Category Archives: Foreign Affairs

American Irony

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In April, 1775, American colonists rebelled against the British Crown, declaring independence on July 4th, 1776 and freeing themselves of the shackles of empire.

When the war was finally over in 1783, hundreds of thousands, of the estimated one-third of colonists who had remained loyal to the Crown, fled the new country with many crossing the border to Canada.

Without doubt, the War of Independence proved to be an inspired success, with the USA developing into the most powerful, important and influential nation in the world.

How ironic that, nearly 240 years later, some American citizens, according to reports in the US media, are considering emigrating to Canada (thus submitting themselves once more to the British Crown!) so disenchanted are they by next November’s candidates in the Presidential election.

George Washington would be turning in his grave!

 

 

Un Pervert

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The French Finance Minister, Michel Sapin, is at the centre of a storm for allegedly twanging a female journalist’s knicker elastic in public – a bit like an over-excited 11 year old schoolboy might do to a female classmate at junior school.

Apparently, the late-middle aged Monsieur Sapin has a bit of a reputation as “un pervert” and the received wisdom among lady journalists is “Don’t dare pick up a pen in front of him”. In this particular instance a female journalist did just that, prompting Old Sappy to say (and this is probably best imagined as spoken in a Peter Sellers’ Inspector Clouseau voice) “Ah, but what have we here?” before he leaned forward and pulled on the exposed under garment.

He initially denied it all, as he would, threatening claims for libel against anybody who dared print the allegations, but then mysteriously changed his tune stating “I made a comment to a female journalist about her clothing while placing my hand on her back”. Ah, right.

He went on to add, “There was no sexist or aggressive intent in my action”, and he was sorry. Really? So if it wasn’t sexist does that mean that he would behave in a similar fashion if a male journalist bent down in front of him exposing the top of his boxer shorts?

What a jerk and what a coward to boot. Like any politician, whether he’s caught with his hand in the till or in somebody’s underwear he is only sorry for the fact that he’s been caught out and nothing else.

If you’re going to behave like a crook or a pervert and you are caught out bang to rights at least have the guts to hold your hands up and admit to it rather than dig yourself an even deeper hole by coming out with an explanation so ridiculous that even the aforementioned 11 year old schoolboy would find laughable.

Dead Right

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It was reported this week that Thailand,  facing one of the world’s worst records of drink-driving,  has passed new legislation compelling convicted drivers to work in mortuaries and to physically handle dead bodies to try and drive home (no pun intended) the seriousness of the offence.

Talk about the punishment fitting the crime!  Perhaps the Thai government will now compel car thieves to clean and valet cars unpaid for months at a time or require those convicted of assault to go ten rounds with a professional boxer.

Maybe persons convicted of indecent exposure will be forced to expose themselves, fully naked, in a commercial fridge-freezer until they turn blue or something drops off! The list is almost endless.

Mere Semantics

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There’s evidently been a bit of a to do Down Under following the decision by lecturers at the University of New South Wales in Sydney to no longer refer to Captain Cook’s voyage of exploration and its aftermath as a “discovery” but as an “invasion”. Some have accused the University of  political correctness but I’m not so sure.

I think we in the West can occasionally be guilty of viewing our past through rose-tinted spectacles although it is a natural human trait to try and paint ourselves in the best possible light. Using the British as an example (though it applies equally to France, Holland, Germany, the USA or any other imperialist power) we were taught that when things happened to us it was bad and when we did it to others it was good.

Thus, the Romans did not “discover” Britain, they “invaded” it. The Vikings did not “discover” the British Isles, they “conquered” large parts of the land following their sea-borne raids. However when the British sailed across the world to Australia or parts of Africa and then settled the land following their military defeat of indigenous peoples it was referred to as “discovery”.

It is no more than mere semantics with different words used to describe the same action and effect. It is also rank hypocrisy and political correctness has got nothing to do with it.

Carve Up

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I recently read an interesting article on countries unlikely to survive due to the artificiality of their borders. Several countries were mentioned but three stood out namely, Iraq, Syria and Libya.

In the last two centuries Africa and the Middle East were carved up by European colonial powers, such as France, Germany, Italy, Belgium and Great Britain.

Tribes and groups of indigenous peoples, thousands of years old and with no cultural link were pulled apart or lumped together with no thought other than profit and how they would look on a map.

Iraq and Syria were created after the end of the First World War in 1918 by France and Britain and groups such as the Kurds, Sunni Muslims and Shiite Muslims were forced to live together whether they wanted to or not.

Libya formerly consisted of three separate regions called, Tripolitania, Cyrenaica and Fezzan. In the early 20th century Italy invaded North Africa and arbitrarily lumped the three regions together to form the new nation.

None of the peoples in any of those three countries wanted nationhood and until recently all were held together by brutal dictators, Saddam in Iraq, Gaddafi in Libya and Assad in Syria. The first two were removed by Western action and the last, Syria, is in turmoil as Assad desperately clings on to power with Russian backing.

What a mess.

 

 

The Rise of Trump

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I watched last week’s television programme on the seemingly unstoppable rise of Donald Trump and there appears to be little doubt that he has a very strong chance of winning the US Republican presidential nomination and therefore a one in two chance of becoming the next President of the USA.

His campaign to win the Republican Party nomination has been extremely effective in spite of (or is it because of?) the fact that much of what he has said has been controversial and provocative. Indeed, it has been noted by political commentators that the more controversial he is the more his popularity grows.

It seemed, listening to the people interviewed in the Trump television documentary, that they are worried about losing their jobs, they are concerned about mass immigration and they are concerned about the security and safety of their families. That certainly strikes a chord across many parts of the West.

