Oil Blackmail Around the Corner?

Here is a scenario that I don't think too many people are thinking about. The tide of dissent within Arab countries will make it impossible for them to ignore Lebanon. Another oil embargo, orchestrated by Russia and Iran, even without Arab participation, would kick off a world wide recession.
PINR

As the war between Israel and Lebanon escalates, growing regional and world outrage may increasingly be channeled toward the United States -- the only country that has influence over Tel Aviv. This may encourage the world's three largest oil producers, Saudi Arabia, Russia and Iran, to significantly reduce oil exports in order to increase pressure on Washington to rein in Israel's military actions. An oil export embargo undertaken by just Russia and Iran, which together account for 20 percent of the world's oil exports, would be much more effective at extracting a major policy change from the Bush administration than Syrian and Iranian missile strikes against Israel.


Economic data released by the Bureau of Economic Analysis on July 28 showed that economic growth in the United States is weakening. Because excess oil production capacity does not exist anywhere in the world, a coordinated reduction of oil exports between any or all of the world's largest oil exporters of just five percent would quickly send international oil prices toward $125 per barrel. An increase in oil prices of this magnitude could be expected to push the United States economy into recession. With the November mid-term Congressional elections in the United States approaching rapidly, those countries opposing Israel's military actions may soon act to cut oil exports and effect political change in the United States, touching off a global recession in 2007.

Israelis Massacre Women and Children

Civilians continue to died in disturbing numbers, truly becoming the pawns of Israel's and Hizbullah's war in south Lebanon. And Hizbullah is winning the hearts and minds of much of the world by appearing to be the brave victims standing up to the Israelis. Clearly, Lebanese civilians mean nothing to Israel or Hizbullah. They are simply cannon fodder in psychological warfare. Israel has miscalculated. They may win this battle, but they are losing the war and dragging the US through the blood.
AFP

Fifty-two people have killed, more than half of them children, in an Israeli air blitz on the Lebanese village of Qana, triggering outrage around the world and warnings of retribution for Israel's "war crime."


US Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice, whose latest Middle East mission was thrown into turmoil by the attack, she was "deeply saddened" by the loss of innocent lives and said it was time to "get to a ceasefire" in Lebanon but stopped short of calling for an immediate halt to hostilities on Sunday.


The raid on Qana, which left homes in ruins and villagers trapped under the rubble, was the deadliest single attack since Israel launched its devastating war on the Shiite Muslim group Hezbollah 19 days ago. Lebanese Prime Minister Fuad Siniora denounced the Qana carnage as a "war crime," demanding an immediate ceasefire in a conflict that Health Minister Mohammed Khalifeh said had killed 750 people.


An AFP count has put the death toll at more than 500, while the United Nations has said around one third of the casualties were children. The 15-member UN Security Council was to hold an emergency meeting on the conflict later Sunday, with France circulating a draft resolution calling for an immediate ceasefire.


Israel expressed "regret" over the civilian deaths and ordered an inquiry but said it had warned residents to leave and pinned the blame on Hezbollah for launching rockets from the village. Prime Minister Ehud Olmert said he was in "no rush" for a truce and told Rice that Israel needed 10 to 14 days more to continue its offensive against the Hezbollah, an Israeli government official said. In Beirut, a mob of angry demonstrators smashed into the UN building as thousands took to the streets in protest while Hezbollah and the ruling Palestinian Islamist militant movement Hamas both vowed revenge. "This horrible massacre, like the others, will not remain unpunished," said Hezbollah, which has fired off waves of rockets against northern Israel since the onslaught began.

Israel and Rice offer little more than lip service to the issue of massacring civilians.
WaPo

Rice will abandon her Middle East negotiations at least temporarily to return to Washington Monday, U.S. officials said Sunday. Rice will shift her diplomatic efforts to the United Nations, aides say. The U.N. Security Council is planning an emergency session this morning. "Her intention is to move to get this thing done in the Security Council," a senior State Department official traveling with Rice told reporters traveling with her.


Earlier, at a hastily called news conference, Rice said she was "deeply saddened" by the "terrible loss of life" and insisted the United States was working harder than any party to try to achieve a ceasefire. Rice said she learned of the attack during a meeting with Israeli Defense Minister Amir Peretz and reiterated U.S. concern about Israel's attacks on civilian targets -- a common refrain during Rice's diplomacy, reflecting U.S. frustration with Israeli targeting.

"Concern", "saddened"? I'm outraged the Bush Administration drags us through responsibility for some of the worst atrocities of the Israelis.

US Moving Towards Target for Both Sides In Civil War Iraq

Here is what our "allies" in Iraq think of us these days.
Los Angeles Times

In a sermon rich with bloody imagery and religious struggle, an influential Shiite Muslim cleric Friday condemned Iraqi Prime Minister Nouri Maliki's trip to Washington this week as a betrayal of Islam and a humiliation to his people at the hands of U.S. and Israeli aggressors.


Sheik Aws Khafaji intertwined the bloodshed in Iraq and Lebanon, calling it a design by Christians and Jews to defeat the Muslim world. He criticized Maliki's speech before the U.S. Congress and asked: "What forced you to eat with the occupiers? Is that your reward? You know more than anybody else that the car bombings, terrorism, explosions and bloodletting in Iraq are under the protection of Zionist-American plans."

Shia resistance to American troops is growing, according to US military leaders.
AFP

Bomb blasts echoed around Baghdad as sectarian death squads pursued their bloody work and the US military warned that it was facing stiffer opposition in formerly cooperative Shiite areas.


The US troops' most deadly foe remains Sunni insurgents -- four marines were killed in the mainly Sunni province of Anbar Thursday -- but the coalition is now drawn increasingly into clashes with powerful Shiite militias.


This trend is all the more ominous given that US commanders have decided to put around 4,000 additional troops into the mainly-Shiite capital to try to halt a surge in murderous bomb and gun attacks by rival sectarian gangs.

The US military's target in Baghdad includes the Shia death squads led by Iraqi government Interior Dept run by Badr Corps, and increasingly supported by Sadr's Mahdi army. But the Bush Administration insists it's not a civil war.
Newsweek

By most benchmarks, as one well-briefed Western analyst in Baghdad tells me, Iraq slipped into civil war "a long time ago." Some observers insist that the scope of the violence hasn't reached critical levels yet. U.S. and military officials in Baghdad admit that "tit-for-tat killings" are occurring, but on a limited scale. But what is "limited" about an estimated 6,000 civilians killed in May and June alone, according to a recent United Nations report on Iraq's violence? Or that some 27,000 Iraqi families had registered for relocation since February, according to reports from the Ministry of Displacement and Migration?


Bodies have been piling up at the Baghdad morgue at a clip altogether in line with an escalating civil war: 1,068 in January of this year; 1,294 in March; 1,595 in June. Altogether, the U.N report suggests that as many as 14,000 civilians have died in Iraq since the beginning of 2006. The vast majority of those deaths have been the result of "insurgent, militia and terrorist attacks ... with an increasing sectarian connotation." As a point of comparison, in the first years of Lebanon's civil war, when 1,000 dead per month made headlines, most people believed the conflict would be resolved quickly. But two years later, at the end of 1976, 35,000 people had died and everyone recognized that civil war was in full swing.


Politicians have artfully dodged the civil war question with fanciful language, calling it "sectarian conflict" or "civil strife." One senior Iraqi official went so far as to say "the language isn't important." Isn't it? The evasiveness calls to mind the politically correct characterization of the Balkan civil war as a "war of aggression." Or, more ominously, the shameful refusal on the part of the U.N. and the Western powers to recognize the Rwandan genocide for what it was. Only after the Hutus slaughtered 800,000 Tutsis with machetes did it become politically acceptable to begin using the term genocide. Civil wars don't just start in one day.


To be sure, it would be wrong to say that all of Iraq is at war. The Kurdish north is, at least for the moment, quiet and relatively stable, a world apart from the chaos of Baghdad. Similarly, much of the south is spared the ethnic hatreds and tensions of Baghdad. The Iraqi Army even took full control of one of the southern provinces recently, a fanfare of celebration for the Shia majority that lives there.


But for months, Sunni families have been fleeing the militia-dominated death squads in the nine Shia provinces of the south, heading north to Baghdad or other friendlier areas, leaving homes and friends behind them. And in the Sunni western desert, Shia are hated even more than the Americans. They are seen as purveyors of an Iranian agenda and accomplices in the despised American occupation. These facts lead to a simple conclusion: where there is even the slightest potential for sectarian conflict in Iraq these days, war on the very fabric of Iraqi civilization erupts. MORE

Some Republicans are been speaking out with courage about the Bush disaster.
WaPo

Sen. Chuck Hagel (R-Neb.) offered a sharp critique of U.S. Mideast policy yesterday, saying the United States must engage Syria and Iran and warning that a close alliance with Israel must not come at the expense of relations with the Arab and Muslim world.


Hagel, an iconoclastic Republican who has been considering a presidential bid in 2008, said lasting peace in the Middle East and security for Israel will come only from a regional settlement of the Israeli-Palestinian dispute, a process he suggested has been neglected by the United States in recent years. "Look at where we are in the Middle East with no process," the senator said in an address at the Brookings Institution. "Crisis diplomacy is no substitute for sustained, day-to-day engagement."


Hagel, a member of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee who has been critical of U.S. policy toward Iraq, also spoke soberly about the challenges ahead in that country, where he said there was "little good news." "America is bogged down in Iraq, and this is limiting our diplomatic and military options," he said. "The longer America remains in Iraq in its current capacity, the deeper the damage to our force structure, particularly the U.S. Army."

