This is from Google.
The final months of the year have involved much less violence but much of this is due to enlisting Sunnis to fight Al Qaeda and Sadr's peaceful tactics for the time being. There is still not much progress on the political front towards meeting benchamarks set by the US including the oil bill.
2007 Deadliest for US Troops in Iraq
By BRADLEY BROOKS – 20 hours ago
BAGHDAD (AP) — The second half of 2007 saw violence drop dramatically in Iraq, but the progress came at a high price: The year was the deadliest for the U.S. military since the 2003 invasion, with 899 troops killed.
American commanders and diplomats, however, say the battlefield gains against insurgents such as al-Qaida in Iraq offer only a partial picture of where the country stands as the war moves toward its five-year mark in March.
Two critical shifts that boosted U.S.-led forces in 2007 — a self-imposed cease-fire by a main Shiite militia and a grassroots Sunni revolt against extremists — could still unravel unless serious unity efforts are made by the Iraqi government.
Iran also remains a major wild card. U.S. officials believe the neighboring country has helped quiet Iraq by reducing its flow of suspected aid to Shiite fighters, including materials needed for deadly roadside bombs.
But Iran's apparent hands-off policies could come under strain as Shiite factions — some favoring Iran, others not — battle for control of Iraq's oil-rich south.
The Pentagon, meanwhile, will increasingly look to the uneven Iraqi security forces to carry the load in 2008 as demands for an American exit strategy grow sharper during the U.S. election year.
Britain, the main U.S. coalition partner in Iraq, is gradually drawing down its forces and other allies, including Poland and Australia, are contemplating full-scale withdrawals in the coming year.
"We're focusing our energy on building on what coalition and Iraqi troopers have accomplished in 2007," Gen. David Petraeus told a group of Western journalists on Saturday. "Success will not, however, be akin to flipping on a light switch. It will emerge slowly and fitfully, with reverses as well as advances, accumulating fewer bad days and gradually more good days."
That arc of progress played out in the raw statistics of U.S. and Iraqi casualties.
American military deaths peaked in May with 126 troops killed. It was then that the U.S. began ramping up its attacks against insurgent strongholds, leading to increased clashes in Baghdad and other key areas across central Iraq.
Seven months on, commanders and analysts say America's aggressive strategy of targeting al-Qaida in Iraq strongholds is paying off: U.S. casualties have dropped sharply. As of Sunday night in Baghdad, 21 deaths were reported in December, one more than in February 2004, which was the lowest monthly total of the war.
The 899 deaths in 2007 surpassed the previously highest death toll in 2004, when 850 U.S. soldiers were killed. The total for 2007 could rise slightly; occasionally the military reports new casualties a few days after they occur. The military reported the non-combat related death of a soldier on Sunday.
At least 3,902 members of the U.S. military have died since the beginning of the war. Of those, at least 3,175 died as a result of hostile action, according to the military's numbers.
Iraqi civilian deaths have tracked that decline and overall violence across the country is down roughly 60 percent, American commanders say.
Since the influx of some 30,000 U.S. troops that began in June, the lessening violence has meant that new problems have emerged.
"There certainly are ample challenges out there in the new year. In some respects, the positive developments in the latter half of 2007 also represent the challenges of 2008," U.S. Ambassador Ryan Crocker said during a recent briefing.
An example, Crocker said, is how the improving security situation is in part luring back Iraqis who took refugee in neighboring Syria, Jordan and elsewhere.
"The return of refugees — a good thing obviously, but a process is going to have to be carefully managed so that it doesn't sow the seeds of new tension and instability," he said.
Along with the increase in American troops, Iraq's lessening violence has been attributed to a self-imposed freeze on activities by the Mahdi Army — the militia of radical Shiite cleric Muqtada al-Sadr.
Another important change was the quick growth of mostly Sunni anti-al-Qaida in Iraq groups, or "awakening councils," who once fought against U.S. and Iraqi forces but now point their guns toward the insurgents.
Of the more than 70,000 fighters in the awakening councils, only 20 percent are expected to be absorbed into the Iraqi security forces. The rest are to receive job training through a joint $300 million program Iraqi and American officials are creating.
That program is in its beginning stages and there are few details about how it will be carried out, but analysts say it must succeed or the Sunni fighters who do not join Iraq's military may sell their services to the insurgents.
On Saturday, a new audiotape by Osama bin Laden warned Iraqi Sunnis against fighting al-Qaida, saying "the most evil of the traitors are those who trade away their religion for the sake of their mortal life."
Keeping the militia of al-Sadr and other powerful Shiite leaders on the sidelines also means keeping Iran to its promise to halt the flow of weapons and training to them, officials say.
"How lasting a phenomenon that will be and how Iran will define and play its role in Iraq in 2008 I think is going to be very important to the long-term future of the country," Crocker said.
Iraqi civilian deaths also peaked in May with 2,155 killed. That fell to 718 in November and 710 in December. For the year, 18,610 Iraqis were killed. In 2006, the only other full year an AP count has been tallied, 13,813 civilians were killed.
Civilian deaths are compiled by the AP from hospital, police and military officials, as well as accounts from reporters and photographers. Insurgent deaths were not included. Other counts differ and some have given higher civilian death tolls.
Those numbers paint an increasingly optimistic picture, but James Carafano, a security expert with the Heritage Foundation think-tank in Washington, D.C., warned dangers lurk.
"The number of people who have the power to turns things around appears to be dwindling," he said regarding extremists. "But there are still people in Iraq that could string together a week of really bad days."
While that might not mean a return to the bloodiest moments of the Iraq war, Carafano said it could seriously rattle the Iraqi government as it tries to bring about some form of political reconciliation in 2008, a key to long-term security.
"People have to be really careful about over-promising that this is an irreversible trend — I think it is a soft trend," he said of the declining violence.
Carafano pointed to the problem of integrating the Sunni awakening councils into Iraqi society and keeping the Shiite militias out of the fight. If either of those situations changes, he said, increased bloodshed in the country is likely.
Those warnings in mind, Carafano said he thought the "surge" in U.S. troops had to a large extent met one of its important goals: to allow the Iraqi government to focus on questions of governance instead of dealing only with security.
He likened the increase in troops to the Marshall Plan that largely rebuilt Europe after World War II and demonstrated U.S. commitment to that continent.
"I think the surge made that statement to Iraqis," Carafano said. "Here's America, fighting an unpopular war and things aren't going so well and we turn around and send more troops in. To the good guys and the bad guys is was a reaffirmation that Americans aren't going to walk away from this."
Monday, December 31, 2007
Top economist says America could plunge into recession
Even if the economy just declines slightly early in the New Year this could exacerbate the credit crunch. As noted in my earlier post there could be a credit crunch in auto loans. If people's incomes do not keep pace with debt then there is bound to be increased defaulting on loans.
From The Times
December 31, 2007
Top economist says America could plunge into recession
Suzy Jagger in New York
Losses arising from America’s housing recession could triple over the
next few years and they represent the greatest threat to growth in the
United States, one of the world’s leading economists has told The
Times.
Robert Shiller, Professor of Economics at Yale University, predicted
that there was a very real possibility that the US would be plunged
into
a Japan-style slump, with house prices declining for years.
Professor Shiller, co-founder of the respected S&P Case/Shiller
house-price index, said: “American real estate values have already
lost
around $1 trillion [£503 billion]. That could easily increase
threefold
over the next few years. This is a much bigger issue than sub-prime. We
are talking trillions of dollars’ worth of losses.”
He said that US futures markets had priced in further declines in house
prices in the short term, with contracts on the S&P Shiller index
pointing to decreases of up to 14 per cent.
“Over the next five years, the futures contracts are pointing to
losses
of around 35 per cent in some areas, such as Florida, California and
Las
Vegas. There is a good chance that this housing recession will go on
for
years,” he said.
Professor Shiller, author of Irrational Exuberance, a phrase later used
by Alan Greenspan, the former Federal Reserve chairman, said: “This
is a
classic bubble scenario. A few years ago house prices got very high,
pushed up because of investor expectations. Americans have fuelled the
myth that prices would never fall, that values could only go up. People
believed the story. Now there is a very real chance of a big
recession.”
He pointed out that signs at the beginning of 2007 that had indicated
that some states were beginning to experience a recovery in house
prices
had proved to be false: “States such as Massachusetts had seen some
increases at the beginning of the year. Denver also looked like it had
a
different path. Now all states are falling.”
Until two years ago, each of America’s 50 states had experienced a
prolonged housing boom, with properties in some – such as Florida,
California, Arizona and Nevada – doubling in price, fuelled by cheap
credit and lax lending practices to borrowers who ordinarily would not
have been able to secure a mortgage. Two years ago, the northeastern
states of America became the first to slide into a recession after 17
successive interest-rate rises between June 2004 and August 2006 hit
the
property market.
Last week, new numbers from the S&P/Case Shiller index showed that
house
prices had declined in October at their fastest rate for more than six
years, with homes in Miami losing 12 per cent of their value.
###
From The Times
December 31, 2007
Top economist says America could plunge into recession
Suzy Jagger in New York
Losses arising from America’s housing recession could triple over the
next few years and they represent the greatest threat to growth in the
United States, one of the world’s leading economists has told The
Times.
Robert Shiller, Professor of Economics at Yale University, predicted
that there was a very real possibility that the US would be plunged
into
a Japan-style slump, with house prices declining for years.
Professor Shiller, co-founder of the respected S&P Case/Shiller
house-price index, said: “American real estate values have already
lost
around $1 trillion [£503 billion]. That could easily increase
threefold
over the next few years. This is a much bigger issue than sub-prime. We
are talking trillions of dollars’ worth of losses.”
He said that US futures markets had priced in further declines in house
prices in the short term, with contracts on the S&P Shiller index
pointing to decreases of up to 14 per cent.
“Over the next five years, the futures contracts are pointing to
losses
of around 35 per cent in some areas, such as Florida, California and
Las
Vegas. There is a good chance that this housing recession will go on
for
years,” he said.
Professor Shiller, author of Irrational Exuberance, a phrase later used
by Alan Greenspan, the former Federal Reserve chairman, said: “This
is a
classic bubble scenario. A few years ago house prices got very high,
pushed up because of investor expectations. Americans have fuelled the
myth that prices would never fall, that values could only go up. People
believed the story. Now there is a very real chance of a big
recession.”
He pointed out that signs at the beginning of 2007 that had indicated
that some states were beginning to experience a recovery in house
prices
had proved to be false: “States such as Massachusetts had seen some
increases at the beginning of the year. Denver also looked like it had
a
different path. Now all states are falling.”
Until two years ago, each of America’s 50 states had experienced a
prolonged housing boom, with properties in some – such as Florida,
California, Arizona and Nevada – doubling in price, fuelled by cheap
credit and lax lending practices to borrowers who ordinarily would not
have been able to secure a mortgage. Two years ago, the northeastern
states of America became the first to slide into a recession after 17
successive interest-rate rises between June 2004 and August 2006 hit
the
property market.
Last week, new numbers from the S&P/Case Shiller index showed that
house
prices had declined in October at their fastest rate for more than six
years, with homes in Miami losing 12 per cent of their value.
###
Juan Cole: Top Ten Challenges for US in the Middle East
This is from Juan Cole's blog. As usual Cole's remarks are quite perceptive although I sometimes find him rather naive. He is a bit bemused by the fact that if the US were really interested in combatting terrorism they would bave acted differently. He doesn't conclude, as I would, that combatting terrorism was not the first order of business for the US but projecting US power and securing energy supplies. Iraq was no fool's errand! While terrorism is a genuine threat that threat is also used as a fig leaf to cover the US drive for global hegemony.
Cole seems very confident that US interventionism if properly done will help stabilise the situation in the Middle East. I have no idea why he should think that!
The record so far has not been very good. Even well intentioned intervention can often exacerbate the situation. For example any support for those trying to democractise from inside Iran is most likely to be counterproductive and gives an excuse for authorities to brand them as enemies of Iran.
Top 10 Challenges Facing the US in the Middle East, 2008
10. Helping broker a deal in Lebanon between the March 14 Movement and the Shiites so that a new president can be elected and a national unity government can be formed.
Lebanon's economy was badly damaged by the Israeli war on the poor little country in summer of 2006. Tourism is a big part of that economy, and is being hurt by the continued political instability. Given historically high oil prices, Iran will probably make $56 billion from petroleum sales this year. That gives it lots of carrots to hand out in Lebanon. If the Lebanese were better off, foreign oil money would not be as important to them. Likewise, the country's poverty breeds social ills. Hizbullah militiamen might be harder to find if there was well-paying work for young men in the south. The dire poverty of Palestinians in camps such as Nahr al-Bared near Tripoli has made them open to predations by Mafia-like groups linked to al-Qaeda. Just a couple of weeks ago, Lebanese security broke up a plot to blow up churches in Zahle on the part of a small group of jihadis. An economically flourishing Lebanon would be less likely to be beset by these ills. The Levant is not that far away from the US or its major interests, and it is very unwise to allow the pathological situation in Lebanon to fester. A prosperous, healthy Lebanon is good for US security and is less likely to become the cat's paw of regional powers hostile to US interests.
9. The US should exercise its good offices to encourage continued dialogue between Iran and Saudi Arabia. The capture of Baghdad by the Shiites and the ethnic cleansing of most Sunnis from it have set the stage for a big Sunni-Shiite battle for the capital as soon as the US troops get out of the way. It is absolutely essential to Gulf security, and to American energy security, that Saudi Arabia and Iran not be drawn into a proxy Sunni-Shiite war in Iraq. Keeping in close contact with each other and with Iraqis of the other sect is the best way for them to avoid a replay of the Iran-Iraq War of the 1980s. Those in the Bush administration who dream of an Israeli-Saudi alliance against Iran are playing with fire, a fire that is likely to boomerang on the US. If the Persian Gulf goes up any further in flames, the resulting unprecedentedly high petroleum prices will likely finally produce a bad impact on the US economy. Instead, the US should be attempting to bring Iran in from the cold, now that the NIE has absolved it of nuclear-weapons ambitions.
8. Congress should expand funding for, and guarantee the future of, the Combatting Terrorism Center at West Point. Its researchers do among the very best jobs of analyzing the writings and activities of the Salafi Jihadis, and so of combatting them. Few government institutions are as effective. If the US government were serious about the threat of terrorism, I would not even have to make this plea. Of course, if Bush and Cheney had really cared about the threat of al-Qaeda, they would have gone after it and gotten Bin Laden and al-Zawahiri rather than rushing off on a fool's errand in Iraq.
7. The US must repair its tattered relations with Turkey. Turkey has been a NATO ally for decades and Turkish troops fought alongside American ones in the Korean War. Turkey stood with the US in the Cold War and gave the US bases on its soil. As a secular country, it is an ally in the struggle against the Salafi Jihadis, for which even religious Turks have contempt. Turkey has among the more promising economies in the Middle East, among non-oil states, and is attracting billions in foreign investment. The US has for some strange reason stiffed Turkey several times in the past decade. The Clinton administration promised Turkey a billion dollars in restitution for the monies it lost during the Gulf War, and then Congress refused to appropriate the money. More recently, the US has unleashed a virulent and violent Kurdish nationalism by allying with Massoud Barzani in Iraq. Barzani in turn has given safe harbor to guerrillas of the Kurdish Workers Party (PKK), who have been going over the border and killing Turks, then retreating to Iraq. The Bush administration has tried to resolve this probably by helping the Turks bombard PKK positions inside Iraq, but that is not ideal. Instead, the US should put economic and other pressure on Barzani to expel the PKK from Iraq.
6. The US must keep the pressure on Pervez Musharraf to hold free and fair, early elections in Pakistan. The elections probably cannot be held on Jan. 8, as planned, because of the extensive turmoil and destruction of polling stations and ballots during the past few days. But they should not be postponed past March 1. Musharraf's own legitimacy has collapsed, and he is in danger of becoming a Shah of Iran figure, hated by his own people and driven from office. Such a scenario could be very bad for the United States. That is why Joe Biden is right and John McCain is wrong when the latter warns against dumping Musharraf. Why cannot the American Right learn that backing the wrong horse is often worse than not having a horse in the first place?
5. The US and NATO have to stop doing search and destroy missions in Afghanistan. The Pushtun tribespeople are never going to put up with tens of thousands of foreign troops in their country, and, indeed, in their underwear drawers. Search and destroy missions just multiply feuds with local people. The NATO and US military missions in Afghanistan have to be redefined so that they are not simply putting down tribes for the central government. The best Afghan central governments have ruled by playing the tribes off against one another, not by trying to crush them. The solutions in Afghanistan are political and economic. More reconstruction needs to be done. Farmers need aid to be weaned off poppies. Forced eradication of poppy crops appears to be behind a lot of the "Taliban resurgence," which actually often looks to me from a distance like angry farmers taking revenge for the destruction of their livelihoods.
4. The US must facilitate provincial elections in Iraq. They are arguably more important than any other step. They would solve a number of important problems.
The Sunni Arab provinces of Al-Anbar, Salahuddin, Ninevah and Diyala have unrepresentative governments (Diyalah, 60% Sunni, is ruled by the Islamic Supreme Council of Iraq, a hard line Shiite group!) The Sunni Arab parties declined to run in January, 2005, and there have been no subsequent provincial elections. Representative Sunni provincial governments could negotiate from a greater position of strength with the federal government of Shiite Dawa Party leader and prime minister Nuri al-Maliki. Some of the Awakening Councils members, who are self-appointed, might get elected and so gain greater legitimacy.
Without legitimate provincial governments in the Sunni Arab provinces, it is hard to see how the US can hope to withdraw troops and turn over security to locals, as Gen. Petraeus had planned to do in Mosul this year.
In the south, Basra needs new elections because its provincial government saw a major division this year, leading to an ISCI-led vote of no confidence in the governor, who is from the Islamic Virtue Party. But then the governor refused to step down! Ineffective governance in oil-rich Basra, which contains the country's only major ports, is bad for the whole country. In some other southern provinces, such as Diwaniya, a more representative provincial government might make for more social peace.
What I am saying now is not new, and Ambassador Ryan Crocker and Gen. Petraeus have repeatedly called for such elections. I am saying, now is the time to make a big push for them. If the US starts drawing down troops this year, it will make it harder to hold elections, since the Iraqi security forces probably cannot keep the voters dafe. If the US leaves behind the current provincial governments, as with Diyala, Diwaniya and Basra in particular, it is probably leaving behind provincial civil wars.
3. The US Congress must allocate substantial funds, on the order of $1 billion or more, for Iraqi refugee relief in Syria and Jordan. UNO relief funds are running out. Iraqis' own savings are running out. Children are not in school and are going hungry. People are being exploited, including young girls forced into prostitution. A majority of the 1.5 million Iraqis in Syria went there in 2007, and almost all of them have been forced out of Baghdad and other areas because of the political instability that the United States unleashed in their country. The surge is being touted as a victory in the US press, but it seems to have displaced 700,000 Iraqi civilians! The US is spending $15 billion a month on the Iraqi and Afghanistan Wars. It can afford $1 billion a year for refugee relief. This is our responsibility. How future generations of Iraqis view the United States will in part depend on whether we do this. I ask all Americans to write your congressional representatives and press them on this humanitarian issue.
2. The Bush administration should expend all of its remaining political capital in the region to have the Israelis return the Golan Heights to Syria. The Golan was captured in 1967. By the United Nations Charter, countries may not permanently grab the territory of their neighbors. The Syrians will have to agree to keep the Golan a demilitarized zone, with UNO blue helmets patrolling as a safeguard. In return, Syria would have to agree to cease backing Palestinian militants and would have to play a positive role in creating a Palestinian state. Damascus would also have to work to restore social peace in Lebanon. Such a deal might help to detach Syria from its alliance with Iran. That in turn would weaken Hizbullah. This deal would be good for Israeli security, and if it helped speed up the creation of a Palestinian state, might even keep Israel from falling into the Apartheid situation that Prime Minister Ehud Olmert recently said he fears.
1. The US must insist that the Israeli siege of Gaza must be lifted. A third of Palestinians killed by Israel this year were innocent civilians. The agricultural sector is being destroyed because farmers cannot export their goods owing to the Israeli blockade. Food, water, essential medicines are all being denied to civilian populations, including children. If Prime Minister Ehud Olmert is so worried about Israel being seen as an Apartheid state, he should release Gazans from their penitentiary and stop deploying collective punishment against civilians.
posted by Juan Cole @ 12/31/2007 06:26:00 AM 0
Cole seems very confident that US interventionism if properly done will help stabilise the situation in the Middle East. I have no idea why he should think that!
The record so far has not been very good. Even well intentioned intervention can often exacerbate the situation. For example any support for those trying to democractise from inside Iran is most likely to be counterproductive and gives an excuse for authorities to brand them as enemies of Iran.
Top 10 Challenges Facing the US in the Middle East, 2008
10. Helping broker a deal in Lebanon between the March 14 Movement and the Shiites so that a new president can be elected and a national unity government can be formed.
Lebanon's economy was badly damaged by the Israeli war on the poor little country in summer of 2006. Tourism is a big part of that economy, and is being hurt by the continued political instability. Given historically high oil prices, Iran will probably make $56 billion from petroleum sales this year. That gives it lots of carrots to hand out in Lebanon. If the Lebanese were better off, foreign oil money would not be as important to them. Likewise, the country's poverty breeds social ills. Hizbullah militiamen might be harder to find if there was well-paying work for young men in the south. The dire poverty of Palestinians in camps such as Nahr al-Bared near Tripoli has made them open to predations by Mafia-like groups linked to al-Qaeda. Just a couple of weeks ago, Lebanese security broke up a plot to blow up churches in Zahle on the part of a small group of jihadis. An economically flourishing Lebanon would be less likely to be beset by these ills. The Levant is not that far away from the US or its major interests, and it is very unwise to allow the pathological situation in Lebanon to fester. A prosperous, healthy Lebanon is good for US security and is less likely to become the cat's paw of regional powers hostile to US interests.
9. The US should exercise its good offices to encourage continued dialogue between Iran and Saudi Arabia. The capture of Baghdad by the Shiites and the ethnic cleansing of most Sunnis from it have set the stage for a big Sunni-Shiite battle for the capital as soon as the US troops get out of the way. It is absolutely essential to Gulf security, and to American energy security, that Saudi Arabia and Iran not be drawn into a proxy Sunni-Shiite war in Iraq. Keeping in close contact with each other and with Iraqis of the other sect is the best way for them to avoid a replay of the Iran-Iraq War of the 1980s. Those in the Bush administration who dream of an Israeli-Saudi alliance against Iran are playing with fire, a fire that is likely to boomerang on the US. If the Persian Gulf goes up any further in flames, the resulting unprecedentedly high petroleum prices will likely finally produce a bad impact on the US economy. Instead, the US should be attempting to bring Iran in from the cold, now that the NIE has absolved it of nuclear-weapons ambitions.
8. Congress should expand funding for, and guarantee the future of, the Combatting Terrorism Center at West Point. Its researchers do among the very best jobs of analyzing the writings and activities of the Salafi Jihadis, and so of combatting them. Few government institutions are as effective. If the US government were serious about the threat of terrorism, I would not even have to make this plea. Of course, if Bush and Cheney had really cared about the threat of al-Qaeda, they would have gone after it and gotten Bin Laden and al-Zawahiri rather than rushing off on a fool's errand in Iraq.
7. The US must repair its tattered relations with Turkey. Turkey has been a NATO ally for decades and Turkish troops fought alongside American ones in the Korean War. Turkey stood with the US in the Cold War and gave the US bases on its soil. As a secular country, it is an ally in the struggle against the Salafi Jihadis, for which even religious Turks have contempt. Turkey has among the more promising economies in the Middle East, among non-oil states, and is attracting billions in foreign investment. The US has for some strange reason stiffed Turkey several times in the past decade. The Clinton administration promised Turkey a billion dollars in restitution for the monies it lost during the Gulf War, and then Congress refused to appropriate the money. More recently, the US has unleashed a virulent and violent Kurdish nationalism by allying with Massoud Barzani in Iraq. Barzani in turn has given safe harbor to guerrillas of the Kurdish Workers Party (PKK), who have been going over the border and killing Turks, then retreating to Iraq. The Bush administration has tried to resolve this probably by helping the Turks bombard PKK positions inside Iraq, but that is not ideal. Instead, the US should put economic and other pressure on Barzani to expel the PKK from Iraq.
6. The US must keep the pressure on Pervez Musharraf to hold free and fair, early elections in Pakistan. The elections probably cannot be held on Jan. 8, as planned, because of the extensive turmoil and destruction of polling stations and ballots during the past few days. But they should not be postponed past March 1. Musharraf's own legitimacy has collapsed, and he is in danger of becoming a Shah of Iran figure, hated by his own people and driven from office. Such a scenario could be very bad for the United States. That is why Joe Biden is right and John McCain is wrong when the latter warns against dumping Musharraf. Why cannot the American Right learn that backing the wrong horse is often worse than not having a horse in the first place?
5. The US and NATO have to stop doing search and destroy missions in Afghanistan. The Pushtun tribespeople are never going to put up with tens of thousands of foreign troops in their country, and, indeed, in their underwear drawers. Search and destroy missions just multiply feuds with local people. The NATO and US military missions in Afghanistan have to be redefined so that they are not simply putting down tribes for the central government. The best Afghan central governments have ruled by playing the tribes off against one another, not by trying to crush them. The solutions in Afghanistan are political and economic. More reconstruction needs to be done. Farmers need aid to be weaned off poppies. Forced eradication of poppy crops appears to be behind a lot of the "Taliban resurgence," which actually often looks to me from a distance like angry farmers taking revenge for the destruction of their livelihoods.
4. The US must facilitate provincial elections in Iraq. They are arguably more important than any other step. They would solve a number of important problems.
The Sunni Arab provinces of Al-Anbar, Salahuddin, Ninevah and Diyala have unrepresentative governments (Diyalah, 60% Sunni, is ruled by the Islamic Supreme Council of Iraq, a hard line Shiite group!) The Sunni Arab parties declined to run in January, 2005, and there have been no subsequent provincial elections. Representative Sunni provincial governments could negotiate from a greater position of strength with the federal government of Shiite Dawa Party leader and prime minister Nuri al-Maliki. Some of the Awakening Councils members, who are self-appointed, might get elected and so gain greater legitimacy.
Without legitimate provincial governments in the Sunni Arab provinces, it is hard to see how the US can hope to withdraw troops and turn over security to locals, as Gen. Petraeus had planned to do in Mosul this year.
In the south, Basra needs new elections because its provincial government saw a major division this year, leading to an ISCI-led vote of no confidence in the governor, who is from the Islamic Virtue Party. But then the governor refused to step down! Ineffective governance in oil-rich Basra, which contains the country's only major ports, is bad for the whole country. In some other southern provinces, such as Diwaniya, a more representative provincial government might make for more social peace.
What I am saying now is not new, and Ambassador Ryan Crocker and Gen. Petraeus have repeatedly called for such elections. I am saying, now is the time to make a big push for them. If the US starts drawing down troops this year, it will make it harder to hold elections, since the Iraqi security forces probably cannot keep the voters dafe. If the US leaves behind the current provincial governments, as with Diyala, Diwaniya and Basra in particular, it is probably leaving behind provincial civil wars.
3. The US Congress must allocate substantial funds, on the order of $1 billion or more, for Iraqi refugee relief in Syria and Jordan. UNO relief funds are running out. Iraqis' own savings are running out. Children are not in school and are going hungry. People are being exploited, including young girls forced into prostitution. A majority of the 1.5 million Iraqis in Syria went there in 2007, and almost all of them have been forced out of Baghdad and other areas because of the political instability that the United States unleashed in their country. The surge is being touted as a victory in the US press, but it seems to have displaced 700,000 Iraqi civilians! The US is spending $15 billion a month on the Iraqi and Afghanistan Wars. It can afford $1 billion a year for refugee relief. This is our responsibility. How future generations of Iraqis view the United States will in part depend on whether we do this. I ask all Americans to write your congressional representatives and press them on this humanitarian issue.
2. The Bush administration should expend all of its remaining political capital in the region to have the Israelis return the Golan Heights to Syria. The Golan was captured in 1967. By the United Nations Charter, countries may not permanently grab the territory of their neighbors. The Syrians will have to agree to keep the Golan a demilitarized zone, with UNO blue helmets patrolling as a safeguard. In return, Syria would have to agree to cease backing Palestinian militants and would have to play a positive role in creating a Palestinian state. Damascus would also have to work to restore social peace in Lebanon. Such a deal might help to detach Syria from its alliance with Iran. That in turn would weaken Hizbullah. This deal would be good for Israeli security, and if it helped speed up the creation of a Palestinian state, might even keep Israel from falling into the Apartheid situation that Prime Minister Ehud Olmert recently said he fears.
1. The US must insist that the Israeli siege of Gaza must be lifted. A third of Palestinians killed by Israel this year were innocent civilians. The agricultural sector is being destroyed because farmers cannot export their goods owing to the Israeli blockade. Food, water, essential medicines are all being denied to civilian populations, including children. If Prime Minister Ehud Olmert is so worried about Israel being seen as an Apartheid state, he should release Gazans from their penitentiary and stop deploying collective punishment against civilians.
posted by Juan Cole @ 12/31/2007 06:26:00 AM 0
A car loan credit crunch?
So people will lose not only their houses but their cars. Again these loans were sold as securities and no doubt the risk is spread all over the globe. If there is a recession in the US more and more debtors will be unable to make payments and this will cause even more problems within the economy. It could be a very bumpy ride in 2008. But Happy New Year everyone anyway!
[Fasten your seatbelts, it's going to be a bumpy night!]
http://www.latimes.com/business/la-fi-autoloans30dec30,0,4315064.story?coll=la-home-center
Los Angeles Times
New cars that are fully loaded — with debt
Americans are rolling over loans, often ending up owing more for the
vehicle than it's worth.
By Ken Bensinger / Los Angeles Times Staff Writer
December 30, 2007
When Jennifer and Bobby Post traded in their 2001 Chevy Suburban last
year for a shiny new Ford F-350 turbo diesel with an extended cab, it
seemed like a great deal. Even though they still owed $9,500 on their
SUV after the trade-in value, they didn't have to put a penny down.
The dealership, near the Posts' home in Victorville, made it easy; it
just added the old debt to the price of the new truck and gave the
couple a seven-year, $44,276 loan.
The Posts were a little worried about taking on such a long
obligation, but they couldn't pass up a monthly payment under $700.
Now they're having regrets.
"I didn't realize how much debt was in it," said Jennifer Post, who
has since moved with her family to Iowa. Now, she'd like to get rid of
the truck but can't, because there's so much debt that she'd literally
have to pay someone to take it off her hands.
"We have no options," she said.
Americans haven't just been taking out risky mortgages for homes in
the last few years; they've also been signing larger automobile loans
for significantly longer terms than they used to.
As a result, people are slipping into a perpetual cycle of automobile
debt that experts think could lead to a new credit crunch extending
from dealerships to driveways and all the way to Wall Street.
Gone are the days of the three-year car loan. The length of the
average automobile loan hit five years, four months in October, up
more than six months from 2002, according to the Federal Reserve. And
nearly 45% of loans written today are for longer than six years. Even
some staid lenders owned by the carmakers, such as Toyota Financial
Services and Ford Credit, are offering seven-year financing. And a few
credit unions, particularly in the West, are tinkering with the
eight-year note.
At the same time, the amount of money drivers owe on their cars is
soaring. In October, the average amount financed hit $30,738, up
$3,500 in just a year and nearly 40% in the last decade, according to
the Fed. More troubling, today's average car owner owes $4,221 more
than the vehicle is worth at the time it's sold -- up from $3,529 in
2002, according to industry analyst Edmunds.
[that's much too much! -- JD]
... It's not just individual consumers who are at financial risk.
Nationwide, an estimated $575 billion in new and used auto loans are
written every year by auto manufacturers, banks, credit unions and
other lenders. About 30% of the loans that are originated by banks,
and 100% of those issued by automaker financiers, are, like mortgages,
repackaged and sold as securities, according to the Consumer Bankers
Assn.
Analysts warn that just as investors didn't comprehend the risk
inherent in some of the more exotic home mortgages in recent years,
they aren't considering how risky these car loans are. If longer loan
terms allow debt on the loans to grow too large, many drivers may
simply default, leading to expensive repossessions.
And even those who keep paying their bills may reach a point, like
Gerhardt, where they simply can't afford another car. That could send
vehicle sales down the drain, a nightmare scenario for an industry
that has already taken a hit this year from slower consumer spending
and higher gas prices.
It could also lead to serious losses among financial institutions that
have invested in car debt. Among securitized auto loans, two-thirds
have terms longer than 60 months, a fact that Standard & Poor's, which
rates auto debt for sale on the secondary market, calls a "credit
concern."
This month, S&P reviewed its ratings on $113.5 billion in auto loan
securities it rated in the last two years out of concerns over growing
losses. It didn't make any downgrades but predicted that "rising
losses will continue into 2008 across all segments of the auto loan
market."
S&P has found that delinquencies of more than 60 days on car loans
issued this year to borrowers with the best credit are up 20% compared
to those issued last year, while delinquencies on loans issued this
year to subprime borrowers increased by 16%. Delinquency rates on car
loans are still far lower than on mortgages, but there is growing
concern in the financial services industry. Indeed, Tom Webb, chief
economist of used-auto analyst Manheim Consulting, said he expects the
tally for 2007 repossessions to be up by 10%.
Mark Pregmon, executive vice president for consumer lending at
SunTrust Bank, is among the concerned. "Any time you extend the
maturity of the loan, you take on more risk. The question is whether
there's enough assessment of that extra risk," he said. "Obviously,
it's a problem. It's a house of cards."
In the 1970s and '80s, car loans hovered between 36 and 48 months, and
drivers typically kept their cars longer than the life of the loan. A
number of factors changed that.
One key was interest rates, which fell from a high of 17.8% in the
early 1980s to lower than 5% today, according to the Federal Reserve.
Another was affordability. According to an index tracked by Comerica
Bank, cars have steadily gotten more affordable -- as compared to
median family income -- since the late 1990s.
With cheap money at hand for more-affordable cars, the temptation to
keep buying became huge. Today, according to Pregmon, financed cars
are typically turned over in 24 to 36 months.
At the same time they were extending loan maturities, lenders,
competing with one another, began offering more money and requiring
smaller down payments.
Today, most lenders offer financing on 100% or even 125% of the
sticker price, and some offer the most credit-worthy buyers loans for
twice the value of the vehicle they're purchasing. Last year, the
average amount financed for new cars reached 99%, according to the
Consumer Bankers Assn., up from 95% in 2005.
Lenders are beginning to brace themselves; many have said they intend
to tighten standards and require larger down payments.
Despite warnings from S&P, the Consumer Bankers Assn., Lehman Bros.
and others, there is little sign that the automobile industry is
willing -- or, with consumers demanding low payments, even able -- to
reduce the lengths of the loans they issue.
"For banks, it's a matter of meeting consumer demand: no money down
and extend the term," said SunTrust's Pregmon. "But as a lender,
you've got a moral obligation as well. Are we putting the clients in
loans they can't afford?"
ken.bensinger@latimes.com
[Fasten your seatbelts, it's going to be a bumpy night!]
http://www.latimes.com/business/la-fi-autoloans30dec30,0,4315064.story?coll=la-home-center
Los Angeles Times
New cars that are fully loaded — with debt
Americans are rolling over loans, often ending up owing more for the
vehicle than it's worth.
By Ken Bensinger / Los Angeles Times Staff Writer
December 30, 2007
When Jennifer and Bobby Post traded in their 2001 Chevy Suburban last
year for a shiny new Ford F-350 turbo diesel with an extended cab, it
seemed like a great deal. Even though they still owed $9,500 on their
SUV after the trade-in value, they didn't have to put a penny down.
The dealership, near the Posts' home in Victorville, made it easy; it
just added the old debt to the price of the new truck and gave the
couple a seven-year, $44,276 loan.
The Posts were a little worried about taking on such a long
obligation, but they couldn't pass up a monthly payment under $700.
Now they're having regrets.
"I didn't realize how much debt was in it," said Jennifer Post, who
has since moved with her family to Iowa. Now, she'd like to get rid of
the truck but can't, because there's so much debt that she'd literally
have to pay someone to take it off her hands.
"We have no options," she said.
Americans haven't just been taking out risky mortgages for homes in
the last few years; they've also been signing larger automobile loans
for significantly longer terms than they used to.
As a result, people are slipping into a perpetual cycle of automobile
debt that experts think could lead to a new credit crunch extending
from dealerships to driveways and all the way to Wall Street.
Gone are the days of the three-year car loan. The length of the
average automobile loan hit five years, four months in October, up
more than six months from 2002, according to the Federal Reserve. And
nearly 45% of loans written today are for longer than six years. Even
some staid lenders owned by the carmakers, such as Toyota Financial
Services and Ford Credit, are offering seven-year financing. And a few
credit unions, particularly in the West, are tinkering with the
eight-year note.
At the same time, the amount of money drivers owe on their cars is
soaring. In October, the average amount financed hit $30,738, up
$3,500 in just a year and nearly 40% in the last decade, according to
the Fed. More troubling, today's average car owner owes $4,221 more
than the vehicle is worth at the time it's sold -- up from $3,529 in
2002, according to industry analyst Edmunds.
[that's much too much! -- JD]
... It's not just individual consumers who are at financial risk.
Nationwide, an estimated $575 billion in new and used auto loans are
written every year by auto manufacturers, banks, credit unions and
other lenders. About 30% of the loans that are originated by banks,
and 100% of those issued by automaker financiers, are, like mortgages,
repackaged and sold as securities, according to the Consumer Bankers
Assn.
Analysts warn that just as investors didn't comprehend the risk
inherent in some of the more exotic home mortgages in recent years,
they aren't considering how risky these car loans are. If longer loan
terms allow debt on the loans to grow too large, many drivers may
simply default, leading to expensive repossessions.
And even those who keep paying their bills may reach a point, like
Gerhardt, where they simply can't afford another car. That could send
vehicle sales down the drain, a nightmare scenario for an industry
that has already taken a hit this year from slower consumer spending
and higher gas prices.
It could also lead to serious losses among financial institutions that
have invested in car debt. Among securitized auto loans, two-thirds
have terms longer than 60 months, a fact that Standard & Poor's, which
rates auto debt for sale on the secondary market, calls a "credit
concern."
This month, S&P reviewed its ratings on $113.5 billion in auto loan
securities it rated in the last two years out of concerns over growing
losses. It didn't make any downgrades but predicted that "rising
losses will continue into 2008 across all segments of the auto loan
market."
S&P has found that delinquencies of more than 60 days on car loans
issued this year to borrowers with the best credit are up 20% compared
to those issued last year, while delinquencies on loans issued this
year to subprime borrowers increased by 16%. Delinquency rates on car
loans are still far lower than on mortgages, but there is growing
concern in the financial services industry. Indeed, Tom Webb, chief
economist of used-auto analyst Manheim Consulting, said he expects the
tally for 2007 repossessions to be up by 10%.
Mark Pregmon, executive vice president for consumer lending at
SunTrust Bank, is among the concerned. "Any time you extend the
maturity of the loan, you take on more risk. The question is whether
there's enough assessment of that extra risk," he said. "Obviously,
it's a problem. It's a house of cards."
In the 1970s and '80s, car loans hovered between 36 and 48 months, and
drivers typically kept their cars longer than the life of the loan. A
number of factors changed that.
One key was interest rates, which fell from a high of 17.8% in the
early 1980s to lower than 5% today, according to the Federal Reserve.
Another was affordability. According to an index tracked by Comerica
Bank, cars have steadily gotten more affordable -- as compared to
median family income -- since the late 1990s.
With cheap money at hand for more-affordable cars, the temptation to
keep buying became huge. Today, according to Pregmon, financed cars
are typically turned over in 24 to 36 months.
At the same time they were extending loan maturities, lenders,
competing with one another, began offering more money and requiring
smaller down payments.
Today, most lenders offer financing on 100% or even 125% of the
sticker price, and some offer the most credit-worthy buyers loans for
twice the value of the vehicle they're purchasing. Last year, the
average amount financed for new cars reached 99%, according to the
Consumer Bankers Assn., up from 95% in 2005.
Lenders are beginning to brace themselves; many have said they intend
to tighten standards and require larger down payments.
Despite warnings from S&P, the Consumer Bankers Assn., Lehman Bros.
and others, there is little sign that the automobile industry is
willing -- or, with consumers demanding low payments, even able -- to
reduce the lengths of the loans they issue.
"For banks, it's a matter of meeting consumer demand: no money down
and extend the term," said SunTrust's Pregmon. "But as a lender,
you've got a moral obligation as well. Are we putting the clients in
loans they can't afford?"
ken.bensinger@latimes.com
Pakistan to delay elections
The government is no doubt surprised by the fact that Bhutto's party is going to contest the elections. This forced Sharif's party to reverse its decision to boycott the elections. Musharraf no doubt will delay the elections for some time to try and cool the anger against him and also to make arrangements to rig the results if he can make appropriate deals or even if he can't!
The move to make the son the symbolic head of the party was clever in that Bhutto's husband's reputation for corruption is legendary. The son cannot run for office until 25!
I am a bit mystified by all the fuss over exactly how Bhutto died. What possible value the government could gain from saying she died from hitting her head as against a bullet wound is not clear to me. Certainly the government has not denied that she was shot at and that there was a suicide blast. What on earth difference does it make if these events in themselves were not the immediate cause of her death. If they had not happened she would not have banged her head cracking open her skull.
Pakistan to delay elections
Monday, December 31, 2007
ISLAMABAD: Elections in Pakistan appear likely to be delayed by several weeks, despite demands by the party of the slain opposition leader Benazir Bhutto and other politicians that they take place as scheduled on Jan. 8, officials said Monday.
The Election Commission said that it had recommended an unspecified delay in the parliamentary polls following the unrest that was triggered by the assassination of Bhutto last week. It said its final decision would be made Tuesday.
Separately, a senior government official predicted that the elections would be postponed by "six weeks or so, as the environment to hold free and fair elections is not conducive." The official spoke on condition of anonymity because he was not authorized to disclose the information.
Despite being in mourning, Bhutto's political party and that of Pakistan's other major opposition leader, Nawaz Sharif, want the polls held on time, perhaps sensing that major electoral gains are possible amid sympathy over Bhutto's death and a widespread belief that political allies of President Pervez Musharraf were behind the killing. Sharif's party reversed an earlier decision to boycott the election.
On Sunday, Bhutto's Pakistan People's Party named her 19-year-old son, Bilawal Bhutto Zardari, as its symbolic leader and left day-to-day control to her husband, Asif Ali Zardari. The announcement was made at a chaotic news conference at the family's ancestral home in Naudero, in southern Pakistan.
The decision to place the burden of blood and history on Bhutto's first-born son, an Oxford undergraduate with no political experience, reflects not only an abiding dynastic streak in South Asian politics - three generations of the Nehru-Gandhi family have dominated politics in India, and hereditary politics pervade Sri Lanka and Bangladesh, as well - but also how much the Pakistan People's Party relies on the Bhutto family name and legacy to bind its supporters.
In keeping with his new mantle, the new chairman added his mother's maiden name to his, becoming the newly anointed Bhutto scion. "My mother always said democracy is the best revenge," he said in a brief address.
The elder Zardari said he would manage the chairmanship on his son's behalf until he finishes his university degree - a minimum of three years. The father instructed reporters not to ask his son any further questions, saying he was "of a tender age."
Later, in the backyard of the family's house, Bhutto Zardari said in an interview that he had been tutored by his mother to play a role in Pakistani politics. "There was always a sense of fear I wouldn't be able to live up to her expectations," he said. "I hope I will."
Asked about his most immediate challenge, he said, "First, to finish my degree."
That would appear to rule out any possibility that Bhutto Zardari could become the new leader of Pakistan before he is significantly older. Nonetheless, the elder Zardari said in an interview, "As her son, he will become a uniting force."
Senior party officials said Bhutto Zardari would be a far less controversial titular head than his father, who had been accused of a raft of corruption charges, jailed for a total of 11 years and blamed in some quarters for some of Bhutto's political woes.
It could not be a more difficult time for the party. Bhutto had held together a large and diverse organization, and even if, on the back of public grief, it were to win the coming elections, it would be likely to be under great pressure to bring a semblance of stability to a nation racked by a wave of extremist violence.
At the news conference, the elder Zardari said he would not run in the election and therefore would not be the party's prime ministerial candidate. That job, he said, would probably go to the party vice president, the veteran party leader Makhdoom Amin Fahim, but that was a decision, he added, that would have to be made by party leaders.
Bhutto was killed in a suicide bomb and gun attack Thursday, but disagreements between her supporters and the government over the precise cause of death are undermining confidence in Musharraf and adding to calls for an international investigation.
New video footage, obtained by Britain's Channel 4, shows a man firing a handgun at Bhutto from close range as she stands in an open-topped vehicle. Her hair and shawl then move upward, suggesting she may have been shot. She then falls into the vehicle just before an explosion rocks the car.
The government has insisted that Bhutto was not hit by any of the bullets, and that she died after the force of the blast slammed her head against the sunroof. Bhutto's family and supporters say she died from gunshot wounds to her head and neck.
Zardari confirmed Sunday that he had refused a request to perform an autopsy, saying he did not trust the government of Musharraf to carry out a credible investigation. This means that short of exhuming her body - something her supporters have already ruled out - the cause of her death will be difficult to establish.
Zardari urged the United Nations to establish a committee like the one investigating the 2005 assassination of the former prime minister of Lebanon, Rafik Hariri. Several leading U.S. politicians have made similar calls.
Musharraf agreed to consider international support for the investigation when he spoke by phone Sunday with Gordon Brown, the British prime minister's office said. But Rashid Qureshi, a spokesman for the Pakistani president, said Monday that Musharraf had made no such promises.
Copyright © 2007 The International Herald Tribune | www.iht.com
The move to make the son the symbolic head of the party was clever in that Bhutto's husband's reputation for corruption is legendary. The son cannot run for office until 25!
I am a bit mystified by all the fuss over exactly how Bhutto died. What possible value the government could gain from saying she died from hitting her head as against a bullet wound is not clear to me. Certainly the government has not denied that she was shot at and that there was a suicide blast. What on earth difference does it make if these events in themselves were not the immediate cause of her death. If they had not happened she would not have banged her head cracking open her skull.
Pakistan to delay elections
Monday, December 31, 2007
ISLAMABAD: Elections in Pakistan appear likely to be delayed by several weeks, despite demands by the party of the slain opposition leader Benazir Bhutto and other politicians that they take place as scheduled on Jan. 8, officials said Monday.
The Election Commission said that it had recommended an unspecified delay in the parliamentary polls following the unrest that was triggered by the assassination of Bhutto last week. It said its final decision would be made Tuesday.
Separately, a senior government official predicted that the elections would be postponed by "six weeks or so, as the environment to hold free and fair elections is not conducive." The official spoke on condition of anonymity because he was not authorized to disclose the information.
Despite being in mourning, Bhutto's political party and that of Pakistan's other major opposition leader, Nawaz Sharif, want the polls held on time, perhaps sensing that major electoral gains are possible amid sympathy over Bhutto's death and a widespread belief that political allies of President Pervez Musharraf were behind the killing. Sharif's party reversed an earlier decision to boycott the election.
On Sunday, Bhutto's Pakistan People's Party named her 19-year-old son, Bilawal Bhutto Zardari, as its symbolic leader and left day-to-day control to her husband, Asif Ali Zardari. The announcement was made at a chaotic news conference at the family's ancestral home in Naudero, in southern Pakistan.
The decision to place the burden of blood and history on Bhutto's first-born son, an Oxford undergraduate with no political experience, reflects not only an abiding dynastic streak in South Asian politics - three generations of the Nehru-Gandhi family have dominated politics in India, and hereditary politics pervade Sri Lanka and Bangladesh, as well - but also how much the Pakistan People's Party relies on the Bhutto family name and legacy to bind its supporters.
In keeping with his new mantle, the new chairman added his mother's maiden name to his, becoming the newly anointed Bhutto scion. "My mother always said democracy is the best revenge," he said in a brief address.
The elder Zardari said he would manage the chairmanship on his son's behalf until he finishes his university degree - a minimum of three years. The father instructed reporters not to ask his son any further questions, saying he was "of a tender age."
Later, in the backyard of the family's house, Bhutto Zardari said in an interview that he had been tutored by his mother to play a role in Pakistani politics. "There was always a sense of fear I wouldn't be able to live up to her expectations," he said. "I hope I will."
Asked about his most immediate challenge, he said, "First, to finish my degree."
That would appear to rule out any possibility that Bhutto Zardari could become the new leader of Pakistan before he is significantly older. Nonetheless, the elder Zardari said in an interview, "As her son, he will become a uniting force."
Senior party officials said Bhutto Zardari would be a far less controversial titular head than his father, who had been accused of a raft of corruption charges, jailed for a total of 11 years and blamed in some quarters for some of Bhutto's political woes.
It could not be a more difficult time for the party. Bhutto had held together a large and diverse organization, and even if, on the back of public grief, it were to win the coming elections, it would be likely to be under great pressure to bring a semblance of stability to a nation racked by a wave of extremist violence.
At the news conference, the elder Zardari said he would not run in the election and therefore would not be the party's prime ministerial candidate. That job, he said, would probably go to the party vice president, the veteran party leader Makhdoom Amin Fahim, but that was a decision, he added, that would have to be made by party leaders.
Bhutto was killed in a suicide bomb and gun attack Thursday, but disagreements between her supporters and the government over the precise cause of death are undermining confidence in Musharraf and adding to calls for an international investigation.
New video footage, obtained by Britain's Channel 4, shows a man firing a handgun at Bhutto from close range as she stands in an open-topped vehicle. Her hair and shawl then move upward, suggesting she may have been shot. She then falls into the vehicle just before an explosion rocks the car.
The government has insisted that Bhutto was not hit by any of the bullets, and that she died after the force of the blast slammed her head against the sunroof. Bhutto's family and supporters say she died from gunshot wounds to her head and neck.
Zardari confirmed Sunday that he had refused a request to perform an autopsy, saying he did not trust the government of Musharraf to carry out a credible investigation. This means that short of exhuming her body - something her supporters have already ruled out - the cause of her death will be difficult to establish.
Zardari urged the United Nations to establish a committee like the one investigating the 2005 assassination of the former prime minister of Lebanon, Rafik Hariri. Several leading U.S. politicians have made similar calls.
Musharraf agreed to consider international support for the investigation when he spoke by phone Sunday with Gordon Brown, the British prime minister's office said. But Rashid Qureshi, a spokesman for the Pakistani president, said Monday that Musharraf had made no such promises.
Copyright © 2007 The International Herald Tribune | www.iht.com
Krugman: Trouble with Trade
For a long time there was a tendency to pooh pooh the negative results of trade. Krugman at least recognises a few of the negative results but only between high and low wage countries. It is not surprising that unions and workers in general are facing hard times as far as retaining benefits and wages at the level they had before globalisation. There are other negative effects that Krugman does not even touch upon. Trade agreements usually limit sovereignty in numerous ways in the interests of capital. For example agreements usually insist on recognition of international property rights that protect patent holders against no-name competitors for as long as twenty years. This can add huge costs to health care plans but huge profits to pharmaceutical companies. Often regulations will be harmonised downward and local or national preference in contracting outlawed. In the case of NAFTA in relation to Canada the so-called trade agreement is mainly a resource grab for the US. Canada is forced to share basic resources with the US and at prices not above those in Canada. In many ways too US labor has lost out as production shifted to lower wage Mexico. But Mexican subsistence corn farmers were also ruined.
The New York Times / December 28, 2007
Op-Ed Columnist / Trouble With Trade
By PAUL KRUGMAN
While the United States has long imported oil and other raw materials
from the third world, we used to import manufactured goods mainly from
other rich countries like Canada, European nations and Japan.
But recently we crossed an important watershed: we now import more
manufactured goods from the third world than from other advanced
economies. That is, a majority of our industrial trade is now with
countries that are much poorer than we are and that pay their workers
much lower wages.
For the world economy as a whole — and especially for poorer nations
—
growing trade between high-wage and low-wage countries is a very good
thing. Above all, it offers backward economies their best hope of
moving up the income ladder.
But for American workers the story is much less positive. In fact,
it's hard to avoid the conclusion that growing U.S. trade with third
world countries reduces the real wages of many and perhaps most
workers in this country. And that reality makes the politics of trade
very difficult.
Let's talk for a moment about the economics.
Trade between high-wage countries tends to be a modest win for all, or
almost all, concerned. When a free-trade pact made it possible to
integrate the U.S. and Canadian auto industries in the 1960s, each
country's industry concentrated on producing a narrower range of
products at larger scale. The result was an all-round, broadly shared
rise in productivity and wages.
By contrast, trade between countries at very different levels of
economic development tends to create large classes of losers as well
as winners.
Although the outsourcing of some high-tech jobs to India has made
headlines, on balance, highly educated workers in the United States
benefit from higher wages and expanded job opportunities because of
trade. For example, ThinkPad notebook computers are now made by a
Chinese company, Lenovo, but a lot of Lenovo's research and
development is conducted in North Carolina.
But workers with less formal education either see their jobs shipped
overseas or find their wages driven down by the ripple effect as other
workers with similar qualifications crowd into their industries and
look for employment to replace the jobs they lost to foreign
competition. And lower prices at Wal-Mart aren't sufficient
compensation.
All this is textbook international economics: contrary to what people
sometimes assert, economic theory says that free trade normally makes
a country richer, but it doesn't say that it's normally good for
everyone. Still, when the effects of third-world exports on U.S. wages
first became an issue in the 1990s, a number of economists — myself
included — looked at the data and concluded that any negative effects
on U.S. wages were modest.
The trouble now is that these effects may no longer be as modest as
they were, because imports of manufactured goods from the third world
have grown dramatically — from just 2.5 percent of G.D.P. in 1990 to
6
percent in 2006.
And the biggest growth in imports has come from countries with very
low wages. The original "newly industrializing economies" exporting
manufactured goods — South Korea, Taiwan, Hong Kong and Singapore —
paid wages that were about 25 percent of U.S. levels in 1990. Since
then, however, the sources of our imports have shifted to Mexico,
where wages are only 11 percent of the U.S. level, and China, where
they're only about 3 percent or 4 percent.
There are some qualifying aspects to this story. For example, many of
those made-in-China goods contain components made in Japan and other
high-wage economies. Still, there's little doubt that the pressure of
globalization on American wages has increased.
So am I arguing for protectionism? No. Those who think that
globalization is always and everywhere a bad thing are wrong. On the
contrary, keeping world markets relatively open is crucial to the
hopes of billions of people.
But I am arguing for an end to the finger-wagging, the accusation
either of not understanding economics or of kowtowing to special
interests that tends to be the editorial response to politicians who
express skepticism about the benefits of free-trade agreements.
It's often claimed that limits on trade benefit only a small number of
Americans, while hurting the vast majority. That's still true of
things like the import quota on sugar. But when it comes to
manufactured goods, it's at least arguable that the reverse is true.
The highly educated workers who clearly benefit from growing trade
with third-world economies are a minority, greatly outnumbered by
those who probably lose.
As I said, I'm not a protectionist. For the sake of the world as a
whole, I hope that we respond to the trouble with trade not by
shutting trade down, but by doing things like strengthening the social
safety net. But those who are worried about trade have a point, and
deserve some respect.
Copyright 2007 The New York Times Company
--
The New York Times / December 28, 2007
Op-Ed Columnist / Trouble With Trade
By PAUL KRUGMAN
While the United States has long imported oil and other raw materials
from the third world, we used to import manufactured goods mainly from
other rich countries like Canada, European nations and Japan.
But recently we crossed an important watershed: we now import more
manufactured goods from the third world than from other advanced
economies. That is, a majority of our industrial trade is now with
countries that are much poorer than we are and that pay their workers
much lower wages.
For the world economy as a whole — and especially for poorer nations
—
growing trade between high-wage and low-wage countries is a very good
thing. Above all, it offers backward economies their best hope of
moving up the income ladder.
But for American workers the story is much less positive. In fact,
it's hard to avoid the conclusion that growing U.S. trade with third
world countries reduces the real wages of many and perhaps most
workers in this country. And that reality makes the politics of trade
very difficult.
Let's talk for a moment about the economics.
Trade between high-wage countries tends to be a modest win for all, or
almost all, concerned. When a free-trade pact made it possible to
integrate the U.S. and Canadian auto industries in the 1960s, each
country's industry concentrated on producing a narrower range of
products at larger scale. The result was an all-round, broadly shared
rise in productivity and wages.
By contrast, trade between countries at very different levels of
economic development tends to create large classes of losers as well
as winners.
Although the outsourcing of some high-tech jobs to India has made
headlines, on balance, highly educated workers in the United States
benefit from higher wages and expanded job opportunities because of
trade. For example, ThinkPad notebook computers are now made by a
Chinese company, Lenovo, but a lot of Lenovo's research and
development is conducted in North Carolina.
But workers with less formal education either see their jobs shipped
overseas or find their wages driven down by the ripple effect as other
workers with similar qualifications crowd into their industries and
look for employment to replace the jobs they lost to foreign
competition. And lower prices at Wal-Mart aren't sufficient
compensation.
All this is textbook international economics: contrary to what people
sometimes assert, economic theory says that free trade normally makes
a country richer, but it doesn't say that it's normally good for
everyone. Still, when the effects of third-world exports on U.S. wages
first became an issue in the 1990s, a number of economists — myself
included — looked at the data and concluded that any negative effects
on U.S. wages were modest.
The trouble now is that these effects may no longer be as modest as
they were, because imports of manufactured goods from the third world
have grown dramatically — from just 2.5 percent of G.D.P. in 1990 to
6
percent in 2006.
And the biggest growth in imports has come from countries with very
low wages. The original "newly industrializing economies" exporting
manufactured goods — South Korea, Taiwan, Hong Kong and Singapore —
paid wages that were about 25 percent of U.S. levels in 1990. Since
then, however, the sources of our imports have shifted to Mexico,
where wages are only 11 percent of the U.S. level, and China, where
they're only about 3 percent or 4 percent.
There are some qualifying aspects to this story. For example, many of
those made-in-China goods contain components made in Japan and other
high-wage economies. Still, there's little doubt that the pressure of
globalization on American wages has increased.
So am I arguing for protectionism? No. Those who think that
globalization is always and everywhere a bad thing are wrong. On the
contrary, keeping world markets relatively open is crucial to the
hopes of billions of people.
But I am arguing for an end to the finger-wagging, the accusation
either of not understanding economics or of kowtowing to special
interests that tends to be the editorial response to politicians who
express skepticism about the benefits of free-trade agreements.
It's often claimed that limits on trade benefit only a small number of
Americans, while hurting the vast majority. That's still true of
things like the import quota on sugar. But when it comes to
manufactured goods, it's at least arguable that the reverse is true.
The highly educated workers who clearly benefit from growing trade
with third-world economies are a minority, greatly outnumbered by
those who probably lose.
As I said, I'm not a protectionist. For the sake of the world as a
whole, I hope that we respond to the trouble with trade not by
shutting trade down, but by doing things like strengthening the social
safety net. But those who are worried about trade have a point, and
deserve some respect.
Copyright 2007 The New York Times Company
--
Sunday, December 30, 2007
Minus Members' Power, Unions Face Mounting Bargaining Woes
This article gives a graphic picture of the problems facing unions in the US. However, similar problems face unions in all developed capitalist societies because of the increasing strength of capital versus labor partly caused by globalisation although I am sure there are multiple factors. Labor has not seemed to be able to develop any powerful international organisations of the sort that they need to confront increasingly globalised capital.
Minus Members' Power, Unions Face Mounting Bargaining Woes
Mark Brenner, Mischa Gaus and Chris Kutalik
Labor Notes
January 2008
William Ehman got acquainted with the current direction of collective
bargaining in his industry from the back of a squad car. The former
president of Steelworkers Local 1537, Ehman led a group of nine
retirees to
a mid-September union meeting to discuss current negotiations with
Latrobe
Steel.
After the last contract six years ago, the local had stopped providing
transcripts of negotiations with the Pennsylvania specialty steelmaker.
But
Ehman knew the company's current offer included a two-tier wage
structure
and a shift from defined benefit pensions to a 401(k) plan. Meanwhile
his
checkbook issue, a retiree health care allowance whose value had
tumbled
over the past few years, wasn't going anywhere in current talks.
The local had said retirees were excluded from the meeting, despite a
provision in the bylaws that guaranteed them access. Union
representatives
told the retirees to leave, but Ehman stood his ground. Soon six police
cars
arrived, and Ehman was hauled away from his union hall in handcuffs,
facing
a criminal trespass complaint.
"It went beyond the pale," he said. "When you start dividing your
membership
against itself, it's just a recipe for disaster."
A PATTERN OF A SORT
The situation of Local 1537's retirees is all too common. Indeed, if
anything the story of widescale givebacks under the gun of employers,
courts, and (yes, even) union officials has been told and retold
throughout
hundreds of workplaces in the private sector in recent years.
Two-tier agreements, double-digit wage cuts, health care cost shifts,
work
rule changes, and defined benefit pension and retiree health care
roll-backs
have occurred in one major contract settlement after another with
dizzying
speed in the past six years. In one industry alone, airlines, wage and
pension concessions given back to employers since 2001 by union pilots,
flight attendants, mechanics, gate agents, and other ground crew
workers
totaled over $15 billion.
Beyond the obvious freefall in bargaining outcomes lie nagging
questions for
labor activists. What trends drive these givebacks? What continues to
shift
the power balance away from workers at the bargaining table?
Behind the simple answer of declining union density, lies another more
fundamental loss, the drop off of strikes, shopfloor organization, and
other
member-centered levers that were the heart of earlier union victories.
Though these setbacks have all been bitterly felt, they come at the end
of a
long trailing off of the once-strong pattern bargaining agreements that
spurred economic gains for U.S. workers. Forged in the fights of the
1930s
and 1940s, the pattern agreements-codified in master contracts-grew
stronger
in most industries decade after decade until the 1980s, when the first
concession wave struck.
WHO'S THE MASTER?
Unfortunately master contracts continue to unravel in many industries.
In
their controversial 2007 contract with UPS, the Teamsters agreed to
pull
44,000 UPS members out of their multi-employer Central States Pension
Fund
in exchange for organizing rights at the company's non-union freight
division. In addition to weakening a key institution of pattern
bargaining-the multi-employer pension fund-new UPS Freight Teamsters
with
work under a contract substantially below National Master Freight
Agreement
standards.
Similar declines in master contracts have been seen in auto, grocery,
and
carhauling. The once-strong master contracts held by the United Food
and
Commercial Workers in Southern California provide a striking example.
Health
care givebacks were so steep in the wake of the 2003-2004
strike/lock-out
that the number of workers with health care coverage fell from a
pre-strike
level of 94 percent to its current level of 54 percent.
Worse yet, was the break up of the UFCW Southern California master
contract
itself. In spring of 2007 the union abandoned joint bargaining,
negotiating
separate agreements between the three major chains and each of the
seven
UFCW grocery locals in the region.
Other unions are moving in the opposite direction, attempting to
reestablish
national master agreements in spite of heavy odds.
The California Nurses Association has fought to forge a master contract
from
13 separate agreements at hospitals in the Sutter health care chain.
Importantly, they have flexed their workplace power, launching two-day
strikes in mid-October and again in mid-December. In similar fashion
UNITE
HERE's 2006 Hotel Workers Rising campaign was an important first step
towards standardizing work at large hotel chains. The Service Employees
International Union (SEIU) has also aggressively pursued industry-wide
standards in healthcare and building services, among other sectors,
although
sometimes resorting to controversial means such as the nursing home
'template agreements' recently abandoned in California.
The counter-trend can also be found in "old economy" workplaces. The
Steelworkers achieved a national deal with International Paper in
August,
pulling 14 separate, staggered contracts into a uniform pact with a
common
expiration date. But the unity came at a cost: the national agreement
includes a no-strike clause, and introduces a lower wage tier for new
employees.
THE REAL LEGACY?
In recent years many employers have made it a top priority to shed
their
so-called "legacy costs"-the pension and retiree health care
obligations of
long-unionized firms. Whether at the bargaining table or in bankruptcy
court, employers have waged a bruising battle to sidestep these
decades-old
commitments.
Pensions have been hard hit. Since 2001 corporations have dumped
liabilities
for almost a million workers onto the Pension Benefit Guarantee
Corporation,
the government agency responsible for insuring the nation's defined
benefit
pension plans. In other cases, corporations have transferred some or
all of
these costs onto unions through the formation of Voluntary Employees
Beneficiary Associations (VEBA), a key feature in the latest contracts
between the UAW and Big 3 automakers.
Often neglected are the substantial legacy costs associated with the
buy-now, pay-later management strategies of the last 20 years. In the
airline industry, the mergers and acquisitions boom of the late 1980s
added
$2 billion a year to the industry's debt service burden-and fed into
the
airlines crisis of the early 1990s.
After recovering ground later in the decade, carriers repeated the
credit
binge, scrambling to expand routes and add capacity. A similar buying
spree
took place in the California grocery industry during the 1990s, as
national
chains like Kroger, Albertsons, and Safeway gobbled up smaller regional
outlets. Both industries suffered in the 2001 recession.
While their creditors rarely felt any pain, debt-strapped companies
took a
hard line with their unionized employees. The UFCW's
four-and-a-half-month
strike in 2004-2005 brought two-tier wages and widespread health care
cost
shifting into Southern California's grocery industry. This pattern will
cut
deeper, as auto-parts manufacturers, steelmakers, and others cry "me
too"
and seek to use the moment to cast off obligations to workers.
A SUBSTITUTE FOR POWER
Caught between a declining membership and tough-minded employers, many
union
leaders have turned to labor-management partnerships as a solution to
their
current difficulties. The UAW-among the first to bat its eyes at
management-has staked its future on keeping the Big 3 automakers
healthy and
competitive. As UAW President Ron Gettelfinger said last summer, "We
have no
interest in tearing down employers. Just the opposite-we want employers
to
succeed so that workers have a chance to share in that success."
Despite tough talk during this fall's auto negotiations, the union
lived up
to Gettelfinger's words, accepting a less-than-fully-funded VEBA
together
with a two-tier wage system that sinks union earnings beneath the
non-union
manufacturing standard, as part of a package of givebacks designed to
keep
the Big 3 afloat.
But even when unions aren't faced with shrinking numbers or non-union
competition, the promise of partnership has proven seductive. And no
one
champions dropping "confrontational" approaches to employers more than
SEIU
President Andy Stern.
Stern explained to the Los Angeles Times on December 7 the kinds of
partnerships he seeks. "I'm talking about appreciating that [members']
employers live in a competitive environment and unions can't be an
albatross
around their competitive neck. We understand we need to organize whole
industries or whole markets or whole sectors to not put union employers
at a
disadvantage."
BUCKING THE TREND
Despite the positive rhetoric, partnership has not paved the way to
high-wage jobs for unions like SEIU that organize in the low-wage
non-union
service sector. Nor has it preserved good jobs for industrial unions
like
the UAW. Other unions, however, have chosen a different path.
Through a two-year fight that included strikes, lock-outs, and an
aggressive
boycott, UNITE HERE Local 2 in San Francisco beat back concessions and
gained new organizing rights. Hotel owners fought to impose pension
cuts and
exclude new hires from the health care plan for their first five years.
Instead, the union won a 64 percent increase in health and welfare fund
contributions and a 69 percent increase in pension contributions,
alongside
solid wage increases.
Equally important, the local won a neutrality agreement from all of the
owners in the city's unionized hotels, enabling the union to organize
without interference at all hotels acquired or built by those owners in
the
Bay Area.
New York's Teamsters Local 804 also successfully bucked the national
trends
of partnership and concession. During recent contract negotiations with
United Parcel Service, Local 804 voted three-to-one against the
national UPS
contract and the local supplement. Although the national contract was
ratified despite important concessions, Local 804 members voted down
the sup
plement in part because it eliminated the 25-year-and-out pension
benefit
for new hires. Local 804 members won this benefit almost three decades
ago
through a 13-week strike.
Company officials and national union negotiators put strong pressure on
Local 804 members, warning that their pensions-cut 30 percent earlier
this
year-would be locked in place if they rejected the local supplement.
But
after negotiators returned from a second round of bargaining, the new
proposal preserved 25-and-out for new hires and restored their pension
benefits, along with several other key gains.
While there is no magic bullet for winning stronger contracts in tough
times, today's success stories stand out. Union activists and leaders
who
have been able to buck concessionary trends have fought to do it. They
have
also rejected the quick-fix of partnership, recognizing that employers'
loyalties lie first and foremost with the bottom line.
