A World View

Berlin Wall and Bad History

noreply@blogger.com (Ed Hancox) — Tue, 10 Nov 2009 02:28:00 +0000

Today is the twentieth anniversary of the fall of the Berlin Wall. By now you've probably heard Ronald Reagan's famous "tear down this wall!" speech on the news a few dozen times. What you might not know, and what author Will Bunch explains in his book/deconstruction of the Reagan years, "Tear Down This Myth", Reagan's Wall speech was aimed less as "Mr. Gorbachev" and more at his conservative critics at home who feared the Gipper had gone soft on the Reds, you know, negotiating nuclear arms reduction treaties with them and all that...

Expect to hear a fair bit of misinterpreted history over the next few days as every news magazine, paper and cable outlet does their own Berlin Wall recap. I stumbled across this piece by George Packer in the New Yorker: "Communism Collapsed, Is Iran Next?", where Mr. Packer talks about Communism being consigned to the "ash heap of history" - something which must come as news to the 1.3 billion Chinese currently living under a Communist government. In fact Beijing just commemorated the 60th anniversary of Communist rule with great fanfare, and despite the free market trappings and luxury cars in the streets of Shanghai, China is still very much a centrally-ruled country, just as the Soviet Union once was.

Meanwhile, Mr. Gorbachev used the anniversary to plead with world leaders to tear down a wall of a different sort, Gorbachev said that the governments of the world must unite now to take on climate change. He draws a parallel between the global security threat the world faced 20 years ago and the one posed by a changing climate today. And just as few thought 20 years ago that the Wall would ever come down, he argues meaningful progress can be made in tackling the causes of climate change and addressing the gap between the world's rich and poor if people and governments are willing to commit to taking action.

Finally, for a personal view of the time surrounding the fall of the Berlin Wall, and an excellent movie to boot, check out the film "Goodbye Lenin!"

A New Look At An Old War

noreply@blogger.com (Ed Hancox) — Sun, 08 Nov 2009 20:56:00 +0000

A new book is prompting a re-examination of a controversial figure from South American history and is dredging up some hard feelings between two neighboring countries.

Eliza Lynch has been painted as a former Irish prostitute who became the unofficial "Queen of Paraguay" that led her country into a disastrous war with Brazil. Now a new book, The Lives of Eliza Lynch: Scandal and Courage, by Michael Lillis, a former diplomat, and Ronan Fanning, a historian is taking a new view of Lynch. Rather than a bloodthirsty wanna-be Queen, they say Lynch was a loyal wife to dictator Francisco Solano López, and the authors say that that López, not Lynch, was the one who pushed for the ill-fated war against the "Triple Alliance" of Argentina, Brazil and Uruguay in 1864.

The war was an utter disaster for Paraguay - Brazilian forces would rampage throughout the country, leaving 90% of Paraguay's men dead. In addition to trying to rehabilitate the image of Lynch, the authors also say that the Brazilians bear responsibility for what they call a "near genocide" during the final two years of the six year war as Brazil's Emperor Dom Pedro II tried to wipe out every last remnant of Paraguay's military.

With their portrayal of Francisco Solano López and Emperor Dom Pedro II, authors Lillis and Fanning have managed to anger people in both Paraguay and Brazil - they have received death threats from Paraguayan nationalists upset at their treatment of López, while the Brazilians have bristled at charges of genocide, who note that it was Paraguay who started the war in the first place.

Meanwhile in modern-day South America, Venezuela's Hugo Chavez told his military on Sunday to "prepare" for war with Colombia. Chavez has accused Colombia of being a puppet of the United States and has said that the US is negotiating a ten-year lease for a Colombian military base to use it as a stepping stone for an eventual US-led invasion of Venezuela. Relations between Venezuela and Colombia have been getting steadily worse, on Thursday Venezuela sent 15,000 soldiers to the Colombian border, supposedly to fight drug trafficking.

Moscow Holds A Parade For A Parade

noreply@blogger.com (Ed Hancox) — Sun, 08 Nov 2009 20:30:00 +0000

They held a big military parade in Moscow on Saturday, technically it was a parade to commemorate another parade - the 1941 Red Army march through the streets of Moscow (which itself was meant to mark the Bolshevik Revolution of 1917...). The 1941 parade (pictured) was noteworthy because the troops went from a display march directly to the front lines to fight off a desperate German attempt to take Moscow before the winter set in. Honored guests at yesterday's parade included 45 survivors from the 1941 parade, and subsequent battle, along with two World War II-vintage T-34 tanks. Several thousand others also participated in the parade, some in replica WWII uniforms.

