Democracy Only Real if Mediaeval?
Democracy Frustrated Over Climate Change
Class Politics in Climate Change
Gaza: Ethnic Cleansing
Snippets
China Seeking Peace
BBC Coopts a Dead Chinaman
A New Hope for Germany?
A Dope’s Guide to US Politics
Gay Games in Hong Kong
Wed Gayly, but no Throuples?
Democracy Only Real if Mediaeval?
Democracy was Britain’s gift to the world, now strangely rejected?
Not true at all. It was always about privileged status, and remains so.
Parliaments were not designed for democracy, and are not good at delivering it.
Most European monarchs would occasionally call large assemblies of the rich and powerful. Get things agreed that might not be acceptable if the monarch did them alone.
Little seen outside of Europe. Not at all the human norm, which is why many states with non-European traditions decide to junk it when it visibly fails to provide Good Government.
England traditionally had a ‘Great Council’ that met for major matters.[A] Parliament, a continental system that the French aristocrat Simon de Montfort introduced for England, included a House of Commons. Lesser gentry elected by other lesser gentry and the upper middle classes. And had a lot of say over taxes.
‘Commons’ never meant the common people. Voters were the richest 7%. Few women before the 20th century.[B]
Votes for all male citizens was a radical demand in the 19th century. Partly conceded in the 1880s for the British Isles, with lesser assemblies for colonies dominated by what they called The White Race.
Parliamentary Democracy let the elite capture the democratic feelings of an emerging working class, and limit their influence.
The big advances in the 1940s to 1960s were mostly because of a real fear that Communism might otherwise spread to the ‘Lower Orders’. Which ended as the Soviet Union declined.
But having worked hard from the 1980s to prevent parliamentary systems from doing what the majority want, they are astonished that such systems are losing respect.
Democracy Frustrated Over Climate Change
Once you understand that Parliament is there to avoid real democracy, it is no longer a puzzle that business interest repeatedly stall the climate controls that most of the electors now want.
Most critics have no such understanding:
“‘Where did I go wrong?’ The scientist who tried to raise the climate alarm.
“Fifty years ago Australian researcher Graeme Pearman travelled the world with six flasks of air to help prove CO2 in the atmosphere was rising…
“Since the late 1950s Keeling had been finding the amount of CO2 in the atmosphere was creeping up and by the late 60s he was blaming the rise on fossil fuel burning.
“Pearman suspected Keeling was wrong and that the rise was down to ‘drifting standards’ in the way the measurements were being taken.
“‘We thought: he’s got to be wrong. How could humans, mere humans, actually influence the global climate? But within about a year, we knew Keeling was right.”[C]
In the 1970s, most experts saw global warming as an unproven fear. Then evidence came in that the process was real.
But in the spirit of Thatcher and Reagan, there was strong resistance to the necessary state action.
And some cunning propaganda to make some anti-Establishment people think that those politicians who trusted expert advice were part of some enigmatic conspiracy, done for enigmatic purposes.
Class Politics in Climate Change
“Carbon emissions of richest 10% are up to 40 times bigger than poorest, and ignoring divide may make ending climate crisis impossible, experts say…
“The world’s richest 10% encompasses most of the middle classes in developed countries – anyone paid more than about $40,000 (£32,000) a year. The lavish lifestyles of the very rich – the 1% – attract attention. But the 10% are responsible for half of all global emissions, making them key to ending the climate crisis.”[D]
The elite try to dump most of the cost onto those who did the least damage. And are currently succeeding. Few limits for the elite of billionaires within that 10%.[E]
But a lot of bewildered fear:
“The rise of wildfires, floods and droughts around the world are just some of the highly visible signs of climate change.
“What is reported less is the impact of climate change on human minds.
“Climate anxiety – defined as feelings of distress about the impacts of climate change – has been reported globally, particularly among children and young people.
“Data from Google Trends shows that search queries related to “climate anxiety” have increased dramatically.
“Search queries in English around “climate anxiety” in the first 10 months of 2023 are 27 times higher than the same period in 2017.”[F]
Gaza: Ethnic Cleansing
«Tel Aviv is the Hebrew title of Theodor Herzl’s 1902 novel Altneuland (“Old New Land”), as translated from German by Nahum Sokolow. Sokolow had adopted the name of a Mesopotamian site near the city of Babylon mentioned in Ezekiel.»[G]
In the real world, it was chosen as the name for a new Jewish settlement near the ancient city of Jaffa. Created under the Ottoman Empire, when the dream of a harmonious mix of Arabs and Jews might have worked.
