Informed Comment

With the approach of Hurricane Irene, climate activists are reminding us that more intensive hurricanes are produced by warmer water, so that global warming over time will increase the severity and frequency of storms. This is true, and it is frightening. Some climate scientists even think we need a “level 6″ category for new, fiercer storms.

Climate is extremely complex, so that global warming won’t proceed in a straight line, something that helps the skeptics (most of whom are motivated by secret payments from large corporations or are under influence of same).

Right now, the Atlantic is in a warm cycle of 10 to 15 years. During the warm cycle, hurricanes are more frequent and more powerful. The warm cycle this time is slightly warmer, because the average surface temperature of the earth and its oceans has increased over the past century. Thus it is true global warming contributed to Irene’s wrath. But climate change activists should be careful to acknowledge the contribution of the warming cycle.

After the warming cycle, the Atlantic will turn cooler. Global warming may mean it won’t turn as cool as it otherwise would, but the cooling will nevertheless make for less dramatic hurricane seasons for a while in the 2020s. Climate change can only be measured over decades, not by individual events or even short patterns.

In other global warming news, a new study shows that weather cycles appear to correlate with increased violence in tropical countries. If the El Nino/ La Nina correlation holds up, it is a horrifying harbinger for what is likely to happen in those countries during the coming century of higher temperatures produced, not just cyclically, but by long-term warming produced by dumping masses of carbon dioxide into the atmosphere.

The problem is accelerating in danger and urgency. US carbon emissions were up by 4 percent in the past year, in part because of increased use of coal. That should be a hanging crime. I hope some lawsuits over climate change damage eventually get traction, whether domestically (as happened eventually with smoking) or internationally, at the WTO or GATT. Americans respond to property issues.

Posted in Energy, Environment, Uncategorized | 11 Comments

As dawn broke Sunday in Libya, revolutionaries were telling Aljazeera Arabic that much of the capital was being taken over by supporters of the February 17 Youth revolt. Some areas, such as the suburb of Tajoura to the east and districts in the eastrn part of the city such as Suq al-Juma, Arada, the Mitiga airport, Ben Ashour, Fashloum, and Dahra, were in whole or in part under the control of the revolutionaries.

Those who were expecting a long, hard slog of fighters from the Western Mountain region and from Misrata toward the capital over-estimated dictator Muammar Qaddafi’s popularity in his own capital, and did not reckon with the severe shortages of ammunition and fuel afflicting his demoralized security forces, whether the regular army or mercenaries. Nor did they take into account the steady NATO attrition of his armor and other heavy weapons.

This development, with the capital creating its own nationalist mythos of revolutionary participation, is the very best thing that could have happened. Instead of being liberated (and somewhat subjected) from the outside by Berber or Cyrenaican revolutionaries, Tripoli enters the Second Republic with its own uprising to its name, as a full equal able to gain seats on the Transitional National Council once the Qaddafis and their henchmen are out of the way. There will be no East/West divide. My hopes for a government of national unity as the last phase of the revolution before parliamentary elections now seem more plausible than ever. Tellingly, Tunisia and Egypt both recognized the TNC as Libya’s legitimate government through the night, as the Tripoli uprising unfolded. Regional powers can see the new Libya being born.

The underground network of revolutionaries in the capital, who had been violently repressed by Qaddafi’s security forces last March, appear to have planned the uprising on hearing of the fall of Zawiya and Zlitan. It is Ramadan, so people in Tripoli are fasting during the day, breaking their fast at sunset. Immediately after they ate their meal, the callers to prayer or muezzins mounted the minarets of the mosques and began calling out, “Allahu Akbar,” (God is most Great), as a signal to begin the uprising. (Intrestingly, this tactic is similar to that used by the Green movement for democracy in Iran in 2009).

Working class districts in the east were the first to rise up. Apparently revolutionaries have been smuggling in weapons to the capital and finding a way to practice with them. Tajoura, a few kilometers from Tripoli to the east, mounted a successful attack on the Qaddafi forces in the working class suburb, driving them off. At one point the government troops fired rockets at the protesting crowds, killing 122 persons. But it was a futile piece of barbarity, followed by complete defeat of Qaddafi forces. Eyewitness Asil al-Tajuri told Aljazeera Arabic by telephone that the revolutionaries in Tajoura captured 6 government troops, and that they freed 500 prisoners from the Hamidiya penitentiary. The Tajoura popular forces also captured the Muitiqa military base in the suburb and stormed the residence of Mansur Daw, the head of security forces in Tripoli.

