Two Americans victorious in Europe

Congratulations to Tiger Woods winning the British Open and Floyd Landis winning the Tour de France.

Noah Feldman on democracy in the Middle East

Published 21 July 2006 online and in the 30 July Times Magazine: "Ballots and Bullets" is an essay analyzing the new situation in and around Israel. Excerpts: .... the cold-war days of balanced powers are behind us now. Faced with the threat of terror, the remaining superpower chose to unleash at once the forces of freedom and instability. From Baghdad to Beirut, Gaza City, Haifa and beyond, the consequences are beginning to be realized. We are in the world of asymmetry, of democratically legitimated militias and armed bands that fight wars with powerful states. Democracy can no longer be seen as an end in itself, and the fate of peoples lies in their own hands. ... The most important new feature of the present situation is the strange hybrid character shared by Hamas and Hezbollah: both are simultaneously militias and democratically elected political parties participating in government. ... Hamas and Hezbollah may have sparked this round of fighting, but the bombs raining down on their cities and the soldiers in their bases still come from Israel, and no one likes to be bombed. ...

Ze'ev Schiff of Haaretz compared two wars against Lebanon: 1982 versus 2006

Published in Haaretz.com: "1982 versus 2006" Many people see no difference between Israel's 1982 Lebanon War and the present war. For example, some Arabs are astounded that the Israeli public is supporting its government and its military moves. Thus the major differences between the two wars must be pointed out: namely, differences in background, objective and modus operandi .... Israel opposed international intervention in 1982, whereas, today, it considers United Nations Security Council Resolution 1559 congruent with the war's strategic aim. That resolution calls for Hezbollah to be disarmed and for the Lebanese government and army to assume responsibility for southern Lebanon up to the border with Israel .... If Israel makes no substantive changes in its objectives, takes greater care to avoid harming the Lebanese people and keeps its operations to the proper proportions, the support it enjoys in the present war will continue unabated.

New York Times on China and Chen Guangcheng

Published 20 July: "Advocate for China’s Weak Runs Afoul of the Powerful". BEIJING, July 19 — Only a few years ago, Chen Guangcheng, a blind man who taught himself the law, was hailed as a champion of peasant rights who symbolized China’s growing embrace of legal norms. Mr. Chen helped other people with disabilities avoid illegal fees and taxes. He forced a paper mill to stop spewing toxic chemicals into his village’s river. The authorities in his home province, Shandong, considered him a propaganda coup and broadcast clips from his wedding ceremony on television. All that changed last year, when he organized a rare class-action lawsuit against the local government for forcing peasants to have late-term abortions and be sterilized. Mr. Chen, 35, is now a symbol of something else: the tendency of Communist Party officials to use legal pretexts to crush dissent. On Thursday a court in Yinan County of Shandong Province is to hear charges that Mr. Chen destroyed public property and gathered a crowd to block traffic. His lawyers argue that he would have had trouble committing those crimes even if he could see. At the time they were said to have occurred, he was being guarded day and night by a team of local officials. His case is typical of efforts to punish lawyers, journalists and participants in environmental, health and religious groups who expose abuses or organize people in a manner officials consider threatening. Like Mr. Chen, they are often accused of fraud, illicit business practices or leaking state secrets, charges that do not reflect the political nature of their offenses....

John Ibbitson writes from Ottawa

From The Globe and Mail, published 15 July (online registration required): Harper sticks close to traditional allies .... But what matters is that Mr. Harper is seen by both the British and U.S. governments as a steadier ally than his two predecessors. This will hearten those at home who have lamented the drift from ancient alliances, and appall those who see the United States and its alleged poodles as out of control.... I included this quotation because a lot of my friends and acquaintances are one who are appalled; on the other hand, I am heartened by the following: .... The meeting of the two prime ministers [Blair and Harper] at 10 Downing St. yesterday re-enforced a fundamental reality of this new government, one that many Canadians may not yet fully appreciate. Under Mr. Harper's Conservatives, Canada has undergone a major shift in its foreign policy. It has replaced carefully balanced responses with bold statements. It has sacrificed Canada's traditional even-handedness for plain declarations based on moral certainty. Rather than cleaving to the multilateral consensus (read the United Nations), the Harper government has chosen to stick close to Canada's traditional allies, with the United States at the centre, Great Britain and Australia not far removed, and continental Europe a distant object.... My take on Canada's foreign and domestic policies. If you read Prime Minister Harper's speeches, there are "bottom lines" which guide his strategy and thinking. Compared to the last prime minister, Harper is not "anything goes" or "you want money, here it is." On domestic files, he means what he says. You have to pay attention to what he says because he says very little in public, and when it is unspoken, it leads me to conclude that the Canadian government is thinking through complicated files, e.g. Canada's economic competitiveness versus the rest of the world and Canada's response to cut greenhouse emissions. On foreign policy, it means that Canada is not "we stand for this ... but we understand that ..." In the grand game of RISK real-time, Canada as a middle power associates with certain allies closer than some others, maintains diplomatic relations with countries in the world, and condemns truly outrageous stuff from "rogue states" and terrorists.

