I know what follows is going to be a little depressing. But I don’t think it has to be. I think it can be inspirational – sometimes once you know what the problems are then you can begin to identify and discuss what you want to DO about them.
I won’t cover Pakistan because it’s getting a ton of coverage now, nor Iraq. You already know what’s going on in Iraq.
Everything below refers to just the last week.
Listen to the music from my neighbors and try to keep your spirits up. 2008 has just begun and with hope, courage and hard work the world can be a better place!
Afghanistan – Besides a Canadian soldier being killed, war continues more than 6 years later between the Taliban and NATO/US/Karzai forces leaving a lot of people dead.
Argentina – Economy minister admits “storing” thousands of dollars in her office bathroom.
Azerbaijan – The pro-US dictatorship keeps locking up opposition media.
Bahrain – The pro-US dictatorship has arrested 32 people over “illegal gathering” of people in majority Shi’ite areas.
Bangladesh – Government troops continue to engage in gun battles with pirates.
Bethlehem – Christian priests duke it out on how to clean the Church of the Nativity. Sigh…
Cambodia – The UN-backed tribunal to try former Khmer Rouge leaders is running out of money.
China – Leading human rights activist and AIDS awareness campaigner Hu Jia is arrested.
Colombia – A dead between the gov’ts of Colombia and Venezuela and the FARC to release a number of hostages held by the FARC have fallen through. 40+ year civil war continues.
Cote d’Ivoire (Ivory Coast) – Country still split in two between official gov’t territory and rebel-held territory.
Gambia – Sadly despite a relatively high measure of independence and democracy, absolute dictatorship continues to loom.
Georgia – Besides political corruption and repressive police tactics in Georgia proper, Georgia is closer than ever to outright war with Russian/CIS troops in Abkhazia. Meanwhile Abkhazia’s PM was targeted for assassination by unknown actors but survived.
India – Various separatist/terrorist groups in the north continue decades long battles against the central government.
Israel/Palestine – Same old shit.
Kenya – Hundreds dead due to rioting and civil strife after a very close presidential election.
Kosovo – Still on the brink of disaster.
Lebanon – The army has clashed with Hezbollah in southern Beirut.
Meanwhile army troops clash with Palestinians in a refugee camp.
Mali – One of the most stable and democratic nations in Africa continues to battle ethnic Tuareg rebels in the north.
Myanmar (Burma) – Dictatorship still rocking like a hurricane.
Nepal – Elections are on track but various militias continue to terrorize outlying districts, kidnapping people for ransom. Over 25,000 people are still internally displaced refugees.
Nigeria – The insurgency in the oil-rich areas of the south continue with more kidnappings for ransom of foreigner workers.
North Korea – 50+ years of the same dictatorship continue. Meanwhile the NK government failed to meet a deadline on its nuclear weapons disarmament program and Bush basically said “so what?”.
Philippines – U.S. troops continue their war in the south against Muslim groups, alienating a lot of people.
Serbia – Ratko Mladic still a free man.
Somalia – More than a year later, southern half of the country still militarily occupied by Ethiopian troops and battles still ongoing between Somali “gov’t” forces/Ethiopian troops and UIC forces. Meanwhile in eastern Ethiopia proper the Ogaden National Liberation Front continues to fight Ethiopian troops.
Sri Lanka – Ongoing civil war between LTTE and gov’t forces continue with artillery shelling, gun battles and the murder of a Tamil member of parliament.
Sudan – Hey remember Darfur? That war continues.
Meawhile a U.S. diplomat was gunned down in the capital.
Thailand – Civil war with southern provinces continue as various gun battles and insurgent actions leave scores dead.
Meanwhile the country is still “in transition” from a military coup that occurred September 2006.
Taiwan – The country’s president says China has increased the number of missiles pointed at the island nation.
Tunisia – The al-Qaeda linked GPLC continues to operate in the country
Turkey – Bombing raids continue into northern Iraq as the war between Kurdish separatists/terrorists continue.
Uganda – Massive flooding has led UNICEF to declare a state of emergency.
Meanwhile the 25+ year civil war between the LRA and the people/state of Acholi continues as the LRA crosses over into the nation of the CAR.
U.S. – Amongst everything else, the dollar is tanking and countries are abandoning it for the euro.
Meanwhile big media corporations just got FCC blessing to grow even larger.
Uzbekistan – Pro-US dictator Islam Karimov rigs elections to continue 18-year rule.
Zimbabwe – Thousands arrested for violating gov’t price controls as the economy spirals into total destruction.
And now the good news:
David Hicks is a free man.
The president of Syria has promised to release 7 political prisoners.
Bhutan takes tiny steps towards democracy.
Rasim Delic goes on trial.
