Author Archives: Tom Arms

Tom Arms

Tom Arms’ World Review

By Tom Arms | Sun 18th August 2024 - 9:49 am

United States

Kamala Harris, asserts Donald Trump, “is a communist.” The assertion is, of course, another blatant falsehood.

And the fact that the former president is resorting to the well-tried, but somewhat discredited, tactic of red-baiting demonstrates how desperate the Trump campaign has become since Harris took over from President Joe Biden.

Kamala Harris does have certain political beliefs and policies that run counter to those of Donald Trump, conservative voters and the Republican Party. The one that rankles most with conservatives is her support for America’s limited social safety net. Vice President Harris supports the universal retirement benefits (ie social security), Medicare (health benefits for the elderly) and Medicaid (health care for low-income Americans). She also favours abortion rights which puts her on a collision course with the evangelical right.

In European terms, such views would put Kamala Harris on the right wing of social democrats. The problem is that a large number of Americans – especially Republicans – drop the word “democrats” when talking about their allies and refer to Europeans simply as “socialists.” Furthermore, many of them wrongly equate democratic socialism with a slightly lesser form of communism.

Communism, however, is different. It promotes a classless society where all property is communally owned and the state controls the means of production. Because this system runs counter to human nature, a repressive government led by an unelected elite is require to enforce it. That is not being proposed by Kamala Harris. But hey ho, Donald Trump has never let the truth stand in the way of a good dog whistle conspiracy.

Gaza

The Gaza ceasefire talks appear to be going nowhere. According to the New York Times, Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu has tabled a new set of conditions which will almost certainly be rejected in Hamas who are refusing to attend talks in Qatar.

In addition, the assassination of negotiator Ismail Haniyeh has elevated hardliner Yahya Sinwar to the job. He is hiding in Hamas’s tunnel labyrinth and has said he would fight to the last Gazan.

Hanging over the ceasefire talks is the threat of Iran to retaliate for the killing of Ismail Haniyeh on Iranian soil. What that retaliation will involve is a worrying unknown, and the Iranians are keen to keep that way.

To confront the fear the Americans have ordered a nuclear-powered submarine equipped with cruise missiles to the Middle East. Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin also despatched to the region a second aircraft carrier group and amphibious craft capable of landing several thousand marines. The Israeli government has told its citizens to stockpile food and water in safe rooms.

The Iranians have been briefing journalists that the one thing that would stop a retaliation would be a Gaza ceasefire. But that prospect is slipping further and further away.

The New York Times reported that this week the Netanyahu government has tabled several more conditions to the proposal they issued in May.  These include Israeli control of the Egyptian-Gaza border and a series of obstacles to the return of refugees to their homes in north Gaza. It has been reported that the new proposals are opposed by both the Israeli negotiators in Qatar and senior military people.

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Tom Arms

Observations of an Expat: Ukraine – Shrewdness or Mistake?

By Tom Arms | Sat 17th August 2024 - 9:36 am

Ukraine has introduced a new strategic weapon in its war with Russia. How it uses this weapon could determine the course of the conflict.

There is a heavily-defended 600 mile frontline between the Russian army in Eastern Ukraine and the Ukrainian military, grouped mainly on the western bank of the Dnieper River. Movement along this frontline has been incremental, much like the western front of World War I.

Defended by poorly-trained Russian conscripts is the 650-mile border between northeast Ukraine and the Russian oblasts of Kursk, Bryansk and Belgorod.

Ukraine’s military commander Oleksandr Syrsky has crossed a 10-mile stretch of that border to become the first military leader since World War Two to invade Russia. As of Friday, Ukrainians have established their dominance in 800-square miles of the Kursk oblast; set up a military administration in the Russian town of Sudzha and gained control of 81 other towns and villages.

General Syrsky declared: “We are here to stay.  A spokesperson for the Ukrainian foreign ministry, said: “We have no intention of staying. We will leave.”

The Syrsky stay strategy is likely to lead to failure and defeat. The diplomats’ approach contains the seeds of victory.

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Tom Arms

Tom Arms’ World Review

By Tom Arms | Sun 11th August 2024 - 10:21 am

United States

Weird is the new catchword of the American presidential elections. It is weird that Donald Trump – a convicted felon – is the Republican nominee for the presidency of the United States.

It is weird that J.D. Vance – an anti-abortionist who claims that America is run by a miserable “bunch of childless cat ladies” – is the Republican nominee for the presidency of the United States.

It is weird because both those images sound totally “un-American” and thus unlikely to win the votes of the American electorate. So it is weird that those two men have been nominated for the two highest offices in America.

Not weird is that Tim Walz, the governor of Minnesota, has been chosen by Kamala Harris to be her running mate in the presidential elections. Governor Walz is – as they like to say – as American as apple pie.

For a start he is from the mid-West which is often viewed as the traditionally American part of America. He attended Nebraska State College where he met his wife Gwen. They have two children – very American.

He taught high school social studies and coached the football team. The team went on to win the state championships. That is very, very American story almost worthy of a based-on-a-true-story Netflix film.

Walz was in the National Guard for 24 years, and reached the rank of Master Sergeant. Military service is almost a requirement for American politicians.

He served six terms in Congress before being elected Governor of Minnesota in 2018. He was re-elected in 2022. It was while he was Governor that Republicans have veered away from his all-American roots and towards what they might regard as weirdness. Walz legalised marijuana, passed strict gun laws, affirmed abortion rights, introduced free school meals and free college tuition. The liberal democrats love him. Which could explain why he is also chair of the Democratic Governors Association.

Walz is also credited with coming up with the catchword “weird” to describe Trump and Vance. President Biden had been focused on Trump’s threat to democracy. Walz reckoned that threat talk was a bit of a stretch for most American voters. “Weird” is easier to understand.

Bangladesh

From Nobel prize-winning micro-banker to leader of Bangladesh is quite a leap. But at the tender age of 84 Professor Muhammad Yunus has made the jump.

He replaces Prime Minister Sheikh Hasina Wazed who has fled the country after an estimated 400 people died in student-led riots against her quota system for the civil service.

Yunus probably doesn’t need the headache of running a country of 170 million people. He already secured the Nobel Peace Prize for creating the micro-finance banking system which has lifted millions out of poverty.

Yunus’s Grameen Bank pioneered micro-credit which is acknowledged as one the factors that transformed Bangladesh from the world’s second poorest country to the 38th wealthiest.

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Tom Arms

Observations of an Expat: Creator of the Great Replacement Theory

By Tom Arms | Sat 10th August 2024 - 10:15 am

Holed up in a 14th century castle in southwestern France is the philosophical architect of the far-right right race riots that have recently swept Britain and inspired White supremacists around the world.

77-year-old Renaud Camus is the man responsible for the “Great Replacement Theory.”

This race-driven conspiracy theory claims that a liberal elite is plotting the destruction of White civilisations by encouraging African and Asian immigrants to replace European culture with their own.

So who is Renaud Camus? For a start he is quite bright and quite driven. He has degrees in history, literature, philosophy and law and has taught at American and French universities and contributed to various encyclopaedias. At the age of 21 he came out of the closet to help establish a gay brigade during the 1968 student riots in Paris. For the next 20-odd years Camus established himself as one of France’s leading gay icons as an award-winning journalist and prolific author.

In 1992 Camus sold his Paris apartment and moved to the crumbling hilltop Chateau de Pilieux. While taking a break from restoring the castle to edit a local guidebook Camus noticed that the demography’s of the populations in France’s old villages had “totally changed,” and, in his view, not for the better.

He described this realisation as an “epiphany” which quickly morphed into The Great Replacement Theory. This was elaborated in three subsequent books: “Abedarium of No Harm,”  “The Grand Replacement “and “You Will Not Replace Us.”

Camus asserts that ethnicity plays a defining role in a country’s identity and he warns that “immigrants are flocking to predominantly white countries for the precise purpose of rendering the white population a minority within their own land or even causing the extinction of their own populations.”

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Tom Arms

Tom Arms’ World Review

By Tom Arms | Sun 4th August 2024 - 9:35 am

Donald Trump is the “Great Obfuscator.”

When asked to clarify his outrageous claims he muddies the political waters even more in an attempt to be all things to all people.

Last Friday he told the Christian political pressure group Turning Point Action that if they voted for him in November they wouldn’t have to vote again. He would “fix it.”

Liberals immediately raised the anti-democracy hue and cry. Donald Trump, they said, planned to either abolish elections or rig the system so that conservative Republicans would stay in power forever.

No, no, no, say the MAGA people. That is not what he meant at all. He meant that they won’t have to vote for Donald Trump again because he is prohibited by the constitution from running for a third term.

