AFRICA
Somaliland Brings Independence Message to London Conference. The president of the
Republic of Somaliland,
H. E. Ahmed Mahmoud Silanyo,
made his case in the
United Kingdom on Feb. 23rd for international recognition of his country’s independence from the
Republic of Somalia. His attendance at the 23rd international conference on Somalia at Lancaster House near Buckingham Palace in London marks the first time delegates from Somaliland and the Horn of Africa’s other
de facto independent unrecognized state,
Puntland (which, unlike Somaliland, does not seek outright independence), have attended the annual conference, which tends to focus on how to bolster the failed transitional government in Mogadishu. The U.K.’s prime minister,
David Cameron, said at the opening of the talks that the focus would be strengthening the barely-functioning
Transitional Federal Government in Mogadishu and in combatting piracy and terrorism, but he
declined an opportunity to speak against Somaliland’s sovereignty. Meanwhile,
Godfrey Bloom, a Member of
European Parliament for Yorkshire on the anti-Brussels, right-wing U.K. Independence Party ticket,
called on Cameron to recognize Somaliland. No
United Nations member states formally recognize Somaliland or Puntland. (See a
spot-on New York Times opinion piece on the subject by Alex de Waal of the World Peace Foundation.)
David Cameron at the Somalia conference in London
Mali Elections a Go Despite Uprising. The president of
Mali,
Amadou Toumani Toure,
has said that the national elections planned for April 29th will go ahead, despite the Tuareg separatist uprising in the country’s northern
Azawad region. “We are already used to holding elections during war,” he said. The
United Nations says at least 60,000 people have been displaced in the recent fighting. (See
my recent blog post on the new Malian civil war.)
South Sudan Asks Kenya to Mediate Border Dispute. The government of the seven-month old
Republic of South Sudan has asked the leadership of Kenya to mediate a dispute with the
Republic of Sudan—from which South Sudan seceded in July 2011—over the disputed district of
Abyei and provinces of
Blue Nile and
South Kordofan, which together stretch out along more than half of their shared border. When South Sudan voted to secede in early 2011, separate referenda were to be held later in the disputed areas, but fighting there between forces loyal to the two governments has made that impossible. Many fear the Sudans are on the brink of all-out war. (Read
here and
here recent reports by the
New York Times columnist
Nicholas Kristof from the Nuba Mountains in South Kordofan.)
Rebels Attack in Darfur. In the
Darfur region in the western part of (north)
Sudan,
both rebels and the government are reporting on a new clash, where as many as twelve soldiers were killed and government heavy weapons were captured. The attack, on the town of Alawni, was claimed by the Darfur-based Sudan Liberation Army. In 2003-04, a Darfur uprising was brutally put down by the Sudanese government, killing as many as 300,000, resulting in the convicion of the Sudanese president,
Omar al-Bashir, for crimes against humanity.
Trial of Caprivi Strip Separatists in Namibia Nears End. In Grootfontein,
Namibia, the
prosecution rested today in a trial of 112 separatists that has been going on since 2003. The accusations include 275 charges of murder, sedition, and treason. In 1999, members of the Caprivi Liberation Army attacked civilian targets in Katima Mulilo, in the
Caprivi Strip, killing eleven. Their ringleader,
Mishake Muyongo, is in exile in
Denmark. The Caprivi Strip, also called
Itenge, is a shard of the Republic of Namibia which juts east between
Botswana and
Zambia and is home to the Lozi ethnic group that also inhabits the neighboring Zambian secessionist region of
Barotseland.
Germany bought the land from the
United Kingdom in 1890 to form a supply route between the German colonies of
Südwest-Afrika (now Namibia) and
Tanganyika (now part of
Tanzania).
