Some time towards the tail-end of last century China and India changed the standard exonym by which its respective principal city is known to outsiders. Thus, Peking became Beijing and Bombay became Mumbai. Other cities within each country followed suit. At the time this caused some pointed comments and a degree of puzzlement among onlookers and even governments around the world. After being called “Peking” and “Bombay” for what seemed like forever (it wasn’t!), why did the Chinese and Indian governments all of a sudden make such a fundamental switch in nomenclature?
Bombay Mumbai (credit: hayesandjarvis.co.uk)
The reasons why governments up and change the names of their cities and even occasionally the name by which the sovereign state itself is known※※, varies. Quite frequently, it’s about politics or ethnic/cultural identity. Often, it’s a matter of transliteration of writing systems to keep up with the state of contemporary realities – which dovetails neatly into the need for recognition of ethnic identities within the country. In some instances the change of name may be about both the political and the phonetic. Let’s look at a few specific cases from different countries.
Politics of decolonisation: Let’s start with India and Mumbai. “Bombay” was the first to be (officially) cancelled. In 1995 the Shiv Sena—a right-wing Hindu nationalist party—took power in the Maharashtra region (includes Bombay/Mumbai). Shiv Sena changed the city name because it wanted to rid it of a name with the connotation of the British colonial legacy (“Bombay” apparently being a tainted “Raj” name to Hindu nationalists)1⃞. In its place, the regional authority seeking a name which reflected Maratha heritage and identity chose “Mumbai” to honour the Koli goddess Mumbadevi2⃞.
Standardisation of spelling: From 1996 other Indian cities similarly underwent a name change, the most significant of which are Kolkata, replacing the former name “Calcutta”, Chennai, replacing “Madras”, Kozhikode, replacing “Calicut”, and Bengaluru, formally called “Bangalore”. While post-British decolonisation was at the heart of the desire to change names, many of the new names were the result of spelling changes to align with the prevailing local languages/ethnic communities (eg, Kolkata is a Bengali word for a city nearly two-thirds populated by Bengalis)3⃞.
Linguistic map of India
Transliteration:China has quite a track record of changing the name of its cities, during the imperial era it was a regular occurrence. The question most are curious about is how “Peking” got traded in for “Beijing” (which translates as “northern capital”). Well for a start, Beijing is not a new name for the city. Back in 1403, during the Ming Dynasty, it was thus named…hence the wheel has gone full circle. In-between Beijing 1.0 and Beijing 2.0 the city was known variously as Beiping, Peiping and Peking (prior to Beijing 1.0 it was called Dadu when ruled by the Mongols). Which brings us back to the question of why Peking became Beijing. Basically, it was the (delayed) outcome of a change in the Chinese writing system/script, requiring the conversion of text to tally with the new Pinyin romanisation system introduced by the communist authorities. As part of the process the phonetic changes necessitated new spellings of many city names. And as the new system involved replacing Cantonese with Mandarin, this led to “Canton”, the old English name for the great southern Chinese city, being transliterated as “Guangzhou”4⃞. For the same reason “Pusan” in South Korea became “Busan” in 2000.
More politically motivated name swaps: The communist era of the USSR occasioned name changes of some cities to honour Bolshevik supreme leaders – “Tsaritsyn”, the Tsarist era name became “Stalingrad” (after Joseph Stalin), only to change again to “Volgograd”); “St Petersburg” became “Petrograd” before the Bolsheviks renamed it “Leningrad” (after VI Lenin), only for it to revert to St Petersburg after the dissolution of Soviet communism. Turkey’s preeminent city and capital, Istanbul, too has a history of different names, the changes occasioned by the succeeding waves of rulers who in turn conquered the city. Founded as “Byzantium” by the ancient Greeks, later it was renamed “Constantinople” when absorbed into the (eastern) Roman Empire (unofficially also known as “New Rome”), and finally, under the Ottoman conquerors it became and remains “Istanbul”5⃞.
(What) Once was Constantinople is now Istanbul (photo: global-geography.org/)
Endnote: The capital of the Central Asian republic of Kazakhstan is arguably the world record-holder for most changes of its name. While it was part of Russia it was originally called Akmoly, this changed to Akmelinsk and then Tselingrad. Since independence the capital has regularly changed autonyms (and at least one change of location and therefore its name as well) – going from Akmola (= “white tomb”, perhaps not the most uplifting name for a city!), to Astana (which simply means “capital”) to Nursultan (named after Kazakhstan’s autocratic first president) back to Astana.
Transformed and modernised Astana (photo: Jose Fuste Raga/Corbis)
※※ Re country name changes see this site’s August 2024 blog Bharat, Türkiye, etc. What’s in a Name?: The Politics of Country Rebranding
𖣴𖣴𖣴 𖣴 𖣴𖣴𖣴
1⃞ “Bombay” (meaning “good bay”) was the name the English adopted during the British Raj which derived from Bombaim, the name the Portuguese chose for the city during their occupation
2⃞ the new name, Mumbai, didn’t trigger a change in the name of the city’s famous film-making complex which remains “Bollywood”
3⃞ Goa, a Portuguese colony for 450 years interestingly has not changed its name…possibly something to do with “Goa” deriving from a South Asian Sanskrit word Gomantak (= “cow’s horn”)
4⃞ Shànghâi already conformed to the Pinyin system and so didn’t require a change of name
5⃞ if we turn our eyes to Europe other politically-motivated changes in the city name include “Danzig” (when a German city), changed to “Gdańsk” (when it came under Polish jurisdiction), and “Königsberg” (historic Prussian name) ➜ “Kaliningrad” (after the USSR took control of it from Germany). The spoils of war also accounts for the change in name of the Vietnamese city “Saigon” to “Ho Chi Minh City” after the North Vietnamese were victorious in the civil war
Mao Zedong’s “Great Leap Forward” (GLF) in 1958—communist China’s bold venture to transform the nation’s economy from agrarian to industrial—necessitated some drastic social engineering, and more than a little tinkering with nature. The “Paramount Leader”, repudiating the advice of state economists, consistently advocated the efficacy of population growth for China (Ren Duo, Liliang Da – “With Many People, Strength is Great”) …he stated that “even if China’s population multiplies many times, she is fully capable of finding a solution, the solution is production” (‘The Bankruptcy of the Idealist Conception of History’, (1949)). One strategy of Mao’s for protecting the imperative of national productivity and boosting output involved an extreme “solution” in itself.
Four Evils Campaign poster (source: chineseposters.net)
Pest controllers: As a plank of the GLF Mao spearheaded the “Four Evils Campaign”, four “pests” of the natural world were targeted for elimination – rats, flies, mosquitoes and sparrows…the first three especially concentrated in large numbers certainly could pose a threat to public health and hygiene, but why sparrows? Mao singled out the sparrow because it consumed the grain seed and rice from agricultural fields. What followed was a government propaganda campaign exhorting the people to fulfil their patriotic duty and zealously hunt down these proscribed “enemies of the state”. The regime enlisted the civilian population in a military-like operation, a coordinated mass mobilisation, dedicated to this singular task. The mass participation event included the very young, armies of children aged five and older were despatched from their homes armed with slingshot and stones, to formicate all over the countryside and wipe out vast numbers of sparrows often with frightening effectiveness.
“Patriotic duty” of young Chinese (source: chineseposters.net)
Mao v Nature: Mao’s war on passerine birds was part of a wider war on nature. Mao encapsulated the objective for China in one of his oft-repeated slogans: Ren Ding Sheng Tian (“Man must conquer nature”). Mao’s modernist conception of the world saw humans as fundamentally distinct and separate from nature, so in order to fashion the world’s most populous republic into the socialist utopia that he envisioned, nature, this external thing, had to be harnessed and defeated (Zhansheng ziran). The result was a drastic reshaping of China’s physical landscape, the over-extraction of resources, intensive farming schemes, massive deforestation, riverine pollution, over-hunting and over-fishing [Judith Shapiro, Mao’s War against Nature (2001)]
Eurasian Tree Sparrow: top of Mao’s nature hit-list
A monstrous ecological imbalance and a species endangered: The nationally coordinated campaign against the four pests proceeded with phenomenal speed and ruthless efficiency. By early 1960 an estimated one billion sparrows had been destroyed🄰, nearly wiping out the species altogether in China…a fateful consequence that was to prove catastrophic for the country’s food production. The authorities had not heeded the expert advice from Chinese scientists🄱 that sparrows fulfilled a vital function in feeding off not just crops but off insects including locusts. With the removal of this natural predator, locusts in plague quantities were free to ravage the nation’s fields of grain and rice, and ravage they did, in Nanjiang 60% of the produce fields were ruined [‘Mao and the Sparrows: A Communist State’s War Against Nature’, Agata Kasprolewicz, Przekroj, 22-Mar-2019, www.przekroj.org] .
The Great (man-made) Famine, 1959–1961: The resulting Great Famine in the PRC caused up to 30 million deaths and an estimated similar figure or more in lost or postponed births, making it the worstfamine in human history judged by population loss [‘Berkeley study: Historic famineleavesmultiplegenerationsvulnerable to infectiousdisease’, Berkeley Public Health, www.publichealth.berkeley.edu]. The plunge in agricultural output linked to the sparrow decimation project was further exacerbated by other factors such as Peking’s procurements policy, increase in grain exports from 1957 (redirecting grain away from domestic consumption which otherwise could have allowed millions of Chinese to survive the famine); the priority on industrialisation diverting huge numbers of agriculturalworkers into industrial sectors adversely affected the food scarcity crisis.
Fujian province propaganda poster, 1960 (image: US National Library of Medicine)
Postscript: Reprising the eradication campaign In 1960 the Chinese government upon realising the folly of its sparrow offensive, overturned its proscription of the birds, declaring war on bed bugs in their place. The disastrous sparrow mega-kill episode however didn’t bury the Four Evils campaign forever. The Chinese government in 1998 launched a new version of the movement, posters were seen in Beijing and Chongqing urging citizens to kill the four pests…the first three were the usual suspects as in 1958, but this time cockroaches were substituted for sparrows. Unlike the original sparrow campaign the 1998 version was not successful [‘The Four Pests Campaign: Objectives, Execution, Failure, And Consequences, World Atlas, www.worldatlas.com].
🄰 along with 1.5 billion rats, over 220 million pounds of flies and over 24 million pounds of mosquitoes
🄱 there were doubters within the hierarchy of the Communist Party who had misgivings about the wisdom of the Paramount Leader’s policy, but most found it expedient to remain silent for fear of the personal consequences of incurring the wrath of Mao
Authoritarian regimes modelled on Italian Fascism and German Nazism in the interwar period were conspicuous in Europe, but by no means confined to that continent. Asia had its share of emerging political movements and regimes that were attracted to the clarion call of Euro-fascism and the German Nazi phenomena in particular. The nationalist Kuomintang in China had its New Life Movement and the Blue Shirt Society. There was the militaristic, ultranationalist Shōwa Statism associated with the Empire of Japan. In Syria the Syrian Social Nationalist Party, formed with the aim of restoring Syrian independence from its colonial master France, borrowed its ideas and symbols from Nazi ideology.
Another Asian country in the 1930s that was inspired by the Euro-fascist movement to venture down the right-wing authoritarian path was Thailand. Army officer Plaek Phibunsongkhram, better known as Phibun (or alternately transliterated, Pibul), rode to power on the back of his domination of the military faction of the People’s Party (Khana Ratsadon), becoming prime minister of Siam in 1938. Phibun, one of the most controversial figures in Thailand’s turbulent, coup-prone political history, consolidated his power by establishing a de facto dictatorship during the Second World War. Whether Phibun or his regime was fascist has been a topic of debate by scholars. But before we look at whether the fascist tag sticks to the Thai kingdom in the period of the Phibun ascendancy (1938–1944), we need to hit on a working definition as to what is meant when we refer to a political organisation or movement as “fascist”.
Thailand, WWII
This is far from a straightforward task given the complexity of the concept of fascism, one not helped by the fact that “fascist” is a catch-all word in everyday speech for spontaneously describing in a pejorative fashion any individual or organisation which vexes us even for a fleeting moment. The term is so loaded and problematic that a universally acceptable definition remains elusive…as historian and political theorist Roger Griffin notes, “with the possible exception of ‘ideology’, there can be no term in the human sciences which has generated more conflicting theories about its basic definition than ‘fascism’” [Roger Griffin, ‘Staging the Nation’s Rebirth. The Politics and Aesthetics of Performance in the Context of Fascist Studies’, Library of Social Sciences, (1996), www.libraryofsocialsciences.com]. A broad and simple answer might be that fascism is a totalitarian entity – defining “totalitarianism” as an extreme form of authoritarian rule where the state has complete control over its citizens, using coercion to suppress individual freedoms𝟙. The problem with “totalitarianism” is that it can be applied equally to either extremity of the political spectrum – the far right, fascist regimes like the Nazis and the Italian Fascists, and to systems on the far left, ie, to the Marxist communist regimes of the Soviet Union and Red China, and to contemporary North Korea under the Kim dynasty.
The Third Reich propagandising a supposed führer and Nazi connexion to a heroic Teutonic medieval imperial past
Reductionist heuristics: A short search through the pages of Google will quickly confirm the nigh-on impossible challenge of pinning down a broad consensus as to an acceptable definition of this hyper-complex term. So perhaps enumerating the essential elements or characteristics that constitute fascism might prove a more fruitful exercise? I am somewhat taken by Griffin’s approach to the definition conundrum, seeking to identify “what all permutations of fascism have in common – what he terms the “fascist minimum”, reducing the slippery concept to its bare essentials. Griffin actually condenses his take on “fascism” to a single basic sentence, viz. “a genus of political ideology whose mythical core in its various permutations is a palingenetic form of populist ultra-nationalism” (‘Staging the Nation’s Rebirth’). This brief statement requires some fleshing out. Griffin identifies three elements that are central to the ideology of fascism: the first is the idea of palingenesis (national revival) which all genuine fascist movements carry in their baggage. This entails the perpetuation of a utopian urban myth which exalts “the regenerative national community which is destined to rise up from the ashes of a decadent society”𝟚. Through emphasising the societal decadence of the status quo (the second idea), the fascist can isolate and vilify the supposed enemies of society (eg, Jews, communists, Gypsies). The evoking of this palingenetic myth allowed fascist movements to attract large masses of voters who have lost faith in traditional parties and religion with their glittering promises. The third element, populist ultra-nationalism, “arises from seeing modern nation-states as living organisms which are directly akin to physical people because they can decay, grow, and die, and additionally, they can experience rebirth” [‘Ultranationalism’, Wikipedia, http://en.m.wikipedia.org]. This palingenetic– ultranationalism fusion is what distinguishes Griffin’s “true fascism” from para-fascism and other authoritarian, nationalist ideologies [Roger Griffin, The Nature of Fascism (1991)].
A fascist or para-fascist checklist?: There are other characteristics evident in the praxis of fascist organisations and movements, including an opposition to or emasculation of parliamentary democracy; the leader’s cult of personality𝟛; (a revolutionary movement with a) belief in a natural hierarchical social order; an inordinately dominant or influential role played by the military in the state’s governance and in society as a whole; victimhood, suppression of targeted minorities in society (be it ethnic or religious); anti-communism; the all-powerful, all-seeing party as the vanguard of the fascist movement; a “cult of action for action’s sake” (Umberto Eco)…the square peg here is that these characteristics are not the exclusive domain of fascism or fascist politics as they feature in far-right authoritarian rulerships and sometimes in communist ones as well𝟜.
✑ ✑ ✑
Pridi (left) and Phibun (source: warfarehistorynetwork.com)
If we turn now to look at Thailand at the end of the 1930s we see that Phibun consolidated his position as prime minister before embarking on the road to dictatorship. Moving quickly to neutralise political opponents, he had his chief army rival Phraya Song’s supporters eliminated and Phraya himself exiled, while curtailing the already restricted royal power. Parliament was reduced to a rubber stamp chamber, press censorship was rigorously imposed. With other parties outlawed, the principal opposition Phibun faced came from within his ruling People’s Party in the form of Pridi Phanomyong (Banomyong) who headed up the civilian faction of the party. Phibun expressed admiration for the major right-extremist powers, Nazi German, Fascist Italy and the Empire of Japan. Militarisation of Thai society was a major focus for Phibun, borrowing extensively from the fascist template he copied the Nazi Jugend (Hitler Youth) with his Thai youth organisations, Yuwachon for boys and Yuwanari for girls. Phibun also relied on propagandist techniques through his right-hand man Wichit Wathakan who acted as party ideologue and propagandist to the extent that he was known in some circles as the “Pocket Goebbels” [REYNOLDS, E. B. (2004). PHIBUN SONGKHRAM AND THAI NATIONALISM IN THE FASCIST ERA. European Journal of East Asian Studies, 3(1), 99–134. http://www.jstor.org/stable/23615170].
Phibunsongkhram: Phibun’s eponymous province
Phibun in power projected the image of a “charismatic national savour”, presenting himself as the Thai people’s one great hope to lift the country out of the straitjacket of its weak and subordinate global position and achieve modernisation and a strong national position. And he built a form of personality cult for himself…pictures of himself were ubiquitous; awarding himself a raft of high offices and titles (including field marshal of the army). Another manifestation of this was how the Thai people celebrated Phibun’s birthday as the nation’s phunam (leader), venerated his auspicious birth-colour (green) and his birth sign, etc (Reynolds). Phibun even named a province after himself, comprising Cambodian territory wrestled from the French.
Prime Minister Phibun in 1948 (photo: Jack Birns/Life Photo Collection)
”Thaification”, Phibun’s territorial expansion ambitions: Was Griffin’s core “palingenetic myth” an element of Phibun’s political ideology for Thailand? Phibun and those other Thais who espoused nationalist sentiments subscribed to a genuine belief in Thai exceptionalism which derived from the pride of Siam having been the only state in Southeast Asia to have retained its independence in the wave of European colonisation of the region, an exceptionalism which Thais presented as a heroic tale in promoting nationalism. The Thai situation seems however to lack a homegrown urban myth in which the phoenix of national revival arises out of a state of decadence, instead the prevailing ideology had an irredentist component which has been called Pan-Thaiism. [‘Thaification: from ethnicity to nationality”, Marcus Tao Mox Lim, Identity Hunters, 05-Dec-2020, www.identityhunters.org].
Name changing ceremony Bangkok, 1939: Affixing of the royal seal by the crown prince (source: Life)
Ditching “Siam” for “Thailand”:Phibun pursued an expansionist foreign policy by which he hoped to reunite ethnically-related peoples under a “greater Thai race-based nation” (Tao Mox Lim). The name change from Siam to Thailand in 1939 had a dual function for Phibun – an intent to modernise the country and the creation of a new national identity𝟝. The name “Thailand” (Prathet Thai) symbolised a departure from the multi-ethnic identity of Siam, a device to assimilate other ethnic minorities (including the Chinese, a very significant minority in Siam𝟞) into a new construct, a national (homogenised) Thai identity – what Tao Mox Lim calls a “reimagining of a ‘Thai race’”. This was all a precondition to Phibun’s irredentist aspirations, allowing him to stake a claim on lost territories, mainly in French Indochina (Reynolds).
Under Phibun’s heavy authoritarian hand democratic rights and freedoms were restricted and the populace subjected to a series of cultural mandates dictating the modes of dress and behaviour to be adopted. The earlier pluralism of Thai society was squashed but the degree of coercive control over aspects of citizens’ lives never got close to the Orwellian “big brother” levels in totalitarian regimes in Nazi Germany and in some Cold War Eastern Block countries. Phibun did not secure a totalitarian hold over the Thai population during his six-year long regime𝟟 and Thailand didn’t experience the ideological journey of national destruction/rebirth process as prescribed by Griffin.
Thailand, the most coup-prone sovereign state in the world (photo: Agence France-Press via Getty Images)
The unravelling of a SE Asian dictator: As autocratic as Phibun was in running the country, the elephant in the room was his wartime relationship with Japan. Having steered Thailand to a neutral stance in the world war, he switched positions, committing to an alliance with the Japanese under the Greater East Asian Co-prosperity Sphere in the hope of realising his long-held goal of Thai territorial expansion. Unfortunately, the alliance proved to be very unequal and heavily in Japan’s favour. The Japanese with its occupying forces in Thailand wouldn’t allow the Thai army to participate in its invasion of Burma and the Thais were forced to hand back the limited territorial concessions it received from France at the war’s end. By 1944 Phibun—with Japan’s military fortunes on the slide and seen as its increasingly unpopular collaborator—was forced out of the prime ministership in which some describe as a parliamentary coup masterminded by his rival Pridi [‘The Fall of the Phibun Government, 1944’, Benjamin A. Batson, www.thesiamsociety.org].
𝟙 as Mussolini summed up the function of totalitario…”all within the state, none outside the state, none against the state“
𝟚 having sold the masses on the notion of the regenerative national community utopia, the masses convinced of its efficacy must (unquestioningly) follow its creator, the (fascist) leader, sowing the seeds for the leadership cult to develop
𝟛 ample examples exist of leaders who were not fascists who cultivated a personality cult, eg, authoritarian populist Juan Peron and communist supremo Stalin
𝟜 it’s quite plausible for authoritarian regimes to practice even extreme fascist tactics, but this of itself doesn’t necessarily make the political system a fascist one
𝟝 the word “Thai” means “free” in the Tai tongue (thus “land of the free”) which resonates with the idea of the country never having been colonised
𝟞 Phibun’s imposition of the Central Thai language on all citizens promoted Thai ethnocentricity after 1939, which together with the introduction of harsh laws had the outcome of lessening the inordinate economic impact of the Chinese community (Reynolds)
𝟟 Phibun in his second stint as PM (1948–57) was preoccupied with “trying to reinvent himself as a democrat” (Reynolds) and surviving several coup attempts before his ultimate removal and exile to Japan
In international news of late there’s been speculation by some pundits that the Republic of India might be planning to drop the name “India”—the name the world identifies the South Asian mega-state by—as the official title of the country. The conjecture stems from an apparent signal given by Modi’s government in issuing invitations in the name of the “President of Bharat” to attendees of the September 2023 G-20 summit held in New Delhi.
Why Bharat? Well, Bharat is already the other official name of India, enshrined in the nation’s constitutionᗩ, with a backstory stretching far back into the Sub-continent’s pre-colonial history. The word comes from ancient Sanskrit—Bhārata (“to bear or to carry”), a shortened form of Bhāratavarsa (first used in the 1st century AD)—as does the name Hindustān, also in currency among Hindi-speaking Indians as another name to describe the country as a whole. Some Hindu nationalists have advocated for the creation of Akhand Bharat (“Greater India”) which would unite India with all of its contiguous neighbours in a South Asian super-state.
Origin of “India”: It derives from the Sanskrit word Sindhu, a name for the Indus River and the lower Indus basin. Etymology: Ancient Greek Indikē, Latin Indía. The name “Hindu”, the predominant Indian religion and dharma, also relates to the Sub-continent’s paramount river, being an Old Persian adaption of “Sindhu”.
Modi of Bharat (photo: Ludovic Marin/AFP/Getty Images)
Modi’s nomenclature move has received endorsement by government officials and followers (no surprise!) who contend that the name “India” as a nation title is “tainted” with its past connotations of colonialism and slavery, echoing the sentiment that “British colonial rulers had coined the name India to overshadow Bharat and forge a British legacy” [‘India’s government has used another name on the world stage. What does ’Bharat’ mean?’ SBS News, 06-Sep-2023, www.sbs.com.au].
If Bharat has already been an official name for India since 1949, why has the Indian government decided to publicise it just now? One answer comes from the political opponents of the BJP who allege that the notion is a diversional tactic by Modi’s party to try to upstage the recent formation of the opposition’s “INDIA” alliance to contest upcoming elections (Rahul Gandhi, Congress Party). This move follows a BJP pattern in power of erasing Indian place names which reflect India’s Mughal (Muslim) and (British) colonial past. Critics accuse the government of “pursuing a nationalist agenda aimed at forming an ethnic Hindu state out of a constitutionally secular India” [‘India’s Modi gov’t replaces country’s name with Bharat in G20 dinner invite’, Aljazeera, 05-Sep-2023, www.aljazeera.com]
source: moroccoworldnewsnews.com
Disassociating with the bird: In 2022 the Republic of Turkey notified the international community that it repudiates the name “Turkey” as a descriptor for it, instead the country should be be referred to officially by all as Türkiye (pronounced “Tur-kee-yay”)ᗷ, the communique stated. The government foreign minister said the use of Türkiye would increase “the country’s brand value”, but reputedly, a reason for the name switch is the president, Recep Erdoğan’s dislike of the association of his country with the Meleagris, a large gallinaceous bird (and by extension with the whole American Thanksgiving thing)…compounding that aversion to the name, is “turkey’s” colloquial meanings, (a person who is) inept or stupid; a movie or play which is a dud.
Another motive of Erdoğan’s could be in play – a political one. The move fits in neatly with his wish to be “rid of a westernised, anglicised name that jarred with his neo-Islamist, nationalist-populist brand” [‘The Observer view on Turkey’s name change’, The Guardian, 05-Jun-2022,www.imp.theguardian.com]. Critics of the Erdoğan regime take an even more scathing view, that “the rebrand is another populist device that Erdoğan is exploiting to divert attention away from the country’s persisting economic woes and to galvanise nationalist voters ahead of (upcoming) crucial elections” ‘ Turkey is now Türkiye: What other countries have changed their name?’, Euronews 28-Jun-2022, wwweuronews.com].
Switching synonyms: While India and Turkey are topical examples of the inclination for nomenclature rebranding, the 20th century is dotted with instances of other such name changes. In 1989 the authoritarian military government in Burma—a country named after the Burmans, the dominant ethnic group—caught the world by surprise by suddenly changing the country’s name to “Myanmar”. The regime explained the switch as jettisoning a name inherited from its colonial past and choosing a new name that would foster ethnic unity by recognising it was a multi-ethnic state. In reality it was “linguistic sleight-of-hand” as in the Burmese language “Myanmar” is merely a more formal version of “Burma”. The Burmese regime, viewed as an international pariah after years of violent repression against its citizens was seeking to rebuild its PR standing, so you only needed to be slightly cynical to see the thinking behind such a cosmetic name change ploy [‘Myanmar, Burma and why the different names matter’, Kim Tong-Hyung & Hyung-Jin Kim, PBS News, 03-Feb-2021, www.pbs.org].
Myanmar, the military’s choice (photo: JPaing/The Irrawaddy)
Czechs of Czechia: The Czech Republic (Česká republika) came into existence in 1993 when Czechoslovakia ceased to be a single political entity (splitting amicably into two countries, the Czech Republic and Slovakia). In 2016 a further name change, or more correctly, name addition, happened, the Czech government introduced a short-form title, “Czechia”, for communication in English, while retaining Česká republika as its full name. Though less controversial than other instances, the term “Czechia” was criticised by some Czechs for being confusingly too close in sound to the name of the internal Russian republic, Chechnya. This was the very reason the Kingdom of Swaziland, a landlocked southern African country, swapped names in 2018, becoming (the Kingdom of) Eswatini. The change occurred by royal fiat…with the stated reason that when Swazi tourists were overseas locals would mistakenly think they were from Switzerland.
”Resplendent” name change:The small island nation of Ceylon left the British Commonwealth and became a republic in 1972…at the same time the government affected a name change to “Sri Lanka“, which combines the honorific Sri meaning “resplendent” and the island’s original name Lanka which simply means “island”. The name “Ceylon”, based on an earlier Portuguese name, had been adopted by the British rulers after they had colonised the island in stages between 1796 and 1817 [‘Sri Lanka erases colonial name, Ceylon’, Charles Haviland, BBC News, 01-Jan-2011, www.bbc.com]. Prior to becoming a British colony the island comprised two entities, a Dutch Ceylan part and the native Sinhalese Kandyan Kingdom.
Regime change ➔ name change: In the case of the small Southeast Asian state of Cambodia the changing of the country’s name, throughout the 1970s and ‘80s, became something of a merry-go-round. In succession it went from (the Kingdom of) Cambodia to the Khmer Republic to Democratic Kampuchea to (the People’s Republic of) Kampuchea to (the State of) Cambodia back to (the Kingdom of) Cambodia, reflecting the state-level instability of ongoing regime changeᑢ.
Cambodia/Kampuchea
Ping-pong nomenclature in Bangkok: Prior to 1939 Thailand was known by the name “Siam”, deriving from a Sanskrit word, syam. In 1939 Prime Minster Phibun changed the kingdom’s name from Prathet Siam to Prathet Thai or Mu’ang Thai (English: “Land of the Thais”). At the end of WWII Phibun having backed the losing Japanese side fell from favour and the succeeding Thai regime changed the name back to Siam to distinguish itself from the previous regime associated with the fascist Japanese invaders. In 1948 however Phibun returned to power and reinstated the name Thailand, which the country has retained to the present [‘Thai or Siam?’ P Juntanamalaga, (1988), Names: A Journal of Onomastics,www.ans-names.pitt.edu].
Siam/Thailand
Footnote: Endonyms and exonyms When Turkish president Ergodan objected to the continued use of the name “Turkey” by outsidersto describe his country, he was in fact rejecting the convention of exonyms (or if you like, xenonyms) – the non-native name by which others refer to your country (cf. endonyms, the native name by which you refer to your own country)…for instance, what an English-speaker calls “China” (an exonym), a Chinese-language speaker would call Zhōngguó or Chung-kuóᘿ(an endonym). Imagine how unwieldy and confusing it would get if every country insisted on universal usage of their particular linguistic exonym?
ᗩ Article 1 of the Constitution, “India, that is Bharat, shall be a Union of States”
ᗷ not really a name change as the nation officially has been called Türkiye (Türkiye Cumhuriyeti) since 1923
ᑢ Cambodia” is the exonym, cf. the endonym of “Khmer”
ᕲ also called an autonym
ᘿ meaning “Central Demesne” or “Middle Kingdom” or “Central Nation”
Scrivener: a copyist of documents; a clerk, scribe or notary [from OldFr. escrivein from L. scriba (“scribe”)]
Sebastomania: religious insanity or mania [ [Gk. sebastos, (“reverence”) + -mania]
Sermocination: the practice of making speeches; the habit of preaching constantly [from L. sermo (“speech”; “conversation”) + -ion]
Sermocination (photo: David Henry)
Sicarian: a murderer, especially an assassin; mercenary fighter [from Sicarii a group of Jewish zealots/insurrectionists opposing the Roman occupation of Judea; cloak-and-dagger assassination unit [from sicae (“small daggers (sickles) concealed in the sicariis’ cloaks”]
Sicarian (image: EBay)
Sillograph: writer of satires [from the book Gk.Sílloi by Timon of Phlius, (flourished ca.280 BC)+ -graphe]
Sillograph (Timon)
Smatchet: a small, nasty person or child; a contemptible, unmannerly person [Scot. Eng. probably from MidEng. smatch + -et]
Somatoparaphrenia: (Psych. ) a type of monothematic delusion where one denies ownership of a limb or an entire side of one’s body [from Gk. sôma, (“body”) + -para (“beside”) + –phrenia]
Staurophobia: pathological aversion to the cross or crucifix (eg, cinematic portrayals of Dracula) [Gk. staurós, (“cross”) + -phobia]
Stentorphonic: speaking very loudly [from Stentōr, a Greek herald in the Trojan War (Homer’s Iliad)]
Stentorphonic (image: tumblr.com)
Stramineous: strawlike; valueless; consisting of straw [L. stramineus (“of straw”) from sternere (“to strew”; “spread out”; “lay flat”)]
Subderisorious: mocking gently and with affection; ridiculing with moderation [L. sub (“below”; “under”) + L. –dērīdeō (“I deride”) + -ous]
Subintelligitur: a meaning or understanding (as of a statement) implied but not expressed [from L. sub- (“secretly”; “under”) + intelligere (“to understand”) + -al]
Succussion: the action or process of shaking the body or the condition of being shaken especially with violence [L. sucussio, from -cussus, (“to shake up”)]
Supernumerary: (person) in addition to usual or necessary number [L. super- (“above”) + number]
Susurrant: gently whispering and rustling [from L. susurrare (“to whisper”)]
Syncretistic: seeking to identify common features of different belief systems, philosophies or civilisations and assimilate them or merge them into a single system [from syncretise (“to attempt to unite and harmonise”), from Gk. synkrētismos (“joining together of Greeks”)]
Synethnic: of (or together with) same race or country [Gk. syn (“same”; “with”; “together”) + –ethno (“people”; “race”; “tribe”; “nation”)]
In the 1950s and ‘60s Berlin, bisected into eastern and western sections, was ground zero for the Cold War. One surprising arena for the head-to-head competition between the rival political systems/ideologies was the public zoological park. Before 1955 there was just one zoo in the divided city, the historic Zoologischer Garten in West Berlin, immensely popular and well patronised, not just by West Berliners but by citizens from the Eastern sector as well𝟙. In that year the East German Communist state established its own (East) Berlin zoo, called the Tierpark (literally “animal park”), to counter the popularity of the Zoologischer Garten. The rivalry between the two Berlin zoos for hegemony sustaining itself over the next 30-plus years would be a personal as well a political one.
Heinrich Dathe (Photo: Katrin Böhme, Ekkehard Hölxtermann, Wolfgang Viebahn: Heinrich Dathe – Zoologe und Tiergärtner aus Leidenschaft)
Zookeepers at 40 paces! The new zoo in the East has the advantage of a dynamic, forceful director, zoologist (Curt) Heinrich Dathe, who managed to wrangle funds out of a cash-strapped GDR to enhance the zoo’s collections and facilities impressively. Construction of the new polar bear habitat for instance was financed by the Stasi (State secret police). When Heinz-Georg Klös took over as director of the Berlin Zoo in 1957 the competitiveness between the two zoos became deeply personal, with a bitter hatred developing and enduring between Dathe and Klös𝟚. The two directors were constantly engaging in contests of oneupmanship…if one zoo acquired a rhinoceros the other zoo got one, or as Jürgen Lange, director of West Berlin Aquarium, described the two men’s relationship: “if one of them buys a miniature donkey, the other buys a mammoth donkey” (Mohnhaupt). Sometimes Klös would get the upper hand…knowing that it was hard for the GDR to get certain exotic animals and that there was a shortage of raw materials in the East, he built an ape house which Dathe couldn’t muster the resources to reciprocate (Mohnhaupt & Frisch). Notwithstanding this, under Dathe the Tierpark was an instant success, so successful that by 1958 it was attracting 1.7 M visitors, 200,000 more than was going through the turnstiles of Berlin Zoo and Aquarium combined.
Source: etsy.com
Baby Vietnamese elephant, Tierpark (Photo: archiv Freunde des Haupstadt)
Proxy cultural warDathe modernised the look of his zoo with innovative flair while the Zoologischer Garten remained more of a traditional zoo…in 1963 the Tierpark opened the Alfred-Brehm-Haus, at that time the largest and most modern animal house in the world. Containing a massive 50,000-foot state-of-the-art facility for big cats, the Brehm-Haus boasted the first barless enclosures for lions and tigers. The Tierpark, with the advantage of boundless space (set on 160 hectares), eventually became the largest zoo in Europe𝟛. The GDR loudly trumpeted its modernised zoo, heralding it as a triumph of socialism over capitalism, the zoo which due to a shortage of labour in East Germany was built partly by citizen-volunteers. Meanwhile Klös anxious to keep up with Dathe, was busy adding to the Berlin Zoo’s species collection, making it the most biodiverse zoo in the world. The duelling zoos in Berlin had become showcases for each side in the Cold War conflict (Rotondi). When either zoo notched up some success it was taken as an endorsement of its political system, a symbol of superiority and the validation of its society.
Zoo Berlin (Source: Reddit)
End of the zoo warsThis cultural competitiveness between East and West, the preoccupation with demonstrating “who’s got the better zoo?”, purportedly asserted to be an indicator of a superior society and way of life, persisted right up tothe collapse of the Eastern Bloc and Wiedervereubugung (German unification) in 1990…it was only in that year that “Professor” Dathe relinquished his iron-grip hold on the Tierpark. With unification came a thaw in the combative climate and a subsequent rapid shift from rivalry to cooperation between the Berlin zoos, symbolised by the appointment in 1991 of a single director in charge of both zoos.
(Elephant Gate, Zoo de Berlin)
Footnote: ZoomaniaAs can be inferred from the above, zoos were and still are a big deal in Germany (in both the bisected and unified eras), a product of the salient fact that the Germans are basically “animal tragics”…it’ssaid that Berliners love animals more than people (Mohnhaupt), a measure of which is the astounding number of zoos Germany has, in a country smaller than the US state of Montana, they number more than 880!
Image source: design-mkt.com
─═─═─═─═─═─═─
𝟙 zoos provided the perfect diversion for Berliners from both sectors during the Cold War, availing them of the opportunity to escape from the city of walls and connect with the world of nature (Rotondi)
𝟚the relationship deteriorating even to the point of a physical confrontation between the two zookeepers in Berlin Zoo’s elephant enclosure
𝟛 cf. the much smaller, cramped, inner city Zoologischer Garten with little space to expand
Bibliography
J.W. Mohnhaupt, The Zookeepers’ War, (2020)
‘Even Before the Wall, Berlin’s Zoos Were Already Cold War Rivals’, J.W. Mohnhaupt & Shelley Frisch, Time, 12-Nov-2019, www.time.com
‘The Cold War Rivalry Between Berlin’s Two Zoos’, Jessica Pearce Rotondi, History, 08-May-2023, www.history.com
The premier tournament of world football, the quadrennial World Cup, is along with the Olympics the most publicised and prestigious international sporting event on the calendar. The powerhouses of the men’s soccer World Cup, Brazil, Argentina, Germany, France, Italy and Spain are household names in the world game, but the World Cup pedigree of the likes of Occitania, Sámpi, Padania, Abkhazia and Kurdistan is far less understood. And yet these geographical (and in some cases linguistic) entities have participated in their own football world cup – of sorts!
The VIVA World Cup
FIFA𝟙 is the international governing body which controls association football globally. For a raft of reasons football-playing territories like the above ones have zero prospects of ever joining FIFA (or UEFA𝟚). This has not stopped them from forming “national” soccer teams and organising ‘“friendly” games with fellow non-FIFA teams. These embryonic encounters on the pitch lead eventually to the formation in 2003 of a new para-FIFA body, Nouvelle Fédération Board (AKA N.F.-Board), to represent their interests. In 2006 the N.F.-Board had held its first (downsized) world cup for male players, known as the VIVA World Cup. The organisation of this event however exposed the fragile nature of this association of disparates. Originally VIVA 2006 was intended to be hosted by the Turkish Republic of North Cyprus, but member-states fell out over planning and politics and the Board reassigned the holding rights to Occitania (a region linguistically defined and stretching over parts of Spain, France, Monaco and Italy). The organisation of the event, beset by various problems, did go ahead but with only three teams participating…Sámpi (representing the Sámi people of Finland, Norway, Sweden and Russia) routed Monaco 21–1 in the final.
Tibet v Abkhazia, 2018 World Cup (Photo: Sky Sports)
ConIFA World Cup
N.F.-Board organised several follow-up VIVA World Cups after the maiden event – three have been won by Padania (a would-be independent state in northern Italy proposed by regional separatists) and one by Kurdistan Region. The VIVA World Cup run out of steam however and was disbanded after the 2012 event. In 2013 a new body, ConIFA𝟛, succeeded N.F.-Board and the following year organised the inaugural ConIFA Cup – held in Sweden and won by Countea de Nissa (County of Nice) (France). Subsequent men’s cups have been won by Abkhazia (a partly-recognised breakaway “state” in South Caucasus) and Kárpátalja (representing a Hungarian minority in Carpathian Ruthenia). The 2020 ConIFA World Cup scheduled to be held in North Macedonia was cancelled owing to COVID 19, as was ConIFA Euro 22.
FA Sámpi Women (Source: ConIFA)
Women’s ConIFA Cup
The first women’s ConIFA cup, after a COVID-delayed false start in 2020, finally took place in July 2022. Tibet was the nominal host (though the tournament took place in India), and was only one of two sides to participate. The other “national” team, FA Sámpi, won the two games played and the cup in a woefully lopsided (non–) contest.
The non-FIFA world of international football
The host of soccer-playing entities affiliated with ConIFA derive from various categories of statehood or putative statehood. Some are legally and politically recognised entities, small sovereign states or micro-nations such as Kiribati, Federated States of Micronesia, Monaco and the Vatican City, or sub-national territories like Mayotte, Zanzibar and the Falklands Islands. Others are autonomous or autonomous-seeking regions, ethnic minorities and unrecognised states, including Western Sahara, Kurdistan, Somaliland, Catalonia, the Basque Country, Brittany, the Republic of Srpska (within Bosnia/Herzegovina), Northern Cyprus, the Channel Islands, the Romani (people) and even Esperanto (a football team representing the worldwide community of Esperanto speakers). The 2018 World Cup was located in London with the nominal host team, Barawa, representing the Somali diaspora in England. Minorities within states neglected and persecuted by the ruling ethnic/political majority are numbered within the association, eg, the Dafuri (Western Sudan), the Karen and the Rohingya (both from Myanmar).
Beyond football
For many of the players themselves the love of football is not the sole raison d’etre. Engaging in the sport collectively is a means to express their national identity denied to them through official channels, and to take pride in that identity. For the world’s many subsumed and marginalised entities an international football profile provides an opportunity to showcase and preserve their submerged heritages. The fielding of “national” teams on an international stage by the likes of Tibet and Abkhazia also draws attention to the plight of their prevailing political circumstance at the hands of more powerful regional neighbours. Diversity and inclusivity are key terms for ConIFA. The aspirations of it and its predecessor body N.F.-Board are to provide the world’s “underdogs” with a global platform through their football teams, ”a stage for the stateless” and recognition of their cause𝟜.
2018 ConIFA Cup final: Kárpátalja & Northern Cyprus (Photo: Kieran Galvin/NurPhoto via Getty Images)
Footnote: ConIFA v FIFA FIFA has a checkered history especially of recent times including high profile charges of racketeering, fraud, corruption and conspiracy levelled against its highest office-holders. ConIFA by contrast is not FIFA in microcosmic form. ConIFA under president Swede Per-Anders Blind has been at pains to differentiate itself from the perception of FIFA’s pattern of “gravy train” indulgences, operating on a not-for-profit basis with all staff volunteers and an emphasis on transparency in its dealings. Not that everything has been rosy in the ConIFA garden…bickering between members have been a reoccurrence, Somaliland was forced to give up its hosting rights for (the ultimately cancelled) ConIFA 22 because of member opposition. The politically-eclectic nature of ConIFA has provoked ruptures within the association membership (eg, Northern Cyprus’s refusal to recognise Western Armenia).
FYI: That other men’s football cup takes place in November this year, to be controversially hosted by Qatar
𝟙Fedération Internationale de Football Association (who’s remit also extends to beach football and futsal)
𝟚 Union of European Football Assocations
𝟛 Confederation of Independent Football Assocations
𝟜 the New Yorker tagged the ConIFA Cup as the “the World Cup for Forgotten Nations”
𓂀𝟙𝟚𝟛𓂀
Articles consulted:
‘From Abkhazia to Zanzibar: How CONIFA Are Uniting the World Through Football’, Will Sharp, The Magazine, 04-Jan-2018, www.thesefootballtimes.com
‘The Non-FIFA Renegades’, Steve Menary, Roads and Kingdoms, 07-Apr-2014, www.roadsandkingdoms.com
Japan is one of many nations who have imposed sanctions on Russia in response to its invasion of Ukraine, but unlike the others Japan has felt an immediate backlash from Moscow in retaliation. The Russian Federation called a halt to peace talks with Japan over the disputed Kuril Island chain[a̼] which has been an ongoing bone of contention between the two countries since the end of WWII.
Japanese residents on Etorofu Is prior to Soviet takeover (Source: ABC News)
On 9 August 1945 in the dying days of the war the USSR invaded Japanese-held territories to its east. Part of the victorious Soviet spoils of war was the Kuril Islands chain§. Since that time successive Japanese governments have tried, without success, to negotiate with Moscow the return of four of the southernmost islands – Kunashir, Iturup, Shikotan and the Habomai islets collectively known to the Japanese as the Northern Territories (Nōzanterotorī). Relations between the two countries have become perpetually strained over the ongoing issue[b̼]. Prospects for resolution of the issue in the three-quarters of a century since the Soviet seizure have been repeatedly stymied…in 1955 Moscow offered to return Shikotan and Habomai to Japan on the proviso that it keeps them demilitarised and not open to foreign vessels, however intervention by Washington effectively torpedoed the arrangement. Secretary of state John Foster Dulles, alarmed at the possible rapprochement of Japan and the USSR warned Japan that if it gave up its claim to any of the southern Kuril Islands, the US might decide to keep Okinawa in perpetuity, squashing the prospect of a peace treaty in 1956. An alternative view from Elleman et al contends that Dulles’ intention was not to sabotage the discussions but to try to give Tokyo a stronger bargaining chip to negotiate with the Russians [Bruce A. Elleman, Michael R. Nichols, & Matthew J. Ouimet. (1998). A Historical Reevaluation of America’s Role in the Kuril Islands Dispute. Pacific Affairs, 71(4), 489–504. https://doi.org/10.2307/2761081].
Kunashir Is (Photo: Reuters)
Why is Russia determined to keep the islands?
° ° °
There are both geostrategic and economic factors driving Moscow’s resolve to retain the islands seized from Japan. Kremlin military thinking sees the continued sovereignty over the South Kuril Islands as vital to the defence of the RFE coastline against potential threats from the US, China or Japan. The Soviet rulers viewed the archipelago and the Kunashir and Etorofu islands in particular as a “protective barrier fencing off the Sea of Okhotsk from the Pacific Ocean” (Rajan Menon and Daniel Abele). The Kuriles’ economic value is considerable, they are thought to be rich in minerals (manganese nodules and crusts, titanium, magnetite and rhenium) and there is good prospects of offshore reserves of oil and gas in its waters. In addition, the islands are adjacent to rich fishing grounds [Chang, Duckjoon. “BREAKING THROUGH A STALEMATE?: A STUDY FOCUSING ON THE KURIL ISLANDS ISSUE IN RUSSO-JAPANESE RELATIONS.” Asian Perspective 22, no. 3 (1998): 169–206. http://www.jstor.org/stable/42704185; ‘Why Russia will not return the Kuril Islands to Japan’, Nikola Mikovic, The Interpreter, 17-Nov-2020, www.lowyinstitute.org].
The Japanese perspective and strategy
° ° °
The Japanese position is that the annexed islands have historically been part of the nation, handed to Japan in 1875 by Tsarist Russia in exchange for Sakhalin Island (Treaty of St Petersburg)[c̼]. In particular the Japanese view the two most southern islands as integrally connected to the adjacent island of Hokkaido. Since the 1980s Tokyo has tended to follow a quid pro quo approach, offering up the carrot of economic assistance, much needed by Russia, but making it conditional upon the resolution of the islands dispute (known in Japan as the seikei fukabun[d̼] policy). A change of approach from recent Japanese prime minister Shinzo Abe eschewing all mention of the hot button subject of the Kuriles and emphasising economic cooperation in a diplomatic offensive aimed at wooing President Putin, again came up short in delivering the desired result for the Japanese.
Putin and Abe (Source: dw.com)
Intractable thorn in bilateral relations
° ° °
Right up to the contemporary era Japanese and Russian politicians have gotten no closer to resolving the Kuriles dispute. With the passage of time public opinion within both countries has hardened on the issue making it more difficult…the Japanese are distrustful of Russia and its current leader, while the rise of nationalism in Russia post-Cold War has sharpened opposition to making any concessions on the islands. President Yeltsin found that out in the 1990s when he had to back down on his commitment to a peace treaty with Japan including a territorial concession, due to domestic opposition (not least of which came from RFE locals). The Kremlin is keenly aware of the politdownside of returning all or any of the Kuril islands which would be seen by Russian nationalists as a sign of weakness on its part (Mikovic).
Image: OSINTdefender
Following Japan’s imposition of sanctions against Russia, prompting the Kremlin to pull the plug on the peace talks, Japanese politicians including current prime minister, Fumio Kishida, have reverted to a hardline position on the dispute, branding Russia as “an illegal occupier” who has militarised sovereign Japanese territories [‘Clash between Japan and Russia looms as Tokyo steps up Kuril Island claims: ‘Russian Army is illegal occupier’, Michael Willems, City A.M., 01-Apr-2022, www.cityam.com]. As a consequence, resolution of the 76-year-old stalemate on the Kuriles’ future now seems further away than ever.
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
[a̼] in Japan sometimes called the Chishima Islands or the Northern Islands (Hoppō Ryodo)
[b̼] although relations between Japan and the Soviet Union briefly attained a state of normalisation in the mid-1950s
[c̼] the southern portion of Sakhalin was regained by Japan after victory in the 1904-05 war
[d̼] “the non-separation or politics and economics”
Malaysia and Singapore and other SEA neighbours (image: constitutionnet.org)
In September 1963 the Federation of Malaysia came into existence, merging peninsula Malaya and the British crown colonies of Singapore, Sarawak and North Borneo (Sabah)𝕒. Not quite two years later, in August 1965, the Federation was rent asunder when Singapore abruptly exited the Federation, albeit with some reluctance initially from Singapore but ultimately by mutual consent of the two governments and with (on the surface) little apparent rancour. The reasons for the transitory nature of the Malaysia/Singapore unification lie in the fragility and weaknesses of the new federation’s arrangements at its onset.
What was Kuala Lumpur and Singapore seeking to get out of the merger in the first place? Significantly, aside from wanting to merge for security from communist expansion, Singapore and Malaya had distinctly different reasons to unify. The original impetus lay primarily with the Singapore side. From as early as 1955 politicians starting with David Marshall (foundation chief minister of Singapore) proposed the idea to Malayan leader Tunku Abdul Rahman. Initially the Tunku refused to countenance the proposal, his principal focus being to maintain the racial balance of the peninsula state in favour of ethnic Malays. By around 1960 Abdul Rahman had changed his mind. Following Singapore’s attainment of self-government in 1959, Kuala Lumpur, fearful that a future independent Singapore might fall under the sway of communist power, was more favourable to merging with the island-state to shore up Malaysian security𝕓. A secondary but undeniably important motivation on Malaya’s part was the economic advantages that Singapore could bring to the Federation𝕔 [‘Merger and Separation’, www.mindef.govt.sg].
Singapore’s incentive to merge Prime Minister Lee Kuan Yew sold the concept of the union with Malaya to the Singapore electorate by persuading it that the island-state’s political and economic survival depended on unifying. Lee saw the benefits in establishing a federation common market with the opening up of greater Malaysia to Singapore goods. Lee’s push for the merger alienated the radical left wing element of his ruling People’s Action Party (PAP), which split off forming Barisan Socialis (“Socialist Front”)…this helped Lee and the PAP moderates consolidate their hold on Singapore politics by broadening the party’s electoral appeal [Leifer, Michael. “Singapore in Malaysia: The Politics of Federation.” Journal of Southeast Asian History 6, no. 2 (1965): 54–70. http://www.jstor.org/stable/20172797].
Source: New Straits Times
Unresolved seeds of disunityAfter two years of protracted and difficult negotiations the merger came into effect in September 1963. Neither Malaya or Singapore were ever really satisfied with the compromise agreement. While Rahman by including Sabah and Sarawak in the union was able to roughly retain Malay ethnic parity with the Singapore Chinese, communal tensions within the Federation exacerbated after 1963. The Tunku’s desire to grant special privileges and rights to Malays—to appease the radicals in the mainland’s dominant party UMNO (United Malays National Organisation)—left him at loggerheads with Lee who was determined to fix the federal status of Singapore citizens. Lee counter-campaigned against Malay political hegemony with the slogan “Malaysian Malaysia”, a call for racial equality in the Federation[‘Singapore Separates From Malaysia and Becomes Independent, 9 August 1965’, HistorySG, www.eresources.nib.gov.sg]
Singapore aerial view, 1964 (Source: Pinterest)
1964, pivotal year With the 1964 federal elections in Malaysia, Lee’s agenda for effecting change crystallised as he sought to redress Singapore’s disproportionate representation of only 15 seats in the federal legislature (the Singapore-Chinese population size warranted at least 25 seats). Lee entered PAP candidates in the mainland elections, hoping to win a foothold in the ruling coalition (Alliance) with UMNO by elbowing aside the Malaysian Chinese Association. The tactic backfired with PAP securing only one new seat and caused resentment and further suspicion from Malays. 1964 also witnessed the outbreak of racial riots in Singapore between the Chinese and Malay communities (with both the Malayan Communist Party and UMNO playing active roles in the fracas). The consequence of which was to widen the gulf between Singapore and the mainland and hasten the eventual break in 1965 [Milne, R. S. “Singapore’s Exit from Malaysia; the Consequences of Ambiguity.” Asian Survey 6, no. 3 (1966): 175–84. https://doi.org/10.2307/2642221].
Distrust across the causeway By 1965 relations between the Malaysian mainland and Singapore had deteriorated graphically. Divisions were widening with UMNO actively working to destabilise PAP’s position in the island-state. Both governments were dissatisfied with the way the federation was functioning. The Singapore government was frustrated by the paucity of its political clout at the federal level. Equally galling was the failure of the hoped-for economic benefits for the island to materialise. Singapore saw itself having to make a disproportionate contribution to Malaysian finances for very little return. Progress towards a viable common market was negligible, as was the promised pioneer status for Singaporean industries. Singapore retaliated by delaying the loans promised to Sarawak and Sabah, much to KL’s displeasure.
LKY, after signing of the Malaysia agreement (Photo: Ministry of Information and the Arts Collection, courtesy of National Archives of Singapore)
Bilateral tensions and antagonisms played their part in perpetuating division between the two main constituent parts of the Malaysian Federation. Lee Kuan Yew’s personality and tendency towards unilateral action at times didn’t help keep a lid on those tensions, eg, Lee’s decision to unilaterally declare Singapore’s “de facto independence” in August 1963 ahead of the official proclamation by the Tunku didn’t win him friends in either Malaya or Britain.
Endgame: Schism, regrets and relief The split occurred in August 1965 after a separation agreement had been drafted, the lead-up to the event was kept very hush-hush (even the Malaysian deputy prime minister was not made privy to the process in train). Singapore was hived off from Malaysia in the end in a bloodless but nonetheless dramatic manner. The failure of the Singapore/Malaysia nexus, as Nancy Fletcher observes, ”grew out of differences in intention and expectation bound up in the very concept of Malaysia (shaped by) divergent economic interests, conflicting political ambitions, and brought to the point of conflagration by inter-racial fear” [Nancy McHenry Fletcher, ‘The Separation of Singapore From Malaysia’, Data Paper # 73, South East Program, Cornell University, July 1969, www.ecommons.cornell.edu.
Source: Straits Times
Footnote: ultimately both parties reached the conclusion that the status quo was beyond salvation but that was not completely the end of it. Rahman, prior to initiating the severing of Singapore from the Federation, first proposed to the Singaporese the alternate arrangement of a “confederation”. According to Janadas Devan, the Singapore government after consideration ultimately rejected the confederation idea, apparently on the “no taxation without (national) representation” principle𝕕[‘Singapore could have been ‘one country, two systems’ within Malaysia, not sovereign country’, Janadas Devan, Straits Times, 28-Jan-2015, www.straitstimes.com].
^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^
𝕒 Brunei was originally intended to be part of the new federation but withdrew prior to its formulation
𝕓 a large concern for the Malayan leadership was a hostile Indonesia who were against the whole concept of “Malaysia” as a British “neo-colonial plot” [‘Why Indonesia Opposes British-Made Malaysia’ (1964), www.lib.ui.ac.id], culminating in the Konfrontasi episode between the two countries
𝕔 Singapore was also attractive to the Malay Peninsula rulers for its strategic location and fine natural harbour
𝕕 the British were also opposed to the confederation solution
At the conclusion of World War Two no one was seriously of the opinion that Glasgow didn’t need to urgent address the acute housing and quality of life dilemmas besetting the city’ inhabitants. For their part, the planners focusing on the city certainly had (or at least professed) good intentions in their efforts to ameliorate what was for tens of thousands of Glaswegians a polluted, congested and thoroughly unpleasant living environment. For all the planning and the vast sums of money poured into redevelopment however, the results were and continue to be more than disappointing. As discussed in the first two parts of this blog series, the uncoordinated approach of having two rival sets of planners trying to implement conflicting visions of a new Glasgow didn’t help matters at all.
Map credit: Glasgow City Council.The Clyde Valley Regional Park Plan with the umpf of the UK government behind it got more of its planned restructure of Glasgow off the drawing board than the discredited Bruce Plan. The core of CVRP’s plan was the “overspill policy”, relocating the surplus population away from the slums of inter Glasgow to new, modern, sanitary, green and spacious accommodation far from the inner-city. There were two planks to the planners’ intended re-housing fix – the creation of five purpose-built “New Towns” outside of Glasgow, at East Kilbride, Glenrothes, Cumbernauld, Irvine and Livingston, and the establishment of four new housing ‘schemes’ (ie, estates)«A̴» on the outskirts of Glasgow — Castlemilk, Drumchapel, Easterhouse and Pollok. Irvine new town (Image: earlyooters.blogspot.com).Avoiding the city slums only to find a brand new set of problems
What looked good on paper (modern flats, heating, indoor toilets, more space, etc) transpired in reality for many of the relocated residents into a deeply dissatisfactory and frustrating experience. Flaws soon surfaced in many of the flats and houses, shoddy construction«B̴», poorly designed heating and ventilation, crumbling housing stock (eg, Castlemilk and Drumchapel). For these residents, the initial hopes and optimism floundering on what Florian Urban calls “a sculpture park of failed modern utopias”. There were grounds for hopefulness at the beginning. After the poky, dirty, overcrowded tenements of Glasgow central, the former inner city residents you imagine would have welcomed living in the housing schemes, many of which were “the equivalent size of many towns in Scotland”, but their positivity were cut asunder by infrastructure realities – there was nothing like an equivalent level of facilities provided to cope with the large implants of population. In a catastrophic piece of non-planning the areas of the schemes had hardly any places for residents to shop or to meet new people and socialise (no pubs, no dance halls, no cinemas, etc) and the promised open spaces for leisure activities failed to materialise. Public transport to take estate residents to the city centre did not run frequently enough and was relatively expensive. The promised local employment opportunities for the new estates were not forthcoming, so unemployment became a major problem for the schemes’ residents (‘Overspill Policy and the Glasgow Slum Clearance Project in the Twentieth Century: From One Nightmare to Another?’, Lauren Paice, IATL Reinvention, Vol 1 Issue 1, May 2013, http://Warwick.ac.uk; ‘Billy Connolly classically described the new estates as “deserts wi’ windaes”’, The Herald, 07-Nov-1998, www.theheraldscotland.com). Scheme in Easterhouse.Scourge of Easterhouse
Easterhouse has the unwanted distinction of embodying the most dire consequences of the failings of Glasgow scheme planning. Physically isolated on the eastern edge of Glasgow, the severity of Easterhouse’s housing estate social problems and their persistence in the 21st century, has drawn a lot of concerned celebrity attention…. Princess Diana, PM Tony Blair and French President Chirac et al all made special visits to its notorious “sink-estates” (‘What’s Happened To Easterhouse: the Most Notorious Housing Scheme in Glasgow’, Francisco Garcia, Vice, 14-Nov-2016, www.vice.com). So depleted was its basic amenities, so lacking in a sense of community spirit, its infrastructure and housing problems magnified by a unemployment rate calamitously high (31.9% cf. a national average of 13.7% Hansard, 3 May 1985), the suburb’s schemes became a case study for social planners on what not to do to create a successful housing development (Paice). Easterhouse’s continuing woes have been compounded seemingly by a corresponding lack of political will to effect meaningful change (Hansard). Rather than leaving their problems and worries behind in the toxic slum tenements of the city, the dispersed Glaswegians found in the peripheral, facilities-deficient housing estates and towns a raft of new social problems…spikes in incidences of drunkenness and family violence, suicide, etc. Alienated and bored youth reacted to the lack of things to do by engaging in vandalism and petty crime (with young gangs perhaps no where active in the late Sixties than in Easterhouse and it’s so-called “Ned culture”)..
Family dislocation
Relocation to the edges from the city led to other unforeseen or unaddressed problems, including a major disruption to the extended family network…many residents in the new projects were now too far away from their past abodes and cut off from their extended families and friends, resulting in a heightening of a sense of isolation (Paice). This outcome was even more perturbing for those Glasgow citizens who had been forced into relocating to the schemes and New Towns.
Cumbernauld Town Centre: “the rabbit warren on stilts”.Though the Glasgow schemes and the New Town project have been widely maligned as abject failures and disasters by both observers and residents, not everyone has come away with a negative perception: the people of Cumbernauld in a 1980s poll gave the program an 87% approval (of course some schemes and some New Towns did better than other). At the very least, the housing experiments did free thousands and thousands of Glaswegians from the abomination of slum life in the city and transported them into new and better if still far from perfect living conditions… certainly anywhere after the Glasgow slum tenements had to be a step up, although some would argue that after fifty or sixty years, the New Towns with their persisting ailments, no longer new, were showing the clear signs of the foundations of new Glasgow slums«C̴» [‘Neighbourhoods New Towns’, (W Hamish Fraser), The Glasgow Story,www.theglasgowstory.com]. Craigshill 1960s (image: Livingston Devlt Corp).Divine right of technocrats
Nonetheless, a deep sense of dissatisfaction was and continues to be the general feeling about the two housing programs. Both plans for Glasgow’s regeneration, both the Scottish Office and Glasgow Corporation, were guilty (unsurprisingly) of taking a technocratic, “top-down’ approach to the re-housing solution. Both groups of planners failed to consult the residents themselves on what they wanted, the very people whose futures were riding on the experiments’ success and would be most affected by the results…a blind “focus on processes and numbers rather than people and their lives” (‘Modernizing Glasgow – Tower Blocks, Motorways, and New Towns 1940-2010’, Florian Urban, Glasgow School of Arts,www.radar.gsa.ac.uk). In hindsight, had they done so, at least some of the chronic and systemic problems may have been averted.
Social engineering, the “Glasgow Effect”
Glasgow’s 20th century standing as the British Empire’s “Second City” and an economic and industrial powerhouse in the region came at a cost. Studies have long revealed that Glaswegians have a proportionately higher early death-rate—and not accountable by poverty alone—than other comparable great cities«D̴». A 2016 report by the Glasgow Centre for Population Health (‘History, politics and vulnerability: explaining excess mortality’) concluded that the combined historic effects of overcrowding, poor city planning (1960s-’80s) and “a democratic deficit–a lack of an ability to control decisions that affect their lives”—were the causes of the city’s susceptibility to premature death (“Revealed: ‘Glasgow effect’ mortality rate blamed on Westminster social engineering”, Karin Goodwin, The Herald, 16-May-2016, www.heraldscotland.com). The SO took this tact, the GCPH asserted, knowing full-well that the policy would be damaging to the long-term health of Glaswegians (Goodwin).
Castlemilk ca.1965 (Source: Gordon Waddell (Pinterest))
.
“Skimming the cream”
The evidence points to a deliberate government policy of social engineering experiments in Glasgow…Scottish Office documents released under the 30-year rule reveal a calculated policy in determining which inner city residents were relocated where. ”Skimming the cream” (rehousing the best preferred preferred citizens in the choices parts of the new settlements) was practiced. Skilled workforce and young families were chosen to reside in East Kilbride and the other New Towns while the centre was left with “the old, the very poor and the almost unemployable”. This tactic and the steering of economic investment away from Glasgow resulted in a “serious population imbalance” (Goodwin) and putting the vulnerable ’stayers’ in a jeopardy.
