Light Seeking Light

PORTLAND, Ore. – After nearly a decade of court battles, scientists plan to begin studying the 9,300-year-old skeleton known as Kennewick Man next week.

A team of scientists plans to examine the bones at the University of Washington's Burke Museum in Seattle beginning July 6, according to their attorney, Alan Schneider.
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The researchers plan to do what is called a "taphonomic" examination of the skeleton, taking measurements and making observations about the processes that affect animal and plant remains as they become fossilized. Further study is planned based on the initial findings....

Now for the disturbing part:

Legislation remains under consideration in Congress that would allow federally recognized tribes to claim ancient remains even if they cannot prove a link to a current tribe.

Senator McCain is a primary sponsor of this legislation -- he must be stopped.

Read it here.

# posted by D. B. Light : 8:47 PM links to this post

WASHINGTON - President Bush, embracing nearly all the recommendations of a White House commission, said Wednesday he was creating a national security service at the FBI to specialize in intelligence as part of a shake-up of the disparate U.S. spy agencies.

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Those changes include directing the Justice Department to consolidate its counterterrorism, espionage and intelligence units. Bush also will ask Congress to create an assistant attorney general position to help centralize those operations. Bush wrote in a memo to intelligence agency leaders that "further prompt action is necessary" at the Justice Department and FBI to address security challenges.

....

_forming a National Counter Proliferation Center to coordinate the U.S. government's collection and analysis of intelligence on nuclear, biological and chemical weapons. The task is now performed by many national security agencies.

_asking Congress to reform its oversight of intelligence agencies.

_putting CIA Director Porter Goss in charge of all overseas human intelligence, or traditional spy work, done by government operatives.

_proposing legislation that would extend the duration of electronic surveillance in cases involving foreign agents.

_put in place new procedures for dissenting intelligence analysis to be allowed to reach senior officials.

_giving the intelligence director a staff of "mission managers" who will develop strategies for specific intelligence areas. As an example, the commission said the director could have a mission manager focused on a specific country, such as China.

# posted by D. B. Light : 8:24 PM links to this post

NEW DELHI, June 29. — India and Singapore today signed four treaties, including the landmark Comprehensive Economic Cooperation Agreement, (CECA). The pact signed by the the Prime Ministers of the two countries will open up banking sector and boost bilateral trade and investment. The CECA agreement will also liberalise the service sector and ease the visa restrictions for professionals from the two countries.
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Singapore today reaffirmed its support to India’s quest for permanent seat in the United Nations Security Council. This was conveyed by the visiting Singapore Prime Minister Mr Lee Hsien Loong during his meeting with external affairs minister Mr K Natwar Singh.

# posted by D. B. Light : 7:56 PM links to this post

WASHINGTON - The Senate Finance Committee on Wednesday voted to send the U.S. Central American Free Trade Agreement, or CAFTA, to the full Senate with a favorable recommendation.

The panel's voice vote set the stage for the full Senate to possibly take up the pact in coming days. The Ways and Means Committee in the U.S. House of Representatives is scheduled to vote on the agreement on Thursday.

# posted by D. B. Light : 6:15 PM links to this post

TEHRAN (Reuters) - Iran's ultra-conservative President-elect Mahmoud Ahmadinejad Wednesday faced calls from hardline supporters to clamp down on social freedoms allowed under the country's outgoing reformist president.

"Islamic and revolutionary culture have been neglected in the past years," the official IRNA news agency quoted hardline lawmaker Mohammad Taqi Rahbar as saying.

"Even if women remove the small handkerchiefs they wear instead of a proper veil, nobody says anything," he said adding that mixing of young men and women in public also contravened the values of an Islamic society.

# posted by D. B. Light : 4:12 PM links to this post

WASHINGTON (AFP) - Defense ministers of the United States and India have signed a 10-year agreement paving the way for joint weapons production, cooperation on missile defense and possible lifting of US export controls for sensitive military technologies.

"We are transforming our relationship to reflect our common principles and shared national interests," it said of the so-called "New framework for the US-India defense relationship" signed at the Pentagon.
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Washington's move to boost relations between the world's oldest and largest democracies which were on the opposite sides in the Cold War is seen by analysts as part of a strategy to counter the growing influence of China, India's immediate neighbour.

# posted by D. B. Light : 7:27 AM links to this post

LONDON – Memo to those who opposed the war in Iraq: Please stop talking about the Downing Street memos! And I say that not as a defender of the war, but as one who was implacably set against it.

The antiwar lobby's obsession with secretive things - whether it's these latest memos, earlier dodgy dossiers, or rumors about who said what to whom in the backrooms of the White House and Whitehall - degrades the debate about war.

Instead of mounting a serious opposition to the invasion of Iraq, antiwar activists have spent the last two years searching endlessly for proof that they and their fellow citizens were lied to. They've seemed more intrigued by the decisionmaking processes that led to the war than outraged by the war itself.

That's nowhere more evident than in the antiwar movement's approach of challenging the war more on the basis of legalistic nitpicking than on the grounds that it was politically and morally the wrong thing to do. Political principles such as national sovereignty have barely been raised.

In the US, activists have speculated ad infinitum that the decision to invade Iraq was taken by Donald Rumsfeld or Paul Wolfowitz or maybe even President Bush at a high-level, top-secret meeting immediately after 9/11.

In Britain, there's been running commentary on whether Tony Blair's legal adviser warned him prior to the war that invading Iraq would be illegal, with various communiqués leaked and salivated over. There have also been two dossier controversies, stoked by antiwar elements, and of course the Hutton Inquiry into the prewar processes, during which 9,000 pages of documents submitted by the authorities to the inquiry - including everyday e-mails and memos from the highest echelons of government - were posted on the inquiry's website. Antiwar journalists had a field day.

The Downing Street Memos are but another chapter in - or perhaps even the climax of - this ongoing saga.

# posted by D. B. Light : 7:05 AM links to this post

WASHINGTON - Are bloggers going mainstream? Web log founders who built followings with anti-establishment postings are now lobbying the establishment to try to fend off government regulation. Some are even working with a political action committee, lawyers and public-relations consultants to do it.

There's a certain responsibility I have to help protect the medium. I have the platform, the voice to be able to do so," said Markos Moulitsas Zuniga, founder of the Web log www.DailyKos.com.

Moulitsas testified Tuesday at a hearing on a Federal Election Commission proposal that would extend some campaign finance rules to the Internet, including bloggers. He urged the FEC to take a hands-off approach.

"We have a democratic medium that allows anyone to have true freedom of the press. We have average citizens publishing their thoughts through research, through journalism, their activism and encouraging others to do the same," Moulitsas told commissioners.

# posted by D. B. Light : 6:23 PM links to this post

Wellington - New Zealand's foreign minister on Tuesday compared Zimbabwe President Robert Mugabe's administration to the genocidal regime of Cambodia's Pol Pot.

Phil Goff made the remarks while pushing for his country's cricket team to call off a planned tour of the southern African nation.

Goff, campaigning to stop New Zealand's Black Caps cricket team from touring Zimbabwe in August, said the International Cricket Council should not ignore the "massive human rights abuses" in Zimbabwe.

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"You can't simply play a game of cricket and ignore those things happening around you," Goff said on National Radio.

No you can't. I'm sure that this will finally cow the old monster Mugabe and convince him of the error of his ways.

Goff plans to write to the ICC, recommending that obligations on sports teams to tour should be waived in the event of a severe human rights crisis.

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He said the ICC is "dominated" by nations that seem unprepared to take a stand on the issue, "whether you're talking South Africa and Zimbabwe, India, Pakistan, Bangladesh, etc".

"How can you move ahead when the African countries are prepared to tolerate such outrageous behaviour from one of their own? They need to do a lot of soul searching," he said.

That's right, mate. Soul searching will get it done. At least his heart is in the right place even if his sense of proportion is totally bonkers.

Read it here.

# posted by D. B. Light : 12:26 PM links to this post

Pressure is mounting on ministers to halt the deportation of failed Zimbabwean asylum-seekers amid fears of increasing violence by President Robert Mugabe's regime.

Mark Oaten. the Liberal Democrat home affairs spokesman, wrote to the Home Secretary demanding a moratorium on deportations to Zimbabwe. He said: "The Mugabe regime is wholly unsafe and plainly has no respect for human rights."

There are 116 Zimbabwean asylum-seekers in detention awaiting possible deportation, the Home Office says. Scores are on hunger strike in protest against the lifting last November of a ban on forced deportation.

# posted by D. B. Light : 1:20 AM links to this post

The more popular Theory became, the less it inspired deep commitments among searching minds. The more Theory became enshrined in anthologies ordered semester after semester, the more it became a token of professional wisdom. The only energy Theory sustained during those years issued from a non-philosophical source: the race/gender/sexuality/anti-imperialism/ anti-bourgeois resentments tapped by various critics giving different objects of oppression theoretical standing.

This raises another discrepancy between Theory’s intellectual content and its institutional standing. Theory in its political versions claimed to be subversive, egalitarian, anti-hegemonic, and ruthlessly self-critical, but in their actual working conditions theorists presided over one of the most hierarchical, prestige-ridden, and complacent professional spaces in our society. Theory promised to bring a fruitful pluralism to the field, yet the proliferation of outlooks created the opposite, a subdivision into sects that didn’t talk to one another. Theory purported to supply intellectual tools to dismantle the contents of humanities education and undo the power structures of institutions, but while the syllabus and curriculum changed, the networking, factionalism, and cronyism only intensified. No doubt the infusion of corporate approaches into the university, along with the growing isolation of humanities professors from American society, played a role in the process, but while Theorists critiqued moneyed interests and bourgeois conventions, they enjoyed the perks of tenured celebrity as much as anyone. One can’t blame them for that, but one can blame them for enlisting Theory in the service of social justice while insulating themselves from genuine social problems.

There's much more -- all of it delicious.

Read it here.

# posted by D. B. Light : 12:49 AM links to this post

WASHINGTON - Puppies and kittens likely are not the first things that come to mind when many think of Sen. Rick Santorum — the conservative No. 3 Senate Republican known for his tough stance against abortion and gay marriage.

But Santorum, R-Pa., has won high praise from the Humane Society of the United States for pushing legislation aimed at ending breeding facilities known as puppy mills.

People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals also finds him a friend. "He's a man with a heart, and he doesn't think it's any more acceptable to treat animals cruelly than humans," said Mary Beth Sweetland, director of research and investigations for the Norfolk, Va.-based PETA.

# posted by D. B. Light : 12:09 AM links to this post

The prime minister, Tony Blair, today ruled out a general moratorium on the deportation of Zimbabwean asylum seekers for fear it would lead to abuses of the system.

As a hunger strike among Zimbabweans seeking refuge in Britain entered its sixth day, Mr Blair said the government was in a "difficult" situation over what to do with people fleeing President Robert Mugabe's regime.

"We abhor what has happened in Zimbabwe," he said at his monthly press briefing. "Everything said about Mugabe has been shown to be true. But over the past few years we have cut asylum numbers down dramatically and for the first time are getting the system under control.

"If we introduce a generalised moratorium in respect of Zimbabwe instead of assessing each case on a case-by-case basis, our real fear is that we will open up our system to the abuse we have been shutting down."

He said all of those deported to Zimbabwe had had their claims thoroughly investigated, often by a court.

"If we then say, even to those whose claims fail, that we are not going to send you back, we will send a signal right across the system that Britain is open for claims ... that are not genuine."

Mr Blair said he "despaired" about the "appalling" regime in Zimbabwe and welcomed the fact that a UN envoy was visiting the country to inspect the latest home clearances, which have left hundreds of thousands homeless.

"I desperately want to do more. But I know that will create opposition from other countries surrounding Zimbabwe and from Zimbabwe itself."

Read it here.

And that's the rub, isn't it. Blair is unable to do anything because he cannot rally the international community, especially African states, to support action. He is unable to extend blanket asylum because the British public won't tolerate unrestricted immigration. This is a story we've seen time and again. The poor suffer while the "civilized" world stands by and "desperately wants" to do something about it, but cannot because that would be acting like a "cowboy" and would involve diplomatic and political risks.

The real tragedy of Iraq is that the intense international and domestic opposition to intervention it engendered would seem to preclude any action at all to respond to other instances of gross barbarism.

And the poor continue to suffer.

Sigh!

RELATED:

Reuters reports:

LONDON (Reuters) - Britain called on Monday for the United Nations Security Council to debate a housing crackdown in Zimbabwe and what it says are wider human rights abuses, after a visiting senior U.N. official reports back.

# posted by D. B. Light : 5:15 PM links to this post

Mr. Ahmadinejad... emphasized his piety and independence, insisting that he did not represent any political party but was a man of the people. His core supporters, the ultrareligious, spoke of him with reverence, as though he were a religious figure and not a politician. It was his everyman posture, compared to the regal style of Mr. Rafsanjani, that won many people over. On election day, Mr. Ahmadinejad waited with average citizens before casting his vote.

"All through my life I have never seen a presidential candidate standing in a queue like ordinary people," said Seyed Mohammad Shekarabi, 75, who broke into tears when he saw Mr. Ahmadinejad take his place in the line.

It was Mr. Rafsanjani whom voters perceived as the embodiment of a system they have grown to distrust. A former president and cleric, who has become a very wealthy businessman, Mr. Rafsanjani carried himself as royalty during the campaign, never taking to the streets, and never seeming to understand that his history as an elder statesman of the republic was viewed as a liability, not an asset.

Read it here.

Rasfanjani has a different view of the matter. He charges that there was massive interference in the electoral process:

Former Iranian president Akbar Hashemi Rafsanjani criticized ``organized and illegal'' interference in the June 24 presidential election won by his rival, Tehran Mayor Mahmoud Ahmadinejad.

Ahmadinejad's victory in the election gives backers of the Islamic revolution full power over state institutions in Iran, holder of the world's second-largest oil and gas reserves. The U.S. also expressed ``concerns'' about the fairness of the election in a statement yesterday.

Read about it here.

Thus is a disturbing assertion of power by hard-line radical Muslims reshaped in the MSM into a comforting assertion of the need for simple "social justice."The ideology of America's secular elites is impenetrable to evidence.

Amir Taheri, writing in the Australian, points out the implications of Ahmadinejad's election.

