February 5th, 2012 - 12:03 am
President Obama’s failed attempt to pass a resolution in the UN Security Council condemning the Assad regime’s attack on his domestic enemies in Qoms may mean that there are no more risk-free ways to both act and not to act against the government in Damascus.
In a 13-2 vote by the U.N. Security Council later on Saturday, however, Russia and China blocked a U.S.-sponsored resolution that would have backed a transition to democracy but did not call for regime change explicitly. That transition process was devised by the Arab League …
“The United States is disgusted,” U.S. Ambassador Susan Rice said of the outcome. She said the U.N. was being “held hostage” by China and Russia.
She told the council that the two members would stop at nothing to “sell out the Syrian people and support a craven tyrant.”
The alternative of course, is for the United States and its allies to find some other way to move against Assad while guarding against the possibility that the successor regime may present an even greater threat to to their regional interests. That dilemma was expressed in a Foreign Policy Initiative essay.
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February 4th, 2012 - 8:49 pm
Lying on a couch in a transit lounge while waiting for a connection to a Third World destination is probably the perfect place to think of of Slab City, a trailer park in a California desert that describes itself as the Last Free Place in the state, “beyond the reach of electricity, running water and the law”.
They forgot to add beyond the reach of bills. For the chief attraction of this community built on the slab building foundations of an abandoned Marine base is that is cheap. It has to be since nothing is provided, including the police who have to be called in from afar whenever things get as bad as shooting.
No one would disagree that the Wild West element has its darker side. Hang around the evening campfires a while and strange stories pour out: disappearances, mysterious drownings in the mud baths, the man who showed up in camp with his finger apparently bitten off, claiming he’d been attacked by a cannibal. The border patrol keeps a visible presence, searching for illegal immigrants that ply the region. When there’s serious trouble, though, firemen must drive over from Niland, a derelict town five miles to the west that boasts the closest grocery store and post office. In 40-plus years on the job, Michael Aleksick, 63, the recently retired fire marshal, says he’s been repeatedly shot at, stabbed and gotten in too many fistfights to remember, often with people he knows. Crime has worsened. “The crystal-meth influence,” he says, “has been huge.”
“There’s the good, bad and the ugly,” says “Shotgun” Vince Neill, 38, a newcomer who got his nickname partly for stopping a man from stealing a friend’s solar panels with a blast of rock salt.
It is in consequence, somebody’s kind of town, and to hear the article tell it, some people may have chosen to live there even if they could afford to live elsewhere. Living “beyond the reach of electricity, running water and the law” — and the bill collector has attractions of its own.
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February 3rd, 2012 - 12:08 am
One of the unresolved mysteries surrounding September 11 are what have come to be called the 2001 Anthrax attacks. The basic facts of the case are simple. Someone sent envelopes containing anthrax spores to the offices of two Democratic Senators, “killing five people and infecting 17 others. According to the FBI, the ensuing investigation became ‘one of the largest and most complex in the history of law enforcement.’”
But despite this massive effort the results were inconclusive. Two major suspects were identified, both of them American. The first was exonerated. The second, Bruce Ivins, committed suicide and his guilt was widely disputed.
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February 1st, 2012 - 12:19 pm
Remember when the Muslim Brotherhood was reckoned to be part of the movement for democratic change in Egypt? That was then. This is now. The New York Times reports that “Gaining Power in Parliament, Islamists Block a Cairo Protest”. Who could have seen that coming?
CAIRO — The Muslim Brotherhood flexed its muscles here on Tuesday as hundreds of its young members linked arms to block a protest march from reaching Parliament while its lawmakers inside dominated the selection of leaders for legislative committees …
The protesters had set out to demand that Egypt’s military rulers surrender power now, before a new constitution is drafted and without any guarantees of immunity from prosecution. But when they confronted the Brotherhood barrier, they quickly shifted their ire to the new target.
“The people want the fall of the Brotherhood,” they chanted. “No Brotherhood, no officers. Down, down with military rule!”
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January 31st, 2012 - 8:16 pm
There’s good news: an American ally is finally going to take charge of Afghanistan. For keeps too. The bad news is that ally is Pakistan.
(Reuters) – The United States military has said in a secret report that the Taliban, backed by Pakistan, are set to retake control over Afghanistan after NATO-led forces withdraw from the country, Britain’s Times of London newspaper said Wednesday …
Citing the same report, the BBC reported on its website that Pakistan and the ISI knew the locations of senior Taliban leaders and supported the expulsion of “foreign invaders from Afghanistan. Senior Taliban leaders meet regularly with ISI personnel, who advise on strategy and relay any pertinent concerns of the government of Pakistan,” it said.
