planet earth looks blue

 The Rohingya people weren’t given any solace from the Association of Southeast Asian Nations, which met in Thailand to discuss the region’s issues.  The Rohingya are an ethnic minority in Burma - but the Burmese government refuses to recognize them.  They are horribly mistreated, with claims that they are undergoing an ethnic cleansing at the hands of the military junta that rules Burma.  Although the borders are guarded, some Rohingya escape the country, only to be turned away once they reach the sanctuary of other countries.  The Thai military has repeatedly sent the refugees to fend for themselves at sea, leaving them to drift, and often times die without food, supplies, or hope.

The Rohingya are native to Burma.  They are part of what was once the Arakan State, which was invaded by a Burmese King in 1784, and has since been annexed by Burma.  The Rohingya have no rights, and are often subject to forced labor and abuse.  Burma stated that they would take back the Rohingya only under the status of Bengali, not Burmese.  The Burmese consul explained that the Rohingya are not really Burmese because they are dark-skinned and “as ugly as ogres”.

The Rohingya refugees have no desire to return to the country that they ran away from, but they also aren’t being accepted elsewhere.  Their fate remains drifting at sea.    

Obama finally announced his plan for US troop withdrawal in Iraq.   By August of next year, troop levels are supposed to have decreased to 50,000, from the 142,000 that are there today.  Those 50,000 will remain until the end of 2011.  Iraq has an agreement with the United States, set up by the Bush administration, saying that all US forces must leave the country by that time.  Obama called August 2010 the official end of the war.  But as Nancy Pelosi pointed out, how does this make any sense when we still have such a large number of troops there - aren’t we still the dreaded occupiers?  I think the answer is the same as its been - no answer, stay vague.  Keep the fog of ambiguity going, leave nothing tangible to argue against, and you can move on your path because nobody can stop you, nobody can touch you.

The whole big Blah we’ve been doing in the Middle East is just that.  Is it a war?  Two wars?  Two conflicts?  One worldwide fight against terrorism?  A tactical move for oil, for a strategic location?  Or are we defending something here?  During the Bush years, the money spent on the Blah wasn’t even included in the budget.  We invaded Iraq because of the alleged actions of a Saudi living somewhere between Afghanistan and Pakistan, going after a man who we supported back when he was fighting Iran.  We’ve tied a knot around the region that just won’t come undone.  

In response to Obama’s announcement - Republicans were pleased, Democrats were mildly critical, and even Al-Jazeera reported a Sunni leader as saying, “To withdraw troops and leave Iraq in chaos would affect the reputation of the US in the world.”  Many have praised Obama for being “responsible”, and others have called him out for doing “not enough”.  There is no question though that there is a mess, caused by the Blah, and one day we’re going to forget what started this whole thing in the first place.  

$59.1 million, 23 tons of narcotics, 26,400 pounds of cocaine, 16,000 pounds of marijuana, 1,200 pounds of meth, 1.3 million ecstacy pills, 149 vehicles, 3 boats, 3 planes, 169 weapons, and 755 alleged members of the Mexican drug cartel - Sinaloa.  This is the booty of Operation Xcellerator, which has been a collaborative effort of Mexican, US, and Canadian authorities over the past 21 months.  The arrests and seizures were made throughout both the United States (in California, Maryland, and Minnesota) and Mexico.  Authorities claim they found a “super meth lab“, and an ecstacy factory, pumping out 12,000 pills an hour.  

So, Obama announced they are going to use all the non-illegal funds from the seizures and fund after school activities in public schools, to ultimately lessen the demand for the drug trade in the first place.  I’m kidding.  I really am actually wondering what happens to all of this “stuff”.  Does it remain on evidence shelves collecting dust?  

Quite a commendable effort by the international team of drug-busters, and I am sure they feel accomplished.  And of course the biggest winners in this are the three remaining Mexican drug cartels that now are able to move in on the areas that Sinaloa previously operated under.  The Gulf cartel, the Tijuana cartel and the Juarez cartel will now all have one less problem to worry about.  And, I hope and believe this will decrease the violence in Mexico - we can all be happy about that.  

