NATO’s disastrous legacy in Libya

Map_Libya_BBC_1There is almost an air of desperation in the recent unanimous adoption of UN Security Council Resolution 2259 that seeks to bring together a critical mass of Libyan factions and actors  to support a new unity government of national accord that will oversee a peace process.

Libya’s new Presidency Council will form a government within 30 days of the UN resolution, and the resolution stipulates that this government will be the only authority recognized as sovereign by other states, but with no consequences for states that ignore that stipulation. Currently, in addition to the myriad militias and warlord factions in Libya, there are two rival “governments” in Libya, the House of Representatives based in Tobruk, and the General National Congress (GNC) in Tripoli. Continue reading

When real wars shade into the simulated environments of the war game….

six_days_in_fallujahThe sometimes mischievous French philosopher, Jean Baudrillard earned himself a bit of notoriety in the wake of Operation Desert Storm by declaring that the the Gulf War did not take place. Of course, he wasn’t suggesting it didn’t take place in the sense that conspiracy theorists maintain NASA didn’t land men on the Moon. Baudrillard’s observations noted instead the simulated character of the war:

  • Simulated” because it was less a war and more a massacre as the large but antiquated Iraqi military was bombed to bits by the very latest weapons technology the Western coalition had at their disposal.
  • Simulated” because the fighting, from the perspective of the coalition military, was done at arms’ length – ground operations were little more than skirmishes, were infrequent, and not germane to the eventual outcome.
  • And “Simulated” because the media fixated on camera-mounted missiles, guided artillery, footage of warplanes embarking and returning from their sorties, and so on.

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Eleven things you should know about Ebola

Congo Guinea Ebola   AGUI101Mike Phipps offers some elementary facts about the epidemic and what it tells us about western priorities.

1. Ebola is fuelled by poverty. It broke out in west African countries that had been devastated by long civil wars. Given the resultant collapse of the public health system, if it hadn’t been Ebola, it would have been something else. Such epidemics require an alleviation of poverty – redistribution, sanitation, good nutrition and education.

2. There is no magic bullet. It won’t be fixed by sending US troops to carry out rapid vaccination programmes. It requires health professionals to carry out “contact tracing” – identification and quarantining those who have been in contact with those infected, as Professor Allyson Pollock has explained.

3. Ebola is hitting the headlines because it might kill the wrong people. The panic is disproportionate to the actual mortality rates and related more to the fact that rich white people might die from it, given the lack of a cure. But it’s hardly the biggest threat to life in poorer countries. The World Health Organisation reckons 15,000 people may have died from the current outbreak, a higher figure than usually reported in the media. But 1.2 million people die every year from malaria and 1.5 million from TB. Continue reading

EU set to ignore migrants plight

migrants arriving on the island of lampedusa in august 2007. pictures taken by Sara Prestianni and taken from storie migrante http://193.204.255.27/~migranti/spip.php?rubrique66Sometimes humanity is in short supply. News has eventually filtered out that in the past 10 months 3,300 people have died while trying to cross the Mediterranean to Malta or Italy. The news only emerged when the Italian government said it was downgrading Operation Mare Nostrum, its very effective sea rescue operation which has helped to safety tens of thousands of migrants in small boats on the Mediterranean.

It is being replaced by a border patrol force from the European Union known as Triton, which is a European Frontier Agency patrolling up to 30 miles along the coasts of EU member states, with the aim of preventing any migrants landing in Europe.

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Ebola a much-needed wake up call for the West

Preparing to enter Ebola treatment unit. Photographer: Athalia Christie  CC BY 2.0  https://www.flickr.com/photos/cdcglobal/15130688115/in/photolist-p43Jr2-oLxNxr-p43J5k-pgsjNp-pgsjZr-pgsi4J-pgsjPX-pgsjST-pgsk2k-ptmyE4-ptmyEV-ptBqy5-ptmyB8-ptmyBP-ptmyCk-pd9Vkc-oAPeN8-ojAoaZ-oB5MhV-ojAEuF-ojAM4x-oz4czE-oAT35U-oB5KhT-ojAKUt-oB45Qb-ojAkJM-ojA9gg-oCQGAz-ojA3Bb--oAP5UB-ojAPrD-ojAuPk-oAP9Qx-ojAUj4-oCQUKp-ojAJDT-oz46RA-oASFEq-oASVgJ-oz4hdN-oB5L6r-oB5ZCg-ojAwi1-oCQU5B-orEj8m-oygmKP-oygn5M-oygnaMThe President of the World Bank, Jim Kim, got it right when he said last night of the international community:

It’s late, really late… We were tested by Ebola and we failed. We failed miserably in our response… Every developed country should be prepared to send trained medical staff to West Africa… We don’t need to stop all travel from these countries. It’s going to be impossible to stop people. The way to stop the flow the patients from these countries getting to the rest of the world is to have programmes that will treat people (in their home countries) and increase survival dramatically. It’s possible.”

But it isn’t nearly happening. The WHO reports already 3,900 deaths in West Africa from Ebola, though with no sign that the epidemic was being brought under control. Continue reading