North Korea puts its armed forces on a war footing

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"As we have learnt again and again in this long period of turmoil, the impossible can become inevitable without even passing through improbable." Anatole Kaletsky - The Times

We seem to be immersed in a period of cumulative disasters, rather similar to the astrological idea of the inauspicious conjunction of certain planets.

This is not how the "age of Aquarius" was supposed to turn out!

Obama's triumphal entry into Jerusalem... yada yada yada

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The US is hoping that Obama's positive first trip will reinvigorate peace efforts, though most settlers are not worried. They see the composition of the new Israeli cabinet as a reassurance that Israeli policy will move away from peace negotiations. Christian Science Monitor

Obama's visit to Israel was strictly for domestic American consumption, because unless the president and Netanyahu took a decision on when to attack or not attack Iran or intervene in Syria's civil war, which they could have done by telephone, his trip was strictly a public relations exercise, certainly it wont affect the "Peace Process" or lead to Palestinian statehood.

The much talked about "Two State Solution" is not stalled or even dead, it never existed: it and the "Peace Process" said to be leading to the founding of a "viable, contiguous, Palestinian state",  or even a Bantustan, was never more than a way of stalling, killing time, running out the clock. Israel has been waiting for a moment that now appears to be fast approaching: the disintegration of the Middle East as the west has known it since the end of World War One. In a short time all of the borders that were designed during the First World War by Britain and France  to suit western interests, will now probably become undefined, fluid if not gaseous... just as Israel's own borders are.

You may not have noticed, but Israel's frontiers have been undefined since 1967. The objective of the Israelis in avoiding the "Two State Solution" is  to not define them "prematurely", before all the pieces on board start to move.  In times like these, the last thing the Israelis want is to be the only ones with firmly drawn frontiers when all other borders in the Middle East are going to be negotiable. The settlers are not an "obstacle to peace", they are merely an excuse for Israel not to define those frontiers.

This Middle Eastern disintegration has been a long time coming and perfectly foreseeable by anyone as cool headed and long headed as the Israelis. The neocon led invasion of Iraq with its "real men go to Tehran" leitmotif, was itself a desperate, Hail Mary pass, attempt to control the events that are now taking place with that certain spontaneity of what looks like a historically driven process.

"What we're seeing here is, in a sense, the growing—the birth pangs of a new Middle East, and whatever we do, we have to be certain that we're pushing forward to the new Middle East, not going back to the old Middle East". Condoleezza Rice - 2006

Just in case you don't know what the "old Middle East" looked like, check this map... As you can see, it's mostly about Turkey and Iran... Not many borders visible except theirs and Britain's protectorates and today the British, who used to control Egypt, are no longer players... and as you may have noticed lately, America's once smothering grip on the area is fading fast.

At this moment Syria is literally disintegrating, spewing nearly half a million refugees into tiny, neighboring  Jordan, where the Palestinian majority is permanently restless and the influence of the Muslim brotherhood is growing. The Muslim Brotherhood controls Egypt and Hamas in Gaza is an offshoot of the Brotherhood; and then there is always Al Qaeda which is growing exponentially in the Syrian conflict. So much for the Sunnis

As to the Shiites: Iran besides working diligently on developing atomic capabilities is fighting a proxy war alongside Assad in Syria, is the major power influence in Iraq and is heavily arming  Shiite Hezbollah on Israel's Lebanese border...

What could the Israelis expect to achieve as all this comes unraveled and the shooting starts?

Simple: they could ethnically cleanse Judea, Samaria, Gaza (and maybe Israel itself too while they are at it) all in the midst of the confusion of a military free for all.  Chaos with thousands of refugees simultaneously in movement everywhere... and when the dust settles, let the Palestinians establish their "viable and contiguous state" on the ruins of the Jordanian monarchy as a Sunni buffer between Israel and Shiite Iraq... if they so desire.

Who thought all this up? Ariel Sharon, I should imagine, who else? DS

What is the new Pope about?

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His Holiness Pope Francis

Francis is no liberal. He had no truck with liberation theology, the popular movement in Latin America and elsewhere which links the church’s work to radical social change, even though many of its supporters have been Jesuits. Not Francis: he is close to the conservative Communion and Liberation movement. The Economist

Latin America is the breadbasket and center of gravity of the Roman Catholic Church today, both in number of faithful and number of vocations. But there are storm clouds on the horizon;  two movements have the Church worried in Latin America and the problems they cause are interconnected: on one hand the revolutionary movements of the Bolivarian variety, which threaten the position of the propertied classes and on the other the growing, US financed, Evangelical Protestant penetration in the continent.

Though as socially conservative as the Catholics, the Evangelicals are ultra-conservatives on economic issues following the US model and very much part of the reactionary culture of the American south. The problem for the Catholic Church is that if they cannot stop the left wing revolutionaries from making inroads in the Catholic population, the rich criollo's money in South America will begin to flow toward the Evangelicals to see if they can do the job, thus leaving the Church without cash and vocations.

