This is from the Inquirer. This is typical of Arroyo's tricks in avoiding damaging testimony before hearings. She is fortunate as the article notes that the Court ruled in her favor. Note the article is by a Jesuit priest. Many of the Roman Catholic clergy are critical of Arroyo.
A dangerously crippling decision
March 31, 2008 00:30:00
Fr. Joaquin G. Bernas, S.J.
Philippine Daily Inquirer
MANILA, Philippines - Without resorting to the language of Governor Salceda, indeed it can be said that the President is the luckiest woman. The Court could have decided that Romulo Neri should answer the three questions pregnant with cloudy foreboding: (a) Whether the President followed up the NBN project; (b) Whether the President directed him to prioritize the ZTE; (c) Whether the President said to go ahead and approve the project after being told about the alleged bribe.
But the Court placed all three questions under executive privilege, and nothing derogatory to the woman, if there was any, as many thought, could come out.
The interest of this piece, however, is not about derogatory imputations but about the scope of executive privilege. Executive privilege, as almost everyone knows by now, is the prerogative of the President to withhold certain types of information from Congress, from the courts and from the public. It is a constitutional right of the President which she alone can claim, but she might also direct the executive secretary to claim it.
Thus, Secretary Ermita, presumably by authority of the President, wrote to the Senate: “The context in which executive privilege is being invoked is that the information sought to be disclosed might impair our diplomatic as well as economic relations with the People’s Republic of China. Given the confidential nature in which these information were conveyed to the President, he [Neri] cannot provide the Committee any further details of these conversations, without disclosing the very thing the privilege is designed to protect.” Neri also added (also by authority of the President?) that his answers might endanger national security.
The type of executive privilege claimed here is “presidential communication privilege.” Presidential communication is presumptively privileged; but the presumption is subject to rebuttal. Thus, whoever challenges it must show good and valid reasons related to the public welfare.
What reason did the Senate have? Recall that this was in the course of a legislative investigation occasioned by, among others, pending bills about foreign loans. The topic of foreign loans is special. It is not the sole domain of the President. Under our Constitution foreign loans may be incurred by the President but only with the prior consent of the Monetary Board and in accordance with laws passed by Congress. Hence the Senate had very good reason for finding out how the ZTE-NBN loans were handled and how the very unique experience under it which had attracted national interest could contribute to legislation.
When the claim of privilege is disputed by Congress, how and by whom is the dispute to be resolved? US decisions, strewn all over Justice Leonardo-De Castro’s ponencia, say that it is the Court that decides whether the claim of privilege has foundation.
That was the reason why the Court called for the oral argument on the subject. The Court wanted to find out, without compelling Neri to reveal legitimate secrets, how Neri’s answer might affect diplomatic relations and national security. As Chief Justice Puno observed, “The Court cannot engage in guesswork in resolving this important issue.”
Neri was not at the oral argument to explain. When his lawyer was asked to explain, Neri’s lawyer was clueless. His answer, repeated like a mantra, was “I cannot fathom.”
One might also add that, if there was any possible cause for impairment of diplomatic relations with China, one such possible cause would have been the cancellation of the contract. But no diplomatic problem arose from the cancellation.
The Court could have asked for an in camera session for Neri to explain his claim within the hearing of the Court alone. Such a procedure, followed by American practice, could have enabled the Court to sift what was privileged and what was not and then to allow the revelation of what was not privileged. But the Court did not use the procedure, probably because it was already obvious from the oral argument that the claim of privilege could not be sustained. It was, to paraphrase Neri’s lawyer, unfathomable.
But, lo and behold, the ponencia ruled that the matter was covered by executive privilege. Was it fathomed by guesswork, as Puno suggested? That is the way it looks to me.
The implication of this ponencia that shows no effort to look into the underlying substance of the claimed privilege is that once the claim of “presidential communication privilege” is claimed, no evidence is needed to support it even if there are legitimate reasons calling for disclosure. This would revolutionize the doctrine on executive privilege in a manner that can affect all other investigations. This can, for instance, hamper effective use of the recently promulgated writ of amparo and writ of habeas data. It can also cripple efforts to battle official corruption, which is a world-recognized specialty of the Philippines.
But did the Neri decision establish this paralyzing and stifling doctrine? We need to count heads. Two of the nine Justices concurred merely in the result without bothering to explain their concurrence. One Justice chose not to argue from executive privilege. That leaves six of the nine. Six out of 15 do not establish a doctrine, especially since the six concurring opinions might just as well have been unwritten.
The case clearly calls for a reconsideration to give the Court a chance to clarify what doctrine of executive privilege it really wishes to establish. Does the Court want to sublimate guesswork?
Monday, March 31, 2008
Rev. Jeremiah Wright's Sermons
This is a more extensive analysis of Wright's sermons than one gets in the sound bytes characteristic of much mainstream media. However, some of his views about AIDS and HIV really seem to be conspiracy theorists dreams or nightmares. However, this article at least makes such views understable within the social context of Wright's sermons.
Chicago Tribune - March 28, 2008
Wright's sermons fueled by complex mix of culture, religion
By Manya A. Brachear Tribune reporter
On the Sunday in 2003 when Rev. Jeremiah Wright Jr. shouted "God damn
America" from the pulpit of Trinity United Church of Christ, he
defined damnation as God's way of holding humanity accountable for
its actions.
Rattling off a litany of injustices imposed on minorities throughout
the nation's history, Wright argued that God cannot be expected to
bless America as the anthem requests unless it changes for the
better. Until that day, he said, God will hold the nation accountable.
And that's when Wright uttered the three infamous words that have
rocked Sen. Barack Obama's presidential campaign.
Not long after a Democratic front-runner emerged from the pews of
Wright's church, the pastor's long-winded oratory found itself at
odds with the sound-bite culture that feeds the 24-hour news cycle
and YouTube. Thirty-second snippets of 30-minute sermons led pundits
to question how Obama could remain a member of Wright's flock.
Examining the full content of Wright's sermons and delivery style
yields a far more complex message, though it's one that some will
still find objectionable. For more than 30 years every Sunday, Wright
walked churchgoers along a winding road from rage to reconciliation,
employing a style that validated both. "He's voicing a reality that
those people experience six days a week," said Rev. Dwight Hopkins, a
professor at the University of Chicago Divinity School and Trinity
member. "In that sense, he's saying they're not insane. That helps
them to function the other six days of the week."
Appearances canceled
Wright preached his last sermon at his "unashamedly black,
unapologetically Christian" church in February but does not
officially retire until May 31. Wright had been scheduled this week
to speak publicly for the first time since debate over his remarks
erupted this month, but those stops in Florida and Texas were
canceled because of security concerns. Efforts to interview him for
this story were unsuccessful.
Obama has denounced Wright's most provocative remarks, but in a
speech on race last week he defended Wright as a person and refused
to disown him as his pastor.
Wright's preaching, which mixes theology with the often-troubled
history of race relations in America, is in the "prophetic"
tradition, one of many that have evolved in black pulpits.
Shocking words like "God damn America" lie at the core of prophetic
preaching, said Rev. Bernard Richardson, dean of the chapel at Howard
University. "The prophets in Scripture . . . their language wasn't
pleasing to hear, and sometimes we need to be reminded of that," he
said.
Some pastors and scholars criticize Wright for not moving beyond the
struggles of the civil rights era. Others say his messages are too
divisive and political. Some say he just goes too far.
Wright "goes beyond the bounds. That's why it's so hard to translate
and why excerpts don't do well," said Rev. Martin Marty, a retired
professor at the University of Chicago Divinity School. "In today's
world, where you can debate these things instead of blast away like
the prophets did, it's sort of an alien language for most people."
But while the rhetoric may come across as harsh, experts say its goal
is to convince bitter skeptics that reconciliation is indeed possible.
"The anger comes from compassion," Richardson said. "It can feel
hard. It can sound hard. It's cutting. It cuts to make you whole and
bruises to heal you."
Wright's sermons closely follow the prophetic formula. Taking a
biblical text, he analyzes the history and language, highlights the
personal pain likely shared by people in the pews, calls out similar
injustices in today's society and emphasizes that God always
provides. His delivery is often provocative, sometimes even raunchy.
But the most provocative passages often don't convey the entire point.
For example, on the Sunday after the terrorist attacks of Sept. 11,
2001, Wright preached for the first time in three decades on the
"brutally honest" last verses of Psalm 137, which he said "spotlight
the insanity of the cycle of violence."
The sound bite taken from the sermon is something Wright on that day
termed a "faith footnote," in which he used the phrase "chickens are
coming home to roost" to sum up what U.S. diplomat Edward Peck had
said in a TV interview. Malcolm X expressed the same sentiment after
the John F. Kennedy assassination. But critique of foreign policy was
not Wright's central topic.
In January, shortly after former President Bill Clinton referred to
Obama's campaign as a fairy tale, Wright told his flock: "Bill did
us, just like he did Monica Lewinsky. He was riding dirty."
Beyond that racy dig, however, the sermon seeks to admonish members
who may vote for Hillary Clinton because they think a black candidate
can't win. Wright likened their doubt to the doubt of Jesus'
disciples who did not believe he could feed a crowd with five loaves
and two fishes.Wright's recent comment that Hillary Clinton would
never know what it feels like to be called the N-word also touched
nerves. But Wright had his reasons for using that term, said Rev.
Frederick Haynes III, a Wright protege.
'From a different time'
"People need to understand how profoundly painful that word is," he
said. "It speaks to an experience. He came from a different time.
Because of the time he came from, he's not going to just flippantly
go along to get along in terms of how that word has hurt him in the
past."
Wright's fans describe his wrath as a "righteous anger." But critics
say it can cloud the Gospel message he is trying to preach. Rev.
Winfred Neely, associate professor of pastoral studies at Moody Bible
Institute, said that while churches should offer social critique,
Wright's presentation is too ethnocentric.
"I don't think some of the critiques were offered in love for
people," Neely said. "I think they were born of his own personal
anger . . . and not necessarily a critique coming out of a
heartbroken pain over the fact that God is being dishonored by what
is going on in society and culture."
Marty said he thinks Wright crosses a line when he equates American
power with white power. He also believes that both Wright's praise of
Nation of Islam leader Louis Farrakhan and Wright's stated belief
that HIV and AIDS were created to destroy the black community damage
his credibility.
But Wallace Best, professor of religion and African-American studies
at Princeton University, said that conspiracy theory is largely a
product of Wright's generation, which recalls experiments in which
black men with syphilis went untreated in the name of science.
"If put in context of the tragic history of what it means to be black
in this country, to think that a government would inflict a virus on
black people is not as far-reaching an idea as we've been led to
believe," Best said.
As for Wright's friendship with Farrakhan, Richardson said that might
be a fair litmus test for a politician seeking popular support but
not for a pastor.
Best, who teaches a course on preaching in America, questions the
sudden disdain for Wright's sermons, which are part of a tradition
around for two centuries.
"It's not like people should be surprised that they peer into a
church on the South Side of Chicago and the minister there who has
the obligation to uplift his people would be speaking in such a way,"
he said.
Last week, Best assigned his students a 1852 speech by Frederick
Douglass on the meaning of July 4 for African-Americans.
"I had my students read that and imagine that Jeremiah Wright could
be saying the same things," Best said. " 'There is not a nation on
earth guilty of practices more shocking and bloody than are the
people in the United States.' Put that on YouTube and spin it around."
___________________________________
Chicago Tribune - March 28, 2008
Wright's sermons fueled by complex mix of culture, religion
By Manya A. Brachear Tribune reporter
On the Sunday in 2003 when Rev. Jeremiah Wright Jr. shouted "God damn
America" from the pulpit of Trinity United Church of Christ, he
defined damnation as God's way of holding humanity accountable for
its actions.
Rattling off a litany of injustices imposed on minorities throughout
the nation's history, Wright argued that God cannot be expected to
bless America as the anthem requests unless it changes for the
better. Until that day, he said, God will hold the nation accountable.
And that's when Wright uttered the three infamous words that have
rocked Sen. Barack Obama's presidential campaign.
Not long after a Democratic front-runner emerged from the pews of
Wright's church, the pastor's long-winded oratory found itself at
odds with the sound-bite culture that feeds the 24-hour news cycle
and YouTube. Thirty-second snippets of 30-minute sermons led pundits
to question how Obama could remain a member of Wright's flock.
Examining the full content of Wright's sermons and delivery style
yields a far more complex message, though it's one that some will
still find objectionable. For more than 30 years every Sunday, Wright
walked churchgoers along a winding road from rage to reconciliation,
employing a style that validated both. "He's voicing a reality that
those people experience six days a week," said Rev. Dwight Hopkins, a
professor at the University of Chicago Divinity School and Trinity
member. "In that sense, he's saying they're not insane. That helps
them to function the other six days of the week."
Appearances canceled
Wright preached his last sermon at his "unashamedly black,
unapologetically Christian" church in February but does not
officially retire until May 31. Wright had been scheduled this week
to speak publicly for the first time since debate over his remarks
erupted this month, but those stops in Florida and Texas were
canceled because of security concerns. Efforts to interview him for
this story were unsuccessful.
Obama has denounced Wright's most provocative remarks, but in a
speech on race last week he defended Wright as a person and refused
to disown him as his pastor.
Wright's preaching, which mixes theology with the often-troubled
history of race relations in America, is in the "prophetic"
tradition, one of many that have evolved in black pulpits.
Shocking words like "God damn America" lie at the core of prophetic
preaching, said Rev. Bernard Richardson, dean of the chapel at Howard
University. "The prophets in Scripture . . . their language wasn't
pleasing to hear, and sometimes we need to be reminded of that," he
said.
Some pastors and scholars criticize Wright for not moving beyond the
struggles of the civil rights era. Others say his messages are too
divisive and political. Some say he just goes too far.
Wright "goes beyond the bounds. That's why it's so hard to translate
and why excerpts don't do well," said Rev. Martin Marty, a retired
professor at the University of Chicago Divinity School. "In today's
world, where you can debate these things instead of blast away like
the prophets did, it's sort of an alien language for most people."
But while the rhetoric may come across as harsh, experts say its goal
is to convince bitter skeptics that reconciliation is indeed possible.
"The anger comes from compassion," Richardson said. "It can feel
hard. It can sound hard. It's cutting. It cuts to make you whole and
bruises to heal you."
Wright's sermons closely follow the prophetic formula. Taking a
biblical text, he analyzes the history and language, highlights the
personal pain likely shared by people in the pews, calls out similar
injustices in today's society and emphasizes that God always
provides. His delivery is often provocative, sometimes even raunchy.
But the most provocative passages often don't convey the entire point.
For example, on the Sunday after the terrorist attacks of Sept. 11,
2001, Wright preached for the first time in three decades on the
"brutally honest" last verses of Psalm 137, which he said "spotlight
the insanity of the cycle of violence."
The sound bite taken from the sermon is something Wright on that day
termed a "faith footnote," in which he used the phrase "chickens are
coming home to roost" to sum up what U.S. diplomat Edward Peck had
said in a TV interview. Malcolm X expressed the same sentiment after
the John F. Kennedy assassination. But critique of foreign policy was
not Wright's central topic.
In January, shortly after former President Bill Clinton referred to
Obama's campaign as a fairy tale, Wright told his flock: "Bill did
us, just like he did Monica Lewinsky. He was riding dirty."
Beyond that racy dig, however, the sermon seeks to admonish members
who may vote for Hillary Clinton because they think a black candidate
can't win. Wright likened their doubt to the doubt of Jesus'
disciples who did not believe he could feed a crowd with five loaves
and two fishes.Wright's recent comment that Hillary Clinton would
never know what it feels like to be called the N-word also touched
nerves. But Wright had his reasons for using that term, said Rev.
Frederick Haynes III, a Wright protege.
'From a different time'
"People need to understand how profoundly painful that word is," he
said. "It speaks to an experience. He came from a different time.
Because of the time he came from, he's not going to just flippantly
go along to get along in terms of how that word has hurt him in the
past."
Wright's fans describe his wrath as a "righteous anger." But critics
say it can cloud the Gospel message he is trying to preach. Rev.
Winfred Neely, associate professor of pastoral studies at Moody Bible
Institute, said that while churches should offer social critique,
Wright's presentation is too ethnocentric.
"I don't think some of the critiques were offered in love for
people," Neely said. "I think they were born of his own personal
anger . . . and not necessarily a critique coming out of a
heartbroken pain over the fact that God is being dishonored by what
is going on in society and culture."
Marty said he thinks Wright crosses a line when he equates American
power with white power. He also believes that both Wright's praise of
Nation of Islam leader Louis Farrakhan and Wright's stated belief
that HIV and AIDS were created to destroy the black community damage
his credibility.
But Wallace Best, professor of religion and African-American studies
at Princeton University, said that conspiracy theory is largely a
product of Wright's generation, which recalls experiments in which
black men with syphilis went untreated in the name of science.
"If put in context of the tragic history of what it means to be black
in this country, to think that a government would inflict a virus on
black people is not as far-reaching an idea as we've been led to
believe," Best said.
As for Wright's friendship with Farrakhan, Richardson said that might
be a fair litmus test for a politician seeking popular support but
not for a pastor.
Best, who teaches a course on preaching in America, questions the
sudden disdain for Wright's sermons, which are part of a tradition
around for two centuries.
"It's not like people should be surprised that they peer into a
church on the South Side of Chicago and the minister there who has
the obligation to uplift his people would be speaking in such a way,"
he said.
Last week, Best assigned his students a 1852 speech by Frederick
Douglass on the meaning of July 4 for African-Americans.
"I had my students read that and imagine that Jeremiah Wright could
be saying the same things," Best said. " 'There is not a nation on
earth guilty of practices more shocking and bloody than are the
people in the United States.' Put that on YouTube and spin it around."
___________________________________
Philippines to upgrade facilities at disputed Spratlys chain
Vietnam, China, and the Philippines have some joint exploration agreement. I wonder where this leaves Malaysia and Brunei. Does China hold that Taiwan's claim is actually a claim of its own!! This is from ABC (Australian Broadcasting)
Philippines to upgrade facilities at disputed Spratlys
Air force chief, Lieutenant General Pedrito Cadungog says the airstrip at Kalayaan island will be lengthened and repaired to ensure air force transport aircrafts can continue to land there.
General Cadungog says the improvements which includes an upgrade of troops quarters should not be seen as a military buildup.
The Spratlys believed to be rich in oil and gas deposits -- are claimed in full or in part by Brunei, China, Malaysia, the Philippines, Taiwan and Vietnam.
All but Brunei have troops posted on some of the islands.
Philippines to upgrade facilities at disputed Spratlys
Air force chief, Lieutenant General Pedrito Cadungog says the airstrip at Kalayaan island will be lengthened and repaired to ensure air force transport aircrafts can continue to land there.
General Cadungog says the improvements which includes an upgrade of troops quarters should not be seen as a military buildup.
The Spratlys believed to be rich in oil and gas deposits -- are claimed in full or in part by Brunei, China, Malaysia, the Philippines, Taiwan and Vietnam.
All but Brunei have troops posted on some of the islands.
Americans in Green Zone under siege.
This is from Salon via Der Spiegel. The Americans have already been dragged into the fighting via way of air attacks. No one seems to even mention that the use of air attacks in an urban area is bound to cause many civilian casualties as well as turn many Iraqis against the occupiers. Those who lose family members are likely to join the insurgency.
http://www.salon.com/news/feature/2008/03/28/green_zone/print.html
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Americans in Green Zone under siege
Fighting between militants and the Iraqi government has threatened what was once the best-secured district in Baghdad.
By Dieter Bednarz
Mar. 28, 2008 | Sarah is not the type of woman who loses her cool very easily. As an employee of the U.S. State Department, she has seen too much for that. Her superiors in Washington have repeatedly sent her to the world's hot spots. Now Sarah works as a "special agent" in the personal protection unit of the U.S. Embassy in Baghdad, where she is responsible for the security of high-ranking guests.
Since Tuesday, it has been Sarah's job to look after German politician Elke Hoff. And, since Wednesday afternoon, Sarah has occasionally had to address her charge -- "Sorry about that, ma'am!" -- more forcefully than usual: "Hurry up! We have to duck and cover."
Sarah already has helmets and bulletproof vests at the ready when she and her security team urge a small delegation of members of the German parliament, the Bundestag, to board an armored personnel carrier. The sound of incoming rockets and grenades isn't long in coming.
The security team doesn't tell the German delegation where exactly the missiles have landed. Having to admit that attacks are taking place in the Green Zone, the best-secured district in the Iraqi capital, is already embarrassing enough. And because the attacks continue into the afternoon, long-scheduled meetings between parliamentarian Hoff, a member of the liberal Free Democratic Party, and high-ranking Iraqi politicians, including former Prime Minister Ibrahim al-Jaafari, have to be canceled "for security reasons."
The attacks on the "I.Z.," or "International Zone," as the U.S. military has dubbed the former Karkh neighborhood, represent one of the biggest challenges to the American forces in Iraq to date. The enclave covers fewer than seven square kilometers (2.7 square miles) and houses the headquarters of the U.S. armed forces and their allies. Until the beginning of the week, the enclave was considered the safest place in a country plagued by violence and terror.
Former Iraqi dictator Saddam Hussein chose the area, which is strategically located along a bend in the Tigris River, as the site for his palaces. The hangers-on of the regime lived there, and only the despot's most loyal henchmen were allowed in.
The country is still ruled from this neighborhood today, and access hasn't become much easier. Tens of thousands of soldiers and diplomats live and work behind roof-high concrete walls. An estimated 4,000 people, most of them soldiers and security personnel, live on the grounds of the U.S. Embassy in a former Saddam palace.
The huge area is like a "Little America" in the midst of this hostile country. Even though the number of attacks has declined by about half compared with what it was like during the height of insurgent activity three years ago, Western news agencies still counted 455 attacks throughout Iraq last week. Foreigners -- and especially Americans -- can only feel safe in their I.Z.
The unrest in the Green Zone continued Thursday. Reuters reported that a giant column of black smoke could be seen near the U.S. Embassy after what was believed to be a mortar strike on a former palace of Saddam that is being used as a headquarters for American civilian and military personnel. However, an embassy spokeswoman said there had been no serious injuries or deaths as a result of the attack. Four people, including two U.S. civilians, were wounded by mortar attacks in the Green Zone Wednesday.
The special zone also has room for some privileged Iraqis. The Green Zone is home to Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki, who has his office there, and to the most important ministries. The Iraqi parliament has taken up temporary quarters here, in a former conference center Saddam had built in the early 1980s. It is also home to influential Iraqis such as Sunni member of parliament Mithal al-Alusi. Al-Alusi is one of the most popular politicians in postwar Iraq and hence one of the people the Hoff delegation had arranged to meet.
Al-Alusi has gotten used to the fact that his life is in danger. It used to be threatened by Saddam and his intelligence services, and today it is threatened by insurgents such as the militia headed by Shiite cleric Muqtada al-Sadr. Al-Alusi also blames the Badr Brigades for the rocket and mortar attacks of the past few days. The attacks, says an outraged al-Alusi, are a "targeted provocation."
Al-Alusi is also one of the few to hazard an explanation: America's two highest-ranking representatives in Iraq -- Gen. David Petraeus, the top commander in Iraq, and ambassador Ryan Crocker -- are scheduled to deliver their reports on the situation in Iraq in one week. According to al-Alusi, the security analyses destined for Washington will not conclude that "the Americans have the situation under control," at least not if "Sadr and his backers in Iran have their way."
No one doubts that the fanatical cleric hates the Americans more than anyone and wants to drive them out of the country as quickly as possible. It is also considered likely that Sadr is in league with his fellow Shiites in Tehran. According to Western security experts, the most recent proof of al-Sadr's Tehran connection is the fact that the projectiles landing in and around the Green Zone are Iranian made.
The attacks on the high-security zone are also intended to strike the Iraqi government of Prime Minister al-Maliki, a Shiite. Some political observers in Baghdad are even convinced that the mortars and rockets are aimed more at the prime minister than at the Americans. The secular al-Maliki declared war on religious fanatic al-Sadr a few days ago.
Since last weekend, government troops have started energetically pursuing "terrorists, bandits and a few foreign elements," as government spokesman Ali al-Dabbagh cautiously puts it. Al-Dabbagh, an experienced diplomat, falls short of saying that the true target of the government's attack is al-Sadr's militia, which has apparently developed its bastion in the south and has received reinforcements in the form of Iranian fighters.
Nevertheless, al-Dabbagh is quick to emphasize the successes of the Iraqi government troops. In the capital there are increasing reports that the government's enemies are retreating across the border into another country. No one mentions that the country in question is Iran, probably out of consideration for Baghdad's new partnership with the regime in Tehran.
Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad's visit to Baghdad early this month was still a "historic event" for the Iraqi government, especially in light of the fact that former dictator Saddam plunged both countries into an eight-year war that claimed millions of lives. Now, though, Baghdad and Tehran are planning economic cooperation programs worth billions of dollars -- much to the chagrin of George W. Bush.
Washington also appears to be doomed to impotence when it comes to the attacks on its only true stronghold in Iraq. The attacks are said to come from the city's eastern part, which is controlled by al-Sadr and his militia. The insurgents apparently launch their rockets and mortars from movable ramps and then immediately disappear into the densely populated neighborhoods.
Officials on the grounds of the U.S. Embassy say that the insurgents are trying to draw the Americans into a trap that would force them to launch "aerial attacks with many dead and wounded." Besides, the Americans can hardly afford grueling house-to-house combat in the al-Sadr-controlled neighborhood, especially after the U.S. armed forces reported this week their 4,000th death in Iraq.
As a result, the Americans have limited themselves to ducking, at least for the time being, even in front of political visitors like German parliamentarian Hoff, to whom it had hoped to present a picture of progress in Iraq.
On Tuesday evening, the "esteemed guest" from Berlin, whose safety the U.S. Embassy had assumed responsibility for, was moved to new quarters -- from the Al-Rashid Hotel on the edge of the security zone, where government guests stayed in the days of Saddam, to the U.S. Embassy. The small German delegation will be flown out Thursday -- ahead of schedule.
Translated from the German by Christopher Sultan.
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
This article has been provided by Der Spiegel through a special arrangement with Salon. For more from Europe's most-read newsmagazine, visit Spiegel Online or subscribe to the daily newsletter.
-- By Dieter Bednarz
pages without written permission is strictly prohibited. SALON® is registered in the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office as a trademark of Salon Media Group Inc.
http://www.salon.com/news/feature/2008/03/28/green_zone/print.html
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Americans in Green Zone under siege
Fighting between militants and the Iraqi government has threatened what was once the best-secured district in Baghdad.
By Dieter Bednarz
Mar. 28, 2008 | Sarah is not the type of woman who loses her cool very easily. As an employee of the U.S. State Department, she has seen too much for that. Her superiors in Washington have repeatedly sent her to the world's hot spots. Now Sarah works as a "special agent" in the personal protection unit of the U.S. Embassy in Baghdad, where she is responsible for the security of high-ranking guests.
Since Tuesday, it has been Sarah's job to look after German politician Elke Hoff. And, since Wednesday afternoon, Sarah has occasionally had to address her charge -- "Sorry about that, ma'am!" -- more forcefully than usual: "Hurry up! We have to duck and cover."
Sarah already has helmets and bulletproof vests at the ready when she and her security team urge a small delegation of members of the German parliament, the Bundestag, to board an armored personnel carrier. The sound of incoming rockets and grenades isn't long in coming.
The security team doesn't tell the German delegation where exactly the missiles have landed. Having to admit that attacks are taking place in the Green Zone, the best-secured district in the Iraqi capital, is already embarrassing enough. And because the attacks continue into the afternoon, long-scheduled meetings between parliamentarian Hoff, a member of the liberal Free Democratic Party, and high-ranking Iraqi politicians, including former Prime Minister Ibrahim al-Jaafari, have to be canceled "for security reasons."
The attacks on the "I.Z.," or "International Zone," as the U.S. military has dubbed the former Karkh neighborhood, represent one of the biggest challenges to the American forces in Iraq to date. The enclave covers fewer than seven square kilometers (2.7 square miles) and houses the headquarters of the U.S. armed forces and their allies. Until the beginning of the week, the enclave was considered the safest place in a country plagued by violence and terror.
Former Iraqi dictator Saddam Hussein chose the area, which is strategically located along a bend in the Tigris River, as the site for his palaces. The hangers-on of the regime lived there, and only the despot's most loyal henchmen were allowed in.
The country is still ruled from this neighborhood today, and access hasn't become much easier. Tens of thousands of soldiers and diplomats live and work behind roof-high concrete walls. An estimated 4,000 people, most of them soldiers and security personnel, live on the grounds of the U.S. Embassy in a former Saddam palace.
The huge area is like a "Little America" in the midst of this hostile country. Even though the number of attacks has declined by about half compared with what it was like during the height of insurgent activity three years ago, Western news agencies still counted 455 attacks throughout Iraq last week. Foreigners -- and especially Americans -- can only feel safe in their I.Z.
The unrest in the Green Zone continued Thursday. Reuters reported that a giant column of black smoke could be seen near the U.S. Embassy after what was believed to be a mortar strike on a former palace of Saddam that is being used as a headquarters for American civilian and military personnel. However, an embassy spokeswoman said there had been no serious injuries or deaths as a result of the attack. Four people, including two U.S. civilians, were wounded by mortar attacks in the Green Zone Wednesday.
The special zone also has room for some privileged Iraqis. The Green Zone is home to Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki, who has his office there, and to the most important ministries. The Iraqi parliament has taken up temporary quarters here, in a former conference center Saddam had built in the early 1980s. It is also home to influential Iraqis such as Sunni member of parliament Mithal al-Alusi. Al-Alusi is one of the most popular politicians in postwar Iraq and hence one of the people the Hoff delegation had arranged to meet.
Al-Alusi has gotten used to the fact that his life is in danger. It used to be threatened by Saddam and his intelligence services, and today it is threatened by insurgents such as the militia headed by Shiite cleric Muqtada al-Sadr. Al-Alusi also blames the Badr Brigades for the rocket and mortar attacks of the past few days. The attacks, says an outraged al-Alusi, are a "targeted provocation."
Al-Alusi is also one of the few to hazard an explanation: America's two highest-ranking representatives in Iraq -- Gen. David Petraeus, the top commander in Iraq, and ambassador Ryan Crocker -- are scheduled to deliver their reports on the situation in Iraq in one week. According to al-Alusi, the security analyses destined for Washington will not conclude that "the Americans have the situation under control," at least not if "Sadr and his backers in Iran have their way."
No one doubts that the fanatical cleric hates the Americans more than anyone and wants to drive them out of the country as quickly as possible. It is also considered likely that Sadr is in league with his fellow Shiites in Tehran. According to Western security experts, the most recent proof of al-Sadr's Tehran connection is the fact that the projectiles landing in and around the Green Zone are Iranian made.
The attacks on the high-security zone are also intended to strike the Iraqi government of Prime Minister al-Maliki, a Shiite. Some political observers in Baghdad are even convinced that the mortars and rockets are aimed more at the prime minister than at the Americans. The secular al-Maliki declared war on religious fanatic al-Sadr a few days ago.
Since last weekend, government troops have started energetically pursuing "terrorists, bandits and a few foreign elements," as government spokesman Ali al-Dabbagh cautiously puts it. Al-Dabbagh, an experienced diplomat, falls short of saying that the true target of the government's attack is al-Sadr's militia, which has apparently developed its bastion in the south and has received reinforcements in the form of Iranian fighters.
Nevertheless, al-Dabbagh is quick to emphasize the successes of the Iraqi government troops. In the capital there are increasing reports that the government's enemies are retreating across the border into another country. No one mentions that the country in question is Iran, probably out of consideration for Baghdad's new partnership with the regime in Tehran.
Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad's visit to Baghdad early this month was still a "historic event" for the Iraqi government, especially in light of the fact that former dictator Saddam plunged both countries into an eight-year war that claimed millions of lives. Now, though, Baghdad and Tehran are planning economic cooperation programs worth billions of dollars -- much to the chagrin of George W. Bush.
Washington also appears to be doomed to impotence when it comes to the attacks on its only true stronghold in Iraq. The attacks are said to come from the city's eastern part, which is controlled by al-Sadr and his militia. The insurgents apparently launch their rockets and mortars from movable ramps and then immediately disappear into the densely populated neighborhoods.
Officials on the grounds of the U.S. Embassy say that the insurgents are trying to draw the Americans into a trap that would force them to launch "aerial attacks with many dead and wounded." Besides, the Americans can hardly afford grueling house-to-house combat in the al-Sadr-controlled neighborhood, especially after the U.S. armed forces reported this week their 4,000th death in Iraq.
As a result, the Americans have limited themselves to ducking, at least for the time being, even in front of political visitors like German parliamentarian Hoff, to whom it had hoped to present a picture of progress in Iraq.
On Tuesday evening, the "esteemed guest" from Berlin, whose safety the U.S. Embassy had assumed responsibility for, was moved to new quarters -- from the Al-Rashid Hotel on the edge of the security zone, where government guests stayed in the days of Saddam, to the U.S. Embassy. The small German delegation will be flown out Thursday -- ahead of schedule.
Translated from the German by Christopher Sultan.
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
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Sunday, March 30, 2008
China and the World Market
This gives a short summary of the Communist Revolution in China and then discusses the policy and economic changes since 1978 when the first market reforms were started that gradually led to the resotration of capitalism.
The B u l l e t
Socialist Project • E-Bulletin No. 94
March 30, 2008
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
China and the World Market:
Thirty Years of the ‘Reform’ Policy
Gregory Albo
It is now thirty years since the People’s Republic of China announced its market reform policy at the Third Plenum of the 11th Central Committee of the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) in December 1978, under the then new leadership of Deng Xiaoping. The policy followed the death of Mao Zedong in 1976 and the purging of ‘leftists’ in the Party and the state, symbolically represented by the trial of the ‘Gang of Four.’ The policy was the declaration of the end of ‘Maoism’ as the economic and political framework for the Chinese revolution, although Maoism has continued to endure as a source of ideological legitimacy for the CCP.
At the Third Plenum, the Central Committee declared an end to class struggle of a “mass” kind and a focus of “Party work on socialist modernization.” This was to be accomplished by combining “adjustment by the market” with “adjustment by the plan.” It meant introducing market reforms and disciplines into collectivist agriculture in the countryside and state-owned enterprises (SOEs) in the cities. It was tied to the ‘open-door’ policy of 1979 to increase flows of foreign trade and finance, the development of special economic zones for unfettered capitalist factories utilizing cheap, and most often female and migrant, labour close to Hong Kong and Taiwan in Guangdong and Fujian provinces, and the formalizing of diplomatic relations with the USA. The opening of the collectivist economy to market forces inside China and integration into the world market was to be via the guidance of the CCP and without political democratization. China’s market-opening policies of 1978, in this wider sense, remain the guiding policy for China and the CCP. The Deng leadership would term this policy ‘socialism with Chinese characteristics.’ It would actually mark the transition to capitalism in China.
The Chinese Revolution
The Chinese Revolution of 1949 was led by the CCP, under the leadership of Mao, and emerged out of a confluence of war, internal political collapse, and peasant rebellion. Not the least of these was the subordination of China in the world market, and more than a century of humiliation by colonial domination, the division of China by the imperialist powers, and ineffective opposition by despotic emperors and the dictatorship of Chiang Kai-Shek. The revolutionary government inherited a deeply backward feudal economy, with only enclaves of capitalist markets largely dominated by foreign capital, and a bureaucratic state directed at extracting as much of the economic surplus out of the peasantry as possible.
The core of the Chinese development strategy was similar to the Soviet economies: the means of production nationalized as state property; central command planning; building up of heavy industry; protective security without political rights for workers and peasants; suppression of the consumption levels of workers and peasants to maximise the potential economic surplus; and conversion of the surplus into high rates of investment in infrastructure and industry. With its enormous peasant population, agricultural collectivization and a village commune system also became a central component of Chinese development.
As with other revolutionary regimes, the imperialist powers broke trade linkages and isolated China from the world market. Great political campaigns and social upheavals over how to drag China out of its isolation and backwardness, configured as a debate between ‘leftists’ and ‘capitalist roaders’, ensued. The first decade of the revolution brought land reforms, nationalization of foreign capital, collectivization and the first five year plan. The ‘Great Leap Forward’ of 1958-60 attempted to use mass political mobilization to advance self-reliant productive capacity via the expansion of the village commune system. The ‘new economic policy’ and the ‘Four Modernizations’ that followed increased the space for market activity, and adopted a technocratic model of central administration with a focus on science and technology. This strategy was disrupted by Mao’s last political campaign, the ‘Cultural Revolution’ from 1966-69, to deepen collectivism and root out bureaucratic conservatism, before slowly emerging again in the 1970s in the internal CCP political struggles that preceded Mao’s death.
It is hard to dispute the accomplishments of the first decades of the revolution for Chinese modernization. From the 1950s to the mid-1970s, average industrial output grew by about 11 percent a year and built productive capacity across virtually all sectors. Mass famines (except for the period of the Great Leap Forward) and pestilence were wiped out; medical services for the masses meant infant mortality rates and life expectancy advanced ahead of all other low income countries; mass education was provided for all, with many peasants even gaining access to university education; efforts at ‘equalising’ social relations in all spheres were undertaken; and the ‘iron rice bowl’ provided social security for all Chinese people. Two areas, however, lagged in performance: food production consistently grew but only doubled its output in this period and just matched population growth, barely raising peasants’ money incomes; and consumer goods production grew at only half the pace of heavy industry.
Market Policies Since 1978
The political failings of the Cultural Revolution provided the space for the return of the ‘Four Modernizations’ policy in the 1970s and eventually the market-opening policies of 1978 noted above. These policies, in turn, generated additional market building policies. In the initial period of 1978-83, the SOEs were given greater enterprise autonomy, including over employment terms for workers, sales of goods once planning targets were met, and control over the re-investment of earnings. Small enterprises were allowed, with limits on the number of employees abolished in 1987; they grew from a few hundred to over 4 million by the mid-1980s. Collective enterprises were also greatly expanded. In 1980, the de-collectivization of agriculture began with almost all peasants becoming dependent on the market for sale of their produce under the household responsibility system. The Maoist commune structures were replaced in 1982 by the Township and Village Enterprises (TVEs). By the early 1990s, these locally-based market enterprises numbered 25 million and employed 125 million workers.
The Third Plenum of the 12th Congress of the CCP in 1984 endorsed the notion of a “planned commodity economy.” SOEs were to finance more of their own operations and subjected to profitability criterion; TVEs were given increased autonomy to respond to market forces. A process of price reforms was started to move away from state-set prices to market pricing. Reforms were also begun to universalize the commodification of labour in the state sector that was already occurring in the private sector and in the special economic zones. Enterprise rights to set contracts were expanded, and new workers hired would not be subject to social protections such as healthcare, pensions, and job security. In 1987, the CCP announced a policy to develop an “export-oriented economy.” This further expanded the special zones to encompass almost all the coastal area, formalised that foreign investors would no longer be required to seek out joint ventures, and promoted even more tax and regulatory breaks for foreign capital. In the decade from 1978 to 1988, foreign trade quadrupled as foreign capital poured in and Chinese export capacity increased.
The 14th Congress of the CCP in 1992 committed to a “socialist market economy.” The slogan represented a final push by the Deng leadership to consolidate the development of capitalism in China. The mass privatization of SOEs took numerous forms, including the sale of shares on the newly opened stock exchange in Shanghai. Former managers, party cadres, and connected CCP family members turned themselves into capitalist entrepreneurs by seizing SOE assets, more often than not by various means of corruption. This was also the case for the TVEs in the countryside. From providing about half of manufacturing employment in 1978, SOEs had only 15 percent in 2001. The 1994 labour law reforms for SOEs generalized the contractual status of wage-labour and further ‘smashed the iron rice bowl.’
The 16th Party Congress in 2002 adopted the strategy of the “Three Represents,” which included representing the most advanced productive forces. Capitalists were thus welcomed to join the CCP; a policy to attach party committees to private companies logically followed.
The Imbalances of Chinese Capitalism
The thirty years of market reforms have brought immense changes to China’s place in the world market. The reforms evolved through a cycle of extraordinary booms followed by slowdowns to contain inflationary pressures. Severe imbalances remain characteristic of China’s capitalist model of development.
Since abandoning the collectivist policies of the Maoist period, China has pursued high growth at all costs, with Deng and his successors ridiculing any efforts to lower the growth rate to meet social or ecological needs. This has sustained Chinese growth rates at over 10 percent per year since 1978. China will soon be the second largest economy in the world, and is steadily closing the gap with the USA. On a per capita GDP basis, however, China remains a poor country at about $2800 (U.S.).
The growth of trade and exports has been an important component driving economic growth. The share of exports in China’s GDP in 1978 was under 5 percent. It had grown to about 25 percent when China entered the World Trade Organization in 2001, and now stands at about 35 percent. China will soon be the word’s largest trading nation. This growth is becoming somewhat less dependent upon exports to the U.S. as trade to the rest of Asia in particular grows, and China’s internal investment and home market increases in size.
However, export-led growth remains critical with the current account monthly surplus is estimated to be running about $25 billion and 12 percent of GDP for 2008. As a result of this long period of trade surpluses, China is now holding about $1.5 trillion in foreign exchange reserves, largely in U.S. dollars. The forex holdings partly arise from the effort to keep the renminbi at highly competitive exchange rates to sustain export-led growth. On the one hand, this adds to inflationary pressures particularly evident in the run-up in stock and real estate values. The large holdings of U.S. dollar-based assets by the Chinese central bank are also subject to losses from both low returns and the slide in the value of the U.S. dollar. On the other hand, the foreign reserves provide a platform for the internationalization of Chinese capital. Chinese private capital and state agencies, for example, have taken equity positions in Barclay’s, Citibank, Bear Stearns, and others. And Chinese capital is actively engaged in an acquisitions surge around the world.
From the outset, foreign capital exploiting Chinese labour has been integral to the growth in trade and the market reforms. China is the largest recipient of foreign direct investment in the world, with estimates of half of Chinese trade occurring in foreign enterprises in 2001, and accounting for just under 10 percent of gross capital formation since 1978. The export sector has been crucial to multiplying the supply and commercial commodity chains into new industrial regions extending beyond the huge coastal cities.
The external imbalances speak directly to the internal imbalances of China’s capitalist growth processes. This has been growing through time as consumption and incomes in China have been growing more slowly than rates of growth in investment and exports. While many Chinese have moved out of poverty and found work in formal employment, the conditions for the estimated 350 million Chinese waged workers remain difficult. Most estimates put the average manufacturing wage at well under $1 per hour, and an average workday of 11 hours (and 6 to 7 days a week). In the special economic zones, conditions are often worse. Irregular employment now claims more than one-third of urban work, and official open unemployment is now at about 10 percent. Surplus value is being extracted from Chinese workers, especially female and migrant workers, at exceedingly high rates of exploitation.
In rural areas, de-collectivization initially raised incomes from increased land utilization and government price supports. Some peasants have continued to prosper. But most have remained impoverished as low prices, soil depletion, and tiny plots have left incomes stagnant for more than two decades. In many areas, privatization has also ended access to health services and even education for many peasant households. Of the one in four Chinese estimated to still be living on $1 U.S. per day, most are in the countryside. This is fuelling perhaps the greatest migration in world history, particularly of women, into the cities. In Beijing, for example, 4 million of the 20 million in the greater urban area are said to be migrant workers, many lacking protections at work and access to social services.
The reckless pursuit of high growth has also caused huge ecological imbalances. Enormous damage has been done to China’s magnificent river system from dumping by factories. The drive for foreign capital all costs has turned some of the coastal areas into a dumpsite for the world’s toxic wastes. With the massive growth in energy demand and reliance on fossil fuels and coal, China is now the world’s largest emitter of greenhouse gases. Air quality is also suffering, with many thousands dieing prematurely as a result. China’s environmental laws are formally no different from some of the best world standards. But the pressures of market driven growth and official corruption has left them not enforced.
Chinese Socialism Renewed?
China is now securely integrated into the circuits of capital as one of the dominant poles of world accumulation. The CCP, with its some 74 million members, has remained in control of this process, neither repudiating the revolution nor socialism as the basis for its ideological legitimacy. As with Deng’s initial turn to ‘market socialism’ in 1978, the recent policy for a ‘harmonious society’ of the current Hu Jintao and Wen Jiabao leadership, as stated at the National People’s Congress in 2005 and during the 17th CCP Congress in October 2007, was put forward within these terms. This is the contradiction at the centre of the evolution of the market reform policy: the CCP set in motion, directly and indirectly, the social forces and market imperatives leading to the development of capitalism in China in the name of building socialism.
The legitimation of market liberalisation in terms of socialist and Maoist thought has, paradoxically, served as a means ‘de-ideologize’ the process and ‘depoliticize’ Chinese society. Although authoritarian measures to put-down with force democratic uprisings have been regularly deployed, such as against the Democracy Movement of the late 1970s and at Tiananmen Square in 1989, or against worker and peasant demonstrations, the party-state has been most effective in maintaining its ideological legitimacy as defender of the revolution and the nation.