South Africa assumed control of the strip after Germany’s defeat in the First World War and used it to run guns to white Rhodesian militants resisting
Zimbabwe’s independence in the 1970s. As a reward, South Africa, which administered Namibia, made it a Lozi “homeland” (autonomous tribal reservation), but when Namibia became independent in 1990, they revoked the autonomous status of the “traitor” region. Meanwhile, four ethnic groups in Namibia—the Ovahimba, Ovatwa, Ovatjimba, and Ovazemba—
have banded together to protest the building of a dam in the Kunene region.
The Caprivi Strip
EUROPE
Latvian Voters Reject Russian Language. Latvians—and minority citizens in
Latvia—
voted in a national referendum Feb. 18th to reject the idea of making Russian a second official language alongside Latvian. The votes were approximately 75% against the proposal and 25% for it. Latvia has just over 2 million people, and a third of them—about 600,000—is ethnically Russian. This makes Russians in Latvia one of the largest linguistic minorities in the world, proportionally speaking, and the highest percentage of Russians in any Soviet successor state outside the
Russian Federation itself. Still, 750,000 votes were needed to pass the proposal, so no one expected anything other than a resounding “no” at the polls. A spokesman for the Russian foreign ministry in Moscow said that the results showed that a quarter of Latvia’s population “do not agree with the course of building a mono-ethnic society.” (I discussed the referendum in detail in
a blog article last week.)
A defaced sign in Latvia
Serbs in Prague March against Kosovo. In Prague, capital of the
Czech Republic, the organization
Friends of Serbs in Kosovo rallied and marched to protest the 1999 secession, under
United States and
North Atlantic Treaty Organization protection, of
Kosovo from what is now the
Republic of Serbia. A Feb. 14-15 referendum in which Serbs in Kosovo’s border area rejected Kosovar authority over them (discussed by me in
a recent blog post) revived the divisive issue in Serbian communities.
Jaroslav Foldyna, a Social Democratic Czech politician of Serbian descent, likened Kosovo’s secession to Nazi
Germany’s annexation of
Czechoslovakia’s
Sudetenland in 1938. Both leading candidates to become the next Czech prime minister support Kosovo’s independence, but it is opposed by both Social Democrats and the current president,
Václav Klaus. Eighty-eight nations recognize Kosovo, but
China and
Russia stand in the way of its admission to the
United Nations. Meanwhile, Serbian and Kosovar representatives
began meeting on Feb. 21st under
European Union auspices to try to settle differences—a precondition for Serbia’s application for E.U. membership. So far they have
agreed only on how to refer to Kosovo on nameplates placed before delegates at such meetings, which is being hailed as a great leap forward in reconciliation.
Spain Arrests Two Basques. Spanish authorities on Feb. 21st
arrested two militants from the banned Basque separatist organization
E.T.A., using information passed along by judicial authorities in
France. E.T.A. laid down its arms in October 2011 after a decades-long struggle to establish an independent homeland in the
Basque Country of northern
Spain and southeastern France.
The flag of the Basque Country
Murdoch Backs Independent Scotland. The corrupt and embattled media tycoon
Rupert Murdoch announced on Twitter on Feb. 21st that he supports Scottish Independence. “Let
Scotland go and compete. Everyone would win,” he tweeted, while in London to promote the launch of his tabloid
Sun on Sunday. He had earlier called Scotland’s separatist First Minister,
Alex Salmond, the most brilliant politician in the
United Kingdom. (See
my recent blog article on Scottish independence.)
More Dead in North Caucasus Militia Battles. Russian forces trying to wipe out militant gangs in a days-long quasi-military operation in the separatist, predominantly-Muslim northern Caucasus mountains
are reporting more deaths, including those of seventeen policemen. The skirmishes are occurring along the mountainous border dividing the
Republic of Chechnya—the formerly autonomous region now being ruled directly from Moscow after brutal suppression of an independence movement—from the
Republic of Dagestan, a multi-ethnic, warlord-ruled no-man’s-land where the government of the
Russian Federation is barely able to operate.
