“Lebanese PM to quit today,” Times of Oman, 30 March 2005, http://www.timesofoman.com/newsdetails.asp?newsid=13276.

The Prime Minister of Lebanon is resigning today.

Lebanese Prime Minister Omar Karameh yesterday said he would stand down today after failing to form a national unity government, a decision likely to plunge the country into further political turmoil.
Karameh has been operating on a caretaker basis since resigning on February 28 in the face of protests sparked by the assassination of five-time premier Rafiq Hariri in a bomb blast.

..

Opposition spokesman Samir Frangieh welcomed the news and called for the swift formation of a “neutral” interim government composed of people “who enjoy public confidence” to see the country through to parliamentary elections due by the end of May.

If this sounds familiar… it is because it already happened

Hopefully this is a sign of clear progress. No word on new freedom chicks, so Marchand‘s link to Publius’s old gallery will have to do for now.

Update: Jawa links to Debka. This is incredible. If true, it is still unbelievable.

DEBKAfile exclusive military sources report complete collapse of pro-Syrian political and intelligence structure in Lebanon and abrupt withdrawal of all Syrian commands including key figure military intelligence chief General Ghazaleh.

Lebanese secret service chief Gen. Raymond Azar has fled to Paris. Internal Security Forces head Gen. Ali al-Hajj about to quit.

New York Times has more coverage. Perhaps the Prime Minister will delay his resignation. But more important: there’s an evil thug named Raymond? Raymond?!?

“The unsung role of Kung Fu in the Kyrgyz revolution,” AFP, 28 March 2005, http://news.yahoo.com/news?tmpl=story&u=/afp/20050328/lf_afp/kyrgyzstanpolitics_050328194347 (from Coming Anarchy).

This is the weirdest news of the night. No wonder the Defense Minister wasn’t good at his job. I’m going to bed.

Many say people power brought down the regime in Kyrgyzstan last week. But Bayaman Erkinbayev, a lawmaker, martial arts champ and one of the Central Asian nation’s richest men, says it was his small army of Kung Fu-style fighters.

In southern Kyrgyzstan, where the protests that brought down the Askar Akayev’s 15-year regime first flared, the name of 37-year-old Erkinbayev seems to be on everyone’s lips.

Effectors of Regime Change in Former Soviet Central Asia?

Erkinbayev is the wealthy playboy head of the Palvan Corporation, who led 2,000 fighters trained in Alysh, Kyrgyzstan’s answer to Kung Fu, to protests launched after the first round of a parliamentary election on February 27.

A hero in his hometown Osh, he is generally considered to have financed the protests and sent his martial arts trainees to the front lines of the demonstrations, including in the capital Bishkek.

Heros of Democracy?

Oh, and the guy’s Tony Soprano too

In the parliamentary elections of 2000 he is said to have spent two weeks on the run from the police after allegedly beating a judge who ordered him to drop out of the race for failing to disclose some of his wife’s property in his registration form.

The ruling was later overturned under unclear circumstances and Erkinbayev described it as an “untruth.”

“When I met the judge later he retracted his accusations,” he said.

“Outsourcing phone sex from call centers in India!,” by Preeti Chaube, India Daily, 29 January 2005, http://www.indiadaily.com/editorial/01-29b-05.asp (from Free Republic).

“After its success in IT outsourcing and biotechnology fields, India plans to promote itself as a health care destination,” India Daily, 1 February 2005, http://www.indiadaily.com/editorial/02-01a-05.asp (from Free Republic).

“Embracing India as a Rising Power,” Christian Science Monitor, 31 March 2005, http://www.csmonitor.com/2005/0331/p08s03-comv.html (from Free Republic).

A reminder that India will be America’s best friend in Asia

The US signal of a new era in ties with South Asia was its decision to sell F-16 fighter jets to Pakistan while for the first time offering both F-16s and even more advanced F-18 jets to India as well as potential sales of nuclear power plants. The goal, a US spokesman said, is to “help India become a major world power in the 21st century.”

Coming from a superpower beset by nations trying to whittle it down to size, that’s a generous offer. The hidden truth, though, is that the US needs a strong India as a counterweight to China’s expanding and often belligerent economic and military might in Asia.

The US also believes India’s democracy – unlike China’s one-party rule – gives it a long-run advantage in political stability in the economic race with its giant to the north. That reflects President Bush’s strategy to promote democracy as an antidote to nations becoming bases for jihadist terrorists. It is exactly because India is a democracy that few if any Muslims from its 150 million Islamic minority have ever joined Al Qaeda

Indians are likewise cutting into medical costs

After its success in IT outsourcing and biotechnology fields, India plans to promote itself as a health care destination for people from across the globe, Health and Family Welfare Minister Anbumani Ramadoss said Monday.

“We are taking steps to promote India as a health care destination to attract persons from different parts of the world to utilize the cost-effective health care expertise and infrastructure available in the country,” Ramadoss said while delivering a keynote address here on “Health Consumers: What is the size of the market; who buys and who pays?”

And perhaps, more prurient industries (not that the government wants that money)…

Callers from America or Europe or any other part of the world can dial a toll free number that gets routed through a western nation into call centers in India after the caller pays in dollars or euros. Then the callers get connected to some Indian lady who provide the phone sex service.