The space for political struggle that might create an alternate trajectory for Chinese development has thus been powerfully contained. A measure of civil activism and liberalisation, partly pushed by the new urban middle class for increased accountability and participation, and partly by peasants and villagers fighting for their rights, has been channelled through the party and state apparatuses. This has been the case, for example, with many ecological and anti-corruption campaigns. The some seventy to eighty thousand incidents of protests, illegal strikes and civil unrest reported to be occurring annually across China now, however, speak to deeper conflicts that the existing state and development model have not been able to absorb. These include the large numbers of protests by peasants fighting for their land tenure rights and workers, particularly female and migrant workers, struggling for their organizational rights and against exploitation in the capitalist factories and construction sites of the coastal cities.
The civil unrest has had difficulty moving from spontaneous resistances to organized anti-capitalist protest. Some support for these protests may be found in the ‘old left’ in the All-China Federation of Trade Unions (ACFTU) and the CCP who remain committed to the original values of the revolution. However, these are now marginal currents in formal party-state institutions. Some ‘Maoists’ also maintain a base amongst peasants and workers. But the protests and strikes occur in relative isolation, linked only by minimal means of communication. The protests also remain, at this point, largely separated from a significant ‘new left’ forming in intellectual, student and other circles in the urban centres and universities. The formation of connections across these locations is where an alternate development trajectory for China most likely resides. As the Hu and Wen project for a ‘harmonious society’ falters in addressing the imbalances of China’s market-driven development model in the next years (and the many unaddressed internal national issues in Tibet and other territories continue to fester), the protests and connections are apt to grow. For Chinese workers and peasants, this is the political space in the making for the renewal of Chinese socialism. •
Gregory Albo teaches political economy at York University.
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^ Back to Top ^
The B u l l e t
Socialist Project • E-Bulletin No. 94
March 30, 2008
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
China and the World Market:
Thirty Years of the ‘Reform’ Policy
Gregory Albo
It is now thirty years since the People’s Republic of China announced its market reform policy at the Third Plenum of the 11th Central Committee of the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) in December 1978, under the then new leadership of Deng Xiaoping. The policy followed the death of Mao Zedong in 1976 and the purging of ‘leftists’ in the Party and the state, symbolically represented by the trial of the ‘Gang of Four.’ The policy was the declaration of the end of ‘Maoism’ as the economic and political framework for the Chinese revolution, although Maoism has continued to endure as a source of ideological legitimacy for the CCP.
At the Third Plenum, the Central Committee declared an end to class struggle of a “mass” kind and a focus of “Party work on socialist modernization.” This was to be accomplished by combining “adjustment by the market” with “adjustment by the plan.” It meant introducing market reforms and disciplines into collectivist agriculture in the countryside and state-owned enterprises (SOEs) in the cities. It was tied to the ‘open-door’ policy of 1979 to increase flows of foreign trade and finance, the development of special economic zones for unfettered capitalist factories utilizing cheap, and most often female and migrant, labour close to Hong Kong and Taiwan in Guangdong and Fujian provinces, and the formalizing of diplomatic relations with the USA. The opening of the collectivist economy to market forces inside China and integration into the world market was to be via the guidance of the CCP and without political democratization. China’s market-opening policies of 1978, in this wider sense, remain the guiding policy for China and the CCP. The Deng leadership would term this policy ‘socialism with Chinese characteristics.’ It would actually mark the transition to capitalism in China.
The Chinese Revolution
The Chinese Revolution of 1949 was led by the CCP, under the leadership of Mao, and emerged out of a confluence of war, internal political collapse, and peasant rebellion. Not the least of these was the subordination of China in the world market, and more than a century of humiliation by colonial domination, the division of China by the imperialist powers, and ineffective opposition by despotic emperors and the dictatorship of Chiang Kai-Shek. The revolutionary government inherited a deeply backward feudal economy, with only enclaves of capitalist markets largely dominated by foreign capital, and a bureaucratic state directed at extracting as much of the economic surplus out of the peasantry as possible.
The core of the Chinese development strategy was similar to the Soviet economies: the means of production nationalized as state property; central command planning; building up of heavy industry; protective security without political rights for workers and peasants; suppression of the consumption levels of workers and peasants to maximise the potential economic surplus; and conversion of the surplus into high rates of investment in infrastructure and industry. With its enormous peasant population, agricultural collectivization and a village commune system also became a central component of Chinese development.
As with other revolutionary regimes, the imperialist powers broke trade linkages and isolated China from the world market. Great political campaigns and social upheavals over how to drag China out of its isolation and backwardness, configured as a debate between ‘leftists’ and ‘capitalist roaders’, ensued. The first decade of the revolution brought land reforms, nationalization of foreign capital, collectivization and the first five year plan. The ‘Great Leap Forward’ of 1958-60 attempted to use mass political mobilization to advance self-reliant productive capacity via the expansion of the village commune system. The ‘new economic policy’ and the ‘Four Modernizations’ that followed increased the space for market activity, and adopted a technocratic model of central administration with a focus on science and technology. This strategy was disrupted by Mao’s last political campaign, the ‘Cultural Revolution’ from 1966-69, to deepen collectivism and root out bureaucratic conservatism, before slowly emerging again in the 1970s in the internal CCP political struggles that preceded Mao’s death.
It is hard to dispute the accomplishments of the first decades of the revolution for Chinese modernization. From the 1950s to the mid-1970s, average industrial output grew by about 11 percent a year and built productive capacity across virtually all sectors. Mass famines (except for the period of the Great Leap Forward) and pestilence were wiped out; medical services for the masses meant infant mortality rates and life expectancy advanced ahead of all other low income countries; mass education was provided for all, with many peasants even gaining access to university education; efforts at ‘equalising’ social relations in all spheres were undertaken; and the ‘iron rice bowl’ provided social security for all Chinese people. Two areas, however, lagged in performance: food production consistently grew but only doubled its output in this period and just matched population growth, barely raising peasants’ money incomes; and consumer goods production grew at only half the pace of heavy industry.
Market Policies Since 1978
The political failings of the Cultural Revolution provided the space for the return of the ‘Four Modernizations’ policy in the 1970s and eventually the market-opening policies of 1978 noted above. These policies, in turn, generated additional market building policies. In the initial period of 1978-83, the SOEs were given greater enterprise autonomy, including over employment terms for workers, sales of goods once planning targets were met, and control over the re-investment of earnings. Small enterprises were allowed, with limits on the number of employees abolished in 1987; they grew from a few hundred to over 4 million by the mid-1980s. Collective enterprises were also greatly expanded. In 1980, the de-collectivization of agriculture began with almost all peasants becoming dependent on the market for sale of their produce under the household responsibility system. The Maoist commune structures were replaced in 1982 by the Township and Village Enterprises (TVEs). By the early 1990s, these locally-based market enterprises numbered 25 million and employed 125 million workers.
The Third Plenum of the 12th Congress of the CCP in 1984 endorsed the notion of a “planned commodity economy.” SOEs were to finance more of their own operations and subjected to profitability criterion; TVEs were given increased autonomy to respond to market forces. A process of price reforms was started to move away from state-set prices to market pricing. Reforms were also begun to universalize the commodification of labour in the state sector that was already occurring in the private sector and in the special economic zones. Enterprise rights to set contracts were expanded, and new workers hired would not be subject to social protections such as healthcare, pensions, and job security. In 1987, the CCP announced a policy to develop an “export-oriented economy.” This further expanded the special zones to encompass almost all the coastal area, formalised that foreign investors would no longer be required to seek out joint ventures, and promoted even more tax and regulatory breaks for foreign capital. In the decade from 1978 to 1988, foreign trade quadrupled as foreign capital poured in and Chinese export capacity increased.
The 14th Congress of the CCP in 1992 committed to a “socialist market economy.” The slogan represented a final push by the Deng leadership to consolidate the development of capitalism in China. The mass privatization of SOEs took numerous forms, including the sale of shares on the newly opened stock exchange in Shanghai. Former managers, party cadres, and connected CCP family members turned themselves into capitalist entrepreneurs by seizing SOE assets, more often than not by various means of corruption. This was also the case for the TVEs in the countryside. From providing about half of manufacturing employment in 1978, SOEs had only 15 percent in 2001. The 1994 labour law reforms for SOEs generalized the contractual status of wage-labour and further ‘smashed the iron rice bowl.’
The 16th Party Congress in 2002 adopted the strategy of the “Three Represents,” which included representing the most advanced productive forces. Capitalists were thus welcomed to join the CCP; a policy to attach party committees to private companies logically followed.
The Imbalances of Chinese Capitalism
The thirty years of market reforms have brought immense changes to China’s place in the world market. The reforms evolved through a cycle of extraordinary booms followed by slowdowns to contain inflationary pressures. Severe imbalances remain characteristic of China’s capitalist model of development.
Since abandoning the collectivist policies of the Maoist period, China has pursued high growth at all costs, with Deng and his successors ridiculing any efforts to lower the growth rate to meet social or ecological needs. This has sustained Chinese growth rates at over 10 percent per year since 1978. China will soon be the second largest economy in the world, and is steadily closing the gap with the USA. On a per capita GDP basis, however, China remains a poor country at about $2800 (U.S.).
The growth of trade and exports has been an important component driving economic growth. The share of exports in China’s GDP in 1978 was under 5 percent. It had grown to about 25 percent when China entered the World Trade Organization in 2001, and now stands at about 35 percent. China will soon be the word’s largest trading nation. This growth is becoming somewhat less dependent upon exports to the U.S. as trade to the rest of Asia in particular grows, and China’s internal investment and home market increases in size.
However, export-led growth remains critical with the current account monthly surplus is estimated to be running about $25 billion and 12 percent of GDP for 2008. As a result of this long period of trade surpluses, China is now holding about $1.5 trillion in foreign exchange reserves, largely in U.S. dollars. The forex holdings partly arise from the effort to keep the renminbi at highly competitive exchange rates to sustain export-led growth. On the one hand, this adds to inflationary pressures particularly evident in the run-up in stock and real estate values. The large holdings of U.S. dollar-based assets by the Chinese central bank are also subject to losses from both low returns and the slide in the value of the U.S. dollar. On the other hand, the foreign reserves provide a platform for the internationalization of Chinese capital. Chinese private capital and state agencies, for example, have taken equity positions in Barclay’s, Citibank, Bear Stearns, and others. And Chinese capital is actively engaged in an acquisitions surge around the world.
From the outset, foreign capital exploiting Chinese labour has been integral to the growth in trade and the market reforms. China is the largest recipient of foreign direct investment in the world, with estimates of half of Chinese trade occurring in foreign enterprises in 2001, and accounting for just under 10 percent of gross capital formation since 1978. The export sector has been crucial to multiplying the supply and commercial commodity chains into new industrial regions extending beyond the huge coastal cities.
The external imbalances speak directly to the internal imbalances of China’s capitalist growth processes. This has been growing through time as consumption and incomes in China have been growing more slowly than rates of growth in investment and exports. While many Chinese have moved out of poverty and found work in formal employment, the conditions for the estimated 350 million Chinese waged workers remain difficult. Most estimates put the average manufacturing wage at well under $1 per hour, and an average workday of 11 hours (and 6 to 7 days a week). In the special economic zones, conditions are often worse. Irregular employment now claims more than one-third of urban work, and official open unemployment is now at about 10 percent. Surplus value is being extracted from Chinese workers, especially female and migrant workers, at exceedingly high rates of exploitation.
In rural areas, de-collectivization initially raised incomes from increased land utilization and government price supports. Some peasants have continued to prosper. But most have remained impoverished as low prices, soil depletion, and tiny plots have left incomes stagnant for more than two decades. In many areas, privatization has also ended access to health services and even education for many peasant households. Of the one in four Chinese estimated to still be living on $1 U.S. per day, most are in the countryside. This is fuelling perhaps the greatest migration in world history, particularly of women, into the cities. In Beijing, for example, 4 million of the 20 million in the greater urban area are said to be migrant workers, many lacking protections at work and access to social services.
The reckless pursuit of high growth has also caused huge ecological imbalances. Enormous damage has been done to China’s magnificent river system from dumping by factories. The drive for foreign capital all costs has turned some of the coastal areas into a dumpsite for the world’s toxic wastes. With the massive growth in energy demand and reliance on fossil fuels and coal, China is now the world’s largest emitter of greenhouse gases. Air quality is also suffering, with many thousands dieing prematurely as a result. China’s environmental laws are formally no different from some of the best world standards. But the pressures of market driven growth and official corruption has left them not enforced.
Chinese Socialism Renewed?
China is now securely integrated into the circuits of capital as one of the dominant poles of world accumulation. The CCP, with its some 74 million members, has remained in control of this process, neither repudiating the revolution nor socialism as the basis for its ideological legitimacy. As with Deng’s initial turn to ‘market socialism’ in 1978, the recent policy for a ‘harmonious society’ of the current Hu Jintao and Wen Jiabao leadership, as stated at the National People’s Congress in 2005 and during the 17th CCP Congress in October 2007, was put forward within these terms. This is the contradiction at the centre of the evolution of the market reform policy: the CCP set in motion, directly and indirectly, the social forces and market imperatives leading to the development of capitalism in China in the name of building socialism.
The legitimation of market liberalisation in terms of socialist and Maoist thought has, paradoxically, served as a means ‘de-ideologize’ the process and ‘depoliticize’ Chinese society. Although authoritarian measures to put-down with force democratic uprisings have been regularly deployed, such as against the Democracy Movement of the late 1970s and at Tiananmen Square in 1989, or against worker and peasant demonstrations, the party-state has been most effective in maintaining its ideological legitimacy as defender of the revolution and the nation.
The space for political struggle that might create an alternate trajectory for Chinese development has thus been powerfully contained. A measure of civil activism and liberalisation, partly pushed by the new urban middle class for increased accountability and participation, and partly by peasants and villagers fighting for their rights, has been channelled through the party and state apparatuses. This has been the case, for example, with many ecological and anti-corruption campaigns. The some seventy to eighty thousand incidents of protests, illegal strikes and civil unrest reported to be occurring annually across China now, however, speak to deeper conflicts that the existing state and development model have not been able to absorb. These include the large numbers of protests by peasants fighting for their land tenure rights and workers, particularly female and migrant workers, struggling for their organizational rights and against exploitation in the capitalist factories and construction sites of the coastal cities.
The civil unrest has had difficulty moving from spontaneous resistances to organized anti-capitalist protest. Some support for these protests may be found in the ‘old left’ in the All-China Federation of Trade Unions (ACFTU) and the CCP who remain committed to the original values of the revolution. However, these are now marginal currents in formal party-state institutions. Some ‘Maoists’ also maintain a base amongst peasants and workers. But the protests and strikes occur in relative isolation, linked only by minimal means of communication. The protests also remain, at this point, largely separated from a significant ‘new left’ forming in intellectual, student and other circles in the urban centres and universities. The formation of connections across these locations is where an alternate development trajectory for China most likely resides. As the Hu and Wen project for a ‘harmonious society’ falters in addressing the imbalances of China’s market-driven development model in the next years (and the many unaddressed internal national issues in Tibet and other territories continue to fester), the protests and connections are apt to grow. For Chinese workers and peasants, this is the political space in the making for the renewal of Chinese socialism. •
Gregory Albo teaches political economy at York University.
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Recflation
We have all heard of Stagflation. I just wonder if we will not see a period of Recflation (RECession and inFLATION) in the U.S. and elsewhere. By increasing the supply of money and lowering interest rates the Feds in the U.S. are making other goods more expensive. Add to this the fact that basic foodstuffs are increasing in price because of decreased supply, and increased costs for transportation, packaging, etc. The high price of oil increases the price of fuel, transportation, and all products such as plastics that depend on oil production. Diversion of agricultural production into ethanol does not help either.
Of course some areas such as house prices will see falling prices but in other areas prices may still rise because demand is inelastic or increasing as with global demand for food.
Of course some areas such as house prices will see falling prices but in other areas prices may still rise because demand is inelastic or increasing as with global demand for food.
Philippines hit by high global rice prices
This is from Australian Broadcasting. Vietnam along with some other Asian countries has moved to limit exports in order to have sufficient supply domestically.
Given the corruption within the Arroyo administration it remains to be seen how effective Arroyo's steps to improve the situation will be.
Philippines hit by high global rice prices
[This is the print version of story http://www.abc.net.au/ra/news/stories/200803/s2202625.htm]
Philippines hit by high global rice prices
Updated March 29, 2008 18:23:43
Commercial rice prices in Philippine markets have doubled in the past days, amid a tight global supply and denials by government officials of a shortage.
Shirley Escalante reports from Manila.
Rice prices in Manila have soared to as high as a dollar and 15 cents a kilo from as low as 50 cents a kilo a week ago. People in the countryside have started complaining of a lack of supply of cheaper, government-subsidized rice in the market. Meantime, President Gloria Arroyo convened her cabinet officials to discuss measures to sustain the country's rice supply and to control soaring prices. She ordered finance officials to relax tariff rates on rice, and wants a moratorium on the conversion of agricultural land, particularly rice land, to residential areas and golf courses. Authorities have also began inspecting rice warehouses and apprehending rice hoarders. Two provincial officers of the National Food Authority, the government agency which controls rice stocks, have also been suspended for failing to stop rice hoarders.
© 2008 Australian Broadcasting Corporation
Copyright information: http://abc.net.au/common/copyrigh.htm
Privacy information: http://abc.net.au/privacy.htm
Given the corruption within the Arroyo administration it remains to be seen how effective Arroyo's steps to improve the situation will be.
Philippines hit by high global rice prices
[This is the print version of story http://www.abc.net.au/ra/news/stories/200803/s2202625.htm]
Philippines hit by high global rice prices
Updated March 29, 2008 18:23:43
Commercial rice prices in Philippine markets have doubled in the past days, amid a tight global supply and denials by government officials of a shortage.
Shirley Escalante reports from Manila.
Rice prices in Manila have soared to as high as a dollar and 15 cents a kilo from as low as 50 cents a kilo a week ago. People in the countryside have started complaining of a lack of supply of cheaper, government-subsidized rice in the market. Meantime, President Gloria Arroyo convened her cabinet officials to discuss measures to sustain the country's rice supply and to control soaring prices. She ordered finance officials to relax tariff rates on rice, and wants a moratorium on the conversion of agricultural land, particularly rice land, to residential areas and golf courses. Authorities have also began inspecting rice warehouses and apprehending rice hoarders. Two provincial officers of the National Food Authority, the government agency which controls rice stocks, have also been suspended for failing to stop rice hoarders.
© 2008 Australian Broadcasting Corporation
Copyright information: http://abc.net.au/common/copyrigh.htm
Privacy information: http://abc.net.au/privacy.htm
Iraqi officials in talks with Sadr group to stop fighting.
This is from SMH.Probably the U.S. was urging Maliki to attack Sadr's militia guaranteeing him backup, a backup that has been increasingly evident. This can do nothing but damage Maliki's credibility such as it is. If the war goes sour again as it probably will unless there is a renewed agreement on a ceasefire this could damage McCain's chances and make it difficult for the Democratic candidate to avoid promising a genuine pullout. Note that Sadr's is not the only militia in Basra just the one whose power Maliki and the U.S. wants to curb. Note that the negotiations are not for the Sadr group to lay down arms but to stop fighting. The ultimatum is obviously a no go.
Iraqi officials in talks with Sadr group to end fighting
Representatives of radical cleric Moqtada al-Sadr and the Iraqi authorities have begun talks to end fierce fighting between security forces and Shiite militiamen that has killed several hundred people, an aide to Sadr said on Sunday.
"Negotiations between the Sadr movement and an Iraqi government delegation started last night (Saturday) and are going in the right direction to solve the crisis," Salah al-Obeidi, Sadr's spokesman in the shrine city of Najaf, told AFP.
The talks began hours after Sadr ordered his followers to defy a call by prime minister Nuri al-Maliki to lay down their arms in the southern port and oil hub of Basra, the flashpoint of the brutal clashes.
"These are the first direct negotiations between the two sides to try to resolve the crisis," said Liqa al-Yassin, a Sadrist MP.
It was unclear if the talks had resumed on Sunday.
Both the Iraqi capital and Basra remained under curfew on Sunday amid the deadly standoff between the Iraqi security forces and Sadr's feared Madhi Army, the most powerful Shiite militia in the violence-ravaged country.
Maliki had given a 72-hour deadline to Shiite fighters in Basra to disarm after launching an offensive against them last Tuesday.
The deadline expired on Friday.
"Sadr has told us not to surrender our arms except to a state that can throw out the (US) occupation," Haider al-Jabari of the Sadr movement's political bureau told AFP on Saturday.
The same day, Maliki vowed to press on with his assault in Basra, saying the militiamen were "worse than Al-Qaeda."
"Unfortunately we were talking about Al-Qaeda but there are some among us who are worse than Al-Qaeda. Al-Qaeda is killing innocents, Al-Qaeda is destroying establishments and they (Shiite gunmen) also," he said.
Basra is the focus of a turf war between the Mahdi Army and two rival Shiite factions -- the powerful Supreme Iraqi Islamic Council (SIIC) of Abdel Aziz al-Hakim and the smaller Fadhila party.
The stand-off there has spread to other Shiite areas of Iraq, including the sprawling Shiite neighbourhood of Baghdad's Sadr City, the bastion of Sadr loyalists.
Fighting in Sadr City has killed at least 90 people since Tuesday and the nationwide death toll has crossed 270, including at least 50 in Basra, according to security officials
The two cities of Baghdad and Basra were locked down on Sunday amid round-the-clock curfew for several days.
Pedestrians and vehicles stayed off the streets of the Iraqi capital for a third straight day of curfew, while the oil hub of Basra was relatively calm, residents said.
They however added that two neighbourhoods of Basra had been bombed during night by US or British jets. The two militaries did not immediately confirm the assaults.
US warplanes had carried out air strikes in the city on Friday and Saturday in which several people were killed, Iraqi and US officials said.
But on Sunday, the US military acknowledged that its ground troops had started participating in the Basra assault.
A team of American special forces joined the battle in Basra, combining with Iraqi troops in an operation that killed 22 militants on Saturday, the military said.
The joint operation was in a known "criminal stronghold" in western Basra, a US military statement said.
Earlier US and Bitish forces have said they have been giving air support to operations since Tuesday.
British troops have deployed outside their base on the edge of Basra in support of the Iraqi operations, British military spokesman Major Tom Holloway said on Sunday.
"There are no plans for our troops to enter the city. We are providing other forms of support," he told AFP.
This includes air support and surveillance as well as logistical back-up including refuelling helicopters and supplying ammunition and medical supplies.
The stand-off between Iraqi and US-led forces is the most intense one since 2004, when the Mahdi Army launched a rebellion against American troops in the central city of Najaf.
Other Shiite cities, such as Kut, Hilla, Nasiriyah and Karbala, meanwhile were also quiet Sunday after heavy clashes earlier in the week.
© 2008 AFP
Iraqi officials in talks with Sadr group to end fighting
Representatives of radical cleric Moqtada al-Sadr and the Iraqi authorities have begun talks to end fierce fighting between security forces and Shiite militiamen that has killed several hundred people, an aide to Sadr said on Sunday.
"Negotiations between the Sadr movement and an Iraqi government delegation started last night (Saturday) and are going in the right direction to solve the crisis," Salah al-Obeidi, Sadr's spokesman in the shrine city of Najaf, told AFP.
The talks began hours after Sadr ordered his followers to defy a call by prime minister Nuri al-Maliki to lay down their arms in the southern port and oil hub of Basra, the flashpoint of the brutal clashes.
"These are the first direct negotiations between the two sides to try to resolve the crisis," said Liqa al-Yassin, a Sadrist MP.
It was unclear if the talks had resumed on Sunday.
Both the Iraqi capital and Basra remained under curfew on Sunday amid the deadly standoff between the Iraqi security forces and Sadr's feared Madhi Army, the most powerful Shiite militia in the violence-ravaged country.
Maliki had given a 72-hour deadline to Shiite fighters in Basra to disarm after launching an offensive against them last Tuesday.
The deadline expired on Friday.
"Sadr has told us not to surrender our arms except to a state that can throw out the (US) occupation," Haider al-Jabari of the Sadr movement's political bureau told AFP on Saturday.
The same day, Maliki vowed to press on with his assault in Basra, saying the militiamen were "worse than Al-Qaeda."
"Unfortunately we were talking about Al-Qaeda but there are some among us who are worse than Al-Qaeda. Al-Qaeda is killing innocents, Al-Qaeda is destroying establishments and they (Shiite gunmen) also," he said.
Basra is the focus of a turf war between the Mahdi Army and two rival Shiite factions -- the powerful Supreme Iraqi Islamic Council (SIIC) of Abdel Aziz al-Hakim and the smaller Fadhila party.
The stand-off there has spread to other Shiite areas of Iraq, including the sprawling Shiite neighbourhood of Baghdad's Sadr City, the bastion of Sadr loyalists.
Fighting in Sadr City has killed at least 90 people since Tuesday and the nationwide death toll has crossed 270, including at least 50 in Basra, according to security officials
The two cities of Baghdad and Basra were locked down on Sunday amid round-the-clock curfew for several days.
Pedestrians and vehicles stayed off the streets of the Iraqi capital for a third straight day of curfew, while the oil hub of Basra was relatively calm, residents said.
They however added that two neighbourhoods of Basra had been bombed during night by US or British jets. The two militaries did not immediately confirm the assaults.
US warplanes had carried out air strikes in the city on Friday and Saturday in which several people were killed, Iraqi and US officials said.
But on Sunday, the US military acknowledged that its ground troops had started participating in the Basra assault.
A team of American special forces joined the battle in Basra, combining with Iraqi troops in an operation that killed 22 militants on Saturday, the military said.
The joint operation was in a known "criminal stronghold" in western Basra, a US military statement said.
Earlier US and Bitish forces have said they have been giving air support to operations since Tuesday.
British troops have deployed outside their base on the edge of Basra in support of the Iraqi operations, British military spokesman Major Tom Holloway said on Sunday.
"There are no plans for our troops to enter the city. We are providing other forms of support," he told AFP.
This includes air support and surveillance as well as logistical back-up including refuelling helicopters and supplying ammunition and medical supplies.
The stand-off between Iraqi and US-led forces is the most intense one since 2004, when the Mahdi Army launched a rebellion against American troops in the central city of Najaf.
Other Shiite cities, such as Kut, Hilla, Nasiriyah and Karbala, meanwhile were also quiet Sunday after heavy clashes earlier in the week.
© 2008 AFP
Saturday, March 29, 2008
Chile, Allende, Cybernetics and Socialism
Here are three articles on Socialism in Chile under Allende and the role of Simon Beer and others who attempted to use cybernetics in planning. The first is from the NY Times. The second is from the Financial Post. The final article is from the
National Post and was written by the son of Stafford Beer who was the cyberneticist who helped Allende.
March 28, 2008 / New York TIMES
Santiago Journal
Before '73 Coup, Chile Tried to Find the Right Software for Socialism
By ALEXEI BARRIONUEVO
SANTIAGO, Chile — When military forces loyal to Gen. Augusto Pinochet
staged a coup here in September 1973, they made a surprising
discovery. Salvador Allende's Socialist government had quietly
embarked on a novel experiment to manage Chile's economy using a
clunky mainframe computer and a network of telex machines.
The project, called Cybersyn, was the brainchild of A. Stafford Beer,
a visionary Briton who employed his "cybernetic" concepts to help Mr.
Allende find an alternative to the planned economies of Cuba and the
Soviet Union. After the coup it became the subject of intense military
scrutiny.
In developing Cybersyn, Mr. Beer changed the lives of the bright young
Chileans he worked with here. Some 35 years later, this little-known
feature of Mr. Allende's abortive Socialist transformation was
remembered in an exhibit in a museum beneath La Moneda, the
presidential palace.
A Star Trek-like chair with controls in the armrests was a replica of
those in a prototype operations room. Mr. Beer planned for the room to
receive computer reports based on data flowing from telex machines
connected to factories up and down this 2,700-mile-long country.
Managers were to sit in seven of the contoured chairs and make
critical decisions about the reports displayed on projection screens.
While the operations room never became fully operational, Cybersyn
gained stature within the Allende government for helping to
outmaneuver striking workers in October 1972. That helped planners
realize — as the pioneers of the modern-day Internet did — that the
communications network was more important than computing power, which
Chile did not have much of, anyway. A single I.B.M. 360/50 mainframe,
which had less storage capacity than most flash drives today,
processed the factories' data, with a Burroughs 3500 later filling in.
Cybersyn was born in July 1971 when Fernando Flores, then a
28-year-old government technocrat, sent a letter to Mr. Beer seeking
his help in organizing Mr. Allende's economy by applying cybernetic
concepts. Mr. Beer was excited by the prospect of being able to test
his ideas.
He wanted to use the telex communications system — a network of
teletypewriters — to gather data from factories on variables like
daily output, energy use and labor "in real time," and then use a
computer to filter out the important pieces of economic information
the government needed to make decisions.
Mr. Beer set up teams of computer programmers in England and Chile,
and began making regular trips to Santiago to direct the project. He
was paid $500 a day while working in Chile, a sizable sum here at the
time, said Raúl Espejo, who was Cybersyn's operations director.
The Englishman became a mentor to the Chilean team, many of them in
their 20s. On one visit he tried to inspire them by sharing Richard
Bach's "Jonathan Livingston Seagull," the story of a seagull who
follows his dream to master the art of flying against the wishes of
the flock.
An imposing man with a long gray-flecked beard, Mr. Beer was a college
dropout who challenged the young Chileans with tough questions. He
shared his love for writing poetry and painting, and brought books and
classical music from Europe. He smoked cigars and drank whiskey and
wine constantly, "but was never losing his head," Mr. Espejo said.
Most of the Cybersyn team scrupulously avoided talking about politics,
and some even had far-right-wing views, said Isaquino Benadof, who led
the team of Chilean engineers designing the Cybersyn software.
One early challenge was how to build the communications network. Short
of money, the team found 500 unused telex machines in a warehouse of
the national telecommunications company.
Cybersyn's turning point came in October 1972, when a strike by
truckers and retailers nearly paralyzed the economy. The
interconnected telex machines, exchanging 2,000 messages a day, were a
potent instrument, enabling the government to identify and organize
alternative transportation resources that kept the economy moving.
The strike dragged on for nearly a month. While it weakened Mr.
Allende's Popular Unity party, the government survived, and Cybersyn
was praised for playing a major role. "From that point on the
communications center became part of whatever was happening," Mr.
Espejo said.
"Chile run by computer," blared The British Observer on Jan. 7, 1973,
as word of the experiment began leaking out.
But as the country's political and security situation worsened, Mr.
Beer and his Chilean team realized that time was running out.
Mr. Allende remained committed to Cybersyn to the end. On Sept. 8,
1973, he gave orders to move the operations room to the presidential
palace. But three days later the military took over; Mr. Allende died
that afternoon.
Military officials soon confronted Cybersyn's leaders, seeking to
understand their political motivations. Mr. Benadof said he was
interrogated at least three times. Mr. Espejo, after being questioned,
was warned to leave the country; two months after the coup he fled to
England.
The military never could grasp Cybersyn, and finally dismantled the
operations room. Several other Cybersyn team members went into exile.
Mr. Flores, who was both economy and finance minister in the Allende
government, spent three years in military concentration camps. After
his release, he moved with his family to California to study at
Stanford University and the University of California, Berkeley, where
he earned a Ph.D. in philosophy.
He later was one of the inventors of the Coordinator, a program that
tracked spoken commitments between workers within a company, one of
the first forays into "work flow" software. He became a millionaire
and returned to Chile, where today he is a senator representing the
Tarapacá Region.
Mr. Beer, who died in 2002, helped some team members secure college
teaching positions in England. That included Mr. Espejo, who dedicated
himself to advancing cybernetics.
"The Chilean project completely transformed Stafford's life, and he
obviously had a huge impact on all of us," Mr. Espejo said. "Clearly,
his work was not recognized during his lifetime. But what he has
written will remain for a long time."
Here is the Financial Post article.
Saturday, March 01, 2008
Presented by
Socialist dreams always turn totalitarian
Peter Foster, Financial Post
Published: Saturday, March 01, 2008
On Nov. 12, 1971, Salvador Allende, the president of Chile, sat down in the presidential palace in Santiago opposite a large, bearded Englishman named Stafford Beer.
Allende, a committed socialist, had been in power for a year, during which he had unleashed a wave of expropriations and populist measures that threatened massive inflation. The economy was in turmoil. Beer, the eccentric founder of "cybernetic management," had come to lay out a master plan for control of the rapidly expanding nationalized sector of the Chilean economy. On a sheet of paper, Beer drew the "neurological" basis for his system. Allende, who had trained as a doctor, reportedly "immediately grasped the biological inspiration behind Beer's cybernetic model and knowingly nodded throughout the explanation."
Beer sketched his "viable system model" based on five hierarchic levels. After he had drawn the top "box," he declared theatrically: "And this, companero presidente, is you." Allende leaned back and with a broad smile said: "At last, the people."
Two years after his first meeting with Beer, Allende was killed during the coup that installed the dictatorship of Augusto Pinochet.
He has since become an icon for crushed socialist dreams. This view is reflected in Naomi Klein's recent book, The Shock Doctrine. Strangely, however, Ms. Klein makes no mention of Stafford Beer, who provides valuable insight into what "socialist control" looks like in practice. Ms. Klein's oversight is especially puzzling since Stafford Beer's story has a strong Canadian angle. In 1973, he gave the CBC Massey lectures with the telling title: Designing Freedom. He lived much of the latter part of his life in Toronto, and consulted to several levels of Canadian government.
Leftist commentators such as Ms. Klein persistently claim that socialism
has "never really been tried." Those countries that called themselves socialist or Communist were always either repressive perversions of the ideal, or were thwarted by the dark machinations of their capitalist enemies. The latter is the conventional leftist take on Chile, and certainly has an element of truth. The U.S. companies that Allende expropriated indeed ran to Washington, which sought to undermine his regime. However, the left inevitably fails to put enough emphasis on the role of Allende's own policies in destroying the Chilean economy. While his Keynesian delusions and reflexive grab for assets would have been damaging enough, they were as nothing compared with the regime's naivete in supporting Beer's "Project Cybersyn," (a word formed from melding "cybernetics" and "synergy.")
Beer was a larger-than-life character, a polymath who dabbled in Eastern religions, poetry and painting. He was also a well-known management consultant who had previously held senior positions in the British steel and the publishing industry. Beer was a specialist in operations research (OR), the study of organizing systems to produce the required results, and had melded OR with cybernetics, the science of control mechanisms which had been founded by Norbert Weiner. Above all, however, Beer was a committed socialist.
Beer's Cybersyn utilized a network of telex machines that ran the length of Chile. These theoretically provided the real-time data from state factories and mines that would then be fed into a specially programmed central computer. The whole operation would be overseen from a control module, the "Opsroom," that resembled the deck of the starship Enterprise. There, seven controllers would act in a "symbiotic relationship" with the computer "to amplify their respective powers in one new synergy of enhanced intelligence." The seven would sit surrounded by numerous screens -- including an eight-by-four-foot master screen -- in ergonomically designed swivel chairs. These chairs' arms featured a series of knobs that the controllers would bash to control the commanding heights of the Chilean economy. The knob thumping was intended by Beer as part of the "drama" of cybernetic control: centralized government as performance art. (More practically, it was based on the assumption that the seven masters of the economy would be keyboard illiterate. Beer apparently didn't want women typists in the room.) Nationalized enterprises would be dynamically modelled in terms of "quantified flow-charts" that would give the central puppeteers all they needed to know. Glitches would be indicated by "algedonic signals."
True to solid socialist principles, this enormously elaborate system would, according to Beer, facilitate worker participation. How wasn't clear. The Russian and Cuban revolutions had somehow missed out on this "democratic" element, but Chile would be -- as with every socialist experiment -- "different." It wasn't.
Beer rejected accusations that his system was Orwellian, but was soon speaking the language of thinly veiled threats. Opposition was allegedly rooted in the "vindictiveness" of the "rich world." Media criticism was written off as part of a corporate plot. Those who had been expropriated had to "talk the new language [of cybernetic viability] or get out." Those who refused to leave were accused of "polarizing" society.
Cybersyn, not surprisingly, never became fully operational, and its only alleged success was in helping the government respond to a nationwide 1972 strike. But that was a very long way from running the public sector, much less an economy. Meanwhile, U.S. computer guru Herb Grosch wrote: "It is a good thing for humanity, and for Chile in particular, that [Cybersyn] is only a bad dream." (Beer got expressions of interest in his system from the repressive regimes in South Africa and Brazil).
What saved Cybersyn from descending into utter farce and/or totalitarian nightmare was the Pinochet coup. According to his credulous biographer, Beer subsequently wondered if the "success" of his experiment might havehastenedAllende's fall and the "demise of democracy."
Beer went off to live for some years in isolation in a cottage in Wales, then went back to consulting. In a speech he gave in 1990, he admitted-- while castigating the Thatcher and Reagan regimes -- that countries seemed to "go into chaos" as soon as he arrived. He died in 2002, apparently without ever grasping why.
Copyright © 2007 CanWest Interactive, a division of CanWest MediaWorks Publications, Inc.. All rights reserved.
Finally the National Post article:
Allende was no totalitarian
Simon Beer, National Post
Published: Saturday, March 29, 2008
As Stafford Beer's son, I was saddened to read Peter Foster's article of March 1, "Socialist dreams always turn totalitarian." Foster seems to have rather a poor grasp of the politics, economics and business management involved in President Salvador Allende's Chile in general and Stafford Beer's work in particular.
He misses the point about the "at last the people" anecdote. Stafford Beer ended with "… and this companero presidente ..." whereupon Allende finished the sentence for him "… at last -- the people." The point is that it wasn't about the president, but about the people. The way Foster writes it, it doesn't make any sense at all.
To claim the Chilean economy was in "turmoil" is fallacious. Allende's super-inflation model was a deliberate act. The premise being that if 5% of the population have all the money and 95% have none, then inflate the cost of everything and subsidize the poor, who receive food, clothing, education and housing for free. The rich meanwhile, have to pay $50 for a loaf of bread and don't even think about a mink coat. To claim this is "turmoil" shows a misunderstanding of the circumstance. Allende knew exactly what he was doing.
Foster's comment that "project Cybersyn never became fully operational" is demonstrably wrong. The distinguished Cybernetician Raul Espejo was responsible for the day-to-day running of the operations room with his colleagues until the American-backed coup d'etat put Pinochet in power, forcing Raul to escape to England. His colleagues? Well, some escaped, some were imprisoned and tortured and some were killed. So tell me again, Mr Foster, about socialist totalitarianism.
Foster quotes Herb Grosch (who knew nothing about what took place or was achieved in Chile). Perhaps Henry Kissinger, who played such a big part in Allende's death, would have been more apposite: "I don't see why we need to stand by and watch a country go communist due to the irresponsibility of its people. The issues are much too important for the Chilean voters to be left to decide for themselves."
It wasn't Allende, a democratically elected president, remember, who herded people into the national stadium and machine-gunned them, it was America's puppet dictator Augusto Pinochet. Pinochet (with the help and support of the American State Department and the CIA), tortured and murdered many thousands of Chilean people for which he would be harangued as a war criminal until death saved him even greater public ignominy. Foster's premise that socialism turns to totalitarianism seems weak in the extreme when using Allende's Chile as a paradigm. Chile produced most of the world's copper; America wanted it. The Chilean government was truly "thwarted by the dark machinations of their capitalist enemies," despite Foster's assertion to the contrary.
Foster suggests "the left inevitably fails to put enough emphasis on the role of Allende's own policies in destroying the Chilean economy." Not surprising, really. The fact that these policies were outside the American accounting norm may be hard for Foster to understand, but then, I suggest his understanding of the whole project is, at best, a little weak.
The summation of Stafford Beer's life, with its paucity of information, is rather akin to suggesting that Kennedy was a man who liked women, dabbled in politics and died. Stafford Beer was indeed a polymath. His books on Cybernetics and decision-making in management are read and respected around the world. Cybernetics is now an international business philosophy. If you enter Stafford Beer into Google, you get 137,000 references. To deride him for his politics is both irrelevant and asinine.
Foster reveals his lack of understanding of the interconnected telex machines that ran the length of Chile, "theoretically" providing real-time data. "Theory" becomes "reality" once the system is working.
And work it did. As for the operations room, he totally misses the point yet again because he fails to understand how the chairs worked. Beer proved that "girls working at keyboards" were not necessary to input data into the system. This could all be achieved by the controls in the arm of the chair: a whole new concept of system control in 1972. That was why "girls working at keyboards" were not required. It wasn't some misogynist plot. Foster describes Cybersyn as "an enormously elaborate system," yet in truth, Cybersyn was a deceptively simple system offering democratic inputs at every point along the operational chain. There were literally thousands of inputs, filtered so that the data weren't overwhelming. Had Foster understood the Cybersyn system, he would have known this.
Foster isn't always wrong, "…Chile would be -- as with every socialist experiment --different. It wasn't."
How true. It was the American politicians and their military, coupled with the CIA and Pinochet, that guaranteed that it wouldn't be.
Foster suggests that Stafford Beer expressed the view that criticism of Cybersyn was part of a "corporate plot." On the contrary, Beer understood corporate inadequacy and its inability to function as a viable system. He wrote many books on the subject. The corporate world would have been incapable of organizing such a plot. More likely, he riled against ill-informed members of the press, writing simplistic text about matters that they didn't understand and couldn't be bothered to adequately research.
Quod erat demonstrandum, Mr. Foster.
Perhaps we should leave the last word to Henry Kissinger, that champion of freedom-loving people everywhere: "The illegal we do immediately, the unconstitutional takes a little longer." - Simon Beer is Stafford Beer's son.
Copyright © 2007 CanWest Interactive, a division of CanWest MediaWorks Publications, Inc.. All rights reserved
--
National Post and was written by the son of Stafford Beer who was the cyberneticist who helped Allende.
March 28, 2008 / New York TIMES
Santiago Journal
Before '73 Coup, Chile Tried to Find the Right Software for Socialism
By ALEXEI BARRIONUEVO
SANTIAGO, Chile — When military forces loyal to Gen. Augusto Pinochet
staged a coup here in September 1973, they made a surprising
discovery. Salvador Allende's Socialist government had quietly
embarked on a novel experiment to manage Chile's economy using a
clunky mainframe computer and a network of telex machines.
The project, called Cybersyn, was the brainchild of A. Stafford Beer,
a visionary Briton who employed his "cybernetic" concepts to help Mr.
Allende find an alternative to the planned economies of Cuba and the
Soviet Union. After the coup it became the subject of intense military
scrutiny.
In developing Cybersyn, Mr. Beer changed the lives of the bright young
Chileans he worked with here. Some 35 years later, this little-known
feature of Mr. Allende's abortive Socialist transformation was
remembered in an exhibit in a museum beneath La Moneda, the
presidential palace.
A Star Trek-like chair with controls in the armrests was a replica of
those in a prototype operations room. Mr. Beer planned for the room to
receive computer reports based on data flowing from telex machines
connected to factories up and down this 2,700-mile-long country.
Managers were to sit in seven of the contoured chairs and make
critical decisions about the reports displayed on projection screens.
While the operations room never became fully operational, Cybersyn
gained stature within the Allende government for helping to
outmaneuver striking workers in October 1972. That helped planners
realize — as the pioneers of the modern-day Internet did — that the
communications network was more important than computing power, which
Chile did not have much of, anyway. A single I.B.M. 360/50 mainframe,
which had less storage capacity than most flash drives today,
processed the factories' data, with a Burroughs 3500 later filling in.
Cybersyn was born in July 1971 when Fernando Flores, then a
28-year-old government technocrat, sent a letter to Mr. Beer seeking
his help in organizing Mr. Allende's economy by applying cybernetic
concepts. Mr. Beer was excited by the prospect of being able to test
his ideas.
He wanted to use the telex communications system — a network of
teletypewriters — to gather data from factories on variables like
daily output, energy use and labor "in real time," and then use a
computer to filter out the important pieces of economic information
the government needed to make decisions.
Mr. Beer set up teams of computer programmers in England and Chile,
and began making regular trips to Santiago to direct the project. He
was paid $500 a day while working in Chile, a sizable sum here at the
time, said Raúl Espejo, who was Cybersyn's operations director.
The Englishman became a mentor to the Chilean team, many of them in
their 20s. On one visit he tried to inspire them by sharing Richard
Bach's "Jonathan Livingston Seagull," the story of a seagull who
follows his dream to master the art of flying against the wishes of
the flock.
An imposing man with a long gray-flecked beard, Mr. Beer was a college
dropout who challenged the young Chileans with tough questions. He
shared his love for writing poetry and painting, and brought books and
classical music from Europe. He smoked cigars and drank whiskey and
wine constantly, "but was never losing his head," Mr. Espejo said.
