David Prashker's World Hourglass: May 2015

Sunday, May 31, 2015

Mozambique

"Almost five centuries as a Portuguese colony came to a close with independence in 1975. Large-scale emigration, economic dependence on South Africa, a severe drought, and a prolonged civil war hindered the country's development until the mid 1990s. The ruling Front for the Liberation of Mozambique (Frelimo) party formally abandoned Marxism in 1989, and a new constitution the following year provided for multiparty elections and a free market economy. A UN-negotiated peace agreement between Frelimo and rebel Mozambique National Resistance (Renamo) forces ended the fighting in 1992. In December 2004, Mozambique underwent a delicate transition as Joaquim Chissano stepped down after 18 years in office. His elected successor, Armando Emilio Guebuza, promised to continue the sound economic policies that have encouraged foreign investment. President Guebuza was reelected to a second term in October 2009. However, the elections were flawed by voter fraud, questionable disqualification of candidates, and Frelimo use of government resources during the campaign. As a result, Freedom House removed Mozambique from its list of electoral democracies."

This is the CIA version, and it seems to leave very little more to be said. In fact, there is a great deal more, and it renders the CIA version somewhat shaded. Obviously the CIA does not want to applaud the Mozambique government for backing the "terrorists" of ZANU and ZAPU who fought to throw the last of the British out of Rhodesia, especially when you consider what a monster Mugabe has turned out to be since Ian Smith went the way of all colonies; but that struggle was valid and legitimate, and crucial in bringing down apartheid in South Africa as well – indeed, the fall of Rhodesia was a much more significant catalyst than the death of Steve Biko or the international sanctions that were being busted anyway. Nor does it wish to mention the fact that the Renamo guerrillas who fought the civil war in Mozambique were funded, trained and supported by the racist regime in Pretoria, with a little bit of help from Salisbury, Rhodesia’s capital. Something near to a million people died in that civil war, and yes the first President after independence, Samora Machel, ran a Marxist government, but strangely there were open elections in Mozambique where there were none in either South Africa or Rhodesia, and nothing in the Mozambique constitution prevented designated groups of people from sitting on certain park benches or using certain public lavatories or living in human conditions. Nor does it mention the transition from impoverished state in the 1970s to one of the world’s fastest growing economies today, which is impressive in itself, and then still more so when you consider the floods of 2000 and 2001, which turned into the drought of 2002. 50% of Mozambiquans, according to statistics published by the BBC, still live on less than $1 a day. Strange form of Marxism anyway; the current President is a millionaire businessman who made his money out of energy and transport – who knew they allowed individuals to run successful businesses in Marxist countries?

Marks for: 1975 (the year of independence)

Marks against: 2015 (the year in which marriage to their victims, rather than prison, became the standard punishment for rapists)

You can find David Prashker at:
http://theargamanpress.com/
http://davidprashker.com/
http://davidprashker.net/
https://www.facebook.com/TheArgamanPress
http://davidprashkersprivatecollection.blogspot.com
http://davidprashkerssongsandpoems.blogspot.com
http://davidprashkersbookofdays.blogspot.com/
http://davidprashkersartgallery.blogspot.com/

The Argaman Press

Friday, May 29, 2015

Morocco

Like most of North Africa – actually, upon reflection, like all of North Africa – Morocco was once a part of the French empire, until it became a protectorate in 1912, though it still has a king. Until the “Arab Spring” of 2011, Morocco did not have the word “democracy” in its dictionary, though it liked to play the role of peacemaker on the world stage. Very ironic this, as there are few regimes in the world more ruthless in their suppression of any kind of opposition, whether the naïve fools who think to set up political parties, or simply individuals who fall foul of the ruling demagoguery; and when bombs went off in Casablanca in 2003, it was a very convenient excuse to make things even tougher, with anti-terrorism laws and attacks on whatever the Moroccan dictionary definition of “extremists” might be, given just how extreme the monarchy is.

After the “Arab Spring”, trades unions began to try out their voices, or at least their whispers, but it's difficult to protest when the king is using the age-old strategy of fake liberalism to cover up the reality of his regime. The introduction of Mudawana, or mudawwanah al-aḥwāl al-shakhṣiyyah in full, provides the country with a family code that ostensibly gives greater equality to women, though conservative Moslems have condemned it, probably because human rights activists have applauded it. The king has also named himself “the guardian of the poor”, which is fine in theory, but still waits to be made manifest in practice.