BITS OF ASIA WHICH LIKE TO PRETEND THEY’RE PART OF EUROPE
Abkhaz President Escapes Assassination Attempt. The president of
Abkhazia,
Alexandr Ankvab,
survived a sixth assassination attempt on Feb. 22nd when his motorcade hit a land mine and then was attacked with a grenade-launcher and a machine gun. One or two of his bodyguards were killed (reports differ) and another injured in the ambush, in the town of Gudauta, on the Black Sea. Ankvab’s spokesman said that police were still searching for the assassins—the republic has been sealed off—but rejected the idea that the
Republic of Georgia, which claims the
de facto independent republic as part of its territory, was responsible. Meanwhile,
Nugzar Tsiklauri, a legislator for Georgia’s ruling party,
suspects Russia of being behind the attacks, pointing out that Ankvab bristles at Russia’s implicit policy of eventually absorbing Abkhazia into the Russian Federation. Ankvab himself the next day
blamed “mafia, criminal groups” and “political circles close” to these groups, adding, “There are forces, which want Abkhazia to have controllable President and weak-willed, dependent supreme leadership.”
Pres. Alexandr Ankvab, in front of his nation’s flag
South Ossetia Sealed Off; Hospitalized President Boycotting Election. The Internet has been extinguished throughout
South Ossetia as public anger crests over the police beating earlier this month of the pseudo-state’s
de facto but disputed president,
Alla Dzhioyeva. Soldiers with AK-47s are turning away anyone other than family trying to visit the 62-year-old Dzhioyeva’s intensive-care hospital room in the capital, Tskhinvali, and relatives are guarding her hospital bed in shifts, fearing an abduction. Dzhioyeva also
says she is boycotting next month’s presidential elections as a sham. Meanwhile, mysterious elements to the Dzhioyeva story are confounding observers: journalists began being turned away from the border before the alleged beating, and on the day of the incident
Russia’s Ministry for Emergency Situations announced that snowslides had forced the closure of the tunnel that is the one link between South Ossetia and the outside world. Late last year, Dzhioyeva won a presidential election (see
my blog article on those elections), but the results were annulled by a judge. However, she continued to serve in her post until the beating. Forces loyal to Russia, or the military of Russia itself, are obvious suspects in all this intrigue; Dzhioyeva is not pro-Moscow and was never expected to win. The official line from Moscow is that she was hospitalized for hypertension, but she has reiterated her version of events to several journalists over the phone. As she described it recently, “The militants tore my body apart, threw me on the floor. I felt their guns sticking into my body the moment before I lost consciousness. They acted as if they were my [executioners].” The
Daily Beast, in
a report on the situation, quotes an historian,
Fatima Margiyeva, as saying, “By stealing the very last right our people had, the right to vote, by isolating us here like cucumbers in a bottle, Moscow is pushing South Ossetia to the verge of a civil war.”
Caucasus Diplomat Accuses West of “Blackmail” over Recognition. A member of
Abkhazia’s diplomatic corps
has told the media that “the West” routinely puts pressure on countries to discourage them from granting diplomatic recognition of Abkhazia and
South Ossetia. In particular, the ambassador,
Juris Gulbis, said that countries like
Nauru,
Tuvalu, and
Vanuatu pay a price in economic sanctions and denial of development projects for being among the few nations recognizing the two South Caucasus republics, which were fully separated from the
Republic of Georgia by
Russia’s military in a brief 2008 war. Gulbis called this Western tactic “blackmail.”
Pravda, also
is reporting on the financial payoffs from Moscow that prompted the
Republic of Kiribati to recognize Abkhazia. Kiribati is a mini-state composed of 32 tiny atolls spread out over more than a million square miles of the Pacific in Micronesia.
Abkhazia Home to Record-Breaking Cave Insect. Also in
Abkhazia, Russian scientists
are reporting their discovery, in a cave considered the world’s deepest (more than 7,000 feet / 2,000 meters deep), a species of eyeless springtail insect which is believed to be the deepest-dwelling land animal known to science. The creature,
Plutomurus ortobalaganensis, found in the Krubera–Voronja Cave, feeds on decomposing organic matter. The tiny mountain republic also holds
putative world records for human longevity.