The revolt in the eastern working-class district of Suq al-Juma appears to have begun before the others, on Saturday. All through Saturday Qaddafi security forces attempted to put it down, but they failed and in the end had to flee.

Tripoli

Tripoli Districts controlled by Revolutionaries early Sunday morning Libya Time

Qaddafi released an audio address in which he made his usual fantasy-land observations, said real Libyans liked to kiss pictures of his head, and called the revolutionaries rats and agents of imperial France. It was an incoherent, rambling, disgraceful performance, and was likely among the last such.

At one point an Aljazeera Arabic correspondent was able to get the frequency of the security forces and we overheard them fretting that they were running low on ammunition and fuel for their riposte to the revolutionaries’ advance.

For a map of the fighting, see here.

By 8 am Sunday morning Libya time, fighters from Nalut and elsewhere in the Western Mountain region had begun coming into Tripoli to give aid to the people who made the uprising. The revolutionaries’ advance into the capital is entitled “Operation Mermaid Dawn.”

One way or another, it seems clear that the Libyan Revolution has entered its last phase, and that this phase could well end abruptly in the next days. If Qaddafi’s own capital is so eager to be rid of him, his support is much thinner than many observers had assumed. His troops in Zawiya and elsewhere are increasingly refusing to engage in hand to hand combat, running away when the revolutionaries show up, and at most sitting in a truck and bombarding the revolutionaries from a distance (but thereby making themselves targets of NATO war planes and helicopters). The esprit de corps of the revolutionaries is, in contrast, high.

Posted in Libya, Uncategorized | 26 Comments

My column in Truthdig is now out, “President Bachmann: Another Mideast Messiah”

Excerpt:

“Bachmann recently alleged that Iran had been “delivered a nuclear warhead” (this assertion, like many of Bachmann’s bromides, is simply untrue). That Bachmann would be a hawk on Iran, favoring at least covert intervention, probably via the MEK, and perhaps even military action, is clear from her speeches on the subject.
Bachmann does not have so much a policy toward Israel as a posture of obeisance. She told the Republican Jewish Coalition of Los Angeles in February 2010:

I am convinced in my heart and in my mind that if the United States fails to stand with Israel, that is the end of the United States. … [W]e have to show that we are inextricably entwined, that as a nation we have been blessed because of our relationship with Israel, and if we reject Israel, then there is a curse that comes into play. And my husband and I are both Christians, and we believe very strongly the verse from Genesis [Genesis 12:3], we believe very strongly that nations also receive blessings as they bless Israel. It is a strong and beautiful principle.

Bachmann appears to believe that God’s blessings on Abraham were actually intended for the Likud Party of Benjamin Netanyahu in contemporary Israel. This theology of Israeli infallibility probably was influenced by Jan Markell of Olive Tree Ministries, with which Bachmann has had a long relationship. Christian Zionists’ fondness for Israel is bittersweet, since it is wrought up with a belief that the end of the world is around the corner, at which time Jews will become Christians.”

Read the whole thing

Posted in Uncategorized | 12 Comments

Free Libya forces are making unconfirmed allegations that Gen. Khamis Qaddafi has been killed in a NATO airstrike on a military outpost at Zlitan near Misrata.

Khamis leads the feared Khamis Brigades, who are accused of using tanks, artillery and cluster bombs against civilians in Misrata. The Brigades is among the most lethal units among the Qaddafi brigades. (See this account.) Khamis has been incorrectly declared dead before, so caution is in order.

But if the report were true, it would be a major blow to Muammar Qaddafi’s attempts to remain in power.

Qaddafi’s eldest son, Saif al Islam, now says he will ally with Libya’s Muslim fundamentalists in order to stay in power. The Qaddafis have long argued that the West should support them because the alternative is the fundamentalists. But in recent months they keep threatening to join al-Qaeda, so that rationale has collapsed.