One of several ways in which Jews were ‘collateral damage’ in British imperial ambitions.[H]
Note also that this was the Imperial elite, not ordinary Britons. People like my own ancestors might have done better had our rulers abandoned Imperial dreams, as Sweden did.[I] ‘Upper London’ is not my London, nor serve my vision of a better Britain.
The British Empire had several times saved the Ottoman Empire when it might have been partitioned by its stronger neighbours, as Poland had earlier been partitioned. But then some of the British elite decided that United Germany threatened their hegemony. It was succeeding in trade and industrialisation, and the elite could not accept that. So they needed Tsarist Russia to break Germany.
The lure was Istanbul, Constantinople for Britons and ‘Tsargrad’ for Russia’s Orthodox Christians. Vast emotional importance, and also offering free access to the Mediterranean.
The song that gave us Jingoism said “The Russians shall not have Constantinople”. But then Germany came to be seen as a worse threat.
Few Britons had cared that Istanbul was a Turkish-majority city. One in which many minorities existed peacefully, and a safe haven for Jews. Russia was to get the heart of the Ottoman Empire, which must be weakened in any way possible.
One way was to convince Arabic-speakers that they were a nation oppressed by Turks. They’ve actually proved to be a collection of intermingled minorities, quite likely to fight each other when no superior power prevents it. ‘Arab Unity’ failed to happen: arbitrary splits made mostly by colonial powers have largely lasted. The one actual unification, North Yemen and South Yemen, has not gone well.
And such factionalism is the human norm. Britain became Britain after a series of authoritarian rulers stamped a common identity upon it. Used great brutality when it was needed, but still failed to include Ireland. Which is why I see authoritarian regimes in newly emerging nation-states as a regrettable necessity, unless you’d see fragmentation as better.
A Greater Syria including what’s now Jordan, Lebanon and Israel / Palestine would probably have worked. It might even have been a safe haven for a Jewish minority. But having raised up Arabs against Turks, and having suffered a bad defeat in what is now Iraq, the rulers of the British Empire decided to win over ‘International Jewry’. They offered them their own homeland in a newly defined Palestine.
It was largely a fantasy. Except in Russia, most Jews supported the governments they had grown up under. Lord Montague, at that time the only Jew in the British cabinet, was against it [the own homeland]. He was one of many who feared it would be an excuse for denying Jews the right to live as minorities across Europe.
Nor was British Palestine a safe refuge for those Jews who increasingly needed it. Having been told that they were Palestinians, the mixed Muslim and Christian inhabitants disliked the idea of being shoved aside to solve a European problem.
But the Second World War ended with Imperialism and European Settlement still the norm. Australia, New Zealand and The Americas had been swamped by European power, and the native populations marginalised. Likewise South Africa, Southern Rhodesia and Kenya. Why not one more small territory for displaced Jews?
Israel was created. The ancient city of Jaffa was swallowed by Tel Aviv, and Arabs there are now a minority. And those famous Jaffa Oranges became a symbol for Israel; seen as an insult by the Arabs who originally developed them.[J]
Vast numbers of Palestinians were frightened into quitting the newly-defined Israel, and never allowed back.
Gaza was a chunk of what the United Nations had defined as Independent Palestine, splitting British Palestine with the new Israel. It was held by the Egyptian army, just as the West Bank was held by what had been Transjordan.
Palestinian identity grew stronger after these territories were taken by Israel after the 1967 war. Egypt and Jordan eventually abandoned their claims. We might have got a smaller version of the Arab Palestine that the United Nations had tried to define in 1948.
But there were always mixed feelings in Israel. Wasn’t the whole of British Palestine actually theirs by right, as heirs of Biblical Israel?
Israeli settlers have been steadily displacing Arabs from the West Bank.
The same was originally tried for Gaza, but the resistance was too fierce. Instead Israel encouraged Hamas. They hoped that hard-line Islamists would happily rule a little Bantustan in a way that had worked for a time in White-ruled South Africa. Just as Islamic extremists were supposed to ‘ride off into the sunset’ after doing the West’s work against the Soviets in Afghanistan.
In Gaza, this aspiration came apart on October 7th. Which strengthened the hand of those who’d like to see Palestinian Gaza reduced as much as possible. Its people pushed into Egypt, if Egypt will take them.
There were also more evictions than usual of West Bank Palestinians who’d had no connection with Hamas.[K]
I won’t comment on current events: they are moving much too fast. Except to note that the BBC mostly show human concerns only for Jews released in the prisoner swap. Little for Palestinians they are being swapped for.[L]
Snippets
China Seeking Peace
I’ve seen repeatedly how The Guardian, voice of Britain’s liberal left, manages to find China’s leaders wrong whatever they do.
Xi Jinping allows the law to operate against corrupt official he did not appoint? Factionalism. Then he allows the law to operate against corrupt officials he did appoint? A sign of weakness.