Bush Admininstration Leads a Media Circus to Support Continued Bombing in Lebanon

Bush has taken to his white horse in an apparent peace making role. This seemingly high road move is an orchestrated stall tactic to allow Israel to continue it's campaign of destruction in south Lebanon while minimizing the perception of US culpability. It may work in the US, but no where else. We are witnessing a media circus designed to maintain a modicum of credibility for the Bush Administration with the US voter. More doublethink from the Dubya.
International Herald Tribune

President Bush, vowing to turn conflict in the Middle East into a "moment of opportunity" for broader change, said today that Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice would be dispatched to the region on Saturday with a plan for a multinational force that would help Lebanon's army take over from Hezbollah in the southern part of the country. Mr. Bush spoke this afternoon at a press conference with Prime Minister Tony Blair of Britain, who called the conflict a "complete tragedy" with innocent Lebanese and Israeli lives lost, people displaced, and a "terrible setback" for Lebanon's democracy.

WaPo

En route to a new round of Middle East negotiations, Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice said Saturday that she was encouraged by Hezbollah's general agreement to disarm and accept an international force in Lebanon, which she called a "positive step" that also strengthens the Lebanese government in the elusive search for a cease-fire. "Obviously we are all trying to get to a cease-fire as quickly as possible, so I'll take this as a positive step," Rice told reporters on her plane flying from Malaysia to a refueling stop in Qatar. "I think there are a lot of elements that are coming together."


Hezbollah signed on to the proposal "in principle" after negotiations Thursday with the government of Lebanon. But Hezbollah held out the caveat that more talks will be held after agreement is reached by the U.N. Security Council on an international force on the border, according to Hezbollah and Lebanese government officials. The radical Shiite Muslim movement would maintain its heavily armed militia in the south during the talks.

• The central element --- and deal-breaker -- is disarmament of Hezbollah. But this does not have to happen before a cease-fire or even soon, U.S. officials say. The goal is to get a formal commitment and to outline arrangements, possibly to eventually bring members of Hezbollah's militia into the Lebanese Army reserves or in another capacity and to get their arms into a government-controlled depot.



• A large, robust and well-armed international force will deploy to initially help with humanitarian relief and refugees, but ultimately retrain and back up the Lebanese Army as it deploys throughout the country for the first time since the civil war erupted in1975, U.S. and European officials say.



• The release of two Israeli soldiers, whose abduction on July 12 triggered the crisis. Up in the air is still the prospect of an eventual release of some Lebanese or Palestinian prisoners held in Israel jails, European officials say. Hezbollah officials said a long-sought prisoner swap was its goal in kidnapping the Israelis. This kind of "no-deal deal," in which one side releases prisoners, claiming there was no deal, is followed by the release of prisoners by the other side at a later date.



• A sensitive issue still up in the air is the fate of Shebaa Farms, the last remaining disputed area on the border, say U.S. and European officials. It is on the corner of Lebanon, Syria and Israel, which occupied it in the 1967 war. The United Nations considers the area Syrian territory but Hezbollah claims it for Lebanon, which Syria once -- but only once -- endorsed.



• A massive humanitarian effort and a donors conference are to be organized as quickly as possible to get Lebanon back on its feet. U.S. officials are deeply concerned about Lebanon's already troubled economy deepening the political and military instability.

This isn't a real proposal, it's designed to be rejected by the parties involved. Israel would never agree to Hizbullah fighters in Lebanese uniforms on it's border. Although Hizbullah has agreed in principle to disarming, they understand this is a stall and stand to benefit from the continued bombing. Syria has a veto also about the Shebaa Farms. The proposal for an international peace keeping force will take months to implement. Deployment will not happen until the fighting stops. That isn't going to happen anytime soon.
Meanwhile Israel rejects even a humanitarian ceasefire.
ABC News Online

Israel has rejected a call by the United Nations (UN) for a 72-hour pause in fighting in southern Lebanon to allow humanitarian aid to get to trapped civilians. The UN says the temporary cease-fire is also needed to enable relief workers to evacuate elderly, young and wounded people.


But Israeli Government spokesman Avi Pazner says the halt is not necessary because Israel has opened a humanitarian corridor to and from Lebanon. Mr Pazner says Israel is not blocking aid from reaching south Lebanon. "The problem is completely different," he said. "It is Hezbollah which is deliberately preventing the transfer of medical aid and food to the population of southern Lebanon in order to create a humanitarian crisis, which they want to blame Israel for." Senior Israeli Foreign Ministry official Gideon Meir says a truce would be dangerous for his country. "We cannot accept a cease-fire with Hezbollah because this terrorist organisation would exploit it to gather civilians to use them as a human shield in the combat zone," he said.

This is so much war propaganda. While it's true that Hizbullah stands to gain from every civilian killed by Israel aggression, they aren't pullling the trigger. The scale of the damage tells all.
New York Times

The United Nations estimates that between 500,000 and 700,000 Lebanese have been displaced, a giant number for a country of 3.5 million. “The scale of the problem is of an unbelievable proportion,” said Sami Haddad, the Lebanese minister of economy. “We have between 20 and 25 percent of our population that is turned into refugees. What government can cope with that?”


There is a nationwide problem of buildings and public works. The Lebanese school system is filled with people seeking shelter, according to Mr. Haddad, and school begins again in two months. With the vast scale of the destruction, even if the war stopped now, the country would still face a housing shortage for 100,000 to 200,000 people whose homes have been leveled, he said.


[...]On his two-hour drive, he saw several large convoys of refugees, all with white flags fluttering from windows. One had stopped in a grove of trees after having reached a relatively safe area. He asked the people where they were going. They said they did not know. “People seemed dazed,” he said. “Somebody crying. Somebody laughing for no reason.”


In the Tyre district, 67 villages with a population of about 275,000, less than a third of the population remained in the area, according to the mayor’s office. But in the past two days, between 600 and 700 cars have come out of the villages and now the count may be even lower.


In the early days of the conflict, a number of civilian vehicles were destroyed in attacks, mostly by Israel, so refugees began to move in convoys of dozens of cars. Early this week, two Lebanese Red Cross ambulances were destroyed in a missile attack in the village of Qana, wounding six people. An American visiting relatives in Lebanon was hit by rockets as he was trying to park his car in front of his family’s house to evacuate with a convoy arranged by the American Embassy.

Israel argues that Hizbullah hides behind civilians, justifying making nearly a million Lebanese refugees, and ultimately a quarter million homeless. Seldom do you find estimates of Hizbullah strength. Just how many fighters are there?
GlobalSecurity.org

The State Department’s 1993 report on international terrorism lists Hizbollah’s “strength” at several thousand. Hizbollah sources assert that the organization has about 5,000-10,000 fighters. Other sources report that Hizbollah’s militia consists of a core of about 300-400 fighters, which can be expanded to up to 3,000 within several hours if a battle with Israel develops. These reserves presumably are called in from Hizbollah strongholds in Lebanon, including the Bekaa Valley and Beirut’s southern suburbs. The number of members involved in combat activity in southern Lebanon is under 1,000. But it has many activists and moral supporters. After the Israeli withdrawal Hizballah reduced the number of full time fighters to about 500, though estimates range from 300 to 1,200. There are also several thousand reserves, but these lack training or experience. Hizbollah’s militia is a light force, equipped with small arms, such as automatic rifles, mortars, rocket-propelled grenades, and Katyusha rockets, which it occasionally has fired on towns in northern Israel. Hizbollah forces are shown on television conducting military parades in Beirut, which often include tanks and armored personnel carriers that may have been captured from the Lebanese army or purchased from Palestinian guerrillas or other sources.

Surely Hizbullah exaggerates their numbers. The most reasonable number is the one thrown around loosely in the press, several thousand. Several thousand Hizbullah militia members have fought the famous Israeli Army to a standstill for 2 weeks. It's not by military means it survives. Israel is unwilling to take the casualties needed to defeat Hizbullah on the ground. So they instead bomb from afar, feeling killing nearly 1000 civilians, maybe 10% are Hizbullah, to save Israeli Army casualties, driving nearly a million Lebanese from their homes and destroying the homes of maybe a quarter million.
Where in the world are these numbers justified? Truly, Israelis are willing to fight Hizbullah to the last Lebanese citizen. Killing maybe 10 civilians for every Hizbullah fighter is justified?
It's not justified, and Israel, the US and the War on Terrorism will pay for it in the next generation. Hizbullah is the new hero of the Palestinian cause. Even Al Qaeda recognizes it has formidable competition.
New York Times

At the onset of the Lebanese crisis, Arab governments, starting with Saudi Arabia, slammed Hezbollah for recklessly provoking a war, providing what the United States and Israel took as a wink and a nod to continue the fight.


Now, with hundreds of Lebanese dead and Hezbollah holding out against the vaunted Israeli military for more than two weeks, the tide of public opinion across the Arab world is surging behind the organization, transforming the Shiite group’s leader, Sheik Hassan Nasrallah, into a folk hero and forcing a change in official statements.


The Saudi royal family and King Abdullah II of Jordan, who were initially more worried about the rising power of Shiite Iran, Hezbollah’s main sponsor, are scrambling to distance themselves from Washington.


An outpouring of newspaper columns, cartoons, blogs and public poetry readings have showered praise on Hezbollah while attacking the United States and Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice for trumpeting American plans for a “new Middle East” that they say has led only to violence and repression.


