Labour: Education: New teachers union battle in govt schools on the horizon

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America's National Education Association stirred up a convulsive reaction to its narrow-guage activism to impose features of the Gay ideology on teachers, schools, curriculum, the NEA and its affiliates, and worst of all the students. The NEA has a core intent on using schools to teach all children in a way that many parents and their friends (homos like myself included) find repulsive to our most ultimate values. Once again, the whole project is secularist to its core. It's part of a larger effort to deconstruct Christian culture in the USA, and to determine (a deeper-than-ever) banishment of Christian faith-discourse from the public square. When the effectively-monopolistic lock on the labour-representation of teachers works thru an entrenched union élite to exclude full participation in the profession to those who don't comly to the established religion of the union, the question of Gay ideology becomes just one among many issues at stake. Unfortunately, that issue is the only one that puts a sufficient number of teachers (political conservatives, and non-strict conservative religious people of Catholic, Evangelical, Judaic, Muslim and many others from across the spectrum - even iincluding assorted atheists and agnostics) in momentary motion for change. Again unfortunately, the alternatives being offered are not alternatives. They are all individualistic cop-outs, they add nothing to a restructuring of labour relations and labour representation in that particular sphere of work -- teaching in the near-monopoly of govt schools.

Evangelicals especially annoy me in this respect. They seem to individualize everyting so radically that it all, the whole of the societal order, dissolves into sand in their subchristian worldview (I'm some kind of evangelical, and obviously no leftist). The crippling individualistic cop-out is unworthy of a confession of faith in Jesus Christ, especially in our day and age. I don't have much of a brief to make for ex=Gays, but near the bottom of this blog-entry is a letter from a teacher, who identifies herself as an ex-Gay and who has ins+it into the Gay ideology's agenda in the schools and in regimenting all teachers into their sexual program (which really does little else than militanlty spread the dominant set of Hollywood mores). She, at least, does not take the individualistic route. She is staying in her union and working longterm to change the NEA. Unfortunately, I don't see a word of tolerance for homo teachers who object to the Gay ideology/agenda, wanting to teach in a way that re-inforces traditional values and parental guidance, but without hatred, bigotry, and scapegoating.

My regret is that there is no move toward Christian unionization to contest the monopoly of the NEA, and at the same time not become a persecutory hammer to pulverize every homo teacher. A Christian teachers union in the public schools should f+t on the level of ideas, organizing around the positive contributions possible to Christian labour-representation alongside unions of other ultimate values in a pluralist system. We do not have pluralist democracy in the labour representation of teachers (or much of anywhere else in the American labor-org sphere of society.

Christian Teachers Seek Alternative to NEA

UNITED STATES, Jul20,2k6 (LifeSiteNews.com) – The National Education Association’s (NEA) endorsement of same-sex “marriage” has lead a number of teachers to consider alternative organizations to the powerful liberal teachers union for job insurance and legal aid, according to Agape Press.

As Agape Press reports, the NEA’s pursuit of an anti-family agenda and its promotion of homosexual “marriage” has caused an upsurge in the numbers of conservative, Christian, and pro-family educators looking for alternatives to the liberal teachers union. Just one day after the American Family Association (AFA) warned its members that the NEA was preparing to endorse homosexual “marriage”, the Christian Educators Association International (CEAI), recorded 5,000 more visits to its official website than the daily average.

“We have been receiving e-mails, phone calls, and a lot of interaction through our website with a level of frustration like I have never seen before,” said Finn Laursen, the executive director of CEAI. “It almost seems like this open endorsement of same-sex marriage is almost the straw that broke the camel’s back, if you will.” reports, the [National Education Association’s] pursuit of an anti-family agenda and its promotion of homosexual 'marriage' has caused an upsurge in the numbers of conservative, Christian, and pro-family educators looking for alternatives to the liberal teachers union. Just one day after the American Family Association warned its members that the NEA was preparing to endorse homosexual 'marriage,' the Christian Educators Association International recorded 5,000 more visits to its official website than the daily average. 'We have been receiving e-mails, phone calls, and a lot of interaction through our website with a level of frustration like I have never seen before,' said Finn Laursen, the executive director of CEAI."

But CEAI is not a union either, and therefore is not really engaged in an inner reformation of teachers labour-representation. Lamentably.

We continue to hear from many educators, support staff, parents, and other friends of education who are frustrated with the policies and positions of the National Education Association. Many are looking to us as an alternative to this union.

CEAI is a professional association that offers liability and legal protection that many look to unions for. We are not a union and therefore do not negotiate contracts; however, we do all we can to support our members, most of whom serve in our public schools. Liability and job protection are available for as little as $129 annually.

I couldn't navigate to anti-abortion and anti-homo Lifesite from either the XNMP source (Jul28,2k6; scroll down to this date's blog-entry; a Hat Tip to Jon Reid Kennedy) and or the Google Search results. But I did find the same text with a little more detail at . XNMP does give the name of the author of the Lifesite article, Peter J. Smith, while indicating there's more to the article. So, I need another strategy, or I need to find some pick-up of the story elsewhere. Meanwhile, the search turned up this non-union "alternative" teachers non-union professional organization in Michigan, as reported by the Michigan Education Report. The monopoly union is the Michigan Education Association, state affiliate of the National Education Association. The "alternative" is the Associaton of American Educators.

The Association of American Educators, a professional association with members in all 50 states, offers teachers access to insurance, career development and industry information without worrying about what it calls "the partisan politics of bargaining or labor unions."

"Teachers who join us do so for a vast number of reasons," says Heather Reams, director of communications for AAE. "But they almost always tell us the same thing. They’re glad there’s an alternative."

Reams said teachers who do not wish to belong to labor union mention factors such as moral issues, political issues or just the fact they do not appreciate lacking alternatives in what they support.

"Many times, people are frustrated because their union is supporting causes that they are against," Reams said. "They don’t have a voice and they feel like other people are making choices for them."

Reams pointed to a January editorial in Wall Street Journal that caught the eye of teachers nationwide. The Journal detailed how the National Education Association had given $65 million in 2005 to political groups that have little to do with education, such as Jesse Jackson’s Rainbow/PUSH Coalition, the Gay and Lesbian Alliance Against Defamation, the Fund to Protect Social Security and the National Women’s Law Center.

Sorry! No link is provided, so I'll have to research that one also, but WSJ takes its articles pay-for very quickly.

There is also the American Federation of Teachers (AFL-CIO) to which apparently the NEA may affiliate, of which John Dewey was the first member.

A commenter on the first quote above informs us that there's also an alternative teachers union in Georgia, USA.

I'm an education major here in GA and we are allowed the alternative union, PAGE (professional association of Georgia educators) of which I am in the student version. There are many critics of the NEA both secular and religious, I am glad to have an alternative here.

Craving more info, I finally found the following text on a PDF:

July 2006

Hello Fellow Christian/Conservative Public School Union Member,

I am Jeralee Smith, California public school teacher and one of the three founders of the NEA Conservative Educators Caucus. In this letter, I am representing my own opinions. The Conservative Caucus has not asked me to write this, though most would probably agree with what I am about to tell you. This is a long letter, but I am morally compelled to give you this information and urge you to give it serious consideration.

Many Christians and conservatives of other faiths are re-examining their relationship to teachers unions in the wake of the Annual NEA Convention just completed in Orlando this month. Many have heard in the Christian media that NEA attempted to endorse gay marriage. NEA refutes that but we have solid evidence that they had every intention of endorsing gay marriage but are now back-pedaling because of the bad press (and resulting membership loss) they got before the convention. If you want to read about this, several articles have come out from Focus on the Family, Southern Baptist Press and American Family Association. Broadcasts are also archived on the internet at Focus on the Family and American Family Association.

Attempting to endorse gay marriage is just one example of many things the National Education Association has been doing over the last 10-15 years that undermine our beliefs. As a conservative activist in the union for the last five years, I am privy to a lot of information that I wish every teacher knew. However, most of what I think you should know, the union wants to keep from you. If you want to be kept informed of what we are learning on the inside of the union, please sign up on the email list for the Conservative Educators Caucus.

Many teachers have developed loyalty to the union and have a tendency to accept what their local union leaders say without getting the big picture of how unions play a role in advancing causes that conflict with our Judeo-Christian values. Unions tell us they don’t spend our dues on politics, but there are many soft and subtle ways that they affect the political outcomes at local, state and national levels. Also, unions are clever at making us feel only they can adequately play the role as our advocate and provider of certain services. A clear discussion of exactly what they provide and how effective they are compared to other options is seldom available. Most don’t even realize they have other options!

Now this letter discusses the options Christian and conservative union members have in order to preserve your integrity. In my opinion, there are only two ways to have integrity regarding teachers unions: One is to get out of the union (more discussion on how to do that below), and the other is to get involved in union policy-making on the inside. The worst thing anyone can do is to let their dues money go to the union and feed this huge political machine that is destroying our values, and do nothing

I am still a union member myself because I feel my role is to speak out on the inside and be an inside “watchdog.” Anyone who is a member of the National Education Association can start a caucus, the purpose of which is to influence NEA policy. We conservatives already have two caucuses, plus a Republican Caucus within the union. All have very small membership. More information on the caucuses can be found on these websites: Conservative Educators Caucus, Ex-Gay Educators Caucus

If you are serious about standing with the bold ones on the inside, then run to be a delegate for the 2007 Convention which will be held at the end of June, beginning of July in Philadelphia, PA. Join one of our caucuses and help us speak up for our values before one of the most liberal groups in the country. Cast your delegate vote on the right side of the issues! Most delegates have all or part of their way paid by their union. Local unions have various procedures to elect delegates. Speak with your local president right away so you can be ready to run before your election.