Murray Drive (Photo: Stonehouse Heritage Group)
Postscript: Belatedly aborted Stonehouse – New Towns become surplus to needs
There was meant to be a sixth New Town built to absorb overspill population from Glasgow…the small village of Stonehouse was slated to accommodate 22,000 new homes and 35,000 people, in fact local farmers had their land compulsorily purchased and the first 96 homes in Murray Drive were not only constructed«E̴» but in 1976 the first residents were already two days in occupancy before the Scottish Office suddenly got “cold feat” and pulled the plug on the development! Why was Stonehouse New Town axed and why did it occur so late in the process? Originally proposed in the early Sixties when planners had identified a continuing need for new houses on the periphery, by 1973 two developments had prompted a policy change — Glasgow city had depopulated dramatically as a result of the dispersals (1970-73: 58,000 Glaswegians left) and the authorities were concerned that too many young people were leaving the centre. The emphasis for the inner city refocused on renovating rather than demolishing and rebuilding and the SO began redeploying resources towards regenerating and rehabilitating the East End of Glasgow. Roger Smith’s answer to the obvious question of why the authorities still kept going with Stonehouse after it was apparent by 1973 that the project was a “no-goer” is that the government machine at both the centralised and local level was simply incapable of “respond(ing) quickly to changing events and new understandings of existing situations”…which seems to sum up many of the urban planning missteps made in postwar Glasgow (Roger Smith (1978) Stonehouse—an obituary for a new town, Local Government Studies, 4:2, 57-64, DOI: 10.1080/03003937808432733; ‘The Scottish town that never was’, Alison Campsie, The Scotsman, Upd. 04-Jun-2020, www.scotsman.com.au).
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«A̴» which initially were unfortunately called “townships” until someone pointed out Apartheid South Africa’s use of the same term to delineate non-white homelands
«B̴» the haste of the estate building program contributed to this
«C̴» as a result of multiple factors including lack of investment, cost-cutting on building materials and techniques, poorly maintained estates, apathy and neglect, pollution, loss of community pride, etc.
«D̴» 30% greater risk of dying before 65 than comparable deindustrialised cities like Liverpool and Manchester (Goodwin)
«E̴» everything else planned remained unbuilt, schools, swimming pools, sports centre, factories, etc.
Currently we are watching, from a distance on television, the Olympics from Tokyo. This is the second time Tokyo has held the Olympic Games, although it is the third time that city has been awarded the Games{a}. The previous time Tokyo hosted the Olympics, 1964, Indonesia, North Korea and the People’s Republic of China, all boycotted the world’s premier sporting event{b}. This disharmonious development within the Olympic community had its origin in the 1962 Asian Games, host Indonesia refused entry to Taiwan (in deference to mainland China) and Israel (to appease Muslim Arab states).
GANEFO opening ceremony, 1963 (Photo from Amanda Shuman’s collection, published in Journal of Sport History) ⇩
Mixing sport and politics
The IOC criticised Indonesia for politicising the 1962 Asian Games, but it’s president, Sukarno, far from contrite, was emboldened to go further in his defiance of the IOC. Sukarno, determined that Indonesia plays a leadership role in the Non-Aligned Movement, enlisted sport in the task of furthering “the politics of anti-imperialism and anti-colonialism”. Sukarno set up GANEFO or the Games of the New Emerging Forces…an alternative Olympics-style event held in 1963 in Djakarta, complete with opening ceremony, giant torch, etc. Like his PRC counterpart Mao Zedong, Sukarno deliberately used sports “to display international prowess” which in turn was meant “to enhance global stature”{c}(Webster, David. “Sports as Third World Nationalism: The Games of the New Emerging Forces and Indonesia’s Systemic Challenge under Sukarno.” The Journal of American-East Asian Relations 23, no. 4 (2016): 395-406. Accessed August 1, 2021. https://www.jstor.org/stable/26549192). GANEFO represented “a Sino-Indonesian-sponsored challenge to the International Olympic Committee’s dominance in sport that also attempted to solidify China’s geopolitical position as a Third World leader“, Shuman, Amanda. “Elite Competitive Sport in the People’s Republic of China 1958–1966: The Games of the New Emerging Forces (GANEFO).”Journal of Sport History40, no. 2 (2013): 258-283.muse.jhu.edu/article/525098.
Pres. Sukarno (Image: globalsecurity.org)
The IOC was hostile to what it viewed as a challenge to its rules and authority, Djakarta’s breach of the Olympic ideal that sport and politics should remain separate. Sukarno responded by calling out the IOC for hypocrisy, pointing out that the IOC by ejecting the Asian communist countries of PR China and North Korea from the Olympics fold, itself was playing politics. In the prevailing Cold War climate Sukarno characterised Brundage’s organisation as “a tool of imperialists and colonialists”. Predictably, the US and the Western media labelled GANEFO as a ‘Red’ event, citing Sukarno’s links to the Indonesian Communist Party (PKI) and communist China’s weighty involvement in the games as well as the USSR and Eastern Bloc’s participation (‘A Third World Olympics: Sport, Politics and the Developing World in the 1963 Games of the New Emerging Forces (GANEFO), Russell Field, Verso, 09-Aug-2016, www.versobooks.com).
⇩ “Onward, no retreat”, GANEFO motto
The establishment strikes backIn IOC chief Avery Brundage’s mind it was more than just a case of defending the ‘official’ games as the IOC’s proprietorial brand, his purpose in trying to deflect the challenge from emerging Third World leaders like Sukarno has been seen as an attempt to “buttress the Olympic movement as a First World institution in a rapidly decolonising world” (Field). The IOC’s retaliatory response was quick: the Indonesian Olympic Committee was turfed from the Games (communist China had already withdrawn from the IOC). Later, in 1964, the IOC readmitted Indonesia for Tokyo but decreed that individual athletes who participated in GANEFO 1963 were barred from selection for Tokyo. Sukarno rejected these conditions, demanding that “all or none” of the country’s athletes be eligible for the 1964 Games. Consequently, with the IOC and Indonesia at loggerheads, Djakarta unilaterally withdrew from Tokyo in protest (‘GANEFO I: Sports and Politics in Djakarta’, Ewa T. Pauker, Rand Paper, July 1964, www.rand.org).
Who went to GANEFO 63 and who ‘won’?Around 2,700 athletes participated representing about 50 countries – mostly from Asia but many from Africa and the Middle East (including a team representing “Arab Palestine”, whereas Israel was again excluded); the communist eastern bloc states; South America; and curiously for an event comprising “New Emerging Powers” there were contingents from France, Italy, Finland and Netherlands (the presence of Dutch athletes in Djakarta from the ex-colonial power in the East Indies seemed baffling!). China had the biggest team and easily won the ‘unofficial’ gold medal count with 68. ⇧ Olympic stadium, Djakarta (antaranews.com)
Almost all of the delegations of attending athletes were not sanctioned by their countries’ Olympics committees for fear of reprisal from the IOC. Accordingly, most of the athletes participating were “not of Olympic calibre”. It was especially tricky for the vacillating Méxicans whose participation it was feared might jeopardise México City’s bid for the 1968 Olympics. As soon as México City got the nod from the IOC, a Méxican team was hastily cobbled together to attend{d}.
Beyond GANEFO
Sukarno saw the realisation of GANEFO and the forging of close ties between Third World countries in sporting and cultural endeavours, as a pathway to something bigger than sport, an institution that might challenge the existing international order. GANEFO was meant to foreshadow the creation of CONEFO (Confederation of the New Emerging Forces), a new world body which would appeal to left-nationalist and neutralist states emerging out of colonialism. CONEFO Sukarno hoped might come to stand as an alternative, Third World-focused United Nations (Webster){e}.
Chinese ‘MO’
China played a key supporting role in getting GANEFO up in 1963. It was the principal financial backer for the event and the Djakarta games got great coverage from the Chinese state media. Like Indonesia, PRC saw good propaganda value in the games, its participation in ‘goodwill’ games purported to foster solidarity and understanding between Third World countries across the globe was intended to show it in a good light vis-á-vis the Capitalist West. Beijing was eyeing off the prospect of becoming rivals with both Washington and Moscow, it was looking for avenues to exert influence with Indonesia and the Afro-Asian world and the GANEFO opportunity nicely suited its purposes (Pauker).
End-note: GANEFO 66 and finis
The GANEFO games were intended to be an ongoingaffair but the impetus could not be maintained. A second GANEFO games had been scheduled to be held in Cairo in 1967 but were subsequently cancelleddue to rising Middle East tensions. Instead, the follow-up games (“Asian GANEFO”) took place in Phnom Penh, Cambodia, in 1966, which tried with less success to replicate the original sporting event in Djakarta. Subsequently GANEFO quickly faded away. The main factors for the GANEFO games’ demise were the overthrow of its driving force President Sukarno and the steep costs of hosting the event (Russell).
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{a} Tokyo was awarded the 1940 Olympics but was stripped of its hosting rights after Japan invaded Chinese Manchuria
{b} in addition South Africa was banned from competing due to its racialist Apartheid policy
{c} now even more important to China as their stand-out performance in the current Games in Tokyo indicates
{d} many of the European participants were from leftist student organisations and workers’ sporting clubs. Military personnel were a component of several nation‘s teams
{e} in 1965 Sukarno pulled Indonesia out of the UN
See also the preceding blog: ‘A Divided Cyprus: Sixty Years and No Resolution on the Horizon, Part I’
After the UN negotiated a cease-fire in Cyprus in 1974, following the Turkish army’s military incursion, the ‘Green Line’ from 1964 was reestablished…a new buffer zone cut right through Nicosia, separating the northern and southern sections of the city. The divided island was left in a highly militarised state – UN estimates put the Turkey presence in the north at around 30,000 soldiers whereas the Republic of Cyprus maintains a force of 12,000 plus up to 2,000 troops from Greece. The fallout from what the Turkish regime called Kibris Baris Harekâti (“Cyprus Peace Operation”) left 200,000 Greek Cypriots and 50,000 Turkish Cypriots displaced (A Borowiec, Cyprus: A Troubled Island (2000); A Smit, The Property Rights of Refugees and Internally Displaced Persons: Beyond Restitution (2012)).
Source: The Economist
Since the Turkish invasion and the subsequent unilateral declaration of an autonomous Turkish Cypriot entity (in 1983 consolidated into the “Turkish Republic of Northern Cyprus”), there have many attempts to settle the Cyprus impasse, all of which have floundered. Among the would-be fixers have been a succession of UN secretary-generals including Perez de Cueller, Boutros-Boutros Ghali and Kofi Annan, all advancing plans in a vain attempt to end the decades-long stalemate.
Annan Plan
Kofi Annan’s plan proposed a restructure of the island into a federation comprising two states – the “United Republic of Cyprus”. Put to a referendum in 2004 it was supported by 65% of Turkish Cypriots but overwhelmingly rejected by 76% of Greek Cypriots, a disparity which demonstrates how far apart the two sides are and how difficult getting a consensus on the issue will be. The context of the Greek Cypriots’ hardline stance—adopting a view that acceptance of the plan would in fact “legalise the island’s de facto partition”—should be viewed in light of the fact that Cyprus had already been guaranteed membership of the European Union (EU) (‘The Peace Processes: 2004 Annan Plan’, Michael Theodoulou, Cyprus Mail, 29-Dec-2016, www. cyprus-mail.com).
Kofi Annan (Source: The Guardian)
Changing the paradigm: Reunification
The international community as a whole, the UN, the EU, tend to favour a unification resolution of the island country. Barriers to reunification however are myriad – including where to draw the boundaries between the two communities; the issue of demilitarisation of the island⊗; the question of displaced Cypriots which opens the can of worms of property rights; the repatriation of Turkish settlers from North☮ (Chan).
Putting Cyprus first
An additional underlying factor is the future role of the three guarantor powers, Turkey, Greece and Britain. A future unified Cyprus needs security against new interventions by Turkey and Greece (‘Cyprus Stalemate’, (Fiona Mullen), Late Night Live, ABC Radio National, broadcast 05-May-2021). Added to the destabilisation, the two hostile Aegean littoral states have continually interfered with Cyprus’ internal politics for their own political advantage. The outside meddling complicates the island’s dilemma, forming a barrier to serious negotiation between the Greek and Turkish communities. When the government in Athens or Ankara is in domestic difficulties they have a habit of reverting to a hardline on the Cyprus issue to deflect attention from their woes at home (Kaloudis, George. “CYPRUS: THE ENDURING CONFLICT.” International Journal on World Peace, vol. 16, no. 1, 1999, pp. 3–18. JSTOR, www.jstor.org/stable/20753188. Accessed 10 May 2021).
A deficit of patriotism
Such is the polarised nature of life in divided Cyprus that both the Turkish and the Greek communities are more loyal to the “mother country” than they are to their own country. This diminished or even absent sense of patriotism by Cypriots works against the misson of securing a solution for Cyprus (Kaloudis).
Image: www.dw.com
Mistrust and baggage
The simple fact that Greece and Turkey are weighed down by so much historical baggage intensifies the difficulty of finding a viable solution for Cyprus. Ancient rivalries, colonial relationships and wars, have contributed to an atmosphere of mutual distrust which extends to contemporary Cyprus. Greek mistrust of more powerful neighbour Turkey fuels hawkish Greek Cypriot perspectives, seeing in the Turkish Cypriots’ two-state solution a Turkish hidden agenda – the first step by Ankara in securing control over the entire country (‘Cyprus: Turkey is heading for a two-state solution’, Costas Venizelos, Greek City Times, Dec 2020, www.greekcitytimes.com). Conversely, the Turkish community (18% of population) fear domination by the numerically much greater Greek community (78%), add to this differences in ethnicity, language and religion, doesn’t make finding common ground between the two communities any easier to accomplish (Kaloudis).
If tensions rise between Turkey and Greece, there is the chance of a knock-on effect on the Cyprus situation. When is more likely the reality as new sources of potential Greek-Turkey conflict abound – control of air space in the Aegean Sea, Greece’s desire to fortify its islands in the eastern Mediterranean, claims on each others’ continental shelf, etc.
Photo: www.in-cyprus.philenews.com
Oil catalyst
The dispute over continental shelves is linked to the most worrying Aegean issue, Turkey’s recent oil and natural gas ventures, exploring and drilling in territorial waters contested by Greece and Cyprus§. The UN Convention of the Law of the Sea (UNCLOS) backs Greek territorial claims in the region, however with Turkey not a signatory of UNCLOS, it’s probable that Ankara will not feel itself bound by its law and thus raising the prospect of an escalation of conflict (‘Greece calls on Turkey to stop renewed gas exploration activities in East Med’, Diego Cupolo, Al-Monitor, 10-Aug-2020, www.al-monitor.com).
Deserted Varosha (Photo: www.the-sun.com)
Famagusta ghost town
Another simmering trigger-point for Greek-Turkey tensions over Cyprus is the “no-go” Famagusta province in the island’s north. Deserted by Greek Cypriot residents in 1974, it was seized by the Turkish military and fenced off with barbed wire. Famagusta’s holiday beach resort of Varosha, has come to attention recently because the TRNC are in the process of reopening this “ghost town” to commercial activity and human habitation…this has prompted protests from the republic of Cyprus who declared the move illegal (‘Cyprus asks UN to step in as beach in north is opened after 46 years’, Helena Smith, The Guardian, 09-Oct-2020, www.theguardian.com).
One of the core stumbling blocks to productive negotiation on the Cyprus stalemate is the fundamental question of who owns Cyprus? A large element of the Greek Cypriot community in particular take a partisan view of the question – insisting that its population majority on the island justifies overall ownership, whereas the Turkish community just as avowedly insists on its right to an “equal partnership” (Mullen).
Failure of political leadership
The Cypriot politicians fronting up to the merry-go-round of fruitless negotiations have abjectly failed in their task to find a resolution…their own entrenched interests and a disinclination to compromise means they come up empty every time. As the progressive-thinking Cyprus Mail summed up the parlous state of Cypriot leadership currently being dished up: “We have returned to the good old days of the Cyprus problem, when every statement issued by one side had to be answered by the other and the blame game was never switched off” (‘Our View: ‘Anastasiades has led the Cyprob to a dead end’ Cyprus Mail 09-May-2021).
With the appointed leaders being part of the problem, some believe it’s time to dump the barren leader-led process and try a markedly new approach to negotiation. One pathway worth pursuing might be to devolve the responsibility to the civic assemblies level, as has been tried with success in Ireland (Mullen).
Greek Cypriot President Anastasiades (www.dailysabah.com)
There’s a perception by some observers that the Greek side doesn’t especially want to reach a settlement. The periodical summits and meetings come round and they go through the motions, paying lip service to the process. This view of a political lack of will has been articulated even among Greek Cypriots, the person in the street (‘Rationality and the Cyprus Issue’, Hugh Pope, International Crisis Group, 08-Mar-2011, www.internationalcrisisgroup.org). In contrast to the hypocritical politicians on both sides, a December 2010 Interpeace poll revealed that two-thirds of Greek and Turkish Cypriots wanted a resolution (Cyprus Mail).
Behind such cynicism is a complacency on the Greek Cypriot side, many of the politicians may be happy with the status quo…Greek Cypriots in the south are comparatively wealthy cf. the economically weak northern entity. The south has all the privileges of EU membership denied to the north. This diminishes some of the impetus, at least domestically, to seek change. All this doesn’t absolve the motives of Turkish politicians from scrutiny. The North Turkey regime is dependent on Turkey for protection, the situation suits Ankara, also giving it a location to offload surplus population. Turkey is in a position to use Cyprus as a bargaining chip in the Mediterranean (‘Opinion: The never-ending Cyprus conflict’, Spiro Moskovou, DW, 22-Nov-2016, www.dw.com). Ankara seems reasonably comfortable with the state of things too, as long as it has a military presence in control of the north.
TRNC President Tatar (www.dailysabah.com)
TRNC president’s pitch
The Northern Cyprus leader Ersin Tatar used the April summit in Geneva to push his two-state solution (2SS)… its merits in the TRNC president’s eyes were that it represented a fairer proposal than the Greek Cypriot one, allowing for what he calls “political equality” between the two communities, adding that 2SS would make possible an opening up of the economy in the north.
Turkish Cypriots justify the establishment of TRNC as a right of self-determination, but it’s hold on Northern Cyprus has been rejected by the international community as an illegal occupation of an EU member state (the Republic of Cyprus). As a result the body of EU law has been suspended in the northern section of the island (Mullen).
The seemingly insurmountable hurdle remains the yawning gulf between what each communities wants. A 2009 survey found that 78% of Greek Cypriots supported a unitary state solution, while 71% of Turkish Cypriots backed the two-state solution (‘Analyzing the proposed solutions to the Cyprus Dispute’, Oliver Hegglin, Human Security Centre, 13-Mar-2021, www.hscentre.org). While both sides with blinkered vision cling to such an absolute position, its hard to envision any breakthrough to one of the world’s most Intractable regional conflicts happening in the foreseeable future.
Kípros/Kıbrıs (Image: www.britannia.com)
Footnote: The Enosis question
The Greek Cypriot quest for Enosis (‘Unioned’) with Greece received a boost from the activism of ultra-right paramilitary organisation EOKA-B in the early Seventies. EOKA-B was involved in plots to assassinate Cypriot leader Makarios III (unsuccessful)—when he turned against the goal of Enosis—and in the assassination of US ambassador to Cyprus Rodger Paul Davies (successful), a protest against Washington’s failure to take action on Turkey’s 1974 invasion✼. The Greek Colonels, behind the 1974 coup which unseated Archbishop Makarios, also espoused Union with Greece in its efforts to created a “Hellenic State of Cyprus’. This was perhaps the high-water mark for Enosis in Cyprus. Polls in recent years have indicated that support for union with the ‘motherland’ has dissipated (‘Cyprus: Why One of the World’s Most Intractable Conflicts Continues’, Sewell Chan, New York Times, 07-Nov-2016, www.nytimes.com).
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✼ notwithstanding the US supported the Greek Colonels’ overthrow of the Greek government and monarchy in 1967
⊗ Turkey and Greece’s heavy military commitment in Cyprus imposes a massive burden on the economies of Greece and Turkey, a resolution would free up finances which are much needed elsewhere in their countries
☮ Ankara embarked on a expansive settlement program after invasion – by 1980 between 35 and 40 thousand Turkish settlers had migrated to Turkish-controlled areas (Helge Jensehaugen(2017)‘Filling the void’: Turkish settlement in Northern Cyprus, 1974–1980,Settler Colonial Studies,7:3,354-371,DOI: 10.1080/2201473X.2016.1196031)
§ over the last decade the (Turkish) ‘Barbaros’ research vessel has repeatedly infiltrated Cyprus’ EEZ, a clear violation of UNCLOS
Last month in Geneva the UN brokered an informal 5+1 meeting between the representatives of the Greek and Turkish communities of Cyprus in yet another fruitless attempt to find a resolution to the island’s “Intractable, identity-based conflict (RJ Fisher, Journal of Peace Research 2001). Also in attendance were the foreign ministers from Cyprus’s three guarantor powers, Greece, Turkey and Britain. For ordinary citizens of the country and foreign observers alike, this amounted to a “Groundhog Day” experience. The disputing parties came (with their own agendas), they talked (at each other) while remaining firmly anchored to their core list of non-negotiables. The disputants returned to their bunkers.
No compromise, no progress…the stalemate and the status quo continues. Even the usually “glass half-full” UN head is not sanguine about future prospects…UN secretary-general Guterres emerged from the three-day summit with a ‘realistic’ rather than a hopeful sense of the situation, stating that there was “not enough common ground to resume negotiations” and that new talks were months away (‘Cyprus settlement talks found little common ground: UN chief’, Aljazeera, 29-Apr-2021, www.aljazeera.com).
Photo: www.greekcitytimes.com
The rationales
Both sides restated their entrenched positions…the Greek Cypriots and Greece wouldn’t budge from their Greek Cypriot-majority bi-zonal federation model as the precondition to reunification, a formula ensuring the Greek community would still be dominant in the Federation. Turkish Cypriot leader Ersin Tatar insisted that to go forward the standing UN resolutions that sanction this approach should be sidestepped in favour of the alternate Turkish Cypriot proposal for a two-state solution, a formula backed by the Turkish government in Ankara and its controversial president Recep Erdogan.
The British connexion and the Cyprus Emergency
The self-interest of Greece and Turkey is transparent, but some may wonder why the UK was one of the participating players in the Cyprus stalemate talks. The British nexus has its genesis in 1878 when expansionist Britain took advantage of the ailing Ottoman Empire to establish a protectorate over Cyprus and add the Eastern Aegean island to its imperial possessions⌖.
EOKA Emergency (Photo: www.iwm.org.uk)
Lead up to the 1960 compromise and beyond
Fast forward to 1955, overseas colonies around the globe were increasingly asserting a postwar yearning for independence from their European masters. Anyone familiar with Britain’s colonial policy in the 20th century (eg, Balfour Declaration on Palestine, Aden, British Raj in India, etc), will be aware of its track record on disengagement with its colonies is far from spotless. The Cyprus situation in the years 1955-60 continued this pattern. British policy towards the colony was shortsighted and misguided. By rigidly denying the Greek and Turkish Cypriots a right to self-determination in an increasingly heavy-handed way, the colonial power inadvertently fostered Greek and Turkish Cypriot nationalist sentiments¤. The struggle of Greek Cypriots to free themselves of British rule was taken up by a guerrilla group called Ethniki Organised Kyprion Agoniston (EOKA). EOKA’s aims were not for independence but for union (Enosis) with Greece. Turkish Cypriots on the other hand, perceiving that the 1960 power share perpetuated their inferior place in the republic developed the idea of Taksim (‘partition’) in opposition to the Greeks’ Enosis✪. EOKA’s campaign of violence targetted the police (Greek and Turkish Cypriot as well as British) and basically anyone who opposed Enosis. Britain’s tactless use of Turkish police to quell the revolt of Greek Cypriots further inflamed and created new ethnic divisions and hostilities between the communities.
Archbishop Makarios III (Photo: www.pastdaily.com)
Although the British military eventually reined in most of the EOKA activists, the island’s slid towards war prompted Britain and the US to bring some kind of resolution to the conflict. Talks in 1959 led to the establishment of a republic in 1960 with a shared power arrangement—Greek Cypriot president, Turkish Cypriot vice president, etc—leadership of the republic thus fell to Archbishop Makarios (“Cyprus: Why One of the World’s Most Intractable Conflicts Continues’, Sewell Chan, New York Times, 07-Nov-2016, www.nytimes.com).
EOKA guerrillas including leader General Grivas
Cold War considerations
Geostrategic considerations of the Cold War played a part in both Britain’s and the US’ involvement in the Cyprus imbroglio. Cyprus was non-aligned and the western powers were fearful that the USSR could take advantage of the island”s instability with a view to establishing a base there, giving it a much sought-after influence in the Eastern Mediterranean. The activism and appeal of AKEL, the Cyprus communist party, augmented those fears (‘The Soviet Union, Turkey and the Cyprus Problem, 1967-1974’, John Sakkas & Nataliya Zhukova, Les Cahiers Rice, 2013/1 (n°10), www.cairn.info). Washington’s later support for the Greek colonels’ dictatorship as a buffer against communism proved disastrous for Cyprus’s long-term stability.
Cyprus in crisis
Trouble in the bi-communal unitary state surfaced in 1963 when Makarios proposed constitutional changes to limit Turkish Cypriot political influence. A civil war broke out between the two communities (inter communal violence, casualties on both sides, arson, displacement of villagers, intervention by UN Peacekeeping Force – which became permanent). The Turkish Cypriot-controlled area was reduced to a few enclaves and Nicosia, the capital, was divided by a cease-fire line called the “Green Line”.
Greek colonels coup and Turkish counter-strike
1974 was the most momentous year of the Cyprus conflict. Athens’ military junta operating through a paramilitary group overthrew the Cyprus government of Makarios and installed a ‘marionette’ government headed by an ex-EOKA leader and convicted murderer. The schemers’ purpose of the coup was to bring about the desired union with Greece. For Ankara though, it provided the opportunity (and pretext) it was waiting for…five days after the coup the Turkish military invaded Cyprus (Operation Atilla), the Greek coup collapsed and the Turkish invaders captured nearly 40% of the island. A cease-fire was negotiated but not before thousands of casualties and expulsions, particularly of Greek Cypriots from the north. Turkey set up a de facto Turkish entity in North Cyprus, which in 1983 was proclaimed to be the Turkish Republic of North Cyprus (TRNC). TRNC was recognised as a sovereign state only by the regime in Ankara, not by any other country.
Footnote: Megali ideaEnosis grew out the Megali Idea (“Great Idea”), an aspirational irredentist concept that posits that all lost Greek territories will be liberated and united with Greece in the future. The Greek colonels launching their 1974 coup d’etat against the Makarios government echoed the concept in their declaration of “the Hellenic State of Cyprus”.
See also the follow-up blog: ‘A Divided Cyprus: Sixty Years and No Resolution on the Horizon, Part II’
♨♨♨♨♨♨♨♨♨♨♨♨♨♨
⌖ formal annexation didn’t occur to 1914. In 1925 Cyprus was made a British crown colony
¤ an underlying grievance of Greek Cypriots in British Cyprus was what was effectively a system of double taxation. In addition to the standard taxation on many items, the communities had to contribute to Britain’s tribute payments to the Ottoman Empire in return for ‘leasing’ the island
✪ under British rule the two communities had been allowed to self- segregate, this led to an aggregation of “nationalistic fervour”, resulting in the development of Enosis andTaksim (‘Analyzing the proposed solutions to the Cyprus Dispute’, Oliver Hegglin, Human Security Centre, 13-Mar-2021, www.hscentre.org). See also Footnote above.
With so many hotspots and tense border stand-offs across the world, the dispute over an obscure island in the Arctic region by two peaceful modern western democracies definitely flies under the international radar. The unlikely spot is Hans Island, a 1.3 square kilometre slab of rock situated in the middle of the Nares Strait separating Greenland from Canada’s Northeast periphery. Barren and uninhabited, devoid of natural resources, the island has been the object of claims on it by both Denmark (of which Greenland is a sovereign part) and Canada since the 1930s¹.
Initially, the League of Nations adjudged the dispute in Denmark’s favour in 1933². But given the ineffectiveness and eventually dissolution of the inaugural world body, the LoN’s ruling carried little weight.
Over the decades Denmark and Canada continued to disagree on who owns Hans Island – without either doing anything about it. Bilateral negotiations in 1973 completely sidestepped the issue of the island’s sovereignty – a maritime border with the vertical line drawn through Nares Strait conveniently left the island itself untouched, and thus still unresolved.
An assertion of sovereignty done with humourand good nature
The 1980s saw an escalation of the competing claims in a tit-for-tat exchange of flag-planting on the island. First there was the hoisting of the Canadian maple leaf (accompanied by an additional item, a trademark bottle of Canadian whisky). The Danes duly responded with their own flag and a bottle of Danish schnapps.
The issue threatened to flare-up again in 2005 when Canadian defense minister Bill Graham earned Copenhagen‘s ire with his unilateral visit of Hans Island. However common senseprevailed and both sides committed to enter into a process to resolve the matter…since then though little headway has been made towards this goal.
A proposal for Inuit authority on the ground
In 2002 academics proposed that Canada and Denmark share control of Tartupaluk (the Greenlandic nameforHans Island), with hands-on management devolving to Inuit control. So far nothing has come of this.
Postscript: A straw prize on the surface but potentially a promisinglong-term prospect?
Though never getting remotely close to a militaryconfrontation, the periodic posturing and grandstanding by Canada and Denmark reflects the desire of both governments to secure possession of Hans Island. Two material considerations seem to inform the disputants‘ commitment to the cause – the possibility of oil and gasreserves in the seabed around Hans Island and the potential of the (Nares) strait as a future international shipping route.
End-note: A third claimant to Hans Island has emerged in recent years, Russia, filing its claim throughtheorthodox UN channels
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¹ “a bizarre sliver of territory for two countries to fight over” as one observer depicted it (Bender)
² a tricky matter to adjudicate on as the island technically lies in both countries’ waters, falling within the 12 mile-territorial limit under international law
❖❖❖🇩🇰🇨🇦
Referenced websites and sources:
‘Analysis: Hans Island – and the endless dispute over its sovereignty’, (Martin Breum), High North News, 24-Oct-2018, www.highnorthnews.com
‘2 countries have been fightingover an uninhabitedisland by leavingeach other bottles of alcohol for over 3 decades’, (Jeremy Bender), Business Insider, 10-Jan-2016, www.businessinsider.com
‘Canada and Denmark Fight Over Island With Whisky and Schnapps’, (Dan Levin), New York Times, 07-Nov-2016, www.nytimes.com
‘Hans Island Case – A territorial dispute in the Arctic’, (Master Thesis), (Nikoleta Maria Hornackova), Aalborg University, May 2018, www.projekter.aau.dk
Sydenham is a tiny inner suburb of Sydney which sits on traditional Cadigal land, part of the Eora nation, some eight kilometres south-west of the CBD. In the formative colonial period Sydenham was subsumed under a wider area known as Bulanaming which stretched from Petersham to Cook’s River and includeda chunk of undesirable swampy land(Gumbramorra Swamp).
Early map (pre-airport) (image: www.dictionaryofsydney.org/)
Grand designs Sydenham
From the 1850s on, the better land on the eastern part of the suburb was turned into grand estates for well-to-do colonial businessmen. These large villa estates occupied an area from Unwins Bridge Road back to Cooks River Road (later renamed Princes Highway). Perhaps the pick of these “large country retreats” in Sydenham, located between Reilly and Grove Streets, was the Grove Estate, with its two-storey Georgian villa, owned by John George Church. Adjoining the Grove Estate was ironmonger Richard Reilly’s Tivoli Estate with a similarly impressive Georgian villa➀ [Meader, Chrys, Sydenham, Dictionary of Sydney, 2008, http://dictionaryofsydney.org/entry/sydenham, viewed 25 Dec 2020].
The working class swampedCommencing in the 1880s, the grand estates started to be broken up by subdivision and the suburb’s complexion took on a recognisable working class character. Rows of Victorian cottages sprang up, many occupied by workers at the nearby Albion and other brickworks in nearby St Peters. At the same time developers sold cheap, unviable land in the swamp area to the working class. This was the notorious Tramvale Estate—badly designed, lacking in basic sewerage facilities, low-lying, prone to flooding and poor drainage—resulting in the spread of disease, plagues of mosquitos in summer and an all-pervasive, persistent stench, leaving the owners holding what amounted to a “white elephant” they couldn’t re-sell (Meader).
🔻 Adjoining suburb: Cooks River Road, St Peters (1935) (photo: State Library of NSW)
Industrial landscape and dichotomy
The swamp was finally drained in the 1890s and the land on it repurposed for heavy industry and engineering works. Factories took root, such as Australian Woollen Mills and the Sydney Steel Company (supplier of steel for the Sydney Harbour Bridge construction)➁. By the early 20th century Sydenham had taken on a twofold complexion: an industrial western part and a primarily residential eastern part (Meader)
The post-WWII period brought an influx of migrants to the inner west suburb, mostly Greeks, Macedonians, Croatians, Serbs and Slovenes from the former Yugoslavia, Turks and later Vietnamese. In the 1950s and 60s Sydenham proved a good recruiting ground for young athletic Aboriginal men who would go on to play rugby league for the Newtown club (Meader).
🔺 Sydenham farms
Sydenham cultural and entertainment ‘hub’ Sydenham has at best been only modestly endowed with shopping options(a handful of shops trailing off from the railway station➂) in comparison withsurrounding urban hubs like Marrickville, the local Sydenham community could boast a pub (the General Gordon) and a cinema, the Sydenham Picture Palace, later superseded by the art deco Rex Theatre (47 Unwins Bridge Rd) closed in 1959 and converted into a roller-drome in 1960. Sydenham at one point also had its own live theatre venue, Norman McVicker’s Pocket Playhouse (94 Terry Street), which operated from 1957 to 1973 [‘Pocket Playhouse’, www.budgeebudgee.wordpress.com].
Leading Hollywood actress Vivien Leigh, attending the Pocket Playhouse with proprietor Norman McVicker, 1961 🔻
From under the radar to under the runway In the early 1990s the Federal government spearheaded a plan to add a third runway to Sydney Kingsford Smith Airportwhich presaged irreparable change to Sydenham’s (eastern) residential zone. The scheme was vigorously opposed at a grass-roots level and supported by a Coalition of (thirteen) Sydney Councils including Marrickville Council (although it later did a volte-face and sided with the government). Although supposed to be ‘voluntary’, some Sydenham residents who were reluctant to sell and move were ‘persuaded’ to comply by intolerable noise levels for residents from the airport just 2km away and from adjacent demolition work in progress [‘The fight to save Sydenham’, (Tom Wilson), Green Left Review, 24-Oct-1995, Issue 208, www.greenleftreview.org.au].When the dust had settled, in excess of over 120 Sydenham houses had been acquired and demolished for the runway go-ahead…this clean-out were described by the Sydney Morning Herald as the airport “gobbling up a whole suburb”. Only a solitary cottage of the row of historic dwellings in the frontline Railway Road survived the decimation, No 19, “Stone Villa” (now an artists’ studio)➃. ⇩
PostScript: Sydenham Green By way of compensation for the demolished houses in Railway Rd, Marrickville Council was handed back the land in 1994…after deliberation the Council turned it into Sydenham Green, apublic park with ‘funky’ community sculptures and a skate park—and being directly under the flight path of the third runway—a quirky arch monument of sorts recounting the local community’s valiant efforts to stop its realisation. By its very presence, Sydenham Green stands as an “everyday reminder of how aircraft noise tore the heart out of a suburb” (Meader).
🂠🂠🂠🂠🂠🂠🂠🂠🂠🂠🂠🂠🂠🂠🂠🂠🂠🂠🂠🂠🂠🂠🂠🂠🂠🂠🂠🂠🂠🂠🂠🂠🂠
➀ both the Grove and the Tivoli villas were demolished during WWI
➁ largest employer in the Marrickville Municipality, >7,500 staff
➂ known as Marrickville Station until 1895 when the Bankstown line opened and Marrickville got its own railway station
➃a later casualty was Australia’s first Coptic Church (24A Railway Road), which had dodged the authorities’ demolition plans for two decades only to see a fire reduce its survival efforts to ashes in 2017
The second in our brace of reclusive authors of American fiction is Thomas Pynchon (see preceding blog on his the similarly publicity-shy JD Salinger). Long Island-born Pynchon came to the full-time vocation of fiction-writing via short stints in the navy and for Boeing as a technical aide. By the time Pynchon writes his first novel, V. in 1963, he is domiciled in México City, and the persona of Pynchon as an “Invisible Man of Letters” has already started to take root.
PYNCHON
If there were slim pickings for inquisitive fans of JD Salinger wanting more biographical information about their ‘fave’ reclusive writer, then comparatively there’s an absolute famine when it comes to the lack of ‘goss’ on Thomas Ruggles Pynchon! Pynchon has managed to weave an airtight web of mystery around his personal life – no interviews, no attendance of literary prize awards, no memoirs, no hobnobbing with fellow celebrities at ‘A’ list gatherings, no teaching post in academia. In Pynchon’s (loosely) historically-based novel Mason & Dixon one of the characters is castigated for “the least tolerable of Offences … the Crime they styl’d ‘Anonymity’” – the very state of existence that Pynchon craves. The reclusive and ubër-private New Yorker differs from the equally reclusive Salinger in not having had to suffer the ignominy of family ‘betrayal’ as Salinger was subjected to. Pynchon’s family (agent/wife, son, brother and sister) and friends have all closed ranks, drawing down the cone of silence on the subject of the famous recluse＊.
‘Mason & Dixon’
Pynchon very much belongs to the “why make it simple, when you can make it complicated” school of literary communication. His books, popularly subsumed under the labels ‘postmodern’ and metafiction are typically characterised by over-elaborate and often open-ended plots, dense and hard to follow, labyrinthine sentences (Mason & Dixon meanders a full 122 words before it reaches its first full stop on page 2!) Pynchon offers up a mixed grill of cultural references to sex, drug culture, science and tech stuff, historical info and comic-book fantasy (with a raft of quirky and zany characters), etc. Beginning with The Crying of Lot 49 (1966), the first of Pynchon’s “Californian trilogy” novels, the author turns a critical eye on the counterculture…although Pynchon evinces a consonance with its core values and communitarian ideals he voices a concern that the American counterculture may be an accessory of the dominant culture rather than a genuine reaction to it [‘American Modernity and Counterculture’, (The Crying of Lot 49 by Thomas Pynchon), www.litcharts .org]. In ‘Lot 49’ protagonist Oedipa Maas accidentally stumbles into Trystero, a shadowy world of convoluted conspiracies, unearthing a centuries-old conflict between rival mail distribution companies.
Political Pynchon?
A central motif that comes through in Pynchon’s novels is a distrust bordering on paranoia of government agencies and private corporations. In Gravity’s Rainbow he expresses deep suspicions about the motives of the military/industrial complex. But Pynchon seems also to distrust the established political left in its empirical authoritarian form. Instead, his natural orientation and sympathies seem to be towards the anarchists and the preterites (ie, those controlled by the elite). One scholar notes that anarchists or allusions to them are present in all of the Pynchon books … anarchism, Pynchon seems to suggest, might be the best non-authoritarian and non-hierarchical social configuration for the future [‘Riding the Interface: An Anarchist Reading of Gravity’s Rainbow’, (Graham Benton), www.pynchonnotes.openlibhums.org]. Politics also run through Pynchon’s next, Vineland (1990), a novel which some dismissively dispatched as “Pynchon-Lite”. Vineland is an absurdist fable— punctuated with numerous references to drugs, 1960s music and TV pop culture, especially Star Wars—through which Pynchon provides a commentary on several key issues of the Eighties (the culture war debates, reading, television and mass communications). Set against the backdrop of the Republican Party’s re-election in 1984, Pynchon also takes a hefty swipe at American politics in the age of Reaganomics with a warning to America about “encroaching fascism” [Meinel, Tobias. “A Deculturated Pynchon? Thomas Pynchon’s “Vineland” and Reading in the Age of Television.” Amerikastudien / American Studies 58, no. 3 (2013): 451-64. Accessed November 26, 2020. http://www.jstor.org/stable/43485900].
❝ Then again, it’s the whole Reagan program, isn’t it—dismantle the New Deal, reverse the effects of World War II, restore fascism at home and around the world, flee into the past, can’t you feel it, all the dangerous childish stupidity—I don’t like the way it came out … someday, with the right man in the White House, there will be a Department of Jesus.❞
~ Thomas Pynchon, Vineland
Guesting on ‘The Simpsons’
While resolutely keeping his guard up Pynchon maintains control of his world by choosing when and what of himself he gives up to the world at large. Famously Pynchon has appeared (in animated form) on two episodes of The Simpsons (a clear sign that the couch-surfing literary hermit is up on mainstream pop culture※), having dictated the terms of his guest spot. Obviously the idea of the Simpsons gig tickled his humerus wildly, as he is shown(sic) wearing a paper bag on his head and gets to say that he loves Marge Simpson’s book “almost as much as he loves cameras”.
Navy boy Tom
The “no selfies” author Tom Pynchon has been incredibly successful over many decades—especially living in a metropolis of over eight million people—in scrupulously avoiding the lenses of the ubiquitous paparazzi. Until fairly recently there was virtually no new photos of the reclusive writer floating round⍟. Media outlets when running a story on Pynchon almost invariably fall back on the one or two photos taken during his navy days (when Pynchon was aged around 19 or 20!). Pynchon’s legendary antipathy to having his photo taken has been explained away as self-consciousness about his protruding buck teeth (something that a sequence of sessions in the dentist’s chair early on could surely have fixed). Whether this explanation holds water or not is of course, like everything else, a topic Pynchon is deafeningly silent on. On the issue of Pynchon hermetically sealing himself off from the world, a more plausible speculation is that it may be a reflection of Pynchon’s disapproval of the modern trend of writers embracing, even rejoicing, in the role of being celebrities, eg, Norman Mailer and Truman Capote et al [‘Thomas Pynchon Returns to New York, Where He’s Always Been’, (J.K. Trotter), The Atlantic, 17-Jun-2013, www.theatlantic.com].
A method in the madness? The lengths Pynchon will go to avoid being photographed have a paranoia-like tinge to them, and some are legendary. Once in México during the Early Sixties V. period, when surprised by a random photographer, Pynchon apparently jumped straight out of his apartment window to escape being snapped [‘Hiding in Plain Sight: On the unobservable Thomas Pynchon’, (Alex Gilvarry), Topic, Issue No. 04, October 2027, www.topic.com]. The failure to pin down the identity of a famous but reclusive novelist contributes to the creation of myths … the enigma of an “invisible literary man” exudes more intrigue. Pynchon would understand that having a mystique about him, another layer of interest for his ‘gonzo’ fan base to engage with, would have a bonus marketable spin-off for the author’s sales [‘Meet Your Neighbor, Thomas Pynchon’, (Nancy Jo Sales), New York, 27-Jun-2008,www.nymag.com].
Pynchon Inc personnel: the ministry of silly names Pynchon novels are typically peopled by a vast array of (usually odd) characters. In Gravity’s Rainbow, Pychon rolls out no fewer than 400 named characters in 760 pages (most with fleeting walk-on, walk-off parts). Pynchon also revels in preposterous nomenclature, inventing lots of outrageous puns like Joaquin Stick, Benny Profane and the Marquis de Sod (a Californian lawn-care specialist!), and an inexhaustible supply of downright silly names – including McClintic Sphere, Tyrone Slothrop, Rachel Owlglass, Weed Atman, Yashmeen Halfcourt, Mike Fallopian, Scarsdale Vipe, Doc Sportello, Rev. Wicks Cherrycoke and Pig Bodine. Counterculture names abound – Zoyd, Frenesi, Prairie, etc. Needless to say from the jokey nature of this Pynchon nomen-sampler that fleshing out a character’s multi-layered depths is not really the New Yorker’s bag [‘Gravity’s Rainbow’, Wikipedia, http://en.m.wikipedia.org].
An orgy of exegesis: Conspiracy la-la landAs someone with a lofty literary profile in the US and beyond (regularly scores a mention in the mix of annual Nobel Prize contenders), the utter paucity of biographical information on Pynchon has given rise to some pretty wild speculation about who he really is? Outré theories abound on the internet about the novelist’s identity, one of the most persistent is that Thomas Pynchon is really JD Salinger! Presumably the germ of this notion was the commonalities between the two, both perceived as hermits with a pathological allergy to attention, and each shared a fierce insistence on their personal privacy. But what gave added weight to the imaginative coupling in people’s minds was Salinger’s early removal from the public gaze and the supposed drying up of his literary output as evidenced by the complete cessation of his published work post-1965. This baseless ‘theory’ holds that Salinger invented “Thomas Pynchon” as an “elaborate authorial personality” to hide behind (Trotter). Even more ludicrous was the allegation that Pynchon was in fact the Unabomber! Another speculation has him as an airline pilot in real life (motivated by Howard Hughes adulation perhaps?). Other theories, rather predictably, conclude that Pynchon has to be a drug smuggler or a CIA agent (“its all there in the stories!”) [‘Authors reveal their Thomas Pynchon conspiracy theories’, Bookish, 03-Oct-2013, www.usatoday.com]. And so it goes, with more and even crazier notions. There’s something very apt that so many loopy conspiracy theories circulate about the identity of an author whose fiction is littered with accounts of loopy conspiracy theories✫.
Footnote: Lost in Pynchon Given my own often bewildered reaction to much of the fiction of Pynchon, and the palpable frustration that I see exhibited by others seeking despairingly to decode Tom Pynchon’s idiosyncratically personal brand of hieroglyphics◪, I often wonder why so many of us punters keep making the self-flagellating effort…I’m reminded of the cynic’s definition of a classic book, “something that everyone wants to have read but nobody wants to read” (Mark Twain, who else?). Echoing this is one critic’s pithy summation of Gravity’s Rainbow, Pynchon’s most praised book, as the “least-read-must-read” book in American history (Sales). For the marginalised multitude denied enlightenment there is some comfort in mockery. The title of the 2009 “Po-Mo” take on TRP’s ‘gumshoe’ novel, Inherent Vice⍉, offers a pyrrhic get-square (‘Incoherent Vice’) [‘Incoherent Vice’, (Sam Anderson), New York, 31-Jul-2009, www.nymag.com].
PostScript: Absurdist and Fabulist?Pynchon is a black belt when it comes to telling the “shaggy-dog” story. Early critics described his novels V. and Gravity’s Rainbow as “high-caliber shaggy dog stories, full of digressions and possibly pointless details converging to a climax that revolves little” [‘Thomas Pynchon: A Primer’, (Jack Joslin), 25-Apr-2012, www.litreactor.com]. This description also applies to the later Mason & Dixon, a long rambling tale full of rollicking in taverns and absurdly inconsequential humour. Pynchon concocts a mixture of fact and fiction, the actual historical personages of Mason and Dixon blended into the “obvious lies, rumours and outright fantasies of their travels” while surveying the boundaries of colonial North America [Thomas Pynchon: Novels & Concept.” Study.com, 25 June 2013,study.com/academy/lesson/thomas-pynchon-novels-lesson-quiz.html]. This shaggy dog, picturesque style of Pynchon brings to mind Laurence Sterne’s Tristram Shandy, but more contemporaneously it reminds me of Peter Carey (especially Illywhacker) and John Barth (The Sot-Weed Factor, Giles Goat-Boy) who both write in a Fabulist/Magic Realism vein.
＊the scarcity of biographical material on Pynchon doesn’t stop the “Pynchon-curious” from trawling through the texts to turn up whatever “auto-fiction” they can find…the protagonist of V., Benny Profane, “a schlemihi and human yo-yo” is ex-navy, just like his creator
※ Pynchon, and for that matter, JD Salinger in his time, would undoubtedly have no trouble writing a treatise on daytime television had either wished to do so
⍟ even the photos supposed taken of the septuagenarian/octogenarian Pynchon out shopping can’t be confirmed as being genuinely of him
✫ Pynchon once famously said “every weirdo in the world is on my wavelength”
◪one reviewer likened Pynchon’s cryptic first novel V. to a Hieronymus Bosch triptych
⍉thus far the only Thomas Pynchon novel to make it to the silver screen
As Europe moves through Autumn, a number of countries are reporting new records for coronavirus infections. This month Italy recorded a 24-hour total of over 10,000 new cases for three consecutive days, while France recorded its highest ever total of new cases for a single day, 32,427. Similarly, the Czech Republic broke the 10,000 barrier for the first time (1,105 cases). Even in Germany, virus cases for a single day reached a pandemic high of 7,830 [‘Italy steps up coronavirus restrictions as Europe fights second wave’, Euronews, 18-Oct-2020, www.euronews.com].
October 4 2020 (Image: WELT)
Not withstanding this current setback in the fight against the pandemic, Germany has easily been the stand-out performer among the larger countries trying to combat Covid-19 in Europe. A raft of factors have been advanced to explain Germany’s success. Obviously, it hinges ultimately on a collective effort by the government, medical authorities and experts, and compliance by the nation. A lot of the credit for steering the ship into relatively safe waters (fingers crossed) goes to the leadership of Chancellor Angela Merkel. Almost from day one she did a number of things right. Projecting a visage of calm and composure, she was upfront with the German people. Honestly and transparently, she was prepared to admit when the government didn’t always have the answer at a given time. Building trust requires candour and elicits consent and compliance. From when the pandemic hit, she was proactive and decisive. There was no “coronavirus denying” by the leadership (unlike the errant course charted initially by the US and UK governments), but an immediate marshalling of efforts to tackle the problem facing it※ [‘The secret of Germany’s COVID-19 success: Angela Merkel Is a Scientist’, (Saskia Miller), The Atlantic, 20-Apr-2020, www.theatlantic.com].
There were other factors relating to demographics and the public health response that were vital—average age of coronavirus patients was lower than elsewhere; better delivery of testing than many countries; careful and comprehensive tracking of cases (>90%); modern, maintained public health system;local responses—but in a sense everything flowed from the chancellor who has been at the helm of the German state since 2005. With a science background (PhD in quantum chemistry), Merkel knew to listen to the scientists, the public health experts, like the celebrated virologist Christian Drosten. As a scientist herself she respected their views, knew that this was essential to finding out what was needed⚡. Drawing on the well-funded scientific-research organisations and university medical departments that she had maintained, she was able to coordinate these into a single, effective coronavirus task force (Miller).
(Photo: Getty Images)
One observer has attributed Germany’s (and Merkel’s) success to the “Four L’s” which may in the event of a new wave of Covid be integral to “bending the curve quickly once again – luck, learning, local responses and listening. The ‘luck’ amounted in part to being in the right place at the right time…having acquired and readied the coronavirus PCR tests in advance so they were “available in Munich when the first tests showed up there”, but this could arguably be equally attributable to due diligence and preparedness, and an instinctual willingness to follow hunches. Learning from the experiences of other countries who had prior exposure to coronavirus also played a key part – in this Germany was fortunate to have had a delayed arrival of the disease. The German authorities were able to look at the strategies of countries such as South Korea, Taiwan and Japan, see what was working well there, and cherry-pick. Germany’s political structure, emphasising localised divisions of authority (government by lander), permitted a decentralised approach to the pandemic which allowed the bureaucratic response to the crisis to be speeded up. The fourth ‘L’, listening to the scientific experts, was not just what Merkel, but what politicians at the local level in Germany◔ did assiduously [‘The four simple reasons Germany is managing Covid-19 better than its neighbors’, (Julia Belluz), Vox, 15-Oct-2020, www.vox.com].
(Source: www.dw.de/)
Of course Chancellor Merkel’s policies in the crisis have had their detractors—business lockdowns and restrictions that go on for lengthy periods are sure to draw displeasure—her measured approach however has been demonstrably unifying and has resulted in overwhelming support from the electorate rallying behind her (approval ratings for the chancellor during the pandemic have been as high as 86%).
PostScript: Denialists and Bunglers Inc Last month British PM Boris Johnson, in an all-too characteristically ham-fisted way, tried to deflect criticism of his government’s abysmal handling of the pandemic vis-vís (especially)Germany by putting the UK’s worse handling of the crisis down to the ‘fact’ that the UK is “a freedom loving” country [‘Why is Germany doing better than the UK at fighting a resurgence of Covid-19?’, The Local – De, 26-Sep-2020, www.thelocal.de/].
Anyone following contemporary US politics would likely be familiar with the term ‘filibuster’ – the spectacle conjured up is of a politician, bunkering down, holding the Senate floor to ransom in an endless monologue. The object of such stonewalling is to perversely delay the passage of some piece or other of legislation they are opposed to. Many movie fans of the “Golden Age of Hollywood” cinema will recall the idealistic young ‘greenhorn’ senator (played by James Stewart) engaging in an agonising 24-hour, non-stop talking marathon to try to block corrupt legislation being passed…the junior senator droning on about the Constitution and the Bible before dramatically collapsing, exhausted, on a ‘bed’ of protest letters and telegrams (Mr Smith Goes to Washington, 1939).
(Illustration: Diana Morales/MPA)
The right to ‘speechify’: Extraneous and unrelated to the legislative matter at handThe principle on which filibustering is predicated—that any senator should have the right to speak as long as necessary—has seen real-life politicians resort to reading material just as prosaic as the fictional Mr Smith’s tedious ‘talkathon’. Louisiana demagogue Huey Long punctuated recitations of Shakespeare and passages from the Constitution with readings of his favourite recipes – especially fried oysters and pot-likkers. Ted Cruz read Dr Seuss to his daughters while trying to stymie Obamacare. The negativity of filibustering is neatly summarised in Senate historian Donald Ritchie’s definition: a filibuster “is a minority of Senators who prevent the majority from casting a vote, knowing otherwise the majority would prevail” [‘Whatever Happened to the Old-Fashioned Jimmy Stewart-Style Filibuster?’, (Aaron Erlich), www.hnn.us/].
⇩ Huey Long (Source: www.npr.com)
Reining in its excessesThe impediment of senatorial filibustering—legislation delayed is legislation denied—led to attempts to curb its disruptiveness. Under the Wilson presidency, the Senate accepted a rule whereby a filibuster could be ended on the achievement of a two-thirds majority vote. In DC-speak this device is called invoking ‘cloture’. In 1975 the requirement was amended, necessitating only a three-fifths majority vote (ie, 60 votes out of the 100 senators) [‘Filibuster and Cloture’, United States Senate, www.senate.gov].
The device of the political filibuster, though quintessentially American, is equally a feature of legislatures of other Western democracies such as the UK, Australia, France and Canada※…and it’s a practice that goes way back to Ancient Rome and Cato the Younger’s all-day talk fests in the Roman Senate circa 60 BCE [‘The art of the filibuster: How do you talk for 24 hours straight?’, (Jon Kelly),BBC News Magazine, 12-Dec-2012, www.bbcnews.com].
⇧ The filibuster phenomena continues to provide political cartoonists in the US with endless inspiration(Image: www.davegranlund.com)
꧂꧂꧂꧁꧁꧁
The other type of filibuster
The etymology of ’filibuster’ dates from the late 16th century, it is first used in the sphere of Spain’s imperial possessions in the “New World”. The Spanish term filibustero⍟described the activities of freelance buccaneers and pirates who plundered the riches of Spanish America (typified by Sir Francis Drake and his raid on Panama in 1573). ’Filibuster’ re-emerges in 19th century United States to refer to North American adventurers and ‘chancers’ who organised schemes and private militias in an attempt to take over foreign countries and territories in Latin America [May, Robert E. “Young American Males and Filibustering in the Age of Manifest Destiny: The United States Army as a Cultural Mirror”. The Journal of American History, vol. 78, no. 3, 1991, pp.857-886. JSTOR, www.jstor.org/stable/2078794. Accessed 10 Oct. 2020].
Pirate gold doubloonsfrom the Americas⇩
(Photo: NY Post)
Burr, godfather of US filibustering
The first tentative steps of US filibustering in the early period of the republic probably starts with Vice-President Aaron Burr in the first decade of the century. After Burr’s political career imploded in 1804 as a result of his killing of former Treasurer secretary Alexander Hamilton in a duel, the disgraced VP is believed to have hatched a plan to invade and seize Spanish territories in the west of the North American continent. The scheme was never implemented, however Burr was subsequently tried for treason but acquitted [‘The Burr Conspiracy’, National Counterintelligence Center, www.fas.org/]◰. Other filibusters followed Burr’s lead…early American adventurers like James Long and Augustus Magee formed expeditions to try to wrest control of Texas from the Spanish colonialists.
Manifest Destiny west and southThe activity really took off after US territorial gains at Mexico’s expense stemming from the 1846-48 war and the discovery of gold in California. In the 1850s filibuster expeditions became a regular occurrence as ambitious US citizens, schemers and “soldiers of fortune”, launched raid and raid mainly on northern Mexico but also Central American lands in an attempt to appropriate territory for themselves or in the name of the US. Venezuelan-born Narcisco López was one of the first, trying unsuccessfully with the assistance of American southerners to capture Cuba from the Spanish on three separate occasions. Most of these filibusters were inspired by (or found legitimacy for their actions) in the emerging credo of Manifest Destiny, the belief that Americans possessed a kind of “quasi-divine Providence” to expand into new territories (be they held by native populations or Mexicans), annex them and thus spread American democracy to them [‘Manifest destiny’, Wikipedia, http://en.m.wikipedia.org].
〥۵〥〥〥〥〥〥〥〥〥〥۵
※ by no means is it confined to Western democracies
⍟filibustero – from the Dutch vrijbuiter, meaning ‘freebooter’, ‘pirate’ or ‘robber’
◰Burr was also largely responsible for the introduction into the Senate of the above form of filibuster, the procrastination ploy
Hostilities between the Greeks and the Turks go back to antiquity, at least to the Late Bronze Age if we accept Homer’s classic literary work The Iliad as evidence of an approximate historical actuality – although Homer referred to the mortal combatants in Asia Minor as Achaeans and Trojans. In the modern era the focus of tension between Greece and Turkey has centred on the Aegean Sea and the eastern Mediterranean…the violent division and disputed status of the island of Cyprus in 1974 has been the most dramatic consequence of the ongoing enmity between the two countries.
(Source: OU News)
Tensions rose again in July of this year – Turkish president Recep Erdoğan dispatched the research vessel Oruc Reis along with a formidable military escort into Greek territorial waters to do seismic surveys of the region in search of gas deposits. Greek protests against Ankara’s territorial incursions being in breach of international law was met with “bellicose rhetoric” and threats by Erdoğan, and the tiny Greek island of Kastellorizo became a hotspot for the dispute. Other incidents followed, in August a Greek frigate collided with one of the Turkish military escorts in the vicinity of Crete, and another Turkish vessel started drilling off the coast of Northern (Turkish-controlled) Cyprus [Turkey-Greece Relations: Why are the two countries locked in a dispute over drilling rights?’, (David Walsh), Euronews, 26-Aug-2020, www.euronews.com].
What accounts for all the recent turmoil and agitation in the region is the discovery a decade ago of natural gas in the eastern Mediterranean. Both Turkey and Greece are eager to exploit this lucrative source of energy and revenue. The problem for Turkey is the myriad EEZs (exclusive economic zones) relating to the numerous Greek islands in the Aegean which blocks Turkey’s scope of activity. The problem for Greece (and other onlookers within the EU) is that Turkey does not accept the legality of Greek sovereignty over the islands and their proximity to the Turkish mainland, its perennial bugbear.
Historic grievances
Old sores have been opened for Turkey and its right wing president Erdoğan, who cite the unjust treaties (as they view it) of Sèvres and Lausanne following WWI as retarding Turkeys’s capacity to explore and access natural resources of the eastern Mediterranean. Ankara maintains that the treaties left Turkey “landlocked despite (having) 8,000km of coastline”, that the maritime rights handed the Greek islands in the Aegean by the 1923 treaty box in Turkey from accessing large areas of sea, which it maintains it has a de jure right to❋. Erdoğan, imbued with the “spirit of the Ottoman sultanate”, has threatened to “tear up the immoral maps and documents” in disregard of the International Court of Justice.[‘How a rush for Mediterranean gas threatens to push Greece and Turkey into war’, (Patrick Wintour), The Guardian, 11-Sep-2020, www.theguardian.com; ‘Tiny island Kastellorizo at centre of growing confrontation between Greece and Turkey’, (Benjamin Brook), News, 14-Sep-2020, www.new.com.au].
Turkey’s “Blue Homeland adventurism” and ‘maximalist’ v ‘minimalist’ island continental shelves
Railing loudly against the ‘invasion’ of Greece ofits ‘sacred’ islands has been a long-standing article of faith for Turkish politicians…Turkish expansionist propaganda has characterised the Greek island-dotted Aegean as its “Blue Homeland” (a doctrine known the Turks as Mavi vatan) in defiance of the Lausanne Treaty [‘Blue Homeland: The Heated Politics Behind Turkey’s New Maritime Strategy’, (Ryan Gingeras), War On The Rocks, 02-Jun-2020, www.warontherocks.com]. Turkey’s counter-argumentto Greece’s is that “Greek islands far from the mainland and closer to Turkey cannot have a continental shelf” (continental shelves equate with national mainlands). It also notes that Greek islands such as Meis and Kastellorizo lie a mere two kilometres from the Turkish mainland but many hundreds of kilometres from the Greek coastline— making a nonsense, they argue, of Greece’s “maximalist continental shelf claims”◰ [‘Turkey-Greek tensions escalate over Turkish Mediterranean drilling plans’, BBC News, 25-Aug-2020, www.bbc.com; ‘Turkey ignores Greece’s dispute, moves on with Mediterranean seismic surveys’, (Onur Ant), World Oil, 22-Jul-2020, www.worldoil.com; Walsh]. The question of whether the maritime areas (the continental shelves) of islands should be equal to that of mainlands (Greece’s position) or not is a thorny international one, only resolvable by complex ICJ arbitration – something Ankara would be reluctant to undertake (Wintour).
A ”Pax Mediterranea“ excluding TurkeyAthens responded to Ankara’s aggressive steps predictably by calling it tantamount to “illegal gunboat diplomacy”. Greece has actively pursued cooperation initiatives with other eastern Mediterranean rim countries including Egypt to jointly exploit gas reserves which by-passes Turkey (eg, the Eastern Mediterranean Gas Forum). Athens’ efforts to exclude and isolate Turkey have secured the willing participation of France. The EU, at the urgings of France’s president, Emmanuel Macron, imposed a sanction on Turkey for its aggressive behaviour in the Aegean. Ankara’s response to the attempted snooker has been to broker an agreement with the Libyan Government of National Accord to establish its own EEZ in the Mediterranean between the two countries. The EU have condemned the arrangement as infringing the maritime rights of Greece and Cyprus, and not complying with the Law of the Sea ◰. Turkey’s initiative is “a clear signal to other coastal states in the region that the gas game will not be played without Ankara’s consent” [‘Why did Turkey sign a maritime deal with Libya?’, TRT, 10-Dec-2019, www.trtworld.com].
Kastellorizo🔻
For the time being tensions over the Kastellorizo hotspot in the Dodecanese islands have eased, President Erdoğan has pulled back its seismic survey vessels to the Turkish mainland. But with Erdoğan defiantly vowing to assert Turkey’s rights in the sea and Greece unwilling to make concessions to its traditional foe, the chance remains that an isolated incident may escalate into something more serious in the foreseeable future◘ [Turkish President Erdogan blinks first in eastern Mediterranean standoff’, (Menekse Tekyak), Arab News, 13-Sep-2020, www.arabnews.com].
Postscript: Ankara’s intransigent view of the ‘foreign’ Greek islands within the “Blue Homeland” remains the central stumbling block to security in the region. There are other recent developments in Turkey that have added to the tense trans-Aegean climate. President Erdoğan, always keen to show his Islamist credentials, in July restored Hagia Sophia—until 1453 a symbol of Christian Orthodoxy—to its former status as a functioning mosque, drawing criticism from many quarters including Greece, the Vatican, other international ecclesiastical councils and UNESCO. A second, current source of tension with its neighbour to the west derives from Erdoğan recently deciding to allow large numbers of refugees and migrants to flood into Europe via the Evros River border and Greece (BBC News).
