The Skeptic الشكاك

234 Dalliance with Dwarves

will erode faith in the judiciary.

231 Public Service Announcement

If anyone’s reading in Lebanon, here’s what an unexploded cluster bomblet looks like:

This photo was taken in southern Lebanon on August 15 by the U.N. Mine Action Coordination Center for southern Lebanon. More photos here. Bloggers, particularly those in Lebanon: Please post these photos. You can see how easy it would be to miss these things in the rubble. Here is what they do in practice (more movies of cluster-bomb strikes here… pretty cool, huh? Not really).

The more people who know what these things look like, the fewer people dead or maimed.
For more information, see HRW’s most recent press release on the use of cluster munitions in southern Lebanon.

[tags]Lebanon, cluster munitions, cluster blombs, Israel[/tags]

233 ‘Where Are the American Moderates?’

Asks Issandr in an op-ed reflecting on the war in Lebanon’s effect on moderates in the Arab world:

The Bush administration?s intuition that it must reach out to moderates in the Arab world is an obvious one, and hopefully will continue to be the policy of future U.S. administrations. But it is not enough to speak warmly about Arab moderates. They are still in the situation they have been for the past three decades: outgunned by a repressive state apparatus, outmaneuvered by Islamist groups that deliver social safety and facile rhetoric and outraged by the schemes of regional powers that seem bent on sabotaging their chances at leading the debate on the future of the Arab world?their future. Orphans of the region?s deadly strategic games, they look at the Bush administration?s shameful conduct over the past month and wonder: Where are the American moderates? [full text]

[tags]Lebanon[/tags]

230 Thank God

It looks like the war in Lebanon is really over, that this cease-fire will hold. Thank God. I’m still a bit nervous because the Israelis are pretty entrenched in some places in the South and people are flooding back to their villages. All it would take is one accident to touch things off again.

Friends in southern Lebanon tell me they’re worried about a new wave of casualties now, as people return to their piles of rubble littered with UXO. They say they’re particularly worried about all the unexploded cluster bombs littering the villages. They’ve seen them in the center of towns, next to hospitals, and on the roads. These are small, battery-sized bomblets. Unless you know what you’re looking for, you wouldn’t necessarily think they were dangerous. You might easily kick one by accident. A curious kid might easily pick one up.

But on balance, I’m feeling relieved and “cautiously optimistic.” Donors are taking this seriously. If you have the means, you can too.

229 Japanese Tongue-Twister

And now, for something completely different…

228 A Good Compromise

The new draft text of the U.N. Security Council resolution strikes an uneasy compromise on many of the key sticking points, but I hope it’s one everyone can support in the interest of ending the fighting. The key addition is the call for “a full cessation of hostilities,” though the confusing proviso, “based upon, in particular, the immediate cessation by Hezbollah of all attacks and the immediate cessation by Israel of all offensive military operations,” is still in there. Equally important (to Lebanon at least), is the explicit call for Israel to withdraw its troops from Lebanese soil.

I fear we’re not out of the woods yet, though. The draft resolution also expresses the UNSC’s intention to pass a Chapter VII resolution authorizing the deployment of a U.N.-mandated international force. Alright. I’m not sure there’s any other option. But what happens if this force gets dragged into the fighting? So much still depends on Hizballah and Israel acting in good faith.

Also at the United Nations today, the Human Rights Council passed a resolution “strongly condemn[ing] grave Israeli violations of human rights and breaches of international humanitarian law in Lebanon” and calling on Israel to “immediately stop military operations against civilian population and civilian objects resulting in death and destruction.” Much less ambiguous, though also less likely to convince Israelis to listen to the United Nations.

[tags]Lebanon, Israel[/tags]

224 Protecting Civilians, Threatening Civilians

A contact in Beirut sent scans of the flyers the Israelis are dropping on the city with following brief message:

These were dropped on our street yesterday warning of the fun to come later on that night. More than 12 bombs dropped this morning at dawn. With the world now focused on Al Qaeda at the Heathrow and not on Lebanon and Gaza, I suspect the Israelis are feeling emboldened to step up the action while there is a distraction.

The flyers follow after the break. A few notes:

1) Civilians following these instructions have been killed as they fled flying white flags. Israel has indicated that any moving vehicle could be considered a target. How, then, should Lebanese civilians flee?

