Suspension of blogging, except occasional posts

Illness, vacations, moving, carpal tunnel, etc, means that refWrite will suspend regular posting for the rest of summer 2007. -- The Publisher

Politics: North Korea: Army officer become Christian to be executed for his faith and discipleship

Brother Pleads for Life of North Korean Facing Death for Faith;
Brownback, Other Senators, Support Cause


WASHINGTON, July 12 /Christian Newswire/ -- Son Jong Hoon, who is visiting the United States from his home in South Korea, today pleaded with the world to pressure North Korea to release his elder brother awaiting public execution for the crime of simply being a Christian.

Photo: Son Jong Nam (R), with younger brother, Son Jong Hoon (L), April 2004, Yeongil, China.

For more than a year, Son Jong Nam, former North Korean Army officer turned underground evangelist, has been beaten, tortured and held in a bleak, North Korean death row basement jail in this capital city. He has been sentenced to public execution as an example to the North Korean people.

"My only purpose in life right now is to save my brother," the younger Son said. "I pray to God for my brother's safety."

Son Jong Hoon made his plea at a news conference at the National Press Club today. He was accompanied by representatives of The Voice of the Martyrs (VOM) and staff members from the office of Sen. Sam Brownback (Rep.-Kan.).

VOM, an international organization that assists persecuted Christians around the world, launched a global campaign Tuesday, calling on people in the United States and other countries to write letters and send emails to North Korean, United Nations and U.S. State Department officials on Son Jong Nam's behalf.

VOM was been joined in the initiative by Brownback, a noted supporter of human rights for North Korean refugees. Brownback sent letters last week, also signed by Senators Baucus (D-Mont.), Durbin (D-Ill.), Inhofe (R-Okla.) and Vitter (R-La.) asking U.S. Secretary of State Dr. Condoleezza Rice and U.N. Secretary General Ban Ki-moon to work to secure the release of the Christian prisoner.

VOM is directing people go to its web site, www.prisoneralert.com, where they can compose a personal letter of support and encouragement to Son. The letter is to be mailed to the North Korean delegation to the United Nations, along with a cover letter asking the North Korean government to spare Son's life, release him from prison immediately, report on his current status and deliver the personal letter to Son.

"We are asking for prayers for Mr. Son, but also that people around the world take action on his behalf," said Todd Nettleton, director of media development for VOM. "Jesus said ministering to a prisoner was like ministering to Himself. Every letter and email can make a difference."

Some years ago the elder Son complained to the North Korean Central People's Committee when his pregnant wife, while being investigated by the secret police, was kicked in the stomach and miscarried. He made plans to leave North Korea after being pressured to drop the matter.

Son defected to China in 1998 with his wife, son and brother. His wife died after arriving there. It was in China that he met a South Korean missionary and became a Christian. Mr. Son continued his religious studies and felt called to be an evangelist in North Korea.

But before he could return home, Son was arrested by Chinese police in 2001 and sent back to North Korea, charged with sending missionaries into his native country. He was imprisoned and brutally tortured for three years.

Son was released on parole in May 2004 and expelled from Pyongyang to Chongjin to work at a rocket research institute. However, his health was so bad when he was released that he was unable to walk. But after receiving medical treatment, he went back to China to meet with his brother.

Son was arrested again when he returned to North Korea in January 2006, and has remained in prison since. The last word of him came in February. It is suspected that because he is being kept in the capitol city, North Korean officials view him as a special case and perhaps are keeping him alive, if barely, for unknown reasons.

VOM has been launching helium-filled balloons, printed with either the Gospel of Mark or the text of a tract called "How to Know God" into North Korea for years, said Nettleton. They also smuggle in copies of an audio drama called "He Lived Among Us" and have sent copies of The New Testament in Korean to northern China through a VOM program called " Bibles Unbound".

The Voice of the Martyrs, headquartered in Bartlesville, Okla., is a non-profit, interdenominational organization with a vision for aiding Christians around the world who are being persecuted for their faith in Jesus Christ, fulfilling the "Great Commission" and educating the world about the ongoing persecution of Christians.


Christian Newswire

Juridics: ICC: First steps to arrest perpetrators of suspected Sudan war crimes in Darfur region

Jurist carries a vital report by Caitlin Price, "ICC prosecutor urges arrest of Sudan war crimes suspects" (Jun7,2k7):

Chief Prosecutor of the International Criminal Court (ICC) Luis Moreno-Ocampo Thursday renewed his call for the arrests of two top suspects accused of committing war crimes in the Darfur region of Sudan. Moreno-Ocampo briefed UN Security Council (UNSC) delegates one week prior to their joint trip with African Union (AU) representatives to several African capital cities to lay out a "hybrid force" peacekeeping effort. The suspects, former Sudanese interior minister and current humanitarian affairs minister Ahmad Muhammad Harun and former militia leader Ali Muhammad Al Abd-Al-Rahman (also known as Ali Kushayb) are each accused of nearly 50 counts of war crimes and crimes against humanity. Moreno-Ocampo underscored the importance that every African nation help to apprehend the suspects and urged the Security Council to "take the lead" in bringing them before a court.

Rather than focussing explicit positive steps toward serious amelioration, if not "solution", to Darfur's misery, action-absolutists blame in every direction they can intrigue, but now seem to be getting to a clearer stance:Foreign Policy carries an analysis by Morton Abramowitz and Jonathan Kolieb, "Why China Won’t Save Darfur" (Jun,2k7):

Frustrated by the West’s failure to halt the slaughter in Sudan, Darfur advocacy groups are pinning their hopes on a country they see as genocide’s enabler in chief: China. But in pressuring an indifferent Beijing, activists are merely helping Western governments evade responsibility for a humanitarian crisis that they could do far more to stop.

Africa > Darfur

After four years of tireless efforts, Darfur advocacy groups have had little success in pressuring the Bush administration or any other Western government to move decisively against the Sudanese government for its atrocities in Darfur. These groups are right to dismiss the Bush administration’s latest sanctions initiative as mere posturing; like all of the president’s efforts to date, it’s too limited in scope and lacks a wider, more holistic diplomatic strategy. These groups are focusing instead on the two C’s of humanitarian advocacy—China and celebrities—as a remedy for a crisis that has killed over 200,000 people and displaced more than 2.5 million. But in pointing the finger at China, proponents of stronger action on Darfur are merely helping the White House evade moral responsibility for a humanitarian disaster that it labels a “genocide.”

Politics: France: UMP under Sarkozy set to win increased representation in parliamentary elections

Javno carries a Reuters story about France's upcoming parliamentary elections, Sarkozy UMP Extends Lead -- French President Nicolas Sarkozy's UMP political party could win up to 460 seats in parliamentary elections to be held later this month (Jun2,2k7):

French President Nicolas Sarkozy's UMP political party could win up to 460 seats in parliamentary elections to be held later this month, four times as many as the opposition Socialists, according to a poll on Saturday. The IFOP poll for Sunday's Journal du Dimanche newspaper put support for the UMP and Socialists steady at 41 percent and 27 percent respectively, but movement in support for other parties meant Sarkozy's UMP was forecast to win more seats than before.

France's parliamentary elections are due to be held over two rounds on June 10 and 17. A big win for the UMP would cement Sarkozy's grip on power after he was elected president on May 6.

The survey projected the UMP could win 420 to 460 seats in the 577-seat National Assembly compared with a projected 410 to 450 in IFOP's previous survey and 359 currently.

The Socialists were seen winning 80 to 120 seats compared with a previously forecast 90 to 130 and down from 149 now.

The Socialists are having their own fierce internicene battle, with some of their candidates standing firm for orthodox Socialism-by-peaceful-means and others seeking seats on the basis of a turn of the Party to social democracy which accepts capitalism but seeks to control it and promotes a a strongly welfarist-capitalism under a social-democratic government and an all-powerful all-responsible state (little sphere sovereignty or sphere-responsiblity for other societal spheres), as in many other European countries. In France, one could well imagine that in due time the present SP will split in two (SP vs. SDP).

The main loser in the poll was Francois Bayrou's new centre-right Democratic Movement, with support falling to 9 percent from 12 percent.

Europe > France

Bayrou's party said it would distribute thousands of orange flowers in Paris on Sunday -- Mothers' Day in France -- in an effort to drum up support.

Another story, this time from a marginal Trotskyite websource Indymedia Bay Area offers a telltale report, in its own desultory way, on Sarkozy's deft navigation among the splintered vote-pools of the French political panorma, "France: Guy Môquet, Sarkozy and the Stalinist school of falsification" (Jun2,2k7):

"After his official installation as French president May 16, Nicolas Sarkozy’s first engagement was a memorial ceremony to fallen Resistance fighters against the Nazi occupation of France during the Second World War.

Sarkozy used the event to issue his first presidential decree: the obligatory annual public reading in schools of Guy Môquet’s letter to his family shortly before his execution by a Nazi firing squad on October 22, 1941. Sarkozy intends this to serve as an example of “heroism” and “sacrifice” for the “nation.” The 17-year-old Môquet was a member of the Young Communists.

The visit to the memorial ceremony and his proclamation about the letter brings to light an important historical episode that reveals the counter-revolutionary essence of French Stalinism.

The latter expression is Trot-speak for France's Communist Party which at one time commanded 20% of the vote, while in the last election the orthodox Communists garnered 1.6%. However, together with the half-a-dozen other small ultraleft parties that have picked up refugees from the Commies, the total of the whole farleft wing is about 10%--who largely voted against Sarkozy in favour of the mainstream Socialists.

The initial indignation of French Communist Party (PCF) leader Marie-George Buffet at Sarkozy’s cynical use of Môquet’s death to promote nationalism during his election campaign was short-lived. “The reading of Guy Môquet’s last letter before his execution is a strong message,” she declared, after Sarkozy had pronounced his presidential decree, “because this young man was a patriot through his engagement in the Resistance, but also because his combat for the emancipation of humanity had a goal, that of constructing a Republic of rights and liberties in a democracy.”

Buffet’s servile falling into line with Sarkozy reinforces the latter’s attempts to present himself as president of “all the French.”

