What part of Vassal State didn't you understand?

Some good news out of Iraq:

AMMAN, Jordan - Iraqi Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki says talks with the United States on a longterm security agreement have reached a "dead end." Al-Maliki says the talks slumped because each side refused the other's demands.

He says the initial framework agreed upon was to have been an accord "between two completely sovereign states." But he says the U.S. proposals "do not take into consideration Iraq's sovereignty."

The prime minister said Friday "this is not acceptable." The American demands "violate Iraqi sovereignty. At the end, we reached a dead end."

Washington and Baghdad have been negotiating behind closed doors a deal that would give U.S. troops legal grounds for an extended stay in Iraq after a United Nations mandate expires Dec. 31.

Fucking savages, thinking we'd let them have their own sovereign country! The nerve, after all that we've done for them.

John McCain understands Colonialism

From an interview with Matt Bai (via Matt Yglesias):

as we talked, I tried to draw out of him some template for knowing when military intervention made sense — an answer, essentially, to the question that has plagued policy makers confronting international crises for the last 20 years. McCain has said that the invasion of Iraq was justified, even absent the weapons of mass destruction he believed were there, because of Hussein’s affront to basic human values. Why then, I asked McCain, shouldn’t we go into Zimbabwe, where, according to that morning’s paper, allies of the despotic president, Robert Mugabe, were rounding up his political opponents and preparing to subvert the results of the country’s recent national election? How about sending soldiers into Myanmar, formerly Burma, where Aung San Suu Kyi remained under house arrest by a military junta?

“I think in the case of Zimbabwe, it’s because of our history in Africa,” McCain said thoughtfully. “Not so much the United States but the Europeans, the colonialist history in Africa. The government of South Africa has obviously not been effective, to say the least, in trying to affect the situation in Zimbabwe, and one reason is that they don’t want to be tarred with the brush of modern colonialism. So that’s a problem I think we will continue to have on the continent of Africa. If you send in Western military forces, then you risk the backlash from the people, from the legacy that was left in Africa because of the era of colonialism.”

There's quite a few insane things about that statement. First off, does McCain not know that Iraq WAS in fact colonized, in addition to quite a few places other than Africa:

Second, and really strangely, it seems like he gets it for second with the "tarring with the brush of modern colonialism" line, but be can't seem to wrap his mind around how that completetly conflicts with his views on Iraq or his hawkish outlook on the rest of the world. Yglesias points out:

Actually, though, I think McCain's not alone here. Very few Americans (even American elites) seem to recognize that most of the "pro-American" regimes in the region -- all the monarchies, basically -- just are colonial regimes set up by the British imperial authorities. Eventually, the United States took over from Britain as the foreign underwriter of those regimes. But to understand U.S. policy in the region and how the U.S. is viewed, you need to understand that Jordan and the G.C.C. aren't just autocracies, they're autocratic creations of the British Empire and CENTCOM is seen as the successor to the Colonial Office. Meanwhile, the "anti-American" or "radical" regimes in Syria, Iran, and (formerly) Iraq all have their origins in rebellions against colonial regimes.

I definitely see Matt's point that the majority of Americans don't understand what our role was/is in the middle east, just because the discourse on our history as well as Europe's is completely sugar coated (to put it mildly). But then again, most Americans don't run campaigns claiming to be experts in foreign affairs. Ladies and Gentlemen, John McCain! Your 2008 Republican nominee for president of the United States!

Different era, same shit.

Vietnam, 1880:

Following the colonial conquest, the French symbolically took over the Hà Nội Citadel, destroying what few buildings were left and replacing them with military barracks and depots. It has remained an army base ever since, though at the time of going to press some of its outer sections are being opened up to the public.

In order to make the colonists feel more at home and at the same time to reflect its vision of imperial grandeur, the French colonial government set about systematically rebuilding the major Vietnamese cities according to European specifications. Central to French urbanist plans was the segregation of these cities into quartiers, based primarily on the ethnicity of residents. In marked contrast to the relative squalor of their neighbours in the quartiers indigènes, the inhabitants of the European quarters of Hà Nội and Sài Gòn were given wide boulevards lined with spacious residential villas.

