Internet Scofflaw

Aviation Week reports.  (Via Perfunction, via Instapundit.)

The Washington Post reports:

Two elderly women were sentenced to a year of labor re-education after they applied for permits to demonstrate during the Olympics against their 2001 eviction from their homes, according to the son of one of the would-be protesters.

Wu Dianyuan, 79, and Wang Xiuying, 77, went to Chinese police five times between Aug. 5 and Aug. 18 to seek approval to protest. . .

They will not have to go to a re-education camp — at least for now — the order stated. But their movement will be restricted and they are likely to face other requirements. If they violate any provisions of the order or other regulations, however, they could be sent to a labor camp. . .

In response to international pressure, China said it would allow protests in three parks during the Aug. 8-24 Olympic Games. However, no one has been granted permission yet. The police have received 77 applications with 74 of them withdrawn voluntarily and the other three rejected, according to the state news agency Xinhua. . .

Wang Wei, China’s top Olympics official, has characterized the fact that there are no protests as a good thing. “I’m glad to hear that over 70 protest issues have been solved through consultation, dialogue. This is a part of Chinese culture,” Wang said at a news briefing Wednesday.

National Review looks at the future of Pakistan.  It’s not entirely pessimistic.

Germany says Georgia is on-track for NATO membership. And, Ukraine has decided to join the missile defense system. (Via Instapundit.)

If Georgia survives, even without South Ossetia and Abkhazia, this could be a net win for the West, given that Europe is now alerted to the danger Russia poses.

UPDATE: That’s a very big if, though, since Russia appears to have no intention of leaving Georgia.

The Washington Post reports that people are staying home in droves:

Chinese Olympic organizers acknowledged Tuesday they were struggling to handle an unforeseen and baffling problem inside Summer Games venues and at the showpiece Olympic Park.

Not enough people.

Two weeks after announcing they had sold every one of the record 6.8 million tickets offered for the Games, Olympics officials expressed dismay at the large numbers of empty seats at nearly every event and the lack of pedestrian traffic throughout the park, the 2,800-acre centerpiece of the competition.

U.S. swimmer Michael Phelps won his third gold medal Tuesday in an arena with at least 500 no-shows, and there was a smattering of empty seats Wednesday morning as he captured his fourth gold in the 200 butterfly. The U.S. softball team played in a stadium only about 30 percent full on Tuesday, while the day before, 10 of 18 venues did not reach 80 percent capacity, officials said. Meantime, crowds of tourists and fans have been thin in the extravagantly landscaped Olympic Park, which holds 10 venues including National Stadium.

To remedy the problem, officials are busing in teams of state-trained “cheer squads” identifiable by their bright yellow T-shirts to help fill the empty seats and improve the atmosphere. They are also encouraging residents to apply for access to the heavily secured park.

There are also fewer foreign visitors than expected:

[Some] said the more strict visa restrictions in place this year could be keeping foreign ticket holders away. Across Beijing, hotels and tourist sites are reporting below-average attendance for August. Many of the foreigners in Tiananmen Square, under tight security for the Games, are not individual tourists but part of Olympic delegations.

“Business is worse than at this time last year,” said a receptionist at a 22-room hotel in Beijing’s Chongwen district, where rooms cost $28 a night. “It’s the season for traveling and last year the hotel was full. The Olympics should have brought business to Beijing, but the reality is too far from the expectation.”

Whatever the cause, the attendance problem has blindsided Chinese organizers, who expected jammed arenas for even obscure sports and throngs across Olympic Park.

It’s also possible that some people who might have been inclined to visit didn’t feel like being spied on.

(Via Instapundit.)

The Telegraph reports:

Besides the terrible killings inflicted by the fanatics on those who refuse to pledge allegiance to them, Al-Qa’eda has lost credibility for enforcing a series of rules imposing their way of thought on the most mundane aspects of everyday life.

They include a ban on women buying suggestively-shaped vegetables, according to one tribal leader in the western province of Anbar.

Sheikh Hameed al-Hayyes, a Sunni elder, told Reuters: “They even killed female goats because their private parts were not covered and their tails were pointed upward, which they said was haram.

“They regarded the cucumber as male and tomato as female. Women were not allowed to buy cucumbers, only men.”

(Via Instapundit.)

A very interesting column at the Washington Post.  (Via Power Line.)

The AP reports:

The noxious air [in Beijing] has been a major headache for Olympic organizers, with athletes voicing concerns over the potential impact to their health and performance. Beijing’s air pollution regularly reaches levels two or three times above what the World Health Organization considers safe.

On Friday, the official air pollution index for Beijing was at 94, similar to levels of moderate pollution recorded earlier in the week. The WHO recommends levels below 50 for healthy air, while China considers anything above 100 to be harmful to sensitive groups including children and the elderly. . .

Beijing officials on Friday continued to insist that the murky haze enveloping the city is not the result of pollution, but instead is fog created by moisture vapor in the air. Visibility, they say, is not necessarily an indicator of air quality.

“The air quality, I think it’s good. It looks a little bit misty. You cannot judge the air quality by its appearance.”

Has Al Jazeera decided it wants to pretend it’s a real news source? Hmm:

Arabic television station Al Jazeera said on Thursday a July broadcast in honor of a Lebanese prisoner freed by Israel violated its code of ethics.

Israel said on Wednesday it would no longer assist the Qatar-based network because of the July 19 birthday party broadcast for Samir Qantar, who spent 29 years in an Israeli jail for a 1979 attack in which five Israelis were killed.

The network said in a statement that its editorial board concluded that the broadcast “violated Al Jazeera’s Code of Ethics”. The network said it “regards these violations as very serious and will assess what action is necessary”.

The Al Jazeera show featured Qantar using a scimitar, a traditional Arab sword, to slice a cake with his picture on it.

(Via LGF.)

I’m not marking this one “Media Failure,” that’s for real media.