It was left to Fox News—Trump’s chosen television medium—to clarify the muddle. Interviewer Laura Ingraham pressed him to explain. Trump said the statement was made to encourage Christians to vote in November because American conservatives don’t often vote. He added that the same could be said for gun owners.

This was patently false. As a group, America’s Christians and gun owners are among the largest proportion of voters in the US. His clarification made no sense. So what did the Great Obfuscator mean?

Just as confusing…

…is Trump’s position on the much-discussed Project 2025.

For the benefit of those who have been trapped in a sealed cave for the past six months, Project 2025, is a 900-page report compiled by the right-wing think tank the Heritage Foundation. It sets out in great detail a programme for Donald Trump if he is inaugurated president in 2025.

Among its provisions are proposals to gut the FBI and Department of Justice and replace tens of thousands of federal civil servants with loyal MAGA Republicans. It wants a national ban on abortion and restrictions on contraception and IVF treatments. Project 2025 proposes a strong “unitary executive branch;” an “end to civil rights protections” and no more “safeguards on drinking water.” All efforts to combat climate change would end” and America would focus more on drilling for fossil fuels. The Department of Education would be scrapped along with all economic ties to China.

Democrats immediately denounced Project 2025 as anti-constitutional, anti-Democratic, anti-American and verging on the illegal. And they added that all those antis pretty well summed up Trump himself.

A fair amount of the mud stuck and Trump quickly started to distance himself from Project 2025. This proved difficult because one of the main contributors to the report was his former Chief of Staff Mark Meadows. The Director of the Heritage Foundation, and the main impetus behind the report, Paul Dans, was Trump’s Chief of Staff for the Office of Personnel Management.

This week Mr Dans resigned as Director of the Heritage Foundation and claimed that Project 2025 was not meant to be an action plan for Donald Trump. Instead, he said, it was merely some thoughts for any future conservative administration.

The Trump campaign immediately put out an “I told you so” release. But then we need to look at what Trump has personally promised to do: Gut the Department of Justice and the FBI and put on trial for treason the “Biden Crime family” and political opponents such as Liz Cheney. “Drill, drill, drill for oil.” Raise tariffs on Chinese exports for between 65-100 percent. Pardon most of the Capitol Hill rioters. Round-up and deport up to 15 million illegal immigrants and “fix it so you won’t have to vote for me again.”

What next in the Middle East?

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Tom Arms

Observations of an ex pat: Great green box ticker

By Tom Arms | Sat 3rd August 2024 - 9:55 am

As a box ticking exercise it is difficult to beat the Great Green Wall of Africa.

For those not familiar with this incredibly important and ambitious project, the Great Green Wall (aka GGW) is an international undertaking to prevent creeping desertification in Africa. It proposes to plant and maintain on the southern border of the Sahara Desert a nine-mile wide forest stretching 4,831 miles from Dakar on the Atlantic to Djibouti on the Red Sea.

It is estimated that the GGW will create 10 million jobs in one of the most poverty-stricken regions of the world. That means 10 million people less likely to seek survival in Europe and America.

More jobs means more income for governments which means increased political stability and improved governance in one of the most of the world’s most politically unstable and corrupt regions.

From a climate change perspective the GGW is potential wonderful news. The proposed grass and tree coverage is projected to restore 250 million acres of degraded land and capture 250 million tonnes of carbon dioxide. Trees also play a major role in reducing global temperatures.

So far about $30 billion has been pledged from a variety of sources to complete the project by 2030. There has already been extensive planting in Senegal, Chad and Ethiopia.

But according to the UN Food and Agricultural Organisation, one of the GGW’s major sponsors—the Great Green Wall is in danger of collapse. The number one threat is violence. Nine of the countries through which the GGW crosses are in the top 20 of the 2024 Global Terrorism Index.

They are the victims of civil war; Jihadist terrorist attacks; the withdrawal of French troops from the Sahel region and their replacement by Russian forces. The Jihadists in particular—and the Russians to a lesser degree—feed on political instability. The GGW encourages stability, so the Jihadists do whatever they can to disrupt the planting regime.

Violence is not the only problem. Critics also claim that the environmental initiative lacks political leadership. That is not surprising. Its roots stretch back to 1952-53 when one of the early climate change activists, British explorer and botanist Richard St Barbe Baker, first proposed the Great Green Wall. He went on to found the International Free Foundation which has since planted an estimated 26 trillion trees.

Many of the foundation’s trees were planted in the Sahel Region. But the foundation is a charity. Governmental coordination and vast amounts of aid were needed to ensure success. In 2002 the project was revived at a special African summit in Chad to launch World Day to Combat Desertification and Drought. In 2012 the African Union took it on as a flagship project and in 2014 they were joined by the EU and the UN Food and Agriculture Organisation (FAO). At the One Planet Summit in 2021 various partners pledged $14.3 billion.

But the widespread interest also created problems. At the beginning of 2024 the project involved 21 countries and the same number of international organisations as well as a plethora of charities at international, national and local level. The wall needs directed political leadership and instead is plagued by a confusing babel of competing interests.

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Tom Arms

Tom Arms’ World Review

By Tom Arms | Sun 28th July 2024 - 10:30 am

Gaza

The world was presented with two alternative approaches to the Gaza War this week. The first was brokered by China. The second was outlined by Benjamin Netanyahu in an address to a Joint Session of the US Congress.

The first was supported by the feuding leaders of Hamas, the Palestinian Authority, 12 other Palestinian factions and a big chunk of the Global South. The second was received with a standing ovation by America’s Republican lawmakers but boycotted by dozens of Democrat Congressmen.

The Chinese-brokered deal is aimed at ending the schism between Fatah which rules the West Bank as the Palestinian Authority and Hamas which has governed Gaza since ejecting Fatah in 2007. The bitter split between the two has been one of the chief obstacles to implementing the much sought after two-state solution.

On Tuesday the Palestinian factions agreed to form an interim reconciliation government. They also agreed to jointly demand a ceasefire; a total withdrawal of Israeli forces from Gaza and the West Bank; elections and they established the bones of a reconstruction programme for Gaza.

On Thursday, Netanyahu denied that Israel was blocking aid to Gaza; claimed that only a few civilians had died; called for the total destruction of Hamas; made no reference to the two-state solution and insisted that a post-war Gaza should be a “demilitarised and de-radicalised” enclave under Israeli military control.

Among those boycotting Netanyahu’s address was former Speaker of the House Nancy Pelosi. She described his speech as “by far the worst presentation of any foreign dignitary invited and honoured with the privilege of addressing the Congress of the United States.”

Ukraine

Another visitor to Beijing this week was Ukrainian foreign minister Dmytro Kuleba. It was the first visit to China by a Ukrainian official since the Russian invasion, and indicates a Ukrainian shift in emphasis from the military to the diplomatic.

The Ukrainians see the Chinese as the only third party power with any leverage over Vladimir Putin. Kuleba told his Chinese counterpart Wang Yi that Ukraine was ready to negotiate in good faith, but he added: “No such readiness is currently observed on the Russian side.” Wang agreed that that the “conditions and timing are not yet ripe.”

Vladimir Putin, for his part, is sticking to his demands that Ukraine handover the four regions his troops have occupied in eastern Ukraine; promise not to join NATO and agree to demilitarisation.

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Tom Arms

Observations of an Expat: Kamala v. Donald

By Tom Arms | Sat 27th July 2024 - 10:01 am

Three days, to coin a phrase, is a long time in today’s Tik Tok politics. This time last week wounded and bandaged Donald Trump was basking in what the New York Times called his “mythical status.” He appeared unbeatable. Liberal democrats around the world were in despair.

Then 81-year-old stumbling, crumbling President Joe Biden announced on Sunday that he was dropping out of the White House race and endorsed Vice President Kamala Harris.

She in turn surprised pundits with a rousing Milwaukee speech and 40,000 Americans registered to vote in one day this week – a 700 percent increase on the daily average. What looked like a Republican walk-over has been transformed in an instant to a to-close-to-call fight to the finish.

Up until this week the age factor had been the major political issue, especially after Biden’s painful to watch performance in his debate with Trump. But at 78 Trump is no spring chicken and is often guilty of stumbling over thoughts and words. The dementia shoe is now on the Republican foot.

Age, however, will only be one of several issues in the roughly 100 days before the election. More than ever, the contest is now between the American left and right. There is no doubt about Trump’s far-right credentials. The Republican hierarchy tried to push him as a unity candidate at the convention. His acceptance speech at the party convention started along those lines. But he quickly lapsed into his rambling, mean-spirited right-wing attack on opponents real and imagined.

