The Arab World is Burning...maybe...possibly...actually, we are not really sure

[malasadas.livejournal.com]

Last week, Tunisia rose up and ousted its long time ruler Zine el-Abidine Ben Ali -- and is now hearing support for the Jasmine Revolution from a top general.

This morning, the streets of Cairo erupted in protests against long time President Mubarak and his government. Reports on the radio this morning said that police were clashing with protesters who would disperse and regroup over and over again in demonstrations that beyond anything the Egyptian government has ever seen.

Also today, 1000s of Sunni Arabs and Christians poured in the streets of Lebanon to protest Hezbollah's announcement that it had appointed Najib Mikati as Prime Minister.

Today, 3 different Arab nations have either ousted a sitting government or are seeing large scale protests against their governments. Does anyone want to offer personal insight or predictions about what this might mean for the region?

State Regulators Dropped the Ball

[dreadfulpenny81.livejournal.com]

The news concerning the victims of Dr. Kermit Gosnell and his band of unqualified assistants just keeps getting worse:

PHILADELPHIA (AP) — When Davida Johnson walked into Dr. Kermit Gosnell's clinic to get an abortion in 2001, she saw what she described as dazed women sitting in dirty, bloodstained recliners. As the abortion got under way, she had a change of heart — but claims she was forced by the doctor to continue.

"I said, 'I don't want to do this,' and he smacked me. They tied my hands and arms down and gave me more medication," Johnson told The Associated Press.

Johnson, then 21, had a 3-year-old daughter when she became pregnant again. She said she first went to Planned Parenthood in downtown Philadelphia but was frightened away by protesters.

"The picketers out there, they just scared me half to death," Johnson, now 30, recalled this week.

Someone sent her to Gosnell's West Philadelphia clinic, at the Women's Medical Society, saying anti-abortion protesters wouldn't be a problem there. She said she paid him $400 cash.

A few months after the abortion, she began to have gynecological problems. An examination revealed venereal disease. She blames Gosnell, 69, for the lifelong illness, which she declined to identify, and for the four miscarriages she has subsequently suffered.

More @ source

The article also mentions that Gosnell's clinic, despite numerous complaints, had not been visited by Pennsylvania state inspectors since 1993 and that 41-year old refugee Karnamaya Mongar was referred to Gosnell's clinic by a clinic in Virginia.

The Pennsylvania state authorities had numerous opportunities to shut down Gosnell's butcher shop for good and failed to do so. This is an obvious failure of the system that needs to be corrected. In your opinion, what could be done to correct government regulatory organizations (for example, streamline them to make them smaller and possibly more efficient or form sub-groups within organizations)?

Terrorism v. Freedom-Fighting:

[underlankers.livejournal.com]

One thing that I've noticed is a slippery pair of terms tend to be thrown around based to some extent on ideological consistency, and to other extents on national interests. For instance the obvious modern example is Israel-Palestine. Depending on the sides one takes both Hamas and Fatah are either freedom fighters for nationalist aims or terrorists hell-bent on destroying Israel. Other examples are the LTTE, who to some would be freedom fighters, to others a particularly unpleasant blend of religious extremists and terrorists, who introduced suicide bombing into the methods of terrorists. And there's also Nelson Mandela and the ANC in the earlier phase of violent resistance to Apartheid.

Edit-It has been pointed out by one of the South Africans here that the ANC deliberately limited its targets to the infrastructure of the Apartheid regime. Hence I will note that this does differentiate the ANC in its more violent phase from what Hamas does and the LTTE did.

( behind a cut for your FLs )

The way I look at it, even if the end for which certain means are used by non-state organizations/individuals are ultimately good those means themselves are still terrorism in every sense of the term. Mandela started as a terrorist opposed to a totalitarian regime, but he was still a terrorist. Similarly Israel's methods and means can be seen as very much settler-colonialism with all that entails, but this no less makes Hamas and Fatah terrorist organizations (just like Haganah and Irgun were terrorist organizations also).

I believe that the concept of freedom fighters is a sop by which people can approve of some terrorists who have causes that meet the sympathies of various movements/individuals but not having to call a terrorist a terrorist. And yes, there are some cases where terrorism is a perfectly valid means to an end: Mandela against Apartheid, John Brown against the Slave Power, the Zapatistas against their Mexican conquerors and so on.

So what say you? 

1) What do you see as the difference between a terrorist and a freedom fighter?

2) Is there ever a case where you personally would see terrorism as a justifiable response to a political-military situation? 

3) If the difference is defined as one targets civilians, but the other doesn't what differentiates the terrorist from the conventional military strategies that deliberately target civilians, like strategic bombing or counterpartisan sweeps?

Any lessons from Domodedovo?

[htpcl.livejournal.com]

Zdravstvuite, tovarishchi! Hi, comrades! I'm not surprised yesterday's event in Moscow went widely unnoticed in the Anglophone media- and blogosphere, and yet it's a fact: one of the deadliest terror acts for the last years has happened at the Domodedovo airport. A man of Northern Caucasian origin blew himself up in the middle of the crowd in the waiting room, killing over 30 people and injuring 150. The act is part of an endless string of terror attacks in Russia for the last years.

The first question is of course who organized it and why? Making conclusions and allegations at this point would be too premature because modern terrorism has many faces and sources, but surely the info we've got at the moment could lead us to some preliminary thoughts.

First, what is that bomb capable of? Well, it happened in the waiting room where the relatives and friends of the arriving passengers were waiting for them to check out and take their luggage after passing the customs control. The bomb was blown up by a suicide terrorist, who, according to witnesses, screamed "I'll kill you all!" a few seconds before pulling the trigger. The power of the bomb (between 3 and 7 kg of TNT) was enhanced with additional ironware and various heavy stuff locked in a suitcase that the terrorist was carrying, and which flew everywhere and cut people's arms, legs and heads. Actually the terrorist's head was found rolling in the wreckage and he was recognized as "Caucasian looking". No surprise there. It was later specified that the bomb had 5 kg TNT, and that's quite a lot. It's similar to the anti-tank missiles which can penetrate armored vehicles.

The effect from the blast could have been even more horrific. Let's remember that a bomb worth 4 kg TNT was blown up in the Moscow subway in 2004, killing 41 people and injuring 250. This time the effect the terrorists were aiming for didn't work up so "well" as they were hoping, mostly because of the specifics of the room. Also we should mention that it's not necessary that they used TNT, there are actually even more powerful substances producing far more energy from a more compact quantity.

Some media mentioned a second blast but that wasn't confirmed.

( But that's not the point )