This is Carlos Alberto Parreira,
the famous Brazilian (football) coach,

headhunted (or foothunted?) to coach the South Africa side in the run-up to the 2010 World Cup, to be held of course in South Africa. Not to be confused by the way with that other iconic Brazilian coach, Luiz Filip Scoleri – they look vaguely similar, except one with a moustache and one without.

Anyway, Mr. Parreira signed the contract, and arrived in South Africa at the end of last month. There were awed articles showing him emerging from his Sandton multi-star hotel to go house hunting for some suitable des res which start thereabouts at R20 000 per month. Mr Parreira would be able to afford this, since his contract stipulated a fee of US$ 250 000 per month, or R 1 800 000: about US$ 8000 per day (you can play around with a calculator for a few other parameters).

All started off well: he attended a couple of matches, and set up a training camp. Then a tiny problem – the South Africa Football Association had neglected to apply for a work permit for him (they probably reasoned they are God, with the destiny of the universe in their hands, so why should they consider such minutiae?). But the SA immigration authorities took a different view – Mr Parreira, on pain of arrest is not allowed to attend any games, takes notes off a televised game, or do anything which could be construed as ‘work’. So he is sitting around, at a cost of US$8000 per day. If South Africa, is anything like Namibia, where a work permit even for a celebrity can take 6 months to a year, we may be talked about a lot of dosh down the tubes.

This seems all to symptomatic of the hallucination and obsession, which is gripping the South Africa football authorities and the Government around 2010. Billions are being spent, for instance, on vast stadia holding five times what normal (post-cup?) crowds will be able to sustain. When any soul has the temerity to timidly suggest that one could manage by spending say a billion or two Rand less, he/she is accused of having an apartheid mentality. Government assume that the World Cup will be an event of cosmological significance, changing the destiny of a country and a continent, but it won’t be. It will be great, it will be amazing, but it will be a 4-week football tournament. And that’s it. Six months after Deutschland 2006, can anyone remember anything about it apart from the head butt? The only part of South African society which will, one can predict, make a huge killing (unfortunately probably literally) is the criminal industry.

That’s the long term. In the short term, I hope that work permit comes through soon.

I know it’s

a few days ago, so apologies for old news, but I’m still puzzled.

What led John Howard, the Australian PM, to lash out at Barak Obama, the latest candidate for the Dem nomination? (Or “08-ama”, as the cartoonists have obviously dubbed him). Is he (Howard) feeling increasingly isolated now that his buddies B&B are in the twilight of their careers? Is it because everyone else is ‘distancing’ himself or herself from his greatest love, the Iraq war? Why did he say that bin Laden must be circling the election date in 2008 and praying for an Obama/Democratic victory? Why is he still calling the Democrats the friends of the terrorists, when even Bush has given up on that one? Or maybe the news hasn’t reached the remote shores of Australia yet?

It need hardly be commented that Osama (not Obama) would most likely be praying for a Republican victory in 2008, since under Bush, al Qaeda has done brilliantly, and recruited staggeringly more supporters (the latest, a violent faction in Algeria) than Osama could ever have hoped for. As the other classic cartoon had it: “Is it not wondrous, O Vile One, that the more Bush talks, the less we have to do?”

Beyond this, why the sudden (and status-enhancing) attack in particular on Barak Obama, who is not by a very long shot the Dem’s confirmed candidate yet. After all, Howard has not launched a public attack on Senator Murtha or Speaker Pelosi, both vociferous anti-war Democrats. Could there be a niggly little racialist aspect, that Howard is infuriated by a cheeky Abo upstart daring to criticise his policies? especially towards a country whose policy has been, for a century, in all but name, the extermination of the Aborigine population?

Obama, as would be expected, gave a dignified reply. If Australia was concerned about troop commitments in Iraq, he said, she was most welcome to send more troops of her own. Since Australia maintains a derisory contingent of 1400 troops, about 100th of the US’s level, the suggestion is very apt.

It’s not often

that one agrees with everything that President Putin says. But in yesterday’s address at a high level security conference in Munich, he said, among other things, that the US was acting as the world’s sole superpower in a unipolar world, that it was exercising an almost uncontrolled use of military force to get its way, that it was flouting international law, that it was making the world a more dangerous place, that it was inspiring terrorism and forcing smaller countires to seek weapons of mass destruction for their protection.

In other words, that US policy is having the precisely oposite effect from what was ostensibly intended.

I would say the speech should get a 100% accuracy grade. Using the US’s (then) military supremacy to achieve dominance in world affairs, correct me if in error, was precisely the neocon’s agenda, as made specific in the writings emanating from the wood-panelled right-wing think tanks, in the early years of the Bush administration.