❋Erdoğan and the Turks argue that the 1923 Lausanne Treaty allowed Greece and Cyprus to steal Turkey’s continental shelf (Brook). The letter of the law supports Greece, however Turkey’s frustrations are understandable given that such a large swath of its coastline is punctuated with a multitude of Greek EEZs
◰ which Turkey continues to refuse to ratify
◘most observers feel that despite Erdoğan’s bellicosity, Turkey is unlikely to declare war any time soon, given it is militarily overextended in Syria and Libya and the current state of the Turkish economy [‘Turkish-Greek relations tense amid fears of military showdown’, Arab News, 13-Jun-2020, www.arabnews.com]
Before the Sovereign Citizen Movement came along (see preceding blog), there was an earlier fringe organisation in the US, Posse Comitatus, which mined the same ideological/conspiracy terrain and employed similar disruptive tactics against federal authority. Emerging in the late 1960s, Posse Comitātūs (Latin for “force of the county”), sprouting anti-Semitic hate speech and uncompromising anti-government dogma and railing against federal taxes, appealed to a range of conservative and reactionary fringe groups — including the Tax Protest Movement, 2nd Amendment Absolutists, Christian Identity adherents and other ”white WASPs”, and ’preppers’ or survivalists. The driving impetus for Posse Comitatus anti-came largely from one William Potter Gale who took over the movement from its founder Henry Lamont Beach⁕. Gale, a self-styled minister, preached retributive violence against US public officials who violate the law and the Constitution (Gale’s “sound bite”: they should be hung by the neck at noon at the nearest intersection of town) [‘Too Weird for The Wire’, (Kevin Carey), Washington Post, May/June/July 2008].
⟰ WP Gale, Posse Comitatus ideologue and leader
The trans-Atlantic sheriff
Posse Comitatus drew on an earlier institution in American history, the office of the sheriff. This office deriving from 9th century Anglo-Saxon England—the word ‘sheriff, meaning literally the “shire guardian”—was exported to England’s American colonies where the sheriff of a county came to be directly elected as a constitutional officer holding great autonomy and independence in his position [‘Sheriffs and the posse comitatus’, (David Kopel), The Washington Post, 15-May-2014, www.washingtonpost.com].
⟱ Office of the sheriff had its genesis during the rule of Alfred the Great in Wessex (Source: www.historytoday.com)
After America became a republic, the institution of sheriff retained its status as the grass-roots hub of local law enforcement, although over time regional variations emerged. In the more densely populated North-East of the country the creation of urban police forces eroded the office’s power, but not so in the South and the West, where the preponderance of larger rural counties meant the sheriff remained a key force in tying together isolated communities. Here the overriding perception commonly is that ”the sheriff in his county is more powerful than the president”§ [‘The Renegade Sheriffs‘, (Ashley Powers), The New Yorker, 23-Apr-2018, www.newyorker.com].
An alternate history of US law: Common law trumps statutory lawPosse Comitatus doctrine affirms the office of sheriff as the truly ‘legitimate’ arm of law enforcement in the land. In the minds of its adherents, it authorises the office-holder to determine local laws based on judicial decisions of county courts. Thus it holds that common law always takes precedence over statute or written law [‘Posse Comitatus’ (organization), Wikipedia, http://en.m.wikipedia.org].
“Constitutional sheriffdom” Influenced by Posse Comitatus and other extremist anti-federal government groups a body of sheriffs in the US have gone further to enunciate their local authority over the law. These hardliners in 2011 formed themselves into an association of ‘constitutional’ sheriffs (Constitutional Sheriffs and Peace Officers Association or CSPOA)✪. CSPOA’s position echoes that of Posse Comitatus– the sheriff represents the highest authority in the county (Powers). In the early 2010s CSPOA mobilised sheriffs to take a very strong stand against President Obama’s attempts to establish gun control legislation [‘Line in the Sand’, (Mark Potok & Ryan Lenz), Southern Poverty Law Center, (Summer Issue, 13-Jun-2016), www.splcenter.org].
Posse Comitatus stoking the Midwest farm crisis
A farm recession in the American Midwest in the early 1980s, resulting in economic ruin, bank foreclosures, etc., “created the conditions necessary for the (Posse Comitatus) doctrine to attract significant support” among desperate and disenchanted farmers⊞. Gale’s acolytes “crisscrossed the region explaining to farmers and ranchers (that they) were under no obligation to repay overdue loans or peacefully accept the foreclosure of their property” [‘Posse Comitatus’, Encyclopedia of the Great Plains, www.plainshumanities.unl.edu]. Some unscrupulous peddlers of Posse Comitatus ideology even sold the hard-hit farmers bogus prepackaged legal defences to circumvent their financial obligations (Carey).
(Source: Iowa PBS)
Followers of the Posse Comitatus manifesto often refused to pay taxes, obtain driver’ licences or pay vehicle insurance counterfeiting (steming from a denial of US fiat money) and other acts of federal disobedience. Posse Comitatus groups set up “common-law courts and juries”✦ to try public officials who had earned their enmity. Some members of Posse Comitatus groups, like today’s Sovereign Citizens, also engaged in more lethal actions. In 1983 one Posse member killed federal marshals and a local sheriff.
Continuing ideological after-effects
By the late 1980s with William Gale’s death, Posse Comitatus activism ebbed away. The movement’s decline has been attributed to a lack of effective leadership. Nonetheless the attraction of its ideology to disaffected fringe elements lies in the durability of its receptive message to many [‘The Anti-Government Movement Guidebook’, (1999, National Center for State Courts), www.famguardia.org]. Gale’s inflammatory ideas “gave people on the paranoid edge of society a collective identity” (Carey). The Posse Comitatus ideology held the appeal it did, according to Daniel Levitas, because Gale forged an American-sounding ideology which married together appeals to anti-Semitism, anti-communism, White Supremacy and the sovereignty of the people [‘The Terrorist Next Door’ (Daniel Levitas), New York Times, 17-Nov-2002, www.nytimes.com].
Endnote: The archetype of the posse in the old west In countless Hollywood western movies the standard trope shows sheriffs raising posses to apprehend fugitives or to marshal back-ups to defend a community or town under threat. This was not merely Hollywood mythology but did occur. On the western frontier during the 19th century the sheriff had the authority to command a posse. Posse service was a right and a duty of responsible citizens of the day (Kopel). The reality behind the Hollywood depiction of posses is that they “routinely overstepped their quasi-legal function and were themselves responsible for mob violence” [‘Hate Normalized: Posse Comitatus’, Siouxland Observer, 30-Apr-2018, www.siouxlandobserver.blogspot.com].
⟰ Former Arizona sheriff, Richard Mack, a co-founder of CSPOA (Source: www.azcenter.com)
Postscript: ”An increasingly central role in partisan battles”
The Marshall Project has identified at least 60 sheriffs across the US that are currently using the wide discretionary powers they have to oppose state government-imposed restrictions due to COVID-19. This has meant not enforcing pandemic safety measures such as stay-at-home orders, the wearing of masks, business closures, etc. [‘The Rise of the Anti-Lockdown Sheriffs’, (Maurice Chammas), The Marshall Project, 15-Aug-2020, www.themarshallproject.org].
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⁕ a far-right activist who had been a member of the “Silver Shirts” (American neo-Nazis) in the 1930s
§ the familiar image again courtesy of Hollywood is of the racist, tyrannical southern sheriff who rides roughshod over everyone, personified in the film In the Heat of the Night
✪ the idea of constitutional sheriffs was Gale’s, first proposed in the 1970s
⊞ by the late Seventies there was 80 or more distinct Posse Comitatus groups in the plains states, with Wisconsin in particular a ‘hotbed’ (‘Anti-Government Movement’)
✦ the common law courts, together with Sovereign Citizens, have been described as ”the direct ideological descendants of Posse Comitatus” (‘Anti-Government Movement’)
Who’d have thought that it’d take a pandemic to bring to light just how many cynics and crazies are out there? Before COVID-19 we only had the climate change deniers and the occasion conspiracy peddler to cope with. Since the virus first descended, coronavirus deniers have been coming out of the woodwork, a contagion not confined to the USA.
Human rights or human life?
Recently, a new phenomena has popped up on social media and TV screens – from the “Republic of Covididiocy”. Provocateurs have taken to filming themselves confronting police and retail shop personnel during lockdown – provocatively refusing to wear masks, not giving their personal details and declaring loudly that their human rights were being transgressed. The extreme position adopted by these protesters connects them to conspiratorial views held by fringe extremists in the US✱.
Conspiracy heaven ⍌
A universal scofflaw mindset
These individuals are part of a loosely-organised movement of people who call themselves “Sovereign Citizens” (or “Sov-Cits” or just ‘Sovereigns’, for short), whose purpose is to assert some set of existing natural rights which, they purport, places them outside of the jurisdiction of the government and the law. In a climate of pandemic-induced restrictions many of these people may just be (over)reacting to the state’s clampdown on their freedom of movement and activity, a knee-jerk libertarian impulse. However the concept of Sovereign Citizenry long pre-dates the current pandemic as a conspiracy-driven stratagem, with its origins, unsurprisingly, found in America.
The world according to Sovereign Citizens
“The Sovereign Citizens Movement promotes the tantalising fantasy that anyone can declare himself or herself above and beyond the jurisdiction of the government by invoking arcane legal terminology”.
~ Southern Poverty Law Center
(Source: www.radicalisationresearch.org)
In the 1990s the SCM picked up the earlier Posse Comitatus movement’s baton of unrelenting enmity towards the federal government, portraying themselves as the “true defenders of the Constitution”. Sov-Cit beliefs rest on the same premise as that established by Posse Comitatus. They believe that the US government is illegitimate…it is, they say, a corporation that has duped ‘natural’ citizens (read “Sovereign Citizens”) into an unlawful contract. Sovereign theorists cite the 14th Amendment in 1868 and FD Roosevelt’s 1933 abandonment of the gold standard as a back-up to the paper currency as historical ‘proof’ of federal deception.
Gurus and methods
The SCM is a loosely organised group of litigants, commentators, tax protesters/deniers and financial scheme promoters…leadership comes from “redemption gurus” who advise Sovereigns to use ‘legal’ phrases to remove themselves from the jurisdiction of government (BBC).
Prison recruitment, outreach and education Gurus and other Sovereign ‘mentors’ incarcerated for fraud or for not paying taxes have found prison an ideal environment to indoctrinate and recruit new adherents. Imprisoned drug dealers and embezzlers were particularly willing recruits to the cause, jumping at the chance to put Sov-Cit theories into place in the hope of getting out of jail, or to retaliate against the public officials and law enforcement officers who put them there! The pseudo-legal strategy employed by Sov-Cits (again following Posse Comitatus) is based on the ludicrous “Theory of Redemption”—a secret (and mythical) fund of money created for everyone at birth by the US government—which Sov-Cits can supposedly redeem or claim to pay debts [‘Sovereign Citizens Movement Resurging’, Southern Poverty Law Center, Spring Issue 2009, 26-Feb-2009, www.splcenter.org].
“American National”, the preferred nomenclature for Sovereigns ⍌
Before the advent of the internet training of Sov-Cits took place at seminars held at remote extremist compounds. Now recruits learn via online videos and forums (like You Tube and MySpace) which disseminate SCM doctrine and tactics. Some Sovereign groups sell booklets like “The Prison Packet” which purports to guide inmates towards the realisation of their freedoms. Religious outreach, through the agencies of numerous Christian fundamentalist fringe organisations in the US, is another avenue for recruiting Sov-Cits into the fringe fold (Southern Poverty Law Center).
Paper terrorism
Sovereigns employ what are saturation methods, submitting countless bogus court filings containing hundreds of pages which are virtually indecipherable. The purpose? “To punish, to harass and mislead public officials”. The paper terrorism may take the form of elaborate scams, the generation of fake letters of credit or tax forms, frivolous law suits or other faux legal documents [‘Understanding the sovereign citizen movement: a guide for corrections professionals’, The Free Library, www.thefreelibrary.com/].
Law-enforcement officers in the Sovereigns’ cross-hairs
Some Sov-Cits are out and out “con artists”, transparently pure 100% charlatan, but as Michael Barkun warns, others are politically-motivated anti-government extremists⧆…and dangerous! In 2010 a Sov-Cit duo, father and son, killed local police officers in West Memphis, Arkansas. A New Hampshire shootout in 1997 resulted in the death of five people including the Sovereign provocateur acting as a “lone wolf”❂. Cop killing by Sovereigns is not confined to America – in 2016 a Reichsbürger, the German version of the Sov-Cit, shot dead a policeman in that country. The FBI has declared some Sovereign Citizens to be domestic terrorists. Often inmates utilise the Sov-Cit strategies from within the prison system to carry out protracted vendettas against judges, IRS officials, prosecutors and local sheriffs (Southern Poverty Law Center).
(Source: www.bbc.com/)
The lengths a Sov-Cit will go to
Your dedicated Sovereign is not adverse to creating fake car licence plates or printing his or her own currency and then trying to pass it off as real money. One SCM provocateur in Florida, in acrimonious conflict with his local Bank of America branch, sent it a bogus foreclosure notice and even barricaded the branch during opening hours (SPLC).
Francis: “It is symbolic of our struggle against oppression”
Reg: “Its symbolic of his struggle against reality”
~ Monty Python’s Life of Brian
Sovereigns don’t believe they need to hold a licence in order to drive (or to fish for that matter). When stopped by police patrols they have been known to deny that they are driving and affirm rather that they are in fact merely travelling⚅ (Dr Kaz Ross, interview, ABC Radio). And travelling, Sovereigns insist, is “a God-given right”. Some Sovereigns go even further than just mouthing the mantra that they are outside of federal jurisdiction, proclaiming to be citizens of other entities, eg, the Montana Freemen, the “Republic of Texas” (The Free Library)✫.
Anti-government protest in Oregon ⍓(Source: http://m.dk.com)
Endnote: Sovereign Citizens are one of a panoply of Alt-Right, conspiracy-obsessed fringe hate groups in the US which might loosely be subsumed under the umbrella term “patriot movement”. There is a lot of blurring of the lines between SCM, QAon, the Three Percenters, the Boogaloo Bois, the Proud Boys, the Anti-Vaxxer groups and various others of a similarly contrarian ilk. In particular, the Sov-Cits’ emphasis on the duality of US citizenship echoes the philosophy of another group – the Freemen-on-the-Land movement. The latter proclaim that “with special knowledge and careful language, we can circumvent these laws and regulations and live freely as an alternative vision of ourselves under our own ‘natural‘ laws” (a virtual identikit image of the SCM’s credo and tactics) [’What is the ‘sov cit movement?’, BBC News, 05-Aug-2020, www.bbc.com; ’The seriously weird belief of Freeman on the Land”, (Shelley Stocken), News, 09-Jul-2016, www.news.com.au].
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PostScript: Black separatism
On the surface you might think Sov-Cits would be an exclusively Caucasian phenomena, given its links to White Supremacist outfits like Christian Identity. But there is an African-American separatist subset that adheres to the Sovereign Citizens credo. Given their disproportionate representation in US prisons, Black inmates not surprisingly have been attracted to the SCM ideology. A clique of African-American drug-dealers on trial for murder in the 2000s in Baltimore employed its obstructionist ploys to delay proceedings for years [‘Too Weird for The Wire’, (Kevin Carey), Washington Post, May/June/July 2008].
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✱ the great danger here “is when fringe beliefs and proponents begin to slip into the mainstream”, eg, President Trump’s spruiking of alleged coronavirus cures which are not scientifically proven and possibly harmful, ‘The threads that don’t connect: Covid gives Australian conspiracy theorists a home’, (Michael McGowan), The Guardian, 02-Aug-2020, www.theguardian.com.au]
⊞ a right to hold possession of property owned by another until they discharge the debt (www.lexico.com/)
⧆ Barkun describes them as “a stubbornly resilient sub-culture, a community of the alienated”
❂ many Sovereign groups are thought to be aligned with militia groups
⚅ ‘driving’, they assert, is what a truck driver or a taxi driver does for a living
✫ it’d be stating the obvious to say that Sovereigns have a cockeyed notion of the rule of law, one based on the false premise that an individual can choose which law they consent to, and which they don’t (SPLC)
Afortnight after Jacobo Árbenz Guzman fell on his sword, resigning the presidency of Guatemala, Colonel Carlos Castillo Armas, who had led the so-called “Army of Liberation”—the US-financed and trained rebel force which had invaded the country—was made president of Guatemala’s ruling military junta. Despite Washington’s professed intention to rebuild Guatemala through comprehensive reforms into a “showcase for democracy”, the US’s ongoing preoccupation with the drive to eliminate communism in the region took precedence [Brockett, Charles D. “An Illusion of Omnipotence: U.S. Policy toward Guatemala, 1954-1960.” Latin American Politics and Society, vol. 44, no. 1, 2002, pp. 91–126. JSTOR, www.jstor.org/stable/3177112. Accessed 4 Aug. 2020].
Árbenz’s resignation speech ⍗
Doubling down on communismAmerica’s ‘Liberator’ for Guatemala however took a blanket approach to the communist witch hunt, his repressive crackdown targeted anyone suspected of opposing his increasingly dictatorial regime. Political opponents, labour leaders, remnants of the Árbenzista peasantry, were all rounded up (over 3,000 were arrested by Castillo Armas and an unknown number liquidated). Non-communists were routinely caught up in the purge, including ordinary farm workers from local agrarian committees. Árbenz’s agrarian land reform system was dismantled, the land appropriated from United Fruit Company (UFCo) was returned to it. Resistance to Castillo Armas’s removal of peasants from their lands acquired during the revolution was met with repression by the regime. Castillo Armas also had to deal with insurrections by disaffected left-wing Ladino officers (remnants of the military remaining loyal to Árbenz and Areválo), fighting a guerrilla insurgency from the highlands (Brockett).
Árbenz and his supporters spent 73 days in asylum in the Mexican Embassy before an inglorious exile ⍗
Armas’ presidency, which ended in 1957 when he was assassinated by an Árbenz sympathiser, was a disaster for a recovering Guatemala. The fallout from the Armas regime’s soaring debts and entrenched corruption was that it became almost completely dependent on US aid. The deteriorating situation under Ydígoras (the new president) led him to declare a “state of seize” in 1960, suspending civil liberties and establishing military rule. An attempt by a group of dissident military officers to overturn Ydígoras’ increasingly oppressive government triggered a civil war in Guatemala which lasted 34 years and claimed the lives of approximately 200,000 civilians, including a genocidal “scorched earth” policy conducted against the indigenous Q’eqchi Maya community [‘Foreign Relations of the United States, 1958-1960, American Republics, Volume V’, Office of the Historian,www.history.state.gov/]
⍐ the Guatemalan junta post-democracy
“Guatemala as domino” – a blueprint for coups in Latin America and the CaribbeanPost-1954 the US continued to provide Guatemalan security forces with “a steady supply of equipment, training and finance, even as political repression grew ferocious”. The type of practices rehearsed in Guatemala—covert destabilisation operations, death squad killings by professional intelligence agencies—were lessons learnt for dealing with future ‘maverick’ regimes trying to chart a different political and economic path to that acceptable to Washington [Greg Grandin, The Last Colonial Massacre: Latin America in the Cold War, (2011)].
The most tragic and wide-reaching legacy of the 1954 Guatemala coup is that it provided a model for future coups and instability in the region set off by a heightened Cold War. The US followed the Guatemala playbook in orchestrating the Bay of Pigs invasion of Cuba by reactionary exiles in 1961 – albeit with a very different outcome. The US’ toppling, with British complicity, of the democratically elected Jagan government in British Guiana in 1964 had familiar reverberations to 1954: Washington’s fear of confronting a communist government in the hemisphere after the Cuban Revolution resulted in “an inflexible and irrational policy of covert subversion towards a moderate PPP government” in British Guiana [Stephen Rabe, U.S. Intervention in British Guiana: A Cold War Story, (2005)]. The CIA and right-wing dissidents within the Brazilian military colluded in a coup which overthrew the liberal government of João Goulart in 1964 (golpe de 64), replacing it with an uncompromising military junta. Washington’s involvement was prompted by Goulart’s plans to nationalise the Brazilian oil industry and other large private businesses. The same techniques and rhetoric were employed in the Dominican Republic coup/counter-coup in 1965. Most notoriously the Guatemalan putsch was to have echoes in the 1973 coup d’état in Chile which violently removed Marxist president, Salvador Allende. This was in response to Allende’s move to nationalise foreign businesses including US-owned copper mines and telecommunications giant I.T.T. US president, Richard Nixon, in fact had already tried to prevent Allende from taking office after the socialist won the Chilean elections fair and square in 1970❅ [‘Chilean president Salvador Allende dies in coup’, History, www.history.com/].
⍐CIA headquarters in Virginia, USA
CIA hit-list for GuatemalaCIA documents declassified in the 1990s reveals lists were compiled as early as 1952 of individuals in the Árbenz government “to (be) eliminated immediately in event of (a) successful anti-Communist coup”. Because the names were deleted during the agency declassification it can’t be verified if any of the assassinations were actually carried through [‘CIA and Assassination: The Guatemala 1954 Documents’, (Edited by Kate Doyle & Peter Kornbluh), The National Security Archive, www.nsarchive2.gwu.edu].
Footnote: the removal of Árbenz from Guatemala didn’t mean the CIA and Washington were done with the deposed president. The CIA continued its campaign to trash the reputation of Árbenz in exile, even though, personally, he was a politically impotent figure by this time. The CIA found it useful to continue to smear Árbenz as a “Soviet agent”, tying him to the ongoing US crusade against communism in the hemisphere✪ [Ferreira, Roberto Garcia. “THE CIA AND JACOBO ARBENZ: HISTORY OF A DISINFORMATION CAMPAIGN.” Journal of Third World Studies, vol. 25, no. 2, 2008, pp. 59–81. JSTOR, www.jstor.og/stable/45194479. Accessed 6 Aug. 2020].
Nixon and Armas: coup planning ⍗
PostScript: A mea culpa of sortsDecades later the US government through President Clinton issued an apology, not for the 1954 coup, but for the US’ role in the human rights abuses of the civil war in Guatemala, which slaughtered thousands of civilians. It wasn’t until 2011 that the Guatemalan government (under President Colom) apologised for the “historic crime” against Árbenz and his family [‘Apology reignites conversation about ousted Guatemalan leader’, (Mariano Castillo), CNN, 24-Oct-2011, www.edition.cnn.com; ‘Clinton apology to Guatemala’, (Martin Kettle & Jeremy Lennard), The Guardian, 11-Mar-1999, www.theguardian.com].
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❅ US I.T.T. (International Telephone and Telegraph Corporation) entreated the Nixon administration to wage “economic warfare” and take other covert measures against the Allende regime to ensure its ouster from power, ‘Papers Show I.T.T. Urged U.S. to Help Oust Allende’, New York Times, 03-Jul-1972, www.nytimes.com
✪ back in Guatemala, President Armas and the latifundios (rich conservative landowners opposed to the Árbenz agrarian policy) provided a in-synch chorus, echoing the US charges of communist collusion by Árbenz
Virtually from the onset of the pandemic, public health boffins around the world, mindful of the deadly follow-up wave of the Spanish Flu in the northern hemisphere autumn of 1918, were warning countries that even if they managed to suppress the virus, the danger of a second strain was incredibly real. And now it seems that second wave has come to fruition⍝. Australia, which had pretty much contained the spread of coronavirus by early June in all states and territories, has seen a renewed spike of infections in metropolitan Melbourne and a reimposition of border lockdowns by other states in the Commonwealth. In addition, another Covid cluster is currently emerging in a pocket of south-west Sydney.
Elsewhere there are even more concerning trends of new flare-ups. In Covid-19 ravaged Europe, Portugal was until recently thought to be an exemplar of sorts on how to handle the pandemic and minimise its harmful impact. While neighbours Spain and France had been beset by rapid rates of infection and steepling mortality counts in the earliest phase of the pandemic’s first wave, Portugal by April was coping comparatively well. The republic’s small population (about 10.25 million) no doubt aided the authorities’ efforts to fight the pandemic, but this was counterbalanced by inherent drawbacks – an elderly population (3rd highest population of over 80s in Europe) and underfunded health system (just 4.2 critical care beds per 100.000 people). Portugal’s centralised system of government and the early implementation of measures—locking down public places and events—was key to the country’s success in slowing the pace of infection, reflected in the comparative death rates [‘How Portugal became Europe’s coronavirus exception’, (Paul Ames), Politico, 14-Apr-2020, www.politico.com].
European country
Per capita mortality from coronavirus
Portugal 🇵🇹
3%
Spain 🇪🇸
>10%
Britain 🇬🇧
12%
France 🇫🇷
15%
(as at mid-April 2020)
{Ames}
(Source: Reuters/ Rafael Marchante / File Photo)
Portugal’s relative success at that time, 18,091 confirmed cases of coronavirus and 599 deaths, was also attributed to a unified political approach—opposition and government working towards the common goal of tackling the pandemic—and tothe self-discipline of Portuguese people in faithfully adhering to the stay-at-home guidelines during the crisis (Ames). The situation in Portugal now sits at 46,818 confirmed cases and 1,662 deaths (14-Jul-2020) – the result of the reopening of economic activity and relaxation of restrictive measures [‘How Sweden and Portugal Went from Pandemic Role Models To Record Infections’, (Marina Velasco), Huffington Post, 11-Jul-2020, www.huffpost.com]. This surge in virus numbers is centred around the capital Lisbon.
Next door Spain is currently confronted with two new very serious cluster points in the north of the country. Galicia region (the northwest) and autonomous Catalonia (the northeast) have both imposed a second lockdown after the earlier easing of restrictions due to a similar upsurge in infections [‘Coronavirus: Spain imposed local lockdown in Galicia’, BBC News, 05-Jul-2020, www.bbcnews.com] . The timing of the spike is not good, especially as Spain and Portugal have just reopened their common border at the start of July.
🔺 Before the second strain: as of around 1st May Portugal had the Iberian bragging rights for best at weathering the coronavirus storm sown up (Source: www.ft.times)
Israel is another country whose fortunes with the pandemic have ebbed in recent weeks – going from “model nation fighting the novel coronavirus to a small, isolated country whose citizens face a long, deadly summer locked down”. An early, enforced lockdown saw Israel hold its fatalities to only 271 by May, with Israeli prime minister Netanyahu proclaiming it “the safest country on earth”. Two months later everything has gone pear-shaped in Israel, virus cases are spiking concurrently with a cratering economy and 23% unemployment (all adding to Netanyahu’s pre-existing political woes). The head of Israel’s public health service has quit in protest, frustrated by the government’s handling of the crisis – alleging a hesitant, disjointed, stop-start approach from the government (“six wasted weeks”), and equally worrying, a Trump-like reluctance by the prime minster to heed official public health expert advice✥. Adding his voice to the chorus of critics of the government’s approach, President Rivlin has commented that “Israel has failed to develop a clear and coherent doctrine to combat the coronavirus” [Noga Tarnopolsky, ‘“The Second Wave” of COVID Hits Israel Like a Tsunami’, Daily Beast, 10-Jul-2020, www.thedailybeast.com].
Ashdod, one of Israel’s virus hotspots
(Source: www.timesofindia.com) 🔻
PostScript: “Second wave-ism”✪ and relaxed response mode⊡In fact “second wave” contagion seems quite a global prospect at the moment. Other countries such as Germany, Singapore, South Korea and China have all managed to contain the first wave outbreak in their respective countries, only, as restrictions on movement and travel get lifted, to be hit afresh with subsequent clusters of local infections [‘New Covid-19 clusters across world spark fear of second wave’, (Emma Graham-Harrison), The Guardian, 27-Jun-2020, www.theguardian.com].
(Image: Getty Images)
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⍝ Professor Nick Talley (Australian Journal of Medicine) refutes the view that Australia is experiencing a “second wave” of the virus, contending that thecurrent outbreak is actually the “real first wave”
✥ over a six-week period the number of confirmed cases multiplied by 499%; currently (14-Jul-2020) Israel has confirmed 40,632 cases and 365 deaths from the pandemic
✪ the concept of what constitutes a virus second wave is not a definitive or consensual one – “no precise epidemiological definition” (Harvard School of Public Health). It can be applied to “anything from localised spikes in infection to a full-blown national crisis” – so some medical experts avoid the term itself (Graham-Harrison)
⊡ epidemiologists worry that “social distancing fatigue” arising from being in lockdown for extended periods can contribute to pockets of new infections emerging
While Brazil has the unenviable title of the worst coronavirus hotspot in Latin America sown up, Mexico has steered a similar course to disaster in the face of the pandemic. As Brazil’s coronavirus count climbs to well over 1.1 million confirmed cases and closing in on 53 thousand fatalities, the galloping toll in Mexico—60% the size of Brazil population-wise—now registers 191,410 cases and 23,377 deaths(as at 24-June-2020).
(Source: www.lonelyplanet.com)
False security?
Among some Mexicans there seem to be a sense that the country’s demographics which are skewed toward the young—around 85% of the population is under 55—may act as a barrier against coronavirus. This confidence may be misplaced due to several factors: pre-existing health conditions in Mexico which affect younger cohorts as well—make the population more vulnerable to the ravages of coronavirus, as the table below indicates [‘Many young Mexican at risk from Covid-19’, (James Blears), Vatican News, 31-March-2020, www.vaticannews.va]. the death-rate from COVID-19 among maquiladora workers in the border region of Baja California was found to be 25 times higher for the age bracket 40-49 than in the corresponding San Diego County, [‘COVID-19 killing young maquiladora workers, study shows’, (Salvador Rivera), Border Report, 11-Jun-2020, www.borderreport.com].
A league of populist leader ‘bedfellows’?
The way Mexico under its president, Andrés Manuel López Obrador, has approached the pandemic has disturbing parallels with that of Brazil’s leader Bolsonaro, and with the US under Trump. Despite a difference of ideological orientation—Obrador (who’s commonly known within Mexico as AMLO) is a Left-populist whereas Bolsonaro and Trump are Right-populists—the Mexican leader has pursued much the same course with similar outcomes. AMLO’s government was slow to engage in the fight against COVID-19 in the critical early period. The virus apparently entered Mexico via overseas returnees, primarily wealthier Mexicans returning from business trips to Italy and skiing holidays in Colorado, and then spread to low-income groups [‘Mexico’s Central de Abasto: How coronavirus tore through Latin America’s largest market’, (Mary Beth Sheridan), Washington Post, 21-Jun-2020, www.washingtonpost.com].
🔺 AMLO, pressing the flesh (Photo: Mexico’s Presidency Handouts/Reuters)
How not to contain a pandemic
Like his US and Brazilian counterparts, AMLO justified his inaction by being dismissive of the disease, continually downplaying its risk to people, and he was negligent by example. After the outbreak Obrador toured the country, holding rallies sans face masks, nonchalantly meeting and greeting supporters, freely shaking hands, embracing people and even kissing them✱. The president’s advice to the Venezuelan people was simply to continue to “live life as usual”…until late March he was encouraging people to go out, attend fiestas, dine in restaurants and go shopping, airports remained open◘– a clear indicator that Obrador’s priority was the health of the economy rather than the health of the public [‘Poverty and Populism put Latin America at the centre of the pandemic’, (Michael Stott & Andres Schipano), Financial Times, 14-Jun-2020, www.amp.ft.com; ‘AMLO’s feeble response to COVID-19 in Mexico’, (Vanda Felbab-Brown), Brookings, 30-Mar-2020, www.brookings.edu].
Abject lack of medical preparedness.
Obrador’s dangerous indifference to the crisis extended to a half-hearted medical intervention. Testing for COVID-19 has remained woefully low, no program of widespread testing or of contact tracing – these vital measures dismissed as being impractical for a population of 128 million (Sheridan; Stott & Schipano). The reluctance to test extensively is no doubt also related to Mexico’s health care incapacity. Despite having gone through the experience of the 2009 H1N1 influenza outbreak, subsequent Mexican administrations have permitted the country’s health sector to run down, funding to hospitals and medical centres have been cut by millions. Mexico has only 1.4 hospital beds for every 1,000 persons and just over 2,000 ventilators all up. The shortfall extends to physicians, medical equipment including PPE and coronavirus test kits [‘Mexico’s coronavirus-sceptical president is setting up his own country for a health crisis’, (Alex Ward), Vox, 28-Mar-2020, www.vox.com].
Shooting the messenger
Inevitably AMLO has copped a lot of internal criticism for his irresponsible response to the crisis. Rather than taking positive measures to try to undo the disaster of his own creation, Obrador has gone on the attack against the Mexican independent media. Again invoking the Trump playbook, he has railed against the “fake news” and “Twitter bots” who have opposed his government’s handling of the situation. Independent investigations in fact have brought to light the clandestine activities of Notimex (the state-owned news agency) which has created a network of bots and fake accounts to discredit prominent journalists and label them as ‘criminal’ [‘Mexican President López Obrador frets about the spreading virus of fake news, but not COVID-19’, (José Miguel Vivanco), Dallas News,16-Jun-2020, www.dallasnews.com].
AMLO has taken to giving regular video ‘sermons’ to the masses (he calls them“Decalogues to emerge from coronavirus and face the new reality”)…these are not as you might surmise updates on how the government is attempting to counter the pandemic, but an uninspiring mish-mash of banalities about staying positive, eating corn and getting sun and fresh air. With the unchecked escalating death toll from the disease, many believe Obrador has given up any pretence to even trying to combat the virus [‘Mexico’s president has given up in the fight against the coronavirus’, (León Krauze), Washington Post, 19-Jun-2020, www.washingtonpost.com]. In this most unpropitious context AMLO is now taking an imprudent gamble by lifting restrictions – despite the curve of Mexican infections continuing to shoot upwards.
🔻 Mega-mercado, Mexico City
Footnote: Mexico City epicentre
Mexico City accounts for about one quarter of all COVID-19 deaths in Mexico. The officalcounts however are only starting points to explain the catastrophe. A Mexico City study by Nexos magazine found that there was an “excess mortality” of more than 20% unaccounted for by the official figures [‘8,000 ‘excess deaths’ in Mexico City as coronavirus rages: study’, Ajazeera, 26-May-2020, www.aljazeera.com]. One of the capital’s biggest clusters is the wholesale mega-market, the Central de Abasto. The enormous mercado providing 80% of the city’s food is a petri-dish for the virus which has cut a scythe through its 90,000-strong workforce, infecting its tomateros, chilli vendors and other workers whose need to keep working is often greater than their fear of the pandemicφ. The vendors and carters have another reason for continuing working even when they become ill – working class Mexicans are accustomed to poor quality health care and often harbour a distrust of hospitals (Sheridan).
⏦⏦⏦ ☤☤☤ ⏦⏦⏦
(Image source: www.studentnewsdaily.com)
Venezuela: Showcase numbers but a lack of transparency
Although the available statistics relating to Venezuela don’t reflect the dramatic numbers in Mexico, the situation in the South American country is peer bit as parlous. Venezuela has fessed up to 4,186 cases and 35 deaths (24-Jun-2020), but these figures have little credibility with independent observers. Venezuela has done very limited testing for the disease with the testing data guarded very carefully by the government [‘Hunger, Infection, and Repression: Venezuela’s Coronavirus Calamity’, (Stephanie Taladrid), The New Yorker, 29-May-2020, www.newyorker.com]. Doubters outside the country have noted that Venezuela’s health system was already in a state of collapse before COVID-19 arrived, citing as evidence:the country‘s functioning intensive care beds are estimated to number between 80 and 163; nil or intermittent supply to water to two-thirds of hospitals; power cuts off at regular intervals; shortages of gloves and face masks in 60% of hospitals; 76% of hospitals shortage of soap and 90% were short of sanitising gel [‘Venezuela’s Covid-19 death toll claims ‘not credible’, human rights group says’, (Tom Phillips), The Guardian, 27-May-2020, www.theguardian.com].
🔺 Maduro: “People, we are identity”
President Maduro—already embroiled in a political and socio-economic crisis acerbatedby long-term US trade sanctions on Venezuela—imposed a national lockdown in March. A side benefit to the lockdown (now extended to July) is that it allows the regime more scope to crack down on its critics…the obvious targets being opposition politicians and increasingly journalists, doctors and nurses who report adversely on Maduro’s handling of the pandemic (especially if they query the reported official numbers). [‘Venezuela’s Zulia State emerges as coronavirus hot spot’, Reuters, 24-Jun-2020, www.news.yahoo.com].
Footnote: Rich and poor, a widening of the divide
At the point of corona impact, the contrast between Venezuela’s masses and the elite have sharpened even more. The brunt of the economic crisis has fallen squarely on the poor and middle-class citizens – skyrocketing prices, scarcity of necessities, a greatly devalued Venezuelan bolivar, the oil price plunge (oil accounts for 98% of Venezuela’s export revenues), and over-reliance on the informal economy by the lower socio-economic classes [‘Why coronavirus could be catastrophic for Venezuela’, (Katy Watson & Vanessa Silva), BBC News, 12-Apr-2020, www.bbc.com]. With corruption, cronyism and nepotism ingrained in Venezuela, the Maduro regime and its acolytes—the heirs of Chavismoism—continue to benefit lavishly from black-market and other illicit financial activities◊ [‘Freedom in the World 2020: Venezuela’, Freedom House, www.freedomhouse.org].
⇚⇛⇚⇛⇚⇛⇚⇛⇚⇛⇚⇛⇚⇛⇚⇛⇚⇛⇚⇛⇚⇛⇚⇛⇚⇛⇚⇛⇚⇛⇚⇛⇚⇛⇚⇛⇚⇛⇚⇛
✱ AMLO preferring to travel and mingle accompanied only by his personal amulets for ‘protection’
◘only in the last week of March did the government retreat a bit and start to urge the public to stay-at-home
φ the CDMX-run market only acted, bringing in health workers, ramping up testing and contact tracing, after workers starting dropping in significant numbers (Sheridan)…as with the rest of Mexico, too little, too late
◊ beneficiaries of this state largesse and privilege include the bolichicos, the wealthy children of the regime’s top leaders
From the start of this month Russia began a gradual re-opening of services after a ten-week pandemic lockdown. This is happening despite new cases of COVID-19 continuing to materialise – the tally of confirmed case of the virus has now ticked over the 500,000 mark (as at 12-Jun-2020). There are several reasons contributing to the decision to re-open, some political and some economic.
Concern for the damage sustained by the Russian economy by the pandemic was foremost to the Kremlin but President Putin also wanted things functioning as close to normal in time for two upcoming events important to him. The 75th end of WWII anniversary military parade in Red Square—a PR showcase of Russian power—postponed from May is rescheduled for 24th of June. Even more personally important for the Russian leader is the July 1 vote✱, Putin has put up far-reaching constitutional amendments for approval, the main outcome of which could see Putin’s iron-grip on the federation extend till 2036.
(Photo: Reuthers / SPUTNIK)
Discontent with Russia’s approach to the crisis
An underlying reason for the hasty end to the national lockdown might be that it hasn’t been as successful as hoped. The tracing app utilised in Moscow (the epicentre of the country’s COVID-19 outbreak) has had issues with its effectiveness. Putin’s personal popularity was at risk with public resentment voiced at the prolonged restrictions (murmurings of Orwellian and Soviet-like echoes). The medical response by the Kremlin has been called out by many front-line responders for its shortcomings⊘. One doctor, Anastasia Vasilyeva (leader of a Russian doctors’ union), frustrated at the president’s insistence that the public health crisis was under control, has been at great risk to herself distributing PPE to medical workers on the front-line, provoking retribution from the Kremlin [‘The doctor who defied a President’, ABC News, (Foreign Correspondent, Eric Campbell), 06-Jun-2020, www.abcnews.com.au]. This is symptomatic of Moscow’s neglect of the regions who are expected to handle both the outbreaks without the medical infrastructure to deal with a large volume of cases✩ and the economic fallout from the crisis without adequate financial assistance [‘Russia’s coronavirus cases top 300,000 but deaths suspiciously low: ‘We conceal nothing’ Kremlin says’, (Holly Ellyatt), CNBC, Upd 21-May-2020, www.cnbc.com].
Counting the virus’ toll: a small exercise in data massaging?
Some Russia watchers have cast doubts about the reported COVID-19 figures released by Moscow. This includes WHO has questioned Russia’s low death toll, describing it as ‘unusual’ [‘WHO asks Russia to review its Covid-19 death toll in rare rebuke’, (Natalia Vasilyeva), The Telegraph, 11-Jun-2020, www.telegraph.co.uk]. While the number of Russian virus cases is comparatively high, the official record of fatalities is disproportionately low compared to the rest of Europe…Russia’s fatality rate is 0.9% cf. UK’s, 14.4% (roughly 10% of the mean figure for Western Europe) [‘How Russia’s Coronavirus Outbreak Became One of the World’s Worst’, (Madeline Roache), Time, 15-May-2020, www.time.com]. The Kremlin has rejected the criticism that it is withholding the full impact of the pandemic, but outside observers pinpoint an anomaly in the methodology it uses to count cases. Unlike say Belgium (which is strictly inclusive), Russia has not counted deaths as caused by the coronavirus where other co-morbidities are present, ie, if a patient tested positive for the virus and then had a subsequent critical episode, the cause of death is not recorded as COVID-19 [‘Russia Is Boasting About Low Coronavirus Deaths. The Numbers Are Deceiving’, (Piotr Sauer & Evan Gershkovich), The Moscow Times, 14-May-2020, www.themoscowtimes.com].
A deserted, locked-down Red Square
(Source: www.citizen.co.za)
Compartmentalising the fatalities
This persuasively accounts for the recent discordant mortality statistics reported by Russian sources, eg, if you separate fatalities directly attributable to coronavirus from other fatalities for May, the unexplained “excess deaths” recorded for Moscow is up about 5,800 on that occurring during the previous three Mays [‘New data suggests Russia may have a lot more COVID-19 deaths than it says it has’, (Alexandra Odynova), CBS News, 11-Jun-2020, www.cbsnews.com]. A look at Dagestan, a region with one of the largest clusters outside of the capital, is also instructive. As of mid-May it had experienced 35 deaths listed as caused by coronavirus, but in the same timeframe it recorded 650 deaths attributed to “community-acquired pneumonia”. One explanation from Russia watchers is that “local officials want to present Moscow with ‘good’ figures” (Ellyatt). If the Kremlin were to publish both sets of figures in its official data, such transparency would deflect much of the doubt and questioning by outsiders (Sauer & Gershkovich).
✱ that Putin is prepared to push through the referendum at this time and risk aggregating the public health and safety of Russians, confirms for many the president’s prioritising of his own political motives [‘Russian officials, citing COVID-19, balk at working July 1 constitutional referendum’, CBC News, 11–Jun-2020, www.cbc.ca]
⊘ many medical practitioners in Russia have been disaffected by both a critical shortage of equipment to fight the virus and by unpaid wages [‘Exclusive: Did Russia pass the coronavirus test? Kremlin spokesman Dimitry Peskov Responds’, (M Chance, Z Ullah & N Hodge), CNN, 09-Jun-2020, www.amp.cnn.com]✩ the COVID-19 emergency has exposed the deteriorating state of the Russian health service in the Putin era – the Semashko system infrastructure allowed to run down while the private medical sector has flourished [‘Can the Russian Health Care System Cope with the Coronavirus?’, (Estelle Levresse), The Nation, 09-Jun-2020, www.thenation.com]
At this point in the war on COVID-19 there are over 120 separate vaccination projects—involving Big Pharma, the public sector, academe, smaller biotech firms and NGOs—all working flat out worldwide trying to invent the ‘magical’ vaccine that many people believe will be necessary to bring the current pandemic to an end. While nothing is guaranteed (there’s still no cure for the HIV/AIDS virus around since the Eighties), the sheer weight of numbers dedicated to the single task, even if say 94% of the efforts fail, there’s still a reasonable chance of success for achieving a vaccine for coronavirus✱ [“Former WHO board member warns world against coronavirus ‘vaccine nationalism’”, (Paul Karp), The Guardian, 18-May-2020, www.theguardian.com].
(Source: CEPI)
If and when the vaccine arrives, will it get to those in greatest need? The way the coronavirus crisis has been handled between nations so far doesn’t exactly give grounds for optimism. Collective cooperation on fighting the pandemic has been sadly absent from the dialogue. We’ve seen the US attack China over coronavirus’ origins with President Trump labelling it the “China virus” and the “Wuhan virus”, and China retaliating with far-fetched accusations of America importing the virus to Wuhan via a visiting military sporting team, and the whole thing becoming entwined in a looming trade war between the two economic powers❂.
(source: www.socioecomonics.net)
The advent of COVID-19 has introduced us to terms such as “contact tracing”, “social distancing”, “covidiot” and the like, but recently we‘ve been hearing a new term thrown about, one with more ominous implications – “vaccine nationalism”. As the scattered islands of scientific teams continue the hunt for the “silver bullet” that presumably will fix the disease, there is a growing sense that the country or countries who first achieve the breakthrough will adopt a “my nation first” approach to the distribution of the vaccine. There are multiple signs that this may be the reality…the US government has launched the curiously named “Operation Warp Speed”, aimed at securing the first 300 million doses of the vaccine available by January 2021 for Americans [‘Trump’s ‘Operation Warp Speed’ Aims to Rush Coronavirus Vaccine’, (Jennifer Jacobs & Drew Armstrong), Bloomberg, 30-Apr-2020, www.bloomberg.com]. In the UK Oxford University is working with biopharma company AstraZeneca to invent a vaccine that will be prioritised towards British needs.
(Source: IndiaMart)
A “vac race”
Not to be outdone, China, operating through Sinovac Biotech, is at the forefront of testing potential cures for COVID-19. The pressing need for a vaccine to safeguard its own population aside, Beijing’s rationale includes a heavy investment in national pride and the demonstration of Chinese scientific superiority (cf. Trump’s motivation). The Sino-US rivalry over finding a cure for the pandemic has been compared to the Cold War era ”Space Race” between the US and the USSR (Milne & Crow). A political war of superpower v superpower on a new battlefield…noted as bring part of a longer trend of the “securitisation of global health “ where the health objective increasingly has to share the stage with issues of national security and international diplomacy (E/Prof Stuart Blume, quoted in ibid.).
An environment of competition in lieu of collaboration
Even prior to the start of serious talk about the vaccine, the coronavirus crisis was provoking an “everyone for themselves”, non-cooperative approach. With the onset of equipment shortages needed to combat the virus outbreak, an international bunfight developed over access to PPE (personal protection equipment). 3M masks destined for Germany were intercepted by the White House and re-routed to US recipients; French president, Emmanuel Macron, seized millions of masks that were on route to Sweden; Trump purportedly tried to buy CureVac, a German biopharma company working on the vaccine [‘Why vaccine ‘nationalism’ could slow the coronavirus fight’, (Richard Milne & David Crow), Financial Times, 14-May-20320, www.ft.com/]. India (under Hindu nationalist Modi), the world’s largest supplier of hydroxychloroquine (touted as a cure for the virus), withheld it from being exported. As part of this neo-protectionism of the corona medical trove, more than 69 countries banned the export of PPE, medical devices and medicines [‘A New Front for Nationalism: The Global Battle Against a Virus’, (Peter S Goodman, Katie Thomas, Sui-Lee Wee & Jeffrey Gettleman), New York Times, 10-Apr-2020, www.nytimes.com].
Politics and economics over science and global health?
Will narrow self-interest and economic advantage prevail? Will Big Pharma sell the virus panacea to the highest bidders? A zero-sum game in which those who can’t afford the cost fall by the wayside? There are precedents…the distribution of the H1N1 vaccine for the 2009 Swine Flu was predicated on the purchasing power of the higher-income countries, not on the risk of international transmission [‘The Danger of Vaccine Nationalism’, (Rebecca Weintraub, Asaf Britton & Mark L Rosenberg), Harvard Business Review, 22-May-2020, www.hbr.org/]. The availability of the vaccine is seen as integral to restarting the global economy (Milne & Crow).
The eclipse of multinationalism?
With WHO in the eyes of some international players seemingly tarnished by its relationship with China, and by Trump’s undermining of its effectiveness by threatening to withdraw American support, multilateralism is on the back foot. There have been some attempts to stem the tide, CEPI (Coalition for Epidemic Preparedness Innovations’)▣, with a mission of promoting a collective response to emerging infectious diseases, is trying to advance both the development of coronavirus vaccines and equitable access to them (http://cepi.net/).
Getting to an “equitable distribution” of the vaccine
As CEPI recognises, and is committed to redressing, there is no formal mechanism in existence for fairly distributing vaccines for epidemics…one step being taken is to try to get an equitable distribution strategy accepted by the G20 nations. The only way forward to ensure that allocation is fair and prioritised according to needs is through a coordinated global effort (Milne & Crow; Weintraub eg al).
The fear is thus well founded that if and when a vaccine is discovered and developed, the richer nations will secure a monopoly over it and prevent it getting to poorer nations where it would be urgently needed by the elderly, the immunocompromised and the “first responder” health workers. There are many who hope fervently that a different scenario will be played out, that a more enlightened type of self-interest will prevail. This would require the wealthier countries seeing the bigger picture – the danger that if they don’t redistribute the cures, the outcome will be an adverse effect on the global supply chain and on the world‘s economies. As Gayle Smith (CEO of “One Campaign“, a Washington-based NGO fighting extreme poverty) put it: it is in the richer countries‘ own interests ”to ensure that the virus isn’t running rampant in other countries” (Milne and Crow). “If an international deal can be reached“, CEPI CEO Dr Richard Hatchett said, ”Everyone will win, if not, the race may turn into a free-for-all” with the losers in plain sight [‘Why the race for a Covid-19 vaccine is as much about politics as it is about science’, (Paul Nuki), The Telegraph (UK), 10-Apr-2020, www.telegraph.co.uk].
(Source: www.euroweeklynews.com)
PostScript: Its no done deal! – reining in the wave of vaccine optimismEven some of the scientists working on developing a vaccine are less than sanguine about the prospects. As immunologist Professor Ian Frazer (UQld) explains: there is no model of how to attack the virus. Trying to come up with a vaccine for upper respiratory tract diseases is complicated due to “the virus landing on the outside of you”, as we have seen with the common cold. What’s needed is “an immunise response which migrates out to where (the coronavirus) lands” [‘No vaccine for coronavirus a possibility’, (Candace Sutton), News, 19-Apr-2020, www.news.com.au].
──── ୨୧ ────
✱ a matter of getting “the maximum shots on goal” as Jane Halton, a former member of the WHO board, put it
❂ with Trump aided and abetted in this mission by Peter Navarro (who Bloomberg calls “Trump’s Trade Warrior”) enthusiastically leading the charge in the undeclared trade war with China
▣ with funding from the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation
Boththe medical experts and the empirical evidence on the ground tell us that the elderly are the cohort in the community most susceptible to COVID-19. The Office of National Statistics (UK) calculates that people aged 80 and over have >59% risk of dying from coronavirus (www.ons.gov.uk/). The pandemic’ age bias skewed against older populations is one explanation, in the absence of much hard data, put forward to explain the African continent’s current low rate of mortality due to the virus – overall 111,812 confirmed cases and only 3,354 deaths (as at 25-May-2020) [‘Coronavirus in Africa tracker’, BBC News, www.bbc.co.uk/]. The percentage of the African population aged under 25 is 60% (in sub-Saharan Africa the number over 65 is only 3%)[‘Coronavirus in Africa reaches new milestone as cases exceed 100,000’, (Orion Rummler), Axion, 22-May-2020, www.axios.com].
And if we needed any more empirical proof of the salience of the age factor, there is the tragic example of Italy’s corona-toll. 32,785 dead✤ from COVID-19 in a country with the oldest population in Europe. Nearly 58% of the country’s deaths in the pandemic have been Italians aged 80 and over [Statistica Research Department, (22-May-2020), www.statista.com/].
With Italy’s grim corona-death tally falling disproportionately heavily on the country’s senectitude, you would think that it would not bode well for Japan which has the world’s highest percentage of older people (28.2% aged 65 and more) [Population Reference Bureau, www.pbr.org/]. When you add in other demographic factors relevant to Japan, this would seem doubly ominous for the “land of the rising sun” – a population of >126 millions on a land area of 377,944 sq km, including the mega-city of Tokyo✪ with its notoriously packed commuter trains. On top of all these is Japan’s proximity to China, the virus’ original causal point.
Sardine distancing (Source: www.quora.com)
Japan, unpropitious conditions for avoiding a global epidemic?With such cards stacked against it, worried Japanese health officials might have feared a catastrophe eventuating on the scale of that befalling the US, Italy and UK. And Japan has not come out of the pandemic unscathed but the result-to-date (25-May-2020)—16,550 confirmed cases and 820 deaths—is much better than many comparably sized and larger countries. Of course, Japan’s public health authorities are very mindful, as is every country, of being swamped by a second wave of the coronavirus.
(Photo: www.english.kyodonews.net)
How has Japan done as well as it has? Good question! The Japanese themselves can’t really explain how they’ve managed to escape a major outbreak of the virus⌧. WHO has called it a “success story”, but it’s one that continues to mystify. In so far as explanations were forthcoming from Japan’s health ministry, it was attributed at least in part to a raft of cultural factors. First, hygiene and cleanliness is something ingrained in the Japanese psyche, Japanese people tend not to shake hands and hugs others, preferring to bow as the form of greeting. Second, the practice of wearing face masks was already the norm in Japan ante-COVID-19 (the Japanese go through 5.5bn a year, averaging 43 per head of population) [‘Most coronavirus success stories can be explained. Japan’s remains a ‘mystery’’, (Jake Sturmer & Yumi Asada), ABC News, 23-May-2020, www.abc.com.au; ’How Japan keeps COVID-19 under control’, (Martin Fritz), DM, 25-Mar-2020, www.dm.com].
Other cultural factors Other suppositions put forward to explain the Japanese success include the practice of inoculating young children with BCG vaccinations, which according to its advocates give Japanese people a basic immunity which helps their defence against coronavirus. Physiology was also cited as a factor in guarding against the disease, the low obesity of Japanese is thought to help, as is the Japanese diet (eg, natto, a soybean yoghurt, is thought to boost the immune system) [‘’From near disaster to success story: how Japan has tackled coronavirus’, (Justin McCurry), The Guardian, 23-May-2020, www.msn.com/; ‘Has Japan dodged the coronavirus bullet?’, Richard Carter & Natsuko Fuhue, Yahoo News, 14-May-2020, www.au.news.yahoo.com; Sturmer & Asada].
(Photo: www..Forbes.com)
The “Diamond Princess”In addition to all of the domestic factors hindering Japan’s fight against COVID-19, an external element exacerbating the early outbreak in Japan was the debacle of the “Diamond Princess” cruise ship. When the international ship docked at Yokohama in February, the Japanese authorities injudiciously prevented healthy passengers and crew on-board from disembarking during the quarantine – with no separation made between well and contaminated passengers, and no self-isolation of the sick! This led to a blow-out of virus contamination which eventually infected 712 passengers, creating the first big cluster of coronavirus outside of Wuhan [‘How lax rules and missed warnings led to Japan’s second coronavirus-hit cruise ship’, (Ju-Min Park), The Japan Times, 07-May-2020, www.japantimes.co.jp].
A cautious reaction from politicians, one eye on the XXXII Olympiad?Let’s look in detail at what Japan did – or didn’t do! When the disease first arrived, the government took a cautious approach to tackling the virus. Borders initially remained open and Chinese visitors were still allowed into the country in huge numbers, 89,000 came in February (after the first outbreak), which was on top of the 925,000 who visited during January! Prime Minister Abe came in for a lot of flak, some including a former PM, Yukio Hatoyama, accused him of holding off from going full-tilt against the pandemic so as to preserve the Tokyo Olympics event (Fritz). Critics railed against a lack of leadership from the Abe government, criticising its failure to appoint anyone to take firm control of the crisis, and that those efforts to counter the virus were hamstrung by the multiplication of bureaucratic silos [‘A Japan divided over COVID-19 control’, (Hiromi Murakami), East Asia Forum, 08-Mar-2020, www.eastasiaforum.org].
Lockdown-lite, testing-liteThe Abe government’s belated state of emergency saw sport suspended and schools closed, but overall only a partial lockdown was imposed✺, many businesses, restaurants were permitted to stay open, albeit with reduced hours. Citizens were asked to stay home but compliance was only on a voluntary basis, with no surveillance technology deployed and no punitive action taken against anyone failing to adhere to the government’s request.
(Image: www.japantimes.co.jp)Targeted testingIt was in testing that Japan adopted a very different crisis approach to most of the leading western countries. Rather than going for high volume, it deliberately tested under capacity. By mid-May it had tested a mere 0.185% of the country’s population, averaging two tests per 1,000 people, cf. Australia, >40 per 1,000 (Sturmer & Asada). It was highly selective, only those with serious virus symptoms were tested. The rationale for such a low-testing regime was concern for the capacity of widespread testing infrastructure, by limiting testing this would lighten the load on testing centres. Rather than mine-sweep the country with testing, the Japanese pursued a strategy of targeting virus clusters as they were identified to pinpoint the sources of the infection [‘Has Japan found a viable long-term strategy for the pandemic’, (Kazuto Suzuki), The Diplomat, 24-Apr-2020, www.thediplomat.com; Gramenz].
Consequently, Japanese medical experts concede that the official counts may be well short of the reality, which puts a rider on the country’s achievement. Even with a smaller number of cases Japan found itself lacking in IPUs (only five per 100,000 people cf. 35 in the US) , there was also a shortage of PPE as well as face masks which were rationed out only two per household (and derided as “Abe-no masks”). This calls into question the faith that the Japanese placed in the robustness of the nation’s health system [‘Japan’s Halfhearted Coronavirus Measures Are Working Anyway’, (William Sposato), Foreign Policy Magazine, 14-May-2020, www.foreignpolicy.com]⊚.
Self-complying social distancing?Social distancing, a nightmare to try to enforce in people-dense Tokyo, was not a major focus for authorities. This was largely left to the goodwill of the individual, aided by some subtle social shaming – government workers walking through Tokyo nightlife areas with signs asking people to go home (Sposato). In any event the authorities’ measures were only partly effective – Japanese people continue to flock to the cherry blossom spring events in large numbers. Where social distancing was more manageable was in shutting off obvious potential hotspots, closed spaces with poor ventilation (karaoke clubs and pubs), crowded places with many people people in the immediate vicinity and other close, intimate contact settings (Suzuki).
Cherry blossom time: no voluntary social distancing here (Photo: www.bloomberg.com)Tokyo transportTokyo’s mass transit network is a petri dish in-waiting for coronavirus, but it appears that preventive measures (some pre-planned) have lessened the impact on public health. Tokyo business working hours have been staggered and large companies like NEC started to adopt telecommuting and teleworking, as well as a big increase of people riding bikes to work occurring. Consequently, transits at Tokyo’s central station on May 18th was down by 73% on the corresponding day in 2019 [‘Remote possibilities: Can every home in Japan become an office?’, (Alex Martin), The Japan Times, 23-May-2020, www.japantimes.co.jp].
(Image: Getty Images/AFP. P Fong)
Most pundits and observers conclude that Japan, with its ageing population and all its drawbacks and encumbrances, has (so far) warded off the worst of the pandemic. With no “silver bullet” in sight, we are left to speculate whether that they have achieved this outcome by sheer good luck, by good judgement, by the personal habits and cultural traits (especially hygiene) of its citizens, or by a combination of all of the above (McCurry).
Endnote: Low tester, early starterAnother Asian country which has mirrored Japan’s pattern of choosing not to test in high volumes is Taiwan. The Taipei China republic, commencing measures to counter the virus as early as anyone did, had tested only 2,900 people per million of population (Worldometer, as at 20th May), but it’s mortality rate (deaths per million) was only 0.3 (total of seven deaths) compared to Japan which was 6.0 per million.
✪ the largest metropolis prefecture in the world, around 14 million people
⌧ Japan’s health officials had themselves projected a worse-case scenario of up to 400,000 deaths (Gramenz)
✺ to be fair, there are constitutional impediments in Japan that prevent the declaration of a full, European-style lockdown (McCurry)
⊚ a Kyodo news poll indicated that 57.5% of people were unhappy with the government’s handling of the emergency. In so far as Japanese people have given credit to the success, it has gone to medical experts for efficiently managing Japan’s cluster tracing and containment efforts, rather than to Abe who many view with distrust based on its past track record [‘Time to Give Japan Credit for its COVID-19 Response’, (Rob Fahey & Paul Nadeau), Tokyo Review, 18-May-2020, www.tokyoreview.net]
When the coronavirus pandemic eventually reached India, it was always going to pose a challenge of epic proportions for a country of 1.3+ billion people, with such a dense population domiciled in such close quarters, and with a widespread underbelly of poverty. The Spanish flu of 1918 inflicted a death toll on India in the many millions, something no doubt in the back of the minds of public health officials. So, two or three months into the crisis, on paper, India’s COVID-19 record, on paper, doesn’t look as frightening as many other nations. As at 17-May-2020, so far it has had a shade under 91 thousand confirmed cases and a total of 2,872 deaths (www.worldometers.info).
There is a perception within medical circles however that these figures don’t portray the full extent of the outbreak. India’s urban areas are packed with masses of people living face to face, beset with poor sanitation conditions, up to 100 people sharing the same toilet in some cases, adding up to a recipe for catastrophe in plague time. Obtaining a test for coronavirus in India has tended to not be straightforward, thus the level of testing has lagged woefully behind what is desirable, eg, by well into March India was averaging only five tests per ten lakhs (= one million) people, compared with South Korea which had managed 4,800 per ten lakhs.
Too many migrant workers waiting for too few buses to take them home after the lockdown was announced (Photo: Yawar Nazir – Getty Images)
Containment measures have been far short of perfect, and with some glaring omissions…there has been passive resistance to the lockdowns from sceptical Indians, and the ban on public gatherings has from time to time been skirted round (some ‘scofflaw’ political parties continue to hold mass rallies). Although India’s borders were closed fairly promptly, some have been critical of the procrastination of Indian leaders’ during the crucial early days of the crisis, one Indian epidemiologist characterised it as a “let’s wait till tomorrow” attitude [‘India Scrambles to Escape a Coronavirus Crisis. So Far It’s Working’, (J Gettleman, S Raj, KD Singh & K Schultz), New York Times, 17-March-2020, www.nytimes.com]. This early reticence to act emanated from Delhi. The Modi BJP government, initially seemingly more concerned with the impact on India’s under-performing economy, issued no public health warnings or media briefings at the onset of the pandemic [‘What the world can learn from Kerala about how to fight covid-19’, (Sonia Faleiro), MIT Technology Review, 13-Apr-2020, www.technologyreview.com].
(www.anayahotels.com)
Kerala, leading from the peripheryKerala is one state that these general criticisms of Indian public health efforts against COVID-19 cannot be levelled. The small southwestern Indian state is one of the most picturesque parts of the land with its coconut trees and irenic and serene back-waterways. Known as a tourist mecca, Kerala, population 35 million, is more affluent than many parts of India (GDP per capital GB£2,200). 20% of India’s gold is consumed here, and it produces over 90% of the country’s rubber. Literacy is nearly 20% higher than the overall Indian average, and life expectancy too, is higher (www.holidify.com). All of these were contributing factors buttressing Kerala’s capacity to cope with the disease when it came.
Local vulnerabilities to the epidemicKerala was coronavirus “ground zero” for India’s very first patients. Three students returning from Wuhan were tested positive and hospitalised (in all 70% of the state’s total virus patients have come from outside India). Certain preconditions pertaining to the state exacerbated the risk of disease outbreak, including a large number of Keralite migrant workers in the Gulf states, a huge expat population (working in Kerala from other Indian states), porous borders, and an early summer monsoon season (contributing to Kerala’s high rate of annual communicable diseases) [‘Coronavirus: How India’s Kerala state flattened the curve’, (Soutik Biswas), BBC News, 16-Apr-2020, www.bbcnews.com].
Preparation and planningKerala was prepared for COVID-19 before the onset of the disease. The earlier Nipah viral outbreak (NiV) In Kerala (2018) proved a good trial run for the health service, giving the local authorities an opportunity to iron out chinks in it. Kerala’s communist-left coalition government had established a strong social welfare foundation, investing in the state’s infrastructure with a focus on health and education, and on tackling the state’s poverty✺. [‘How the Indian State of Kerala flattened the coronavirus curve’, (Oommen C Kurian), Guardian, 21-Apr-2020, www.theguardian.com].