You can also get involved in your state union representative body. It is this body which makes all the union decisions for your state (including dues raises) and powerfully influences your state legislatures, substantially supporting campaigns for politicians who then advance the union agenda. For example, California Teachers Association representatives voted to endorse a gay marriage bill in February, 2004.

For whatever reason, if you cannot be a voice for conservative values inside the union, you can have a powerful effect for good, by keeping part or all of your dues out of union hands by becoming a non-member. Most teachers are told that union membership is mandatory, especially if they don’t live in a state that has “Right to Work” laws. Although about 30 states have laws supporting unions, there is no state in the country that can force union membership on an individual. You can become an agency fee payer where the portion of your dues designated for contract negotiation and local services is all that you pay. Or you can keep every penny out of union hands by becoming a religious objector. Your money then goes into a charity that both you and the union agree upon. For those who live in the approximately 20 “right to work” states, you don’t have to belong to the union. Simply don’t join, or if you do, get involved!

If you want some guidance in this decision, I suggest you visit the National Right to Work website. They have a lot of information and can help you understand your options and what procedures to follow. They can even give you legal counsel along the way or remind anyone of your legal rights who tries to stop you. ...

There are also teachers associations that are not unions who can provide you with liability insurance that is far better than what the union provides for a fraction of the cost of union dues. The union often tries to make teachers fearful of quitting for a variety of reasons, liability insurance being one of them. You should expect this, but double check everything you are told by talking with National Right to Work or another teachers association (not a union) about the arguments you are given for remaining a union member. Union representatives are not reliable sources of information to help you look at the pros and cons of unionism. To get a thorough “Consumer Report” level of quality information about union membership vs. other professional affiliation membership, you need to get information from one or more sources besides the union.

These suggestions are humbly offered for your consideration. We live in a very critical time where the real conflicts with our Christian values lies beneath the surface of our everyday encounters. Sometimes it takes extra time and energy to dig up the truth and get the big picture. Our values are under attack in the open by anti-Christian law suits and press coverage. Our money is being used for the very things we disagree with and we CAN do something about it! Now is our chance to exercise our freedom to take a stand before our freedoms have been entirely eroded.

Blessings,
Jeralee Smith
California Teacher
Co-Founder of the Conservative Educators Caucus
Founder and Out-Going Chair of the Ex-Gay Educators Caucus

The intertwined issues involved in this whole complex of labour-representation of teachers engages several groups that refWrite does not endorse. Anti-Gay is often deceptively anti-homo, a total negation of people who do not endorse the Gay ideology or agenda, do not endorse teaching homosexuality in the schools (govt or independent of govt), yet who are indeed homo without apology. It takes extra effort to be such a person and oppose a teachers labour-union that endorses the Gay agenda and makes life miserable for teachers who are homo (but not Gay) or who are ex-Gay. Sometimes, it must be said, there's an ex-Gay ideology which is the mirror-reverse of the Gay ideology. In both those cases, refWrite is non-supportive of these subchristian ideologies. Yet, the teachers unions and the Gay ideologists maintain there is no honest person who is ex-Gay, refusing them representation and participation when they make their changed orientation visible in opposition to the truckload of ideology dumped on them by the Gay-promoting teachers unions. It's a messy historical situation, and many distinctions must be made at once in order to steer past the Scylla and Charybdis of the polarizers who leave no space for those who don't fit the mold. And have a third or fourth position to articulate; almost always they are drowned out.

Nevertheless, the main point is that we need Christian-ethical unionization as a full alternative to these so-called "professional organizations" that are actually business organizations selling insurance packeages, and which do not take up the task of labour-representation in the workplace and in bargaining units of workers (in this case teachers in govt schools). refWrite supports the Christian Labour Assocation (USA) and the larger Christian Labour Association of Canada and the still larger Christian National Labour Federation of the Netherlands (Christelijk Nationaal Vakverbond (CNV)) - which includes CNV Onderwijsbond: the teachers' union with around 56,000 members working in state-supported schools but only some of them govt schools (the Dutch educational system overall is also more pluralist and democratic). These are all Protestant-founded and answer to no Church. There are Catholic unions as well. Both kinds cooperate in many places around the world, being affiliated and active on the global level of labour-representaiton thru the World Confederation of Labour. Of course, this implies a pluralist system of labour law, where for instance two or several unions can exist parallel to one another in the same teachers barganing unit -- an negotiate their differences before determining a proposal from labour's side regarding wage, safety, health and benefits. It also implies a mutual recognition of the different basic values of the different but parallel memberships, a dialogue as it matures where the establishment teachers unions cannot dictate labour's position from one undialogued position which is subject to special-interest-group lobbying. We must face the fact that NEA-style unions are totalitarian. It's in this context that accomodation / take-over of the Gay ideologists takes place. But that is only one issue on which NEA-style unions are increasingly totalitarian, gobbling up all those people and all their dues-money for causes that do not belong in the purview of a labour union and work against the interests of many teachers who just don't want such add-ons that steamroller over their beliefs.

-- Owlb

Related: NEA abuses unionism to promote Gay ideology/agenda, endaring non-Gay homos in govt schols

Tags: NEA stirs call for alternative unions

• labor
• economics
• labour-representation
• bargainingunit.
• professionalorganization
• neagayideology
• homo

War: Lebanon / Hizbullah : Fouad Ajami analyzes Nasrallah's Folly, for Wall Street Journal

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A most important geostrategic analysis has been published by Fouad Ajami, "Hostage to Hezbollah," Wall Street Journal(Jul21,2k6) and republished by Regime Change Iran - to whom a Hat Tip:

Pity Lebanon: In a world of states, it has not had a state of its own. A garden without fences, was the way Beirut, its capital city, was once described.

A cleric by the name of Hassan Nasrallah, at the helm of the Hezbollah movement, handed Lebanon a calamity right as the summer tourist season had begun. Beirut had dug its way out of the rubble of a long war: Nasrallah plunged it into a new season of loss and ruin. He presented the country with a fait accompli: the "gift" of two Israeli soldiers kidnapped across an international frontier. Nasrallah never let the Lebanese government in on his venture. He was giddy with triumphalism and defiance when this crisis began. And men and women cooped up in the destitution of the Shiite districts of Beirut were sent out into the streets to celebrate Hezbollah's latest deed.

Iranian Theocrats

It did not seem to matter to Nasrallah that the ground that would burn in Lebanon would in the main be Shiite land in the south. Nor was it of great concern to he who lives on the subsidies of the Iranian theocrats that the ordinary Lebanese would pay for his adventure. The cruel and cynical hope was that Nasrallah's rivals would be bullied into submission and false solidarity, and that the man himself would emerge as the master of the game of Lebanon's politics.

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IAF drops anti-Nasrallah fliers over Beirut
by Jerusalem Post staff (Jul29,2k6 17:17)

The IAF dropped fliers over Beirut on Saturday, which contained a message to the Lebanese people that Hizbullah leader Sheikh Hassan Nasrallah was continuing to wreck their country.

The fliers described Nasrallah as a child who was playing with matches, only to discover that the IDF's firepower was much stronger, Israel Radio reported.

Back to Fouad Adami's WSJ article ...

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"The hotels are full in Damascus," read a dispatch in Beirut, as though to underline the swindle of this crisis, its bitter harvest for the Lebanese. History repeats here, endlessly it seems. There was something to Nasrallah's conduct that recalled the performance of Gamal Abdel Nasser in the Six Day War of 1967. That leader, it should be recalled, closed the Straits of Tiran to Israeli shipping, asked for the evacuation of UN forces from the Sinai Peninsula -- clear acts of war -- but never expected the onset of war. He had only wanted the gains of war.

Nasrallah's brazen deed was, in the man's calculus, an invitation to an exchange of prisoners. Now, the man who triggered this crisis stands exposed as an Iranian proxy, doing the bidding of Tehran and Damascus. He had confidently asserted that "sources" in Israel had confided to Hezbollah that Israel's government would not strike into Lebanon because Hezbollah held northern Israel hostage to its rockets, and that the demand within Israel for an exchange of prisoners would force Ehud Olmert's hand. The time of the "warrior class" in Israel had passed, Nasrallah believed, and this new Israeli government, without decorated soldiers and former generals, was likely to capitulate. Now this knowingness has been exposed for the delusion it was.

There was steel in Israel and determination to be done with Hezbollah's presence on the border. States can't -- and don't -- share borders with militias. That abnormality on the Lebanese-Israeli border is sure not to survive this crisis. One way or other, the Lebanese army will have to take up its duty on the Lebanon-Israel border. By the time the dust settles, this terrible summer storm will have done what the Lebanese government had been unable to do on its own.

