The old and forested Presidio, a former military base in San Francisco’s northwest corner, buzzes with activity during the summer weekday as dog walkers and day-camp counselors lead their charges around the grounds, drifters hang out in front of the bowling alley, and commuters drive by on their way over the Golden Gate Bridge.

Somalia is in a desperate state, with a constant threat of violence and famine. Control is divided between an Islamist “Courts” militia and a foreign-backed government. Reuters via the New York Times describes the situation:

“Foreign states, particularly Ethiopia and Eritrea, must stop supporting the rival factions or risk inflaming the situation, the International Crisis Group (ICG) said in a report.

“Unless the crisis is contained, it threatens to draw in a widening array of state actors, foreign jihadi extremists and al Qaeda,” said the report, entitled “Can the Somali Crisis Be Contained?”

The interim government of Ethiopian-backed President Abdullahi Yusuf has had its brittle authority challenged by a group of militarily superior Islamists, whom U.N. monitors say have received Eritrean military support.

The Islamists seized Mogadishu and its environs in June after routing warlords who had ruled Somalia since the 1991 ouster of dictator Mohamed Siad Barre.

“The prospects for a peaceful resolution of the present crisis are poor,” ICG said.”

The Economist reports on the disaster in the region overall:

“The scale of potential misery is becoming clearer. Rough estimates of famine victims in the next few years range upwards from 10m. The risk of whole areas of the Horn collapsing with famine and irreversible environmental damage, urged on by jihadist and tribal clashes, is clear cause for alarm.”

Nearby Kenya has an appeal posted on it right now at the World Food Program site:

“WFP is fast running out of emergency food aid for millions of people affected by drought in Kenya and has appealed for urgent new contributions to prevent malnutrition rates rising as the long dry season sets in. WFP is feeding a total of 3.6 million people in 25 of Kenya‘s 70 districts because of drought — 3.1 million people receive monthly rations and 535,000 children are given school meals.”

[photo: AFP]

The Iraq disaster continues, with an ongoing occupation unable to stop continuing violence. America and Britain are in a mess and need to withdraw. Voters in Connecticut’s Democratic senate primary chose antiwar Ned Lamont over neoconservative Joe Lieberman, so now Lamont is taking the party that direction, as noted in the Washington Post:
“Democratic Senate nominee Ned Lamont will launch a general election bid in Connecticut next week with an expanded campaign operation of Washington-based reinforcements, in preparation for a bitter brawl with Sen. Joseph I. Lieberman over the Iraq war and national security.
Lamont’s upset of the three-term senator and former Democratic vice presidential nominee, who is now running to keep his seat as an independent, has forced a hasty reordering of political alliances, as prominent Democratic leaders and organizations shift their support to Lamont. The political novice is seeking help from party veterans in fundraising and communications, and in answering Lieberman’s increasingly aggressive war defense.”
But many magazine and blog writers are still lifting pens and typing keys for the “grand vision New Middle East democratization etc.” project and straying into delusion. Outside the Economist offices, is anyone else disputing whether Iraq is in a civil war? Referring to Iraqi prime minister al-Maliki:
“But he still needs the Americans badly, especially in Baghdad, where he has called them in as reinforcements to staunch the sectarian bloodshed; without them, it would be even worse, and civil war might indisputably arrive.” So Bill Emmott is gone but the war still has supporters down in St. James. Very well, if increasingly irrelevant. Now to the right-wing blogs–as usual reprinting administration propaganda, this time directly via Byron York on the National Review online:
“‘And I think that’s in part because at the end of the day people look at the consequences of failure and the consequences of victory, the consequences of withdrawal and the consequences of finishing the fight, and they draw very important lessons about what it means to our country.'” So as long as the administration is still talking about the “consequences of victory,” no real discussion can occur, but it’s all..very..bizarre..and shameful.
[photos: Bill Emmott by bsme.com, Iraqis by AP]