Militant strikes and other job actions, while abandoned by many unions
in
recent years, have proven successful when part of a larger plan. But in
most
cases, members remain the lynchpin. Where unions are making strides,
members
are at the center of the process-helping formulate strategy, getting
themselves and their co-workers prepared, and making their power felt
at
work and in their communities.
http://labornotes.org/node/1483
Minus Members' Power, Unions Face Mounting Bargaining Woes
Mark Brenner, Mischa Gaus and Chris Kutalik
Labor Notes
January 2008
William Ehman got acquainted with the current direction of collective
bargaining in his industry from the back of a squad car. The former
president of Steelworkers Local 1537, Ehman led a group of nine
retirees to
a mid-September union meeting to discuss current negotiations with
Latrobe
Steel.
After the last contract six years ago, the local had stopped providing
transcripts of negotiations with the Pennsylvania specialty steelmaker.
But
Ehman knew the company's current offer included a two-tier wage
structure
and a shift from defined benefit pensions to a 401(k) plan. Meanwhile
his
checkbook issue, a retiree health care allowance whose value had
tumbled
over the past few years, wasn't going anywhere in current talks.
The local had said retirees were excluded from the meeting, despite a
provision in the bylaws that guaranteed them access. Union
representatives
told the retirees to leave, but Ehman stood his ground. Soon six police
cars
arrived, and Ehman was hauled away from his union hall in handcuffs,
facing
a criminal trespass complaint.
"It went beyond the pale," he said. "When you start dividing your
membership
against itself, it's just a recipe for disaster."
A PATTERN OF A SORT
The situation of Local 1537's retirees is all too common. Indeed, if
anything the story of widescale givebacks under the gun of employers,
courts, and (yes, even) union officials has been told and retold
throughout
hundreds of workplaces in the private sector in recent years.
Two-tier agreements, double-digit wage cuts, health care cost shifts,
work
rule changes, and defined benefit pension and retiree health care
roll-backs
have occurred in one major contract settlement after another with
dizzying
speed in the past six years. In one industry alone, airlines, wage and
pension concessions given back to employers since 2001 by union pilots,
flight attendants, mechanics, gate agents, and other ground crew
workers
totaled over $15 billion.
Beyond the obvious freefall in bargaining outcomes lie nagging
questions for
labor activists. What trends drive these givebacks? What continues to
shift
the power balance away from workers at the bargaining table?
Behind the simple answer of declining union density, lies another more
fundamental loss, the drop off of strikes, shopfloor organization, and
other
member-centered levers that were the heart of earlier union victories.
Though these setbacks have all been bitterly felt, they come at the end
of a
long trailing off of the once-strong pattern bargaining agreements that
spurred economic gains for U.S. workers. Forged in the fights of the
1930s
and 1940s, the pattern agreements-codified in master contracts-grew
stronger
in most industries decade after decade until the 1980s, when the first
concession wave struck.
WHO'S THE MASTER?
Unfortunately master contracts continue to unravel in many industries.
In
their controversial 2007 contract with UPS, the Teamsters agreed to
pull
44,000 UPS members out of their multi-employer Central States Pension
Fund
in exchange for organizing rights at the company's non-union freight
division. In addition to weakening a key institution of pattern
bargaining-the multi-employer pension fund-new UPS Freight Teamsters
with
work under a contract substantially below National Master Freight
Agreement
standards.
Similar declines in master contracts have been seen in auto, grocery,
and
carhauling. The once-strong master contracts held by the United Food
and
Commercial Workers in Southern California provide a striking example.
Health
care givebacks were so steep in the wake of the 2003-2004
strike/lock-out
that the number of workers with health care coverage fell from a
pre-strike
level of 94 percent to its current level of 54 percent.
Worse yet, was the break up of the UFCW Southern California master
contract
itself. In spring of 2007 the union abandoned joint bargaining,
negotiating
separate agreements between the three major chains and each of the
seven
UFCW grocery locals in the region.
Other unions are moving in the opposite direction, attempting to
reestablish
national master agreements in spite of heavy odds.
The California Nurses Association has fought to forge a master contract
from
13 separate agreements at hospitals in the Sutter health care chain.
Importantly, they have flexed their workplace power, launching two-day
strikes in mid-October and again in mid-December. In similar fashion
UNITE
HERE's 2006 Hotel Workers Rising campaign was an important first step
towards standardizing work at large hotel chains. The Service Employees
International Union (SEIU) has also aggressively pursued industry-wide
standards in healthcare and building services, among other sectors,
although
sometimes resorting to controversial means such as the nursing home
'template agreements' recently abandoned in California.
The counter-trend can also be found in "old economy" workplaces. The
Steelworkers achieved a national deal with International Paper in
August,
pulling 14 separate, staggered contracts into a uniform pact with a
common
expiration date. But the unity came at a cost: the national agreement
includes a no-strike clause, and introduces a lower wage tier for new
employees.
THE REAL LEGACY?
In recent years many employers have made it a top priority to shed
their
so-called "legacy costs"-the pension and retiree health care
obligations of
long-unionized firms. Whether at the bargaining table or in bankruptcy
court, employers have waged a bruising battle to sidestep these
decades-old
commitments.
Pensions have been hard hit. Since 2001 corporations have dumped
liabilities
for almost a million workers onto the Pension Benefit Guarantee
Corporation,
the government agency responsible for insuring the nation's defined
benefit
pension plans. In other cases, corporations have transferred some or
all of
these costs onto unions through the formation of Voluntary Employees
Beneficiary Associations (VEBA), a key feature in the latest contracts
between the UAW and Big 3 automakers.
Often neglected are the substantial legacy costs associated with the
buy-now, pay-later management strategies of the last 20 years. In the
airline industry, the mergers and acquisitions boom of the late 1980s
added
$2 billion a year to the industry's debt service burden-and fed into
the
airlines crisis of the early 1990s.
After recovering ground later in the decade, carriers repeated the
credit
binge, scrambling to expand routes and add capacity. A similar buying
spree
took place in the California grocery industry during the 1990s, as
national
chains like Kroger, Albertsons, and Safeway gobbled up smaller regional
outlets. Both industries suffered in the 2001 recession.
While their creditors rarely felt any pain, debt-strapped companies
took a
hard line with their unionized employees. The UFCW's
four-and-a-half-month
strike in 2004-2005 brought two-tier wages and widespread health care
cost
shifting into Southern California's grocery industry. This pattern will
cut
deeper, as auto-parts manufacturers, steelmakers, and others cry "me
too"
and seek to use the moment to cast off obligations to workers.
A SUBSTITUTE FOR POWER
Caught between a declining membership and tough-minded employers, many
union
leaders have turned to labor-management partnerships as a solution to
their
current difficulties. The UAW-among the first to bat its eyes at
management-has staked its future on keeping the Big 3 automakers
healthy and
competitive. As UAW President Ron Gettelfinger said last summer, "We
have no
interest in tearing down employers. Just the opposite-we want employers
to
succeed so that workers have a chance to share in that success."
Despite tough talk during this fall's auto negotiations, the union
lived up
to Gettelfinger's words, accepting a less-than-fully-funded VEBA
together
with a two-tier wage system that sinks union earnings beneath the
non-union
manufacturing standard, as part of a package of givebacks designed to
keep
the Big 3 afloat.
But even when unions aren't faced with shrinking numbers or non-union
competition, the promise of partnership has proven seductive. And no
one
champions dropping "confrontational" approaches to employers more than
SEIU
President Andy Stern.
Stern explained to the Los Angeles Times on December 7 the kinds of
partnerships he seeks. "I'm talking about appreciating that [members']
employers live in a competitive environment and unions can't be an
albatross
around their competitive neck. We understand we need to organize whole
industries or whole markets or whole sectors to not put union employers
at a
disadvantage."
BUCKING THE TREND
Despite the positive rhetoric, partnership has not paved the way to
high-wage jobs for unions like SEIU that organize in the low-wage
non-union
service sector. Nor has it preserved good jobs for industrial unions
like
the UAW. Other unions, however, have chosen a different path.
Through a two-year fight that included strikes, lock-outs, and an
aggressive
boycott, UNITE HERE Local 2 in San Francisco beat back concessions and
gained new organizing rights. Hotel owners fought to impose pension
cuts and
exclude new hires from the health care plan for their first five years.
Instead, the union won a 64 percent increase in health and welfare fund
contributions and a 69 percent increase in pension contributions,
alongside
solid wage increases.
Equally important, the local won a neutrality agreement from all of the
owners in the city's unionized hotels, enabling the union to organize
without interference at all hotels acquired or built by those owners in
the
Bay Area.
New York's Teamsters Local 804 also successfully bucked the national
trends
of partnership and concession. During recent contract negotiations with
United Parcel Service, Local 804 voted three-to-one against the
national UPS
contract and the local supplement. Although the national contract was
ratified despite important concessions, Local 804 members voted down
the sup
plement in part because it eliminated the 25-year-and-out pension
benefit
for new hires. Local 804 members won this benefit almost three decades
ago
through a 13-week strike.
Company officials and national union negotiators put strong pressure on
Local 804 members, warning that their pensions-cut 30 percent earlier
this
year-would be locked in place if they rejected the local supplement.
But
after negotiators returned from a second round of bargaining, the new
proposal preserved 25-and-out for new hires and restored their pension
benefits, along with several other key gains.
While there is no magic bullet for winning stronger contracts in tough
times, today's success stories stand out. Union activists and leaders
who
have been able to buck concessionary trends have fought to do it. They
have
also rejected the quick-fix of partnership, recognizing that employers'
loyalties lie first and foremost with the bottom line.
Militant strikes and other job actions, while abandoned by many unions
in
recent years, have proven successful when part of a larger plan. But in
most
cases, members remain the lynchpin. Where unions are making strides,
members
are at the center of the process-helping formulate strategy, getting
themselves and their co-workers prepared, and making their power felt
at
work and in their communities.
http://labornotes.org/node/1483
Benazir's son, husband hold key to legacy
This is from the Khaleej Times. Bhutto's husband sounds like a prime candidate to visit the Bush ranch at Crawford Texas. Maybe he could become part of the circle of crony capitalists around Bush and his crew.
Benazir’s son, husband hold key to legacy
(AFP)
30 December 2007
ISLAMABAD - The son and husband of Benazir Bhutto are among the main contenders for the leadership of the slain Pakistani opposition leader’s party, which is likely to be decided Sunday.
A senior aide to Bhutto said the former premier’s son was not keen to enter politics yet, leading to speculation that her widower Asif Ali Zardari could effectively take charge of the party until he is older.
Whatever the outcome, both will remain key figures in the Pakistan People’s Party (PPP) founded four decades ago by Bhutto’s father and now the crisis hit country’s biggest opposition group.
BILAWAL: At just 19, the mantle of the Bhutto family’s bloodstained legacy would lie heavy on the head of Benazir’s only son, Bilawal.
If picked for the top slot in the PPP he would be the third leader in its history after his mother and his grandfather, Zufilqar Ali Bhutto, who founded the party and was executed under martial law in 1979.
But he has already shown signs of following in his mother’s footsteps, enrolling earlier this year at Oxford University, where Benazir Bhutto was head of the prestigious Oxford Union debating society.
Bilawal -- meaning one without equal -- was born in September 1988, a month before his mother won general elections under military dictator Zia-ul-Haq to become Pakistan’s first female premier.
“I went back to sleep and woke up to the sound of a congratulatory gunshot being fired outside the hospital, the beating of drums and cries of “Jiye (Long Live) Bhutto. The most celebrated and politically controversial baby in the history of Pakistan had been born,” Bhutto said in her autobiography.
He and his two sisters went into exile with their mother in 1999, dividing their time between London and Dubai, where Bilawal attended school. Reports in local newspapers said he was keen on outdoor sports including target-shooting and horse riding.
At Benazir’s funeral on Friday he was pictured looking composed despite his grief, but analysts say he is currently too young to lead the party.
“Bilawal is just 19 years old, he needs to be groomed,” political analyst and retired general Talat Masood said.
“They should let him complete his education. When he is in a position to assume he should be given the mantle.”
ZARDARI: Nicknamed “Mr. Ten Percent” by Pakistanis because of allegations about kickbacks from his wife’s time in power, Asif Ali Zardari, 51, has gone from playboy to villain and now to grieving political widower.
When he married into the Bhutto political dynasty in 1987, Zardari, then 31, was the little known scion of a landowning polo-playing family from southern Sindh province.
He was born on July 21, 1956 in the rural Sindh district of Nawabshah and schooled in the commercial capital Karachi at the Saint Patrick High School, alma mater of President Pervez Musharraf.
He graduated from the Petaro Cadet College in 1972, an army-run institution known for its discipline and regimented life.
After their arranged marriage Zardari gradually carved out an influential position for himself under his wife’s two tenures in power.
But he was back behind bars within half an hour of the dismissal of Bhutto’s second government in 1996.
Zardari spent eight years in jail -- five of them while his family lived in exile -- before being freed in November 2004 after being cleared over the last of 17 cases of corruption, murder and drug smuggling.
His passion for thoroughbred horses was well known and landed into trouble. One of the charges against him was that he maintained a costly stable in the prime minister’s official residence in Islamabad at state expense.
“Zardari has a very tainted record. He may not consider himself suitable for the party leadership,” Masood said.
“He may leave it to some senior member to lead the party. It will be more appropriate for the party and for him.”
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Benazir’s son, husband hold key to legacy
(AFP)
30 December 2007
ISLAMABAD - The son and husband of Benazir Bhutto are among the main contenders for the leadership of the slain Pakistani opposition leader’s party, which is likely to be decided Sunday.
A senior aide to Bhutto said the former premier’s son was not keen to enter politics yet, leading to speculation that her widower Asif Ali Zardari could effectively take charge of the party until he is older.
Whatever the outcome, both will remain key figures in the Pakistan People’s Party (PPP) founded four decades ago by Bhutto’s father and now the crisis hit country’s biggest opposition group.
BILAWAL: At just 19, the mantle of the Bhutto family’s bloodstained legacy would lie heavy on the head of Benazir’s only son, Bilawal.
If picked for the top slot in the PPP he would be the third leader in its history after his mother and his grandfather, Zufilqar Ali Bhutto, who founded the party and was executed under martial law in 1979.
But he has already shown signs of following in his mother’s footsteps, enrolling earlier this year at Oxford University, where Benazir Bhutto was head of the prestigious Oxford Union debating society.
Bilawal -- meaning one without equal -- was born in September 1988, a month before his mother won general elections under military dictator Zia-ul-Haq to become Pakistan’s first female premier.
“I went back to sleep and woke up to the sound of a congratulatory gunshot being fired outside the hospital, the beating of drums and cries of “Jiye (Long Live) Bhutto. The most celebrated and politically controversial baby in the history of Pakistan had been born,” Bhutto said in her autobiography.
He and his two sisters went into exile with their mother in 1999, dividing their time between London and Dubai, where Bilawal attended school. Reports in local newspapers said he was keen on outdoor sports including target-shooting and horse riding.
At Benazir’s funeral on Friday he was pictured looking composed despite his grief, but analysts say he is currently too young to lead the party.
“Bilawal is just 19 years old, he needs to be groomed,” political analyst and retired general Talat Masood said.
“They should let him complete his education. When he is in a position to assume he should be given the mantle.”
ZARDARI: Nicknamed “Mr. Ten Percent” by Pakistanis because of allegations about kickbacks from his wife’s time in power, Asif Ali Zardari, 51, has gone from playboy to villain and now to grieving political widower.
When he married into the Bhutto political dynasty in 1987, Zardari, then 31, was the little known scion of a landowning polo-playing family from southern Sindh province.
He was born on July 21, 1956 in the rural Sindh district of Nawabshah and schooled in the commercial capital Karachi at the Saint Patrick High School, alma mater of President Pervez Musharraf.
He graduated from the Petaro Cadet College in 1972, an army-run institution known for its discipline and regimented life.
After their arranged marriage Zardari gradually carved out an influential position for himself under his wife’s two tenures in power.
But he was back behind bars within half an hour of the dismissal of Bhutto’s second government in 1996.
Zardari spent eight years in jail -- five of them while his family lived in exile -- before being freed in November 2004 after being cleared over the last of 17 cases of corruption, murder and drug smuggling.
His passion for thoroughbred horses was well known and landed into trouble. One of the charges against him was that he maintained a costly stable in the prime minister’s official residence in Islamabad at state expense.
“Zardari has a very tainted record. He may not consider himself suitable for the party leadership,” Masood said.
“He may leave it to some senior member to lead the party. It will be more appropriate for the party and for him.”
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Saturday, December 29, 2007
Bhutto's Rival Blames Death on Government
This is from the New York Times. According to this article the Pakistan People's Party that Bhutto led has not decided whether or not to participate in the January elections if they are held. If the party decides to run then Sharif's party will probably be forced to run as well. Sharif is not favored by the US and he blames the US for supporting Musharraf and he also blamed Bhutto for trying to make deals with Musharraf. Bhutto and the US have said little about the lawyers and supreme court judges who were removed from their posts and jailed for some time. Sharif on the other hand has made restoring the judges one of his prime aims.
Bhutto’s Rival Blames Death on Government
By SOMINI SENGUPTA
Published: December 29, 2007
NAUDERO, Pakistan — A former prime minister of Pakistan came and laid a wreath Saturday on the grave of his former political rival.
There were riots Friday across Pakistan, including the eastern city of Peshawar, near the Afghan border.
But just before he did it, Nawaz Sharif blamed the military government of Pervez Musharraf for pulling Pakistan into the “grave crisis” that resulted in the assassination of Benazir Bhutto. His words were terse, his eyes dry.
“His policies are responsible,” Mr. Sharif said in an interview on a specially chartered propeller plane that took him to Ms. Bhutto’s ancestral village. “Whether he is responsible or not, an independent commission will have to investigate. No commission can be independent if Musharraf is in charge of this government.”
Mr. Sharif’s antipathy to Mr. Musharraf runs deep. The former general ousted Mr. Sharif in a 1999 coup, which Mr. Sharif tried to prevent by blocking the landing of Mr. Musharraf’s plane in Karachi. Mr. Sharif was tried, convicted and sentenced to life in prison for that, though the sentence was later modified to exile in Saudi Arabia, from which he returned last month.
On Saturday, Mr. Sharif flew to an airstrip in Mohenjo-Daro, where South Asian civilization was born some 5,000 years ago, and from there to the ancestral village of Ms. Bhutto, Naudero, where senior leaders of both their parties met briefly to give their sympathies and discuss the way forward. Mr. Sharif has already said his party would boycott the polls, scheduled for Jan. 8.
He said on his way to Naudero that he hoped Ms. Bhutto’s Pakistan People’s Party would join the boycott. “With Musharraf, Pakistan doesn’t have a future,” he said in the interview.
Farha Tullah Babar, a spokesman for the Pakistan People’s Party, said it was too early for his organization to make a decision about whether to go ahead and contest the elections. The party’s executive council is to meet Sunday afternoon to discuss their plans, including “how the party will be led and by whom,” he said.
Mr. Sharif’s journey the day after Ms. Bhutto was buried traveled the road to Naudero still lined with portraits of Ms. Bhutto’s beaming face, where she was embraced as its native daughter and the town being the stronghold of her party. Mr. Sharif met with Ms. Bhutto’s husband, Asif Ali Zardari, as well as members of the executive council, inside the Bhutto family home.
In the courtyard, hundreds of party members had gathered to mourn for the last two days. Some sat quietly; others shouted slogans when Mr. Sharif’s entourage came in: “By the name of God and his prophet, Benazir is innocent.”
In one corner of the courtyard, a party member named Kaiser Bengali said that he could not help but be struck by the slogan. “I see more anger than grief,” he said.
There is plenty of bad blood between the two parties. It was Mr. Sharif who initially brought a raft of corruption charges against Ms. Bhutto and her husband and Mr. Sharif became prime minister, after her government was dismissed in 1996, charges that Mr. Musharraf continued to pursue until recently.
Mr Sharif was also making a journey across the divide between his native Punjab, the richest and most populous province of Pakistan, and Sindh, its poorer, harsher neighboring province, one of Pakistan’s three minority provinces.
Even political leaders said they noticed a hardening rage against the Punjabi elite that dominates Pakistan’s military and government institutions. The spokesman Mr Babar, himself a Pashtun, one of Pakistan’s other minorities, described the mood as a “strange kind of resentment against the federation itself.” He and other members of the party have warned that the central government under Mr. Musharraf has alienated the three minority provinces and placed dangerous strains on the unity of the country.
“People were shouting slogans,” he said, “The frightening thing was that the federation had lost meaning for them. Yesterday hundreds of thousands of people gathered, they were angry, they were sad, their eyes were full of fire which is hard to describe,” he said.
Mr. Sharif, in the interview, railed against the Bush administration for its “blind support to the Musharraf government.”
He continued: “Now that a major Pakistani political leader has been assassinated, why is he still supporting this man? The whole nation is asking these questions. Does Mr. Bush consider Musharraf his friend or Pakistan his friend?”
He warned that Mr. Bush’s support of the Musharraf government would only heighten anti-American sentiment in Pakistan and the region.
Asked whether he would do anything differently to counter terrorist groups in his country, Mr. Sharif offered no specific remedy except a return to democratic rule. “Terror cannot be fought by one single man,” he said. “A truly elected sovereign parliament is the only answer. Otherwise, Mr. Musharraf is leading this country into a very grave crisis. We are in that crisis.”
Mr. Sharif ruled out negotiations with Mr. Musharraf. “No negotiations with this man,” he said. “Any negotiations and I will be offending the feelings of a 160 million people in this country.”
Muhammad Mian Soomro, the caretaker prime minister, told reporters in Islamabad on Friday that the government would hold talks with all political parties to chart a plan of action, but that “right now, the elections stand as they were announced.”
The Pakistan Peoples Party has not decided on its election plans, though it could be expected to win an overwhelming sympathy vote, which could give it a majority in Parliament, analysts and politicians said. Other parties could also suffer in the polls from a backlash after the death of a national leader.
Several leading politicians said they did not think the government could go ahead with elections so soon after what is being described as a national tragedy that has dismayed people across the political spectrum.
“Speaking on a personal level, there is no mood or inclination to have an election,” said Mushahid Hussain Sayed, secretary general of the Pakistan Muslim League faction that backs Mr. Musharraf. He said the elections could be postponed until March to allow people time to regroup. “Right now there is so much uncertainty.”
The death toll from continuing violence across the country since Ms Bhutto’s death rose Saturday to 38, Brigadier Javed Iqbal Cheema, a spokesman for the Ministry of Interior said. The worst violence has been in Sindh province where protesters have burned buildings and looted shops, but Brigadier Cheema said criminal elements were taking advantage of the situation and Ms. Bhutto’s supporters were not to blame.
He warned anti-government elements of dire consequences if they continued in their destruction. Over 750 shops had been torched and 18 railways stations had been burned, he said.
The controversy over how Ms. Bhutto died has further fueled tension in the country. Three women who washed her body before burial dismissed the government’s version that she had died from hitting her head on a lever in the car roof and said they had seen a bullet wound in the back of Ms Bhutto’s head.
A party spokeswoman, Sherry Rehman, said she was present when they bathed Ms. Bhutto’s body after her death and said she had seen a wound where a bullet has passed through her neck and exited through the back of her head.
Brigadier Cheema stood by his earlier statement that she died from a fractured skull caused by a fall against a lever of the car.
“What we gave you were facts, absolute facts corroborated by the doctors’ reports,” he said at a news briefing Saturday. The medical report released by the government, signed by six doctors, makes no mention of a bullet wound and describes a single wound “on the right temporoparietal region.” It gave the cause of death as “open head injury with depressed skull fracture, leading to cardiopulmonary arrest.”
Brigadier Cheema ruled out an inquiry by international experts into Ms Bhutto’s death, saying that Pakistan did not need any help in the investigation.
Bhutto’s Rival Blames Death on Government
By SOMINI SENGUPTA
Published: December 29, 2007
NAUDERO, Pakistan — A former prime minister of Pakistan came and laid a wreath Saturday on the grave of his former political rival.
There were riots Friday across Pakistan, including the eastern city of Peshawar, near the Afghan border.
But just before he did it, Nawaz Sharif blamed the military government of Pervez Musharraf for pulling Pakistan into the “grave crisis” that resulted in the assassination of Benazir Bhutto. His words were terse, his eyes dry.
“His policies are responsible,” Mr. Sharif said in an interview on a specially chartered propeller plane that took him to Ms. Bhutto’s ancestral village. “Whether he is responsible or not, an independent commission will have to investigate. No commission can be independent if Musharraf is in charge of this government.”
Mr. Sharif’s antipathy to Mr. Musharraf runs deep. The former general ousted Mr. Sharif in a 1999 coup, which Mr. Sharif tried to prevent by blocking the landing of Mr. Musharraf’s plane in Karachi. Mr. Sharif was tried, convicted and sentenced to life in prison for that, though the sentence was later modified to exile in Saudi Arabia, from which he returned last month.
On Saturday, Mr. Sharif flew to an airstrip in Mohenjo-Daro, where South Asian civilization was born some 5,000 years ago, and from there to the ancestral village of Ms. Bhutto, Naudero, where senior leaders of both their parties met briefly to give their sympathies and discuss the way forward. Mr. Sharif has already said his party would boycott the polls, scheduled for Jan. 8.
He said on his way to Naudero that he hoped Ms. Bhutto’s Pakistan People’s Party would join the boycott. “With Musharraf, Pakistan doesn’t have a future,” he said in the interview.
Farha Tullah Babar, a spokesman for the Pakistan People’s Party, said it was too early for his organization to make a decision about whether to go ahead and contest the elections. The party’s executive council is to meet Sunday afternoon to discuss their plans, including “how the party will be led and by whom,” he said.
Mr. Sharif’s journey the day after Ms. Bhutto was buried traveled the road to Naudero still lined with portraits of Ms. Bhutto’s beaming face, where she was embraced as its native daughter and the town being the stronghold of her party. Mr. Sharif met with Ms. Bhutto’s husband, Asif Ali Zardari, as well as members of the executive council, inside the Bhutto family home.
In the courtyard, hundreds of party members had gathered to mourn for the last two days. Some sat quietly; others shouted slogans when Mr. Sharif’s entourage came in: “By the name of God and his prophet, Benazir is innocent.”
In one corner of the courtyard, a party member named Kaiser Bengali said that he could not help but be struck by the slogan. “I see more anger than grief,” he said.
There is plenty of bad blood between the two parties. It was Mr. Sharif who initially brought a raft of corruption charges against Ms. Bhutto and her husband and Mr. Sharif became prime minister, after her government was dismissed in 1996, charges that Mr. Musharraf continued to pursue until recently.
Mr Sharif was also making a journey across the divide between his native Punjab, the richest and most populous province of Pakistan, and Sindh, its poorer, harsher neighboring province, one of Pakistan’s three minority provinces.
Even political leaders said they noticed a hardening rage against the Punjabi elite that dominates Pakistan’s military and government institutions. The spokesman Mr Babar, himself a Pashtun, one of Pakistan’s other minorities, described the mood as a “strange kind of resentment against the federation itself.” He and other members of the party have warned that the central government under Mr. Musharraf has alienated the three minority provinces and placed dangerous strains on the unity of the country.
“People were shouting slogans,” he said, “The frightening thing was that the federation had lost meaning for them. Yesterday hundreds of thousands of people gathered, they were angry, they were sad, their eyes were full of fire which is hard to describe,” he said.
Mr. Sharif, in the interview, railed against the Bush administration for its “blind support to the Musharraf government.”
He continued: “Now that a major Pakistani political leader has been assassinated, why is he still supporting this man? The whole nation is asking these questions. Does Mr. Bush consider Musharraf his friend or Pakistan his friend?”
He warned that Mr. Bush’s support of the Musharraf government would only heighten anti-American sentiment in Pakistan and the region.
Asked whether he would do anything differently to counter terrorist groups in his country, Mr. Sharif offered no specific remedy except a return to democratic rule. “Terror cannot be fought by one single man,” he said. “A truly elected sovereign parliament is the only answer. Otherwise, Mr. Musharraf is leading this country into a very grave crisis. We are in that crisis.”
Mr. Sharif ruled out negotiations with Mr. Musharraf. “No negotiations with this man,” he said. “Any negotiations and I will be offending the feelings of a 160 million people in this country.”
Muhammad Mian Soomro, the caretaker prime minister, told reporters in Islamabad on Friday that the government would hold talks with all political parties to chart a plan of action, but that “right now, the elections stand as they were announced.”
The Pakistan Peoples Party has not decided on its election plans, though it could be expected to win an overwhelming sympathy vote, which could give it a majority in Parliament, analysts and politicians said. Other parties could also suffer in the polls from a backlash after the death of a national leader.
Several leading politicians said they did not think the government could go ahead with elections so soon after what is being described as a national tragedy that has dismayed people across the political spectrum.
“Speaking on a personal level, there is no mood or inclination to have an election,” said Mushahid Hussain Sayed, secretary general of the Pakistan Muslim League faction that backs Mr. Musharraf. He said the elections could be postponed until March to allow people time to regroup. “Right now there is so much uncertainty.”
The death toll from continuing violence across the country since Ms Bhutto’s death rose Saturday to 38, Brigadier Javed Iqbal Cheema, a spokesman for the Ministry of Interior said. The worst violence has been in Sindh province where protesters have burned buildings and looted shops, but Brigadier Cheema said criminal elements were taking advantage of the situation and Ms. Bhutto’s supporters were not to blame.
He warned anti-government elements of dire consequences if they continued in their destruction. Over 750 shops had been torched and 18 railways stations had been burned, he said.
The controversy over how Ms. Bhutto died has further fueled tension in the country. Three women who washed her body before burial dismissed the government’s version that she had died from hitting her head on a lever in the car roof and said they had seen a bullet wound in the back of Ms Bhutto’s head.
A party spokeswoman, Sherry Rehman, said she was present when they bathed Ms. Bhutto’s body after her death and said she had seen a wound where a bullet has passed through her neck and exited through the back of her head.
Brigadier Cheema stood by his earlier statement that she died from a fractured skull caused by a fall against a lever of the car.
“What we gave you were facts, absolute facts corroborated by the doctors’ reports,” he said at a news briefing Saturday. The medical report released by the government, signed by six doctors, makes no mention of a bullet wound and describes a single wound “on the right temporoparietal region.” It gave the cause of death as “open head injury with depressed skull fracture, leading to cardiopulmonary arrest.”
Brigadier Cheema ruled out an inquiry by international experts into Ms Bhutto’s death, saying that Pakistan did not need any help in the investigation.
Fisk: They don't blame Al-Qaida. They blame Musharraf.
I have watched CBC and US Spokane Public TV and the story is more or less related as Fisk describes. However I just watched headline news. It is possible that some commentaries were more nuanced.
The situation is much more complicated than the story we are getting. As is natural when a person is assassinated most reports do not relay any of the negative aspects of her story as Fisk has done.
Fisk is probably correct that Pakistani intelligence works for i.e. is paid by Musharraf, US, and Taliban etc. If Musharraf was behind the assassinatiion it is a bit puzzling since most commentators think he is now much weakened. It is more likely that Taliban sympathisers in the intelligence and security services aided in the assassination but without Musharraf's support.
Robert Fisk: They don't blame al-Qa'ida. They blame Musharraf
Published: 29 December 2007
Weird, isn't it, how swiftly the narrative is laid down for us. Benazir Bhutto, the courageous leader of the Pakistan People's Party, is assassinated in Rawalpindi – attached to the very capital of Islamabad wherein ex-General Pervez Musharraf lives – and we are told by George Bush that her murderers were "extremists" and "terrorists". Well, you can't dispute that.
But the implication of the Bush comment was that Islamists were behind the assassination. It was the Taliban madmen again, the al-Qa'ida spider who struck at this lone and brave woman who had dared to call for democracy in her country.
Of course, given the childish coverage of this appalling tragedy – and however corrupt Ms Bhutto may have been, let us be under no illusions that this brave lady is indeed a true martyr – it's not surprising that the "good-versus-evil" donkey can be trotted out to explain the carnage in Rawalpindi.
Who would have imagined, watching the BBC or CNN on Thursday, that her two brothers, Murtaza and Shahnawaz, hijacked a Pakistani airliner in 1981 and flew it to Kabul where Murtaza demanded the release of political prisoners in Pakistan. Here, a military officer on the plane was murdered. There were Americans aboard the flight – which is probably why the prisoners were indeed released.
Only a few days ago – in one of the most remarkable (but typically unrecognised) scoops of the year – Tariq Ali published a brilliant dissection of Pakistan (and Bhutto) corruption in the London Review of Books, focusing on Benazir and headlined: "Daughter of the West". In fact, the article was on my desk to photocopy as its subject was being murdered in Rawalpindi.
Towards the end of this report, Tariq Ali dwelt at length on the subsequent murder of Murtaza Bhutto by police close to his home at a time when Benazir was prime minister – and at a time when Benazir was enraged at Murtaza for demanding a return to PPP values and for condemning Benazir's appointment of her own husband as minister for industry, a highly lucrative post.
In a passage which may yet be applied to the aftermath of Benazir's murder, the report continues: "The fatal bullet had been fired at close range. The trap had been carefully laid, but, as is the way in Pakistan, the crudeness of the operation – false entries in police log-books, lost evidence, witnesses arrested and intimidated – a policeman killed who they feared might talk – made it obvious that the decision to execute the prime minister's brother had been taken at a very high level."
When Murtaza's 14-year-old daughter, Fatima, rang her aunt Benazir to ask why witnesses were being arrested – rather than her father's killers – she says Benazir told her: "Look, you're very young. You don't understand things." Or so Tariq Ali's exposé would have us believe. Over all this, however, looms the shocking power of Pakistan's ISI, the Inter Services Intelligence.
This vast institution – corrupt, venal and brutal – works for Musharraf.
But it also worked – and still works – for the Taliban. It also works for the Americans. In fact, it works for everybody. But it is the key which Musharraf can use to open talks with America's enemies when he feels threatened or wants to put pressure on Afghanistan or wants to appease the " extremists" and "terrorists" who so oppress George Bush. And let us remember, by the way, that Daniel Pearl, the Wall Street Journal reporter beheaded by his Islamist captors in Karachi, actually made his fatal appointment with his future murderers from an ISI commander's office. Ahmed Rashid's book Taliban provides riveting proof of the ISI's web of corruption and violence. Read it, and all of the above makes more sense.
But back to the official narrative. George Bush announced on Thursday he was "looking forward" to talking to his old friend Musharraf. Of course, they would talk about Benazir. They certainly would not talk about the fact that Musharraf continues to protect his old acquaintance – a certain Mr Khan – who supplied all Pakistan's nuclear secrets to Libya and Iran. No, let's not bring that bit of the "axis of evil" into this.
So, of course, we were asked to concentrate once more on all those " extremists" and "terrorists", not on the logic of questioning which many Pakistanis were feeling their way through in the aftermath of Benazir's assassination.
It doesn't, after all, take much to comprehend that the hated elections looming over Musharraf would probably be postponed indefinitely if his principal political opponent happened to be liquidated before polling day.
So let's run through this logic in the way that Inspector Ian Blair might have done in his policeman's notebook before he became the top cop in London.
Question: Who forced Benazir Bhutto to stay in London and tried to prevent her return to Pakistan? Answer: General Musharraf.
Question: Who ordered the arrest of thousands of Benazir's supporters this month? Answer: General Musharraf.
Question: Who placed Benazir under temporary house arrest this month? Answer: General Musharraf.
Question: Who declared martial law this month? Answer General Musharraf.
Question: who killed Benazir Bhutto?
Er. Yes. Well quite.
You see the problem? Yesterday, our television warriors informed us the PPP members shouting that Musharraf was a "murderer" were complaining he had not provided sufficient security for Benazir. Wrong. They were shouting this because they believe he killed her.
The situation is much more complicated than the story we are getting. As is natural when a person is assassinated most reports do not relay any of the negative aspects of her story as Fisk has done.
Fisk is probably correct that Pakistani intelligence works for i.e. is paid by Musharraf, US, and Taliban etc. If Musharraf was behind the assassinatiion it is a bit puzzling since most commentators think he is now much weakened. It is more likely that Taliban sympathisers in the intelligence and security services aided in the assassination but without Musharraf's support.
Robert Fisk: They don't blame al-Qa'ida. They blame Musharraf
Published: 29 December 2007
Weird, isn't it, how swiftly the narrative is laid down for us. Benazir Bhutto, the courageous leader of the Pakistan People's Party, is assassinated in Rawalpindi – attached to the very capital of Islamabad wherein ex-General Pervez Musharraf lives – and we are told by George Bush that her murderers were "extremists" and "terrorists". Well, you can't dispute that.
But the implication of the Bush comment was that Islamists were behind the assassination. It was the Taliban madmen again, the al-Qa'ida spider who struck at this lone and brave woman who had dared to call for democracy in her country.
Of course, given the childish coverage of this appalling tragedy – and however corrupt Ms Bhutto may have been, let us be under no illusions that this brave lady is indeed a true martyr – it's not surprising that the "good-versus-evil" donkey can be trotted out to explain the carnage in Rawalpindi.
Who would have imagined, watching the BBC or CNN on Thursday, that her two brothers, Murtaza and Shahnawaz, hijacked a Pakistani airliner in 1981 and flew it to Kabul where Murtaza demanded the release of political prisoners in Pakistan. Here, a military officer on the plane was murdered. There were Americans aboard the flight – which is probably why the prisoners were indeed released.
Only a few days ago – in one of the most remarkable (but typically unrecognised) scoops of the year – Tariq Ali published a brilliant dissection of Pakistan (and Bhutto) corruption in the London Review of Books, focusing on Benazir and headlined: "Daughter of the West". In fact, the article was on my desk to photocopy as its subject was being murdered in Rawalpindi.
Towards the end of this report, Tariq Ali dwelt at length on the subsequent murder of Murtaza Bhutto by police close to his home at a time when Benazir was prime minister – and at a time when Benazir was enraged at Murtaza for demanding a return to PPP values and for condemning Benazir's appointment of her own husband as minister for industry, a highly lucrative post.
In a passage which may yet be applied to the aftermath of Benazir's murder, the report continues: "The fatal bullet had been fired at close range. The trap had been carefully laid, but, as is the way in Pakistan, the crudeness of the operation – false entries in police log-books, lost evidence, witnesses arrested and intimidated – a policeman killed who they feared might talk – made it obvious that the decision to execute the prime minister's brother had been taken at a very high level."
When Murtaza's 14-year-old daughter, Fatima, rang her aunt Benazir to ask why witnesses were being arrested – rather than her father's killers – she says Benazir told her: "Look, you're very young. You don't understand things." Or so Tariq Ali's exposé would have us believe. Over all this, however, looms the shocking power of Pakistan's ISI, the Inter Services Intelligence.
This vast institution – corrupt, venal and brutal – works for Musharraf.
But it also worked – and still works – for the Taliban. It also works for the Americans. In fact, it works for everybody. But it is the key which Musharraf can use to open talks with America's enemies when he feels threatened or wants to put pressure on Afghanistan or wants to appease the " extremists" and "terrorists" who so oppress George Bush. And let us remember, by the way, that Daniel Pearl, the Wall Street Journal reporter beheaded by his Islamist captors in Karachi, actually made his fatal appointment with his future murderers from an ISI commander's office. Ahmed Rashid's book Taliban provides riveting proof of the ISI's web of corruption and violence. Read it, and all of the above makes more sense.
But back to the official narrative. George Bush announced on Thursday he was "looking forward" to talking to his old friend Musharraf. Of course, they would talk about Benazir. They certainly would not talk about the fact that Musharraf continues to protect his old acquaintance – a certain Mr Khan – who supplied all Pakistan's nuclear secrets to Libya and Iran. No, let's not bring that bit of the "axis of evil" into this.
So, of course, we were asked to concentrate once more on all those " extremists" and "terrorists", not on the logic of questioning which many Pakistanis were feeling their way through in the aftermath of Benazir's assassination.
It doesn't, after all, take much to comprehend that the hated elections looming over Musharraf would probably be postponed indefinitely if his principal political opponent happened to be liquidated before polling day.
So let's run through this logic in the way that Inspector Ian Blair might have done in his policeman's notebook before he became the top cop in London.
Question: Who forced Benazir Bhutto to stay in London and tried to prevent her return to Pakistan? Answer: General Musharraf.
Question: Who ordered the arrest of thousands of Benazir's supporters this month? Answer: General Musharraf.
Question: Who placed Benazir under temporary house arrest this month? Answer: General Musharraf.
Question: Who declared martial law this month? Answer General Musharraf.
Question: who killed Benazir Bhutto?
Er. Yes. Well quite.
You see the problem? Yesterday, our television warriors informed us the PPP members shouting that Musharraf was a "murderer" were complaining he had not provided sufficient security for Benazir. Wrong. They were shouting this because they believe he killed her.
Friday, December 28, 2007
Income Inequality in the United States
Here is an article from this blog. I have invented a new theory to explain what happens when the economy grows. I am not sure what to name it. Originally I thought I would call it the trickle up theory to compete with the original trickle down theory. Unfortunately, the flow upwards is more like a gusher than a trickle. Even the original trickle down theory disguised the fact that when there is a trickle down there is almost always a much larger flow to the upper income earners. It would have been better termed the falling crumbs theory wherein the poor get more crumbs since it is a bigger cake.
Another pop theory is captured by the idea that a rising tide raises all boats. This is a real laugh when applied to economic growth. You can be sure that the extra money created by a growing economy is not shared equally in the way that a rising tide raises all boats big and small equally.
Boy, Have We Got an Inequality Problem
By Jared Bernstein | bio
The Congressional Budget Office (CBO) just updated their invaluable data series on income inequality and the results are startling. Income inequality among households, both before and after Federal taxes, grew more quickly over the last two years of the series, 2003-05, than over any other two-year period on record, back to 1979.
Over those two years, the growth of inequality transferred $400 billion dollars from the bottom 95% to the top 5%. That is, had the income distribution remained as it was in 2003, the income of each of the 109 million households in the bottom 95% would have been $3,660 higher in 2005.
If this is the ownership society at work, I think we need to have a serious talk with the owners.
EPI will post our analysis later in the day (the Center on Budget and Policy Priorities will also post their nifty analysis), but I wanted to share a few of our findings with you right away:
If we break households in groups of 20% each by income, well over half of household income (55%) was held by the richest fifth in 2005, the highest such share on record;
The share of income held by the top 1% has climbed from 9% in 1979 to 18% in 2005.
After-tax income of the bottom 20% grew 6%, or $1,800 over these years (1979-2005, in 2005 dollars); the middle-class gained $11,000, up 21%, over these 26 years. The average income of the top 1%, more than tripled, up 228%, for a gain $781,000.
By 2005, the average post-tax income of the bottom fifth was $15,300, the middle fifth: $50,200, and the top 1%: $1.1 million.
These hugely different growth rates have led to much greater economic distance between income classes over the years. Back in 1979, the post-tax income of the top 1% was 8 times higher than that of middle-income families and 23 times higher than the lowest fifth. In 2005, those ratios grew to 21 (top compared to middle) and 70 (top to bottom), a vast increase in the distance between income classes.
Lest we forget, before our current problems in housing and financial markets developed, the overall economy grew solidly over this recovery, with notably strong productivity growth. Aggregate household income, according to these CBO data, grew $1.1 trillion, 2003-05. But, to put it mildly, these gains have failed to flow broadly throughout the income scale, and the extent of their concentration at the top of the income scale is historically unique. Just under two-thirds (63%) of the gain in household income from 2003 to 2005 went to just 5% of the nation’s wealthiest households.
Such concentration of income is unsustainable in a democratic society.
Another pop theory is captured by the idea that a rising tide raises all boats. This is a real laugh when applied to economic growth. You can be sure that the extra money created by a growing economy is not shared equally in the way that a rising tide raises all boats big and small equally.
Boy, Have We Got an Inequality Problem
By Jared Bernstein | bio
The Congressional Budget Office (CBO) just updated their invaluable data series on income inequality and the results are startling. Income inequality among households, both before and after Federal taxes, grew more quickly over the last two years of the series, 2003-05, than over any other two-year period on record, back to 1979.
Over those two years, the growth of inequality transferred $400 billion dollars from the bottom 95% to the top 5%. That is, had the income distribution remained as it was in 2003, the income of each of the 109 million households in the bottom 95% would have been $3,660 higher in 2005.
If this is the ownership society at work, I think we need to have a serious talk with the owners.
EPI will post our analysis later in the day (the Center on Budget and Policy Priorities will also post their nifty analysis), but I wanted to share a few of our findings with you right away:
If we break households in groups of 20% each by income, well over half of household income (55%) was held by the richest fifth in 2005, the highest such share on record;
The share of income held by the top 1% has climbed from 9% in 1979 to 18% in 2005.
After-tax income of the bottom 20% grew 6%, or $1,800 over these years (1979-2005, in 2005 dollars); the middle-class gained $11,000, up 21%, over these 26 years. The average income of the top 1%, more than tripled, up 228%, for a gain $781,000.
By 2005, the average post-tax income of the bottom fifth was $15,300, the middle fifth: $50,200, and the top 1%: $1.1 million.
These hugely different growth rates have led to much greater economic distance between income classes over the years. Back in 1979, the post-tax income of the top 1% was 8 times higher than that of middle-income families and 23 times higher than the lowest fifth. In 2005, those ratios grew to 21 (top compared to middle) and 70 (top to bottom), a vast increase in the distance between income classes.
Lest we forget, before our current problems in housing and financial markets developed, the overall economy grew solidly over this recovery, with notably strong productivity growth. Aggregate household income, according to these CBO data, grew $1.1 trillion, 2003-05. But, to put it mildly, these gains have failed to flow broadly throughout the income scale, and the extent of their concentration at the top of the income scale is historically unique. Just under two-thirds (63%) of the gain in household income from 2003 to 2005 went to just 5% of the nation’s wealthiest households.
Such concentration of income is unsustainable in a democratic society.
Pakistan govt. reveals how Bhutto was killed
This is from Information Clearing House.
This account will probably fuel more speculation. Although one would wonder what point there would be in the Pakistan government inventing this account!
A great many Pakistanis apparently think that Musharraf was involved in the operation if not directly at least indirectly through his security or intelligence services.
But it is not clear to me that Musharraf gains anything much from the assassination. The biggest gainers will be the Islamic extremists who can hope to fan the flames of resentment against Musharraf and the US and strengthen support for the overthrow of Musharraf.
Pak govt reveals how Benazir was killed
By IBNlive.com
12/28/07 "IBNlive" -- - -New Delhi: Mystery shrouds the death of former Pakistan prime minister Benazir Bhutto. In an explosive revelation, Pakistan's Interior Minister Hamid Nawaz on Friday said that Bhutto did not die of bullet wounds.
Nawaz said that Bhutto died from a head injury. At least seven doctors from the Rawalpindi General Hospital – where the leader was rushed immediately after the attack – say there were no bullet marks on Bhutto's body.
The doctors have submitted a report to the Pakistan government in which they say that no post-mortem was performed on Bhutto’s body and they had not received any instructions to perform one.
“The report says she had head injuries – an irregular patch – and the X-ray doesn’t show any bullet in the head. So it was probably the shrapnel or any other thing has struck her in her said. That damaged her brain, causing it to ooze and her death. The report categorically ssyas there’s no wound other than that,” Nawaz told a Pakistani news channel.
Government sources say there will be an investigation to determine why no autopsy was conducted.
According to agency reports doctors at the Rawalpindi General Hospital tried desperately for 41 minutes to revive former prime minister Bhutto after she was shot but failed in their efforts.
Bhutto was declared dead 41 minutes after she was brought the hospital's emergency department at 1735 hrs (local time) (1805 hrs IST) with open wounds on her left temporal bone from which "brain matter was exuding", the report said.
It said Bhutto was not breathing at the time and her pulse and blood pressure "were not recordable".
IANS adds: According to the report, "immediate resuscitation (process) was started" and she was taken to the operation theatre where she was attended by a team of doctors headed by Musaddiq Khan, principal of the Rawalpindi Medical College, Dawn reported Friday.
"Left antrolateral thoracotomy for open cardiac massage was performed," the hospital report said, adding: "In spite of all the possible measures she could not be revived and (was) declared dead at 1816 hrs IST (6.16 p.m.)."
An autopsy was not carried out at the hospital "because the district administration and police had not requested the hospital authorities (for this)", the report said.
Bhutto was shot not far from where Pakistan's first prime minister Liaquat Ali Khan was killed by an assassin's bullet on Oct 16, 1951
This account will probably fuel more speculation. Although one would wonder what point there would be in the Pakistan government inventing this account!
A great many Pakistanis apparently think that Musharraf was involved in the operation if not directly at least indirectly through his security or intelligence services.
But it is not clear to me that Musharraf gains anything much from the assassination. The biggest gainers will be the Islamic extremists who can hope to fan the flames of resentment against Musharraf and the US and strengthen support for the overthrow of Musharraf.
Pak govt reveals how Benazir was killed
By IBNlive.com
12/28/07 "IBNlive" -- - -New Delhi: Mystery shrouds the death of former Pakistan prime minister Benazir Bhutto. In an explosive revelation, Pakistan's Interior Minister Hamid Nawaz on Friday said that Bhutto did not die of bullet wounds.
Nawaz said that Bhutto died from a head injury. At least seven doctors from the Rawalpindi General Hospital – where the leader was rushed immediately after the attack – say there were no bullet marks on Bhutto's body.
The doctors have submitted a report to the Pakistan government in which they say that no post-mortem was performed on Bhutto’s body and they had not received any instructions to perform one.
“The report says she had head injuries – an irregular patch – and the X-ray doesn’t show any bullet in the head. So it was probably the shrapnel or any other thing has struck her in her said. That damaged her brain, causing it to ooze and her death. The report categorically ssyas there’s no wound other than that,” Nawaz told a Pakistani news channel.
Government sources say there will be an investigation to determine why no autopsy was conducted.
According to agency reports doctors at the Rawalpindi General Hospital tried desperately for 41 minutes to revive former prime minister Bhutto after she was shot but failed in their efforts.
Bhutto was declared dead 41 minutes after she was brought the hospital's emergency department at 1735 hrs (local time) (1805 hrs IST) with open wounds on her left temporal bone from which "brain matter was exuding", the report said.
It said Bhutto was not breathing at the time and her pulse and blood pressure "were not recordable".
IANS adds: According to the report, "immediate resuscitation (process) was started" and she was taken to the operation theatre where she was attended by a team of doctors headed by Musaddiq Khan, principal of the Rawalpindi Medical College, Dawn reported Friday.
"Left antrolateral thoracotomy for open cardiac massage was performed," the hospital report said, adding: "In spite of all the possible measures she could not be revived and (was) declared dead at 1816 hrs IST (6.16 p.m.)."
An autopsy was not carried out at the hospital "because the district administration and police had not requested the hospital authorities (for this)", the report said.
Bhutto was shot not far from where Pakistan's first prime minister Liaquat Ali Khan was killed by an assassin's bullet on Oct 16, 1951
Of GCC state oil companies and geopolitics
This is from the Khaleej Times. Leave it to an investment banker to set forth the connections between Gulf oil and Big oil and the goings on in national oil companies. An article such as this is worth a dozen of the fluff stuff that passes for reporting in the mainstream press. The GCC is the Gulf States Co-operation Council a body that will merit nary a mention in the puff stuff of the western press.
Of GCC state oil companies and geopolitics
BY MATEIN KHALID
27 December 2007
GEOPOLITICS has shaped the creation, operations and worldview of Middle East owned oil companies ever since the earliest regional oil strikes in Dammam, Persia’s Masjid Suleiman and Kirkuk in the 1930s. Saudi Aramco, Kuwait Petroleum, National Iran Oil Company (NIOC), Algeria’s Sonatrach and Abu Dhabi’s ADNOC own 600 billion barrels of crude oil, half the world’s proven reserves.
Qatargas operates the world’s largest LNG export terminal and owns the world’s third largest offshore oil reserves after Russia and Iran. Middle East oil colossi will determine both the future of the oil and gas markets but also profoundly shape the region’s international relations.
Saudi Aramco, created out of the historic security alliance between the House of Saud and the United States, has acted as the dominant, moderating force in OPEC, the proverbial central bank of black gold. Saudi Arabia, as the swing producer in OPEC, saved the world from catastrophic oil shocks when the Shah of Iran lost his Peacock Throne in 1979, Saddam Hussein invaded Iran in 1980 and Kuwait in 1990, when Hugo Chavez, the Iraqi insurgents and the Niger Delta’s Ogoni rebels triggered speculative oil spirals in 2007.
Saudi Arabia is unique in the energy market because it is not only the world’s largest exporter and lowest cost producer, but also because the Kingdom alone can boost output at short notice. Yet Saudi oilfields, including Ghawar, are ageing. What if Saudi Aramco has overestimated its reserves and future spare capacity, as Houston investment banker Matt Simmons argues in his book, Twilight in the Desert? What if there is no Saudi swing producer to moderate a future oil supply shock?
Iran’s NIOC, born out of nationalist Premier Mohammed Mossadegh’s epic battles with BP and a CIA- M16 countercoup that restored the Shah to power, has a pathological mistrust of Big Oil, particularly the Anglo- American firms. NIOC’s xenophobia was reinforced by the Iranian revolution, the tanker war with Baathist Iraq in the Gulf and the continual threat of American sanctions, military strikes and international banking freezes. Of course, NIOC has also been riddled with corruption and mismanagement on such a scale that its technological capabilities are obsolete, its foreign joint ventures threatened by a suspicious Majlis and White House’s sanctions, its domestic subsidies on gasoline making pollution, smuggling and billion dollar mullah slush funds in the Swiss Alps inevitable.
Kuwait Petroleum shares NIOC’s problem with parliamentary interference. The Kuwaiti Parliament has effectively torpedoed Project Kuwait, foreign investments in Kuwait’s northern oilfields and KPC has often become the victim of power struggles between the tribal / Islamist blocs in the legislature and the Al Sabah ruling clan. Kuwait Petroleum is still traumatised by the impact of Iraq’s invasion in August 1990 (Among Baghdad’s cassus belli was KPC overproduction and attempts to exploits two disputed oilfields!) and the exodus of thousands of Palestinian, Algerian and Yemeni oil engineers and managers from the emirate. Kuwait Petroleum was created after the emirate nationalised the concessions of British Petroleum and Gulf Oil.
Abu Dhabi’s ADNOC has proven the most reliable partner for international oil and gas companies, creating a network of joint venture companies with Big Oil from exploration, production, LNG to shipping and even equity stakes in foreign oil companies from Austria to Canada. Without a contentious Parliament like Kuwait, a xenophobic mindset like NIOC, a vast unexplored hinterland like Algeria’s Sonatrach, a history of corruption and terrorist sabotage like Nigerian General Petroleum, ADNOC has emerged as the most professionally managed, reliable, vertically integrated national oil company in the Middle East with access to the latest drilling, LNG, oilfield management enhanced recovery and downstream technologies.
Qatar is a classic case study of a Gulf emirate where international relations, military alliances and energy policies are inextricably intertwined. Qatar’s offshore North Field gasfield borders Iran, meaning the world’s third largest gas reserves and most extensive LNG export terminals are, in essence, located in the epicentre of a potential war zone. Qatar would not have been able to raise the $20 billion in Eurobonds it floated in the international capital markets in the 1990s had Doha not assured Western oilmen and bankers that its gas assets were not exposed to ruinous political risk. This meant that Qatar negotiated a security alliance with the United States, encouraged Exxon and Occidental Petroleum to invest untold billions in its LNG complex and hosted the Al Udeid Air Base, the Pentagon’s command and control hub for the American wars in Iraq and Afghanistan. In essence, Qatar’s Washington connection not only bought it the political risk insurance to attract the oil patch’s largest companies to help Qatargas replace Indonesia as the world’s largest LNG exporter but also enabled a micro- state to survive in a political chessboard dominated by Saudi Arabia and Iran, Doha’s two powerful regional rivals. Qatar’s acrimonious relations with Saudi Arabia did not prevent its leadership from using the leverage of its huge gasfields to emerge as a significant power broker in GCC and Arab politics. The Dolphin gas pipeline is the most successful cross border GCC energy project that, despite initial Saudi refusal to grant transit rights, is a mission critical for the emerging industrial constellations of Dubai, Abu Dhabi and Oman.
Dolphin Energy has, in essence, linked the economies of Qatar, the UAE and Oman, created a diplomatic triumvirate in the GCC that balances the historic dominance of Saudi Arabia and Iran in Gulf politics. Moreover, with no less than 910 million cubic feet of gas reserves, Qatar is courted by world leaders like Russia’s President Putin, whose secret service sent hitmen to Doha to assassinate Chechen warlords only a decade ago. Qatar has also created an Energy City that seeks nothing less than the creation of a spot market for LNG, a future major trend in the Gulf because of new chilling technologies for gas liquification and the construction of even bigger gas supertankers. Now that the International Court of Justice has resolved the Hawar Islands dispute between Qatar and Bahrain, the scope of Dolphin Energy could well encompass Manama. Gas pipelines, not a common currency or central bank, could well prove the most potent symbol of GCC integration.
Matein Khalid is a Dubai-based investment banker and economic analyst
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
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Of GCC state oil companies and geopolitics
BY MATEIN KHALID
27 December 2007
GEOPOLITICS has shaped the creation, operations and worldview of Middle East owned oil companies ever since the earliest regional oil strikes in Dammam, Persia’s Masjid Suleiman and Kirkuk in the 1930s. Saudi Aramco, Kuwait Petroleum, National Iran Oil Company (NIOC), Algeria’s Sonatrach and Abu Dhabi’s ADNOC own 600 billion barrels of crude oil, half the world’s proven reserves.
Qatargas operates the world’s largest LNG export terminal and owns the world’s third largest offshore oil reserves after Russia and Iran. Middle East oil colossi will determine both the future of the oil and gas markets but also profoundly shape the region’s international relations.
Saudi Aramco, created out of the historic security alliance between the House of Saud and the United States, has acted as the dominant, moderating force in OPEC, the proverbial central bank of black gold. Saudi Arabia, as the swing producer in OPEC, saved the world from catastrophic oil shocks when the Shah of Iran lost his Peacock Throne in 1979, Saddam Hussein invaded Iran in 1980 and Kuwait in 1990, when Hugo Chavez, the Iraqi insurgents and the Niger Delta’s Ogoni rebels triggered speculative oil spirals in 2007.
Saudi Arabia is unique in the energy market because it is not only the world’s largest exporter and lowest cost producer, but also because the Kingdom alone can boost output at short notice. Yet Saudi oilfields, including Ghawar, are ageing. What if Saudi Aramco has overestimated its reserves and future spare capacity, as Houston investment banker Matt Simmons argues in his book, Twilight in the Desert? What if there is no Saudi swing producer to moderate a future oil supply shock?
Iran’s NIOC, born out of nationalist Premier Mohammed Mossadegh’s epic battles with BP and a CIA- M16 countercoup that restored the Shah to power, has a pathological mistrust of Big Oil, particularly the Anglo- American firms. NIOC’s xenophobia was reinforced by the Iranian revolution, the tanker war with Baathist Iraq in the Gulf and the continual threat of American sanctions, military strikes and international banking freezes. Of course, NIOC has also been riddled with corruption and mismanagement on such a scale that its technological capabilities are obsolete, its foreign joint ventures threatened by a suspicious Majlis and White House’s sanctions, its domestic subsidies on gasoline making pollution, smuggling and billion dollar mullah slush funds in the Swiss Alps inevitable.
Kuwait Petroleum shares NIOC’s problem with parliamentary interference. The Kuwaiti Parliament has effectively torpedoed Project Kuwait, foreign investments in Kuwait’s northern oilfields and KPC has often become the victim of power struggles between the tribal / Islamist blocs in the legislature and the Al Sabah ruling clan. Kuwait Petroleum is still traumatised by the impact of Iraq’s invasion in August 1990 (Among Baghdad’s cassus belli was KPC overproduction and attempts to exploits two disputed oilfields!) and the exodus of thousands of Palestinian, Algerian and Yemeni oil engineers and managers from the emirate. Kuwait Petroleum was created after the emirate nationalised the concessions of British Petroleum and Gulf Oil.
Abu Dhabi’s ADNOC has proven the most reliable partner for international oil and gas companies, creating a network of joint venture companies with Big Oil from exploration, production, LNG to shipping and even equity stakes in foreign oil companies from Austria to Canada. Without a contentious Parliament like Kuwait, a xenophobic mindset like NIOC, a vast unexplored hinterland like Algeria’s Sonatrach, a history of corruption and terrorist sabotage like Nigerian General Petroleum, ADNOC has emerged as the most professionally managed, reliable, vertically integrated national oil company in the Middle East with access to the latest drilling, LNG, oilfield management enhanced recovery and downstream technologies.
Qatar is a classic case study of a Gulf emirate where international relations, military alliances and energy policies are inextricably intertwined. Qatar’s offshore North Field gasfield borders Iran, meaning the world’s third largest gas reserves and most extensive LNG export terminals are, in essence, located in the epicentre of a potential war zone. Qatar would not have been able to raise the $20 billion in Eurobonds it floated in the international capital markets in the 1990s had Doha not assured Western oilmen and bankers that its gas assets were not exposed to ruinous political risk. This meant that Qatar negotiated a security alliance with the United States, encouraged Exxon and Occidental Petroleum to invest untold billions in its LNG complex and hosted the Al Udeid Air Base, the Pentagon’s command and control hub for the American wars in Iraq and Afghanistan. In essence, Qatar’s Washington connection not only bought it the political risk insurance to attract the oil patch’s largest companies to help Qatargas replace Indonesia as the world’s largest LNG exporter but also enabled a micro- state to survive in a political chessboard dominated by Saudi Arabia and Iran, Doha’s two powerful regional rivals. Qatar’s acrimonious relations with Saudi Arabia did not prevent its leadership from using the leverage of its huge gasfields to emerge as a significant power broker in GCC and Arab politics. The Dolphin gas pipeline is the most successful cross border GCC energy project that, despite initial Saudi refusal to grant transit rights, is a mission critical for the emerging industrial constellations of Dubai, Abu Dhabi and Oman.
Dolphin Energy has, in essence, linked the economies of Qatar, the UAE and Oman, created a diplomatic triumvirate in the GCC that balances the historic dominance of Saudi Arabia and Iran in Gulf politics. Moreover, with no less than 910 million cubic feet of gas reserves, Qatar is courted by world leaders like Russia’s President Putin, whose secret service sent hitmen to Doha to assassinate Chechen warlords only a decade ago. Qatar has also created an Energy City that seeks nothing less than the creation of a spot market for LNG, a future major trend in the Gulf because of new chilling technologies for gas liquification and the construction of even bigger gas supertankers. Now that the International Court of Justice has resolved the Hawar Islands dispute between Qatar and Bahrain, the scope of Dolphin Energy could well encompass Manama. Gas pipelines, not a common currency or central bank, could well prove the most potent symbol of GCC integration.
Matein Khalid is a Dubai-based investment banker and economic analyst
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
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Tariq Ali: On Bhutto's Assassination
Guardian - December 28, 2007
Tariq Ali is a well know leftist commentator who knows Bhutto and the situation in Pakistan quite well. He is quite critical of Bhutto but notes that her party has the many poor in Pakistan as its base and could if reformed provide a foundation for democracy in Pakistan.
On the news this morning I see that the US is calling for elections to go ahead. However the main opposition party remaining that of Sharif plans to boycott the elections so if they go ahead they will have almost zero legitimacy.
A tragedy born of military despotism and anarchy
The assassination of Benazir Bhutto heaps despair upon Pakistan. Now
her party must be democratically rebuilt
Tariq Ali
Even those of us sharply critical of Benazir Bhutto's behaviour and
policies - both while she was in office and more recently - are
stunned and angered by her death. Indignation and fear stalk the
country once again.
An odd coexistence of military despotism and anarchy created the
conditions leading to her assassination in Rawalpindi yesterday. In
the past, military rule was designed to preserve order - and did so
for a few years. No longer. Today it creates disorder and promotes
lawlessness. How else can one explain the sacking of the chief
justice and eight other judges of the country's supreme court for
attempting to hold the government's intelligence agencies and the
police accountable to courts of law? Their replacements lack the
backbone to do anything, let alone conduct a proper inquest into the
misdeeds of the agencies to uncover the truth behind the carefully
organised killing of a major political leader.
How can Pakistan today be anything but a conflagration of despair? It
is assumed that the killers were jihadi fanatics. This may well be
true, but were they acting on their own?
Benazir, according to those close to her, had been tempted to boycott
the fake elections, but she lacked the political courage to defy
Washington. She had plenty of physical courage, and refused to be
cowed by threats from local opponents. She had been addressing an
election rally in Liaquat Bagh. This is a popular space named after
the country's first prime minister, Liaquat Ali Khan, who was killed
by an assassin in 1953. The killer, Said Akbar, was immediately shot
dead on the orders of a police officer involved in the plot. Not far
from here, there once stood a colonial structure where nationalists
were imprisoned. This was Rawalpindi jail. It was here that Benazir's
father, Zulfikar Ali Bhutto, was hanged in April 1979. The military
tyrant responsible for his judicial murder made sure the site of the
tragedy was destroyed as well.
Zulfikar Ali Bhutto's death poisoned relations between his Pakistan
People's party and the army. Party activists, particularly in the
province of Sind, were brutally tortured, humiliated and, sometimes,
disappeared or killed.
Pakistan's turbulent history, a result of continuous military rule
and unpopular global alliances, confronts the ruling elite now with
serious choices. They appear to have no positive aims. The
overwhelming majority of the country disapproves of the government's
foreign policy. They are angered by its lack of a serious domestic
policy except for further enriching a callous and greedy elite that
includes a swollen, parasitic military. Now they watch helplessly as
politicians are shot dead in front of them.
Benazir had survived the bomb blast yesterday but was felled by
bullets fired at her car. The assassins, mindful of their failure in
Karachi a month ago, had taken out a double insurance this time. They
wanted her dead. It is impossible for even a rigged election to take
place now. It will have to be postponed, and the military high
command is no doubt contemplating another dose of army rule if the
situation gets worse, which could easily happen.
What has happened is a multilayered tragedy. It's a tragedy for a
country on a road to more disasters. Torrents and foaming cataracts
lie ahead. And it is a personal tragedy. The house of Bhutto has lost
another member. Father, two sons and now a daughter have all died
unnatural deaths.
I first met Benazir at her father's house in Karachi when she was a
fun-loving teenager, and later at Oxford. She was not a natural
politician and had always wanted to be a diplomat, but history and
personal tragedy pushed in the other direction. Her father's death
transformed her. She had become a new person, determined to take on
the military dictator of that time. She had moved to a tiny flat in
London, where we would endlessly discuss the future of the country.
She would agree that land reforms, mass education programmes, a
health service and an independent foreign policy were positive
constructive aims and crucial if the country was to be saved from the
vultures in and out of uniform. Her constituency was the poor, and
she was proud of the fact.
She changed again after becoming prime minister. In the early days,
we would argue and in response to my numerous complaints - all she
would say was that the world had changed. She couldn't be on the
"wrong side" of history. And so, like many others, she made her peace
with Washington. It was this that finally led to the deal with
Musharraf and her return home after more than a decade in exile. On a
number of occasions she told me that she did not fear death. It was
one of the dangers of playing politics in Pakistan.
It is difficult to imagine any good coming out of this tragedy, but
there is one possibility. Pakistan desperately needs a political
party that can speak for the social needs of a bulk of the people.
The People's party founded by Zulfikar Ali Bhutto was built by the
activists of the only popular mass movement the country has known:
students, peasants and workers who fought for three months in 1968-69
to topple the country's first military dictator. They saw it as their
party, and that feeling persists in some parts of the country to this
day, despite everything.
Benazir's horrific death should give her colleagues pause for
reflection. To be dependent on a person or a family may be necessary
at certain times, but it is a structural weakness, not a strength for
a political organisation. The People's party needs to be refounded as
a modern and democratic organisation, open to honest debate and
discussion, defending social and human rights, uniting the many
disparate groups and individuals in Pakistan desperate for any
halfway decent alternative, and coming forward with concrete
proposals to stabilise occupied and war-torn Afghanistan. This can
and should be done. The Bhutto family should not be asked for any
more sacrifices.
· Tariq Ali's book The Duel: Pakistan on the Flightpath of American
Power is published in 2008
___________________________________
Tariq Ali is a well know leftist commentator who knows Bhutto and the situation in Pakistan quite well. He is quite critical of Bhutto but notes that her party has the many poor in Pakistan as its base and could if reformed provide a foundation for democracy in Pakistan.
On the news this morning I see that the US is calling for elections to go ahead. However the main opposition party remaining that of Sharif plans to boycott the elections so if they go ahead they will have almost zero legitimacy.
A tragedy born of military despotism and anarchy
The assassination of Benazir Bhutto heaps despair upon Pakistan. Now
her party must be democratically rebuilt
Tariq Ali
Even those of us sharply critical of Benazir Bhutto's behaviour and
policies - both while she was in office and more recently - are
stunned and angered by her death. Indignation and fear stalk the
country once again.