Rookmaker Club geostrategic analysis:

In his cocoon, Nasrallah did not accurately judge the temper of his own country to begin with. No less a figure than the hereditary leader of the Druze community, Walid Jumblatt, was quick to break with Hezbollah, and to read this crisis as it really is. "We had been trying for months," he said, "to spring our country out of the Syrian-Iranian trap, and here we are forcibly pushed into that trap again." In this two-front war -- Hamas's in the Palestinian territories and Hezbollah's in Lebanon -- Mr. Jumblatt saw the fine hand of the Syrian regime attempting to retrieve its dominion in Lebanon, and to forestall the international investigations of its reign of terror in that country.

In the same vein, a broad coalition of anti-Syrian Lebanese political parties and associations that had come together in the aftermath of the assassination last year of former Prime Minister Rafik Hariri, called into question the very rationale of this operation, and its timing: "Is it Lebanon's fate to endure the killing of its citizens and the destruction of its economy and its tourist season in order to serve the interests of empty nationalist slogans?"

In retrospect, Ehud Barak's withdrawal from Israel's "security zone" in southern Lebanon in the summer of 2000 had robbed Hezbollah of its raison d'être. It was said that the "resistance movement" would need a "soft landing" and a transition to a normal political world. But the imperative of disarming Hezbollah and pulling it back from the international border with Israel was never put into effect. Hezbollah found its way into Parliament, was given two cabinet posts in the most recent government, and branched out into real estate ventures; but the heavy military infrastructure survived and, indeed, was to be augmented in the years that followed Israel's withdrawal from southern Lebanon.

Syria gave Hezbollah cover, for that movement did much of Syria's bidding in Lebanon. A pretext was found to justify the odd spectacle of an armed militia in a time of peace: Hezbollah now claimed that the battle had not ended, and that a barren piece of ground, the Shebaa Farms, was still in Israel's possession. By a twist of fate, that land had been in Syrian hands when they fell to Israel in the Six Day War. No great emotions stirred in Lebanon about the Shebaa Farms. It was easy to see through the pretense of Hezbollah. The state within a state was an end in itself.

For Hezbollah, the moment of truth would come when Syria made a sudden, unexpected retreat out of Lebanon in the spring of 2005. An edifice that had the look of permanence was undone with stunning speed as the Syrians raced to the border, convinced that the Pax Americana might topple the regime in Damascus, as it had Saddam Hussein's tyranny. For Hezbollah's leaders, this would be a time of great uncertainty. The "Cedar Revolution" that had helped bring an end to Syrian occupation appeared to be a genuine middle-class phenomenon, hip and stylish, made up in the main of Sunni Muslims, Druze and Christians. Great numbers of propertied and worldly Shiites found their way to that Cedar Revolution, but Hezbollah's ranks were filled with the excluded, newly urbanized people from villages in the south and the Bekaa Valley.

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Nasrallah said to be hiding in Iranian embassy, says Bill Geertz, Washington Times (Jul28,2k6): "Intelligence reports indicate the leader of Hezbollah is hiding in a foreign mission in Beirut, possibly the Iranian Embassy, according to U.S. and Israeli officials. ¶ Israeli military and intelligence forces are continuing to hunt for Sheik Hassan Nasrallah, Hezbollah's secretary-general, who fled his headquarters in Beirut shortly before Israeli jets bombed the building last week. ¶ "We think he is in an embassy," said one U.S. official with access to the intelligence reports, while Israeli intelligence speculates Sheik Nasrallah is hiding in the Iranian Embassy. ¶ If confirmed, the reports could lead to an Israeli air strike on the embassy, possibly leading to a widening of the conflict, said officials who spoke on the condition of anonymity. Foreign embassies are sovereign territory and an attack on an embassy could be considered an act of war. ¶ But other reports from the region indicate Sheik Nasrallah may be in Damascus. A Kuwaiti newspaper, Al-Seyassah, reported from the Syrian capital yesterday that Sheik Nasrallah was seen moving through the city with Syrian guards in an intelligence agency car, Associated Press reported. He was dressed in civilian clothes, not his normal clerical robe. ¶ The newspaper quoted Syrian government sources as saying Iranian national security council official Ali Larijani was in Damascus and was to meet with Syrian President Bashar Assad and Sheik Nasrallah. ¶ Hezbollah officials in Beirut said they did not know whether Sheik Nasrallah had gone to Damascus."

Back to Fouad Adami's WSJ article ...

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Hassan Nasrallah had found a measure of respectability in the Lebanese political system; he was a good orator and, in the way of Levantine politics, a skilled tactician. A seam was stitched between the jihadist origins of Hezbollah and the pursuit of political power in a country as subtle and complex and pluralistic as Lebanon. There would be no Islamic republic in Lebanon, and the theory of Hezbollah appeared to bend to Lebanon's realities.

But Nasrallah was in the end just the Lebanese face of Hezbollah. Those who know the workings of the movement with intimacy believe that operational control is in the hands of Iranian agents, that Hezbollah is fully subservient to the Iranian Revolutionary Guard. The hope that Hezbollah would "go Lebanese," and "go local," was thus set aside. At any rate, Nasrallah and his lieutenants did not trust the new Lebanon to make the ample room that a country at war -- and within the orbit of Syria -- had hitherto made for them in the time of disorder. Though the Shiites had risen in Lebanon, there remains in them a great deal of brittleness, a sense of social inadequacy relative to the more privileged communities in the country.

Don't miss the remainng 4/5ths of this powerfully ins+tful analysis by a leading scholar of MidEast Studies. The original article is also accessible by going to the RegimeChangeIran blog (click the title headline) and then navigate to Wall Street Journal where you login can or register; it's a pay-for setup but you can download a printable version of the full article if you want.

-- Politicarp

Tags: Hisbullah's Nasrallah on the run

• war
• IsraelVsHizbullah-Iran
• Hizbullah
• Iran
• Lebanon
• NasrallahSheikHassan

Politics: Congo (Kinshasa): Elections in the vast country of Democratic Republic of Congo this Sunday -- all the best, folks!

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It sure is great to hear how Tristan McConnell is headlined in his report in Christian Science Monitor (Jul28,2k6). Before quoting McConnell, I note that CSM also has a worthwhile editorial on pre-vote DRCongo. Now, McConnell's dispatch:

Congolese hopeful as they head to polls.

The Democratic Republic of Congo votes Sunday in its first free presidential election in 46 years.

BUKAVU, DEMOCRATIC REPUBLIC OF CONGO – Voters in this vast mineral-rich central African country are hoping that Sunday's presidential election - the country's first in 46 years - will usher in democracy and development after four decades of predatory misrule and horrific violence.

Across the country 25.7 million registered voters will be faced with tablecloth-sized ballot papers listing the 33 presidential hopefuls and 9,700 parliamentary candidates.

Africa > DemRep of Congo (Kinshasa):

With only 300 miles of paved road in a country one quarter the size of the United States and covered by half the forest on the African continent, just getting the 1,800 tons of ballot papers distributed to the 53,000 polling stations has required more than 75 flights and countless trips in four-wheel-drive vehicles. Even after a massive voter education campaign, groups can still be seen crowding around sample ballot sheets discussing how to properly cast their vote.

Yet, despite the monumental logistical challenges - and early claims of irregularities, sporadic violence, and opposition boycotts - most Congolese voters, especially in the country's war-torn east, have an optimistic outlook.

"I will vote for Joseph Kabila because he brought us peace, and when he is president he will bring us jobs," says a smiling Paulin Murimu, an unemployed 37-year-old from Bukavu in eastern Congo. Joseph Kabila, 35-year-old son and heir to the presidency of his murdered father Laurent, is popular in this part of eastern Congo. And, with total control of the state media, Mr. Kabila is the only candidate with name recognition across the vast country, making him the favorite to win.

The foregoing blog-entry was drafted yesterday. Today, with only one day left before tomorrow's vote, BBC provides a worthwhile supplementary report. I recommend your reading McConnell's dispatch in its entirety, noting the role of 17,000 UN troops there (no one's mentioning the rape stories about these UN troops).

And if you're rooting for success, you're probably doing so like me, holding your breath!

-- Politicarp

Further Sources:

refWrite on Mining multnationals in Congo have lots of influence, lack transparency (Jul23,2k6)

Sex-crimes allegations against UN troops double in DR Congo (May6,2k6)

Endless sex abuse by UN Peacekeepers (NYT,Oct19,2k5

France: Politics: Nicolas Sarkozy takes on Socialists, and also Lackadaisicals of his own party

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In many leading reports from France these days, it seems the bookreview genre predominates. Such is the case with Adam Sage's bookreviewish account in The Times "The French Interior Minister has a stark message for his countrymen" (Jul 18,2k6). The book under review, Testimony (English trans), is written by an important French govt figure who, from his positions as head of the main govt party UMP and as Minister of the Interior who thereby also heads France's national police as in the widespread ethnic youth riots of several months back. Now Sarkozy has taken on the current President of France, Jacques Chirac, hoping to be his successor in that office, while from the same political party, UMP. [Note: "M" in these across-the-channel dispatches = the French "Monsieur" -- or "Mr.", of course.]

Témoignage (Testimony) has an initial print run of 130,000 copies and M Sarkozy’s publisher, XO Editions, hopes that the work will become a summer blockbuster.

M Sarkozy hopes that it will be a launch pad to the presidency next year.

In it, the leading centre-right contender aims to demonstrate that he is everything President Chirac is not — honest, pragmatic, straight-talking and pro-Anglo-Saxon. He is open about the difficulties that he says France is facing after M Chirac’s 11 years in power, and about his own problems.

