WhirledView

Singing in a Drought's Abundant Rain in Exeter, Devon

Singing in a Drought's Abundant Rain in Exeter, Devon

By: John C. Dyer, UK Correspondent

 It was raining the morning I set out to visit Exeter.   

It has long been said Britain has weather not climate, a nod to the weather’s changeability. But a new British reality is unfeasible drought punctuated by untenable downpours, leading to floods that seem to defy all expectations that come with the word, "drought."  It is the second year of a British drought severe enough for water use restrictions in some parts of the country.  But the South West, my destination, was on flood watch due to record downpours.   (Photo left "Vintage Exeter Roof in Rain"  by John C. Dyer, May 2012)  

Incidentally, because of the weather’s changeability, traveling in the UK requires at least two essentials- an all weather coat and a sensible pair of shoes.  You can get by without an umbrella, but not the coat. The weather can change from sunshine to storm within a half hour.  Sensible shoes are critical. You may see women dressed in 5 inch heels. This custom is called “fashion.”  But for the traveller, high heels may be the truest symbol of British austerity- not austere, in fact ostentatious, but undoubtedly horribly uncomfortable, especially walking along all those hills.  Wear sensible, comfortable shoes with great arch support. Your knees will thank you in the morning. 

A Journey by Rail (with travel tips)  

I set out from St Annes. The rain formed beautiful droplets on Spring’s new blossoms, foreshadowing hope for a holiday more enjoyable than the rains might have suggested possible.  

St. Annes is a community within the community of Lytham St. Annes. While neighbours the two towns have a different feel to them.   (Photo left "Sated Tulip" by John C. Dyer, May 2012)  

This summer that feel will be busy.  Golf’s biggest professional tournament comes to the Royal Lytham Golf Course, which runs like a green belt through St. Annes.  I shop Marks and Spencer. Their St. Annes outlet is hardly larger than a US 7/11 convenience store. It is always busy, but they estimate during the tournament as many as 10,000 people will shop there each day. Whew. 

I traveled to Exeter by rail, with an overnight stop in Bristol, Somerset.     

Rail has the place in British life air travel has in California. I have often seen BBC  interview the Chancellor , the shadow Chancellor or the leader of the opposition during their routine rail commutes between their constituencies and London.  For a visitor rail presents the advantages of dependability, wide access through the country, good directions for a new user, and, in First Class, comfort.   

As an example of how user friendly it can be, when I arrived in Preston to make connections for Bristol I learned that my connection had been delayed due to a safety problem further up the track.  Even as anxiety set in, the cheerful crew at the highly visible information booth set the old codger’s mind at ease. They explained to me just how to deal with it. They permitted me to use their telephone gratis to call my wife to advise her of the expected 20 minute delay.  Although I missed the scheduled connection in Bristol as a result, I just caught the next train with the same ticket. It was all quickly sorted by the onboard ticket taker.  With trains departing every 30 minutes I didn’t really notice a difference.  

Rail’s main disadvantages are relative lack of luggage space, particularly for large items, and crowding during peak hours.  For visitors who prefer a low fat, low cholesterol diet I suggest you consider buying your own prior to the journey. You will not find your diet choice either on the train or in the stations.  If you want to avoid noisy crowds and cell phones try for the “quiet car.”  

If you travel by rail with a reserved seat you will receive two tickets, one for the trip and one for the seat.  You must hold on to both. Both will be checked, predictably just after you decide that they aren’t going to bother this time.  Expect your ticket to be checked when you first set off and as you attempt to leave the station platform area. In fact, your ticket is your exit pass from the station. Don’t lose it.    

Other than that, trust the system, sit back, and enjoy the many sights and sounds of the journey. A rail journey in the UK is in-of-itself an adventure in discovery.  

