Politics and Press

The interaction of the press and politics; public diplomacy, and daily absurdities.

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Drums Along the Potomac

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“The Armed Forces Are the Instrument of Foreign Policy, Not Its Master”,   Hans Morgenthau

Some see war as a failure of diplomacy; others see it as a substitute. Twelve years after the disastrous U.S. invasion of Iraq those who prefer war to diplomacy are back and priming the pump for what could be the next exercise in American folly in the Middle East. This time it is Iran that looms as the target.

President Obama has chosen diplomacy joined with sanctions to reduce Iran’s likelihood of attaining a nuclear capability. And while success in this effort is by no means guaranteed, neither is the likely success of a military intervention despite claims by some that we should cease our diplomatic efforts and move apace to war.

In recent weeks our two major newspapers -the Washington Post and the New York Times– have published clear calls to bomb Iran on its op ed pages. In the once great Washington Post Joshua Muravchik, a Fellow at the Johns Hopkins School of Advanced International Politics, argued that “war [[against Iran] is probably our best option” and was explicitly critical of any diplomatic efforts. This is a reprise of his November, 2006 op ed in the L.A. Times which opens with: “We must bomb Iran” and predicts Iran’s creating conflicts all over the world, including Southeast Asia. He then urged then President Bush to attack at once, despite the “unpopularity” of his Iraq war.

Similarly, last week in the New York Times, John Bolton, analyst at he American Enterprise Institute and former U.S. Ambassador to the United Nations under President George W. Bush, provided an op ed titled “To Stop Iran’s Bomb, Bomb Iran”. This is consistent with Bolton’s predilection to send other people’s sons and daughters to fight unnecessary wars in places like Iraq, and to view diplomacy as a sign of weakness.

Add to this mix the views of politicians like Senators John McCain and Lindsey Graham and what seems to be the entire Republican membership of the House of Representatives and we have the seeds of an effort to move the country toward acceptance of yet another irrational attempt to change that part of the world in which we have been notoriously ineffective-even destructive-in the past. It is all too reminiscent of the lead up to the 2003 invasion of Iraq which has provided much of the impetus for an energized battle between Shia and Sunni forces throughout the Middle east.

The press was instrumental in building support for the invasion of Iraq and that alone should be enough to warn us of the danger of accepting press reports and untested analyses without careful vetting. The fact that U.S. intelligence agencies participated in driving the argument to invade Iraq adds to the need to be careful whom we trust. The quality of the press is of fundamental importance and unfortunately there are reasons to be skeptical.

Is Israel’s Grip on America’s Middle East Policy Slipping Away?

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“Netanyahu’s shrill public statements during the last two or three days before the vote may account in part for Likud’s startling margin of victory. For the first time since his Bar Ilan speech in 2009, he explicitly renounced a two-state solution and swore that no Palestinian state would come into existence on his watch. He promised vast new building projects in the Palestinian territorial concessions, anywhere, since any land that would be relinquished would, in his view, immediately be taken over by Muslim terrorists.”   from,

“Israel The Stark Truth” by David Shulman, New York Review Blog, March 21, 2015

Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s thinly veiled attacks on President Obama – and indeed on the office of the American Presidency – have opened the door to a long overdue reassessment of American policy in the Middle East, where we have invested a lot and gained little.

U.S. foreign policy is – or should be – based on analysis of what serves the strategic national interest of the United States. Most of the time that national interest is consistent with that of its allies — but not always. The United States has historically played a major role in the ongoing security of Israel and, in fact, Israel’s security has been a linchpin of American foreign policy since the post WWII years. It has included billions of dollars of military aid to Israel, and a Middle East foreign policy built on America’s commitment to Israel’s security. It has also been a forgiving policy. When Israel bombed the America ship U.S. Liberty in 1967, killing some 34 Americans, domestic politics led to the U.S. government joining in a pretension that it was simply a mistake by Israeli pilots, later proved to be false, and therefore arguably, a killing of Americans by Israeli pilots flying planes paid for by American taxpayers. Also, Israel’s nuclear force is at least partly a result of Israeli spies stealing secrets from the U.S. This is also largely winked at by the U.S. although one man remains in jail for that crime in spite of annual public relations efforts by the Israelis to get him released. While there have been other minor blips in the U.S.-Israel relationship over the years it has been largely collaborative until recently.