[...]The Saudi royal court has issued a dire warning that its 2002 peace plan — offering Israel full recognition by all Arab states in exchange for returning to the borders that predated the 1967 Arab-Israeli war — could well perish. “If the peace option is rejected due to the Israeli arrogance,” it said, “then only the war option remains, and no one knows the repercussions befalling the region, including wars and conflict that will spare no one, including those whose military power is now tempting them to play with fire.” The Saudis were putting the West on notice that they would not exert pressure on anyone in the Arab world until Washington did something to halt the destruction of Lebanon, Saudi commentators said.


[...]There are evident concerns among Arab governments that a victory for Hezbollah — and it has already achieved something of a victory by holding out this long — would further nourish the Islamist tide engulfing the region and challenge their authority. Hence their first priority is to cool simmering public opinion.


But perhaps not since President Gamal Abdel Nasser of Egypt made his emotional outpourings about Arab unity in the 1960’s, before the Arab defeat in the 1967 war, has the public been so electrified by a confrontation with Israel, played out repeatedly on satellite television stations with horrific images from Lebanon of wounded children and distraught women fleeing their homes.


Egypt’s opposition press has had a field day comparing Sheik Nasrallah to Nasser, while demonstrators waved pictures of both.


An editorial in the weekly Al Dustur by Ibrahim Issa, who faces a lengthy jail sentence for his previous criticism of President Mubarak, compared current Arab leaders to the medieval princes who let the Crusaders chip away at Muslim lands until they controlled them all.


After attending an intellectual rally in Cairo for Lebanon, the Egyptian poet Ahmed Fouad Negm wrote a column describing how he had watched a companion buy 20 posters of Sheik Nasrallah.


“People are praying for him as they walk in the street, because we were made to feel oppressed, weak and handicapped,” Mr. Negm said in an interview. “I asked the man who sweeps the street under my building what he thought, and he said: ‘Uncle Ahmed, he has awakened the dead man inside me! May God make him triumphant!’ ”


In Lebanon, Rasha Salti, a freelance writer, summarized the sense that Sheik Nasrallah differed from other Arab leaders. “Since the war broke out, Hassan Nasrallah has displayed a persona, and public behavior also, to the exact opposite of Arab heads of states,” she wrote in an e-mail message posted on many blogs.


[...]Perhaps nothing underscored Hezbollah’s rising stock more than the sudden appearance of a tape from the Qaeda leadership attempting to grab some of the limelight. Al Jazeera satellite television broadcast a tape from Mr. Zawahri (za-WAH-ri). Large panels behind him showed a picture of the exploding World Trade Center as well as portraits of two Egyptian Qaeda members, Muhammad Atef, a Qaeda commander who was killed by an American airstrike in Afghanistan, and Mohamed Atta, the lead hijacker on Sept. 11, 2001. He described the two as fighters for the Palestinians. Mr. Zawahri tried to argue that the fight against American forces in Iraq paralleled what Hezbollah was doing, though he did not mention the organization by name. “It is an advantage that Iraq is near Palestine,” he said. “Muslims should support its holy warriors until an Islamic emirate dedicated to jihad is established there, which could then transfer the jihad to the borders of Palestine.” Mr. Zawahri also adopted some of the language of Hezbollah and Shiite Muslims in general. That was rather ironic, since previously in Iraq, Al Qaeda has labeled Shiites Muslim as infidels and claimed responsibility for some of the bloodier assaults on Shiite neighborhoods there.


But by taking on Israel, Hezbollah had instantly eclipsed Al Qaeda, analysts said. “Everyone will be asking, ‘Where is Al Qaeda now?’ ” said Adel al-Toraifi, a Saudi columnist and expert on Sunni extremists. Mr. Rabbani of the International Crisis Group said Hezbollah’s ability to withstand the Israeli assault and to continue to lob missiles well into Israel exposed the weaknesses of Arab governments with far greater resources than Hezbollah. “Public opinion says that if they are getting more on the battlefield than you are at the negotiating table, and you have so many more means at your disposal, then what the hell are you doing?” Mr. Rabbani said. “In comparison with the small embattled guerrilla movement, the Arab states seem to be standing idly by twiddling their thumbs.”

Now, it would appear that rumors that the Israelis want to settle with Hamas appears to have some truth to it.
Los Angeles Times

Israeli tanks pulled out of the Gaza Strip early Friday morning, ending an incursion that began Wednesday and left 30 Palestinians dead and a trail of damaged homes, crushed cars and uprooted trees. On the eastern edges of Gaza City's Shaaf district, deep trenches of churned earth surrounded by newly pockmarked buildings clearly showed the path taken by an estimated 50 Israeli tanks and armored bulldozers. "This used to be all olive and fruit trees," said Shaaf resident Yusuf Hamad, pointing to a wide patch of barren earth. The incursion targeted orchards used by militants for launching rockets over the border, the Israeli army said. Within hours of the tanks' withdrawal, the military wing of Islamic Jihad launched several rockets that landed near the southern Israeli town of Sderot and wounded two children, an Israeli army spokesman said.


Three Palestinians were killed Friday, including a 13-year old boy, and a man died of wounds incurred Thursday, bringing the total toll to 30 dead and at least 75 wounded over the last three days, medical sources said.

Israel Bites the Hand That Feeds It

Israeli Justice Minister shows just how much they believe they have a free hand from the Bush Administration to bomb Lebanon. The State Department is quick to deny this, but clearly Israeli Cabinate feels entitled to bomb.
BBC

The US state department has dismissed as "outrageous" a suggestion by Israel that it has been authorised by the world to continue bombing Lebanon. "The US is sparing no efforts to bring a durable and lasting end to this conflict," said spokesman Adam Ereli. Israeli Justice Minister Haim Ramon made the suggestion after powers meeting in Rome refrained from demanding an immediate ceasefire.


UK PM Tony Blair has arrived in Washington for talks on the crisis. His meeting with US President George W Bush comes amid growing pressure for the UK and US to join calls for an immediate ceasefire between Israel and Hezbollah.


[...]In Israel, few people still speak of being able to neutralise Hezbollah, our correspondent in Jerusalem Katya Adler says. Instead Israel speaks of trying to establish a "secure zone" empty of Hezbollah fighters north of the border with Israel.


The Israeli government's announcement that it is calling up three divisions of reservists - said to number between 15,000 to 40,000 - suggests it is preparing for the possibility of a protracted war, our correspondent says.

Hizbullah May Succeed in Joining With Hamas Against Israel

Palestinians in Gaza are singing the praises of Hizbullah. Some Hamas leaders are expressing interest in negotiating with Israel only with Hizbullah at the table. Israelis are talking privately about settling now with Hamas to divide the causes. Abbas, now out of the lime light, is quietly attempting to broker a peace that now may be a long ways off.
Hizbullah has strengthened the hand of Hamas politically by sacrificing the blood of it's own people in south Lebanon. And public opinion in Islamic countries world wide swings to the "heroic Hamas". Hizbullah may well force the US to show its hand and prevent it from any brokering role in the Middle East because of it's carte blanche support for Israel despite 600 innocent civilian deaths in Lebanon.
Quite a sophisticated political hand if it works: "Bomb us into the ground and we'll return, stronger than ever!" The US and Israel maybe politically out of their league. We'll see.

Newsweek

As Hizbullah was holding its ground in southern Lebanon, Arab public opinion seemed to be coalescing around the group. At least some Israelis and Americans were beginning to wonder whether it might be a good idea to make a separate peace with the Hamas leadership in Gaza—attempting to break the tightening bond between Hamas and Hizbullah by working out a prisoner exchange for Cpl. Gilad Shalit, the Israeli soldier captured near Gaza. Indeed, such a deal seemed more likely today as Abbas told reporters that Shalit’s release may be imminent. Meanwhile, Hizbullah is still holding two other Israeli soldiers after capturing them in a July 12 cross-border raid that precipitated Israel’s attack on the group.


A senior Israeli security official, who did not want to be identified discussing sensitive negotiations, told me that he thought it was "in everybody's interest to sever as many connections as possible [between] Hamas and Hizbullah. Whatever we can do to weaken these ties makes sense." Daniel Kurtzer, who up until about a year ago was the U.S. ambassador to Israel, agrees. "I would do that deal first," Kurtzer told me. "You cannot, under any circumstances, allow Hizbullah to deliver Shalit."


[...]Some Hamas leaders were wary of striking a deal. "Nobody wants to negotiate without Hizbullah," says Mahmoud Musleh, a Hamas parliamentarian in Ramallah. "To do it in isolation would be a betrayal." When I finally tracked down Mahmoud Zahar, the Hamas foreign minister who has been in hiding since Israeli aircraft leveled his Gaza City office, he didn't seem eager to negotiate separately with the Israelis. Hizbullah's performance in Lebanon was "impressive," Zahar said, looking a little worse for the wear in a brown pinstriped suit. "I'm not talking about good or bad.

Eritrea Sending Military Supplies to Islamist in Mogadishu

The contest in Somalia has turned regional with Eritrea supporting the Islamists in control of Mogadishu. This is indeed a concern because Eritrea has bested Ethiopia in the battlefield on a number of occassions. It's also interesting that the EU doesn't trust Ethiopia in it's support of the interim Somali government.
WaPo

A cargo plane landed in the Somali capital Wednesday, and the interim government said it was carrying Eritrean weapons and supplies for a rival Islamic militia.


Residents reported seeing a medium-size aircraft with no recognizable markings land at Mogadishu's old international airport. The plane was only the second to land at the airport since the Islamic militia reopened it days ago.


"The plane was carrying antiaircraft missiles and other weapons donated by Eritrea to the Islamists," the deputy prime minister, Ismail Mohamed Hurre, said from Baidoa, 150 miles northwest of the capital and the base of the fragile interim government.

