2006 - %3, July

Roundup: War in the Middle East

—By

| Wed Jul. 26, 2006 6:53 AM PDT

JULY 26, 2006

All eyes are now on Syria, where SANA, the official news agency, is busy denying a Sky News report claiming Syria is ready to rat out Al Qaeda to the US and wants to mediate some deal between Bush and Iran. This seems pretty far fetched given that the high rollers among the neo-conservatives, currently savoring Israel's seizure of southern Lebanon, want regime change in Syria on the way to overturning the ayatollahs in Iran.

The Death of UN Observers: "The BBC's Daniel Lak at the UN in New York says that the observers had taken shelter in a bunker under their base because there had already been 14 Israeli artillery attacks on their position, causing a French general in charge of the UN observers to call Israel's military asking them to desist. However, as they sheltered, the bunker was hit by a single heavy bomb from an Israeli war plane and four unarmed observers, from Austria, Canada, China and Finland, were killed. A UN rescue team also came under fire as it searched the rubble for survivors.''

Israel's War Against Lebanon's Shi'a: The two weeks of Israeli air and sea bombardment suggests Israel aims to play on Lebanon's sectarian tensions to impel Hezballah's disarmament, with potentially very dangerous consequences for Lebanon.


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Army: If They Screw up, Promote 'em?

—By

| Wed Jul. 26, 2006 12:42 AM PDT

There is so much that is depressing, and so much that feels like you already kind of knew it but have never seen it laid out in such horrific detail, about Fiasco, the new book by the Washington Post's Thomas Ricks, now being serialized in the paper. One of those things is the pattern whereby grunts do bad things--always have, always will; that's a given if you're going to send hundreds of thousands of people into a creepy, scary, unknown environment--but it's the command structure that signals whether those things are to be tolerated, winked-and-nodded, or avoided at all costs. That is why it's a problem when, as Emily Bazelon documented in Mother Jones, torture was exported from Bagram to Abu Ghraib; or when you have an Army batallion commander who, even after he's been outed for helping his guys cover up a straight-out murder, can get away with saying that

"If I were to do it all over again, I would do the exact same thing, and I've thought about this long and hard. I was taught in the Army to win, and I was trying to win all the way."

57 Dead From Heat in California, So Far

—By

| Tue Jul. 25, 2006 11:59 PM PDT

According to my local (San Francisco) ABC station. And the expected break in the heat...not coming until Thursday, at the earliest.

If the heat waves in Europe (2003) and Chicago are any indication, the national reporting numbers will be slow and contested. (In France, for example, they are still arguing over how many tens of thousands died in 2003. )

But how much evidence will need to amass before...oh never mind.

Hot in the City - Because of the City

—By

| Tue Jul. 25, 2006 6:14 PM PDT

Global warming isn't the only reason cities are sweltering across America: cities themselves are creating more heat. In Los Angeles, at least climatologists report that while average daytime temperatures have risen three degrees over the last century, average nighttime temperatures are up by seven degrees. The reason is that features of the ever-expanding urban environment like golf courses, shopping centers and lawns trap the day's heat, and release it again after dark - keeping the atmosphere from cooling down. No reason to think the same thing isn't happening in other big cities.

How Hot Is It? And Why?

—By

| Tue Jul. 25, 2006 5:05 PM PDT

As Julian points out, no one climate event (hurricane, heat wave, frogs falling from the sky) can be definitively pinned on global warming. But lest the round up of scientists in his post below give us all false succor, the trend seems clear.

According to our own government (via MSNBC):

January through June was the warmest first half of any year in the continental United States since records began in 1895. The average January-June temperature was 51.8 degrees Fahrenheit — 3.4 degrees above the 20th century average, according to preliminary data reported by scientists at the National Climatic Data Center in Asheville, N.C.

Five states — Kansas, Missouri, Nebraska, Oklahoma and Texas — saw record warmth for the period. No state in the continental United States was near or cooler than average, the report stated, although Alaska was 0.55 degrees cooler than the 1971-2000 average.And, it ain't just hot here in the USA.

Globally, January-June was the sixth warmest first half of a year on record, about 0.90 degrees above normal, the center reported. Average temperatures were warmer in the majority of North America, China and western Europe. Cooler than average temperatures were posted in Alaska, far eastern Europe, and parts of Russia.

Most years of the last decade are among the warmest on record. NASA calculates 2005 global temperatures as the warmest, followed by 1998, 2002, 2003 and 2004.Indeed, 20 of the globe's 21 hottest years on record occurred in the last quarter century.

It's Getting "Warmer Than Average" in Here! (But Is Global Warming to Blame?)

—By

| Tue Jul. 25, 2006 4:17 PM PDT

hot2.jpg

Scientists are split:

"I think there are very good reasons to believe that the current U.S. heat wave is at least partly caused by global warming," Kevin Trenberth, one of the nation's top global-warming computer modelers, wrote in an e-mail. ... "Heat waves have...increased most places around the world."

"It is true that the current heat wave could have occurred by chance. But I believe that the likelihood of such occurrences increases due to global warming," said [noted atmospheric scientist and climate modeler, Govindasamy] Bala [of Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory]. ...

James O'Brien, Florida's state climatologist...criticized colleagues who he thinks are too quick to link short-term and long-term weather. He recalled that in 1988, "we had a big Midwest heat wave ... which (NASA scientist) Jim Hansen told the U.S. Senate was due to global warming."