The Anniversary of the Bolshevik Revolution on November 7 was one of the biggest holidays in the Soviet calendar, but was abolished by Vladimir Putin several years ago (no reason to celebrate all those old Soviet holidays in the new Russia it was thought). But old habits die hard, many Russians - particularly the Communists who held their own November 7 rally - still mark the day.

Bird Foils Big Bang

noreply@blogger.com (Ed Hancox) — Sun, 08 Nov 2009 03:16:00 +0000

Ok, this is a little scary - the Large Hadron Collider in Switzerland, the multi-billion dollar science experiment that is suppose to simulate the conditions of the Big Bang was brought to a screeching halt this week by a bird, specifically a bird that dropped "a bit of baguette" into the works.

According to officials at the LHC, a bird snacking on a piece of bread at one of the machine's capacitors caused a temperature spike that caused the LHC to shut down. The LHC uses 16 miles of supercooled tubing to accelerate hydrogen atoms to nearly the speed of light before smashing them into each other in an attempt to create sub-atomic particles.

I guess it's a good thing that the machine shut itself down when it detected a problem, it is a little scary though to think such a huge, complex thing could be knocked out by a snacking bird.

Saudis Battling Rebels Along Yemeni Border

noreply@blogger.com (Ed Hancox) — Sun, 08 Nov 2009 02:35:00 +0000

For the past several days Saudi Arabia has engaged in a series of fierce clashes along their southern border with Yemen.

That the Saudi military is actually fighting somebody could be news in itself - an apocryphal story from the first Gulf War was that if Saddam Hussein ever invaded Saudi Arabia, US forces were ordered not to fire at the first troops they saw coming from the border since those would be the Saudis abandoning their posts. This time, the Saudis have taken the offensive against Yemeni rebels from the Zaidi Shiite sect. Yemen's government has accused the Zaidis of trying to overthrow them to restore a religious imamate that overthrew an earlier Yemeni elected government back in 1962, sparking a civil war in the process.

The Yemeni government has fought the rebels for the past five years along the rugged border with Saudi Arabia. Recent cross-border raids by the Zaidis prompted the Saudis to act. The Saudi military has used both aircraft and artillery in a series of intense strikes against the rebels, which began on Tuesday. Details on casualties and even where the fighting is exactly occurring are sketchy - the rebels say the Saudis have attacked inside Yemen, while the Saudis say the military strikes have been limited to their side of the border.

In either case though the Saudis have the support of the Yemeni government, which supports their actions against the rebels. And looming large over the whole situation is Al-Qaeda. Twice in the past three months, Saudi Arabia claims to have foiled terror attacks by a Yemen-based Al-Qaeda affiliate, Al Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula (or AQAP). According to analysts, the Yemeni government's battle against the Zaidi rebels has left them with little ability or initiative to fight groups like AQAP. In turn, veteran jihadis from Iraq and Afghanistan are said to be moving to Yemen, which along with the largely lawless Somalia, are being viewed by Al-Qaeda as the most likely places to establish a new base of operations.

The Domain That Refused To Die

noreply@blogger.com (Ed Hancox) — Wed, 04 Nov 2009 17:43:00 +0000

My latest bit of writing over at The Mantle - nearly two decades after the end of the Soviet Union, one piece of the old empire persists: the Internet domain ".su", despite all the best efforts to delete it. In my post I take a look at the ."su" domain, who uses it and what the future holds for the last vestige of the old Soviet empire.

Last Thoughts On The Afghan Election

noreply@blogger.com (Ed Hancox) — Tue, 03 Nov 2009 14:48:00 +0000

There's a lot happening in the world, but I wanted to share a few last links about the Afghan election debacle. The first is an editorial by Peter Galbraith, who was the UN official who sounded the alarm about the massive fraud in the Afghan election in the first place. I'd say those credentials alone make his editorial worth reading, but Galbraith also debunks a major claim making the rounds, namely that President Hamid Karzai would have won the election anyway, fraud or not.