Somehow Kyrgyzstan is narrowly hanging onto democracy.
Some genuinely good news from Afghanistan.
The government of Liberia tries something new to help the country heal from decades of civil war.
Democracy seems to be hanging on in Timor Leste (E. Timor)
After decades of civil war Sierra Leone makes the first baby steps towards democracy and true peace.
My new home country of Romania leads the world in countries that protect the privacy of its citizens. The U.S. is at the bottom unfrotunately.
And last but not least, a message from 70 years ago of peace from Albert Einstein.
Dreams that you dare to dream really do come true.
Peace
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In the Dutch language it’s ‘hoop’ which also means plenty, as in: “there is plenty of work to be done in 2008.”
I was hoping you would be triggered to write a diary after reading your recent comment in my diary.
Thank you and I sincerely wish you would let us know how Romania is doing after becoming an EU member. Seems like a challenge with many opportunities for the Romanian people with many advantages and unfortunately some who will not be able to participate. Romania with a large agricultural base covered by small landownership, must nevertheless be able to profit of the higher product price in the EU.
"But I will not let myself be reduced to silence."Always a pleasure Oui and always good to see your stuff on Boo’s site. I don’t get as much chance as I’d like to write comments (or diaries) but I’m almost always peeking around on a regular basis.
What I’m saying is even if I (or others too I’m sure) don’t always say it, we ARE thankful for your hard work!
As for Romania? Well the verb here is “sa descurce” which translates I guess as “getting along” or “making do”. It’s pretty tough out here for most folks as salaries are still in the toilet and prices are sky high.
That being said, there’s a lot more visa freedom so a lot of Romanians are earning overseas and bringing the money back home. But the temperature here right now is bitterly cold and there’s a lot of Romanians who are barely getting along.
But hey it’s falling to pieces next door to the east so I’m glad to be HERE 😉 Quite frankly there’s no other place on Earth I’d rather be 🙂
Pax
Since I am but one simple woman who has to work to make things happen in my corner of the world, I watch for both of your diaries to read and learn from. Happy New Year to you both from my corner of America. Looking forward to many , many more to read and digest. HUGS
Thanks, a hug is always welcomed 😉
I don’t know if you know who Arthur Silber is or ever read his stuff. I go bananas because I hate the font on his site. And he tends to be extremely verbose and long-winded but in his writing is a lot of gold.
He wrote a post fairly recently talking about intelligence as in the government collecting information whether spying or just observing, etc. And he made a very good point, which I will shrink down a little TOO small but here we go:
In war time, intelligence is exactly what we think of it as: collecting information to make a useful decision. The CIA sprang from an agency called the OSS whose mission was exactly that: know where the tanks are, etc. that kind of thing.
NOWADAYS however, intelligence is used to make political decisions. Not just with the current Bush but ever since World War 2.
It’s a subtle difference but an important one – intelligence is gathered to act on political threats rather than military ones. Military threats are now a sub-set of intelligence rather than the primary goal.
This means the institution of government itself (and whoever is running the show at the moment) is what is being protected. All the spying, bugging, letting people die, killing people, surveillance, dictatorship supporting or regime toppling isn’t done to make you and I safer but to strengthen the institution of government itself. It’s this kind of thinking that gets us Operation Northwoods mentality as well as not forecasting the end of the Soviet Union.
Now all of the above was to contrast what IS possible these days – running your own intelligence agency. Weird eh? But with just a few bucks and a normal computer set up the right way and a few hours a day to sift through the gigantic amount of information that comes in off the internet that’s public, open source, whether news reports, blogs, etc. you can literally have more intelligence than the average politician.
It’s sort of like having access to all the data from weather satellites and then sitting at home and if you know what you’re doing, you can see fault lines and storms brewing ahead of time.
An intelligence agency whose true goal was to protect the United States as well make the world a better, safer, more peaceful place could and would be doing what I (and you) can do times 100. But they don’t. There’s probably good men and women working for them who want to, but that’s not what the system is set up to do.
I myself used to do it full-time and occasionally still do it just to inform myself, and when I’ve got time to put it together and post it here for others. But I truly wonder which of our fine, fine crop of presidential contenders even know where the CAR is or where the ethnic and religious fault lines lie in Kenya, Ethiopia and Somalia and look at Yemeni politics and wonder whether why they’re developing closer ties to Iran, etc.
I do my occasional “work” here for all of you because you’re good people and not for a W2 because it’s not a good system.
Pax
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The outcome of US elections is easy to manipulate, just look at the presidential race of 2000 and 2004. These lessons have been well learned by Chavez, Kadika and Musharraf.
