There has been a leaking fuel rod in one of Koeberg's nuclear reactors "for some time", but Eskom says this is nothing to worry about.
And the other unit at Koeberg has a problem with a valve, which has meant its power output has had to be reduced to 80 percent.
But Eskom says this will not increase the risk of rolling blackouts to the province - already at risk with only one nuclear reactor working - because it is able get enough power from Mpumalanga on the transmission lines to make up the shortfall.
Eskom spokesperson Carin de Villiers said yesterday the leaking fuel rod was in Koeberg's unit 2, which had been shut down for refuelling and maintenance.
It had been due to be shut down for refuelling at the end of March, but was kept on line because the other unit had been damaged in December by a loose bolt.
De Villiers said this was "not the first time in Koeberg's 22 years that they've had a fuel leak" and it would probably not be the last.
"It means there is a small pinprick hole in the rod and the fuel has direct access to the water that surrounds the fuel rods. Once it's in the water it stays there, it can't go anywhere," she said.
She was not sure when the fuel leak in unit 2 had been detected, but said it had been there "for some time".
"We suspect it is in the fuel that's going to come out anyway (during refuelling). If not, we will have to repair it or replace it."
The problem with the valve was in unit 1, which came back into operation two weeks ago after the damaged generator had been repaired.
De Villiers said the valve was "on the primary system (the reactor) or on a system attached to the primary system".
"Because of this, the unit throttled back and went down to 80 percent. It shouldn't (increase the likelihood of blackouts) because we're able to bring more power down on the transmission lines."
Thanks Carin, just a little seepage, no worries eh?
Galloway preapproves the murder of the British prime minister.
By Christopher Hitchens
In the current issue of British Gentleman's Quarterly, there appears an interview with somebody who could by no leap of the imagination be characterized as a gentleman. George Galloway is a man whose Catholic beliefs have not prevented him from expressing nostalgia for Stalinism and offering open support for the dictatorships of Saddam Hussein and Bashar Assad. Evidence that this support has not gone unrequited has been presented by two investigations into the prostitution of the U.N. oil-for-food racket, one of them conducted by Paul Volcker for the United Nations itself and another conducted by a U.S. Senate investigations subcommittee. Scotland Yard's Serious Fraud Office is currently reviewing these reports, and I would be the last to prejudge the outcome of their inquiries.
Galloway himself is not so averse to a rush to judgment. Asked by GQ if he would justify the suicide-murder of Tony Blair (with the tender GQ proviso that only the prime minister would be killed in this putative assassination) Galloway responded as follows:
Yes it would be morally justified. I am not calling for it, but if it happened it would be of a wholly different moral order to the events of 7/7. It would be entirely logical and explicable. And morally equivalent to ordering the deaths of thousands of people in Iraq as Blair did.
The allusion to "the events of 7/7" is to the suicide-murderers who killed themselves and many others in an attack on the London transportation system on July 7, 2005. On that occasion, Galloway told the British House of Commons that Londoners had "paid the price" not of suicide-bombing but of British involvement in Iraq.
Much of the commentary that I read about this amazing statement seemed to conclude that Galloway had provided himself with enough "wiggle room" to avoid the charge of incitement or advocacy. And it is true that suicide-murderers do not require his warrant in advance to go about their work. (They tend to get his approval, or his defense, only after they have blown themselves up.) But if you examine his statement, and the statements that he has made subsequently, you will have an idea of the complete mental chaos that has overtaken a whole section of the "left" who regard Galloway as an anti-war champion.
If the killing of Blair would be "morally equivalent" to the deaths of thousands of Iraqis, then obviously it would be equivalent to something of which Galloway presumably strongly disapproves. In other words, it could not be "morally justified" at all, except by an utter moral cretin. And this is to say nothing of the unmentioned question: How right can it be to remove a thrice-elected head of government by any means other than an election? Galloway is a member of Parliament by the grace of an electorate in the East End of London but is widely regarded as a corrupt scumbag, an egomaniac, an apologist for tyranny, and a supporter of jihad. How would he phrase his complaint if someone were now to propose overruling his voters and offing him as the insult to humanity that he has become? I think I can hear the squeals of self-pity already.
The fascinated GQ interviewer then asked Galloway what he would do if he actually came to know about such a plot against Blair. Once again, Galloway appeared to have an evasion ready to go along with his endorsement. Would he alert the forces of law and order? "Yes. Such an operation would be counter-productive because it would just generate a new wave of anti-Arab sentiment [and] … new draconian anti-terror laws." I have to say I admire his cool use of the term "operation," which is the word that he and his admired "insurgents" in Iraq have long used for their beheadings, car bombs, mosque detonations, and school burnings. And I further note the firm way in which he condemns the possible murder of an elected prime minister—lest it increase "anti-Arab sentiment." I thought Galloway objected to the association of Arabs with terrorism. Who said anything about an Arab doing this hypothetical deed?
Apparently not much liking the publicity he got for this (and apparently being unable to claim that he hadn't said any of it), Galloway made another shift on the night of May 26 and invoked a remark made by Cherie Blair, the prime minister's wife, in 2002. Like her, he grandly announced, "I understand why such desperate acts take place and why those involved might believe such actions to be morally justifiable." Cherie Blair had not said anything of the sort. What she said was, "As long as young people feel they have got no hope but to blow themselves up you are never going to make progress."
So, here is what it comes down to. George Galloway says that the murder of an elected prime minister would be "morally justifiable." He is not brave enough to call for it, but he does preapprove it. He finds room for criticism of the murder only because it might occasion a backlash. And he then tries to hide behind the skirts of a woman who he has just told us ought in all justice to be a widow! That he does this by deliberately misquoting her is a mere coda to an almost incredible catalog of indecency.
It was a busy week for Galloway. He went to Cuba and publicly embraced Fidel Castro on television, saying that the aging caudillo was a "lion" in a political world populated by "monkeys." The main distinction between Castro and his neighbors, however simian some of them might be, is that he is the only one left in Latin America and the Caribbean who does not submit himself for election. This seems to be the difference that appeals most to Galloway. In both Britain and America, this fawning and cowardly and sinister jerk is considered a hero of the "anti-war" movement. He is, in fact, an excuse-maker for totalitarianism and an apologist for nihilistic religious violence. How long before the democratic left starts to refuse him a platform and make him stand on his own? Some of us will be watching.
#1
I made the comment to the BBC discussion on this - a comment they chose not to print - that he has a dangerous moral equivalency problem here.