Conan O’Brien:

China has announced that during the Olympics, protesters will be allowed to assemble in designated protest areas. Yeah. Or, as they’re commonly called in China, jails.

This makes me prouder of the US team than anything that will happen on the field:

Lopez Lomong, a Lost Boy of the Sudan and a member of Team Darfur, was selected Thursday (Beijing time) as flag bearer for the U.S. Olympic team in Friday’s opening ceremonies — the same day winter Olympian Joey Cheek had his visa revoked by China because of his prominent role with Team Darfur.

Cheek, a 2006 gold medal-winning speedskater who expected to arrive in Beijing today, is angry that the Chinese government is taking this “effort to suppress discussion about human rights.”

He was happy about Lomong’s selection but said it had no bearing on his situation. Lomong, 23, a 1,500-meter runner, was born in Sudan and driven from his family after a rebel attack. After escaping from a rebel camp at 6, he spent 10 years in a refugee camp in Kenya before arriving in Tully, N.Y., and becoming a citizen a year ago. “His selection is a statement to how moving his story is,” Cheek said. “The fact that he survived these tragedies is an amazing story.”

Cheek is co-founder of Team Darfur. He had planned to attend the Games to support the 70-plus athletes who will be competing in Beijing who have signed onto Team Darfur. The group is critical of the Chinese government’s funding of the Sudanese regime responsible for the genocide in Darfur.

McClatchy reports:

As tens of thousands of foreign journalists arrive to test China’s pledges to respect media freedom during the Olympic Games, the nation offered apologies Tuesday for the beatings that police gave two Japanese journalists who were covering a deadly assault by Muslim separatists.

Paramilitary police kicked and beat the journalists, throwing one to the ground, putting boots to his head and body, and damaging his photo gear.

In a separate incident, police entered the hotel room of an Agence France Presse photographer and forced him to delete photos of the attack scene, the French agency said. . .

As part of its pledge to win the right to host the Olympics, China offered international media complete freedom around the period of the Aug. 8-24 games.

There’s also this:

With four days left before the start of the 2008 Summer Games, Chinese officials have not lived up to key promises they made to win the right to host the Olympics, including widening press freedoms, cleaning up their capital city’s polluted air and respecting human rights.

The failures were evident Monday:

• A thick pall of smog covered Beijing, raising concerns that endurance events such as long-distance races would have to be moved out of the city. Some still held out hope that emergency measures would clear the city’s air by Friday.
• Near Tiananmen Square in the heart of the city, police scuffled with protesters who said they were evicted from their homes to make way for Games-related development.
• Chinese censors continued to block access to politically sensitive Web sites for thousands of foreign journalists gathered at the Olympic press center.

These failures stand in contrast to the Herculean efforts China has made to prepare for the Olympics, building world-class venues, housing and other infrastructure.

Oops:

Four Mexican soldiers crossed into Arizona and held a U.S. Border Patrol agent at gunpoint before realizing where they were and returning to Mexico, federal authorities said Wednesday.

The confrontation occurred early Sunday on the Tohono O’odham Indian Reservation, about 85 miles southwest of Tucson, in an area fenced only with barbed wire, said Dove Crawford, a spokeswoman for the Border Patrol.

The soldiers, outfitted in desert camouflage, pointed their rifles at the agent and shouted at him not to move, Crawford said. They lowered their weapons after about four minutes when the agent convinced them of who he was and where they were, she said. The soldiers then retreated into Mexico.

Okay, honest mistake and no one was harmed. But:

T.J. Bonner, president of the National Border Patrol Council, the union for Border Patrol agents, said the incursions have created a disturbing pattern.

Bonner said there have been at least a half-dozen situations in recent years in which Mexican soldiers have entered U.S. territory and shot at Border Patrol agents.

“It’s a minor miracle that none of our agents have been killed or seriously injured,” he said.

“It’s inexcusable to not know where the border is” when military units have global positioning capabilities, Bonner said.

The instances in which the Border Patrol strays into Mexico are few and far between, Bonner said.

And “we have no incursions with Canada,” he added. “Absolutely none.”

It’s a good point about the GPS.  This doesn’t need to happen, and it shouldn’t.

Fox News reports:

Anti-American Shiite cleric Muqtada al-Sadr is planning to disarm the Mahdi Army by turning the militia into a civic and social service organization, a significant strategic shift, according to a report by the Wall Street Journal.  In a brochure obtained by the paper and confirmed by Sheikh Salah al-Obeidi, Sadr’s chief spokesman, the Mahdi Army will now be guided by Shiite spirituality instead of anti-American militancy. . .

The move, according to the Wall Street Journal, could further enhance the stability of Iraq amid a government military crackdown and dwindling popular support. The brochure states the al-Mumahidoon will undergo an intellectual and scientific jihad focusing on education, religion and social justice.

“[The army] is not allowed to use arms at all,” the brochure reportedly says.

A few months ago, Time was trumpeting that Sadr had beaten us.  (To the best of my knowledge, they have never retracted that, either.)  Now he’s converting his “army” into a sort of Shiite rotary club.  How the (purportedly) mighty have fallen.

The Wall Street Journal reports:

Tens of thousands of taxi drivers in Beijing have a tool that could become part of China’s all-out security campaign for the Olympic Games. Their vehicles have microphones — installed ostensibly for driver safety — that can be used to listen to passengers remotely.

The tiny listening devices, which are connected to a global positioning system able to track a cab’s location by satellite, have been installed in almost all of the city’s 70,000 taxis over the past three years, taxi drivers and industry officials say.

As with digital cameras used in cities such as London, Sydney or New York, the stated purpose of the microphones is to protect the driver. But whereas the devices in other countries can only record images, those devices in Beijing taxis can be remotely activated without the driver’s knowledge to eavesdrop on passengers, according to drivers and Yaxon Networks Co., a Chinese company that makes some of the systems used in Beijing. The machines can even remotely shut off engines.

