In radio broadcasts and sermons, Taliban militants have been promoting themselves as Islamic Robin Hoods, defending Pakistan’s rural poor from a ruling elite that they describe as corrupt and oppressive. That message has been resonating throughout the Pakistani countryside, where the culture is deeply conservative and the people are desperately poor. “Justice [in Pakistan] is only for people who have money,” Daoud said, while slicing through handfuls of grass with a small scythe. “We are illiterate,” he added, “but we are hoping that with Islamic sharia law, our lives will get better.”
Enforcement of sharia law is the platform the Taliban have been using to justify recent land-grabs, such as last week’s armed occupation of the district of Buner, some 60 miles from the Pakistani capital. Militants have slowly taken over territory in northwestern Pakistan by first targeting unpopular landlords and bureaucrats, according to Amnesty International, the human rights watchdog. “Its systematic. The Taliban move into an area, they use local existing resentments. They often go in with the guise of being Robin Hoods,” said Amnesty International representative Sam Zarifi. “They scare away some local thieves, they impose very, very quick justice, very harsh justice, and initially in some places they are even welcomed.”

And how are the Taliban fought ? Attempts to reform society to make it more even and less corrupt do not go anywhere (or are not even made); the military has fought the Taliban in parts, but the battle is a battle in which innocents are affected and make them resentment of the efforts of the military; the presence of the US drones that make frequent bombing runs of villages in order to eliminate terrorists are seen as invasions of Pakistani sovereignty, and killing of innocents only serves to inflame the population even more.
What can be done ? The effort has to be bring down the Robin Hood image of the Taliban by reducing corruption levels, by making more development in these regions, and at the same time, confronting them militarily. One wonders whether Pakistan can do all this ?

Libya has paid $1.5bn into a US compensation fund for relatives of victims of terror attacks blamed on Tripoli, the US state department says. The fund was agreed in August to settle remaining lawsuits in the US. The attacks include the 1988 Lockerbie bombing that killed 270 people and the 1986 bombing of a Berlin disco which killed three and wounded more than 200. Under the deal, Libya did not accept responsibility for the attacks, but agreed to compensate victims.
In exchange, President Bush has signed an executive order restoring the Libyan government’s immunity from terror-related lawsuits and dismissing pending compensation cases in the US, the White House said. Relations between Libya and the US improved in 2003 when Tripoli stopped working on weapons of mass destruction. The decision led to the restoration of US diplomatic ties with Libya in 2006.

This coming back into the international community has helped Libya immensely. It has managed to get investors coming back into the country, and it needs these investors for improving the lot of its citizens. These investors include global oil companies that are helping Libya develop its oil fields, and raising the promise of generating huge amounts of revenue from oil and gas, like other oil exporters.

The most important thing to remember about the drowning of New Orleans is that it wasn’t a natural disaster. It was a man-made disaster, created by lousy engineering, misplaced priorities and pork-barrel politics. Katrina was not the Category 5 killer the Big Easy had always feared; it was a Category 3 storm that missed New Orleans, where it was at worst a weak 2. The city’s defenses should have withstood its surges, and if they had we never would have seen the squalor in the Superdome, the desperation on the rooftops, the shocking tableau of the Mardi Gras city underwater for weeks.
The real culprit was the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers, which bungled the levees that formed the city’s man-made defenses and ravaged the wetlands that once formed its natural defenses. Americans were outraged by the government’s response, but they still haven’t come to grips with the government’s responsibility for the catastrophe.
Many of the same coastal scientists and engineers who sounded alarms about the vulnerability of New Orleans long before Katrina are warning that the Army Corps is poised to repeat its mistakes—and extend them along the entire Louisiana coast. If you liked Katrina, they say, you’ll love what’s coming next.

A lot of this discussion just does not get heard. With a presidential election in full swing (albeit very early), most of the discussion is about the swinging fortunes of the candidates, or about the latest act of famous starlets, or about the genuineness of the record home run baseball hitter. All this time, a lot of scientists are screaming about what the reconstruction of New Orleans is not doing.
The basic thrust of the article is: New Orleans is on a place where river sediment carried by the Mississippi would create some elevated areas, and at the same time, there would be a barrier of wetlands, mangroves and swamps that would reduce the thrust of a hurricane. However, since the Corps over a period of time carried out a series of steps to regulate the river, sedimentation was reduced; further activities had a major impact on causing a slow destruction of the wetlands and also let the Gulf expand way inwards. And in an ominous conclusion, the claim is that the further plans of construction of a large number of leeves all along the coast will cause further destruction of the wetlands. And the elected representatives are more interested in pork, or diverting money to electorally appealing projects. Such an article should be debated, if only for the sake of the number of people who dies in the flooding after the storm.

Nato is reported to have killed at least two senior Taliban leaders in an airstrike north of Helmand as they were watching a public execution. The bombing took place in the northern district of Baghran on Thursday, a district entirely controlled by the Taliban. The Taliban’s commander for southern Afghanistan, Mansoor Dadullah, was among those targeted, according to unconfirmed reports.
Nato has systematically targeted the Taliban leadership with airstrikes for the past year and claims to have seriously depleted the Taliban’s command and control structure. According to figures collated by Western diplomats in Kabul, around 45 middle and high level Taliban commanders in Helmand have been killed to date.

These are good to hear, but the fact remains that the Taleban was completely routed 6 years back, but has now relentlessly taken back districts. The fact that the district was totally under the control of the Taleban is a pointer to that effect. It is also very strange, given that the Taleban’s shelter was what led to Al-Qaeda being able to plan the 2001 WTC attacks. If this situation is not reversed, as already reported, the Taleban is going to become as strong again as before.