Abkhazia’s newest celebrity, Plutomurus ortobalaganensis
English M.E.P. Fumes over Northern Cyprus’s Anti-Gay Laws. A Member of
European Parliament for the
United Kingdom has
pressed the Turkish Republic of Northern Cyprus to repeal its laws against homosexual acts. The M.E.P.,
Marina Yannakoudakis, cited a recent case of two men, one a citizen of
Nigeria, arrested in the Turkish-ruled half of Cyprus’s divided capital city, Nicosia, for sexual acts “against the order of nature.” Yannakoudakis, an Englishwoman married to a Greek-born U.K. citizen, is a member of the
European Union legislature’s diplomatic “contact group” with Northern Cyprus. She has received personal assurances from the Northern Cypriot president,
Derviş Eroğlu, that the ban would be repealed, but it has not yet happened. The
Republic of Cyprus was admitted to the E.U. in 2004, but the northern third-or-so of the island has been administered since a 1974 war by the
de facto independent Turkish Republic of Northern Cyprus, a client state of the
Republic of Turkey. Yannakoudakis has referred to Northern Cyprus as the last place in Europe where it is illegal to be gay—though of course the island is geographically part of Asia, being just offshore of Turkey, the land-mass for which the name
Asia was in fact first used (but don’t get me started on that).
Hearings Open in North Cypriot Soldier’s Torture Death. On Feb. 17th a military court in the unrecognized
Turkish Republic of Northern Cyprus convened a third inquiry into the death of a soldier,
Uğur Kantar, who was apparently tortured to death amidst disciplinary action taken by the military. The judge turned down a request from the Kantar family’s lawyer to shift the hearings to a civilian court. The only officer among the defendants,
Sgt. Ayhan Şentürk, was never arrested but appeared in court on opening day.
15,000 Kurds March in Strasbourg for Öcalan’s Rights. A crowd of Kurds and their supporters estimated at 15,000 demonstrated in Strasbourg,
France, home to the
European Parliament, to protest the ongoing imprisonment in
Turkey of the Kurdish leader
Abdullah Öcalan, founder of the militant separatist Kurdistan Workers’ Party (PKK). Fearing that Öcalan was being poisoned, the demonstrators demanded that Öcalan be given a medical examination, in conformity with international norms. Eighteen Kurds have been on hunger strike for 32 days in Strasbourg in support of the cause. Öcalan founded the PKK, which in 1984 launched a war to establish an independent
Kurdistan in what is now southeastern Turkey. In 1999 he was captured in
Kenya, where he was being harbored by the Greek consul. He was initially sentenced to death, but in 2002 Turkey abolished the death penalty as part of its bid to reform their abysmal third-world-calibre justice system and become a candidate for membership in the
European Union. In 2005, the European Court of Justice found that the defendant’s rights had not been observed and urged that Öcalan be retried—an idea Turkey rejects. Öcalan now resides in the notorious prison on the island of İmralı in the Sea of Marmara, the gulf that separates the European from the Asian part of Turkey. (The prison was once home to the American writer
Billy Hayes, whose brutal treatment in Turkey’s prison system was described in his book—later a film—
Midnight Express.) (I listed Kurdistan in a recent blog post as one of
“Ten Separatist Movements to Watch in 2012.”)
Zhirinovsky Sees Looming World War Focused on Caucasus. The neo-fascist hypernationalist firebrand and head of
Russia’s misnamed Liberal Democratic Party,
Vladimir Zhirinovsky,
predicts that the escalating Western rhetoric against Iran over its nuclear program presages a coming world war, one in which the micro-geopolitics of the southern Caucasus will figure. “The third world war over Iran may start this summer,” Zhirinovsky said. “After
Syria is rolled over, Iran will be attacked.
Azerbaijan will use [the opportunity] to seize
Nagorno–Karabakh.