‘Surprising and disappointing’, was the State Department’s reaction. I’ll bet. ‘An unnecessary confrontation’ said someone. “If Russia wants meaningful relations with the West…” pompously began the overweight, superannuated Republican John McCain. It might actually be a case of things being the other way around.

‘Back to the cold war?’ posed the Babbling Broadcasting Corporation.

No, none of these things. Just a (re)emerging power flexing its muscles, and laying out a few, long overdue home truths. The US would be well advised to listen.

Over $ 7 billion

has been promised in aid by various countries at a recent conference for the reconstruction of the Lebanon.

I wonder how much of this was contributed by Israel.

Also to be wondered is, in the event of a Hizbollah governemtn coming to power, even legally, how much of this will be handed over??

“Where’s the outrage?”

as a former (and better) US president once said. I’m referring to Somalia, where a few months ago, after a decade of anarchy, a de facto but functional administration grew up, seemingly spontaneously, in the glaring absence of the so-called provisional government, which felt so popular and secure in its own country that it chose to base itself in Nairobi; its leader never having been to Mogadishu. Anyway, this de facto administration, unlike the products of innumerable hot-air conferences, actually started to get things done. The seaport and airport of Mogadishu were opened. Government offices started to function. You could walk around the city without being instantly mowed down by militias. It seemed to be a government by consent, whereas the ‘official’ government, a cobbling together of warlords, was nowhere to be seen, or at least languished in a far southern town. The administration was called the Union of Islamic Courts – the very name indicating that it was primarily a clerical and administrative organisation, rather than a political one. Religious extremists? No more so than the Christian Democrat party in Germany is an extremist religious organisation.

But the UIC, though not fundamentalist, made two fundamental mistakes. One was simply by virtue of being successful. Somalia’s neighbours, Ethiopia, which fought several border wars with Somalia in the 70’s, and the comically corrupt regime of Kenya, must have concluded that a stable and functioning Somalia represented a competitor and a threat to them. They decided to take action, using the installation of the recognised but moribund ‘provisional government’ as a pretext.

The other mistake was the inclusion of ‘Islamic’ in their name, which would guarantee that sooner or later they would get bombed by the US. No matter that the organisation was overwhelmingly a moderate one, the paranoid delusionals in Washington could very easily be convinced (by some “reliable intelligence” again) that they harboured dangerous wanted-list al Qaeda suspects. So Ethiopia, Kenya and the US ganged up on the UIC, and of course defeated them by sheer weight of firepower. The UIC retreated, saying that they did not want to cause civilian casualties, an attitude somewhat different, we may note, from that of the US.

The US navy blockaded the Somali coast to prevent UIC members from escaping (why should they wish to ‘escape’ from their own country?) : and is not the blockading of a neutral country’s coast an act of war in international law? And of course, the US duly bombed the UIC’s last remaining stronghold in the far south, with evidence of civilian casualties but very little evidence of slain al Qaeda militants.

So now the provisional government holds sway in Mogadishu, propped up by 8000 troops of the Ethiopian army. As far as the US is concerned, the Ethiops made an ideal low cost proxy force. They will leave ‘in a few days’ stated the Ethiopian prime minister. Fat chance, seeing that in their absence the half-life of the Somalia PG would be about 10 minutes.

There is an attempt to legitimise this exercise by claiming that it is only temporary, pending the arrival of an AU peacekeeping force. The only show-willing contributor to such a force so far is Uganda, which seems rather suspiciously eager to get in on the act. Few regional countries wish to get involved in Somalia; and anyway the AU is fully stretched doing an essential job in Dafur. So I would bet the Ethiopians will stay put for the time being. Why not? They have effectively a client state, if not a colony, and a new coastline, the former one lost to Eritrea.

In the last couple of days there has been another disturbing incident. One of the leaders of the UIC, conceded by even the EKUS ‘coalition’ to be a moderate, 'turned himself in' in northern Kenya, flown to Nairobi, and then ‘handed over’ to US officials. By what right or law is this done? He is presently being ‘held’, as a citizen of a sovereign country (which Somalia is now touted to be) on no other ground than that he is an official of an organisation unpopular with the US. Next stop, Guantanamo!

What are we to make of the statement/admission by the US ambassador to Kenya that ‘some’ members of the UIC were moderates and should play a part in the new Somalia order? It seems like an exercise in PR and window dressing. If you had just been driven out of your office by a foreign army, covertly backed by the US, would you be inclined to slink back and ‘play a part’? It is highly unlikely that the provisional government would trust anyone in the UIC, and rightly so.

