Faster Please: Malaria Vaccine Works In First Major Trial

Malaria, a scourge for much of the world, and which is responsible for more than million of deaths annually (and 350 million cases annually), may finally have met its match. After decades of studies and attempts at a vaccine to prevent the illness, scientists may have found a winning combination in preventing the disease via a vaccine. It isn't a panacea, but it's better than anything else out there:

An experimental vaccine from GlaxoSmithKline halved the risk of African children getting malaria in a major clinical trial, making it likely to become the world's first shot against the deadly disease.

Final-stage trial data released on Tuesday showed it gave protection against clinical and severe malaria in five- to 17-month-olds in Africa, where the mosquito-borne disease kills hundreds of thousands of children a year.

"These data bring us to the cusp of having the world's first malaria vaccine," said Andrew Witty, chief executive of the British drugmaker that developed the vaccine along with the non-profit PATH Malaria Vaccine Initiative (MVI).

While hailing an unprecedented achievement, Witty, malaria scientists and global health experts stressed that the vaccine -- known as RTS,S or Mosquirix -- was no quick fix for eradicating malaria. The new shot is less effective than others against common infections like polio and measles.

"We would have wished that we could wipe it out, but I think this is going to contribute to the control of malaria rather than wiping it out," Tsiri Agbenyega, a principal investigator in the RTS,S trials in Ghana, told Reuters at a conference in Seattle about the disease.

Mosquito control programs would have to remain the front line in preventing the spread of the disease, but this would be a significant improvement for the lives of millions of people in Africa.

French Special Forces Capture and Hand Over Gbagbo To Ivory Coast Opposition

The capital of Ivory Coast is rife with ruined buildings, damaged vehicles, and the remains of the dead from heavy fighting between Laurent Gbagbo's loyalists and Alassane Dramane Ouattara's opposition groups.

The UN and French forces have not been playing peacekeepers so much as pushing to rid the African nation of Gbagbo, who has refused to step down after losing elections in November to Ouattara.



French forces have apparently captured Gbagbo, after assaulting his last bastion with tanks and special forces.

French special forces have detained Ivory Coast's Laurent Gbagbo and handed him to leaders of the rebel opposition, after French tanks forced their way into his residence, a Gbagbo adviser in France said.

"Gbagbo has been arrested by French special forces in his residence and has been handed over to the rebel leaders," Toussaint Alain told Reuters.

The opposition, UN and French forces have worn away Gbagbo's loyalists until there were fewer than 1,000 left. Waning support helped undermine Gbagbo's regime, but that didn't stop him from causing incalculable damage to the country and its economy.

The next step will be to see how Ouattara handles Gbagbo, and how the new government takes shape.

UPDATE:
Video has emerged from his arrest/handover to Ivory Coast:



Looks like someone whose former lifestyle is now a dim memory and whose future is anything but sunny. He knows that he's in for a rough time and that by staying on in power well beyond his electoral mandate, he's won few friends.

Death Toll Mounts In Ivory Coast As UN Comes Under Attack From Gbagbo's Loyalists

The death toll continues rising in the Ivory Coast as a result of the political unrest and demands that Laurent Gbagbo leave office.



French peacekeepers took control over a key airport and are bolstering UN peacekeepers elsewhere in the country. Various reports indicate that anywhere from several hundred to more than a thousand people were killed in one town near the heart of the cocoa producing region. There is some dispute over who engaged in the killings, but there were retaliatory attacks between Gbagbo's loyalists and the rebel groups backing the winner of November's election, Alassane Dramane Ouattara.

United Nations helicopters patrolled the skies over the city as a tense calm reigned Sunday morning, a local resident told CNN.

The man, whom CNN is not naming to protect his safety, said he had been to church as usual, where another parishioner said he had seen dead bodies by the road on his way to the congregation.

The uneasy peace came in the wake of claims of a massacre as fighters backing internationally recognized President Alassane Ouattara battle forces loyal to Laurent Gbagbo, who refuses to leave office.

U.S. Secretary of State Hillary Clinton demanded Sunday that Gbagbo step aside immediately.

"Gbagbo is pushing Cote d'Ivoire into lawlessness," she said, using the French name for the country. "He must leave now so the conflict may end."

She also called "on the forces of President Ouattara to respect the rules of war and stop attacks on civilians."

The International Committee of the Red Cross said 800 people were shot to death in the western cocoa-producing town of Duekoue. A United Nations official put the death toll so far at 330.

The massacre occurred between Monday and Wednesday as Ouattara's Republican Forces led an offensive through the country to Abidjan, said Guillaume Ngefa, the deputy human rights director at the U.N. mission in Ivory Coast.

He blamed 220 deaths on forces loyal to Ouattara. Ngefa said pro-Gbagbo forces killed 100 people.

"We have evidence, we have pictures. This was retaliation," he said, referring to Ouattara's forces.

The Ouattara camp said it "firmly rejects such accusations and denies any involvement by the Republican Forces of Cote d'Ivoire in possible abuses."

The UN is withdrawing some of its personnel after their headquarters building has come under repeated attack by Gbagbo's loyalists.

Ivory Coast's Gbagbo's Regime Is At End, Except for the Shooting

The situation in the Ivory Coast remains in flux as rebel groups continue gaining ground against former President Laurent Gbagbo. Fighting continues in the country's commercial capital, and the state television station has gone off the air. The fighting is now focusing on the presidential compound, and Gbagbo's regime may be nearing an end.

U.N. peacekeepers moved to secure the Abidjan airport by sending armed elements and additional personnel there, according to a U.N. peacekeeping official in New York who was not authorized to speak publicly.