Don't expect any loosening of Church doctrine under the new pope, Jorge Mario Bergoglio. Karol Wojtyla and his enforcer Josef Ratzinger, systematically carried out  a 35 year long purge of all "green shoots" of John XXIII, Paul VI and Vatican II. This has been deep and thorough and every trace of progressive thought has been exhaustively eradicated from the Church aparat. Bergoglio is a product of that purge and a collaborator in carrying it out. The Jesuit order was once a hotbed of left wing liberation theology, Bergoglio made his bones helping to stamp that out.

There is a lot of disturbing news about the new pope coming out of Argentina.  He is accused of operating hand in glove with the Videla regime... it might be a good idea to moderate our enthusiasm for this "Franciscan" simplicity of his till all that is cleared up. DS

Whither post-Chávez Venezuela

To put the entire subject of Venezuela into perspective from a yanqui point of view, I suggest reading the following snippet by Matthew Yglesias.

The late Hugo Chavez is controversial because of American aspirations to global military hegemony. People who vocally oppose those aspirations find themselves subjected to a massive amount of scrutiny of their human rights record that leaders who support it manage to completely avoid. Thus Chavez is an authoritarian strongman while King Abdullah II of Jordan does cameos on Star Trek Voyager. And since American aspirations to global military hegemony are uncontroversial inside the United States, critics of said aspirations develop an outsized level of emotional affiliation with foreign leaders who are subjected to this kind of hypocritical scrutiny. Matthew Yglesias - Slate

That quote more or less gives us the parameters of an American discussion of Hugo Chávez and the future of his movement, revolution or regime, whichever you prefer.

Cutting to the chase: in my opinion, if the Venezuelan army and Venezuela's poor hang together and the bottom doesn't totally drop out of oil market, Chavismo will survive, either as a potent force for change in Venezuela, Latin America and the Third World in general or in a degenerate form like Argentinian Peronism, with Chávez in the role of Evita. Whatever happens, the poor people of Venezuela will never forget him and will always worship his memory, in some ways he is more powerful dead than alive.

First the army. To really have any idea of Venezuela's future you would have to be a fly on the wall in a Venezuelan army junior officer's mess. One of the USA's problems south of the border nowadays is that they no longer train and network most of Latin America's army officers like they used to in Cold War days, and neither are they the exclusive suppliers of those country's weapon systems anymore. That is why the US backed coup against Hugo Chavez failed: only the older, Yankee trained officers were behind it, the young officers, the ones who make successful coups, backed Chávez.

As to oil, I would imagine that Russia, China, Iran would be quite willing to supply the necessary expertise to help restructure Venezuela's limping oil industry in order to dilute American influence.

For me the question is whether what follows Chávez will be a serious revolution or simply a demagogic fraud like Peronism has become. A revolution means a total change in the social and economic relations of a country. Many observers, who don't sympathize with Chávez's goals predict that his regime will quickly disintegrate without his hand on the helm. I'm not at all sure they are right.

We should take into account that Chavez didn't just suddenly drop dead of a heart attack.... the regime has had plenty of time to prepare... also we should take into account that the revolutionary infrastructure and revolutionary "consulting" services available to Venezuela come from the Castro brothers, who are the world's most successful revolutionaries, and if nothing else, certainly brilliant survivors.

An example of the brothers' ingenious handiwork is using the Cuban model of turning the ranchito (favela) "comadres" (gossipy, neighborhood, old wives and general busybodies) into the eyes and ears of the regime with cost-effective neighborhood "committees". The Cubans are supplying the type of know how that the CIA, the State Department and the USIA used to supply to South America's right wing dictators. The survival of the Castro brother's life's work may depend on Venezuelan oil and I wouldn't want to be standing between the Castro brothers and survival, it could be hazardous to ones health

Certainly the regimes of Cuba and Venezuela are mutually dependent and the Castros are very hard, intelligent and experienced men and will not let everything they have built up over decades just slip through their fingers only because Chavez has died.

So those are the elements: the army, the oil and the Cubans and most of all, the poor people of Venezuela, who for the first time in their history are playing a leading role in the drama of their lives. DS

On the death of Hugo Chávez

A little old lady interviewed by El País in a mourning crowd of Venezuelans gave the most insightful analysis of Hugo Chávez and his probable legacy: "He gave us an identity!". 

Latin America is filled with people like that old lady, they are the overwhelming majority: poor, brown, left out and despised by the white, Criollo minority that has ruled the continent since colonial times. Chávez has given them an identity, an icon and marked a path. How attractive that identity, that Icon and that path are in South America can be judged by the reaction of Brazil's moderate president, Dilma Roussef, quoted in The Guardian, "The loss is irreparable. He was a great leader and friend of Brazil. President Chávez will live on in the empty space that he filled in the heart of history and the struggle of Latin America."

Paradoxically the conditions that brought forth Hugo Chávez in South America, obscene wealth and inequality in the midst of poverty, squalor and injustice, are being replicated right now in the developed world. Chávez's death coincides with the Dow Jones index hitting "all time highs", while, as John Gapper writes in the Financial Times, with unemployment hanging over their heads, the working poor and even university educated, middle class Americans are being encouraged to work longer hours at lower pay.... and in Europe? Much of its south is busy looking for their Hugo Chávez.

Hugo Chávez is/was not a freak accident, he is a leading indicator of the United State's loosening grip in the midst of the most important systemic crisis since the Great Depression. DS