The Unorthodox Website Blog

I get fed up reading the depressing posts on Facebook that a third World War is looming or a nuclear war with Russia. Having lived through the last Cold War I feel these prophecies of doom are exaggerated, but on the other hand there are worrying differences between the situation now and back in the days of the old Cold War. Then the most dangerous episode was after the failed Bay of Pigs attack on Castro’s Cuba, when the Soviet Union agreed to ship nuclear missiles to the island, just a few miles from the Florida coast, to deter any further invasion attempts by the United States. This became known as the Cuba Missile Crisis, and for a few days the world really was on the brink of a nuclear catastrophe. We then had a hot-line between Washington DC and Moscow, and the crisis was defused when Kennedy and Krushchov came to an agreement the full details of which have only come to light in more recent years. Krushchov agreed not to ship nuclear missiles to Cuba if the USA removed recently installed nuclear missiles from just across the Soviet border in Turkey. The world breathed a sigh of relief.

However, apart from Cuba, the first Communist state in North America, the spheres of influence of the two super-powers had been clearly defined in the various conferences at the end of World War II. The USSR had freedom to do more or less whatever it wanted in its sphere of influence, i.e. the Socialist ‘buffer states’ of Eastern and Central Europe which the Soviet Union had liberated from fascism and which it insisted on keeping as friendly, if subordinate, Socialist states to prevent another disastrous invasion from the West. The USSR had lost millions when Hitler invaded. Other countries in Europe, including Finland which bordered the USSR, agreed to remain neutral. So when East Germany, Hungary and then Czechosovakia were invaded by the Soviet Union to quash unrest or what the USSR regarded as dangerous reforms which might lead to counter-revolution, the West was very vocal but actually did nothing. It was different when the Soviet Union operated outside its agreed sphere of influence, such as supporting a Soviet-style government in Afghanistan. The USA and Western powers gave aid and arms to the Mohajadeen and the Soviets were eventually driven out. Ironically, this has now come back to haunt us as from the Mohajadeen developed Al-Quaida and ISIS who have also been armed with many American weapons either captured or provided by states favored by the USA.

What is so worrying about the current Cold War between Russia and the West is that there are no longer agreed ‘spheres of influence’ and there are no summit meetings between the American President and the Russian leader, who is portrayed in the West as a threat to peace on a par with Adolf Hitler. In actual fact, of course, Vladimir Putin has shown enormous restraint in the face of constant Western provocation. When the Soviet Union started to disintegrate an agreement was made between the USA and the then Soviet leader, Gorbachev, that in the event of the Warsaw Pact being dismantled, NATO would not expand Eastwards. It is now on the very borders of the Russian Federation and many former Soviet republics are now NATO members, yet Russia has not reacted apart from a defensive build up in its border areas. This has resulted in a huge NATO build up in these areas, so Russia now feels threatened. It is very much like the old Cold War situation, depicted in the German production Deutschland 83, where each side feared a planned invasion by the other. Of course there are also regular military plane flights by both sides which come dangerously close to encroaching on the other sides’ air space, and these happened constantly throughout the old Cold War as well. Indeed in the days before spy satellites became so efficient, U2 spy planes were sent by the USA over Soviet territory, which caused a big crisis when Gary Powers was shot down in one.

In the current decade there was the Western-backed rightwing coup in the former Soviet republic of Ukraine. Neo-fascists backed this coup, as did the West, but the large Russian-speaking population in the Eastern provinces of the Ukraine opposed the coup which they felt threatened the Russian language and culture. Again Putin has shown great statesmanship and enormous restraint. The eastern provinces of Ukraine would, by a large majority, love to join the Russian Federation in the wake of the Kiev coup, but only the Crimea, which has a huge Russian naval base and which was part of the Russian Federation until 1954, has been allowed to re-join Russia. This is presented by the West as an ‘invasion’, but it was the will of the majority of the local Crimean parliament and majority of the mainly Russian-speaking population, and the Russian military were already in the province because of the naval base there.

Russia has not threatened to invade the Baltic States of Lithuania, Estonia and Latvia. There has been some Russian involvement in the former Soviet republic of Georgia where South Ossetia, a Georgian province, requested Russian assistance. The problem with all these former Soviet republics, of course, is that they have large Russian-speaking populations who naturally want to preserve their language and culture. When these are threatened, they react.   As for the Ukraine, the solution is surely for a federal set-up which allows more autonomy to the eastern provinces within Ukraine.

