Conflicts

The massive Twitter and Facebook outages yesterday seem to be linked in some way to the Georgian conflict. As CNET reported, the rolling blackout of Twitter began with a DDOS attack on a Georgian blogger's Twitter and Facebook accounts.  A Facebook spokesperson says, "The people who are coordinating this attack, the criminals, are definitely determined and using a lot of resources."

In his Financial Times column today, Gideon Rachman makes the argument for a "United Nations army." His test case, interestingly, is Somalia, where offshore piracy has galvanized international cooperation, but 18 years of onshore violence and instability has rumbled on unchecked. Would it be easier, or any more advisable, to send UN peackeepers to Somalia if there were, as Rachman proposes, "a proper UN force on permanent stand-by?"

From a good article in Macleans, the Canadian weekly:

Well, no. When there are 300,000 Tamils languishing in IDP camps, even a $26 million investment in microfinance loans won't erase the human rights violations that many of these civilivans faced in Sri Lanka's frenzied campaign against the Tamil Tigers.