Since he says it would be "morally justified" if somebody killed Blair and feels that to be ok -- why then if somebody else felt "morally justified" to have him killed and took out a hit order on him... he would have no "moral grounds" to even be upset over it.
In addition, even though he is to stupid to see it, he as advocation a world based on the concept of "black anarchy". To see how well that works perhaps he should live in the bad areas of Somalia for awhile and see how much he likes it. Say 5 years. After that time he could consider opening his mouth again. I doubt he would opt for the law of the jungle as he currently is.
#2
Actually I think assassinations are the way to go.
In a Democracy we have an established chain of succession in the event of tragedy. In a dictatorship an assassination leads to fighting over control.
Democracies have a distinct advantage in such a battle of assassins and Bush made a mistake in not removing the executive order against assassinations on Sept 12.
And from a moral point of view in war we end up fighting the fodder the dictators forces into the army at gunpoint and trying not to hurt them too bad when we should just aim for that bastard making the decisions and leave the fodder alone.
At the end of his multi- state tour of the United States, MexicoÂ’s President Vicente Fox slipped away from a US Secret Service detail late Saturday....
Democrat Rep. John "Cut and Run" Murtha thinks he knows the truth about Haditha -- and he has been blabbing it to every last cable show host that will host him.
The loose-lipped former Marine has accused troops of wantonly killing some two dozen civilians, including children, "in cold blood" in the terrorist stronghold in Iraq last November. There are two ongoing military investigations into the incident itself and the actions of higher-ups in the Haditha aftermath.
Let me repeat that: The investigations are ongoing. Not complete. Official reports aren't expected for several weeks.
I do not know the truth about Haditha. Neither do Murtha and the media outlets calling the alleged massacre a massacre before all the facts are in. It would be helpful if they could handle these grave charges without serving as al Jazeera satellite offices. GOP Sen. John Warner, who like Murtha also served in the Marines, struck the right tone over the weekend -- refusing, unlike Murtha, to render a verdict against the Marines before trial and avoiding Bush Derangement Syndrome, but also taking the allegations very seriously.
I do know this. Children are dead. Other children have been orphaned. There are pictures of bullet holes and bloodied homes. There are evolving stories about what happened last Nov. 19 and serious allegations of a possible cover-up.
I also know this: Lance Cpl. Miguel Terrazas, the Marine who was killed by a roadside IED (improvised explosive device) that day, followed a proud family tradition of military service. He had received a commendation for bravery on his first tour of duty in Iraq in 2004. One of his fellow Marines said Terrazas's body was split in two by the bomb explosion that rocked his Hummer while on patrol that morning.
And there's this: Haditha is crawling with terrorists. The Associated Press points out that "in just three days last August, six Marine snipers were killed in Haditha and 14 Marines died in nearby Parwana in the deadliest roadside bombing of the war." Most-wanted al Qaeda leader Abu Musab al-Zarqawi is reported to have lived in Haditha. The Washington Post quoted a military lawyer noting that Nov. 19 was the Marine 3rd Battalion's "hottest day" in Iraq.
"In addition to drone surveillance that day," the paper reported, "AV-8 Harriers were dropping bombs, helicopters were evacuating wounded, and a large firefight occurred about one-third of a mile from the site of the civilian shootings, said several people familiar with the investigation." Audio of radio traffic that day reportedly contradicts Rep. Murtha's claim that the Marines did not come under small-arms fire after the roadside explosion, according to one of the Post's military sources.
We know this, too: Naval Criminal Investigative Service officials have not turned their backs. Time magazine, which initially broke the story of survivors' accounts that prompted the military probe, reports that Haditha residents -- who have yet to be visited by any of Iraq's own officials -- "were gratified by [the investigation's] thoroughness" and "were especially impressed by the NCIS investigators" conducting three separate enquiries.
Finally, there is this incontrovertible fact: There are countless numbers of anti-war zealots on the American Left rooting for failure. They believe the worst about the troops. They've blindly embraced frauds who've lied about their military service and lied about wartime atrocities. They've allied themselves with socialist kooks and coddled murderous dictators. They are looking for any excuse to pull out, abandon military operations and reconstruction, and impeach the president.
They insist on giving suspected foreign terrorists more benefit of the doubt than our own men and women in uniform. And that, I know, I am not willing to do.
I will wait. I will pray. And I will remind you that while the murder of civilians is and remains an anomaly in American military history, it is the jihadists' way of life.
Michelle Malkin is author of the new book "Unhinged: Exposing Liberals Gone Wild." Her e-mail address is malkin@comcast.net.
#1
I'm not a big fan of her writing, but I must admit she has the agitprop from the right down pat. And normally I agree with her sentiments, although I frequently dispute her aguements.
#3
By most accounts, Haditha seems to be under the control of the Islamists. Has anyone considered that this was a disinformation op much like the "wedding party" near the Syrian border some time ago? That perhaps the family had cooperated with the Marines and that Jihadis went in immediately afterward and executed them as collaborators with the survivors understanding, under threat of death, that they would testify that the Americans did it?
I'm just tossing this out as a hypothetical. Just as it would be wrong to assume that no US service member could never snap and massacre innocents; it would be stupid to assume that the Jihadis wouldn't be capable of such a sophisticated operation since they've shown such capabilities in the past. Some of the questions I've been asking myself in preparation of the release of the official report are
• Muslims have to bury the bodies before the next sundown, I believe. Were any of the bodies ever autopsied by US authorities?
• Do the Jihadis have access to US firearms? Did ballistics tests match any recovered rounds to the Marines' rifles and pistols?
• A fire team is being accused of the deaths. A fire team is unlikely to operate on its own in such a hostile environment. There would have been other squad, and likely platoon, elements within overwatch distance. What did they hear or see?
• How could a fire team (3-4 men) have "controlled" such a large area -- supposedly several houses and a taxi stand -- without most of the occupants fleeing after the first shots?
These are all questions that I hope that the defense lawyers are asking. I doubt that anyone in the MSM will.
#5
It isn't the things Murtha says about his 'fellow' Marines that bothers me. It's the glee with which he says them, along with every other leftie. They WANT the US to fail. They WANT atrocities and embarassments to occur. A rational human being can only conclude they loathe their own country.
#6
• Muslims have to bury the bodies before the next sundown, I believe. Were any of the bodies ever autopsied by US authorities?
You mean a good 'CSI' type exam. Probably not.
