In his Washington Post article, Jackson Diehl argues that the recent ‘crises’ in Lebanon & Ukraine (two democratic revolution countries) will provide a dilemma for the Bush administration: should the United States continue to promote democracy even when it yields anti-West countries?

The question really boils down to this: were the democratic revolutions about installing pro-West regimes in place of anti-West regimes or were they about installing democracies in place of dictatorships?

Though I think Diehl overestimates the likelihood of Ukraine returning to authoritarianism, his larger point has wide ranging implications. Is America really promoting democracy because democracies are peaceful and the best form of government? Or is America using democracy promotion to disguise more traditional balance of power politics?

I suspect the United States has pursued democracy promotion because, up until now, democracy promotion has been an effective means to its power politics end. Given the recent divergence, Bush will probably have to choose between these two policies.

So, the proof of America’s belief in democracy may very well be in the pudding of Ukraine & Lebanon.

Your country has a problem when inflation is at 1200%, the currency has had to be devalued by 60%, production of important natural resources like gold are down 50% over the past three years, teachers/government employees/soldiers are threatening strikes and revolts, 20% of the population has HIV/AIDS, tens of thousands are fleeing in fear, and all basic necessities of life are no longer available. This is Mugabe’s Zimbabwe. Hell on earth. The culmination of radical land redistribution policies and a totalitarian police state.

Watch out Venezuela. This could be your future.

Zimbabwe’s economic crisis has actually reached a point where it cannot be fixed under the current political regime; not simply because Mugabe is pure evil, but because his policies have been so repressive that the situation and any possible fix has slipped completely out of his control.

There is reason to hope that it will not be too long off before his regime completely collapses. Severe discontent has been brewing in the armed forces for the past year, a result of the hyperinflation and lack of pay increases to make up for it. Mugabe gained his soldiers’ loyalty by being able to feed them — no more. The people are either going to have to leave or revolt sometime soon or they will simply starve.

The Movement for Democratic Change (MDC), the opposition party against Mugabe, has finally reunited with Morgan Tsvangirai and leader of the split faction Arthur Mutambara meeting together in public at the Save Zimbabwe Convention, embracing, and finally pledging to work together to unseat the tyrant.

Now more than ever do they have a shot at doing so. Every sector of civil society, from students to trade unions to church groups are against Mugabe. The only thing holding them back is the support of the armed forced and police. Mugabe has relied for decades on the use of force. If he no longer has that power, he will no longer be able to rule. If this inflation continues and they are not adequately paid then they will once again begin to revolt over the next few months. That’s when the MDC should begin to take its chances.

At the end of May I wrote about Vietnam and the United States bilateral free-trade agreement, paving the way for the United States to approve a bill leading the country’s accession to the WTO later this year. Trade will lead to growth and prosperity; and, eventually, real democracy. Even we fought a war with them so many years ago, Washington and Hanoi are on pretty good terms these days. The latter knows that being friends with the former leads to big benefits in the long run.

There are some, however, who don’t want to see that happen. Venezuela’s Hugo Chavez, after just signing a flurry of arms deals in Belarus and Russia, is now sniffing butt in Vietnam. They signed some deals, mostly related to development of oil industry. But Vietnam, despite its so-called communist rulers, did not get suckered into his anti-imperialist game. Chavez may have “spoke warmly” about the Vietnam War, but they wouldn’t let him visit a museum of a shot-down U.S. warplane. Fact is, they don’t want to sour ties with the United States, and any deal they can make with Chavez is strictly business and small potatoes.

He’ll have to do better than that if he wants to sucker more people into his maniacal schemes. Only the true crazies, like Lukashenko of Belarus, Ahmadinejad of Iran, and Mugabe of Zimbabwe go for this stuff. Essentially, Chavez is trying to convince countries like Vietnam that working to destroy the guarantor of their prosperity is in their best interests, a logic that could only make sense to a madman. Luckily the Vietnamese are not mad and want nothing of it.

Venezuelan dictator Hugo Chavez embraces Iran’s Mahmoud Ahmadinejad
Source: Reuters, via Yahoo!

America, behold the future!

Carlos the Jackal’s biggest (and fattest) fan embraces 1979’s Iranian “student” hostage-taker of American diplomats ringleader in an epic spread-the-love embrace. I’m gonna throw up. I can’t blog anymore after looking at this.

If you aren’t, Quico at Caracas Chonicles has a whole gallery of photos of all the other dictators Hugo’s embraced down the side of his page here.

Between meaningful embraces with Iran’s leading U.S. hostage-taker and quality time frolicking on The Stalin Line at the Happy-Hitler Meadows, Venezuelan dictator Hugo Chavez still finds time to hawk toothpaste, too. He’s a busy man, a man of the world, but the Pitchman Supremo still manages to get it all in. Last year he was hawking corn flake crunchies, this year it’s bright red communist toothpaste. Oh that Hyuug! What would we all do without him? How would this stuff ever get sold? And there’s nothing more important than getting teeth as pearly white as Chavez’s.

Must be read to be believed, here.

Have a great weekend everyone! I am working on two posts about Switzerland. One will be about the Swiss national holiday on Tuesday in which I will compare it to the American July 4th and patriotism in the two, and the other will be about Swiss social-democracy. I will be leaving for Prague, Kiev, and Minsk in less than a week to gather writing material and take a look around. Again, if you are in any of these places, feel free to drop me a line.