So there we have it. A Christian army invading and forcibly occupying a Muslim state. Sound familiar? The army is bound to be popular, Not too many signs of a full insurgency yet (the attacks on Ethiopian troops are starting) but watch this space. Certainly, there are no flowers in the street. What do you expect from a new war, from the folks who brought you Iraq? (As the commentator Gwynne Dyer said).

A justifiable cause for outrage? I think so.

So Saddam has been executed.
However, despite 'conservative' commentators rushing to comment that his death 'is an important milestone', 'allows Iraq to turn the corner', 'marks the end of a dark chapter', and all the other clichés, his death now does not mark anything much, since the fate of Saddam and the fate of Iraq parted company a long time ago, and the daily life of Iraqis in the present hell is far darker than it was under his regime.

Nor will his passing affect the insurgency much one way or the other, since his faction is but a small faction in the insurgency.

His trial was a shambles, and did not provide in the slightest degree the hoped for platform to reconciliation as the Truth Commission provided in South Africa. He was hanged on a (relatively) minor incident early in his career, to avoid awkward questions of his support from the West cropping up in the proceedings, and most of his victims, the thousands of Sunnis, will not receive and moral or legal justice.

If anything, he was the only person who symbolised (and achieved) a strong unitary Iraqi state, and his passing thus symbolises the inevitable fragmentation and chaos into which the country is now descending.

Bill Torbitt

Can anyone fail to be reminded,

even if they only know about it from history books, when they hear the Lebanese prime minister’s desperate pleas for help and an immediate cease fire: of Haile Selassie’s appeals for help to the League of Nations when the Italian fascists where laying waste to his country Ethiopia, or the pleas of Imre Nagy, the Hungarian premier of the 1956 uprising, over the free radio’s last transmitter, as the Soviet tanks were closing in on Budapest?

To defeat a handful of ragged terrorists, and their fireworks-night rockets, is it necessary to destroy a sovereign country, to send hundreds of thousands fleeing for their lives, to cause hundreds of deaths, and billions worth of damage, to undo a generation’s work in painful reconstruction, in a couple of days? Are these precision strikes, to destroy a small country’s infrastructure: power supply and only dairy processing plant? Or is it Israel’s favourite tactic of collective punishment?

It is now obvious that the reason for the clamour to remove Syrian forces from the Lebanon was simply to leave in defenceless in preparation for an Israeli attack.

As expected, the US congress and senate pass knee-jerk resolutions endorsing Israel’s attacks on Hezbollah and the Lebanon without calling it to exercise any restraint. Every state, given enough power and contempt for its neighbours, starts to behave like the Nazis.

The Israelis, like the Nazis before them, not being used to those they are attacking to defend themselves, react with fury to Hizbollah’s resistance. As with the Nazis, do they have a policy of 100 Arabs killed for every Israeli?

The neo-cons, like in their cowboy movies, need an identifiable bad guy, to simply the issues for their audience. This bad guy then is demonised in all the available media, and blamed for all the evil and problems the US is encountering. Of course, the current evil is terrorism (and anything which may threaten the supremacy of Israel). The bad guy can either be an individual or a country. And of course, it should be someone/some place reasonably easy for Americans to pronounce. Up till recently, it was al-Zaqarwi. After he was killed, the message was that all the problems of Iraq would be solved….. sorry, that does not seem to have happened, so a new villain is needed. Re-enter Iran/Syria (the supply of bad guys does seem to be dwindling)

Does not any intelligent person realise (and even in the neocon administration there must be a couple) that clumsy military attacks on Muslim create far more terrorists than they kill?

So we have a ‘precision’ targeting of Lebanon. It certainly is a precision attack, designed to maximise the impact of collective punishment. The usual targets are power stations, roads and other communications, and in the case of Lebanon, the diary processing plant which produces baby food for the whole region.

In the neo-con world, there must be a simple explanation (and conspiracy theory) for every setback and problem. Hizbollah would of course not have acted on its own – there must have been a puppet master in the background.

One conspiracy theory is that Iran deliberately orchestrated the raid on Israel to draw attention away from its nuclear programme at the G8 meeting. Here’s another conspiracy theory – that the whole scenario is the neo-con’s ploy to revive their flagging agenda and to bring the US electorate, literally, a brand-new casus belli.

Is it not Israel’s strategy to surround itself with a buffer zone of compliant, subject or if not compliant, shattered vassal states ?

Onward to Teheran (and just imagine what the Iranian ‘insurgency’ will be like when we get there)