Prior to 1920 many important public buildings were constructed in Parisian neo-classical style; the latter is best illustrated in Hà Nội by the architecture of St Joseph's Cathedral (1891), the Governor General's Palace (1906), the Palace and Office of the French Resident (1906), the High Court (1906), the Opera House (1911) and the Directorate des archives et bibliothèques (1917, now the National Library of Việt Nam); and in Sài Gòn by the Town Hall (1873, now the People's Committee Building), Notre Dame Cathedral (1880), the High Court (1885), the Vice-Governor's Palace (1890), the Central Post Office (1891) and the Opera House (1900).

Iraq, 2008:

Picture, if you will, a tree-lined plaza in Baghdad's International Village, flanked by fashion boutiques, swanky cafes, and shiny glass office towers. Nearby a golf course nestles agreeably, where a chip over the water to the final green is but a prelude to cocktails in the club house and a soothing massage in a luxury hotel, which would not look out of place in Sydney harbour. Then, as twilight falls, a pre-prandial stroll, perhaps, amid the cool of the Tigris Riverfront Park, where the peace is broken only by the soulful cries of egrets fishing.

Improbable though it all may seem, this is how some imaginative types in the US military are envisaging the future of Baghdad's Green Zone, the much-pummelled redoubt of the Iraqi capital where a bunker shot has until now had very different connotations.A $5bn (£2.5bn) tourism and development scheme for the Green Zone being hatched by the Pentagon and an international investment consortium would give the heavily fortified area on the banks of the Tigris a "dream" makeover that will become a magnet for Iraqis, tourists, business people and investors. About half of the area is now occupied by coalition forces, the US state department or private foreign companies

....

One Los Angeles-based firm, C3, has said it wants to build an amusement park on the Green Zone's outskirts. As part of the first phase, a skateboard park is due to open this summer.

American officials stress that final decisions about reconstruction and development rest with the Iraqi government. Karnowski added that as well as the benefits of renovating and demilitarizing an important area of Baghdad, the blueprint would help to create a "zone of influence" around the massive new US Embassy compound being built on the eastern tip of the Green Zone. The $1bn project to move the embassy from Saddam's old presidential palace is planned for completion later this year."When you have $1bn hanging out there and 1,000 employees lying around, you kind of want to know who your neighbours are. You want to influence what happens in your neighbourhood over time," Karnowski told Associated Press.

For many Baghdad residents, the Green Zone has been a no-go area for years, first under Saddam and now under the occupation. "What do I care?" shrugged one, Ahmed Hussein. "I don't have electricity, I don't have fresh water and I don't have a job."

Call me a dork, but few things piss me off more than people using words like fascism, socialism, empire etc. without having any idea about what they actually mean.

We are an imperial power, and as we have shown in Iraq, we are an imperial nation where the colonial mentality is still very much alive in our words and actions. It's not a pleasant truth to look at ourselves in that light, but M.O.P. would say: "DEAL WITH IT MOTHER FUCKER!!!"

And while this isn't a new idea (Most recently the best case was made by Chalmers Johnson), it is important to keep in mind in order to not lose perspective of our actions in the world, and equally important, how we are seen by the rest of the world.

Odds and Ends

A few reads:

• As the horrific death toll continues to climb in Burma, an deadly earthquake kills an estimated 10,000 in China.

• Potentially more Labor/Environmental partnerships in the future? Let's hope so.

• Hillary Clinton is 20 Million dollars in debt. Hilarious. Not being able to manage a campaign without resorting to lending yourself millions, and yet still finding yourself in massive debt. Now that's someone who should be running a country!

