There are far better things to send to the Middle East than arms, politicians, missionaries threats or ambassadors that will foster integration and cross cultural understanding, Horatio

It was, said the director, an Elizabethan atmosphere. People came and went throughout the play. There was chatter and laughter and crying babies. One boy kicked a football, another swung from an overhead metal bar near the stage.

Yet this was not the Globe theatre on the south bank of the Thames, but an open-air performance in the shadow of Israel’s concrete wall separating Bethlehem from Jerusalem. One of the defining symbols of the occupation, here the wall towers over a Palestinian refugee camp, making it perhaps an appropriate setting for a Shakespeare play with themes of exile, injustice, resistance and – ultimately – freedom and forgiveness.

Overlooked by Israeli military watchtowers, and against a backdrop of graffiti (“One day the sun will rise on a free Palestine”), the British troupe struggled at times to hold the attention of the mainly young audience, nearly all of whom were seeing a Shakespeare play for the first time.

via Shakespeare in the West Bank: British troupe savour ‘Elizabethan’ crowd | World news | The Guardian.

Abusing another country’s resources is not new; stealing the actual ground from under their feet might be taking liberties too far!

Where once there was seabed, hotels, a casino and airport rise off Singapore’s coast.

We needed his expertise, grit and experience. RIP .

A man who served honorably and productively.

His family should be proud.

A life well lived

God speed, Richard Holbrooke

The French are an excitable people. They take to the streets at the drop of a hat…or a brief delay in a retirement entitlement. The Americans have a similar penchant for street protests, but less of a predilection for burning things. The French do have a certain way with  flambé automobiles. This contrasts starkly with the stoic British. A recent BBC comedy show pointed out rather than riot on the streets the British would only sigh dejectedly if the police were herding the whole population into stadiums for detention.

Besides the pension controversy, the French are also all of lather about burqas. They recently passed legislation limiting the where and when such attire can be worn in a nation passionate about maintaining its secular nature. This irked Osama Bin Laden so much that he released a tape condemning the act and threatening violent reprisals against the French and their foreign interests.

This restriction on a group’s apparent religious freedoms also angered some French. With Gallic flair, a pair of self-named “Niqabitches” made a film in satire of the restriction showing themselves strutting around French government buildings wearing face veils and mini-shorts. This caused no end of consternation among French officials who were not sure if these beautiful young things were offending against some ordinance or other. I am a fan of satire, and think that this non-violent protest is a priceless piece of Gallic politicking (see the video below).

Viva les French girls!

In an article published on the news website, rue89, the political science and communication students wrote that they wanted the film to be a facetious way of criticizing a French law banning the face veil worn by some Muslim women and which many religious scalars describe as un-Islamic.

“To put a simple burka on would have been too simple. So we asked ourselves: ‘how would the authorities react when faced with women wearing a burka and mini-shorts?’” asked the girls, of whom one is Muslim.

“We were not looking to attack or degrade the image of Muslim fundamentalists – each to their own – but rather to question politicians who voted for this law that we consider clearly unconstitutional,” they wrote

French girls strut in burka and mini-shorts

It is somewhat difficult to avoid the increasingly strident levels of “debate” here in the US as we hurtle toward the mid-term elections. The extreme right seems ascendant and is certainly dominating the headlines.  We are  seeing some apparently bizarre candidates look as though they might possibly get elected. The flame of Tea Party ardor seems fiery bright, and as an observer external to the voting process though resident here, it makes one wonder how is this possible in such a seemingly advanced nation?

In an attempt to understand the issue one has to immerse in the debate. A good place to see what this ultra-conservative anger is all about is to visit sites that traffic in such extremism such as Tea Party darling  Michelle Malkin. Visiting Malkin’s blog is like intellectual porn; something one feels dirty and guilty about, but necessary to understand the beast-like rage within the American psyche. Malkin’s posts are nothing extraordinary. She deals with the conservative hot points such as national security, border control and government (especially world-government) conspiracies against ‘we, the people’. She demonstrates the classic insecurities of type. She has the paranoia symptomatic of the Cheney led xenophobes, and the classic ‘shut the gate so no-one else can get in’ of a first generation immigrant. It is, however, in her reader’s comments that the underbelly of the beast can be dissected. If you want to understand the primeval rage of the ‘race, religion and rifle’ crowd, you just need to trawl the comments to understand their frustrated anger and misinterpretation of current realities.

