Don't call me comrade

Ideologies and realities

The spectre of the Communist Party of Britain in front of the Central Library at St Peter’s Square this afternoon after church was one for amusement. Do not get me wrong, there is room for diverse political thought and ideas, though the system might not work here, there is a possibility that good ideas might gain the attention towards being considered for policy.

Anyway, it was the coincidence of events that made for a wry observation of ironic consideration. They were gathered with their many flags applauding someone giving an address, not that I cared to listen. I had a cup of Starbucks latter with a piece of cake, and Starbucks does not come any more multinational bastion of global capitalism than that.

Life is a different story

Whizzing past on their bicycles were Deliveroo couriers, workers with needs that demand the exertion of the physical, facing dangers to earn a crust, most not covered by any employee protections, collectivism, or unionised representation. It is them against a system, yet, to increase productivity some have electric bicycles which means they probably would not tire as early as those who need to muscle it out for each errand.

As a settled down to drink my coffee, watching them and chatting to Brian, a group of people probably Chinese from their appearance, took an interest and stopped to take pictures. We were not that far from Manchester’s Chinatown, but they could have been thinking whether this gathering was an offshoot of their party in government back in China. I could not read their thoughts.

Back and forth they go

Then they marched off towards the war memorial where they stopped for some minutes before marching back past the Central Library towards the Manchester Convention Centre, stopping in the square opposite Barbirolli Square, by which time, I thought they were acting in the spirit of the Grand Old Duke of York, it was just left to them to march back and forth until they stopped somewhere neither here nor there.

For all that amusement, you never know, they might great ideas and democracy is the act of persuasion. Whatever the case, never call me comrade, I am not of that persuasion, not by any stretch of the imagination.

Berlin: Concentration camps and walled cities

Memorials of grave deeds

Some things just defy explanation or understanding and sadly they are at first part of our history and are constantly at the risk of repeating and recurring in the present with the same horrors of the past.

The remains of the Berlin Wall preserved in a memorial are sited just outside Nordbahnhof Station. The record of a deliberate decision of people in power to cage people under a ruthless authoritarian Communist rule. [Berlin Wall Memorial]

The architects of the wall destroyed life and property to plant this rotten edifice that ran through a cemetery and in the process the disinterment of over 1,000 graves to fit that purpose. The memorial now sits on what was once part of a cemetery.

Concentrated evil

When people sought to escape this regime, because the primordial cry of humanity is for freedom, they were shot. Someone took orders to shoot both young and old without mercy and it was done. At the memorial stands portraits of each person martyred in their quest for freedom.

Not even 16 years before this wall was conceived and erected in 1961, there was the liberation of the concentration camps, the first of which was sited near the seat of power to cater to political prisoners at Sachsenhausen in Oranienburg.

These were operated by the Nazis with an efficiency and organisation that today still baffles imagination and comprehension.

In this and many other Nazi concentration camps, they perfected the art and science of human extermination with an almost sense of omnipotence and power over life, livelihood, death and disposal.

History in present replay

Anyone who visits the memorial will fail with words with which to appreciate this enterprise. What however all in our touring group was when I noted to our tour guide how when the Communist government of the GDR were planning a memorial to the souls lost in the concentration camps in 1961, the people who said never again were building a new wall around Berlin.

Man’s capacity for evil is never trammelled, when power is absolute and that fear of the other is exploited, resulting in the persecution of the other and the considered different by the Nazis, then by the GDR, was repeated in the Brexit campaign, is showing a Genesis in the aftermath of the failed coup in Turkey and is a fearful prospect if Donald Trump becomes president of the United States of America.

Walls are not bridges and bridges are not walls, whichever is built would either celebrate or denigrate our common humanity. The populist rhetoric aims to accentuate our differences, and if we do not stand up to this narrative, before long, people will be victimised and how long before this poison colours our doorstep?