An odd coexistence of military despotism and anarchy created the
conditions leading to her assassination in Rawalpindi yesterday. In
the past, military rule was designed to preserve order - and did so
for a few years. No longer. Today it creates disorder and promotes
lawlessness. How else can one explain the sacking of the chief
justice and eight other judges of the country's supreme court for
attempting to hold the government's intelligence agencies and the
police accountable to courts of law? Their replacements lack the
backbone to do anything, let alone conduct a proper inquest into the
misdeeds of the agencies to uncover the truth behind the carefully
organised killing of a major political leader.
How can Pakistan today be anything but a conflagration of despair? It
is assumed that the killers were jihadi fanatics. This may well be
true, but were they acting on their own?
Benazir, according to those close to her, had been tempted to boycott
the fake elections, but she lacked the political courage to defy
Washington. She had plenty of physical courage, and refused to be
cowed by threats from local opponents. She had been addressing an
election rally in Liaquat Bagh. This is a popular space named after
the country's first prime minister, Liaquat Ali Khan, who was killed
by an assassin in 1953. The killer, Said Akbar, was immediately shot
dead on the orders of a police officer involved in the plot. Not far
from here, there once stood a colonial structure where nationalists
were imprisoned. This was Rawalpindi jail. It was here that Benazir's
father, Zulfikar Ali Bhutto, was hanged in April 1979. The military
tyrant responsible for his judicial murder made sure the site of the
tragedy was destroyed as well.
Zulfikar Ali Bhutto's death poisoned relations between his Pakistan
People's party and the army. Party activists, particularly in the
province of Sind, were brutally tortured, humiliated and, sometimes,
disappeared or killed.
Pakistan's turbulent history, a result of continuous military rule
and unpopular global alliances, confronts the ruling elite now with
serious choices. They appear to have no positive aims. The
overwhelming majority of the country disapproves of the government's
foreign policy. They are angered by its lack of a serious domestic
policy except for further enriching a callous and greedy elite that
includes a swollen, parasitic military. Now they watch helplessly as
politicians are shot dead in front of them.
Benazir had survived the bomb blast yesterday but was felled by
bullets fired at her car. The assassins, mindful of their failure in
Karachi a month ago, had taken out a double insurance this time. They
wanted her dead. It is impossible for even a rigged election to take
place now. It will have to be postponed, and the military high
command is no doubt contemplating another dose of army rule if the
situation gets worse, which could easily happen.
What has happened is a multilayered tragedy. It's a tragedy for a
country on a road to more disasters. Torrents and foaming cataracts
lie ahead. And it is a personal tragedy. The house of Bhutto has lost
another member. Father, two sons and now a daughter have all died
unnatural deaths.
I first met Benazir at her father's house in Karachi when she was a
fun-loving teenager, and later at Oxford. She was not a natural
politician and had always wanted to be a diplomat, but history and
personal tragedy pushed in the other direction. Her father's death
transformed her. She had become a new person, determined to take on
the military dictator of that time. She had moved to a tiny flat in
London, where we would endlessly discuss the future of the country.
She would agree that land reforms, mass education programmes, a
health service and an independent foreign policy were positive
constructive aims and crucial if the country was to be saved from the
vultures in and out of uniform. Her constituency was the poor, and
she was proud of the fact.
She changed again after becoming prime minister. In the early days,
we would argue and in response to my numerous complaints - all she
would say was that the world had changed. She couldn't be on the
"wrong side" of history. And so, like many others, she made her peace
with Washington. It was this that finally led to the deal with
Musharraf and her return home after more than a decade in exile. On a
number of occasions she told me that she did not fear death. It was
one of the dangers of playing politics in Pakistan.
It is difficult to imagine any good coming out of this tragedy, but
there is one possibility. Pakistan desperately needs a political
party that can speak for the social needs of a bulk of the people.
The People's party founded by Zulfikar Ali Bhutto was built by the
activists of the only popular mass movement the country has known:
students, peasants and workers who fought for three months in 1968-69
to topple the country's first military dictator. They saw it as their
party, and that feeling persists in some parts of the country to this
day, despite everything.
Benazir's horrific death should give her colleagues pause for
reflection. To be dependent on a person or a family may be necessary
at certain times, but it is a structural weakness, not a strength for
a political organisation. The People's party needs to be refounded as
a modern and democratic organisation, open to honest debate and
discussion, defending social and human rights, uniting the many
disparate groups and individuals in Pakistan desperate for any
halfway decent alternative, and coming forward with concrete
proposals to stabilise occupied and war-torn Afghanistan. This can
and should be done. The Bhutto family should not be asked for any
more sacrifices.
· Tariq Ali's book The Duel: Pakistan on the Flightpath of American
Power is published in 2008
___________________________________
Krugman: Progressives to Arms
Krugman has an excellent point about bi-partisanship and polarization. Inevitably policies that generate real change as against marginal issues about which most can agree will involve polarisation although with the majority on the side of progressive change. US politics though is stuck in a two party logjam in which each party tries to stick to the middle that in effect means catering to those who have the funds to buy support for their interests and leaving the vast majority to be fed by patriotic rhetoric and only minimal attention to their needs.
SLATE politics
Progressives, To Arms!
Forget about Bush--and the middle ground.
By Paul Krugman
Here's a thought for progressives: Bush isn't the problem. And the
next president should not try to be the anti-Bush.
No, I haven't lost my mind. I'm not saying that we should look kindly
on the Worst President Ever; we'll all breathe a sigh of relief when
he leaves office 405 days, 2 hours, and 46 minutes from now. (Yes, a
friend gave me one of those Bush countdown clocks.) Nor am I
suggesting that we should forgive and forget; I very much hope that
the next president will open the records and let the full story of the
Bush era's outrages be told.
But Bush will soon be gone. What progressives should be focused on now
is taking on the political movement that brought Bush to power. In
short, what we need right now isn't Bush bashing—what we need is
partisanship.
OK, before I get there, a word about terms—specifically, liberal vs.
progressive. Everyone seems to have their own definitions; mine
involves the distinction between values and action. If you think every
American should be guaranteed health insurance, you're a liberal; if
you're trying to make universal health care happen, you're a
progressive.
And here's the thing: Progressives have an opportunity, because
American public opinion has become a lot more liberal.
Not everyone understands that. In fact, the reaction of the news media
to the first clear electoral manifestation of America's new
liberalism—the Democratic sweep in last year's congressional
elections—was almost comical in its denial.
Thus, in 1994, Time celebrated the Republican victory in the midterm
elections by putting a herd of charging elephants on its cover. But
its response to the Democratic victory of 2006—a victory in which
House Democrats achieved a larger majority, both in seats and in the
popular vote, than the Republicans ever did in their 12-year
reign—was
a pair of overlapping red and blue circles, with the headline "The
center is the place to be."
Oh, and the guests on Meet the Press the Sunday after the Democratic
sweep were, you guessed it, Joe Lieberman and John McCain.
More seriously, many pundits have attributed last year's Republican
defeat to Iraq, with the implication that once the war has receded as
an issue, the right will reassert its natural political advantage—in
spite of polls that show a large Democratic advantage on just about
every domestic issue.
In a way, it's understandable that many political analysts are finding
it hard to grasp how much things have changed. After all, not long ago
it was conventional wisdom among the chattering classes that America
had entered an era of long-term Republican—and
conservative—dominance.
I have a whole shelf of books with titles like One Party Country and
Building Red America, all of them explaining why movement
conservatism—the interlocking set of institutions, ranging from the
Heritage Foundation to Fox News, that make up the modern American
right—is invincible.
And it's true that even now, polls suggest that Americans are about
twice as likely to identify themselves as conservatives as they are to
identify themselves as liberals.
But if you look at peoples' views on actual issues, as opposed to
labels, the electorate's growing liberalism is unmistakable. Don't
take my word for it; look at the massive report Pew released earlier
this year on trends in "political attitudes and core values." Pew
found "increased public support for the social safety net, signs of
growing public concern about income inequality, and a diminished
appetite for assertive national security policies." Meanwhile,
nothing's the matter with Kansas: People are ever less inclined to
support conservative views on moral values—and have become
dramatically more liberal on racial issues.
And it's not just opinion polls: Last year, the newly liberal mindset
of the electorate was reflected in actual votes, too. Yes, some of the
Democrats newly elected last year were relatively conservative. But
others, including James Webb of Virginia and Jon Tester of Montana,
have staked out strikingly progressive positions on economic issues.
The question, however, is whether Democrats will take advantage of
America's new liberalism. To do that, they have to be ready to
forcefully make the case that progressive goals are right and
conservatives are wrong. They also need to be ready to fight some very
nasty political battles.
And that's where the continuing focus of many people on Bush, rather
than the movement he represents, has become a problem.
A year ago, Michael Tomasky wrote a perceptive piece titled "Obama the
anti-Bush," in which he described Barack Obama's appeal: After the
bitter partisanship of the Bush years, Tomasky argued, voters are
attracted to "someone who speaks of his frustration with our polarized
politics and his fervent desire to transcend the red-blue divide."
People in the news media, in particular, long for an end to the
polarization and partisanship of the Bush years—a fact that probably
explains the highly favorable coverage Obama has received.
But any attempt to change America's direction, to implement a real
progressive agenda, will necessarily be highly polarizing. Proposals
for universal health care, in particular, are sure to face a firestorm
of partisan opposition. And fundamental change can't be accomplished
by a politician who shuns partisanship.
I like to remind people who long for bipartisanship that FDR's drive
to create Social Security was as divisive as Bush's attempt to
dismantle it. And we got Social Security because FDR wasn't afraid of
division. In his great Madison Square Garden speech, he declared of
the forces of "organized money": "Never before in all our history have
these forces been so united against one candidate as they stand today.
They are unanimous in their hate for me—and I welcome their hatred."
So, here's my worry: Democrats, with the encouragement of people in
the news media who seek bipartisanship for its own sake, may fall into
the trap of trying to be anti-Bushes—of trying to transcend
partisanship, seeking some middle ground between the parties.
That middle ground doesn't exist—and if Democrats try to find it,
they'll squander a huge opportunity. Right now, the stars are aligned
for a major change in America's direction. If the Democrats play nice,
that opportunity may soon be gone.
Paul Krugman is a columnist for the New York Times.
--
SLATE politics
Progressives, To Arms!
Forget about Bush--and the middle ground.
By Paul Krugman
Here's a thought for progressives: Bush isn't the problem. And the
next president should not try to be the anti-Bush.
No, I haven't lost my mind. I'm not saying that we should look kindly
on the Worst President Ever; we'll all breathe a sigh of relief when
he leaves office 405 days, 2 hours, and 46 minutes from now. (Yes, a
friend gave me one of those Bush countdown clocks.) Nor am I
suggesting that we should forgive and forget; I very much hope that
the next president will open the records and let the full story of the
Bush era's outrages be told.
But Bush will soon be gone. What progressives should be focused on now
is taking on the political movement that brought Bush to power. In
short, what we need right now isn't Bush bashing—what we need is
partisanship.
OK, before I get there, a word about terms—specifically, liberal vs.
progressive. Everyone seems to have their own definitions; mine
involves the distinction between values and action. If you think every
American should be guaranteed health insurance, you're a liberal; if
you're trying to make universal health care happen, you're a
progressive.
And here's the thing: Progressives have an opportunity, because
American public opinion has become a lot more liberal.
Not everyone understands that. In fact, the reaction of the news media
to the first clear electoral manifestation of America's new
liberalism—the Democratic sweep in last year's congressional
elections—was almost comical in its denial.
Thus, in 1994, Time celebrated the Republican victory in the midterm
elections by putting a herd of charging elephants on its cover. But
its response to the Democratic victory of 2006—a victory in which
House Democrats achieved a larger majority, both in seats and in the
popular vote, than the Republicans ever did in their 12-year
reign—was
a pair of overlapping red and blue circles, with the headline "The
center is the place to be."
Oh, and the guests on Meet the Press the Sunday after the Democratic
sweep were, you guessed it, Joe Lieberman and John McCain.
More seriously, many pundits have attributed last year's Republican
defeat to Iraq, with the implication that once the war has receded as
an issue, the right will reassert its natural political advantage—in
spite of polls that show a large Democratic advantage on just about
every domestic issue.
In a way, it's understandable that many political analysts are finding
it hard to grasp how much things have changed. After all, not long ago
it was conventional wisdom among the chattering classes that America
had entered an era of long-term Republican—and
conservative—dominance.
I have a whole shelf of books with titles like One Party Country and
Building Red America, all of them explaining why movement
conservatism—the interlocking set of institutions, ranging from the
Heritage Foundation to Fox News, that make up the modern American
right—is invincible.
And it's true that even now, polls suggest that Americans are about
twice as likely to identify themselves as conservatives as they are to
identify themselves as liberals.
But if you look at peoples' views on actual issues, as opposed to
labels, the electorate's growing liberalism is unmistakable. Don't
take my word for it; look at the massive report Pew released earlier
this year on trends in "political attitudes and core values." Pew
found "increased public support for the social safety net, signs of
growing public concern about income inequality, and a diminished
appetite for assertive national security policies." Meanwhile,
nothing's the matter with Kansas: People are ever less inclined to
support conservative views on moral values—and have become
dramatically more liberal on racial issues.
And it's not just opinion polls: Last year, the newly liberal mindset
of the electorate was reflected in actual votes, too. Yes, some of the
Democrats newly elected last year were relatively conservative. But
others, including James Webb of Virginia and Jon Tester of Montana,
have staked out strikingly progressive positions on economic issues.
The question, however, is whether Democrats will take advantage of
America's new liberalism. To do that, they have to be ready to
forcefully make the case that progressive goals are right and
conservatives are wrong. They also need to be ready to fight some very
nasty political battles.
And that's where the continuing focus of many people on Bush, rather
than the movement he represents, has become a problem.
A year ago, Michael Tomasky wrote a perceptive piece titled "Obama the
anti-Bush," in which he described Barack Obama's appeal: After the
bitter partisanship of the Bush years, Tomasky argued, voters are
attracted to "someone who speaks of his frustration with our polarized
politics and his fervent desire to transcend the red-blue divide."
People in the news media, in particular, long for an end to the
polarization and partisanship of the Bush years—a fact that probably
explains the highly favorable coverage Obama has received.
But any attempt to change America's direction, to implement a real
progressive agenda, will necessarily be highly polarizing. Proposals
for universal health care, in particular, are sure to face a firestorm
of partisan opposition. And fundamental change can't be accomplished
by a politician who shuns partisanship.
I like to remind people who long for bipartisanship that FDR's drive
to create Social Security was as divisive as Bush's attempt to
dismantle it. And we got Social Security because FDR wasn't afraid of
division. In his great Madison Square Garden speech, he declared of
the forces of "organized money": "Never before in all our history have
these forces been so united against one candidate as they stand today.
They are unanimous in their hate for me—and I welcome their hatred."
So, here's my worry: Democrats, with the encouragement of people in
the news media who seek bipartisanship for its own sake, may fall into
the trap of trying to be anti-Bushes—of trying to transcend
partisanship, seeking some middle ground between the parties.
That middle ground doesn't exist—and if Democrats try to find it,
they'll squander a huge opportunity. Right now, the stars are aligned
for a major change in America's direction. If the Democrats play nice,
that opportunity may soon be gone.
Paul Krugman is a columnist for the New York Times.
--
Thursday, December 27, 2007
US to expand military presence in Pakistan
The next celebrity in Pakistan may very well be Musharraf. Musharraf is obviously getting even more involved with the US and this could lead to a real danger of his being terminated either by operatives in the Pakistani intelligence service or the armed forces even if the Islamic radicals are unable to reach him directly.
One can expect turmoil even something akin to civil war in Pakistan in the near future.
US to expand mily presence in Pakistan
EARLY next year, US special forces are expected to vastly expand their presence in Pakistan, as part of an effort to train and support indigenous counter-insurgency forces and clandestine counter-terrorism units, according to American defence officials involved with the planning, reports Washington Post.
These Pakistan-centric operations will mark a shift for the US military and for US-Pakistan relations. In the aftermath of Sept 11, the US used Pakistani bases to stage movements into Afghanistan. Yet once the US deposed the Taliban government and established its main operating base at Bagram, north of Kabul, US forces left Pakistan almost entirely. Since then, Pakistan has restricted US involvement in cross-border military operations as well as paramilitary operations on its soil.
But the Pentagon has been frustrated by the inability of Pakistani forces to control the borders or the frontier area. And Pakistan’s political instability has heightened US concern about extremists there.
According to Pentagon sources, reaching a different agreement with Pakistan became a priority for the new head of the US Special Operations Command, Adm Eric T Olson.
Olson visited Pakistan in August, November and again this month, meeting with President Pervez Musharraf, Chairman Joint Chiefs of Staff Committee Gen Tariq Majid and Lt Gen Muhammad Masood Aslam, commander of the military and paramilitary troops in northwest Pakistan. Olson also visited the headquarters of the Frontier Corps, a separate paramilitary force recruited from Pakistan’s border tribes.
Now, a new agreement, reported when it was still being negotiated last month, has been finalised. And the first US personnel could be on the ground in Pakistan by early in the new year, according to Pentagon sources.
US Central Command Commander Adm William Fallon alluded to the agreement and spoke approvingly of Pakistan’s recent counter-terrorism efforts in a recent interview.
“What we’ve seen in the last several months is more of a willingness to use their regular army units,” along the Afghan border, Fallon said. “And this is where, I think, we can help a lot from the US in providing the kind of training, assistance and mentoring based on our experience with insurgencies recently and with the terrorist problem in Iraq and Afghanistan, I think we share a lot with them, and we’ll look forward to doing that.”
One can expect turmoil even something akin to civil war in Pakistan in the near future.
US to expand mily presence in Pakistan
EARLY next year, US special forces are expected to vastly expand their presence in Pakistan, as part of an effort to train and support indigenous counter-insurgency forces and clandestine counter-terrorism units, according to American defence officials involved with the planning, reports Washington Post.
These Pakistan-centric operations will mark a shift for the US military and for US-Pakistan relations. In the aftermath of Sept 11, the US used Pakistani bases to stage movements into Afghanistan. Yet once the US deposed the Taliban government and established its main operating base at Bagram, north of Kabul, US forces left Pakistan almost entirely. Since then, Pakistan has restricted US involvement in cross-border military operations as well as paramilitary operations on its soil.
But the Pentagon has been frustrated by the inability of Pakistani forces to control the borders or the frontier area. And Pakistan’s political instability has heightened US concern about extremists there.
According to Pentagon sources, reaching a different agreement with Pakistan became a priority for the new head of the US Special Operations Command, Adm Eric T Olson.
Olson visited Pakistan in August, November and again this month, meeting with President Pervez Musharraf, Chairman Joint Chiefs of Staff Committee Gen Tariq Majid and Lt Gen Muhammad Masood Aslam, commander of the military and paramilitary troops in northwest Pakistan. Olson also visited the headquarters of the Frontier Corps, a separate paramilitary force recruited from Pakistan’s border tribes.
Now, a new agreement, reported when it was still being negotiated last month, has been finalised. And the first US personnel could be on the ground in Pakistan by early in the new year, according to Pentagon sources.
US Central Command Commander Adm William Fallon alluded to the agreement and spoke approvingly of Pakistan’s recent counter-terrorism efforts in a recent interview.
“What we’ve seen in the last several months is more of a willingness to use their regular army units,” along the Afghan border, Fallon said. “And this is where, I think, we can help a lot from the US in providing the kind of training, assistance and mentoring based on our experience with insurgencies recently and with the terrorist problem in Iraq and Afghanistan, I think we share a lot with them, and we’ll look forward to doing that.”
Al Qaeda claims responsibility for Bhutto death.
This is from this site. It is not surprising that Bhutto was killed.
The accounts vary. Some say that she was first shot when she stuck the top of her body through her SUV to wave at the crowd. Immediately afterward there was a suicide bomber who badly damaged her vehicle.
Both the extreme Islamists and some in the government wanted her dead. Al Qaeda probably did it but just claiming responsibility doesn't clinch the matter. Both Musharraf and the US want to blame it on Al Qaeda of course. Bhutto was widely seen as the US candidate for president and that did not help her at all. Sharif's party also experienced attacks on a rally that killed several people.
Bhutto certainly did not fear death but perhaps it would have been better if she had been more careful as is Musharraf. I am reminded of Aristotle's concept of courage as a mean between cowardice (too much fear of danger) and foolhardiness (too little fear of danger). Bhutto tended toward the foolhardiness end of the scale.
Pakistan: Al-Qaeda claims Bhutto's death
Karachi, 27 Dec. (AKI) - (by Syed Saleem Shahzad) - A spokesperson for the al-Qaeda terrorist network has claimed responsibility for the death on Thursday of former Pakistani prime minister Benazir Bhutto.
“We terminated the most precious American asset which vowed to defeat [the] mujahadeen,” Al-Qaeda’s commander and main spokesperson Mustafa Abu Al-Yazid told Adnkronos International (AKI) in a phone call from an unknown location, speaking in faltering English. Al-Yazid is the main al-Qaeda commander in Afghanistan.
It is believed that the decision to kill Bhutto, who is the leader of the opposition Pakistan People's Party (PPP), was made by al-Qaeda No. 2, the Egyptian doctor, Ayman al-Zawahiri in October.
Death squads were allegedly constituted for the mission and ultimately one cell comprising a defunct Lashkar-i-Jhangvi’s Punjabi volunteer succeeded in killing Bhutto.
Bhutto had just addressed a pre-election rally on Thursday in the garrison town of Rawalpindi when the bomb went off.
She had come to Rawalpindi after finishing a rapid election campaign, ahead of the January polls, in Pakistan's volatile North West Frontier Province (NWFP) where she had talked about a war against terrorism and al-Qaeda.
Reports say at least 15 other people were killed in the attack and several others injured.
As news of Bhutto's death spread throughout the country, there are reports that people have taken to the streets to protest the death of the leader of the PPP, which has the largest support of any party in Pakistan.
In the southern port city of Karachi, Bhutto's hometown, residents reportedly threw stones at cars and burnt tyres.
The accounts vary. Some say that she was first shot when she stuck the top of her body through her SUV to wave at the crowd. Immediately afterward there was a suicide bomber who badly damaged her vehicle.
Both the extreme Islamists and some in the government wanted her dead. Al Qaeda probably did it but just claiming responsibility doesn't clinch the matter. Both Musharraf and the US want to blame it on Al Qaeda of course. Bhutto was widely seen as the US candidate for president and that did not help her at all. Sharif's party also experienced attacks on a rally that killed several people.
Bhutto certainly did not fear death but perhaps it would have been better if she had been more careful as is Musharraf. I am reminded of Aristotle's concept of courage as a mean between cowardice (too much fear of danger) and foolhardiness (too little fear of danger). Bhutto tended toward the foolhardiness end of the scale.
Pakistan: Al-Qaeda claims Bhutto's death
Karachi, 27 Dec. (AKI) - (by Syed Saleem Shahzad) - A spokesperson for the al-Qaeda terrorist network has claimed responsibility for the death on Thursday of former Pakistani prime minister Benazir Bhutto.
“We terminated the most precious American asset which vowed to defeat [the] mujahadeen,” Al-Qaeda’s commander and main spokesperson Mustafa Abu Al-Yazid told Adnkronos International (AKI) in a phone call from an unknown location, speaking in faltering English. Al-Yazid is the main al-Qaeda commander in Afghanistan.
It is believed that the decision to kill Bhutto, who is the leader of the opposition Pakistan People's Party (PPP), was made by al-Qaeda No. 2, the Egyptian doctor, Ayman al-Zawahiri in October.
Death squads were allegedly constituted for the mission and ultimately one cell comprising a defunct Lashkar-i-Jhangvi’s Punjabi volunteer succeeded in killing Bhutto.
Bhutto had just addressed a pre-election rally on Thursday in the garrison town of Rawalpindi when the bomb went off.
She had come to Rawalpindi after finishing a rapid election campaign, ahead of the January polls, in Pakistan's volatile North West Frontier Province (NWFP) where she had talked about a war against terrorism and al-Qaeda.
Reports say at least 15 other people were killed in the attack and several others injured.
As news of Bhutto's death spread throughout the country, there are reports that people have taken to the streets to protest the death of the leader of the PPP, which has the largest support of any party in Pakistan.
In the southern port city of Karachi, Bhutto's hometown, residents reportedly threw stones at cars and burnt tyres.
Wednesday, December 26, 2007
Philippines: Flat Export Growth Forecast for 2008
Flat export growth forecast for 2008
This is from the Manila Tribune. While the high peso makes imports cheaper, it obviously creates difficulties for exporters. Also, the high peso means that US dollar earnings sent to the Philippines from abroad purchase fewer pesos. The Arroyo government is obviously overly optimistic in its predictions for export growth. That is not too surprising!
12/27/2007
With the peso strength expected to persist until next year and at the same time the specter of recession in the United States looms large, local firms project exports growth to be flat through next year.
The best that exporters can hope for is a 5-percent growth next year, according to Philippine Exporters Confederation president Sergio Ortiz-Luis Jr.
“We could not commit to the nine percent projection of government. Most of our members are already saying their exports may even decline due to the strengthening peso. They are also scared of a recession in the United States,” Ortiz-Luis added.
For this year, exporters said growth will only be four to 6 percent this year due to the rampaging peso, much lower than the government’s six to seven percent forecast.
He said even the call center industry is now paring down its projected income of $10 billion by 2015 and its projected manpower needs of 1 million by 2010. That sector contributed $3.5 billion to the $50 billion in total dollar revenues from goods and services exports last year.
Garments magnate and Philippine Chamber of Commerce and Industry chairman Donald Dee was equally pessimistic on the performance of the garments industry, the second biggest export product of the country.
“Garments exports already contracted by 12.29 percent from January to October this year. If the peso continues to appreciate and the US economy declines while costs are going up, we expect to be hit even harder by next year,” Dee said.
He said the hoped increase in exports to the recovering economy of Japan may even be dashed if the Philippine Senate rejects the Japan-Philippines Economic Partnership Agreement.
Semiconductor and Electronics Industries of the Philippines Inc. president Ernesto Santiago, said at worst, the nation’s top export industry may stay flat next year.
This was the revised projection of industry players in their last meeting, he said.
“At best, if the US can prevent a recession in the second half of next year, our industry may post a 5-percent growth,” Santiago said.
Semiconductor and electronics make up 60 percent of exports. Its most optimistic projection of 5 percent growth falls short of the 9-percent projection of the government.
Although semiconductor grew by 6.42 percent in the first 10 months of this year, the electronics segment of the industry declined by 30.86 percent this year partly due to the strong peso and partly due to the high cost of electric power, Santiago added.
For his part, Philippine Food Processors and Exporters (Philfoodex) president Bobby Amores doubted government statistics showing that food export was one of the few industries that grew this year.
“I don’t know where the government got its figures. What I know is that mango exports declined by 30 percent this year,” Amores said.
Food exporters are making shipments at a loss just to keep their buyers from ordering from other suppliers but they cannot sustain that without any relief, he said.
Gerardo Sicat, leader of the handicrafts industry, pointed out that the hard-hit handicrafts sector already declined by 1.53 percent this year due to the rejection of orders. There is no hope for growth from that end this coming year, he said.
George Barcelon, head of the footwear export industry, said his members have stopped giving out quotations to its buyers because of the continued decline of the dollar’s value against the peso.
On the whole, the export leaders expressed pessimism they can aim for the same export growth target that government officials have dreamt of.
“Six percent (growth) is still possible, I think within 4 to 6 percent. But next year, we have no idea yet, we have still to look at what’s happening. There are many ‘ifs’ to consider,” Ortiz-Luis Jr. said.
Ortiz-Luis said even if the November and December exports figures increased, these will not make a significant dent in improving total exports revenues for 2007.
The cumulative exports for the first 10 months only averaged 5.4 percent despite the double-digit 10.5-percent growth in October.
“The figures in October are deceptive. Ordered three months back when the dollar was valued at about P44 but paid when it was nearing P42 to the dollar, the October deliveries were made at a loss,” he volunteered.
PhiliExport News and Features
This is from the Manila Tribune. While the high peso makes imports cheaper, it obviously creates difficulties for exporters. Also, the high peso means that US dollar earnings sent to the Philippines from abroad purchase fewer pesos. The Arroyo government is obviously overly optimistic in its predictions for export growth. That is not too surprising!
12/27/2007
With the peso strength expected to persist until next year and at the same time the specter of recession in the United States looms large, local firms project exports growth to be flat through next year.
The best that exporters can hope for is a 5-percent growth next year, according to Philippine Exporters Confederation president Sergio Ortiz-Luis Jr.
“We could not commit to the nine percent projection of government. Most of our members are already saying their exports may even decline due to the strengthening peso. They are also scared of a recession in the United States,” Ortiz-Luis added.
For this year, exporters said growth will only be four to 6 percent this year due to the rampaging peso, much lower than the government’s six to seven percent forecast.
He said even the call center industry is now paring down its projected income of $10 billion by 2015 and its projected manpower needs of 1 million by 2010. That sector contributed $3.5 billion to the $50 billion in total dollar revenues from goods and services exports last year.
Garments magnate and Philippine Chamber of Commerce and Industry chairman Donald Dee was equally pessimistic on the performance of the garments industry, the second biggest export product of the country.
“Garments exports already contracted by 12.29 percent from January to October this year. If the peso continues to appreciate and the US economy declines while costs are going up, we expect to be hit even harder by next year,” Dee said.
He said the hoped increase in exports to the recovering economy of Japan may even be dashed if the Philippine Senate rejects the Japan-Philippines Economic Partnership Agreement.
Semiconductor and Electronics Industries of the Philippines Inc. president Ernesto Santiago, said at worst, the nation’s top export industry may stay flat next year.
This was the revised projection of industry players in their last meeting, he said.
“At best, if the US can prevent a recession in the second half of next year, our industry may post a 5-percent growth,” Santiago said.
Semiconductor and electronics make up 60 percent of exports. Its most optimistic projection of 5 percent growth falls short of the 9-percent projection of the government.
Although semiconductor grew by 6.42 percent in the first 10 months of this year, the electronics segment of the industry declined by 30.86 percent this year partly due to the strong peso and partly due to the high cost of electric power, Santiago added.
For his part, Philippine Food Processors and Exporters (Philfoodex) president Bobby Amores doubted government statistics showing that food export was one of the few industries that grew this year.
“I don’t know where the government got its figures. What I know is that mango exports declined by 30 percent this year,” Amores said.
Food exporters are making shipments at a loss just to keep their buyers from ordering from other suppliers but they cannot sustain that without any relief, he said.
Gerardo Sicat, leader of the handicrafts industry, pointed out that the hard-hit handicrafts sector already declined by 1.53 percent this year due to the rejection of orders. There is no hope for growth from that end this coming year, he said.
George Barcelon, head of the footwear export industry, said his members have stopped giving out quotations to its buyers because of the continued decline of the dollar’s value against the peso.
On the whole, the export leaders expressed pessimism they can aim for the same export growth target that government officials have dreamt of.
“Six percent (growth) is still possible, I think within 4 to 6 percent. But next year, we have no idea yet, we have still to look at what’s happening. There are many ‘ifs’ to consider,” Ortiz-Luis Jr. said.
Ortiz-Luis said even if the November and December exports figures increased, these will not make a significant dent in improving total exports revenues for 2007.
The cumulative exports for the first 10 months only averaged 5.4 percent despite the double-digit 10.5-percent growth in October.
“The figures in October are deceptive. Ordered three months back when the dollar was valued at about P44 but paid when it was nearing P42 to the dollar, the October deliveries were made at a loss,” he volunteered.
PhiliExport News and Features
Ramallah Govt. pay Gaza Civil Servants not to work.
This is the type of report which you will be unlikely to find in mainstream media. The article shows not only Israeli disregard for the humanitarian needs of Palestinians in Gaza but also the totally callous attitude of Abbas and the Ramallah government. They will pay hospital workers not to care for the sick and injured rather than provide any comfort for the Hamas controlled govt. in Gaza.This article is from http://news.newamericamedia.org/news/view_article.html?article_id=9645ecb620103370f8ac4611d870c122.
Ramallah Government Pays Gaza’s Civil Servants Not to Work
Washington Report, News feature, Mohammed Omer, Posted: Dec 26, 2007
A PLUME OF smoke, its scent redolent of roasted apples, wafts out the paneless window into the autumn air. A rhythmic bubbling can be heard as 47-year-old Abu Khaled inhales from the ornate hookah set beside him. As he exhales deeply, his heavy eyes watch the latest snakelike plume follow its predecessor. Once a man of action, today he simply sits, sentenced by political maneuvering to a sedentary existence and lamenting the life he until recently led.
Prior to June of this year, Abu Khaled worked as a security officer at Gaza’s border crossings. Walkie-talkie in hand, he bustled between the operations room, gates and terminals, shouting orders, checking identifications and maintaining order. Today he idles his day away channel surfing his TV and keeping up with current events on the Internet. He would rather work, yet today civil servants in Gaza receive wages from the U.S.-backed Palestinian government in Ramallah on one condition: that they not work.
A few weeks after Hamas came to power in January 2006 elections, Israel and Washington imposed an international boycott on the new, democratically elected government. Eighteen months later, having failed to topple Hamas, U.S.- and Israeli-funded and trained Fatah militia attempted a coup. While Fatah gained control of the West Bank, Gaza remained under the control of Hamas.
The American and Israeli governments began funneling cash and support to Fatah, led by President Mahmoud Abbas, and declared the elected Hamas government illegitimate. Declaring Gaza a “hostile entity,” Israel proceeded to increase its pressure. Tactics have included sealing Gaza’s borders, Israeli military incursions and regular bombings, the cutting off of water and electricity, bank closures, and cutting off aid.
Ramallah’s latest anti-Hamas tactic is to pay government employees not to work, while providing them a small stipend to compensate for 18 months of unpaid wages. Those who continue to work at hospitals, schools, police stations and other public institutions have their wages withheld.
The result of this strategy was quickly apparent. Commerce skidded to a halt, inflation soared, and the most basic necessities of life virtually disappeared from this 23-mile strip of land, home to 1.5 million people, of whom 68 percent are under the age of 18. An atmosphere of fear enveloped Gaza.
“Why should I work?” asked Abu Khaled in a hushed voice, looking around to ensure no one could hear him. “I support our leader, President Abbas. If I work under Hamas, my salary will be cut off by the Ramallah-based government.”
Abu Khaled, who declined to reveal his full name, personifies the anxiety shared by most Fatah loyalists in Gaza. By not working, the idle security guard could get in trouble with Hamas. On the other hand, he at least receives compensation. Officials estimate that 55,000 Gazans currently are being paid not to work. Some do it out of loyalty to Fatah, others out of fear or necessity.
A Life-or-Death Decision
Healthcare providers face a unique dilemma. Their choice whether or not to work can literally be a matter of life or death.
At Al Nasser Hospital’s Intensive Care Unit, 30-year-old staff nurse Hamam Nasman remained on duty, assisting in operations. The Ministry of Health in Gaza falls under the control of Hamas.
“Ramallah’s government deprived me of my salary,” he explained in frustration. “How can I sit at home and just leave children to die? This is a crime!”
In enforcing the salary rules laid down by the U.S. and Israel, the Fatah government in Ramallah has created a severe crisis for public employees in Gaza, forcing them to choose between feeding their own families and serving or saving the lives of others.
“This is my human duty,” Nurse Nasman insisted. “I took an oath to treat patients, not to be a tool used for political purposes.”
Speaking on behalf of Hamas, Palestinian Legislative Councilman Dr. Salah Al Bardawil summarized the purpose of the latest directive from Ramallah.
“The objective in cutting off employee salaries is political,” he stated. “It is designed to cause a failure of democracy in Gaza—the same democracy which is not honored by the American or Israeli administrations.”
Though strapped for cash, the Hamas government manages to sporadically pay approximately 10,000 public sector workers as funds become available. According to Dr. Al Bardawil, however, 33,000 civil employees currently work without pay, and that number is increasing. Gaps in services are filled by Hamas supporters who volunteer by stepping into critical positions in the various municipal agencies, schools and hospitals.
But not all gaps can be filled in Gaza, where today only emergency humanitarian aid is occasionally allowed to enter.
The worsening shortage of necessities resulting from this latest tightening of the screws on Gaza increasingly is pitting friends and families against one another. Abu Khaled knows this pain only too well. Trepidation coupled with discretion has prevented him from spending time with a friend in the Hamas security force.
“I’m afraid that if Fatah agents see me hosting him, the Ramallah-based government will assume I am not loyal and cut off my salary,” he explained nervously.
Even those in positions of authority feel pressured to comply. Abu Waled, a Fatah loyalist and supervisor at the local police station, admitted that he now spends his days like a retiree, visiting friends and sitting at home.
“I’m not going to risk losing my salary by going to work,” he said sharply. “Let Hamas manage Gaza by themselves.”
Mohammed Omer, winner of New America Media’s Best Youth Voice award, reports from the Gaza Strip, where he maintains the Web site . He can be reached at .
Ramallah Government Pays Gaza’s Civil Servants Not to Work
Washington Report, News feature, Mohammed Omer, Posted: Dec 26, 2007
A PLUME OF smoke, its scent redolent of roasted apples, wafts out the paneless window into the autumn air. A rhythmic bubbling can be heard as 47-year-old Abu Khaled inhales from the ornate hookah set beside him. As he exhales deeply, his heavy eyes watch the latest snakelike plume follow its predecessor. Once a man of action, today he simply sits, sentenced by political maneuvering to a sedentary existence and lamenting the life he until recently led.
Prior to June of this year, Abu Khaled worked as a security officer at Gaza’s border crossings. Walkie-talkie in hand, he bustled between the operations room, gates and terminals, shouting orders, checking identifications and maintaining order. Today he idles his day away channel surfing his TV and keeping up with current events on the Internet. He would rather work, yet today civil servants in Gaza receive wages from the U.S.-backed Palestinian government in Ramallah on one condition: that they not work.
A few weeks after Hamas came to power in January 2006 elections, Israel and Washington imposed an international boycott on the new, democratically elected government. Eighteen months later, having failed to topple Hamas, U.S.- and Israeli-funded and trained Fatah militia attempted a coup. While Fatah gained control of the West Bank, Gaza remained under the control of Hamas.
The American and Israeli governments began funneling cash and support to Fatah, led by President Mahmoud Abbas, and declared the elected Hamas government illegitimate. Declaring Gaza a “hostile entity,” Israel proceeded to increase its pressure. Tactics have included sealing Gaza’s borders, Israeli military incursions and regular bombings, the cutting off of water and electricity, bank closures, and cutting off aid.
Ramallah’s latest anti-Hamas tactic is to pay government employees not to work, while providing them a small stipend to compensate for 18 months of unpaid wages. Those who continue to work at hospitals, schools, police stations and other public institutions have their wages withheld.
The result of this strategy was quickly apparent. Commerce skidded to a halt, inflation soared, and the most basic necessities of life virtually disappeared from this 23-mile strip of land, home to 1.5 million people, of whom 68 percent are under the age of 18. An atmosphere of fear enveloped Gaza.
“Why should I work?” asked Abu Khaled in a hushed voice, looking around to ensure no one could hear him. “I support our leader, President Abbas. If I work under Hamas, my salary will be cut off by the Ramallah-based government.”
Abu Khaled, who declined to reveal his full name, personifies the anxiety shared by most Fatah loyalists in Gaza. By not working, the idle security guard could get in trouble with Hamas. On the other hand, he at least receives compensation. Officials estimate that 55,000 Gazans currently are being paid not to work. Some do it out of loyalty to Fatah, others out of fear or necessity.
A Life-or-Death Decision
Healthcare providers face a unique dilemma. Their choice whether or not to work can literally be a matter of life or death.
At Al Nasser Hospital’s Intensive Care Unit, 30-year-old staff nurse Hamam Nasman remained on duty, assisting in operations. The Ministry of Health in Gaza falls under the control of Hamas.
“Ramallah’s government deprived me of my salary,” he explained in frustration. “How can I sit at home and just leave children to die? This is a crime!”
In enforcing the salary rules laid down by the U.S. and Israel, the Fatah government in Ramallah has created a severe crisis for public employees in Gaza, forcing them to choose between feeding their own families and serving or saving the lives of others.
“This is my human duty,” Nurse Nasman insisted. “I took an oath to treat patients, not to be a tool used for political purposes.”
Speaking on behalf of Hamas, Palestinian Legislative Councilman Dr. Salah Al Bardawil summarized the purpose of the latest directive from Ramallah.
“The objective in cutting off employee salaries is political,” he stated. “It is designed to cause a failure of democracy in Gaza—the same democracy which is not honored by the American or Israeli administrations.”
Though strapped for cash, the Hamas government manages to sporadically pay approximately 10,000 public sector workers as funds become available. According to Dr. Al Bardawil, however, 33,000 civil employees currently work without pay, and that number is increasing. Gaps in services are filled by Hamas supporters who volunteer by stepping into critical positions in the various municipal agencies, schools and hospitals.
But not all gaps can be filled in Gaza, where today only emergency humanitarian aid is occasionally allowed to enter.
The worsening shortage of necessities resulting from this latest tightening of the screws on Gaza increasingly is pitting friends and families against one another. Abu Khaled knows this pain only too well. Trepidation coupled with discretion has prevented him from spending time with a friend in the Hamas security force.
“I’m afraid that if Fatah agents see me hosting him, the Ramallah-based government will assume I am not loyal and cut off my salary,” he explained nervously.
Even those in positions of authority feel pressured to comply. Abu Waled, a Fatah loyalist and supervisor at the local police station, admitted that he now spends his days like a retiree, visiting friends and sitting at home.
“I’m not going to risk losing my salary by going to work,” he said sharply. “Let Hamas manage Gaza by themselves.”
Mohammed Omer, winner of New America Media’s Best Youth Voice award, reports from the Gaza Strip, where he maintains the Web site . He can be reached at .
Juan Cole: Ten Myths about Iraq
As usual Juan Cole is perceptive, and provocative. Here he takes on many of the myths pushed by mainstream media about the situation in Iraq.
From: Juan Cole
Date: Dec 25, 2007 11:48 PM
Subject: [infoco] [Informed Comment] Top Ten Myths about Iraq 2007
10. Myth: The US public no longer sees Iraq as a central issue in the
2008 presidential campaign.
In a recent ABC News/ Washington Post poll, Iraq and the economy were
virtually tied among voters nationally, with nearly a quarter of
voters in each case saying it was their number one issue. The economy
had become more important to them than in previous months (in November
only 14% said it was their most pressing concern), but Iraq still
rivals it as an issue!
9. Myth: There have been steps toward religious and political
reconciliation in Iraq in 2007.
Fact: The government of Prime Minister Nuri al-Maliki has for the
moment lost the support of the Sunni Arabs in parliament. The Sunnis
in his cabinet have resigned. Even some Shiite parties have abandoned
the government. There are new tensions between Shiites and Kurds over
what to do.
8. The US troop surge stopped the civil war that had been raging
between Sunni Arabs and Shiites in the Iraqi capital of Baghdad.
Fact: The civil war in Baghdad escalated during the US troop
escalation. Between January, 2007, and July, 2007, Baghdad went from
65% Shiite to 75% Shiite. UN polling among Iraqi refugees in Syria
suggests that 78% are from Baghdad and that nearly a million refugees
relocated to Syria from Iraq in 2007 alone. This data suggests that
over 700,000 residents of Baghdad have fled this city of 6 million
during the US 'surge,' or more than 10 percent of the capital's
population. Among the primary effects of the 'surge' has been to turn
Baghdad into an overwhelmingly Shiite city and to displace hundreds of
thousands of Iraqis from the capital.
7. Myth: Iran was supplying explosively formed projectiles (a deadly
form of roadside bomb) to Salafi Jihadi (radical Sunni) guerrilla
groups in Iraq.
Fact: Iran has not been proved to have sent weapons to any Iraqi
guerrillas at all. It certainly would not send weapons to those who
have a raging hostility toward Shiites. (Iran may have supplied war
materiel to its client, the Supreme Islamic Council of Iraq (ISCI),
which was then sold off from warehouses because of graft, going on the
arms market and being bought by guerrillas and militiamen.
6. Myth: The US overthrow of the Baath regime and military occupation
of Iraq has helped liberate Iraqi women.
Fact: Iraqi women have suffered significant reversals of status,
ability to circulate freely, and economic situation under the Bush
administration.
5. Myth: Some progress has been made by the Iraqi government in
meeting the "benchmarks" worked out with the Bush administration.
Fact: in the words of Democratic Senator Carl Levin, "Those
legislative benchmarks include approving a hydrocarbon law, approving
a debaathification law, completing the work of a constitutional review
committee, and holding provincial elections. Those commitments, made 1
1/2 years ago, which were to have been completed by January of 2007,
have not yet been kept by the Iraqi political leaders despite the
breathing space the surge has provided."
4. Myth: The Sunni Arab "Awakening Councils," who are on the US
payroll, are reconciling with the Shiite government of PM Nuri
al-Maliki even as they take on al-Qaeda remnants.
Fact: In interviews with the Western press, Awakening Council
tribesmen often speak of attacking the Shiites after they have
polished off al-Qaeda.
3. Myth: The Iraqi north is relatively quiet and a site of economic
growth.
Fact: The subterranean battle among Kurds, Turkmen and Arabs for
control of the oil-rich Kirkuk province makes the Iraqi north a
political mine field. Kurdistan now also hosts the Kurdish Workers
Party (PKK) guerrillas that sneak over the border and kill Turkish
troops. The north is so unstable that the Iraqi south is now
undergoing regular bombing raids from Turkey.
2. Myth: Iraq has been "calm" in fall of 2007.
Fact: in the past 6 weeks, there have been an average of 600 attacks a
month, or 20 a day, which has held steady since the beginning of
November. About 600 civilians are being killed in direct political
violence per month, but that number excludes deaths of soldiers and
police.
1. Myth: The reduction in violence in Iraq is mostly because of the
escalation in the number of US troops, or "surge."
Fact: Although violence has been reduced in Iraq, much of the
reduction did not take place because of US troop activity. Guerrilla
attacks in al-Anbar Province were reduced from 400 a week to 100 a
week between July, 2006 and July, 2007. But there was no significant
US troop escalation in al-Anbar. Likewise, attacks on British troops
in Basra have declined precipitously since they were moved out to the
airport away from population centers. But this change had nothing to
do with US troops.
From: Juan Cole
Date: Dec 25, 2007 11:48 PM
Subject: [infoco] [Informed Comment] Top Ten Myths about Iraq 2007
10. Myth: The US public no longer sees Iraq as a central issue in the
2008 presidential campaign.
In a recent ABC News/ Washington Post poll, Iraq and the economy were
virtually tied among voters nationally, with nearly a quarter of
voters in each case saying it was their number one issue. The economy
had become more important to them than in previous months (in November
only 14% said it was their most pressing concern), but Iraq still
rivals it as an issue!
9. Myth: There have been steps toward religious and political
reconciliation in Iraq in 2007.
Fact: The government of Prime Minister Nuri al-Maliki has for the
moment lost the support of the Sunni Arabs in parliament. The Sunnis
in his cabinet have resigned. Even some Shiite parties have abandoned
the government. There are new tensions between Shiites and Kurds over
what to do.
8. The US troop surge stopped the civil war that had been raging
between Sunni Arabs and Shiites in the Iraqi capital of Baghdad.
Fact: The civil war in Baghdad escalated during the US troop
escalation. Between January, 2007, and July, 2007, Baghdad went from
65% Shiite to 75% Shiite. UN polling among Iraqi refugees in Syria
suggests that 78% are from Baghdad and that nearly a million refugees
relocated to Syria from Iraq in 2007 alone. This data suggests that
over 700,000 residents of Baghdad have fled this city of 6 million
during the US 'surge,' or more than 10 percent of the capital's
population. Among the primary effects of the 'surge' has been to turn
Baghdad into an overwhelmingly Shiite city and to displace hundreds of
thousands of Iraqis from the capital.
7. Myth: Iran was supplying explosively formed projectiles (a deadly
form of roadside bomb) to Salafi Jihadi (radical Sunni) guerrilla
groups in Iraq.
Fact: Iran has not been proved to have sent weapons to any Iraqi
guerrillas at all. It certainly would not send weapons to those who
have a raging hostility toward Shiites. (Iran may have supplied war
materiel to its client, the Supreme Islamic Council of Iraq (ISCI),
which was then sold off from warehouses because of graft, going on the
arms market and being bought by guerrillas and militiamen.
6. Myth: The US overthrow of the Baath regime and military occupation
of Iraq has helped liberate Iraqi women.
Fact: Iraqi women have suffered significant reversals of status,
ability to circulate freely, and economic situation under the Bush
administration.
5. Myth: Some progress has been made by the Iraqi government in
meeting the "benchmarks" worked out with the Bush administration.
Fact: in the words of Democratic Senator Carl Levin, "Those
legislative benchmarks include approving a hydrocarbon law, approving
a debaathification law, completing the work of a constitutional review
committee, and holding provincial elections. Those commitments, made 1
1/2 years ago, which were to have been completed by January of 2007,
have not yet been kept by the Iraqi political leaders despite the
breathing space the surge has provided."
4. Myth: The Sunni Arab "Awakening Councils," who are on the US
payroll, are reconciling with the Shiite government of PM Nuri
al-Maliki even as they take on al-Qaeda remnants.
Fact: In interviews with the Western press, Awakening Council
tribesmen often speak of attacking the Shiites after they have
polished off al-Qaeda.
3. Myth: The Iraqi north is relatively quiet and a site of economic
growth.
Fact: The subterranean battle among Kurds, Turkmen and Arabs for
control of the oil-rich Kirkuk province makes the Iraqi north a
political mine field. Kurdistan now also hosts the Kurdish Workers
Party (PKK) guerrillas that sneak over the border and kill Turkish
troops. The north is so unstable that the Iraqi south is now
undergoing regular bombing raids from Turkey.
2. Myth: Iraq has been "calm" in fall of 2007.
Fact: in the past 6 weeks, there have been an average of 600 attacks a
month, or 20 a day, which has held steady since the beginning of
November. About 600 civilians are being killed in direct political
violence per month, but that number excludes deaths of soldiers and
police.
1. Myth: The reduction in violence in Iraq is mostly because of the
escalation in the number of US troops, or "surge."
Fact: Although violence has been reduced in Iraq, much of the
reduction did not take place because of US troop activity. Guerrilla
attacks in al-Anbar Province were reduced from 400 a week to 100 a
week between July, 2006 and July, 2007. But there was no significant
US troop escalation in al-Anbar. Likewise, attacks on British troops
in Basra have declined precipitously since they were moved out to the
airport away from population centers. But this change had nothing to
do with US troops.
Africom and the new scramble for Africa
This is a very interesting analytical article on the increased attention being given to Africa in US foreign policy and the competition between China and the US for oil in Africa. The article is from the Tehran Times but there is no information about the author.
December 24, 2007
Africom and the new scramble for Africa
By Jean Damu
The recent unveiling of Africom by the Bush administration is the clearest indicator yet of the military establishment’s continued ascendancy over the State Department in formulation and implementation of foreign policy, a trajectory that began soon after the conclusion of World War II.
The great contradiction within this trajectory is that as modern military establishments become more technological and exert greater political influence, they become less relevant to modern warfare as can be seen in Iraq, where a $3 million tank proves to be tactically worthless against a $15 IED (improvised explosive devise).
The creation of Africom also reflects contemporary concerns in Washington about the United States’ sustained access to, what many believe to be, dwindling global supplies of oil. Africom is a vital link in the huge military apparatus that provides “national security”.
Significantly, Cindy Courville, Washington’s ambassador to the African Union, formerly presided over the Africa desk at the Pentagon.
Furthermore, the long-running discussion within the Pentagon focused on Africa, most notably within the Army, suggests Africom, among other things, will be used to promote policies of “imperialist assimilation”, is predicated upon there being little if any resistance from the Congressional Black Caucus, and ultimately envisions reconfiguring the map of Africa in the interests of the U.S.
But during a recent television interview, newly minted four-star General William “Kip” Ward, the commanding officer of the Africa Command, said none of this. He placated the willingly naive interviewer, Charlie Rose, with the standard public information office nonsense.
General Ward, a man who creates the appearance of someone profoundly ignorant of anything having to do with Africa, portrayed Africom as little more than a Rotary International with guns.
Africom’s role, he said, will include working with national armies to “professionalize” their security forces, it will help keep the region free of weapons of mass destruction, will promote governance that is humane, managerially competent and accountable, will aid in providing information and warning, and will help to maintain an un-threatened natural environment.
The only problem being, these missions already are being carried out through various military organizations, most notably the Africa Center for Strategic Studies at Fort McNair and various regional alliances, such as the Trans-Saharan Counter-Terrorism Initiative and the African Contingency Operations Training Program.
In addition to this, by the end of 2007 the U.S. will have conducted joint military training exercises with 46 of the 53 countries of Africa.
The Pentagon also operates a military base in Djibouti on the Horn of Africa (from which U.S. Army personnel were dispatched earlier this year to aid in the Ethiopian intervention in Somalia). It maintains an extensive military presence in Uganda. From there, various military adventures are launched in all directions including into Central Africa and Sudan. It was from Uganda that the U.S. aided in the destabilization of Rwanda, which resulted in the 1994 genocide.
It is these numerous military relationships, designed to shape African militaries into reflections and appendages of the Pentagon, from which notions of imperialist assimilation flow.
This strategy is relevant to Africa in general because colonialism left most sub-Saharan African nations with relatively weak or undeveloped modern social structures in terms of national businesses and student and trade union class sectors of the populations.
The military therefore became the dominant social institution under independence and is seen by the outside world as the class with the most political power, if it chooses to exercises it.
So why Africom and why now?
Two reasons mostly.
In February of 2007, while it apparently escaped the attention of the mainstream media, oil imports to the U.S. from sub-Saharan Africa surpassed imports from the Middle East. Therefore, major branches of the Pentagon, whose role is often to act as security guards watching over oil deliveries to the U.S., would have to be reconfigured to focus on Africa, which is now a region of vital importance to national security.
The second issue of fundamental concern to the U.S. is the rise of China as a global economic power, rampaging through Africa, consolidating oil and trade agreements there at a pace heretofore unseen and at prices unseen, allowing some African countries to shed themselves of the draconian International Monetary Fund dictates.
It has long been commonly believed the U.S. would never allow the rise of a true competitor, which it now appears China will certainly become. Economic forecasters predict China’s economy will surpass the U.S. by 2040. Africom must be seen as a major countermeasure designed to impede China’s developing relationships with African countries.
However, if there is one single reason, almost equal in weight to all the others, that can be said to explain Africom’s existence -- it has to be the problematic Nigeria, the most prolific provider of Africa’s oil to the U.S., but also what the Defense Department considers to be the world’s largest failed state.
Nigeria is the keystone of the oil-producing countries that border the Gulf of Guinea, which the U.S. now considers to be its private lake. It is that vast expanse of the Atlantic off the coast of West Africa that contains some of the world’s largest reservoirs of oil and natural gas.
Nineteen African countries, most of them oil producers, stretching from Liberia in the north to Angola in the south, either border or have immediate access to the Gulf of Guinea. In 2004, California’s Chevron Corporation completed an oil pipeline that stretches from southern Chad through Cameroon to the Gulf of Guinea, a distance of 1070 kilometers.
“The Gulf of Guinea offshore is one of the most prolific hydrocarbon provinces in the world, with oil and gas discoveries of more than 10 billion barrels and tremendous potential beyond that,” said Dr. Edmund Daukoru, then president of OPEC and currently Nigeria’s Minister of State for Petroleum Resources, speaking at a conference attended by 1200 oil industry executives and technicians last year.
The clear relationship between the creation of Africom and access to oil, natural gas, and other minerals necessary to the energy industry lends credence to the belief by many political analysts that the U.S. is in the midst of a one hundred year, and counting, war for energy.
Quiet in regard to these developments is the Congressional Black Caucus, that forum some in the Pentagon consider the most powerful grouping of Black politicians in the world. In a 1994 research paper written for the Industrial College of the Armed Forces titled “Congressional Black Caucus and American Foreign Policy”, U.S. Army Colonel Renard Marable noted that the CBC is often criticized for only getting involved in foreign affairs when a crisis arises, as in Haiti and Somalia.
The one exception to this norm is the CBC’s involvement with South Africa, but this exception exists largely because of a common language, Marable noted.
In more recent times, New Jersey Congressman Donald Payne, who chairs the House Subcommittee on Africa and Global Health, and California Congresswoman Barbara Lee have been outspoken on Darfur, but as has been noted extensively elsewhere, suspicions abound as to the true nature of the Darfur issue and to the motives of U.S. policy in Sudan. Col. Marable also noted the CBC has never employed a foreign policy specialist to advise the caucus as a whole.
Apparently as a result of not having a sustained focus on foreign policy, specifically as it relates to Africa, with the exception of Payne, who made a brief and tepid statement of qualified criticism of Africom to Voice of America radio, CBC members have not, either individually or as a group, supported the large number of African nations that have rejected and criticized Africom’s formation.
Finally, and closely connected to the issues of Darfur and Sudan as well as much of the rest of the African continent, is the notion of military planners that many of Africa’s problems can be solved by redrawing the map of Africa.
For years, some African scholars, educated in the U.S. and with close ties to the U.S. military, such as the Brookings Institution’s Francis M. Deng, a Sudanese, have long argued that many of the nations of Africa need to be reconfigured along more logical geographic and ethnic lines.
This flies in the face of long-held common wisdom and rejects one of the fundamental underpinnings of the original Organization of African Unity, predecessor of the current African Union. That wisdom held that the national borders at the time of independence were to be inviolate.
With the granting of independence to Eritrea from Ethiopia in 1993, however, the deep thinkers at the Pentagon and its related think tanks took heart. This was the first time since the dawn of African independence in 1957 that a new state had been torn from an old state. Would there, could there be more to come?
In 2005 another opportunity developed when the U.S. helped broker the Comprehensive Peace Agreement in Sudan that provides for a referendum to determine whether southern Sudan, which geographically contains the majority of Sudan’s oil, shall secede from Khartoum.
Though the referendum is not scheduled to be held until 2011, already the U.S. extends to the government of southern Sudan privileges and economic benefits it withholds from the Khartoum government, a policy certain to encourage secession from the north.
If southern Sudan should follow the path of secession, as now seems likely, it is difficult to see how Sudan could not but react militarily to protect its control over the lifeblood of the Sudanese nation, the oilfields.
This then is typical of the long-range objectives of Africom, to use military power, whether U.S. or “assimilated” African militaries’, to help enforce the “democratic” restructuring of Africa, as may take place in Sudan and elsewhere, or to help bolster, by force if necessary, such vital oil producing “failed states” as Nigeria -- all in the name of national security.
December 24, 2007
Africom and the new scramble for Africa
By Jean Damu
The recent unveiling of Africom by the Bush administration is the clearest indicator yet of the military establishment’s continued ascendancy over the State Department in formulation and implementation of foreign policy, a trajectory that began soon after the conclusion of World War II.
The great contradiction within this trajectory is that as modern military establishments become more technological and exert greater political influence, they become less relevant to modern warfare as can be seen in Iraq, where a $3 million tank proves to be tactically worthless against a $15 IED (improvised explosive devise).
The creation of Africom also reflects contemporary concerns in Washington about the United States’ sustained access to, what many believe to be, dwindling global supplies of oil. Africom is a vital link in the huge military apparatus that provides “national security”.
Significantly, Cindy Courville, Washington’s ambassador to the African Union, formerly presided over the Africa desk at the Pentagon.
Furthermore, the long-running discussion within the Pentagon focused on Africa, most notably within the Army, suggests Africom, among other things, will be used to promote policies of “imperialist assimilation”, is predicated upon there being little if any resistance from the Congressional Black Caucus, and ultimately envisions reconfiguring the map of Africa in the interests of the U.S.
But during a recent television interview, newly minted four-star General William “Kip” Ward, the commanding officer of the Africa Command, said none of this. He placated the willingly naive interviewer, Charlie Rose, with the standard public information office nonsense.
General Ward, a man who creates the appearance of someone profoundly ignorant of anything having to do with Africa, portrayed Africom as little more than a Rotary International with guns.
Africom’s role, he said, will include working with national armies to “professionalize” their security forces, it will help keep the region free of weapons of mass destruction, will promote governance that is humane, managerially competent and accountable, will aid in providing information and warning, and will help to maintain an un-threatened natural environment.
The only problem being, these missions already are being carried out through various military organizations, most notably the Africa Center for Strategic Studies at Fort McNair and various regional alliances, such as the Trans-Saharan Counter-Terrorism Initiative and the African Contingency Operations Training Program.
In addition to this, by the end of 2007 the U.S. will have conducted joint military training exercises with 46 of the 53 countries of Africa.
The Pentagon also operates a military base in Djibouti on the Horn of Africa (from which U.S. Army personnel were dispatched earlier this year to aid in the Ethiopian intervention in Somalia). It maintains an extensive military presence in Uganda. From there, various military adventures are launched in all directions including into Central Africa and Sudan. It was from Uganda that the U.S. aided in the destabilization of Rwanda, which resulted in the 1994 genocide.
It is these numerous military relationships, designed to shape African militaries into reflections and appendages of the Pentagon, from which notions of imperialist assimilation flow.
This strategy is relevant to Africa in general because colonialism left most sub-Saharan African nations with relatively weak or undeveloped modern social structures in terms of national businesses and student and trade union class sectors of the populations.
The military therefore became the dominant social institution under independence and is seen by the outside world as the class with the most political power, if it chooses to exercises it.
So why Africom and why now?
Two reasons mostly.
In February of 2007, while it apparently escaped the attention of the mainstream media, oil imports to the U.S. from sub-Saharan Africa surpassed imports from the Middle East. Therefore, major branches of the Pentagon, whose role is often to act as security guards watching over oil deliveries to the U.S., would have to be reconfigured to focus on Africa, which is now a region of vital importance to national security.
The second issue of fundamental concern to the U.S. is the rise of China as a global economic power, rampaging through Africa, consolidating oil and trade agreements there at a pace heretofore unseen and at prices unseen, allowing some African countries to shed themselves of the draconian International Monetary Fund dictates.
It has long been commonly believed the U.S. would never allow the rise of a true competitor, which it now appears China will certainly become. Economic forecasters predict China’s economy will surpass the U.S. by 2040. Africom must be seen as a major countermeasure designed to impede China’s developing relationships with African countries.
However, if there is one single reason, almost equal in weight to all the others, that can be said to explain Africom’s existence -- it has to be the problematic Nigeria, the most prolific provider of Africa’s oil to the U.S., but also what the Defense Department considers to be the world’s largest failed state.
Nigeria is the keystone of the oil-producing countries that border the Gulf of Guinea, which the U.S. now considers to be its private lake. It is that vast expanse of the Atlantic off the coast of West Africa that contains some of the world’s largest reservoirs of oil and natural gas.
Nineteen African countries, most of them oil producers, stretching from Liberia in the north to Angola in the south, either border or have immediate access to the Gulf of Guinea. In 2004, California’s Chevron Corporation completed an oil pipeline that stretches from southern Chad through Cameroon to the Gulf of Guinea, a distance of 1070 kilometers.
“The Gulf of Guinea offshore is one of the most prolific hydrocarbon provinces in the world, with oil and gas discoveries of more than 10 billion barrels and tremendous potential beyond that,” said Dr. Edmund Daukoru, then president of OPEC and currently Nigeria’s Minister of State for Petroleum Resources, speaking at a conference attended by 1200 oil industry executives and technicians last year.
The clear relationship between the creation of Africom and access to oil, natural gas, and other minerals necessary to the energy industry lends credence to the belief by many political analysts that the U.S. is in the midst of a one hundred year, and counting, war for energy.
Quiet in regard to these developments is the Congressional Black Caucus, that forum some in the Pentagon consider the most powerful grouping of Black politicians in the world. In a 1994 research paper written for the Industrial College of the Armed Forces titled “Congressional Black Caucus and American Foreign Policy”, U.S. Army Colonel Renard Marable noted that the CBC is often criticized for only getting involved in foreign affairs when a crisis arises, as in Haiti and Somalia.
The one exception to this norm is the CBC’s involvement with South Africa, but this exception exists largely because of a common language, Marable noted.
In more recent times, New Jersey Congressman Donald Payne, who chairs the House Subcommittee on Africa and Global Health, and California Congresswoman Barbara Lee have been outspoken on Darfur, but as has been noted extensively elsewhere, suspicions abound as to the true nature of the Darfur issue and to the motives of U.S. policy in Sudan. Col. Marable also noted the CBC has never employed a foreign policy specialist to advise the caucus as a whole.
Apparently as a result of not having a sustained focus on foreign policy, specifically as it relates to Africa, with the exception of Payne, who made a brief and tepid statement of qualified criticism of Africom to Voice of America radio, CBC members have not, either individually or as a group, supported the large number of African nations that have rejected and criticized Africom’s formation.
Finally, and closely connected to the issues of Darfur and Sudan as well as much of the rest of the African continent, is the notion of military planners that many of Africa’s problems can be solved by redrawing the map of Africa.
For years, some African scholars, educated in the U.S. and with close ties to the U.S. military, such as the Brookings Institution’s Francis M. Deng, a Sudanese, have long argued that many of the nations of Africa need to be reconfigured along more logical geographic and ethnic lines.
This flies in the face of long-held common wisdom and rejects one of the fundamental underpinnings of the original Organization of African Unity, predecessor of the current African Union. That wisdom held that the national borders at the time of independence were to be inviolate.
With the granting of independence to Eritrea from Ethiopia in 1993, however, the deep thinkers at the Pentagon and its related think tanks took heart. This was the first time since the dawn of African independence in 1957 that a new state had been torn from an old state. Would there, could there be more to come?
In 2005 another opportunity developed when the U.S. helped broker the Comprehensive Peace Agreement in Sudan that provides for a referendum to determine whether southern Sudan, which geographically contains the majority of Sudan’s oil, shall secede from Khartoum.
Though the referendum is not scheduled to be held until 2011, already the U.S. extends to the government of southern Sudan privileges and economic benefits it withholds from the Khartoum government, a policy certain to encourage secession from the north.
If southern Sudan should follow the path of secession, as now seems likely, it is difficult to see how Sudan could not but react militarily to protect its control over the lifeblood of the Sudanese nation, the oilfields.
This then is typical of the long-range objectives of Africom, to use military power, whether U.S. or “assimilated” African militaries’, to help enforce the “democratic” restructuring of Africa, as may take place in Sudan and elsewhere, or to help bolster, by force if necessary, such vital oil producing “failed states” as Nigeria -- all in the name of national security.
Iraq Kurds warn Turkey over raids
This is from the bbc. Interesting that there is no warning to the US which at the very least opened up Iraqi airspace to the Turkish aircraft and probably provided intelligence as well. The Kurds are well aware of US double crosses so maybe they don't feel it is worth commenting upon!
I guess it was impossible to work out a compromise that was acceptable to Turks and Kurds. Certainly the US has been most reluctant until now to sanction Turkish attacks, hoping that the Kurds or Iraqi govt. would act.
Iraq Kurds warn Turkey over raids
The president of the Kurdish region in northern Iraq has warned Turkey to halt its strikes against rebel Kurdish positions in the border area.
Massoud Barzani said he "vehemently condemned" the bombardments, which he said had killed innocent people.
Turkish jets have carried out three strikes on Kurdish targets and one ground foray over the past eight days.
Turkey blames rebels from the Kurdistan Workers' Party (PKK) for launching attacks on Turkey from bases in Iraq.
Ankara approved cross-border raids on PKK bases in October, saying the Iraqi government and its US backers were not doing enough to halt attacks.
Formal complaint
"The bombing targeted safe and secure areas and innocent people," Mr Barzani told a news conference in the northern city of Suleimaniya.
"Several people were either killed or wounded. We held consultations with [Iraqi] President Jalal Talabani and we will continue our consultations with other concerned parties to put an end to these aggressions and put an end to the shelling of villages."
President Talabani - also a Kurd - was standing beside Mr Barzani as he delivered the condemnation.
He said his government had lodged a formal complaint with Turkey - but that he did not want to worsen tensions over the issue.
Turkey's ambassador to Iraq has been summoned to the foreign ministry to hear a formal complaint, reports the BBC's Humphrey Hawkesley in Baghdad.
Up to 10 people are reported to have been killed in the strikes - it is not known whether they are rebels or civilians.
As many as 2,000 people have fled the areas under attack.
US support
In a telephone conversation with Turkish Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan on Monday, US President George W Bush reiterated his backing for Turkey's operations against PKK rebels, said a White House spokesman.
They discussed "the importance of the United States, Turkey and Iraq working together to confront the PKK", said national security spokesman Gordon Johndroe.
The PKK - which is designated a terrorist organisation by Turkey, the US, and the EU - is thought to have about 3,000 rebels based in Iraq.
For decades, it has been fighting for a Kurdish homeland separate from Turkey.