Patrick Achi, a spokesman for Ouattara, said the fighters — largely drawn from a northern rebel group that launched a 2002 rebellion against Gbagbo — had breached the city limit overnight.

It was unclear whether Gbagbo was inside the presidential mansion. The defiant leader has not been seen in public since the offensive began five days ago.

"We don't know where he is," a senior diplomat told The Associated Press. He asked not to be named because he is not authorized to speak to the press.

A Swedish woman working for the United Nations was killed by a stray bullet during fighting in Abidjan on Thursday night, the Foreign Ministry in Stockholm confirmed. Some 500 foreigners sought refuge at a French military base, Col. Thierry Burkhard told the AP.

The chairperson of the commission of the African Union, Jean Ping, urged Gbagbo to immediately hand over power to Ouattara "in order to shorten the suffering of the Ivorians," the AU said in a statement from Addis Ababa, Ethiopia.

Gbagbo lost last November's presidential election according to his country's election commission and international observers, but has stubbornly refused to step down. Sanctions imposed on him and his inner circle failed to dislodge him.

The armed offensive is the most severe threat that he has faced, and analysts say they expect Gbagbo's regime to fall within days. "It's over — except for the shooting," said the diplomat.

Gbagbo was defeated in elections this past November by Alassane Dramane Ouattara, but Gbagbo refused to step down, setting up the current conflict.

The Domino Effect Revisited

After the fall of Tunisia's Zine El Abidine Ben Ali, speculation ran rampant as to whether the revolution that overthrew Ben Ali would spread throughout Africa and the Middle East because the conditions, complaints, and socio-economic situations are pervasive throughout the region.

Special concern was focused on Egypt, Jordan, Syria, Saudi Arabia, and even Iran.

The concern about Egypt was especially well placed, and the events over the past three weeks, up to and including the news that the military sent Hosni Mubarak packing into the sunset this morning show that there may be something to the domino effect (or as I put it - a spillover effect).

While the focus has long been on the Middle Eastern regimes, there's a notable lack of democratic regimes in Africa, and countries South of Egypt and Tunisia may be looking at Tunisia and Egypt as a model for their own stand against autocratic, kleptocratic, and otherwise totalitarian regimes. Africans are going to take a good long look at the events of the past two months as a model for their own political discontent.

That includes some of the usual suspects, like Zimbabwe's Robert Mugabe, and Libya's Mumar Khadafi. In fact, Libya's between a literal rock and hard place as it is sandwiched between Tunisia and Egypt and Khadafi has been stifling the country's development for 41 years.

So, while any number of regimes are necessarily worried about the people rising up against them, including Syria, Bahrain has said that they don't see a domino effect. I'm sure that Mubarak was thinking the same thing up to and including last night's speech - and the abrupt change in government this morning that sent him packing.

If anyone thinks that there can't or wont be a spillover effect, or a domino effect through the region clearly hasn't been paying attention. Jordan and Syria have been trying to take steps to avert a regime change, and Iran's mullahs have already weathered one attempt (and another attempt is likely to receive renewed vigor in light of events in Cairo).

Iran's regime survived the threat posed by the opposition as led by Mirhussein Mousavi because their secret police, the IRGC, and paramilitary force (Basij) wasn't constrained in the way that the Egyptian army was. The Basij was merciless in its oppression and the crackdown was harsh and thorough to the point that it's debatable whether the opposition could attempt another uprising to demonstrate against the Islamist regime in charge.

But other countries in the region aren't in that kind of position. Their regimes aren't nearly as stable or confident in their security forces to quell potential demonstrations. Their leaders aren't as willing to modernize and impose changes necessary to improve the sociopolitical situation, and that is going to lead to more regimes being contested openly.

Billions Missing From Global Fund to Fight AIDS, Tuberculosis and Malaria

The Global Fund to Fight AIDS, Tuberculosis and Malaria was seen as a charitable entity that could be a viable alternative to the United Nations. Well, it seems to have picked up many of the same problem traits as the United Nations, including corruption, graft, and shoddy accounting practices. No one knows where billions of dollars have gone.

A $21.7 billion development fund backed by celebrities and hailed as an alternative to the bureaucracy of the United Nations sees as much as two-thirds of some grants eaten up by corruption, The Associated Press has learned.

Much of the money is accounted for with forged documents or improper bookkeeping, indicating it was pocketed, investigators for the Global Fund to Fight AIDS, Tuberculosis and Malaria say. Donated prescription drugs wind up being sold on the black market.

The fund's newly reinforced inspector general's office, which uncovered the corruption, can't give an overall accounting because it has examined only a tiny fraction of the $10 billion that the fund has spent since its creation in 2002. But the levels of corruption in the grants they have audited so far are astonishing.

A full 67 percent of money spent on an anti-AIDS program in Mauritania was misspent, the investigators reported.

So did 36 percent of the money spent on a program in Mali to fight tuberculosis and malaria, and 30 percent of grants to Djibouti.

In Zambia, where $3.5 million in spending was undocumented and one accountant pilfered $104,130, the fund decided the nation's health ministry simply couldn't manage the grants and put the United Nations in charge of them.

The fund is trying to recover $7 million in "unsupported and ineligible costs" from the ministry.

Fund officials blame African regimes where the bulk of the corruption is alleged for misspending the monies allocated.

Reason To Hope For Change In Africa

If a new malaria vaccine gets cleared by regulators as being safe for administration, a scourge of Africa could finally be brought under control and millions of people would no longer have to suffer from the debilitating effects of malaria.

