Revolt continues in Libya - more massacres

More horrible news from Libya: Libya defiant as hundreds of protesters feared dead. Qaddafi and his evil family are determined not to give in.

Oliver Miles, a former British ambassador to Libya, writes on the Guardian's Comment is Free site: "Assuming that the Libyan protesters have the stamina and determination of those in Tunisia and Egypt , even in the face of gunfire, the resolution of the conflict seems to depend on two factors: will the disturbances spread to the different urban environment of Tripoli? And will the army – composed of Libyans, not foreign mercenaries, and therefore open to tribal influences which are largely unknown – continue to be willing to fire on unarmed civilians?"

Report in the New York Times on the battle for Benghazi:

Several residents of Benghazi described an ongoing battle for control of the city, Libya’s second-largest, with a population of more than half a million. By Sunday, thousands of protesters had occupied a central square in front of the courthouse, which some call their Tahrir Square after the epicenter of the Egyptian revolt, and they were chanting the same slogans that echoed through the streets of Tunis and Cairo, “The people want to bring down the regime.”

By evening, two witnesses said, the protesters had stormed the security headquarters, and, these witnesses said, a few members of the security forces had defected to join the protesters. “These young men are taking bullets in their chests to confront the tyrant,” Mr. Hadi said, speaking by phone from the siege of the security building.

But more than a thousand other members of the security forces had hardly surrendered. They were concentrated a few miles away from the courthouse in a barracks in the neighborhood of Berqa. Witnesses said young protesters were attempting suicidal attacks on the barracks with thrown rocks, stun grenades usually used for fishing, or occasionally vehicles stolen from the security forces. But the security forces responded by shooting from the cover of the fortified building, while others shot from vehicles as they cruised the side streets....

Benghazi, the traditional hub of the country’s eastern province, has long been a center of opposition to the Qaddafi government centered in Tripoli. In 1996, it was the site of a massacre at the Abu Slim prison, when security forces shot more than 1,000 prisoners. Those killings have since become a major rallying point for Qaddafi critics there.

Afghanistan - Politics

Central power does not mean a great deal. It means the promise of dividing up aid money. Two opposite dynamics are at work in Afghanistan’s government: on the one hand, the central government must gain control over de facto autonomous regions, in order to maintain order. On the other hand, those regions are de jure subordinate parts of a highly centralized state, and reformers eventually must find a way to increase rather than decrease their role in governance.
By early 2003 Afghanistan's northern parts were engulfed in the same factional rivalries that plagued the area in the 1990s. General Abdul Rashid Dostum's Junbish-e Melli-ye Islami party (National Islamic Movement) was battling former Afghan President Burhanuddin Rabbani's Jami'at-e Islami party (Society of Islam) in several northern provinces. A splinter group within Hizb-e Wahdat and loyal to Planning Minister Mohammad Mohaqeq was also battling Jami'at loyalists in Balkh Province. And the self-proclaimed "amir" of western Afghanistan, Herat Governor Mohammad Ismail Khan, was battling Pashtuns in his own province and in neighboring Badghis Province. Moreover, the Islmai'li Shi'ites had begun quarreling in Baghlan Province.
The Emergency Loya Jirga was held from 11-19 June 2002. The Loya Jirga, Afghanistan's "grand assembly," concluded nine days of meetings in June 2002, electing Hamid Karzai as President. The delegates - including over 220 women - elected by secret ballot the Head of the Transitional Administration, and confirmed ministers and other key figures. After decades of war, this marked the nation's first tentative steps towards a system where political decisions are made by a representative assembly of the people of Afghanistan at large and not based on military force. The process for the selection of delegates involved mass popular participation in a political exercise unrivalled in Afghanistan's history.
Karzai, an ethnic Pashtun selected as the interim head of the country at the Bonn Conference of November 2001, delivered major posts to several regional warlords in hopes of buying their allegiance. Some foreign observers found it more worrisome that the two most powerful warlords refused the posts they were offered. The warlords were brought in as vice-presidents, but a couple of them refused the vice-presidential posts because they wanted to retain their regional authority uncontested.
Whereas individuals such as Ismail Khan in the past have been essentially positive forces, two leaders seen as posing serious dangers to the authority and effectiveness of the Karzai government were Dostum, the ethnic Uzbek commander in the north, and ethnic Tajik Atta Mohammad of Jamiat-e Islami.
Dostum, considered Afghanistan's top ethnic Uzbek commander, previously sided with the Soviet Union during their occupation of the country in the 1980s. More recently he was one of several military leaders in the opposition Northern Alliance, also known as The United Front, attempting to regain territory lost to the Taliban. The Taliban's capture of Dostum's fortress and airfield in Mazar-e-sharif in 1997 forced him into exile in Uzbekistan and Iran. He returned in 2000 to join the Alliance, seeking to avenge that defeat. Dostum's force of some 20,000 militia fighters was composed mostly of ethnic Uzbeks who are members of his political group, Junbish-e Melli. Karzai appointed Dostum as his special adviser on security and military affairs, with effective control over security affairs in the northern Afghan provinces of Balkh, Jowzjan, Sar-e Pol, Samangan, and Faryab.
Atta Mohammad, from the rival ethnic Tajiks, fought against the Soviet invasion, and at the time of the fall of the Taliban commanded some 20,000 troops. Mohammad had close ties with Afghan Defense Minister Mohammad Qasim Fahim, with whom he was a member of Jamiat-e Islami, a predominantly ethnic Tajik political grouping.
Both Dostum and Mohammad joined the Northern Alliance, fighting alongside other Afghan commanders, as well as US forces, to help defeat the country's strict Islamist Taliban regime in 2001. But in the years since the Taliban was ousted from power, the same militias have turned on each other repeatedly in hit-and-run battles that have brought instability and lawlessness to parts of five northern Afghan provinces.
The involvement of the United Nations Assistance Mission in Afghanistan (UNAMA) helped bring Dostum and Mohammad towards an agreement in May 2002 to hold regular meetings between their factions. This worked to lessen active conflict, but fighting still occurred in Faryab province and Dar-I-Souf.
Since May of 2003, provincial governors have not been allowed to hold a military title. In Herat, in August 2003, President Karzai removed Governor Ismail Khan from his command of the 4th Corps.
In a 13-point declaration signed on 20 May 2003 by Afghan Transitional Administration Chairman Karzai and 10 provincial governors, one deputy governor, and two military commanders, the provincial authorities agreed to "follow and implement the laws, regulations, and legislative documents of the country and their job descriptions," Radio Afghanistan reported on 20 May. The provincial authorities also pledged to implement internal and external policies as directed by the central administration; not to interfere in the affairs of other provinces; and not to hold military and civilian posts simultaneously. Further, Article 11 of the declaration abolished special titles that some of the regional leaders had adopted for themselves, such as "special envoy of the head of state" or "amir," adopted by Dostum and Herat Governor Mohammad Ismail Khan, respectively.
Signatories to the 20 May 2003 Agreement:

• General Mohammad Ismail Khan, Governor of Herat Province
• General Abdul Rashid Dostum, Deputy Defense Minister
• Lieutenant General Atta Mohammad, Commander of Army Corps No. 7
• Lieutenant General Gol Agha [Sherzai], Governor of Kandahar Province
• Haji Din Mohammad, Governor of Nangarhar Province
• Abdol Latif Ebrahimi, Governor of Konduz Province
• Sayyed Mohammad Ali Jalali, Governor of Paktika Province
• Mohammad Abdul Karim Barawi, Governor of Nimroz Province
• Abdol Hayy Ne'mati, Governor of Farah Province
• Mohammad Eshaq Rahgozar, Governor of Balkh Province
• Sayd Ekramoddin Masumi, Governor of Takhar Province
• Abdul Hakim Taniwal, Governor of Khost Province
• Afzali, Deputy Governor of Badakhshan Province

In a decree issued on 21 May 2003, Karzai appointed Deputy Defense Minister General Abdul Rashid Dostum as a special adviser on security and military affairs. Dostum was instructed to dismantle Army Corps No. 7, commanded by his Jami'at rival, General Atta Mohammad. Mohammad, however, stated that he would not relinquish his command of the Army Corps No. 7, effectively challenging Dostum's job description. In a related development, Mohammad resigned from his post as "first deputy head of the Leadership Council of the northern provinces of Afghanistan," Balkh Television reported on 20 May 2003.
In late September 2003 troops belonging to the longtime rival commanders Dostum and Mohammed clashed in northern Afghanistan's Sar-e Pul province. The two commanders are nominally aligned with the central government, but are considered independent warlords, autonomously ruling the areas occupied by their troops. Their forces frequently engage each other in efforts to take control of Afghanistan's north. The United Nations and other mediators have repeatedly sought a regional truce, on several occasions brokering meetings between Dostum, Mohammad, and other local commanders.
In October 2003 the Afghan central government deployed police in northern Afghanistan in an effort to bring an end to the recurring battles between the rival groups. About 300 police officers from Kabul were deployed in the northern Afghan city of Mazar-i-Sharif to help monitor a cease-fire between the forces of the two feuding warlords.
The police force was token in size against the tens of thousands of militiamen loyal to each of the warlords. And yet, the deployment had enormous symbolic significance because it appeared to signal the start of a serious effort by Karzai and his international backers to extend the authority of the Kabul-based government.
Dostum and Mohammad signed an agreement on 11 October 2003 to extend their shaky cease-fire into other areas that have suffered from factional violence since the collapse of the Taliban regime nearly two years ago. Those areas include the provinces of Balkh, Samangan, Jowzjan, Sar-i-Pul, and Faryab. Dostum and Mohammad last signed an initial cease-fire on 9 October that involved only their private militia forces close to Mazar-i-Sharif. That deal came after a fierce tank and artillery battle advanced to within 20 kilometers of Mazar-i-Sharif. Some reports said as many as 60 militia fighters were killed.
US Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld was in Afghanistan 4 December 2003 on a one-day visit, during which he met with Dostum, whose forces had been accused of acting too slowly in disarming. Defense officials said that while Dostum's faction had handed over three tanks to Afghan security forces, his rival Mohammad had turned in more than 50.