Armenia will oppose,
Turkey will support Azerbaijan. It is how Russia may be involved in war this summer.” Russia has tended to side with Armenia, Syria, and Iran in the post-Communist period.
Vladimir Zhirinovsky
Shots Fired across Nagorno-Karabakh Border. Media in Armenia are reporting that during the week of Feb. 12th to 18th,
Azerbaijan’s military violated a cease-fire 250 times by firing rounds across its border with the
de facto independent ethnic-Armenian enclave of the
Nagorno-Karabakh Republic. The Armenian report adds, “NKR forces refrained from retaliatory measures.” Meanwhile, the
United States secretary of state,
Hillary Rodham Clinton, reiterated her support for resolving the Nagorno-Karabakh conflict through the
Organization for Security and Co-operation in Europe (even though the conflict is taking place just over the Caucasus ridge in Asia—but don’t get me started).
ASIA
English Baroness Escapes Separatist Attack in Yemen “Election” Violence. An alliance of clans and militias pressing for the reestablishment of a separate state in southern
Yemen called for its followers to disrupt this week’s sham presidential “elections,” in which only one candidate was on offer. The
Higher Council of the Peaceful Movement for the Liberation of the South, as it is known, asked for “civil disobedience” to prevent “voters” from casting “ballots.” But not all separatists kept it civil. On Feb. 18th, secessionist gunmen
injured two policemen during an attack on a “polling station” in Aden, the former South Yemeni capital. And on “election” day, Feb. 21st, similar attacks in the south killed four and injured nineteen. One of the Aden attacks
narrowly avoided killing a British life peeress and former Member of
European Parliament visiting to observe the “elections”—the
Baroness Nicholson of Winterbourne, a gin-distillery heiress and Liberal Democrat (who had also, ironically, survived an
Irish Republican Army bombing attempt on
Margaret Thatcher’s life in Brighton,
England, in 1984—back when Lady Nicholson was a Conservative). Yemen’s Higher Council opposed the Feb. 21st “vote” because it did not provide an opportunity for southerners to decide whether to stay in Yemen. In fact, it did not allow “voters” to choose anything: there was only one presidential candidate on the “ballot” (hence all the scare quotes):
Abdu Rabu Mansour Hadi, vice-president to the outgoing authoritarian leader,
Ali Abdullah Saleh, who eventually relented to a months-long Arab Spring street movement to unseat him. To no one’s surprise, Hadi received 99.8% of votes cast. The entire transfer of power was orchestrated in a
United States–backed agreement to end the country’s civil war, which it probably still will not do. The elections were also being boycotted by Shabab al-Mu’mineen, a militant group representing Yemen’s minority Zaidiyyah Shiites, who would like to impose Islamic law in the country. (I listed South Yemen in a recent blog post as one of
“Ten Separatist Movements to Watch in 2012.”)
Baroness Nicholson of Winterbourne, survivor of two ethnonationalist bombings
Pakistan Accuses U.S. of Stoking Baloch Rebellion. The prime minister of
Pakistan,
Yusuf Raza Gilani,
has condemned a recent resolution in the
United States House of Representatives in support of Baloch self-determination as an attack on Pakistan’s sovereignty. It comes after a year of lethal U.S. drone attacks and a unilateral U.S. raid last year to kill
Osama bin Laden in Pakistani territory. The U.S. has traditionally supported any government in power in Pakistan, for reasons of stability and nuclear security, but after ongoing revelations of the role of Pakistan’s secret police in supporting terrorism, as well as other divisive issues, U.S. foreign policy is turning away from Pakistan. Separatists in the southwestern Pakistani province of
Balochistan have stepped up activities in recent months, and the Pakistani government has cracked down brutally, with hundreds of activists “disappeared.” Some U.S. policymakers’ shifts may be related to another Baloch insurgency just over the border in
Iran. Many observers predict a coming war by the U.S. and
Israel against Iran, and there has already been documented C.I.A. and Mossad support for separatists in southwestern Iran’s Arab Sunni
Khuzestan region, bordering
Iraq. (I listed Balochistan in a recent blog post as one of
“Ten Separatist Movements to Watch in 2012.”)