If regulators determine the vaccine is safe, it could be on the market in three to five years - the first vaccine against a human parasite.

Tens of millions of Africans are plagued by malaria every year, and more than a third of the hospital beds in this rural Kenyan region next to Lake Victoria are dedicated to its victims. More than 1 million children die of the disease in Africa annually, a crippling economic drain that prolongs a cycle of disease and poverty throughout the continent.

Malaria is also prevalent in parts of Asia, the Middle East and Central and South America.

This vaccine was developed specifically for Africa, however, and will only prevent the African strain of the disease. Experts say it would be a historic advancement.

"Some may say, '50 percent, that's not great.' And that's true. If you get a measles vaccine, you're not going to get measles again," said Dr. Dave Jones, a U.S. Army colonel and director of a clinic in nearby Kombewa operated by the Walter Reed Army Institute of Research and the Kenya Medical Research Institute.

A malaria vaccine would be one tool in reducing the incidence of malaria and would allow cash-strapped nations to focus on economic development rather than see a significant portion of their population waste away year after year.

UN Failing Africa Again: Congo Violence Displaces 600,000+

This time, it's the situation in the Congo that deserves closer attention. The United Nations 17,000 member peacekeeping force in Congo, the largest such contingent in the world, is on the run after rebel groups have gone on the offensive against the regime there. 600,000 are displaced and the numbers continue to grow literally by the hour.

The misery in the Congo has its genesis in the 1994 genocide and ethnic cleansing in neighboring Rwanda, and we're now watching the same ethnic groups, the Hutus and Tutsis about to rip Congo apart. Millions of Hutus were forced to flee Rwanda following the 1994 genocide and settled in Congo, including many of those responsible for the genocide. They set up camps from which to carry out operations against the Tutsis in Rwanda. Now, they're on the march:

Rebels vowing to take Congo's eastern provincial capital of 600,000 people advanced toward Goma on Tuesday as Congolese troops and U.N. tanks retreated, while tens of thousands fled to a makeshift shelter.

The sudden influx tripled the size of the camp in Kibati in a matter of hours, said Ron Redmond, a spokesman for the U.N. refugee agency. A hundred refugees a day, mostly women and children, were also fleeing across the border into Uganda, that country's Red Cross said.

In Kibati, a few miles from the front line, young men also lobbed rocks Tuesday at three U.N. tanks with Uruguayan troops heading away from the battlefield.

There are no simple answers to dealing with the situation there, but the UN's presence does little to deter the combatants from going after people who are taking refuge at UN refugee camps.

The Congolese military and the UN have retreated in the face of this rebel army, leaving civilians in the path of the advancing army wondering about what will happen next.

Aid groups and UN officials warn of a human rights catastrophe. Considering that the UN is doing nothing but withdrawing from the field of battle, the African Union isn't likely to send in forces anytime soon, and the Congolese military is also retreating, I'd say that there's little anyone can do to stop the advancing rebel army from taking Goma.

No one at the UN seems prepared to actually force peace on this rebel army; making a sustained fight to the rebel army, rather than withdrawing to avoid a fight. This only enables and emboldens this group to take further territory and advance towards its goals. The use of helicopter gunships is a start, but those UN tanks and armored units need to stop retreating and begin holding their ground.

There's also suggestions that the rebel army is operating in cahoots with the Rwandan government, which expands the level of this crisis.

UPDATE:
It's also important to keep in mind that the failure to act to prevent the 1994 genocide is leading to further bloodshed and displacement of hundreds of thousands of people. It should once again be a clarion call for action to stop bad actors before they are able to carry out their plans, and shows that the UN cannot handle such situations with peacekeepers who are constrained by their rules of engagement from actually enforcing peace by going after those who wish to break it.

UN Fails Zimbabwe Again

Once again, the UN fails Zimbabwe. UN peacekeepers are supposed to be protecting refugees from Mugabe's thugs, and yet they were no where to be found as those thugs raided a refugee camp.

The 400-strong group at Ruwa rehabilitation center sought refuge at the South African Embassy in Harare three weeks ago, and moved to the site 15 miles southeast of the city after assurances for their safety were given.

But around a dozen uniformed men, some in balaclavas, walked past a lone policeman on duty at the gate and attacked sleeping refugees.

One man who escaped said he believed scores had been hurt, and many, including women and children, had been kidnapped.

South Africa has been playing a key role for Mugabe in running interference at the UN, the African Union, and at the G8 conference. The South Africans are also trying to keep the West from imposing sanctions against Mugabe, which is the most that the West has been able to agree upon. South Africa's President Mbeki thinks that sanctions could lead to civil war, though one has to wonder what calls a situation where Mugabe has ran the opposition out of the country, displaced hundreds of thousands, killed an untold number of people, and destroyed the democracy there, if not a civil war?

The latest from those entities calls on Mugabe and the opposition to enter into a power-sharing arrangement, but we've seen time and time again that Mugabe has no interest in sharing power with anyone, least of all Tsvangirai. Why would anyone in Mugabe's government listen to Tsvangirai, including the military and the militias operating at Mugabe's behest to intimidate and threaten the opposition to the point where they've sought refuge in foreign embassies.

My Two Cents On The Economy

I was going to leave a comment to chicagodudewhotrades' post, but my comment got longer and longer, so I decided to turn it into a post of my own. And lets face it, I haven't had the time to post in a while, so this was a good opportunity.