Europe > France:
Spring 2007 Prez Election

Four pages are devoted to his separation and reconciliation with his high-profile wife, Cécilia. “Too much pressure, too many attacks, not enough attention from me. At the time, the couple we formed together did not resist.”

Two days later, Katrin Bennhold's report was headlined, "In France, an intriguing a story of love, politics and rivalry," International Herald Tribune (July 20, 2006). Three further days later, the latter reporter gets a second round with a more harshly political headline, "Nicolas Sarkozy, in a book, lets fly at his party leaders" Katrin Bennhold, IHT (July 23, 2006).

Adam Sage had already said it all on Jul 18:

... [T]he personal confessions that run through Témoignage accompany a tough political message on the cardinal value of work, a value that he says the French have abandoned in favour of such measures as the 35-hour working week.

Hailing modern Britain as an example, M Sarkozy urges voters to remove their heads from the sand, accept that France is in decline and embrace the market economy as the path to revival.

His argument represents an electoral gamble in a country that has repeatedly voted in favour of generous welfare payments and extensive leisure time — and which will be invited by the Socialist Party to do the same again in the presidential election next spring.

“I believe that deep in French society there is a strong demand for the restoration of certain values of the Republican right: work, respect for authority, the family, individual responsibility,” he says. Although he denies personal animosity for his rival, President Chirac, he makes no attempt to hide their fundamental political differences.

He criticises almost every significant decision that M Chirac has taken, including the threat to veto a UN resolution on the war in Iraq and approval of Turkey’s entry into the EU.

Interestingly, in this tangle of the personal and the political, the leading contender for the Socialist Party candidacy for President of France is a woman. married, and apparently with no soap-opera episode to 'fess up. Andrew Hussey, writing in another UK newspaper,The Observer (Jul23,2k6), "Is France ready for a woman President?" --

It has been a remarkable year for Marie-Segolene Royal. Emerging from the shadow of her husband, and a low-key career in politics, she is now tipped to become France's first-ever female President. Women admire her for taking on the macho world of French politics, while men are wooed by her mix of intelligence and sexiness. But is this tough-minded reformer really a revolutionary force-in-waiting?

In the same Sunday edition, Mary Riddell, headed "Suddenly, we all want to speak in tongues" (Jul23,2k6) makes the reverse observation for the Brits of what Sage reports regarding Sarkozy's challenge to the French on language. Riddell:

Football managers, comedians ... the famously monoglot British are rushing to learn languages [foremost being French, interestingly - P]

Sage:

...'[I]n a comment that will infuriate traditionalists, he says that the French should no longer insist on speaking their own language in international negotiations and instead should use English.

“We should ask ourselves why the English buy our houses in the Dordogne, in the Périgord ... and in many other regions. The answer is simply because the British GDP is 10 per cent greater than the French and that the standard of life of the British is higher than that of the French.”

“We have committed the immense error of undermining work. When someone who works does not have a better life than someone who does not work, why should he get up in the morning?”

Sarkozy led the way in declaiming against the ethnic-youth rioters, then supported the new law for small businesses, allowing them to hire and fire more easily -- so that ethnic youth without job experience could get a toehold in the workforce, denial of which has been said to be an important factor in the ethnic riots. Whereas, the French govt then faced a later set of riotous strikes from featherbedding unionized non-ethnic workers and students. Sarkozy was prominent in negotiating all these rapids, and his book is a diagnosis at a deeper level of the problem epitomized by the two sets of riots.

More currently, Sarkozy is trying to limit illegal immigration, France having the h+est level of legal migration already.

At present, it is not known whether Jacques Chirac (an old man) will run again; and if he does not, then his lieutenant of long standing, M Dominique de Villepin, now Prime Minister (when Foreign Minister, he merited Donald Rumsfeld characterization of France and Germany at the time, "Old Europe"), this de Villepin may attempt to inherit the chiracquist machine in the UMP party. Yet, in both cases of Old France, Sarkozy (in his early 50s, young for a French Prez) may be able to cut thru the malaise and failures of Chirac's leadership of France, unable to divest itself of dreams of lost empires and unable to awaken to Europe's new demographic challenges and France's lack of competitiveness.

In the title URL for this blog-entry, Sarkozy had a 3% lead in French opinion polls on who should be next president.

-- Politicarp

Further Resources:

refWrite (Apr3,2k6) on UMP's Statement of Principles
refWrite (Apr5,2k6) on radical unionism against govt job measures favouring ethnic-minority youth 1st-time employment

Tags: DR Congo historic vote 1 day away

• politics
• politicsFrance
• FranceprezvoteSpring2007
• sarkozynicolas
• chiracjacques
• villepindominquede
• royalmariesegolene

Economics: Africa: Congo mining industry and govt officials ripoff labour & society

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An election is coming in the Democratic Republic of Cong with its capital in Kinshasa and its economic engine in the province of Katanga where mining is the most developed source of employment and corporate profits. There's another country named Congo as well, with its capital in Brazzaville. You'll often see it referred to as "Congo (Brazzaville)", sometimes you'll see DR Congo referred to simply as "Congo (Kinshasa)," since it's been anything but a democratic republic. That's why the upcoming elections on Jul30,2k6 are so important. The folowing press statement was received by refWrite on Jul 7,2k6, and as the elections approach it seems more timely than ever. It focusses on two commodities produced in Katanga for the world market, copper and cobalt. The statement gives a picture of primary economic relations within this industrialized sector of a large African country's economy that needs tax revenues desperately to build the national infrastructure that is of vital importance in Central Africa's quest for democracy, stablity, civil order, and prosperity inclusive of the general population.

The copper and cobalt mining industry in Katanga, in southeastern Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC), continues to be plagued by fraud, abuse and political interference, Global Witness said in a new report released today. “In the run-up to elections, politicians and companies have been scrambling to get their hands on ever-greater shares of the lucrative mineral trade, with little or no regard for the welfare of the Congolese population,” said Patrick Alley, Director of Global Witness. “The plunder of the DRC’s natural resources continues to undermine the country’s opportunities for peace, stability and development.”

Africa > Democratic Republic of Congo:

The new report by Global Witness, entitled “Digging in Corruption: Fraud, abuse and exploitation in Katanga’s copper and cobalt mines”, is based on field investigations in Katanga and neighbouring Zambia in 2005 and 2006. It documents corruption, extortion and illicit exports in the informal (artisanal) mining sector in Katanga, and the ruthless exploitation of artisanal miners by the government and trading companies.

Global Witness’s research confirmed entrenched patterns of illicit exports of minerals across the DRC-Zambia border, with government and security officials either turning a blind eye to false or inaccurate export certificates, or actively colluding with trading companies to circumvent control procedures. Large quantities of minerals are leaving the country undeclared, representing a huge loss for the Congolese economy – but a vast gain for a small number of powerful actors. The big influx of foreign companies pouring into Katanga since 2004 has presented yet more opportunities for the political elite to enrich itself. The report describes how government and security officials are taking a cut at every stage of the process, systematically extorting payments from artisanal miners – who typically earn no more than US $ 2 or 3 a day – as well as from middlemen known as négociants, transporters and other actors in the mining sector.

Global Witness also documented the harsh labour conditions in the artisanal mines, the complete absence of safety precautions and the failure of both the government and companies to take responsibility for the health and safety of tens of thousands of artisanal miners. “Scores of miners have died in 2005 alone, mostly when trapped under collapsing mineshafts,” said Patrick Alley. “No one is investigating these deaths or taking action to prevent further accidents. The government seems indifferent to their plight and trading companies are happy to continue buying products mined in these conditions in the full knowledge that miners are risking their lives every day.”

The preceding paragraph is especially poignant to me, since my maternal grandfather started working in the bituminous coal mines of Pennsylvania when he was 14 years old, working far too many hours a day. He'd come home black as soot, collapse, his mother (my greatgrandmother) would strip him, bathe, and put him in the comfort of his bed. He became a member of the United Mine Workers. He contracted black lung disease, which brawt him an untimely death. As a youngster, I visited him whlie he was on his death bed, our death watch. After the whole family had come on those final days to express their love, and feel their anguish, Frank Balchunas died. A family man, a stalwart member of First Congregational Church, Mount Carmel, Pennsylvania, and a stalwart member of the United Mine Workers. Papap, RIP. ...Back to Katanga:

Corruption is also rife in the industrial mining sector in Katanga. The report highlights interference by political actors based in the capital Kinshasa, particularly in the negotiation of mining contracts. Several large contracts have been rushed through in 2005, signed by an unelected transitional government which has itself been responsible for large-scale looting of natural resources. The terms of many of these contracts provide for a disproportionately large share of the profits for foreign or multinational companies, leaving a negligible amount for the state mining company Gécamines.

Resentment is growing among the population of Katanga as they see vast profits flowing out of the country with no change in their own economic situation. An artisanal miner in Katanga told Global Witness: “We know that the Congo is rich. But despite this, we don’t even have enough to eat. Only one category of people profits.”

