Palestine problems: 'pogrom' in West Bank, collapse in Gaza

Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Olmert spoke out forcefully against attacks against Palestinians by Israeli settlers in the city of Hebron in the West Bank last week. Settlers were described as going on a rampage after the Israeli Defense Forces evicted them from a building they were illegally occupying, more than a dozen Palestinians were wounded in the violence, several of them shot by settlers. There were also reports of settlers trying to burn at least one Palestinian home.

Olmert called the wave of violence a 'pogrom', which is an emotionally charged word for Israelis since it historically has been used to describe anti-semetic attacks carried out against Jewish communities. "The sight of Jews firing at innocent Palestinians has no other name than pogrom," Olmert said at a meeting of his cabinet this week.

Olmert, along with former prime ministers Ehud Barak and Shimon Perez, recently have all basically said that Israel needs to give up on settlements in the West Bank to ensure a peaceful future with both the Palestinians and the larger Arab world. They have shown interest in restarting talks over a proposal put forward by Saudi Arabia in 2002 where the nations of the Arab world would sign peace agreements with Israel in return for Israel withdrawing from occupied areas in the West Bank and Golan Heights.

Meanwhile, a report from the World Bank on Saturday said that civil society in the Gaza Strip (the other part of the Palestinian Territories) was near collapse and urged Israel to allow shippments of cash to banks in Gaza. Israel has maintained a blockade of Gaza since Hamas was voted into power in elections in teh summer of 2007. But now banks in Gaza are running out of money, meaning many civil servants will likely not be paid. Unemployment is already high in Gaza, home to two and a half million people; nearly 70,000 draw a salary from the Palestinian government.

Rumor mill: Is Putin really a Georgian?

On the odd news for docket today, courtesy of the Scotsman newspaper, is the claim of an 82-year old Georgian woman that she is actually Russian Prime Minister Vladimir Putin's mother.

Vera Putina claims that she gave up young Vlad when he was 10 years old, sending him off to live with his grandparents in Russia. His father, she says, was a Russian mechanic already married to another woman.

Putin's official biography is that he was born in St. Petersburg; his father served in the Soviet Navy and his paternal grandfather was once Josef Stalin's personal chef. Putin's parents both died in the 1990's.

Vera Putina says, "I used to be proud of having a son who became president of Russia. Since the war [between Russian and Georgia last summer] I am ashamed."

Putina's claim makes for an interesting story, but one that's hard to believe - if the claim was valid it's hard to imagine that Putin's political opponents wouldn't have used it earlier on in his career, or that Georgian President Mikhail Saakashvili wouldn't be making more of it to try to embarrass his rival. Vera Putina has offered to take a DNA test to confirm her claim.

More calls for Mugabe to go

British Prime Minister Gordon Brown added his voice to the chorus of world leaders telling Zimbabwe's President Robert Mugabe it's time to go. The situation in Zimbabwe gets worse by the day, a cholera outbreak, caused by the country's crumbling water and sewer systems, has already killed more than 600 people. Refugees are now spreading cholera to Zimbabwe's neighbors South Africa and Botswana. Brown said that this makes the situation in Zimbabwe "an international rather than a national emergency."

Botswana's foreign minister, meanwhile, blamed his fellow Southern African neighbors for allowing Mugabe to stay in power so long. Phandu Skelemani told BBC radio that Zimbabwe's neighbors could bring down Mugabe's regime in a matter of weeks if they wanted to. The reason? Zimbabwe is a landlocked country, so all of its imports must be unloaded at ports in neighboring countries and then shipped into Zimbabwe. Skelemani said that if neighboring countries just refused to supply Mugabe's government with gasoline, it could be enough to bring him down. "If you deny him petrol which is used by the armed forces, which is used by the police, I don't think he'll last two weeks," he said.

Earlier in the year dockworkers in South Africa refused to unload a shipload of weapons ordered by Mugabe from China, because they thought Zimbabwe's security forces would use them to silence the opposition. The ship ultimately had to return to China without unloading, so Skelemani makes a good point on how vulnerable Zimbabwe is to outside pressure. Other African nations though have been reluctant to stand up to Mugabe because in the late 1970's Mugabe was a hero in Zimbabwe's struggle for independence from their colonial masters Great Britain. Of course since then Mugabe has turned into a run-of-the-mill despot doing whatever it takes to stay in power, the kind of leader that has been holding Africa back for decades now.