First, I want to say, that this was a great first post, and welcome to the team. I think this is the power of the blogs that you can bring in so many different point of views and different areas of expertise into one forum in a way that traditional media cannot, or has not. So, personally, I am glad to see posts just like this and hope that we can expand on this and not make it a one shot deal.

Ok, so here is my take. To start off, I agree with your conclusion. The American economy should not be written off. The fundamentals of the American economy are still strong. We have a strong federal reserve that while maybe they were late to react, understand what needs to be done, what the problems are, and are not afraid to react when they feel it is in the countries best interest (contrary to Jim Cramer's "they know nothing" rant.) The proof of this is that while the economy has turned downward we have not seen a corresponding rise in corporate bankruptcy's. Not long ago, Bear Sterns would of had to file for Bankruptcy protection. Instead, the government bailed them out and worked out a sale of the company, rather than let it fold.

Everyone mentions China in connection with the economy. China is this decade's Japan. I remember in the 80s and 90s, everyone was complaining that Japan was buying America. What happened with that? China's economy is strong because we buy their goods. Their own population cannot support their economy, as it is mostly agrarian. They manufacture goods that they sell here. They need us, as much as we need them. We are the reason that China is strong, and despite all of China's rhetoric, China needs us as much, if not more, than we need them.

As for Africa, I agree completely with you. They have taken major steps forward, followed by multiple major steps backwards. How countries can sit on the largest gold and diamond mines in the world and be below even the worst imaginable poverty, is incredible.

The Middle East is a mixed bag. Yes, the have the oil, but with the world attempting to move away from oil, and as oil runs out (don't we keep hearing about peak production?) where will they be? The smart ones, like the UAE in Dubai, will move their economy away from oil into something else. Others, cannot because of the political climate (no one is going to make Iraq into the playground of the Middle East, like they are doing in Dubai.) Their sphere of influence declines as oil quantity decreases and new deposits are discovered, or old deposits become economically feasible to explore.

The problem with the American Economy is that we still look at the market using indicators that are out dated. Manufacturing in this country is a past sector. We are not a manufacturing company. Many reasons for that, not the least of which is the destructive force that the Unions became (yes, they were necessary once upon a time, but now they are the primary reason for the manufacturing decline.) Yet, the market lives and dies on the manufacturing reports that come out on CNBC every month.

The American economy is in transition. We were a manufacturing economy that turned to a service economy, but now we are outsourcing that. America's economy will come back when we, as a business nation, decide what our identity is.

Horrors Lurking Beyond The Big Media Coverage

The situation in Congo is one that makes Darfur pale in comparison. Rape and unspeakable crimes against humanity persist on a daily basis, and are all the result of continuing problems from the Rwandan genocide in 1994.

The problems have their roots in the Rwandan genocide in 1994, when thousands of victims and perpetrators fled across the border. Upwards of 10,000 Rwandan rebel forces remained, living in forested areas and terrorising local populations at their will. Rwanda doesn't want them back, and even if they did, many refuse to return. The Congolese Army, it seems, has neither the collective heart nor the political will to forcibly remove them, and with many soldiers not receiving pay for months on end, they too are guilty of looting and pillaging. So the forces remain, intent on the sexual and social destruction of the local population.

So far they are succeeding on a spectacular scale. For those who are apprehended, there is little impunity, thanks to antiquated gender laws. The attacks grow more numerous and sadistic by the day and the normalisation of sexual violence continues largely unabated.

"Darfur is nothing compared to what's going on in the Congo," says Schuler Deschryver, who despite constant death threats, continues to raise the plight of Congolese women. "My father was the founder of the National Park in Rwanda, which is home to rare silver back gorillas. During the war here, just one silver back was killed. And when it happened, within 48 hours millions in funding was sent to ensure the rest of the gorilla population was protected. Why isn't the same done with our women? I'll tell you why, because in the eyes of the international community animals have more value than humans in this part of the world."

Schuler Deschryver's anger is also felt a few kilometres away, on the outskirts of Bukavu, where Dr Denis Mukwege, an obstetrician for more than 20 years, tries to deal with the aftermath of sexual violence. He runs Panzi Hospital, set up in 1999 in response to the emergency crisis after the so-called African war; it houses more than 350 patients. Each day, 10 new cases are admitted, some as young as nine, so badly damaged that reconstructive surgery is often required. The victims sit on benches, lining urine-soaked corridors, alone and frightened. On eye contact, there is nothing. No expression, no acknowledgement, no smiles - just a fleeting confirmation that behind their eyes, a pained suffering lies deep.

Mukwege can't say for certain if the attacks are on the increase. In general, the hospital estimates it sees just 10 per cent of all sexual violence victims, but certain patterns are developing. Attackers are now identifiable by their manner of attack: one group, after raping the woman or girl, inserts the barrel of a gun into her vagina and shoots, thus destroying her vagina, bladder, rectum and causing massive blood loss. Some force males at gunpoint to rape mothers or sisters, often in front of the whole community. A large percentage of the attackers are HIV-positive and knowingly try to infect their victims.

These aren't just random acts of grotesque inhumanity; it is the systematic sexual and social destruction of whole populations in eastern Congo. And little, it seems, is being done to stop it.

Nothing is done to stop it because it simply isn't fashionable for the Hollywood elites to travel to Congo to demand a stop to the rapes and killings and mutilations. If it were the gorillas, they'd be lifting their voices to demand an end to the senseless deaths and poaching.

There are serious problems with the way the world community deals with human rights catastrophes, and the entire region in Africa is still dealing with the failures to stop the Rwandan genocide in 1994. It's a slow motion horror that continues to take lives and breed new generations of hatred and violence.