In January, Russia’s state-controlled natural gas company Gazprom shut off the pipelines to Ukraine, causing shortages all throughout Europe. It could have been because Ukraine didn’t want to pay higher rates for its gas, but more likely it was political pressure aimed at dislodging the new pro-Western government of Viktor Yushchenko. And it worked. Now it looks like Russia’s favored candidate, Viktor Yanukovich, may be taking the reins of power soon.

But if you thought that was bad, it’s not the half of it.

Russia maintains “peacekeeper” troops in places where they aren’t want. One such place is the Transdnistria separatist region of Moldova, where an undemocratic pro-Russia government does its bidding. In the Caucasus, it maintains thousands of such troops in the Georgian breakaway provinces of South Ossetia and Abkhazia, both with undemocratic pro-Russia governments now. These so-called peacekeepers make sure that these governments cannot be dislodged by the Georgian government and reintegrated into the rest of the country.

Last week, the Georgian parliament voted for the Russian military to leave unconditionally. So what does Russia do?

For months, it has slowly been blockading the country, refusing to import many of its important products like wine. Now it has backed its ambitions by putting its support behind an Abkhazian militia leader who vows that he won’t allow Georgia to disarm his militia on the border. Russia warns that the operation could spark a wider conflict. Indeed, one day Georgia is going to try to retake control of its entire territory, and Russia will have to decide what it’s going to do.

The European Union voices its support for Georgia’s call for negotiation and reassertion of its sovereignty. Yet in reality it can do nothing, as Gazprom has the entire continent by the you-know-whats. At the same time, Georgia is a NATO-aspiring country, and if war were to break out, it would become a very complicated entanglement to say the least.

In the end I think Russia will have to allow the disarming of the militia, as it does lie outside of Abkhazia, and it would not want this larger armed conflict at the moment. Russia has already agreed to remove its peacekeepers from the separatist territories by 2008 and that it what will likely happen. It seems that nothing Georgia can do will work against its infinitely larger neighbor. The only purpose such votes serve is to beat the drum. They will just have to wait.

Media reports covering the reactions of certain Congressmen earlier in the year portrayed a rather negative outlook for the US-India nuclear deal, signaling another battle between the White House and Congress for approval. But apparently giving equal time to both sides doesn’t equally represent the full scale of the situation, as the deal passed the House 359-68. I could hear the cheers in India all the way from here.

For those who voted against it, I have just a few words. You are retarded.

Perhaps the implications of this bill have not been fully realized by some, but without it, the future could look a lot different. Economies around the world are rapidly expanding, especially in countries such as India and China. Unfortunately for the United States, these two are very close to vital oil and natural gas reserves in the Middle East and Central Asia. Already the drive for these resource between America, India, Russia, and China has been underway for years, and it looks like the latter two have a leg up on the competition. One day, when these resources dry up, the scramble for their ownership will result in a world where, strategically, everyone is an enemy when it comes to energy.

This deal is about making sure this doesn’t happen. The United States and India are creating strong and trusting bonds of true cooperation that will hopefully last for years to come. But India needs energy, and so does the United States. When it comes down to it, both will look out for their respective national interests, and that could pit the two against each other. With increasing Russian control of gas pipelines and penetration by China rising fast, this is a region that the United States cannot afford to be locked out of. By giving India an alternative to these resources by providing it with everything it needs to produce all of the nuclear energy it needs. Do that and it won’t have to fiercely compete with the United States in the future. It’s really that simple.

There are concerns that India will now have all the nuclear material it needs for its nuclear arsenal, and this is true. But what really matters is if it will use them. This is the question that one must ask; the reasoning. Why would the Bush administration negotiate this deal with India and then outright reject any possibility of it with so-called ally Pakistan?

The fact is, India is a relatively stable democratic country that has proven its internal resiliency through and through. Pakistan, on the other hand, is a military dictatorship with a quickly growing radical Islamist population. Nuclear plants in its hands would certainly lead to disaster. This is the reasoning. There is not an inherent danger to allow India to have nuclear power, yet there is every strategic reason that it should.

…and anti-democratic leaders. Maybe it’s a pirate thing?

Boli-Nica has some intriguing observations in a neat little photoessay here.

Here’s an amazingly elaborate YouTube satirizing Iran’s loathesome president, Mahmoud Ahmadinejad. Even without being able to read or understand the language, you can see exactly what the sentiment is and marvel at how well done and funny the little parody film really is, making the Iranian president look like a clown. All this is a sure sign of a dynamic Iranian democratic opposition.

See it here.

Venezuelan and Belarusian dictators strut before lines of troops in Minsk
Source: Reuters, via Yahoo!

First, take a look at the top of line weaponry Venezuelan dictator Hugo Chavez is buying from Vladimir Putin of Russia, to aim at us, just 1350 miles from our shores. This is but one step removed from another Cuban Missile Crisis. That’s a main reason for this junket to Belarus and Russia. So much for peace and friendship. What’s peace and friendship compared to advanced weaponry!