Until Zimbabwe’s neighbors decide to stand up for the ideas of democracy and responsible leadership, the situation will only get worse.

US not thrilled with Russia's EATO idea

US officials dismissed a Russian proposal for a new international body to provide security for much of the Northern Hemisphere. Russia used a meeting of the Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe (OSCE) on Thursday to put forward a pet project of Russian President Dmitri Medvedev, sometimes called "EATO" or the Euro-Atlantic Treaty Organization. Medvedev sees EATO as a modern-day replacement for NATO, which he calls a "Cold War relic".

But the US officials in attendance weren't buying it. "There is no need for some new architecture," said US deputy assistant secretary of state Matthew Bryza. "I think it's about looking for an alternative to NATO, which has worked so well.

Er, maybe not...I think it's a little difficult to make the "NATO is working well" argument when you look at NATO's record recently. NATO has a large presence in Afghanistan, where things have been getting steadily worse recently and Afghan President Hamid Karzai has been getting more and more critical of the Western military forces operating in his country; NATO also sent several warships to patrol off of the coast of Somalia, but the number of pirate attacks have actually gone up since their arrival. A bigger problem for NATO is that few countries even send troops to missions like Afghanistan or Somalia, and some countries that do (like Germany) put restrictions on their troops' involvement, like keeping them out of combat zones, which would seem to defeat the purpose of sending troops to a conflict zone in the first place. And the idea of expanding NATO to include Georgia and Ukraine has been a source of great tension within Europe since it was announced, potentially making Europe less, rather than more, secure.

It’s hard then to buy the argument that NATO is doing a good job these days. But Bryza’s (and the United States') real reason for opposing the idea of EATO is that Medvedev has talked about bringing together Russia, the countries of Europe, even Canada; everyone except the US, so you can see why we wouldn't be exactly thrilled with the idea.

Few European nations at the OSCE meeting were said to be that excited about EATO either, but French President (and the current holder of the European Union's rotating presidency) Nicolas Sarkozy has promised to hold further talks on the idea.

More political wrangling in Canada

Earlier in the week I wrote about the very un-Canadian power struggle developing in their government. Things up there just keep getting more interesting...

To recap - three of the opposition parties in the Canadian Parliament were planning to cast a vote of no confidence against Prime Minister Stephen Harper, bringing down his Conservative government elected only weeks ago. But Harper has managed to derail their attempt, for a little while at least. Harper basically shut the parliament down until the end of January (a first for Canada), preventing the opposition from holding their vote.

And the no confidence scheme may be backfiring for the opposition group. A poll taken this week showed that the Conservative Party now has nearly twice the level of support than the Liberals, 45% to 24%, a jump of 10% in support levels for the Conservatives from polls taken just last month.

Harper said he would use the delay in Parliament to put together an economic recovery plan for Canada (the opposition group said they were voting no confidence over Harper's handling of the financial crisis). Canada appears to be joining nations around the world in sliding into recession - figures for October showed 70,000 jobs lost in the manufacturing sector, the highest level since 1982.

Western powers blast Zimbabwe

It seems like the West is finally waking up to the awful situation in Zimbabwe.

David Miliband, Great Britain’s foreign secretary, ripped into the government of Robert Mugabe calling it a "rogue regime" over its mismanagement of the country's economy and health care sectors. Not only does Zimbabwe have an utterly ridiculous inflation rate (estimated in the range of hundreds of millions or even billions of percent), but the country is also now suffering from an outbreak of cholera that has killed hundreds so far.

"The economy is in free-fall. Education and health systems have failed. Public infrastructure is in terminal decline and the government is unwilling and unable to look after its own people," Miliband said. "This is a direct result of the abuse, neglect and corruption of a Mugabe regime which long ago lost respect and in March's elections lost its legitimacy."

Meanwhile US Secretary of State Condoleeza Rice was even more blunt.

"It's well past time for Robert Mugabe to leave, that's now obvious," Rice said. "There has been a sham election, there was a sham power-sharing. We are now seeing the humanitarian toll."

Speaking of that supposed power-sharing...after three months of negotiations Mugabe and opposition leader Morgan Tsvangirai still have not come to an agreement on how to jointly run the country, mostly because Mugabe's idea of power-sharing has been to keep all the power for himself and shove Tsvangirai off to the side. Tsvangirai has refused to sign onto a deal that would leave the military and national police forces under Mugabe's control. For the past few years, Mugabe has used the military to crush political opposition to his rule, so you can understand why Tsvangirai would be reluctant to agree to a setup where Mugabe keeps control over the state security forces. Mugabe is now threatening to call for a new round of elections if Tsvangirai doesn't sign onto the deal, though what good another election will do since the last was largely considered a sham is a good question.