One of the reasons Harris’ 2020 bid for the White House foundered so quickly is that she was perceived as a far-left candidate. If she is going to be successful in 2024 she has to shed that image and capture the centre ground of American politics.

Not helping her are the problems on America’s southern border. Immigration is a major political issue and early on his administration President Biden handed Harris the poisoned chalice of managing America’s southern border. She failed. In 2023 a record 2.3 million people crossed from Mexico into Texas, New Mexico, Arizona and California.

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Tom Arms

Observations of an ex pat: Despair

By Tom Arms | Sat 20th July 2024 - 5:13 pm

My overwhelming emotion in the wake of the attempted assassination of Donald Trump is despair.

My crushing depression is not caused just by the attempted assassination. It has been triggered by the host of events that led up to and followed the shooting in Pennsylvania.

It started with the Republicans thirst for power at any price. Between 1933 and 1995 they were the minority party in the House of Representatives for all but four years.  Republican Congressman Newt Gingrich had the answer. He embraced wedge politics by unjustifiably labelling Democrats as “traitors,” “communists,” or “un-American”. Republicans were “patriots,” and the only “true Americans.”

It worked. Republicans have held the majority in the lower house for 22 of the past 30 years.

Then in 2009 along came the Tea Party with its demands for lower taxes, a reduced national debt and federal budget and decreased government spending.

The Tea Party was followed in 2015-16 by Donald Trump. He married wedge politics to the populism of the Tea Party. At first the Republican old guard opposed him. Then he started to win with a mixture of wedge rhetoric, scapegoating, and dangerously over-simplified answers to complex problems.

After winning the presidency in 2016 he set himself up not as the leader of the Republican Party but as THE Republican Party. If you wanted to secure the Republican nomination for an elected office you first had to pledge fealty to The Donald and his increasingly right-wing policies. If you refused you were branded a RINO (Republican in Name Only) and destined—in many cases—to fail at the first hurdle.

Joe Biden’s victory in 2020 should have been the end of the cult of Donald Trump. It wasn’t.  He kept it alive by donning the mantle of victimhood and claiming– without a shred of evidence—that the 2020 election was stolen by Biden and that he was the real winner. On January 6, 2021, a mob incited by Trump’s lies and rhetoric stormed the US Capitol in an attempt to thwart the peaceful transfer of power.

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Tom Arms

Tom Arms’ World Review

By Tom Arms | Sun 14th July 2024 - 11:15 am

European Parliament

Patriots for Europe is a political oxymoron designed to confuse the public about its true intentions. It stands alongside other political oxymorons such as The Democratic People’s Republic of Korea, aka North Korea, which is neither democratic, a republic or run for the benefit of the North Korean people.

Patriots for Europe is a new political grouping in the European Parliament. And the political reality is that none of the national political parties that belong to this group feel the least patriotic leanings towards the European concept.

In fact, they are all Euro-sceptics whose main mission in life is to undermine the concept of a united Europe and drag their countries back to the 19th century when Europe was a patchwork of feuding nationalistic states.

The intellectual driving force behind Patriots for Europe is Hungarian Prime Minister Viktor Orban. His Fidesz Party was booted out of the centre-right European People’s Party in 2022 for being too right-wing and has been politically homeless ever since.

Soon after the announcement of the results for the recent European Parliament elections – a victory for the far-right – Orban flew to Vienna to launch Patriots for Europe alongside Czech Prime Minister Andrej Babis and former Austrian Interior Minister Herbert Kickl. Their stated manifesto was: weaken the EU, focus on European cultural identity, introduce stronger anti-immigration measures and oppose the EU’s climate change policy which aims to make Europe carbon neutral by 2050.

The core trio quickly attracted far-right groups from across the EU. By the end of this week it had grown to 84 seats drawn from 12 member states. This places it in third place behind the centre-right European People’s Party (176 seats) and the centre-left Progressive Alliance of Socialists and Democrats (139 seats). There are a total of 720 seats in the European Parliament.

Conspicuous by its absence from the new party is Germany’s AfD (Alternative for Deutschland). Recent Nazi-related scandals have put the far-right Germans beyond the pale even for the likes of Viktor Orban.

A catch was France’s National Rally (RN). It achieved a major victory in the European Parliamentary elections with 30 of France’s 79 MEPs. National Rally then went on to place a disappointing—and surprising—third in French parliamentary elections.

RN’s Jordan Bardella had expected to be French Prime Minister. He has had to settle for the job of President of Patriots for Europe. He secures the job as leader of the national party with the largest number of MEPs in the new political group.  He will be using the parliamentary building at Strasbourg as a platform from which to attack France’s left and centre in preparation for the French presidential elections in 2027.

Iran

“I am a reformist principlist”, declares Masoud Pezeshkian, Iran’s newly-elected president.

But what is a “reformist principlist”? According to Pezeshkian it is someone who is loyal to the principles of the 1979 Iranian Revolution, but wants to liberalise/reform the principles of that revolution.

That means, for a start, swearing allegiance to Supreme Ruler Ayatollah Khameini, which he did throughout his campaign. In fact, in his victory speech Pezeshkian praised the “guidance” of Khameini which he described as a major factor in his electoral success.

Khameini, for his part, made a rare post-election speech in which he acknowledged that some Iranians dislike his regime. He then added: “We listen to them and we know what they are saying.”

The question is: What is Khameini hearing and what will he allow Pezeshkian to do about it?

The new president campaigned on a pledge to rein in the morality police who had been arresting women who refused to wear head scarves. He also wanted to improve relations with the West and resume talks on Iran’s nuclear development.

The headscarves issue is likely to be a win for the protesters. The government is unlikely to make a song and dance about it, but they will probably inform the morality police to turn a blind eye to the absence of scarves.

An Iranian initiative to resume talks on nuclear development may also be on the cards. This is because, according to US intelligence, the Iranians have recently slowed down their race to develop nuclear weapons. Thus there is more scope for talks on time limits and associated issues.

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Tom Arms

Observations of an Expat: Special Relationship

By Tom Arms | Sat 13th July 2024 - 9:48 am

It’s time for the Special Relationship to be extracted from the diplomatic cupboard and dusted off.

Britain needs it. Europe needs it. And, although they are less keen to admit that they need help from any quarter, the US needs it to become the cornerstone of a new Transatlantic Alliance.

For years the UK shared the “Special Relationship” tag with France and Germany. In fact, after Brexit, Britain probably slipped into third place in Washington’s relationship arrangements.

But French President Emmanuel Macron has politically castrated himself with the recent political elections and the dull and dreary German Chancellor Olaf Scholz fails to inspire either the Germans or the wider world community

Britain may no longer be an EU power, but Sir Keir Starmer’s landslide victory gives him latitude at home and kudos abroad.

He is helped by a foreign secretary who has the potential to go down in history as one of the best in modern times. David Lammy wasted no time in stamping his image on British foreign policy. Almost before Sir Keir had finished his acceptance speech, Lammy was on the plane for Paris, Berlin, Warsaw and Kyiv. This week he was at the prime minister’s elbow for the NATO summit in Washington where Sir Keir was the only NATO leader awarded a tete a tete with President Joe Biden.

Lammy also has extensive American connections. The new foreign secretary has worked, studied and lived in the US. He has family in America and his father is buried in Texas.

But what if Donald Trump returns to the White House? A prospect which appears increasingly likely as Joe Biden ages with every passing day. Lammy is on record as labelling Trump a “woman-hating neo-Nazi sympathising sociopath” and a “profound threat to international order” as well as a racist and a fascist.

But both Sir Keir and Lammy have said that the transAtlantic relationship remains the “bedrock” of British foreign policy. And in a recent speech at the conservative US think tank the Hudson Institute, Lammy said that Trump’s comments on European security had been “misunderstood.” He has also gone out of his way recently to meet senior Trump foreign policy advisers.

Unfortunately, Trump’s negative policy towards Europe is based on good, sound politics. It is a reflection of a growing US isolationism which in turn is a reaction to series of foreign policy reversals. That feeling of being hard done by the rest of the world (especially its European allies) will continue regardless of whomever win the November election.

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Tom Arms

Tom Arms’ World Review

By Tom Arms | Sun 7th July 2024 - 10:45 am

United States

It’s official: The United States judicial system is no longer independent.

And by destroying its independence the Supreme Court has knocked away one of the main pillars of American democracy and left the constitution’s carefully structured and revered system of checks and balances heavily politicised and largely controlled by the executive.

Of course, the US judicial system was already heavily politicised. But the Supreme Court took its role as the top court seriously enough to avoid political judgements. No longer.