Minister Shailaja (Source: www.manoramonline.com)
Shailaja ‘Teacher’, a woman with a planWhen the epidemic arrived in Kerala, the proactive state health minister KK Shailaja took charge. With the full backing of Kerala chief minister, Pinarayi Vijayan, she had already organised a rapid response team to focus on targeted clusters, and liaised with the provincial councils. Kerala adopted the WHO protocols of test, trace, isolate and support. Rigorous contact tracing was employed, utilising detailed “route maps”. Testing of suspected carriers was decisive, with a quick, 48-hour turnaround of the result [‘Kerala has best coronavirus test rate in the country, but is it enough?’, (Vishnu Varna), The Indian Express, 01-Apr-2020, www.indianexpress.com], allowing them to move quickly on to the quarantine phase. 17,000 people were quarantined under strict surveillance, the poor without quarantine facilities were placed in improvised isolation. Recovered patients were duly released back into the community. Quarantine compliance was achieved through an admixture of phone monitoring (>340,000 calls and a neighbourhood watch system [‘The coronavirus slayer! How Kerala’s rock star health minister helped save it from Covid-19’, (Laura Spinney), The Guardian, 14-May-2020, www.theguardian.com; Kurian].
One of the sternest challenges, very early on, came from the district of Pathanamthitta. A family returning from Italy tested positive, but refused to disclose their movements upon return to Kerala. The civil servant in charge of the district, PB Nooh, and his team, worked round this obstacle by accessing the family’s GPS phone data, allowing them to trace all of their contacts (almost 300 people!). Nooh’s staff then tested the contacts for infection, thus shutting down the risk of the virus being exponentially transmitted to others in the community, ie, “breaking the chain” (Faleiro).
The coronavirus certainly didn’t miss Kerala, one-fifth of all Indian cases of the disease have occurred in the state. Under Shailaja, Kerala hit the ground running, before the end of January, screenings of arrivals at all four of the state’s international airports was introduced. The government imposed a lockdown even before the national lockdown was called…schools, malls, cinemas, public gatherings, were closed down, and the lockdown was stricter and longer than the national one (Kurian). Face masks were distributed to slum dwellers. Planning was precise and focused, a state stimulus package of Rs20,000 crore was directed towards the economic and medical crises.The medical task force was mobilised (doctors on leave were recalled, others asked to delay their leave). Those suffering hardship included migrant workers from other states were provided with free lunches by the state.
Communication with citizens informing them about all aspects of the crisis was clear and consistent (“Break the Chain” campaign which emphasises public and personal hygiene). Accordingly, community participation, both voluntary and active, was forthcoming. Some Keralites made accommodation available (including vacant homes in some instances) to those in need when requested to by the government [‘The Kerala Way of Tackling a Pandemic’, Times of India, 20-Mar-2020, www.timesofindia.com].
The Kerala government’s campaign against the virus has been aided by the polity’s decentralised nature of it’s structures. The coordination achieved allows the local councils to follow through on a lot of the public health measures needed to be implemented in the crisis (Biswas). The result of all this detailed planning and effort by Kerala – 587 confirmed cases and only four deaths and apparently no significant community transmissions (17-Apr-2020).
The state of Kerala and Shailaja ‘Teacher’ (so known because her occupation before entering politics was that of science teacher) are not resting on their laurels, being very mindful of the chance of a second wave of COVID-19 due to impending factors—Prime Minister Modi’s anticipated ending of the national lockdown, which will trigger a mass return of Kerala’s migrant workers based in the Gulf, and the approach of the tropical wet season in Kerala (June) [‘Kerala Lays Down Specific Plans To Tackle Monsoon Amid COVID-19 Pandemic’, NDTV, 15-May-2020, www.ndtv.com]. Minister Shaijala has been making preparations for such an event, many of the state’s teachers have been retrained as nurses to cope with a new upsurge in virus hotspots (Spinney).
EndNote: No time for Kerala complacency but a most worthy blueprint on offer The threat of new clusters emerging in Kerala remains very real, especially coming from outside, with a spike as recent as this past Friday—imported from neighbouring Tamil Nadu and Maharashtra as well as from overseas—reminding Shailaja and Co that the battle’s still far from won. Nonetheless, for elsewhere in India and beyond, there are lessons from Kerala‘s formidable achievement to be had from the state’s “nimble-footed, community-oriented, cautiously-aggressive approach” to the outbreak [Kurian; ‘Kerala reports 11 new Covid-19 cases’, (Ramesh Babu), Hindustan Times,16-May-2020, www.hindustantimes.com].
₪₪₪₪₪₪₪₪₪₪₪₪₪₪₪₪₪₪₪₪₪₪₪₪₪₪₪₪₪₪₪₪
✺ the Kerala government is Marxist in ideology but pragmatic in practice, it’s policies are moderately social-democratic, with a highly-privatised public health system (Kurian)
The Coronavirus outbreak has brought out both the good and bad in human nature, but as everyone tries with varying success to cope with the strange and new reality of lockdowns, closures, social distancing and restrictions on movement, it has brought out the downright weird and bizarre as well. In 1929 when Wall Street collapsed, triggering the Great Depression and a devaluing of the money currency, there was a run on the banks as people desperately tried to salvage their evaporating savings. In March when people in the ‘burbs heard the pandemic was not likely to go away any time soon, there was a run on the supermarkets, efficiently stripping the shelves bare (like locusts in a corn field) – of toilet paper! Somehow, the crux of what is needed for civilisation to sustain itself during an enforced hibernation has been reduced to this, apparently now the most precious of household commodities in a lockdown survival strategy. Widely circulated media footage of shoppers coming to blows in supermarket aisles over the providence of a single roll of loo paper and profiteering hoarders trying to flog bog rolls on eBay at an insane $100 a shot, is surely proof of the arrival of a new and dynamic currency (what price the toilet roll futures market?)✥.
(Source. www.mix1023.com.au)
Once the epidemic got in full swing, the demand for face masks, especially in those countries with a culture of wearing protective masks, quickly outstripped supply. Accordingly some people have resorted to ‘improv’, mask substitutes – scarves and bandanas, face shield visors and so on. Sometimes people are a bit creative, eg, converted bras, vacuum bag filters, and sometimes grossly inappropriate (and utterly gross) or bizarrely impractical.
KKK hood shopper, an injudicious choice of replacement for a face mask, San Diego, Ca. (Image: Tiam Tellez (FB))
A comfy 15L plastic bottle-head in lieu of face mask (Source: www.dailystar.co.uk)
Agencies tasked with enforcement all over the world struggle to come to grips with the need to make everyone social distance. India’s efforts at least have resulted in some comical outcomes (light relief perhaps from all the descending gloom). In India’s west coast tourist spots, foreigners found at the beach by local police have been forced to write out apologies 500 times for breaching the stay-at-home rules. Elsewhere, in southern India, in one village the mandated use of umbrellas outside (in any weather) is the prescribed method for enforcing social distancing.
(Photo: Hindustan Times, source: UGC)
Meanwhile, officials in the Swedish city of Lund, confronted with the Herculean task of stopping the multitudes ignoring voluntary social distancing guidelines, have gone for the unorthodox! To discourage people from crowding together in outdoor recreational areas, a frustrated LundsKommun (city council) has resorted to the somewhat “left-field” measure of dumping chicken manure all over the city’s main park.
(Source: www.internewscast.com)
Has any other natural or unnatural phenomenon ever inspired such an array of whacky bizarre headlines (a la “Ripley’s believe-or-not!”) as this minuscule spiky particle pathogen has? In an atmosphere heightened by anxieties over a sense of that which we cannot control, “miracle cures” have saturated social media channels, everything from Llama Antibodies Could Help Scientists Stop the Coronavirus Pandemic? to Does JK Rowling’s breathing technique cure the coronavirus? to Colloidal silver toothpaste will fix your Covid virus. Then there’s the “contributions to the debate” from the White House, a kaleidoscope of quack cures being incredulously recycled by “The Donald” who continues to be in the thrall of non-scientists sprouting convenient opinion to him (“UV light and disinfectant injections killing the virus inside human bodies”, “hydroxychloroquine and bleach“, etc). The Covid-19 pandemic has been somatotropin for conspiracy theorising, with no handbrake applied to how asinine they can get…the 5G network is an ‘accelerator’ of coronavirus; Bill Gates Foundation’s COVID-19 Vaccine is a Satanic Plot; Not a pandemic but a plan-demic; Coronavirus hoax is an Agenda 21 plot to microchip us; etc. ad nauseum⌖. (‘Miracle ‘coronavirus cures’ haven’t changed in 700 years’, (Jennifer Wright), New York Post, 18-Apr-2020, www.nypost.com)◨.
Suspicious-looking 5G mobile towers
PostScript: the coronavirus crisis leads to some surprising scenarios. A report on a news bulletin a couple of weeks ago disclosed the trials of tribulations the super rich have had to endure at this time. Because of social distancing measures, many of society’s wealthy burghers have for safety concerns dispensed with the services of their house maids and auxiliary staff. This has resulted in grievous inconvenience and vexation for the plutocrats as they are now forced to learn for themselves how to use washing machines and other appliances in their palatial homes…ahh, those eternal First World problems – they just never let up.
⍤⍤⍤⍤⍤⍤⍤⍤⍤⍤⍤⍤⍤⍤⍤⍤⍤⍤⍤⍤⍤⍤⍤⍤⍤⍤⍤⍤⍤⍤
✥ when Covid-19 first hit the US,eight of the eleven states in which cannabis is legal, declared ongoing access to the narcotic an essential service for medicinal and recreational users. This prompted, in microcosm, a similar run to that on toilet paper, on marijuana outlets by aficionados of the weed. Consumers flocked to their local dispensers to stock up on essential ‘pot’ for the long, hard days of confinement ahead. This panic-buying of cannabis led some with a vested interest in the industry to talk up the prospects of a medicinal marijuana-led recovery of the US economy once the cloud of coronavirus disperses (‘Aurora Cannabis and Tilray set to detail hoarding of marijuana during COVID-19’, (Max A Cherney), Market Watch, 09-May-2020, www.marketwatch.com)
◨ plucking supposed panaceas out of the ether in time of pandemic has been ever thus…in the Black Plague they tried onions to ward off the disease, in the coronavirus crisis the equivalent recommendation is garlic (same degree of effectiveness)
⌖ the authors of these expressions of coronavirus denial, once thought largely confined to the United States, are spreading to different parts of the world, ironically enough, like a virus in themselves. They are drawn from different groups of society—anti-vaxxers, 5G truthers, sovereign citizens, QAnon believers and other Alt-Right, fringe conspiracy theorists—that have through ”cross-pollination” of their beliefs, converged into “a virulent if not entirely coherent umbrella movement against coronavirus lockdown measures“ (’Why Are Australians Chanting “Arrest Bill Gates” At Protests? This Wild Facebook Group Has The Answers’, (Cameron Wilson), BuzzFeed, 11-May-2020, www.buzzfeednews.com.au)
When a novel virus comes along, such as we are facing now, there is no medical vade mecum, no universal guidebook to follow, no one proven route to safely navigate the crisis. Governments weigh up the choices, then in consultation with medical experts, decide on a strategy and do modelling on how to chart the optimal course through the unpredictable straits of COVID-19. Local factors in each country, the conditions, the capacity to respond, the culture, all shape what direction the fight against the virus takes.
The following focuses on just two of the 212 countries and territories which have reported cases of the novel coronavirus disease. The two countries, Sweden and Vietnam, have very different societies, cultures and political systems. Each has followed its own distinct strategy and have produced results that are polarities apart from each other.
🇸🇪SwedenOne thing you can’t accuse the home of ABBA and Ingmar Bergman of is sheepishly following the flock. While countries like the US and the UK ‘sleepwalked’ for precious weeks at the start of the crisis, Sweden went out on a limb. From the get-go, Sweden identified itself as an outlier, a contrarian country in the coronavirus war. It adopted a particular course and implemented it. Or to put it another way, Sweden opted for a “change very little”, “wait and see” position, which amounts in effect to the pursuit of a “herd (or community) immunity” approach. Put simply it means you intentionally expose as many people as possible in the community to infection and so (the theory goes) the majority become immune to the virus. It’s effectiveness hinges on (quickly) minimising the number of high-risk people overall. For it to work, there needs to be an infection rate of at least 60%. Critics of herd immunity, and there are many in both the medical and non-medical world, describe it, among other things, as a “let it rip” strategy✱.
Getting back to Sweden’s experience, the Social Democrat government under Stefan Lofven, and state epidemiologist Anders Tegnell, were at the outset confident of success with a “let it happen ASAP” approach. Sweden stopped organised sporting fixtures and closed university buildings but it eschewed a strategy of mandatory lockdowns (restaurants, bars, cafes and schools for pupils under 16 all stayed open) for a libertarian-like “principle of responsibility”, trusting the Swedish populace to “behave like adults” and do the right thing voluntarily.
The figures tell a different and disconcerting story: Sweden with a population of just 10.33 million has a reported Covid death toll of 3,225 (as at 10-May-2020) – with capital Stockholm overwhelmingly the primary hotspot. As illustrated below, compared to it’s Nordic neighbours Sweden’s mortality figures resonate like a distress beacon in the ocean, and in per capita terms it even outstrips the horrendous, spiralling toll of the US.
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The mortality rate for Sweden has prompted even the Swedish chief medical scientist Dr Tegnell to comment that it is now a “horrifying large number” [‘Sweden’s near “horrifying” death toll of 3,000 from coronavirus with 87 new fatalities, including a child under ten’, (Ross Ibbotson), Daily Mail (UK), 07-May-2020, www.dailymail.co.uk]. The body responsible, the Swedish Public Health Agency has come under mounting pressure (increasingly internal) for the current situation. A group of 22 scientific researchers from Swedish universities and institutes have called on the SPHA for a rethink of the strategy and a more cautious approach [‘Sweden: 22 Scientists Say Coronavirus Strategy Has Failed’, (David Nikel), Forbes, 14-Apr-2020, www.forbes.com].
A consequence of “granny-killer metrics” A leading molecular virologist from Sweden’s Karolinska Insitutet has accused the government of taking unnecessary risks and sacrificing the elderly (half of the total deaths are from aged care homes), as well as placing the health of their carers and hospital workers in jeopardy [‘Sweden urged to reconsider controversial coronavirus advice as infections rise sharply’, (John Varga), Express, 07-May-2020, www.express.co.uk].
A Stockholm bar: elbow distancing only
Defending the hard to defendThe Swedish authorities have tried to defend its strategy—citing dramatic drops in the use of public transport and a survey which the agencies conclude is evidence that people are practicing safe distancing from each other during the crisis (Ibbotson)—unfortunately the visual evidence from photos and videos within Sweden suggests otherwise with crowded restaurants, bars and parks still the norm and few people seeming to be social distancing. So far, the government for the most part is holding the line and appears to be committed to the long haul, although they have now given some ground, banning outdoor gatherings of more than 50 (Nikel)ㅁ.
There are some outside observers who still take a sanguine view of outlier Sweden’s methods of dealing with the crisis. Stanford School of Medicine (US) professor, Michael Levitt, has been critical of other countries with a different approach, the so-called “first mover” countries like Australia, Austria, New Zealand, Denmark, Czech Republic, Israel and Greece, who he says have paid too heavy a price for locking down their communities – resulting in severe damage to their economies, social upheaval, the loss of an academic year for students, and still having not attained herd immunity [‘Granny-killer metrics don’t add up in Australia’s costly coronavirus battle’, (Andrew Probyn), ABC News, 08-May-2020, www.abcnews.com.au]. No doubt the decision-makers in Sweden would find this external support comforting, and of course Sweden could turn around and say to the growing number of doubters that it’s approach is keeping people in jobs, keeping businesses from closing down, and the economy afloat … but at what a human cost! This is the Solomonic trade-off.
(Source: www.irishtimes.com)
Update since originally published: (information updated to 21-May-2020) SWEDEN has overtaken the UK, Italy and Belgium to record the highest coronavirus per capita death rate in the world. Sweden has recorded 6.08 deaths per million inhabitants, higher than the UK, USA and Italy (www.express.co.uk/).
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🇻🇳VietnamWith international media attention on the COVID-19 dilemma focused largely on the US and the Eurocentric world, the efforts of Vietnam in the war against coronavirus has garnered little notice till recently. Many observers would be surprised to discover that the South-East Asian country has had zero recorded deaths from the virus, out of a total of 288 confirmed cases (10-May-2020). Surprising…for a few reasons. First, it seems a bona fide claim, unlike some of it’s S.E. Asian neighbours who claim also to have done well with little to substantiate it. As a general rule, S.E. Asian numbers, even more so African numbers, are often problematic as there has been an inadequate amount of testing carried out to gauge progress accurately✮.
(Photo: AP)
Second, Vietnam shares a (northern) border with China, the country of coronavirus origin, plus in normal times Vietnam is a busy destination with frequent international flights from nearby Taiwan, Hong Kong and China itself, leaving it, one would think, quite susceptible to to the importation of the infection. Third, Vietnam has an estimated 97 million people but for a medical emergency of this magnitude it lacks the allocatable resources and health infrastructure of the more economically dynamic Asian states. It simply can’t afford to engage in the level of mass testing that say South Korea has managed [‘Vietnam shows how you can contain COVID-19 with limited resources’, (Sean Fleming), World Economic Forum, 30-Mar-2020, www.weforum.org].
Why has Vietnam done so well in the war against the “invisible enemy”?Part of the explanation is that Vietnam has approached the crisis very much like a military campaign. In fact war rhetoric has been employed by the government, which constantly speaks of “fighting the enemy”. The country’s response was early and proactive, border closures, rigorous mass quarantines of whole towns for weeks, were implemented up front, not just as a last resort like some places elsewhere [‘How Vietnam is winning its “war” on coronavirus’, (Rodion Ebbighausen), DW, 16-Apr-2020, www.dw.com]. The authorities conducted targeted testing and thorough contact-tracing procedures. To compensate for the country’s limited resources they created low-cost test kits for wide distribution (“70-minute rapid test kits”).
“Rice ATMs” initiative: Made available 24/7 to Vietnamese people during the time of pandemic
(Photo: www.vietnamnet.vn)
An ingrained culture of compliance The key to what Vietnam has achieved is the central government’s ability to secure almost universal integration into the fight against the disease. Communist Vietnam’s authoritarian one-party state structure with a highly organised army and security apparatus makes this task more easily obtainable (whereas in a liberal society where plurality is the norm this would be nigh on impossible). The regime can much more easily mobilise the people to adhere to it’s rules and restrictions…there is a prevailing culture of compliance, and a range of effective mechanisms in the hands of Hanoi to attain that compliance. The government-controlled media and the high numbers of Vietnamese people exposed to social media have facilitated this. Apps have been a standard part of the public information campaign to get the government message out – and the degree of transparency about COVID-19 and the government’s plan to counter-attack it, has raised public confidence and made it more receptive to what Hanoi is saying [‘The Secret to Vietnam’s COVID-19 Response Success’, (Minh Vu & Bich T Tran), The Diplomat, 18-Apr-2020, www.thediplomat.com].
The government has called on a raft of idiosyncratically-Vietnamese cultural devices to creatively drive home it’s theme. ”Viral hand-washing” songs have been popularised among the people and most effectively, the regime have resorted to propaganda art, something with a long tradition in communist Vietnam. Calling on the familiar slogan, “In war, we draw” (again, invoking the war metaphor), the government has fostered a patriotic response in Vietnamese to get 100% behind the war on the virus (#TogetherWeWillWin), resulting in the production and dissemination of visually-powerful and meaningful posters like these two (above and below). COVID-19 has also prompted the release of special stamps to help unify the Vietnamese people [‘“In a war, we draw”: Vietnam’s artists joint fight against Covid-19’, (Chris Humphrey), The Guardian, 09-Apr-2020, www.theguardian.com; Fleming].
Coercion and collaborationAnother side of Vietnam’s use of “soft power” to get everyone thinking as one can be seen at work in the coronavirus emergency. The socialist ethos in Vietnam operates on one level as a “surveillance state“…ordinary Vietnamese are conditioned, not just to obey rules, but to help the authoritarian regime’s realisation of it’s goals by spying on neighbours and reporting back to the authorities the activities of non-conformists or of anyone breaching the public health regulations (Humphrey).
Notwithstanding this further encroachment on civil liberties, the Vietnamese people as a whole, having accepted the seriousness of Hanoi’s fight against coronavirus, are on board, and appear genuinely proud of their country’s success in avoiding thus far any serious outbreak of the epidemic in a country with a healthcare system woefully ill-equipped to deal with harmful effects on it’s large population (Ebbighausen).
The Vietnamese achievement, having been successful so far in keeping a lid on the epidemic, might lead it’s citizens to feel or at least hope that they are out of the woods. But even if they are in the clearing now, there’s another forest looming largely in the shape of the economy, which of course is another matter entirely. Over 85% of Vietnam’s enterprises have been adversely effected by the crisis. Tourism, which Vietnam like so many is highly dependent on, could be looking at a loss of $US3 to $US4 Bn in 2020, and so on down the line of the country’s businesses. At the moment business leaders in Vietnam are preoccupied with exploring new economic opportunity that may arise for the country post-crisis [‘Vietnam is set to lose billions due to coronavirus, and it’s already feeling the impact of the deadly outbreak’, (Kate Taylor), Business Insider Australia, 25-Feb-2020, www.businessinsider.com.au].
EndNote: Peering inside that can of worms
The UK Johnson government initially toyed with the idea of going the herd immunity route, before being awakened to it’s senses by a vociferous chorus of British medical experts recounting the dire ramifications of such a gamble.After chief epidemiologist Prof Neil Ferguson did some remodelling, the UK government (belatedly) switched to a suppression approach. The Netherlands in March announced it would follow Sweden’s strategy but the Dutch prime minister then walked back the herd immunity line, opting instead for what has been described as “lockdown light” [‘Caught Between Herd Immunity And National Lockdown, The Netherlands Hard Hit Bt Covid-19 (Update)’, (Joshua Cohen), Forbes, 27-Mar-2020, www.forbes.com]
𖡟𖡟𖡟𖡟𖡟𖡟𖡟𖡟𖡟𖡟𖡟𖡟
✱ the medical critics would be quick to point out that, if herd immunity can’t be accomplished by vaccination (and there is no vaccine for coronavirus yet, not even on the horizon), then it is an extremely risky business to dabble in. It puts the old and vulnerable into the position of sacrificial pawns for the greater good; it can also expose a country’s health-care system to intolerable demands on its resources (not to neglect the heightened personal danger for nursing staff and medics); a third drawback with the approach is that mortality from coronavirus is a reality for the under 70s and under 60s as well
ㅁ in an implicit admission of a failure of it’s voluntary compliance arrangements, Sweden announced recently that it would close bars and restaurants which flaunted the social distancing guidelines [‘Sweden is shutting down bars and restaurants where people defied social distancing guidelines’, (Kelly McLaughlin), Business Insider, 28-Apr-2020, www.businessinsider.com]
✮ like Myanmar for instance which admits to only six deaths from the virus. A population of 55 million, according to a World Bank estimate it has only 249 ventilators in the whole country. The Myanmar regime’s lack of transparency, the sheer logistics of trying to safely social distances and the attribution of it’s very low fatality level to the country’s diet and lifestyle, cast more than reasonable doubts on the true extent of the epidemic in the republic [‘Zara’s Billionaire Owner Was Praised For Helping in the Coronavirus Crisis. Workers In Myanmar Paid the Price’, (Nishita Jha), BuzzFeed News, 07-May-2020, www.buzzfeed.com]
In the fiercely combative arena of Washington DC politics, one term that gets bandied about a lot—before and continuing through the time of pandemic—is the notion of the existence of a “Deep State”. Whenever the expression gets publicly uttered, it’s purpose is to serve as the answer to some or other momentous development or outcome. Left there hanging in the air, vague, nebulous, mysterious and unelaborated but always unambiguously pejorative – the innuendo of conspiracy.
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Alternately called “a state within a state”, the “shadow government” or “the permanent state”, the Deep State connotes images of shadowy individuals talking in soto voco, practicing the political dark arts.
So, what actually is a deep state? In get to the essence of this concept let’s survey a cross-selection of responses to the question:
⌱ a type of governance made up of networks of power operating independently of the state’s political leadership in pursuit of their own agenda and goals [Wikipedia]
⌱ a conspiracy theory which suggests that collusion and cronyism exists within the US political system and constitute a hidden government within the legitimately elected government [Wikipedia]
⌱a body of people, typically influential members of government agencies or the military, believed to be involved in the secret manipulation or control of government policy[Oxford English Dictionary].
⌱ the idea that a cabal of unelected security officials across a number of government bodies maintain influence over elected politicians [Will Worley, The Independent (UK)]
⌱ (“the seed for many tantalising conspiracy theories”…the existence of a premeditated effort by certain federal governmentemployeesor other persons to secretly manipulate or control the government without regard for the policies of Congress or the President [Robert Longley]
⌱an underworld of unaccountable authority [Peter Dale Scott]
⌱ belief in an informal or parallel government that exists to countermand legitimate, usually more democratic, institutions (whose usage includes) a catch-all term applied to any number of extraordinary, usually violent, episodes, eg, JFK assassination, 9/11, etc. [Ryan Gingeras]
⌱a massive informal government comprising untold thousands of bureaucrats, technocrats and plutocrats committed to driving president-elect Trump from power [Breitbart]
⌱ (how it functions) whenelected governments threaten the deep state’s domestic or international interests, actors aligned to this coalition (the military, the clandestine service, the mafia and far-right activists) employ any means to reverse the state’s political course…these coalitions within the government work to ‘veto’ or ‘fine tune’ policies related to national security [Ola Tunander]
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The topicality of the Deep State as a conspiracy theory and as a form of politics in practice, as I indicated at the start, resides within, indeed permeates, the present US political realm, but the political phenomena itself did not start in the US. Let’s first look at the modern origins of the deep state – in early 20th century Turkey.
Turkey: volatile zero-sum-game
The notion of an unofficial para-authority, a deep state within the nation’s polity, has probably existed since the time of antiquity, but as a normative concept it can be traced back to the rise of the Young Turks movement in Turkey (revolution of 1908). In the struggle for power in the vacuum created by the disintegration of the Ottoman Empire, the Young Turks, and Kemal Ataturk who would become the ‘architect’ of the modern Turkish Republic, used criminal elements to eliminate political opponents. Ataturk’s group, through a violent, intra-government resistance to the ruling clique in Turkey, destabilised and undermined it (from within), eventually establishing control over state and society for itself. Turks called this secret network, derin devlet (literally the “deep state”). Since then, the phenomena has been replicated elsewhere, eg, Soviet Union/Russia, Egypt, Pakistan❈, with the tradition maintained in Turkey up to the (present) Erdogân era, eg, the failed military coup in 2016 seeking to overthrow the Erdogân autocracy [‘Turkey’s “Deep-State” and the Ergenekon Conundrum’, (H Akin Ünver), Middle East Institute, 01-Apr-2009, www.mei.edu].
↴ Erdogân state (Source: www.time.com)
Deep state sans conspiracy
Drawing together the different threads of responses, a deep state exists when a network of different groups covertly coalesce, forming a power base independent of and parallel to the legitimate government, with the purpose of pursuing its own objectives. In practice it tends to exercise soft power (rather than the more violent type seen in Turkey) by undermining and discrediting the legitimate government, with the aim of subverting its operation and bringing it down. The collusive elements of the network or cabal is typically drawn from the state’s security services, the bureaucracy, the military, the media, the private sector, even from organised crime.
The deep state in America
It was general–turned–GOP president Dwight D Eisenhower who first alerted America to the dangers of a deep state emerging…at his farewell address in 1961 he said: “We must guard against the acquisition of unwarranted influence, whether sought or unsought, by the military-industrial complex”. A couple of years later the assassination of Eisenhower’s successor John F Kennedy provided conspiracy theory obsessives with endless material for imaginative speculation. Inevitably some of that speculation has joined the dots between the never-satisfactorily explained Kennedy murder and the Deep State. A perusal of the web turns up numerous posts with titles like ‘JFK was Murdered by the Deep State’ and ‘JFK Was Assassinated by LBJ, Establishment, Deep State’…fairly self-explanatory but these generally fact-thin ‘revelations’ detail a deep state hit squad of assassins and conspirators which includes Lyndon B Johnson and a coterie of southern Democrat politicians, the American mafia, Texas oil tycoons, Fidel Castro, the CIA, the KGB and a host of other nominated suspects⊠. And of course popular movies like Oliver Stone’s 1991 JFK was a further shot-in-the-arm for political conspiracy buffs and the perpetuation of the Deep State/JFK thesis (portraying “a cabal of shadowy officials as the puppet masters behind Kennedy’s assassination”)◘. As Professor Paul Musgrove remarked, “the deep state is catnip for conspiracy theorists” [‘How a Conspiracy Theory Went From Political Fringe to Mainstream’, (Tom Porter), Newsweek, 08-Feb-2017, www.newsweek.com].
Deep State rhetoric: How to vilify your opponents and turn back criticism, it’s all a conspiracy by the enemy!
The term finally acquires staying power and everyday currency in the US political lexicon with Donald Trump’s transition to the presidency in 2016/2017. Trump, a self-acknowledged outlier of Washington politics, came to office promising to “drain the swamp in DC”, his avowed aim, to ditch the old, distrusted model of federal government. With Trump doing things very much his own (peculiarly idiosyncratic) way in the White House, this caused waves, there was a “natural pushback” from a bureaucracy accustomed to a very different approach under Obama. This is a normal part of the process of regime change in parliamentary democracies universally – a residual if usually temporary feature of the culture of resistance to government change. [‘President Trump’s Allies Keep Talking About the “Deep State”. What’s That?’, (Alana Abramson), Time, 08-March-2017, www.time.com].
The practice of leaking information
From within the president’s fold, warnings of “covert resistance” from within to the president, emerged. Talk of a “Deep State” was heard from the far-right✪, Trump strategist Steve Bannon among the voices. The complaint was that elements within the bureaucracy, the State Department, Pentagon, wherever, were leaking damaging information to a media hostile to Trump (eg, New York Times, Washington Post), to which Trump’s “knee-jerk” reaction was to label it as “fake news”⍤. Two points need to be made about the leaking of information from democratic governments: as Abramson has noted, this is “not a new dynamic” or unique to the US, career civil servants—who are extra-political—have always leaked information to the press. The (legitimate) government from time to time itself will leak favourably information to the media (Abramson).
Watching the president
The second point is that the various federal government agencies, being non-partisan, see a component of their role to act as a check on wayward and irresponsible behaviour by an incumbent chief executive that would be harmful to the nation. Previous directors of the CIA have stated that the military would refuse to follow orders given by Trump which are unlawful [‘US Military to Disobey Trump’s ‘Illegal’ Nuclear Strike Order’, Sputnik News, 15-Nov-2017, www.sputniknews.com]. In such a scenario, the “permanent national security apparatus” has a right to act, as “a check on the civilian government” (Musgrave).
Another Deep State linkage with the coronavirus for conspiracy fans? The “Covert-19” pandemic? ↴
Using the Deep Statecatch-phrase to your own advantage
Opposition to Trump, to his style of presidency and approach to government, in the form of hostility from almost the entirety of the mainstream US media, the leaking of information from within the ‘citadel’ such as the charge that Russian interference in the 2016 elections assisted a Trump victory, have provided the ammunition for the Trump’s enablers and supporters to construct a narrative of a deep state, a ‘conspiracy’ of anyone seeking to subvert the presidency, including foreign powers (like China) and many bureaucrats they see as loyal to the former president (Obama).
Trump has turned internal criticism of himself into an excuse to fire officials, creating scapegoats for the shortcomings of the administration he heads. Inspector General of the Intelligence Community Michael Atkinson, sacked after alerting Congress of Trump’s attempts to pressure Ukraine’s leader into investigating the president’s domestic political opponents, remarked pointedly that he was dismissed, not for failing to do his job but for doing it properly [‘Trump’s safari into the wilderness of the deep state’, (Jacob Heilbrunn), Spectator (America), 08-Apr-2020, http://spectator.us]. Numerous other subalterns from the White House staff, Pentagon, Homeland Security, FBI, Treasury, Attorney General, etc have suffered the same fate after earning Trump’s ire. As Professor Timur Kuran, an economist who has studied the deep state concept in both Turkey and the US, said: in many authoritarian regimes, dictators often blame their failures on a “deep state enemy” within the legitimate state [‘Deep State: Inside Donald Trump’s Paranoid Conspiracy Theory’, (Michael Hanford), Rolling Stone, 09-Mar-2017, www.rollingstone.com].
Connecting coronavirus to the Deep State conspiracy
In the turmoil of the COVID-19 crisis in America, it didn’t take long for a number of Trump’s cronies and followers to play the pandemic conspiracy card. TV commentator Rush Limbaugh has labelled the coronavirus a deep state hoax⍝ (calling health experts fighting the virus outbreak functionaries of the deep state). The right-wing “shock jock” has said the crisis was being used by as a political weapon to destabilise and undo the Trump presidency [‘Rush Limbaugh: coronavirus a “common cold” being “weaponised’ against Trump’, (Martin Pengelly), The Guardian, 26-Feb-2020, www.theguardian.com]⦿. Other “true-believers” of the DS conspiracy myth see the coronavirus crisis as a plot to destabilise global markets and cripple the US economy, or alternately a Deep State plan to suppress dissent and impose “mandated medicine” on to the unsuspecting masses [‘Right-wing conspiracy theorists see coronavirus as a plot against Trump’, (Mikael Thalen), The Daily Dot, 26-Feb-2020, www.dailydot.com; ‘Scientist with 4 Degrees from MIT Warns ‘Deep State’ Using Coronavirus Fear-Mongering To Suppress Dissent’, (Carmine Sabina), The Western Journal, 17-Mar-2020, www.westernjournal.com].
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❈ there have been numerous other Deep State scenarios internationally, a classic one in recent history was the 1973 Chilean coup where foreign elements, the American CIA and IT&T, combined with a right wing military clique in Chile to overthrow the democratically-elected Allende government
⊠ many of the conspiracy hypothesisers who accept that Lee Harvey Oswald killed Kennedy, depict the gunman as having been an agent of the Deep State
◘ with hindsight we can see earlier instances of the (unnamed) deep state in American politics, beavering away to undermine a US president – in the Thirties and early Forties the Dulles brothers, Foster and Allen, exploited their key diplomatic roles in arms of the Roosevelt administration to covertly pursue their own agendas which were at variance with FDR’s policies, David Talbot, The Devil’s Chessboard: Allen Dulles, the CIA, and the Rise of America’s Secret Government (2015)
✪ one of the wildest is the QAnon Deep State conspiracy which alleges that a “cabal of Satan-worshiping pedophiles” have joined up with Hollywood liberals and Democrat politicians to try to overthrow the Trump regime
⍤ sometimes hitting back with his own brand of fake news, such as his unsubstantiated tweet claim that President Obama wiretapped Trump Tower before the election
⍝ a view with popular backing among sections of the Alt-Right, patriot-militia groups in the US
⦿ Limbaugh last month, looking to cloak the ‘conspiracy’ in an even more sinister light, suggested to his viewers that there were eighteen earlier strains of the disease which he has likened to the common cold, therefore COVID-19 was nothing to be concerned about, he reasoned. Limbaugh’s woeful ignorance—the 19 in the disease’s name refers to the year it was first identified, 2019—earned him much scorn and derision from liberal America (although amazingly it didn’t deter a Trump lackey from repeating the gross misinformation in a “Fox & Friends” rant against WHO) , ‘Coronavirus skeptic Rush Limbaugh thinks COVID-19 means there were 18 other COVIDS’, (Brian Niemietz), Daily News, 12-Mar-2020, www.nydailynews.com
The majority of countries where coronavirus infection rates have experienced an upward curve have resorted to locking down the community to varying degrees. In the USA, more than elsewhere, this has tested the faith of those of a libertarian disposition. In recent weeks we have seen the mega-massive jolt to the economy and enforced closures of businesses resulting in millions of workers finding themselves in the dole queues. Many libertarians, albeit with reluctance, accept the inevitability of the present state intervention as the only means available of providing the fiscal stimulus to keep people and businesses afloat.
Its when it comes to the matter of mandatory quarantine as a counter-virus measure, then the issue becomes more thorny for libertarians. The classic libertarian position would see voluntary self-isolation as the ideal solution in an ideal (ie, libertarian) world… compulsory quarantine is the last resort to them. Some of a libertarian mind would reject it outright – on ideological grounds, while also claiming it to be an ineffective measure as a social curative. Others accept it as a legitimate move given the uniqueness of the Covid-19 crisis situation, but with a very clear rider that the measures taken need to be temporary only. As shown below, this aspect of libertarianism is a “hot-button” issue currently for many in the US with skin in the game [‘What libertarians would do in response to coronavirus’, (Bonnie Kristian), The Week, 13-Mar-2020, www.theweek.com].
Gadsden flag: associated with libertarianism & the American Tea Party
Social distancing as an imposed, mandated practice during the pandemic, fails the libertarian test. The pure libertarian much prefers to see voluntary compliance by the individual, in the expectation (or hope) that most people will ultimately do the right thing [‘Libertarianism and the Coronavirus Pandemic’, (Andy Craig), Cato Institute, 25-Mar-2020, www.cato.com]. Accordingly, a small minority of US states (five?) have not enforced the distancing and stay-at-home edicts, their leaders pledging to hold fast to the “sacred liberties” of their citizenries. But most everywhere else the pandemic has hit, certainly in urban areas, the civil authorities have gone for some form of lockdown.
Escape from Lockdown 13For the average “Joe and Joanna Citizen” in Main Street, Anywheresville, being locked down inside four walls indefinitely is one of the hardest things to cop. For most people “cabin fever” will inevitably set in…confined at home, unable to congregate and socialise in cafes, eateries and bars with friends and colleagues or do road trips. In First World societies such as the US, Western Europe or the Commonwealth of Nations, freedom of movement is such an inherently natural expectation, once deprived, resistance to these rigid controls can reach a tipping point which easily spills over into increasingly bold attempts to subvert or defy the government’s edicts. Recently we have witnessed this perhaps at its apogee in the Midwest and Southern states of the US. Protest groups, the new scofflaws of Trumpian America, have mushroomed in particular in “rust-belt” states such as Michigan, Ohio, Indiana, Pennsylvania and West Virginia✷.
Pro–Trump demonstrators trying to intimidate Democrat Gov. Whitmer (photo: AP Photo/Paul Sancya)
As the lockdowns extend from weeks into months bunches of pro-Republican conservatives∎ have more and more blatantly violated the stay-at-home orders of mostly Democratic governors (in contrast serving GOP governors like South Dakota’s Kristi Noem, continue to play the libertarian card, steadfastly refusing to implement a stay-at-home order regardless of virus outbreaks within the state). For the protesters, egged on by the schizophrenic tweets❂ of President Trump, a call to “Liberate Michigan” (Virginia, etc) and amplified by the Fox press, one prime target of their vitriol has been Michigan governor Gretchen Whitmer who has mandated a strict ”stay home, stay safe” executive order to counteract the virus. This month organised gatherings of protesters have assembled outside the Capitol building and the governor’s home, flaunting the restrictions and demonstrating their displeasure at Whitmer’s policies. Some of the dissenters have been armed with AR-15s and AK-47s, very few wearing face masks but brandishing Confederate and Gadsden flags and even Nazi emblems (loosely equating the state “governor/tyrant” with Nazis). Some protesters have held up signs such as “The cure is worse than the virus” (which, if you have watched the president’s coronavirus press briefings ‘sideshow’, has a faintly familiar ring to it).
(Photo: REUTERS/Alyson McClaran)
This orchestrated “Operation Gridlock”, in Michigan and elsewhere, is organised by a conservative patriot/militia group with connexions to Trump’s education secretary, Betsy DeVos. One of its objectives (successful) was to grind city centre traffic down to a standstill, including the blocking of ambulances conveying patients. Protesters in various states have also tried to intimidate health workers engaged in the frontline of the fight against the pandemic. So far Whitmer has remained resolute in maintaining a strict state lockdown, pointing to the gravity of the state’s health predicament (Michigan has had 37,778 confirmed cases and 3,315 deaths due to coronavirus, as at 27-April-2020) [‘Conservative group linked to DeVos family organises protest of coronavirus restrictions in Michigan’, (Igor Derbyshire), Salon, 16-Apr-2020, www.salon.com; ‘Trump Supporters Are Staging Armed Protests to Stick it to Coronavirus’, (Caleb Ecarma), Vanity Fair, 16-Apr-2020, www.vanityfair.com].
🔻 Gov. Whitmer (Photo: U.S. News & World)
What’s motivating the scofflaw behaviour?Researchers at the University of Maryland have concluded that “quarantine fatigue” has set in. Increasing numbers of fed-up or plain bored Americans are venturing outside of “the box” in defiance of state stay-at-home orders. Many of these are exercising, or as the weather gets warmer, going to the beach (most of the escapees are doing these things without bothering to practice safe distancing)⌖ [‘Quarantine fatigue is setting in: Smartphone data shows thousands are fed up after weeks under lockdown’, (Ralph R Ortega), Daily Mail, 27-Apr-2020, www.dailymail.com].
The inalienable right to be ‘selective’ The gatherings of those discontented with the status quo in America have exercised their right to protest against their state’s political leaders. Interestingly, their decision to protest on this occasion, as has been noted, does not signify their endorsement of the right to protest per se – a perfectly admirable and consistent libertarian trait. Previously when sectors of the Left in America took to protesting issues such as climate change and police brutality, these Right-wing elements were vigorously supporting the conservative politicians’ endeavours to bring in legislation to outlaw protests [’The hypocrisy of the anti-lockdown protests’, (Anthony L Fisher), Business Insider Australia, 22-Apr-2020, www.businessinsider.com.au].
🔺The ‘tyranny’ avengers
(Photo: Nikolaus Kama/AFP via Getty Images)
These insurrectionists and those who facilitate and encourage them, argue that they are motivated, nay compelled, by the (temporary) loss of their basic liberties… evoking the First Amendment and the Founding Fathers, they portray Whitmer and other governors as tyrants, preventing their right to come and go as they wish, to work and leisure untrammelled. Thus, it comes back to that same nub at the core of libertarian values, the right to do as one pleases — (with the rider)…so long as it doesn’t harm anyone else. This added qualifier is fundamental to the credo of libertarian theory.
“Inviolable freedom”…so long as it doesn’t harm harm anyone elseThe casualty toll of the Covid-19 health crisis in the US—the worse in the world by far—is rapidly overtaking that of the total of American lives lost in the ten-years of the Vietnam War. Disproportionally, the pandemic everywhere is killing the older and the most vulnerable, people with co-morbidities. Coronavirus, the epidemiologists have shown us, is transmitted from a human host to a human recipient, the more people interacting with each other, the more likelihood of transmission, the greater the incidence of morbidity and mortality from the virus, simple as that!
An unavoidable trade-offThe temporary suspension of liberties is the price to pay to preserve lives. Yes, the measures are inconveniences and hardships on individuals, but they’ve been imposed on the population for a health safety reason – the greater good of the community and the health of all. Yes, the libertarians have some grounds to quibble, a few of the measures taken have been over-the-top and seem disproportionate. Even Gov. Whitmer, a rising Democrat star on the national political scene, has at times pulled the wrong rein (eg, barring people from purchasing garden equipment and baby restrainers for cars seems to be over-zealous) [‘Quarantine Protesters Are No Heroes of Civil Disobedience’, (Jonah Goldberg), National Review, 22-Apr-2020, www.nationalreview.com].
🔺 Colorado protestersvisualising a totalitarian pivot by their governor?(Photo: AP)
FN: Heat in the kitchenDemocrat governors in “swing states” like Gov. Whitmer—caught in a pincer of intimidatory Scofflaw defiance, demands from business to re-open and constant sniping from a divisive chief executive at 1600 Pennsylvania Ave—are not the only ones feeling the mounting pressure of the moment. Florida’s GOP governor, Ron DeSantis, has copped plenty of flak himself. He was very late in issuing stay-at-home orders, having rejected calls to close Florida’s crowded beaches, citing the libertarian manta of free choice. When the lockdown finally came, church services got a “go free” card from the restrictions. Consequently, the state’s coronavirus ‘scorecard’ is now 32,138 confirmed cases and 1,088 deaths (27-April-2020). The current virus “hot spots” in Florida don’t augur well for a lifting of it’s restrictions any time soon. On top of this gloomy prognosis, Florida, being a ‘bellwether’ state, Trump will be expecting DeSantis to deliver it to the Republicans in the November elections [‘Anti-quarantine protests, Trump pressure on governors on political tightrope over coronavirus’, (Deidre Shesgreen & Maureen Groppe), USA Today, 23-Apr-2020, www.amp.usatoday.com].
⥿⥿⥿⥿⥿⥿⥿⥿⥿⥿⥿⥿⥿⥿⥿⥿⥿⥿⥿⥿⥿⥿⥿⥿⥿⥿⥿⥿⥿⥿⥿⥿⥿⥿⥿⥿⥿⥿⥿⥿⥿⥿⥿⥿⥿
✷ the protests have by no means been confined to these states – such happenings have been increasingly the done thing from Pennsylvania to Nebraska to California. Nor have lockdown protests been confined to America, ‘Berlin police anti-lockdown protestors accusing Angela Merkel of “banning life”’, SBS News, 25-Apr-2020, www.sbsnews.com.au∎ the same kind of pro-Trump people that Hillary Clinton (unwisely) labelled a “basket of deplorables” in the 2016 presidential campaign❂ ”schizophrenic” because at the same time the president at his daily podium is officially asking Americans to adhere to the prescribed Covid-19 safety measures⌖ there’s obviously other underlying factors in the tendency towards civil disobedience in Midwestern states and perhaps more so in the South – greater religiosity (and associated with that) scepticism towards scientific evidence and government experts, and even the “Siamese twins” attachment of many Americans to car culture (especially in suburbia and rural regions), ‘The American South has resisted social distancing measures — and we’re all going to pay the price’, Raw Story, 03-Apr-2020, www.rawstory.com
Every day we are reminded of the global reach of the novel coronavirus crisis. We know it’s a pandemic because WHO and other health agencies publish data showing that 211 countries and territories have been affected by the disease. The international media coverage tends to focus largely on the unenviable “big five” chart-toppers who have been most affected – the US, Italy, Spain, France and the UK. A number of sites publish constantly updated lists of the growing toll of Covid-19 casualties, a sort of sombre “score card” listing all the countries who have recorded instances of the disease.
Confirmed Coronavirus Cases: Globally tracked, country-by-country – as @ 23-Apr-2020
Country
Total cases
Total deaths
Region
USA
850,000
47,700
Americas
Italy
188,000
25,500
Western Europe
Spain
208,500
21,750
Western Europe
France
160,000
21,500
Western Europe
UK
134,000
18,300
Western Europe
Sources: WHO http://covid19.who.int/;
http://worldometers.info/
When we scroll through the world tables of where the pandemic has landed, it’s instructive to look at the comparative totals by continent – Europe has a bit over 1.28 million confirmed cases recorded, and the Americas, 995,510 (predominantly from the US), compare these to South-East Asia, a bit more than 38,572 and Africa, a mere 18,234 cases✺✺.
(Source: www.vietnamcredit.com.vn)
From a statistical standpoint we might wonder if the published data gives a true impression of the extent of of the pandemic? It needs to be kept in mind that the numbers we have are those that have been reported to the World Health Organisation. Population differences aside, it is clear that the low numbers in South-East Asia and Africa (examples: Cambodia 122 cases, zero fatalities✺✺, Myanmar 139 cases, five fatalities✺✺, Ghana 1,279 cases, 10 fatalities✺✺, Ethiopia 117 cases, three fatalities✺✺) mask the full impact of the catastrophe. They are a product of limited testing by countries in these regions … widespread poverty, surplus populations, lack of resources and infrastructure mitigate against the capacity to take corrective, safety monitoring measures.
(Photo: www.theborneopost.com)
Limited testing capacity and weak surveillanceThe small numbers of recorded cases and handful of reported deaths in Africa and S.E. Asia (the Caribbean is another such case in point) can engender a false security and justify a lack of action by such already economically and health-challenged countries, thus the risk of infections spreading is magnified. In the early phases of the outbreak some S.E. Asian states were slow to acknowledge the risks…even as late as mid-March, Myanmar’s government was still attributing it’s low number of cases to the superior “lifestyle and diet” of the locals. The fight against Covid-19 by Third World countries is further retarded by a failure to test widely and in the numbers necessitated by the crisis. It shouldn’t be overlooked that some of these countries have quite repressive regimes that don’t rank the goal of a universal healthcare system as their highest priority [‘Experts Doubt Low Coronavirus Counts of Some Southeast Asian Countries’, (Zsombor Peter), VOA, 29-Mar-2020, www.voanews.com].
(Photo: www.upnews.info.com)
For the bulk of African countries the story is similar. A by-product of their lack of development is that their health systems are fragile before the onset of coronavirus hits them. Awareness of the inability to cope with a full-blown health crisis, had led some leaders to advocate so-called “miracle cures” for the virus (eg, Madagascar’s president’s championing of untested traditional plant remedies). Nigeria (Africa’s largest nation by population) shows only 981 confirmed cases and 31 deaths✺✺ to date but is looking as vulnerable as anyone in Africa. Oil exports are the hub of Nigeria’s economy and the fall of the world’s crude oil price to a record low will hamstrung the country’s efforts to contain any future eruptions of the disease [‘Coronavirus: How drop in oil price affects Nigeria’s economy’, (Michael Eboh), Vanguard, 17-Mar-2020, www.vanguardngr.com]. The outbreak of pandemic hotspots in Nigeria could be devastating, especially in the north, given the country’s population of nearly 200 million people and it’s inadequate healthcare capacity⋉.
(Photo: www.newswirenow.com)
Too good to be …Some countries have reported being lightly or relatively lightly touched by the onslaught of the coronavirus, these results have surprised outside observers. One such country that raises eyebrows in this respect is Russia. The republic has 146 million people and shares long borders with China⤱, yet it fesses up to having had only 68,622 cases✺✺ (well under half of that of the UK) and suffered only a comparatively low 615 deaths✺✺ from the epidemic (most of those since the start of April). If you cast aside the anomalies, on paper it’s an excellent result! But whether Soviet or post-Soviet, there’s always an air of suspicious doubt about Russian information. The Russian Bear has had form in the past with cover-ups…a prime example—the Soviet Union throwing a tarpaulin over the Chernobyl nuclear disaster in the 1980s —indicative of a less than honest response to major disasters [‘The Very Low Number of Russia’s Reported COVID-19 Cases Raises Questions of a Cover-Up’, (Rick Moran), PJ Media, 22-Mar-2020, www.pjmedia.com].
Image: www.asianews.it
Russia, if it so erred, is not “Robinson Crusoe” in deliberately underreporting the pandemic’s effect. China for nearly three months from the initial outbreak didn’t include asymptomatic patients in the official stats, and only rectified this oversight on April Fools Day [‘China acknowledges underreporting coronavirus cases in official count’, (Mark Moore), New York Post, 01-Apr-2001, www.nypost.com]. For six weeks after WHO declared a global health emergency Indonesia did not report a single Covid-19 case (unlike most of it’s S.E. Asian neighbours). Considering the republic’s population size (more than 270 million) and it’s close links with China, this aroused widespread suspicion of underreporting and criticism in a Harvard University study which seemed to belatedly jolt Indonesia into disclosure. The first notification by Djakarta of coronavirus cases occurred on 2nd March, and from then on Indonesia’s curve has been on an upward trajectory – currently 8,211 cases, 689 deaths✺✺ [‘Why are there no reported cases of coronavirus in Indonesia?’, (Randy Mulyanto & Febriana Firdaus), Aljazeera, 18-Feb-2020, www.aljazeera.com].
Doubting a hermetically-sealed “Hermit Kingdom”North-East Asia’s renegade, secretive state, North Korea, can be added to the list of countries purporting to be Covid-19–free. Pyongyang‘s official line has been met with disbelief from several external sources such as South Korea and Radio Free Europe which asserts that disclosures from within North Korean military circles confirm the occurrence of coronavirus cases in the border areas [‘What Is the Coronavirus Doing to North Korea’, (Nicholas Eberstadt), New York Times, 22-Apr-2020, www.nytimes.com]
Addendum: (Coronavirus as @ 0130 hrs EAT time, 25-April-2020)
USA 890,200 cases | 50,403 deaths
Italy 189,973 cases | 25,549 deaths
Spain 219,764 cases | 22,524 deaths
France 158,183 cases | 21,856 deaths
UK 143,464 cases | 19,506 deaths
໒꒱໒꒱໒꒱໒꒱໒꒱໒꒱໒꒱໒꒱໒꒱໒꒱໒꒱໒꒱໒꒱໒꒱໒꒱໒꒱໒꒱໒꒱໒꒱໒꒱໒꒱໒꒱໒꒱໒꒱
✺✺ figures as @ 0130 hrs EAT time, 25-Apr-2020
⋉ just over the last week the African continent experienced a sudden surge in infections, ‘Africa’s 43% jump in virus cases in 1 week worries experts’, (Gerard Zim Rae), ABC News, 23-Apr-2020, www.abcnews.go.com
⤱ although Russia did close its eastern border with China after the virus breakout
The act of assassination❈—be it for political, religious or financial motives—has been around for … I was going to say the entirety of human history, but we can be more precise now, thanks to scientific discoveries made in the 1990s. We can now say with some confidence … since the Chalcolithic period (the Copper Age).
The Tyrolean Iceman
Scientists in 1991 located the ice-preserved remains of a man (ascribed the name ‘Ötzi) in the Austrian-Italian Alps, believed to be the earliest victim of assassination… killed by an arrow ca 5,300 years ago [‘Preservation of 5300 year old red blood cells in the Iceman’, Journal of Royal Society Interface, (Marek Janko, Robert W Stark & Albert Zink), 02-May-2012, www.royalsocietypublishing.org].
⇧ Hasan-i-Sabbah
The ‘original’ Assassins
The deed was perpetrated for thousands of years before the term by which we known it, ‘assassination’, was coined. It derives from the 11th/12th centuries in the Middle East. The ‘Assassins’ were from a branch of the Nizari Ismail sect of Shi’a Islam. From a mountain fortress base in Persia (there were Assassins also active in Syria), under the cult’s leader Hasan-i-Sabbah, they targeted particular Seljuk Turkish rulers for assassination. When they turned their retribution to rulers of the Mongul Empire later, the group was hunted down and wiped out by the invading Monguls. The etymology of ‘assassins’ derives probably from the Egyptian Arabic, hashasheen, meaning “noisy people” or “trouble-makers”. An alternate but it seems erroneous explanation, propagated by the oriental explorer Marco Polo, among others, is that the term derived from hashiti, because of the (unfounded) belief that the Assassins committed their murders while under the influence of hashish [‘Hashshashin: The Assassins of Persia’, (Kallie Szczepanski), ThoughtCo, 19-Sep-2019, www.thoughtco.com].
⇧ Lee Harvey Oswald (the person-in-the-street’s image of the modern “lone wolf” assassin)
A continent mercifully spared the assassin’s vengeance
Assassination is one of the oldest tools of power politics, there are instances of it depicted in the Hebrew Bible (Old Testament) and world history is littered with assassinations of the famous—Philip of Macedon, Julius Caesar, Caligula, Thomas a’Becket, Abraham Lincoln, JFK, Mahatma Gandhi, Archduke Ferdinand, Leon Trotsky—as well as more obscure figures of power and influence [‘Assassination’, Wikipedia, http://en.m.wikipedia.org]. Interestingly, Australia is one the few parts of the world with a modern political structure that has largely escaped the universal spectre of political assassination. In the 120 years of Australia’s Federation there has been only two instances involving serving politicians, one successful and one not successful❒.
⇧ John Newman
“Australia’s first political assassination”
NSW Labor backbencher John Newman was pursuing an anti-crime, anti-drug campaign in his electorate in southwest Sydney, centring round the (then) criminal hotspot of Cabramatta. Newman earned the enmity of the local crime syndicate headed by a Vietnamese migrant club owner and was assassinated in his front driveway in 1994 [‘John Newman murder: Downfall of a merciless crime lord saved soul of Cabramatta’, (Mark Morri & Lachlan Thompson), Fairfield Advance, 03-Sep-2014].
⇧AA Calwell (Source: National Library of Australia)
Nearly 30 years earlier Australia’s leader of the opposition Arthur Calwell very nearly anticipated the Newman assassination. In 1966 Calwell was attending a rowdy rally at Mosman Town Hall debating conscription during the Vietnam War. As the Labor leader was leaving the event, a 19-year-old itinerant factory hand approached the car and fired a sawn-off .22 rifle from point-blank at Calwell✪. Fortunately for the opposition leader, the would-be assassin only succeeded in shattering the window glass which lacerated the politician’s chin. The assailant, Peter Raymond Kocan, whose background was characterised as that of a “casebook disturbed loner”, when questioned why he shot Calwell, responded that “he wanted to be remembered by history for killing somebody important” and that “he didn’t like (Calwell’s) politics” [‘Arthur Calwell and Peter Kocan’, Shane Maloney and Chris Grosz’, The Monthly, Aug 2007, www.themonthly.com.au].
⇧Peter R Kocan
At his trial, the press reporting took the “15 minutes of fame” line – portraying Kocan as a “coldly deranged Lee Harvey Oswald type…(determined) to kill to be famous, to rise above the nobodies of the world” [‘Pivotal chapter in Peter Kocan’s life’, The Age, 03-July-2004, www.theage.com.au]. But Kocan’s homicidal intent was not a political act or a rationally calculated one, rather it was the “distorted reasoning of a mind alienated, socially isolated and hyper-sensitively suggestible” [‘Portrait of a Loner’, Weekend Australian, (Murray Waldron), 03-July-2004].
Finding a calling in purgatory
Arthur Calwell made a full recovery from his superficial wounds but “died politically” soon after. His loss in the national elections later that year (the stodgy, charisma-free Calwell’s third unsuccessful tilt at winning the prime ministership) ended his leadership ambitions⌧. Kocan, described by his defence psychiatrist as a “borderline schizophrenic”, was declared criminally insane, receiving a life sentence and ended up spending a decade in a psychiatric prison at Morisset Hospital. Out of such bleak adversity Kocan found unexpected light and hope. A chance encounter with the poetry of Rupert Brooke at Morisset launched the failed assassin on a post-incarceration career path in which he transformed himself into an award-winning, published poet and novelist [Graham Freudenberg, ‘Calwell, Arthur Augustus (1896–1973)’, Australian Dictionary of Biography, Volume 13, (MUP), 1993].
≍≍≍≍≍≍≍≍≍≍≍≍≍≍≍≍≍≍≍≍≍≍≍≍≍≍≍≍≍≍≍≍≍
❈ “the act of deliberately killing someone especially a public figure, usually for hire or for political reasons”, Black’s Law Dictionary
❒ Thomas Ley, a minister of justice in a state National Party government of the 1920s may have been Australia’s first political assassin…a trail of murders, including of two of Ley’s political opponents, point an incriminating finger back to him (‘Thomas Ley’, Glebe Society, www.glebesociety.org.au)
✪ portentously, Calwell told the town hall meeting “you can’t defeat an ideal with a bullet”
⌧ although Calwell stubbornly hung on to the Labor leadership until replaced by his younger, dynamically visionary deputy Gough Whitlam in February 1967
Lockdown immediately, quarantine everyone, isolate the virus? Close the borders! Go hard, go fast! Make haste slowly! Laissez-faire? Test as many as you can! Watch and wait, hold off, preserve the economy, keep people working! Half/half?Herd immunity? As the experts—both recognised and putative—come out of the woodwork, a plethora of different approaches to the 21st century’s greatest crisis are thrown up, causing ever deeper descent into confusion for those of us watching from the sidelines.
Sweden: Personal responsibility to do the right thing, fingers and toes crossed
At one extreme there’s the “hands-off” non-interventionist line adopted by Sweden…”a relatively relaxed strategy, seemingly assuming that overreaction is more harmful than under-reaction” – in other words, keep calm and carry on. The Swedish government’s goal being to build up a “herd immunity” of the population to (they hope) forestall further waves of infection. The blueprint involves letting the virus spread slowly while sheltering the old and weakest elements of society until the bulk of the population become naturally immune. So schools, restaurants, bars and gyms remain open, all places that many other countries have ’hot-spotted’ as potential petri dishes (to use of the media’s current favourite buzzword in the virus crisis). Critics of the Swedish voluntary approach have stressed the risks it is exposing itself to – a danger of overwhelming the health system’s capability and precipitating large numbers of premature deaths [‘Inside Sweden’s Radically Different Approach to the Coronavirus’, (Bojan Pancevski), Wall Street Journal, 30-Mar-2020, www.wsj.com; ‘Sweden under fire for ‘relaxed’ coronavirus approach – here’s the science behind it’, The Conversation, (PW Frank& PM Nilsson), 30-Mar-2020, www.mamamia.com.au]. While Sweden persists in it’s “long game”, Sweden’s death toll from coronavirus has reached 239❈, a far-from-inconsequential figure for a small population nation like Sweden (and more than double the next highest total of fatalities in the Nordic region, that of Denmark). Not happy, Scandinavian neighbours of Sweden!
🔺 Boris in isolation – self-sacrificing crash-test dummyfor the nation, gauging the coronavirus level of virulence: “taking one for the nation!” (Picture: No 10 Downing Street/AFP)
Boris, not dancing
The UK government in the early stages of the crisis, along with the Netherlands, flirted with adopting Sweden’s herd immunity approach, but subsequently (and belatedly) opted for lockdown. The UK number of cases and mortality rates continue to rise alarmingly (2,352 dead❈) and it’s citizens can draw little reassurance from the antics of its erratic Conservative Party leader Boris Johnson. At the onset the insouciant Johnson downplayed the epidemic and declared that he was all for shaking hands with as many people as he could (his Churchillian bluff AKA confidence-building strategy?) This didn’t prove a good move, personally for the prime minister, as he was soon struck down with the virus (recalling wistfully whilst in self-quarantine that shaking hands with some people at a hospital, who with hindsight probably had coronavirus, probably wasn’t a good idea).
(Photo: AP)
China’s southern neighbours
Taiwan and Singapore both got early warning of the outbreak in China, which helped them get an early start on their countries’ protective measures. Taiwan, at the get-go, posted health workers at airports – incoming passengers from Wuhan (the virus’ origin-point) were checked for symptoms before they exited the planes. Singapore on January 3, inside four days of China’s notification to WHO of an unknown virus, which later was confirmed to be the COVID pathogen, was temperature screening passengers arriving from Wuhan. Taiwan and Singapore were also in a better state of preparedness (than say northern Asian countries bordering China like South Korea and Japan which initially struggled with their respective outbreaks) The two southeast Asian micro-states had learned invaluable lessons from the 2003 SARS and the 2009 swine epidemics. That the Singaporean and Taiwanese governments were upfront and transparent with the public, also got everyone in society quickly on board with the “national project”. The death toll for both Taiwan and Singapore stands well short of double figures❈ [‘How Taiwan and Singapore Have Contained the Coronavirus’, (Chloe Hadavas), Slate, 11-Mar-2020, www.slate.com].
(Photo: AP)
Continental contrast
The European comparison of how different countries have handled the virus focuses largely on a Germany v Italy correlation – unfortunately to the great disadvantage of the latter. Angela Merkel and Germany have been able to restrict their coronavirus fatalities thus far to 931❈, compared to Italy’s out-of-control, frighteningly catastrophic 13,155 deaths❈. The reasons for the size of discrepancy are manifold. First as with Taiwan Germany was ready at the outset, comparatively Italy wasn’t. Germany went to social distancing and lockdown early while Italy prevaricated, and Italy was also slow to seal it’s borders. Anticipation paid off for Germany, it had developed a favourable type of test for the virus before it hit. They then tested fast and widely. Italy was slower off the mark, and it’s testing regime was (and is) half or less that of Germany’s capacity. Integral to Germany’s edge is its medical infrastructure, the ratios are stark: Germany has 33.9 hospital beds for every 100,000 of population, cf. Italy, only 8.6 per 100,000. So, by the time Italy got its testing into full swing, the country was swamped with way too many corona-patients requiring critical and urgent treatment. Italy’s age demographic, skewed towards the geriatric end of the scale (second oldest population in the world after Japan) was also a decisive factor in the extremely high mortality rates it has experienced [‘How one country got months ahead of its neighbours in coronavirus fight’, (AP), Yahoo!News, 02-Apr-2020].