Whether these microphones are used to spy on riders is unclear. Asked if police could listen in on conversations in taxis, a Beijing police official declined to comment, saying that such matters were “confidential” and that they were “not supposed to release such details to the public.”

“Unclear”?  Oh please.

The AP reports:

IOC president Jacques Rogge was accused of backtracking on promises of press freedoms Saturday and some Internet sites remained blocked less than a week before the Beijing Games begin. . .

“Let me be very clear on this,” said Rogge, speaking publicly for the first time since arriving in Beijing on Thursday. “We require that different media have the fullest access possible to report on the Olympic Games. And I’m adamant in saying there has been no deal whatsoever to accept restrictions. Our requirements are the same from host city to host city and remain unchanged since the IOC entered into a host city contract with Beijing in 2001.” . . .

“I’m not going to make an apology for something that the IOC is not responsible for,” Rogge said “We are not running the Internet in China. The Chinese authorities are running the Internet.”

Not reponsible, my ass. They knew what China was when they gave them the Olympics. Then there’s this:

During an IOC news conference earlier Saturday, Rogge was quoted as saying “foreign media will be able to report freely and publish their work freely in China. There will be no censorship on the Internet.”

IOC spokeswoman Giselle Davies suggested that Rogge, who is Belgian, may not have been precise when he spoke of “no censorship” because he was speaking in English, not his native tongue.

I don’t think that explanation — even if we were to believe it — is very good cover.  The IOC president hasn’t had occasion to learn the meaning of the world “censorship”?

(Via Instapundit.)

Plus, Olympic visitors face a major headache from Chinese spies.  (Via Instapundit.)  Simplest way to handle that would be not to go.

An encouraging McClatchy story:

For years, when she approached Iraqi Army checkpoints and produced an identification card for soldiers to study for clues about her sect, Nadia Hashim used a simple formula to signal the mostly Shiite Muslim force that she, too, is a Shiite.

“I am one of you,” she’d say.

The soldiers would harass Sunnis, but they’d simply wave Hashim through.

Now her pat line gets her an official reproach.

When a relative used it recently, a soldier admonished the driver and the passengers. “‘We are Iraqis, and you shouldn’t say such a thing,’ ” recalled Hashim.

The 35-year-old mother of three said that for her and countless other Iraqis, the fact that soldiers are now using nationalist rather than sectarian language is a significant change. Being a Shiite is no longer key to her survival.

(Via Instapundit.)

This AP headline caught my eye: “Hamas Says It is Closing in on Suspects in Deadly Bombing.” Is Hamas actually cracking down on suicide bombings against Israeli civilians?

Ha ha. Just kidding. They’re investigating a bombing staged (allegedly) by the rival Palestinian faction, Fatah, against Hamas:

Hamas security forces on Saturday battled fighters in a tribal stronghold where they say suspects in a deadly bombing last week were hiding. Two Hamas police officers were killed and 35 people wounded.

The fighting with machine guns and mortars raged around the stronghold of the Hilles clan, which is allied with Hamas rival Fatah. Loud explosions could be heard throughout Gaza City, and ambulances and police cruisers raced to the scene.

The six Hamas policemen were in a critical condition, a police spokesman said. He also reported 15 arrests.

It was the most violent confrontation between Hamas forces and Fatah supporters since last week’s deadly bombing, in which five Hamas militants and a six year-old girl were killed in a beachside attack.

Hamas blamed Fatah and arrested more than 200 Fatah supporters in the toughest crackdown since seizing Gaza by force last year. The group said the clan is hiding bombing suspects. The clan denies the charge, and said it would defend its homes.

The latest Chinese oppression shows that farce need not wait for the tragedy to end:

Polishing up Beijing for the Olympics has extended to the city government telling residents what not to wear, advising against too many colors, white socks with black shoes, and parading in pajamas.

The advice, on top of campaigns to cut out public spitting and promote orderly lining up, was handed out in booklets to 4 million households ahead of the Olympics, an official said Thursday.

The etiquette book giving advice on everything from shaking hands to how to stand is part of a slew of admonitions on manners, said Zheng Mojie, deputy director of the Office of Capital Spiritual Civilization Construction Commission.

“The level of civility of the whole city has improved and a sound cultural and social environment has been assured for the success of the Beijing Olympic Games,” she said.

There should be no more than three color groups in your clothing, the book published by Zheng’s committee advises, and wearing pajamas and slippers to visit neighbors, as some elderly Beijing residents like to do, is also out. It recommends dark-colored socks, and says white socks should never be worn with black leather shoes.

In the last few years, the government has educated people on how to prepare for the Olympics under the slogan: “I participate, I contribute, I enjoy.”

(Via Hot Air.)

Imagine my shock and dismay at learning that terrorists don’t make good governments:

Palestinian security forces loyal to Hamas and Fatah have both carried out serious human rights abuses over the past year, including arbitrary arrests and torture, according to a report on the bitter power struggle between the groups.

Human Rights Watch, in the report released on Wednesday, cited a pattern of politically motivated arrests, mock executions and severe beatings in detention centers run by Hamas Islamists in the Gaza Strip and President Mahmoud Abbas’s secular Fatah faction in the West Bank.

It faulted the United States and other donors, who have bankrolled Abbas’s Palestinian Authority and Fatah-dominated security forces, for “not paying adequate attention to the systematic abuses by those forces.” . . .

According to Human Rights Watch, masked Fatah security men in the West Bank have arrested hundreds of Hamas members and supporters without warrants.

The report said Fatah forces often tortured detainees during interrogation, apparently resulting in one death. Torture methods included mock executions, kicks and punches, and beatings with sticks, plastic pipes and hoses, it said.

The most common form of torture was forcing detainees to stay in “stress” positions, a practice known in Arabic as shabah, which causes intense pain and sometimes internal injury but leaves no physical mark, Human Rights Watch said.