As the train departed St. Annes the loudspeaker announced destinations.  I drifted bemused and amused by the pronunciation of "Oswald Twistle," a stop further down the line.  In this reverie it finally occurred to me the British are entitled to pronounce "Oswald Twistle" as they do, without an American saying to himself “how cute” or “how quaint.”  I don’t know if this was a transformative insight or just the haze of waking at “O Dark Hundred” to begin my journey.  (Photo Above "Impulse Power, Scotty" by John C. Dyer, May 2012)  

I soon settled in, watching the beautiful green, rolling countryside with its fields dotted by free ranging cattle and sheep, listening to the symphony of dialects spoken around me.  I remember registering just before nodding off that the “ot” in “Not” in a Glasgow accent  is pronounced “oh” as in French. So Not is “No.”   

Bristol

Victoria met me in Bristol.  We stayed overnight in Bristol before leaving for Exeter. 

I described Bristol at length in a previous post. One of the UK’s most vibrant cities, it is a blend of old and new. The Queen Elizabeth Hospital Boy’s School dates back to the time of Elizabeth I. 

The new flats and shopping areas of the redeveloped docks all came after Victoria moved away 20 years ago.    

 

 (Photo Up left  "Queen Elizabeth Welcomes Thee"; Photo Left "Brisol Port Flats" By John C. Dyer, May 2012)  

 

John Cabot was one of Bristol’s heros.  Memorials to his contribution to Bristol’s glorious past dot the city, from Cabot Tower 

to a bronze statue overlooking the dockyards.   

(Photo far left "Cabot Tower Bristol"; Photo left "Cabot Bronze" by John C. Dyer, May 2012)   

This sculpture symbolizes the vibrant unity of Bristol’s past and present. Cabot’s character-filled face gazes across the new development.   

His character filled hands rest casually crossed before him. He seems to tie together Bristol’s glorious past, vibrant present, and promising future. 

(Photo far left "Cabot Surveys Bristol Channel"; Photo left "Cabot Bronze Detail" by John C. Dyer, May 2012)       

 

Beware the Tides of Greek Political Extremism

By Patricia H. Kushlis

Maybe Greece never should have become a member of the EURO-zone.  But it did.  Or maybe the EURO-zone should have been structured far differently so that it could deal with problematic states and regions such as Greece through transfers not loans. But this didn’t happen.

Maybe Greece’s political leaders should have behaved far more responsibly – immediately implementing at least major reforms that the Troika told them needed to be done two plus years ago to right the ailing economy. But they didn’t begin in earnest until a caretaker government took power November 11, 2011.  The domestic political and economic costs were simply too painful for either of the two mainstream parties that have dominated the country's politics for years.

Maybe the Troika and Germany should not have declared that the May 6 election was one that would determine whether Greece would stay in the EU, a claim also made by the two major Greek political parties that have alternated in power.  But it and they did.   

Maybe the exasperated Germans should not have come across as imperialist overlords to the Greek populace – perceptions are important in a country’s psyche – but that happened too.   That shrillness has resulted in untoward international consequences propelling what could and should have been contained as an internal EURO-zone dispute.

Instead the handling of the dispute has unsettled, once again, worldwide financial markets.  Yet Greece’s economy, after all, represents only 2.5% of the Euro-zone total and is dwarfed by all the others.     

And maybe the Greeks – and non-Greeks with capital in Greek banks should not be withdrawing their savings at a rate akin to a run on the banks.  An average of $5.1 billion dollars has been flowing out of Greece every month since 2009 when the debt crisis first broke and since the May 6 elections, Greeks have “pulled nearly $900 million in savings from their banks,” according to the May 17, New York Times.  

In whose interest is it?

But is it really in anyone’s interest – and this includes Germany, the rest of Europe and the US - for the country and its people to be treated the way they have been over the past two years and not expect untoward and dangerous political repercussions in the country?

Long Memories

Memories may be short elsewhere, but they’re not in Greece.  It’s not that history is doomed to repeat itself, hopefully people learn from history’s mistakes and don’t repeat them, but when the political center hollows out as has just happened the radical fringes rise to the fore.  Twentieth century Greek history, after all, alternated between democracy, right wing military coups and a nasty Civil War that followed a brutal Nazi occupation.

