Jonathan Adams | Mogadishu | May 7

CSM - Food riots and anti-US protests in Somalia are compounding the chaos in the long-suffering war zone in the Horn of Africa.

Meanwhile, an Amnesty International Report released Tuesday alleged that Islamist militants, as well as US-backed Ethiopian and Somali government troops, are committing widespread atrocities against civilians in the capital, Mogadishu. And a recent US strike against what it says was an Al Qaeda leader in Somalia has sparked further protests.

The Associated Press reports that Tuesday saw a second day of protests over rising food prices, with hundreds of youths burning tires, throwing stones, and blocking roads.

Somalia is just the latest country to see riots over rising food prices, after others including Haiti, Egypt, Cameroon, and Burkina Faso. The Financial Times has a map of the civil unrest sparked by the food crisis here. (more, media roundup article)

When Nicolas Sarkozy was elected president one year ago today, the US media were full of praise for him and expected a big improvement in transatlantic relations.

Sarkozy's pro-American rhetoric was very much appreciated, because it was a big contrast to Gerhard Schroeder's US critical election campaigns. With Schroeder replaced by Angela Merkel and Chirac now replaced by Sarkozy, many Americans were looking forward to a new era in transatlantic relations led by a younger generation of pro-American leaders in Europe.

I did not find this much convincing, but have been very critical of Sarkozy (and to a lesser extent of Merkel). In the last few months, however, President Sarkozy announced some policy changes that indicate more support for US interests, so perhaps I should reconsider my position on Sarko.

Gaelle Fisher has written a very balanced analysis on the question "Has Sarkozy truly improved the state of transatlantic relations and earned his reputation as the most pro-American president France has ever had?" She presents three arguments in favor and three against in a pro & con feature on Atlantic Community: Sarkozy l' Américain? Here is a snippet:

Sarkozy has agreed to increase France’s contribution to the war effort in Afghanistan by adding 1500 to 1700 to the existing French contingent of 1600, sending combat troops to the East, and providing military arsenal. Yet the main new element of French military cooperation with the United States is Sarkozy’s commitment to reintegrating France into NATO’s military wing.

On Sarko’s first anniversary in power, the French are very critical of his domestic policies (and his style), but I wonder what Americans think of his foreign policy. Has he met your expectations? Has he repaired the damage in transatlantic relations as expected by many in the US media?

When it comes to surviving the end of the world, it pays to have your survivalist manbag at the ready - complete with peanut butter - Leo Hickman

The Guardian - When does having a bug-out bag packed and ready to go "just in case" stop being the preserve of cranks and start being a sensible precaution? Well, judging by the sudden rush of reports about a surge of interest in survivalism (in G2 last Friday, but also here, here and here) that time might be now.

That I even now know what a 'bug-out bag' is (a portable kit which allows you to survive for 72 hours after evacuating from a disaster) probably says much about the current atmosphere of anxiety. Whatever your fear - global food crisis, climate disaster, Avian bird 'flu, nuclear war, terrorism strikes, earthquake, peak oil, economic meltdown, [insert your own paranoia here] - it seems that more and more of us and contemplating a growing chance that our comfortable lives might soon be receiving a sudden jolt and that we had better prepare ourselves for a world where we will be - often desperately - fending for ourselves.

(Context being everything, of course; with the world's sympathies and thoughts currently directed at the people of Burma, westerners worrying about whether they're going to suffer, say, a power outage somehow barely registers). more..

NATO deserves attention both in terms of its current activities in Afghanistan and because of the current debates revolving around NATO expansion to Ukraine and Georgia. NATO’s quest for a new identity since the end of the Cold War has rightly resulted in much debate about the utility of the Alliance in a world with contemporary threats that can no longer be defined by East and West. Several articles published recently at the Atlantic Community provide an excellent framework for anchoring discussions around NATO.

Andre Kelleners, a member of the Atlantic Community, argues that rather than sidelining Russia, NATO membership states should consult with Russia to determine a common understanding of NATO’s role. It makes sense, he contends, for Partnership-for-Peace countries to eventually join the alliance as full members, but only together with and at the same time as Russia. It is in all parties’ best interest for NATO and Russia to share the same vision.