Domestic political pressure supporting Israeli interest in America is strong. Currently the U.S. provides annually ca. $3.1 Billion to Israel – a country of just over 8 million people. Israel supporters such as Sheldon Adelson have been willing to commit significant financial resources to politicians willing to support Israeli interests even when those interests are in conflict with U. S. interests. While America’s foreign policy has always been influenced by national or ethnic diaspora in the U.S., it is hard to imagine a more intrusive and negative influence on American foreign policy than what we have seen over the last several years with Benjamin Netanyahu as Israel’s Prime Minister. He joined forces with American extreme conservatives to help push American foreign policy towards the absurdly counter-productive 2003 invasion of Iraq and continues his attempt to destroy any hope of detente with Iran. And never mind peace with the Palestinians – both by 8 years of action and now open speech – Netanyahu has declared that a dead issue, while waffling slightly – and unbelievably – after he won reelection earlier last week. Netanyahu’s campaign was characterized by a not so subtle attack on Israeli Arabs and his spoken commitment to walk away from the possibility of a Palestinian state, the latter an open disagreement with long agreed Israeli-American Middle East policy.

Netanyahu meddled in American politics when he worked openly for Mitt Romney in the 2012 election – a foolish act mostly ignored by the American press some of whom now wonder why President Obama hasn’t been friendlier to Netanyahu. More recently Netanyahu worked with John Boehner in an attempt to join forces with the anti-Obama right wingers in the Congress to destroy a multinational negotiation with Iran. These negotiations involve France, Germany, the UK, U.S., Russia and China and represent the only realistic possibility to reduce the likelihood of an Iranian nuclear military capability. At this point Netanyahu’s arrogant bumbling has increased Israel’s isolation and raised the possibility of the U.S. – for the first time – supporting the concept of a Palestinian state in the UN. It puts at risk America’s historic relationship with Israel.

The U.S. has expended billions of dollars in the Middle East and has little to show for it other than a nuclear armed Israel that has managed to isolate itself from much of the Western world. The memory of the Holocaust and Israel’s strong democratic traditions have argued for almost unconditional love of Americans for Israelis but Netanyahu has managed to put that relationship at great risk to satisfy his narrow, personal political agenda. For many Americans this is now seen as an opportunity to loosen the ties that bind.

Global Warming hits home

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The has never been more dramatic proof of the threat of global warming than what  has happened on the west coast of Canada this winter. Here it is February 20 and Vancouverites are faced with all the consequences.  The cheery tree are in full bloom on the streets, and the leaves leaves smudge marks on parked cars.  The sound of lawnmowers has awakened the  hibernating animals, coming two months early out of  their burrows,  to see what’s up this early in the day.  And the gras iss unusually thick due to sudden surge of too warm sun.  After working up a sweat from the hand-mowing  work, it is an old tradition  to take a run down to the beach for a swim, and many are doing that only to find the lifeguards are not on duty. and red warn ing flags are waving.  The water is nevertheless refreshing if dangerous .  The orcas have shown up much  earlier than usual in the bay and we are all delighted  to see more than the usual little ones following Mama around.  And the skiers, bereft of snow in the local mountains, have to drive north for an hour and half before hitting the powdery slopes.  Frustrating it is too for those who like to shovel snow or push a snow blower, as they must seek some other form of exercise.

People who have had to travel east or to the high arctic come back with  a different story.  It’s hard to believe but they say that it hasn’t been nearly as warm and green out east.  No doubt as a piece of satire, the New York Times claimed that the mayor of New York closed the city subway system down one day in advance of  a two-inch snowfall, fearful that  the white stuff would fill the subway tunnels.  The mayor of Winnipeg offered him a week’s vacation there to clear his mind, but he has not had a reply.  And the Peg has always been the place for the true winter fans.