2) If the Israelis are indeed taking all precautions to spare civilian life and if civilians are dying in such numbers because Hizballah is hiding behind civilian shields, how to account for these threats: “Be aware! The expansion of Hizbollah terrorist operations will lead to a painful and severe reaction; their painful results will not only be limited to Hassan’s guerilla group and its criminals”; “Hassan has gambled with your future, and now you are the ones to pay for it”? Or, indeed, this report that Israel has asked the United States to speed delivery of cluster munitions?

See also Rasha Salti’s well-written and honest war diary in the LRB. Some of the best journalism to come out of this.

Flyers follow (I suspect the English versions are my contact’s translation, but that was unclear from the email): More…

221 Cairo Protest Turns Violent

Hossam reports at Arabist.net that a Lebanon solidarity protest at Cairo’s Al-Azhar mosque turned violent today. He’s also posted Nasser Nouri’s photographs of plainclothes officers (apparently State Security’s elite “Karate Squad”) clashing with protesters.

Please, guys, please: Please stop beating State Security with your shib-shibs. It’s a counterproductive provocation. Assaulting a police officer is a crime. Exercising your right to assembly is not.

[tags]Egypt, Lebanon, Israel[/tags]

220 U.S. Corporations Complicit in Chinese Censorship

Congratulations to my friend Rebecca MacKinnon for her excellent report for HRW on Internet censorship in China.

Here’s the jist:

China?s system of Internet censorship and surveillance is the most advanced in the world. While tens of thousands of people are employed by the Chinese government and security organs to implement a system of political censorship, this system is also aided by extensive corporate and private sector cooperation?including by some of the world?s major international technology and Internet companies. In China, the active role of censor has been extended from government offices into private companies. Some companies not only respond to instructions and pressures from Chinese authorities to censor their materials, they actively engage in self-censorship by using their technology to predict and then censor the material they believe the Chinese government wants them to censor…

In this report, we have documented the different ways in which companies such as Yahoo!, Microsoft, Google, and Skype are assisting and reinforcing the Chinese government?s system of arbitrary, opaque and unaccountable political censorship. This report documents the way in which these companies actively, openly, and deliberately (by their own admission) collaborate with the Chinese government?s system of Internet censorship.

But read the full report.

HRW expects the Chinese government to censor the report, so they’ve set up mirror sites. If the government blocks access to the first mirrors, HRW will unveil new URLs. They’re also releasing a BitTorrent version. The first mirrors are here:

http://people.bu.edu/cjr/hrw/
http://www.giantdatamart.com/hrw/index.htm

[tags]Internet, China, Censorship[/tags]

217 Taking the Sting out of a Hereditary Presidency

Thanks to reader SP for sending this along. “Try topping this, Gamal,” SP comments.

Martial arts black belt, Harvard graduate, jewellery designer, businesswoman. Her father may be a brutal dictator, but the official list of Gulnara Karimova’s achievements is as long as your arm.

Now the glamorous daughter of the president of Uzbekistan, Islam Karimov, has added a new talent to the list with the release of her first music video. Unutma Meni (Don’t Forget Me) features the 33-year-old brunette under the stage name GooGoosha – apparently her father’s name for her – cavorting in a cartoon wonderland where she travels to a secluded castle and a tropical island in a limousine that floats through the air.

Commentators say the video – showing repeatedly on Uzbekistan’s domestic equivalent of MTV – is part of a campaign to promote Ms Karimova as a potential successor to her father, whose term of office finishes at the end of next year.

Despite the stumbling block of promoting a woman as leader in a traditional Muslim society, Ms Karimova is thought to be the only person who can protect the assets of her father’s family and cronies. [Full Story] [The BBC weighs in]

Personally, I’m glad Gamal Mubarak or Bushes George W. and Jeb aren’t trying to launch a careers as pop stars, as funny as it would be to watch them gyrating in music videos.

Also via SP, this word from Kyrgyzstan:

The town of Korasuv is in mourning.

The day after the funeral, men young and old lined up in front of the house of Imam Mohammed Rafik Kamalov, the leader of the biggest mosque along the Uzbek-Kyrgyz border.

There was a feeling of a quiet fury among them, a distinct sense of anger over what one of the men called the “ultimate injustice”.

One by one, they entered slowly to express their condolences to the family of the man who was a hugely popular figure here. Then, for hours, they gathered outside under the blistering August sun, discussing what to do next.

Then came their decision – on Friday, after the prayers, the town of Korasuv would hold a demonstration to demand that the government explain why their imam had died. More…

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