Three former commanders of the Revolutionary United Front (RUF) were all found guilty of war crimes for their role in the 10 year civil war in Sierra Leone.  They were charged with being involved in the rape, murder, and mutilation of half a million people, as well as for turning innocent children into child soldiers, AK-47’s in tow.  The RUF was known for cutting off people’s body parts, hands, ears, legs, anything, and then carving RUF into the skin.  The war was over ownership of the diamond mines in Sierra Leone, and is the reason activists had been speaking out against blood diamonds for years, criticizing the wealthy sector of American culture obsessed with diamond gluttony.  And most of us are familiar with the 2006 film, Blood Diamonds, which documented the war, and brought international attention to what went on in Sierra Leone.

Of course all of this is after the fact.  At least these men were tried, a symbolic gesture to their surviving victims and family members and closure for some.  But it was more than a handful of men who were responsible for a decade long atrocity.  And even if all who were wronged could somehow be avenged - what then?  Sierra Leone is still very poor, people are still desperate, and it is still lacking the education and infrastructure that a society needs to progress.  Meaning - the same circumstances that helped create the civil war are still there.

The international community does give money to the country, but the problem is that it is not able to be used effectively because there aren’t systems in place to spend the money properly.  The country is still one of the worst ranked in infant mortality.  Maybe time will heal all wounds, but assistance and commitment over the long term are needed.  There is of course still heavy interest in the country for other than humanitarian reasons.  This year a British Columbia company - Canaf, announced that it has raised enough funds to start mining its properties in Sierra Leone.  According to USAID, some profits from the diamond mines are rolled back into the local communities.  Ultimately it is only the people who can tell us if their lives are improving.  It seems a shame though that a country with so much intrinsic wealth, cannot reap the benefits of its own natural resources.  That the diamonds go to the corrupt and violent, or international investors, and at the same time become a curse on those who live there.  

In Mogadishu, Somalia’s capital, at least fifteen people were killed, several being civilians caught in the cross-fire.  Sixty more were wounded.  The newly named President, Sharif Sheik Ahmed, returned from Djibouti just the day before where he had been forming his government.  The battle began when troops who support Ahmed’s transitional government, both Somali and Ethiopian, rolled into a Muslim insurgent area with tanks and armored vehicles.  Once the fighting started, it spread, forcing civilians to flee their homes for whatever sanctuary they can find.  40,000 have already left this month, according to UN estimates, adding to the growing sea of refugees around the world.  

Ahmed, who is supported by the international community, is a former leader of the Union of Islamic Courts.  Before that, he was a teacher.  Four radical Islamist groups, the Islamic Front, Anole, the Ras Kamboni Brigade, and the Alliance for the Re-liberation of Somalia, have all joined forces to fight Ahmed’s incoming transitional government.  The question is, how much of a chance does Ahmed have?  Portions of Somalia have been recently run by Islamist insurgents, who oppose Ethiopia’s military presence.  The people have given them support because they as well want the Ethiopians out, and have dealt with widespread human rights abuses from their occupiers.  Ahmed has African Union troops and some support of the people, but how quickly will this wane if he us unable to bring some form of stability?  And stability is just what the more radical Islamist fighters are trying to prevent.  Is this the beginning of an epidemic of more fighting in Somalia, or the end?

The pressure in Zimbabwe is rising as racial tensions play out across the country.  The results of the elections are still being withheld, and Zimbabwe’s High Courts have delayed making a decision on whether or not to force election officials to release the results, until Tuesday.  In the meantime, opposition leader and now co-leader with Mugabe, Morgan Tsvangirai, left the country to meet with South African leaders.  Coinciding with his departure, this weekend militia groups have started a campaign to seize all white-owned farms.  So far about 77 farms have been taken.  Police in most cases are guarding the seized lands from the white farmers returning, which is unlikely to happen as most have gone into hiding in fear of violence.  