Ahmadinejad's victory means that Khamenehi, who has established himself as head of the most radical faction within the Khomeinist establishment, now controls all levers of power for the first time. He will now be able to put his own men in charge of all key government departments. Any idea of Western-style reforms to please the restive middle classes will be abandoned.

The concentration of power in the hands of the radical faction will end more than two decades of divided government that has put many aspects of policy on autopilot as it were. Two years ago when King Abdullah II of Jordan telephoned Khatami to complain about Iran setting up terrorist cells in Amman, the Iranian president was able to claim that he knew nothing of it because he did not control all organs of government.

The Europeans who have been negotiating with Tehran over the nuclear issue have also heard similar claims from Iranian counterparts. With Ahmadinejad in charge, however, such claims will no longer be credible because the camarilla headed by Khamenehi is now in complete control. Rafsanjani had promised the Chinese model - meaning the combination of a despotic political regime with capitalist economic policies. Ahmadinejad promises a North Korean model - that is to say a totalitarian system and a command economy.

Ahmadinejad's election shows that the Khomeinist regime cannot be reformed from within. It also shows that there is still a strong constituency in Iran for the populist message of the ayatollah. True, far fewer people voted than the regime claims. But those who did vote preferred Ahmadinejad's "pure Islam" to Rafsanjani's attempt at perpetuating the myth that Iran today is, in the words of the former US president Bill Clinton, "a progressist democracy".

Ahmadinejad describes himself as a fundamentalist, has no qualms about asserting that there can be no democracy in Islam, rejects free-market economics, and insists on "religious duties" rather than human rights.

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Ahmadinejad's victory reveals the true face of the Islamic Republic as a regional power with its own world vision that challenges the so-called "global consensus". It reminds the world that the mini-Cold War that started between the Islamic Republic and the West, notably the US, is far from over.

Read it here.

So much for the liberal consensus on Islamic radicalism. Ahmadinejad does not represent "everyman," nor is he a proponent of social justice as the term is understood in the West. He is a repudiation of everything the NYT stands for. It is long past time for the editors at the Gray Lady to wake up and realize it.

# posted by D. B. Light : 11:35 AM links to this post

This week, the Bush Administration acknowledged that funding for health care of veterans is short $1 billion. The shortfall was apparently just discovered during a midyear budget review.
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But how will struggling VA hospital survive with less money when despite budget increases in prior years, cutbacks in services were necessary. "About a year and a half ago, the Secretary decided there were not enough resources to treat every veteran who was coming to the VA looking for us to take care of their health-care needs," explains Wilkinson.

# posted by D. B. Light : 1:21 AM links to this post

POP superstar Bono has urged leaders at the upcoming G8 summit - especially US President George W. Bush - to offer a generous aid package to bring about a "historic breakthrough" for the world's poor.

"Those of us who have been working on development issues - and Africa in particular - are holding out that this could be a historic breakthrough, a real sea change on issues facing the poorest of the poor," he said.

[Britain] is pushing for an "International Finance Facility", or IFF, that would use international bond markets to raise $50 billion in development funds for each of the next few years, with donors committing future aid budgets to pay off the bonds in the out-years.
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We already have a framework for confronting Africa's ills. In Monterrey, Mexico, in early 2002, the developed nations agreed to a new bargain with the world's underdeveloped nations: donors would increase aid spending and the world's poor nations would carry out economic and political reforms to ensure that development assistance money gets spent effectively and achieves observable outcomes. Simple something-for-nothing handouts would end.

The IFF undermines the spirit of the Monterrey Consensus by focusing on the tin-cupping of financing the enterprise rather than crafting a strategy for achieving the desperately needed outcomes the enterprise is intended to provide. Given the servicing on borrowed funds, paying interest to investors, and the likelihood of decreased funding by donors after the big push, Africa will actually experience a net loss of aid flows in the long term.

Further, the concentration on a blanket call for aid funds creates a distraction from the sometimes painful responsibilities of developing countries to adopt the reforms, transparency, and capacity building necessary to enable a greater degree of self-sufficiency. Why should a country like Uganda, considered one of Africa's development success stories, take steps to trim any of its 70 cabinet ministries or other parts of its bloated public bureaucracy when international donors continue to pay 50 per cent of its national budget?

We must no longer treat Africa as a ward of the developed world. We must no longer espouse the welfarism of patting the continent on the head, muttering "poor Africans" while opening our wallets so we can sleep better at night thinking we've made a difference when we haven't. No nation ever spent its way out of poverty by cashing foreign aid cheques.

Instead, we should focus our partnerships on committed African leaders who are actively implementing the kinds of policies and actions necessary for home-grown economic growth and poverty reduction. African leaders genuinely concerned about the betterment of their country focus on trade, private investment, technology, democratic and economic reform, and other core drivers of lasting economic growth - and how to become less dependent on the whims of Western handouts. Such leaders and their countries deserve increased levels of targeted assistance to support them as they wrestle through their development challenges with their own solutions.

# posted by D. B. Light : 1:04 AM links to this post

US Defence Secretary Donald Rumsfeld said Sunday more violence in Iraq could go on for a number of years.

He said that defeating the insurgency may take as long as 12 years, with Iraqi security forces, not U.S. and foreign troops, taking the lead and finishing the job.

# posted by D. B. Light : 12:37 AM links to this post

China is building its military forces faster than U.S. intelligence and military analysts expected, prompting fears that Beijing will attack Taiwan in the next two years, according to Pentagon officials.

U.S. defense and intelligence officials say all the signs point in one troubling direction: Beijing then will be forced to go to war with the United States, which has vowed to defend Taiwan against a Chinese attack.

China's military buildup includes an array of new high-technology weapons, such as warships, submarines, missiles and a maneuverable warhead designed to defeat U.S. missile defenses. Recent intelligence reports also show that China has stepped up military exercises involving amphibious assaults, viewed as another sign that it is preparing for an attack on Taiwan.

...China wants a "blue-water" navy capable of projecting power far beyond the two island chains.
"If you look at the technical capabilities of the weapons platforms that they're fielding, the sea-keeping capabilities, the size, sensors and weapons fit, this capability transcends the baseline that is required to deal with a Taiwan situation militarily," the intelligence official said.

"So they are positioned then, if [Taiwan is] resolved one way or the other, to really become a regional military power as well."

# posted by D. B. Light : 11:57 PM links to this post

Mad Bobby Mugabe’s reign of terror continues in Zimbabwe and all efforts to stem it have failed. Appeals from the West have been ineffective and so have those from the clergy. The opposition has been completely demoralized and is incapable of mounting effective resistance. Economic sanctions are impossible because so much of Zimbabwe’s population is barely surviving as it is. [For a discussion of the scope of the disaster read here.]

The African Union refuses to condemn Mugabe’s actions and South Africa, the only power in the region capable of possibly influencing him, actually supports his policies.

What is to be done?

Well, there's this:

The Scotsman reports:

BRITISH government diplomats have held secret talks in Zimbabwe aimed at persuading Robert Mugabe to hand over power and return his devastated nation to the Commonwealth, it was claimed last night.

Senior sources in London and Zimbabwe told Scotland on Sunday that the dictator's closest allies have been pressing the British government to relax its stance against Mugabe in advance of an attempted breakthrough in the stalemate at the G8 summit in Scotland this week.

And they claimed that Foreign Office diplomats have already travelled to Zimbabwe to begin clandestine negotiations with representatives of the hated dictator's regime, with a view to returning the nation to the Commonwealth, three years after it was suspended.

But the proposed 'peace plan' for Zimbabwe would require Mugabe to resign from the presidency and withdraw from the public eye - although he could retain an over-arching role as the 'Father of the Nation'.

Read it here.

There is a certain urgency to the proposal. Not only are millions of lives imperiled, but Mugabe’s actions are threatening to disrupt international relations at a number of levels. Already there are tensions between Britain, which condemns the brutality of his policies, and South Africa and Tanzania which support him. The controversy could disrupt this fall’s Commonwealth Heads of Government meeting, and could derail Tony Blair’s attempts to build support for his African Aid initiative.

At present there is little likelihood that the diplomatic effort will yield satisfactory results. Contacts with the Zimbabwe government so far have proceeded only at low levels and international disunity, even in the face of these horrors, precludes any effective effort. China, which supports Mugabe, will block any UN initiative. The G-8 cannot act. The African Union refuses to take action. And as a result, millions of Africa’s most vulnerable people will suffer.

# posted by D. B. Light : 1:34 PM links to this post

HARARE, Zimbabwe - Hundreds of homes have been built in Zimbabwe's capital to replace some of the thousands destroyed in a widely criticized official "cleanup" campaign, the government said Saturday ahead of a planned visit by a United Nations envoy.
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State radio in Zimbabwe reported Saturday that the first 500 of 5,600 new homes were ready for occupation in the capital, Harare, and 250,000 plots of land had been made available immediately countrywide.
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Mugabe also pledged $325 million to provide 1.2 million houses and plots of land by 2008.

He urged Zimbabweans faced by widespread international condemnation of the campaign "to remain focused and disregard the machinations of the West trying to demonize the country," according to ZBC.

The 81-year-old president, who has ruled the southern African country since independence in 1980, said the mass bulldozing of houses and businesses was to curb "lawlessness, illicit foreign currency dealings, black marketeering, rampant thefts, prostitution and other social ills so detrimental to social morality and decency." He claimed that the program had been "well-received by the majority of our people."

Police say the blitz - in which 42,000 people have been arrested, fined, or had their goods confiscated - has resulted in a 20 percent drop in crimes, including murder, house robberies and car theft.

Read the whole thing here.

Of course, this is little consolation for the hundreds of thousands who are freezing and starving tonight, and where is the food and money going to come from for these programs? The Zimbabwean economy has collapsed. Maybe these promises will satisfy other African states and UN investigators, but they must be seen objectively as simple attempts to paper over an ongoing disaster.

RELATED:

Another outrage! It seems that Britain's immigration officials are sending Zimbabwean refugees back into Mad Bobby's clutches.

The Archbishop of Bulawayo, Pius A Ncube, said those deported would be persecuted by the Mugabe regime as "traitors". "People who were asylum seekers in Britain and are returned have been detained by police in Zimbabwe, some being tortured and forced to confess that they were in anti-government activities."

Read it here.

# posted by D. B. Light : 1:07 PM links to this post

Mr Blair may not have stormed the Bastille, but wielding his motto “modernise or die”, he had stormed the temple of European federalism.

Disgruntled pro-Chirac French MEPs skulked at the back of the hall. After his speech setting out his plans for the European presidency and emphasising the need to modernise the EU and to divert its €50 billion (£33 billion) agriculture budget to industries of the future, one Spanish journalist ran out declaring: “I am convinced! He is absolutely right!”

....

Mr Blair had become the toast of Europe; ...he is being hailed as the natural leader of the continent: the only man who can save Europe from itself.

Italian politicians hailed Tony Blair’s vision of Europe, and declared that a new “Rome-London axis” would provide the driving force of the new EU, replacing the exhausted Franco-German motor. Silvio Berlusconi, the Italian Prime Minister, said last night: “Europe must reform, as Prime Minister Blair says, and I am in total accord with him.” Piero Fassino, leader of the Democrats of the Left, the main opposition party, said that Mr Blair was charting the way for Europe. Antonio Polito, editor of the left-wing review Reformista, said: “The European Left must understand that it cannot remain attached forever to the Franco-German idea.”

Most worryingly for President Chirac and Herr Schröder is that their own countries’ newspapers fell under Mr Blair’s spell. The left-wing French newspaper Libération declared in its headline: “Blair’s new deal for Europe.” Its veteran Brussels correspondent, Jean Quatremer, said: “For a long time, we have been talking about the French social model, as opposed to the horrible Anglo-Saxon model, but we now see that it is our model that is a horror.” The country’s most influential newspaper, Le Monde, backed Mr Blair’s demand for a reform of the Common Agricultural Policy (CAP), calling for the partial “renationalisation” of farm aid so that EU countries pay part of the subsidies themselves. The paper declared that the only way to find the funds needed for EU research and technology was to cut spending on agriculture.

Germany’s professionally Europhile journalists have broken the taboo about challenging the Franco-German axis, and no longer risk charges of being unpatriotic if they support Mr Blair. The Berliner Zeitung proclaimed Mr Blair the new strongman of Europe. Die Welt declared: “The British sense of freedom strengthens Europe.”

This week’s revolution in Europe has transformed even the EU capital, Brussels, where analysts and commentators hailed the British conquest.

Read the whole thing here.

JACQUES CHIRAC may be engaged in an all-out assault on perfidious Albion, but French business has taken a wholly different approach.

According to a new study, a majority of big French companies has adopted English as the official language.

“Today, someone who does not know how to speak English is like someone who did not know how to read or write 50 years ago,” said the report from the French branch of Educational Testing Service (ETS) Europe, the language group.

....

Among 26 of France’s most important firms questioned by ETS Europe, 16 gave English as their official working language. Of these, nine have dropped French altogether and seven have placed English and French on a level footing.

“This means that documents must be written in English,” said Bertrand Moneger, head of markets at ETS Europe-France. “And if there is one English speaker present at the meeting, then it must be held in English even if everyone else there is French.”

....

The report said: “An overwhelming majority of managers, if not all of them, use English daily as their working language and must switch indifferently from one language to another for meetings, e-mails and other workplace exchanges.”

A majority of the firms questioned said that the trend would accelerate. “In five or six years, most personnel managers think all official company documents will be in English.”

The survey also found that an ability to speak English was a basic employment criterion for managerial posts. Without it, applicants stood virtually no chance — whatever other qualifications they possessed. “English is no longer the optional extra . . . It is the minimum.”

Read the whole thing here.

This is huge. Fluency in English is now becoming essential to advancement within French corporations and this need will soon be reflected in school curricula. The next generation of French kids [assuming there is one, given their birthrate problems] will grow up speaking English. So much for French cultural superiority; it is going the way of it's pretentions to political dominance.

# posted by D. B. Light : 12:35 PM links to this post

Iranian bloggers have been reacting to the landslide victory of hardliner Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, with a mixture of shock, anger, despair, cynicism and irony.

Some acknowledge Mr Ahmadinejad's success in reaching out to the country's poor, while others doubt that the vote could have made any difference to the country's future.

Iran's weblogs, which represent one of the largest web communities in the world, are seen as mainly the preserve of the urban middle class and liberal-leaning people both inside and outside the country.