Most of the Cybersyn team scrupulously avoided talking about politics,
and some even had far-right-wing views, said Isaquino Benadof, who led
the team of Chilean engineers designing the Cybersyn software.
One early challenge was how to build the communications network. Short
of money, the team found 500 unused telex machines in a warehouse of
the national telecommunications company.
Cybersyn's turning point came in October 1972, when a strike by
truckers and retailers nearly paralyzed the economy. The
interconnected telex machines, exchanging 2,000 messages a day, were a
potent instrument, enabling the government to identify and organize
alternative transportation resources that kept the economy moving.
The strike dragged on for nearly a month. While it weakened Mr.
Allende's Popular Unity party, the government survived, and Cybersyn
was praised for playing a major role. "From that point on the
communications center became part of whatever was happening," Mr.
Espejo said.
"Chile run by computer," blared The British Observer on Jan. 7, 1973,
as word of the experiment began leaking out.
But as the country's political and security situation worsened, Mr.
Beer and his Chilean team realized that time was running out.
Mr. Allende remained committed to Cybersyn to the end. On Sept. 8,
1973, he gave orders to move the operations room to the presidential
palace. But three days later the military took over; Mr. Allende died
that afternoon.
Military officials soon confronted Cybersyn's leaders, seeking to
understand their political motivations. Mr. Benadof said he was
interrogated at least three times. Mr. Espejo, after being questioned,
was warned to leave the country; two months after the coup he fled to
England.
The military never could grasp Cybersyn, and finally dismantled the
operations room. Several other Cybersyn team members went into exile.
Mr. Flores, who was both economy and finance minister in the Allende
government, spent three years in military concentration camps. After
his release, he moved with his family to California to study at
Stanford University and the University of California, Berkeley, where
he earned a Ph.D. in philosophy.
He later was one of the inventors of the Coordinator, a program that
tracked spoken commitments between workers within a company, one of
the first forays into "work flow" software. He became a millionaire
and returned to Chile, where today he is a senator representing the
Tarapacá Region.
Mr. Beer, who died in 2002, helped some team members secure college
teaching positions in England. That included Mr. Espejo, who dedicated
himself to advancing cybernetics.
"The Chilean project completely transformed Stafford's life, and he
obviously had a huge impact on all of us," Mr. Espejo said. "Clearly,
his work was not recognized during his lifetime. But what he has
written will remain for a long time."
Here is the Financial Post article.
Saturday, March 01, 2008
Presented by
Socialist dreams always turn totalitarian
Peter Foster, Financial Post
Published: Saturday, March 01, 2008
On Nov. 12, 1971, Salvador Allende, the president of Chile, sat down in the presidential palace in Santiago opposite a large, bearded Englishman named Stafford Beer.
Allende, a committed socialist, had been in power for a year, during which he had unleashed a wave of expropriations and populist measures that threatened massive inflation. The economy was in turmoil. Beer, the eccentric founder of "cybernetic management," had come to lay out a master plan for control of the rapidly expanding nationalized sector of the Chilean economy. On a sheet of paper, Beer drew the "neurological" basis for his system. Allende, who had trained as a doctor, reportedly "immediately grasped the biological inspiration behind Beer's cybernetic model and knowingly nodded throughout the explanation."
Beer sketched his "viable system model" based on five hierarchic levels. After he had drawn the top "box," he declared theatrically: "And this, companero presidente, is you." Allende leaned back and with a broad smile said: "At last, the people."
Two years after his first meeting with Beer, Allende was killed during the coup that installed the dictatorship of Augusto Pinochet.
He has since become an icon for crushed socialist dreams. This view is reflected in Naomi Klein's recent book, The Shock Doctrine. Strangely, however, Ms. Klein makes no mention of Stafford Beer, who provides valuable insight into what "socialist control" looks like in practice. Ms. Klein's oversight is especially puzzling since Stafford Beer's story has a strong Canadian angle. In 1973, he gave the CBC Massey lectures with the telling title: Designing Freedom. He lived much of the latter part of his life in Toronto, and consulted to several levels of Canadian government.
Leftist commentators such as Ms. Klein persistently claim that socialism
has "never really been tried." Those countries that called themselves socialist or Communist were always either repressive perversions of the ideal, or were thwarted by the dark machinations of their capitalist enemies. The latter is the conventional leftist take on Chile, and certainly has an element of truth. The U.S. companies that Allende expropriated indeed ran to Washington, which sought to undermine his regime. However, the left inevitably fails to put enough emphasis on the role of Allende's own policies in destroying the Chilean economy. While his Keynesian delusions and reflexive grab for assets would have been damaging enough, they were as nothing compared with the regime's naivete in supporting Beer's "Project Cybersyn," (a word formed from melding "cybernetics" and "synergy.")
Beer was a larger-than-life character, a polymath who dabbled in Eastern religions, poetry and painting. He was also a well-known management consultant who had previously held senior positions in the British steel and the publishing industry. Beer was a specialist in operations research (OR), the study of organizing systems to produce the required results, and had melded OR with cybernetics, the science of control mechanisms which had been founded by Norbert Weiner. Above all, however, Beer was a committed socialist.
Beer's Cybersyn utilized a network of telex machines that ran the length of Chile. These theoretically provided the real-time data from state factories and mines that would then be fed into a specially programmed central computer. The whole operation would be overseen from a control module, the "Opsroom," that resembled the deck of the starship Enterprise. There, seven controllers would act in a "symbiotic relationship" with the computer "to amplify their respective powers in one new synergy of enhanced intelligence." The seven would sit surrounded by numerous screens -- including an eight-by-four-foot master screen -- in ergonomically designed swivel chairs. These chairs' arms featured a series of knobs that the controllers would bash to control the commanding heights of the Chilean economy. The knob thumping was intended by Beer as part of the "drama" of cybernetic control: centralized government as performance art. (More practically, it was based on the assumption that the seven masters of the economy would be keyboard illiterate. Beer apparently didn't want women typists in the room.) Nationalized enterprises would be dynamically modelled in terms of "quantified flow-charts" that would give the central puppeteers all they needed to know. Glitches would be indicated by "algedonic signals."
True to solid socialist principles, this enormously elaborate system would, according to Beer, facilitate worker participation. How wasn't clear. The Russian and Cuban revolutions had somehow missed out on this "democratic" element, but Chile would be -- as with every socialist experiment -- "different." It wasn't.
Beer rejected accusations that his system was Orwellian, but was soon speaking the language of thinly veiled threats. Opposition was allegedly rooted in the "vindictiveness" of the "rich world." Media criticism was written off as part of a corporate plot. Those who had been expropriated had to "talk the new language [of cybernetic viability] or get out." Those who refused to leave were accused of "polarizing" society.
Cybersyn, not surprisingly, never became fully operational, and its only alleged success was in helping the government respond to a nationwide 1972 strike. But that was a very long way from running the public sector, much less an economy. Meanwhile, U.S. computer guru Herb Grosch wrote: "It is a good thing for humanity, and for Chile in particular, that [Cybersyn] is only a bad dream." (Beer got expressions of interest in his system from the repressive regimes in South Africa and Brazil).
What saved Cybersyn from descending into utter farce and/or totalitarian nightmare was the Pinochet coup. According to his credulous biographer, Beer subsequently wondered if the "success" of his experiment might havehastenedAllende's fall and the "demise of democracy."
Beer went off to live for some years in isolation in a cottage in Wales, then went back to consulting. In a speech he gave in 1990, he admitted-- while castigating the Thatcher and Reagan regimes -- that countries seemed to "go into chaos" as soon as he arrived. He died in 2002, apparently without ever grasping why.
Copyright © 2007 CanWest Interactive, a division of CanWest MediaWorks Publications, Inc.. All rights reserved.
Finally the National Post article:
Allende was no totalitarian
Simon Beer, National Post
Published: Saturday, March 29, 2008
As Stafford Beer's son, I was saddened to read Peter Foster's article of March 1, "Socialist dreams always turn totalitarian." Foster seems to have rather a poor grasp of the politics, economics and business management involved in President Salvador Allende's Chile in general and Stafford Beer's work in particular.
He misses the point about the "at last the people" anecdote. Stafford Beer ended with "… and this companero presidente ..." whereupon Allende finished the sentence for him "… at last -- the people." The point is that it wasn't about the president, but about the people. The way Foster writes it, it doesn't make any sense at all.
To claim the Chilean economy was in "turmoil" is fallacious. Allende's super-inflation model was a deliberate act. The premise being that if 5% of the population have all the money and 95% have none, then inflate the cost of everything and subsidize the poor, who receive food, clothing, education and housing for free. The rich meanwhile, have to pay $50 for a loaf of bread and don't even think about a mink coat. To claim this is "turmoil" shows a misunderstanding of the circumstance. Allende knew exactly what he was doing.
Foster's comment that "project Cybersyn never became fully operational" is demonstrably wrong. The distinguished Cybernetician Raul Espejo was responsible for the day-to-day running of the operations room with his colleagues until the American-backed coup d'etat put Pinochet in power, forcing Raul to escape to England. His colleagues? Well, some escaped, some were imprisoned and tortured and some were killed. So tell me again, Mr Foster, about socialist totalitarianism.
Foster quotes Herb Grosch (who knew nothing about what took place or was achieved in Chile). Perhaps Henry Kissinger, who played such a big part in Allende's death, would have been more apposite: "I don't see why we need to stand by and watch a country go communist due to the irresponsibility of its people. The issues are much too important for the Chilean voters to be left to decide for themselves."
It wasn't Allende, a democratically elected president, remember, who herded people into the national stadium and machine-gunned them, it was America's puppet dictator Augusto Pinochet. Pinochet (with the help and support of the American State Department and the CIA), tortured and murdered many thousands of Chilean people for which he would be harangued as a war criminal until death saved him even greater public ignominy. Foster's premise that socialism turns to totalitarianism seems weak in the extreme when using Allende's Chile as a paradigm. Chile produced most of the world's copper; America wanted it. The Chilean government was truly "thwarted by the dark machinations of their capitalist enemies," despite Foster's assertion to the contrary.
Foster suggests "the left inevitably fails to put enough emphasis on the role of Allende's own policies in destroying the Chilean economy." Not surprising, really. The fact that these policies were outside the American accounting norm may be hard for Foster to understand, but then, I suggest his understanding of the whole project is, at best, a little weak.
The summation of Stafford Beer's life, with its paucity of information, is rather akin to suggesting that Kennedy was a man who liked women, dabbled in politics and died. Stafford Beer was indeed a polymath. His books on Cybernetics and decision-making in management are read and respected around the world. Cybernetics is now an international business philosophy. If you enter Stafford Beer into Google, you get 137,000 references. To deride him for his politics is both irrelevant and asinine.
Foster reveals his lack of understanding of the interconnected telex machines that ran the length of Chile, "theoretically" providing real-time data. "Theory" becomes "reality" once the system is working.
And work it did. As for the operations room, he totally misses the point yet again because he fails to understand how the chairs worked. Beer proved that "girls working at keyboards" were not necessary to input data into the system. This could all be achieved by the controls in the arm of the chair: a whole new concept of system control in 1972. That was why "girls working at keyboards" were not required. It wasn't some misogynist plot. Foster describes Cybersyn as "an enormously elaborate system," yet in truth, Cybersyn was a deceptively simple system offering democratic inputs at every point along the operational chain. There were literally thousands of inputs, filtered so that the data weren't overwhelming. Had Foster understood the Cybersyn system, he would have known this.
Foster isn't always wrong, "…Chile would be -- as with every socialist experiment --different. It wasn't."
How true. It was the American politicians and their military, coupled with the CIA and Pinochet, that guaranteed that it wouldn't be.
Foster suggests that Stafford Beer expressed the view that criticism of Cybersyn was part of a "corporate plot." On the contrary, Beer understood corporate inadequacy and its inability to function as a viable system. He wrote many books on the subject. The corporate world would have been incapable of organizing such a plot. More likely, he riled against ill-informed members of the press, writing simplistic text about matters that they didn't understand and couldn't be bothered to adequately research.
Quod erat demonstrandum, Mr. Foster.
Perhaps we should leave the last word to Henry Kissinger, that champion of freedom-loving people everywhere: "The illegal we do immediately, the unconstitutional takes a little longer." - Simon Beer is Stafford Beer's son.
Copyright © 2007 CanWest Interactive, a division of CanWest MediaWorks Publications, Inc.. All rights reserved
--
Progressives for Obama
More rah rah rah for Obama. Tom Hayden must be as ancient as I am by now. I really don't see any sense at all of progressives or radicals spending much time working within the two major parties except to expose them as vehicles for maintaining the status quo. Perhaps the Obamamania helps Hayden relive his youth. I wonder where Hayden thinks a lot of Obama's money comes from? Does he think those big bad corporations shun him like the plague? What of the military contractors? Do they hate Obama because he wants to increase the already huge U.S. military?
Of course capital would probably on the whole prefer McCain but as sensible investors in the system they will hedge their bets.
Click here to return to the browser-optimized version of this page.
This article can be found on the web at
http://www.thenation.com/doc/20080407/hayden_et_al
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Progressives for Obama
by TOM HAYDEN, BILL FLETCHER JR., DANNY GLOVER & BARBARA EHRENREICH
[posted online on March 24, 2008]
All American progressives should unite for Barack Obama. We descend from the proud tradition of independent social movements that have made America a more just and democratic country. We believe that the movement today supporting Barack Obama continues this great tradition of grassroots participation, drawing millions of people out of apathy and into participation in the decisions that affect all our lives. We believe that Barack Obama's very biography reflects the positive potential of the globalization process that also contains such grave threats to our democracy when shaped only by the narrow interests of private corporations in an unregulated global marketplace. We should instead be globalizing the values of equality, a living wage and environmental sustainability in the new world order, not hoping our deepest concerns will be protected by trickle-down economics or charitable billionaires. By its very existence, the Obama campaign will stimulate a vision of globalization from below.
As progressives, we believe this sudden and unexpected new movement is just what America needs. The future has arrived. The alternative would mean a return to the dismal status quo party politics that has failed so far to deliver peace, healthcare, full employment and effective answers to crises like global warming.
During past progressive peaks in our political history--the late thirties, the early sixties--social movements have provided the relentless pressure and innovative ideas that allowed centrist leaders to embrace visionary solutions. We find ourselves in just such a situation today.
We intend to join and engage with our brothers and sisters in the vast rainbow of social movements to come together in support of Obama's unprecedented campaign and candidacy. Even though it is candidate-centered, there is no doubt that the campaign is a social movement, one greater than the candidate himself ever imagined.
Progressives can make a difference in close primary races like Pennsylvania, North Carolina, Oregon and Puerto Rico and in the November general election. We can contribute our dollars. We have the proven online capacity to reach millions of swing voters in the primary and general election. We can and will defend Obama against negative attacks from any quarter. We will seek Green support against the claim of some that there are no real differences between Obama and McCain. We will criticize any efforts by Democratic superdelegates to suppress the winner of the popular and delegate votes, or to legitimize the flawed elections in Michigan and Florida. We will make our agenda known at the Democratic National Convention and fight for a platform emphasizing progressive priorities as the path to victory.
Obama's March 18 speech on racism was as great a speech as ever given by a presidential candidate, revealing a philosophical depth, personal authenticity, and political intelligence that should convince any but the hardest of ideologues that he carries unmatched leadership potentials for overcoming the divide-and-conquer tactics that have sundered Americans since the first slaves arrived here in chains.
Only words? What words they were.
However, the fact that Barack Obama openly defines himself as a centrist invites the formation of this progressive force within his coalition. Anything less could allow his eventual drift towards the right as the general election approaches. It was the industrial strikes and radical organizers in the 1930s who pushed Roosevelt to support the New Deal. It was the civil rights and student movements that brought about voting rights legislation under Lyndon Johnson and propelled Eugene McCarthy and Bobby Kennedy's antiwar campaigns. It was the original Earth Day that led Richard Nixon to sign environmental laws. And it will be the Obama movement that will make it necessary and possible to end the war in Iraq, renew our economy with a populist emphasis, and confront the challenge of global warming.
We should not only keep the pressure on but also connect the issues that Barack Obama has made central to his campaign into an overarching progressive vision.
• The Iraq War must end as rapidly as possible, not in five years.
All our troops must be withdrawn. Diplomacy and trade must replace further military occupation or military escalation into Iran and Pakistan. We should not stop urging Barack Obama to avoid leaving American advisers behind in Iraq in a counterinsurgency quagmire like Afghanistan today or Central America in the 1970s and 1980s. Nor should he simply transfer American combat troops from the quagmire in Iraq to the quagmire in Afghanistan.
• Iraq cannot be separated from our economic crisis.
Iraq is costing trillions of dollars that should be invested in jobs, universal healthcare, education, housing and public works here at home. Our own Gulf Coast requires the attention and funds now spent on Gulf oil.
• Iraq cannot be separated from our energy crisis.
We are spending an unheard-of $100/barrel for oil. We are officially committed to wars over oil supplies far into the future. We instead need a war against global warming and for energy independence from Middle Eastern police states and multinational corporations.
Progressives should support Obama's sixteen-month combat troop withdrawal plan in comparison to Clinton's open-ended one, and demand that both candidates avoid a slide into four more years of low-visibility counterinsurgency.
The Democratic candidates should listen more to the blunt advice of the voters instead of the timid talk of their national security advisers. Two-thirds of American voters, and a much higher percentage of Democrats, oppose this war and favor withdrawal in less than two years, nearly half of them in less than one year. The same percentage believe the war has had a negative effect on life in the United States, while only 15 percent believe the war has been positive. Without this solid peace sentiment, neither Obama nor Clinton would be taking the stands they do today.
Further, the battered and abused people of Iraq favor an American withdrawal by a 70 percent margin.
The American government's arrogant defiance of these strong popular majorities in both America and Iraq should be ended this November by a powerful peace mandate.
The profound transition from the policies of the past will not be easy, and fortunately the Obama campaign is lifted by the fresh wind of change. We seek not only to change the faces in high places, however, but to save our country from slow death by greed, status quo politics and loss of vision. The status quo cannot stand much longer, neither that of politics-as-usual nor that of our security, energy and economic policies. We are stealing from the next generation's future, and living on borrowed time.
The Bush Administration has replaced the cold war with the "war on terrorism," led by the same military-industrial complex that President Eisenhower warned against. The reality and public fear of terrorism today is no less real than fear of communism and nuclear annihilation a generation ago. But we simply cannot continue multiple military interventions in many Muslim countries without increasing the vast number of violent jihadists against us, bleeding our military and our economy, becoming more dependent on Middle East oil, creating unsavory alliances with police states, shrinking our own civil liberties and putting ourselves at permanent risk of another 9/11 attack.
We need a brave turn towards peace and conflict resolution in the Middle East and the Muslim world. Getting out of Iraq, sponsoring a two-state solution between Israel and the Palestinians, ending alliances with police states in the Arab world, unilaterally initiating real energy independence and moving the world away from the global warming crises are the steps that must be taken.
Nor can we impose NAFTA-style trade agreements on so many nations that seek only to control their own national resources and economic destinies. We cannot globalize corporate and financial power over democratic values and institutions. Since the Clinton Administration pushed through NAFTA against the Democratic majority in Congress, one Latin American nation after another has elected progressive governments that reject US trade deals and hegemony. We are isolated in Latin America by our cold war and drug war crusades, by the $500 million counterinsurgency in Columbia, support for the 2002 coup attempt in Venezuela and the ineffectual blockade of Cuba. We need to return to the Good Neighbor policies of Franklin D. Roosevelt, policies that rejected Yankee military intervention and accepted Mexico's right to nationalize its oil in the face of industry opposition. The pursuit of NAFTA-style trade policies inflames our immigration crisis as well, by uprooting countless campesinos who inevitably seek low-wage jobs north of the border in order to survive. We need balanced and democratically approved trade agreements that focus on the needs of workers, consumers and the environment. The Banana Republic is a retail chain, not an American colony protected by the Monroe Doctrine.
We are pleased that Hillary Clinton has been responsive to the tide of voter opinion this year, and we applaud the possibility of at last electing an American woman President. But progressives should be disturbed by her duplicitous positions on Iraq and NAFTA. She still denies that her 2002 vote for legislation that was called the war authorization bill was a vote for war authorization. She now promises to "end the war" but will not set a timeline for combat troop withdrawal, and remains committed to leaving tens of thousands of counter-terrorism troops and trainers in Iraq amidst a sectarian conflict. While Obama needs to clarify his own position on counterinsurgency, Clinton's "end the war" rhetoric conceals an open commitment to keep American troops in Iraq until all our ill-defined enemies are defeated--a treadmill that guarantees only the spawning of more enemies. On NAFTA, she claims to have opposed the trade deal behind closed doors when she was first lady. But the public record, and documents recently disclosed in response to litigation, prove that she was a cheerleader for NAFTA against the strong opposition of rank-and-file Democrats. The Clintons ushered in the Wall Street Democrats whose deregulation ethos has widened inequality while leaving millions of Americans without their rightful protections against market shocks.
Clinton's most bizarre claim is that Obama is unqualified to be commander-in-chief. Clinton herself never served in the military, and has no experience in the armed services apart from the Senate armed services committee. Her husband had no military experience before becoming President. In fact, he was a draft opponent during Vietnam, a stance we respected. She was the first lady, and he the governor, of one of our smallest states. They brought no more experience, and arguably less, to the White House than Obama would in 2009.
We take very seriously the argument that Americans should elect a first woman President, and we abhor the surfacing of sexism in this supposedly post-feminist era. But none of us would vote for Condoleezza Rice as either the first woman or first African-American President. We regret that the choice divides so many progressive friends and allies, but believe that a Hillary Clinton presidency would be a Clinton presidency all over again, not a triumph of feminism but a restoration of the aging, power-driven Wall Street Democratic hawks at a moment when so much more fresh imagination is possible and needed. A Clinton victory could only be achieved by the dashing of hope among millions of young people on whom a better future depends. The style of the Clintons' attacks on Obama, which are likely to escalate as her chances of winning decline, already risks losing too many Democratic and independent voters in November. We believe that the Hillary Clinton of 1968 would be an Obama volunteer today, just as she once marched in the snows of New Hampshire for Eugene McCarthy against the Democratic establishment.
We did not foresee the exciting social movement that is the Obama campaign. Many of us supported other candidates, or waited skeptically as weeks and months passed. But the closeness of the race makes it imperative that everyone on the sidelines, everyone in doubt, everyone vascillating, everyone fearing betrayals and the blasting of hope, everyone quarreling over political correctness, must join this fight to the finish. Not since Robert Kennedy's 1968 campaign has there been a passion to imagine the world anew like the passion and unprecedented numbers of people mobilized in this campaign. For more information, go to progressivesforobama.blogspot.com.
Of course capital would probably on the whole prefer McCain but as sensible investors in the system they will hedge their bets.
Click here to return to the browser-optimized version of this page.
This article can be found on the web at
http://www.thenation.com/doc/20080407/hayden_et_al
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Progressives for Obama
by TOM HAYDEN, BILL FLETCHER JR., DANNY GLOVER & BARBARA EHRENREICH
[posted online on March 24, 2008]
All American progressives should unite for Barack Obama. We descend from the proud tradition of independent social movements that have made America a more just and democratic country. We believe that the movement today supporting Barack Obama continues this great tradition of grassroots participation, drawing millions of people out of apathy and into participation in the decisions that affect all our lives. We believe that Barack Obama's very biography reflects the positive potential of the globalization process that also contains such grave threats to our democracy when shaped only by the narrow interests of private corporations in an unregulated global marketplace. We should instead be globalizing the values of equality, a living wage and environmental sustainability in the new world order, not hoping our deepest concerns will be protected by trickle-down economics or charitable billionaires. By its very existence, the Obama campaign will stimulate a vision of globalization from below.
As progressives, we believe this sudden and unexpected new movement is just what America needs. The future has arrived. The alternative would mean a return to the dismal status quo party politics that has failed so far to deliver peace, healthcare, full employment and effective answers to crises like global warming.
During past progressive peaks in our political history--the late thirties, the early sixties--social movements have provided the relentless pressure and innovative ideas that allowed centrist leaders to embrace visionary solutions. We find ourselves in just such a situation today.
We intend to join and engage with our brothers and sisters in the vast rainbow of social movements to come together in support of Obama's unprecedented campaign and candidacy. Even though it is candidate-centered, there is no doubt that the campaign is a social movement, one greater than the candidate himself ever imagined.
Progressives can make a difference in close primary races like Pennsylvania, North Carolina, Oregon and Puerto Rico and in the November general election. We can contribute our dollars. We have the proven online capacity to reach millions of swing voters in the primary and general election. We can and will defend Obama against negative attacks from any quarter. We will seek Green support against the claim of some that there are no real differences between Obama and McCain. We will criticize any efforts by Democratic superdelegates to suppress the winner of the popular and delegate votes, or to legitimize the flawed elections in Michigan and Florida. We will make our agenda known at the Democratic National Convention and fight for a platform emphasizing progressive priorities as the path to victory.
Obama's March 18 speech on racism was as great a speech as ever given by a presidential candidate, revealing a philosophical depth, personal authenticity, and political intelligence that should convince any but the hardest of ideologues that he carries unmatched leadership potentials for overcoming the divide-and-conquer tactics that have sundered Americans since the first slaves arrived here in chains.
Only words? What words they were.
However, the fact that Barack Obama openly defines himself as a centrist invites the formation of this progressive force within his coalition. Anything less could allow his eventual drift towards the right as the general election approaches. It was the industrial strikes and radical organizers in the 1930s who pushed Roosevelt to support the New Deal. It was the civil rights and student movements that brought about voting rights legislation under Lyndon Johnson and propelled Eugene McCarthy and Bobby Kennedy's antiwar campaigns. It was the original Earth Day that led Richard Nixon to sign environmental laws. And it will be the Obama movement that will make it necessary and possible to end the war in Iraq, renew our economy with a populist emphasis, and confront the challenge of global warming.
We should not only keep the pressure on but also connect the issues that Barack Obama has made central to his campaign into an overarching progressive vision.
• The Iraq War must end as rapidly as possible, not in five years.
All our troops must be withdrawn. Diplomacy and trade must replace further military occupation or military escalation into Iran and Pakistan. We should not stop urging Barack Obama to avoid leaving American advisers behind in Iraq in a counterinsurgency quagmire like Afghanistan today or Central America in the 1970s and 1980s. Nor should he simply transfer American combat troops from the quagmire in Iraq to the quagmire in Afghanistan.
• Iraq cannot be separated from our economic crisis.
Iraq is costing trillions of dollars that should be invested in jobs, universal healthcare, education, housing and public works here at home. Our own Gulf Coast requires the attention and funds now spent on Gulf oil.
• Iraq cannot be separated from our energy crisis.
We are spending an unheard-of $100/barrel for oil. We are officially committed to wars over oil supplies far into the future. We instead need a war against global warming and for energy independence from Middle Eastern police states and multinational corporations.
Progressives should support Obama's sixteen-month combat troop withdrawal plan in comparison to Clinton's open-ended one, and demand that both candidates avoid a slide into four more years of low-visibility counterinsurgency.
The Democratic candidates should listen more to the blunt advice of the voters instead of the timid talk of their national security advisers. Two-thirds of American voters, and a much higher percentage of Democrats, oppose this war and favor withdrawal in less than two years, nearly half of them in less than one year. The same percentage believe the war has had a negative effect on life in the United States, while only 15 percent believe the war has been positive. Without this solid peace sentiment, neither Obama nor Clinton would be taking the stands they do today.
Further, the battered and abused people of Iraq favor an American withdrawal by a 70 percent margin.
The American government's arrogant defiance of these strong popular majorities in both America and Iraq should be ended this November by a powerful peace mandate.
The profound transition from the policies of the past will not be easy, and fortunately the Obama campaign is lifted by the fresh wind of change. We seek not only to change the faces in high places, however, but to save our country from slow death by greed, status quo politics and loss of vision. The status quo cannot stand much longer, neither that of politics-as-usual nor that of our security, energy and economic policies. We are stealing from the next generation's future, and living on borrowed time.
The Bush Administration has replaced the cold war with the "war on terrorism," led by the same military-industrial complex that President Eisenhower warned against. The reality and public fear of terrorism today is no less real than fear of communism and nuclear annihilation a generation ago. But we simply cannot continue multiple military interventions in many Muslim countries without increasing the vast number of violent jihadists against us, bleeding our military and our economy, becoming more dependent on Middle East oil, creating unsavory alliances with police states, shrinking our own civil liberties and putting ourselves at permanent risk of another 9/11 attack.
We need a brave turn towards peace and conflict resolution in the Middle East and the Muslim world. Getting out of Iraq, sponsoring a two-state solution between Israel and the Palestinians, ending alliances with police states in the Arab world, unilaterally initiating real energy independence and moving the world away from the global warming crises are the steps that must be taken.
Nor can we impose NAFTA-style trade agreements on so many nations that seek only to control their own national resources and economic destinies. We cannot globalize corporate and financial power over democratic values and institutions. Since the Clinton Administration pushed through NAFTA against the Democratic majority in Congress, one Latin American nation after another has elected progressive governments that reject US trade deals and hegemony. We are isolated in Latin America by our cold war and drug war crusades, by the $500 million counterinsurgency in Columbia, support for the 2002 coup attempt in Venezuela and the ineffectual blockade of Cuba. We need to return to the Good Neighbor policies of Franklin D. Roosevelt, policies that rejected Yankee military intervention and accepted Mexico's right to nationalize its oil in the face of industry opposition. The pursuit of NAFTA-style trade policies inflames our immigration crisis as well, by uprooting countless campesinos who inevitably seek low-wage jobs north of the border in order to survive. We need balanced and democratically approved trade agreements that focus on the needs of workers, consumers and the environment. The Banana Republic is a retail chain, not an American colony protected by the Monroe Doctrine.
We are pleased that Hillary Clinton has been responsive to the tide of voter opinion this year, and we applaud the possibility of at last electing an American woman President. But progressives should be disturbed by her duplicitous positions on Iraq and NAFTA. She still denies that her 2002 vote for legislation that was called the war authorization bill was a vote for war authorization. She now promises to "end the war" but will not set a timeline for combat troop withdrawal, and remains committed to leaving tens of thousands of counter-terrorism troops and trainers in Iraq amidst a sectarian conflict. While Obama needs to clarify his own position on counterinsurgency, Clinton's "end the war" rhetoric conceals an open commitment to keep American troops in Iraq until all our ill-defined enemies are defeated--a treadmill that guarantees only the spawning of more enemies. On NAFTA, she claims to have opposed the trade deal behind closed doors when she was first lady. But the public record, and documents recently disclosed in response to litigation, prove that she was a cheerleader for NAFTA against the strong opposition of rank-and-file Democrats. The Clintons ushered in the Wall Street Democrats whose deregulation ethos has widened inequality while leaving millions of Americans without their rightful protections against market shocks.
Clinton's most bizarre claim is that Obama is unqualified to be commander-in-chief. Clinton herself never served in the military, and has no experience in the armed services apart from the Senate armed services committee. Her husband had no military experience before becoming President. In fact, he was a draft opponent during Vietnam, a stance we respected. She was the first lady, and he the governor, of one of our smallest states. They brought no more experience, and arguably less, to the White House than Obama would in 2009.
We take very seriously the argument that Americans should elect a first woman President, and we abhor the surfacing of sexism in this supposedly post-feminist era. But none of us would vote for Condoleezza Rice as either the first woman or first African-American President. We regret that the choice divides so many progressive friends and allies, but believe that a Hillary Clinton presidency would be a Clinton presidency all over again, not a triumph of feminism but a restoration of the aging, power-driven Wall Street Democratic hawks at a moment when so much more fresh imagination is possible and needed. A Clinton victory could only be achieved by the dashing of hope among millions of young people on whom a better future depends. The style of the Clintons' attacks on Obama, which are likely to escalate as her chances of winning decline, already risks losing too many Democratic and independent voters in November. We believe that the Hillary Clinton of 1968 would be an Obama volunteer today, just as she once marched in the snows of New Hampshire for Eugene McCarthy against the Democratic establishment.
We did not foresee the exciting social movement that is the Obama campaign. Many of us supported other candidates, or waited skeptically as weeks and months passed. But the closeness of the race makes it imperative that everyone on the sidelines, everyone in doubt, everyone vascillating, everyone fearing betrayals and the blasting of hope, everyone quarreling over political correctness, must join this fight to the finish. Not since Robert Kennedy's 1968 campaign has there been a passion to imagine the world anew like the passion and unprecedented numbers of people mobilized in this campaign. For more information, go to progressivesforobama.blogspot.com.
FBI eyes militarization in Philippines.
This is from presstv.The U.S. has still managed to keep the Philippines within the U.S. orbit with operations such as these. There are close links between the AFP and the U.S. military including aid in the form of military equipment. The U.S. is concerned about increasing ties with China (and Vietnam) including the Spratly oil exploration deal. However the U.S. itself as far as foreign investment is concerned has plenty of investment in China and increasingly in Vietnam as well.
Because of the presence of the Maoist insurgency and radical Islamic groups in the Philippines the U.S. has involved itself in the Philipppines under the cover of the war on terror or officially to help (or hinder) the Philippine government.
FBI eyes militarization in Philippines?
Wed, 26 Mar 2008 20:47:31
US Federal Bureau of Investigation launches a six-month training program for police and military personnel in southern Philippines.
"The FBI experts and instructors are now in Jolo to extend support to the intelligence group of the military and national police," AFP quoted provincial police chief Senior Superintendent Julasirim Kasim as saying.
Although the 'intensive' six-month counter-intelligence training program is said to be aimed at easing the hunt for Abu Sayyaf and Jemaah Islamiyah (JI) rebels, pundits believe the US intends to increase its military presence in southeastern Asia to temper China's influence throughout the region.
China's recent military and economic boom has been a cause for concern in Washington which has called on Beijing to clarify the intentions behind its military build-up.
Because of the presence of the Maoist insurgency and radical Islamic groups in the Philippines the U.S. has involved itself in the Philipppines under the cover of the war on terror or officially to help (or hinder) the Philippine government.
FBI eyes militarization in Philippines?
Wed, 26 Mar 2008 20:47:31
US Federal Bureau of Investigation launches a six-month training program for police and military personnel in southern Philippines.
"The FBI experts and instructors are now in Jolo to extend support to the intelligence group of the military and national police," AFP quoted provincial police chief Senior Superintendent Julasirim Kasim as saying.
Although the 'intensive' six-month counter-intelligence training program is said to be aimed at easing the hunt for Abu Sayyaf and Jemaah Islamiyah (JI) rebels, pundits believe the US intends to increase its military presence in southeastern Asia to temper China's influence throughout the region.
China's recent military and economic boom has been a cause for concern in Washington which has called on Beijing to clarify the intentions behind its military build-up.
Friday, March 28, 2008
The Philippine American War: Waterboarding
This is from the Inquirer. Obviously waterboarding is not a new torture method or even new to Americans. The article draws some interesting parallels to the war in Iraq even noting that the American public became rather indifferent to the conflict or at least the reporting of atrocities.
By Michael Tan
Columnist
Philippine Daily Inquirer
Posted date: March 28, 2008
MANILA, Philippines—In the year 1902, the Philippines was very much in the Americans' public consciousness, much like Iraq is today. America's adventure in the Philippines began in 1898, when it went to war against Spain. Commodore George Dewey sailed into the Manila Bay on May 1, 1898, and quickly defeated the already demoralized Spanish forces. Spain had its hands full in the islands, with Filipino revolutionaries fighting for independence and was probably only too happy to unload the Philippines, together with Guam and Costa Rica, to the Americans through the Treaty of Paris.
But trouble was already brewing when the Treaty of Paris was ratified by the US Senate in February 1899. Only two days before the ratification, hostilities had broken out in Manila when an American patrol was supposedly attacked by a band of Filipino insurgents. The Philippine-American War erupted and more American soldiers had to be sent to the islands.
Within a few weeks after the Philippine-American War broke out, allegations of US military atrocities began to appear in the United States. In April 1899, a New York newspaper, the Evening Post, carried reports of a massacre of Filipino prisoners in Caloocan. Then, as today in Iraq, such reports often came from conscience-stricken American soldiers, who would request anonymity. The Evening Post ran into trouble because they could not bring out the soldiers and eventually had to retract.
But the letters continued and more American newspapers picked up on these reports. Most disturbing were reports of the use of the "water cure," large amounts of water forced into prisoners to extract confessions. There were so many reports of this torture that eventually, the US Senate had to launch an inquiry into the behavior of American soldiers in the Philippines. The hearings began on Jan. 31, 1902, and were conducted by the Senate's Committee on the Philippines, headed by Henry Cabot Lodge.
The Committee's members were largely biased in favor of the American occupation of the Philippines but enough evidence was presented in the hearings, about the water cure, "reconcentration" camps and outright massacres, to bring out public condemnation of the war. Last Wednesday I gave some of the details about those hearings and said I'd continue this Friday and tell you what came out of the Lodge Committee hearings.
The hearings put the American military on the defensive. It supplied witnesses who claimed that the instances of military misconduct were isolated. William Howard Taft, who had been assigned to the Philippines, even argued that the Filipinos themselves sometimes asked to be tortured, so that if they gave away information about their comrades, they could claim this was forced out of them.
Other American soldiers testified that the Filipino insurgents also had their share of atrocities. Former Sgt. L. E. Hallock said they had used the water cure after one of their men had been captured and then tortured to death by roasting. Other American soldiers testified that the water cure was inflicted mainly by Macabebes, Filipinos recruited from Pampanga, to serve as interpreters and scouts for the Americans.
Again, as with Iraq, war was cruel for both sides, and one can imagine how difficult it was for American soldiers to understand the Philippines and Filipinos. What was clear though was that many of the Americans were goaded on by racism. A Gen. Robert Hughes, asked if the military's behavior in the Philippines came under the "limits of civilized warfare," replied: "These people are not civilized."
Senator Lodge himself proposed that the misconduct had "grown out of the conditions of warfare, of the war that was waged by the Filipinos themselves, a semi-civilized people, with all the tendencies and characteristics of Asiatics, with the Asiatic indifference to life, with the Asiatic treachery and the Asiatic cruelty, all tinctured and increased by 300 years of subjection to Spain."
The hearings did result in some action. Capt. Edwin Glenn, accused of ordering the use of the water cure and the burning of Igbaras, Iloilo, was court-martialled. He asked that the hearings be conducted in Catbalogan, Samar, away from the "high state of excitement in the United States." The trial included testimony from Tobeniano Ealdama, Igbaras' presidente and a victim of the water cure. Glenn admitted that the water cure had become "the habitual method of obtaining information from individual insurgents" and that this was "a legitimate exercise of force under the laws of war."
Glenn was found guilty of "conduct to the prejudice of good order and military discipline," suspended for one month and ordered to pay a $50 fine. In 1919, he retired as brigadier general. Ealdama went back to prison, where he was serving a 10-year sentence of hard labor for his participation in the insurgency.
Another court martial was ordered for Gen. Jacob Smith, this one held in Manila. One of his officers had testified that "Hell-roaring Jake" had ordered troops to retaliate against the town of Balanginga in Samar for an ambush that resulted in the death of 48 US Army soldiers. Smith allegedly ordered: "the more you kill and burn, the better it will please me." Asked who they could spare, Smith was said to have commented that even a child of 10 could bear arms. Reports on the number of Balanginga's death toll vary, going up as high as 5,000.
Smith was found guilty, and his punishment consisted of a slight reprimand and early retirement.
The Lodge Committee hearings, and these court martials, may have served to defuse public anxieties, and eventually, the Americans grew tired of the news about the Philippines. As early as April 1902, one New York newspaper complained that readers were being served too much of "Philippine atrocities" for breakfast.
On July 4, 1902, President Theodore Roosevelt declared a victorious end to the Philippine Insurrection. Officially, there were no more insurgents, only "brigands" (bandits). The Lodge Committee officially declared an end to its inquiry on February 1903.
'Waterboarding'
It was not, however, the last we were to hear of the American military and the water cure. More than a century later, in fact just last month, an investigation into "waterboarding" began in the US Congress. The US Central Intelligence Agency's Michael Hayden argued that "Strapping a person to a surface, covering their face with cloth and pouring water on their face to imitate the sensation of drowning" could be used if "an unlawful combatant is possessing information that would help us prevent catastrophic loss of life of Americans or their allies." Hayden said they had used the method in 2002 and 2003 but only on three top al-Qaida suspects. The US attorney general, Michael Mukasey, said he would not open a criminal investigation into the CIA's use of waterboarding.
* * *
Email: mtan@inquirer.com.ph
^ Back to top
©Copyright 2001-2008 INQUIRER.net, An Inquirer Company
By Michael Tan
Columnist
Philippine Daily Inquirer
Posted date: March 28, 2008
MANILA, Philippines—In the year 1902, the Philippines was very much in the Americans' public consciousness, much like Iraq is today. America's adventure in the Philippines began in 1898, when it went to war against Spain. Commodore George Dewey sailed into the Manila Bay on May 1, 1898, and quickly defeated the already demoralized Spanish forces. Spain had its hands full in the islands, with Filipino revolutionaries fighting for independence and was probably only too happy to unload the Philippines, together with Guam and Costa Rica, to the Americans through the Treaty of Paris.
But trouble was already brewing when the Treaty of Paris was ratified by the US Senate in February 1899. Only two days before the ratification, hostilities had broken out in Manila when an American patrol was supposedly attacked by a band of Filipino insurgents. The Philippine-American War erupted and more American soldiers had to be sent to the islands.
Within a few weeks after the Philippine-American War broke out, allegations of US military atrocities began to appear in the United States. In April 1899, a New York newspaper, the Evening Post, carried reports of a massacre of Filipino prisoners in Caloocan. Then, as today in Iraq, such reports often came from conscience-stricken American soldiers, who would request anonymity. The Evening Post ran into trouble because they could not bring out the soldiers and eventually had to retract.
But the letters continued and more American newspapers picked up on these reports. Most disturbing were reports of the use of the "water cure," large amounts of water forced into prisoners to extract confessions. There were so many reports of this torture that eventually, the US Senate had to launch an inquiry into the behavior of American soldiers in the Philippines. The hearings began on Jan. 31, 1902, and were conducted by the Senate's Committee on the Philippines, headed by Henry Cabot Lodge.
The Committee's members were largely biased in favor of the American occupation of the Philippines but enough evidence was presented in the hearings, about the water cure, "reconcentration" camps and outright massacres, to bring out public condemnation of the war. Last Wednesday I gave some of the details about those hearings and said I'd continue this Friday and tell you what came out of the Lodge Committee hearings.
The hearings put the American military on the defensive. It supplied witnesses who claimed that the instances of military misconduct were isolated. William Howard Taft, who had been assigned to the Philippines, even argued that the Filipinos themselves sometimes asked to be tortured, so that if they gave away information about their comrades, they could claim this was forced out of them.
Other American soldiers testified that the Filipino insurgents also had their share of atrocities. Former Sgt. L. E. Hallock said they had used the water cure after one of their men had been captured and then tortured to death by roasting. Other American soldiers testified that the water cure was inflicted mainly by Macabebes, Filipinos recruited from Pampanga, to serve as interpreters and scouts for the Americans.
Again, as with Iraq, war was cruel for both sides, and one can imagine how difficult it was for American soldiers to understand the Philippines and Filipinos. What was clear though was that many of the Americans were goaded on by racism. A Gen. Robert Hughes, asked if the military's behavior in the Philippines came under the "limits of civilized warfare," replied: "These people are not civilized."
Senator Lodge himself proposed that the misconduct had "grown out of the conditions of warfare, of the war that was waged by the Filipinos themselves, a semi-civilized people, with all the tendencies and characteristics of Asiatics, with the Asiatic indifference to life, with the Asiatic treachery and the Asiatic cruelty, all tinctured and increased by 300 years of subjection to Spain."
The hearings did result in some action. Capt. Edwin Glenn, accused of ordering the use of the water cure and the burning of Igbaras, Iloilo, was court-martialled. He asked that the hearings be conducted in Catbalogan, Samar, away from the "high state of excitement in the United States." The trial included testimony from Tobeniano Ealdama, Igbaras' presidente and a victim of the water cure. Glenn admitted that the water cure had become "the habitual method of obtaining information from individual insurgents" and that this was "a legitimate exercise of force under the laws of war."
Glenn was found guilty of "conduct to the prejudice of good order and military discipline," suspended for one month and ordered to pay a $50 fine. In 1919, he retired as brigadier general. Ealdama went back to prison, where he was serving a 10-year sentence of hard labor for his participation in the insurgency.
Another court martial was ordered for Gen. Jacob Smith, this one held in Manila. One of his officers had testified that "Hell-roaring Jake" had ordered troops to retaliate against the town of Balanginga in Samar for an ambush that resulted in the death of 48 US Army soldiers. Smith allegedly ordered: "the more you kill and burn, the better it will please me." Asked who they could spare, Smith was said to have commented that even a child of 10 could bear arms. Reports on the number of Balanginga's death toll vary, going up as high as 5,000.