Miguel Octavio at Devil’s Excrement in a brilliant essay, writes of Venezuelan dictator Hugo Chavez’s visit with Aleksander Lukashenka, the Belarusian dictator of the Russian satellite state, Belarus. He says Chavez has more in common with Lukashenka than probably any other brutal dictator in the world. Both are in office by election fraud, both love military hardware, both are great repressors of democracy crowds, with an particularly raging hatred for what explicitly is known as ‘democratic revolution.’

I know that some naivos in England pompously dismiss Chavez as ‘democratically’ elected, even though they have never been to Venezuela, nor have they ever been exposed to anything beyond ZNet or Venezuelanalysis, nor have they read any of the work of even left-leaning Venezuelan bloggers, but perhaps because of this, they are sure they know more than any of us who watch Venezuela closely, and insist that Chavez is in a whole different category from the brutal Lukashenka, but here’s something important: Chavez in Belarus explicitly denounced “color revolutions” meaning: Orange, Rose, Daffodil and Denim ones. God knows what the people of Belarus thought upon hearing this Caracas thug say that. It sure wasn’t “aww, but he’s a democrat.”

Chavez pretty well broadcast that that he intended the Babes of Minsk the same sort of fate Lukashenka intended - and he thus unintentionally created a democracy bond between the two nations - Venezuela and Belarus, same as the bond that currently exists between Cuba’s democratic revolutionaries and the Czech Republic.

Make no mistake: Chavez hates all democratic revolution, and indeed all democracy. He even came to Belarus and kissed its dictator to make sure everyone understood that. The Belarusian Being Had blog has a whole string of news stories and photos here.

Meanwhile, Transitions Online Belarus has a deliciuous bloggy sarcastic perspective on how the visit looked from the Belarusian point of view, plus notes and links from the Belarusian language blogs well worth a click here.

Fausta at Fausta’s Blog points out that there indeed are plenty of people out there who don’t understand any of this. They don’t even understand that Belarus is run by one of the world’s most brutal dictators. Reuters is one of them, gaily calling these two avowed tyrants “mavericks.” She’s got a good post here.

Meanwhile, Boli at Boli-Nica has some cautionary notes for Chavez, noting that Russia and Iran have always distrusted the loudmouthed dictator and generally played a different kind of power game. It’s well worth reading here.

And Investor’s Business Daily has an editorial positing that this Chavez-Putin-Lukashenka alliance could presage a new cold war, because Putin’s arms sales and Chavez’s cavorting with the anti-democracy Lukashenka are two unfriendly signs that are likely to escalate. There’s also a lot of description of just what Chavez is buying from Putin and what those aircraft can do to the U.S. in this link here.

If you haven’t already seen Daniel’s post at Venezuela News & Views about Chavez & Lukashenka, along with his photos of the pair frolicking in the Happy-Hitler meadows of something unappetizingly called “The Stalin Line,” you really must click on for at least a first look here.

UPDATE: The weapons deal with Russia will total $3 billion, not the first-reported $1 billion. It also will include missiles capable of hitting the U.S. The Reuters item is here.

Today’s El Universal reports an increasingly serious situation with Venezuela’s oil supply, which is sure to have implications for its largest buyer, the U.S.

Not only is the country running its oil industry into the ground with fires and accidents, something that’s never occurred until these Chavista years, a result of the firing and blacklisting of all of Venezuela’s talented and dedicated engineers and managers - who have since been replaced by Chavista operatives known for their political loyalty and not their expertise - intransparency has grown.

Citgo recently announced that it would end supply to gas stations in 10 U.S. states due to the fact that it no longer can internally access enough Venezuelan oil, and the effort to supply these stations with imported oil at world prices was a burden.

El Universal now says that a new report out from Congress suggests that the U.S. needs to prepare for an oil cutoff from Venezuela, because they’re betting it’s something ahead of us. Whether through Chavez’s malice, or Chavez’s destruction of the oil fields themselves, it’s something we need to get serious about. Venezuela supplies about 12% of the U.S.’ energy needs, its fifth or sixth biggest supplier, down from number one in 1998, the year Chavez was elected president of Venezuela.

Today, I noticed some weird new Citgo ads, underlining and emphasizing that Venezuela is a reliable supplier of the U.S. I don’t know what it means except that maybe Venezuela is afraid we may cut THEM off or boycott them or something. They clearly don’t want the lunatic image of Hugo Chavez to extend to them. It’s called “fueling tomorrow” and the whole slick thing can be seen here.

Before the Islamic Courts overran Mogadishu, it was revealed that the CIA was supporting various warlord militias with hundreds of thousands of dollars in order to prevent them from taking over Somalia. The plan failed, however, and the group it advancing on the rest of the country. Life may not be good under the warlords, but the promise of a Taliban-like regime on the horizon doesn’t give much hope to the people of Somalia.

However, the United States has a backup plan in Ethiopia, which has now sent troops into Somalia in order to stop the Islamic Courts. The U.S. has given Ethiopia hundreds of millions of dollars in anti-terrorist training just for such an event that may occur. The government of Meles Zenawi has happily agreed to go along with the United States in defeating the Islamists because, really, all of that aid money is what keeps the government afloat. It’s a perfect arrangement for both. America gets what it wants, and Ethiopia gets…?

Well, Meles gets a lot. Ethiopia doesn’t really get anything.