As to the likelihood of war between Russia and the West, this is extremely unlikely. Hitler and Napoleon learned it was impossible to invade the huge Russian lands, and a nuclear war would be a catastrophe for both sides and the world in general, making it uninhabitable. There is a proxy war, however, going on in Syria, where apart from Russia and NATO many other groups including ISIS are involved. This has caused the biggest refugee problem since the Second World War, and for this all sides are guilty. Both NATO and Russia, as well as ISIS and other groups have, intentionally or not, killed many innocent civilians with their bombing and other activities. The obvious solution would be for the West/NATO to join forces with Russia to defeat ISIS with a coordinated operation under UN authority, and then to seek an agreement on the future government of Syria. However it ill behoves the West to criticize the Russian-backed Syrian government when NATO backs equally repressive regimes like Saudi Arabia, and when NATO has invaded and bombed places like Afghanistan, Iraq and Libya and only succeeded in creating anarchy and the rise of groups like ISIS in the place of the former regimes.

The West needs to engage in regular talks with the Russian leadership. USA also needs to halt its aggressive policies of invasion and intervention around the world, and its extremely provocative build up of military forces in the seas around the People’s Republic of China and on the borders with Russia. An agreement needs to be drawn up between Russia and NATO guaranteeing that neither side will encroach on the territories of the other. As for interventions to protect human rights, these should always be under the authority of the UN General Assembly resolutions; it is not for individual states or groups of states such as the USA and NATO to unilaterally take action which, rightly or wrongly, are often seen as wars for oil and to boost the profitable arms industry.

This is the second such referendum in my lifetime. The previous one was about our membership of the European Common Market, or EEC, as it then was. I voted against then, but this time for the EU I will vote to stay in.

I know the European Union is far from perfect, and it needs a lot of reform, such as only one Parliament site instead of both Brussels and Strasbourg, and much more democracy. I see it as a United States of Europe in formation, and many Europeans also want to move forward to ever-closer political union. Britain is holding out against this, but a federal EU is, in my opinion, the only way it can really work with a single currency, the Euro, which must have central control over the economy, including wages and prices. These must be uniform across the EU so there are not huge influxes from poorer to richer areas which impoverishes the poorer areas even further, and can cause problems when too many flood into the richer areas.

As for democracy, we only have to look at the United States of America to see how it might work in a federal EU. Each state of the USA has its own Capitol or legislature and its own local laws. There is therefore a great deal of autonomy. I would be in favor of breaking up the United Kingdom (I’m a republican and can see no place for monarchies in a federal EU) and for England, Scotland and Wales to join a federal EU as separate states with their own legislatures. Northern Ireland should be united with the Irish Republic and join as one state. Indeed if the UK votes to leave the EU it will pose particular problems for people living in the Irish border areas – some have homes which straddle the border, as an Irish friend pointed out to me. Part of their homes would be in the EU and part outside it!

At present the EU is a bit of a mess, but that is to be expected with any federation in the making. The predecessors to the EU were formed after World War II, and part of the motivation was to prevent more world wars starting on our continent. The EU, for all its faults, has introduced a lot of progressive measures such as workers’ rights and anti-discrimination legislation. Britain was dragged kicking and screaming into the 21st Century by the EU and its institutions. It is significant that on a visit to Australia in the 1990s I was told by a Sydney resident that Britain was the laughing stock of the civilized world because many of our laws dated back to the Victorian era. This was in particular reference to our laws on male homosexuality which, despite the 1967 Sexual Offences Act, was still only semi-legal with many restrictions. Under that Act males had to be over 21, not in the armed forces, and living in a separate domicile with no other person present overnight on the premises. All ways gay men could meet were still illegal – the charge was ‘importuning for an immoral purpose’ and ‘pretty policemen’ were sent out to entrap gay men and boost police prosecutions. All public displays of affection between two men were also illegal – ‘offending public decency’. This included such things as holding hands or kissing in public. The privacy stipulation of the 1967 Act meant that gay backroom clubs,  saunas, etc. prevalent all over Western Europe, Australia and North America were illegal in the UK and were quickly raided and closed down if they opened up, and the people in them arrested and charged. This drove gay men into dangerous cruising grounds where many muggings, queer-bashings and gay murders took place, or into public toilets where they were a nuisance to the general public and where minors could inadvertently stumble upon gay activity or even become involved. I wrote an article in the gay HIM magazine in 1991 saying that Britain needed safe space for gay men away from the general public, where minors would not be admitted, and during the 1990s the police started turning a blind eye to such gay clubs which opened up, a government review was launched on reforming the law and I contributed to that, and then the EU passed legislation which made any form of discrimination illegal, so our government had to fall in line. The gay age of consent was made equal with heterosexuals, as were the privacy laws. Following on from that we got civil partnerships then gay marriage and adoptions. Age discrimination was also made illegal, so the age of retirement for men and women was equalized. All thanks to the EU.

