varnam

Kevin is blogging the events in Iraq from the front lines.

All American TV Channels are trying to cover the war the whole night,
without any real information. They go to correspondents all over the
world, and they all tell the same information. Fox has switched to
American Idol. NBC is showing some cool animation of aircrafts taking
of from an air base and launching bunker busters. After many months of
"Target Iraq" programs on various channels, the TV channels would have
been disappointed if the war had not happened.

Salam Pax (from Baghdad) tells that there was a rumor floating that
Saddam's brother had asked him to surrender, but in turn he has
imprisoned him

It is being said that Barazan (Saddam?s brother) has suggested to
him that he should do the decent thing and surrender, he got himself
under house arrest in one of the presidential palaces which is
probably going to be one of the first to be hit.

BBC is reporting that Saddam is going to address his people in a while.

Saddam injured in US strike: report

Witnesses saw Saddam being carried away from the wreckage of the compound hit early yesterday with an oxygen mask over his face, according to intelligence sources quoted by the US network.

(link via The Command Post)

How else, would they find time in the middle of a war to expel CNN journalists. It was like, we can stand the war, but CNN is worse. CNN also shut down the blog of Kevin Sites. CNN should learn something from BBC here and take advantage of the new media. As Dan Gillmor says, we have various other options now, and don't have to depend on Amanpour for our news.

Some of the sickest souls in the world have found a breeding ground:

Relief efforts for Iraqi victims of war have religious overtones

But a fraction of the agencies view the war
as more than a relief effort. They see it is a golden opportunity to
convert this predominantly Muslim country to Christianity, and along
with supplies, they carry the New Testament and the message of Jesus
Christ.

Once Iraq is done, here are some suggestions

• Pakistan (mainly North Western Province)
• Iran (Salman Rushdie will vouch for their willigness to convert)
• Saudi Arabia

TriNetre - The Third Eye says:

"You know the world's gone mad when the best rapper is a white guy, the best golfer is a black guy, the tallest guy in the NBA is Chinese, the Swiss hold the America's Cup, France is accusing the USA of arrogance and the German's don't want to go to war!"

there is nothing more i can add to that.

Ashwini asks:

Why is it OK for the mob ?

Numerous African nations are at war, why are there no global protests? Aren?t the Africans worth your time? Don?t they too deserve to lead peaceful lives? How different are these wars from the current Iraq war? Suicide bombers are killing foreign nationals thereby fighting a proxy war against the countries of those killed. Why is there no global outrage? Aren?t these lives worth anything? Pakistan sends murderous jihadis into Indian Jammu and Kashmir on a regular basis and people are killed everyday by these jihadis. These are political killings just as war killings are. Where are the global peace protests against the Pakistani govt ? Numerous govts are killing their own people, torturing them and destroying their properties. They are at war against their own people but where are the peace protests? Or is a peace protest valid only when you protest against certain countries? The silence is deafening and the selective protestation seems hollow

Why is no one writing articles titled "Kilimanjaro, Nile, Niger, Congo" in the Guardian. Why is no one holding candles in Marina Beach for these people ?

So what did not happen during the war ?

• There were no widespread fires in the oil fields.
• There was no use of chemical weapons.
• Missiles were not launched at Israel.
• Bridges and dams were not blown up.

What was proved

• Muslim Unity is a myth
• Anti-War movement is just anti-US movement
• UN is a waste of money
• Mohammed Saeed al-Sahaf is the best standup

(Few points taken from CNBC Capital Report)

The anti-war crowd has some explaining to do

I want to rub it in the anti-war crowd's face so badly. I want to hear the protesters explain why it's a bad thing we released more than 100 children from an Iraqi gulag for underage political prisoners. I want them to talk about how they were fighting for the Iraqi people as the Iraqi people hug and kiss the American forces in Baghdad and greet the human shields with signs reading "Go Home You Wankers." I want them to explain why it wasn't worth it.

