juan cole

I found this on Juan Cole. It’s an interview with a Norwegian physician on the scene in Gaza. Believe it or not, it was done by CBS News.

Watch it and blame it on Hamas! Hey, that’s what Bush does as well as most of our media.

Juan Cole tells it the way it is. Here’s his last paragraph:

The Israelis on Saturday killed 5% of all the Palestinians they have killed since the beginning of 2001! 230 people were slaughtered in a day, over 70 of them innocent civilians. In contrast, from the ceasefire Hamas announced in June, 2008 until Saturday, no Israelis had been killed by Hamas. The infliction of this sort of death toll is known in the law of war as a disproportionate response, and it is a war crime.

UPDATE: I keep hearing in our MSM that Hamas must stop its rocket attacks on Israel. It’s interesting that the first Israeli killed by a rocket from Hamas since the June ceasefire was killed after the Israeli’s launched their attack on Saturday. Now Hamas is launching mortars and rockets towards the Israeli towns. This is happening in response to the Israeli attacks, not the other way around. The only Democrat who is pointing this out is, of course, Denis Kucinich.

A Little Background: A disaster was waiting to happen, and no-one was doing much about it. There was of course a date for the end of the ceasefire – December 19th. As that date approached both sides sought to improve their relative positions, to test some new rules of the game. Israel conducted a military operation on November 4th (yes, you had other things on your mind that day), apparently to destroy a tunnel from which an attack on Israel could be launched, Hamas responded with rocket-fire on southern Israeli towns. That initiated a period of intense Israeli-Hamas dialogue, albeit an untraditional one, largely conducted via mutual military jabs, occasional public messaging and back-channels. Again though the main reliance was on Egypt – by now in an intense struggle of its own with Hamas. When Hamas pushed the envelop with over 60 rockets on a single day (December 24th), albeit causing no serious injuries and mostly landing in open fields (probably by design), Israel decided that it was time for an escalation. That happened today [Dec. 27] – on a massive scale - with an unprecedented death toll.

Robert Fisk

Here’s a cell phone video:

Juan Cole always sets me up with cheery news when I read him first thing in the morning. This time it’s about a United Nations Environment Programme study of brown clouds in the atmosphere. These light diminishing clouds stretch from Shanghai to Dubai with various “hot spots” in between. Take a look at the report. It’s pretty impressive. Lots of color maps and data!

So what are the conclusions? Here’s the summary of the findings:
The build-up of greenhouse gases (GHGs) and the resulting global warming pose major environmental threats to Asia’s water and food security. Carbon dioxide (CO2), methane, nitrous oxide, halocarbons and ozone in the lower atmosphere (below about 15 km) are the major gases that are contributing to the increase in the greenhouse effect.

In a similar fashion, increasing amount of soot, sulphates and other aerosol components in atmospheric brown clouds (ABCs) are causing major threats to the water and food security of Asia and have resulted in surface dimming, atmospheric solar heating and soot deposition in the Hindu Kush-Himalayan-Tibetan (HKHT) glaciers and snow packs. These have given rise to major areas of concern, some of the most critical being observed decreases in the Indian summer monsoon rainfall, a north-south shift in rainfall patterns in eastern China, the accelerated retreat of the HKHT glaciers and decrease in snow packs, and the increase in surface ozone. All these have led to negative effects on water resources and crop yields. The emergence of the ABC problem is expected to further aggravate the recent dramatic escalation of food prices and the consequent challenge for survival among the world’s most vulnerable populations. Lastly, the human fatalities from indoor and outdoor exposures to ABC-relevant pollutants have also become a source of grave concern.
So, the ABCs of the ABC problem are extremely serious according to this report. I’m not knowledgeable enough, naturally, to critique it, but even if it’s half true it’s very worrisome. Thanks, Juan. More morning food for thought.

As Juan Cole says this morning, there should be “a special place in hell for the Taliban in Qandahar who threw acid on the faces of two schoolgirls in Qandahar.” Aljazeera English reports that the tactic emptied the girl’s school that they attended.

As Juan points out, while the Aljazeera reporters were working on this story, a blast from a suicide bomber killed 6 and wounded 42. They caught the aftermath of this blast on the film.

Here’s something I never caught on the MSM this August during the Democratic National Convention: it’s Dan Rather blasting the MSM, caught by that great little alternative media, Link TV. Juan Cole included this today on his blog. Note the first three comments on Juan’s link. The first attacks Dan from the right, a fairly common MSM type attack. The third attacks him from the left: Chomsky has it all! The second comment I’d agree with. For almost 200 more comments, see the YouTube here. Juan says “If media consolidation is the problem then Anti-Trust actions would make more sense as a response”, rather than simply courage which Dan is advocating.

From Juan Cole this morning: A couple days ago Rep. Lloyd Doggett (D-Texas) interviewed Joseph Christoff, Director, International Affairs and Trade, for the U.S. Government Accountability Office. The Texas Democrat was trying to get Mr. Christoff to admit that the benchmarks Bush laid down for success of the “surge” in Iraq have still not been met. Mr. Christoff kept saying his report was not about benchmarks, but the questioning by Mr. Doggett ended up showing that there has been no progress on benchmarks. This five minute interview is what you might call “wonky” but it’s interesting nevertheless and shows that the so-called surge has not been a great success.

How about some non-US spin on General Petraeus leaving Iraq? Ajazeera is a good place to start. Here’s a video discussed by Juan Cole this morning. Instead of the happy talk of victory that the US media would spin, Juan Cole quotes a more realistic statement by Gen. Petraeus himself:

‘ In a telephone interview with The Associated Press on Sunday, Petraeus said experience in Iraq shows it will take political and economic progress as well as military action to tackle increased violence in Afghanistan. “You don’t kill or capture your way out of an industrial strength insurgency,” he said.’

Click on the YouTube and watch the heavies! There’s quite a bunch there. Also, what sounds to Juan Cole (and me) like realistic reporting. Worth a three minute watch.

Juan Cole this morning has an excellent summary of where we are seven years after 9/11. His main point is that the original al-Qaeda is defeated. Usamah Bin Laden’s original voice hasn’t been heard from in four years, and Ayman al-Zawahiri, the number two man, is alive and kicking but is mainly playing wolf and offers no “genuine accomplishments in recent times save the ability of the top leadership to elude capture!”.

On the other hand, the Taliban in Afghanistan are increasingly strong but “do not pose the threat of international terrorism, though they may give safe harbor to individuals from abroad that do.” The locals in Afghanistan increasingly distrust the US and NATO as this Aljazeera video demonstrates:

Rather than sending more US troops to Afghanistan, “a fool’s errand”, we should realize that the locals are right and that more Afghan troops are the answer.

Juan Cole as a great piece this morning which he calls Rambo and the Mean Girl. Worth checking out.

Hey! The Russians are the bad guys! That’s what this Fox News interviewer wanted to say to this 12-year old girl and her aunt, but all he could mumble at the end of the interview was, “Well, there are gray areas in war”. That’s because the girl and her aunt specifically blamed the president of Georgia for starting the war and thanked the Russians for saving her.

Hat tip to Juan Cole who concludes: Gee,that isn’t that master narrative in the US military-information complex.