Surprise, surprise.

The Army Reserve, whose part-time soldiers serve in combat and support roles in Iraq and Afghanistan, is so hampered by misguided Army policies and practices that it is "rapidly degenerating into a 'broken' force," the Reserve's most senior general says.

Lt. Gen. James R. Helmly, chief of the Army Reserve, wrote in an internal memorandum to the Army's top uniformed officer that the Reserve has reached the point of being unable to fulfill its missions in Iraq and Afghanistan and to regenerate its forces for future missions.

And just like those armored Humvees, somebody's working on it, so we should all rest easy.

Whether you were for or against the invasion of Iraq, surely we can agree that this Administration has demonstrated a continued betrayal of the basic social contract between civilian and military. Doesn't really matter whether it's due to unending wishful thinking, cavalier disregard for "fungible" units, attachment to high-tech transformation models, unwillingness to confront unpalatable political truths in a four-year re-election campaign, or an entrenched bureaucracy more concerned about where their next budget's coming from.

We can and must do better than this. First and foremost, the denial game has to stop at the top. These problems have been visible to anyone with one eye for over a year, but have been dismissed and brushed aside as partisan sniping. The media have totally failed to push what has been plain to see. The military themselves know all this, but they have no way to hold the civilians to account.

The next thing is for some new priorities to be set, and Congress had better be part of that agenda-setting process. The Reserve and Guard are as much Congress' children as anything.

And then maybe some new managers to tackle those priorities?

There is no innocence in the politics of humanitarian assistance.
Jayadeva Uyangoda, head of dept of political science, Colombo University.

The notion of a "core" group of major countries with resources and logistical assets within the region affected by the tsunami makes a great deal of sense. Although just how that "core" is supposed to relate to all the other pieces of the international mosaic has been more than a little unclear since announced by President Bush, but probably best left deliberately vague.

The announcement of the "core" has been seen by some, however, as another Bush "coalition of the willing" designed to cut out the formal mechanisms of multilateral cooperation. But in that prickly reaction to the core, no one seems to be paying much attention to relations within the core itself.

Except in Sri Lanka. Where the decision to send a contingent of US Marines has "raised eyebrows" in some quarters of Colombo and Delhi, with some suspicions that humanitarian aid isn't all that innocent, especially when it involves a movement, temporary or not, into India's sphere of influence.

"India Furious!" said a banner headline in the Monday edition of the Sudar Oli (Beacon Light), a Tamil-language newspaper considered sympathetic to the LTTE published from Colombo.

The newspaper said India was upset that Sri Lanka had not given it proper warning that it would be welcoming U.S. Marines into its "neighbourhood".

But G. Parthasarthy, a former Indian ambassador to Pakistan, told Reuters by telephone from New Delhi that too much ado was being made of the aid effort. "They love conspiracy theories in Colombo," he said.

Parthasarthy said it was clear the United States had got into the aid race rather late "after stringent domestic and international criticism".

For the present, he said -- "and please underline 'for the present'" -- the aid seemed to be just what it was, humanitarian and with no strings attached.

Although having lost more than 15,000 people itself, India has been keen to demonstrate its ability to manage in the wake of the catastrophe. After Indo-Lankan relations reached a nadir in the early stages of Sri Lanka's civil war, they have improved substantially. India is now seen as a supportive neighbor when humanitarian assistance is called for. India has already mobilized five Navy vessels including a hospital ship, a field hospital, six military helicopters and nearly 1000 military personnel for Sri Lanka.

And then there's India's famous general prickliness about anything that could be seen as failing to acknowledge its global and regional status. India has politely refused external aid for itself. As Amb Parthasarthy reminded the Reuters interviewer:

"Ten foreigners come and work two hours a day and the world's media think they've sorted out our problems tickety-boo," he said.

"We have the resources to manage our own situation."

Best not to forget that.

For another look at internet coverage, this time from the other side of the Atlantic, scotsman.com's "lazy guide to net culture" is serious, not cheeky, for once this week. The SEA-EAT site (see sidebar) is cited as a stand-out.

The unending human toll of the catastrophe, the explosive conditions of disorder in some already conflict-ridden areas, the process of a global community inventing mechanisms to mobilze resources in a timeframe and on a scale not seen before -- we will be feeling the ripple effects of the tsunami for some time to come. To keep track of day-to-day developments and longer term consequences, we've added a new category under "global threats and responses."

As prak has been following, the US is now quite publicly gearing up across the board to mobilize not only money and supplies but the transportation, logistics and assessment teams required. Looks like Thailand will be a major center of operations for the US, at least before other naval resources have made their way to the region.

Berlusconi has just called for the G-8 to take a joint response. And France and Germany are leading an effort for the Paris Club to address debt relief for the affected countries. The outpouring of donations from the wealthy countries, both public and private, continues to grow along with the death toll.

Although the most efficient way of providing private assistance right now is to the big NGOs which, in turn, can triage needs and allocate funds, many of us want to feel that we're somehow doing more, or making a more direct difference. Individuals are beginning to ask how they can volunteer to help directly -- which is currently a major challenge due to the simple constraints of transporting people and supplies to affected areas. The need for volunteers is more likely to be critical in the months to come, as millions of homeless, already vulnerable and leading a marginal existence, struggle to get back on their feet.

At the grassroots level of assistance delivery, there are already local organizations on the ground that are shifting their attention from their longer-term economic and social development programs to the immediate requirements of their "clients." The online development network, Global Giving, which we've highlighted in other posts and in the sidebar, already has a page of local projects in India working to help tsunami victims. It will undoubtedly expand in both number of projects and countries covered in the future, so it's worth watching closely to see what specific needs can be addressed with donations.

