Capitalizing on critique: UN intervention as political tool

Watching live the vote in the security council was certainly a thrilling experience. There's a lot to be said here,and it was pointed out that the situation and the result was open as the council proceeded to vote; the five abstainees had different reasons for not entering into the vote - and most importantly - the two remaining veto powers also abstained. This was certainly a historic vote, and it served to reaffirm the UN security council as the world's top decision maker.
In the days to follow, the queue of people and groups wanting to critisize this grew longer and longer; and certainly when the attacks commenced. The leader of the Arab League remarked that "This was not what we voted for". It is always problematic to appear divided after a campaign has started, and it very often makes the game easy for the opponent. The question of the no-fly zone was controversial, because the US argued that such a thing would also have to include other operations than just some jets flying around in a circle above Libya. I felt that the critique of the Arab League was pretty near unreasonable, as only Qatar and maybe UAE were planning on supplying planes for the operation. The risk of being shot down would be too great if the anti-air-missile systems were not taken out, and why should only the western powers run this risk? The price tag on a jet is in the millions, not to speak of the potential loss of life. So quite frankly I'm a little provoked by all these loud critics of this resolution and the voting, because they never seem to come up with any alternatives. This leads me to suspect them of thinking about their own political standing when making critical remarks to the resolution and the intervention. How would it be possible to see eye to eye with the survivors of Gaddafi's brutalizing and hide behind the eternal excuse of internal affairs? I also think that the strong critisism regarding Libya's oil is exaggerated. Libya is not a producer of oil of a size that would totally ruin world economics.

Who owns the Middle East revolutions, and what are they about?

Colonel Gaddafi has now almost taken back Libya. Bengazhi has almost a million people, but the colonel has the means to keep them down by way of tanks and bomber aircraft.A lot can be executed too, and the rest given the choice of hailing Gaddafi or ending their lives, much like the old Roman cesarian cult. The colonel knew probably well what he was doing, because the no-fly-zone had no way of passing the security coucil in the UN. If China were to allow the priciple of foreign intervention into internal affairs, it would certainly see problems at home too. It probably did'nt help Erdogan in Turkey's application process into the EU to endorse Gaddafi, although Hillary Clinton did the same thing before Gaddafi started to shoot on his own people. As long as Gaddafi keeps on using military equipment sold to him by western industries, and soldiers trained by western special forces, he will have the upper hand versus the rebel opposition, and obviously he receives a healthy supply of young african men who will work for him for a modest salary. The freezing of his bank accounts abroad obviously has little effect as far as mercenaries go.

But that which happened in Bahrain was even more disturbing, when the Saudi-Arabian royals sent in troops to help uphold law and order. The problem here is that instead of the inspiring common values expressed by protesters to foreign newsreporters, the government and the Fahd-dynasty view this as a conflict between shiite and sunni-branches of Islam, and bring religious arguments into the discussion. This is a total deviation, and clearly demontrates how the ruling families fail to understand the scope and target for the popular protests. It might even be a very well planned strategy to take focus of the appearant lack of civil rights not least in Saudi-Arabia, but also in Bahrain.

The US. is tiptoeing as quietly as it can in these shallow waters, as the Saudi-Arabian establishment simply is too big to fail, as it were. Or too rich, and far too dominant in the oil market. No one expects the cloaked royals to pay attention to a nice motion from the US that they didn't like what they saw. The Saudis even rebuked the US, calling their step-in at Bahrain internal affairs, and not for anyone else to mingle with.

In the big shadow of Japan

I'm usually not a great fan of Ronald Reagan, but I feel that his calling Mohammar Ghaddafi 'the mad dog of the middle east' is of some value, even today. He is using the chaos in Japan to get back his country from those deranged and druged palestinian youths that tried to take it from him. And obviously he is succeeding. This should teach the impoverished and starving populations in North Africa a powerful lesson about the difference between dreams and reality. If the no-fly-zone ever comes into place, it will probably be too late, and all the journalists will have left for Tokyo.

I really hope that Ghaddafi's show of strength doesn't quell the dream of democracy totally among the peoples of North Africa, though this might well prove to be the case, as the other rulers in the Middle East also have great arsenals at their disposal. Ghaddafi has in effect shown the way on how to deal with those stupid ideas of people's rule and voting.

Much of interest in today's politics

What happened in Japan is certainly tragic, and a reminder of how fragile things are. Should there be another even stronger rupture in the seaboard the whole of Japan could literally be washed away, and for one thing this would certainly bring about earthquakes in the world economy too. More than 120 million live on those small islands, and the potential catastrophe could not even be blamed on any enviroment misuse. However, the nuclear threat is another matter all together, and very troublesome indeed. Nuclear power may well be clean, cheap and efficient, but if something goes wrong the effects would outdo the oil and gas troubles by far.Japan knows all about that, tragically.
But Japan needs the energy, and even more so if it can't get a stable supply from the middle-east.

Listening to Jan Egeland give his evaluation of the situation was interesting, and I noticed something interesting; he spoke about all the search and rescue teams around the world, waiting to be dispatched and rush into the disaster area. And he was asked about this, why wouldn't Japan just accept this with open arms. And his answer was that firstly a high level of organization needs to be in place. And secondly, Japan is one of the world's richest and best organized countries, and people there would certainly be able to muster a lot of resources on their own, and they would have to ask if they needed aid. But there is more; because the service of the search and rescue-teams is not free; it is rather expensive, and lack of coordination could even make things worse, rather than help.

I'm sure many religious groups are now predicting the end of the world as can be read in for example the book of Revelation in the Bible. It is ironic to think about aid worker's groups actually making it an industry to provide relief, and as such profiting on the "last times". I'm also sure there is a lot of healthy idealism in many of these groups, and even human compassion and empathy,but I see it as a good thing that the country's government has to ask for these services themselves, and even decide when to dismiss the rescue-groups.


The winds of change in the middle east are also very exciting to follow; the western countries' human rights hipocracy was clearly undressed, but this process is also fragile; the fall of the Saudi-Arabian ruling family is a terror scenario that the western countries don't even dare to think about.