With such gestures, Sarkozy seems intent on chipping away at his opposition to win more seats in the Parliament than even Jacques Chirac could muster. For his interim cabinet, Sarkozy has named at least one Socialist to an important ministerial portfolio.

Politics: Riot: Ahead of G8 Summit, Europe's violent nutcult seriously hurt 18 police, injure 128 others

"The world shaped by the dominance of the G-8 is a world of war, hunger, social divisions, environmental destruction and barriers against migrants and refugees," [protest] organizers said in leaflets handed out on the streets.

CNN.com carries a dreadful story from Rostock, Germany: "146 German police officers injured in violent G-8 protests" (Jun2,2k7):

Masked demonstrators showered police with grapefruit-sized rocks and beer bottles, then were driven back with water cannon and tear gas during a protest march Saturday against the upcoming Group of Eight summit in Germany.

The clashes left smoke from burning cars and the sting of tear gas drifting through the harborfront area in the north German port of Rostock. Some 146 police were hurt, 18 of them seriously.

Radicals "are smashing everything in their way to pieces," said Karsten Wolff, a police spokesman.

The officially permitted march preceded a three-day summit beginning Wednesday in the seaside resort of Heiligendamm, where German Chancellor Angela Merkel hosts the leaders of the other G-8 nations -- Britain, France, Japan, Italy, Russia, Canada and the United States.

The leaders are expected to discuss measures against global warming, the fight against AIDS and poverty in Africa, and the world economy. As in previous years, the summit drew protesters of various stripes opposed to globalization, capitalism and the G-8 itself.

Most marchers were peaceful, but others pried up paving stones and broke them into chunks before charging police. Officers in helmets and full body armor fell back, then charged the demonstrators.

Five large green police trucks with twin water cannons mounted on top blasted groups of rioters. A police car was destroyed and several parked cars burned, spreading black smoke over the area.

Protesters torched a large blue recycling bin.

Police spokesman Frank Scheulen estimated the number of violence-minded demonstrators at about 2,000. Police put the size of the demonstration at 25,000, while organizers said it was 80,000.

Officials said 17 people were arrested.

Werner Raetz, an anti-globalization activist with Attac, one of the organizing groups, distanced himself from the violence: "There is no justification for these attacks."

Economy USA: Alan Greenspan: Reviews 18 years at Federal Reserve Bank and peers into the future of world economy in new book

CNN.com carries a Reuters article, "Greenspan: 'Very unusual' economic conditions -- The former Fed chief, noting a 'very unusual' situation in which interest rates around the world are low, defended his trademark circumspection and reflected on the surprising lesson he got from 9/11." (Jun1,2k7):

Former U.S. Federal Reserve Chairman Alan Greenspan said Friday that U.S. interest rates are low, but that rates are low all over the world.

He said the prevalence of low interest rates throughout the world was one of the things that surprised him as he prepared his reflections on his past for the new book he was promoting, The Age of Turbulence [Sept2k7, Penguin Press].

CNNMoney.com's Allen Wastler discusses U.S.-China trade issues and Alan Greenspan's ominous warning. ... Greenspan warns China stocks primed to fall

Politics: Latin America: Bolivia and Ecuador join ultraleftist suppression of privately-owned news media begun by Cuba, Venezuela

Washington Times carries a story by Martin Arostegui, "Morales, Correa target TV foes" (May31,2k7):

>SANTA CRUZ, Bolivia -- The leaders of Bolivia and Ecuador are moving with Cuban encouragement and in concert with their mentor, Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez, to restrict press freedom in their countries.

Bolivian President Evo Morales and Ecuadorean President Rafael Correa both announced steps to crack down on independent broadcasters within days of Mr. Chavez's closure on Sunday of Venezuela's main independent television station, RCTV.

My editor has asked me to develop analysis of the full report on refWrite refBlogger Insert, which he will post. I hope to add there some musings on the future role of blogging in these no-free-speech totalitarian countries.

Enviro: G-8 Summit: Bush stuns world leaders with gung-ho freelance carbon-emissions reductions by USA, China and India

Bloomberg.com carries a long and valuable overview of the Brendan Murray and Tina Seeley story, "Bush Proposes Initiative for Cutting Greenhouse Gases (Update5)" (May31,2k7).

President George W. Bush, in a counter-offer to European leaders on climate change, proposed convening a new round of talks with the world's biggest economies to set targets for cutting greenhouse gas emissions. past opposition to setting global goals to cut the pollution causing the Earth's atmosphere to warm. He said each nation should be free to pursue its own strategy for meeting targets.

``My proposal is this: By the end of next year America and other nations will set a long-term global goal for reducing greenhouse gases,'' Bush said in an address that set out the US agenda during next week's meeting of the Group of Eight [G8] industrial nations in Heiligendamm, Germany. The talks would ``establish a new framework'' for when the Kyoto Protocol on emissions expires in 2012.

Bush is heading into the G-8 summit having rejected a proposal by host German Chancellor Angela Merkel to set a target of limiting global warming to 2 degrees Celsius (3.6 degrees Fahrenheit), effectively cutting emissions to half of 1990 levels by 2050. The administration also opposes a cap-and-trade system, favored by Europeans, that would allow the buying and selling of credits to meet carbon dioxide targets. By proposing to convene talks on climate change, Bush is positioning the US to begin negotiations on the next steps to take.

`Huge Step Forward'

Bush's closest European ally, U.K. Prime Minister Tony Blair, hailed the president's proposal as a ``huge step forward'' for the US.

``For the first time, America is saying it wants to be part of a global deal,'' Blair said in an interview on Sky News during a visit to South Africa. ``For the first time it is saying it wants a global target for the reduction of emissions'' which opens the way ``for a proper global deal.''

Merkel, while calling it an ``important step'' and ``positive,'' was more cautious in her reaction.

``When it comes to the concrete formulation for Heiligendamm, though, we certainly have to continue to work on it,'' she said during a news conference in Berlin. ``But I do see movement on the issue.''

The president's critics said the administration was still trailing behind allies, state officials and US companies in addressing global warming and the proposal didn't offer much in the way of concrete progress.

G8 Summit, Heiligendamm, Germany > Enviro

`Isolated'

``The White House is just trying to hide the fact that the president is completely isolated among the G-8 leaders by calling vaguely for some agreement next year, right before he leaves office,'' Philip Clapp, president of the National Environmental Trust, said in a statement.

National Wildlife Federation President Larry Schweiger called the plan ``is an attempt to muddy the waters for the next president.''

``If President Bush were serious about this plan, he should have offered it six years ago when he rejected the Kyoto treaty,'' Schweiger said in a statement.

The proposal addresses one of Bush's objections to the 1997 Kyoto agreement -- which required industrialized nations to cut greenhouse gas emissions by 2012 -- by including India and China. Bush pulled the US out of the accord.

India and China

``To develop this goal, the United State will convene a series of meetings of nations that produce the most greenhouse gas emissions [GHGs], including nations with rapidly growing economies like India and China,'' Bush said. ``In addition to his long- term global goal, each country would establish mid-term national targets and programs that reflect their own mix of energy sources and future energy needs.''

The U.S. is the biggest producer of greenhouse gases, among them carbon dioxide, methane and nitrous oxide. Bush's chief environmental adviser, James Connaughton, said the U.S. had a net reduction of such emissions of 1.3 percent in 2006 even as the economy grew. While part of that is attributable to cooler summers and warmer winters, he said, ``we're getting more output with the same or slightly increasing amount of energy.''

Bush said the US-led climate change talks would include industry leaders so that technological advances are part of the solution.

``We need to harness the power of technology to help nations meet their growing energy needs while protecting the environment and addressing the challenge of global climate change,'' Bush said.

James Hansen, a climatologist and director of the Goddard Institute for Space Studies at the National Aeronautics Space Administration, said he won't be persuaded that the administration is serious about addressing climate change unless the targets are mandatory. ...

The G-8 countries are the U.S., Japan, Germany, the U.K., France, Italy, Canada and Russia. The U.S. economy accounts for about 45 percent of the group's $29.3 trillion in annual economic output.

More coverage:

* A carbon-neutral house? -- Plan would offset emissions by end of current Congress

* US carbon emissions fell 1.3% in 2k6

* Bush wants greehghouse gas summit

* Bush seeks global warming goal with China, India (2nd roundup)

* International Herald Tribune carries a G8 Summit story, by Brian Knowlton"Bush calls for action to reduce greenhouse gases'" (May31,2k7):

WASHINGTON: President George W. Bush reversed previous policy on Thursday and called for the first time on the world's top greenhouse-gas emitters to meet and agree, by next year, on goals to cut emissions aimed at averting potentially catastrophic global warming.

"In recent years, science has deepened our understanding of climate change; it opened new possibilities for confronting it," Bush said. "The United States takes this issue seriously."

It was the most significant call for action on climate change from a president who angered much of the world in 2000 when he rejected the Kyoto Protocol on global warming.

For the first time, Bush has now accepted the principle of goals for emissions reduction. His effort also would pointedly include India and China, whose fast-growing economies now rank them among the worst greenhouse-gas emitters.

Bush's call came a week before the Group of 8 industrialized countries are to meet in Germany, where Chancellor Angela Merkel had planned personally to press the president for bolder action on climate change. Bush's comments appeared, at least in part, to be an effort to seize the initiative from the Europeans - while endorsing a less-ambitious approach and giving countries 18 months before taking any action.

Also another story with another slant, this time in the Daily Telegraph [London, UK] by David Blair and Richard Spencer, Bush 'undermines G8 with new climate plan' (May31,2k7):

President George W Bush was accused of "spoiling" next week's G8 summit today after he announced that America would not agree to reduce its carbon emissions before a new conference next year.

Germany, which holds the presidency of the G8 group of rich countries, had hoped to reach a landmark deal on climate change when leaders gather in the Baltic town of Heiligendamm.

Angela Merkel, the German Chancellor, has proposed a global agreement limiting any increase in world temperatures to no more than two degrees Celsius.

