Geoffrey MG's Beyond Wallacia

BIZARRE SCIENCE: Women who drink even a moderate amount of alcohol are increasing their chances of developing breast cancer, new World Health Organisation guidelines warn. "The clear (link between) breast cancer and even modest levels of alcohol drinking is a major concern, particularly in view of the changing drinking patterns of women in many countries,'' Dr Peter Boyle, director of WHO's International Agency for Research on Cancer said.

Even just two drinks a day increased the risk of breast cancer, according to an article published in The Lancet Oncology this month. "Breast-cancer risk jumped by 50 percent when five standard drinks were consumed in a day. Those who drank that amount also increase their chance of getting bowel cancer, traditionally associated with low fruit and vegetable consumption, by 40 percent," The Sunday Telegraph reported.

British-American writer Christopher Hitchins uses words of the poet W.H. Auden to illustrate the "pathetic oversimplification, which describes skepticism, agnosticism, and atheism as equally 'fundamentalist'" as a religious faith which is "simultaneously the ideology of insurgent violence and of certain inflexible dictatorships."

One of Auden's most beloved poem, September 1, 1939, laments Europe's toppling into a chasm of darkness and reflects on how this catastrophe for civilization had come about:

Exiled Thucydides knew
All that a speech can say
About Democracy,
And what dictators do,
The elderly rubbish they talk
To an apathetic grave;
Analyzed all in his book,
The enlightenment driven away,
The habit-forming pain,
Mismanagement and grief:
We must suffer them all again.

"The enlightenment driven away … This very strong and bitter line came back to me when I saw the hostile, sneaky reviews that have been dogging the success of Ayaan Hirsi Ali's best seller Infidel, which describes the escape of a young Somali woman from sexual chattelhood to a new life in Holland and then (after the slaying of her friend Theo van Gogh) to a fresh exile in the United States," Hitchens wrote in Slate.

His examples of what he calls "linguistic slippage" are provocative. So too his observation of similar trends in American civil liberties circles amongst those who refer to themselves as First Amendment absolutists.

"By this we mean, ironically enough, that we prefer to interpret the words of the Founders, if you insist, literally. The literal meaning in this case seems (to us) to be that Congress cannot inhibit any speech or establish any state religion. This means that we defend all expressions of opinion including those that revolt us, and that we say that nobody can be forced to practice, or forced to foreswear, any faith.

"I suppose I would say that this is an inflexible principle, or even a dogma, with me. But who dares to say that's the same as the belief that criticism of religion should be censored or the belief that faith should be imposed? To flirt with this equivalence is to give in to the demagogues and to hear, underneath their yells of triumph, the dismal moan of the trahison des clercs and 'the enlightenment driven away.'

"Perhaps, though, if I said that my principles were a matter of unalterable divine revelation and that I was prepared to use random violence in order to get 'respect' for them, I could hope for a more sympathetic audience from some of our intellectuals."

The experience of managing a 12-month infrastructure research project in Sorong, West Papua (1996/1997) and later visits to Biak, Timika, Tembagapura and Jayapura created a continuing interest in the progress of what are now the two provinces of Indonesian New Guinea.

Over the past year there have been some dramatic political changes, such as the newly installed Majelis Rakyat Papua's selection of indigenous Papua candidates for the governorships of Papua and Papua Barat provinces; the huge turnout of electors for the first direct election of governors in both provinces; and the subsequent self-demobilisation of one of the armed separatist groups.

However, the few international media articles on the region barely mention the changing political and administrative process and focus instead on the allegations of brutality against peaceful separatists, allegations of displacement of villagers due to security action against non-peaceful separatists and calls for unlimited foreign NGO access.

These issues are being revisited and highlighted in Australia and South East Asia by a television advertising campaign funded by a concerned Australian optical retailer, Ian Melrose, featuring the words: "Howard, Yudhoyono, you now have all the information: 183,000 dead in East Timor, 100,000 dead in West Papua. Include human rights monitoring and access for journalists to West Papua in the Australia Indonesia Treaty."

According to Kate Corbett of Australian Associated Press, the adverts will "initially be aired across Australia and then overseas on ABC Asia-Pacific [the Australian Government-owned satellite broadcasting service now renamed Australia Network and already broadcasting into Indonesia] and potentially on Indonesian television."

But in the six months since the inauguration of the new governors, Barnabas Suebu in Papua and Bram Atururi in Papua Barat, there has been much more positive news. Consider, for instance, the following February 2007 reports:

- Papuan provincial government approval of a special regulation on the allocation and management of trillions of rupiah in autonomy funds from the central government.

- President Susilo Bambang Yudhoyono’s announcement of central government injection of investment for transportation infrastructure across the provinces over three-to-five years.

- Ministry of Environment's report that illegal logging in Papua province is decreasing as buyers as well as sellers are targeted.

- Joint National and Papuan governments' announcement of the opening of a new border road with neighbouring Papua New Guinea.

- Ministry of Home Affairs' concern that six proposed new local government districts are not yet financially viable and their formation should be postponed.

- Historic meeting of the governors, administrations and parliaments of the two provinces at the birthplace of Christianity in western New Guinea declares “"One but Two, Two but One", meaning that Papua's culture, economy and infrastructure development are unified even as its government has split into two provinces. Agreements for sharing of special autonomy funds and both provinces’ mineral and energy resources.

- A follow-up meeting of the Papua and Papua Barat governors, representatives from the provinces' parliaments and the joint MRP, and regents and mayors on 31 March will discuss implementation of eight points of agreement including the gathering of inventories for personnel and equipment as well as the documentation of regional revenue, public works, transportation, forestry, agriculture, sea fishing and mining figures; sharing of special autonomy funds; sharing of natural resources royalties based o a percentage division between producing and non-producing areas; an integrated development plan, which covers spatial planning and the development of infrastructure, strategic economic development, social and cultural development; and the development of human resources.

- The decision of the provincial governments to hand Rp 100 million (about US$11,100) to each of the two provinces’ 3,900 villages to get them active in specifying their needs and outline planned development programs, as well as detailing plans for supervising the use of the money.

- The four-day meeting of the Indonesian Catholic Youth Organisation in Merauke which was addressed by the five bishops in Papua as well as the Indonesian State Minister for the Accelerated Development of Disadvantaged Regions and which focussed on spirituality and poverty alleviation but also passed a motion agreeing to the splitting of a new South Papua province from Papua if that was the local peoples’ aspirations.

- The announcement that in 2006, Papuan gold-copper miner Freeport Indonesia paid its financial obligations to the governments of Indonesia in the sum of US$1.6 billion in corporate, employee income and other taxes, dividends and royalties. Te company also generated direct employment for 9,000 people in 2006, some 27 percent of whom were indigenous Papuans, provided another 10,700 jobs indirectly (contract workers or employees at partner firms) and had purchased domestic goods and services worth US$4.3 billion.

- The announcement that the Papua Barat Tangguh LNG plant and gas field (with proven reserves of more than 14 trillion cubic feet), operated by BP with Japanese and Chinese partners, is entering the final phase of construction and is expected to commence initial production by the last quarter of 2008,

- Papua province's announcement that it has established a joint team to draft provincial and regency and municipal government ordinances and regulations necessary for the full implementation of special autonomy by the end of the year.

If you find this information interesting check out the full reports at the new website on Indonesian New Guinea and "Papuan prospects".

While Tommy Thomdeanm, cartoonist for Indonesia's leading daily newspaper, Kompas, is being feted by the Islamic Republic of Iran for his entry in a $12,000 first-prize competition to insult millions of murdered Jews (see Indonesian may win world's 'best' Holocaust cartoon), one of his colleagues is on trial in Jakarta for publishing cartoons of a different sort.

Teguh Santosa, editor of the online version of daily Rakyat Merdeka, is accused of religious defamation under the Indonesian penal code and risks five years in jail. The International Federation of Journalists has described the trial as an affront to press freedom.

He was arrested in July, despite a public apology by his publication for having showed caricatures of Islam's Prophet Mohammed, which many Muslims feel were insulting, and then released pending trial whch commenced yeasterday.

"To face five years imprisonment, is not only excessive, it is also an attack on the very foundations of freedom of expression" IFJ president Christopher Warren said, in a statement. "It is time for the Indonesian Government to recognise that jailing journalists for defamation is an ineffective and inappropriate penalty. Defamation should be dealt with through the civil Law of the Press 40/1999 in Indonesia."

The Alliance of Independent Journalists Indonesia (Aliansi Jurnalis Independen) agrees. In a statement it set out the cause of the action and the demand for press freedom as guaranteed by Indonesia's Constitution:

It all began when in its 2 February 2006 edition, RM Online republished three of 12 controversial cartoons taken from the October 2005 edition of Denmark-based Jylland Posten daily. RM Online had intended to show its readers that those were the pictures that had sparked protests from Islamic believers in various countries, including Indonesia. A group of people who saw the cartoons, however, accused RM Online of defaming Prophet Mohamad and Islam.

Conceding that "the press must be ready to be controlled by the people", RM Online withdrew the cartoons from its online edition and issued an apology to Muslims who felt insulted that their religion had been degraded by the republication of the cartoons. Editor-in-chief Teguh also stressed that there had been no intention to insult any party, but merely to carry out journalistic duties in seeking, digging and sharing information.

The goodwill, however, was not enough. A group of Muslims filed a report against RM Online to the police and the Jakarta High Court followed up by prosecuting Teguh, accusing him of insulting Prophet Mohamad.

The Alliance of Independent Journalists Indonesia wishes to state that:

* The use of Articles 156 and 156(a) of the Criminal Code on defamation/degradation of religion against Teguh Santosa (RM Online) is an effort to criminalize journalists/press, which is not in line with the spirit of press freedom as stipulated by Article 28F of the 1945 Constitution.

* Since the very beginning, AJI has always called for the use of the Law on Press Number 40/1999 and rejected the use of the Criminal Code in efforts to resolve any disputes regarding press reports, because the latter option could cause censorship of critical journalists and threaten press freedom.

* What Teguh Santosa and RM Online had done was fully an effort to meet the public's right to know as regards the cartoon controversy, which has been regarded by some Islamic followers as insulting Prophet Mohamad, and it was part of the duties of the press to seek and dig for information to share with the public.

* AJI is aware that there is no absolute freedom, including press freedom. However, AJI calls on the people and government apparatus who may question a news report or the publication of pictures in the media, to NOT take steps that can jail journalists or control press freedom. Regulations on the right to counter, the right to make correction and reports to the Press Council are the best consensus in settling press-related disputes.

Publishers, editors, journalists and readers are urged to protest this case. Messages of support to Teguh Santosa and the Alliance of Independent Journalists may be emailed to sekretariatnya_aji@yahoo.com.

Rahardjo Mustadjab, a former Indonesian Air Force pilot, contributed an interesting article to today's Jakarta Post on the origins of the Indonesian Air Force and its choice of 29 July as "Air Force Dedication Day". Following the unconditional surrender of Imperial Japanese forces throughout Asia in 1945, nationalists declared the establishment of the Republic of Indonesia over the territory of the Dutch East Indies on 17 August. Unfortunately, the Netherlands, itself just liberated from Nazi Germany occupation, fought a 'police action' to throttle the new republic until 1950.

The newly formed RI air force, Angkatan Udara Republik Indonesia (AURI), had commandeered Japanese aircraft and air bases and was reckoned a threat to the Dutch re-colonisation. On 21 July 1947, the Dutch military launched "Operation Pelikaan" and its coordinated attacks on AURI airfields destroyed much of Indonesia's air power.

However, in the early hours of 29 July, three AURI pilots, Muljono (flying a Mitsubishi KI-51 fighter), Sutarjo Sigit and Suharnoko Harbani (both flying Yokosuka K5Y1 training planes), launched an audacious counter-attack from Maguwo near Yogyakarta, bombing Dutch army positions in Semarang, Ambarawa and Salatiga, respectively.

The three young men were Air Force cadets, and they had learned to fly the Japanese aircraft they had at their disposal simply by reading the manuals written in Japanese. In the absence of bomb bays, the pilots lobbed the small bombs from the cockpits of their fighter planes by hand. Because of this, the Dutch did not suffer any reported loss of life or great damage, though it probably did give them a scare.

Of course, the ragtag Japanese aircraft the occupiers had left behind in Indonesia were no match for the Dutch, whose American P-40 Kitty Hawk fighter planes then roamed the skies above Java with a vengeance. To avoid being intercepted, the Indonesian pilots flew just above the treetops. After accomplishing their jobs, they returned to base safely and the ground crew hid the planes under the trees.

According to Rahardjo Mustadjab, "the Dutch punishment came swiftly and severely":

That same morning only a couple of hours later, two Kitty Hawks strafed Yogyakarta. Later that afternoon a Kitty Hawk gunned down an Indian transport plane, a Dakota C-47, carrying medicines donated by the Malaya Red Cross, which was about to land at Maguwo. The hapless plane went down in flames in a nearby village, killing all three Indonesian Air Force crew members: Agustinus Adisutjipto, Abdulrachman Saleh and Adisumarno ... Also killed were pilot Alexander Noel Constantine (an Australian), co-pilot Roy Hazelhurst (a Briton), flight engineer Bidha Ram (Indian), Zainal Arifin (the Indonesian consul in Malaya) and Mrs Noel Constantine. The only survivor was one passenger, Abdulgani Handokotjokro.

Jos Heyman's Indonesian aviation 1945 -1950 described the Indian-registered aircraft, VT-CLA, as being previously owned by the government of the Indian state of Orissa but subsequently purchased in support of the Indonesian republic by Bijayananda Patnaik "who hailed from a family of freedom fighters, ideologues and patriots in Orissa ... [and who] had earlier been involved in the Indian freedom struggle and eventually became a leading figure in the government of Orissa." However at the time it was shot down by Dutch P-40s, the plane was "on charter to the Indonesia government on a flight from Singapore to Maguwo."