America’s legal system is based on English Common Law. Many of the structures were determined by the great 18th-century British jurist William …

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Tom Arms

Observations of an Expat: How Did We Get Here?

By Tom Arms | Sat 6th July 2024 - 10:06 am

It has been a bad week for democracy. In fact it has been a bad year for democracy. The only exception is the UK. But don’t worry Britain’s time will come.

Now, however, the rise of the populist far-right just about everywhere else is dominating the world’s headlines. Marine Le Pen’s far-right National Rally is knocking on France’s gates to power. A conservative-dominated US Supreme Court has granted serial law breaker and liar Donald Trump immunity from prosecution. A cognitively-impaired Joe Biden is endangering democracy by clinging to power. A far-right anti-immigrant government has been formed in the Netherlands.

And those are only the most recent examples. In Israel, Hungary, India, Slovakia, Italy, Spain, Portugal, Sweden, Austria, and Germany the far-right is either in government or growing in power and influence.

So how did we get here and where are we going?

Back in the naughty nineties everything looked so different. The collapse of the Soviet Empire appeared to be a great victory for liberal democracy, globalism, free markets and capitalism. We won, and countries around the world flocked to democracy’s banner.

First in the queue were the members of the old Soviet system, with Russia right at the front. That was the first problem. The transition from a Soviet-style command economy and from dictatorship to democracy was more difficult than envisaged.

A broken system was replaced not with capitalist prosperity but with hyper-inflation, economic breakdown and mass unemployment. Life expectancy in Russia fell with up to five million excess adult deaths between 1991 and 2001. Birth rates collapsed and organized crime grabbed the levers of power.

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Tom Arms

Tom Arms’ World Review

By Tom Arms | Sun 30th June 2024 - 10:25 am

United States

Unedifying train crash. That is possibly the most charitable portray of President Joe Biden’s performance in Thursday night’s debate. The 81-year-old candidate had a simple task: Don’t look old and expose Trump as the convicted felon and serial liar that he is. He failed.

The result is that Joe Biden now faces a crushing tsunami of party and public opinion to perform his final act of public service:  step aside and let a younger Democratic leader shoulder the job of preventing a dangerous demagogue from returning to the White House.

The problem is that there is no mechanism for allowing him to do so. The US constitution does not specify how presidential candidates are chosen. In fact, the founding fathers were dead set against the creation of political parties which they condemned as “factionalism.”

But human nature being what it is political parties quickly emerged and politicians hived off into camps labelled Republican, Democrat, Whig, Federalist, Nativists, Progressives…

From the early years of the 19th century until relatively modern times, the party machinery in each state would select delegates to attend a national convention where a presidential candidate would emerge from a series of knock-out ballots.

The first state primaries were not held until 1901 when Florida broke ranks with convention. Between 1901 and 1968 only twelve states held primaries which pledged their convention delegates to a particular candidate. Then came the chaos of the 1968 Chicago Democratic National Convention with delegates deadlocked while anti-Vietnam War demonstrators rioted outside.

To avoid a repetition of this unedifying spectacle the Democratic Party leadership decided to extend the primary system. The Republican Party followed suit. By 1992 Democrats had primaries in 40 states and Republicans in 39 and presidential conventions had been converted from a week of back-room horse trading and multiple ballots to a coronation party.

If Biden steps aside then the Democratic Party will have to revert to the pre-1968 format at its convention in (ironically) Chicago, on 19-22 August. The problem is that there are few – if any – people alive today who attended an old style nominating convention. Old rule books will need to be pulled out or archives, dusted off and studied thoroughly.

They have just over a month to prepare, and that is if Biden decides to hand in his notice today. Presidential contenders have the same time frame to start securing delegates’ support. And then, assuming all goes well on the night in Chicago, the party has only three months to unite behind a new candidate and persuade the American electorate that their choice is better than a lying convicted felon.

France

French voters troop to the polls on Sunday for the first round of parliamentary elections that are likely to open the door to the country’s far-right.

The latest opinion polls put Marine Le Pen’s National Rally well ahead with 37 percent of the vote. Not enough for the absolute majority so it will probably need to form a coalition with the Gaullist Les Republicains (eight percent) and some of the smaller parties (five percent). President Macron’s centrist Ensemble Alliance Renaissance lags far behind at 19.6 percent.

But a huge fly in the French political ointment is the 29 percent who say they will vote for the far-left New Popular Front led by former Trotskyist Jean-Luc Melenchon. It appears that the unpalatable choice for French voters is between the extremes of left and right.

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Tom Arms

Observations of an Expat: Putin’s War Conundrum

By Tom Arms | Sat 29th June 2024 - 9:33 am

Putin can’t afford to stop fighting. To do so would mean either crashing the economy or handing it over to the Chinese. But then the Chinese might end up controlling it anyway.

Russia is now a war economy. Six percent of GDP and 40 percent of the government budget is spent on “special operations” In Ukraine. Millions are employed at top dollar jobs in armaments factories that have sprung up over the past two years.

The lives of Russian soldiers have been commoditised. Families with a dead son receive $53,800. An injured son costs Putin’s Treasury $32,280. It is estimated that so far the war has cost $18 billion in compensation alone.

War is the most financially unproductive activity known to mankind. With what it costs to build a missile you can construct a building which can be used as a school to educate future generations or a factory to produce goods for export. When the missile blow up it is gone. And so is the building which it blew up and the people who can rebuild it.

But in the short-term war can be good for the economy. That is the case in Russia today. Putin was recently able to boast that at 2.6 percent, the Russian economy was growing faster than all the other European economies combined. But that growth must be set against inflation of seven percent – and rising – and interest rates at an unsustainable 16 percent in an effort to prevent runaway inflation.

Sanctions have contributed to the boom economy by forcing Russians to develop home grown alternatives, increase imports from Asian friends and the Global South, and/or pay inflated prices for Western goods imported through third-party intermediaries such as Turkey, the United Arab Emirates or Hong Kong. The growth may also be helped by the imposition of financial controls that make it impossible to take money out of the country.

That may, however, be coming to an end. President Joe Biden recently tightened the sanctions screw by expanding the powers of the US Treasury to allow it to cut off any banks in third countries deemed to be helping the Russian military-industrial complex. Turkish and UAE banks have already started cutting back on their facilities for Russian clients. Chinese banks are starting to follow suit, or insisting that all deals are made in Yuan.

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Tom Arms

Tom Arms’ World Review

By Tom Arms | Sun 16th June 2024 - 9:28 am

Gaza

 Benjamin Netanyahu and the Hamas leadership share a common interest: It is to neither’s advantage at this stage to end the Gaza War. But neither is in either party’s interests to be seen as the bad guy.

In the case of the Israeli prime minister it is the fact that once the war is over he will face an overpowering clamour for a general election. It is an election which he will almost certainly lose as the Israeli electorate will hold him to account for the events that led up to the October 7th Hamas attack.

And then, once he is out of office, Netanyahu is likely to exchange the prime minister’s official residence for a prison cell via a trial on charges of fraud, bribery and breach of trust. Fleeing the country is not an option because by then the International Criminal Court will have issued an arrest warrant for war crimes – unless he flees to America.

With Hamas the story is different. There are two wars being fought in the eastern Mediterranean. One is on the ground and in the air over a strip of land 26 miles long and 2.5 miles wide. The other is a war in the court of international public opinion. Hamas is losing the first and winning the second.

The longer the military war continues. The greater the disproportionate losses in human terms between Palestinians and Israelis and the greater the victory for Hamas. Already it has secured diplomatic recognition of a Palestinian state from six EU countries—Norway, Spain, Slovenia, Cyprus, Sweden and Ireland.

Hamas has repeatedly proven that it puts political objectives before Palestinian lives. A string of historical precedents would have told them that the October 7th attack and the taking of hostages would have resulted in a highly disproportionate number of dead and injured Palestinians. It is also clear that Hamas has used hospitals, schools and Palestinian civilians, as shields.

So, where does that leave the prospects for peace and the diplomatic brokering of the US, Egypt and Qatar? At the moment US Secretary of State Antony Blinken is focused on the lack of Hamas’s enthusiasm for the latest peace proposal. Hamas say they have responded with “positivity” but Blinken says that the Hamas’s “positivity” includes “unworkable” changes.

Part of the latest problem is ownership of the plan currently on the table. It was announced by President Biden. But in his announcement he said it was an Israeli plan. However, as Hamas’ has been keen to point out, no Israeli official has publicly endorsed the plan.