David Zucchino’s excellent piece on the mood in Benghazi and the economic difficulties facing the Free Libya regions in the east accords with what I have heard from other recent visitors to Benghazi. No one can understand why there hasn’t been more humanitarian aid, given the poor economy. No one thinks the war will be over soon. The mood in Benghazi cheered considerably Thursday when an oil tanker made a big delivery.

The handful of recent visitors to whom I spoke are divided on the likelihood of the rebels’ long term success.

But logically speaking there are only four likely outcomes.

1. Qaddafi wins and conquers the East

2. The Free Libya forces over time win and take Tripoli

3. Elites in Tripoli overthrow Qaddafi and seek a national unity government with Benghazi

4. The country is partitioned

The UN allies won’t allow Qaddafi to take the east and massacre and imprison thousands, however much Alexander Cockburn, the Tea Party, and the World Socialist Web site would like to see that happen, or at least they object to practical steps to prevent it.

I don’t think a partition would be stable. Given international sanctions, Qaddafi’s part would grow weak, his weapons would degrade for lack of spare parts, and eventually he would fall to a wealthier and better-supplied Benghazi.

So most likely either there will eventually be a coup against Qaddafi in Tripoli or the rebels will win in the end.

The two Balkans interventions showed that air intervention is slow, difficult, & frustrating. But the alternative is to stand by while a Srebenica takes place.

Update (moved up from comments:) But there is ample reason for optimism over the medium to long term. The rebels & UN allies have made slow but steady progress for several months, stopping the assault on Benghazi, taking Ajdabiya, coming into Brega from the east; stopping the assault on Misrata, coming into Zlitan in the middle; stopping the assault on Zintan and taking most of the Western Mountains region. If you showed it with time elapse photography it would be a huge expansion of TNC-held territory and a series of dramatic defeats for the Qaddafi attackers. I was not instancing the Balkans with regard to local political arrangements, which are different (there is no ‘Serb/Bosnian/Kosovar’ divide, just fluid tribes who easily switch sides), but with regard to the difficulties in stopping aggressive attacks by armor and aircraft without troops on the ground. Actually NATO has done this better in Libya than it did in the first Balkan war.

Posted in Libya, Uncategorized | 8 Comments

The July 8 protests spearheaded by young Egyptian leftists to demand accountability and transparency were rewarded Wednesday by publicly broadcast trial proceedings against former president Hosni Mubarak, his two sons, and several associates.

The sight of Mubarak, on a hospital bed in the in-court cage where the accused are kept during the proceedings, was electrifying to the Egyptian public. His son Gamal looked bored at points. One Egyptian activist tweeted, ‘what’s the matter, Jimmy, are we wasting your time?” The Mubaraks are accused of authorizing the killing of some 900 persons during this year’s revolution and of looting the country.

The decision to make it a civilian trial gave Mubarak more justice than he gave the 4000 persons he had tried in military courts. He faces both criminal charges and civil suits from families whose sons he is accused of having killed.

So the Egyptians may get some justice. In contrast to Americans, who will never see George W. Bush tried for torture and other violations of US and international law.

What with their lively popular revolutions, the Arabs may have something to teach us now about accountability, transparency and democracy.

Posted in Egypt, Uncategorized | 17 Comments

Howard Eissenstat writes in a guest column for Informed Comment

Turkey’s Generals Resign: Thoughts on a New Chapter in Turkish Politics

For most of my professional life I have argued that one of the chief flaws of Turkish democracy was the overwhelming influence of its military. It is for this reason I have been largely sympathetic to the efforts of the ruling Justice and Development Party (AKP) at pushing the military out of politics and, as the Turkish saying has it, back into the barracks. This process seems to have come to an end this past week, when top-ranking Turkish generals resigned in protest against what they consider ill-treatment. No crisis ensued, no coup was staged. Effectively, nothing happened: the government selected new generals, security meetings continued as scheduled, and people went on with their business. Although the resignations certainly received press attention in Turkey, they have not caused an uproar. All in all, Turks are far more concerned about the recent scandal in their national soccer league.

I wish I could feel happier about all this, but I don’t. It is not that there is much to miss about the Turkish military’s meddling in Turkish politics. Beyond the coups, the Turkish military has created an undemocratic constitution, consistently pushed for a stupidly hard line against Turkey’s Kurds, engaged in extra-judicial killings and terrorism, allocated for itself unseemly wealth, worked to create an obscenely militaristic popular culture, and generally treated the country’s citizens as slightly backward children, in constant need of guidance.