Heyman noted both Indonesian references to the aircraft carrying Red Cross medicines and a Dutch report which claimed Dutch authorities had not been informed of the flight and that the aircraft carried no Red Cross markings:

The report continues to state that: 'Of course the MLKNIL has instructions to hinder republican air activities. Each aircraft that is over republican territory without clear markings and of which the pilot maneuvers in a manner that indicates he wants to avoid being spotted, in serious danger'. But nevertheless the orders were not to shoot an aircraft down but instead force it to land on the nearest airfield in Dutch control. The report further states that a warning shot was fired at the aircraft upon which the aircraft hit a tree and crashed. The passing of time make it impossible to conclude what actually happened.

Interestingly the aircraft's owner, Paitnak, demanded 10 million rupees from the Dutch government as compensation and eventually received a KLM DC-3.

29 July is Indonesian Airforce Dedication Day and three Indonesian victims of VT-CLA, Agustinus Adisutjipto, Abdulrachman Saleh and Adisumarno, have had airports named after them in Yogyakarta, Malang and Surakarta.

But who were the foreigners, Noel Constantine and his un-named wife, Roy Hazelhurst and Bidha Ram? I am also wondering where they are buried and how Indonesians commemorate their contribution to their independence struggle?

It appears that Iran and North Korea may soon be armed with nuclear weapons. One privateer gave them a head-start. James Button writes in today's The Age (Melbourne):

Just days before the bombs fell on Iraq in March, 2003, Britain's secret service got an unexpected phone call. It led two MI6 officers to private rooms in a Mayfair hotel. There, a nervous young man told them that "the leader" was ready to reconsider his weapons of mass destruction program. The agents were astonished. The leader was the young man's father, Libyan President Muammar Gaddafi.

From that meeting with Saif al-Islam Gaddafi, a tense and top-secret diplomatic operation began. Libya wanted to shed its pariah status - the United States had designated it a "state sponsor of terrorism" in 1979 - but it feared betrayal by the US and Britain. Over nine months in 2003 it tortuously revealed details of its program to acquire nuclear weapons.

After a tip-off in September, agents working on behalf of the CIA and MI6 boarded the BBC China, a container vessel berthed in Taranto, Italy. In five containers bound for Libya they found thousands of components for a centrifuge, a device that can enrich uranium for a bomb.

The game was up. Soon after, Libya allowed US and British agents to inspect its weapons production sites for the first time. On December 19, its foreign minister announced on television that his country was giving up its nuclear weapons ambitions in return for the lifting of sanctions. As arranged, British Prime Minister Tony Blair and US President George Bush immediately endorsed the deal. The war on terror, it seemed, had finally borne fruit. A grateful Gaddafi even sent Blair boxes of oranges and dates.

But when Libya came in from the cold, something even bigger and less cheering came in with it. The seizure of the centrifuge parts in Taranto was the last step in exposing a sophisticated global network that traded the materials and know-how to make nuclear arms.

The network was vital to Iran's march down the nuclear path. It seems to have helped North Korea in its attempt to build a bomb. It tried to sell to Iraq. It was constructing an entire nuclear weapons capability for Libya. It was dominated by shadowy European businessmen but at its head was a high-profile Pakistani scientist who had helped forge his country's atomic weapons program ...

Read on at Shopping for Bombs: Nuclear Proliferation, Global Insecurity and the Rise and Fall of the A. Q. Khan Network

Budget and low cost airlines in Indonesia are a mixed bunch. Over the past few months I've had good prices and comfortable flying on three of them: Value Air between Jakarta and Singapore (featuring online booking, seat allocation, free snack and coffee); Air Asia between Jakarta and Kuala Lumpur (online booking) and Adam Air between Jakarta and Semarang (seat allocation, bottled water). The aircraft appeared well maintained and each arrived on time. However one mate has just had a bit of a problem with the condition of an aircraft provided by Lion Air for its Surabaya to Balikpapan route (pictured above). "We make people fly" -- But keep your seat-belts fastened at all times?

Indonesian cartoonist Tommy Thomdean is in the running for the prize for the world's "best" anti-Jewish-Holocaust cartoon being presented by Iran Cartoon and Iran's largest selling newspaper Hamshahri. Interest is mounting as an exhibition of the competition's 204 finalists from the more than 1,100 cartoons submitted by participants from 60 countries was opened in Tehran's Palestine contemporary art museum yesterday. The top three cartoons will be announced on 2 September with the winners being awarded prizes of 12,000, 8,000 and 5,000 dollars respectively.

Thomdean may have a good chance of finishing in the top three and proudly raising anti-Semitism in Indonesia to a new level of prominence as he previously won an Excellence Prize at the 2004 LM International Cartoon Competition held in Nanjing, China. and was also a prize winner at this year's Syrian International Cartoon Contest.

According to the Syria Cartoon website, Thomdean began his career as freelance cartoonist and illustrator in 1997 while working as an architect "for many local social projects and low income housing in Indonesia" and now works as a cartoonist and illustrator for Kompas morning daily, Indonesia's largest circulating and most prestigious newspaper.

Aljazeera newsagency reported that Thomdean's cartoon "shows the statue of liberty holding a book on the Holocaust in its left hand and giving a Nazi-style salute with the other". This accords with the objective of the competition to parody the documented murder of some six million European Jews by the German Nazi terror regime between 1933 and 1945, known as the Holocaust.

Thomdean's cartoon appears to be displayed on the gallery wall to the right in the photo above. Blogger View From a Height, who has reproduced many more scenes from the exhibition's oepning ceremony, makes the point that half the cartoons are in English, "which tells you a little something about the target audience." He also observed that while the exhibition wanted to deny the Holocaust happened, numerous cartoons portrayed Iraelis Jews as "latter-day" Nazis. "The genius of good propaganda is doublethink," he mused.

The contest was announced in February after caricatures of the Muslim Prophet Muhammad were first printed in Denmark in September 2005 and then, surprisingly six months later, were attacked by Muslims worldwide. The cartoons were then republished by other publications, mostly in democratic countries. Many Muslims considered the cartoons offensive and a violation of traditions prohibiting images of their prophets. In some Islamic countries Muslim demonstrators were killed in riots that got out of control.

Masoud Shojai, the competition organiser, said "we staged this fair to explore the limits of freedom Westerners believe in ... they can freely write anything they like about our prophet, but," he claimed, "if one raises doubts about the Holocaust he is either fined or sent to prison."

According to Aljazeera, "Iran's fiercely anti-Israeli regime is supportive of so-called Holocaust revisionists, who maintain that the systematic slaughter by the Nazis of mainland Europe's Jews and other groups during World War II was either invented or exaggerated. Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, Iran's president, has also prompted international anger by dismissing the Holocaust as a 'myth' used to justify the creation of Israel."

Ahmadinejad and other Iranian leaders are increasingly calling for Muslims to join together to ensure the destruction of Israel (see Ahmadinejad very clear on Israel's "elimination").

Indonesian connections

In February, about 200 Muslims demonstrated outside the Danish Embassy in the Indonesian capital, Jakarta, to protest the publishing of the caricatures of the Prophet Mohammed in a Danish newspaper six months before. Danish Ambassador Neils Erik Andersen told CNN that about a dozen of the demonstrators, members of Defenders of Islam (FPI), broke through security and, once on the embassy grounds, demanded to meet with him. During the meeting, Andersen reiterated an apology made earlier by Jyllands-Posten, the Danish newspaper.

Indonesia's foreign minister, Hassan Wirajuda, said at the time that radical groups around the world were exploiting public Islamic anger over the cartoons and protests were now "out of proportion."

Last month, however, an Indonesian journalist was arrested over his decision to publish the controversial cartoons in Rakyat Merdeka newspaper back in February. Teguh Santosa, online editor of the newspaper, was charged with inciting hatred towards a religious group. (namely the country's 80% Muslim majority).

He said he published the images to give readers the full story on the cartoons issue. "We just wanted to let people know about the cartoons, which were being strongly protested at that time," he told the Associated Press. Santosa faces up to five years imprisonment if found guilty.

Blogger Indonesia Matters reported that the Committee to Protect Journalists had denounced the arrest and charges, as an attack on the freedom of the press. The Alliance of Independent Journalists (Aliansi Jurnalis Independen) also voiced its concern, claiming that Santosa had not breached the journalists? code of ethics.

The AJI insisted that 30-year-old Santosa had no desire to provoke Muslims when he posted the cartoons and that his sole aim was to provide his readers with background to the controversy they had caused and noted that he was the second Indonesian journalist to suffer consequences for reproducing the cartoons. David Da Silva, the editor of the Christian magazine Gloria, was fired by his employers in February.

Emails may possibly be received by Tommy Thomdean at tom_thomdeanjunior@yahoo.com and via his editor at Kompas. Emails may possibly be received by Teguh Santosa via the Alliance of Independent Journalists.

UPDATE

Exhibition curator Masoud Shojai has since told an Iranian News Channel (IRINN) reporter that "Zionist circles" had "severely attacked" the exhibition website and he'd received "thousands of threatening e-mails" and "offers to money" to prevent the exhibition. Who would have thought Zionist violence or sinister cash transactions were possible in the centre of Islamic revolutionary Tehran?

In another suprise, there have no news reports yet of angry Jewish protests or riots against the exhibition anywhere in the world. No burning of embassies or public calls for the beheading of Iranian or Muslim leaders either.

Lebanese blogs seemingly have no nice words for Israel and share extreme anger about the force used by Israel in its powerful (yet underwhelming) counter-attack against Hizb'Allah (Lebanon's Party of God) military provocation. Even Vox's Den, who acknowledged that "punishing the Shias ...[to] make it hard from for Hezbollah to attack Israel anytime soon" was a good strategy from an Israeli point of view, declared the "cost of this war far outweighs the benefits - especially that, at the end of the day, Hezbollah might still be there. In this case, there won't be any benefits for me, only costs."

But regardless of their patriotism and concern for their dead and injured countrymen, Lebanese bloggers are now writing of the penalty incurred by all Lebanese as a result of Hizb'Allah's military adventurism, independence from the national government (in which it has ministers), religious fanaticism, non-State alliances with Syria and Iran and promises to destroy Israel.

Here's a recent sampling:

Hezbollah has another face, a bearded face. It is a party involved in act of terrorism against US marines and Jewish targets in South America. It is a party that send its thugs beat Christian dwellers after a TV show mocked its 'sayyed', God's representative on Earth. It is a party that opposed Syria's withdrawal last year, despite the fact that there are thousands of Lebanese prisoners in Syria being treated worse than Khiam's prisoners, despite the fact that they know what the Syrians did to the Lebanese during the last decades. It is a party that besiege Christian and Druze villages in the south, abuse their population, fire its Katiusha behind churches in an obvious attempt to improve the 'score' of civilian casualties. It is a party that wants to impose its fanatical religious system on others. It is a party that has been trying to stop the international inquiry and the international tribunal regarding Hariri's death. It is a party that hides its rockets in civilian buildings and then cry crocodile tears over the death of children. It is a party funded by Iran and Syria in order to block the Lebanese transition to democracy and that has done everything to block the reforms during the last 14 months. For all of these reasons, Hezbollah deserve to die one hundred times. - Vox's Den, 2 Aug 2006

The Syrian regime, which still has illusions that it rules Lebanon and that it is a "player," when it's little more than a client-proxy spoiler of the Iranians, is very clearly threatened by the UN draft resolution. So they're threatening left and right. This is on top of the repeated threats of unleashing al-Qaeda on Lebanon (just a reminder to all the "experts" who tell us that the "secular" Syrian regime cannot have ties to Islamists or al-Qaeda even as they are a client of Khomeinist Iran on top of it!). So while their venomous foreign minister was in Lebanon, he gave a reminder to all those who think that the Syrians have any interest other than boosting Hezbollah and undermining the central government, and essentially staging a classic coup d'etat. He volunteered to join Nasrallah's army, and put himself at Hezbollah's disposal, and offered every possible support for Hezbollah. And in the end, he issued a veiled threat that unless they get their way, they will try to provoke civil war in the country. - Across The Bay, 6 Aug 2006

The time is right for liberal forces in Lebanon to speak with force and belief. Before July 12, the debate between Hezbollah and the rest of the Lebanese had a classic pattern: When a Lebanese party reproaches Hezbollah for their weapons, they respond with a barrage of intimidation, bullying and self-righteousness. "How dare you question us?" "You sound exactly like the Israelis," "Who are you to judge us?" sweetened with an assurance that the weapons are only for deterrence and will only be used against the "Zionist enemy," followed by veiled (and not so veiled) threats: "we shall cut the limbs and heads of those who will try to disarm us and pull their souls out of their bodies." The problem was not Hezbollah?s responses per say. The problem was the fact that a lot of Lebanese (mainly the Sunnis) actually felt a hint of shame for criticizing a force that appeals so much to populist Arab public opinion. Especially if you watch Aljazeera and the way they insinuate that the Lebanese who don?t support Hezbollah serve the interests of Israel. At this junction, we need to be more righteous than Hezbollah, because our cause is, in fact, more just. - The Beirut Spring, 14 Aug 2006

And in the end, what exactly has Hizbullah won for its efforts? Since it is too soon to judge Hizbullah's "balance of terror" strategy as a successful deterrent to the Israeli threat, we can look at how this all began. Nasrallah began this war for all intents and purposes back in January when he announced that he would engage Israel in the south and seek hostages with which to exchange for the final few Lebanese prisoners still residing in Israel. In all the fighting and furor, with all the opportunity that waves of Israeli soldiers assaulting Hizbullah positions would provide, has Hizbullah taken a single additional prisoner? We would certainly know if they had, considering Hizbullah's own media initiatives. Also, Hizbullah has not succeeded in downing a single Israeli combat aircraft. Considering that Syria, Jordan, and Egypt all managed to take Israeli prisoners and shoot down Israeli aircraft in wars they clearly lost, where does this leave Hizbullah's war effort? Where are the true symptoms of victory aside from the postmodern assertion that it's somehow in the eye of the beholder? - Bliss Street Journal, 8 Aug 2006

