The Italian newspaper La Stampa is reporting that Venezuelan President Hugo Chávez and Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad are involved in a plot to circumvent an embargo on Iran’s missile program. Citing Western intelligence sources, La Stampa finds that Venezuela’s state owned airline Conviasa, which operates just a handful of routes internationally but has a three times weekly flight to Damacus and Tehran from Caracas, is transporting material and computer equipment required in Iran’s missile program via Venezuela to Syria. From there the material is transported overland.
This is in a country that was once the “breadbasket” of Africa and exported grain. Today, Zimbabwe is a country facing famine. Must a country starve because of the incompetence and intransigence of Robert Mugabe? It is criminal to allow him to remain in power. How many Zimbabweans must die before we act?
Along a road in Matabeleland, barefoot children stuff their pockets with corn kernels that have blown off a truck as if the brownish bits, good only for animal feed in normal times, were gold coins.
In the dirt lanes of Chitungwiza, the Mugarwes, a family of firewood hawkers, bake a loaf of bread, their only meal, with 11 slices for the six of them. All devour two slices except the youngest, age 2. He gets just one.
And on the tiny farms here in the region of Mashonaland, once a breadbasket for all of southern Africa, destitute villagers pull the shells off wriggling crickets and beetles, then toss what is left in a hot pan. “If you get that, you have a meal,” said Standford Nhira, a spectrally thin farmer whose rib cage is etched on his chest and whose socks have collapsed around his sticklike ankles.
The half-starved haunt the once bountiful landscape of Zimbabwe, where a recent United Nations survey found that 7 in 10 people had eaten either nothing or only a single meal the day before.
Still dominated after nearly three decades by their authoritarian president, Robert Mugabe, Zimbabweans are now enduring their seventh straight year of hunger. This largely man-made crisis, occasionally worsened by drought and erratic rains, has been brought on by catastrophic agricultural policies, sweeping economic collapse and a ruling party that has used farmland and food as weapons in its ruthless — and so far successful — quest to hang on to power.
The New York Times in an editorial offers an assessment on how to pay for a “21st Century Military.” The New York Times specifically calls for more ground forces, less reliance on the Reserves, new equipment and training to replace cold-war weapons systems and doctrines.
Money will have to be found to pay for all of this, and the Pentagon can no longer be handed a blank check, as happened throughout the Bush years.
Since 2001, basic defense spending has risen by 40 percent in real post-inflation dollars. That is not counting the huge supplemental budgets passed — with little serious review or debate — each year to pay for the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan. Such unquestioned largess has shielded the Pentagon from any real pressure to cut unneeded weapons systems and other wasteful expenses.
As a result, there is plenty of fat in the defense budget. Here is what we think can be cut back or canceled in order to pay for new equipment and other reforms that are truly essential to keep this country safe:
– End production of the Air Force’s F-22.
– Cancel the DDG-1000 Zumwalt class destroyer.
– Halt production of the Virginia class sub.
– Pull the plug on the Marine Corps’s V-22 Osprey.
– Halt premature deployment of missile defense.
– Negotiate deep cuts in nuclear weapons.
– Trim the active-duty Navy and Air Force.
One thing the New York Times didn’t mention is our overseas empire. No one, apart from Chalmers Johnson and Noam Chomsky, ever does which is strange since we have troops in over thirty countries and installations in 40 countries and overseas territories. It is difficult to tell because the Defense Department (DoD) doesn’t make it easy to decipher but according to the DoD Base Structure Report for Fiscal 2008 the United States seems to boast 761 military installations overseas down from 823 military installations in 2007. It is important to note that these are installations as opposed to bases. Often US military presence is at an established military base in the host country. Such is the case in Manta, Ecuador where the US runs counter-narcotics operations in South America. Still in return for use of the facilities, the US commits to pay a lease and making improvements. In the case of Manta, the US expanded the runways at the cost of $62.5 million. The Ecuadorian government has opted not to renew the American lease and thus the US will be leaving Ecuador in 2009.
I’m hardly a military expert but I really would like to know how many of these installations are essential for national security and global policing?
Ethiopia has said it is preparing to pull its forces out of Somalia, after providing assistance to the country’s fragile transitional government. Still despite Ethiopian assistance the government in Mogadishu lacks effective control outside the capital and its environs. The northern third of country (the part on the Horn of Africa bordering the Gulf of Aden) is composed of two separatist regions, Northern Somaliland and Puntland. Both have functioning governments and are de facto independent from Mogadishu. The bottom two-thirds of the country remains a series of mini-fiefdoms run by tribal warlords and armed militias.
But there are fears that if Ethiopian troops leave, the capital Mogadishu will fall and opposition fighters, including al-Shabab, will take over the southern portion of Somalia.
Al-Shabab already control most of the south, including the port city of Kismayo. Al Jazeera’s Mohammed Adow reports from the city as part of his exclusive series on the group.
On a goal by Wayne Rooney in the 73rd minute, European champion Manchester United defeated Liga de Quito, the first Ecuadorian team to win the South American Libertadores title, to win the World Club Football Title today in Yokohama, Japan.
There will not be a clamour for a knighthood this time but the latest treble of his Manchester United reign will please Sir Alex Ferguson all the same; champions of England, champions of Europe and now champions of the world. And unlike 1999, there is no dispute.
United were reduced to 10 men in the 49th minute, when Nemanja Vidic received a straight red card for elbowing Claudio Bieler in the face, but they still emerged as deserved winners of the Fifa Club World Cup in Yokohama having dominated throughout against Liga de Quito. Wayne Rooney’s superb 73rd-minute goal was the least Ferguson’s men deserved as they became the first English team to win this event in its expanded form. The Champions League suspension that awaits the Serbian centre-half was the only drawback — he will miss the first leg of the Champions League last-16 tie against Internazionale in February.
“The sending off made it difficult for us,” Ferguson said. “Half an hour to go is a long road with 10 men but Wayne scored a magnificent goal. In 30 years you’ll look back and see Manchester United’s name on the trophy — although I won’t be around to enjoy it. It’s a soft sending off but he swung an elbow. When you do that in front of the referee you’ve got no chance. He gave the referee no option.”
This may have been a contest between the first- and second-best teams on the planet, officially speaking, but United were in a different league to the Ecuadorians, with Rooney and Cristiano Ronaldo confirming their status on the global stage and combining to produce a rightful winner just as Liga de Quito were beginning to show some adventure against 10 men. Before then the finest that South America supposedly has to offer were intent on staging a damage limitation exercise and damaging Ronaldo’s ankles every time they got near his shocking lime-green boots.
