A NEW BEGINNING...

OK Folks, the Conflict Monitor is back and kicking! The Honduras crisis lasted far too long and cost too much in lives and civic liberties than expected. Still things are not certain and I believe the country has fallen into a Supreme Court junta, which will take time to get rid of, heal from, and move on. It is not the only country where the Supreme Court becomes an active player in shaping a country's future... Indeed the US Supreme Court pretty much decided the general elections results that brought G.W.Bush and the neocons in power in 2000. The Spanish courts have destroyed several attempts to end the Basque insurgency, and the Turkish Supreme Courts recently not only blocked the path to a political solution with the PKK but also blocked the whole package for reforms proposed by the Turkish government that would guarantee an entry to the European Union. Only a referendum may save some of those recommendations in September but the point here is... Supreme Courts can be political with capital letters and the problem with them is that they take a long time to reshape... A political Supreme Court can be as menacing as a military junta if it decides to turn political; as they hide behind the very institutional structures intended to guarantee the constitutionality of the law turning the constitution, the supreme, permanent law of the land into a playground for streetfight politics. It is in my opinion a sign of corruption along with the corruption of the press and that of the politicians in every other level that leaves no other option for people such those who elected President Zelaya but with a few only choices. It appears also that international pressure somewhat worked; that the OAS and the US did have some effect and even though there is no guarantee that Zelaya would remain alive for a minute if he returned in the Honduras, his "pardon" was a gesture of submission by the state to outside pressure as much as to the congress's insistence to sanity. As the OAS is now being approached by the Uribe regime in Colombia... we may begin to consider the possibiilty of abuse of the very system that helped "end" the Honduras crisis which drives us to the main topic of this blog entry...

The Honduras crisis was treated here at the Conflict Monitor as a linear, singular chain of events... as if the rest of the world stop from existing... This is not any different that what happens in conflict analysis or case history-writing. The exclusive granted to the Honduras crisis took the readers attention away from other current affairs that should have also mattered that day or hour as things unfolded in Tegucigalpa. Distant places as far as China and Northern Sudan were just as active and this blog unintentionally created the impression - as most conflict analyses do - that it's the only thing going on.. So from now on the Conflict Monitor will respond to conflict situations in parallel, as they unfold. It will provide more of a commentary to current events than a case focused exclusive analysis. Connections and continuities will be considered but the idea here is that there is an overall, over arching conflict on the planet the ingredients of which are interlinked and interconnected from one region to the next. Conflict Monitor will treat conflicts similar to the snake helix of Hermes, spiraling upwards in wings towards the sun... I hope you will enjoy what the Monitor has to say and participate in the open debate. I hope to provoke that debate vigorously yet respectfully. The idea here is to OPEN UP our minds to new possibilities in understanding conflicts, not to regurgitate the same main stream information from the media or the establishment of politically corectedness that has caused just as much damage in shedding light in the fog of global and regional conflict. So the Conflict Monitor is back and more is on the way. Sri Lanka getting away with murder against the Tamil, the spill of Somalia's violence in Uganda, the ongoing struggle of indigenous peopel in Peru, and the efforts of Uribe to ignite the region into conflict so as to deprive his predecessors of a peaceful approach, all are on the way to the Conflict Monitor!

Peace equals light!