The Ideological Contagion of dummy capitalism

A contagion most contagious

I could not help but snigger when an analyst from Goldman Sachs appeared on CNN and depicted the possibility of some Chavez socialist ideas being taken on by other Andean states as Ideological Contagion.

Now, that is something he definitely thought of earlier, however, that is beside the point. The threat to nationalise a number of previously privatised utilities lead to the suspension of trading in the shares of a number of companies which lost between 20% to 30% of their value as investors took fright.

Evidently, many political socialists are oblivious of market economics and how capitalism works, in fact, the only Nobel Prize winner in Economics from a socialist background won on the topical issue of the theory of optimum allocation of resources – the fixation on redistribution of resources and wealth without assessing merit creates an island of states that really cannot insulate themselves from the march of globalisation. [This comment is not an exegesis on the economics of allocation of resources or the socialist contexts of Karl Marx]

Chaos borne from Communism

Many would say the fall of Communism created a more peaceful world as we relaxed from the Cold War and settled into a more destabilising war between civilisations.

The states that gave up Communism and adopted shades of democracy have also ensconced capitalism, however, none have matured in appreciating the voice of their people now have they really accepted the force and good of market economics.

Nowhere is this more evident than in Moscow through the unconscionable way they instituted an asset raid on Yukos by claiming back-taxes that bankrupted the company because the chief executive of the company chose to pitch his tent in political opposition to the president.

Force of government abuse

All those assets are now in the hands of the Russian government, but two wrongs do not make a right. The sell-off of the national chattels to influential ex-Communists and opportunistic smart cads – oligarchs - in the Yeltsin years was wrong, however, rather than seek redress through the Rule of Law (A sign of matured democracies) and due process (another sign of matured democracies), the state apparatus terrorised and appropriated with untrammelled lien every means to redress that Yukos to access to dig themselves of out the rut.

So also, we see the kind of muscle that Gazprom exerts on all foreign investment with the force of government to invalidate contracts and threat major loss of investment that investors are literally stampeded into accepting minority stakes in their major investments to remain in business in Russia.

The first gas war

Last January, we saw the distorted face of capitalism when Gazprom decided subsidies to Ukraine were no more economical and rather than present a graduated withdrawal of subsidies, we were seeing price hikes of up to 50% for economies that would literally collapse if they were to be exacted.

A resolution was reached, but not without Europe realising that their energy security was being threatened by a newcomer to capitalism who had goods to sell but no marketplace decorum.

We were introduced to a large nation that was getting drunk on being the largest exporter of gas and oil, these was now being used a tool of political leverage to emasculate the near-abroad that was adopting a more Western outlook.

Europe with more money than sense

Historically, the USSR was somewhat energy self-sufficient, when the Soviet Union broke up; the states came to an arrangement which involved subsidised exports to these former Soviet republics.

The issue of subsidy arises because another part of energy economics does not necessary relate the cost of production to the selling price, but it is more related to the affordability of the demand-led sector.

It explains why Europe is probably paying over the odds for Russian oil and this is being used as a standard of measure of non-European countries which have hardly 20% of the average GDP of EU-15, probably more in relation to EU-25 or EU-27. Gazprom had 3^rd Quarter profits increase 68% in 2005.

The second oil and gas war

This energy bullying stance came to a head in December when Gazprom decided to double the price of Belarusian fuel supplies, they came to an agreement but Russia is now being taught a lesson in understanding their means of production when trying to reach their market.

In the case of Ukraine, the pipeline was a branch off from the main European supply route, Belarus however is the trunk of the European pipeline network, and everything goes through Belarus and they are not looking to make any friends and do not care.

Gazprom in its gullibility thought they could squeeze Belarus and then expect their oil to traverse the land of Belarus without sanction, retribution or reaction, well, a tit-for-tat in which Belarus imposed crippling taxes on traversal, extracted payment with oil and Russia ended up closing the pipeline as Europe looks on helpless against the tyranny of capitalism in the hands of cretins.