America is in transition – economically, culturally, demographically and in terms of its global soft power influence. In recent times, America was the dominant world power. It enjoyed a historically brief period of unipolarity in terms of it world standing. It was the super power; the largest economy, the one with all the bling, and on and on. Americans saw themselves as somehow better. They self-identify with American exceptionalism, as if the average American is somehow intrinsically better than folk of other nations. This period of American ascendancy was but a moment in historical terms, perhaps a couple of hundred years or so. This contrasts with the fact that China and India were the biggest economies for more than 1800 years before losing that crown.  Now it appears it will not be many years before one or more of them reclaims it.

This is where the American anger comes from – a rapidly changing reality.  Unipolar hegemony is out, as multipolarity appears on the horizon. Soon there will be no one superpower, but many. China, India, Brazil and more are vying to take their seat at the big table. This in actuality is a better reality. Any one power, regardless of benign intent, upsets the balance. It sets a singular agenda of  nationalist objective. It is difficult to seek mutual advancement when one big kid has the keys to the car and the credit card for the gas. America is transitioning from what was to what will be, and this is hard on the heartland of the nation. If you want a insight into this process take a listen to the Council on Foreign Relations recent podcast by Kishore Mahbubani. Leave aside his breezy passing off of China’s human rights record, a common opinion in Asian countries used to more autocratic government, and focus on his dissection of US foreign ,  domestic, education and social policy.  It explains this moment in history so adroitly.

Unfortunately, this is not the sort of content that will get widespread airtime on the cable channels like Fox and CNN, and as a result does not permeate the consciousness of mainstream America where Beck, Hannity and Ann Coulter dominate. So as a result, the American populace doesn’t get to experience the broader picture of the world’s perception. America main street attempts to analyze itself from within, without the benefit of perspective, and as a result, has become angry, impotent and truculent. This unstoppable change of multipolarity, internalization and a clipping of US hegemony infuriate those who can’t understand the driving forces are larger than a single nation. The anger is real, but the cause is being displaced with base rage at the current US President.

Presidents Obama and Bush marked bookends of the transition, and the great divide in the American population. Bush is the traditional American hero – cowboy, war chief, not intellectual, everyman and bombastic. This appeals greatly to the old America – clinging to the past that see ‘America the Great’, a land unsurpassed where the dream can still be achieved. In reality, this passed a generation ago. Economic mobility is now greater even in places like Europe than it is in the US where the next generation is more likely to remain the same class as their parents. It contrasts even more sharply with the emerging economies where a booming middle class is rapidly appearing better educated, hungrier for advancement and in greater numbers than America can compete with.

President Obama represents the next age. He is a transitional leader, but for many in the country they are not yet willing to let go of the past and embrace the wave of the future. Obama talks to other world leaders, apologizes where he sees transgressions, understands the need for investments in education and social supports such as health, and appears more a citizen of the world than of the mid-West.  This enrages those who look in the rear view mirror at history, and that is where the anger of the Tea Party and their ilk comes from. Knowing this, it becomes somewhat easier to comprehend this backswing and what the mid-term results mean. It is the last great throes of the past; in one more generation it will pass, but the passing will be painful for many.

Those who observe America through a microscope of objectivity can see the pattern.  Like a maze that cannot be seen in its entirety unless from a distance, many in the American populace can’t understand the bigger picture. It confuses both sides. The new America cannot understand the Tea Party Anger anymore than the old America can stomach the changes occurring in its midst. In these elections, the mantra of the angry masses seems to be ‘we, the people’, and ‘it’s the economy stupid.’ In reality, it is more ‘it’s history happening, stupid’ and ‘we, the people’ now means  a whole lot more than just Americans and their Constitution. Time to crank up ‘the times they are a changing’ and recognize that massive social change such as occurred in the sixties is not a one-off event, but merely part of a continuum that continues in tsunami waves at times and not always as just gradual erosion. Big waves can hurt, and many will be as the country changes. What emerges, however, will certainly be different and many of us hope it will be better.

This says it all. The disparity of the world picture form the left to the right, the secular to the religious, the liberal to the Tea Party, the xenophobe to the internationalist is all here in this humorous little drawing.  There is sometimes great insight in humor! Don’t know who made it, but kudos to the artist.

This may well be one of those articles that ends up with me in hot water. The thought process arose from listening to a recent BBC interview with Australian author, Peter Carey. Carey is a long time resident and a big fan of New York, but the interviewer pushed him to give an opinion on America in general. Carey attempted to dodge the question a few times, but backed into a corner he espoused some thoughts that acted as a catalyst for not dissimilar ideas of my own. Carey expressed the view, and I paraphrase, that he didn’t understand America in totality. He said that ’outside of New York what is America? A collection of highways and a population where as many as a third believe that dinosaur remains were left on earth by God as a puzzle for us. Where up to one third think Obama is not a Christian and where twenty per cent think he isn’t even American.’ There was more in a similar vein, but the point was clear. Americans often come across as …well…as a little stupid when viewed from outiside.

