Junk

Libya: the regime under siege

Today BBC News has a story headlined Libya rebels ‘in secret talks’ with Tripoli underground, quoting Alamin Belhaj of the National Transitional Council (NTC) in Benghazi on what he describes as extensive nightly communications with an extensive network in Tripoli planning for an uprising in the capital.

Earlier in the week, feb17.info reported Maj. Gen. Abd-al-Fattah Yunis al-Ubaydi, chief-of-staff of Libya’s liberation army, as saying “ Freedom Fighters in Tripoli have formed secret cells and are undertaking spectacular operations,” and going on to call on them not to repeat the destruction of property that happened after the uprising in Benghazi.

One consequence of attacks on regime buildings in Benghazi was the loss of potential evidence of human rights abuses. In Misrata, the Guardian reported, uprising forces have been working to collect and preserve such evidence of war crimes.

Two other stories relevant to the siege of Tripoli, both via libyafeb17.com: one from Reuters, an analysis of NATO strategy seeing it as designed to create conditions for an uprising in Tripoli, and one from The Economist, on how rebels are putting pressure on the regime’s fuel supplies.

Despite some opponents of intervention clinging to their precious pessimism, more serious observers in the governments of Russia and China have seen for some time which way the wind blows, and continue to realign accordingly.

Given all this, the effect of negative noises from kitsch Left characters like Germaine Greer (comment via Bob) and Cynthia McKinney will be inconsequential for Libya’s future; instead the damage they do is to the cause of an enlightened Left at home.

Finally, as a counter to the offensive comments by Ms Greer, Gita Sahgal earlier this month on rape allegations in Libya.

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ADDED: In the interview above, Gita Sahgal sensibly caveats her comments with “it hasn’t been proved yet” and speaks more widely on the topic of organised rape as a weapon in war. Now her former employers at Amnesty International, as well as Human Rights Watch, are reported as expressing doubt on allegations of organised rape in Libya.

ADDED: In the New York Times, Rebels Arm Tripoli Guerillas and Cut Resources to Capital.

The story of how “Matchbox” models are made

This is a late response to Bob’s 2010 booklist post, but rather than list off a few of the few books I read last year, I’d like to talk about three of them that tell a sort of shared story: a children’s picture book, a fat novel, and a journalist’s book on China.

Miroslav Sasek has enjoyed a posthumous boom in recent years, with his colourful travel books for children in every bookshop window, but a book unlikely to be reprinted is Mike and the Modelmakers, a picture book published in 1970 by Lesney Products & Co. Ltd, the then London based manufacturer of Matchbox model cars.

Fleeing by land and by sea

Fleeing Guilin by the North Station, print by Cai Dizhi, 1945.

From the book art blog, A Journey Round My Skull.

Navio de emigrantes (Ship of Emigrants), painting by Lasar Segall, 1939.

From the art blog Weimar.

La notte di San Lorenzo (The Night of the Shooting Stars), a film by Paolo and Vittorio Taviani, 1982.

We watched this film last night, and the mirroring of what’s happening now in Libya was almost too painful to bear.

The dictator’s loss of power is now a certainty, so every killing by his forces in these days is a murder to no end, but still it goes on.

Make note of who still supports him, and by this know them well.

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PRI’s The World produced a series of reports on migration last year centering on the story of one Somalian man fleeing war. Read and listen here, and learn how Gaddafi's thugs went about preventing migrants from reaching the EU.

Daytime listening

Jeb Sharp of PRI’s The World talks to political scientist Severine Autesserre about reasons for failure in peacemaking efforts in The Democratic Republic of Congo: The Trouble with the Congo. Her main argument is that national and international peacemaking efforts miss the importance of local causes of conflict. Part of the How We Got Here podcast series.

A two part documentary by Wendy Robbins on BBC World Service: The Holocaust Deniers, via Greens Engage. Also as MP3s, here and here.

Available for seven days only, Liu Xiaobo: ‘I Have No Enemies’ from BBC Radio 4.

Like a bird on a stick . . .

 . . . on a bird,

on a stick,

on a bird,

on a stick,

on a bird . . .

P.S. While I’m here, those who would like more words to read than I’m currently writing could do worse than clicking over to Norm’s place. In recent days he has posted amongs other things  a very good and short piece on Bush and torture, with a follow up, two pieces on China as seen from King’s Cross and as seen from China, and on doing something less than arguing over possible justifications for war.