Historic elections scheduled for 30 July 2006 could provide a unique opportunity for fundamental reform. Global Witness’s report, “Digging in corruption: Fraud, abuse and exploitation in Katanga’s copper and cobalt mines,” contains recommendations for priority actions by the new government, by companies and by international donors. These measures could have long-lasting effects for the development of Katanga province – and for the country as a whole – if they are embarked upon without delay. They include:
- measures to eradicate corruption
- strengthening of export controls
- improvements in labour conditions in the artisanal mines
- greater transparency and fairness in mining contracts

You can download the report in a PDF file, in either French (the country's general language) or English. Hat Tip to AfricaFiles

-- Politicarp

With just a little further digging, the following info on Canadian mining corporations in Katanga emerged.

Corporate Knights [website for Canadian Magazine for Responsible Business] examines the operations of 6 Canadian mining companies in the Congo with respect to the OECD Guidelines for Multinational Enterprises. [OECD = Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development

Parenthesis re OECD: The snippet for the top entry on my search-results page says of the OECD "Brings together countries sharing the principles of the market economy, pluralist democracy and respect..." I couldn't find the conclusion to this statement on the entry's page itself, when clicked up. So, I'm still asking: "Respect" what?. Here's the OECD basic functional material, minus what should be a full principial statement for OECD that I had wanted to find:

The OECD groups 30 member countries sharing a commitment to democratic government and the market economy. With active relationships with some 70 other countries, NGOs and civil society, it has a global reach. Best known for its publications and its statistics, its work covers economic and social issues from macroeconomics, to trade, education, development and science and innovation.

The OECD plays a prominent role in fostering good governance in the public service and in corporate activity. It helps governments to ensure the responsiveness of key economic areas with sectoral monitoring. By deciphering emerging issues and identifying policies that work, it helps policy-makers adopt strategic orientations. It is well known for its individual country surveys and reviews.

The OECD produces internationally agreed instruments, decisions and recommendations to promote rules of the game in areas where multilateral agreement is necessary for individual countries to make progress in a globalised economy. Sharing the benefits of growth is also crucial as shown in activities such as emerging economies, sustainable development, territorial economy and aid.

Dialogue, consensus, peer review and pressure are at the very heart of OECD. Its governing body, the Council, is made up of representatives of member countries. It provides guidance on the work of OECD committees and decides on the annual budget. It is headed by Angel Gurría, who took up the post of Secretary-General on 1 June 2006. ...

Back to copper, cobalt, mining, Katanga Province, DR Congo, and holding multinational mining corporations to best business practices ...:

The OECD Guidelines for Multinational Enterprises are a widely recognized corporate responsibility yardstick meant to apply to multinational companies operating around the world.

Over the course of February and March, Corporate Knights examined six Toronto Stock Exchange-listed mining companies with substantial interests in the Democratic Republic of the Congo to determine how closely their operations suggested adherence to the OECD Guidelines. None of the below is meant to be taken as a conclusion of adherence or non-adherence. The intent is to provide elements of the companies' operations/practices that merit further investigation.

* Anvil Mining Limited
* Banro Corporation
* First Quantum Minerals Limited
* Katanga Mining Limited
* Moto Goldmines Ltd.
* Tenke Mining Corp.

The investigation took Corporate Knights’ Toby Heaps to all corners of the country, involving 11 planes, 5 helicopters, and many jeeps. Heaps interviewed over 130 people ranging from the President of the country to the presidents of the mining operations to children working as informal miners on company property and local chiefs living in huts in the vicinity of mining operations. Local and international NGOs, media, professors, members of the clergy, lawyers, economists, union leaders, diplomats, UN, IMF, IFC and World Bank officials also provided invaluable insight for this article.

In the course of this investigation, Corporate Knights compiled a report evaluating the operations of these six companies in respect to the General Policies of the OECD Guidelines for Multinational Enterprises, assessing each company with a green/yellow/red score in nine different areas on the basis of their conformance with OECD guidelines.

CK's site also provides the OECD Guidelines for Mining Corporations and industrial profiles for each of the Canadian companies doing business there. There are companies from other countries in DR Congo, including at least one company from Communist China that's very interested in that copper and cobalt. In Canada and the USA, if you are a Christian and you invest in any of these companies, you should examine the line of evidence that extends from this basic info.

-- Owlb

Further Resources:
Google research results for terms: companies Katanga mines
Google Search results for term: OECD
Google Search results for terms: election DR Congo > news

War: MidEast: Arab states don't oppose Israel's War vs Iran, Hizbullah–-a Kirschner cartoon

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"Israel War, Ahmadinjad," an original cartoon by Yaakov Kirschner©July 19,2006
Digitally republished with the permission of the artist.

Missions: Aid: Malawi lacks rain, lake-region farmers, people have no irrigation, AIDS is widespread

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Here's a report from Malawi, West Africa, about the continuing drout there. I got this item in an email newsletter from a aid oranization that helps homegrown Christian missionaries not tied to Western denoms, but which have opportunities to help their own people in areas where the mission has grown from scratch. Often they don't have funds to respond to emergencies and natural disasters, while being best able to do so. Of course, aided people sometimes want to check out their benefactors, espeically when the benefactors are their own people. For some this raises questions of "missions buying converts." You be the judge before you shell out, but have you ever given anything to faraway folks in dire straits? Treated here as a press release, the item is digitally republished without special permission. - Owlb

Malawi, one of the poorest nations in the world, is still suffering from the famine that reached its peak toward the end of 2005. Drought caused crops to wither in the brutal heat. The price of corn soared beyond the reach of millions, forcing many to fill their empty stomachs with wild plants. Many waded into crocodile-infested lakes to pull up the roots of water lilies.

The president of Malawi declared the country a "disaster area," and warned that 5 million people, almost half the population, were threatened with starvation. In addition to famine, 14 percent of Malawians are infected with the AIDS virus; thus many farmers are too sick to work. They must choose to spend what little money they have on medicine or food.

Africa > Malawi

Approximately 12 million people are still in need of food aid due to drought and disease.

Ironically, most of the worst-hit villages were located in a fertile river valley fed with water from Lake Malawi. Farmers, however, who cannot afford wheelbarrows and other tools, had no way to transport the water to their fields.

Christian Aid was able to wire emergency funds to The Church of Disciples Mission, an indigenous ministry in Malawi. Since food is available if one has money to buy it, native missionaries were immediately able to buy and distribute food to the starving, and continue to lend aid to those in need. Help is needed for the ongoing crisis.

Churches started by the ministry have increased in number since the famine because many people learned about Christ’s love through the kindness of the gospel workers.

Here's a more analytic overview of hunger in Malawi that I found on Christian Aid site's search engine:

Food shortages in Malawi

Millions of Malawians have just faced the worst ‘hungry season’ in a decade. This year’s harvest is better, but it will take people years to recover.

Why were there food shortages?

Many parts of Malawi had a long dry spell early last year. The drought struck at a crucial time, and many families harvested nothing at all.

Malawi is one of the poorest countries in the world, and food shortages are a long-term problem. Even in a ’normal year’ millions of people go hungry. Last year the situation was far worse than usual.

Living in such extreme poverty, poor Malawians have no assets to fall back on when disaster strikes.

Farmers depend on the rains to grow enough to eat. And if the rains fail, so do their crops. This year’s harvest has been better, but for the poorest families, who had no seeds to plant, it has not brought much relief.

And some families already weakened by hunger have lost their homes, animals and winter crops to floods.

The impact

During the worst months of hunger (January to May), many families were eating just one meal a day or less. The very poorest were going for days without food.

Families have had to find other ways to get food, including searching for wild fruits, and selling or bartering their possessions and animals.

Some women and older sisters have been turning to sex work to feed their families, putting themselves and others at risk of HIV infection.

What are our partners doing?

Thanks to those people who donated to our emergency appeal, our partners have been able to help more than 100,000 farmers survive this year’s crisis.

Partners have been:

• providing emergency food aid for the most vulnerable

• monitoring malnourished children and providing nutrition advice for parents

• distributing drought-resistant seeds and fertiliser so that people could plant crops for this year’s harvest

• providing water pumps so people can grow food all year round, without having to depend on the unreliable rains

• helping people set up small irrigation schemes by building dams and diverting streams

• showing people how to make their own compost, so they can grow more food

• distributing livestock such as goats and chickens so that poor families have a ‘safety net’ to fall back on if the harvest fails again.

More updates

‛We don’t have any food in the house…We haven’t had a meal for three days.' /03.06
• Pedalling past hunger /03.06
• Malawi food shortages: 'this year will be terrible' /19.12.05
• Christian Aid's Communications officer reports /01.11.05
• Malawi food shortages – a tale of two plots /27.10.05
• Malawi food shortages – the vulnerable are at risk /18.10.05

See further info on Christian Aid's relief work thru-out West Africa.

-- Owlb

Core of the Word War: Israel:Iran, Syria, Hamasian Palestaine & Hizbullahland Lebanon > hostilities continue

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A survey of the last week's developments in the core of the world war being waged by Islamofascism and its sponsors, the "rogue states" of Iran and Syria (as Condoleezza Rice calls them).

"War defeats diplomacy," here's another one by the pretentious leftwiing know-it-all Paul Rogers, in the pretntious leftwing know-it-all OpenDemocracy (Jul 18,2k6). Nevertheless, the mag and the article are must reads, even tho the brunt is blame-Israel-for-defending=itself.

In the final analysis there is no alternative to a peace settlement encompassing the creation of a viable Palestinian state.