This bit of "wisdom" is being offered up as a justification for continuing Western support of the thoroughly corrupt Karzai regime. But Galbraith argues that it's a big assumption to make. An audit of the votes cast in the August 20th election dropped Karzai below the 50% threshold needed to trigger a run-off, once officials hit that target though, they stopped examining the votes. Galbraith claims that his sources indicate if all the votes were examined and all the bad ones tossed, the results would have been Karzai 41% / Abdullah 34%. A seven-percent deficit certainly isn't insurmountable in a run-off election - if the second round was run fairly - so this notion that Karzai would have won regardless is a pretty big assumption to make.

Germany's Der Spiegel, meanwhile, offers a round-up of opinions from the German media about the elections in Afghanistan. The take-away is that they pretty much all view Karzai's "victory" as a fraud and most question the ongoing purpose of the Afghan mission.

And finally Fox News of all places offers up an editorial by analyst KT McFarland who says that in the wake of Karzai's stealing the election the US should "pull the plug" on our Afghanistan mission. Now I ripped KT a couple of weeks ago for an utter lack of knowledge on current events in Russia, but this time I think she makes a good argument - the real security/terrorism problem lies in Pakistan so why should the US continue to spend lives and money propping up a corrupt government in Kabul?

Clinton Gets A Statue, Bolt Gets A Cheetah

noreply@blogger.com (Ed Hancox) — Tue, 03 Nov 2009 06:14:00 +0000

So if you're the fastest man in the world, what animal to you choose as a pet? A cheetah, of course... Well, Olympic Champion Usain Bolt didn't exactly buy a cheetah as a pet, but he did adopt one at a refuge in Kenya, which he named "Lightning Bolt". Bolt, Usain Bolt that is, was visiting Kenya to help launch "The Long Run", an ecology campaign sponsored by a German charity, the Zeitz Foundation. Bolt was also made an honorary Masai Warrior during his visit.

But if you're looking for honors, it's hard to beat the one that Kosovo bestowed upon former President Bill Clinton. Officials in Pristina unveiled a gold-covered 10-foot tall likeness of the former president, whom many in Kosovo honor as the man responsible for ending their conflict with Serbia and ultimately paving the way for Kosovo's independence. Bill Clinton himself was on hand for the unveiling, along with at least one young Kosovar named "Klinton" in his honor. For the record, the Kosovars also have similar warm feelings for George W. Bush as well, though Bush only has a street named after him in the capital, no giant gold-plated statue.

In his speech, Clinton called upon the Kosovars to forge a multi-ethnic society. So far ethnic relations in Kosovo have focused on keeping the peace between the Albanian majority and the Serbian minority. But there are other smaller ethnic groups in Kosovo as well who say that they are being shoved to the margins of society. The London Telegraph recently ran this story about Kosovo's Ashkali minority, who claim that in efforts to build bridges between the Serbs and Albanians, their plight is being ignored. Like the Roma (Gypsies), the Ashkali have a murky ethnic lineage that stretches back to Central Asia, and like the Roma, the Ashkali often find themselves excluded from society. The Ashkali interviewed by the Telegraph say they have an almost 100% unemployment rate, their children can't go to school and that the Kosovo government largely ignores them, focusing solely on the Serbian minority.

It's something for the Kosovars to keep in mind as they listen to the words of Bill Clinton.

Karzai Finally Steals Afghan Election

noreply@blogger.com (Ed Hancox) — Mon, 02 Nov 2009 14:31:00 +0000

The Afghan election debacle came to an end this morning when Dr. Abdullah Abdullah officially dropped out of the planned run-off against President Hamid Karzai, Afghanistan's Independent Election Commission (IEC) took the opportunity to then proclaim Karzai the president for another five year term.

"Whew! I'm glad we didn't have to go through with rigging another election," said Azizullah Ludin, the chairman of the IEC, "you know how hard stuffing ballot boxes can be? And we were worried that we wouldn't have time to get the ballots with votes pre-printed for Karzai finished in time."

Ok, Ludin didn't really say that, at least not as far as I know, but in Abdullah's opinion, he might as well have. Dr. Abdullah was calling for the removal of Ludin from his position at the IEC since that organization oversaw the fraud-riddled first round of the election. Abdullah also protested the opening of more polling stations in the southern part of the country - a Karzai stronghold, but also the region where the Taliban is the most active. Because of the shaky security situation many polling stations in the south never opened for the August 20 round of voting, yet still turned in ballot boxes filled with votes for Karzai - many of the ballots that were later thrown out. More polling stations there seem like just more chances for fraud.