U.N. approves up to 26,000 troops, police for Darfur

This is a story that Lawhawk has been all over the past year or even more. However, he probably missed this as it came out while was probably on his way home. I am sure you will see a whole article from him on this shortly. So here is the teaser article:

UNITED NATIONS (Reuters) - The U.N. Security Council authorized on Tuesday up to 26,000 troops and police for Darfur and approved the use of force to protect civilians in Sudan's arid western region.

Expected to cost more than $2 billion in the first year, the combined "hybrid" U.N.-African Union operation aims to quell violence in Darfur, where more than 2.1 million people have been driven into camps and an estimated 200,000 have died over the past four years.

U.N. Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon, who conducted months of talks with Khartoum, described the resolution as "historic and unprecedented" and said the mission would "make a clear and positive difference."

The resolution, number 1769, invokes Chapter 7 of the U.N. Charter, under which the United Nations can authorize force. The measure allows the use of force for self-defense, to ensure the free movement of humanitarian workers and to protect civilians under attack, but acknowledges Sudan's sovereignty.

But the resolution, which has been watered down several times, no longer allows the new force to seize and dispose of illegal arms. Now it can only monitor such weapons.

I am not sure that this is anything more than symbolism over substance. The U.N. is not sending a peace keeping force, it is sending a baby sitting squad with power to observe. They can't seize and dispose of illegal weapons, only monitor them? Monitor them doing what...shooting and killing innocent civilians. "Yup, that was an illegal weapon that killed that baby over there...good monitoring troops!"

I am tired of this. The U.N. is a useless agency that is mired in its own mediocrity and irrelevance. U.N. peace keeping forces have failed to keep peace since its founding. U.N. peace keepers themselves have been almost as bad as the forces they are supposed to protecting civilians from.

Its about time the United Nations authorizes a peace keeping force with authority to actually keep the peace. Who will actually make a difference rather than "monitor" illegal weapons. Take the illegal weapons! They don't want to give them up, use force. Monitoring the situation is only going to allow the status quo to continue. All we will be left with is another acronym, UNAMID or the United Nations-African Union Mission in Darfur, and another failed peace initiative, more innocent lives lost and a bad situation made worse by inaction and failed action.

24 Hours For Darfur

24 Hours for Darfur is a grassroots video advocacy campaign dedicated to ending the conflict in Darfur and promoting peace and security for the people living there. I received the following via email and thought it worth sharing. The Darfur genocide is far from over, and people living in the region continue to be hounded by the Janjaweed and Sudanese government forces. The African Union has been stretched to the limit and the UN has been ineffectual at stopping the violence.

Our primary initiative is to collect thousands of personal video appeals from people all over the world. All appeals will be displayed on our website and sent directly to participant's political representatives. On September 16, 2007 we will screen 24 hours of rolling footage at a rally in front of the UN headquarters and at smaller events at halls of power throughout the world - all connected through a real-time online broadcast.

US Presidential candidate John Edwards, Author Samantha Power, Actress Mia Farrow, two former United Nations Deputy Secretaries-General, two former United States Deputy Secretaries of State, and hundreds of private citizens from around the world have already submitted videos. Please join us in speaking out against genocide by submitting a video appeal of your own. Use a webcam to record a video right in your web browser, or upload a video you've recorded offline.

We have also been working with scholars, practitioners, journalists and Darfuris to compile an online video library of educational material related to the conflict. Nicholas Kristof, John Prendergast, several Human Rights Watch researchers, and many others have already contributed educational videos. You can check it out by visiting our website's education section: http://www.24hoursfordarfur.org/education.php.

For this campaign to make a significant contribution to Darfur advocacy, it needs to be truly global in scope. We hope you'll lend your voice to the effort.

Short Memories

The Washington Post/MSNBC article on the recent Algerian bombings linked to al Qaeda suggests that al Qaeda has a long reach and that it has infiltrated North Africa.

Al-Qaeda has rapidly extended its influence across North Africa by aiding and organizing local groups that are demonstrating a renewed ability to launch terrorist attacks in the region, such as the triple suicide bombings that killed 33 people here last month, according to counterterrorism officials and analysts.

The bombers who struck the Government Palace and a police station in Algiers, the capital, are believed to have been local residents. But Algerian authorities are examining evidence that the bombers were siphoned from recruiting pipelines that have sent hundreds of North African fighters to Iraq and perhaps were trained by veterans of the Iraqi insurgency, U.S. and European intelligence officials said.

I think the article misses out on what has happened over the past 20 years.

Al Qaeda got its start in Africa. The USS Cole was hit in Yemen and the dual bombings of the US Embassies in Kenya and Tanzania showed that al Qaeda had a potent capability in Africa. Porous borders and failed states on the continent enable al Qaeda to spread without being detected. The jihadi ideology further enables al Qaeda to spread its message.

The Iraq conflict, combined with the Afghanistan campaign put al Qaeda on the defensive. They had to respond to both campaigns. Infidels in the heart of the Islamic world could not be tolerated, and yet al Qaeda has been decimated there. They need to take the pressure off their remaining al Qaeda thugs, so have attempted to do so by launching attacks elsewhere in the world. Algeria is a good launching point from which to go after Europe and other parts of Africa because of its central location and proximity to unstable failed states in Africa from which al Qaeda can grow its manpower relatively undetected.

And with the porous European borders, the concern is that once inside Algeria, it is a quick hop into Europe to launch attacks.

The article makes the leap that the Iraq campaign has spread the jihadi war to Africa and into Europe, and ignores the recent past to do so. Al Qaeda has had a presence in Africa for more than a decade.