Their voices are not heard by the mainstream conservative media and the blogs have become a popular forum for dissent. It is the first time that the Iranian blogs have had the chance to be involved in a presidential election campaign.

As an outsider, Mr Ahmadinejad had been virtually ignored by bloggers until he came second in the first round of voting a week ago.

Read the whole thing here.

# posted by D. B. Light : 11:16 AM links to this post

Hard-liner on way to winning Iran presidency

Aides to ex-President Rafsanjani concede defeat to Ahmadinejad

TEHRAN, Iran - Hard-line candidate Mahmoud Ahmadinejad was rolling toward a landslide victory in Iran’s presidential election, officials in his opponent’s campaign acknowledged Saturday. The result would be an upset win for a man reformers fear will restrict freedoms won in past years.

Read it here.

This meant that relatively small, but well organized groups could have a major impact on the outcome of the election.

3) Although Ahmadinejad is routinely described in the MSM as a "hard-line conservative" he is not. He has the strong backing of religious conservatives, but also,

has captured the attention of the Iranian poor with his ascetic message of socialist-style economic reform and cultural discipline.

His campaigning has been a stroke of genius. The slick, Western-style campaigns of the other candidates backfired, alienating working-class voters who were not impressed by colourful posters and abstract talk of modernisation.

In contrast, Mr Ahmadinejad played up his humble origins and sold himself as a man of the people.

Campaign leaflets showed him sitting cross-legged on a Persian rug eating a modest meal of bread and cheese promising to solve poverty, unemployment and corruption.

Iranians have voted not so much on [Ahmadinejad's] ideological position - some of them have overlooked that in a way.

It was his appeal to the poor that seems to be the secret to Mr Ahmadinejad's success. Despite Iran's huge oil wealth, the country has an unemployment problem and a big gap between rich and poor.

People see a lot of consumerism, very conspicuous spending in Tehran among the elite, but they do not themselves see the results of the country's oil boom.

The vote seems to have been one against the status quo - a sign of deep economic frustration.

Mr Rafsanjani is seen as an establishment figure, a senior cleric who has always been at the top of the revolutionary elite. Instead Iranians have chosen an alternative, younger man who talks in the revolutionary slogans of redistributing the country's oil wealth, re-nationalising the assets.

But for liberals, Mr Ahmadinejad's ascent to power is worrying. It is expected he will want to reverse some of the social freedoms introduced by the reformists and take a harder line on nuclear negotiations with the West.

His victory now puts all the organs of state in the hands of the hardliners.

Very interesting mixture -- populism, radical socialism, and religious reaction. What they all have in common is a rejection of western liberalism, secularism, and bourgeois culture. It's an anti-globalist message. Yup!

Read the BBC piece here.

# posted by D. B. Light : 8:30 PM links to this post

The rights groups urged the African Union, which is meeting in Libya next month, and the United Nations to act against Zimbabwe – but did not specify how.

They also demanded that Zimbabwe compensate the displaced and allow them access to humanitarian workers, who they say are currently being blocked from providing relief.

[here] and [here]

The African Union has rejected calls from the UK and the US to put pressure on Zimbabwe to stop its demolition of illegal houses and market stalls.

An AU spokesman told the BBC that it had many more serious problems to consider than Zimbabwe.

The UN says that 275,000 people have been made homeless. At least three children have been crushed to death.

Urging the AU to take action, US Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice described recent events as "tragic".

....

"If the government that they elected say they are restoring order by their actions, I don't think it would be proper for us to go interfering in their internal legislation," AU spokesman Desmond Orjiako told the BBC's Network Africa program

Read it here.

And what about South Africa, the only nation really positioned to interfere?

[M]any of those other African governments have overseen similar brutal evictions in their own countries, and yet have suffered very little outside criticism.

The sad truth is that what is going on in Zimbabwe at the moment is not at all unusual.

From one end of Africa to the other, governments have set about slum clearance schemes without any consideration for the people who live there, or any sense of responsibility for what happens to them afterwards.

....

The victims of the Zimbabwe eviction are lucky that because of the political campaign being run against President Robert Mugabe, both inside and outside the country, there are well-organized and well-funded people calling attention to their plight.

But it seems unlikely that Africa's other leaders will sympathise with the displaced rather than with a fellow president cleaning up his country's city, and will speak out on their behalf.

# posted by D. B. Light : 7:26 PM links to this post

[F]oreign ministers from the Group of Eight (G8) club of wealthy countries Thursday rapped Zimbabwe.

"We discussed the current situation and the ongoing police operations which have reportedly left thousands of the most vulnerable homeless and destitute," British Foreign Secretary Jack Straw told a news conference in London following a one-day meeting with his G8 counterparts.

"And we call on the government of Zimbabwe to abide by the rule of law and respect human rights," he said.

The G8 is due hold a summit in Scotland in early July to discuss the fate of a multi-billion-dollar rescue plan for Africa which underpins good governance and zero-corruption in the world's poorest continent.

The G8 warning came as London-based rights watchdog Amnesty International led more than 200 non-governmental organisations in urging the United Nations and the African Union to exert pressure on President Robert Mugabe to stop the drive.

"The AU and the relevant bodies of the UN ... cannot fail to act in the face of gross and widespread human rights violations and appalling human misery," Amnesty and the other bodies said in a joint statement released simultaneously in Harare and four other African cities.

Zimbabwean lawyers have meanwhile lined up a series of lawsuits against the clean-up campaign.

# posted by D. B. Light : 7:56 PM links to this post

NEW YORK – Big employers sharply accelerated freezes and terminations of pension plans last year, steering away from the increasing expense and uncertainty of paying for workers' retirement, a new study says.

About 11 percent of the big companies offering traditional pensions terminated their plans or froze accrual of new benefits to workers, according to a study by consulting firm Watson Wyatt Worldwide, released Wednesday. That is up from 2003, when 7 percent of the nation's 1,000 largest companies capped pension plans.

That trend, long in the making, has continued into this year, most notably with UAL Corp.'s United Airlines defaulting on its severely underfunded pension plans. Whether it continues could hinge on how lawmakers resolve a number of difficult questions swirling around pensions, experts say.

About half of the companies that froze pension accruals or terminated plans last year are financially troubled businesses, the study found.

But even many healthy companies are rethinking pensions, partly because of the uncertain legal status of some pension plans.

....
Companies including Sears Holding Co., NCR Corp., Circuit Stores Inc., and others have frozen pension plans for all or some of their employees during the past year.

Read about it here.

As the number of companies forfeiting on their pension obligations increases pressure will build for government intervention. This is building toward a huge political brouhaha. I wonder, is there a politician out there who sees an opportunity? You bet there is.

Stay tuned....

# posted by D. B. Light : 7:41 PM links to this post

Well, it happened again. Yesterday I made yet another effort to see “Cinderella Man.” This is the third time in the past few weeks. The first time failed because She Who Shall Not Be Named declared that Russell Crowe was a creep, that she didn’t want to see him, and would much rather go to see the “Sisterhood of the Traveling Pants.” OK! [read about it here]

Last week I made a second attempt. SWSNBN was finally willing to put up with Crowe for my sake, but then she invited a friend of ours to join us. The friend immediately announced that she really wanted to see the new Brad Pitt film, and SWSNBN joined in. So, instead of Cinderella Man we went to see a horrible flick in which Angelina Jolie looked sexy, Brad Pitt looked goofy, and lots of things blew up real good. Ugh! It didn’t help much that the friend apologized afterward for dragging us to such a bad movie.

Yesterday I tried again. SWSNBN and I drove down to a Cineplex in the nearest town and approached the ticket counter. “Two for Cinderella Man,” I said confidently. “Sir, I’m sorry,” was the reply, “We’ve just changed our schedule.”

“Wha’?”

“’Herbie’ was just released and we had to make room for it.”

[silent] “AAARRRGGGH! Herbie?!?!?”

[calmly] “Well dear, in that case, is there anything you would like to see?”

SWHNBN: “How about ‘Batman Begins? Christian Bale is cute.”

Me: “Oh, OK. [unvoiced: “Damn”]

So, once again I failed. At this rate I may never get to see “Cinderella Man.”

So, how about “Batman Begins”? Was it worth it? Yeah, sorta, if you’re into that kinda thing.

It’s by far the most realistic of the Batman sagas [allowing of course for the fact that it is, after all, a superhero movie]. This was director Christopher Nolan’s avowed intention and he has succeeded. The special effects are prosaic by today’s standards, but that’s all to the good. Batman and his opponents are not super-powered and their exploits do not exceed the bounds of plausibility to such an extent that we lose sight of their humanity.

In place of spectacular wire work and cgi, Nolan substitutes confusion and sound effects. Time and again the screen is filled with chaotic images and quick camera cuts, the aim of which is to confuse the visual senses while thumps, rustles, and bangs, and the reaction of the on-screen characters tell us that something intensely violent and mysterious is taking place off camera. At times I found the technique annoying, but overall it works pretty well and gives the movie a distinctive feeling.

There is a gritty realism too. The Bat Cave is a filthy hole. Bruce Wayne spends a lot of time covered with muck and mud, being brutally slammed around, and painfully healing from his wounds. That works too. The only real sore point in this regard is the Batmobile, which is terribly incongruous, but I suppose necessary in a Batman movie. It looks like the unnatural offspring of a hummer and a dune buggy.

Some reviewers have commented that the film spends more time on Bruce Wayne than on Batman and rejoiced in that choice. Well, “Duh!” It’s an origins story, guys. It has to spend a lot of time explaining where the superhero comes from, and what he was before he became super. Whatever the reason – it works. Let’s face it, Bruce is a lot more interesting than the Batman.

There was a literary conceit (popular in the middle decades of the past century when the Batman first originated) that psychological quirks made characters interesting and that these defining peculiarities were to be explained through childhood trauma. Well, Dr. Freud has long since passed from the scene and his theories have been generally discounted, but the comments of reviewers seem to show that those standards still thrive in the critical community. And in the case of this movie those hoary old literary devices work because in oh so many ways this film is a throwback to those times. The costuming, the technology on display, the architecture, etc. are all [with the exception of the freaky batmobile] redolent of the mid-twentieth century.

There’s not much to the story. The hero is traumatized at an early age, separated from all that he has known, develops an obsessive fixation on justice, suffers horribly and descends to the depths, from which he is raised by a mentor from whom he is soon separated and has to overcome his inner weaknesses to establish himself…, oh what the Hell! You’ve all read Joseph Campbell; you know how it works – standard hero fare.

What about a theme? Fear! The whole thing is about fear – suffering from it, confronting it, overcoming it, using it. Not a very sophisticated or perceptive treatment, but at least it’s better than Spiderman [“with great power comes great responsibility”] and, in the context of a super-hero story, it serves to humanize the Batman. A superhero who gets scared; not bad for a genre work.

The acting? Adequate! Christian Bale makes an excellent Batman and an even better Bruce Wayne. Bale knows very well how to live a life of luxury and privilege and it shows. He’s the first believable Bruce Wayne. He has buffed up and his Batman exhibits a plausible physicality as he performs strenuous stunts. And, most importantly, he expresses well the pent-up rage that animates his character.

There are a lot of heavyweights in supporting roles. Morgan Freeman walks through his wise mentor paces, and Michael Caine is a wonderful actor miscast as Alfred the Butler. Liam Neeson is adequately menacing as the mentor/antagonist. Gary Oldman and Tom Wilkinson are both superb. Ken Wantanbe, Rutger Hauer, and Linus Roach are all also quite good in underwritten parts. Cillian Murphy is not bad, but not very scary, as the “Scarecrow.” The only real disappointment is Katie Holmes who just isn’t believable as the girlfriend/district attorney. She’s a jumped-up TV actress and it shows.

In most ways this effort is vastly superior to earlier TV and movie incarnations of the Batman. The only way in which it doesn’t match up is in the villains. In the past we have been treated to some wonderful, if cartoonish, bad guys; Jack Nicholson as the Joker; Jim Carrey as the Riddler; Danny DeVito as the Penguin; Michelle Pfeiffer as the Cat Woman. All had a ball with their over-the-top characters. Here, in the interest of realism, the villains have been toned down to human proportions and aren’t as interesting as the old gang. As a result the movie suffers a bit, but not too much.

And what about the moral/political dimensions of the film. It’s very traditional, something of a throwback, and an explicit repudiation of the statist mentality that has characterized American elite culture for so long. One might almost call it “Reaganesque.” In Gotham government is not the answer, it is the problem. The institutions of society are thoroughly corrupt and as a result the people suffer as the powerful prey upon the poor. Evil exists and is palpable, but because of corruption society cannot protect its members. There is no hint of class warfare. There are good rich guys, like the Waynes, and bad ones, like Rutger Hauer’s character. There are good street people and bad ones, good cops and bad ones. Good and evil permeate all levels of society and the battle between them is fought everywhere from the boardrooms to the streets.

What is to be done? The only real dispute is between anarchists who want to destroy Gotham completely and reformers [like Batman] who want to “mend it not end it” by surgically removing the evildoers. And throughout the emphasis is on individual, not collective or corporate responsibility.

In a sense “Batman Begins” hearkens back to the old self-reliance themes of traditional westerns [which were at the height of their popularity fifty years ago]. Batman is like the archetypal western hero – the ultra-competent man who knows what must be done and has the will to do it. Its villains are corporate chieftans, a secret society of anarchists, a psychiatrist, and a criminal capo. Batman’s allies are ordinary folk – an assistant DA, a police sergeant, a mid-level corporate manager on a dead-end career track, and of course, his loyal butler, Alfred. In all it is a call for the common people to rise up and to take back their country from the political and professional elites who are plundering it.

So, was it worth it? Yeah, if you like this sort of thing. Judging from the reviews it’s gotten the generation that grew up on comic books will greet it with wild enthusiasm, and it has the benefit of being much, much better than its immediate predecessors. It’s not a bad film; it has some interesting elements; and it looks good in comparison with what has gone before in the super-hero genre.

Check it out.