Don't misunderstand me. I believe PM Siniora is a decent man in a very tight spot. I believe PM Siniora is well intentioned and that his tears were heart-felt for the plight of his fellow citizens. However, that can be said of most Lebanese and is not enough to make one a historic leader. What is needed from a leader in times of war, is bold action, strong words, and vision. None of which appear forthcoming. The government is now talking about sending the army to the south, a welcome move but a move that is a year too late. When the Iranian and/or Syrian Foreign Ministers contradicts, from Lebanese soil, the Lebanese government's view on a cease-fire resolution, I don't want to hear it's "over the limit". I want my PM to kick their butts out (sorta like Rice). Siniora, at least, ought to have had the Iranian ambassador recalled. What could happen? Iran might stop shipping us rockets? Nasrallah is going to howl? Even better! Embarrass the crap out of him by looking strong, and taking the initiative. That is how people rally around you. Siniora has yet to be clear on his government's position on crucial matters, including Hezbollah. I understand the need to be cautious with Hezbollah, but Lebanon got in this mess by having an incoherent policy, and won't get out of the mess by remaining incoherent. - Lebonesque, 8 Aug 2006

I didn't believe Hezbollah leader Hassan Nasrallah when he said Hezbollah has more than 15,000 missiles. I didn't believe any of the Hezbollah cheerleaders who claimed that Hezbollah soldiers are as good or better than most of the premier special forces units outside of the Western world. I took it as a given that they are the best fighting troops amongst the Arab countries, which is not saying much, but better than Iran, Pakistan, India? I knew firsthand the professionalism of Hezbollah's soldiers. I knew through a close associate about how quickly out of line Hezbollah members were put in their place. And I knew firsthand the professionalism and capabilities of al Manar staff. Former UNIFIL spokesman Timur Goksel regularly spoke and speaks about the professionalism of Hezbollah. He notes that they plan, strategize, re-plan, re-strategize, and then do that all over again before they make any decision. They think through the consequences of any military activity from multiple different angles: how it will effect Hezbollah militarily, how it will effect Hezbollah politically, how it will effect Hezbollah members, how Shia Lebanese will respond, how Lebanese public opinion will respond, how Israel will respond, how the West will respond, how Iran and Syria will respond. I always doubted him. I believed him to a degree, but I thought he was exaggerating, even when we spoke just after the 12 July conflict began. I was wrong ... Hezbollah is much more powerful than I ever imagined. - Lebanese Political Journal, 13 Aug 2006

The Lebanese Druze leader, Walid Jumblatt, in a televised broadcast, accused Iran and Syria to be behind the initiative of Sheikh Hassan Nasrallah in kidnapping the two Israeli soldiers, thereby providing Israel with an alibi to destroy Lebanon, once again, if only to avenge its earlier defeat and evacuation of Lebanon, at the hands of Hezbollah combatants. We know that Walid Jumblatt has no love for the Syrians, who had assassinated his father, Kamal, because of his adamant refusal to submit to a Syrian dictate. As for Iran, the meeting which took place between the French and Iranian Foreign Ministers at the Iranian Embassy in Beirut is but one indication of the complicity of Iran in the war on Lebanon. The objective of Iran is to divert the attention of the world away from its uranium enrichment programme. Syria, on the other hand would like nothing better than to see Lebanon destroyed over the heads of its inhabitants, as the head of the Regime, Bashar el Assad had vowed to do. Undoubtedly, Walid Jumblatt is courting assassination; and thus all the greater merit for his statements. - The Wizard of Beirut, 5 Aug 2006

"Syria says that she supports the Lebanese Government acceptance of the UN resolution 1701" ? Exactly who asked you your opinion? When will Syria understand that they can't interfere in Lebanon anymore? Whether you supported it or not, let me get this clear for you...IT'S NOT YOUR DAMN BUSINESS! If you really want to be helpful, write an official document stating that Shebaa farms are not yours, and you can bet the Lebanese Government will NOT only support your decision, but it will be thankful as well! Syria, please start listening to what PM Seniora is saying: "Syrian should start accepting that Lebanon is an independent state, and they don't have any right interfering with our national affairs". Go and worry about your own issues, like Goulan Heights, the Syrian land still occupied by Israel till now! - Failasoof, 13 Aug 2006

More Lebanese bloggers and viewpoints are aggregated at Open Lebanon and www.lebweb.com/. Read about the Background and objectives of Hizb'Allah.

Despite heart-rending visual imagery of war in Lebanon and the Palestinian districts, public attacks on Lebanon's Party of God (Hizb'Allah) and its militia, as well as the Islamic Republic of Iran's strategic goals, have become commonplace in the Sunni Arab world since the start of Israel's powerful (yet underwhelming) counter-attack against Hizb'Allah provocation from southern Lebanon.

Amir Taheri, for instance, the Iranian-born senior columnist for Asharq Al-Awsat, the thirty-year-old pan-Arab daily newspaper printed in 12 cities, wrote today that Hizb'Alah was fighting "not for prisoners, the Shabaa farms or even 'Arab causes', whatever they may be at any given time, but for Iran in its broader struggle."

In his article, When Elephants Fight, Taheri recalled that one week ago Iran's Foreign Minister Manuchehr Motakki shocked an audience in Beirut and drew flak from Lebanon's Prime Minister Fouad Sinioraby by identifying the current border war as about reshaping the Middle East.

"However, the most frank analyses of the situation on the Iranian side of the conflict have come from two close aides of [Iran's Supreme Guide Ali Khamenehi] Khamenehi," he wrote.

The first was by Ali Akbar Velayati, Iran's Foreign Minister for 16 years. In a speech in Tehran last week, Velayati said that, by destroying the Pakistan- and Saudi Arabian-backed Sunni Taliban insurgents in Afghanistan and the Arab Baathist dictatorship in Iraq, the United States had freed Shia-Persian Iran from devoting "much of its energies protecting its borders" and had "created an historic opportunity" for taking leadership of the region.

The second analysis came from Hussein Shariatmadari, also a top aide to Khamenehi and director of Iran's main daily newspaper Kayhan (Universe). According to Taheri, Shariatmadari believes that with the fall of communism, the task of challenging the US-lead, "Infidel" West has devolved to the Islamic Republic and its Khomeinist ideology:

"In an editorial bearing the title of This Is Our War, Shariatmadari made it clear that Hezbollah was fighting not for prisoners, the Shabaa farms or even 'Arab causes', whatever they may be at any given time, but for Iran in its broader struggle to prevent the US from creating 'an American Middle East.'

"The consensus in Tehran is that American power is peaking out and that the West as a whole is entering a period of historic decline. President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad is convinced that it is the turn of rising new powers, brimming with energy and ambition, sustained by strong demographic trends, and ready for endless sacrifice and suffering, to provide humanity with leadership."

"Seen in that context, Taheri commented, the ultimate control of the current war may not be in the hands of either Israel or Hezbollah."

Earlier, Ahmed Al-Jarallah, Editor-in-Chief of Kuwait's Arab Times newspaper, opined in his editorial, No to Syria, Iran agents, that "people of Arab countries, especially the Lebanese and Palestinians, have been held hostage for a long time in the name of 'resisting Israel.'"

"Arab governments have been caught between political obligations and public opinion leading to more corruption in politics and economics. Forgetting the interests of their own countries the Hamas Movement and Hezbollah have gone to the extent of representing the interests of Iran and Syrian in their countries. These organizations have become the representatives of Syria and Iran without worrying about the consequences of their action."

Al-Jarallah pointed out that, without mentioning Hizb'Allah by name, Saudi Arabia blamed certain "elements" inside Lebanon for the violence with Israel and said "it is necessary to make a distinction between legitimate resistance and uncalculated adventures adopted by certain elements within Lebanon without the knowledge of legal Lebanese authorities."

The strict Sunni-Muslim Arab kingdom said it was against irresponsible adventures undertaken by certain elements in the region without consulting the legal authorities putting all Arab nations at risk, adding that "these elements must take responsibility for their irresponsible actions and they alone should end the crisis created by them."

He said the "battle between supporters and opponents of these adventurers has begun, starting from Palestine to Tehran passing through Syria and Lebanon" and that war was inevitable as the "Lebanese government couldn't bring Hezbollah within its authority" and make it work for the interests of Lebanon.

"Unfortunately, he concluded, "we must admit that in such a war the only way to get rid of 'these irregular phenomena' is what Israel is doing. The operations of Israel in Gaza and Lebanon are in the interest of people of Arab countries and the international community."

A Hizb'Allah rocket attack on an UNIFIL monitoring base in southern Lebanon today, injured three Chinese members of the interim peace keeping force, just hours after China called on the United Nations to ensure the security of UNIFIL forces, China's official Xinhua News Agency announced.

"The rocket landed near our post at 11:55 a.m. (0855 GMT) as an Israeli military unit passed by a village close to the post," Luo Fuqiang, a Chinese officer who heads a sapper battalion, was quoted as saying.

Earlier Sunday, China's Foreign Minister Li Zhaoxing told UN Secretary-General Kofi Annan in a telephone conversation that the UN should take tangible measures to ensure the security of UN peacekeepers, Xinhua said.

The silence from the United Nations secretariat and world media about this attack contrasts dramatically to the reaction to an Israeli attack on a UNIFIL observer post in July which killed four UN monitors.

At that time, Kofi Annan claimed the action was "apparently deliberate targeting by Israeli Defense Forces of a United Nations observer post".

Kofi's widely publicised allegation was immediately challenged by the release of an email sent earlier by one of the fallen UN observers, Major Paeta Hess-von Kruedener, of Canada, in which he claimed that the UNIFIL post "was taking fire within, in one case, three meters of his position for tactical necessity, not being targeted."

The email reciprient, retired Canadian Major General Lewis Mackenzie, said Kruedener "was telling us was Hezbollah soldiers were all over his position and the IDF were targeting them. And that's a favorite trick by people who don't have representation in the UN. They use the UN as shields knowing that they can't be punished for it."

Canada's Prime Minister Stephen Harper also stated that the Israeli attack was a "terrible tragedy" but not likely deliberate. At the same time, he questioned why the UN had manned the outpost in Lebanon near the Israeli border as bombs exploded all around.

"We want to find out why this United Nations post was attacked and also why it remained manned during what is now, more or less, a war during obvious danger to these individuals," he told media. Asked about UN head Kofi Annan's statement suggesting Israel had targeted the outpost, Harper said: "I certainly doubt that to be the case."

Since its withdrawal from its military buffer zone in southern Lebanon in 2000, Israel consistetly lobbied "for UNIFIL to either take a more active role vis-a-vis Hezbollah (for example, preventing Hezbollah from setting up military posts adjacent to UNIFIL's in the hope this will deter Israel from attacking them), or to step out of the region (thereby voiding the Lebanese government's excuse for not deploying its army along the border)."

Prior to Hizb'Allah's 12 July attack on Israel, visitors to UNIFIL posts in southern Lebanon noted that they were still often within a few hundred metres of Hizb'Allah posts (the latter flying their yellow party flag not the Lebanese national flag) and UNIFIL troops took no action against their cross-border provocations.

The Indonesian-based Asian Muslim Youth Movement claims it has sent hundreds of South East Asian suicide bombers around the world with a mission to attack Jewish interests in countries that support Israel such as Britain, the US and possibly Australia. Its leader, Islamist author Suaib Bidu, warned The Australian that thousands more jihadis were preparing to join the resistance against Israel and die as"martyrs". Bidu said a "passing-out" ceremony for more than 3000 jihadis will be held tomorrow in the Indonesian city of Pontianak, West Kalimantan. But only about 200 would be sent immediately to targets aboard, with the remainder being active supporters.

"We have a lot of support, including in Australia, from people who don't believe Israel's attack (on Hizb'Allah) is just," he said. The group claims to have already sent 217 suicide bombers, including 72 Indonesians as well as citizens of six other Southeast Asian nations, to Malaysia, Thailand and the Philippines. They include seasoned mujaheddin fighters, some of whom had fought the Soviets in Afghanistan and then the Northern Alliance in the same country.

According to The Australian, about 40 percent of the AMYM recruits have military experience in countries including Afghanistan, Thailand, The Philippines, Palestine and Iraq. Those with field experience have learned how to make suicide bombs. However Bidu said the fighters from his movement will not travel to Lebanon "because we don't want to face Israel from the front; we prefer to do it from behind".

Indonesia's Islamic Defenders Front (FPI) has announced it has 200,000 members ready to join the battlefield in southern Lebanon. "When we apply for passports we say we are going to Singapore or to Mecca, so that we can fulfil our true aims'" FPI spokesman Habib Hasan al-Jufrie said. He said the FPI held military training courses "at secret locations" every two weeks.

Last night, Malaysian Prime Minister Abdullah Badawi said there were fears a "new wave" of terrorists could be generated by the Israeli offensive in Lebanon. "Muslims are angry even in moderate Muslim countries," said Mr Abdullah, who hosted and chaired an emergency meeting of the 57 nations of the Organisation of the Islamic Conference in Kuala Lumpur.

The leader of the violent anti-globalisation S11 protest against the 2000 World Economic Forum held in Melbourne, Australia, has been made the public voice of the city's RMIT University. And the controversial new media and communication adviser, David Glanz, took the opportunity this weekend to declare his support for the Arab Islamist organisations Hamas and Hizb'Allah currently attacking Israel. He said both groups had the right to resist and the Australian Federal Government was wrong to outlaw Hizb'Allah as a terrorist organisation.

Glanz is an activist of the International Socialist Organisation, which has reportedly advocated assassinations, blowing up military targets and tearing up the roots of the capitalist system. When asked by Craig Binnie of the Herald Sun if he still supported this Mr Glanz replied: "Individual acts of terrorism do not advance the campaign for a world free of injustice, poverty and war."

In May, the Indonesian government banned its education institutions from associating with RMIT University. A spokeswoman for the Indonesian Ministry of National Education, Nur Samsiah, said the West Papuan separatist flag was flown on RMIT's campus after the recent granting of protection visas to 42 West Papuan asylum seekers. "Their academics, their lecturers and their campuses are used for supporting separatists," Ms Samsiah said.

She said all co-operation between the ministry and the two universities was "on hold" and a proposal was being considered to suspend the accreditation of Indonesian students taking courses at either university, which would effectively stop them studying there.