In fact, official Israeli pronouncements continue to focus on continuing the war until Hamas’s “governing and military capabilities have been destroyed and the hostages returned.” There is also the political problem that Netanyahu’s far-right coalition partners will withdraw from the government if the plan outlined by Biden goes ahead. This would result in an election which Netanyahu would lose.

Israeli problems and positions in turn appear to be in direct conflict with a Hamas demand that Israel commit in writing to ending the fighting before it agrees to any plan from anyone. Until this deadlock is resolved and the Americans come up with a plan that allows both sides to achieve the aims they want without fighting, then the war continues.

Ukraine

Shortly after the Russians invaded Ukraine in February 2022, the West froze $325 billion in Russian assets.

Almost immediately the call went out to hand the money over to Ukraine to finance its war against Russia. But there was a problem with this tactic which can easily be summed up with one word – hypocrisy.

Putin was being condemned for contravening international law with his naked war of aggression. But confiscating Russian assets and handing them over to Ukraine would also break international law. And respect for international law is at the root of what Ukraine and the West is fighting for. Putin wants to create a world where might is right. America and its allies want to retain a world based on respect for international law.

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Tom Arms

Observations of an Expat: Macron’s Gamble

By Tom Arms | Sat 15th June 2024 - 10:23 am

Emmanuel Macron is either a fool, a political genius or – what is most likely – supremely arrogant. Or perhaps it is a confusing mix of all three.

His decision to call early parliamentary elections is – on the face of it – a gamble worthy of a high stakes Las Vegas poker game.

But then, within hours of the president’s televised announcement, things were looking up for Macron as France’s political right started tearing itself apart. Then there is the strong possibility that a far-right victory could prove to be the poisoned chalice that keeps Marine Le Pen out of the Elysee Palace after the 2027 presidential vote.

That must be Macron’s goal. He is barred from running for a third term, but he firmly believes that Ms Le Pen and her National Rally (RN) is an existential threat to France, Europe and the wider world. He is determined that his political legacy should not read: “The man who put Le Pen in power.”

Most pundits agree that Macron had to call an election soon, but they expected it in the autumnal afterglow of the Paris Olympics. The poll has been on the cards ever since Macron lost his parliamentary majority in 2022. Since then he has either had to shift to the right or resort to ruling by decree with Article 49.3. The latter meant that he would eventually face and lose a vote of censure which would have forced him to hold an election. This way he chooses the date and the context.

Marine Le Pen has worked hard to de-demonise the far-right National Rally founded by her father as the National Front. She went so far as to expel her familial predecessor from the party and changed its name to National Rally.

Bowing to opinion polls, she has even also diluted the party’s euro-scepticism. Calls for “Frexit” and withdrawal from the Euro have been abandoned. But some of RN’s other policies make it hard for the party to shed the extremist label. RN opposes French intervention in Africa; wants to leave NATO’s integrated command structure, supports economic intervention and protectionism; seeks a “privileged partnership” with Russia; is anti-globalist and supports a policy of zero tolerance on law and order issues.

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Tom Arms

Tom Arms’ World Review

By Tom Arms | Sun 9th June 2024 - 9:57 am

Gaza War

Sometimes the most shocking statements are the most obvious. Especially when they are spoken by those encumbered with having to be the most diplomatic.

This week President Joe Biden publicly stated what everyone knows but he has been reluctant to confirm: Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu is dragging out the Gaza War as a way to stay in office.

He might have also added that the war is keeping Netanyahu out of prison as he has been indicted on charges of bribery, fraud and breach of trust. As long as he is prime minister he cannot be tried.

The latest Israeli opinion polls indicate that if an election were held in Israel today Netanyahu’s Likud-led coalition would win 46 seats compared to the opposition parties’ 68 seats. But, at the same time, polls show strong support for the war and its goal of eliminating Hamas. If Netanyahu achieves the total destruction of the enemy then the voters might just forgive him for creating the conditions that allowed the 7 October attack to happen.

Biden’s comments came in an interview with Time magazine and only a few days before he announced another plan to end the Gaza War. This one is in three phases.

Phase one would last six weeks and include a total ceasefire and the withdrawal of Israeli forces from Gaza. Some hostages would be released. Hundreds of Palestinians would be released from Israeli prisons and there would be an immediate and massive influx of humanitarian aid into Gaza.

Under phase two the remaining hostages, including soldiers and the remains of any dead hostages would be released and the IDF would complete its withdrawal from Gaza. Phase three would involve reconstruction which would last three to five years. The two-state solution is not mentioned in this latest plan.

Despite the fact that President Biden has made it clear that there would be no future role for Hamas, the terrorist organisation has said that they view the plan “positively.”  Biden claimed that his phased proposal had been endorsed by the Israeli government, but then a spokesperson said: “Israel has not changed its conditions to reach a permanent ceasefire. That will only happen after our objectives are met including destroying Hamas’s military and governing capabilities.” He added that that is estimated to take seven months.

Meanwhile, a new front is opening on the border with Lebanon. Actually, it is an old front, but the fighting between Iran-backed Hezbollah and Israel is worsening. Hezbollah is now using explosive drones which are more difficult for Israel’s iron dome to stop and can reach further south. Israel, for its part, is levelling the southern Lebanese city of Sidon. Within the Israeli cabinet there is talk of creating an Israeli-occupied “security zone” in southern Lebanon, similar to the one Israel maintained until 2000.

The US has responded to the Lebanon threat with another three-part plan. First part is a ceasefire to allow residents on both sides of the border to return to their homes. Phase two is US economic assistance for financially-strapped Lebanon and the final phase calls for a newly demarcated border to improve security.

The problem is that the negotiations are with the Lebanese government while the power is with Iran-backed Hezbollah. They are unlikely to accept any ceasefire until a truce is agreed and implemented in Gaza. And, as President Biden acknowledged, that truce is against the political interests of Bibi Netanyahu.

European Parliament

Europe’s far-right is expected to sweep the board in this weekend’s elections to the European Parliament. This could mean problems ahead as a centre-left council and commission clash with a right-wing parliament.

This didn’t use to be a problem. It used to be that the European Parliament was a talk shop with limited oversight powers. The real power lay with the member states through the European Council which in turn effectively appointed the President of the European Commission and the 27 commissioners.

But over the years, increasing pressure has meant that more and more power is vested in the directly elected parliament rather than the indirectly elected council. Parliament has progressed from an advisory body to a co-decision maker.

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Tom Arms

Observations of an Expat: Modi – The Winner Loses

By Tom Arms | Sat 8th June 2024 - 9:53 am

Narendra Modi won and lost India’s general election.

His Baharatiya Janata Party (BJP) lost its absolute majority in parliament. But with the help of 23 smaller parties has cobbled together a working coalition.

But more importantly, the BJP lost big in the expectation stakes. Modi’s party was predicted to romp home with 400-plus seats. This would have given the BJP the super majority it needed to complete the transformation of India from the world’s largest democracy to an autocratic Hindu nationalist nation.

As it is the BJP dropped from 303 to 240 seats. And, to add insult to injury, some of its biggest losses were in the BJP heartland of Uttar Pradesh.

Modi faces additional problems. A big chunk of his new coalition partners are secularists. They do not share his Hindu nationalist vision. This will make it difficult for 73-year-old Narendra Modi to achieve his goals in what is almost certain to be his third and final term as prime minister. And because Modi has stooped to cult politics to realise his ambitions, there is no BJP successor in sight.

Modi’s failed expectations has several causes. As usual, economic is near or at the top of the list. At a macro level India looks fantastic. GDP growth is an astonishing 8.4 percent a year.  There are 200 Indian billionaires, putting the sub-continent third behind the US and China. But trickledown economics have failed in India just like everywhere else. Twenty-two percent of Indians live below the world poverty line. The per capita income is $2,023 a year.

The number and quality of India’s higher education institutions has dramatically increased from 723 in 2014 to 1,113 in 2023. But so has youth unemployment figure at 23.22 percent. Many of the young people brandishing impressive university degrees have been forced to return to the countryside and poor paying agricultural jobs. So yes, there is a growing national pride. But its benefits are diluted by growing inequalities.

Another problem is the caste system which has inflicted Indian society for centuries. The British colonials imposed an affirmative action programme which was later enshrined in the Indian constitution. This provided a guaranteed quota in parliament, jobs, education and other sectors for the Dalits (untouchables), other low castes and minorities such as Christians, Muslims and Anglo-Indians.

The problem was that no one knew for certain the size of the pool of Dalits in order to calculate a reasonable quota. This is because that there had been no caste census since before independence in 1947. Last September, however, there was just such a census in the Bihar state. It revealed that the size of the Dalit caste was much larger – and thus more of a problem – than expected.