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January 31st, 2012 - 10:54 am
Three years ago two tiger parks in India reported that while they had no tigers, they had plenty of officials to manage them. “State Minister of Forests Rajendra Shukla said that the [Panna National Park] reserve, which three years ago had 24 tigers, no longer had any … this is the second tiger reserve in India, after Sariska in Rajasthan, where numbers have dwindled to zero.” They ought to form a club with the Philppine forestry department, which has thousands of foresters and no forests left to manage either.
On second thought, the Indian park rangers ought to make common cause with educators. Despite the ever increasing amounts of money spent on educating elementary and high school students, and despite the relentless rise in the numbers of educators, the dropout rate in America is rising. Every 12 seconds, a student drops out. As an article in Education Week put it:
Every school day, more than 7,200 students fall through the cracks of America’s public high schools. Three out of every 10 members of this year’s graduating class, 1.3 million students in all, will fail to graduate with a diploma. The effects of this graduation crisis fall disproportionately on the nation’s most vulnerable youths and communities. A majority of nongraduates are members of historically disadvantaged minorities and other educationally underserved groups. They are more likely to attend school in large, urban districts. And they come disproportionately from communities challenged by severe poverty and economic hardship.
The problem, according to the artcle, is that the students are “underserved”. The solution to this problem therefore, is to increasing the size of the servings. Increase the portions.
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January 30th, 2012 - 10:14 am
Syrian uprising reaches the edge of Damascus, according to the Washington Post. Hanin Ghaddar argues that Israel actually prefers to keep Assad in power as a lesser evil to a possible Islamist takeover. And so too does Hezbollah! As perhaps does Russia, according to the NYT. But despite this, Assad’s regime is looking more and more shaky by the day.
According to the Washington Post, Hamas is looking for a new sugar daddy in Turkey and is distancing itself from Iran. “Hamas is developing new relations with Turkey, according to new reports coming from the region. The arrangement includes opening an official Hamas office in Turkey in a matter of weeks and a reported Turkish pledge of $300 million to help re-build Hamas-controlled Gaza. … ‘Far better a Sunni sponsor with growing influence than a Shia paymaster that is an international pariah under growing sanctions. One has to wonder how the Turkish role affects the internal dynamics in Hamas, where the Gaza hierarchy appears to be pushing aside the formerly dominant outsiders, led by Khaled Meshal from Damascus.’”
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January 30th, 2012 - 8:39 am
In the years immediately after the Second World War, American prestige was so great that it covered many of its actions with “that old magic” — the aura of invincibility and power that made it hard for foreign governments to question it. That magic has worn thin.
Pakistan has decided to jail a doctor who helped find Osama Bin Laden. “Defense Secretary Leon Panetta is acknowledging publicly for the first time that a Pakistani doctor provided key information to the U.S. in advance of the successful Navy SEAL assault on Osama bin Laden’s compound last May.
Panetta told CBS’s “60 Minutes,” in an interview to be broadcast on Sunday, that Shakil Afridi helped provide intelligence for the raid on bin Laden’s compound in Abbottabad, Pakistan. Afridi ran a vaccination program for the CIA to collect DNA and verify bin Laden’s presence in the compound.
He has since been charged by Pakistan with treason. Panetta said he is “very concerned” for the doctor.
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January 29th, 2012 - 3:26 pm
The nice thing about the term “Climate Change” is that it covers all possibilities. The Daily Mail reports:
Based on readings from more than 30,000 measuring stations, the data was issued last week without fanfare by the Met Office and the University of East Anglia Climatic Research Unit. It confirms that the rising trend in world temperatures ended in 1997. …
Meanwhile, leading climate scientists yesterday told The Mail on Sunday that, after emitting unusually high levels of energy throughout the 20th Century, the sun is now heading towards a ‘grand minimum’ in its output, threatening cold summers, bitter winters and a shortening of the season available for growing food. …
Analysis by experts at NASA and the University of Arizona – derived from magnetic-field measurements 120,000 miles beneath the sun’s surface – suggest that Cycle 25, whose peak is due in 2022, will be a great deal weaker still.
What this represents is an empirical test of the hypothesis that solar activity affect the earth’s climate more than Greenhouse Gases. Watts Up With That describes how the estimates of the sun’s activity are predicted.
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January 29th, 2012 - 1:04 pm
“They’re not that different from some of the protests that we saw coming from the Tea Party.” — Barack Obama on Occupy.
According to the San Jose Mercury News, “Occupy Oakland protesters broke into City Hall, stole an American flag from the City Council chamber and set it on fire Saturday night, punctuating a wild day in which police deployed tear gas, arrested more than 400 marchers and dodged hurling objects. Demonstrators spent the day trying to break into a convention center and temporarily occupying City Hall and a YMCA.”
According to Occupy, it it’s the fault of the police. “In a news release Sunday, the Occupy Oakland Media Committee criticized the police conduct, saying that most of the arrests were made illegally because police failed to allow protesters to disperse.”
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