A spokeswoman for RMIT said the university was perplexed by the charges from Jakarta "as it did not support any political agendas".

Iran president Mahmoud Ahmadinejad has dropped all opacity regarding the fate of Israel (see Subtle Ahmadinejad. What does he really mean?) and finally got to the point. He told delegates to the emergency summit of the Organization of the Islamic Conference being held in Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia, that Muslims should support an immediate ceasefire in southern Lebanon as a stage in the destruction of Israel.

"Though elimination of the Zionist regime is the main solution to the current crisis, at this stage a cease-fire should be immediately established," he said, as quoted by the Islamic Republic News Agency.

Israel is fighting to clear Iran-backed Party of God (Hizb'Allah) fighters from southern Lebanon after they crossed the international border, abducted and killed Israeli soldiers and fired weapons into civilian areas of northern Israel.

The objectives of Hizb'Allah, a member of the Lebanese Government, includes "the destruction of Israel ... It is the hated enemy that must be fought until the hated ones get what they deserve ... Therefore our struggle will end only when this entity is obliterated. We recognize no treaty with it, no cease fire, and no peace agreements, whether separate or consolidated."

Wikiquote has published a number of statements by the reclusive Hizb'Allah leader, Hassan Nasrallah. They include:

"Peace settlements will not change reality, which is that Israel is the enemy and that it will never be a neighbor or a nation ... And on this last day of the century, I promise Israel that it will see more suicide attacks, for we will write our history with blood" (Hezbollah rally in Beirut. December 31, 1999); and

"If we searched the entire world for a person more cowardly, despicable, weak and feeble in psyche, mind, ideology and religion, we would not find anyone like the Jew. Notice, I do not say the Israeli" (Quoted in Saad-Ghorayeb, Amal 2001, Hizbu'llah: Politics and Religion, Pluto Press, ISBN 0745317928).

Malaysian blogger Husin Tapa is impressed with the chutzpa of investment banker Khairy Jamaluddin, the son-in-law of Prime Minister Abdullah Ahmad Badawi, and leader of the governing party's UMNO Youth League, who led the recent anti-Israeli and anti-US demonstrations in Kuala Lumpur during which he attempted to barge into the convention centre to rebuke US Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice.

"Khairy?s action reminds us of those days when Anwar Ibrahim or Ibrahim Ali and some others led demonstrations against the government, which eventually facilitated them into high political office," Tapa wrote in his Malaysia Kini blog.

"I am also impressed with Khairy who demanded that all Islamic countries quit the United Nations to show their anger at the world body for doing nothing to stop the Israeli atrocities in Lebanon. UMNO Youth, he said, would also make a list of Jewish companies whose products Malaysians should boycott ...

"But as a graduate of Oxford, Khairy may not have the heart to protest against the country that gave him political education and the best period of his formative years," he wrote, addding, "Will Khairy abandon Manchester United?

Malaysia's state broadcaster, Radio Televisyen Malaysia, will continue broadcasting reports of "Israeli atrocities" in Lebanon and Palestine, Deputy Information Minister Datuk Ahmad Zahid announced. A South East Asian multicultural and multiracial state but with a Malay Muslim majority, Malaysia does not recognise Israel.

"The government has no other motives in broadcasting the reports but to explain to the people the importance of unity to prevent outside elements from threatening the peace and sovereignty of our country," Zahid said. "If the Malaysian Defence Forces were to be involved in [UN] peacekeeping duties in Lebanon, RTM would embed its personnel so that Malaysians got a clear picture of the human suffering in Lebanon as a result of the Israeli action, he added.

The Jihad cause seems to erupt whenever there is good news about democracy in Muslim-majority countries.

For instance, in Indonesia's two New Guinea provinces, Papua and Irian Jaya Barat, the first direct elections for their provincial governors -- by law reserved for ethnic Papuans -- attracted the participation of more than 80 percent of entitled voters in both provinces as citizens appear willing to give Special Autonomy status an opportunity for implementation. The inauguration of both governors was followed by the military wing of the separatist Free West Papua movement (OPM) announcing that it is ending its 40 year "armed struggle" and will campaign for Papua's independence, through "non-violent action".

However, three non-Papuan Indonesians have been arrested for suspected terror activities after entering a secure site inside the US mining company Freeport-McMoRan's gold-copper mining complex in Papua province. The three were arrested Thursday after they entered a "protected area" inside the mine without having proper security clearance, said national deputy police spokesman Bambang Kuncoko.

A senior officer with Indonesia's anti-terror unit Detachment 88 said two of the three were Freeport employees, including one in charge of handling explosives. The third is an Islamic teacher, the officer said. The teacher had at least once entered the complex using a visitor's ID pass made by one of the other two, the officer told AFP on condition of anonymity.

He said anti-terror detectives also seized several documents including bomb-making instructions, a map of Freeport mining area and videos of anti-Western propaganda.

From Lebanon resident, anti-Israel activist and middle-east affairs writer and commentator, Robert Fisk:

" ... it's Syria that is being lined up for attack next, not the Saddam Cabinet. And the signs were clear long ago.

"Take the article in The New York Times by Larry Collins - joint author with Dominique Lapierre of O Jerusalem! - which last month announced that the Syrian-supported Hizbollah resistance in Lebanon had 10,000 missiles that could fly to Tel Aviv and 'leave in their wake devastation more terrible than anything Israel has ever known'.

"The missiles are a myth - I travel the roads of southern Lebanon every two weeks and there are no such missiles, as the UN force there will confirm ..."

Published by The Independent (UK) on 15 April 2003.

A dual Australian-Israel citizen was killed in action with the Israeli army in southern Lebanon yesterday. He was one of nine Israeli soldiers killed in a Hizb'Allah ambush near the guerilla stronghold of Bint Jbeil. Sergeant Asaf Namer was close to completing his two years of volunteer military service. Born in Israel, he emigrated to Sydney, Australia, as a child with his mother and older sister in 1991. He returned to his birth country to be with his father and was living with his grandmother in the town on Kiryat Yam, near Haifa.

Australian Foreign Minister Alexander Downer said: "I just want to say how sad I am that an Australian has been killed and obviously we extend our condolences to the family ... He was in the last month of his national service so it's particularly sad circumstances surrounding his death." Australian Labor Party leader Kim Beazley said he was "deeply sorry" about Mr Namer's death. "He was obviously fighting for something he believed in."

Sixteen years ago an Australian citizen reportedly played a critical player in an act of terrorism in Lebanon.

It involved General Michael Aoun who had commanded the Lebanese Army from the mid 1980s. In 1988 he became prime minister of an interim government and cracked down on the various militia groups in the country and waged a 'War of Liberation' against the Syrian Army in Lebanon. In October 1990 he was removed from power by Syrian and pro-Syrian forces and exiled to France.

On 12 October 1990, just before he was forced to resign, Aoun went into the palace grounds to greet thousands of his followers. From the crowd, Francois Habib Halal opened fire with a hand gun and fired four shots at the prime minister. The asassinatioon attempt failed but one bystander was killed. Hillal was a member of the Syrian Ba'ath Party, a Shi'ite from southern Lebanon but with Australian citizenship.

He was arrested but General Aoun gave orders that he should be well treated and handed over to the proper authorities for investigation. Hallal was released from prison the very next day after the Syrian army's 13 October onslaught against Aoun. He then gave a press conference at Syrian Baath Party (Lebanese Branch) offices in Beirut. The Baath Secretary General, Abdallah Al-Amin introduced Hallal as a national hero of the Arab cause. He reportedly still lives in South Beirut.

A car bomb has exploded outside the Israeli embassy in London injuring 14 people. The blast, at 1210 BST, caused widespread damage and could be heard over a mile away.

The Israeli Ambassador and British intelligence experts are blaming pro-Iranian extremists, probably linked to the Lebanon-based Hizb'Allah ...

Breaking news at BBC (click for story).


Incredible how quickly we forget.

Andrew Bolt, a columnist of Australia's biggest selling newspaper, Herald Sun (Melbourne), drew attention to changes made to an article by Max Hasting, originally published in The Guardian (England), when it was reprinted in The Age (Melbourne). The words in bold were removed by The Age:

Hizbullah is a profoundly unpleasant and violent movement, which has inflicted as much grief upon the people of Lebanon as the Israelis. But as long as Israel continues to deny justice to the Palestinians, Hizbullah?s actions will be deemed by many to possess more legitimacy than its own.

Cut for space limitations, perhaps.

Nobel peace laureate Betty Williams, one of Northern Ireland's peace movement leaders in the 1970s, now questions the concept of 'non-violence'. Addressing young people at Mikhail Gorbachev's Earth Dialogues forum, being held in Brisbane, Australia, Mrs Williams now 64 and head of the World Centres of Compassion for Children International, said she had a "very hard time with this word 'non-violence', because I don't believe that I am non-violent."

"Right now, I would love to kill George Bush," she told the young people, adding "I don't know how I ever got a Nobel Peace Prize, because when I see children die the anger in me is just beyond belief."

Back in 1977 I published The Peace People of Northern Ireland - impressions of Mairead Corrigan, Betty Williams and the Peace Movement (Widescope). Author Dairy O'Donnell, convinced me that her insights were approved by Corrogan, Williams et al, and it was an interesting and economically slim read.

Corrigan was supposed to launch the book in Sydney during her Australian speaking tour but cancelled after noting that the book's back cover blurb described her as "Mairead, the virgin martyr, sacrificing her youth and her personal desires on the altar of a higher destiny."

Sexual repression, you see, was part of Dairy O'Donnell's explanation for the vigorous origins of the peace movement in violence-dominated, Roman Catholic districts of Northern Ireland: "Married adults living a celibate existence build up energies which might otherwise be expressed in conjugal intercourse," she wrote.

This extended to Betty Williams. As her husband was often at sea, she may have been "denied this normal outlet for her sexual or procreative drive for several months."

As Dairy wonderfully surmised: "Could it have been this sublimated procreative urge that provided the impetus for the tremendous out pouring of energy that went into the conception of the Peace Movement?"

Thirty years later, one wonders the sub-sexual catalyst for Mrs Williams' "fiesty" and publically declared, impulse to murder.

According to its official program, Hizb'Allah-Al-thawra Al-Islamiya fi Lubnan (Party of God of Lebanon) is a unit of the world Muslim "vanguard" which was "made victorious by God in Iran" and which "obey the orders of one leader ... Ruhollah Musawi Khomeini." It lists as a main objective "the destruction of Israel ... the hated enemy that must be fought until the hated ones get what they deserve ... Therefore our struggle will end only when this entity is obliterated. We recognize no treaty with it, no cease fire, and no peace agreements, whether separate or consolidated ..."

Speaking at a graduation ceremony in Haret Hreik, Lebanin, on 22 October 2002, Hizb'Allah leader Sayyed Hassan Nasrallah said 'Christian Zionists' were gaining strength and had a powerful impact on US foreign policy. "Their aim is to redraw the world's political map" [so as to] return the Jews to Israel and rebuild their temple, destroyed by the Romans in 70AD, over the Al-Aqsa Mosque. However, Nasrallah warned, "if they [Jews] all gather in Israel, it will save us the trouble of going after them worldwide." (Photo: Hizb'Allah members give party salute in Lebanon rally across the border from an Israeli village - link /image from Harry's Place).

At rallies around the world this weekend, socialists have added their voice in support of Hizb'Allah's program and continuing attacks on Israel, particularly in countries where Hizb'Allah has been declared a terrorist organisation. In London, for instance, blogger Lenin's Tomb reported that "people [were] chanting 'Ooh aah Hizb'Allah, say ooh aah Hizb'Allah!' Or 'We are all Hizb'Allah!' Things like that. It was a real pleasure to hear thousands of people yelling that outside the American Embassy. Let the fuckers phone that one home."

George Galloway, the Member of Paliament for the Respect Party, prompted claps and cheers from demonstrators there when he declared: "Hizb'Allah has never been a terrorist organisation, Hizb'Allah is a resistance movement of Lebanon." Andrew Murray, national chair of the Stop the War Coalition and director of campaigns and communications for the Transport and General Workers? Union, later read out an address from Hizb'Allah.

A socialist reported from Holland: "We walked for an hour or so and ended at the 'Museum Plein' ... When the heavy rain fall started, there was a woman from Libanon crying and begging for a stop of the war. It was heartbreaking, really. The rain so hard, and the people just listening to here, feeling with here, and crying with here. After that there came lighting, right above our heads. 'Flash - Boom', direct hit a couple of meters from us. A young lady behind me said 'Now we kind of know how those people in Lebanon have to feel'. It was frighting those flash-booms, many of them. And the woman was right.

"More people arrived to shelter for the rain. People screamed 'Allah Akhbar!'. I am glad i have been there. To be one of the many individuals crying out loud for the stopping of the war! Allah Akhbar! And we are all Hizb'Allah!"

A socialist reported from Auckland, New Zealand: "A massively angry and energetic protest - a very good mix of lefties and liberals and the Lebanese/Muslim/Arabic communities. We socialists had a telling off from a Muslim woman for not chanting 'Victory to Hizb'Allah', so we took a vote and decided to adopt that slogan, and I'm proud of it ... Fuck, I've just about lost my voice today."

A socialist reported from Sydney: "Demo was massive (over 10,000 even by police estimates). I heard and saw nothing pro-Hizb'Allah (possibly partly because there are very few Shi'a in the Lebanese community here, and certainly because the Lebanese community associations discouraged any pro-Hizb'Allah stuff) - rather, everything said and waved was explicitly attacking Israel and America (although, sadly no one seemed willing to attack Australian government policy - possibly because there were rumblings about making that illegal last year)."

The Communist Party of Australia demanded Israel end its "aggression against the Palestinian people and the Lebanese nation." The party's newspaper, The Guardian, claimed the Hizb'Allah attack, "in solidarity with the Palestinians", was used by Israel "as the excuse to launch the present murderous attack on Lebanon which has practically no military forces to defend itself."