The Lion and the Lioness Part Two

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As predicted in the same-titled blog of not so long ago, (Part One), a 60 year-old woman who does not care about charisma, and lives in a modest apartment in Berlin, rather than a mansion, is now the undisputed most powerful woman in existence. Angela Merkel has also earned the right to at least  be considered the most powerful and respected political leader in the world. The German Kanzlerin seems to be the only one still willing to take her position seriously.as someone who just might be able to talk to enough lions who might be convinced to see solutions other than aggression, killing  and warfare to solve the world’s miserable problems these days.  She may well fail, but at least somebody is trying.

Seconded only by a large security detail, and in Europe by the President of France, die Kanzlerin pushed herself to the edge of exhaustion by visiting Kiew, Moscow, Munich , Berlin (f0r a pit stop)  Ottawa, Washington and Minsk in one week, delivering speeches and talking with  leaders who are missing in action in all of them except Russia, where Putin is very much in action.  By skipping London and spending as much time in Ottawa as in Washington, whose leader recently refused to meet either with the President of Israel or the Dalai Lama, Merkel made a statement of her own about the  support she could have expected but has not received in attempting to stop an all out war in Europe.  She herself has said that all that it has resulted in only a shimmer of hope.   But that’s one more  shimmer than anyone else has been  willing to risk his/her own health to produce.

POLICE: FRIEND OR FOE?

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“Always Remember… Once You Give Up Your Rights, You Can Never Get Them Back. Once You Turn On That Police State, You Can Never Turn It Off.”
― Ziad K. Abdelnour

America is caught up in an all too familiar argument about the relationships among young black males, mostly white police departments, the press, politicians and the general public. And it would be a real dandy if it addressed the reality of what has happened in America in recent years. This is the case especially since the 9/11 attacks that have contributed to a level of free floating existential fear, furthered by a host of American politicians, aided and abetted by a mediocre – or worse – media..

The Michael Brown killing in Ferguson, Missouri subverted the discussion by directing it to the narrow and away from the broad. The narrow allowed people to argue that Mr. Brown was a “thug” because he pushed a convenience store employee and stole some cigarillos. It allowed people to argue that he was a very big and very black and ergo a very scary guy. Therefore for some, he deserved to die. The narrow also allowed the discussion to accept as truth the carefully scripted grand jury testimony of the policeman without any questioning by – for instance – the prosecutor – at the grand jury proceedings. So be it. The dice were loaded, the game was fixed. Few of us were surprised.

The police in America have way more power than they should or that they deserve, given past behavior. They work for us and we do not expect them to play dress up in Camo duds to come out and scare us. We expect them to be on our side and that does not include killing people because the are big and black. But the problem – while largely one suffered by young black males – is not and will not be restricted to them. We are giving the police in America powers they do not need, do not deserve, and that in the end will haunt us all.

Michael Brown was one in a long line of victims of criminal police action. Tonight a grand jury refused to indict a NY policeman who choked an unarmed black man to death with the help of three or four additional cops – on video. No indictment from that grand jury. Last week a 12 year old black child in Cleveland was shot for holding a toy gun. The excuse? The yellow tag that identified it as a toy had been removed. The reality? The cops arrived, waited less than 2 seconds and blasted him into the history books. But these well-reported cases are the tip of the iceberg. From May 2013 to today over 1450 people have been killed by American police. Some were no doubt bad people – perhaps deserving to die – but there is simply too much evidence in the public domain to ignore the fact that the people we hired to protect us have become one of our major threats. In 2013, 111 police were reported to have died in duty 46 died in traffic accidents; 33 by gunfire and 14 by heart attack, the rest by various means. So a total of 33 by gunfire (although the report does not indicate whether it was friendly fire or suicide – neither uncommon).