There is little chance of that even beginning to be recognised in the current insecure environment within Israel. It is made even less likely by the solid support from the Bush administration, due in no small measure to the political significance of Christian Zionism in the United States (see David Brog's new book, Standing with Israel: Why Christians Support the Jewish State, Front Line Books, 2006).

Almost a week into the war, a weak and disunited Europe concentrates on evacuating its citizens from Lebanon, and the United States displays a special sense of irony by chartering a cruise ship to do the same. At present, the prospects for peace are minimal.

First, let me state that I am no Christian zionist. Second, historically, since George Washington's letter to the synogogue in New England, the USA has been a friend of Jews, and by extension since 1948, a friend of israel. This national legacy of friendship is stronger than some American Christains anti-semitism, some American Christian's doctrinalistic "zionism" (a heresy to be sure), and some efforts toward inter-state friendships between America and a number of Islamic states. Loyalty to a very longterm friend outweighs efforts to widen the circle of friendship that simply don't count as much. That's a secular valuation that isn't secularistic but a part of a Christian political ethos, a blibical secularity (as Henk hart used to put the matter).

"South Lebanon bears war's brunt," Nicholas Blandford

The bombing of roads and bridges linking the south to the rest of Lebanon has created a zone, UN peacekeepers here say, for the Israeli military to pursue its campaign against Lebanon's Hizbullah guerrillas. But it is civilians who are bearing the brunt of the conflict between the two old foes.

"They are only hitting civilians, not members of the party," Jaafar charges, referring to Hizbullah fighters. "They take out one house, and with it a whole family dies."

According to eyewitness accounts from survivors interviewed by the Monitor, Israel is striking homes, schools, town centers, using bombs that obliterate entire buildings. Israel is targeting the region because it is a Hizbullah stronghold and the base for rocket attacks on northern Israel.

Vehicles, including ambulances, according to hospital workers, have been shelled by gunboats and have been hit by helicopter gunfire. Even the Jabel Amel Hospital in Tyre has been hit, struck early Sunday morning by a missile, demolishing an entire wing and killing a family of nine.

A detail on the UN presence in Lebanon, which has done nothing to stop Hizbullah's assaults on Israel all along:

Even the United Nations Interim Force In Lebanon (UNIFIL) has found itself unable to dispatch urgently needed relief convoys into the beleaguered villages of the border area to evacuate terrified residents or supply drinking water and basic staples.

A convoy of Chinese UNIFIL engineers dispatched to recover the bodies of the Qudsi family outside Tyre was forced to turn back when the road it was traveling along came under fire from artillery and Israeli navy gunboats.

UNIFIL's civilian staff have been evacuated from its headquarters in the coastal village of Naqoura, one mile north of the border, and have taken refuge in the Rest House hotel on the Tyre sea front.

Although UNIFIL is pressing the Israelis to allow it freedom of movement in the south, the peacekeepers estimate that its supply of fuel for trucks and armored personnel carriers will run out by the weekend which will completely paralyze the force until it can be resupplied from Beirut.

"Haifa residents quietly persevere," Josua Mitnick, CSM (Jul 19,2k6)

At least 50 Hizbullah rockets struck northern Israel Tuesday and at least four hit Haifa. At least one Israeli was killed in Tuesday's attacks. So far the militant Lebanese Shiites have fired some 750 rockets into northern Israel since the Israeli offensive began July 12.

But with a naval base, a shipping port, and oil refineries, the vulnerability of Israel's third-largest city to Hizbullah rocket attacks has taken residents and the country off guard.

After nearly a week of Katyusha strikes that claimed eight fatalities, Haifa locals are staying home, shuttering businesses, and resigning themselves to ducking into shelters or stairwells at a moment's notice.

That's good news for Israel, because with civilians in the line of fire in this war, home-front morale will directly impact Israel's ability to prolong its effort to weaken Hizbullah.

"It's the first times time since the 1948 [Arab-Israeli] war that the Israeli home front has been so exposed to attack and by an outside party," says Sami Michael, an Israeli author who lives in Haifa. "The population is showing maturity in dealing with the situation."

"Q & A: Behind the Israel-Hisbullah crisis, Dan Murphy

, CSM (Jul 19,2k6). This article is a must read, if for new other reason than its explanation of the attacks on Israel to which it is now responding, and the role of Hisbullah in compromising the govt of Lebanon, which latter has given Hizbullah a licence to bombard Israel with a huge cache of "10,000 short-range rockets from Iran and has received training from Iran and Syria." Then, too, are Hizbullah's long-range missiles, regarding which the origin is not to difficult to guess.

Another detail of note:

UN Secretary-General Kofi Annan called Tuesday for a bigger, better-armed and more robust international force to stabilize southern Lebanon and buy time for the Lebanese government to disarm Hizbullah.

Shrugging off US and Israeli reluctance, Mr. Annan said he expected European nations to contribute troops to the proposed force in a bid to end fighting between Israel and Hizbullah and prevent a wider Middle East conflagration.

"It is urgent that the international community acts to make a difference on the ground," Annan said.

"Beyond the war in Lebanon," Bahman Baktiari and Augustus Richard Norton , CSM (Jul 19,2k6)

To suggest that Hizbullah kidnapped the Israeli soldiers on the orders of Tehran and Damascus is to grossly oversimplify a strong strategic relationship between Hizbullah, Syria, and Iran. While there is certainly a shared geopolitical framework among the three, operational decisions are typically made by Hizbullah. In fact, the group has become increasingly autonomous since its triumph in 2000, when it basically forced Israel to withdraw from Lebanon.

The latest Hizbullah operation - in which eight Israeli soldiers were killed and two wounded - profoundly embarrassed the vaunted Israeli army. While it may have been tactically brilliant, it was clearly a strategic miscalculation. The action even surprised the Iranian leadership whose anti-Israel rhetoric often obscures a nuanced relationship with the group. Pragmatism, not ideology, has been the secret to Iranian success in Lebanon.

While Shiite supporters of Hizbullah celebrated the nabbing of Israeli soldiers, many others, including some Shiites, are angry that Hizbullah provided Israel an excuse to wreak havoc in their country, where more than 200 civilians have already been killed. Iran is now seeing decades of constructive engagement with various political parties in Lebanon endangered by this miscalculation.

Hizbullah is a major foreign policy success for the clerics in Iran. For more than 20 years, with Iran's aid, Hizbullah built an infrastructure of hospitals, aid organizations, media, and construction companies. This has been key to Hizbullah's evolving success as a political party and is the furthest reach of Iranian influence within an Arab Shiite group.

Since the triumph of 2000, Hasan Nasrallah, Hizbullah's secretary general, has enjoyed superstar status in the Arab world - mainly for leading the first Arab party to retrieve occupied Arab territories through armed resistance against Israel. He is articulate, analytically rigorous, and he usually delivers on his promises. He no doubt saw the July 12 operation that provided casus belli to Israel as an opportunity to stiffen the backs of the Palestinians, and to further bolster Hizbullah as an exemplar for resistance.

But strong criticism from Egypt, Jordan, and Saudi Arabia underlines that it behaved recklessly, and in doing so provided an excuse for Israel to launch a war that it has long prepared to fight. If Israeli generals delight in the prospect of cutting Hizbullah down to size, the more important dimension of Israel's new war is preparing the battlefield vis-à-vis Iran. Israeli generals have already asserted an Iranian role in the firing of a missile that disabled an Israeli naval ship, killing four sailors. If Hizbullah's capacity to bombard Israel is even significantly reduced, then it will be easier for Israel to attack Iran's nuclear sites later. Israel has obviously been preparing for such an attack for several years, and if the US and the other players in the so-called "Five plus One" fail in their efforts to temper Iran's nuclear programs, Israel will most likely move against Iran.

"Israeli Warplanes Target Suspected Hezbollah Bunker in Beirut," , Associated Press via FoxNews (Jul 19,2k6)

JERUSALEM — Israeli warplanes dropped bombs late Wednesday on a bunker in south Beirut where senior Hezbollah leaders were thought to be, the military said.

Military officials said a wave of aircraft dropped 23 tons of explosives on the bunker. The officials, speaking on condition of anonymity because they were not authorized to talk to reporters, said top Hezbollah figures were thought to be there, possibly including Hezbollah leader Hassan Nasrallah. The officials said the bunker was in the Bourj al-Barajneh section of southern Beirut.

That's all I have for you today, dear refWrite readers.

-- Owlb

World War: Afghanistan: Taliban resurgence in Afghan 'theatre' of Islamofascism terror war

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It's good to hear even conditional good news out of Afghanistan these days. In the lastest we read that "Afghan troops fight to retake southern towns," which means the Taliban's recovery of territories they target are at least being contested, and in this case, not be "outsiders" but by the new Afghan army itself. The other side of the same dispatch by Tom Regan Christian Science Monitor (Jul 18,2k6) runs a subtitle on the darker side, "Meanwhile, ongoing drought may drive Afghans to join the Taliban."


Afghan troops were preparing Tuesday to retake a town in the country's dangerous Helmand province that one official said had been "technically and temporarily" left to Taliban insurgents and Pakistani militants.

The Associated Press reports that between 300 and 400 Afghan soldiers were heading to the southern town of Garmser. "Our soldiers are going to Garmser with the support of the coalition to take it back from the Taliban," said Amir Mohammed Akhunzada, the deputy governor of Helmand province.