George W. Bush said that the British bomb plot was a “stark reminder this nation is at war with Islamic fascists who will use any means to destroy those of us who love freedom, to hurt our nation. I want to thank, uh, the government of Tony Blair, and officials in the United Kingdom–“
For radicalizing his Muslim subjects? The plotters were largely British-born Muslims. Whatever you want to call these people–“fascists,” or whatever–they are British. How does that comport with “fighting them over there so we don’t have to fight them over here?” Also, why the award show-style thank-yous? Then, Bush continued:
“for their good work, in busting this plot. I thank the officials in Washington D.C. and around the country […] Travelers are going to be inconvenienced […] The American people need to know we live in a dangerous world, but our government will do everything we can to protect our people from these dangers.”
Not being able to take a few bottles of water or pop onto a flight is an onerous burden to put on the air travel consumer, whatever Bush wants to “urge” people to do. And taking more rights away from passengers to try to compensate for inadequate bomb detection equipment must be weighed against the problems of dehydration and lack of caffeine for millions of travelers.
So Bush used the occasion to typically try to induce fear and paranoia (it is an election season). Though he talked about “cooperation” with Britain, it is questionable how much cooperation occurred when all the action seemed to be in Britain and Pakistan anyway, as the Guardian reports:
“A brother of one of the 24 suspects seized by detectives investigating a plot to bomb up to 12 planes was seized in Pakistan shortly before police launched their raids, it emerged tonight. The arrest of Rashid Rauf in the border area with Afghanistan was a trigger that led anti-terrorist investigators to start an immediate pre-emptive operation with officers fearing that the alleged cells were ready to strike. […] It also emerged today that at least one of the suspects arrested in Walthamstow, east London, regularly attended Islamic camps run by Tablighi Jamaat, an organisation which the Americans believe has been used as a recruiting ground for al-Qaida.”
The New Republic online has posted a piece by Scotsman newspaper writer Alex Massie. One key paragraph follows from the piece:
“In the days to come, we will surely hear bleating that British support for the war in Iraq has increased the threat […] Britain faces. (Certainly, there is neat symmetry in targeting British and American aircraft leaving London for the United States.) But Iraq alone has not radicalized British Muslims. Nearly 5,000 British troops are garrisoned and fighting in Afghanistan, and the British youths who attended training camps in the Hindu Kush are unlikely to look too kindly upon them. In other words, Iraq may have exacerbated the threat, but it did not cause it. Anyway, to treat the Afghan invasion as a just cause for domestic terrorism is to argue that there should have been no military response to September 11.”
Well, let the “bleating” begin. First of all, this all amounts to a flawed circular reasoning working its way back to that great rhetorical bludgeon of war-mongers on both sides of the Atlantic–“September 11.” Somehow Massie hopes we will forget the earlier parts of the paragraph, including the strangely constructed “unlikely to look too kindly” argument and the concession almost upfront that the bleaters have a point (“Iraq alone has not radicalized British Muslims”). The article is just another platform for anti-Muslim tirades, which are coming fast and furious these days. Consider what Massie says:
“This disdain for their homeland, it should be noted, comes despite […] Britain’s record as a tolerant and liberal country–just as much, if not more, than any other European country. Britishness has always been a baggy concept, requiring little from immigrants.”
Not only is this convenient to say but hard to back up (the reality of intolerance and racism in Britain is actually rather more sinister than he would like to admit, especially in northern English towns), but it is very possible that Massie actually stole the “baggy” idea from the article he links to! Consider this from the Guardian piece by Timothy Garton Ash that the New Republic article contains a link to:
“I have always thought that the very undemanding vagueness, the duffle-coat bagginess of Britishness was an advantage when it comes to making immigrants and their descendants feel at home here. After all, what have you traditionally required in order to be British?”
Well with all this talk about “undemanding” Britishness that’s “requiring little from immigrants,” consider this notice from the Southern Poverty Law Center:
“The British National Party (BNP), a neofascist political party that limits membership to whites, more than doubled its number of local councilors in British elections this May [2006], shocking anti-racist leaders and the political establishment.”
All this talk about “Britishness” is both offensive and unconvincing, but then what of the troubles with integrating Muslims into European societies. Do the British Muslims (many of the them from Pakistan, Bangladesh and India) want to integrate, the way the “baggy” people see it? At the end of the day, one thing is clear–Jacques Chirac respected the will of his Muslim citizens (many Algerian), while Tony Blair signed on to an appalling aggression in Iraq in defiance of his. A mass of French Muslims tipped cars and set them aflame in their suburban slums in late 2005, while a handful of British Muslims blew up transit vehicles in July 2005. While French society has a high tolerance for protests, scuffles, migrations, even riots and revolutions from time to time and may yet take absorbing Muslims in stride (relatively speaking), Britain has now after the July 7 attacks in 2005 discovered another apparent group of angry British-born Muslim fanatics ready to commit mass murder. However much some Brits want to congratulate themselves for being so much of a “tolerant and liberal country,” they have a major problem on their hand
s with their own native-born subjects that has little to do with religion and distant terror networks and a great deal to do with their own society and its racism and the limited opportunities its offers the children and grandchildern of South Asian migrants. From BBC News:
“It is thought that the group of suspects were planning to blow up several planes by using liquid explosives carried in soft-drink bottles, and detonators disguised as electronic equipment. UK police said the explosions could have caused “mass murder on an unimaginable scale”. As a result of fears over liquid explosives, all liquids are among items now banned from the cabins of planes taking off from the UK.”
The events surrounding the apparent bomb plot might be a big deal–but they haven’t been enough to convince Tony Blair to end his Barbados vacation. According to BBC News:
“Prime Minister Tony Blair is on holiday in Barbados but Downing Street says he is in “constant contact.”
There was no indication that action was going to be taken “imminently” against the alleged terrorist plot when Mr Blair left the country, said Mr Reid – that had only become clear in the last 24 hours.”
While Blair is gone, it isn’t even clear who is in charge of Britain, declared the Times online:
“Today it looks very much as if John Reid is in charge of the Government, starting from this morning at a dramatic press briefing when he announced that the country was on “critical” alert.
It was the Home Secretary who swiftly chaired two meetings of the Cobra committee, one late last night and one this morning to hear the results of the pre-emptive action taken by the police and security services. But Mr Prescott was also busy, in talks with Muslim organisations.”
[photos: Heathrow Airport–American traveler by AP, plane overhead by Reuters, armed British policeman by Reuters]