Now cheap shots at Americans with their Puritanism, social conservatism, xenophobia and over-confidence are easily made and all too frequently pursued.  However,  Carey’s ponderings raise a valid question. Americans are not congenitally stupid; no nation that is so economically successfully can only be peopled by rubes.  So why are there such disconnects between the level of debate and understanding in the US versus other developed nations. Partially, it is a question of history, but what can be posited from the current upsurge in regressive forces such as movements like the Tea Party seemingly predicated on rejecting societal advancement, liberalization and internationalization?

A large part of the blame can be attributed to US media. As a long time US resident,  I know from personal experience that the level of analysis and in-depth reporting here is deplorable. American news is the epitome of the sound bite where catchy one liners act as a news report to a visually over-stimulated and intellectually-soporific audience. This is a not a new theme for us (no pun intended) we have reported on this before in such tongue in cheek articles as “Is the US media making Americans stupid?” Yes, the level of inane commentary on both sides of the great American divide by the likes of Malkin, Coulter, Olberman et al makes one despair, but there is more to it than that. US news and its media commentators are bad, appallingly bad, but if the populace were inspired to look for knowledge, a few minutes and a search engine could take them to the world press.  That is not what generally happens. Many Americans remain poorly informed and lock step on the populist talking points.

The US cable news and talk shows are also  incredibly partisan and a large part of the problem. The likes of Fox News and MSNBC serve as poster children for this. Fox has particular impact as several studies indicate that the far-right of the Republican base gets most of its information from visual and auditory sources such as Fox and radio talk shows. This contrasts to the Liberals who empirically seek written sources which are often less extreme and usually more detailed. However, this again is not enough of a deterrent to anyone that does actively seek out information. These are no real excuse for dumb. Dumb doesn’t just happen in and of itself; it is usually a product of a systemic failure.  Does the issue lie in the education system? It is true that the public system is often poorly funded and that the school year is far shorter than America’s international competitors.

Unfortunately, the vigorous work ethic and strive to learn has not rubbed of on the nation’s children. American children have school for only 180 days year, compared to the 195 days in Germany and 200 in East Asia. Furthermore, they only have about 2-3 hours of homework per night and are not pressured by society to take extra classes after school; a fact that appalls nations such as Japan and India, whose children take after school classes regularly to help them with their studies.

Americans also have the shortest school day, a mere six and half hours, all packed into the morning and early afternoon. Countries such as Denmark and Sweden boast a staggering 40 to 50 hour school week, making some American education reforms re-think they way the write guidelines for the nation’s schools.

U.S. education falling behind those of other countries | Saratoga Falcon

Anecdotally, the US education system seems less rounded in terms of subject matter and a little less rigorous than its counterparts, but is this enough to explain the naiveté and paranoia that often peppers American debate? A little less rote knowledge of the Constitution could be balanced out with a better grasp of world geography, but again this is not enough to explain the intellectual under-achievement. How does the US stack up in IQ measurement to other nations? A controversial academic study, “IQ and the Wealth of Nations”, ranked the US 19 in IQ  among other relatively high GDP per capita nations, well behind many of the other developed countries. This ranking puts the US behind many of the Asian and European nations and sadly on a par ranking with France and Mongolia. One fails to see what other similarities these countries have other than a middling comparative IQ average. The US and Mongolia, leaving France aside, would not usually be peers in a league of nations

So this brings us back to the question that Carey raised in his interview, ‘what about America?’ Is it really only a nation of God-fearing, dinosaur doubting, anti-climate change gun lovers or is it more like its left and right coasts, sophisticated, nuanced and diverse. It is a question I tussle with frequently but the trend doesn’t look good, particularly with the current political polls indicating a probable boomerang to the social right. I foreshadowed the issue a while back in the article “Is America bringing stupid back?” I hope for all our sakes that both Carey and myself are wrong about that, but with the likes of Sarah Palin, anti-immigrant Governor Brewer and Christine O’Donnell anti-masturbation policies showing  surging populist support, one does have to wonder.

The military aberration that is cluster munitions has wrought an incredible price in terms of death, disfigurement and amputation. Some countries ratified a treaty to stop making cluster munitions, dispose of stockpiles, and clear contaminated areas. Several key countries including the US did not. Last week the treaty came into effect, and a article on the devastation still brought by dormant cluster munitions tells us why this is important.