Smith was found guilty, and his punishment consisted of a slight reprimand and early retirement.
The Lodge Committee hearings, and these court martials, may have served to defuse public anxieties, and eventually, the Americans grew tired of the news about the Philippines. As early as April 1902, one New York newspaper complained that readers were being served too much of "Philippine atrocities" for breakfast.
On July 4, 1902, President Theodore Roosevelt declared a victorious end to the Philippine Insurrection. Officially, there were no more insurgents, only "brigands" (bandits). The Lodge Committee officially declared an end to its inquiry on February 1903.
'Waterboarding'
It was not, however, the last we were to hear of the American military and the water cure. More than a century later, in fact just last month, an investigation into "waterboarding" began in the US Congress. The US Central Intelligence Agency's Michael Hayden argued that "Strapping a person to a surface, covering their face with cloth and pouring water on their face to imitate the sensation of drowning" could be used if "an unlawful combatant is possessing information that would help us prevent catastrophic loss of life of Americans or their allies." Hayden said they had used the method in 2002 and 2003 but only on three top al-Qaida suspects. The US attorney general, Michael Mukasey, said he would not open a criminal investigation into the CIA's use of waterboarding.
* * *
Email: mtan@inquirer.com.ph
^ Back to top
©Copyright 2001-2008 INQUIRER.net, An Inquirer Company
Is This the Big One..
This is an excerpt from a larger article in the Nation. The article gives a good summary of some of the financial instruments that gave rise to the crash near the end of this selection. How bad the recession will be remains to be seen. The government is not just sitting back and waiting for markets to turn around at least but whether the interventions will have much success is still moot. Pumping a lot of money into the economy could very well create problems with inflation. This is beginning to make itself obvious in the price of basic foodstuffs such as bread, and globally rice. This added to the cost of oil which is used to manufacture many products as well as to produce fuel will result in even more inflation. The expenditure on foreign military adventures will do nothing to help the situation except to create further debt.
http://www.thenation.com/doc/20080414/faux
Is This the Big One?
by JEFF FAUX
[from the April 14, 2008 issue]
For more than a decade, we Americans have been living on an economic
San Andreas fault--a foundation of fracturing competitiveness covered
by unsustainable consumer spending with money borrowed from
foreigners. A financial earthquake was inevitable. We don't know how
high on the recession Richter scale the current crisis will take us,
but it increasingly looks like, as they say in San Francisco, "The Big
One."
Since the last Big One, the Great Depression of the 1930s, we have
had eleven small to medium recessions, lasting an average of ten
months. The most severe--two back-to-back downturns that began in
1979--drove price increases and the unemployment rate to double digits.
We're not at those levels yet. But the structural supports underneath
our shop-till-we-drop economy are considerably weaker. For starters,
we have a historic depression in the housing market. Americans' total
mortgage debt now exceeds their home equity, for the first time since
1945. Housing prices have dropped 10 percent since last spring,
followed by record foreclosures. Most economists expect them to drop
at least another 10 percent, which could leave more than 14 million
households--at least 16 percent of the total--better off if they just
walked away from their homes. Prices could go even lower.
Until last year, housing prices in most places had risen rapidly
since the 1990s. This enabled middle-class homeowners with stagnant
wages and maxed-out credit cards to keep spending by refinancing
their mortgages. The housing boom also spawned the now infamous
subprime mortgage--a scheme devised by Main Street realtors and Wall
Street bankers to finance home buying with loans that let the
borrower buy in with little money down but carried high interest
rates. The expensive payments would be made later by refinancing the
mortgage as prices continued to rise. These subprimes were sold to
middle-class strivers upgrading to McMansions as well as to the working
poor.
The increased demand pushed housing prices further into the
stratosphere--until, inevitably, they fell back to earth. When the
subprime borrowers could no longer make their payments, foreclosure
signs went up, lowering the value of other houses in the
neighborhood. The refinancing spigot shut off, retail sales sputtered
and by January the economy was shedding jobs.
But it is not the squeeze on homeowners that is giving our central
bankers nightmares. It is the blowback of housing deflation on the
country's massively overleveraged financial markets, which has
seriously constricted the flow of credit--the lifeblood of the
world's largest debtor economy.
In a typical deal, subprime mortgages were sold to investment
companies, where they were commingled with prime mortgages to back up
new securities that could be touted as both safe and high-yielding.
This new debt paper was then peddled to investors, who used it as
collateral for "margin" loans to buy yet more stocks and bonds. At
each change of hands, fees and underwriting charges added to the
total claims on the original shaky mortgages. The result was a
frenzied bidding up of prices for a bewildering maze of arcane
securities that neither buyers nor sellers could accurately value.
Giant Ponzi scheme? Not to worry, responded the Wall Street geniuses.
By spreading risks among more people, the miracle of "diversity" was
actually turning bad loans into good ones. Anyway, banks were buying
insurance policies against default, which in turn were transformed
into a set of even murkier securities called "credit default swaps"
and marketed to hedge funds, pension managers and in some cases back
to the banks that were being insured in the first place. At the end
of 2007 the market for these swaps was estimated at $45.5
trillion--roughly twice as large as all US stock markets combined.
(clip)
http://www.thenation.com/doc/20080414/faux
Is This the Big One?
by JEFF FAUX
[from the April 14, 2008 issue]
For more than a decade, we Americans have been living on an economic
San Andreas fault--a foundation of fracturing competitiveness covered
by unsustainable consumer spending with money borrowed from
foreigners. A financial earthquake was inevitable. We don't know how
high on the recession Richter scale the current crisis will take us,
but it increasingly looks like, as they say in San Francisco, "The Big
One."
Since the last Big One, the Great Depression of the 1930s, we have
had eleven small to medium recessions, lasting an average of ten
months. The most severe--two back-to-back downturns that began in
1979--drove price increases and the unemployment rate to double digits.
We're not at those levels yet. But the structural supports underneath
our shop-till-we-drop economy are considerably weaker. For starters,
we have a historic depression in the housing market. Americans' total
mortgage debt now exceeds their home equity, for the first time since
1945. Housing prices have dropped 10 percent since last spring,
followed by record foreclosures. Most economists expect them to drop
at least another 10 percent, which could leave more than 14 million
households--at least 16 percent of the total--better off if they just
walked away from their homes. Prices could go even lower.
Until last year, housing prices in most places had risen rapidly
since the 1990s. This enabled middle-class homeowners with stagnant
wages and maxed-out credit cards to keep spending by refinancing
their mortgages. The housing boom also spawned the now infamous
subprime mortgage--a scheme devised by Main Street realtors and Wall
Street bankers to finance home buying with loans that let the
borrower buy in with little money down but carried high interest
rates. The expensive payments would be made later by refinancing the
mortgage as prices continued to rise. These subprimes were sold to
middle-class strivers upgrading to McMansions as well as to the working
poor.
The increased demand pushed housing prices further into the
stratosphere--until, inevitably, they fell back to earth. When the
subprime borrowers could no longer make their payments, foreclosure
signs went up, lowering the value of other houses in the
neighborhood. The refinancing spigot shut off, retail sales sputtered
and by January the economy was shedding jobs.
But it is not the squeeze on homeowners that is giving our central
bankers nightmares. It is the blowback of housing deflation on the
country's massively overleveraged financial markets, which has
seriously constricted the flow of credit--the lifeblood of the
world's largest debtor economy.
In a typical deal, subprime mortgages were sold to investment
companies, where they were commingled with prime mortgages to back up
new securities that could be touted as both safe and high-yielding.
This new debt paper was then peddled to investors, who used it as
collateral for "margin" loans to buy yet more stocks and bonds. At
each change of hands, fees and underwriting charges added to the
total claims on the original shaky mortgages. The result was a
frenzied bidding up of prices for a bewildering maze of arcane
securities that neither buyers nor sellers could accurately value.
Giant Ponzi scheme? Not to worry, responded the Wall Street geniuses.
By spreading risks among more people, the miracle of "diversity" was
actually turning bad loans into good ones. Anyway, banks were buying
insurance policies against default, which in turn were transformed
into a set of even murkier securities called "credit default swaps"
and marketed to hedge funds, pension managers and in some cases back
to the banks that were being insured in the first place. At the end
of 2007 the market for these swaps was estimated at $45.5
trillion--roughly twice as large as all US stock markets combined.
(clip)
Subprime Fallout in Germany
This is from Der Spiegel. The fallout from the sub-prime debacle is global as banks around the world purchased the securities involved in the belief that they were safe and sound.
As the article mentions, by some estimates German banks stand to lose 111 billion U.S. dollars.
SUBPRIME FALLOUT
German Banks Could Hemorrhage 70 Billion Euros
The fallout in Germany from exposure to America's subprime crisis may turn out to be far bigger than previously feared. One major newspaper is putting estimated losses at a whopping 70 billion euros, while a prominent politician warns that the US recession has already arrived in Germany.
DPA
German Economics Minister Michael Glos is confident that the German economy will weather the global financial crisis with flying colours.
German banking executives fear the current financial crisis (more...) is quickly shaping up to be the worst since 1929. In its Friday edition, mass-circulation daily Bild newspaper cites banking insiders who predict that total losses at German banks from the American subprime mortgage loan crisis could hit the €70-billion ($111 billion) mark.
The paper reports that Germany's banking supervisory authority BaFin has calculated the total volume of high-risk investments made by the country's banks. "Now we have an overview of what's going on," a BaFin spokeswoman told the newspaper. "The figures are reliable." The agency, however, is keeping the data classified.
On Friday, Bavarian governor Günther Beckstein said the state's BayernLB bank would announce losses related to the credit crisis of up to €4 billion -- double the €1.9 billion figure the bank had previously disclosed. The announcement is sure to place additional pressure on government figures in the state who have been accused of trying to play down the magnitude of the bank's red ink flow.
Bild also reports it has obtained information suggesting that state-led bailouts will continue for German banks hit hardest by the subprime crisis. The paper claims that the country's third-largest regional bank, WestLB -- which has been kept alive (more...) with injections from the state of North Rhine-Westphalia -- will soon be requiring an additional €2-billion lifeline. Meanwhile, IKB Deutsche Industriebank AG bank,which has already received a billion-euro bailout (more...), will be draining a further billion euros from the public purse, bringing its total rescue package so far to €8 billion. Globally, the Bank for International Settlements is reporting that banks had already written off losses to the tune of €150 billion by the end of January.
"The American recession will definitely arrive," Michael Fuchs, an economics expert for the conservative Christian Democrats (CDU), told Bild. "It's already virtually here."
Not so fast, argues German Economics Minister Michael Glos, who belongs to the CDU's Bavarian sister party, the Christian Social Union. He feels there's nothing to suggest the recession has already hit: The supply of credit is strong and the government's forecast for GDP growth in 2008, to be announced April 24, remains at 1.7 percent.
.
If the US subprime crisis does indeed deliver the feared slump to Europe, he told the financial daily Handelsblatt, his Economics Ministry was prepared to present plans to mitigate the impact of a recession, including tax relief for mid- to low-income groups. Glos said the state should take advantage of any financial room for maneuver at its disposal in order to lower taxes.
However his calls are driving a wedge between the two partners in Germany's grand coalition government, which is a power-sharing agreement between the Christian Democrats and the center-left Social Democrats (SPD).
German Finance Minister Peer Steinbrück of the SPD promptly rejected any calls for tax cuts. According to Reuters, Finance Ministry spokesman Torsten Albig said: "There will not be any additional tax cuts during this legislative period," which will not end until after national elections in 2009.
Meanwhile, the free-market liberals, the Free Democratic Party, have called on Glos to follow up on his words with action, with the party's deputy chief, Rainer Brüderle, noting that "low taxes make the best economic policy."
nmb/reuters
As the article mentions, by some estimates German banks stand to lose 111 billion U.S. dollars.
SUBPRIME FALLOUT
German Banks Could Hemorrhage 70 Billion Euros
The fallout in Germany from exposure to America's subprime crisis may turn out to be far bigger than previously feared. One major newspaper is putting estimated losses at a whopping 70 billion euros, while a prominent politician warns that the US recession has already arrived in Germany.
DPA
German Economics Minister Michael Glos is confident that the German economy will weather the global financial crisis with flying colours.
German banking executives fear the current financial crisis (more...) is quickly shaping up to be the worst since 1929. In its Friday edition, mass-circulation daily Bild newspaper cites banking insiders who predict that total losses at German banks from the American subprime mortgage loan crisis could hit the €70-billion ($111 billion) mark.
The paper reports that Germany's banking supervisory authority BaFin has calculated the total volume of high-risk investments made by the country's banks. "Now we have an overview of what's going on," a BaFin spokeswoman told the newspaper. "The figures are reliable." The agency, however, is keeping the data classified.
On Friday, Bavarian governor Günther Beckstein said the state's BayernLB bank would announce losses related to the credit crisis of up to €4 billion -- double the €1.9 billion figure the bank had previously disclosed. The announcement is sure to place additional pressure on government figures in the state who have been accused of trying to play down the magnitude of the bank's red ink flow.
Bild also reports it has obtained information suggesting that state-led bailouts will continue for German banks hit hardest by the subprime crisis. The paper claims that the country's third-largest regional bank, WestLB -- which has been kept alive (more...) with injections from the state of North Rhine-Westphalia -- will soon be requiring an additional €2-billion lifeline. Meanwhile, IKB Deutsche Industriebank AG bank,which has already received a billion-euro bailout (more...), will be draining a further billion euros from the public purse, bringing its total rescue package so far to €8 billion. Globally, the Bank for International Settlements is reporting that banks had already written off losses to the tune of €150 billion by the end of January.
"The American recession will definitely arrive," Michael Fuchs, an economics expert for the conservative Christian Democrats (CDU), told Bild. "It's already virtually here."
Not so fast, argues German Economics Minister Michael Glos, who belongs to the CDU's Bavarian sister party, the Christian Social Union. He feels there's nothing to suggest the recession has already hit: The supply of credit is strong and the government's forecast for GDP growth in 2008, to be announced April 24, remains at 1.7 percent.
.
If the US subprime crisis does indeed deliver the feared slump to Europe, he told the financial daily Handelsblatt, his Economics Ministry was prepared to present plans to mitigate the impact of a recession, including tax relief for mid- to low-income groups. Glos said the state should take advantage of any financial room for maneuver at its disposal in order to lower taxes.
However his calls are driving a wedge between the two partners in Germany's grand coalition government, which is a power-sharing agreement between the Christian Democrats and the center-left Social Democrats (SPD).
German Finance Minister Peer Steinbrück of the SPD promptly rejected any calls for tax cuts. According to Reuters, Finance Ministry spokesman Torsten Albig said: "There will not be any additional tax cuts during this legislative period," which will not end until after national elections in 2009.
Meanwhile, the free-market liberals, the Free Democratic Party, have called on Glos to follow up on his words with action, with the party's deputy chief, Rainer Brüderle, noting that "low taxes make the best economic policy."
nmb/reuters
U.S. jets drop bombs in Basra..
It seems that U.S. Iraq policy has little to do with the situation in Iraq and everything to do with U.S. domestic politics. The last thing the Republicans need is more U.S. casualties. Of course it is also true that the U.S. wants to have Iraqi forces carry out security operations as soon as possible. But since the Iraqis are not up to this on the ground the U.S. (or Brits are called in for air support). To be fair coalition troops also call in air support to avoid casualties. Such a policy particularly in highly populated cities is bound to increase civilian casualties but those casualties are not even counted and will only register with a few activists in the U.S. If the U.S. had suffered casualties equal to the Iraqis the troops would have been long gone.
US jets drop bombs in Basra, British military says; clashes resume elsewhere
The Associated Press
Friday, March 28, 2008
BAGHDAD: U.S. warplanes carried out at least two airstrikes overnight in Basra for the first time since clashes between Shiite militias and Iraqi security forces erupted in the southern oil port this week, a British official said Friday.
Shiite militants also clashed with government forces for a fourth day in Iraq's oil-rich south and sporadic fighting broke out in Baghdad, despite a weekend curfew in the capital.
Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki has promised "no retreat" in the fight against militias in Basra despite growing anger among followers of radical Shiite cleric Muqtada al-Sadr and his Mahdi Army.
The crackdown has intensified Sadrist anger over recent raids and detentions. They say U.S. and Iraqi forces have taken advantage of their seven-month-old cease-fire to target the movement.
Al-Sadr on Thursday called for a political solution to the burgeoning crisis and an end to the "shedding of Iraqi blood." But the statement, released by a close aide, stopped short of ordering his Mahdi Army militia to halt attacks.
A British military spokesman in Basra said U.S. warplanes carried out at least two airstrikes overnight in Iraq's southern oil port.
Maj. Tom Holloway says jets have been providing air support since clashes between Shiite militias and Iraqi forces erupted in the southern oil port on Monday, but it was the first time bombs have been dropped.
Iraqis have been of control of security since the British withdrew last December but Britain maintain troops there to provide assistance when needed.
In Baghdad, a U.S. helicopter also fired a Hellfire missile during fighting in the Baghdad's militia stronghold of Sadr City early Friday, killing four gunmen, military spokesman Lt. Col. Steve Stover said.
Ground forces called for the airstrike after coming under small-arms fire while clearing a main supply route at 4:10 a.m., he added.
Iraqi police and hospital officials in Sadr City said five civilians were killed and four others wounded in the attack.
The strikes underscore the risks that the U.S. and its allies in Iraq could be drawn into an internal Shiite conflict that has threatened to unravel al-Sadr's cease-fire and spark a new cycle of violence after months of relative calm.
In political developments, the main Shiite bloc in parliament said it would not attend an emergency session called for Friday to find ways to end fighting between government forces and militiamen in southern Iraq.
Deputy parliamentary speaker Khalid al-Attiyah, also a member of the United Iraqi Alliance, said the events in the south are a law and order issue, not legislative.
The bloc has been in contact with its Kurdish allies to boycott Friday's session too, which would prevent a quorum, he said.
It was not immediately clear whether house speaker Mahmoud al-Mashhadani, a Sunni, would still attempt to convene a session.
Amid the crisis, the prime minister has decided to skip this weekend's Arab summit, officials said. Vice President Adel Abdul-Mahdi will attend the meeting in Syria instead, according to Laith Shobar, an adviser to the Shiite vice president.
The campaign to rid Basra, Iraq's second-largest city, 340 miles southeast of Baghdad, of lawless gangs and Shiite militias — some believed tied to nearby Iran — is a major test for the Shiite leader and for the Iraqi military.
The ability of Iraqi leaders and security forces to control situations like this one is key to U.S. hopes of withdrawing its forces from the country.
The prime minister put his credibility on the line by flying down to Basra on Monday and issuing a weekend deadline for the surrender of Mahdi Army militiamen loyal to al-Sadr.
But the Basra offensive has faced fierce resistance and the security operation has triggered a violent response among al-Sadr's followers in Baghdad and cities throughout the Shiite heartland of southern Iraq.
At least 12 militia fighters were killed and seven others wounded in fighting in Mahmoudiya, according to an Iraqi army official.
The local office of radical Shiite cleric Muqtada al-Sadr, meanwhile, claimed 15 Iraqi soldiers had been captured, including two officers, in the city, about 20 miles south of the capital.
Fierce fighting in the Mahdi Army stronghold of Nasiriyah also killed at least four people, including two policemen and two civilians, and wounded 14, an officer said, adding that the clashes had spread to other parts of the city.
Two Iraqi security forces also were killed and three wounded in Kut, police said.
The security officials all spoke on condition of anonymity because they weren't authorized to release the information.
Rockets or mortars also were lobbed at a U.S. facility in the southern city of Hillah, although no casualties were reported, the military said.
Al-Maliki's office also announced Friday that it has given residents in Basra until April 8 to turn over "heavy and medium-size weapons" in return for unspecified monetary compensation.
The deadline is separate from the three-day ultimatum for gunmen to surrender their arms and renounce violence or face harsher measures, which expires later Friday, government adviser Sadiq al-Rikabi said.
The move instead appeared to be aimed at noncombatants who may have weapons like machine-guns and grenade launchers either for smuggling purposes or to sell to militants or criminal gangs.
The government also announced a days-old curfew in Basra would be loosened to allow people to move around in the city from 6 a.m. to 6 p.m. to facilitate shopping and other necessary tasks. It also called on local agencies to use the time to help residents, who have complained of food shortages and other problems amid the chaos.
Despite the order, an Associated Press staffer said he and his family were fired upon by Iraqi security forces when they tried to leave their house.
Sporadic fighting was reported in predominantly Shiite areas in eastern Baghdad despite a curfew banning unauthorized movement in the capital was imposed from 11 p.m. Thursday to 5 a.m. Sunday.
Purported Mahdi Army gunmen abducted three policemen with their weapons and vehicle in one area and clashes erupted between militiamen and U.S.-Iraqi troops in another, according to police.
The U.S. military did not immediately comment on the latest reports but said 26 militants during operations Thursday in mostly Shiite areas in Baghdad.
___
Associated Press writers Ryan Lenz and Saad Abdul-Kadir contributed to this report.
US jets drop bombs in Basra, British military says; clashes resume elsewhere
The Associated Press
Friday, March 28, 2008
BAGHDAD: U.S. warplanes carried out at least two airstrikes overnight in Basra for the first time since clashes between Shiite militias and Iraqi security forces erupted in the southern oil port this week, a British official said Friday.
Shiite militants also clashed with government forces for a fourth day in Iraq's oil-rich south and sporadic fighting broke out in Baghdad, despite a weekend curfew in the capital.
Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki has promised "no retreat" in the fight against militias in Basra despite growing anger among followers of radical Shiite cleric Muqtada al-Sadr and his Mahdi Army.
The crackdown has intensified Sadrist anger over recent raids and detentions. They say U.S. and Iraqi forces have taken advantage of their seven-month-old cease-fire to target the movement.
Al-Sadr on Thursday called for a political solution to the burgeoning crisis and an end to the "shedding of Iraqi blood." But the statement, released by a close aide, stopped short of ordering his Mahdi Army militia to halt attacks.
A British military spokesman in Basra said U.S. warplanes carried out at least two airstrikes overnight in Iraq's southern oil port.
Maj. Tom Holloway says jets have been providing air support since clashes between Shiite militias and Iraqi forces erupted in the southern oil port on Monday, but it was the first time bombs have been dropped.
Iraqis have been of control of security since the British withdrew last December but Britain maintain troops there to provide assistance when needed.
In Baghdad, a U.S. helicopter also fired a Hellfire missile during fighting in the Baghdad's militia stronghold of Sadr City early Friday, killing four gunmen, military spokesman Lt. Col. Steve Stover said.
Ground forces called for the airstrike after coming under small-arms fire while clearing a main supply route at 4:10 a.m., he added.
Iraqi police and hospital officials in Sadr City said five civilians were killed and four others wounded in the attack.
The strikes underscore the risks that the U.S. and its allies in Iraq could be drawn into an internal Shiite conflict that has threatened to unravel al-Sadr's cease-fire and spark a new cycle of violence after months of relative calm.
In political developments, the main Shiite bloc in parliament said it would not attend an emergency session called for Friday to find ways to end fighting between government forces and militiamen in southern Iraq.
Deputy parliamentary speaker Khalid al-Attiyah, also a member of the United Iraqi Alliance, said the events in the south are a law and order issue, not legislative.
The bloc has been in contact with its Kurdish allies to boycott Friday's session too, which would prevent a quorum, he said.
It was not immediately clear whether house speaker Mahmoud al-Mashhadani, a Sunni, would still attempt to convene a session.
Amid the crisis, the prime minister has decided to skip this weekend's Arab summit, officials said. Vice President Adel Abdul-Mahdi will attend the meeting in Syria instead, according to Laith Shobar, an adviser to the Shiite vice president.
The campaign to rid Basra, Iraq's second-largest city, 340 miles southeast of Baghdad, of lawless gangs and Shiite militias — some believed tied to nearby Iran — is a major test for the Shiite leader and for the Iraqi military.
The ability of Iraqi leaders and security forces to control situations like this one is key to U.S. hopes of withdrawing its forces from the country.
The prime minister put his credibility on the line by flying down to Basra on Monday and issuing a weekend deadline for the surrender of Mahdi Army militiamen loyal to al-Sadr.
But the Basra offensive has faced fierce resistance and the security operation has triggered a violent response among al-Sadr's followers in Baghdad and cities throughout the Shiite heartland of southern Iraq.
At least 12 militia fighters were killed and seven others wounded in fighting in Mahmoudiya, according to an Iraqi army official.
The local office of radical Shiite cleric Muqtada al-Sadr, meanwhile, claimed 15 Iraqi soldiers had been captured, including two officers, in the city, about 20 miles south of the capital.
Fierce fighting in the Mahdi Army stronghold of Nasiriyah also killed at least four people, including two policemen and two civilians, and wounded 14, an officer said, adding that the clashes had spread to other parts of the city.
Two Iraqi security forces also were killed and three wounded in Kut, police said.
The security officials all spoke on condition of anonymity because they weren't authorized to release the information.
Rockets or mortars also were lobbed at a U.S. facility in the southern city of Hillah, although no casualties were reported, the military said.
Al-Maliki's office also announced Friday that it has given residents in Basra until April 8 to turn over "heavy and medium-size weapons" in return for unspecified monetary compensation.
The deadline is separate from the three-day ultimatum for gunmen to surrender their arms and renounce violence or face harsher measures, which expires later Friday, government adviser Sadiq al-Rikabi said.
The move instead appeared to be aimed at noncombatants who may have weapons like machine-guns and grenade launchers either for smuggling purposes or to sell to militants or criminal gangs.
The government also announced a days-old curfew in Basra would be loosened to allow people to move around in the city from 6 a.m. to 6 p.m. to facilitate shopping and other necessary tasks. It also called on local agencies to use the time to help residents, who have complained of food shortages and other problems amid the chaos.
Despite the order, an Associated Press staffer said he and his family were fired upon by Iraqi security forces when they tried to leave their house.
Sporadic fighting was reported in predominantly Shiite areas in eastern Baghdad despite a curfew banning unauthorized movement in the capital was imposed from 11 p.m. Thursday to 5 a.m. Sunday.
Purported Mahdi Army gunmen abducted three policemen with their weapons and vehicle in one area and clashes erupted between militiamen and U.S.-Iraqi troops in another, according to police.
The U.S. military did not immediately comment on the latest reports but said 26 militants during operations Thursday in mostly Shiite areas in Baghdad.
___
Associated Press writers Ryan Lenz and Saad Abdul-Kadir contributed to this report.
Thursday, March 27, 2008
U.S. airstrike kills 60 Gunmen in Hilla
This is from this site.
This shows how closely the U.S. is involved in these operations. The U.S. is also closing off Sadr city. The Iraqi govt. will pay by increased attacks against the Green Zone and the U.S. will pay in increased casualties. A U.S. financial advisor was killed in a recent Green Zone attack. Air attacks of this kind are bound to cause civilian casualties aka collateral damage! The result is even more anti-U.S. feeling. U.S. media is too busy covering the latest flap in the Democratic primaries to show much concern about the breakup of the relative peace in Iraq.
U.S. airstrike kills 60 gunmen in Hilla
Baghdad - Voices of Iraq
Thursday , 27 /03 /2008 Time 5:36:26
Hilla, Mar 26, (VOI)- More than 60 gunmen were killed on Wednesday evening as U.S. choppers fired rockets against buildings used by gunmen in central Hilla, 100 km south of Baghdad, Iraqi security source said.
"U.S. copters bombed sites used by gunmen in Hilla's neighborhoods of al-Askari, Ahmed Nader and Muhaizem, killing more than 60 militants and destroying some houses," the source, who requested anonymity, told Aswat al-Iraq- Voices of Iraq- (VOI).
From his part, Abdellatif Rayan, an MNF-Iraq media adviser who could not give an exact number of the gunmen killed during the airstrike told VOI that the operation was carried out as Iraqi forces requested an air support while clashing with gunmen in central Hilla.
Hilla, capital city of Babel, has been a scene of clashes that erupted between security forces and fighters of the Shiite cleric Muqtada al-Sadr's militia.
SK
.
This shows how closely the U.S. is involved in these operations. The U.S. is also closing off Sadr city. The Iraqi govt. will pay by increased attacks against the Green Zone and the U.S. will pay in increased casualties. A U.S. financial advisor was killed in a recent Green Zone attack. Air attacks of this kind are bound to cause civilian casualties aka collateral damage! The result is even more anti-U.S. feeling. U.S. media is too busy covering the latest flap in the Democratic primaries to show much concern about the breakup of the relative peace in Iraq.
U.S. airstrike kills 60 gunmen in Hilla
Baghdad - Voices of Iraq
Thursday , 27 /03 /2008 Time 5:36:26
Hilla, Mar 26, (VOI)- More than 60 gunmen were killed on Wednesday evening as U.S. choppers fired rockets against buildings used by gunmen in central Hilla, 100 km south of Baghdad, Iraqi security source said.
"U.S. copters bombed sites used by gunmen in Hilla's neighborhoods of al-Askari, Ahmed Nader and Muhaizem, killing more than 60 militants and destroying some houses," the source, who requested anonymity, told Aswat al-Iraq- Voices of Iraq- (VOI).
From his part, Abdellatif Rayan, an MNF-Iraq media adviser who could not give an exact number of the gunmen killed during the airstrike told VOI that the operation was carried out as Iraqi forces requested an air support while clashing with gunmen in central Hilla.
Hilla, capital city of Babel, has been a scene of clashes that erupted between security forces and fighters of the Shiite cleric Muqtada al-Sadr's militia.
SK
.
Shiite Anger Mounts in Iraq Amid Clashes.
This is from AP. Notice that there is air support involved in these attacks and that certainly is not coming from the Iraqi govt. This crackdown no doubt has the blessing of the U.S. It could very well be that it is at the prompting of the occupiers. Maliki is risking the downfall of his government through taking such action and outright civil war among Shiite factions. The crackdown is obviously going far beyond rogue elements of the Mahdi army. In fact the U.S. and Iraqi government have forced Sadr to return to politics at a time when he was about to take time off to meditate! The quiet times are history unless a new ceasefire is quickly negotiated and that seems unlikely.
Shiite Anger Mounts in Iraq Amid Clashes
By KIM GAMEL – 52 minutes ago
BAGHDAD (AP) — Tens of thousands of Shiites took to Baghdad's streets to protest the government crackdown on militias in Basra as heavy fighting between Iraqi security forces and gunmen erupted for a third day in the southern oil port and the capital.
Iraqi officials reported 17 more people killed in overnight clashes in Baghdad's main Shiite district of Sadr City and raised the number of deaths from fighting in the southern city of Hillah to at least 60.
Mounting anger focused on Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki, a Shiite who is personally overseeing an operation against Shiite militias dominated by followers of radical cleric Muqtada al-Sadr amid a violent power struggle in Basra, Iraq's southern oil hub near the Iranian border.
The events threatened to unravel a Mahdi Army cease-fire and spark a dramatic escalation in violence after a monthslong period of relative calm.
There is minimal presence of the U.S.-led coalition in Basra after British forces turned over responsibility for the area to the Iraqis in late December, and the crisis was seen as a test of the government's ability to take over security.
Demonstrators in the northern Baghdad neighborhood of Kazimiyah called al-Maliki a "new dictator" as they carried a coffin bearing a crossed-out picture of the U.S.-backed prime minister, who belongs to a rival political party.
A sea of people also rallied in Sadr City, chanting slogans against the government and in favor of al-Sadr amid rising fears that the cleric's cease-fire order to his Mahdi Army militia is unraveling.
Sheik Salman al-Feraiji, al-Sadr's chief representative in Sadr City, issued a statement with demands to quell the discontent, including the release of Sadrist detainees, an end to military operations against them and al-Maliki's resignation.
Suspected Shiite extremists also hammered the U.S.-protected Green Zone for the fourth day this week, firing several rounds of apparent rockets that sent a huge plume of smoke above the heavily fortified area in central Baghdad.
The U.S. military said 16 rockets slammed into the Green Zone on Wednesday, wounding a U.S. soldier, two American civilians and an Iraqi soldier. An American financial analyst also was killed in this week's first spate of Green Zone attacks on Sunday.
The violence continued a day after al-Maliki warned gunmen in Basra to surrender their weapons by Friday or face harsher measures, as clashes between security forces and Shiite militia fighters spread throughout the south and in Baghdad.
Despite the ultimatum, heavy gunfire and explosions resounded across Basra while helicopters and jet fighters buzzed overhead. The city's police chief escaped an assassination attempt late Thursday but three of his guards were killed in the roadside bombing.
Government troops have faced stiff resistance in neighborhoods controlled by the Mahdi Army in Basra, Iraq's second-largest city, 340 miles southeast of Baghdad. Residents spoke of militiamen using mortar shells, sniper fire, roadside bombs and rocket-propelled grenades to fight off security forces.
A Pentagon official said Wednesday that reports from the Basra area indicate that militiamen had overrun a number of police stations and that it was unclear how well the Iraqi security forces were performing overall. The official spoke on condition of anonymity because he was not authorized to discuss the matter publicly.
Street battles that started Tuesday in Basra and Sadr City spread to several other neighborhoods and southern cities, leaving nearly 200 dead, including civilians, Iraqi security forces and militants. That three-day figure was a rough estimate provided by police and hospital officials who could not give a more specific breakdown.
The death toll in the Shiite city of Hillah, about 60 miles south of Baghdad, rose to at least 60, according to a senior police official who asked not to be identified because of security concerns.
He said that was the number of bodies counted after fierce clashes that began on Wednesday and continued Thursday morning.
The U.S. military said four suspected Shiite extremists were killed in an airstrike but it had no further details.
Two American soldiers were also killed Wednesday in separate attacks in Baghdad, the military said.
The Sadrists are angry over recent raids and detentions, saying U.S. and Iraqi forces have taken advantage of the August cease-fire to crack down on the movement.
They have accused rival Shiite parties, which control Iraqi security forces, of engineering the arrests to prevent them from mounting an effective campaign after the Iraqi parliament agreed in February to hold provincial elections by the fall.
The U.S. military has insisted the fight is being led by the Iraqi government and was not against al-Sadr's movement but breakaway factions believed to be funded and trained by Iran, which has denied the allegations.
President Bush told The Times of London in an interview published Wednesday that the Iraqi government's decision to "respond forcefully" was a "positive moment in the development of a sovereign nation that is willing to take on elements that believe they are beyond the law."
The violence also was raising concerns about Iraq's beleaguered oil industry since Basra accounts for most of the country's exports.
A bomb struck an oil pipeline Thursday in Basra, a local oil official said, declining to be identified because he was not authorized to release the information.
Iraqi Oil Minister Hussein al-Shahristani, however, sought to assure international oil companies.
"The security situation in Basra is still unstable ... but this has not reflected negatively works at oil output and export installations," al-Shahristani told the U.S.-funded Radio Sawa.
In other violence reported by police, a booby-trapped car exploded near the Iraqi Red Crescent Society's offices in Baghdad, killing two civilians and wounding five.
Gunmen also killed a U.S.-allied Sunni fighter and wounded his wife and daughter after storming his house in the northern city of Samarra late Wednesday.
Associated Press writers Sinan Salaheddin and Hamid Ahmed contributed to this report.
Hosted by Copyright © 2008 The Associated Press. All rights reserved.
Shiite Anger Mounts in Iraq Amid Clashes
By KIM GAMEL – 52 minutes ago
BAGHDAD (AP) — Tens of thousands of Shiites took to Baghdad's streets to protest the government crackdown on militias in Basra as heavy fighting between Iraqi security forces and gunmen erupted for a third day in the southern oil port and the capital.
Iraqi officials reported 17 more people killed in overnight clashes in Baghdad's main Shiite district of Sadr City and raised the number of deaths from fighting in the southern city of Hillah to at least 60.
Mounting anger focused on Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki, a Shiite who is personally overseeing an operation against Shiite militias dominated by followers of radical cleric Muqtada al-Sadr amid a violent power struggle in Basra, Iraq's southern oil hub near the Iranian border.
The events threatened to unravel a Mahdi Army cease-fire and spark a dramatic escalation in violence after a monthslong period of relative calm.
There is minimal presence of the U.S.-led coalition in Basra after British forces turned over responsibility for the area to the Iraqis in late December, and the crisis was seen as a test of the government's ability to take over security.
Demonstrators in the northern Baghdad neighborhood of Kazimiyah called al-Maliki a "new dictator" as they carried a coffin bearing a crossed-out picture of the U.S.-backed prime minister, who belongs to a rival political party.
A sea of people also rallied in Sadr City, chanting slogans against the government and in favor of al-Sadr amid rising fears that the cleric's cease-fire order to his Mahdi Army militia is unraveling.
Sheik Salman al-Feraiji, al-Sadr's chief representative in Sadr City, issued a statement with demands to quell the discontent, including the release of Sadrist detainees, an end to military operations against them and al-Maliki's resignation.
Suspected Shiite extremists also hammered the U.S.-protected Green Zone for the fourth day this week, firing several rounds of apparent rockets that sent a huge plume of smoke above the heavily fortified area in central Baghdad.
The U.S. military said 16 rockets slammed into the Green Zone on Wednesday, wounding a U.S. soldier, two American civilians and an Iraqi soldier. An American financial analyst also was killed in this week's first spate of Green Zone attacks on Sunday.
The violence continued a day after al-Maliki warned gunmen in Basra to surrender their weapons by Friday or face harsher measures, as clashes between security forces and Shiite militia fighters spread throughout the south and in Baghdad.
Despite the ultimatum, heavy gunfire and explosions resounded across Basra while helicopters and jet fighters buzzed overhead. The city's police chief escaped an assassination attempt late Thursday but three of his guards were killed in the roadside bombing.
Government troops have faced stiff resistance in neighborhoods controlled by the Mahdi Army in Basra, Iraq's second-largest city, 340 miles southeast of Baghdad. Residents spoke of militiamen using mortar shells, sniper fire, roadside bombs and rocket-propelled grenades to fight off security forces.
A Pentagon official said Wednesday that reports from the Basra area indicate that militiamen had overrun a number of police stations and that it was unclear how well the Iraqi security forces were performing overall. The official spoke on condition of anonymity because he was not authorized to discuss the matter publicly.
Street battles that started Tuesday in Basra and Sadr City spread to several other neighborhoods and southern cities, leaving nearly 200 dead, including civilians, Iraqi security forces and militants. That three-day figure was a rough estimate provided by police and hospital officials who could not give a more specific breakdown.
The death toll in the Shiite city of Hillah, about 60 miles south of Baghdad, rose to at least 60, according to a senior police official who asked not to be identified because of security concerns.
He said that was the number of bodies counted after fierce clashes that began on Wednesday and continued Thursday morning.
The U.S. military said four suspected Shiite extremists were killed in an airstrike but it had no further details.
Two American soldiers were also killed Wednesday in separate attacks in Baghdad, the military said.
The Sadrists are angry over recent raids and detentions, saying U.S. and Iraqi forces have taken advantage of the August cease-fire to crack down on the movement.
They have accused rival Shiite parties, which control Iraqi security forces, of engineering the arrests to prevent them from mounting an effective campaign after the Iraqi parliament agreed in February to hold provincial elections by the fall.
The U.S. military has insisted the fight is being led by the Iraqi government and was not against al-Sadr's movement but breakaway factions believed to be funded and trained by Iran, which has denied the allegations.
President Bush told The Times of London in an interview published Wednesday that the Iraqi government's decision to "respond forcefully" was a "positive moment in the development of a sovereign nation that is willing to take on elements that believe they are beyond the law."
The violence also was raising concerns about Iraq's beleaguered oil industry since Basra accounts for most of the country's exports.
A bomb struck an oil pipeline Thursday in Basra, a local oil official said, declining to be identified because he was not authorized to release the information.
Iraqi Oil Minister Hussein al-Shahristani, however, sought to assure international oil companies.
"The security situation in Basra is still unstable ... but this has not reflected negatively works at oil output and export installations," al-Shahristani told the U.S.-funded Radio Sawa.
In other violence reported by police, a booby-trapped car exploded near the Iraqi Red Crescent Society's offices in Baghdad, killing two civilians and wounding five.
Gunmen also killed a U.S.-allied Sunni fighter and wounded his wife and daughter after storming his house in the northern city of Samarra late Wednesday.
Associated Press writers Sinan Salaheddin and Hamid Ahmed contributed to this report.
Hosted by Copyright © 2008 The Associated Press. All rights reserved.
Rating agency: Philippine banks exposed to high credit losses
This is from xinhua.At least where we were in Legazpi a city of about 150k people what I noticed is that the banks seemed always to be busy so that often one had to wait some time for service. This contrasts with service around here even in cities where there is usually no wait or not a long wait at least. The ATMs used to run out of money on the weekends quite regularly it seems. Often there were large lineups even to use ATMs.
Ratings agency: Philippine banks exposed to high credit losses
www.chinaview.cn 2008-03-25 17:45:08 Print
MANILA, March 25 (Xinhua) -- Despite their high earnings profile, Philippine banks are exposed to high credit losses because of lack of support from the government and a generally weak operating environment, ratings agency Moody's Investor Service said on Tuesday.
In its first report on Philippine banks, Moody's said industry reforms undertaken since the Asian currency crisis have helped improve regulation and supervision but further improvements are needed, Philippine TV network GMA News reported.
Moody's senior analyst Richard Lung said the industry's confidence can be further boosted by greater transparency, formalization of procedures and institutionalization of reforms.
"Bank credit risk in the Philippines has been elevated by a difficult operating environment, a new and developing supervisory and regulatory framework, and low level of government support," Lung said.
Philippine banks have historically faced little competition from the domestic capital markets or from non-bank financial institutions, Lung said.
Despite the rapid expansion of the equities market especially last year, banks remain the main source of corporate financing particularly for small- and medium-sized companies that find it costlier to access the stock market for raising capital.
As the dominant financial intermediaries, Lung said Philippine banks have developed strong earnings profiles, supported by the fact that most of the large banks have universal banking licenses.
Universal banks are licensed to offer a wide range of financial services that increased their revenue flows.
However, Lung said that because of problems in their operating environment, banks in the Philippines were exposed to potentially high credit losses similar to that experienced following the Asian financial crisis.
"In addition to the moderately high volatility in the country's business cycles, credit losses have historically been exacerbated by weak governance," Lung said.
"These challenges outweigh the benefits derived from the dominant role of banks within the financial system, and also help explain the low intrinsic financial strength and deposit ratings of the Moody's-rated Philippine banks," says Lung.
However, Lung said that proposed legislation pending in Congress could correct some of the deficiencies in the supervisory framework.
In considering external support factors, Lung said that based on Moody's assessment, the Philippines was considered to be a low-support country based on the relatively low importance of the banking sector relative to the size of the economy, the uneven history of past government interventions and limits on deposit insurance coverage.
Ratings agency: Philippine banks exposed to high credit losses
www.chinaview.cn 2008-03-25 17:45:08 Print
MANILA, March 25 (Xinhua) -- Despite their high earnings profile, Philippine banks are exposed to high credit losses because of lack of support from the government and a generally weak operating environment, ratings agency Moody's Investor Service said on Tuesday.
In its first report on Philippine banks, Moody's said industry reforms undertaken since the Asian currency crisis have helped improve regulation and supervision but further improvements are needed, Philippine TV network GMA News reported.
Moody's senior analyst Richard Lung said the industry's confidence can be further boosted by greater transparency, formalization of procedures and institutionalization of reforms.
"Bank credit risk in the Philippines has been elevated by a difficult operating environment, a new and developing supervisory and regulatory framework, and low level of government support," Lung said.
Philippine banks have historically faced little competition from the domestic capital markets or from non-bank financial institutions, Lung said.
Despite the rapid expansion of the equities market especially last year, banks remain the main source of corporate financing particularly for small- and medium-sized companies that find it costlier to access the stock market for raising capital.
As the dominant financial intermediaries, Lung said Philippine banks have developed strong earnings profiles, supported by the fact that most of the large banks have universal banking licenses.
Universal banks are licensed to offer a wide range of financial services that increased their revenue flows.
However, Lung said that because of problems in their operating environment, banks in the Philippines were exposed to potentially high credit losses similar to that experienced following the Asian financial crisis.
"In addition to the moderately high volatility in the country's business cycles, credit losses have historically been exacerbated by weak governance," Lung said.
"These challenges outweigh the benefits derived from the dominant role of banks within the financial system, and also help explain the low intrinsic financial strength and deposit ratings of the Moody's-rated Philippine banks," says Lung.
However, Lung said that proposed legislation pending in Congress could correct some of the deficiencies in the supervisory framework.
In considering external support factors, Lung said that based on Moody's assessment, the Philippines was considered to be a low-support country based on the relatively low importance of the banking sector relative to the size of the economy, the uneven history of past government interventions and limits on deposit insurance coverage.