Easiest to access the constituencies where a close result is expected, the manipulation is less likely to be evident. All known practises can be used: voter registration, disenfranchise voters at the polling booth, tallying fraud and simply stuffing the ballot box. CNNi has shown parts of the report in its news item in western Europe this morning and should be made available on their website.
ISLAMABAD, Pakistan (CNN) — On the day she died, Benazir Bhutto planned to hand over to visiting U.S. lawmakers a report accusing Pakistan’s intelligence services of a plot to rig parliamentary elections, sources close to the slain former Pakistani prime minister told CNN.
A top Bhutto aide who helped write the report showed a copy to CNN.
“Where an opposing candidate is strong in an area, they [supporters of President Pervez Musharraf ] have planned to create a conflict at the polling station, even killing people if necessary, to stop polls at least three to four hours,” the document says.
The report also accused the government of planning to tamper with ballots and voter lists, intimidate opposition candidates and misuse U.S.-made equipment to monitor communications of opponents.
“Ninety percent of the equipment that the USA gave the government of Pakistan to fight terrorism is being used to monitor and to keep a check on their political opponents,” the report says.
Sen. Latif Khosa, who helped put the report together, accused the powerful Inter-Services Intelligence of operating a rigging cell from a safe house in the capital, Islamabad. The goal, he said, is to change voting results electronically on election day.
“The ISI has set up a mega-computer system where they can hack any computer in Pakistan and connect with the Election Commission,” he said.
Media outlets in Pakistan, India and Bangladesh have run reports alleging that retired Brig. Gen. Ejaz Shah — formerly an Inter-Services Intelligence officer and now head of the civilian Intelligence Bureau — is involved in the vote rigging plans.
Black Prisons in Musharraf’s Pakistan
≈ Cross-posted from my diary — Client States In Disarray ≈
"But I will not let myself be reduced to silence."good to see you soj, and here’s another milestone for your list; the ussa has been downgraded from “Extensive Surveillance Society” to “Endemic Surveillance Society,” the worst possible category there is for privacy protections…we are now in the company of britian, russia, and china, among others.
from the latest report from Privacy International:
click map to see the complete report: Leading surveillance societies in the EU and the World 2007
welcome to the paranoid panopticon society.
peace
lTMF’sA
Oh my. We seem to have an outage of those 1000 points of lights.
No longer the shining city on the hill.
chimeror’s going to travel a lot so he can go “around spreading good will, talking about the importance of spreading freedom and peace”…’cause he and all the enablers have pretty much destroyed it here.
385 days to go.
lTMF’sA
I have many loved ones and cherished friends in the USA and it pains me a LOT to have seen this encroachment on personal liberty.
As much as I dislike a LOT of his positions, I think Ron Paul is resonating as well as he is with the public not JUST because he wants to get out of Iraq but because people are sick of living in a police state.
A few years ago yours truly was walking home after work in a midwest city around 1am in the middle of a moderate snowstorm and got “pulled over” by some police investigating a burglary that had occurred nearby. That part was fine but when the officer asked me for my driver’s license and got visibly upset that I didn’t have one cracked me up and simultaneously deeply saddened me.
I may speak a lot of languages but in my core I am 100% American and a huge chunk of that is I choose freedom over everything else. Half the reason I DO live in Romania is because this is a free country and people live in peace here. More valuable than gold. But the tragedy is I shouldn’t have to come HERE to find that.
Pax
That as I clicked through CNN and Faux this morning, all I heard was about some missing girl in some state (they all blur together.) News, news everywhere, and not a drop to drink.
Besides blogs and the internet, sometimes the closest we have to carriers of truth are comedians. I don’t just mean the ones on TV (Colbert, Stewart) but even just the regular stand-up ones.
Last couple of days I’ve been listening to Social Crime radio (google it if you like) and today I heard a stand-up routine by Jamie Foxx who is something of a mainstream actor now. But he went to Africa recently and even though he was making jokes, there was more of an accurate description of another culture and events than any “hard news” corporate outfit.
And as for WHY corporate news outfits are as they are, I think the old BBC documentary “Century of the Self” really hits the nail on the head. You can watch it for free on Google Video. It explains not just why corporations produce “news” as a vehicle for delivering audiences to advertisers but HOW they shape those audiences FOR advertisers.
What’s ironic is that advertising used to be just that – spreading knowledge of one’s products in the hopes of tempting consumers. Now it’s a subset of Goebbels style propaganda – manipulating people to create need for products.
Anxiety stemming from news about a missing child followed by a commercial for toothpaste or a medicine that will ease your anxiety is no coincidence.
Pax
Thank you, soj, for your continued excellent work. I wish you a continually productive, joyful & peaceful New Year.
Mersi la fel as we say here, which means “thank you and I wish the same for you as well”.
Pax
My thanks in return.