Our initial post on places to go for good information on the tsunami, its impact, and news about victims and survivors, as well as sites to visit about assistance is here.

Not a total surprise, given the inevitable burgeoning PR debacle, but the Office of Foreign Assets Control at Treasury has seen fit to reverse itself.

We've been carping, along with many other friendly bloggers who follow things Iranian, about Treasury's abusrd rule that extended US sanctions against Iran, Cuba and Sudan to publications of dissident authors.

The United States eased a controversial ban on publications from Iran, Sudan and Cuba on Wednesday in a bid to allow dissidents to be heard while maintaining an embargo on official documents.

The rule change by the U.S. Treasury Department's Office of Foreign Assets Control comes after Nobel Peace Prize winner Shirin Ebadi sued the United States because its economic embargo on Iran blocked U.S. publication of her memoirs.

"OFAC's previous guidance was interpreted by some as discouraging the publication of dissident speech from within these oppressive regimes. That is the opposite of what we want," Stuart Levey, Treasury's undersecretary for the Office of Terrorism and Financial Intelligence, said in a statement.

"This new policy will ensure those dissident voices and others will be heard without undermining our sanctions policy," Levey said.

The new rule allows U.S. publishers to engage in "most ordinary publishing activities" with people in Cuba, Iran and Sudan, while maintaining restrictions on interactions with government officials and agents of those countries.
[...]

The KMT and its allies have apparently won the parliamentary elections.

Taiwan opposition wins parliamentary poll

An opposition alliance which favours friendly ties with China defeated a pro-independence grouping in Taiwan's parliamentary election according to official vote count figures quoted by Eastern TV.

As long as Chen is still President it's unlikely the Chinese will loosen up on their refusal to talk with Taiwan. But since the elections were viewed by both sides as a referendum on whether to proceed with amending the Taiwanese constitution, this will hopefully reduce the amount of delicate navigating the US is forced to do.

For an interesting view of the problem for the US, which argues that Taiwan and others, such as Israel and Georgia, can't be allowed to hijack US foreign policy, see Wagging the Dog, by Nikolas K. Gvosdev & Travis Tanner in in the Fall 2004 issue of The National Interest (sub req'd unfortunately).

At least now we can return our focus to regulating our financial markets as national markets, within global markets. Consumer protection is a great thing, and the federal regulators fell asleep at the switch. But the answer is not to have fifty states competing for litigation awards, or to revive fifty Blue Sky laws, and then extend them to every other part of the financial services industry.

Hope the next NYAG won't have quite such grandiose political ambitions as our lad Eliot.

Well this should bring a sigh of relief to Matthew Yglesias, who's been fretting ever since Nov 3 about the hard-to-explain boost of Bush support from Latino voters.

NBC Makes Unprecedented Downward Correction in Latino Support for Bush

18-point Margin of Victory for Democrat Kerry Among Hispanics Doubles Previous NBC Estimates; Numbers Affirm WCVI Criticism of National Exit Poll Figures

WASHINGTON, Dec. 3 /PRNewswire/ -- In a stunning admission, an elections manager for NBC News said national news organizations overestimated President George W. Bush's support among Latino voters, downwardly revising its estimated support for President Bush to 40 percent from 44 percent among Hispanics, and increasing challenger John Kerry's support among Hispanics to 58 percent from 53 percent. The revision doubles Kerry's margin of victory among Hispanic voters from 9 to 18 percent. Ana Maria Arumi, the NBC elections manager also revised NBC's estimate for Hispanic support for Bush in Texas, revising a reported 18-point lead for Bush to a 2-point win for Kerry among Hispanics, a remarkable 20-point turnaround from figures reported on election night. [...]

The more information comes out about the exit polls, when they were right and where they were wrong, and actual voting behavior (to say nothing of actual counting of ballots), it looks like we should hold off on any more "revise Democratic strategy" sessions until at least January, when more reliable data can be assembled and analyzed with some degree of confidence.

Donkey Rising has more here and here on the ongoing revision of Hispanic numbers, and here on the declining Bush margin as the raw vote totals are finalized state-by-state.

Ukraine's Supreme Court has invalidated the results of the second round and ruled in favor of a rerun of the second round of voting, to be completed by Dec 26.

This puts at least one nail into Kuchma's attempt to rerun the entire election, with a new candidate to replace Yanukovych. That was the scheme for which he got Putin's blessing when he rushed off to Moscow yesterday.

Now we'll see what else Kuchma has up his sleeve.

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[UPDATE] A lovely piece of FT snark:

The European parliament usually has difficulty organising a roll call, so how to explain the mass appearance of hundreds of orange scarves as MEPs debated the crisis in Ukraine on Thursday?

Step forward Jacek Saryusz-Wolski and his fellow members of the centre-right Civic Platform from Poland.

The MEP sent an assistant out to find 1,000 scarves and paid for half of them himself, the rest coming from a whip-round of colleagues.

Nevertheless, Observer hears some of the more couture-conscious MEPs went out to buy their own, designer, brands.

A great deal of rumors have flown in the past few days about special forces being brought in -- maybe including two planes of Russians flying into a base near Kyiv, maybe not -- and readied for taking on the crowds Monday night after negotiations broke off again. Here's the most credible eye-witness account, published in Kommersant (major Moscow newspaper) on Tuesday, translated on Neeka's Backlog, one of the Ukrainian bloggers.