Wednesday, March 26, 2008
Across Iraq, battles erupt with Mahdi Army
This is from the CSmonitor. This is the end of the ceasefire. Sadr was just about to retire to contemplate for a while when this attack on the Mahdi militia was mounted. Now Sadr is back and leading against the Maliki government and the U.S. The relative calm is now ended. Of course not much attention is being paid to this back in the U.S. or to the fact that the 4,000 mark has now been surpassed in U.S. casualties. Unless the Maliki govt. and the U.S. stand down and stop these attacks there may be a bloody civil war.
Across Iraq, battles erupt with Mahdi Army
Moqtada al-Sadr's Mahdi Army fought US, Iraqi forces in Baghdad and Basra on Tuesday.
By Sam Dagher | Correspondent of The Christian Science Monitor
Baghdad
The Mahdi Army's seven-month-long cease-fire appears to have come undone.
Rockets fired from the capital's Shiite district of Sadr City slammed into the Green Zone Tuesday, the second time in three days, and firefights erupted around Baghdad pitting government and US forces against the militia allied to the influential Shiite cleric Moqtada al-Sadr.
At the same time, the oil-export city of Basra became a battleground Tuesday as Iraqi forces, backed by US air power, launched a major crackdown on the Mahdi Army elements. British and US forces were guarding the border with Iran to intercept incoming weapons or fighters, according to a senior security official in Basra.
The US blames the latest attacks on rogue Mahdi Army elements tied to Iran, but analysts say the spike in fighting with Shiite militants potentially opens a second front in the war when the American military is still doing battle with the Sunni extremists of Al Qaeda in Iraq.
"The cease-fire is over; we have been told to fight the Americans," said one Mahdi Army militiaman, who was reached by telephone in Sadr City. This same man, when interviewed in January, had stated that he was abiding by the cease-fire and that he was keeping busy running his cellular phone store.
Sadr City residents say they saw fighting Tuesday between Mahdi militiamen and US and Iraqi forces in several parts of the district. One eyewitness, in the adjacent neighborhood of Baghdad Jadida, who wished to remain anonymous, said he saw a heavy militia presence on the streets, with two fighters planting roadside bombs on a main thoroughfare.
Lt. Col. Steve Stover of the Baghdad-based 4th Infantry Division said that in the span of 12 hours Tuesday 16 rockets were fired at the Green Zone and nine rockets and 18 mortar rounds fell on US bases and combat outposts on the east side of Baghdad. A mortar round hit a US patrol in the northern Adhamiyah district, killing one US soldier. A roadside bomb set a US Humvee on fire in Sadr City but all soldiers inside survived. He said clashes broke out between American forces and militiamen when they attacked several government checkpoints in the district and that some of these posts are now manned by both US and Iraqi forces.
Almost exactly four years ago, American forces and Mr. Sadr's loyalists clashed on the streets of Baghdad's Sadr City and the holy city of Najaf shortly after the US shuttered his newspaper for allegedly inciting violence. That round of fighting lasted several months and at one point the Americans were aiming to arrest Sadr, a cleric whose religious credentials come from his father who was widely influential and loved.
The fighting burnished Sadr's standing among fellow Shiites wary of the US occupation. Over the years, the US has repeatedly accused elements within the Sadrist movement of having ties with Iran and even Lebanon's Hizbullah.
After rockets hit the Green Zone Sunday, US commander in Iraq Gen. David Petraeus said the weapons had been provided by Iran.
On Tuesday, Rear Adm. Greg Smith, spokesman for US-led multinational forces in Iraq, blamed the elite Quds units of Iran's Revolutionary Guards for supplying the 22 107-mm and 122-mm rockets that hit the heavily fortified area of Baghdad that is home to the US Embassy.
"We believe the violence is being instigated by members of special groups that are beholden to the Iranian Quds Force and not Sadr.... Although we are concerned, we know that very few Iraqis want a return to the violence they experienced before the surge," he says.
Admiral Smith says US and Iraqi forces were facing two distinct enemies in Al Qaeda in Iraq (AQI) and the Iranian-trained and supplied special groups. But he adds, "AQI is still Iraq's No. 1 enemy."
There is growing concern, however, that Iran could respond to such US accusations. "This is pretty serious, and if the Iranians do not back down rapidly this will escalate," says Martin Navias, an analyst at Britain's Centre for Defence Studies at King's College in London. "The US has a number of problems with Iran, mainly the nuclear program and its behavior in Iraq. There are many people in the Bush administration who want to hit Iran."
While Iraqi troops fought with Shiite militants in Basra Tuesday, a contingent of Coalition troops, including British and US forces, mobilized at Basra's border with Iran to prevent militiamen from escaping or smuggling in ammunition and weapons, according to a senior security source in the city who spoke on condition of anonymity because of the sensitivity of his remarks.
The US military refused to comment on this, citing "security reasons" during ongoing operations, while another spokesman, Col. Bill Buckner, said the Basra operation was Iraqi-led and that the US was providing "limited assistance" mainly in "intelligence, surveillance, reconnaissance, and ... support aircraft."
The US military has regularly accused Iran of smuggling weapons into Iraq over this border, particularly armor-piercing bombs known as explosively formed penetrators (EFP) that have been blamed for the deaths of many US soldiers in Iraq.
"This is a major operation aimed at outlaws and removing all heavy weapons and explosives from the hands of militias inside the city. It has now escalated into fighting between the Iraqi Army and the Mahdi Army because they are resisting," the security official said by phone from Basra, a few hours after the start of the offensive dubbed "The Knights' Assault."
The Basra-based official said that fighting is now centered in Mahdi Army strongholds in the neighborhoods of Tamimiyah, Hayaniyah, and Five Miles, and that there was also fighting in the neighboring provinces of Nasiriyah and Maysan.
A curfew has also been imposed in Nasiriyah and other southern cities, such as Samawa and Kut, the scene of clashes involving the Mahdi Army over the past two weeks.
One Basra resident reached by phone said he was holed up at his office at the local branch of the ministry of trade, and described the sound of explosions and gunfire as "terrifying."
Two Iraqi Army battalions and five battalions of the National Police's quick-reaction force were dispatched to Basra, where an entire Army division is already stationed.
"The lawlessness is going on under religious or political cover along with oil, weapons, and drug smuggling. These outlaws found support from inside government institutions either willingly or by coercion ... turning Basra into a place where no citizen can feel secure for his life and property," said Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki in a statement read on state television, which reported that Mr. Maliki along with the ministers of defense and interior were all in Basra to oversee the operation.
The reaction from Sadr's camp was swift. At a press conference in the holy city of Najaf, three of the cleric's top lieutenants condemned the government offensive and accused Maliki, a Shiite, of carrying out a US agenda. They also threatened a nationwide campaign of protests and civil disobedience if US and Iraqi forces continued to fight the Mahdi Army.
Smith, the military spokesman, said the US would not stop this campaign if it remained peaceful.
One of the movement's leaders, Liwa Smaisim, described as "preposterous" US claims that it was only targeting splinter elements of the Mahdi Army.
Hazem al-Aaraji, another leader usually based in Baghdad, said the current fighting was a continuation of a campaign by the movement's Shiite rivals in the Iraqi government to finish it off – a drive it began last fall in southern Iraq.
Sadr's influence was felt throughout Baghdad Tuesday, highlighting the risk that the fight in Basra may spread to the capital, home to a large segment of his supporters. On Tuesday, witnesses reported that gun battles broke out in the capital's Sadr City district between the militia and rivals from the Badr Organization, which is part of Maliki's ruling Shiite coalition.
The offices of one of the branches of Maliki’s Dawa Party was torched in Sadr City, according to the US military.
On Monday evening, pickup trucks filled with chanting Mahdi militiamen, within sight of Iraqi forces, were forcing shopkeepers in many parts of Baghdad's west side to close in protest of US and Iraq Army raids.
On Tuesday, all shops in the Mahdi Army stronghold neighborhoods – Bayiaa, Iskan, Shuala, and Washash – were shuttered. Leaflets saying "No, no to America" were plastered on each storefront. Anti-American banners hung right next to Iraqi government checkpoints.
Several people interviewed in the Amel neighborhood said they were forced by militiamen to return home when they tried to go to work this morning. "This is anarchy," says Ali al-Yasseri.
• Awadh al-Taiee in Baghdad and a Najaf-based Iraqi journalist contributed reporting.
© 2008 The Christian Science Monitor. All rights reserved.
Across Iraq, battles erupt with Mahdi Army
Moqtada al-Sadr's Mahdi Army fought US, Iraqi forces in Baghdad and Basra on Tuesday.
By Sam Dagher | Correspondent of The Christian Science Monitor
Baghdad
The Mahdi Army's seven-month-long cease-fire appears to have come undone.
Rockets fired from the capital's Shiite district of Sadr City slammed into the Green Zone Tuesday, the second time in three days, and firefights erupted around Baghdad pitting government and US forces against the militia allied to the influential Shiite cleric Moqtada al-Sadr.
At the same time, the oil-export city of Basra became a battleground Tuesday as Iraqi forces, backed by US air power, launched a major crackdown on the Mahdi Army elements. British and US forces were guarding the border with Iran to intercept incoming weapons or fighters, according to a senior security official in Basra.
The US blames the latest attacks on rogue Mahdi Army elements tied to Iran, but analysts say the spike in fighting with Shiite militants potentially opens a second front in the war when the American military is still doing battle with the Sunni extremists of Al Qaeda in Iraq.
"The cease-fire is over; we have been told to fight the Americans," said one Mahdi Army militiaman, who was reached by telephone in Sadr City. This same man, when interviewed in January, had stated that he was abiding by the cease-fire and that he was keeping busy running his cellular phone store.
Sadr City residents say they saw fighting Tuesday between Mahdi militiamen and US and Iraqi forces in several parts of the district. One eyewitness, in the adjacent neighborhood of Baghdad Jadida, who wished to remain anonymous, said he saw a heavy militia presence on the streets, with two fighters planting roadside bombs on a main thoroughfare.
Lt. Col. Steve Stover of the Baghdad-based 4th Infantry Division said that in the span of 12 hours Tuesday 16 rockets were fired at the Green Zone and nine rockets and 18 mortar rounds fell on US bases and combat outposts on the east side of Baghdad. A mortar round hit a US patrol in the northern Adhamiyah district, killing one US soldier. A roadside bomb set a US Humvee on fire in Sadr City but all soldiers inside survived. He said clashes broke out between American forces and militiamen when they attacked several government checkpoints in the district and that some of these posts are now manned by both US and Iraqi forces.
Almost exactly four years ago, American forces and Mr. Sadr's loyalists clashed on the streets of Baghdad's Sadr City and the holy city of Najaf shortly after the US shuttered his newspaper for allegedly inciting violence. That round of fighting lasted several months and at one point the Americans were aiming to arrest Sadr, a cleric whose religious credentials come from his father who was widely influential and loved.
The fighting burnished Sadr's standing among fellow Shiites wary of the US occupation. Over the years, the US has repeatedly accused elements within the Sadrist movement of having ties with Iran and even Lebanon's Hizbullah.
After rockets hit the Green Zone Sunday, US commander in Iraq Gen. David Petraeus said the weapons had been provided by Iran.
On Tuesday, Rear Adm. Greg Smith, spokesman for US-led multinational forces in Iraq, blamed the elite Quds units of Iran's Revolutionary Guards for supplying the 22 107-mm and 122-mm rockets that hit the heavily fortified area of Baghdad that is home to the US Embassy.
"We believe the violence is being instigated by members of special groups that are beholden to the Iranian Quds Force and not Sadr.... Although we are concerned, we know that very few Iraqis want a return to the violence they experienced before the surge," he says.
Admiral Smith says US and Iraqi forces were facing two distinct enemies in Al Qaeda in Iraq (AQI) and the Iranian-trained and supplied special groups. But he adds, "AQI is still Iraq's No. 1 enemy."
There is growing concern, however, that Iran could respond to such US accusations. "This is pretty serious, and if the Iranians do not back down rapidly this will escalate," says Martin Navias, an analyst at Britain's Centre for Defence Studies at King's College in London. "The US has a number of problems with Iran, mainly the nuclear program and its behavior in Iraq. There are many people in the Bush administration who want to hit Iran."
While Iraqi troops fought with Shiite militants in Basra Tuesday, a contingent of Coalition troops, including British and US forces, mobilized at Basra's border with Iran to prevent militiamen from escaping or smuggling in ammunition and weapons, according to a senior security source in the city who spoke on condition of anonymity because of the sensitivity of his remarks.
The US military refused to comment on this, citing "security reasons" during ongoing operations, while another spokesman, Col. Bill Buckner, said the Basra operation was Iraqi-led and that the US was providing "limited assistance" mainly in "intelligence, surveillance, reconnaissance, and ... support aircraft."
The US military has regularly accused Iran of smuggling weapons into Iraq over this border, particularly armor-piercing bombs known as explosively formed penetrators (EFP) that have been blamed for the deaths of many US soldiers in Iraq.
"This is a major operation aimed at outlaws and removing all heavy weapons and explosives from the hands of militias inside the city. It has now escalated into fighting between the Iraqi Army and the Mahdi Army because they are resisting," the security official said by phone from Basra, a few hours after the start of the offensive dubbed "The Knights' Assault."
The Basra-based official said that fighting is now centered in Mahdi Army strongholds in the neighborhoods of Tamimiyah, Hayaniyah, and Five Miles, and that there was also fighting in the neighboring provinces of Nasiriyah and Maysan.
A curfew has also been imposed in Nasiriyah and other southern cities, such as Samawa and Kut, the scene of clashes involving the Mahdi Army over the past two weeks.
One Basra resident reached by phone said he was holed up at his office at the local branch of the ministry of trade, and described the sound of explosions and gunfire as "terrifying."
Two Iraqi Army battalions and five battalions of the National Police's quick-reaction force were dispatched to Basra, where an entire Army division is already stationed.
"The lawlessness is going on under religious or political cover along with oil, weapons, and drug smuggling. These outlaws found support from inside government institutions either willingly or by coercion ... turning Basra into a place where no citizen can feel secure for his life and property," said Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki in a statement read on state television, which reported that Mr. Maliki along with the ministers of defense and interior were all in Basra to oversee the operation.
The reaction from Sadr's camp was swift. At a press conference in the holy city of Najaf, three of the cleric's top lieutenants condemned the government offensive and accused Maliki, a Shiite, of carrying out a US agenda. They also threatened a nationwide campaign of protests and civil disobedience if US and Iraqi forces continued to fight the Mahdi Army.
Smith, the military spokesman, said the US would not stop this campaign if it remained peaceful.
One of the movement's leaders, Liwa Smaisim, described as "preposterous" US claims that it was only targeting splinter elements of the Mahdi Army.
Hazem al-Aaraji, another leader usually based in Baghdad, said the current fighting was a continuation of a campaign by the movement's Shiite rivals in the Iraqi government to finish it off – a drive it began last fall in southern Iraq.
Sadr's influence was felt throughout Baghdad Tuesday, highlighting the risk that the fight in Basra may spread to the capital, home to a large segment of his supporters. On Tuesday, witnesses reported that gun battles broke out in the capital's Sadr City district between the militia and rivals from the Badr Organization, which is part of Maliki's ruling Shiite coalition.
The offices of one of the branches of Maliki’s Dawa Party was torched in Sadr City, according to the US military.
On Monday evening, pickup trucks filled with chanting Mahdi militiamen, within sight of Iraqi forces, were forcing shopkeepers in many parts of Baghdad's west side to close in protest of US and Iraq Army raids.
On Tuesday, all shops in the Mahdi Army stronghold neighborhoods – Bayiaa, Iskan, Shuala, and Washash – were shuttered. Leaflets saying "No, no to America" were plastered on each storefront. Anti-American banners hung right next to Iraqi government checkpoints.
Several people interviewed in the Amel neighborhood said they were forced by militiamen to return home when they tried to go to work this morning. "This is anarchy," says Ali al-Yasseri.
• Awadh al-Taiee in Baghdad and a Najaf-based Iraqi journalist contributed reporting.
© 2008 The Christian Science Monitor. All rights reserved.
McCain on Iraq!
I am sure that one could collect quotes of this sort from Bush that are much worse! Hilary has a bad memory about her trip to Bosnia too!
from the Institute for Public Accuracy]
"I believe that success will be fairly easy."
-- John McCain (9/24/02, CNN)
"I believe that we can win an overwhelming victory in a very short
period of time."
-- John McCain (9/29/02, CNN)
"The American people ... were led to believe that this would be some
kind of a day at the beach which many of us, uh, fully understood
from the very beginning would be a very, very difficult undertaking."
-- John McCain (8/22/06, CNN)
"I knew it was probably going to be long and hard and tough. And
those that voted for it and thought that somehow it was going to be
some kind of an easy task, then I'm sorry they were mistaken. Maybe
they didn't know what they were voting for."
-- John McCain (1/4/07, MSNBC)
from the Institute for Public Accuracy]
"I believe that success will be fairly easy."
-- John McCain (9/24/02, CNN)
"I believe that we can win an overwhelming victory in a very short
period of time."
-- John McCain (9/29/02, CNN)
"The American people ... were led to believe that this would be some
kind of a day at the beach which many of us, uh, fully understood
from the very beginning would be a very, very difficult undertaking."
-- John McCain (8/22/06, CNN)
"I knew it was probably going to be long and hard and tough. And
those that voted for it and thought that somehow it was going to be
some kind of an easy task, then I'm sorry they were mistaken. Maybe
they didn't know what they were voting for."
-- John McCain (1/4/07, MSNBC)
Tuesday, March 25, 2008
Singapore Court Blocks Marcos Funds transfer to the Philippines.
This is from AFP This seems to be a never-ending saga. I wonder how many millions have been spent on legal fees since 1986 when Marcos was deposed!
Singapore court blocks Marcos funds transfer to Philippines
SINGAPORE (AFP) — Singapore's highest court on Monday rejected the Philippine government's appeal for the transfer of 25 million US dollars in assets allegedly belonging to the late dictator Ferdinand Marcos.
The Court of Appeal affirmed an earlier ruling by a Singapore High Court judge who said the Philippine government must prove that it owns the bank deposits in the face of competing claims from other parties.
The rival claimants to the money -- now held in escrow -- include human rights victims of Marcos's 21-year rule, along with four foundations and a corporation alleged to be Marcos fronts.
Marcos was toppled in a popular revolt in 1986 and died in exile in Hawaii in 1989. He was accused of plundering billions of dollars from his impoverished country, but his family denies the accusation.
The Singapore appeal court said the 25 million dollars was the remainder of some 100 million dollars in Marcos funds deposited in Singapore. The rest had been transferred to the Philippine government in 2003.
The Philippine government demanded to be given the remaining money and opposed the rival claims in Singapore's judicial system by invoking the principle of state immunity in foreign courts.
"The Court of Appeal held that the doctrine of state immunity did not apply to the present case at all since the property in dispute was not in the possession of the sovereign state," it said in a summary report Monday.
The judgement identified the four foundations also claiming the disputed money as the Maler Foundation, Avertina Foundation, Palmy Foundation and Vibur Foundation. The other claimant is Aguamina Corporation.
More than 500 civil and criminal suits have been filed worldwide against members of Marcos's family and his estate.
Despite years of hearings and investigations, no Marcos relative has been sent to jail, but human rights victims won a judgement for damages in a Hawaii court, which forms the basis of their claim to the assets in Singapore.
Singapore court blocks Marcos funds transfer to Philippines
SINGAPORE (AFP) — Singapore's highest court on Monday rejected the Philippine government's appeal for the transfer of 25 million US dollars in assets allegedly belonging to the late dictator Ferdinand Marcos.
The Court of Appeal affirmed an earlier ruling by a Singapore High Court judge who said the Philippine government must prove that it owns the bank deposits in the face of competing claims from other parties.
The rival claimants to the money -- now held in escrow -- include human rights victims of Marcos's 21-year rule, along with four foundations and a corporation alleged to be Marcos fronts.
Marcos was toppled in a popular revolt in 1986 and died in exile in Hawaii in 1989. He was accused of plundering billions of dollars from his impoverished country, but his family denies the accusation.
The Singapore appeal court said the 25 million dollars was the remainder of some 100 million dollars in Marcos funds deposited in Singapore. The rest had been transferred to the Philippine government in 2003.
The Philippine government demanded to be given the remaining money and opposed the rival claims in Singapore's judicial system by invoking the principle of state immunity in foreign courts.
"The Court of Appeal held that the doctrine of state immunity did not apply to the present case at all since the property in dispute was not in the possession of the sovereign state," it said in a summary report Monday.
The judgement identified the four foundations also claiming the disputed money as the Maler Foundation, Avertina Foundation, Palmy Foundation and Vibur Foundation. The other claimant is Aguamina Corporation.
More than 500 civil and criminal suits have been filed worldwide against members of Marcos's family and his estate.
Despite years of hearings and investigations, no Marcos relative has been sent to jail, but human rights victims won a judgement for damages in a Hawaii court, which forms the basis of their claim to the assets in Singapore.
Musharraf never allowed US strikes in Tribal Areas
This is from the Dailytimes. Neither source is likely to be reliable. Probably Musharraf did give permission but also told the US he would have to deny it!
The new government in Pakistan may be less pro-U.S. especially the Sharif faction. Bhutto's party is prone to make deals with whomever seems to give the best deal especially given that Bhutto's husband is now one of the main powers behind the party.
Whether with permission or not the attacks of U.S. drones have probably been a big plus for radical Islamist recruiters.
Musharraf never allowed US strikes in Tribal Areas’
* Presidential spokesman rejects Newsweek report alleging Musharraf’s tacit approval for drone attacks
RAWALPINDI: Major General (r) Rashid Qureshi, the presidential spokesman, has rejected a report in a US magazine, which says that President Pervez Musharraf has allowed US forces to launch operation in the Tribal Areas of Pakistan, a private television channel reported on Monday
“The report is baseless and unfounded. No such type of approval has been given to US forces,” he told the channel. The US had been informed several times that only Pakistani forces had a right to launch operation against Al Qaeda in the Tribal Areas, he said.
Qureshi said the Foreign Office had lodged strong protest with the US against the recent missile strike in Pakistan. We would not allow forces of any other country to launch incursions in Pakistan, he added.
Newsweek in its report said that the Musharraf regime had given tacit approval to attacks by US drones on Al Qaeda targets along Pakistan’s restive border area.
The report said that such strikes had been stepped up, as officials feared that the new government in Pakistan would be hostile to such an offensive. Since January, missiles reportedly fired from US drones have hit at least three suspected hideouts of militants, including a strike on March 16 in the Toog village of South Waziristan that left 20 dead.
The magazine, quoting US officials and Pakistani sources, said the recent wave of drone attacks were at least partly the result of understandings that US officials had reached with Musharraf and other top Pakistani officials, giving Washington virtually unrestricted authority to hit targets in the border areas.
“The surge,” says the magazine in its upcoming issue, “began after visits to Pakistan at the beginning of the year by senior US officials, including intelligence czar Mike McConnell, General Michael Hayden, the director of the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA), and Admiral William Fallon, who recently resigned as commander of US forces in the region.”
Some news reports had said at the time that President Pervez Musharraf had rebuffed US proposals to step up combat operations inside Pakistan.
The magazine quoted Bruce Riedel, a retired CIA expert on the region, as saying that a new wave of terrorism inside Pakistan had forced Musharraf and new military chief General Ashfaq Kayani to acknowledge that extremists threatening Americans now also posed a growing threat to Pakistan’s internal security.
A former official told the magazine that the United States had been relying on its own intelligence to uncover terror targets because Pakistani intelligence agencies were weak on espionage in the Tribal Areas. online
The new government in Pakistan may be less pro-U.S. especially the Sharif faction. Bhutto's party is prone to make deals with whomever seems to give the best deal especially given that Bhutto's husband is now one of the main powers behind the party.
Whether with permission or not the attacks of U.S. drones have probably been a big plus for radical Islamist recruiters.
Musharraf never allowed US strikes in Tribal Areas’
* Presidential spokesman rejects Newsweek report alleging Musharraf’s tacit approval for drone attacks
RAWALPINDI: Major General (r) Rashid Qureshi, the presidential spokesman, has rejected a report in a US magazine, which says that President Pervez Musharraf has allowed US forces to launch operation in the Tribal Areas of Pakistan, a private television channel reported on Monday
“The report is baseless and unfounded. No such type of approval has been given to US forces,” he told the channel. The US had been informed several times that only Pakistani forces had a right to launch operation against Al Qaeda in the Tribal Areas, he said.
Qureshi said the Foreign Office had lodged strong protest with the US against the recent missile strike in Pakistan. We would not allow forces of any other country to launch incursions in Pakistan, he added.
Newsweek in its report said that the Musharraf regime had given tacit approval to attacks by US drones on Al Qaeda targets along Pakistan’s restive border area.
The report said that such strikes had been stepped up, as officials feared that the new government in Pakistan would be hostile to such an offensive. Since January, missiles reportedly fired from US drones have hit at least three suspected hideouts of militants, including a strike on March 16 in the Toog village of South Waziristan that left 20 dead.
The magazine, quoting US officials and Pakistani sources, said the recent wave of drone attacks were at least partly the result of understandings that US officials had reached with Musharraf and other top Pakistani officials, giving Washington virtually unrestricted authority to hit targets in the border areas.
“The surge,” says the magazine in its upcoming issue, “began after visits to Pakistan at the beginning of the year by senior US officials, including intelligence czar Mike McConnell, General Michael Hayden, the director of the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA), and Admiral William Fallon, who recently resigned as commander of US forces in the region.”
Some news reports had said at the time that President Pervez Musharraf had rebuffed US proposals to step up combat operations inside Pakistan.
The magazine quoted Bruce Riedel, a retired CIA expert on the region, as saying that a new wave of terrorism inside Pakistan had forced Musharraf and new military chief General Ashfaq Kayani to acknowledge that extremists threatening Americans now also posed a growing threat to Pakistan’s internal security.
A former official told the magazine that the United States had been relying on its own intelligence to uncover terror targets because Pakistani intelligence agencies were weak on espionage in the Tribal Areas. online
Pakistan's President Swears in New Prime Minister
This is from VOAnews.
Musharrif may face insuperable problems if the ruling coalition should re-instate the ousted justices as seems likely. The People's Party coalition can hardly make a deal with Musharraf without alienating its partner in the coalition. Sharif's party was consistent in supporting the justices whereas Bhutto's party waffled. U.S. policy may face resistance from Sharif.
Pakistan's President Swears in New Prime Minister
By Steve Herman
Islamabad
25 March 2008
Pakistan's president has sworn in a political enemy as prime minister. Meanwhile, two top U.S. State Department officials have arrived in the country for talks with the embattled president and the new government leaders. VOA Correspondent Steve Herman reports from Islamabad.
President Pervez Musharraf greets newly-elected Prime Minister Yousuf Raza Gilani after swearing-in ceremony, 25 Mar 2008
At exactly noon, stone-faced President Pervez Musharraf, administered the oath of office to a the new prime minister, Yousuf Raza Gilani, who spent more than four years in jail under Mr. Musharraf's rule.
"May Allah Almighty help and guide me, Amen," the president said.
"May Allah Almighty help and guide me, Amen," Mr. Gilani repeated.
Some supporters of the prime minister then began chanting "Long Live Bhutto."
If she had not been assassinated on December 27, it is possible former Prime Minister Benazir Bhutto would have been the one taking the oath of office.
Her Pakistan Peoples Party swept to victory on a wave of sympathy in last month's
elections. The runner-up party, led by former Prime Minister Nawaz Sharif, has joined the party of his rival, the late Ms. Bhutto, to form an anti-Musharraf coalition.
Pakistan's evolving political framework throws into doubt the level of the country's future cooperation with the United States on confronting terrorism. Mr. Musharraf has been a staunch ally of Washington in the global anti-terrorism campaign.
Just hours before Tuesday's midday ceremony, two top envoys of the United States arrived in Pakistan. John Negroponte and Richard Boucher are in the country for meetings with top Pakistani officials. Negroponte is deputy secretary of state. Boucher is assistant secretary for South and Central Asian affairs.
They met Tuesday morning with former Prime Minister Sharif, a key player in the new coalition. The American officials are also expected to talk with the president, as well as the new prime minister.
A showdown is looming between the new government and the president concerning the judiciary. The coalition has pledged to restore to the bench judges removed last year by the president. But the replacement Supreme Court has ruled the dismissals of
their predecessors to be constitutional.
After his selection by parliament, the new prime minister immediately freed the ousted
judges, who had been under house arrest for more than four months.
Musharrif may face insuperable problems if the ruling coalition should re-instate the ousted justices as seems likely. The People's Party coalition can hardly make a deal with Musharraf without alienating its partner in the coalition. Sharif's party was consistent in supporting the justices whereas Bhutto's party waffled. U.S. policy may face resistance from Sharif.
Pakistan's President Swears in New Prime Minister
By Steve Herman
Islamabad
25 March 2008
Pakistan's president has sworn in a political enemy as prime minister. Meanwhile, two top U.S. State Department officials have arrived in the country for talks with the embattled president and the new government leaders. VOA Correspondent Steve Herman reports from Islamabad.
President Pervez Musharraf greets newly-elected Prime Minister Yousuf Raza Gilani after swearing-in ceremony, 25 Mar 2008
At exactly noon, stone-faced President Pervez Musharraf, administered the oath of office to a the new prime minister, Yousuf Raza Gilani, who spent more than four years in jail under Mr. Musharraf's rule.
"May Allah Almighty help and guide me, Amen," the president said.
"May Allah Almighty help and guide me, Amen," Mr. Gilani repeated.
Some supporters of the prime minister then began chanting "Long Live Bhutto."
If she had not been assassinated on December 27, it is possible former Prime Minister Benazir Bhutto would have been the one taking the oath of office.
Her Pakistan Peoples Party swept to victory on a wave of sympathy in last month's
elections. The runner-up party, led by former Prime Minister Nawaz Sharif, has joined the party of his rival, the late Ms. Bhutto, to form an anti-Musharraf coalition.
Pakistan's evolving political framework throws into doubt the level of the country's future cooperation with the United States on confronting terrorism. Mr. Musharraf has been a staunch ally of Washington in the global anti-terrorism campaign.
Just hours before Tuesday's midday ceremony, two top envoys of the United States arrived in Pakistan. John Negroponte and Richard Boucher are in the country for meetings with top Pakistani officials. Negroponte is deputy secretary of state. Boucher is assistant secretary for South and Central Asian affairs.
They met Tuesday morning with former Prime Minister Sharif, a key player in the new coalition. The American officials are also expected to talk with the president, as well as the new prime minister.
A showdown is looming between the new government and the president concerning the judiciary. The coalition has pledged to restore to the bench judges removed last year by the president. But the replacement Supreme Court has ruled the dismissals of
their predecessors to be constitutional.
After his selection by parliament, the new prime minister immediately freed the ousted
judges, who had been under house arrest for more than four months.
Philippines: Reverse "Globlization" of Agriculture to Address Rice Crisis
This is from Pinoy Press. There is a clear need for an agricultural policy in the Philippines that stresses production of staples such as rice for domestic consumption otherwise the Philippines will be exposed to problems such as it now faces. With prices of rice rising this should encourage more domestic production of rice especially if the government also supports such production.
Given the influence of the Roman Catholic Church there is little emphasis upon birth control as a means of limiting population growth. One of the main exports of the Philippines seems to be workers since the home country does not produce nearly enough jobs for its growing population. With a surplus of labor, incomes for the poorest may become worse during a slowdown in growth even as prices of basic necessities increase.
Reverse “Globalization” of Agriculture to Address Rice Crisis
The assurances made by Agriculture secretary Arthur Yap and Mrs. Gloria Arroyo that there is no rice crisis are not enough. Far-reaching policy reforms are needed to guarantee the country’s rice supply security in the short and long terms.
Yap is completely off the mark in calling on fast food outlets to decrease the amount of rice they serve, purportedly to reduce wastage from uneaten rice. In fact, customers are already complaining about how much the rice portions have shrunk in the past few years. Moreover, these outlets cater to only a small percentage of the population, in the cities and towns at that.
The government can do more to bring immediate relief to consumers What is urgently needed is to by breaking up the cartel of big rice traders who hoard supply and further drive up prices. For the poor who can no longer afford to buy the staple food of Filipinos, a dependable subsidy program should be implemented to avert mass hunger.
Nor is further increasing rice imports the answer to the looming shortage. The National Food Authority (NFA) said Tuesday that it is importing 335,000 tons of rice to balance the expected shortfall in domestic production. This approach is unsustainable and therefore unreliable even in the medium term, not to mention over the long run.
Tight global supply and record high prices mean that the country can no longer be assured that traditional sources of imported rice will be able to deliver like before. Vietnam, for instance, has turned down the request of Arroyo herself to supply 1.5 million metric tons (MT) of rice to the country. Vietnam said it could only guarantee one million MT since it has to secure its own rice supply.
Only a sound agriculture policy that promotes and protects domestic food production can ensure the availability of food at affordable prices for ordinary consumers. . This, in turn, requires a no-nonsense, genuine agrarian reform program and a dependable support program for peasants, farm workers and independent farmers and their families. Alas, such basic principles of food security have been undermined and severely weakened by neoliberal globalization policies of past and present administrations.
The current insecurity in rice supply is the result of years of agricultural restructuring that has led to the integration of local farm production into the world market. Under this restructuring, the country has compromised its domestic food production, substituting “high value” cash crops for export abroad. This process has been most rapid since the trade liberalization frenzy of the 1990s, underscored by our membership in the World Trade Organization (WTO) in 1995.
Land use and crop conversion has dramatically reduced our capacity to feed our people through self-sufficient food production. The latest Census of Agriculture shows that the farm area for palay fell by 86,606 hectares between 1991 and 2002. Corn, which like palay is also a staple crop, saw its farm area contract by 298,064 hectares. Consequently, the country needs to rely on outside sources for local food needs.
From a yearly surplus of $667.5 million in food trade from 1980 to 1994, we have been posting an annual deficit of $724.6 million from 1995 to 2006. Under the Arroyo administration, yearly food trade deficit is pegged at $719.7 million.
The urgency of reversing neoliberal globalization policies on agriculture is underlined by the factors behind the global rice crisis. Climate change, oil price crisis, US recession, and the rush to shift to biofuels from fossil fuels have combined to push up rice prices and squeeze supply. These are complex global phenomena that cannot be expected to be resolved in a few years. Thus, the need to improve domestic self-sufficiency and self-reliance in food production to ensure food security and protect the national interest. #
IMPORTANT NOTICE: INBOX is an archive of press releases, statements, announcements, letters to the editors, and manifestos sent to PinoyPress for publication. Please email your materials to pinoypress @ gmail.com. PinoyPress is not responsible for the content of these materials. The opinion expessed in these items does not reflect those of PinoyPress and its staff. Please refer to our terms of use/disclaimer
Given the influence of the Roman Catholic Church there is little emphasis upon birth control as a means of limiting population growth. One of the main exports of the Philippines seems to be workers since the home country does not produce nearly enough jobs for its growing population. With a surplus of labor, incomes for the poorest may become worse during a slowdown in growth even as prices of basic necessities increase.
Reverse “Globalization” of Agriculture to Address Rice Crisis
The assurances made by Agriculture secretary Arthur Yap and Mrs. Gloria Arroyo that there is no rice crisis are not enough. Far-reaching policy reforms are needed to guarantee the country’s rice supply security in the short and long terms.
Yap is completely off the mark in calling on fast food outlets to decrease the amount of rice they serve, purportedly to reduce wastage from uneaten rice. In fact, customers are already complaining about how much the rice portions have shrunk in the past few years. Moreover, these outlets cater to only a small percentage of the population, in the cities and towns at that.
The government can do more to bring immediate relief to consumers What is urgently needed is to by breaking up the cartel of big rice traders who hoard supply and further drive up prices. For the poor who can no longer afford to buy the staple food of Filipinos, a dependable subsidy program should be implemented to avert mass hunger.
Nor is further increasing rice imports the answer to the looming shortage. The National Food Authority (NFA) said Tuesday that it is importing 335,000 tons of rice to balance the expected shortfall in domestic production. This approach is unsustainable and therefore unreliable even in the medium term, not to mention over the long run.
Tight global supply and record high prices mean that the country can no longer be assured that traditional sources of imported rice will be able to deliver like before. Vietnam, for instance, has turned down the request of Arroyo herself to supply 1.5 million metric tons (MT) of rice to the country. Vietnam said it could only guarantee one million MT since it has to secure its own rice supply.
Only a sound agriculture policy that promotes and protects domestic food production can ensure the availability of food at affordable prices for ordinary consumers. . This, in turn, requires a no-nonsense, genuine agrarian reform program and a dependable support program for peasants, farm workers and independent farmers and their families. Alas, such basic principles of food security have been undermined and severely weakened by neoliberal globalization policies of past and present administrations.
The current insecurity in rice supply is the result of years of agricultural restructuring that has led to the integration of local farm production into the world market. Under this restructuring, the country has compromised its domestic food production, substituting “high value” cash crops for export abroad. This process has been most rapid since the trade liberalization frenzy of the 1990s, underscored by our membership in the World Trade Organization (WTO) in 1995.
Land use and crop conversion has dramatically reduced our capacity to feed our people through self-sufficient food production. The latest Census of Agriculture shows that the farm area for palay fell by 86,606 hectares between 1991 and 2002. Corn, which like palay is also a staple crop, saw its farm area contract by 298,064 hectares. Consequently, the country needs to rely on outside sources for local food needs.
From a yearly surplus of $667.5 million in food trade from 1980 to 1994, we have been posting an annual deficit of $724.6 million from 1995 to 2006. Under the Arroyo administration, yearly food trade deficit is pegged at $719.7 million.
The urgency of reversing neoliberal globalization policies on agriculture is underlined by the factors behind the global rice crisis. Climate change, oil price crisis, US recession, and the rush to shift to biofuels from fossil fuels have combined to push up rice prices and squeeze supply. These are complex global phenomena that cannot be expected to be resolved in a few years. Thus, the need to improve domestic self-sufficiency and self-reliance in food production to ensure food security and protect the national interest. #
IMPORTANT NOTICE: INBOX is an archive of press releases, statements, announcements, letters to the editors, and manifestos sent to PinoyPress for publication. Please email your materials to pinoypress @ gmail.com. PinoyPress is not responsible for the content of these materials. The opinion expessed in these items does not reflect those of PinoyPress and its staff. Please refer to our terms of use/disclaimer
Report from an Unfolding Crisis, or What I Learned in Washington
This is from a Canadian economics blog. This is an analysis of the developing crisis from the point of view of a progressive Canadian economist. So far European authorities have not attempted to stimulate their own economies as has the U.S. As the article notes one of the key factors in creating the crisis has been lax regulation of the financial sector. While the U.S. has acted quickly to stimulate the economy and bail out Bear/Sterns it seems in no hurry to develop regulations to prevent the same fiasco from occuring again.
Report From an Unfolding Crisis, or What I Learned in Washington.
I was in Washington last week for meetings of economists from central trade union bodies, mainly from the OECD countries. While the main purpose of the meetings was to draft the annual union statement to the upcoming G-8 summit in Japan, we had a full day of meetings with researchers and senior officials from the International Monetary Fund, and also a half day mini conference on the unfolding economic crisis with progressive US economists, including Bob Kuttner, Robert Pollin, Bill Spriggs and Tom Palley.
With Bear Sterns collapsing just before we met and the US visibly headed into a potentially deep recession, the key theme of discussion and debate was, of course, the growing global financial and economic crisis, and what to do about it.
On the union and progressive economist side, the current crisis is seen as rooted in the current neo liberal global model, marked by a powerful, largely unregulated financial sector, by a global shift of power from labour to capital which has been depressing wages, and by unsustainable trade imbalances between major economic regions.
The IMF officials we met with hardly share this perspective but they were, to say the very least, deeply worried about where we are headed. Indeed, the extent of their concern was worrying in and of itself given that, until very recently, the IMF and central banks had tended to downplay if not dismiss concerns that financial de-regulation would lead to a major crisis.
The global economic outlook is currently being revised downwards, with, as the saying goes, pronounced risks on the downside, meaning that things could spin out of control. Key concerns expressed by and to the IMF from our group are that the US is in or near recession, which threatens to become deep and prolonged if the financial crisis turns into a credit crisis in which households and businesses are unable to borrow, and if housing prices continue to fall and destroy household wealth. Effective borrowing rates have not fallen despite recent deep cuts to policy interest rates by the US Federal Reserve, and risk spreads are now rising for even what would seem to be sound assets such as high grade corporate bonds. There is no indication when US housing markets will hit bottom, and more and more US households have seen their housing equity evaporate to nothing.
Growth in Europe could be slowing due to the knock-on effects of the financial crisis on their financial institutions and, as in Japan, the impacts of high oil prices. Some of the most worrying aspects of the financial crisis persist and are deepening. No one knows for sure who is holding the bad debts, what distressed assets will be worth if an when markets finds a bottom, and which institutions will survive and can be trusted not to renege on their own debts and deposits. Some of the distressed assets such as low grade sub prime mortgage securities may turn out to be worthless, and there is talk of eventual losses of 20% or more on even the highest grade, early vintage sub prime mortgage backed securities. Some of the highest risk securities such as the last tranches of sub prime mortgage debt may turn out to be almost worthless.
The current liquidity crisis - the difficulties banks and hedge funds face in finding cash - threatens to turn into a broader solvency crisis in which banks lack the capital to match any shortfall between their assets and liabilities. Clearly it was not just hedge funds which borrowed heavily to invest in what turned out to be very risky assets, but also major US and European banks which were supposed to be more closely regulated. To say the least, the collapse of Bear Stearns almost overnight shocked everyone, and will likely come to be seen as one of the defining events of this crisis.
On a more reassuring note, the anticipated slowdown is only just turning up in the hard data on production and jobs, meaning that something can be done about it in the US and elsewhere. Meanwhile, there are few signs to date of the crisis spreading in a major way to developing countries, which can still borrow, and where internal demand is still leading growth. That said, risk spreads on developing country debt are rising, and their stock markets have mainly been falling. If the US does go into recession, developing country exports and commodity prices will likely fall from current high speculation- fueled levels, further worsening the downturn.
What is interesting, to say the least, is that the IMF is concerned enough that they (now led by ex French Socialist Finance Minister Dominique Strauss- Kahn) have begun to tell governments with strong fiscal positions that they should provide some fiscal stimulus to global growth - a message that is being studiously ignored by the OECD and by most European governments.
Moreover, the IMF seem to generally approve the somewhat unorthodox actions of central banks, notably the US Federal Reserve, to provide credit to the banking system based on some rather risky and non traditional assets, and even to decisively intervene in the financial markets as in the brokered take-over of Bear Stearns by JP Morgan (partially financed by the Fed.) The scale of US Federal Reserve action in terms of lowering policy interest rates has been generally approved of, even though the US faces rising inflation. Officials even talk of the possible need for much more radical interventions by governments moving forward, such as buying up distressed mortgages and other assets to create a bottom to the housing market and to stop the slide in prices. There was also talk of forcing the banks to wipe bad loans off their balance sheets as quickly as possible. The big concern seems to be to learn from the lesson of Japan’s decade long depression and to act decisively so as to stop the credit squeeze from worsening and becoming prolonged.
In terms of the underlying causes of the crisis, discussion on the trade union side and at the progressive economist meetings focused on three key, inter-related themes - financial deregulation, global economic imbalances, and the stagnation of working class living standards. It is clear that very lax regulation of banks and hedge funds played a major role in allowing a massive growth of very risky, complex debt in the US, which was in turn widely dispersed throughout the global financial system. Governments could and should have been limiting leverage, promoting greater transparency, and countering outright fraud and insider profiting which have jeopardised overall financial stability. But another key underlying factor has been the huge current account surpluses which fulled global liquidity, and generated massive amounts of low cost money, which the global banks deployed into risky loans of all kinds. The fact that wages have been stagnant in the US and much of Europe as a result of labour market de-regulation and financial pressures on firms to maximize returns to capital has meant that demand growth became unhealthily dependent on a continuing expansion of household debt, above all in the US.
In terms of policy response in the US, major concern was expressed about the fate of US working families, who have sustained consumption over a long period of stagnant wages growth by borrowing against their fast-eroding home equity. It is not just the sub prime borrowers who are in difficulty, but the many households who refinanced their mortgages over the past few years. Indeed it is very slow real wage growth which made US growth hostage to financial manipulations, stretching out an unsustainable growth of consumption based on ever-rising household debt.
Financialization of the real economy has also repressed wage growth by forcing companies to adopt short term profit maximization at the expense of long term investment. Hedge funds and private equity have further promoted a ruthless drive to cut wage costs, while doing nothing to raise the rate of real investment.
