Webdiary - Founded and Inspired by Margo Kingston

"Does the rise of left-leaning governments in Latin America, particularly the election of Evo Morales as President of Bolivia, presage a shift to the hard left across the continent? Does it mark a repudiation of United States foreign policy in the region? Will it, for example, lead to a re-nationalisation of Bolivia’s vast natural gas deposits?" Jeffrey D Sachs

"Earlier this month, Mikhail Gorbachev celebrated his 75th birthday with a concert and conference at his foundation in Moscow. Unfortunately, he is not popular with the Russian people, who blame him for the loss of Soviet power. But, as Gorbachev has replied to those who shout abuse at him, 'Remember, I am the one who gave you the right to shout'." Joseph S Nye

"As support for President George W Bush in the United States has crumbled over the past year, perhaps the most surprising element is the revolt of economists and observers of economic policy. Last week, Peggy Noonan, a speechwriter for both President Reagan and the first President Bush declared in the Wall Street Journal that had she known what George W Bush’s fiscal policy would be, she would have voted for Al Gore in the 2000 presidential election." J Bradford DeLong

"It is five days to the Israel elections. Permit me to show you a link between two events this week that superficially appear to be unconnected. Ehud Olmert announced publicly that he would not have Lieberman in his coalition unless the latter accepted his “convergence” plan. The Centre for the Struggle against Racism released figures indicating that we are incredibly racist towards Arab men and women. Nearly 70 per cent of us are unwilling to live next door to an Arab. Just under half of us are unwilling to have an Arab visit us at home, and 40 per cent think that the state ought to encourage the emigration of Arabs. I wonder what the figures would have been had the question proposed our own expulsion from this land?" Merav Michaeli, translated by Sol Salbe.

"Slobodan Milosevic cheated justice, and by doing so demonstrated the futility of attempting to deal with war crimes and crimes against humanity through international prosecutions. That, at least, is the conclusion that some people have reached after Milosevic’s death in a Hague prison: the fact that he was able to drag out his trial for four years and still escape a verdict is considered proof that the international community is wasting its resources by putting such people on trial for their misdeeds." Aryeh Neier

"The Thai people cannot afford to look to their aging and ailing King every time they have a problem. Moreover, a royal intervention would risk returning Thailand to square one, seeking to rewrite its constitution to remedy the shortfalls of its democratic culture." Thitinan Pongsudhirak

David McKnight’s Beyond Right and Left: New Politics and the Culture Wars was reviewed on Webdiary back in October. McKnight is essentially a politician whose analysis of the capture of the parties of the left by the market imperative is used as a basis for a program for regeneration of the left. Almost simultaneously with McKnight’s Australian publication, a very different analysis by a right-wing sociologist, Frank Furedi, was published in the UK: Politics of Fear: beyond left and right (London & New York, Continuum). David Roffey reviews it.

"Almost daily, the United States and Europe brandish threats to impose economic sanctions or cut off development assistance unless some vulnerable government accepts their political strictures. The most recent threats are towards the new Hamas-led government in Palestine. Other recent examples include threats vis-à-vis Chad, Ethiopia, Haiti, Kenya, Bolivia, Uganda, and long-standing sanctions against Myanmar." Jeffrey D Sachs

"As George W Bush embarks on his sixth year in office, it’s anybody’s guess whether his administration’s egregious misrepresentations, misjudgements and (quite probably) crimes will end up carrying any penalty. We will perhaps be able to gauge the electoral implications with the midterm Congressional elections this November, though it should always be remembered that the US electoral system, which has become heavily reliant on unaudited electronic voting machines, is vulnerable to vote-tampering." Kerryn Higgs

"Whilst Australian citizen, David Hicks, continues to endure his 4^th year of illegal imprisonment and torture in America’s Guantanamo Bay gulag, a new report by Joshua Denbeaux, a law professor at Seton Hall, has found that, based on data supplied by the Pentagon, that "55% of the detainees have not committed any hostile acts against the United States or its coalition allies." John Richardson

"When I was last in Israel, I stayed in a Jewish village in the north of the country. The children from the nearby Arab town attended the village kindy and the Jewish farmers sold produce to shopkeepers in the town. Security was always a consideration – the village was surrounded by a fence which the men of the village patrolled every and all night – but generally there was no problem." Sue Hoffman

"The election of the militant and hitherto extra-parliamentary group Hamas in the Palestinian territories reminds us of what democracy cannot achieve. No one in a more established democratic state is surprised if one’s own side does not win. Democracy is about competing parties, and, unless they form a “grand coalition,” they cannot all win. But what if an election’s winners have no intention of abiding by the rules that are part and parcel of the democratic process?" Ralf Dahrendorf

"On 31 March 2002, in between the two Passover holidays, the Hamas dispatched a suicide bomber to my home town of Haifa. My parents, Haley and Shimon, and my sister Adi went out for lunch at the Matza restaurant on that day. At about 14.45 the terrorist entered the restaurant and blew himself up. My mother was very badly hurt and my father was critically wounded. My sister and 14 other people perished in that attack. Only someone who has been through that experience can understand what we have been through since then." Eyal Shiran, translated from the Hebrew by Sol Salbe.

"Hamas’s rise to power and the question of whether it will ditch terrorism and renounce its aim of destroying Israel is evocative of the experience of the IRA in Ireland. The Irish group and its political wing, Sinn Fein, switched from fervent extremism and undeniable terrorism to power sharing and in the process abandoning their main aim: the removal of Britain from Northern Ireland." Yehuda Litani, translated from Hebrew by Sol Salbe.