Life on Planet Trump
In the US a reasonable expectation the citizens of the world’s leading democratic-capitalist state might normally entertain in such a disastrous crisis, would be to have mature, insightful national leadership. Instead, they have Trump! Countless reems of pages of news-copy have been wasted on the US president, but to briefly summarise his Covid-19 performance: at the start in January we got the glib and blasé Trump – “the virus was one person coming from China and we’ve got it under control”; by February it was, we had “pretty much shut it down” (somehow he thought it was over before it had hardly started taking root!?!); next he opined “warm weather will kill it in April”; “the numbers are going down” (said after public health officials had advised the White House that the virus was spreading); by late February it was “we have lost nobody to coronavirus” (there had already been US fatalities). In March Trump, rebuked for repeatedly spreading misinformation, resorted to “it’s the Democrats’ new hoax”; then, “it will disappear one day – like a miracle!” which perhaps demonstrates one of Trump’s rare threads of consistency, drawing a link to the president’s later assertion (completely tone-deaf to the message of social distancing and ignorant of realistic timeframes) that he wanted to see the churches in America full at Easter!✪ [‘Coming Soon: Donald Trump As the Hero of COVID-19”, (Richard North Patterson), The Bulwark, 23-Mar-2020, www.thebulwurk.com].
🔺 Trump impersonating a giant bully rabbit (Photo: CBS News)
Perhaps the most striking and alarming example of Trump’s off-the-cuff and off-the-rails raves is his wilful and flagrant ignoring of the professional advice of his top medical advisers, eg, “anyone who wants a test can have one” (wrong); “we’ll have vaccines relatively soon…they’re coming” (even the non-scientific layperson knows it will take at least one to one-and-a-half years to be publicly available); “we have tremendous control of the virus”, completely contradicting Dr Fauci’s starkly realistic warning that the worst is ahead of us. The consequences of Trump’s disregarding scientific truths provided by medical experts in favour of convenient misinformation has been downright dangerous. His advocacy of an unproven coronavirus treatment (chloroquine phosphate) still being scientifically reviewed was a causal factor leading to the death of a man who tried to self-medicate using the ‘treatment’.
Trump, master of the ad hominem at the lectern, recently on TV seems bored with the subject, maybe looking round for a new focus (Iran?). Trump as president takes no responsibility. When he should be uniting all the key cogs in a coherent national response to the corona-crisis which is killing hundreds of Americans every day, he has been his divisive worst, brawling with the media, attacking medical workers for supposedly hoarding supplies, shifting blame to state governors. Fortunately, governors like New York’s Andrew Cuomo, California’s Gavin Newsom and Washington’s Jay Inslee, recognising the gaping gap in leadership and the lack of support coming from the White House, have risen to the mammoth and increasingly desperate challenge facing the country and taken the lead in the crisis [‘History’s verdict on Trump will be devastating’, (Michael D’Antonio), CNN, 30-Mar-2020, www.cnn.com].
(Photo: Jeff Gritchen, Orange County Register/SCNG)
The “Trump of the Tropics”
Trump’s abject performance, his “epochal incompetence” (to quote Michael D’Antonio), in the crisis, is bad enough for the risks he has exposed Americans to, but his influence as a “role model” for far-right leaders in other countries, is helping to undermine those countries’ fight against the virus. One such leader is Brazil’s authoritarian president Jair Bolsonaro who expresses profound admiration for Trump (hence his nickname above), whose skepticism for the virus’ threat Bolsonaro mirrors. Bolsonaro has publicly dismissed the coronavirus as “a little cold”, refuses to isolate and continues to attend public events, irresponsibly mingling with crowds of his supporters, shaking hands with all❖. Bolsonaro, like Trump, has tended to “flip-flop” on the epidemic, lunging erratically from urging Brazilians to show caution in avoiding transmission of the disease (do as I say, not do as I do!) to calling for an end to the quarantine restrictions and removal of the shackles on the economy.
When confronted with the danger of the virus to Brazilian society, Bolsonaro rivals Trump in loopy explanations, eg, Brazilians possess a “natural immunity” which means that they cannot be infected by diseases❅ (part of the Bolsonaro fantasy playbook!) So far, despite these unique ‘antibodies’ claimed by Bolsonaro, some 244 Brazilians have died from coronavirus❈. The Brazilian president has also exhibited the Trump trait of disbelieving the medical experts and the official statistics. When São Paulo recorded a sharp spike in deaths from the virus, Bolsonaro was quick to cast doubts on the numbers. The governors of São Paulo and Rio are two of the most vocal critics of his lax approach to the crisis, in return Bolsonaro blames the state governors for their concerted measures to halt the disease, labelling their efforts ‘criminal’ [‘Brazil’s Bolsonaro makes life-or-death coronavirus gamble’, (David Biller), Sydney Morning Herald, 29-Mar-2020, www.smh.com.au].
🔺 Bolsonaro, unsafe at any distance?
Some analysts have noted the element of political calculation in Bolsanaro’s hard line on the epidemic. The Brazilian leader’s may feel that if he can take the economy (still feeling the severe effects of the 2015/16 recession) to the next elections in good health, the voters may be less concerned about the country’s death toll from coronavirus (David Biller). Mexico’s president, López Obrador, is singing from a similar hymn-sheet as Bolsonaro. Obrador contends that the severity of the virus has been overstated, and has been quoted as saying that personally he would rely on his (lucky) amulets to keep him safe [‘In Brazil and Mexico, Leaders Downplay Dangers of Virus Outbreak’, Latino USA, 26-Mar-2020, www.latinousa.org].
🔺 President Lukashenko, national leader, sportsman, tractor enthusiast
Belarus, 2020 global sporting capital
Belarus president Alexander Lukashenko is another head of state professing an admiration for the US president and similarities in style can be observed. Lukashenko has launched the small East European country on a novel path to (supposedly) combat the deadly virus – a cocktail of sport, cold, vodka and saunas. The Belarus government has vetoed lockdowns and social isolation to counter coronavirus, and it is just about the only place in the world that hasn’t discontinued sporting events. The Tokyo Olympics have been canned for 2020 but crowds still flock to football matches in Belarus. The remarkable leader himself, leading by example, recently participated in an ice hockey game. Likewise, the annual victory parade scheduled for May is still all systems go! In addition to spruking sport (and would you believe, “tractor-riding” in the countryside⊞) as antidotes to the virus, the Belarusian president recommends drinking vodka and taking saunas, whilst reassuring Belarusian citizens that God will protect the country from the global pandemic, adding the rider that Belarus’ icy cold climate will also do the job [‘“Reckless” World Leader says vodka and saunas will protect people from coronvirus’, (James Hawkins), The Mirror, 30-Mar-2020, www.mirror.co.uk].
Postscript: Crisis climate – encroaching on democratic rights?
While the pandemic continues to rage, the politics don’t abate. All countries trying to restrict the movements of their citizens have enacted emergency measures to try to confine the pathogen. Most countries have closed their borders and some have legislated the power to detain people. The fear for advocates of civil liberties is that the more authoritarian states may use the new arrangements to move towards martial law. Regimes cross the globe have enacted new powers, ostensibly to protecting the public, but at the same time with the effect of protecting themselves from public and press scrutiny and accountability [‘”Coronavirus” profound threat to democracy’, (Noah Millman), The Week, 01-Apr-2020, www.theweek.com]. In Hungary the right-wing Orbán government has suspended existing laws, by-passing the parliament to allow president Viktor Orbán to rule by decree (with no end date). Thailand has taken the opportunity to censor the nation’s news media (suing and intimidating journalists who criticise the government’s handling of the crisis). Turkmenistan has taken the unusual approach to the pandemic of banning all use of the word ‘coronavirus’ by it’s citizens and state-controlled media✧. According to Radio Free Europe‘s Turkmenistan watch group, people talking about the virus or wearing masks in public could be arrested by the authoritarian regime which claims to have had no confirmed cases of the virus…as Turkmenistan shares a border with coronavirus-ravaged Iran this claim is viewed from outside with extreme skepticism. President Berdymukhamedov✜, not to be outdone for whacky coronavirus remedies, has recommended inhaling smoke from a burning desert-region plant (Vanguard) [’For Autocrats and Others, Coronavirus Is a Chance to Grab Even More Power’, (Selma Gebrekidian), New York Times, 30-Mar- 2020, www.nytimes.com; ‘Coronavirus: The unusual ways countries are managing lockdowns’, BBC News, 01-Apr-2020, www.bbc.co.uk].
🔻 President Berdymukhamedov, safe distancing not on the agenda here! (Photo: AFP/Igor SAFIN)
<╍╍╍╍╍╍╍╍╍╍╍╍╍╍╍╍╍╍^╍╍╍╍╍╍╍╍╍╍╍╍╍╍╍╍╍╍╍>
❈ as at 1000 hours, Greenwich M-T, 02-Apr-2020
◘ faced with an overwhelming dose of reality, “Flip-Flop Man” Trump has been forced to pivot 180° away from this…now the White House is acknowledging the health authorities’ dire, nightmarish predictions, (‘US predicts up to 240,000 deaths even with social distancing’, ABC News, 01-Apr-2020, www.abc.net.com.au)
✪ the secular and materialistic lifestyle Trump follows, nay revels in, contrasts conspicuously with the image he tries to sow in the minds of the American public and especially the Religious Right, of him as piously religious
❖ Bolsonaro himself has apparently tested twice for coronavirus but won’t publish the results – transparent governance at its finest!
❅ including the notorious assertion by Bolsonaro that they “can swim in raw sewerage and not catch a thing” – in effect this is what he is doing to Brazilians with his cavalier policy
⊞ the Belarusian president was quoted as saying: “There, the tractor will heal everyone. The fields heal everyone.” (tractors are apparently something of a fetish item in Belarus!)(‘Belarusian president proposes ‘tractor’ therapy for coronavirus’, Vanguard, 16-Mar-2020, www.vanguardngr.com)
✧ Turkmenistan is ranked by Paris-based RSF (Reporters Without Borders) as the country with the least press freedom in the world
✜ Berdymukhamedov has an exalted status in Turkmenistan, being seen as the Arkadag (protector of the people)
I remember where I first heard about the Weatherman, or as they later came to be called, the Weather Underground (Organisation). Some time during the 1970s I was thumbing through the pages of the 1973-74 edition of Pears Cyclopaedia❈ and came across an entry on this oddly named group subsumed under the section on “Ideas and Beliefs”…the meteorological sounding nametriggered my curiosity. As the Pears editornoted of the name: a “rather incongruous name for the most radical and volatile of the many groups making up the so-called ‘underground’inthe United States of America“⊡.
What most struck the editor about the phenomenon was that“the Weathermenappear(ed) to be largely drawn from the highly intelligent and well-educated strata…well-to-do, academic backgrounds”, something Pears opined to be “sinister and ominous” (a hint toward class betrayal perhaps?). The entry goes on to explore a classic conspiracy theory, the “fantastic speculation, widely held in America” that “the Weathermen are in reality financed and backed by the country’s extreme right—as a means of discrediting in the public eye the slow but steady move toward socialism that seems to be developing there”(?!?). The Pears writer adds a coy reference to one of the leaders of the group (unnamed), “an attractive and dynamic woman university lecturer (who in 1970) was placed on the FBI’s notorious ‘most wanted criminals’ list”✥.
(Source: Yale University)
The origins of the Weather Underground lie in the tumultuous politics of Sixties America—the emergence of the “New Left” and the “Counterculture”, the struggle for civil rights and the growing anti-war movement of those disaffected by the growing catastrophe of Vietnam. Students for a Democratic Society (SDS) had assumed the mantle of leadership of the “youth rebellion” in America and of the anti-war movement. The Weathermen, dissatisfied with the SDS’s limited, reformist approach to curing the ills of modern capitalist society (with its emphasis on disruption and non-violent student demonstrations), split off from the SDS, who they labelled “movement creeps”, in 1969. After the Chicago “Days of Rage” riot, the Weathermen determined on a new, direct and revolutionary approach to changing a society that they avowed hatred for.
Bombed interior of Capitol (Wash DC) (Photo: Washington Post) 🔻
1970 was the year that domestic terrorism embarked on a rapid upward trajectory in the US. The catalyst for the Weathermen adopting a more extreme line was Nixon’s escalation of the Vietnam War into Laos and Cambodia and the Kent State student murders. The fringe policos went underground and turned ‘outlaws’. “Declaring war on the United States”✪, the network operating in small clandestine cells launched a series of bomb attacks on targeted sites—police stations, court houses, military installations, banks, the Capitol and Pentagon buildings in Washington DC, etc. Weather Underground attached the tag-line “bringing the war back home” to this serious switch of tactics.
1971, the assault on the “Amerikan war machine” continues
The following year brought no let-up by the Weather arsonists and incendiaries. The International Association of Chiefs of Police declared 1971 the worst year for bombings in US history. Despite causing such upheaval, the Weathermen failed abjectly to achieve any of their avowed aims [Daniels, Stuart. “The Weathermen.”Government and Opposition, vol. 9, no. 4, 1974, pp.430-459. JSTOR,www.jstor.org/stable/44482282. Accessed 14 Jan. 2020].
A giant fail
The Weather faction (WUO) failed for a multiplicity of reasons fundamentally arising out of a muddled understanding of how to effectively use political discontent to build a mass movement. The Weathermen aspired to be the revolutionary vanguard to lead the revolution that overthrew US imperialism and capitalist society. Yet it laid none of the groundwork necessary to achieve it! WUO established no popular support base for its leadership and it stayed numerically small, a “Prairie Fire” that failed to ignite!₪
Finally, in 1974, the folly of this omission was recognised within Weather and some members tried to re-orient the organisation to a policy focused on wooing the American working class. The hardliners in WUO however resisted and predictably clung to the old guerrilla war tactics, with the result of a splintering and further weakening of Weather [‘How the Weather Underground Failed at Revolution and Still Changed the World’, (Arthur M Eckstein), Time, (02-Nov-2016), http://time.com].
Rather than the Weathermen’s actions and tactics leading to a crystallisation of the (new) left in America as a cohesive force, its recourse to the nihilism of violence, the pattern of random bombings, alienated it from other sections of the far left such as SDS (Daniels). The greatest damage of the group’s bombings in fact was a self-inflicted one, when three of the Weathermen accidentally blew themselves up in a Greenwich Village townhouse in 1970⊕.
🔺 Scene of the WUO terrorists’ backfiring bomb (Source: Bettmann/GettyImages)
The middle-class dilemma
The Weathermen were essentially middle-class kids who took inspiration from grass-roots radicalsand authentic working class militants like the Black Panthers. Therefore, they knew that to be taken seriously they needed to lose the bourgeois tag, to ‘declass’ themselves (to use Michael Miles’ term). Hodgdon has suggested that they were motivated partly by the “guilt arising from members’ acute consciousness of their own white privilege” [Hodgdon, Tim. Journal for the Study of Radicalism, vol. 1, no. 2, 2007, pp. 144–146. JSTOR,www.jstor.org/stable/41887583. Accessed 14 Jan. 2020]. The outcome was a resort to high focus violence by WUO which it equated with the demonstration of revolutionary commitment. Ultimately, violence became a habitual self-indulgence for the Weathermen. Fascinated with the idea of terrorism per se, their actions became more anarchic and nihilistic and only served to further isolate them from Middle America (Daniels).
Weather logo 🔺
A junket of romance and fantasy
Studentsof the WUO phenomena have noted how remarkably detached the group was from the realities of contemporary USA. Exhibiting a romantic view of Third World Liberation Movements, importing the urban-guerrilla tactics of the Tupamoros of Uruguay, of whom the Weathermen were only ever pale imitations. For ideological underpinnings, the Weathermen cherrypicked from Marxist political theory (Mao, Guevara, Marighella, Debray, etc) to forge a blueprint for extreme militant action. The often immature and at times infantile Weather members revelled in their status as deviants in society…and in their notoriety as politicised “bad-boy rock stars” of crime. Clearly, more than a few of the members gained a huge thrill from being publicly portrayed as fugitives, enemies of the state [‘”Prairie Fire” Memories’, (Jonah Raskin), Tablet, 18-Jul-2019, www.tabletmag.com].
🔺 The character “Mark Slackmeyer” in Garry Trudeau’s ‘Doonesbury’ comicis based on Weatherman Mark Rudd
Their ready resort to acts of violence was one manifestation of this, as was their indulgence in drug-taking (wholeheartedly embracing LSD and ‘grass’) and “free love” as integral to what they saw as liberating themselves from the strictures of a rigid and corrupt society (Daniels).
PostScript:WeatherUnderground, fade to black
Having failed to make the slightest dint on the fortress of the American political and economic elite, the Weathermen reduced their bombing acts after 1971 and continued to scale back through the rest of the seventies. The Weather Underground lingered on for several years before eventually petering out. This however did not stop the FBI from pursuing the home-grown terrorists long after they had ceased to be active. As Eckstein noted, the FBI’s responses to the Weather phenomena had caused the Bureau embarrassment. The FBI, the nation’s chief law enforcement organisation, continued to get them wrong…initially they underestimated Weather’s seriousness as a hostile element, then they overestimated its effectiveness. The FBI persisted with a misreading of their strength, thinking there were around 1,000 Weathermen guerrillas at large in the US, overstating the reality by a factor of ten. The FBI also illegally botched the evidence against the group so none of the Weathermen could be prosecuted for conspiring to bomb government buildings [‘The Americans who declared war on their country’, (Mark Honigsbaum), The Guardian, (21-Sep-2003), www.theguardian.com ; Eckstein, Time; ‘Bad Moon Rising’, AM Eckstein, www.yalebooks.yale.edu].
❈ an annual British publication (first published 1897, now discontinued), a one-volume compendium of general and specialised knowledge in a select number of different fields
⊡ the original name, ‘Weatherman’, was taken from the lyric of a 1960s Bob Dylan song
✥ Bernadine Dohrn – who with Bill Ayers, Mark Rudd, Jeff Jones,Trevor Robbins, Kathy Boudin, Karen Ashley, Howie Machtinger and John Jacobs, founded the Weathermen. Jonah Raskin points out that a significant number of the members were, like him, Jewish (Raskin). Dohrn also headed up a Women’s Brigade within WUO
✪ a ‘symbolic’ war as Todd Gitlin described it
₪ Prairie Firewas the name of WUO’s 1976 published political statement, and a metaphor that the organisation was fond of using (eg, “a single spark can start a prairie fire”)
⊕ the three WUO bomb assemblers were the only victims of Weathermen bomb explosions as the group always forewarned the target locations so that humans could be evacuated from the spot in time
Canadian political philosopher John Ralston Saul is the secular high-priest of doubters and cynics, a non-believer in “the gospel” of the modern corporate state, constantly debunking the conventional wisdoms offered up as “absolute truths” in Western society✲. Therefore, it comes as no surprise that Saul would produce a guidebook for other secular agnostics. Wedged between his treatises on his personal philosophy ‘superstar’ Voltaire, his studies of modern Canadian society and his excursions into the realm of fiction, is JR Saul’s The Doubter’s Companion, or to give it his full title:
The Doubter’s Companion: A Dictionary of Aggressive Common Sense (Viking, 1994)¹
Although Saul calls his volume “a dictionary”, the term applies more to the book’s format (utilising the standard A-Z form of the dictionary) than to its content or purpose. The Companion goes on to define Dictionary as “Opinion presented as truth in alphabetical order”. And Answers are merely “a mechanism for avoiding questions”. Saul decries the trajectory of modern dictionaries and language (which have been captured by the forces of a rational orthodoxy), yearning instead for a return to the Humanist dictionaries of the 18th century (Voltaire, Diderot, Johnson, etc)².
When I first delved into The Doubter’s Companion (around 1995), my mind took me to that other great cynic’s dictionary of the early 1900s, Ambrose Bierce’s The Devil’s Dictionary. Both works, albeit very different books, are idiosyncratically unconventional takes on language and meaning in their respective societies, and both proffer a contrarian view of the established wisdom of the day. Both Saul and Bierce are provocateurs, each with their own personal axe to grind⁌.
The Doubter’s Companion, by its polemical nature is unequivocally meant to shake up orthodox thinking (TDC was described by one reader as “an abecedarium of subversion”). The dictionary form of the book is a device Saul employs to launch into short philosophical essays on topics about modern post-industrial society that concern him—corporatism, individualism, leadership and managerialism, freedom of expression, communication, public relations, advertising and the way language is distorted to control communications (see his definition of ‘ideology’). In so doing, Saul skewers the accepted veracity of many of the words, phrases and terms you will find in today’s dictionaries.
And as it is an instruction manual to help doubters navigate their way through a linguistic maze of (in Saul’s opinion) mis-defined terms, the central tenet is thus affirmed:
Doubt: The only human activity capable of controlling the use of power in a positive way. Doubt is central to understanding.
Wisdom: The purpose of doubt … wisdom is life with uncertainty, the opposite of power or ideology.
Ideology: Tendentious arguments which advance a world view as absolute truth in order to win and hold political power.
The Corporate executive “is not a capitalist but a technocrat in drag”.
Economics is “the romance of truth through measurement”.
Level playing field: An ideological abstraction adopted as a universal value by the management of large corporations.
Saul the provocateur infuses the dictionary with a regular diet of “outrageous statements and provocations”:
Marxist: The only serious functioning Marxists left in the West are the senior managers of large, usually transnational corporations.
Neo-Conservatives are the Bolsheviks of the Right (“the exact opposite of a conservative”).
Modern (that should be “post-modern”) fads of intellectual thinking such as Deconstructionism get short shrift from Saul:
Deconstructionism: Can also be seen as a school of light comedy.
Calm: A state of emotion which is overrated except in religious retreats. Calmness for Saul has a decidedly political connotation today, “it is used to control people who are dissatisfied with the way those in authority are doing their job”✬.
Public relations: A negative form of imagination. In Mussolini’s phrase, “invention is more useful than truth”.
Saul savages that that most universal institution of American fast food, MacDonalds:
A Big Mac: The communion wafer of consumption. (Itis) not really food but the promise of food.
He goes on sardonically to bracket it with “Perrier, one of the last sacred objects of the leading philosophical school of the late-twentieth century—public relations”…one of Saul’s greatest bête noires.
Elsewhere, in a similar vein, he brands Ronald McDonald as a “Post-modern philosopher”…the “face and voice of consumer culture”.
Contemporary education doesn’t escape a broadside from Saul, especially the American form:
SAT: A system of standardized American college entry exams designed to nurture and reward functional illiteracy.
Universities find themselves in Saul’s cross-hairs as well. Within the “exclusive territories” of the university that knowledge is divided into, the principal occupation of academics is “to invent dialects sufficiently hermetic to prevent knowledge from passing between territories”.
Happy Hour is “a depressing comment on the rest of the day”.
At different points Saul diverts momentarily from his philosophical musings to give historical clarification on certain pertinent terms of interest to him. Having defined Depression as “a form of economic disaster common throughout history”, he goes on to contend that “in 1973 the word was deleted from all Western languages and replaced by the term recession”, a softer word which in Saul’s mind allows economists to maintain the myth of appearing to “manage real situations”. The author expands his point: “to admit to the existence of anything as uncontrollable as a depression would be to admit failure”.
The book’s dictionary entries allow space for brief commentaries on individuals from the pages of history who attract Saul’s interest. These are usually philosopher-figures but not always. He has an interesting take on the great turn-of-the-century novelist Joseph Conrad, “The essential modern writer…demonstrated that the novel could have a third century of relevance if the story was transformed into metaphysics disguised as reality”.
Sigmund Freud, who in America would be described as the “father of shrinks”, gets a guernsey in the dictionary, albeit a cynical and disparaging reference – “a man so dissatisfied with his own mother and father that he devoted his life to convincing everyone who would just listen—or better still, talk—that they’re parents were just as bad”.
Air Conditioning: An efficient means for spreading disease in enclosed public spaces.
Muzak: A public noise neither requested nor listened to by individuals. It is the descendant of a school of public relations invented by the Nazis.
For one so articulately cynical of human nature, politics, economics, most things in the modern world (except of course doubt), Saul’s definition of that attitudinal standpoint seems contradictory:
Cynicism: An effective social mechanism for preventing communication.
Pessimism on the other hand is “a valuable protection against quackery”. More beneficial than ‘scepticism’ “which slips easily into cynicism and so becomes a self-defeating negative force”.
Whereas Optimism to Saul is double-edged. When applied to oneself it is “a pleasant and sometime useful distraction” to reality, but “when encouraged as a social attitude … it is the public tool of scoundrels and ideologues” (as is patriotism).
World Class: A phrase used by provincial cities and second-rate entertainment and sports events … to assert they are not provincial or second-rate, thereby confirming that they are.
Saul includes in the alphabetical list a number of surprising and disparate entries for a reference book on philosophical common sense. These include Ants (Saul makes the unexpected and unverified statement that the members of the Formicidae family of eusocial insects “do nothing 71.5 per cent of the time”)⊡; Apple (the fruit not the corporation); Armpits (which is curiously cross-referenced to Reality); Nannyism (not sure why this topic warranted nine paragraphs and over 400 words but Saul interweaves a discourse on Margaret Thatcher, bullying and sex appeal into the entry); Urban weather patterns (wtf?); White bread (“the sophisticated product of a civilization taken to its logical conclusion … continually refined until all utility has been removed”).
Among the many asides Saul offers an interesting reflection on the city-state of Venice – he declares it “the original model of modern dictatorship, in which commercial power finds its cultural expression in painting, architecture and music … (but not) language”. And on Benito Mussolini: “the nascent modern Heroic leader (who) combined corporatism, public relations and sport together, while replacing public debate and citizen participation with false popularism and the illusion of direct democracy”.
JRS humorous and glib
The philosopher’s serious message aside, Saul produces a regular line of humorous explanations of terms, some of these are dazzlingly economic epigrams or bon mots:
Museums: Safe storage for stolen objects.
Cosmetic surgery: Cosmetic perjury.
Biography: A respectable form of pornography.
Other descriptors and definitions however are quite glib:
René Descartes is thus presented “gave credibility to the idea that the mind exists separately from the body, which suggests he didn’t look down while writing” [ba-dum-tss!].
Anorexia: A condition aspired to by most middle-class women (a subject taken much more medically serious today!).
JRS’s extensive catalogue of pet bugbears include ideology (and ideologues), applied corporatism, applied civilisation, conventional wisdom, , economic determinism, technocrats, absolute truth and certainty, dry, sectarian ‘definitions’, rigid scholasticism and structure, superstition, public relations and advertising.
Footnote: it’d be interesting to see an update of the Companion. A chance to find out what the perspicacious John Ralston Saul makes of early 21st century concepts such as social media, iPhones, fake news, drones. climate change deniers and the nanny state, to name just a handful.
╰━━⋅𖥔⋅━━✶━━⋅𖥔⋅━━⋅𖥔⋅━━✶━━⋅𖥔⋅━━✶━━⋅𖥔⋅━━✶━━⋅𖥔⋅━━╯
✲ whether that be from the left or right
⁌ though where Bierce is acerbic, Saul is out and out incendiary
✬ adding the rider that “calm incompetence” has risen to become a quality of high professionalism”
⊡ in case this isn’t enough on the subject, JRL follows up with an entry for ant-eaters (Myrmecophaga Jubata)
¹ Amazon‘s “dust-jacket” review summarises the book as full of “renegade opinions”; (it) uses “guerrillalexicography to reclaim public language from stultifying dialects of modern expertise”
² ‘Doubter’s Companion’, www.freelistbooks.com
⏏³⁴⁵⁶⁷⁸⁹⁰⏏
▓▓▓▓▓▓▓▓▓▓▓▓
✲ whether that be from the left or right
⁌ though where Bierce is acerbic, Saul is out and out incendiary
✬ adding the rider that “calm incompetence” has risen to become a quality of high professionalism”
⊡ in case this isn’t enough on the subject, JRL follows up with an entry for ant-eaters (Myrmecophaga Jubata)
𖥶𖥶𖥶𖥶𖥶𖥶𖥶𖥶𖥶𖥶𖥶𖥶𖥶𖥶𖥶𖥶
¹ Amazon‘s “dust-jacket” review summarises the book as full of “renegade opinions”; (it) uses “guerrillalexicography to reclaim public language from stultifying dialects of modern expertise”
Vladivostok, the principal city and port of Far Eastern Russia, is nearly 4,000 miles from the Russian Federation’s capital, Moscow, yet it is only some 830 miles from China’s capital, Beijing. That stark fact of geography goes a good way to explaining the Russian Far East’s destiny. The inhospitable remoteness of the wild East from the capital of Russia, be it under empire, union or federation, has in its history never been until very recently❉ in the forefront of the minds of the country’s political leaders.
RFE today: the demographics
Russian: Дальний Восток России/ Dal’niy Vostok Rossi (trslit. Russian), literally “The distant East of Russia”.
Where exactly is it? The Russian Far East is a vast region within the world’s largest single-state political entity; roughly RFE extends from Eastern Siberia and Lake Baikal through to the Pacific coastline.
Area: 6,952,000 kms (comprising 40.6% of all the Russia territory)
Population according to the 2010 Census: 6.3 million (constituting a population scarcity of less than one person per square kilometre).
Composition: the majority are ethnic Russians and Ukrainians, with traditional indigenous and other ethnic minorities – including Mongols and Buryats, Aleuts and Inuits, Chukotko-Kamchatkan peoples, Koryats, Turkic peoples, Korean people (Koryo Saram).
Political division: RFE comprises four oblasts, three krais, an autonomous okrug (Chukotia) and the Sakha Republic⚛️.
Historical background
The Russian Empire, emerging out of its tentative, early Moscovy origins, was not quick to explore (and eventually conquer) the regions to the east of the Russian heartland. Exploration of the area got its impetus and propulsion under the rule of Ivan the Terrible (Tsar Ivan IV) in the late 16th century. Cossack Hetman Ermak’s 1581 victory over the Khanate of Sibir led to other eastern expeditions by other Russian atamans and ultimately to the defeat of the other khanates (the Golden Horde) and the incorporation of their lands under the Russian imperial banner. Aside from empire-building, the Russians were motivated by the mystique that had attached itself to the Asian hinterlands to the east, the reported vast quantities of wealth thought to be on the other side of the Kamen (a traditional name for the Urals)[‘Meeting of Frontiers: Siberia, Alaska and the American West’, (Library of Congress project), www.frontiers.loc.gov].
The image many hold of Sibir
Once the explorers and the conquerors had established the territory in the name of the tsar, the trappers, traders and merchants followed in their footsteps, populating the enormous reaches of Siberia. The promyshelenniki typified these pioneers, the frontiersmen who harvested and distributed the lucrative fur trade, much sought after by the European market. Finally, in 1639, the Russians reached the Pacific at the Sea of Okhotsk with Ivan Moskvitin’s expedition [ibid.].
Yakutsk (capital of Yakutia)
Yakutia, a land with a grim past to match its climate
Yakutia in RFE’s north, today the Sakha Republic (Coordinates: 66°24’N 129°10’E), (not to be confused with the Sakhalin Oblast comprising the Sakhalin and Kuril Islands) achieved legendary notoriety during the Soviet era. Described as “a prison without bars”, Yakutia was the location of somewhere in the region of 105 to 165 of Stalin’s Gulags. Between 1930 and 1950 the Soviets operated brutal forced-labour camps where many victims of Stalin’s autocracy were tasked with building the USSR’s infrastructure in conditions that were intolerable harsh and unbearable cold (arctic permafrost, frozen tundra, etc)⊙.
Contemporary Yakutia typifies the dilemma of RFE. The present government’s commitment to developing RFE is viewed with cynicism by most in the Sakha Republic. The town of Mirny (37,000 inhabitants) is the unofficial diamond capital of Russia, 25% of the world’s commercially mined diamonds are found here❂. In addition the region is blessed with ample deposits of gold and coal. Another more niche commodity found below ground in the republic are the bones of prehistoric woolly mammoths – many of which find a ready home on the black market [‘Left Behind in Russia’s Far East’, (Dmitriy Frolovskiy, The Diplomat, 24-Jul-2019, www.thediplomat.com].
Yakutia locals see the development priorities and benefits accruing from the new emphasis on the RFE differently to that of Moscow. In their eyes the increased wealth extracted from the region goes one way only – back to the centre. This has deepened Yukutians’ sense of isolation from “the mainland” (as the locals sometimes call the rest of Russia). Notwithstanding that the Republic of Sakha is critically underpopulated (around 1M residents in an area of 3,103,200 sq km), many locals also express dissatisfaction with the federal government’s recent attempts to bolster the depleted population of RFE with new intakes of migrants, largely from the ‘Stans’ of Central Asia’ [ibid.].
Norilsk, another ‘Gulagtown’ trying to live down its past
Current day Norilsk is overshadowed by a similar back storyto Yakutia’s gulag towns…a remote location in Krasnoyarsk Krai, also supra-Arctic Circle, with no roads or rail lines into the city. Norilsk-Talnakh contains the largest-known deposits of nickel-copper-palladium in the world. In the days of Stalin’s “campaign of terror” Norilsk was “a node in the network of similar camps that Alexandr Solzhenitsyn (described) in the Gulag Archipelago” [‘Norilsk: The remote Russian mining town uneasy about its gulag past’, (Tom Parfitt), The Times, 06-May-2018, www.thetimes.co.uk].
Norilsk Golgotha, a monument to the city’s gulag prisoners
Repopulating RFEwith Eastern Ukrainians
Ukrainians have been (forcibly) resettled in Siberia and RFE since the 17th century. In the formative years after the Russian Revolution of 1917, Ukrainians resettled in the area known as Zeleny Klyn◚(sometimes also called Transcathay) tried to secede from the newly established Bolshevik Far Eastern Republic and create their own Eastern Russian entity, Green Ukraine. Fast-forward to 2016, President Vladimir Putin, in the wake of Russia’s annexation of Crimea, launched a Ukrainian resettlement program, voluntary this time with inducements of free land in underpopulated northern towns like Igarka for refugees from East Ukraine [‘Green Ukraine’, Wikipedia, http://en.m.wikipedia.org; ‘Meeting of Frontiers’, loc.cit.]. The free land carrot had already been offered to Russians living in the Federation to migrate to the Far East.
The follow-up second part of my Russian Far East blog piece will deal in more detail with contemporary developments in RFE including Putin’s desire and strategy to turn the region into an economic powerhouse, and the vexing question of foreign investment in RFE, especially that of China.
◧◨◩◪◧◨◩◪◧◨◩◪◧◨◩◪◧◨◩◪◧◨◩◪◧◨◩◪◧◨◩◪
❉ the current and greatly enhanced interest shown by the ultra-nationalistic Putin government in Russia’s Far East will be more thoroughly addressed in Part 2 of this blog
⚛️ oblasts, krais and okrugs are terms for administrative divisions with a fair degree of elasticity, although okrug is sometimes rendered as ‘district’ (raion)
⊙ known to get down to temperatures of -70° Celsius
❂ the ALROSA group of companies accounts for 95% of the country’s diamond production and dominates the Russian Far East’s economy◚literally “thegreen wedge”
Life can only be understood backwards, but it must be lived forwards.
~ Søren Kierkegaard
㊗⎋㊙⎋㊗
On the 17th of this month US film actress with a social conscience Marsha Virginia Hunt turned 100, joining the illustrious company of Olivia de Havilland and Kirk Douglas – a trio of Hollywood film centenarians all still alive! (Libby and the dimpled Kirk both reached their triple figure milestones during 2016).
(Photo: Mansfield News Journal)
Adulation for Marsha’s momentous achievement haven’t reached the stratospheric fanfare, the hype and media attention of Kirk Douglas’ 100th bash last December or of that of another Hollywood mainstay, Bob Hope. Of course it would not be expected, Marsha has never achieved the limelight that those other centenarian luminaries demanded in their Hollywood careers. She was a serious actress but never got the star ‘creds’ that others in the business did☸…but the elusiveness of stardom for Marsha wasn’t down to a shortfall in her acting ability – rather the explanation for this lay in the intervention of external factors which were to impact on her career.
Marsha does Jane Austen
Ms Hunt’s film career from its start in the Thirties looked promising, but in the super-charged, competitive stakes for the glamour female roles she came close without ever quite clasping the big prize…especially in 1939 when she tested impressively for the much sort-after part of Melanie in Gone With The Wind but narrowly lost out to (fellow centenarian) Olivia de Havilland. The following year Hunt did score a supporting role in the prestigious period movie Pride and Prejudice starring Laurence Olivier.
After World War II the grubby, gutter politics of McCarthyism dealt a savage blow to Marsha Hunt’s career…as it did to numerous other Hollywood liberals during that time when it was the fashion de jour in America to go full-throttle after citizens who were merely alleged or implied to be communists (truly a “Dark Age of guilty until proven innocent” witch-hunts!) For a fuller account of Hunt’s story see my earlier blog on this site (June 2014) Marsha Hunt, Lifelong Social Activist: Not your Average Hollywood Role Model.
With her reputation unfairly besmirched (tantamount to no more than implicit guilt by association!), Hunt was punished by being inexorably squeezed out of the Hollywood film mainstream. Potential parts in A-movies disappeared and the public saw her relegated to B-pictures and eventually to television and theatre (few good roles in theatrical movies came her way after 1947, the 1948 film noirRaw Deal and the much later Johnny Got His Gun (1971) were rare exceptions for the Chicago-born actress).
Marsha Hunt today
After being blacklisted by HUAC in 1950 after having made around 50 films since 1935, Hunt only featured in three films during the next eight years [‘Marsha Hunt (actress, born 1917)’, Wikipedia, http://en.m.wikipedia.org]. By the Fifties and Sixties Hunt was finding work only easy to find in television – in a minor-note series Peck’s Bad Girl and in numerous guest roles on Zane Grey Theater, The Twilight Zone and so on ad infinitum.
Marsha Hunt: Life lived forwards…
After her semi-retirement in 1960 Hunt stepped up her active involvement in progressive causes including support for same-sex marriage, ending global poverty, raising awareness of climate change and promoting peace in Third World countries [Memos, Roger C. (October 17, 2014). “Honoring Actress – Activist Marsha Hunt on her 97th Birthday!”. Sherman Oaks, California: Patch.com. Archived from the original on August 10, 2017. Retrieved May 14, 2016]
In a series of interviews last week in honour of her 100th birthday Miss Hunt reflected on her career and on the missed stardom, which seemed to have touched her but only lightly. Hunt merely remarked of her Hollywood years that she was grateful for being allowed to be an actress and show her versatility on the screen✳…or as she put it in her characteristically humble, unassuming way, she is “a grateful girl of 100!” [J Kinser, ‘Marsha Hunt at 100: The Actress Recalls the Blacklist, Film Noir and Being Cast in Gone With a The Wind‘, Movie Maker, 13-Oct-2017, www.moviemaker.com].
JE Smith seems to have summed up the essence of Marsha Hunt and the paradoxes in her movie persona and career fairly well in the title of his interview with the centenarian, “American girl, Un-American woman, upstanding centenarian” [JE Smith, ‘Marsha Hunt: American girl, Un-American woman, upstanding centenarian’, Sight & Sound, 17-Oct-2017,www.bfi.org.uk].
(Source: Alt Film Art)
Once vilified by HUAC along with other progressive Hollywood actors as “Un-American”, Hunt’s longevity and achievements are testimony to all that is good about American society – an authentic patriot but also a defender of freedoms for all citizens – whilst repudiating all that is bad about American society. At the same time we have Hunt’s unceasing activism as a humanitarian concerned for the world as a whole and its future well-being, a tireless advocate for peace and progress, and for a more fair distribution of resources and safeguards for the environment.
๑๑~๑๑~๑๑~๑๑~๑๑~๑๑~๑๑~๑๑~
☸ IMDB proffers an interesting take on why she never scored the plum roles that other lauded Hollywood female stars were given: “Perhaps her work was not flashy enough, or too subdued, or perhaps her intelligence too often disguised a genuine sex appeal to stand out among the other lovelies” [Marsha Hunt biographical entry, www.imdb.com]
✳ the unstated inference is clear…rather than being factory-made into (an overhyped) star!
They lie on different continents but just a shade over 28 kilometres apart from each other, across the Straits of Gibraltar, and the common denominator for both is Spain. Their situations are in some ways the mirror image of each other – one, Gibraltar, is a tiny piece of the United Kingdom within the natural geography of Spain, and the other, Ceuta, is a tiny piece of Spain within the natural geography of Morocco. Geologically, both landscapes are physically dominated by a large chunk of limestone rock, viz. the Rock of Gibraltar and Monte Hacho (both probably are heavily fortified). Another thing they have in common is that the sovereign state in possession of each enclave is fiercely determined that its unilateral hold over the territory is not negotiable.
href=”http://www.7dayadventurer.com/wp-content/uploads/2017/03/image-18.jpg”> Spain’s Places of Sovereignty[/
In discussing the tiny, controversial entities of Ceuta (known as Sebta in the Arab world) and Gibraltar, it is necessary to introduce a third entity into this binary equation – Melilla, because this territory located 225km east of Ceuta is linked to it by circumstance. Melilla, although overshadowed by the higher profile of Ceuta, shares its peculiar status – both are minuscule Spanish territories incongruously appended to the Moroccan state, which in turn claims sovereignty over both enclaves. And certainly, when it comes to advocating sovereignty over Ceuta and Melilla, both sides treat them as a “job lot”❈.
The following table is a snapshot of the comparative basic data on the three enclaves:
🌐 🌐 🌐
Gibraltar
Walking through the streets of Gibraltar it’s hard to miss the very visible signs of ‘Britishness’ or ‘Angloness’ in the territory … red telephone boxes, Leyland double-decker buses, fish-and-chips shops, “English atmosphere” pubs, British bobbies, Union Jacks and the like. It is after all a BOT, a British Overseas Territory – and there are scarce few of those left on the world map! To the residents of the Rock these trappings are an unequivocal testimony to the loyalty of Gibraltarians to the United Kingdom and the British Crown.
Brexit for Gibraltar?
The vote last June by Britain and Northern Ireland to leave the EU was nowhere more momentous in the United Kingdom than in Gibraltar. Gibraltar, in contrast to most elsewhere in Britain, voted 96 per cent to stay in the Common Market[1]. Energised, the Spanish government seized on the Brexit opt-out to push the Gibraltar sovereignty issue again, calling for joint sovereignty of the two countries. With the unpalatable prospect for Gibraltar of being denied vital access to a single European market thanks to the British decision, Madrid believe (or hope) that they can leverage Gibraltarians into a rethink of their future options.
Like Ulster (Northern Ireland), Gibraltar is bracing itself to feel the full impact of what Brexit means for it, once the separation takes effect. Gibraltar for its part has argued for a special relationship post-Brexit with the European Union (as has Scotland)[2]. Madrid however has turned up the heat on Britain and its Iberian BOT, initiating tighter border controls, a deliberate go-slow affecting all vehicles and persons crossing into the British Overseas Territory from Spain. Already in 2013 the Spanish government threatened to charge motorists €50 to cross the border, restrict flights as well as investigate the tax status of 6,000 Gibraltar residents who own investment properties in Spain[3].
Gibraltar Chief Minister Picardo stressed that the implementation of a ‘hard’ border by Madrid would impose hardships on both sides, pointing out that 12,000 workers cross daily to work in the construction and services industries on “the Rock”[4]. But the stalemate persists and border-crossers continue to endure (up to) six-hour delays into and out of Gibraltar⊛.
The simmering tensions have aggravated underlying issues between the two European disputants in recent times … the Brits in 2014 asserted that there had been over 5,000 unauthorised incursions of Spanish ships into Gibraltar’s waters during 2013[5]. Local fishermen from Spain have complained that the construction of an artificial reef in Gibraltar in 2013 has imperilled the livelihoods of Spanish fishermen by depleting local fish stocks[6]. Spain has also objected to the presence of British warships in Gibraltar’s port as an unnecessary provocation[7].
The Rock-cum-Fortress
A minor incident involving a US nuclear submarine and warning flares in the Port of Gibraltar in April 2016 also drew Madrid’s displeasure (notwithstanding the fact that the port is a frequent maintenance stop for US subs)[8]. Some suspicions seem to be fed by prolonged antagonisms. Spaniards have expressed disquiet about the 1,400 foot high limestone Rock, a fortress-like structure in itself, hinting darkly at the possibility that the Gibraltarians may have fortified it[9]. Another point of Spanish aggravation on the frontier has been the issue of smuggling. A recurrent problem since the 1990s, Spain sees Gibraltar as the conduit for an estimated 1½ billion contraband cigarettes as well as drugs, mainly hashish (from Morocco) coming into Spain each year … resulting in a massive loss of customs revenues for Madrid who accuse the British and Gibraltarian authorities of turning a blind eye to the illicit activities[10].Gibraltar – the historical issue
❝The Catholic King (Philip V of Spain) … yield to the Crown of Great Britain the full and entire propriety of the town and castle of Gibraltar together with the port, fortifications and forts thereun belonging … the said propriety to be held and enjoyed absolutely with all manner of right for ever❞.
[Article X of the Treaty of Utrecht, 13 July 1713]
(Note no reference in the legal document of Spain ceding the territorial waters of Gibraltar to the English victors). Bay of Gibraltar, 1704(source: www.revolvy.com)
The British secured the tiny enclave of Gibraltar during the Spanish War of Succession, having (with the Dutch) captured the peninsula from Spain early in the war and then been granted ownership of it as part of the spoils of war in the Treaty of Utrecht in 1713. The longevity of Britain’s occupation of Gibraltar is one the arguments used to validate possession of this remote, non-contiguous part of the UK. Spain counters that the English takeover in 1704 was as interlopers in a conflict provoked by a Spanish dynastic dispute, and the English claims on Gibraltar were limited by the Treaty and did not include the isthmus, the area of the current airport and Gibraltar’s territorial waters[11].A choice of principles: Self-determination Vs territorial integrity
Britain argues that its right to retain Gibraltar rests primarily on the issue of self-determination, pointing to the fact that the citizens of Gibraltar twice voted by massive majorities to remain part of the UK (1967 and 2002)¤. Despite being embedded in an Hispanic milieu, the people of Gibraltar culturally self-identify as British.The Spanish counter-argument has been that the validity of its sovereignty lies in the realm of territorial integrity. In support of this Spain has cited UN Resolution 1514 (XV) (the UN principle of territorial integrity): “any attempt✥ at the partial or total disruption of the national unity and the territorial integrity of a country is incompatible with the purposes and principles of the Charter of the United Nations”. Spain also argues that the passage of UN Principles of Decolonisation resolutions in the 1960s [2231 (XXI) and 2353 (XXII) ‘Question of Gibraltar’] affirms that the principle of territorial integrity prevails over Gibraltar’s right to self-determination[12].Ceuta y Melilla
As already mentioned the parallels between Britain’s Gibraltar and Spain’s Ceuta in particular, are stark … two small but strategically positioned enclaves, one almost on the southernmost tip of Europe and the other on the north-western point of Africa, both tacked on to the end of a foreign state. The seeming irony of Spain’s passionate advocacy of its right to absorb Gibraltar into the nation-state is not lost on Morocco who has pointed out that the presence of Spanish military on Ceuta and Melilla poses a threat to Moroccan national security (and territorial integrity), and argues that its existence contravenes the UN principle of decolonisation[13].
Faro de Ceuta
Spain’s basis for retaining its hold over Ceuta and Melilla rests on a number of criteria – longevity of occupation, right of conquest, the doctrine of Terra Nullis (historical justifications); national security and the territorial integrity of the state. As well Spain, like the UK, contends that the great bulk of its residents want to retain their Spanish status[14].
North Africa: Boundary disputes the way of the world
In North Africa, and in Africa generally, disputes between neighbouring states are legion (a 2015 estimate put it at close to 100 (active or dormant) border conflicts across the continent). And Morocco has had its fair share of them … with Spain over control of Western Sahara until Spain withdrew in 1975; and subsequently over the same territory embroiled together with Mauritania in a conflict against the Polisario Front (militaristic pro-independence group representing the Sahrawi people); in the 1960s contesting its border with Algeria[15].
(image: www.geo-ref.net)
A Spanish double standard?
Spain has gone to great pains to play down any perceived similarity that might be drawn between the situation of Gibraltar and that of its North African enclaves. Madrid portrays Gibraltar (officially a British Overseas Territory) as no more than a colonial remnant (“ripe for decolonisation”) … Gibraltar it argues should rightfully be politically reunited with Spain which it was part of until taken by force three centuries ago.
Map of Melilla (note neutral zone encircling city)
Ceuta and Melilla on the other hand, Madrid says, are integral parts of Spain and have been since the formation of the modern Spanish state, long predating the existence of modern Morocco as an independent, sovereign political entity (1956). The enclaves are semi-autonomous with the same status as the mainland (described by Madrid as “autonomous cities”), and under pressure Spain has hinted that it will offer Ceuta and Melilla greater autonomy[16]. Spain’s longevity argument could be countered by Moroccans who can point to an Arab presence in Ceuta and the other North African enclaves since the 8th century[17].
Melilla (photo: www.lonelyplanet.com)
UN Committee 4: Non-Self Governing Territory status
Morocco’s claim on the Plazas, from a legal standpoint, is generally thought to be a weaker case than Spain’s on Gibraltar. Whilst the UN includes Gibraltar in a list of non-self governing territories (international entities whose eligibility for decolonisation the UN investigates each year), Ceuta and Melilla is not. This is because of the Barajas Spirit (Espiritu de Barajas), an agreement reached in 1963 between Spain’s General Franco and Morocco’s King Hassan II … Morocco agreed to deal with the Ceuta and Melilla issue bilaterally, with Spain separately, rather than submit it to the UN to be raised with other territorial disputes of the day such as Gibraltar. And because Morocco was preoccupied in the 1960s and ’70s with the recovery of southern territories (Sidi Ifni and Western Sahara), it delayed any action on Melilla and Ceuta and missed its chance to register them on the NSGT territories list for the UN to debate their future[18].
Ceuta/El Tarajal, border fenceSpain, without pressure from a third-party, unsurprisingly, has played a straight bat to any attempts by Morocco to pursue the question of Ceuta and Melilla sovereignty. Spain fortified both enclaves and constructed razor wire border fences in the 1990s designed to stop illegal immigration and smuggling from Morocco. Impoverished Moroccans and other, mainly sub-Saharan Africans have long sought an entry point into Europe and the EU through the two Spanish autonomous cities. Because of the ongoing attempts to breach the border, authorities later reinforced the walls with a 6m high double fence structure and a “no man’s land” strip (a neutral zone) separating the Spanish outposts from Moroccan territory.Border wars
The enhanced security hasn’t stopped desperate African migrants from trying to scale the border walls of Ceuta and Melilla (many have been shot and a number killed by unfriendly fire from security forces on both sides of the fence[19]) … since 2015 there has been an increase in the number of break-in attempts. As recently as January 2017 1,100 African migrants tried to storm the border in a violent confrontation with Spanish border guards[20].Other incidents in recent years have kept the disputed territories issue on the boil. In 2002 a potential flash point erupted when a handful of Moroccan soldiers captured a tiny, uninhibited rocky outcrop named Perejil Island (near Ceuta and part of the disputed Plazas), leaving five cadets in charge of it. The cadets were summarily and peacefully ejected by elite troops and Spanish sovereignty swiftly reinstated[21]. The visit of King Juan Carlos I to Ceuta and Melilla in 2007 (the first reigning Spanish monarch to visit the Plazas) succeeded in stirring up further ill-will between Morocco and Spain over the territorial dispute[22].
PostScript: Gibraltar, Mission seemingly Impossible – what gain is there for Spain?
In the context of the United Kingdom’s commitment to Gibraltar and its people’s unwavering determination to stay subjects of the British Crown, the likelihood of Spain regaining its former territory in the foreseeable future is exceedingly slim✜. Why therefore does Spain persist in what seems to all appearances to be a futile exercise against such odds?[23]
1967 Gibraltar Poll: endorsement of UK rule
Madrid’s objections to ‘British’ Gibraltar derive from a mixture of motives – that Gibraltar continues to be (in the words of former Spanish prime minister Felipe Gonzáles) “a pebble on the bottom of Spain’s shoe” is an impediment to the country’s sense of national pride. Gibraltar’s existence as the only colony remaining in Europe is an affront to Spanish nationalists, and its continuation in the hands of a historic foe a reminder of the loss of Spain’s once great power status. A further driver for Spain in its quest is the perception that Britain has breached the terms of the Treaty of Utrecht. Article X states that if ❝ the Crown of Great Britain (decides to) grant, sell or by any means to alienate therefrom the propriety of the said town of Gibraltar, it is hereby agreed and concluded that the preference of having the sale shall always be given to the Crown of Spain before any others❞. When the UK offered the people of Gibraltar the opportunity to determine their own future by referendum in 1967, it was (according to Spain’s interpretation) reneging on its 1713 agreement to allow the Spanish government the “first right of refusal” if Britain were to renounce its own claim to the enclave. Furthermore, Spain contends that Britain’s expansion of its territory in Gibraltar on land and sea also contravenes the Treaty[24].
Aside from these matters, the status quo in Gibraltar represents financial disadvantages for Spain, obstacles that regime change in the enclave could potentially provide a windfall for Madrid, eg, Gibraltar’s long-time role as a “smuggler’s paradise” (principally narcotics), which as Spain expert Gareth Stockey of Nottingham University states, continues to be “a drain on Spanish resources”. Similarly, Spain have sought to draw international attention to Gibraltar and its reputation as a tax haven (OECD “Grey List” of countries lacking fiscal transparency). Low-taxing Gibraltar has had negative spin-offs for its Hispanic neighbour’s revenues both in the collection of taxes for individual citizens and for companies. Madrid has tried to turn the spotlight on to the Rock’s company tax dodges … Gibraltar has had over 30,000 registered businesses (roughly parity with the territory’s population!) and only a 10% corporate tax rate (until 2011 it charged no company taxes for many businesses), compared to a 30% tax in Spain[25].
⊢────────────────────────────────────⊣
❈ there are three other minor Spanish territories in North Africa, which together with Ceuta and Melilla are known collectively as Plazas de soberanía (“Places of Sovereignty”)
⊛ an even more disturbing prospect for Gibraltarians is the closure altogether of the border – many of them are old enough to recall the closure by President Franco in 1969, a blockade that ensued until 1982
¤ the 1967 referendum asking if the Gibraltarians were in favour of replacing British sovereignty with Spanish, returned a resounding 99.64% ‘no’ vote; the 2002 referendum with the question rephrased as “Do you approve of the principle that Britain and Spain should share sovereignty over Gibraltar?” again definitively said ‘no’, 98.97%
✥ ie, in this instance the UK’s insistence on self-determination for the enclave
✜ especially when you take into account the total lack of an irredentist impulse from within the Gibraltar community
𖠜𖠜𖠜
[1] ‘Gibraltar: 96% vote to stay in EU’, Euobserver, 24-Jun-2016, www Euobserver.com[2] B Reyes, ‘EU parliament hears contrasting views on Gibraltar and Brexit’, Gibraltar Chronicle, 31-Jan-2017,www.chronicle.gi[3] V Barford, ‘What are the Competing Claims over Gibraltar?’, BBC News Magazine, 12-Aug-2013, www.bbc.com[4] B Hague, ‘Gibraltar caught between a rock and a hard place after UK’s Brexit Vote’, ABC News, 13-Oct-2016,www.abc.net.au[5] ‘Gibraltar profile – Timeline’, BBC News, 16-Mar-2015, www.bbc.com[6] R Booth, Gibraltar frontier conflict causing frustration for locals’, The Guardian, 07-Aug-2013, www.theguardian.com[7] Barford, loc.cit.
[8] R Faith, ‘Spanish-UK Dispute over Gibraltar Flares Up Again after Warning Shot Incident with US Nuclear Sub’, Vice News, 10-May-2016, www.news.vice.com.
[9] Barford, op.cit.
[10] R Aldrich & J Connell, The Last Colonies (1998)
[11] Barford, op.cit.. The tiny Balearic island Minorca also fell to Britain in the wash-up of the Treaty of Utrecht – though unlike Gibraltar it was returned to Spain via the Treaty of Amiens (1802)
[12] ibid.
[13] Morocco takes the view also that Spain’s determination to pursue its claim to Gibraltar adds substance to Morocco’s argument in respect of the Plazas, G O’Reilly & JG O’Reilly, Ceuta and the Spanish Sovereign Territories: Spanish and Moroccan Claims, (1994). This uncomfortable comparison was not lost on King Juan Carlos either – documents declassified in 2014 reveal that the Spanish monarch conceded to the British ambassador in 1982 that Spain was reluctant to push too hard on Gibraltar for fear of encouraging Moroccan claims on its territories, F Govan (1), ‘Spain’s King Juan Carlos told Britain: “we don’t want Gibraltar back” ‘, The Telegraph (London), 06-Jan-2014, www.telegraph.co.uk
[14] O’Reilly, loc.cit.
[15] G Oduntan, ‘Africa’s border disputes are set to rise – but there are ways to stop them’, The Conversation, 14-Jul-2015, www.theconversation.com
[16] F Govan (2), ‘The Battle over Ceuta, Spain’s African Gibraltar’, The Telegraph (London), 10-Aug-2013, www.telegraph.co.uk
[17] ‘International Court of Justice – Morocco/Spain’, (Rumun: Rutgers Model UN), www.idia.net
[18] S Bennis, ‘Gibraltar, Ceuta and Melilla: Spain’s unequal sovereignty disputes’, The New Arab, 28-Jun-2016, www.alaraby.co.uk
[19] N Davies, ‘Melilla: Europe’s dirty secret’, The Guardian, 17-Apr-2010, www.theguardian.com
[20] ‘Migrants storm border fence in Spanish enclave of Ceuta’, BBC News, 01-Jan-2017, www.bbc.co.uk
[21] though it was summarily repulsed, the would-be coup was seen as testing Spain’s resolve to defend Ceuta and Melilla, ‘Perejil Island’, Wikipedia, en.m.wikipedia.org
[22] Govan 2, op.cit.
[23] if the highly improbable were to happen and Spain recover its long-lost province, an interested observer might be Barcelona … the Catalans lost their autonomy in the aftermath of the Utrecht Treaty and it has been speculated that the restoration of Gilbratar might trigger a new call for Catalonian independence, ‘The Economist explains … Why is Gibraltar a British territory?’ (T.W.) The Economist, 08-Aug-2013, www.economist.com
[24] ‘Four reasons Gibraltar should be Spanish’, The Local (es), 08-Aug-2013, news@thelocal.es
[25] ibid.; L Frayer, ‘Once a Tax Haven, Gibraltar Now Says It’s Low-Tax’, (NPR Parallels), 17-Apr-2016 (broadcast), www.npr.org
The Curonian Spit is a distinctive geographical feature on the Baltic Coast, a narrow spit of sand-dune covered land some 98km in length. UNESCO describes it as a “unique example of a landscape of sand dunes under constant threat from (the) natural forces of wind and tide”[1]. Recently the Spit has been the scene of a different, human-produced threat, one evoking memories for locals of a past Cold War conflict.
Curonian Spit
Curonian Spit bridges the Russian oblast of Kaliningrad❈ with eastern Lithuania, thus being a landform shared by the two countries. The normally tranquil seaside atmosphere has in the last two years been replaced by a tense mood, especially on the Lithuanian side. The seeds of the tension has its origins in Russia’s military incursions into the Ukraine in 2014 and the ensuing conflict over the control of the Crimean Peninsula. The Lithuanian government interpreted the brazen nature of Moscow’s military intervention in that sovereign state as a warning to the possibility of it being next on President Putin’s takeover list[2].
In the aftermath of the events in Crimea in 2014, the bitterly learnt lessons of history (the 50 year Soviet occupation of the Baltic States) gave the Lithuanians and the other Balts cause to fear that a new invasion might be on the cards. Since then there has been immediate and tangible evidence of the perceived threat from Russia. Moscow has undertaken a renewed military build-up in Kaliningrad, adding an Air Force detachment and early warning system (Voronezh radar) to the land forces already on the ground[3].
Geopolitics plays a part in heightening the threat to the Baltics. Lithuania’s safeguard (as well as that of Latvia and Estonia) is membership of NATO, however the location of this chunk of Russian territory (Kaliningradskaya Oblast) cuts the Baltic States (henceforth BS) off from the rest of western Europe. Adding to these concerns is the fact that Russia’s Baltic fleet is stationed at Kaliningrad. NATO’s countermove has seen it propose sending battalions of 1,000 (mostly US) troops each to the BS and Poland.
The Vilnius government’s reaction to the Crimea crisis in military terms was several-fold – forming a Rapid Response Force (RRF); reintroducing a national draft to bolster Lithuania’s paltry regular force (8,000 troops); mobilising volunteer partisans (eg, the Lithuanian Riflemen’s Union). The motivation is the possibility of direct military intervention by Russia, but the more immediate worry is the sense that the Kremlin could well employ the same tactics as in Ukraine, using pro-Russian (Udijan) separatist insurgents within Lithuania to destabilise the country[4].
Both sides claim that their militarisation of the Kaliningrad/ Baltic region is a necessary counter to the actions of the other, recreating in miniature the standoff scenario of the Cold War. NATO’s take on Russian intentions is that it wants to use Kaliningrad to strategically position surface-to-air (Iskander) missiles to block NATO access to BS and northern Poland in the event of an attack on these member states[5].
(Source: www.dailymail.co.uk)
Lithuania’s and the other Baltics’ concerns about Russia extend to the possibility of hybrid war. Russia has also adopted a soft power approach to undermining the BS governments through a variety of means, eg, influencing electoral results by fuelling social tensions within the Russian minorities (less effective in Lithuania than in the other, more Russian populated countries); harming BS economies through economic and energy blockades, wilfully destroying infrastructures; trying to weaken BS faith in the security structure provided by NATO[6].
(Photo: www.washingtonpost.com)
Both NATO and Russia have stepped up their displays of “muscle flexing” in Kaliningrad in an attempt to intimidate the other side. During August 2016, a large contingent of NATO ground troops fired artillery and mortars close to the border with the Russian province. At the same time Russian troops drilled close by the oblast’s capital. In September the Russian Baltic Fleet undertook exercises off the coast as a demonstration of the Republic’s naval power. Both sides have extensively conducted war games in Kaliningrad … all part of an ongoing tit-for-tat jockeying for advantage in the Baltics. Russia and NATO both claimed to be reacting to border encroachments which had put at risk its national security[7].
The thousands of NATO forces on the ground are clearly intended to provide a deterrence to any plan by the Russians for aggression against BS. The deliberate execution of large-scale army manoeuvres in Kaliningrad on the borders with Lithuania and Poland by Russia are aimed at destabilising the border area and shaking local confidence in the Alliance[8].
It should not be overlooked that the militarisation of the Baltic area cuts both ways! Earlier this year NATO’s “Anaconda-2016” operation was comparably large in scale to anything the Kremlin has engineered in Kaliningrad. A 10-day exercise involving 31,000 troops from 24 countries … a blatant power-play that was criticised by the German foreign minister for being a Western show of “sabre-rattling and warmongering”[9].
Most commentators play down the likelihood of the tense stand-off in the Baltic region between NATO and Russia escalating into an open war, however it remains a critical hotspot in international circles. There have been recent “close-call” incidents between US and Russia military personnel, two such in April 2016 involved Russian fighter planes and US warships.
