Shorter Donald J. Boudreaux: The health of the average American is better than that of Victorian peasants. Therefore, we should ignore any problems associated with global warming.

Seriously, is this what GMU is up to these days? With "libertarian" screeds like this publicly passing as logic, we could transition to a fossil-fuel-free economy by hooking a dynamo up to Hayek's wildly spinning corpse.

 
Washington Post: Lebanese find humor in war while Hizb Allah begins the cease-fire spin.

 
Washington Post: Quake relief cash funds bomb plot.

If the money was transferred to Jamaat ad-Dawa as the article says, it's not a long leap to al-Qaeda at all. The history of Jamaat ad-Dawa (JD, "Organization of the (Muslim) Call/Teaching") is pretty straightforward.

The grandparent organization is Markaz Ad-Dawat Wal Irshad (MDI, "Center for Teaching and Guidance") originally created in 1987 by bin Laden mentor Abdullah Azzam and two Pakistani professors, Hafiz Saeed and Zafar Iqbal. MDI's more famous paramilitary force, Lashkar-i-Taiba (LiT, "Army of the Pure") was and remains active in Kashmir and even within India proper, operating with more or less a hands-off blessing from the Pakistani government. LiT's main goal is the installation of Muslim rule within Kashmir, Junagarh in Gujarat, and Hyderabad, as well as creating explicitly Muslim rule in Pakistan.

After the 2001 attacks, the U.S. pressured Pakistan to shut down MDI; as a result, the group was technically banned, but really underwent a name change to Jamaat ad-Dawa and, on the surface, changed its mission to charity and relief. (As noted in this WaPo article, it's practically the disaster relief organization of choice in much of Pakistan.) Although Hafiz Saeed supposedly stepped down as organization leader in 2002, he's assumed to still be running the show. Zafar Iqbal subsequently formed his own splinter faction due to personality and tactical disagreements, and now runs Khairun Naas (KN, "People's Welfare"). This originally appeared to be a serious blow to JD and LiT, but now seems to have done little damage to LiT's operational capability, leading some though not a majority of analysts to suspect that the split was encouraged by Pakistan for control purposes.

What is new about this story is that MDI and LiT have always concentrated on Subcontinent targets: if they've moved into enabling attacks against the "far enemy" in Europe and America, then we've moved into an environment where our own security is much more closely tied to the status of Kashmir than previously thought. Pakistan is unlikely to give up its ace card -- terrorists and guerillas -- in the disupted territories without significant incentives, so where do we take the diplomatic heavy lifting from here?

 
News of the World: In Somalia, as fighting rages between the Shar'ia courts' militias and regional warlords, the drug lord and Hawiye clan leader Shaykh Yusuf Muhammad Siad Indha Ade of the Lower Shabelle region has created a splinter paramilitary named al-Shabaab that looks set to cause chaos within the Shar'ia courts' ranks ... In the ongoing hostilities between Ethiopia and Eritrea, an Ethiopian general has defected to the other side: Brigadier General Kemal Gelchu reportedly went over with a few hundred Oromo and Amhara officers, enlisted troops, and materiel. Gelchu was previously a commander for the UNMIL force in Liberia ...

In Ukraine, pro-Russian forces ousted in the "Orange Revolution" have returned to power in a compromise with beleagured President Viktor Yushchenko ... Bernard Lewis seems to think Iran may nuke Israel on August 22, which corresponds this year to 27 Rajab, by tradition Lailat al Miraj, the date of Muhammad's "Night Journey." (Sunni Salafists like al-Qaeda discourage any celebration of Lailat al Miraj, and disavow the tradition that dates the journey.) Now the Weekly World News of Russia, Pravda, agrees ... In Georgia, the government has given the go-ahead for UNOMIG to begin patrols of the Kodori Gorge ...

Does Rummy want out of Iraq? Sherwood Ross of the Middle East Times has some dismal thoughts on the American presence there ... Ha'aretz calls the Israeli incursion into Lebanon a "humiliation" for the IDF but places the blame on the air force while letting Olmert and Livni slide ... Author Jonathan Cook defends the use of anti-personnel rockets by Hizb Allah and claims that the Shi'ite paramilitary is targeting its rockets at IDF military installations, not civilian areas (Hey, I don't endorse 'em, I just report 'em) ...

Japanese Prime Minister Junichiro Koizumi visited the controversial Yasukuni shrine for Japanese war dead, sparking Chinese protest after reports that South Korea and China would accept one last visit to the shrine ... Another H5N1 victim in China has been reported dead ... The Chinese government's continuing cautious acceptance of homosexuality took another step forward with the opening of a government-approved online gay forum ... A Japanese survivor of World War Two relates his grotesque wartime experiences ... The first intra-Japanese hostile takeover attempt between Oji Paper and Hokuetsu Paper Mills is almost over, with Oji apparently failing yet still ushering in a new era of Western-style business management ...

More violence in Waziristan and Baluchistan ... India is ratcheting up security in advance of tomorrow's Independence Day celebrations ... Finally, airport security in Pakistan is a bit more serious than our own American TSA employees. What are they planning to shoot with that thing?