There have been problems with EU countries getting into debt and having to be bailed out, but this would not be a problem in a federal EU. Alabama doesn’t have to be bailed out by California because they have a more or less even playing field; one country with more or less equal prices and wages across the United States, and central control of the economy. We need to move forward to a United States of Europe, and I for one can’t wait to register as an EU citizen.

In any case there is nothing to stop any member state from leaving the EU at any time in the future, or a group of states could break away and form a new federation. For instance a group of  EU states, if they felt the EU wasn’t progressive enough, could join together in a new federation with a progressive Constitution.

If Britain votes ‘No’ and leaves the EU we would come even more under the influence of the USA. Already, as a NATO member along with much of the EU, we are dominated by U.S. foreign policy with its interventions in the Middle East, etc. However the EU is becoming more critical and independent of U.S. foreign policy. Outside the EU we are in real danger of becoming even more the de facto 51st state of America, with all that implies.

Our place is in Europe, and we need the EU to become a federation to compete with the United States, the Russian Federation, China, etc. Increasingly these super-states will come to dominate the world scene, and personally I hope one day a world confederation will develop under the auspices of the United Nations with a permanent UN security force to keep law and order and defend human rights everywhere. I see the EU as but the first step in that direction. So I look forward to the possibility of people becoming less nationalistic and eventually world citizens. That’s why I’ll  be voting ‘Yes’ in the forthcoming EU Referendum.

In July 1974 Cyprus was invaded. Almost 42 years later huge areas of the country are still under foreign occupation. In these areas Cypriot law does not apply, and people are tried by a foreign court.

Cyprus was invaded by Greece in July 1974. The fascist Colonels in Athens arranged a coup against the Cypriot government and imposed a new leader, Nicos Sampson, with the purpose of ethnically cleansing the whole island of Turkish-Cypriots and annexing the island to Greece. The palace of Archbishop Makarios, President of Cyprus, was bombed, but he escaped, went to the UN General Assembly in New York and in a speech which has been forgotten by all but Turkey, it seems, pleaded for help saying: ‘Greece has invaded my country’.

The island is still partly occupied, and has been since so-called ‘independence’. Britain maintains two huge ‘sovereign bases’ on the island. These are, in effect, two huge areas of colonial rule; areas of Cyprus under permanent British occupation. It includes villages, and public roads, and any Cypriot arrested in these areas comes under the authority of British law and courts, not Cypriot ones.

Yet with thousands of troops permanently stationed on the island in these occupied areas, Britain refused to enact its role as guarantor of the independence of the rest of Cyprus when Greece invaded by means of the Nicos Sampson coup. Turkey appealed to Britain to act to save the Turkish-Cypriot population, but Britain did not respond. Turkey then had no option other than to send troops to the island to create a safe haven for Turkish-Cypriots in the northern part of the island.

In the South the Sampson coup collapsed, the junta in Athens was eventually overthrown. Makarios returned as President of the largely Greek-Cypriot Republic of Cyprus in the south (ethnically cleansed of Turkish-Cypriots), but died in 1977, some may say rather conveniently. My own view is that the Sampson coup was organized by NATO to rid the island of Makarios who was thought to be too pro-Soviet. I suspect they felt he might allow Soviet military ships access to Cypriot ports and therefore to the Mediterranean. My father, a Greek-Cypriot who was in Cyprus at the time of the coup, came back to UK afterwards, removed a picture of Makarios from his mantelpiece and declared: ‘Makarios is a Communist’. My father seemed to know quite a lot of secrets , so this is perhaps an insight into how those who supported the Sampson coup saw Makarios. My father also said nuclear weapons were stored in Cyprus under a green hill in one of the British occupied areas (so-called ‘sovereign bases’).

In the northern part of Cyprus the Turkish Federative State of Cyprus was established under Denktash with the long-term goal of achieving a federal solution to the eternal Cyprus problem of accommodating both Greek and Turkish-Cypriots. Even before the fascist Sampson coup to annex the island to Greece (Enosis) the power-sharing agreement between the Greek and Turkish Cypriot communities had broken down.  Denktash had been Vice President in name only, as the Turkish-Cypriots had been marginalized.