The other outcome of the “Arab Spring” was a referendum on a new constitution, which people voted for in massive numbers, though clearly most of them hadn’t actually read it, as all it did was give more power to the Prime Minister and Parliament, without inhibiting in any way the royal prerogative of veto and dismissal. The governing party is the Islamist Justice and Development Party, a “moderate Islamist party” according to the CIA, though a meaningful definition of "moderate Islam" has yet to be offered by anyone. The concept sounds like a contradiction in terms, and probably is, though in fact the government is a coalition so wide-ranging in its composition that one cannot imagine it ever agreeing anything that will need the king to veto or dismiss – conservative monarchists seated next to liberals is all very well, but socialists and communists, radical Moslems and, before it quit, the Istiqlal party, which is Morocco’s version of UKIP, except that what it wants to be rid of is not the whole EU, just France. Several ministers in the Cabinet have been appointed by the king rather than the PM, so it would be interesting to hear a conversation taking place around that table – a phrase which I imagine the king uses regularly, when he summons said ministers to keep him appropriately briefed.

Historically it is Morocco which gave its name to the Moors, who also inhabited Sicily, Malta, the Iberian Peninsula of Spain, and most of the Maghreb - think of Othello, the Moor of Venice. A mixture of Berbers and Arabs who had embraced Islam at the time of the Umayyad dynasty, we tend to think of them as part of that "primitive" and "Infidel" "barbarianism" against whom the Crusaders fought for several centuries, but actually Moorish culture was probably the most sophisticated in the history of the world until that time, and its indirect influence upon the European "Enlightenment" is so vast that it would be worth writing a book about - which, by strange coincidence, I have done, though a publication date has not yet been set. For a preview click here.

Marks for: 709 (the year the Moors arrived in Spain)

Marks against: 1492 (the final expulsion of Islam from Spain)

You can find David Prashker at:
http://theargamanpress.com/
http://davidprashker.com/
http://davidprashker.net/
https://www.facebook.com/TheArgamanPress
http://davidprashkersprivatecollection.blogspot.com
http://davidprashkerssongsandpoems.blogspot.com
http://davidprashkersbookofdays.blogspot.com/
http://davidprashkersartgallery.blogspot.com/

The Argaman Press

Tuesday, May 26, 2015

Montserrat

One of the Leeward Islands, and one of the best places in the world to witness volcanic eruptions, the “Emerald Isle of the Caribbean” is a self-governing British territory whose capital city, Plymouth, disappeared under volcanic ash in 1997, and flecks are still floating around to this day. Roughly half the population took the opportunity to leave, mostly for New York and Antigua; those who stayed had no choice but to relocate to the northern part of the island; those who were given refuge in the US have now had their temporary Green Cards revoked, on the somewhat absurd grounds that the volcanic activity is unlikely to cease, and so the word “temporary” cannot be applied. We can assume they will be relabelled as “wetbacks” very soon, and relocated to Mexico. In situations like this, I always like to look at the CIA World Factbook to see what is being said there. A brief history of the island is given, with mention of the volcano, but the main item is Montserrat’s status as “a trans-shipment point for South American narcotics destined for the US and Europe”. Do they serious believe that all the ash floating around the island is the residue of smoking marijuana? Maybe they should relocate their no-longer-temporary-workers to Colorado, where it is now medically legal.

Montserrat, which incidentally is in that part of the Caribbean known as the Lesser Antilles, was named by Christopher Columbus in honour of Santa María de Montserrat, la Moreneta ("the little dark-skinned one" or "the little dark one"; a variation, of course, on Lucy Negro, which adds both an odd coincidence and a further layer of justification to my writing about the lady in the previous chapter) as she is known by the Catelans - her statue can be found at the monastery that bears her name in the mountains above Barcelona. Why "the little dark-skinned one"? Because she belongs to a great tradition of Black Madonnas that goes back to the 12th century, and of which there are several hundred, mostly in the Byzantine parts of the Catholic world. Or so the Catholic world likes to believe. Actually the tradition of Black Madonnas goes back way further, even beyond the time of the Catholic Black Madonna herself, to statues of Venus and Astarte and Ishtar and Isis which often portrayed the mother-goddess as Nubian, though whether because they regarded her as Nubian (which is to say negroid), or simply because the wood they used for the carving was extremely dark, is something no one has yet bothered to study.