# posted by D. B. Light : 6:10 PM links to this post

''A READER living in Moscow," writes National Review's Jay Nordlinger, ''sent me a photo from a rally in Azerbaijan, which showed a youth holding up a poster of President Bush with the words, 'We Want Freedom.' The reader commented, 'It's good to remember whom people turn to when they're desperate -- and it ain't Kofi Annan.' "

Indeed. It is fashionable in some circles to invoke the United Nations as the touchstone of moral authority, but realists know better. They look to the United States, not the UN, as the great moral engine in world affairs. Like the Lebanese who waved a US flag during the demonstrations in Beirut earlier this year, like the ''Goddess of Liberty" in Tiananmen Square in 1989, the young Azerbaijani with his poster is a reminder that America and its message of freedom and individual dignity have an almost limitless capacity to inspire those who are denied them.

# posted by D. B. Light : 8:36 AM links to this post

[T]his election was a spectacular show of force by the more hard-line Khomeinists, whose most successful standard-bearer Mahmoud Ahmadinejad will be present in the run-off against Rafsanjani.

Together, the four hard-line Khomeinist candidates, all members of the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC), collected more votes than the two mullahs. This shows that the generation of militants produced by the IRGC now provides the dominant force within the ruling establishment....

A win by Rafsanjani would be a sure sign that Khamenei thinks he still needs a kind of interface with the broader Iranian society, similar to the role that the outgoing President Muhammad Khatami played in his first four-year term. It would also indicate that the "Supreme Guide" is still interested in playing diplomatic games, especially with the Europeans, rather than provoking a direct confrontation with the major powers, especially the United States.

On the domestic front, Rafsanjani's victory would allow the cosmetic reforms introduced by Khatami, especially allowing some women to show a few strands of their hair from under the Khomeinist hijab, to continue.

Ahmadinejad, on the other hand, represents the North Koreans of Islam: hard-line radicals who believe that they have discovered the recipe for the ideal society and that the rest of the world, which is corrupt and godforsaken must, at some point , either submit to them or be forced into submission.

Read it here.

In no case does the future look good. A win by the hard-liners would be disastrous for all concerned, but at best a Rasfanjani win would install a weak regime that would simply continue the current situation with all its fatal contradictions.

The key question remaining is what will be the role of Iran's disaffected youth? The blogosphere is filled with predictions that they have real revolutionary potential, but other reports [here] suggest that they are more likely to seek escape from rather than confrontation with the current regime. This is particularly likely if Rafsanjani is elected and continues the cosmetic reforms he has pushed in the past. But if the hard-liners emerge victorious, simple disaffection could easily shift into revolutionary consciousness.

Either way, the future does not look good for Iran.

And, to ease your mind, think about the consequences of a radical Khomeinist regime with nuclear capabilities.

Stay tuned....

# posted by D. B. Light : 7:35 AM links to this post

STANDING prominently in a bold, black, pin-striped suit amid Howard County's elected Democrats as they publicly endorsed U.S. Rep. Benjamin L. Cardin for the U.S. Senate last week was an unelected, yet formidable, figure: the Rev. John L. Wright, longtime pastor of First Baptist Church of Guilford.

The feisty clergyman served for more than seven years as chairman of the Maryland branch of the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People, from 1986 to 1994, after heading Howard County's chapter. But he enthusiastically endorsed Cardin over Kwesi Mfume, the former national NAACP director and the first to declare for the seat being vacated by Sen. Paul S. Sarbanes.

# posted by D. B. Light : 8:58 AM links to this post

I am now forced to wonder: Who is there who does not know that the Bush administration decided after September 2001 to change the balance of power in the region and to enforce the Iraq Liberation Act, passed unanimously by the Senate in 1998, which made it overt American policy to change the government of Iraq? This was a fairly open conspiracy, and an open secret. Given that everyone from Hans Blix to Jacques Chirac believed that Saddam was hiding weapons from inspectors, it made legal sense to advance this case under the banner of international law and to treat Saddam "as if" (and how else?) his strategy of concealment and deception were prima facie proof. The British attorney general—who has no jurisdiction in these 50 states—was worried that "regime change" alone would not be a sufficient legal basis. One appreciates his concern. But the existence of the Saddam regime was itself a defiance of all known international laws, and we had before us the consequences of previous failures to act, in Bosnia and Rwanda, where action would have been another word for "regime change."

What is disturbing about all this is that a sizeable segment of one of our major political parties is willing to believe this crap, and that the MSM is willing to parrot it. Such is the state of public discourse in these times.

Sad!

# posted by D. B. Light : 8:46 AM links to this post

HARARE, Zimbabwe - Police have begun destroying vegetable gardens planted by Zimbabwe's urban poor, extending a demolition campaign that initially targeted shacks and street vendor kiosks.

Senior assistant police commissioner Edmore Veterai said urban farming on vacant plots of land was causing "massive environmental damage," state radio reported Tuesday.

The crackdown — at a time of food shortages in Zimbabwe — is the latest escalation in the government's monthlong Operation Murambatsvina, or Drive Out Trash, which has seen police torch the shacks of poor city dwellers, arrest street vendors and demolish their kiosks.

# posted by D. B. Light : 7:12 PM links to this post

The art world, confusing at the best of times, took another right-angled lurch at Bonhams auction house yesterday.

Amid wild scenes, three paintings by a chimpanzee were sold for £14,400, more than 20 times their estimate.

In the same sale an Andy Warhol painting and a small Renoir sculpture attracted so little interest that they had to be withdrawn.

A Bonham's spokesman said: "It was quite an historic moment and it was fantastically exciting.

"People seem to see these paintings as the truest form of creativity."

# posted by D. B. Light : 6:04 PM links to this post

Modern-day druids, hippies and revellers who turn up at Stonehenge to celebrate the summer solstice may not be marking an ancient festival as they believe.

The latest archaeological findings add weight to growing evidence that our ancestors visited Stonehenge to celebrate the winter solstice.

Analysis of pigs's teeth found at Durrington Walls, a ceremonial site of wooden post circles near Stonehenge on the River Avon, has shown that most pigs were less than a year old when slaughtered.

Dr Umburto Albarella, an animal bone expert at the University of Sheffield's archaeology department, which is studying monuments around Stonehenge, said pigs in the Neolithic period were born in spring and were an early form of domestic pig that farrowed once a year. The existence of large numbers of bones from pigs slaughtered in December or January supports the view that our Neolithic ancestors took part in a winter solstice festivities....

Prof Mike Parker Pearson of Sheffield university, who leads the project, said: "We have no evidence that anyone was in the landscape in summer.''

Read it here.

Now here's the scary part. The Guardian noted:

Before dawn, King Arthur Pendragon, 51, the head battle chieftain of the British Council of Druids, led a troop of warriors - all anthropology students from the University of East London - in a dance honouring mother nature, whose effigy was held aloft and illuminated by fiery torches. [emphasis mine]

# posted by D. B. Light : 1:45 PM links to this post

Syrian intelligence seems to still be operating in Lebanon.

Reuters reports:

BEIRUT - An anti-Syrian politician was killed in Lebanon on Tuesday when a bomb ripped through his car, two days after parliamentary elections brought victory for an alliance opposed to Damascus' role in the country.

George Hawi, a former leader of the Lebanese Communist Party, died instantly in the blast in the Wata Musaitbi neighborhood of Beirut, witnesses and security sources.
....

It was the second killing of an anti-Syrian figure in Beirut this month. Newspaper columnist Samir Kassir was killed on June 2 when a similar explosion destroyed his car outside his home.

The United States said after Kassir's killing it had information about a Syrian hit-list targeting Lebanese leaders. Damascus has denied the claim and denounced Hawi's killing.

Read it here.

Condi is on the case:

BRUSSELS (Reuters) - Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice told Syria to "knock it off" on Tuesday after the second assassination this month in Lebanon of abprominent anti-Syrian figure.

Rice said she did not know who detonated the bomb that killed George Hawi, the former leader of the Lebanese Communist Party, but she accused Syria of destabilising Lebanon despite withdrawing its troops from its tiny neighbor.

Will the revolution continue -- can Lebanon avoid the sectarian violence of the past -- will Syria pay a price for its meddling in Iraq and Lebanon? Stay tuned....

Read it here.

Check out YaLibnan's coverage -- lots of pictures. Here

# posted by D. B. Light : 1:10 PM links to this post

PARIS - Jean-Paul Sartre, the 20th century philosopher whose influence has been on the wane, may be getting the last laugh from the grave as France battles a new existential crisis.

The 100th anniversary of the bespectacled thinker's birth on Tuesday comes amid a bout of soul searching about France's role in the world following voters' resounding rejection of the European Union constitution and turmoil in the country's fabled social welfare system.

With the word "crise" on just about everyone's lips, Sartre's legacy is being re-examined in a flurry of academic gatherings, media reports and commemorative exhibits marking the centennial, as well as the 25th anniversary of his death in April.

"Sartre can be used to decode the sickness that France is living today," said Annie Cohen-Solal, author of a best-selling biography on Sartre. "He plays the role of revealing the identity crisis."

# posted by D. B. Light : 12:54 PM links to this post

BRUSSELS (Reuters) - French actress turned animal rights activist Brigitte Bardot has urged the European Union to take legal action against France for authorising the killing of six wolves.

Bardot, a star of the cinema in the 1950s and 1960s, wrote to EU Environment Commissioner Stavros Dimas on Monday, saying France had broken EU conservation rules.

"It's totally unacceptable that France puts in danger a protected species," she wrote.

The wolf population was nearly wiped out in France and only started to reappear in 1992. The authorities estimate there are 55 wolves in France compared to 2,000 in Spain and 700 in Italy.

Bardot also wrote to French Ecology Minister Nelly Olin to urge her to reverse the decision.

French farmers say wolves killed 2,808 sheep in 2002 compared to 192 sheep in 1994. Bardot said farmers could use guard dogs to protect their flocks.

Geez, can't a poor peasant get a break? First Tony Blair tries to do away with EU subsidies to French farmers, now the [once] divine BB invokes the [somewhat diminished] power of the EU and the distant and rapidly fading memory of her sexual power to stop them from killing wolves.

Read about it here.

# posted by D. B. Light : 12:42 PM links to this post

Arab countries have not undergone democratic transformation or substantial political reform.... [T0he fact is that the Arabs are the largest group of people yet to receive their right to self-determination. Citizenship has been deferred, as has the problem of the institutionalised state, the role of the army in modernisation and in the development of a state-based -- as opposed to a pan-Arab -- national identity.... I would argue that the particularity of the Arab situation can be attributed to three fundamental factors.

The first of these is the rentier state, with its ability to use oil revenues, remittances from abroad and other such revenues to purchase loyalty and create release vents for economic and political pressures while keeping the fundamental relationship between society and the state and the economic and political orders intact.

.....
A second factor is the crisis of legitimacy which is associated with the espousal of pan-Arab national causes and/or the Palestinian cause. The latter issue has functioned as both a stabilising and destabilising factor. Regimes have used it to draw attention away from domestic conflicts, to export internal contradictions and to otherwise postpone having to address deeply rooted domestic problems. The regimes' opponents, on the other hand, have used it as a means to crticise those in power.... The legitimacy crisis has worked to obstruct the construction of an Arab nation by its people....

The third factor, Islam, works at various levels. Arab regimes have used Islamic rhetoric as an alternative means for establishing their legitimacy, while simultaneously exploiting the rise of non- democratic radical Islamist movements as a way of intimidating their societies. Meanwhile, state repression of the non- democratic Islamist alternative works to make that agenda the only apparent alternative. Political movements without a martyrdom cult tend to withdraw quickly from the fray when faced with repression. And Islamist rhetoric and terms of reference reverberate deeply among the masses as well as among the ruling milieu, even if the Islamist movement is a modern and unfamiliar phenomenon.

To the foregoing we can add a fourth factor: the existence of oil in this region, which has made the US adopt stability as a priority and, therefore, oppose any change, especially during the Cold War period.

# posted by D. B. Light : 11:00 AM links to this post

As Mubarak began to read the oath on Monday, a number of Islamist and tribal MPs, opposed to women's political rights, began screaming and banging on their desks.

But she looked unbothered as she continued to read the oath.
....

"It's a great victory. It's a glorious victory for Kuwaiti women and a glorious victory for democracy," Mubarak told reporters as she walked through parliament gate.

Kuwaiti women will make their election debut in 2007 legislative elections and will vote in and contest the next municipal polls in 2009, after parliament voted on May 16 to grant them full political rights.

Read it here.

Women in Parliament! The horror, the horror!

You go girl!

# posted by D. B. Light : 1:45 AM links to this post

Scientists say they are wrapping up final arrangements to study Kennewick Man's remains in early July at University of Washington's Burke Museum in Seattle.

The 9,400-year-old skeleton found along the banks of the Columbia River in 1996 has been the focus of a bitter nine-year court battle between the federal government, Mid-Columbia Native American tribes that claim the bones as their ancestor and the scientists who want to study the remains.

Scientists from around the country plan to convene in Seattle for about two weeks early next month to conduct the research, said Alan Schneider, Portland-based attorney for the scientists.

....

[F]urther studies of Kennewick Man might be stopped if a bill proposed by U.S. Sen. John McCain, R-Ariz., passes and changes the wording of the Native American Graves Protection and Repatriation Act.

The senator has introduced a two-word amendment that would let federally recognized tribes demand the return of remains, even if they can't prove a link to a modern tribe.

"Right now skeletal remains that are culturally unaffiliated are being given to tribes and reburied," Schneider said. "If the McCain amendment goes through, we are very concerned about what would become of Kennewick Man and all of these other skeletal remains that are so different from present day Native Americans."

# posted by D. B. Light : 2:48 PM links to this post

"There is no such mood of change as we saw in the election eight years ago (when Mohammad Khatami was elected president). Because the experience of recent years showed the youth that participating in the election brought them no influence at all in politics, not to mention setting the Islamic Republic on a reform course. Most of them think: we've voted for the reformers four times in the last eight years. But reform from within isn't possible, because there's nothing to be done against the bulwark of conservatives. That's why so many of them escape. Either inwardly, into the private sphere where they throw wild parties and take all kinds of drugs, or they flee the country. For years the citizens of the Islamic Republic have voted with their feet. Each year 200,000 people leave Iran, and more would go if they could – mostly well-educated young people. The brain drain does no end of harm."

The upmarket district of Fereshteh is the only place in Teheran where the traffic jams are welcome. Every evening, the young and well-to-do of Iran, driving their smartest cars and wearing their best clothes, crawl around a mile-long circuit in the narrow side streets hoping to meet members of the opposite sex.
....