Disasters – natural & man-made

Editor's Note: This is the inagural post of a guest author rama from Calcutta, India, whose sensitivity to social justice issues and beautiful writing style inspired me to ask him to join Shining Light when the India government blocked access to Blogger. That problem has since been resolved, but I'm happy that rama has taken me up on my offer anyway! Welcome him warmly!
Natural disasters may strike a people, but its impact depends upon the existing situation within society. In that sense, the fundamental causes of the resultant devastation have to be found within the functioning of society, government and institutions, and in social relations. Undertaking a post-disaster rapid damage assessment mission enables such issues and factors to be highlighted. This note is based on such a study (undertaken by TARU) across the cyclone-affected region of Orissa in eastern India, three weeks after the cyclone disaster of 29 October 1999.
Rehabilitation is therefore essentially a process of awakening to the critical necessities for building a humane, just, and sustainable society. A natural disaster could serve to initiate a process to address long-neglected matters. Rehabilitation could act as a means for renewal of a moribund society. Pro-poor economic and social development in Orissa, has been at the best of times a significant challenge. These events could provide the impetus to accelerate this process.
The question of distributive justice
Unless there exists an independent mechanism of ensuring distributive justice and organising villagers at the grassroots-level, available resources would simply enrich and empower those already well-off and powerful.
Left to governments alone, the rehabilitation would be ineffective at best, and disastrous at worst. Given the inherent tendency towards self-interest in government and institutions, both the above aspects, i.e. the flow of resources from a civic response, and the empowerment of poor villagers to benefit from the rehabilitation process, should therefore be seen within an essentially civil society intervention. The challenge of rehabilitation is principally a challenge for the affected people, for the people of Orissa, and the people of India, rather than being a challenge only for the panchayats (village councils), the block development offices, the state government and the central government.
The survey of cyclone-affected villages only served to highlight the endemic nature of poverty, mal-utilisation of resources, environmental degradation, and social conflicts – even without any cyclone risk. That this is the situation in a region that is considerably better endowed, in socio-economic, infrastructural, communications, financial and institutional resources - than the interior, hilly areas of northern, western and southern Orissa, inhabited by indigenous peoples - is something meriting reflection. The coastal region, and in particular some of the affected areas like Jagatsinghpur, Erasama, Baleshwar, dominate and powerfully control social, economic and cultural life, decision-making and resource flows in Orissa. But as the survey reveals, this region is also with its deep stratifications, leaving large numbers of people at the margins of survival, with a precarious hold on the necessities for bare existence. Natural disasters may have devastating consequences. But even without them, a slow but nonetheless devastating process is at work.
The significance of these districts also means that, given that even the non-poor, reasonably well-to-do have been hit, e.g. by house, crop and livestock loss, there is likely to be a flow of resources for rehabilitation. Since such flows must ulimately also be formally governed by principles of just distribution, the potential exists of using the post-crisis situation to put in place forces enhancing distributive justice, and using the flow of resources to begin the process of long-term socio-economic empowerment of the hitherto marginalised. Such an opportunity would not be there in a pre-disaster situation.
Across the surveyed areas, it was found that access to institutional credit is virtually nil for the common villager, and there is continuing reliance on usurious money-lenders. With house rebuilding and restoration of livelihood (agriculture, fishing) being the crucial rehabilitation tasks, and both requiring credit, it is not realistic to expect that this credit flow will happen of itself.
Role of governmental institutions
The complete absence of any sanitation arrangements whatsoever in the Sandakut settlement in Paradip (which, had come up only about 30 years ago), which is after all a developed, important urban area, is a telling indicator of the state of affairs before any cyclone. This settlement is recognised, albeit informally, by the Notified Area Committee. Regularisation of the settlement, provision of basic civic amenities and facilitating improved house construction - are all tasks that could well have been taken up, without involving much resources. In fact, they could well have been taken up within the context of a larger commercially attractive and public revenue fetching self-financing scheme. But this is not within the set of priorities or capabilities of the authorities.
However, all these tasks require their involvement, and thus the formal power of the relevant institutions only serves to hold development hostage to an administration that is, quite typically, apathetic, incapable and corrupt.
The role of the state is not simply to secure the interests of the most needy and vulnerable. The state’s financial allocations should more realistically be seen in terms of enhancement of the overall economic development of a region. The nature of such economic development - the extent to which its benefits are concentrated in a few hands or is widely distributed – is the crucial issue. Principles of distributive justice demand that the state must not be a means for the enhancement of the stakes of one relatively secure section at the expense of another more vulnerable one. And, it is ultimately the rural poor who provide labour, the basic source of food and incomes creation in a capital-scarce rural environment. Their further immiserisation would only have serious long-term consequences on agriculture.
To assume that the inertia will be broken because of the cyclone disaster, and will be replaced by sustained dynamism, to address matters that were consistently neglected earlier, would be unrealistic.
But even if a committed, dynamic administration were to do its utmost, in terms of mobilising financial resources and initiating various measures, nevertheless, at the levels of the hamlet or village, the village council and the block, there are persons, functionaries, formal representatives, contractors, traders and businessmen, landowners, groups, families – who dominate and control decision-making and resource flows. In some places, and at times, their role in affecting the quality of living of the poor and vulnerable may even be quite positive.
On the whole, however, the situation is that the ordinary villagers, landless agricultural labourers, marginal farmers, fishermen, are completely immersed in simply struggling to eke out a marginal existence, often on a day-to-day basis. They do not possess the basic economic security, education, social exposure, awareness and confidence necessary to secure their just share of whatever rehabilitation assistance is forthcoming. Their typical attitude is to get whatever little they can, and since they have to continue living in that environment, and have a predominant focus on survival, rather than on rights, justice, ethics, governance, they would prefer to accept their lot. This might still result in some resources flowing towards them. Such people form the overwhelming majority of the affected population.
Since such people are already living on the margins of survival, and the cyclone has disrupted this very rudely and rendered their situation even more precarious. The issue here is of ensuring maximal flow, out of a limited fund. Unless an all-out effort is made to stand by this section, and work with them to draw maximal assistance from all quarters to ensure they gain a somewhat stable foothold - there is every likelihood of famine-like conditions visiting the affected areas in the coming months.
If this were to happen even as some relatively affluent, and considerably powerful people enhance their stakes further, quite apart from the ignominy of this, is the fact that their stranglehold over resources and their flow and utilisation would have become fiercer still – with severe and deeply negative socio-economic consequences. In that sense, the natural disaster could be seen as having been merely a detonator of even greater devastation.
The significance of the issue of transparency can be illustrated with reference to the survey finding that in all the affected villages visited, even a month after the disaster, most villagers were ignorant about the financial assistance to be paid. Some had heard that it would be between Rupees 500-2,000, elsewhere people mentioned figures of Rupees 20,000 – 30,000. In a post-disaster context, it is essential that steps are taken speedily, expeditiously, with certainty and transparency, so that basic objectives are not impeded or thwarted by vested interests.
If transparency can be ensured, the potential exists to mobilise a large quantity of voluntary labour – the ultimate source of wealth creation in a humble village – in a post-disaster scenario. Food-for-work or wage employment schemes could be used to leverage voluntary labour, for a transparently leakage-proof collective benefit. This can happen at the level of one labourer, and at the level of the village as a whole. Those workers will be chosen for a day’s job who will give half a day’s labour in the week, say, to build a cyclone shelter. This should not then mean that there can be an equivalent leakage from the financial allocation for the shelter, but that existing resources can go further. Similarly, a job can be allotted to that village which provides the largest volume of voluntary labour (relative to its population).
Stakeholders
The challenge is this: rehabilitation, and disaster preparedness or mitigation, ask for things to happen, which tended, by design, not to happen earlier. Things as they existed, worked to keep such people in their precarious situations. Is it reasonable to expect that the cyclone would have brought about a complete change of heart, all around? To the extent that this happens, it is a very positive factor for the rehabilitation. But more practically, it is necessary to bring in something that will work as a powerful means of introducing transparency into the rehabilitation process. This will be aided by new guidelines, procedures, mechanisms instituted by an administration committed to speedy rehabilitation of the vulnerable. But the fundamental need is for something more that just such measures. The villagers need an ally, against exploitation, beginning with their own selves first.
This cannot be a government functionary – since this role does not form the job description of anyone in the administration now. Also, government is seen by different people and groups in different ways, which may not coincide with the role needed.
In some of the affected villages there may be local youth associations, some of which may occasionally be active, for public purposes. Others may be largely of a cultural or recreational type. Typically, these are not well-resourced, active or presently capable for a major development and justice facilitating role. On the other hand, many of these organisations may provide the initial persons for organising villagers for rehabilitation.
The role of village council and ward members also differs, in terms of awareness, commitment, integrity, transparency, vested interests, conflict-generation or conflict-resolution, capability and effectiveness. But it can definitely be said that this level of governance is not managed by the vulnerable sections, in their interests. The functioning of the present structure, at best results in an indirect trickle-down of opportunties to such sections. Sometimes, they may represent a well-entrenched interest group unto themselves, not averse to intimidation and violence to secure their objectives.
Role of NGOs
There are people whose present role may seem to be quite close to the kind of grassroot level empowerment role that is needed. NGOs, for instance. They are therefore a valuable resource. However, the survey indicates that the presence of capable, empowered, committed NGOs at the village level across the cyclone and flood affected areas - is very marginal. The reasons for this have to be probed. Were not the conditions of the marginal people of coastal Orissa precarious enough, and their numbers large enough to merit intervention, in the pre-cyclone scenario? Would there be a change of heart, all of a sudden? If so, is this a positive factor for the rehabilitation? But it may also prompt some thought on whether there may be other, less noble objectives motivating the sudden intervention.
There is a need for an assessment of the actual capabilities, background, proven experience, skill-levels of NGOs, rather than merely assuming that anyone claiming to be an NGO has the wherewithal to do the requisite work. At a village level, NGO involvement ultimately involves their field staff. More often than not, this level is staffed by youths for whom this is a job, in the absence of any other. They may not necessarily have the motivation, aptitude or personal qualities appropriate to a grassroot development worker. At the very least, they may be a redundant; at worst, they may even create deep damage in the village community.
Where would the large number of requisite village-level staff come from, in the NGOs, who may get involved in the rehabilitation effort? NGOs are by and large supported by project-based grants, mostly foreign. Some of them may have a long-term programme focus based in a specific region. Some of these organisations may have the capability based on their action experience to play a valuable resource role, for instance in training and guiding village staff.
Across the affected region, the survey revealed that villages could benefit significantly with some fairly straightforward measures being taken – such as a small sluice on a water channel to control inflow of saline water. Many villagers know this, some have even gone so far as to have made some efforts to get this taken up, but to no avail. It is reported that there are over 27,000 registered voluntary organisations in Orissa. The state also features in the priority areas list of many international lending, aid and donor agencies. So why does the vacuum remain?
The need for an agency
So we arrive at the apparently absurd need for someone, present for a significant period of time, at the village level, who is more concerned about the vulnerable villagers’ survival and upliftment than they themselves are. And this someone has to be above any personal stake in the resource flow – since direct or indirect control over resources is what all the forms of power ultimately imply. In short, this person or group has to be trustee, of the power of the villagers’ own awareness, intelligence, unity, organisation, initiative and labour, which they can then use for their own betterment.
There is no agency, at present, that matches this description. But this is the most critical requirement, based upon whose presence everything else can happen, (provided resources are forthcoming). In this context, reference may be made to the Nehru Yuvak Kendras. Wherever they exist, in the affected zone, they could play the requisite grassroot-level facilitative role.
Essentially the necessary agency has now to be created - an independent, voluntary, civic movement, of grassroot workers, professionals, experts and specialists. Setting up the structure of such a movement, making the network linkages, and training and ongoing guidance for a cadre of village rehabilitation workers – emerges as the most crucial and strategic requirement for a just and effective rehabilitation programme.
A volunteer worker would be based in an affected village for a considerable period of time – at least one year. He or she would operate within a group of hamlets / villages. At one level this person would interact with the villagers and especially the vulnerable; at another level, with resource persons, experts, professionals. Such workers and specialists would be mobilised from across the country, as part of a special civic mission for rehabilitation and rural reconstruction, beginning in the affected coastal belt of Orissa.
The initial focus of this movement would be to begin the work, on a demonstrative and action-learning mode, in a number of selected villages. This approach would then be sought to be propagated across the entire affected zone.
Local factors
The survey also revealed that the plight of the Scheduled Castes sections in the affected villages was, almost uniformly, the worst. At the same time, it was also clear that a positive process of social integration has been taking place in rural society, with an erosion of prejudicial attitudes (e.g. regarding using common water sources).
Travelling within a short span of time, across a wide band, also enabled discernment of subtle differences and variations across regions. These differences could be related to environmental, economic, social, institutional and even circumstantial factors. Thus, there are regions that are relatively well-developed, in terms of irrigation facilities, commercial agricultural returns, off-farm diversification; there are regions which are significantly lower in social development terms, measured for instance by school attendance. There are places where after a modicum of economic development, a saturation point has been reached, and migration is growing.
Each place has to be understood in terms of its specific situation within an overall human development frame. A general prescription applied mechanically across the entire cyclone-affected region will mean that the potential is lost of utilising the rehabilitation process to begin addressing long-term issues of sustainable livelihood.
Resource flows
If available resources could flow to the vulnerable, the rehabilitation process could be a means for them to begin rising above their previous marginal existence. Conversely, in a limited resource scenario, the ‘law’ of self-interest pursuit, on the part of anyone other than the vulnerable, will work to push the vulnerable to starvation and destitution. And the ‘self-interest’ of the vulnerable, even as articulated by them, may not really be in their interest. For instance, a villager would not like to overtly offend a powerful man. Nor does he want to have to wait very long for getting something. He is completely outside the framework of seeking to obtain justice or redress through the formal channels. So he is quite willing to pay a commission to a sarpanch (council head) for some disbursement.
The amount in question may not make an immense difference to the villager. But the aggregate of such amounts, with that one person, and over all such persons across the entire affected region - would work out to quite a enormous sum, which, since it can apparently be spared by the villager, and of course, is in no way due to the people getting it, could instead have been invested in much-needed rural infrastructure, which would enhance the livelihood prospects of all.
But public works involve significant leakages, and result in shoddy constructions. And life goes on, notwithstanding this. A natural disaster visits and causes extreme devastation in such a scenario. So, by the same logic, one arrives at the need for ensuring flow of the maximal resources, to the absolutely vital investment areas, and through a mechanism involving the vulnerable beneficiaries themselves. The number of intermediaries, between the source of funds, and the beneficiaries, should be zero - except for entities that function like a dynamo-engine, enhancing the quality of the rehabilitation process, the rate of fund flow, distributive justice, attention to the specially vulnerable etc.
The specially vulnerable
The psychological impact, on those in the worst-affected areas, who have been witness to the harrowing drama of losing their kin, could be serious. Compounding this is the practical dimension, of bread-winners and able-bodied men having been killed. Thus, the final human impact has really to be sensitively assessed at a family-to-family level, and the rehabilitation process, at a village level, has to be dove-tailed with the family-level observation and remedial measures. For instance, priority would have to be given to families who have lost their able-bodied men – since they do not have the male member even to go out to find work, while in another family, whose men are alive, they can at least go out to find work even if they are deprived because of the special favour shown to the other. However, typically, far from receiving special attention, the more vulnerable family would be the one trampled in the rush of many, all needy in a broad sense, for limited resources.
No special attention is being given yet to the question of health conditions of women and children. Many children would be severely malnourished.
There are reports of young girls having been sold into prostitution. Similarly the issue of sexual abuse of young girls, who are exposed and vulnerable after their houses have been destroyed and men have gone out to get relief materials or for work.
Human nature would also reveal that the ones rendered most vulnerable, would show tendencies to prefer continuous patronage, rather than seeking to attain rapid security and stability through utilising the available benefits, their own intelligence and effort. This has to be dealt with, sensitively.
There would also be many whose situation simply calls for continued assistance, over a long-term, before they can attain some stability. A young widow, with infants. An elderly or infirm person, straddled with some of the surviving family children. The ways of sustaining this pose a tremendous challenge for micro-level intervention, in terms of resource identification, harnessing and multiplication.
The ultimate concern of the administration is to see that, in the records, tasks have been completed. Requirement was assessed, and communicated. Allotments were made. Disbursement was made. What actually happens to the villager, day by day, over the coming months and years – does not feature in this. The pain of her painful existence is not felt.
In any village, there exist structures of kinship, community, and compassion, which work to ameliorate poverty and resource scarcity. This would work to ensure that the most vulnerable, do also get attention. But these tendencies are severely strained in a post-disaster scenario, when everyone is quite badly affected. Also, this cannot be expected to be sustained, and that too at a higher level, over a long period.
Conflict, cooperation
It should be realised that the flow of resources occasioned by the rehabilitation effort will be accompanied by the emergence and growth of conflicts, as different interest groups seek to obtain a stake for themselves. This can have a deeply negative and long-term socio-economic and environmental effect.
It was found that people who have been badly affected seem to be in a state of shock, just trying to get from relief whatever they immediately need, while those less or not affected are busy obtaining as much as they can. Approach roads to some of the areas are lined with children, women and old women stretching out their hands to passing vehicles with distressing pleas. One can understand that the post-cyclone relief milieu is like a heaven-sent opportunity to extract as much as possible to improve their admittedly not so comfortable situation. Similarly, some of the affected villagers have also started exploiting the post-cyclone situation, e.g., selling vegetables at exorbitant prices. In some of the areas, looting and other serious anti-social activities took place, suggesting that besides some criminals, some of the local villagers may also have indulged in this.
Conflict and cooperation are both present at the village level, emerging at different times, under different circumstances. Thus, villagers across the surveyed villagers spoke of the spirit of cooperation, unity and selflessness that was exhibited in the midst of crisis. Limited foodstuffs were pooled and shared, with priority being given to small children, the aged and infirm. But the same villagers also speak of the exploitativeness of some now, for instance by charging exorbitant prices for vegetables. In Ganjam district, a few kms south of Gopalpur town, a rice mill owner reported that his badly damaged mill was looted by people from a nearby village.
Such acts of looting in the immediate aftermath of the disaster suggest the prior existence of serious conflict between the parties in question. Such currents will be operative during the rehabilitation process. Discerning such currents at a village level, resolving conflict and enhancing cooperation, is part of the rehabilitation challenge.