In practice, scientists believe this would require a reduction of 50 per cent in global carbon emissions below the 1990 level by 2050.

But Mr Bush's latest speech might have destroyed any chance of a deal being agreed next week. He said that America and the group of 15 countries forming the world's largest economies should meet to discuss the issue next year.

This conference would convene shortly before America's next presidential election and a few months before Mr Bush steps down.

When this meeting happens, Mr Bush said: "America and other nations will set a long-term global goal for reducing greenhouse gases. To develop this goal, the United States will convene a series of meetings of nations that produce the most greenhouse gases, including nations with rapidly growing economies like India and China.

"Each country would establish mid-term management targets and programmes that reflect their own mix of energy sources and future energy needs."

For me, this Bush move makes the G8 Summit vitallty interesting, and the move Bush recently made regarding fiting AIDs increases the likelihood of approval also of Blair's own proposal to renew the G8's Africa Promises from the last summit.

Politics: Darfur: USA Prez Bush declares further sanctions against Sudan's alleged genocide to exterminate the Darfurians

Marketplace a radio newscast carries the audio link to hear US Prez George W. Bush declaration of further sanctions on Sudan, and personal sanctions on 2 govt officials and 1 "rebel leader," whether Janjaweed or Darfurian, I have no idea yet. In the background, there will be lurking the charges related to genocide, which easily could bring the International Criminal Court into action. Bush's Sudan statement on American Public Media [APM] radio.

The Save Darfur Coalition is urgently asking people to campaign for the President to take up the issue in the UN Security Council on an emergency basis.

North Africa > Darfur, Sudan

But just today I see a news report where the umbrella group is saying it may be too late. Despite the headline, the article makes clear SDC is by no means playing a blame-game, because the Save Darfur Coalition are diplomatic realists.

President Bush today directed the Treasury Department to tighten existing economic sanctions against Sudan. It's already a crime for American companies to do business with the country. [The] new US economic sanctions against Sudan intend ... to pressure the Sudanese government to stop the bloodshed in the Darfur region.

In the strange world of international diplomacy, the President had to dot all his "i"s and cross all his "t"s to avoid China's reaction (Sudan is one of China's oil sources). A negative reaction on a time-consuming diplomatic technicality would have had a bad outcome for the effort to save Darfur, as a negative Chinese response would (and still may) effect the UN SC's discussion of worlwide enforcement of the additional sanctions. China is a permanent member of the Security Council, and thus has veto power over any decision of the Council.

Politics: Canada's Humanitarian Aid: Agency fawlted for slothful biz-as-usual in Afghanistan war zone

National Post reports in an article by Andrew Mayeda, "Canada’s aid failures a threat to Afghan mission: NGO" (May28,2k7) CanWest News Service

OTTAWA - Canada's "failures" on the development and aid front are endangering the military mission in Afghanistan, says a non-governmental organization that operates in Kandahar province.

Notice at the outset of reporter Mayeda's article that a new framework of geostrategic thawt is employed when he uses quite interestingly the phrase development and aid front, tho only momentarily at the outset, sweeping aside the previous decades of the Cdn Lib policy of parallelism, military was one strait-line task, paralleled by a distinct CIDA-ethos of "humanitarian aid."

But in Mayeda's phrasing, in the new barely-mentioned framework of one war, integrated but fawt on differentiated fronts. Development and aid in what should be Canada's integrated policy for it's mission in Afghanistan, is just one front of an integrated three-pronged war policy.

In fact, the situation is so severe that the Canadian International Development Agency (CIDA) should be relieved of its duties and replaced with a special envoy who will co-ordinate development, aid and counter-narcotics policy, argues Senlis Council.

"When you're on the ground in Kandahar, it's sad to say that despite good intentions, CIDA's efforts are non-existent," Vancouverite Norine MacDonald, the group's founder, said today.

"We are confronted every day by people without food, without water, without medical aid, without shelter."

Senlis is calling for a major overhaul of Canada's strategy that would see its development and aid budget increased to the same level as the military budget.

The logic of this equation depends on the validity of the quantifications and accounting philosophy presupposed in "military" and "development, aid." The almitey dogma of Equality spread beyond its appropriate stretch of meaningfulness.

Currently, Canada spends more than 10 times on military operations than it does on development.

I don't think it's prudent to starve Canadian soldiers to feed starving Aghans. By that I mean, funds alloted to reach toward the hokum ideal of "equality" of dollars, should only gradually be phased in.

"Our military are doing a remarkable job in the most difficult circumstances, but our government is not doing what needs to be done in development, aid or counter-narcotics policies to be sure that we have the support of the Afghan people," said Ms. MacDonald. "Without winning the hearts and minds of the Afghan people, we will continue to win the battles but we will not the war."

Almost six years since the United States and its allies invaded the country, people in southern Afghanistan are actually worse off economically, said Ms. MacDonald.

The province is gripped by "extreme poverty" and "growing disenchantment" with NATO forces, she said.

Refugee camps are teeming with starving people, making the camps an "easy recruiting ground" for the Taliban, who pay recruits about $200 per month.

No substantial food aid has been delivered to Kandahar province since March 2006, said Ms. MacDonald.

Meanwhile, mounting civilian casualties are feeding resentment toward Canadian troops and their allies.

According to a Senlis survey of 17,000 Afghan men this spring, more than 80% of men in southern Afghanistan worry about feeding their families.

North America > Canada's Aid2Afghans

Fifty percent [50%!--Owlb]believe the Taliban will defeat the NATO coalition.

Senlis also slammed the U.S.-driven policy to stamp out the opium trade by eradicating poppy crops. Opium production has actually increased while leaving poor farmers without work.

Instead, the group is proposing a "poppy-for-medicine" pilot project that would license Afghan farmers to grow opium for use as morphine or codeine, an approach that has worked in countries such as Turkey and India.

If well-regulated and controlled, doubling as an anti-Taliban program, this Senlis suggestion could solve the problem of illicit trade in opium. To accomplish this bureaucratically, however, would require a system of inspection, accounting, and paperization / digitalization almost unheard of in Afghan culture.

Senlis also recommends that Canada adopt the UN's Millennium Development Goals [MDGs] success criteria for the Afghanistan mission . The goals target progress in areas such as poverty and hunger, universal primary education and gender equality.

Rookmaker Club for geostrategic analysis

Vitally interesting to me, is how the Senlis Council's report adopts UN MDG goalism such as reformational Christian economist Bob Goudzwaard has severely criticized (see the exchange between Dr Bruce Wearne and refWrite's publisher, "Public Justice and Emerging World Society," pointing out how the priority of goals over norms is an evasion of facing the issue of norms. Norms are precedent to goals. Utopian goals can be at first exhilarating, then frustrating, then widely nodded-to but disregarded (like Kyoto Enviro and the G8's goals for African aid), then the whole idea of goals becomes numbing.

Nothing happens ... but Senlis wants to put Canada on record as supporting wannabe DMG goals to turn Kandahar into the very image of a Canadian middle-class suburb.

... Ms. MacDonald reserved her harshest words for CIDA, which has been criticized for the slow pace of its development efforts.

Perhaps whipping up fury because CIDA is insufficiently motivated by artificial and utopian goals such as DMGing Afghan's plite? Are we seeing the emergence of A new development-doctrine orthdoxy? Via Senlis?

"For some reason, CIDA has a structure in historical development that makes it difficult for them to work in a war zone," said Ms. MacDonald.

However, she was vague on exactly how a special development envoy would turn things around. She said the envoy would decide on the strategy after consulting with government, military and aid-agency officials.

A Senate committee on national defence also found no evidence of a "visible" Canadian development effort and called on CIDA to funnel money through the military to deliver aid.

The office of Josee Verner, the minister in charge of CIDA, did not respond to a request for comment.

Despite its concerns, Senlis is not calling for a Canadian withdrawal from Afghanistan. In fact, Canada should not set a timetable for leaving, but instead set clear goals for the mission and not leave until they are accomplished, said Ms. MacDonald.

This military doctrine is remarkably sensible in regard to Canadian foreign policy vis a` vis strong support for the new democracy of Afghanistan--a democracy which the Taliban is trying to bring to its knees. Senlis is more than hot air.

Canada has about 2,500 troops in the Kandahar region in the southern part of Afghanistan. Fifty-five Canadian soldiers and one diplomat have died there since 2002.

Senlis was founded in 2002 and is bankrolled by Swedish philanthropist Stephan Schmidheiny, an early investor in the Swatch Group. It has offices in London, Paris, Brussels, Ottawa and Kabul, as well as field offices in Kandahar and Helmand provinces.

Meantime, one should remember that CIDA has functioned as well as could be expected in pre-tsunami, war-torn Sri Lanka--and serves in that war zone to this very day, a war zone that is at the same time a post-tsunami culture under the invasion of do-gooders, whose massive presence attracted do-good cadres to the point where the famous Tamil city of Batticaloa (Mattapuku), one sees foreign experts swarming en masse that one sees changed the entire complexion of the faces on the streets, suddenly an international conclave, not a Tamil city--if my sources hold, and my facts not too stale.

In any case, Senlis is not reported as having even a single word to say on the demographics that Afghanistan is up against, whether the West is present there or not. It more than reproduces its population, which it cannot feed to begin with (only the opium trade is capable of supplying jobs and incomes aside from aid and taxes ... but taxes of whom?). And in that circumstance, there is no mention of policies to free up entrepreneurial energies and skills in the Afghan population to create businesses, no mention of loans to business small and large, of workable banking and accounting in Afghanistan, of manufacturing goods some of which Canadians could purchase. Afghans need money incomes like everyone else in today's world. Sure, build schools (and pay teachers and professors) and hospitals (and pay nurses and doctors), but where's the tax-base to keep the schools and hospitals and their non-profit employees going?

Juridics: Canada: Supreme Court affirms economic-class basis for access to Canadian legal system

Bloomberg.com carries a major news story from Toronto by
Joe Schneider "Canadians Don't Have Entitlement to Legal Services, Court Says" (May25,2k7):

Canadians don't have a constitutional entitlement to legal services, the country's highest court ruled, overturning two lower court decisions that declared a British Columbia tax on legal fees unconstitutional.