Learning capitalism the hard way

If Russia cannot get its oil to its customers, it would either have to back down with egg on its face or invade Belarus and institute regime change. No matter how reviled the Belarusian president Lukashenka is, standing up to Russia would fuel the embers of nationalism and support for their president.

This would lead to a very interesting conclusion.

Then we move on to Thailand where after a military coup, the government decided to tinker with the markets by imposing currency controls to prevent the flight of capital, that day, the market fell 15%, the first time the Thai market fell so much in its 31-year history.

The ideological contagion of stupid economics

The Ideological Contagion is very much like boys trying to play the games of real men, capitalism and market economics are not levers one can push and pull in isolation, these ideas sit in a globalised setting where everyone is in a train at the top of a steep incline, one wrong pull and the thing goes hurtling down unstoppably to a demise too gruesome to record.

Russia was never ready for capitalism and they are not in school learning to do it right, it would now take an unruly dictatorship to teach the lesson that without your means of good transportation, you would be making no capital; if your goods traverse fields you do not own, you should remain good friends with that field owner.

Venezuela probably wants to get those privatised organisations on the cheap and that is best done by threatening to create the flight of capital – however, does a nationalised entity end up getting better managed for the government or do company taxes paid by a privatised entity create more revenue?

As for Thailand, the military government would find no legitimacy, they must have forgotten that the economy is no Army battalion that you can order around like some recruit in a boot camp, I am sure they have duly learnt a lesson they would not forget.

References

Gazprom’s Strategy

The Folly of Renationalisation

The Kinks In Russia's Oil Pipeline

Bush finally takes the draft - Vietnam

Cuba ja!

90 miles from a southern cape of the United States of America lies a country that through the adversity of isolation by atrocious embargos has learnt self-sufficiency even though has a government not to the liking of administrations in the US since the 60s.

Then America had a swagger with a 20-gallon hat as they tried to overthrow the government of that island, hoping people would come out on the streets to support a foreign insurrection and eventually lead to ridding Cuba of the “scourge” of Communism – sounds familiar, doesn’t it?

It would appear that many have not learnt of wallowing in the mess of the Bay of Pigs and now, Mess-O-potamia is still a rotten mess and Communism still lives.

A dodge, fudge or a smart?

Then America went to war to rid a faraway land of Communism, somehow, the people who rule today from the comfort of Pennsylvania Avenue never got to do what their pals did, go out there to die for their country.

The gunman of dunking received five deferments; whilst he might have adhered to the letter of the law in getting the deferments, he did not imbibe the spirit of the same law. He was being a student in university thrice, getting married and having kids.

Reminds me of John Kerry again, even then, if you were in university you did not get stuck in a war, you were smart enough to get deferments.

The Commander-in-Chief then joined the rich men’s kids airplane club (Texas Air National Guard) and it appears he never got to take off, probably because he was not there, allegedly.

Now in Commune with faraway Communists

As it transpired, the Americans ended up pulling out of Vietnam having not been able to defeat Communism – only yesterday, the president was hopeful of getting a trade deal approved by Congress, but that did not happen.

Anyway, the President is now reporting for duty in Hanoi, Vietnam for the summit of Asian Leaders.

President & Laura Bush arrive in Hanoi - MSNBC / Vincent Thian / AP

He would also be paying a courtesy call on the Secretary General of the Communist Party, I can only imagine how different things would have been if America had had the magnanimity to pay courtesy calls to the government in Havana.

Cuba is at the forefront of affordable quality medicine – America’s is broken; they are also very organized at disaster management – Katrina was the shaming of America and it is debatable if Cuba has anything that has a patch on Guantanamo Bay.

The unpalatable comparisons

My crystal ball does not like the cold, condensation on the inside of the glass means I may not be able to see things clearly.

However, a window into the future appears, I hit the streets in my haggard witch costume, wailing like a banshee.