And why am I telling all this? Because of an oddity that may be a racism. The island is named for a Black Madonna, and yet what appears on the flag of Montserrat is not only not Nubian, not even Anglo-Saxon despite the British connection, but most decidedly, most Celtically, red-headed white, and the harp belongs to Venus' wooer, who at different times has been both Orpheus and King David, but not to herself.

Marks For: 2

Marks Against: 1997

You can find David Prashker at:
http://theargamanpress.com/
http://davidprashker.com/
http://davidprashker.net/
https://www.facebook.com/TheArgamanPress
http://davidprashkersprivatecollection.blogspot.com
http://davidprashkerssongsandpoems.blogspot.com
http://davidprashkersbookofdays.blogspot.com/
http://davidprashkersartgallery.blogspot.com/

The Argaman Press

Tuesday, May 12, 2015

Mongolia

Back in the late 1960s and early 1970s, when such statements were still permissible, I was frequently accused by my teachers of coming from Mongolia (though not precisely in those words), a charge I vehemently denied, and for which, I am glad to say, they would be sacked today – one little piece of human progress to counterbalance the unflagging pessimism of this blog. Why exactly a person of limited intelligence should be given that particular insult is unclear, given that the Mongols never invaded western Europe, let alone the United Kingdom; but so it was, and the insult was given equally to the supposedly stupid me and to the entire population of Asia into the bargain.

I also used to think of Mongolia as part of China, mostly because it is located north, east and west of China; however it is also located south of Russia, and indeed it forms a kind of buffer state between those two competing superpowers.

The Mongols were once a superpower themselves, when Genghis Khan ruled them and built an empire, and his grandson Kublai Khan extended it from India and Persia and most of Arabia in the west to China and Siberia. They even pushed into Poland and Hungary, into Bohemia and parts of Austria and the Balkans, and left behind cities of great importance, most notably Moscow.

Few wars of empire in the whole of human history can have been quite so barbarically murderous as those the Mongols fought, and in a very real sense we should see IS and their radical Islamist confrères more as a revival of Mongolism than of Islam. But the empire collapsed at the end of the 14th century, after which it became part of the Tibetan Buddhist world of the Manchu Qing dynasty.

Finally, in the 20th century, it emerged from that isolated existence as the newly-created Mongolian People’s Republic, only to find itself quickly incorporated into the Soviet empire. In 1992 it fashioned a democratic constitution and adopted a free market economy, though it does not take much looking at the place to realise why Genghis Khan decided to conquer other countries. How else to feed his people, unless by stealing the food from others, given the virtual absence of arable land and mineral resources (actually there are lots of mineral resources; but he couldn’t have known it then, and nobody is even trying to mine them now)?

One third of the population, which is remarkably small given the vastness of the country, live as nomads, wandering the steppes that separate the snowy mountains and the emptiness of the Gobi Desert in search of water, let alone grazing. With Moslem Kazakhstan on its western border, and significant numbers of Kazakhs living in Mongolia, Islam lives uncomfortably alongside Tibetan Buddhism, with no armed conflict as yet – one cannot easily imagine an army of Tibetan Buddhists facing an army of Khazak Moslems: yoga versus decapitation is not an equal struggle.

Marks For: 1

Marks Against: 1227 (the year of Genghis Khan's death)

You can find David Prashker at:

http://theargamanpress.com/
http://davidprashker.com/
http://davidprashker.net/
https://www.facebook.com/TheArgamanPress
http://davidprashkersprivatecollection.blogspot.com
http://davidprashkerssongsandpoems.blogspot.com
http://davidprashkersbookofdays.blogspot.com/
http://davidprashkersartgallery.blogspot.com/

The Argaman Press

Monaco

One of the curiosities about France is that, while it holds a ridiculous number of territories outside its geographical borders, it is quite incapable of maintaining authority over the whole of its actual geographical territory. Think of Andorra, which is independent, or Brittany, which would like to be, or the number of times Alsace and Lorraine have wandered back and forth into and out of French possession. Think of the French Riviera and you immediately think of Nice, Cannes, St Tropez and Monte Carlo – and you are wrong. Monte Carlo is in Monaco, and it occupies a space of land so small that you could fit it into Central Park in New York and still have almost half the park available for other purposes (mostly jogging and transsexual prostitution as far as I can tell); on the other hand, one cannot imagine Central Park and its surrounding streets being converted into a Formula I Grand Prix racing circuit once every year, though I am sure it would be very popular (most of the taxi drivers already think it is). Why does Monaco exist? Because the French need tax havens that they can access in person as well as online – why else? And Grace Kelly of course, but she only married into Monaco, so she doesn't really count.