The practice is totally illegal in India while somewhat legal in Western countries. The business is brisk and revenue flow is very heavy. The Indian operators running these call centers normally have a legitimate normal call center in the front and then phone sex center in the back end.

Girls are paid very heavy and plenty of young models are working in these underground centers. Central Bureau of Investigation and local police try their best to catch these illegal operators but all they can do is to unveil a legitimate call center operations for normal businesses.

All three stories relate to India’s liberal economy and stable democracy. India is the long-term power in Asia. It has a government that is actively seeking foreign customers. And as important, it has an entrepreneurial population that seeks out customers on its own.

Bloglines is, quite possibly, the awesomest service, ever.

It’s an RSS reader, similar to RSS Owl or Firefox. Except it is far niftier. You input the rss feeds you wish to view, and they appear on a special website. You are notified as soon as the RSS feed is updated. There is even a firefox extension to give you updates as quickly as possible.

It saves a lot of time, and makes blog reading even more fun. I signed up less than 24 hours ago and am loving it.

Plus, it is free!

“Google News Drops ‘The Jawa Report’ for ‘Hate Speech’ Violation,” by Rusty Shackleford, Jawa Report, 29 March 2005, http://mypetjawa.mu.nu/archives/073310.php (from Michelle Malkin).

I’ve been hearing complaints about liberal bias at Google for a while, but I dismissed them until now.

I received the following e-mail moments ago from Google News.

Hi Rusty,

Upon recent review, we’ve found that your site contains hate speech, and we will no longer be including it in Google News. If you can guarantee that your news no longer includes hate speech, we will be happy to re-review the site for inclusion.

Regards,
The Google Team

Needless to say, I am pretty damned ticked.

I challenge Google News to find one instance of ‘hate speech’ on this site that is not either a case of sarcasm, humor, or a direct quote used in the context of a post that attempts to do just the opposite.

All the facts aren’t in yet, and of course Google can carry what sites they wish. Google and Google News are great services that I use many, many times a day. But this is disturbing. Cries of “hate speech” are commonly used to silence conservatives on college campus, and now in the blogosphere too. Let’s hope there is an innocent explanation!

“Uncle Sam Wants You,” by Andrew J. Bacevich, Boston Globe, 28 March 2005, http://www.boston.com/news/globe/editorial_opinion/oped/articles/2005/03/28/uncle_sam_wants_you/.

American Leftism opposes freedom and supports compulsion. It supports compelling pharmacists to serve who the state wishes. It supports compelling doctors to treat who the state wishes. It supports compelling youths to kill who the state wishes.

Less privileged Americans — people of color along with the sons and daughters of the working class — picked up the slack. As a consequence, the military establishment that emerged by the 1990s as a preeminent symbol of revived national self-confidence and self-esteem was in no sense representative of American society. Its members came not from the suburbs but from the farm and the inner city, not from Harvard but from Prairie View A & M. Seldom acknowledged openly but tacitly understood by all, this ignoble arrangement figured prominently in easing the divisions that Vietnam had opened up at home.

According to President Bush, winning the global war on terror means that the United States must exert itself to spread the blessings of liberty around the world. If so, then those who enjoy a disproportionate share of freedom’s blessings here at home ought to share in the sacrifices that such an enterprise necessarily entails. In that regard, plastering yellow-ribbon decals on the back of the family SUV or sporting ”Support Our Troops” jelly bracelets as fashion accessories just won’t cut it.

Military service today is no longer a job opportunity to be coveted. Increasingly, it is becoming a trial to be endured. The immediate question posed by the crisis confronting the all-volunteer force is not whether to revive the draft. Instead the question is this: Will this democracy ensure that the burdens of war are distributed consistent with the principles of equity and justice?

Never mind the factual irregularities — that blacks have been a disproportionately small share of the combat force for more than a decade.

The renewed call for a draft on the left is worrying. But it is not new. I blogged on John Kerry‘s and Juan Cole fascination with serfdom earlier.

I’m not saying that all Leftists support a draft. But it seems that many more of them want one than conservatives. Oppose the draft. Be a conservative.

“A New Era for Oil,” by Jonah Goldberg, The Corner, 30 March 2005, http://www.nationalreview.com/thecorner/05_03_27_corner-archive.asp#059495.

Jonah Goldberg joins the geogreen movement

Maybe it’s the nitrogen bubbles in my brain or the afterglow of reading Bob Samuelson’s column today, but I finally feel willing to float a trial balloon in the Corner which, I admit, has been launched more times than the Goodyear blimp: Increase gas/oil taxes.

Admittedly, current high oil prices have caused pain for some and are probably a drag on the economy in significant respects (the airline industry, for example), but the negative effects certainly don’t track with the predictions of doom and gloom which typically accompany fuel tax proposals. Clinton’s 4.3 cent a gallon tax elicited howls that the economy would go off the rails, for example. Well, now gas prices are much higher than they were in 1996, though still lower — adjusted for inflation — than they were in the early 80s. And, more to the point, the economy seems to have absorbed high gas prices better than most would have predicted.