Rather than face a second rigged vote, Abdullah bailed out of the election. While some media outlets like The Guardian are suggesting that this latest turn of events further undermines the legitimacy of the Karzai presidency, the international community is already rallying to Karzai's side. Hillary Clinton said the Obama administration would back Karzai's new term in office, and the UN's Secretary General Ban Ki-moon flew to Kabul to lend the UN's support.

Of course the international community was more than willing to look the other way on the fraudulent first round of the vote until the UN's number two man in Kabul, Peter Galbraith raised enough of a stink about the vote-rigging force the global community into pressuring Karzai to accept a run-off election (Galbraith lost his UN job in the process). The global community valued the "stability" of the corrupt Karzai regime over the "chaos" of an actual fair election - ignoring the fact that it has been the corruption and incompetence of the Karzai government that led to the resurgence of the Taliban in Afghanistan in the first place.

I can't think of any clearer indication of how screwed up the situation in Afghanistan has become. Unfortunately the international community is showing a lack of will to take any real steps to make things better.

Ten Foreign Policy Myths

noreply@blogger.com (Ed Hancox) — Sun, 01 Nov 2009 20:01:00 +0000

Stephen Walt over at Foreign Policy magazine does a nice job of skewering the conventional wisdom that surrounds some of the biggest fears in international affairs, everything from the real threat posed by "Rogue States" to "Islamofascism" (perhaps the dumbest term in all of foreign policy in my opinion).

Walt's rationale is that in all of the ten cases he lists we let ourselves be scared silly by things that in reality aren't all that scary. This has led, and continues to lead, the US into making some really poor foreign policy choices. It's definitely worth a read, especially if you're not satisfied with the way American foreign policy is going these days.

Somali Pirates: We're Protecting Our Fish

noreply@blogger.com (Ed Hancox) — Sun, 01 Nov 2009 16:22:00 +0000

Along with issuing a ransom demand on Saturday for a British couple whose yacht they seized, the Somali pirates used the opportunity to accuse foreigners of stealing their resources, namely their fish. "The Western forces continue to loot our natural resources. They continue to harass local fishermen and destroy their fishing nets, so we want them to taste the consequence," said Ahmed Gadaf, a self-described spokesman for the pirate group holding the wayward British yachters Paul and Rachel Chandler. Gadaf went on to say that "many countries are fishing illegally in Somali waters," and estimated that they were taking "hundreds of millions of dollars" worth of fish from Somalia.

Though the US media has picked up on Gadaf's claims as something new, this isn't the first time the pirates have painted themselves as a sort of vigilante coast guard fighting to defend Somalia's waters - you can click on the "Pirates" tag on the right side of the page to read earlier claims by the pirates that they are really acting out of economic self-defense.

And honestly there is something to their claims, many of today's pirates were once fishermen who plied the waters just off the Somali coast. But without a viable government for the past two decades, there has been no way for Somalia to patrol their territorial waters, leaving them open to exploitation by whomever - including, according to the pirates, the fishing fleets of any number of nations. But coastal defense doesn't explain why Somalia's pirates are now heading hundreds of miles out into the Indian Ocean to capture ships and hold them for ransom.

In addition to the Chandler's yacht, Somali pirates have also seized a large Chinese cargo ship and a Thai-owned, Russian-crewed fishing vessel in recent days.

Presidential Deal Struck in Honduras

noreply@blogger.com (Ed Hancox) — Sat, 31 Oct 2009 21:25:00 +0000

The four-month political crisis in Honduras seems to be over as the two sides - deposed President Manuel Zelaya and acting President Roberto Micheletti - struck a deal to allow Zelaya to apply to return to his former office and for the already scheduled presidential elections to go forward on November 29.

Honduras was plunged into political chaos when the military grabbed the sleeping Zelaya in the middle of the night and dropped him off in neighboring Costa Rica. The reason? Zelaya was apparently illegally trying to change the Honduran constitution through a referendum so that he could run for a second term as president, even after being ordered by both the Honduran Legislature and Supreme Court not to do so (more on this in a moment). The United States and the Organization of American States both pushed for Zelaya's return. And while this whole crisis could have resolved itself next month with the scheduled elections, the United States was threatening to not recognize the results of those elections unless Zelaya was first returned to office.

The Wall Street Journal, meanwhile, never one to pass up a shot at the Obama Administration, is painting this as a victory for the pro-Micheletti side and a defeat for Secretary of State Hillary Clinton. But the WSJ does have something of a point, while this is being declared a victory for Zelaya, the agreement only says that he can apply to get his presidential job back. Since the Legislature ruled against him twice over his proposed referendum and supported his ouster, it's hard to think they'll restore him to the presidency. And besides, he only has three months left in his term anyway, the Legislature could easily drag his hearing out that long, meaning he'll likely never actually return to his job.