The partisans of Israel in America are a powerful constituency, as Mearsheimer and Walt pointed out in the London Review of Books.
“The combination of unwavering support for Israel and the related effort to spread ‘democracy’ throughout the region has inflamed Arab and Islamic opinion and jeopardised not only US security but that of much of the rest of the world. This situation has no equal in American political history.”
Israel‘s lobbyists and partisans are often talking about the democratic elements of Israel‘s governance, its political freedom, and its religious diversity.
The fundamental and overpowering objection to this first claim about democracy is the occupation of the West Bank and the millions of disenfranchised Palestinians living under Israeli control, walled off arbitrarily from enclaves of Jewish settlers who can vote.
The other former “occupied territory,” Gaza, continues to see attacks from Israeli military (and outgoing fire from within it) even though Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Olmert carried out Ariel Sharon’s “unilateral withdrawal” plan in the area. Reuters reports this story about an airstrike on a residence:
“An Israeli air strike destroyed a house in the northern Gaza Strip on Monday after residents said they received two telephone calls from the army, one urging them to leave and a second insisting, ‘This is not a joke.’ An Israeli army spokeswoman said the house had been used by the Islamic Jihad militant group to store weapons. No one was injured in the blast. A person who lived in the house denied any ties to militants.”
So despite any other elements of democracy (Israel has most of them) the occupation and its violations of UN Sec. Council Res. 242 gives lie to the claim of democratic governance.
Religious diversity is tolerated in Israel, with large numbers of Muslims and Druze holding Israeli citizenship. However these groups are widely regarded as low in Israeli society, and no important official in the country hails from one of those sects. Basam Jaber at ynetnews.com writes about the complex situation the ethnic Arabs living in Israel face:
“We do not voice our protests against Nasrallah because the majority of the Arab population in Israel opposes war. We do not oppose a single side, but oppose war itself. Therefore, we demand an immediate ceasefire. We are protesting against the war not against one leader or another. We the Arabs of Israel are witnessing the death of Israeli citizens and soldiers, we are personally experiencing the missiles, but at the same time we are also seeing how Israel is attacking the country of Lebanon we love so dearly, and we are also witnessing how the Israeli Air Force is destroying Lebanon – this is very painful.”
Political freedom is a resource that must be used. And just like Democrats like Joe Lieberman and the dozens of other Democratic senators who voted to authorize the Iraq war, Israel seems to have a useless or “rubber-stamp” opposition. With an air force general as the chief of staff, Israel has pursued a stupid, brutal and useless bombing campaign all over Lebanon while Hizbullah continues to fire rockets into Israel, sometimes over a hundred a day, and most of the world waits for a ceasefire while Condi Rice makes typically stupid comments, this time about “birth pangs.” Juan Cole assaults this nonsense at Informed Comment [includes link from Cole]:
“Condi Rice echoes the old Neocon theory of ‘creative chaos’ when she confuses the Lebanon war with ‘the birth pangs’ of a ‘new’ Middle East. The chief outcome of the ‘war on terror’ has been the proliferation of asymmetrical challengers. Israel‘s assault on the very fabric of the Lebanese state seems likely to weaken or collapse it and further that proliferation. Since asymmetrical challengers often turn to terrorism as a tactic, the ‘war on terror’ has been, at the level of political society below that of high politics and the state, the most efficient engine for the production of terrorism in history.”
The leader of Labour, Amir Peretz, is the defense minister who used to belong to an organization called Peace Now, but then again, read their own words, how dovish do they sound?:
“In Lebanon this situation came to be. But will the war, which as I said is justified, continue to be justified without thought to the amount of force used?”
It is pretty clear already that an absurdly excessive amount of force has been used by Isreal with American-supplied weaponry on all sorts of targets, including “civilian infrastructure.” If this is the range of acceptable political opinion–trying to calibrate just right how much bombing and raids will accomplish while remaining “justified”–what kind of democracy is Israel?
The heinous war goes on, as Reuters reports:
“Israeli aircraft also hit the last coastal crossing on the Litani River between Sidon and Tyre, Lebanon, cutting the main artery for aid supplies to civilians in the southern part of the country, aid agencies said.
‘We must be able to have movement throughout the country to deliver supplies. At this point we can’t do that,’ said the UN humanitarian coordinator for Lebanon, David Shearer. ‘The deliberate targeting of civilian infrastructure is a violation of international law.'”
[photo: AP]