The basic issue sits out there. How afraid are we? 9/11 happened 13 years ago; can we please get over it? Apparently not. But why would we foster the development of a police state that infringes on all of our freedoms and that becomes more dangerous than the so-called enemy and provides no real increased protection? The police work for us. We pay them more than we pay our teachers while requiring less training and background. Then we give them guns and a badge and they become a national nightmare. And then we give them tanks and assault weapons and camouflage uniforms. And then they begin to believe that they are all powerful and can get away with murder. And guess what? They can and they do.

Ukraine: Bad Policy OR The Absence of Policy?

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The demonization of Vladimir Putin is not a policy;
it is an alibi for the absence of one.
Henry Kissinger

The Ukraine crisis has raised significant – some would say unnecessary – risks of international turmoil that could become much worse if not brought under control by the main participants, esp. Russia and Ukraine. Yet, it seems clear that a significant portion of the American foreign policy community and the American press has been unable or unwilling to discuss or even consider alternatives to what has become the de facto official narrative. Official in the sense of presenting a one-sided, American/European view of a situation that is a lot more complicated and that has roots in Western policies aggressively aimed at attacking Russia’s national interest under the guise of our never-ending and almost always futile attempt to install Western democracies in countries not ready for it. e.g. Egypt, Iraq, Afghanistan, Libya, etc.

But most troubling is the almost total lack of debate minus the demonizing of the debaters. Without defending Putin’s actions in Ukraine there are, nonetheless, geopolitical realities that should not be ignored while blindly following simplistic thinking of the likes of John McCain and Lindsey Graham in calling for military action in some form (i.e. giving lots of weapons to the Ukrainian military) as the only answer to what is a complex political and diplomatic problem.

The behavior of the American press is reminiscent of its cheerleading for the Vietnam War with unquestioning acceptance of the government narrative of the dominoes theory. The press’s support for the 2003 invasion of Iraq was similarly supported without substantive debate in the press, although there were a small number of politicians willing to voice their doubts. But the alternative narratives for the Ukraine are mostly being ignored or even ridiculed.

For example, two notable commentaries by respected foreign policy thinkers provide a very different narrative of how we arrived at the Ukraine crisis and both authors have been largely ignored. John Mearsheimer, a highly regarded University of Chicago political scientist published his views of “Why the Ukraine Crisis is the West’s Fault” in the current issue of Foreign Affairs, reiterating points he made in an earlier piece in Foreign Policy and again in the NY Times. Princeton and New York University Russian Studies Professor Stephen Cohen presented his views in a Conference in Washington but had published extensively on the crisis in The Nation Magazine. While writing in very different journals they come to similar conclusions: that the West failed to consider the importance of an unaligned Ukraine to Russia’s security and national interest; that the West continues to treat Russia as a “defeated” former enemy; that the West – specifically the EU – blundered when they offered Ukraine an economic agreement that would begin the movement of Ukraine into the Western sphere; then supporting the revolt that toppled the elected government of Ukraine. The West eagerly accepted the bonafides of the “revolution” and by picking sides in a battle of primary political importance to Russia contributed to the crisis. Consider the U.S.’s Monroe Doctrine and what the U.S. would likely do if a rival power decided to foment revolution in Mexico. Then ask whether the U.S. and European leaders bothered to put themselves in Putin’s shoes when they decided to foment revolution in Ukraine.

As for Cohen and Mearsheimer, rather than producing a transparent, robust debate, they have been vilified as Putin’s puppets, etc. by much of what passes for an informed press. But almost no one has seriously debated them on the merits of their arguments or – more significantly – on the facts of the case. And more importantly, there is no evidence of such a serious debate behind the scenes. Most commentators have taken the facts as presented by the U.S. and Ukraine governments and have been happy to demonize Putin. As for the political players, senators from both parties have bought the line with the Republicans criticizing Obama for the lack of “action” whatever that might be, when the real issue is his over reaching in the region that contributed to a major, dangerous crisis.

