Editorial note: If you have not yet read our mission statement above, please do so in order that you can put our blogs in context.
1 January 2015
The good news is that Antigone1984 is to resume blogging as from today. The bad news is that there is no good news.
Today’s blog pinpoints, in some cases with comment, a number of likely hotspots in the political calendar for 2015.
It will be bloodshed as usual in Iraq, Syria, Afghanistan and Gaza.
States holding parliamentary elections this year include Greece (January), Israel (March) the United Kingdom (May), Portugal (September/October), Spain (October/December), Poland (probably October) and Turkey (date to be announced). Expect firework displays of varying intensity.
Dictatorships will continue to flourish in states such as Egypt, Saudi Arabia, the United Arab Emirates, Bahrain, Kuwait, Qatar, Iran, Russia and China.
The imperial US plutocracy will remain top dog in what is still, at least for the time being, a unipolar world.
However, Moscow and Peking may cosy up together on the grounds that my enemy’s enemy is my friend. Both dictatorships resent being pushed around by the White House, which has spent the last few years building up military alliances with vassal states in order to encircle them.
Cuba and the US have just announced a measure of détente. It remains to be seen whether this will result in a re-emergence of the corrupt casino economy that obtained on the island before Fidel Castro ousted US protégé Fulgencio Batista in 1959.
Russia may use force to unite the Crimea – which it occupied last year – with Russian-speaking eastern Ukraine, which has declared independence from the Ukrainian central government in Kiev. On the other hand, the USA may seek to prevent this happening by fast-tracking Ukraine into its Nato military caucus, where it would be protected by Nato’s mutual defence shield: an attack on any Nato member state is regarded as an attack on all Nato member states. Fun and games on the horizon.
US Democrat President Barack Obama, now beginning his last two years in office, is likely to be enmeshed in permanent conflict with the US Congress as from early this month when both chambers – the House of Representatives and the Senate – will be controlled by the Republican Party.
Another feature of US life is likely to be a continuation of the violent conflict that flared up in cities across the nation last year between black citizens and white-dominated police forces.
Our prediction is that there will be no agreement between Teheran and Washington on the latter’s insistence that Iran subject its nuclear energy programme to Western supervision so as to prevent it from developing nuclear weapons as other members of the nuclear club (such as the US, Israel, France, UK, etc) have done.
The world’s spy agencies will continue to ratchet up mass electronic surveillance outside the public eye to the detriment of civil liberties and the personal privacy of both their own citizens and those of other countries. States will continue to launch cyber-attacks against organizations and countries seen as hostile. Typewriters will come back into fashion.
Well, that’s enough to be going on with for now, folks.
Happy New Year to y’all.
Antigone1984
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You might perhaps care to view some of our earlier posts. For instance:
- Why? or How? That is the question (3 Jan 2012)
- Partitocracy v. Democracy (20 July 2012)
- The shoddiest possible goods at the highest possible prices (2 Feb 2012)
- Capitalism in practice (4 July 2012)
- Ladder (21 June 2012)
- A tale of two cities (1) (6 June 2012)
- A tale of two cities (2) (7 June 2012)
- Where’s the beef? Ontology and tinned meat (31 Jan 2012)
Every so often we shall change this sample of previously published posts.
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