Yes, the narrow issue was a taxation issue. But it's quite obvious that recent pronouncements that the Equality section of Canada's Charter of R+ts and Freedom's has done its job in getting equal pay for equal work and other issues of equality related to the situation of women in Canada. But then it was stretched beyond the meaning of the Charter-writers in order to be used for other purposes in lower courts and the Supreme Court of Canada. The Equality sections were activistically stretched beyond reason to demote the unique status of 1woman1man intimate unions and to alter the traditional meaning of the word "marriage" in law, so that the term itself becomes a mere generic for any kind of intimate union without difference in the Canadian legal system. Now the Court has mothballed the Equality section for any foreseeable future.

After this addle-brained decision, you can't use a legal concept of equality to render fairness for members of all Canada's classes and income-levels before the law, equality of the poor to have the same access to the legal system as the middle and upper classes. Unequal, if you can't afford to pay to hire a competent lawyer.

Dugald Christie, a British Columbia lawyer killed last year on a cross-country bicycling trip, had sued the provincial government saying a 7 percent tax on the purchase of legal services made it impossible for some people with low incomes to pursue claims. A trial judge agreed, saying the tax breached a constitutional right to access to justice. A provincial court of appeal upheld the decision.

``The impugned provincial legislation is constitutional,'' Canada's Supreme Court said today in a 9-0 decision. ``The right to access the courts is not absolute.''

Well, nothing is absolute; only God the Almitey Creator is absolute. The Constitution acknowledges God. So the Court's statement on absolutes is no comfort to the poor who can't afford legal representation in various jurisdictions. It's the poor who are unequally served by how the Canadian Supremes deploy thru the legal system their own tragic Equality history and very self-contradictory conceptualization of Equality. The recent decision is nonsensical.

Juridics > Canada

British Columbia is the only province in Canada to tax legal fees. The tax was imposed in 1993, ostensibly to add funding to the provincial legal aid program, which provides lawyers to people with low incomes at no charge. The money collected is included in general revenue and the high court said it's difficult to ascertain how much of the tax goes to legal aid.

This manoeuvre by the BC govt is a typical tax shell-game that is typically used by govts' to rip off specially-designated revenue streams which are such in name only. The court should demand transparency of the BC govt in regard to legal aid revenues.

Christie, 65 at the time of his death on July 31, was struck by a van on the Trans-Canada Highway east of Sault Ste. Marie, Ontario, as he was cycling across the country to raise awareness about access to legal services.

He was the founder of the Western Canada Society to Access Justice. The Supreme Court said his net income between 1991 and 1999 didn't exceed C$30,000 ($27,787) annually because his clients often couldn't pay their bills.

Under the provincial law, he still had to pay the tax on fees that had been levied, even if he didn't get the money [from his impecunious clients].

``Notwithstanding our sympathy for Mr. Christie's cause, we are compelled to the conclusion that the material presented does not establish the major premise on which the case depends -- proof of a constitutional entitlement to legal services,'' the Supreme Court said.

So much for legal equality in regard to class and income-level in Canada.

The case is Attorney General of British Columbia v. Christie, Supreme Court of Canada (Ottawa), Case No.: 31324

I think in this decision the Court has been found out in the contradictions of its own juridical hypocrisy, in the emptiness and self-contradictoriness of its collective conceptualization, and in the unanimous philosophy entrenched in the personnel of the Court, to the exclusion of any genuine jurisprudential viewpoint-pluralism.

Economics: Labour USA: Jobs disappear, membership erodes, as some labour unions re-invent themselves

Washington Times carries a report by John Seewer and Dan Sewell "New face of unions" (May28,2k7) about the misfortunes and fortunes of American labour organizations

TOLEDO, Ohio -- The new faces of organized labor are immigrants working at construction sites, and as hospital nurses, parking lot attendants, mechanics and casino dealers -- all groups who are unlikely to lose their jobs to overseas workers.

Union leaders, trying to stop the erosion of organized labor, are looking beyond their core auto and steel industries to recruit service workers making low wages and professionals worrying about losing their health care.

"What's left anymore?" said Al Mixon, president of the International Brotherhood of Teamsters Local 507 in Cleveland, which just finalized a contract with American Red Cross employees in northern Ohio. "We're all forced to look into new areas."

This may be just the beginning of the reshaping at a time when factory jobs are being sent overseas or lost to technological changes.

"As we lose manufacturing jobs, we're going to move more into nontraditional occupations," said United Auto Workers [UAW] Ohio President Lloyd Mahaffey. "The issues aren't different whether it's a health care facility or a factory. It's about having a voice."

In the past year, the UAW signed up 2,500 new members in Ohio at auto parts plants, county jails and a juvenile courthouse. The national union last year voted to move $60 million from its strike fund into recruiting new members.

"We had a good year," Mr. Mahaffey said. "But it wouldn't be fair to say we're replacing everyone we lose."

Job losses at the Big Three automakers and at parts makers knocked UAW membership to fewer than 600,000 members in 2005, from a high of 1.5 million in 1979. [A 6 out 15 ration, ruffly only 3/7 left. - EM]

Union membership has declined steadily nationwide in the past 50 years. Only about one in 10 workers belongs to a union compared with a third of all workers in the 1950s.

"The question is, 'Have unions fallen so far and so fast that they can't get up?' " said Gary Chaison, a labor specialist at Clark University in Worcester, Mass. "I give them a 50-50 chance."

The fall has been most pronounced in the industrial Midwest, where hundreds of thousands of union jobs have disappeared and unions in states such as Indiana and Ohio have recorded double-digit percentage drops in membership in the past two decades.

Jon Spears, 35, became one of the casualties in September when he accepted a separation package from Delphi Corp.'s auto-brake plant in Dayton, Ohio, where he had worked since 1999. He has no regrets about his union membership or the representation he received. But he felt beaten down by the unrelenting "gloom and doom" of the loss of security as the company filed for bankruptcy and the union weakened.

"I thought I was going to be there for my 30 [years]. When I started working there, I was very excited to have that job. I loved going to work," said Mr. Spears, who now is looking for a job.

Unions likely need at least 500,000 new members each year just to make up for their annual losses, Mr. Chaison said.

"They don't have to look overseas for fertile fields," he said. "It's all around them. They just have to use their imagination."

The Service Employees International Union (SEIU) has organized child care providers who work at home in Illinois and janitors who clean office towers in Houston.

The union has doubled in size in a little more than a decade, to 1.8 million members, and now is trying to unionize janitors in Indianapolis, Cincinnati and Columbus.

"We need health care, we need better wages," Lauressie Tillman said at an organizing rally in Cincinnati in March.

Mrs. Tillman makes $6.85 an hour cleaning offices downtown to support her family of four. She has diabetes and must pay for doctor visits. "I don't have money for my medicine," she said.

One challenge in organizing new members is that many workers don't value unions like they once did, forcing labor leaders to reintroduce and redefine themselves.

They are pushing for more than better wages, telling workers that access to health care and the ability to join unions are civil rights -- not just bargaining chips.

And they are becoming less adversarial.

"Workers are looking for an organization that solves problems, not one that creates them," said Andy Stern, president of the SEIU.

Too many labor leaders are concerned only about negotiating contracts for their own members and aren't focused on solving problems facing all workers such as the lack of an adequate health care system, he said.

"For way too long, we've tried to stay the same and, in some cases, stop change," Mr. Stern said. "That's a losing strategy."

Organized labor is declining for a variety of reasons, including improved technology and productivity that requires fewer workers, more aggressive anti-union action by employers in the era after President Reagan fired striking air traffic controllers in 1981, movement of jobs overseas and the rise of mostly nonunion foreign automakers. US economic growth also dilutes the urge to unionize.

"It is very difficult for the unions to get a foothold where there is not a need," said Brian Burton, vice president of the Indiana Manufacturers Association, which represents about 1,500 companies in the state. Mr. Burton said workers there are able to get nonunion jobs with good pay and benefits.

Much of the economic growth in recent years has been in the Sun Belt, including states with little history of union support but an eagerness to welcome good-paying jobs.

"They give 'em just about anything they want to locate here," said Robert Shaffer, president of the AFL-CIO labor federation in Mississippi, where the state recently offered an incentives package worth about $300 million to Toyota. The Japanese automaker will build an assembly plant in Tupelo, bringing 2,000 jobs to an area where other jobs have moved overseas.

Economics > Labor USA

"If they treat the people good and don't [hurt them], it will probably be hard to organize them," Mr. Shaffer said.

Toyota, which employs 7,000 at its Georgetown, Ky., plant, is viewed favorably locally, even as US automakers cut back in the region, said Kenneth Troske, director of the Center for Business and Economic Research at the University of Kentucky.

"If we didn't have Toyota, we'd be even worse off," he said.

During the past year, Toyota's advertising has emphasized the company's deep involvement in the United States and economic contributions. Similarly, Wal-Mart Stores Inc., the world's largest retailer, has touted itself as helping working families save thousands of dollars by offering low prices and providing jobs.

The UAW is still pushing to organize workers at the foreign automakers, and Wal-Mart remains under fire by union groups who criticize the Bentonville, Ark., retailer for low wages and benefits and would like to organize its workers. Critics of unions say millions of Americans vote with their pocketbooks by buying Japanese cars and shopping at Wal-Mart.

But labor analysts say many Americans view labor favorably, even though they don't belong to unions, adding potential for growth.

One way unions are working to drum up members is by trying to become a bigger part of their members' everyday lives. That means bringing back labor-sponsored family events such as pumpkin patches and mother-daughter banquets.

"It's an old idea regenerated," said Bill Lichtenwald, president of the International Brotherhood of Teamsters Local 20 in Toledo. Its membership has been cut in half since 1980 and now is down to 7,000.

The union offers casino bus trips and ballroom dancing lessons at special rates.

Teamsters are going into schools to talk with students about what unions offer their members and how they have shaped the middle class.

