By Eduardo Baudet

During his presidency Hugo Chávez talked about so many things for such a long time that he managed to become the centre of both the political and personal life of Venezuela. Becoming ubiquitous was his greatest success.

In 1998, when the Venezuelan poor needed someone to help them, Chávez rose as their savior. That year he defeated the established parties in a landslide electoral victory. He remembered the poor after they had been long forgotten by the interchange of power between the traditional parties; their lives neglected by the capitalist oligarchy. These were words that Chávez never stopped repeating.

He shouted them to the world in the his speech at the United Nations – where he called George W. Bush the devil- and continues to do so, even after his passing, through the insults delivered by Maduro. He retold them to the poor on a daily basis and again in cadenas, in his Aló Presidente, and in each and every electoral campaign since he won the Presidential Election of December 1998.

Continue reading “The General Will or the Will of the Colonel?” »

If, as is sometimes said, the life of Hugo Chavez has been like a Hollywood film, then his is a character so hammy that only John Williams could provide the score. Raised in a mud hut by his sainted grandmother Rosa Inés and bourn into power by a movement which idolises a 200-year deceased revolutionary – Chavez’ presidency of Venezuela was at various times inspirational and farcical; moving and intractable; bathetic without, one should concede, ever descending into the pathetic. For the equal millions who idolised and despised him, both at home and abroad, there was an undeniable consensus that his was an epochal moment. Now, after losing his life to an unspecified cancer, the question of the legacy and sustainability of the ‘Bolivarian Revolution’ becomes one of immediate importance.

In more ways than the usual, Chavez’ life and works strike one as being like a long preparation for his own death; for the moment when he would depart the mortal realm to join a transcendent pantheon of populist heroes, including, of course, his own idol: Simón Bolivar. For his most loyal constituents, the teeming poor in the barrios and villages of Venezuela, Chavez  ruled with a Christ-like aura; as a politician who traversed the slum lanes shunned by his predecessors, he arrived as an opponent of the ‘oligarchy’ that had ruled the country since its return to democracy in the late 1950s. In spite – or because of – his frequent electoral victories, he is conversely execrated by the beneficiaries of the old order, by those who considered him an autocrat in the old cast, and by an international league headed up by the United States. A redeemer of the majority at home and a spokesman for tyrant allies abroad, he was from various aspects too imperfect a hero and not heartless enough a villain to fully annex the caricatures that had been drafted for him. Whilst one should ask what will become of Venezuela after Chavez, equally salient is the question: what would Chavez have been without Venezuela? Continue reading “Somewhere beyond the barricade: the Chavez era closes” »

Editor’s Note: In the miasma of British Prime Minister David Cameron’s current trip to India, Jasmeet Singh takes a look at the rise of India’s next heir apparent: Narendra Modi.

On bright rain-drench mid-week morning of February, a bearded man stood in front of a crowd of young students holding up a glass half-filled with water. “An optimist would say this glass is half full,” he said with a thoughtful glance at the glass “while a pessimist would say it is half empty. I have a third view” he gestured. “For me the glass is always full-half full with water and half full with air.”

The venue that Narendra Modi, current Chief Minister of the western Indian state of Gujarat, chose to deliver his speech was the Sri Ram College of Commerce, or SRCC as it is popularly known among its many aspirants. It is also one of India’s most prestigious institutions to study business. Modi, the emerging face of the Hindu-nationalist Bhartiya Janata Party (BJP) chose the place not only because SRCC’s name includes the name of Hinduism most revered figure-Lord Ram, but also because it’s a college primarily dedicated to the study of commerce, a field Modi’s Gujarat seem to be excelling in for over a decade now. It has constantly notched 10 per cent plus growth rate during decades after 1991, the year the Indian economy was liberalised and foreign trade eased.

Continue reading “The rise and call of Narendra Modi” »

By Giorgos Dimitriadis

On 13th of January 2013, the trilateral Intergovernmental Agreement regarding the Trans Adriatic Pipeline (TAP) was signed. Greece, Italy and Albania took a big step towards the final choice of TAP as the exclusive one to transport the gas from Azerbaijan to Europe, by the Shah Deniz consortium.

The Agreement was signed by the Greek Minister of Foreign Affairs Dimitris Avramopoulos, the Italian Minister of Development Corrado Passera, and the Albanian Minister of Economy, Trade and Energy Edmond Haxhinasto. The ceremony took place  at the Ministry of Foreign Affairs in Athens, Greece, with the presence of officers from the Azerbaijani government, the TAP consortium (Statoil, Axpo, E.ON Ruhrgas) and the Shah Deniz consortium (BP, Socar, Total). It has to be noted that on the occasion of his visit in Greece, Eric Rubin, the U.S. Deputy Assistant Secretary of State was also present to the ceremony.