Reckoning with Russia

By Patricia H. Kushlis

Well before Vladimir Putin’s formal re-relection to the Russian Presidency earlier this month, the Russian foreign policy machine vociferously complained and continuously whined about western interference in Russia’s internal politics.  The foreign policy line emanating from the top was designed to play upon deeply held Russian popular angst of intervention by foreign powers.

As a part of Putin’s election campaign, he charged that the West had launched a nefarious campaign to undermine his candidacy as well as Russian political institutions in order, presumably, to weaken and perhaps destroy the country.

These charges are now being aimed at Michael McFaul, President Obama’s new activist US Ambassador to Moscow who is being targeted in a Russian domestic propaganda campaign by the Putin controlled Russian media for meeting with dissidents.

Propagating the Kremlin line 

Unfortunately, this very same Kremlin anti-western interference line has been bought and is being propagated by individuals in the American media.  The accusation is being framed as an either/or dichotomy – the kind Western media love to broadcast because, well a simple dichotomy is understandable to their average reader.

Former Business Week Moscow correspondent Paul Starobin made this case during a March 29 talk at the Baker Institute for Public Policy in Houston.  But Starobin is not the only western journalist to buy into the Kremlin “us-or-them” line – and that’s not the only part of Putin’s foreign policy line that Starobin ascribes to either.

The gist of the argument is that if the US wants to have good relations with Russia, it needs to cease and desist contacts with and support for Russian pro-democracy activists.

The Ambassador Effect

By Patricia H. Kushlis

I have been having an ongoing e-mail conversation about whether and what kind of influence the US and Western Europe can and should have on the political situation in Russia in view of the recent anti-government demonstrations protesting Putin’s cavalier changing places announcement last September and the well-documented and blatant electoral fraud in the December 4 parliamentary elections which was employed – almost Soviet style - to maintain his party in power.   

No, this was not a send-in-the-NATO-tanks-as-Putin-plays-hardball-with-the-Russian-political-opposition sort of conversation.  It was more about moral suasion and whether the new US Ambassador can have a positive influence on Russian internal politics at a time when the situation is more fluid than at any other period since 1991 only this time with Putin and his henchmen assuming the roles of the drunken coup-makers of twenty years ago.

What sort of influence can an Ambassador have on another country’s internal affairs – if at all?  This is what the tough and broader question boils down to.  Or should a US Ambassador in a country like Russia, China or even Syria confine his or her activities to dealing with the government in power as the best way to represent this country’s interests. 

There’s been a fair amount of play in the US news media and American academia about soft power and the importance of an Ambassador’s role as the country’s chief public face or public diplomacy representative and what sort of message that individual sends or should send to the people and the government of the country to which he or she is accredited.

A Remembrance of Moscow, December 8, 1991

By Patricia H. Kushlis

Twenty years ago today the heads of the Russian Federation, Ukraine and Belarus met in a nature preserve in Belarus to form the CIS (Commonwealth of Independent States).   Their declaration sounded the Soviet Union’s death knell although the international recognition of the independence of the three Baltic Republics in early September in the wake of the failed coup against Gorbachev had presaged the final blow.  President Mikhail Gorbachev formally disbanded the USSR on December 25, 1991 and the red flag with the yellow hammer and sickle on it was lowered from over the Kremlin for the last time. (Photo left by PHKushlis, Church of the Apostles, Kremlin, December 1991).

That surprise December 8 announcement was one of those events that remain etched firmly in my brain.  Not because it came as such a shock in the overall scheme of things Soviet at the time.  By then, the empire’s impending dissolution had been obvious and imminent.  The question had become when, not if.

It had been argued that if Gorbachev had only agreed to recognize the illegal incorporation of the Baltic Republics into the Soviet Union under Stalin and released them from bondage in 1989 or thereabouts that a Soviet Union of 12 republics could have continued to exist.  Whether accurate or not, it hadn’t happened and the independence movements that had begun in the northeastern tip of Estonia had spread like wildfire throughout the European republics and the Caucasus thereafter. (Photo right by PHKushlis: Soviet mouse caught in Estonian blue, black and white trap, 1991).