That last one is in response to an odd piece of writing on the Washington Post’s Political Bookworm blog by a professor with a book to sell, one Richard Rubenstein of George Mason University’s Institute for Conflict Analysis and Resolution. One interesting fact the professor presents his readers with is that “we are a religious people who will not fight unless first convinced that war is morally justified. This is why virtually every American war has spawned a significant anti-war movement.” Well fancy, the anti-war movement is primarily religious, did you know that?

On China as seen from the sea, the Information Dissemination blog is often interesting. For example this post on China’s strategic weaknesses, and an earlier one on the costs of rogue regimes.

Back to drawing now!

Patriotism for sale

Peter Hessler’s book Oracle Bones is about his experiences working in China from 1999 to 2002, going from being a clipper at the Beijing bureau of the Wall Street Journal to a feature writer for The New Yorker and others. An earlier book that I haven’t read, River Town, is about his time as an english teacher in China.

Oracle Bones covers his view of the big news stories of those years, the 1999 US bombing of the Chinese embassy in Belgrade, the 2001 collision between a US electronic surveillance plane and a Chinese fighter jet, the suppression of the Falun Gong movement, and the massive economic change taking place in China.

A great part of the book looks at these events through the experiences of friends and ex-students, giving a strong sense of the struggles of individuals with little power having to navigate a life in unstable times.

At the same  time he traces a story of Chinese archaeology, of the history of Chinese writing, and of the lives of archaeologists through all the conflicts from the Boxer Uprising through to the Cultural Revolution.

Peter Hessler was in China at the time of the 9/11 attacks. He describes how bootleg DVDs and VCDs of the attacks appeared in video shops as soon as three days after the attacks. The covers for the 9/11 videos were designed to look like Hollywood blockbusters, with scrambled credits and blurbs in english lifted from other films, “TOUCHSTONE PICTURES presenta JERRY BRUCKHEIMER production david TOM HANKS silen TWITNESS,” and so on. Two of them have credits lifted from Patton. He writes that the Patton credits were particularly common on all sorts of bootlegs, even a movie on high school cheerleading.

The official Chinese government response to the attacks was one of sympathy and solidarity in the face of terrorism, but Peter Hessler found the popular response to be quite different, with anti-Americanism quite common, unsurprisingly in view of the historic and recent antagonism between China and the US:

In part, it seemed to be habit - so many years of anti-American propaganda had settled into people’s minds. But it was also connected to everything that had been left out of the news. In the past, the media had rarely reported on tensions in Xinjiang - like Tibet, it was generally portrayed as a peaceful place whose indigenous people were happy to be a part of China. Few average Chinese knew that their own government was concerned about the spread of Islam in the West.

Watching the Chinese 9/11 bootlegs, the contents of some reflected the covers, swiping Hollywood soundtrack music, and even cutting in clips from Hollywood films with the news footage. And then there was the VCD made up of coverage by Phoenix Television:

After the attacks, Phoenix Television had cut advertisements and broadcast live for thirty-six hours. That was the only privately owned Chinese-language news station that broadcast on the mainland, and it was also the only network that covered the event so closely. Rupert Murdoch’s News Corporation owned 40 percent of Phoenix, which was based in Hong Kong but targeted mainland cable subscribers. The station hoped someday to become the CNN of China. Phoenix’s access to the Chinese market depended on a good relationship with the Communist Party, and sometimes the private station’s coverage was even more nationalistic than that of the government stations. [...]

One of the VCDs that I found in Yueqing had been compiled mostly from Phoenix broadcasts. Whereas the government had avoided any criticism of America, Phoenix’s tone was completely different. In the hours after the attacks, the station featured a man named Cao Jingxing, who was identified only as a “Political Commentator.” He said, “Why aren’t other countries hated like the United States of America? Let’s try to think about that.” He commented on the hijackings: “Why were the hostages taken so easily? The glory of the Americans was lost in just a few seconds.” [...]

The Chinese-language station use Fox footage of New York and Washington, D.C., which was almost as disorienting as the Hollywood cut-ins. The Fox logo appeared in the corner, and the images were the same ones that Americans watched, but here the shots were joined by the anti-American commentary in Chinese. I remembered Willy’s comment about the Chinese government being unable to express the way that it really felt. That was politics, but this was business; the media gave the people what they wanted. News Corp. used the same footage to sell patriotism in America and in China, and in both places the people bought it.

Thanks to Enda for the book.