The latest suitor to have gone a-wooing round Fereshteh, however, is not a love-lorn twentysomething but a grey-haired, septuagenarian cleric by the name of Akbar Hashemi Rafsanjani, who was on the hunt for votes.

In one of the most audacious bids ever to capture a "youth" vote, the conservative Islamic revolutionary rebranded himself for Iran's bitterly-fought presidential election last Friday as a champion of the young, using a Western-style marketing campaign that owed more to Nike than the Koran.

Not only did the 70-year-old former president open a campaign office on Fereshteh's sunset strip, he also hired an army of hip, happening underlings to spread his message across the capital.

....

Thanks to work by Mr Rafsanjani's supporters in recent weeks, his campaign stickers can be seen all over Teheran, wrapped around lamp-posts and plastered on pavements, cars and motorbikes, even adorning the headscarves of attractive young women.

Leading up to Friday's polls, crowds of young supporters held "spontaneous" rallies in his honour, and celebrated Iran's recent qualifying victory in football's World Cup by chanting his name.

Which, incidentally, is no longer "Mr Rafsanjani", "His Holiness', or "His Excellency". Instead, he now styles himself simply as "Hashemi" - his middle name, and a form of address usually reserved for intimate acquaintances.

You've gotta admire the audacity of this guy.

Read it here.

Robert Mayer over at Publius Pundit sees the disaffection of Iranian youth as a positive political statement. They boycotted the elections, he argues, based on blogosphere reports, to protest the current government. I'm not so sure that the political motivation is paramount. Passive disaffection is not the same as a boycott. Read Robert here.

# posted by D. B. Light : 2:32 PM links to this post

Thousands of demonstrators chanting ``Freedom'' and carrying portraits of President Bush marched across Azerbaijan's capital Saturday, demanding the resignation of the government and free parliamentary elections - in the biggest protest in years.

The protest of about 20,000 marchers, the second such rally in as many weeks, was organized by three leading opposition parties that formed the Azadlig (Freedom) bloc to run for parliamentary elections set for November.

....

Supporters of the Musavat party, the People's Front of Azerbaijan and the Democratic Party of Azerbaijan chanted ``Freedom'' and ``Free Elections'' and carried pictures of President Bush, seen as inspiration for the earlier democratic revolutions in the former Soviet republics of Georgia and Ukraine.

Bush visited Georgia's capital of Tbilisi last month and told a cheering crowd of tens of thousands of people that Georgia is proving to the world that determined people can rise up and claim their freedom from oppressive rulers.

Azerbaijan's opposition bloc has chosen orange as its campaign color - the color that was also used by the Ukrainian opposition during mass protests dubbed ``Orange Revolution'' that helped pave way for the victory of a Western-backed candidate over a Russia-backed rival.

Many participants in Saturday's rally wore orange T-shirts and baseball caps and carried orange flags.

Read it here.

# posted by D. B. Light : 9:21 AM links to this post

TEHRAN, Iran -- Two reform candidates angrily challenged the results of Iran's presidential election Saturday, charging that hard-line factions manipulated the vote in favor of the conservative mayor of Tehran, a former member of the Revolutionary Guard with limited political experience.

At a raucous news conference, third-place finisher Mehdi Karroubi claimed that conservatives had denied him his rightful place in Friday's runoff election between the two top vote-getters.

Another reformer echoed the complaint. Mostafa Moin had been considered a likely challenger to the front-runner, former President Hashemi Rafsanjani, but finished fifth out of seven candidates.

After a day of sometimes contradictory information, election officials confirmed late Saturday that Tehran Mayor Mahmoud Ahmadinejad had come in second, only 1 1/2 percentage points behind Rafsanjani. The former president, a 70-year-old centrist, will face the 49-year-old Ahmadinejad in the first presidential runoff in the 26-year history of the Islamic republic.

Rafsanjani, a one-time confidant of the late Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini, has spoken of the need for greater engagement with the United States.

Ahmadinejad, who was an unknown when he was tapped to run Tehran's city government two years ago, has said better relations with the United States are not a priority. He has also been quoted as ruling out any retreat by Iran from its nuclear program, which the country says is for peaceful purposes. The United States and the European Union say Iran is attempting to acquire nuclear weapons.

"Access to nuclear technology is an inalienable right of Iran and the world ought to recognize our rights," Ahmadinejad has said.

Moin's finish came as a bitter disappointment to followers and aides, who were counting on him to build on the policy of gradual liberalization carried out for the last eight years by incumbent Mohammad Khatami. A campaign aide to Moin spoke darkly of a "coup d'etat" being carried out by the Revolutionary Guard and the conservative watchdog Council of Guardians, which oversees elections and decides who can run.

# posted by D. B. Light : 8:06 AM links to this post

Mad Bobby Mugabe’s terror regime just keeps rolling along. So complete is his triumph that the opposition is reduced to praying for his death or silliness like the following:

The Zimbabwe Independent reports:

IN a major indictment of Zimbabwe's electoral process, the European Union has extended its list of Zimbabweans under targeted sanctions to include head of the Zimbabwe Electoral Commission Justice George Chiweshe, the Zimbabwe Independent can reveal.

Read it here.

Yeah guys, whatever, this will really hurt the old monster.

And there's this from the Zimbabwean:

MICHIGAN - The student government of Michigan State University recently voted unanimously to denounce President Robert Mugabe and ask the Board of Trustees to strip him of the honorary degree awarded him by that institution 15 years ago.

Read it here.

Or this:

Washington - The United States on Thursday strongly condemned an urban clean-up campaign by the Zimbabwe government that has left hundreds of thousands of poor people homeless and facing the winter cold.

Read it here.

Or this:

Harare - Zimbabwean doctors condemned a government campaign to clear shacks from the cities, saying as many as one million people might have been made homeless and expressing particular concern about Aids victims among those affected.

"The campaign has targeted the poorest members of our community, simply trying to survive," said the 300-member Zimbabwe Doctors for Human Rights statement on Monday. It added its voice to an outpouring of international and domestic outcry over what the government calls an urban cleanup campaign.

Read it here.

Maybe, just maybe, if things get bad enough we can have an official from one of the NGO’s send a strongly worded communiqué to Mugabe. That’ll show him we’re really, really serious, and he will bend to the weight of world opinion, for what that's worth (clearly not much).

Meanwhile the terror directed against Zimbabwe’s poorest citizens has spread from the cities to the countryside.

News 24 reports:

Harare - Police in Central Zimbabwe have begun evicting people who settled on former white-owned farms without government permission as part of a countrywide "clean-up" campaign, the Daily Mirror reported on Friday.

Police spokesperson Whisper Bondayi told the privately-run newspaper that the controversial Operation Restore Order, which was launched last month and has made tens of thousands of people homeless, had now spread to farms in the citrus-growing Mazowe district.

Read it here. [I like that name: “Whisper”]

And there’s this from Zimonline:

HARARE - More than 300 000 children of informal traders and city squatter families in Zimbabwe have dropped out of school in the last four weeks alone after their homes were destroyed by the government, ZimOnline has learnt.

Officials at the Ministry of Education head office in Harare said directors of education in the country’s 10 provinces were last week asked to compile figures of children under 13 years no longer coming to school because their families were evicted in the government’s highly unpopular urban clean-up operation.

….

The official said school authorities have not been able to establish the whereabouts of the children many of whom are now just roaming around urban areas with their families and sleeping in the open after the shanty homes were brunt down by the police.

Read it here.

And in particular read this moving account of the destruction by Neal Connerly:

It is a wasteland. Street after street razed in a scene that looks like a natural disaster. The hundreds of thousands who have been left homeless are calling it Zimbabwe's tsunami. But man, not nature, is to blame for the destruction enveloping this country.

The full force of Robert Mugabe's state is destroying homes and lives in what it calls Operation Restore Order. But all that can be seen is chaos and trauma. There is no compassion, only carefully executed brutality. [emphasis mine]

....

In the ruins of his former home in the Harare suburb of Mbare, a man called Isaac prepared for another night in the freezing mid-winter cold. His wife and four children were huddled around a small fire.

Three pieces of corrugated iron that they managed to salvage from the mess left behind by the bulldozers are the walls of their new home.

"This is our tsunami," he said. "We are cold and alone and who cares? What are we meant to do? We have no money, there is nowhere for us to go. What have done wrong?"

Indeed!

Read it here.

And yet another obscenity, the Times reports:

Harare has been turned into a refugee city with marauding bands of families pursued through the smoking rubble by police who move on anyone they find sleeping outside or still retaining a few possessions.
....

With international aid agencies prevented from helping, those who can have sought shelter from the freezing winter nights in church yards and halls.

But confidential minutes of a meeting last Wednesday between community representatives and government officials headed by Ignatius Chombo, the minister of public works, confirm that church leaders have been refused permission to help the homeless.
....

“It’s social engineering with sledgehammers,” said Oskar Wermter, a Jesuit priest in Harare. “I do not know anyone poorer than a widow with her orphaned grandchildren — remember, there is Aids all around — surrounded by the rubble of her destroyed home.”

Yet far from halting the brutal campaign, which has seen people forced to destroy their homes at gunpoint, government officials said yesterday they were extending it to rural areas. “We must clean the country of the crawling mass of maggots bent on destroying the economy,” declared Augustine Chihuri, police commissioner.

"Social engineering with sledghammers..." Hmmm.

Read it here.

Simple condemnation and symbolic gestures are not what is needed in these circumstances, but that seems to be all that will be forthcoming from the "international community." Once more, as has been so often demonstrated in the past few decades, the weight of world opinion counts for nothing -- absolutely nothing! And the poor suffer, and suffer, and suffer.

Sigh!

Previous posts here, and here, and here, and here, and here, and here, and here, and here. There are more. Just scroll through my archives to see them.

Philip Chaston over at Samizdata thinks this is lazy blogging, and maybe it is, but he does so in the process of denouncing the cozy relationship that has developed betseen Mugabe and UN Special Envoy James Morris.

Read it here.

# posted by D. B. Light : 6:58 AM links to this post

Read it here.

# posted by D. B. Light : 12:01 PM links to this post

BRUSSELS, Belgium (CNN) -- The two-day European Union summit has ended in failure, with its president stating, "Europe is not in a state of crisis -- it's in a state of profound crisis."

Luxembourg Prime Minister Jean-Claude Juncker, who holds the rotating EU presidency and tried to broker a budget compromise, said on Friday, "I have to say my enthusiasm for Europe has suffered a severe setback today."

British officials rejected a budget plan for the years 2007-2013 because they said it did not contain sufficient guarantees that the EU's system of agricultural subsidies would be overhauled, in return for Britain agreeing to freeze a rebate it receives in compensation for its outsized net contribution to the EU.

The budget requires approval of all 25 EU member states, so it cannot go into force with Britain's approval.

Read it here.

What is more, Blair's defiance has proven popular with other European states who also resent French subsidies.

BBC reports that the states of Eastern Europe, Sweden and Holland are all supporting Blair's demands for budgetary reform as are opposition politicians in France and Germany. All are also supporting a pro-US position on other matters.

Read it here.

Once again the staggering ineptitude of the Chirac regime was on display for all to see. I wonder if the NYT and the US MSM have noticed?

Probably not.

# posted by D. B. Light : 6:23 AM links to this post

TEHRAN, Iran — A former speaker of the parliament, who offered everyone in the country the equivalent of $60 a month if elected president, appeared to be the first-place finisher in Iran's president election, the Interior Ministry announced this morning. But according to the preliminary results, he failed to win enough votes to avoid a runoff against the former two-term president, Ali Akbar Hashemi Rafsanjani.

The results, based on an incomplete sample and not adjusted for voting patterns, could still change markedly. But if they stand up, they will have confounded all polls and conventional wisdom by showing Mehdi Karroubi, the former speaker of the parliament and a moderate, reformist cleric, drawing 22.6 percent of the vote, with more than 12 million votes, about 40 percent of the expected total, counted. Rafsanjani was a close second with 21.2 percent, and officials said it was not clear which candidate would eventually turn out on top.

Turnout, put preliminarily at 55 percent by the Interior Ministry but thought to be running closer to the 68 percent recorded in the last presidential election, also confounded the experts.

The apparent outcome signaled a crushing defeat for the leading reform candidate, Dr. Mostafa Moin, who polls had showed to be running in second place and who had the support of some of the nation's top reformers, including those who worked closely with the outgoing president, Mohammad Khatami. Moin finished fifth.

Interesting. The only clear indication here is that the Khatami regime has been solidly rejected by the electorate. To what extent this is based on Iran's continued confrontation with the West over nuclear arms is unknown. Rafsanjani has publicly pledged that he will seek better ties with the West, and particularly the US. All in all, the elections have so far had a mildly positive outcome.

Stay tuned.....,

Read the article here.

By the way..., is there any politician in Iran that the NYT will not refer to as a "reformer"?

RELATED:

BBC has a nice little article on Iranian bloggers and the election.

The Persian blogland is less than four years old, and so Friday's presidential election is the first of its kind in the post-weblog world.

Iranian weblogs, one of the largest web communities in the world, owe their significance to the welcome they have received from middle-class Iranians inside and outside the country.

Thousands of voices not heard via Iranian state-owned media can now express their views through the internet.

During the past weeks, the Iranian urban middle-class has published a huge amount of articles on weblogs about its preoccupation with the presidential election. They have left no stream of thought unrepresented.

These discussions are invariably about one of two topics: Boycotting the election or voting for three of the candidates - former police chief Mohammad Baqer Qalibaf, former science minister Mostafa Moin or former President Ali Akbar Hashemi Rafsanjani.

The other candidates are not talked about as such on the weblogs.

Boycotting tension

Many bloggers have been calling for a boycott of the election after becoming disillusioned by the reformists.

Read it here.

What jumps out from this article is how misleading bloggy opinion can be. Bloggers have been calling for a boycott of the election and many in the blogosphere assumed that it would take place. Instead people turned out in large numbers to vote.

# posted by D. B. Light : 5:41 AM links to this post

Bishkek, Kyrgyzstan — Several hundred unarmed supporters of a presidential hopeful who was denied registration in next month's election stormed the Kyrgyz government headquarters on Friday, in the largest protest to grip the Central Asian country since the March uprising that ousted its former leader.

Police and Interior Ministry troops regained control of the building about an hour after the crowd of about 2,000 had gathered, shouting slogans in support of the candidate, Urmat Baryktabasov.

