Hurrahpertif Thursday - Arrest Warrants, Dem Hallucinations, Jihadis

By Meteor Blades

Last month, the Italian government added three Americans to its list of 19 sought in the kidnapping and “rendition” of alleged terrorist Abu Omar from a Milan street in February 2003. On Tuesday, a Spanish judge issued an arrest warrant for three American soldiers, who, from their tank, shelled the Palestine Hotel April 8, 2003, killing Telecinco cameraman Jose Couso and Reuters cameraman Taras Protsyuk. About 200 journalists were bivouacked in the hotel. A U.S. investigation concluded the men were justified in opening fire. The Spanish judge sees things: otherwise :

"I order the ... capture and arrest of the U.S. soldiers, with a view to extradition," High Court Judge Santiago Pedraz said in a court document, adding the order would be submitted to the international police organization Interpol. …

The judge said he issued the warrants because U.S. authorities refused to cooperate.

The court had twice asked U.S. officials for help, requesting documents and offering to send a legal team to the United States to take statements from the three men, but neither request had been answered, he said.

David Sirota again has some sharp words for Democrats in his In These Times piece The Partisan War Syndrome:

The Democrats' policy of doing nothing as the Republican Party keeps tripping over itself is a recipe for continued political failure and irrelevance.

The first major symptom of Partisan War Syndrome is wild hallucinations that make progressives believe we can win elections by doing nothing, as long as the Republican Party keeps tripping over itself. You can best see this symptom each time another GOP scandal comes down the pike. The scandal hits, Republicans respond with a pathetic "I am not a crook" defense, and both Democratic politicians and grassroots activists/bloggers berate a "culture of corruption."

Yet, then these same critics largely refuse to demand concrete solutions such as public funding of elections that would actually clean up the system, and would draw a contrast between the left and the right. We see hallucinations of a victory in the next election as long as we just say nothing of substance, as we have for the last decade. But like a mirage in the desert, it never seems to materialize.

These hallucinations are the only logical explanation as to why the Democratic Party remains without an official position on almost every major issue in Congress. Just look at the last year: Democrats have no clear party position on Iraq, energy, bankruptcy, trade, tax cuts, Supreme Court nominees or corruption, other than to criticize Republicans. …

As New York Times columnist Frank Rich recently wrote, the tragedy in allowing the hallucinations to continue indefinitely goes beyond just election losses. "The Democrats are hoping that if they do nothing, they might inherit the earth as the Bush administration goes down the tubes," he wrote.
"Whatever the dubious merits of this Kerryesque course as a political strategy, as a moral strategy it's unpatriotic. The earth may not be worth inheriting if Iraq continues to sabotage America's ability to take on Iran and North Korea, let alone Al Qaeda." The same could be said for every other issue that progressives are trying to avoid in the face of the 2006 elections.

Jan McGirk at Open Democracy says the every-present army in Pakistan did a poor job after the recent earthquake there, which killed 80,000. But guess who did a good job:

Kashmir: the politics of an earthquake:

They say that not even a single leaf on a tree can shake in Pakistan without the army and its dreaded intelligence service, the ISI, knowing about it. So when on the morning of 8 October 2005 a 7.6 magnitude earthquake, the most devastating in a century, collapsed buildings and triggered violent landsides that left nearly 3 million people homeless in Kashmir and the Northwest Frontier Province, Pakistanis were aghast that soldiers did not come immediately to their rescue.

Nearly a quarter of a million troops were already stationed in the area, to enforce a tentative ceasefire with Pakistan’s nuclear-armed neighbour, India, over claims to the disputed territory. After living under the military dictatorship of General Pervez Musharraf for six years, the victims expected a disciplined and professional relief effort to alleviate their suffering. …

It took days before the army would reach any stricken areas beyond the towns; while it dallied, tens of thousands of loved ones were smothered under the rubble and the injuries of survivors went septic. Without any shelter, vulnerable infants and elders contracted pneumonia when intermittent downpours soaked their bedding. In grief, people could only cling to one another for body heat as hail pelted down and thunderclaps heralded more aftershocks. Villagers grumbled that the army must be tending to its own casualties first and had abandoned its hapless civilians to the elements. …

