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NEWNATIONS BULLETIN 1ST JANUARY 2010
Monthly reports on finance, business, trade,
economics, & political analysis
NEWNATIONS BULLETIN 1ST JANUARY 2010
THE NIGHTMARE THAT IS AFGHANISTAN
Obama may believe that the AFGHANISTAN issues have been dealt with, given his decisions to surge the US forces there, the fact is that they have not. We give a simple and devastating account of the realities of that benighted nation, which is truly in an awful condition - read it for yourself!
Obama may believe that the AFGHANISTAN issues have been dealt with, given his decisions to surge the US forces there, the fact is that they have not. We give a simple and devastating account of the realities of that benighted nation, which is truly in an awful condition - read it for yourself!
2009 finished with some judgements to be made. It has certainly not been a good year for the middle-east peace process. Little has changed in the regional dynamic - except for the worse. Netanyahu, who is about the most disappointing possible news for a fair peace process that there could be, became the prime minister of Israel in 2009, which alone takes the cause of peace back years. He stopped the ongoing and promising Israel-Syrian negotiations being held under Turkish chairmanship, really because he doesn’t believe that the Golan Heights, territory captured in war (albeit over 40 years ago), ever needs to be returned.
How to deal with IRAN seems to be no clearer - whilst the morass gets deeper. We make original suggestions here for a different approach, which we think ‘stands up‘, where nothing else appears to be working.
The Copenhagen story will run and run. We made our position clear in a special report and the debate continues at our blog. www.geopolemics.com
We report that $352 billion of drugs profits absorbed into the economy, apparently saved some banks from collapse. Time, we say, to seriously review the whole question of illegal drugs, with a view to decriminalising! This debate just isn’t happening, which is ludicrous.
We introduce readers to “Gulfo,” the proposed new currency favoured by the Gulf States to replace the US Dollar in the settlement of oil deals.
Iraq has once again come back from the brink with regard to its substantial Kurdish minority - the US has taken on the responsibility of broking a deal acceptable to all parties. It’s a breakthrough for February elections taking place, but we wonder and are prepared to marvel at what the US can possibly come up with, regarding the status of Kirkuk.
We take a look at the great Kazakhstan whitewash, where in an attempt to prettify the state of that country’s regime, Washington consultants in return for big bucks, seek to justify this former soviet country becoming this year’s chair of the prestigious OSCE. We have been following the Kazakhstan story since it was a limb of the Soviet Union and whatever else, it is a curious, actually an absurd choice for the leadership of the OSCE, supposed to be one of democracy’s leading proponents.
Uzbekistan, next door neighbour to Kazakhstan, has been assessed by Human Rights Watch as attacking and harassing campaigners, which reports sounds right to us. It really is one of the most desperately awful dictatorships on earth, and we don’t at all like it, when the EU has praised them as making progress in human rights, since this appears to stem from a desire to consolidate oil and gas supplies.
Turkey is back in focus, partly because of its unresolved problems with Armenia but also because it is trouble with the EU over not being nice to Greek-controlled Cyprus. We explain the story here.
Many of Europe’s nations are in election mode. We look particularly at UKRAINE, ROMANIA and ALBANIA. In the Balkans, CROATIA and SLOVENIA have agreed to go to arbitration on their border dispute, which opens the way for CROATIA to join the EU. Meanwhile the International Court of Justice will be considering KOSOVO’s declaration of independence from SERBIA - a tough one for the court!
South Africa’s long January report touches on the economy and the impact on it of the world financial crisis, but we also report on the politics of the nation, once Africa’s great hope for democracy. But here politics has become more than previously corrupt - inevitable probably when one political party totally dominates, and that party is itself a vehicle for a non-elected interest group, the African National Congress.
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