For Palestine, and like most of the world, Xi says that the Two States Solution is the answer. Crushing Hamas and letting Palestinians be squeezed more will fix nothing.
Everyone expected Israel to retaliate for the original attack. But retaliation should never be called Self Defence. What we had was aggressive actions that might or might not prevent a repeat.
Most of the world sees the continuing punishment as excessive. And making sense only if Ethnic Cleansing is the end in view. Or rather an acceleration of what has happened ever since the Oslo Agreement, which should have ended it.
I’d imagined that if China were supporting Israel, something bad would still be found to say about them. And then actually found it; Chinese companies will sell surveillance equipment to Israel, which is seen as wrong even though Israel’s right to enforce its control where it actually rules is not questioned.
Beijing is also continuously bad-mouthed about Xinjiang, with no more mention of the way Uighur extremists sought an independent state, and many were linked to Islamic extremists. It was only a few years ago that the paper was demanding that Xi should take firm action against them.[M]
Why are they surprised that Western liberal values have lost a lot of support in the Global South?
*
BBC Coopts a Dead Chinaman
“Li Keqiang: Ex-Chinese premier sidelined by Xi dies at 68
“Li was once tipped to be the country’s future leader but was overtaken by President Xi Jinping.
“A trained economist, he held the second highest-ranked position in China, though in recent years, he was widely isolated amongst China’s top leadership.
“He was the only incumbent top official who didn’t belong to Mr Xi’s loyalists group.
“‘Li’s death means the loss of a prominent moderating voice within the senior levels of the Chinese Communist Party, with no one apparently being able to take over the mantle,’ Ian Chong, non resident scholar at the Carnegie China think tank told the BBC.”[N]
Propaganda-by-omission. Li was the choice of successor by Hu Jintao, the previous leader. But Xi moved ahead by getting more votes for election to the Politburo Standing Committee: He was more popular with those deciding China’s future.
And it was Hu Jintao who began the move away from at open attitude to global capitalism. Who rejected tolerance of growing inequality. Controls were imposed, and they worked.
Xi’s faction and Hu’s cooperated for the first ten years of Xi’s rule, with Li functioning as one of the most powerful men in the world. But the complete change-over of the top leadership every ten years had already been noted as a weakness. The old team would lose authority as the end of their term neared, and the new team would need time to get control.
The 20th National Congress of the Chinese Communist Party in 2022 re-elected Xi, but did not include anyone in the Politburo Standing Committee who was young enough to be a plausible successor.
The planned 21st Congress that’s scheduled for 2027 would allow him to get a successor agreed. And it would need to be agreed: I’ve never believed those who see him as a personal dictator, rather than a trusted faction leader.[O] He’d still be only in his 70s, not an unreasonable age for a political leader. And could hand over smoothly: that at least is what I’d hope for.
*
A New Hope In Germany?
“One of Germany’s most prominent leftwing politicians said she is setting up a new party with an anti-immigration message that will compete with — and potentially peel away support from — the far-right Alternative for Germany (AfD).
“Sahra Wagenknecht announced the movement at a packed press conference in Berlin on Monday, saying her aim was to offer a voice to people frustrated with the traditional parties and put off by the AfD’s strident nationalism…
“Like Wagenknecht herself, who is half-Iranian, BSW [Bündnis Sahra Wagenknecht, an Alliance formed in order to create a new party] will be difficult to pigeonhole, a movement combining traditional leftwing ideas such as a tax on wealth, massive public investments in education and opposition to Nato, with a rightwing rejection of irregular immigration — an issue that has risen to the top of the German political agenda as refugee numbers rise…
“In recent months she has emerged as a vocal opponent of western support for Ukraine and economic sanctions against Russia, calling for more efforts to find a diplomatic solution to the conflict while defending herself against accusations she is pro-Russian.”[P]
In Europe as a whole, the left has damaged itself by not accepting that immigration has to be controlled.
This magazine mentioned Wagenknecht back in December 2021, as someone with hopeful ideas.[Q]
*
A Dope’s Guide to US Politics
“I always tell the truth. Even when I lie.”
That’s the ‘wisdom’ of fictional gangster Tony Montana, in the 1980s remake of Scarface.
You also see a brilliant scene in which his swinging security cameras show him he’s safe. And then you see it live: gangsters with basic military training are moving between hiding places whenever the camera isn’t looking their way.
You can have a false vision of the world, but the falseness of it is likely to cost you.
More recently, I was reading Michael Lewis’s The Big Short. It tells about Fancy Finance and how foolish it could get. A few smart investors expected the 2008 collapse of a bloated mortgage market. And saw that most of the supposedly expert investors did things that made no sense. Or not unless they believed their own lie!