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Tom Arms

Tom Arms’ World Review

By Tom Arms | Sun 2nd June 2024 - 10:00 am

South Africa

Three decades of ANC rule in South Africa look set to end. The final votes from Wednesday’s election have yet to be counted and are expected to be announced on Sunday. But the general consensus is that the party that ended apartheid will garner about 45 percent of the vote. Which means it is coalition time.

The downfall of the ANC vote is evidence of the well-worn political truism that power corrupts and that absolute power corrupts absolutely. In 2004 the African National Congress won 70 percent of the vote. It dropped to 57 percent in 2019 and is projected to drop between 10 and 15 points in this election.

The reason for the collapse of the ANC vote is corruption, poor governance and economic mismanagement leading to a flight of capital and an unemployment rate of 37 percent.

Corruption reached its peak under the presidency of Jacob Zuma whose misuse of government funds led to his ousting in 2018. In 2020 he was sentenced to 15 months imprisonment for contempt of court. He served only three, but he is still barred from serving in parliament.

Zuma’s successor, Cyril Ramaphosa, made some progress towards resolving the corruption problem, but it was too little too late> Unemployment – especially among the urban youth – remains troublingly high. Zuma, in the meantime has emerged as leader of a new KwaZulu Natal-based political party, Umkhonto we Size (MK) or Spear of the Nation.

MK has surprised political pundits by beating the Economic Freedom Fighters (EFF) to take third place in the polls. Both the EFF and MK have adopted radical agendas which include the expropriation of white-owned land and widespread nationalisation. MK also wants to return more political power to the traditional trial chieftains.

MK took votes away from both the ANC and EFF. Another winner from this week’s was the Democratic Alliance (DA) who appear to have won the confidence the white South African voter. A fifth party is the Inkatha Freedom Party (IFP) is—like MK– also based in Natal. The most likely coalition is between the IFP, Democratic Alliance and ANC.

Europe

Europe’s far-right parties appear set to sweep the boards in European Parliament elections held on 6-9 June.

Giorgia Meloni’s Brothers of Italy are on the rise. Marine Le Pen is current favourite to win the 2027 and her National Rally party is currently at 30 percent in the opinion polls. Viktor Orban’s Fidesz has a stranglehold on Hungary and Geert Wilder’s Party for Freedom won elections in the Netherlands. Far-right parties, in Spain, Belgium, Slovakia, Sweden and Austria are growing or having a stake in government.

There is, however, a chink, in the far-right armour: Germany’s Alternative for Deutschland (Afd) has swung too far to the right even for Europe’s far-right. Recently, there top candidate for the European Parliament, Maximilian Krah, said that members of the wartime SS were not automatically “criminals.” Krah is also being investigated by the police for accepting payments from China and Russia. His problems followed a secret meeting in a hotel outside Berlin where senior officials in the AfD discussed the mass deportation of non-ethnic Germans, including German citizens.

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Tom Arms

Observations of an Expat: Uncharted Waters

By Tom Arms | Sat 1st June 2024 - 9:56 am

Twelve New York jurors set the Good Ship USA adrift on uncharted waters in a troubled political sea.

They had no choice. They were chosen from nearly 200 Manhattanites and forced to listen to weeks of complex and at times lurid testimony while fully aware that the entire world awaited their decision.

And after carefully weighing all the evidence they delivered their verdict: Guilty in the first degree on all 34 felony charges. Now the real trial begins – the political trial with the verdict coming – as Trump has said – on November the fifth.

Because of the totally unprecedented nature of this election it is impossible to predict the voters’ verdict and the impact of the New York trial. Socialist Eugene V. Debs ran for president from a prison cell in 1920, but never before has a convicted felon been the candidate of a major political party and not since 1860 has America been so politically polarised.

Eric Trump Jr declared after the trial that May 30 will go down in history as the day that Donald Trump won the 2024 election. Antony Scaramucci, former Trump Communications Director, said it will be noted as the day he lost it.

The country appears hopelessly divided. On one side of the political equation is those who argue that May 30th was an historic moment in which the US showed the world that no one is above the law. And on the other, that an American president is prepared to use the law to attempt to destroy their political opponent.

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Tom Arms

Tom Arms’ World Review

By Tom Arms | Sun 26th May 2024 - 10:55 am

United Kingdom

British Prime Minister Rishi Sunak is gambling on British xenophobia to return him to Downing Street. Or at the very least limit the damage to his troubled and divided ruling Conservative Party.

Of course, there are other factors he is throwing into the electoral mix. The lowering of inflation, the threat of China and the Ukraine War being a few of the political ingredients he is hoping will counter 14 years of Conservative austerity, corruption and misrule.

But playing on the average British voter’s deep-seated fear and mistrust of foreigners is one of the few issues the prime minister can control. And at the same time claim that the opposition Labour Party will not or cannot control.

Immigration played a major role in the Brexit vote. It should not have. But it did and being tough on it proved to be a vote winner. The average Briton dislikes foreigners, especially when they speak differently, pray differently, dress differently and eat different foods. They are perceived as a threat to British culture.

The “small boats people” – as they are known – are in their own xenophobic category. Not because there are a lot of them (29,347 in 2023), but because they are visible. They are shown on the nightly news and British Coast Guard vessels are sent to rescue them and long-faced quayside crowds watch them land.

Rishi Sunak’s policy of shipping them off to Rwanda as soon as their feet touched British soil has been one of his government’s top priorities. It was blocked by the UK Supreme Court because under British law people cannot be deported to unsafe countries. So the Sunak government passed a law which said parliament had the right to declare a country safe and to overrule the courts if they ruled otherwise.

With the legislation in place, Sunak pledged that the first refugees would be Rwandan-bound “within weeks.” That was another untruth. More legal challenges – and possibly industrial action by civil servants – are planned and would have delayed the Rwandan flights for several more months.

Calling the election for the 4th of July has turned the Rwanda Policy into an election issue. Vote for me, says Sunak, and  we will air freight the refugees to Rwanda. Vote for Labour and the Rwanda policy is lost.

Iran

The death of Iranian President Ebrahim Raisi provides Iran’s political elite with a massive opportunity. They won’t take it.

Elections to replace President Raisi have to be held within 50 days of his death. The candidates for the job are chosen by religious leaders on Iran’s Supreme National Security Council. They could dramatically change their country by opening up the nomination list to reformers.

This would mean that 85-year-old Supreme Leader Ayatollah Khameini would be willing to risk the country taking a different course from the hardline anti-Western, anti-Israeli, heavily Islamic direction that he has pursued. This would be a major break with all past and present policies.

Ebrahim Raisi was more or less hand-picked for the presidential job by Khameini because of his impeccable hardline Islamic revolutionary credentials. His nickname was “Butcher of Tehran” and it was well-deserved. According to Human Rights Watch, during five months in 1988, Raisi ordered the execution of between 2,800 and 5,000 political prisoners.

Raisi was the favourite to succeed the ageing and ailing Ayatollah Khameini. So his death creates a dual problem for the regime – finding a replacement for the presidency and the supreme leadership.

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Tom Arms

Observations of an Expat: Love, Hate and the International Criminal Court

By Tom Arms | Sat 25th May 2024 - 10:05 am

America has a love-hate relationship with the International Criminal Court (ICC). At the moment it is a virulent hate.

Ironically, Washington also claims to be the chief supporter of International law. “The United States does believe that international law matters,” said John Bellinger, the State Department’s chief Legal Adviser. “We help develop it, rely on it, abide by it.”

The problem is that you cannot cherry pick the law. To do so is to choose the road called hypocrisy which leads – eventually – to chaos.

It is the charge of hypocrisy that America risks in its relations with the ICC. It applauded seeing the world’s top criminal court send brutal African dictators to prison. It has celebrated the court’s warrants for the arrest of Vladimir Putin. But it has condemned as “outrageous” the decision of ICC Chief Prosecutor Karim Khan to request warrants for the arrest of Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and Defense Minister Yoav Gallant for war crimes and crimes against humanity committed during the Gaza War.

There are several reasons for American duplicity. Washington fears that the arrest warrants will only make the Israelis more intransigent. It also believes that it is important to be seen to be supporting an ally; and, finally there is the sovereignty issue. As a super power, Washington has difficulty with any international law or organisation which appears to supersede American law.  The US, for instance, has failed to ratify the UN Convention on the Law of the Sea and will almost certainly pull out of the climate change convention – again – if Donald Trump is elected.