Marks For: 1

Marks Against: 3

The Argaman Press

Moldova

My friend Lia, who comes to the same Russian Literature group as me, and helps us out by reading excerpts from Gogol or Dostoievski in their original Russian, once asked me if I had ever been to Russia, and I replied that I had, and that I had also written a book which was set in part in Kishinev. She looked at me as though I had suggested that Tolstoy was a Turk or Turgenev a Chinaman. Kishinev, she informed me, is in Moldova. She was right of course, but at the time that my book is set, Kishinev was most definitely part of Russia, or at least an integral part of the Soviet Bloc, which was tantamount to the same thing; and being integral to today’s Russian Federation, I took the risk of stating, it still is. She simply smiled, as any loyal Putin voter should (all Russians are Putin voters, or in jail, or dead, or living abroad; it is simply the way democracy operates in the Russian Federation).

Most of Moldova is not Moldova anyway, but Bessarabia, annexed by the USSR in 1940 when Stalin and von Ribbentrop agreed the division of what was no longer Romania. Of the remainder, the lands to the east of the Dniester river were originally part of Ukraine, but it too was gathered in as part of that 1940 Communist-Fascist pact. That area acquired the name Trans-Dniester, much as eastern Palestine became Trans-Jordan, and then declared itself independent and autonomous, failed to obtain international let alone Russian recognition, and collapsed into economic and political anarchy, a situation made more worrying by the huge stockpiles of Soviet military equipment which the Moldovan government refuses to give back. Mired in extreme poverty, and with Gazprom regularly cutting off its gas supplies as a way of bullying it into giving back those weapons (and to withdraw from deals with the EU), there is little but poor quality wine in Moldova, so poor that most of it gets exported (as do thousands of women every year, also in crates - human trafficking for forced prostitution is a principal source of wealth for Moldova's oligarchs), though one cannot imagine the French or Italians or the Californians purchasing any. The largest vineyard in Moldova is situated in the Valley of Plonk. On my list of countries that can expect to go the way of Chechnya and the Crimea very soon, Moldova is placed at number one.

Marks For: 0

Marks Against: 1917 or 1940, whichever you prefer.

The Argaman Press

Monday, May 11, 2015

Micronesia, Federated States of

Six hundred Pacific islands, sub-divided into four groups, named Pohnpei, Chuuk (which is also called Truk), Kosrae and Yap. The total geographical area is about five times the size of France, but no, it is not a French overseas department, nor an administered territory – it exists under a “Compact of Free Association” with the USA, which formally grants the Americans not only the right to establish military bases as it pleases, but to deny access to Micronesia by any other country, in exchange for “economic aid” (a euphemism in this case for “rent”) of around $100m annually - $3.5 billion over twenty years was the deal signed by George W. Bush in 2003, but $100m is the figure generally used - which is peanuts. The peanuts are useful however, as the inhabitants of these islands have virtually nothing else to live on, and vast numbers of Filipino migrants are competing for a share of the nothingness. They are not competing for the electricity or the running water however, because there is none for the vast majority of the population. There is little work either, and tourism, the obvious source of jobs and income, is unlikely, for the reason noted above, that the Compact prohibits anyone from going anywhere near the place, including American civilians, because the military doesn’t want them to know that they themselves are there.

The US, incidentally, calls them the Caroline Islands, and describes them as “a UN Trust Territory under US administration following World War II”. No mention, obviously, of those military bases, merely a statement that “present concerns include large-scale unemployment, overfishing, and overdependence on US aid.” They might have added the words “extreme” and “poverty”, but apparently they chose not to.