(Link via MercuryBlog)

A national pastime in Russia used to be tax evasion. So the Govt. came up with a plan to collect taxes -- a 13% flat tax system. Due to this

Russia Misuses Benefits From Its Flat-Tax System: As the Russian media reported, in addition to one low rate, Russia's flat tax is much more favorable to savings and investments. In this country, income is taxed once when Americans earn it and a second time when Americans invest it. Russia's flat tax does not double-tax corporate income or impose a capital gains tax on stocks, bonds and home sales. Also, with few exceptions, there is no double tax on bank deposit interest.

As a result of this system, which established one of the lowest tax rates in Europe, Russia's economy grew by more than 5 percent last year while most other nations were hit by recessions. In establishing a flat tax, Russia followed Hong Kong and Bermuda and such former Soviet republics as Latvia, Lithuania and Estonia, whose populations also enjoyed rapid growth in part because of their tax system.

I read the editorial in Wall Street Journal which advocates the same for United States. Is this something which can be done in India ?

Gerald Posner who wrote Why America Slept was on MSNBC last night with Keith Olberman. The issue was the news that Saudis were going to acquire nukes. Posner thinks that this was leaked as a warning to the Americans, to tell them, if they screw the relations and get too investigative, then Saudis will acquire them using petro dollars.

One country that will be happy to sell it would be Pakistan.

Concerns about Saudi plans to buy nuclear weapons were raised after Prince Sultan toured Pakistan's secret nuclear facilities in May 1999. The prince toured the Kahuta uranium enrichment plant and an adjacent factory where the Ghauri missile is assembled with Pakistani prime minister Nawaz Sharif and was briefed by A.Q. Khan, the father of Pakistan's atom bomb.

And this is a facility which even Prime Minister Benazir Bhutto was not allowed to visit. Also Saudi Arabia had funded Pakistan's nuclear and missle program

Quoting reports, DIA's senior China analyst Thomas Woodrow said in a research paper that "Saudi Arabia has been involved in funding Pakistan's missile and nuclear program purchases from China, which has resulted in Pakistan becoming a nuclear weapon-producing and proliferating state". According to the paper, there was also a probability that Riyadh was "buying nuclear-capability from China through a proxy state with Pakistan serving as the cut-out."

So if Saudi Arabia wants to go nuclear, it will plain easy for them. Scary thought.

One dictator gets caught

"He was just caught like a rat," said Maj. Gen. Raymond Odierno, commander of 4th Infantry Division, which led the hunt in the area for one of the world's most wanted men and conducted the raid that caught him. "When you're in the bottom of a hole, you can't fight back."

Another one just escapes

Pakistan's military President Pervez Musharraf narrowly escaped a "terrorist" attack on Sunday after a bomb tore up a section of road in the northern city of Rawalpindi a minute after his convoy passed, officials said.

"The president's motorcade passed a minute before the blast," a military spokesman, Major General Shaukat Sultan, said. "He is safe and sound."

Update via Instapundit: :CNN reports the head of Palestinian Hamas has issued a statement expressing outrage that Saddam would encourage martrydom in others, yet personally go down without a fight. The impact of this should not be underestimated.

Hamas now knows what an Arm Chair Quaterback means.

Saddam's arrest discouraging among Arab world

"There is disappointment in nationalist circles in the way he was captured, that he didn't commit suicide so he wouldn't undergo an embarrassing interrogation," Victor Nahmias, an Arab affairs expert, said on state-run Israel Radio. "Here was the symbol of heroism and here is an American non-Muslim (tugging) at his beard. It's hard for proud Arabs to take."

The French have decided to ban the wearing of any religious symbols by people in public places and the main focus is on the head scarfs worn by Muslim women. Democracies like United States and India do not enforce any ban on public display of religious symbols worn by people. But France thinks this ban is required to assimilate Muslims into the mainstream. So when such an issue comes up, the question is

Thus the issue has become, in large part, who controls women? Are they subject to French laws ? and the deeply held principle of church-state separation ? or to their fathers, husbands, brothers and mullahs? Are they free? And a second issue is even broader: Do religious citizens of a democratic country owe first service to their religion or their nation?

The second question is more important. And here is the answer given by the Grand Sheikh of the al-Azhar mosque in Egypt, Mohammed Sayed Tantawi

He said Muslim women had to obey the rules of the host country in which they live, under what he described as dire necessity.