Relativity

Oliver Kamm keeps himself occupied reading the papers, finding a familiar problem of relativity on the subject of Iraq, and morbid finality on an argument over Kosovo.

Mick Hartley goes to a gallery, MOMA in NY, and encounters a variation on the relativity problem at a retrospective of the photographer Henri Cartier-Bresson.

Martin relaxes listening to music on the radio.

And Lars Vilks stays alive. Here is his blog. Here is Google’s (unreliable) translation.

The above image comes from a Ladybird book, The Story of Newspapers. Copyright © Ladybird Books Ltd. 1969.

Silk Road, Iron Horse, Copper Wire

. . . or connectivity in Afghanistan.

Having read today’s New York Times article about China’s copper mining project in Afghanistan, a project to develop not just a copper mine, but a power station, a coal mine, and a railway line from the country’s northern border with Uzbekistan to its southeastern border with Pakistan, I had an appetite for more background, and found Railways of Afghanistan. What ever did I waste my time on before the internet?

Will China build the railway? Maybe. Will they be first to build a moon base? That might be just as likely.

A familiar script

According to BBC News, “China's response to Sunday's violence has been to accuse foreign forces of fomenting the unrest.”

More at The New York Times News Blog.

For background on Xinjiang, see Mick Hartley’s post from last month, linked to earlier in my roundup below.

Not Iran

It’s hard to keep your eyes pointing in all directions at once . . .

Iraq, and Thoughts on Intervention, by Roland Dodds. Added: Ibn Muqawama on Joe Biden, Iraq envoy.

At the SWJ, Pentagon planners should study Somalia, not just Hezbollah.

Sietske in Beirut writes on conversations she has. Not many dead, according to the papers.

Via Mick Hartley, Riots in China. Mick has also paid particular attention to the Uighurs being released from Guantanamo, fleshing out their tale with information on ongoing repression of Uighurs by the Chinese authorities in Xinjiang. Since his last round up on the story, The New York Times has published a report on the Uighurs settled in Bermuda.  

Georgia’s Hard Slog to Democracy by Michael Cecire, at Michael Totten’s blog. Related at the NY times, Russia’s Neighbors Resist Wooing and Bullying.

Also from Michael Totten, A Conversation with Robert D Kaplan. This does include discussion of Iran, along with China’s involvement in Sri Lanka, Russia and its neighbours, Afghanistan and Pakistan. However I’d like to highlight an exchange at the end regarding Israel’s failure in counterinsurgency, material relevant to the essay topic set in an earlier post here.

Kaplan: You know what’s interesting? The Israelis. They’ve been great at defeating structured Arab armies, but they haven’t figured out how to deal with a few thousand insurgents in South Lebanon or in Gaza. What did their wars in 2006 and 2009 in Lebanon and Gaza get them? MJT: It got them fewer rockets for a while, but it’s temporary. Kaplan: Yeah. MJT: I don’t know what they should do. They can’t put a David Petraeus in Gaza or Lebanon. It won’t work. Kaplan: No. MJT: And they can’t fight a counterinsurgency from the air because that’s just absurd. Kaplan: Yeah. They haven’t been able to solve this problem at all. MJT: I’m glad it isn’t up to me what Israel should do. There aren’t any good options. Maybe they should hold Syria accountable. Syria is at least a state with a return address and national interests. I don’t think the Syrian government is particularly ideological. It isn’t like the Iranian government. Syria isn’t an ideology, it’s a state. Kaplan: It wants to survive. MJT: Maybe the Israelis should lean on Assad. They can’t lean on Hamas or Hezbollah. They can’t lean on Beirut because Beirut is too weak to do much. Kaplan: Yeah. I mean, the idea of bombing highway overpasses near Beirut to punish Lebanon for Hezbollah is ridiculous.

Kaplan and Totten point to Israel’s failure to develop of a true counterinsurgency campaign, but positive suggestions are still lacking. Tackling the Syrian regime may be relevant, but does not address the absence of a population-centric strategy. Any takers? 

Update: Vigilant as I try to be, one direction I didn’t think to look was down.

A few links re. Tiananmen Square

At The Big Picture, photos from then and now, via Mick Hartley.

From BBC News, Brian Hanrahan on Tiananmen Square in relation to Gorbachev and the collapse of communism in Europe.

Via Information Dissemination, a rant from TPM Barnett on the adaptive capabilities of the Chinese Capitalist Party.

Also at Informaion Dissemination, Feng on LiuSi.

