For Syria there is no safe, morally pure solution | Jenni Russell | Comment is free | The Guardian

For Syria there is no safe, morally pure solution | Jenni Russell | Comment is free | The Guardian

Korea is the focus, but this is China versus Japan | Timothy Mo | Comment is free | The Guardian

Korea is the focus, but this is China versus Japan | Timothy Mo | Comment is free | The Guardian

Is Cyprus a country? | Searching questions | News | guardian.co.uk

Is Cyprus a country? | Searching questions | News | guardian.co.uk

Iraq must not blind us to Blair's skill and seriousness | Martin Kettle | Comment is free | The Guardian

Iraq must not blind us to Blair's skill and seriousness | Martin Kettle | Comment is free | The Guardian

Why Obama's 'targeted killing' is worse than Bush's torture

 President Obama has authorized many times the killings that President Bush did. Obama apparently authorized the killing of an American in Yemen, and he is now engaged in the building of drone bases to continue the campaign of assassination.Greg Miller of the Washington Post notes that "no president has ever relied so extensively on the secret killing of individuals to advance the nation's security goals."

In 2001, the US ambassador to Israel, Martin Indyk, stated on Israeli television in connection with Israeli targeted killing of suspected terrorists:

"The United States government is very clearly on the record as against targeted assassinations. They are extrajudicial killings, and we do not support that."

http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/cifamerica/2012/jan/20/why-obama-targeted-killing-is-like-bush-torture

Putting things in perspective : famine in Africa..

The deaths of tens of thousands of people during the drought in east Africa could have been avoided if the international community, donor governments and humanitarian agencies had responded earlier and more swiftly to clear warning signs that a disaster was in the making, according to a new report.
Figures compiled by the Department for International Development (DfID) suggest that between 50,000 and 100,000 people, more than half of them children under five, died in the 2011 Horn of Africa crisis that affected Somalia, Ethiopia and Kenya.

http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2012/jan/18/east-africa-drought-disaster-report

Iranian scientist assasinations, crime, act of war, or act to provoke war?

Can scientists working on nuclear programs be considered legitimate targets, or are they civilians? If it would be acceptable (if an act of war) to target soldiers handling a weapon, why not the people building them? Though of course in my view the most legitimate targets are those giving the orders to develop them, i.e. the politicians.

But this of course assumes justifiable grounds for 'acts of war', and attacking the Iranians for developing the same weapons systems that Israel and the US have, and have pointed at them, is highly debatable.

Most worrying is the idea that this is known to have minimal real impact on the weapons programmes, but is being used by Israel as a means to 'provoke' Iran (and hence enable it to retalliate). This is surely the most questionable moral approach. If true..

http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2012/jan/12/iran-nuclear-scientists-attacks

(update 16-Jan with link to this comment piece)

it's a M.A.D. world...

so much for modern reason...here's to Mutual Assured Destruction as our only saviour! As they say, you don't have to be M.A.D. to live here, but it helps...

Doomsday Clock ticks one minute closer to midnight
The symbolic clock face, maintained since 1947 by the board of directors of the Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists at the University of Chicago, counts down to nuclear armageddon
http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2012/jan/10/doomsday-clock-ticks-closer-to-midnight

The latest US military strategy...and the writing on the Chinese wall...

Were two super tribes to go to war, none is all that you can score...
China syndrome dictates Barack Obama's Asia-Pacific strategy | Simon Tisdall | Comment is free | guardian.co.uk

Perspective in the Iranian question

When one remembers that Saddam Hussein didn't allow UN inspections not because he had weapons of mass destruction but because he didn't want his people and neighbours to know he didn't, then it is all the more important when considering the effect of sanctions on Iran to take internal perspectives into account.

As Tisdall says: "
And this is the point that should worry the west's sanctioneers, fixated by Iran's nuclear programme to the exclusion of other considerations. At the moment the regime's deep internal contradictions could be leading towards a revolutionary climax, the US and its allies are giving Khamenei a possible way out by allowing him to externalise the problem and claim that the Iranian nation is under attack from hostile foreign forces, rather than definitively changing from within.

This is the overlooked domestic backdrop to the strait of Hormuz shenanigans and other provocations, such as the alleged plot against the Saudi ambassador in Washington. Iran, for all its aggressive rhetoric over the past few years, has studiously avoided military confrontation. In fact, it has studiously eschewed an open conflict that it would probably lose, relying instead on time-consuming diplomacy and occasional publicity stunts. But with the regime's back to the wall at home, that may be changing."

Iran could be bluffing in the strait of Hormuz – but can US risk calling it? | Simon Tisdall | Comment is free | guardian.co.uk

2012 world preview: no peace, no prosperity, no progress

As always a cheery international prognosis for a new year...though I always think that at least for us (for the moment!) rich westerners, it has been scarier before, since at least we don't have to worry too much about hair-triggered mutual assured nuclear destruction...

Simon Tisdall's 2012 world preview: no peace, no prosperity, no progress | Comment is free | guardian.co.uk

Though in an interconnected world, we'll for sure at least partly feel the pain of others, if not their misery; and of course climate change though slower than war, will spread further. Is indeed worth remembering the Nepal Airways motto mentioned in this piece : when flying in the himalayas, every cloud has a solid lining.  No matter what height our civilization cruises at, there's always room for a hard landing..