As major Arab and African opposition to the International Criminal Court’s indictment of Sudanese President Omar al-Bashir emerges, the wisdom of the indictment - and the Court’s power to enforce it - have been called into serious question.

At its recent summit in Libya, the African Union announced that it will not cooperate with the ICC to arrest al-Bashir. This move represents an escalation from a previous request by the AU to the UN Security Council to postpone the indictment. It also brings the AU’s position into line with that of the Arab League, which rejected the ICC decision at its summit in Qatar earlier this spring.

Not all African countries approve of the AU’s stance; Botswana, for example, has reiterated its support for the ICC’s indictment, as has Chad. From AU and Arab League statements, however, it’s clear that strong opposition to al-Bashir’s arrest exists from Capetown to Damascus, with echoes in Beijing. Spoken opposition - and its manifestation in (lack of) deeds as al-Bashir travels abroad unimpeded, undermines the ICC’s authority.

In May, Mali and Algeria began preparing to get tough on AQIM (Al Qaeda in the Islamic Maghreb). For much of the past six weeks, however, AQIM appeared to be on the offensive. In Mali, an AQIM affiliate executed a kidnapped British citizen, Edwin Dyer, and appeared to be behind the assassination of Colonel Lamana Ould Cheikh, an army officer with responsibility for hunting militants. Meanwhile, militants claimed responsibility for a series of attacks in Algeria.

Mali and Algeria are responding in different ways. Today, Malian forces captured an Al Qaeda base in the Sahara near the border with Algeria, killing “at least twelve” while losing five of their own soldiers.

For its part, Algeria is considering offering amnesty to militants who renounce violence:

The plan is to widen a limited amnesty already on offer to include the leaders of Algeria’s insurgency — excluded from previous offers on the grounds they had too much blood on their hands after nearly two decades of violent attacks.

A similar amnesty was used in Saudi Arabia as part of a strategy that helped defeat a three-year al Qaeda campaign there to destabilise the ruling family, and Yemen is trying to implement a similar scheme.

Algerian President Abdelaziz Bouteflika has raised the possibility of a wider, “general” amnesty in the past few months but statements from senior aides and members of the ruling elite indicate the idea is now closer to being implemented.

“Any measure, including a general amnesty, that could help to stop violence is welcomed,” Abdelaziz Belkhadem, influential leader of the ruling National Liberation Front and personal representative of Bouteflika, said earlier this month.

An upsurge in violence in the past few weeks showed the militants, operating under the banner of al Qaeda in the Islamic Maghreb (AQIM), are still able to threaten stability in Algeria, an OPEC member and the world’s fourth largest gas exporter.

The group this month killed a British hostage, Edwin Dyer, it had been holding in Mali, to the south of Algeria. In Algeria itself, insurgents killed five paramilitary gendarmes southwest of the capital and a week later shot dead nine soldiers.

Overall though, security analysts say the number of attacks has declined sharply in the past few years and security forces have been gaining in strength.

The thinking behind the amnesty is that against this backdrop, many militants are ready to surrender if they are offered immunity from prosecution.

Potentially, these strategies can complement each other. It seems the problem of AQIM has at least two sources: lawlessness in the Sahara and political crisis in Algeria. Perhaps a show of government force in Mali will address the issue of lawlessness, while some form of amnesty in Algeria could supplement ongoing security efforts in Algeria and help resolve the political animosity there.

To read more about religion and politics in the Sahel and the Horn of Africa, visit Sahel Blog.

Heavy fighting in Wahbo in central Somalia between pro-government Islamists and anti-government Islamists claimed over one hundred lives this weekend. Rumors flew that Sheikh Hassan Dahir Aweys, a major Islamist rebel leader, was among them. Rebel spokesmen, however, denied Aweys’ death. On Sunday, AFP reported that Aweys was alive.

After the invitation to join NATO was extended to Georgia and Ukraine last year, Prime Minister Putin and President Medvedev’s cries that NATO’s expansion is simply another form of Cold War isolation continue to grow louder. Their increased effort at building up the Collective Security Treaty Organization (CSTO) - the Soviet response to NATO, consisting of Armenia, Kazakhstan and other allies - underscores these objections.