French Vinters Threaten Violence

A shadowy group of wine activists has issued a one-month ultimatum to Nicolas Sarkozy threatening “action” if the new French President fails to help the industry.

The Regional Committee for Viticultural Action (CRAV) has been known to hijack tankers of foreign wine and dynamite government buildings or supermarkets.

In a pre-recorded message delivered to France 3, a regional television channel, from “somewhere in the Languedoc hinterland”, five balaclava-clad men read out a statement addressed to Sarkozy.

Looking more like Corsican nationalists or masked Islamic fundamentalists than winemakers, the “wine terrorists” vowed that if nothing changed and the price they received for their wine had not gone up, they would go “into action”.

In a reference to the French resistance in World War II, the CRAV said it would “come out of the maquis (scrub) and go into action”.

Calling on fellow winemakers to unite, the activists referred to the 1907 winemakers’ uprising in Montpellier, when thousands took to the streets and the army opened fire, killing six.

The French wine industry has been under attack from high quality and lower cost locales ranging from South Africa, Australia, New Zealand, and even the United States for years. The French wine industry has been incredibly slow to respond to the changes, and the locals are getting restless. France's share of the worldwide wine market has slipped, and that has translated into bad blood at home.

This group is threatening terrorism and all that it entails. Things have the potential to get quite bloody.

I was in Paris this past March and you would be hard pressed to find any non-French wines in most restaurants, let alone the wine shops that dot the city. Are the French that threatened by foreign imports of wine that they'd threaten to blow up the shipments? This seems to be more about retaining the status quo than adapting to new realities of the marketplace.

The group that is apparently behind these threats comes from a region where the supply outstrips the demand considerably. The French have repeatedly resorted to taking the excess wine and distilling it into alcohol, rather than pouring it down the drain. There simply isn't the kind of demand for the French wines that there once was because other regions around the world are producing high quality wines.

It's yet another mess that Sarkozy has to deal with.

Via Samizdata

AI Savages Israel While Ignoring Terrorism Against Israel

Amnesty International, an international organization that claims to support and promote human rights, once again takes time out of its busy schedule to savage Israel in a scathing report that ignores Palestinian and Islamic terrorists and the measures taken by Israel to limit the loss of Israeli lives as a result of Palestinian and Islamic terrorists.

You see, Israeli human rights don't mean nearly as much as Palestinian lives that may be disrupted by the construction of a security fence. AI ignores the consistent and persistent threat of Palestinian suicide bombers who used to flow from the West Bank and Gaza into Israel to kill and maim Israelis. The number of suicide bombers has dropped off significantly since the fence was built. However, that form of terrorism has been replaced by a different form - the rocket attack. Thousands of rockets have fallen on Israel in the past several years, many launched by Hizbullah in 2006 during the August war. AI criticizes Israel's use of cluster weapons to destroy Hizbullah targets and Israel's targeting of Lebanese infrastructure as though a war launched by Hizbullah against Israel didn't exist at all. Israel's response was quite measured compared to what any other country would do when attacked out of the blue by a foreign group or country. Israel also was trying to disrupt Hizbullah's capabilities to launch further attacks against Israel using Lebanon as a launching pad. Indeed, much of South Lebanon was turned into a vast network of bunkers and ammo dumps for Hizbullah terrorists from which they could launch attacks against Israel, including adjacent to UNIFIL positions, despite UNIFIL's mission and mandate to disarm Hizbullah and all militias operating within Lebanon.

AI also fails to consider the difference between a terrorist group that hides behind civilian populations so as to inflate a body count and who doesn't wear a uniform so as to better blend into civilian populations and an army whose targeting of said terrorists was designed to prevent further attacks on Israeli civilians.

In other words, this latest screed by AI is nothing more than a partisan political document and not an objective report.

There is no attempt at balance, or recognition that much of the violence in Gaza is the result of Palestinian terrorist groups launching attacks on Israel and Israel's sovereign right to defend itself against terrorist attacks. AI would like the world to think that most of those who were killed in the ongoing fighting were civilians, which couldn't be further from the case. The overwhelming majority of those killed were Palestinian terrorists, and even then the terrorists would be responsible for putting civilians in harm's way by operating in civilian areas and hiding behind human shields.

Then, there's this bit:

Meanwhile, social and economic conditions for Palestinians living under Israeli occupation continued to go from bad to worse as Israel pushed forward its construction of settlements and the building of a 700-kilometre fence/wall in the West Bank, increased or tightened the blockades and restrictions on Palestinian movements, and withheld customs duties due to the Palestinian Authority.

What is ignored is the complete collapse of Palestinian infrastructure and society within Gaza after Israel's complete withdrawal in 2000. Instead of using the opportunity to build a prosperous society, Hamas and Fatah plundered the rotting carcass of Palestinian society and started a rocket war with Israel. AI ignores the anarchy in Gaza, where roving gangs routinely kill and kidnap people at random and gangs of terrorists aligned with Hamas or Fatah will shoot at each other without caring who else gets in the way (aka the Palestinian civil war). The PA is nothing but a shell organization through which money is funneled to various terrorist organizations - the various factions of Hamas and Fatah that are engaged in killing each other and Israelis.

Tripoli Siege Against Fatah al Islam Continues

The following are two videos of the situation in Tripoli, Lebanon as a result of the ongoing fight between Fatah al Islam and the Lebanese military and police forces.





The Lebanese are asserting control over the Palestinian camp where the terrorists have holed up. This is sending a message to both the Palestinians and to Syria, which many believe is backing the Fatah al Islam terror group.