In Kabul, Associated Press reports that [Afghan] government officials accused the outlawed Pakistan-based militant Islamic group Lashkar-e-Tayyaba [which apparently figured largely in the train-terrorism in Mumbai - P] and the pro-Taliban political party Jamiat Ulema-e-Islam of taking over Garmser[, Helmand province, Afghanistan]. Afghan police battled with the insurgents for 16 days before the police were forced to withdraw.

[Deputy Interior Minister Abdul Malik Sidiqi] said a second Helmand town - Naway-i-Barakzayi - that had been overrun by militants was reclaimed by government forces late Monday. "[The ousted insurgents had] burned the Afghan flag and raised the Jamiat Ulema-e-Islam flag in the district."

The specter of unified terrorists with a political wing operating in Pakistan, India, and Afghanistan - at the very same time that the terrorists continue viciously in Iraq - and have been killing civilians and capturing a few soldiers in Israel from their strongholds in southern Lebanon (where Hizbullah had paralyzed the Lebanese govt) and Palestine's West Bank and Gaza (where Hamas had won the recent parliamentary elections), while recalling all the other places like-minded terrorists had struck in this worldwide endeavour - London UK, Bali Indonesia, Egypt, Kenya - we have to conclude that we are in the midst of a worldwide war. Returning to the specifically Afghan situation:

Meanwhile, the BBC reports that the country is now facing another problem - massive drought. And the drought is worse in the areas where the Taliban have the most "influence," reports show.

Much of the country's wheat crop has failed this year because of lower than expected snowfall during the winter and poor spring rains. Families are already reported to be going hungry in provinces as far Badakshan in the north-east and Josjan in the west.

Thousands of people in Zabul province have left their villages to search for food, but the World Food Programme says it does not have the resources to help them.

Reuters reports that poverty has been one of the main reasons for the resurgence of the Taliban in the south.

"There are many villages where, because development agencies can't operate normally in conditions of insurgency, people don't have enough to eat," a diplomat said.

"If the Taliban arrive with a little cash, that can be enough to induce people to join."

The situation in Afghanistan is, simply, dire. An analysis byv Hekmat Karzai and Seth G. Jones (CSM, "How to curb rising suicide terrorism in Afghanistan," (Jul 19,2k6) parses its subject matter into five distinct elements:

First, Al Qaeda and the Taliban have successfully tapped into the expertise and training of the broader jihadi community. Militants have imparted knowledge on suicide tactics to Afghan groups through the Internet and in face-to-face visits, and these militants - with Al Qaeda's assistance - have supplied a steady stream of suicide bombers.

Second, Al Qaeda and the Taliban have concluded that suicide bombing is more effective than other tactics in killing Afghan and coalition forces. This is a direct result of the success of such groups as Hamas in the Palestinian territories, Hizbullah in Lebanon, the Tamil Tigers in Sri Lanka, and Iraqi groups. Suicide attacks allow insurgents to achieve maximum impact with minimal resources. Data show that when the insurgents fight US and coalition forces directly in Afghanistan, there is only a 5 percent probability of inflicting casualties. With suicide attacks, the chance of killing people and instilling fear increases several fold.

Third, Al Qaeda and the Taliban believe that suicide attacks have increased the level of insecurity among the Afghan population. This has caused some Afghans to question the government's ability to protect them and has further destabilized the authority of local government institutions. Consequently, the distance between the Afghan government and the population in specific areas is widening.

Fourth, suicide attacks have provided renewed visibility for the Taliban and Al Qaeda, which previous guerrilla attacks did not generate. Because of their lethality and high profile nature, every suicide attack is reported in the national and international media.

While the majority of suicide attackers are foreigners, some Afghans have been influenced by the increased proliferation of extremist propaganda and have carried out suicide attacks.

The two reports differ in more or less "blaming" the problems on Lakshar-e-Taiba (LeT) in the first article sited in this blog-entry, and instead "blaming" them on Al-Quaeda as the master of the resurgent Taliban in the secod article cited. The accounts may be reconcilable, one or both may be seriously mistaken (tho I doubt it). In any case, dire.

-- Politicarp

Economics: North America & EU: Stewardship ethics for business today

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"Can profits and ethics coexist?," that's the question Rushworth Kidder
poses in reviewing a new book on business economics understood as an ethical discipline in the daily practice / vocation of businesspeople Christian Science Monitor (Jul 18,2k6). Profit with Honor: The New Stage of Market Capitalism by Daniel Yankelovich (Yale University Press; 189 pp., $24).

Today, says Yankelovich, a "third wave of mistrust of business and other institutions," following two earlier waves around the time of the Great Depression and again in the late 1960s, is upon us at least in North America.

Yankelovich argues that the current mistrust, while fed by scandals at Enron, Tyco, WorldCom, and elsewhere, springs from a convergence of three deeper trends:

• The deregulation of the 1980s and 1990s that "transformed the gatekeepers - the accounting firms, the investment bankers, the business law firms, the regulatory agencies - into enablers." • The excesses of CEO pay, which tied it to "the vagaries of the stock market" and "sorely tempted" CEOs to "take questionable shortcuts, or even cheat." • The importing into business of bad cultural norms that include winning at all costs and gaming the system.

Fighting such trends with laws and compliance structures isn't enough. "If you want positive results," he writes, "you need to give people a positive basis for trust and respect and an ethical vision to live by, not merely severe punishment for misdeeds."

R+t now, I'd bet you're thinking what I'm thinking and it turns out I'm thinking what reviewer Kidder is thinking: "But how?"

Principium Consumers Hub

Recently a reformational philosopher-economist wrote on Thinknet out of the Dooyweerd Centre at Redeemer University that he had a certain unease with outfits like Live 8, Make Poverty History and the Micah Challenge. They're good on making demands of govts, but they don't do any concrete work of a business kind, a business kind that is different from the prevailing kind's so as to show a model and offer a vocation to young people who want to create enterprises that can produce good things and services differently, without excess of profits but with stable return on investment and gifts. Yes, I would argue that such a real alternative way of enterprizing would merit not only investments but also gifts from those who weren't looking for a return but a place to put accumulated capital to work that wouldn't be pissed down the down the drain of CEO mammoth salaries and bonuses, prestige advertizing campaigns that notified no potential customer of a good product ready for purchase, bad products like (where shall I start) luxury autos and gas-guzzlers at that.

Unlike many laments about corporate malfeasance that are awash with diagnoses but scant on prescriptions, this book steers directly toward a concept that Yankelovich describes as "stewardship ethics." He sees it as "a new stage of enlightened self-interest" that brings social norms together with business imperatives, focuses on community, and "emphasizes the conscious effort required to reconcile profitability with social good."

Yankelovich locates his concept between two popular but (in his view) flawed theories about business ethics. One is a laissez-faire approach that assumes "all reasonably honest ways of making profit somehow serve the public good" with no additional ethical imperatives required. The other is a corporate social responsibility approach. Arising from the nonprofit sector, this theory finds profitmaking suspect, and seeks to burden business with the correction of social ills unrelated to its core objectives.

This brings us to the core issue of practicality in the Yankelovich program. And for the reviewer as for the book's author, that brings us to today's captains of business:

Will hard-driving executives buy into stewardship ethics? Here he draws two strong arguments from his own work over the years.

The first concerns executive pay. He divides compensation into two pieces: "the wealth needed to provide a CEO with financial security and a high-status lifestyle, and the wealth desired mainly for scorekeeping purposes ('my bonus is bigger than yours')." His own research has convinced him that baby boomers - who make up the bulk of today's CEOs - desire more than money. He finds them "hungry for recognition and for the conviction that they are leaving a valued legacy for the future." If that hunger can replace the "scorekeeping" part of executive compensation - and Yankelovich thinks it can - then stewardship ethics may well be attractive to the CEO.

The second argument concerns our culture's broad social norms. "The good news is that the larger culture is ready for less self-centered, more-communal-minded values," he writes.

My own interest is not so much in today's top-of-the-heap executives. Were I interested in the older sets, I'd be more curious about the various hardcore evangelical and pentecostal business networks, faith&business movements, mostly Christian I've been presumming, but also with some Judaic voices like that of Orthodox Rabbi Daniel Lapin (who had connections with Jack Abramoff, a fellow Orthodox Jew, for whom Lapin's teachings didn't seem to do much good - just as the Christian execs at Enron and World.com didn't get much good out of the likes of Business Reforme magazine and ChristianBusiness.net -- the latter being BR's rebrand these days (a name which of course can be shed as soon as scandal hits the outfit). I see a lot of Evangelicalism, a lot of Pentecostalism, and a lot of Judaic Orthodoxy in these sources - but very little of a renewing vision for the inner reformation of business structures, organizations, institutions, companies, firms, corporations, etc. Just the same old same-old, with a lot of gooey religiosity jazz. Too bad. We need a global movement of business for human good, and not the self-interest of owners, investors, employers, employees and their families only. How to satisfy the needs and drive to succeed which ferments, and could do so, in all these busienss-involved people (that could be each one of us) and at the same time build up a different pattern of doing business in the world that powerfully trend it toward the well-being of a starving population, unskilled, homeless, migrant - in so many places.

To get more local: It's this phenom that presses America's borders. It's this phenom that shouts out for investment in good business in Mexico, that leaves wages, salaries and capital remaining in Mexico to provide rise-out-of-poverty jobs there, to build an economy from which all there will benefit.

