Jonathan of The Head Heeb sums up the detail of the US-French UNSC draft on Lebanon, and it looks eerily like the AFOE consensus solution. Key points, as we predicted, are how to arrange for everyone to claim victory..
If all these hurdles are overcome, then the Israel-Hizbullah war will end on terms that allow everyone [...]

The Onion: Bush Grants Self Permission to Grant More Power to Self. Funny, but also the best definition of the Kompetenzkompetenz I’ve ever seen.

AFP, via the Beirut Daily Star reports that the US is to find the Lebanese army $10 million to buy equipment needed to patrol the southern border and, presumably, keep Hezbollah in hand. For one thing, it doesn’t sound much. For another thing, wouldn’t it be an idea to get the Israelis to stop bombing [...]

Well, it now looks as if the window of opportunity for a ceasefire in the Levant has slammed shut on the fingers of its proponents. With the destruction of a UNTSO observation post, the mobilisation of three Israeli reserve divisions (by contrast, the total force employed so far has been one division-plus), Hezbollah’s successful defence [...]

Says Scott: Why should outsiders participate in saving face for Israel and in solidifying what will no doubt be perceived in the Middle East as a Hezbollah victory?
Well, if a situation emerges where Israel can save face and Hezbollah is simultaneously able to claim victory, we’d be fools not to seize this opportunity. Put it [...]

After the Russian gas showdown with Ukraine, the Turkmen gas showdown with Russia. Two can play at that game, it seems. No doubt a lot of this is motivated, like the Ukraine crisis, by the decision makers’ own corruption interests in their Austrian, Swiss or God knows where nominee companies and numbered accounts. No doubt [...]

According to this morning’s news, the International Committee of the Red Cross and Red Crescent had admitted the Israeli Magen David Adom and Palestinian Red Crescent Society as full members, following the final passage of a text allowing the new “red crystal” symbol. The red crystal looks to me like a red Renault logo, [...]

So now, according to CNN, the US and various others are now talking about paying for an African Union peacekeeping force for Somaila. They just had some wanker on talking about how Somalia is a place where children don’t got to school, they join militias, where there’s no law and order, where “there’s been [...]

Steve Clemons, who’s quite adept at reading the Washington tea leaves, writes that the Doha round of trade negotiations is effectively over.
Why? For most of the present US administration, Bob Zoellick had been the US Trade Representative. Zoellick was an old hand, wise in the ways of both trade and Washington. But when Condelezza [...]

Once upon a time, before it became the Paris edition of the New York Times, the International Herald Tribune published its late sports editor Dick Roraback’s ode to baseball’s opening day each year.
Under the fold, “The Crack of the Bat.”
(The fifth stanza is current again, after reflecting a bygone age for more than three decades. [...]