From the AP…

Rebels from the Lord’s Resistance Army sent torture victims — including a man whose back was sliced with a machete — to warn the people of this Congolese town they would be next.

The town’s three policemen fled and there was no response from the military and U.N. peacekeepers to the increasingly panicked pleas for help. That’s when residents realized they were on their own.

“We were sending warnings and begging for help practically every day for two weeks. And nothing happened,” said community leader Nicolas Akoyo Efudha. “We finally understood that we were abandoned — in danger and without protection.”

So Akoyo called a town meeting and told everyone to bring whatever weapons they had: pre-World War II rifles, homemade shotguns, lances, swords, machetes, hunting knives, bows with sheaths of poisoned arrows.

The women came armed with kitchen knives and log-sized wooden pestles used to pound yams into flour.

Since then, the residents of Bangadi have successfully driven off two attacks by the Ugandan rebels, who have killed at least 900 people in this remote northeastern corner of Congo over the past seven weeks.

It is commonly said that Africa suffers from too much tribalism. But the truth is that Africa don’t have enough tribalism. What passes for tribalism in Africa is really nothing more then racism.

A racist looks down on another ethnic group and favors his own when the cost of doing so are not all that great. A tribalist will fight for his tribe and listen to his tribal leaders. He will consider his own life as being worth little compared to the greater good of his tribe. A tribalist can be a racist, but just because one is a racist does not make you a tribalist.

The more you read about current African affairs, the more you will realize that there are plenty of racists in Africa and not many tribalist. An ethnic group that actually sticks together and helps each other out when the times gets tough is a rare thing in Africa. And when one does, they wield power all out of proportion to their numbers. Look at Rwanda for example.

From the Telegraph….

The protests, which began on Dec 14, rapidly took on a political hue and Mr Putin, who is intolerant of dissent, ordered the Kremlin’s top officials in the far east to use force next time. But senior adminstrators refused to intervene and a week later the government was forced to send a special detachment of riot police from Moscow to break up a second protest in Valdivostok.

Furious that he had again been disobeyed, Mr Putin directed Vladislav Surkov, his top ideologue, to sack the newly appointed head of internal affairs in Primorye, the region surrounding Vladivostok.

But the official, Maj Gen Andrei Nikolayev, flatly refused to leave his post. Sources say he threatened to expose corruption linked to the Kremln in the Russian far east if Mr Putin pressed ahead.

Such a gesture of defiance is almost unheard of in Russia. Gen Nikolayev was supposed to be the man entrusted by the Kremlin to keep regional officials under control.

But he quickly found a powerful champion in the form of President Dmitry Medvedev, who is said to have countermanded his dismissal. “The fight between Medvedev and Putin started over this issue and has been getting worse ever since,” the source close to the Kremlin said.

If this is true I don’t think that Medvedev has long to live. I am pretty sure that the men who know how to kill are still loyal Putin.

The Israeli newspaper Haaretz has a blow by blow account of Israel’s diplomatic moves. But all you really need to know comes from the first line…

The political goals of Operation Cast Lead were not formulated until a few days after the fighting in Gaza began.

If the word “war crime” had any real meaning, the above would be grounds for prosecution. It reveals a criminal level of incompetence that would be punished by death if Israel was not so much stronger than Hamas. War is always a horrible thing, but to engage in it without even knowing what you want to accomplish is no better then random killing.

It would be one thing if the operation had been a fast reaction to a sudden attack. But Israel endured the increased rocket attacks for weeks without doing anything. For the political leadership to have no idea of what they wanted to accomplish after waiting all that time is inexcusable.

Edit: A different article from Haaretz has the military perspective….

An officer who was in contact with the political echelon during the Gaza operation says he now understands what went so horribly wrong in Lebanon: “It was weird, to put it mildly.” Another senior figure adds: “It is difficult to conduct a war when an election campaign is under way. Two of the ‘kitchen cabinet’ members were interested in the operation’s implications for the elections. The third [Olmert] was busy with the question of what it would all mean for his legacy.”