Miliband and Rice said it is up to the other nations in Southern Africa to put pressure on Mugabe to either share power or step down.

Putin: Russia will survive difficult period

Russia's Prime Minister Vladimir Putin this week continued a tradition he started while he was president by holding his annual nationwide televised question and answer session with the public. Given the global economic crisis, it's not surprising that many of the questions in the three-hour broadcast focused on the economy. Putin said that inflation in Russia would likely hit 13% this year, while the economy was expected to grow around 7% this year and only projected to grow by 3% in 2009. Strong economic growth was a hallmark of Putin's two terms as president. Putin went on to say that it was possible that the government would buy "large scale" stakes in major Russian corporations and banks to help stabilize them in the global crisis, but ruled out nationalizing any of them. Putin said there would be no sharp devaluations of the ruble - a fear in the back of the minds of many Russians who recall when the country's currency suddenly collapsed during Russia's last economic crisis in 1998.

On the international front, Putin hoped for better US-Russian relations when President Obama takes office. He did have tough talk for Ukraine though, threatening to cut off supplies of natural gas if Ukraine does not pay up on back debts owed to Russian gas suppliers. Not only is Ukraine a major consumer of natural gas from Russia, but it also hosts major pipelines that carry Russian gas into Europe. Russia has warned Ukraine not to siphon off gas bound for Europe to use in Ukraine if the outstanding bills are not paid. It is another factor contributing to the already tense relations between Ukraine and Russia.

Putin tried to squash rumors that President Dmitry Medvedev will soon step down to allow Putin to return to the presidency saying their "tandem" rule of the country had been working well. He did not rule out running for president again in 2012, when Medvedev's term expires. Russian law does not prevent Putin from running for a third term; a person is only kept from serving more than two consecutive terms.

Finally, a brief note on the coverage of Putin's speech in the Western media: like much of the coverage of Russia, it tends to miss some important points. Putin spoke mostly about the economy, but reports in Reuters and the Associated Press gave a lot of space to talking about the idea that Putin would try to retake the presidency and to a comment he made about wanting to hang Georgian President Mikheil Saakashvili "by the balls", a crude and silly comment (Saakashvili's reply was something along the lines that Putin didn't have enough rope) that really isn't worth a lot of discussion (plus it was made a few weeks ago anyway). The AP noted that Putin, rather than Medvedev, was dealing with the economy - but under the Russian system dealing with the economy is the prime minister's responsibility, so it just makes sense that Putin would discuss it extensively during his Q-and-A. Reuters noted that Medvedev hasn't done one of these town hall-style meetings, implying that he's distant from the public. But what Reuters failed to note is that Medvedev regularly posts a video blog (Putin himself notes that Medvedev is far more tech-savvy than he), which is a very direct, and modern, way for the president to stay in touch with the people.

US-Iraq agreement revealed

Nearly lost in the Thanksgiving hubbub last week was the announcement that the United States and Iraq’s government have finally reached an agreement over the future of US troops in their country. The two sides needed to sign a Status of Forces Agreement (SOFA) because the original UN mandate that authorized the 2003 invasion was set to expire at the end of this year. Without a new agreement the US would, under international law, have no right to keep troops in Iraq past December 31 (though as I said earlier, perhaps that's not such a bad idea).

Negotiating the SOFA though has been an ordeal. President Bush was so determined to get the agreement done before the end of his term, he agreed to a withdrawal timetable - something he repeatedly slammed the Democrats for requesting. Even then the Iraqi government was reluctant to sign onto the SOFA, adding in their own round of changes (after Bush had said that SOFA negotiations were finished). The Iraqis delayed the final vote so that even more changes could be made to bring reluctant Sunni lawmakers onboard.

The details of the deal have finally been made public. The highlights:

• US troops have to withdraw from all Iraqi cities by June 30, 2009 and from the country entirely by the end of 2011 (so ironically Bush has set the stage for Obama to make good on one of his main campaign promises);


• the US will have the right to use Iraq's airspace and waters, but the US has promised that it will not use Iraq as a base to launch an attack on any of Iraq's neighbors (read that as Iran);


• US forces will not be allowed to detain Iraqis without criminal charges; and finally,


• US soldiers will not have immunity to Iraqi law when they are off US bases off-duty, nor will US contractors be immune to Iraqi law.