Washington has had doubts about the ICC since before its founding by the Rome Statute in 1998. It refused to sign the treaty documents, although 123 other countries (including Britain) have. If a country is a signatory to the Rome Statute then they are obligated to detain and extradite anyone for whom the ICC has issued an arrest warrant. Being a non-signatory, does not protect a country’s citizens from investigation.

The problem for America was the activities of its soldiers and the CIA around the world. In August 2002 President George W. Bush signed the American Service Members Protection Act, aka “The Hague Invasion Act”. This gave the president the power to “use all means necessary and appropriate to bring about the release of any US or Allied personnel being detained, or imprisoned, on behalf of, or at the request of, the International Criminal Court.” Effectively this meant that any country that carried out an ICC arrest warrant against an American citizen risked the wrath of Washington.

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Tom Arms

Tom Arms’ World Review

By Tom Arms | Sun 19th May 2024 - 10:09 am

Russia and China

It took Vladimir Putin just nine days for Putin to go from his inauguration in the Kremlin to Zhongnanhai – the seat of China’s political power and the home of President Xi Jinping.

At the end of the two-day visit the “partnership without limits” had been elevated to one in which there are now “no forbidden areas of cooperation.”

The two countries – and the two leaders – are united in their common goal of dismantling the liberal Western political order that has dominated the world since 1945. Democracy, they are convinced, has had its day. It is time now for Sino-Russian orchestrated autocracy.

The current pivot of the Beijing-Moscow axis is the Ukraine War. This war presents both problems and opportunities for China. On the one hand, Russian failure would be regarded as a disaster. On the other, Xi Jinping is conscious of the need to prevent Sino-American relations from deteriorating too quickly. China is not ready to step into American shoes.

So, Xi Jinping exploits Russia to poke, needle and goad Washington. He talks of “no forbidden areas of cooperation” but then urges Putin to row back on the nuclear rhetoric. China has yet to recognise the Russian annexation of Luhansk and Donetsk and – so far—has refused to supply Russia with obvious weaponry. It buys more oil from Russia but is playing hardball on the Russian request for a gas pipeline that would replace revenues that Gazprom has lost in Europe.

China, has however, ignored Western sanctions against Russia. In 2022 Russian imports of Chinese machine tools grew by 120 percent and in 2023 they rose another 170 percent.

Machine tools are just one industrial category which Secretary of State Antony Blinken has complained loudly about as helping the Russian war effort. This equipment either has a hidden defense element or it is categorised as dual-use, which means it can be used for civilian or military purposes.

Other similar categories of Chinese exports have grown exponentially since Russian tanks rolled across the Ukrainian border. Semi-conductor exports rose from $230 million in 2021 to £407 million in 2023. The machinery for making computer chips grew from $3.5 million to $180 million over the same period. Computer chips are essential for the conduct of high-tech 21st century warfare.

Russian oil

Russian oil and gas are financing Putin’s Ukraine War. So, this week, the Russian president had good news and bad news about his war coffers.

Oil revenues are up. Gas revenues are down.

Gazprom – the state gas monopoly – lost $6.9 billion in 2023. Its first annual loss since the bad old days of Russian financial chaos 20 years ago. The reason for the drop is Western sanctions and the closure of the gas pipelines Nordstream 1 and 2. Russian gas sales to Europe were down 55.6 percent. They will be even lower next year.

The picture provided by Rosneft – the Russian oil equivalent – is much rosier. Its profits were up a record 13 percent to $14.07 billion. The reason for its financial success were India, Putin’s friends in OPEC and the end of the pandemic.

Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi has completely ignored Western sanctions and exploited Putin’s difficulties by buying huge quantities of oil at discounted prices, India then reaps a nice profit by selling the processed oil to third countries via the world market.

The OPEC countries meanwhile, have obliged President Putin by keeping oil production down and prices up. At the same time demand for energy has grown as the world economy recovers from the Covid pandemic.

But what about the coming year. Gazprom’s revenues are unlikely to rise. It takes time to build alternative destination pipelines and storage facilities. As for oil prices, demand is starting to fall. India has reached the limits of how much oil it can process and world economic growth is expected to drop to 2.7 percent in 2024 compared to 5.5 percent in 2022.

So, what Putin needs is a first class money manager to ensure that the maximum efficiency is squeezed out of every rouble. That is why he has appointed economist Andre Belousov as his new Minister for Defense.

Putin is his own commander-in-chief. He already has a Chief of Staff in the form of General Valery Gerasimov. What he needs is someone who can organise a defense budget that is now 6.7 percent of the country’s GDP before oil prices start to go the way of gas prices.

United States

In 1923, the US Secretary of the Interior, Albert Fall, was hauled before the courts for accepting a $350,000 bribe that allowed an oil company to drill in protected reserves at Teapot Dome, Wyoming.

This is the crux of the Teapot Dome Scandal which was recognised as America’s biggest political scandal until Watergate and the resignation of Richard Nixon.

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Tom Arms

Observations of an Expat: Robert Fico – from sinner to saint to martyr

By Tom Arms | Sat 18th May 2024 - 10:05 am

The man who shot Slovakian Prime Minister Robert Fico has inflicted major damage on the cause of liberalism.

Fico is a far-right populist who started his political life as a far-left populist. He supports Putin and opposes Zelensky. He is anti-immigrant, anti-vaxer, anti-LGBTQ, anti-Muslim and hates journalists. While Fico is fighting for his life in a Bratislavan intensive care unit, far-right politicians in Slovakia and beyond are using his fate as a rallying cry.

In short, Robert Fico is a sinner who has been turned into a saint by an attempted assassination and may yet become a martyr.

When the Soviet Empire collapsed, Robert Fico was a staunch member of the Communist Party and when the first post-Soviet Czechoslovak parliament was elected he successfully ran as a candidate of the communist successor party.

But as the communists fell from favour, Fico jumped ship and in 1999 formed his own political vehicle – Direction Social Democracy (SMER-SD). Seven years later, his party won the most seats in Slovak Parliamentary elections and Fico became prime minister for the first time. He served again 2006 to 2010, 2012 to 2016, 2016 to 2018 and finally from 2023.

In 2018, Robert Fico resigned the premiership after mass demonstrations in protest against the murder of young investigative journalist Jan Kuciak and his fiancée. A short spell in the political wilderness followed, but Fico’s career was saved by the Covid pandemic. He took an increasingly anti-lockdown, anti-vax position in direct opposition to the government’s policy. At one point his support for during an anti-lockdown demonstration resulted in his arrest.

In 2023 Fico was back in the prime minister’s chair at the head of a coalition which included the far-right Slovak National Party and the far-left Voice-Social Democracy (HLAS) Party. On the face of it, his political partners were on opposite sides of the political spectrum, but in reality they shared an ultra-nationalist populist agenda with Fico’s SMER-SD.

Fico’s own views became increasingly far-right and ultra-nationalist. Same-sex marriages and adoptions by same-sex couple are “a perversion.” His views on immigration also follow the same line as other European nationalists:  We will not, said the prime minister “accept a single Muslim immigrant.”

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Tom Arms

Tom Arms’ World Review

By Tom Arms | Sun 12th May 2024 - 9:26 am

Russia

It was a week of military parades, trumpets, nuclear sabre-rattling and an inauguration in Russia this week.

It started with another threat from President Vladimir Putin when he announced on Monday the start of military exercises involving non-strategic nuclear weapons. This was in response to America releasing its $61 billion aid package to Ukraine, and the repetition of French President Emmanuel Macron’s threat to consider sending French troops to Ukraine.

Then there was Putin’s inauguration as he started his fifth term in office with a long walk past applauding crowds lining the red-carpeted corridors of the Kremlin. Putin’s first inauguration in 2000 was hailed as Russia’s transition to democracy. This one followed an election in which he “won” 87.5 percent of the vote while all his political opponents were either dead, in exile or in prison.

On Thursday it was the Victory Day Parade to mark the end of what the Russians call “The Great Patriotic War.” May Day was the big parade in Soviet days. May 9, was important, but it was not even a public holiday until 1965. Putin, has revived the celebration and elevated it to a collective remembrance resembling a religion.

One of the highlights of the parade is the march of the “Immortal Regiment” in which relatives troop past the reviewing stand holding aloft pictures of family members who died in the war. The scene is reminiscent of icons being carried in Russian Orthodox Church services. The 60th and 70th anniversaries of the war’s end (in 2005 and 2015) were the biggest public holidays in Russia since the fall of the Soviet Union.

Meanwhile, in Ukraine, the inauguration and Victory Day were marked by increased Russian bombardments and missile attacks as Russian troops tried to gain the military upper hand before the latest batch of Western military aid arrived.

Palestine

The two main Palestinian factions – Hamas and Fatah – hate each other almost as much as they do the Netanyahu government.