This plan is rather convenient for Meles. He isn’t really losing any money because this entire war is being financed by the United States. If he is successful, he can depend on a longtime friend for his government. Only, it isn’t what one might consider democratic. You know, there is the whole problem of a lack of free and fair elections, thousands of people beaten and arrested when protesting the falsification, millions of aid dollars used for patronage instead of development, etc. This is simply one of those moments when the Bush Administration has to decide whether it really wants democracy in Ethiopia, because after this, there is no way that its support for the Meles regime will wither.

What the people of Ethiopia will be stuck with is a government that still doesn’t look after their interests. I realize that it is important to make sure that a Taliban-like regime is not established in Somalia, but at the same time the freedom of the Ethiopian people cannot be compromised because of it. The Ethiopian diaspora looks to this administration as their best hope at moving their country toward freedom, and it would be an opportunity wasted to win the hearts and minds of their people for America.

Something that went unnoticed due to the international attention focused on Lebanon was the sentencing of Belarussian opposition candidate Alexander Kozulin to 5 1/2 years in prison on July 13. His crime? Leading protest marches following the obviously fraudulent presidential election last March. You’d think he murdered someone or something. What is interesting, however, is that the candidate of the united democratic forces, Alexander Milinkevich, was never arrested, jailed, or even had any of his rallies broken up at the time. What gives?

The Eurasia Daily Monitor gives us a clue:

Kazulin has long had close links to state structures, he has influential contacts in Russia, and his election tactics were notably confrontational and personal (regarding Lukashenka’s private life in particular). He is articulate and personable, and to the presidential administration there is little doubt that he is more feared than other opposition leaders. Lyabedzka and Vyachorka are familiar foes and can be predicted to act according to democratic norms; the same applies to Milinkevich, who is essentially a political outsider who needs to penetrate the mainstream electorate and is better known outside the country than within.

Thus either the president or his associates fear Kazulin. While such apprehension might seem illogical to an outsider, Kazulin’s influence and popularity in Minsk are only too evident, and they are not reflected in his official election returns. Just as Lukashenka had to finish first, so Kazulin needed to finish last, if only so the Leader and/or his cohorts may sleep more peacefully at night.

This comes down to some very basic things that I noticed during the election campaign. Kozulin was brazen, perhaps too much so for the time, and consequently people were hurt and thrown in jail for an unnecessary march. On the other hand, the militia never openly forced the shutdown of the October Square protest led by Milinkevich because he constantly assured the authorities that his followers would not provoke them. And so they didn’t.

What Lukashenko fears the most is Kozulin’s insider portfolio of friends. He was the director of the Belarus state university for many years, and even a minister for Lukashenko at one time, giving him access to people in the country’s extensive bureaucracy. Furthermore, he seems to know so many powerful people in Russia that it is thought that Moscow is financing his campaign. Who knows? The threat that Lukashenko sees is that people from within his own government will begin to support Kozulin if the tides begin to change even in the slightest. Doing away with him may head off that chance.

I make this speculation in parallel to the imprisonment of politician Mikhail Marinych in 2004. He was the “Extraordinary and Plenipotentiary Ambassador of the Republic of Belarus, ex-minister of the Foreign Economical Affairs, MP of the 12th and 13th Supreme Soviet.” He was highly critical of Lukashenko and it appeared that his network within the regime could have split it and caused its downfall. Marinych was arrested and imprisoned on trumped up charges.

Milinkevich, on the other hand, has always been viewed with some skepticism as to his charm. The man spends a lot of time outside Belarus drumming up support for his campaign in the rest of Europe when he has truly, truly not developed a national popularity and grassroots institutionalization. He is certainly a political outsider, starting his campaign from the ground up. Lukashenko does not believe that he will be able to achieve this in the near future. It would take years to achieve this if it were the only factor involved. But with a hike in energy prices by Gazprom in the near future that will threaten Lukashenko’s ability to support his social model, it may be external factors that break down any internal support he has.

Pitched battle on the streets of Kinshasa, ahead of a controversial election
Source: AP, via Yahoo! News

Ahead of Congo’s first democratic election in 45 years on Sunday, street battles are engulfing the capital of Kinshasa.

At issue is electoral fraud. And the indifference of the international community, which, having spent $400 million for supposedly free and fair elections in its most complex election ever, just wants to hold the thing, get it over with, pull up stakes, and get the heck out.

Opposition leaders to Congo’s incumbent Laurent Kabila regime say not so fast.

Congo’s authorities have overprinted ballots, a surefire prerequisite for stuffing the ballot boxes if the results just don’t quite seem to go the way the incumbent party wants. Another problem is missing voter registration details, something that ensures that no one can check out whether certain voters exist. All of this is groundwork for fraud, which Congo’s 25.5 million distrustful voters, having experienced this sort of thing, are pretty sure is likely to be going on right now.

The Catholic Church, which over half of the 40 million Congolese citizens belong to, has warned voters not to bother with this one, because they see a lot of flaws that need to be fixed first.

But the United Nations, which is organizing the election, has brushed off the voter concerns and told Congolese to just shut up and vote. That indifference, and the refusal of the Kabila regime to inspire any confidence, has turned the once-high hopes of Congo’s voters into a pit of despair. Even today, as pitched battles rage in the streets, a top UN officials travelling to Kinshasa, says he’s not all that worried about anything ahead of Sunday. Pitched battles? Ho hum.