Just to give a sense of what $100m can buy, this was the exact sum spent in the 2014 elections for the Governorship of Florida. http://www.nrsc.org/blog/9-things-you-can-buy-for-100-million-dollars has tackled the question as well, noting that Liberal mega donor Tom Steyer has pledged to spend $100 million dollars to fund Democrats who support his environmental agenda, and that Donald Trump’s Boeing 757 comes at the same price, paint job included. In 2013 Tiger Woods earned just $78.5m, but he has had better years, coming top in the world earnings rankings every year from 2002 until 2013, except 2012, when boxer Floyd Mayweather beat him (Mayweather earned $85m that year). Tiger’s total earnings over the period add up to almost exactly $1,000m (he is about 93 cents short to be absolutely imprecise, but you can do the calculation yourself at http://www.topendsports.com/world/lists/earnings/forbes-index.htm), which means he could not only pay off the entire rent for Micronesia single-handed, but would have enough left over to run the military bases and feed the population as well. And now let’s talk about the next ninety-nine names on the golf list, the tennis list, the baseball, basketball, hockey, soccer…

Marks For: 0

Marks Against: 100 million, per annum

You can find David Prashker at:
http://theargamanpress.com/
http://davidprashker.com/
http://davidprashker.net/
https://www.facebook.com/TheArgamanPress
http://davidprashkersprivatecollection.blogspot.com
http://davidprashkerssongsandpoems.blogspot.com
http://davidprashkersbookofdays.blogspot.com/
http://davidprashkersartgallery.blogspot.com/

The Argaman Press

Sunday, May 10, 2015

Mexico

Ah, Mexico, Mexico, also known as Texas in some quarters, and actually seven of the fifty United States originally belonged to Mexico: Arizona, California, New Mexico, and parts of Colorado, Nevada and Utah make up the sacred number.

But then, on the other hand, before the Spanish stole what the Americans would later steal from them, Mexico belonged to the Olmec, the Toltec, the Teotihuacan, the Zapotec, the Maya and the Aztec, all great civilisations in their own right, with advanced, sophisticated tribal structures, agriculture - the cultivation of maize and beans especially - as ancient as the Mesopotamians, who Europeans like to think invented it; and sedentary village life four thousand years before the first European village; and a form of hieroglyphic writing so similar to the Egyptian that some Pharaonic Columbus must surely have beaten Christopher to these shores by a millennium or two; and a vigesimal numbering system (which is to say based on the number 20, where we prefer 10); and the most beautifully complex mythological explanations of the universe, manifested in architecture that likewise resembles the Egyptian, but even more than that the Babylonian, and...but this is all nonsense; let's be honest; they were brutal savages and heathens, barely human, and thank God the European Christians came to save their souls, even if they did have to wipe them out almost in their entirety to do so.

Just for the interest (mine, even if not yours), Mexico is really Mēxihco, in the Nahuatl language, and its capital, now Mexico City, was Mēxihco-Tenochtitlana, a compound word achieved by joining Mēxihtli, the Aztec god of war who ruled the city, with tetl, which means a rock, and nōchtli, which is the prickly pear that Israelis call the sabra, the custard-like fruit with a hard and prickly shell that grows on the desert cactus.

The illustration above is one of dozens by one of the greatest modern artists, and not only of Mexico: Diego Rivera. It reconstructs the Aztec capital as it was at the height of the Toltec culture, and if anyone has a convincing argument that modern Mexico City is even in the same league, I would be very happy to debate it. Other than a few ruins, which include the economy and the political system as well as the Spanish churches and grand palaces, it is modern Mexico which truly reflects the primitive, the savage, the barbaric, but please don't tell the drug-lords that I said so, because they tend to shoot up first and then ask for payment later.

Interestingly, more Mexicans are leaving the United States to return home than are either being trafficked there, or wetbacking their way there, or even, though this is denied by most parties in the USA, coming there entirely legally. Statistics from both governments on both sides of the border agree that just 870,000 crossed the Rio Grande northwards between 2009 and 2014, while more than a million either took the advice of the zenophobes and rejoined their families in Mexico, or recognised that the upgrading of border controls and illegal immigrant checks was no longer in their favour, or just possibly it was the scale of the recession in the United States, which actually made staying in Mexico a better economic option.

Marks For: 0

Marks Against: However many Catholic missionaries and conquistadores and drug-barons and missing-presumed-dead kidnapped students you can count.

The Argaman Press

Saturday, May 9, 2015

Mayotte

About 1 in 10, did I say earlier, of the world's coral atolls and volcanic islands, that they turn out to be French? I shall have to recalculate this number when I have completed the full catalogue, but it may well prove to be a massive under-estimation.

