International

Via the August 18, 2006, issue of The Week, from an opinion piece in the LA Times by Niall Ferguson:

It was 99 years ago that Leo Hendrik Baekeland invented the first plastic based on a synthetic polymer - Bakelite - and ushered in the age of plastic. From that moment, a new kind of pollutant entered the sea; one that took a century or more to degrade. The plastic plague is a global epidemic. According to the United Nations Environment Program, about 46,000 pieces of plastic are floating on every square mile of the world's oceans. The problem is more than merely aesthetic. Last week, this newspaper carried a shocking report from Midway Atoll, which is about as isolated a spot as the world has to offer. Hardly anyone lives there, so the number of bottles thrown in the sea can't be large. And yet birdlife on Midway is being devastated as albatrosses inadvertently feed their chicks lethal fragments of plastic picked up from what's known as the Eastern Garbage Patch, a virtual island of trash formed by the currents of the North Pacific subtropical gyre.

The Eastern Garbage Patch on Wikipedia.

From an article in the New Yorker titled "WATCHING LEBANON" by Seymour Hersh:

In the days after Hezbollah crossed from Lebanon into Israel, on July 12th, to kidnap two soldiers, triggering an Israeli air attack on Lebanon and a full-scale war, the Bush Administration seemed strangely passive... Two days later, despite calls from several governments for the United States to take the lead in negotiations to end the fighting, Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice said that a ceasefire should be put off until "the conditions are conducive." The Bush Administration, however, was closely involved in the planning of Israel's retaliatory attacks. President Bush and Vice-President Dick Cheney were convinced, current and former intelligence and diplomatic officials told me, that a successful Israeli Air Force bombing campaign against Hezbollah's heavily fortified underground-missile and command-and-control complexes in Lebanon could ease Israel's security concerns and also serve as a prelude to a potential American preemptive attack to destroy Iran's nuclear installations, some of which are also buried deep underground. Israeli military and intelligence experts I spoke to emphasized that the country's immediate security issues were reason enough to confront Hezbollah, regardless of what the Bush Administration wanted. ...a Middle East expert with knowledge of the current thinking of both the Israeli and the U.S. governments...the Administration had several reasons for supporting the Israeli bombing campaign. Within the State Department, it was seen as a way to strengthen the Lebanese government so that it could assert its authority over the south of the country, much of which is controlled by Hezbollah. He went on, "The White House was more focussed on stripping Hezbollah of its missiles, because, if there was to be a military option against Iran's nuclear facilities, it had to get rid of the weapons that Hezbollah could use in a potential retaliation at Israel. Bush wanted both. Bush was going after Iran, as part of the Axis of Evil, and its nuclear sites, and he was interested in going after Hezbollah as part of his interest in democratization, with Lebanon as one of the crown jewels of Middle East democracy."... The initial plan, as outlined by the Israelis, called for a major bombing campaign in response to the next Hezbollah provocation, according to the Middle East expert with knowledge of U.S. and Israeli thinking. Israel believed that, by targeting Lebanon's infrastructure, including highways, fuel depots, and even the civilian runways at the main Beirut airport, it could persuade Lebanon's large Christian and Sunni populations to turn against Hezbollah, according to the former senior intelligence official.... The Israeli plan, according to the former senior intelligence official, was "the mirror image of what the United States has been planning for Iran." (The initial U.S. Air Force proposals for an air attack to destroy Iran's nuclear capacity, which included the option of intense bombing of civilian infrastructure targets inside Iran, have been resisted by the top leadership of the Army, the Navy, and the Marine Corps, according to current and former officials. They argue that the Air Force plan will not work and will inevitably lead, as in the Israeli war with Hezbollah, to the insertion of troops on the ground.)... Cheney's office supported the Israeli plan...They believed that Israel should move quickly in its air war against Hezbollah. A former intelligence officer said, "We told Israel, ‘Look, if you guys have to go, we're behind you all the way. But we think it should be sooner rather than later-the longer you wait, the less time we have to evaluate and plan for Iran before Bush gets out of office.' "

From an article in the LA TImes titled "U.S. Denies Role in Attacking Hezbollah":

The White House on Sunday vigorously denied a report in the New Yorker magazine that the Bush administration had worked with Israel to plot military action against Hezbollah as part of a long-term plan to target Iran, a longtime supporter of the Shiite Muslim militant group. "The piece abounds in fictions," White House Press Secretary Tony Snow said in an e-mailed response to a request for comment. He also assailed reporter Seymour M. Hersh's use of unnamed sources, saying it was "hard to imagine that the story would meet any major news organization's standards for sourcing and verification." Appearing Sunday on CNN's "Late Edition," Hersh alluded to his early reporting on detainee abuses at the U.S.-run Abu Ghraib prison in Iraq. "When I did Abu Ghraib, the same kind of stuff was thrown at me - that I'm fantasizing," he said.

From the August 18, 2006, issue of The Week, an article of the same tite:

Morality monitors are back in Afghanistan. The government of President Hamid Karzai has begun cracking down on "un-Islamic" activities such as drinking. In the past month, police raids have closed down bars across Kabul, and dozens of suspected prostitutes have been deported. The Cabinet has even proposed reinstating the Department for the Promotion of Virtue and the Discouragement of Vice, a body that under the Taliban was notorious for whipping men whose beards were too short or women whose veils showed their faces. Officials insist that the agents would serve as gentle reminders, not punitive enforcers. "We would not beat people or force women to wear scarves," said Interior Ministry official Abdul Jabbar Sabit. "But we have to do something to protect society, to tell people they should not drink alcohol or smoke hashish."