His registration was denied because Kyrgyz officials said they had proof he was a citizen of neighbouring Kazakhstan.

Read it here.

Nathan at Registran has a much more on the subject [here]. Follow his links for more information.

His sources seem to think that the demonstrations were financed by ousted ruler Askar Akayev in an attempt to regain power. Could be.

Stay tuned....

# posted by D. B. Light : 10:47 AM links to this post

"The blogs take over the functions that the state-controlled print media are prevented from carrying out. They contain uncensored reports and commentaries on the major political events in the country. For example, the blog pages gave full coverage on the disqualification of the reform candidates in the upcoming elections on June 17. With the blogs, the system in Iran has gained one more absurdity: a flagrantly manipulated election about which the entire country is reading every detail in real time over the Internet." [English excerpts at Sign and Sight]

# posted by D. B. Light : 9:06 AM links to this post

Maryland Lt. Gov. Michael S. Steele today launched an exploratory bid for next year's U.S. Senate race, sounding very much like a candidate already -- and one with unusually strong backing from the state and national Republican parties.

Steele, who as Gov. Robert L. Ehrlich Jr.'s running mate in 2002 became the first African-American elected statewide in Maryland, told reporters that he would spend the coming months talking to voters about "the opportunity to potentially fly solo" in 2006.

Steele left little doubt about his intentions during a half-hour conference call, though, at one point referring to himself as "the next senator from Maryland."

With the looming retirement of five-term Sen. Paul S. Sarbanes (D), "a new opportunity has presented itself, and I'm ready to stand up and meet that challenge and to take on that opportunity," said Steele, a Prince George's County resident.

This is great news. Steele's candidacy will make the whole thing interesting. Next year's contest is shaping up to be a great one.

Read about it here.

# posted by D. B. Light : 8:21 AM links to this post

I always knew that there are three major Sunni Arab groups,” said Wael Abdul-Latif, a Shiite lawmaker and former Cabinet minister. “But when we asked the Sunni Arabs to provide us with representatives to join the constitutional committee, 53 groups came to us.”

The compromise offer to Sunnis - 15 additional seats and 10 adviser positions - was made last week, but at the time it was rejected by many Sunnis, who said they wanted more seats with full voting powers. Since then, Shiite committee members offered a sweetener, saying the committee would approve the new constitution by consensus and not by vote, making the precise number of seats less important.
....

So on Tuesday night, a team of Sunni Arab negotiators met in one negotiator's house to discuss the offer. They decided, some with reservation, that it was one they must accept. Turning it down, they said, would mean permanent isolation from the political process. Today, they made their agreement public.
....

In many ways, today's agreement marked a new political beginning for Sunni Arabs, who make up about a fifth of this country's population. The Sunni Arabs had grown increasingly isolated in recent months since a majority of them refused to vote in national elections in January. Shiites, who account for about 60 percent of all Iraqis, swept to power in those elections and Sunni Arabs, the former ruling class, have chafed under that new rule.

# posted by D. B. Light : 7:19 AM links to this post

Beirut, Lebanon - The million Lebanese that marched on the streets of Beirut on March 14 were united. Christians, Muslims and Druze were one voice like never before. They all wanted to see a new Lebanon, free from the Syrians. A Lebanon that is free of sectarian influence. A Lebanon that is united in its resolve to reform for the better. What did they get instead?

Not much!

1- It is true that the Syrian troops are out if the country, but according to published reports the Syrian intelligence is still freely moving in Lebanon. Aoun's partnership with the Syrian Loyalists, gave them legitimacy that they lost when the Syrian troops pulled out.

2- Sectarianism is very much alive in Lebanon. The results of the elections showed clearly that voters were voting on sectarian basis. Gone were the symbols of unity shown during the March demonstrations.

3- The opposition is divided, thanks to the failed attempt to negotiate a deal with General Aoun. The Kornet Shahwan movement was badly wounded if not completely dead after the Mount Lebanon elections. If the momentum continues in the fourth round in Northern Lebanon's elections, say goodbye to the majority that was projected by Saad Hariri. Aoun is fielding support from the Syrian loyalists, such as former PM Omar Karami and Suleiman Franjieh, as he did in Mount Lebanon and Zahle. His alliance with the Syrian loyalists will not be free, God knows what the price will be!

4- Jumblatt and Hariri's alliance with Speaker Nabih Berri and Hezbollah will also not be free. Hezbollah has an agenda that may not fit well with the new Lebanon that the Cedar Revolution marchers called for. The presence of the arms in the hands of Hezbollah is a destabilizing factor, if not properly controlled by a strong government.

There's much more. Read it here.

Oh, by the way, they're still running photos of Miss Lebanon.

# posted by D. B. Light : 7:55 AM links to this post

BALTIMORE – A. Robert Kaufman, a Democratic candidate for the U.S. Senate, was in serious but stable condition Tuesday after being stabbed several times in the upper body during an attack at his west Baltimore home.

Kaufman was rushed in critical condition to the Shock Trauma Center at the University of Maryland after the 4 p.m. attack Monday, police said. Investigators believe the stabbing stemmed from a landlord-tenant dispute. Kaufman rents out several rooms in his home and owns a few nearby buildings with tenants, said Michael Melick, a member of the City Wide Coalition, Kaufman’s activist organization.

“We don’t have any suspects in custody, but we do have good leads,” police spokesman Troy Harris said.

Kaufman, 74, is a social activist and perennial candidate who has run previously for Congress, governor and mayor of Baltimore. He is one of three declared candidates in the Democratic primary for the seat being vacated by U.S. Sen. Paul Sarbanes, who is retiring. U.S. Rep. Ben Cardin and former NAACP head Kweisi Mfume also are running.

Read it here.

Jeez, and I thought Howard Dean was getting rough. Oh Maryland, my Maryland...., sigh!

Hat Tip to Baltimore Reporter.

# posted by D. B. Light : 7:48 AM links to this post

'If politicians tell you who you'll have bad sex with and who you'll have good sex with, then any critical alternative to this missionary position is considered a protest. And that is of course cool – being able to combine the useful and the pleasurable: to have sex with whoever you wish and however you wish, knowing that in so doing, you're opposing Lukaschenko's politics. That's why we call it the Revolution 69!'

"Belarus is not the Ukraine. Here the people receive salaries and pensions that they can actually live on. And there are no big economic players with vested interests in democratic institutions – here only firms that have made an arrangement with the government can thrive. There are no independent television or radio broadcasters, and almost no newspapers – the existing opposition papers are abolished for all eyes to see. And: the Russian influence is very strong in Belarus."

# posted by D. B. Light : 4:58 PM links to this post

Judging from the growing number of street protests against the president, the strident headlines of opposition newspapers, and the open pressure for reform from Washington, there is now a "Cairo Spring" in the air.

With an eye on pro-democracy revolutions in Ukraine and Georgia, Egypt's old guard is nervous about where the "democracy thing", as one senior official put it, will lead.

But there is one Mubarak who welcomes the new climate. "This is a period of vibrancy, change and reflection," said Gamal Mubarak, the president's 42-year-old son who is widely regarded as a strong contender to succeed his father.

"We have presidential elections in September and parliamentary elections in November. We want the elections to send a message to our people that there is serious change."

Gamal has been working for years to establish his credentials as a reformer, obviously positioning himself to replace his father, probably in 2011. He talks like a republican but so far there is no indication that any of the Mubareks intend anything more than cosmetic changes in what is essentially an autocracy.

# posted by D. B. Light : 4:48 PM links to this post

She Who Shall Not Be Named and I went to the movies the other day. I thought we were going to see Cinderella Man, but she had other ideas. She declared that Russell Crowe was a creep and she didn’t want to see him and suggested another film. You married guys know how this went. “We” decided to see The Sisterhood of the Traveling Pants.

Pants is made for adolescent girls of all ages, and in some ways it’s a refreshing break from the sorts of movies I usually see. It’s a sweet film. There are no bad people in it, just some bad actors. To the extent that there are conflicts they are the result of misunderstanding, and are easily resolved by people communicating effectively with one other. In three of the four stories told in the film, the problem is a man (a stern grandfather, an uncommunicative father, and a maybe boyfriend). All three are ultimately generous, forgiving, and reasonable when confronted by the demands of aggressive girls.

What’s the film about? Well, the influences are obvious. Think Divine Secrets of the Ya Ya Sisterhood [there is even a character named "Ya Ya"] meets Bend it Like Beckham, meets Mystic Pizza. Four sixteen year old girls [played by twenty-something actresses], lifelong friends, are getting ready for summer vacation before their senior year of high school. On a shopping trip they discover that, despite their disparate physiques, one pair of blue jeans fits them all. They purchase the magic pants and decide to share them through the summer. Each will keep the pants for a week, then mail them to another who will keep them for a week, and so on. They then disperse to various destinations – one to visit relatives on Santorini in the Aegean, another to a soccer camp in Mexico, a third to visit her father [who left her mother years earlier], and the fourth remains at home in Bethesda, MD to work and to try to make a documentary film.

We follow each girl as she has a life-transforming experience, arranged (we are led to believe) by the magic pants. Lena, played by Alexis Bledel, [Gilmore Girls, Tuck Everlasting, Sin City] travels to Greece where she enters the household of her grandfather. Shy, withdrawn, and with an artist’s sensitivity Lena blunders into a relationship with a local boy only to find that his family and hers are ancient enemies. She is forbidden to see him again, but can’t resist. Eventually she works up the courage to confront her grandfather and wins his approval. In the end she finds true love.

The second girl, Bridget, played by newcomer Blake Lively is a boy-crazy soccer star. At camp she sets her eyes on one of the coaches and determinedly seduces him. Finally he succumbs and she discovers that sex is no substitute for love and, upon reflection, realizes that she was just trying to assuage the loneliness that she had felt since the death of her mother. In the end she and her conquest decide to remain friends and she realizes that she has already found love in the sisterhood.

The third story is the weakest of the four. Carmen, played by America Ferrera [Real Women Have Curves] is proud of her Puerto Rican heritage and feels terribly the loss of her Anglo father who left her and her mother years before. She plans to spend her vacation with him and secretly hopes to effect a reconciliation between him and her mother. But, when she arrives she finds that he is planning to marry a WASP woman with perfect Anglo children her own age. She rebels against this and makes a perfect ass of herself, exploding in rage against her father and his new family. In the end, though, the reunited sisterhood convinces her to attend her father’s wedding (wearing the magic pants) and there she and her father reconcile.

The final story, and by far the best, follows Tibby, an alienated young film-maker played by a superb young actress, Amber Tamblyn [Joan of Arcadia], as she works at a mindless job in a warehouse market and endeavors to make what she calls her “suckumentary”. She meets a precocious young girl from her neighborhood who volunteers to become her “assistant.” The interaction and verbal sparring between the young girl, “Bailey,” played by Jenna Boyd [The Missing], and Tibby is wonderful and the only memorable aspect of the film. Gradually Tibby learns to tolerate, then respect, and finally to love, the annoying kid Bailey. In the end Tibby learns that Bailey is dying of leukemia and has to deal with the death of a loved one.

That’s it. The four stories are silly sentimental slop informed by the easy kind of benevolent supernaturalism that pollutes so much of today’s popular culture (think Touched By An Angel). It is unchallenging and mildly amusing. Competently directed by Ken Kwapis (Beautician and the Beast), a prolific TV director, it is in essence an extended TV show – fine for its target audience of twelve to fifteen year old girls, but at best mildly amusing for an adult male. The one real reason to see it is the performance of two extraordinary young actresses – Tamblyn and Boyd. We expect to see a lot more of them in the future.

Nobody gets killed, nothing blows up, no car chases -- what were they thinking?

# posted by D. B. Light : 4:14 PM links to this post

I have not written anything about the Michael Jackson trial because, frankly, there is not one aspect of the entire thing that I do not find totally repulsive. However, now that it’s over, I have a few thoughts on the whole subject of celebrity trials.

From OJ to MJ the celebrity trials have been decided, not on factual evidence, but by competing claims on our sympathy. In the OJ case the prosecution portrayed the victim as an exemplar of women’s plight in a world dominated by testosterone drenched men. This invited the defense to counter by portraying OJ as a victim of racism. The evidence of the case was forgotten and the public was treated to competing victimization narratives. This played well on TV, but not so well in the courtroom. To the dismay of feminists everywhere, the race card trumped the gender card, and in doing so it provided one small clue as to the relative saliency of these two narratives. Race, it would seem, trumps gender.

Then came Robert Blake. Here the race card was inapplicable so the defendant’s victimization narrative was that of celebrities being preyed upon by grifters. The dead wife was plausibly portrayed as a con artist who had entrapped Blake and apparently decided that she got what she deserved. The jury apparently agreed, discounted abundant evidence that Blake had tried to have his wife killed, and found for the defendant.

Michael Jackson also plugged into this narrative. The race card was problematic, given his penchant for reinvention, and there were no blacks on the jury, so once again the defense presented a narrative that plausibly portrayed a celebrity as the victim of con artists [and, borrowing a page from Bill Clinton, of sex-obsessed prosecutors]. Interestingly enough, the alternative victimization story was that of a young child being abused by an adult sexual predator. Again the jury ignored evidence of Jackson’s peculiar promiscuities and found for the celebrity victim.

So what can we conclude from this? In all three cases the weight of the evidence took a back seat to victimization narratives, and look at how those narratives fared. Portraying women and children as victims of adult males was far less salient than the counter-narratives that depicted the plight of rich adult male celebrities.

Could it simply be the case that it is impossible to convict celebrities? Not really. Both Winona Ryder and Martha Stewart were convicted and Stewart was sentenced to prison. Does this mean that child and female victimization narratives are less potent than alternative ones based in race and class? Possibly, but neither Stewart nor Ryder attempted to make victimization the core of their cases. It’s hard to tell; the sample size is too small. We need to indict and try more celebrities – lots of them – before we can come to any firm conclusions.

Let’s get started – simply in the interests of social science, you understand.