Anyway, since it’s impossible to deny that our dependence on Middle East oil — or our dependence on foreigh oil, a lot of which comes from the Middle East — skews our foreign policy in undesirable ways (and enriches folks we’d rather see make their money from ordinary development), it seems worth considering a tax system which weans us of oil as much as possible. Demand from China and India will be putting upward pressure on oil prices for decades to come. And since I’m increasingly sympathetic to consumption taxes in general, it seems to me a fuel tax is a good place to start.

Goldberg mostly repeats geo-green talking points, but I am glad to see Jonah give President Clinton the credit he deserves. America’s economy is weaning itself off of foreign oil (as a percentage of GDP), but a higher gas tax would help that process along.

“‘Quiet Diplomacy’ Update,” by Joshua, One Free Korea, 29 March 2005, http://freekorea.blogspot.com/2005/03/quiet-diplomacy-update_29.html.

South Korea believes in One Korea, Free From Foreigners. They have realigned as a friend of Pyongyang.

They are against freedom. It is very hard to see the silver lining in this cloud.

[D]ue to intense though indirect pressure by Seoul officials, the North Korean execution tapes, purportedly of “middlemen” who help refugees escape to China, are not yet available for viewing by Koreans in the South. The indirect censure adds to frustration among those documenting the gulags and torture in the North. They charge indifference in the South to evidence of manifold suffering by ethnic siblings across the demilitarized zone.

What is so worrying about this is Seoul’s backsliding. They are becoming less internationalist and less free with every news story. China, Vietnam, and Cambodia are all getting better. South Korea is getting worse.

South Korea is not our enemy. They are a more-or-less free society that is heavily integrated into the world economy. But they are not a friend like Britain, India, and Japan. They are not allies.

South Korean policy appears to be a separate peace with that tailbone of the Cold War, North Korea. If they are strong enough to make peace on their own, then they are strong enough to defend themselves on their own.

United States Forces Korea has served its purpose. Bring them home.

“Theocracy in America,” by Collounsbury, Lounsbury on MENA, 29 March 2005, http://www.livejournal.com/users/collounsbury/304891.html.

Are “defenders” or Mrs. Schiavo Republican Lenninists? Col thinks so:

However, returning to the subject of Theocracy in America and the “God Botherers” – I confess one of my favorite memories of my father, otherwise … well a model for my personality, was his reducing some Mormon missionaries to tears, quite inspirational that – I find myself appalled in a real sense by this case. More in the sense in which these so called “Conservatives” in the American government lost their hypocritical attachment to local rights, family and whatnot to use the power of the State to intervene and even try to override the courts. These are the policies of Right Bolsheviks, not classic liberals by either instinct or nature. They are the actions of theocrats (in the wide sense the very same people often use in regards to the Islamists (who are not so far away from them in their thinking)), with this talk of “God’s Law” and the like. To take Central Government action to rip a case from its proper context and place it into another sphere, into the Federal court system in this case, is an abuse of power worthy of any theocracy.

The “theocrat” charge is exaggerated, but the rest isn’t

1. The Schiavo Actists are not Conservatives. They are attempting to break family law, break the courts, and break local control.
2. The Schiavo Activists are attacking marriage. The entire argument rests on the inability of Schiavo’s lawful husband to determine her medical treatment. If marriage is so weak, why would these activists bother defending it against homosexualists?
3. Allowing for hyperbole. the Schiavo Activsts are like Bolsheviks. Some popular pundits are alreading justifying extreme means with the ends. Ann Coulter adocated executive nullification (the Andrew Jakcon Option), for goodness sake!

The Schiavo case has a wider context, and I will blog that once it is over. But the extremism of my friends on the right is still alarming.

“Michigan Preparing To Let Doctors Refuse To Treat Gays ,” Proud Parenting, http://www.proudparenting.com/page.cfm?Sectionid=65&typeofsite=snippetdetail&ID=1204&snippetset=yes# (from Jaakko at Lounsbury on MENA).

The good news train rolls on

Doctors or other health care providers could not be disciplined or sued if they refuse to treat gay patients under legislation passed Wednesday by the Michigan House.

The bill allows health care workers to refuse service to anyone on moral, ethical or religious grounds.

Happy news. The story is about rolling back government social engineering, freedom of contract, and denormalizing homosexualism. Michiganers should be proud.

The law is reasonable. It gives health-care providers twenty-four hours to make an objection known, but requires that emergency care be provided. Licensing gives doctors freedom from competition, and as long as the certification regime remains this is a reasonable cost

The Conscientious Objector Policy Act would allow health care providers to assert their objection within 24 hours of when they receive notice of a patient or procedure with which they don’t agree. However, it would prohibit emergency treatment to be refused.

Of course, not everyone is happy. Some people insist on special rights.

Rep. Chris Kolb (D-Ann Arbor) the first openly gay legislator in Michigan, pointed out that while the legislation prohibits racial discrimination by health care providers, it doesn’t ban discrimination based on a person’s sexual orientation.

“Are you telling me that a health care provider can deny me medical treatment because of my sexual orientation? I hope not,” he said.