Rational Thoughts in an Irrational World

Russia turning the screws on Poland?

From the SMH -

POLAND has accused Germany of conspiring with Russia to threaten central Europe in a manner that recalled the deal between Hitler and Stalin to carve up Poland before World War II.

...

The target was the deal between Berlin and Moscow last year to bypass eastern and central Europe with a new pipeline under the Baltic Sea linking Russia directly with Germany

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Germany and Russia made the deal before last year's German election which the then chancellor, Gerhard Schroeder, lost. He has since been given a lucrative post overseeing the pipeline linking the Russian port of Wyborg and the town of Greifswald in north-eastern Germany.

Well, it sounds like Schroeder was willing to make some money by screwing over Poland. Not the first time this has happened, but it is the most blatent for a long, long time.

So we have Russia created this deal this so it can exert more pressure on Poland, both because Poland has joined the EU and become rather pro-West (even if relations between it and Germany are sometimes frosty) and because so many of Russia's former client states in the USSR have recently broken away from their kleptocratic, authoritarian (and most definately pro-Russia) ruling parties and installed European and US friendly governments - think Ukraine and Georgia, and the attempts at change going on in Belarus.

But the Russian government will probably get away with it, because Western Europe won't complain (think of all that cheaper oil making its way in), the US has many more pressing items concerning Russia at the moment to make waves over this (think Iran, the Sudan, etc) and its fellow Eastern European neighbours don't have the economic, militaristic or political clout to stop it from happening.

I predict that we will see mounting pressure by the Russians on Eastern Europe, partly to try and cash in on the economic success that E.Europe is having, and partly to try and re-establish a political base from which it can meet the US and EU on more equal terms. And as long as Russia can keep the oil coming into W.Europe, and keep the US busy with other problems around the world, not much will happen to stop it.

But I'm sure someone will blame Bush for it all.

Tuesday, March 28, 2006

Problems with Indonesia, over the old foe, human rights

From The SMH

Demonstrators have painted furious messages on the walls of the Australian embassy in Jakarta as protests mount against Canberra's decision to grant visas to dozens of Papuan asylum seekers.

Indonesian police guarding the mission did not stop the vandals, who were among a group of 200 demonstrators staging a rally outside the heavily-fortified mission on one of Jakarta's busiest streets. Other rallies took place in East Java.

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Indonesia also postponed for the third time the signing of an agreement on Australian assistance to fight bird flu with $10 million of funding.

Australia's ambassador to Indonesia, Bill Farmer, said the government wholeheartedly backed Indonesian rule over Papua, echoing Prime Minister John Howard's conciliatory words over the weekend.

"The Australian prime minister, our foreign minister and the Australian government have made it very clear in recent days that Australia recognises Papua as an integral part of Indonesia, and we do not support, and will not support, separatism," Mr Farmer said.

This shows how sensitive Indonesia, or at least the ruling segment and its supporters, are about how it is seen in treating its people. And it also shows how unwilling we are to actually make a stand against Indonesia over its actions, for fear of cries of 'imperialism' or 'racism' or some such nonsense.

Fair enough, Australia does not want to get into a diplomatic hot spot with Indonesia, especially with growing trade between the two countries and possible ramifications for the joining of ASEAN, etc, over West Papua seperatism. However, strong words should be said regarding the deplorable way that the Indonesians rule over their minorities, from those in Aceh, to the Christian minority, to the ethnic minorities in the areas in the east and south. Even if it is not the Indonesian military or police acting directly against its minorities, they tacitly allow the hotheads to get away with such actions without reprisals. And that is not acceptable - any government which only enforces part of the law at the expense of significant sections of its own people is criminal at best.

And to show their displeasure by breaking off talks regarding Australian support to combat the bird flu shows the fallacy of the current government - it is more worried about appearance rather than taking essential procedures to protect its own people.

But what will happen? Not much, likely.

Monday, March 27, 2006

Will Belarus become the next free society?

From The Australian

RIOT police in Belarus clubbed protesters and arrested an opposition leader who marched in defiance of President Alexander Lukashenko, who has drawn US and EU sanctions.

The violence took place after a peaceful rally of up to 7000 people called by opposition leader Alexander Milinkevich.

Some of the crowd then attempted to march on a prison where hundreds of opposition supporters have been jailed in the past week since Mr Lukashenko's disputed landslide re-election.