Woe, woe, three times woes, I see in Mesopotamia, the shame of Saigon; as peace finds no respite in a land brought to destruction on the flight of a lie.

The many who were carried out having arrived on their feet would not the maidens back home anymore countenance.

We shall leave soon and no sooner than the mess in Mesopotamia has overwhelmed us with more shame than the retreat from Saigon.

Hear, O Dubbiyew, your Saigon has come for the King of Terror has for his kingdom Iraq chosen.

Phew! That crystal does take you places.

6th of July - 1942, 1946 & 2006

Seeking refuge finding little solace

As Europe changed under the scourge of Communism, Fascism and Nazism, people negatively affected by these developments began to seek succour and refuge in other countries where the effect was less evident.

Men sought to protect their lives and lives of their families as they moved from persecution state to another hoping to outrun, outdo and outlive the tragedies that were knocking at their front doors.

This was a time when trust mattered but suspicion thrived, your good neighbour of yesterday became your sworn enemy the next day as the sufferings gave way to the desire to obtain reward for the despicable acts of telling on others for personal safety.

As so, 64 years ago today, Otto Frank, his wife and two daughter sought refuge in a backroom apartment in Amsterdam to avoid being taken by the Nazis and sent to ghettos or concentration camps as part of plan of Jewish extermination which became known as the Holocaust.

Men of evil persuasion

These were times when probably people could have claimed other allegiances or heritage to escape privation, but no, Jews owned up as Jews and stayed true to being who they were, in the process, they were corralled and gathered for death in concentration camps.

Only a few weeks before this event, Otto had given his daughter Anne an autograph book which she had pointed out to her father, however, on receipt of this 13th Birthday present, she decided to use it as a diary.

For 2 years and 29 days, they sojourned in refuge in the Actherhuis (Secret Annex), unbeknownst to anyone but a few trusted staff of Otto Frank's business.

Accounts reveal that there were Jew hunters who were rewarded handsomely for those deprived times for seeking out Jews, and so it happened that Otto Frank, his family and other Jews in the annex were betrayed and apprehended for transportation to concentration camps.

There is no doubt from those studies that quite a few of the Dutch citizenry were collaborators in fishing out Jews for horrors beyond words.

Anyway, for blackmail, for fear or for honour, the Franks were apprehended and sent to away - only Frank survived that ordeal.

Ensuring a legacy

He returned to Amsterdam where his ex-employees had gathered most of Franks' belongings and papers, which ended which contained writings that became known as "the Anne Frank diary".

I first came across information about Anne Frank in a church exhibition in England, and then when I visited Amsterdam in 1996, we went to the Anne Frank House to be enlightened about life in the Netherlands during Nazi occupation and how it affected the Jews.

The brood of collaborators

Like today, we have another dimension of immigration problems where the collaborators in sending immigrants, refugees and asylum seekers back to places of misery, privation and death are the rule-keepers in the guise of ministers of the Dutch crown.

There are immigrants today who were just as integrated as Anne Frank, her diary was written in Dutch and then translated into many other languages.

It is amazing that there is a still a lot of angst about conferring Dutch citizenship on Anne Frank an issue that has been refused on the technicality that citizenship is not granted posthumously - for people who speak a language that has so many exceptions, one would expect an exception to the rule in this case.

This even in the light of Anne Frank almost being voted the greatest Dutch person.

The problem is not necessarily that of everyday Dutch people, rather it is their unconscionable leaders given to populist notions and deceived by presumed popularity that stoke the embers that bring out the worst in us.

July the 6th - auspiciously inauspicious

Beyond this is the issue of legacies; Anne Frank ensured her legacy by journaling the events of her times, which gives insight into a dark period of Dutch history.

Four years after the Frank's sought refuge, George W. Bush was born; he is in the process of ensuring a legacy which history might not judge to nicely if Iraq, Afghanistan, the War on Terror continues to gather the headlines.

