I had occasion last week to reflect on the joke that a camel is a horse designed by a committee.

Our group was struggling to come up with a name to describe ourselves and our purpose. I had moved that the notion of community democracy should be included in the name. That motion was overwhelmingly. Not been used to the process, I suppose I did not present a very convincing argument for my proposition, although I still think I was right. I just have not developed any skills of rebuttal and argument because skills only develop when the environment makes them necessary. The prevailing assumption is that such skills are not needed, or can developed only by a chosen few. Then again, we live and work, in authoritarian top-down corporate organizations. Read more »

This week we were pushed for time. We thought we better to be home soon – but it never works out like that.

Sasha and Dexter seem to enjoy their time out and about. They might be thinking, “what has happened to that other person who used to be around here?” Still it is difficult to know

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The Israeli Government seems immune to the cares and concerns of others and is continuing its dispossession of Palestinians by the building of new settlements despite the presence of the US Vice President.

One has to assume that biting the hand the feeds you is not a good strategy. The Israeli Government seems to think that Obama and Biden can be treated with contempt – the same way they treat everybody else.

For example, Juan Cole observes:

The far rightwing government of Binyamin Netanyahu in Israel majorly sandbagged Vice President Joe Biden on Tuesday, demonstrating once again that it has not the slightest interest in pursuing a just peace with the Palestinian people or in trading a cessation of its colonization of the Palestinian West Bank for a comprehensive peace with the Arab world. Read more »

Juan Cole see two possible outcomes of the Iraqi election, which seems to have gone on despite intimidation of bombs.

The first alternative sees the return of the Shiite Government and that might be written as a win for Iran. The Second, with Allawi the victor, sees Iraq lining up, as it did under Saddam Hussein, with the Sunni Arab alliance that includes among others Saudi Arabia. That could be written as an win for the invaders, and it might appease those sorry losers the oil companies, who envisaged they would seal Iraq’s oil. Much expenditure of blood and treasure has occurred with little practical gain,but nonetheless there is always the bases.

As a historian, Juan Cole observes: Read more »

Another week another dog blog it is true, except with the with and time and the weariness of the familiarity of life the changing context can only be alluded to in pictures.

Even on the most mundane, we are caught in the frame of history. This might, I suspect, be more the human than the canine condition. Sasha and Dexter seem to experience enjoyment. Dexter is of an activist disposition most of the time, whereas Sasha tends to be more laid back.

This week we had cause to visit Coledale hospital and it provides a different view on the same local world while providing a reminder of a common local history related to coal mining. And horses were part of this history, including pit ponies and draught(draft) horses. The latter are very impressive animals. I did not want any demonstration of their strength, and in this instance Sasha (as can be seen) and Dexter were remarkably obedient. Read more »

As I recall one of the four freedoms of The Atlantic Charter was that of religion and belief.

Much like the Nuremberg Trials that history seems to have been sealed in storage as we faced the brave new world of terrorism, without acknowledging the use of terrorism by States is equally repugnant. Does violence, in whatever form, promote justice? Read more »

. . . and Arab dictatorships, for example Egypt, seem to be the key issues in the Middle East, which create injustice and drive terrorism. Terrorism is another form of violence, and those who use violence, including the Imperialists, are equally at fault.

The oppressed should always have recourse to justice. Government and justice (are in my opinion) are in essence species of the common good. We live in a global community. Communications networks makes that community real. Violence sometimes intended, as in the case of terrorism as a political act, is a form of communication, albeit not always fully understood and articulated to its intended audience. The violence perpetrated by the West carries with the implication that the lives of those murdered have not value. They are lesser human beings, even if compensation is paid.

James Madison seems to have been perceptive when in 1787 he observed:

It is of great importance not only to guard society against the oppression of its rulers, but to guard one part of society against the injustice of the other part. If men were angels, no government would be necessary. Read more »

Or what is fit to print? More importantly, what will be allowed to be transmitted through the principal propaganda outlets, of which television is the leader?

I was taken aback to see in the last presidential campaign that media outlets, television companies, decided when a candidate, such as Ron Paul for example, has reached his use by.

The idea of watchdogs of democracy seems to have morphed into something else, or perhaps that was a role that television never played, perhaps with the exception of investigative documentaries that tended to be the field of public television. While it is true that major city newspapers were vehicles for advertising and consensus elite framed-opinion they nevertheless, and still do, but not on their online front pages, sustained coverage of political stories. Print as a linear medium lays out the argument in a way that it is consistent with logical thought and the presentation of evidence, even if unfamiliar. Space is provided for reflection.

Imagery and declaration are very different. They tend to target or reinforce emotional responses. Read more »

And Australian passport holders are now implicated in the Dubai murder investigation apparently conducted by the Israeli Government.

ABC News Online, via Reuters, reports:

Dubai has identified 15 new suspects in the assassination, bringing the total number of people believed involved in the death to 26, the government said on Wednesday.

Three of the new suspects were travelling on Australian passports.

Hamas military commander Mahmoud al-Mabhouh was killed last month in his hotel room in what Dubai police have said they are near certain was an Israeli hit. They said the killers travelled to the Gulf Arab emirate on European passports.

Of the new suspects, six carried British passports, three held Irish documents, three Australian, and three French, the Dubai government’s media office said in an emailed statement. Read more »

The repeated murder of civilians in Afghanistan is a prima facie case for war crime prosecutions.

They are always represented as accidents and deeply regretted. Surely, the implication is that the violent methods employed are inappropriate.

Rod Nordland in The New York Times reports:

A NATO airstrike on Sunday against what the coalition believed to be a group of insurgents ended up killing 33 civilians, including women and children, in Uruzgan Province, Afghan officials said on Monday. Read more »

Proportional  representative voting systems, as in the Netherlands, gives rise to coalition governments. Nato – or is that the Pentagon – in its wisdom has decided to pressure the Dutch.

In consequence another government at the Hague bites the polder. The Dutch forces began their engagement in August 2006 and has been extended for two years beyond the original time with 21 causalities.
SBS reports:

The Dutch government collapsed Saturday, the prime minister said, after members of the coalition government failed to agree on a NATO request to extend the Netherlands’ military mission in Afghanistan.

“Later today, I will will offer to her majesty the Queen the resignations of the ministers and deputy ministers of the (Labour Party) PvdA,” premier Jan Peter Balkenende told journalists in the early hours.

He made the announcement after the cabinet held more than 16 hours of talks in The Hague to try to settle the dispute. Read more »

China is no longer a coming power. Katmandu was once of interest to tourists, such as hippies, seeking exotic destinations, and the Indian Government, which could largely take Nepal for granted.

Now the Chinese have stepped in, and the weight they bring and size of the footprint is changing the political reality on India’s north western border. The Chinese interest in Nepal was made acute by the protests in Tibet. Tibetans had regularly crossed into Nepal to among other things visit the Dela Lama.

Jim Yardley in The New York Times observed that this situation changed:

From China’s perspective, Nepal’s geopolitical significance rose after Tibetan protests erupted in March 2008, five months before Beijing hosted the Olympic Games. Those protests began inside China, in Lhasa, the Tibetan capital, and other Tibetan regions, but also spread across the border to Katmandu, where an estimated 12,000 Tibetans live. Read more »