• A really stupid diary getting Rec'd on dailykos, leads to a common sense response from Chris Bowers:

While the Daily Kos diary in question is specifically arguing that the Cooper plan was great (although that is implied), it does take as its main point that health care reform failed in 1993-1994 because Democrats, specifically Hillary Clinton, weren't nice enough to conservatives. If only Hillary Clinton had been nicer to conservatives, then we could have had great health care plans like Jim Cooper's. Hell, Jim Cooper himself says so. And look, David Brooks agrees, so it much be right.
This is a very disturbing argument. The moment when dislike of Hillary Clinton is combined with calls for Democrats to compromise in the manner of Jim Cooper, and it is all justified by citing David Brooks, is a moment when I really fear for the internal logic of some Barack Obama support.

Jim Cooper=Bad. Check out the rest of the post for the full story and background.

• Paul Krugman once again lets his feud with Obama get the better of his judgment:

Discussions of how and why Mr. Obama’s support narrowed over time have a Rashomon-like quality: different observers see very different truths. But at this point it doesn’t matter whose fault it was. What does matter is that Mr. Obama appears to have won the nomination with a deep but narrow base consisting of African-Americans and highly educated whites. And now he needs to bring Democrats who opposed him back into the fold.

I've defended Krugman before during the primary because he was right in his policy criticism of Obama, and instead of responding to the criticisms, Obama's team put out a factually inaccurate hit piece on him. Here he moves away from issue based critiques, and on to utter bullshit. One Drop from Too Sense has a great response:

Not to get all racial up in here, but have any of you noticed how quickly white folks start talking about "it doesn't matter whose fault it was" . . . when the responsible party is white? You hear the same kind of rhetoric whenever the uncomfortable topic of race comes up, "Let's not go pointing fingers now," or "Playing the blame game isn't going to help anyone." Those statements, and similar ones, are really just euphemisms to avoid saying "Now, let's not go blaming white people for anything!"

In Krugman's case, I can't say that he's trying to deflect blame away from white people in general. He's definitely trying to deflect blame from Hillary and her campaign, though. If Krugman had any plausible way to put the entire blame for the recent racialization of the Democratic primaries on Obama, "It doesn't matter whose fault it was" is the last sentence he would have written.

So who is responsible for the increase in racial tension? Well, did Obama go on tour in front of exclusively black audiences and tell them that Clinton does not care about "people like you?" Has Obama ever gone before a black audience and told them that Hillary, the white candidate, was making fun of them for supporting him? Has Obama ever referred to "hard working Americans, black Americans" or stated that Clinton has no support among black voters?

No?

Okay, next question: Has Clinton done the reverse?

Few things piss me off more than a whitewashing (no pun intended) an event and pretending there was equal blame to go around. It's always important to understand who is to blame for what and why, for the simple reason of not repeating your mistakes or trusting people who should not be trusted or listened to.

And just for the record, the first paragraph of One Drop's response is also describes what's wrong with the current discussion of colonialism. "Look, it's not about assessing blame, its about what we can do now" is the most common response from European powers when it comes to issues of the developing world. Ok, it's about right now, but how the hell can you understand what's going on now if you don't acknowledge how we got there, who got us here and why?

On another note, it'll be fun to see how Hillary Clinton responds tonight after a win in West Virginia. Her speeches have really been comedy gold recently, with all her talking of "winning" and "being the nominee". It's a level of delusion that would be hard to keep up, and it'll be interesting to see how she plays it. Interesting enough to watch during one or two commercial breaks of the Spurs-Hornets game.
Maybe.
If it's a blowout.

Just what we need...

Scott Ritter, former UN weapons inspector, someone with lots of contacts as well as great knowledge of US policy in the region:

There’s no doubt in my mind that the United States is planning right now, as we speak, a military strike against Iran. The chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff and almost every senior US military official has pretty much acknowledged the same. They speak of the need to punish Iran and deter Iran from continuing to provide material assistance to Iraqi groups, these so-called “special groups” that operate, according to the United States, outside of the umbrella of the Mahdi Army. And they speak of the Iranian Revolutionary Guard Command as being a rogue organization within the Iranian government that provides this support. The United States Senate, through the Kyl-Lieberman resolution, has pretty much given a target list blessing to the US military by passing a resolution that labels the Revolutionary Guard Command as a terrorist organization. And the Bush administration, of course, is engaged in a global war on terror backed by two congressional war powers resolutions.

