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NEWNATIONS BULLETIN 1ST SEPTEMBER 2009
Monthly reports on finance, business, trade,
economics, & political analysis
NEWNATIONS BULLETIN 1ST SEPTEMBER 2009
A HONEYMOON BORN OF GEOSTRATEGY
IRAN sends positive signals of a willingness to engage in talks. RUSSIA and China are both adding to the pressure, indicating their preparedness to support further sanctions if IRAN will not show willing to break the deadlock. But at the same time our RUSSIA report tells of military cooperation in Caspian Sea manoeuvres between IRAN and RUSSIA, and what that might lead to. It appears to be ushering in a honeymoon born of geo-strategic considerations. A somewhat frustrated RUSSIA is clearly - and who can blame them - establishing an alternative set of policies if the US and itself are not successful in resetting their relationship.
NORTH KOREA after endless months of bad behaviour has quite turned over a new page, as we detail in this months report on that nation. How long can it last?
LIBYA has been receiving much media attention recently over the release on compassionate grounds of the only convicted bomber al Megrahi, a former Libyan career spook, who is close to death with terminal cancer. Much of the media (that mostly don’t do compassion), has been trying to link some trade deal for the UK pivoting on this release, thereby exposing the alleged cynicism of UK politicians, but this always felt too 'media attack-dog' simplistic, for us. After providing monthly reports on LIBYA for nearly six years (this is report 69), we have diligently followed the story and we are convinced that quite another issue was key in this decision. The imminence of an appeal in the Scottish courts, we believe, was the determining factor in the UK government not seeking to intervene in the decision of the Scottish justice minister to release Al Megrahi in this way. The ministers must after all have known the 'quality' of the evidence that convicted this man after all these years, and that an Appeal Court was likely to reverse the conviction. What that would have said about the justice of the extraordinary court held on Dutch territory, that tried the two accused (and acquitted one) in accordance with Scottish law but without a jury, we now will never know. Similarly it would have inconveniently meant there was no acknowledged guilty party for this frightful atrocity and what would LIBYA have done with that, including the fact that whilst protesting and claiming innocence, they nevertheless set up a $1.8 bn fund for compensation.
We look at elections coming up in IRAQ. In Baghdad we comment on PM al Maliki's approach to retaining power. The AFGHANISTAN elections took place in a cloud of suspicious conduct by the authorities, whilst the electorate seems to regard them pragmatically as 'not perfect', but the best that they were going to get. We note in INDIA, the regional super-power's attitude to these AFGHAN elections.
The Grameen Bank and its founder Dr Muhammed Yunis have achieved further distinction and are now established to aid poorer borrowers with micro-credit and collateral-less lending, in the United States itself . At a time that banking and bankers have been dragging along the bottom of public esteem for their irresponsible and greedy behaviour, here is a branch of banking that is receiving and deserves acclaim.
Several elections in eastern Europe all with ramifications, which we report in ROMANIA, BULGARIA, ALBANIA and SERBIA.
The most dramatic election result in August however was in Japan, where after fifty four years the Liberal Democrats, the monolithic party that has controlled power and won election after election to do so, have finally been defeated and resoundingly so, in favour of the Democratic Party of Japan. The new PM Yukio Hatoyama is not short of ideas, whereby a benign Japan could begin to punch its considerable weight in international affairs. We will follow this major change with great interest.
UKRAINE is a large Slav FSU state which the Russians have never abandoned as the prime candidate, for rejoining greater Russia. Elections are coming in sorely troubled UKRAINE and not for the first time (which sparked off the Orange revolution), RUSSIA is backing their pro-Russian candidate Viktor Yanukovich. But Yulia Timoshenko, the feisty PM has different ideas to theirs about outcomes.
Following the hardly noticed 64th anniversary in August of Hiroshima and Nagasaki we revisit the nuclear debate.
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