Months after Palestinian factions lost control of the camp to the Syrian-intelligence Islamist creation, the terrorists felt they could get away with massacring Lebanese soldiers and terrorizing Lebanese citizens. More details have emerged about what transpired Sunday morning. According to As-Safir, an ISF investigation into a bank robbery accidentally led the police to an apartment in Tripoli that members of Fatah al-Islam used as a base. The Islamists reacted to the police operation by attacking a Lebanese army post near the Nahr El Bared refugee camp, slaughtering 17 Lebanese army soldiers in their sleep, and ambushing others on leave in Qalamoun and Koura. The terrorists' weapon of choice: suicide attacks. As-Safir said the ISF and the Army intelligence had been monitoring the movements of Fatah al-Islam for months. They succeeded in apprehending over a dozen members, but the camp was off limits to them.

The Lebanese military offensive may help give the Siniora government operating space to deal with Syria, but the larger issue of Syrian destabilization operations against Lebanon remains unaddressed so long as Assad continues to remain in power.

UPDATE:
FoxNews is reporting that civilians are fleeing the refugee camp that has become a battleground between Fatah al Islam and the Lebanese military. While a truce is supposedly in place, gunfire continues to be exchanged between the two sides.

Meanwhile, Lebanese military officials said the body of the second-in-command of the Fatah Islam militant group was retrieved Wednesday near the camp in Tripoli.

The officials, speaking on condition of anonymity because they were not authorized to talk to the media, said that the Lebanese Civil Defense personnel uncovered the body of Abu Madyan in the area of Abde, just north of the Nahr al-Bared camp.

Abu Madyan was killed on Monday during battles between his group and the Lebanese army. He is the highest ranking member of the group to be killed since the battles began near the camp Sunday.

The Lebanese government has said it's determined to uproot Fatah Islam, and on Wednesday, the army reinforced its positions around Nahr el-Bared.

A militant who identified himself as Fatah Islam's deputy leader told The Associated Press the group would never surrender and vowed to fight to the death if attacked.

"We are ready to enter into a permanent cease-fire on condition we stay, military action against us is halted and life is allowed to return to normal in the camp," said the militant, who goes by the name Abu Hureira.

Rima Fawaz notes who will pay for this terrorism, it is the Lebanese people who will die and be displaced because of violence imposed on them by terrorist groups and foreign groups seeking to turn Lebanon into a mess.

Thousands of people remain stuck in the camp even as the violence continues. The Lebanese military has issued an ultimatum to the terrorists:

"The army will not negotiate with a group of terrorists and criminals. Their fate is arrest, and if they resist the army, death," he said in an interview with the Al-Arabiya television. "There are two choices: The first one, which we prefer, is that they surrender... the other, which we don't like... is military action."

It remains to be seen whether the Lebanese military has the staying power to back up those words. One can only hope that they're successful in beating back this latest threat to Lebanese sovereignty.

Land Grab

[T]hugo Chavez is committed to destroying Venezuela, one socialist program after another.

This time, it's the forcible redistribution of land.

Mr. Chávez is carrying out what may become the largest forced land redistribution in Venezuela’s history, building utopian farming villages for squatters, lavishing money on new cooperatives and sending army commando units to supervise seized estates in six states.

The violence has gone both ways in the struggle, with more than 160 peasants killed by hired gunmen in Venezuela, including several here in northwestern Yaracuy State, an epicenter of the land reform project, in recent years. Eight landowners have also been killed here.

“The oligarchy is always on the attack and trying to say you are no good,” Mr. Chávez said to squatters in a televised visit here. “They think they’re the owners of the world.”

Mr. Chávez’s supporters have formed thousands of state-financed cooperatives to wrest farms and cattle ranches from private owners. Landowners say compensation is hard to obtain. Local officials describe the land seizures as paving stones on “the road to socialism.”

“This is agrarian terrorism encouraged by the state,” said Fhandor Quiroga, a landowner and head of Yaracuy’s chamber of commerce, pointing to dozens of kidnappings of landowners by armed gangs in the last two years.

The government says the goal of the nationwide resettlement is to make better use of idle land and to make Venezuela less dependent on food imports. New laws allow squatters to manage and farm land that has now been placed in government hands.

Zimbabwe's Mugabe tried that policy - and it resulted in the former breadbasket of Africa being turned into a basket case.

The Soviets did the same thing - causing misery and ruin and death for millions.

The Chinese did the same thing - with the same result - millions starving and dead.

Chavez thinks that this will end any differently? Fat chance.

UPDATE:
Astute Blogger also makes reference to the Chinese and Zimbabwean disasters resulting from land grabs and how the NYT focuses on the legality of such moves, despite the horrible toll that it will inflict on the country. Cato at Liberty also slams the Times for this article and questions how exactly is this legal other than because Chavez owns the legislature and deems it to be so.

Because They Have Nothing Better To Do

What are Congressional Democrats thinking when they put out ideas like tasking the CIA and other intelligence agencies with trying to track down global warming threats.

Senior House Republicans are complaining about Democrats' plans to divert "scarce" intelligence funds to study global warming.

The House next week will consider the Democrat-crafted Intelligence Authorization bill, which includes a provision directing an assessment of the effects that climate change has on national security.

"Our job is to steal secrets," said Rep. Peter Hoekstra of Michigan, the ranking Republican on the Permanent Select Committee on Intelligence.

"There are all kinds of people analyzing global warming," he told The Washington Times. "There's no value added by the intelligence community here; they have no special expertise, and this takes money and resources away from other threats."

