Given all the hullabaloo about the nomination of Miss Masturbation here in real murrika-you may not have been paying attention to two elections that have real impacts on the world those Teabaggers as well as the rest of us normal people will face tomorrow.
The first was in Japan-and the result was a big win for the good guys. Ichiro Ozawa’s attempt to replace Naoto Kan as leader of the Democratic Party of Japan failed. That’s great news-Ozawa is a really sleazy guy.
Kan was announced the winner of Tuesday’s nail-biting party presidential vote at 3:40 pm. He garnered a total vote of 721 compared to Ozawa’s 491. As expected, Kan won a majority of support among party staff, regional representatives and supporters. But he also won majority support of the DPJ’s 411 Diet members, which counted for about two-thirds of the overall result.
The Economistcalled Ozawa an “increasingly ineffectual bully” in July 2007 and partially blamed him both for enervating reformists in his own party and for DPJ failure to profit from LDP predicaments. That’s a pretty good explanation. He is currently under the threat of indictment for his involvement in a land scandal in Tokyo-and many thought his running to replace Kan was an attempt to shield himself from any further investigation.
Of course now, he will not have any chance of becoming Prime Minister-and that is bad news for him.
The other election, and whose results are not so good for the US was in Turkey. The Turks voted on a series of constitutional amendments in a referendum that was cast as a judgment on the leadership of Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan. Unfortunately he won-and that’s bad news for the US.
Turkey is an Islamic country. However thanks to Kemal Ataturk, it is a secular country, where the military has had the veto card-making sure that religion stayed out of politics. And in the past they exercised that veto on several occasions-with mixed results. However from a US standpoint the Turks stayed firmly in the Western orbit and did not slip into the morass that other Islamic nations have.
And that is the real problem. While not perfect, the Army served as check against an electorate that keeps on voting in religious parties in Turkey and if the army did not have anything to say in Turkey, things could slip it into a sharia dominated country. That is the antithesis of what Ataturk wanted. And its really bad for the US.
Now there are some who say that this could actually help open the way for a settlement with the Kurds ( like their interests should be any one’s concern) or help Turkey get into the EU. I’m not buying either proposition. The Kurds need to shut up and color-and as for the EU its going to take a lot more than this one election to persuade the rest of the EU to play ball. Erdogan now has the upper hand-which might be Ok if he were not so beholden to the damn Muslim parties-but he is. Unlike Iraq-Turkey is a Muslim country in a position of interest to the United States, if for no other reason than that control the Straits of Dardanelles.
” The death of Atatürk, who had saved Turkey during the war and revived the Turkish Nation after the war, is a great loss, not only for his country, but also for Europe as well. ” Sir Winston Churchill
I hope this is not coming true again.
What can one say about a society that is focused on remaining robustly in the 8th century? Sucks to be them? They bought the footwear and threw it, let them eat it now. Should they go nuts all of a sudden let them fight their way to us through Europe or Russia. I’m just shuddering in fear. Ditto Iran.