What the Wikileaks affair reveals

The major newspapers in the West and various intelligence agencies are in an uproar because of the recent leak of secret data, including battle reports and strategic analysis, relating to the NATO war in and against Afghanistan. The internet site wikileaks, run specifically for this purpose by the elusive Australian Julian Assange, distributed the information to various major newspapers to assure the publication would go through. Wikileaks has a history of revelations of this kind, but this is the greatest transparency coup they have succeeded in committing so far. Continue reading “What the Wikileaks affair reveals”

Independence for Kosovo?

Kosovo’s declaration of independence from Serbia in 2008 did not break international law, the International Court of Justice has ruled in a non-binding decision.(1) This of itself has a limited meaning in legal terms. The Court’s full decision is not yet accessible, but the implications are that declarations of independence are matters for the relevant ‘host’ nation state to accept or not, and are not matters for international law a priori. In other words, the question is for the ICJ a nonjusticiable matter. The implications politically for the region are nonetheless serious. Continue reading “Independence for Kosovo?”

What was Nazi Germany? – Part III

Having set out the rise and outlook of the Nazi government as well as its economic impulses during the 1930s until the onset of World War II, it is now time to get into the matter of the actual conquest and colonization process itself. In this, it will be necessary to focus as little as possible on the now very familiar history of the diplomacy, the war itself, military tactics and so on. These things, although interesting in their own right and important for understanding the history of the period, do not shed much light on the nature of the Nazi regime as seen from a larger perspective. The essence of this series of articles is, after all, not to answer the question what Nazi Germany did, but what Nazi Germany was: in other words, when seen from a larger historical perspective and put in its post-19th century context, what sort of class society was Nazi Germany and from where did its policy direction come? I hope to have already shown that Nazi Germany’s class support came mainly from the army, from the middle-sized and large farmers/landowners, and initially from those sections of industry (and banking) most affected by the Great Depression. Later, the more competitive and ‘liberal’ sections of industry joined the Nazi effort more fully as the rearmament and strategic investment shifts of the Goering plans led to prospects of an improved position for these industries in case of war. Industry and (large) agriculture indeed have been shown to be the main beneficiaries of the militarist restructuring of German society during the 1930s. I hope also to have shown that Nazi policies aimed at effectively applying colonial methods, which were familiar to German politics both from the cruelties in Africa and the Americas by other nations as well as their own, within Europe itself. Now it is time to address two other, related, topics. The first is that of the war and the full implementation, as could be done during wartime, of the Nazi government’s settlement plans for Eastern Europe and its colonization scheme for Europe altogether. The enormity of the horror of these plans, fortunately curtailed by events although still unbelievably destructive, is still not quite commonly understood, nor is its connection to colonialism as a phenomenon. The second topic is the question of cui bono? – who ended up benefiting from this, and how? These will now be addressed. Continue reading “What was Nazi Germany? – Part III”

Crisis in Haiti

When an earthquake of 7.0 on the Moment scale struck the country of Haiti recently, this led to a total collapse of the government, economy and social institutions of this already plagued country. Some 200.000 people are estimated to have died, on a total population of about 9 million – the proportional equivalent of some 7 million Americans dying at once. It killed also the opposition leader, the Archbishop, and most of the staff of the United Nations mission in Haiti, MINUSTAH. There has subsequently been an outpouring of foreign aid and medical support from many countries around the world. And yet the question about this long-suffering country remains: how come it was so poor and so unprepared? Haiti is not far from the United States, one of the world’s richest countries, and yet it is itself one of the world’s poorest, and has been so for a long time.

To understand Haiti’s history, we must go back to the days of Columbus. Continue reading “Crisis in Haiti”