Speaking of the legality of his removal: Sen. John Kerry and Rep. Howard Berman are demanding that the Law Library of Congress retract an analysis that backed up the Honduran military's removal of Zelaya for violating their constitution as legal. In July, Octavio Sánchez, a former presidential advisor in Honduras also argued that the military acted properly to uphold the rule of law. The Library of Congress is quite upset at Kerry and Berman since they feel the lawmakers' demand could compromise the Library's image as a non-partisan organization.

The Library of Congress is a pretty serious body. Somehow I have more faith in their ability to correctly analyze the situation in Honduras than I do in a couple of Congressmen.

Kim's Double Vision

noreply@blogger.com (Ed Hancox) — Sat, 31 Oct 2009 20:51:00 +0000

It's starting to seem like if you're looking for a strange news story of the day you need look no farther than North Korea. The latest, from the Christian Science Monitor, is a question: last August, did former President Bill Clinton meet with North Korea's Kim Jong-Il or a Kim Jong-Double?

That's the speculation of several Japanese and South Korean analysts. During his mission to rescue two wayward American journalists, Clinton met with Dear Leader Kim. In the official photos from their meeting Kim looked far healthier than he had just a few months ago - keep in mind that for awhile in the summer 2008 the speculation was that Kim had died, now it is widely believed that the 68-year old suffered a severe stroke that has left him enfeebled.

The image of the plumper, healthier August '09 Kim is prompting a number of North Korea watchers to speculate that Clinton actually met with a Kim Jong-Il double, and that in recent months doubles have been making trips around North Korea to reinforce the idea that Kim is still the man in charge. Some analysts interviewed by the CSM went on to say that doubles may have been doing all of Kim's public appearances since 2000, and even that Kim may have actually died years ago but is still being used as a figurehead by North Korea's ruling cabal.

Whether this is true or not is anybody's guess, though Kim wouldn't be the first despot to use body doubles, Saddam Hussein was also reported to have a troop of stand-ins, including one who made his annual swim across the Tigris River.

Stalin Looms Over Russian Remembrance

noreply@blogger.com (Ed Hancox) — Fri, 30 Oct 2009 17:06:00 +0000

Russia's President Dmitry Medvedev used his official Kremlin blog to rip into those who are attempting to "rehabilitate" the image of former Soviet leader Josef Stalin.

Medvedev's post comes on the "Day of Remembrance of the Victims of Political Repressions", an official day set aside to remember those purged, imprisoned and executed during the reign of Stalin. According to the KGB's own state archives 800,000 people were executed during Stalin's rule - by comparison only 3,000 death sentences were carried out in the four decades between the end of Stalin and the end of the Soviet Union, and of the 800,000 executed under Stalin, 75% had their death sentences posthumously overturned. The Russian civil rights group "Memorial" marked the day in central Moscow by reading out the names of 30,000 people executed under the orders of Stalin between 1937 and 1938 in Moscow alone.

Medvedev warned against the "falsification" of history in attempts to excuse Stalin's crimes. He went on to say that: "no success or ambitions of the state, should be achieved through human grief and loss. Nothing can be valued above human life, and there is no excuse for repression."

But Stalin remains a complex and controversial topic in Russia and apparently within the Russian leadership. Current Prime Minister Vladimir Putin has been accused of soft-pedaling the crimes committed by Stalin and his regime in an effort to promote the positive aspects of Soviet history and boosting the image of Stalin as a "strong leader" as cover for his own attempts to consolidate power in modern Russia.

Meanwhile Russia's top news agency RIA Novosti also used the Day of Remembrance to blast a story by a European journalist that RIA Novosti was working with an American PR firm in an effort to polish the image of Stalin.

World Wide Web To Become More Global

noreply@blogger.com (Ed Hancox) — Fri, 30 Oct 2009 16:31:00 +0000

ICANN, the Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers, the body that regulates the use of Internet names and addresses, today approved the use of non-Latin characters in Internet addresses. What that means is that people and organizations with a website in Arabic, Chinese, Russian or a dozen other languages can now have an Internet address to match.