Mayotte is another of those small islands off the east coast of Africa, close by Madagascar, a part of the Comoros archipelago, the other three of which became independent of France in 1975. But not Mayotte, which held a referendum on the issue in 2009, and voted to remain an integral part of France.

The fastest century in test cricket was scored by Misbah-ul-Haq of Pakistan, against Australia, on November 2nd 2014, taking just fifty-four deliveries. The highest number of home runs in a baseball career is held by Barry Bonds, with seven hundred and sixty-two. The most goals scored by any player in the soccer world cup is Germany’s Miroslav Klose with sixteen. And the prize for the most military coups ever staged in one country goes to…Mayotte…with a staggering twenty.

A Moslem country, despite being French, and with less than half its population actually able to speak, let alone read or write French, it practices polygamy, and girls are free to marry, or actually to be married, which is not quite the same thing, at fifteen.

So significant is Mayotte on the world stage that Index Mundi, one of the more useless reference websites for the state of the world, does not even include it - but neither does the CIA World FactBook, which also, and even more inexplicably, omits Martinique. NationsOnLine.org lists it, but has no page for it. EveryCulture.com has a fairly extensive page, which includes data that explains the incomprehensible mishmash of Wikipedia's page; Wikipedia, which is about as reliable on any subject as the Burmese official news agency or the Warren Report, states (my quote has been verified by three independent proof-readers) that "The term Mayotte (or Maore) may refer to the group of islands, of which the largest is known as Maore (French: Grande-Terre), and it includes Maore's surrounding islands, most notably Pamanzi (Petite-Terre), or to the largest island mentioned."

Absence from the above websites is, as stated, a sign that very little of significance ever happens on Mayotte, which is not a good thing. Total absence from the websites of Amnesty International and Human Rights Watch is also a sign that very little of significance ever happens on Mayotte, but in these two cases, this is a very good thing.

Marks for: 2

Marks against: 1

The Argaman Press

Mauritius

Easy to confuse Mauritius with Mauritania, but only because the names are similar. Mauritius is a really rather gorgeous volcanic island in the Indian ocean, east of Madagascar, a paradise of lagoons and white beaches – much the same sand that you will find in Mauritania, but somehow sand makes for a good habitation when it’s on the beach, whereas it just makes for a bad death when it’s inland.

What makes Mauritius stand out is the way in which it has defied human nature for decades. It used to be dependent on sugar for its economy, and sugar was both slave-manufacture and profits-elsewhere; but now it produces textiles for home-use as well as export, provides the world with a significant banking centre, specialises in out-sourcing, and of course there is tourism. Not to mention its constitution, which is thoroughly democratic, generally functions by coalition governments, and looks after the rights of all the many cultures that comprise its population: Asians, Europeans and Africans.

And you just read that paragraph, and believed me? Never believe anything you read in the media, not even an independent blog like this one! Or believe it, but only after you have carefully deconstructed its propagandistic euphemisms, and it still remains credible.

* textiles for home-use as well as export - low-wage jobs in poor conditions

* a significant banking centre - euphemism for tax haven and money laundering

* specialises in out-sourcing - humanoids on telephones earning a pittance

* tourism - service industry work, where the quality of obsequiousness determines the quantity of the gratuity

* the many cultures that comprise... - about one-third of the population are the descendants of African slaves (yes, they even took slaves to countries as close to home as this), who live in dire poverty and are thoroughly discriminated against.

It was in Mauritius incidentally that the dodo was hunted to extinction in the 17th century, and there are significant numbers of other species, both flora and fauna, that are severely threatened – tourism the biggest cause of this because, well you don’t need me to explain how people discover “unspoiled” places, see money to be made from bringing lots of people to gaze in wonder at them, and then spoil them by doing so. Though it would be hard to spoil the extraordinary seven-coloured earth, which is shown in the picture above (actually, on reflection, it wouldn't be that hard: graffiti could be scrawled or sprayed on it, agents for Islamic State could blow it up, speculators could cut it into shards and sell it as art to rich collectors, thousands of feet could scratch it into greyness...)