Cluster bombs affect about two dozen nations, from Afghanistan to Zambia. But it was Israel’s use of the weapon in Lebanon in August 2006, causing more than 200 casualties over the following year, that spurred members of the international community to act. On Aug. 1, the Convention on Cluster Munitions comes into force under international law.  The first gathering of the 106 member states will be held in the Laotian capital in November. Israel nor the United States will attend. In fact, the US, Russia, China, India, Pakistan, Brazil, and Israel are not signatories to the treaty. The US, among others, has argued that cluster bombs are an effective military tool that saves their soldiers’ lives. The US has also argued that it’s shifting to “smart” cluster bombs that self-destruct or deactivate, reducing the risk to civilians. Laos, the most bombed country in the world per capita, strongly backs the treaty. Between 1964 and 1973, the US dropped more than 2 million tons of ordnance in a campaign kept hidden from Congress and the public. Since then, about 20,000 civilians have been maimed or killed by unexploded bombs, according to Legacies of War, a Washington-based group that raises awareness about America’s “secret war” in Laos.

As cluster bomb ban takes effect, the view from Laos – CSMonitor.com

We have reported on this issue previously. Progress seems slow, key players won’t act, and the deadly legacy of cluster munitions continues to take its toll.

The Reuters Alert briefing document on cluster munitions gives an excellent backgrounder on the issue.

“WHAT ARE THEY?

– A cluster bomb, or cluster munition, is a weapon containing multiple explosive submunitions. They are dropped from aircraft or fired from the ground and are designed to break open in mid-air, releasing the submunitions which can cover an area the size of several football fields.

– Anyone in that area is very likely to be killed or seriously injured. Many bomblets fail to detonate immediately, and, like land mines, can maim and kill years later.

WHEN AND WHERE HAVE THEY BEEN USED?

– The Soviet Union first used cluster bombs in 1943 against Nazi troops.

– Between 1964 and 1973, the U.S. military dropped an estimated 260 million cluster munitions in Laos. So far, fewer than 400,000 have been cleared, a meagre 0.47 percent and at least 11,000 people have been killed

– At least 15 countries have used cluster bombs, including Eritrea, Ethiopia, France, Israel, Morocco, the Netherlands, Britain, Russia and the United States. A small number of non-state armed groups have used them.

– Cluster bombs were used extensively in the Gulf War, Chechnya, the former Yugoslavia, Afghanistan and Iraq.

– The U.N. estimated that Israel used up to 4 million submunitions in Lebanon during a 2006 war against Hezbollah guerrillas, who also fired more than 100 cluster munition rockets into northern Israel.

– Russia used several types of cluster munitions, both air- and ground-launched, in a number of locations in Georgia’s Gori district in 2008. Also Georgia used cluster munitions in the August 2008 conflict with Russia.

DEADLY LEGACY:

– One third of all recorded cluster munitions casualties are children. Sixty percent of cluster bomb casualties are people injured while undertaking everyday activities.

STOCKPILES:

– Billions of submunitions are stockpiled by some 76 countries. A total of 34 states are known to have produced more than 210 different types.

– In March 2007 Belgium became the first country to make it a crime to invest in companies that make cluster bombs.”

Given the deadly legacy of cluster munitions one would think that a global treaty, similar to the one on landmines signed in 1997, would be desired by all. The landmine initiative was deemed to be successful, only defiant Burma has deployed landmines since that treaty was enacted. However, cluster munitions are still widely spread. Even today, a large arsenal was found secreted in the Afghan mountains, over 290 tonnes of hidden armaments which included a stockpile of the deadly cluster bombs. The US has recently stopped exporting cluster bombs due to international pressure, one of its biggest customers being Israel. However, occurring so late in the game this has limited effect, as Israel has now developed and continues to manufacture its own domestic version. Pressure needs to be kept on the nations that did not sign the treaty. The use of cluster bombs needs to be made illegal. Even today, so many years after the Vietnam war people die or are maimed every month by such munitions, that due to they way they are scattered indiscriminately and cannot be mapped or disarmed without massive trained personnel deployment. Cluster bombs are an indiscriminate killer that remain active long after a war has ended, and it is often children who carry the brunt of death or disability. It is a great shame that such an opportunity was missed, and the major producers should be called to answer for their non-action by the UN and by the populations of their respective countries. That is the story, 111 countries say yes, but the Top 5 producers and users of cluster bombs remain silent and uncommitted to the curtailment of their use.

Ban on cluster bombs – who didn’t agree?