Hizbullah is Winning

Hizbullah is winning, not militarily, but politically. It is seen worldwide as a hero among those sympathetic to the Palestinian's plight and seeing Israel as a bully killing innocent women and children. What has been thought of as the single most effective military force in the world has been effectively repelled by a militia of a few thousand. No, not repelled militarily, but by seeking to limit casualties, they are making little progress at stopping the missiles, in fact the missiles are coming more frequently than ever. Iran and Syria's stature as the leader of the resistance to Israel rises with Hizbullah. Hamas's fortunes have been similar and it's stature has reached heroic proportions.
Apparently, Dubya has been one of the admirers of the Israeli military. That's why he was such a pushover for the neo-cons. So when Israel claims it's right to defend itself, Dubya is the head-cheerleader. The point Israelis and their supporters keep missing is that the agenda of "defending itself" is not about strategy, it's about re-elections. The voters in Israel scream en mass, "It has to stop, do something!" And Israel does. Empowered by a population fearful of annihilation, the hawks have been in power for many years. Anyone in Israel who dares to say they might be losing the war on terror, is committing political suicide.
But the reality is that terrorism is not about winning militarily, it's about winning the hearts and minds of the populous. Israel may well win this battle, but they are condemning themselves to perpetual warfare, by creating a new generation of terrorists every time a Palestinian or in this case, Lebanese Shia neighborhood is bombed and innocent families die.
The lesson of Vietnam was not just about waging a war that was not popular, not just about wage a war directed by politicians seeking to minimize political damage, it's about fighting a mechanized war against a people who are armed and living with and fighting for their families. You can't win a guerrilla war without the support of the population living where the guerrilla fighters live and eat. Unless you intend to commit genocide.
Hamas and Hizbullah should not be confused with Al Qaeda. Al Qaeda is an organization with worldwide ambitions, and only the benefit of themselves at risk. The rank and file of Hamas and Hizbullah defend their homes and families, regardless of who funds their weapons.
Newsweek

[...]The bottom line: Hizbullah is winning. That’s the hideous truth about the direction this war is taking, not in spite of the way the Israelis have waged their counterattack, but precisely because of it.