President Mugabe has condoned the seizures, saying, “This is our soil and the soil must never go back to the whites…We don’t want to hear this fight is going backward”, according to an MSNBC report.  In fact Mugabe started the whole land seizure trend in 2000 as a redistribution program.  Approximately 5,000 farms were seized then.  Unfortunately, instead of going to poor black farmers, they went to Mugabe’s friends and high supporters, who never successfully farmed the land, leading to a dramatic fall in agricultural output.  He started the redistribution program when he was in political trouble before, and is doing it again now that Tsvangirai is challenging his power.  He is playing politics, not passionately supporting the poor of his nation.  

If he was a true lover of the people, wouldn’t he have done something about the cholera outbreak, that has claimed nearly 4,000 lives so far, and the rampant inflation, which is at 10 sextillion per cent, or the food crisis, leaving half of the population without food?  But the 84-year old waning tyrant is facing a political dilemma, nothing new in his 28-year reign, nothing the old man can’t deal with.  

 The door has slammed shut on the 600 prisoners being held at the detention center at Bagram Air Base in Bagram, Afghanistan.  Although the other CIA secret torture centers around the world, and the prison at Guantanamo Bay were ordered to be closed, somehow Bagram is under a different law.  The Justice Department declared yesterday that the detainees being held in Afghanistan have no claim on constitutional rights.  Their justification for this move is that Bagram is in a war zone and consequently the prisoners are an integral part of the war.  And what about those that are being held unjustly?  With no right to a hearing, the men being held there have no voice, and at this point, history will never hear their stories.  What made the Obama administration stop at Bagram?

Even those that are deemed “real terrorists”, torture isn’t exactly the path of a civilized nation.  There have been deaths at Bagram in the past, two that the US military admitted to.  In 2002 Habibullah and Dilawar were killed at Bagram - the military coroners declared both of their deaths to be due to homicide.  Habibullah was chained to a ceiling in an isolation cell.  He was repeatedly beaten to the point of death.  The reason he was singled out was his defiant attitude.  Dilawar’s life ended in the same way.  His body was held up by chains, while guards beat him until his legs couldn’t even bend.  Army investigators later learned that Dilawar’s interrogators/murderers knew that he was an innocent man.  The story goes that Dilawar drove through militia territory, so the militia told the US army that he was a terrorist.  The army paid the militia, and took Dilawar to the prison where the 22 year old lived out the last days of his life.  There have also been horror stories released of men who were held at the former Soviet aircraft machine shop and then later released.  

$60 million US tax dollars will go towards building a new prison to hold another 1,100 men.    

The violence due to the Mexican drug war has reached a new plateau this month.  Now even the military are being terrorized.  At the beginning of February a retired General, a man with respect and a reputation, a proven military leader, Brigadier General Mauro Tello Quinones, came to Cancun to clean up the growing problem.  Within three days, he, his driver, and his bodyguard were abducted, tortured, taken to the jungle and shot.  In response the Mexican military has swooped in and taken over the police force in the area, making it the 11th out of 31 states to be military-controlled.  This of course raises the concern of potential human rights abuses, of which the military will probably not be held accountable.  

But people are getting desperate, with even the Mexican Green party calling for a reinstatement of the death penalty, hoping that would deter some of the murders.  Last year 5,400 people were killed in drug-related violence.  Kidnapping is an epidemic.  No matter what age, what class, everyone is vulnerable.    Mexico has deployed more than 40,000 troops to fight the drug cartels, and the US has deployed $197 million dollars - part of the $400 million passed by Congress last year for the Merida Initiative.  Most of the money is going to buy helicopters and surveillance equipment (American helicopters?).  

So, I have to ask, what exactly is fueling the Mexican drug war?  What circumstances have allowed for all these people to live in fear?  The drug cartels have so much money and power, obviously more even than the government.  The police are either bought by the gangs, or afraid of them.  People who are normally the most progressive and humanitarian politically are asking for the most archaic of policies.  Where is all this coming from?  The demand.  Huge demand.  90% of US cocaine comes from Mexico (as well as 90% of the Mexican gun trade ends up in the US).   7 tons of Mexican cocaine were confiscated this month, and 70 tons in total since President Felipe Calderon started fighting back in 2006.    