Countries that use non-Latin alphabets had long complained that it was unfair they had to use addresses only in Latin script, and that it was especially difficult for computer users in their countries who did not know the Latin alphabet to access the Internet. It's estimated that half the people in the world (that's more than three billion) speak a language that uses a non-Latin alphabet.

Under the ICANN ruling, countries can apply for one non-Latin web domain - for example Russia has proposed ".рф", cyrillic for "RF", standing for "Russian Federation". The new non-Latin domains should start to go live in the first half of 2010.

Is Iran Really a Threat?

noreply@blogger.com (Ed Hancox) — Fri, 30 Oct 2009 16:07:00 +0000

That is the question the Compass Blog over at RealClearWorld is asking, at least in regard to America's security. Writer Greg Scoblete cites an article in London's Daily Telegraph that argues Iran is a bigger threat to global security than even Afghanistan or Pakistan. Scoblete notes though that Iran's threat isn't global but instead aimed at two specific regions/goals - Israel and disrupting the flow of oil out of the Persian Gulf, and there have been no acts of terrorism on American soil - actual or attempted - that have been traced back to Iran.

Meanwhile a media event staged by the Pakistani military this morning to tout their recent offensive against terrorist groups in their Waziristan region turned up passports of militants linked to both the Madrid train bombings of 2004 and the 9/11 attacks.

It does make you wonder...

Bosnia, A Test Case for Multilateralism

noreply@blogger.com (Ed Hancox) — Thu, 29 Oct 2009 01:15:00 +0000

In my latest post over at The Mantle I tackle the topic of Bosnia, actually former Senator Bob Dole's take on the situation in Bosnia, which he worries could be split apart because of gridlock within the government between the Bosnian Serb and Bosnian Croat/Bosnian Muslim sides. With the specter of a new Balkan war in the background, Dole calls for the US to get involved to fix the political situation or risk disaster. My take though is that Bosnia could provide serve as a great test case for the new era of multilateralism that President Obama has made the center point of his foreign policy.

Give my whole argument a read over at The Mantle.

Ahmed Wali Karzai: CIA Employee of the Month

noreply@blogger.com (Ed Hancox) — Wed, 28 Oct 2009 17:38:00 +0000

Ahmed Wali Karzai is one busy guy. Not only does he play an important role in the administration of his brother, Afghan President Hamid Karzai, he's also said to be one of Afghanistan's biggest drug lords, and, according to today's the New York Times, Ahmed has also been on the CIA's payroll for the past eight years.

The story goes that Ahmed Wali Karzai has been helping the CIA battle insurgent and Taliban groups in and around Kandahar, his base of operations in southern Afghanistan. Thus AW Karzai is a valuable asset, in CIA terms, in the fight against insurgents in Afghanistan. Of course since he's also (allegedly) one of the country's biggest drug lords, and since the opium trade is a major source of funding for the insurgents/Taliban, AW Karzai can also be said to be a valuable asset too for those working against the CIA/NATO/US military efforts to defeat the insurgency in Afghanistan.

Meanwhile, according to the London Telegraph, Ahmed Wali's brother Hamid is working hard to rig the second round of the Afghan presidential election. Karzai's camp has refused requests from his challenger, Dr. Abdullah Abdullah, to fire the head of Afghanistan's Independent Election Commission, the group that oversaw the fraudulent first round of voting. Nor will Karzai agree to close hundreds of polling stations in the south of Afghanistan that helped to turn in the nearly one million phony votes cast for him during the first round of the election.

Without these changes the International Crisis Group, a well-respected international affairs NGO, is warning that there is no reason to expect the second round of voting to be any more legitimate than the fraud-plagued first round. Nor they say does the international community seem to "either [have] the time, political will or resources available" to prevent Hamid Karzai from stealing Round Two.

The Karzai Brothers...perhaps this is a good time to again ask what are we doing in Afghanistan anyway?

Saudis Take One Step Forward, Two Steps Back

noreply@blogger.com (Ed Hancox) — Sun, 25 Oct 2009 21:51:00 +0000

Last month Saudi Arabia opened up a brand new school - the King Abdullah Science and Technology University (or KAUST). The Saudi royal family spent $7 billion to build an ultra-modern center for the sciences, which includes state-of-the-art labs and one of the world's fastest super-computers. But what makes KAUST truly remarkable, for Saudi Arabia anyway, is that within its campus men and women can mix freely, and women can do wild things like go outside without veils and even drive cars - both big taboos in ultra-conservative Saudi Arabia.