Andreas Umland of the National Taras Shevchenko University of Kyiv, continued the debate about when and how to offer a Membership Action Plan (MAP) to Ukraine. He highlighted the February 2008 statistics which revealed that a staggering 53% of Ukraine’s population were against NATO membership and only 21% in favor. He blames NATO rather than Germany for this statistic, saying that NATO “has done too little too late in terms of explaining to Ukrainians what NATO is about. Instead, Ukraine's political and public discourse remains corrupted by Soviet legacies.”

Timo Noetzel and Benjamin Schreer of the German Institute for International and Security Affairs in Berlin focus the discussion around NATO on the difficulties which NATO is currently facing in Afghanistan and argue that the chances are high that the Alliance will fail. NATO, they contend, is both politically and militarily ill-prepared to execute the required counter-insurgency strategy in Afghanistan. An Afghan disaster might not be a death sentence for the Alliance, but would certainly have major repercussions.

Agonistas may find some enjoyment in Bob Ellis :
abc.net.au - unleashed - Last Monday Hillary Clinton said she'd "obliterate" Iran if Iran attacked Israel and on Tuesday picked up some Jewish, redneck, gun-loving, wog-hating, duck-shooting, Catholic and early-dementia votes in nursing homes and by 10 per cent won handily the "rust-belt", "lunch-bucket" and Amish-cluttered state of Pennsylvania in which she was leading by 30 per cent a month before.

"The road to the White House," she then exulted to her weeping followers, "runs through Pennsylvania!" - later amending this to "the road to Pennsylvania Avenue runs through Pennsylvania!"

Arms Race in Space
Wed, 30 Apr 2008 11:31:40 -0500
By Marko Beljac - GNN

It's on. It's expensive. And it could destablize the world.

Mario Osava | Rio de Janiero | April 26

IPS - The success of pioneering efforts to reduce inequality and poverty using relatively few resources has led to an expansion in Latin America of direct aid, targeting the most vulnerable families, especially in rural areas. "Conditional cash transfer" encompasses many different strategies in more than a dozen Latin American countries. Brazil and Mexico have truly massive programmes, reaching 11.1 million and five million impoverished families, respectively, while Colombia's programme involves just 1,500 families.

The "Chile Solidario" initiative, often included in the same category, "is not comparable to other programmes in terms of amounts or objectives," like Brazil's "Family-Grant" and Mexico's "Opportunities" programmes, said Verónica Silva, executive secretary of Chile's Social Protection System. The Chilean programme, created in 2002, now covers 290,000 families, about 40 percent of whom live in rural areas. "The proportion of participants is much higher in rural zones, because if you want to find the poorest of the poor in Chile, you have to look for an indigenous mother who is the head of a household in a rural area," Silva told Tierramérica.

The focus is on extreme poverty, which affected 5.6 percent of the Chilean population in 2000, a sector so marginalised that it falls outside the social welfare networks. The aim is to bring these families into the fold with psycho-social support and a monthly stipend, which gradually declines from 28 to eight dollars over two years.

A few weeks ago I received the news that my old coach and math teacher, Craig Newell, had died. I haven't written about it till now because I've been thinking of him since then. He was an odd man, spare and lean, with the whippet body of a greyhound, and he had a way of cocking his head when he looked at you which was inevitably parodied every year when the seniors did their annual play.

I spent five years around him, in high school, a boarder in an all boys school. It was an excellent school, well run, with fair rules and no brutality, but I hated the place and was miserable most of the time, though still happier there than I would have been at home. Mr. Newell was my grade 9 math teacher, but I didn't really make a connection with him till a few months into the year.

If I Can't Dance...
Fri, 11 Apr 2008 04:20:00 -0500
By David Rovics

An Open Letter to the Left on the Relevance of Culture

"If I can’t dance, I don’t want to be part of your revolution" — Emma Goldman

Vienna | April 20

(Reuters) - Global food price rises are leading to "silent mass murder" and commodities markets have brought "horror" to the world, the United Nations' food envoy told an Austrian newspaper on Sunday.

Jean Ziegler, UN special rapporteur on the right to food, told Kurier am Sonntag that growth in biofuels, speculation on commodities markets and European Union export subsidies mean the West is responsible for mass starvation in poorer countries.

Ziegler said he was bound to highlight the "madness" of people who think that hunger is down to fate.