I have to be careful I don't let utopian rhetoric run away with my vision-talk; because I want a practical, workable, step-at-a-time vision that will become articulate in economic challenges to young people who will study and act entrepreneurially for a new way of making a God-blessed dollar, of benefit to the whole society, at home and abroad, locally and globally. At the same time, I have no illusion that hunger, displacement, strife rising in poverty are the fate of the world for at least a long time to come. The problems are vastly structural, and the demographic realities of populations exanding without any hope of secular relief from childhood to old age are far too real.

In the hands of a less trusted author, either argument would require at least a chapter of charts, graphs, and quotations. Who but Dan Yankelovich can talk so briefly about baby-boomer longings or civil-society norms - and be so readily believed? If you hunger for scholarly detail, "Profit with Honor" may not satisfy you. But if you suspect that what's most needed today is a new vision for corporate ethics, this book makes perfect sense.

-- Politicarp

India: Terrorist attacks: Bombay is Mumbai is Islamofascist terrorist target

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Tuesday, July 11, I began gathering news URLs about Mumbai, India (aka known by its colonial name, Bombay), the massacre there designed with engineering expertise that reminds one of how Hitler was praised for making the trains run on time. But trains have been occasions for massacre before in India--and those train-massacres resonated with the communal strife between India's Muslims and Hindus as well. An early report from BBC told us this:

More than 160 people have been killed and 460 injured by seven bombs on the train network in the Indian financial capital Mumbai (Bombay), police say.

The first of the near-simultaneous blasts went off at about 1830 local time (1300 GMT), during the rush hour in the suburbs on the Western Railway.

Correspondents spoke of scenes of pandemonium, with people jumping from trains and bodies flung onto tracks.

There have been a number of bomb attacks in Mumbai in recent years.

Most of the exploding bombs were on moving trains; two were detonated at train stations. See the BBC map.

An even earlier reports was from a BBC blog where Rabiya Prakesh mentions how internet locations had immediately gone into service.

Mumbai Help is keeping across the developing situation, and on tonight's programme we will try and bring you the latest.

If you are in Mumbai or have been affected by the blasts, please do get in touch with us. We want to try and piece together what has happened and what the situation is like on the ground.

We've already been getting some emails in telling us that the transport system has been paralysed, and the telephone networks are down.

On the matter of bloggers's speedy response, see blogger Steve's judgement of excellence on Obiter Dicta.

The day after the attacks some of the nitty gritty details in all their gritty began to emerge. CNN reported that h+ly sophisticated timers for at least some of the bombs in Bombay, were hidden in ...

Timers hidden in pencils have been discovered in at least three of the seven sites where bombs exploded on commuter trains in India's financial capital, killing 185 people, according to CNN's sister station, CNN-IBN.

The timers are believed to have detonated bombs made of RDX, one of the most powerful kinds of military explosives, the network quoted police as saying Wednesday.

However, CNN could not independently confirm the discovery of the timers or the material used in the explosives.

I decided to keep my own eyes open to mention of the timers in further reports.

No group has claimed responsibility for the blasts, which came in a span of 11 minutes during Tuesday evening's rush hour in Mumbai, when trains were jam-packed with commuters making their way home.

The Western Railway system carries more than 4.5 million passengers a day in the city formerly named Bombay.

Maharashtra state's police chief said more than 700 people were hurt, and hospitals continued appeals for blood donors.

Pakistan's govt was already on Jul 12,2k6 trying to fix blame on the Kashmir dispute between the countries which dispute has attracted terrorist activism for decades.

Not all judgments of the blogsphere's attention were positive. Already on Jul 12, Bombay's Sepia Mutiny scored not only America's mainstream media for being "poor in local coverage" of the murderous carnage, but also knocked the "relative silence from the blogosphere." The post by Ennis has some very serious geostrategic thinking, and refWrite recommends reading it. A sample where he refers us to Hukku, on another Sepia Mutiny page from the day before and now with scads of comments): I couldn't track what Ennis quotes, either on the earlier blog-entry nor on the Foreign Affairs page where :

“Accordingly, the Pakistani government continues to support the insurgents, although more subtly than before. But what the Musharraf regime and its more intransigent Islamist allies fail to recognize is that Indian patience with Pakistani-sponsored violence in Kashmir and elsewhere in India is nearly at an end. Although largely ignored by the U.S. media, bombings during the festival for the Hindu holiday of Diwali in New Delhi last November, in which Pakistani-based groups were implicated, almost precipitated another major crisis, which was averted only by the Indian leadership’s restraint. But it is far from clear whether such forbearance could survive another attack. Furthermore, in contrast to the 2001-2 crisis, when the Indian military lacked viable plans for responding to a Pakistani-based terrorist attack, the Indian army is now well prepared to undertake swift and decisive action by retaliating against targets in Pakistan at times and places of its own choosing. Unfortunately, the Pakistani leadership appears to be oblivious to India’s growing frustration. Consequently, although another Indo-Pakistani war is not likely, it remains possible…”

A preview of the first 500 of 3,474 words total gives a summary background for the Kindia-Pakistan conflict over Kashimir, but the key quote by author Sumit Ganguly is not in the 500.

Another analyst, writing in OpenDemocracy,Ajai Sahni puts the blame squarely on Pakistan:

The latest series of blasts is, in essence, a continuation of a sustained covert war against India in which Pakistan has created and exploited a number of Islamist terrorist groups over more than a decade and a half. The principal focus of this war remains at present the Indian state of Jammu & Kashmir (J&K); but since the early 1990s there have been sustained efforts to extend this war to every part of India, and there has been a cyclical succession of terrorist operations across the length and breadth of the country.

The frequency, spread and, in some cases, intensity of these operations has seen some escalation in the past years, as international pressure on Pakistan to end terrorism in J&K has diminished levels of "deniable" engagement in that theatre after a diminution of the international "tolerance of terror" after 9/11.

It is significant that hundreds of Pakistan-backed terrorist cells have been discovered, disrupted and neutralised over the past years. The cumulative evidence of these operations has systematically confirmed a sustained and comprehensive Pakistani strategy of subversion and mobilisation for terrorism in virtually every significant concentration of Muslim people in India. This strategy has failed entirely to secure a mass base among India's Muslims, but a handful of recruits – sufficient to sustain a sporadic and, given contemporary technologies, fairly devastating, terrorist campaign – has been available.

Sahni argues that one or more of a shortlist of known organizations, in league with the Pakistan secret service and working according to its plan, are at the root of the terrorism this week in Mumbai. They are: Lakshar-e-Taiba / Pure Army of God (LeT); Studients Islamic Society of India (Simi); and "the Dawood Ibrahim gant" now based in Karachi -

"This has been involved in trafficking in arms and explosives, as well as the illegal transfer of funds to south Asian and international Islamist terrorist groups. The "D Company", as the gang is known, still has a stranglehold over organised crime in Bombay, and its infrastructure is regularly used by Pakistan's Inter Services Intelligence (ISI) to facilitate terrorist activities in India as well as abroad. The Dawood gang is on India's list of wanted terrorist organisations, as well as on the United States list of proscribed terrorist groups.

Mr Sahni may be altogether wrong regarding any and all of these three organizations, but his considered analysis is well worth your reading.

Another blogger of India-origin working n the USA gives us his take on the US media attention to the Mumbai story. On his blog Context Switch, Sibin Mohan tells us:

I would like to take an alternate spin on the media coverage in this post actually...I was incredulous about the response to the event by the American mainstream media ! They passed it off as a footnote at best, and then got on with more "serious" matters ! As I mentioned, the Washington Post probably had the initial uptake on the matter and a couple of editorials and op-eds. Similar coverage was seen in the New York Times. While I have great respect for the journalistic integrity of these two large institutions in world media, I was more than disappointed ! CNN, seemed to have better coverage and analysis on this situation ! So did Pajamas Media, Wikinews and Slate ! BBC, of course, has a pretty good handle on this situation (as expected from a respeced International news organization). So, why this blind spot from the two of America's (and probably the world's) largest news publications ? Even the Los Angeles Times had just one story on this...are American newspapers editors and readers just not interested in a bombing in internationl cities ?

Hang on a sec...the bombings in London and Madrid got a lot more coverage that this incident! I remember constant news reports and updates and stories and editorials being written about those "heinous" crimes ! Journalists were crying in unison about the rise of the islamic terrorists and how they should be countered...but in the case of Mumbai, not so much as a peep !

Let's digress (well, not really...) by reading a blog-entry, "Floods, Riots, and Bombs," by Avi who attends a friends wedding in Mumbai the day before, and visits his parents, but normally he lives these days in Indonesia. He has a heart for the city, and he was there on that day.

The Times of India follows the line of thawt offered by India's intelligence––the train terrorism of Jul 11,2k6 was the work of LeT and Simi. While this line is as yet entirely hypothetical (and may be the best "theory" available even now), the line has been picked up in the USA by Robert Spence, the know-it-all o jihad, writing for Human Events.

But the most poignant item I've seen so far is the article you'll get when you click on the title of this blog-entry. Give it a try.

-- Politicarp

Tags: Mumbai-Bombay terrorist attacks

• war
• terrorism
• India
• Kasmir
• Bombay
• Mumbai
• Lakshar-e-Taiba
• simi
• dgangindia