I think this is a very important statement, which sets the order of loyalties very clear. But as Niraj notes, such a measure would be considered as a violation of both freedom of speech and freedom of religious statutes in United States.

The Americans are not the only ones torturing their prisoners. CBS 60 Minutes had a glimpse of Saudi Justice this week.

Why did the Government of Saudi Arabia frame seven westerners for a series of car bombings they didn't commit? Those car bombings, which began in the Saudi capital, Riyadh, in November 2000, killed three members of the expatriate community and severely injured several others. To Western observers, they were clearly the work of Islamic fundamentalists. But the Saudis were not about to admit that. So five Britons, a Canadian and a Belgian found themselves arrested, systematically tortured into false confessions and eventually convicted of those bombings.

Moral Outrage Mr. Koffi Annan ?

The European plan to contain Saddam was to request him not to do anything bad. Now they are trying the same with Iran. The Europeans met with the mullahs and agreed to block any Security Council referrals and in return Iran would stop work on Uranium enrichment. But now

This week, with the world's attention focused on the troubled situation in Iraq, the European version of preemption is yielding its own bitter -- if less bloody -- result. Inspectors of the International Atomic Energy Agency have reported that Iran never honored its agreement; it has stalled and stonewalled the inspectors while continuing to work on elements of a nuclear program that could soon allow it to produce weapons. The Europeans have responded by drafting for approval by the 35-member IAEA board a stern statement demanding Iranian cooperation; Tehran has replied with threats to restart uranium enrichment and suspend negotiations with the West. Washington Post

Finally an agreement on the EU Constitution has been reached. One of the contentious issues was, if the new Constitution should include a reference to Christianity. The move had strong support from the Pope, and countries like Poland. But now, the reference to God and Christianity has been dropped.

Over another area, whether or not the text would mention God or Europe?s Christian heritage, Catholic countries (especially Poland) gave way to the secular group (led by France) in leaving out any such reference. Economist

"We don't see any reason - there has been no cause at all for us to have second thoughts about providing any assistance to Pakistan," Christina Rocca, assistant secretary of state for South Asian affairs, told a congressional hearing in Washington. BBC

At the same time in Los Angeles Times

International investigators are examining whether Syria acquired nuclear technology and expertise through the black market network operated by rogue Pakistani scientist Abdul Qadeer Khan, according to a U.S. official and Western diplomats. Intelligence reports found that Khan and some associates visited Syria in the late 1990s and later held clandestine meetings with Syrian nuclear officials in Iran, said Western diplomats from a U.S. ally. Concerns were heightened after an experimental U.S. electronic eavesdropping device recently picked up signals indicating that Syria was operating centrifuges, which enrich uranium for possible use in nuclear weapons. LA Times

John Howard won by a narrow margin in Australia with a swing of less than 2% and James Taranto immediately branded it as a defeat for al Qaeda as if the whole election was fought on that issue. Australia has only 800 odd troops in Iraq and they have not suffered any casualities.

The election was not a referendum on the Iraq war because the issue was buried by the Labor Party and the mass media. Despite the mountain of evidence showing that the war was based on lies, Howard was never challenged by opposition leader Mark Latham, who maintained that the issue of �??trust�?� centred on whether Howard was going to continue as prime minister for a full three-year term. The Labor Party dropped all reference even to Latham�??s previous comments that he would withdraw Australian troops by Christmas, and said nothing during the entire six-week campaign about the ongoing repression of the Iraqi population by US and other occupation forces. According to the Labor leader, Howard�??s Iraq commitment was simply a �??mistake.�?� Latham�??s position was echoed by the Greens, who by and large dropped criticism of the war as well. While the Greens�?? vote went up by around 2.2 percent, attracting those seeking a �??left�?� alternative to Labor, it turned out to be substantially less than they expected.[Australia: Howard government returned, courtesy of Labor]

On a side note, in Australia it is mandatory for all citizens to vote. Defaulters face a jail term.