And Congo is a land of despair. A foreign-correspondent friend who went there in 2000 told me the degree of fear and paranoia on this poor country was matched only by that which is found in today’s Cuba. Four million people have died in Congo’s 1998-2003 civil war, making it the world’s deadliest.

Now, this rapidly failing election is threatening to reignite it. Keep an eye on this story.

Congo’s security forces chase opposition children protesting electoral fraud
Source: AP, via Yahoo! News

Global Voices has a link to the UDPS opposition party Web site, detailing protests, in French, here.

I’m thinking, not much. For decades we have sent nearly $3 trillion dollars in aid around the world that was supposed to be used for development but instead has been funneled into the personal checking accounts of dictators. The GDP per capita of the continent has actually fallen in this time, and the countries that we rank as being the most likely to succeed are actually experiencing negative growth. Every feel-good strategy that has been employed up to this point has failed miserable, causing more pain and suffering than there was before. Nice job, Bono.

Now, the one chance at opening trade and increasing the livelihoods of both the West and Africa alike has just collapsed under the sheer stupidity of the negotiators pushing it. After numerous recussitations, the Doha Round is dead.

The article deals mainly with negotiations between the United States, the European Union, Brazil, and India. The former two want the latter to open up their markets while still being able to maintain subsidies for their agricultural sector. Guess what? Brazil and India want the exact same thing. That doesn’t sound like free trade and competitive markets to me. It sounds like each trying to one-up the other. It also notes that because such a multilateral free trade agreement isn’t working out under the auspices of the WTO, the United States has gone ahead and done bilateral negotiations with several countries. The problem with this is that the larger country — the United States or the EU — is negotiating with a smaller one, and the smaller cannot expect the larger to give up its huge farm subsidies in exchange for an agreement. This obviously isn’t free trade at all; in fact, it looks more like the seeds for future trade conflicts.

Africa is the region that gets hurt the worse though. Most people in Africa are small-scale farmers who need to get their produce to some kind of market, yet with huge farm subsidies in the United States and European Union, there is no way that they can compete with the artificially lowered prices. What the United States has at the moment is legislation called the African Growth and Opportunity Act, meant to open up U.S. markets to African-made goods. However, to put it lightly, the whole thing is a crock of shit.

To quote a previous article on the subject:

Although imports from AGOA countries has increased 88% to $26.6 billion in 2004 alone, 87% of this total was petroleum products from just five out of 37 eligible countries, meaning that total imports only equalled $3.5 billion. Most of these leftovers are made up of minerals, metals, and textiles. Out of some 6000 eligible products, only these are exported in any significant quantity.

If anyone is actually serious about free trade and development, there has to be an equal playing ground for everyone. This means that no country can have significant tariffs or government earmarked agricultural subsidies that promote an unfair advantage for any one country’s goods. That’s economic warfare plain and simple, whether its the United States or Brazil doing it.

Aid is no longer going to cut it, because delivery and implementation is too hard to account for. Billions go to AK-47s instead of new roads and schools. Trade on the other hand is managed by individuals looking for better lives. Only, up to this very moment, it has always been apparent that no party has the political will to make this happen, because they really don’t care to.

The recent crisis in the Middle East has enflamed passions and continued the argument over history on the originations of the conflict. However, I have no desire to take this issue to task or recount different versions of a tortured history, and instead will focus on the reaction by Israel towards Lebanon in the context of democracy and international responsibility.

The problem for the West, Israel included, is not the terrorists themselves, but the atmosphere and conditions that create sympathy and participation in extremist behavior. Outside of Israel, there are three democratic states in the Middle East: Lebanon, Palestine, and Turkey. On the ground level, the average Palestinian makes 700 dollars a year, compared to over 30 thousand dollars for the average Israeli, Palestinians and Arabs in general live in autocratic, undemocratic, and economically stagnate societies, and the state of education and civil rights has regressed in the past fifty years. This provides ample support among the populous for movements that not only promise to punish the enemies of the West, but provide services and political outlets against undemocratic regimes that legitimize their actions. The popularity of extremist groups has meant nations, specifically Iran, Saudi Arabia, and Syria, have provided economic support and refuge for known terrorists. The pursuit of terrorism on a strictly military level fails to address the means about which terrorism becomes acceptable and entrenched into society.

The capture of two soldiers by Hezbollah and subsequent reaction by Israel has created a victim of Lebanon. Israeli military has been quick to punish Lebanon for the actions of Hezbollah as it seeks to reassert its ability to defend itself, provoked or preemptively. No matter how incapable Lebanon is of removing extremism on its own, Israel views it as still implicitly culpable for the acts of Hezbollah carried out on its territory. This can be defined as a bad apple spoiling the bunch, or for simplicities sake, collective punishment. While in the short term, this may be seen in Israel or the West as necessary action against a nation harboring terrorists, it is against the long term interests of all parties to undermine one of the only democracies in the Middle East region that apart from Hezbollah, has disavowed itself of militarist elements.