Finally, lest we forget, a significant portion of the Ukraine population does not support the movement to the West and in fact yesterday the NY Times reported that hundreds of thousands of citizens of eastern Ukraine are fleeing into Russia for refuge from the Ukraine army which, according to Human Rights Watch, has matched the rebels in killing thousands of civilians. Most of those “refugees” are now planning to remain in Russia. And are there Russian troops fighting with the rebels? Maybe so, or even probably so, but that does not give us the moral edge. After all, we have had our instances of sending troops – secret in many cases – into almost every Central American country in the past when our leaders had determined it to be in our national interest. much like Mr. Putin in the Ukraine. With a Ukraine cease fire tentatively agreed to by Russia and Ukraine this morning, the West (i.e. NATO) has announced its planned “Rapid Reaction Force for Eastern Europe”. We shall see how Mr. Putin responds.

Race, Obama and the Deferred Dream

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Things fall apart; the centre cannot hold;
Mere anarchy is loosed upon the world.
The blood-dimmed tide is loosed, and everywhere
The ceremony of innocence is drowned;
The best lack all conviction, while the worst
Are full of passionate intensity.
                                                     W.B. Yeats

Reading comments of readers of daily newspapers and reading or hearing the ongoing barrage of criticism and blame laid on the President by his political foes has led many who should know better to believe that President Obama is a human disaster, laying waste to the America we learned about in grade school. Listening to Obama’s supporters could lead us to the conclusion that he is too good to be true and that his political enemies are ignorant louts. Both sides can claim some evidence to support their views, but to get sucked into the mire of so-called analysis by our press pundits is to get lost in a maze of untruths, half-truths, facts, non-facts, beltway bullshit and sheer hate speech.

This is not to conclude that Obama has been a knight in shining armor; clearly he has not. But let’s review some of what he and we have had to put up with for six years:

* the idiotic nonsense of his country of birth with calls for his birth certificate continuing still some five years after it was produced;
* the absurd claims that he was a secret Muslim intent on bringing us sharia law;
* the public insults hurled at his wife for promoting healthy eating;
* criticism linking him to every failed democracy in the world, with John McCain leading a bitter vendetta against the man who defeated him in 2008;
* and, of course, the subtle and not so subtle, racist comments directed at him and his family. It is this factor that has mostly been an elephant on the table,    mostly ignored or simply pretended that the issue does not exist.

A good measure of where the U.S. is in its movement toward genuine racial equality is not so much the recent events in Ferguson Missouri, but rather the way in which the country has responded. A young, black teenager is gunned down with six shots by a white policeman. The teenager’s body is left in the street for over 4 hours without so much as a sheet over it. The police wait a few days and then finally release the policeman’s name, simultaneously beginning to slur the teenager with a video of him pushing a clerk in a convenience store. For many this was enough of a reason to execute the young man. The riots that followed were all too predictable as was the overreaction of the white police, which included arresting journalists, bringing in an ARMY TANK for God’s sake, shooting rubber bullets and tear gas canisters, and threatening law-abiding citizens participating in their constitutional right to protest. The NY Times did not help by publishing a front page story about the victim saying he “was no angel” and listing his many crimes – occasionally smoking marijuana, drinking beer underage, jostling a neighbor once – crimes that are consistent with growing up in America – white or black, and perhaps a reminder that none of us are “angels”.

So what has been the response? Well, it varied of course and mostly in predictable ways. There was the initial gnashing of teeth in most of the press with the notable exception of Fox News – an exception also predictable. Then over time the slurring of the victim, the calls for peace in the street, the calling of a grand jury investigation, the burial of the victim, and then back to a sense of normality which means that nothing much is likely to change. Although there is some public concern over their local police forces turning into military machines, dedicated to keeping the people under control rather than protecting them. We shall see where that goes.

But perhaps the best measure of where W.B. Yeats’ “worst…full of passionate intensity” have ended up is that a few weeks after the event, nearly $500,000 had been raised (some by the KKK) for the defense of a so far not even charged white policeman who managed to put 6 bullets in an unarmed black teenager. This spontaneous outpouring of support is as good a measure as any of where we are in our crawl toward racial equality. The money quote in the fund-raising for the officer came from one contributor who said: “We’ll all see this in the end that it was a good shooting. You know, it was a good kill.”