But according to the free market, if there is demand, there is supply.  The invisible hand is working against the innocent people of Mexico here.  And since people aren’t going to stop buying cocaine, just like teenagers aren’t going to stop having sex, the situation must be approached from a different angle.  We’ve been mixing up drugs and violence for decades.  Once again, you can’t solve the same problem with the same solution.  You have to find another one.  And what’s takes down the force of the invisible hand?  The government.  Well, and taxes on a several billion dollar industry would help flip those deficit numbers around.  Just a thought.  

Violence heats up in Pakistan as the oil wars spill over the Afghan-Pakistan border.  31 people were killed by a suicide bomber at the funeral of a leader of the Shia community, Sher Zaman.  Zaman was assassinated yesterday, shot in the middle of the day by a man who then sped off on a motorbike.  Sixty people were injured in today’s attack, with more casualties expected.  

A group called Lashkar-e-Jhangvi is thought to be behind the violence against the Shia community.  They are supported by the Taliban.  Lashkar-e-Jhangvi was formed in 1996 when a group of Sunni extremists broke from another Sunni radical group, the Sipah-e-Sahaba Pakistan, because they felt that Sipah had deviated from the original edicts of the deceased founder, Maulana Haq Nawaz Jhangvi.  The objective of Lashkar is to turn Pakistan into a Sunni state.  The group is responsible for numerous killings of doctors, lawyers, religious scholars, teachers, and activists, as well as the more recent suicide bombing attacks, which kill indiscriminately, since 2000.  The group has also targeted Iranians.  

Although this attack and others like it, from Afghanistan, to Iraq, to Pakistan, is Sunni against Shia, why is the rise in violence coinciding with American military presence?  These groups are not killing American soldiers in massive numbers, but their own countrymen. They are pursuing their own agendas according to their religious beliefs.  But would they be so bold and hateful without the oil wars?  Would they have the ability to recruit financing and foot soldiers, without foreign presence?  It is tension.  And without the one force, there wouldn’t be the other.  I don’t think the American military has any idea of how to fight these people, or protect civilians.  The minute they step into a country and start bombing their own targets, more people die.  This is a mess - there is not one enemy, one centralized power to defeat.  When one arm is cut off, this causes another one to grow, with no head to kill the whole body.  I’m afraid this is an unbreakable foe. Then is the only way to destroy it to starve it of the two things that it feeds off of - hate and violence?  

As President Obama presses on back in the States, in the 700th laborious hour of trying to birth the economic stimulus, the rest of the world is still waiting, but not so patiently anymore.  Today Hamas sent a letter addressed to the President, making Senator John Kerry the messenger.  Kerry, who is head of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, is visiting Gaza to acknowledge the humanitarian debacle of the Palestinian people.  He arrived just in time to see first hand the normal run of affairs between Hamas and Israel, as rockets were fired by Hamas Thursday morning, and Israel confirmed that they had re-started their airstrikes.  There is no word so far what is in the letter, or even if Kerry accepted it.  But here is an attempt at first contact.  They have something to say to American, and although Kerry is not Secretary of State, he wanted the position.  I hope we hear what they wrote, and that this doesn’t go quietly into the abyss of under-reported news while we get bombarded with the economy and Caylee Anthony.  

Meanwhile, Archbishop Desmond Tutu spoke in London yesterday.  One of the focal points of his speech was President Obama - the first black President, with a father from Kenya nonetheless, who is running the risk of falling short even with the African people.  Tutu warns Obama to take action.  That all the words and promises of Obama and Secretary of State Clinton need to be backed up with, well, something.  He even suggested apologizing for the Iraq war and the mess that it has caused.  A smart move, if he didn’t have the GOP and scandal drunk media machine back home waiting like vultures.  Tutu also recommended reaching out to more nations, making connections, listening to what they have to say, and pressuring African dictators.  And as far as the international community at large, he suggests getting in line with the Kyoto Protocol and the Rome Statute of the International Criminal Court.  What Tutu says is true, Obama needs to address these issues.  The question runs back to, can he do it, with his Bush era inheritance, the state of the economy like a giant elephant sitting on his back?  It is a race against patience, but in the end, if Obama produces for people outside of America as well as within, we’ll all forgive him a little time.