"We're taking a lot of steps to re-educate," Mr. Lichtenwald said. "It used to be that labor unions were respected. That reputation went away."

David Weil, an associate professor of economics at Boston University, expects unions will look much different in the coming years. He predicted that unions may offer more job training, serve as a third party to resolve disputes or work more as a support organization for immigrants.

Some unions now don't fit the traditional mold.

The Freelancers Union, based in Brooklyn, N.Y., doesn't bargain for wages or benefits with employers. Instead, it offers low-cost health care, life insurance and networking for its 45,000 members who are writers, artists and Web site designers.

"The idea of a union conjures up so many images," said Sara Horowitz, who founded the union in 2003. "The real answer is you have to be helpful and provide something valuable."

She said that unions don't need to engage in collective bargaining to grow.

"There are many structures that have helped workers from mutual aid societies to guilds," she said. "The essence of a union is people coming together to solve their problems."

The article and those quoted completely erase the issues of closed shops, freedom of association, viewpoint pluralism of workers represenation (even in the same factory), national-sectoral multi-union collective bargaining, and the philosophy of workers representation in itself.

In the USA there happens to be an alternative-viewpoint union since 1931, certified by the National Labor Relations Board, the tiny Christian Labor Association - USA.

Likewise, in Canada, Christian Labour Association of Canada. CLAC Campaign for Cuban Trade Union prisoners.

The Netherlands: Christelijk Nationaal Vakverbond which translates to "National Federation of Christian Trade Unions".

The CNV is a federation of eleven affiliated trade unions. Altogether, the CNV has around 355,000 members. The current chair is René Paas. Although the CNV is formally independent of other organizations there are strong ideological and personal links with the Christian Democratic Appeal [CDA] political party. Former CNV vice chair Aart-Jan de Geus currently serves as CDA minister of Social Affairs and Employment for instance.

The eleven affiliated unions are:

* CNV Heavy-industry union (88.000 members);
* CNV Public union of civil servants and healthcare personnel (84.000 members);
* CNV Teachers' union (56.000 members);
* CNV Construction Workers, and Woodworker (54.000 members);
* CNV Services union (37.000 members);
* CNV Police Personnel union (21.000 members;
* CNV Military union;
* CNV Arts union 6000 members);
* CNV Church Employees union;
* CNV Joung People's union (1300 members).

Internationl: World Confederation of Labour, which had Christian origins from its outset in 1920 in Nov2k6 folded itself into the new International Trade Union Confederation, dropped its Christian identity completely but still maintained its commitment to trade-union pluralism, freedom of association, and a multi-union theory of workers' represenatation.

Brussels: In a May29,2k7 letter to President Hu Jintao of Communist-Party-run China, "the ITUC criticises a major failing of the draft law [to govern labour reiations] – the absence of any reference or commitment to allow workers in China to form and join independent trade unions and bargain collectively with employers in line with International Labour Organisation Conventions. “”The Chinese authorities have missed a real opportunity to allow their own citizens the best guarantee of decent work – the right to trade unions which they themselves control. Without this, employers will continue to be able to exploit their workforce virtually at will, and no amount of tinkering with regulations will change that”, said ITUC General Secretary Guy Ryder.

Politics: Europe: Republic of Ireland voters stunned with the win of Bertie Ahern's Fianna Fail Party, spurned coalition with Sinn Fein Party in Rpblc

BBC carries an article by James Helm, "Irish PM achieves 'unlikely' victory" (May26,2k7):

A couple of weeks ago, in the corridors of Stormont, the seat of devolved government in Northern Ireland, Bertie Ahern [Republic of Ireland "prime minister"] looked happy and relieved.

After 10 years of negotiations and frustrations, a power-sharing government - something that had at times seemed a distant, unlikely prospect - had been achieved [in Northern Ireland, which has remained part of the UK with local self-govt, but a UK working hand-in-glove with the Irish Republic which straddles most of the island from the Irish Sea to the Atlantic Ocean.]

The man known across Ireland simply as "Bertie" told me that, as a politician, this was "as good as it gets".

For Mr Ahern, the events of the last couple of days may push that achievement close for top billing. For much of the campaign, he was on the back foot, criticised and scrutinised, his strategy derided and his personal credibility called into question.

The polls had, more than once, suggested that voters might dump him out of office.

Third term

The two largest opposition parties, Fine Gael and Labour, with their "Alliance for Change", had suggested that the Irish electorate had an appetite for new faces and different policies.

Many pundits joined in, asking if this might be the end of the road for the man who has led Ireland since 1997.

Instead, he has won a remarkable victory, and is heading for a third term in office.

His personal popularity, which has carried him through tough times before, has again paid off. The man once dubbed the "Teflon Taoiseach", [Taoiseach is the Irish word for Prime Minister - P] because criticism just never seems to stick to him, has done it again. Mr Ahern may well be feeling pretty satisfied.

So how did Mr Ahern confound the pollsters, the pundits and the bookies?

Perhaps it was that personal popularity, or the fact that Irish voters objected to the questions and scrutiny of Mr Ahern's own financial dealings back in the 1990s - something those around him suggested had become a witch hunt.

Or maybe it was a satisfaction with the status quo.

Europe > Republic of Ireland

Media 'intrusion'

Much of Ireland, though not all, has had it pretty good [economically] in recent years, enjoying rapid economic growth. The campaign focussed on the state of public services, especially the health system.

Enda Kenny had been favoured to unseat Mr Ahern. But, as some looked down at their ballot papers, they might have wondered whether it really was the moment to sweep the current government from power.

Mr Ahern, never one to blow his own trumpet, said Fianna Fail had done well because of a surge in support among young voters. He also complained about what he said was an increasingly intrusive media.

Yet in the next couple of weeks Bertie Ahern will have little time for his favourite leisure pursuits, watching sport or tending his beloved hanging baskets. ...

Thursday's election saw Mr Ahern's Fianna Fail emerge as the largest party, while the biggest opposition grouping, Fine Gael, made strong gains.

Voters selected two main parties to set the tone of the national political debate--one to govern, the other to offer a serious loyal opposition--with the remaining parties pretty well particalized.

But the smaller parties - Labour, Greens, Sinn Fein and the Progressive Democrats [PDs] - were squeezed. Independents also suffered.

Sinn Fein had gone into the election with high hopes, seemingly riding the crest of a wave after joining the power-sharing government in Northern Ireland.

But afterwards its president, Gerry Adams, talked of his party "dusting itself down" and looking at why it failed to build on past successes.

The very good news is that Sinn Fein--now presumably thoroly disconnected from IRA terrorists that targetted Northern Ireland for so many years--is losing what bloc of interest and influence that they had had during the previous election in the Irish Republic.

For all its satisfaction, Fianna Fail does not have an overall majority in the 166-member parliament.

For the past ten years, the right-of-centre PDs have been its coalition partners. But their support drained away this time round, and its leader, the controversial Justice Minister Michael McDowell, was the election's most high-profile casualty.

So the most likely options are that Mr Ahern forms a coalition with Labour Party or Greens. Either way, it means a possible change of political direction.

Mr Ahern is 55, and has said he will leave active politics when he turns 60. In his retirement, when he has more time for gardening and football-watching, he may look back at May 2007 with a great deal of fondness.

I hope that Bertie, tho he may be somewhat the scoundrel some of his detractors amplify, has another full term. Realignments in the Irish array of parties, where coalition govts are the norm, are taking place already. The process will continue. At some point, Fianna Fail will have a new younger Taoiseach at its helm, Sinn Fein will disappear from the Republic of Ireland.

Politics: Iraqi factions: Shiite firebrand Moqtada Sadr leaves other Shiites holding the bag, announces plan for his militia's alliance with Sunnis

BBC reports "Sadr calls for Sunni co-operation--Moqtada Sadr delivers sermon at Kufa" (25,2K7). The unsigned article continues, "Moqtada Sadr's faction has met for talks with Sunni moderates."

Moqtada Sadr, the radical Shia cleric, has backed a peace plan with Sunni factions in a bid to calm Iraq's sectarian violence.

Mr Sadr, who appeared in Iraq for the first time in months at Friday prayers, said his followers would co-operate with Sunnis against US occupation.

A senior aide told the BBC Mr Sadr had met moderate Sunni groups, aiming to forge a "united and democratic Iraq".

Iraq's vice-president called Mr Sadr's statement "quite encouraging".

Tarek al-Hashemi described Mr Sadr as "number one... the most influential leader" and said he would welcome a new approach to Sunni-Shia relations.

Speaking in the city of Kufa, Mr Sadr blamed foreign troops for Iraq's problems, and said Sunnis and Shias alike should oppose their continued presence in the country.

"I am ready to cooperate with [Sunnis] at all levels - this is my hand I stretch out to them."

Moqtada Sadr

"I say to our Sunni brothers in Iraq that we are brothers and the occupier divided us in order to weaken the Iraqi people," he said.

"In unity is strength, and in division weakness. We say to them, welcome at any time.

"I am ready to cooperate with them at all levels. This is my hand I stretch out to them - in so doing, I seek only God's satisfaction."

Mehdi politics

A senior political aide to Mr Sadr, Abd al-Mahdi al-Mutairi, told the BBC how the cleric's organisation was now seeking a compromise with moderate Sunnis.

He said Sadrist representatives met a group called the Anbar Awakening Council with the aim of preventing "sectarian sedition".

The Mehdi army has fought serious rebellions against US forces.

"We want a united and democratic Iraq that does not follow the occupation's agenda," Mr Mutairi said.

Mideast > Iraq

"We signed with them a pledge charter which we hope will be the nucleus of future agreements with other brothers, whether Sunni, Kurdish or otherwise."

Mr Sadr's followers have not always preached peace and co-operation.

His Mehdi Army, a Shia militia responsible for some of the sectarian killings in Iraq, has become one of the targets of the US-led surge.

But when the US began its security drive in Baghdad in February, Mr Sadr ordered his militants off the streets to avoid confrontation.