Throughout the world, we see that wherever socialists took power, genocide followed. In the USSR, up to 30 million people were murdered by Communists. Tens of millions were slaughtered in China. Two million in Vietnam. A million and a half in Cambodia. Up to three and a half million people in North Korea. In Afghanistan upon Communist take-over, at least 12,000 people were killed in Kabul alone in the first few months.

The reason why genocides occur under a socialist form of economics is very simple. For one, politicians have total power over the masses. They can tell you where to live, what to buy �?? and most importantly, you depend on them for your subsistence because you can only work for the government. In a market economy, if a worker is mistreated or underpaid, he can leave and work for someone else �?? or start his own business. Not so in a communist economy. You are totally dependent on politicians.

Two, any time a person�??s property is taken away from him, he will resist. Some will complain passively, others will resist in an active manner, refusing the politicians�?? dictates. To impose their will, politicians must use force �?? which is exactly what happened in the USSR, China, Vietnam, North Korea, Cambodia, Afghanistan and all the other countries where politicians were given total economic power over the people. [Asian Experiment: Contrast Between Capitalist and Communist Nations]

According to R.J. Rummel, professor emeritus of political science and Nobel Peace Prize finalist, Marxist regimes have murdered nearly 110 million people from 1917 to 1987. Even in democracies the Communists have to blow up railway lines, murder political opponents and subvert development at any cost.

While violence in Iraq shows no signs of abatement, you would think that civilians would be scared to go there. Today I had gone to notarize a document, when I met this American who wanted someone to sign as witness to his will. He said he was off to Iraq as a civilian contractor and wanted to give the power of attorney to his wife.

He said he was going to give counter-terrorism training to Iraqis. On asked what motivated him to go to such a dangerous place, pat came the reply: Money.

There was a program on NPR few weeks back saying that some British are moving out of the country and living as immigrants in other countries as they are fed up with many things. One of the problems cited by them was the influx of immigrants.

Now a recent Economist poll in which 74% of the people said that too many immigrants are coming to Britain. The most important problem cited was that immigrants put too much pressure on public services.

Most damaging for Britain's enlightened self-image, the nation has risen to the top of the European xenophobes' league. A Eurobarometer poll earlier this year found that 41% saw immigration as one of the two biggest problems faced by the nation�??16 points more than in any other European country. Forget unemployment, terrorism or crime: the real threat comes from the man with the battered suitcase.

Hostility to those who do not come openly to work is not new. Even in 2000, before the asylum panic, just 12% believed that genuine refugees should be accepted unreservedly�??the lowest number in Europe. But Britons are more blasé than other Europeans about the effect of immigration on national harmony. Of those who reckon there are too many, only a quarter worry about racial balance. �??Britain has become a multicultural society; it just doesn't want any more people to come in,�?� says John Solomos, who follows the subject at City University in London.

What seems to have happened over the past few years is that immigration has become associated with refugees and illegal entrants rather than with migrant workers. That is not surprising, given the rise in asylum claimants that began in the late 1990s. Numbers are down, but it does not matter: perceptions have shifted. [Out with the new (subscription reqd)]

Accompanying the article was a graph depicting the most despised immigrants. Iraqis lead the list followed by Pakistanis. This was followed by Romanians, Black Africans, West Indians, Poles and to my surprise Australians whereas Indians do not feature at all.

It is said that animals can sense when disaster is going to strike and escape. But what is not often mentioned is that humans become insane during such times. Here are two stories.

Apparently when you are going to provide aid in Indonesia, you have to dress as per Islamic code.

"The Americans have to understand our culture here," said Hilmy Bakar Almascaty, vice-chairman of the Jakarta-based Islamic Defenders Front, which is mobilising relief efforts of its own.

"If they are not sensitive to local issues then there will be problems. If American women come to Aceh, they must wear dilbab for example. There is Sharia law in Aceh and that is what is dictated."

USAid's Bok said it was unlikely US service personnel would adhere to a Muslim dresscode.