Malaysia Backs Thailand against Rebels; 4 Killed. The prime minister of
Malaysia,
Datuk Seri Najib Razak,
pledged to the visiting Thai prime minister,
Yingluck Shinawatra, her cooperation with Thai effort to suppress separatism in southern
Thailand, by the Malaysian border. But on Feb. 21st, Thai forces
killed three insurgents from the
Runda Kumpulan Kecil (R.K.K.) militia in the separatist
Pattani region, and a fourth, a member of the dormant
Pattani United Liberation Organisation (PULO), was found murdered, probably killed by R.K.K. forces. The Pattani region in southern Thailand is predominantly Muslim and ethnically Malay in a mostly Buddhist nation. Yingluck’s older brother, the former prime minister,
Thaksin Shinawatra, tried in 2005 to put down a rebellion there by imposing emergency powers on the country, a decision which eventually led to his downfall. In the wake also of a foiled Iranian assassination plot against Israeli diplomats in Bangkok, both Thailand and Malaysia now preach “moderation” instead of “extremism,” embodied in Najib’s new Global Movement of Moderates initiative.
U.S. Backs Accountability for Sri Lankan War. Human-rights groups
welcomed the United States government’s support for a coming resolution in the
United Nations Human Rights Council that will push both the government of
Sri Lanka and Tamil separatists to come to a final settlement, including agreeing on how war crimes on both sides will be accounted for. A U.S. Under-Secretary of State,
Maria Otero, stated the U.S. position in a press conference in Colombo, Sri Lanka, at the end of a three-day visit to the Buddhist-majority island nation, where the government succeeded in 2009 in putting down a separatist rebellion by nationalist Tamils after a bloody fifteen-year-long civil war. Tamils, who are mostly Hindu, hoped to establish a separate state in the north of the island, to be called
Tamil Eelam.
Filipino Muslim Separatists Deny Role in Prison Break. A representative of the
Moro Islamic Liberation Front, a group fighting for a separate Muslim state in the southern
Philippines,
has denied involvement in a recent failed prison break attempt. The prison, in Kidapawan in Cotabato province on the island of Mindanao, was attacked by fifty militants on Feb. 19th. Prison guards repelled the attack, but not before the militants, armed with rocket-propelled grenades, killed two civilians in a karaoke bar and a third, a Red Cross driver, in the mêlée.
India Orders Crackdown on Bodoland Rebels, Claims International Maoist Conspiracy. The
Republic of India’s Minister for Home Affairs,
P. Chindabaram,
has directed the state government of Assam, in the country’s tribal-dominated far east, to intensify its operations against rebel factions that are still refusing to hold talks after the general cease-fire agreed to last year by separatist militias. In particular, New Delhi is concerned about the National Democratic Front of
Bodoland, a group representing the separatist faction of an ethnic group making up about 5% of Assam’s population. In October 2011, the Indian government signed a treaty with the
United Liberation Front of Asom, an umbrella group seeking independence for the state, agreeing to an end to hostility. But not all separatist groups support the document. Now Chindabaram’s ministry
claims to have evidence of a vast conspiracy to set up a Maoist confederation of tribal peoples taking in separatist movements in India,
Burma, and
Bangladesh. Meanwhile, in New Delhi, four members of the banned and mostly dormant
Sikh separatist group Babbar Khalsa International
were sentenced to time served on Feb. 22nd after pleading guilty to a 2008 plot to attack religious figures in
Punjab.