Extra: Edel Rodriguez, with links and illustrations related to the anniversary.

Promoting democracy?

In the IHT last monday, Obama rethinks the goal of democracy-building:

His Inaugural Address a few days later was in sharp contrast to Bush’s four years ago. Where Bush called the spread of freedom the central goal of American policy, Obama made just passing reference to those who silence dissent being on “the wrong side of history.” Indeed, his secretary of state, Hillary Rodham Clinton, outlined a policy of the “Three D’s” - defense, diplomacy and development. The fourth D, democracy, did not make the list.

And if that were not clear, during her trip to Asia, she said that human rights violations by China “can’t interfere” with cooperation between Washington and Beijing on other issues. That may simply be a more honest statement of longstanding reality in the Chinese-American relationship, but it still seemed jarring.

Galrahn at Information Dissemination, also last monday, Hilary Channels Thomas Barnett. And Thomas Barnett on his own blog, Being real on China. The meat is in the comments in both those posts.

(My previous posts on TPM Barnett start here.)

Meanwhile farther north, via the comments at Terry’s place, Full-Steam Ahead on Spreading Democracy, an interview with Steven Fletcher, Canadian minister of state for democratic reform:

“I think Canada is a civilized member of the world community and this is the time that we should step up and show leadership that we care about what happens in the rest of the world, we want people to be empowered, to make the best decisions for themselves and nations to be empowered to make the best decisions for their people who live within their borders.

“And democracy is the best way to do it and Canada will do more than its fair share to empower the individuals, and therefore their governments, to ensure that the people of these countries, their quality of life is improved. And I think most Canadians would be very impassioned about this. Is there stuff to do at home? Of course, but home is also the planet Earth.”

Turning back to the article in the IHT for a closing quote:

William Inboden, a former strategic adviser at the National Security Council now at the Legatum Institute in London, said [...] Obama has the chance to rebrand democracy. His own election generated enormous good will around the world, an “incredibly profound and incredibly potent” statement about American democracy, Inboden said. And so, he said, “there’s real opportunity there.”

While I have respect for TPM Barnett’s thesis that economic interconnectivity promotes security, I believe democracy is still essential. Economic development without democratically accountable rule of law is too vulnerable to corruption and worse.

Bags of money, up for grabs . . .

. . . and Pakistan, Pakistan, Pakistan. Also India, China, Russia, and, um, Iran? And hard, long, difficult, challenging, and hard.

Some words from two conversations about Afghanistan on the Charlie Rose Show. From last Monday February 16th, a discussion with Milt Bearden, Dexter Filkins, Craig Mullaney and Martha Raddatz (via this SWJ post on Craig Mullaney’s new book The Unforgiving Minute), and from last Friday February 20th, an interview with Richard Holbrooke.

Recently I posted on Afghanistan and tea drinking. Here’s a tea reference that’s more to the point, in words from General Petraeus earlier this month:

A nuanced appreciation of the local situation is essential. Leaders and troopers have to understand the tribal structures, the power brokers, the good guys and the bad guys, local cultures and history, and how systems are supposed to work and do work. This requires listening and being respectful of local elders and mullahs, and farmers and shopkeepers – and it also requires, of course, many cups of tea.

That quote was used to open a radio discussion on The Brian Lehrer Show with Nathaniel Fick and John Nagl, all about counter-insurgency and Afghanistan, broadcast on WNYC February 10th, again via the Small Wars Journal.

Also on that same SWJ post, a TV interview with Tom Ricks on The Daily Show. An excerpt from his new book The Gamble, about the surge strategy in Iraq, appeared in The Times on Saturday and attracted the notice of both Mick Hartley and Norman Geras. The headline was Emma Sky, British ‘tree-hugger’ in Iraq who learnt to love US military.

Out with the family on Wednesday, we chanced upon this exhibition at the Royal Geographical Society showing Victorian photographs and drawings of Afghanistan, with a few more recent images included as comparisons. The exhibition still has a few days to run. I would have liked to have spent longer, but Dan Dare beckoned us further down Exhibition Road.

One of the photos in the Royal Geographical Society exhibition turns up in a recent post at Ghosts of Alexander, ‘Afghanisation’, a rather unfortunate neologism.

Two links to close: returning to a favourite theme, from Roland, This is “Realism”? And good news on the Canadian home front via Terry, Jonathon Narvey: Cheer The Hell Up. Of course once you start linking to Terry and his friends it’s hard to stop, but enough is enough is too much.