"I don't think the practice of Islam in Aceh is such that it forces all people to wear dilbab," said Weiss. "This is not Saudi Arabia." [Indonesian Islamic Group Wants US military aidgivers to wear Islamic dress]

The next one is from Tamil Nadu

People have died, but politics lives on. A strange game of politics in so in Tamil Nadu. J Jayalalitha is the chief minister of the state and controls a TV channel, Jaya TV. M Karunanidhi is her chief rival and controls Sun TV. Sun TV keeps showing news that portrays the government�??s relief efforts in a bad light, and Jaya TV paints quite the opposite picture. Every disaster, after all, is an opportunity to score a few political brownie points. And the lives which have been lost? Well, shit happens.[Despatches 6: Politics]

Left-wing rebels killed at least 17 peasants in northeast Colombia on New Year's Eve in reprisal for cooperating with far-right paramilitaries, police and local authorities said Saturday.

The massacre, in which police said four children and six women died, took place Friday night in the town of Tame, in the province of Arauca near the Venezuelan border. The oil-rich region is contested by Marxist rebels and their paramilitary foes.

The victims were gathered for a New Year's Eve celebration when they were attacked, said Tame Mayor Alfredo Guzman.

Police say the Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia, or FARC, carried out the crime. Authorities say the group killed nine peasant coca growers in August and 34 in June in the neighboring province of Norte de Santander. [Rebels Kill 17 Peasants in Colombia, Police Say]

FARC was established in 1964 by the Columbian Communist Party to defend Communist controlled areas and is considered the best equipped insurgency of Marxist origin in Latin America. You would think that Communism is a religion meant to defend the rights of peasants and common folk from exploitation. But looking at their activities, the same people are exploited and murdered.

Now that both Rajeev Srinivasan and Harkishen Singh Surjeet have invoked mysterious forces and omimous signals w.r.t the tsunami, the Mullahs in Saudi Arabia were feeling left behind.

Fatah said, The disappointment is not just because of the pathetic contributions by Saudi Arabia or Kuwait. It is compounded by the message being repeated ad nauseam in their mosques and media that the earthquake was a punishment from God for the sins of the people of South and South East Asia. The view that wanton behavior provoked the quake was the subject of Friday sermons in Saudi Arabia and of other religious commentaries in the kingdom. Asia�??s earthquake, which hit the beaches of prostitution, tourism, immorality and nudity, one commentator said on an Islamist website, is a sign that God is warning mankind from persisting in injustice and immorality before he destroys the ground beneath them.[Arab response to Tsunami seen as appalling]

Update: Egyptians have put all the above divine theories to shame. This one takes the cake - Egyptian paper: Israel-India nuke test caused tsunami

The National Intelligence Council, a group of senior intelligence analysts who report to the CIA Director have a new report on future global trends.

China and India are likely to be among the leading beneficiaries of globalization, in part because of their low-cost labor and high technology capabilities. Many of their people, however, will remain poor.

"A combination of sustained high economic growth, expanding military capabilities and large populations will be at the root of the expected rapid rise in economic and political power for both countries," the report said.

By 2020, China's gross domestic product, the total value of goods and services, will be greater than that of any Western country except the United States, and India's GDP will have overtaken or will be about to overtake European economies.

Led by China and India, Asia "looks set to displace Western countries as the focus of international economic dynamism - provided Asia's rapid economic growth continues," it said.[Report: India, China will be major powers in 2020 (requires bugmenot)]

The full report is available online.

2005 seems to be the year of pipelines. India has signed an agreement with Iran, but the transport protocol has not been decided yet. On the Eastern border of India, Bangladesh and Myanmar have agreed to build a gas pipeline.

Land based gas pipelines are much cheaper than transporting it via tankers or deep sea pipeline and hence all this enthusiasm for building it even though it is through a country like Pakistan. Other than economics, the gas pipelines also give the countries involved an opportunity to indulge in some image improvement exercise as well as build relations.