Story from BBC NEWS:
http://news.bbc.co.uk/go/pr/fr/-/2/hi/europe/7159529.stm
Published: 2007/12/24 17:49:08 GMT
© BBC MMVII
I guess it was impossible to work out a compromise that was acceptable to Turks and Kurds. Certainly the US has been most reluctant until now to sanction Turkish attacks, hoping that the Kurds or Iraqi govt. would act.
Iraq Kurds warn Turkey over raids
The president of the Kurdish region in northern Iraq has warned Turkey to halt its strikes against rebel Kurdish positions in the border area.
Massoud Barzani said he "vehemently condemned" the bombardments, which he said had killed innocent people.
Turkish jets have carried out three strikes on Kurdish targets and one ground foray over the past eight days.
Turkey blames rebels from the Kurdistan Workers' Party (PKK) for launching attacks on Turkey from bases in Iraq.
Ankara approved cross-border raids on PKK bases in October, saying the Iraqi government and its US backers were not doing enough to halt attacks.
Formal complaint
"The bombing targeted safe and secure areas and innocent people," Mr Barzani told a news conference in the northern city of Suleimaniya.
"Several people were either killed or wounded. We held consultations with [Iraqi] President Jalal Talabani and we will continue our consultations with other concerned parties to put an end to these aggressions and put an end to the shelling of villages."
President Talabani - also a Kurd - was standing beside Mr Barzani as he delivered the condemnation.
He said his government had lodged a formal complaint with Turkey - but that he did not want to worsen tensions over the issue.
Turkey's ambassador to Iraq has been summoned to the foreign ministry to hear a formal complaint, reports the BBC's Humphrey Hawkesley in Baghdad.
Up to 10 people are reported to have been killed in the strikes - it is not known whether they are rebels or civilians.
As many as 2,000 people have fled the areas under attack.
US support
In a telephone conversation with Turkish Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan on Monday, US President George W Bush reiterated his backing for Turkey's operations against PKK rebels, said a White House spokesman.
They discussed "the importance of the United States, Turkey and Iraq working together to confront the PKK", said national security spokesman Gordon Johndroe.
The PKK - which is designated a terrorist organisation by Turkey, the US, and the EU - is thought to have about 3,000 rebels based in Iraq.
For decades, it has been fighting for a Kurdish homeland separate from Turkey.
Story from BBC NEWS:
http://news.bbc.co.uk/go/pr/fr/-/2/hi/europe/7159529.stm
Published: 2007/12/24 17:49:08 GMT
© BBC MMVII
Monday, December 24, 2007
More Problems in Housing?
Hagerty, James R. 2007. "Price Indexes Will Map Out Spread of 'Negative
Equity."
Wall Street Journal (22 December): p. A 2.
http://online.wsj.com/article/SB119829696940946747.html?mod=todays_us_page_one
"Last March, First American CoreLogic, a housing- and mortgage-data
supplier in
Santa Ana, Calif., calculated that nearly 7% of 32 million U.S.
households studied
as of December 2006 owed more than their homes were worth, based on
computer
estimates of the property values. The homes studied had mortgages
originated in 2004
through 2006, around the peak in the housing market. Since the end of
2006, U.S.
home prices on average have fallen nearly 5%, said Mark Fleming, chief
economist at
the firm. That suggests that about 11% of the homes studied now would
have negative
equity. An additional 5% or so probably have equity of less than 5%.
That doesn't
leave much cushion at a time when prices are still falling and most
economists don't
expect the market to hit bottom for at least another year."
"Economists at Merrill Lynch say home prices are likely to fall 10% in
2008 after
slipping 5% this year. Mark Zandi, chief economist of Moody's
Economy.com, a
research firm in West Chester, Pa., recently forecast that on average
U.S. house
prices will decline about 13% by the second quarter of 2009 from a peak
in the
second quarter of 2006. Declines will be much larger in Florida,
California, Arizona
and Nevada, as well as in the metropolitan areas of Washington, D.C.,
and Detroit,
he said."
Equity."
Wall Street Journal (22 December): p. A 2.
http://online.wsj.com/article/SB119829696940946747.html?mod=todays_us_page_one
"Last March, First American CoreLogic, a housing- and mortgage-data
supplier in
Santa Ana, Calif., calculated that nearly 7% of 32 million U.S.
households studied
as of December 2006 owed more than their homes were worth, based on
computer
estimates of the property values. The homes studied had mortgages
originated in 2004
through 2006, around the peak in the housing market. Since the end of
2006, U.S.
home prices on average have fallen nearly 5%, said Mark Fleming, chief
economist at
the firm. That suggests that about 11% of the homes studied now would
have negative
equity. An additional 5% or so probably have equity of less than 5%.
That doesn't
leave much cushion at a time when prices are still falling and most
economists don't
expect the market to hit bottom for at least another year."
"Economists at Merrill Lynch say home prices are likely to fall 10% in
2008 after
slipping 5% this year. Mark Zandi, chief economist of Moody's
Economy.com, a
research firm in West Chester, Pa., recently forecast that on average
U.S. house
prices will decline about 13% by the second quarter of 2009 from a peak
in the
second quarter of 2006. Declines will be much larger in Florida,
California, Arizona
and Nevada, as well as in the metropolitan areas of Washington, D.C.,
and Detroit,
he said."
The Wages of Intervention
This is from antiwar.com
I almost always enjoy Raimondo's columns. They are provocative and usually well backed up with citations. He is probably my favorite libertarian, the best of the right wingers. On issues such as Iraq his views and those of many of the left coincide except for the substantial portion of the left that supports US imperialism.
Of course Raimondo is anathema to many on the US right!
December 19, 2007
The Wages of Intervention
Kurds snub Condi – that's what we get for our billions and the sacrifices of our soldiers
by Justin Raimondo
I had to laugh when I saw the headline: "Iraq Kurdish leader snubs Rice over Turkey raid." So Condi went all the way to Iraq to resolve this latest crisis in our fast-unraveling Iraqi protectorate, only to be told by Massoud Barzani, president of the Kurdistan autonomous region, the diplomatic equivalent of "go fly a kite." Such are the wages of interventionism: that's what we get for the billions poured into "liberated" Kurdistan over the years, not to mention the lives of our soldiers who fought and died to free Kurdistan from Saddam Hussein.
Yet who can blame the Kurds? After all, we're supposed to be their "liberators," and yet here we are, not merely standing idly by while Turkish warplanes bomb their country, but actively encouraging Ankara's aggression. Oh, the bitter irony! Ah, but that's power politics for you – allies turn into enemies in an instant, and the rule of thumb is to simply ask, "What have you done for me lately?"
Or, in the case of the Kurds, what have you done to me lately? The U.S. and the Kurds, formerly best friends, are on the road to an acrimonious divorce, with the battle over spousal support and custody of the kids bound to be an epic battle.
In this case, I'm betting on the Kurds. No tougher, more intransigent people exist in the entire region: the Kurdish peshmerga, known for their valor, form the backbone of the Iraqi army, such as it is. The historic dream of the Kurdish nationalist movement is the creation of a Greater Kurdistan, of which the establishment of the autonomous "regional government" of Kurdistan is but the first baby step.
Technically, Kurdistan is a province of Iraq, yet it has functioned as a de facto independent state since the establishment of the northern "no fly zone" in 1991. Ever since then, with Saddam cut off from his Kurdish domains, the Kurds have ruled themselves. Though up until this point very pro-American, Kurdistan is not exactly a Jeffersonian republic. The state is controlled by two families – the Barzanis and the Talabanis, who head up the two main political parties – and is a model of crony capitalism. In spite of this, however, Kurdistan is relatively free and has attracted a certain level of investment.
Among the major investors is Hunt Oil, a Texas-based firm that has close ties to the Bush administration, with whom the Kurdistan regional government recently signed contracts. CEO Ray Hunt was the finance chairman of the RNC in 2002 and contributed heavily to Bush's campaigns – not to mention giving a grand total of $350,000 for both Bush inaugural celebrations and raising $35 million for the Bush Library. His reward has been a seat on the President's Foreign Intelligence Advisory Board, an agency that has been a redoubt of neoconservative influence within the administration.
While Ray is the son of H. L. Hunt, the lovable old McCarthyite of the 1950s, whose sponsorship of such groups as the Facts Forum and the John Birch Society gained him notoriety as an ultra-rightist, the son has not exactly followed in his father's footsteps. Old H. L. was an isolationist, who disdained such liberal One-Worlder schemes as foreign aid and overseas meddling: he was mainly concerned about the ascendancy of socialism in America. The younger Hunt, however, has a different, more "modern" orientation, like so many heirs of conservative business fortunes: interventionism is profitable for him and his business interests, as it is for his cronies, such as Dick Cheney, his fellow Halliburton board member.
Aside from the impropriety of Hunt's investment – as a member of the PFIAB, he has access to secret intelligence that is unavailable to his competitors – there is the question of his ties to the CIA. As referenced here, Hunt Oil aircraft were spotted making at least two recent visits to the CIA's Camp Peary training facility. As to what the relationship is, and what advantage the CIA link is to Hunt Oil as a profit-making enterprise, I'll leave to the reader's imagination. Suffice to say that the connections of U.S. intelligence agencies to Kurdish rebel groups, not only on the Turkish-Iraqi border but within Iraq proper, are known, at least in general outline.
The Kurdish Workers Party (PKK), the main Kurdish group carrying out terrorist attacks on Turkish civilian and military targets, has long operated with impunity inside Iraq, in the territory controlled by the Kurdish regional government. In 2003, the detention of Turkish soldiers by U.S. troops – captured when they crossed the border with Iraq in hot pursuit of PKK terrorists – underscored the developing rupture with Washington. The Turks, who were once among the firmest of America's allies in the region, began to fall out out of favor in Washington, on account of their efforts to reach out to Iran and Syria and contain the consequences of the Iraqi breakup. Their refusal to let the U.S. use Turkish territory as a launching pad for the invasion didn't help relations, either.
Turkey, Iran, and Syria have one thing in common, and that is substantial – and fairly radicalized – Kurdish minorities, with active guerrilla groups in the first two, and sporadic reports of Kurdish unrest in Syria. That they are beginning to coordinate their efforts to tamp down Kurdish separatist activities comes as no surprise. This is yet more blowback from the invasion and breakup of Iraq. However, the Turkish-Syrian-Iranian rapprochement has provoked the wrath of the Israel lobby in Washington, and this was a key factor in getting the Armenian genocide resolution through Congress, which further alienated Ankara.
Rice's mission to Iraq was designed to showcase the alleged reduction in violence that is supposed to be due to the surge, yet her visit merely underscored the fragility of the U.S. position and the prospects for a rapid disintegration. Turkish forces drove into the northern part of Iraq just as the American secretary of state was in Kirkuk. The Kurds claim the city as their historic "Jerusalem," and it is the epicenter of an internal political struggle between Arabs and Kurds, characterized by ethnic cleansing and methods utilized by the Kurdish ultra-nationalists that can only be termed terroristic.
Kirkuk is the historic center of Iraq's oil industry, and control of the city and surrounding countryside is a key goal of the Kurds. A referendum to decide who has jurisdiction was scheduled for this year but had to be postponed because of a political deadlock in the Iraqi parliament. The Kurds have gone ahead and signed oil contracts, however, not only with Hunt Oil but with companies in the UK, Belgium, France, and Korea. The Iraqi oil ministry, however, says these contracts are null and void. In short, a conflict is brewing – and it won't be very long before it shatters the "peace" of the surge.
Although I don't know all the details, it seems to me that the current Kurdish brouhaha is reminiscent of what happened with Ahmed Chalabi, the neocon with nine lives. Chalabi, you'll remember, was the darling of the neoconservatives, who touted him as the George Washington of Iraq and gave him the kind of credibility that would later prove so mistaken – and so costly. He was, however, hated by the CIA, which rightly considered him a charlatan, a thief, and perhaps worse. As long as Chalabi was useful to U.S. policymakers, he was kept on retainer and supplied with all sorts of assistance; the minute he was not useful and the faction supporting him had fallen into disrepute, the CIA raided his Iraqi compound and spread the story that he was working for the Iranians.
The same pattern repeats itself with the Kurds, who were initially protected by U.S. warplanes and then lavishly funded after the invasion. There seems little doubt that U.S. military supplies intended for the Iraqi police and Kurdish military units somehow fell into the hands of the PKK and groups such as Pejak, the anti-Iranian Kurdish military force that is essentially the same organization as the PKK. Now that covert operations carried out by the U.S. government – or elements of it – have backfired and caused a real rift with the Turks, Rice has been dispatched to the region to patch things up. Yet there is little she can do about it at this point.
With one hand the U.S. government wreaks damage to its own interests, while the other hand is employed to clean up the mess. The Turks say they are using U.S. intelligence as well as acting with Washington's full approval, and no doubt they find the former quite useful: after all, their American overseers have every reason to know where the Kurdish guerrillas are and how they operate. As for rooting them out – again, I'm betting on the Kurds…
The invasion and occupation of Iraq has unleashed forces over which we have absolutely no control, and perhaps the most potentially destructive, if not the most potent, is Kurdish nationalism – which, in the present context, means Kurdish expansionism. Nor are the Kurds without allies in the region: the Israelis have cultivated the Kurds, arming and training their peshmerga and making significant economic investments, as reported by Seymour Hersh. The idea is to use the Kurds as a source of intelligence and to pinprick the Iranians. U.S. intervention on the side of the Turks means that the Americans are directly confronting Israeli interests in Kurdistan – yet another sign of a developing rupture in the much-vaunted "special relationship."
The wages of intervention are paltry indeed: we get the dubious satisfaction, in our self-appointed role as world "leader," of arbitrating ancient feuds and fresh conflicts constantly erupting in every part of the globe – and when it comes to Mesopotamia, there is no paucity of historic vendettas. As U.S. troops are increasingly caught in the crossfire between Shi'ites and Sunnis, Kurds and Turks, the Israelis and nearly everyone else, at some point the American people are going to wake up and say: "Enough! We don't want a single U.S. soldier to die for a 'Greater Kurdistan' or a unitary Iraqi state – because it's none of our business, after all."
Find this article at:
http://www.antiwar.com/justin/?articleid=12076
Copyright 2007 Antiwar.com
I almost always enjoy Raimondo's columns. They are provocative and usually well backed up with citations. He is probably my favorite libertarian, the best of the right wingers. On issues such as Iraq his views and those of many of the left coincide except for the substantial portion of the left that supports US imperialism.
Of course Raimondo is anathema to many on the US right!
December 19, 2007
The Wages of Intervention
Kurds snub Condi – that's what we get for our billions and the sacrifices of our soldiers
by Justin Raimondo
I had to laugh when I saw the headline: "Iraq Kurdish leader snubs Rice over Turkey raid." So Condi went all the way to Iraq to resolve this latest crisis in our fast-unraveling Iraqi protectorate, only to be told by Massoud Barzani, president of the Kurdistan autonomous region, the diplomatic equivalent of "go fly a kite." Such are the wages of interventionism: that's what we get for the billions poured into "liberated" Kurdistan over the years, not to mention the lives of our soldiers who fought and died to free Kurdistan from Saddam Hussein.
Yet who can blame the Kurds? After all, we're supposed to be their "liberators," and yet here we are, not merely standing idly by while Turkish warplanes bomb their country, but actively encouraging Ankara's aggression. Oh, the bitter irony! Ah, but that's power politics for you – allies turn into enemies in an instant, and the rule of thumb is to simply ask, "What have you done for me lately?"
Or, in the case of the Kurds, what have you done to me lately? The U.S. and the Kurds, formerly best friends, are on the road to an acrimonious divorce, with the battle over spousal support and custody of the kids bound to be an epic battle.
In this case, I'm betting on the Kurds. No tougher, more intransigent people exist in the entire region: the Kurdish peshmerga, known for their valor, form the backbone of the Iraqi army, such as it is. The historic dream of the Kurdish nationalist movement is the creation of a Greater Kurdistan, of which the establishment of the autonomous "regional government" of Kurdistan is but the first baby step.
Technically, Kurdistan is a province of Iraq, yet it has functioned as a de facto independent state since the establishment of the northern "no fly zone" in 1991. Ever since then, with Saddam cut off from his Kurdish domains, the Kurds have ruled themselves. Though up until this point very pro-American, Kurdistan is not exactly a Jeffersonian republic. The state is controlled by two families – the Barzanis and the Talabanis, who head up the two main political parties – and is a model of crony capitalism. In spite of this, however, Kurdistan is relatively free and has attracted a certain level of investment.
Among the major investors is Hunt Oil, a Texas-based firm that has close ties to the Bush administration, with whom the Kurdistan regional government recently signed contracts. CEO Ray Hunt was the finance chairman of the RNC in 2002 and contributed heavily to Bush's campaigns – not to mention giving a grand total of $350,000 for both Bush inaugural celebrations and raising $35 million for the Bush Library. His reward has been a seat on the President's Foreign Intelligence Advisory Board, an agency that has been a redoubt of neoconservative influence within the administration.
While Ray is the son of H. L. Hunt, the lovable old McCarthyite of the 1950s, whose sponsorship of such groups as the Facts Forum and the John Birch Society gained him notoriety as an ultra-rightist, the son has not exactly followed in his father's footsteps. Old H. L. was an isolationist, who disdained such liberal One-Worlder schemes as foreign aid and overseas meddling: he was mainly concerned about the ascendancy of socialism in America. The younger Hunt, however, has a different, more "modern" orientation, like so many heirs of conservative business fortunes: interventionism is profitable for him and his business interests, as it is for his cronies, such as Dick Cheney, his fellow Halliburton board member.
Aside from the impropriety of Hunt's investment – as a member of the PFIAB, he has access to secret intelligence that is unavailable to his competitors – there is the question of his ties to the CIA. As referenced here, Hunt Oil aircraft were spotted making at least two recent visits to the CIA's Camp Peary training facility. As to what the relationship is, and what advantage the CIA link is to Hunt Oil as a profit-making enterprise, I'll leave to the reader's imagination. Suffice to say that the connections of U.S. intelligence agencies to Kurdish rebel groups, not only on the Turkish-Iraqi border but within Iraq proper, are known, at least in general outline.
The Kurdish Workers Party (PKK), the main Kurdish group carrying out terrorist attacks on Turkish civilian and military targets, has long operated with impunity inside Iraq, in the territory controlled by the Kurdish regional government. In 2003, the detention of Turkish soldiers by U.S. troops – captured when they crossed the border with Iraq in hot pursuit of PKK terrorists – underscored the developing rupture with Washington. The Turks, who were once among the firmest of America's allies in the region, began to fall out out of favor in Washington, on account of their efforts to reach out to Iran and Syria and contain the consequences of the Iraqi breakup. Their refusal to let the U.S. use Turkish territory as a launching pad for the invasion didn't help relations, either.
Turkey, Iran, and Syria have one thing in common, and that is substantial – and fairly radicalized – Kurdish minorities, with active guerrilla groups in the first two, and sporadic reports of Kurdish unrest in Syria. That they are beginning to coordinate their efforts to tamp down Kurdish separatist activities comes as no surprise. This is yet more blowback from the invasion and breakup of Iraq. However, the Turkish-Syrian-Iranian rapprochement has provoked the wrath of the Israel lobby in Washington, and this was a key factor in getting the Armenian genocide resolution through Congress, which further alienated Ankara.
Rice's mission to Iraq was designed to showcase the alleged reduction in violence that is supposed to be due to the surge, yet her visit merely underscored the fragility of the U.S. position and the prospects for a rapid disintegration. Turkish forces drove into the northern part of Iraq just as the American secretary of state was in Kirkuk. The Kurds claim the city as their historic "Jerusalem," and it is the epicenter of an internal political struggle between Arabs and Kurds, characterized by ethnic cleansing and methods utilized by the Kurdish ultra-nationalists that can only be termed terroristic.
Kirkuk is the historic center of Iraq's oil industry, and control of the city and surrounding countryside is a key goal of the Kurds. A referendum to decide who has jurisdiction was scheduled for this year but had to be postponed because of a political deadlock in the Iraqi parliament. The Kurds have gone ahead and signed oil contracts, however, not only with Hunt Oil but with companies in the UK, Belgium, France, and Korea. The Iraqi oil ministry, however, says these contracts are null and void. In short, a conflict is brewing – and it won't be very long before it shatters the "peace" of the surge.
Although I don't know all the details, it seems to me that the current Kurdish brouhaha is reminiscent of what happened with Ahmed Chalabi, the neocon with nine lives. Chalabi, you'll remember, was the darling of the neoconservatives, who touted him as the George Washington of Iraq and gave him the kind of credibility that would later prove so mistaken – and so costly. He was, however, hated by the CIA, which rightly considered him a charlatan, a thief, and perhaps worse. As long as Chalabi was useful to U.S. policymakers, he was kept on retainer and supplied with all sorts of assistance; the minute he was not useful and the faction supporting him had fallen into disrepute, the CIA raided his Iraqi compound and spread the story that he was working for the Iranians.
The same pattern repeats itself with the Kurds, who were initially protected by U.S. warplanes and then lavishly funded after the invasion. There seems little doubt that U.S. military supplies intended for the Iraqi police and Kurdish military units somehow fell into the hands of the PKK and groups such as Pejak, the anti-Iranian Kurdish military force that is essentially the same organization as the PKK. Now that covert operations carried out by the U.S. government – or elements of it – have backfired and caused a real rift with the Turks, Rice has been dispatched to the region to patch things up. Yet there is little she can do about it at this point.
With one hand the U.S. government wreaks damage to its own interests, while the other hand is employed to clean up the mess. The Turks say they are using U.S. intelligence as well as acting with Washington's full approval, and no doubt they find the former quite useful: after all, their American overseers have every reason to know where the Kurdish guerrillas are and how they operate. As for rooting them out – again, I'm betting on the Kurds…
The invasion and occupation of Iraq has unleashed forces over which we have absolutely no control, and perhaps the most potentially destructive, if not the most potent, is Kurdish nationalism – which, in the present context, means Kurdish expansionism. Nor are the Kurds without allies in the region: the Israelis have cultivated the Kurds, arming and training their peshmerga and making significant economic investments, as reported by Seymour Hersh. The idea is to use the Kurds as a source of intelligence and to pinprick the Iranians. U.S. intervention on the side of the Turks means that the Americans are directly confronting Israeli interests in Kurdistan – yet another sign of a developing rupture in the much-vaunted "special relationship."
The wages of intervention are paltry indeed: we get the dubious satisfaction, in our self-appointed role as world "leader," of arbitrating ancient feuds and fresh conflicts constantly erupting in every part of the globe – and when it comes to Mesopotamia, there is no paucity of historic vendettas. As U.S. troops are increasingly caught in the crossfire between Shi'ites and Sunnis, Kurds and Turks, the Israelis and nearly everyone else, at some point the American people are going to wake up and say: "Enough! We don't want a single U.S. soldier to die for a 'Greater Kurdistan' or a unitary Iraqi state – because it's none of our business, after all."
Find this article at:
http://www.antiwar.com/justin/?articleid=12076
Copyright 2007 Antiwar.com
Corporate oil giants scramble to plunder Iraq's energy reserves
This is from the World Socialist website. The oil law still seems stuck in parliament but the oil companies are making an end run around the missing law as this article shows. There still is improper metering of exported oil and no doubt much of it is going who knows where. I am surprised that the Oil Union goes along with the technical services contracts. Anyway under the Hussein law they are not recognised!
Corporate oil giants scramble to plunder Iraq’s energy reserves
By James Cogan
18 December 2007
When Iraqi Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki finally sent the so-called “oil law” to be passed by the parliament in July, George Bush phoned to congratulate him personally. Maliki’s failure to push the legislation through had been a source of growing frustration and anger in Washington for more than a year. The law was needed to legitimise one of the main aims of the illegal US invasion of Iraq—to allow foreign corporations to assume control over the country’s state-owned energy resources on the most lucrative of terms.
Bush’s congratulations—made on behalf of the major oil corporations and their share-holders—were premature however. The rival Shiite, Sunni and Kurdish factions of the Iraqi ruling elite have still not agreed on the legislation due to their bitter and increasingly intractable differences over how to divide the revenues that would flow to the Baghdad government. Five months after the law was sent for ratification, it is still tied up in debates within a parliamentary committee, with few indications as to when, or in what form, it will be passed.
Faced with US demands for the opening up of the oil industry, the Maliki government, with Washington’s support, has turned to a desperate ploy to circumvent the parliamentary impasse. In a bizarre twist, US-based oil companies are being asked to invest in Iraq on contracts that legally rest on the pre-invasion laws of Saddam Hussein’s Baathist regime. The Baghdad government is offering transnationals what oil minister Hussain al-Shahristrani described to UPI (United Press International) earlier this month as “technical support contracts” over some of the country’s largest oilfields. These contracts involve corporations being paid to operate or manage oilfields, rather than having long term control or a share in the profits.
By contrast, the stymied oil law, which was largely ghost written by US oil interests, would legalise production sharing agreements (PSAs), a one-sided contractual arrangement that gives oilfield operators all revenues until they have paid their costs as well as a fixed ratio of all profits. Iraqi PSAs were expected to guarantee as much as 20 percent of all profits to the operating companies for terms as long as 30 to 40 years, while formally leaving “ownership” of the oil and gas in the hands of the “Iraqi people”.
Without PSAs, Steve Peacock, a representative of British Petroleum (BP), told Oil and Gas News Magazine last month that major companies would move into Iraq “if the terms compensate for the skills, tools and experience that international oil companies bring to the table”. Peacock stated: “There are many forms of contract that can find that sweet spot in the middle.”
The exact terms of the “technical support contracts” are not known. The extent of interest being expressed, however, suggests that the transnationals are being offered a very sweet deal, combined with the longer-term promise of a lucrative PSA once the new legislation is enacted. As well, they have been given a promise of industrial peace from the Iraqi Federation of Oil Unions, which had called strikes against the proposed oil law. The union has agreed to allow transnationals into the oil industry under the support contracts.
The focus of contract offerings is southern Iraq, where between 60-70 percent of the country’s proven oil reserves are located. The area is firmly under the political control of the Shiite parties that dominate Maliki government.
BP is seeking a contract for the major Rumailia field on the border of Basra and Kuwait, one of the country’s largest. Chevron and Total have done preparatory work to take over operations of the Majnoon field near the Iraq-Iran border. UPI’s sources indicate that ConocoPhillips is seeking a contract for the West Qurna field near Basra, which has reserves of some 14 billion barrels. ExxonMobil is looking at the Zubair field, also located near Basra.
Royal Dutch Shell and the Australian-South African corporation BHP-Billiton are seeking a contract in the Missan fields in Amara province. An Iraqi official told Oil and Gas News Magazine that Shell would be paid to “help in providing new techniques to increase production as well as buying equipment for the field’s redevelopment”.
The Bush administration and the Maliki government are both seeking to dramatically boost Iraqi oil production. Shahristrani, who is considered a political representative of the leading Shiite cleric Ayatollah Ali al-Sistani, outlined plans last month to increase oil production from 2.5 million barrels per day to at least three million by the end of 2008, and to six million within a decade.
The major oil companies would be the primary beneficiaries but a rise in production would also boost the ability of the Iraqi government to contribute to the upkeep of US occupation forces. As well, it would generate a substantial flow of wealth to the Shiite elite after decades of being marginalised by the former Baathist regime.
Controversially, companies are also seeking a role in the northern Kirkuk field, Iraq’s oldest and the subject of a bitter territorial conflict between the Baghdad government and the Kurdish Regional Government (KRG) which functions as an autonomous state in northern Iraq. According to UPI, Royal Dutch Shell has been conducting technical studies of the Kirkuk field since 2005 and wants a contract. Production is currently as low as 200,000 barrels per day, compared with an estimated potential output of a million barrels.
The KRG is demanding a referendum in Kirkuk province to decide if it will become part of the Kurdish region—which would give the KRG jurisdiction over the oil fields. Fearful that the central government will sign deals for the Kirkuk field, the KRG has denounced Shahristrani’s offerings of contracts under the old Baathist laws as illegitimate.
While denouncing Shahristrani’s offerings, however, the KRG is proceeding to sign its own contracts on the basis of a regional oil law passed unilaterally in August. At least 20 PSAs have been entered into with international oil companies to develop untapped oil fields in the Kurdish north. The KRG’s aim is to attract more than $10 billion in investment and push production in the north up to a million barrels per day over the next five years.
The US State Department has generally discouraged US-based firms entering into PSAs with the KRG. There are concerns throughout the Middle East that the development of the northern Iraqi oil industry would enable the KRG to gain sufficient economic and political clout to begin openly calling for the formation of a greater “Kurdistan” including Kurdish areas in Turkey, Syria and Iran. Turkey, in particular, has issued veiled threats it would militarily act to prevent Kirkuk oil coming under the KRG’s sway.
Shahristrani, on the behalf the Iraqi government, has labelled the Kurdish contracts as “illegal”. As a consequence, the world’s major oil companies have been reluctant to enter into arrangements with the KRG so as to not disrupt relations with the Maliki government and hinder their access to the southern oil fields.
The sordid wrangling between factions of the Iraqi elite underscores the fact that the various competing “oil laws” are to legitimise corporate profiteering on a vast scale under a US-led occupation that is completely illegitimate and illegal.
Corporate oil giants scramble to plunder Iraq’s energy reserves
By James Cogan
18 December 2007
When Iraqi Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki finally sent the so-called “oil law” to be passed by the parliament in July, George Bush phoned to congratulate him personally. Maliki’s failure to push the legislation through had been a source of growing frustration and anger in Washington for more than a year. The law was needed to legitimise one of the main aims of the illegal US invasion of Iraq—to allow foreign corporations to assume control over the country’s state-owned energy resources on the most lucrative of terms.
Bush’s congratulations—made on behalf of the major oil corporations and their share-holders—were premature however. The rival Shiite, Sunni and Kurdish factions of the Iraqi ruling elite have still not agreed on the legislation due to their bitter and increasingly intractable differences over how to divide the revenues that would flow to the Baghdad government. Five months after the law was sent for ratification, it is still tied up in debates within a parliamentary committee, with few indications as to when, or in what form, it will be passed.
Faced with US demands for the opening up of the oil industry, the Maliki government, with Washington’s support, has turned to a desperate ploy to circumvent the parliamentary impasse. In a bizarre twist, US-based oil companies are being asked to invest in Iraq on contracts that legally rest on the pre-invasion laws of Saddam Hussein’s Baathist regime. The Baghdad government is offering transnationals what oil minister Hussain al-Shahristrani described to UPI (United Press International) earlier this month as “technical support contracts” over some of the country’s largest oilfields. These contracts involve corporations being paid to operate or manage oilfields, rather than having long term control or a share in the profits.
By contrast, the stymied oil law, which was largely ghost written by US oil interests, would legalise production sharing agreements (PSAs), a one-sided contractual arrangement that gives oilfield operators all revenues until they have paid their costs as well as a fixed ratio of all profits. Iraqi PSAs were expected to guarantee as much as 20 percent of all profits to the operating companies for terms as long as 30 to 40 years, while formally leaving “ownership” of the oil and gas in the hands of the “Iraqi people”.
Without PSAs, Steve Peacock, a representative of British Petroleum (BP), told Oil and Gas News Magazine last month that major companies would move into Iraq “if the terms compensate for the skills, tools and experience that international oil companies bring to the table”. Peacock stated: “There are many forms of contract that can find that sweet spot in the middle.”
The exact terms of the “technical support contracts” are not known. The extent of interest being expressed, however, suggests that the transnationals are being offered a very sweet deal, combined with the longer-term promise of a lucrative PSA once the new legislation is enacted. As well, they have been given a promise of industrial peace from the Iraqi Federation of Oil Unions, which had called strikes against the proposed oil law. The union has agreed to allow transnationals into the oil industry under the support contracts.
The focus of contract offerings is southern Iraq, where between 60-70 percent of the country’s proven oil reserves are located. The area is firmly under the political control of the Shiite parties that dominate Maliki government.
BP is seeking a contract for the major Rumailia field on the border of Basra and Kuwait, one of the country’s largest. Chevron and Total have done preparatory work to take over operations of the Majnoon field near the Iraq-Iran border. UPI’s sources indicate that ConocoPhillips is seeking a contract for the West Qurna field near Basra, which has reserves of some 14 billion barrels. ExxonMobil is looking at the Zubair field, also located near Basra.
Royal Dutch Shell and the Australian-South African corporation BHP-Billiton are seeking a contract in the Missan fields in Amara province. An Iraqi official told Oil and Gas News Magazine that Shell would be paid to “help in providing new techniques to increase production as well as buying equipment for the field’s redevelopment”.
The Bush administration and the Maliki government are both seeking to dramatically boost Iraqi oil production. Shahristrani, who is considered a political representative of the leading Shiite cleric Ayatollah Ali al-Sistani, outlined plans last month to increase oil production from 2.5 million barrels per day to at least three million by the end of 2008, and to six million within a decade.
The major oil companies would be the primary beneficiaries but a rise in production would also boost the ability of the Iraqi government to contribute to the upkeep of US occupation forces. As well, it would generate a substantial flow of wealth to the Shiite elite after decades of being marginalised by the former Baathist regime.
Controversially, companies are also seeking a role in the northern Kirkuk field, Iraq’s oldest and the subject of a bitter territorial conflict between the Baghdad government and the Kurdish Regional Government (KRG) which functions as an autonomous state in northern Iraq. According to UPI, Royal Dutch Shell has been conducting technical studies of the Kirkuk field since 2005 and wants a contract. Production is currently as low as 200,000 barrels per day, compared with an estimated potential output of a million barrels.
The KRG is demanding a referendum in Kirkuk province to decide if it will become part of the Kurdish region—which would give the KRG jurisdiction over the oil fields. Fearful that the central government will sign deals for the Kirkuk field, the KRG has denounced Shahristrani’s offerings of contracts under the old Baathist laws as illegitimate.
While denouncing Shahristrani’s offerings, however, the KRG is proceeding to sign its own contracts on the basis of a regional oil law passed unilaterally in August. At least 20 PSAs have been entered into with international oil companies to develop untapped oil fields in the Kurdish north. The KRG’s aim is to attract more than $10 billion in investment and push production in the north up to a million barrels per day over the next five years.
The US State Department has generally discouraged US-based firms entering into PSAs with the KRG. There are concerns throughout the Middle East that the development of the northern Iraqi oil industry would enable the KRG to gain sufficient economic and political clout to begin openly calling for the formation of a greater “Kurdistan” including Kurdish areas in Turkey, Syria and Iran. Turkey, in particular, has issued veiled threats it would militarily act to prevent Kirkuk oil coming under the KRG’s sway.
Shahristrani, on the behalf the Iraqi government, has labelled the Kurdish contracts as “illegal”. As a consequence, the world’s major oil companies have been reluctant to enter into arrangements with the KRG so as to not disrupt relations with the Maliki government and hinder their access to the southern oil fields.
The sordid wrangling between factions of the Iraqi elite underscores the fact that the various competing “oil laws” are to legitimise corporate profiteering on a vast scale under a US-led occupation that is completely illegitimate and illegal.
Philippines: Furor over US lobby deal
This is not the first time there has been a furor and investigation of Arroyo govt. lobbying. Last time the Senate actually held the National Security Advisor under arrest for contempt of Senate. This is the first I heard that Gonzales faked a heart problem. I believe that doctors examined him! Anyway that contract was a real scandal since it was designed to help Arroyo change the constitution!
I guess Arroyo badly needs help from the US. Arroyo's ratings would make Bush look like a top rock star.
Lavish $50-M lobby deal a go — Palace
By Sherwin C. Olaes and Ben Gines Jr.
12/23/2007
President Arroyo will pursue an expensive $50 million contract to hire an American lobby firm to represent the country’s interest in the United States for six months despite a snowballing protest over it.
Chief presidential legal counsel Sergio Apostol said there’s nothing wrong with the hiring of a lobby group to push the interest of the Filipino people in Washington, adding that Sen. Manuel Roxas II, who was the first to raise a howl over the deal, was only making “an issue over it to get media mileage on his president in ambition in 2010.”
“I don’t see anything wrong about it because there’s no government in the world which has no lobbyists in Washington. They all have lobbyists in Washington. Nothing unusual we need it to protect our interests,” he said.
When asked why the hiring of Covington and Burling LLP would cost the Arroyo government some $50 million for six months, which according to
Roxas is expensive, Apostol was evasive saying he doesn’t know anything about it.
“If you’re asking is its wasteful? We’re trying to get some aid, protect our interest, such as reducing the sugar quota, coconut, copra which we export to the US and among others, why?, because no one can protects us. We can’t rely on our own embassy doing also the lobbying,” he said.
“We need to lobby for the inclusion of export possible materials in the trade agreement, there’s a lot to lobby (for), without a lobby group many of our products would not be exported there,” he added.
More protests were raised yesterday over the government’s plan to hire an American lobby firm to spruce up the image of President Arroyo before institutions in the United States.
Malacanang’s plan to hire an American lobby firm drew a flak as opposition described it as an “insensitive” act at a time when millions of Filipinos will be celebrating a bleak Christmas because of poverty.
Makati Mayor and United Opposition (UNO) president Jejomar Binay said while millions of Filipinos try to make ends meet this Christmas, Malacanang is willing to spend millions of dollars for lobby firm of Covington & Burling LLP.
“Malacanang should abandon its habit of unveiling so-called poverty alleviation measures that only serve PR purposes but do not impact positively on the lives of the poor,” he said.
Binay said Malacanang’s announcement that it will engage the services of a high-profile lobby firm and will pay top dollar for their services is highly insensitive, considering that many Filipinos will not even be able to put food on their table this Christmas.
The Makati mayor cited a recent survey conducted by the Social Weather Station that around 17 million Filipinos or 19 percent of the population go hungry every day, while 45 million Filipinos or 53 percent of families consider themselves poor.
“At no other time since Mrs. Arroyo came to power will there be millions of Filipinos observing Christmas with hardly any food on their table. This is the real face of the Philippines that the administration has been trying to ignore,” he said.
Binay said Malacanang should instead take a serious look at the conditions of the poor and utilize
public funds for projects that truly address their needs rather than spend money for a lobby firm.
The opposition instead asked Malacanang to abandon its habit of unveiling so-called poverty alleviation measures that only serve PR purposes but do not impact positively on the lives of the poor.
Binay, who is also national president of PDP Laban, added that Palace officials are committing mental dishonesty by reducing the lobbying issue to how much the contract would cost.
Binay said whatever the amount, the issue is that the money that will be paid could be put to better use, by prioritizing services and assistance to the poor.
Binay pointed out that had it not been for media reports about the contract, Palace officials, known for its propensity to disregard transparency in government dealings, would not have admitted that negotiations with the lobby firm are on-going.
Binay said the Covington & Burling lobby contract is in the same mold as the Venable contract, the ZTE contract and other highly irregular transactions that were all entered into on the sly.
In July 2005, National Security Adviser Norberto Gonzales signed a lobbying contract with Venable LLP to seek funding from the US for the administration’s plan to change the Constitution.
The contract was scrapped after a public outcry over the lack of transparency and terms of payment.
“He’s (Roxas) talking because of his ambition to become the next president of this country. Let’s say we remove that ambition of him and I think he will not be talking,” he said.
Roxas earlier challenged the Arroyo government to publish in full the provisions of the multimillion-dollar contract signed between the Philippine Embassy in Washington D.C. and Covington & Burling LLP, the lobby group.
A year or so earlier, the Arroyo government was discovered to have engaged an American lobby firm Venable LLP, at a similar cost of $50 million, to primarily raise funds and support for Mrs. Arroyo’s campaign to change the Constitution.
The signatory for the country was National Security Adviser Norberto Gonzales, who, when summoned by the Senate to explain why US funding was being sought for Charter change in the country, a business solely of the Filipinos, the NSA refused to divulge the terms and conditions, as well as scope of the Venable Lobby contract.
He was cited in contempt by the Senate, and detained in the chamber, but Gonzales was suspected to have faked a heart condition and was instead transferred to a hospital.
The details of the Venable contract were never made public by Malacañang, although it was pressured to rescind the contract.
It was not publicly known whether the Philippine government had to pay $50 million to Venable despite the cancellation of the contract.
Roxas, commenting on the hiring of the new lobby firm said: “This amount is even bigger than what we get from the US in military aid. If they (Malacañang) can’t defend this in Plaza Miranda, then they should junk it altogether,” Roxas said.
The senator, chairman of the Senate trade and commerce committee, noted that the contract is another example of wasteful and non-transparent spending of the people’s hard-earned money.
“What can Covington do that our own Philippine Embassy cannot accomplish? A sum of $50-million for a prominent US lobby firm is P2 billion worth of assistance to disadvantaged sectors like farmers, fishermen, distressed OFWs, malnourished children and many others,” he said.
He also asked if it was right for this PR lobby group contract to be funded by taxpayers’ money.
Roxas scored the government for being quick in saying yes, in entering into such multi-million dollar contracts, but when it comes to the suspension of the eVAT on oil bills, Malacañang is just as quick to say no.
“Glaring examples of such overpriced and needless foreign contracts are precisely why it is better to let the people enjoy part of their money by suspending the eVAT on oil than let government decide on how such revenues should be allocated,” he explained.
The senator recalled that the failed Venable contract, which was priced at P50 million, drew a huge outcry from the people and members of Congress.
“I am familiar with the rates charged for normal trade access or information access. This amount is for something more, perhaps like getting the US Defense and Military establishment to soften resistance to a new strain of Martial Law,” he said.
He added that it was the repetitious wrong acts committed by this government that makes it suffer from crediblity problems.
The senator said that foreign contracts such as the Covington deal must go through public bidding and be imbued with transparency and accountability.
“Who is behind this contract and why? Who is ready to stand before the people and explain what this contract is all about and why $50-million of the people’s money should be spent on this rather than on school-feeding programs, better health services, and other priorities?” he queried.
I guess Arroyo badly needs help from the US. Arroyo's ratings would make Bush look like a top rock star.
Lavish $50-M lobby deal a go — Palace
By Sherwin C. Olaes and Ben Gines Jr.
12/23/2007
President Arroyo will pursue an expensive $50 million contract to hire an American lobby firm to represent the country’s interest in the United States for six months despite a snowballing protest over it.
Chief presidential legal counsel Sergio Apostol said there’s nothing wrong with the hiring of a lobby group to push the interest of the Filipino people in Washington, adding that Sen. Manuel Roxas II, who was the first to raise a howl over the deal, was only making “an issue over it to get media mileage on his president in ambition in 2010.”
“I don’t see anything wrong about it because there’s no government in the world which has no lobbyists in Washington. They all have lobbyists in Washington. Nothing unusual we need it to protect our interests,” he said.
When asked why the hiring of Covington and Burling LLP would cost the Arroyo government some $50 million for six months, which according to
Roxas is expensive, Apostol was evasive saying he doesn’t know anything about it.
“If you’re asking is its wasteful? We’re trying to get some aid, protect our interest, such as reducing the sugar quota, coconut, copra which we export to the US and among others, why?, because no one can protects us. We can’t rely on our own embassy doing also the lobbying,” he said.
“We need to lobby for the inclusion of export possible materials in the trade agreement, there’s a lot to lobby (for), without a lobby group many of our products would not be exported there,” he added.
More protests were raised yesterday over the government’s plan to hire an American lobby firm to spruce up the image of President Arroyo before institutions in the United States.
Malacanang’s plan to hire an American lobby firm drew a flak as opposition described it as an “insensitive” act at a time when millions of Filipinos will be celebrating a bleak Christmas because of poverty.
Makati Mayor and United Opposition (UNO) president Jejomar Binay said while millions of Filipinos try to make ends meet this Christmas, Malacanang is willing to spend millions of dollars for lobby firm of Covington & Burling LLP.
“Malacanang should abandon its habit of unveiling so-called poverty alleviation measures that only serve PR purposes but do not impact positively on the lives of the poor,” he said.
Binay said Malacanang’s announcement that it will engage the services of a high-profile lobby firm and will pay top dollar for their services is highly insensitive, considering that many Filipinos will not even be able to put food on their table this Christmas.
The Makati mayor cited a recent survey conducted by the Social Weather Station that around 17 million Filipinos or 19 percent of the population go hungry every day, while 45 million Filipinos or 53 percent of families consider themselves poor.
“At no other time since Mrs. Arroyo came to power will there be millions of Filipinos observing Christmas with hardly any food on their table. This is the real face of the Philippines that the administration has been trying to ignore,” he said.
Binay said Malacanang should instead take a serious look at the conditions of the poor and utilize
public funds for projects that truly address their needs rather than spend money for a lobby firm.
The opposition instead asked Malacanang to abandon its habit of unveiling so-called poverty alleviation measures that only serve PR purposes but do not impact positively on the lives of the poor.
Binay, who is also national president of PDP Laban, added that Palace officials are committing mental dishonesty by reducing the lobbying issue to how much the contract would cost.
Binay said whatever the amount, the issue is that the money that will be paid could be put to better use, by prioritizing services and assistance to the poor.
Binay pointed out that had it not been for media reports about the contract, Palace officials, known for its propensity to disregard transparency in government dealings, would not have admitted that negotiations with the lobby firm are on-going.
Binay said the Covington & Burling lobby contract is in the same mold as the Venable contract, the ZTE contract and other highly irregular transactions that were all entered into on the sly.
In July 2005, National Security Adviser Norberto Gonzales signed a lobbying contract with Venable LLP to seek funding from the US for the administration’s plan to change the Constitution.
The contract was scrapped after a public outcry over the lack of transparency and terms of payment.
“He’s (Roxas) talking because of his ambition to become the next president of this country. Let’s say we remove that ambition of him and I think he will not be talking,” he said.
Roxas earlier challenged the Arroyo government to publish in full the provisions of the multimillion-dollar contract signed between the Philippine Embassy in Washington D.C. and Covington & Burling LLP, the lobby group.
A year or so earlier, the Arroyo government was discovered to have engaged an American lobby firm Venable LLP, at a similar cost of $50 million, to primarily raise funds and support for Mrs. Arroyo’s campaign to change the Constitution.
The signatory for the country was National Security Adviser Norberto Gonzales, who, when summoned by the Senate to explain why US funding was being sought for Charter change in the country, a business solely of the Filipinos, the NSA refused to divulge the terms and conditions, as well as scope of the Venable Lobby contract.
He was cited in contempt by the Senate, and detained in the chamber, but Gonzales was suspected to have faked a heart condition and was instead transferred to a hospital.
The details of the Venable contract were never made public by Malacañang, although it was pressured to rescind the contract.
It was not publicly known whether the Philippine government had to pay $50 million to Venable despite the cancellation of the contract.
Roxas, commenting on the hiring of the new lobby firm said: “This amount is even bigger than what we get from the US in military aid. If they (Malacañang) can’t defend this in Plaza Miranda, then they should junk it altogether,” Roxas said.
The senator, chairman of the Senate trade and commerce committee, noted that the contract is another example of wasteful and non-transparent spending of the people’s hard-earned money.
“What can Covington do that our own Philippine Embassy cannot accomplish? A sum of $50-million for a prominent US lobby firm is P2 billion worth of assistance to disadvantaged sectors like farmers, fishermen, distressed OFWs, malnourished children and many others,” he said.
He also asked if it was right for this PR lobby group contract to be funded by taxpayers’ money.
Roxas scored the government for being quick in saying yes, in entering into such multi-million dollar contracts, but when it comes to the suspension of the eVAT on oil bills, Malacañang is just as quick to say no.
“Glaring examples of such overpriced and needless foreign contracts are precisely why it is better to let the people enjoy part of their money by suspending the eVAT on oil than let government decide on how such revenues should be allocated,” he explained.
The senator recalled that the failed Venable contract, which was priced at P50 million, drew a huge outcry from the people and members of Congress.
“I am familiar with the rates charged for normal trade access or information access. This amount is for something more, perhaps like getting the US Defense and Military establishment to soften resistance to a new strain of Martial Law,” he said.
He added that it was the repetitious wrong acts committed by this government that makes it suffer from crediblity problems.
The senator said that foreign contracts such as the Covington deal must go through public bidding and be imbued with transparency and accountability.
“Who is behind this contract and why? Who is ready to stand before the people and explain what this contract is all about and why $50-million of the people’s money should be spent on this rather than on school-feeding programs, better health services, and other priorities?” he queried.
Sunday, December 23, 2007
Australian French Leaders stress support for Afghan mission
This is from yahoo. I assume the US will welcome this. NATO is pushing hard for more support and declarations of support. It is not clear if Sarkozy is going to let French troops serve in more dangerous areas though. The mission is not popular in France. Kevin Rudd seems to be moving more towards the same sort of support of the US as Howard did except for the Iraq mission. Although Rudd signed on to Kyoto that is about all he has done on the environment. It seems he is mollifying Bush in his support for the Afghan mission.
Australian, French leaders in Kabul to stress support Sat Dec 22, 2:02 PM ET
KABUL (AFP) - The leaders of France and Australia paid surprise visits to Afghanistan Saturday, stressing support for efforts against terrorism after the bloodiest year of a Taliban-led insurgency.
French President Nicolas Sarkozy and Australian Prime Minister Kevin Rudd met their Afghan counterpart separately in whistlestop visits and also held talks with the commander of a NATO-led military force, US General Dan McNeill.
Sarkozy told journalists who travelled with him from Paris that the international community could not afford to lose the "war against terrorism" in Afghanistan.
The various nations with troops here must be united and committed in their efforts to build Afghanistan so it can withstand insurgents linked with the Taliban and Al-Qaeda, he said.
"It is absolutely necessary that Afghanistan does not become a state which falls in the hands of terrorists, as we saw with the Taliban," he said.
The Taliban were removed from power in late 2001 in a US-led invasion weeks after the September 11 attacks by the Al-Qaeda network, which had training camps here and is still allied with the Afghan militant movement.
Sarkozy said his visit, on which he was accompanied by his defence and foreign ministers and other officials, was to assess the situation in Afghanistan.
France would "take a number of decisions" in the coming weeks, Sarkozy said, adding it would "reinforce" the personnel it has here to train the Afghan army and police.
France has about 1,600 troops serving with NATO's International Security Assistance Force (ISAF) that is involved in efforts to defeat a Taliban-led insurgency and build Afghanistan's security forces.
Australia has about 900, most of them in the south-central province of Uruzgan -- one of the most volatile in Afghanistan and a former Taliban stronghold -- where Rudd started his trip before travelling up to Kabul.
He told reporters after talks with Karzai that his country was committed to Afghanistan for the "long haul."
"Over the next several months, I would also be encouraging other friends and partners and allies in NATO to continue their commitments to this country and where possible extend them," he said.
Australia has denied media reports last weekend that it would keep its troops in Afghanistan longer than the scheduled end of their mission in August next year, saying no decision had been made yet.
But Rudd's Labor Party had "indicated for some time that they would consider further reasonable requests for military assistance in Afghanistan," a spokeswoman said then.
Italian Prime Minister Romano Prodi is expected in the coming days, British Prime Minister Gordon Brown and US Defence Secretary Robert Gates also visited in recent weeks.
The flurry of trips comes at the tail end of the bloodiest of the Taliban-led insurgency, with around 6,000 people dead -- most of them rebels -- and a spike in suicide and other bombings.
The Australian, a daily newspaper, reported Monday that Rudd's new government had warned NATO and its allies that they would lose the war against hardline Taliban forces unless they urgently changed tactics.
The United States has also announced that a review is under way.
Karzai has been calling for more focus on militant bases outside of Afghanistan, notably in Pakistan, while there has been increased emphasis this year on training the Afghan forces and promoting reconciliation.
A NATO summit in Bucharest in April is set to review efforts to help Afghanistan end the insurgency and establish democracy
Australian, French leaders in Kabul to stress support Sat Dec 22, 2:02 PM ET
KABUL (AFP) - The leaders of France and Australia paid surprise visits to Afghanistan Saturday, stressing support for efforts against terrorism after the bloodiest year of a Taliban-led insurgency.
French President Nicolas Sarkozy and Australian Prime Minister Kevin Rudd met their Afghan counterpart separately in whistlestop visits and also held talks with the commander of a NATO-led military force, US General Dan McNeill.
Sarkozy told journalists who travelled with him from Paris that the international community could not afford to lose the "war against terrorism" in Afghanistan.
The various nations with troops here must be united and committed in their efforts to build Afghanistan so it can withstand insurgents linked with the Taliban and Al-Qaeda, he said.
"It is absolutely necessary that Afghanistan does not become a state which falls in the hands of terrorists, as we saw with the Taliban," he said.
The Taliban were removed from power in late 2001 in a US-led invasion weeks after the September 11 attacks by the Al-Qaeda network, which had training camps here and is still allied with the Afghan militant movement.
Sarkozy said his visit, on which he was accompanied by his defence and foreign ministers and other officials, was to assess the situation in Afghanistan.
France would "take a number of decisions" in the coming weeks, Sarkozy said, adding it would "reinforce" the personnel it has here to train the Afghan army and police.
France has about 1,600 troops serving with NATO's International Security Assistance Force (ISAF) that is involved in efforts to defeat a Taliban-led insurgency and build Afghanistan's security forces.
Australia has about 900, most of them in the south-central province of Uruzgan -- one of the most volatile in Afghanistan and a former Taliban stronghold -- where Rudd started his trip before travelling up to Kabul.
He told reporters after talks with Karzai that his country was committed to Afghanistan for the "long haul."
"Over the next several months, I would also be encouraging other friends and partners and allies in NATO to continue their commitments to this country and where possible extend them," he said.
Australia has denied media reports last weekend that it would keep its troops in Afghanistan longer than the scheduled end of their mission in August next year, saying no decision had been made yet.
But Rudd's Labor Party had "indicated for some time that they would consider further reasonable requests for military assistance in Afghanistan," a spokeswoman said then.
Italian Prime Minister Romano Prodi is expected in the coming days, British Prime Minister Gordon Brown and US Defence Secretary Robert Gates also visited in recent weeks.
The flurry of trips comes at the tail end of the bloodiest of the Taliban-led insurgency, with around 6,000 people dead -- most of them rebels -- and a spike in suicide and other bombings.
The Australian, a daily newspaper, reported Monday that Rudd's new government had warned NATO and its allies that they would lose the war against hardline Taliban forces unless they urgently changed tactics.
The United States has also announced that a review is under way.
Karzai has been calling for more focus on militant bases outside of Afghanistan, notably in Pakistan, while there has been increased emphasis this year on training the Afghan forces and promoting reconciliation.
A NATO summit in Bucharest in April is set to review efforts to help Afghanistan end the insurgency and establish democracy
Nothing can morally justify the invasion of Iraq
This comes from Counterpunch.\
In some ways this is a weird piece. Several times Hornberger implies that the Bush moral justification for the invasion was the 9/11 attack. Bush never directly said this. Indeed he even said correctly that none of the terrorists were from Iraq. There were some who tried to establish some connection between Iraq and 9/11 but the main justification for the invasion was the alleged WMD of Hussein supposedly a great threat to the US. Almost anything could be a moral justification of the invasion according to the Bushies: i)the crimes of Hussein ii) bringing democracy to Iraq,iii)preventing oil from getting into the hands of terrorists iv) fighting Al Qaeda in Iraq rather than the US. The only moral reason not put forward was to advance US interests and secure energy supplies.
Nothing Can Morally Justify the Invasion of Iraq
By JACOB G. HORNBERGER
Neo-con supporters of the U.S. government's war of aggression against Iraq are undoubtedly holding their collective breath in the hope that U.S. military forces have finally smashed any further violent opposition to their conquest of Iraq. The attitude would then be, "You see, this shows that we were right after all to invade and occupy Iraq and kill and maim hundreds of thousands of Iraqi people."
Meanwhile, the Associated Press is reporting that U.S. soldiers have found mass graves next to a torture center north of Baghdad. In the torture center, chains were attached to blood-spattered walls while a metal bed was attached to an electrical shock system.
Hey, who knows? Maybe the torture center prevented a ticking time bomb from going off? And who's to say that chains, blood-spattered walls, metal beds, and an electrical shock system really constitute torture? Doesn't torture depend on each person's subjective determination of the term?
By the way, wasn't there torture in Iraq under Saddam Hussein? I wonder if his justifications for torture were different from those employed by those torturing in Iraq today. I wonder if they were different than those employed by current U.S. torturers.
As Rosa Brooks writes in the Los Angeles Times today, Baghdad has now been divided into "cleansed" neighborhoods, in which Sunnis occupy some areas and Shiites occupy others. The U.S. military is helping to keep the neighborhoods free of violence by constructing walls that separate the respective neighborhoods. What an interesting way for the Pentagon to rebuild a peaceful society that it has destroyed with its invasion.
Meanwhile, hundreds of thousands of Iraqis have fled the country, mostly to neighboring countries given that the U.S. government refuses to let them emigrate to the United States, despite one of the U.S. government's claims (in addition to the WMD one) that it invaded Iraq out of love for the Iraqi people. Hey, what better way to reduce the death toll than by reducing the country's population?
And if things weren't crazy enough, we now learn that the U.S. government is helping Turkey to attack Iraqi Kurds in the northern part of the country. Can't you just hear U.S. officials exclaim when some Iraqi survivor of those attacks retaliates with a terrorist attack against the U.S.: "We're innocent! We're innocent! We haven't done anything to provoke this! They hate us for our freedom and values! God bless America!"
No rational person can deny that Iraq never had any connection whatsoever to the 9/11 attacks, especially given that none of the 9/11 attackers were even from Iraq. Yet, countless Iraqi people are now dead or maimed and their entire country is destroyed. One might easily say that Iraq is the federal massacre of Waco magnified a million-fold. The whole situation in Iraq brings to mind the famous dictum of Tacitus: "They made a desert and called it peace."
Nothing, not even "peace" in Iraq, will ever be able to morally justify a war of aggression against a nation whose people were totally innocent of the 9/11 attacks. Nothing, not even some warped definition of "terrorist," will ever be able to morally justify killing Iraqis who were doing nothing more than trying to oust their country of an illegal invader who had invaded with a thirst for vengeance and regime change relying on fake and false rationales for its invasion. Nothing will ever be able to morally justify the killing of even one single Iraqi, much less hundreds of thousands of them, given that neither the Iraqi people nor their government ever attacked the United States.
Jacob Hornberger is founder and president of The Future of Freedom Foundation.
In some ways this is a weird piece. Several times Hornberger implies that the Bush moral justification for the invasion was the 9/11 attack. Bush never directly said this. Indeed he even said correctly that none of the terrorists were from Iraq. There were some who tried to establish some connection between Iraq and 9/11 but the main justification for the invasion was the alleged WMD of Hussein supposedly a great threat to the US. Almost anything could be a moral justification of the invasion according to the Bushies: i)the crimes of Hussein ii) bringing democracy to Iraq,iii)preventing oil from getting into the hands of terrorists iv) fighting Al Qaeda in Iraq rather than the US. The only moral reason not put forward was to advance US interests and secure energy supplies.
Nothing Can Morally Justify the Invasion of Iraq
By JACOB G. HORNBERGER
Neo-con supporters of the U.S. government's war of aggression against Iraq are undoubtedly holding their collective breath in the hope that U.S. military forces have finally smashed any further violent opposition to their conquest of Iraq. The attitude would then be, "You see, this shows that we were right after all to invade and occupy Iraq and kill and maim hundreds of thousands of Iraqi people."
Meanwhile, the Associated Press is reporting that U.S. soldiers have found mass graves next to a torture center north of Baghdad. In the torture center, chains were attached to blood-spattered walls while a metal bed was attached to an electrical shock system.
Hey, who knows? Maybe the torture center prevented a ticking time bomb from going off? And who's to say that chains, blood-spattered walls, metal beds, and an electrical shock system really constitute torture? Doesn't torture depend on each person's subjective determination of the term?
By the way, wasn't there torture in Iraq under Saddam Hussein? I wonder if his justifications for torture were different from those employed by those torturing in Iraq today. I wonder if they were different than those employed by current U.S. torturers.
As Rosa Brooks writes in the Los Angeles Times today, Baghdad has now been divided into "cleansed" neighborhoods, in which Sunnis occupy some areas and Shiites occupy others. The U.S. military is helping to keep the neighborhoods free of violence by constructing walls that separate the respective neighborhoods. What an interesting way for the Pentagon to rebuild a peaceful society that it has destroyed with its invasion.
Meanwhile, hundreds of thousands of Iraqis have fled the country, mostly to neighboring countries given that the U.S. government refuses to let them emigrate to the United States, despite one of the U.S. government's claims (in addition to the WMD one) that it invaded Iraq out of love for the Iraqi people. Hey, what better way to reduce the death toll than by reducing the country's population?
And if things weren't crazy enough, we now learn that the U.S. government is helping Turkey to attack Iraqi Kurds in the northern part of the country. Can't you just hear U.S. officials exclaim when some Iraqi survivor of those attacks retaliates with a terrorist attack against the U.S.: "We're innocent! We're innocent! We haven't done anything to provoke this! They hate us for our freedom and values! God bless America!"
No rational person can deny that Iraq never had any connection whatsoever to the 9/11 attacks, especially given that none of the 9/11 attackers were even from Iraq. Yet, countless Iraqi people are now dead or maimed and their entire country is destroyed. One might easily say that Iraq is the federal massacre of Waco magnified a million-fold. The whole situation in Iraq brings to mind the famous dictum of Tacitus: "They made a desert and called it peace."
Nothing, not even "peace" in Iraq, will ever be able to morally justify a war of aggression against a nation whose people were totally innocent of the 9/11 attacks. Nothing, not even some warped definition of "terrorist," will ever be able to morally justify killing Iraqis who were doing nothing more than trying to oust their country of an illegal invader who had invaded with a thirst for vengeance and regime change relying on fake and false rationales for its invasion. Nothing will ever be able to morally justify the killing of even one single Iraqi, much less hundreds of thousands of them, given that neither the Iraqi people nor their government ever attacked the United States.
Jacob Hornberger is founder and president of The Future of Freedom Foundation.
Saturday, December 22, 2007
Miltary Evangelism
I found this article rather surprising. I did not think that evangelism would be this open within the military. One would think that there enough people concerned enough to separate religion and the state to mount more of a counter-offensive to this sort of activity. I am sure many religious groups themselves are against this type of activity.
Military Evangelism Deeper, Wider Than First Thought
By Jason Leopold
t r u t h o u t | Report Friday 21 December 2007
For US Army soldiers entering basic training at Fort Jackson Army base
in Columbia, South Carolina, accepting Jesus Christ as their personal
savior appears to be as much a part of the nine-week regimen as the
vigorous physical and mental exercises the troops must endure. That's
the message directed at Fort Jackson soldiers, some of whom appear in
photographs in government issued fatigues, holding rifles in one hand,
and Bibles in their other hand.
Frank Bussey, director of Military Ministry at Fort Jackson, has
been telling soldiers at Fort Jackson that "government authorities,
police and the military = God's Ministers,"
Bussey's teachings from the "God's Basic Training" Bible study
guide he authored says US troops have "two primary responsibilities": "to
praise those who do right" and "to punish those who do evil - "God's
servant, an angel of wrath." Bussey's teachings directed at Fort Jackson
soldiers were housed on the Military Ministry at Fort Jackson web site.
Late Wednesday, the web site was taken down without explanation. Bussey
did not return calls for comment. The web site text, however, can
still be viewed in an archived format.
The Christian right has been successful in spreading its
fundamentalist agenda at US military installations around the world for decades.
But the movement's meteoric rise in the US military came in large part
after 9/11 and immediately after the US invaded Iraq in March of 2003.
At a time when the United States is encouraging greater religious
freedom in Muslim nations, soldiers on the battlefield have told disturbing
stories of being force-fed fundamentalist Christianity by highly
controversial, apocalyptic "End Times" evangelists, who have infiltrated US
military installations throughout the world with the blessing of
high-level officials at the Pentagon. Proselytizing among military personnel
has been conducted openly, in violation of the basic tenets of the
United States Constitution.
Perhaps no other fundamentalist Christian group is more influential
than Military Ministry, a national organization and a subsidiary of
the controversial fundamentalist Christian organization Campus Crusade
for Christ. Military Ministry's national web site boasts it has
successfully "targeted" basic training installations, or "gateways," and has
successfully converted thousands of soldiers to evangelical Christianity.
Military Ministry says its staffers are responsible for "working
with Chaplains and Military personnel to bring lost soldiers closer to
Christ, build them in their faith and send them out into the world as
Government paid missionaries" - which appears to be a clear-cut violation
of federal law governing the separation of church and state.
"Young recruits are under great pressure as they enter the military
at their initial training gateways," the group has stated on its web
site. "The demands of drill instructors push recruits and new cadets to
the edge. This is why they are most open to the 'good news.' We target
specific locations, like Lackland AFB [Air Force base] and Fort
Jackson, where large numbers of military members transition early in their
career. These sites are excellent locations to pursue our strategic
goals."
Mikey Weinstein, the founder and president of the government
watchdog organization the Military Religious Freedom Foundation, whose group
has been closely tracking Military Ministry's activities at Fort
Jackson and other military bases around the country, said in an interview
that using "the machinery of the state" to promote any form of religion is
"not only unconstitutional and un-American but it also creates a
national security threat of the first order."
A six-month investigation by MRFF has found Military Ministry's
staff has successfully targeted US soldiers entering basic training at
Lackland Air Force Base and Fort Sam Houston, with the approval of the
Army base's top commanders.
"I've said it before and I will say it again," Weinstein said. "We
are in the process of creating a fundamentalist Christian Taliban and
somebody has to do something to stop it now."
Weinstein points out that on Fort Jackson's Military Ministry web
site, the basic training battalion commander, Lt. Col. David Snodgrass,
and the battalion's chaplain, Maj. Scott Bullock, who appear in uniform
in a photograph with Bussey, is a clear-cut violation of Military
rules. MRFF contacted Bussey via email on Wednesday to request information
about the "similar programs" he claimed Fort Jackson has for soldiers
of other faiths. Bussey, responding to MRFF via email, did not provide
an answer to the watchdog group's question, but, instead, he fired back
a query of his own asking MRFF Senior Research Director Chris Rodda to
direct him to the place in the Constitution where it states there is a
"separation of church and state."
Clause 3, Article VI of the Constitution forbids a religion test
for any position in the federal government, and the Establishment Clause
of the First Amendment of the Bill of Rights says Congress shall make
no law regarding an establishment of religion.
A spokesperson for the Fort Jackson Army base did not return calls
for comment. Earlier this week, after MRFF exposed the potential
constitutional violations between Military Ministry and the Fort Jackson Army
base, Bussey added language to Military Ministry at Fort Jackson web
site in the form of a "notice to MRFF and ACLU types" in bold red
letters that says the Bible study classes are strictly voluntary, not command
directed in any way, allows soldiers to exercise for themselves the
right of freedom of religion ... and similar programs exist on Fort
Jackson for Soldiers of all faiths."
In July, the Pentagon's inspector general (IG) responded to a
complaint filed a year earlier by MRFF that accused Pentagon officials of
violating the federal law governing the separation of church and state.
The IG did not address the church/state issue, but he issued a 45-page
report admonishing several high-level Pentagon officials for
participating, while in uniform and on active duty, in a promotional video
sponsored by Campus Crusade for Christ's Christian Embassy group. The IG
report quoted one high-ranking military official as saying he believed his
participation in the video was acceptable because Campus Crusade for
Christ had become so embedded in the Pentagon's day-to-day operations that
he viewed the organization as a "quasi federal entity."
The IG report recommended the military officials who appeared in
the video be disciplined, but the Pentagon would not say whether it has
in fact punished the military officers who appeared in the video.
MRFF uncovered another recent Campus Crusade for Christ promotional
video filmed at the Air Force Academy in Colorado Springs that would
appear to violate the same military rules detailed in the IG report.
Cadets and academy officials appear in uniform discussing how Campus
Crusade for Christ helped strengthen their bonds with Jesus.
Scot Blom, the Campus Crusade for Christ director assigned to work
at the Air Force Academy, says in the video the organization "has
always been very intentional about going after the leaders or the future
leaders" and that's why Campus Crusade for Christ picked the Air Force
Academy to spread its fundamentalist Christian message. Every week,
according to the video, cadets are encouraged to participate in a Bible study
class called "cru" short for "crusade."
"Our purpose for Campus Crusade for Christ at the Air Force Academy
is to make Jesus Christ the issue at the Air Force Academy and around
the world," Blom says in the video. "They're government paid
missionaries when they leave here."
Weinstein said the recent promotional video for Campus Crusade for
Christ, and the photograph of US soldiers holding Bibles in one hand
and rifles in the other posted on the Fort Jackson Military Ministry web
site, gives the impression the Pentagon endorses the fundamentalist
Christian organization and underscores that the occupation of Iraq and the
war in Afghanistan appears to be more of a modern-day fundamentalist
Christian crusade. That message, Weinstein said, could lead to more
"jihads" against the United States.