Does the New Republic still expect history to vindicate Joe Lieberman? As the Connecticut Senator heads into a primary next Tuesday against Ned Lamont, I’m wondering how loyal Lieberman’s flacks in the press will remain if he loses. This tirade comes from a 2004 article (“Our Choice“) endorsing Lieberman for the Democratic nomination for president:

“Only Lieberman–the supposed candidate of appeasement–is challenging his party, enduring boos at event after event, to articulate a different, better vision of what it means to be a Democrat. Three years ago, that vision seemed ascendant. Today, it is once again at the margins. It may take years, or even decades, for Democrats to relearn the lessons we thought, naïvely, they had learned for good under Clinton. But one day, Joe Lieberman’s warnings in this campaign will look prophetic. And the principles he has espoused will once again guide the Democratic Party. It will be the work of this magazine, to whatever small degree possible, to hasten that day.”
[photo: AP]

I saw things in the apartment shifting around a little at around 8:18 p.m. tonight and felt some shaking. The futon seems like a better place to watch an earthquake from than the computer chair so I moved and by the time I was situating myself (this obviously wasn’t a very major quake where I was) the shaking had stopped. Jessica was seeing a show with a friend tonight during that time and just told me now on the phone that she didn’t feel anything where she was (downtown at the performance of A Chorus Line). Here in the Outer Richmond of San Francisco we had a little tremor or aftershock or whatever but epicenter seemed much higher north according to reports. As the AP via the San Jose Mercury News reports:
“A magnitude 4.4 earthquake shook the San Francisco Bay area Wednesday night, but no serious injuries or damage were immediately reported.”
[photo: KRON 4]

Jessica and I took a walk together along West Cliff Drive in Santa Cruz Saturday evening. At one point I snapped a twilight picture of the rather calm ocean waters with surfers waiting for waves and a sailboat hovering offshore.

New York Mets pitcher Pedro Martinez is coming off the disabled list today to pitch against the Atlanta Braves. Shaping up as the National League’s best team at the end of the All-Star break, the Mets are looking to end the 15-year run of division championships by the Braves and make it to the World Series for the first time since losing the subway series to the New York Yankees in 1999.

As Italy won its fourth World Cup championship in Germany this summer, the Italian soccer federation was investigating a major match-fixing scandal that has implicated several major clubs. As a result of the inquiry, league champion Jeventus of Turin has been stripped of its championship and Inter Milan, the highest-finishing team not pulled into the scandal, has been declared the new Italian league champ.