Malcolm Blair-Robinson's Blog, page 214
July 30, 2014
July 29, 2014
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Downfall In Downing Street
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……as the train roared out of the tunnel, he sensed rather than felt a movement behind him before he was violently pushed. As he flew off the platform into the path of the oncoming train, he heard a woman scream.
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July 28, 2014
Downfall In Downing Street: Free Download
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July 27, 2014
Clegg and Moscow: This Is Wrong
The news that Nick Clegg thinks that the next World Cup should be taken away from Russia, jumps onto the hysterical anti-Putin bandwagon whipped up in western media by people who have little grasp of the facts. The deputy prime minister should know better. Russia is not a rogue state, there are good historic reasons for its support of the Russian majority in eastern Ukraine and its restoration of Crimea to the Russian Federation. All of this was part of the Soviet Union and because of that the populations are culturally and ethnically mixed. Russia’s position is exactly similar to the British view of its continued control of the Falklands, Gibraltar and Northern Ireland.
Too little of western foreign policy, led by the US and an increasingly strident UK, is about making friends and too much of it actually makes enemies. Too many of the friends turn out to disappoint. The headlong flight of the staff of the US Embassy from Tripoli over the border to Tunisia underscores the embarrassing and little reported fact that post Gaddafi Libya is a failed state and about to break up. The West is accumulating the greatest foreign policy failures in modern history, with mounting jihadist threats emerging in Iraq, Syria, Libya, Yemen, Afghanistan and the tribal areas of Pakistan. It is backing a very unsavoury nationalist grouping in Kiev, the prime minister of which has resigned and the coalition split apart. Its peace initiatives in Palestine get nowhere and terrible slaughter now ensues as a stubborn Hamas and a heavy handed Israel engage in their third war.
The last thing the West needs is another Cold War or even a chill in its relations with Moscow. Most of the problems, especially Ukraine, Iran and Syria cannot be solved without Russian input. Foreign policy is not a football tournament. To work in the national interest and the interest of all nations it has to be nuanced, pragmatic consensus building and constructive. The object is to turn enemies into friends, not friends into enemies. Everyone knows Russia did not shoot down MH17. Everyone knows too, that the most likely explanation is that the plane was shot down by mistake by separatists using sophisticated weaponry without due care for target identification. It has been a public relations disaster for both the separatists and Moscow.
On the other hand Kiev has gained authority and status. That is why some harbour the suspicion that Kiev is hiding something. Meanwhile its government in parliament has collapsed and the money has all but run out. By the end of this week it will not be able to pay its army. Instead of making childish gestures to Moscow, Clegg needs to turn his attention to his bright new ally and find out what is going on in Kiev.
July 26, 2014
Labour, Milliband and Winning
The Labour Party is ahead in the polls but not by a large margin. The margin is small enough to be eaten away during the election campaign. The recovery is gaining momentum. This is awkward for the party which said the Coalition was on the wrong course. It is true that the recovery is fuelled by another housing bubble, is not well balanced and is not felt by ordinary people, whose incomes are falling in real terms. It is also a recovery which cannot last and may well end in tears. Yet the tide appears turning towards the Tories, when it should be running more strongly to Labour.
It is not because Milliband is geeky, though he is. It is not because Balls lacks the credibility to become the next Chancellor, though he does. It is not because Labour has no good new ideas, they have a few worth looking at. The problem is they have no Big Idea. Nor do they have a narrative in which people can believe and by which they can become inspired.
It is simple. With a Big Idea and a Narrative to Inspire, Labour could be certain of victory, whoever is leader. Without either they can expect, at best, not to win outright and, at worst, to loose altogether. Whoever is leader.
July 23, 2014
Cameron: Think It Through!
The ‘blame the Russians’ mantra running through British foreign policy, which feeds into hate stories in the media and inflames public opinion, has the power to damage Britain in the long term much more than it does Russia. Russia is perhaps the most resilient of all nations. It coped with Napoleon, the Kaiser, Hitler and the collapse of the Soviet Union and remains one of the world’s three greatest powers. It is potentially self sufficient in all things. It has already agreed to sell more gas to China and Western sanctions will only increase job opportunities for Russian workers in the long term. It can well survive Cameron’s opprobrium, better than the British economy can survive the loss of the enormous economic opportunity of participating in the modernization of what was the central power of the old Soviet Union.
Britain, its foreign office and its lack lustre political class have been anti Russian in sentiment since the collapse of the Soviet empire. There has never been a serious attempt to think in strategic terms; only to advance the hand of friendship on conditional and censorious conditions which require that they become like us. They were blamed for Syria, yet they prophesied the current mayhem would be the outcome of our original policies. They were blamed for the seamless return of Crimea to Russia without any significant violence and with overwhelming support of the Crimean population.
In Northern Ireland we allow the protestant unionists to attach themselves to us for historic reasons, rather than the country of which they were originally a part. We call them loyalists. Yet when the same sentiment breaks out among ethnic Russians in Eastern Ukraine, for equally good historical reasons, we call them separatists. Russia is nervous of the ever eastward advance of NATO and the EU, in violation of promises previously made and without a serious attempt to bring Russia westwards.
