Yellow Times
Power and Interest News Report (PINR)
Sat May 3 18:46:10 2003
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Power and Interest News Report (PINR)
PINR: "Iraq's greatest challenge is an old one"
Printed on Saturday, May 03, 2003 @ 08:01:13 CST
http://www.yellowtimes.org/categories.php?op=newindex&catid=5

(PINR) -- One of the greatest obstacles facing those attempting to introduce the concept of democracy to Iraq is a problem that is actually centuries old: the complexities of the nation-state. Unlike the fledgling United States and many European regions during the 17th and 18th centuries, the geographical puzzle and political, religious and ethnic arrangement now referred to as Iraq is not -- and really never was -- conducive to the coherent formation of a modern day Western-inspired nation-state.

Not widely discussed is that Iraq is a fusion of three former Ottoman provinces -- Basra, Baghdad and Mosul -- devised by the British in the inter-war period last century. While many regions within modern day Iraq have cultural and historical homogeny, Iraq, unlike, say, Iran, has no distinct history, ethnicity, or language with which to create a national identity in the modern sense. The people who happened to be living in the Ottoman provinces at the time of the British demarcation were many: Arabs and Kurds; Muslims, Christians, and Jews; Shi'a and Sunni.
http://www.yellowtimes.org/article.php?sid=1319&mode=thread&order=0

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PINR: "The Europe-U.S. divide"
Printed on Monday, April 28, 2003 @ 08:34:25 CST

PINR Power and Interest News Report (PINR)

(PINR) -- The recent tensions between the United States and Western Europe show no sign of abating and further highlight the growing differences between these former allies. After the fall of the Soviet Union, the traditional threat to Western Europe dissolved. Throughout the '90s, the U.S. began to realize that without the threat of the Soviet Union, there was no state from which to protect the European continent. Furthermore, the U.S. could now pursue its envisioned foreign policy without having to be overly concerned with the opinions of those in Europe -- whether it be the public or the politicians and diplomats; without Europe being threatened, European states had no cards to play against the United States, as the French consistently had done in conflicts such as the one in Vietnam. Despite this lack of dependence, during the first decade after the fall of the Soviet Union, the United States continued to pursue its traditional role in European relations: in 1991, the Bush administration worked with Europe to attack Iraq in the Gulf War, and later in the decade the Clinton administration worked with Europe to attack Serbia in the Balkans.

Throughout this decade, even though neither the Bush administration nor the Clinton administration necessarily needed Europe to achieve their interests, the link between European states and the United States was too strong to circumvent. While the U.S. did flex its muscles more during the decade after the Soviet Union's fall in 1991, by and large it continued to work with its traditional allies in Western Europe and through the multilateral institution of the United Nations. All of this changed with the election of George W. Bush in the fall of 2000.
( Full text...
http://www.yellowtimes.org/article.php?sid=1300&mode=thread&order=0

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• Undercover among Americas secret theocrats. — I C H, Sat May 3 23:16
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