People who feel alienated and tired of the policies of their elected leaders will naturally look elsewhere, to politicians who say what they want to hear and promise them what they want, no matter how implausible. If Donald Trump does end up as President of the USA it will undoubtedly act as a wake-up call to many other leaders in the West.

Time for Action

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Tragically, the world witnessed another entirely predictable slaughter over the weekend, 129 dead and counting. There will be others, of course, and next time it could be London, Manchester, Berlin, New York or maybe even Paris again, in fact anywhere in the world inhabited by we “unbelievers”.

Well, what are we going to do about it? Naturally, Western leaders have expressed outrage, President Obama has talked of crimes against humanity, Prime Minister Cameron has talked about sharing the pain and all have talked of solidarity with France which is all very well and good, but, to repeat the question, what are we actually going to do about it?

This is deadly serious, literally, and the only sensible statement I’ve heard from any politician has been the response of French President Hollande, who said that we are “at war”. We are, the whole of the civilised world is at war with the extremists of Islam whose self-proclaimed aim is to destroy us.

The United Nations, according to its own charter was set up to safeguard the security and liberty of sovereign nations and their citizens. Sadly, we all know that the UN is worse than useless and so it has to fall upon the civilised world, namely us and all our freedom-loving allies, to unite and defend ourselves.

There is no choice but to form an armed coalition and put men on the ground in Syria and Iraq, in fact, anywhere where these psychopaths congregate, and neutralise the threat, whatever it takes. At home we have to be more vigilant than ever and must sadly abandon our failed policy of tolerance and get tough with those who live within our midst and whose self-avowed aim is our destruction.

This will inevitably bring forth allegations of breaches of human rights from the liberal politically correct elite who have such a big say in Western government but, too bad. As long as the authorities act rationally and in a cool measured manner, safeguarding the rights of law-abiding citizens, we have nothing to fear.

If there is another realistic alternative then, I for one, have yet to hear of it. This is not a game, this is deadly reality. Our leaders have talked too much, now they must act.

Terror in the Skies

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The UK Government’s suspension of British flights to and from Sharm el-Sheikh in Egypt over the last few days, whilst British security officials investigated and put in place their own safeguards, met with a mixture of approval and criticism. The move can hardly have come as a surprise following the downing of a Russian airliner over the Sinai Desert last week with the loss of 224 lives.

It has yet to be conclusively established how the crash occurred but, upon hearing the news, I’m sure that most people immediately suspected a terrorist missile or bomb. Evidently both UK and US Intelligence have recently warned of terrorist activity in the area so that was enough for our Government to take action.

It’s a difficult position for any government to be in because with 20,000 nationals currently holidaying in the area that’s an awful lot of responsibility. I suppose the Foreign Office could have said that flying in or out of southern Egypt at the moment is a real danger and then leave it up to the individual but that is not the way it works these days.

If a British airliner were to suffer the same fate as the Russian plane just imagine the outrage directed at the Government. Imagine too the huge raft of legal claims. One cannot blame the Government for its cautious stance, irrespective of the inconvenience to holidaymakers. Better inconvenienced than dead.

I’ve never had a favourable opinion of Egyptian security since the time I took an early morning flight on Egypt Air from Cairo to Luxor a few years back. The flight was scheduled for about 6am and at 4.30am or so, as the passengers went through security screening, the “guard” was fast asleep in front of his x-ray machine. It seemed funny at the time but not anymore.

Raising the Stakes

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Matters in Syria took a serious turn this week when the Russians began bombing rebel forces, who, since the conflict began, have been receiving aid from the West and particularly the USA in their struggle against the government of President Assad. This undoubtedly raises the stakes in this troubled country and in the Middle East as a whole.

It’s bad enough that the region is witnessing Arab groups turning on one another and Isis destroying everything in its path but now we have the potential for conflict between Russia and America and the danger of a return to the Cold War.

The opportunistic Russian leader, Vladimir Putin, has said that his planes are merely bombing the same targets as the West but that has been shown to be untrue. If the Russians were just to bomb Isis, as the West is doing, that would be welcomed because Isis, with its religious fanaticism and evident disdain for everything that decent human beings hold dear, is an obvious global threat.

Isis are seeking to fill a void in Syria and, unlike the Syrian rebels, have a far greater agenda than the mere removal of the brutal President Assad. It seems apparent that Putin’s aim is to keep Assad in power and for Syria to, in effect, become a client state of Russia. If this is the price to be paid for the destruction of Isis then most of the world would probably breathe a sigh of relief.

However, as the fighting intensifies the real losers in this tragedy, the Syrian people, who want nothing more than to live in peace, continue to face the stark choice between death and the seeking of refuge in any country that will take them in. When will their suffering end?

Rubbing It In

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I was working in Miami last week, specifically Miami Beach, where the streets are lined with pastel coloured Art-Deco buildings and the beautiful people walk along Ocean Drive pausing only to sip their margaritas and admire one other. Being far removed from such glitterati I was sat in a plain old bar drinking Budweiser with my head buried in a newspaper but that’s another story.

What struck me about my visit was the fact that, strategically located near to the beaches, are sun cream dispensers supplied by the city medical authority, enabling folk to apply factor 30 sun protection free of charge (as if they cannot afford to buy their own!).

No doubt the prominent location of these dispensers serves as a useful reminder to the forgetful. I imagine that, if you spend half the morning sculpting your eyebrows, removing unwanted body hair and putting on your designer make-up, a little thing like sun protection is probably easy to overlook. I’m sure that the local women struggle too!

On a serious note, since skin cancer is one of the fastest growing diseases of the modern age (described by many experts as an epidemic) the move makes sense, if only to save on medical bills. I wouldn’t be at all surprised if this idea catches on elsewhere.

As an additional service, applications are now being accepted for the job of rubbing in the cream on the young and beautiful of Miami Beach. Apparently the queue begins somewhere in New York!