It'll be a point in any trial. Given particularly that the US in it great wisdom and misplaced heart PAYS families of non-boom-etts for injury and death. Not that any scam would be involved with members of the clan to convince the good examiner to only list bullet damage and no bomb damage to the bodies. And its not like anyone would be so crass to upset the locals by unearthing the bodies for a more complete 'western' exam for legal purposes.
#7
The "truth" is...bad stuff happens in wartime. There is a memorial to the Malmedy fallen at Baugnez. After Malmedy, the order went out: SS and Fallschirmjäger were to be shot on sight.
#8
Well we don't have any conclusion to the investigation yet, so I'm reserving judgement. If the accusations prove to be true however, how do you equate the execution of women and children with the shooting under orders of SS and Fallschirmjäger troops?
#9
What we need to do is associate Murtha with the incident. i.e. Murtha's marines killing innocent children. Keep his name on the issue. Drive that bastard to an early grave. That Murtha, that baby killer.
#11
This whole incident says more about Murtha than anything else. How could any patriotic American make such an allegation against our brave men and women in the absence of all the facts?
Is Murtha's ambition for being "right" more important than defending the country he represents? You know the answer, and it's disgusting.
Posted by: Captain America ||
05/31/2006 13:00 Comments ||
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#12
Anybody ever hear of Murtha before his cut-and-run plan? The gentleman has got himself into a feedback loop in which the more anti-military his comments are, the more positive reinforcement he gets in the form of PR and adulation from the left. Publicity is to politicians as food pellets are to rats.
Posted by: Matt ||
05/31/2006 13:24 Comments ||
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#13
Where have I heard this before? To paraphrase Yogi Berra "deja vu all over again".
#15
Sounds a campaign negative ad has written itself.
Murtha: Pull out of Somalia
Bin Laden: Somalia proved America is paper tiger
WTC footage.
Posted by: ed ||
05/31/2006 18:31 Comments ||
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#16
nice shot, Ed, I like it!
Posted by: Frank G ||
05/31/2006 18:38 Comments ||
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#17
The point is it is still under investigation. When they formally charge the Marines there will be more to the story, or not. Murtha ia a pig that is tainting the Corps and is an embarasment to our nation. Bad things do happen in war, a Marine was literally cut in two and another hurt. The hurt Marine that was running his mouth was on TV today said he was knocked out the whole time and saw nothing but it was bad. This whole thing reeks of leftie politics.
Posted by: 49 Pan ||
05/31/2006 20:47 Comments ||
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#18
America should also know that many insurgents are armed wid US-manufactured weapons, either captured, found, supplied by foreign sources or bought on the black market, not just the Commie types; plus as times before have shown, many insurgents have used women, children, andor elderly civilians, including family members, as "human shields" both before and during firefights against US-Allied forces, to include unilaterally executing them wid US-type weapons just to blame the deaths on American soldiers. WAIT FOR THE FACTS, KEEP AN OPEN MIND.
It is often said that the United States isn't easy on its scholars and public intellectuals--that they are not accorded the prestige and respect that they are given in the Old World. This complaint, usually made by left-wingers struggling against the tide in the United States, isn't totally without merit. A good literary scholar or classicist in the United States perhaps doesn't quite have the same social cachet as would a similarly accomplished scholar at Oxford or the Sorbonne. But when scholars do make it in the United States--and there certainly seem to be vastly more European scholars hoping to make it in America than Americans trying to snag a sinecure in Europe--there is simply no comparison in the eminence, influence, and renown that they can achieve. Since arriving in the United States in 1974, the British historian of the Middle East Bernard Lewis has become one of America's--and thus the world's--most famous academics.
For those of us seriously interested in the Middle East--and since 9/11 that has become a rather large crowd--Lewis, who will celebrate his 90th birthday on May 31, has attained a stature in the field and with the general reading public unrivaled by any historian, living or dead, of the Middle East and Islam. His range of writings--from the pre-Islamic period, through Islam's classical and medieval ages and its premodern "gunpowder" empires, to today's Muslim nation-states--is simply unparalleled by any other scholar, even from the golden age of Islamic studies in the late 19th and early 20th centuries, when the field's terrifyingly erudite, multilingual European founding fathers--the much despised "orientalists"--bestrode the earth. Lewis is the last and greatest of the orientalists--an awkward, geographically imprecise name for those who gave birth to the disciplined study of Islamic civilization. To borrow from Shiite Muslim legal scholarship, Bernard Lewis is the marja-e taqlid, "the source of emulation," the scholar to whom on the great questions one must make reference. He has joined that elite group of academics--the economists Milton Friedman and John Kenneth Galbraith come to mind--who have decisively shaped public discourse, if not always government policy, on their subjects.
This is an odd situation, for reasons both personal and pedagogical. His place in America would not have been predicted 35 years ago, when Lewis was already one of the great dons of Islamic studies, precisely because he is (in all the best senses) so very English--which doesn't always play well in the United States. He is unrelentingly ironic and nuanced, preferring to come at the most consequential of matters obliquely. He is conservative, with a quiet, deep curiosity about small details and the traditions that have evolved and endured over centuries. He is urbane and witty, punctuating the most serious of discussions with subtle, usually mischievous, often mordant humor, gathered and delivered in many languages (translations are provided, though not without occasional frowning). He can be shy and, despite his vast learning, at times arrestingly modest. These attributes are hard to square with his experiences--few men have read and remembered as much as Lewis has forgotten, or traveled the world as thoroughly, or dined so regularly with the high and mighty--but they nonetheless are attributes that define his character, and make him open to people and places that great men, by the time they become great men, usually can no longer see.
Lewis has gained the broadest fame and notoriety for being the intellectual godfather behind the Bush administration's critique of the Muslim Middle East. To quote Ian Buruma in the New Yorker, "if anyone can be said to have provided the intellectual muscle for recent United States policy toward the Middle East it would have to be him." Pedagogically, this, too, would not have been expected. Lewis's complicated ideas are not easily compacted and translated into policy prescriptions, by him or others. He has, nevertheless, been for years a man of public affairs. In 1970, Richard Perle, as a young staffer for Washington senator Henry "Scoop" Jackson, observed Lewis giving a speech, and was astonished by his eloquence ("most people speak in sentences; he spoke in paragraphs") and historical reach. Perle later introduced the Englishman to Washington. However, Lewis's comings and goings in Washington and the media have been relatively quiet for a celebrity scholar. While many of his most vocal academic critics trumpet their appearances before Congress or on cable news programs or at VIP private dinners, experience over decades has taught Lewis (if not his critics, who usually have had less knowledge of the mechanics of American governance) that dinners in Washington rarely translate into policy--at least not policy that penseurs would recognize as their own. Lewis dislikes prognostication--the common denominator of policy life in Washington--because an accomplished historian more than others knows the role that blind luck can play in turning history upside down.