Indeed. Weinstein, a former White House counsel during the Reagan
administration, former general counsel to Texas billionaire and two-time
presidential candidate H. Ross Perot and a former Air Force Judge
Advocate General, said he had an "unexpected" telephone conversation with
several senior Bush administration intelligence officials this week who
encouraged him "to continue to fight for the separation of church and
state in the US military" because, these senior administration
intelligence officials told Weinstein, US troops are being put in harms way.
Weinstein said the senior administration intelligence officials
told him they too have been tracking Islamic web sites where people have
been discussing on message boards the fundamental Christianity issues
Weinstein has raised within the US military. The intelligence officials
told Weinstein they are concerned the fundamentalist Christian agenda
surfacing in the military could lead to attacks against US soldiers.
Weinstein said he could not identify the senior Bush intelligence
administration officials he spoke with because they contacted him with the
understanding they would not be named.
Fundamental Christianity's Influence on the Bush Administration
While Weinstein has worked tirelessly the past four years exposing
the Christian Right's power grab within the military, he says the White
House continues to thumb its nose at the constitutional provision
mandating the separation of church and state.
Indeed. This week a US District Court judge ruled the White House
must disclose its visitor logs showing White House visits by nine
fundamentalist Christian leaders.
The ruling was issued in response to a lawsuit filed by the
government watchdog group, Citizens for Responsibility and Ethics in
Washington (CREW), and could very well show how much influence fundamental
Christian leaders such as James Dobson of Focus on the Family, Family
Research Council president Tony Perkins, Gary Bauer and Moral Majority
co-founder Jerry Falwell have had on the Bush's administration.
"We think that these conservative Christian leaders have had a very
big impact," said Melanie Sloan, executive director of CREW. "The
White House doesn't want to talk about how much influence these leaders
have, and we want to talk about how much they do have."
Bush has been vocal about his fundamentalist Christian beliefs and
how God has helped him during his presidency. A couple of weeks ago,
the White House sent out Christmas cards signed by President Bush and his
wife Laura that contained a Biblical passage from the Old Testament:
"You alone are the LORD. You made the heavens, even the highest
heavens, and all their starry host, the earth and all that is on it, the seas
and all that is in them. You give life to everything, and the
multitudes of heaven worship you." The inclusion of the Biblical passage
caught the attention of longtime broadcaster Barbara Walters, who was a
recipient of the presidential Christmas card.
Walters said she doesn't recall receiving "religious" holiday cards
from past presidents and she wondered how non-Christians would receive
such an overtly religious greeting.
"Usually in the past when I have received a Christmas card, it's
been 'Happy Holidays' and so on," said Walters. "Don't you think it's a
little interesting that the president of all the people is sending out a
religious Christmas card? Does this also go to agnostics, and
atheists, and Muslims?"
The Biblical passage inside the Christmas card did not amount to a
constitutional violation because it was paid for by the Republican
National Committee, but Weinstein said it's intolerable, nonetheless,
because military officials believe they have the approval of the White House
to allow fundamentalist Christian organizations and their leaders to
proselytize in the military.
Recently, Bush nominated Brig. Gen. Cecil R. Richardson, the deputy
Air Force Chief of Chaplains, to replace the outgoing Air Force Chief
of Chaplains, and is in line to be promoted to Major General.
Richardson was quoted in a front-page, July 12, 2005, New York Times story
saying the Air Force reserves the right "to evangelize the unchurched." The
distinction, Richardson said at the time, "is that proselytizing is
trying to convert someone in an aggressive way, while evangelizing is more
gently sharing the gospel."
Weinstein filed a federal lawsuit against the Air Force in October
2005 after Richardson's comments were published alleging "severe,
systemic and pervasive" religious discrimination within the Air Force.
Weinstein is a 1977 graduate of the Academy. His sons and a daughter in law
are also academy graduates. Weinstein's book, "With God On Our Side:
One Man's War Against An Evangelical Coup in America's Military," details
the virulent anti-Semitism he was subjected to while he attended the
academy and the religious intolerance that has permeated throughout the
halls over the past several years.
The federal lawsuit Weinstein filed was dismissed, but the Air
Force agreed to withdraw a document that authorized chaplains to evangelize
members of the military. Still, Weinstein said MRFF would lobby
senators to oppose Richardson's nomination because of his past statements
Richardson has refused to retract.
"The Military Religious Freedom Foundation will do everything in
our power to convince the United States Senate to reject the nomination
of Brig. Gen. Cecil R. Richardson to become the chief of Air Force
chaplains and his promotion to the rank of major general," Weinstein said in
an interview. "We view Richardson as the prototypical poster child of
the type of constitutional rapist we are trying to eradicate from
existence within the US military."
In September, MRFF filed a lawsuit in federal court against
Secretary of Defense Robert Gates and US Army Maj. Freddy Welborn, on behalf
of an Army soldier stationed in Iraq. The complaint filed in US District
Court in Kansas City alleges that Jeremy Hall's an Army specialist
currently on active duty in Combat Operations Base Speicher, Iraq, First
Amendment rights were violated when Welborn threatened to retaliate
against Hall and block his reenlistment in the Army because of Hall's
atheist beliefs.
"When You Join the Military, Then You Are Also in the Ministry"
The executive director of Military Ministry, retired US Army Major
General Bob Dees, wrote in the organization's October 2005 "Life and
Leadership" newsletter, "We must pursue our particular means for
transforming the nation - through the military. And the military may well be
the most influential way to affect that spiritual superstructure.
Militaries exercise, generally speaking, the most intensive and purposeful
indoctrination program of citizens...."
Moreover, Military Ministry's parent organization, Campus Crusade
for Christ, has been re-distributing to military chaplains a DVD
produced a decade ago where Tommy Nelson, a pastor at the Denton Bible Church
in Denton, Texas, tells an audience of Texas A&M cadets and military
officers when they join the military "then you are also in the ministry."
"I, a number of years ago, was speaking at the University of North
Texas - it happens to be my alma mater, up in Denton, Texas - and I was
speaking to an ROTC group up there, and when I stepped in I said,
"It's good to be speaking to all you men and women who are in the
ministry," and they all kind of looked at me, and I think they wondered if maybe
I had found the wrong room, or if they were in the wrong room, and I
assured them that I was speaking to men and women in the ministry, these
that were going to be future officers," Nelson says in the DVD.
Military Evangelism Deeper, Wider Than First Thought
By Jason Leopold
t r u t h o u t | Report Friday 21 December 2007
For US Army soldiers entering basic training at Fort Jackson Army base
in Columbia, South Carolina, accepting Jesus Christ as their personal
savior appears to be as much a part of the nine-week regimen as the
vigorous physical and mental exercises the troops must endure. That's
the message directed at Fort Jackson soldiers, some of whom appear in
photographs in government issued fatigues, holding rifles in one hand,
and Bibles in their other hand.
Frank Bussey, director of Military Ministry at Fort Jackson, has
been telling soldiers at Fort Jackson that "government authorities,
police and the military = God's Ministers,"
Bussey's teachings from the "God's Basic Training" Bible study
guide he authored says US troops have "two primary responsibilities": "to
praise those who do right" and "to punish those who do evil - "God's
servant, an angel of wrath." Bussey's teachings directed at Fort Jackson
soldiers were housed on the Military Ministry at Fort Jackson web site.
Late Wednesday, the web site was taken down without explanation. Bussey
did not return calls for comment. The web site text, however, can
still be viewed in an archived format.
The Christian right has been successful in spreading its
fundamentalist agenda at US military installations around the world for decades.
But the movement's meteoric rise in the US military came in large part
after 9/11 and immediately after the US invaded Iraq in March of 2003.
At a time when the United States is encouraging greater religious
freedom in Muslim nations, soldiers on the battlefield have told disturbing
stories of being force-fed fundamentalist Christianity by highly
controversial, apocalyptic "End Times" evangelists, who have infiltrated US
military installations throughout the world with the blessing of
high-level officials at the Pentagon. Proselytizing among military personnel
has been conducted openly, in violation of the basic tenets of the
United States Constitution.
Perhaps no other fundamentalist Christian group is more influential
than Military Ministry, a national organization and a subsidiary of
the controversial fundamentalist Christian organization Campus Crusade
for Christ. Military Ministry's national web site boasts it has
successfully "targeted" basic training installations, or "gateways," and has
successfully converted thousands of soldiers to evangelical Christianity.
Military Ministry says its staffers are responsible for "working
with Chaplains and Military personnel to bring lost soldiers closer to
Christ, build them in their faith and send them out into the world as
Government paid missionaries" - which appears to be a clear-cut violation
of federal law governing the separation of church and state.
"Young recruits are under great pressure as they enter the military
at their initial training gateways," the group has stated on its web
site. "The demands of drill instructors push recruits and new cadets to
the edge. This is why they are most open to the 'good news.' We target
specific locations, like Lackland AFB [Air Force base] and Fort
Jackson, where large numbers of military members transition early in their
career. These sites are excellent locations to pursue our strategic
goals."
Mikey Weinstein, the founder and president of the government
watchdog organization the Military Religious Freedom Foundation, whose group
has been closely tracking Military Ministry's activities at Fort
Jackson and other military bases around the country, said in an interview
that using "the machinery of the state" to promote any form of religion is
"not only unconstitutional and un-American but it also creates a
national security threat of the first order."
A six-month investigation by MRFF has found Military Ministry's
staff has successfully targeted US soldiers entering basic training at
Lackland Air Force Base and Fort Sam Houston, with the approval of the
Army base's top commanders.
"I've said it before and I will say it again," Weinstein said. "We
are in the process of creating a fundamentalist Christian Taliban and
somebody has to do something to stop it now."
Weinstein points out that on Fort Jackson's Military Ministry web
site, the basic training battalion commander, Lt. Col. David Snodgrass,
and the battalion's chaplain, Maj. Scott Bullock, who appear in uniform
in a photograph with Bussey, is a clear-cut violation of Military
rules. MRFF contacted Bussey via email on Wednesday to request information
about the "similar programs" he claimed Fort Jackson has for soldiers
of other faiths. Bussey, responding to MRFF via email, did not provide
an answer to the watchdog group's question, but, instead, he fired back
a query of his own asking MRFF Senior Research Director Chris Rodda to
direct him to the place in the Constitution where it states there is a
"separation of church and state."
Clause 3, Article VI of the Constitution forbids a religion test
for any position in the federal government, and the Establishment Clause
of the First Amendment of the Bill of Rights says Congress shall make
no law regarding an establishment of religion.
A spokesperson for the Fort Jackson Army base did not return calls
for comment. Earlier this week, after MRFF exposed the potential
constitutional violations between Military Ministry and the Fort Jackson Army
base, Bussey added language to Military Ministry at Fort Jackson web
site in the form of a "notice to MRFF and ACLU types" in bold red
letters that says the Bible study classes are strictly voluntary, not command
directed in any way, allows soldiers to exercise for themselves the
right of freedom of religion ... and similar programs exist on Fort
Jackson for Soldiers of all faiths."
In July, the Pentagon's inspector general (IG) responded to a
complaint filed a year earlier by MRFF that accused Pentagon officials of
violating the federal law governing the separation of church and state.
The IG did not address the church/state issue, but he issued a 45-page
report admonishing several high-level Pentagon officials for
participating, while in uniform and on active duty, in a promotional video
sponsored by Campus Crusade for Christ's Christian Embassy group. The IG
report quoted one high-ranking military official as saying he believed his
participation in the video was acceptable because Campus Crusade for
Christ had become so embedded in the Pentagon's day-to-day operations that
he viewed the organization as a "quasi federal entity."
The IG report recommended the military officials who appeared in
the video be disciplined, but the Pentagon would not say whether it has
in fact punished the military officers who appeared in the video.
MRFF uncovered another recent Campus Crusade for Christ promotional
video filmed at the Air Force Academy in Colorado Springs that would
appear to violate the same military rules detailed in the IG report.
Cadets and academy officials appear in uniform discussing how Campus
Crusade for Christ helped strengthen their bonds with Jesus.
Scot Blom, the Campus Crusade for Christ director assigned to work
at the Air Force Academy, says in the video the organization "has
always been very intentional about going after the leaders or the future
leaders" and that's why Campus Crusade for Christ picked the Air Force
Academy to spread its fundamentalist Christian message. Every week,
according to the video, cadets are encouraged to participate in a Bible study
class called "cru" short for "crusade."
"Our purpose for Campus Crusade for Christ at the Air Force Academy
is to make Jesus Christ the issue at the Air Force Academy and around
the world," Blom says in the video. "They're government paid
missionaries when they leave here."
Weinstein said the recent promotional video for Campus Crusade for
Christ, and the photograph of US soldiers holding Bibles in one hand
and rifles in the other posted on the Fort Jackson Military Ministry web
site, gives the impression the Pentagon endorses the fundamentalist
Christian organization and underscores that the occupation of Iraq and the
war in Afghanistan appears to be more of a modern-day fundamentalist
Christian crusade. That message, Weinstein said, could lead to more
"jihads" against the United States.
Indeed. Weinstein, a former White House counsel during the Reagan
administration, former general counsel to Texas billionaire and two-time
presidential candidate H. Ross Perot and a former Air Force Judge
Advocate General, said he had an "unexpected" telephone conversation with
several senior Bush administration intelligence officials this week who
encouraged him "to continue to fight for the separation of church and
state in the US military" because, these senior administration
intelligence officials told Weinstein, US troops are being put in harms way.
Weinstein said the senior administration intelligence officials
told him they too have been tracking Islamic web sites where people have
been discussing on message boards the fundamental Christianity issues
Weinstein has raised within the US military. The intelligence officials
told Weinstein they are concerned the fundamentalist Christian agenda
surfacing in the military could lead to attacks against US soldiers.
Weinstein said he could not identify the senior Bush intelligence
administration officials he spoke with because they contacted him with the
understanding they would not be named.
Fundamental Christianity's Influence on the Bush Administration
While Weinstein has worked tirelessly the past four years exposing
the Christian Right's power grab within the military, he says the White
House continues to thumb its nose at the constitutional provision
mandating the separation of church and state.
Indeed. This week a US District Court judge ruled the White House
must disclose its visitor logs showing White House visits by nine
fundamentalist Christian leaders.
The ruling was issued in response to a lawsuit filed by the
government watchdog group, Citizens for Responsibility and Ethics in
Washington (CREW), and could very well show how much influence fundamental
Christian leaders such as James Dobson of Focus on the Family, Family
Research Council president Tony Perkins, Gary Bauer and Moral Majority
co-founder Jerry Falwell have had on the Bush's administration.
"We think that these conservative Christian leaders have had a very
big impact," said Melanie Sloan, executive director of CREW. "The
White House doesn't want to talk about how much influence these leaders
have, and we want to talk about how much they do have."
Bush has been vocal about his fundamentalist Christian beliefs and
how God has helped him during his presidency. A couple of weeks ago,
the White House sent out Christmas cards signed by President Bush and his
wife Laura that contained a Biblical passage from the Old Testament:
"You alone are the LORD. You made the heavens, even the highest
heavens, and all their starry host, the earth and all that is on it, the seas
and all that is in them. You give life to everything, and the
multitudes of heaven worship you." The inclusion of the Biblical passage
caught the attention of longtime broadcaster Barbara Walters, who was a
recipient of the presidential Christmas card.
Walters said she doesn't recall receiving "religious" holiday cards
from past presidents and she wondered how non-Christians would receive
such an overtly religious greeting.
"Usually in the past when I have received a Christmas card, it's
been 'Happy Holidays' and so on," said Walters. "Don't you think it's a
little interesting that the president of all the people is sending out a
religious Christmas card? Does this also go to agnostics, and
atheists, and Muslims?"
The Biblical passage inside the Christmas card did not amount to a
constitutional violation because it was paid for by the Republican
National Committee, but Weinstein said it's intolerable, nonetheless,
because military officials believe they have the approval of the White House
to allow fundamentalist Christian organizations and their leaders to
proselytize in the military.
Recently, Bush nominated Brig. Gen. Cecil R. Richardson, the deputy
Air Force Chief of Chaplains, to replace the outgoing Air Force Chief
of Chaplains, and is in line to be promoted to Major General.
Richardson was quoted in a front-page, July 12, 2005, New York Times story
saying the Air Force reserves the right "to evangelize the unchurched." The
distinction, Richardson said at the time, "is that proselytizing is
trying to convert someone in an aggressive way, while evangelizing is more
gently sharing the gospel."
Weinstein filed a federal lawsuit against the Air Force in October
2005 after Richardson's comments were published alleging "severe,
systemic and pervasive" religious discrimination within the Air Force.
Weinstein is a 1977 graduate of the Academy. His sons and a daughter in law
are also academy graduates. Weinstein's book, "With God On Our Side:
One Man's War Against An Evangelical Coup in America's Military," details
the virulent anti-Semitism he was subjected to while he attended the
academy and the religious intolerance that has permeated throughout the
halls over the past several years.
The federal lawsuit Weinstein filed was dismissed, but the Air
Force agreed to withdraw a document that authorized chaplains to evangelize
members of the military. Still, Weinstein said MRFF would lobby
senators to oppose Richardson's nomination because of his past statements
Richardson has refused to retract.
"The Military Religious Freedom Foundation will do everything in
our power to convince the United States Senate to reject the nomination
of Brig. Gen. Cecil R. Richardson to become the chief of Air Force
chaplains and his promotion to the rank of major general," Weinstein said in
an interview. "We view Richardson as the prototypical poster child of
the type of constitutional rapist we are trying to eradicate from
existence within the US military."
In September, MRFF filed a lawsuit in federal court against
Secretary of Defense Robert Gates and US Army Maj. Freddy Welborn, on behalf
of an Army soldier stationed in Iraq. The complaint filed in US District
Court in Kansas City alleges that Jeremy Hall's an Army specialist
currently on active duty in Combat Operations Base Speicher, Iraq, First
Amendment rights were violated when Welborn threatened to retaliate
against Hall and block his reenlistment in the Army because of Hall's
atheist beliefs.
"When You Join the Military, Then You Are Also in the Ministry"
The executive director of Military Ministry, retired US Army Major
General Bob Dees, wrote in the organization's October 2005 "Life and
Leadership" newsletter, "We must pursue our particular means for
transforming the nation - through the military. And the military may well be
the most influential way to affect that spiritual superstructure.
Militaries exercise, generally speaking, the most intensive and purposeful
indoctrination program of citizens...."
Moreover, Military Ministry's parent organization, Campus Crusade
for Christ, has been re-distributing to military chaplains a DVD
produced a decade ago where Tommy Nelson, a pastor at the Denton Bible Church
in Denton, Texas, tells an audience of Texas A&M cadets and military
officers when they join the military "then you are also in the ministry."
"I, a number of years ago, was speaking at the University of North
Texas - it happens to be my alma mater, up in Denton, Texas - and I was
speaking to an ROTC group up there, and when I stepped in I said,
"It's good to be speaking to all you men and women who are in the
ministry," and they all kind of looked at me, and I think they wondered if maybe
I had found the wrong room, or if they were in the wrong room, and I
assured them that I was speaking to men and women in the ministry, these
that were going to be future officers," Nelson says in the DVD.
Christmas is made in China
This is from the asia times.I am surprised that the Chinese save 40 per cent of their income. There is no source given. I would wonder at that. Surely many Chinese require all of their income just to sustain themselves. Brown's comments about US debt seem well taken. I have wondered how long US consumers can keep piling up debt and the US government funding the IRaq and Afghan wars. The sub-prime mortgage debacle however produces losses not just in the US but worlwide including China. The declining dollar also means that China is losing money because it could have held funds in currencies such as the Euro that are not in decline. There are some signs that countries are switching to Euros.
Dec 20, 2007
SPEAKING FREELY
Christmas is made in China
By Lester R Brown
Speaking Freely is an Asia Times Online feature that allows guest writers to have their say. Please click here if you are interested in contributing.
I know Santa Claus is Chinese because each Christmas morning after all the gifts are unwrapped and things settle down I systematically go through the presents to see where they are made. The results are almost always the same: roughly 70% are from China. After some research, it seems that my one-family survey is representative of the country as a whole.
Let's start with toys. Some 80% of the toys sold in the United States - from Barbie dolls to video games - are made in China. Talking toys that speak English learned the language from
Chinese workers. Electronic goods - from Apple's iPod to Microsoft's Xbox - are made in China. Clothing - from the latest cashmere sweaters to gym suits - is also likely to have a "Made in China" label.
The Christmas tree itself may come from China. While real Christmas trees are grown in every state in the United States and are marketed locally, many families now gather around artificial Christmas trees. Eight out of every 10 artificial Christmas trees sold in the United States are made in China. Last year Americans spent over US$130 million on plastic Christmas trees from China, more than 90% of which were manufactured in the semi-tropical southern city of Shenzhen.
This year Americans will spend over $1 billion on Christmas ornaments from China. And in perhaps the greatest irony of all, even nativity scenes are made in China. Last year Americans spent more than $39 million buying nativity scenes shipped in from the East. China's success in attracting foreign investment capital and mobilizing this huge workforce has made it the workshop of the world.
That the US Christmas is made in China is a metaphor for a far deeper set of economic issues affecting the United States. Today Christmas is celebrated in both the United States and China - but for different reasons and with far different economic consequences. For the Chinese, the manufacturing bonanza means record profits, rising incomes, and, in a society where people save some 40% of their income, a sharp jump in savings. In the United States, Christmas shopping expenditures, headed for another record high this year, contribute to rising credit card debt and a soaring trade deficit.
Underneath the American Christmas spirit and good cheer is a debt-laden society that appears to have lost its way, marred in the quicksand of consumerism. As a society, we seem to have forgotten how to save so we can invest in a better future. Instead of leaving our children a promising economic future, we are bequeathing them the largest debt burden of any generation in history.
At the personal level, credit card debt just keeps climbing, and at the government level, we have the largest deficit in history. At the international level, we have a trade deficit that moves to a new high month after month.
It's not the fact that our Christmas is made in China, but rather the mindset that has led to it that is most disturbing. We want to consume no matter what. We want to spend now and let our children pay. It is this same mindset that introduces tax cuts while waging a costly war. Economic sacrifice is no longer part of our vocabulary. After the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor, President Roosevelt banned the sale of private cars in order to mobilize the manufacturing capacity and engineering skills of the US automobile industry to build tanks and planes. In contrast, after 9/11, President Bush urged us to go shopping.
In the United States we are so intent on consuming that personal savings have virtually disappeared. We have an average of five credit cards for every man, woman, and child. Of the 145 million cardholders, only 55 million clear their accounts each month. The other 90 million cannot seem to catch up and are paying steep interest rates on their remaining balance. Millions of people are so deeply in debt that they may remain indebted for life.
The official national debt, the product of years of fiscal deficits, now totals $8.5 trillion - some $64,000 per taxpayer. (See data at Earth Policy Institute) By the end of the Bush administration in 2008, this figure is projected to reach a staggering $9.4 trillion. We are digging a fiscal black hole and sinking deeper and deeper into it.
Each month the Treasury covers the fiscal deficit by auctioning off securities. The two leading international buyers of US Treasury securities are Japan and China. In this role, China is now also becoming our banker. This developing country, where income levels are one sixth those of the United States, is financing the excesses of an affluent industrial society. What's wrong with this picture?
In times past, when our fiscal deficits were covered largely by US lenders, interest payments on the debt were reinvested in the United States. Now they are flowing abroad to Japan, China and other foreign holders of US debt.
While the US fiscal deficit, driven partly by the war in Iraq, soars to stratospheric levels, the country is facing an unprecedented fiscal challenge as the baby boomer generation retires, pushing up the costs of social security, Medicaid, and Medicare. This, combined with the growing interest payments on our debt to China and other countries, will put a nearly impossible tax burden on the next generation - something for which they may never forgive us.
The US trade deficit is growing by leaps and bounds, nearly doubling from $452 billion in 2000 to an estimated $850 billion in 2006. Rising oil imports and the trade deficit with China account for over half of it.
National policy failures such as not adequately supporting the use of renewable energy technologies have contributed to the growing US trade deficit. For example, the United States should be a leading manufacturer and exporter of solar cells and wind turbines, but it has fallen behind both Europe and Japan. The solar cell, invented at Bell Labs in 1954, is an American technology. But the US effort to develop solar energy was so weak and sporadic that both Germany and Japan forged ahead and developed robust solar cell manufacturing and export industries.
The situation is similar with wind. Although the modern wind industry was born in California at the beginning of the 1980s, the US failure to sustain support for wind resource development allowed European countries to largely take over this industry.
Even though rising oil imports are widening our trade deficit, we consume oil with abandon, weakening the economy and undermining our political independence.
We have lost influence in world financial markets simply because of our mounting debt, much of it held by other countries. If China's leaders ever become convinced that the dollar is headed continuously downward and they decide to dump their dollar holdings, the dollar could collapse.
Beholden to other countries for oil and to finance our debt, the United States is fast losing its leadership role in the world. The question we are facing is not simply whether our Christmas is made in China, but more fundamentally whether we can restore the discipline and values that made us a great nation - a nation the world admired, respected, and emulated. This is not something that Santa Claus can deliver, not even a Chinese Santa Claus. This is something only we can do.
Lester R. Brown is president of the Earth Policy Institute and author of Plan B 3.0: Mobilizing to Save Civilization.
Dec 20, 2007
SPEAKING FREELY
Christmas is made in China
By Lester R Brown
Speaking Freely is an Asia Times Online feature that allows guest writers to have their say. Please click here if you are interested in contributing.
I know Santa Claus is Chinese because each Christmas morning after all the gifts are unwrapped and things settle down I systematically go through the presents to see where they are made. The results are almost always the same: roughly 70% are from China. After some research, it seems that my one-family survey is representative of the country as a whole.
Let's start with toys. Some 80% of the toys sold in the United States - from Barbie dolls to video games - are made in China. Talking toys that speak English learned the language from
Chinese workers. Electronic goods - from Apple's iPod to Microsoft's Xbox - are made in China. Clothing - from the latest cashmere sweaters to gym suits - is also likely to have a "Made in China" label.
The Christmas tree itself may come from China. While real Christmas trees are grown in every state in the United States and are marketed locally, many families now gather around artificial Christmas trees. Eight out of every 10 artificial Christmas trees sold in the United States are made in China. Last year Americans spent over US$130 million on plastic Christmas trees from China, more than 90% of which were manufactured in the semi-tropical southern city of Shenzhen.
This year Americans will spend over $1 billion on Christmas ornaments from China. And in perhaps the greatest irony of all, even nativity scenes are made in China. Last year Americans spent more than $39 million buying nativity scenes shipped in from the East. China's success in attracting foreign investment capital and mobilizing this huge workforce has made it the workshop of the world.
That the US Christmas is made in China is a metaphor for a far deeper set of economic issues affecting the United States. Today Christmas is celebrated in both the United States and China - but for different reasons and with far different economic consequences. For the Chinese, the manufacturing bonanza means record profits, rising incomes, and, in a society where people save some 40% of their income, a sharp jump in savings. In the United States, Christmas shopping expenditures, headed for another record high this year, contribute to rising credit card debt and a soaring trade deficit.
Underneath the American Christmas spirit and good cheer is a debt-laden society that appears to have lost its way, marred in the quicksand of consumerism. As a society, we seem to have forgotten how to save so we can invest in a better future. Instead of leaving our children a promising economic future, we are bequeathing them the largest debt burden of any generation in history.
At the personal level, credit card debt just keeps climbing, and at the government level, we have the largest deficit in history. At the international level, we have a trade deficit that moves to a new high month after month.
It's not the fact that our Christmas is made in China, but rather the mindset that has led to it that is most disturbing. We want to consume no matter what. We want to spend now and let our children pay. It is this same mindset that introduces tax cuts while waging a costly war. Economic sacrifice is no longer part of our vocabulary. After the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor, President Roosevelt banned the sale of private cars in order to mobilize the manufacturing capacity and engineering skills of the US automobile industry to build tanks and planes. In contrast, after 9/11, President Bush urged us to go shopping.
In the United States we are so intent on consuming that personal savings have virtually disappeared. We have an average of five credit cards for every man, woman, and child. Of the 145 million cardholders, only 55 million clear their accounts each month. The other 90 million cannot seem to catch up and are paying steep interest rates on their remaining balance. Millions of people are so deeply in debt that they may remain indebted for life.
The official national debt, the product of years of fiscal deficits, now totals $8.5 trillion - some $64,000 per taxpayer. (See data at Earth Policy Institute) By the end of the Bush administration in 2008, this figure is projected to reach a staggering $9.4 trillion. We are digging a fiscal black hole and sinking deeper and deeper into it.
Each month the Treasury covers the fiscal deficit by auctioning off securities. The two leading international buyers of US Treasury securities are Japan and China. In this role, China is now also becoming our banker. This developing country, where income levels are one sixth those of the United States, is financing the excesses of an affluent industrial society. What's wrong with this picture?
In times past, when our fiscal deficits were covered largely by US lenders, interest payments on the debt were reinvested in the United States. Now they are flowing abroad to Japan, China and other foreign holders of US debt.
While the US fiscal deficit, driven partly by the war in Iraq, soars to stratospheric levels, the country is facing an unprecedented fiscal challenge as the baby boomer generation retires, pushing up the costs of social security, Medicaid, and Medicare. This, combined with the growing interest payments on our debt to China and other countries, will put a nearly impossible tax burden on the next generation - something for which they may never forgive us.
The US trade deficit is growing by leaps and bounds, nearly doubling from $452 billion in 2000 to an estimated $850 billion in 2006. Rising oil imports and the trade deficit with China account for over half of it.
National policy failures such as not adequately supporting the use of renewable energy technologies have contributed to the growing US trade deficit. For example, the United States should be a leading manufacturer and exporter of solar cells and wind turbines, but it has fallen behind both Europe and Japan. The solar cell, invented at Bell Labs in 1954, is an American technology. But the US effort to develop solar energy was so weak and sporadic that both Germany and Japan forged ahead and developed robust solar cell manufacturing and export industries.
The situation is similar with wind. Although the modern wind industry was born in California at the beginning of the 1980s, the US failure to sustain support for wind resource development allowed European countries to largely take over this industry.
Even though rising oil imports are widening our trade deficit, we consume oil with abandon, weakening the economy and undermining our political independence.
We have lost influence in world financial markets simply because of our mounting debt, much of it held by other countries. If China's leaders ever become convinced that the dollar is headed continuously downward and they decide to dump their dollar holdings, the dollar could collapse.
Beholden to other countries for oil and to finance our debt, the United States is fast losing its leadership role in the world. The question we are facing is not simply whether our Christmas is made in China, but more fundamentally whether we can restore the discipline and values that made us a great nation - a nation the world admired, respected, and emulated. This is not something that Santa Claus can deliver, not even a Chinese Santa Claus. This is something only we can do.
Lester R. Brown is president of the Earth Policy Institute and author of Plan B 3.0: Mobilizing to Save Civilization.
The Democrats are Anti-War?
Seems the Democrats are not doing much of anything to end the war in Iraq. Maybe now that there is a bit more security provided by Sunni groups paid for by the US who have managed to control Al Qaeda in some of the most violent prone areas the Democrats think they don't need to worry about the war. However, in the long run this may just produce more Shia, Sunni violence. The American populace still is opposed to the war and US casualties continue even though at a lesser rate. This is from BBC news.
The US House of Representatives has voted for a $555bn (£277bn) federal budget, with an extra $70bn for the US military in Iraq and Afghanistan.
The US House of Representatives has voted for a $555bn (£277bn) federal budget, with an extra $70bn for the US military in Iraq and Afghanistan.
Friday, December 21, 2007
Philippines defends rights record over US military aid
It is quite unlikely that the US will hold back any substantial military aid. At most they might hold back some as a symbol of disatisfaction on human rights issues. The official certainly has a point about the US human rights record in Guantanamo. However, Blancaflor failed to mention that the filipinos were withdrawn from Iraq ages ago!
Anyway the US is right in this case, the record of the Philippines on human rights can hardly stand scrutiny, especially the armed forces. Arroyo promoted a general who had a horrible human rights record so the human rights office referred to must be packed with Arroyo supporters!
Philippines defends rights record over US military aid: official
Friday, December 21, 2007
MANILA: The Philippines said on Thursday its human rights record “can stand up” to global scrutiny amid reports the US government may hold back on military assistance. Ricardo Blancaflor, who was named as head of a recently created task force to solve political killings, said the Philippines only suffered from bad perceptions carried by the media.
“Our human rights record can stand up to the rest of the world,” Blancaflor said on local television. He said he hoped US legislators would not apply “double standards” in approving military aid for the Philippines, stressing that Manila was closely following cases of human rights abuses and political killings.
Blancaflor noted that Manila did not attach conditions when Washington requested a Philippine contingent to serve in the Iraq war. “We did not tell the Americans, ‘You know we’re going to join you in Iraq provided you don’t do what you are doing in Guantanamo Bay or in Abu Ghraib prison,” Blancaflor said, referring to US detention centres in Cuba and Iraq where human rights abuses against detainees have been documented.
Blancaflor’s comments came after news reports that US legislators had agreed to slightly increase military funding for Manila from $29.7 million this year to 30 million dollars in 2008. But part of the increase was contingent on the Philippines improving its rights record.
US special envoy Philip Alston earlier this month released a damning report blaming the Philippine military for many unsolved killings. His report said soldiers were “systematically hunting down” leaders of left-wing groups as part of its anti-insurgency campaign.
Among those killed, he said, were judges, lawyers, anti-government activists, trade union activists and journalists. Local rights group Kaparatan said the number of extra-judicial killings had dropped to 68 this year from 209 in 2006.
It added that since President Gloria Arroyo came to power in January 2001 up to October this year, a total of 887 killings were reported. Blancaflor defended the military, saying they were the only defence organisation in the world where officers can only be promoted if cleared by a human rights office.
Anyway the US is right in this case, the record of the Philippines on human rights can hardly stand scrutiny, especially the armed forces. Arroyo promoted a general who had a horrible human rights record so the human rights office referred to must be packed with Arroyo supporters!
Philippines defends rights record over US military aid: official
Friday, December 21, 2007
MANILA: The Philippines said on Thursday its human rights record “can stand up” to global scrutiny amid reports the US government may hold back on military assistance. Ricardo Blancaflor, who was named as head of a recently created task force to solve political killings, said the Philippines only suffered from bad perceptions carried by the media.
“Our human rights record can stand up to the rest of the world,” Blancaflor said on local television. He said he hoped US legislators would not apply “double standards” in approving military aid for the Philippines, stressing that Manila was closely following cases of human rights abuses and political killings.
Blancaflor noted that Manila did not attach conditions when Washington requested a Philippine contingent to serve in the Iraq war. “We did not tell the Americans, ‘You know we’re going to join you in Iraq provided you don’t do what you are doing in Guantanamo Bay or in Abu Ghraib prison,” Blancaflor said, referring to US detention centres in Cuba and Iraq where human rights abuses against detainees have been documented.
Blancaflor’s comments came after news reports that US legislators had agreed to slightly increase military funding for Manila from $29.7 million this year to 30 million dollars in 2008. But part of the increase was contingent on the Philippines improving its rights record.
US special envoy Philip Alston earlier this month released a damning report blaming the Philippine military for many unsolved killings. His report said soldiers were “systematically hunting down” leaders of left-wing groups as part of its anti-insurgency campaign.
Among those killed, he said, were judges, lawyers, anti-government activists, trade union activists and journalists. Local rights group Kaparatan said the number of extra-judicial killings had dropped to 68 this year from 209 in 2006.
It added that since President Gloria Arroyo came to power in January 2001 up to October this year, a total of 887 killings were reported. Blancaflor defended the military, saying they were the only defence organisation in the world where officers can only be promoted if cleared by a human rights office.
U.S. needs to engage Tehran not order it around.
This is from the Star (Toronto) This article points out some obvious facts that almost no western media bother to point out. The US is in violation of the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty and has been for ages. The US says zilch about Israel's nuclear capabilities. Israel of course refuses even to acknowledge it has any weapons! The US rewards India and tolerates Pakistan's nuclear arsenal/ THe US adamantly refuses to envisage a non-nuclear Middle East since that would inclued Israel.
U.S. needs to engage Tehran, not order it around
TheStar.com - columnists - U.S. needs to engage Tehran, not order it around
December 20, 2007
Haroon Siddiqui
Russia delivers nuclear fuel to Iran. Russia and China sign multi-billion dollar contracts to develop Iran's oil and gas fields, the auto and telecommunications sectors.
Both do so within two weeks of the U.S. intelligence agencies announcing that Tehran does not have a nuclear weapons program.
After six years of sabre rattling, George W. Bush's Iran policy is in shambles. It is so for the same reason his Iraq policy has been. It's fundamentally dishonest.
The U.S. does not want Iran to develop a bomb but it won't reduce its own huge nuclear stockpile, as called for under the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty.
It bullies Iran for allegedly doing what Israel, India and Pakistan have done: develop nuclear bombs covertly. Far from penalizing them, Bush has been courting each for strategic reasons.
Nor would he support a call by the International Atomic Energy Agency for a nuclear-free Middle East, including Israel.
Do what I say, not what I do.
Iran's nuclear program was started by the pro-U.S. Shah in the 1970s, with Washington's full backing.
The power plant at Bushehr lay dormant after the 1979 Islamic revolution. Since the Russians resumed work on it in 1995, the IAEA has kept an eye and will monitor the fuel that Russia has just shipped.
This is all legit work.
It is at another plant, at Natanz, that Iran is enriching uranium. That, too, is legit, under the non-proliferation treaty, of which Iran is a member.
So what's the problem?
The U.S. and its allies do not want Iran to have the know-how to enrich uranium, which can also be used to make a bomb. But Iran says it is not making one and does not want to.
We don't believe you, says the U.S., because you've cheated in the past.
Iran was indeed not forthcoming about all its activities, as required by the non-proliferation treaty. It's now working with the IAEA to explain its 1988-2003 record.
The issue boils down to deciphering Iran's "intentions." Bush says: "They can play like they got a civilian program and pass the knowledge to a covert military program."
But all nuclear nations built their bombs that way. So, his stance becomes: Okay, we did it but you can't. And you can't because you hate Israel and the U.S., and help Hamas and Hezbollah. That's why we must stop you, never mind the IAEA.
Hence the parallel American track at the UN Security Council, which passed two resolutions imposing sanctions on Iran.
Bush was trying for a third when his own intelligence agencies pulled the rug from under him.
If Iran has no weapons program, as the IAEA also says, the basis for the UN resolutions is gone. And there's no basis to bomb Iran.
Enter the Russians with the fuel, and they and the Chinese with the contracts to sign.
We are seeing a repeat of a historic American mistake.
In the 1950s, Dwight Eisenhower sent Egypt into the Soviet fold, from which it couldn't be pried for decades.
Bush needs to engage Tehran, not order it around. He wants to talk to Iran about Iraq but not Iran itself. You help us in Iraq but we won't help you anywhere.
The clerics in Tehran won't crumble under such coercion. But they do respond pragmatically, as they did against the Taliban, both pre- and post-9/11.
They want the U.S. to stop being belligerent, abandon its policy of regime change and respect Iran's territorial integrity. That's not a bad starting point to demand, in return, the suspension of the uranium enrichment program and a constructive Iranian role in Lebanon and in the peace talks in the Middle East.
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Haroon Siddiqui, the Star's editorial page editor emeritus, appears Thursday in World and Sunday in the A-section. Email: hsiddiq@thestar.ca
U.S. needs to engage Tehran, not order it around
TheStar.com - columnists - U.S. needs to engage Tehran, not order it around
December 20, 2007
Haroon Siddiqui
Russia delivers nuclear fuel to Iran. Russia and China sign multi-billion dollar contracts to develop Iran's oil and gas fields, the auto and telecommunications sectors.
Both do so within two weeks of the U.S. intelligence agencies announcing that Tehran does not have a nuclear weapons program.
After six years of sabre rattling, George W. Bush's Iran policy is in shambles. It is so for the same reason his Iraq policy has been. It's fundamentally dishonest.
The U.S. does not want Iran to develop a bomb but it won't reduce its own huge nuclear stockpile, as called for under the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty.
It bullies Iran for allegedly doing what Israel, India and Pakistan have done: develop nuclear bombs covertly. Far from penalizing them, Bush has been courting each for strategic reasons.
Nor would he support a call by the International Atomic Energy Agency for a nuclear-free Middle East, including Israel.
Do what I say, not what I do.
Iran's nuclear program was started by the pro-U.S. Shah in the 1970s, with Washington's full backing.
The power plant at Bushehr lay dormant after the 1979 Islamic revolution. Since the Russians resumed work on it in 1995, the IAEA has kept an eye and will monitor the fuel that Russia has just shipped.
This is all legit work.
It is at another plant, at Natanz, that Iran is enriching uranium. That, too, is legit, under the non-proliferation treaty, of which Iran is a member.
So what's the problem?
The U.S. and its allies do not want Iran to have the know-how to enrich uranium, which can also be used to make a bomb. But Iran says it is not making one and does not want to.
We don't believe you, says the U.S., because you've cheated in the past.
Iran was indeed not forthcoming about all its activities, as required by the non-proliferation treaty. It's now working with the IAEA to explain its 1988-2003 record.
The issue boils down to deciphering Iran's "intentions." Bush says: "They can play like they got a civilian program and pass the knowledge to a covert military program."
But all nuclear nations built their bombs that way. So, his stance becomes: Okay, we did it but you can't. And you can't because you hate Israel and the U.S., and help Hamas and Hezbollah. That's why we must stop you, never mind the IAEA.
Hence the parallel American track at the UN Security Council, which passed two resolutions imposing sanctions on Iran.
Bush was trying for a third when his own intelligence agencies pulled the rug from under him.
If Iran has no weapons program, as the IAEA also says, the basis for the UN resolutions is gone. And there's no basis to bomb Iran.
Enter the Russians with the fuel, and they and the Chinese with the contracts to sign.
We are seeing a repeat of a historic American mistake.
In the 1950s, Dwight Eisenhower sent Egypt into the Soviet fold, from which it couldn't be pried for decades.
Bush needs to engage Tehran, not order it around. He wants to talk to Iran about Iraq but not Iran itself. You help us in Iraq but we won't help you anywhere.
The clerics in Tehran won't crumble under such coercion. But they do respond pragmatically, as they did against the Taliban, both pre- and post-9/11.
They want the U.S. to stop being belligerent, abandon its policy of regime change and respect Iran's territorial integrity. That's not a bad starting point to demand, in return, the suspension of the uranium enrichment program and a constructive Iranian role in Lebanon and in the peace talks in the Middle East.
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Haroon Siddiqui, the Star's editorial page editor emeritus, appears Thursday in World and Sunday in the A-section. Email: hsiddiq@thestar.ca
Thursday, December 20, 2007
Philippines: Lawyers Criticize Arroyo regime
This is from the Manila Tribune. It is not only in Pakistan that lawyers protest against the government. The statements released by the IBP (Integrated Bar of the Philippines) has a good summary of some of the most important charges against the Arroyo govt. However, there are enough paid allies of Arroyo to prevent any successful attempt to impeach or cause the downfall of the government. So far people power--mass protests-- has not worked either. No doubt many people are cynical about people power. After all Arroyo first got into power through people power!
RP lawyers: Make GMA see, feel, hear public anger
12/21/2007
Filipino lawyers appear to have had it with President Arroyo and her many scandals and scams that have earned her the tag of “The Most Corrupt President” the Philippines has ever had.
Taking a half-page advertisement in a major daily that was published yesterday, the Integrated Bar of the Philippines (IBP), the country’s national organization of lawyers, yesterday strongly condemned what it termed as the “culture of corruption, dishonesty and deceit” that marks the Arroyo government “whose moral fiber has worn thin and whose conscience has vanished.”
The national lawyers group called this state of Arroyo government affairs “abominable.”
The IBP called on the Filipino people to make Mrs. Arroyo feel their anger.
The advertisement, entitled A statement of Concern, slammed the Arroyo administration for its continuing acts of involvement in scandals, scams and controversies, stressing that hers is a “government which has mastered the art of cover-up and manipulation” as it strongly intimated that Mrs. Arroyo’s “constitutional right to lead has been diminished.”
The statement of concern was signed by IBP national president Feliciano Bautista and eight governors, namely, Abelardo Estrada, Ernesto Gonzales Jr., Marcial Magsino, Bonifacio Barandon Jr., Evergisto Escalon, Raymond Jorge Mercado, Ramon Edison Batacan and Carlos Valdez Jr.
The statement read: “The culture of corruption, dishonesty and deceit that pervades our government is abominable.”
The IBP stressed in its statement that it has not forgotten the issues that rocked the nation in the past such as the “anomalous election computerization deals, the agriculture fertilizer funds scam, the Northrail scandal, the Diosdado Macapagal Highway overprice, irregularities during the May 2007 national elections and the aborted NBN deal.”
The statement said that “these controversies clearly show a malignant social gangrene that afflicts the nation’s leadership. Of course, on top of the more prominent irregularities, we are exposed every so often to news of smuggling, extra-judicial killings and forced disappearances, and ghost projects in government agencies.”
The group of lawyers also scored the “huge amounts of money” distributed to legislative and local officials right inside the halls of Malacañang Palace.”
The lawyers deplored the fact that when the Filipino people asked for answers, all they got was a “flimsy and belated explanation peddled by Malacañang’s spin doctors that were untrue, unbelievable and utterly insulting to anyone with a functioning brain.”
The IBP added that these are the types of incidents that dishearten a citizenry regularly fed with reports of a supposedly improving economy which the IBP said cannot be felt.
“When we vote, there is a lingering suspicion that our collective voice will be subverted. When we pay our taxes, there is frustration that our hard-earned money will not be used to pave our roads and improve social services.
“And now the clincher. Results of a recent opinion poll show that many Filipinos perceive the present administration to be the most corrupt in recent history. This does not raise eyebrows anymore, because deep inside, many of us believe it to be true,” the statement read.
The IBP also “strongly” condemned “these continuing acts of a government whose moral fiber has worn thin and whose conscience has seemingly vanished. A government which has mastered the art of cover-up and manipulation finds its constitutional right to lead diminished. It betrays the people’s trust when it thrives not on good governance but on sustained corruption.”
Broadly hinting that the people must move against the Arroyo government, the IBP statement said: “We need to act now. We challenge the Filipino citizenry to channel (its) rightful indignation and disappointment into legal means of expression.
“We lament Congress’ move of killing the most recent impeachment complaint.”
Appealing to the members of Congress, the IBP said: “Dear congressmen, please act on what is right, not when the price is right. As for our senators, we admonish you to continue your probes on government anomalies and questionable transaction.
“We are now all witness to a government that dampens our hopes and fails to positively inspire; a government which shamefully pampers the already rich and powerful and pays mere lip service to the interest of millions who are impoverished.
“It is but proper that we let a government like this see, hear and feel our growing anger.”
This is the first time that the IBP has issued a very strong statement against the Arroyo government, even as the statement reflects the issues that continue to hound the Arroyo presidency, such as Mrs. Arroyo’s legitimacy issue, first challenged before the high court, as she ascended to Malacañang and political power through a power grab while she and her civil society mounted a coup d’etat against the then sitting constitutional president, Joseph Estrada.
The legitimacy issue surfaced even more resoundingly in 2005, after the infamous “Hello Garci” tapes, which held teh incriminating conversations between Mrs. Arroyo and then Comelec commissioner Virgilio Garcillano, where the vote rigging operations, through the vote shaving, vote padding scheme to ensure her fraudulent victory in 2004, were exposed.
Scandal after scandal have rocked the Arroyo government which has moved to stonewall all probes into these scams and controversies.
In the P3 billion fertilizer fund scam, it was reported that Mrs. Arroyo and her aides ensured the protection of former Agriculture Under-secretary Jocelyn “Joc-Joc” Bolante and in the same fashion, was said to have spirited him away as Garcillano was spirited away by the Arroyo government, to keep them out of the Senate’s reach.
The IBP lamented that the people are now all witness to a government that “dampens our hopes to positively inspire, a government which shamefully pampers the already rich and powerful and pays mere lip service to the interest of millions who are now impoverished.”
The IBP, in calling on the people to let their anger be seen, felt and heard by Mrs. Arroyo and her aides, appear to be urging the Filipino people to go into street demonstrations, in the same way people did in 1986, in the Edsa 1 revolt.
IBP leaders also said it is ready to mount street protests to express the “growing anger” of lawyers over controversies pestering the Arroyo’s administration.
RP lawyers: Make GMA see, feel, hear public anger
12/21/2007
Filipino lawyers appear to have had it with President Arroyo and her many scandals and scams that have earned her the tag of “The Most Corrupt President” the Philippines has ever had.
Taking a half-page advertisement in a major daily that was published yesterday, the Integrated Bar of the Philippines (IBP), the country’s national organization of lawyers, yesterday strongly condemned what it termed as the “culture of corruption, dishonesty and deceit” that marks the Arroyo government “whose moral fiber has worn thin and whose conscience has vanished.”
The national lawyers group called this state of Arroyo government affairs “abominable.”
The IBP called on the Filipino people to make Mrs. Arroyo feel their anger.
The advertisement, entitled A statement of Concern, slammed the Arroyo administration for its continuing acts of involvement in scandals, scams and controversies, stressing that hers is a “government which has mastered the art of cover-up and manipulation” as it strongly intimated that Mrs. Arroyo’s “constitutional right to lead has been diminished.”
The statement of concern was signed by IBP national president Feliciano Bautista and eight governors, namely, Abelardo Estrada, Ernesto Gonzales Jr., Marcial Magsino, Bonifacio Barandon Jr., Evergisto Escalon, Raymond Jorge Mercado, Ramon Edison Batacan and Carlos Valdez Jr.
The statement read: “The culture of corruption, dishonesty and deceit that pervades our government is abominable.”
The IBP stressed in its statement that it has not forgotten the issues that rocked the nation in the past such as the “anomalous election computerization deals, the agriculture fertilizer funds scam, the Northrail scandal, the Diosdado Macapagal Highway overprice, irregularities during the May 2007 national elections and the aborted NBN deal.”
The statement said that “these controversies clearly show a malignant social gangrene that afflicts the nation’s leadership. Of course, on top of the more prominent irregularities, we are exposed every so often to news of smuggling, extra-judicial killings and forced disappearances, and ghost projects in government agencies.”
The group of lawyers also scored the “huge amounts of money” distributed to legislative and local officials right inside the halls of Malacañang Palace.”
The lawyers deplored the fact that when the Filipino people asked for answers, all they got was a “flimsy and belated explanation peddled by Malacañang’s spin doctors that were untrue, unbelievable and utterly insulting to anyone with a functioning brain.”
The IBP added that these are the types of incidents that dishearten a citizenry regularly fed with reports of a supposedly improving economy which the IBP said cannot be felt.
“When we vote, there is a lingering suspicion that our collective voice will be subverted. When we pay our taxes, there is frustration that our hard-earned money will not be used to pave our roads and improve social services.
“And now the clincher. Results of a recent opinion poll show that many Filipinos perceive the present administration to be the most corrupt in recent history. This does not raise eyebrows anymore, because deep inside, many of us believe it to be true,” the statement read.
The IBP also “strongly” condemned “these continuing acts of a government whose moral fiber has worn thin and whose conscience has seemingly vanished. A government which has mastered the art of cover-up and manipulation finds its constitutional right to lead diminished. It betrays the people’s trust when it thrives not on good governance but on sustained corruption.”
Broadly hinting that the people must move against the Arroyo government, the IBP statement said: “We need to act now. We challenge the Filipino citizenry to channel (its) rightful indignation and disappointment into legal means of expression.
“We lament Congress’ move of killing the most recent impeachment complaint.”
Appealing to the members of Congress, the IBP said: “Dear congressmen, please act on what is right, not when the price is right. As for our senators, we admonish you to continue your probes on government anomalies and questionable transaction.
“We are now all witness to a government that dampens our hopes and fails to positively inspire; a government which shamefully pampers the already rich and powerful and pays mere lip service to the interest of millions who are impoverished.
“It is but proper that we let a government like this see, hear and feel our growing anger.”
This is the first time that the IBP has issued a very strong statement against the Arroyo government, even as the statement reflects the issues that continue to hound the Arroyo presidency, such as Mrs. Arroyo’s legitimacy issue, first challenged before the high court, as she ascended to Malacañang and political power through a power grab while she and her civil society mounted a coup d’etat against the then sitting constitutional president, Joseph Estrada.
The legitimacy issue surfaced even more resoundingly in 2005, after the infamous “Hello Garci” tapes, which held teh incriminating conversations between Mrs. Arroyo and then Comelec commissioner Virgilio Garcillano, where the vote rigging operations, through the vote shaving, vote padding scheme to ensure her fraudulent victory in 2004, were exposed.
Scandal after scandal have rocked the Arroyo government which has moved to stonewall all probes into these scams and controversies.
In the P3 billion fertilizer fund scam, it was reported that Mrs. Arroyo and her aides ensured the protection of former Agriculture Under-secretary Jocelyn “Joc-Joc” Bolante and in the same fashion, was said to have spirited him away as Garcillano was spirited away by the Arroyo government, to keep them out of the Senate’s reach.
The IBP lamented that the people are now all witness to a government that “dampens our hopes to positively inspire, a government which shamefully pampers the already rich and powerful and pays mere lip service to the interest of millions who are now impoverished.”
The IBP, in calling on the people to let their anger be seen, felt and heard by Mrs. Arroyo and her aides, appear to be urging the Filipino people to go into street demonstrations, in the same way people did in 1986, in the Edsa 1 revolt.
IBP leaders also said it is ready to mount street protests to express the “growing anger” of lawyers over controversies pestering the Arroyo’s administration.
Seven Medical Myths Exposed
I have my own version of some of the myths. For example my myth is that we should drink eight cups of coffee a day to keep healthy and alert! My wife thinks I use only ten percent of my brain.
I am quite surprised at the reading in dim light myth. I always thought that was well established. I guess it is well established as a myth! The article is from the BBC.
'Medical myths' exposed as untrue
Some say we should drink at least eight glasses of water a day
Some claim drinking eight glasses of water a day leads to good health, while reading in dim light damages eyesight.
Others believe we only use 10% of our brains or that shaving legs causes hair to grow back thicker.
But a review of evidence by US researchers surrounding seven commonly-hold beliefs suggests they are actually "medical myths".
Some are utterly untrue, while others have no evidential proof, the British Medical Journal reports.
Researchers from the Indiana University School of Medicine in Indianapolis hunted medical literature for evidence on each claim.
They found no evidence supporting the need to drink eight glasses of water a day.
Medical myths
In fact, studies suggest that adequate fluid intake is often met by drinking juice, milk, and even caffeine-rich tea and coffee.
Data also suggests drinking excessive amounts of water can be dangerous.
The belief that we only use 10% of our brains appears to be completely untrue.
Studies of patients with brain damage suggest that damage to almost any area of the brain has specific and lasting effects on mental, vegetative and behavioural capabilities.
Absence of evidence does not necessarily mean absence of effect
Dr David Tovey
Editor of Clinical Evidence journal
Brain imaging studies also show that no area of the brain is completely silent or inactive.
And the belief that hair and fingernails continue to grow after death may be an optical illusion caused by retraction of the skin after death.
The actual growth of hair and nails requires a complex interplay of hormonal regulation not present after death.
Again, illusion may be to blame for the belief that shaving hair causes it to grow back faster, darker, and coarser, report author Rachel Vreeman told the BMJ.
The stubble resulting from shaving grows out without the finer taper seen at the ends of unshaven hair, giving the impression of thickness and coarseness.
Again, expert opinion is that reading in dim light does not damage your eyes. And there is little evidence to support the banning mobile phones from hospitals on the basis of electromagnetic interference.
Finally, eating turkey - and the tryptophan amino acid it contains - does not make people especially drowsy.
Indeed, turkey, chicken and minced beef contain similar amounts of tryptophan.
THE SEVEN MEDICAL BELIEFS
Drink at least eight glasses of water a day
We use only 10% of our brains
Hair and fingernails continue to grow after death
Reading in dim light ruins your eyesight
Shaving causes hair to grow back faster or coarser
Mobile phones are dangerous in hospitals
Eating turkey makes people especially drowsy
The researchers explained: "Any large meal can induce sleepiness because blood flow and oxygenation to the brain decrease, and meals rich in protein or carbohydrate may cause drowsiness. Wine may also play a role."
Dr David Tovey, editor of Clinical Evidence journal, said: "The difficulty is it is often hard to disprove a theory.
"On the flip-side, absence of evidence does not necessarily mean absence of effect.
"Where reliable evidence becomes really important is in helping people make serious decisions about harms and risks.
"Many of these 'myths' are innocuous. However, we are still finding evidence that runs contrary to current practice and what we expect."
He gave the example of the relatively recent U-turn in advice over sleeping positions for babies to cut cot deaths.
I am quite surprised at the reading in dim light myth. I always thought that was well established. I guess it is well established as a myth! The article is from the BBC.
'Medical myths' exposed as untrue
Some say we should drink at least eight glasses of water a day
Some claim drinking eight glasses of water a day leads to good health, while reading in dim light damages eyesight.
Others believe we only use 10% of our brains or that shaving legs causes hair to grow back thicker.
But a review of evidence by US researchers surrounding seven commonly-hold beliefs suggests they are actually "medical myths".
Some are utterly untrue, while others have no evidential proof, the British Medical Journal reports.
Researchers from the Indiana University School of Medicine in Indianapolis hunted medical literature for evidence on each claim.
They found no evidence supporting the need to drink eight glasses of water a day.
Medical myths
In fact, studies suggest that adequate fluid intake is often met by drinking juice, milk, and even caffeine-rich tea and coffee.
Data also suggests drinking excessive amounts of water can be dangerous.
The belief that we only use 10% of our brains appears to be completely untrue.
Studies of patients with brain damage suggest that damage to almost any area of the brain has specific and lasting effects on mental, vegetative and behavioural capabilities.
Absence of evidence does not necessarily mean absence of effect
Dr David Tovey
Editor of Clinical Evidence journal
Brain imaging studies also show that no area of the brain is completely silent or inactive.
And the belief that hair and fingernails continue to grow after death may be an optical illusion caused by retraction of the skin after death.
The actual growth of hair and nails requires a complex interplay of hormonal regulation not present after death.
Again, illusion may be to blame for the belief that shaving hair causes it to grow back faster, darker, and coarser, report author Rachel Vreeman told the BMJ.
The stubble resulting from shaving grows out without the finer taper seen at the ends of unshaven hair, giving the impression of thickness and coarseness.
Again, expert opinion is that reading in dim light does not damage your eyes. And there is little evidence to support the banning mobile phones from hospitals on the basis of electromagnetic interference.
Finally, eating turkey - and the tryptophan amino acid it contains - does not make people especially drowsy.
Indeed, turkey, chicken and minced beef contain similar amounts of tryptophan.
THE SEVEN MEDICAL BELIEFS
Drink at least eight glasses of water a day
We use only 10% of our brains
Hair and fingernails continue to grow after death
Reading in dim light ruins your eyesight
Shaving causes hair to grow back faster or coarser
Mobile phones are dangerous in hospitals
Eating turkey makes people especially drowsy
The researchers explained: "Any large meal can induce sleepiness because blood flow and oxygenation to the brain decrease, and meals rich in protein or carbohydrate may cause drowsiness. Wine may also play a role."
Dr David Tovey, editor of Clinical Evidence journal, said: "The difficulty is it is often hard to disprove a theory.
"On the flip-side, absence of evidence does not necessarily mean absence of effect.
"Where reliable evidence becomes really important is in helping people make serious decisions about harms and risks.
"Many of these 'myths' are innocuous. However, we are still finding evidence that runs contrary to current practice and what we expect."
He gave the example of the relatively recent U-turn in advice over sleeping positions for babies to cut cot deaths.
New ANC leader Zuma ends speech with trademark song.
This is from Reuters. This election shows the degree to which democracy still flourishes in South Africa although it also shows that the government has been quite unable to do much to alleviate the grinding poverty of many blacks. The crime rate is also soaring. Many of Mbeki's policies have been neo-liberal which is why the business community is a bit nervous at Zuma's win. Zuma represents a mass base of the ANC and other parties that have not been raised from poverty. However, given that Zuma is already facing rape and corruption charges he will probably be willing to trade some principle in exchange for some respite from further attacks on his integrity. 9/10ths of reputed integrity is backing the powers that count. Just look at Bhutto and Sharif in Pakistan. Bhutto has talks with Musharraf and agrees to participate in elections but Sharif refused to until in effect his hand was forced by Bhutto. But Sharif cannot run for president because corruption charges against him were not dropped but those against Bhutto were. Sharif has no reputed integrity but Bhutto has--of course in the western media she has lots of integrity too!
New ANC leader Zuma ends speech with trademark song
Thu 20 Dec 2007, 16:08 GMT
[-] Text [+] POLOKWANE, South Africa (Reuters) - Jacob Zuma, new leader of South Africa's ruling ANC, ended his first speech as party chief on Thursday by singing a trademark anti-apartheid guerrilla song "Bring me my machine gun" as supporters sang along and danced.
In stark contrast to the austere and intellectual style of President Thabo Mbeki, whom he defeated for the party leadership this week, Zuma sang the African National Congress guerrilla song called "Umshini Wam".
Hundreds of delegates to the ANC national conference in the northern town of Polokwane sang along, clapping hands and swaying, some holding signs that read "Dictatorship R.I.P".
Mbeki watched impassively as Zuma sang. In his speech, Zuma called for unity in the party and said he would work with Mbeki to heal the ANC after the worst rifts in its history.
New ANC leader Zuma ends speech with trademark song
Thu 20 Dec 2007, 16:08 GMT
[-] Text [+] POLOKWANE, South Africa (Reuters) - Jacob Zuma, new leader of South Africa's ruling ANC, ended his first speech as party chief on Thursday by singing a trademark anti-apartheid guerrilla song "Bring me my machine gun" as supporters sang along and danced.
In stark contrast to the austere and intellectual style of President Thabo Mbeki, whom he defeated for the party leadership this week, Zuma sang the African National Congress guerrilla song called "Umshini Wam".
Hundreds of delegates to the ANC national conference in the northern town of Polokwane sang along, clapping hands and swaying, some holding signs that read "Dictatorship R.I.P".
Mbeki watched impassively as Zuma sang. In his speech, Zuma called for unity in the party and said he would work with Mbeki to heal the ANC after the worst rifts in its history.
Tuesday, December 18, 2007
Philippines: US lobbies against cheap medicines bill.
This is from the Tribune.
This is typical of US attempts to influence legislation but in the Philippines it is liable to cause strong reactions especially since the press in the Philippines is actually quite free. Ratings of press freedoms are bad only because of the dangers to journalists! After Iraq, the Philippines has the most attacks on journalists but it seems without effect. I was struck by the fact that the press there is much more free-wheeling than in the US or Canada by far. Some newspapers such as the Tribune can be quite radical.
Cheap medicines bill faces rough sailing in bicam — solon
12/19/2007
A member of the House of Representatives yesterday accused the United States of lobbying against the passage of the cheaper medicines bill, warning that the Philippines would be going against the trend in the US free trade agreements with other countries once the bill becomes a law.
Akbayan Rep. Riza Hontiveros, during a press conference yesterday said the US Trade Representative in the country is actively lobbying with the members of the House committee on trade and industry to junk the cheaper medicines bill.
“They ought to be reminded that the Philippines is not a colony of the United States,” Hontiveros said.
She added a copy of the US government’s position paper was circulated to members of the House trade and industry committee.
“Predictably, the Office of the US Trade Representative echoed the position of multinational pharmaceutical companies. They don’t want a stricter definition of patentability to protect the monopoly of big pharmaceutical companies,” Hontiveros said.
She added the US also wants to limit the government’s use of compulsory licensing.
Hontiveros also took exception to the warning that the bill is contrary to the interests of the US in its free trade pacts with other countries.
“This is a clear connivance between multinational pharmaceutical companies and the US government ,” she said, adding “the US government is using the US-RP free trade agreement, which is still being negotiated under the US-RP bilateral Trade and Investment Framework Agreement, as their trump card,”
Hontiveros revealed that the target of the multinational pharmaceutical companies – the Intellectual Property Code Amendments – has not been removed when the bill was passed on second reading.
She called on her colleagues in the House and other cause-oriented groups to be vigilant as the bill would still be going through a series of amendatory process in the bicameral conference committee meetings.
Speaker Jose de Venecia Jr., for his part, said the overwhelming vote for the bill on Monday “disproved once and for all the notion of a lobby out to derail approval of the legislation long awaited by the Filipino people.”
“We have fully disproved that there is a strong lobby against the measure. The people’s interest has clearly prevailed,” he said.
House Bill 2884 aims to bring down the prices of medicines through a regulatory body headed by the Department of Trade and Industry secretary and amending Republic Act 8239 of the Intellectual Property Code to allow parallel importation of patented drugs and disallow the grant of new patents. The bill, which was deliberated upon by the trade committee of Rep. Antonio Alvarez, was principally authored by Rep. Ferjenel Biron.
Cebu Rep. Pablo Garcia in a privilege speech batted for the removal of the provision for the creation of the Drug Price Regulation Board that would control the prices of medicines.
Gerry Baldo
This is typical of US attempts to influence legislation but in the Philippines it is liable to cause strong reactions especially since the press in the Philippines is actually quite free. Ratings of press freedoms are bad only because of the dangers to journalists! After Iraq, the Philippines has the most attacks on journalists but it seems without effect. I was struck by the fact that the press there is much more free-wheeling than in the US or Canada by far. Some newspapers such as the Tribune can be quite radical.
Cheap medicines bill faces rough sailing in bicam — solon
12/19/2007
A member of the House of Representatives yesterday accused the United States of lobbying against the passage of the cheaper medicines bill, warning that the Philippines would be going against the trend in the US free trade agreements with other countries once the bill becomes a law.
Akbayan Rep. Riza Hontiveros, during a press conference yesterday said the US Trade Representative in the country is actively lobbying with the members of the House committee on trade and industry to junk the cheaper medicines bill.
“They ought to be reminded that the Philippines is not a colony of the United States,” Hontiveros said.
She added a copy of the US government’s position paper was circulated to members of the House trade and industry committee.
“Predictably, the Office of the US Trade Representative echoed the position of multinational pharmaceutical companies. They don’t want a stricter definition of patentability to protect the monopoly of big pharmaceutical companies,” Hontiveros said.
She added the US also wants to limit the government’s use of compulsory licensing.
Hontiveros also took exception to the warning that the bill is contrary to the interests of the US in its free trade pacts with other countries.
“This is a clear connivance between multinational pharmaceutical companies and the US government ,” she said, adding “the US government is using the US-RP free trade agreement, which is still being negotiated under the US-RP bilateral Trade and Investment Framework Agreement, as their trump card,”
Hontiveros revealed that the target of the multinational pharmaceutical companies – the Intellectual Property Code Amendments – has not been removed when the bill was passed on second reading.
She called on her colleagues in the House and other cause-oriented groups to be vigilant as the bill would still be going through a series of amendatory process in the bicameral conference committee meetings.
Speaker Jose de Venecia Jr., for his part, said the overwhelming vote for the bill on Monday “disproved once and for all the notion of a lobby out to derail approval of the legislation long awaited by the Filipino people.”
“We have fully disproved that there is a strong lobby against the measure. The people’s interest has clearly prevailed,” he said.
House Bill 2884 aims to bring down the prices of medicines through a regulatory body headed by the Department of Trade and Industry secretary and amending Republic Act 8239 of the Intellectual Property Code to allow parallel importation of patented drugs and disallow the grant of new patents. The bill, which was deliberated upon by the trade committee of Rep. Antonio Alvarez, was principally authored by Rep. Ferjenel Biron.
Cebu Rep. Pablo Garcia in a privilege speech batted for the removal of the provision for the creation of the Drug Price Regulation Board that would control the prices of medicines.
Gerry Baldo
Fayyad's alibi
This is an interesting article on the new Palestinian Authority Prime Minister Salam Fayyad. He is the new darling of the west and will now be in charge of distribution a huge supply of funds coming from international donors. Fatah is a bit leery of him since he is not a member of Fatah. He has a less compromised reputation as far as corruption is concerned. He has prepared himself an alibi for the failure of his plans. This is from Haaretz.
Fayyad's alibi
By Avi Isaacharoff
Tags: Fayyad, Fatah, Palestinians
Today's donors conference to the Palestinian Authority, taking place in Paris, is a time for Palestinian Prime Minister Salam Fayyad to shine. A mere six months since he was appointed to the post, Fayyad has managed to win the international community's support for the economic plan that is the fruit of his labors.
On Thursday, Fayyad stood before a group of journalists in Ramallah and explained, in simple terms, the PA's expectations of the donor states ($5.6 billion over the next three years), of itself and, of course, of Israel. In Paris yesterday, Fayyad repeated the mantra before another group of reporters. The media-shy Palestinian prime minister wants to get his message out so that his plan can succeed.
