Anglosphere

The Return of the Militants: Violent Dissident Republicanism

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That’s the title of a report just issued by the International Centre for the Study of Radicalisation and Political Violence (ICSR) — but it may not be about what you might think it’s about — depending which side of the Atlantic you’re from.

It’s about “dissident republican groups in Northern Ireland such as the Continuity IRA and the Real IRA, who continued to oppose the peace process”. And the phrasing of the title makes a neat illustration of Bernard Shaw’s aphorism about “two countries divided by a common language”.

I’m “divided by a common language” myself, as a Brit who has been here in the US more than half my life. And yes, I know, technically “Republicanism” should mean the sentiment that led to the War of Independence — but I checked with some American friends, and they reassured me that there’s “usage” of the phrase to refer to GoP philosophy…

Myself, FWIW, I’m a monarchist. Which I suppose makes me “conservative” — another divided word in our deliciously divided common language.

Net Protest: extending the Anglosphere

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[ cross-posted from SmartMobs ]

One little detail caught my eye in a Foreign Policy AfPak Channel blog report yesterday.

Whether their first language is Kashmiri or Farsi, the internet makes English the language of choice for protesters.

Kashmiris are slowly harnessing the power of the internet to create a communal digital protest and to forge a voice for themselves in the democratic realm of cyberspace. In 2010 Kashmir’s Generation Next, those who were born or young during the turbulence of the 1990s, found their voices. Unlike Kashmiri youth of the 1990s who were silenced given India’s media, U.N. and NGO blackout of Kashmir, new technologies and social media have made it possible for Kashmiris to begin to tell their own stories, to have a voice and a narrative that can reach beyond the Valley and into international consciousness. Facebook and You Tube have been transformative, creating a cadre of citizen-journalists and more artistic expressions in which Kashmiris create video montages set to music and images, providing a voice whether in Kashmiri or English, such as Kashmiri-American Mubashir Mohi-u-Din’s take on the Steven Van Zandt song Patriot.
 
This summer Kashmir’s youth have learned two lessons from other international struggles for justice: Iran and Palestine. In 2009 Iranian youth and social activists harnessed the power of social media as young Iranians took to the internet and street in the face of state suppression. Iranians demanded “where is my vote?” — the slogan, appearing curiously and ubiquitously in English, was meant for an international audience, to raise attention to the struggles occurring within the Islamic Republic of Iran after the results of the presidential election were called into question. Similarly, “I protest” cries out in a language that is not native to Kashmir but has united Kashmiris globally as they seek an international audience.

Bubbles

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Government employee salaries + benefits + pensions = bubble.

Government schools K-12 = bubble.

Higher education = bubble.

MSM monopoly = bubble.

The foundations of the opposition are crumbling before our eyes.

We are on the verge of a table-clearing, systemic regime collapse.

Once in a century change is coming.

Be happy.

Britain in Search of a Grand Strategy

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The United States is not the only Western power suffering from strategic uncertainty. James Frayne, a British political consultant who is a friend of this blog and an avid student of strategy, drew my attention to  his post at The Campaign War Room:

“Who Does UK Grand Strategy?”

The House of Commons Public Accounts Committee – under the leadership of Bernard Jenkin – has been running a very worthwhile investigation into “Who Does UK Grand Strategy?” The uncorrected evidence has begun to be put online and it’s worth taking a look at. Peter Hennessy, Julian Lindley-French, and Hew Strachan gave evidence on 9 September, which you can read here. Foreign Secretary William Hague and National Security Adviser Sir Peter Ricketts gave evidence on 14 September, available here. Various figures from the MoD gave evidence on 16 September, available here. We have no meaningful national conversation in the UK on national strategy, so we owe Bernard Jenkin one for pushing this investigation forward. I haven’t had a chance to go through all the evidence yet and will post something longer on it further down the line.

Seems straightforward enough, but the quality of the links are really good; senior British officials in frank discussion of grand strategy. Here’s an example:

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A Few Words About India and the Anglosphere (bumped, five years later)

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[This post, inspired by this article provoked a conversation about the relationship between India and the Anglosphere. It seems like just yesterday I wrote about this (with Verity and I going back and forth in the comments) on Jim Bennett’s now dormant blog Albion’s Seedlings. My old post needed virtually no revision, so I am reposting it here. Setting the Way Back Machine for 2005 … .]

The comments to this post contained some vexation about whether or not India is part of the “core” of the Anglosphere. The implication seemed to be that one is either part of the Anglosphere or not, and that it was wrong therefore to suggest that India is not.

I think this is to misstate the issue. It is not “either/or” or “in/out” of the Anglosphere. It is a matter of degrees of participation. The USA, UK, Anglo-Canada, Australia, NZ are “core” areas because of very high degrees of commonality in language, law, business practices, cultural norms, etc. Jim Bennett talks about all this in his book, which you must all go and buy and read if you have not yet done so.

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