And it must be said that the professor's influence has, in all probability, been overstated--both by his friends and most loudly by those who have emotionally and intellectually been unhinged by the Iraq war. Until President Bush, Vice President Cheney, Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld, his former deputy Paul Wolfowitz, and White House speech writer Michael Gerson write their memoirs, we really won't know to what extent Lewis, directly or indirectly, shaped their views of the Middle East, radical Islam, al Qaeda, Saddam Hussein, and the possibilities for a post-Saddam Iraq. (When the Clinton administration was bombing Saddam's regime on a nearly daily basis in 1998, when its senior officials were routinely describing the damage that the Iraqi dictator could do to us with his WMD programs, was it also under the spell of Professor Lewis?)
I strongly doubt that Wolfowitz, long an advocate of toppling Saddam Hussein and an admirer and serious student of Lewis, pushed war primarily because of what the professor had written or said about the Middle East. When Wolfowitz remarked that a post-Saddam Iraq would be inclined toward being a more liberal state because over 50 percent of the population was female, that opinion surely didn't derive from Lewis, who has keenly understood the magnetic power of traditional Islamic teachings for both men and women, even as he has underscored the extraordinarily debilitating effect that Muslim patriarchy, with its multiple wives and concubines, has had on Islamic civilization's competitiveness. Further from Lewis than Wolfowitz, the president and the vice president in all probability didn't see the necessity for war against Saddam and the establishment of a functioning democracy after his fall primarily through a Lewisean lens. (Ditto, by the way, for most of the pro-war editors of this magazine.)
Thoughtful observers could easily have favored a policy that aimed to replace the Baathist dictatorship of Saddam Hussein, and to rethink America's reflexive support of the autocratic regimes in Saudi Arabia and Egypt, where bin Ladenism was born, and been ignorant of the writings of Princeton University's most famous professor emeritus. This certainly would not have been the ideal intellectual preparation for conflict in the Middle East, but it is a situation that I suspect occurred quite often inside the administration and out. No wild-eyed, Bush-admiring Wilsonian hawk, the New Yorker's George Packer, who chronicled post-Saddam Iraq in his magazine and in the book The Assassin's Gate, doesn't appear particularly influenced by Bernard Lewis's oeuvre, yet he supported the war, however riddled with angst and foreboding. Ditto for Ken Pollack, the military strategist who now hangs his hat at the liberal Brookings Institution. Pollack's The Threatening Storm in the fall of 2002 was the single most influential book explicitly arguing in favor of war against Saddam Hussein. This work is not an extended essay on the cultural, spiritual, economic, and military decay of the modern Middle East Ă la Bernard Lewis, yet it is a compelling argument for why sensible men could support the war and the American occupation.
Although Lewis was certainly in favor of the war (still is), and certainly backed the idea of U.S. support for the establishment of an Iraqi democracy (still does), his views on Muslim history, which are usually expressed in broad brushstrokes that capture several centuries, always have underscored the unrequited expectations of those who would liberalize the modern Middle East. An appreciation of this point was behind the critique done by Buruma, an intellectually serious effort that avoids the anti-Zionist animadversions that have defined most left-of-center critiques of the Princeton professor since 9/11.
Buruma suggests that Lewis's affection for the Muslim Middle East got the better of him, causing him to rashly throw his hitherto conservative intellectual force behind the democracy-through-war project of the Jacobin neocons in the Bush administration. Buruma finds the decision to go to war against Saddam rationally inexplicable, and particularly discordant for Lewis, who has long warned about the dangers of Islamic extremism (per Buruma, the "Iraqi regime was hated by religious extremists"). For years, the professor had written about the obstacles to democratic growth in the Muslim world. But Lewis, it appears, lost his patience and his conservative values because "his beloved civilization is sick." After all, according to Buruma, "what would be more heartwarming to an old Orientalist than to see the greatest Western democracy cure the benighted Muslim?" This, then, is what motivated Lewis's pro-war zeal, "or something less charitable: if a final showdown between the great religions is indeed the inevitable result of a millennial clash [Lewis, not Harvard's Samuel Huntington, originally coined the phrase clash of civilizations], then we had better make sure that we win."
Buruma's assessment is the polar opposite of those in the academy who despise Lewis for being insufficiently sensitive to Arabs and Muslims and supportive of Israel. Nonetheless Buruma's reading is a variation of Edward Said's charge against the Princeton scholar--that Lewis advances the "white man's burden"--though out of love, not imperialist motives, as Said claimed. Buruma is undeniably correct in discerning an evolution in Lewis's views since the University of London graduate in 1939 published his dissertation on the Assassins, a medieval heretical Shiite sect that once scared Sunni Muslim potentates from its strongholds in Iran and Syria.
Given the ugly history of the Muslim Middle East since 1945, it would be shocking if the professor's views had not evolved. In 1945, for example, Lewis was not in favor of a Jewish state in Palestine; today, he is, seeing Israel as one of the things that has gone more right than wrong in the region. What Buruma does not appreciate--and he is far from alone in this--is that Lewis does see the rise of bin Ladenism, and 9/1l in particular, as an epochal event for both Islam and the West.
Although Lewis has never advocated the export of democracy by force, he became increasingly focused after 9/11 on the perverse nexus in the Muslim Middle East between tyranny and the growth of Islamic extremism. He understood--because he'd actually been reading the primary material produced by Sunni Wahhabi and Shiite extremists and by Arab dictatorships--that the United States in the 1990s was increasingly seen as weak in the Middle East, and that such perceptions could be lethal. He underscored the extraordinary dangers posed by Saddam's aggressive totalitarian regime, with a proven hunger for weapons of mass destruction, which, lest we forget, was on the verge of escaping, thanks to French and Russian efforts, from its sanctions and isolation. Lewis, a child of 1930s Europe and a profound admirer of Winston Churchill, did not think the United States should make the mistake again that it made in 1991, in failing to finish off the Butcher of Baghdad.