It's ironic that one of my favorite poets, Ezra Pound (whom I am reading a new biography of), was so intimately involved in the creation of so much of the modern 'art' that I dislike. He pushed harder than just about any American poet I know for the democratization of art in pre-War England, forcing artists like Cezanne, Picasso, Gaugauin and Kandinsky on the stuffy, upper-class 'Bloomsbuggers', as he called them--not without merit considering Lytton Strachey's habits and loves (ever see the movie Carrington? If not, rent it--splendid). Anyhow, it's just strange and ironic to me. His poetry has always symbolized a kind of youthful swagger--call it post-Victorian trash talk. And to think he had such influence on poets like Eliot and Yeats. And also that many of the writers he associated with are largely forgotten and the Bloomsbury set is seeing a renascence of sorts. Ironies abound, no?

Strange, to me at least, that I find so little of value in the visual arts of the time (and much of the present) and their subsequent development but so much value in the same abstractive values that have been applied to the written word since Pound's era.

Like I said, it's ironic.

Nota bene: Please, don't take my comments to mean I find no beauty or value in all abstract art. Not so, as I find much lush, vigorous beauty in the abstract art found in and on Islamic mosques and maddressehs. It's just that modern Western abstract art seems to lack any vitality--in the sense of it being vital and visceral. But perhaps this is part of the larger question between the decadence and decline of the Western tradition of 'representation and realism' in art versus the Islamic injunction against the same. There are certainly cycles of decadence and decline in Islamic art too--just compare a Timurid era mosque with a Qajar era madresseh! So gauche and unaffecting is the Qajar-era work and how soaring and ineffable the Timurid one.

Or maybe it's just me. I don't like the breakdown in realism and representation in painting and am conservative in my art tastes as it is, be they Islamic or Western--although much modern photography is quite captivating. And what of music, that most abstract of all the arts? I guess I could go on forever, so I'll stop.

Oh, what the hell, here's some more.

Ever wonder why Europe is so wedded to its EU experiment? And also why it is so reluctant to follow the US in its neo-colonial adventures? Tony Judt provides a little necessary context:

In World War I the US suffered slightly fewer than 120,000 combat deaths. For the UK, France, and Germany the figures are respectively 885,000, 1.4 million, and over 2 million. In World War II, when the US lost about 420,000 armed forces in combat, Japan lost 2.1 million, China 3.8 million, Germany 5.5 million, and the Soviet Union an estimated 10.7 million. The Vietnam Veterans Memorial in Washington, D.C., records the deaths of 58,195 Americans over the course of a war lasting fifteen years: but the French army lost double that number in six weeks of fighting in May–June 1940. In the US Army's costliest engagement of the century—the Ardennes offensive of December 1944–January 1945 (the "Battle of the Bulge")—19,300 American soldiers were killed. In the first twenty-four hours of the Battle of the Somme (July 1, 1916), the British army lost more than 20,000 dead. At the Battle of Stalingrad, the Red Army lost 750,000 men and the Wehrmacht almost as many.

With the exception of the generation of men who fought in World War II, the United States thus has no modern memory of combat or loss remotely comparable to that of the armed forces of other countries. But it is civilian casualties that leave the most enduring mark on national memory and here the contrast is piquant indeed. In World War II alone the British suffered 67,000 civilian dead. In continental Europe, France lost 270,000 civilians. Yugoslavia recorded over half a million civilian deaths, Germany 1.8 million, Poland 5.5 million, and the Soviet Union an estimated 11.4 million. These aggregate figures include some 5.8 million Jewish dead. Further afield, in China, the death count exceeded 16 million. American civilian losses (excluding the merchant navy) in both world wars amounted to less than 2,000 dead.

We don't even begin to comprehend what suffering war causes.

The end of cheap food, and absolute shortages are on the way. There are a number of reasons, which include the following:

1) The early instability caused by global warming, whose first effects are less increased temperatures than unpredictable weather patterns has lead to key areas having lower crops than in the past.

2) Aquifers in large parts of the world are being drained at unsustainably fast rates. This includes most of the American southwest, large parts of China, huge swathes of India and many areas in Africa. In India there are already villages that have had to be abandoned because no matter how deep they drill, there's no water. This is only going to get worse.

3) Desertification and reduced fertility. US farmland fertility is less than half of what it was 50 years ago. Large areas of China are deserts, with dust storms boiling out of them on a regular basis. It is only a matter of time before we have full on dust bowls in many major food producting regions, just as we did in the 20's and 30's.