The whole point of KAUST is to help diversify Saudi Arabia away from its petro-driven economy by establishing a base for science and technological research. It is also being used as a place to start to breakdown long-standing cultural taboos against the mixing of the genders. Of course as soon as it opened, KAUST became a target for religious conservatives. Sheikh Saad Bin Naser al-Shethri, a member of Saudi's Supreme Committee of (Islamic) Scholars, demanded that women be barred from the university. In a rare blow for women's rights, King Abdullah turned around and sacked Shiekh al-Shethri from his position on the Supreme Committee.

So are conditions for women actually changing in Saudi Arabia? Not really. Just a couple of weeks after this tacit endorsement of women's rights in Saudi, a court in the city of Jeddah ordered that a female journalist receive 60 lashes for having been involved in a talk show that talked about, you know, s-e-x.

Journalist Rozana al-Yami received the sentence after LBC, a Saudi-owned Lebanese television network aired an episode of their popular talk show "Bold Red Line" where a Saudi man named Mazen Abdul Jawad talked about meeting Saudi women and having sex with them. For publicly bragging about "picking up chicks" Jawad was sentenced to 1,000 lashes and five years in jail.

What makes Rozana al-Yami's sentence more disturbing though is that there is no proof she was directly involved in the Jawad episode of "Bold Red Line", only that she worked part-time for the network, which according to the judge made her guilty enough to face the lash. Needless to say al-Yami's verdict is being seen as an attack on both women and journalists, and may also be a message to LBC's owner Prince Alwaleed bin Talal, who is perhaps the most liberal and reform-minded member of the Saudi royals.

No matter how many progressive steps like the opening of KAUST Saudi Arabia takes it means nothing so long as sentences like the one against Rozana al-Yami continue to be handed out.

Georgia: The Movie

noreply@blogger.com (Ed Hancox) — Sun, 25 Oct 2009 20:59:00 +0000

Hollywood is descending on Georgia (the country, not the state) for a re-telling of last year's conflict with Russia over the breakaway regions of Abkhazia and South Ossetia. In fact the project, titled simply "Georgia", will be the biggest-ever movie production in the southern Caucasus country - Renny Harlin, of "Die Hard 2" fame will direct and Andy Garcia will star as Georgian President Mikhail Saakashvili.

The filmmakers insist that their movie won't be a propaganda piece and will carry a strong anti-war message. I'm a little suspicious though since the Georgians, according to media reports, are pulling out all the stops to help get this production made. Garcia has even met privately with Saakashvili and has been working hard to master his speech patterns and mannerisms. No word on whether this includes the Saakashvili method of nervously eating one's own tie as he was caught doing by the BBC in this clip:

The Georgian army has also loaned the film crew tanks and other equipment, while thousands of Georgians turned out to recreate the "victory" celebration of August 12th, 2008 that marked the declaration of a cease-fire with Russia.

And that brings us back to the propaganda uses of "Georgia". Saakashvili, on August 12th, painted the conflict as a victory for his country, even though Russian forces were fully in control of both Abkhazia and South Ossetia, had advanced to within a couple dozen miles of Tbilisi and had sunk almost all of Georgia's navy. Saakashvili even spun last month's report on the war by the Council of Europe that debunked his two major claims - that Russia had started the conflict and had massed troops in South Ossetia for an invasion of Georgia - into a vindication of his actions. I'm sure no matter what story the movie "Georgia" tells, Saakashvili will again say it shows his country was the victim of Russian aggression.

China vs. the Somali Pirates

noreply@blogger.com (Ed Hancox) — Sat, 24 Oct 2009 12:59:00 +0000

We haven't heard from the Somali pirates in awhile, but that could all change very soon.

On Wednesday the pirates seized a Chinese-owned cargo ship, an event that is remarkable in several ways. First, the ship - the De Xin Hai - unlike many pirate targets is really big, its carrying 76,000 tons of coal and has a crew of 25; second the De Xin Hai was captured by the pirates a whopping 700 miles off the coast of Somalia in the Indian Ocean, the farthest out to sea that the pirates have ever struck. But perhaps most remarkable was the reaction of the Chinese government, which quickly - and publicly - vowed to "make all-out efforts to rescue the hijacked ship and personnel.”