But LewisÂ’s conservatism remains: He is still a qualified advocate of democratic change in the Middle East. Here is the qualification: He understands the centrality of the Koran and the Holy Law to the Islamic identity and Muslim emotions, and he understands that neither--even in the hands of the most brilliant Muslim modernists--is a vehicle for empowering democratic ideals. He does not trust Islamists. It is for this reason, among others, that Lewis has long admired the achievement of Kemal AtatĂĽrk, the dictatorial father of the secular (and semidemocratic) Turkish Republic.
Yet Lewis is also aware of the burgeoning democratic discussion in the Muslim Middle East. And he assesses this positively--democracy has become for him an essential part of solving the region's many problems. It is astonishing how many observers of the region choose simply to ignore or diminish the explosion of democratic sentiments that has occurred since the Anglo-American invasion of Iraq. These sentiments have not yet transformed the Middle East, but they are a start. I think Lewis's emphasis on secularism and secularists as the all-critical component in democratic transformation may be a little too rigid. Democratic sentiments, however imperfect and self-serving, have embedded themselves to varying degrees even into the ulama and lay religious classes in the region. Iraq's Grand Ayatollah Ali Sistani and the dissident Shiite clergy in Iran are the most famous and probably the most evolved of these religious drivers of democratic change.
Men of religion, I have argued, will advance the democratic movements in the Middle East more effectively than their secularist brethren will. The Muslim Brotherhood in Egypt, the font of so much violent Islamic extremism, could well turn out to be the mothership for democratic change in the Sunni Arab world. (Change that will, at least in the short term, send anti-Americanism through the roof, adversely affect liberal, secular social values, and America's military and security relationships with the ruling elite in Cairo.) This is a bit much for Lewis. Nevertheless, it is probably correct to say that his conception of who will drive democracy in the Arab world no longer fits--if it ever did--the Turkish model, which the professor admires and so many in academe dislike, if not loathe. (Though they need not be mutually exclusive, liking Turkey and liking the Arab world are usually fire and water among scholars and among the experts of the State Department and CIA.)
So what is Bernard Lewis's place in history, especially along the Potomac? Undoubtedly, his two short but compendious, bestselling books that appeared after 9/11--What Went Wrong? and The Crisis of Islam--played a part in helping senior administration officials better understand the historical context of radical Muslims who had embraced terrorism as a means of expressing their faith. His seminal essays on Islamic militancy in the Atlantic Monthly, Foreign Affairs, Commentary, and the New Republic also worked their way into the foreign-policy establishment, even if members of that establishment didn't know the lineage of the views that they expressed.
His bestselling books and post-9/11 articles all hark back to Lewis's greatest work, The Muslim Discovery of Europe, published in 1982. Perhaps the most illuminating book ever written on the Islamic world--a history book that has the chance of being read 50 years from now as closely and as profitably as when it was written--The Muslim Discovery of Europe allows the reader to see how Muslims saw the West, from Islam's earliest days to modern times. (The Muslim Discovery of Europe's only real competitor would be The Venture of Islam, the three-volume masterpiece by the University of Chicago's late, great Marshall Hodgson.) Lewis's book could have been subtitled The Origins of Curiosity About Infidels, for it is a 1,400-year trek through the development of Muslims' encounters with unbelievers. There are many reasons European civilization raced ahead of other, once-superior civilizations. These reasons all somehow combined to explode the rapacity and range of the West's curiosity, both individually and collectively expressed.
As Lewis regularly points out, the word curiosity doesn't really have good equivalents in Islamic languages. The Columbia University literary critic Edward Said, who loathed Lewis and the "orientalist" tradition behind him, never really understood to what degree curiosity (and sympathy)--not dark, imperialist, exploitative motives--drove Western scholarship about the Islamic world, especially during the formative "orientalist" age. A Palestinian Christian Arab by birth, whom Lewis famously debated on stage and dueled in the pages of the New York Review of Books in 1982, Said never really understood, either, how Western scholars could be proud, not particularly apologetic patriots and also profoundly respect foreign faiths, cultures, and lands. (Said never understood, as far as that goes, how men of differing views could remain civil. Under Lewis and his close friend Charles Issawi, a phenomenally accomplished scholar of both modern and medieval Islamic history who had fairly sharp political differences with Lewis, Princeton University was a refuge from the Third-Worldist, anti-Israeli political storms that made many Middle Eastern studies departments in America socially and intellectually unpleasant.)
The creation of a free society, as the history of existing democracies in the world makes clear, is no easy matter. The experience of the Turkish republic over the last half century and of some other Muslim countries more recently has demonstrated two things: first, that it is indeed very difficult to create a democracy in such a society, and second, that although difficult, it is not impossible. The study of Islamic history and of the vast and rich Islamic political literature encourages the belief that it may well be possible to develop democratic institutions--not necessarily in our Western definition of that much misused term, but in one deriving from their own history and culture and ensuring, in their way, limited government under law, consultation and openness, in a civilized and humane society.
The forces of tyranny and terror are still very strong and the outcome is far from certain. . . . The war against terror and the quest for freedom are inextricably linked, and neither can succeed without the other. The struggle is no longer limited to one or two countries, as some Westerners still manage to believe. It has acquired first a regional then a global dimension, with profound consequences for all of us. . . . If freedom fails and terror triumphs, the peoples of Islam will be the first and greatest victims. They will not be alone, and many others will suffer with them.
Many years ago, when I was still an Iran-watcher in the CIA's clandestine service, I thanked Lewis, who had been my teacher at Princeton, for his writings and the long conversations that he'd so generously had with me. I could respect Iranian holy warriors, who then interested the United States government more than their Sunni counterparts, because the professor had helped me to see them as they really were. He'd taught me how to time travel--to reach back and touch the events, people, and literature that still define so much of the Muslim soul. For a case officer, who feeds on the strengths and weaknesses of foreigners, there was no more valuable gift. With other students of the Middle East and Islam, with the common man who is just curious, and with Democratic and Republican officials in Washington who try to see beyond our borders, and who often are not blessed with keen historical insight, Lewis has been similarly generous and kind. We are all in his debt, and in his shadow. Kheli tashakkor mikonam, professor. Happy birthday, Bernard.
Posted by: Dan Darling ||
05/31/2006 01:36 ||
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#1
There is already someone who may be the intellectual successor to Lewis.
His name is Efraim Karsh (currently has a gig at Yale). His book "Islamic Imperialism - A History" takes the hardheaded view that the current islamist efforts are the result of 14 centuries of imperialist thinking and not a result of a new 'breaking with tradition' movement.