We take a look at the military buildup, we take a look at the rhetoric, we take a look at the diplomatic posturing, and I would say that it’s a virtual guarantee that there will be a limited aerial strike against Iran in the not-so-near future—or not-so-distant future, that focuses on the Iranian Revolutionary Guard Command. And if this situation spins further out of control, you would see these aerial strikes expanding to include Iran’s nuclear infrastructure and some significant command and control targets.

When the reports of the US planning strikes on Iran came out back in 2006, I was really skeptical. I mean, these guys are stupid... but are they really that stupid? Even for Bush and Cheney, that would be a new level.

Well, after several dozen times over the last 7 years when I thought they had hit rock bottom, I've come to the realization that literally anything is possible, even something as mind-bendingly stupid as attacking Iran. Although it wouldn't be fair just to blame the Bush administration, they can't pull something like this off on their own. Special thanks to AIPAC for writing the authorization bill, and to the 76 senators who signed it. Congrats guys, it wouldn't have been possible without you.

Scott Ritter has been right on just about everything else in this area, lets just hope he's wrong on this one. The thought of going to war with Iran on top of everything else is really just too much to take.

Nelson Mandela and the Reagan Legacy

Yesterday:

Nobel Peace Prize winner and international symbol of freedom Nelson Mandela is flagged on U.S. terrorist watch lists and needs special permission to visit the USA.

The idea that Nelson Mandela is on a US terrorist watch list may seem like just another story reminding us that this type of institutional incompetence knows no bounds, but it also serves as a reminder of Ronald Reagan's despicable legacy as president.

Nelson Mandela's name didn't end up on that list because of some bureaucratic mistake. His name was included, as well as anyone else associated with the African National Congress, which still listed as a terrorist organization by England, the US at the request of the apartheid south African Government.

We have an amazing ability to re-write history and conceal unpleasant truths about our past, and Reagan's legacy just happens the most over-the-top example of this trend. South Africa during the 1980s as told by ANC member Father Michael Lapsley:

Father Lapsley: Yes. I think it’s good to think about what South Africa was like inside the country as well as what was happening in the front line states at that time. During those years, there were two states of emergency. Vast numbers of people were imprisoned. It was during those years, and this is a salient point for people this country this time that torture became normative. It became a principle weapon used by the Apartheid regime against people, particularly against black children during that period. It was also a period where there were a vast number of people on death row in South Africa. Every Thursday, up to seven people at a time were executed, but it was also a time when the Apartheid regime was in the rampage in the Front Line States attacking Botswana, Lesotho, Mozambique and Zimbabwe. There were a number of massacres of refugees that took place. It was also a time of civil war in Angola. And it was the Reagan administration that was supporting the Unita bandits in Angola and fomenting war. And it was clear to the people of South Africa during those years, that whilst there were a vast number of ordinary people in the United States, particularly African-Americans who stood with us, the Reagan administration was on the side of Apartheid. It was both Reagan and Thatcher who were giving succor to the Apartheid regime and in a sense prolonging our struggle. More people had to die in South Africa because of the support that came from western governments, particularly from Washington and London at that period.

Amy Goodman: What about this quote of former president Reagan, talking about the Apartheid regime as, quote, a country that stood by us in every war we have ever fought, a country that strategically is essential to the free world in its production of minerals.

Father Lapsley: I think the interesting thing about that comment is that it focuses on profit. It doesn’t focus on what happens to people. And of course, remembering that that regime that Reagan was supporting was a regime in which the majority of the people were voteless. The majority of the people had no legitimate way of removing an illegitimate regime.

Amy Goodman: This was a time in the United States and its policy towards South Africa of the term coined, “constructive engagement.”

