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Monthly reports on finance, business, trade, economics, & political analysis
NEWNATIONS BULLETIN 04 AUGUST 2008
A CRY FOR DEMOCRACY
We bring NEWS and ANALYSIS of Global events, including a close look at the sorry story of SOUTH AFRICA. There the monolithic African National Congress is exhibiting an arrogance of power over the great African nation, which betrays the democratic principles on which it was founded.

IS THIS JUST TREACHERY?
Whilst the eyes of the world are turning to China for the Olympics, we report the astonishing story of the new president of TAIWAN. Armed with a mandate to improve relations with Beijing, he is apparently handing over the keys of the store, and rushing hell-for-leather down the road towards a Taiwan Autonomous Region. It also appears that Taiwan incredibly is thinking of junking its security cooperation agreement with the USA!

RUSSIA'S NEW DEFENCE ALIGNMENT PROPOSALS
We preview the diplomatic initiative taken by RUSSIA on a new security treaty architecture for Eurasia. The implications are vast and should exercise the incoming US presidency and NATO allies. But for UKRAINE, even more for GEORGIA in particular, already in some kind of state of siege from RUSSIA and its cohorts, there is much apprehension about the review of their application to join NATO due to be discussed in December - clearly a part of what this is all about.

A STATE OF 'COOL WAR' EXISTS
We conclude that current UK-RUSSIA relations can so be described - and say why.



SERBIA CHOOSES THE LIGHT
We celebrate the establishment of a forward-looking coalition in Belgrade and sincerely hope that from now on SERBIA can take its place in the comity of nations, and no longer be a pariah. The arrest and removal of Karadic, the Bosnian Serb leader to the Hague, needs only a similar outcome for his former military commander Ratko Mladic, still on the run, to close that evil chapter of modern history. Since they were indicted 13 long years ago, we summarise here the crimes for which they must answer at trial.

CORRUPTION 'AWARDS'
Meanwhile we review the political creation which Karadic set up, the Republika Srbska (RS) within BOSNIA, and conclude that despite strong competition from ALBANIA, ROMANIA and particularly BULGARIA, the RS is now the MOST corrupt regime in Europe.

PAKISTAN AND AFGHANISTAN
We cannot be alone in fearing that the situation in these two countries is rapidly deteriorating. Little has changed in AFGHANISTAN with its dire, corrupt government, but PAKISTAN is clearly lacking firm government. President Musharraf who on past form could and did provide it, is constitutionally disabled from doing so since the disastrous elections that the west clamored for. Apart from that, he is not wanted by the citizens, according to opinion polls. The latest outrage is that the CIA have up-front accused (with evidence), the Pakistani ISI of being implicated in the bombing of the Indian Embassy in Kabul. So the war-party in PAKISTAN, relating to INDIA, are triumphantly back and how can relations between these two South Asian countries do anything but deteriorate in these circumstances?

TURKEY BACK FROM THE BRINK
Good news from TURKEY. The popular and successful AKP government party was ambushed by its secular opponents when the state prosecutor argued that the party should be closed down and seventy of their most prominent politicians barred from politics for several years. How this would serve the cause of secularism was never quite clear, since the electorate would themselves decide for whom to vote and the reaction could have been towards religious extremists. But if the whole threatening incident served any purpose, it did put a shot across the bows of the AKP not to press too hard on such sensitive issues - in this case it was about modesty in women's dress, sensitive because many Turkish middle-class women were horrified at what happened to their westernised sisters in next door IRAN. There headscarves, finished up under the ayatollahs, as the shapeless, all-embracing black sacks of chadors, inspected by Revolutionary Guards not gently enforcing the modesty edicts.

LIBYA'S REPUBLICAN 'PRINCES'
We report the most recent story of the Ghadaffi boys, in fairness just one of them, and see likenesses with the Saddam Hussein scions, Uday and Qusay. Not a pretty sight!

BULGARIA FINALLY CATCHES IT!
It had to finally catch up with BULGARIA. They promised to clean up their shabby act and never got close. Admitted to the EU before they were qualified, they ignored the entry conditions and kept on stealing from the public purse. But the very large funds due to come to them as members of the EU are not now coming, so they can continue to steal from their own taxpayers, but not from those of other EU countries. ROMANIA is in line for the same treatment for similar reasons, except that a particularly pernicious gangsterism, with many unsolved murders is rife in BULGARIA where the old KGB from communist days just integrated with their customary methods, into the criminal world.


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