Since Medvedev announced CSTO’s creation on February 4^th, Russia’s expedited its efforts to establish this pseudo-NATO. A source from the Russian Foreign Ministry may hinted at the source of their urgency, saying “the work is being conducted in all directions. It will be a purely military structure that will be set up to maintain security in Central Asia in case of attack from the outside.” Many are viewing this statement as a warning to Western nations not to meddle in Russia’s foreign affairs.

While he’s rattling the usual sabers and convicting reporters of doing their job, the shrinking leader of North Korea has at least finally admitted that he’s not immortal. This exceeding outsider among world leaders is emitting great volumes of his usual pronouncements while making nice with the military, to all appearances purposefully positioning a son to take over.

Another, latest, blow has landed, with the isolated nation threatening traffic in waters it considers under its control, while two young reporters have received harsh sentences for venturing too close to its closed borders.

North Korea has warned fishermen and boat captains to stay away from the country’s east coast, Japan’s coast guard said Monday, in another sign the communist regime is planning to fire more missiles after its recent nuclear test.

Pyongyang also threatened Monday to retaliate with a “super hard-line” response if sanctions were imposed.

North Korea’s Rodong Sinmun newspaper said Pyongyang “has made clear many times that we will consider any sanction a declaration of war and will take due corresponding self-defense measures.” The commentary carried by the official Korean Central News Agency did not elaborate.

The U.N. Security Council has been discussing imposing sanctions against the North in response to its May 25 nuclear test, while Washington considers introducing its own financial sanctions.
(snip)
On Monday, Pyongyang, handed down 12-year prison sentences to two U.S. journalists, convicting them of unspecified hostility toward the country and illegally crossing the border. The reporters were arrested March 17 near the North’s border with China while researching a story.

The only action taken by the previous maladministration seems to have been cutting the cord in Macau, where the country has been producing its own currency for awhile. From that place, the admission from the eldest, errant, son (recently finally removed from succession plans)comes.

The eldest son of North Korea’s leader Kim Jong-il appears to have confirmed reports his younger brother has been designated the country’s next leader.

Kim Jong-nam, when asked by Japanese broadcaster NTV about whether Kim Jong-un would succeed his father, said: “I think so. I hear this news by media”.

Kim Jong-nam, who denied reports he had defected, said he could not remember the last time he spoke to his father.

South Korean media last week said Kim Jong-un had been designated to succeed.

In the interview, which NTV said was conducted in Macau, Kim Jong-nam, 37, said in English: “The appointment of a successor is totally my father’s decision.

“He makes his decisions so he doesn’t need to talk to me or talk to another person.”

The outsider of world regimes is a sad, bothersome remnant of days when rule was all in the family. Spain will not be invading England again to claim its due after the kind assassinates his Spanish-born wife, and Shakespearean dramas won’t be inspired by family feuds that topple heirarchies. While this is an improvement in many ways, we do have to reflect that family concern for a country’s well-being could be good in instances when an elected leader proves to be daft and/or dysfunctional.

But I digress.

Sadly, in the waning days of the Clinton administration, U.S. relations with N.Korea were actually making progress. We cannot know what difference it would have made if the adults had remained in charge, rather than the maladministration irrevocably undermining diplomatic efforts by blustering about ‘axis of evil’ attitude problems. That we have no existing channels for dealing with a deteriorating world leader - who appears to be paving his son’s way by giving his military free hand in world affairs - verges on disastrous.

The results of the infantile maladministration’s bad handling of absolutely everything has brought world threat to a precipice, and it will take good work with little predictable by way of results to bring off a good ending.

This is a hard lesson in the importance of electing thoughtful, even responsible, world leaders.

(This post also at http://cabdrollery.blogspot.com/ )

Although I am aware that WaPo op-eds are sometimes paid advertisements, it was interesting to see Mikhail Gorbachev’s views on our country there this morning. Like many ex-politicians, Mr. Gorbachev can make a good living by touring with his opinions, and has developed a line that he claims has produced significant applause.