The Baltics’ concerns as to what the Russians might do in Kaliningrad are matched by other members of the Alliance, not least of which the US. The Pentagon and military think tanks, in the light of Moscow’s readiness to intervene in Ukraine and more recently in Syria, are not optimistic about their prospects in a military conflict with Russia in Kaliningrad, were it to eventuate. US military analysts concede that the US/NATO would be no match for the Russian forces given the level and quality of Moscow’s military installations in the oblast[10].
президент Putin inspects the oblast’s troops (Photo: www.neweasterneurope.eu)
From the Kremlin’s viewpoint, Kaliningrad is integral to Russia’s western defence system, eg, Kalingrad’s location allows it to give advance notice to Moscow in the event of an attack on Russia from Western air power. In ‘Putinspeak’ Kaliningrad is part of the “Russian World” – moreover the Baltics as a whole are part of that world, which in Putin’s thinking are “lost lands (that Russia) has a historic right to”[11]. Often, Putin observers have drawn a link between the image portrayed by the Russian president (autocratic strongman, ex-KGB, ultra-nationalist) with his supposed designs on a more expansive role in the region. Putin has justified any extra-border aggression on Russia’s part as being consistent with his unwavering commitment to protect ethnic Russians anywhere outside in the world[12].
Unequivocally Putin’s aggressive forays into Georgia (2008) and the Ukraine (2014) underscore that urge for Russian expansionism, psychologically perhaps revealing a desire to regain the leadership role of the former USSR. Many in the West are quick to pounce on Putin’s public pronouncements about Russia asserting or defending its rights in the world as proof of an aim on his part to establish a Pan-Slavic empire, the notion of one people (Slavs), one single political entity (supposedly a hankering back to the glory days of either the Tsarist era or the Russian-dominated Soviet Union)[13].
Although speculation has been rife in the international media that Putin will launch a full-scale attack on the Baltics (à la Crimea), replete with dire warnings that WWIII is imminent, there is no consensus that this is a likely outcome. Rather, most commentators see a persistence of the tension that has been building up, an environment in Kaliningrad which is highly weaponised and therefore continues to be unstable and dangerous.
A more likely scenario than outright invasion of BS by Russia is that Moscow will try to foment separatism, inflame the local radicals and militants to rebel against the Baltic governments – an objective that may be more attainable in Latvia and Estonia with ethnic Russian populations of 27% and 24% respectively, than in Lithuania (less than 6% ethnic Russians). Russia may also ‘parachute’ in Russian activists and volunteers over the border to act as “fifth columnists”[14].
For the Baltic countries membership of both the EU and NATO seems to offer reassurance, its citizens by and large simply get on with their daily lives, neither panicked or pessimistic about the shadow of Putin’s Russia on their doorsteps. An air of edgy uncertainty, a tenseness nonetheless prevails as everyone waits and watches for Putin’s next move⍁.
❈ the city of Kaliningrad, incorporated into the USSR at the end of WWII, was previously Königsberg, a German city (before that it was part of East Prussia). Originally, the area was called Sambia, after an Old Prussian tribe by that name
⍁ See also the following, related blog ‘Kaliningrad Oblast: Withering of the Russian Connexion?’
[1] ‘Curonian Spit’, UNESCO World Heritage Centre, www.whc.unesco.com
[2] The Curonian Spit is not the only hotspot in Russia’s western sphere, another identified by Western strategists and carefully watched by Poland, Lithuania and the US is Suwalki Gap. The Gap is a thin corridor of land separating Poland and Lithuania and stretching for about 100km in length. The NATO allies worry that it could be relatively easy for Russia to capture the Gap, and in so doing, connect Kaliningrad directly with Russia’s ally Belarus … at the same time it would cut off the Baltics from all NATO member territory and further encircle Poland to its northeast, M Bearak, ‘This tiny stretch of countryside is all that separates Baltic states from Russian envelopment’, Washington Post, (20-Jun-2016), www.washingtonpost.com
[3] ‘Russian Kaliningrad region poses challenge at NATO summit’, Daily Mail, (Aust.) 7-Jul-2016, www.dailymail.co.uk. The contrary view of Moscow is that the Vilnius government is using the fear of Russia to mobilise its own people, (view of a Russian political scientist), ‘If Russia Gets Crimea, Should Germany Get Kaliningrad?’, The Moscow Times, (21-Mar-2014), www.themoscowtimes.com. Lithuanian officials retorted that Russia was trying to buy off Lithuania soldiers to spy on behalf of the Kremlin, R Emmott & A Sytas, ‘Nervous Baltics on war footing as NATO tries to deter Russia’, Reuters, (13-Jun-2016), www.reuters.com
[4] K Engelhart, ‘Lithuania Thinks the Russians Are Coming – and It’s Preparing with Wargames’, 18-May-2015, Vice News, www.news.vice.com; A Nemtsova, ‘Ground Zero and the New Cold War’, The Daily Beast, (29-Aug-2016), www.thedailybeast.com
[5] L Kelly, ‘Russia’s Baltic outpost digs in for standoff with NATO’, Reuters, 5-Jul-2016, www.mobile.reuters.com
[6] J Hyndle-Hussein, ‘The Baltic States on the conflict in Ukraine’, OSW Commentary,, (25-Jan-2015), www.osw.waw.pl
[7] H Mayer, ‘Putin’s Military Buildup in the Baltics Stokes Invasion Fears’, Bloomberg, (6-Jun-2016), www.bloomberg.com
[8] ‘Lithuania, Poland, NATO Drills Aimed at Rising Tensions on Russian Border’, Sputnik News, (02-Jun-2016), www.sputniknews.com
[9] for a contrary view from a Western source that downplays the destabilising intentions of Putin in the Baltics see P Gleupp, ‘Putin’s “Threats” to the Baltics: a Myth to Promote NATO Unity’, CounterPunch, (12-Jul-2016), www.counterpunch.org
[10] See K Mizokami, ‘How a Russia vs. NATO war would really go down’, The Week, (16-Jun-2016), www.theweek.com; ‘Baltic Conflict Would Spell Defeat for US, NATO Against Russia’, Sputnik News, (04-Feb-2016), www.sputniknews.com
[11] ‘The Invasion of Crimea is Hurting Russia’s Other Enclave’, (Interview with Ola Cichowlas), Forbes, 6-Jun-2014, www.forbes.com;
[12] characterised as the “Putin Doctrine”, R Coalson, ‘Putin Pledges To Protect All Ethnic Russians Anywhere. So, Where Are They?’, Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty (10-Apr-2014), www.rferl.org
[13] or perhaps to an ideological, mythic state, neither East or West but the “otherness” of a multi-ethnic melange of a state, one with Mongol roots, under the hegemony of “Great Russian Nationalism”, P Mishra, ‘Putin’s Eurasian Fantasy’, Bloomberg L.P. (17-Mar-2014). Putin’s use of the term Novorossiya (New Russia) in 2014 in reference to the Ukraine situation is another association with the (Tsarist) past and a manifestation of new-found Russian assertiveness
[14] ‘Is Russia really a threat to the Baltic States?’, Al Jazeera, 8-Jul-2016, www.aljazeera.com
A dilution of Russian connectivity among Kaliningrad’s population?
Eighty-seven per cent of the population of Russia’s Kalininskaya province (out of 941,873 residents (2010 Census)) are ethnic Russians. Because of Kaliningrad’s geographic isolation from the rest of the Russian Federation (it is a distance of 1,095km from Moscow), it depends on its trade links with nearby EU states. When Vladimir Putin embarked on trade wars with the West over Crimea, Kaliningrad was hit hardest by the ensuing food embargo. In this environment, proximity allowed many Kaliningraders to venture outside the domestic Russian orbit – especially going to Poland on shopping sprees without requiring visas. School children in the Oblast, many of whom have studied in neighbouring Lithuania, Poland and Germany, have only hazy recognition of the names of Russian cities. Kaliningraders, who can afford to, have been buying properties in EU countries¹.(Photo: www.britannia.com)
Some meaningful Kaliningrad statistics:
► 25% of residents have Schengen (Treaty) visas► 60% have foreign passports
► 34% identify as SBNR (spiritual but not religious) cf. 30.9% Russian Orthodox and 33.1% Atheist or non-religious (2012 official survey, Arena – Atlas of Religions and Nationalities in Russia)
The cumulative effect of all these developments has seen a trend, as Professor V Shulgin observed in a controversial article on www.stoleti.ru, involving an identity shift (especially in younger Kaliningraders) away from Russian nationalism to a more liberal and European identity².
Prof Shulgin paid a personal price for expressing a pluralistic opinion that the Kremlin did not want to hear voiced, but the question remains – with so many younger residents of the Oblast perceiving themselves as European – will that eventually snowball into a collective desire by Kaliningraders to join the European Union? Given Moscow’s firm grip on Kaliningrad at the moment❈, this doesn’t appear on the horizon in the short-term at least.
In 2006 Moscow introduced a SpecialEconomic Zone in Kaliningrad. This was intended to provide duty-free trade opportunities in the Oblast and transform Kaliningrad into Russia’s version of Hong Kong or Singapore. The SEZ however failed miserably, it was unable to achieve the necessary economic integration into the Baltic Sea region³, nor did it create a viable tourist trade. Kaliningrad hasn’t had a good track record with SEZs – in 1996 a Yantar✺ Special Economic Zone was started but it has achieved only limited success⊙. The closure of Kaliningrad’s SEZ in April 2016 has left the Oblast with questions marks over its economic direction from here⁴.
A conflict zone? See also the preceding blog which details how Kalingrad in the 2010s has become a central pawn in a highly dangerous regional hotspot in north-eastern Europe:
❈ despite the Russian Republic not having a contiguous border with its most western oblast
✺ yantar is amber – the region’s premier mineral
⊙ Kaliningrad was part of the Amber Road in ancient times, a trade route for transporting amber from the North and Baltic Seas to the Mediterranean Sea and Imperial Rome
▪ ▫ ▪ ▫ ▪ ▫ ▪
¹ ‘The Invasion of Crimea is Hurting Russia’s Other Enclave’, (Interview with Ola Cichowlas), Forbes, 6-Jun-2014, www.forbes.com; P Goble, ‘From Siberia to Kaliningrad: the fledging independence movements gaining traction in Russia’, The Guardian (London), 16-Aug-2014, www.theguardian.com
² cited in R Piet, ‘Kaliningrad: The Last wall in Europe’, (19-Nov-2014), Aljazeera, www.aljazeera.com
³ at its core the economic failures had political roots … Moscow maintained tight reins on the province’s economic activities because of the old fear that giving it too much autonomy might create the conditions for it to secede from the Republic, S Sukhankin, ‘Kaliningrad: Russia’s stagnant enclave’, Economic Council on Foreign Relations, 31-Mar-2016, www.ecfr.eu
⁴ D Crickus, ‘Kaliningrad: Russia’s Own Breakaway Region?’, The National Interest, 21-Mar-2014, www.nationalinterest.com
Not to be outdone by the strident diplomatic goings-on in the South China Sea, some of the groups of islands off the Northeast Asian coast have in recent years generated their own share of heat and controversy. The better known of the northern island disputes involve the Kuril Island group in the Sea of Okhotsk – diplomatically fought over for decades by Russia/USSR on one side and Japan on the other.
Some rocks between a rock and a hard place!
The other North Asian island dispute that I am going to focus on in this post has a lower media profile than the Kurils stand-off but has nonetheless contributed to a rise in tensions in the Sea of Japan between Korea and Japan❈. The highly contested islands are a miserable looking prize, two principal islets♰ plus 30 smaller slabs of rock emerging out of the sea (an even less prepossessing sight that the disputed Senkaku Islands further south). As with the Senkakus the rocky outcrops have been known by several different names depending on who was doing the naming. The neutral name is the Liancourt Rocks回, named after the French whaler which was almost wrecked around the rocks in 1849. The Japanese name is Takeshima (meaning “Bamboo Islands”). The Koreans call it Tok-do or Dok-do (meaning “Solitary Islands”). To complicate the matter the disputants have ascribed various other names to the islands at different periods, eg, Matsushima, Yankodo, Usan-do, Juk-do, Sok-do, etc, which have further obscured the question of ownership. On occasions the neighbouring island of Ulleung-do has been mistaked (innocently or otherwise) for Dok-do/Matsushima, and some historic charts show Ulleung-do to the east of Dok-do (which it isn’t!)[1].
The antecedents of the dispute over the islands appear to reside in the Russo-Japanese War of 1904-05. Under the Japan-Korea protocol in force then, Japan was green-lighted to occupy the islets for the duration of the war on the condition that it vacated them post-bellum, terms which Japan violated in 1905 by incorporating them into its nearby Shimane prefecture (without publicly announcing it had done so!), a prelude to Japan’s full annexation of the Korean Peninsula in 1910. Japan retrospectively used the Terra Nullius argument as justification for its seizure of the geo-strategic Liancourt Rocks.
Under the Western-imposed terms of the peace treaty (the 1951 San Francisco Treaty), Japan forfeited all possessions it had taken by force. After South Korea (ROC) retook Dok-do/Tok-do in 1954, Tokyo protested, arguing that as the disputed islands were not mentioned by name in the Treaty, it did not apply to them and therefore Japan should retain them (the SFT was a poorly draughted document in this respect)[3]. Since Korea’s reoccupation it has maintained a coast guard outpost on the islets (lighthouse, docking facilities added in the late 1990s), however they have remained almost entirely unoccupied[4].
Japan responded by referring the issue to the International Court of Justice. This tactical move was in vain though, because the rules of international law require both parties to agree to the dispute being heard at the ICJ before it can proceed. Korea, already in possession of the islets, naturally showed no interest in going this route … ROC’s position has remained steadfastly that Dok-do/Tok-do is “irrefutably (South) Korean”. Moreover, as Dong-Joon Park and Danielle Chubb argue, there is a powerful emotional dimension to the issue for Koreans, one that triggers their sense of “national identity”. Dok-do has symbolic significance as a sombre reminder of Koreans’ shameful experience of annexation by Japan[5].
Annals of Joseph Dynasty
Around 1962 Japan’s case shifted more from the Terra Nullius view to one emphasising Takeshima as an “inherent and ancient territory” of Japan. Both sides in fact have resorted to “proof” in the shape of old maps and documents purporting to support each country’s claim. Ancient texts and maps, such as Samguk Sagi (‘History of Three Kingdoms’), the Paldo Chongdo (‘Map of the Eight Provinces’) and the ‘Map of Three Adjoining Countries’ (Sangoku Tsūran Zusetsu), have been dredged up to advance the case of one side or the other. These pieces of “evidence” have tended to be characterised by ambiguities over names, inaccuracies in island locations on early maps, etc, making them problematic and in most cases not particularly helpful in resolving the issue[6].
North Korea’s view of the Dok-do/Takeshima dispute
North Korea (DRK) in 2011 affirmed that the Tok Islets (Pyongyang’s name for Dok-do) is an “inalienable part of the territory of Korea”[7]. But the matter is a diplomatically tricky one for North Korea given that it does not recognise the government of South Korea … despite the depth of its feelings on the issue it does not want to be seen supporting a position taken by its ideological enemies in Seoul. Accordingly it has tended to be fairly cautious to the extent that it has bought into the dispute.
United States’ position on the islets’ dispute
In the late 1940s and again after the outbreak of the Korean War the US military used the Liancourt Islands for bombing practice. From the ratification of the Treaty to San Francisco to after ROK recaptured Dok-do, key figures in the US administration such as John Foster Dulles and Dean Rusk privately concurred with Japan that it had a right to the islets, saying off-the-record that President Syngman Rhee‘s unilateral takeover was an illegal move. Publicly though, the US refused to back the Japanese claim (wanting to avoid getting offside with its new ally ROK)[8]. A policy of strict neutrality on the question of Dok-do V Takeshima continues to be practiced by the current US (Obama) administration.
Economic value of the islets
The two countries contesting Liancourt Rocks have traditionally harvested the area’s rich fishing grounds of squid, crab and mackerel (yielding an estimated 13m tons of fish per year[9]). As well as this there is the attraction of potential gas and oil under its waters. In the early 2000s large hydrocarbon deposits were discovered around the islets. Korea and Australia launched a joint, highly capitalised gas and oil exploration project in the immediate vicinity[10]. Korea and Japan’s demand for new energy resources feeds into the push for control of Dok-do/Takeshima (especially for Japan with its reliance on imported oil).
Japan and ROK’s fundamental disagreement about ownership of the Liancourt Rocks hasn’t shutdown the possibility of cooperation between the two countries in the vital Sea of Japan/East Sea. Back as far as 1965 South Korea and Japan were able to negotiate a Treaty of Basic Relations which sought to normalise their diplomatic relations. The Treaty granted Japan access to the Sea’s fishing grounds and quotas were set on the fish caught by each (provisional zones were introduced in 1998). In 2002 the two countries were again able to reach an agreement on reducing catch quotas to avoid depleting the fish stocks of the Sea[11].
As part of the claim by both sides to be the rightful owner of Liancourt Rocks each have stressed their historic fishing ties to it. Japan traces its fishing connection to 1661 (Korea even earlier), and cites the on-going activities on Takeshima by Japanese fishermen, circa 1900-1935, eg, hunting sea lions (granted licences to do so by the government in Tokyo), gathering seaweed and abalone, to support its case[12]. ROK counters, referencing evidence from Japanese sources (the “Chosun (Korean) Fishing Manuals” written by the Black Dragons, a Shimane-based nationalist organisation). This Japanese guidebook states that Yankodo (Dok-do) was clearly Chosun or Joseon (Korean) territory before the Japanese annexation[13].
The South Korean claim on the Liancourt Rocks rests on several planks. ROK’s continuous physical control of the small island group (62 years to date), whilst not definitive per se, is a strong card in Seoul’s hand. Another plank is the contiguity/closest proximity argument. The disputed islets are closer to recognised sovereign territory of Korea than they are to the nearest recognised sovereign territory … the Liancourts are 157km from Japan’s Oki Islands but only 87.4km from the closest part of South Korea, the island of Ulleung-do. Further strengthening this fact is that Korean scholars have long considered Dok-do to an appendage or “little sister” of the larger Ulleung-do island[14]. That Dok-do can be seen “from Ulleung-do on a clear autumn day, reinforces the linkage”[15].
Jon M Van Dyke, an American international law expert, has argued that the superiority of ROK’s claims to the disputed islands over those of Japan, are such that if Seoul were to agree to take the matter to the ICJ (a path Tokyo has sought for the last 60-plus years!), the Court would almost certainly, based on other historical decisions handed down on international territorial disputes, decide in ROK’s favour. This of course is a big ‘if’ as South Korea has hitherto shown not the slightest sign of willingness to contemplate going this route, and would view this probably as an unnecessary risk. Seoul’s view has unwaveringly been that the dispute is a political one, not a legal one[16].
Van Dyke has pinpointed several weaknesses in Japan’s claim on the disputed territory vis-vís ROK’s. In contrast to Korea’s current possession of Dok-do/Takeshima, Japan’s long period of control of the islets (1905-45) does not advance its current claim – being tainted because it was “wrongful occupation”, illegitimately achieved by force. Van Dyke also notes that Japan has not pressed the question of the viability of its sovereignty prior to 1905, which perhaps could be viewed as an implicit admission by Tokyo of the weaknesses of its pre-20th century claims[17].
Van Dyke further discounts the Japan contention based on the grounds of Terra Nullius. For purposes of tax collection and security Korea at one point implemented a “vacant islands policy” in respect of Dok-do but this was revoked in 1881 and the islets’ population built up again to at least 1,000 by 1890[18]. Van Dyke makes the point that Korea’s minimal occupancy of the islets in the period before and after Japan’s subjugation of Korea is sufficient to establish a valid controlling presence on the part of Korea[19].
Like many of the long-standing island disputes in the region, Takeshima versus Dok-do is a stalemate with no obvious signs of a way forward as long as both sides maintain an entrenched, even intransigent viewpoint. As noted above, Japan and South Korea, fortunately, value their close bilateral relationship which hopefully will ensure that the dispute never escalates to a dangerous level (so far the fall-out has been restricted to a few minor incidents between coast guard vessels and fishing boats)[20]. The status quo suits South Korea as the territorial possessor … Japan, given it has the weaker hand, is unlikely to press the matter beyond a continuation of the symbolic show of discontent, a periodical “drum-beating” of the issue.
⊹⊹⊹⊹⊹⊹⊹⊹⊹⊹⊹⊹⊹⊹⊹⊹⊹⊹⊹⊹⊹⊹⊹⊹⊹⊹⊹⊹⊹⊹⊹⊹⊹⊹⊹⊹⊹⊹⊹⊹⊹⊹⊹⊹⊹⊹
❈ Japan-Korea disputation in this stretch of water is rife, being restricted not just to the Liancourt islands themselves – the very name of the sea is a source of disagreement … Japan calls the body of water the “Sea of Japan” (no surprise!), both Koreas conversely call it Donghae (the “East Sea”)
♰ the east islet is known as Dongdu (Korean name) or Higashijima (Japanese name) and the west islet is called Seodu (Korean) or Nishijima (Japanese)
回 a less common name for the islets is the “Hornet Islands”. The coordinates of the Liancourt islets are 131˚52’22″N 37˚14’24″E
⊶ ⊷ ⊸ ⊶ ⊷ ⊸ ⊶ ⊷ ⊸ ⊶ ⊷ ⊸ ⊶ ⊷ ⊶
[1] ‘Liancourt Rocks dispute’, Wikipedia, http://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Liancourt-Rocks-dispute; ‘A Visual Study of Dokdo and Ancient Territorial Perceptions’, (“Historical Facts about Korea’s Dokdo Islands),www Dokdo-Takeshima.com
[2] Japan dispute that this included Takeshima/Dok-do, Justin McCurry, ‘Rocky relations between Japan and South Korea over disputed islands’, The Guardian, (London), 18-Jul 2010
[3] interestingly, the British proposal (suggested to it by NZ), that Japan’s territory and sovereign waters be determined by latitude and longitude, may have resolved the issue at that time, ‘The United States’ Involvement with Dokdo Iskand (Liancourt Rocks): A Timeline of the Occupation and Korean War Era’, (Mark S Lovmo, 2004), www.dokdo-research.com
[4] Korea maintains two families on the islets year round with seasonal stays by fishermen from the mainland, ‘A Visual Study of Dokdo and Ancient Territorial Perceptions’, (Historical Facts about Korea’s Dokdo Islands), www.dokdo-takeshima.com; ‘Liancourt Islands/Takeshima/Tokdo’, Global Security, www.GlobalSecurity.org
[5] D-J Park & D Chubb, ‘Why Dokdo Matters to Korea’, The Diplomat, (17-Aug 2011, www.thediplomat.com; ‘Liancourt Rocks dispute’, op.cit.
[6] ibid.
[7] ‘N. Korea denounces Japan’s vow to visit island near Dokdo’, Yonhap News Agency, 30-Jul 2011,www.english.yonhapnews.co.kr
[8] Lovmo, op.cit.
[9] Sean Fern, ‘Tokdo or Takeshima? The International Law of Territorial Acquisition in the Japan-Korea International Dispute’, SJEAA, 5(1), Winter 2005
[10] ‘Liancourt Islands/Takeshima/Tokdo’, op.cit.
[11] significantly though, the 1965 Treaty did not mention the disputed islets, Fern, op.cit.
[12] ‘Takeshima: Japan’s Territory’, (Takeshima Information Leaflet), www.pref.shimane.lg.jp
[13] ‘A Visual Study of Dokdo’, op.cit.
[14] moreover, even in the pre-motorised era of vessels, Dok-do was within two days sailing distance of the Korean mainland, ibid.
[15] Jon M Van Dyke, ‘Legal Issues Relating to Sovereignty over Dokdo and its Maritime Boundary’, Ocean Development and International Law, 38 (2007),www.jonvandyke-doc.pdf
[16] were the matter to go before The Hague, vital errors in judgement made by Japan would hamper its bid for ownership, eg, its failure to raise the islands dispute in the 1960s negotiations over the Basic Relations Treaty was a serious omission on Japan’s part, strategically it needed to keep the issue in the international spotlight. In the event of a resolution a likely outcome would see the maritime boundary drawn equidistance between Ulleung-do and the Oki Islands, as such confirming that Liancourt Rocks falls within the South Korean sphere, ibid
[17] indeed, from Japanese sources alone, significant parts of the early evidence appear to contradict the Japanese viewpoint, eg, maps drawn by Japanese cartographers seem to concede the point that Dok-do belongs to Korea. In a similar vein, the 1877 decree by the Daijō-kan (the Japanese Great Council) stating that Liancourt Rocks are not part of Japan, is a persuasive factor in weakening Japanese claims, ibid
[18] Kiran Kim, ‘Dokdo or Takeshima?’ CLA Journal, 2 (2014), www.uca.edu
[19] especially when one takes into consideration how remote, difficult to access and basically ‘uninhabitable’ Dok-do/Takeshima is, Van Dyke, op.cit.
[20] Fern, op.cit.
The long-running South China Sea island dispute involving several Southeast Asian states❈ has demanded much of the world news attention recently. In July the International Court of The Hague rejected the territorial claims of the Peoples’ Republic of China (PRC), a judicial decision which the PRC, predictably, refused to recognise. Not far from the location of this seemingly intractable international dispute is another long-running dispute with marked similarities in the East China Sea, involving two of the South China Sea players, China and Taiwan (ROC), along with Japan.
Proximity of disputing parties
This dispute is over a small, remote group of uninhibited islands (comprising five islets and three rocks), known variously as the Senkaku Islands回 (Japan), Diàoyú Islands (PRC) or the Pinnacle Islands (ROC). After the Empire of Japan’s defeat in WWII the Senkakus were administered by the US until 1972 as part of the Ryukyus Islands. In that year the Senkaku Islands were returned to Japan under the Okinawa Reversion Agreement.
From the early 1970s interest in the Senkakus by outside parties started to be shown. According to Japan, it surveyed the Islands in 1885 and found them uninhibited, and so incorporated them into Japan under the doctrine of terra nullius[1]. Japan affirms this to be the legal title for it’s “valid control” (to use the government’s term) of the Senkaku Islands. Despite this both the PRC and the ROC lodged claims to the islands in 1971. Their interest in such a collection of sparse and barren rocks seems to be linked to the ECAFE (UN Economic Commission for Asia and Far East) report in 1968 which identified the possibility of oil reserves in the area (although in the longer term ROC’s interest in the Pinnacle Islands (Senkakus) seems primarily to do with the Sea’s rich fishing harvest).
China’s (and Taiwan’s) claims for territorial sovereignty rest on a historical argument. PRC views the islands as part of its traditional fishing grounds, administered through the historic Chinese province of Taiwan. Beijing additionally has argued that the Senkaku/Diàoyú Islands were integral to China’s coastal defences against Japanese pirates during the Ming Dynasty (14th-17th centuries). China’s claim also contends that Japan ‘stole’ its sovereignty over the Islands by annexing them in the aftermath of the (First) Sino-Japanese War in 1894-95[2].
Japan, for its part, expressed cynicism over the belatedness of Chinese (and Taiwanese) claims, attributing it to the attraction of the islands as a potential source of oil for China. Access through the East China Sea both to key shipping lanes and to its rich fishing grounds was also noted[3]. These by-products of course were equally-attractive motives to Japan for holding on to the Senkakus.
Successive Japanese governments have rebuffed the Chinese contention that the islands should have been handed over to it after WWII in accordance with the 1943 Cairo Agreement and the 1945 Potsdam Agreement. These agreements decreed that Japan would forfeit territories, eg, Formosa (Taiwan) and Pescadores Islands (Penghu), acquired by Japanese imperial aggression, but Japan has argued that the Senkaku Islands were not mentioned in these documents, not part of Formosa and therefore were not intended to be included under its terms[4].
With no ground being given by either country, the Senkakus conflict simmered on the back-burner for several decades, however in the 2010s the dispute has heated up again. China in particularly has taken a more proactive and aggressive stance. It has directed an increasing number of it’s vessels – both commercial and naval – into the territorial zone claimed by Japan (Taiwan also has launched protest vessels against the Japanese). In 2010 a Chinese fishing boat collided with two Japanese vessels off the islands – resulting in a serious diplomatic issue and a protracted stand-off between Beijing and Tokyo. In 2013 China provocatively declared an Aerial Defence Identification Zone in the vicinity of the islands (ADIZ)[5].
Japan has countered with some provocations of its own. The right-wing Toyko governor, Shintaro Ishihara, moved to use public funds to purchase the Senkaku Islands from their private owner in 2012, prompting the Japanese government to step in and acquire (ie, effectively to nationalise) three of the islands as a damage control measure. An unmollified China reacted by sailing its government ships including coastguard vessels through Japanese-claimed territorial waters. In 2014 it was announced that students in Japanese classrooms would be taught that the Senkaku Islands are Japanese territories – further angering Beijing[6].
Amrita Jash has attributed China’s combativeness on the Senkaku issue to more than the pursuit of economic interests and maritime security, pinpointing the “emotional significance” to PRC of Diàoyú Tai. Jash argues that the depth of China’s nationalist passions over the islands has its genesis in memories of the humiliation and inferiority felt by the Chinese during the period of Japanese occupation (1930s-40s) which evinced a sort of “victim identity” for China. Such hyper-intense feelings fed by historical insecurity are seen by Jash as currently driving a ‘hawkish’ foreign policy against Japan[7].
The role of the United States in the dispute? PRC’s perception is that the US sides with the Japanese position over the Senkakus/Diàoyús. The reality of this was made unequivocally clear to Beijing during Barack Obama’s 2014 trip to Japan when the President assured his Japanese hosts that the islands dispute fell “within the scope of Article 5 of the U.S.-Japan security treaty” … (and that) “we oppose any unilateral attempts to undermine Japan’s administration of these islands”. China duly protested, labelling the US-Japan accord “a bilateral arrangement from the Cold War”[8].
Chinese escalation of the conflict and possible long-term outcomes?In the event of PRC gaining control of the disputed territories a number of threats to each of the players could materialise:
⌲ to Taiwan the idea of Beijing controlling the islands so close to Taiwan (170km to the north) is a worrying geo-strategic prospect, ie, as a Chinese invasion route to recapture Taiwan which Beijing still denies legitimacy to and considers to be a rightful province of mainland China. More immediately important to Taiwan is the concern that Chinese control would deprive it of vital fishing grounds
⌲ to Japan the threat from commercial effects (loss of fishing waters, blocking of trade routes, exclusion from potential oil fields) is very significant, but probably even more concerning to it is the security implications (PRC using the strategically-positioned islands for a military build-up)◑
⌲ the US is not directly part of the disputants but Washington is cognisant of the inherent risk to it from China gaining a dominant hold over the East China Sea, eg, it could in a future, Pacific power play scenario block US fleet activities in the area[9]
Part of the disputed islands (Source: www.theguardian.com)
With international concern over rising tensions in the East China Sea and the stalemate between China and Japan, the International Court of Justice (ICJ) has been suggested as an approach to a solution. Japan, in possession of the disputed territory, would not need to take the initiative, whereas PRC (along with ROC) have the motivation to do so. But China’s recent refusal to accept the ICJ ruling over the South China Sea issue (and having as it appears the weaker case in the Senkaku/Diàoyú dispute)₪, recourse to the ICJ would likely see PRC again reject it’s findings and we would be no closer to a resolution of the matter[10].
❈ China, the Philippines, Taiwan, Vietnam, Malaysia and Brunei – all with overlapping or related territorial claims in the sea involving the Paracels Islands, the Spratly Islands, the Pratas Islands and Scarborough Shoal, as well as various disputes over the maritime boundaries of each state回 Uotsuri-shíma (coordinates: 25˚46’N 123˚31’E) at a mere 4.3 square metres in size is the largest of the islands◑ a measure of how seriously Tokyo takes the threat from China on this and other contemporary conflicts between the two Asian powerhouses is the record defence budget approved by Prime Minister Abe’s government in late 2015 – US$41.4B₪ China’s lack of good evidence of historic occupation of the disputed island group seriously undermines its case vis-à-vis Japan
[1] from time to time since 1895 the islands have been populated by Japan and used to harvest albatross feathers and process dried bonito, Tadeshi Ikeda, ‘Getting Senkaku History Right’, The Diplomat, 26-Nov 2013,www.thediplomat.com2] A Jash, ‘Diaoyu/Senkaku Islands dispute: identity versus territory’, (11-Jan 2016), www.policyforum.net; S Roy-Chaudhury, ‘The Senkaku Islands Dispute’, International Policy Digest, 1-Aug 2016, www.intpolicydigest.org[3] ‘How uninhibited islands soured China-Japan ties’, BBC News, 10-Nov 2014, www.bbc.com[4] ‘The Senkaku Islands’, Ministry of Foreign Affairs of Japan, www.mofa.go.jp[5] BBC News, ibid.[6] ibid.; Justin McCurry, ‘Japan: teachers to call Senkaku and Takeshima islands Japanese territory’, The Guardian, 29-Jan 2014[7] Jash, op.cit.[8] Ankit Panda, ‘Obama: Senkakus Covered Under US-Japan Security Treaty’, The Diplomat,, 24-Apr 2014, www.thediplomat.com[9] Roy-Chaudhury, op.cit.[10] Ikeda, op.cit.
Eighty years ago this month the IOC’s most controversial Olympiad was held. 1936 was a momentous year for the Olympic movement – the official Summer Olympic Games were held by the Nazis in August in Berlin. Back in February of that year another part of Germany, Garmisch-Partenkirchen*, had hosted the Winter Olympiad[1]. And in July there had been, or should have been, an alternative, anti-Nazi Olympiad in Barcelona … more of that later.
Never before had a modern games been manipulated for propaganda purposes to the extent that the Germans under Hitler did at Berlin. When the Summer Games were awarded in 1931 Germany was still under the governance of the democratic (but ill-fated) Weimar Republic, but with Hitler coming to power two years later Germany swiftly took on a more unsavoury and increasingly sinister complexion. The Third Reich was soon savagely attacking the liberties of Jews, communists and the Roma (gypsies) … and much worse was to come!
(Image: www.olympic-museum.de)
As it got closer to the event there were questions asked within the Olympic community about whether the Games should go ahead in Berlin. The Nazi regime’s transparent violations of human rights at home, and it’s failure to behave like a good international citizen (eg, pulling out of the League of Nations in 1933, illegally occupying the Rhineland in March 1936, etc), prompted a number of nations to consider boycotting the event.
In America public opinion was far from consensual on the issue. 500,000 Americans signed petitions demanding an alternate site” to Berlin and several newspapers, including the New York Times registered objections to US participation [Peter Carroll, The Odyssey of the Abraham Lincoln Brigades, (1994)].
f=”http://www.7dayadventurer.com/wp-content/uploads/2016/08/image-18.jpg”> Berlin olympischstadion 1936[/capt
The US Olympic Committee debated the issue at great length. American Olympic association heavyweight, Avery Brundage (later controversial head of the IOC) was “gung-ho” for going ahead with participating, running the (now hackneyed) line that politics had no place in sport. The head of the American Amateur Athletic Union, JT Mahoney, and many others, were in favour of boycotting. The authoritarian patrician Brundage was widely thought to be anti-Semitic and racist (in 1935 he alleged there was “a Jewish-communist conspiracy” trying to prevent the US team’s participation in Berlin). Ultimately Brundage’s lobby narrowly carried the AAAU vote in favour of going. The American decision to participate in Berlin was pivotal in salvaging the Games for the host city[2].
Brundage, defender of the Nazi OlympiadInternational opposition to the Nazi Olympics remained very vocal in the lead-up to the event. Spain and Barcelona in particular had a vested interest, having lost the bid to hold the 1936 Games to Berlin (the German city won easily, 43 votes to 16)♔. SASI (the international federation of workers’ sports) decided to hold the next instalment of its Workers’ Olympiads (see my previous post) in Barcelona in 1936. The Catalan Committee in Favour of Popular Sport (CCEP), boosted by the election of the leftist Popular Front in Spain in February 1936, worked with SASI to plan and prepare the Barcelona Olympiad♕, scheduled to begin just two weeks before the start of the official (Berlin) Games … clearly timed to steal Nazi Germany’s (and the Führer’s) thunder!
(Source: Bernard N. Danchik Papers; ALBA 033; Box 2; Tamiment Library / Robert F. Wagner Labor Archives, NYU)
In the end, although only two countries, the USSR and Spain, withdrew from the Berlin Games in favour of the Barcelona Olympiade, support for the Barcelona alternative games was widespread. The Olympiad was not state-sponsored in the fashion of the IOC carnival but backing came from progressive bodies and associations within western countries (trade unions, socialists, communists, anarchists, syndicalists, etc.). The Peoples’ Olympiad was also supported by various individuals – eg, dissident Germans with first-hand experience of the Hitler state and Jewish-American athletes opposed to Nazism[3].
SASI preached a cooperative and fraternal spirit to the 6,000 athletes from 22 countries who committed to participate. Whereas the Berlin Games were perceived as an affront to the Olympic ideals, Barcelona was intended to be based on a foundation of international solidarity that would elevate the “brotherhood of men and races” and “show the sport-loving masses (a Olympiad) that is neither chauvinistic or commercialised”, one devoid of the “sensational publicity of stars” that was characteristic of the IOC-run Games[4].
The organising committee for the Peoples’ Olympiad employed an emblem which reinforced the SASI themes of solidarity, brotherhood and world peace … three male athletes standing defiantly side-by-side, one white, one coloured and one (to all appearances) of mixed or Asian ethnicity (no females in the poster to be seen however … inclusiveness apparently hadn’t extended that far by then!)[5].
Most of the mainstream IOC sports had been slated for inclusion in Barcelona and one or two former ones like amateur rugby revived. Also tacked on to the Olympiad were a variety of cultural activities such as folk dancing, theatre, music, chess♚ and an “Art Olympiad” (the promoters advertised the event also as a “Folk Olympiad”)[6].
Avery Brundage and the IOC were not alone in condemning the ‘rebel’ Olympiad in Catalonia, the Spanish right-wing press slammed the idea saying, variously: it would be a “second class Olympics” because it was open to all-comers, it was a “Jewish-communist” games, etc.[7]. On the Left the Spanish Marxist Workers’ Party (POUM) opposed the Peoples’ Olympiad on two grounds – the preoccupation with sports was “a waste of time” distracting the working class from its ‘proper’ objectives, and they mistrusted the motives of the democratic socialists (ie, SASI)[8]. Another instance of the lack of unity of the European Left in the face of the threat from the totalitarian Right.
El Estadio de Montjuic
In July 1936 on the eve of the games opening, the Peoples’ Olympiad was thwarted when the Spanish military led by General Franco staged a coup against the republican government. The outbreak of a full-scale civil war in the country resulted in the Olympiad’s cancellation. It was a double blow for the city of Barcelona as it had earlier also lost out on the 1924 Olympic bid (to Paris). Some of the overseas athletes A number of the overseas athletes who had already arrived in Barcelona stayed, joining the Republic side and fighting in the International Brigades against Franco’s Falange forces. The Berlin Olympics kicked off as planned on 1st August with the politics indeed overshadowing the sport[9]. Barcelona and its Montjuïc Stadium had to wait another 56 years before it finally got its chance to hold the Olympic Games in 1992.
_________________________________________
* the infrastructure for the sports tournament was already in place – the main stadium and hotels (to be converted into a state-of-the-art Olympic village) had been constructed for the 1929 Barcelona International Exposition and upgraded for the city’s bid for the 1936 Games
♚ Chess has a long tradition (since 1924) of staging its own brand of international Olympics, the Chess Olympiads, now held biennially
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[1] such was the furore that surrounded the Berlin Olympics, the Garmisch-Partenkirchen Games, comparatively, have been largely overlooked by history … Hitler did take a more low-key approach to the Bavarian event, however it was not entirely without controversy, eg, the “Jews not wanted” signs prominently displayed in the town had to be hastily removed from sight (albeit only temporarily); the German army undertook military manoeuvres in the vicinity during the Games, A Meyhoff & G Pfeil, ‘Garmisch-Partenkirchen’s Uncomfortable Past: German Ski Resort Represses Memory of 1936 Winter Olympics’, Spiegel International Online, 22-Jan 2010, www.spiegel.de
[2] H Gordon, Australia and the Olympics ; ‘The Movement to Boycott the Olympics of 1936’, (United States Holocaust Memorial Museum), www.ushmm.org
[3] British support of Barcelona (and opposition to Berlin) was formidable, promising a big representation of UK athletes for the Olimpíada Popular, TUC (Trade Union Congress), ‘Labor Chest – Opposition to the Nazi Games, British Workers’ Sports Associations’ (Press Release), 9-Jun 1936), in Documents on the Popular Olympiad from “Trabajadores: The Spanish Civil War through the eyes of organised labor”, BTU Congress (Modern Research Centre, University of Warwick), www.contentdm.warwick.ac.uk
[4] ibid.
[5] J Freedland, ‘The Anti-Nazi Games that never were’, Evening Standard (Lon.), 16-Jul 2012
[6] ‘The Peoples’ Olympics in Barcelona’, http://iberianature.com/
[7] G Calomé & J Sureda, ‘Sport and Industrial Relations’ (1913-1939): the 1936 Popular Olympiad’, (1995), www.ddd.uab.cat
[8] ibid.
[9] Photos of the Berlin Games at the time of the event capture how completely Nazi propaganda lorded it over the ideals of the Olympics – the massive Nazi swastika symbol is seen to dwarf the Olympic Rings at venues, ‘The Olympics: Playing Political Games’, (Modern Research Centre, University of Warwick), www2.warwick.ac.uk
1936 was a momentous year for the Olympic movement, the official, IOC-sanctioned Olympic Games was hosted by Nazi Germany’s Berlin. Never before had a modern games been manipulated for propaganda purposes to the extent that the Germans under Hitler did in Berlin 80 years ago this month. When Berlin was awarded the Games in 1931, Germany was still under the governance of the democratic Weimar Republic, but with Hitler coming to power two years later Germany swiftly took on a more unsavoury and increasingly sinister complexion. The Third Reich was soon savagely attacking the liberties of Jews, communists, the Roma (gypsies) and other targeted groups of German society … and much worse was to come!
As it got closer to the event there were questions asked within the Olympic community about whether the Games should go ahead in Berlin. The Nazi regime’s transparent violations of human rights at home, and it’s failure to behave like a good international citizen (eg, pulling out of the League of Nations in 1933, illegally occupying the Rhineland in March 1936, etc), prompted a number of nations to consider boycotting the event.
The US Olympic Committee debated the issue at great length. American Olympic association heavyweight, Avery Brundage (later controversial head of the IOC) was “gung-ho” for going ahead with participating, running the (now hackneyed) line that politics had no place in sport. The head of the American Amateur Athletic Union, JT Mahoney, and many others, were in favour of boycotting. The patrician Brundage was widely thought to be anti-Semitic and racist (in 1935 he alleged there was “a Jewish-communist conspiracy” trying to prevent the US team’s participation in Berlin). Ultimately Brundage’s lobby narrowly carried the AAAU vote in favour of going. The American decision to participate in Berlin was pivotal in salvaging the Games for the host city[1].
Catalonia’s Olympiad Stadium
International opposition to the Nazi Olympics remained very vocal in the lead-up to the event. Spain and Barcelona in particular had a vested interest, having lost the bid to hold the 1936 Games to Berlin (the German city won easily, 43 votes to 16)♔. SASI (the international federation of workers’ sports) decided to hold the next instalment of its Workers’ Olympiads (see my previous post) in Barcelona in 1936. The Catalan Committee in Favour of Popular Sport (CCEP), boosted by the election of the leftist Popular Front in Spain in February 1936, worked with SASI to plan and prepare the Barcelona Olympiad♕, scheduled to begin just two weeks before the start of the official (Berlin) Games (clearly timed to steal Nazi Germany’s thunder!).
Politics and sport, the National Socialist way
In the end, although only two countries, the USSR and Spain, withdrew from the Berlin Games in favour of the Barcelona Olympiade, support for the Barcelona alternative games was widespread. The Olympiad was not state-sponsored in the fashion of the IOC carnival but backing came from progressive bodies and associations within western countries (trade unions, socialists, communists, anarchists, syndicalists, etc.). The Peoples’ Olympiad was also supported by various individuals – eg, dissident Germans with first-hand experience of the Hitler state and Jewish-American athletes opposed to Nazism[2].
SASI preached a cooperative and fraternal spirit to the 6,000 athletes from 22 countries who committed to participate. Whereas the Berlin Games were perceived as an affront to the Olympic ideals, Barcelona was intended to be based on a foundation of international solidarity that would elevate the “brotherhood of men and races” and “show the sport-loving masses (a Olympiad) that is neither chauvinistic or commercialised”, one devoid of the “sensational publicity of stars” that was characteristic of the IOC-run Games[3].
Olimpíada Popular poster: International worker-athlete brotherhood
The organising committee for the Peoples’ Olympiad employed an emblem which reinforced the SASI themes of solidarity, brotherhood and world peace … three male athletes standing defiantly side-by-side, one white, one coloured and one (to all appearances) of mixed or Asian ethnicity (no females in the poster to be seen however … inclusiveness apparently hadn’t extended that far by then!)[4].
Most of the mainstream IOC sports had been slated for inclusion in Barcelona and one or two former ones like amateur rugby revived. Also tacked on to the Olympiad were a variety of cultural activities such as folk dancing, theatre, music, chess♚ and an “Art Olympiad” (the promoters advertised the event also as a “Folk Olympiad”)[5].
Avery Brundage and the IOC were not alone in condemning the ‘rebel’ Olympiad in Catalonia, the Spanish right-wing press slammed the idea saying, variously: it would be a “second class Olympics” because it was open to all-comers, it was a “Jewish-communist” games, etc.[6]. On the Left the Spanish Marxist Workers’ Party (POUM) opposed the Peoples’ Olympiad on two grounds – the preoccupation with sports was “a waste of time” distracting the working class from its ‘proper’ objectives, and they mistrusted the motives of the democratic socialists (ie, SASI)[7]. Another instance of the lack of unity of the European Left in the face of the threat from the totalitarian Right.
Estadio Montjuïc
In July 1936 on the eve of the games opening, the Peoples’ Olympiad was thwarted when the Spanish military led by General Franco staged a coup against the republican government. The outbreak of a full-scale civil war in the country resulted in the Olympiad’s cancellation. Some of the overseas athletes A number of the overseas athletes who had already arrived in Barcelona stayed, joining the Republic side and fighting in the International Brigades against Franco’s Falange forces. The Berlin Olympics kicked off as planned on 1st August with the politics indeed overshadowing the sport[8]. Barcelona and its Montjuïc Stadium had to wait another 56 years before it finally got its chance to hold the Olympic Games in 1992.
유유유유유유유유유유유유유유유유유유유유유유유유
♔ a double blow for Barcelona as it also earlier had lost the 1924 Olympic bid (to Paris)
♕ the infrastructure for the sports tournament was already in place – the main stadium and hotels (to be converted into a state-of-the-art Olympic village) had been constructed for the 1929 Barcelona International Exposition and upgraded for the city’s bid for the 1936 Games
♚ Chess has a long tradition (since 1924) of staging its own brand of international Olympics, the Chess Olympiads, now held biennially
─ ─ ─ ─ ─ ─ ─ ─ ─ ─ ─ ─ ─ ─ ─ ─ ─ ─ ─ ─ ─
[1] H Gordon, Australia and the Olympics ; ‘The Movement to Boycott the Olympics of 1936’, (United States Holocaust Memorial Museum), www.ushmm.org
[2] British support of Barcelona (and opposition to Berlin) was formidable, promising a big representation of UK athletes for the Olimpíada Popular, TUC (Trade Union Congress), ‘Labor Chest – Opposition to the Nazi Games, British Workers’ Sports Associations’ (Press Release), 9-Jun 1936), in Documents on the Popular Olympiad from “Trabajadores: The Spanish Civil War through the eyes of organised labor”, BTU Congress (Modern Research Centre, University of Warwick), www.contentdm.warwick.ac.uk
[3] ibid.
[4] J Freedland, ‘The Anti-Nazi Games that never were’, Evening Standard (Lon.), 16-Jul 2012
[5] ‘The Peoples’ Olympics in Barcelona’, http://iberianature.com/
[6] G Calomé & J Sureda, ‘Sport and Industrial Relations’ (1913-1939): the 1936 Popular Olympiad’, (1995), www.ddd.uab.cat
[7] ibid.
[8] Photos of the Berlin Games at the time of the event capture how completely Nazi propaganda lorded it over the ideals of the Olympics – the massive Nazi swastika symbol is seen to dwarf the Olympic Rings at venues, ‘The Olympics: Playing Political Games’, (Modern Research Centre, University of Warwick), www2.warwick.ac.uk
The second week of the Rio Olympics is now in full swing with the track and field disciplines having taken over from the swimming events. The conspicuous media coverage of the ‘unofficial'(sic) medal tallies in these games and the keen, vicarious interest of patriotic supporters in the performances of their national teams is as high as ever. By way of contrast to today’s highly competitive and commercialised IOC Olympics, I thought it might be interesting to take a look at a very different kind of Olympiad, one lacking in individual competitiveness, centring largely round the Second World in the 1920s and 1930s.
During the interwar period (1919-1939) the newly-communist state of the USSR isolated itself from the capitalist world, this also meant opting out of the western system of sport, including the quadrennial Olympic Games♜. The USSR leaders viewed the Olympics as a capitalist and inherently exploitative and chauvinistic sporting event run by and for the West’s elites¹. The Bolsheviks certainly wanted to engage the Soviet citizenry especially its youth in physical activity, but wanted to create a sporting and physical culture that was ‘proletarian’ in nature to match the state’s avowed ideological position². Eschewing the IOC games’ ‘bourgeois’ individualism and record-seeking, the Soviets envisaged a sporting movement that would be class-based, collectivist and mass-oriented³.
Spartakiad 1931
As an alternative to the Olympics the Soviet Union in the early 1920s introduced the Spartakiad⁴, an ongoing, international multi-sports event sponsored by itself. The state organisation responsible for organising the event was called Red Sport International♔ (RSI or Sportintern), under the aegis of the powerful Comintern (the Communist International). The Spartikiad was the brainchild of RSI’s first president, Nikolai Podvoisky who came to the position from being Vsevobuch (responsible for organising the military training of Soviet youth).
RSI was formed in opposition to the IOC’s First World-dominated Olympics, but also in opposition to the rival Socialist Workers’ Sport International (Ger: Sozialistische Arbeitersport Internationale, SASI) which was founded as the Lucerne Sport International and based in that German-speaking Swiss city in 1920 (see Postscript). SASI organised a series of Workers’ Olympiads over the ensuing two decades.
The early (unofficial) Spartakiads were purely Soviet Republic affairs involving formations of the Red Army and Spartak Youth Physical Culture. Later participants included trade unions, the Dynamo Physical Culture Sports Society, the Patriotic Defence Society (DOSAAF) and other labour-based sports clubs and associations. From 1928 to 1937 athletes from sports clubs and associations outside of the USSR were invited to take part in the Spartakiads.
RSI Vs SASI
Predictably the separate sports tournaments of the USSR-sponsored RSI and the SASI (backed by the German parliamentary socialist Left and a mixture of independent socialists, syndicalists and anarchists) became vehicles to endorse the virtues of each body’s political stance … the Soviets saw the sporting activities of RSI as opportunities for political education of the masses (although they were quite frustrated at the limited success in this objective). There were calls in the 1920s for SASI and RSI to unify their multi-sport movements and some tentative connections made, but these were made against a backdrop of the non-crystallisation of the Left in Europe. Communists and social democrats committed the fatal political mistake: bickering and fighting with each other rather than focusing on the common enemy, a greater threat to them from fascism and the Far Right in Europe (eg, as happened in Weimar Germany). Ultimately the two workers’ sporting organisations couldn’t bring themselves to merge as the ideological divide between moderate (democratic) Left and Far Left widened⁵.
Both sports internationals were large-scale organisations, each with over two million members by 1928. Both professed to be anti-bourgeois but crucial differences surfaced rapidly. SASI took a strongly anti-militarist stance (the Olympiad’s slogan was “No More War”), and insisted that members follow its policy of political party neutrality (on both counts antithetical to RSI). SASI’s political non-alignment drew hostility from RSI who attacked it for a failure to espouse revolutionary goals, labelling its members as ‘Mensheviks’ and ‘reformists’. RSI also pursued a strategy of trying to ‘white-ant’ SASI by forming communist factions within it. SASI for its part earnestly resisted attempts by RSI to radicalise its movement and impose a communist dominance over it⁶.
Frankfurt WO 1925
SASI held its first Workers’ Olympiad in Frankfurt-am-Main in 1925. Around 150,000 spectators attended and a world record was broken in the 4 x 100 metres women’s relay race. SASI fostered the ideals of international solidarity and brotherhood among athletes, this was in stark contrast to the IOC which had compromised its own Olympic principles by allowing Belgium and France to ban the defeated (so-called) “aggressor nations”, Germany and Austria, from the 1920 and 1924 Olympics♕. The display of national flags and anthems at Worker Olympiads were forbidden … all athletes competed under a single red flag and “The Internationale” was sung at ceremonies which comprised displays of free exercises by a mass of gymnasts. The sense of brotherhood engendered by SASI discouraged the quest for records and the idolisation of individual athletes⁷.
Another feature distinguishing the Workers’ Olympiad from the IOC Olympics was that the best performed athletes were awarded diplomas instead of medals. As well, there was no exclusive accommodation for competitors such as Olympic villages, worker-athletes were billeted with local, working class families⁸.
The 1931 SASI Olympiad in Vienna♚ was probably the most successful tournament, introducing innovative sports such as fitness biathlon (run-and-swim) and “military sport”. It attracted 250,000 spectators (more than attended the 1932 Los Angeles Games), with competitors from 26 countries numbering in excess of 75,000 (cf. a mere 1,410 competing at the LA Games). Workers’ Olympiads were not restricted to elite performers, they were in fact overtly non-elitist … open to participants regardless of ability. SASI’s games had a more socially progressive approach … where the IOC had only 107 women competitors in LA in 1932 (about 7% of the total), Vienna had 25,000 female athletes attend in 1931⁹.
The next Workers’ Olympiad was set to take place in Barcelona in 1936, the same year as the Berlin Olympics, and was intended to be a protest against the IOC’s awarding of the Games to Hitler’s Germany. It was however called off at the 11th hour owing to the outbreak of the Spanish Civil War (see separate post). Hastily rescheduled for 1937♤ in Antwerp, this Olympiad was considerably reduced in scale (15 participating countries) … no German athletes because the Workers’ Gymnastics and Sports Federation of Germany (ATSB) had been outlawed by the Nazi regime upon coming to power. As a partial reconciliation SASI did permit RSI sporting clubs and bodies to take part. Exotic or novel sports at Antwerp included Basque pelota, Czech handball, table tennis, motor cycling and chess¹⁰.
Antwerp WO 1937
The 1937 Workers’ Olympiad was the last of SASI’s sexennial multi-sports labour-centred events, as the outbreak of World War II put paid to plans to hold the 1943 Workers’ Olympiad scheduled to take place in Helsinki. The global war also called a halt to the Moscow-controlled Spartakiads (Red Star International itself was dissolved in the late 1930s).
Emerging from the war as allies of Britain, France and the US, the USSR moved towards a position of greater engagement with the world. Embracing the West, to the extent it did this, was partly a recognition of the need to modernise the Soviet Union, and this was essential if the USSR was going to compete with and overtake the capitalist world in industry, technology and agriculture. A key part of engaging internationally was to integrate into the Western international sports system, starting with the major sports in the USSR, football and weightlifting. The Soviets got themselves onto the world governing federations in these sports and then extended the process to other highly participatory sports¹¹.
As the muscle-flexing of the Cold War was starting up, the USSR recognised the value of using sport to project and enhance great-power status, so a clear aim was re-admission to the Olympic Games fraternity. The Soviets did not try to participate at the 1948 London Games but timed their return for the 1952 Games in Helsinki where they were successful in winning 22 gold medals. At Melbourne in the 1956 Olympics the USSR finished first (above even the mighty USA) in the medal tally. Such a demonstration of communist sporting supremacy over capitalist nations in this world arena brought the Soviet Union a real measure of international recognition¹² (in the same way as Soviet technological breakthroughs in the “Space Race” did).
In the post-war period the Soviet Union continued holding Spartakiads, but they now had new purposes. The Spartikiads and other such massive-scale, multi-sport extravaganzas (kompleksnye sorevnovania) were still PR vehicles to propagate positive values of youth, optimism and world peace. The Spartakiad continued right up to the breakup of the USSR, and its sporting activities bolstered national defence by providing paramilitary training for Soviet youth. But the event was now held one year prior to the Olympics, the Spartakiad became an internal Olympics trial, a mechanism to find and develop new talent for the upcoming Games¹³.
Postscript:
The origins of worker gymnastic and sporting associations and clubs lie in Central Europe in late I9th century and arose out of an increase in workers’ leisure time, eg, Germany led the way with the formation of the Worker-Gymnasts Association (Arbeiter-Turnerbund – ATB) in 1893. Swimming, sailing, athletics and other sports swiftly followed suit. By soon after the turn-of-the century these types of organisations had spread to other European states. In 1913 worker sport associations representing Germany, England, Belgium, France and Austria, met at a congress in Ghent and formed the first International Workers’ Sports Association. The advent of world war the following year however put the IWSA’s activities in abeyance for the duration¹⁴.
₪┅┅┅┅┅┅┅┅┅┅┅┅┅┅┅┅┅┅┅₪
♜ in this formative stage of the Soviet Union, “Socialism in One Country” was the prevailing strategy of the Party (advanced by Stalin) – consolidating the ‘progressive’ and revolutionary conditions within the USSR, which meant postponing its export to the outside world
♔ originally known as the International Red Sports and Gymnastics Associations, underscoring gymnastics’ place in organised recreational pursuits in this period
♕ both worker sports associations (especially SASI) railed against the IOC for its practice of social exclusion, racist attitudes and failure to promote policies of gender equality at the Games
♚ the same year RSI held an All-Unions Spartakiad in Berlin
♤ the 1937 Summer workers’ event was preceded by an Arbeiter Olympiade Winter in Czechoslovakia
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References:
¹ a succession of aristocratic heads of the IOC (de Coubertin, de Baillet-Latour, Brundage) accentuated the elitist nature of the organisation and the event
² more pragmatically, the government also understood that the proletarian sports meets would provide youth with valuable training for later national military service
³ B Keys, ‘Soviet Sport and Transnational Mass Culture in the 1930s’, Journal of Contemporary History, 38(3), 2003, www.blogs.bu.edu
⁴ the Spartakiad took its name from Spartacus, the 1st century Thracian gladiator who led the slave rebellion against Rome, a deliberate contrast with the Modern Olympics movement which took its inspiration from the Ancient Olympics with its aristocratic nod to the mythology of Greek Gods, ‘Spartakiad’, (Wikipedia), https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Spartakiad
⁵ ‘A Workers’ Olympics?’, Workers’ Liberty, 01-Aug 2012,www.workersliberty.org
⁶ DA Steinberg, ‘The Workers’ Sports Internationals 1920-28′, Journal of Contemporary History, 13(2), Apr 1978
⁷ B Kidd, ‘Radical Immigrants and the Workers’ Sports Federation of Canada, 1924-37′, in G Eisen & DK Wiggins [Eds], Ethnicity and Sport in North American History and Culture
⁸ ‘A Workers’ Olympics?’, op.cit.
⁹ ‘Socialist Workers’ Sport International’, (Wikipedia), https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/SocialistWorkersSportInternational; ‘Red Sport International’, (Wikipedia), https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/RedSportInternational; Kidd, op.cit.
From the first, inchoate Papuan calls for independence (Merkeda) and separation from Indonesia, the West has conveniently chosen to ignore the justness of the West Papuans’ right to self-determination and a post-colonial future. There has been a mixture of motives for these omissions – revolving largely around an insurance policy of political self-interest and opportunities for economic self-gain. Over the past half century Australia, the US and the UN have at different times ably served the Indonesian cause in Western New Guinea (WNG).
The US manipulated the 1962 negotiations between the Netherlands and Indonesia (the New York Agreement) and undercut the Dutch position essentially for ideological self-interest. After overtures and military hardware from the USSR to Sukarno were warmly received in Jakarta, the need to keep Indonesia in the anti-communist camp became critical to Washington’s thinking of the day. The support for Indonesia’s designs on West Irian later lucratively opened the door for US mining companies (I have already outlined how Freeport Copper and Gold, in conjunction with the Suharto regime, richly profited from the mineral-saturated province).
At the time of the so-called “Act of Free Choice” in 1969, Ortiz Sanz, the UN’s official observer at the plebiscite, allowed Indonesia free rein to determine how the poll would be conducted. Jakarta chose a form of consultation with community elders known as Musyawarah, rather than the “one man, one vote” principle. The Musyawarah system (allowing less than 0.2 per cent of the population to vote) flagrantly breached the 1962 New York Agreement. Jakarta then employed its military muscle on the ground to intimidate (and in some cases bribe) a select sample of Papuan voters into allowing integration of the WNG territory into Indonesia. The UN effectively sold the Papuan majority “down the river” by rubber-stamping the manifestly fraudulent result. As John Saltford noted, “U Thant and the UN Secretariat allowed the UN to involve itself in a dishonest process which deliberately denied the Papuans political and human rights”.
In the lead-up to the West Irian vote Washington again endorsed the Indonesian position as the correct one. US national security adviser Henry Kissinger echoing the earlier, dismissive tone uttered by President Kennedy on Papuan self-determination, advised Nixon that “independence was meaningless to the Stone Age cultures of New Guinea”. Interestingly Kissinger later became a member of the board of Freeport and a key lobbyist of the Indonesian government on behalf of the New Orleans-based multinational!
Australia right through the fifties to the early sixties backed the Dutch plan to facilitate self-determination for WNG, slowing bring the colony to a state of readiness for self-determination, and presumably self-rule. Australia was far more conservative about how long this would take for both parts of New Guinea to achieve. The Netherlands however went ahead, from the 1950s on it started building indigenous political structures, trade unions, etc, with a view to possible self-rule for WNG sometime around 1970.
Canberra’s support for this option was more about blocking Indonesia’s designs on the territory than about advancing the interests of the Papuans. Australia’s strategic focus in the (still) Eurocentric fifties was on the avoidance of having an Asian power (especially one with a leader showing leftist tendencies) sharing a land border with any territory administered by it. At this time Australia was responsible for the Territory of Papua New Guinea in the eastern half of the island (later granted independence in 1975), and there had even been some discussion of a pan-Papuan Melanesian Union – although it is debatable how seriously this was ever mooted [R Chauvel, ‘Australia’s strategic environment: the problem of Papua’; JR Verrier, ‘Origin of the Border Problem’].
The US’s involvement in Indo-China in the cause of anti-communism steered the Liberal government in Canberra in a different direction. To counter Soviet influence on Indonesia the Kennedy and Johnson administrations put their support first behind the Sukarno regime, and after it fell, the Suharto regime as “a bulwark against the spread of communism” in south-east Asia. Australia, in what was increasingly becoming its default position, followed the US line … accommodating Indonesia’s wishes on West Irian would uphold the status quo and maintain the regional balance.
Aust & Indonesia discuss mutual interests
In addition to being a supporting pillar in Washington’s Cold War ‘army’, Canberra had its own, more immediate, regional geo-strategic considerations concerning WNG. In 1962 the Menzies government changed tact on the issue. This happened because external affairs minister Garfield Barwick persuaded the cabinet to switch sides. Australia’s immediate defence concerns were still focused on the dangers inherent in “an arc of instability” existing to the north, but Barwick argued, that the creation of an independent micro-state (that would probably not be viable) within the orbit of a large, emerging Asian powerhouse with an axe to grind, was the worst result for Australia [R Chauvel, ‘Australia’s strategic environment: the problem of Papua’].
The Menzies government rationalised that letting Jakarta have the former Dutch New Guinea colony would satisfy the Indonesians’ territorial ambitions*. And already there were signs in Canberra’s thinking that the integration of Dutch New Guinea into Indonesia was a done deal waiting to happen. As Barwick’s successor as EA minister Paul Hasluck revealing put it in 1965, the process of self-determination need not amount to a plebiscite but can merely be “an act of ascertainment” [cited in W Henderson, West New Guinea: The dispute and its settlement].