 
Andy Sullivan, champion of the zeitgeist: Just don't tell him it's not a cultural bellwether, but a viral Smirnoff ad, okay?

 
Update on that strange Allen comment: blogger Jeffrey Feldman digs up evidence that the odd term Allen used ("macaca," or "macaque") is a common ethnic slur in Francophone countries. Of course, as noted, Allen's mother came from a French colonial family (Tunisia), and it's entirely possible that Allen was more than passingly familiar with the word. (h/t Josh)

 
Moving the goalposts: President Bush declares that Hizb Allah "suffered a defeat," says "There's going to be a new power in the south of Lebanon."

In the New Yorker, Hersh provides more information on the Israeli actions. One passage is of particular note:

The surprising strength of Hezbollah's resistance, and its continuing ability to fire rockets into northern Israel in the face of the constant Israeli bombing, the Middle East expert told me, "is a massive setback for those in the White House who want to use force in Iran. And those who argue that the bombing will create internal dissent and revolt in Iran are also set back."

Nonetheless, some officers serving with the Joint Chiefs of Staff remain deeply concerned that the Administration will have a far more positive assessment of the air campaign than they should, the former senior intelligence official said. "There is no way that Rumsfeld and Cheney will draw the right conclusion about this," he said. "When the smoke clears, they'll say it was a success, and they'll draw reinforcement for their plan to attack Iran."

Make no mistake: Hizb Allah has shown itself to be a very capable paranational military force, even though Syria cut off its supply routes relatively early in the war. Israel's strategy, on the other hand, was monumentally unsuccessful, showing the relative inutility of large-scale air assaults in 4GW. Only a repeat of the 1982 invasion could have successfully routed Hizb Allah, and Israel was unwilling to repeat its eighteen-year-long experience in occupation.

The cease-fire, while certainly welcome for civilians on both sides of the border, will almost certainly not lead to an excision of Hizb Allah's paramility capability; Nasr Allah's prestige has expanded exponentially in not only Lebanon (which was tired of him and his thugs before the Israeli attacks) but in the wider Arab world; and Iran had an opportunity to see some of its weapons and 4GW tactics tested against a modern conventional military force, to satisfying effect.

In the long run, Hizb Allah will be back, especially since Israel's attacks significantly damaged the already fragile stability of Lebanon's government and the incursion created new moral flashpoints for the Arab "street." (The extent of damage in Qana II is debatable; its long-term effect on Arab minds is not.) Nothing has been done to cut Hizb Allah from Iran, and thus Syria will remain (largely unwillingly) in the Iranian orbit. Hence, the strategic situation has deteriorated from a month ago: there remains the probability of the creation of a geopolitical continuum of interest stretching from Tehran through Baghdad and Damascus to Israel's front door, and Israel has lost some of its hard-won military prestige, shown in Arab governments' quick turnaround from their initial condemnation of Hizb Allah.

But, hell, let's declare victory and get out. More background on the Israeli incursion at Global Guerillas.

 
I have to agree with TNR (no permalinks; their site appears to have problems): George Allen just can't seem to get past a genuinely "creepy" public attitude towards race. In this case, it was calling a 20-year-old Indian-American a nonsense name, "Macaca," and patronizingly telling him, "Welcome to America."

TNR has done a solid job of tracking down Allen's strange racial actions and attitudes: growing up as a half-French child of football royalty, Allen reinvented himself as a Copenhagen-spitting, boots-wearing, Confederate battle flag-waving would-be redneck -- in other words, a stereotype he would have gathered from shows like 'Hee-Haw' (according to Ryan Lizza, Allen's favorite show) and 'Dukes of Hazzard.' Beyond that, his sister has charged that Allen was a sadistic sibling who, amongst other things, once dangled her by her feet over Niagra Falls.

Not exactly Presidential material, as these things go: it's one thing to have a black-sheep background, but another to have it documented on paper. Allen is tipped to beat former Secretary of the Navy James Webb in the upcoming election, but his Presidential hopes surely have ended by now.

 
Marine hypoxia: know it.

The basic theory of hypoxic events goes as follows: when deep marine waters upwell to the surface, they bring a large number of nutrients with them, which then stimulate algal blooms. When the algae and bacteria die, they sink to the bottom and are consumed by aerobic bacteria, which flourish and deplete the water's oxygen content. The hypoxic or even anoxic water creates a dead zone -- an underwater desert in which life is literally choked to death.

Natural hypoxic cycles have been documented worldwide, but we're starting to see new areas forming and existing ones being exacerbated. Although previously-developed marine models do predict the creation and expansion of hypoxic zones as a side-effect of global warming (for example, from changes in nutrient-rich riverine ruoff, or through changes in the amount and circulation of arctic water), no one can say for sure if what we're seeing is a genuinely anthropogenic event. Furthermore, although the affected areas are almost entirely cleared of fauna, hypoxic zones serve as buffers between species and can prevent predators from crossing over into prey habitats. Like most aspects of climate change, we are not well-equipped to predict the effects of what we're seeing.