Democrats, who outnumber Republicans on the committee, blocked the minority from stripping the warming language from the bill.

That's not their job. And even if it were, would the CIA even get it right? After all, the CIA missed the intel on the fall of the Berlin Wall, the WMD in Iraq, al Qaeda's numerous attacks on the US, etc.

It's not like the CIA doesn't already have a full plate, trying to get a handle on the Islamic terrorist groups and their backers in Iran, Iraq, Syria, Saudi Arabia, Indonesia, and Pakistan. Then, there are the ongoing threats and analysis for places like China and Russia and emerging and continuing threats in places like Venezuela, Cuba, Sudan, and most of Africa, and Southeast Asia.

Where does global warming fit in exactly? It doesn't.

This tells you all you need to know about the priorities of Democrats in Congress. They think global warming is a threat on par with terrorism and that the CIA should task its limited assets to investigating an issue that is already in the purview of agencies like NASA and NOAA along with the Department of the Interior, Department of Commerce, and the EPA.

Bob Woolmer Murdered For Offending Muslims?

Pakistan's cricket coach Bob Woolmer may have been murdered after angering radical Muslims, according to a BBC investigation.

The Panorama TV show suggests some players followed the extremist Muslim movement, Tablighi Jamaat.

The claims come as preliminary toxicology tests confirm Woolmer was rendered helpless with a powerful poison before being strangled.

According to the team's former media manager, PJ Mir, Woolmer shared his view that members of the squad were more interested in praying than playing.

Mr Mir claims it was this pre-occupation with religion that explained their poor World Cup result.

"Bob had his reservations that the boys, rather than focusing on the religious aspect, they ought to be focusing more on cricket.

"He wasn't particularly pleased when players were going out to say their prayers in the middle of the game and a substitute was coming in. He was totally against it," he said.

After the team was knocked out, Mr Mir's comments led to a fatwa being issued against him forcing him to flee Pakistan.

He believes Woolmer may have faced the same fate.

"If Bob had said what I'd had said, I think there would have been a fatwa on him as well," Mr Mir said.

Other competing theories included point shaving and related criminal activities that Woolmer knew about and was preparing to expose, putting the team and various players in jeopardy.

When investigators first began looking into his death, they believed he died from asphyxiation. Now, it appears that poisoning played a role.

HT: Israellycool.

Details relating to his funeral in South Africa are being kept private.

This report mixes the gambling and Islamist theories together, via a bookie who appears to have links with al al Qaeda.

CCTV shows Woolmer with two men shortly before his death. This story also notes the possible fatwa and that some players were involved in a group known as 'Tablighi Jamat'. Wiki calls this a Muslim missionary movement that supposedly works within the Muslim community. It has a relatively low profile despite its size, but there are concerns that it is another group committed to jihad:

The West's misreading of Tablighi Jamaat actions and motives has serious implications for the war on terrorism. Tablighi Jamaat has always adopted an extreme interpretation of Sunni Islam, but in the past two decades, it has radicalized to the point where it is now a driving force of Islamic extremism and a major recruiting agency for terrorist causes worldwide. For a majority of young Muslim extremists, joining Tablighi Jamaat is the first step on the road to extremism. Perhaps 80 percent of the Islamist extremists in France come from Tablighi ranks, prompting French intelligence officers to call Tablighi Jamaat the "antechamber of fundamentalism."[12] U.S. counterterrorism officials are increasingly adopting the same attitude. "We have a significant presence of Tablighi Jamaat in the United States," the deputy chief of the FBI's international terrorism section said in 2003, "and we have found that Al-Qaeda used them for recruiting now and in the past."[13]

Recruitment methods for young jihadists are almost identical. After joining Tablighi Jamaat groups at a local mosque or Islamic center and doing a few local dawa (proselytism) missions, Tablighi officials invite star recruits to the Tablighi center in Raiwind, Pakistan, for four months of additional missionary training. Representatives of terrorist organizations approach the students at the Raiwind center and invite them to undertake military training.[14] Most agree to do so.

Tablighi Jamaat has long been directly involved in the sponsorship of terrorist groups. Pakistani and Indian observers believe, for instance, that Tablighi Jamaat was instrumental in founding Harakat ul-Mujahideen. Founded at Raiwind in 1980, almost all of the Harakat ul-Mujahideen's original members were Tablighis. Famous for the December 1998 hijacking of an Air India passenger jet and the May 8, 2002 murder of a busload of French engineers in Karachi, Harakat members make no secret of their ties. "The two organizations together make up a truly international network of genuine jihadi Muslims," one senior Harakat ul-Mujahideen official said.[15] More than 6,000 Tablighis have trained in Harakat ul-Mujahideen camps. Many fought in Afghanistan in the 1980s and readily joined Al-Qaeda after the Taliban defeated Afghanistan's anti-Soviet mujahideen.[16]

UPDATE:
Trackposted to Outside the Beltway, Perri Nelson's Website, Blog @ MoreWhat.com, Mark My Words, The Random Yak, DragonLady's World, Shadowscope, The Pet Haven Blog, Leaning Straight Up, The Bullwinkle Blog, Conservative Cat, Conservative Thoughts, Pursuing Holiness, Pet's Garden Blog, Allie Is Wired, Faultline USA, third world county, stikNstein... has no mercy, The World According to Carl, Pirate's Cove, Blue Star Chronicles, Wake Up America, Dumb Ox Daily News, High Desert Wanderer, and Gone Hollywood, thanks to Linkfest Haven Deluxe.