Perhaps the real reason I remember the December 8 declaration so vividly was because I was in Moscow when the announcement was made. It came via a grainy black and white newscast in Russian on the small television in our hotel room shortly before dinner while thawing out from a bitterly cold walk to see the White House where Yeltsin’s government was still housed. 

It happened over the three day Finnish Independence Day holiday weekend.   

The US Embassy in Helsinki and Finnish schools had been closed, of course, in honor of the Finnish holiday on December 6. Finnair had a special flight and hotel stay offer and we had wanted to see Moscow again after a hiatus of 11 years before leaving the neighborhood after four years in Finland. 

When the Symbol is the Message – Clinton, Obama and the South China Sea

By Patricia H. Kushlis

On November 16, 2011, Secretary of State Hillary Clinton spoke from the deck of a destroyer, the USS Fitzgerald, in Manila Bay.  She delivered America’s message in Philippine waters docked next to the capital’s shore - the gist of which included a not-so-veiled warning to the Chinese military to play by international rules and keep paws off the barren islands and rich resources resting under the surface of the South China Sea in territory claimed by four other Asian countries in addition to China.  

While there have been decades-old overlapping territorial claims among the five (Brunei, Malaysia, Taiwan, the Philippines and China), China is the single protagonist to have staked out the South China Sea as its own bathtub, a position which runs counter to the US policy of freedom of navigation, the international Law of the Sea Convention, and America’s own economic and trade interests in the region. 

In a press conference in Canberra on the same day, President Barack Obama and Australian Prime Minister Gillard announced the intent to rotate units of US Marines on Australian bases for training and exercises as well to increase US military flights out of Australian airfields along the country’s north coast. The six month rotations there are to begin the middle of 2012 with 250 US Marines ultimately increasing to as many as 2,500.

Obama and Clinton then moved on to the East Asian Summit in Bali where all but the leaders of three ASEAN countries spoke in support of the US position on the South China Sea.  The strongest statements came from the Philippines, Vietnam and Singapore. 

The photos tell the story

Clinton’s visit to Manila commemorated the 60^th Anniversary of the signing of the bilateral US-Philippines Mutual Defense Treaty.  That the ceremony was held on a US warship suggested in and of itself a made-for-media story with high profile visuals oozing with historical symbolism.   In essence the evocative photos told the story – the contents of the speech were almost secondary. 

Put those visuals next to photos of General Douglas MacArthur’s famous farewell “I shall return” declaration uttered upon departure after President Roosevelt ordered him to leave Corregidor Island in March 11, 1942 in the face of an overwhelming Japanese military invasion of the Islands.

Add in the pictures from 1898 when the US Navy steamed into Manila Bay and took the Philippines by force from the Spanish as an almost forgotten part of the Spanish-American War which otherwise focused on the battles of the Caribbean brought on by the Hearst media empire’s yellow journalism of the day.  

Yes, there were some 50-70 protestors in Manila who objected to Clinton’s presence last week – but in reality their numbers were negligible in comparison with the mass protests that have rocked Manila in the past.

South China Sea Policy Change

US policy towards the South China Sea changed over a year ago after the Vietnamese and Filipino governments objected to a new Chinese assertiveness in these long disputed waters. Both Southeast Asian governments voiced objections and turned to the US for support.  That the US demonstrated this support so visibly and at such high levels was not missed by any of the parties involved.  It also provoked – as likely expected – an angry retort from the Chinese.

The Filipinos understood the symbols; the Chinese got the message

The photos of Secretary Clinton speaking from the deck of a US warship in the harbor of its former colony surrounded by Filipino military brass in itself spoke volumes.

Combine Clinton’s speech with Obama’s nearly simultaneously timed press conference in Australia in which he also reiterated that the US had abandoned neither its interests nor its allies in Southeast Asia and Australia. In fact he stressed that the US would up its presence in this immensely vibrant economic part of the globe as the US military presence in Iraq and Afghanistan finally winds down.