Father Lapsley: Sure. And it was constructive for death. That’s the real point. It was not constructive with the people of South Africa, who were living and dying for basic fundamental human rights, rights that people all over the world take for granted, that we had to die in great numbers to achieve simply the right to go to the polls to choose a government for ourselves.

Amy Goodman: What difference did it make what role the U.S. played within South Africa or in the Front Line States?

Father Lapsley: Well, the African National Congress of South Africa leading the struggle in South Africa was saying to the world, we will free South Africa; we ask the world to be in solidarity with us. So the role the international community had to play was to shorten that struggle, to mean that we would die less. So in a way, the support, the economic support to Apartheid meant the struggle lasted longer. It took us longer to achieve those fundamental rights, to achieve democratic freedoms.

Although South Africa is just one example, understanding our past actions and their consequences is an absolutely critical step for our country to take in order to move forward. When we refuse to acknowledge the disastrous effects of Reagan's policies and instead remember him as an action figure who singlehandedly defeated communism, it seriously hampers our ability to create a sane foreign policy in the present.

Colombia and China

Op-eds aren't always that interesting, but flipping through the Post the past couple days these two stood out for very different reasons. First the good, a great response to the Post's idiotic editorial on the Colombia Trade deal:

If death squads with ties to the U.S. government were targeting Post reporters for assassination, I doubt that The Post would dismiss the problem by arguing that the murder rate for journalists was less than the rate for the District as a whole. Yet that is exactly what The Post did in dismissing the killings of trade union activists by paramilitaries in Colombia on the basis that trade unionists are still less likely to be killed than the average citizen ["The Sin of Speaking Truth," editorial, April 8].

Of course, the overall murder rate in Colombia -- a country in conflict -- is high. But when union members are killed for exercising basic rights, that is not just another manifestation of violence; it is a threat to Colombian democracy itself.

Nicely done, especially since the Post's coverage of Uribe has been shockingly bad, particularly when in comparison with their tabloid style articles on Hugo Chavez is over the last two years.

Now on to the bad, this from Joan Chen's op-ed defending the Beijing Olympics:

Last month I went to China and spent four weeks visiting Shanghai, Beijing, Hong Kong and Chengdu. The people I met and spoke with are proud and excited about the Beijing Games. They believe that the Olympics are a wonderful opportunity to showcase modern China to the rest of the world. Like many Americans, most Chinese people are disturbed by the recent events in Tibet. But after watching the scenes of violence and arson by the rioters, the Chinese believe that the government is doing the right thing in cracking down to restore order.

Umm, I don't think all the Chinese people feel that way, with that whole hundreds of violent protests each month thing. And just for the record, I'm glad that someone took a break from claiming that these Olympics are helping human rights in china, and decided to just flat out defend the murderous actions of the Chinese government. Good to see every now and then.

Israel, The Global War on Terror... and Sri Lanka?

Daniel Levy at TPM has a somewhat strange essay on a meeting between the PMs of Israel and Sri Lanka last week:

In a meeting between Wickremanayake and Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Olmert the two discussed, what else, terrorism and the common threats they both face. Olmert had this unsurprising advice for his Sri Lankan guest: "Do not give in to terrorism because it will only bring destruction to your country. Terrorism must be fought; one must not capitulate to it." OK, no big deal – except that in these days of the dumbed-down war on terror, when the Republican Presidential nominee (intentionally or mistakenly) confuses Iran, their Iraqi Shia allies and Al-Qaeda, the Israeli and Sri Lankan examples can actually be rather informative and worth taking another look at.

The Israeli-Sri Lankan leaders’ tête-à-tête was probably not too illuminating, with lots of platitudes, mutual expressions of support and some kwetching and gewalts and whatever the Sri Lankan equivalents of those are. But the respective challenges posed to Israel and Sri Lanka, especially in the realm of suicide bombings can teach us a great deal— especially when it comes to the tendency here in the US to view terror through the prism of Islamo-fascism and peculiar and perverse shortcomings of Islam.