The Government of Australia raised no objections to Indonesia’s reliance on a grotesque, wilfully skewed plebiscite in 1969 to meet its desired ends. In fact the new Liberal-Country Party external affairs minister Gordon Freeth endorsed Jakarta’s symbolic consultative process. Without blinking the Gorton government in Canberra subsequently and routinely endorsed the Indonesian takeover of the territory.
The laissez-faire Australian policy towards Indonesia’s oppressive neo-colonial treatment of its Papuan province and people continues to the present. In fact recent Australian governments have been frantically trying to curry favour with Indonesia, making pronouncements on the West Papua issue that at times sound uncomfortably close to appeasement. In late 2013 the then Australian PM, Tony Abbott, obsequiously reassured the Indonesian president at the time (Yudhoyono) that his government would do everything in its power to stop protestors using Australia to criticise Indonesian treatment of Papuans in the province (“as a platform for grandstanding against Indonesia” as he phrased it) [S Rollo, ‘Ending our pragmatic complicity in West Papua’].
For Indonesia’s part it too has a new president, ‘Jokowi’ Widodo, who has expressed a greater interest in the troubled province than his predecessors, and has made some limited concessions. In 2015 he released five Papuan political detainees and lifted restrictions on foreign correspondents within the provinces** (although this has been put in doubt by later contradictory statements).
It is too early to say if Jokowi’s ascension will signify real improvements in the Papuan community’s situation. Both Wahid and Habibie in the Papuan Spring interlude committed themselves to reforms but these did not really materialise. Even with genuine goodwill and intent on the part of the president, it has been shown in Indonesia that the political and military elites can block the way to meaningful changes occurring.
The Indonesia/West Papua conflict has reached a kind of impasse. Indonesia believes that Western New Guinea belongs to it. It sees itself as the rightful heir and successor to the Dutch East Indies empire. It is in possession of that last piece of the East Indies jigsaw and it has the title deeds (albeit tainted) to it in the shape of the 1969 UN-sanctioned plebiscite! Jakarta fought hard diplomatically and by other means in the 1950s and 60s to get West Papua and it is not prepared to relinquish this prize, as far as it is concerned it is non-negotiable! External criticism and talk of “human rights” in West Papua is sternly viewed as interference with Indonesia’s internal affairs.
Melanesian world
The Papuans, through different lens, see it otherwise. They view the Indonesian identity as an external impost on their Melanesianness, they see themselves as ethnically and culturally distinct from the many other parts of the archipelago. The separatist rebels know that they can never defeat the Indonesian Army militarily, but so barbaric and oppressive is the war Indonesia is waging against militia and civilians alike, that OPM and other pro-independence elements would never give up the struggle whilst they still have any means to resist. The Papuans also have right on their side, they know that the 1969 vote that was supposed to demonstrate the population’s will was an undemocratic, tokenistic process with a transparently contrived result.
Whilst Indonesia persists with its discriminatory practices, behaving as an occupational power with its terror and torture tactics against the Papuans, it can never hope to win the hearts and minds of the population. The great majority of Papuans, from their everyday experiences with Indonesian authority, live with the realisation that, without any say in the matter, they have gone from one form of colonialism (Dutch) to another, more oppressive, colonialism (Indonesian).
Like other intractable conflicts around the world it cries out for mediation by a third-party. Comparisons are often made with the Timor/Indonesia conflict which dragged on for decades and at times seemed a pretty hopeless cause for the East Timorese before they finally achieved their freedom. One vital difference between the two though is that the UN supported Timorese independence, but with West Papua the UN has has never given diplomatic recognition to the Papuans’ cause***.
Jakarta refuses to even contemplate granting the West Papuans sovereignty. On a pragmatic level, unlike Timor, they’ve got too much invested in the provinces. Moreover the government has a profound belief in its right to the western Papuan land, based on the ideological underpinning that it sees itself as the natural and therefore rightful heir to the Dutch East Indies – which the western portion of New Guinea was part of (another key difference to Timor-Leste which was a Portuguese colony before the Indonesian invasion).
Indonesia is doing all it can to isolate the Papuan independence movement in the region, applying pressure to dissuade other nearby Pacific states from accepting West Papua into the Melanesian Spearhead Group (MSG). However, someone needs to encourage Jakarta to enter into a dialogue on autonomy for Papua with OPM/pro-independence representatives and to convince it that it is in its interest to do so – otherwise the situation will just perpetuate as a stalemate with further bad PR for Jakarta and a very costly exercise of never-ending military occupation draining the Indonesian coffers … and the issue will continue to cast a shadow over the Indonesian Republic’s human rights credentials.
Australia is the obvious candidate as mediator, but this prospect is problematic on several levels. Australia is hamstrung by the 2006 Lombok Treaty which commits it to support Indonesia’s hold on West Papua, and relations with Indonesia are as sensitive as they probably have ever been. But more germane, both the current Australian government – and the opposition – lack the will to intervene on behalf of the Papuans. A long-delayed justice and a fair deal for the Melanesian population of Papua is just not on Canberra’s radar, rather its priorities lie more in shoring up its bilateral relationship with Indonesia to safeguard its trade and security interests and in heading off the possibility of new influxes of asylum seekers coming to Australian shores.
* in fact soon after Indonesia had secured its temporary mandate over WNG in 1962 it provoked a confrontation (Konfrontasi) over Borneo with the newly formed Federation of Malaysia, a conflict leading to military involvement from Britain, Australia and New Zealand.
** characteristic of a regime trying to keep its unsavoury authoritarian practices under wraps Indonesia has consistently maintained a media blackout for decades, restricting information on Western New Guinea reaching the outside world (intended to keep the rest of Indonesia in the dark as much as the wider world).
*** in a previous post on West Papua I outlined the negative role played by the UN in hampering the indigenous New Guineans’ free expression of their wishes in the 1969 Referendum on the territory’s future.
References:
R Chauvel, ‘Fifty years on, Australia’s Papua policy is still failing’, Inside Story, 27 Sept 2012
R Chauvel, ‘Australia’s strategic environment: the problem of Papua’, Agenda, 11(1), 2004
G Harvey, ‘The Human Tragedy of West Papua’, The Diplomat, www.diplomat.com
S Rollo, ‘Ending our pragmatic complicity in West Papua’, The Drum, ABC-TV, 28 Oct 2013, www.abc.net.au
J Saltford, ‘Act of Free Choice’, Independent Parliamentarians for West Papua, www.ipwp.org
JR Verrier ‘Origin of the Border Problem … to 1969’ in RJ May (Ed.), Between two nations: the Indonesian-PNG border and West Papuan nationalism.
‘Is West Papua another Timor?’, Parliament of Australia (Current Issues Brief 1 2000-01), Dr JR Verrier, 27 Jul 2000
Since at least the mid to late 1970s West Irian (AKA West Papua) has been a militarised zone. The Indonesian Army (known as ABRI to 1999, TNI after 1999) has been stationed in the province in increasing numbers to protect extremely valuable US mining interests from sabotage (especially the Grasberg gold and copper mines), and to quell indigenous opposition to Jakarta’s Inkorporasi of West Irian. In the mid 1980s investigative journalist Robin Osborne exposed a “secret war” in Western New Guinea conducted by ABRI since around 1962/63 against a small and poorly armed Papuan militia (known as OPM – Free West Papua Movement) trying to resist the Indonesian takeover [R Osborne, Indonesia’s Secret War … Irian Jaya, (1985)].
OPM has been active if sporadic since the 1960s against the occupying Indonesian forces, its hostile actions however limited to guerrilla style attacks on army and police posts (on occasions including assaults on the Freeport mine) and kidnappings of security personnel and transmigrants. The sheer persistence of the low-level insurgency and the resistance of Papuans generally to Indonesian rule has ensured a continuing heavy army and police presence in the province. Up to the time of Suharto’s fall from power, West Irian was declared a militarised zone (DOM – Daerah Operasi Militir) by Jakarta. The ongoing OPM resistance and other provocations such as the raising of the banned West Papuan “Morning Star” flag have met with disproportionate retribution from the security forces.
Amnesty International and other humanitarian NGOs have drawn attention to systematic human rights violations perpetrated by the security forces against Papuan civilians and militia alike, including the widespread use of terror, torture and brutalisation, and rape [‘Indonesia 2015/16 – Annual Report’, AI, www.amnesty.org/en/countries/asia-and-the-pacific/Indonesia]. Richard Chauvel has characterised its prevalence as “a deeply ingrained institutional cult of violence in the way members of the security forces interact with Papuans” [R Chauvel, Policy Failure & Political Impasse’ in Peter King et al (Eds), Comprehending West Papua].
Military actions by ABRI in 1977-78 (code name “Operasi Kikis”) launched aerial bombardments of villages in the Central and Eastern Highlands (using US and Australian helicopters and aircraft to strafe villages) resulting in an estimated 11,000 casualties among tribesmen and villagers [‘Neglected Genocide: Human Rights Abuses against Papuans’, www.tapol.org].
The security forces, whilst intended to pacify opposition in implementation of government policy, have at times appeared to get right out of hand, provoking riots (eg, Wamena 2000 and Timika 2003) and massacres of civilians (Biak 1998). Kopassus, the Indonesian military special forces unit, has been responsible for assassinating OPM and other Melanesian independence leaders.
Aside from its repressive role against indigenous Papuans, the occupying military has pursued other ‘maverick’ activities in the name of its self-interest. An US Embassy cable in 2007 quoted an Indonesian foreign affairs official as saying that TNI was operating in the province “as a virtual autonomous government entity” and also admitting that troop numbers in Papua were understated, and that they were there to protect the military’s illegal logging interests and other corrupt practices such as controlling prostitution, trafficking in stolen goods and endangered species [Chauvel].
After the fall of Suharto in 1998 Indonesian policy in West Irian entered a new period known as the Papuan Spring … under the new president (Habibie) tight military controls were relaxed right across the Indonesian archipelago and a spirit of democratic reforms (Reformasi) was entered into. This led to greater autonomy for the troubled province of Aceh and eventually to full independence for Timor-Leste. In Papua the outcome was a heightening of nationalistic feeling among the indigenous population (described as “Pan-Papuan nationalism”), but unfortunately there was only a brief interlude before there was a backlash from the Indonesian elites in 2000 and the authoritarian approach was restored. Army reform was supposed to be part of the new deal but successive governments have stalled on the process and ultimately not delivered on the promises [AMT Supriatma, ‘How Security Reforms work in the Conflict Region’, Indonesia, #95 (Apr 2013].
A disturbing consequence of the army’s reprisals against the OPM rebels has led to Papuan fighters fleeing over the border into Papuan New Guinea with ABRI forces regularly crossing the 141st meridian in hot pursuit. The larger scale military operations of the military have resulted in West Papuan villagers also fleeing east into PNG for their safety, eg, in 1983-84 11 to 12 thousand refugees crossed into PNG causing a refugee problem for the country (a logistics problem as well as a political one as PNG was ill-equipped to handle the influx in the hastily set up camps).
The 141st meridian
Despite a 1986 border treaty between the two countries incidents continued to strain diplomatic relations – Indonesia was accused of violating PNG air space and thus its sovereignty (an accusation it initially denied but later admitted), and Jakarta in turn was enraged by OPM rebels using the cover of PNG territory to launch the raids across the border into West Irian [‘Indonesia to apologise for PNG border incursions: report’, ABC News 21 Jul 2008, www.mobile.abc.net.au; ‘Border incursions a sign that West Papua also a PNG issue’, RNZ, 3 Mar 2014, www.radionz.co.nz]
The position of the PNG government vis-à-vis the border tensions with Indonesia is a very difficult balancing act – it has to safeguard its own sovereignty (and to be seen doing it), but it also has to tread carefully to avoid offending its powerful and volatile, much larger neighbour. At the same time the porousness of the long (760 km) border has maintained “grass-roots” contacts between Papuans on each side (eg, tribal ties unite Papuans across the border). Another common concern for both is the damage illegal logging is doing to the of New Guinea as a whole. Many Papuans living east of the PNG border regions are aware of the atrocities and denials of freedoms suffered by their brethren on the Indonesian side. All who reside on both sides of the New Guinea border are aware of the anomalies of the situation, one people, one island, yet politically divided. [‘Line between PNG and Indonesia increasingly blurred’, RNZ, 21 Dec 2015, www.radionz.co.nz]
In the 15 or so years since the Papuan Spring dissipated, Indonesian security forces have behaved with immunity in the Papuan provinces, terrorising village communities at will whilst hunting down rebels and independence activists. They have continued to engage in human rights abuses unabated, especially the extensive use of torture and rape of civilians.
An element of racism resides in the Indonesian forces’ violent treatment of Papuans. This is often overt, eg, the tendency of Indonesian troops to have their photo taken with rebels or tribesmen that they have just killed on patrol – in the fashion of “big game” hunters proudly posing with their wild animal trophy! References to Papuans as ‘monkeys’, ‘primitives’ and ‘cannibals’ are rife amongst the security forces and non-Papuan Indonesians generally [M Bachelard, ‘Papuans face ignorance, corruption and racism from Jakarta’, The Interpreter, (26 Jun 2015), www.lowyinterpreter.org].
Densus 88 “Ghost Owls”
In recent years there have disturbing allegations that Indonesia’s counter-terrorism unit, Densus 88 (Detachment 88) is operating within West Papua. This special branch of the national security forces, funded, trained and equipped by the Australian government, is suspected of carrying out a targeted assassination of a pro-independence Papuan leader in Jayapura in 2012 [‘Is Australia funding Indonesian Death Squads? Densus 88 in West Papua’, http://arsip.tabloidjubi.com/].
The transmigration of people from one island to another in the East Indies archipelago had its origins with the Dutch colonialists. Stemming from the Dutch “Ethical Policy” towards its colonies, it was introduced in 1905 to relieve overcrowding in Java by moving people to the less densely populated areas like Kalimantan and Sumatra. The Dutch transmigration program was not fully implemented and thus had little impact on alleviating Javanese overcrowding. It was under the Indonesian Republic however that the program was reworked, first by Sukarno, and later refined by Suharto and extended to its furthest eastern territory.
The Central Highlands
The acquisition of the New Guinea territory (known variously by the Indonesians between 1963 and 2001 as Irian Jaya and Irian Barat) from 1963 was a godsend for the vexing dilemma of overcrowding. This applied overwhelmingly in Java but also in Madura, Sulawesi and Bali, and transmigration provided surplus land for poor, landless Indonesians. The policy has seen more than a million Indonesians resettle in West Papua either as sponsored Transmigrasi or as ‘spontaneous’ arrivals*.
The genuine practicalities of the goal of population easing aside, the ideological underpinnings of the government’s transmigration policy focused on the goal of assimilating indigenous people so as to forge a single, national identity (consistent with how the government sees Indonesia – as a unitary state) [‘West Papua Information Kit’, www.utexas.edu]. The Transmigrasi program was meant to absorb local Melanesians into Indonesian life, economy and culture (‘Indonesisation’). The heavy-handed approach and blatantly discriminatory practices of the government have had the opposite effect, serving only to sharpen the Papuans’ sense of their racial and cultural distinctiveness from the Asian newcomers [D Gietzelt, ‘Indonesization of West Papua’, Oceania, 59(3), March 1989].
This sense of Papuan alienation from the centre was compounded by demographic factors, the steady, systematic rise in transmigrants has eventually made the indigenous population a minority in its own land**. The Papuans with their Christian or traditional native beliefs also found themselves outnumbered by a Muslim majority, an additional cultural gulf between the two ethically diverse groups.
With the transmigrants taking up residency in the province, especially in urban regions and around the mining and timber regions, the new jobs in construction, in extractive processes and in forestry have been distributed heavily in favour of the newcomers resulting in the marginalisation of the urban Melanesians in West Papua (previously I referred to Freeport Copper and Gold’s key role in this marginalisation).
The opportunities flowing from resource exploitation went hand in hand with Jakarta’s policy of transmigration in Papua. The government seized the Papuans’ adat (customary land by right) to exploit the minerals and timber therein, at the same time decimating Papua’s rain forests and spreading deforestation. The consequence of all this upheaval was to deprive the traditional highland Irianese forest-dwellers of their only source of income. Uncompensated, they were forced to move to lower-lying poorer quality areas which were conducive to ill-health.
Despite the government’s repeated claims that, under the province’s new Special Autonomy status, Papuans would benefit from the transformation of society promised by economic development, the reality has been that the indigenous population has continued to be the excluded sector of society, denied status (the stigma of ‘primitiveness’, as tagged by no less an international personage than JFK, persists), missing out on the opportunities of employment and education, and finding themselves the primary target of the state security apparatus [J Munro, ‘The Violence of Inflated Possibilities’, Indonesia, # 95 (April 2013)].
In financial terms alone, the resettlement project has come up short. In the mid-1980s transmigration was costing the Indonesian government US$7,000 per family, constituting an economic disaster which has had the effect of worsening Indonesia’s national debt. And despite the scale of the transmigration to Papua, the objective of reducing Java’s population pressure has not been successful, as the island’s current (2015) population of in excess of 141 million indicates [MA Sri Adhiati & A Bobsein (Eds), ‘Indonesia’s Transmigration Programme – An Update’, (Jul 2001) www.downtoearth-Indonesia.org].
President Widodo formally ended the policy of transmigration to the renamed provinces of Papua and Western Papua in June 2015, but the required action has been all too late – the transmigrants have taken root in Tanah Papua in significantly large numbers and the program has already taken a heavy toll on the indigenous Papuans and their relationship with the central authority.
* the Indonesian government has been quite guarded when it comes to revealing the actual number of transmigrants to the politically sensitive provinces of Papua and West Papua.
** the change in the ratio of Papuan to transmigrant resident is striking – in 1971 non-Papuans formed only 4% of the province population, by 2004 it was 50/50 – such was the escalation in transmigration (by 2010 it was 51/49 in favour of non-Papuans) [research by Ir YA Ukago/J Elmslie & C Webb-Gannon, cited in S Tekege,’The Intentional Annihilation of the Indigenous Peoples of Papua by the Government through Transmigration Approach’, West Papua Media Alerts, www.westpapuamedia.info]
Freeport-McMoRan is a leading US mining company, dating back to 1912, when it was formed in Freeport, Texas, to mine local deposits of sulphur. The part of its wider-reaching history that is of most interest though, dates from 1967 when it went into business with the new Suharto (“New Order”) regime in Indonesia.
General Suharto had recently overthrown Sukarno, the foundation president of Indonesia, and Indonesia and Suharto had something that Freeport wanted – seemingly limitless reserves of gold and copper located in the former Dutch colony of Western New Guinea. Since the early 1970s Freeport has mined enormous holes in the mountainous central region of Irian Jaya (West Papua), first at the Ertsberg mine, and when that was mined out, at nearby Grasberg. This (second) gigantic mined hole in the ground north of Timika contains the world’s largest gold mine and it’s third largest copper mine.
The Suharto regime was rewarded very generously for liberally doling out mining licences and concessions to Freeport and other US companies. In 1967, General Suharto still trying to consolidate his tenuous hold on power, gratefully signed a contract with Freeport very, very much on the company’s terms. Freeport Indonesia Inc was given a 30 year lease on the mine within a 250,000 acre concession. The traditional indigenous owners of the land were excluded from the consultations and received no compensation. Under the agreement Freeport was under no obligation to contribute to community development and there were no environmental restrictions on the firm’s operations. The deal “signalled the beginning of a complex but mutually supportive and beneficial relationship between the American company, the regime and its arm of repression (TNI/ABRI) that was to last another thirty years” (Denise Leith).
Freeport Indonesia became “an integral part of Suharto’s patronage system” (Leith). Within a government already synonymous with corruption, the President and his close cronies were all generously taken care of by Freeport. This was in addition to the official benefits to Indonesia of the partnership. So important was the US company to the Suharto regime it even assumed the role of a “quasi-state organisation”. As part of the quid pro qua Suharto provided the heavy security (ABRI and TNI) for the Freeport operation (funded by Freeport) necessary for the strategically vulnerable location of the mine.
Grasberg
By the late eighties the original, Ertsberg, mine was just about bottomed out, and the newly discovered Grasberg mine neatly filled the void, going on to yield massively more mineral wealth than Ertsberg. Suharto’s government was in a strengthened negotiating position as Grasberg blossomed and secured a percentage of the mine’s profits for itself. By the early 1990s the company was Jakarta’s largest taxpayer*, the largest employer in the province, and the source of over 50% of West Papua’s GDP.
As the profits rolled in very conspicuously for Freeport the corporation found it prudent to be seen to be giving something back to the community. From the nineties Freeport started for the first time to contribute to community development, building schools, medical facilities and houses, more job opportunities for the Melanesian population, in an attempt to cultivate an image of a benevolent, socially responsible, all-inclusive multinational.
The climate of graft and corruption redolent in the Suharto era did not abate after his 1998 downfall. A report by the New York Times in 2005 alleged that Freeport made payments between 1998 and 2004 to Indonesian army and police commanders totalling nearly US$20 million. The government also provided political protection for Freeport whose dodgy labour and environmental practices were in violation of US laws.
Freeport’s practice of bankrolling TNI to provide heavy security for the vulnerably located mine (at a cost of US$10 million for 2010 alone)** has proved to be a two-edged sword. The ongoing abuses of the police and army against Freeport workers and against OPM rebels has implicated the US corporation in TNI’s human rights violations. Freeport has found itself in the difficult position of trying to avoid the PR disaster of being implicated in the military’s repression of indigenous Papuans whilst having the need to maintain a high level of security for its operations.
Freeport’s environment record in West Papua has come under scrutiny. The corporation’s practices have been severely damaging to the local environment. Tailings from the mine have caused massive damage to 28 km of the province’s western rainforest, and a quantity in the billions of waste rock containing acid have emptied in the surrounding rivers and lakes of the district.
The Suharto era were the halcyon days of Freeport in Indonesia. Subsequent Indonesian governments have not taken a compliant attitude towards the Phoenix-based US minerals corporation. On the contrary they had been distrustful and quite vocal in their demands of Freeport. In the wake of the 2009 Mining Law Jakarta has called for a larger cut of the royalties and increased domestic ownership of Grasberg to flow to it.
The parent Freeport company for its part is less sanguine about its future in West Papua than it once was. In recent years problems have magnified for Freeport – metals prices have collapsed and are at a “historic low”, mine workers in recent years have gone on strike over wages and safety issues, and production was affected by the company’s conflict with the government over export duties with Freeport’s right to export in doubt.
Despite the current setbacks it is far from apparent that Freeport Copper and Gold wants to cut and run from its Papuan commercial enterprises, it is after all literally sitting on a gold mine! In fact Freeport is currently earnestly negotiating with the Indonesian Government for the extension of its contract in West Papua which expires in 2021. Nevertheless it is a turbulent time for the mining corporation – last month the CEO of Freeport Indonesia, Maroef Sjamsuddin, abruptly resigned only one year into his term, and less than a month after the scandal involving the speaker of the Indonesian House of Representatives, Setya Novanto, who was forced to resign for soliciting kickbacks from Freeport in return for an offer to extend the Grasberg contract.
Traditional villagers
The copper and gold extraction of Grasberg, together with the exploitation of other natural resources in western Papua, especially silver, oil, gas and forests***, have gone hand in hand with the dispossession and impoverishment of native Papuans. The loss of traditional lands without recompense has contributed to the parlous state of the bulk of Melanesians in the province. The stark figures of a 2007 World Bank report tells the story of their exclusion from the province’s wealth generation – 40% of Papuans still live below the poverty line (double the national average); 1/3 of children do not attend school; only one in 10 villages have basic health services. Moreover, the famine in 2009 resulted in almost 1,000 deaths from starvation.
New President, Widodo, has signally his intent to put more focus on the West Papuan situation. How Jokowi and his government handles the poverty-stricken conditions of disadvantaged, indigenous Papuans, and how Freeport contributes in this, remains to be shown.
* this continues to be the case, eg, in 2010 PT Freeport Indonesia paid out about US$1.75Bn in taxes and royalties to the Yudhoyono government.
** the ever upward spiralling cost to the corporation of safeguarding its property with hired security (itself an increasingly tainted liability for it) is another concern for the mining giant.
*** Freeport is far from alone in multinational exploitation of Papuan resources – the Tangguh natural gas to LNG project in West Papua province is a massive income generator for BP and its Japanese consortium partners.
Note: The present ownership of the Grasberg mine is divvied up as follows – Freeport-McMoRan Copper & Gold (67.3%), Rio Tinto (13%), Government of Indonesia (9.3%) and PT Indocopper Investama Corporation (9.3%)[www.miningglobal.com].
⪩⪩⪩⪩⪩⪩⪩⪩⪩⪩⪩⪩⪩⪩⪩⪩⪩⪩⪩⪩⪩⪩⪩⪩⪩⪩⪩
Glossary:
ABRI Angkatan Bersenjata Republik Indonesia (Indonesian Republic armed forces including the national police)
OPM Organisesi Papua Merdeka (Free West Papua Movement)
TNI Tentara Nasional Indonesia (from 1999, Indonesian National Army – armed forces minus the national police)
⋆˚࿔ ⋆˚࿔ ⋆˚࿔
References:
D Leith, ‘Freeport’s troubled future’, 67, Inside Indonesia, Jul-Sep 2001
S Michaels, ‘Is a U.S. Mining Company Funding a Violent Crackdown in Indonesia?’, The Atlantic, 29 Nov 2011, www.theatlantic.com
P O’Brien, ‘The Politics of Mines and Indigenous Rights: a Case Study of the Grasberg Mine’, Georgetown Journal of International Affairs, XI(1), Wint-Spr 2010
‘Grasberg: The World’s Largest Gold Mine’, 24 Feb 2015, www.miningglobal.com
‘Biggest Gold Mine Keeps Working as Export Permit Expires’, Bloomberg Business, 28 Jan 2016, www.bloomberg.com
‘Indonesia parliament Speaker Setya Novanto resigns over alleged kickbacks’, The Straits Times, 16 Dec. 2015,www.straitstimes.com
Around 1978–1979 I used to catch the 343 bus to work in the southern suburbs of Sydney. At that time I was working for a company that had the double distinction of (then) being both the world’s 9th biggest multinational corporation and the developed world’s 1st biggest industrial environmental vandal. On this particular day I was sitting on the bus thoughtfully reading a book by Australian journalist Jill Jolliff on Timor-Leste called East Timor: nationalism and colonialism. In the course of the bus journey I became aware of an Asian (Chinese-looking) guy next to me trying his hardest to read, over my shoulder as it were, the book I was engrossed in.
Suddenly, uninvited, he said to me, “why are you reading a book on East Timor mate?” Having invited himself into my personal space, he went on to voice his (popularly held view at the time) that East Timor didn’t matter, it was too small, unimportant, no one cared about it. I asked him if he was Indonesian, to which he, shaking his head, quickly demurred. “No one cares”, he repeated and looked away.
At that period it did look to all the world that the cause of Timor-Leste was a lost one. Realpolitik prevailed. Australia (at government-level at least) had happily washed its hands of this troublesome issue, with Whitlam giving Suharto the green light for a takeover in their hushed up Yogyakarta meeting in 1974, and his successor Fraser, rubber-stamping it with his Government’s formal recognition in 1976 of Jakarta’s Act of Incorporation of East Timor.
No one, or so it seemed, cared about the micro “half-island”. The neighbours in the region, the great nations of the world, all denied the Timorese the right to self-determination. In circa 1980 the chances of Timor-Leste ever gaining independence appeared to be zero! And yet that is exactly what was achieved by the Timorese in 2002 when East Timor attained nationhood whilst still sharing an island border with Indonesian Timor-Barat (West Timor).
As amazing, even miraculous, as this transformation was, advocates of a similar sovereignty for West Papua, a territory with much more economic viability and substance than Timor-Leste could ever have, cannot be as sanguine about its chances of achieving sovereignty and separation from the Republic of Indonesia.
When the Dutch former colonial masters of West New Guinea tried to counter Indonesia’s takeover of West Irian in 1962, President Kennedy, in seeking to curry favour with the Indonesians as part of the US’s anti-communist Cold War strategy, notoriously dismissed the Papuans’ right to self-determination with the words, (they are) “living, as it were, in the Stone Age” … a self-damning perspective of the indigenous Irianese as being too ‘primitive’ to matter to anyone [D Rutherford in M Slama & J Munro (Eds), From ‘Stone Age’ to ‘Real Time’, (2015)]
Even Jose Ramos Horta, East Timor’s former president and the man who led the decades-long diplomatic fight to turn international opinion in favour of an independent Timor-Leste, has not given his support to the notion of independence for West Papua [‘East Timor’s former president Jose Ramos Horta says West Papua “Part of Indonesia” ‘, (23-07-15), www.mobile.abc.net.au].
Morning Star
The justness of the West Papua’s case for self-determination, a genuine self-determination, not the travesty of one that took place in 1969 (the so-called “Act of Free Will”), has never seemed to grab people, especially in Australia the third party with the greatest self-interest in the large island immediately to its north, in the same way as East Timor did. Its lack of ‘sexiness’ has seen the issue limp along under the radar, never really exciting the passion of progressive elements in Australia, New Zealand, or elsewhere in the West. Of course the media has played a key part in this, not getting the message out of Papua, in large part not being allowed to get the message out – such has been the persistently tight control of Indonesia over press freedoms in the province [‘Press Freedom in Papua?’ (R Tapsell), New Mandala, 11-05-15, www.asiapacific.anu.edu.au].
Notwithstanding the overwhelmingly slim prospects of a sovereign West Papua happening in the foreseeable future, and the sense of fatalism this engenders, it would be instructive to look in some detail at how developments during the period of Indonesian rule over the province reached such a grim outcome.
In 1976 the NSW state government consolidated the two mental health care facilities in Lilyfield, Callan Park Mental Hospital and Broughton Hall Psychiatric Clinic, into one body, called Rozelle Hospital (the word ‘Psychiatric’ was quietly excised from the name). Drug and alcohol and psycho-geriatric services were added to the psychiatric care and rehabilitation roles of the hospital.
A watershed moment in mental health with profound and long-lasting repercussions for Rozelle Hospital occurred seven years later in 1983. The Richmond Report recommended a policy of de-institutionalisation, moving patients of mental hospitals back into the community. From the 1960s, with overcrowding in state mental hospitals rife, there had been isolated attempts to deinstitutionalise starting to happen but the Report advocated that the government accelerate the process on a more systematic basis.
Stairs to a safe haven?The Report’s blueprint advocated moving patients out of the psych wards and into the community at large. They were to be given support through a network of community-based agencies. As well, the plan was to open up new special units in mainstream general hospitals and accommodation facilities to take care of the needs of the former inpatients. In reality however these measures have never been properly supported by successive NSW governments, Labor or Liberal. Cynically but unsurprisingly, the parties in power have tended to manipulate the program to cut back on existing bed numbers and close wards in the mental health care system.
New specialised mental health wards were eventually opened, such as in Western Sydney hospitals Nepean and Liverpool. But the cost of caring for the former patients, providing them with the services and housing they needed once released, has not been adequately met by the authorities. As a consequence, the state’s prisons have returned in practice to a traditional role they had filled in past centuries, acting as de facto psychiatric institutions. Government research points to a high percentage of prisoners (90% female and 78% male) experiencing a psychiatric disorder in the year preceding their incarceration [R Pollard, ‘Out of Mind’, Sydney Morning Herald, February 12, 2005].
Derelict “Social Club” for the patients
A conspicuous side-effect of de-institutionalisation at Callan Park was the physical deterioration of wards and other dwellings on the site. As wards closed, their upkeep was not maintained and many fell into various stages of dilapidation, some were found to contain very significant levels of asbestos. In 1991 an extensive DPWS Heritage Study was undertaken by the Department of Public Works with every building, evaluated zone-by-zone, to determine if it should be preserved, repaired or removed. Bizarrely, some of the buildings deemed suitable to be demolished were in satisfactory condition and still being utilised, such as the NSW Ambulance Service!?! Many of the old buildings earmarked for removal were subsequently pulled down but fortunately, somehow the Ambulance building complex survived [‘DPWS Heritage Plan’, (1991), www.leichhardt.nsw.gov.au].
The fallout from the policy to deinstitutionalise continues to be felt in the community. NSW Health’s 2007 ‘Tracking Tragedy’ report identified that there had been some 113 suicides by former psychiatric patients plus a number of patients who had committed homicides upon release [‘Final Government Response to Tracking Tragedy 2007’ (3rd Report)].
“Harbour Bridge” monument to Ward B patients or to war?
By the early ’90s the Kirkbride Block was being phased out as a psychiatric institution (the nearby wards however were retained for patient relocation) and a deal was struck with Sydney University (USyd) to lease it from 1996 as the site of its College of the Arts (SCA). The University then injected 19 million dollars into upgrading the facilities to make it suitable as a tertiary education campus. At the same time the nearby Garryowen House was repaired to become the new home of the NSW Writers Centre.
Uncertainty about the Government’s future plans for Callan Park led concerned citizens to form the Friends of Callan Park (FOCP) in 1998. Their concerns were well-founded as the Carr Labor Government in 2001-2002 produced a draft Master Plan for the land which included the sale of significant chunks of the site for residential development and the shift of psychiatric services to Concord – all formulated without having consulted local residents (this followed an earlier clandestine arrangement made by Carr to provide land in the Park gratis for a Catholic retirement village). FOCP and Leichhardt Council mobilised community support against the Government’s plan, resulting in a huge backlash from residents of the municipality.
Embarrassed, the state government backed down, ditched the Master Plan and enacted the 2002 Callan Park (Special Provisions) Act which guaranteed that the entire site would remain in public hands to be used strictly for health and education purposes only [‘Callan Park – a Tribute to the Local Community’, (FOCP), www.callanpark.com]
Later, Labor planning minister Sartor (again covertly) offered the the central core of the whole site (an area of 35HA) to Sydney University whose expansion plans for the SCA site envisaged increasing the student numbers to 20,000 and providing for up to 7,000 places in residential accommodation. USyd received a 99 year lease from the Government on the 35HA land. The University was planning to move the Sydney Conservatorium of Music from its present location in the city onto the Lilyfield site (the Conservatorium itself was very lukewarm about this proposal, as it turned out). This over-the-top development would have required 16 new buildings (some up to 4 storeys high!) to be built, which would have been a breach of the 2002 Act. Again, after a backlash and significant pushback from the public, the Government backed down [Sydney Morning Herald, October 21, 2002; Inner West Courier, November 6, 2007] (see also PostScript].
Recently USyd has been murmuring about the prospect of pulling out of the Rozelle campus, citing financial difficulties as the reason. It has already flagged its intention to move the Fine Arts School to the main Camperdown site [‘Sydney University abandons art school at Callan Park’, Sydney Morning Herald, November 25, 2015]. The uncertainty about Callan Park’s future has prompted critics like FOCP to suggest that the Baird Government may follow the same path as Labor did in trying to sell off part of the site for commercial gain. FOCP has accused the Government of taking a “demolition by neglect” approach to Callan Park, this will be a fait accompli, they contend, especially if USyd leaves Rozelle as the buildings will no longer be maintained and inevitably fall into disrepair [‘Callan Park in danger of being “demolished by neglect”, (23-04-15), www.altmedia.net.au].
New uses for old buildings
The next signpost in the Callan Park story occurred in May 2008 when the Government moved the psychiatric patients out of Broughton Hall and relocated them at a new, purpose-built psychiatric unit at Concord Hospital, six kilometres down the Parramatta River. The Friends of Callan Park had campaigned to retain the psychiatric facility, the late Dr Jean Lennane advocated that, rather than closing down Callan Park, the bed numbers needed to be increased as deinstitutionalisation had led to an increase in homelessness among the mentally ill, or had seen them end up ‘warehoused’ in gaols, or tragically, dead, after being turned out. FOCP also called for an extension of outdoor recreational activities available to the patients, eg, establishment of a city farm on the grounds with the patients tending the animals as part of their therapuetic regime.
Leichhardt Council also voiced its disapproval of the Government’s plans for Callan Park. Despite the chorus of opposition, the NSW Government went ahead with the closures. The Council persisted with its criticisms and the NSW Government in late 2008 granted the Council care, control and management of 40 hectares of Callan Park (roughly two-thirds of the area) under a 99 year lease (previously the “physical fabric” of Callan Park as a whole had been managed by the Sydney Harbour Foreshore Authority (SHFA) on behalf of the Government)
[http://callanparkyourplan.com.au/]
Sensing the need to be more proactive, Leichhardt Council prepared its own “Master Plan” for Callan Park, which, in a poll conducted by the Council, elicited 87% approval from municipality residents. The plan provides for greater use of the land for a broad cross-section of the community, with new sporting fields and skate parks and other activities.
The land and structures of Callan Park continue to be owned by the NSW Government now under the agency of the NSW Office of Environment and Heritage (although the SHFA website still confusingly lists Callan Park on its website as one of the “places we manage” [www.shfa.nsw.gov.au]). Some of the wards and halls (those remaining ones not riddled with asbestos) get rented out for film and television shoots from time to time, one building permanently houses a film production unit (building Callan 201) whose management harbours its own designs to expand further into the Park and create an international film production hub (again which would be a flagrant breach of the 2002 Act if it was ever allowed to happen)[‘Premiere plan for Callan Park film hub’, (20-06-13) www.altmedia.net.au]. Other current tenants of Callan Park include the Ambulance Service and a host of NGOs, eg, AfterCare, WHOS, SIDSKIDS and Foundation House.
With Sydney University’s future campus expansion plans looking elsewhere (closer to the city, North Eveleigh has been mooted as the spot to expand into) [University of Sydney, Campus 2020 Masterplan], Leichhardt Council seems to be running most of the debate currently. Very recently, the Council approved (over opposition from the Greens and Liberals) a motion to use the complex site to house some of the 7,000 Syrian refugees due to be settled in Sydney next year, ‘Leichhardt Council approves plan to resettle refugees at former mental hospital’, ABC News, 09-12-15, www.mobile.abc.net.au]. This produced a predictable if minor furore from some quarters of the community, demonstrating that land use in the area known locally as “The Lungs of Leichhardt” continues to be a divisive and hotly contested issue within the community.
PostScript: North Eveleigh trade-off
Frank Sartor’s biography❈ shed more light on the machinations: according to him the NSW Keneally Government secretly planned to compensate Sydney University for the ‘loss’ of Kirkbride by offering it the North Eveleigh site in Redfern for the new location for SCA. The deal fell through though because the North Eveleigh site was valued at about A$100 million, whereas USyd was only prepared to pay $30 million for it [‘Sartor: Keneally discusses plan for North Eveleigh with Sydney Uni’, Redwatch, [www.redwatch.org.au].
The western half of the island of New Guinea has been known since its discovery by Europe by different names, varying according to just who is doing the delineating. To the Dutch colonialists it was, unsurprisingly, Dutch New Guinea, to the Indonesians it was initially Irian Barat and then later after a dubious plebiscite endorsed Indonesia’s takeover of the territory, Irian Jaya (Victorious Irian), and more recently, Central Irian Jaya, West Irian Jaya and Irian Jaya when Indonesia divided it into three provinces (only to subsequently revert to the present arrangement of two after Papuan opposition). To the indigenous pro-independence movement and most outside observers it is West Papua.
The struggle of the indigenous population of West Papua to determine its own destiny long precedes the period of subjugation at the hands of their current overlords, Indonesia. From the Sixteenth Century on, the Portuguese, the Spanish, the Germans, the Dutch and the British, have all staked claims on various parts of the island of New Guinea. Spanish mariner Alvara de Saveedra on visiting the territory in the 1520s named it Isla Del Oro (Island of Gold), which turned out in light of the later discovery of its vast mineral wealth, to have been very prescient [Bilveer Singh, Papua: Geopolitics and the Quest for Nationhood].
Emblem of United States of Indonesia 1949-50
When the emergent Indonesian nation won independence from the Dutch colonists in 1949, the Netherlands refused to cede Dutch New Guinea to the newly-created Republic of the United States of Indonesia. The Indonesian Government argued at the time and have done so ever since in the international forum that, as the successor state to the Dutch colonial territory, it should by right have possession over the entire area of the former Dutch East Indies which included the western part of New Guinea. The Dutch Government’s rebuff of Indonesia’s claim to Western New Guinea was predicated on the fact that its inhabitants were ethnically different to the rest of the East Indies populace [ibid.]. This was Amsterdam’s stated view anyway, on this basis it proposed to guide Western Papua to self-determination at a time to be deemed appropriate.
But as Professor Peter King described the Indonesian mindset on the issue, “(their) agreement to the temporary ‘loss’ of the territory was never anything more than an expedient” [‘Indonesia and Ethno-nationalist “Separatism” since Independence: East Timor, Aceh and Papua’, University of Sydney, Papuan Paper # 6 (Nov. 2013), www.sydney.edu.au/]. Indonesia responded diplomatically by raising the issue at the UN General Assembly four times between 1954 and 1957, but failed to obtain a two-thirds majority. After the last failure Indonesia’s president, Sukarno, changed tack. Taking a more proactive approach, Sukarno seized Dutch enterprises in Indonesia and expelled 46,000 Dutch nationals from the country [PH Kratoska, Southeast Asia, Colonial History: Independence through Revolutionary War].
Through the 1950s tensions between the Dutch and the Indonesians over West Papua were high and intensified after 1957. At the time of the Indonesian Republic’s foundation western powers had indicated that they supported the Dutch plan to bring West New Guinea to self-determination, but by the early sixties the intensification of the Cold War had prompted the United States to reassess it’s priorities. The US’s focus had turned to Asia and the perceived influence of Red China on Indo-China and Southeast Asia in general. It was eager to ensure that geostrategically-important Indonesia did not become lost to communism. Sukarno’s lean to the left, bringing the burgeoning PKI (Indonesian Communist Party) into the political framework, was a particular concern for Washington at this time [95/03/06: Foreign Relations Series, US Department of State, 1961-63, Vol XXIII, Southeast Asia (March 6, 1995). www.dosfan.lib.uic.edu].
The late 1950s saw the Netherlands step up Dutch New Guinea’s preparedness for autonomy, laying the groundwork for an autonomous Papuan entity: new infrastructure was built, education was expanded, political parties and labour unions were created [‘Neglected Genocide: Human Rights Abuses against Papuans in Central Highlands, 1977-78’, (AHRC/HRPP), www.tapol.org/sites/default/files/sitesy/default/files/pdfs/NeglectedGenocideAHRC.pdf].
Indonesian stamp: Battle of Arafura Sea AKA Battle of Vlakke Hoek
Following the appointment of the indigenous representative New Guinea Council in April 1961 to produce a manifesto outlining the Papuans’ feelings on the issue of self-determination, an official raising of the Morning Star flag took place on 1 December 1961 in Hollandia, now Jayapura (Victory City), celebrated as West Papua’s Independence Day (these hopes for independence were however to be dashed on the rocks of political pragmatism within a year). All of these unwelcome developments prompted Jakarta to issue threats to invade the Western New Guinea territory by force. A naval military clash in early 1962 (Battle of Arafura Sea) saw the conflict reach a dangerous flashpoint. An Indonesian attempt to infiltrate West Papua by landing troops in the territory to incite rebellion against Dutch rule was repulsed by Dutch air and naval forces with losses incurred by the Indonesian side [‘Battle of Arafura Sea’ (Wikipedia entry), www.en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Battle_of_Arafura_Sea].
Kennedy–Sukarno talks 1962
The expediency of American foreign policy and the manoeuvrability of its stand on self-determination was exposed bare through statements by US President Kennedy. Freshly into the White House in 1961 Kennedy espoused the principle of self-determination, powerfully so in light of the Berlin Wall crisis, advocating the right of West Berliners to choose freedom in the face of threats from the Soviets and the Eastern Bloc. Simultaneously, demonstrating the ascendancy of realpolitik, Kennedy did a complete volte-face on West New Guinea. The US President summarily dismissed the Papuans’ right to choose their own future, intoning the disdain of the ‘superior’ white man: “The West Berliners are highly civilized and highly cultured, whereas those (only seven hundred thousand) inhabitants of West New Guinea are living, as it were, in the Stone Age” [cited in David Webster, ‘Self-Determination Abandoned: The Road to the New York Agreement on West New Guinea (Papua), 1960–62], Indonesia, No. 95 (April 2013)]. The Americans, in the end, reasoned that giving West New Guinea to Indonesia was the price it was happy to pay to keep the Republic out of the Soviet and/or Chinese camps.
In this polarised climate Western opinion had well and truly shifted on the issue from supporting the Dutch position to the Indonesian one. With Washington putting pressure on the Netherlands and things becoming increasingly uncomfortable for the Dutch in their former colony, the Kingdom advanced its exit plan to completely wash its hands of the East Indies. The US brokered a series of negotiations between the Dutch and the Indonesians which led to the signing of the New York Agreement in August 1962 (significantly no representatives of the West Papuans took any part in the talks). The Agreement stipulated that a plebiscite would be held in West New Guinea by 1969 to determine its future, all adults would be allowed to participate in the “Act of Free Choice”, and the Musyawarah (consultative councils) would be instructed as to how the referendum should reflect the will of the people. Under the Agreement’s provisions the territory was placed under temporary UN administration (UNTEA) until May 1963 when it was handed over to Indonesia to administer in accordance with the pre-agreed conditions for holding a vote to determine independence or incorporation.
From the start Jakarta was determined to snuff out any semblance of Papuan separatism and desire for autonomy. Assimilation into the Indonesian economy and culture was the plan. Government policy and programs aimed at diluting the tendency of the indigenous population to identify themselves as Melanesians, and trying to substitute in them a sense of being Indonesian [Dale Gietzelt, ‘Indonesization of West Papua’, Oceania, 59(3), March 1989]. As part of this policy the Papuans’ use of Dani and other Melanesian languages was forbidden by the Government [‘Neglected Genocide’, op.cit.]. Papuans were reclassified as ‘Irianese’ by Jakarta. To keep a close watch on the indigenous population and especially those the Government identified as subversives, Indonesia had troops on the ground in Irian Barat right from the onset of the interim UN period and the military build-up continued apace [Pieter Drooglever, ‘The pro- and anti-plebiscite campaign in West Papua: before and after 1969’ in P King, J Elmslie & C Webb-Gannon (Eds.), Comprehending West Papua.].
Grasberg Mine, Wt Papua
The military (ABRI) influx and crackdown in West Irian, which escalated in the years up to the Act of “Free Choice” had a secondary purpose, aside from neutralising opposition to Indonesian integration. After the 1963 takeover Sukarno welcomed foreign multinational companies to the new province to engage in what would become a ruthless exploitation of natural resources. The Dutch during the colonial era established that the territory was incredibly rich in minerals. At Tembagapura (“Copper Town”), the large US company Freeport Copper and Gold built a giant gold mine, Erstberg Mine (Dutch for “Ore mountain”), and later near Puncak Jaya, a second even larger open pit mine called Grasberg, the largest in the world – and in partnership with Rio Tinto, the world’s third largest copper mine.
One of the principal functions of the large military presence was to protect these vital economic assets from sabotage. Both mining operations were given free rein by Jakarta with the predictable resultant environmental damage. Freeport Copper became a lucrative source of patronage for the government, especially for the later, Suharto regime. In return, the regime protected Freeport, politically and physically [Denise Leith, ‘Freeport and the Suharto Regime 1965-1998’, Contemporary Pacific, 14(1), Spring 2002].
After the fall of Sukarno in 1966, it was business as usual for his replacement, General Suharto, in regard to the corrupt practices and under-the-table money transfers between the Indonesian regime and huge US corporations. In fact the quid pro qua relationship between Jakarta and foreign capital was further extended with a widening of mining licence access and concessions to US business interests. Suharto’s New Order government and US multinationals were now partners for the long haul [‘Neglected Genocide’, op.cit.].
Acquiring the 420 thousand square kilometres of West New Guinea in 1963 allowed Indonesia a means of easing the archipelago’s demographic pressures on the overpopulated islands. The Government instigated a transmigration program, moving mainly Javanese, Sumatran and Sulawesi Indonesians to live in West Irian. Jakarta provided special autonomy funding (in part sourced from the World Bank) in effect to divide and rule the Papuan population. By favouring certain Papuan elites and regions who were more cooperative with it, over others, the Government was able to undermine and weaken the local separatist movement [Peter King, ‘Self-determination and Papua: the Indonesian Dimension’ in P King et al (Eds), op.cit.]. Despite Government pledges that there would be no transmigration to West New Guinea, the transplanted population from other Indonesian provinces by as early as 1964 was estimated at 16,000 (twice the maximum number of Dutch residents in the territory pre-UN administration) [John Saltford, The United Nations and the Indonesian Takeover of West Papua, 1962-1969: The Anatomy of Betrayal].
The growing presence of loyal, pro-Indonesia migrants in the West Irian province was also designed to shift support toward the unification goal of the Government. The attempt to assimilate Melanesian locals into Indonesian life, culture and economy was however counterproductive because the money Jakarta poured into the province creating new jobs in work projects benefitted the subsidised Asian newcomers much more than the urban and rural Papuans. This had the effect of marginalising Papuans from the rewards of economic development. Therefore ironically, rather than binding them to Indonesia the experience with the centre resulting in a sharpening of their sense of racial and cultural distinctiveness, laying the seeds of an embryonic nationalism [Gietzelt, op.cit.].
With the Act of Free Choice required by the terms of the NYA to take place by the end of 1969, Indonesia lost no time in consolidating its plans to secure West Irian. Occupation of the territory was accomplished in a three-pronged strategy, by transmigration of non-Papuans into Irian (as outlined above), through a bureaucracy dominated by Javanese and other Indonesians intent on keeping a tight rein on the Papuan majority, aided in this by in excess of six thousand well-equipped Indonesian soldiers on the ground in West Irian. Jakarta’s objective for ABRI (the Indonesia armed forces) was to pacify the resistance to integration, so that the referendum, when it came, would be assured of a vote for unification with the Republic.
From about 1965, ABRI, under the command of General Suharto, engaged in a “secret war” against the Papuan resistance group, OPM (Free Papua Movement) as well as a terror campaign against targeted groups of Papuan villagers. This involved aerial bombings of Papuan villages located in the Arfak Mountains as well as the Ayamaru, Teminabuan, Paniai and Enarotali regions. The indigenous uprising against the Army in the Arfak highland continued sporadically over several years with the security forces eventually suppressed it, killing approximately 2,000 tribesmen and villagers in the process. Military operations in other parts of West Irian, ie, Ayamaru, Teminabuan and Inanuatan (code name: Operasi Tumpas (Obliteration)), resulted in an alleged 1,500 deaths, including whole villages being wiped out by aerial strafing [‘The Indonesian Army – Act of Free Choice’ (Joseph Daves), www.theindonesianarmy.com]; ‘Papuan Conflict’, (Wikipedia entry), www.en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Papua_conflict].
Papuan perspective of the “Act of Free Choice”
In the lead-up to the Act of Free Choice, the Indonesians stepped up the intimidation of Papuans. President Suharto issued thinly-veiled threats: anyone who opposed West Irian’s integration with Indonesia would be “guilty of treason” [Brian May, Indonesian Tragedy, cited in Daves, ibid.].
The military command, aside from intimidation and force, used other methods to win over the population (or at least the various tribal elders). Brigadier General Moertopo, put in charge of the ground operations by Suharto, alternated coercion with transparent bribery to secure acquiescence. Planeloads of much-valued consumer goods were distributed to selected local chiefs and community leaders to bring them across to the Indonesian side. Those that accepted the Indonesian largesse would be required to help deliver the pro-integration vote [‘The Indonesian Army’, ibid.]. Many of the Papuan separatists captured by ABRI, such as the Arfak leader Lodewijk Mandatjan, “turned” (dibina) against the resistance or in some cases were recruited to the Indonesian cause by the Red Berets in West Irian [ibid.].
The provisions of the New York Agreement (NYA) which stipulated that self-determination had to be allowed to take its course were breached by the military repeatedly right up to the plebiscite. Because of the tight control kept by the Indonesian administration and army the native population was denied the freedom of speech, movement and assembly that Jakarta had pledged to guarantee in the 1962 accord [Socratez Sofyan Yoman, ‘The injustice and historical falsehood of West Papua’s integration into Indonesia through the Act of Free Choice, 1969’ in King et al, op.cit.].
When it came to the vote itself, the decision-making process was profoundly flawed. Instead of the specified fully-participatory referendum, exercising the one adult one vote principle, the Indonesians set up a consensus by discussion mechanism (Musyawarah Dewan) to decide the matter. Further, the ABRI manipulated the process, appointing a hand-picked consultative committee, 1,026 men (out of a total population of nearly 810,000) who in an open forum with the army standing menacing by, opted for incorporation with Indonesia. Thus, the community representatives who voted to join Indonesia did so because they were either cowed or bribed into doing so it. Papuan students and anyone else suspected of expressing support for independence were rounded up and detained during the consultative meetings to prevent them demonstrating against the ‘yes’ vote [May, op.cit., Indonesian Tragedy].
Indonesian stage-show: the appearance of unity for Ortiz-Sanz’s arrival
The Act of Free Choice was thus completely undemocratic, a travesty of justice. To compound the crime, the UN itself was complicit in the Indonesians’ act of “deceit and theft”, bestowing upon it an air of legitimacy [ibid.]. The UN’s representative in attendance, F Ortiz-Sanz, despite blatant evidence of the illegality of the process, basically rubber-stamped the Indonesians’ actions (detailing only minor objections to the process in his report). Consequently the UN Secretary-General (U Thant) merely ‘noted’ that the Act had resulted in West New Guinea’s integration into the unitary Republic of Indonesia [ibid; UN General Assembly Resolution 2504 (XXIV).]. Papuan and external critics of the Act would come to refer to it as “an Act of No Choice” or “an Act Free of Choice” [Nonie Sharp, Review of RJ May, ‘Between Two Nations: The Indonesia-Papua New Guinea Border and West Papua Nationalism’, Journal of Polynesian Society, 97(3), Sept. 1988].
With Indonesia making the outcome a fait accompli by force and the UN giving a half-hearted nod of approval, other countries such as Australia and the UK basically looked the other way. The Americans by 1969 were deeply embroiled in Vietnam and in the region were all about advancing the cause of anti-communism [‘Indonesian Army’, op.cit]. The integration outcome was seen as good for political stability and for business. ‘Strongman’ Suharto and his New Order regime had the green light to apply an even firmer clamp on radicalism in West Irian. And the retention of a territory abundant with minerals, oil and timber by a friendly power open for business (especially American) was a status quo that suited Washington economically as well as politically.
Epoch-defining international news reaches even the most peripheral, overlooked corners of the Globe. Take this piece that appeared on page 1 of the Ketchikan Dispatch in late 2007. The Dispatch is one of the finest news publications in the entire Southern Alaskan Gateway.
An appeals court in Chile has blocked the extradition of Commodore Augustine Pinocchio to Argentina for questioning over a car bombing in 1979.
A judge in Buenos Aires wants to quiz the Chilean timber baron as part of an investigation into a 28-year-old attack that killed a rival paper pulp producer.
But the Santiago Court of Appeals, in refusing to lift the immunity Pinocchio has in his capacity as former president of the South American Anti-Woodpecker Trust, has effectively blocked his extradition. The Santiago ruling would appear to put a lid on any legal avenues to make the nonagenarian faces charges in Argentina, at least for the foreseeable future.
Court President George W Somoza-Duvalier said that the Tribunal ruled that Pinocchio is mentally and physically unfit to stand trial as he is still suffering the debilitating effects of an abusive relationship he had recently with a particularly violent termite.
Pinocchio’s health is generally in a bad state, he also suffers from a mild case of degenerative wood rot, has a pacemaker and has had three strokes since 1998. When interviewed briefly in hospital this week, the edgy nonagenarian revealed that his emotional ill-health started at the age of three when his father took him on a visit to a saw mill, and as a result, to this day he stills breaks out in a rash at the mere sight of a pencil sharpener!
IF you didn’t know it was there, you would drive right past it. In a quiet back street in the Illawarra beachside village of Thirroul … No. 3 Craig Street, no signs or plaques. For two or so months in 1922, this inconspicuous bungalow with the jokey, alt-spelt name ‘Wyewurk’❂ was home to one of the 20th century’s greatest English-language writers, DH Lawrence. That Bert Lawrence resided briefly in a far-flung part of the world like Thirroul NSW was not exceptional in itself. In the course of his “stop-go” global peregrinations Lawrence during his truncated life resided in over 300 addresses across the world! What gives it import and binds the great writer to this country was that he used this sojourn in the Illawarra to write all but the final chapter of his 421-page novel about Australia, Kangaroo.
⍙ “Valley of the Cabbage Tree Palms”
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After the 1914-18 War DH Lawrence (DHL), opted for a life of voluntary exile, eventually journeying to Australia with his German wife Frieda, the latest destination in a globe-trotting quest by the writer for a peculiar degree of spiritual fulfilment. They stayed two weeks in Perth⊞, before sailing on to Sydney. Lawrence’s initial plan was to live in Sydney for an extended time, however a day trip up to Narrabeen Lakes apparently convinced him that Sydney was decidedly not to his taste. The people with their displays of unbridled, rampant democracy, he found jarring to his sensibilities. He discovered little to enthuse about in the town…in the novel he describes pre-Harbour Bridge Sydney as “loused over with small promiscuous bungalows around which lay an aura of rusty tinned cans” (its fortunate that DHL didn’t pursue a career as a real estate agent on Sydney’s foreshore suburbs). He also rather extremely went so far as to wish that something akin to a tsunami would engulf the city. The Lawrences escaped from Sydney finding refuge in a small, coal-mining settlement 70km south. That Lawrence found a haven from the suburbia of Sydney in a (then) coalmine-littered Thirroul is a choice irony, given his hatred of coalmining, the vocation of his father back in Lawrence’s native Nottinghamshire.
⍙ The “Pale sea of green glass” at the front of Wyewurk
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Descriptions abound in Kangaroo of the bungalow in which they lived, and of Thirroul more widely. Lawrence evocatively depicts the beach directly below ‘Wyewurk’—which he gives the name “Coo-ee” in the novel—as “the pale sea of green glass that fell in such cold foam. Ice-fiery, fish-burning … full of brilliantly clear water and delicately-coloured shells … strangely sea-scooped sharp sea-bitter rock floor, all wet and sea-savage”. In the thinly-autobiographical novel Lawrence calls Thirroul ‘Mullumbimby’ – presumably he came upon the name ‘Mullumbimby’ on a state map as it’s the name of an actual town in the “hippie hinterland” of north coast NSW. The bungalow Wyewurk/Coo-ee is delineated thus: “The house inside was dark, with its deep verandahs like dark eyelids half closed … overlooking the huge rhythmic Pacific.”
The hastily written and skimpily revised novel Kangaroo itself is not valued highly in the overall oeuvre of DHL by critics or academe, eg, “Kangaroo is little more than an egregious failure” [Macdonald Daly, 1997 Penguin edition of Kangaroo; “a generic gallimaufry with a primarily pastoral focus”, Joseph Lenehan Davis, ‘Place, pastoral and the politics of the personal: a semi genre-based exploration of D.H. Lawrence’s Kangaroo‘, PhD dissertation, University of Wollongong, 1992]. What the novel has attracted recent commentary for revolves around the thesis advanced by Robert Darroch and others – its depiction of a secret right-wing army in Australia which was allegedly planning a coup d’état. Lawrence in Kangaroo seems to have anticipated the advent in the late twenties and early thirties of semi-fascist groups in Australia such the Old Guard and the New Guard.
David Herbert (Bert) and Frieda outside ‘Wyewurk’, 1922⍙
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In the isolated village of Thirroul—between the sea and the escarpment—DHL found an anonymity and ‘stillness’ that he had craved but had hitherto eluded him. The freedom, artistically, he found in Thirroul, enabled him to write over 3,000 words a day of his ‘great’ modern Australian novel [John Worthen, DH Lawrence: The Life of an Outsider] . Frieda and Bert left Thirroul and Australia in August 1922 for the US via Wellington, NZ. Settling near Taos in New Mexico, Lawrence completed the final chapter of Kangaroo and hastily edited the book. The serene native pueblos and western ranches of Taos were the next staging post in Lawrence’s lifelong “savage pilgrimage“, his descriptor of the relentless search for a more fulfilling lifestyle than that delivered by industrialised Western civilisation. Lawrence believed that “every continent has its own great spirit of place”. In the course of DHL’s terrestrial wanderings, both Taos and to a much lesser extent Thirroul embodied in their different ways aspects of the powerful life-spirit he was seeking.
Lawrence grappling with the menacing Kangaroo on the veranda of “Wyewurk”. ⍙ The Struggle’ by Garry Shead (Wollongong Art Gallery)
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In the years after the Lawrences departed Australia Thirroul slowly extricated itself from its coalmining preoccupation. Largely, it has remained a sleepy holiday coastal town while building a thriving arts community for local artists and musicians. Wyewurk, bereft of the DHL aura, slumbered back into a cloak of invisibility. It continued to be owned by the Southwell family whilst a succession of renters occupied it. In the 1970s people (some local, some from further afield) started to take a renewed interest in the literary significance of the writer’s 1922 residence. Unfortunately for the growing public interest but hardly surprisingly, the occupants of Wyewurk at the time (a dentist and his wife) repeatedly denied visitors access to the house and grounds.
⍙ ‘Wyewurk’, the Craig Street bungalow
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This situation got worse from the perspective of the DH Lawrence “fan base” after a local real estate agent bought Wyewurk from the Southwells in 1984. The new owner categorically refused any access to the property at all. Lawrence scholars (who would later coalesce into the “Friends of Wyewurk” and also form the nucleus of the DH Lawrence Society of Australia) grouped together to lobby politicians resulting in an interim conservation order being placed on Wyewurk. Despite this the owner submitted plans with Wollongong Council to add a two-story extension to the bungalow (which if implemented would effectively “cape cod” it).
Thus began a protracted period of litigation, the outcome of which saw the Heritage Council of NSW reject the owners’ ‘Pavilion’ plan. The Wyewurk group rallied support for the preservation of Lawrence’s house in its original form from public figures like Patrick White, Manning Clark and Judith Wright, from various national and international DHL scholars, and the local community. Later, support was also forthcoming for its retention on architectural grounds after the architects’ council declared Wyewurk to be the oldest surviving example of the Californian bungalow style in NSW (possibly in Australia) [S Jobson, ‘How we battled to save Wyewurk’, Rananim, Nov 1995, 3(3)]
The Wyewurk saga dragged on for several years more with the community divided on the issue. With all the publicity about Lawrence’s house, the Sydney Morning Herald weighed in with a predictable LCD tag, referring to Wyewurk as “Lady Chatterley’s beach house” [SMH, 29 July 2003]. Submissions to the Commission of Inquiry followed including proposals to turn Wyewurk into a centre for arts activities, but none of this bore fruit. At one point the owner himself is believed to have approached Wollongong Council with a view to the Council purchasing the house. The Council, adopting a breathtakingly tunnel-visioned approach, rebuffed the proposal outright…it’s woeful lack of acuity signifying a real missed tourism opportunity! Despite the building’s literary and cultural significance, the Commissioner ultimately ruled that the owner be permitted to erect a one-story addition to Wyewurk. To everyone’s surprise, in the end the owner decided not to proceed with the approved changes to the bungalow![Jobson, ibid.]
⍙DH Lawrence Reserve
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Wyewurk today is still there in Craig Street, pretty much as it was (the exterior at least) in Bert Lawrence’s time, though more strongly fortified now – given its challenges a minor miracle of survival! The preservationists won, but since sightseers and Lawrence devotees are barred from viewing its lawns, verandahs and the jarrah wood table on which Kangaroo was crafted, it remains something of a Pyrrhic victory. Since the mid Eighties the estate agent/owner has done all he could to block the public’s view of the bungalow through fences, the planting of trees and dense shrubs, a garage and a marauding dog on the property ready to bark at inquisitive and unwelcome visitors. There are no plaques in front of the cottage proclaiming its connection to the great English novelist and poet. The only indication signalling that “Lawrence was here” is 35 metres away in a tiny reserve overlooking Lawrence’s “green glass” Pacific. In late 1998 the Council named the reserve in honour of DHL and installed a commemorative plaque.