However, it seems that even Fayyad is preparing for the possibility of failure. He regularly reiterates his two basic demands of Israel, which are conditional for the plan succeeding and the Palestinian economy flourishing: allowing the freedom of movement and goods in the West Bank and, as Fayyad says, "Israel must remove the blockade from Gaza, which has so damaged the Palestinian economy."
Advertisement
But the Palestinian prime minister knows full well that these two conditions will not be met any time soon. Israel is not going to remove the blockade from Gaza, nor will it lift the hundreds of roadblocks dispersed throughout the West Bank. Fayyad does refer to World Bank reports on the subject, but he is getting an alibi ready in case Israel continues its policy and his economic plan does not bring about the awaited changes.
Fayyad is an exception in Palestinian politics: He belongs to neither Fatah nor Hamas, having helped found the Third Way party, and unlike most Palestinian leaders, Fayyad does not blame "the occupation" for everything.
He managed to dismiss 40,000 PA employees after his predecessors and rivals in Fatah had tried to win support by handing out government jobs. In Nablus he wrought significant change on the ground, making the city secure again. As a result, both the United States and Israel see him as "the great hope."
Nonetheless, it is difficult to see how Fayyad plans to implement hundreds of millions of dollars in economic projects without Hamas' agreement. He has also neglected to mention that the Israeli blockade of Gaza is continuing in part due to the pressure the PA is exerting on Israel to do so.
Some Fatah officials argue that Fayyad has been trying to signal to Hamas in anticipation of the possibility that Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas will go back to negotiating with them.
Such a scenario may be part of Fayyad's calculations, but Fatah complaints appear to stem primarily from the fear that in the next elections, Fayyad, with his clean public image, is likely to steal votes from Fatah. The billions of dollars coming in from the donor states will only help him do so.
Fayyad's alibi
By Avi Isaacharoff
Tags: Fayyad, Fatah, Palestinians
Today's donors conference to the Palestinian Authority, taking place in Paris, is a time for Palestinian Prime Minister Salam Fayyad to shine. A mere six months since he was appointed to the post, Fayyad has managed to win the international community's support for the economic plan that is the fruit of his labors.
On Thursday, Fayyad stood before a group of journalists in Ramallah and explained, in simple terms, the PA's expectations of the donor states ($5.6 billion over the next three years), of itself and, of course, of Israel. In Paris yesterday, Fayyad repeated the mantra before another group of reporters. The media-shy Palestinian prime minister wants to get his message out so that his plan can succeed.
However, it seems that even Fayyad is preparing for the possibility of failure. He regularly reiterates his two basic demands of Israel, which are conditional for the plan succeeding and the Palestinian economy flourishing: allowing the freedom of movement and goods in the West Bank and, as Fayyad says, "Israel must remove the blockade from Gaza, which has so damaged the Palestinian economy."
Advertisement
But the Palestinian prime minister knows full well that these two conditions will not be met any time soon. Israel is not going to remove the blockade from Gaza, nor will it lift the hundreds of roadblocks dispersed throughout the West Bank. Fayyad does refer to World Bank reports on the subject, but he is getting an alibi ready in case Israel continues its policy and his economic plan does not bring about the awaited changes.
Fayyad is an exception in Palestinian politics: He belongs to neither Fatah nor Hamas, having helped found the Third Way party, and unlike most Palestinian leaders, Fayyad does not blame "the occupation" for everything.
He managed to dismiss 40,000 PA employees after his predecessors and rivals in Fatah had tried to win support by handing out government jobs. In Nablus he wrought significant change on the ground, making the city secure again. As a result, both the United States and Israel see him as "the great hope."
Nonetheless, it is difficult to see how Fayyad plans to implement hundreds of millions of dollars in economic projects without Hamas' agreement. He has also neglected to mention that the Israeli blockade of Gaza is continuing in part due to the pressure the PA is exerting on Israel to do so.
Some Fatah officials argue that Fayyad has been trying to signal to Hamas in anticipation of the possibility that Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas will go back to negotiating with them.
Such a scenario may be part of Fayyad's calculations, but Fatah complaints appear to stem primarily from the fear that in the next elections, Fayyad, with his clean public image, is likely to steal votes from Fatah. The billions of dollars coming in from the donor states will only help him do so.
Monday, December 17, 2007
Our decrepit food factories
This article seems a bit overblown although the dangers Pollan outlines are real enough. Certainly the use of antibiotics in animal feeding operations is a real and present danger that should be strictly limited if not banned. The honey bee problems are not that clear as yet. A lot more research needs to be done before we will know what are the causes.
NY Times Magazine, December 16, 2007
The Way We Live Now
Our Decrepit Food Factories
By MICHAEL POLLAN
The word “sustainability” has gotten such a workout lately that the
whole concept is in danger of floating away on a sea of
inoffensiveness.
Everybody, it seems, is for it whatever “it” means. On a recent
visit to
a land-grant university’s spanking-new sustainability institute, I
asked
my host how many of the school’s faculty members were involved. She
beamed: When letters went out asking who on campus was doing research
that might fit under that rubric, virtually everyone replied in the
affirmative. What a nice surprise, she suggested. But really, what soul
working in agricultural science today (or for that matter in any other
field of endeavor) would stand up and be counted as against
sustainability? When pesticide makers and genetic engineers cloak
themselves in the term, you have to wonder if we haven’t succeeded in
defining sustainability down, to paraphrase the late Senator Moynihan,
and if it will soon possess all the conceptual force of a word like
“natural” or “green” or “nice.”
Confucius advised that if we hoped to repair what was wrong in the
world, we had best start with the “rectification of the names.” The
corruption of society begins with the failure to call things by their
proper names, he maintained, and its renovation begins with the
reattachment of words to real things and precise concepts. So what
about
this much-abused pair of names, sustainable and unsustainable?
To call a practice or system unsustainable is not just to lodge an
objection based on aesthetics, say, or fairness or some ideal of
environmental rectitude. What it means is that the practice or process
can’t go on indefinitely because it is destroying the very conditions
on
which it depends. It means that, as the Marxists used to say, there are
internal contradictions that sooner or later will lead to a breakdown.
For years now, critics have been speaking of modern industrial
agriculture as “unsustainable” in precisely these terms, though
what
form the “breakdown” might take or when it might happen has never
been
certain. Would the aquifers run dry? The pesticides stop working? The
soil lose its fertility? All these breakdowns have been predicted and
they may yet come to pass. But if a system is unsustainable — if its
workings offend the rules of nature — the cracks and signs of
breakdown
may show up in the most unexpected times and places. Two stories in the
news this year, stories that on their faces would seem to have nothing
to do with each other let alone with agriculture, may point to an
imminent breakdown in the way we’re growing food today.
The first story is about MRSA, the very scary antibiotic-resistant
strain of Staphylococcus bacteria that is now killing more Americans
each year than AIDS — 100,000 infections leading to 19,000 deaths in
2005, according to estimates in The Journal of the American Medical
Association. For years now, drug-resistant staph infections have been a
problem in hospitals, where the heavy use of antibiotics can create
resistant strains of bacteria. It’s Evolution 101: the drugs kill off
all but the tiny handful of microbes that, by dint of a chance
mutation,
possess genes allowing them to withstand the onslaught; these hardy
survivors then get to work building a drug-resistant superrace. The
methicillin-resistant staph that first emerged in hospitals as early as
the 1960s posed a threat mostly to elderly patients. But a new and even
more virulent strain — called “community-acquired MRSA” — is
now killing
young and otherwise healthy people who have not set foot in a hospital.
No one is yet sure how or where this strain evolved, but it is
sufficiently different from the hospital-bred strains to have some
researchers looking elsewhere for its origin, to another environment
where the heavy use of antibiotics is selecting for the evolution of a
lethal new microbe: the concentrated animal feeding operation, or CAFO.
The Union of Concerned Scientists estimates that at least 70 percent of
the antibiotics used in America are fed to animals living on factory
farms. Raising vast numbers of pigs or chickens or cattle in close and
filthy confinement simply would not be possible without the routine
feeding of antibiotics to keep the animals from dying of infectious
diseases. That the antibiotics speed up the animals’ growth also
commends their use to industrial agriculture, but the crucial fact is
that without these pharmaceuticals, meat production practiced on the
scale and with the intensity we practice it could not be sustained for
months, let alone decades.
Public-health experts have been warning us for years that this
situation
is a public-health disaster waiting to happen. Sooner or later, the
profligate use of these antibiotics — in many cases the very same
ones
we depend on when we’re sick — would lead to the evolution of
bacteria
that could shake them off like a spring shower. It appears that
“sooner
or later” may be now. Recent studies in Europe and Canada found that
confinement pig operations have become reservoirs of MRSA. A European
study found that 60 percent of pig farms that routinely used
antibiotics
had MRSA-positive pigs (compared with 5 percent of farms that did not
feed pigs antibiotics). This month, the Centers for Disease Control and
Prevention published a study showing that a strain of “MRSA from an
animal reservoir has recently entered the human population and is now
responsible for [more than] 20 percent of all MRSA in the
Netherlands.”
Is this strictly a European problem? Evidently not. According to a
study
in Veterinary Microbiology, MRSA was found on 45 percent of the 20 pig
farms sampled in Ontario, and in 20 percent of the pig farmers. (People
can harbor the bacteria without being infected by it.) Thanks to Nafta,
pigs move freely between Canada and the United States. So MRSA may be
present on American pig farms; we just haven’t looked yet.
Scientists have not established that any of the strains of MRSA
presently killing Americans originated on factory farms. But given the
rising public alarm about MRSA and the widespread use on these farms of
precisely the class of antibiotics to which these microbes have
acquired
resistance, you would think our public-health authorities would be all
over it. Apparently not. When, in August, the Keep Antibiotics Working
coalition asked the Food and Drug Administration what the agency was
doing about the problem of MRSA in livestock, the agency had little to
say. Earlier this month, though, the F.D.A. indicated that it may begin
a pilot screening program with the C.D.C.
As for independent public-health researchers, they say they can’t
study
the problem without the cooperation of the livestock industry, which,
not surprisingly, has not been forthcoming. For what if these
researchers should find proof that one of the hidden costs of cheap
meat
is an epidemic of drug-resistant infection among young people? There
would be calls to revolutionize the way we produce meat in this
country.
This is not something that the meat and the pharmaceutical industries
or
their respective regulatory “watchdogs” — the Department of
Agriculture
and F.D.A. — are in any rush to see happen.
he second story is about honeybees, which have endured their own
mysterious epidemic this past year. Colony Collapse Disorder was first
identified in 2006, when a Pennsylvanian beekeeper noticed that his
bees
were disappearing — going out on foraging expeditions in the morning
never to return. Within months, beekeepers in 24 states were reporting
losses of between 20 percent and 80 percent of their bees, in some
cases
virtually overnight. Entomologists have yet to identify the culprit,
but
suspects include a virus, agricultural pesticides and a parasitic mite.
(Media reports that genetically modified crops or cellphone towers
might
be responsible have been discounted.) But whatever turns out to be the
immediate cause of colony collapse, many entomologists believe some
such
disaster was waiting to happen: the lifestyle of the modern honeybee
leaves the insects so stressed out and their immune systems so
compromised that, much like livestock on factory farms, they’ve
become
vulnerable to whatever new infectious agent happens to come along.
You need look no farther than a California almond orchard to understand
how these bees, which have become indispensable workers in the vast
fields of industrial agriculture, could have gotten into such trouble.
Like a great many other food crops, like an estimated one out of every
three bites you eat, the almond depends on bees for pollination. No
bees, no almonds. The problem is that almonds today are grown in such
vast monocultures — 80 percent of the world’s crop comes from a
600,000-acre swath of orchard in California’s Central Valley —
that,
when the trees come into bloom for three weeks every February, there
are
simply not enough bees in the valley to pollinate all those flowers.
For
what bee would hang around an orchard where there’s absolutely
nothing
to eat for the 49 weeks of the year that the almond trees aren’t in
bloom? So every February the almond growers must import an army of
migrant honeybees to the Central Valley — more than a million hives
housing as many as 40 billion bees in all.
They come on the backs of tractor-trailers from as far away as New
England. These days, more than half of all the beehives in America are
on the move to California every February, for what has been called the
world’s greatest “pollination event.” (Be there!) Bees that have
been
dormant in the depths of a Minnesota winter are woken up to go to work
in the California spring; to get them in shape to travel cross-country
and wade into the vast orgy of almond bloom, their keepers ply them
with
“pollen patties” — which often include ingredients like
high-fructose
corn syrup and flower pollen imported from China. Because the
pollination is so critical and the bee population so depleted, almond
growers will pay up to $150 to rent a box of bees for three weeks,
creating a multimillion-dollar industry of migrant beekeeping that
barely existed a few decades ago. Thirty-five years ago you could rent
a
box of bees for $10. (Pimping bees is the whole of the almond business
for these beekeepers since almond honey is so bitter as to be
worthless.)
In 2005 the demand for honeybees in California had so far outstripped
supply that the U.S.D.A. approved the importation of bees from
Australia. These bees get off a 747 at SFO and travel by truck to the
Central Valley, where they get to work pollinating almond flowers —
and
mingling with bees arriving from every corner of America. As one
beekeeper put it to Singeli Agnew in The San Francisco Chronicle,
California’s almond orchards have become “one big brothel” — a
place
where each February bees swap microbes and parasites from all over the
country and the world before returning home bearing whatever pathogens
they may have picked up. Add to this their routine exposure to
agricultural pesticides and you have a bee population ripe for an
epidemic national in scope. In October, the journal Science published a
study that implicated a virus (Israeli Acute Paralysis Virus) in Colony
Collapse Disorder — a virus that was found in some of the bees from
Australia. (The following month, the U.S.D.A. questioned the study,
pointing out that the virus was present in North America as early as
2002.)
“We’re placing so many demands on bees we’re forgetting that
they’re a
living organism and that they have a seasonal life cycle,” Marla
Spivak,
a honeybee entomologist at the University of Minnesota, told The
Chronicle. “We’re wanting them to function as a machine. . . .
We’re
expecting them to get off the truck and be fine.”
We’re asking a lot of our bees. We’re asking a lot of our pigs too.
That
seems to be a hallmark of industrial agriculture: to maximize
production
and keep food as cheap as possible, it pushes natural systems and
organisms to their limit, asking them to function as efficiently as
machines. When the inevitable problems crop up — when bees or pigs
remind us they are not machines — the system can be ingenious in
finding
“solutions,” whether in the form of antibiotics to keep pigs
healthy or
foreign bees to help pollinate the almonds. But this year’s solutions
have a way of becoming next year’s problems. That is to say, they
aren’t
“sustainable.”
From this perspective, the story of Colony Collapse Disorder and the
story of drug-resistant staph are the same story. Both are parables
about the precariousness of monocultures. Whenever we try to rearrange
natural systems along the lines of a machine or a factory, whether by
raising too many pigs in one place or too many almond trees, whatever
we
may gain in industrial efficiency, we sacrifice in biological
resilience. The question is not whether systems this brittle will break
down, but when and how, and whether when they do, we’ll be prepared
to
treat the whole idea of sustainability as something more than a nice
word.
Michael Pollan is a contributing writer. His new book, “In Defense of
Food: An Eater’s Manifesto,” will be published next month.
NY Times Magazine, December 16, 2007
The Way We Live Now
Our Decrepit Food Factories
By MICHAEL POLLAN
The word “sustainability” has gotten such a workout lately that the
whole concept is in danger of floating away on a sea of
inoffensiveness.
Everybody, it seems, is for it whatever “it” means. On a recent
visit to
a land-grant university’s spanking-new sustainability institute, I
asked
my host how many of the school’s faculty members were involved. She
beamed: When letters went out asking who on campus was doing research
that might fit under that rubric, virtually everyone replied in the
affirmative. What a nice surprise, she suggested. But really, what soul
working in agricultural science today (or for that matter in any other
field of endeavor) would stand up and be counted as against
sustainability? When pesticide makers and genetic engineers cloak
themselves in the term, you have to wonder if we haven’t succeeded in
defining sustainability down, to paraphrase the late Senator Moynihan,
and if it will soon possess all the conceptual force of a word like
“natural” or “green” or “nice.”
Confucius advised that if we hoped to repair what was wrong in the
world, we had best start with the “rectification of the names.” The
corruption of society begins with the failure to call things by their
proper names, he maintained, and its renovation begins with the
reattachment of words to real things and precise concepts. So what
about
this much-abused pair of names, sustainable and unsustainable?
To call a practice or system unsustainable is not just to lodge an
objection based on aesthetics, say, or fairness or some ideal of
environmental rectitude. What it means is that the practice or process
can’t go on indefinitely because it is destroying the very conditions
on
which it depends. It means that, as the Marxists used to say, there are
internal contradictions that sooner or later will lead to a breakdown.
For years now, critics have been speaking of modern industrial
agriculture as “unsustainable” in precisely these terms, though
what
form the “breakdown” might take or when it might happen has never
been
certain. Would the aquifers run dry? The pesticides stop working? The
soil lose its fertility? All these breakdowns have been predicted and
they may yet come to pass. But if a system is unsustainable — if its
workings offend the rules of nature — the cracks and signs of
breakdown
may show up in the most unexpected times and places. Two stories in the
news this year, stories that on their faces would seem to have nothing
to do with each other let alone with agriculture, may point to an
imminent breakdown in the way we’re growing food today.
The first story is about MRSA, the very scary antibiotic-resistant
strain of Staphylococcus bacteria that is now killing more Americans
each year than AIDS — 100,000 infections leading to 19,000 deaths in
2005, according to estimates in The Journal of the American Medical
Association. For years now, drug-resistant staph infections have been a
problem in hospitals, where the heavy use of antibiotics can create
resistant strains of bacteria. It’s Evolution 101: the drugs kill off
all but the tiny handful of microbes that, by dint of a chance
mutation,
possess genes allowing them to withstand the onslaught; these hardy
survivors then get to work building a drug-resistant superrace. The
methicillin-resistant staph that first emerged in hospitals as early as
the 1960s posed a threat mostly to elderly patients. But a new and even
more virulent strain — called “community-acquired MRSA” — is
now killing
young and otherwise healthy people who have not set foot in a hospital.
No one is yet sure how or where this strain evolved, but it is
sufficiently different from the hospital-bred strains to have some
researchers looking elsewhere for its origin, to another environment
where the heavy use of antibiotics is selecting for the evolution of a
lethal new microbe: the concentrated animal feeding operation, or CAFO.
The Union of Concerned Scientists estimates that at least 70 percent of
the antibiotics used in America are fed to animals living on factory
farms. Raising vast numbers of pigs or chickens or cattle in close and
filthy confinement simply would not be possible without the routine
feeding of antibiotics to keep the animals from dying of infectious
diseases. That the antibiotics speed up the animals’ growth also
commends their use to industrial agriculture, but the crucial fact is
that without these pharmaceuticals, meat production practiced on the
scale and with the intensity we practice it could not be sustained for
months, let alone decades.
Public-health experts have been warning us for years that this
situation
is a public-health disaster waiting to happen. Sooner or later, the
profligate use of these antibiotics — in many cases the very same
ones
we depend on when we’re sick — would lead to the evolution of
bacteria
that could shake them off like a spring shower. It appears that
“sooner
or later” may be now. Recent studies in Europe and Canada found that
confinement pig operations have become reservoirs of MRSA. A European
study found that 60 percent of pig farms that routinely used
antibiotics
had MRSA-positive pigs (compared with 5 percent of farms that did not
feed pigs antibiotics). This month, the Centers for Disease Control and
Prevention published a study showing that a strain of “MRSA from an
animal reservoir has recently entered the human population and is now
responsible for [more than] 20 percent of all MRSA in the
Netherlands.”
Is this strictly a European problem? Evidently not. According to a
study
in Veterinary Microbiology, MRSA was found on 45 percent of the 20 pig
farms sampled in Ontario, and in 20 percent of the pig farmers. (People
can harbor the bacteria without being infected by it.) Thanks to Nafta,
pigs move freely between Canada and the United States. So MRSA may be
present on American pig farms; we just haven’t looked yet.
Scientists have not established that any of the strains of MRSA
presently killing Americans originated on factory farms. But given the
rising public alarm about MRSA and the widespread use on these farms of
precisely the class of antibiotics to which these microbes have
acquired
resistance, you would think our public-health authorities would be all
over it. Apparently not. When, in August, the Keep Antibiotics Working
coalition asked the Food and Drug Administration what the agency was
doing about the problem of MRSA in livestock, the agency had little to
say. Earlier this month, though, the F.D.A. indicated that it may begin
a pilot screening program with the C.D.C.
As for independent public-health researchers, they say they can’t
study
the problem without the cooperation of the livestock industry, which,
not surprisingly, has not been forthcoming. For what if these
researchers should find proof that one of the hidden costs of cheap
meat
is an epidemic of drug-resistant infection among young people? There
would be calls to revolutionize the way we produce meat in this
country.
This is not something that the meat and the pharmaceutical industries
or
their respective regulatory “watchdogs” — the Department of
Agriculture
and F.D.A. — are in any rush to see happen.
he second story is about honeybees, which have endured their own
mysterious epidemic this past year. Colony Collapse Disorder was first
identified in 2006, when a Pennsylvanian beekeeper noticed that his
bees
were disappearing — going out on foraging expeditions in the morning
never to return. Within months, beekeepers in 24 states were reporting
losses of between 20 percent and 80 percent of their bees, in some
cases
virtually overnight. Entomologists have yet to identify the culprit,
but
suspects include a virus, agricultural pesticides and a parasitic mite.
(Media reports that genetically modified crops or cellphone towers
might
be responsible have been discounted.) But whatever turns out to be the
immediate cause of colony collapse, many entomologists believe some
such
disaster was waiting to happen: the lifestyle of the modern honeybee
leaves the insects so stressed out and their immune systems so
compromised that, much like livestock on factory farms, they’ve
become
vulnerable to whatever new infectious agent happens to come along.
You need look no farther than a California almond orchard to understand
how these bees, which have become indispensable workers in the vast
fields of industrial agriculture, could have gotten into such trouble.
Like a great many other food crops, like an estimated one out of every
three bites you eat, the almond depends on bees for pollination. No
bees, no almonds. The problem is that almonds today are grown in such
vast monocultures — 80 percent of the world’s crop comes from a
600,000-acre swath of orchard in California’s Central Valley —
that,
when the trees come into bloom for three weeks every February, there
are
simply not enough bees in the valley to pollinate all those flowers.
For
what bee would hang around an orchard where there’s absolutely
nothing
to eat for the 49 weeks of the year that the almond trees aren’t in
bloom? So every February the almond growers must import an army of
migrant honeybees to the Central Valley — more than a million hives
housing as many as 40 billion bees in all.
They come on the backs of tractor-trailers from as far away as New
England. These days, more than half of all the beehives in America are
on the move to California every February, for what has been called the
world’s greatest “pollination event.” (Be there!) Bees that have
been
dormant in the depths of a Minnesota winter are woken up to go to work
in the California spring; to get them in shape to travel cross-country
and wade into the vast orgy of almond bloom, their keepers ply them
with
“pollen patties” — which often include ingredients like
high-fructose
corn syrup and flower pollen imported from China. Because the
pollination is so critical and the bee population so depleted, almond
growers will pay up to $150 to rent a box of bees for three weeks,
creating a multimillion-dollar industry of migrant beekeeping that
barely existed a few decades ago. Thirty-five years ago you could rent
a
box of bees for $10. (Pimping bees is the whole of the almond business
for these beekeepers since almond honey is so bitter as to be
worthless.)
In 2005 the demand for honeybees in California had so far outstripped
supply that the U.S.D.A. approved the importation of bees from
Australia. These bees get off a 747 at SFO and travel by truck to the
Central Valley, where they get to work pollinating almond flowers —
and
mingling with bees arriving from every corner of America. As one
beekeeper put it to Singeli Agnew in The San Francisco Chronicle,
California’s almond orchards have become “one big brothel” — a
place
where each February bees swap microbes and parasites from all over the
country and the world before returning home bearing whatever pathogens
they may have picked up. Add to this their routine exposure to
agricultural pesticides and you have a bee population ripe for an
epidemic national in scope. In October, the journal Science published a
study that implicated a virus (Israeli Acute Paralysis Virus) in Colony
Collapse Disorder — a virus that was found in some of the bees from
Australia. (The following month, the U.S.D.A. questioned the study,
pointing out that the virus was present in North America as early as
2002.)
“We’re placing so many demands on bees we’re forgetting that
they’re a
living organism and that they have a seasonal life cycle,” Marla
Spivak,
a honeybee entomologist at the University of Minnesota, told The
Chronicle. “We’re wanting them to function as a machine. . . .
We’re
expecting them to get off the truck and be fine.”
We’re asking a lot of our bees. We’re asking a lot of our pigs too.
That
seems to be a hallmark of industrial agriculture: to maximize
production
and keep food as cheap as possible, it pushes natural systems and
organisms to their limit, asking them to function as efficiently as
machines. When the inevitable problems crop up — when bees or pigs
remind us they are not machines — the system can be ingenious in
finding
“solutions,” whether in the form of antibiotics to keep pigs
healthy or
foreign bees to help pollinate the almonds. But this year’s solutions
have a way of becoming next year’s problems. That is to say, they
aren’t
“sustainable.”
From this perspective, the story of Colony Collapse Disorder and the
story of drug-resistant staph are the same story. Both are parables
about the precariousness of monocultures. Whenever we try to rearrange
natural systems along the lines of a machine or a factory, whether by
raising too many pigs in one place or too many almond trees, whatever
we
may gain in industrial efficiency, we sacrifice in biological
resilience. The question is not whether systems this brittle will break
down, but when and how, and whether when they do, we’ll be prepared
to
treat the whole idea of sustainability as something more than a nice
word.
Michael Pollan is a contributing writer. His new book, “In Defense of
Food: An Eater’s Manifesto,” will be published next month.
US health reform by Himmelstein and Woolhandler
New York Times - December 15, 2007
The attempts by US states to attempt to find some alternative to a truly universal system has not had very positive results and has still left many uninsured.
The stranglehold that private insurers have on the system prevents any radical reforms.
I Am Not a Health Reform
By DAVID U. HIMMELSTEIN and STEFFIE WOOLHANDLER
Cambridge, Mass.
IN 1971, President Nixon sought to forestall single-payer national
health insurance by proposing an alternative. He wanted to combine a
mandate, which would require that employers cover their workers, with
a Medicaid-like program for poor families, which all Americans would
be able to join by paying sliding-scale premiums based on their income.
Nixon's plan, though never passed, refuses to stay dead. Now Hillary
Clinton, John Edwards and Barack Obama all propose Nixon-like
reforms. Their plans resemble measures that were passed and then
failed in several states over the past two decades.
In 1988, Massachusetts became the first state to pass a version of
Nixon's employer mandate — and it added an individual mandate for
students and the self-employed, much as Mrs. Clinton and Mr. Edwards
(but not Mr. Obama) would do today. Michael Dukakis, then the state's
governor, announced that "Massachusetts will be the first state in
the country to enact universal health insurance." But the mandate was
never fully put into effect. In 1988, 494,000 people were uninsured
in Massachusetts. The number had increased to 657,000 by 2006.
Oregon, in 1989, combined an employer mandate with an expansion of
Medicaid and the rationing of expensive care. When the federal
government granted the waivers needed to carry out the program, Gov.
Barbara Roberts said, "Today our dreams of providing effective and
affordable health care to all Oregonians have come true." The number
of uninsured Oregonians did not budge.
In 1992 and '93, similar bills passed in Minnesota, Tennessee and
Vermont. Minnesota's plan called for universal coverage by July 1,
1997. Instead, by then the number of uninsured people in the state
had increased by 88,000.
Tennessee's Democratic governor, Ned McWherter, declared that
"Tennessee will cover at least 95 percent of its citizens." Yet the
number of uninsured Tennesseans dipped for only two years before
rising higher than ever.
Vermont's plan, passed under Gov. Howard Dean, called for universal
health care by 1995. But the number of uninsured people in the state
has grown modestly since then.
The State of Washington's 1993 law included the major planks of
recent Nixon-like plans: an employer mandate, an individual mandate
for the self-employed and expanded public coverage for the poor. Over
the next six years, the number of uninsured people in the state rose
about 35 percent, from 661,000 to 898,000.
As governor, Mitt Romney tweaked the Nixon formula in 2006 when he
helped devise a second round of Massachusetts health care reform:
employers in the state that do not offer health coverage face only
paltry fines, but fines on uninsured individuals will escalate to
about $2,000 in 2008. On signing the bill, Mr. Romney declared,
"Every uninsured citizen in Massachusetts will soon have affordable
health insurance." Yet even under threat of fines, only 7 percent of
the 244,000 uninsured people in the state who are required to buy
unsubsidized coverage had signed up by Dec. 1. Few can afford the sky-
high premiums.
Each of these reform efforts promised cost savings, but none included
real cost controls. As the cost of health care soared, legislators
backed off from enforcing the mandates or from financing new coverage
for the poor. Just last month, Massachusetts projected that its costs
for subsidized coverage may run $147 million over budget.
The "mandate model" for reform rests on impeccable political logic:
avoid challenging insurance firms' stranglehold on health care. But
it is economic nonsense. The reliance on private insurers makes
universal coverage unaffordable.
With the exception of Dennis Kucinich, the Democratic presidential
hopefuls sidestep an inconvenient truth: only a single-payer system
of national health care can save what we estimate is the $350 billion
wasted annually on medical bureaucracy and redirect those funds to
expanded coverage. Mrs. Clinton, Mr. Edwards and Mr. Obama tout cost
savings through computerization and improved care management, but
Congressional Budget Office studies have found no evidence for these
claims.
In 1971, New Brunswick became the last Canadian province to institute
that nation's single-payer plan. Back then, the relative merits of
single-payer versus Nixon's mandate were debatable. Almost four
decades later, the debate should be over. How sad that the leading
Democrats are still kicking around Nixon's discredited ideas for
health reform.
David U. Himmelstein and Steffie Woolhandler are professors of
medicine at Harvard and the co-founders of Physicians for a National
Health Program.
___________________________________
The attempts by US states to attempt to find some alternative to a truly universal system has not had very positive results and has still left many uninsured.
The stranglehold that private insurers have on the system prevents any radical reforms.
I Am Not a Health Reform
By DAVID U. HIMMELSTEIN and STEFFIE WOOLHANDLER
Cambridge, Mass.
IN 1971, President Nixon sought to forestall single-payer national
health insurance by proposing an alternative. He wanted to combine a
mandate, which would require that employers cover their workers, with
a Medicaid-like program for poor families, which all Americans would
be able to join by paying sliding-scale premiums based on their income.
Nixon's plan, though never passed, refuses to stay dead. Now Hillary
Clinton, John Edwards and Barack Obama all propose Nixon-like
reforms. Their plans resemble measures that were passed and then
failed in several states over the past two decades.
In 1988, Massachusetts became the first state to pass a version of
Nixon's employer mandate — and it added an individual mandate for
students and the self-employed, much as Mrs. Clinton and Mr. Edwards
(but not Mr. Obama) would do today. Michael Dukakis, then the state's
governor, announced that "Massachusetts will be the first state in
the country to enact universal health insurance." But the mandate was
never fully put into effect. In 1988, 494,000 people were uninsured
in Massachusetts. The number had increased to 657,000 by 2006.
Oregon, in 1989, combined an employer mandate with an expansion of
Medicaid and the rationing of expensive care. When the federal
government granted the waivers needed to carry out the program, Gov.
Barbara Roberts said, "Today our dreams of providing effective and
affordable health care to all Oregonians have come true." The number
of uninsured Oregonians did not budge.
In 1992 and '93, similar bills passed in Minnesota, Tennessee and
Vermont. Minnesota's plan called for universal coverage by July 1,
1997. Instead, by then the number of uninsured people in the state
had increased by 88,000.
Tennessee's Democratic governor, Ned McWherter, declared that
"Tennessee will cover at least 95 percent of its citizens." Yet the
number of uninsured Tennesseans dipped for only two years before
rising higher than ever.
Vermont's plan, passed under Gov. Howard Dean, called for universal
health care by 1995. But the number of uninsured people in the state
has grown modestly since then.
The State of Washington's 1993 law included the major planks of
recent Nixon-like plans: an employer mandate, an individual mandate
for the self-employed and expanded public coverage for the poor. Over
the next six years, the number of uninsured people in the state rose
about 35 percent, from 661,000 to 898,000.
As governor, Mitt Romney tweaked the Nixon formula in 2006 when he
helped devise a second round of Massachusetts health care reform:
employers in the state that do not offer health coverage face only
paltry fines, but fines on uninsured individuals will escalate to
about $2,000 in 2008. On signing the bill, Mr. Romney declared,
"Every uninsured citizen in Massachusetts will soon have affordable
health insurance." Yet even under threat of fines, only 7 percent of
the 244,000 uninsured people in the state who are required to buy
unsubsidized coverage had signed up by Dec. 1. Few can afford the sky-
high premiums.
Each of these reform efforts promised cost savings, but none included
real cost controls. As the cost of health care soared, legislators
backed off from enforcing the mandates or from financing new coverage
for the poor. Just last month, Massachusetts projected that its costs
for subsidized coverage may run $147 million over budget.
The "mandate model" for reform rests on impeccable political logic:
avoid challenging insurance firms' stranglehold on health care. But
it is economic nonsense. The reliance on private insurers makes
universal coverage unaffordable.
With the exception of Dennis Kucinich, the Democratic presidential
hopefuls sidestep an inconvenient truth: only a single-payer system
of national health care can save what we estimate is the $350 billion
wasted annually on medical bureaucracy and redirect those funds to
expanded coverage. Mrs. Clinton, Mr. Edwards and Mr. Obama tout cost
savings through computerization and improved care management, but
Congressional Budget Office studies have found no evidence for these
claims.
In 1971, New Brunswick became the last Canadian province to institute
that nation's single-payer plan. Back then, the relative merits of
single-payer versus Nixon's mandate were debatable. Almost four
decades later, the debate should be over. How sad that the leading
Democrats are still kicking around Nixon's discredited ideas for
health reform.
David U. Himmelstein and Steffie Woolhandler are professors of
medicine at Harvard and the co-founders of Physicians for a National
Health Program.
___________________________________
Turkish planes bomb northern Iraq in hunt for PKK
Interesting that the bombing was cleared with the US not the central Iraq govt. It shows who is important in Iraq, the US rather than the Kurdish regional govt. or central govt. The bombing may very well increase tension between the Kurdish, Iraqi, and Turkish authorities. It may turn the Kurds the staunchest US allies against the US as well.
Turkish planes bomb northern Iraq in hunt for PKK
16 hours ago
SULAIMANIYAH, Iraq (AFP) — Turkish planes bombed suspected rebel bases in northern Iraq on Sunday, killing one woman, damaging infrastructure and forcing villagers to flee, local officials said.
Turkey's general staff said its warplanes had hit the "regions of Zap, Hakurk and Avasin as well as the Qandil mountains" -- known to harbour rear bases of the rebel Kurdistan Workers' Party (PKK).
The Turkish military said the bombardment began at 1:00 am (2300 GMT Saturday) and all its aircraft had returned safely to base by 4:15 am (0215 GMT Sunday). Artillery continued to pound the targets once the planes left.
The raids, which Turkey's armed forces' chief said were carried out with US approval and intelligence, were condemned by the Iraqi government, which called in the Turkish ambassador to explain his country's actions.
"This attack has destroyed hospitals, schools and bridges. We demand that Turkish authorities stop such actions against innocents," deputy foreign minister Mahmoud al-Hajj Humoud said in a statement late Sunday.
Turkey's army chief General Yasar Buyukanit said the air strikes had been carried out with Washington's approval and using US military intelligence, the Anatolia news agency reported.
"The United States gave intelligence," General Buyukanit was quoted as telling the private television channel Kanal D.
"But what is more important is that the United States last night opened northern Iraqi airspace to us. By doing that, the United States approved the operation," Buyukanit said.
"The PKK should watch its step. It should not forget that, for us, its camps and movement in northern Iraq are like a 'Big Brother' show," the general said, referring to the popular reality TV show.
US President George W. Bush last month said Washington would provide Ankara with "real-time" information on rebel movements from its satellites.
In Ankara, Turkish Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan hailed a "successful" operation.
"Last night, the Turkish armed forces carried out a comprehensive air strike against targets of the terrorist organisation in northern Iraq," he said in a televised speech.
"I am satisfied to say that, according to our preliminary evaluations, the operation, undertaken under night conditions, was successful."
The air strikes killed a woman and seriously wounded five other civilians but inflicted no losses on the PKK, the pro-Kurdish Firat news agency reported from Iraq.
"A woman was martyred and five people were heavily wounded" in the village of Leejuwa near the Qandil mountains, Democratic Communities of Kurdistan (KCK) spokesman Ferman Garzan was quoted as saying on its Internet site.
The KCK is an umbrella organisation bringing together the PKK and affiliate groups.
The village was badly damaged in the bombing and two school buildings were destroyed, Garzan said.
"There are no losses on the guerrilla side," he added.
The Iraqi Kurdish militia that provides security in north Iraq said that according to preliminary reports, eight Turkish warplanes bombed villages along the border near the Qandil mountains.
"Some families are fleeing from the villages attacked today. We have dispatched our border teams to check the casualties and damage," said a spokesman, Jabbar Yawar.
Turkish Foreign Minister Ali Babacan denied any civilian areas had been hit.
"You should trust statements made by the Turkish armed forces," he said in televised remarks.
The PKK, which has waged a deadly insurgency in southeastern Turkey since 1984, said the strikes lasted eight hours.
"An air strike by scores of warplanes and artillery attacks took place against PKK positions," the group said on its Internet site, adding that the raid followed a month of reconnaissance flights by US planes.
The air strikes were at least the second Turkish operation against the PKK inside Iraq this month. Turkish helicopters pounded suspected rebel bases on December 1.
Deputy Prime Minister Cemil Cicek warned Turkey would launch more cross-border strikes if necessary.
"The government, working in harmony with all state institutions, primarily the armed forces, is determined to take this scourge off the country's agenda," the Anatolia news agency quoted him as saying.
The Turkish parliament authorised cross-border operations in October, but Ankara has so far held back from any ground assault amid strong lobbying by Washington
Turkish planes bomb northern Iraq in hunt for PKK
16 hours ago
SULAIMANIYAH, Iraq (AFP) — Turkish planes bombed suspected rebel bases in northern Iraq on Sunday, killing one woman, damaging infrastructure and forcing villagers to flee, local officials said.
Turkey's general staff said its warplanes had hit the "regions of Zap, Hakurk and Avasin as well as the Qandil mountains" -- known to harbour rear bases of the rebel Kurdistan Workers' Party (PKK).
The Turkish military said the bombardment began at 1:00 am (2300 GMT Saturday) and all its aircraft had returned safely to base by 4:15 am (0215 GMT Sunday). Artillery continued to pound the targets once the planes left.
The raids, which Turkey's armed forces' chief said were carried out with US approval and intelligence, were condemned by the Iraqi government, which called in the Turkish ambassador to explain his country's actions.
"This attack has destroyed hospitals, schools and bridges. We demand that Turkish authorities stop such actions against innocents," deputy foreign minister Mahmoud al-Hajj Humoud said in a statement late Sunday.
Turkey's army chief General Yasar Buyukanit said the air strikes had been carried out with Washington's approval and using US military intelligence, the Anatolia news agency reported.
"The United States gave intelligence," General Buyukanit was quoted as telling the private television channel Kanal D.
"But what is more important is that the United States last night opened northern Iraqi airspace to us. By doing that, the United States approved the operation," Buyukanit said.
"The PKK should watch its step. It should not forget that, for us, its camps and movement in northern Iraq are like a 'Big Brother' show," the general said, referring to the popular reality TV show.
US President George W. Bush last month said Washington would provide Ankara with "real-time" information on rebel movements from its satellites.
In Ankara, Turkish Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan hailed a "successful" operation.
"Last night, the Turkish armed forces carried out a comprehensive air strike against targets of the terrorist organisation in northern Iraq," he said in a televised speech.
"I am satisfied to say that, according to our preliminary evaluations, the operation, undertaken under night conditions, was successful."
The air strikes killed a woman and seriously wounded five other civilians but inflicted no losses on the PKK, the pro-Kurdish Firat news agency reported from Iraq.
"A woman was martyred and five people were heavily wounded" in the village of Leejuwa near the Qandil mountains, Democratic Communities of Kurdistan (KCK) spokesman Ferman Garzan was quoted as saying on its Internet site.
The KCK is an umbrella organisation bringing together the PKK and affiliate groups.
The village was badly damaged in the bombing and two school buildings were destroyed, Garzan said.
"There are no losses on the guerrilla side," he added.
The Iraqi Kurdish militia that provides security in north Iraq said that according to preliminary reports, eight Turkish warplanes bombed villages along the border near the Qandil mountains.
"Some families are fleeing from the villages attacked today. We have dispatched our border teams to check the casualties and damage," said a spokesman, Jabbar Yawar.
Turkish Foreign Minister Ali Babacan denied any civilian areas had been hit.
"You should trust statements made by the Turkish armed forces," he said in televised remarks.
The PKK, which has waged a deadly insurgency in southeastern Turkey since 1984, said the strikes lasted eight hours.
"An air strike by scores of warplanes and artillery attacks took place against PKK positions," the group said on its Internet site, adding that the raid followed a month of reconnaissance flights by US planes.
The air strikes were at least the second Turkish operation against the PKK inside Iraq this month. Turkish helicopters pounded suspected rebel bases on December 1.
Deputy Prime Minister Cemil Cicek warned Turkey would launch more cross-border strikes if necessary.
"The government, working in harmony with all state institutions, primarily the armed forces, is determined to take this scourge off the country's agenda," the Anatolia news agency quoted him as saying.
The Turkish parliament authorised cross-border operations in October, but Ankara has so far held back from any ground assault amid strong lobbying by Washington
Sunday, December 16, 2007
Human Rights Watch: US is world's largest jailer.
Here is more on US incarceration rates. No doubt many Americans still see the US as soft on crime. Jails are big business in the US with the privatisation of some jails but also in terms of building contracts and management contracts and also in terms of companies using prison labor. This is from Google.
US is the world's largest jailer: HRW
Dec 6, 2007
WASHINGTON (AFP) — The United States incarcerates more people per capita than any other country in the world, Human Rights Watch said Wednesday, citing new US government figures.
At the end of 2006 more than 2.25 million persons were behind bars in US prisons and jails, an all-time high, the rights group said, citing figures from the Bureau of Justice Statistics (BJS), a branch of the US Department of Justice.
HRW said the 2006 increase was the largest one-year jump in the last six years.
The number represents an incarceration rate of 751 per 100,000 US residents -- "substantially higher than that of Libya (217 per 100,000), Iran (212), and China (119)," HRW said in a statement.
For comparison, France's incarceration rate is 85 per 100,000, while the rate in Britain's is 148 and Canada is 107, HRW said.
"These figures confirm an unenviable record: the United States is the world's leading prison nation," said David Fathi, director of the US program at Human Rights Watch.
"The US is even ahead of governments like China that use prisons as a political tool," he said.
According to the group, the US prison population "has increased approximately 500 percent in the last 30 years, and continues to grow."
The government figures also show sharp racial disparities, with black men incarcerated at a rate 6.2 times higher than white men, HRW said.
"Nearly 8 percent of all black men ages 30 to 34 in the United States were incarcerated as sentenced prisoners at the end of 2006," the group said.
US is the world's largest jailer: HRW
Dec 6, 2007
WASHINGTON (AFP) — The United States incarcerates more people per capita than any other country in the world, Human Rights Watch said Wednesday, citing new US government figures.
At the end of 2006 more than 2.25 million persons were behind bars in US prisons and jails, an all-time high, the rights group said, citing figures from the Bureau of Justice Statistics (BJS), a branch of the US Department of Justice.
HRW said the 2006 increase was the largest one-year jump in the last six years.
The number represents an incarceration rate of 751 per 100,000 US residents -- "substantially higher than that of Libya (217 per 100,000), Iran (212), and China (119)," HRW said in a statement.
For comparison, France's incarceration rate is 85 per 100,000, while the rate in Britain's is 148 and Canada is 107, HRW said.
"These figures confirm an unenviable record: the United States is the world's leading prison nation," said David Fathi, director of the US program at Human Rights Watch.
"The US is even ahead of governments like China that use prisons as a political tool," he said.
According to the group, the US prison population "has increased approximately 500 percent in the last 30 years, and continues to grow."
The government figures also show sharp racial disparities, with black men incarcerated at a rate 6.2 times higher than white men, HRW said.
"Nearly 8 percent of all black men ages 30 to 34 in the United States were incarcerated as sentenced prisoners at the end of 2006," the group said.
In US rich are getting richer, faster!
It seems that the rich are not facing any problems because of the U.S. expenditures on defence. No doubt many actually profit. One wonders about the long term problems of such expenditures. Will personal and government debt ultimately cause problems in the US economy.
There seems little movement towards any narrowing of income gaps in the US. No doubt the market moves in mysterious ways its wonders to perform and it would be sinful to try to change that! Of course markets and crony capitalism have little to do with one another as any libertarian would tell me!
NY Times, December 15, 2007
Report Says That the Rich Are Getting Richer Faster, Much Faster
By DAVID CAY JOHNSTON
The increase in incomes of the top 1 percent of Americans from 2003 to
2005 exceeded the total income of the poorest 20 percent of Americans,
data in a new report by the Congressional Budget Office shows.
The poorest fifth of households had total income of $383.4 billion in
2005, while just the increase in income for the top 1 percent came to
$524.8 billion, a figure 37 percent higher.
The total income of the top 1.1 million households was $1.8 trillion,
or
18.1 percent of the total income of all Americans, up from 14.3 percent
of all income in 2003. The total 2005 income of the three million
individual Americans at the top was roughly equal to that of the bottom
166 million Americans, analysis of the report showed.
The report is the latest to document the growing concentration of
income
at the top, a trend that President Bush said last January had been
under
way for more than 25 years.
Earlier reports, based on tax returns, showed that in 2005 the top 10
percent, top 1 percent and fractions of the top 1 percent enjoyed their
greatest share of income since 1928 and 1929.
The budget office report takes into account a broader definition of
income than tax returns that is known as comprehensive income. It
includes untaxed Social Security benefits, welfare, food stamps and
part
of the value of Medicare benefits, giving a fuller picture of incomes
at
the bottom than tax data.
Much of the increase at the top reflected the rebound of the stock
market after its sharp drop in 2000, economists from across the
political spectrum said. About half of the income going to the top 1
percent comes from investments and business.
In addition, Congress in 2003 cut taxes on long-term capital gains and
most dividends, which advocates said would encourage people to turn
untaxed wealth into taxable income. Some economists have said that the
increase in incomes at the top is illusory and is in good part simply
converting untaxed assets into taxed income to take advantage of
reduced
tax rates.
The Congressional Budget Office report made no attempt to explain the
increases in income in its annual report on effective federal tax rates
paid by people at different income levels.
Asked how much of the increase at the top was from the tax cuts rather
than market gains, Peter R. Orszag, the budget office director, said,
“I
can’t give you an answer to that because we just don’t know.”
Chris Frenze, Republican staff director for the Congressional Joint
Economic Committee, said the increase in top incomes is much more
modest
if viewed over longer time periods. Since 2000, he said, the average
income of the top 1 percent has risen $97,900, or 6.7 percent, the same
percentage increase this group had from 1992 to 1997.
Jared Bernstein, an economist at the Economic Policy Institute in
Washington who characterizes the Bush administration’s policies as
YOYO
economics, based on You (Are) On Your Own, said the differences in
income growth explained why so many Americans have told pollsters that
they are feeling squeezed.
“A lot of people justifiably feel they are working harder and
smarter,
they are baking a bigger and better pie, and yet their slice is not
growing much at all,” Mr. Bernstein said. “It is meaningless to
middle-
and low-income families to say we have a great economy because their
economy looks so much different than folks at the top of the scale
because this is an economy that is working, but not working for
everyone.”
At every income level Americans had more income, after adjusting for
inflation in 2005 than in 2003, but the increases ranged from almost
imperceptible for the poor to modest for the middle class and largest
for those at the top.
On average, incomes for the top 1 percent of households rose by
$465,700
each, or 42.6 percent after adjusting for inflation. The incomes of the
poorest fifth rose by $200, or 1.3 percent, and the middle fifth
increased by $2,400 or 4.3 percent.
The share of all federal taxes paid by the top 1 percent grew, but only
slightly more than half the rate of their growth in incomes because of
the tax rate cuts. The top 1 percent paid 27.6 percent of all federal
taxes in 2005, up from 22.9 percent in 2003, while the share paid by
the
middle fifth of taxpayers declined to 9.3 percent from 10 percent in
2003.
The share of their income that the top 1 percent paid in all federal
taxes and in income taxes fell. The total tax rate dropped 1.8
percentage points, to 31.2 percent, from 2003 to 2005 while their
average income tax rate declined one percentage point, to 19.4 percent,
largely because of the cuts in taxes on capital gains and dividends.
There seems little movement towards any narrowing of income gaps in the US. No doubt the market moves in mysterious ways its wonders to perform and it would be sinful to try to change that! Of course markets and crony capitalism have little to do with one another as any libertarian would tell me!
NY Times, December 15, 2007
Report Says That the Rich Are Getting Richer Faster, Much Faster
By DAVID CAY JOHNSTON
The increase in incomes of the top 1 percent of Americans from 2003 to
2005 exceeded the total income of the poorest 20 percent of Americans,
data in a new report by the Congressional Budget Office shows.
The poorest fifth of households had total income of $383.4 billion in
2005, while just the increase in income for the top 1 percent came to
$524.8 billion, a figure 37 percent higher.
The total income of the top 1.1 million households was $1.8 trillion,
or
18.1 percent of the total income of all Americans, up from 14.3 percent
of all income in 2003. The total 2005 income of the three million
individual Americans at the top was roughly equal to that of the bottom
166 million Americans, analysis of the report showed.
The report is the latest to document the growing concentration of
income
at the top, a trend that President Bush said last January had been
under
way for more than 25 years.
Earlier reports, based on tax returns, showed that in 2005 the top 10
percent, top 1 percent and fractions of the top 1 percent enjoyed their
greatest share of income since 1928 and 1929.
The budget office report takes into account a broader definition of
income than tax returns that is known as comprehensive income. It
includes untaxed Social Security benefits, welfare, food stamps and
part
of the value of Medicare benefits, giving a fuller picture of incomes
at
the bottom than tax data.
Much of the increase at the top reflected the rebound of the stock
market after its sharp drop in 2000, economists from across the
political spectrum said. About half of the income going to the top 1
percent comes from investments and business.
In addition, Congress in 2003 cut taxes on long-term capital gains and
most dividends, which advocates said would encourage people to turn
untaxed wealth into taxable income. Some economists have said that the
increase in incomes at the top is illusory and is in good part simply
converting untaxed assets into taxed income to take advantage of
reduced
tax rates.
The Congressional Budget Office report made no attempt to explain the
increases in income in its annual report on effective federal tax rates
paid by people at different income levels.
Asked how much of the increase at the top was from the tax cuts rather
than market gains, Peter R. Orszag, the budget office director, said,
“I
can’t give you an answer to that because we just don’t know.”
Chris Frenze, Republican staff director for the Congressional Joint
Economic Committee, said the increase in top incomes is much more
modest
if viewed over longer time periods. Since 2000, he said, the average
income of the top 1 percent has risen $97,900, or 6.7 percent, the same
percentage increase this group had from 1992 to 1997.
Jared Bernstein, an economist at the Economic Policy Institute in
Washington who characterizes the Bush administration’s policies as
YOYO
economics, based on You (Are) On Your Own, said the differences in
income growth explained why so many Americans have told pollsters that
they are feeling squeezed.
“A lot of people justifiably feel they are working harder and
smarter,
they are baking a bigger and better pie, and yet their slice is not
growing much at all,” Mr. Bernstein said. “It is meaningless to
middle-
and low-income families to say we have a great economy because their
economy looks so much different than folks at the top of the scale
because this is an economy that is working, but not working for
everyone.”
At every income level Americans had more income, after adjusting for
inflation in 2005 than in 2003, but the increases ranged from almost
imperceptible for the poor to modest for the middle class and largest
for those at the top.
On average, incomes for the top 1 percent of households rose by
$465,700
each, or 42.6 percent after adjusting for inflation. The incomes of the
poorest fifth rose by $200, or 1.3 percent, and the middle fifth
increased by $2,400 or 4.3 percent.
The share of all federal taxes paid by the top 1 percent grew, but only
slightly more than half the rate of their growth in incomes because of
the tax rate cuts. The top 1 percent paid 27.6 percent of all federal
taxes in 2005, up from 22.9 percent in 2003, while the share paid by
the
middle fifth of taxpayers declined to 9.3 percent from 10 percent in
2003.
The share of their income that the top 1 percent paid in all federal
taxes and in income taxes fell. The total tax rate dropped 1.8
percentage points, to 31.2 percent, from 2003 to 2005 while their
average income tax rate declined one percentage point, to 19.4 percent,
largely because of the cuts in taxes on capital gains and dividends.
Israel: US report on Iran may spark war.
Sometimes Israel goes a bit over the top even by partisan spinning standards! The rationale for the statement is really hard to fathom. The forces against Iran are not altered because of the report and as reckless as Iran may sound they have made no move to attack their neighbours or even threatened it. At the most they may be helping insurgents in Iraq but even that such as it is often may not be explicitly sanctioned. I expect that the US deliberately blows up any Iran involvement while not even recognising Saudi involvement in arming and financing the Sunni insurgency. To start a war would be absolutely foolish for Iran.
This is from Yahoo.
Israel: US report on Iran may spark war By LAURIE COPANS, Associated Press Writer
Sat Dec 15, 11:35 AM ET
JERUSALEM - Israel's public security minister warned Saturday that a U.S. intelligence report that said Iran is no longer developing nuclear arms could lead to a regional war that would threaten the Jewish state.
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In his remarks — Israel's harshest criticism yet of the U.S. report — Avi Dichter said the assessment also cast doubt on American intelligence in general, including information about Palestinian security forces' crackdown on militant groups. The Palestinian action is required as part of a U.S.-backed renewal of peace talks with Israel this month.
Dichter cautioned that a refusal to recognize Iran's intentions to build weapons of mass destruction could lead to armed conflict in the Middle East.
He compared the possibility of such fighting to a surprise attack on Israel in 1973 by its Arab neighbors, which came to be known in Israel for the Yom Kippur Jewish holy day on which it began.
"The American misconception concerning Iran's nuclear weapons is liable to lead to a regional Yom Kippur where Israel will be among the countries that are threatened," Dichter said in a speech in a suburb south of Tel Aviv, according to his spokesman, Mati Gil. "Something went wrong in the American blueprint for analyzing the severity of the Iranian nuclear threat."
Dichter didn't elaborate on the potential scenario but seemed to imply that a world that let its guard down regarding Iran would be more vulnerable to attack by the Islamic regime.
Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Olmert had disputed the U.S. intelligence assessment this month, saying that Iran continues its efforts to obtain components necessary to produce nuclear weapons. Tehran still poses a major threat to the West and the world must stop it, Olmert said.
This is from Yahoo.
Israel: US report on Iran may spark war By LAURIE COPANS, Associated Press Writer
Sat Dec 15, 11:35 AM ET
JERUSALEM - Israel's public security minister warned Saturday that a U.S. intelligence report that said Iran is no longer developing nuclear arms could lead to a regional war that would threaten the Jewish state.
ADVERTISEMENT
In his remarks — Israel's harshest criticism yet of the U.S. report — Avi Dichter said the assessment also cast doubt on American intelligence in general, including information about Palestinian security forces' crackdown on militant groups. The Palestinian action is required as part of a U.S.-backed renewal of peace talks with Israel this month.
Dichter cautioned that a refusal to recognize Iran's intentions to build weapons of mass destruction could lead to armed conflict in the Middle East.
He compared the possibility of such fighting to a surprise attack on Israel in 1973 by its Arab neighbors, which came to be known in Israel for the Yom Kippur Jewish holy day on which it began.
"The American misconception concerning Iran's nuclear weapons is liable to lead to a regional Yom Kippur where Israel will be among the countries that are threatened," Dichter said in a speech in a suburb south of Tel Aviv, according to his spokesman, Mati Gil. "Something went wrong in the American blueprint for analyzing the severity of the Iranian nuclear threat."
Dichter didn't elaborate on the potential scenario but seemed to imply that a world that let its guard down regarding Iran would be more vulnerable to attack by the Islamic regime.
Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Olmert had disputed the U.S. intelligence assessment this month, saying that Iran continues its efforts to obtain components necessary to produce nuclear weapons. Tehran still poses a major threat to the West and the world must stop it, Olmert said.
Aghan Mission being reviewed.
This is from the NY Times. It is always amusing to read about the opium production financing the insurgency. It also finances many in the Karzai government as well as providing a good living for farmers who would otherwise be in dire poverty.
The US and allies think that they can just invade Afghanistan and impose the type of government they desire. The government they have now survives only by placating former warlords and tolerating a considerable degree of radical Islamism even now. Karzai is so anxious to survive he would bring the Taliban--always characterised as terrorists not the brave jihadists of yesteryear fighting the Soviets--into his government! So much for not negotiating with terrorists! Of course there are already "reformed" Taliban in the government!
Perhaps one of the reasons the NATO mission is not aggressive enough for the US is that the countries involved have political difficulty selling the mission at home and casualties would make it worse. However, the US policy of using bombing missions certainly does not help matters especially when they sometimes bomb their allies.
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
December 16, 2007
Afghan Mission Is Reviewed as Concerns Rise
By THOM SHANKER and STEVEN LEE MYERS
WASHINGTON — Deeply concerned about the prospect of failure in Afghanistan, the Bush administration and NATO have begun three top-to-bottom reviews of the entire mission, from security and counterterrorism to political consolidation and economic development, according to American and alliance officials.
The reviews are an acknowledgment of the need for greater coordination in fighting the Taliban and Al Qaeda in Afghanistan, halting the rising opium production and trafficking that finances the insurgency and helping the Kabul government extend its legitimacy and control.
Taken together, these efforts reflect a growing apprehension that one of the administration’s most important legacies — the routing of Taliban and Qaeda forces in Afghanistan after the attacks of Sept. 11, 2001 — may slip away, according to senior administration officials.
Unlike the administration’s sweeping review of Iraq policy a year ago, which was announced with great fanfare and ultimately resulted in a large increase in troops, the American reviews of the Afghan strategy have not been announced and are not expected to result in a similar infusion of combat forces, mostly because there are no American troops readily available.
The administration is now committed to finding an international coordinator, described as a “super envoy,” to synchronize the full range of efforts in Afghanistan, and to continue pressing for more NATO troops to fight an insurgency that made this the most violent year since the Taliban and Al Qaeda were routed in December 2001.
“We are looking for ways to gain greater strategic coherence,” said a senior administration official involved in the review process.
One assessment is being conducted within the United States military. Adm. William J. Fallon, commander of American forces in the Middle East, has ordered a full review of the mission, including the covert hunt for Taliban and Qaeda leaders.
“It’s an assessment of our current strategy and how we are doing,” said a senior military officer. “It’s looking at whether we’ve done enough or need to do more in terms of expanding governance and economic development, as well as wrestling with the difficult security issues that we have been dealing with in Afghanistan.”
Senior State Department officials also said that R. Nicholas Burns, the under secretary of state for political affairs, was coordinating another internal assessment of diplomatic efforts and economic aid — the sorts of “soft power” assistance beyond combat force that officials agree are required for success.
A third review, one that has previously been part of the public discussion, involves the strategy of NATO, which last year assumed control of the security operation in Afghanistan and has since been criticized by American officials and lawmakers for not being aggressive enough.
At an alliance meeting in Scotland on Friday, Secretary of Defense Robert M. Gates successfully gained a commitment from NATO to produce what senior Pentagon officials called an “integrated plan” for Afghanistan.
“The intent is to get people to look beyond 2008 and realize this is a longer-term endeavor,” said Geoff Morrell, the Pentagon press secretary, who was with Mr. Gates in Scotland. He said the plan would “start off by acknowledging the success we’re having in terms of reconstruction and education and governance and so forth, but it also will state where we want to be in three to five years, and how we get there.”
The NATO assessment is to be completed for a meeting of alliance heads of state in Bucharest, Romania, next spring. The other reviews are due early next year.
Publicly, administration officials have expressed optimism that the war in Afghanistan can be won, but Mr. Gates told Congress this week that his optimism was “tempered by caution.”
In recent months, though, Mr. Bush’s senior advisers have expressed a growing unease.
While there is a sense that this year’s troop buildup in Iraq has turned around a dire situation, the effort in Afghanistan has begun to drift, at best, officials said. That prompted Mr. Bush’s national security adviser, Stephen J. Hadley, to oversee internal deliberations that resulted in the push for the new reviews.
The NATO-led security assistance mission in Afghanistan has about 40,000 troops; of those, 14,000 are American. Separately, the United States military has 12,000 other troops in Afghanistan conducting specialized counterterrorism missions.
Mr. Gates has declined to name specific allies that have not fulfilled pledges for combat troops, security trainers and helicopters for Afghanistan, or whose governments have placed restrictions on their combat forces. But he has noted that Britain, Canada and Australia had met their commitments and carry their full combat load.
Some members of Congress have not been so diplomatic.
“The Germans, the Spanish, the Italians don’t send any troops to the south except for 250 troops by Germany,” said Representative Joe Sestak, Democrat of Pennsylvania. A retired three-star admiral who worked on the staff of the National Security Council in the 1990s, Mr. Sestak complained that some allies “refuse to do combat ops at night and some don’t fly when the first snowflake falls.”
As part of the NATO review, alliance diplomats and military officers are closely watching the actions of Britain, which may be able to commit additional troops to Afghanistan as it reduces its deployments in Iraq.
To that end, Britain has opened its own “strategic review” of the Afghan mission, especially in the turbulent southern provinces, which will shape the alliance’s assessment, according to a senior diplomat of a NATO nation.
“Essentially what’s driving it is that a year ago, we were regarding Afghanistan as an outstanding success — we established democracy, we were in control of many parts of the country,” the NATO diplomat said. “Now we have significant issues with certain areas producing opium and the Taliban coming back in certain parts of the country, as well.”
The Democratic chairman of the House Armed Services Committee, Representative Ike Skelton of Missouri, was more direct in assessing possible failure in Afghanistan.
“I have a real concern that given our preoccupation in Iraq, we’ve not devoted sufficient troops and funding to Afghanistan to ensure success in that mission,” Mr. Skelton said. “Afghanistan has been the forgotten war.”
Strained by commitments in Iraq, the American military has few troops available to expand its forces in Afghanistan. “It is simply a matter of resources, of capacity,” Adm. Mike Mullen, chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, told Congress this week. “In Afghanistan, we do what we can. In Iraq, we do what we must.”
Both Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice and Mr. Gates have urged Hamid Karzai, the Afghan president, to consider proposals for eradicating poppy fields by aerial spraying to halt the rapid increase in opium production. But the Afghan president has thus far rejected the idea, and even American officials admit that vastly increased eradication efforts would be counterproductive unless alternative livelihoods were immediately available to the poppy farmers.
The Karzai government also is said to be reluctant to endorse having an international coordinator with expanded powers, fearing its own legitimacy and credibility could be undermined.
Julianne Smith, director of the Europe Program at the Center for Strategic and International Studies, said the mission in Afghanistan was at risk of failure, as political support in European capitals strained NATO’s ability to sustain, let alone expand its effort there.
“The mission in Afghanistan has been suffering from neglect on all sides,” she said.
The US and allies think that they can just invade Afghanistan and impose the type of government they desire. The government they have now survives only by placating former warlords and tolerating a considerable degree of radical Islamism even now. Karzai is so anxious to survive he would bring the Taliban--always characterised as terrorists not the brave jihadists of yesteryear fighting the Soviets--into his government! So much for not negotiating with terrorists! Of course there are already "reformed" Taliban in the government!
Perhaps one of the reasons the NATO mission is not aggressive enough for the US is that the countries involved have political difficulty selling the mission at home and casualties would make it worse. However, the US policy of using bombing missions certainly does not help matters especially when they sometimes bomb their allies.
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
December 16, 2007
Afghan Mission Is Reviewed as Concerns Rise
By THOM SHANKER and STEVEN LEE MYERS
WASHINGTON — Deeply concerned about the prospect of failure in Afghanistan, the Bush administration and NATO have begun three top-to-bottom reviews of the entire mission, from security and counterterrorism to political consolidation and economic development, according to American and alliance officials.
The reviews are an acknowledgment of the need for greater coordination in fighting the Taliban and Al Qaeda in Afghanistan, halting the rising opium production and trafficking that finances the insurgency and helping the Kabul government extend its legitimacy and control.
Taken together, these efforts reflect a growing apprehension that one of the administration’s most important legacies — the routing of Taliban and Qaeda forces in Afghanistan after the attacks of Sept. 11, 2001 — may slip away, according to senior administration officials.
Unlike the administration’s sweeping review of Iraq policy a year ago, which was announced with great fanfare and ultimately resulted in a large increase in troops, the American reviews of the Afghan strategy have not been announced and are not expected to result in a similar infusion of combat forces, mostly because there are no American troops readily available.
The administration is now committed to finding an international coordinator, described as a “super envoy,” to synchronize the full range of efforts in Afghanistan, and to continue pressing for more NATO troops to fight an insurgency that made this the most violent year since the Taliban and Al Qaeda were routed in December 2001.
“We are looking for ways to gain greater strategic coherence,” said a senior administration official involved in the review process.
One assessment is being conducted within the United States military. Adm. William J. Fallon, commander of American forces in the Middle East, has ordered a full review of the mission, including the covert hunt for Taliban and Qaeda leaders.
“It’s an assessment of our current strategy and how we are doing,” said a senior military officer. “It’s looking at whether we’ve done enough or need to do more in terms of expanding governance and economic development, as well as wrestling with the difficult security issues that we have been dealing with in Afghanistan.”
Senior State Department officials also said that R. Nicholas Burns, the under secretary of state for political affairs, was coordinating another internal assessment of diplomatic efforts and economic aid — the sorts of “soft power” assistance beyond combat force that officials agree are required for success.
A third review, one that has previously been part of the public discussion, involves the strategy of NATO, which last year assumed control of the security operation in Afghanistan and has since been criticized by American officials and lawmakers for not being aggressive enough.
At an alliance meeting in Scotland on Friday, Secretary of Defense Robert M. Gates successfully gained a commitment from NATO to produce what senior Pentagon officials called an “integrated plan” for Afghanistan.
“The intent is to get people to look beyond 2008 and realize this is a longer-term endeavor,” said Geoff Morrell, the Pentagon press secretary, who was with Mr. Gates in Scotland. He said the plan would “start off by acknowledging the success we’re having in terms of reconstruction and education and governance and so forth, but it also will state where we want to be in three to five years, and how we get there.”
The NATO assessment is to be completed for a meeting of alliance heads of state in Bucharest, Romania, next spring. The other reviews are due early next year.
Publicly, administration officials have expressed optimism that the war in Afghanistan can be won, but Mr. Gates told Congress this week that his optimism was “tempered by caution.”
In recent months, though, Mr. Bush’s senior advisers have expressed a growing unease.
While there is a sense that this year’s troop buildup in Iraq has turned around a dire situation, the effort in Afghanistan has begun to drift, at best, officials said. That prompted Mr. Bush’s national security adviser, Stephen J. Hadley, to oversee internal deliberations that resulted in the push for the new reviews.
The NATO-led security assistance mission in Afghanistan has about 40,000 troops; of those, 14,000 are American. Separately, the United States military has 12,000 other troops in Afghanistan conducting specialized counterterrorism missions.
Mr. Gates has declined to name specific allies that have not fulfilled pledges for combat troops, security trainers and helicopters for Afghanistan, or whose governments have placed restrictions on their combat forces. But he has noted that Britain, Canada and Australia had met their commitments and carry their full combat load.
Some members of Congress have not been so diplomatic.
“The Germans, the Spanish, the Italians don’t send any troops to the south except for 250 troops by Germany,” said Representative Joe Sestak, Democrat of Pennsylvania. A retired three-star admiral who worked on the staff of the National Security Council in the 1990s, Mr. Sestak complained that some allies “refuse to do combat ops at night and some don’t fly when the first snowflake falls.”
As part of the NATO review, alliance diplomats and military officers are closely watching the actions of Britain, which may be able to commit additional troops to Afghanistan as it reduces its deployments in Iraq.
To that end, Britain has opened its own “strategic review” of the Afghan mission, especially in the turbulent southern provinces, which will shape the alliance’s assessment, according to a senior diplomat of a NATO nation.
“Essentially what’s driving it is that a year ago, we were regarding Afghanistan as an outstanding success — we established democracy, we were in control of many parts of the country,” the NATO diplomat said. “Now we have significant issues with certain areas producing opium and the Taliban coming back in certain parts of the country, as well.”
The Democratic chairman of the House Armed Services Committee, Representative Ike Skelton of Missouri, was more direct in assessing possible failure in Afghanistan.
