scary - hezbollah

From the excellent blog, Global Guerrillas:

Hezbollah is in the process of evolving into a more effective force. Nicholas Blanford has a great article over at the Christian Science Monitor on this.

New type of military:

Sheikh Hassan Nasrallah, the party's leader, in February said that Hizbullah had evolved into an "unparalleled new school" that is part guerrilla force and part conventional army.

This is aka a 4GW military.

New offensive methods:

New tactics are being taught, including how to "seize and hold" positions, a requirement that Hizbullah's guerrilla fighters – traditionally schooled in hit-and-run methods – never needed before... Jawad says that the next war will be "fought more in Israel than in Lebanon," one comment of many from various fighters that suggest Hizbullah is planning commando raids into northern Israel.

In context: Simultaneous hostage dramas during a conflict to shut down city/town centers, economic activity, and sow confusion? Broad spectrum damage. Civilians are the best defensive works possible in the modern variant of the strategic barrage. As a result, these hostage dramas could last for the duration of the conflict. Message to fighters is that if they survive: they will be released in end of conflict prisoner exchange (its not necessarily a one way mission).

Wider movement :

Hizbullah's military buildup is not confined to Shiite Lebanese. Sunnis, Christians, and Druze also are being recruited into reservist units called "Saraya," or battalions... Sheikh Afif Naboulsi, a prominent Hizbullah cleric, last month was quoted as saying that next time "the Israelis will find resistance fighters from all sects and denominations."

This is a variation on open insurgency.

that's it, moishe is no longer buying gasoline

On a clear day, the view from the top will take in the Middle East, North Africa and the Indian Ocean - providing you've a head for heights.

Plans for a mile-high tower in the Saudi Arabian desert have been unveiled by the billionaire owner of London's Savoy Hotel.

At 5,250ft, the £5billion project, masterminded by two British engineering consultancies, will be twice as high as its nearest rivals, skyscrapers under construction in Dubai and Kuwait, and almost seven times as high as the Canary Wharf tower in London's Docklands.

The Law of Unintended Consequences

From Haaretz.

Israeli town sues Google over claim it was built on Arab village
By The Associated Press

The northern town of Kiryat Yam is suing Internet giant Google for slander, a local official said Monday, because a feature of its worldwide map service shows the town was built on the ruins of an Arab village.

The dispute brings together two controversies, one old and one new. Officials from the town deny they displaced Arabs during the War of Independence, and Google is defending the practice of allowing any surfer to change information in its files.

Kiryat Yam is a town of 40,000 on the Mediterranean coast just north of the port of Haifa. An entry on Google Earth, a feature that allows users to zero in on locations around the world, alleges that the town was built on the ruins of Ghawarina, an Arab village.
...
Kiryat Yam was pulled into the dispute when a Google Earth user, Thameen Darby, inserted a note on the map saying it was built on the location of Ghawarina. Darby has inserted at least 10 such notes over Google's map of Israel.

"Kiryat Yam filed a slander complaint with Israel's police," said town official Naty Keyzilberman. "This obviously cannot be true, because Kiryat Yam was founded in 1945, he said, explaining the police complaint."

Darby, 30, a Palestinian doctor raised in the northern West Bank town of Jenin, said his mother was a refugee from to the village Balad al-Sheikh near Kiryat Yam. He said his contributions to Google Earth are part of the Nakhba - Palestinian Catastrophe information hub aimed to help displaced Palestinians understand their heritage or find the villages of their parents or grandparents.

"As far as I can know, the Arab Ghawarina locality was in the place depicted," Darby told The Associated Press. He noted that he may have not marked the exact location and "if proven wrong by reliable sources, I will be quick to reallocate it."
...
Asked to respond to the police complaint, a Google spokesman said Google Earth depends on user-generated content that reflects what people contribute, not what Google believes is accurate. The spokesman would not give his name, in keeping with company policy.

The spokesman insisted that the altered map is not illegal, and Google's
policy is not to remove such postings.

From Thomas Barnett's Blog - very interesting - and a good sign

SPECIAL REPORT: “Boomtime in lands of oil and money: The rise in the oil price is driving investment growth,” by Roula Khalaf, Financial Times, 20 November 2007, p. 1.

ARTICLE: “The Construction Site Called Saudi Arabia,” by Jad Mouawad, New York Times, 20 January 2008, p. B1.

ARTICLE: “Who’s Afraid of Mideast Money?” by Emily Thornton and Stanley Reed, BusinessWeek, 21 January 2008, p. 042.

The first story is cited just for the numbers. The Gulf Co-operation Council Six (Saudi Arabia, Kuwait, UAE, Qatar, Oman and Bahrain) are expected to hit oil export earnings in the range of $400b this year and $450b next year.

Between 2005 and 2020, it’s estimated that GCC will bank $3 trillion. About half is expected to stay in region, a quarter goes to the wider region, and a quarter hits the global streets looking for returns through SWFs. Roughly $1t is slated for local investment, which is why the region starts to rival Asia for its construction crane demand. Indeed, a lot of Turks, Indians and Chinese are doing the construction in the region, so they fight over worker bodies too.

The second story profiles a gargantuan petrochem plant going up in Saudi Arabia that will link the economy to a wide variety of global production chains, like cells, TVs, and thousands of other products. This factory is but a blip in Saudi Arabia’s planned $500 billion in internal diversification investment. The House is building four massive “economic cities” that intend to create about 1.6 million jobs.

Aramco wants to become a bigger Exxon Mobil, a serious supplier of petrochem products as well as oil.

No more “idle mode” for the Saudi economy, and yes, that’s a good sign.

So should we be afraid of all this oil money?

Like just about anybody else hoping to get deeply plugged into the global economy, Saudi Arabia and the GCC are running desperate races against their own demographics and the inevitability that the advanced world must move past oil—for environmental reasons alone.

The oil producers are facing their last great swing at the ball. Failure is really not an option here.