Those who lose their jobs in the US in the coming months will have little or no financial cushion or social safety net to fall back upon. Yet the modest tax rebate package just approved by Congress fails to even extend unemployment insurance benefits beyond the current maximum of 26 weeks. The majority of Democrats, including Hillary and Obama, are prepared to support modest public infrastructure investment/green jobs/alternative energy programs to create jobs, but are still not talking about re-regulation of Wall Street (source of half of all campaign funds) or about major government action to put a floor under house prices. Indeed the Democrats have been adamant, with the Republicans, that any fiscal stimulus must be very targeted and temporary, and not risk balanced budgets moving forward. A few progressive Democrats are now thinking about more radical actions, including a major shift to public investment financed in part by much higher taxes on corporations and the rich, and effective aid to highly indebted home-owners. The plan most likely to gain traction is for the US government to help refinance reduced mortgages, while taking some equity position in housing, combined with aid to banks in return for a share of equity.
In terms of global solutions the trade union and progressive economists are generally thinking along the same lines. China and other countries with large trade and current account surpluses must shift from export-led to internal demand driven growth. Europe and Japan should help the US administer a fiscal and monetary stimulus to global growth, with a tilt to investment in infrastructure and green jobs. The financial sector must be re-regulated, both nationally and globally, to reduce leverage and high risk lending, to end the perverse alignment of high insider compensation with highly risky and de-stabilizing financial practices. Wages and working class living standards must rise - at the expense of a growing profit share in all countries - to reduce reliance on financial sector driven growth, and to link wages with rising productivity.
We are at a moment when progressives will have to move from critique to prescription. As Naomi Klein argued in the Shock Doctrine, neo liberalism took advantage of past crises by having a set of coherent prescriptions ready to hand to advance to policy-makers. We are just beginning to define a new global agenda to replace the neo liberal prescription which has led into the current crisis.
Report From an Unfolding Crisis, or What I Learned in Washington.
I was in Washington last week for meetings of economists from central trade union bodies, mainly from the OECD countries. While the main purpose of the meetings was to draft the annual union statement to the upcoming G-8 summit in Japan, we had a full day of meetings with researchers and senior officials from the International Monetary Fund, and also a half day mini conference on the unfolding economic crisis with progressive US economists, including Bob Kuttner, Robert Pollin, Bill Spriggs and Tom Palley.
With Bear Sterns collapsing just before we met and the US visibly headed into a potentially deep recession, the key theme of discussion and debate was, of course, the growing global financial and economic crisis, and what to do about it.
On the union and progressive economist side, the current crisis is seen as rooted in the current neo liberal global model, marked by a powerful, largely unregulated financial sector, by a global shift of power from labour to capital which has been depressing wages, and by unsustainable trade imbalances between major economic regions.
The IMF officials we met with hardly share this perspective but they were, to say the very least, deeply worried about where we are headed. Indeed, the extent of their concern was worrying in and of itself given that, until very recently, the IMF and central banks had tended to downplay if not dismiss concerns that financial de-regulation would lead to a major crisis.
The global economic outlook is currently being revised downwards, with, as the saying goes, pronounced risks on the downside, meaning that things could spin out of control. Key concerns expressed by and to the IMF from our group are that the US is in or near recession, which threatens to become deep and prolonged if the financial crisis turns into a credit crisis in which households and businesses are unable to borrow, and if housing prices continue to fall and destroy household wealth. Effective borrowing rates have not fallen despite recent deep cuts to policy interest rates by the US Federal Reserve, and risk spreads are now rising for even what would seem to be sound assets such as high grade corporate bonds. There is no indication when US housing markets will hit bottom, and more and more US households have seen their housing equity evaporate to nothing.
Growth in Europe could be slowing due to the knock-on effects of the financial crisis on their financial institutions and, as in Japan, the impacts of high oil prices. Some of the most worrying aspects of the financial crisis persist and are deepening. No one knows for sure who is holding the bad debts, what distressed assets will be worth if an when markets finds a bottom, and which institutions will survive and can be trusted not to renege on their own debts and deposits. Some of the distressed assets such as low grade sub prime mortgage securities may turn out to be worthless, and there is talk of eventual losses of 20% or more on even the highest grade, early vintage sub prime mortgage backed securities. Some of the highest risk securities such as the last tranches of sub prime mortgage debt may turn out to be almost worthless.
The current liquidity crisis - the difficulties banks and hedge funds face in finding cash - threatens to turn into a broader solvency crisis in which banks lack the capital to match any shortfall between their assets and liabilities. Clearly it was not just hedge funds which borrowed heavily to invest in what turned out to be very risky assets, but also major US and European banks which were supposed to be more closely regulated. To say the least, the collapse of Bear Stearns almost overnight shocked everyone, and will likely come to be seen as one of the defining events of this crisis.
On a more reassuring note, the anticipated slowdown is only just turning up in the hard data on production and jobs, meaning that something can be done about it in the US and elsewhere. Meanwhile, there are few signs to date of the crisis spreading in a major way to developing countries, which can still borrow, and where internal demand is still leading growth. That said, risk spreads on developing country debt are rising, and their stock markets have mainly been falling. If the US does go into recession, developing country exports and commodity prices will likely fall from current high speculation- fueled levels, further worsening the downturn.
What is interesting, to say the least, is that the IMF is concerned enough that they (now led by ex French Socialist Finance Minister Dominique Strauss- Kahn) have begun to tell governments with strong fiscal positions that they should provide some fiscal stimulus to global growth - a message that is being studiously ignored by the OECD and by most European governments.
Moreover, the IMF seem to generally approve the somewhat unorthodox actions of central banks, notably the US Federal Reserve, to provide credit to the banking system based on some rather risky and non traditional assets, and even to decisively intervene in the financial markets as in the brokered take-over of Bear Stearns by JP Morgan (partially financed by the Fed.) The scale of US Federal Reserve action in terms of lowering policy interest rates has been generally approved of, even though the US faces rising inflation. Officials even talk of the possible need for much more radical interventions by governments moving forward, such as buying up distressed mortgages and other assets to create a bottom to the housing market and to stop the slide in prices. There was also talk of forcing the banks to wipe bad loans off their balance sheets as quickly as possible. The big concern seems to be to learn from the lesson of Japan’s decade long depression and to act decisively so as to stop the credit squeeze from worsening and becoming prolonged.
In terms of the underlying causes of the crisis, discussion on the trade union side and at the progressive economist meetings focused on three key, inter-related themes - financial deregulation, global economic imbalances, and the stagnation of working class living standards. It is clear that very lax regulation of banks and hedge funds played a major role in allowing a massive growth of very risky, complex debt in the US, which was in turn widely dispersed throughout the global financial system. Governments could and should have been limiting leverage, promoting greater transparency, and countering outright fraud and insider profiting which have jeopardised overall financial stability. But another key underlying factor has been the huge current account surpluses which fulled global liquidity, and generated massive amounts of low cost money, which the global banks deployed into risky loans of all kinds. The fact that wages have been stagnant in the US and much of Europe as a result of labour market de-regulation and financial pressures on firms to maximize returns to capital has meant that demand growth became unhealthily dependent on a continuing expansion of household debt, above all in the US.
In terms of policy response in the US, major concern was expressed about the fate of US working families, who have sustained consumption over a long period of stagnant wages growth by borrowing against their fast-eroding home equity. It is not just the sub prime borrowers who are in difficulty, but the many households who refinanced their mortgages over the past few years. Indeed it is very slow real wage growth which made US growth hostage to financial manipulations, stretching out an unsustainable growth of consumption based on ever-rising household debt.
Financialization of the real economy has also repressed wage growth by forcing companies to adopt short term profit maximization at the expense of long term investment. Hedge funds and private equity have further promoted a ruthless drive to cut wage costs, while doing nothing to raise the rate of real investment.
Those who lose their jobs in the US in the coming months will have little or no financial cushion or social safety net to fall back upon. Yet the modest tax rebate package just approved by Congress fails to even extend unemployment insurance benefits beyond the current maximum of 26 weeks. The majority of Democrats, including Hillary and Obama, are prepared to support modest public infrastructure investment/green jobs/alternative energy programs to create jobs, but are still not talking about re-regulation of Wall Street (source of half of all campaign funds) or about major government action to put a floor under house prices. Indeed the Democrats have been adamant, with the Republicans, that any fiscal stimulus must be very targeted and temporary, and not risk balanced budgets moving forward. A few progressive Democrats are now thinking about more radical actions, including a major shift to public investment financed in part by much higher taxes on corporations and the rich, and effective aid to highly indebted home-owners. The plan most likely to gain traction is for the US government to help refinance reduced mortgages, while taking some equity position in housing, combined with aid to banks in return for a share of equity.
In terms of global solutions the trade union and progressive economists are generally thinking along the same lines. China and other countries with large trade and current account surpluses must shift from export-led to internal demand driven growth. Europe and Japan should help the US administer a fiscal and monetary stimulus to global growth, with a tilt to investment in infrastructure and green jobs. The financial sector must be re-regulated, both nationally and globally, to reduce leverage and high risk lending, to end the perverse alignment of high insider compensation with highly risky and de-stabilizing financial practices. Wages and working class living standards must rise - at the expense of a growing profit share in all countries - to reduce reliance on financial sector driven growth, and to link wages with rising productivity.
We are at a moment when progressives will have to move from critique to prescription. As Naomi Klein argued in the Shock Doctrine, neo liberalism took advantage of past crises by having a set of coherent prescriptions ready to hand to advance to policy-makers. We are just beginning to define a new global agenda to replace the neo liberal prescription which has led into the current crisis.
Monday, March 24, 2008
No Depression just recession.
This is the conventional wisdom but the conventional wisdom not long ago was that the securities that are now virtually worthless had great ratings. That is why all those banks now taking billion dollar writedowns bought them. How reliable are the ratings of the chances of depression by conventional economists? It is true that the conventional theology about not interfering in markets that helped fuel the Great Depression has been thrown overboard this time.The same conventional economists who in normal times trumpet the virtues of the market unsullied by government intervention are now trumpeting the virtues of government intervention to cut interest rates and to stimulate the economy. But this could very well cause problems itself such as inflation especially when combined with humungous expenditures on war and the military.
NY Times, March 23, 2008
The Nation
Depression, You Say? Check Those Safety Nets
By CHARLES DUHIGG
The stock markets are spiraling like whirling dervishes, one of the
nation's largest financial institutions has flirted with bankruptcy
and the former Federal Reserve chairman Alan Greenspan invoked the
ghost of past calamities when he wrote that the current economic
turmoil is likely to become the "most wrenching" since World War II.
Meanwhile, home foreclosures are at their fastest pace in at least 30
years and in a survey conducted by USA Today and Gallup, more than
half of respondents indicated that they had fears the downturn could
become a depression.
Some innocent bystanders might be forgiven for wondering why that
last word — "depression" — has started popping up. Is it possible
our
economy could speed past a recession into a full-blown depression
like that of the 1930s, when American unemployment reached 25 percent?
Well, the economists are here to say that you can dig up the family
silver and stop training the kids how to jump onto a moving train.
While many who study the nation's economic health agree that a
recession has probably already begun, and that it may be long and
severe, they also say the odds of a full-blown depression are almost
nonexistent.
Why? Because so many of them have spent so much time studying the
Great Depression and trying to figure out how to react more
effectively if things turn really bad again. Take last week, for
example.
"I used to give a lecture explaining that the Great Depression could
never happen now because of the regulations that emerged from that
crisis," said Barry Eichengreen, an economist at the University of
California at Berkeley. "But we're learning that there is a shadow
banking system, of hedge funds and investment banks, that are outside
of those safety nets. What happened to Bear Stearns last week looked
a lot like a 19th-century run on the bank. And that's why the Fed
reacted so quickly."
Indeed, when the government moved last weekend to help save Bear
Stearns, the fifth-largest securities firm on Wall Street, from
bankruptcy, policy makers were motivated by concerns that the
investment bank's failure could start a chain reaction of collapses
at other investment houses. Stopping those dominoes was such a
priority that the Federal Reserve helped broker the sale of Bear
Stearns to its rival JPMorgan Chase.
A century ago, such government hustle would have been unthinkable.
Even the distinction between a recession (a significant decline in
economic activity that lasts more than a few months) and a depression
(a decline that is much longer and deeper) didn't really matter,
because turmoil in the economy was often taken for granted.
Between 1857 and 1929, while regulators largely stood idle, the
American economy swung through 19 national boom-and-bust gyrations
that sometimes threatened to wipe out whole industries within months.
But in the wake of the Great Depression, American policy makers began
actively managing the economy with a handful of tools, including
adjusting interest rates and using massive government spending to
spur growth. Since 1945, there have only been 10 boom-and-bust
cycles, most of them much shallower than earlier ones, and the
unemployment rate has never topped 9.7 percent.
Much of that stability, economic historians say, stems from reforms
designed to calm consumers during downturns, like the Federal Deposit
Insurance Corporation, which guarantees most checking and savings
accounts up to $100,000 if a bank fails.
But as the Internet boom and recent housing bubble demonstrate, even
relatively stable periods can be part of a cycle of extreme ups and
downs. The prolonged expansion that just ended had an unusually long
run of more than six years. As a result, some are speculating that
the crash will be equally drawn out.
"The biggest difference with this recession is that it's starting in
the housing market," said Victor Zarnowitz, an economist at the
Conference Board who is also a member of the National Bureau of
Economic Research's business-cycle committee. For the first time in
more than 50 years, the nation faces a broad risk "that people's most
important asset, their home, will lose value," he said.
As homeowners see the value of their homes decline, they become more
likely to delay purchases of the big items — like automobiles,
electronics and home appliances — that are ballasts of the American
economy. When those purchases decline, large manufacturing firms,
suddenly short on funds, could begin laying off employees. Those
workers, uncertain about the future, might in turn stop buying
Starbucks lattes and movie tickets, and in a worst-case scenario,
that could spur coffee shops and theaters to begin layoffs of their
own.
Such a chain reaction was one reason unemployment during the Great
Depression was so persistent and widespread.
But today, say economists, fundamental changes make such contagion
unlikely. For one thing, incomes are more stable. Many more Americans
hold jobs in service sectors, like medicine or education. And more
Americans work for the government, which is less inclined to fire
people just because the economy turns gloomy.
Moreover, there are safety nets that can be traced to the Great
Depression, like Social Security, unemployment benefits, food stamp
programs. These "give people a sense of security even when they're
out of work," said the Harvard economist Benjamin Friedman. "That
establishes a floor for how panicked consumers become."
Even if consumer confidence hit rock bottom, that most likely would
not be enough, by itself, to cause a depression. For things to become
really dire, the nation's financial institutions would have to fail
at the same time that unemployment began significantly rising. Only
if banks suddenly closed, or it became impossible for companies to
access short-term lines of credit, would things begin spiraling out of
control.
A credit shortage, in fact, has played a significant role in today's
economic turmoil, and was the reason some economists began invoking
the Great Depression. But those comparisons were more to stress how
differently policy makers are behaving today than their counterparts
did in 1930, when a wave of panics started that eventually caused
one-fifth of the nation's banks to fail.
Today, the Federal Reserve is so cautious about the stability of
major financial institutions that regulators sometimes jump into
action almost immediately, as they did in the Bear Stearns case. One
goal of such an intervention, say economic historians, is to slow
down the turmoil as much as possible. In the 1920s and early 1930s,
policy makers became overwhelmed by a cascade of crises they were
unable to temper.
"In the 1920s, everyone was still reeling from the First World War,
which had realigned capital structures and boundaries and had put the
defeated countries in positions where they had much less economic
flexibility," said Peter Temin, an economic historian at the
Massachusetts Institute of Technology. In particular, one cause of
the Great Depression was that policy makers in the United States and
elsewhere were either reluctant or unable to increase their
countries' supplies of money, which at the time were often backed by
gold.
"Today, we have a lot more flexibility and we can prop up banks and
the economy to give us enough time to let things stabilize,"
Professor Temin added. Already, some lawmakers are proposing to help
refinance or purchase failing mortgages in order to slow down how
quickly other problems might spread; that approach, however, might
carry risks of its own, like encouraging irresponsible behavior and
increasing government deficits.
Of course, all of these techniques do not guarantee an easy path to
rosier times. Some economists and financiers say it's likely that the
current recession will extend for at least a year. Others think the
American economy will suffer from an extended malaise as Japan did in
the 1990s.
But whatever name economists give the current downturn, we are
unlikely to see the bread lines, shantytowns and dust bowl of the
Great Depression. More likely, these economists say, would be a
sudden increase in the number of people selling belongings on eBay.
Hollywood, which until now has largely catered to American tastes,
might begin more explicitly choosing scripts based on how they would
play in rising economies like India and China. And while exports of
manufactured goods might accelerate, the outsourcing trends that sent
some American jobs abroad might reverse. Already, Germany-based BMW
is expanding a South Carolina plant, betting that the weak dollar
will make American workers cheaper than those in Germany or Japan.
Which isn't to say that anyone is starting to hum "Happy Days Are
Here Again." Even the Federal Reserve chief, Ben Bernanke, has warned
against becoming too sanguine.
"To understand the Great Depression is the Holy Grail of
macroeconomics," Mr. Bernanke wrote in a 1994 paper, when he was a
professor at Princeton focused on analyzing the financial cataclysm
that began in 1929. While economists have made great progress, he
continued, "we do not yet have our hands on the Grail by any means."
_______________________
NY Times, March 23, 2008
The Nation
Depression, You Say? Check Those Safety Nets
By CHARLES DUHIGG
The stock markets are spiraling like whirling dervishes, one of the
nation's largest financial institutions has flirted with bankruptcy
and the former Federal Reserve chairman Alan Greenspan invoked the
ghost of past calamities when he wrote that the current economic
turmoil is likely to become the "most wrenching" since World War II.
Meanwhile, home foreclosures are at their fastest pace in at least 30
years and in a survey conducted by USA Today and Gallup, more than
half of respondents indicated that they had fears the downturn could
become a depression.
Some innocent bystanders might be forgiven for wondering why that
last word — "depression" — has started popping up. Is it possible
our
economy could speed past a recession into a full-blown depression
like that of the 1930s, when American unemployment reached 25 percent?
Well, the economists are here to say that you can dig up the family
silver and stop training the kids how to jump onto a moving train.
While many who study the nation's economic health agree that a
recession has probably already begun, and that it may be long and
severe, they also say the odds of a full-blown depression are almost
nonexistent.
Why? Because so many of them have spent so much time studying the
Great Depression and trying to figure out how to react more
effectively if things turn really bad again. Take last week, for
example.
"I used to give a lecture explaining that the Great Depression could
never happen now because of the regulations that emerged from that
crisis," said Barry Eichengreen, an economist at the University of
California at Berkeley. "But we're learning that there is a shadow
banking system, of hedge funds and investment banks, that are outside
of those safety nets. What happened to Bear Stearns last week looked
a lot like a 19th-century run on the bank. And that's why the Fed
reacted so quickly."
Indeed, when the government moved last weekend to help save Bear
Stearns, the fifth-largest securities firm on Wall Street, from
bankruptcy, policy makers were motivated by concerns that the
investment bank's failure could start a chain reaction of collapses
at other investment houses. Stopping those dominoes was such a
priority that the Federal Reserve helped broker the sale of Bear
Stearns to its rival JPMorgan Chase.
A century ago, such government hustle would have been unthinkable.
Even the distinction between a recession (a significant decline in
economic activity that lasts more than a few months) and a depression
(a decline that is much longer and deeper) didn't really matter,
because turmoil in the economy was often taken for granted.
Between 1857 and 1929, while regulators largely stood idle, the
American economy swung through 19 national boom-and-bust gyrations
that sometimes threatened to wipe out whole industries within months.
But in the wake of the Great Depression, American policy makers began
actively managing the economy with a handful of tools, including
adjusting interest rates and using massive government spending to
spur growth. Since 1945, there have only been 10 boom-and-bust
cycles, most of them much shallower than earlier ones, and the
unemployment rate has never topped 9.7 percent.
Much of that stability, economic historians say, stems from reforms
designed to calm consumers during downturns, like the Federal Deposit
Insurance Corporation, which guarantees most checking and savings
accounts up to $100,000 if a bank fails.
But as the Internet boom and recent housing bubble demonstrate, even
relatively stable periods can be part of a cycle of extreme ups and
downs. The prolonged expansion that just ended had an unusually long
run of more than six years. As a result, some are speculating that
the crash will be equally drawn out.
"The biggest difference with this recession is that it's starting in
the housing market," said Victor Zarnowitz, an economist at the
Conference Board who is also a member of the National Bureau of
Economic Research's business-cycle committee. For the first time in
more than 50 years, the nation faces a broad risk "that people's most
important asset, their home, will lose value," he said.
As homeowners see the value of their homes decline, they become more
likely to delay purchases of the big items — like automobiles,
electronics and home appliances — that are ballasts of the American
economy. When those purchases decline, large manufacturing firms,
suddenly short on funds, could begin laying off employees. Those
workers, uncertain about the future, might in turn stop buying
Starbucks lattes and movie tickets, and in a worst-case scenario,
that could spur coffee shops and theaters to begin layoffs of their
own.
Such a chain reaction was one reason unemployment during the Great
Depression was so persistent and widespread.
But today, say economists, fundamental changes make such contagion
unlikely. For one thing, incomes are more stable. Many more Americans
hold jobs in service sectors, like medicine or education. And more
Americans work for the government, which is less inclined to fire
people just because the economy turns gloomy.
Moreover, there are safety nets that can be traced to the Great
Depression, like Social Security, unemployment benefits, food stamp
programs. These "give people a sense of security even when they're
out of work," said the Harvard economist Benjamin Friedman. "That
establishes a floor for how panicked consumers become."
Even if consumer confidence hit rock bottom, that most likely would
not be enough, by itself, to cause a depression. For things to become
really dire, the nation's financial institutions would have to fail
at the same time that unemployment began significantly rising. Only
if banks suddenly closed, or it became impossible for companies to
access short-term lines of credit, would things begin spiraling out of
control.
A credit shortage, in fact, has played a significant role in today's
economic turmoil, and was the reason some economists began invoking
the Great Depression. But those comparisons were more to stress how
differently policy makers are behaving today than their counterparts
did in 1930, when a wave of panics started that eventually caused
one-fifth of the nation's banks to fail.
Today, the Federal Reserve is so cautious about the stability of
major financial institutions that regulators sometimes jump into
action almost immediately, as they did in the Bear Stearns case. One
goal of such an intervention, say economic historians, is to slow
down the turmoil as much as possible. In the 1920s and early 1930s,
policy makers became overwhelmed by a cascade of crises they were
unable to temper.
"In the 1920s, everyone was still reeling from the First World War,
which had realigned capital structures and boundaries and had put the
defeated countries in positions where they had much less economic
flexibility," said Peter Temin, an economic historian at the
Massachusetts Institute of Technology. In particular, one cause of
the Great Depression was that policy makers in the United States and
elsewhere were either reluctant or unable to increase their
countries' supplies of money, which at the time were often backed by
gold.
"Today, we have a lot more flexibility and we can prop up banks and
the economy to give us enough time to let things stabilize,"
Professor Temin added. Already, some lawmakers are proposing to help
refinance or purchase failing mortgages in order to slow down how
quickly other problems might spread; that approach, however, might
carry risks of its own, like encouraging irresponsible behavior and
increasing government deficits.
Of course, all of these techniques do not guarantee an easy path to
rosier times. Some economists and financiers say it's likely that the
current recession will extend for at least a year. Others think the
American economy will suffer from an extended malaise as Japan did in
the 1990s.
But whatever name economists give the current downturn, we are
unlikely to see the bread lines, shantytowns and dust bowl of the
Great Depression. More likely, these economists say, would be a
sudden increase in the number of people selling belongings on eBay.
Hollywood, which until now has largely catered to American tastes,
might begin more explicitly choosing scripts based on how they would
play in rising economies like India and China. And while exports of
manufactured goods might accelerate, the outsourcing trends that sent
some American jobs abroad might reverse. Already, Germany-based BMW
is expanding a South Carolina plant, betting that the weak dollar
will make American workers cheaper than those in Germany or Japan.
Which isn't to say that anyone is starting to hum "Happy Days Are
Here Again." Even the Federal Reserve chief, Ben Bernanke, has warned
against becoming too sanguine.
"To understand the Great Depression is the Holy Grail of
macroeconomics," Mr. Bernanke wrote in a 1994 paper, when he was a
professor at Princeton focused on analyzing the financial cataclysm
that began in 1929. While economists have made great progress, he
continued, "we do not yet have our hands on the Grail by any means."
_______________________
U.N. torture envoy says U.S. authorities deny access to Iraq jails.
This is from Reuters. The British have given the UN permission to inspect but not the U.S. The U.S. seems not to wish to be accountable to any international body or else it is hiding something about its jails. The U.S. reputatioon can hardly get much worse given the not just Abu Ghraib but also Guantanamo, Bagram in Afghanistan, extra-ordinary rendition, and secret prisons.
U.N. torture envoy says U.S. deny access to Iraq jails
Tue Mar 11, 2008 3:13pm EDT
By Stephanie Nebehay
GENEVA (Reuters) - The U.N. investigator on torture said on Tuesday the United States had denied his request to visit U.S.-run jails in Iraq and insisted a visit could help clear its legacy of the prison abuse scandal in Abu Ghraib.
Manfred Nowak, United Nations special rapporteur on torture, said he had received credible information the situation had improved at U.S. detention facilities in recent years, but stressed only a visit would allow him to verify them.
An international outcry erupted in 2004 after images of prisoner abuse by U.S. military personnel at Abu Ghraib west of Baghdad, including naked detainees stacked in a pyramid and others cowering before snarling dogs, became public.
"I was a little astonished that the U.S. government is not willing to grant me access because it might perhaps even be in their own interest if I compared different detention facilities," Nowak told a news briefing in Geneva.
"It might also be in their interest in overcoming the legacy of having been criticized so much for torture practices in Abu Ghraib and other detention facilities up to 2004," he added.
Nowak, who has an Iraqi government invitation for his Oct 18-26 planned visit, said he would also expect full access to Iraqi-run detention facilities, although this was still under negotiation. British authorities have agreed to allow him to visit their detainees in Iraq, he added.
At least 30,000 prisoners are held by Iraqi authorities, according to the International Committee of the Red Cross which made its first visit to security detainees held by Iraq's central government last October.
The neutral Red Cross -- whose reports are confidential unlike those of U.N. investigators -- still seeks a wider agreement for access to all prisoners held by Iraq. Sunni Arabs have accused the Shi'ite-led interior ministry of operating torture centers and dungeons holding Sunni detainees.
Nowak also voiced dismay at President George W. Bush's veto last Saturday of legislation passed by Congress that would have banned the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) from using waterboarding. The U.N. envoy reiterated that the interrogation technique which simulates drowning amounted to torture.
"I think that the (U.S.) government wishes to maintain certain positions of principle which they have taken at the beginning of the so-called war on terror, and if they now would take them back as a government, they would kind of admit that what they had done in the past was wrong," he said.
"I think that the current administration still sticks to its legal position although there is enough evidence that these legal positions are untenable under international law," he said.
Nowak, an Austrian law professor who has served in the independent post since 2004, spoke on the sidelines of the U.N. Human Rights Council. Its 47 member states are holding a four-week session until March 28 to examine abuses worldwide.
(Editing by Jonathan Lynn and Matthew Jones)
© Reuters 2007. All rights reserved. Reuters journalists are subject to the Reuters Editorial Handbook which requires fair presentation and disclosure of relevant interests.
U.N. torture envoy says U.S. deny access to Iraq jails
Tue Mar 11, 2008 3:13pm EDT
By Stephanie Nebehay
GENEVA (Reuters) - The U.N. investigator on torture said on Tuesday the United States had denied his request to visit U.S.-run jails in Iraq and insisted a visit could help clear its legacy of the prison abuse scandal in Abu Ghraib.
Manfred Nowak, United Nations special rapporteur on torture, said he had received credible information the situation had improved at U.S. detention facilities in recent years, but stressed only a visit would allow him to verify them.
An international outcry erupted in 2004 after images of prisoner abuse by U.S. military personnel at Abu Ghraib west of Baghdad, including naked detainees stacked in a pyramid and others cowering before snarling dogs, became public.
"I was a little astonished that the U.S. government is not willing to grant me access because it might perhaps even be in their own interest if I compared different detention facilities," Nowak told a news briefing in Geneva.
"It might also be in their interest in overcoming the legacy of having been criticized so much for torture practices in Abu Ghraib and other detention facilities up to 2004," he added.
Nowak, who has an Iraqi government invitation for his Oct 18-26 planned visit, said he would also expect full access to Iraqi-run detention facilities, although this was still under negotiation. British authorities have agreed to allow him to visit their detainees in Iraq, he added.
At least 30,000 prisoners are held by Iraqi authorities, according to the International Committee of the Red Cross which made its first visit to security detainees held by Iraq's central government last October.
The neutral Red Cross -- whose reports are confidential unlike those of U.N. investigators -- still seeks a wider agreement for access to all prisoners held by Iraq. Sunni Arabs have accused the Shi'ite-led interior ministry of operating torture centers and dungeons holding Sunni detainees.
Nowak also voiced dismay at President George W. Bush's veto last Saturday of legislation passed by Congress that would have banned the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) from using waterboarding. The U.N. envoy reiterated that the interrogation technique which simulates drowning amounted to torture.
"I think that the (U.S.) government wishes to maintain certain positions of principle which they have taken at the beginning of the so-called war on terror, and if they now would take them back as a government, they would kind of admit that what they had done in the past was wrong," he said.
"I think that the current administration still sticks to its legal position although there is enough evidence that these legal positions are untenable under international law," he said.
Nowak, an Austrian law professor who has served in the independent post since 2004, spoke on the sidelines of the U.N. Human Rights Council. Its 47 member states are holding a four-week session until March 28 to examine abuses worldwide.
(Editing by Jonathan Lynn and Matthew Jones)
© Reuters 2007. All rights reserved. Reuters journalists are subject to the Reuters Editorial Handbook which requires fair presentation and disclosure of relevant interests.
Sunday, March 23, 2008
Russia moves to control foreign ownership
This is from the CBC.
There seems to be a trend towards more nationalism in Russian politics. At the same time this will protect Russian oligarchs allied with Putin from competition through unchecked purchases of Russian assets by international capital. The open season on former Soviet assets that prevailed after the collapse of communism is now over as far as foreigners are concerned.
Russia moves to control foreign ownership
Last Updated: Friday, March 21, 2008 | 4:19 PM ET Russian legislators have taken the first step to limiting foreign investment in 42 strategic sectors, including energy, mass media and aerospace.
A Russian bill would limit foreign ownership in several sectors, including energy. Russia's Sakhalin Island, above, last September, is home to world's largest oil and gas project.
(Burt Herman/Associated Press)
The Kremlin is already in control of the oil and gas business, and this bill will enable it to dominate other key sectors.
The bill gives a Russian commission of economic and security officials a veto over any deal in which a foreign company wants to buy control — more than 50 per cent — of Russian companies in the named sectors.
The proposed rule is even tougher for companies controlled by foreign governments. They will need permission from the commission to buy more than 25 per cent in a Russian company covered by the legislation.
Russia's lower house of parliament gave preliminary approval to the bill on Friday.
The approval suggests that the bill is likely to become law without substantial changes, because the remaining approvals required are by bodies either controlled by the Kremlin or under its influence.
There seems to be a trend towards more nationalism in Russian politics. At the same time this will protect Russian oligarchs allied with Putin from competition through unchecked purchases of Russian assets by international capital. The open season on former Soviet assets that prevailed after the collapse of communism is now over as far as foreigners are concerned.
Russia moves to control foreign ownership
Last Updated: Friday, March 21, 2008 | 4:19 PM ET Russian legislators have taken the first step to limiting foreign investment in 42 strategic sectors, including energy, mass media and aerospace.
A Russian bill would limit foreign ownership in several sectors, including energy. Russia's Sakhalin Island, above, last September, is home to world's largest oil and gas project.
(Burt Herman/Associated Press)
The Kremlin is already in control of the oil and gas business, and this bill will enable it to dominate other key sectors.
The bill gives a Russian commission of economic and security officials a veto over any deal in which a foreign company wants to buy control — more than 50 per cent — of Russian companies in the named sectors.
The proposed rule is even tougher for companies controlled by foreign governments. They will need permission from the commission to buy more than 25 per cent in a Russian company covered by the legislation.
Russia's lower house of parliament gave preliminary approval to the bill on Friday.
The approval suggests that the bill is likely to become law without substantial changes, because the remaining approvals required are by bodies either controlled by the Kremlin or under its influence.
Philippines 'most corrupt' in Asia: Poll
This is from the Inquirer. Not too many of the rankings are listed so it is hard to know how the Philippines compared to other corrupt countries. The article is rather strange in that it suggests that the Philippines is a 'sad case' because corruption is politicised and openly discussed in the media unlike authoritarian countries such as Vietnam and China. Huh? I suppose being just part of the accepted mode of operation and uncriticised is a plus! Having opposition parties and media criticise corruption is bad and sad! I would think that it is the other way around unless you support corruption as a normal and acceptable cost of doing business.
Philippines ‘most corrupt’ in Asia
Philippine Daily Inquirer
First Posted 02:08:00 03/23/2008
MANILA, Philippines—The Philippines, Thailand, Indonesia and China are among the most corrupt Asian economies, according to results of a regional poll of expatriate businessmen released March 10.
Singapore and Hong Kong retained their rankings as the cleanest economies, the Political and Economic Risk Consultancy (PERC) said.
The annual survey covers only 13 economies in Asia and excludes other countries notorious for corruption, such as Myanmar and Bangladesh.
Some 1,400 expatriates were polled in January and February this year, PERC said.
Corruption remains a problem in the region despite huge economic progress made over the years, with governments generally lacking the political will to tackle the problem, the Hong Kong-based PERC said.
“The Philippines is a sad case when it comes to corruption,” the consultancy said in a summary report made available to AFP.
The Philippine situation is “probably no worse than in places like Indonesia and Thailand” but corruption has become politicized and is openly discussed in the media, unlike in authoritarian countries like China and Vietnam, it said.
The Philippines scored 9.0 out of a possible 10 points under a grading system used by PERC under which zero is the best score and 10 the worst
Philippines ‘most corrupt’ in Asia
Philippine Daily Inquirer
First Posted 02:08:00 03/23/2008
MANILA, Philippines—The Philippines, Thailand, Indonesia and China are among the most corrupt Asian economies, according to results of a regional poll of expatriate businessmen released March 10.
Singapore and Hong Kong retained their rankings as the cleanest economies, the Political and Economic Risk Consultancy (PERC) said.
The annual survey covers only 13 economies in Asia and excludes other countries notorious for corruption, such as Myanmar and Bangladesh.
Some 1,400 expatriates were polled in January and February this year, PERC said.
Corruption remains a problem in the region despite huge economic progress made over the years, with governments generally lacking the political will to tackle the problem, the Hong Kong-based PERC said.
“The Philippines is a sad case when it comes to corruption,” the consultancy said in a summary report made available to AFP.
The Philippine situation is “probably no worse than in places like Indonesia and Thailand” but corruption has become politicized and is openly discussed in the media, unlike in authoritarian countries like China and Vietnam, it said.
The Philippines scored 9.0 out of a possible 10 points under a grading system used by PERC under which zero is the best score and 10 the worst
Wall Street Culture unlikely to change
Note that many of the big trading firms are doing quite well during all this turmoil. There seems to be no sign that a stricter regulatory regime is in the offing so taking risks and greed will not be prevented from causing the same problems in the future.
http://biz.yahoo.com/ap/080322/wall_main.html?.v=3
Wall Street Culture Not Likely to Change
NEW YORK (AP) -- Wall Street investment bankers got
another lesson about the dangers of risk-taking this
past week with the downfall of Bear Stearns Cos. The
question now obviously is, how long will it last?
Those bankers, many of whom lived through market
debacles like the dot-com bust at the start of this
decade, turned out to have very short memories. And so
analysts believe the sale of Bear Stearns to JPMorgan
Chase & Co. for a stunning $2 per share ultimately
won't have that much of an impact on how Wall Street
conducts business.
In fact, bankers and traders are under even more
pressure to reap big returns because of the ongoing
credit crisis, and risk is just part of the game.
"There's an old saying on Wall Street that, for
traders and bankers, you'd have to take a normal 30
year career and distill it to 15 years," said Quincy
Krosby, chief investment strategist for The Hartford.
"This whole episode might change Wall Street for a
little while."
Krosby believes that Bear Stearns' near-collapse,
which followed the company's investing too heavily in
risky mortgage-backed securities, might force some
bankers to change their ways in the short term. But it
won't be enough to temper the financial industry's
relentless pursuit of money.
Indeed, the past decade has seen a number of investing
fiascoes that Wall Street doesn't appear to have
learned much from. Krosby noted the go-go Internet
days - when untested high-tech companies reaped piles
of cash in public offerings. The lesson then was,
don't put a lot of money into a venture that isn't on
fairly solid ground - but mortgages granted to people
with poor credit are quite akin to high-tech firms
that had never turned a profit. In both cases,
investors gleefully looked past the risk.
Now investors are smarting from what happened to Bear
Stearns. And traders are somewhat chastened, for now.
Erin Callan, the chief financial officer for Lehman
Brothers Holdings Inc., said her firm has certainly
become more wary about the risks it takes amid the
credit crisis. However, the market's gyrations also
offer Lehman's army of traders an opportunity to make
money.
"We just try to come in, and run the business the best
way we can," she said. "But, you can't survive if you
take no risks at all. All we can do is plan in this
environment, making sure we do all the things to
optimize running the firm."
It seems there's little that will change an industry
and a lifestyle attached to Wall Street, which is
thought of by Americans as more than just the center
of free-market capitalism. Its culture attracts men
and women with a swashbuckling mentality - smart,
aggressive risk takers with the potential to become
very rich.
And, their skills in trading and investment banking
were proven this past week - even after news of Bear
Stearns' buyout.
Chief executives at Morgan Stanley, Goldman Sachs
Group Inc., and Lehman Brothers pointed out that
trading desks played a big part in offsetting massive
mortgage-backed asset write-downs, which have ticked
past $156 billion for global banks since last year.
As the three companies released first-quarter earnings
data, Morgan Stanley said equity trading revenue
surged 51 percent to $3.3 billion. Revenue at its
fixed-income sales and trading group dropped 15
percent to $2.9 billion, but it was still the firm's
second-highest performance ever despite having to
write down $2.3 billion linked to subprime mortgages
and leveraged loans.
And that pleased investors. Morgan Stanley had its
largest gain in more than a decade on Wednesday,
climbing 18.8 percent to $42.86. Rival investment
banks also had their best week since 2001.
But, investors shouldn't get too comfortable - the
investment banking industry, and Wall Street in
general, still have a long way to go before they can
be called healthy. It's not just the credit market
problems that are an issue, it's also the struggling
U.S. economy and its potential to hurt other
countries.
"Until we feel more certain about the worldwide
economies, we don't see things picking up
dramatically," said Goldman Sachs CFO David Viniar.
"We just need to keep plugging away."
http://biz.yahoo.com/ap/080322/wall_main.html?.v=3
Wall Street Culture Not Likely to Change
NEW YORK (AP) -- Wall Street investment bankers got
another lesson about the dangers of risk-taking this
past week with the downfall of Bear Stearns Cos. The
question now obviously is, how long will it last?
Those bankers, many of whom lived through market
debacles like the dot-com bust at the start of this
decade, turned out to have very short memories. And so
analysts believe the sale of Bear Stearns to JPMorgan
Chase & Co. for a stunning $2 per share ultimately
won't have that much of an impact on how Wall Street
conducts business.
In fact, bankers and traders are under even more
pressure to reap big returns because of the ongoing
credit crisis, and risk is just part of the game.
"There's an old saying on Wall Street that, for
traders and bankers, you'd have to take a normal 30
year career and distill it to 15 years," said Quincy
Krosby, chief investment strategist for The Hartford.
"This whole episode might change Wall Street for a
little while."
Krosby believes that Bear Stearns' near-collapse,
which followed the company's investing too heavily in
risky mortgage-backed securities, might force some
bankers to change their ways in the short term. But it
won't be enough to temper the financial industry's
relentless pursuit of money.
Indeed, the past decade has seen a number of investing
fiascoes that Wall Street doesn't appear to have
learned much from. Krosby noted the go-go Internet
days - when untested high-tech companies reaped piles
of cash in public offerings. The lesson then was,
don't put a lot of money into a venture that isn't on
fairly solid ground - but mortgages granted to people
with poor credit are quite akin to high-tech firms
that had never turned a profit. In both cases,
investors gleefully looked past the risk.
Now investors are smarting from what happened to Bear
Stearns. And traders are somewhat chastened, for now.
Erin Callan, the chief financial officer for Lehman
Brothers Holdings Inc., said her firm has certainly
become more wary about the risks it takes amid the
credit crisis. However, the market's gyrations also
offer Lehman's army of traders an opportunity to make
money.
"We just try to come in, and run the business the best
way we can," she said. "But, you can't survive if you
take no risks at all. All we can do is plan in this
environment, making sure we do all the things to
optimize running the firm."
It seems there's little that will change an industry
and a lifestyle attached to Wall Street, which is
thought of by Americans as more than just the center
of free-market capitalism. Its culture attracts men
and women with a swashbuckling mentality - smart,
aggressive risk takers with the potential to become
very rich.
And, their skills in trading and investment banking
were proven this past week - even after news of Bear
Stearns' buyout.
Chief executives at Morgan Stanley, Goldman Sachs
Group Inc., and Lehman Brothers pointed out that
trading desks played a big part in offsetting massive
mortgage-backed asset write-downs, which have ticked
past $156 billion for global banks since last year.
As the three companies released first-quarter earnings
data, Morgan Stanley said equity trading revenue
surged 51 percent to $3.3 billion. Revenue at its
fixed-income sales and trading group dropped 15
percent to $2.9 billion, but it was still the firm's
second-highest performance ever despite having to
write down $2.3 billion linked to subprime mortgages
and leveraged loans.
And that pleased investors. Morgan Stanley had its
largest gain in more than a decade on Wednesday,
climbing 18.8 percent to $42.86. Rival investment
banks also had their best week since 2001.
But, investors shouldn't get too comfortable - the
investment banking industry, and Wall Street in
general, still have a long way to go before they can
be called healthy. It's not just the credit market
problems that are an issue, it's also the struggling
U.S. economy and its potential to hurt other
countries.
"Until we feel more certain about the worldwide
economies, we don't see things picking up
dramatically," said Goldman Sachs CFO David Viniar.
"We just need to keep plugging away."
Saturday, March 22, 2008
Republicans and Democrats diverge on health care
The most that can be said for the U.S. system is that it is one of the better systems globally for the rich and has lots of high tech features. However, in international rankings it is not even in the top ten let alone best. Here is the 2000 WHO rankings of almost two hundred countries:
"The U.S. health system spends a higher portion of its gross domestic product than any other country but ranks 37 out of 191 countries according to its performance, the report finds. The United Kingdom, which spends just six percent of GDP on health services, ranks 18 th.."
Where the U.S. is number one is in percentage of GDP it spends on health care. The U.S. system is wildly inefficient.
Republicans and Democrats diverge on health care
Thu Mar 20, 12:25 AM ET
Americans' views of the U.S. health care system differ
widely based on political party preferences, with
Republicans far more likely than Democrats to call it
the world's best, a poll released on Thursday showed.
People taking part in the survey by the Harvard
University School of Public Health and Harris
Interactive were asked if they thought the United
States has the best health care system or if other
countries had better ones.
Overall, 45 percent said the U.S. system is best, 39
percent disagreed and 15 percent said they did not
know or declined to answer.
Clear differences appeared when the respondents were
sorted by political party identification. Among
Republicans, 68 percent said the United States is the
best, compared to 32 percent of Democrats and 40
percent of independents.
The survey was conducted from March 5 to 8, with a
nationally representative sample of 1,026 people. It
has a margin of error of plus or minus 3 percent.
"We didn't think the split would be as large as it was
between Republicans and Democrats," Robert Blendon, a
Harvard professor of health policy and political
analysis who helped design the survey, said in a
telephone interview.
"Just based on your party perspective, your view about
whether or not there's something better out there, as
a system, is so different," Blendon said.
Runaway U.S. health-care spending and lack of medical
coverage for millions of Americans have emerged as
issues in this year's U.S. presidential campaign. An
estimated 47 million people in a country of about 300
million have no health insurance, either private or
government-provided.
The non-profit Commonwealth Fund said in November
Americans spend double what people in other
industrialized nations do on health care, but have
more trouble seeing doctors, face more medical errors
and are more apt to go without treatment.
Those findings came in a poll of 12,000 people in the
United States, Britain, Germany, the Netherlands,
Canada, New Zealand and Australia.
British researchers said in January that the United
States rated worst in rankings focusing on preventable
deaths due to treatable conditions in 19 leading
industrialized nations.
In the Harvard survey, 26 percent of respondents said
the United States is better than other countries in
providing affordable health care access to everyone,
and 21 percent felt the United States was better in
controlling health care costs.
Also, 55 percent of respondents said U.S. patients
receive better quality of care than those in other
nations and 53 percent said waiting times were shorter
for U.S. patients to see specialists or be admitted to
the hospital than elsewhere.