# posted by D. B. Light : 5:15 AM links to this post

Jumblat is pissed and claimed this a loss for Christian moderation, and threw a nasty jab that this was a replay of Syrian intervention in 1976, which claimed to be on behalf of Christians, but then never left. He also made the curious claim that the Syrians will now try to regain control over Lebanon through selling out Hizbullah and its weapons to the Americans. And that they (namely Bashar and Lahoud) cunningly brought in Aoun to specifically target Hizbullah. Incendiary stuff. He's pissed. Yet, the Shouf went all to him, and apparently so did Baabda-Aley (we're not sure if one candidate of the Aoun list managed to break through or not), and his coalition list won in the western Bekaa-Rashaya (kicking out two really annoying pro-Syrians, Elie Ferzli and Abdel-Rahim Mrad). And it seems that Zahle eventually showed a breakthrough for Nicholas Fattoush, backed by the Bristol opposition, which spoiled Aoun-Skaff's sweep.

But if this is a signal from Jumblat, it's not a good one, because it means that he'll go deeper into the Amal-PoG camp to try to get what he wants. Ghassan Tueni is taking a more balanced position, seeing the dynamism of this round (not seen anywhere else) as good for Lebanese democracy, and in one sense, he is right. Aound also sounded conciliatory and said he won't isolate anyone, but he won't be isolated either. Let's see what happens.

# posted by D. B. Light : 9:48 AM links to this post

Kansans have been debating how the development of life on earth should be taught in public schools -- as the unintended result of random evolution or as the complex product of an evolution shaped by intelligent design. The board of education held hearings in May, and is to decide this summer whether the current science standards should be changed. Kansas is just one of 19 states in which the Darwinism vs. Intelligent Design contest is being fought. Emotions have been running high, as they often do when the state takes sides in a clash of fundamental values and beliefs.
....
From issues of sexuality and religion to the broad themes of US history and politics, public opinion is fractured. Secular parents square off against believers, supporters of homosexual marriage against traditionalists, those stressing "safe sex" against those who emphasize abstinence. Each wants its views reflected in the classroom. No longer is there a common understanding of the mission of public education. To the extent that one camp's vision prevails, parents in the opposing camp are embittered. And there is no prospect that this will change -- not as long as the government remains in charge of educating American children.

Which is why it's time to put an end to government control of the schools.
....
Imagine how diverse and vital American education could be if it were liberated from government control. There would be schools of every description -- just as there are restaurants, websites, and clothing styles of every description. Parents who wanted their children to be taught Darwinian evolution unsullied by leaps of faith in an Intelligent Designer would be able to choose schools in which religious notions played no role. Those who wanted their children to see God's hand in the miraculous tapestry of life all around them would send them to schools in which faith played a prominent role.
....
With separation of school and state, the roiling education battles would come to a peaceful end. Robust competition and innovation would dramatically lower costs. Teachers, released from their one-size-fits-all straitjacket, would be happier in their chosen profession. Children would be happier, too -- and, perhaps best of all, better-educated to boot.

# posted by D. B. Light : 9:13 AM links to this post

[W]ithin Zimbabwe, reaction has been muted. This is a population that has been cowed by years of torture, rape and food deprivation, where up to 40% are infected with HIV.

NI_MPU('middle');

A two-day mass “stay-away” from work fizzled out last week, leaving Mugabe triumphant and the opposition Movement for Democratic Change (MDC) in disarray.

....

Many within the opposition believe that they are in danger of becoming irrelevant if they do not act soon to topple Mugabe. Leading members are demanding that the party takes a more confrontational stance.

“Passive resistance has not worked,” said Nelson Chamisa, chairman of the MDC Youth League. “It is time to engage in active struggle.”

# posted by D. B. Light : 1:39 AM links to this post

Sunday's vote in the central and eastern regions - together accounting for nearly half the 128 seats in Parliament - is too close to call, and the winners could decide the country's political direction for the next four years.
....

While the race in most of Lebanon is largely between pro-and anti-Syrian camps, the central and eastern areas have thrown up surprising alliances between pro-and anti-Syrians.

The vote in central Mount Lebanon, the nation's most populous region, has been billed as the "mother of all battles," with friends and foes running against each other in a jumble of baffling alliances.

Political tensions have already spilled over into violence. The government sent army and police reinforcements to Mount Lebanon fearing clashes between rival groups, mainly allies of Jumblatt and those supporting former army commander Michel Aoun, who returned home last month after 14 years in exile.

Aoun, who fought and lost a war against Syria in 1989, was one of Syria's main Lebanese foes but recently broke with other opponents of Damascus and forged alliances with pro-Syrian politicians.

Last week, a gun battle in the mountain resort of Sofar between Jumblatt's supporters and those of Druze rival - and Aoun ally - Talal Arslan left at least seven people wounded.

In the Baabda-Aley constituency, the Aoun-Arslan alliance is fighting a ticket backed by Jumblatt's Progressive Socialist Party and the Lebanese Forces, the main Christian militia during Lebanon's civil war, as well as the Syrian-backed militant group Hezbollah. The battle is too close to call.

In the Chouf area, the Druze heartland, a Jumblatt-Lebanese Forces ticket is expected to do well, while rival Christian tickets are battling it out in the Christian heartland of Kesrwan-Byblos.

In Metn, Aoun has forged an alliance with pro-Syrian politician Michael Murr and Armenian political party Tashnag, against an anti-Syrian ticket headed by legislator Nassib Lahoud and Pierre Gemayel, son of former President Amine Gemayel.

Read it here.

In other words, the unity of the early protests, when there was a common foe, has given away to democratic deal-making. To some extent this is all well and good -- the essence of democracy -- but in Lebanon, with it's history of civil conflict, the danger is always that faction rivalries will deteriorate into civil war. Reports of occasional armed skirmishes between factions are not encouraging.

The key to preserving any democratic system is that the losers are willing to accept the validity of the results. Will the losers in this round accept their fate? Time will tell.

Stay tuned....

RELATED:

YaLibnan has a district by district breakdown of the candidates and factions [with a handy reference chart]. They argue that the decisive factor today will be the level of turnout in the Christian community. Read it here.

ALEY, Lebanon (Reuters) - Anti-Syrian Christian leader Michel Aoun scored a clean sweep against rival Christian politicians on Sunday in the most crucial round of Lebanon's parliamentary elections.

....

Unofficial counts showed candidates backed by Aoun set to clinch 15 of 16 seats up for grabs in Sunday's third round of the elections in the Maronite Christian heartland of North Metn and Byblos-Kesrwan north of Beirut. There was no Aoun-allied candidate running for the undecided seat.

But the candidates of former general Aoun, who fell out with other anti-Syrian leaders after returning in May from 14 years in exile, looked set to be beaten by a list backed by Druze chieftain Walid Jumblatt in the Baabda-Aley district, where 11 seats are being contested.

Jumblatt's list won all eight seats in the mainly Druze Shouf constituency.

Among those who lost to Aoun was Nassib Lahoud, long touted as the opposition's preferred presidential candidate. Sunday's defeat looked likely to end any presidential aspirations

The pro-Syrian Hizbollah guerrilla group and its allies also increased their share in parliament with 10 candidates winning seats in the eastern Baalbek-Hermel district. The alliance has now won 33 seats in the 128-assembly, with two more seats set to be won later in the night.

Hizbollah now has 13 members elected to the new parliament compared to 12 in the outgoing assembly.

# posted by D. B. Light : 7:18 AM links to this post

LONDON - Finance ministers from the Group of Eight industrialized nations agreed Saturday to a historic deal canceling at least $40 billion worth of debt owed by the world's poorest nations.

Britain Treasury chief Gordon Brown said 18 countries, many in sub-Saharan Africa, will benefit immediately from the deal to scrap 100 percent of the debt they owe to the World Bank, the International Monetary Fund and the African Development Bank.

As many as 20 other countries could be eligible if they meet strict targets for good governance and tackling corruption, leading to a total debt relief package of more than $55 billion.

# posted by D. B. Light : 1:16 PM links to this post

"failed an important test of character by aligning himself with Michael Zak's dangerous, deceptive and racially divisive commentary."

# posted by D. B. Light : 11:59 AM links to this post

Archaeologists have discovered Europe's oldest civilisation, a network of dozens of temples, 2,000 years older than Stonehenge and the Pyramids.

More than 150 gigantic monuments have been located beneath the fields and cities of modern-day Germany, Austria and Slovakia. They were built 7,000 years ago, between 4800BC and 4600BC. Their discovery, revealed today by The Independent, will revolutionise the study of prehistoric Europe, where an appetite for monumental architecture was thought to have developed later than in Mesopotamia and Egypt.

# posted by D. B. Light : 7:57 AM links to this post

AP: Speaking of liberalism, there was a story in The Washington Post about six months ago, they'd pulled something off the Web, some article that you wrote blaming, according to The Washington Post, blaming in part the Catholic Church scandal on liberalism. Can you explain that?

SANTORUM: You have the problem within the church. Again, it goes back to this moral relativism, which is very accepting of a variety of different lifestyles. And if you make the case that if you can do whatever you want to do, as long as it's in the privacy of your own home, this "right to privacy," then why be surprised that people are doing things that are deviant within their own home? If you say, there is no deviant as long as it's private, as long as it's consensual, then don't be surprised what you get....

So far, so good..., basically he's saying that if you normalize behavior in one sphere it will begin to slip over into other spheres.

But then he starts to expand on his position, and quickly gets into trouble.

SANTORUM: We have laws in states, like the one at the Supreme Court right now, that has sodomy laws and they were there for a purpose. Because, again, I would argue, they undermine the basic tenets of our society and the family. And if the Supreme Court says that you have the right to consensual sex within your home, then you have the right to bigamy, you have the right to polygamy, you have the right to incest, you have the right to adultery. You have the right to anything. Does that undermine the fabric of our society? I would argue yes, it does. It all comes from, I would argue, this right to privacy that doesn't exist in my opinion in the United States Constitution, this right that was created, it was created in Griswold — Griswold was the contraceptive case — and abortion. And now we're just extending it out. And the further you extend it out, the more you — this freedom actually intervenes and affects the family. You say, well, it's my individual freedom. Yes, but it destroys the basic unit of our society because it condones behavior that's antithetical to strong healthy families. Whether it's polygamy, whether it's adultery, where it's sodomy, all of those things, are antithetical to a healthy, stable, traditional family.

Every society in the history of man has upheld the institution of marriage as a bond between a man and a woman. Why? Because society is based on one thing: that society is based on the future of the society. And that's what? Children. Monogamous relationships. In every society, the definition of marriage has not ever to my knowledge included homosexuality. That's not to pick on homosexuality. It's not, you know, man on child, man on dog, or whatever the case may be. It is one thing. And when you destroy that you have a dramatic impact on the quality — [emphasis mine]

AP: I'm sorry, I didn't think I was going to talk about "man on dog" with a United States senator, it's sort of freaking me out.

Read the whole thing here.

Of course the reporter jumped on that one. The reference will "freak out" voters too. But far more importantly, Santorum is making a case against a "right to privacy" and so broadly stated that just won't fly in today's political culture. He's digging himself a hole, and these careless statements will come back to haunt him in a big way next year.

# posted by D. B. Light : 1:48 AM links to this post

TOPEKA, Kan. - (KRT) - Nearly every change evolution critics had suggested was endorsed by three members of the State Board of Education Thursday evening.

But there still weren't enough criticisms of evolution in the new draft of science standards to satisfy board member Connie Morris, who suggested using the transcript of last month's hearings on evolution to add more.

"I just feel like there needs to be more there because that is the crux of this effort: getting the criticisms of Darwinian evolution into the standards and into the classroom," Morris said.

Read the whole thing here.

It's unfortunate that the debate over Darwinism, within which there are broad areas of potential agreement between scientific and religious authorities, should be pushed into the political arena where accommodations are difficult. I fault the hyper-darwinst extremists like Richard Dawkins who insist on excluding all possibility of God's existence. Of course scientistic extremists have called forth equally extreme responses from within religious communities. And so the debate degenerates into diatribes and crass political maneuvering.

Faugh!

# posted by D. B. Light : 1:35 AM links to this post

[A] nationwide two-day strike came to a close yesterday, President Robert Mugabe's regime was taking no chances. The government, already braced for a backlash against its campaign of mass arrests and the destruction of street markets and shanty towns, stepped up security as anger threatened to turn into mass protest.

A senior official in the Bulawayo mayor's office, speaking on condition of anonymity, said the situation had reached boiling point and a single event or gathering could lead to serious clashes. "They [the government] have deliberately provoked the situation because they want to have an excuse to declare a state of emergency, get rid of the rules and deploy the arms they spent millions buying," he told The Independent.

In the townships outside Bulawayo, the atmosphere was tense. Police put up roadblocks on all the exits of the city. Anyone seen with a camera, or gathering in a group of three or more persons, faced arrest. On every street corner, plainclothes police and soldiers were on the look-out for any sign of opposition activity.

HARARE, Zimbabwe - Police fought running battles until dawn Friday with supporters of a general strike called to protest a government campaign against shack dwellers and street traders, the strike organizer said.

Lovemore Madhuku, the head of the group that called the strike, said anti-riot police beat and fired tear gas at protesters and shot bullets over their heads in the Chitungwiza township south of Harare.

The violence erupted, he said, after police set up roadblocks on all routes in and out of Chitungwiza and other crowded southern township and searched people after forcing them to leave their vehicles.

A two-day strike called to protest a crackdown by President Robert Mugabe's government on informal traders headed for a total collapse on Friday when most businesses opened as usual for the second consecutive day....

In a statement, the main Zimbabwe Congress of Trade Unions which participated in the call, acknowledged it had attracted "a minimal response", with its sole success reflected in a boycott by MDC legislators on Thursday of Mugabe's speech to officially open a new parliament.

State media crowed over the flop on Friday, and the official Herald newspaper quoted Mugabe as saying the MDC had behaved like "little children, not yet mature".

[W]e were all shocked. People are not spread around in open fields on the farm, as we had imagined. They are crowded together in the fenced compound immediately around the farmhouse. When we drove past (we didn't risk going inside) about a hundred were crowded around the verandah....

The people are staying in tents, and the tents are right next to each other, not a bit of space in between. Laundry was drying on the fence, children were wandering around behind the crowd, and we noticed a police car parked inside.The main shock was the small size of the place - there is no way all the people from Hatcliffe Extension (there are still roughly 6000 - 8000 people staying there) will fit inside that compound, even if they all remain standing! And even before the Hatcliffe people started arriving, there were others already there from Porta Farm - and there will be many others coming from all over Harare....

The health dangers looming in Caledonia transit holding camp are obvious, but serious. Moreover, we wonder what people are eating, where they are getting their water, and how the sick, especially Aids sufferers, are being cared for, and what is happening to the orphans....