Witnesses at the scene on Saturday saw lines of black-helmeted riot police on the road to the prison beating back protesters with truncheons.

Alexander Kozulin, one of the two opposition candidates defeated in the March 19 presidential election, was arrested near the site of the violence.

Hopefully this is only the start of the movement to remove Lukashenko's authoritarian regime, such as what happened in Ukraine and Georgia. The will of the people overcoming the 'soft authoritarian regime' through sheer weight of numbers and disapproval. That is, if there are enough people interested and willing to put themselves on the line until the movement builds up a critical mass of people large enough so that they can't all be arrested.

I say 'soft authoritarian regime' in regards to Belarus because I believe that the Belarusian government is unwilling to use the military to violently enforce its version or vision of law and order, thus differentiating it from a 'hard authoritarian regime' such as China (Tiananmen square, for example) or the old USSR (the Hungarian and Czech uprisings) or the old Iraq for that matter (basically any and every time there was trouble since Saddam took power). In those countries, protests or uprisings against the central authority were (and in many states, still are) put down ruthlessly through the use of military power against the people.

I seem to have become the international news man around here, so expect more. I know, lucky you.

Thursday, March 23, 2006

UNHRC disbanded, replaced by UNHRC.

From Yahoo News - UNITED NATIONS - The U.N. gave a green light Wednesday night to abolish the discredited Human Rights Commission on June 16, clearing the way for the new Human Rights Council to become the U.N.'s main rights watchdog.

Last week, the General Assembly voted overwhelmingly to replace the highly politicized and often criticized commission with a new human rights body. The assembly ignored U.S. objections that not enough was done to prevent abusive countries from becoming members.

The Economic and Social Council, which coordinates the U.N.'s work in those fields, approved a resolution abolishing the Human Rights Commission without a vote.

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The commission will be replaced by a new 47-member Human Rights Council, which will be elected on May 9 and hold its first meeting on June 19. Like the commission, the council will be based in Geneva.

The commission came to be discredited in recent years because some countries with terrible human rights records used their membership to protect one another from condemnation.

After voting against the new council, U.S. Ambassador John Bolton told the General Assembly its "real test" will be "whether it takes effective action to address serious human rights abuse cases like Sudan, Cuba, Iran, Zimbabwe, Belarus and Burma."

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The General Assembly resolution setting it up calls for election by an absolute majority — 96 members — and does not ban any country from membership.

Well, the UNHRC is being replaced with a new UNHRC, except... what? The UN resolution doesn't contain any references to excluding abusive nations from the HRC, it doesn't ensure that a clear majority of nations are required to support nations to join the HRC, it doesn't puport to give a new direction to the HRC - that of actually highlighting and stopping abuses of human rights all around the globe. Indeed, the only thing that seems to have changed is that the word 'Commission' has been replaced with 'Council'. The abused people of the globe must be breathing more freely now that they know a Council is looking out for them, not just some old Commission.

Again, the UN highlights that it hasn't managed to do anything worth the time of day since the 50's, and is hostage to the dictatorships, kleptocracies and junta's who use the UN as a cloak to hide their activities, or at least make sure that in the UN (which many support as the only legitimate way to take international action) there is no chance of any real action taking place.

State Sponsored Piracy? Both a truth and an irony

From Google News

A proposed French law that would force Apple Computer to make the songs it sells through its iTunes music store playable on devices that compete with its own iPod amounts to "state-sponsored piracy," Apple said Wednesday.

France's lower house of parliament passed a law Tuesday that would require digital content providers to share details of their rights management technologies with rivals. iTunes songs are protected by Apple's FairPlay technology and are incompatible with most non-iPod players. The bill, designed to prevent any single music-playing technology--and hence, any one media seller or device maker--from dominating the online market, now moves to France's senate.

"The French implementation of the EU Copyright Directive will result in state-sponsored piracy," Apple said in a statement. "If this happens, legal music sales will plummet just when legitimate alternatives to piracy are winning over customers. iPod sales will likely increase as users freely load their iPods with 'interoperable' music which cannot be adequately protected. Free movies for iPods should not be far behind in what will rapidly become a state-sponsored culture of piracy."