On the subject of coalition governments, I happen to be a great fan of coalition governments. Oligarchies everywhere will tell you that coalition governments prevent anyone from doing anything, because the minorities you depend on hold you back, demanding concessions that you are reluctant to give, at threat of pulling out. So coalitions don’t last long, and another election reconstitutes another coalition, but the beauty of the system (look at Italy, Sweden, Israel) is precisely what the oligarchs complain about. Nothing gets done. Oligarchs come with ideologies, and insist on interfering. Change the tax system, change it back again; change the education system, change it back again; nationalise, denationalise, renationalise, redenationalise. Interfere – and generally for the worse. Or have a large enough majority to impose your despotism. Governments should stick to agreeing a budget, maintaining the police and army, doing international diplomacy, and cutting ribbons; that and nothing else. If politicians were actually prohibited from holding opinions, let alone ideologies, but simply elected to agree and administer the items mentioned above, peace and prosperity would probably dawn upon the Earth in, well, about the time it takes to hold a new election under the new constitution.

Marks for: 3

Marks against: 3

The Argaman Press

Thursday, May 7, 2015

Mauritania

When God decided to create the world, his intelligent design appears to have had some major flaws, of which tectonic plates, volcanoes, and the creation of human beings are the most strikingly obvious, but which must also include the distinct imbalance of climates around the globe, leaving large swathes under solid ice, and others as uninhabitable and infertile deserts. Mauritania attempts to inhabit one of the latter, known as sub-Saharan Africa, and it thanks its god daily that it was only given the sub part, and not the full dead region. Those prayers are fixed in time, but not in place, for the Arab-Berber and indigenous African peoples who share the wilderness are mostly nomadic – they have to be, because this is the nature of the land. The god in question, by the way, is al-Lah, who was brought to Mauritania by the Almoravids long, long ago, in the days that followed the first Caliphate.

The French took control of it in the 19th century, the coast first, then the whole country, as a “protectorate”, which is a very ignoble euphemism for “empire” and an utterly ignoble self-vindication for the enslavement, cultural destruction and degradation of a people as "savages" which followed. In 1960 they decided to relinquish their protection, which was also very noble, though Morocco did attempt to block the deal as part of its somewhat ignoble aspiration to grab the country for itself. You might ask why Morocco would want such an arid land; and the answer is – oil. Morocco was prevented, but the thought of oil, or at least of oiling their own palms, led various tribal leaders and self-made warlords to undertake a smash-and-grab raid, which is an ignoble euphemism for civil war. Mauritania itself grabbed (annexed) huge chunks of land to the south, but gave them up again after three years, unable to defeat the Polisario, who resisted them. That land is now Western Sahara.

A bloody coup in 1984 led to two decades of military rule, ended by a bloodless coup in 2005, again by the military, but this time with a commitment to take off their uniforms and rule as elected civilians. When those elections brought the independent and non-military Sidi Ould Cheikh Abdallahi to the Presidency, the military changed their minds and deposed him, putting their own man, General Aziz, back in charge, as he still is, despite being “accidentally shot” by one of his guards (a rather charming euphemism on this occasion; the phrase normally used is “botched assassination attempt”). Aziz is still in charge, and his palms are becoming blacker every day; metaphorically of course; the oil has started flowing.

The saddest part of Mauritania is the same sad story everywhere that human beings blight the planet. Mauritania is listed as a significant source, transit, and destination country for men, women, and children subjected to forced labour and sex trafficking, with both adults and children from what have been the slave castes for so long they are now widely described as "the traditional slave castes", subjected to every imaginable form of the disease (it is the masters, of course, who have the disease, but the slaves who suffer from it). Young male students, for example, known as Talibe, are trafficked within the country by religious teachers for forced begging. Young females, and you really don't want me to tell you how young is young, along with girls from Mali, Senegal, Gambia, and other West African countries, are forced into domestic servitude, or simply carted away to work the cocoa plantations (most of the chocolate we eat in the West is farmed by underage female slaves who are also expected to provide sexual services to their male owners outside work hours), or coerced into prostitution at home, or else transported to countries in the Middle East for the same purpose.

And if you don't believe me, watch this CNN documentary.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=player_embedded&v=5yQlOPD8mNo

Marks for: None, I'm afraid.

Marks against: Rather too many.