Since their formation in 1972, The Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam (LTTE), better known as the Tamil Tigers, have waged a relentless insurgency against the Sri Lankan state in order to fulfill their ambitions of an independent state for the ethnic Tamils (the Eelam in the group’s name means homeland). Suicide attacks—which they have carried out over 200 of in the last 3 decades—have been a prominent tactic in their participation in a civil war which has claimed some 60,000 lives in the last two decades. In recent weeks, the situation in Sri Lanka has continued to deteriorate, seeing the assassination of two members of parliament by the Tigers and a concurrent abrogation—by the Sri Lankan government—of the official cease-fire that had lasted between the parties (however tenuously) since 2006.

So are the Tamil Tigers an aberration to the otherwise Muslim monopoly on suicide attacks – or do they perhaps hint at the underlying issues that need to be addressed in successfully confronting the phenomenon? That question really gets to the heart of the critique of the current Global War on Terror that is still insufficiently heard in the US and elsewhere too – that it can after all be about what we do, the policies we pursue (we America, we Israel, we Sri Lanka) rather than about who we are – freedom loving nations merrily going about our freedom-loving business. The GWOT policy cannot be effectively countered without challenging its basic assumptions and narrative, and US foreign policy cannot turn the corner without over-turning GWOT.

That last paragraph hits home and the key to understanding the major flaw in our "war on terror" as well as most of Israel's problems. The "what we do rather than who we are" argument is dead on needs to be heard more often in discussions of our foreign policy and Israel's as well(although our foreign policy is Israel's foreign policy since we give them their army... but we'll get to that later). My main issue with his statement is that I don't think that it applies to Sri Lanka the way it applies to the US and Israel.

The problem that I have is that Sri Lanka falls into a different type of conflict than the "war on terror". The conflict that is discussed as the "war on terror" is actually fairly easy to solve, because it involves immense aggression(through sanctions, wars such as Iraq, military bases where they are not wanted, and military support of a state that has aggressively encroached into the land of other countries half a century) on one side, with retaliation by unconventional means on the other side (Suicide bombings and other violence in Iraq, 9/11, the Barracks in Beirut).

While each of the actions that I listed above were given justifications when they were enacted, they usually weren't particularly good ones or they were trying to hide the real rational for those actions. The other actions were essentially responses to our (or Israel's) action with the means they had available to them. The Beirut bombing as a response to Israel's invasion of Lebanon in 1982, suicide bombs in Iraq as a response to the US invasion and occupation, and Bin Laden stated that his grievances against the US were our bases in Saudi Arabia, the sanctions on Iraq, and our support of Israel. Although some sort of back and forth of aggressor/retaliation happens in most conflicts, in Sri Lanka (as with most post colonial conflicts) the history with the original aggressor(Great Brittan) makes things much more complex.

The background in Sri Lanka is a pattern similar to many other former colonies. Under the colonial ruler there are often cycles of favor and repression to create and then fuel ethnic tensions, leading to a situation after independence where the once privileged minority often finds itself persecuted by the once persecuted majority. Sri Lanka continued in this pattern when the Sinhalese controlled government passed the discriminatory Sinhala only act, which caused immense anger and resentment in the Tamil community, leading to protests and some violence in the following years. It was only years after these tensions had been growing on both sides that the LTTE was formed, and that the true civil war began.

It's this distinction that is my main problem with the article. Levy is comparing these cases because they have all used suicide bombings, and since that is a military tactic that seems a bit nonsensical. People are more likely to use suicide bombings because they don't have any other means. When you've over powered militarily like the Tamils and the Palestinians (also not a fair comparison because the Tamils are much closer to the Sri Lankan army in strength than the Palestinians could ever be as long as we are supplying Israel), your only option is to fight back a-symmetrically. They are both over matched to varying degrees, and so at times they have each used suicide bombers. The comparisons end there.