Well, huh. Since the beating that Microsoft took over just having media player software bundled in its OS, did Apple really think that they would just get away being so 'uncompetitively unfair' or some stupid phrase like that? It probably didn't help that they are an American company, it also probably didn't help that Apple is forming almost a monopoly with the IPod, because the only monopoly's allowed in Europe, especially France, belong to the government.

Indeed, if Apple was a French company, you would expect to see it nationalised by now. Then again, if Apple was a French company, the IPod would have a charge time of 15 minuits, only accept the songs it felt like, then take six weeks leave when it was feeling like it, and finally go on strike if it did over 35 hours on a four day week.

Though more seriously, I would say that Apple would cease to sell ITunes in France well before it actually had to implement this idiotic scheme, it still brings to light the inanity of the French parliament - with unemployment at 10%, youth unemployment at 20%, and minorities at 40% unemployment, you would really think they would have more sensible things to be legislating. Like legislating themselves out of existence.

Wednesday, March 22, 2006

Iran and the UN - intransigence vs incompetence

From the SMH - Iran says it will not be bullied by the United States over its nuclear program and is not worried about being referred to the UN Security Council.

I must say, if I were Iran, I wouldn't be overly worried about the UNSC either. If the UNSC delegations can't even agree on the wording of a statement to Iran, what chance have they of producing a serious set of sanctions or authorisation of military action? Especially with China, Russia and their joint nutjob client-state North Korea all making billions selling technology and military hardware to Iran. And because of this inability to act through the formal processes of the UN (no major surprise there) it leaves three major possible outcomes for this situation - firstly that nothing is done, Iran developes a nuclear capability, and then proceeds to not use them (possible, but Iran isn't the most rational of players on the world stage, especially with their current 'Kill the Jews, all of them' regime).

The second possible outcome is a mushroom cloud, possibly in Israel, or near one of the US fleets in or around the Gulf, or perhaps even in a western city. Again, this is possible, due to the aforementioned irrational player aspect to Iran, even though direct and swift retribution would ensue.

The third possible outcome involves military intervention, either directly by the US (through a covert strike or even invasion by the US) or indirectly (sabotage or otherwise) by Israel to destroy the nuclear facilities. However, whether the US or even Israel have the will to do so is in question, both due to sluggish support for the Iraq war in the US making the Administration less likely to take risks, and hostility towards Israel at a high with Hamas in power in Palestine combined with rising antipathy in Europe and the rest of the Middle East making Israel think that the possible gain isn't worth the pain.

You would probably notice that I didn't really mention the UNSC in anything I just wrote, or the UN in general - because apart from being a dead weight and deadlocking proceedures in endless processes to the delight or dictatorships and military juntas around the world, they don't do anything if action seems a real possibility. Maybe I'm being too harsh, but I don't think so.

Either way, what I said above is pieced together facts glued together by assertions, or maybe its the other way around. If you have an idea, or an opinion on the matter, please comment.

Stuart Lord

Excuse me?

As I was trawling through today's newspaper, I saw this article here - The Australian

'KABUL: An Afghan man could be sentenced to death after being charged with converting from Islam to Christianity, a crime under Afghanistan's sharia law.'

Look, I understand that the people and therefore the government and legal system of Afghanistan was empowered to choose their own directions after the liberation of the country from the Taliban in 2001-2, but this matter should be acted upon, either by the US, the EU taskforce in the country, indeed, just about anyone with clout in the country. Why? Because condemning men and women to death for their beliefs was one of the hallmarks of the Taliban regime, and one of the (smaller) reasons why the US and allies felt justified in regime change to begin with. And now we have exactly the same thing going on, even if it is on a lesser scale. Principal dictates action, and swift action, even if it puts pressure on new allies.

Otherwise we may as well just have said to the Taliban 'Look guys, if you clean up your act on the sides, cut a bit back on the random shootings and lynchings, and just moderate the fanaticism slightly, it will all be fine.' Because that is what we will end up with - a slightly cleaner, more PR friendly version of the Taliban.

And just as a thought or two - if the punishment and possible execution of infidels is allowed or even demanded under Sharia law, what does it tell us about those who wish or are already acting to have Sharia law enacted in other societies (*cough*Canada*cough*) as well? What does it tell us about those who wish to see it enacted in Australia?

Oh, and Hi. I'm one of the new co-bloggers, so expect to see a bit more of me. Unlucky you, I know.

Stuart Lord