Australian Socialist Alliance said "Israel's incessant and indiscriminate bombardment of Lebanon ... is an outright act of terrorism" and demanded Israel "cease its wars on Lebanon and Palestine immediately."

According to Vanguard, the journal of the Communist Party of Australia (Marxist-Leninist), "the peoples of the world will be with the Palestinians in their continuing resistance and stand against the attack on Lebanon. Israel has made a grave mistake."

A spokesman of the Last Super Power faction in Australia, praised Hizb'Allah for its "practical action to mobilize people and do things. In this case first to show genuine solidarity with the Palestinians by capturing an enemy prisoner themselves and then to respond to the Israeli disproportionate attacks on Lebanese civilian infrastructure (calculated to inculcate learned helplessness) with consequent significant civilian casualties by proportionate rocket attacks on Israeli and proportionate (lighter) incidental civilian casualties." Describing Israeli reaction to missile attacks against its civilians as "disgusting" he added that "the overwhelming majority of casualties are suffering from hysteria."

Just two months prior to the Hizb'Allah attack on northern Israel, MIT Professor Noam Chomsky met with the party's leaders during an eight-day visit to Lebanon. In an interview on Hizb'Allah's television station Al Manar on 13 May, he expressed support for the party's armed forces and rejection of UN Security Council Resolution 1559 on disarming all Lebanese militia:

Hizb'Allah's insistence on keeping its arms is justified... I think Nasrallah has a reasoned argument and [a] persuasive argument that they [the arms] should be in the hands of Hezbollah as a deterrent to potential aggression, and there is plenty of background reasons for that. So until ? I think his position [is] reporting it correctly and it seems to me [a] reasonable position, is that until there is a general political settlement in the region, [and] the threat of aggression and violence is reduced or eliminated, there has to be a deterrent, and the Lebanese army can't be a deterrent.

"Most Lebanese are against the Hizb'Allah arms ... the Hizb'Allah arms scare the Lebanese people more than the Israelis," retorted Ali Hussein in his article, "Chomsky needs to learn a lot more about Lebanon," published in Ya Libnan on 13 May 2006.

Kofi Annan's presentation on the Lebanon-Israel crisis to the UN Security Council last night had an air of grim realism. After declaring Hizb'Allah the aggressor and condemning Israel for excessive force, he put aside the blame game to discuss steps to de-escalation. While demanding a ceasefire for humanitarian purposes, he agreed that full cessation of hostilities were unlikely until Israel's abducted soldiers were returned and its minimum security issues - removal or disarming of Hizb'Allah and the return of the Lebanon national army to the border - had been met.

With hundreds reported killed and thousands of civilians already displaced, Annan listed his most "urgent steps" in the following order: "The deliberate targeting by Hezbollah of Israeli population centres with hundreds of indiscriminate weapons and Israel's disproportionate use of force and collective punishment of the Lebanese people must stop. The abducted soldiers must be released as soon as possible. The government of Israel must allow humanitarian agencies access to civilians. And the democratically elected government of Lebanon must be urgently supported in this hour of crisis."

The elements he proposed included: "The captured Israeli soldiers must be transferred to the legitimate Lebanese authorities under the auspices of the ICRC with a view to their repatriation to Israel and a cease-fire ... On the Lebanese side of the Blue Line, an expanded peacekeeping force would help stabilize the situation, working with the Lebanese government to help strengthen its army and deployed fully throughout the area [for strength of Lebanon's army see Lebanese President comments on security forces). Meanwhile, the Lebanese government ... would unequivocally respect the Blue Line in its entirety until agreement on Lebanon's final international boundaries is reached."

Annan also referred to the problem of the United Nation's 30-year-old, Interim Force In Lebanon whose mandate to observe border conflicts expires on 31 July (see What the UN's 2,000 soldiers are doing in Lebanon).

After the speech, US ambassador John Bolton said the suggestions would be acceptable to the United States if they lined-up with last week's G-8 Statement. Asked about an Israeli ceasefire with Hizb'Allah, he replied: "No one has explained how you conduct a ceasefire with a group of terrorists" (see official objectives of Hizb'Allah and Hamas and the Islamic Republic of Iran).

Amidst the loud clamour to quickly foist a cease fire on the Israeli counter-attack on Hizb'Allah forces in Lebanon, the United Nations general secretary Kofi Annan found international media significantly disinterested in the latest intiative of some 70 countries to fund a muscular UN force to replace the current African Union peacekeepers in Africa's Darfur region. His report reiterated Western concerns for the need for immediate protection of Black African Muslims in Darfur against genocidal attacks allegedly committed by Sudan-government backed Arab Muslim militia.

"Alleged" may be superfluous. The United Nations has previously described the three-year conflict as the "world's worst humanitarian crisis" with more than 400,000 people reportedly dead and more than 2 million people forced to flee their burned villages and settled in makeshift camps. Annan has also stated that the UN had uncovered "serious violations of international human rights and humanitarian law amounting to crimes under international law."

A July 2004 report by Amnesty International documented 500 cases of rape in the Darfur region and added that because of the taboo on discussing rape, that number is probably only a fraction of the total. A UNICEF report said 41 girls and teachers were gang-raped in the village of Tawila alone in February 2004 while others were abducted as sex slaves. There were reports the women were branded like cattle.But no equivalent rush on this issue.

The USA demanded immediate action by the United Nations back in 2004. Unfortunately, Arab and other Muslim members supporting the Sudanese government didn't agree that "most urgent" steps were required. Complicating the rescue package further is the intrusion of al-Qaeda terrorists. On 23 April, al-Jazeera television broadcast a statement by the group's leader, Osama bin Laden, in which he called for al-Qaeda fighters to begin traveling to Darfur to prepare for a "long-term war against the Crusaders," an apparent reference to the new UN force.

Hundreds of Muslims in Malaysia burnt Israeli flags and accused the Jewish state of terrorism in protests against the country's military actions in Lebanon. In Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia's largest city, hundreds of protesters, many of them linked to government parties, rallied outside the US Embassy chanting, "Destroy Israel, down with Israel!"

According to reports, demonstrators set afire about one dozen Israeli flags and activists handed US embassy officials a memorandum demanding the UN Security Council take action to stop Israel's bombardment. Anti-riot police and a truck with a water cannon mounted on it guarded the embassy, but took no action.

"We demand the UN Security Council pass a resolution to stop Israeli atrocities. This is nothing short of murder and genocide," said Khairy Jamaluddin, the deputy leader of the the Malaysian ruling party's youth wing and an organizer of the protest. "Israel is a terrorist state and it must be brought to justice," said Khairy, who is also the son-in-law of Prime Minister Abdullah Ahmad Badawi.

President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad of Iran said the volcano of the rage of nations is on the verge of eruption. "The Zionists themselves have realized that they have launched a risky move and are aware that the flame of the fury of the regional states will set them ablaze," he added. "The world is standing on the threshold of great development." - 20 July, Islamic Republic News Agency.

President Ahmadinejad warned "bullying powers" will burn in the fire of regional nations' wrath. The world is on the verge of great developments, he said, adding that world Muslims will soon be victorious. - 19 July, Islamic Republic News Agency.

President Ahmadinejad urged the West to remove the Jewish state from the region. "For certain, you cannot withstand the power of the nations of the region," he said. "If you do not contain this criminal regime and end your support for it and give a positive response to the people of the region you will face a dire fate." - 17 July, Iran Focus.

President Ahmadinejad warned Israelis to "disintegrate" their state and "apologize to the residents of the region" otherwise thay should expect a horrible destiny. - 16 July, Islamic Republic News Agency.

President Ahmadinejad warned the European Union not to increase pressure on Iran to abandon its nuclear program. "Until now, we have moved in the framework of the nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty and agreements, but they must know that if the Iranian nation reaches the conclusion that they are not sincere in their actions and proposals it will reconsider its policies. The Europeans will be the ones that suffer from any problem that arises. " - 13 July, Iran Focus.

President Ahmadinejad said Iran will not negotiate on its "undeniable right" to have a nuclear program, again rejecting international demands that the Islamic republic freeze sensitive atomic work. "We are for negotiations, we are for dialogue. But of course we will not negotiate our undeniable rights with anyone." - 12 July, Iran Mania.

Urging the international community to "end the fighting and the killing," UN Secretary-General Kofi Annan backed a UN "stabilisation force" to take control of areas in Southern Lebanon corrently controlled by the Hizb'Allah party and its armed forces. He said it should be "larger than the 2,000-man force we have there [and] have a different concept of operation and, hopefully, a different mandate from the Security Council that will allow them to operate." (AP)

"Indonesia is prepared to contribute around 450 troops for a possible UN-led peacekeeping mission in Lebanon ... Susilo Bambang Yudhoyono made the offer after meeting Middle Eastern ambassadors to Indonesia, which is the world's most populous Muslim nation. He said a UN-led force should be dispatched to Lebanon to stop the fighting. 'Indonesia is ready to send about one battalion to help keep peace there,' Yudhoyono told reporters." (Jakarta Post, 18 July)


The United Nations created its Interim Force In Lebanon (UNIFIL) in March 1978 following a brief Israeli incursion into Lebanon seeking to remove Palestine Liberation Organization forces responsible for brutal attacks on civilians in northern Israel. The UNIFIL mission was to confirm the withdrawal of Israeli forces; restore international peace and security; and assist the Government of Lebanon in ensuring the return of its effective authority in the area.

Nearly 30 years later, the UN acknowledges there are no Israeli forces in Lebanon but Lebanon's national government has still not resumed responsibility for the border zone. Instead it has encouraged the Hizb'Allah party's independent army to control the region and allowed it to mount attacks across the international border into Israel.

And, with international peace and security yet to be restored, UNIFIL continues its deployment with a current strength of 1991 soldiers from China, France, Ghana, India, Ireland, Italy and Poland, some 50 United Nations Truce Supervision Organization observers and 390 civilians. Its annual budget is about US$100 million.

According to UNIFIL itself:

According to Wikipedia, UNIFIL forces fell out of favour in Israel following accusations that it was complicit in a fatal abduction of Israeli soldiers in October 2000 and Israel has previously lobbied "for UNIFIL to either take a more active role vis-a-vis Hezbollah (for example, preventing Hezbollah from setting up military posts adjacent to UNIFIL's in the hope this will deter Israel from attacking them), or to step out of the region (thereby voiding the Lebanese government's excuse for not deploying its army along the border)."

As recently as 31 January 2006, the UN Security Council extended the mandate of UNIFIL until 31 July 2006 and called again on the Government of Lebanon to fully extend and exercise its sole and effective authority throughout the south. By that resolution, the Council condemned all acts of violence, including the serious incidents across the Blue Line initiated from the Lebanese side that had resulted in deaths and injuries on both sides.

However, UNIFILL posts in Southern Lebanon were still often within a few hundred metres of Hizb'Allah posts (the latter flying their yellow party flag not the Lebanese national flag) and UNIFIL troops took no action against their cross-border provocations. In fact, the 12 July incursion into Israel which started the current crisis was in visual distance of a UNIFIL post.

On that day, Hizb'Allah launched dozens of Katyusha rockets and mortar bombs at the Israeli town of Shlomi and at Israeli outposts in the Shebaa Farms area. Its fighters then crossed the border, attacked two Israeli armoured jeeps patrolling the border, killed three soldiers and abducted two. A pursuing Israeli tank was destroyed by a large explosive device detonated underneath, killing all four of the crew. An eighth soldier was killed when Israeli troops tried to retrieve the bodies of the tank crew. Israel declared the attack on its soil an "act of war".

Regarding President Susilo Bambang Yudhoyono's offer to send an Indonesian battalion to help "keep peace" between Israel and Lebanon: In recent years Indonesia has declined invitations to help "keep peace" between warring Muslim forces in Iraq and Afghanistan; despite serving a term as a member of the UN Security Council that extended the UNIFIL mission, it never previously vounteered to participate in the force; and, unlike the countries currently participating in UNIFIL, it does not recognise Israel. Indonesian orginality.

Lebanon's Syrian-backed president, Emile Lahoud, has accused neighbouring Israel of wanting to "destroy Lebanon" and "paralyze its security forces." His comments on Israeli plans were made during a visit to Lebanon national army military barracks east of Beirut where 11 soldiers were killed in an Israeli raid earlier Tuesday.

According to Jaffee Center's Middle East Military Balance, there are 64,000 members of Lebanon's armed forces, which has 36 helicopters, four shoulder-launched missiles, 27 naval patrol crafts, 350 tanks, 1,380 mechanized infantry vehicles, and 335 artillery pieces.

However the Lebanese government has refused to deploy the national forces to the border with Israel, allowing the separate army of the Beruit-headquartered Hizb'Allah party (a coalition member of the Lebanese government) to administer the region and mount attacks on Israel across the international border with impunity.

Hizb'Allah-Al-thawra Al-Islamiya fi Lubnan (Party of God), an Iranian-backed Lebanese Islamic Shiite group, was founded in 1982 and subsumed members of the 1980s coalition of groups known collectively as Islamic Jihad. Following Lebanon's 2005 national elections, Hizb'Allah holds 23 seats in the 128-member Lebanese Parliament and participates in the Lebanese government with two direct ministers. However it still maintains its own military force, independent of the Lebanese National Army.

The objectives of the Hizb'Allah are contained in its program first published 16 February 1985. It states its identity as:

"the sons of the umma [Muslim community] ... the vanguard of which was made victorious by God in Iran. There the vanguard succeeded to lay down the bases of a Muslim state which plays a central role in the world. We obey the orders of one leader, wise and just, that of our tutor and faqih [jurist] who fulfills all the necessary conditions: Ruhollah Musawi Khomeini."

Other important objectives in the program include:

Whatever touches or strikes the Muslims in Afghanistan, Iraq, the Philippines and elsewhere reverberates throughout the whole Muslim umma of which we are an integral part.

Our military apparatus is not separate from our overall social fabric. Each of us is a fighting soldier.

We combat abomination and we shall tear out its very roots, its primary roots, which are the US.

