Oxfam Points Out the Obvious in Africa

A new report released by Oxfam indicates that conflict is hurting African development. What a shocker. Wars cost Africa about $18 billion a year or roughly 15% of its potential GDP.

Did you know that most of Africa’s firearms come from outside the continent? At least all those wars keep Africa from developing the industrial base to produce weapons on their own. For more of Oxfam stating the obvious check out the full report here.

Tomislav Damjanovic: Making Money through War

Serbia based arms dealer Tomislav Damjanovic has supplied arms to conflict zones all over the world. An illuminating story in the International Herald Tribune goes into some detail on the life of a real arms broker. It is not quite a how to guide on how to make money from war, but a story on how to outwit the UN (not difficult). However, it looks like things are over for Tomislav Damjanovic. He is currently attempting to restructure his operation into a legitimate air-freight business.

Two Wrongs Don't Make a Right

Mount Obey is about to blow. And not in a good way...

House Appropriations Chairman David Obey (D-Wis.) warned President Bush on Tuesday that he would bottle up a critical $190 billion war spending bill in his committee unless Bush agrees to a goal of ending combat operations in Iraq by January 2009 and other conditions.
[...]
Obey also announced his backing for a war surtax on income, ranging from 2 percent to 15 percent of every American’s tax bill, to raise about $150 billion a year to pay for the war.

“If you don’t like the cost, then shut down the war,” Obey said.

2% to 15%? Yikes. I know he's just blowing smoke by trying to raise the issue of the cost of the war, but a special tax to help finance the clusterfuck over there isn't something to joke about.

Via Roll Call. Sorry, subscription required.

The Neverending Story

AP Special Correspondent Charles Hanley must have woke up on the wrong side of the bed this morning.

In Iraq, after four years and three months of war, the echoes have begun to echo themselves.

American troops are taking Baghdad's streets back from insurgents. The prime minister has a plan for national reconciliation. To the south, in the "triangle of death," two U.S. soldiers are missing, captives in enemy hands.

Those were the headlines a year ago. Now they're being heard again in the newscasts of today, like some grim rewinding of a movie tragedy, of a story that never ends.

At the White House last June, back from a secretive trip to Baghdad, an upbeat President Bush told reporters assembled in the Rose Garden, "I sense something different happening in Iraq." It's June again and those roses are once more in bloom. But in Baghdad the scene looks only bleaker.

To a visitor returning after a year, the something different is the spread of concrete blast barriers across ever more of the city, the accumulation of still more rubble, the sectarian "cleansing" of neighborhoods, the ruin of still more lives — of friends whose loved ones have fled, been kidnapped, been killed. And for those left behind, life is worse.

Ouch! Take that, Bush. More here.

Can We Have the Election Right Now Before Bush Starts WWIII?

Bush has made an unimaginable mess in the Middle East that might take generations to clean up. But he can't stop himself from causing more problems for the US by destabilizing the world even further, as that seems to be his greatest skill.

This time Bush is aiming his unique anti-diplomatic skills toward Russia, as if the US doesn't have enough world-wide problems to manage. Bush announced that the US is deploying an anti-missile shield in former Soviet bloc country the Czech Republic. The Czech population opposes it overwhelmingly and Putin is going ballistic, saying that he will start pointing Russian nuclear missiles at the US.

Perhaps with a CBS News poll indicating that W is the worst president ever, and that Reagan was the best, W wants to recreate the Cold War so he can be Reagan and again close a war that was over 20 years ago. Maybe that is why he added to the missile crisis by saying, just before the coming G-8 Summit, that Russian reforms were "derailed." I don't disagree with that, but it sure makes Bush's famously naive statement about Putin in 2001 as that Bush said

"I looked the man in the eye. I found him to be very straight forward and trustworthy and we had a very good dialogue. "I was able to get a sense of his soul.

Putin is a former KGB officer who pocketed Bob Kraft's Super Bowl ring. I don't know what is worse, being a fool enough to trust Putin based on eye contact or trying to antagonize his nation now. Any president with a brain would have avoided both.

So let's have an election in 2007. The candidates are primed and ready to go. And the US cannot afford one more year of W's scary stupidity, ego and recklessness.