Unless the Ukrainian government in Kiev had a hand in bringing down MH17 (unlikely but as yet not fully discounted), it is now accepted that tragic though it was, MH17 was shot down in a catastrophic mistake by people who had the basic skills to fire the missile, but not the skill required to confirm identification of the target. US intelligence has confirmed that its sophisticated tracking, surveillance and eavesdropping has produced no evidence to show Russian complicity or participation in the disaster.
So the accusation is that Russia supplied the weapon. Coming from one of the greatest arms exporters, Britain, this is hardly an intelligent platform on which to stand on such an issue. The aim all along should have been to make Russia a full partner with the West, in which case the turmoil in Ukraine would never have happened. Now the West is hell bent on turning Russia in on itself to become a rival. Russia will then turn to China. If they gang up together the West will have nothing to gain and a good deal to lose.
July 21, 2014
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Israel: This Has to Stop
Israel has gone over the top and is pursuing a counterproductive policy which will not enhance its security in the long term. Its military operations have no validity whatever as a strategic operations and have all the aspects of revenge attacks and punishment details. There is only negative propaganda value in massive civilian casualties, among them large numbers of women and decapitated children. The warnings to civilians to leave their homes are little more than a cruel torment when Israel knows perfectly well that in overcrowded Gaza they have nowhere to go. Israel is now without any friends in the nations in the world bar one, the United States, which is close to getting fed up as well. The State of Israel teeters on the edge of moral bankruptcy.
It has nothing to do with being Jewish. Almost everything it is does is in violation of all the high principles and humanitarian traditions of Judaism. It is to do with the difference between being a fully paid member of the family of civilised nations and a rogue state which does whatever it likes. Of course Israel has a right to defend itself, but that right is progressively degraded if it has itself created the very conditions which cause its security to be threatened.
Occupying large tracts of other people’s land and refusing to accept any peace proposals which to do not involve capitulation by the enemies which it has in sixty years of conflict itself created, sealing of all access in an out of Gaza so that the essentials of life have to be smuggled through tunnels burrowed into the earth, forcing a rat like existence and which guarantee that those very tunnels will be used also to smuggle arms and weapons, builds with forensic efficiency the very threats Israel then has to defending itself against. The United Nations is often split on major issues but on the censure of Israel for its current operations, the condemnation is unanimous.
The people of Israel and their government have to take a long hard look at themselves in the mirror of reason and see that they cannot go on like this. Their future lies not in everlasting fear and fighting but in negotiating a settlement which guarantees their security and gives their neighbours a civilised life in a place they can call their own. This is what the world gave the Jewish people when it inaugurated the state of Israel after WWII. To secure that achievement Israel must now recognise once and for all that the rights it has been given by its very existence are not exclusive to it, but are shared by all humanity and must be honoured by all civilised countries. The days when Israel could claim exception on whatever pretext are well and truly over.
July 20, 2014
The Judas Cross: Free Download
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Air Crash: The West Must Work With Russia
There are alarming reports of trigger happy gunmen interfering with the attempts of investigators trying to discover the truth behind the destruction of MH17, together with surprising disrespect for the bodies scattered across the countryside of east Ukraine. This is appears to be in sharp contrast to the work of the emergency services and ordinary people in the locality of the crash, overwhelmed as they are by the scale of the disaster.
These reports are causing revulsion across the world and are severely damaging the cause of the separatists. The whole ghastly episode is a public relations disaster for the Kremlin, because of its supposed support for these armed units. Yet every independent expert commentator urges caution before apportioning blame. The prima face evidence is of a mistake by the separatists, but some, including Moscow, believe that Kiev has something to hide. This could be worrying as it is a matter of fact that the separatists have everything to lose from this disaster and cannot gain anything from it. On the other hand many at the centre of the Ukraine government are as keen as mustard to pull NATO in and this outrage, they wrongly calculate, may just do that. They may be innocent but they have a motive and their innocence needs to be properly tested.
Meanwhile it should be clear to everybody that blaming Russia for everything is pointless and counter productive. It is doubtful that Russia actually has as much control of the separatist militias as the West likes to assert. There are signs of Russian mercenaries with a pro Soviet agenda on the loose who want to turn the clock backwards. This cannot be welcome in the Kremlin. It is, however, clear that the crisis in Ukraine cannot be solved without Russian participation and that will work only if Russia and the West are in step. Otherwise loads more innocent people will be killed.
Instead of these repetitive phone calls from the White House and Downing Street to Putin issuing demands and threats, it could just be that a softer tone asking for his suggestions might be a more grown up approach, yielding better results. Respect for the nearly three hundred dead and concern for those they have left behind numb with grief, make settling differences among the powers in play an obligation. This blog detects that a cautious President Obama senses this. Prime Minister Cameron, as usual utterly clueless on foreign policy, does not.