The sons of Hizb'Allah know who are their major enemies in the Middle East - the Phalanges, Israel, France and the US - [and] are now in a state of growing confrontation with them and will remain so until the realization of the following three objectives:

(a) to expel the Americans. the French and their allies definitely from Lebanon, putting an end to any colonialist entity on our land;

(b) to submit the Phalanges to a just power and bring them all to justice for the crimes they have perpetrated against Muslims and Christians;

(c) to permit all the sons of our people to determine their future and to choose in all the liberty the form of government they desire. We call upon all of them to pick the option of Islamic government which, alone, is capable of guaranteeing justice and liberty for all.

The necessity for the destruction of Israel ... It is the hated enemy that must be fought until the hated ones get what they deserve ... Therefore our struggle will end only when this entity is obliterated. We recognize no treaty with it, no cease fire, and no peace agreements, whether separate or consolidated.

We vigorously condemn all plans for negotiation with Israel, and regard all negotiators as enemies ...

The full text of the Hizb'Allah Program (with explanatory notes) is available at Institute for Counter Terrorism.


Harakat al-Muqawama al-Islamiyya (Islamic Resistance Movement) is a Palestinian Sunni Islamist militant organization founded in 1987 by Shaikh Ahmed Yassin of the Gaza wing of the Muslim Brotherhood. Hamas is known chiefly for its suicide bombings and other attacks directed against Israeli civilians, as well as military and security forces targets. Hamas boycotted the January 2005 Palestine Authority presidential election, during which Mahmoud Abbas was elected to replace Yasser Arafat, but participated in the January 2006 legislative elections. It defeated Abbas's ruling Fatah party and, winning 74 of the 132 seats, was able to form the government in its own right. However it still maintains its own military force, independent of the Palestine Authority security forces.

The principles of Hams are contained in its charter adopted on 18 August 1988. Its official slogan is:

"Allah is its target, the Prophet is its model, the Koran its constitution: Jihad is its path and death for the sake of Allah is the loftiest of its wishes."

Other important declarations of the charter include:

The Islamic Resistance Movement is one of the wings of Moslem Brotherhood in Palestine.

Israel will exist and will continue to exist until Islam will obliterate it, just as it obliterated others before it.

The Islamic Resistance Movement believes that the land of Palestine is an Islamic Waqf consecrated for future Moslem generations until Judgement Day. It, or any part of it, should not be squandered: it, or any part of it, should not be given up.

There is no solution for the Palestinian question except through Jihad. Initiatives, proposals and international conferences are all a waste of time and vain endeavors.

It is necessary to instill in the minds of the Moslem generations that the Palestinian problem is a religious problem, and should be dealt with on this basis.

Israel, Judaism and Jews challenge Islam and the Moslem people. "May the cowards never sleep."

After Palestine, the Zionists aspire to expand from the Nile to the Euphrates. When they will have digested the region they overtook, they will aspire to further expansion, and so on. Their plan is embodied in the "Protocols of the Elders of Zion", and their present conduct is the best proof of what we are saying.

Leaving the circle of struggle with Zionism is high treason, and cursed be he who does that.

The complete 36 Articles of the Hamas Charter are available at MidEastWeb Gateway

Mark Styne reminds us of one of his "all-time favorite Iranian negotiating positions" as reported in The New York Times exactly a year ago:

"Iran will resume uranium enrichment if the European Union does not recognize its right to do so, two Iranian nuclear negotiators said in an interview ..."

If we don't let Iran go nuclear, they'll go nuclear. Negotiate that ...

It's not often that candid remarks between world leaders on critical issues are leaked to the public but a frank, lunch-time discussion between US President George Bush and UK Prime Minister Tony Blair during the G-8 conference in St Petersburg, Russia, today was accidentally broadcast by the event's television system. The following transcription by Mark Silva of the Chicago Tribune (USA) is the best of those I've read. Bush and Blair "voiced frustration" about the conflict in the Middle East and blamed Hizb'Allah, a group backed by Iran and Syria, for the violence:

"What about Kofi?" Bush asked of United Nations Secretary General Kofi Annan, who was present at the lunch table but not close. "His attitude is basically, cease fire and everything else happens? You know what I'm saying?"

"Yeah ... the only thing's that really difficult ... you can't stop this unless you get this international business agreed," Blair told Bush.

"Yeah," Bush replied. " ... But you need that done quickly," Blair said.

"Yeah? I think Condi's gonna go pretty soon," Bush said of his secretary of state, Condoleezza Rice.

"Right, that's, that's all that matters," Blair said. "See, it'll take some time to get that together," Blair added, "But at least it gives people ... "

"A process, I agree," said Bush. "I told her your offer, too."

"Well, it's only if it's, I mean, you know, if she's gotta, or if she needs the ground room there, as it were," Blair said. "Obviously, if she goes out, she's got to succeed, as it were, whereas I can go out and just talk ..."

"See, the irony is that what they need to do is to get Syria to get Hezbollah to stop doing this s---, and it's over" Bush told Blair.

"Ah, yeah ..." Blair said, pausing. "Syria ..."

"Right," Bush said.

"Yes, 'cause I think this is all part of the same thing," Blair said, with an apparent reference to Annan. "Look, what does he think? He thinks, if Lebanon turns out fine, if he gets a solution in Israel and Palestine, Iraq goes in the right way ..."

"Yeah, he's through," Bush said.

"He's had it," Blair said.

"Yeah," Bush said in a softer voice. "I felt like telling Kofi to call, get on the phone with (Syrian President) Assad and make something happen," Bush said, "instead of blaming Israel. We're not blaming the Lebanese government."

At this point, observers said, Blair reached down and shut off the microphone in front of them.

The leaders of G-8, representing the United States of America, Canada, the United Kingdom, France, Germany, Italy, Japan and Russia, unanimously endorsed the following statement on the Middle East. Strangely, media reports have give the impression that the sentiments expressed are vague whereas the document itself is very clear on the immediate cause of recent conflict and unequivocal on the first steps towards de-escalation:

Today, we the G-8 Leaders express our deepening concern about the situation in the Middle East, in particular the rising civilian casualties on all sides and the damage to infrastructure. We are united in our determination to pursue efforts to restore peace. We offer our full support for the UN Secretary General's mission presently in the region.

The root cause of the problems in the region is the absence of a comprehensive Middle East peace.

The immediate crisis results from efforts by extremist forces to destabilize the region and to frustrate the aspirations of the Palestinian, Israeli and Lebanese people for democracy and peace. In Gaza, elements of Hamas launched rocket attacks against Israeli territory and abducted an Israeli soldier. In Lebanon, Hizbollah, in violation of the Blue Line, attacked Israel from Lebanese territory and killed and captured Israeli soldiers, reversing the positive trends that began with the Syrian withdrawal in 2005, and undermining the democratically elected government of Prime Minister Fuad Siniora.

These extremist elements and those that support them cannot be allowed to plunge the Middle East into chaos and provoke a wider conflict. The extremists must immediately halt their attacks.

It is also critical that Israel, while exercising the right to defend itself, be mindful of the strategic and humanitarian consequences of its actions. We call upon Israel to exercise utmost restraint, seeking to avoid casualties among innocent civilians and damage to civilian infrastructure and to refrain from acts that would destabilize the Lebanese government.

The most urgent priority is to create conditions for a cessation of violence that will be sustainable and lay the foundation for a more permanent solution. This, in our judgment, requires:

- The return of the Israeli soldiers in Gaza and Lebanon unharmed;
- An end to the shelling of Israeli territory;
- An end to Israeli military operations and the early withdrawal of Israeli forces from Gaza;
- The release of the arrested Palestinian ministers and parliamentarians.
The framework for resolving these disputes is already established by international consensus.

In Lebanon, UN Security Council Resolutions 1559 and 1680 address the underlying conditions that gave rise to this crisis. We urge the UN Security Council to develop a plan for the full implementation of these resolutions.

We extend to the Government of Lebanon our full support in asserting its sovereign authority over all its territory in fulfillment of UNSCR 1559. This includes the deployment of Lebanese Armed Forces to all parts of the country, in particular the South, and the disarming of militias. We would welcome an examination by the UN Security Council of the possibility of an international security/monitoring presence.

We also support the initiation of a political dialogue between Lebanese and Israeli officials on all issues of concern to both parties. In addition, we will support the economic and humanitarian needs of the Lebanese people, including the convening at the right time of a donors conference.

In Gaza, the disengagement of Israel provided an opportunity to move a further step toward a two state solution under the Road Map. All Palestinian parties should accept the existence of Israel, reject violence, and accept all previous agreements and obligations, including the Roadmap. For its part, Israel needs to refrain from unilateral acts that could prejudice a final settlement and agree to negotiate in good faith.

Our goal is an immediate end to the current violence, a resumption of security cooperation and of a political engagement both among Palestinians and with Israel. This requires:

- An end to terrorist attacks against Israel;

- A resumption of the efforts of President Abbas to ensure that the Palestinian government complies with the Quartet principles;

- Immediate expansion of the temporary international mechanism for donors established under the direction of the Quartet;

- Israeli compliance with the Agreement on Movement and Access of November 2005 and action on other steps to ease the humanitarian plight of the people of Gaza and the West Bank;

- Resumption of security cooperation between Palestinians and Israelis;

- Action to ensure that the Palestinian security forces comply with Palestinian law and with the Roadmap, so that they are unified and effective in providing security for the Palestinian people;

- Resumption of dialogue between Palestinian and Israeli political officials.

These proposals are our contribution to the international effort underway to restore calm to the Middle East and provide a basis for progress towards a sustainable peace, in accordance with the relevant UN Security Council Resolutions. The Quartet will continue to play a central role. The G-8 welcomes the positive efforts of Egypt, Saudi Arabia and Jordan as well as other responsible regional actors to return the region to peace. We look forward to the report of the Secretary General's mission to the Security Council later this week which we believe could provide a framework for achieving our common objectives.

According to the ABC, Australia's state-owned broadcasting corporation, a high profile Australian critic of nuclear power claims any push by the Australian government to develop a nuclear power industry will threaten neighbours and increase the risk of terrorism.

"I think it has huge potential for damaging relations with countries like Indonesia, who would see it as a direct threat," scientist and Australian Conservation Foundation president Prof Ian Lowe said. "I think our neighbours would inevitably be suspicious about what our real motivations were and that would make us less secure in the region."

A good example of Intelligent Idiocy.

Indonesia is opening tenders for the construction of a 1,000-megawatt nuclear power plant in 2007. Its minister of Energy and Mineral Resources, Purnomo Yusgiantoro, has announced the plant is expected to be on-line by 2015. Its capacity is designed to increase to 4,000-megawatt.

State-owned power companies from four countries - among them Japan, South Korea and France - have offered to provide technology to help construct the US$8 billion station on the Muria peninsula in central Java.

Indonesia currently operates three nuclear research reactors in the cities of Serpong, Banten and Yogyakarta.

Last week I visited Borders Bookshop in Kuala Lumpur's Times Square. I casually looked out for the April-May issue of Free Inquiry featuring 'Danish' cartoons which, I already knew, had been banned by the chain's US headquarters over fears of religious violence against staff. There were no copies but, overall the magazine section for current affairs was surprisingly sparse; perhaps a reflection of local censorship.

I noticed only three US imports: the respected Foreign Affairs and two, well, 'alternative' journals, Socialism and Liberation (published by the Party for Socialism and Liberation, "a Marxist-Leninist party") and Michael Albert's "politically progressive left-wing" Z magazine. How extraordinary, I thought, that two American fringe publications both have sympathetic connections within Borders' buying department and are among the few foreign political periodicals seemingly acceptable to Malaysia's domestic and foreign policy sensitivities.

From the local publications section, I was able to pick up a new edition of former prime minister Mahathir bin Mohamad's 1970 classic, The Malay Dilemma, as well as a copy of the third printing of Malaysia's 2005 best seller, Future Fastforward: The Zionist Anglo-American Empire Meltdown, by Mattias Chang, one of Mahathir's former political secretaries.

I've wanted a copy of The Malay Dilemma for a long time after reading extracts of Mahathir's youthful views on the economic factors of racialism. His argument for positive discrimination for Malays is peppered with insights on dominant races in Malaysia (and elsewhere?) such as "Jewish stinginess and financial wizardry provoked anti-Semitism" and "Before the onslaught of the predatory Chinese the Malays retreated" and "Jews are not merely hook-nosed but understand money instinctively" and "the Chinese are materialistic, aggressive", etc.

From his 2003 retirement speech to the Organization of Islamic Conference it is clear he never moderated those views, on the Jews, at least: "About 1.3 billion Muslims cannot be defeated by a few million Jews. There must be a way. And we can only find a way if we stop to think, to assess our weaknesses and our strength, to plan, to strategise and then to counter-attack ... We are up against a people who think. They survived 2,000 years of pogroms not by hitting back, but by thinking. They invented and successfully promoted Socialism, Communism, human rights and democracy so that persecuting them would appear to be wrong, so they may enjoy equal rights with others. With these they have now gained control of the most powerful countries and they, this tiny community, have become a world power ..."

Chang's Future Fastforward brings us up to date on the Zionist Anglo-American War Cabal. Surely he is risking his life - and the lives of the staff of Borders Bookstore - by publicly distributing "incontrovertible documentary evidence that testifies to the terrifying Zionist Anglo-American Agenda for World Dominance"?

His courage in exposing an enemy that "ruthlessly manufactures wars, armed conflicts, coup d'etats and the overthrow of democratically elected governments" is shared with his mentor, Mahathir, "who almost single-handedly defied the odds and defeated the Zionist international financiers during the 1997 financial crisis". Particularly as the Zionists are "having another go and testing whether the previous resistance was collective and systemic or merely the resilient and determined leadership of an individual".

It is important Chang warns, that Malaysians ask themselves "In the event of any US aggression in whatever form against Malaysia, can you count on Singapore to be on your side as an ally?" Indeed.

This is truly an illuminating book. His 2015-2020 vision for the Middle East is that the "Islamic Revolution" will "sweep away all the puppet regimes ... through democratic elections" and the USA will be "compelled to give refuge to those surviving Zionists fleeing ... from total annihilation in Palestine". You'll fund more detail in the flyer for the US edition of the book published by American Free Press.