For Iran, India�??s participation in the project is of paramount importance. In addition to a broader market for its gas Iran hopes to gain political support from India as it is facing strong international pressure to terminate its nuclear program. In return for India's agreement to buy large quantities of gas, Iran has awarded Indian gas companies major service contracts and also granted them participation in refining and other energy related projects to the tune of $40 billion. Iran�??s relations with Pakistan are also strategically important. With American troops stationed in neighboring Afghanistan and Iraq, Iran is trying to check U.S. influence in the region by strengthening its ties with Pakistan, one of America�??s most needed allies in the war on terror. The Pakistanis, for their part, would like to see their territory used as a transit route to export natural gas to India. This would not only guarantee a source of income for them but also increase stability in the region. Pakistani Prime Minister Shaukat Aziz said the Iran-Pakistan-India gas pipeline is "a win-win proposition for Iran, India, and Pakistan," that could serve as a durable confidence-building measure, creating strong economic links and business partnerships among the three countries. [Iran-Pakistan-India pipeline: the Baloch wildcard]

The first time I came to know about Heinrich Harrer was when I saw the movie Seven Years in Tibet. The movie was kind of boring, but Harrer's life was fascinating. In the movie he escapes from a POW camp in Darjeeling in 1944 and crosses the mountainson foot to reach Tibet, thus being one of few westerners to reach there. He spends 7 years there, tutoring a young Dalai Lama, who many years later would take the reverse route to India

He was an accomplished mountaineer as well, climbing the Eiger, regarded as a major test of climbing ability.

After the Eiger's hazardous east ridge was scaled in 1921, only the north face remained unconquered. The first nine climbers who attempted it in the 1930s all died.

In August 1935 two Germans, Max Sedlmayer and Karl Mehringer, made their assault on the wall. The men were abruptly halted 3,000 feet up by a terrible storm, accompanied by freezing temperatures and frequent avalanches.

They survived on the face for five agonising days, bivouacking there for four nights before freezing to death. Four more climbers died the next year while trying to retreat.

Then, in July 1938, an Austro-German team of four, Anderl Heckmair, Ludwig Vörg, Fritz Kasparek and Heinrich Harrer, made it to the top. It took the men, who had only decided to team up at the base of the wall, more than three days to reach the summit.[The ultimate alpine challenge]

They met Hitler and Goebbels who praised them for their achievement. Harrer died this week. In such an eventful life his only regret must have been that he was portrayed by Brad Pitt on screen.

Recently the Chhattisgarh government decided to give a knockout punch to the Naxalites with the help of K.P.S.Gill and our friend Praful Bidwai came out strongly against it. He was sure that this police action would violate the human rights of Adivasis. For once he has not come out against the human rights violations by the Naxalites.

This model of opposing police action, while remaining silent on brutality and murder by terrorists is not just the trade mark of Naxal supporters like Bidwai, but also of many human rights organizations. While organizations like Amnesty International scream about police and state violence all around the world, not a word comes out of their mouth against terrorists, dictators and warlords.

If an award has to be given to a human rights organization for being ridiculous, then it has to go to the one in Namibia. Angelina Jolie recently gave birth to a baby in Namibia and the paparazzi have been camping there to get photographs of the celebrity parents and the baby. The couple wanted privacy and they got it there.

Bodyguards and undercover Namibian police officers shielded the celebrity parents from journalists, erecting green cloth screens around the beach resort where they stayed. A local human rights group accused the security services of using "heavy-handed tactics" to keep the paparazzi at bay. [Hello! sues over Jolie photo leak]

Following the withdrawal of the Soviet forces in 1992, Afghanistan was thrown into a civil war. Warlords were in charge of various sectors and they enforced their own rules Businesses had to pay them for safe transport and there were competing warlords. So if a Pakistani businessman wanted to send goods via road to Turkmenistan, he would end up lining the pockets of many warlords, which affected the profit margin. Then came the Taliban, from the madrassas in Pakistan and took over the Afghanistan and bought "stability". They defeated various warlords and established a single point of payment.

Then they imposed Islamic laws on the poor Afghanis. Criminal punishments included amputations, and stoning. Women could go out only with a male relative and Hindus were required to a special marking on their cloth. Finally they forged a relationship with Osama bin Laden and you know the rest.

Now this story is repeating in Somalia. Following the fall of Mohamed Siad Barre in 199, the county has been in chaos. In a scene by scene replay of the takeover of Afghanistan by the Taliban, an alliance of Islamic militias have taken over the country. Now people can walk without fear in the streets of Mogadishu.

