These Are the Good Guys?

Gul Haider, a commander of the Northern Alliance that swept into Kabul after the Taliban's collapse, makes no apology for owning a mansion in Shirpur.

"We are praying for the poor people to have houses like us," he said. "But everything belongs to God. God knows better who should be given property and who shouldn't. God gave us this property and we built our houses. We are praying that God will look more favorably on the poor." - The Boston Globe, November 11, 2006

Meanwhile, Children work the streets to support families because they are so desperately poor. The favoured economic activity for children is picking soda cans out of the dump to sell.



Meanwhile parts of Kabul have been changed into a "mini-Paris" for better enjoyment of rich people, warlords, drug-lords, NGOs etc., most of them high ranking government officials.



More photos

New U.N. leader to visit Addis

Also in the news: [Police Violence in the Streets of Addis] - [Siye Abraha's closing statement] - [U.N. eyes more cuts in Eritrea-Ethiopia peace force] - [Islamist Fighters Captured Fleeing Somalia] - [Clan Divisions Threaten Somalia Government] - [Al Amoudi to build new resort at Bawadi]

International: [Sudan says U.S. troops raided its embassy in Iraq] - [Bush won't reauthorize eavesdropping program] - [Israel's military chief offers to resign over Lebanon war] - [Defense team of Saddam honoured in Libya] and more of today's top stories!


The scientists who mind the Doomsday Clock moved it two minutes closer to midnight on Wednesday -- symbolizing the annihilation of civilization and adding the perils of global warming for the first time. (More...)

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-[Audio] Public Radio: Ethiopia’s Quagmire in Somalia (Ken Menkhaus—Associate Professor, Political Science, Davidson College; Former U.N. Policy Advisor on Somalia)

- [Audio] Public Radio: The Efforts of Ethiopia and the U.S. in Somalia (Ahmed Samartar—Dean, Institute for Global Citizenship, Macalester College)
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- Siye Abraha's closing statement -

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Meles Zenawi hails Kadhafi`s peace efforts in Somalia

Tripoli, Libya, 01/17 - Ethiopian Premier Meles Zenawi has commended Libyan leader Mouammar Kadhafi for his sustained efforts towards peace, political and social reconciliation in Africa, and particularly in Somalia.

This was expressed Tuesday in Tripoli by visiting Ethiopian foreign minister Seyoum Mesfin, during a meeting with his Libyan counterpart Abderrahmane Chalgham to whom he handed a message from Zenawi to Col Kadhafi.

Mesfin said the Ethiopian prime minister and people had great respect for the Libyan leader for the efforts he has deployed to reinforce unity and stability in the African continent.

During the meeting, Mesfin reaffirmed his country`s willingness to withdraw its forces from Somalia as quickly as possible, noting that Ethiopia intends to withdraw its troops in weeks but would like to leave behind a state of national reconciliation and to help Somalis rebuild their country.(More...)

U.N. eyes more cuts in Eritrea-Ethiopia peace force

UNITED NATIONS (Reuters) - The U.N. Security Council, frustrated by the long-stalled peace process between Ethiopia and Eritrea, is leaning toward more cutbacks in the peacekeeping force monitoring their shared border, diplomats said on Tuesday.

Most members of the 15-nation council support cutting the force to 1,700 from its current 2,300, although some African states worry that too few peacekeepers could risk a new flare-up in the 1998-2000 border war between the Horn of Africa neighbors that killed 70,000 people, the diplomats said.

The council in May 2006 trimmed the peacekeeping force to 2,300 troops from 3,300. U.N. troops were first sent to Ethiopia and Eritrea in 2000 to enforce the ceasefire ending their border conflict. As part of the peace agreement, both countries pledged to accept a new border as set out by an international commission.

But the new border has never been marked out after Ethiopia rejected part of it and Eritrea objected that Ethiopia was not being held to its word, leading to a four-year impasse. (More...)

Lewit Blog: Police Violence in the Streets of Addis

Yesterday while coming home from work I passed a group of policemen standing in a semi-circle. Though they were dressed in the tan uniforms of the local police, it was obvious by their guns and boots that they were actually federal security forces.

In the middle was a man who looked to be in his late-twenties, on his knees with his arms tied behind his back. His nose was bleeding and it was obvious that he had been beaten.

There must have been at least 6 or 7 of them. Before the traffic started up again, I saw the man look around in confusion and then flop over in the dirt on his side while the policeman moved closer--to close the cirlce, and, I assume, to block such crimes from the view of passing cars. Then they started kicking him.(More...)

Islamist Fighters Captured Fleeing Somalia

MOGADISHU, Somalia, Jan. 17 — Somali Islamist fighters, possibly including some top leaders, were arrested as they tried to escape across the border into Kenya, Kenyan authorities said today. The arrests raised the possibility of a sticky asylum issue.“We have detained a number of people, but we are still trying to determine their identities,” said Alfred Mutua, spokesman for the Kenyan government.

According to Somali officials, one of the Somalis captured by Kenyan soldiers may be Sheikh Sharif Sheikh Ahmed, the second in command of the defeated Islamist Court Union forces.

Gen. Ismail Qasim Naji of the Somali transitional government said that Sheikh Sharif’s briefcase was recently discovered at a jungle hideout in southwestern Somalia.

“It had some important documents in it,” General Naji said at a press conference in Mogadishu, Somalia’s seaside capital. When a reporter asked what they were, the general replied, “Top secret.”