As a science fiction fan, I’ve read many works of fiction in which the author chooses to make it so. What you want to believe is what will happen, if you believe hard enough. But I never confused it with reality.
A lot of what they’re doing makes sense if they actually do believe they can wish a new reality into being, without allowing for real material forces. Without allowing for foreigners preferring their own identities. You see this in the current wars in Ukraine and Gaza, and earlier failure in Afghanistan.
Observable failures can be explained away by not wishing hard enough.
*
Gay Games in Hong Kong
“After months of pandemic-related delays, Asia’s first Gay Games was held in Hong Kong last week, with nearly 2,400 athletes competing. At the opening ceremony, Regina Ip, the convenor of Hong Kong’s executive council, said the competition represented the city’s commitment to ‘equal opportunity and non-discrimination’, and praised Hong Kong’s courts for the ‘numerous judgments’ handed down in favour of the LGBTQ+ community in the past decade.
“This was met with bemusement by activists and lawyers, who pointed out that Ip’s government has opposed each of those judgments, losing in nearly every single case.”[R]
A posture, I believe. I’ve said before that China does not want to be seen as a champion of open homosexuality, as they increase their status as leader of the Global South. I’d assume they told the rulers of Hong Kong the proper role to play. Maintain the posture, but make the gay community realise that they have a lot to lose. Give them enough to stop them emigrating.
Hong Kong was given the games back in 2017: not that I’d noticed at the time. Then in 2022, I warned against the foolishness of local liberals defying Beijing.[S] And a suppression of political liberalism happened much as I’d expected.
I assume the bulk of the Chinese gay community are wiser. Keep quiet, and be helpful with their useful global contacts.
*
Wed Gayly, But No Throuples?
The Indian Supreme Court recently decided that the law must protect homosexuals. But refused suggestions that Gay Marriage was a compulsory Human Right.
Sensibly, they said that it was a matter for individual Indian states. Some do allow polygamy, though not polyandry.[T]
Men with multiple wives is an old tradition, and often an exploitation of women. Polyandry, a woman with several husbands, is seemingly sanctioned in their Mahabharatalegend, but denied real-world legality. Yet it exists among some tribal groups. It was part of Tibetan culture, in the face of strong disapproval from Beijing.
In Europe, ‘throuples’ are less marginal than they were, but still not given legal recognition.[U]
The liberal-left consensus is that two-person unions between persons of the same sex are a basic human right, but other possible marriage variants are not.
One wonders at the logic.
*
Old newsnotes at the magazine websites. I also write regular blogs – https://www.quora.com/q/mrgwydionmwilliams
[A] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Magnum_Concilium
[B] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Timeline_of_women%27s_suffrage
[C] https://www.theguardian.com/australia-news/2023/nov/20/where-did-i-go-wrong-the-scientist-who-tried-to-raise-the-climate-alarm
[D] https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2023/nov/20/revealed-huge-climate-impact-of-the-middle-classes-carbon-divide
[E] https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2023/nov/20/billionaires-great-carbon-divide-planet-climate-crisis
[F] https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/science-environment-67473829
[G] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tel_Aviv#Etymology_and_origins
[H] https://labouraffairsmagazine.com/problems-magazine-past-issues/jews-suffering-in-the-fall-of-the-british-empire/
[I] https://labouraffairsmagazine.com/past-issues/past-issues-before-2016/isolated-labour-affairs-pages-before-2015/how-the-british-empire-blighted-britain/
[J] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jaffa_orange
[K] https://www.theguardian.com/world/2023/oct/31/west-bank-palestinian-villages-israeli-army-settlers
[L] https://mrgwydionmwilliams.quora.com/BBC-Bias-Over-Gaza
[M] https://mrgwydionmwilliams.quora.com/Bliaring-about-Xinjiang-and-about-Islamic-Extremism
[N] https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-67235777
[O] https://labouraffairsmagazine.com/problems-magazine-past-issues/post-liberalism/chinese-politics-working-well/
[P] https://www.ft.com/content/b18d8fee-b622-4e09-8865-4b200a62436c – pay site.
[Q] https://labouraffairs.com/2021/12/05/sahra-wagenknecht-the-self-righteous/
[R] https://www.theguardian.com/world/2023/nov/11/gay-games-hong-kong-china-hostility-gay-transgender
[S] https://mrgwydionmwilliams.quora.com/Hong-Kong-Its-Friends-Encourage-Suicide
[T] https://www.quora.com/Does-the-Indian-Republic-give-legal-recognition-to-polyandrous-or-polygamous-marriages
Labour Affairs 