We’re talking about a militia—a small guerrilla army of a few thousand fighters, in fact—that plays all the dirty games that guerrillas always play. It blends in with the local population. It draws fire against innocents. But it’s also fighting like hell against an Israeli military machine that is supposed to be world class. And despite the onslaught of the much-vaunted Tsahal, Hizbullah continues to pepper Israel itself with hundreds of rockets a day.


Neither U.S. nor Israeli policymakers have taken this dynamic into account. If they had, they’d understand that with each passing day, no matter how many casualties it takes, Hizbullah’s political power grows.


As in Iraq three years ago, the administration has been blinded to the political realities by shock-and-awe military firepower. Clinging to its faith in precision-guided munitions and cluster bombs, it has decided to let Lebanon bleed, as if that’s the way to build the future for peace and democracy.

Global Poverty Kills Millions, But Nobody Wants Free Trade

People are too wrapped up in their own issues to consider the big picture. Unfortunately many do see the big picture but don't want to spend their tax dollars on the third world's "colored" masses. Then there is the military industrial complex that would rather spend tax dollars on new and more expensive weapons than on teaching the poor survival technology and building jobs where there are none. For them, it's about profits, people are just so much cannon fodder.
While it's true that there is no way to solve all the problems and handouts exacerbate the problems, there are many worthy programs that would benefit the world's poor, and build them a future, help with environmental degradation, further world peace and help with the "war on terror" than anything Dubya has ever done.
Los Angeles Times

[...]global poverty has killed several million this year, while contributing to the instability and despair that will spawn tomorrow's wars, terrorism and other more telegenic tragedies. The Doha round of talks that collapsed Monday in Geneva, launched in the aftermath of the 9/11 terror attacks, could have put a genuine dent in that poverty while boosting standards of living in wealthy nations. The World Bank estimates that a successful outcome would add nearly $300 billion to the world economy.


Just last week, world leaders proclaimed at the Group of 8 summit that they were committed to saving the Doha round, which is aimed primarily at reducing agricultural tariffs and subsidies that make it harder for poor countries to sell their crops to rich countries at a fair price. Their words were, as expected, completely empty. None of them gave their trade ministers any new proposals to introduce during last-ditch efforts over the weekend to resolve the 5-year-old talks, which ended up being suspended indefinitely by WTO Director Pascal Lamy.


The United States and the European Union each accuse the other of intransigence, but in truth, neither side was ready to make anything but cosmetic cuts in farm supports. The reason is connected to the lack of headlines on the collapse of the Doha talks: There is no strong political constituency on behalf of free trade or international development. Though every American taxpayer and consumer is harmed by farm subsidies, the powerful agribusiness lobby and members of Congress from farm states still prevail.


Doha is dead for now, but it doesn't have a stake in its heart. Other trade rounds have been revived years after their apparent demise. That could happen with Doha if business interests and politicians who know the benefits of free trade and appreciate the strategic value of lifting global living standards are willing to get the message across.


President Bush has been addressing the crisis in Iraq this week, and Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice has been dealing with Lebanon. In a decade, their efforts may well be historical footnotes. It was U.S. Trade Representative Susan Schwab — ever heard of her? — who was left to deal with what could turn out to be the more lasting tragedy. Poverty, unless more is done to combat it now, will in coming decades still be the scourge of humanity, engendering more wars and famines, giving rise to new diseases and worsening overpopulation. It's worth a lot more attention than it's getting.

Hello? Dubya? Are You Of This World?

Hey Dubya? Did someone wake you up from your nap? Did you enjoy your vacation?
I'm sorry, the idea about sending more troops, it's about two years too late. Sorry.... It's just not going to help. After all one of the most influential political leaders in Iraq is supporting the rule in the streets for the past 4 years, everyone needs to be armed, just to protect their family. I'm sure many will again turn their weapons on their neighbors and the American sons and daughters.
Dubya, go back to kindergarten, you seemed more comfortable there than you have been since that day the towers fell.
WaPo

President Bush said yesterday that he will send more U.S. forces and equipment to Baghdad as part of a fresh strategy to put down rising sectarian violence, abandoning a six-week-old operation that failed to pacify the strife-torn Iraqi capital and opening what aides called an unexpected new phase of the war.

br />
Playing host to Iraqi Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki at the White House for the first time, Bush sounded unusually dour and acknowledged that the situation in Iraq in many ways has worsened lately. But he vowed to adjust tactics to deal with evolving threats and to keep U.S. forces in Iraq as long as necessary to fortify Maliki's government until it can defend itself.

China to freeze N Korean Bank Accounts

China has taken unprecedented action against it's long time ally, not because of missile activities, but because of counterfeiting and money laundering alleged by the US. This is amazing news. I can't help but wonder if China's patience with it's ally has been exhausted.
FT.com

The Bank of China has frozen North Korean bank accounts containing millions of dollars, following in the footsteps of a US-led crackdown on the rogue state’s alleged counterfeiting and money-laundering.


The decision is remarkable because Beijing, long concerned about the potential for catastrophe on its north-eastern border, has hitherto avoided taking any action that might cause instability in Kim Jong-il’s regime.


A US government official said on Tuesday the Bush administration had been alerted that the Bank of China had frozen North Korea-related assets in its Macao branch. Earlier this year, China had warned financial institutions about counterfeiting by North Korea.


The Bank of China froze the accounts before this month’s provocative rocket tests by North Korea, which have led to international sanctions intended to curb North Korea’s missile programme, said Park Jin, a prominent lawmaker in South Korea’s main opposition Grand National Party who recently met former and current US administration officials in Washington.


Pyongyang has responded angrily to US action against the Banco Delta Asia (BDA) in Macao, where $24m of North Korean money has been frozen since September. Similar action by China’s second-largest bank is likely to have a profound effect. North Korea has insisted it will not resume six-party talks unless the US calls off its financial campaign.


“I understand the Bank of China stopped dealing with North Korea as the US expanded its probe,” said Mr Park. “This is a virtual ban against dealing with North Korea by China, leaving North Korea all the more devastated,” Mr Park said, quoting a former Bush administration official. Washington believes Pyongyang has been counterfeiting Chinese renminbi as well as US dollars, he added.


[...]North Korean and foreign businessmen dealing with Pyongyang say sanctions have shut down the regime’s ability to earn foreign currency.

Hizbollah and Hamas Looking More And More The Heroes

Who champions the Palestinian and the Shia of Lebannon? It's Hamas and Hizbollah. Virtually all of the Arab leaders have been critical of both terrorist organizations, both born of past Israeli conflicts and growing in power and statue with each confrontation. Neither organization cares about casualties or war materials as much as they do as viewing themselves as central players in confrontation with Israel.
And both Israel and the US simply don't understand how they create their own enemies and ensure a new generation of recruits by martyring their members.
Newsweek

Yet the main target of Israel's war, Hizbullah leader Hassan Nasrallah, remained cool, confident, apparently unperturbed. A few hours after the Israelis dropped 23 tons of explosives on a bunker where they thought he was holed up, Nasrallah appeared on Al-Jazeera television, smiling affably as he chatted with the network's Beirut correspondent. "The command structure of Hizbullah has not been harmed," he said. The militia "has managed to absorb the strikes," and it would still "offer some surprises." Indeed, Hizbullah rockets continued soaring into northern Israel; 30 landed in and around Haifa in a single day.


[...]The history of earlier drives into Lebanon shows that even as the Israeli war machine gains momentum, so do the chances of terrible accidents and atrocities. In 1982, under the protection of Israeli forces, Christian Lebanese militias carried out the now infamous massacre of hundreds of Palestinians in Beirut's Sabra and Shatila refugee camps. Ten years ago, during a campaign against Hizbullah similar to the one now underway, Israeli gunners blasted a United Nations monitoring post at the South Lebanese town of Qana, where terrified locals had taken refuge. More than 100 civilians were killed in a barrage that lasted only a few ghastly seconds. International outrage quickly forced Israel to end its offensive.


[...]The problem is both dangerous and complex. When Nasrallah started his war, he claimed he was supporting the people of Gaza, who had been under siege since the June 25 kidnapping of an Israeli soldier by Hamas operatives. The Hizbullah leader makes no secret of his ambitions to speak not only for his Lebanese Shiite followers, but for the Palestinians as well—indeed, for Muslims all over the world. At the same time, Egypt, Jordan and others have been working behind the scenes to arrange an end to the Gaza fighting and the Israeli soldier's release, and they've done their best to keep Nasrallah from stealing any credit.