Philip Klotzbach, an atmospheric scientist at Colorado State University [wrote in an email]: "Heat waves have happened for many years (i.e., the Dust Bowl in the 1930s), so to say that this one particular event is caused by global warming is really impossible." (SF Chronicle)

So there you have it -- jury's still out. Nifty map, though.

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Is Hamas Ready to Negotiate?

—By

| Tue Jul. 25, 2006 3:39 PM PDT

Via Kevin Drum, the Guardian is reporting that some Hamas leaders are looking to negotiate a ceasefire in Gaza:

Palestinian factions, including Hamas and Islamic Jihad, have agreed to stop firing rockets at Israel and to free a captured Israeli soldier in a deal brokered by Mahmoud Abbas, the Palestinian president.

The deal, agreed on Sunday, is to halt the rocket attacks in return for a cessation of Israeli attacks on the Gaza Strip, and to release Corporal Gilad Shalit, the Israeli soldier captured on June 25, in exchange for the freeing of Palestinian prisoners at some point in the future....

This has been accepted by Ismail Haniyeh, the Hamas prime minister, and the Hamas political movement but not by Khaled Meshal, the Hamas leader in Damascus. Mr Meshal wields considerable power because he controls funds donated by Iran, Saudi Arabia and the Gulf states. The military wing of Hamas, which is holding Cpl Shalit, is particularly dependent on the money from Mr Meshal.

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Peacekeepers, shmeacekeepers

—By

| Tue Jul. 25, 2006 2:25 PM PDT

Whatever else you might think about the latest conflict in Lebanon, you can't really blame Israel for being unenthusiastic about the idea of installing a UN peacekeeping force in southern Lebanon. There already is a UN peacekeeping force there - the embarassingly impotent United Nations Interim Force in Lebanon. Despite the optimistic "Interim" in its title, this outfit has been in place since 1978, after the first time Israel invaded its northern neighbor. UNIFIL failed to keep the Palestine Liberation Organization from resuming their rocket attacks on the Jewish state after that offensive, leading to another, much larger scale and longer lasting Israeli invasion in 1982. Clearly, UNIFIL's track record since hasn't been any more inspiring.

Nor is this the region's first experience with pointless peacekeepers. In the leadup to the Six Day War in 1967, Egypt demanded that UN peacekeepers stationed between it and Israel in the Sinai Desert get out of the way so that Egyptian forces could begin massing on Israel's border. The blue helmets obliged.

Roundup: War in the Middle East

—By

| Tue Jul. 25, 2006 2:19 PM PDT

Interview with Hezbollah Secretary General Hasan Nasrallah
by Al-Jazeera Beirut Bureau Chief Ghassan Bin-Jiddu, on July 20, 2006

Lebanon's president accused Israel on Monday of using phosphorous bombs…
"According to the Geneva Convention, when they use phosphorous bombs and laser bombs, is that allowed against civilians and children?" President Emile Lahoud asked on France's RFI radio.

Saudi King pledges $500 million for Lebanon rebuilding.
as reported by China's Xinhua News
** More Xinhua reportage on the war

No He Didn't! (Bush Record on Civil Rights)

—By

| Tue Jul. 25, 2006 2:15 PM PDT

As Charlie Savage of the Boston Globe points out, President Bush's attempt to kiss and make up with the NAACP last week came as the "Bush administration is quietly remaking the Justice Department's Civil Rights Division, filling the permanent ranks with lawyers who have strong conservative credentials but little experience in civil rights." According to the Globe:

The documents show that only 42 percent of the lawyers hired since 2003, after the administration changed the rules to give political appointees more influence in the hiring process, have civil rights experience. In the two years before the change, 77 percent of those who were hired had civil rights backgrounds.

Enterprise reporting! We love it! Chase the link, the details are outrageous.

We've already blogged on how Bush's NAACP cameo was too little, too late. On a related point, last week, during a hearing of the Senate Judiciary Committee, Senator Edward Kennedy (exhorting the administration to support reauthorization of the Voting Rights act) got into the whole hypocrisy gap with Attorney General Alberto Gonzalez, noting that:

"The Bush administration Civil Rights Division has litigated only three lawsuits on behalf of African-American voters; two of which were initiated by Attorney General Reno." And furthermore, the DOJ is currently "in the process of litigating the department's first-ever alleging discrimination against white voters."
(Full transcript of Kennedy/Gonzalez face-off is after the jump)

Close readers of the Washington Post might feel a little déjà vu over this whole kerfluffle. Back in December, the Post's Dan Eggen reported that:

"The Justice Department has barred staff attorneys from offering recommendations in major Voting Rights Act cases, marking a significant change in the procedures meant to insulate such decisions from politics, congressional aides and current and former employees familiar with the issue said."
A few weeks earlier, Eggen pointed out that:
Nearly 20 percent of the division's lawyers left in fiscal 2005, in part because of a buyout program that some lawyers believe was aimed at pushing out those who did not share the administration's conservative views on civil rights laws. Longtime litigators complain that political appointees have cut them out of hiring and major policy decisions, including approvals of controversial GOP redistricting plans in Mississippi and Texas.

At the same time, prosecutions for the kinds of racial and gender discrimination crimes traditionally handled by the division have declined 40 percent over the past five years, according to department statistics. Dozens of lawyers find themselves handling appeals of deportation orders and other immigration matters instead of civil rights cases.

(Graphic to that end is here. The numbers don't lie.

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