They have barely spoken since 2007 when Hamas won elections in Gaza and booted Fatah and the Palestinian Authority out of the seaside strip.

That is why it is significant that representatives from the two factions met recently in Moscow and Beijing. The Chinese meeting was especially interesting because Beijing is keen to project itself as Middle East peace broker as opposed to its characterization of the US as Middle East war monger.

The Chinese have already successfully brokered the re-establishment of diplomatic relations between regional rivalries Iran and Saudi Arabia. Shortly after that success, foreign minister Wang Yi wrote to Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu offering to mediate in the decades-old Arab-Israel conflict. Netanyahu politely refused.

Brokering a rapprochement between Fatah and Hamas could be a diplomatic back door for Beijing to constructively inject itself into the Middle East conflict. It is generally agreed that the two-state solution is the logical solution to the conflict.

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Tom Arms

Observations of an expat: The hip thigh bone theory of the world

By Tom Arms | Sat 11th May 2024 - 10:20 am

It is time for a review of the hip thigh bone theory of the world. The theory is based on the 1920s African-American spiritual “Dem bones, Dem Bones, Dem Dry Bones.”

The ditty in turn was based on a Biblical passage in which a collection of dry bones reassemble themselves before the astonished eyes of the prophet Ezekiel.

The foot-tapping, hand-clapping tune is a roof raiser in evangelical churches around the world. It is also a popular song in young children’s anatomy classes.

For the purposes of this article, however, it is a perfect metaphor of how the rapidly shrinking and interconnected world has become increasingly dependent on its constituent parts (or bones) working together. Recognition of this interconnectability is becoming increasingly important as the world’s political leaders appear to be intent on disassembling the skeletons and protecting their constituent parts behind fast growing economic, political and – sometimes – physical walls.

Globalisation has become a dirty word. Forget the fact that it lifted hundreds of millions out of poverty in the 1990s and early part of the 21st century. And that it ushered in decades of growth and low inflation. Substituted in its place is the mantra of “economic security” and “national interests.”

Also forget the fact that the new buzzwords totally ignore reality. Like it or not – that the world body politic has become totally interconnected. In fact, the bones that comprise the skeleton of our globe are not so much connected as fused  and then overlaid with a complex web of nerves, muscles, sinews, international political and trade organs, ligaments and a protective skin of military alliances. In fact, it seems, that the only thing missing from this political metaphor is a functioning brain.

The advantages of free trade are not new. They have been propounded for centuries. They are at the very core of the capitalist’s Bible, Adam Smith’s Wealth of Nations and were later developed by David Ricardo who urged countries to exploit their “comparative advantage” through free trade.

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Tom Arms

Tom Arms’ World Review

By Tom Arms | Sun 5th May 2024 - 9:34 am

Germany

Germany’s far-right Alternative for Deutschland (AfD) party has problem in Thuringia. The East German Lander is an AfD stronghold, but their main candidate, MEP Maximilian Krah, has become a non-person.

The reason for his disappearance from the campaign for the European Parliament is the arrest of his aide Jian Guo on charges of spying for China. Krah himself, may not be above suspicion. He is known as one of the Asian giant’s biggest backers in the European Parliament.

The case of Jian Guo is only one of several scandals affecting AfD candidates for June’s European parliament elections. There have also been allegations that another AfD politician, Petr Byrstron, was paid $21,300 by a Russian disinformation network.

The ensuing political disgrace appears to be having effect on the electorate. In December, opinion polls showed the AfD with 23 percent of the national German vote. Another poll at the end of April showed them with the support of only 16 percent of the electorate.

In the meantime, Herr Krah’s name remains on the ballot in Thuringia. It has to. Once the parties submit their list of candidates then their names cannot be removed. Krah’s name is right at the top. But he is at the bottom of the list for speaking opportunities.

Gaza

Compromise appears to be in the air in the Hamas-Israel talks in Egypt. Israel is talking to negotiators about a six-week truce – possibly longer. Hamas is saying that it is looking at the latest proposals in a “positive light”.

So, what are the proposals? Specifics are a diplomatic secret. But what can be gleaned so far indicates that international pressure on Israel and Israeli pressure on Hamas is wringing concessions out of both sides.

A long truce will almost certainly mean the end of Benjamin Netanyahu’s pledge of total victory and the destruction of Hamas. But in return he wants to release of about 100 hostages which means that Hamas will have to relinquish their only bargaining chip.

The proposal currently on the table would call for a phased deal which American, Qatari and Egyptian mediators hope will lead to a permanent ceasefire.

The first phase would be the release of all female hostages in exchange for an undetermined number of Palestinians held in Israeli prisons. Once the initial exchange is completed Israeli troops would withdraw from the coastal road in Gaza. This would facilitate the movement of humanitarian aid and allow displaced Palestinians to return to their homes in northern Gaza. Once northern Gaza is re-opened the remaining hostages would be released along with the remains of hostages who have died in captivity. Israel would also release another batch of Palestinian prisoners.

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Tom Arms

Observations of an Expat: Campus Powder Keg

By Tom Arms | Sat 4th May 2024 - 10:22 am

America has for years been a polarised powder keg waiting for the spark to ignite the fuse. It has come in the form of student protests against American support for Israel.

Protesters, counter-protesters and rent-a-mob have violently coalesced around the conflicting fates of Palestinians and the State of Israel.

As of Friday demonstrations have broken out on 140 college campuses in 45 states. More than 2,000 students have been arrested by police storming barricaded encampments and university buildings with riot gear.

President Joe Biden is trying to thread his way through the oft conflicting principles of freedom of speech and the rule of law. “There’s the right to protest but not the right to cause chaos,” he said. At the same time he is standing firm on his support for Israel while privately bemoaning the fact that he is not being given sufficient credit for pressuring the government of Benjamin Netanyahu.

The political result could be a November victory for Donald Trump as young people continue their Gaza protest by boycotting the polls and the older generation vote for the strong man politics of Trump.

But what do the protesters want? It varies. Some what the total destruction of Israel. Others are focused on a ceasefire and the two-state solution. Still others have been drawn to the barricades by the issue of free speech. Counter-protesters fear that Israel and Jews in general are facing the problems of the 1930s. Rent-a-mob just sees an advantage in chaos.

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Tom Arms

Tom Arms’ World Review

By Tom Arms | Sun 28th April 2024 - 10:05 am

United States of America

Here’s the problem facing the US Supreme Court: Should US presidents – in and out of office – have total or partial immunity from criminal prosecution for acts they committed while in the Oval Office?

Or does the failure to provide this blanket immunity expose past presidents to political vendettas by their successors or other political opponents?

Or would Donald Trump’s appeal for blanket immunity – in the words of Justice Elena Kagan – “turn the Oval Office into a sea of criminality.”

This week the Justices heard oral arguments from lawyers representing Trump on one side and Special Prosecutor Jack Smith on the other. The latter is attempting to bring the former president to trial for his role in the 6 January Capitol Hill riots.

The Justices will now go away and ponder the arguments and issue a decision several weeks from now. Court-watchers are split on what the decision is likely to be. Quite often one can determine the outcome from the questions the Justices ask. Not so, this time as the Justices are painfully aware of the impact of their decision on the actions of future presidents as well as those of Donald Jesus Trump.

Many observers think the Supreme Court will issue a split decision. This would please the Trump team as it would mean referral back to the lower courts and delay, delay, delay.

As the Justices ponder, they may consider the words of pamphleteer Thomas Paine, whose 1776 “Common Sense” had a major impact on the American War of Independence and the constitution which the Justices are sworn to protect. “Where,” wrote Paine, “is the King of America? In America the law is king. For as in absolute governments the King is law, so in free countries the law ought to be king; and there ought to be no other.”

United Kingdom and Rwanda

The British government has declared itself the final arbiter of reality. It has decreed that if it says that a country is safe then it is safe, regardless of whether it is or not.

Most everyone – except for the government of Rishi Sunak – agrees that Rwanda is not safe. Freedom House judges it as “not free”. Human Rights Watch says that protesting refugees have been fired on by Rwandan police. Others have simply disappeared. The Rwandan government is supporting the M23, a violent faction in the Democratic Republic of the Congo which has been accused of war crimes.

For all of these reasons – and others – the UK Supreme Court in November ruled that the Sunak’s plans to send asylum seekers to Rwanda was “unlawful” because Rwanda is not a safe country.

So the government passed a bill which decreed that Rwanda is safe and the UK Supreme Court cannot say otherwise if the UK government say it is. A clear blow to the traditional independence of the British judiciary and its much vaunted respect for the rule of law.

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