Posted by seumasach on August 24, 2016
Neil Clark
2nd August, 2016
The ICTY’s exoneration of the late Slobodan Milosevic, the former President of Yugoslavia, for war crimes committed in the Bosnia war, proves again we should take NATO claims regarding its ’official enemies’ not with a pinch of salt, but a huge lorry load.
Posted in Disband NATO! | Tagged: ICTY | Leave a Comment »
Posted by seumasach on August 23, 2016
“At the moment, however, the Sino-British “golden era” in relations, ushered in by Chinese President Xi Jinping and Cameron last fall, looks like in shambles. Faced with a choice between America and China, May could indeed think that the tested relationship with Washington remains “more special” than the blossoming one with Beijing.”
22nd August, 2016
While British Prime Minister Theresa May probably may like to take a leaf out of German Chancellor Angela Merkel’s book, she is no stateswoman like her counterpart nor is Britain comparable to Germany in geopolitical terms. As Merkel effectively engages China and Sino-German trade turnover grows, Beijing sees Germany as the locomotive that pulls the EU economic and political trains. On the other hand, post-Brexit Britain, faced with a choice between America and China, may finally opt for the tested relationship with Washington.
Posted in brexit crisis, Containing China | Tagged: Chinese soft power | Leave a Comment »
Posted by seumasach on August 22, 2016
It may be that something will happen this autumn to distract attention from the travails of the hopelessly divided Brexit camp, something like a financial crash. This could put the whole process on the back-burner much to the relief of Johnson & co who simply don’t know what they are doing, just as millions of Brits simply didn’t know what they were voting for in practice. Failing this deus ex machine the divisions within the camp will be there for all to see rendering the necessary pre-article 50 agreement on a brexit plan impossible.
21st August, 2016
When Boris Johnson was working for the Daily Telegraph in Brussels in the early 1990s, rival British correspondents dreaded midnight calls from their news desks in London. Sonia Purnell, Johnson’s biographer, who worked with him at the time, recalls that Boris’s stories about the curvature of bananas, the shape of cucumbers and other EU absurdities were known as “duvet blasters”. Despairing reporters were ordered out of bed to write follow-ups. “The stories were almost always wrong but they would still blast everyone’s duvets,” says Purnell. For the young Johnson, it was good journalistic fun.
Posted in brexit crisis | Tagged: article 50 of Lisbon Treaty | Leave a Comment »
Posted by seumasach on August 21, 2016
It is not the Remain camp which is stalling Brexit so much as the Brexit camp itself. They are yet to come up with a program for Brexit. They did not do so in the course of the referendum campaign apart from vagaries about trading with the rest of the world, except China as it turns out. They will never come up with a program for the simple reason that there are no good options and no options at all that they can agree on. Without agreement on a future framework for Britain article 50 will not be triggered. The brexiteers have dedicated entire lifetimes to reaching this point and they just don’t know what to do.
21st August, 2016
Iain Duncan Smith has urged Theresa May to crack on with Britain’s divorce from the European Union as he accused Remain supporters of trying to delay the process.
Posted in brexit crisis | Tagged: brexit mudge and fudge, the brexit disaster | Leave a Comment »
Posted by seumasach on August 21, 2016
21st August, 2016
First Russian involvement changed the fortunes of the Syrian civil war to a large extent. Then first some, and later much, of the world began a sort of decoupling with the Gulf regimes, especially Saudi Arabia, and moved closer to Iran. Then the Syrian Arab Army started regaining lost cities and highways, especially the route from the Turkish border to the disputed city of Aleppo; which no longer supplies rebels with American anti-tank weapons, etc. And now, with the Americans, GCC, Nato, etc, on the back foot, the Chinese have also engaged with the war, training the Syrian forces as they close the noose around the rebels, particularly ISIS.
Posted in Global peace process, Syria | Tagged: End the Syrian war! | Leave a Comment »
Posted by seumasach on August 19, 2016
F.William Engdahl
2nd August, 2016
After more than two years of worsening economic growth and an economy struggling with 10.5% central bank interest rates that make new credit to spur growth virtually impossible, Russian President Vladimir Putin has finally broken an internal factional standoff. On July 25 he mandated that an economic group called the Stolypin Club prepare their proposals to spur growth revival to be presented to the government by the Fourth Quarter of this year. In doing so, Putin has rejected two influential liberal or neo-liberal economic factions that had brought Russia into a politically and economically dangerous recession with their liberal Western free market ideology. This is a major development, one I had been expecting since I had the possibility to exchange views this June in St. Petersburg at the annual St. Petersburg International Economic Forum.