"India’s Indestructible Heart" wrote Naresh Fernandes from Mumbai

From New York Times, published July 12: MY Tuesday morning began with a flashback of the tragedy that “buried Lower Manhattan in a cloud of toxic dust that for a moment blotted out the sun.” That’s how a former colleague of mine from The Wall Street Journal had ended the first chapter of her memoir about her experiences on 9/11, which she had just e-mailed me from New York. Twelve hours later, Indian news channels reported an explosion on a rush-hour train just past Bandra, the suburban stop where I’d gotten off an hour before. Our commuter rail’s western line carries three million of us back from work every evening, so almost everybody I know was a potential victim. Just as I was absorbing the enormity of the blast, there was news of another — and then some more. As the evening wore on, we learned that there’d been eight blasts, all timed within a few minutes. Many of us had seen this before. On March 12, 1993, at least 10 bombs shattered the spine of our city, then called Bombay, in two hours, tearing their way northward in short, deadly bursts. That attack left 257 dead. Since then, the city has been the target of several other vicious bombings, most recently in 2003, when car bombs went off at the city’s most recognizable symbol, the Gateway of India. The last few years have been difficult for overcrowded Mumbai, but this fortnight has left nerves especially taut. Moderate monsoon rains caused such enormous flooding that the whole city was shut down for three days. Those floods evoked memories of the cloudburst last July 26, when more than 400 people were drowned, electrocuted and crushed after their homes collapsed on top of them. It was a tragedy that brought into focus how years of willful neglect and breathtaking corruption by municipal officials, working in tandem with avaricious politicians and real estate developers, have brought India’s financial capital to its knees. After “26/7,” as the press immediately labeled the day, our politicians and administrators fell over themselves to assure us that they’d set things right. Last week’s rains showed that their promises were as empty as our drains were full of rubbish. Then, when the rain stopped last week, we found hooligans rampaging through our streets. As we settled down to brunch on Sunday, our TV sets brought us the chilling sight of buses being ransacked and burnt across Mumbai by cadres of the Hindu nativist Shiv Sena party. They claimed that a statue of their leader’s late wife had been vandalized, and they were protesting in the only way they knew how. Despite the long history of sporadic violence, Mumbai has always picked itself up by its bootstraps and marched off to work as soon as the trains started working again. Our ability to jeer at misfortune is attributed in the Indian press to the “spirit of Bombay,” which is variously described as “indomitable,” “never say die” and “undying.” But our spirit has been saluted so frequently of late, all the praise was beginning to annoy me. Before I left the office Tuesday evening, I finished a magazine article complaining that this illogical faith in Bombay’s innate resilience had the unfortunate consequence of absolving the city’s administrators of the responsibility of actually fixing our problems. No matter how bad things get, they seem to suggest, we have an infinite capacity to cope. Soon after hearing about the blasts, I made my way to the local hospital to see if they needed blood donations. It had been less than an hour since the first explosion, but I’d been beaten to it by nearly 200 people. When the volunteers found that the authorities had adequate supplies of blood, they waited patiently to help carry victims into the wards. Others stood over shocked survivors, fanning them with newspapers and helping them contact relatives. Stories of exceptional selflessness have flooded in all evening. One came from my friend Aarti, who was in one of the trains on which a bomb went off. As she jumped out of her compartment, she saw streams of slum dwellers from the bleak shanties along the tracks rushing toward the train with bed sheets. They knew that there would be no stretchers to be found and were offering their threadbare cottons to be used as hammocks to carry victims away. Perhaps the newspapers have it right after all. An anguished night has fallen over Mumbai, but when the city eventually sleeps it will do so secure in the knowledge that its spirit is unbroken, that it is, exactly like the myth has it, indomitable and undying. Naresh Fernandes is the editor of Time Out Mumbai. (a magazine launched in 2004)

Not to be overtaken by missile testing, the Westerners have their war games

Check out RIMPAC2006. The Telegraph has a reporter onboard USS Bonhomme Richard.

India's turn

After North Korea's Taepodong-2, now comes India's Agni-3. But as the Times of India comments, Communist China's intercontinental ballistic missiles are superior.

Viva l'Italia!

Great football game to watch today, Italy 5, France 3. Congratulations to the Italian team for its victory and to the French team for fighting hard.

USS Mustin in Japan and comments on the end of the Cold War

Remember Communist China kicked up a fuss when Taiwan wanted to upgrade its navy by attempting to purchase American-made destroyers loaded with missile-tracking systems. Well, there are now eight now in the Sea of Japan. Remember the Cold War and "MAD" (which stands for Mutually Assured Destruction). From the 1960s to 90s, the Soviet and governments stared at each other across the division of East and West Germany, armed and nuclear-armed to the teeth and "fought" each other with diplomacy, espionage, funding to Third-World countries, industrial production and scientific research. Now the Cold War has been over for fifteen years and countries are left with playing the game of RISK, Real-Time. As in any game, a player sometimes makes a stupid mistake or a questionable move. The latest firing of ballistic missiles by North Korea is an example. For weeks, the Americans knew about someting happening and warned North Korea publicly to refrain from firing. North Korea decided to fire test missiles anyway--it continued to be a sovereign state after all. Well, every action is followed by a reaction. Failed missile test launches were met with diplomacy, protests and talk of sanctions in the United Nations. An enemy declaring itself a nuclear power and testing ballistic missiles made a move resulting in uniting Japan, US, UK and France. North Korea had to contend with Communist China and Russia essentially saying North Korea made a stupid move; so, let's move on. Sigh, plus ça change, plus de la même chose.