#2
It is often said that the United States isn't easy on its scholars and public intellectuals--that they are not accorded the prestige and respect that they are given in the Old World.
That's because a lot of scholars in the US believe a lot of foolish things and don't have the brains to keep their mouths shut and the rest of them are reluctant to shame the idiots so they all get tarred together.
When the UN left East Timor, violence broke out. Its nation-building had created merely a facade
by Linda Polman
The world's newest state is balanced on a knife edge. Only months after UN troops wrapped up their nation-building mission in East Timor, President Xanana Gusmao has imposed emergency rule, and an Australian-led peacekeeping force of more than 2,000 has been flown in. Peace talks in Dili are welcome, but they are taking place against a backdrop of continued violence, with fighting raging on between government forces and their mutinous colleagues. A coup remains a real threat.
The outbreak of violence should come as no surprise - UN forces have left East Timor. In the absence of external military stabilisation, most countries emerging from violence will return to it within a few years, no matter what economic aid, advice and other forms of support they receive. Despite this, the order to nation-builders from their financiers, the UN member states, is to make the missions as short, cheap and small as they can, whatever the context.
Pacific Architects and Engineering (PAE) has a current contract to support the ongoing peace process in the Darfur region of Sudan.
We currently have openings for 14 Cease Fire Monitors and are actively seeking out possible employees for the project.
The Duties/Job Description and Qualifications are listed below.
Duties/Job Description is as follows:
The US Cease Fire Monitors will assist and advise the Sector Commander and his staffs, liaises between the various Non Governmental Organizations and the African Union, and provide weekly situation reports to the African
Support Group in Washington D.C. and members of the U.S. Embassy in Khartoum
Sudan.
Cease Fire Monitors will be under administrative control of the U.S. Department of State's Africa Bureau Sudan Programs Group (AF/SPG) in
Washington DC and under the operational control of the African Mission in Sudan (AMIS) to observe, monitor, report and negotiate in the context of a post-conflict peace process.
Cease fire Monitors will conduct vehicle mounted patrols to monitor the Cease Fire Agreement and conduct formal and informal meetings with local
government representatives, rebel presentatives, and private Sudanese citizens. Monitors will also conduct investigations when a party violates or
is alleged to have violated the cease-fire mandate and report their findings
to the CFC and support the African Union's military diplomacy efforts to mediate between the warring parties, and participate in proactive patrolling with peacekeeping troops as observers.
Additional duties/responsibilities will be:
Monitor checkpoints, military garrisons, crossing points, entry/exit points, Arial points of embarkation and debarkation.
Monitor disengagement, regrouping and cantonment of forces. Identify location and type of weapons and weapons systems. Maintain liaison with and between parties to a conflict, Non Governmental
Organizations, international organizations and other civilian agencies. Assist humanitarian agencies conducting food distribution points and
convoys, medical supplies and establishments.
Provide support to the peace processes, reconciliation, early warning, security sector reform, and analysis and guidance of conflict management and mitigation practices.
Qualifications are as follows:
Minimum of ten years active military experience in Special Operations, Infantry, or Intelligence with a focus on information collection and
reporting, ground operations, and working with, advising, and training of foreign troops.
A high level of professionalism, mental and physical capacity to operate autonomously in an austere environment for extended periods of time.
Familiarization with organization, tactics, and weapons systems of military units at the brigade level and below.
Exceptional map reading and land navigation skills. Excellent interpersonal communication skills (both verbal and written). Strong computer skills to include Microsoft Office word, Excel, and Power Point. A valid U.S. passport.
Additional desired qualifications include:
Experience in Africa and working with African troops. Arabic and/or French language skills.
Contact information is as provided below:
Dave Stroop
Operations Support Manager
E-Mail dstroop@paegroup.com
Phone Work: (703) 717-6062
Cell (703) 340-6049
Litasha Waldon
Human Resources Manager
E-Mail lwaldon@paegroup.com
Phone Work: (703) 717-6055
Please note that I will be out of the net June 02, 06 through June 06, 06
and return to the office on June 07, 06.. Please contact Litasha Waldon in
my absence.
Posted by: Job Huntin B. Hard ||
05/31/2006 14:31 Comments ||
Top||
#1
Most of Iran?s nuclear marketing campaign, especially within the Arab world, is linked to the Palestinian cause and its relationship with Israel. Therefore, the idea that for the Arab World to get rid of Israel it has to accept getting rid of massive populations of Palestinians as well, would be hard to sell to the Muslim world. Plus, the potential negative effects of a nuclear attack on Israel?s soil on other Arab countries, with the panic that it will immediately create in their populations, as well as the risk of making Jerusalem (Al-Aqsa mosque) radioactive, make it even harder for Iran to strike Israel first. It could cause Iran?s leaders to loose their political power and acceptance in the region.
#2
The Arabs and Persians use the Paleos but couldn't give a rat's ass if they were eradicated if that was done in a useful (i..e: joooo-killin') manner
Posted by: Frank G ||
05/31/2006 18:47 Comments ||
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#4
MadMoud can't proclaim a unilateral aymmetric "People's War" or "War of Resistance" in national self-defense, andor defense of Islam, against Amer attack = invasion = imperialism iff no attack or invasion takes place. The US Dems won't like it becuz it means Commie Hillary may have to PC remain a Senator for a while yet, plus any potens Dem successor to Dubya will have to resolve the various Iran, North Korean , Syria, and Taiwan crises, i.e. no post-Dubya/GOP "easy street". NO US INVASION > NO US ATTACK ON SHIA ISLAM HOLY PLACES = ditto agz 12th IMMAM = ditto agz MAHDI = ergo NO PERSONAL OR PAN-ISLAMIC APOCALYPSE FOR MADMOUD, thus Radical Islam won't like it becuz it will become harder for them to acquire naive, youthful recruits to easily replace the heavy losses presently being suffered at the hands of America-Allies. NO IRAN ATTACK-INVASION > also makes it harder to justify any new 9-11's against America, to include PC terror strikes = decapitation strikes against Dubya & Admin. & GOP & anti-Socialist/OWG GOP Congress. CHINA > TAIWAN has more time to buildup its defenses since the USN-USAF, etal will be around instead of over in Iran-ME!? NORTH KOREA won't like it becuz it means the armed forces and econ might JAPAN, SOUTH KOREA, and AMERICA, etal. will still be there in opposition to North Korea wid likely no concessions from the US-West, and with no likely [initial?] mil help from China in case war starts becuz China wants to see what America will do agz Iran. THE REASONS ARE MANY, THE DANGER IS REAL AND STILL OUT THERE. Iran knows its being surrounded,and it also knows Dubya or any Bush-esque GOP successor will likely impose newer, stronger types of international sanctions that can de facto hurt Iran economically.
