How long before this particular axe falls? What is ironic about the pro-drilling rhetoric is that it implicitly or explicitly demonizes the Arabs (as well as the environmentalists, of course) for driving up oil prices. Meanwhile: a.) the Arabs are pumping the stuff as fast as they can, and prices remain sky-high despite this, and b.) it is the high prices which hold the only promise of making their dreams of exploiting ANWR a possibility. Who are they kidding? Themselves? From Market Watch, May 25:

House passes ANWR exploration
Oil, gas exploration measure likely to face Senate filibuster

WASHINGTON — Seeking to respond to soaring gasoline prices, the House on Thursday revisited a top Bush administration priority by voting again to open a portion of Alaska's Arctic National Wildlife Refuge, or ANWR, to oil exploration.

Revelations by Human Rights Watch May 26 that Darfur's Janjaweed have overrun villages in Chad. The rapidly shifting alliances are dizzying here. On the face of it, this is simple: Chad's government has backed the Darfur guerillas and this is simple retaliation by Khartoum's proxy force. Except (as we have noted), Chad's government is now divided, with rival factions of the ruling Zaghawa tribe in a violent struggle for power. The faction around President Idriss Deby accuses Sudan of supporting his enemies and is demonizing Sudanese refugees in Chad as subversives—even though they were cleansed from their lands by the Janjaweed, Sudan's proxy force. Meanwhile (as we have also noted), the Darfur rebels have also split, between factions led by the Fur and Zaghawa ethnicities. The Zaghawa-led faction is presumably closer to Chad—but to which faction in Chad? And does the report of "Chadian recruits" working with the Janjaweed indicate that Khartoum and its proxy force have made an alliance with the Zaghawa-led guerillas in both Darfur and Chad against the Fur and the rival (ruling) Chadian Zaghawa faction? HRW duly notes the claim—universal throughout the Darfur crisis—that this is just tit-for-tat violence over stolen cattle. This may, in fact, be the immediate and ostensible spark for the attacks. But, especially given the oil stakes in Chad, it is pretty disingenuous to argue that this war is about cattle-rustling.

Exactly four years after winning its independence from Indonesia, East Timor is tragically descending into chaos, and Australia has sent a "peacekeeping" force. Excerpts from a Reuters account via TV New Zealand, May 27:

Gangs of youths allied to feuding East Timor police or army units went on the rampage in parts of the capital on Saturday, torching houses and vehicles, as Australian and Malaysian peacekeeping troops stepped up their patrols.

A victory for Western designs on Capsian oil 20 years in the making, this heightens the regional contradictions in several ways. It places greater pressure on Turkey to crush the Kurdish PKK insurgents who are making trouble in precisely that section of Eastern Anatolia traversed by the pipeline. It places greater pressure on Russia to finally get Chechnya and the North Caucasus under control so a new Moscow-controlled alternative route can be built. And it places greater pressure on both Moscow and Washington to reshape the order in Central Asia in their favor before the next arm is built—across the Caspian Sea itself, incorprating the gas and oil fields of Kazakhstan and Turkmenistan . Will that arm connect to the Baku-Ceyhan line, or to an alternate Russian-controlled route? From Turkey's Zaman, May 27:

At a joint news conference with Tony Blair in Washington, Bush said he regretted saying "bring 'em on" when responding in July 2003 to a question about the Iraqi insurgency. Bush now says the remark was "kind of tough talk, you know, that sent the wrong message to people... I learned some lessons about expressing myself maybe in a little more sophisticated manner, you know. 'Wanted, dead or alive'; that kind of talk. I think in certain parts of the world it was misinterpreted." He also cited the Abu Ghraib prison abuse as "the biggest mistake that's happened so far, at least from our country's involvement in Iraq ... We've been paying for that for a long period of time," he said. (Reuters, May 26)

The outside world is paying no attention, but if the National Council of Resistance (Mujahedeen Khalq) is to be believed, the Azeri uprising in northern Iran is spreading. Of course Mujahedeen Khalq (with some degree of likely US connivance) would love to fan the flames of ethnic unrest in Iran, and exploit it for their own ends. If nobody else loans some support to the Azeris, they may succeed.

Iran: Clashes in Naqadeh leave six dead, dozens wounded

Residents in Naqadeh and Pars-Abad in Azerbaijan, and Meshkinshahr in Ardabil provinces attacked government buildings and prevented the governor’s speech

NCRI - Yesterday in the fifth day of the uprising by Azeri speaking provinces, thousands of demonstrators in Meshkinshahr and Naqadeh staged anti-government demonstrations.

The Fatah and Hamas factions met at the official Muqata compound in the Palestinian capital Ramallah today, with President Mahmoud Abbas and Prime Minister Ismail Haniyeh attempting to calm the situation after armed clashes between their supporters claimed at least ten lives over the past two weeks. (YNet, May 24)

Meanwhile, some 25 armored vehicles, accompanied by helicopters of the Israeli occupation forces, invaded Ramallah. Laying siege to one building in the city center, the occupation forces opened fire throughout the city, killing four Palestinians and injuring at least 40. The assault lasted two hours and was met by local Palestinian youths with stone-throwing.

Just as a resolution was in sight in the Mohawk stand-off in Ontario, a re-escalation—due to an angry backlash from Caledonia's white residents. From the Toronto Globe & Mail, May 23:

Caledonia, Ont. — Violence erupted at the site of an aboriginal land-claim protest Monday as non-aboriginal area residents, frustrated by a roadblock that has divided the community, lashed out.

The aboriginal protesters had briefly dismantled their barricade early in the day, a sign of goodwill after the province pledged last week to indefinitely halt development on a plot of disputed land.