All of this keeps the issue of race on the table when thinking about Obama’s performance as President and the cost to America of continuing to avoid fully addressing the problems facing black Americans. Americans were justifiably proud of their willingness to vote an African American to the presidency – twice. Now they need to do the really hard work of persuading the rest of the country of the need for mutual respect and of the common interest in renewing the nation’s efforts to finally, at long last, put racism in its past. The effort needs a new beginning.

Obama’s Stunde Null

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Is Obama trying to become the least trusted president of the US in recent memory? If he is, he doing a very good job of it. Just in the last couple of months he has managed to alienate many of his formerly most reliable friends, none worse than Germany, although Canada would also have a good case of feeling most offended. Perhaps the Canadian irritations seem to be small matters, but they have certainly added up, and do nothing to bring about any sense of harmony among the second and third largest countries on earth, not to mention a feeling of solidarity in North America. There is no doubt that Canada is quickly drawing away from its long-standing position of being a close ally of its smaller southern neighbour, whose arrogance in such matters as the naming of ambassadors, the paying of obviously-due bills, the willingness to co-operate on border issues, and the inability of Washington to understand that spying on your friends and neighbours is considered unacceptable by respected governments, and the simple absence of courtesy visits is simply rude by Canadian standards. The two US ambassadors to Canada appointed by Obama have both been non-diplomat bagmen for Democrats with no experience in foreign affairs or for that matter in Canada. The US seems to be unwilling to pay for the building and maintenance of a new border crossing on the desperately needed new bridge to Canada near Detroit, but has plenty of money for drones cruising along the once so-called longest unarmed border in the world. The almost total absence of visits by the Candian Prime Minister to Washington and the US president to ottawa does nothing to dispel the feeling that these two countries are not getting along well.
But the situation with regard to Germany has deteriorated even more rapidly. Any North American liviing in Germany has long had the feeling that the Germans basically ten d to look at eh US through rose-oloured glasses, no doubt because of the US eole in t he Second World War and its aftermateh. (These same German almost never know anything about the role of Canada , whose army played a major part in the D-Day invasion and fought its way on its own through northern France and the Netherlands.) But that good will has almost been destroyed by the revelations about Washington’s tapping of phones of the leaders of government there, including the private cell phone of Prime Minister Merkel, who seemed honestly taken aback by this revelation . As she was brought up in the DDR, she is more or less the last person on earth who has to be reminded of the awful reaction of citizens who hear that their private communications have been listened to by threatening governments, in this case a foreign one. And now the head of the CIA in Berlin has been kicked out of Germany as the proof of illegal spying that came out of his office continues to widen . What birdbrains allowed this to happen? did they really think the Germans, by far the central power of Europe. would take this affront without acting? And there we can see it: Merkel talking with Putin in Rio about the Ukrainian situation, which has left the US once again all at sea, German Foreign Minister Steinmeyer icily confronting an outmatched US Foreign Minister Kerry in Vienna. It’s all unnecessary, if there were only some sense of diplomatic skill coming out of Washington . But there isn’t and we shall see what the consequences are of such amateur behaviour.

 

What happens next in Ukraine

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As events in Ukraine continue to seem to spin out of control, some aspects of the crisis seem to be getting clearer:
1. Crimea is lost to Ukraine and will soon be understood by almost everyone to be apart of Russia – again. It is time for the western leaders to stop saying otherwise. It is a peninsula in the Black Sea that Russian armies have fought for over the centuries against the British, the Ottomans and others when it was threatened with invasion, and no one stepped in to defend it when Russia just took it over , not even the Ukrainian army that was stationed on it. Most of the people who lived there were in favour of the return to Mother Russia and Putin wasted no time in welcoming them back. In Russia itself it was an event that worked greatly to increase Putin’s popularity.