Chang's current prognosis on Iran's uranium enrichment program is worth noting. He is disinterested in Iran's claim that it is for electricity generation. "Iran's acquisition of nuclear weapons," he writes, "is not nuclear proliferation but rather the guarantee of a nuclear-free Middle East and genuine peace for the entire region" (refer back to 2020 vision).

There are some who doubt that Chang's original appointment as the prime minister's first Chinese political advisor was really all that focussed on "Chinese community" affairs.

He was not a member of the Malaysian Chinese Association; an "active freemason" he was known to have been sacked from one lodge for "conduct unbecoming"; a lawyer, he was a former legal partner of Justice Ariffin Jaka, who sentenced Mahathir's rival, the former deputy prime minister, Dato' Seri Anwar Ibrahim, to nine years jail for sodomy; and a Catholic, he rejects the Church's pronouncements on anti-Semitism as "corrupted Christianity".

Somewhat to be expected, Mahathir and Chang remain closely associated. Chang, for instance, was the organiser of the Mahathir-chaired Perdana Peace Foundation's Global Peace Forum held in Kuala Lumpur in 2005. Mahathir was the key note speaker and most of Malaysia's state-owned companies were the official sponsors that heavily subsidised the 2,000 delegates to the event.

The Forum attracted international attention through the participation of "antiwar hero Daniel Ellsberg, antinuclear activist Helen Caldicott, outspoken British MP George Galloway, Iraq war veteran Jimmy Massey, Prince Alfred of Liechtenstein, Malaysian Prime Minister Abdullah Badawi, former Australian Prime Minister Bob Hawke, and former UN officials Hans von Sponeck and Denis Halliday" and antiwar.com's Justin Raimondo and Eric Garris.

The forum made a commitment to form a world peace secretariat that will be based in Kuala Lumpur. Chang and antiwar.com will be very involved in the secretariat.

Iran's firebrand president Mahmoud Ahmadinejad will visit Jakarta tomorrow for bilateral talks with Indonesian leaders ahead of a summit of eight large Muslim countries in Bali. Iran has been dangling the promise of a US$600 million dollar investment in Indonesia's flagging oil and gas sector to get South East Asia's only OPEC member's support for its controversial nuclear development program.

Indonesia Energy Minister, Purnomo Yusgiantoro, has already confirmed that, during Ahmadinejad's visit, energy firm PT Elnusa will sign an agreement with an Iranian oil company to build a 300,000 barrel-per-day refinery on Java Island. Although Purnomo described the arrangement with Iran as a "business-to-business deal", Elnusa is a subsidiary of the state-owned oil and gas company PT Pertamina, which runs all existing refineries in the country.

Meanwhile, Ahmadinejad is giving the German government a reminder of a different sort of gas problem.

As host of the FIFA World Cup next month, Germany is obliged to admit the head of state of a participating nation ... and the tournament's official motto is "A Time To Make Friends". But Ahmadinejad has repeatedly denied the Holocaust (last century's mass murder of millions of European Jews by the Nazi terror regime) which is a crime in Germany ... and also continues to make threats against the existance of Israel, a fellow FIFA member state.

According to Roger Boyes in The Times, pressure is growing on German Chancellor Angela Merkel to bar Ahmadinejad if he tries to attend the tournament. Germany's politicians hope the issue can be dealt with quietly by European foreign ministers and one official told Boyes it would be "an elegant solution" if the EU banned the Iranian leadership. This was also reflected by the Rheinische Post which said there had been clear signals that the so-called EU3 of Britain, France and Germany, which have been involved in negotiations over Iran's nuclear program, will ask the European Union to impose a travel ban on Iran's political elite.

The Asian Football Business Review, which has been following the sports implications of Iran's political issues, observed in Some women may attend football without beating that the world football body FIFA "may yet have to decide on accepting international sanctions against the country" once Iran faces the United Nations Security Council over its nuclear (uranium enrichment) program.

And precedents of UNSC bans successfully preventing national teams from participating in FIFA events are quite recent. "United Nations international sanctions banned the Federal Republic of Yugoslavia from participating in international sporting events from 1992-1994. Although the country qualified for the 1992 European Championship it was replaced by Denmark in the play-offs. The country was also refused entry into the 1994 FIFA World Cup," it noted.

In November last year the Asian Football Business Review also reported that Iran had shocked the Asian football community by introducing political bans to an invitational football tournament in Tehran.

"Furious over the Republic of Korea's opposition to its nuclear program, the Iran government unilaterally ditched the South Korean sponsors of a friendly international football tournament. 'From today, no competition will have a [South] Korean sponsor, and that goes for all sports federations,' the student agency ISNA quoted national sports official Mehdi Ghadami. The event once known as the 'LG Cup', backed sinced 1997 by the South Korean electronics giant, was to go ahead with another title," it observed.

The Indonesian government says the mediated dialogue with Acehnese separatists being conducted in Finland needs a clearer agenda to secure a formal ceasefire to safeguard aid for disaster survivors in the earthquake and tsunamis-stricken province.

After two days of discussion, mediators said they had lined up further discussions and are optimistic that an end to three decades of fighting is a possibility.

The leader of the Indonesian delegation, senior security minister Widodo Adi Sucipto said while Jakarta had "never closed the doors for dialogue", there will be no progress unless both sides agreed on a framework.

"Should there be more dialogue, the future talks have to provide a clear prospect for a solution," he told Indonesia's SCTV television station, speaking in Helsinki." Therefore there has to be an agenda and substance that must be jointly agreed before we move on to the factual talks," he added.

Indonesia entered these talks only offering the continued implementation of special autonomy for Aceh province, a proposal totally rejected by the separatists in mediated talks that collapsed two years ago.

At that time Indonesian negotiations were lead by the security and social welfare coordinating ministers, Susilo Bambang Yudhoyono and Jusuf Kalla, now Indonesia's president and vice president, respectively.

Known as Gerakan Aceh Merdeka (Free Aceh Movement), the separatists are fighting for the restoration of an independent, autocratic Islamic sultanate of "Acheh Sumatra" to be ruled by Dr Hasan Tiro, a Swedish citizen. GAM joined the current talks without public comment on the government's singular offer.

"I will be very disappointed if I do not succeed in this effort," said former Finnish president Martti Ahtisaari who is hosting the talks. "I will be working with the parties to try to get an agreement [on this], it will take some time, but I don't expect it to take months.

"The aim must be in this process to find a comprehensive settlement on the basis on the special autonomy, there is no other offer at the table," he said, as quoted by AFP.

One can only but wish Iraqi voters a safe election day. From all accounts, most Iraqis want to participate in the elections but many will be prevented from doing so by acts of brutal terrorism. Democracy will be earned through blood shed on the streets outside election booths.

Those Iraqi people standing up to intimidation to pursue democracy are heroes; particularly the emerging new security forces being targeted by the remnants of the old regime and the thousands of unarmed electoral workers preparing the ballot sheets and manning the polling booths.

It must be extraordinarily difficult building a new open system of government while facing down violent thugs.

Fortunately there is a growing band of international professionals - some contracted by NGOs others employed by United Nations agencies such as UNDP - who are available to assist the building or rebuilding democratic institutions and civil society structures in countries emerging from tyranny.

I recall in 1999 when Indonesia was preparing its first unfettered national election for some forty years, foreign electoral assistance was requested to help establish independent monitoring procedures across 14,000 islands. Ironically, under democracy, Indonesia's 400,000-strong military, so feared under the Soeharto security regime, was suddenly seen to have had barely enough personnel to man each of the nation's 300,000 plus polling booths.

Late last year I wrote of Wallace Rogers, previously a county administrator in Wisconsin, USA, who was working in Tikrit and Erbil, in the Kurdistan zone managing project teams organizing Iraqi city councils, municipal budgets and public works programs.

Although he didn't support his country's military invention in Iraq, he was prepared to risk his life to get the outcome right. "I believe democracy and democratic tendencies grow from the ground up. It won't work in Iraq, or anywhere else, unless and until ordinary people," he emphasised, "feel they can access its decision-making and policy-making processes".

That opportunity knocks in Iraq tomorrow. InshaAllah.

There seems to be something linking my home town of Melbourne, Australia, to England's 'Second City', Birmingham. (Please note, however, that there is no similar ranking of cities in Australia; Melburnians are brought up not to notice Sydney's larger population).

First came the story last year of the City of Birmingham's proposal to build a replica of Melbourne's dockland stadium, currently known as the Telstra Dome (although its retractable roof is flat and terribly un-dome-like). Telstra seats over 55,000 football patrons and its arena is large enough to accommodate international cricket and Australian-rules football. The arena can be narrowed for games of rugby and soccer.

The Birmingham version will be the first roofed stadium in the United Kingdom to cater for cricket and soccer. Foundation tenants are reported to be the Warwickshire County Cricket Club and the Birmingham City Football Club who would vacate their existing Edgbaston and St Andrews venues respectively.

Telstra Dome was not without its structural and operational problems but since being absorbed within the Seven Television Network and managed by the experienced sports and media administrator, Ian Collins, its popularity amongst Melbourne sports fans is rising to match that of its neighbour, the historic, 100,000-seat Melbourne Cricket Ground.

The second story of the Birmingham-Melbourne connection is Birmingham City Council's plan to "spend £500,000 on adapting the bus station near the Bullring shopping complex removing an obstacle to running trams through Birmingham city centre ... changes likely to result in an inquiry inspector recommending the tram line proposals for consideration to the secretary of state for transport."

Birmingham's original tramway was ripped up in 1953 and replaced by buses. Melbourne, alone of all the major cities in Australia, retained and expanded its system and now posses one of the largest in the world. Indeed, Sydney may have its Opera House, but Melbourne's icon is mobile, street-smart and on track.

I should also mention the rotten football seasons shared by my Australian Football League Hawthorn Hawks and English Premier League Birmingham City Blues. Both started off with high expectations and floundered with unexpected injuries and troublesome and over-rated players.

After finishing second last in the AFL's 2004 season (thank goodness for no relegation) the Hawks have replaced key players and their entire coaching staff and narrowly avoided a board spill. Hawthorn's 2005 pre-season cup campaign kicks off against St Kilda at Telstra Dome on 19 February. Can't wait!

The Blues' chairmen, David Gold and David Sullivan, appear to be holding firm, retaining great faith in manager Steve Bruce. Here's hoping confidence returns with the exit of Robbie Savage and new signings so there is at least a respectable mid-table finish.

Just noticed that Birmingham City in Alabama, USA is also planning a domed stadium. Most of the civic center expansion money would come from Birmingham, Jefferson County and possibly the state government. Private investors would contribute millions more to build a hotel, entertainment district and infrastructure nearby.

An often ignored province of Canada, Newfoundland and Labrador, is causing a fuss about allocation of off-shore oil and gas revenues. I've read most about it in Damian J. Penny's daimnation! weblog. The province narrowly voted to join Canada in 1949 after decades of financial problems. Instead of prosperity, it found it didn't have the political muscle to stand up to neighbouring Quebec and the federal government and fell into a "welfare ghetto" pattern of national equalisation handouts.

Demanding the same rights to offshore petroleum assets as other provinces have with onshore fields, premier Danny Williams symbolically ordered the Canadian flag lowered throughout the province. This unleashed a stinging assault on the Newfies' alleged victimhood by Margaret Wente, a prominent writer for the national, Toronto-based Mail and Globe. The response in Newfoundland was predictable.

The Plattsburgh Press-Republican's Peter Black put it that "the dispute has reopened a debate that goes back at least 150 years to when Newfoundland first rejected federating with other British colonies to form Canada. Ever since the place finally joined the country, Newfoundlanders and mainlander Canadians have been arguing about who got rooked most by the deal."

I came across this divide when I visited Canada for the Montreal Book Fair in 1976. As the president of the Australian Independent Publishers Association I was invited to address an executive meeting of the Association of Canadian Publishers, a private sector organisation then (suprisingly, to us Industries Assistance Commission-blighted Australians) well subsidised by the Canadian government to resist USA 'cultural hegemony' in the book trade.

After my brief report on the problems faced by locally-owned Australian book publishers competing against British and US media corporations, questions were invited. The first addressed me in an accent I'd never heard before: "Geoffrey, I definitely understand your oppressive situation", the representative from Newfoundland said. "We have the same problem with Canada."

I posted the following comment at a discussion on minority ethnic, national and racial rights on John Rosenthal's Transatlantic Intelligence website. With news that the Aceh separatists are ready to accept an invitation to resume talks with the Indonesian government, but this time based on regional autonomy and not independence, the following brief points on the importance of decentralisation to Indonesia's continuing democratisation process may be of interest:

As so much of the discussion on minority ethnic, national or racial rights is presented legalistically, it is helpful to read your comparisons of various international approaches and the problems they seek to address.

However, I do not share your concerns that all policies defining or codifying minority (national, ethnic or racial) rights weaken the unity of a modern, democratic state.

Indonesia's recently, and first directly, elected president, Susilo Bambang Yudhoyono, spent time in Kosovo as a military observer and would have been aware of the view that "the stronger an ethnic-national 'minority' movement is and the more capable it is of obtaining concessions in the form of 'rights' or even local governmental competencies ('autonomy'), the more fragile and or dysfunctional become the central state institutions."

However, as security coordinating minister for his immediate predecessor, president Megawati Soekarnoputri, he persevered with peace talks with the ethnic separatist movement in Aceh province offering substantial increases in regional autonomy until their rejection of any offer other than an independent Islamic sultanate and their continuing military mobilisation made it possible for the Indonesian army to successfully press the case for resumption of containment and suppression by force.

Yudhoyono's immediate, post-Tsunamis relaxation of security regulations to allow foreign military and aid assistance to arrive directly into Aceh, his mobilisation of national sentiment to bring emergency assistance from all parts of Indonesia and his continued offer of special autonomy based on Aceh's cultural identity, may prove a watershed in the relationship between his country's already 'fragile' and 'dysfunctional' central state institutions, its far-flung regions and long-suffering citizenry.