I'm not sure if there's anything to this other than the usual hand-wringing by Mr. Tisdall. The notion that we somehow 'need' Syria in our effort to isolate Iran is laughable. We don't need Syria, we need to implode Syria quietly. That removes Hezbollah from Lebanon, ends at least half of the terrorist threats Israel faces and a substantial portion of our problem in Iraq. Assad doesn't need to be enticed, he needs to go.
by Simon Tisdall
Almost a year after Syria completed a humiliating military withdrawal from Lebanon amid predictions of imminent regime change in Damascus, President Bashar Assad is clawing back lost ground. Dozens of dissidents have been arrested in recent weeks. Among those detained were Michel Kilo, a prominent democracy activist, and Anwar al-Bunni, a top human rights lawyer. US and EU diplomatic protests have been brusquely rejected.
A silent purge of other signatories to this month's so-called Damascus-Beirut Declaration is also under way, sources said yesterday. Backed by about 300 Syrian and Lebanese intellectuals, it urged normalisation of bilateral relations. It coincided with a UN security council resolution demanding an end to Syrian interference in Lebanon. But Mr Assad, encouraged by Russia and China and backed by Lebanon's pro-Syrian president, Emile Lahoud, ignored that, too. The Syrian leader has cracked down on travel abroad for political purposes and renewed pressure on national media to toe the official line. And in a bid to neutralise the rise of political Islam, the secular ruling Ba'ath party has made a series of conciliatory gestures to the Sunni majority. Mr Assad has even taken to praying for the cameras. That contrasts with his late father's brutal suppression of the Muslim Brotherhood, symbolised by the 1982 Hama massacre.
"There's a big effort to try to get everybody on side. The strong message is that no criticism will be tolerated from whatever quarter," said Rime Allaf, a Syria analyst and Chatham House fellow.
Explanations of the regime's new bullishness lie largely beyond its embattled borders and, paradoxically, owe much to US policy choices. Washington's enthusiasm for regional democracy was tempered by Hamas' election victory in Palestine. The ensuing crisis there has in any case distracted attention from Syria, as has nascent civil war in Iraq. And then there is Iran, America's next big thing.
Isolating Tehran means inducing Syria, one of its few Arab allies, to stand back. Though it would not admit it, Washington needs Mr Assad. At the same time, the Syrian leader's recent muscle-flexing is also motivated by fear, fixated on two looming events.
One is next month's UN report into the killing last year of the former Lebanese prime minister, Rafiq Hariri. Whether or not Mr Assad is accused of wrongdoing, senior officials have already been implicated. But the extent of the regime's embarrassment is likely to be directly proportionate to American determination to pursue it.
Potentially more problematic for Mr Assad in the longer term is the National Salvation Front, an umbrella opposition alliance that will hold its first conference in London next month. The NSF brings together two formidable figures: Syria's former vice-president, Abdel Halim Khaddam, who defected last year; and Ali Sadreddin al-Bayanouni, the exiled leader of Syria's Muslim Brotherhood.
Such collaboration by secular and religious opposition leaders was unusual, Ms Allaf said, and was an echo of Mr Assad's own recent efforts at cohabitation. "This is the first time in four decades that we've seen significant organised opposition to the regime. They've gone out on a limb to draw in other exiles and groups from around the world." If the NSF proved a serious proposition, she said, all Mr Assad's machinations could count for nought.
Posted by: Steve White ||
05/31/2006 00:54 ||
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#1
The only two choices for Assad Jr. and AL SYRIANS REGARDLESS OF ETHNICITY OR BELIEFS is to remain sovereign and independent; or be a future province of Tehran, at best a PC un-annexed province of Tehran ala NORTH KOREA overtly controlled by Syrians BUT de facto controlled by Tehran. Are PERSIANS-IRANIANS, JUST NOT OFFICIALLY LABELED AS SUCH BY TEHRAN OR TEHRAN'S LOCAL VICHY-STYLE SYRIAN PROXIES.
#2
Whether or not Mr Assad is accused of wrongdoing, senior officials have already been implicated. But the extent of the regime's embarrassment is likely to be directly proportionate to American determination to pursue it.
The liberal mindset at work. This is a good example of the cowardice that motivates their thinking.
In recent weeks, media reports from both Iraq and Afghanistan have suggested the appearance of a slow evolution of the Islamist insurgents' tactics in the direction of the battlefield deployment of larger mujahideen units that attack "harder" facilities.
These attacks are not replacing small-unit attacks, ambushes, kidnappings, assassinations and suicide bombings in either country, but rather seem to be initial and tentative forays toward another stage of fighting.
In the past month, reports have suggested Abu Musab al-Zarqawi and his Iraqi resistance allies are trying to train semi-conventional units, and this month's large-unit action by the Taliban at the town of Musa Qala in southern Afghanistan may be straws in the wind in this regard.
Al-Qaeda believes that it and its allies can only defeat the United States in a "long war", one that allows the Islamists to capitalize on their extraordinary patience, as well as on their enemies' lack thereof. Before his death in a firefight with Saudi security forces, the leader of al-Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula, Abu Hajar Abd al-Aziz al-Muqrin, wrote extensively about how al-Qaeda believed the military fight against the US and its allies would unfold. He envisioned a point at which the mujahideen would have to develop semi-conventional forces. He identified this period as the "Decisive Stage" [1].
Muqrin told his insurgent readers that the power of the US precluded any expectation of a quick victory. He wrote that the war would progress slowly through such phases as initial manpower mobilization, political work among the populace to establish trust and support, the accumulation of weaponry and other supplies, the establishment of bases around the country and especially in the mountains, the initiation of attacks on individuals and then a gradual intensification of the latter until a countrywide insurgency was under way.
Each of these steps was essential and none could be skipped, Muqrin maintained; the steps would prolong the war, thereby allowing the mujahideen to grow in numbers, experience and combat power. "We should warn against rushing from one stage to the next," he wrote. "Rather, we should be patient and take all factors into consideration. The fraternal brothers in Algeria, for instance, hastily moved from one stage to the other ...The outcome was the movement's retreat ... from 1995-1997."