Ethiopian-led troops routed the Islamist forces that controlled most of Somalia, including the capital, last month after the Islamists mounted an attack on Baidoa, the seat of the country’s transitional government. (More...)

Al Amoudi to build new resort at Bawadi

Dubai: Al Amoudi, a diversified business group, said it will develop an Ottoman Palace Hotel and Resort at Bawadi, the Dh100 billion hospitality and tourism boulevard near Dubailand.

The company yesterday signed an agreement with Bawadi to create the resort that will replicate the 16th and 17th century era. The agreement confirming the partnership was signed between Saeed Al Muntafiq, chief executive of Tatweer, Bawadi's parent entity and Shaikh Mohammad Al Amoudi, chairman of Golden Leaves Hotels and Resorts Ltd at the Bawadi offices in Dubai.

Al Muntafiq said: "Shaikh Mohammad Al Amoudi represents the best of private sector entrepreneurship and is proof of much of what is happening in African development.(More...)

New U.N. leader to visit Addis

(CapitalEthiopia) The new U.N. Secretary-General Mr.Ban Ki-moon said Thursday he will attend an African Union summit in Ethiopia and a meeting on Lebanese reconstruction on his first major trips abroad, reflecting his intention to prioritize Africa and the Middle East.

The AU summit in Addis Ababa scheduled for January 29th to 30th will address three of the world's most visible hot spots - the Darfur region of Sudan, Somalia, and the Congo. "Africa will be the focus of many of my priorities, and my first major trip will reflect that focus," Ban Ki-moon told a news conference.

On his way to Africa, Ban will stop in Paris to attend an international donors' conference on January25 focused on the reconstruction in Lebanon following a 34-day war between Israel and Hezbollah guerrillas in the summer. He said he wanted to "inject new momentum into the search for peace and stability in the Middle East."

The focus of much of the AU summit will be the four-year-old conflict in Darfur in which more than 200,000 people have died.

"It is particularly important that we succeed in putting a strong, well resourced force on the ground," he said, alluding to the widespread belief that the 7,000-strong AU force currently patrolling the region is too small and ill-quipped to adequately protect civilians.

Sudanese President Omar al-Bashir has repeatedly refused, most recently on Wednesday, to allow U.N. peacekeeping troops to replace the beleaguered African force, saying any international force would be "colonialist."

Today's Top Stories

-Clan Divisions Threaten Somalia Government
-Sudan says U.S. troops raided its embassy in Iraq
-Mullah Omar 'hiding in Pakistan'
-NATO: Taliban leader detained in Afghanistan
-Bush won't reauthorize eavesdropping program
-Israel's military chief offers to resign over Lebanon war
-Countdown to the Apocalypse: Scientists Change Doomsday Clock
-China blocks entry to Scorsese's "Departed"
-Defense team of Saddam honoured in Libya

How Cities Help Regulate Fear

Why do people in rural areas tend to be more Right-wing than people in urban areas?

First, Rural and Suburban areas promote fear:

In an open city...people of different colors and incomes must negotiate their mutual fate together. In some respects, they learn to value one another more highly, and social networks are expanded. In socially isolated environments [such as gated suburbs], social distance leads to stereotyping and misunderstanding, which in turn leads to fear and even greater distance. A resident in one of our [suburban] focus groups exemplified this dynamic when she told us that she never left her downtown San Francisco office building, even for lunch, for fear of people on the streets. Her building is located on a central street of department stores and offices, populated at lunch hour mainly by businesspeople and shoppers. But because it is a public space where anyone may go, it is too uncontrolled for her comfort, too unpredictable. Unlike her gated suburb, its openness increases the vulnerability she already feels to an unacceptable level.
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As one citizen told Constance Perin in her study of community and place in American life: "See, you have to understand the fundamental feeling in the suburbs is fear, let's face it. The basic emotional feeling is fear. Fear of blacks, fear of physical harm, fear of their kids being subjected to drugs, which are identified as a black problem, fear of all the urban ills. They feel [that] by moving to the suburbs they've run away from it, in fact, they haven't, in reality they haven't, but in their own mind's eye they've moved away from the problem." From Blakely & Snyder's Fortress America: Gated Communities in the United States via Bicycle Fixation

Not only are residents of vibrant cities usually less fearful of crime, they also tend to be less fearful of the big 'T': Terrorism, despite inhabiting much more likely targets than suburb dwellers:

We do not live behind gated communities and we do not have private security forces. We walk by alleys after dark and we dodge mentally unstable people to get to our subways and to make our bus connections. When you neglect the needy, we are the people that suffer. When the dispossessed and alienated riot, they riot in Newark, Detroit, and Watts. They do not riot in Topeka, Boise, or Crawford, Texas. From On Courage

Second, I think the simplistic cliché that the Left is all about hope, while the Right is all about fear holds a lot of truth. The Right Soothes Fear. The Right offers people the promise of security and order in what can feel like a world gone out of control. Witness McCarthy-era anti-Communist hysteria, which is very similar to the current hysteria over "Islamic terrorism". When facing something frightening, it feels good to have a strong, protective big brother.

Right-wing leaders know this, and they use fear as "a way of getting people to act against their own interests to work up hysteria and to get people to do terrible things to other people, because they’ve been made afraid." - Howard Zinn

Fear is one of our biggest challenges. Also see Can Fear be a Useful Tool for Progressives?