And during his recent absence from Iraq on security grounds, Mr Sadr withdrew six ministers loyal to him from the Iraqi cabinet, in an effort to press Prime Minister Nouri Maliki to set a timetable for a US troop withdrawal.

Sadr 'unstable'?

In a characteristically fiery sermon in Kufa, Mr Sadr led the 6,000 worshippers in the mosque in chanting: "No, no for Satan. No, no for America. No, no for the occupation. No, no for Israel."

However, the cleric urged his followers to use peaceful means of opposition.

The cleric's brand of nationalism and populism has made him a popular figure among Iraq's Shia Muslims, but it is not clear why he has chosen this moment to return.

Moqtada Sadr is one of the most important players in Iraq's complex sectarian and political mosaic, says the BBC's security correspondent Rob Watson.

One theory for his return is a desire to re-assert control over his militia, which is reported to be increasingly fragmented.

Mr Sadr may also see a chance to strengthen his position in the absence of his great Shia rival Abdul Aziz Hakim, who has left Iraq for medical treatment, our correspondent says.

One senior US official described Mr Sadr as a highly unstable 33-year-old whose own aides often find hard to predict.

If he pulls this one off, Moqtada will definitely rise in my evaluation of his historical relevance. But to accomplish a broad-distribution Sunni ally (there are many differences between Iraq's Sunnis) would be monumental labour and solomonic diplomatic skills.

Reflecting on this development as reported, one must recall Imam Sadr's longtime mainstay alliance with Iran's mullocracy. Thus, as only an Iranian establishmentarian could imagine, Sadr has orders to woo Iraq's Sunnis into alliance with the 30 Sadrite Shia members of the Iraq parliament, his 30,000 troops in his Sadrite Shiite militia, and a whole district of mostly-poor folk in xone of Baghdad called "Sadrland."

Economics: Shareholder Activism: Most initiatives struck down in corporations' annual investors meetings

MarketWatch carries an important article by Chuck Jaffe, "A proxy for victory--Despite losing most shareholder votes, investors come up winners (May23,2k7)

Boston -- ... For investors, proxy-voting season is coming to a close and with most shareholder initiatives going down to defeat it's much harder to recognize that the real winner this year has been the individual investor.

The vast majority of shareholder-friendly proposals have gone down to defeat yet again this year, but the results have been closer than ever before and there is little doubt that Corporate America has taken notice. More importantly, there's a good chance that many companies will react rather than waiting to come out on the losing end of a vote.

"...[O]ne of the big efforts for shareholders and legislators this year has been "say on pay" rules, where investors get an advisory vote on executive compensation. Dozens of companies were targeted with say-on-pay proposals this year, up from a handful in 2006; the US House of Representatives recently passed a bill that would give investors the right to an advisory vote on pay.

Most companies faced with say-on-pay proposals have been fighting them, but , the insurance company most recognized for the duck in its advertising, changed its policy in February, giving shareholders a say on pay beginning in 2009.
By then, there may be a lot of companies joining them on that line, with or without law to push the idea of a nonbinding poll of investors.

More say on pay

In early May, 57% of the shares in Blockbuster Inc. who voted to take a more active role in compensation; just a hair over half of the shares were voted in favor of the change.

Shareholders in J.C. Penney also voted for a voice in compensation. That's no surprise after the company last year fired a new chief operating officer after just six months on the job, with her compensation -- including stock and options awards -- totaling about $10 million.

Economics USA > Corporate Governance

There are about 20 companies facing say-on-pay votes during the current proxy season. There have been some well-publicized defeats of say-on-pay proposals -- such as AMR Corp. beating back a proposal from American Airlines' pilots union -- but even those have been remarkably close. In the past, the majority of shareholder votes that the board recommended voting against would get a tiny percentage of shareholder support. The AMR defeat, by comparison, still netted 38% of the outstanding vote. A proposal at Merck failed by the narrowest of margins, getting 49% of the vote.

Even those losses bode well for a future with investors having their nonbinding say on pay.

"With the success from this year, I think it will be everywhere next year, you will see one proposal after the next," says Kurt Schacht, managing director of the CFA Centre for Financial Market Integrity. "And I think the votes are starting to show you that this one is going the shareholders' way. Rather than lose, companies facing this vote will simply adopt these measures." ...

Winning without a fight

"...[S]everal other potential proxy fights on different issues have been settled by agreements, with no vote ever being taken. Home Depot and Applebee's International gave money-management firms a seat on their board, ostensibly to avoid facing an election of directors with a dissident candidate. A year ago, dissidents won election about 40% of the time.

The most frequent proposal facing corporations has been over a requirement to have a majority vote in order to elect directors. Institutional Shareholder Services, a Maryland firm that tracks and consults on proxy issues, estimated that proposals on the issue were drawn up at nearly 140 companies. Roughly 90 of those votes were withdrawn, but the main reason to back away from the vote was that the companies caved in, agreeing to adopt majority-vote standards rather than having the rules crammed down past their objections.

In short, shareholders are staring at headlines talking about close votes, proxy defeats and hinting at a lack of progress, but what they are really seeing is a big victory and the start of something bigger next year. ...

In conjunction with the theme of "Directors retain edge over shareholder activists under Sarbanes-Oxley Act USA, see my discussion of some thawts of UCLA Professor Stephen Bainbridge.

Juridics: Pisteutics: Episcopalian Diocese of Virginia goes to court to seize properties of new Anglican District of Virginia

Washington Times carries an article by Julia Duin, "Church schism set for Va. court" (May21,2k7).

The mother of all lawsuits pitting Episcopalian against Anglican kicks off today in the red-brick confines of Fairfax County Circuit Court.

The case has amassed numerous court filings involving 11 churches, two dozen lawyers, 107 individuals, the 90,000-member Diocese of Virginia, the 2.3 million-member Episcopal Church and the 18.5 million-member Anglican Province of Nigeria.

The Episcopal Church and its Virginia Diocese are suing 11 churches, their clergy and lay leaders for leaving the diocese last winter in order to join the Nigerian province. Since the 2003 consecration of the openly homosexual New Hampshire Bishop V. Gene Robinson, conservatives have been fleeing the denomination.

The 11 churches of the new District of Virginia, part of the Convocation of Anglicans of North America, a mission of the Anglical Province of Nigeria, are as follows: Celebration Church, Christ the Redeemer, Christ the Savior Anglican, Church of our Saviour (Oatlands), Church of the Apostles, Church of the Epiphany, Church of the Messiah, Church of the Word, Potomac Falls Church, St Margaret’s, St Paul’s, St Stephen’s, The Falls Church, Truro Church

Some of the nation's top law firms are involved in the fight, including the 750-attorney firm Goodwin Procter. One of its partners, David Beers, is chancellor for the Episcopal Church. Hourly rates for partners at the firm go as high as $475, according to filings in a 2006 case in U.S. District Court for the District of Columbia.

The defendants are having to pony up huge amounts as well. The Falls Church, oldest of the 11 churches, has announced it will have a special collection June 10 to defray $342,576 in unpaid legal expenses.

Virginia Theological Seminary historian Robert Prichard said that in terms of the number of individuals and fair-market value of the historic properties, this may be the Episcopal Church's largest lawsuit ever.

He declined to predict the winner of the dispute. "I've got better sense than that," he said.

Circuit Judge Randy Bellows, no stranger to high-profile cases, will preside. He's the former assistant U.S. attorney who was the lead prosecutor on the "American Taliban" case of John Walker Lindh, and the investigator called upon to examine how the FBI bungled its espionage probe of Taiwanese-American scientist Wen Ho Lee.

The plaintiffs' main complaint is not that several thousand people have exited the diocese, but that they took millions of dollars of church property with them.

The suit also charges that members who wanted to stay Episcopalian -- mostly tiny minorities, but in two cases, one-quarter of the parish -- were not granted separate services on church property.

But the new Anglican District has adopted these classical Episcopalian resources, but including some recent ones of the worldwide Anglican Communions with which the Episcopal Church is not in harmony ("impaired communion"): The Thirty-Nine Articles of Religion [of the Church of England](1562), Chicago-Lambeth Quadrilateral (1886, 1888), The Episcopalian Church Book of Common Prayer (1662, update 1928 USA), Lambeth (1998) Resolution 1.10 on Human Sexuality, Primates’ Statement (Oct23,3k3), The Windsor Report (2004), Primates’ Statement (Feb2k5), To Set Our Hope on Christ (TEC’s response at the Anglican Consultative Council Meeting in Nottingham, 2005), Primates’ Statement (Sept2k6), Primates’ Communique (Dar es Salaam, 2007)

"There were people who wanted to worship as Episcopalians," diocesan spokesman Patrick Getlein says. "They were denied that. That was really quite something for the bishop and the diocese to hear, that there were Episcopalians turned out of their churches."

Leaders of the departing churches say no one has been made to leave and that the diocese has made it impossible for 21 departing clergy -- all under an ecclesiastical "inhibition" order -- to function as Episcopal priests.

Mary McReynolds, chancellor of the Anglican District of Virginia, the new ecclesiastical body for the 11 churches, said the diocese and the churches hammered out a "protocol" allowing conservatives to leave. The diocese then appointed a property commission to look at the assets of each church and levy an amount each church must pay in order to leave. Then on Jan. 31, the diocese filed lawsuits against each of the 11 churches.

"The members of the property commission were embarrassed by this situation," she said. "It was such an about-face. It took 13 months to negotiate that protocol."

Leaders of the departing churches, she added, suspect the diocese was pressured by church headquarters in New York to fight for the property.

"The curious thing is, not only did [Virginia] Bishop [Peter J.] Lee do a 180-degree turn," she said, "but the Episcopal Church had a policy of all property matters deferring to the diocesan bishop."

Mr. Getlein said the diocese never agreed on the protocol. "It was a work product given to the [diocesan] executive board and the standing committee, but they never agreed to it," he said. "It was nothing official."

Opening briefs filed by both sides are expected to take up the summer. Oral arguments may not start until the fall.

The crux of the case is a state law that spells out that in a division within a denomination, the congregation can retain its property if a majority votes to disassociate.