When it became apparent that the Greek-Cypriots had no intention of forming a federation with the Turkish-Cypriot state, the Turkish Republic of North Cyprus was declared. However when years later the Kofi Annan plan to re-unite the island under a federal solution was put to the electorates of the two Cypriot republics, the majority of Turkish-Cypriots voted in favor of the plan, while the Greek-Cypriots rejected it. So we now have the ironic situation whereby the Greek-Cypriots are responsible for the continued division of the island, yet have been rewarded with EU membership. The Turkish-Cypriots, who voted for reunification, are denied EU membership and their Republic is unrecognized by any state except Turkey.

Of course not all the blame can be put on Greece, the Greek-Cypriots or the British. Atrocities were carried out by both Turkish and Greek Cypriots before, during and after the tragic events of July 1974. Greek-Cypriots fled for their lives to the Southern part of the island, and the Turkish-Cypriots fled North for the same reason. Turkish mainland troops remain on the island 41 years later, and many mainland Turkish settlers live in the TRNC, as do many British settlers in both Cypriot republics. Famagusta is a particularly sore point, with the tourist area in mothballs since 1974. I suspect this area was taken by the Turkish army as a bargaining chip in the event of any settlement of the Cyprus question. It has never been developed as a tourist center of the TRNC, though the rest of Famagusta is a Turkish-Cypriot town.

Some progress has been made since 1974. For years the ‘Attilla Line’ divided the island completely. A no-man’s land policed by the UN, which ran right through the capital Nicosia, and which only foreign tourists could cross. A ‘Berlin Wall’ ran across Nicosia, and fences separated the rural borders between the two Cypriot states. In recent years, however, the border has been opened and Greek and Turkish Cypriots can now cross the line and visit the other parts of the island.

There remains one village in the UN buffer zone where Greek and Turkish Cypriots still live together, though when I visited they lived largely apart, with their own clubs and cafes, etc., and of course the Greek-Cypriot Orthodox church and the Turkish-Cypriot mosque. Despite the differences in language and religion, the two Cypriot communities are remarkably alike in their culture, the men spending much of their time in the coffee shops drinking Turkish/Greek coffee and playing backgammon while the women seem to do most of the work. A foreigner would be hard pressed to differentiate between a Greek and Turkish Cypriot. What saddened me in 1977 when I first visited the troubled island, was a Greek-Cypriot boy in my father’s village, who had just done his national service, said the only Turkish-Cypriots he had ever seen had been through the eyesights of his military rifle. In divided Nicosia, however, I saw Turkish and Greek Cypriots waving to each other across the line that divided the two communities, the Turkish-Cypriots high up on the ancient walls of the city by one of the gates. Now at least they can visit each other.

The tragedy of Cyprus may never be resolved, since it seems to suit both Cypriot states to maintain the status quo, particularly for the Greek-Cypriot Republic of Cyprus which has international recognition and EU membership. They have little to gain from a federation with the TRNC. Nevertheless they should reach out to their Turkish-Cypriot fellow-countrymen and women and come to a mutually acceptable formula for a federation, and the British areas of occupation (‘sovereign bases’) which did nothing to protect Cypriot independence during the events of July 1974 should be kicked out.

These are three controversial but closely connected issues. Firstly, refugees. There is an international obligation to provide refuge for people in danger of gross human rights violations. This is hopefully a temporary situation, though how temporary depends on the exact circumstances in their home countries.

There are two ways of providing refuge. One is for safe countries around the world to take in a quota of refugees. Obviously some countries are more able than others. Russia, Australia, the USA and other big countries have a lot of empty space so could be expected to take a much larger quota than smaller, relatively overcrowded countries. The other way of providing refuge is to create safe havens nearer to their country of origin, protected by UN security forces. The disastrous ‘safe haven’ in Srebenica in Bosnia, supposedly ‘protected’ by the UN peacekeepers who left the inhabitants of the haven to their fate, has done very serious damage to the ‘safe haven’ option. The UN peacekeepers MUST be prepared to fulfil their obligations to protect the safe havens and their inhabitants with their lives, and sufficient UN peacekeepers must be provided to keep the havens safe. If possible ‘safe corridors’ or air transport need to be provided in order to establish safe havens well away from the area of conflict and danger.