Media like the flim Osama and the novel The Kite Runner have made me more keenly aware of the evil of the Taliban, the morality police. Let's hope and pray that they won't be ascendant again in Afghanistan, here (yes, we have them of a sort), or anywhere else.

Via digg, from an article of the same title from BBCNews.com:

The Netherlands is the rich nation which does the most to improve lives in developing countries, a Center for Global Development (CGD) report says. The UK is 12th in the annual Commitment to Development Index of the world's 21 richest nations and Japan ranked last... The CGD's measures a broad number of factors for the index, rather than merely the amount of aid countries provide. It also examines several policy areas - such as trade investment migration and environment - while aid is measured not only in terms of quantity but as a share of its income and the quality of aid given... Meanwhile, despite the US giving the largest amount of aid that donation was the smallest in relation to the size of its economy.

I've been curious to find out what happened on Lucado, Atchley, et al.'s trip to China. Atchley reports on how it went in a video (if that link doesn't work, search for "Trip to China Report" from August 9, 2006, on this page for the RealVideo link) on the Richland Hills church of Christ web site. Here's a summary: The trip was the brainchild of John Bentley, a missionary in China who, along with his wife Lisa, founded Harmony Outreach, a ministry that operates a children's home for special-needs orphans in China and helps connect people and organizations to China (see the Harmony Outreach website and also a Tyndale House Publisher's bio about Lisa). John had the idea to arrange a delegation of Christian leaders from America including:

• Rick Atchley (Richland Hills Church of Christ, Richland Hills, TX)
• Bob Russell (Southeast Christian Seminary, Louisville)
• Max Lucado (Oak Hills church, San Antonio, TX)
• Gary Smith (Fielder Road Baptist Church, Arlington, TX)
• Royce Money (President, Abilene Christian University)
• Rick Gregory (Vice President and Dean, Dallas Baptist University)
• John Bethany (representative from Focus on the Family)
• David Llewellyn (Attorney)

to meet with government officials about the possibility of better relations in China with the Christian faith. In order to go, they had to have a sponsor. "Chinese Charity Association" (maybe he meant "China Aid Association"?) had agreed to be their sponsor but got cold feet a couple days before they were to leave. When the group left for China, no meetings had yet been arranged. Once they had arrived, several important meetings were planned. The group visited John and Lisa's "Harmony House" orphanage. Apparently, China's one child policy means that babies with problems are discarded/abandoned. They met with the Chinese association in charge of social work. They agreed that it would be OK to come and do good works (for example, for the poor) in Jesus' name. They met with the equivalent of the state dept. They talked to the equivalent of our secretary of state about dreams for a more cooperative relationship with Chinese government. He listened politely and said "let us continue to dialogue more." They had lunch at the embassy in Beijing with US ambassador. They met with the state department for religious affairs, with the person with the cabinet level position in the party (an atheist) who controls all religion in China. He gave them the standard spiel that there are 16 million Christians in China and that the constitution says China allows freedom religion. They also met with an underground church leader. Overall, the trip seems to have resulted in plans for more activities and engagement with China. In less positive news about China, from an article this week in the NY Times by Howard W. French titled "China Adds Restrictions in Effort to Shake the Faith of Independent Congregations":

Tuanqianbu, China...Despite the 100-degree heat, there was a crowd at the little Protestant church this Sunday... Two weeks earlier, as many as 500 police officers surrounded the congregants as they were closing in on their long-held dream of completing construction of a new church nearby. The 3,000 or so people were driven away from the site, and those who argued or resisted in any way were arrested and, according to their lawyer, beaten. Then the church, with all but the roof in place, was demolished. The campaign against this poor little church outside Hangzhou, the capital of Zhejiang Province in eastern China, is part of a national wave of repression against independent, or underground, churches that are not registered with the government and do not recognize the authority of state-appointed spiritual leaders. Since the law regulating religious affairs was introduced in March 2005, provincial and local governments have begun a series of crackdowns on underground churches across China. The vaguely worded new rules call for local governments to "standardize" the management of religion nationwide. The Chinese crackdown, which also affects other faiths, especially Buddhism in Tibet and Islam in the far western Xinjiang Province, comes at a time of booming growth in underground churches across the country. The right to practice any of five recognized faiths - Buddhism, Catholicism, Daoism, Islam and Protestantism - is enshrined in the Chinese Constitution, and the authorities routinely insist that religious freedom exists in this country. Under Chinese law, however, all recognized faiths must be registered and approved by the government, and they are closely monitored and required to follow strict and frequently changing regulations... According to the China Aid Association, an American Christian advocacy group that monitors religious freedom in China, 1,958 pastors were arrested at churches like these in the last year alone. Although the crackdown is decentralized, with each province and locality carrying out the repression on its own, the pattern is as unmistakable as the constant stream of incidents. In one recent case, in Tongwei, a village in eastern Anhui Province in late July, 90 children were reportedly detained with 40 adults after the police raided a Protestant Sunday school, calling the church teachings "illegal evangelism." Around the same time, in Hebei Province in the north, as many as 90 protesters were arrested after demanding the release of two clergymen from the underground Roman Catholic church, who had been detained without explanation.

Sounds like "complete freedom of religion" to me!