Unlike the controversial and often negative reception to actions of previous American governments in decades past, however, the US defense presence this time around was solicited by the Southeast Asians and the Australians to help the region counter-balance an increasingly powerful China.

For the most part and until quite recently, the Chinese have almost exclusively focused on building trade and aid relations with their southern neighbors – approaches designed to win friends and positively influence the neighbors. This has included the signing of CAFTA or the China-ASEAN Free Trade Area agreement in 2010 as well as financing infrastructure development projects in Southeast Asia’s poorer parts over a number of years.

Yet, as with any large power on the ascendancy and especially one located nearby, the smaller neighbors prefer not to catch pneumonia if and when the elephant or the lion sneezes.  Furthermore, their sense of unique cultural and historic identities in this colorful part of globe combines with their singularly strong aversion to colonialism and vassaldom that come to the fore whenever a large beast stirs.   

Previous WV posts on this topic by Patricia H. Kushlis:

The US, China and the South China Sea - What's Changed?  July 2010

 

Germany and the neo-Nazis - will the Germans finally rid themselves of their troubled past?

By Patricia H. Kushlis

In Monday’s New York Times, Nicholas Kulish reported on a more than decade long outbreak of suspected violent neo-Nazism that has stalked Germany from Rostock on the Baltic to Munich and Nuremburg in Bavaria since at least 1998.  According to Kulish, the lengthy crime wave is likely connected to a loosely organized group calling itself the National Socialist Underground.

The story came to light on November 4 following an explosion and fire that gutted an apartment in Zwickau in eastern Germany where several members of the group had been living – two of whom are now dead in an apparent double suicide. A third turned herself into police.  A fourth was arrested separately.     

Members of the Underground have apparently murdered at least ten people, committed a minimum of 14 bank robberies and set off a bombing in Cologne in 2004.  Several other bombings – including one in Saarbrucken in 1999 and another in Berlin in 2002 may also turn out to be the work of this same group.  The scope and types of their actions are reminiscent of the left-wing urban guerrilla Baader-Meinhof Gang otherwise known as the Red Army Faction that operated in the 1967s and 1970s - except that their political leanings and targets are not.

The times are also very different.   

Whereas Baader-Meinhof targeted the German elite and US military personnel at the height of the Cold War, today’s National Socialist Underground has seemingly concentrated on murdering Turkish street vendors and small shopkeepers although one bombing – in a Jewish cemetery in Berlin – could be another piece of their handiwork.

The members of the left wing Baader-Meinhof Group turned out to be children of the middle class.   How large is the National Socialist Underground and how does it operate?  Who are these people and what motivated them to engage in militant acts? What is its relationship to German political parties, movements and even the security services?

Right wing extremists in Germany have been under surveillance and largely kept under the carpet ever since the end of World War II.   After the Berlin Wall’s fall and the incorporation of East Germany into the Federal Republic, German right wing militant extremism erupted with a vengeance in the East where it continues to receive its greatest support.  When the Communist lid came off in 1989, the neo-Nazis popped up like toadstools after a rain.

Glaring economic discrepancies and far higher unemployment in the East compared with the prosperous West likely helped trigger the initial extremist reaction especially among minimally educated young men disillusioned with life under Communism but unfit to compete in the West.

Germany's Federal Constitutional Court

Germany’s Federal Constitutional Court has the ability to declare radical groups illegal – and it does so.  This keeps them out of the government but it doesn’t mean they don’t exist – some in shadowy forms – lurking beneath the surface. The National Democratic Party – the extreme right’s closest legal representative – competes in elections.  It currently has seats in two of Germany’s state parliaments – Saxony and Mecklenburg - but none at the federal level.  Its members number 7,000 down from a couple of years ago.

An effort in 2003 on the part of both houses of the German parliament to declare the party illegal failed when it was learned that a number of the NPD's inner circle were undercover agents or informants of the German secret services.  But what does that mean?  And why did it take an explosion, a gutted apartment, joint suicides and a hunted woman turning herself in to the police for the group to be exposed to the public?  

