Category Archives: World News

The Swedes are coming for you…

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As I was embarking on a trip through the local IKEA store yesterday, I happened upon a scene that made the very red of my oh-so-American blood boil…

A Swedish flag, flying at the same level as the Texas flag. AND the American flag.

As we all know from my comments on a nutjob in Reno who committed criminal mischief, it is illegal to fly another nation’s flag even with the Stars and Stripes.

As we also all know from my comments on how the War on Terror has made us all incredibly stupid, IKEA was recently the setting for an alleged-attempted terror attack by drunken joggers.

Now my crack investigation skills have revealed the following chillinginformation:

I can only conclude the following: Sweden is conducting a covert campaign to conquer and colonize America. We must fight IKEA at every turn–could it be possible that, if you assemble the parts correctly, a trained Swedish operative disguised as a helpful IKEA employee could construct, say, a tank?

Beware, America, for the TYLÖSAND conquest may be soon at hand! Can I get a “Hell ja“?

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Those neocons and their tiny peckers…

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I have this theory about the hubbub surrounding Iranian president Ahmadinejad’s visit to the Big Apple–I think the neocons who are chanting the loudest for war with Iran are pants-wettingly terrified of actually facing the man, mano a mano, and having to say directly, out loud, what they think, as well as face the fact that many Iranians had the gall to support us after 9/11 (which undercuts the neocon view of all Iranians as Evil Brown People). It’s so much easier to keep him at arm’s length and portray him as a cartoon villain, isn’t it?

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Et tu, Belgium?

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I posted the other day about similarities between Iraq today and Yugoslavia 15 years ago, and how I hope (certainly naively) that Iraq will go the way of Czechoslovakia more than Yugoslavia. The other major split-state crisis in the world, of course, is Israel/Palestine, but now it turns out (h/t Volokh Conspiracy) that another potential separation may occur in Belgium, of all places.

“We are two different nations, an artificial state created as a buffer between big powers, and we have nothing in common except a king, chocolate and beer,” said Filip Dewinter, the leader of Vlaams Belang, or Flemish Bloc, the extreme-right, xenophobic Flemish party, in an interview. “It’s ‘bye-bye, Belgium’ time.”
Radical Flemish separatists like Mr. Dewinter want to slice the country horizontally along ethnic and economic lines: to the north, their beloved Flanders — where Dutch (known locally as Flemish) is spoken and money is increasingly made — and to the south, French-speaking Wallonia, where a kind of provincial snobbery was once polished to a fine sheen and where today old factories dominate the gray landscape.

“There are two extremes, some screaming that Belgium will last forever and others saying that we are standing at the edge of a ravine,” said Caroline Sägesser, a Belgian political analyst at Crisp, a socio-political research organization in Brussels. “I don’t believe Belgium is about to split up right now. But in my lifetime? I’d be surprised if I were to die in Belgium.”

 

With the headquarters of both NATO and the European Union in Brussels, the crisis is not limited to this country because it could embolden other European separatist movements, among them the Basques, the Lombards and the Catalans.

Since the kingdom of Belgium was created as an obstacle to French expansionism in 1830, it has struggled for cohesion. Anyone who has spoken French in a Flemish city quickly gets a sense of the mutual hostility that is a part of daily life here. The current crisis dates from June 10, when the Flemish Christian Democrats, who demand greater autonomy for Flanders, came in first with one-fifth of the seats in Parliament.

Turns out there are ten languages spoken in Belgium, but the vast majority speak either Dutch or French (slightly more speak Dutch). I’m one of those geeks who finds the Ethnologue fascinating–the USA has 238 languages listed. Not all of those languages are exactly equal: English has 210 million speakers in the U.S., while Eyak apparently has one (who is 89 years old, lives in Alaska, and should probably be writing everything down and/or offering classes–although I wonder if she would have any takers).

Back to my original point, though–the trend in the world for some time has been for distinct ethnic and/or national group to want to form their own countries. It has happened in places like East Timor and the aforementioned Czechoslovakia. There are often rumblings about independence in Quebec and Puerto Rico. It’s hard for people born in the U.S. to understand this, I think, because (except perhaps for Minutemen types) the basic idea of being “American” is constantly being redefined. The Flemish people were Flemish long before “Belgium” existed, and the same is true for Kurds and other groups in Iraq and other countries. We are in way over our heads, is all I’m saying.

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There is no country to hold together, really

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Out of the ashes of World War I, the victorious Allies threw together an entirely new country, composed of disparate ethnic and national groups, perhaps somewhat linked by language or religion, but lacking any long-standing historical ties to one another. This “country,” as it were, had never existed before, nor had these people been expected to live together under a single flag. A strongman dictator held it all together, often through violence and repression and often through sheer force of personality. Eventually, however, the strongman fell, and all the pieces came apart in an explosion of violence that claimed hundreds of thousands of lives while the world looked on.