Remembering Gerry Ferraro

She was one tough lady.

It really wasn’t so long ago that having a woman one breath from the presidency was essentially a fantasy. Geraldine Ferraro, who made it to the top of the Democratic ticket in 1984, almost made that dream come true.

Hers was a life of firsts: First woman to chair the Democratic Platform Committee. First female vice-presidential nominee. First major-league Italian-American on a presidential ticket.

As unflinching as she was as a crimefighting assistant district attorney, as indomitable as she was while representing New York in Congress, Ferraro was also -- unapologetically -- a dedicated mother of two daughters and a son.


For her, parenting and politics were both vital parts of her existence-- and through her actions, she proved to America’s women that they did not have to choose a life consisting solely of one or the other.

Ferraro didn’t give up her feminine or maternal sensibilities to make it in a political world dominated by men. That said, if they hadn’t let her into the old boys’ club, she might’ve kicked the door down.

Even during a long battle with the cancer that finally took her, Ferraro did not turn her back on the events of the day.

She stepped up to help another woman who captivated America, Hillary Clinton, during her 2008 White House run, and later proved her loyalty during the candidacy of Andrew Cuomo for governor. She saw and took a chance to give another woman, Leslie Crocker Snyder, a leg up in the 2009 Manhattan district attorney’s race.

Geraldine Ferraro was not a saint. However, with a candor rare and valuable in politicians, if not always gracefully worded, she didn’t try to present herself as one.

She, like all of us, was imperfect. But she, like few of us, became a role model and a symbol. Ferraro was honest enough to say that at the time that she might not have reached the civic heights she did had she not been a woman, but she damn well made the most of it.

As President Obama said of his daughters upon this trailblazer’s death, “Sasha and Malia will grow up in a more equal America because of the life Geraldine Ferraro chose to live.”

They’re not the only ones.

A public service broadcaster propagates some strange economics

On the ABC "Green" site, unsurprisingly. The writer obviously has some grasp of economics but makes some elementary blunders. Take the first sentence in the excerpt below: If that were true, why are forests and stands of trees bought and sold?

And take the last paragraph reproduced below, the claim that burning down cities would benefit the GNP. It is an old fallacy. The writer has obviously never read Bastiat. In summary, the available economic energies (labour etc.) would not change. It would produce much the same in sum with or without a conflagration. Instead of building new houses (say), it would have to rebuild old ones. There would be no necessary impact on GNP at all -- but there would of course be a great loss of assets. See also here for a another refutation of this old fallacy

I suspect that the writer just liked the idea of burning down houses. Greenie forest management policies frequently accomplish just that -- via their opposition to bushfire prevention

A tree growing in a forest has no standing in economics. As far as conventional economics is concerned, it has no "economic" role. Of course, it provides a vital role in the earth's life support system, but this is of interest to scientists and not economists.

As soon as the tree is cut down, it acquires status in economics. Its significance grows as the tree is broken up into smaller components, such as paper or match sticks. The more it is destroyed, the more important it becomes to economic calculations.

Gross National Product (GNP)

Economic and political life revolves around the GNP or Gross National Product. GNP is the measure of financial transactions within a country's economy - the total flow of goods and services produced by the economy over a specified time (usually a year) - and it is derived from calculating the total income of a country's residents, whether the incomes come from production in that country or from production abroad. There is also a calculation of the Gross Domestic Product (GDP) but this distinction is not very important for the main argument here: the inadequacy of conventional economics to take the environment into account.

The GNP is simply a measure of financial transactions; it makes no value judgment on whether the transactions were socially useful or what impact there may have been on the environment.

Crime and car accidents increase the GNP because of the increased work for police, ambulances and prisons. A reduction in crime reduces the GNP. Similarly, a good way to increase Australian GNP would be to burn down Sydney and Melbourne each year. GNP would grow because of the extra work for fire brigades, undertakers, architects, builders, and plumbers. There would be little to show for all this annual effort - but there would be a higher GNP.