We then come to the issue of emigration and immigration. Ideally, in a world with a more or less level playing field, emigration and immigration is not a problem. There is an exchange of populations as people move from one country to another, so it is swings and roundabouts. Where it becomes problematic is when there is a large flow of population from poorer countries to richer ones, so-called ‘economic migration’. Or when one country’s problems are dumped on another (an example being Britain sending convicts to Australia). When one country poaches on another’s skilled or educated labor (West Germany enticing professionals educated and trained in East Germany for instance, or possibly Britain enticing nurses and other valuable people from West Indian countries).

Mass emigration/immigration is not just a problem for the receiving countries, but also for the countries experiencing mass emigration. East Germany regarded mass emigration by people from the country which fed them, educated them, trained them and looked after them from the cradle to the grave as treachery. The grass looked greener on the ‘other side’ and GDR citizens were offered automatic FRG citizenship. Even so millions decided to stay in East Germany long before the Wall and border installations were erected. They visited West Germany but returned to the GDR.

The West Indies provided many valuable workers to Britain in the 1950s and later, but what effect did this have on the countries they came from? After the fall of Socialism in Poland so many of their menfolk emigrated to Western countries that there were not enough left to run the Polish fire brigade. Surely people have an obligation not to leave their country so impoverished that it cannot raise its living standards or even maintain them?

Another factor is that it tends to be the better off part of the population that is able to emigrate. This is true even of refugees, who often have to bribe smugglers to get them out of the country. This means the poorer people are left to either suffer gross human rights abuses, or a lower standard of living.

The whole question of emigration/immigration needs to be addressed in the much wider context of the global situation. Richer countries need to help raise the living standards in the poorer countries as that is the only long-term solution. It is perfectly obvious that there has to be a limit to both emigration and immigration if it is one-way traffic, that is to say, if it is not a more or less equal exchange of populations from one country to another. Instead of exploiting the cheap labor of poorer countries, investors there should pay a decent living wage or, much more likely, the workers there should be encouraged to form their own cooperatives and not rely on multinational corporations to provide work in often slave labor conditions. It all boils down to the fact that capitalism and the market economy, which seeks low labor costs and maximum profits, causes and maintains inequality and therefore mass emigration and immigration. The only way to create a world where resources are shared fairly is worldwide Socialism, with the richer countries helping the poorer ones to develop without exploiting them.

We then come to the related question of the European Union and the guarantee of free movement within it. Unless the EU becomes a federal union, with central control over the economy and a roughly uniform level of wages/prices and living standards thruout the Union, then poorer countries should not be accepted as full members of the EU. They can be given associate membership until their economies and living standards are compatible with EU membership, and the EU can provide investment to bring this about. During associate membership there should not be the automatic right of free movement to full EU member states.

Once migrants are in the country they have emigrated to, they have an obligation to learn the language fluently, to integrate into the local culture and to abide by the laws of the country they are in. So Britons demanding British culture when they emigrate to Spain, for instance, is just not on. They should not be expecting all the local restaurants to provide full English breakfasts, or for their locality to be full of British-style pubs. Those Britons working in or emigrating to Muslim countries cannot expect or demand off-licences or pubs. Muslims emigrating to European countries, Australia, USA, Canada, etc. cannot demand Sharia law to replace the national laws of those countries. What can be provided is limited access to alcohol, pork, etc. for Britons and other Westerners in Muslim countries, and limited access for Jewish people and Muslims to kosher/hal-al meat in Western countries.  Problems occur when whole areas of Spain are swamped by British culture, for instance, or when in certain areas of London it is impossible to find a non-hal-al butcher or take-away outlet. Most Western countries have introduced humane stunning legislation for slaughterhouses, so hal-al or kosher ones where stunning is not allowed have to be strictly limited. The wearing of facial coverings, such as the burka/hajib, or for that matter balaclavas or face masks, is not acceptable in public places in this day and age of terrorism, gun and knife crime, gang warfare and CCTV footage to combat these. What people wear in private or in places of worship is entirely up to them of course.

This is a very controversial and sensitive subject, but the Left and liberals need to seriously address these issues. At the moment many on the Left hold private thoughts about these issues that they dare not discuss for fear of being accused of ‘racism’ or ‘political incorrectness’. However the alternative to the Left/liberals openly and seriously addressing these issues is to seriously risk a far-right backlash, racial conflict and even the rise of full-scale Fascism.