He is observing for his audiences that we need to have our own Perestroika, a shake-up of our systems deeper than the regular changes in personnel that our elections produce. In Russia, there were no elections that had real meaning until Perestroika, and ingrained personnel inside their bureaucracy had allowed real stagnation that was stifling the economy. While several commenters and posters seem to think that we have the same problem, I think that they are misled by the misuse of position in our government that the maladministration just past perpetrated.

Our system requires good information, and that’s been a major weakness. When a Newt Gingrich can buy his way onto the opinion pages of our major news organs, we are ill served in the system of acquiring information. In Russia, the acknowledged propaganda that the rulers instituted was known for what it was, and underground sources developed. That’s what has been happening here, and it has brought about changes that promise to upset the evils that resulted.

To Mr. Gorbachev, the evils resulting have suggested the need for the government itself to be radically changed.

We started with glasnost — giving people a chance to speak out about their worries without fear. I never agreed with my great countryman Alexander Solzhenitsyn when he said that “Gorbachev’s glasnost ruined everything.” Without glasnost, no changes would have occurred, and Solzhenitsyn would have ended his days in Vermont rather than in Russia.

At first, we labored under the illusion that revamping the existing system — changes within the “socialist model” — would suffice. But the pushback from the Communist Party and the government bureaucracy was too strong. Toward the end of 1986, it became clear to me and my supporters that nothing less than the replacement of the system’s building blocks was needed.

We opted for free elections, political pluralism, freedom of religion and an economy with competition and private property. We sought to effect these changes in an evolutionary way and without bloodshed. We made mistakes. Important decisions were made too late, and we were unable to complete our perestroika.
(snip)
In the West, the breakup of the Soviet Union was viewed as a total victory that proved that the West did not need to change. Western leaders were convinced that they were at the helm of the right system and of a well-functioning, almost perfect economic model. Scholars opined that history had ended. The “Washington Consensus,” the dogma of free markets, deregulation and balanced budgets at any cost, was force-fed to the rest of the world.

But then came the economic crisis of 2008 and 2009, and it became clear that the new Western model was an illusion that benefited chiefly the very rich. Statistics show that the poor and the middle class saw little or no benefit from the economic growth of the past decades. (Emphasis added.)

The statement that economic growth passed workers by is indeed true. The diagnosis which would pitch out the baby with the bathwater oversimplifies, to my mind. While Gorbachev, and some of those alienated by the slow progress of change, consider that the entire system is faulty, I see the problem as one posed by the operation of ideology that has placed enemies of our government in positions of power.

With an enemy of the environment running EPA, an enemy of justice managing DOJ, an enemy of labor manipulating the Labor Department, and so on throughout the executive branch, there is no functioning system. The system has been perverted by its enemies, though, rather than by its own weaknesses.

Furthermore, the staff accumulated by these enemies of the state have been operating against the public interest for more than eight years. There are some agencies that need realigning, and one that the administration of President Obama has suggested is an agency for consumer protection of financial institution operations.

I believe that a slowly, methodically, shifting of the government we have into hands that want to and are capable of its operation in the interests of the public is the answer. After all, in Russia, perestroika brought about a system for promoting the public interest, instituting a public voice that hadn’t had any place in Russia’s government before. Ours was originated with that in mind, and only has been diverted from its purposes by those who wanted to siphon the benefits off to themselves, away from the greater good.

Former President Gorbachev is seeing an effect, and it is a bad one. Behind it, though, is a cause, and he is deluded by the gross misinformation our media has been spreading.

Our government has been subverted, but it can be fixed. An election works more effectively than massive shifts in structure, when it puts public service back into the scheme of things. The main change of perestroika was to give the public a voice.

Cold War victims took late President Khrushchev’s promise that he would ‘bury us’ so seriously that they dug the hole themselves. By empowering those who twisted our freedoms to the purposes of combating our own citizens, we have weakened the best form of government ever brought into being. Rather than scrapping it, we need to put our value system back into it. Freedom from repression, not freedom from protection, is its proper function.