The problem is that the absolutely healthy process of asserting civilian control is being undertaken by a political party that has shown an unhealthy willingness to politicize the bureaucracy and a marked intolerance for dissent. To give the AKP their due, they have won their elections primarily because of a winning formula: tolerance for Islam in the public sphere, effective government, a relative lack of corruption, good services, and a keen ear for national trends. The Prime Minister, Tayyip Erdoğan, is brusque, arrogant, and intolerant, but he is also smart, hardworking, deeply patriotic, and perhaps the most natural, instinctive politician Turkey has seen in a half century. Domestically and globally, Turkey has become, under AKP leadership, an important regional power, economically, culturally, and politically. The claim that they are Islamist (or even, as so many journalists describe them as “mildly Islamist”), is not supportable. After nearly a decade in power, there is nothing about their rule that fits with even the broadest definitions of an Islamist agenda. It is true that they are clearly devout Muslims and that this colors their worldview and their attitude to some issues both domestic (headscarves) and international (Israel), but this hardly qualifies as evidence of a call to sharia or traditional Islamic law. Claims on the wacky right notwithstanding, the AKP has no intention of re-establishing a Caliphate on the Bosphorus.

It isn’t quite that the AKP is undemocratic. They clearly believe in elections. But they tend to view elections in the same way as other large, successful political machines do: as a means of connecting with the base and distributing benefits, but not meant as a real check on their power. Although the AKP’s reforms had real, positive effects in its first five years, as it has consolidated power it has become less interested in opening up Turkish political discourse, more traditionally nationalistic, and more aggressive in its persecution of political opponents. One can hardly blame them for the weakness and ineptitude of the political opposition, but this has only exacerbated the problem of too much power in the hands of one party for too long. Turkish political life, always subject to a tradition of patronage called kadrolaşma,in which political allies are rewarded with positions in the bureaucracy, has now created something resembling a democratically elected single-party state.

The particular question over which the generals resigned last week was the on-going Ergenekon and Sledgehammer investigations. It seems likely that there is some truth to the basic premise of these investigations, which allege a conspiracy to destabilize the democratically elected government of Turkey as a means of dislodging the AKP from power. Nonetheless, the investigations have bloated beyond all recognition, with hundreds under investigation and no trial in sight. Many of those accused, including some top military officers, have been put into pre-trial detention indefinitely. Moreover, the investigations have come to look increasingly like a means of punishing political enemies. Ahmet Şık for example, a journalist with a long-standing interest in human rights, and one of those who helped publicize the Ergenekon case in the first place, is now under arrest as a conspirator, though it appears his major “crime” was to write a book critical of the political ambitions of the Gülen movement, a religious group with close ties to the governing AKP.

By and large, the mood among the Turkish journalists and human rights workers that I have spoken to in recent months has been dark. The Ergenekon investigations seem to have gone off-track and it is likely that many of those being held are, in fact, completely innocent. The AKP has, for all its success in the mechanics of democratic politics, proven to be remarkably illiberal in its own right: authoritarian in its instincts, intolerant of dissent, and increasingly militaristic in tone. Political opposition groups are weak and divided, while there are few cracks evident within the AKP’s own structure. Moreover, violence associated with Kurdish nationalism has been on the upswing. The AKP’s response has been markedly bellicose. It is, in the final analysis, a good thing that the Turkish military’s role in “stewarding” Turkish politics has come to an end. But I am not feeling very celebratory.

Howard Eissenstat, Department of History, St. Lawrence University

Posted in Turkey, Uncategorized | 4 Comments

As usual, Friday was a big day for the popular Arab reform movements that are challenging dictatorial governments.

1. Syrian security forces are alleged to have killed about 20 protesters on Friday, as the demonstrations and rallies continue to be vigorous in places like Hama and Deir al-Zor. The one-party state, ruled by the Baath Party, had attempted to mollify Syrians this week by issuing a law allowing many parties to contest elections. Most are not mollified.