“I have a real concern that given our preoccupation in Iraq, we’ve not devoted sufficient troops and funding to Afghanistan to ensure success in that mission,” Mr. Skelton said. “Afghanistan has been the forgotten war.”
Strained by commitments in Iraq, the American military has few troops available to expand its forces in Afghanistan. “It is simply a matter of resources, of capacity,” Adm. Mike Mullen, chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, told Congress this week. “In Afghanistan, we do what we can. In Iraq, we do what we must.”
Both Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice and Mr. Gates have urged Hamid Karzai, the Afghan president, to consider proposals for eradicating poppy fields by aerial spraying to halt the rapid increase in opium production. But the Afghan president has thus far rejected the idea, and even American officials admit that vastly increased eradication efforts would be counterproductive unless alternative livelihoods were immediately available to the poppy farmers.
The Karzai government also is said to be reluctant to endorse having an international coordinator with expanded powers, fearing its own legitimacy and credibility could be undermined.
Julianne Smith, director of the Europe Program at the Center for Strategic and International Studies, said the mission in Afghanistan was at risk of failure, as political support in European capitals strained NATO’s ability to sustain, let alone expand its effort there.
“The mission in Afghanistan has been suffering from neglect on all sides,” she said.
Saturday, December 15, 2007
Philippine Separatists Agree to Reconcile
Next September is a long way away. Also some members may split off and join Abu Sayyaf who certainly will not negotiate with the government. There are also still NPA (New People's Army) groups in Mindanao so there are unlikely to be bucolic times in Mindanao as yet. However, there could be much less tension and violence. It is interesting that Libya helped broker the deal.
Separatists in Philippines Agree to Reconcile
By CARLOS H. CONDE
Published: December 15, 2007
MANILA — Two rival Islamic separatist groups in the Philippines have agreed to reconcile by September, a pledge that has raised hopes here that the insurgency in the south of the country where the separatists have been fighting for self-determination since the 1970s might finally come to an end, officials said Friday.
In a meeting Thursday with Seif al-Islam el-Qaddafi, a son of the Libyan leader, Col. Muammar el-Qaddafi, leaders of the two separatist groups, the Moro Islamic Liberation Front and the Moro National Liberation Front, said they should be able to resolve their differences, which date to 1976, when the former group broke away from the latter.
The two groups differed over the boundaries of an autonomous territory for Muslims, and the differences have complicated the search for peace in the southern Philippines region of Mindanao.
Other Muslim countries, like Malaysia, have been involved in recent peace negotiations between the Moro Islamic Liberation Front and the government. But Libya has played a special role in the dealings with the two Muslim separatist groups.
Libya brokered the 1976 Tripoli agreement between the government and the Moro National Liberation Front. Soon after that agreement, several high-ranking separatist leaders broke away and formed the Moro Islamic Liberation Front.
Mr. Qaddafi’s three-day visit “signified that the Muslim world is concerned with the problem in Mindanao,” said Abhoud Syed M. Lingga, the executive director of the Institute of Bangsamoro Studies, a nonprofit institution based in Mindanao that is monitoring the peace effort.
“And any concern from Muslim countries and leaders, whether symbolic or substantive, gives a people desperate for peace a ray of hope,” he said. Although the Moro National Liberation Front signed what was termed a “final peace agreement” with the government in 1996, Islamic separatism remained a problem because the Moro Islamic Liberation Front said that agreement failed to address fundamental issues, like the rights of Muslims to their ancestral domains and natural resources.
There were no details on Friday about how the two groups agreed to resolve their differences. Officials from the groups said a reconciliation was necessary to develop the economy in the areas in Mindanao where most Filipino Muslims live.
“We promised to iron out whatever differences we have had in the past not later than September 2008 and come up with a single road map to develop Muslim communities in the south,” said Eid Kabalu, a spokesman for the Islamic Front who attended the meeting, according to Reuters.
The Moro Islamic Liberation Front had wanted a larger territory and greater autonomy than what the Moro National Liberation Front had agreed to with the government in 1996.
Filipino officials, peace advocates and leaders of the Organization of the Islamic Conference have long urged the two groups to settle their disputes to make it easier for the Philippine government to deal with the conflict.
The Moro National Liberation Front, as part of its peace settlement with the government in Manila, has been managing a seven-province autonomous region in Muslim Mindanao, but has been criticized for failing to develop the economy there.
More than 120,000 people have died in the decades-old conflict, according to the government.
Separatists in Philippines Agree to Reconcile
By CARLOS H. CONDE
Published: December 15, 2007
MANILA — Two rival Islamic separatist groups in the Philippines have agreed to reconcile by September, a pledge that has raised hopes here that the insurgency in the south of the country where the separatists have been fighting for self-determination since the 1970s might finally come to an end, officials said Friday.
In a meeting Thursday with Seif al-Islam el-Qaddafi, a son of the Libyan leader, Col. Muammar el-Qaddafi, leaders of the two separatist groups, the Moro Islamic Liberation Front and the Moro National Liberation Front, said they should be able to resolve their differences, which date to 1976, when the former group broke away from the latter.
The two groups differed over the boundaries of an autonomous territory for Muslims, and the differences have complicated the search for peace in the southern Philippines region of Mindanao.
Other Muslim countries, like Malaysia, have been involved in recent peace negotiations between the Moro Islamic Liberation Front and the government. But Libya has played a special role in the dealings with the two Muslim separatist groups.
Libya brokered the 1976 Tripoli agreement between the government and the Moro National Liberation Front. Soon after that agreement, several high-ranking separatist leaders broke away and formed the Moro Islamic Liberation Front.
Mr. Qaddafi’s three-day visit “signified that the Muslim world is concerned with the problem in Mindanao,” said Abhoud Syed M. Lingga, the executive director of the Institute of Bangsamoro Studies, a nonprofit institution based in Mindanao that is monitoring the peace effort.
“And any concern from Muslim countries and leaders, whether symbolic or substantive, gives a people desperate for peace a ray of hope,” he said. Although the Moro National Liberation Front signed what was termed a “final peace agreement” with the government in 1996, Islamic separatism remained a problem because the Moro Islamic Liberation Front said that agreement failed to address fundamental issues, like the rights of Muslims to their ancestral domains and natural resources.
There were no details on Friday about how the two groups agreed to resolve their differences. Officials from the groups said a reconciliation was necessary to develop the economy in the areas in Mindanao where most Filipino Muslims live.
“We promised to iron out whatever differences we have had in the past not later than September 2008 and come up with a single road map to develop Muslim communities in the south,” said Eid Kabalu, a spokesman for the Islamic Front who attended the meeting, according to Reuters.
The Moro Islamic Liberation Front had wanted a larger territory and greater autonomy than what the Moro National Liberation Front had agreed to with the government in 1996.
Filipino officials, peace advocates and leaders of the Organization of the Islamic Conference have long urged the two groups to settle their disputes to make it easier for the Philippine government to deal with the conflict.
The Moro National Liberation Front, as part of its peace settlement with the government in Manila, has been managing a seven-province autonomous region in Muslim Mindanao, but has been criticized for failing to develop the economy there.
More than 120,000 people have died in the decades-old conflict, according to the government.
Friday, December 14, 2007
Capitalism Cannot Satisfy Us
This is perhaps surprising coming from a director of the WTO. Of course he is not a Marxist as he makes clear at the end. He seems to be sympathetic to John Rawls. I have always taken him to be a reformer of capitalism basically drawing upon the contract theory tradition ( a tradition rejected by Hegel Marx and others) to arrive at a type of social democratic state. I expect given the present day orientation in the US Rawls would be though of as a socialist since the state is heavily involved in the economy and regulation.
From Truthout: http://www.truthout.org/docs_2006/120707G.shtml
"Capitalism Cannot Satisfy Us"
Daniel Fortin and Mathieu Magnaudeix interview Pascal Lamy
Challenges
Thursday 06 December 2007
World Trade Organization Director Pascal Lamy, one of
globalization's shrewdest observers, rehabilitates the Marxist
criticism of capitalism.
A man of the Left and director general of the World Trade
Organization, Pascal Lamy is at the heart of globalization. His sense
of things? Marxism remains pertinent as a tool for analysis of modern
capitalism. His conviction? We must look for alternatives to this same
capitalism.
Challenges: Does Marx, as a certain number of recent authors have
written, remain the best thinker about contemporary capitalism?
Pascal Lamy: Not the best, because history has shown us that he
was not the prophet some vaunted. But from the perspective of
nonpredictive explanatory power nothing comparable exists. If one
wants to analyze the globalized market capitalism of today, the
essential tools reside in the intellectual toolkit Marx and some of
those who inspired him created. Of course, everything is not perfect.
There are stacks of criticisms to level against Marx, and he was
probably a better philosopher and economic theoretician than he was a
political thinker....
What do you retain from Marx?
Before everything else, the idea that market capitalism is a
system based on a certain theory of value and the dynamic and the
dysfunctions it may generate. A system where there are owners of
capital who buy labor and holders of their own labor power who sell
that. That relationship implies a theory of profit which ensues from
alienation: the system has the tendency for the rich to become richer
as they accumulate capital and for the poor to become poorer when they
own nothing but their labor. All that remains largely true. No one
since Marx has invented an analysis of the same significance. Even
globalization is only a historical stage of market capitalism as Marx
imagined it.
But what good does it do to criticize capitalism? Isn't it
accepted by everyone?
Market capitalism is a system that possesses virtues and quirks:
efficiencies, inequality, innovation, short-termism.... Its recent
financialization has brutally changed the equilibrium laboriously
hammered out between capital and labor. The institutions developed to
protect workers have proven ever more inadequate and ineffective.
Hence the priority I gave to the goal of mastering globalization
during my term as European Trade Commissioner. At the time, in 1999,
that surprised people. We must listen to those who talk about
alternative modes of growth, those who sign up against this enormous
consumerist weight that materializes, commodifies everything, who are
against this system that puts people into relation with symbols they
are sold thanks to the media and the Internet, so that in essence they
buy nothing but their own image all day long. There's a kind of
psychic cannibalism in all that that provokes dissolute behavior. Many
people are unhappy because they are constantly being compared to their
neighbors, with a fabricated image of themselves they cannot achieve.
I belong to those who think we must continue to seek alternatives and
that politics must be involved in these questions.
Alternatives to capitalism or alternatives to the way capitalism
operates?
Alternatives to capitalism. Capitalism cannot satisfy us. It is a
means that must remain in the service of human development. Not an end
in itself. A single example: if we do not vigorously question the
dynamic of capitalism, do you believe we will succeed in mastering
climate change?
Isn't that Utopian?
So? From a theoretical point of view, I don't believe we can
satisfy ourselves with limiting the historic horizon by saying that
market capitalism is a stable model, give or take a few amendments. It
feeds on too many injustices. But we can also be realistic and observe
that up until now, whatever has been either theorized, or written, or
applied as an alternative to capitalism has not worked. The reality
test must remain essential.
But all the same, we don't want to throw everything in capitalism
out....
Of course not. I'd like to see us get beyond reciprocal
anathematization. The Berlin wall fell close to twenty years ago. It's
time to be able to discuss reality without falling into caricature.
Capitalism is even a very effective system. All the more so as it is
now globalized, which produces more economies of scale. With the same
capital, one may use more work in bigger batches. That certainly
creates inequalities, but also it also creates purchasing power and
growth. Capitalism has brought between 300 and 500 million people out
of poverty in the course of the last twenty years. That's the case in
India and China, somewhat less so in Africa; it's a reality and we
mustn't deny it. We have to be clear-headed enough to acknowledge the
drawbacks, but also the advances of this system.
With respect to China's rise in power, isn't that an instance of
the sublimation of capitalism before its self-destruction at the heart
of Marxist theory?
If Marx analyzed today's China in its reality and its plan and he
talked about it with Tocqueville, he would tell him that America is
ultimately very social-democratic compared to the model China
incarnates. In the United States, you have a form of social assistance
for the poorest people; you have food stamps; largely private
contingency systems, certainly, but also some public ones for those
who are most destitute. None of that exists in China.
Chinese leaders talk about a transition phase...
When I talk to Chinese leaders, they tell me that, for them, this
economic transformation phase entails risks of social, regional and
environmental imbalances. And they are worried. They say: "We have to
deal with the issue, but we've succeeded in bringing millions of
people out of poverty, and done so consistently over thirty years. No
one else has done that (which is true); credit us with the fact that
it's a point on our trajectory."
You believe them?
I understand them.
But go on; do you associate with them regularly?
I believe they are very concerned about the resolution of these
questions, but I also believe that the resolution of these questions
is intrinsically necessary to the development of the Chinese system.
If these social questions of social, environmental and regional
imbalances are not dealt with, then it's the system itself that is at
stake. The Chinese save too much and don't consume enough. That's one
source of the imbalance in global trade.
Why, according to you?
Because they save up for their retirement, for their children's
education and for the day they might be sick. That's where we come
back to market capitalism. It's not altogether an accident that Mr.
Bismarck invented social security, that Mr. Ford was in favor of it
and that Mr. Beveridge perfected it. These are necessities for the
operation of the system itself in the absence of the search for an
alternative.
Where is the French Left with respect to Marx?
Let's talk about the Left at a global level. In a phase when
market capitalism is more efficient and less equalitarian than
previously, the present political reality is, from a certain
perspective, much more favorable for the Left. You have, moreover,
events that come to corroborate the least bearable aspects of the
model: either its intrinsic dysfunctions, such as the subprime crisis,
or the phenomena that capitalism and its value system don't allow us
to deal with - the most obvious of those being global warming.
But is the French Left still too Marxist?
Yes, but not in its analysis of capitalism, but rather in the
sense of what Marx wrote about the Commune. What the French Left likes
in Marx, is the aspect "the Revolution is for tomorrow; workers of the
world, unite, strike, break the backs of capitalism and of the
capitalists and take power." That's the myth of the French Left.
That's Marx's fertilization of Gracchus Babeuf in French political
thought because Babeuf was one of those who inspired Marx.
Why has the social-democratic model never prospered in France, do
you think?
Because the French Left remains obsessed with equality and because
it has a frequently theoretical vision that distances it from, for
example, the labor movement, which is more practical and more dynamic
in its approach. John Rawls is a man whose thinking is accepted by
three-quarters of the world's social-democrats and who continues to be
rejected by the [French] Socialist Party. They tell you, "Rawls is a
right-wing philosopher." And why? Because he talks about equity and
not equality. That's something that deserves debate. Because if the
concrete incarnation of equality is equity, then rejecting equity in
the name of the fact that it's a right-wing notion amounts quite
simply to rejecting reality when it doesn't adhere to one's analysis
of it.
If I am a social-democrat, it's both because I believe deeply in
the necessity and the possibility of changing the world, and also
because I believe that all politics is grounded in the facts.
Translation: Truthout French language editor Leslie Thatcher.
From Truthout: http://www.truthout.org/docs_2006/120707G.shtml
"Capitalism Cannot Satisfy Us"
Daniel Fortin and Mathieu Magnaudeix interview Pascal Lamy
Challenges
Thursday 06 December 2007
World Trade Organization Director Pascal Lamy, one of
globalization's shrewdest observers, rehabilitates the Marxist
criticism of capitalism.
A man of the Left and director general of the World Trade
Organization, Pascal Lamy is at the heart of globalization. His sense
of things? Marxism remains pertinent as a tool for analysis of modern
capitalism. His conviction? We must look for alternatives to this same
capitalism.
Challenges: Does Marx, as a certain number of recent authors have
written, remain the best thinker about contemporary capitalism?
Pascal Lamy: Not the best, because history has shown us that he
was not the prophet some vaunted. But from the perspective of
nonpredictive explanatory power nothing comparable exists. If one
wants to analyze the globalized market capitalism of today, the
essential tools reside in the intellectual toolkit Marx and some of
those who inspired him created. Of course, everything is not perfect.
There are stacks of criticisms to level against Marx, and he was
probably a better philosopher and economic theoretician than he was a
political thinker....
What do you retain from Marx?
Before everything else, the idea that market capitalism is a
system based on a certain theory of value and the dynamic and the
dysfunctions it may generate. A system where there are owners of
capital who buy labor and holders of their own labor power who sell
that. That relationship implies a theory of profit which ensues from
alienation: the system has the tendency for the rich to become richer
as they accumulate capital and for the poor to become poorer when they
own nothing but their labor. All that remains largely true. No one
since Marx has invented an analysis of the same significance. Even
globalization is only a historical stage of market capitalism as Marx
imagined it.
But what good does it do to criticize capitalism? Isn't it
accepted by everyone?
Market capitalism is a system that possesses virtues and quirks:
efficiencies, inequality, innovation, short-termism.... Its recent
financialization has brutally changed the equilibrium laboriously
hammered out between capital and labor. The institutions developed to
protect workers have proven ever more inadequate and ineffective.
Hence the priority I gave to the goal of mastering globalization
during my term as European Trade Commissioner. At the time, in 1999,
that surprised people. We must listen to those who talk about
alternative modes of growth, those who sign up against this enormous
consumerist weight that materializes, commodifies everything, who are
against this system that puts people into relation with symbols they
are sold thanks to the media and the Internet, so that in essence they
buy nothing but their own image all day long. There's a kind of
psychic cannibalism in all that that provokes dissolute behavior. Many
people are unhappy because they are constantly being compared to their
neighbors, with a fabricated image of themselves they cannot achieve.
I belong to those who think we must continue to seek alternatives and
that politics must be involved in these questions.
Alternatives to capitalism or alternatives to the way capitalism
operates?
Alternatives to capitalism. Capitalism cannot satisfy us. It is a
means that must remain in the service of human development. Not an end
in itself. A single example: if we do not vigorously question the
dynamic of capitalism, do you believe we will succeed in mastering
climate change?
Isn't that Utopian?
So? From a theoretical point of view, I don't believe we can
satisfy ourselves with limiting the historic horizon by saying that
market capitalism is a stable model, give or take a few amendments. It
feeds on too many injustices. But we can also be realistic and observe
that up until now, whatever has been either theorized, or written, or
applied as an alternative to capitalism has not worked. The reality
test must remain essential.
But all the same, we don't want to throw everything in capitalism
out....
Of course not. I'd like to see us get beyond reciprocal
anathematization. The Berlin wall fell close to twenty years ago. It's
time to be able to discuss reality without falling into caricature.
Capitalism is even a very effective system. All the more so as it is
now globalized, which produces more economies of scale. With the same
capital, one may use more work in bigger batches. That certainly
creates inequalities, but also it also creates purchasing power and
growth. Capitalism has brought between 300 and 500 million people out
of poverty in the course of the last twenty years. That's the case in
India and China, somewhat less so in Africa; it's a reality and we
mustn't deny it. We have to be clear-headed enough to acknowledge the
drawbacks, but also the advances of this system.
With respect to China's rise in power, isn't that an instance of
the sublimation of capitalism before its self-destruction at the heart
of Marxist theory?
If Marx analyzed today's China in its reality and its plan and he
talked about it with Tocqueville, he would tell him that America is
ultimately very social-democratic compared to the model China
incarnates. In the United States, you have a form of social assistance
for the poorest people; you have food stamps; largely private
contingency systems, certainly, but also some public ones for those
who are most destitute. None of that exists in China.
Chinese leaders talk about a transition phase...
When I talk to Chinese leaders, they tell me that, for them, this
economic transformation phase entails risks of social, regional and
environmental imbalances. And they are worried. They say: "We have to
deal with the issue, but we've succeeded in bringing millions of
people out of poverty, and done so consistently over thirty years. No
one else has done that (which is true); credit us with the fact that
it's a point on our trajectory."
You believe them?
I understand them.
But go on; do you associate with them regularly?
I believe they are very concerned about the resolution of these
questions, but I also believe that the resolution of these questions
is intrinsically necessary to the development of the Chinese system.
If these social questions of social, environmental and regional
imbalances are not dealt with, then it's the system itself that is at
stake. The Chinese save too much and don't consume enough. That's one
source of the imbalance in global trade.
Why, according to you?
Because they save up for their retirement, for their children's
education and for the day they might be sick. That's where we come
back to market capitalism. It's not altogether an accident that Mr.
Bismarck invented social security, that Mr. Ford was in favor of it
and that Mr. Beveridge perfected it. These are necessities for the
operation of the system itself in the absence of the search for an
alternative.
Where is the French Left with respect to Marx?
Let's talk about the Left at a global level. In a phase when
market capitalism is more efficient and less equalitarian than
previously, the present political reality is, from a certain
perspective, much more favorable for the Left. You have, moreover,
events that come to corroborate the least bearable aspects of the
model: either its intrinsic dysfunctions, such as the subprime crisis,
or the phenomena that capitalism and its value system don't allow us
to deal with - the most obvious of those being global warming.
But is the French Left still too Marxist?
Yes, but not in its analysis of capitalism, but rather in the
sense of what Marx wrote about the Commune. What the French Left likes
in Marx, is the aspect "the Revolution is for tomorrow; workers of the
world, unite, strike, break the backs of capitalism and of the
capitalists and take power." That's the myth of the French Left.
That's Marx's fertilization of Gracchus Babeuf in French political
thought because Babeuf was one of those who inspired Marx.
Why has the social-democratic model never prospered in France, do
you think?
Because the French Left remains obsessed with equality and because
it has a frequently theoretical vision that distances it from, for
example, the labor movement, which is more practical and more dynamic
in its approach. John Rawls is a man whose thinking is accepted by
three-quarters of the world's social-democrats and who continues to be
rejected by the [French] Socialist Party. They tell you, "Rawls is a
right-wing philosopher." And why? Because he talks about equity and
not equality. That's something that deserves debate. Because if the
concrete incarnation of equality is equity, then rejecting equity in
the name of the fact that it's a right-wing notion amounts quite
simply to rejecting reality when it doesn't adhere to one's analysis
of it.
If I am a social-democrat, it's both because I believe deeply in
the necessity and the possibility of changing the world, and also
because I believe that all politics is grounded in the facts.
Translation: Truthout French language editor Leslie Thatcher.
The Mysteries of the American Empire
This is an article from Z magazine. It gives a helpful summary of some of the reasons why US hegemony is likely to continue at least for some time. However, the analysis of some of the problems facing the US seem rather lame to me. Such issues as the decline of the dollar, trade imbalances, and the debt incurred through imperial wars are not really much analysed. The most useful part of the article is simply Halliday's summary of the arguments of Singh and Lynch against those who think US hegemony is finished.
The mysteries of the American empire
by Fred Halliday; openDemocracy; December 09, 2007
The debate on the future of American power – and what is increasingly (even casually) referred to as the American “empire” – is almost as old as the United States itself. It was Alexis de Tocqueville who, in the 1830s, anticipated a future dominated by the two continental states of Russia and America; and the Time magazine editor Henry Luce who, in 1941, on the eve of America’s decisive entry into both the Pacific and European wars, predicted “the American century”.
Since then, many observers have predicted that US hegemony (or in post-cold-war terminology, "unipolarity") is dissolving. Indeed, this a key motif in each decade, an accompanying chorus to (for example) the Soviet Union's space programme in the 1950s; the "third-world" revolutions of the 1960s and 1970s; and the emergence of Japan, Europe and (now) China as major economic powers in the 1980s-2000s.
That one day the US's dominance over the world will lessen is indisputable; but that another power will emerge in the foreseeable future that can rival it (as the Soviet Union did from a position of overall weakness) is less clear. A world of one dominant, and several medium powers, seems more probable. Paul Kennedy's famous book, The Rise and Decline of the Great Powers (1989) - which speaks of "imperial overstretch", of the mismatch of political and strategic goals with economic and (not least) fiscal reality - set the scene for a whole range of such works; more recent examples include the work of the historical sociologist Michael Mann, (The Incoherent Empire), the veteran Guardian columnist Martin Woollacott (After Suez), the more meta-Hegelian speculations of Tony Negri & Michael Hardt's Empire, as well as substantial chorus of Islamist triumphalists.
The financial press's rich reportage of American domestic financial troubles - from the sub-prime crisis to the long-term dangers of the trade and current-account deficits - is, again as in earlier decades, a potent source for doom-laden projections of the fate of the behemoth. In the Gulf states, major investors are leaving the dollar, as they did the pound sterling in 1967. In August 2007, total holdings of US long-term securities fell by a record amount, $69.3 billion.
Seven doubts
Robert S Singh of Birkbeck College, London, and co-author with Timothy J Lynch of a forthcoming book - After Bush: The Case for Continuity in American Foreign Policy (Cambridge University Press, 2008) - is not persuaded of these arguments. In a crisp summary of seven main points at issue, he lays out an alternative view:
? historical perspective: we have been here before, not least in the late 1980s under the Ronald Reagan presidency; yet in the 1990s - be it in military expenditure, international influence, pop culture or information technology - the United States ran further ahead of all its rivals.
? hard power: the US has by far the largest military budget and capability, and continues to have the strongest and must dynamic economy in the world, accounting even today for 20% of world output. It has a per-capita income of around $40,000, compared to a Chinese of $2,300.
? international influence: the US has treaties with no less than eighty-four countries, and of the total of 200 in the world no more than five - Korea, Iran, Syria, Cuba, Venezuela - are outright enemies.
? resilience: while US influence has certainly been battered in recent years - be it in the middle east, Europe or Latin America - it remains both resilient and (as the initiatives of French president Nicholas Sarkozy indicate) capable of recovering ground.
? competition: the major rivals the US faces are much weaker than they appear: Russian military power is exaggerated; China's economy and social fabric, not to mention political system, face increased strain.
? global image: for all the hostility to the US over Iraq, or Guantànamo, people around the world continue to admire and desire aspects of the American way of life (and, not least, demonstrate in large numbers their desire to live there)
? domestic aspirations: perhaps of greatest importance, there is no evident wish in the US - whether in the political elite in Washington, or in the Democratic Party, or in the nation as a whole - to abandon US primacy and exceptionalism. The new president of 2009 will only in some degree alter existing policies. Washington will continue to want to run, if not control, the world. We should not expect that much would change with the advent of Hillary Clinton or Barack Obama.
Four questions
The issue of United States power is without doubt one of the half dozen most important questions in the world today. It is also one which, along with the others - the development of the world economy, the future of China, the limits on Russian reassertion, the spread and time-frame of the jihadi military campaign and, in the shorter term, the future of Iraq and the likelihood and consequences of a war with Iran - allows of no definite answer. The current data, historical precedent, and the assessment of probabilities and scenarios can offer guidelines, but little more; an added complication is that a never-to-be-discounted subjective factor, namely wishful thinking, often skews analysis in one direction or another.
At the same time, the back-and-forth of this debate may serve to obscure what, for any observer of US foreign policy, must remain four equally intractable questions.
First, what is the real impact on the US economy, and on the world economy as a whole, of the US campaigns in Iraq and Afghanistan? In a world where it is often said that politics and economics are closely intertwined, there seems (so far) remarkably little interconnection here. That the two wars have and will continue to consume vast amounts of money, and greatly reduce US credibility, is evident; yet, to date, the economic impact seems to be very small: the crisis in confidence in the US financial system is a result of debt mismanagement, mortgage and trade figures, not Iraq. The spread of inflation (and in particular the rise in the price of oil) reflect market conditions, not least Chinese demand and a shortage of refining capacity, not the reduction in Iraqi oil exports or the military and civilian costs of the war.
Second, why has it taken the US so long to recognise the crisis it is in in Iraq? Those working with the US and British forces in Iraq knew from spring 2004 at the latest that the stabilisation of Iraq would not work; from the latter part of 2005 - two or more years ago - there were many in Congress, including Democratswith close ties to the military such as Senator John Murtha, as well as combat personnel in Iraq, who were speaking out as the disaster in that country. True, great powers are notoriously unable to face up to realities (look no further than the US in Iran in 1978-79, or the Soviet Union in east-central Europe in the late 1980s); but after all the reports, debates, criticisms, and initiatives, the US today is as bogged down and as lacking in any coherent strategy as it was in 2004-05.
Third, what can be said of the extraordinary phenomenon of a major power that has gone to war in two middle-eastern states, Afghanistan and Iraq, and which is now contemplating a third, with Iran, but which is almost devoid of people with expertise or experience in, and on, these countries (see Godfrey Hodgson, "Washington discovers Islamabad", 27 November 2007)? Those specialists on Iraq, and Iran, who work in Washington or across the US have been systematically marginalised from policy discussions, their place taken by a motley gang of irresponsible and often corrupt political exiles, "terrorism experts", "security specialists", and other mountebanks. Many of those who pontificate about Iran in the US these days have never been there, and could not write a newspaper article, or academic essay, on the history, culture or politics of that country.
Fourth, a question that goes to the heart not only of recent US policy in the middle east but of the very character and sources of US foreign policy and decision-making itself is so simple that it is often overlooked in the welter of polemic and self-justification that besets the story, namely: why did George Bush decide to invade Iraq in the first place? The dispute over "weapons of mass destruction" and subsequent policy blunders has left this question unanswered and usually unasked, yet it remains unclear. Many have immediate, single-factor, analyses - from the "military-industrial complex", to "oil", by way of evangelical Christians or pro-Israel currents in the US, neo-conservative bellicosity after 9/11, and the simple desire of George W Bush to avenge a supposed assassination attempt on his father by Saddam Hussein in Kuwait, in 1993.
The best answer may be some variant of "all of the above". But as with the other mysteries of US empire and the US decline, no definitive answer to these questions is likely to become available in short order. The US empire, and all who love or hate it, or who merely seek to analyse it, must await the verdicts of history.
The mysteries of the American empire
by Fred Halliday; openDemocracy; December 09, 2007
The debate on the future of American power – and what is increasingly (even casually) referred to as the American “empire” – is almost as old as the United States itself. It was Alexis de Tocqueville who, in the 1830s, anticipated a future dominated by the two continental states of Russia and America; and the Time magazine editor Henry Luce who, in 1941, on the eve of America’s decisive entry into both the Pacific and European wars, predicted “the American century”.
Since then, many observers have predicted that US hegemony (or in post-cold-war terminology, "unipolarity") is dissolving. Indeed, this a key motif in each decade, an accompanying chorus to (for example) the Soviet Union's space programme in the 1950s; the "third-world" revolutions of the 1960s and 1970s; and the emergence of Japan, Europe and (now) China as major economic powers in the 1980s-2000s.
That one day the US's dominance over the world will lessen is indisputable; but that another power will emerge in the foreseeable future that can rival it (as the Soviet Union did from a position of overall weakness) is less clear. A world of one dominant, and several medium powers, seems more probable. Paul Kennedy's famous book, The Rise and Decline of the Great Powers (1989) - which speaks of "imperial overstretch", of the mismatch of political and strategic goals with economic and (not least) fiscal reality - set the scene for a whole range of such works; more recent examples include the work of the historical sociologist Michael Mann, (The Incoherent Empire), the veteran Guardian columnist Martin Woollacott (After Suez), the more meta-Hegelian speculations of Tony Negri & Michael Hardt's Empire, as well as substantial chorus of Islamist triumphalists.
The financial press's rich reportage of American domestic financial troubles - from the sub-prime crisis to the long-term dangers of the trade and current-account deficits - is, again as in earlier decades, a potent source for doom-laden projections of the fate of the behemoth. In the Gulf states, major investors are leaving the dollar, as they did the pound sterling in 1967. In August 2007, total holdings of US long-term securities fell by a record amount, $69.3 billion.
Seven doubts
Robert S Singh of Birkbeck College, London, and co-author with Timothy J Lynch of a forthcoming book - After Bush: The Case for Continuity in American Foreign Policy (Cambridge University Press, 2008) - is not persuaded of these arguments. In a crisp summary of seven main points at issue, he lays out an alternative view:
? historical perspective: we have been here before, not least in the late 1980s under the Ronald Reagan presidency; yet in the 1990s - be it in military expenditure, international influence, pop culture or information technology - the United States ran further ahead of all its rivals.
? hard power: the US has by far the largest military budget and capability, and continues to have the strongest and must dynamic economy in the world, accounting even today for 20% of world output. It has a per-capita income of around $40,000, compared to a Chinese of $2,300.
? international influence: the US has treaties with no less than eighty-four countries, and of the total of 200 in the world no more than five - Korea, Iran, Syria, Cuba, Venezuela - are outright enemies.
? resilience: while US influence has certainly been battered in recent years - be it in the middle east, Europe or Latin America - it remains both resilient and (as the initiatives of French president Nicholas Sarkozy indicate) capable of recovering ground.
? competition: the major rivals the US faces are much weaker than they appear: Russian military power is exaggerated; China's economy and social fabric, not to mention political system, face increased strain.
? global image: for all the hostility to the US over Iraq, or Guantànamo, people around the world continue to admire and desire aspects of the American way of life (and, not least, demonstrate in large numbers their desire to live there)
? domestic aspirations: perhaps of greatest importance, there is no evident wish in the US - whether in the political elite in Washington, or in the Democratic Party, or in the nation as a whole - to abandon US primacy and exceptionalism. The new president of 2009 will only in some degree alter existing policies. Washington will continue to want to run, if not control, the world. We should not expect that much would change with the advent of Hillary Clinton or Barack Obama.
Four questions
The issue of United States power is without doubt one of the half dozen most important questions in the world today. It is also one which, along with the others - the development of the world economy, the future of China, the limits on Russian reassertion, the spread and time-frame of the jihadi military campaign and, in the shorter term, the future of Iraq and the likelihood and consequences of a war with Iran - allows of no definite answer. The current data, historical precedent, and the assessment of probabilities and scenarios can offer guidelines, but little more; an added complication is that a never-to-be-discounted subjective factor, namely wishful thinking, often skews analysis in one direction or another.
At the same time, the back-and-forth of this debate may serve to obscure what, for any observer of US foreign policy, must remain four equally intractable questions.
First, what is the real impact on the US economy, and on the world economy as a whole, of the US campaigns in Iraq and Afghanistan? In a world where it is often said that politics and economics are closely intertwined, there seems (so far) remarkably little interconnection here. That the two wars have and will continue to consume vast amounts of money, and greatly reduce US credibility, is evident; yet, to date, the economic impact seems to be very small: the crisis in confidence in the US financial system is a result of debt mismanagement, mortgage and trade figures, not Iraq. The spread of inflation (and in particular the rise in the price of oil) reflect market conditions, not least Chinese demand and a shortage of refining capacity, not the reduction in Iraqi oil exports or the military and civilian costs of the war.
Second, why has it taken the US so long to recognise the crisis it is in in Iraq? Those working with the US and British forces in Iraq knew from spring 2004 at the latest that the stabilisation of Iraq would not work; from the latter part of 2005 - two or more years ago - there were many in Congress, including Democratswith close ties to the military such as Senator John Murtha, as well as combat personnel in Iraq, who were speaking out as the disaster in that country. True, great powers are notoriously unable to face up to realities (look no further than the US in Iran in 1978-79, or the Soviet Union in east-central Europe in the late 1980s); but after all the reports, debates, criticisms, and initiatives, the US today is as bogged down and as lacking in any coherent strategy as it was in 2004-05.
Third, what can be said of the extraordinary phenomenon of a major power that has gone to war in two middle-eastern states, Afghanistan and Iraq, and which is now contemplating a third, with Iran, but which is almost devoid of people with expertise or experience in, and on, these countries (see Godfrey Hodgson, "Washington discovers Islamabad", 27 November 2007)? Those specialists on Iraq, and Iran, who work in Washington or across the US have been systematically marginalised from policy discussions, their place taken by a motley gang of irresponsible and often corrupt political exiles, "terrorism experts", "security specialists", and other mountebanks. Many of those who pontificate about Iran in the US these days have never been there, and could not write a newspaper article, or academic essay, on the history, culture or politics of that country.
Fourth, a question that goes to the heart not only of recent US policy in the middle east but of the very character and sources of US foreign policy and decision-making itself is so simple that it is often overlooked in the welter of polemic and self-justification that besets the story, namely: why did George Bush decide to invade Iraq in the first place? The dispute over "weapons of mass destruction" and subsequent policy blunders has left this question unanswered and usually unasked, yet it remains unclear. Many have immediate, single-factor, analyses - from the "military-industrial complex", to "oil", by way of evangelical Christians or pro-Israel currents in the US, neo-conservative bellicosity after 9/11, and the simple desire of George W Bush to avenge a supposed assassination attempt on his father by Saddam Hussein in Kuwait, in 1993.
The best answer may be some variant of "all of the above". But as with the other mysteries of US empire and the US decline, no definitive answer to these questions is likely to become available in short order. The US empire, and all who love or hate it, or who merely seek to analyse it, must await the verdicts of history.
Big oil to sign Iraq deals soon
This is from UPI. There certainly is little in the press about all this but one passage about sums things up:
"This means that it is pay-off time for the majors that have been running training courses for Oil Ministry personnel, reservoir surveys, drawn up work-plans and given general advice during the past years," said Samuel Ciszuk, Middle East energy analyst for Global Insight. "It is clever."
Everything important is going on behind the public view and with no input from the Iraqi people or even the parliament.
Analysis: Big Oil to sign Iraq deals soon
Published: Dec. 6, 2007 at 2:00 PM
Print story Email to a friend Font size:By BEN LANDO
UPI Energy Editor
WASHINGTON, Dec. 6 (UPI) -- Big Oil's big dreams are close to coming true as Iraq's Oil Ministry prepares deals for the country's largest oil fields with terms that aren't necessarily what companies were hoping for but considered a foot in the door of the world's most promising oil sector.
Iraq's proven oil reserves are only smaller than those in Saudi Arabia and Iran -- and the country is only about 30 percent explored.
Iraq produces about 2.4 million barrels per day, a recent increase from the 2 million bpd post-invasion average, but far below what its reserves could handle. Its oil sector is suffering from decades of Saddam Hussein-era mismanagement, U.N. sanctions and the effects of the current war.
The decision of how to develop a resource that provides for nearly the entire federal budget is political and controversial. To each side's alarm, the national government will rely on a Saddam-era law and Iraq's Kurdish region is signing deals on its own.
Details of negotiations between the ministry and international oil majors are being kept quiet, though media are picking up on pieces of deal-making.
MarketWatch reports executives from BP and Shell were to meet with Oil Minister Hussain al-Shahristani following Wednesday's meeting of the Organization of Petroleum Exporting Countries in Abu Dhabi. The global energy information firm Platts reports top ministry and company officials are to meet in Amman this week.
Shahristani himself dropped hints to United Press International in a recent interview. He said he's moving forward with oil deals despite the lack of a new national oil law, a draft of which has been stalled in negotiations for more than a year.
"This has nothing to do with the national oil law. There is no timeline. Whenever we finish our discussions we'll just sign the contracts," he told UPI on the sidelines of the OPEC heads of state summit last month.
"This is basically technical-support contracts," he said, adding the contracts will not be the result of a bidding process. "Selected companies will offer us technical support that we need to develop our producing fields."
Develop producing fields? "Yes, only."
With the companies who are helping to, who have been studying them, who have been doing this work? "Yes. Exactly. That's right."
How many fields? "We will not be announcing anything until we sign the contracts."
Super giants? "They are the super giants, yes."
Super giant fields are those with at least 5 billion barrels in reserves, and in Iraq include the Kirkuk, Majnoon, Rumaila North and South, West Qurna and Zubair fields. Reserves of the Nahr Umr and East Baghdad fields may also reach 5 billion barrels, and there are many large producing fields rumored to be on the negotiating table.
The world's largest oil companies are keen on entering Iraq, as their own booked reserves decline and a growing bulk of global reserves are under nationalized systems.
Oil company officials met with U.S. officials, including Vice President Dick Cheney, prior to the war and since, to discuss contracts for Iraq's oil. Former top officials of the companies were tasked by the U.S.-led occupation with advising the Oil Ministry.
"This means that it is pay-off time for the majors that have been running training courses for Oil Ministry personnel, reservoir surveys, drawn up work-plans and given general advice during the past years," said Samuel Ciszuk, Middle East energy analyst for Global Insight. "It is clever."
He said forgoing bidding allows the ministry to move quickly, as well as prove wrong critics, such as the Iraqi Kurds.
According to insiders to whom UPI talked recently as well as media reports, Shell, which produced a technical study of Kirkuk in 2005, wants a deal for the field. BP wants one for Rumaila, which it studied last year. Shell and BHP Billiton are angling for the Missan field in the south. ExxonMobil is interested in the southern Zubair field while the Sabha and Luhais fields are being targeted by Dome and Anadarko Petroleum.
ConocoPhillips is talking with the ministry about the West Qurna oil field, officials with Russian major Lukoil told Dow Jones Newswires. Lukoil, of which Conoco is a 20 percent shareholder, had a deal with Saddam Hussein for West Qurna in the 1990s, but it was cancelled prior to the war.
Chevron and Total have teamed up in a bid for the Majnoon field.
Less than 1 percent of Iraq's proven reserves are located in the area controlled by the Kurdistan Regional Government, but limited successful exploration and geological formations have the KRG excited with prospects.
Bolstered by contempt for central control and the sluggish pace of the oil law, the KRG has passed its own regional oil law and signed more than 20 exploration and production deals with international oil firms.
Shahristani has called the KRG deals "illegal" and a dispute is slowly brewing in Baghdad. None of the major companies has signed with the KRG, fearing being blacklisted by Baghdad from the rest of Iraq's bounty.
Shahristani, growing impatient himself, has started his negotiations, though the KRG claims the Saddam-era law is illegitimate. Washington, which maintains an emphasis on approving a new oil law, has given Shahristani its blessing.
Iraq's oil sector was fully nationalized in 1972 and power was concentrated in the hands of the Iraqi National Oil Company. INOC is temporarily defunct, and its role has been incorporated into the ministry.
The ministry can sign the service contract deals on its own, though it may need to get Cabinet approval first.
But if it were to sign any risk or concession contracts, such as production-sharing contracts like the KRG
"This means that it is pay-off time for the majors that have been running training courses for Oil Ministry personnel, reservoir surveys, drawn up work-plans and given general advice during the past years," said Samuel Ciszuk, Middle East energy analyst for Global Insight. "It is clever."
Everything important is going on behind the public view and with no input from the Iraqi people or even the parliament.
Analysis: Big Oil to sign Iraq deals soon
Published: Dec. 6, 2007 at 2:00 PM
Print story Email to a friend Font size:By BEN LANDO
UPI Energy Editor
WASHINGTON, Dec. 6 (UPI) -- Big Oil's big dreams are close to coming true as Iraq's Oil Ministry prepares deals for the country's largest oil fields with terms that aren't necessarily what companies were hoping for but considered a foot in the door of the world's most promising oil sector.
Iraq's proven oil reserves are only smaller than those in Saudi Arabia and Iran -- and the country is only about 30 percent explored.
Iraq produces about 2.4 million barrels per day, a recent increase from the 2 million bpd post-invasion average, but far below what its reserves could handle. Its oil sector is suffering from decades of Saddam Hussein-era mismanagement, U.N. sanctions and the effects of the current war.
The decision of how to develop a resource that provides for nearly the entire federal budget is political and controversial. To each side's alarm, the national government will rely on a Saddam-era law and Iraq's Kurdish region is signing deals on its own.
Details of negotiations between the ministry and international oil majors are being kept quiet, though media are picking up on pieces of deal-making.
MarketWatch reports executives from BP and Shell were to meet with Oil Minister Hussain al-Shahristani following Wednesday's meeting of the Organization of Petroleum Exporting Countries in Abu Dhabi. The global energy information firm Platts reports top ministry and company officials are to meet in Amman this week.
Shahristani himself dropped hints to United Press International in a recent interview. He said he's moving forward with oil deals despite the lack of a new national oil law, a draft of which has been stalled in negotiations for more than a year.
"This has nothing to do with the national oil law. There is no timeline. Whenever we finish our discussions we'll just sign the contracts," he told UPI on the sidelines of the OPEC heads of state summit last month.
"This is basically technical-support contracts," he said, adding the contracts will not be the result of a bidding process. "Selected companies will offer us technical support that we need to develop our producing fields."
Develop producing fields? "Yes, only."
With the companies who are helping to, who have been studying them, who have been doing this work? "Yes. Exactly. That's right."
How many fields? "We will not be announcing anything until we sign the contracts."
Super giants? "They are the super giants, yes."
Super giant fields are those with at least 5 billion barrels in reserves, and in Iraq include the Kirkuk, Majnoon, Rumaila North and South, West Qurna and Zubair fields. Reserves of the Nahr Umr and East Baghdad fields may also reach 5 billion barrels, and there are many large producing fields rumored to be on the negotiating table.
The world's largest oil companies are keen on entering Iraq, as their own booked reserves decline and a growing bulk of global reserves are under nationalized systems.
Oil company officials met with U.S. officials, including Vice President Dick Cheney, prior to the war and since, to discuss contracts for Iraq's oil. Former top officials of the companies were tasked by the U.S.-led occupation with advising the Oil Ministry.
"This means that it is pay-off time for the majors that have been running training courses for Oil Ministry personnel, reservoir surveys, drawn up work-plans and given general advice during the past years," said Samuel Ciszuk, Middle East energy analyst for Global Insight. "It is clever."
He said forgoing bidding allows the ministry to move quickly, as well as prove wrong critics, such as the Iraqi Kurds.
According to insiders to whom UPI talked recently as well as media reports, Shell, which produced a technical study of Kirkuk in 2005, wants a deal for the field. BP wants one for Rumaila, which it studied last year. Shell and BHP Billiton are angling for the Missan field in the south. ExxonMobil is interested in the southern Zubair field while the Sabha and Luhais fields are being targeted by Dome and Anadarko Petroleum.
ConocoPhillips is talking with the ministry about the West Qurna oil field, officials with Russian major Lukoil told Dow Jones Newswires. Lukoil, of which Conoco is a 20 percent shareholder, had a deal with Saddam Hussein for West Qurna in the 1990s, but it was cancelled prior to the war.
Chevron and Total have teamed up in a bid for the Majnoon field.
Less than 1 percent of Iraq's proven reserves are located in the area controlled by the Kurdistan Regional Government, but limited successful exploration and geological formations have the KRG excited with prospects.
Bolstered by contempt for central control and the sluggish pace of the oil law, the KRG has passed its own regional oil law and signed more than 20 exploration and production deals with international oil firms.
Shahristani has called the KRG deals "illegal" and a dispute is slowly brewing in Baghdad. None of the major companies has signed with the KRG, fearing being blacklisted by Baghdad from the rest of Iraq's bounty.
Shahristani, growing impatient himself, has started his negotiations, though the KRG claims the Saddam-era law is illegitimate. Washington, which maintains an emphasis on approving a new oil law, has given Shahristani its blessing.
Iraq's oil sector was fully nationalized in 1972 and power was concentrated in the hands of the Iraqi National Oil Company. INOC is temporarily defunct, and its role has been incorporated into the ministry.
The ministry can sign the service contract deals on its own, though it may need to get Cabinet approval first.
But if it were to sign any risk or concession contracts, such as production-sharing contracts like the KRG
The oil law and the situation in Basra
This is just a small excerpt from an article at Democracy Now. It gives a glimpse into the situation and conflict in the Basra area. No doubt violence could break out at any time.
RICK ROWLEY: But some opponents of the oil law still see Prime Minister Maliki as an American ally and worry that this current draft will lead to privatization and an American oil grab.
FALEH ABOOD UMARA: [translated] The law was written by the American administration, and it serves the American interest in Iraq.
RICK ROWLEY: Faleh Abood, head of the Southern Oil Workers’ Union, has led several strikes against the government.
FALEH ABOOD UMARA: [translated] We achieved many things. We were able to raise salaries and get workers pieces of land. But what made people oppose us was our opposition to the oil and gas law.
RICK ROWLEY: In fact, Oil Minister Shahristani used a Saddam-era law that the Americans left in place to declare the union illegal and has pledged to stop future strikes.
HUSSAIN AL-SHAHRISTANI: The law under Saddam was reinstated, so even after the fall of the regime, that was the law, and anybody who tries to disrupt oil production and export would be liable to government actions, because this would be considered as a sabotage of national economy.
RICK ROWLEY: Back in Basra, the political storm is growing around Governor al-Waili, whose party is linked to the Oil Workers’ Union. Prime Minister Maliki has called for his resignation, and charges of corruption, mismanagement and fraud are circulating in the press. The Iraqi newspaper Kitabat alleged that he skimmed $80 million from reconstruction contracts.
We leave the governor’s compound to try to see what normal Basrans think of this crisis, but the governor refuses to let us go without an escort of twelve heavily armed guards. One man is brave enough to speak to us, telling us that he has not seen any of the $340 million worth of projects the governor claims are 85% complete.
BASRAN MAN: [translated] There are no services, no reconstruction. There is a lot of fraud.
RICK ROWLEY: When asked about political parties in Basra, this man is too frightened to say anything more.
BASRAN MAN: [translated] I voted, but I’d rather not say.
RICK ROWLEY: After that interview, the governor was reluctant to let us talk to anyone else in Basra or to visit any of his reconstruction projects. Claiming it was for our security, he locked us in a house on his compound, surrounded by soldiers. We escaped once in hopes of doing more interviews on the street, but were spotted before we even left the compound and firmly escorted back to our quarters by armed men. After being held four more days, we were taken to the airport and flown back to Baghdad.
RICK ROWLEY: But some opponents of the oil law still see Prime Minister Maliki as an American ally and worry that this current draft will lead to privatization and an American oil grab.
FALEH ABOOD UMARA: [translated] The law was written by the American administration, and it serves the American interest in Iraq.
RICK ROWLEY: Faleh Abood, head of the Southern Oil Workers’ Union, has led several strikes against the government.
FALEH ABOOD UMARA: [translated] We achieved many things. We were able to raise salaries and get workers pieces of land. But what made people oppose us was our opposition to the oil and gas law.
RICK ROWLEY: In fact, Oil Minister Shahristani used a Saddam-era law that the Americans left in place to declare the union illegal and has pledged to stop future strikes.
HUSSAIN AL-SHAHRISTANI: The law under Saddam was reinstated, so even after the fall of the regime, that was the law, and anybody who tries to disrupt oil production and export would be liable to government actions, because this would be considered as a sabotage of national economy.
RICK ROWLEY: Back in Basra, the political storm is growing around Governor al-Waili, whose party is linked to the Oil Workers’ Union. Prime Minister Maliki has called for his resignation, and charges of corruption, mismanagement and fraud are circulating in the press. The Iraqi newspaper Kitabat alleged that he skimmed $80 million from reconstruction contracts.
We leave the governor’s compound to try to see what normal Basrans think of this crisis, but the governor refuses to let us go without an escort of twelve heavily armed guards. One man is brave enough to speak to us, telling us that he has not seen any of the $340 million worth of projects the governor claims are 85% complete.
BASRAN MAN: [translated] There are no services, no reconstruction. There is a lot of fraud.
RICK ROWLEY: When asked about political parties in Basra, this man is too frightened to say anything more.
BASRAN MAN: [translated] I voted, but I’d rather not say.
RICK ROWLEY: After that interview, the governor was reluctant to let us talk to anyone else in Basra or to visit any of his reconstruction projects. Claiming it was for our security, he locked us in a house on his compound, surrounded by soldiers. We escaped once in hopes of doing more interviews on the street, but were spotted before we even left the compound and firmly escorted back to our quarters by armed men. After being held four more days, we were taken to the airport and flown back to Baghdad.
Thursday, December 13, 2007
CIA destroyed tapes despite court order..
It is not too surprising that the Central Intelligence dept. of dirty tricks should flout the law. They also no doubt arrange for retired officers to suggest that torture works wonders. I really doubt that anything at all will come of all this investigation. It is all going through the motions to make it look as if justice actually is supposed to mean something in these contexts.This comes from Raw Story.
CIA destroyed tapes despite court order
CIA Destroyed Tapes Despite Court Orders, but Secret Prison System Could Provide Legal Cover
MATT APUZZO
AP News
Dec 12, 2007 03:11 EST
The Bush administration was under court order not to discard evidence of detainee torture and abuse months before the CIA destroyed videotapes that revealed some of its harshest interrogation tactics.
Normally, that would force the government to defend itself against obstruction allegations. But the CIA may have an out: its clandestine network of overseas prisons.
While judges focused on the detention center in Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, and tried to guarantee that any evidence of detainee abuse would be preserved, the CIA was performing its toughest questioning half a world away. And by the time President Bush publicly acknowledged the secret prison system, interrogation videotapes of two terrorism suspects had been destroyed.
The CIA destroyed the tapes in November 2005. That June, U.S. District Judge Henry H. Kennedy Jr. had ordered the Bush administration to safeguard "all evidence and information regarding the torture, mistreatment, and abuse of detainees now at the United States Naval Base at Guantanamo Bay."
U.S. District Judge Gladys Kessler issued a nearly identical order that July.
At the time, that seemed to cover all detainees in U.S. custody. But Abu Zubaydah and Abd al-Rahim al-Nashiri, the terrorism suspects whose interrogations were videotaped and then destroyed, weren't at Guantanamo Bay. They were prisoners that existed off the books — and apparently beyond the scope of the court's order.
Attorneys say that might not matter. David H. Remes, a lawyer for Yemeni citizen Mahmoad Abdah and others, asked Kennedy this week to schedule a hearing on the issue.
Though Remes acknowledged the tapes might not be covered by Kennedy's order, he said, "It is still unlawful for the government to destroy evidence, and it had every reason to believe that these interrogation records would be relevant to pending litigation concerning our client."
In legal documents filed in January 2005, Assistant Attorney General Peter D. Keisler assured Kennedy that government officials were "well aware of their obligation not to destroy evidence that may be relevant in pending litigation."
For just that reason, officials inside and outside of the CIA advised against destroying the interrogation tapes, according to a former senior intelligence official involved in the matter who spoke on condition of anonymity because it is under investigation.
Exactly who signed off on the decision is unclear, but CIA director Michael Hayden told the agency in an e-mail this week that internal reviewers found the tapes were not relevant to any court case.
Remes said that decision raises questions about whether other evidence was destroyed. Abu Zubaydah's interrogation helped lead investigators to alleged 9/11 mastermind Khalid Sheikh Mohammed and Remes said Abu Zubaydah may also have been questioned about other detainees. Such evidence might have been relevant in their court cases.
"It's logical to infer that the documents were destroyed in order to obstruct any inquiry into the means by which statements were obtained," Remes said.
He stopped short, however, of accusing the government of obstruction. That's just one of the legal issues that could come up in court. A judge could also raise questions about contempt of court or spoliation, a legal term for the destruction of evidence in "pending or reasonably foreseeable litigation."
Kennedy has not scheduled a hearing on the matter and the government has not filed a response to Remes' request.
___
CIA destroyed tapes despite court order
CIA Destroyed Tapes Despite Court Orders, but Secret Prison System Could Provide Legal Cover
MATT APUZZO
AP News
Dec 12, 2007 03:11 EST
The Bush administration was under court order not to discard evidence of detainee torture and abuse months before the CIA destroyed videotapes that revealed some of its harshest interrogation tactics.
Normally, that would force the government to defend itself against obstruction allegations. But the CIA may have an out: its clandestine network of overseas prisons.
While judges focused on the detention center in Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, and tried to guarantee that any evidence of detainee abuse would be preserved, the CIA was performing its toughest questioning half a world away. And by the time President Bush publicly acknowledged the secret prison system, interrogation videotapes of two terrorism suspects had been destroyed.
The CIA destroyed the tapes in November 2005. That June, U.S. District Judge Henry H. Kennedy Jr. had ordered the Bush administration to safeguard "all evidence and information regarding the torture, mistreatment, and abuse of detainees now at the United States Naval Base at Guantanamo Bay."
U.S. District Judge Gladys Kessler issued a nearly identical order that July.
At the time, that seemed to cover all detainees in U.S. custody. But Abu Zubaydah and Abd al-Rahim al-Nashiri, the terrorism suspects whose interrogations were videotaped and then destroyed, weren't at Guantanamo Bay. They were prisoners that existed off the books — and apparently beyond the scope of the court's order.
Attorneys say that might not matter. David H. Remes, a lawyer for Yemeni citizen Mahmoad Abdah and others, asked Kennedy this week to schedule a hearing on the issue.
Though Remes acknowledged the tapes might not be covered by Kennedy's order, he said, "It is still unlawful for the government to destroy evidence, and it had every reason to believe that these interrogation records would be relevant to pending litigation concerning our client."
In legal documents filed in January 2005, Assistant Attorney General Peter D. Keisler assured Kennedy that government officials were "well aware of their obligation not to destroy evidence that may be relevant in pending litigation."
For just that reason, officials inside and outside of the CIA advised against destroying the interrogation tapes, according to a former senior intelligence official involved in the matter who spoke on condition of anonymity because it is under investigation.
Exactly who signed off on the decision is unclear, but CIA director Michael Hayden told the agency in an e-mail this week that internal reviewers found the tapes were not relevant to any court case.
Remes said that decision raises questions about whether other evidence was destroyed. Abu Zubaydah's interrogation helped lead investigators to alleged 9/11 mastermind Khalid Sheikh Mohammed and Remes said Abu Zubaydah may also have been questioned about other detainees. Such evidence might have been relevant in their court cases.
"It's logical to infer that the documents were destroyed in order to obstruct any inquiry into the means by which statements were obtained," Remes said.
He stopped short, however, of accusing the government of obstruction. That's just one of the legal issues that could come up in court. A judge could also raise questions about contempt of court or spoliation, a legal term for the destruction of evidence in "pending or reasonably foreseeable litigation."
Kennedy has not scheduled a hearing on the matter and the government has not filed a response to Remes' request.
___
Philippine Bishops reject Charter Change under Arroyo
This is from the Manila Times.
Arroyo has been trying everything within her power to alter the Philippine Constitution in ways that would help her stay in power. She is particularly interested in doing away with the Senate that continually embarasses her with investigations that show the corruption within her government.
The Catholic Bishops are perhaps less active now than they formerly were as the Vatican tries to keep Church involvement in politics less evident but in the Philippines there is a long history of Church involvement. The people power revolutions involved the Church--as well as various communist front organisations and many others.
Charter change unacceptable – Bishop Cruz
Leslie Ann G. Aquino
Charter change (Chacha) is unacceptable under the present leadership, a senior member of the Catholic Church Bishops Conference of the Philippines (CBCP) said yesterday.
"No matter what you do with Cha-cha, it’s still unacceptable under the present leadership. I’m sorry," Lingayen-Dagupan Archbishop Oscar Cruz told reporters.
"It is the most unacceptable move by the government under any pretense of modality, whether it is constituent assembly (Con-ass), people’s initiative (PI) or constitutional convention (Con-con), it’s still a no," he added.
Even the CBCP stand on the issue, he said, remains the same.
"The stand of the CBCP is still the same. It’s against Cha-cha of any kind, any form. Under the present administration, it’s so hard to believe that anything that will be submitted to the people for their judgment will be acceptable," Cruz said.
The former president of the CBCP is concerned that the change in the Constitution might only benefit the administration.
"The change of Cha-cha is definitely to benefit the one sitting to continue after 2010," Cruz said.
Cruz tied the recent bribery controversy in Malacañang to renewed calls for Cha-cha.
"I tell you the moment Cha-cha happens whether by Con-con, Con-ass, and there is a plebiscite, it will win 100 percent because that is in the domain of the barangay captains and mayors. What do you think is the bribery in Malacañang for? That is for Cha-cha," Cruz said.
At the same time, Jesus is Lord (JIL) movement leader Bro. Eddie Villanueva said he is also against the revival of the proposal to amend the 1987 Constitution.
"The controlling political power in our country is expected to resort to any shameless political tactics just to perpetuate themselves in power, thus prolonging the untold sufferings of the Filipino people," Villanueva said in a statement.
"Changing the Constitution at this point is a classic example of insatiable greed for power and money in the face of the people’s overwhelming clamor for genuine change and reforms! The government is just true to its real form as a morally bankrupt government as truthfully pictured by the CBCP," he added.
Arroyo has been trying everything within her power to alter the Philippine Constitution in ways that would help her stay in power. She is particularly interested in doing away with the Senate that continually embarasses her with investigations that show the corruption within her government.
The Catholic Bishops are perhaps less active now than they formerly were as the Vatican tries to keep Church involvement in politics less evident but in the Philippines there is a long history of Church involvement. The people power revolutions involved the Church--as well as various communist front organisations and many others.
Charter change unacceptable – Bishop Cruz
Leslie Ann G. Aquino
Charter change (Chacha) is unacceptable under the present leadership, a senior member of the Catholic Church Bishops Conference of the Philippines (CBCP) said yesterday.
"No matter what you do with Cha-cha, it’s still unacceptable under the present leadership. I’m sorry," Lingayen-Dagupan Archbishop Oscar Cruz told reporters.
"It is the most unacceptable move by the government under any pretense of modality, whether it is constituent assembly (Con-ass), people’s initiative (PI) or constitutional convention (Con-con), it’s still a no," he added.
Even the CBCP stand on the issue, he said, remains the same.
"The stand of the CBCP is still the same. It’s against Cha-cha of any kind, any form. Under the present administration, it’s so hard to believe that anything that will be submitted to the people for their judgment will be acceptable," Cruz said.
The former president of the CBCP is concerned that the change in the Constitution might only benefit the administration.
"The change of Cha-cha is definitely to benefit the one sitting to continue after 2010," Cruz said.
Cruz tied the recent bribery controversy in Malacañang to renewed calls for Cha-cha.
"I tell you the moment Cha-cha happens whether by Con-con, Con-ass, and there is a plebiscite, it will win 100 percent because that is in the domain of the barangay captains and mayors. What do you think is the bribery in Malacañang for? That is for Cha-cha," Cruz said.
At the same time, Jesus is Lord (JIL) movement leader Bro. Eddie Villanueva said he is also against the revival of the proposal to amend the 1987 Constitution.
"The controlling political power in our country is expected to resort to any shameless political tactics just to perpetuate themselves in power, thus prolonging the untold sufferings of the Filipino people," Villanueva said in a statement.
"Changing the Constitution at this point is a classic example of insatiable greed for power and money in the face of the people’s overwhelming clamor for genuine change and reforms! The government is just true to its real form as a morally bankrupt government as truthfully pictured by the CBCP," he added.
UK: Taliban could have place in Afghanistan govt.
While articles often retail the harsh fundamentalist characteristics of the Taliban version of Islam and claim that the occupation is meant to save the Afghans from such horror at the same time Karzai first and now Brown approve negotiations with the Taliban. Of course the standard line also is that there should be no negotiations with terrorists. This is from the CBC.
Taliban could have place in Afghan politics: U.K.
Last Updated: Wednesday, December 12, 2007 | 3:16 PM ET
The Associated Press
Taliban fighters can win a role in Afghanistan's future if they renounce violence, British Prime Minister Gordon Brown said Wednesday as he pledged a long-term troop presence and aid commitments for the country.
Brown told lawmakers in London that Britain would support efforts by Afghan President Hamid Karzai to bring former insurgents into mainstream politics.
"If they are prepared to renounce violence and abide by the constitution and respect basic human rights, then there is a place for them in the legitimate society and economy of Afghanistan," Brown told the House of Commons.
He said Britain would not hold direct talks with ex-Taliban fighters, but would support the attempts by Karzai's officials to widen Afghanistan's political sphere.
Brown also urged neighbouring countries to do more to help political reconciliation in Afghanistan.
"Iran, too, must start to play a more constructive role," he said.
Britain is helping to identify members of the Taliban — particularly mid-level commanders — who are ready to take part in mainstream politics, a senior government official told reporters.
He spoke on condition of anonymity, in line with government policy.
Britain believes 10 to 12 people are co-ordinating the Taliban insurgency, meeting in Pakistan's tribal areas and in the Pakistani city of Quetta, the senior official said. He said these are the leaders who should be arrested.
7,800 British troops to remain in Afghanistan
Brown said Britain will keep about 7,800 troops in Afghanistan for the long term, without specifying a limit on how long soldiers could stay. Some British military chiefs have suggested troops will be required for decades.
The prime minister told lawmakers a rising number of newly trained Afghan soldiers — expected to reach 70,000 next year — as well as European Union and NATO allies must do more to share the security burden.
NATO currently has a contingent of about 41,700 troops in Afghanistan, including roughly 2,500 from Canada and 25,000 from the U.S.
"This progress must, I believe, now be matched by contributions from other counties in NATO, the EU and beyond," Brown said.
Brown said Britain has pledged the equivalent of $920 million US in development aid from 2009 to 2012, aiming to strengthen Afghanistan's legal system.
However, Brown offered no new plans to tackle the country's booming narcotics trade. Officials said Britain opposes aerial spraying of poppy fields and a plan to buy farmers' crops so they can be destroyed or used for medicinal purposes.
© The Canadian Press, 2007
Taliban could have place in Afghan politics: U.K.
Last Updated: Wednesday, December 12, 2007 | 3:16 PM ET
The Associated Press
Taliban fighters can win a role in Afghanistan's future if they renounce violence, British Prime Minister Gordon Brown said Wednesday as he pledged a long-term troop presence and aid commitments for the country.
Brown told lawmakers in London that Britain would support efforts by Afghan President Hamid Karzai to bring former insurgents into mainstream politics.
"If they are prepared to renounce violence and abide by the constitution and respect basic human rights, then there is a place for them in the legitimate society and economy of Afghanistan," Brown told the House of Commons.
He said Britain would not hold direct talks with ex-Taliban fighters, but would support the attempts by Karzai's officials to widen Afghanistan's political sphere.
Brown also urged neighbouring countries to do more to help political reconciliation in Afghanistan.
"Iran, too, must start to play a more constructive role," he said.
Britain is helping to identify members of the Taliban — particularly mid-level commanders — who are ready to take part in mainstream politics, a senior government official told reporters.
He spoke on condition of anonymity, in line with government policy.
Britain believes 10 to 12 people are co-ordinating the Taliban insurgency, meeting in Pakistan's tribal areas and in the Pakistani city of Quetta, the senior official said. He said these are the leaders who should be arrested.
7,800 British troops to remain in Afghanistan
Brown said Britain will keep about 7,800 troops in Afghanistan for the long term, without specifying a limit on how long soldiers could stay. Some British military chiefs have suggested troops will be required for decades.
The prime minister told lawmakers a rising number of newly trained Afghan soldiers — expected to reach 70,000 next year — as well as European Union and NATO allies must do more to share the security burden.
NATO currently has a contingent of about 41,700 troops in Afghanistan, including roughly 2,500 from Canada and 25,000 from the U.S.
"This progress must, I believe, now be matched by contributions from other counties in NATO, the EU and beyond," Brown said.
Brown said Britain has pledged the equivalent of $920 million US in development aid from 2009 to 2012, aiming to strengthen Afghanistan's legal system.
However, Brown offered no new plans to tackle the country's booming narcotics trade. Officials said Britain opposes aerial spraying of poppy fields and a plan to buy farmers' crops so they can be destroyed or used for medicinal purposes.
© The Canadian Press, 2007
Wednesday, December 12, 2007
Oprah and Obama
The Black Agenda people do not sound very enthused about Obama! The description seems quite accurate. The only problem is that the current leader in the race Hilary Clinton is even worse!
All stories are available at: www.BlackAgendaReport.com
BAR-produced stories:
Oprah & Obama: Corporate Marketing for a Corporate Campaign
by BAR managing editor Bruce Dixon
Two of the best marketers in the U.S. teamed up for a three-state
extravaganza of vapid, substance-devoid entertainment posing as
presidential politics. Oprah Winfrey – a certified genius of self-
salesmanship – and the faux progressive, fraudulent anti-war
candidate Barack Obama wowed crowds in South Carolina, Iowa and New
Hampshire in a mega-media celebration of celebrity, itself. Political
theater has devolved to theater without politics. Corporate
“journalists” behave like sports “color” commentators, minus
real
stats and facts. Next stop: Broadway – if the world doesn’t explode
before curtain-time.
All stories are available at: www.BlackAgendaReport.com
BAR-produced stories:
Oprah & Obama: Corporate Marketing for a Corporate Campaign
by BAR managing editor Bruce Dixon
Two of the best marketers in the U.S. teamed up for a three-state
extravaganza of vapid, substance-devoid entertainment posing as
presidential politics. Oprah Winfrey – a certified genius of self-
salesmanship – and the faux progressive, fraudulent anti-war
candidate Barack Obama wowed crowds in South Carolina, Iowa and New
Hampshire in a mega-media celebration of celebrity, itself. Political
theater has devolved to theater without politics. Corporate
“journalists” behave like sports “color” commentators, minus
real
stats and facts. Next stop: Broadway – if the world doesn’t explode
before curtain-time.
Bush to name new US image-maker
There is no reason given why Hughes is leaving the job. Maybe she found it too challenging. Bush is appointing another of his own kind to replace her. However, even an entrepreneur journalist from the American Enterprise Institute may find it difficult to make a silk purse from a sow's ear.
Bush to name journalist as new US image-maker Tue Dec 11, 3:27 PM ET
WASHINGTON (AFP) - US President George W. Bush will nominate on Tuesday conservative journalist James Glassman as the senior diplomat in charge of improving America's battered image abroad, the White House said.