Somalis interviewed by Reuters in Mogadishu -- and Jowhar and Balad to the north, which the Islamic militia also captured last week -- almost unanimously expressed happiness at the new-found stability on their streets since the power shift.

Transport was moving more freely, business was flourishing, roadblocks had come down, and guns were less visible on the streets, they said. [Islamists bring rare peace, new worry to Mogadishu]

Abdifatah Nur, 26, said he was watching a World Cup soccer match at a movie house when Islamic militiamen crashed through the doors and ordered the television turned off. They beat the children with lashes and took the young men to a jail. Before the militiamen let their prisoners free three days later, Nur said, they whipped him and cut off his long, curly hair.

Nur said that a few days later, in a different movie house, he watched as Islamic militiamen beat the owner to death, apparently for ignoring earlier orders to not show soccer matches."I hate what they are doing," Nur said. "We have no choice.">Several leaders of the Islamic militias have said they have issued no orders banning World Cup broadcasts or requiring men to cut their hair.

Alas, the truth is that the Union is made up of at least four major jihadi groups: al-Ittihad al-Islami ("Islamic Union"), a group which used to appear on the State Department's list of foreign terrorist organizations (the folks at Foggy Bottom apparently bought at face value the group's previously self-proclaimed dissolution); al-Takfir wal-Hijra ("Excommunication and Exodus"), a group so extreme that it considered Osama bin Laden too moderate and tried to kill him in Sudan in 1996; al-Islah ("Reconciliation"), an Islamist group pushing for the establishment of a Islamic state in Somalia; and al-Tabligh ("Making Known"), an Islamist "missionary" group with links to the same madrassas in Pakistan which gave us the Taliban [WSJ:The New Taliban (subscription required)]

Lebanese photographer Adnan Hajj was covering the war between Israel and Hezbollah and took a photograph of an Israeli air strike on a Beiruit neighborhood. Somehow Adnan felt that the image was not good enough and he embellished it to make more darker smokes arising from it. He also added some extra buildings for more impact. Unfortunately for Adnan, his little trick was discovered by Charles Johnson of the blog  Little Green Footballs and now Reuters has admitted to the crime and has withdrawn all 920 images taken by him.

Another photograph by Adnan Hajj has also been found to be doctored. The photo shows an Israeli F-16 firing three missiles (according to the Reuters caption), which in fact turned out to be an F-16 firing one flare. The two other flares in the image are copies of the first one.
Soon after the draft of the Franco-American draft for a UN Security Council resolution was released, Reuters came out with an alert saying that the Lebanese had rejected the draft. Turns out the article was based on the comment of a single pro-Syrian, Hezbollah ally by the name of Nabih Berri.

All these incidents makes you wonder why Reuters is so bent on fanning this war and where their priorities lie.

The ceasefire mandated by the United Nations resolution 1701 has bought the cessation of hostilities between Israel and Hezbollah. The ceasefire also calls also upon the government of Lebanon and UNIFIL to deploy their troops to South Lebanon and make sure that there will be no weapons without the consent of the government of Lebanon and no authority other than that of the government of Lebanon. The Lebanese interpretation of this rule is that the Hezbollah can keep the arms so long as it does not display it in public. A Hezbollah leader said that they would just hide the weapons and melt into the local population which is a bad idea for the people of Israel as we know from the whole Soviet Union-Afghanistan-Pakistan episode.

After the Soviet Union left Afghanistan, the weapons supplied to the Mujahideen stayed with them. Many weapons were left unaccounted for. Later any terrorist groups wishing to inflict damage to the world could find the weapons in the open markets of Pakistan and these terrorists have been creating trouble for India and Afghanistan. Even now graduates from the center of the Jihadi universe are involved in every terrorist plot from 9/11 to the trans-Atlantic terror plot. Instead of waiting for the next Hezbollah attack on Israel, the United Nations should have worked towards disarming them like what they did in Nepal.