"In this decisive year, you and I will make choices that determine both the future and the character of our country. We will choose to act confidently in pursuing the enemies of freedom - or retreat from our duties in the hope of an easier life. We will choose to build our prosperity by leading the world economy - or shut ourselves off from trade and opportunity. In a complex and challenging time, the road of isolationism and protectionism may seem broad and inviting - yet it ends in danger and decline. The only way to protect our people, the only way to secure the peace, the only way to control our destiny is by our leadership - so the United States of America will continue to lead." US President George Bush in his State of the Union Address.

"Whilst Hamas has already taken tentative steps to achieve political legitimacy, there will be little point in their continuing that process if Israel refuses to engage them in constructive discussions in pursuit of the peace process and the ultimate achievement of self-determination by the Palestinian people." John Richardson

"International counter-narcotics policy is currently driven by pressure for rapid and visible results. But eradication and alternative livelihood projects mainly affect the lowest end of the value-added chain, the farmers, with no real impact on those higher up, such as large landowners and local traffickers, not to mention the extremely powerful drug lords and the international cartels and mafias. Most landless farmers find it difficult to switch to different crops, being caught up as they are in the illegal opium-denominated market, which forces them to live at the mercy of the drug traffickers, who provide them with access to credit and market outlets." Emma Bonino

How will President George W. Bush’s administration be remembered historically? After five years in office, and with another three years to go, some answers are already apparent. Others are emerging gradually. The latter category includes an increasing assault on civil liberties within the United States that now compares to that of Richard Nixon’s administration more than thirty years ago. Aryeh Neier

Specialist in Pacific media and journalism and their contexts, Dr Mark Hayes, is a very close Region and Fiji watcher, as well as traveller Out There, attempts to make sense of what's going on in Fiji, one of the three Pacific Forum countries (the others are the Solomon Islands and Samoa) scheduled to hold elections during 2006. Dr Mark Hayes

"In the 2005 rankings, Iceland scored as the least corrupt country, with the Scandinavian countries, New Zealand, and Singapore close behind. The US ranked seventeenth from the top, a not-so-glorious position for the world’s leading power. In general, the poorer the country, the lower the ranking: tied for last place are Chad and Bangladesh." Jeffrey Sachs.

"Central Asia is frequently in the news these days – and most of the news seems to be bad. The casual reader, viewer, and listener has become acquainted with a region of landlocked and poor countries – Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan, Tajikistan, Turkmenistan, and Uzbekistan – that share a legacy of isolation, squandered natural resources, environmental degradation, and Soviet-era political systems." Kalman Mizsei and Johannes F Linn

"In many ways, 2005 has been Europe’s annus horibilis. It began well, when Spanish voters approved the draft European Union constitution, but it turned sour when French and Dutch voters spurned it soon after. Those votes partly reflected displeasure with domestic policies, and partly disappointment with the way governments conduct European affairs." - Charles Wyplosz

"The 'Paris Burning' story made no effort to say what 'multiculturalism' is. The term applies in vastly differing ways to France and Australia. 60 Minutes judged the story in advance and fitted Overton's field report to a tabloid style culture of fear. In so doing, the program failed to give an honest appraisal of the youth underclass in the French economy." Stephen Smith

"The children of Muslim migrants make up the majority of Muslims in Australia. These marginal Muslims are what I call the “Aussie Mossies” (or “Kiwi Mossies”, if you like, where “Mossie” is an abbreviation for Muslim). I know them because I am one of them. I have slightly darker skin and a name no one seems to be able to pronounce correctly. Often I am tempted to anglicise my name. I speak fluent English, not Arabic or Hindi or some other language. Although I can swear in Urdu when I am angry. And anger is a common feature amongst the Aussie and Kiwi Mossies. We are angry because our parents’ generation have failed us. They have brought us to peaceful liberal countries where we learnt a culture of tolerance and openness. Yet so many Muslim youth are caught in a cultural clash with their parents, who expect them to be just as Fijian or Pakistani or Malay as people were in the 1970’s or whenever it was our parents brought us here." Irfan Yusuf

"However on one of my explorations I went alone... to Bobigny, a decrepit and ugly suburb, filled with a mixture of shabby old apartments and hideous modern apartments, crammed together in a frightful urban slum. Even a Francophile (Parisophile?) like me found this shocking. I suppose being dark and dressed in casual clothing I didn't stand out from the locals and exercising caution I walked around and saw the frightful conditions in which the black and Arab residents lived. I found a crowded coffee shop and bought some coffee and (excellent) Arab pastries, and shared a table with an older man of my age, a former Algerian who spoke English (my terrible French would have been useless) and who told me of the bleak existence of most residents in these ghettos on the north-western side of the city." Brian McKinlay

I started to wonder why Plitnick didn't refer to Harel's commentary. It took another check and then the penny dropped. For some reason some of the background information wasn't deemed worthy of translation. ... the crucial next sentence had been dropped." Sol Salbe

"Chronologically the first of the three "social" announcements came for the Peace Prize. Mohammed El Baradei prize was not welcomed by the glass-is-half-empty crowd. Many of these would have preferred someone like Israeli nuclear whistleblower Mordechai Vanunu. ...Of course receiving the Nobel Peace Prize is no proof of being commendable or, for that matter, making a great contribution for peace. Think of Henry Kissinger..." Sol Salbe