4) Modern agriculture is actually very dependent on oil, and the demand and supply curves for oil are not looking good. Reduced soil fertility has been made up for by increasing the amount of energy used. That energy, at the very least, is becoming more and more expensive and will continue to do so. That will drive up food prices significantly, or force a return to the use of much more human labor. Probably both.

5) In the short run foolish subsidies for ethanol have driven up the price of food staples as farmers switch to corn to sell for ethanol.

I hardly expect the current administration to do a great deal about this, but I still encourage people to sign the ONE Campaign's petition for Bush. Making it very clear that this is an issue that matters to a lot of people is the only way that politicians will take it seriously. The sooner we start, the better, and the life you save (or the pocketbook you help) will as likely be your own as anyone else's.

So please take a few moments and go sign.

The traditional narrative of the industrial revolution begins in the mid 19th century in Britain. One obsession of various scholars is to prove a cause for why Britain, including appeals to genetics, while others attempt to prove that Britain was merely in the right place at the right time.

However, this ignores the substantial changes in technology, living standards and organization. It also ignores the profound shift in the energy basis of the Eurasian economy that took place in the 1400-1800 period. More over, it conveniently ignores just how long it took industrialization, in the old sense as being driven by the steam engine, to really become the dominant mode of transportation and production.

The industrialization narrative is not without rivals. Two of the most important are the information narrative, which focuses on movable type, and the gunpowder narrative, which focuses on the ability of fire arms to rapidly raise armies capable of defeating previous armies. Both of these narratives have well known exponents. Together they can be thought of as the informationalist viewpoint: that it was crucial technology in service of unified culture that was the driver of European victory.

Both of these narratives suffer, as pure narratives, from crucial defects, and these defects are sufficient to reject either narrative in its pure form.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cultural_genocide

Cultural genocide is a term used to describe the deliberate destruction of the cultural heritage of a people or nation for political, military, religious, ideological, ethnical, or racial reasons.

Relevance to International Law

As early as 1933, Raphael Lemkin proposed a cultural component to genocide, which he called "vandalism".[1] However, the drafters of the 1948 Genocide Convention dropped that concept from their consideration.[2] The legal definition of genocide was confined to acts of physical or biological destruction with intent to destroy a racial, religious, ethnic or national group as such.[3]

Amanda Gentleman & Hari Kumar | New Delhi | April 17

NYT - The Olympic torch made a strange and lonely procession through central Delhi on Thursday, with the event so overshadowed by fears of the anti-Chinese protests that marred its appearances in other cities that no members of the public were allowed close enough to witness it.

The 70-odd Indian athletes and celebrities who carried the torch down Delhi’s widest avenue were outnumbered by thousands of watchful members of India’s security forces, who managed to stamp out any pomp and excitement, transforming the occasion into a tense security operation.

India has the world’s largest population of exiled Tibetans, about 100,000, who fled their homeland after China crushed an uprising there in the 1950s, and their presence had made Olympic organizers particularly anxious about this stage of the torch’s journey to Beijing, where the Games will begin on Aug. 8.

Michael Isikoff and Mark Hosenball | April 17

Newsweek - A British court slams Bandar and the Brits.

A scathing British court ruling could create more legal problems for Prince Bandar, head of Saudi Arabia's National Security Council and the former Saudi ambassador in Washington, over his alleged role in a massive multimillion-dollar bribery scheme involving a major British aerospace firm.

The Justice Department is investigating allegations that U.K.-based British Aerospace Systems (BAE) paid millions of dollars in bribes to Bandar and other Saudi officials—in possible violation of the Foreign Corrupt Practices Act. Bandar, whose close ties to the Bush family earned him the nickname "Bandar Bush," has retained former FBI Director Louis Freeh to represent him in connection with the Justice Department probe. A spokesman said Freeh was traveling overseas and could not be reached for comment.

Last week the British High Court ruled that then-Prime Minister Tony Blair's government may have interfered with the rule of law in December 2006, when it ordered the British government's Serious Fraud Office to shut down its own bribery investigation, allegedly after Bandar threatened to cut off Saudi cooperation with U.K. terrorism investigations if the inquiry continued. The ruling could pressure the fraud office to reopen its own shuttered investigation into the alleged scandal. (Bandar's representatives have repeatedly denied that he engaged in any wrongdoing).