On June 16th, in Nepal, Prime Minister Girija Prasad Koirala and Maoist leader Prachanda reached an agreement in which the Maoists would join an interim government. The question then was if the Maoists would disarm before it. Though some Indian columnists (you know the more Catholic than the Pope types) wanted the world to accept the reality that the Maoists would not disarm, the Maoists agreed to have their arms counted and deposited under the supervision of the United Nations.

Now that the Israel-Hezbollah is over, Hezbollah has declared victory and the celebrations are going on. At the same time the Lebanese are roasting them for all the damage they caused. The leaders of the March 14th movement have demanded an investigation into the circumstances that led to the war. Prominent Hezbollah supporters like Michel Aoun has called for the Shiite militia to disband.

Hezbollah is also criticized from within the Lebanese Shiite community, which accounts for some 40% of the population. Sayyed Ali al-Amin, the grand old man of Lebanese Shiism, has broken years of silence to criticize Hezbollah for provoking the war, and called for its disarmament. In an interview granted to the Beirut An-Nahar, he rejected the claim that Hezbollah represented the whole of the Shiite community. "I don't believe Hezbollah asked the Shiite community what they thought about [starting the] war," Mr. al-Amin said. "The fact that the masses [of Shiites] fled from the south is proof that they rejected the war. The Shiite community never gave anyone the right to wage war in its name."

 

There were even sharper attacks. Mona Fayed, a prominent Shiite academic in Beirut, wrote an article also published by An-Nahar last week. She asks: Who is a Shiite in Lebanon today? She provides a sarcastic answer: A Shiite is he who takes his instructions from Iran, terrorizes fellow believers into silence, and leads the nation into catastrophe without consulting anyone. Another academic, Zubair Abboud, writing in Elaph, a popular Arabic-language online newspaper, attacks Hezbollah as "one of the worst things to happen to Arabs in a long time." He accuses Mr. Nasrallah of risking Lebanon's existence in the service of Iran's regional ambitions.[Hezbollah Didn't Win (WSJ: subscription reqd)]

Adrianus  Melkert, a Dutch politician who is also an associate administrator at United Nations Development Program has threatened to retaliate against the United States if it tries to get to the bottom of what UNDP was doing in North Korea. The UN Board of Auditors found that the UNDP violated many rules by  hiring staffers selected by the North Koreans, paying their salary directly to Pyongyang, and inspecting only a few projects. UNDP had no idea for what purpose the North Koreans were using the money for and Melkert did not like the American enquiries into the gory details of what his organization was doing and hence the anti-American stand.

When it comes to human rights activism, the United Nations would give the Booker prize winning verbal terrorist a run for her money. The UN's new Human Rights Council, formed last year to replace the much discredited UN Human Rights Commission,  has decided to halt all investigation into Cuba and Belarus while continuing investigations of Israel. In fact  Israel is the only country mentioned by name by the council.

The very notion that Israel, a vibrant democracy surrounded by fanatical religious dictatorships seeking to hurl it into the sea and the only nation ever formally censored by the HRC, is a bigger threat to human rights than the totalitarian dictatorships in Cuba and Belarus is a crude slur on the intelligence of every person whose tax dollars fund the United Nations. How can the UN possibly claim any moral legitimacy to address human rights issues if it proceeds in this manner? The saddest thing of all is that this salaciously fraudulent enterprise is actually a replacement of another UN group that was so corrupt it had to be abolished.[Annals of HRC Fraud at the UN]

Isn't it time the UN is moved from New York to Pyongyang or Havana?

1. Bill Gates
2. Mother Teresa
3. Norman Borlaug
   

Who do you think is the most and least admirable? Steven Pinker writes

Yet a deeper look might lead you to rethink your answers. Borlaug, father of the “Green Revolution” that used agricultural science to reduce world hunger, has been credited with saving a billion lives, more than anyone else in history. Gates, in deciding what to do with his fortune, crunched the numbers and determined that he could alleviate the most misery by fighting everyday scourges in the developing world like malaria, diarrhea and parasites. Mother Teresa, for her part, extolled the virtue of suffering and ran her well-financed missions accordingly: their sick patrons were offered plenty of prayer but harsh conditions, few analgesics and dangerously primitive medical care.[The Moral Instinct]

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