Lebanon is simply a fragile nation and a fledgling democracy. In the past thirty years, it has experienced a tortuous civil war along religious lines, a military occupation by Syria (left following the Cedar Revolution in 2005) and Israel (left in 2000 after 20 years of occupation), and has been an unwitting battleground in the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. The current crisis is an extension of the past that has proven peace is often a pseudonym for a lull in violence. The acts of collective punishment — the bombing of infrastructure, the debilitation of a nation, the killing of civilians in ‘collateral damage’ — are not only immoral but counter-productive towards stability and sustainable peace. While Israel has the right to defend itself, it must not pursue a defensive policy by compromising the chances for future peace, undermining the Lebanese government, and provoking hostility towards the West and sympathy for extremists by endangering civilians.

Originally posted on PBH.
*****

Previous Contributor Pieces on the War:
- Restoring the Cedar Revolution
- On Israel’s Long-Term Interest
- Israel did Nothing Other than Protest Itself
- Israel is at War

Boz has lots of bad news for Venezuelan dictator Hugo Chavez, in new polls from Mexico, Venezuela, Nicaragua, and all the other hot spots around the hemisphere. It’s an edifying read this week in this post here.

I’ve discovered an interesting new blog called Cubanology which has encouraging words for Cubans and Cuban exiles in a new iSi se Puede! - ‘yes, you can’ - campaign. It’s got an interesting colorful layout, and sterling reporting on all the doings in Fidel Castro’s Cuba.

See it here.

Alvaro Vargas Llosa is now in Lebanon and writing of the experience from his brilliant political and economic perspective, as well as from his eyes on the ground. Like some of our Publius posters, he warns that Israel risks destroying Lebanon’s vibrant civil society, just as it’s beginning to regain its confidence, even as it must end the terrorism that is destroying it. It’s a very tragic picture.

With the destruction of all Lebanon, what is likely to happen is that Hezbollah barbarians will fill that civil-society void, because they are never happier than when they are in a failed state.

It’s a beautiful essay, and well worth reading here.

UPDATE: Boli at Boli-Nica has further intelligent thoughts about this here.

If there was any question in anyone’s mind that Venezuelan dictator Hugo Chavez might not be a communist, that illusion was put paid to rest by Chavez’s visit today to Belarus, the last remaining dictatorship in Europe.

Agencia EFE reported the Venezuelan dictator’s visit to Europe’s most oppressive regime this way:

“We must make (Soviet Union founder Vladimir) Lenin’s slogan a reality regarding the unacceptability of the exploitation of man by man,” Chavez told the press.

The Venezuelan leader said he had come to Minsk to “seal a unity pact and lay the first stone for future relations between Belarus and Venezuela.” “Here, we feel among brothers and friends,” he added.

Chavez is the first Latin American leader to come to the former Soviet republic on an official visit.

He added that Belarus is developing a “social state model” like the one being constructed in Venezuela.

Now to put it into perspective, Chavez is scraping bottom on friends, having alienated most of his Latin American neighbors, the European Union states and the OPEC countries. East Asia is wary of him. The Eastern Europeans have always been wise to the egomaniac. The U.S.-Americans can’t stand him.

But Saddam’s gone, so all he has left are Zimbabwe and Cuba as real allies. Even North Korea (!) thought he was a little weird. That’s why he’s sought new friends and allies from the remaining dictator community. But not just any dictator, only prime dictators, true tyrants. That’s why he chose Belarus as his new friend and ally.

Both states are communistic, both are controlled by egomanic dictators, both are despised by their neighbors and both seek federations with old-line communist regimes of the past - Chavez of Cuba and Lukashenka of Russia.

Daniel’s got a really good analysis of this story here, along with a truly disgusting photo, redolent of the Brezhnev era, showing Chavez’s pastoral visit to something called “The Stalin Line.” You’ve never seen such a happy exuberant look on a brutal leftist dictator’s face as this.

For many decades Israel has been the fundamental “enemy” of the Muslim Arab world, viewed as an abberation imposed on them by Western imperialist forces. Nowadays things are a bit different. Pan-Arabism is dead only to be revived on special occassions, like Friday or when Mubarak’s poll numbers are dropping. No one fights really hard for the Palestinian cause or even sticks to the anti-Israel line anymore. The issue is warming down and Arab dictatorships just don’t care like they used to. Perhaps something is in the air.

Whatever it is, it smells like a wet mullah’s beard on a humid spring day. When Saudi Arabia and Egypt ostensibly condemned Hezbollah for attacking and kidnapping Israeli soldiers two weeks ago, some may have seen it as a sign of changing times. And they would be right, but perhaps not how they thought. The Arabs still loathe the Jews more than uncovered women (well, maybe not that); however, there is a new imperialist power in the region, having only emerged in recent years, which threatenes to overrun their hold on power.

Iran: The common enemy of Arabs, Israelis, and Westerners alike!

The rapid growth in funding and support for radical Islamist groups, whether they be Sunni or Shiite, is at least in part due to the expansionist desires of both, the two competing to be the dominant forms of Islam. Arab governments see the Persians as having effectively played its game, having culminated in the latest Israel-Hezbollah war, and like a jolt of electricity are rethinking who their true enemy is. (I know, pick any day of the week and it will be different, but work with me here). The split is showing between from the grassroots level up, reflecting on how this series of events has changed the political atmosphere, and where it may go from here.