A dream of former times than never existed   

The Continuing Greek Saga in which Politics Trumps Economics - November in Greece

By Patricia H. Kushlis

Is this a 21^st century version of Nero fiddling while Rome burns?  And if so, is the modern day Nero the Greek politicians, various players in the Eurozone from Angela Merkel and Nikolas Sarkozy to the leaders of the European Central Bank, the IMF, or all of them put together?  (Photo top left: Greek parliament, by PHKushlis, September 2006).  

In Greece where a tragedy of Herculean proportions plays out on the pavement in and around Constitution Square as well as at the President’s palace, the economic crisis has not only turned into a full blown domestic political crisis but also one which could take down the Eurozone and more with it.  It could and should be contained – but that’s dependent upon the Greeks getting their political house in order and the Europeans with Germany at the helm doing what needs to be done – not just half-way measures – to stave off Armageddon for yet another day.    

In reality, the Greek economy is tiny and composes just 2% of that of the Eurozone but it is still the 32^nd largest in the world. As a result of its dire economic straits, the country’s manufacturing sector declined by over 8% between March 2010 and 2011 and what began as a good year for tourism – a chief money earner – will likely have suffered because of strikes and public demonstrations representing popular discontent.  Moreover, in the first quarter of 2010, youth unemployment had reached over 36%.   

There’s also something amiss when a government is forced to borrow at ever higher interest rates to satisfy its creditors. Greece is locked out of international bond markets because of sky-high interest rates and must rely on its EU partners to avoid default.  A sovereign debt problem that could have been managed early on has turned into a death spiral in and of itself.     

If the Eurozone monetary union had been better conceived and implemented, Greece’s economic weaknesses simply wouldn’t matter that much.  But that didn’t happen. How the Europeans allowed the country’s debt to mushroom to this degree is beyond my expertise but The New York Times November 6, 2011 Business Section report “The Denials that Trapped Greece,” is, I understand, right on the money.

When push comes to shove, Greek politics and economics are usually intertwined.  Politics, as much as economics, is at the heart of this crisis.  

Normally, political parties in healthy democracies keep each other honest.  The watch-dog role of opposition parties is at the heart of democratic governance.  Lord knows, the Greeks invented democracy centuries ago on those very stones in Athens – or at least ones close by – where today’s Greeks have become mired in such a deep sovereign debt crisis that one would think the problem would bring its feuding politicians together to save the country from economic and political ruin.

Apparently not yet.   

The sandbox bickering between former Prime Minister George Papandreou and opposition leader Antonis Samaras, the country’s two major party leaders – once roommates at Amherst College in Massachusetts and later bitter enemies – continued unabated throughout the weekend.  To make matters worse, throw in the shrill fight over leadership between Papandreou and Finance Minister Evangelos Venizelos - within PASOK itself, the country’s majority party.

The country’s president Karolos Papoulias finally stepped in. Papandreou resigned Sunday and the two political leaders have been told to meet on Monday to determine who will next lead the country and serve in the interim cabinet.  The date for new elections will also need to be set.  This is part of the ongoing discussion between officials representing both parties according to AP.

PASOK and ND both culprits

Certainly major mistakes were made along the way – but the country does not have only PASOK to blame.  The previous New Democracy government overspent and over-borrowed in the good times. Then it hid the size of the country’s financial deficit when the global recession hit.  The extent of the problem only came to light when PASOK won the elections in 2009, examined the books and rang the alarm bells.

Promises, promises . . .

What PASOK did not do subsequently was make the unpopular and substantial structural changes needed to reverse course: the wealthy continue to find ways to avoid the tax collector, and the clientage system is simply too strong and deeply entrenched in the political system to be easily shaken off. Moreover, ND, the chief opposition party – although its leadership changed from Karamanlis to Samaras in the interim – thought playing party politics more important than calling for a bipartisan coalition capable of dealing with a country in shock.  It’s still not clear that Samaras really understands that message but one can hope.

In the meantime, both ND and PASOK are perhaps only finally recognizing what 52% of the public apparently already realizes - that the situation has deteriorated so much that neither major party alone can resolve the crisis but that together they might have a chance.