I’m talking, of course, about the Kingdom of Serbs, Croats, and Slovenes, which later came to be known simply as Yugoslavia. The “country” was cobbled together out of pieces of defeated Austria-Hungary and added to Serbia and Montenegro. The strongman I refer to is Josip Broz Tito, who led a partisan rebellion against the Nazis during World War II and then unified the “country” under a communist regime. The only thing “Yugoslavs” had in common was that they all belonged to “Slavic” ethnic groups and occupied a southern area of Europe (“yug” is a common Slavic root meaning “south”).

Tito was Yugoslavia’s president from 1953 until his death in 1980. He probably was the only force holding the country together, but his belief in a unified Yugoslavia seemed unflappable. Among his famous quotes is the following: “None of our republics would be anything if we weren’t all together; but we have to create our own history – history of United Yugoslavia, also in the future.”

It would be another 11 years before everything really hit the fan, but a lot happened in preparation for the breakdown. In my humble opinion, blame lies almost exclusively with Slobodan Milošević, who exploited Serb nationalism in his rise to power. Beginning in 1987, when he first played on the fears of the Serb minority in Kosovo, he set the stage for much of the chaos that followed.

The rest of the story is pretty well-known. Beginning in 1991, the pieces began to break off: within a year, Slovenia, Croatia, Macedonia, and Bosnia and Herzgovina declared independence. Serbia and Montenegro stuck together for a while, keeping the name Yugoslavia until 2003, and then finally separating in 2006. The process was painful and nasty, to say the least, and it added new phrases to the global lexicon like “ethnic cleansing.” In the end, the world sees that “Yugoslavia” was an artificial construct of Serbs, Croatians, Bosnians, Macedonians, Albanians (in Kosovo and Macedonia), Montenegrins, Slovenians, and Hungarians (in Vojvodina, northern Serbia).

Why do I bring all of this up? Well, after World War I, there was another defeated empire to dissect: the Ottoman Empire. Although it once extended to the outskirts of Vienna and deep into Africa, the Ottoman Empire was pretty much used up by 1918. France and Britain carved up the remnants–one of Britain’s spoils was the Mandate of Iraq, which combined three Ottoman provinces (Baghdad, Basra, and Mosul) into a single state. “Iraq” became independent of Britain in 1932 under a British-installed monarchy that lasted until 1958. Then there was a military coup, followed by Saddam Hussein’s rise to power and assumption of the presidency in 1979.

I have commented before on the vast array of ethnic identities present in Iraq: Sunni Arab, Shia Arab, predominately Sunni Kurd, Turkomen, Assyrian, Yazidi, and so forth. We have seen what can happen when a haphazard pastiche of ethnic groups are thrown together in a single state, held together by a dictator, and then that dictator leaves the scene one way or another (usually by death, let’s face it). Anyone with a shred of intellectual honesty and integrity will agree that Iraq is now in a civil war, one in which “ethnic cleansing” is once again an appropriate term to use. Iraq may still be a state appearing on a map, but it is not a nation.

There may be hope (although I feel like I am only including this final paragraph in order to not be totally depressed): another entirely new country was created after World War I, whose history and ultimate divorce was much less of a blot on history. That country was Czechoslovakia, which peacefully split into its two constituent parts in 1993, in what was called the “Velvet Divorce,” named after the country’s comparatively peaceful “Velvet Revolution” of 1989.

Iraq already looks a hell of a lot like Yugoslavia. Is there a chance for it to become more like Czechoslovakia? One can hope, but I doubt it. The ultimate breakup of Yugoslavia threatened wider conflagrations, as does the possible breakup of Iraq. Since neither country really existed as a nation to begin with, perhaps there is some sort of inevitability to it. The question then becomes whether we want or need to be in the middle of the mess.

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Top 10 places to never, ever go

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The 10 most polluted places on Earth have been identified by the U.S.-based Blacksmith Institute (h/t to Truthdig, and these are apparently in no particular order):

  • Sumgayit, Azerbaijan; Potentially 275,000 affected
  • Linfen, China; Potentially 3m affected
  • Tianying, China; Potentially 140,000 affected
  • Sukinda, India; Potentially 2.6m affected
  • Vapi, India; Potentially 71,000 affected
  • La Oroya, Peru; Potentially 35,000 affected
  • Dzerzhinsk, Russia; Potentially 300,000 affected
  • Norilsk, Russia; Potentially 134,000 affected
  • Chernobyl, Ukraine; Potentially 5.5m affected
  • Kabwe, Zambia; Potentially 255,000 affected

Of this list, I have previously heard of only one, Chernobyl, and it is hardly surprising that it is still not a good place to summer. Being me, of course, I want to know more. The BBC offered help on the three newest inductees to the list:

Among the new sites listed in 2007 were Tianying in China, where potentially 140,000 people were at risk from lead poisoning from a massive lead production base there.