Bert & Freida in the backyard at ‘Wyewurk’ with visitors ⍙ (photo: Mr AD Forrester)
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Footnote: the current inaccessibility of the bungalow to DH Lawrence enthusiasts and the ordinarily curious over the last few decades was not ever thus! After the Lawrences’ departure for America, the owners at the time, grasping the significance of their recent famous tenants, kept the house as a sort of shrine for the 20th century literary icon. They maintained the furniture that Frieda and Bert used during their stay, including the table on which Kangaroo was penned! They even kept a visitors’ book for the many literary “pilgrims” who undertook the trek to Craig Street [‘Wyewurk’, (built circa 1911) NSW Office of Environment & Heritage, www.environment.nsw.gov.au].
⍙ Wyewurk with cute, friendly “dangerous dog” sign
Postscript: Lawrence’s visit and the publication of Kangaroo have exerted a profound influence on a number of Australian artists and other creative practitioners in the arts field. These include composer Peter Sculthorpe, Nobel laureate Patrick White, artists Sidney Nolan, Brett Whiteley and Garry Shead. Sydney artists Whiteley and Shead set up their easels in the backyard of the cottage next-door to “Wyewurk” (with the similarly-themed quaint name of ‘Wyewurrie’) in about 1973 and painted several Lawrence-themed pieces❈ including a diptych of the bungalow where Lawrence penned Kangaroo [Sandra Jobson Darroch, ‘Claws in the Arse’, www.dhlawrencesocietyaustralia.com.au].
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❂ the ‘Wyewurk’ theme is extended to the house the Lawrences/Somers stayed briefly in at Murdoch St Cremorne – which in the novel DHL calls ‘Torestin’ (“to rest in”)
⊞ DHL penned a short story here while being simultaneously inspired and frightened by the WA bush
❈ the Shead paintings of DHL’s sojourn are memorably jocular ones, especially riotous is the one (see reproduction above in the text) which depicts Lawrence frantically trying to ward off a frenzied attack from a large red non-metaphorical kangaroo on the back verandah of ‘Wyewurk’, while an unperturbed Frieda serenely admires the view
NOW that Scotland have expressed an inclination, but not a preference, to secede from the Union with England (the UK), it would be interesting to take a gander at other secession attempts both closer to home and around the world. The impulse for or advocacy of secession by a section or part of an established, multi-ethnic nation state is a recurring feature in contemporary international relations.
The enthusiasm with which so many Scots embraced the notion of “going it alone” and their, so it seemed up to polling day, excellent prospect of pulling it off, is a fillip for long-lingering secessionist movements around the world – Catalonia, the Basque Country, Québec, Flemish Belgium, Kurdistan (although some of the several Kurdish groups seek only autonomy, not outright independence) [“The Kurdish Conflict: Aspirations for Statehood within the Spirals of International Relations in the 21st Century”, www.kurdishaspect.com]
In the Southern Hemisphere, on this very continent indeed, in the state of Western Australia, an air of secessionism has tended to linger, much like the relieving breeze visited upon Perth in the afternoon from the Indian Ocean’s “Fremantle Doctor”. The Western Australians, from the very outset in 1900, were reluctant to join the Commonwealth of Australia…in fact the state’s name was conspicuously omitted from the original Federation document of 1 January 1901! A special provision (Section 95) guaranteeing that a planned inter-colonial tariff would only be gradually phased in, had to be added to the Constitution before the West would sign up. A further inducement that clinched it was the prospect of a transcontinental railway to be built linking WA with the eastern states.
The proposed colony of ‘Auralia’ – an irredentist goldfields colony
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In the end, what swayed WA in joining (as argued by Tom Musgrove) was the affinity with the East held by recent settlers lured to WA by the goldfield discoveries. The huge population surge in the 1890s in WA, due to the influx of these Eastern fortune-seekers made them more numerous than the established residents on the coast who were, conversely, distinctly isolationist in their outlook. The miners formed a pressure group advocating that the eastern goldfields area (calling itself the colony of ‘Auralia’) break away from the rest of WA and unilaterally federate with the Commonwealth. The WA Parliament eventually succumbed to the threat of being splintered and losing the goldfields, and committed to the Federation [T Musgrove, ‘Western Australian Secessionist Movement’, The Macquarie Law Journal, www.austlil.edu.au; ‘Separation Movement on the Eastern Goldfields, 1894-1904’, West Australian Historical Society 1949, 4(5) 1953]. So, even prior to Federation, a bent for Western secession was evident.
Black Swan State
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The secessionists succeed…or do they?
The threat of ‘Westralian’ succession has been a recurring theme in the state’s history since the early days of colony… lying dormant for years before being triggered into prominence by the emergence of some economic upheaval or issue (more recently over the distribution of mining revenues by the Commonwealth). In 1933 the issue of secession was actually put to the electorate of WA in a referendum held concurrently with the state election. The pre-conditions leading up to such a momentous development were brought about by the Great Depression. Wheat, WA’s top primary product export-earner was decimated (the price per bushel declined by less than half in three years) and unemployment in Perth reached 30 per cent. The WA Dominion League spearheaded by H Keith Watson agitated from 1930 for secession in the West. As a result of the League’s vigorous campaign (contrasting with the lacklustre campaign of the Federal League’s ‘No secession’ campaign), the referendum resulted in a greater than two-thirds vote (68 per cent) in favour of secession. Interestingly, the only region of the state to oppose the secession motion was again the goldfields!
“Westralia Shall Be Free”
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The Electorate’s each-way bet!
Paradoxically at the same time, the WA electors dumped the incumbent Nationalist/Country Party Coalition from power (even though the NCPC had backed the ‘Yes’ camp), and elevated the Labor Party opposition, who had opposed secession, into office in the state. The apparent contradictory behaviour of the electors has been explained thus: support was given to the ‘Yes’ case because there was widespread dissatisfaction with WA’s situation vis-à-vis the eastern states (WA had long identified itself as the “Cinderella State” of the Commonwealth, it’s perception being one of it contributing more to federal funds than it receives back). At the same time, the unacceptable state unemployment situation in 1933 resulted in voters seeking to punish the incumbent conservative government by turfing them out (as was done federally to the Scullin Labor Government in 1932) [‘Secession 1929-39: Western Australia & Federation’ www.slwa.wa.gov.au].
The WA delegation bringing the petition to secede to London
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Westminster or “Yes Minister”!
The new WA premier, Philip Collier, after some prevarication, appointed a delegation which took a petition for WA secession to the UK. Westminster, in a farcical turn of events which the writers of the popular 1980s TV series Yes, Minister would be proud to put their name to, simply sat on the issue, doing nothing! The British Government after a lengthy delay informed the WA Government that it could not act on the petition without the assent of Canberra. By 1935 the economy had recovered somewhat, the secessionist movement and the Dominion League lost momentum and the issue petered way for ordinary West Australians as they got on with the day-to-day task of making the best of what they could with the status quo [ibid.].
Western successionism, a simmering pot!
The media in WA helps to keep the issue alive with periodical appeals to the spectre of “secessionist redux” (with regular articles appearing with titles like “Why the West should secede” and “Secession still on our mind”). Secessionism has remained a rallying cry for disgruntled Western Australians whenever they feel aggrieved about what they see as the excesses and encroaching powers of Canberra. In the 1970s maverick millionaire/WA mining magnate Lang Hancock tried to revive the state’s secessionist trajectory with his short-lived “Westralian Secessionist Movement”, in effect a political campaign against the allegedly ‘socialist’ policies of the Whitlam Labor Government.Most recently this reared its head again in the concerted opposition to the Rudd and Gillard Labor Governments’ mining taxes.
‘Prince’ Leonard & his consort – in the ‘Principality’
PostScript: Fringe micro-secessionists – seceding from the secessionist state!
In 1970 West Australian wheat farmer Leonard Casley declared his 18,500-acre agricultural property near Northampton (south of Geraldton) to be ‘independent’ of the Commonwealth and the state of Western Australia when Canberra and the WA government tried to limit the size of his wheat crop. In true “comic-opera” style, the eccentric Casley turned his farm into the Hutt River Province Principality, adopting the title of “His Majesty Prince Leonard I of Hutt”, and in so doing spawned a whole new wellspring of tourism for the locality. Enthused with the spirit of commercial opportunity Leonard and his Hutt River ‘micro-nation’ has gone the whole hog…flag, coat-of-arms, royal seal, coins, stamps, medallions, passports, souvenirs, etc. The response from the Australian authorities to such a “bold act” of “unilateral independence” has been a “softly-softly” approach, not seeking to unduly push the matter, a bit surprising as the Hutt River ‘Principality’ purportedly owes the Commonwealth many years of unpaid taxes (although it does make rate payments to the local government authority, the Shire of Northampton)…the state and the federal governments seem to gravitate between being nonplussed and amused by the eccentric entity❈ and generally try to ignore it! [M Siegel, “Micronation Master: Prince Leonard of Hutt River”, 17 May 2012, www.businessweek.com]; ‘Principality of Hutt River’, Wikipedia, http://en.m.wiki.org
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❈ the Prince’s pattern of bizarre and idiosyncratic behaviour includes trying to seize government land surrounding his farm to increase his wheat quota; invoking the 1495 British Treason Act as proof of Hutt River Province’s status as a de facto monarchy; and declaring war on Australia (for four days in 1977!)
I’ve always thought it absurd that the average punter in the street raises up movie stars (whether it be Hollywood or any other derivative film community) to the status of demi-gods (as they do with pop and rock stars and elité sportspersons). Yes I know that it was ever thus, film stars in the silent era were arguably even more venerated by society given that at that time they did not have to compete with popular singers and sporting stars for the public’s kudos.
The media is of course deeply complicit in this with its obsessive focus on Hollywood box-office stars, especially the popular gossip mags’ hanging on every utterance and info snippet of headline-grabbing Hollywood A–listers like George Clooney, Angelina Jolie and Brad Pitt – a custom which is jejune and banal in the extreme. If these overblown ‘celebs’ make even a shallow pronouncement on environmental or human rights issues or announce their latest Third World orphan acquisition projects, this receives an inordinate amount of drooling media attention.
This uncritical über-reverence is ridiculously inane given that the majority of movie stars are not necessarily exemplars of propriety and moral rectitude, and sometimes behave like pampered prima donnas, absorbed in their overweening self-importance. Proportionate to the rest of society, movie stars often behave badly, they have equally manoeuvrable morals, they take drugs, they drink too much and beat their wives, extravagantly waste money, are unfaithful, get divorced (disproportionately to society at large in this case!), they are after all onlyactors! And yet media outlets continue to elevate them to the loftiest reaches of societal respect, as if some special higher wisdom is implicit in their trade.
Consequently she was ‘outed’ by the McCarthyists in ‘Red Channels’ (a right wing publication blacklisting suspected ‘subversives’ in the arts and media) and her burgeoning film career suffered accordingly❀. Hunt was a gifted actor, and an accomplished singer. She was also the composer of about 50 songs including one she wrote in the early 1960s, ahead of its time, on the subject of same sex equality in love and marriage – later a hit in the US in the 1980s.
In 1944 she was voted one of the Hollywood ‘Stars of Tomorrow’. However, like others in the industry who refused to recant their earnestly-held political convictions, roles for Hunt dried up. First she was relegated to B movies, then not even that and her film career was effectively over by the time she was 40. From the ’50s, Hunt, like many other Hollywooders including Ronald Reagan (180 degrees apart from her politically) found TV work her only reliable source of income and expression.
Peacenik, social activist
Marsha Hunt, friend to all Democratic presidents from FDR on, was and still is an activist with a capital ’A’. Outside of acting Marsha has pursued a concern for a host of vital humanitarian issues on the global stage—pollution, poverty, peace and population growth—as well as actively working against the blight of social homelessness and supporting the right of same sex equality. Hunt has never lacked for courage or for determination in anything she has done. She was active in the Civil Rights Movement in the 1960s. The 2014 film documentary, Marsha Hunt’s Sweet Adversity, illustrates the 60-plus years (and ongoing) of active international work (world hunger campaigns, a staunch supporter of the United Nations, UNICEF and other UN humanitarian projects, etc) by a woman known to admirers as a “Planet Patriot“.
Today despite her great chronological seniority she is as committed to and active in the causes of ordinary people as she ever was! Marsha is still in her own principled way making a difference for the planet. Marsha Hunt, talented actor, indefatigable activist, world citizen, a refined woman of principles, a great humanitarian and advocate for universal civil rights – a truly great American.
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⌺ Hunt is the only surviving member of the Committee for the First Amendment
❀ whilst other, more illustrious Hollywood liberals abjectly backed down in the onslaught of HUAC bullying, Hunt was one of the very few ‘Tinseltown’ stars to put her film career on the line by refusing to apologise for her support of the blacklisted ‘Ten’ and for her role in progressive activist causes
Indulge my self-indulgence if you would and spare me a few minutes to recount the following little tale about an academic department in a leafy, red brick outer-suburban university in the Antipodes. This story has a ring to it so palpably real that were it not for the certain knowledge that it is a fictional account, an imaginative invention of my mind, I could almost feel I was there, observing its dramas unfold first-hand! Indeed, I shall put myself into the story (as a mute, peripheral onlooker) as it unfolds. The setting for this narrative is a second generation middle-ranking tertiary institution in the early 1980s. For purposes of imprecise identification lets call it Governor Bligh University … that’s got a nice colonial ring to it!
Leafy western redbrick of GBU
At the beginning of the 1980s I commenced what I refer to in a jocular fashion as my undergraduate career at Gov Bligh University (or GBU as tertiary ed insiders like continually refer to it). I did have earlier brief tertiary false starts at Kenso Tech Uni and Warrumbungles CAE and an fleeting brief unregistered tilt at the University of Central Australia, but the less said about these feeble attempts to imprint on academia the better … . I came to GBU as a cod ordinary arts student very keen to study politics. In particular what was starting to catch my attention was the evolving political situation in the Middle East.
This newfound fascination with Middle East politics was, admittedly, partly motivated by an extrinsic factor: I had a Coptic Egyptian girlfriend at the time, but that aside I definitely had an intrinsic interest in the political dynamics of this crucial and volatile region of the world (and yes, my interest in Middle East politics did outlast my interest in my Middle Eastern girlfriend!). So, wanting to get a handle on the complex, endlessly convoluted politics of the region, I signed up for MEP269. In doing so, I unwittingly became an observer of an engrossing little political (and personal) duel between a brace of antagonistic academics.
The study of Middle East politics in the Department of Political Science at GBU at that time worked like this: two lecturers took turns to run the introductory UG course on a year-to-year basis. In the year that I took the course it was the turn of Dr Noam Menachem-Ryka. Had I taken it the year before or the year after, the Middle East course would have been run by Assoc Professor Dwayne Boemsteenboer. Boemsteenboer and Menachem-Ryka were poles apart in so many aspects of their views and personalities. Each of them were driven by a passionate, some would say partisan, commitment to one particular side of the Middle East debate. From this clash of personalities came a mutually personal and increasingly bitter enmity. Boemsteenboer was a very self-confident, somewhat intimidating mid-west American Arabist with Iraqi Ba’ath Party sympathies, whereas Menachem-Ryka was a liberal Australian Jewish scholar of East European ancestry with an entrenched commitment to the cause of Zionism (albeit from the standpoint of a small ‘z’ Zionist).
The consequence of this pedagogic bifurcation was that if you were taking MEP269 one year you would get Boemsteenboer’s pro-Palestinian slant on the Middle East situation, one heavily critical of his own countrymen’s (America’s) complicity in the imbroglio and sheeting home the blame for a lack of progress toward peace to the intransigent Israeli bullies, buttressed by US superpower, and unwilling to negotiate a just solution. Boemsteenboer’s homeland, the US, would be lambasted for using a non-Arab, alien, Western implant (the state of Israel) for Cold War gains, as a proxy military force to gain a hegemonic advantage over the Soviet Union in the region.
GBU
But if you took MEP269 on the alternate year you would get the avowedly Israeli perspective of Menachem-Ryka and his young female Jewish tutorial assistants, and an emphasis on Israel’s isolated position in a hostile sea of surrounding, undemocratic, authoritarian Arab States intent on the destruction of the Jewish homeland. Israel’s continued hard line on West Bank Palestinians would be justified on the grounds that the small ‘underdog’ Jewish state was fighting for its very survival. Indeed, I well remember during this period Menachem-Ryka being interviewed on ABC TV just after Israel bombed Iraq’s nuclear reactor. Noam’s response to a question from chirpy ABC interviewer Murf Paulfry was to justify Israel’s use of this dangerous pre-emptive strike option on the grounds that Israel would never be the second state in the ME region to launch an attack against its enemies.
Less I give a distorted view of these two academics’ teaching styles, let me hasten to add that for either of the combatants we are not talking here about the crass arguments and wholly transparent bias of, say, a David Irvine trying to rewrite the history of the Nazis’ Jewish holocaust. Both Menachem-Ryka and Boemsteenboer were well respected scholars with a string of insightful and critically well-received papers on the Middle East to their names, but the reality is that both had a political axe to grind, and so any expectation one might have of an objective, neutral, down the centre account of the Middle East conflict was out the window.
The task of the inexperienced undergraduate politics neophyte taking the course would be to try to read widely on the topic at hand and reach a well-reasoned conclusion which balances the robustly-argued critique on the conflict presented to them by the convenor (be it a pro-Palestinian or a pro-Israeli one) and the countervailing arguments from the other side of the debate. Great if it happens and a terrific learning skill to acquire, but the question that poses itself is how many first year students fresh from Year 12 would have the experience and sophistication to pull it off? Inevitably, the endorsement of a partisan position on the Middle East also had a polarising effect on students taking the course.
When I came to Gov Bligh University and enrolled in the Politics Department in the first semester, it was not long before I discovered a state of fraught and increasingly icy relations between A/Professor Boemsteenboer and Dr Menachem-Ryka. The personal tensions seemed to have built up over the previous two years, ever since Menachem-Ryka arrived as a fresh-faced lecturer at GBU with his recently minted National University PhD and some ‘intelligence’ work background.
What started off conceivably as a simple difference of opinion or value-systems, a rigorous intellectual debate between two overachieving scholars within the same department, eventually developed into an antagonism that became very personal. Everyone in the Department (and many outside) knew that the atmosphere between the two was quite toxic, both were inclined to avoid each other where possible. The ill-will between the two was clearly discernible to colleagues (Menachem-Ryka himself when I pressed him on his differences with Boemsteenboer described the American in highly disparaging terms).
There was nothing dramatic, no observable verbal exchanges or confrontations between them, but a falling-out at some point followed by an on-going, lingering war of words which extended beyond Menachem-Ryka’s departure from GBU. The feud between them eventually spilled out beyond the department and the University and into the wider academic community. Even the Sydney Morning Herald ran articles about the heated, personal conflict, depicting it somewhat over-statedly in boxing terms as a sort of head-to-head public slanging match.
Someone in the Department of Political Science obviously had a wickedly mischievous sense of humour about the Menachem-Ryka/Boemsteenboer animus. When Menachem-Ryka returned from OSP the last time before leaving GBU for good, he was re-housed into a room right next door to Boemsteenboer! I could almost see the sparks of vitriol ricocheting wildly off both sides of the adjoining wall!
I can’t speak with any certainty about Boemsteenboer’s motives or the emotional and intellectual drivers that propelled him to hitch his colours to the Palestinian mast. He remained an elusive figure around the campus, not very visible except for classes. My personal contact with the American don was restricted to observing his slick and authoritative lecturing style in the International Relations course, and to a singular encounter at enrolment where he dismissively and unreasonably (to my mind) refused to sign my program to take extra semester units. Whereas with Menachem-Ryka, who was convenor for both poli-sci courses I took that year, Middle East Politics and Australian Foreign Policy, I was able to get some insights into what was firing his engine.
What came across clearly enough to the interested observer was the outward appearance of the personality differences between the two exceptional Middle East scholars. Boemsteenboer was fairly stiff and colourless, blunt-talking, seemingly without humour, and unnervingly robot-like in his rapid delivery of facts and cogent arguments in lectures. He was not given to any visible warmth or friendly disposition, and you would certainly never call him exuberant (the term “charisma by-pass” comes to mind). You had to readily concede that he really knew his stuff, but you were not likely to be charmed, or inspired even, by him in conversation.
Corridors of discord
Menachem-Ryka on the other hand always came across as far more approachable, personable and engaging (very PR conscious), got on with the other Governor Bligh academics apart from those with a political axe to grind. Noam made himself generously available to his students – he freely gave out his home number to students! I recall talking to him at home on the phone on a number of occasions. Menachem-Ryka certainly connected with students in a way that the remote and aloof Boemsteenboer could or would never do. It was apparent that Menachem-Ryka was keen to progress up the academic ladder, conscientious in his work and committed in putting his hand up for the little administrative tasks (committee participation, academic advising, etc) that many, less motivated academics, would try to avoid like the plague! This made Menachem-Ryka popular, getting on well with the head of department and it was no surprise that he was rewarded by being promoted to senior lecturer in minimum time.
Menachem-Ryka left GBU a couple of years later with his ambitions enlarged to go on to great (vain)glory in the US. No doubt, had Menachem-Ryka been satisfied to stay on the academic treadmill in Australia, he would easily have made professor. In any circumstance he was never one to understate his academic accomplishments, as a memorable interview he gave several years ago to Australian television reinforced. An enthralled female interviewer gushing over the Australian background of the now American power player, referred to him as having once been a lecturer in a modest regional city university, pointedly Menachem-Ryka was super quick to correct her marginally inaccurate remark with the firmly spoken and no doubt self-satisfied words,”Senior lecturer, Jana”.
Talking at length with Menachem-Ryka after classes made me acutely aware of the depths of his ambitions. I asked him once why the Middle East was his bag, the focal point of all his intellectual energies, his answer, sidestepping the obvious personal element of his Jewish heritage, was to declare that he was only interested “in the big picture”, the global dimension! His background gave a clue to his ambitions, with fierce sibling rivalry playing its part. Menachem-Ryka’s older brother, Moshe, had already made a name for himself in academic circles and literary publications, so the younger Noam always felt he had a lot to emulate, a lot of ground to catch up (significantly the older literati Menachem-Ryka brother did eventually become a full professor in Australia – unlike Noam).
Intra-university disapproval of the young Jewish politics lecturer was not confined to A/Professor Boemsteenboer. After a history class given by an abstrusely intellectual and somewhat flaky Marxist lecturer one day, I was walking along the Humanities Building corridor with the same academic, when Menachem-Ryka walked past us from the opposite direction. I acknowledged Noam who I was on good terms with. The left-wing dogmatist, let’s call him Dr Mervyn Picklewhiting, stone-facedly ignored Menachem-Ryka, then straight after NMR had passed, leaned over in conspiratorial fashion and murmured sotto voce to me “he’s a spy!” We have to remember that the Faculty of Humanities and Social Sciences at GBU and arts faculties or departments at other Western universities at that time represented an ideological and philosophical breadth that ranged all the way from “a Marxist orientation of different hues to those whose political critique of post-industrial society was informed by Marxism” as opposed to being the “whole hog” of Marxism. Picklewhiting and his lot with paranoiac zeal outed Menachem-Ryka as a ‘spook’ – apparently on the basis of his having previously been employed within an Australian intelligence network in an agency allied to ASIO.
After a couple of years Menachem-Ryka decided that Gov Bligh and the Australian pond were too small for a fish his size, or at least for the size of his burgeoning aspirations…NMR abruptly upped and left the University to reside permanently in Washington and work for American think tanks and Israeli lobby groups. Within a short period he had done a ‘Rupert Murdoch’, trading his Australian citizenship for a glossy American one. This was a necessary step in the Menachem-Ryka grand plan, opening the door for him to the US State Department and swift promotion to high diplomatic and consular US posts in Israel.
When I eventually heard about the ‘Americanisation’ of Menachem-Ryka it made me chuckle! I recalled that Noam had once mentioned in class his overseas’ experiences of meeting strangers who responded positively to him when they discovered that he was Australian. Menachem-Ryka waxed lyrical with pride about the high regard this identity was held in internationally. Vaulting ambition and expediency can bring about a complete turnaround in values and in allegiances!
In the end both Boemsteenboer and Menachem-Ryka seemed to overreach through injudiciousness or perhaps a touch of hubris, and got a bit burnt, Icarus-like, by their outspokenness and capacity to polarise. Boemsteenboer found himself in the hot seat during the 1st Gulf War copping flack from the Australian Government for voicing public opposition to its decision to invade Iraq. This incident prompted conservative political commentators and the Australian Jewish lobby to vilify him for what they saw as bias against Israel and inevitably, and expression of the American’s anti-Semitism. Eventually Boemsteenboer left Governor Bligh and Australia to return to his homeland.
For his part, Menachem-Ryka’s smooth pathway through the corridors of power in Washington received a jolt when he was recalled from his post in Tel Aviv and denied a security clearance relating to irregularities in the handling of administrative matters under his charge. His star did eventually rise again, such was the determined nature of the Jewish political dealmaker, but he was much more chastened and wide-eyed about the world of politics second time round.
With both Boemsteenboer and Menachem-Ryka back in the US, although based in widely disparate parts of the country (both of them seemingly still “rusted-on” to their opposing ideological standpoints), the corridors of Governor Bligh University must seem a much more mundane and comparatively ho-humdrum milieu these days – especially in the once volatile Department of Political Science.
In the 1950s and ‘60s Berlin, bisected into eastern and western sections, was ground zero for the Cold War. One surprising arena for the head-to-head competition between the rival political systems/ideologies was the public zoological park. Before 1955 there was just one zoo in the divided city, the historic Zoologischer Garten in West Berlin, immensely popular and well patronised, not just by West Berliners but by citizens from the Eastern sector as well𝟙. In that year the East German Communist state established its own (East) Berlin zoo, called the Tierpark (literally “animal park”), to counter the popularity of the Zoologischer Garten. The rivalry between the two Berlin zoos for hegemony sustaining itself over the next 30-plus years would be a personal as well a political one.
Image source: design-mkt.com
The premier tournament of world football, the quadrennial World Cup, is along with the Olympics the most publicised and prestigious international sporting event on the calendar. The powerhouses of the men’s soccer World Cup, Brazil, Argentina, Germany, France, Italy and Spain are household names in the world game, but the World Cup pedigree of the likes of Occitania, Sámpi, Padania, Abkhazia and Kurdistan is far less understood. And yet these geographical (and in some cases linguistic) entities have participated in their own football world cup – of sorts!
The VIVA World Cup
FIFA𝟙 is the international governing body which controls association football globally. For a raft of reasons football-playing territories like the above ones have zero prospects of ever joining FIFA (or UEFA𝟚). This has not stopped them from forming “national” soccer teams and organising ‘“friendly” games with fellow non-FIFA teams. These embryonic encounters on the pitch lead eventually to the formation in 2003 of a new para-FIFA body, Nouvelle Fédération Board (AKA N.F.-Board), to represent their interests. In 2006 the N.F.-Board had held its first (downsized) world cup for male players, known as the VIVA World Cup. The organisation of this event however exposed the fragile nature of this association of disparates. Originally VIVA 2006 was intended to be hosted by the Turkish Republic of North Cyprus, but member-states fell out over planning and politics and the Board reassigned the holding rights to Occitania (a region linguistically defined and stretching over parts of Spain, France, Monaco and Italy). The organisation of the event, beset by various problems, did go ahead but with only three teams participating…Sámpi (representing the Sámi people of Finland, Norway, Sweden and Russia) routed Monaco 21–1 in the final.
Beyond football
For many of the players themselves the love of football is not the sole raison d’etre. Engaging in the sport collectively is a means to express their national identity denied to them through official channels, and to take pride in that identity. For the world’s many subsumed and marginalised entities an international football profile provides an opportunity to showcase and preserve their submerged heritages. The fielding of “national” teams on an international stage by the likes of Tibet and Abkhazia also draws attention to the plight of their prevailing political circumstance at the hands of more powerful regional neighbours. Diversity and inclusivity are key terms for ConIFA. The aspirations of it and its predecessor body N.F.-Board are to provide the world’s “underdogs” with a global platform through their football teams, ”a stage for the stateless” and recognition of their cause𝟜. 
2018 ConIFA Cup final: Kárpátalja & Northern Cyprus (Photo: Kieran Galvin/NurPhoto via Getty Images)
𝟙 Fedération Internationale de Football Association (who’s remit also extends to beach football and futsal)
What was Kuala Lumpur and Singapore seeking to get out of the merger in the first place?
Significantly, aside from wanting to merge for security from communist expansion, Singapore and Malaya had distinctly different reasons to unify. The original impetus lay primarily with the Singapore side. From as early as 1955 politicians starting with David Marshall (foundation chief minister of Singapore) proposed the idea to Malayan leader Tunku Abdul Rahman. Initially the Tunku refused to countenance the proposal, his principal focus being to maintain the racial balance of the peninsula state in favour of ethnic Malays. By around 1960 Abdul Rahman had changed his mind. Following Singapore’s attainment of self-government in 1959, Kuala Lumpur, fearful that a future independent Singapore might fall under the sway of communist power, was more favourable to merging with the island-state to shore up Malaysian security𝕓. A secondary but undeniably important motivation on Malaya’s part was the economic advantages that Singapore could bring to the Federation𝕔 [‘Merger and Separation’, www.mindef.govt.sg].
Map credit: Glasgow City Council
Irvine new town (Image: earlyooters.blogspot.com)
Scheme in Easterhouse
Cumbernauld Town Centre: “the rabbit warren on stilts”
Craigshill 1960s (image: Livingston Devlt Corp)
Castlemilk ca.1965 (Source: Gordon Waddell (Pinterest))
Murray Drive (Photo: Stonehouse Heritage Group)
⇧ Olympic stadium, Djakarta (antaranews.com)
End-note: GANEFO 66 and finis The GANEFO games were intended to be an ongoing affair but the impetus could not be maintained. A second GANEFO games had been scheduled to be held in Cairo in 1967 but were subsequently cancelled due to rising Middle East tensions. Instead, the follow-up games (“Asian GANEFO”) took place in Phnom Penh, Cambodia, in 1966, which tried with less success to replicate the original sporting event in Djakarta. Subsequently GANEFO quickly faded away. The main factors for the GANEFO games’ demise were the overthrow of its driving force President Sukarno and the steep costs of hosting the event (Russell).
Source: The Economist
Annan Plan
Kofi Annan’s plan proposed a restructure of the island into a federation comprising two states – the “United Republic of Cyprus”. Put to a referendum in 2004 it was supported by 65% of Turkish Cypriots but overwhelmingly rejected by 76% of Greek Cypriots, a disparity which demonstrates how far apart the two sides are and how difficult getting a consensus on the issue will be. The context of the Greek Cypriots’ hardline stance—adopting a view that acceptance of the plan would in fact “legalise the island’s de facto partition”—should be viewed in light of the fact that Cyprus had already been guaranteed membership of the European Union (EU) (‘The Peace Processes: 2004 Annan Plan’, Michael Theodoulou, Cyprus Mail, 29-Dec-2016, www. cyprus-mail.com).
Kofi Annan (Source: The Guardian)
Image: www.dw.com
Photo: www.in-cyprus.philenews.com
Deserted Varosha (Photo: www.the-sun.com)
Greek Cypriot President Anastasiades (www.dailysabah.com)
TRNC President Tatar (www.dailysabah.com)
Kípros/Kıbrıs (Image: www.britannia.com)
Postscript: A straw prize on the surface but potentially a promising long-term prospect? 
PostScript: Sydenham Green By way of compensation for the demolished houses in Railway Rd, Marrickville Council was handed back the land in 1994…after deliberation the Council turned it into Sydenham Green, a public park with ‘funky’ community sculptures and a skate park—and being directly under the flight path of the third runway—a quirky arch monument of sorts recounting the local community’s valiant efforts to stop its realisation. By its very presence, Sydenham Green stands as an “everyday reminder of how aircraft noise tore the heart out of a suburb” (Meader).
As Europe moves through Autumn, a number of countries are reporting new records for coronavirus infections. This month Italy recorded a 24-hour total of over 10,000 new cases for three consecutive days, while France recorded its highest ever total of new cases for a single day, 32,427. Similarly, the Czech Republic broke the 10,000 barrier for the first time (1,105 cases). Even in Germany, virus cases for a single day reached a pandemic high of 7,830 [‘Italy steps up coronavirus restrictions as Europe fights second wave’, Euronews, 18-Oct-2020, www.euronews.com].
(Photo: Getty Images) 
(Source: www.dw.de/)
(Illustration: Diana Morales/MPA)
⇧ The filibuster phenomena continues to provide political cartoonists in the US with endless inspiration
(Image: www.davegranlund.com)
(Photo: NY Post)
What accounts for all the recent turmoil and agitation in the region is the discovery a decade ago of natural gas in the eastern Mediterranean. Both Turkey and Greece are eager to exploit this lucrative source of energy and revenue. The problem for Turkey is the myriad EEZs (exclusive economic zones) relating to the numerous Greek islands in the Aegean which blocks Turkey’s scope of activity. The problem for Greece (and other onlookers within the EU) is that Turkey does not accept the legality of Greek sovereignty over the islands and their proximity to the Turkish mainland, its perennial bugbear. 
For the time being tensions over the Kastellorizo hotspot in the Dodecanese islands have eased, President Erdoğan has pulled back its seismic survey vessels to the Turkish mainland. But with Erdoğan defiantly vowing to assert Turkey’s rights in the sea and Greece unwilling to make concessions to its traditional foe, the chance remains that an isolated incident may escalate into something more serious in the foreseeable future◘ [Turkish President Erdogan blinks first in eastern Mediterranean standoff’, (Menekse Tekyak), Arab News, 13-Sep-2020, www.arabnews.com]. 
After America became a republic, the institution of sheriff retained its status as the grass-roots hub of local law enforcement, although over time regional variations emerged. In the more densely populated North-East of the country the creation of urban police forces eroded the office’s power, but not so in the South and the West, where the preponderance of larger rural counties meant the sheriff remained a key force in tying together isolated communities. Here the overriding perception commonly is that ”the sheriff in his county is more powerful than the president”§ [‘The Renegade Sheriffs‘, (Ashley Powers), The New Yorker, 23-Apr-2018, www.newyorker.com].
“Constitutional sheriffdom”
Influenced by Posse Comitatus and other extremist anti-federal government groups a body of sheriffs in the US have gone further to enunciate their local authority over the law. These hardliners in 2011 formed themselves into an association of ‘constitutional’ sheriffs (Constitutional Sheriffs and Peace Officers Association or CSPOA)✪. CSPOA’s position echoes that of Posse Comitatus – the sheriff represents the highest authority in the county (Powers). In the early 2010s CSPOA mobilised sheriffs to take a very strong stand against President Obama’s attempts to establish gun control legislation [‘Line in the Sand’, (Mark Potok & Ryan Lenz), Southern Poverty Law Center, (Summer Issue, 13-Jun-2016), www.splcenter.org]. 
(Source: www.bbc.com/)
The lengths a Sov-Cit will go to
Your dedicated Sovereign is not adverse to creating fake car licence plates or printing his or her own currency and then trying to pass it off as real money. One SCM provocateur in Florida, in acrimonious conflict with his local Bank of America branch, sent it a bogus foreclosure notice and even barricaded the branch during opening hours (SPLC).
A league of populist leader ‘bedfellows’?
The way Mexico under its president, Andrés Manuel López Obrador, has approached the pandemic has disturbing parallels with that of Brazil’s leader Bolsonaro, and with the US under Trump. Despite a difference of ideological orientation—Obrador (who’s commonly known within Mexico as AMLO) is a Left-populist whereas Bolsonaro and Trump are Right-populists—the Mexican leader has pursued much the same course with similar outcomes. AMLO’s government was slow to engage in the fight against COVID-19 in the critical early period. The virus apparently entered Mexico via overseas returnees, primarily wealthier Mexicans returning from business trips to Italy and skiing holidays in Colorado, and then spread to low-income groups [‘Mexico’s Central de Abasto: How coronavirus tore through Latin America’s largest market’, (Mary Beth Sheridan), Washington Post, 21-Jun-2020, www.washingtonpost.com].
With Italy’s grim corona-death tally falling disproportionately heavily on the country’s senectitude, you would think that it would not bode well for Japan which has the world’s highest percentage of older people (28.2% aged 65 and more) [Population Reference Bureau, www.pbr.org/]. When you add in other demographic factors relevant to Japan, this would seem doubly ominous for the “land of the rising sun” – a population of >126 millions on a land area of 377,944 sq km, including the mega-city of Tokyo✪ with its notoriously packed commuter trains. On top of all these is Japan’s proximity to China, the virus’ original causal point.
(Image: www.japantimes.co.jp)
Targeted testing
It was in testing that Japan adopted a very different crisis approach to most of the leading western countries. Rather than going for high volume, it deliberately tested under capacity. By mid-May it had tested a mere 0.185% of the country’s population, averaging two tests per 1,000 people, cf. Australia, >40 per 1,000 (Sturmer & Asada). It was highly selective, only those with serious virus symptoms were tested. The rationale for such a low-testing regime was concern for the capacity of widespread testing infrastructure, by limiting testing this would lighten the load on testing centres. Rather than mine-sweep the country with testing, the Japanese pursued a strategy of targeting virus clusters as they were identified to pinpoint the sources of the infection [‘Has Japan found a viable long-term strategy for the pandemic’, (Kazuto Suzuki), The Diplomat, 24-Apr-2020, www.thediplomat.com; Gramenz].
Cherry blossom time: no voluntary social distancing here (Photo: www.bloomberg.com)
Tokyo transport
Tokyo’s mass transit network is a petri dish in-waiting for coronavirus, but it appears that preventive measures (some pre-planned) have lessened the impact on public health. Tokyo business working hours have been staggered and large companies like NEC started to adopt telecommuting and teleworking, as well as a big increase of people riding bikes to work occurring. Consequently, transits at Tokyo’s central station on May 18th was down by 73% on the corresponding day in 2019 [‘Remote possibilities: Can every home in Japan become an office?’, (Alex Martin), The Japan Times, 23-May-2020, www.japantimes.co.jp]. 
The government has called on a raft of idiosyncratically-Vietnamese cultural devices to creatively drive home it’s theme. ”Viral hand-washing” songs have been popularised among the people and most effectively, the regime have resorted to propaganda art, something with a long tradition in communist Vietnam. Calling on the familiar slogan, “In war, we draw” (again, invoking the war metaphor), the government has fostered a patriotic response in Vietnamese to get 100% behind the war on the virus (#TogetherWeWillWin), resulting in the production and dissemination of visually-powerful and meaningful posters like these two (above and below). COVID-19 has also prompted the release of special stamps to help unify the Vietnamese people [‘“In a war, we draw”: Vietnam’s artists joint fight against Covid-19’, (Chris Humphrey), The Guardian, 09-Apr-2020, www.theguardian.com; Fleming].
Its when it comes to the matter of mandatory quarantine as a counter-virus measure, then the issue becomes more thorny for libertarians. The classic libertarian position would see voluntary self-isolation as the ideal solution in an ideal (ie, libertarian) world… compulsory quarantine is the last resort to them. Some of a libertarian mind would reject it outright – on ideological grounds, while also claiming it to be an ineffective measure as a social curative. Others accept it as a legitimate move given the uniqueness of the Covid-19 crisis situation, but with a very clear rider that the measures taken need to be temporary only. As shown below, this aspect of libertarianism is a “hot-button” issue currently for many in the US with skin in the game [‘What libertarians would do in response to coronavirus’, (Bonnie Kristian), The Week, 13-Mar-2020, www.theweek.com].
🔺The ‘tyranny’ avengers (Photo: Nikolaus Kama/AFP via Getty Images)
(Photo: AP)
(Photo: AFP/Igor SAFIN)
What most struck the editor about the phenomenon was that “the Weathermen appear(ed) to be largely drawn from the highly intelligent and well-educated strata…well-to-do, academic backgrounds”, something Pears opined to be “sinister and ominous” (a hint toward class betrayal perhaps?). The entry goes on to explore a classic conspiracy theory, the “fantastic speculation, widely held in America” that “the Weathermen are in reality financed and backed by the country’s extreme right—as a means of discrediting in the public eye the slow but steady move toward socialism that seems to be developing there”(?!?). The Pears writer adds a coy reference to one of the leaders of the group (unnamed), “an attractive and dynamic woman university lecturer (who in 1970) was placed on the FBI’s notorious ‘most wanted criminals’ list”✥.
1970 was the year that domestic terrorism embarked on a rapid upward trajectory in the US. The catalyst for the Weathermen adopting a more extreme line was Nixon’s escalation of the Vietnam War into Laos and Cambodia and the Kent State student murders. The fringe policos went underground and turned ‘outlaws’. “Declaring war on the United States”✪, the network operating in small clandestine cells launched a series of bomb attacks on targeted sites—police stations, court houses, military installations, banks, the Capitol and Pentagon buildings in Washington DC, etc. Weather Underground attached the tag-line “bringing the war back home” to this serious switch of tactics. 
🔺 The character “Mark Slackmeyer” in Garry Trudeau’s ‘Doonesbury’ comic is based on Weatherman Mark Rudd 
Canadian political philosopher John Ralston Saul is the secular high-priest of doubters and cynics, a non-believer in “the gospel” of the modern corporate state, constantly debunking the conventional wisdoms offered up as “absolute truths” in Western society✲. Therefore, it comes as no surprise that Saul would produce a guidebook for other secular agnostics. Wedged between his treatises on his personal philosophy ‘superstar’ Voltaire, his studies of modern Canadian society and his excursions into the realm of fiction, is JR Saul’s The Doubter’s Companion, or to give it his full title:
Although Saul calls his volume “a dictionary”, the term applies more to the book’s format (utilising the standard A-Z form of the dictionary) than to its content or purpose. The Companion goes on to define Dictionary as “Opinion presented as truth in alphabetical order”. And Answers are merely “a mechanism for avoiding questions”. Saul decries the trajectory of modern dictionaries and language (which have been captured by the forces of a rational orthodoxy), yearning instead for a return to the Humanist dictionaries of the 18th century (Voltaire, Diderot, Johnson, etc)². 
When I first delved into The Doubter’s Companion (around 1995), my mind took me to that other great cynic’s dictionary of the early 1900s, Ambrose Bierce’s The Devil’s Dictionary. Both works, albeit very different books, are idiosyncratically unconventional takes on language and meaning in their respective societies, and both proffer a contrarian view of the established wisdom of the day. Both Saul and Bierce are provocateurs, each with their own personal axe to grind⁌.
The Doubter’s Companion, by its polemical nature is unequivocally meant to shake up orthodox thinking (TDC was described by one reader as “an abecedarium of subversion”). The dictionary form of the book is a device Saul employs to launch into short philosophical essays on topics about modern post-industrial society that concern him—corporatism, individualism, leadership and managerialism, freedom of expression, communication, public relations, advertising and the way language is distorted to control communications (see his definition of ‘ideology’). In so doing, Saul skewers the accepted veracity of many of the words, phrases and terms you will find in today’s dictionaries.
Saul savages that that most universal institution of American fast food, MacDonalds:
Happy Hour is “a depressing comment on the rest of the day”.
Saul includes in the alphabetical list a number of surprising and disparate entries for a reference book on philosophical common sense. These include Ants (Saul makes the unexpected and unverified statement that the members of the Formicidae family of eusocial insects “do nothing 71.5 per cent of the time”)⊡; Apple (the fruit not the corporation); Armpits (which is curiously cross-referenced to Reality); Nannyism (not sure why this topic warranted nine paragraphs and over 400 words but Saul interweaves a discourse on Margaret Thatcher, bullying and sex appeal into the entry); Urban weather patterns (wtf?); White bread (“the sophisticated product of a civilization taken to its logical conclusion … continually refined until all utility has been removed”).
Museums: Safe storage for stolen objects.
(Photo: Mansfield News Journal)
Marsha does Jane Austen
With her reputation unfairly besmirched (tantamount to no more than implicit guilt by association!), Hunt was punished by being inexorably squeezed out of the Hollywood film mainstream. Potential parts in A-movies disappeared and the public saw her relegated to B-pictures and eventually to television and theatre (few good roles in theatrical movies came her way after 1947, the 1948 film noir Raw Deal and the much later Johnny Got His Gun (1971) were rare exceptions for the Chicago-born actress).
Marsha Hunt today(Source: Alt Film Art)
Gibraltar Chief Minister Picardo stressed that the implementation of a ‘hard’ border by Madrid would impose hardships on both sides, pointing out that 12,000 workers cross daily to work in the construction and services industries on “the Rock”[4]. But the stalemate persists and border-crossers continue to endure (up to) six-hour delays into and out of Gibraltar⊛.
Faro de Ceuta 
Map of Melilla (note neutral zone encircling city)
Curonian Spit
In the aftermath of the events in Crimea in 2014, the bitterly learnt lessons of history (the 50 year Soviet occupation of the Baltic States) gave the Lithuanians and the other Balts cause to fear that a new invasion might be on the cards. Since then there has been immediate and tangible evidence of the perceived threat from Russia. Moscow has undertaken a renewed military build-up in Kaliningrad, adding an Air Force detachment and early warning system (Voronezh radar) to the land forces already on the ground[3].
Both sides claim that their militarisation of the Kaliningrad/ Baltic region is a necessary counter to the actions of the other, recreating in miniature the standoff scenario of the Cold War. NATO’s take on Russian intentions is that it wants to use Kaliningrad to strategically position surface-to-air (Iskander) missiles to block NATO access to BS and northern Poland in the event of an attack on these member states[5].
(Source: www.dailymail.co.uk)
(Photo: www.washingtonpost.com)
президент Putin inspects the oblast’s troops (Photo: www.neweasterneurope.eu)
Suwalki Gap
Kaliningrad
(Photo: www.britannia.com)
In 2006 Moscow introduced a Special Economic Zone in Kaliningrad. This was intended to provide duty-free trade opportunities in the Oblast and transform Kaliningrad into Russia’s version of Hong Kong or Singapore. The SEZ however failed miserably, it was unable to achieve the necessary economic integration into the Baltic Sea region³, nor did it create a viable tourist trade. Kaliningrad hasn’t had a good track record with SEZs – in 1996 a Yantar✺ Special Economic Zone was started but it has achieved only limited success⊙. The closure of Kaliningrad’s SEZ in April 2016 has left the Oblast with questions marks over its economic direction from here⁴.
As part of the claim by both sides to be the rightful owner of Liancourt Rocks each have stressed their historic fishing ties to it. Japan traces its fishing connection to 1661 (Korea even earlier), and cites the on-going activities on Takeshima by Japanese fishermen, circa 1900-1935, eg, hunting sea lions (granted licences to do so by the government in Tokyo), gathering seaweed and abalone, to support its case[12]. ROK counters, referencing evidence from Japanese sources (the “Chosun (Korean) Fishing Manuals” written by the Black Dragons, a Shimane-based nationalist organisation). This Japanese guidebook states that Yankodo (Dok-do) was clearly Chosun or Joseon (Korean) territory before the Japanese annexation[13].
Proximity of disputing parties
With no ground being given by either country, the Senkakus conflict simmered on the back-burner for several decades, however in the 2010s the dispute has heated up again. China in particularly has taken a more proactive and aggressive stance. It has directed an increasing number of it’s vessels – both commercial and naval – into the territorial zone claimed by Japan (Taiwan also has launched protest vessels against the Japanese). In 2010 a Chinese fishing boat collided with two Japanese vessels off the islands – resulting in a serious diplomatic issue and a protracted stand-off between Beijing and Tokyo. In 2013 China provocatively declared an Aerial Defence Identification Zone in the vicinity of the islands (ADIZ)[5].
Eighty years ago this month the IOC’s most controversial Olympiad was held. 1936 was a momentous year for the Olympic movement – the official Summer Olympic Games were held by the Nazis in August in Berlin. Back in February of that year another part of Germany, Garmisch-Partenkirchen*, had hosted the Winter Olympiad[1]. And in July there had been, or should have been, an alternative, anti-Nazi Olympiad in Barcelona … more of that later.
Never before had a modern games been manipulated for propaganda purposes to the extent that the Germans under Hitler did at Berlin. When the Summer Games were awarded in 1931 Germany was still under the governance of the democratic (but ill-fated) Weimar Republic, but with Hitler coming to power two years later Germany swiftly took on a more unsavoury and increasingly sinister complexion. The Third Reich was soon savagely attacking the liberties of Jews, communists and the Roma (gypsies) … and much worse was to come!
(Image: www.olympic-museum.de)
International opposition to the Nazi Olympics remained very vocal in the lead-up to the event. Spain and Barcelona in particular had a vested interest, having lost the bid to hold the 1936 Games to Berlin (the German city won easily, 43 votes to 16)♔. SASI (the international federation of workers’ sports) decided to hold the next instalment of its Workers’ Olympiads (see my previous post) in Barcelona in 1936. The Catalan Committee in Favour of Popular Sport (CCEP), boosted by the election of the leftist Popular Front in Spain in February 1936, worked with SASI to plan and prepare the Barcelona Olympiad♕, scheduled to begin just two weeks before the start of the official (Berlin) Games … clearly timed to steal Nazi Germany’s (and the Führer’s) thunder!
(Source: Bernard N. Danchik Papers; ALBA 033; Box 2; Tamiment Library / Robert F. Wagner Labor Archives, NYU)
The organising committee for the Peoples’ Olympiad employed an emblem which reinforced the SASI themes of solidarity, brotherhood and world peace … three male athletes standing defiantly side-by-side, one white, one coloured and one (to all appearances) of mixed or Asian ethnicity (no females in the poster to be seen however … inclusiveness apparently hadn’t extended that far by then!)[5].
El Estadio de Montjuic
As it got closer to the event there were questions asked within the Olympic community about whether the Games should go ahead in Berlin. The Nazi regime’s transparent violations of human rights at home, and it’s failure to behave like a good international citizen (eg, pulling out of the League of Nations in 1933, illegally occupying the Rhineland in March 1936, etc), prompted a number of nations to consider boycotting the event.
Catalonia’s Olympiad Stadium
Politics and sport, the National Socialist way
Olimpíada Popular poster: International worker-athlete brotherhood
Estadio Montjuïc
Spartakiad 1931
Antwerp WO 1937
The US manipulated the 1962 negotiations between the Netherlands and Indonesia (the New York Agreement) and undercut the Dutch position essentially for ideological self-interest. After overtures and military hardware from the USSR to Sukarno were warmly received in Jakarta, the need to keep Indonesia in the anti-communist camp became critical to Washington’s thinking of the day. The support for Indonesia’s designs on West Irian later lucratively opened the door for US mining companies (I have already outlined how Freeport Copper and Gold, in conjunction with the Suharto regime, richly profited from the mineral-saturated province).
Canberra’s support for this option was more about blocking Indonesia’s designs on the territory than about advancing the interests of the Papuans. Australia’s strategic focus in the (still) Eurocentric fifties was on the avoidance of having an Asian power (especially one with a leader showing leftist tendencies) sharing a land border with any territory administered by it. At this time Australia was responsible for the Territory of Papua New Guinea in the eastern half of the island (later granted independence in 1975), and there had even been some discussion of a pan-Papuan Melanesian Union – although it is debatable how seriously this was ever mooted [R Chauvel, ‘Australia’s strategic environment: the problem of Papua’; JR Verrier, ‘Origin of the Border Problem’].
Aust & Indonesia discuss mutual interests
Melanesian world
Like other intractable conflicts around the world it cries out for mediation by a third-party. Comparisons are often made with the Timor/Indonesia conflict which dragged on for decades and at times seemed a pretty hopeless cause for the East Timorese before they finally achieved their freedom. One vital difference between the two though is that the UN supported Timorese independence, but with West Papua the UN has has never given diplomatic recognition to the Papuans’ cause***.
OPM has been active if sporadic since the 1960s against the occupying Indonesian forces, its hostile actions however limited to guerrilla style attacks on army and police posts (on occasions including assaults on the Freeport mine) and kidnappings of security personnel and transmigrants. The sheer persistence of the low-level insurgency and the resistance of Papuans generally to Indonesian rule has ensured a continuing heavy army and police presence in the province. Up to the time of Suharto’s fall from power, West Irian was declared a militarised zone (DOM – Daerah Operasi Militir) by Jakarta. The ongoing OPM resistance and other provocations such as the raising of the banned West Papuan “Morning Star” flag have met with disproportionate retribution from the security forces.
The security forces, whilst intended to pacify opposition in implementation of government policy, have at times appeared to get right out of hand, provoking riots (eg, Wamena 2000 and Timika 2003) and massacres of civilians (Biak 1998). Kopassus, the Indonesian military special forces unit, has been responsible for assassinating OPM and other Melanesian independence leaders.
The 141st meridian
Densus 88 “Ghost Owls”
The Central Highlands
This sense of Papuan alienation from the centre was compounded by demographic factors, the steady, systematic rise in transmigrants has eventually made the indigenous population a minority in its own land**. The Papuans with their Christian or traditional native beliefs also found themselves outnumbered by a Muslim majority, an additional cultural gulf between the two ethically diverse groups.
The opportunities flowing from resource exploitation went hand in hand with Jakarta’s policy of transmigration in Papua. The government seized the Papuans’ adat (customary land by right) to exploit the minerals and timber therein, at the same time decimating Papua’s rain forests and spreading deforestation. The consequence of all this upheaval was to deprive the traditional highland Irianese forest-dwellers of their only source of income. Uncompensated, they were forced to move to lower-lying poorer quality areas which were conducive to ill-health.
President Widodo formally ended the policy of transmigration to the renamed provinces of Papua and Western Papua in June 2015, but the required action has been all too late – the transmigrants have taken root in Tanah Papua in significantly large numbers and the program has already taken a heavy toll on the indigenous Papuans and their relationship with the central authority.
General Suharto had recently overthrown Sukarno, the foundation president of Indonesia, and Indonesia and Suharto had something that Freeport wanted – seemingly limitless reserves of gold and copper located in the former Dutch colony of Western New Guinea. Since the early 1970s Freeport has mined enormous holes in the mountainous central region of Irian Jaya (West Papua), first at the Ertsberg mine, and when that was mined out, at nearby Grasberg. This (second) gigantic mined hole in the ground north of Timika contains the world’s largest gold mine and it’s third largest copper mine.
Grasberg
Freeport’s environment record in West Papua has come under scrutiny. The corporation’s practices have been severely damaging to the local environment. Tailings from the mine have caused massive damage to 28 km of the province’s western rainforest, and a quantity in the billions of waste rock containing acid have emptied in the surrounding rivers and lakes of the district.
Traditional villagers
At that period it did look to all the world that the cause of Timor-Leste was a lost one. Realpolitik prevailed. Australia (at government-level at least) had happily washed its hands of this troublesome issue, with Whitlam giving Suharto the green light for a takeover in their hushed up Yogyakarta meeting in 1974, and his successor Fraser, rubber-stamping it with his Government’s formal recognition in 1976 of Jakarta’s Act of Incorporation of East Timor.
As amazing, even miraculous, as this transformation was, advocates of a similar sovereignty for West Papua, a territory with much more economic viability and substance than Timor-Leste could ever have, cannot be as sanguine about its chances of achieving sovereignty and separation from the Republic of Indonesia.
Morning Star
Stairs to a safe haven?
Derelict “Social Club” for the patients
“Harbour Bridge” monument to Ward B patients or to war?
Uncertainty about the Government’s future plans for Callan Park led concerned citizens to form the Friends of Callan Park (FOCP) in 1998. Their concerns were well-founded as the Carr Labor Government in 2001-2002 produced a draft Master Plan for the land which included the sale of significant chunks of the site for residential development and the shift of psychiatric services to Concord – all formulated without having consulted local residents (this followed an earlier clandestine arrangement made by Carr to provide land in the Park gratis for a Catholic retirement village). FOCP and Leichhardt Council mobilised community support against the Government’s plan, resulting in a huge backlash from residents of the municipality.
New uses for old buildings
[http://callanparkyourplan.com.au/]
With Sydney University’s future campus expansion plans looking elsewhere (closer to the city, North Eveleigh has been mooted as the spot to expand into) [University of Sydney, Campus 2020 Masterplan], Leichhardt Council seems to be running most of the debate currently. Very recently, the Council approved (over opposition from the Greens and Liberals) a motion to use the complex site to house some of the 7,000 Syrian refugees due to be settled in Sydney next year, ‘Leichhardt Council approves plan to resettle refugees at former mental hospital’, ABC News, 09-12-15, www.mobile.abc.net.au]. This produced a predictable if minor furore from some quarters of the community, demonstrating that land use in the area known locally as “The Lungs of Leichhardt” continues to be a divisive and hotly contested issue within the community.
Western New Guinea
Emblem of United States of Indonesia 1949-50
Indonesian stamp: Battle of Arafura Sea AKA Battle of Vlakke Hoek
Kennedy–Sukarno talks 1962
Grasberg Mine, Wt Papua
Papuan perspective of the “Act of Free Choice”
Indonesian stage-show: the appearance of unity for Ortiz-Sanz’s arrival
A judge in Buenos Aires wants to quiz the Chilean timber baron as part of an investigation into a 28-year-old attack that killed a rival paper pulp producer.
David Herbert (Bert) and Frieda outside ‘Wyewurk’, 1922 ⍙
Lawrence grappling with the menacing Kangaroo on the veranda of “Wyewurk”. ⍙ The Struggle’ by Garry Shead (Wollongong Art Gallery)
NOW that Scotland have expressed an inclination, but not a preference, to secede from the Union with England (the UK), it would be interesting to take a gander at other secession attempts both closer to home and around the world. The impulse for or advocacy of secession by a section or part of an established, multi-ethnic nation state is a recurring feature in contemporary international relations.
The proposed colony of ‘Auralia’ – an irredentist goldfields colony
Black Swan State
The WA delegation bringing the petition to secede to London
‘Prince’ Leonard & his consort – in the ‘Principality’
The media is of course deeply complicit in this with its obsessive focus on Hollywood box-office stars, especially the popular gossip mags’ hanging on every utterance and info snippet of headline-grabbing Hollywood A–listers like George Clooney, Angelina Jolie and Brad Pitt – a custom which is jejune and banal in the extreme. If these overblown ‘celebs’ make even a shallow pronouncement on environmental or human rights issues or announce their latest Third World orphan acquisition projects, this receives an inordinate amount of drooling media attention.
Consequently she was ‘outed’ by the McCarthyists in ‘Red Channels’ (a right wing publication blacklisting suspected ‘subversives’ in the arts and media) and her burgeoning film career suffered accordingly❀. Hunt was a gifted actor, and an accomplished singer. She was also the composer of about 50 songs including one she wrote in the early 1960s, ahead of its time, on the subject of same sex equality in love and marriage – later a hit in the US in the 1980s.
In 1944 she was voted one of the Hollywood ‘Stars of Tomorrow’. However, like others in the industry who refused to recant their earnestly-held political convictions, roles for Hunt dried up. First she was relegated to B movies, then not even that and her film career was effectively over by the time she was 40. From the ’50s, Hunt, like many other Hollywooders including Ronald Reagan (180 degrees apart from her politically) found TV work her only reliable source of income and expression.
MVH at 95
Leafy western redbrick of GBU
This newfound fascination with Middle East politics was, admittedly, partly motivated by an extrinsic factor: I had a Coptic Egyptian girlfriend at the time, but that aside I definitely had an intrinsic interest in the political dynamics of this crucial and volatile region of the world (and yes, my interest in Middle East politics did outlast my interest in my Middle Eastern girlfriend!). So, wanting to get a handle on the complex, endlessly convoluted politics of the region, I signed up for MEP269. In doing so, I unwittingly became an observer of an engrossing little political (and personal) duel between a brace of antagonistic academics.
The study of Middle East politics in the Department of Political Science at GBU at that time worked like this: two lecturers took turns to run the introductory UG course on a year-to-year basis. In the year that I took the course it was the turn of Dr Noam Menachem-Ryka. Had I taken it the year before or the year after, the Middle East course would have been run by Assoc Professor Dwayne Boemsteenboer. Boemsteenboer and Menachem-Ryka were poles apart in so many aspects of their views and personalities. Each of them were driven by a passionate, some would say partisan, commitment to one particular side of the Middle East debate. From this clash of personalities came a mutually personal and increasingly bitter enmity. Boemsteenboer was a very self-confident, somewhat intimidating mid-west American Arabist with Iraqi Ba’ath Party sympathies, whereas Menachem-Ryka was a liberal Australian Jewish scholar of East European ancestry with an entrenched commitment to the cause of Zionism (albeit from the standpoint of a small ‘z’ Zionist).
The consequence of this pedagogic bifurcation was that if you were taking MEP269 one year you would get Boemsteenboer’s pro-Palestinian slant on the Middle East situation, one heavily critical of his own countrymen’s (America’s) complicity in the imbroglio and sheeting home the blame for a lack of progress toward peace to the intransigent Israeli bullies, buttressed by US superpower, and unwilling to negotiate a just solution. Boemsteenboer’s homeland, the US, would be lambasted for using a non-Arab, alien, Western implant (the state of Israel) for Cold War gains, as a proxy military force to gain a hegemonic advantage over the Soviet Union in the region.
GBU
The task of the inexperienced undergraduate politics neophyte taking the course would be to try to read widely on the topic at hand and reach a well-reasoned conclusion which balances the robustly-argued critique on the conflict presented to them by the convenor (be it a pro-Palestinian or a pro-Israeli one) and the countervailing arguments from the other side of the debate. Great if it happens and a terrific learning skill to acquire, but the question that poses itself is how many first year students fresh from Year 12 would have the experience and sophistication to pull it off? Inevitably, the endorsement of a partisan position on the Middle East also had a polarising effect on students taking the course.
When I came to Gov Bligh University and enrolled in the Politics Department in the first semester, it was not long before I discovered a state of fraught and increasingly icy relations between A/Professor Boemsteenboer and Dr Menachem-Ryka. The personal tensions seemed to have built up over the previous two years, ever since Menachem-Ryka arrived as a fresh-faced lecturer at GBU with his recently minted National University PhD and some ‘intelligence’ work background.
There was nothing dramatic, no observable verbal exchanges or confrontations between them, but a falling-out at some point followed by an on-going, lingering war of words which extended beyond Menachem-Ryka’s departure from GBU. The feud between them eventually spilled out beyond the department and the University and into the wider academic community. Even the Sydney Morning Herald ran articles about the heated, personal conflict, depicting it somewhat over-statedly in boxing terms as a sort of head-to-head public slanging match.
Corridors of discord
Menachem-Ryka left GBU a couple of years later with his ambitions enlarged to go on to great (vain)glory in the US. No doubt, had Menachem-Ryka been satisfied to stay on the academic treadmill in Australia, he would easily have made professor. In any circumstance he was never one to understate his academic accomplishments, as a memorable interview he gave several years ago to Australian television reinforced. An enthralled female interviewer gushing over the Australian background of the now American power player, referred to him as having once been a lecturer in a modest regional city university, pointedly Menachem-Ryka was super quick to correct her marginally inaccurate remark with the firmly spoken and no doubt self-satisfied words,”Senior lecturer, Jana”.
After a couple of years Menachem-Ryka decided that Gov Bligh and the Australian pond were too small for a fish his size, or at least for the size of his burgeoning aspirations…NMR abruptly upped and left the University to reside permanently in Washington and work for American think tanks and Israeli lobby groups. Within a short period he had done a ‘Rupert Murdoch’, trading his Australian citizenship for a glossy American one. This was a necessary step in the Menachem-Ryka grand plan, opening the door for him to the US State Department and swift promotion to high diplomatic and consular US posts in Israel.
With both Boemsteenboer and Menachem-Ryka back in the US, although based in widely disparate parts of the country (both of them seemingly still “rusted-on” to their opposing ideological standpoints), the corridors of Governor Bligh University must seem a much more mundane and comparatively ho-humdrum milieu these days – especially in the once volatile Department of Political Science.