Hamas forces in Gaza committed many of the same abuses, including arbitrary detentions accompanied by severe beatings and, in two cases, multiple gunshots at close range to the legs, Human Rights Watch said. In at least three cases, individuals died in custody, apparently from torture, the report said.

Human Rights Watch said Hamas and Fatah have both largely failed to hold accountable security men implicated in abuses.

(Via LGF.)

Another report due to be released shortly reveals that the sun rises in the east, the Pope is Catholic, and water is wet.

The Telegraph reports:

The unnamed executive, a 22-year-old from St Petersburg, had been hoping to become only the third woman in Russia’s history to bring a successful sexual harassment action against a male employer.

She alleged she had been locked out of her office after she refused to have intimate relations with her 47-year-old boss. . .

The judge said he threw out the case not through lack of evidence but because the employer had acted gallantly rather than criminally.

“If we had no sexual harassment we would have no children,” the judge ruled.

Since Soviet times, sexual harassment in Russia has become an accepted part of life in the office, work place and university lecture room.

According to a recent survey, 100 per cent of female professionals said they had been subjected to sexual harassment by their bosses, 32 per cent said they had had intercourse with them at least once and another seven per cent claimed to have been raped.

(Via Hot Air.)

Here’s a shocker:

With the 2008 Olympic Games due to open in the shining Bird’s Nest Stadium on Aug. 8, [Amnesty International] on Tuesday gave a scathing assessment of China’s record, saying many of its citizens’ protections and freedoms have shrunk, not expanded, in the seven years since Beijing won the right to hold the Games.

The country has not honored vows to improve rights that officials made in lobbying for the Games, and was not living up to commitments as an Olympic host, the group stated in the report released in Hong Kong.

“There has been no progress towards fulfilling these promises, only continued deterioration,” it said in the report, titled “The Olympics countdown — broken promises.”

“The authorities have used the Olympic Games as pretext to continue, and in some respects, intensify existing policies and practices which have led to serious and widespread violations of human rights,” it said in the report released in Hong Kong.

Amnesty said that in the past year alone, thousands of petitioners, reformists and others were arrested as part of a government campaign to “clean up” Beijing before the games. It said many of those arrested have been sentenced to manual labor without trial.

And then there’s this related item:

Some International Olympic Committee officials cut a deal to let China block sensitive Web sites despite promises of unrestricted access, a senior IOC official admitted on Wednesday. . .

China had committed to providing media with the same freedom to report on the Games as they enjoyed at previous Olympics, but journalists have this week complained of finding access to sites deemed sensitive to its communist leadership blocked. . .

China has backed away from a promise to lift all Internet blocks on foreign media. . .  Chinese officials assured news organizations “complete freedom to report” when bidding for the games seven years ago. The International Olympic Committee received further such assurances in April. But Kevan Gosper, a senior member of the IOC, said this week that the promise will apply only to sites related to “Olympic competitions.”

No surprise here:

China has installed Internet-spying equipment in all the major hotel chains serving the 2008 Summer Olympics, a U.S. senator charged on Tuesday.  “The Chinese government has put in place a system to spy on and gather information about every guest at hotels where Olympic visitors are staying,” said Sen. Sam Brownback.

The conservative Republican from Kansas, citing hotel documents he received, added that journalists, athletes’ families and others attending the Olympics next month “will be subjected to invasive intelligence-gathering” by China’s Public Security Bureau. He said the agency will be monitoring Internet communications at the hotels.

The U.S. senator made a similar charge a few months ago but said that since then, hotels have come forward with detailed information on the monitoring systems that have been required by Beijing.

(Via LGF.)

China is looking likely to be embarrassed by its failure to curb pollution in advance of the Olympics:

China has gone to Olympian lengths to try to ensure that its skies are clear for the Summer Games, which formally kick off in 10 days. It has spent $17 billion on antipollution measures in recent years. Last week, it forced more than a million cars off the streets, halted construction in and around the city, and temporarily closed hundreds of factories in surrounding provinces.

But despite these measures, the Chinese capital remains mired in a gray haze, and the government’s pollution readings have exceeded its own safe levels four out of the past eight days.

Now, with the prospect of international embarrassment looming, officials are considering even tougher measures, including shutting more factories. They might also ban as many as 90% of Beijing’s private vehicles on especially bad days during the Games, a government adviser said Monday. Special lanes for Olympic VIPs may be abandoned because officials say they’re causing extra congestion and making the air worse.

I hope they are embarrassed. It couldn’t happen to a nicer bunch of totalitarian thugs. But the key point is this one:

The success or failure of Beijing’s efforts in the coming days could help determine whether China’s most important international event in modern times is itself a success. But it also has implications that go beyond the ability of the city to host a clean Games.

Scientists from around the world are studying the antipollution efforts to see what, if anything, succeeds — and what the costs are. These conclusions could affect policies in countries like India. . .

China’s authoritarian government can compel companies and citizens to comply with regulations more easily than other countries can. The government’s antipollution measures have disrupted workday commutes for hundreds of thousands of residents, and caused tens of thousands of workers to go on forced holiday, with reduced pay.

So if Beijing can’t succeed — even in the short term — the current experiment could bode ill for the ability of other industrializing countries to curb pollution.

If authoritarian environmentalism can’t make it in China, it can’t make it anywhere.

Another thing Hugo Chavez has to answer for is a horrific surge in Venezuela’s murder rate:

ONE of Hugo Chávez’s lesser-known feats since taking over as Venezuela’s leader in 1999 is to have presided over a tripling of the annual homicide rate—and that’s according to the official statistics. Last year more than 13,000 people were killed in a country of 27m, producing a murder rate of 48 per 100,000, the second highest in the world (after El Salvador). In neighbouring Colombia, a country plagued by guerrilla war and drug violence, the rate was 40 per 100,000.