Decentralisation appears to be an essential part of the continuing democratisation process throughout Indonesia. And while the regional autonomy laws define this limited devolution on a geographic basis (as perhaps does the Swiss Constitution) the continuing creation of new provinces and local governments and the adjustment of boundaries to accord with historic ethnicity is a simultaneous acknowledgment of the archipelago's cultural diversity.

There are other examples of the "cause of 'minority rights'", being not necessarily dangerous and not particularly European.

New Zealand has reserved dedicated seats in its national parliament for the minority Ma'ori people since 1868. A Ma'ori may chose to be registered as either a general elector or a Ma'ori elector and the seats allocated in parliament (currently seven of 120) are determined by the numbers exercising their option.

Neighbouring Australia is no-less-democratic and unified despite its 1901 federal constitution endowing the new national government with the discriminatory "power to make laws for the peace, order, and good government; with respect to the people of any race, for whom it is deemed necessary to make special laws".

And the United States, itself, both recognises minority rights - and even sovereignty - and discriminates between the rights and responsibilities of various of its citizens on the basis of nationality and ethnicity.

US law, for instance, recognises a limited form of sovereignty in its Indian nations in the form of the 'domestic dependent nations' doctrine and inherent powers: "It is undisputed that Indian tribes have power to enforce their criminal laws against tribe members. Although physically within the territory of the United States and subject to ultimate federal control, they nonetheless remain 'a separate people, with the power of regulating their internal and social relations' United States v. Kagama, supra, at 381-382; Cherokee Nation v. Georgia, 5 Pet. 1, 16. " The powers of Indian tribes are, in general, "inherent powers of a limited sovereignty which has never been extinguished." F. Cohen, Handbook of Federal Indian Law 122 (1945) ; The sovereignty that the Indian tribes retain is of a unique and limited character. It exists only at the sufferance of Congress and is subject to complete defeasance. But until Congress acts, the tribes retain their existing sovereign powers. In sum, Indian tribes still possess those aspects of sovereignty not withdrawn by treaty or statute, or by implication as a necessary result of their dependent status. See Oliphant v. Suquamish Indian Tribe, ante, p. 191;" [United States v Wheeler 435 US 313 (1978)].

Other legislated discrimination in favour of particular groups of USA citizens exists within the many territories of the USA. Most Puerto Ricans and US Virgin islanders appear to find US citizenship without federal income tax an irresistible combination.

The US citizens of the Commonwealth of Northern Marianas exercise special tax, immigration and residency privileges while the territory's constitution guarantees that the "acquisition of permanent and long-term interests in real property within the Commonwealth" is "restricted to persons of Northern Marianas descent" (a person who is a citizen or national of the United States and who is of at least one-quarter Northern Marianas Chamorro or Northern Marianas Carolinian blood or a combination thereof).

Similar to the electors of other US territories, the US nationals of American Samoa are represented in the US Congress by a non-voting member of the USA House of Representatives. Internally however, American Samoa's Legislative Assembly, or Fono, is a mixture of traditional and western political systems: the twenty members of the House of Representatives are elected for two years by popular vote but the senate's 18 members are restricted to traditional chiefs, or matai, chosen for four years by their respective tribal councils.

These American "exceptions to your rule" may have been originally based on territories acquired by conquest or treaty but many of the discriminatory rights I have listed appear to have been retained by request of the residents.

Fellow ASEANer, An American Expat in Southeast Asia, has been tracking the Jakarta trial of Muslim cleric, Abu Bakar Ba'asyir, the alleged Jemaah Islamiyah mastermind behind the terrorist bombings in Bali in 2002 and Jakarta in 2003. He is particularly interested in the testimony of Fred Burks, a former US State Department translator, "who for unknown reasons seems to go out of his way in bending over backwards to help the defense team".

Last Thursday, the leader of Muhammadiyah, Indonesia's second largest Muslim organization, Ahmad Syafii Maarif claimed in court that the then US Ambassador Ralph L Boyce personally asked for a favor from Muhammadiyah in the run-up to the legislative election in 2004 to persuade former president Megawati Soekarnoputri to keep Ba'asyir in detention so that he would not disrupt the country's fledgling democracy.

"We began talking and during our conversation, he asked me, as a public figure, not to allow ustadz Ba'asyir to be released from detention until the April 5 2004 election," he said. Syafii said that he turned down Boyce's alleged request (Jakarta Post, 14 January) .

Later, Fred Burks told the court that he was at a meeting with US officials in 2002, where president Soekarnoputri refused to hand over the hardline cleric to the USA for interrogation and named the Americans present as Ambassador Boyce, the National Security Council expert on Indonesia, Karen Brooks, an unnamed "special assistant" to President Bush and himself.

According to Burks, the "US presidential envoy" was a CIA agent who had been ordered to brief Mrs Soekarnoputri on information sourced from an Al Qaeda suspect held by the Americans, Omar Al Faruk, which reportedly confirmed Ba'asyir's leadership of the Jemaah Islamiyah terrorist group and his involvement in Christmas bombings around Indonesia in 2000 and two attempts on Mrs Soekarnoputri's life.

The US Embassy in Jakarta denies Washington attempted to influence the Indonesian government in the Ba'asyir case. "We have stated this before. If the question is 'Did we apply any pressure to Indonesia over Ba'asyir, the answer is no, absolutely no," spokesman Max Kwak was quoted by Agence France-Presse as saying.

However Mr Martins is drawing attention to the possibility of a further security issue, the outing of CIA agent. Here he comments: "Can things get worse? They can if you tell someone the name of a female CIA agent outside the courtroom" followed again here by: "One has to wonder what would make a man ... confide the name of a CIA agent to our enemies." He promises "more details coming soon ..."

For his part, Fred Burks, self-confessed to being of the "more liberal persuasion", has recently become an aggressive activist on a range of issues.

Despite his work with the State Department, he vacationed with his girl friend in Cuba in 1999 and was subsequently fined nearly $8,000, 18 months later, for breaching the US trade embargo against that country. He has refused to settle with the US Treasury's Office of Foreign Assets Control and the case is still in litigation.

In October last, a month prior to the US presidential election, he circulated a report claiming that President Bush is fed information electronically during meetings with other heads of state: "As a deep insider myself, I have independent confirmation of President Bush using an earpiece to assist him in communicating intelligently with others".

Within days of being criticised for his action by his State Department Language Services supervisors, he announced he was "voluntarily terminating" his contract, after 18 years as a language interpreter, "because of a requirement to sign a new agreement which requires excessive secrecy".

Remarkably, this translator to Presidents Clinton and Bush and Vice Presidents Gore and Cheney, insists he never carried a "secret security clearance" during his State Department career. He sometimes was advised to apply for secret clearance, he told the Oakland Tribune's Josh Richman, but the series of extensive background checks was never required of him. And although a "more stringent secrecy demand" was given to him during the Clinton administration's last days in October 2000, he never got around to singing it.

On 9 December 2004, the Washington Post reported that since Burks' "noisy exit from government service" [he] "has been treating anybody who will listen with insider stories about private meetings he attended. These included high-level negotiations with Indonesia over U.S. attempts to secure the handover of a radical Muslim cleric, Abu Bakar Bashir, suspected by the Bush administration of connections to the terrorist group al Qaeda."

And another veteran translator, interpreter and "proud member of the American Translators Association" later publicly responded to Burks' criticisms of the State Department's new Basic Ordering Agreement, arguing in favour of the stricter client confidentiality clauses.

Burks maintains a number of websites that focus on X-file-style conspiracy theories. A recent post commented on "a small, but powerful group of influential intelligence agents in service of the greater good from around the world [who] long ago formed a group called the Library. Over many decades, members of the Library have collected and archived key information on all of the secret manipulations committed by the self-serving group and the resulting effects on global politics and economics. When the self-serving group occasionally gets out of control, Library members leak certain information to the appropriate sources to prevent some really ugly things from happening".

UPDATE

The Belmont Club adds further trial links and comment: "Despite President Bush's belief that his re-election in 2004 was a referendum which provided a mandate to pursue his strategy against terrorism, there are many who disagree -- and virulently. Abu Bakar Ba'asyir may well be acquitted, in part by testimony from an American witness."

The Guardian's wickedly titled article, "US Island Base Given Warning - Bulletins Sent to Diego Garcia 'Could Have Saved Lives'" seemed meant to imply that the United States selfishly supplied a timely tsunamis warning to its "British-owned American base" on Diego Garcia island in the Indian Ocean but did not share it with other nations to the great cost of thousands of victims. It proved nothing of the sort but did deliver two useful pointers to the current structure of the international tsunamis warning system:

First, the US Pacific Command and Diego Garcia received a specific warning about the tsunami some two and three quarter hours after the earthquake - too late to warn the countries most impacted. "This was shortly after the tsunami had struck Sri Lanka and well after it hit Indonesia and Thailand"; and secondly, the alert was issued by the Hawai`i centre of the USA's National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA).

Rather than supporting a claim of 'American bastardry', the information leads to yet another example of the United Nations and its agencies being hampered by slow-moving bureaucratic machinery even when a significant threat is known and decisions made for its address.

In Hawai'i the NOAA hosts and funds two facilities of the Intergovernmental Oceanographic Commission (IOC) of the United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization (UNESCO): the International Tsunami Information Center (ITIC) and the Pacific Tsunami Warning Center (PTWC) which provides warnings on tsunamis to most countries in the Pacific Basin.

Other significant bodies of the Paris-based UNESCO/IOC include the International Coordination Group for the Tsunami Warning System in the Pacific (ICG/ITSU) and the Tsunami Warning System in the Pacific group (TWSP). The latter presently has 26 member states: Australia, Canada, Chile, China, Colombia, Cook Islands, Costa Rica, Democratic People's Republic of Korea, Ecuador, El Salvador, Fiji, France, Guatemala, Indonesia, Japan, Mexico, New Zealand, Nicaragua, Peru, Philippines, Republic of Korea, Samoa, Singapore, Thailand, the Russian Federation and the USA.

The absence of most Indian Ocean countries was recognised by a meeting of the ICG/ITSU held in June 2004 which recommended that as both the Southwest Pacific and Indian Ocean have 'a significant threat from both local and distant tsunamis' with some areas not covered by the PTWC, it agreed "to evaluate capabilities of countries in these regions for providing tsunami warning services and to ascertain requirements from countries in the Southwest Pacific and Indian Ocean for the tsunami warning services". The financial implications of the decision were noted as 'US$ 5,000 for 2004; US$5,000 for 2005'.

According to the last published summary of the working group's minutes, a subsequent meeting in July 2004 attended by Dr Phil Cummins, Australia; Gaye Downes, New Zealand; Dr Slava Gusiakov, Russia; Dr Laura Kong, ITIC; Dr Masturyono, Indonesia; Lasarusa Vuetibau, Fiji; Dr Stuart Weinstein, PTWC; and Dr Masahiro Yamamoto, Japan, agreed to split into two separate working groups, one to focus on the Indian Ocean and related seas between Indonesia, Papua New Guinea, and Australia and the other on the South Pacific Ocean.

The question The Guardian should have so obviously asked is why the UN agency and its member nations recognized "a significant threat from both local and distant tsunamis" in the Indian Ocean but could not take quicker action to deal with it?

And one more thought: An international workshop 'In Memoriam of 120 years of Krakatau Eruption - Tsunami and Lessons Learned from Large Tsunami' was held in Jakarta and Anyer, Indonesia, on 26-29 August 2003. Organised by the Indonesian Meteorological and Geophysical Agency (BMG) and the Indonesian Department of Marine Affairs and Fishery (DKP) in cooperation with ICG/ITSU and IUGG Tsunami Commission, it was attended by more than 100 Indonesian participants as well as by international experts from Japan, Germany and Russia. What were the "lessons learned" and what were their conclusions?

A three hour road trip from Indonesia's crowded capital, Jakarta, brings you to a wonderful stretch of beach on the western tip of Java island. From Anyer to Carita there are scores of hotels, resorts and bungalows providing fresh sea-air and relaxation beneath luxurious palm trees. On a clear day you can see as far as Anak Krakatau island in the Sunda Straits.

When I first visited I was informed that virtually none of the local people were asli (original). In 1883, the eruption of the original Krakatau volcano caused huge tsunamis which lashed the shores wiping out dozens of towns and villages. The port of Anyer, it is recorded, "simply ceased to exist as great waves washed over it, carrying away the flimsy wooden buildings that made up the town". The waves were so powerful that coral blocks weighing as much as 600 tons were thrown ashore.

According to Indonesia's Meteorological and Geophysical Agency (BMG):

The 40 m high tsunamis generated ravaged the shores of the Sunda Straits and caused 36,000 deaths in 295 coastal fishing villages, whilst casualties were recorded as far away as 800 km. Much of Krakatau was very low altitude and therefore the huge tsunamis swept headlong further inland than in higher areas. Many areas are recorded to have flooded as much as 10 km inland, and a Man-of-war ship was carried a similar distance and stranded 10 m above sea level.

The true casualty figure will never be known but the estimated 36,000 of the archipelago's then 40 million population is, probably, equivalent to 200,000 today. Around Anyer the devastated, now empty coastline was gradually resettled by people from other districts.

That catastrophe was all too hard to imagine - until 26 December 2004. On Friday, Indonesia raised its confirmed death toll from the northern Sumatran earthquakes and tsunamis to 104,055. The Ministry of Social Affairs said over 10,000 people are still missing.

With over 153,000 tsunamis victims across 13 Indian Ocean nations reported killed, more than half a million people injured and up five million in immediate need of emergency assistance, renowned author and Sri Lankan resident, Sir Arthur C Clarke, adds a further historical connection:

"There is much to be done in both short and long terms for Sri Lanka to raise its head from this blow from the seas. Among other things, the country needs to improve its technical and communications facilities so that effective early warnings can help minimise losses in future disasters.

"Curiously enough, in my first book on Sri Lanka, I had written about another tidal wave reaching the Galle harbour (see Chapter 8 in The Reefs of Taprobane, 1957). That happened in August 1883, following the eruption of Krakatau in roughly the same part of the Indian Ocean." (via Michelle Malkin).