(Reporting by Will Dunham; Editing by Maggie Fox and
Eric Walsh)
http://news.yahoo.com/s/nm/20080320/pl_nm/usa_dc
_______________
"The U.S. health system spends a higher portion of its gross domestic product than any other country but ranks 37 out of 191 countries according to its performance, the report finds. The United Kingdom, which spends just six percent of GDP on health services, ranks 18 th.."
Where the U.S. is number one is in percentage of GDP it spends on health care. The U.S. system is wildly inefficient.
Republicans and Democrats diverge on health care
Thu Mar 20, 12:25 AM ET
Americans' views of the U.S. health care system differ
widely based on political party preferences, with
Republicans far more likely than Democrats to call it
the world's best, a poll released on Thursday showed.
People taking part in the survey by the Harvard
University School of Public Health and Harris
Interactive were asked if they thought the United
States has the best health care system or if other
countries had better ones.
Overall, 45 percent said the U.S. system is best, 39
percent disagreed and 15 percent said they did not
know or declined to answer.
Clear differences appeared when the respondents were
sorted by political party identification. Among
Republicans, 68 percent said the United States is the
best, compared to 32 percent of Democrats and 40
percent of independents.
The survey was conducted from March 5 to 8, with a
nationally representative sample of 1,026 people. It
has a margin of error of plus or minus 3 percent.
"We didn't think the split would be as large as it was
between Republicans and Democrats," Robert Blendon, a
Harvard professor of health policy and political
analysis who helped design the survey, said in a
telephone interview.
"Just based on your party perspective, your view about
whether or not there's something better out there, as
a system, is so different," Blendon said.
Runaway U.S. health-care spending and lack of medical
coverage for millions of Americans have emerged as
issues in this year's U.S. presidential campaign. An
estimated 47 million people in a country of about 300
million have no health insurance, either private or
government-provided.
The non-profit Commonwealth Fund said in November
Americans spend double what people in other
industrialized nations do on health care, but have
more trouble seeing doctors, face more medical errors
and are more apt to go without treatment.
Those findings came in a poll of 12,000 people in the
United States, Britain, Germany, the Netherlands,
Canada, New Zealand and Australia.
British researchers said in January that the United
States rated worst in rankings focusing on preventable
deaths due to treatable conditions in 19 leading
industrialized nations.
In the Harvard survey, 26 percent of respondents said
the United States is better than other countries in
providing affordable health care access to everyone,
and 21 percent felt the United States was better in
controlling health care costs.
Also, 55 percent of respondents said U.S. patients
receive better quality of care than those in other
nations and 53 percent said waiting times were shorter
for U.S. patients to see specialists or be admitted to
the hospital than elsewhere.
(Reporting by Will Dunham; Editing by Maggie Fox and
Eric Walsh)
http://news.yahoo.com/s/nm/20080320/pl_nm/usa_dc
_______________
Diplomat: Philippine Ties with China in serious jeopardy.
This is from abs-cbnnews. On the other hand if the Philippines makes a good deal with China and Vietnam on oil exploration and development in the Spratlys the U.S. may not be happy. If Arroyo gets in trouble maybe the U.S. will not let her and her hubby run off to some undisclosed properties in the U.S. one destination for Filipino politicians under distress or investigation at home. This is from bulatlat.
"Two cause-oriented groups disclosed that President Gloria Macapagal-Arroyo and her husband, Mike Arroyo, did not include in their joint Statement of Assets and Liabilities (SAL) from 1992 to 2002 a multi-million dollar real estate properties acquired in the United States since 1992.
Based on documents obtained by the fisherfolk alliance Pambansang Lakas ng Kilusang Mamamalakaya ng Pilipinas (Pamalakaya, or National Federation of Small Fisherfolk Organizations in the Philippines) and the peasant group Kilusang Magbubukid ng Pilipinas (KMP, Peasant Movement of the Philippines), the latest property acquired by the Arroyos was a real estate property located at 1510 Austin St, San Francisco, California on Sept. 1, 1999 from Jerry Benjamin and Karen M."
RP ties with China in 'serious jeopardy', diplomat warns
By Estrella Torres
Business Mirror
A SENIOR diplomat has warned that the Philippines’ diplomatic relations with China “is in serious jeopardy” owing to the controversy surrounding the National Broadband Network deal (NBN) with ZTE Co. that has dragged other bilateral agreements with that country.
The official said the NBN-ZTE controversy is not in anyway linked with the Joint Marine Seismic Undertaking (JMSU) and even the Spratly issue that has been subject to diplomatic reviews for almost 10 years.
“We are putting our diplomatic relations with China, in serious jeopardy because the ZTE investigation is being linked with the JMSU. The Chinese government is now protesting the way we [Philippine government] handle the matter,” said a senior official of the Department of Foreign Affairs (DFA), who spoke on condition of anonymity.
She believes that the US government, a major economic rival of China, is “fueling” the opposition to the JMSU.
“The US has been wanting to be involved in the oil exploration in the South China sea but the Philippines has already agreed to undertake this with China,” said the diplomat.
Also, the US Embassy in Manila also expressed concern over the award of the NBN project with China’s ZTE because a US telecommunications company lost in the bidding.
The eroding trust in the Arroyo administration is compounding the problem, she said. “The problem is, the Arroyo administration has lost its credibility to govern and anything it does now is being viewed with distrust.”
DIPLOMATS GUIDED PNOC ON JMSU
Another DFA official privy to the negotiations on JMSU, meanwhile, said the agreement with China and Vietnam was separately negotiated from the economic agreements with China, which include Northrail and the NBN project with ZTE.
The official explained the JMSU was internally discussed by an inter-agency team that includes officials from the DFA, National Security Council, Department of Energy and the Department of Justice. It was the Philippine National Oil Co. (PNOC) that negotiated the JMSU as a commercial agreement with its Chinese and Vietnamese counterparts.
“Although the JMSU is a commercial agreement by nature, the PNOC was provided with policy guidance by the inter-agency team that includes the DFA, because the seismic activity would have implications on the respective claims to the Spratly Islands by the Philippines, China and Vietnam,” the official said.
The JMSU was signed by the Philippines, China and Vietnam in September 2005 as part of the confidence-building measures of claimant countries to the Spratly Islands, she said.
The diplomat recalled that the interagency team conducted strings of meetings at the DFA to discuss the JMSU, “because not only were we going to break new ground in regional diplomacy but we also had to make sure it was above board.”
She said the JMSU is guided by the Constitution and the Declaration of Conduct on the South China Sea, a Philippine-initiated agreement signed by China, and the members of the Association of Southeast Asian Nations on November 2, 2002.
"Two cause-oriented groups disclosed that President Gloria Macapagal-Arroyo and her husband, Mike Arroyo, did not include in their joint Statement of Assets and Liabilities (SAL) from 1992 to 2002 a multi-million dollar real estate properties acquired in the United States since 1992.
Based on documents obtained by the fisherfolk alliance Pambansang Lakas ng Kilusang Mamamalakaya ng Pilipinas (Pamalakaya, or National Federation of Small Fisherfolk Organizations in the Philippines) and the peasant group Kilusang Magbubukid ng Pilipinas (KMP, Peasant Movement of the Philippines), the latest property acquired by the Arroyos was a real estate property located at 1510 Austin St, San Francisco, California on Sept. 1, 1999 from Jerry Benjamin and Karen M."
RP ties with China in 'serious jeopardy', diplomat warns
By Estrella Torres
Business Mirror
A SENIOR diplomat has warned that the Philippines’ diplomatic relations with China “is in serious jeopardy” owing to the controversy surrounding the National Broadband Network deal (NBN) with ZTE Co. that has dragged other bilateral agreements with that country.
The official said the NBN-ZTE controversy is not in anyway linked with the Joint Marine Seismic Undertaking (JMSU) and even the Spratly issue that has been subject to diplomatic reviews for almost 10 years.
“We are putting our diplomatic relations with China, in serious jeopardy because the ZTE investigation is being linked with the JMSU. The Chinese government is now protesting the way we [Philippine government] handle the matter,” said a senior official of the Department of Foreign Affairs (DFA), who spoke on condition of anonymity.
She believes that the US government, a major economic rival of China, is “fueling” the opposition to the JMSU.
“The US has been wanting to be involved in the oil exploration in the South China sea but the Philippines has already agreed to undertake this with China,” said the diplomat.
Also, the US Embassy in Manila also expressed concern over the award of the NBN project with China’s ZTE because a US telecommunications company lost in the bidding.
The eroding trust in the Arroyo administration is compounding the problem, she said. “The problem is, the Arroyo administration has lost its credibility to govern and anything it does now is being viewed with distrust.”
DIPLOMATS GUIDED PNOC ON JMSU
Another DFA official privy to the negotiations on JMSU, meanwhile, said the agreement with China and Vietnam was separately negotiated from the economic agreements with China, which include Northrail and the NBN project with ZTE.
The official explained the JMSU was internally discussed by an inter-agency team that includes officials from the DFA, National Security Council, Department of Energy and the Department of Justice. It was the Philippine National Oil Co. (PNOC) that negotiated the JMSU as a commercial agreement with its Chinese and Vietnamese counterparts.
“Although the JMSU is a commercial agreement by nature, the PNOC was provided with policy guidance by the inter-agency team that includes the DFA, because the seismic activity would have implications on the respective claims to the Spratly Islands by the Philippines, China and Vietnam,” the official said.
The JMSU was signed by the Philippines, China and Vietnam in September 2005 as part of the confidence-building measures of claimant countries to the Spratly Islands, she said.
The diplomat recalled that the interagency team conducted strings of meetings at the DFA to discuss the JMSU, “because not only were we going to break new ground in regional diplomacy but we also had to make sure it was above board.”
She said the JMSU is guided by the Constitution and the Declaration of Conduct on the South China Sea, a Philippine-initiated agreement signed by China, and the members of the Association of Southeast Asian Nations on November 2, 2002.
Friday, March 21, 2008
Obama's "Multiracial Coalition" and the politics of "Racial Reconciliation".
This is from blackagendareport. This is an analysis of Obama that you will find nowhere in mainstream press reports. This type of analysis is not likely to deter black voters from voting for Obama, the other choice is even less appealing if anything. However, being associated with Wright might sabotage Obama's successful so far building of a multi-racial coalition. If Obama does win it could also cost him the presidency against McCain.
Obama's "Multiracial Coalition" and the Politics of "Racial Reconciliation"
by BAR Managing Editor Bruce Dixon
“We took this country (from Native Americans) by terror...”
“We bombed Hiroshima and Nagasaki. We nuked far more than the numbers killed in New York and the Pentagon and we never batted an eye...”
“We have supported state terrorism against the Palestinians and the black South Africans, and now we are indignant because the stuff we have done overseas has been brought back to our own front yards? America's chickens are coming home to roost...”
These and similar statements by Rev. Dr. Jeremiah A. Wright, the long time pastor of Chicago's Trinity United Church of Christ are not even particularly controversial in the Black community. They are, as the University of Chicago's Michael Dawson affirms well within the mainstream of Black opinion, and can be heard on street corners, barber shops, churches and around dinner tables all the time. The fact is, most African Americans agree with Rev. Wright.
But the common and ordinary wisdom of Black America is inadmissible in mainstream US discourse. In the reality-defying bubble of US corporate media, one must never speak of the genocide and dispossession of Native Americans as “terror”. Comparing the atomic bombings of hundreds of thousands of civilians in World War 2, the snuffing out of two million Vietnamese lives in the sixties and seventies or one million plus Iraqis and counting in the current war is, in mainstream media, strictly off-limits. And any suggestion that US imperial policies in the Middle East, Africa or elsewhere might provoke justified resistance or understandable retaliation is deemed beyond-the-pale anti-American hate speech.
The foundation of Barack Obama's electoral strategy is reliance upon a base of voters in black America motivated by a nationalistic desire to see one of their own in the White House, no matter what his beliefs. Thus the black vote, ordinarily the most dependably left wing bloc in the US can be safely and permanently taken for granted, leaving Obama free to move rightward, doing and saying whatever it takes to win white votes and corporate favor. Barack Obama is therefore the establishment's dream black candidate, almost entirely free of obligation to African Americans and our historic agenda, but getting our votes anyway.
Accordingly, to preserve his standing among white and Republican voters who imagine him as the “post-racial” candidate, Obama has for the past week sought to distance himself from his pastor of twenty years. In speeches and interviews Obama compared Rev. Wright to “that old uncle everybody has” who mumbles things we disagree with. He pronounced Wright an “angry” man, hopelessly stuck in the fifties and sixties. Obama's much ballyhooed March 18 speech went several steps further, suggesting that white American racism is a not a fundamental feature of American life, mischaracterizing his pastor's views on the Middle East, and blaming war and US imperial adventures that part of the world on “radical Islam” instead of on our insistence upon controlling their resources.
"...the remarks that have caused this recent firestorm weren't simply controversial. They weren't simply a religious leader's effort to speak out against perceived injustice. Instead, they expressed a profoundly distorted view of this country - a view that sees white racism as endemic, and that elevates what is wrong with America above all that we know is right with America; a view that sees the conflicts in the Middle East as rooted primarily in the actions of stalwart allies like Israel, instead of emanating from the perverse and hateful ideologies of radical Islam."
The fact is that black America is more pro-Palestinian than any other constituency except Arab-Americans. Black America is highly suspicious of US claims to be an “honest broker” for peace in the Middle East. Obama's labeling of "radical Islam" as the transcendent national enemy, however, is perfectly in line with that of corporate media, as well as with Hillary's, McCain's and Bush's "war on terror" foreign policy framework. But it happens to be the exact opposite of where most of Black America stands.
If Barack believes, as he says, that "the perverse and hateful ideologies of radical Islam" are the reasons we are at war in the Middle East, what difference is there between Obama and Hillary, between Obama and McCain or even between Obama and George Bush or the neo-cons? If Barack believes this, his promised withdrawal and “over the horizon” redeployment of "combat troops" (not of mercenaries or contractors or counterinsurgency troops or training troops or the rest of the occupation, just the "combat brigades") will be followed by another intervention somewhere else in hopes of squashing "the perverse and hateful ideology of radical Islam". Maybe Somalia, which we already bomb regularly. Maybe Afghanistan. Maybe nuclear-armed Pakistan, a target Obama has already identified.
A further proof of how liberated the black candidate Obama is from the will of black voters is his promised to increase the military budget over Bush levels, to add 90,000 more pairs of boots to the army and marines, and to increase the number of US troops in Afghanistan, where we support a coterie of arms and opium smugglers masquerading as a government. Increasing the military budget is lower on the priorities of African Americans than of any other constituency in the land, and takes money away from all the cherished priorities of African American communities like education, public transit, and job creation.
And of course our "stalwart ally", as Barack called Israel, in fact a murderous apartheid regime in which Arab "citizens" are forbidden from owning land in much of the country, where their marriages are not recognized by the state, where Arabs are issued different license plates so their cars can be profiled from a distance, and many other indignities. And those are Arabs with Israeli citizenship. Palestinians, the owners of the land only two generation ago, are still experiencing wholesale confiscation of their remaining land and assets, penned up into Gaza and the West Bank, humiliated, starved and murdered at will by Israeli armed forces and death squads. Obama knows these to be facts, and at earlier points in his political career would show up at Palestinian events in Chicago. But the political game he has chosen to play, and the allies he has chose to play it with require a selective memory.
And just as Ronald Reagan was seldom able to complete a paragraph on race without a reference to fictional Cadillac-driving welfare queens, Barack Obama was unable to make a speech on race without a gratuitous and pandering reference to the alleged shortcomings of black fathers. Is this what “post-racial” black candidates must do to prove they are not “stuck” in the sixties? Is this how a “multiracial coalition” is built?
"What would it have cost Barack Obama to try to educate, to lead, to lift the level of the American people by picking say, the least controversial of Wright's assertions, say that the country was taken from Native Americans “by terror” and actually defending it?"
Two decades ago he took the advice of a local pastor who suggested his work as a community organizer in Chicago's Roseland neighborhood would go better if he had a “church home”, and Obama chose Trinity United Church of Christ on 95th Street. In the very early 80s, long before most Americans knew Nelson Mandela's name, Trinity UCC had a “FREE SOUTH AFRICA” sign in front of its building. Meetings were held and collections were regularly taken up since at least the mid-1970s to aid liberation movements in what were then the white-ruled countries of Mozambique, Guinea-Bissau, Namibia, Angola and South Africa. Rev. Wright was a theologian, an activist, a successful pastor and leader who built a thriving ministry that was one of the black south side's social, economic and political hubs for a generation. If you were up and coming on the south side, Trinity was one of the places to be, for many reasons.
Obama got what he could out of Trinity in the 80s,. He re-joined the church upon his return to Chicago after law school in 1992 to begin his political career. Obama admits that Wright married the him and his wife, baptized their children, and blessed their new house. But at this point in the campaign, Rev. Wright's message and ministry are as expendable as the political will of the rest of Black America has been all along. Campaign insiders have told reporters that if Rev. Wright was not retiring, Obama would have to change congregations, but since he is, that will not be necessary. In the end, Barack Obama is a grown man, a savvy and ambitious politician who will have to live with his moral and political choices. And so will we. We know what's in it for him. But what's in it for us?
What would it have cost Barack Obama to try to educate, to lead, to lift the level of the American people by picking say, the least controversial of Wright's assertions, say that the country was taken from Native Americans “by terror” and actually defending it? That would have been an historic and groundbreaking act of moral leadership. If Obama is not ready to lead now, when will he be? And where?
Obama's unconditional affirmations that America is “inherently good”, that white racism is not endemic, that “radical Islam” is the enemy, that apartheid Israel is a “stalwart ally”, and that his pastor and spiritual mentor, a man who accurately reflects the views of most of Black America is an angry, divisive old uncle stuck in the fifties and sixties --- all these may restore his credentials among whites as the candidate of “racial reconciliation”. But what is being reconciled here? Aside from the color of the president's face, what is being changed? And just what does Black America, its opinions and leading thinkers denounced, belittled and banned from the political discourse by the black candidate, no less, get out of this reconciliation, or this campaign?
Obama's "Multiracial Coalition" and the Politics of "Racial Reconciliation"
by BAR Managing Editor Bruce Dixon
“We took this country (from Native Americans) by terror...”
“We bombed Hiroshima and Nagasaki. We nuked far more than the numbers killed in New York and the Pentagon and we never batted an eye...”
“We have supported state terrorism against the Palestinians and the black South Africans, and now we are indignant because the stuff we have done overseas has been brought back to our own front yards? America's chickens are coming home to roost...”
These and similar statements by Rev. Dr. Jeremiah A. Wright, the long time pastor of Chicago's Trinity United Church of Christ are not even particularly controversial in the Black community. They are, as the University of Chicago's Michael Dawson affirms well within the mainstream of Black opinion, and can be heard on street corners, barber shops, churches and around dinner tables all the time. The fact is, most African Americans agree with Rev. Wright.
But the common and ordinary wisdom of Black America is inadmissible in mainstream US discourse. In the reality-defying bubble of US corporate media, one must never speak of the genocide and dispossession of Native Americans as “terror”. Comparing the atomic bombings of hundreds of thousands of civilians in World War 2, the snuffing out of two million Vietnamese lives in the sixties and seventies or one million plus Iraqis and counting in the current war is, in mainstream media, strictly off-limits. And any suggestion that US imperial policies in the Middle East, Africa or elsewhere might provoke justified resistance or understandable retaliation is deemed beyond-the-pale anti-American hate speech.
The foundation of Barack Obama's electoral strategy is reliance upon a base of voters in black America motivated by a nationalistic desire to see one of their own in the White House, no matter what his beliefs. Thus the black vote, ordinarily the most dependably left wing bloc in the US can be safely and permanently taken for granted, leaving Obama free to move rightward, doing and saying whatever it takes to win white votes and corporate favor. Barack Obama is therefore the establishment's dream black candidate, almost entirely free of obligation to African Americans and our historic agenda, but getting our votes anyway.
Accordingly, to preserve his standing among white and Republican voters who imagine him as the “post-racial” candidate, Obama has for the past week sought to distance himself from his pastor of twenty years. In speeches and interviews Obama compared Rev. Wright to “that old uncle everybody has” who mumbles things we disagree with. He pronounced Wright an “angry” man, hopelessly stuck in the fifties and sixties. Obama's much ballyhooed March 18 speech went several steps further, suggesting that white American racism is a not a fundamental feature of American life, mischaracterizing his pastor's views on the Middle East, and blaming war and US imperial adventures that part of the world on “radical Islam” instead of on our insistence upon controlling their resources.
"...the remarks that have caused this recent firestorm weren't simply controversial. They weren't simply a religious leader's effort to speak out against perceived injustice. Instead, they expressed a profoundly distorted view of this country - a view that sees white racism as endemic, and that elevates what is wrong with America above all that we know is right with America; a view that sees the conflicts in the Middle East as rooted primarily in the actions of stalwart allies like Israel, instead of emanating from the perverse and hateful ideologies of radical Islam."
The fact is that black America is more pro-Palestinian than any other constituency except Arab-Americans. Black America is highly suspicious of US claims to be an “honest broker” for peace in the Middle East. Obama's labeling of "radical Islam" as the transcendent national enemy, however, is perfectly in line with that of corporate media, as well as with Hillary's, McCain's and Bush's "war on terror" foreign policy framework. But it happens to be the exact opposite of where most of Black America stands.
If Barack believes, as he says, that "the perverse and hateful ideologies of radical Islam" are the reasons we are at war in the Middle East, what difference is there between Obama and Hillary, between Obama and McCain or even between Obama and George Bush or the neo-cons? If Barack believes this, his promised withdrawal and “over the horizon” redeployment of "combat troops" (not of mercenaries or contractors or counterinsurgency troops or training troops or the rest of the occupation, just the "combat brigades") will be followed by another intervention somewhere else in hopes of squashing "the perverse and hateful ideology of radical Islam". Maybe Somalia, which we already bomb regularly. Maybe Afghanistan. Maybe nuclear-armed Pakistan, a target Obama has already identified.
A further proof of how liberated the black candidate Obama is from the will of black voters is his promised to increase the military budget over Bush levels, to add 90,000 more pairs of boots to the army and marines, and to increase the number of US troops in Afghanistan, where we support a coterie of arms and opium smugglers masquerading as a government. Increasing the military budget is lower on the priorities of African Americans than of any other constituency in the land, and takes money away from all the cherished priorities of African American communities like education, public transit, and job creation.
And of course our "stalwart ally", as Barack called Israel, in fact a murderous apartheid regime in which Arab "citizens" are forbidden from owning land in much of the country, where their marriages are not recognized by the state, where Arabs are issued different license plates so their cars can be profiled from a distance, and many other indignities. And those are Arabs with Israeli citizenship. Palestinians, the owners of the land only two generation ago, are still experiencing wholesale confiscation of their remaining land and assets, penned up into Gaza and the West Bank, humiliated, starved and murdered at will by Israeli armed forces and death squads. Obama knows these to be facts, and at earlier points in his political career would show up at Palestinian events in Chicago. But the political game he has chosen to play, and the allies he has chose to play it with require a selective memory.
And just as Ronald Reagan was seldom able to complete a paragraph on race without a reference to fictional Cadillac-driving welfare queens, Barack Obama was unable to make a speech on race without a gratuitous and pandering reference to the alleged shortcomings of black fathers. Is this what “post-racial” black candidates must do to prove they are not “stuck” in the sixties? Is this how a “multiracial coalition” is built?
"What would it have cost Barack Obama to try to educate, to lead, to lift the level of the American people by picking say, the least controversial of Wright's assertions, say that the country was taken from Native Americans “by terror” and actually defending it?"
Two decades ago he took the advice of a local pastor who suggested his work as a community organizer in Chicago's Roseland neighborhood would go better if he had a “church home”, and Obama chose Trinity United Church of Christ on 95th Street. In the very early 80s, long before most Americans knew Nelson Mandela's name, Trinity UCC had a “FREE SOUTH AFRICA” sign in front of its building. Meetings were held and collections were regularly taken up since at least the mid-1970s to aid liberation movements in what were then the white-ruled countries of Mozambique, Guinea-Bissau, Namibia, Angola and South Africa. Rev. Wright was a theologian, an activist, a successful pastor and leader who built a thriving ministry that was one of the black south side's social, economic and political hubs for a generation. If you were up and coming on the south side, Trinity was one of the places to be, for many reasons.
Obama got what he could out of Trinity in the 80s,. He re-joined the church upon his return to Chicago after law school in 1992 to begin his political career. Obama admits that Wright married the him and his wife, baptized their children, and blessed their new house. But at this point in the campaign, Rev. Wright's message and ministry are as expendable as the political will of the rest of Black America has been all along. Campaign insiders have told reporters that if Rev. Wright was not retiring, Obama would have to change congregations, but since he is, that will not be necessary. In the end, Barack Obama is a grown man, a savvy and ambitious politician who will have to live with his moral and political choices. And so will we. We know what's in it for him. But what's in it for us?
What would it have cost Barack Obama to try to educate, to lead, to lift the level of the American people by picking say, the least controversial of Wright's assertions, say that the country was taken from Native Americans “by terror” and actually defending it? That would have been an historic and groundbreaking act of moral leadership. If Obama is not ready to lead now, when will he be? And where?
Obama's unconditional affirmations that America is “inherently good”, that white racism is not endemic, that “radical Islam” is the enemy, that apartheid Israel is a “stalwart ally”, and that his pastor and spiritual mentor, a man who accurately reflects the views of most of Black America is an angry, divisive old uncle stuck in the fifties and sixties --- all these may restore his credentials among whites as the candidate of “racial reconciliation”. But what is being reconciled here? Aside from the color of the president's face, what is being changed? And just what does Black America, its opinions and leading thinkers denounced, belittled and banned from the political discourse by the black candidate, no less, get out of this reconciliation, or this campaign?
A new Great Depression? It's different this time.
Notice that it is an unregulated area that the problem cropped up and that one of the reason's for the Great Crash was the market theology that markets corrected themselves! There was no regulation of the greed that led to the mortgage meltdown:
"The agencies bestowed lofty AAA ratings on some extremely complex mortgage bundles even though their inherent risks were not understood. The banks and firms that packaged the securities and hawked them to clients simply accepted the rating agencies' conclusions, which were often favorable to the packagers. The dubious valuations of many of these securities are at the core of the credit crisis roiling the financial markets today"
Just what has been done to correct this problem? What has been done is to rescue those who sought to benefit from this greed using taxpayer funds.
A new Great Depression? It's different this time
The shadow of the '30s looms over every economic downturn or crisis. But unemployment reached 25% during the Depression; last month it was reported at 4.8%.
Fear is spreading with the financial system in disarray. But the global boom is ongoing, unemployment is low and the government has new tools to address the downturn.
By Michael A. Hiltzik, Los Angeles Times Staff Writer
March 20, 2008
Dysfunctional capital markets, frantic central banks, stressed-out consumers, fear and uncertainty -- all are alarming echoes of the global economic cataclysm of the 1930s.
Which raises the inevitable question: Could another Great Depression be lurking over the horizon?
TV news programs show grainy footage of Depression-era bankers as reporters tick off grim economic statistics. The Federal Reserve invokes powers it hasn't used since the 1930s. Critics of President Bush's economic policies are emboldened to use the H-word: "Hoover."
On the surface, there are disquieting parallels between economic conditions in the early 1930s and those of today. There is the popping of enormous asset bubbles -- stocks then, housing now.
And, as in the Great Depression, the financial system is in disarray. It was symbolized back then by the failure of thousands of banks, mostly small, local outfits -- 2,300 in 1931 alone.The parallel today is the crippling ofonetime giantssuch as Bear Stearns Cos., Countrywide Financial Corp. and Ameriquest Mortgage Co.
Many economists believe that the U.S. will find it almost impossible to avert a recession, if one has not started already. Housing remains mired in a deep slump,with some analysts projecting that Southern California home values could plunge 40% from their peaks last year.The Commerce Department reported this week that new residential building permits nationwide plummeted 36.5% in February from a year earlier.
Then, like now, stock prices were highly volatile. The S&P 500 index, which fell more than 56% from 1928 through 1940, nevertheless recorded four up years in that span, including a 46.5% gain in 1933.
The shadow of the '30s looms over every economic downturn or crisis, no matter how modest. Pundits were quick to invoke the Depression as a cautionary model during the stock market crash of 1987, the bailout of the giant hedge fund Long-Term Capital Management in 1998 and the dot-com meltdown of 2000 and 2001.
But there are vast differences between the 1930s and today. U.S. unemployment reached 25% during the Depression; last month it was reported at 4.8%. The international industrial economy was a shambles in the '30s. Today it is coming off a global boom.
"I've been asked many times whether we will have another Great Depression," said David M. Kennedy, a Stanford University history professor and the author of "Freedom From Fear," a Pulitzer Prize-winning history of the Depression and World War II. "My standard answer is that we won't have that one again -- I'd be surprised to have one of that seriousness and duration. But that doesn't mean we wouldn't have a catastrophe we haven't seen before."
Economists and historians say the most important difference between today's economic environment and the old days is the government's role.
"There's a perception now that you don't stand around at the central bank and whack people with a ruler for making bad decisions," said Robert Brusca, chief economist at New York-based Fact and Opinion Economics. "Instead, you do something."
Nothing demonstrates that as vividly as the Fed's orchestration of the takeover of Bear Stearns by JPMorgan Chase & Co. over the weekend. The deal staved off a possible Bear bankruptcy, which the central bank feared might traumatize financial systems worldwide.
The resolution drew a stark contrast with the Fed's role in the 1930 collapse of the Bank of the United States, a New York institution largely serving Jewish immigrants. The failure was then the largest in U.S. history, and the Fed's inability to arrange a rescue by Wall Street banks -- including J.P. Morgan & Co., the predecessor to the "white knight" in the Bear Stearns case -- caused a cataclysmic loss of confidence in the entire national banking system. That fueled a panic that historians regard as a key cause of the Depression.
The Fed's relative powerlessness in 1930 led directly to New Deal reforms that vastly expanded its authority. Some of the agency's new powers, such as its ability to lend directly to brokers and investment banks, were seldom or never used until the current crisis.
Fed Chairman Ben S. Bernanke, an expert in the central bank's Depression-era history, is also knowledgeable about the instruments at its disposal in a crisis.
In a 2002 speech -- he was then a member of the central bank's Board of Governors under Alan Greenspan -- he outlined a number of drastic steps the Fed could take in extreme conditions and still remain within its legal authority.
Among them were buying up foreign government debt to influence dollar exchange rates, and even lending, if indirectly, against private assets. The subject of Bernanke's speech was how to combat deflation, a broad decline in consumer prices that is not currently a problem on the Fed's agenda. Still, the powers he described could apply in a wide range of dire scenarios.
But as Fed Vice Chairman Donald L. Kohn conceded in testimony before a Senate committee this month, the most serious challenges generally arise not from scenarios that can be forecast but from the unforeseen.
Alluding, in effect, to the tendency of regulated industries to burst at their weakest seams, Kohn blamed "the most sophisticated banks" for allowing credit rating agencies such as Moody's and Standard & Poor's to paper over the unsoundness of mortgage securities on their books.
The agencies bestowed lofty AAA ratings on some extremely complex mortgage bundles even though their inherent risks were not understood. The banks and firms that packaged the securities and hawked them to clients simply accepted the rating agencies' conclusions, which were often favorable to the packagers. The dubious valuations of many of these securities are at the core of the credit crisis roiling the financial markets today.
Brusca, the economist, says the most dangerous behavior often occurs just beyond regulators' reach -- in the exotic strategies of the hedge fund industry, to use a contemporary example. "We have a far more extensive regulatory network now," he said, "but it's always the unregulated sector that pushes change."
Does it make sense to require banks to maintain adequate capital relative to their obligations, Brusca added, "but let them have an unregulated hedge fund?"
There are also limits to what monetary policy -- the Fed's responsibility -- can achieve on its own to forestall a drastic economic downturn. The Franklin D. Roosevelt administration not only reformed the Fed but also experimented with stimulative fiscal policy, such as unemployment relief.
New Deal programs aimed at staving off a wave of home foreclosures may be especially relevant today. Among the most important was the Home Owners Loan Corp., or HOLC, which is one of several models for homeowner relief being considered by Congress.
HOLC took over 1 million mortgages in default starting in 1933, worked to keep the owners in their homes and made new loans to strapped mortgage holders. When the agency was finally liquidated in 1951, it even returned a small profit to the U.S. Treasury.
The Fed's recent actions were "a temporary palliative" to the fundamental problem in the economy, which is the rapid fall in home prices and its ripple effect on mortgage bonds and other securities, said Barry Eichengreen, a professor of economics and political science at UC Berkeley. "You have to reorganize the system, but the discussion about that has only begun."
michael.hiltzik@latimes.com
"The agencies bestowed lofty AAA ratings on some extremely complex mortgage bundles even though their inherent risks were not understood. The banks and firms that packaged the securities and hawked them to clients simply accepted the rating agencies' conclusions, which were often favorable to the packagers. The dubious valuations of many of these securities are at the core of the credit crisis roiling the financial markets today"
Just what has been done to correct this problem? What has been done is to rescue those who sought to benefit from this greed using taxpayer funds.
A new Great Depression? It's different this time
The shadow of the '30s looms over every economic downturn or crisis. But unemployment reached 25% during the Depression; last month it was reported at 4.8%.
Fear is spreading with the financial system in disarray. But the global boom is ongoing, unemployment is low and the government has new tools to address the downturn.
By Michael A. Hiltzik, Los Angeles Times Staff Writer
March 20, 2008
Dysfunctional capital markets, frantic central banks, stressed-out consumers, fear and uncertainty -- all are alarming echoes of the global economic cataclysm of the 1930s.
Which raises the inevitable question: Could another Great Depression be lurking over the horizon?
TV news programs show grainy footage of Depression-era bankers as reporters tick off grim economic statistics. The Federal Reserve invokes powers it hasn't used since the 1930s. Critics of President Bush's economic policies are emboldened to use the H-word: "Hoover."
On the surface, there are disquieting parallels between economic conditions in the early 1930s and those of today. There is the popping of enormous asset bubbles -- stocks then, housing now.
And, as in the Great Depression, the financial system is in disarray. It was symbolized back then by the failure of thousands of banks, mostly small, local outfits -- 2,300 in 1931 alone.The parallel today is the crippling ofonetime giantssuch as Bear Stearns Cos., Countrywide Financial Corp. and Ameriquest Mortgage Co.
Many economists believe that the U.S. will find it almost impossible to avert a recession, if one has not started already. Housing remains mired in a deep slump,with some analysts projecting that Southern California home values could plunge 40% from their peaks last year.The Commerce Department reported this week that new residential building permits nationwide plummeted 36.5% in February from a year earlier.
Then, like now, stock prices were highly volatile. The S&P 500 index, which fell more than 56% from 1928 through 1940, nevertheless recorded four up years in that span, including a 46.5% gain in 1933.
The shadow of the '30s looms over every economic downturn or crisis, no matter how modest. Pundits were quick to invoke the Depression as a cautionary model during the stock market crash of 1987, the bailout of the giant hedge fund Long-Term Capital Management in 1998 and the dot-com meltdown of 2000 and 2001.
But there are vast differences between the 1930s and today. U.S. unemployment reached 25% during the Depression; last month it was reported at 4.8%. The international industrial economy was a shambles in the '30s. Today it is coming off a global boom.
"I've been asked many times whether we will have another Great Depression," said David M. Kennedy, a Stanford University history professor and the author of "Freedom From Fear," a Pulitzer Prize-winning history of the Depression and World War II. "My standard answer is that we won't have that one again -- I'd be surprised to have one of that seriousness and duration. But that doesn't mean we wouldn't have a catastrophe we haven't seen before."
Economists and historians say the most important difference between today's economic environment and the old days is the government's role.
"There's a perception now that you don't stand around at the central bank and whack people with a ruler for making bad decisions," said Robert Brusca, chief economist at New York-based Fact and Opinion Economics. "Instead, you do something."
Nothing demonstrates that as vividly as the Fed's orchestration of the takeover of Bear Stearns by JPMorgan Chase & Co. over the weekend. The deal staved off a possible Bear bankruptcy, which the central bank feared might traumatize financial systems worldwide.
The resolution drew a stark contrast with the Fed's role in the 1930 collapse of the Bank of the United States, a New York institution largely serving Jewish immigrants. The failure was then the largest in U.S. history, and the Fed's inability to arrange a rescue by Wall Street banks -- including J.P. Morgan & Co., the predecessor to the "white knight" in the Bear Stearns case -- caused a cataclysmic loss of confidence in the entire national banking system. That fueled a panic that historians regard as a key cause of the Depression.
The Fed's relative powerlessness in 1930 led directly to New Deal reforms that vastly expanded its authority. Some of the agency's new powers, such as its ability to lend directly to brokers and investment banks, were seldom or never used until the current crisis.
Fed Chairman Ben S. Bernanke, an expert in the central bank's Depression-era history, is also knowledgeable about the instruments at its disposal in a crisis.
In a 2002 speech -- he was then a member of the central bank's Board of Governors under Alan Greenspan -- he outlined a number of drastic steps the Fed could take in extreme conditions and still remain within its legal authority.
Among them were buying up foreign government debt to influence dollar exchange rates, and even lending, if indirectly, against private assets. The subject of Bernanke's speech was how to combat deflation, a broad decline in consumer prices that is not currently a problem on the Fed's agenda. Still, the powers he described could apply in a wide range of dire scenarios.
But as Fed Vice Chairman Donald L. Kohn conceded in testimony before a Senate committee this month, the most serious challenges generally arise not from scenarios that can be forecast but from the unforeseen.
Alluding, in effect, to the tendency of regulated industries to burst at their weakest seams, Kohn blamed "the most sophisticated banks" for allowing credit rating agencies such as Moody's and Standard & Poor's to paper over the unsoundness of mortgage securities on their books.
The agencies bestowed lofty AAA ratings on some extremely complex mortgage bundles even though their inherent risks were not understood. The banks and firms that packaged the securities and hawked them to clients simply accepted the rating agencies' conclusions, which were often favorable to the packagers. The dubious valuations of many of these securities are at the core of the credit crisis roiling the financial markets today.
Brusca, the economist, says the most dangerous behavior often occurs just beyond regulators' reach -- in the exotic strategies of the hedge fund industry, to use a contemporary example. "We have a far more extensive regulatory network now," he said, "but it's always the unregulated sector that pushes change."
Does it make sense to require banks to maintain adequate capital relative to their obligations, Brusca added, "but let them have an unregulated hedge fund?"
There are also limits to what monetary policy -- the Fed's responsibility -- can achieve on its own to forestall a drastic economic downturn. The Franklin D. Roosevelt administration not only reformed the Fed but also experimented with stimulative fiscal policy, such as unemployment relief.
New Deal programs aimed at staving off a wave of home foreclosures may be especially relevant today. Among the most important was the Home Owners Loan Corp., or HOLC, which is one of several models for homeowner relief being considered by Congress.
HOLC took over 1 million mortgages in default starting in 1933, worked to keep the owners in their homes and made new loans to strapped mortgage holders. When the agency was finally liquidated in 1951, it even returned a small profit to the U.S. Treasury.
The Fed's recent actions were "a temporary palliative" to the fundamental problem in the economy, which is the rapid fall in home prices and its ripple effect on mortgage bonds and other securities, said Barry Eichengreen, a professor of economics and political science at UC Berkeley. "You have to reorganize the system, but the discussion about that has only begun."
michael.hiltzik@latimes.com
China ready for talks with Dalai Lama
From anything I have heard the Dalai Lama has consistently adovcated a non-violent approach. In return he has often been villified by the Chinese govt. as a trouble maker. The Dalai Lama is not even requesting independence but simply autonomy for Tibet. This of course might interfere with China's present course which involves using Tibet as a place to settle Chinese and to develop Tibet according to plans made in Beijing not Lhasa. I really know little about the issues but it just seems to me that not working with the Dalai Lama will lead to a continuation of what is happening: more radical leaders will use violence as part of the mix of strategies to advance Tibetan aims.
Tibet: China 'ready for for talks with Dalai Lama'
Philip Webster, Political Editor, and Jane Macartney in Beijing
Britain called for a resumption of negotiations between China and Tibetan representatives yesterday after Gordon Brown announced that he had spoken to the Chinese Premier and would meet the Dalai Lama, the exiled Tibetan spiritual leader, in May.
Last night China’s state media admitted for the first time that riots had spread to two provinces outside Tibet, but Beijing claimed that order was returning to the restive Himalayan region.
Mr Brown took the Commons by surprise when he informed MPs that Wen Jiabao, the Chinese Prime Minister, had told him in a telephone conversation yesterday that he was ready to enter into a dialogue with the Dalai Lama, provided that he did not support the total independence of Tibet and that he renounced violence.
Downing Street said that the Dalai Lama had already satisfied both conditions in recent statements and that Britain believed that conditions were in place for talks to resume between Beijing and Tibet’s spiritual leader.
Tibet: China 'ready for for talks with Dalai Lama'
Philip Webster, Political Editor, and Jane Macartney in Beijing
Britain called for a resumption of negotiations between China and Tibetan representatives yesterday after Gordon Brown announced that he had spoken to the Chinese Premier and would meet the Dalai Lama, the exiled Tibetan spiritual leader, in May.
Last night China’s state media admitted for the first time that riots had spread to two provinces outside Tibet, but Beijing claimed that order was returning to the restive Himalayan region.
Mr Brown took the Commons by surprise when he informed MPs that Wen Jiabao, the Chinese Prime Minister, had told him in a telephone conversation yesterday that he was ready to enter into a dialogue with the Dalai Lama, provided that he did not support the total independence of Tibet and that he renounced violence.
Downing Street said that the Dalai Lama had already satisfied both conditions in recent statements and that Britain believed that conditions were in place for talks to resume between Beijing and Tibet’s spiritual leader.
Thursday, March 20, 2008
Bush defends Iraq war on fifth anniversary
This is from the IHT. McCain talks of winning a major victory against Islamic radicalism. But the radicalism they are fighting in Iraq hardly existed during Saddam's reign. It was nurtured by the invasion itself! The Iraq war has been a huge boon for recruitment as far as Islamic radicalism is concerned.
Note that Bush fails to mention the fabled weapons of mass destruction that was the rationale for the invasion not overthrowing Hussein. Note that the right of the U.S. to overthrow any leader that it doesn't like is presupposed but not argued for. As Chomsky put it in an earlier post: The U.S. owns the world. I guess it can do what it likes with its property and no one would ever question their right to do so.
How else can one explain that Iran can be said to be meddling in Iraq affairs by a country that occupies Iraq, the U.S. The U.S. is not meddling because it owns Iraq and it has managed to get a UN resolution that gives it title until such time as the final ownership terms are negotiated with the government that was birthed by the occupiers.
Bush defends Iraq war on fifth anniversary
By Steven Lee Myers
Thursday, March 20, 2008
WASHINGTON: President George W. Bush used the fifth anniversary of the start of the war in Iraq to make the case for persevering in a conflict that could have many more anniversaries. Democrats accused him of lacking a strategy to win and withdraw.
Bush, speaking before troops, officers and defense officials at the Pentagon on Wednesday, in his frankest acknowledgment yet, said the costs of the war, in lives and money, had been higher and longer-lasting than he had anticipated.
But he remained unwavering in his insistence that the invasion of Iraq, which began in March 2003, had made the world better and the United States safer.
"Five years into this battle, there is an understandable debate over whether the war was worth fighting, whether the fight is worth winning, and whether we can win it," he said. "The answers are clear to me. Removing Saddam Hussein from power was the right decision, and this is a fight that America can and must win."
The anniversary starkly illustrated the divide between Bush and Democrats who control Congress - and between the Republican presidential candidate, Senator John McCain, and the two senators seeking the Democratic nomination, Barack Obama and Hillary Rodham Clinton.
At a community college in Fayetteville, a military town in North Carolina, Obama noted that the war in Iraq had now lasted longer than the Civil War, World War I and World War II, although it has been fought on a far-lower scale than those conflicts.
"Where are we for all of this sacrifice?" he said. "We are less safe and less able to shape events abroad. We are divided at home, and our alliances around the world have been strained."
Clinton, appearing at an American Legion post in Huntington, West Virginia, argued for a cautious withdrawal of troops that would begin within 60 days of her taking office. "Every one of you who has served knows, withdrawing troops can be as dangerous as inserting them," she said.
By contrast, McCain, who visited Iraq this week, issued a statement saying that the United States and its allies in Iraq stood "on the precipice of winning a major victory against radical Islamic extremism."
As it has in the past, the anniversary galvanized the critics of the war and, to a lesser degree, its supporters. Bush gave his speech as sporadic, relatively small but raucous protests erupted in Washington and in other cities, leading to dozens of arrests.
"How much longer?" read a banner along the president's route to the Pentagon across the Potomac.
Iraq has receded somewhat as an issue in the campaign. And the scale and fury of antiwar protests appeared to have diminished from just a year ago, before Bush ordered a "surge" of additional U.S. troops to Iraq that has resulted in a decline in overall violence there.