2. Tens of thousands of Yemenis protested again on Friday, demanding an end to the regime of Ali Abdullah Saleh, who is recuperating in Saudi Arabia from burns in a bomb attack. A general who defected to the protesters provided them with protection in Sanaa via an unusually large convoy of military vehicles. Half of Yemen’s 23 million citizens own a gun, and fears of a bloody internal struggle have risen. Protests were held not only in the capital of Sanaa but also in Taez (the second-largest city), Maarib, and elsewhere.

3. Thousands of mostly Shiite protesters marched on the Budaiya highway outside Manama on Friday, denouncing the fixed “dialogue” process and tepid reforms offered by King Hamad Al Khalifa. The dialogue council had been heavily stacked with Sunnis and regime supporters. The Wifaq Party was marginalized. It represents the majority of Bahrain Shiites, who are roughly 60% of the population (down from 65% because of a crash program of giving citizenship to foreign Sunnis in recent years on the part of the regime). Shiite Bahrainis are disproportionately rural and poor and face employment, social and political discrimination. Wifaq seeks a constitutional monarchy, though the minority view that a republic would be even better may be gaining adherents as the monarchy uses hard line tactics to repress the majority demands. Manama is the site of the HQ of the US Fifth Fleet, and while the Obama administration has urged King Hamad to negotiate and compromise with his citizens, it has done no more than that, in the face of severe repression and violations of basic human rights. There is no evidence for the regime charge that Bahrain Shiites are cat’s paw of nearby Shiite Iran. Most Bahrain Shiites belong to a different legal school than Iranians, and, being Arabs, are skittish about the idea of Persian domination. (A minority of Bahrain Shiites, mostly in Manama, has Iranian ancestry). The demonstrations on Friday were a remarkable resurgence of the democracy movement, given how severe the crackdown against it was.

4. The Egyptian Left has been on a roll since July 8, starting back up the Tahrir protests and forcing the government to move more aggressively in trying former regime figures and out-of-control police, and in switching out about half the cabinet, replacing Establishment figures with persons more sympathetic too or even deriving from the ranks of the protesters. The Muslim fundamentalists were upset by this growing leftist influence, backed by labor activists and youth groups sympathetic to them, and so threatened to stage a big rally on July 29 in favor of implementing Islamic law. They were afraid in part that the Supreme Command of the Armed Forces, the real power behind the civilian cabinet of PM Essam Sharaf, will issue “guiding principles” for the drafting of the constitution, scheduled to begin this winter after elections. These “guiding principles” could forestall any Islamization of the constitution. The Wasat Party mediated a deal to avoid a clash at Tahrir Square, and it was decided that some 30 parties and organizations would hold a joint demonstration for mutually agreed-upon goals. The Freedom and Justice Party of the Muslim Brotherhood, which represents itself as the modern face of Muslim politics, largely abided by the agreement. But Salafis, who are a recognizable subculture in Egypt, did not. Salafi men tend to wear white, Saudi-style robes, checkered kaffiyas or head scarves, and large beards, often with no moustaches. The Salafis want an Islamic state and a hard line interpretation of shariah, and on Friday they said so loudly. The Salafis are a tiny group in Egypt, and they are widely seen to have behaved badly, even by other Muslim parties like the Muslim Brotherhood. In fact, the Salafis put a scare into women, middle class people, Coptic Christians, and youth on Friday that almost certainly hurt the chances of the Muslim Brotherhood in the upcoming elections, at least in urban areas. That is, the true significance of Friday’s events is the opposite of that you see in a lot of today’s headlines in the Western press, about Muslim politics coming to the fore. More like Muslim politics behaves like a boor.

5. Some 3,000 Muslim fundamentalists protested in downtown Amman, Jordan, demanding “genuine reform.” On July 15, pro-regime crowds (or paid hands, who knows?) attacked protesters and journalists there. The fundamentalists took a joint oath to remain peaceful. Polling does not show that Muslim fundamentalism is very popular in Jordan, and as long as the protests are spearheaded by that part of the political spectrum, they are unlikely to amount to much.

Posted in Bahrain, Egypt, Islam, Islamophobia, Syria, Uncategorized, Yemen | 8 Comments

Egyptian newspaper Al-Shuruq in Arabic for July 29, 2011: Article on Anders Breivik with the title, “Europe’s Extreme Right: A Hatred Factory”

Al-Shuruq Article on Breivik

Posted in Uncategorized | 2 Comments