The diocese's position is that the properties are owned by the trustees as long as the congregation remains Episcopal. If it leaves the denomination, it forfeits ownership.

In another development, but one not involving the public courts, is the latest move by the Episcopal Church USA's Diocese of Fort Worth, as reported Episcopal Life by Rev. Mary Frances Schjonberg, "FORT WORTH: Diocese renews its oversight request, proposes new structures" (May17,2k7):

The leadership of the Episcopal Diocese of Fort Worth voted May 14 to move ahead with its appeal for alternative oversight from a primate other that Presiding Bishop Katharine Jefferts Schori.

Juridics > Episcos USA vs Anglicans USA

A statement issued May 16 and signed by the bishop and standing committee of the Diocese of Fort Worth proposes three different ways in which such a change might happen. They include:

* forming a new Anglican province of the Anglican Communion in North America in a cooperative effort with other dioceses "in consultation with Primates of the Anglican Communion;"
* transferring to another existing province of the Anglican Communion; or
* seeking the status of an extra-provincial diocese, under the authority of the Archbishop of Canterbury.

Fort Worth Bishop Jack Iker and the diocese's General Convention deputation announced at the 75th General Convention June 19 -- the morning after Jefferts Schori's election -- that the diocesan Standing Committee had asked the Archbishop of Canterbury for what it called "alternative primatial oversight" (APO). That call was subsequently endorsed by the diocese's Executive Council and its convention.

"The Bishop and diocese remain firmly convinced of the need for alternative oversight," the May 16 statement said.

Therefore, the statement said, the Standing Committee adopted a statement assessing "the current situation" and proposing to "actively pursue all viable options." The diocesan Executive Council subsequently adopted that stance.

"While we remain open to the possibility of negotiation and some form of acceptable settlement with [the Episcopal Church], it appears that our only option is to seek APO elsewhere," the statement said.

Varieties of Christianities > Anglicans

The requests for APO have changed several times in the months since June 2006. After Fort Worth made its initial request June 19 it entered into a formal request July 20 that the Archbishop of Canterbury appoint a "commissary" for the dioceses of Pittsburgh, Central Florida, Dallas, San Joaquin, South Carolina, and Springfield. In September 2006, Dallas Bishop Jim Stanton confirmed that his diocese had withdrawn from the July 20 request and in October the Diocese of Quincy (Illinois) joined the APO request.

(A commissary is a kind of overseer used by the Bishop of London for the colonies which later became the United States and then left the Church of England.)

Then in early November at its convention, the Diocese of Pittsburgh reverted to an APO request. Three different versions of that request have appeared on Pittsburgh's website since July 2006, including one in February that appealed to Anglican Primates in the Global South.

In late November 2006, Jefferts Schori and a group of bishops announced an alternative structure for the APO requests. The plan revolved around a "primatial vicar" who would be the Presiding Bishop's designated pastor to bishops and dioceses that have requested such oversight. The primatial vicar would have been accountable to the Presiding Bishop and would have reported to an advisory panel that would consist of the designee of the Archbishop of Canterbury, the Presiding Bishop's designee, a bishop of The Episcopal Church selected by the petitioning dioceses, and the President of the House of Deputies (or designee).

The May 16 statement from Fort Worth noted that "the appellant bishops rejected the proposal as unacceptable."

The APO requests were discussed at the February meeting of the Anglican Primates, who proposed the appointment of a primatial vicar nominated by bishops who have declared themselves to be "Windsor bishops," that is those who say they are committed to the proposals for life in the Communion suggested in the Windsor Report. The vicar would have been accountable to a pastoral council established by the Primates.

The Episcopal Church's House of Bishops rejected that plan during its March meeting, saying it "would be injurious to The Episcopal Church" and urging that the Executive Council decline to participate in it.

The bishops said the so-called pastoral scheme violates Episcopal Church law because it calls for a delegation of primatial authority not permissible under the Canons and would compromise the church's autonomy, which the bishops said was not permissible under the church's constitution. They also said the scheme "fundamentally changes the character of the Windsor process and the covenant design process in which we thought all the Anglican Churches were participating together," violates the church's "founding principles," and changes the leadership structure of the Episcopal Church and the Anglican Communion.

The Fort Worth statement criticized Jefferts Schori's response to the Windsor Report, saying she "has failed to seek implementation of the essential requests" made by the Primates in February. The statement also criticized her theology.

"For all these reasons and others, we do not wish to be affiliated with her, nor with anyone she may appoint or designate to act on her behalf," the statement said.

In other words, the Diocese of Forth Worth regards the Presiding Bishop of the Episcopal Church to be an apostate and that whole denomination, of which Forth Worth is a part while in a state of protest, is headed toward fullscale apostasy under her presidency.

Economics: Enviro biz: Hedging against weather-change disaster, Big Oil ramps up green programmes as investor-savy move

MarketWatch carried superb commentary by its editor-chief, David Callaway, "Are alternative-energy stocks the new tech? -- Scandal, growing pains ensured as industry matures" (May16,2k7).

New York -- Are alternative-energy stocks the new tech stocks, or are they simply socially responsible stocks and funds in disguise? That's the question investors need to ask themselves before they cast their hard-earned savings into the widening flood of assets flowing into anything bearing the name "green" or "alternative energy."

Interestingly, a lot of assumptions are packed into Callaway's Q and A. "New tech stocks" are perhaps best understood in terms outlined by reformational economic theorist Bob Goudzwaard in his longterm-influential book, Capitalism and Progress regarding the entire capitalist system being interwoven from three h+ly differentiated but distinct threads: investment-based enterprises, science, and technics (I reserve the term "technology" for the philosophy, modal science, and positive sciences of technics, not for technical phenomena themselves--hence, technics). Both science and technical phenoms cost money and thus have their own economic elements, and more largely their modally-optimatic embedded phenoms in non-economically-qualified societal spheres and institutions (Hendrik Hart, Understanding Our World) in our h+ly differentiated society where capitalism does indeed hold sway--alth not the entire story. But enterprises with owners (there are several forms of ownership of businesses; for focus here, however, I'm narrowing the scope to those with boards of directors, whether self-continuing, or investor-approved publically-listed, or appointed by govt as in the case of Canada's Crown Corporations like PetroCanada).

In this conceptual fraemwork, Calloway's "new tech stocks" that launch green-related innovations and outcomes industrially thru specific corporations which adopt those innovations, belong conceptually first to the various industries where they do actually constitute new innovations, alongside all those others for which the preceding (set of) technique(s) had previously been developed. Thus, I would not speak of a green industry, but of green technics within any given industry and of inter-industry green technics, even inter-sector green technics. Yet, we can speak of green businesses, green corporations--from a microbiz like mom-'n-pops to a small biz (under 100 employees, let's say) to the top size-tier on which we're focussing here. Greening and green-house gas (GHG) emmision reductions can occur all across the spectrum, industry by industry, biz size by biz size. Green innovation can occur within all sorts of businesses of all sizes, industries, and sectors; there is no such thing as a green industry in this conceptual framework, contrary to Callaway's rhetorical usage.

That said, we can then better conceptualize simultaneously the fact that corporations (within a given industry) adopting new green technical innovations are most directly competing with the other corporations active in that same particular industry (its non-greening corporations vs. its greening corporations); and, thus, also that industry's pace within a particular sector of the economy.

Certainly, as the MarketWatch special "The Heat Is On" series has been describing this week, an industry (sic! -- I would say > a pan-industries technical-industrial green movement - EM) is already growing around the issue of climate change and pollution fighting, despite the fact that the debate over global warming [and cooling] continues to rage in political and academic circles.

But that means, speaking analogically in regard to a "debate," a new wave of innovations is entering many industries as specific companies within each industry struggle to innovate-greenly ahead of the other companies in the same industry who are not greening, while these non-greeners try to sell their existing investors on the idea that such expensive greenward technical innovation is not necessary and undermines the investors' profits (this is where non-anological actual debates do take place in companies, sometimes...the other locales of actual debates are and will be boards of directors of corporations, together with corporate bureaucracies like engineering depts, Research and Development depts, and strategic planning staffs).

Economy > Green Technical-Industrial Movement

But whether the [pan] industr[ial green movement] can produce the type of technological breakthrus and innovations that a young Microsoft, Apple or even Google produced -- and the profits and stock run-ups that followed -- remains an open question.

But IT (internet technics) became a new full-fledged electro digitally-based industry (spininng out of the earlier non-digital "business machines industry"), by our set of definitions. Thus, one's argument and technological reasoning should become nuanced for each additional industry into which the green technical-industrial movement enters, and in these cases the technical phenoms are each embedded in specific biz/corporation institutions of the economically-qualified societal sphere (now gone global with the rise of an international economic order), an enterprise in an industry of co-competitor enterprises, industries which themselves in turn funciton as members of one or more larger sector(s) of the local/ regional/ national/ global economy.

In short, will this [green technical-industrial movement in the international economic order] change the world, with all the benefits to investors -- not to mention to the world -- that would bring? Or will it just be another in a long line of Wall Street fads, dreamed up to pitch to gullible investors looking to make money and feel good at the same time.

Everybody remembers the socially responsible funds, which attempted to invest only in companies that steered clear of such practices as working with dictatorships and human-rights violators, or producing products -- such as cigarettes or alcohol -- deemed harmful to society.

Many of [the socially responsible investment funds] produced tidy little returns. But none compared with the power of shares of Philip Morris Cos. over the last three decades. Even after changing its name to Altria Group Inc., in an attempt to change society's perception of it as a purveyor of cancer, the shares have continued to soar over the past several years.

Let's face it: When it comes to investing, feeling good is nice, but profits are what drive stocks. And most investors are not shy about going where the profits are, even if they don't smoke, drink, gamble or support drilling for oil in global hot spots.
What sets the alternative-energy stocks and other makers of clean [techniques] apart is that in this case it is typically the big energy companies that are at the forefront of these issues, anyway. Exxon Mobil Corp., Chevron, and the rest, affectionately known as Big Oil, are behind some of the most dramatic innovations in alternative energy, if only as a hedge against the potential loss of their main businesses in the decades to come.