It has all the appearance of a detention centre - and it is extremely likely that they will be forced to attend re-education "pungwes" (all night rallies) at night for political correctness. The "vetting" may well be to sort out the ZanuPF members from the others, then they might well be re-allocated their stands back at Hatcliffe Extension - and the others will be discarded along with the other "rubbish" in this "clean-up campaign".

[A]s the campaign, directed at as many as 1.5 million members of Zimbabwe's vast underclass, spreads beyond Harare, it is quickly evolving into a sweeping recasting of society, a forced uprooting of the very poorest city dwellers, who have become President Robert G. Mugabe's most hardened opponents.

By scattering them to rural areas, Mr. Mugabe, re-elected to another five-year term in 2002, seems intent on dispersing the biggest threat to his 25-year autocratic rule as poverty and unemployment approach record levels and mass hunger and the potential for unrest loom.
....
Mr. Mugabe says the campaign is a long-overdue step to rid Zimbabwe of what he told Parliament on Thursday was "a chaotic state of affairs" in the nation's cities and towns. The street vendors being uprooted work in the black market and pay no taxes....

But by attacking the shanty dwellers and so-called informal traders, whose black-market businesses have supplanted much of the official state-dominated economy, the government also hopes to reclaim control of the foreign currency that the official economy desperately needs.

That would solidify Mr. Mugabe's authority at a time when Zimbabwe's economic and human crises seem to have eroded it. One Harare political analyst who refused to be identified for fear of retribution said: "I think they know what the country is going to look like in a few months, and they want to clear out the towns, to clear these people way out of here. It's a governing strategy, no doubt about it."
....

The government's drive shows no sign of slowing down.

# posted by D. B. Light : 12:33 AM links to this post

THE President arrived for the state opening of parliament in a black Rolls-Royce, medals pinned to his chest. He inspected a guard of honour of mounted police lancers. He then delivered a 35-minute speech condemning lawlessness and demanding “greater cohesion and unity” from his countrymen.

At first sight this was a fine example of democracy in action, except that the country was Zimbabwe, the President was Robert Mugabe and the parliament was elected in polls last March that were widely denounced as fraudulent.

NI_MPU('middle');

MPs of the opposition Movement for Democratic Change boycotted yesterday’s ceremonies, and even as Mr Mugabe was speaking his security forces were continuing their three-week drive to raze the shantytowns of Harare and Bulawayo — MDC strongholds — that has left up to a million people homeless.

Timothy Burke over at Easily Distracted has argued that popular protest demonstrations can be effective only when the leadership of a country is capable of being shamed. [I can't find the exact post, but here's the blog -- scroll around, he's got a lot of interesting things to say. While you're there check out his comments on the hermeneutics of Star Wars and Middle Earth.]

Mad Bobby is far beyond the point where he or his cronies can be shamed. They are inhuman thugs -- Maoist ideologues for whom human concerns and consequences are of negligible importance. The democratic reform imperative that started in Georgia and Ukraine has reached an end in Zimbabwe. Absent outside interference, and contrary to Belmont Club I do not think that it is in the works, Mugabe's tyranny will continue unabated at least for the forseeable future.

Read the Times account here.

# posted by D. B. Light : 4:53 AM links to this post

WASHINGTON, June 9 - The United States has received "credible information" that Syrian operatives in Lebanon plan to try to assassinate senior Lebanese political leaders and that Syrian military intelligence forces are returning to Lebanon to create "an environment of intimidation," a senior administration official said Thursday.

The official said that the information had come from "a variety of Lebanese sources" and that "we assess it as credible." The information, he said, was gathered after the recent assassinations of former Prime Minister Rafik Hariri in February, and of Samir Kassir, a well-known journalist, a week ago.

Both were outspoken critics of Syrian domination of Lebanese politics, and Mr. Kassir had blamed Syria for the assassination of Mr. Hariri.

"This is a moment when many politicians are facing overt Syrian intimidation in the middle of the election period," said the official, referring to parliamentary elections held last month and again this month. "When Lebanese sources tell us that they are hearing that the Kassir killing will be followed by others, we take it seriously."

The official refused to go on the record with his charges and said that the leak was just a warning to the Syrians that we know what they're up to, and that they should stop.

Intelligence officials, though, said that they could not confirm the existence of a Syrian hit list.

Read the story here.

# posted by D. B. Light : 4:43 AM links to this post

VANCOUVER (CP) -- The ripe stench of human excrement is getting stronger in downtown lanes, curling the stomachs of workers who no longer want to relax by the back door for smoke breaks.

"We're getting to the point where the need for public toilets is getting serious," said Charles Gauthier, executive director of the Downtown Vancouver Business Improvement Association.

"There's a burgeoning entertainment district, a growing homelessness problem and people have nowhere to go.

"I've been with the association for 15 years and it's just becoming more and more of an issue for more of our members. The stench of urine and feces in back lanes in
the central business district and the Downtown Eastside, where it's probably a lot worse."

Read about it here.

# posted by D. B. Light : 3:08 PM links to this post

ADDIS ABABA, Ethiopia, June 8 -- At least 22 people were killed and more than100 wounded when Ethiopian security forces fired into crowds Wednesday in a third day of unrest over disputed elections last month.

# posted by D. B. Light : 9:12 AM links to this post

The EU report also said U.S. President Jimmy Carter, who led a team of 50 election observers, undermined the electoral process and EU criticism with "his premature blessing of the elections and early positive assessment of the results."

# posted by D. B. Light : 6:55 AM links to this post

This morning I went down to the street market to witness first hand what has taken place. Last week I drove down the same roads. The street market is situated down one side of the road (the govt. made the road a one way specifically to accommodate the market, yes, the same so called ‘illegal market’). Small stalls were crammed together and there was a happy bustle about the place. Fruit, vegetables, beans, grains, roasted mealies. African wood carvings, mats, baskets and wooden spoons. At the end of the street, a section selling second hand bric-a-brac. Vendors were all calling out the price of their goods trying to entice us in. There was a happy, calm, peaceful ambiance.

Now, there is nothing but a pile of rubble. Steel, plastic and cardboard lies in a twisted heap. There are people milling around, but nobody is trading. If this was a clean up operation, then why did the police not ‘clean up’? The area is devastated and the mess has been left for all to see.

Tears roll down my cheeks as I remember the market as it was just one week ago. Now as I write this, I am angry. Angry at mugabe. Angry at the police and army who carry out insane orders from a despot. But most of all, I am angry at the international community. Zimbabweans are crying out for help. We have not had a natural disaster. We have had no ‘tsunami’ but we are suffering the same horrors! This dictator has no mercy! Please, somebody help us! [Emphasis mine, as if it was needed]

# posted by D. B. Light : 2:02 AM links to this post

I'm sure you will all be glad to hear that,

THE International Criminal Court launched an investigation yesterday into suspected war crimes in Sudan, where tens of thousands of people have died since a rebel uprising began in early 2003.

"The investigation will be impartial and independent, focusing on the individuals who bear the greatest criminal responsibility for crimes committed in Darfur," the ICC said in a statement. It did not name any suspects.

The United Nations Security Council voted in March to refer the situation in Darfur to the ICC, the world's first permanent global criminal court, established in The Hague in 2002 to try cases of genocide and human rights violations.

The referral, the first to the ICC by the Security Council, was made possible when the United States, which opposes the court, abstained from the vote after winning guarantees that its citizens in Sudan would be exempt from prosecution by the court.

"The wheels of justice are finally beginning to turn on behalf of the people of Darfur who have been victims of mass slaughter, widespread rape and forced displacement," said Richard Dicker, counsel for New York-based Human Rights Watch.

This is what the multilateralist/NGO groupies consider an appropriate response to crimes against humanity. Tens, maybe hundreds of thousands of blacks are being killed by Arab marauders and the ICC "suspects" that maybe, just possibly, crimes are being committed. They will start to investigate and carefully weigh and sift the evidence, being careful not to offend the sensibilities of the killers. And maybe, some years from now, they will...

Hey guys! Wake up! This is genocide! Do something!

As has been pointed out here many times before: If the US doesn't do it, it doesn't get done. Multilateralism and NGOs are a prescription for inaction in the face of emergency.

If Bush, Blair, and the EU leaders are sincere in their concern for Africa they will tell the UN and the ICC to go to hell and take action. But that would be acting like "cowboys."

Faugh!

Read this disgusting tripe here.

# posted by D. B. Light : 12:40 AM links to this post

that paternalism and condescension are the only ways to deal with Africa, they're just quibbling over the particular form of condescension....

[W]e all know Africa can produce wild, vibrant, exciting jungle rhythms. What's unclear is whether it can produce anything boring, humdrum and routine. Accountancy firms, for example.
....

According to the World Bank's Doing Business report, in Canada it takes two days to incorporate a company; in Mozambique, it takes 153 days. And Mozambique's company law has been unchanged since 1888. In the midst of the unending demands that Bush do this, Blair do that, do more, do it now, would it be unreasonable to suggest that, after 117 years, the government of Mozambique might also be obligated to do something about its regulatory regime?

Meanwhile, next door in Zimbabwe, Robert Mugabe's government is being given hundreds of thousands of tons of emergency supplies from the UN's World Food Programme. At the press conference, James Morris, head of the WFP, was at pains to emphasise that the famine was all due to drought and Aids, and certainly nothing to do with Mr Mugabe's stewardship of the economy. Some of us remember that during the 2002 G8 summit, also devoted to Africa, Zimbabwe's government ordered commercial farmers to cease all operations.

But still neither the UN nor his fellow African leaders will hear a word against Mr Mugabe....

The issue in Africa in every one of its crises - from economic liberty to Aids - is government. Until the do-gooders get serious about that, their efforts will remain a silly distraction.

Read the whole thing here.

This summarizes the difference between the approach now being advocated by George Bush and Paul Wolfowitz, both of whom insist that aid to Africa be targeted toward promoting business development, international trade, and political freedom, and that of Blair and the EU who are willing to simply dispense money to corrupt dictatorial kleptocracies, trusting them to spend it wisely.

# posted by D. B. Light : 12:20 AM links to this post

A prominent Iraqi Sunni politician has said that two insurgent groups are ready to disarm and begin talks with the Iraqi government.

Former minister Ayham al-Samarie said the Islamic Army in Iraq and the Mujahideen Army represented more than 50% of the resistance.

He said he began contacting the groups' political leaders five months ago.
....
The disclosure follows reports last week that Prime Minister Ibrahim al-Jaafari had opened indirect channels of communication with some militant groups, urging them to lay down their weapons.

Of course, like anything coming out of Iraq, this report is suspect. But if it is true, it's a very big step toward stabilizing that unfortunate land.

Read it here.

# posted by D. B. Light : 11:50 PM links to this post

ZIMBABWEAN ruler Robert Mugabe is "as fit as a teenager", if you believe his press secretary George Charamba.

The denial came amid swelling rumours about Mugabe's ill health, or possible death on the streets of Harare.

With mass protests planned for Thursday and Friday in Zimbabwe, the authorities in Harare are rather sensitive when it comes to Mugabe's health and such was the concern that his two deputies called on him to check if he was DEAD.

# posted by D. B. Light : 11:13 PM links to this post

The parliamentary reforms were widely endorsed by Taiwan's 23 million people, who have grown weary of the bitter inter-party disputes that made Taiwan's parliament notorious for fistfights and deadlocked bills since Chen took office in 2000.

The idea was to weed out the more radical troublemakers, so parliament can work more efficiently. But some analysts say ideological differences bar the DPP and anti-Taiwan independence KMT from cooperating, no matter the size of parliament.

# posted by D. B. Light : 10:45 AM links to this post

A crowd of 600 Afghan clerics gathered in front of an historic mosque yesterday to strip the fugitive Taliban leader Mullah Mohammed Omar of his claim to religious authority, in a ceremony that provided a significant boost to the presidency of Hamid Karzai.

The declaration, signed by 1,000 clerics from across the country, is an endorsement of the US-backed programme of reconciliation with more moderate elements of the Taliban movement that Karzai has been pursuing ahead of the country's first parliamentary elections, due in September.

With the assembled clerics seated on the marble floor before him, the head of shura, Maulvi Abdullah Fayaz, said: "Karzai is elected through free and fair election and religiously we have to obey his orders. None of the orders of the previous Emirs, including Mullah Omar, is accepted."

He said that following the Taliban, "accepting their orders and through their orders killing people and destabilising the country", was "against sharia law".

The clerics demanded the construction of hundreds of religious schools, a prohibition of drugs, alcohol and "sexual films" and a call for women's rights to remain within the limits of sharia law.

# posted by D. B. Light : 11:03 PM links to this post

President Robert Mugabe's onslaught against Zimbabwe's cities has escalated to claim new targets, with white-owned factories and family homes being demolished in a campaign that has left 200,000 people homeless.

Across the country, Mr Mugabe is destroying large areas of heaving townships and prosperous industrial areas alike.

The aim of this brutal campaign is, says the official media, to depopulate urban areas and force people back to the "rural home".
....

Across Zimbabwe, the United Nations estimates that 200,000 people have lost their homes, with the poorest townships bearing the brunt of Mr Mugabe's onslaught. "The vast majority are homeless in the streets," said Miloon Kothari, the UN's housing representative. He added that "mass evictions" were creating a "new kind of apartheid where the rich and the poor are being segregated".

Virtually all the areas singled out for demolition voted for the opposition Movement for Democratic Change in the last elections. The MDC says that Mr Mugabe ordered the destruction as a deliberate reprisal. But the regime is also seeking to depopulate the cities, driving people into the countryside where the MDC is virtually non-existent and the ruling Zanu-PF Party dominates.

The Herald, the official daily newspaper, urged "urbanites" to go "back to the rural home, to reconnect with one's roots and earn an honest living from the soil our government repossessed under the land reform programme".

# posted by D. B. Light : 12:46 AM links to this post

University of Colorado professor Ward Churchill fabricated historical facts, published the work of others as his own and repeatedly made false claims about two federal Indian laws, a Rocky Mountain News investigation has found.

The two-month News investigation, carried out at the same time Churchill and his work are being carefully examined by the university, also unearthed fresh genealogical information that casts new doubts on the professor's long-held assertion that he is of American Indian ancestry.

# posted by D. B. Light : 9:10 PM links to this post