It is always a conundrum; which comes first the technology or the demand for its application? Many of us lived happily without smartphones, in fact we didn’t even know we needed one. Flash forward to the 4^th generation of iphones, the latest blackberries and androids and it is difficult to imagine life without them.

Technology also creates the potential for adaptation ad application in ways never imagined by the engineers that designed them. Such is the case of GPS in even the most basic of current cell phones and its impact on the remote Bedouins in Mauritania. The Bedouins had a unique skill of being able to track people through the remote desert. Such valuable skills were utilized by governments and private parties to located missing or in some cases hiding individuals.

These traditional skills are now less in demand due to increasing cell phone coverage of these remote areas. People who are lost can call for help.  People attempting to hide can now be monitored and tracked using their phones. I doubt anyone in the labs at the major cell phone company foresaw that possibility.

Despite the important position they have been occupying in Mauritania for a long time, trackers agree to losing ground to technology as the prevalence of cell phones is remarkably reducing the demand on tracking, said Mahmoud weld el-Mena, a famous tracker in northern Mauritania.

“Mobile phone companies are increasing coverage in the desert and this makes people resort less to trackers,” he told Al Arabiya. “When people get lost, those looking for them give them a call and the problem is solved.”

Weld el-Mena said that in the past he used to work in crimes like theft and murder and the police depended on him and his fellow trackers whenever the desert was the crime scene.

“Now I am basically asked to look for lost people and cattle or at most to follow someone who attacked a village or stole some camels.”

The advancement of investigation tools and the emergence of modern ways to follow criminals, weld el-Mena added, also contributed to making the trackers’ job redundant.

“Now the police are equipped with high-tech devices that track people and identify criminals.”

News | Mauritania trackers threatened by technology

The way the US media is over-hyping the so called direct peace talks brings  a twinkle to the eye of the rather mislead American readership.  It as if this posturing isn’t another round of theater that has accompanied gentle US pressure for decades. Israel goes through the motion of negotiations so as to not upset the American aid and armaments machine that feeds them, but even a most casual analysis shows you there is no real intent here.

Netanyahu would be committing political suicide to make any meaningful concessions. His coalition with the extremist Foreign Minister led group in the Knesset would immediately fracture. Avigdor Lieberman and his ilk won’t countenance concessions and neither will the land-grabbing settlers. The Palestine side offers no better options. A fissured political representation headed by a leader that lacks credibility post the Gaza war, and lacks authority given the dubious legal rights to hold office.

While we were on summer hiatus we were ever hopeful that one of the influential western media would run the video footage of Netanyahu proudly and openly admitting (in a candid moment between his two Knesset leadership roles) how he deceived the Americans and undermined peace efforts. Instead, we got vacuous reports about the on and off again Bristol and Levi affair, and the like. The US media once again applying its laser like focus on the trivia while the big issues are left to languish.  Don’t be fooled, by CNN and Fox’s pretty blinking lights, watch the video and read the report below. Afterwards, if you still think the current peace talks are real, please let me know as I have some junk bonds and bridges you may want to add to your portfolio

The contents of a secretly recorded video threaten to gravely embarrass not only Benjamin Netanyahu, the Israeli prime minister but also the US administration of Barack Obama.

The film was shot, apparently without Mr Netanyahu’s knowledge, nine years ago, when the government of Ariel Sharon had started reinvading the main cities of the West Bank to crush Palestinian resistance in the early stages of the second intifada.

At the time Mr Netanyahu had taken a short break from politics but was soon to join Mr Sharon’s government as finance minister.

On a visit to a home in the settlement of Ofra in the West Bank to pay condolences to the family of a man killed in a Palestinian shooting attack, he makes a series of unguarded admissions about his first period as prime minister, from 1996 to 1999.

Seated on a sofa in the house, he tells the family that he deceived the US president of the time, Bill Clinton, into believing he was helping implement the Oslo accords, the US-sponsored peace process between Israel and the Palestinians, by making minor withdrawals from the West Bank while actually entrenching the occupation. He boasts that he thereby destroyed the Oslo process.

He dismisses the US as “easily moved to the right direction” and calls high levels of popular American support for Israel “absurd”.

He also suggests that, far from being defensive, Israel’s harsh military repression of the Palestinian uprising was designed chiefly to crush the Palestinian Authority led by Yasser Arafat so that it could be made more pliable for Israeli diktats.

All of these claims have obvious parallels with the current situation, when Mr Netanyahu is again Israel’s prime minister facing off with a White House trying to draw him into a peace process that runs counter to his political agenda.

Netanyahu admits on video he deceived US to destroy Oslo accord | America at War