Glassman would replace a longtime Bush confidante, Karen Hughes, who has announced her intention to step down as under secretary for public diplomacy before the end of the year.
"In his new role, Mr Glassman will help effectively explain our policies and America's fundamental values to people around the world," White House spokeswoman Dana Perino told reporters, announcing the appointment.
Hughes, who has worked with Bush since his days as governor of Texas in the 1990s, will leave her post after barely two years and with little visible success in polishing the US image in the world.
Glassman will take over as the Bush administration faces new criticism from human rights groups over its handling of suspects in the "war on terror" following the CIA's admission that it destroyed tapes of interrogations.
Glassman is the chairman of the Broadcasting Board of Governors, which oversees the US government's international broadcasters including Voice of America, Radio Free Europe, and Alhurra.
He is also the editor-in-chief of The American, a bimonthly business and economics magazine of the American Enterprise Institute, a conservative think tank.
Bush to name journalist as new US image-maker Tue Dec 11, 3:27 PM ET
WASHINGTON (AFP) - US President George W. Bush will nominate on Tuesday conservative journalist James Glassman as the senior diplomat in charge of improving America's battered image abroad, the White House said.
Glassman would replace a longtime Bush confidante, Karen Hughes, who has announced her intention to step down as under secretary for public diplomacy before the end of the year.
"In his new role, Mr Glassman will help effectively explain our policies and America's fundamental values to people around the world," White House spokeswoman Dana Perino told reporters, announcing the appointment.
Hughes, who has worked with Bush since his days as governor of Texas in the 1990s, will leave her post after barely two years and with little visible success in polishing the US image in the world.
Glassman will take over as the Bush administration faces new criticism from human rights groups over its handling of suspects in the "war on terror" following the CIA's admission that it destroyed tapes of interrogations.
Glassman is the chairman of the Broadcasting Board of Governors, which oversees the US government's international broadcasters including Voice of America, Radio Free Europe, and Alhurra.
He is also the editor-in-chief of The American, a bimonthly business and economics magazine of the American Enterprise Institute, a conservative think tank.
Philippines: Arroyo most corrupt president: Poll
This is from the Tribune. Being most corrupt doesn't seem to effect her staying power. It seems the administration is always blowing off steam about the opposition. Maybe they need a new public relations firm probably a US one paid for by foreign aid!
Ally wants GMA ‘most corrupt’ poll probed
By Angie M. Rosales
12/13/2007
In a bid to kill the messenger for coming up with a survey message showing President Arroyo as the “most corrupt president” in Philippine history, her staunchest ally, Sen. Miriam Santiago, yesterday vowed to unmask the alleged “culprit” behind the latest Pulse Asia survey that dared to make public the unfavorable results of its poll on who among the Philippine presidents earned the tag as the most corrupt.
She also reportedly threatened to have survey firms probed, as the senator claimed that they never conduct surveys unless they are paid for and financed by certain personalities.
Santiago said she is bent on filing a resolution today to investigate not only the particular survey firm but all major survey firms that have their results published in the media.
The woman senator pointed to a known member of the opposition, a former senator whom she did not name, but who she said was behind the Pulse Asia survey.
While she mentioned no names, it was already out in the
news Tuesday that former Sen. Sergio Osmena had commissioned that particular survey question.
Sources in the opposition said it was a rider question.
Santiago, in an interview with reporters, bared her plans of calling for a probe on this specific issue as soon as possible.
But Santiago’s colleagues, including the Senate leadership, are cold to her proposal, saying such results cannot be helped since this is the perception of the public of Mrs. Arroyo.
Senate President Manuel Villar Jr. twitted Santiago on her position, saying there was nothing wrong with the opposition commissioning the survey on corruption issues.
Mrs. Arroyo’s staunch ally said she wants to know who paid for these surveys, as she does not buy the claim that these polls are not commissioned and insists on knowing just who funded these surveys.
She also stated that she does not believe that the Pulse Asia survey results tagging Mrs. Arroyo as the “Most Corrupt President” in history are accurate.”
“Apart from the usual criticisms of accuracy of surveys, I don’t think that any right-minded scientific professional survey firm will conduct a one-sided survey. There will always be a positive part of the survey. For example, it may ask: ‘Who is the most corrupt president?’ but it should ask also ‘Who do you think is the most successful economically among the presidents we have had’?” Santiago stressed.
“My unconfirmed report is that a member of the opposition commissioned the survey and was able to convince a major daily to use it as a banner headline. This is not a coincidence,” she said, and claimed she was outraged at these survey results and their publication.
Condemning Pulse Asia, Santiago claimed: “This survey firm has always been associated with a former president. I would not say that there is a direct connection between that former president and this firm. I do know however that there is an opposition figure who commissioned the survey and paid the firm. He is very slippery. It (the survey) does serve the purpose of the opposition to put President Arroyo down,” she noted.
Villar disputed the assessment of Santiago as he hinted that it would be unlikely for the matter to be even taken up by them, saying it would be better for the President to address this current perception of the public on her.
“She (Mrs. Arroyo) should just accept this (opinion of the Filipinos of her),” he stressed.
Sen. Panfilo Lacson, opposition member, joined Villar in chiding Malacañang and the chief executive on their response to the issue of Mrs. Arroyo as most corrupt president, tossing the blame on the series of scandals that continue to rock the administration.
“In other societies, such widespread indictment would be enough to make a leader resign. In Mrs. Arroyo’s case, it further fuels her motivation to work for the extension of her term via Charter change. Only in the Philippines,” Lacson said.
The same call was issued by another member of the opposition, Sen. Manuel “Mar” Roxas II, who strongly advised Mrs. Arroyo the following: To issue the release of the Neda-ICC documents on the broadband project so that the public can see how the government approved this project; order the return home of former controversial Agriculture Undersecretary Jocelyn “Joc-joc” Bolante to face the music in the proper venues and make sure that the fertilizer fund scam will finally be resolved; cancel all foreign loans that are associated with questionable big-ticket projects including the P25 billion Cyber-Ed project; and go after the big-time smugglers and tax evaders, sparing no political sacred cows in the process.
“I humbly put forward these areas where the administration can start walking the talk and hardening its resolve against corruption.”
For former President Estrada, he said that “if the surveys and majority of the Filipinos believe that Mrs. Arroyo is corrupt, then perhaps she indeed is (the most corrupt).”
Estrada was reacting to the “Most Corrupt President” tag, earned by Mrs. Arroyo, topping former strongman Ferdinand Marcos in corruption, as measured by Pulse Asia.
“If that is what the survey shows then it is true. I am a believer of surveys. Even when I first ran for Mayor of San Juan I was given 50-50 chance from that time, I won. I am a true believer of surveys as a mayor, as a senator, and as President, even at the height of my popularity,” Estrada said.
He stated that he is willing to help the Arroyo regime provided it shows sincerity in its treatment of the Filipino people the Arroyo government claims to be helping. “They (government) must decide for the good of the greatest number which is the poor,” he said.
Asked if he has already seen or felt the sincerity by the government Estrada shrugged and said: “No.”
The survey, conducted last October showed Mrs. Arroyo being widely viewed by the Filipino people as the most corrupt ever, topping the most corrupt list with a 42 percent rating nationwide.
Marcos came in second, with a 35 percent rating. Estrada came in as a far third, with a mere 16 percent of the respondents rating him in the same corrupt listing.
He came in second, however, in the same survey as the “least corrupt president” or not corrupt president after Corazon Aquino.
The findings on Estrada validate past surveys where the majority of the people saw him as not having enriched himself while in office, as against the great majority of the respondents also saying that Mrs. Arroyo definitely enriched herself while in the presidential office.
For its part, Malacañang yesterday branded as “unfair” and “baseless” the latest Pulse survey findings.
Both Press Secretary Ignacio Bunye and Presidential Management Staff (PMS) chief Secretary Cerge Remonde claimed to be in disbelief over the survey results, claiming that the poll does not represent the sentiments of the majority of the 84 million Filipinos, and only a handful, or 1,200 who were polled expressed these sentiments.
“How can you compare 1,200 respondents to the majority of the 84 million Filipinos? We have to check the line of questioning used. Were the questions leading? We have to consider also the kind of respondents chosen. All these must be considered before making any judgment,” Bunye said.
When asked to comment if the survey has no credibility, Bunye said “ Let us just say, we don’t agree with the characterization (of Mrs. Arroyo as the most corrupt president ever).”
Remonde, for his part, said the survey is baseless because it does not look at the positive developments done by the Arroyo administration but merely relied of perceptions.
Executive Secretary Eduardo Ermtia, however, expressed belief that the opposition is behind the survey and that this is part of yet another plot to destabilize the government.
“Just like in boxing, they try to do body punching on the President because they cannot give her a straight cut. It’s fortunate that we have a strong contender (Mrs. Arroyo) ,” Ermita said, adding that the people behind the survey are known to be “unfriendly” toward Mrs. Arroyo but stressed that he is not referring to the political opposition.
“Some elements from the opposition, not really the political groups, might be behind this (survey) so they can continue to criticize the President,” Ermita said.
Ermita also urged the media to be more positive in reporting so the good deeds done by Mrs. Arroyo can be made known to the public, citing as example the effort of the chief executive in saving Overseas Filipino Worker Marilou Ranario from her death sentence in Kuwait.
The Palace official also observed that some media men “glorified” opposition Sen. Antonio Trillanes IV despite his wrong deeds in leading the standoff at the Manila Peninsula last Nov. 29.
With Sherwin C. Olaes and Tesa Gaila Medina
Ally wants GMA ‘most corrupt’ poll probed
By Angie M. Rosales
12/13/2007
In a bid to kill the messenger for coming up with a survey message showing President Arroyo as the “most corrupt president” in Philippine history, her staunchest ally, Sen. Miriam Santiago, yesterday vowed to unmask the alleged “culprit” behind the latest Pulse Asia survey that dared to make public the unfavorable results of its poll on who among the Philippine presidents earned the tag as the most corrupt.
She also reportedly threatened to have survey firms probed, as the senator claimed that they never conduct surveys unless they are paid for and financed by certain personalities.
Santiago said she is bent on filing a resolution today to investigate not only the particular survey firm but all major survey firms that have their results published in the media.
The woman senator pointed to a known member of the opposition, a former senator whom she did not name, but who she said was behind the Pulse Asia survey.
While she mentioned no names, it was already out in the
news Tuesday that former Sen. Sergio Osmena had commissioned that particular survey question.
Sources in the opposition said it was a rider question.
Santiago, in an interview with reporters, bared her plans of calling for a probe on this specific issue as soon as possible.
But Santiago’s colleagues, including the Senate leadership, are cold to her proposal, saying such results cannot be helped since this is the perception of the public of Mrs. Arroyo.
Senate President Manuel Villar Jr. twitted Santiago on her position, saying there was nothing wrong with the opposition commissioning the survey on corruption issues.
Mrs. Arroyo’s staunch ally said she wants to know who paid for these surveys, as she does not buy the claim that these polls are not commissioned and insists on knowing just who funded these surveys.
She also stated that she does not believe that the Pulse Asia survey results tagging Mrs. Arroyo as the “Most Corrupt President” in history are accurate.”
“Apart from the usual criticisms of accuracy of surveys, I don’t think that any right-minded scientific professional survey firm will conduct a one-sided survey. There will always be a positive part of the survey. For example, it may ask: ‘Who is the most corrupt president?’ but it should ask also ‘Who do you think is the most successful economically among the presidents we have had’?” Santiago stressed.
“My unconfirmed report is that a member of the opposition commissioned the survey and was able to convince a major daily to use it as a banner headline. This is not a coincidence,” she said, and claimed she was outraged at these survey results and their publication.
Condemning Pulse Asia, Santiago claimed: “This survey firm has always been associated with a former president. I would not say that there is a direct connection between that former president and this firm. I do know however that there is an opposition figure who commissioned the survey and paid the firm. He is very slippery. It (the survey) does serve the purpose of the opposition to put President Arroyo down,” she noted.
Villar disputed the assessment of Santiago as he hinted that it would be unlikely for the matter to be even taken up by them, saying it would be better for the President to address this current perception of the public on her.
“She (Mrs. Arroyo) should just accept this (opinion of the Filipinos of her),” he stressed.
Sen. Panfilo Lacson, opposition member, joined Villar in chiding Malacañang and the chief executive on their response to the issue of Mrs. Arroyo as most corrupt president, tossing the blame on the series of scandals that continue to rock the administration.
“In other societies, such widespread indictment would be enough to make a leader resign. In Mrs. Arroyo’s case, it further fuels her motivation to work for the extension of her term via Charter change. Only in the Philippines,” Lacson said.
The same call was issued by another member of the opposition, Sen. Manuel “Mar” Roxas II, who strongly advised Mrs. Arroyo the following: To issue the release of the Neda-ICC documents on the broadband project so that the public can see how the government approved this project; order the return home of former controversial Agriculture Undersecretary Jocelyn “Joc-joc” Bolante to face the music in the proper venues and make sure that the fertilizer fund scam will finally be resolved; cancel all foreign loans that are associated with questionable big-ticket projects including the P25 billion Cyber-Ed project; and go after the big-time smugglers and tax evaders, sparing no political sacred cows in the process.
“I humbly put forward these areas where the administration can start walking the talk and hardening its resolve against corruption.”
For former President Estrada, he said that “if the surveys and majority of the Filipinos believe that Mrs. Arroyo is corrupt, then perhaps she indeed is (the most corrupt).”
Estrada was reacting to the “Most Corrupt President” tag, earned by Mrs. Arroyo, topping former strongman Ferdinand Marcos in corruption, as measured by Pulse Asia.
“If that is what the survey shows then it is true. I am a believer of surveys. Even when I first ran for Mayor of San Juan I was given 50-50 chance from that time, I won. I am a true believer of surveys as a mayor, as a senator, and as President, even at the height of my popularity,” Estrada said.
He stated that he is willing to help the Arroyo regime provided it shows sincerity in its treatment of the Filipino people the Arroyo government claims to be helping. “They (government) must decide for the good of the greatest number which is the poor,” he said.
Asked if he has already seen or felt the sincerity by the government Estrada shrugged and said: “No.”
The survey, conducted last October showed Mrs. Arroyo being widely viewed by the Filipino people as the most corrupt ever, topping the most corrupt list with a 42 percent rating nationwide.
Marcos came in second, with a 35 percent rating. Estrada came in as a far third, with a mere 16 percent of the respondents rating him in the same corrupt listing.
He came in second, however, in the same survey as the “least corrupt president” or not corrupt president after Corazon Aquino.
The findings on Estrada validate past surveys where the majority of the people saw him as not having enriched himself while in office, as against the great majority of the respondents also saying that Mrs. Arroyo definitely enriched herself while in the presidential office.
For its part, Malacañang yesterday branded as “unfair” and “baseless” the latest Pulse survey findings.
Both Press Secretary Ignacio Bunye and Presidential Management Staff (PMS) chief Secretary Cerge Remonde claimed to be in disbelief over the survey results, claiming that the poll does not represent the sentiments of the majority of the 84 million Filipinos, and only a handful, or 1,200 who were polled expressed these sentiments.
“How can you compare 1,200 respondents to the majority of the 84 million Filipinos? We have to check the line of questioning used. Were the questions leading? We have to consider also the kind of respondents chosen. All these must be considered before making any judgment,” Bunye said.
When asked to comment if the survey has no credibility, Bunye said “ Let us just say, we don’t agree with the characterization (of Mrs. Arroyo as the most corrupt president ever).”
Remonde, for his part, said the survey is baseless because it does not look at the positive developments done by the Arroyo administration but merely relied of perceptions.
Executive Secretary Eduardo Ermtia, however, expressed belief that the opposition is behind the survey and that this is part of yet another plot to destabilize the government.
“Just like in boxing, they try to do body punching on the President because they cannot give her a straight cut. It’s fortunate that we have a strong contender (Mrs. Arroyo) ,” Ermita said, adding that the people behind the survey are known to be “unfriendly” toward Mrs. Arroyo but stressed that he is not referring to the political opposition.
“Some elements from the opposition, not really the political groups, might be behind this (survey) so they can continue to criticize the President,” Ermita said.
Ermita also urged the media to be more positive in reporting so the good deeds done by Mrs. Arroyo can be made known to the public, citing as example the effort of the chief executive in saving Overseas Filipino Worker Marilou Ranario from her death sentence in Kuwait.
The Palace official also observed that some media men “glorified” opposition Sen. Antonio Trillanes IV despite his wrong deeds in leading the standoff at the Manila Peninsula last Nov. 29.
With Sherwin C. Olaes and Tesa Gaila Medina
Tuesday, December 11, 2007
Gates: Israel no nuclear threat to neighbors.
Probably it is no nuclear threat right at the moment since it can well handle any of its neighbors using its huge conventional military might. Of course Israel refuses even to acknowledge it has nuclear weapons just two nuclear reactors but it is well known that it has. Gates made the horrendous gaff of actually stating that it did some time back.
Of course if Iran had nuclear weapons it would change the balance of power in the Middle East that is the problem. Iran would not be likely to use its weapons except as a bargaining chip since any use of nuclear weapons could result in a devastating counter-attack.
Many US citizens seem oblivious to the transparent hypocrisy of their government on the nuclear issue. Gates could easily give his speech in the US without any laughter.
Israel no nuclear threat to neighbors, says Gates
MANAMA (Reuters) - U.S. Defense Secretary Robert Gates defended Israel's nuclear program on Saturday, saying the Jewish state did not seek to destroy its neighbors or support terrorism, unlike Iran.
Asked at the Manama Dialogue conference whether he thought Israel's nuclear program posed a threat to the region, Gates replied: "No, I do not."
The statement was greeted by laughter from a room filled with government officials from Middle Eastern countries.
Israel is widely assumed to have the region's only atomic arsenal, but refuses to confirm or deny it. Washington has long avoided pressing Israel to go public with its capabilities.
Gates did not specifically mention Israel's nuclear weapons or arsenal, but responded to questions about its "nuclear program" -- giving the Pentagon chief room to dismiss any suggestion that he implicitly confirmed the existence of nuclear weapons in Israel.
He dismissed the allegation that the United States applied a double standard on the nuclear issue by supporting Israel while calling for Iran to abandon its enrichment activities, which Tehran says are for peaceful purposes.
"Israel is not training terrorists to subvert its neighbors. It has not shipped weapons into a place like Iraq to kill thousands of innocent civilians covertly," Gates said.
"It has not threatened to destroy any of its neighbors. It is not trying to destabilize the government of Lebanon.
"So I think there are significant differences in terms of both the history and the behavior of the Iranian and Israeli governments. I understand there is a difference of view on that," he said.
Iran denies U.S. allegations that it has armed, trained and funded Shi'ite militias in Iraq, blaming the violence in Iraq on the U.S.-led invasion to topple Saddam Hussein in 2003.
A year ago, Gates first angered Israelis during testimony to the U.S. Congress by including Israel in a list of nuclear-armed countries in the regions around Iran to explain why Tehran might have sought the means to build an atomic bomb. He has not publicly discussed it since.
Israel admits to having two atomic reactors, describing them officially as research facilities. Its refusal to discuss any nuclear weapons capabilities or accept international inspections at the facilities is a major irritant for Arabs and Iran, which see it as a contradiction in U.S. policy in the region.
(Editing by Andrew Dobbie)
© Reuters2007All rights reserved
Of course if Iran had nuclear weapons it would change the balance of power in the Middle East that is the problem. Iran would not be likely to use its weapons except as a bargaining chip since any use of nuclear weapons could result in a devastating counter-attack.
Many US citizens seem oblivious to the transparent hypocrisy of their government on the nuclear issue. Gates could easily give his speech in the US without any laughter.
Israel no nuclear threat to neighbors, says Gates
MANAMA (Reuters) - U.S. Defense Secretary Robert Gates defended Israel's nuclear program on Saturday, saying the Jewish state did not seek to destroy its neighbors or support terrorism, unlike Iran.
Asked at the Manama Dialogue conference whether he thought Israel's nuclear program posed a threat to the region, Gates replied: "No, I do not."
The statement was greeted by laughter from a room filled with government officials from Middle Eastern countries.
Israel is widely assumed to have the region's only atomic arsenal, but refuses to confirm or deny it. Washington has long avoided pressing Israel to go public with its capabilities.
Gates did not specifically mention Israel's nuclear weapons or arsenal, but responded to questions about its "nuclear program" -- giving the Pentagon chief room to dismiss any suggestion that he implicitly confirmed the existence of nuclear weapons in Israel.
He dismissed the allegation that the United States applied a double standard on the nuclear issue by supporting Israel while calling for Iran to abandon its enrichment activities, which Tehran says are for peaceful purposes.
"Israel is not training terrorists to subvert its neighbors. It has not shipped weapons into a place like Iraq to kill thousands of innocent civilians covertly," Gates said.
"It has not threatened to destroy any of its neighbors. It is not trying to destabilize the government of Lebanon.
"So I think there are significant differences in terms of both the history and the behavior of the Iranian and Israeli governments. I understand there is a difference of view on that," he said.
Iran denies U.S. allegations that it has armed, trained and funded Shi'ite militias in Iraq, blaming the violence in Iraq on the U.S.-led invasion to topple Saddam Hussein in 2003.
A year ago, Gates first angered Israelis during testimony to the U.S. Congress by including Israel in a list of nuclear-armed countries in the regions around Iran to explain why Tehran might have sought the means to build an atomic bomb. He has not publicly discussed it since.
Israel admits to having two atomic reactors, describing them officially as research facilities. Its refusal to discuss any nuclear weapons capabilities or accept international inspections at the facilities is a major irritant for Arabs and Iran, which see it as a contradiction in U.S. policy in the region.
(Editing by Andrew Dobbie)
© Reuters2007All rights reserved
Victim: Gang-Rape Cover-Up by U.S. Halliburton/KBR
I find it amazing that a story such as this would manage to escape reporters who just love a juicy scandal. One wonders if there was a lot of pressure brought to bear to steer clear of the story or if reporters were just dismissive of the alleged victim's story. In any event this may become a much larger story in a short time. Obviously something happened as she was able to phone her dad and she was released from the container. What on earth explanation was given for her being there?
Victim: Gang-Rape Cover-Up by U.S., Halliburton/KBR
KBR Told Victim She Could Lose Her Job If She Sought Help After Being Raped, She Says
By BRIAN ROSS, MADDY SAUER & JUSTIN ROOD
Dec. 10, 2007—
A Houston, Texas woman says she was gang-raped by Halliburton/KBR coworkers in Baghdad, and the company and the U.S. government are covering up the incident.
Jamie Leigh Jones, now 22, says that after she was raped by multiple men at a KBR camp in the Green Zone, the company put her under guard in a shipping container with a bed and warned her that if she left Iraq for medical treatment, she'd be out of a job.
"Don't plan on working back in Iraq. There won't be a position here, and there won't be a position in Houston," Jones says she was told.
In a lawsuit filed in federal court against Halliburton and its then-subsidiary KBR, Jones says she was held in the shipping container for at least 24 hours without food or water by KBR, which posted armed security guards outside her door, who would not let her leave.
"It felt like prison," says Jones, who told her story to ABC News as part of an upcoming "20/20" investigation. "I was upset; I was curled up in a ball on the bed; I just could not believe what had happened."
Finally, Jones says, she convinced a sympathetic guard to loan her a cell phone so she could call her father in Texas.
"I said, 'Dad, I've been raped. I don't know what to do. I'm in this container, and I'm not able to leave,'" she said. Her father called their congressman, Rep. Ted Poe, R-Texas.
"We contacted the State Department first," Poe told ABCNews.com, "and told them of the urgency of rescuing an American citizen" -- from her American employer.
Poe says his office contacted the State Department, which quickly dispatched agents from the U.S. Embassy in Baghdad to Jones' camp, where they rescued her from the container.
According to her lawsuit, Jones was raped by "several attackers who first drugged her, then repeatedly raped and injured her, both physically and emotionally."
Jones told ABCNews.com that an examination by Army doctors showed she had been raped "both vaginally and anally," but that the rape kit disappeared after it was handed over to KBR security officers.
A spokesperson for the State Department's Bureau of Diplomatic Security told ABCNews.com he could not comment on the matter.
Over two years later, the Justice Department has brought no criminal charges in the matter. In fact, ABC News could not confirm any federal agency was investigating the case.
Victim: Gang-Rape Cover-Up by U.S., Halliburton/KBR
KBR Told Victim She Could Lose Her Job If She Sought Help After Being Raped, She Says
By BRIAN ROSS, MADDY SAUER & JUSTIN ROOD
Dec. 10, 2007—
A Houston, Texas woman says she was gang-raped by Halliburton/KBR coworkers in Baghdad, and the company and the U.S. government are covering up the incident.
Jamie Leigh Jones, now 22, says that after she was raped by multiple men at a KBR camp in the Green Zone, the company put her under guard in a shipping container with a bed and warned her that if she left Iraq for medical treatment, she'd be out of a job.
"Don't plan on working back in Iraq. There won't be a position here, and there won't be a position in Houston," Jones says she was told.
In a lawsuit filed in federal court against Halliburton and its then-subsidiary KBR, Jones says she was held in the shipping container for at least 24 hours without food or water by KBR, which posted armed security guards outside her door, who would not let her leave.
"It felt like prison," says Jones, who told her story to ABC News as part of an upcoming "20/20" investigation. "I was upset; I was curled up in a ball on the bed; I just could not believe what had happened."
Finally, Jones says, she convinced a sympathetic guard to loan her a cell phone so she could call her father in Texas.
"I said, 'Dad, I've been raped. I don't know what to do. I'm in this container, and I'm not able to leave,'" she said. Her father called their congressman, Rep. Ted Poe, R-Texas.
"We contacted the State Department first," Poe told ABCNews.com, "and told them of the urgency of rescuing an American citizen" -- from her American employer.
Poe says his office contacted the State Department, which quickly dispatched agents from the U.S. Embassy in Baghdad to Jones' camp, where they rescued her from the container.
According to her lawsuit, Jones was raped by "several attackers who first drugged her, then repeatedly raped and injured her, both physically and emotionally."
Jones told ABCNews.com that an examination by Army doctors showed she had been raped "both vaginally and anally," but that the rape kit disappeared after it was handed over to KBR security officers.
A spokesperson for the State Department's Bureau of Diplomatic Security told ABCNews.com he could not comment on the matter.
Over two years later, the Justice Department has brought no criminal charges in the matter. In fact, ABC News could not confirm any federal agency was investigating the case.
Monday, December 10, 2007
Pelosi did not object to waterboarding in 2002
The Democrats are creatures of the moment moving with the winds except where the winds are definitely against their basic principles such as supporting US imperialism. On minor matters such as torture, opportunism based upon polls and weaknesses in Republican policy are the norm. At least a late howl is better than staying mute or even supporting the practice. This is from rawstory.
Secretly briefed, Pelosi did not object to waterboarding in 2002John Byrne
Published: Sunday December 9, 2007
Pelosi would later boot sole objector to program from chance to chair Intelligence Committee
Two senior Republicans and Democrats in Congress -- including House Speaker Nancy Pelosi -- were briefing on the CIA's program to use waterboarding on terror suspects in September 2002 and did not object, according to Sunday's Washington Post.
In the long-ranging article, which seemingly takes the lawmakers and the Bush Administration to task by discussing the practice's emergence in Nazi Germany and other totalitarian states, a Pelosi aide said the Speaker remembered discussion of "enhanced" interrogation techniques and "acknowledged that Pelosi did not raise objections at the time."
"In September 2002, four members of Congress met in secret for a first look at a unique CIA program designed to wring vital information from reticent terrorism suspects in U.S. custody," the Post wrote. "For more than an hour, the bipartisan group, which included current House Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.), was given a virtual tour of the CIA's overseas detention sites and the harsh techniques interrogators had devised to try to make their prisoners talk."
"Among the techniques described, said two officials present, was waterboarding, a practice that years later would be condemned as torture by Democrats and some Republicans on Capitol Hill," the Post added. "But on that day, no objections were raised. Instead, at least two lawmakers in the room asked the CIA to push harder, two U.S. officials said."
Secretly briefed, Pelosi did not object to waterboarding in 2002John Byrne
Published: Sunday December 9, 2007
Pelosi would later boot sole objector to program from chance to chair Intelligence Committee
Two senior Republicans and Democrats in Congress -- including House Speaker Nancy Pelosi -- were briefing on the CIA's program to use waterboarding on terror suspects in September 2002 and did not object, according to Sunday's Washington Post.
In the long-ranging article, which seemingly takes the lawmakers and the Bush Administration to task by discussing the practice's emergence in Nazi Germany and other totalitarian states, a Pelosi aide said the Speaker remembered discussion of "enhanced" interrogation techniques and "acknowledged that Pelosi did not raise objections at the time."
"In September 2002, four members of Congress met in secret for a first look at a unique CIA program designed to wring vital information from reticent terrorism suspects in U.S. custody," the Post wrote. "For more than an hour, the bipartisan group, which included current House Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.), was given a virtual tour of the CIA's overseas detention sites and the harsh techniques interrogators had devised to try to make their prisoners talk."
"Among the techniques described, said two officials present, was waterboarding, a practice that years later would be condemned as torture by Democrats and some Republicans on Capitol Hill," the Post added. "But on that day, no objections were raised. Instead, at least two lawmakers in the room asked the CIA to push harder, two U.S. officials said."
Bomb kills Iraq police chief.
Bomb Kills Iraqi Police Chief Praised by U.S.
By Naseer Nouri and Sudarsan Raghavan
Washington Post Foreign Service
Monday, December 10, 2007; A13
When will the Americans ever learn. They should praise people they want to get rid of not ones that they want to have on their side. This pattern of US praise and subsequent assassination is common enough that one would think that US officials would be sparing in their praise of those that do what they believe is good work. This is from the Washington Post.
BAGHDAD, Dec. 9 -- A roadside bomb killed the police chief of a mostly Shiite province south of Baghdad, hours after U.S. commanders praised him for his commitment to bringing stability to Iraq.
The assassination of Maj. Gen. Qais al-Mamouri was the latest in a series of attacks against provincial leaders in unruly southern Iraq, where Shiite militias and other factions are engaged in a struggle for power and resources.
The bomb attack Sunday, which struck Mamouri's convoy and also killed two of his bodyguards, occurred in Hilla, about 60 miles south of Baghdad. There had been six previous attempts on his life since he became police chief of Babil province.
"We're very lucky to have in Babil province Major General Qais, who is a very good Iraqi police chief for all of that province," Col. Tom James, commander of the 4th Brigade Combat Team, 3rd Infantry Division, said before the assassination. "He is committed to securing Iraq for the people, for the population. He does not see anything through a sectarian lens. It's all about Iraqi law, and the people see that."
Police imposed an indefinite curfew on Hilla. With people
By Naseer Nouri and Sudarsan Raghavan
Washington Post Foreign Service
Monday, December 10, 2007; A13
When will the Americans ever learn. They should praise people they want to get rid of not ones that they want to have on their side. This pattern of US praise and subsequent assassination is common enough that one would think that US officials would be sparing in their praise of those that do what they believe is good work. This is from the Washington Post.
BAGHDAD, Dec. 9 -- A roadside bomb killed the police chief of a mostly Shiite province south of Baghdad, hours after U.S. commanders praised him for his commitment to bringing stability to Iraq.
The assassination of Maj. Gen. Qais al-Mamouri was the latest in a series of attacks against provincial leaders in unruly southern Iraq, where Shiite militias and other factions are engaged in a struggle for power and resources.
The bomb attack Sunday, which struck Mamouri's convoy and also killed two of his bodyguards, occurred in Hilla, about 60 miles south of Baghdad. There had been six previous attempts on his life since he became police chief of Babil province.
"We're very lucky to have in Babil province Major General Qais, who is a very good Iraqi police chief for all of that province," Col. Tom James, commander of the 4th Brigade Combat Team, 3rd Infantry Division, said before the assassination. "He is committed to securing Iraq for the people, for the population. He does not see anything through a sectarian lens. It's all about Iraqi law, and the people see that."
Police imposed an indefinite curfew on Hilla. With people
Ex-PM Sharif drops plan to boycott Pakistan elections
This makes sense since Bhutto's decision not to support a boycott would leave him completely out in the cold. In fact Bhutto and Musharraf would have the field to themselves. Bhutto shows that she is still hankering for a deal with Musharraf in effect if not openly. Unlike Sharif I have not heard Bhutto clamoring for the re-instatement of the deposed and jailed justices.
Ex-PM Sharif drops plan to boycott Pakistan elections
Bhutto rejected plea for joint boycott
Last Updated: Sunday, December 9, 2007 | 11:47 PM ET
CBC News
One of the main opposition leaders in Pakistan, Nawaz Sharif, has gone back on his plan to boycott January's elections.
Sharif had hoped that rival opposition leader Benazir Bhutto and her Pakistan People's Party would join an alliance seeking to isolate President Pervez Musharraf in protest against his declaration of emergency rule.
Bhutto has said a boycott would leave the field open for a takeover by Musharraf's allies.
Ahzan Iqbal, a spokesman for Sharif's Pakistan Muslim League-N, offered similar reasons Sunday for taking part in the election.
"It was considered that if we did not now contest elections, the field will be open for those parties which have supported General Musharraf and he will be able to bring about a constitutional-law amendment with two-thirds majority to indemnify his 3rd November action of dismissing the judiciary," Iqbal said.
Sharif and Bhutto, both former prime ministers, met Dec. 3 for the first time since they returned to Pakistan from years in exile. Sharif failed to enlist Bhutto in a joint boycott
Ex-PM Sharif drops plan to boycott Pakistan elections
Bhutto rejected plea for joint boycott
Last Updated: Sunday, December 9, 2007 | 11:47 PM ET
CBC News
One of the main opposition leaders in Pakistan, Nawaz Sharif, has gone back on his plan to boycott January's elections.
Sharif had hoped that rival opposition leader Benazir Bhutto and her Pakistan People's Party would join an alliance seeking to isolate President Pervez Musharraf in protest against his declaration of emergency rule.
Bhutto has said a boycott would leave the field open for a takeover by Musharraf's allies.
Ahzan Iqbal, a spokesman for Sharif's Pakistan Muslim League-N, offered similar reasons Sunday for taking part in the election.
"It was considered that if we did not now contest elections, the field will be open for those parties which have supported General Musharraf and he will be able to bring about a constitutional-law amendment with two-thirds majority to indemnify his 3rd November action of dismissing the judiciary," Iqbal said.
Sharif and Bhutto, both former prime ministers, met Dec. 3 for the first time since they returned to Pakistan from years in exile. Sharif failed to enlist Bhutto in a joint boycott
Sunday, December 9, 2007
Gulf Countries speak out against military option against Iran
This is from AFP through Yahoo. Even though the Gulf States are concerned about growing Iranian influence in the region they are probably even more concerned about US military adventurism against Iran. The new intelligence estimate has done nothing to dampen the US ardour for painting Iran as the Great Satan in the region threatening Israel with annihilation--even though Israel has itself a nuclear deterrent!
Gulf countries speak out against military option in Iran by Ali Khalil
Sat Dec 8, 9:57 AM ET
Gulf countries, cautious about the nuclear standoff between the United States and Iran, signalled loudly at a regional security conference on Saturday their opposition to any military option against Tehran.
Washington, wrong-footed by its own National Intelligence Estimate in its accusations that Iran wanted nuclear weapons, has emphasised that no options have been ruled out in forcing it to end its nuclear enrichment programme.
The NIE on Tuesday said that Iran, which insists its current programme is for peaceful power generation, had halted a secret nuclear weapons programme four years ago.
"We want the military factor (of Iran's nuclear programme) to be eliminated," the secretary general of the Gulf Cooperation Council (GCC) Abdulrahman al-Attiyah told AFP on Saturday.
"What we care for in the GCC is finding solutions that enhance security and stability ... and believe in dialogue as a way to solve the crisis," between the West and Iran, he said.
Gulf countries remain wary of Iran's nuclear ambitions but do not want to see its standoff with the West escalating into a military confrontation.
"We are not for the military confrontation option," said Attiyah.
Qatar's Prime Minister Sheikh Hamed bin Jassem al-Thani went further, calling on Washington to engage Tehran in dialogue to reach a solution.
"Direct talks do not mean agreeing (from the start) with the other party," he told conference delegates on Saturday, among them US Defence Secretary Robert Gates.
Qatar, one of the key US-allies in the region, hosts the US army's Central Command which directed the US-led invasion of Iraq in March 2003.
But in a surprising move, it invited Iran's President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad to attend a GCC annual summit on Monday, making him the first Iranian president to take part in a Gulf leaders summit.
"I don't think we can try to solve our problems through trying to seal Iran (off from) the region. They are a very important player," he said defending Qatar's decision.
He also reiterated that being "pushed into a military confrontation with Iran" would not be in the interest of the GCC countries.
Toby Dodge, a Middle East consulting senior fellow at the London-based International Institute for Strategic Studies (IISS), said the GCC fears of military escalation in the Gulf were justified.
"Iran would retaliate to any (US) military action and the Gulf region would be affected... I assume that their strategy is to support an active US policy to restrain Iran (on the nuclear front), but short of military action," he told AFP.
But he said that the GCC fears go beyond Iran's nuclear programme to encompass Tehran's "ambition for regional hegemony."
GCC countries are worried about "Iran's dominance in the region," agreed Mamoun Fandy, who is also an IISS senior fellow for Gulf security.
"Iran is winning in Palestine, Lebanon and Syria. Iran is winning the Muslim Brotherhood in Egypt," he told AFP referring to Tehran's clout over Islamist movements in the Sunni-dominated Arab countries.
Qatar's premier echoed that same concerns in addressing delegates in the security conference, which was snubbed by Iran in the last minute, saying that it is "very important that nobody tries to dominate the region."
Iraq meanwhile welcomed the intelligence report saying it was "very encouraging".
"We think it will prompt Iran towards more moderation," Iraq's National Security Advisor, Mowaffak al-Rubaie, told AFP.
Gates meanwhile reiterated Washington's view that Iran's foreign policy was a threat to the United States, the Middle East and all countries within range of missiles which he said Tehran was developing.
Copyright © 2007 Agence France Presse. All rights reserved. The information contained in the AFP News report may not be published, broadcast, rewritten or redistributed without the prior written authority of Agence France Presse.
Copyright © 2007 Yahoo! Inc. All rights reserved.
Questions or Comments
Privacy Policy -Terms of Service - Copyright/IP Policy - Ad Feedback
Gulf countries speak out against military option in Iran by Ali Khalil
Sat Dec 8, 9:57 AM ET
Gulf countries, cautious about the nuclear standoff between the United States and Iran, signalled loudly at a regional security conference on Saturday their opposition to any military option against Tehran.
Washington, wrong-footed by its own National Intelligence Estimate in its accusations that Iran wanted nuclear weapons, has emphasised that no options have been ruled out in forcing it to end its nuclear enrichment programme.
The NIE on Tuesday said that Iran, which insists its current programme is for peaceful power generation, had halted a secret nuclear weapons programme four years ago.
"We want the military factor (of Iran's nuclear programme) to be eliminated," the secretary general of the Gulf Cooperation Council (GCC) Abdulrahman al-Attiyah told AFP on Saturday.
"What we care for in the GCC is finding solutions that enhance security and stability ... and believe in dialogue as a way to solve the crisis," between the West and Iran, he said.
Gulf countries remain wary of Iran's nuclear ambitions but do not want to see its standoff with the West escalating into a military confrontation.
"We are not for the military confrontation option," said Attiyah.
Qatar's Prime Minister Sheikh Hamed bin Jassem al-Thani went further, calling on Washington to engage Tehran in dialogue to reach a solution.
"Direct talks do not mean agreeing (from the start) with the other party," he told conference delegates on Saturday, among them US Defence Secretary Robert Gates.
Qatar, one of the key US-allies in the region, hosts the US army's Central Command which directed the US-led invasion of Iraq in March 2003.
But in a surprising move, it invited Iran's President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad to attend a GCC annual summit on Monday, making him the first Iranian president to take part in a Gulf leaders summit.
"I don't think we can try to solve our problems through trying to seal Iran (off from) the region. They are a very important player," he said defending Qatar's decision.
He also reiterated that being "pushed into a military confrontation with Iran" would not be in the interest of the GCC countries.
Toby Dodge, a Middle East consulting senior fellow at the London-based International Institute for Strategic Studies (IISS), said the GCC fears of military escalation in the Gulf were justified.
"Iran would retaliate to any (US) military action and the Gulf region would be affected... I assume that their strategy is to support an active US policy to restrain Iran (on the nuclear front), but short of military action," he told AFP.
But he said that the GCC fears go beyond Iran's nuclear programme to encompass Tehran's "ambition for regional hegemony."
GCC countries are worried about "Iran's dominance in the region," agreed Mamoun Fandy, who is also an IISS senior fellow for Gulf security.
"Iran is winning in Palestine, Lebanon and Syria. Iran is winning the Muslim Brotherhood in Egypt," he told AFP referring to Tehran's clout over Islamist movements in the Sunni-dominated Arab countries.
Qatar's premier echoed that same concerns in addressing delegates in the security conference, which was snubbed by Iran in the last minute, saying that it is "very important that nobody tries to dominate the region."
Iraq meanwhile welcomed the intelligence report saying it was "very encouraging".
"We think it will prompt Iran towards more moderation," Iraq's National Security Advisor, Mowaffak al-Rubaie, told AFP.
Gates meanwhile reiterated Washington's view that Iran's foreign policy was a threat to the United States, the Middle East and all countries within range of missiles which he said Tehran was developing.
Copyright © 2007 Agence France Presse. All rights reserved. The information contained in the AFP News report may not be published, broadcast, rewritten or redistributed without the prior written authority of Agence France Presse.
Copyright © 2007 Yahoo! Inc. All rights reserved.
Questions or Comments
Privacy Policy -Terms of Service - Copyright/IP Policy - Ad Feedback
Breaking point in Kosovo
While this article mentions the ethnic cleansing by Serbia there is virtually nothing about the subsequent ethnic cleansing by the Albanian Kosovans. This is from the Guardian. This is just an excerpt from the article.
Breaking point
It's a crisis that's been simmering since 1999, when Nato troops enforced an uneasy peace on Kosovo. But from Monday, the Albanian majority in this former Yugoslav province will no longer be bound by the UN-brokered truce. And the fallout could be disastrous, as Julian Borger reports
Friday December 7, 2007
The Guardian
A Kosovo Albanian stands behind the Albanian national flag at a market in Pristina Photograph: Dimitar Dilkoff/AFP-Getty
Some of the potholes have been mended on the rough tar road into Kosovo from the south, but otherwise it is unchanged, winding its way through a blighted land that has been stuck in limbo for eight years. British troops came this way as part of Nato's intervention force in June 1999, when their vehicles were festooned with flowers by enthusiastic villagers - creating the dangerous expectation of a similar floral welcome in Iraq.
Article continues
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Unlike Iraq, the Kosovo invasion has gone down in history as a success. It staunched the bloodletting that had seen 10,000 people die in this, the last of the 1990s Balkan wars that broke Yugoslavia into its ethnic components. But eight years later, Nato's Kosovo force (K-For) is still there patrolling the same country roads, keeping a lid on the same fundamental problem - the unwillingness of Kosovo's ethnic Albanian majority and Serb minority to live together under the same flag. For most of the world, the troubled province has been out of sight and out of mind in recent years, but it is about to force its way back into the headlines. On Monday, the deadline expires for UN-brokered negotiations on power-sharing between the two peoples. The expectation is that Kosovo's Albanian-led government will go on to declare independence early in the New Year. The crisis that is now gathering momentum could not only ignite ethnic antipathies in Kosovo, but also set the west and Russia at each other's throats and send ripples of instability along other ethnic fault lines through the Balkans and the Caucasus.
The epic clash was inevitable from the moment Nato troops drove into the killing fields on that hot June day to put an end to Slobodan Milosevic's final stab at ethnic cleansing, before he was ousted as president of what remained of Yugoslavia and bundled off to the Hague war crimes tribunal.
By the late 90s, Milosevic's dreams of a Greater
Breaking point
It's a crisis that's been simmering since 1999, when Nato troops enforced an uneasy peace on Kosovo. But from Monday, the Albanian majority in this former Yugoslav province will no longer be bound by the UN-brokered truce. And the fallout could be disastrous, as Julian Borger reports
Friday December 7, 2007
The Guardian
A Kosovo Albanian stands behind the Albanian national flag at a market in Pristina Photograph: Dimitar Dilkoff/AFP-Getty
Some of the potholes have been mended on the rough tar road into Kosovo from the south, but otherwise it is unchanged, winding its way through a blighted land that has been stuck in limbo for eight years. British troops came this way as part of Nato's intervention force in June 1999, when their vehicles were festooned with flowers by enthusiastic villagers - creating the dangerous expectation of a similar floral welcome in Iraq.
Article continues
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Unlike Iraq, the Kosovo invasion has gone down in history as a success. It staunched the bloodletting that had seen 10,000 people die in this, the last of the 1990s Balkan wars that broke Yugoslavia into its ethnic components. But eight years later, Nato's Kosovo force (K-For) is still there patrolling the same country roads, keeping a lid on the same fundamental problem - the unwillingness of Kosovo's ethnic Albanian majority and Serb minority to live together under the same flag. For most of the world, the troubled province has been out of sight and out of mind in recent years, but it is about to force its way back into the headlines. On Monday, the deadline expires for UN-brokered negotiations on power-sharing between the two peoples. The expectation is that Kosovo's Albanian-led government will go on to declare independence early in the New Year. The crisis that is now gathering momentum could not only ignite ethnic antipathies in Kosovo, but also set the west and Russia at each other's throats and send ripples of instability along other ethnic fault lines through the Balkans and the Caucasus.
The epic clash was inevitable from the moment Nato troops drove into the killing fields on that hot June day to put an end to Slobodan Milosevic's final stab at ethnic cleansing, before he was ousted as president of what remained of Yugoslavia and bundled off to the Hague war crimes tribunal.
By the late 90s, Milosevic's dreams of a Greater
Saturday, December 8, 2007
The Slow Death of the US dollar
This comes from aribisto. . This is a good companion analyses to the Dwyer article that I posted earlier and provides more data and also explores further the reasons why the dollar might decline even more and be replaced in some areas. However, I think it would be premature to predict the demise of the US dollar any time soon.
Dr. Aref Assaf
The Slow Death of the US Dollar
December 03, 2007 10:11 AM
"The dollar is falling" was the cry of Iran's President at a recent OPEC meeting. Many OPEC members are now publically expressing their grave concerns about the dramatic decline of the value of the U.S. dollar. In fact, some members are publically calling for depegging from the dollar, the
use of other currencies in which to sell their oil. For OPEC, the issue is the substantial decrease in the value of their huge financial reserves which are denominated in U.S. currency. There is also the recognition that huge investments in foreign companies in the U.S. do not create local wealth; and with the weakening of the American dollar, the value of such investments is rapidly eroding.
While free market economists have their theories about the fall of the dollar, I would argue that the unprecedented rise in the Euro's value to the U.S. dollar is another facet of the Bush administration’s failed Iraq Policy. Bush’s unilateral and antagonistic policies may have perhaps irrecoverably debased the dollar as the world’s currency. If OPEC were to decide to accept the Euro for its oil, then American economic hegemony would be irreversibly challenged. “If one day the world’s largest oil producers demanded euros (sic) for their barrels, it would be the financial equivalent of a nuclear strike”. Bill O’ Grady, A.G. Edwards
Iraq, which has the second largest oil reserve in the world after Saudi Arabia, has been a major US concern since the start of the Bush administration, and indeed earlier. Iraq’s total reserves could be 200 billion barrels or even more, and all of it can be easily and cheaply extracted. Because the US is the world's largest consumer of oil and its appetite is growing because of its standards of consumption, it needs control over the oilfields of the Middle East.
The U.S.'s policy, however, is not premised on controlling oil for its domestic consumption. More importantly, it wants to also deny this control to the other world economic powers - the European Union, China, Japan. Driven by both strategic imperatives and reasons related to energy security, the US wants to ensure that Europe's access to oil will be routed through American-controlled pipelines.
Indeed, broadly speaking, the war in Iraq was directed as much against major powers in Europe as Iraq, a fact to which the "old Europe" of Chirac and Schroeder were quite alert. As in the case of Caspian oil, the US wants to deny Iraq’s oil to China as well, which has a quickly increasing need for imported crude. Since America perceives China as its potential rival in establishing a secure and dynamic global system under its own control, this is quite a significant reason for the Bush administration’s persistence to keep China out of the oil regions of Eurasia.
There were many motives related to the Iraqi oil justifying the Bush administration's military intervention in Iraq. But the biggest one seems to be about the currency used to trade oil: the role of preserving the dollar as the world’s reserve currency.
The United States' status as the unrivaled global superpower has rested on two unchallengeable pillars. First, the overwhelming US military superiority over all other rivals; second, the control of global economic markets with the dominant role of the US dollar as reserve currency. Reserve currencies are held by governments and institutions outside the country of issue and are used to finance international economic transactions, including trade and the payment of debts. Reserve currency status is not just an international status symbol. It brings international seignior age, benefits for ‘home’ financial institutions, relaxation of the ‘external constraint’ on macroeconomic policy, a greater role for the issuer in international institutions, and the wider geopolitical consequences of exercising currency hegemony.
However, this all changed in 1971 when president Richard Nixon took the dollar off the gold standard that has been agreed to at the Bretton Woods Conference in 1944. Thus, the dollar has been an irredeemable currency, no longer defined or measured in terms of gold. This removed the restraints on printing new dollars. The dollar has become the world’s dominant currency and the core reserve asset of central banks all over the world. It has replaced gold as an international currency. Central banks around the world have built up large reserves of dollars. Those dollars flow back into the US banking system in the form of investments in US dollar-denominated assets.
The dollar hegemony is key to the future of American global dominance, in many respects as significant if not more so, than the overwhelming military strength. And the petrodollar has been at the heart of the dollar hegemony since the early 1970s. Almost two-thirds of the world's currency reserves are kept in dollars, because oil importers pay in dollars and oil exporters keep their reserves in the currency they are paid in. The entire global oil trade is conducted in dollars. This means that everyone needs to keep dollars. This effectively provides the American economy with an interest-free loan, as these dollars can be invested back into the U.S.A. with zero currency risk. This money is not inactive; it is invested in dollar securities like US Treasury notes, stocks, mutual funds, and bonds. The US dollar's current strength is supported by OPEC’s requirement that all OPEC oil sales be denominated in dollars. This was secured by an agreement between the US administration and Saudi Arabia, the largest OPEC oil producer. This had been determined in June 1974 by Secretary of State Henry Kissinger, establishing the US-Saudi Arabian Joint Commission on Economic Cooperation. In 1975 OPEC officially agreed to sell its oil only in dollars.
America today practically borrows from the entire world without keeping reserves of any other currency. Because the dollar is the de facto global reserve currency, the US currency accounts for approximately two-thirds of all official exchange reserves. America does not have to compete with other currencies in interest rates; even at low interest rates, capital flies to the dollar. The more dollars there are circulating outside the US, the more the rest of the world has had to provide the US with goods and services in exchange for these dollars. The fact that the world uses the currency in this way means that the US is importing vast quantities of goods and services virtually for free. The US has a luxury of having its debts denominated in its own currency. This is the position the US has enjoyed for 30 years. It means that the US has been afforded a huge subsidy from everyone else in the world. The United States economy is, therefore, intimately tied to the dollar's role as reserve currency. The dominant position of the US dollar in world markets is not only a matter of pure economics, but also “deeply rooted in the geopolitical role of the United States.”
Until the advent of the Euro in late 1999 there was no potential challenge to this dollar hegemony in world trade. The coming of the Euro has threatened the dominant role of the US dollar as reserve currency. Some European leaders have even said that the Euro's main aim is to put Europe on an equal monetary footing with the United States - ending the dollar's 'hegemony,' in the word of former President Jacques Chirac of France.
In just a few years, the Euro has emerged as a real alternative to challenge the dollar. It has established itself as the second-most important currency in the world’s financial markets. Just before the introduction of the Euro, the outstanding amount of bonds and notes denominated in the legacy currencies of the Euro accounted for barely 28% of world issues, compared to 45 % for dollar-denominated bonds and notes. By mid-2007, the gap became much smaller: the share of issues in dollars had fallen to 32 %, while the Euro’s share had increased to 51 %. And even more spectacular development took place on the money market. At the end of 1998, money market instruments denominated in the Euro’s predecessor currencies accounted for just over 17% of world issues, compared to 58 % for dollar denominated instruments. By mid-2007, the share of issues in dollars had fallen to 19%, while the share of Euro issues had climbed to almost 61%. The Euro today accounts for over one quarter of the global market.
Iraq was the first OPEC country, in November 2000, to convert its reserves from dollars to Euros. This was the first time an OPEC country dared violate the dollar price rule. Iraq also converted $10 billion of its currency reserves to Euros. Since then the value of the Euro has increased, and the dollar has begun to decline. Libya has been urging for some time that oil be priced in Euros rather than dollars. Iran, Venezuela, and other countries have begun to denominate their petroleum trade in Euros. In 2002 the majority of reserve funds in Iran's central bank had been shifted to Euros. Some in Saudi Arabia have called for switching to the Euro as “a more effective punishment [than an oil embargo] for the United States, Israel’s principal source of financial and political support”. Russian President Vladimir Putin has threatened to price its oil in Euros as well. Since the oil trade is a central factor underpinning the dollar's hegemony, all these are potentially very significant threats to the strength of US economy in particular, and the US global hegemony in general.
With a significant part of the petroleum trade using the Euro instead of dollars; many countries would have to keep a part of their reserves in Euros. The dollar would then have to compete with the Euro for global capital. Not only would Europe not need dollars anymore, but Japan (which imports more than 80% of its oil from the Middle East) would have to convert most of its dollar assets to Euros. The US, too, being the world’s largest oil importer would have to get hold of Euro reserves. This would be disastrous for the American attempts at monetary management. Not only they would lose a large part of their annual subsidy of effectively free goods and services, but the switch to Euro reserves from dollar reserves would bring down the value of the US currency. Even a modest shift out of dollars, or a change in the flow, would create significant changes. If the Euro becomes a bigger reserve currency [i.e. if the US were to share its reserve currency status with the Euro] it is also likely to mean that either the US buys more Euros or the Europeans reduce their dollar holdings and buy Euros.
That is why there is a clear and definite oil (and petrodollar) connection in the recent military conflict in Iraq. This financial dimension is a power game of the highest geopolitical significance. The future of the dollar/ Euro competition to be the global reserve currency is far from a minor issue of interest only to banks or currency traders. A hidden war between the dollar and the new Euro currency for global hegemony corresponds to two different perceptions of the global order: Pax Americana, or the American Century model of global hegemony on one hand; and to balance the overwhelming dominance of the U.S. in world affairs on the other.
Consequently, the war in Iraq is a war whose purpose is much bigger than fortunes of Halliburton or Exxon: it's a long term and a strategic objective being fought to maintain America's position on top of the world.
Dr. Aref Assaf
The Slow Death of the US Dollar
December 03, 2007 10:11 AM
"The dollar is falling" was the cry of Iran's President at a recent OPEC meeting. Many OPEC members are now publically expressing their grave concerns about the dramatic decline of the value of the U.S. dollar. In fact, some members are publically calling for depegging from the dollar, the
use of other currencies in which to sell their oil. For OPEC, the issue is the substantial decrease in the value of their huge financial reserves which are denominated in U.S. currency. There is also the recognition that huge investments in foreign companies in the U.S. do not create local wealth; and with the weakening of the American dollar, the value of such investments is rapidly eroding.
While free market economists have their theories about the fall of the dollar, I would argue that the unprecedented rise in the Euro's value to the U.S. dollar is another facet of the Bush administration’s failed Iraq Policy. Bush’s unilateral and antagonistic policies may have perhaps irrecoverably debased the dollar as the world’s currency. If OPEC were to decide to accept the Euro for its oil, then American economic hegemony would be irreversibly challenged. “If one day the world’s largest oil producers demanded euros (sic) for their barrels, it would be the financial equivalent of a nuclear strike”. Bill O’ Grady, A.G. Edwards
Iraq, which has the second largest oil reserve in the world after Saudi Arabia, has been a major US concern since the start of the Bush administration, and indeed earlier. Iraq’s total reserves could be 200 billion barrels or even more, and all of it can be easily and cheaply extracted. Because the US is the world's largest consumer of oil and its appetite is growing because of its standards of consumption, it needs control over the oilfields of the Middle East.
The U.S.'s policy, however, is not premised on controlling oil for its domestic consumption. More importantly, it wants to also deny this control to the other world economic powers - the European Union, China, Japan. Driven by both strategic imperatives and reasons related to energy security, the US wants to ensure that Europe's access to oil will be routed through American-controlled pipelines.
Indeed, broadly speaking, the war in Iraq was directed as much against major powers in Europe as Iraq, a fact to which the "old Europe" of Chirac and Schroeder were quite alert. As in the case of Caspian oil, the US wants to deny Iraq’s oil to China as well, which has a quickly increasing need for imported crude. Since America perceives China as its potential rival in establishing a secure and dynamic global system under its own control, this is quite a significant reason for the Bush administration’s persistence to keep China out of the oil regions of Eurasia.
There were many motives related to the Iraqi oil justifying the Bush administration's military intervention in Iraq. But the biggest one seems to be about the currency used to trade oil: the role of preserving the dollar as the world’s reserve currency.
The United States' status as the unrivaled global superpower has rested on two unchallengeable pillars. First, the overwhelming US military superiority over all other rivals; second, the control of global economic markets with the dominant role of the US dollar as reserve currency. Reserve currencies are held by governments and institutions outside the country of issue and are used to finance international economic transactions, including trade and the payment of debts. Reserve currency status is not just an international status symbol. It brings international seignior age, benefits for ‘home’ financial institutions, relaxation of the ‘external constraint’ on macroeconomic policy, a greater role for the issuer in international institutions, and the wider geopolitical consequences of exercising currency hegemony.
However, this all changed in 1971 when president Richard Nixon took the dollar off the gold standard that has been agreed to at the Bretton Woods Conference in 1944. Thus, the dollar has been an irredeemable currency, no longer defined or measured in terms of gold. This removed the restraints on printing new dollars. The dollar has become the world’s dominant currency and the core reserve asset of central banks all over the world. It has replaced gold as an international currency. Central banks around the world have built up large reserves of dollars. Those dollars flow back into the US banking system in the form of investments in US dollar-denominated assets.
The dollar hegemony is key to the future of American global dominance, in many respects as significant if not more so, than the overwhelming military strength. And the petrodollar has been at the heart of the dollar hegemony since the early 1970s. Almost two-thirds of the world's currency reserves are kept in dollars, because oil importers pay in dollars and oil exporters keep their reserves in the currency they are paid in. The entire global oil trade is conducted in dollars. This means that everyone needs to keep dollars. This effectively provides the American economy with an interest-free loan, as these dollars can be invested back into the U.S.A. with zero currency risk. This money is not inactive; it is invested in dollar securities like US Treasury notes, stocks, mutual funds, and bonds. The US dollar's current strength is supported by OPEC’s requirement that all OPEC oil sales be denominated in dollars. This was secured by an agreement between the US administration and Saudi Arabia, the largest OPEC oil producer. This had been determined in June 1974 by Secretary of State Henry Kissinger, establishing the US-Saudi Arabian Joint Commission on Economic Cooperation. In 1975 OPEC officially agreed to sell its oil only in dollars.
America today practically borrows from the entire world without keeping reserves of any other currency. Because the dollar is the de facto global reserve currency, the US currency accounts for approximately two-thirds of all official exchange reserves. America does not have to compete with other currencies in interest rates; even at low interest rates, capital flies to the dollar. The more dollars there are circulating outside the US, the more the rest of the world has had to provide the US with goods and services in exchange for these dollars. The fact that the world uses the currency in this way means that the US is importing vast quantities of goods and services virtually for free. The US has a luxury of having its debts denominated in its own currency. This is the position the US has enjoyed for 30 years. It means that the US has been afforded a huge subsidy from everyone else in the world. The United States economy is, therefore, intimately tied to the dollar's role as reserve currency. The dominant position of the US dollar in world markets is not only a matter of pure economics, but also “deeply rooted in the geopolitical role of the United States.”
Until the advent of the Euro in late 1999 there was no potential challenge to this dollar hegemony in world trade. The coming of the Euro has threatened the dominant role of the US dollar as reserve currency. Some European leaders have even said that the Euro's main aim is to put Europe on an equal monetary footing with the United States - ending the dollar's 'hegemony,' in the word of former President Jacques Chirac of France.
In just a few years, the Euro has emerged as a real alternative to challenge the dollar. It has established itself as the second-most important currency in the world’s financial markets. Just before the introduction of the Euro, the outstanding amount of bonds and notes denominated in the legacy currencies of the Euro accounted for barely 28% of world issues, compared to 45 % for dollar-denominated bonds and notes. By mid-2007, the gap became much smaller: the share of issues in dollars had fallen to 32 %, while the Euro’s share had increased to 51 %. And even more spectacular development took place on the money market. At the end of 1998, money market instruments denominated in the Euro’s predecessor currencies accounted for just over 17% of world issues, compared to 58 % for dollar denominated instruments. By mid-2007, the share of issues in dollars had fallen to 19%, while the share of Euro issues had climbed to almost 61%. The Euro today accounts for over one quarter of the global market.
Iraq was the first OPEC country, in November 2000, to convert its reserves from dollars to Euros. This was the first time an OPEC country dared violate the dollar price rule. Iraq also converted $10 billion of its currency reserves to Euros. Since then the value of the Euro has increased, and the dollar has begun to decline. Libya has been urging for some time that oil be priced in Euros rather than dollars. Iran, Venezuela, and other countries have begun to denominate their petroleum trade in Euros. In 2002 the majority of reserve funds in Iran's central bank had been shifted to Euros. Some in Saudi Arabia have called for switching to the Euro as “a more effective punishment [than an oil embargo] for the United States, Israel’s principal source of financial and political support”. Russian President Vladimir Putin has threatened to price its oil in Euros as well. Since the oil trade is a central factor underpinning the dollar's hegemony, all these are potentially very significant threats to the strength of US economy in particular, and the US global hegemony in general.
With a significant part of the petroleum trade using the Euro instead of dollars; many countries would have to keep a part of their reserves in Euros. The dollar would then have to compete with the Euro for global capital. Not only would Europe not need dollars anymore, but Japan (which imports more than 80% of its oil from the Middle East) would have to convert most of its dollar assets to Euros. The US, too, being the world’s largest oil importer would have to get hold of Euro reserves. This would be disastrous for the American attempts at monetary management. Not only they would lose a large part of their annual subsidy of effectively free goods and services, but the switch to Euro reserves from dollar reserves would bring down the value of the US currency. Even a modest shift out of dollars, or a change in the flow, would create significant changes. If the Euro becomes a bigger reserve currency [i.e. if the US were to share its reserve currency status with the Euro] it is also likely to mean that either the US buys more Euros or the Europeans reduce their dollar holdings and buy Euros.
That is why there is a clear and definite oil (and petrodollar) connection in the recent military conflict in Iraq. This financial dimension is a power game of the highest geopolitical significance. The future of the dollar/ Euro competition to be the global reserve currency is far from a minor issue of interest only to banks or currency traders. A hidden war between the dollar and the new Euro currency for global hegemony corresponds to two different perceptions of the global order: Pax Americana, or the American Century model of global hegemony on one hand; and to balance the overwhelming dominance of the U.S. in world affairs on the other.
Consequently, the war in Iraq is a war whose purpose is much bigger than fortunes of Halliburton or Exxon: it's a long term and a strategic objective being fought to maintain America's position on top of the world.
The Long Farewell to the US dollar
This is from the straightgoods site. It will be some time yet before there is any significant movement towards replacing the US dollar. THe US still is the world master in terms of military and political power but as the article points out some changes are already taking place. Iran has set up an alternative arrangement where oil is not traded in US dollars but Euros and other countries too are demanding euros.
The situation is not all bad for the US since exports will be more competitive.
The long farewell to the US dollar
World looking for new reserve currency as US dollar collapses.
Dateline: Sunday, December 02, 2007
by Gwynne Dyer
It's just straws in the wind so far. India's Ministry of Culture announces that foreign tourists can no longer pay in dollars when visiting the Taj Mahal and other heritage sites; they have to pay in good, hard rupees. Iran and Venezuela call for a joint OPEC statement on the weak US dollar, and Saudi Arabian Foreign Affairs Minister Saud Al-Faisal warns that any public reference to the US dollar's problems could cause the troubled currency to "collapse". Rap star Jay-Z's latest video shows our hero flashing a wad of euros, not dollars.
Only straws in the wind, but all in the past couple of weeks. For the majority of Americans who do not travel abroad, the only visible effect so far of the dollar's steep fall has been higher fuel prices at the pump. The Chinese imports that fill the big-box stores still cost the same, because the Chinese yuan is still pegged to the American dollar. But that may be about to change, along with many other things.
At the beginning of 2003, one euro bought one US dollar. Eighteen months ago, it bought $1.20. Now it is pushing $1.50, and there is no reason to think that it will stop there. Three of the world's biggest oil exporters, Iran, Venezuela and Russia, are demanding payment in euros rather than US dollars. Last week a Chinese central bank vice-director, Xu Jian, gave voice to the suspicion of many others, saying that the US dollar was "losing its status as the world currency."
If that happens, then America loses a great deal. Other countries have to maintain large reserves of foreign currencies — most of which they keep in US dollars — to cover their foreign debts, but the United States can pay its huge foreign debts in its own money. If necessary, it can just print more dollars. Having their own money as the world's reserve currency confers advantages that Americans would miss if they lost them.
The main reason for the collapse of the US dollar is President George W Bush's attempt to fight expensive foreign wars while cutting taxes at home. This involved deficit financing on a very large scale, and inevitably the value of the dollar began to fall — slowly at first, but with increasing speed as it became clear that the White House did not care. "Ronald Reagan proved that deficits don't matter," as Vice-President Dick Cheney told then-Treasury Secretary Paul O'Neill.
But they do matter to foreigners. As the US dollar fell in value, the price of oil (which is usually calculated in dollars) rose to compensate for it, but there was no comparable adjustment for foreign central banks that had huge amounts of US dollars in their reserves. China, which was sitting on about a trillion US dollars, simply lost several hundred billion as the currency's value fell. So various central banks started wondering if they should diversify their reserves, and some act
The situation is not all bad for the US since exports will be more competitive.
The long farewell to the US dollar
World looking for new reserve currency as US dollar collapses.
Dateline: Sunday, December 02, 2007
by Gwynne Dyer
It's just straws in the wind so far. India's Ministry of Culture announces that foreign tourists can no longer pay in dollars when visiting the Taj Mahal and other heritage sites; they have to pay in good, hard rupees. Iran and Venezuela call for a joint OPEC statement on the weak US dollar, and Saudi Arabian Foreign Affairs Minister Saud Al-Faisal warns that any public reference to the US dollar's problems could cause the troubled currency to "collapse". Rap star Jay-Z's latest video shows our hero flashing a wad of euros, not dollars.
Only straws in the wind, but all in the past couple of weeks. For the majority of Americans who do not travel abroad, the only visible effect so far of the dollar's steep fall has been higher fuel prices at the pump. The Chinese imports that fill the big-box stores still cost the same, because the Chinese yuan is still pegged to the American dollar. But that may be about to change, along with many other things.
At the beginning of 2003, one euro bought one US dollar. Eighteen months ago, it bought $1.20. Now it is pushing $1.50, and there is no reason to think that it will stop there. Three of the world's biggest oil exporters, Iran, Venezuela and Russia, are demanding payment in euros rather than US dollars. Last week a Chinese central bank vice-director, Xu Jian, gave voice to the suspicion of many others, saying that the US dollar was "losing its status as the world currency."
If that happens, then America loses a great deal. Other countries have to maintain large reserves of foreign currencies — most of which they keep in US dollars — to cover their foreign debts, but the United States can pay its huge foreign debts in its own money. If necessary, it can just print more dollars. Having their own money as the world's reserve currency confers advantages that Americans would miss if they lost them.
The main reason for the collapse of the US dollar is President George W Bush's attempt to fight expensive foreign wars while cutting taxes at home. This involved deficit financing on a very large scale, and inevitably the value of the dollar began to fall — slowly at first, but with increasing speed as it became clear that the White House did not care. "Ronald Reagan proved that deficits don't matter," as Vice-President Dick Cheney told then-Treasury Secretary Paul O'Neill.
But they do matter to foreigners. As the US dollar fell in value, the price of oil (which is usually calculated in dollars) rose to compensate for it, but there was no comparable adjustment for foreign central banks that had huge amounts of US dollars in their reserves. China, which was sitting on about a trillion US dollars, simply lost several hundred billion as the currency's value fell. So various central banks started wondering if they should diversify their reserves, and some act