The Argaman Press

Martinique

A Caribbean island situated just a teeny bit west of Nice and Cannes on France’s extended Riviera, it is made up of an extensive range of ethnic groups, including Oberoi, Hilton, Peninsula, Shangri-La, Hyatt, Marriott and Couples. Civil war between these groups has raged for decades, mostly in the form of weekend discounts and competitive buffets. The other ethnic group, known as Martiniquans and comprised of 17th century French settlers and the descendants of the slaves they brought with them, are either employed by the aforementioned others, or unemployed, though a few drive taxis, and some run souvenir kiosks; the vast majority have sought economic asylum in France, where they are employed as football players or to man the unemployment benefit queues. While the aforementioneds generally keep their earnings on the Cayman Islands, France does provide economic aid, and does so sufficiently that barely half the country bothered to turn out for a referendum in 2010, which asked whether Martinique should seek greater autonomy, and they only turned out to make sure the answer was No. The real threat to the future of the island is not the tourists however, nor the warring global corporations, but Mount Pelle, its active volcano, which last erupted in 1902, and so is about due for another little explosion any time soon.

Joséphine de Beauharnais, who started out life as Marie-Josèphe-Rose Tascher de La Pagerie and ended it as the Emperor Napoleon's first wife, was born on the island, though no one there claims her as a Martiniquaise. In truth, the only thing the world has remotely heard of that ever came out of Martinique is the Beguine, a dance not unlike the rumba which takes its name from the Creole word for a white woman. You can listen to Artie Shaw playing Cole Porter's "Begin the Beguine" if you click here.

Marks for: 1

Marks against: 2

The Argaman Press

Sunday, May 3, 2015

Marshall Islands

On average, about once every ten countries, a small group of coral atolls in the middle of an ocean somewhere occurs in this catalogue, and it remains only to determine whether they are part of France or not; usually they are. On this occasion however – not; they are part of the USA. The CIA World FactBook states: "After almost four decades under US administration as the easternmost part of the UN Trust Territory of the Pacific Islands, the Marshall Islands attained independence in 1986 under a Compact of Free Association. Compensation claims continue as a result of US nuclear testing on some of the atolls between 1947 and 1962. The Marshall Islands hosts the US Army Kwajalein Atoll (USAKA) Reagan Missile Test Site, a key installation in the US missile defence network.”

Enough said! Two long chains of atolls, twenty-four in total, making over a thousand islands, some of them so small they are known as islets. The whole area is known as Micronesia, which includes Kiribati and Mauro; the name Marshall refers to an 18th century British explorer, John Marshall, who actually named them “Lord Mulgrove’s Range.” The islands, which are known to have been settled by indigenous peoples around 1500 BCE, became the property of Spain until it sold them to Germany in the 1880s, who lost them to the Japanese in World War One, who lost them to the Americans in World War Two, since when they have been used, as we have seen, as a base of preparations for World War Three. Today they are free and independent, whatever that means when the USA has "a key installation" in its missile defence network based there. A Presidential Republic anyway, though ultimately the current President may well be Barack Obama and not Christopher Loeak, for it was Loeak who got himself elected in 2012, but Obama who pays most of the Marshall Islands bills, and the islands are almost entirely dependent on American imports for any goods except subsistence groceries.

Of the atolls used for nuclear testing (and for which $150m was paid in compensation by the US in the 1980s), Bikini is the most famous, and it remains uninhabitable for the foreseeable future. Enewetak has been “partially decontaminated”, though I am not sure how one partially decontaminates; the cockroaches are gone from my bathroom but still infest my kitchen; I no longer have chickenpox in my upper body; the cancer in my lungs has been cleared up, but they are still working on the ones in my brain and my liver. On the subject of “partial decontamination” I declare myself an atheist.

Surprisingly, given the above, the Marshall Islands will receive a mark, not so much for a contribution to human growth and progress, as for a contribution by that tiny percentage of humans who may be described as intelligent. In October 2011, some 772,000 square miles of ocean around the Marshall islands was declared a shark sanctuary by the government, making it the largest shark sanctuary in the world, unless you include the New York Stock Exchange.

Marks For: 1

Marks against: $150m

The Argaman Press

David Prashker's World Hourglass

Sunday, May 31, 2015

Mozambique

Friday, May 29, 2015

Morocco

Tuesday, May 26, 2015

Montserrat

Tuesday, May 12, 2015

Mongolia

Monaco

Moldova

Monday, May 11, 2015

Micronesia, Federated States of

Sunday, May 10, 2015

Mexico

Saturday, May 9, 2015

Mayotte

Mauritius

Thursday, May 7, 2015

Mauritania

Martinique

Sunday, May 3, 2015

Marshall Islands

Blog Archive

About Me