Not surprisingly, violent crime far outweighs the other worries of Venezuelans. Three-quarters of them describe it as the worst problem now facing the country, polls show. “The first thing we need to do”, says José Vicente Rangel, Mr Chávez’s former vice-president, “is confess our failure.”

He claims that the government, opposition, media and criminologists are all equally to blame. But, as critics point out, Mr Chávez controls most of the security forces, as well as the prisons; the courts and the prosecution service are in effect branches of the executive, too. Luis Cedeño, head of Incosec, a public-security think-tank, accuses the government of showing a “total lack of political interest” in tackling crime. . .

Many homicides never get into the official statistics. They include those killed while supposedly “resisting arrest”. Yet in exchanges of fire between police and alleged criminals, 39 suspects are killed for every policeman, suggesting not much “resistance” is taking place. Another large (and growing) group of suspicious deaths excluded from the official data are those that have not yet been categorised—and probably never will be—though most are likely to result from murder. . .

Caracas is currently the second most dangerous city in the Americas (after San Salvador). Even by the official figures, the murder rate is 130 per 100,000; Mr Cedeño says the true figure is a staggering 166. One reason, he argues, is impunity. On average, only three of every 100 murderers are actually sentenced, he points out. Another is a presidential discourse that emphasises class warfare and has sometimes excused crime as a response to social inequality.

For perspective, the murder rate in Detroit, the worst in America, was 47.3 in 2006, so Venezuela as a whole is more dangerous than America’s worst city. Caracas is over three times worse. The annualized rate of death-by-violence in Baghdad for the first nine months of 2006 (near the height of the sectarian violence) was around 300. So Caracas is about half as bad as Baghdad at its worst. In the first half of 2008, Iraq had an annualized death-by-violence rate of 27.6.

(ASIDE: The Iraq 2008 figure is computed from the Brookings Institution report of 18Jul2008. Reliable figures on Baghdad are hard to find. I did my Baghdad 2006 calculation by subtracting the cumulative figures in two Brookings Institution reports, 23Feb2006 and 31May2007. I was unable to find any figures on Baghdad 2008.)

The article also reports that Venezuela’s latest interior minister has “achieved” a 27% drop in homicides in the traditional way, by changing the way the figures are calculated.

The suffering people of Zimbabwe are responding rationally to hyperinflation, conducting transactions in anything but Zimbabwean dollars:

Zimbabweans spend their local dollars as fast as possible or change them into hard currency on the black market. A parallel system is thriving in back offices and parking lots. Ronald was a civil servant but became a money dealer about a year ago to feed his family. He now makes about $100 a month, whereas his former colleagues earn the equivalent of less than $2 a month, enough to buy two loaves of bread. On a recent trip, this correspondent changed money from a central-bank employee running an illegal foreign-exchange business in his own office.

With a strict daily limit (currently less than $1.40) on bank withdrawals, people shun banks as much as possible and are returning to a cash economy. Petrol and rents are now charged mainly in American dollars or South African rand, but since some landlords have been taken to court, rents are increasingly often paid for in groceries. People buying overpriced cooking oil or sugar on the black market, since those items have long vanished from shops due to official price controls, are charged more if they pay in local dollars. Petrol coupons have become a virtual currency.

John Robertson, a local economist, reckons that the informal economy has probably become larger than the formal one. Though estimates are fuzzy, he believes that money sent by Zimbabweans abroad to friends and relatives at home, which used barely to register on Zimbabwe’s foreign-exchange radar screen, now accounts for probably a third or so of the country’s foreign-exchange inflows.

Turning to foreign exchange or barter is what you would expect in countries that have had inflation of more than a few hundred per cent a year. At the height of its inflation crisis, shops in Argentina were no longer able to price their goods. In some cases, Peruvians started using lavatory paper, then in short supply, as currency.

I wish I could believe this London Times report:

THE president of Zimbabwe, Robert Mugabe, has been warned by Thabo Mbeki, the South African president, that he faces prosecution for the crimes he has committed during his 28 years in office unless he signs a deal to give up all effective power.

Mbeki, who has done all he can to shield and support Mugabe for the past eight years, has come under overwhelming western pressure and has had to tell Mugabe that he could no longer protect him and his key cronies from being charged by the International Criminal Court (ICC).

The power-sharing talks between Mugabe’s Zanu-PF and Morgan Tsvangirai’s Movement for Democratic Change (MDC) are shrouded in secrecy. But The Sunday Times has learnt that Mugabe, who has vowed that Tsvangirai will never be in government and that “only God can remove me from power”, faces humiliation over the terms of the deal that he will be forced to sign next month.

He will remain as president in name only and all real power will be held by a 20-member cabinet under Tsvangirai as prime minister. The opposition MDC will have 11 cabinet posts to nine for Mugabe’s Zanu-PF.

All Mugabe’s senior officials in the army, police and intelligence services, who have unleashed a campaign of terror since the MDC won a disputed victory in the elections held in March, will be dismissed.

(Via Hot Air.)

Fox News reports:

The International Olympic Committee confirmed its decision to ban Iraq from taking part in the Beijing Olympics because of the government’s interference with sports by disbanding the country’s National Olympic Committee, Reuters reported.

“This morning we were informed of the final decision of the International Olympic Committee to suspend the membership of the Iraqi Olympic Committee,” Hussein al-Amidi, the general secretary of the Iraqi Olympic Committee, said.

The decision is a major blow to seven Iraqi athletes who hoped to travel to Beijing this summer, AFP reported.

During Saddam Hussein’s regime, the IOC didn’t act on Uday Hussein’s interference with sports:

In the history of the world, an expanse that covers Genghis Khan and Adolf Hitler and other despots both past and present, there is no shortage of absolute rulers whose human rights records compare with that of today’s designated pariah, Saddam Hussein.

There may never have been a sports official, though, as brutal as his son, Uday.