 

The report also said that in the Indian town of Sukinda there were 12 mines operating without environmental controls, leaching dangerous chemicals into water supplies.

Sumgayit in Azerbaijan was also included in the report, which said the former Soviet industrial base was polluting the area with industrial chemicals and heavy metals.

According to the report, cancer rates in Sumgayit were as much as 51% higher than the national average and that genetic mutations and birth defects were commonplace.

That still leaves six cities undescribed, so now I turn to Google (I leave assessments of the objectivity and reliability of each account to the discretion of my intrepid readers, although it is clear some of the articles cited below have an axe to grind–which doesn’t mean they’re wrong).

Linfen, China:

According to China’s latest pollution rankings, the country’s most polluted city is now Urumqi. Linfen, the city that formally held this title, is showing some small progress, says a recent article in The Guardian. Swallowed up by 50m tonnes of coal mined each year in the nearby hills of Shanxi province and located smack in the middle of a 12-mile industrial belt, Linfen plains to shutdown 160 of 196 iron foundries, and 57 of 153 coking plants by the end of 2007. In 2006, if you lived in Linfen, you inhaled 163 days of unhealthy air—but that’s a 15 day improvement when compared to 2005.

Vapi, India:

If India’s environment is on the whole healthier than its giant neighbor China’s, that’s because India is developing much more slowly. But that’s changing, starting in towns like Vapi, which sits at the southern end of a 400-km-long belt of industrial estates. For the citizens of Vapi, the cost of growth has been severe: levels of mercury in the city’s groundwater are reportedly 96 times higher than WHO safety levels, and heavy metals are present in the air and the local produce.

La Oroya, Peru:

The health and environmental crisis in La Oroya, Peru, reached a new stage in December, 2004, when the government stated its intention to allow a metal-processing plant to delay implementation of its environmental management plan for four years.

Owned by the Missouri-based Doe Run Corporation, the plant is largely responsible for the dangerously high blood lead levels found in the children of this community. Ninety-nine percent of children living in and around La Oroya have blood lead levels that exceed acceptable amounts, according to studies carried out by the Director General of Environmental Health in Peru in 1999. Lead poisoning is known to be particularly harmful to the mental development of children.

Dzerzhinsk, Russia:

A once-secret manufacturing center of the Soviet Union’s defense industry, Dzerzhinsk (population 300,000) has hosted many chemical factories, including production facilities for Sarin and VX nerve gas. Lead additives for gasoline, mustard gas, munitions, and other highly-polluting products have also had their birth in this city. While many of these factories are now shuttered, the chemical industry still employs over a quarter of local residents.

The groundwater and soil around the city, about 250 miles east of Moscow, remain severely polluted with phenol, arsenic, dioxins, heavy metals, and a host of other toxins. Indeed, a dominant ecological landmark in the area is the “White Sea”, a 100-acre-wide lake of toxic sludge discharged from nearby factories.

Clearly, Dzerzhinsk faces huge challenges in managing this legacy of toxic wastes. It holds the ignominious title of “The Most Chemically Polluted Town” in the world. Greenpeace claims that the average life expectancy of city residents may have shrunk to a mere 45 years. The city’s annual death rate, 17 per 1,000 people, is much higher than Russia’s national average of 14 per 1,000. And, according to researchers at the Nizhny Novgorod Research Institute of Hygene and Occupational Pathology, rates of reproductive health disturbances affecting women and fetuses, as well as rates of respiratory and pulmonary diseases in children, are dangerously high. In study after study, the health impacts of these chemicals continue to dampen enthusiasm and drain resources needed for economic and social recovery in Dzerzhinsk.

Norilsk, Russia:

Norilsk sits on a landscape stripped bare, its grizzled inhabitants choking on fumes not yet named in the periodic table of elements. For 100 miles in each direction a dead zone permiates, the snow is colored yellow, a putrid mix of mercury, cyanide, cobolt, and question marks. Seeds which blow in from greener pastures die on impact, with a rare few managing to sprout an inch, before turning gray and melting into dust.

Russians have toiled, eaten each other, and died here long before Soylant Green was filmed. Human bodies and their corresponding memories, hopes, and dreams are turned to nickel, melted down and sold for comforts of the West. A Russian expression goes like this: “The sooner you are imprisoned, the sooner you’ll get out”.

The road to Norilsk is no longer an involuntary one. Every slave of the smelter has a choice, work for $100 a month in your home city, or trek north for a salary of $600. The tradeoff is a life expectancy of 40 years. Weeds do not grow in Norilsk, but cancerous nodules do.