The International Herald Tribune runs a story about the debate on internet message boards between the jihadists’ different views on Hezbollah’s actions.

BAGHDAD The question has popped up all over Internet sites frequented by Islamic militants: Should your average God-fearing jihadist support Hezbollah in its battle against the Zionist aggressors and their American lapdogs?
The answer seems a foregone conclusion, given the hatred of Israel across much of the Muslim world.

But consider this posting about Hassan Nasrallah, the leader of Hezbollah, that appeared on a Web site with ties to Al Qaeda: “Let us explain that the party of Hassan Nasrallah, for us, is a party which has a Shia ideology. Thus, he is considered our enemy like our enemies the Jews, the Christians.”

“So what should we do now? What side shall we take? Who shall we support?” asked the seemingly puzzled author, a Sunni known as Saif al-Din al- Kanani.

Rather than uniting the region’s holy warriors, the conflict in Lebanon has ignited a robust debate among militants over backing for Hezbollah, the Shiite group that set off the crisis when it captured two Israeli soldiers on July 12.

The discussions reflect the widening divide between Shiite and Sunni Arabs in parts of the Middle East, and Sunni fears of the ascendance of Shiite-dominated Iran. The Internet volleys, some of them full of fury and venom, also offer a window into the startling diversity of opinion among jihadist groups.

Accusing Palestinians of being anti- Shiite, one Iraqi bitterly writes: “It is better to concentrate one’s efforts on helping the Shiite kinfolk rather than the Sunnis.”

The world of Islamic militants on the Internet is nebulous, and it is often hard to pinpoint the influence of the myriad figures and groups. But U.S. experts say prominent supporters of jihad, including religious leaders in Saudi Arabia and Kuwait, have joined in the debate.

Well-recognized guerrilla groups and militant clerics in Iraq, like the 20th Revolution Brigades and the Muslim Scholars Association, have posted their views on conflict in the Middle East.

About 80 percent of the postings this week on jihadist sites concern support for Hezbollah, according to the SITE Institute, a group in Washington that provides translations of the messages.

The internet has given fighters and supporters on the lowest rung of the ladder the ability to exchange ideas with each other, allowing them to forge their thoughts without necessarily taking the cue of a radical tribal or religious leader. But this has not happened. Instead, it has served as a means to simply reinforce their own ideas and block out others. Many Sunni Arab jihadists are now siding against Hezbollah because it is an Iranian proxy, while many Shia Arab jihadists are siding with Iran.

One must out of necessity take the words of religious and tribal leaders as gold, as these are the commandments by which many people in the Middle East live. Knowing this reveals the split. The main barrier for many of us in the West is that of language. For years Arafat said one thing to us in English and another to his supporters in Arabic, but now we have shifted a microscope to the words of influential radical Islamists so that we know exactly what they are thinking.

The SITE Institute mentioned in the above article provides translations of materials from jihadist websites and media; the following is a summary of a speech made by radical Kuwaiti Sheik Hamed bin Abdullah Ali, passed around internet forums on July 13, regarding the “sharia interpretation” of recent events in Lebanon:

He writes of Iran as possessing an expansionist, imperialist spirit, hoping to spread its power and influence into the Gulf countries and Iraq, and using the ???????Crusader/Zionist??????? alliance as a conduit for part of its goals. However, the sheikh prays: ???????But at best and in the end - Allah willing - they will be burned with the same fire which they ignited to burn the Muslims.???????

Iran????????s ???????card??????? have presented the Shi????????a Republic an opportunity to achieve its plans, which according to the message, include the coalition with Syria and Iran????????s arm in Lebanon, Hezbollah, supporting parties in the countries of the Arab Peninsula and Iraq, capitalizing on the ???????Palestinian problem??????? and its steps towards achieving nuclear capability and becoming a threat atop that of North Korea and Venezuela. Sheikh Hamed al-Ali predicts that a confrontation is approaching, as the entire region of the Middle East in is between ???????Great War????????s hands and mass chaos???????. But in the end, it will be in Islam????????s favor, ???????even if Islam and its people will have a great disaster???????.

The ???????Shari????????a position??????? then, as the sheikh writes, maintains that Palestine is Islam????????s problem, as Muslims should not be deceived by Iran taking it as its own. Iran, he believes, is more dangerous than the ???????Crusader/Zionist??????? enemy. Therefore Sheikh Hamed al-Ali calls upon the Mujahideen in Palestine to be steady and show determination in jihad and Islam. He states: ???????We ask to help them by any means and support them with everything possible and make all efforts to release their blockade, this is a Shari????????a obligation; nobody can leave it anyway.???????

It also posts a summary of messages and videos by prominent Shia insurgency groups in Iraq which express support for Hezbollah against their Zionist enemy.