The Italian Minister Corrado Passera pointed out the important role of TAP as a strategic infrastructure to strengthen the security of supplying energy  to Europe. Mr. Passera made clear that the plan of his government is to turn Italy into the main gas hub of Southern Europe and added that his country should play an important  role within the general European Energy Policy.

On their side, Greek Minister Dimitris Avramopoulos and Prime Minister Antonis Samaras noted the establishment of a new framework of cooperation with Italy and Albania, and the strategic role of the project for the energy security in the European Union. Mr. Samaras mentioned the advantages of TAP compared to the other pipelines planned for the region (shorter route, lower cost, smalled number of countries involved), and said that Greece is determined to attract even more foreign investors in the country.

Finally, the Agreement was welcomed by the European Commissioner for Energy, Günther Oettinger, who expressed the full support of the European Commission towards the Trans Adriatic Pipeline project and added that this agreement has set the legal framework for the pipeline. ”This is another important step towards our aim to get gas directly from the Caspian Region” the EU Energy Commissioner said.

However, for the moment, the members involved in this project can only wait until June 2013 in order to find out if TAP will be the pipeline chosen to transport the Caspian gas in Europe, through the South.

By Justin Cash

North Korean Supreme Leader Kim Jong-un is a man who is loved and feared in equal measure. Amongst his own people, he certainly has his fair share of flatterers, as did his father before him. Nowadays, however, many are becoming increasingly suspicious of this unscrupulous autocrat.

In so many ways, the new Kim is the personification of a modern day Machiavellian ideal. He is the very embodiment of those traits that Machiavelli prized so highly: he is ruthless, cold, calculating, controlling, and utterly unafraid of the prospect of war.

Continue reading “Kim Jong-un: the Modern Machiavellian” »

By Justin Cash

In the modern financial world, investors crave that ever-elusive combination of stability and high returns. As major financial institutions have faltered and the Middle East has become steadily wealthier, general consumers and financiers alike have rightly turned their gaze towards Islamic finance.

For the first three quarters of 2012, the Islamic Bank of Britain (IBB), the only retail bank in the UK to be completely Sharia compliant, reported a 63% increase in home financing and a 43% increase in long-term savings. The main drivers of growth, it said, were demand for new savings products, the IBB Home Purchase Plan (a Sharia compliant alternative to mortgage) and Buy to Let Purchase Plans.

“The Bank has experienced year on year growth in revenues since its inception in 2004” says Sultan Choudhury, managing director. “This is despite challenging macroeconomic and market conditions, which have persisted for over four years.”

This ability to buck global trends is undoubtedly impressive. The most staggering thing about the revolution in Islamic finance, however, may well be its ability to generate revenue – and some profit – from a system that seems, at least on the face of it, anathema to these concepts. Money creation is legally prohibited under Sharia. Financial speculation and the receipt of interest are also strongly discouraged with a typical requirement that products be backed up by assets. As such, many modern financial products are unavailable to the devout Muslim.

Continue reading “2013: The year of Islamic finance?” »

Just over two years ago last week, the epochal force of the ‘Arab Spring’ overswept its first tyrant with the unseating of Tunisian president, Zine El Abidine Ben Ali. Since then, mass demonstrations, revolutionary fervour and foreign missiles have brought down three further dictatorships in the Arab territories, elicited five elite-led changes of government and collapsed Syria into an ongoing period of civil war. With the latter conflict bringing new misery and destruction down upon its participants every day, the current death toll of the uprisings – signposts to the solipsism of despots – stands at around 90,000 and growing.

Yet for all the rapidity with which the manifest will to popular self-determination has spread across the Arab states, there have remained some interesting holdouts. Of the nations comprising the Arab Middle East and Maghreb, only the governments of Qatar and the UAE – both absolute monarchies – have appeared publically as more-or-less untroubled by existential threats. Even neighbouring Saudi Arabia – the wealthiest country in the region, and one which derives its name from the patrimony of the ruling family – has been forced to concede municipal elections in an effort to appease its opponents. Continue reading “Winter in the desert: has the UAE withstood the Arab Spring?” »

Iran’s Kurds make up roughly 11-15% of the country’s 75 million population, situated largely in its north eastern provinces. They have had a long and eventful history in Iran as it is within its borders that the Kurds are believed to have originated. Yet it was not until the late nineteenth century that concepts of nationalism and separatism began to dominate their relationship with the Persian state.

(c) Khoyboun

The concept of Kurdish nationalism was slow to germinate in Iran compared to its popularity in neighboring countries. There was little talk of it during the collapse of the Iranian state in the late nineteenth century, nor during the ensuing Constitutional Revolution of the early twentieth century. Continue reading “The Kurdish situation in Iran” »