One of the more frustrating things about comparing these conflicts in that way is that it seems to equate the degree of difficulty that it would take to solve each conflict, when they couldn't be further apart. Although you will never read this in the paper, or hear it from a senator, republican or democrat(thanks, AIPAC...) - but the truth of the matter is, we could solve the Israeli-Palestinian conflict starting tomorrow if we wanted to. There are many conflicts in the world that truly keep me up at night, and it's a real struggle to think about how there can be an feasible solution in my lifetime. Sadly Sri Lanka is at the top of that list with so many complexities, horrific levels of violence, and peace structure that would be hard to rebuild when so much trust has been lost on either side. There are many other conflicts that aren't as complicated as Sri Lanka, but they are also problematic because there is virtually no way the US could be any way involved as an even-handed broker. There is plenty of conflicts like this, just not Israel - Palestine.

The ironic thing is that Israel - Palestine would be so much easier to solve simply because the US is such an extremely biased broker. In fact, we're so tilted to one side that we actually hold all of Israel cards... or I at least the only card that matters(the military). Unlike these other situations, we actually can control the negotiations, because for all intensive purposes, we are one of the parties. But this won't happen, because the people in charge are stupid enough to believe that keeping things the way they are is in our national interest, even when all conceivable logic tells us that couldn't be further from the truth.

So, that was kind of all over the place, the original point remains the same. Comparing Sri Lanka's Civil War to the Israel-Palestine conflict and the US "Global War on Terror" is fairly ridiculous, because other than suicide bombings, the situations have very little in common. Random note, there isn't enough room in this post to write more about the details Sri Lankan conflict, but if you wanted to learn more I wrote a pretty long paper on the conflict and possible solutions in college that I could send you're way if you'd like. With everything going on in the world today, I'm hardly expecting anyone to want to subject themselves to 20 more pages on this extremely depressing topic, but hey, I figured I'd throw it out there.

Meanwhile, in Gaza

Israel continues its war against the Gaza strip for having voted the wrong way.

Israel was facing widespread international condemnation yesterday for its onslaught in Gaza, as the UN and EU demanded an end to a "disproportionate" response to Palestinian rocket attacks, which were also denounced. Israel's prime minister, Ehud Olmert, rejected the criticism and vowed to press on with the offensive, which has claimed an estimated 100 Palestinian lives in the past five days.

Early today, after clashing with militants and making arrests yesterday, Israel moved more troops into northern Gaza and five Hamas militants were killed in nine airstrikes.

On Saturday alone, some 60 people were killed, the biggest Palestinian casualty toll since the second intifada broke out more than seven years ago. "Nothing will prevent us from continuing operations to protect our citizens," Olmert said. Two Israeli soldiers and one civilian have also been killed in the violence.

Human casualties apart, western governments expressed alarm at the decision by Mahmoud Abbas, the Palestinian president and bitter rival of the Hamas Islamists in Gaza, to freeze all contacts with Israel, putting the already moribund peace process at greater risk. Saeb Erekat, the chief Palestinian negotiator, said: "For the time being, negotiations are suspended because we have so many funerals."

Britain reacted by calling on Palestinians and Israelis to "step back from the brink". David Miliband, the foreign secretary, said: "Israel's right to security and self-defence is clear and must be reiterated and supported. But measures taken in response to rockets must be in accordance with international law, minimising the suffering for innocent civilians and maximising the scope for political negotiations to be restarted."

With Condoleezza Rice, the US secretary of state, due in Jerusalem tomorrow, a White House spokesman said: "The violence needs to stop and the talks need to resume."

Arab states were united in outrage. Pro-western Jordan, which, like Egypt, has a peace treaty with Israel, called the Gaza operations a "flagrant violation" of international law. Saudi Arabia, which brokered last year's revived Arab initiative backing peace with Israel, condemned what it called "mass killings".

Much more deserves to be written on this topic (and time permitting, it will), but I figured I'd just link to the story for now. There are few situations that make me more depressed than this one, mainly because I think its very probable that the US' Israel policy won't change in my lifetime.