Majority of Eastern germans feel that life was better under communism

According to an article in Der Spiegel a "Majority of Eastern Germans Feel Life Better under Communism". I am curious how that is in other former communist countries.

736 million dollars for an embassy

The US is spending 736 million dollars on a new embassy in Pakistan. That is 6% of the nominal GNP of Afghanistan.

Trouble in Iran

I haven't posted for a while and one of the reasons was that I was puzzled what to believe about the events in Iran. Nowadays I am inclined to believe that the official election results are somewhat fair. For other voices see for example here and here. Here is a journalist who doubts. Although these fraud believers have some points (about 50% of the Iranians distrust the polls, the fast results, the violent reaction to protests), on other points I get the impression that they are manipulative (the claim that Ahmadinejad would end third in honest elections sounds hollow: this is very unusual for an incumbent who can gather large demonstrations).

It looks like Iran is the next color revolution. Peter Ackerman is involved - although he doesn't believe it is a full color revolution. He "in 2006 sponsored a workshop in the United Arab Emirates for Iranians on the strategic application of civil disobedience.". Also the US spent a lot of money on "democracy promotion" in Iran and that started two years ago. The Iranian government is well aware of this. The regime talked a lot about the risk of a color revolution months before the elections. Ahmadinejad recently received the speaker of the Belarusian parliament. I would be astonished if they hadn't talked about the success of Belarus in stopping its color revolution.

There is also some video training and there was even some conference. And then there is the 6 months old Persian television service of the BBC

This makes it difficult to decide what was first: a desire from the "reformist" side to fight the election results and use them as an excuse for a color revolution or the determination of Ahmadinejad and Khamenei not to let this happen and to even prevent it with violence and (possibly) election fraud.

Reports from Ukraine often mention that the color revolution didn't bring much political improvement, but at least it brought a much more open climate for political discussion. News reports on Iran now like to take the same line. They claim that the killings will undermine the legitimacy of Iran's leaders and that the enormous protests are a signal that the population wants change. It looks to me just as in the Ukraine the West is using a fight between two local clans to achieve its own goals. However, a lost revolution may mean less freedom and more repression.

I don't give a color revolution in Iran much chance. Revolutions succeed best when the regime is weak. In 1979 for example the Shah was ill and didn't take enough time for government affairs. The present regime is vigorous and has considerable support. And given the thousands who were killed by the regime in the 1980s I don't think they will feel afraid of using violence.

An interesting option was in this article. It claims the Revolutionary Guards seem destined to gain more power. And they already control a third of the economy. It would mean that Iran will look more and more like its neighbor Pakistan.

A lot has been made of the divisions in Iran's ruling elite. But these divisions have been there for a long time. Being diverse actually adds to the regime's strength.

I can only conclude that it looks like Washington's policy of blind hate against everyone who doesn't agree with them seems bound to produce once more counter-intuitive results. Counter-intuitive for the ignorant people who invented them that is. Here is an article about the situation in Israel that unfortunately is very similar to that in the US. While Israel has elevated Iran's nuclear program to diplomatic top priority it employs hardly any analist who can understand Farsi.

Solving the Middle East

Last time there were serious negotiations about peace between Israel and the Arabs everything seemed to go well - until the issue of the return of the Palestinian refugees came up. Israel refused the return of all refugees and the negotiations were over.

So Israel is the bad guy? They cleansed some 800,000 Palestinians from their homes and now they don't want to give them their home back? Not so from the point of view of many Israeli Jews. They will point out that 40% of Israel's population are Jews who come from Arab countries. Some deliberately emigrated, but many were simply thrown out of their countries after the foundation of Israel - while all their properties were confiscated.

The number of Jews sho left the Arab countries is at least as large as that of the number of Palestinians. Yet no UN resolution has been dedicated to their right of return and their right of restitution of properties. Of course very few of those Jews want to go back: they live no in a much richer country and are no loger discriminated. But that doesn't take the responsibility of the Arab countries for what they have done away. While Israel provided a home for the Jews that they threw out they consistently refused to provide a home for the Palestinians that Israel threw out.

Yet even Israel-friendly America hasn't found the words to advocate such a point of view. But I don't think that the Israel-Arab conflict is solvable unless the Arabs take their responsibility.

All Palestinian refugee camps should be turned into towns with full rights. And Palestinians should get the right to become citizens of the Arab countries if they want. In my opinion that is the only road towards a solution.

Divide and rule - is still the European credo

After several wars and a lot of economic distress it looks like Europe's divide-and-rule policy in the ex-Yugoslav territory has passed its top. In the territory of that other former federation (the Soviet Union) however, the policy is alive and kicking. The EU is starting an Eastern Partnership of most former Soviet states, but excluding Russia.

In former Yugoslavia CEFTA has taken some of the pain away, but for the former Soviet Union I am still waiting for a similar initiative. Just as Norway (oil) and Iceland (fish) Russia (oil and gas) is a country with a resource dependent economy that would have to give up much control of those resources with an EU entry - too much for the taste of many.

Offering these countries a kind of "CEFTA light" - that possibly later could be converted in a full CEFTA membership would go a long way to stabilize their economies. Yet instead the EU is only bickering about possible EU memberships (not very probable for the next decade) and giving minuscule amounts of aid.

The Soviet economies were connected with the other COMECON countries. Breaking that connection was harmful to both sides and the connection should be restored.

Lobbying for Kosovo

BDnews24.com from Bangla Desh has an informative article how the US is lobbying there for recognition of Kosovo. The price: possibly a meeting between Obama and their prime minister when she visits Canada to see her daughter who lives there.