2. Ukraine has always functioned as a kind of buffer zone between the Russian Empire and western Europe. . There is no doubt that the western part of Ukraine, with the city of Lwiw/Lwow/Lemberg has been at different times a centre of Polish, Yiddish, German and Ukrainian cultures. There is absolutely no doubt that its inhabitants would vote overwhelmingly to look west for its future, but it is also true that western Europe has never been particularly welcoming towards them. When the EU clearly placed its eastern boundary on the Ukrainian/Romanian border and welcomed Romania and Bulgaria into its military wing, NATO, it made life very difficult for those western Ukrainians who would love to enjoy free travel and close relations to the people in the lands beyond the visa-controlled Romanian border. Ukranians have emigrated in large numbers over the last century and a half, especially to the Canadian prairies, partly because they never felt particularly welcome in central and western Europe while simultaneously being subjected to enforced famine by its Slavic brothers to the east.

3. There is real uncertainty about what would happen in eastern Ukraine if such a vote were held. Cities of a million people like Donetsk and Karkov – and suddenly Odessa seems to have joined this assembly – seem to be so divided on the topic that civil war seems a real possibility if serious negotiations aren’t held immediately. Nobody seems to really know what Putin’s plans might be, but his recent suggestion that the pro-Russian separatists should act with a bit more caution, may be a sign that a kind of semi-autonomous status within the Ukrainian Republic for Russian-speaking areas areas of eastern Ukraine might be a negotiable position that would be less threatening than anything anyone else has been able to think of. .

4. Putin has proven to a ruthless and powerful opponent in all this. Here on his home turf he has been able to completely outmaneuver both his Ukrainian adversaries and the western leaders who have so ditheringly come to their defence. His foreign minister makes mincemeat of all the western foreign ministers except the German Frank-Walter Steinmeyer who is very aware of how awful the actions of west European armies in Ukraine have been in the recent past. Putin has a black belt in judo, and he has proven he is one tough customer, but it may be that he has made all the moves he plans to make and that a negotiated settlement based on a Ukrainian Federation can bring some chance of peace to this tormented part of the world. If not ….

Fear and Loathing in Istanbul

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Ok. So Turkish Prime Minister Erdogan is a mite paranoid and more than a mite pissed off. Seems that You Tube and Facebook have been peddling some troubling audio of Erdogan carrying on with his son about his need to hide some money – well, actually quite a lot of money – before those police not yet fired by the Prime Minister come a-calling. Other phone conversations capture Erdogan threatening newspaper publishers for having published articles critical of him and his political party. This is consistent with his habit of jailing journalists and academics who voice criticisms of his government. Indeed, it is possible now to question whether Turkey actually is a functioning democracy.

Erdogan’s solution to the leaked conversations? Ban Facebook and You Tube from all of Turkey! This after announcing laws that allow police to trace website searches on individuals’ computers and to ban any websites that suggest dishonesty or paranoia or sedition or whatever might displease the Prime Minister. Alas Erdogan might be running into a problem with all of this since President Abdullah Gul has already said that banning social media is not acceptable and he will not sign such a law. And if that is so, it is a dead issue and Erdogan might be more concerned about his future than anyone would have expected six months ago. Gul has always been the loose piece in this puzzle – a somewhat less pious Muslim with a mind of his own and no real debt to Erdogan.

In addition, while Erdogan has been busy waging war against free expression and the Internet the Turkish Constitutional Court has found that charges brought against a former army military chief of staff by Erdogan’s government last year was improper and has opened the possibility that all of the charges that broke the military’s secular influence on power in Turkey were improper.

Erdogan’s power in Turkey has been partly theocratic but more importantly economic. The economy has flourished, quality of life has improved and a lot of people have benefitted financially. But the current crises have had serious negative effects on the economy and people are getting restless. Turkey faces a major choice in important local elections this month: it can stay with Erdogan and sacrifice free expression and free access to information with the hope for renewed economic development or opt for moving toward a more secular government with the hope for a commitment to free speech, and the rule of (secular) law. These elections will be an early indication of whether Erdogan has gone too far in his efforts to stifle political debate and manipulate public opinion.