As president of the Iraqi National Olympic Committee, Uday allegedly tortures athletes for losing games. He sticks them in prison for days or months at a time. Has them beaten with iron bars. Caned on the soles of their feet. Chained to walls and left to stay in contorted positions for days. Dragged on pavement until their backs are bloody, then dunked in sewage to ensure the wounds become infected. If Uday stops by a player’s jail cell, he might urinate on his bowed, shaven head. Just to humiliate him.

This is the picture that emerges of Uday Saddam Hussein from ESPN.com interviews in the United States and England with former Iraqi national team athletes in several sports. Some of them claim they were personally tortured. All of them say they lived in fear that they would be punished at Uday’s whim. . .

The allegations in the ESPN.com report come on the heels of a formal complaint filed with the International Olympic Committee earlier this month. Indict, a London-based human rights group created in 1997 that seeks to bring criminal charges against the top leaders of the Iraqi regime, asked the IOC Ethics Commission earlier this month to suspend or expel the country from the Olympics based on violations of the IOC code of ethics. The IOC, which has no sway over a nation’s choice for its Olympic committee chief, is reviewing the request.

Didn’t act, that is, until a month after Saddam’s regime fell. Then, in May 2003, the IOC’s “ethics commission” called for the dissolution of Iraq’s national Olympic committee, the same action for which Iraq now finds itself banned from the 2008 Olympics.

Another reason to boycott them.

UPDATE (7/29): The IOC has relented.

Fox News reports.

The AP reports.

Communist countries cannot afford green industry, so they tend to be among the worst polluted if they are industrialized at all. However, if their rulers so desire, they can put the entire country behind a single national effort, such as Sputnik or temporarily clearing the smog from Beijing. So, China is shutting down industry, transportation, and construction throughout the Beijing area:

Beijing’s Olympic shutdown begins Sunday, a drastic plan to lift the Chinese capital’s gray shroud of pollution just three weeks ahead of the games.

Half of Beijing’s 3.3 million vehicles will be pulled off the roads and many polluting factories will be shuttered. Chemical plants, power stations and foundries left open have to cut emissions by 30 percent — and dust-spewing construction in the capital will be halted. . .

Striking venues and $40 billion spent to improve infrastructure cannot mask Beijing’s dirty air. A World Bank study found China is home to 16 of the 20 worst cities for air quality. Three-quarters of the water flowing through urban areas is unsuitable for drinking or fishing.

International Olympic Committee president Jacques Rogge has repeatedly warned that outdoor endurance events lasting more than an hour will be postponed if the air quality is poor.

Under the two-month plan, vehicles will be allowed on the roads every other day depending on even-odd registration numbers. In addition, 300,000 heavy polluting vehicles — aging industrial trucks, many of which operate only at night — were banned beginning July 1. . .

The gigantic experiment to curb pollution could still go wrong. Veerabhadran Ramanathan, an atmospheric scientist at the Scripps Institution of Oceanography at the University of California San Diego, said unpredictable winds could blow pollution into Beijing despite factory shutdowns in the city and five surrounding provinces.

Chris Borgen has an interesting post about “seasteading,” the idea of forming micronations at sea. (Via Instapundit.)

I’ve daydreamed about this sort of thing a lot, and my conclusions are generally the same as his. I think he complicates matters, though, with his focus on the idea of sovereignty. I would argue that in reality, there’s no such thing. Any group of people who decide to call themselves an independent nation are independent exactly to the degree to which they are able to defend themselves.

Trying to make yourself inoffensive, so that you don’t need to defend yourself, is a non-starter. No one contemplating seasteading has the intention of living in poverty, and anyone enjoying a western standard of living would be a target.

You can try to get friends to defend you, but you need to find someone who is able and willing. Most countries that are able (America for example), aren’t likely to exert themselves to protect people they see as tax dodgers. (The unique quality of Sealand was that it was clearly under the umbrella of the UK, but had a peculiar legal status that made it de facto independent.)

Hiding worked for John Galt and Andrew Ryan, but it’s not an option in the real world, at least until we can settle in space. That leaves defending yourself.

So there’s really two avenues to starting your own nation. First, get a strong power to accept your “sovereignty” and also be friendly enough that they will defend you. To pull that off, you generally need to be a persecuted minority. Second, hire yourself an army.

Where I differ from Borgen is I don’t see the latter as impossible. To be sure, you’d need to be seriously rich, but there are people in the world who can afford to retain a decent mercenary force. You don’t need one that can fight world powers; just one that can deter pirates and whatever nearby dictators might cast a covetous eye your way.

What happens next? That’s where the daydream begins.

In the run-off “election”, Robert Mugabe seems to have abandoned his old slogan, “Get behind the fist.” His new one is, er, not a lot better:

Two weeks ago, I noted that Mugabe had been cut off by the German firm that supplied him the paper on which to print his hyper-inflating currency.  At the time, the Zimbabwean Minister of Worthless Currency (or whatever they call it) bravely predicted that it would not be a problem.

Now Mugabe’s printing operation is being cut by two-thirds, and it will be entirely out-of-paper in another two weeks.  Since the money is used to pay Mugabe’s police, army, and thugs, this could be a major problem for his regime.

(Via the Corner.)

An Iranian student who was arrested in 1999 for appearing on the cover of the Economist and suffered years of torture, has escaped to America.

Just in case anyone forgets who are the good guys and who are the bad guys.

After the last few years of anti-war, effectively pro-terrorist idiocy, I’m not easily outraged any more, but Her Majesty’s government has found a way to do it. Al Qaeda’s ambassador to Europe, Abu Qatada, is free in Britain (with an ankle bracelet) and collects around £50,000 a year in government benefits.  He is also exempt from property tax on his £800,000 home.  But it’s not all cushy for Qatada; he’s not allowed to have any contact with Osama bin Laden.

(Via the Corner.)

To prepare for the Olympics, China is jailing dozens of dissidents.  (Via Instapundit.)