(This post also at http://cabdrollery.blogspot.com/ )

The developing world has gotten a lot of lipservice from our industries, but not a great deal of real help. The dumping of our wastes has emerged as a really squalid area of neglect by businesses that chase profits in the face of real damage to our world.

In dumping our wastes abroad, we are infecting our own world. It is horrible abuse to put profit motivation above the natural world that we all need to protect. Talk about our children and grandchildren’s futures rings particularly hollow, when its financial institutions rather than safety and health that is being protected.

One business emerged today as leading the way toward responsible practice.

PC maker Dell Inc. on Tuesday formally banned the export of broken computers, monitors and parts to developing countries amid complaints that lax enforcement of environmental and worker-safety regulations have allowed an informal and often hazardous electronic-waste recycling industry to emerge.

Although Dell’s announcement does not mark a significant change in the PC maker’s behavior, environmental groups hope that by making its standards public, Dell will raise the bar for other electronics makers.

In the absence of U.S. regulations, those groups are banking on competitive pressure to make companies improve their e-waste practices.

“This is very significant announcement,” said Barbara Kyle, national coordinator of the Electronics Takeback Coalition, which has long pressured Dell and other electronics makers to improve their recycling programs. “It may seem like nuance, but what Dell’s doing is drawing a very sharp and clear line and saying they won’t cross it, in a way that is just much brighter and clearer than the way anyone else does it.”

Environmental groups like Greenpeace and the Basel Action Network have tracked shipments of e-waste intended for recycling to countries such as China, Ghana and Nigeria and found computers, TVs and other electronics being dismantled by smashing or burning, exposing people to mercury, lead and other toxic chemicals.

No one knows exactly how much of the electronics turned over to recyclers ends up in such conditions, but Greenpeace and others say it could be 50 percent to 80 percent of the items collected in the U.S. for recycling.

That’s despite broad acceptance of the Basel Convention, an international treaty that controls the movement of hazardous waste across borders. The U.S., which has no federal law against sending such e-waste to scrap dealers overseas, has yet to ratify the Basel Convention. (Emphasis added.)

We have suffered eight years of aggressive ignorance, and the damage is immense. Our national honor, our economy, our laws are bad, but the damage to future generations is more dreadful. The environment isn’t waiting for U.S. voters to realize they have been robbed, it gets worse every day that we spout wastes into it.

Great Britain is in the throes of discovery of gross environmental damages to the Ivory Coast, deliberately committed and with great cost to the local population. Those damages are actionable, and they are being prosecuted.

London’s High Court will on Wednesday hear allegations of dirty tricks in the biggest class action ever brought before the British courts.

It arises from the dumping of toxic waste three years ago in Ivory Coast’s largest city, Abidjan.

In the aftermath, up to 100,000 people fell sick and 16 died.

The waste belonged to a multi-national oil trading company, Trafigura. In the wake of the incident, 30,000 Abidjanis are suing them for damages.

The irresponsibility of criminal conduct by business isn’t assuaged when the perpetrators pay damages. As we see in our own country, the taxpayers are left with the burden of cleaning up and paying for reparations, while the profits are sent offshore.

Deregulation has done lasting harm to this country and many of the developing nations. We must return to oversight of business practices. The damages done by those practices are not going to deter a business community that has shown its only standard is profit and loss. When deterred by regulations and oversight agencies, the business community will serve, rather than destroy, this country.

When left to their own devices, our business community has shown it hasn’t got the good judgment to develop the very consumer economy it depends on.

(This post also at http://cabdrollery.blogspot.com/ )

In a wonderful eventuality, Britain has protected itself from hate mongers. This is something I would love to see more of, and this country might consider acting to limit undesirables of this ilk for our enhanced security. Could we start with ex-Darth Cheney, maybe?

Thanks to the Rude Pundit for this post.