And while the markets for carbon trading, weather futures and other forms of global-warming-focused investing are booming, they are, like any new markets, bound to suffer growing pains in the form of scandals over the next several years, as investors get duped by too-good-to-be-true ideas and technologies.

Callaway's moral realism about the coming new technical wave in the economic order, an intra-industry technical-industrial movement within many industries is quite important. He acknowleges, from an investment-economics viewpoint, the dark side of the coming economic activity around the wave of technical innnovations and pseudo-innovations that will bewilder investors, consumers, and governments and the courts. The legal system will have to develop internally to accomodate the pile-on of coming green scams.

The scars suffered by the energy-trading industry after Enron Corp.'s collapse have largely healed and been forgotten, at least by rank-and-file investors and certainly by Wall Street. But the potential for abuse of these young markets is still very much alive.

So the lesson for investors is to keep history in mind when jumping onto the bandwagon of alternative energy, clean technology or any other environmentally led investment play. Out of all these companies, both new and old, rushing to make a name for themselves in this league, undoubtedly a few will emerge to actually change the world for the better.

Whether you can make money on them, however, is a whole different issue.

This article is an outstanding overview of the move to green by major companies, irrespective of shareholders factions trying to determine who gets on the boards of directors of large corporations, and why.

Politics: USA: Plame-Wilson cell's bizarre civl suit against Cheney, Libby, Rove, Armitage

Washington Post carries a news report by Carol D. Leonnig, "Judge Told Leak Was Part of 'Policy Dispute'" (May18,2k7).

Attorneys for Vice President Cheney and top White House officials told a federal judge yesterday that they cannot be held liable for anything they disclosed to reporters about covert CIA officer Valerie Plame [Plame was no longer covert--P] or her husband, former ambassador Joseph C. Wilson IV.

The officials, who include senior White House adviser Karl Rove and Cheney's former chief of staff, I. Lewis "Scooter" Libby, argued that the judge should dismiss a lawsuit filed by the couple that stemmed from the disclosure of Plame's identity to the media.

Joseph C. Wilson IV and Valerie Plame say revealing Plame's job endangered their family. They are suing administration officials.

The perjury trial of Vice President Cheney's former chief of staff calls up high-profile witnesses.

The suit claims that Cheney, Libby, Rove and former deputy secretary of state Richard L. Armitage violated the couple's privacy and constitutional rights by publicly revealing Plame's identity in an effort to retaliate against Wilson. Plame's identity was disclosed in a syndicated column in July 2003, days after Wilson publicly accused the Bush administration of twisting intelligence to exaggerate Iraq's nuclear threat and justify an invasion.

Libby was convicted in March of lying to a grand jury investigating the leak.

Valerie Plame was not undercover when she was exposed. The Plame-Wilson cell worked to advance John Kerry's campaign for President; after Kerry's defeat, the cell continued to use their positions in government to undermine the elected government.

Politics: Fiji: New strategy proposed for coping with constitutional and military crisis in the Fiji Republic

Fiji Daily Post carries an Editorial that deserves thawtful consideration from friends of the island Republic around the world, "State of emergency brings peace to the nation" (May16,2k7). Hat Tip for the heads-up from correspondent Dr. Bruce Wearne. The Editor-in-Chief of the independent and courageous Fiji Daily Post is Dr. Robert Wolfgramm.

The decision to extend the state of emergency decree is a wise one. Without the furtherance of the decrees, the nation would surely disintegrate into violence of a scale sometimes warned about by our traditional prophets and doomsday commentators, but (thankfully) not witnessed on these shores in the past.

Every passing day brings more economic slowdown and unrelenting signs of a military clamp-down on free speech of some of our alleged dissidents. Qarase remains island-bound and his court case appears moribund in the administrative and legal processes of the courts.

The SDL case likewise appears becalmed. The combination of an economic downturn with no sign of a speedy return to democracy, coupled with the selective repression of the freedoms of some, is a recipe for turning patience into anger. And if the bubble of security is going to burst, the question is when and what will trigger it. The Interim regime knows that and so it is to their great credit and for the safety of all citizens that we must all put up with more, not less, state of emergency. It is the only way to keep a lid on potentially growing dissent and mounting opposition to Interim control. That is to say, we are as far from satisfying the doctrine of acquiescence as we ever have been and may be even further now than we were on December 5.

Yes, there are a few scattered voices raised here and there in support of the interim regime, but their influence and representativeness, is far from known or acknowledged. On the other hand, anti-Interim websites proliferate. Until the conditions which give rise to opposition to the Interim regime are moderated or allayed completely - that is, until democracy is restored and in its train assistance packages refurbished to our ailing economy and the rights of dissidents respected - a state of emergency is the best option for the foreseeable future.

We must get back top democracy as a priority, but not if an all-out war between the political factions that currently divide the nation is allowed to erupt. The state of emergency may not be pleasant, but like a leash on a dog, it restrains tempers and lets most people walk the streets and sleep safely at night. It allows for a sense of well-being for most and ensures the nation is at peace.

I chime in, thinking Dr Wolfgramm has alerted us in the past to the antidemocratic and unconstitutional actions of the military in dismissing the elected governmtment of Quarase, while replacing it with an illegal "Interim" government by the self-appointed "guardians"--namely, the military. At this distance, I find myself trusting editor Wolfgramm, a principled Christian-democratic thinker.

The fleeting glimpses the Editor-in-Chief gives us of the economic downturn (resulting from the withdrawal of aid packages from New Zealand, Australia, and the European Union -- if I recall correctly); and of the understandable rise of militant blogging against the military regime; both of these glimpses lead on to certain geostrategic considerations that make the overall picture in Fiji grim, to say the least.

SouthWest Pacific > Fiji

Undoubtedly there are countries who would want a SouthWest Pacific listening post and puppet showcase--Russia, even more so China, and not forgetting the India-heritage population-segment now in Fiji for generations, let's add India to this list. One or all of these could suddenly prioritize Fiji by offering an aid package that could outdo whatever the island Republic was receiving from elsewhere. To my mind, what argues against this scenario is the military leadership's apparent adulatory cultivation of American politicians and Survivor-escape tourist ventures. But, I don't think these affinities are enuff to push aside the constraining American reliance on the New Zealand + Australian sphere of influence in the SouthWest Pacific. [I've further thawts on all these countries in relation to Fiji, from the stamdpoint of world geostrategic reflection, but that's for another time; and I would pursue them in my Neo-Constantinian Horizons blog, not here in my refWrite frontpage column.]

Rookmaker Club geostrategic analysis

As to the proliferation of militant regime-overthrow bloggers (I may be forecasting instead of reporting by using the term "regime-overthrow" here, as such trends sometimes develop an inner dynamic all their own, sometimes becoming dominated by forces without a peaceful democratic society honestly in mind as their goal and at heart as their envisioned norm), Dr Wolfgramm states simply that "anti-Interim websites proliferate." Who is financing them, just the irate citizens that have had enuff? Or do we look to countries or corporations that would have an interest in financing such dissidents and which have a new or old interest in Fiji--an interst in Fiji not for its own sake, but for its value as a stepping stone to other countries in the region? Does China want a capitalist-communist pro-China base--a Hong Kong?, a Macao?, a Cuba--nearby its prized customers / espionage targets New Zealand and Australia? Just asking. Or, turning the question about, is such worriment precisely what the Interimist-military complex fosters and seeks to use as leverage in furthering its own ends. So the residual questio: whether only an Interimist fictional scenario is behind anti=Interimist support for anti-regime bloggers?, or whether a real political praxis by an expansive Chinese communo-capitalist state (for instance) is behind much / some / a few of the dissident bloggers?

Dr Wolfgramm concludes:

Until the conditions which give rise to opposition to the Interim regime are moderated or allayed completely - that is, until democracy is restored and in its train assistance packages refurbished to our ailing economy and the rights of dissidents respected - a state of emergency is the best option for the foreseeable future.

Sadly, I have to concur. I do so out of a Christian-democratic neo-Constantinian anti-revolutionary framework of political values and geostrategic thinking. But the anti-revolutionary component has its limits, as does the neo-Constantinian.

Yet, we should keep in mind, sometimes the doctrine of acquiescence is definitively blocked in a potentially revolutionary situation, and intransigence prevails past its shelf-date. If one can't retreat from Fiji and the kairos moment comes when the peace on the street is broken, even for the general public of the island once-upon-a-time Republic, what criteria could be proposed for direct action to preserve / restore the Republic in democratic fullness? By peaceful means only, in the first instance? How to coalesce bloggers calling for direct action yet wanting peaceful democracy in an independent Republic distinct from any bloggers who may turn to revolutionism that really works toward a dictatorship alternative to the military-Interimist regime? How to discern the spirits if direct action becomes a cause? How to configure a coalition that isolates out from the circle of democratic and Christian-democratic co-belligerents, those others following a revolutionistic path pure and simple? Fiji is not Nepal, but....

Could Christian-democratic discussion clubs focused on these issues help in this situation at this moment?

Speaking in regard to action, one could ask: How to divide the bloggers who are authentic Fijian patriots from those who are serving foreign interests (whether foreign states or mega-corporations which may be the root of the military's coup, or may be a new force seeking to wedge its way into influence / power in this moment of weakness for all Fijian democracy and constituitonality)?

I will be posting further on the Fiji dissident bloggers on refWrite refBlogger Insert--a reformational blog which is devoted to exposing blog abuse and to supporting bloggers who are repressed, denied at least a modicum of freedom of speech in various represssive countries. As regular readers will know, I do not believe in an absolute freedom of speech, but there is a time and place for much expression that you or I may detest and consider to be quite anti-normative. In that lite, we must search for guidelines for our communal Christian reformational stance, an intelligence-fortified basic argument to defend the freedom of speech / blogging by the new Fijian extra-parliamentary opposition (a very mixed designation, I'd guess), freedom of speech within normative limits, and opposition to any imposed illegal extra-constitutional regime--that principled core of ideas remains de rigeur.