The flag of Bodoland
Xi Seeks Turkey’s Reassurance on Uighurs. On a state visit to Istanbul on Feb. 21st, the Chinese government’s rising star, Vice-President
Xi Jinping, pleaded with the government of
Turkey to refrain from supporting separatists in western China seeking to establish an independent
East Turkestan. The Turkish prime minister,
Recep Tayyip Erdogan, reiterated his country’s commitment to China’s integrity and recognition of the
People’s Republic of China as the sole legitimate Chinese government. In the past decade, there has been increasing violence in China’s far west as members of the predominantly-Muslim
Uighur minority seek more autonomy and, even, independence. Although Uighurs, like other Central Asian nationalities (Azeris, Uzbeks, Kazakhs, etc.), speak a Turkic language related to Turkish, the Turkish government has never supported pan-Turkic irredentism or Uighur separatism.
Burmese Refugee Camp in Thailand Burns. Initial reports describe a fire sweeping through a refugee camp in
Thailand near the border with
Burma (
Myanmar) on Feb. 23rd. The Umpiem Mai refugee camp is home to about 17,000 members of the Karen ethnic minority seeking refuge from fighting between Myanmar’s junta and Karen rebels seeking an independent homeland to be called
Kawthoolei. Arson is not suspected. (See
my recent blog article on ethnic separatism in Burma.)
NORTH AMERICA
Ex-Stripper “Trailer Park Mata Hari” Shook Booty to Snare White-Power Bombers. Just before the federal terrorism trial of
Dennis and
Daniel Mahon, two 61-year-old White-supremacist identical twins, was handed to the jury for a verdict, their
lawyers were decrying as entrapment the methods of the federal informant who snared them. Dubbed by the media the “Trailer Park Mata Hari,”
Rebecca “Becca” Williams is an ex-stripper who worked for the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, and Firearms for five years (for $45,000 per year, plus promise of a $100,000 conviction bonus) by moving into the Mahons’ Catossa,
Oklahoma, campground, bonding with them by using racial slurs and White-separatist rhetoric, and flirting with them by, for example, sending them photos of herself from behind in a bikini bottom with a
Confederate-flag design, as well as other photos showing her posing with pick-up trucks and swastikas. The Mahons, members of the
White Aryan Resistance, were tried for sending a near-fatal package bomb to the African-American diversity director for the city of Scottsdale,
Arizona, in 2004. The federal prosecutor in the case points out that Williams never actually resorted to sexual acts to extract information. In the verdict Feb. 25th, Dennis Mahon
was found guilty and Daniel not guilty. Dennis has yet to be sentenced.
Your tax dollars at work
Parti Québécois Surges as Election Looms. In
Quebec, the separatist Parti Québécois has gained nine percentage points in popularity since last month,
according to a new poll, and is now more popular than the province’s ruling Liberal Party, which polls only 29% to the P.Q.’s 30%. Quebec’s Liberal premier,
Jean Charest, is allowed another year before calling an election, but he may choose an earlier date to avoid an ongoing corruption investigation into his awarding of defense contracts. In 1995, the P.Q. held a referendum on independence from
Canada, which lost by a narrow margin.
New York’s Iroquois Tribes Profit from Tobacco Loophole. The
New York Times is reporting that the
Oneida Indian Nation, along with others of the eight federally recognized American Indian tribes in upper
New York State, has increased its investment in the tobacco trade, despite controversy, including manufacturing its own cigarettes using tobacco shipped from the Carolinas. This exploits a loophole in a law, only inadequatelly enforced, which prevents tribes from selling name-brand cigarettes to non-Indians on reservation land without charging New York’s exorbitant $4.35-per-pack sin tax on the product. The Oneida are one of six members of the centuries-old
Haudenosaunee, or
League of the Iroquois, who interacted with arriving Europeans in the colonial period as a sovereign confederation that even partly inspired the
United States federal system of government. They are still recognized as a sovereign nation within U.S. territory and issue their own driver’s licenses and even passports.