In Brief: Michael Savage: New Winner of the Easiest Takedown in History:
Great Britain banned, among others, radio host and walking self-parody Michael Savage from entering the UK because he is someone who is “fostering extremism or hate.”

Savage, who just last week said of illegal immigrants from Mexico, “[T]hey are a perfect mule — perfect mules for bringing this virus into America,” and that swine flu was cooked up by Islamic radicals to test the borders, is considering suing the British official who made the announcement. Savage, who once wished AIDS on a caller and says repeatedly that homosexuality is a perversion, is upset because the list of people banned from Britain includes him alongside Fred “God Hates Fags” Phelps and believes he is being defamed.

In an interview, British Home Secretary Jacqui Smith (who was so hot when she was on Charlie’s Angels) said, “If people have so clearly overstepped the mark in terms of the way not just that they are talking but the sort of attitudes that they are expressing to the extent that we think that this is likely to cause or have the potential to cause violence or inter-community tension in this country, then actually I think the right thing is not to let them into the country in the first place. Not to open the stable door then try to close it later.”

That’s something you think that Savage would respect since, on page 122 of his 2004 book The Savage Nation, he spittles: “And I’ll tell you something else. ‘It’s our borders, stupid.’ If America is going to survive…we must defend our borders from those who come to exploit our nation or we’re cooked. We’re finished…In the spirit of nationalism…we must defend our borders against the dregs of society.”

Which is just what Britain did, almost like they were advised by Michael Savage.

When we continually discover the bad influence of haters who broadcast their thoughts to weakminded listeners, who are inclined to act against our society, it isn’t bad planning to limit that influence. Of course, making a license to broadcast subject to limitations that demand some taste would be a good start.

The purveyors of violence by their language and their injunctions to save our society from other types should not be spreading their evil. We have freedom of speech, but not freedom to do harm. We won’t be exiling the hatemongers, but there are potential remedies. If advertisers see them as a boost to earnings, those advertisers should be fined when they influence their sickest listeners to strike out at their victims.

(This post also at http://cabdrollery.blogspot.com/ )

Grammar just wouldn’t work for me this morning, so forgive the title, but it’s what I want to post about. (There I go again.)

In watching stories giving a glow to the heroism of Cpt. Richard Phillips, for all of us who have been made aware of the source of Somalia’s piracy there is a bad taste. We can admire a person’s bravery in exchanging himself for his crew, while still wondering why we can’t begin to redeem the harm our Western businesses have done to the country.

With many of you, I learned about the dumping in Somalian waters - that has led to piracy necessitated by the need to make a living - from The SideShow on January 11th. Avedon found and posted then about the hideous waste shoveled off on the failed nation.

Johann Hari says “You are being lied to about pirates: “In 1991, the government of Somalia collapsed. Its nine million people have been teetering on starvation ever since - and the ugliest forces in the Western world have seen this as a great opportunity to steal the country’s food supply and dump our nuclear waste in their seas. Yes: nuclear waste. As soon as the government was gone, mysterious European ships started appearing off the coast of Somalia, dumping vast barrels into the ocean. The coastal population began to sicken. At first they suffered strange rashes, nausea and malformed babies. Then, after the 2005 tsunami, hundreds of the dumped and leaking barrels washed up on shore. People began to suffer from radiation sickness, and more than 300 died. [...] At the same time, other European ships have been looting Somalia’s seas of their greatest resource: seafood. [...] This is the context in which the “pirates” have emerged. Somalian fishermen took speedboats to try to dissuade the dumpers and trawlers, or at least levy a “tax” on them. They call themselves the Volunteer Coastguard of Somalia - and ordinary Somalis agree. The independent Somalian news site WardheerNews found 70 per cent ’strongly supported the piracy as a form of national defence’.”

Over the past eight years of pro-business crimes from the maladministration just past, crimes were ignored as long as they were committed by the business interests. This went on all over the world, to our great detriment. This morning in the Dallas Morning News, Fareed Zakaria commented, in an interview, about the steps President Obama is taking toward regaining a place in the world’s esteem.

Crossposted at Mideast by Midwest.