Meanwhile, long before the arrival of army regulars, international aid agencies, or emergency search and rescue teams, an alternative volunteer army was reporting for duty in the earthquake zone: the jihadis. Bearded young men converged on towns close to the epicentre, after threading their shiny white mini-vans or military vehicles through boulder-strewn roads. More trekked by foot across rockslides, carrying picks and shovels. Yahya Mujahid, a Muslim militant chief, said he ordered his guerrillas to put aside their Kalashnikov rifles and hired 100 mules so they could get relief supplies up to the heights and carry out the injured.

The efforts won accolades from anguished survivors. No one else was on the spot to help locals unearth the injured and administer first aid, shroud and bury their dead, or dish up dates and hot soup so they might break the Ramadan fast at dusk. These aid workers appeared extremely organised.

Organized, effective and with new respect among people who thought they could count on their government. All over the Muslim world, from Libya to Sumatra to Pakistan, the foes of ineffectual and/or dictatorial government increasingly hail from the fundamentalist camp. Good for earthquake survivors, not so good otherwise.

Comments

[Meteor Blades]

I keep hoping one of these arrest warrants will reach just a little bit higher.

[antiaristo]

Unfortunately the Spanish goverment has stuck its nose in. The attorney general Conde Pumpido, has launched an appeal against the decisions. The search-and-capture orders are frozen.
(ps I live in Spain)

[antiaristo]

Unfortunately the Spanish goverment has stuck its nose in. The attorney general Conde Pumpido, has launched an appeal against the decisions. The search-and-capture orders are frozen.
(ps I live in Spain)

[janinsanfran]

The Pakistan story is really significant. Much of the unrest in the Central America in the 70s and 80s was related to the fact that the oligarchs and dictators the US supported there were of no use in a series of earthquakes and hurricanes. The 1972 Managua earthquake and aftermath was the beginning of the end for the Somoza regime in Nicaragua. People do not forgive the failure of government in these events. Worth thinking about.

[janinsanfran]

The Pakistan story is really significant. Much of the unrest in the Central America in the 70s and 80s was related to the fact that the oligarchs and dictators the US supported there were of no use in a series of earthquakes and hurricanes. The 1972 Managua earthquake and aftermath was the beginning of the end for the Somoza regime in Nicaragua. People do not forgive the failure of government in these events. Worth thinking about.

[mamayaga]

Giving aid and comfort and promoting your insurgency as an added benefit -- isn't that the Hamas model? Meanwhile we burn bodies and engage in juvenile taunting of local villagers in Afghanistan.

[emptypockets]

I enjoyed this little piece about workplace habits. How working with people physically near you allows you to be more productive than telecommuting (or even just working with people in other rooms or on other floors) because your physical neighbors can tell how busy you are and know when is a good time to interrupt you with a question -- phone calls and emails don't have that courtesy, they arrive whether it's a good time or not. AI engineers are now trying to design computers to filter emails (and phone calls?) based on the "busy-ness" state of the user, by monitoring your typing speed, how often you're switching windows, if you're surfing blogs or working on a presentation -- even monitoring how noisy you are with a microphone. Neat stuff.

[Meteor Blades]

My own experience indicated that part-time telecommuting increased productivity. Nine staffers of the 31 I supervised at the time originally opted for one or two days a week of telecommuting. Getting this concept past my boss took almost three years. All but one of those nine got more done, improved the quality of the material they worked on and had a better attitude when they actually did work in the office. Six other employees eventually opted for the program.

All of them said, however, they wouldn't have wanted to telecommute full time because they would miss the camaraderie and face-to-face brain-storming.

[emptypockets]

I stay home when I need to focus, like when writing or editing something. But even at home I allow myself a million little interruptions. It wouldn't hurt me to have a genie in the computer that would shut off non-work email & non-work web sites except for scheduled breaks -- even while working from home (and maybe not even let me on those for too long). The question is, would I let that genie run or stuff it back in its bottle to take a break (or just get up and get a bottle or two for myself).