If I were any good at illustration, I’d prepare a graphic of the Olympic logo with the rings replaced by chains.

Compliments of John Derbyshire:

Stalin appears to Putin in a dream, says: “Valdimir Vladimirovich, I have two pieces of advice for you. One: Kill all your enemies, without fear or favor. Two: Paint the Kremlin blue.”

Putin: “Why blue?”

The Kremlin ratchets up its rhetoric against deployment of a missile defense system in Europe (the one the American left says can’t work):

Russia will be forced to make a military response if the U.S.-Czech missile defense agreement is ratified, the Foreign Ministry said Tuesday. . . Russia says the system would severely undermine European security balances by weakening Russia’s missile capacity.

If the agreement is ratified, “we will be forced to react not with diplomatic, but with military-technical methods,” the Foreign Ministry statement said. It did not give specifics of what the response would entail. . .

The U.S. has pushed the plan as necessary to prevent missile attacks by rogue nations, pointing to Iran as a particular concern. But Russia dismisses the likelihood of such threats.

Speaking of which, in other news:

Iran’s state television says its Revolutionary Guards have tested nine new long- and medium-range missiles in war games that officials say are in response to U.S. and Israeli threats.

The Economist reports:

Few things symbolised the Soviet attitude to truth more than the Katyn massacre: having shot 20,000 Polish officers in cold blood, the Kremlin then blamed it on the Nazis. And few things symbolise better modern Russia’s lingering clinch with the Soviet past than the failure by relatives of the victims to get justice from the Russian legal system.

Last month a court in Moscow rejected a request to hear a case on two issues: the declassification of documents about Katyn and the judicial rehabilitation of the victims. That was shocking (imagine a German court telling Holocaust survivors that Auschwitz files were a military secret). But the Katyn relatives want to take their case to the European Court of Human Rights in Strasbourg, and for that other legal avenues must be exhausted first.

Last week, however, an appeal court overturned the lower court’s ruling and ordered it to hear the case. Other signals coming from the top, including an interview given to a Polish newspaper by an adviser to former President Vladimir Putin who called Katyn a “political crime”, suggest that the Russians are changing their attitude. One risk for them is a defeat at Strasbourg. Another is the effect on public opinion of a new film, “Katyn”, by Andrzej Wajda, Poland’s best-known director, that is filling cinemas in the West and in Russia.

I won’t be holding my breath.

In another coup for Iraqi Prime Minister al-Maliki, the United Arab Emirates has restored full diplomatic relations with Baghdad and forgiven Iraq’s $7 billion debt.

Iran may be working on biological weapons:

Hundreds of endangered monkeys are being taken from the African bush and sent to a “secretive” laboratory in Iran for scientific experiments.

An undercover inquiry by The Sunday Times has revealed that wild monkeys, which are banned from experiments in Britain, are being freely supplied in large numbers to laboratories in other parts of the world. All will undergo invasive and maybe painful experiments leading ultimately to their death.

One Tanzanian dealer, Nazir Manji, who runs African Primates, an animal-supplying company based in Dar es Salaam, said that in recent years he had been selling up to 4,000 vervet monkeys a year to laboratories, charging about £60 each. . . Manji said scientists at the Razi Vaccine and Serum Research Institute in Iran had bought 215 vervet monkeys from him this year but he had become suspicious about their true motive, although he was still trading with them. They had “spent a lot of money” on getting the monkeys, even sending over scientists to check on each consignment.

“Iran is very secretive,” said Manji, who has been exporting monkeys for 22 years. “They said it [the monkeys] was for ‘our country’, for vaccine. [They said] ‘We don’t buy vaccine from anywhere; we prepare our own vaccine’.

“But I think they use it for something else. You know why? Because they don’t go on kilos. Iran wants [monkeys weighing] 1.5kg to 2.5kg, [but] 1.5kg for vaccine is not possible.” . . .

The revelation will fuel speculation that the monkeys may be used for research involving biological weapons. Primates are typically used by scientists wishing to test both the effectiveness of germ warfare agents and defences against them.

The Razi Vaccine and Serum Research Institute, which has its headquarters in Karaj, near Tehran, has been accused in the past by an Iranian opposition group of conducting biological weapons testing.

According to US intelligence, the pharmaceutical industry in Iran has long been used as a cover for developing a germ warfare capability.

In 2005 the US Office of the Director of National Intelligence said Iran “continued to seek dual-use biotechnology materials, equipment and expertise that are consistent with its growing legitimate biotechnology industry but could benefit Tehran’s assessed probable BW [biological weapons] programme”. Earlier this year it reiterated this.

The Razi institute, which was established in 1925, does legitimate research but does not publicly list on its website the use of primates in any of its current projects. Other animals being used for experiments, such as guinea pigs and mice, are mentioned.

Good thing Iran is no threat to us.

(Via Instapundit.)

A new problem (subscription required) for Mugabe:

Robert Mugabe has kept his embattled regime in Zimbabwe afloat on a sea of paper money. Now, he’ll have to try to do it without the paper.

The Munich-based company that has supplied Zimbabwe with the special blank sheets to print its increasingly worthless dollar caved in to pressure on Tuesday from the German government for it to stop doing business with the African ruler.

Mr. Mugabe’s regime relies on a steady supply of the paper — fortified with watermarks and other antiforgery features — to print the bank notes that allow it to pay the soldiers and other loyalists who enable him to stay in power. With an annual inflation rate estimated at well over 1 million percent, new notes with ever more zeros need to be printed every few weeks because the older ones lose their worth so quickly.

Giesecke & Devrient — a secretive, family-owned Bavarian company that once made its money churning out worthless cash for the doomed Weimar Republic in the 1920s — has been airlifting tons of blank notes to the Zimbabwean capital Harare. The company, which has been doing business with the African nation since before Mr. Mugabe took power in 1980, is one of the few sources in the world for the specialized paper that is so important in an age when computers and laser printers have made forgery easy.