As these steps were traversed by the mujahideen, Muqrin argued that the resources, political will, morale and manpower of the insurgents' enemies would be eroded and their forces would assume more static positions in order to limit the attrition they suffered. In this stage of the insurgency, Muqrin predicted that the US and its allies would conduct far fewer large-scale combat operations in the countryside and would turn toward conducting smaller raids on specific targets, while simultaneously hardening their bases and protecting their supply routes and lines of communication.
At this point, Muqrin wrote, the mujahideen could begin the final stage of preparation for victory, "which is building a military force across the country that becomes the nucleus of a military army".
With the end of the constant pressure and danger generated by major enemy sweep operations, Muqrin wrote that the mujahideen should begin "taking advantage of the areas where the regime has little or reduced presence" to train semi-conventional military units. In these areas, "the mujahideen will set up administrative centers and bases ... They will build camps, hospitals, sharia courts and radio transmission stations at these areas, which will serve as a staging area for their military and political operations".
Currently, Anbar province in Iraq; Nuristan, the Kunar Valley, Kandahar and Paktika provinces in Afghanistan; and swathes of Pakistan's border provinces would seem to meet the requirements laid down by Muqrin.
It should be clearly noted that Muqrin neither envisioned nor called for mujahideen units that could evenly square off with the units of their foes. Although the formation of such insurgent units would mark "the era of victory and conquests for the mujahideen", Muqrin wrote, the development of "semi-regular forces that gradually become regular forces with modern formations" would not yield forces equivalent to those of the enemy.
"By modern," Muqrin wrote, "I mean the need for these troops to be knowledgeable about regular warfare, the army formations [and] their function in urban areas. I do not mean following the suit of the regimes ..." The purpose of these forces? "Through these regular forces," Muqrin explained, "the mujahideen will begin to attack small cities and publicize the conquest and victories in the media to lift the morale of the mujahideen and the people in general and break the morale of the enemy."
Muqrin continued: "The reason the mujahideen should target the small cities is that when the enemies' soldiers see these [small] cities falling into the hands of the mujahideen it will destroy their morale and they will realize that they are no match for the mujahideen."
Interestingly, Muqrin uses for his example the activities of the Afghan mujahideen from 1988-92. In Afghanistan, this period encompassed the era after the Soviet military terminated its large-scale, hammer-and-anvil sweep operations - leaving most of the country's non-urban areas to the mujahideen - and after the Soviet withdrawal when the Afghan communists were hunkered down in a few urban bastions.
In these years, Ahmad Shah Massoud and Jalaluddin Haqqani began to train small, semi-conventional units to use in attempts to take small cities of the kind to which Muqrin refers. Both Afghan commanders successfully used these units; Massoud took several small cities in northern Afghanistan - including Takhar - and Haqqani took Khost, then the capital of Paktia province.
These relatively small victories produced a substantial morale boost among the Afghan mujahideen and their supporters and produced equal dismay among their enemies. In a similar but more recent example of this phenomenon, the Iraqi insurgency's morale received a boost - and the US-led coalition was embarrassed - when Zarqawi's forces took and temporarily held the small city of al-Qaim near the Syrian border in September 2005 [2].
In closing, it is again important to note that al-Qaeda's doctrine as explained by Muqrin does not call for semi-conventional units to replace guerrilla forces; the latter will remain a main force of the insurgency, as well as its safety net. At this stage, Muqrin wrote, "we should keep the guerrillas because the mujahideen may need them in some cases."
Muqrin argued that it was always possible that the enemy would revert to large-scale aggressive offensive operations and force the insurgents back into an earlier stage of the war. He also noted that the enemy's airpower would always afford it great mobility. "It should be noted here that the main bases on the mountains must maintain a strong garrison and that the conquests [taking small cities] should not tempt the mujahideen to abandon their fortified bases," Muqrin warned.
"This is [done] so not to give the enemy an opportunity to conduct a rear-landing operation, taking advantage of the absence of the mujahideen in these bases. This is why we mentioned earlier that the mujahideen must keep the guerrillas constantly prepared."
The larger insurgent units that have been sporadically operating in Iraq and Afghanistan during the past year may signal the initial, limited success of Muqrin's call for the building of semi-conventional mujahideen units. The data to make a definitive judgment, however, are currently not available.
It will suffice to say that what is known about al-Qaeda's doctrine for the "long war" calls for the eventual creation of such units, and that al-Qaeda deputy leader Ayman al-Zawahiri's instructions to Zarqawi - in Zawahiri's letter of July 9, 2005 - clearly infers that the mujahideen will need semi-conventional forces to control Iraq after the withdrawal of the US-led coalition.
And he still thinks linearly and has a penchant for ignoring the failures of the enemy and lauding (or secretly admiring?) their tactics. His mindset served him, and us, so well, after all.
Many things could derail the March to Victory envisaged by al-Muqrin. Consider, for instance, what the picture looks like with Iranian Mullah funding removed due to their demise. Oops! The whole drama, as described, goes poof. Relentlessly attack the funding, of all types, and everything changes - for the better.
Thanks, Mikey. You belong at Asia Times. It suits.
* Michael Scheuer served in the CIA for 22 years before resigning in 2004. He served as the chief of the bin Laden unit at the Counterterrorist Center from 1996 to 1999. He is the once anonymous author of Imperial Hubris: Why the West is Losing the War on Terror and Through Our Enemies' Eyes: Osama bin Laden, Radical Islam, and the Future of America.
#2
Further, does anyone really think that terrorism will ever stop? I'd say it's here to stay.
Certainly, where there is Islam, there will be terrorism -- and where it dominates, there will be sectarian strife. There will be outbreaks of violence due to other causes, lame and absurd and greedy causes, but Islam is the center of gravity for sustained and widespread terrorism.
#3
"Islam is the center of gravity for sustained and widespread terrorism."
-I wish one our real leaders would just throw this out there instead of playing the whole ROP thing. Most Americans are getting *it* now, Islam's a bad joke or more like a bad hangover.
A multi-volume chronology and reference guide set detailing three years of the Mexican Drug War between 2010 and 2012.
Rantburg.com and borderlandbeat.com correspondent and author Chris Covert presents his first non-fiction work detailing
the drug and gang related violence in Mexico.
Chris gives us Mexican press dispatches of drug and gang war violence
over three years, presented in a multi volume set intended to chronicle the death, violence and mayhem which has
dominated Mexico for six years.
Rantburg was assembled from recycled algorithms in the United States of America. No
trees were destroyed in the production of this weblog. We did hurt some, though. Sorry.
