Saturday, November 29, 2008

Following the supposed conclusion of the stunning attacks in India's premier city Mumbai, the Toronto Star has this interesting piece written by an Indian commentator. He mentions the large poverty and the significant lawlessness in Indian cities, of which Maximum City by Suketu Mehra touched on in Mumbai, and this underworld's alleged relations with Pakistan.
One important point he makes is how unprepared India was for this despite the amount of time and preparation involved in planning attacks of this order.
While India has captured a few of the attackers, one hopes that it doesn't lead to larger cross-border reparations, not that this is the first significant terrorist attack in India blamed on Pakistan.

Sunday, November 09, 2008

While fighting in East Congo heats up with rebel warlord Nkunda's forces gaining territory and forcing increased government reaction, the situation involving another even more notorious warlord in nearby Uganda is worsening as well. Joseph Kony and his LRA have transferred their terror campaign into northern Congo, looting, killing and taking children and women as slaves. Formerly thought to be waning to the point of almost signing a peace agreement with the Ugandan government, the LRA have reemerged and continued into regions of neighboring countries like Congo and Sudan.

Sunday, November 02, 2008

A BBC investigation has confirmed that the Russia-Georgia conflict which occurred during the Olympics in August, and which raised fears of a new Cold War, was actually started by Georgian military aggression against South Ossetia. As well, war crimes were committed by Georgian forces on Ossetian civilians. The first part is quite clear to me as I remember seeing it in news reports at that time but for some reason, this fact seemed to be conveniently ignored or overlooked as a bunch of news reports, articles and commentators sounded alarms and cast direct blame on Russia. The above article's writer mentions this:
"At the start of the August conflict, western media reporting was relatively even-handed, but rapidly switched into full-blown cold war revival mode as Russia turned the tables on the US's Georgian client regime and Nato expansion in the region. Clear initial evidence of who started the war and Georgian troops' killing spree in Tskhinvali was buried or even denied in a highly effective PR operation from Tbilisi."

Furthermore, the writer says that the investigation was barely reported in mainstream news which is quite true because I didn't see any articles about it over the weekend.

Our role in the Congo

The Congo crisis continues with renewed fighting and mass civilian displacement in Kivu, as rebel warlord Laurence Nkunda's forces have managed to seize government army bases. Lack of food, sanitary conditions and violence will possibly cause serious casualties, adding on to the worst conflict toll since World War 2.
This conflict, which mostly is in the Eastern parts of the DRCongo, is not merely ethnic or tribal battles, but rather about rival factions, supported by foreign countries as well as the DRC itself fighting over natural resources.
This article from the UK's Independent goes over the current fighting and directly blames the violence on the wider world's appetite for resources found in DRCongo and Rwandan attempts to maintain control over lucrative resource-rich areas.