Flag of the Iroquois Confederacy
SOUTH AMERICA
Remote Chilean Town Begs to Be Annexed to Argentina. Citizens of Puerto Aysén, in the isolated, glacier-pocked mountains of southern
Chile’s Patagonia region, added a new demand to their month-old campaign to attract more assistance from the federal government. Now they say
they want neighboring Argentina to annex their district. Marchers, including students, environmentalists, and trade unions, chanted, “Argentina adopt us!” and lit bonfires. The rhetorical ploy attracted more attention in Buenos Aires, Argentina’s capital than in Santiago, 800 miles to the north. Argentine news websites featured references to Chileans as “dirty traitors” and remarks such as, “Why don’t you ask
England to adopt you? They are your best friends and allies!” Chile has maintained the closest ties to the
United Kingdom of any South American nation amid rival Argentine and British claims to the
Falkland Islands. During the Falklands War of 1982, Chile’s dictator,
Augusto Pinochet, a personal friend of
Margaret Thatcher’s, sided with the U.K.
Ecuadorian Calls for Decolonization. The
United Nations’ newly seated chairman of the Select Committee on Decolonization,
Diego Morejón Pazmino, who is from
Ecuador,
has called for the “final disappearance of the archaic concept of colonialism.” He listed sixteen remaining “non-self-governing territories,” with a combined population of over 2 million. The list includes ten overseas territories of the
United Kingdom (
Anguilla,
Bermuda, the
British Virgin Islands, the
Cayman Islands, the
Falkland Islands,
St. Helena, the
Turks and Caicos Islands,
Gibraltar,
Pitcairn, and
Tokelau), three
United States ones (the
U.S. Virgin Islands,
American Samoa, and
Guam), two belonging to France (
New Caledonia and
Montserrat), and
Western Sahara, the former
Spanish Sahara, which is currently divided between a majority of the territory ruled by the
Kingdom of Morocco and a landlocked sliver administered as the unrecognized
Sahrawi Arab Democratic Republic.
PRACTICALLY BLOODY ANTARCTICA
Argentines May Court Scottish Nationalists on Falklands Issue. The government of
Argentina is considering seeking support for their claims on the
Falkland Islands from a possible eventual independent
Scotland. Argentina has few military or diplomatic options in pressing its goal of wresting the archipelago, which it calls the
Islas Malvinas, from the
United Kingdom, which has administered it for virtually its entire history of permanent settlement. But Argentina’s president,
Cristina Fernández de Kirchner, says she is “analyzing the possibility of sending a delegation” to the government of
Alex Salmond, Scotland’s separatist First Minister. The idea seems doomed: although both Scots and Argentines have railed lately against “English colonialism,” there is no reason to think there is any more sympathy in Scotland than in
England for Argentina’s position. Argentina attacked the Falklands in 1982 and was easily defeated by the U.K. in the brief war that followed. Meanwhile, Buenos Aires’s claims on the Falklands
is being criticized by an
ad hoc alliance of Argentina’s leading intellectuals. (See
my recent blog article on the Falklands dispute.)
In other Falklands-related developments, the American actor
Sean Penn is still a moron and has as of press time not yet been
fed to crocodiles.
Sean Penn, still a moron
OUTER SPACE
Gingrich Proposes Making Moon 51st State. The former Speaker of the
United States House of Representatives,
Newt Gingrich,
promised while campaigning in the
Florida Republican primary that by the end of his second term as President there would be an American colony on the
Moon. He also promised regular flights to
Mars by 2020. Further, Gingrich reminded the crowd in Coco Beach, Florida (setting for the 1960s television situation comedy
I Dream of Jeannie), that while he was a U.S. representative he sponsored a bill allowing any lunar colony with a population of 13,000 or more to apply for statehood. (The U.S., however, is signatory to international agreements barring the claiming of national territory on other planets or moons.) Gingrich relished accusations that he is “grandiose,” adding, “I accept the charge that I am American and Americans are instinctively grandiose because we believe in a bigger future.” At other times, Gingrich has proposed that public schools hire children as janitors and that a giant mirror be placed in Earth orbit to light highways and catch criminals.