Kabwe, Zambia:

Kabwe, the second largest city in Zambia, has found itself on the top-ten of a new list of “the world’s worst polluted places” due to very high lead concentrations left over from previous mining operations. Average blood levels of lead among children in some townships are five to ten times the level considered dangerous.

Kabwe is one of six towns situated around the Copperbelt, once Zambia’s thriving industrial base. In 1902, rich deposits of lead were discovered here, leading to a century-long mining operation that never bothered too much about environmental standards and public health.

I suppose it’s some small relief for me personally that my six years spent in Houston were not as damaging as they might have been.

Mostly, though, it sounds like these countries, Russia especially, need more hippies.

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Today’s global geography lesson

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I have always been a fan of maps, but I must admit I haven’t spent as much time looking at them lately as I did when I was a kid. It recently occurred to me that I have a certain obligation, as an intelligent human and taxpaying American, to understand the geography of these countries we are occupying, because I’m not sure the folks in charge fully understand it. I’m happy to share a bit of what I have learned, although “what I have learned” mostly amounts to a broadened understanding of my own ignorance. Iraq’s geography includes tribes and ethnoreligious groups we rarely hear about on the news. Two maps particularly intrigued me:

—Iraq: Distribution of Ethnoreligious Groups and Major Tribes From Iraq: Country Profile [map], CIA, January 2003 (215K) and pdf format (216K)
—Iraq: Distribution of Religious Groups and Ethnic Groups from Map No. 503930 1978 (163K)

I had never heard of the Yazidi before this week, although they may have been the subject of an earlier post. I also had no idea the Mandaeans were still around. On the ethnic side of things, you have the Kurds, the Iranians, the Turkomen (not to be confused with Turks), the Assyrians, and so forth. That’s at least three different religions (four if you count Sunni and Shia separately, along with Yezidi and Madaeanism, not to mention random Jewish and Christian populations) and five languages (Arabic, Kurdish, Aramaic, Persian, and Turkic).

Afghanistan is even more fun (so to speak). I’m not even going to try to count all the provinces. The 11 ethnolinguistic groups listed on at least one map are also quite diverse: some Iranian language family, some Turkic, a little bit of “Other” thrown in.

Given how determined some people are to have a single official language here in the U.S., I kind of wonder if we can ever really understand the hodgepodge that is these two countries.

Man, that’s kind of depressing. I hope you were at least enlightened a little.

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Hey, if America can do it…

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Zimbabwe. Not the number one place you think of for political freedom. Now their new warrantless wiretapping law has as its justification…wait for it…the U.S. warrantless wiretapping law!!!

How proud we should be.

Fuck.

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Dear Iraq insurgents…

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…when can America expect a thank-you note for our largesse?

The US military cannot account for 190,000 AK-47 assault rifles and pistols given to the Iraqi security forces, an official US report says.

The Government Accountability Office (GAO) says the Pentagon cannot track about 30% of the weapons distributed in Iraq over the past three years.

The Pentagon did not dispute the figures, but said it was reviewing arms deliveries procedures.

About $19.2bn has been spent by the US since 2003 on Iraqi security forces.

GAO, the investigative arm of the US Congress, said at least $2.8bn of this money was used to buy and deliver weapons and other equipment.

Correspondents say it is now feared many of the weapons are being used against US forces on the ground in Iraq.

I’m sure these 190,000 weapons were not intended as a gift, but you should still at least say thank you or send us some cookies.

Oh, and also, please stop killing people. I know, I know, we’re doing it too, but two wrongs hardly make a right, do they?

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Meanwhile, in other parts of the Middle East

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Juan Cole has a great post today on the Kurds in Iraq, Iran, Turkey and elsewhere, and how this whole U.S.-occupation-of-Iraq thing could lead to bigger problems.

[T]here is at the least an issue in the Kurdish terrorist groups that are operating from US-occupied Iraq against Iraq’s neighbors. The US is not able to stop the PKK from operating against an ally, Turkey, so I don’t think it could stop the Iranian Kurdish terrorists, PEJAK, from operating against Iran. But it is also probably true that there are elements in the US military, in the intelligence services, and in the Washington power elite that are connected to PEJAK and are either happy about its activities or subtly enabling them.

It’s a lot of speculation, hearsay, and other inconclusive whatnot, but it is worth being reminded that there is a whole nation in the region that spans several countries and may piss off a lot of said countries while getting pretty pissed itself. Kurdistan was supposed to become a separate state after World War I, but it didn’t happen. Now Kurdistan exists in Iraq, Iran, Turkey, Syria, and slivers of Armenia and Azerbaijan, among the largest distinct ethnic groups without their own state. The Iraqi Kurds have done alright since 1991, but things can get complicated really fast for all of Kurdistan if we’re not paying attention. And we’re not.

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