As of Friday the De Xin Hai was reported to be anchored off the coast of Somalia. Normally at this point in your standard hijacking middlemen in Somali pirate ports like the city of Eyl would start negotiating with the ship's owners for a ransom payment. But the Chinese public took their government's "all-out efforts" comments to heart and some are now burning up the blogosphere with demands that China take military action against the pirates, going so far as to say the Chinese can't "surrender" to the pirates and to do so would make China a "laughing stock" on the world stage.

China does have three warships on patrol off the coast of Somalia but whether they're equipped to launch a commando raid on the De Xin Hai is an open question. And there is a good chance that some or all of the crew may have been moved ashore, making a rescue operation all that more difficult. It will be interesting to see whether the Chinese stick to the traditional route of negotiations and ransom to get the De Xin Hai and her crew back or if they pick the military option.

Even though the Somali pirates have largely disappeared from the news in recent months, they've kept themselves busy. In fact there have been more pirate attacks in the first nine months of 2009 than during the same period in 2008. And the pirates have become more sophisticated, using large captured "mother ships" as a base for the small, speedy craft they use to attack their targets, allowing them to strike hundreds of miles off the coast of Somalia - far beyond the patrols of the flotilla of warships from nations around the world there to guard the shipping lanes.

Galbraith, not Kerry, Responsible for Afghan Redux

noreply@blogger.com (Ed Hancox) — Fri, 23 Oct 2009 16:02:00 +0000

My new post over at The Mantle is about President Hamid Karzai's decision to give up his opposition and accept a run-off in Afghanistan's election. While Senator John Kerry is being hailed as the deal-broker here for finally convincing the reluctant Karzai to do the right thing and submit to a run-off, I argue that the real credit should go to UN envoy Peter Galbraith.

Galbraith was the one who loudly sounded the alarm about the ridiculous levels of voter fraud in the Afghan election, and who kept complaining even after he was fired by the United Nations for publicly disagreeing with his boss, Kai Eide, the head of the Afghan mission, who seemed more than willing to let the fraudulent results of the vote stand. If it hadn't been for Galbraith's complaints, it's hard to imagine that Kerry would have been sent on his mission to Kabul in the first place.

You can read my whole post here.

Speaking of Karzai...

noreply@blogger.com (Ed Hancox) — Fri, 23 Oct 2009 16:01:00 +0000

Afghanistan's Hamid Karzai told CNN's Fareed Zakaria that he finally accepted holding a run-off round in the country's disputed presidential election because to do otherwise would be "insulting democracy."

I guess that can only mean that Karzai thinks that stuffing ballot boxes, taking over polling stations and burning votes for opposition candidates aren't insults to democracy. He has an interesting point of view...

When Stalin Was "Uncle Joe"

noreply@blogger.com (Ed Hancox) — Wed, 21 Oct 2009 17:09:00 +0000

According to Russia Today, the American World War II-era movie "Mission to Moscow" is finally being released on DVD. What makes "Mission to Moscow" different from the legions of other pieces of wartime propaganda churned out by Hollywood during WWII is that it was made in 1943 basically as a PR piece for Soviet leader Josef Stalin.

It's worth remembering that for a brief time in America in the 1940s, Stalin wasn't painted as the notorious Soviet dictator, but instead as "Uncle Joe" - our reliable Russian ally in the fight against Adolph Hitler. "Mission to Moscow", based loosely on the memoirs of United States' ambassador to the Soviet Union, Joseph E. Davies, was meant to help cement that view of Stalin in the minds of the average American, though even in 1943 one movie critic slammed "Mission" as a "love letter" to the Soviet leader. "Mission to Moscow" went as far as to frame Stalin's purges of his political enemies as an attempt to foil German plots to bring down his government.

"Mission to Moscow" had a different legacy after the war. Senator Joe McCarthy would use the movie's pro-Stalin message as "proof" that Hollywood had been infiltrated by Soviet agents during his anti-Communist crusade in the post-war era.

The BBC Tackles the F-Word

noreply@blogger.com (Ed Hancox) — Wed, 21 Oct 2009 17:00:00 +0000

If you listen to enough talk about politics or world affairs today, you're likely to hear the word "fascist" thrown about pretty freely, usually as an insult. But what exactly does the term "fascist" mean? The BBC Magazine tackles that question this week in their piece "What is a Fascist?"

And the simple answer is, there is no simple answer...The BBC traces the term fascist back to its roots in early 20th Century Italian politics and its popular usage today, as traditional Fascism has become conflated with the ideas of Nazisim, authoritarianism, and racism. It all makes for an interesting read, one worthwhile for the next time you hear someone called a fascist.