So far, however, he seems to be prospering no matter what happens. While moderate Arab governments have lined up against Hizbullah and its provocations, many of their people have been pouring into the streets to cheer for Nasrallah's war. Tehran is gloating over the way its client has held out against the Israeli onslaught—and crowing at the seeming contradictions of U.S. policy. "America has spent millions of dollars on satellite TV and radio programming trying to promote the Greater Middle East Plan and in 10 days Israel has destroyed all of that," says Mohamad Ali Mohtadi of Tehran's Center for Scientific Research and Middle East Strategic Studies. MORE

Ethiopia Gets the Nod From Washington To Invade Somalia

It is apparent that the Bush Administration has given Ethiopia the silent encouragement to invade Somalia in support of the interim government. I seriously doubt very many people are too worried about Somali self-determination since a Islamic fundamentalist group allied with Al Qaeda controls half the country. The sad part is that Islamic rule is probably the only hope for Somalia to end the violence. It's unfortunate a good number of the leaders of this movement ally with Al Qaeda.
Africa" href="http://news.independent.co.uk/world/africa/article1193088.ece">Independent.co.uk

Ethiopian troops moved further into Somalia yesterday, opening a new front in the American-led "war on terror". An estimated 5,000 Ethiopian soldiers are believed to be inside Somalia, protecting the weak transitional government from an Islamist force that controls half the country.


The US does not want Somalia to fall into the hands of the Islamists; so far, regional observers point out, neither the US nor any other UN Security Council member has condemned the Ethiopian invasion.

Pakistan Joins the Nuclear Arms Race

With the US supplying modern nuclear technology to India, in view of it's new strategic relationship, Pakistan is left to keep up by creating numbers. But their plan production of plutonium will far outstrip their needs to modernize their current stockpile. So will Pakistan be stockpiling unused plutonium? I think not. More likely they will seek to counter India's technological edge with numbers of missile mounted warheads.
The other possibility is that Pakistan will play it's traditional spoiler roll and become a major exporter of plutonium. If so, what a wonderful world this will be with virtually all Islamic regimes including fundamentalist Saudi Arabia and others, and presumably Iran and North Korea, all past beneficiaries of Pakistani nuclear technology. Presumably, China is encouraging this development to counter India's missiles pointed north.
WaPo

Pakistan has begun building what independent analysts say is a powerful new reactor for producing plutonium, a move that, if verified, would signal a major expansion of the country's nuclear weapons capabilities and a potential new escalation in the region's arms race.


Satellite photos of Pakistan's Khushab nuclear site show what appears to be a partially completed heavy-water reactor capable of producing enough plutonium for 40 to 50 nuclear weapons a year, a 20-fold increase from Pakistan's current capabilities, according to a technical assessment by Washington-based nuclear experts.


The construction site is adjacent to Pakistan's only plutonium production reactor, a modest, 50-megawatt unit that began operating in 1998. By contrast, the dimensions of the new reactor suggest a capacity of 1,000 megawatts or more, according to the analysis by the Institute for Science and International Security. Pakistan is believed to have 30 to 50 uranium warheads, which tend to be heavier and more difficult than plutonium warheads to mount on missiles.


"South Asia may be heading for a nuclear arms race that could lead to arsenals growing into the hundreds of nuclear weapons, or at minimum, vastly expanded stockpiles of military fissile material," the institute's David Albright and Paul Brannan concluded in the technical assessment, a copy of which was provided to The Washington Post.


[...]"Such a reactor could produce over 200 kilograms of weapons-grade plutonium per year, assuming it operates at full power a modest 220 days per year," it says. "At 4 to 5 kilograms of plutonium per weapon, this stock would allow the production of over 40 to 50 nuclear weapons a year."

What incentive is there to stop another arms race in Asia and the Middle East? The US is so far in debt, there will be no more greenbacks for all.

In the Mosques, Sermons Critical of the U.S., Israel

The Bush Administration carte blanche to Israel is having it's expected effect. Most notably, we discover why the Bush Administration has backed off of it's mission to bring democracy to the world. Not only was it an expression of it's ignorance, the world is voting against Bush. For example, Egypt is in the midst of a crack-down. But even the most authoritarian regimes have recognized that their credibility is on the line, and have allowed dissent to state opinions about Lebanon, even from the usually controlled pulpits in Egypt and Saudi Arabia. Arab leaders are truly afraid of losing control to the Islamic fundamentalists.
New York Times

In mosques from Mecca to Marrakesh, sermons at Friday Prayer services underscored both the David-versus-Goliath glamour many Arabs associate with Hezbollah’s fight against Israel and their antipathy toward the United States and its allies in the region for doing so little to stop yet another Arab country from collapsing into bloodshed.


“Our brothers are being killed in Lebanon and no one is responding to their cries for help,” said Sheik Hazzaa al-Maswari, an Islamist member of Yemen’s Parliament, in his Friday sermon at the Mujahid Mosque in Sana, the country’s capital. “Where are the Arab leaders?” he said. “Do they have any skill other than begging for a fake peace outside the White House? We don’t want leaders who bow to the White House.”


The tone of the sermons suggests that the fighting in Lebanon is further tarnishing the image of the United States in the Arab world as being solely concerned with Israel’s welfare and making its allied governments look increasingly like puppets.


“What is creating radicalism in the region is not authoritarian regimes,” said Mustafa Hamarneh, director of the Center for Strategic Studies at the University of Jordan. “Mainly it is American policy in the region — survey after survey shows that.”


The attacks against Arab leaders from the pulpit were all the more surprising because so many governments have exerted some manner of control over sermons in recent years. Dictating the content of the weekly themes is one means of preventing prayer leaders from launching into the kind of political discussions that could inspire extremists.

Lawsuit Against ATT Allowed To Proceed

Privacy received a motion of support when a federal judge ruled that despite Bush Administration attempts to kill the lawsuit against ATT for an illegal surveillance program. Since the story is already public, there is no secrecy to protect. The content of the ruling, particularly the below quotes are worth reading, because it demonstrates just how desparate the Bush Administration has been to keep this under wraps.
Wired.com

A federal judge in San Francisco has rejected the Bush administration's bid to kill the EFF's class action lawsuit alleging that AT&T is cooperating in an illegal NSA surveillance program that monitors Americans' internet activities.


In a 72-page written decision (.pdf) issued Thursday, U.S. District Court chief judge Vaughn Walker rejected the government's argument that merely allowing the case to proceed would cause critical harm to U.S. national security -- a ruling that marks a significant victory for EFF, and puts a rare limitation on the reach of the president's "state secrets privilege" to sweep alleged illegal government activities under the cloak of national security.

[...]The court also recognizes that legislative or other developments might alter the course of this litigation. But it is important to note that even the state secrets privilege has its limits. While the court recognizes and respects the executive's constitutional duty to protect the nation from threats, the court also takes seriously its constitutional duty to adjudicate the disputes that come before it. ... To defer to a blanket assertion of secrecy here would be to abdicate that duty, particularly because the very subject matter of this litigation has been so publicly aired. The compromise between liberty and security remains a difficult one. But dismissing this case at the outset would sacrifice liberty for no apparent enhancement of security.


[...]Based on these public disclosures, the court cannot conclude that the existence of a certification regarding the "communication content" program is a state secret. If the government's public disclosures have been truthful, revealing whether AT&T has received a certification to assist in monitoring communication content should not reveal any new information that would assist a terrorist and adversely affect national security. And if the government has not been truthful, the state secrets privilege should not serve as a shield for its false public statements. In short, the government has opened the door for judicial inquiry by publicly confirming and denying material information about its monitoring of communication content.

Voting Rights Act Renewed, Not Broad Enough

Despite moves by bigotted Republicans in the House, the Voting Rights Act passed the Senate today and will likely be signed by Bush given his statements to the NAACP this week.
The problem is that it has limited authority in most states, focusing on the South where discrimination has been flagrant in the past. However, the problems in Ohio and Florida in the last election will not be addressed. Clearly, many red states have unwritten policies designed to intimidate get out the vote drives and minority voters. The law needs considerable strengthening.
WaPo

The Senate voted 98 to 0 to renew key provisions of the Voting Rights Act yesterday, permitting the federal government to continue its broad oversight of state voting procedures for the next quarter-century, and allowing Republicans to claim equality with Democrats in protecting minorities' clout at the ballot box.


The act requires several states, mostly in the South, to obtain Justice Department approval before changing precinct boundaries, polling places, legislative districts, ballot formats and other voting procedures. It also requires many jurisdictions throughout the nation to provide bilingual ballots or interpreters for voters whose English is not strong.


The law, first passed in 1965, retains near-iconic status in civil rights circles, even though some elected officials say it is no longer needed. GOP leaders were eager to renew it before the November elections. Unlike the House, where some Southern Republicans opposed provisions that focus on their states, the Senate passed the bill unanimously after hours of one-sided debate in which member after member praised leaders of the 1960s desegregation movement.