That last item is a major departure for US policy regarding our troops. The US government has SOFA agreements with countries all over the world, but one common provision is that US troops are immune to local laws. If they are accused of a crime in a foreign country it is up to the US military to prosecute them, not the local courts. In Iraq this immunity was also extended to US contractors who performed many paramilitary duties around the country (think of security firms like Blackwater). According to one report by MSNBC the lifting of immunity for contractors may be retroactive, meaning they could be charged for incidents that occurred years earlier. MSNBC said that firms like Blackwater are quite upset about that tidbit...

But even with all the changes made to the SOFA, it was still a hard sell for the Iraqis. Some Sunni parties did not go along with it, and a bloc of Shiite lawmakers loyal to cleric Muqtada al-Sadr vocally opposed it. Neither group is happy with the continued presence of US troops in Iraq, nor to they want to see the government of Prime Minister Nuri al-Maliki strengthened. And even though the Iraqi government has approved the pact, it's still not the final word on the deal. The whole agreement is scheduled to be put up for a national referendum before July 30 of next year.

But for now there's a deal in place and the troops will be in Iraq for some time to come.

Political intrigue in Canada

In the United States we tend to look at Canada as our very polite, terminally boring northern neighbor, but a full-blown political fistfight is brewing in the Great White North, namely Canada's three opposition parties have cooked up a plan to oust Prime Minister Stephen Harper and the Conservative Party from power.

Harper just won reelection last month (and a note to American politicians, the entire campaign and election season in Canada lasted just SIX WEEKS!), building the Conservative Party's number of seats in Parliament and handing the Liberal Party one of its worst defeats ever. But Harper and the Conservatives didn't win enough seats for an outright majority in Parliament, so they were forced to set up a minority government.

If you're not quite sure how parliaments work, a brief recap. Ideally, one party will have a majority of the seats in a parliament, giving them the right to run the executive branch of the government - the prime minister's post, the cabinet, heads of different ministries, etc. A lot of times though one party doesn't get a majority, so it makes a deal with a smaller party to form a coalition to reach a majority and form a government. Then there is the situation that Harper has in Canada, where the Conservatives don't have a majority but instead of forming a coalition they have decided to rule as a minority government. This means that they have to get other parties to support them on important issues; if they lose a vote in parliament it can be taken as a vote of "no confidence" in the government, meaning they have to step down.

This is what's going on now in Canada. The three other parties in the Canadian Parliament - the Liberals, the New Democrats and Bloc Quebecois - have announced that next week they will hold a no confidence vote in Harper's government, bringing it down. They will then form a coalition to run the country in its place with Liberal Party leader Stephane Dion already picked as the new Prime Minister. Their reason for the vote is anger over how Harper is dealing with the economic crisis that is gripping Canada like most other places in the world.

Of course the Conservatives are up in arms over this plan, calling it "undemocratic" and suggesting it's something akin to a coup. They point out that the voters overwhelmingly rejected the Liberals just last month. To make matters worse Dion, in the wake of his party's big loss, already announced he'd step down from his post next May, a plan he intends to stick with even if he now becomes Prime Minister. Since the opposition parties are upset at Harper's plans (or lack of plans) to deal with the economic crisis, you have to wonder then if having three Prime Ministers in six months is really the best course of action.

I guess politics in Canada can be interesting after all.

New offer from Zimbabwe government: free graves!

The cholera epidemic is getting so bad in Zimbabwe that authorities in the capital, Harare, are offering free graves to the families of victims. The reason? The economy has collapsed to a point that most families cannot afford the roughly $30 it costs to bury someone in the city.

So let's review - under Robert Mugabe's leadership Zimbabwe has fallen to the point where they can't provide their people with food, medicine or clean water, but they will give you a free hole in the ground when you die. It would be funny if it weren’t so tragic.

And it's likely to only get worse. Since the infrastructure has collapsed from lack of maintenance in much of the country people have taken to digging latrines in their back yards, along with wells. And with the rainy season coming it's expected that the excess rain will cause waste from the hastily dug latrines to spill into the hastily dug wells, contaminating them and causing an even larger cholera outbreak.

Mugabe, meanwhile, jetted off for Qatar to attend a UN conference on financing development. Surely the guy whose country has an inflation rate estimated at 231 million percent has a lot to offer by way of economic advice. Again, it would be funny if it weren’t so tragic.