Thom Shanker | Washington | March 16

iht - WASHINGTON: Defense Secretary Robert Gates urged Congress on Tuesday to grant the Pentagon permanent authority to train and equip foreign militaries, a task previously administered by the State Department, and to raise the annual budget for the effort to $750 million, a 250 percent increase.

Gates said that rapidly building up the armed forces of friendly nations to combat terrorism within their borders was "a vital and enduring military requirement" — and one that should be managed by the Defense Department.

Representative Ike Skelton, the Missouri Democrat who is the Armed Services Committee chairman, voiced apprehension over "what appears to be the migration of State Department activities to the Department of Defense."

My wife, Leah, has been making pottery for four years and is getting quite good. Here are a few pieces she made in the last year.

The Medieval Period had a reason: a series of rapid invasions from the core areas of the Eurasian Continent. The period would be dominated by this repeated migration pattern. In turn, it created decentralized structures which are recognizable as feudalism, in order to have a localized military elite capable of holding back the migration. It was a new phase of the horse/house conflict. The end of the medieval period is when the reverse becomes true: the house holders develop a true technological, social and intellectual advantage. However, it starts with the reverse: the horse empire of the Mongols over-running the core of Eurasia and conquering a divided China. They rose because they were able to acquire many of the technologies that traditionally frustrated horse empires previously, that is siege craft.

As rules the were, in fact, extremely innovative and entrepreneurial. They also collapsed rapidly and left behind a world which was transfigured, and transfiguring. The first industrial revolution was about to happen.

George Friedman | April 15

Stratfor - China is an island. We do not mean it is surrounded by water; we mean China is surrounded by territory that is difficult to traverse. Therefore, China is hard to invade; given its size and population, it is even harder to occupy. This also makes it hard for the Chinese to invade others; not utterly impossible, but quite difficult. Containing a fifth of the world’s population, China can wall itself off from the world, as it did prior to the United Kingdom’s forced entry in the 19th century and under Mao Zedong. All of this means China is a great power, but one that has to behave very differently than other great powers.

Stephen Khan | April 13

Independent - When is a lesbian not a lesbian? When the person in question is a gay, Catholic, conservative blogger by the name of Andrew Sullivan, it would seem.

For when Sullivan was stuck for words on an American news discussion programme last week, he was confronted by the acerbic polemicist Christopher Hitchens. "Don't be such a lesbian," intervened Mr Hitchens. "Get on with it."

Mr Sullivan paused. Mr Hitchens looked to the floor. And the MSNBC Tim Russert Show merrily continued with its analysis of the role religion and the preacher Jeremiah Wright have played in Barack Obama's election campaign.

http://z15.invisionfree.com/The_Living_Room/index.php?showtopic=436

Allison Van Dusen & Ana Patricia Ferrey | April 11

Forbes - There are lots of reasons to envy residents of Northern Europe. Each day they get to take in raw, dramatic landscapes, stunning architecture and world-class shopping.

But, more important, they know a thing or two about health and wellness.

Forbes.com has found that the region is home to some of the world's healthiest countries, including top-ranking Iceland, Sweden and Finland.

Others that fared well include Germany, Switzerland, Australia, Denmark, Canada, Austria and the Netherlands.

"Historically, these countries had an ethic of having more of a nationalized health care system," says Kate Schecter, a program officer for the American International Health Alliance, a nonprofit that works to advance global health by helping nations with limited resources build sustainable infrastructure. "There's this mentality that health care should be a given right for citizens."

** In Depth: The World's 15 Healthiest Countries

Bruce Campion-Smith | Ottowa | April 10

Toronto Star - Canadian actors are speaking out against the "censorship" posed by new legislation that could deny tax credits for controversial film projects.

"If there is something that artists fear it is censorship," actor and director Sarah Polley told a Parliament Hill news conference this morning.

Polley said it was the job of artists to "provoke and to challenge.

"Part of the responsibility of being an artist is to create work that will inspire dialogue, suggest that people examine their long-held positions and yes, occasionally offend in order to do so," she said.

Bill C-10, a tax bill amendment, will be debated at the Senate banking and commerce committee starting today after Canada's entertainment industry voiced concern that it would revise criteria to exclude tax breaks for shows that bureaucrats regard as offensive or not in the public interest.