I can’t help wondering how Mugabe was paying them.

(For those without a WSJ subscription, MSNBC has a story too.)

The London Times reports. (Via LGF.)

But, to give credit where credit is due, Raila Odinga, the Prime Minister of Kenya, did speak out against Mugabe:

The African Union should not accept or entertain Mr Mugabe. He should be suspended until he allows the African Union to facilitate free and fair elections between him and his opponents.

AFP reports:

“It is extremely troubling to see the Government of Venezuela employing and providing safe harbor to Hezbollah facilitators and fundraisers. We will continue to expose the global nature of Hezbollah’s terrorist support network, and we call on responsible governments worldwide to disrupt and dismantle this activity,” said Adam Szubin, Director of the Office of Foreign Assets Control (OFAC).

The people of Zimbabwe having not yet suffered enough, Mugabe has decided to empty the store shelves:

In a bid to cement voters’ loyalty, Mr Mugabe has ordered price cuts of up to 90 per cent in some areas. Truckloads of scarce goods are being sent from Harare to so-called People’s Shops, which were inaugurated by Mr Mugabe during his campaign. These will be forced to sell bottles of cooking oil at Z$1 billion, or about 6p, according to the official Herald daily. Normally, a bottle costs Z$16 billion (£1).

Fox News reports.

Queen Elizabeth yesterday stripped Mugabe of his knighthood, which was awarded in 1994. (Via Instapundit.)

Paul Wolfowitz has a plan:

Words of condemnation help to deny Mugabe’s claims of legitimacy, but words alone are not enough. Specific sanctions against some of the leaders of the violence may also be useful, but their impact will be limited. Broad economic sanctions will only increase the suffering of Zimbabwe’s people, whose misery has already been increased by Mugabe’s refusal to accept emergency food assistance from the U.N.

There is also talk about U.N. peacekeeping forces or other forms of military intervention, but this does not seem to be what the people of Zimbabwe want. What the people of Zimbabwe clearly do want is to maintain the pressure on Mugabe and his cronies for peaceful, democratic change.

The international community should commit – as publicly and urgently as possible – to provide substantial support if Mugabe relinquishes power. Even if Mr. Tsvangirai were to become president tomorrow he would still face a daunting set of problems: restoring an economy in which hyperinflation has effectively destroyed the currency and unemployment is a staggering 70%; getting emergency food aid to millions who are at risk of starvation and disease; promoting reconciliation after the terrible violence; and undoing Mugabe’s damaging policies, without engendering a violent backlash.

The international community should also say it will move rapidly to remove the burden of debts accumulated by the Mugabe regime and not force a new government to spend many months and precious human resources on the issue.

(Via Instapundit.)

A few years ago, Israel unilaterally withdrew from its security buffer in southern Lebanon. At the time, that was the sole demand of Hezbollah. But terrorist organizations don’t cease to exist when their demands are met, they simply issue new demands, and Hezbollah is no exception. After Israel’s disengagement from Lebanon, Hezbollah announced that it also required that Israel turn over the Shebaa farms (a small piece of territory claimed by Syria).

Now, facing the prospect of perhaps getting what they demand, Hezbollah has announced that Israel turning over the Shebaa farms would not be enough. Also, they have backtracked in negotiations over a prisoner exchange, demanding hundreds of additional (non-Lebanese) prisoners be released in exchange for the release of the two Israeli soldiers they kidnapped. One might be forgiven for wondering if perhaps Hezbollah might not want peace!

There’s a reason it’s long been said that negotiating with terrorists is folly.

(Via LGF.)

With mounting violence in Zimbabwe, Morgan Tsvangirai has announced that he is pulling out of the presidential runoff. With the likelihood that voting for Tsvangirai would cost voters their lives, and Mugabe vowing to stay in power whatever the results, he decided it would irresponsible to carry through with the charade.

I’ve long expected that Mugabe will leave office only at the end of a noose.

(Here’s a retrospective on Mugabe’s post-election atrocities.)

When Hugo Chavez was somewhat popular, he may not have needed a secret police. Now, times have changed:

It may be an autocracy, but Hugo Chávez’s government has never been particularly repressive, let alone a dictatorship. A decree issued late last month with no prior debate threatens to change that. It creates a new intelligence and counter-intelligence system which in the name of national security enlists the entire population in what could potentially amount to a spy network. “This undoubtedly brings us close to…a ‘police state’,” declared Provea, a human-rights group.

The decree authorises police raids without warrant, the use of anonymous witnesses and secret evidence. Judges are obliged to collaborate with the intelligence services. Anyone caught investigating sensitive matters faces jail. The law contains no provision for any kind of oversight. It blurs the distinction between external threats and internal political dissent. It requires all citizens, foreigners and organisations to act in support of the intelligence system whenever required—or face jail terms of up to six years. . .

[Interior Minister Ramón Rodríguez Chacín] said that members of the new intelligence and counter-intelligence bodies will be required to demonstrate “ideological commitment” to Mr Chávez’s “Bolivarian revolution”.

The president’s popularity is falling, according to most opinion polls. In December he lost a constitutional referendum. Regional elections in November are likely to erode his near-monopoly of power. The suspicion must be that this law is designed to defend a declining regime rather than to bolster the security of Venezuelans.

But then, Chavez blinked:

Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez has revoked a law that made sweeping changes to the intelligence services.

Mr Chavez said he recognised he had made errors when proclaiming the law by decree, adding that it breached the country’s constitution.

What happened? The sequence is reminiscent of the recent Venezuelan referendum that would have made Chavez a dictator. The government initially declared victory, before eventually conceding defeat after actual results leaked and the military refused to cooperate with vote-rigging. I suspect that here too, the military refused to acquiesce to Chavez’s plans.

This isn’t over. Chavez will be working hard to replace the military’s chiefs, and he has lots of time to do it. He doesn’t face re-election until December 2012.