As the conflict intensifies between Israel, Palestinian territories and Lebanon, Shi????????a scholars and militant brigades in Iraq have issued statements and attack videos, respectively, in support of Lebanon and Palestine, and condemning Israeli and American actions. A jihadist Shi????????a forum, today, July 19, 2006, featured a statement from Ayatollah Ahmad al-Hussaini al-Baghdadi, writing from Najaf, concerning the ???????criminal aggression??????? on Palestine and Lebanon by the ???????Zionists??????? and the sectarian schism in Iraq. He believes that the ???????international arrogant forces,??????? specifically citing the United States, have created strife between the Sunnis and Shi????????ites in Iraq, and have provoked Israel to commit its attacks. As a result, Ayatollah al-Baghdadi states: ???????The only decisive solution to these challenges is to fight the imperialists, the Zionists, and the agents of the rulers and kick them out of our Islamic, sacred lands.???????

Similarly, Grand Ayatollah Kazem al-Hussien al-Haeri, an Iraq-born cleric residing in Iraq, posted to his official website, www.alhaeri.org, yesterday, July 18, a statement which was distributed to jihadist Shi????????a forums, that discusses the Israel-Lebanon conflict. In it he posits that the conflict is not between Israel and Hezbollah, but rather, the ???????non-believers??????? versus Islam. The Islamic Nation is called upon to support the Mujahideen in Lebanon, ???????sacrifice the most precious thing,??????? and attack those non-Muslims who initiated the attack on Islam.

Shi????????ite insurgency groups in Iraq, Imam al-Baqer Brigades and Imam Ali Brigades of the Leagues of the Righteous People ÄAsa????????ab Ahel al-HaqÅ, also commented on the Israel-Lebanon crisis in their attack videos issued Monday, July 17, 2006, and today, Imam Ali Brigades, in a three-minute video depicting bombings of American Humvees in Karbala and al-Hilla, killing two soldiers in one operation and unknown number in the other, states that the attacks are in ???????retaliation for the attacks by the Zionist forces on our brothers in Lebanon???????.

Imam al-Baqer Brigades???????? 1:21 minute video of attacking American forces in Baghdad bears the same message of striking enemy forces in Iraq to grant ???????victory??????? to the Lebanese resistance.

Right now the result of such a split is hard to determine. The Gulf states have been worried about Iran for a long time, and with Saudi Arabia and Egypt on board, it could be a realignment of Arab government policy explicitly against Iran with a more toned down approach toward Israel for the time being. This would mean that Syria, whose regime has been able to stabilize itself in part due to support from Iran, may have to cut off its aid to Hezbollah and let it live on its own.

For all its ambitions, Iran is the enemy that has crept up from the shadows, thrusting itself onto the scene in recent years as a ticking timebomb. Arab dictatorships are losing support and are working that Iran’s machinations will eventually lead to their overthrow. Israel will have to wait. For now, the war that they are worrying about is not just the one that they believe is against Islam, but the one within Islam.

I’ve been really busy settling down here in Switzerland for the next couple weeks before moving on to Ukraine and Belarus. Posting should be normal again on Monday like usual. Enjoy your weekend everyone!

Ah, NAFTA, and the glories of free trade. The economies of the U.S., Canada and Mexico have all increased threefold since that first shot against tyranny was fired with that alliance on New Year’s Day in 1994. There’s is nothing more impressive than free trade.

Or here’s another way of looking at it.

This is too funny! Is this the tragicomic end of the Glenn Greenwald saga?

Greenwald is presently denying the claims, but I don’t think it helps his credibility that his own biographical blurb reads almost exactly the same as the alleged sock-puppet posts in question…

UPDATE: He seems to have changed the tenor of his bio. I wonder what else he’ll be revising?

Why Greenwald is probably doomed

I believe Glenn Greenwald is probably doomed to relegation. If the suspicions around his online activity are correct — and judging by his response of frantic denial, personal attacks, revisionism, etc., it feels like they are — then there are plenty of incentives for the truth to come out, and as we’ve seen in similar cases, the truth almost certainly will out; that’s pretty much an Internet axiom.

Once that happens, the barriers for him become almost insurmountably high, because blogs are an almost completely free information market — the very same freedom whose low barriers to entry allowed Greenwald himself to gather a large-ish following in “only 9 months.” If the choice is between reading Greenwald’s blog and reading one of the thousands of identi-Greenwalds who would gladly take his place, then everybody, including his current supporters and excepting pretty much only his immediate family, would have nearly infinitessimal motivation to continue reading him, and his readership will dry up. Would you choose to read a guy who goes around posting on the Internet under a variety of pseudonyms, talking up this “really smart” fellow Glenn Greenwald who has a New York Times best-selling book and graduated from a top-5 law school, when you can get the same content at the same price and with no difficulty whatsoever in switching from one to the other? Not unless you really, really liked Glenn Greenwald. (Hell, you probably wouldn’t even let him stand next to you at a cocktail party.)

In the world of blogs, unlike with the New York Times or a cable news station, there are few special protections and few market conditions that would likely benefit Mr. Greenwald. His small network effect is no match for the countless new bloggers waiting in the wings. He can’t drown out the coverage with his own perspective or coverage of completely unrelated topics. He can’t rely on being a monopoly source whose readers have nowhere else to turn, or in any way abuse a non-existant monopoly power. Essentially, I think he would be forced into relative obscurity, and no spasm in the world will prevent another hiltziking. (Michael Hiltzik: former Pulitzer Prize-winner, now a page of amusing Google results.)

Altogether a good excuse to exit the stage and spend time on something more personally meaningful, but somehow I doubt that would suit Glenn Greenwald’s personality!