Over Three Hundred Dead Civilians in Lebanon

Three hundred dead civilians in Lebanon, untold thousands injured with no access to health care, 500,000 homeless. It's hard to imagine that this disruption and destruction of Lebanon was justified by the kidnapping of two soldiers. Clearly this was planned for a long time, and the kidnapping provided a pretext to act.
Don't get me wrong. Hezbollah is a terrorist organization. It had been offered a chance to disarm and join the Lebanese government. It refused. It has stockpiled thousands of rockets and other weapons. Southern Lebanon would be occupied by Israelis if it wasn't for Hezbollah. Perhaps civilian lives would have been spared if that were a practical method in Israeli eyes.
The sad thing about it is that Hezbollah came to be after the Israeli invasion of 1982 targetting the PLO. Iranian Revolutionary Guards came to support and train the Shiite majority in southern Lebanon to defend themselves.
There is no sense in war. And there is no justification to this kind of war, for either party. War is only justified if there is no other choice. Targetting civilians violates all treaties and moral values. I'm astounded that the world stands by and shrugs, doing little more than chiding each side to show "restraint", when no one believes they will.
Welcome to the post 9/11 world.
WaPo

Israeli warplanes continued their punishing airstrikes across Lebanon on Wednesday, including for the first time striking Beirut's main Christian enclave and later bombing a bunker believed to be sheltering Hezbollah leaders. Ground troops meanwhile launched their most significant incursion so far into southern Lebanon, joining attacks that killed more than 50 Lebanese on the deadliest day since hostilities erupted eight days ago.


Hezbollah in return fired more than 100 rockets into northern Israel, hitting Haifa and, for the first time, Nazareth, where two Israeli Arab boys were killed.


[...]The International Committee of the Red Cross and other international aid agencies cited growing concern over the number of Lebanese civilians being displaced by the Israeli air campaign, particularly in the hard-hit villages and towns of southern Lebanon. The number forced to leave their homes was estimated at 500,000 in a country with a population of 4 million.


[...]Siniora, in a televised appeal, said about 300 Lebanese had been killed by Israeli air raids over the past eight days. He called on foreign governments to come to Lebanon's aid, adding, "I hope you won't let us down."

Update: Finally the EU speaks up, after all the damage is done. Too little too late.
WaPo

European allies are particularly alarmed about the disproportionately high civilian death toll in Lebanon. They are also concerned that the U.S. position will increase tensions between the Islamic world and the West by fueling militants, playing into the rhetoric of Osama bin Laden and adding to the problems of the U.S.-led coalition force in Iraq.


[...]"The one thing that is guaranteed to send the Arab world and the Persian world over the edge is for the U.S. to be seen ultimately to be doing what they always believed -- to be fully in cahoots with Israel," said a European official who spoke on the condition of anonymity because of diplomatic relations. "The danger of allowing it to continue is that the United States is more and more despised. It's not like the U.S. had a good reputation within the region to start with."

This is winning the war on terror? Hardly. This is doing exactly what Osama predicted, and confirming Arab and Persian fears that the US is indeed the "Great Satan".

India Blocks Internet Access Targetting Blogs

"Democratic" India is looking less so today, by blanket blocking Blogger and Geocities, apparently with concern risk of sharing terroristic ideas and inspiration via the Internet. I'm sure Doublethink Dubya would love to do this too. Thank goodness for rightwing bloggers. They are the only reason we aren't shut down I'm sure.
WaPo

India's department of telecommunications sent an order late last week to Internet service providers to block several Web sites, according to a department spokesman. The spokesman, Rajesh Malhotra, declined to disclose the contents of the letter or discuss the order, saying it was a "confidential exchange of information between the department and the operators."


Several telecom operators confirmed that they were directed to block more than 15 Web sites. Close to a third of those are home to blogs, or personalized Web logs, such as Blogger.com and Geocities.com. Included on a list seen by the Wall Street Journal are sites that showcase views of an Islamic holy man; conservative Hindus; and dalits, the low caste in India pejoratively referred to as untouchables.


The government blacklist follows the July 11 commuter-train bombings in Bombay, which killed an estimated 207 people. It isn't clear whether the move was related to the blasts, in which Indian officials suspect militants in neighboring Pakistan.

Alternate access for those blocked:

Somalia Headed Towards Islamic State Allied with Al Qaeda

In the past few months, conditions in Somalia have taken a potentially disasterous turn. The Islamic Courts Council took control of Mogadishu, driving out a US supported alliance of warlords. Ethiopia has quietly infultrated troops into Northern Somalia supporting the Transitional Federal Government, a fractured group of Somali's some allied with Ethiopia, with no actual power, put together by a consortium of governmental organizations including the western powers.
Meanwhile, the I.C.C. has been consolidating power, and a faction allied with Al Qaeda and seeking to impose sharia law on the Somali people, who are unlikely to accept it.
Clearly what the US does next may turn the tide.
PINR

Since June 5, when the Islamic Courts Union (I.C.U.) -- now institutionalized and renamed the Islamic Courts Council (I.C.C) -- took control of Somalia's official capital Mogadishu, routing a rival alliance of Washington-backed warlords, the country has been in an incipient revolutionary situation.


The revolutionary character of Somalia's politics became evident when the hard-line Islamist faction of the I.C.C. led by Sheikh Hassan Dahir Aweys, who is on Washington's list of al-Qaeda supporters, gained ascendancy over the moderate group headed by Sheikh Sharif Sheikh Ahmed on June 25. Whereas Ahmed had said that the I.C.U. was not interested in imposing an Islamist social model on Somalia and was only concerned with bringing peace and order to the country, Aweys insisted that the new I.C.C. would not be satisfied with anything less than a state governed by Shari'a law.


The rise of the I.C.C. changed the balance of power in Somalia's stateless society decisively, throwing the internationally supported but increasingly impotent Transitional Federal Government (T.F.G.), based in the town of Baidoa, on the defensive. As the I.C.C. swept through most of Somalia's south and consolidated its gains, the T.F.G. desperately pleaded for support from international and regional organizations in the form of a peacekeeping mission, and was met with a tepid response. Alarmed by the possibility of a hostile Islamist state on its border, Ethiopia sent troops into areas of Somalia as yet outside I.C.C. control and reportedly deployed troops and armored vehicles in Baidoa to protect the T.F.G.


[...]Although most Western analysts have predicted that rifts between the hard-liners and moderates in the I.C.C. would surface, that traditional clan rivalries would hamstring the I.C.C. and that Somalia's generally moderate Muslim population would resist the imposition of Shari'a law, none of those projection has yet to materialize.


[...]Distrustful of Ethiopian intentions in Somalia, the Arab bloc now appears to have taken sides, bolstering the I.C.C.'s position and rendering the efforts of international organizations, the A.U. and Western powers to spur a power-sharing agreement problematic.


[...]Ousted warlord and ex-governor of Somalia's Middle Shabelle region Mohammad Dheere was reportedly shuttling between Addis Ababa and Baidoa in an effort to revive the warlords' alliance and unite it with the T.F.G. under Ethiopia's military and financial support. Warlords Botan Ise Alin and Abdi Nur Siyed reportedly crossed from Somalia into Ethiopia.


The T.F.G. executive's dependence on Ethiopia, which fought a war with Somalia in 1977 and is a prime target of Somali nationalist sentiment, and its collusion with discredited warlords indicates its desperate position. It no longer appears that the T.F.G. is coherent and credible enough to be a negotiating partner in a reconciliation process -- despite the promise of a "joint committee" to meet with the I.C.C. -- leaving the A.U., U.N., and the U.S. and European powers that are working within the Washington-inspired Contact Group (C.G.) with the major pillar of their policy of containing and moderating the I.C.C. shattered. The stage is set for a possible confrontation between Addis Ababa and the I.C.C. amidst the wreckage of the T.F.G.


[...]With the exception of Ethiopia, which has actively supported Yusuf's faction in the T.F.G., and Eritrea, which has a simmering border conflict with Ethiopia and has backed the I.C.C., the other external actors with interests in Somalia have proven unable to adapt to the rise of the Courts and the collapse of the T.F.G. with coherent and decisive strategies, and have remained at least one step behind events on the ground.


Divided within themselves by member states that have taken sides in past internal Somali conflicts, the A.U., and the Inter-Governmental Authority on Development (I.G.A.D.), a regional grouping of Somalia and its neighbors, have given formal support to the T.F.G. and have promised to provide troops for a peacekeeping mission if an exemption is made to the arms embargo by the U.N. Security Council. Their support for the T.F.G., however, has not run deep and their effectiveness is dependent on diplomatic and financial backing from Western powers, which have also given formal support to the T.F.G., but have been unwilling to empower it.


The United States, which backed the defeated warlords in an effort to capture al-Qaeda operatives whom it believes are being sheltered by the Islamists, has drawn back and now appears to have decided to work with international and regional organizations and not to follow its former Ethiopian partner on the path of confrontation. Interested European powers, especially Great Britain and Italy -- the former colonial rulers of Somalia -- have done the same, as has the United Nations.


The result of the convergence of the preponderance of external players has not been a firm and resolute consensus, but a tentative and compromised approach that has deprived them of any control over the evolving revolutionary situation in Somalia.


During the week of July 9, an A.U.-I.G.A.D.-European "fact-finding mission" visited Somalia in an effort to determine the feasibility of deploying peacekeepers, and met with pleas for immediate deployment from the T.F.G. executive and outright rejection from the I.C.C., which threatened publicly to wage war against any foreign force. Nonetheless, when the mission released its report on July 10, it expressed "optimism" that the I.C.C. and T.F.G. would be "willing to dialogue."


[...]Analysts tend to underestimate the advantage that ascending revolutionary movements derive from their adherents' sense of advancing toward more successes, the solidarity generated by that sense and the appeal that it has for a dispossessed public. The I.C.C. has internal divisions and external foes, one of which -- Ethiopia, especially if it gained Washington's blessing -- can pose a serious threat to the realization of its aims. Yet the I.C.C.'s weaknesses do not seem to have retarded its forward march. MORE