Posted in Multipolar world | Tagged: Friederich List, Putin agenda, Russian development model, Russian renaissance, Stolypin Club | Leave a Comment »
Posted by seumasach on August 19, 2016
I think this is a credible outline of the Trump agenda: it ties in with the Brexit agenda and the emergence of an anti-China front which curiously replicates the Oceania of Orwell’s 1984. Essentially, it envisages a reconstruction policy without engagement with China. It is extremely questionable that such an Listian economic nationalist program can work in today’s conditions. It presupposes that capital goods and commodities can be imported for an ever devalued dollar. It presupposes that the USA still possesses the skills base and the national ethos for such a program, that it can accept sacrifice and a massive shift from consumer to capital spending. It presupposes that the US financial system can be adapted to productive capital investment and that the managerial, bureaucratic basis for a centrally directed economy can be put in place. And, above all, it presupposes that oligarchical interests can reconcile themselves to the dirigiste model which has hitherto been a taboo, that the political conditions for a latter-day New Deal exist. Is this, in the end, the last illusion of a USA which is rejecting a globalisation which it no longer controls?
Pepe Escobar
17th August, 2016
Hillary Clinton, Queen of Chaos, Queen of War, Golden Goldman Girl, for all practical purposes is by now the official bipartisan candidate of US neocons and neoliberalcons alike.
Posted in Containing China, Oceania | Tagged: trump agenda, US-China: clash of world systems | Leave a Comment »
Posted by seumasach on August 19, 2016
M.K.Bhadrakumar
18th August, 2016
Turkish President Recep Erdogan’s recent visit to St Petersburg to meet Russian President Vladimir Putin, Russian jet fighters taking off from an Iranian base for the first time to hit Syrian targets and Erdogan’s proposed visit to Iran probably next week point to a trilateral Turkey-Iran-Russia format emerging on Syria. China seems to be entering the equation laterally as indicated by top military officer Rear Admiral Guan Youfei’s meeting with Syrian Defense Minister Fahad Jassim al-Freij in Damascus. Turkey, Iran, Russia and China have a shared interest or even need to push back at the US, each for its own reasons.
Posted in Syria | Tagged: China-Iran-Russia Triangle, Russian diplomacy, Turkey-Syria-Russia-Iran alliance | Leave a Comment »
Posted by seumasach on August 17, 2016
M.K.Bhadfrakumar
15th August, 2016
The reported remarks Monday by Turkish Prime Minister Binaldi Yildirim regarding a 3-step road map for ending the Syrian conflict would be the latest indication that Ankara is tiptoeing toward restoring Turkish-Syrian relations at the diplomatic and political level.
Posted in Multipolar world, Syria | Tagged: russia -Turkey strategic alliance, Turkey-Syria-Iran alliance, Turkey-Syria-Russia-Iran alliance | Leave a Comment »
Posted by seumasach on August 17, 2016
This article gives an excellent overview of both China’s global strategy and systemic conflicts with the Western model. The authors correctly, in my view, identify the relationship of the financial system to the state as being at the heart of these systemic differences:
“To take one specific example, in Western economic thought, banks are seen as intermediaries between borrowers and lenders. Traditionally in Asia, however, banks are seen as instruments of state-directed growth and industrialization which take deposits and then use the savings through preferential allocation of credit to drive development in predetermined priority sectors of the economy.17 China’s People’s Bank, Ministry of Finance, and major policy banks, such as the China Development Bank and the State Export-Import Bank, have worked with their southern counterparts on how to become “responsible borrowers,” and how to identify and structure revenue and surplus-generating projects so that a stable supply of funds is available to repay loans.18 Chinese experiences on public financial and fiscal management are a core component in the curriculum of this government-to-government training.”
They also show great prescience in identifying the policy shift now crystalising out of Obama’s “pivot to Asia”:
“China, however, should be mindful that, just as it can hedge, so can the West and its likely Asian partners such as India and Japan. A reversion to an old- fashioned “balance-of-power” scenario would be unfortunate for all, especially if absent effective coordination mechanisms between the paramount powers.”
They could have added South America, South Africa, Australia and the UK as being drawn into an anti-China reaction or , at least, being strongly pressured in that direction.
Gregory Chin and Ramesh Thakur
October, 2010
Posted in Containing China | Tagged: Chinese soft power, US-China: clash of world systems | Leave a Comment »
Posted by seumasach on August 17, 2016
Raising the spectre of a Chinese “security”threat is, of course, merely a pretext. Our hostility to China becomes China’s imagined hostility to us. The real issue is systemic: China’s financial system is subordinate to the state whereas our state is subordinate to the financial system. All this has been accentuated post-Brexit: at the same time as we shut out China we are directing more of our own resources to bailing out the financial sector.
13th August, 2016
Whether he wins or loses the US presidency next November, Donald Trump has already come up with one of the defining slogans of 2016 – “Make America great again”.
Posted in Containing China | Tagged: Chinese soft power, US-China: clash of world systems | Leave a Comment »
In These New Times 