The lesson is simple, we can find good in all men, but when adversity strikes, many good men fall; we can also find truth in all men, but when in the skin of politicians - better be bitten by a rattlesnake than listen to their populist poison that destroys communities and societies.

References

Who Betrayed Anne Frank?

Ex-Liberal boss compares Verdonk to Le Pen

Here lies … About the greatest Dutch person

The Greatest Dutch Person - the official Anne Frank House website

Anne Frank on Dutch 'greatest' list stirs citizenship debate

The Communism of Capitalism - American Paranoia

Loving American and leaving her

Flight BA 223 is the byword for the intelligence that now typifies the paralysing fear of another jet-fuelled attack on American soil by terrorists.

Cancelled, delayed and grounded for security reasons because the passenger list possibly contains the name of a toddler terrorist ready to blow up the flight with Farley's crusts dipped in milk formula.

Well, that farce accompanied the cancellation of six flights between Paris and Los Angeles over Christmas.

With all the fanfare that greeted the establishment of the mammoth department called Homeland Security, one would think the Americans have returned to their Native Indian roots.

Chief Long Tom [read as euphemism for Tom Ridge] sweeping the air waves with America's rights of sovereignty to refuse permission for flights to land if not accompanied by air marshals has also advocated screening procedures more intrusive than typical of endoscopies.

Well, one can think of over 20 places of interest in the whole wide world to visit that does not feature America. If they want to be unilateral and insular, why bother going there?

I have no sympathy for the inconvenienced so much that they express such stoicism for improved security measures at the expense of dignity, respect, courtesy and freedom.

I am having none of that.

In fact, commend Brazil for advocating retaliatory measures of screening Americans with the same ferocity. Do not forget that full-blooded Americans perpetrated the Oklahoma bombing.

That foreign terrorists abound does not mean homegrown terrorists cannot create the same havoc as September 11 and they do not have to go through airport security.

It is all a Red Herring, it is unlikely that the terrorists would attack using the same Modus Operandi, low level techniques that could easily fox the greatest intelligence collaborations do not require the sophistication of weaponry if the perpetrator is ready to give up life and livelihood.

The Petty Tyrants again

Well, nine units in five departments have yet to coordinate their watch lists of shady characters so that the child's name was confused with that of a terrorist. So, cancel six flights to press home the disarray.

Once again, what it highlights is departmental rivalries constituting little empires working against the interests of the state they represent in the quest to assume more influence.

What the simple sharing of information would save in a coordinated list approach is lost to the work of those ubiquitous petty tyrants who have no purpose than to propagate the cult of bureaucracies and red tape that infuriates right thinking people.

Hence, Senator Chuck Grassley's comments:

“Information sharing among federal agencies remains inefficient and without clear direction or leadership. Different computer systems in five departments with nine agencies and twelve watch lists have trouble exchanging information. State and local law enforcement only have about half of the information in watch lists.”

Grassley Comments on GAO Watch Lists Report

GAO Watch Lists

The threat of terrorism seems to be as effective as the act itself. The acts prove they are still about, but the threats are a life-giving force that perpetrates fear and insecurity.

Well, that is what terror is all about, inspiring fear; where fear reigns; courage, love, boldness and sound minds are slaves. [Second Book of Timothy chapter 1 verse 7 – The Bible].

One believes that reciprocity on the part of the nations of all nationals affected would expose the absurdity of the American Paranoiac age that characterizes the second Bush era reminiscence of the McCarthy witch-hunt of the 1950s.

McCarthyism and the Cold War

Joseph McCarthy

McCarthyism

The war on terrorism on American soil however typifies a witchhunt with the primary purpose of harassing and weakening the entire political opposition on the premise of protecting the citizenry. The rights forfeited in the Patriot Act are case in point.

If everyone introduced stringent security measures of screening, air marshals, no-fly zones and fully documented passenger details available to all levels of law enforcement, the might of democratic Capitalism would have succumbed to the strictures that typified Communism.

History has a way of repeating itself.