Obama's hour of truth

Obama's first 100 days are gone. And he has little to show for it. Sure, he spent a lot of money on banks, big companies and other fatcats. But these are Republican voters - not his. For his voters Obama has not much to show.

This reminds me of Clinton. He came to power with a lot of ideals too. But in the end his biggest legacy was a balanced budget - a conservative idea. Sure, a lot of time he had to face a congress with a Republican majority. And he tried but failed with health care insurance. But that doesn't take away that he enthusiastically embraced the balanced budget religion, employed a Secretary of the Treasury with a conservative ideology and presided over a lot of "deregulation".

Together with Clinton you saw similar politicians in other countries. Blair too was a politician from the left who essentially followed a right wing policy (thatcherism with a human face). The effect in both countries on the opposition was the same: seeing their ideology adopted and justified by the left the right wing opposition became even more rightish. Normally this would make them unelectable - as indeed happened in the UK. Unfortunately the clumsiness of Gore and a bit of election fraud combined to give a different result in the US: 8 years with Bush.

Not only gave Obama a lot of money to the rich guys, he also absolved Bush's torturers and hasn't started any prosecution for the many financial abuses of the last decades.

Recently it looks like Obama is finally understanding that his voters want something too. He has proposed to address credit card abuses and to take the middle man out of student loans. The latter would save the government billions but the industry is already fighting back. In a third battle, about rules for unionizing it looks like Obama is losing.

In the mean time America's rich elite - that possesses an even bigger part of the pie as in 1929 - has started a new attack on social security under the pretext that all those billions of aid have to be compensated somewhere.

But real financial reform stays off-limit for Obama. It seems that a lot of the discussion at the recent G20 was between regulation-first Europeans and stimulus-first (regulation-never) Americans.

What also strikes the attention is Obama's lack of political acumen. The smart thing would be to have some popular proposals that would raise resistance among some representatives. It would place them for the choice: support Obama or to face a serious backlash among their supporters. Roosevelt in 1933 managed this very cleverly, but I haven't seen this done by Obama yet. The student loans or the increase of taxes for the richest look like a good opportunities. But somehow Obama seems to fail to get it straight. Republicans claim for example that the extra tax for the richest also taxes the middle class. This concerns not only Republican representatives: there are many Democrats too who have drunk too much of the neoconservative coolaid.

Blackmail won't solve Kosovo's problems

My fellow dutchman Peter Feith has a new idea. He is going to use the Ahtisaari Plan to blackmail Kosovo's Serbs in submission. In his words: "The offer is on the table. It is up to the Kosovo Serbs alone to judge and take this offer". Of course that won't work, but that is not his problem. It will be a good excuse for his Albanian friends to refuse those Serbs the autonomy that the Ahtisaari Plan offers them. An autonomy that many of Kosovo's Albanian leaders don't like anyway.

Feith seems to understand his mission narrowly as the promotion of Kosovo's independence. It would be a much wiser course of action to give Kosovo's Serbs the Ahtisaari autonomy on their terms - under the guidance of the European Council. That way the autonomy can prove itself. If it really works and provides the Serbs an environment were they feel at home that would be a big step towards solving Kosovo's status.

The same "surrender or we will cleanse you" mentality can also be seen in the recent decision of EULEX and the Kosovo government that Serb cops should return to the police before june 30 or they will be fired.

It seems to be the ideology of the diplomats involved that only results matter. I beg to differ: their mafia-style behavior may influence Kosovo politics for decades to come. Just look at the color revolutions where lots of Western money for PR and "non-violent" means like the storming of the parliament building were supposed to strengthen democracy. In Kyrgyzstan and Georgia the men brought to power are showing clear dictatorial inclinations. In Ukraine Yushchenko's approval rates stand now at 3%. What would have happened in Serbia if Djindjic hadn't been assassinated is not clear, but his approval ratings at that time were already quite low. And Tadic Machiavellian tactics poison Serbia's politics.

In the end the dubious means of those Western diplomats may have more lasting and profound effects than the goals they reach.

How Gaza became a Hamas stronghold

The article is already a year old - but I just discovered it. It tells with painful details how misguided US policies led to the present situation in the Gaza strip.

First the US more or less ordered the Palestinians to have elections (they were due, but due to Arafat's death a year before Fatah wasn't ready). When Hamas won (56% of the votes) in januari 2006 the US administration was flabbergasted. Their intelligence was so bad that they hadn't expected anything like that. And there immediate reaction was not to accept the result and start a dirty war.

The first move was made with the Middle East diplomatic “Quartet”—the U.S., the European Union, Russia, and the United Nations. They demanded - on US instigations - that the new Hamas government renounce violence, recognize Israel’s right to exist, and accept the terms of all previous agreements. As Hamas predictably refused (they saw these as bargaining chips) sanctions were announced.

Notice the repetitiveness in US foreign policy. They put seemingly reasonable demands that they know will be refused and when these then are refused they announce sanctions. One can see similar patterns with Kosovo 1999, Iraq 2003 and recently with North Korea. In Gaza too there certainly were moderate forces with whom the US might have been able to work out a solution.

Next the US began to pressure Fatah to start a coup against Hamas. When after a period of dirty war this finally led to open conflict Fatah was quickly beaten. Since then Hamas has become a kind of dictatorship.

What is most striking about the story is the level of amateurism on the American side. Important diplomats involved knew virtually nothing about the Middle East. The US promised Fatah aid that never materialized. And as usual the US has as it favorite a big, well-dressed, salonfähig guy who isn't afraid of a bit of violence: the similarities between Kosovo's Thaci and Fatah's Gaza leader Muhammad Dahlan are striking. Condoleeza Rice gets most of the blame in the article.