Just Another Dull Day On The Planet

It's been another of those typical days in the neighborhood. Nothing too dramatic. Nothing too dismal. Nothing too exciting. Just the same old same old.

The killing of Guinea-Bissau's President Jaoa Bernardo Vieira was hardly enough to stifle a yawn. It was predictable. Viera's days were numbered--and not with a large figure--when his goons were believed by members of the G-B military to have been behind the murder of chief of staff General Batista Tagme Na Waie by a bomb last Friday.

The two old comrades-in-arms from the glory days of the insurgency against Portugal thirty plus years ago have been at mutual gunpoint for years. The capping of one would invariably lead to the dusting of the other. So it has.

The only interesting wrinkle to this otherwise humdrum piece of commonplace politics African style is G-B's role as a major drug transhipment point. For South American exporters of cocaine G-B is a reasonable distance for twin engine aircraft delivery of cargo. Making G-B even more attractive as an intermediate stop for drugs en route to Europe is the absence of 1) a navy, 2) a competent army, 3) a competent internal security force. Elevating the desirability of G-B yet another notch is the presence of 1) extreme poverty, 2) extreme poverty, 3) extreme poverty.

G-B has no economic reason to exist. It's only export product is cashew nuts for which the global market is quite finite. Given the paucity of resources, the presence of overgrazing and overfishing, a life expectancy of 45.5 years and a per capita annual income of roughly six hundred bucks, it's not surprising that the place is awash in corruption and folks desperate to make a buck or two lending a hand to the flow of illegal drugs from South America to emporia in Europe.

The presence of the South American cartels in G-B raises the interesting possibility that the short wave of high-level killings was sponsored from without. The hits were carried off with a lack of collateral deaths which is remarkable in G-B's rather sanguinary history. The Geek wonders if each of the newly dead G-B heavies was a client of a different cartel.

In any event the coke will keep on flowing through since in Europe, as in the US, an old Bob Dylan lyric applies, "Everybody must get stoned." Which brings up another lyric from the Sixties applicable to the moralists and drug cops today, "When will they ever learn? When will they ever learn?"

Elsewhere on the planet SecState Clinton batted two for two in the never-ending World Series of Realpolitik. (Gotta give the lady credit. Foreign policy seems much more her metier than health care reform.)

Reportedly she told the UAE ForMin that she held no hopes for a favorable Iranian response to the recent American demarche on holding some sort of conversations. How right she is.

Whether inadvertent or not, the Iranians showed their intransigence in an unusual way. The Tehran government stated that the Iranian filmakers would not be allowed to meet with a visiting bunch from Hollywood unless and until the evil Americans apologised for anti-Iranian propaganda in the movies. The mullahs' mouthpiece specifically referenced the hit film 300 for portraying the ancient Persians as evil, mean, nasty and aggressive in their wars with the Greeks. The Tehran crew was also perturbed by The Wrestler for reasons which elude rational consideration.

Thus the demands from Iranian president Ahmedinejad for US apologies over all and sundry continue to be the theme du jour. Considering that reality, SecState Clinton sounded almost optimistic in her expectation of nothing.

If SecState Clinton wants to continue her run of realism, she had best not be taken in by Vladimir Putin. And, she would be well advised to warn her boss not to swallow the patented Vladimir (Hey-I'm-The Guy-You-Can-Do-Business-With) Putin pose. Both W. Bush and Bill Clinton took the Putin bait. Both found out that Putin was a practiced, smooth tergiversator. Right now, with Russia foundering in a mixture of the Spanish Disease and falling oil prices, Putin needs a good anti-American message to whip up weakening support from the elite and general public alike.

On the Great Global Financial Meltdown front, the expected ruled one more time. The Germans--while maintaining that they were anything but protectionist--blocked the creation of a relief and stimulus fund for the Eastern European economies as proposed by Hungary. Thus Germany joins France in a policy of being protectionist while assuring any who might believe that they were not. The United States of Europe is still lost in the haze of future dreams. Nationalism is not dead, no matter what the various European elites might wish.

The award today for the most inventive gambit in foreign relations goes to China. The mendacious bid by a noted Chinese art dealer for the pair of Qing dynasty bronzes offered at the YSL auction not only stopped the auction but called global attention to the matter of repatriating cultural objects looted by Western armies, officials and other plunderers. This is a very real issue not only for China but a number of other countries such as Greece, Turkey, Egypt, Iraq and even Iran. The issue is not one of legal claims but moral ones.

Yesterday's swag is today's expression of national heritage and pride. The loot of long ago invaders, colonial officials, and early period archaeologists is now a matter of tying a present day society with its past, with its presumed glories, its assumed historical depth. Again, nationalism is not dead. It is not even on life support regardless of the fondest hopes of some.

Just a standard issue day on the planet. A mix of the expected and the unusual. An uneasy blend of the national and the transnational. A lesson or two of the power of history and national identity. A cautionary note or two for those who hope too much or believe too much, for those who don't get a grip on reality.