Still, the war stirs intense emotions on both sides. The House speaker, Nancy Pelosi, said the war had damaged America's reputation, strained its military and now threatened its economy.
"With the war in Iraq entering its sixth year," she said in a statement, "Americans are rightly concerned about how much longer our nation must continue to sacrifice our security for the sake of an Iraqi government that is unwilling or unable to secure its own future."
Obama criticized both of his rivals, McCain and Clinton, for their initial votes for the war. "Here is the stark reality," he said."There is a security gap in this country - a gap between the rhetoric of those who claim to be tough on national security, and the reality of growing insecurity caused by their decisions."
He also seized on a gaffe McCain made on Tuesday in Amman, Jordan, when he confused the main branches of Islam and the support for each by Al Qaeda, a Sunni-dominated group, and Iran, a Shiite-majority nation. McCain corrected his statement after Senator Joseph Lieberman, who is traveling with him in the region, whispered in his ear. "Maybe that is why he completely fails to understand that the war in Iraq has done more to embolden America's enemies than any strategic choice that we have made in decades," Obama said. Obama said that as commander in chief he would begin withdrawing a brigade or two each month, beginning immediately. His plan, he said, would reduce the U.S. force in Iraq to only the number required to secure the U.S. Embassy and maintain a counterterrorist force. Even that, he acknowledged, would take until 2010.
The number of troops in Iraq is at the center of the administration's attention right now. The top U.S. commander, General David Petraeus, is scheduled to appear before Congress in April to present his recommendations on what to do after a withdrawal of the 30,000 additional troops ordered to Iraq by Bush last year.
Those troops brought the total number to a peak of more than 160,000; by summer, roughly 140,000 are expected to remain. Military and administration officials have indicated that there should be a pause in any further reductions to see whether security in Baghdad and other cities deteriorates. One administration official said on Wednesday that the outstanding question was how long a pause would last.
Bush said he had made no decision but indicated that he would be reluctant to hasten withdrawals. "Any further drawdown will be based on conditions on the ground and the recommendations of our commanders," he said, "and they must not jeopardize the hard-fought gains our troops and civilians have made over the past year."
Bush announced the war's start from the Oval Office on the night of March 19, 2003, declaring that the United States would "not live at the mercy of an outlaw regime that threatens the peace with weapons of mass murder." (It later became clear that those weapons did not exist.) His remarks each March 19 since have paralleled the ups and downs of the war. In 2004 he appeared in the East Room of the White House with dozens of foreign diplomats and cast the war as "the inescapable calling of our generation." By 2006, with the insurgency worsening along with ethnic and sectarian violence, he spoke alone for two minutes on the South Lawn and spent most of that time speaking of soldiers' sacrifices. "It's a time to reflect," he said. Bush's speech at the Pentagon on Wednesday will be his last presidential address on the anniversary, and he reflected at length on the overthrow of Saddam, the rise of the insurgency, the lurch toward civil war, and the decision to send more troops. The latter he declared a success, saying that it led the way to the decision by many Sunni Arabs to switch allegiances and join U.S. forces against extremists that U.S. officials say are foreign led. He called that the "the first large-scale Arab uprising against Osama bin Laden." "The challenge in the period ahead is to consolidate the gains we have made and seal the extremists' defeat," he went on. Vice President Dick Cheney, who declared in June 2005 that the insurgency was in "its last throes," also acknowledged on Wednesday that the war had "lasted longer than I would have anticipated," but he, too, defended the effort and brushed aside popular antiwar sentiment. When told in an interview with ABC News that two-thirds of Americans said the war was not worth fighting, Cheney replied, "So?" When pressed, he added: "I think you cannot be blown off course by the fluctuations in the public opinion polls."
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Notes:
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Copyright © 2008 The International Herald Tribune | www.iht.com
Note that Bush fails to mention the fabled weapons of mass destruction that was the rationale for the invasion not overthrowing Hussein. Note that the right of the U.S. to overthrow any leader that it doesn't like is presupposed but not argued for. As Chomsky put it in an earlier post: The U.S. owns the world. I guess it can do what it likes with its property and no one would ever question their right to do so.
How else can one explain that Iran can be said to be meddling in Iraq affairs by a country that occupies Iraq, the U.S. The U.S. is not meddling because it owns Iraq and it has managed to get a UN resolution that gives it title until such time as the final ownership terms are negotiated with the government that was birthed by the occupiers.
Bush defends Iraq war on fifth anniversary
By Steven Lee Myers
Thursday, March 20, 2008
WASHINGTON: President George W. Bush used the fifth anniversary of the start of the war in Iraq to make the case for persevering in a conflict that could have many more anniversaries. Democrats accused him of lacking a strategy to win and withdraw.
Bush, speaking before troops, officers and defense officials at the Pentagon on Wednesday, in his frankest acknowledgment yet, said the costs of the war, in lives and money, had been higher and longer-lasting than he had anticipated.
But he remained unwavering in his insistence that the invasion of Iraq, which began in March 2003, had made the world better and the United States safer.
"Five years into this battle, there is an understandable debate over whether the war was worth fighting, whether the fight is worth winning, and whether we can win it," he said. "The answers are clear to me. Removing Saddam Hussein from power was the right decision, and this is a fight that America can and must win."
The anniversary starkly illustrated the divide between Bush and Democrats who control Congress - and between the Republican presidential candidate, Senator John McCain, and the two senators seeking the Democratic nomination, Barack Obama and Hillary Rodham Clinton.
At a community college in Fayetteville, a military town in North Carolina, Obama noted that the war in Iraq had now lasted longer than the Civil War, World War I and World War II, although it has been fought on a far-lower scale than those conflicts.
"Where are we for all of this sacrifice?" he said. "We are less safe and less able to shape events abroad. We are divided at home, and our alliances around the world have been strained."
Clinton, appearing at an American Legion post in Huntington, West Virginia, argued for a cautious withdrawal of troops that would begin within 60 days of her taking office. "Every one of you who has served knows, withdrawing troops can be as dangerous as inserting them," she said.
By contrast, McCain, who visited Iraq this week, issued a statement saying that the United States and its allies in Iraq stood "on the precipice of winning a major victory against radical Islamic extremism."
As it has in the past, the anniversary galvanized the critics of the war and, to a lesser degree, its supporters. Bush gave his speech as sporadic, relatively small but raucous protests erupted in Washington and in other cities, leading to dozens of arrests.
"How much longer?" read a banner along the president's route to the Pentagon across the Potomac.
Iraq has receded somewhat as an issue in the campaign. And the scale and fury of antiwar protests appeared to have diminished from just a year ago, before Bush ordered a "surge" of additional U.S. troops to Iraq that has resulted in a decline in overall violence there.
Still, the war stirs intense emotions on both sides. The House speaker, Nancy Pelosi, said the war had damaged America's reputation, strained its military and now threatened its economy.
"With the war in Iraq entering its sixth year," she said in a statement, "Americans are rightly concerned about how much longer our nation must continue to sacrifice our security for the sake of an Iraqi government that is unwilling or unable to secure its own future."
Obama criticized both of his rivals, McCain and Clinton, for their initial votes for the war. "Here is the stark reality," he said."There is a security gap in this country - a gap between the rhetoric of those who claim to be tough on national security, and the reality of growing insecurity caused by their decisions."
He also seized on a gaffe McCain made on Tuesday in Amman, Jordan, when he confused the main branches of Islam and the support for each by Al Qaeda, a Sunni-dominated group, and Iran, a Shiite-majority nation. McCain corrected his statement after Senator Joseph Lieberman, who is traveling with him in the region, whispered in his ear. "Maybe that is why he completely fails to understand that the war in Iraq has done more to embolden America's enemies than any strategic choice that we have made in decades," Obama said. Obama said that as commander in chief he would begin withdrawing a brigade or two each month, beginning immediately. His plan, he said, would reduce the U.S. force in Iraq to only the number required to secure the U.S. Embassy and maintain a counterterrorist force. Even that, he acknowledged, would take until 2010.
The number of troops in Iraq is at the center of the administration's attention right now. The top U.S. commander, General David Petraeus, is scheduled to appear before Congress in April to present his recommendations on what to do after a withdrawal of the 30,000 additional troops ordered to Iraq by Bush last year.
Those troops brought the total number to a peak of more than 160,000; by summer, roughly 140,000 are expected to remain. Military and administration officials have indicated that there should be a pause in any further reductions to see whether security in Baghdad and other cities deteriorates. One administration official said on Wednesday that the outstanding question was how long a pause would last.
Bush said he had made no decision but indicated that he would be reluctant to hasten withdrawals. "Any further drawdown will be based on conditions on the ground and the recommendations of our commanders," he said, "and they must not jeopardize the hard-fought gains our troops and civilians have made over the past year."
Bush announced the war's start from the Oval Office on the night of March 19, 2003, declaring that the United States would "not live at the mercy of an outlaw regime that threatens the peace with weapons of mass murder." (It later became clear that those weapons did not exist.) His remarks each March 19 since have paralleled the ups and downs of the war. In 2004 he appeared in the East Room of the White House with dozens of foreign diplomats and cast the war as "the inescapable calling of our generation." By 2006, with the insurgency worsening along with ethnic and sectarian violence, he spoke alone for two minutes on the South Lawn and spent most of that time speaking of soldiers' sacrifices. "It's a time to reflect," he said. Bush's speech at the Pentagon on Wednesday will be his last presidential address on the anniversary, and he reflected at length on the overthrow of Saddam, the rise of the insurgency, the lurch toward civil war, and the decision to send more troops. The latter he declared a success, saying that it led the way to the decision by many Sunni Arabs to switch allegiances and join U.S. forces against extremists that U.S. officials say are foreign led. He called that the "the first large-scale Arab uprising against Osama bin Laden." "The challenge in the period ahead is to consolidate the gains we have made and seal the extremists' defeat," he went on. Vice President Dick Cheney, who declared in June 2005 that the insurgency was in "its last throes," also acknowledged on Wednesday that the war had "lasted longer than I would have anticipated," but he, too, defended the effort and brushed aside popular antiwar sentiment. When told in an interview with ABC News that two-thirds of Americans said the war was not worth fighting, Cheney replied, "So?" When pressed, he added: "I think you cannot be blown off course by the fluctuations in the public opinion polls."
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Notes:
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Copyright © 2008 The International Herald Tribune | www.iht.com
Wednesday, March 19, 2008
Morgan Stanley buys 10% stake in PetroVietnam company
This is from Nhan Dan (Vietnam) More evidence of Vietnam's rapid transition to capitalism. Morgan Stanley is confident enough to invest in a PetroVietnam company. Of course Morgan Stanley also is buying out Bear/Stearns. No doubt PetroVietnam has a lot more potential for growth!
Imagine there is now a Ho Chi Minh City stock market! This is no doubt socialism with Vietnamese characteristics just as next door there is socialism with Chinese characteristics. They really should be called capitalism with Chinese characteristics and capitalism with Vietnamese characteristics.
Morgan Stanley buys 10% PVFC stake
Nhan Dan – The PetroVietnam’s Joint Stock Finance Corporation (PVFC) has officially announced Morgan Stanley as its first foreign shareholder as the latter has acquired a 10% stake in the corporation.
The announcement was made on March 18 at the inauguration ceremony of PVFC, a member of the Vietnam Oil and Gas Group, PetroVietnam, in Hanoi.
PVFC targets to issue petroleum finance and PetroVietnam bonds on both the domestic and foreign markets.
It is also making preparations to open a representative office in Singapore and list their shares on the Ho Chi Minh City Stock Exchange.
PVFC focuses its operations in oil and gas, energy and real estate.
From 2007-2010, PVFC has set targets of 30% annual growth rate, 11.5% dividend and an asset value of US $3 billion in 2010.
Imagine there is now a Ho Chi Minh City stock market! This is no doubt socialism with Vietnamese characteristics just as next door there is socialism with Chinese characteristics. They really should be called capitalism with Chinese characteristics and capitalism with Vietnamese characteristics.
Morgan Stanley buys 10% PVFC stake
Nhan Dan – The PetroVietnam’s Joint Stock Finance Corporation (PVFC) has officially announced Morgan Stanley as its first foreign shareholder as the latter has acquired a 10% stake in the corporation.
The announcement was made on March 18 at the inauguration ceremony of PVFC, a member of the Vietnam Oil and Gas Group, PetroVietnam, in Hanoi.
PVFC targets to issue petroleum finance and PetroVietnam bonds on both the domestic and foreign markets.
It is also making preparations to open a representative office in Singapore and list their shares on the Ho Chi Minh City Stock Exchange.
PVFC focuses its operations in oil and gas, energy and real estate.
From 2007-2010, PVFC has set targets of 30% annual growth rate, 11.5% dividend and an asset value of US $3 billion in 2010.
GOP sees Rev. Wright as pathway to victory
A recent poll shows that McCain would beat Obama (and also Hilary). Apparently many Republicans are changing their view that Obama would be harder to beat than Hilary. Wright has provided the Republicans with some great video clips to clip Obama's wings. I just wonder if the market managers within the Democratic party may decide that Obama is damaged goods and Obama's financial gusher will begin to produce less each day. Hilary is always there to be thrust forward as the old reliable who is not tainted through covorting with America haters just good old Bill who can be forgiven for liking oral sex.
Most people I have talked to think that Obama's speech on race was one of the best pieces of oratory in recent U.S. history but excellent rhetoric may have less effect than crude videos of Wright on the U.S. public.
GOP sees Rev. Wright as pathway to victory
By: Jonathan Martin
March 19, 2008 06:04 AM EST
For months, Republican party officials have watched with increasing
trepidation as Barack Obama has shattered fundraising records, packed
arena after arena with shrieking fans and pulled in significant
Republican and independent votes.
Now, with the emergence of the notorious video portraying Rev.
Jeremiah Wright damning the country, criticizing Israel, faulting
U.S. policy for the attacks of Sept. 11 and generally lashing out
against white America, GOP strategists believe they've finally found
an antidote to Obamamania.
In their view, the inflammatory sermons by Obama's pastor offer the
party a pathway to victory if Obama emerges as the Democratic
nominee. Not only will the video clips enable some elements of the
party to define him as unpatriotic, they will also serve as a
powerful motivating force for the conservative base.
In fact, the video trove has convinced some that, after months of
praying for Hillary Clinton and the automatic enmity which she
arouses, that they may actually have easier prey.
"For the first time, some Republicans are rethinking Hillary as their
first choice," said Alex Castellanos, a veteran media consultant who
recently worked for Mitt Romney's campaign.
Even Obama's much-lauded Tuesday speech, which detailed his
relationship with his church and focused on the issue of racial
reconciliation, failed to shake the notion that Republicans had been
given a rare political gift.
"It was a speech written to mau-mau the New York Times editorial
board, the network production people and the media into submission.
Beautifully calibrated but deeply dishonest," said GOP media
consultant Rick Wilson, who crafted the ad in 2002 tying then-Sen.
Max Cleland to Osama bin Laden. "Not good enough."
Until now, questions about Obama's allegiance to country had been
largely confined to the fever swamps of the Internet and e-mail
chains. They took the form of dark whispers about the greater meaning
of Obama's failure to put his hand over his heart during one national
anthem, his decision not to wear an American flag lapel pin and, at
their most toxic, the outright lie that he's a Muslim or some sort of
Manchurian candidate.
With Michelle Obama's comments last month that she was, thanks to her
husband's candidacy, for the first time "really proud of [her
country]," the topic entered the more mainstream elements of the
conservative conversation, ricocheting across talk radio, cable news
and blogs.
"All the sudden you've got two dots and two dots make a line," said
Castellanos. "You start getting some sense of who he is and it's not
the Obama you thought – he's not the Tiger Woods of politics."
But if Michelle Obama's gaffe caused some ripples in the right-wing
pond, the Wright videos have detonated the equivalent of a daisy
cutter on the conservative landscape, awakening an otherwise
dispirited party base.
"I usually get three or four emails a week on Obama," said Michigan
Republican chairman Saul Anuzis Monday. "Today I received more than
10 – all of them on his minister."
Among the e-mails Anuzis received was a link to a mash-up video
splicing together Wright's most extreme comments, Michelle Obama's
statement, footage of Obama not putting his hand over his heart
during the anthem at a political event and images of Malcolm X and
the two black Olympians in 1968 who raised their fists in the "black
power" salute set to the iconic rap song by Public Enemy "Fight the
Power."
The video, titled "Is Obama Wright," is described as being produced
by something called "NHaleMedia," apparently just a dummy Web site
set up to produce anonymous and home-made videos.
In effect, the pastor has done what many on the right, quivering even
with the anonymity afforded by the online era, had hesitated over
until now—thrust highly delicate matters of patriotism and race into
the political dialogue.
"It opens up an entire new vein," said Republican consultant Paul
Wilson.
Just as with John Kerry and the Swift Boat Veterans for Truth in
2004, Republican strategists view the Wright flap as deeply damaging
to Obama because it strikes at the message, or set of principles, at
the heart of his candidacy.
In Obama's case, the core of his appeal has been that he transcends
race and is more inclined toward conciliation than combat.
"He wants the authentic black image but he also wants to keep all his
safe, suburban Obamacans in line," said Rick Wilson. "Well, you can't
have both – they're mutually exclusive."
"This is a guy who associates with some real haters," he added.
Perhaps most damaging for Obama, his opponents now have the powerful
video to make that case.
"It's harder for people to say it's taken out of context because
these are Wright's own words," noted Chris LaCivita, the Republican
strategist who helped craft the Swift Boat commercials against Kerry
that employed the use of their target's own language when he returned
from Vietnam and returned his medals. "You let people draw their own
conclusions."
"You don't have to say that he's unpatriotic, you don't question his
patriotism," he added. "Because I guaran-damn-tee you that with that
footage you don't have to say it."
Asked if they would say it or even suggest it, a spokesman for John
McCain indicated that the GOP candidate would not.
"There are profound differences on enormously important issues that
will affect the future of the country," said McCain adviser Steve
Schmidt. "He's said he intends to campaign on those issues."
McCain's hesitance to go anywhere near the Wright videos speaks to
just how explosive they could be among voters – but also to his
awareness of the potential for a backlash.
"He needs to stay away from it," said Paul Wilson of McCain. "It's
poison."
But thanks to the power of new media forces – talk radio, cable TV
and blogs – to drive a storyline, McCain's job could easily be done
for him.
"The best thing the GOP can do is stay out of it," suggested Jim
Dyke, a former RNC communications chief who was a key figure in the
behind-the-scenes takedown of Kerry in '04. "Why risk getting shot by
running into the middle of a circular firing squad?"
And to interfere may obscure the attack, added Castellanos. "Leave it
alone – the last thing you want is to make it a partisan Republican
attack. It's much more credible on its own."
Yet some conservatives aren't content to let the video played out
organically, spread via "did-you-see-this?" e-mails—especially if
it's revealed that Obama was in fact in the church when Wright
delivered some of his more incendiary remarks. The temptation to
craft an ad may be overwhelming.
"Obama knows that if somebody puts him in church on some day that
Wright said some crazy [stuff] like white people injected blacks with
AIDS he's in a world of hurt," said Rick Wilson. "I would eat this up
like cake."
Most people I have talked to think that Obama's speech on race was one of the best pieces of oratory in recent U.S. history but excellent rhetoric may have less effect than crude videos of Wright on the U.S. public.
GOP sees Rev. Wright as pathway to victory
By: Jonathan Martin
March 19, 2008 06:04 AM EST
For months, Republican party officials have watched with increasing
trepidation as Barack Obama has shattered fundraising records, packed
arena after arena with shrieking fans and pulled in significant
Republican and independent votes.
Now, with the emergence of the notorious video portraying Rev.
Jeremiah Wright damning the country, criticizing Israel, faulting
U.S. policy for the attacks of Sept. 11 and generally lashing out
against white America, GOP strategists believe they've finally found
an antidote to Obamamania.
In their view, the inflammatory sermons by Obama's pastor offer the
party a pathway to victory if Obama emerges as the Democratic
nominee. Not only will the video clips enable some elements of the
party to define him as unpatriotic, they will also serve as a
powerful motivating force for the conservative base.
In fact, the video trove has convinced some that, after months of
praying for Hillary Clinton and the automatic enmity which she
arouses, that they may actually have easier prey.
"For the first time, some Republicans are rethinking Hillary as their
first choice," said Alex Castellanos, a veteran media consultant who
recently worked for Mitt Romney's campaign.
Even Obama's much-lauded Tuesday speech, which detailed his
relationship with his church and focused on the issue of racial
reconciliation, failed to shake the notion that Republicans had been
given a rare political gift.
"It was a speech written to mau-mau the New York Times editorial
board, the network production people and the media into submission.
Beautifully calibrated but deeply dishonest," said GOP media
consultant Rick Wilson, who crafted the ad in 2002 tying then-Sen.
Max Cleland to Osama bin Laden. "Not good enough."
Until now, questions about Obama's allegiance to country had been
largely confined to the fever swamps of the Internet and e-mail
chains. They took the form of dark whispers about the greater meaning
of Obama's failure to put his hand over his heart during one national
anthem, his decision not to wear an American flag lapel pin and, at
their most toxic, the outright lie that he's a Muslim or some sort of
Manchurian candidate.
With Michelle Obama's comments last month that she was, thanks to her
husband's candidacy, for the first time "really proud of [her
country]," the topic entered the more mainstream elements of the
conservative conversation, ricocheting across talk radio, cable news
and blogs.
"All the sudden you've got two dots and two dots make a line," said
Castellanos. "You start getting some sense of who he is and it's not
the Obama you thought – he's not the Tiger Woods of politics."
But if Michelle Obama's gaffe caused some ripples in the right-wing
pond, the Wright videos have detonated the equivalent of a daisy
cutter on the conservative landscape, awakening an otherwise
dispirited party base.
"I usually get three or four emails a week on Obama," said Michigan
Republican chairman Saul Anuzis Monday. "Today I received more than
10 – all of them on his minister."
Among the e-mails Anuzis received was a link to a mash-up video
splicing together Wright's most extreme comments, Michelle Obama's
statement, footage of Obama not putting his hand over his heart
during the anthem at a political event and images of Malcolm X and
the two black Olympians in 1968 who raised their fists in the "black
power" salute set to the iconic rap song by Public Enemy "Fight the
Power."
The video, titled "Is Obama Wright," is described as being produced
by something called "NHaleMedia," apparently just a dummy Web site
set up to produce anonymous and home-made videos.
In effect, the pastor has done what many on the right, quivering even
with the anonymity afforded by the online era, had hesitated over
until now—thrust highly delicate matters of patriotism and race into
the political dialogue.
"It opens up an entire new vein," said Republican consultant Paul
Wilson.
Just as with John Kerry and the Swift Boat Veterans for Truth in
2004, Republican strategists view the Wright flap as deeply damaging
to Obama because it strikes at the message, or set of principles, at
the heart of his candidacy.
In Obama's case, the core of his appeal has been that he transcends
race and is more inclined toward conciliation than combat.
"He wants the authentic black image but he also wants to keep all his
safe, suburban Obamacans in line," said Rick Wilson. "Well, you can't
have both – they're mutually exclusive."
"This is a guy who associates with some real haters," he added.
Perhaps most damaging for Obama, his opponents now have the powerful
video to make that case.
"It's harder for people to say it's taken out of context because
these are Wright's own words," noted Chris LaCivita, the Republican
strategist who helped craft the Swift Boat commercials against Kerry
that employed the use of their target's own language when he returned
from Vietnam and returned his medals. "You let people draw their own
conclusions."
"You don't have to say that he's unpatriotic, you don't question his
patriotism," he added. "Because I guaran-damn-tee you that with that
footage you don't have to say it."
Asked if they would say it or even suggest it, a spokesman for John
McCain indicated that the GOP candidate would not.
"There are profound differences on enormously important issues that
will affect the future of the country," said McCain adviser Steve
Schmidt. "He's said he intends to campaign on those issues."
McCain's hesitance to go anywhere near the Wright videos speaks to
just how explosive they could be among voters – but also to his
awareness of the potential for a backlash.
"He needs to stay away from it," said Paul Wilson of McCain. "It's
poison."
But thanks to the power of new media forces – talk radio, cable TV
and blogs – to drive a storyline, McCain's job could easily be done
for him.
"The best thing the GOP can do is stay out of it," suggested Jim
Dyke, a former RNC communications chief who was a key figure in the
behind-the-scenes takedown of Kerry in '04. "Why risk getting shot by
running into the middle of a circular firing squad?"
And to interfere may obscure the attack, added Castellanos. "Leave it
alone – the last thing you want is to make it a partisan Republican
attack. It's much more credible on its own."
Yet some conservatives aren't content to let the video played out
organically, spread via "did-you-see-this?" e-mails—especially if
it's revealed that Obama was in fact in the church when Wright
delivered some of his more incendiary remarks. The temptation to
craft an ad may be overwhelming.
"Obama knows that if somebody puts him in church on some day that
Wright said some crazy [stuff] like white people injected blacks with
AIDS he's in a world of hurt," said Rick Wilson. "I would eat this up
like cake."
India, Mongolia, and Philippines owe $60 million in taxes to NYC
This is from IHT. It is hardly fair that New York City should forego taxes on property that should not really be exempted. Seems that some countries have been claiming exemptions that are not warranted. Now all New York has to do is collect!
Maybe the Philippines can pay in Filipino nurses and Mongolia in yurts. India can offer call center services.
Judge orders India, Mongolia and the Philippines to pay nearly $60 M in taxes to NYC
The Associated Press
Wednesday, March 19, 2008
NEW YORK: The governments of India, Mongolia and the Philippines must pay New York City a total of $57.6 million (€36.5 million) in real estate taxes after a federal judge ruled that diplomatic privileges do not exempt the countries from tax obligations.
U.S. District Court Judge Jed S. Rakoff issued the order Monday in a case that reached the Supreme Court. The court ruled 7-2 last year that the city had a right to collect taxes on portions of buildings used by other countries for non-diplomatic purposes.
International treaties have defined consulates and embassies as sovereign territory, which makes them generally tax exempt. But Rakoff said it was clearly stated that only the home of the head of a mission is exempted from taxes in the Vienna Convention on Consular Relations and the Vienna Convention on Diplomatic Relations.
India was ordered to pay $42.4 million (€26.88 million) in taxes related to a 26-story tower near the United Nations with 20 floors of apartments occupied by diplomatic employees.
Rakoff said Mongolia must pay $4.3 million (€2.73 million) in taxes for a six-story building with two floors of staff residences and the Philippines must pay $10.9 million (€6.91 million) in taxes for a building on a prime stretch of Fifth Avenue that includes commercial tenants such as a restaurant, a bank and an airline office.
Robert A. Kandel, a lawyer who represented the three nations in court, did not immediately return a telephone message for comment.
The city praised Rakoff's decision. "We are very pleased that the rule of law was upheld," New York Corporation Counsel Michael A. Cardozo said in a release. "Most countries are good neighbors to New York City. They pay what they owe, like all other New Yorkers who carry their share of the tax burden. However, this ruling sends a message to those trying to avert their obligations that New York City will be vigilant."
Marjorie B. Tiven, commissioner of the NYC Commission for the United Nations, said she was hopeful the case would send a message to the rest of the world about tax obligations.
"It's time for all foreign governments using diplomatic properties for non-diplomatic purposes to pay their fair share like other New Yorkers," she said.
At one point in the litigation, the U.S. Department of State had sided with the foreign countries against the city, saying that a victory by the city could force the U.S. to pay millions of dollars in taxes on various properties it controls abroad.
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Copyright © 2008 The International Herald Tribune | www.iht.com
Maybe the Philippines can pay in Filipino nurses and Mongolia in yurts. India can offer call center services.
Judge orders India, Mongolia and the Philippines to pay nearly $60 M in taxes to NYC
The Associated Press
Wednesday, March 19, 2008
NEW YORK: The governments of India, Mongolia and the Philippines must pay New York City a total of $57.6 million (€36.5 million) in real estate taxes after a federal judge ruled that diplomatic privileges do not exempt the countries from tax obligations.
U.S. District Court Judge Jed S. Rakoff issued the order Monday in a case that reached the Supreme Court. The court ruled 7-2 last year that the city had a right to collect taxes on portions of buildings used by other countries for non-diplomatic purposes.
International treaties have defined consulates and embassies as sovereign territory, which makes them generally tax exempt. But Rakoff said it was clearly stated that only the home of the head of a mission is exempted from taxes in the Vienna Convention on Consular Relations and the Vienna Convention on Diplomatic Relations.
India was ordered to pay $42.4 million (€26.88 million) in taxes related to a 26-story tower near the United Nations with 20 floors of apartments occupied by diplomatic employees.
Rakoff said Mongolia must pay $4.3 million (€2.73 million) in taxes for a six-story building with two floors of staff residences and the Philippines must pay $10.9 million (€6.91 million) in taxes for a building on a prime stretch of Fifth Avenue that includes commercial tenants such as a restaurant, a bank and an airline office.
Robert A. Kandel, a lawyer who represented the three nations in court, did not immediately return a telephone message for comment.
The city praised Rakoff's decision. "We are very pleased that the rule of law was upheld," New York Corporation Counsel Michael A. Cardozo said in a release. "Most countries are good neighbors to New York City. They pay what they owe, like all other New Yorkers who carry their share of the tax burden. However, this ruling sends a message to those trying to avert their obligations that New York City will be vigilant."
Marjorie B. Tiven, commissioner of the NYC Commission for the United Nations, said she was hopeful the case would send a message to the rest of the world about tax obligations.
"It's time for all foreign governments using diplomatic properties for non-diplomatic purposes to pay their fair share like other New Yorkers," she said.
At one point in the litigation, the U.S. Department of State had sided with the foreign countries against the city, saying that a victory by the city could force the U.S. to pay millions of dollars in taxes on various properties it controls abroad.
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Copyright © 2008 The International Herald Tribune | www.iht.com
Lawmaker: Air raid kills civilians in Afghan south..
Air operations produce no casualties for occupying forces. They make use of the superior force and technology of the occupiers. They also produce extensive "collateral damage". In a tribal society the killing of relatives demands revenge. Air operations thus ensure a constant stream of suicide bombers and recruits for the Taliban. It also makes the central government unpopular. Karzai constantly complains about such operations but to no avail. This disabuses any Afghans not profiting from the occupation that Afghanistan is sovereign. Sovereignty involves having a monopoly on the legitimate use of force within your borders. An occupied country has no such monopoly. Karzai does not control the operations of the occupying forces.
Air raid kills civilians in Afghan south-lawmaker
REUTERS
Reuters North American News Service
Mar 18, 2008 09:02 EST
KABUL, March 18 (Reuters) - An air strike by foreign forces has killed more than 30 people, including civilians, in Afghanistan's southern province of Helmand, a lawmaker said on Tuesday.
The raid happened on Monday in a village in the province's Sangin district, scene of a series of battles between Taliban insurgents and foreign troops in recent years, she said.
Civilian deaths are a sensitive issue for the foreign forces in Afghanistan under the command of the U.S. military and NATO and for President Hamid Karzai's government.
"More than 30 people have lost their lives and it is said that the Taliban and civilians were amongst those killed," Nasima Niyazi, who is a member of the lower house of the Afghan parliament representing the province, told Reuters.
She did not have any more details about the air strike.
But several people who identified themselves as residents of Sangin said the raid targeted a picnic spot where civilians had gathered to play traditional sports. The Taliban said 40 civilians were killed and 60 more wounded.
Both NATO and U.S.-led troops are stationed in Helmand, a bastion for Taliban insurgents and the key drug-producing region of Afghanistan, the world's top supplier of heroin.
A spokesman for NATO in Kabul said the alliance had carried out an air attack to the south of Sangin and a total of 12 insurgents were killed while driving in three cars.
The strike comes amid spiralling violence in the past two years in Afghanistan, the bloodiest period since U.S.-led troops overthrew the Taliban's hardline Islamist government in 2001.
More than 12,000 people, nearly a quarter of them civilians, have been killed by the violence.
Civilian deaths have sparked protests and added to growing frustration among ordinary Afghans that Karzai's government and its Western backers have not brought more security to the country. (Reporting by Sayed Salahuddin; Editing by Alex Richardson)
Source: Reuters North American News Service
Air raid kills civilians in Afghan south-lawmaker
REUTERS
Reuters North American News Service
Mar 18, 2008 09:02 EST
KABUL, March 18 (Reuters) - An air strike by foreign forces has killed more than 30 people, including civilians, in Afghanistan's southern province of Helmand, a lawmaker said on Tuesday.
The raid happened on Monday in a village in the province's Sangin district, scene of a series of battles between Taliban insurgents and foreign troops in recent years, she said.
Civilian deaths are a sensitive issue for the foreign forces in Afghanistan under the command of the U.S. military and NATO and for President Hamid Karzai's government.
"More than 30 people have lost their lives and it is said that the Taliban and civilians were amongst those killed," Nasima Niyazi, who is a member of the lower house of the Afghan parliament representing the province, told Reuters.
She did not have any more details about the air strike.
But several people who identified themselves as residents of Sangin said the raid targeted a picnic spot where civilians had gathered to play traditional sports. The Taliban said 40 civilians were killed and 60 more wounded.
Both NATO and U.S.-led troops are stationed in Helmand, a bastion for Taliban insurgents and the key drug-producing region of Afghanistan, the world's top supplier of heroin.
A spokesman for NATO in Kabul said the alliance had carried out an air attack to the south of Sangin and a total of 12 insurgents were killed while driving in three cars.
The strike comes amid spiralling violence in the past two years in Afghanistan, the bloodiest period since U.S.-led troops overthrew the Taliban's hardline Islamist government in 2001.
More than 12,000 people, nearly a quarter of them civilians, have been killed by the violence.
Civilian deaths have sparked protests and added to growing frustration among ordinary Afghans that Karzai's government and its Western backers have not brought more security to the country. (Reporting by Sayed Salahuddin; Editing by Alex Richardson)
Source: Reuters North American News Service
The Geopolitics of Crude Oil
This is from the Khaleejtimes. This is a great summary of some of the most important features of the geopolitics of oil historically and in the present. The article also helps explain the high price of oil at present.
The new geopolitics of crude oil
BY MATEIN KHALID (At Home)
12 March 2008
GEOPOLITICS has haunted the international oil and gas market since the birth of the hydrocarbon age. The British Empire created the Hashemite kingdom of Iraq and sent combat troops to the Suez Canal after Winston Churchill converted the Royal Navy’s warships from coal to oil during World War One.
The British helped Reza Khan Pahlavi seize the Peacock Throne from the Qajars to protect BP’s oil interests in Iran, just as BP helped his imperial son plot a countercoup against Mossadegh a generation later. The Japanese reacted to Roosevelt’s oil embargo with Hideki Tojo’s preemptive attack on Pearl Harbour and the subsequent invasion of Shell’s oilfields in the Dutch East Indies, modern Indonesia. Hitler’s Wehrmacht besieged Stalingrad because the Third Reich was determined to control the oilfields of the Caucasus and Azerbaijan, where the modern oil age was inaugurated by the Rothschild banking clan in Baku.
Last week was a defining moment in international relations. West Texas and North Sea Brent crude oil, the world’s light sweet crude benchmarks, soared to $105, above its inflation adjusted 1979 price of $92, when the Shah was overthrown in the Iranian Revolution and a buyer’s panic traumatised the Rotterdam market for spot tanker cargoes. While the immediate cause of the oil surge was an unexpected fall in US inventories and Opec’s failure to heed Bush’s call to boost production, black gold has become a hedge against the dollar, a new global currency of wealth and power, as the exponential increase in the numbers of Russians in the Forbes Global Billionaire list suggests.
Geopolitical supply shocks have added a risk premium to crude oil prices ever since the fall of the Saddam Hussein regime in Iraq. Terrorist attacks against pipelines and oil storage depots in Basra and the Saudi oil export terminals of Yanbu and Dhahran, secessionist sabotage in the Niger Delta, Venezuelan intransigence in Latin America, Israel’s wars with Hezbollah in Lebanon and Hamas in Gaza, Russia’s gas conflict with Ukraine and the Turkish army’s strikes against in the PKK in Iraqi Kurdistan show that all is not well in the provinces of black gold. The US sanctions against the Ayatollah regime have gutted the energy potential of an Iran that once pumped six million barrels of crude oil in the twilight of the Pahlavi dynasty.
Opec has blamed speculators for the parabolic rise in crude oil prices with good reasons. The New York Mercantile Exchange sets the global price of light sweet crude, not the princes of Riyadh, the Kremlin or the demagogues in Caracas and Teheran. If oil has surged to historic highs, so have gold, silver, platinum, wheat, coffee and iron ore. Inflation rates have surged worldwide, not least in the Arabian Gulf states and China, where power consumption has skyrocketed. However, oil shipment data to the Far East suggests that Saudi Arabia is pumping at least 300,000 barrels above its Opec quota of 8.9 million barrels. In essence, if Chinese austerity and US demand weaken or if the Group of Seven central banks intervene in the foreign exchange markets to buy dollars against the Euro and the Japanese Yen, then crude oil prices could easily plunge to $80. However, the Wall Street credit meltdown has scared the Bernanke Fed and the Chairman’s helicopters are dropping billions of new liquidity in the money markets, meaning US interest rates have plunged 200 basis points since September. The last thing Saudi Arabia, the UAE and Kuwait need is $125 crude oil in November, with their largest customer and security underwriter in deep financial distress. Saudi Arabia has been hypersensitive to its image in the US, since the kingdom was demonised in the media, Congress and the court of public opinion after 9/11. If oil prices do not fall, Opec and Saudi Arabia could well become the focal point of the presidential election in the US. The bitterness of the Bush White House’s reaction to the last Opec conclave in Vienna is a premonition of autumn follies.
The volatility in oil prices also derives from the internal factions and rivalries in Opec. As non Opec supply growth declines in Mexico, the North Sea and Southeast Asia declines, its decision making processes become critical in oil prices. Moreover, a world obsessed by Chindia’s oil demand has not noticed the domestic demand growth in Iran and the GCC, where gas shortages will curb oil export growth. The air conditioners in Riyadh and power plants in Jebel Ali guzzle energy just as the American motorists hit the highways.
Iran, Venezuela, Libya and Algeria are the price hawks in Opec and have opposed production increases by Gulf exporters with spare capacity, outvoting Saudi Arabia’s 1 million barrel a day production increase. The data suggests Saudi Aramco tankers have loaded sour crude for refineries in China.
It is impossible to predict crude oil prices without a sophisticated understanding of the current geopolitical zeitgeist. A decade ago, Iraq and Venezuela produced almost seven million barrels a day, 2.5 mbd above current levels. A generation ago, the Shah’s Iran produced double the oil it pumps in 2008. The politics of gas pipelines in the Gulf will also impact crude oil prices. The GCC needs to divert oil exports to power generation and the requisite natural gas infrastructure will only constrain oil export capacity in the future.
The US Congress has held hearings on speculative oil traders who manipulate the energy markets. State owned oil and gas companies like Gazprom, Rosneft and Sonatrach could well replace sovereign wealth funds as the new protectionist bete noirs in Washington. The Seven Sisters, the Western multinationals supermajors who once ruled the energy markets, now have no access to nine tenth of the world’s oil and gas reserves. Politics has restrained capacity expansion in Mexico, Iraq, Venezuela, Russia, Kuwait, Nigeria, and Iran. From the mangrove creeks of the Niger Delta to the ancient hills of Iraqi Kurdistan, from the desert vastness of Saudi Arabia’s Sea of Emptiness to the Siberian permafrost in Russia, politics will define the future of the kingdoms of black gold.
Matein Khalid is a Dubai-based investment banker and economic analyst
The new geopolitics of crude oil
BY MATEIN KHALID (At Home)
12 March 2008
GEOPOLITICS has haunted the international oil and gas market since the birth of the hydrocarbon age. The British Empire created the Hashemite kingdom of Iraq and sent combat troops to the Suez Canal after Winston Churchill converted the Royal Navy’s warships from coal to oil during World War One.
The British helped Reza Khan Pahlavi seize the Peacock Throne from the Qajars to protect BP’s oil interests in Iran, just as BP helped his imperial son plot a countercoup against Mossadegh a generation later. The Japanese reacted to Roosevelt’s oil embargo with Hideki Tojo’s preemptive attack on Pearl Harbour and the subsequent invasion of Shell’s oilfields in the Dutch East Indies, modern Indonesia. Hitler’s Wehrmacht besieged Stalingrad because the Third Reich was determined to control the oilfields of the Caucasus and Azerbaijan, where the modern oil age was inaugurated by the Rothschild banking clan in Baku.
Last week was a defining moment in international relations. West Texas and North Sea Brent crude oil, the world’s light sweet crude benchmarks, soared to $105, above its inflation adjusted 1979 price of $92, when the Shah was overthrown in the Iranian Revolution and a buyer’s panic traumatised the Rotterdam market for spot tanker cargoes. While the immediate cause of the oil surge was an unexpected fall in US inventories and Opec’s failure to heed Bush’s call to boost production, black gold has become a hedge against the dollar, a new global currency of wealth and power, as the exponential increase in the numbers of Russians in the Forbes Global Billionaire list suggests.
Geopolitical supply shocks have added a risk premium to crude oil prices ever since the fall of the Saddam Hussein regime in Iraq. Terrorist attacks against pipelines and oil storage depots in Basra and the Saudi oil export terminals of Yanbu and Dhahran, secessionist sabotage in the Niger Delta, Venezuelan intransigence in Latin America, Israel’s wars with Hezbollah in Lebanon and Hamas in Gaza, Russia’s gas conflict with Ukraine and the Turkish army’s strikes against in the PKK in Iraqi Kurdistan show that all is not well in the provinces of black gold. The US sanctions against the Ayatollah regime have gutted the energy potential of an Iran that once pumped six million barrels of crude oil in the twilight of the Pahlavi dynasty.
Opec has blamed speculators for the parabolic rise in crude oil prices with good reasons. The New York Mercantile Exchange sets the global price of light sweet crude, not the princes of Riyadh, the Kremlin or the demagogues in Caracas and Teheran. If oil has surged to historic highs, so have gold, silver, platinum, wheat, coffee and iron ore. Inflation rates have surged worldwide, not least in the Arabian Gulf states and China, where power consumption has skyrocketed. However, oil shipment data to the Far East suggests that Saudi Arabia is pumping at least 300,000 barrels above its Opec quota of 8.9 million barrels. In essence, if Chinese austerity and US demand weaken or if the Group of Seven central banks intervene in the foreign exchange markets to buy dollars against the Euro and the Japanese Yen, then crude oil prices could easily plunge to $80. However, the Wall Street credit meltdown has scared the Bernanke Fed and the Chairman’s helicopters are dropping billions of new liquidity in the money markets, meaning US interest rates have plunged 200 basis points since September. The last thing Saudi Arabia, the UAE and Kuwait need is $125 crude oil in November, with their largest customer and security underwriter in deep financial distress. Saudi Arabia has been hypersensitive to its image in the US, since the kingdom was demonised in the media, Congress and the court of public opinion after 9/11. If oil prices do not fall, Opec and Saudi Arabia could well become the focal point of the presidential election in the US. The bitterness of the Bush White House’s reaction to the last Opec conclave in Vienna is a premonition of autumn follies.
The volatility in oil prices also derives from the internal factions and rivalries in Opec. As non Opec supply growth declines in Mexico, the North Sea and Southeast Asia declines, its decision making processes become critical in oil prices. Moreover, a world obsessed by Chindia’s oil demand has not noticed the domestic demand growth in Iran and the GCC, where gas shortages will curb oil export growth. The air conditioners in Riyadh and power plants in Jebel Ali guzzle energy just as the American motorists hit the highways.
Iran, Venezuela, Libya and Algeria are the price hawks in Opec and have opposed production increases by Gulf exporters with spare capacity, outvoting Saudi Arabia’s 1 million barrel a day production increase. The data suggests Saudi Aramco tankers have loaded sour crude for refineries in China.
It is impossible to predict crude oil prices without a sophisticated understanding of the current geopolitical zeitgeist. A decade ago, Iraq and Venezuela produced almost seven million barrels a day, 2.5 mbd above current levels. A generation ago, the Shah’s Iran produced double the oil it pumps in 2008. The politics of gas pipelines in the Gulf will also impact crude oil prices. The GCC needs to divert oil exports to power generation and the requisite natural gas infrastructure will only constrain oil export capacity in the future.
The US Congress has held hearings on speculative oil traders who manipulate the energy markets. State owned oil and gas companies like Gazprom, Rosneft and Sonatrach could well replace sovereign wealth funds as the new protectionist bete noirs in Washington. The Seven Sisters, the Western multinationals supermajors who once ruled the energy markets, now have no access to nine tenth of the world’s oil and gas reserves. Politics has restrained capacity expansion in Mexico, Iraq, Venezuela, Russia, Kuwait, Nigeria, and Iran. From the mangrove creeks of the Niger Delta to the ancient hills of Iraqi Kurdistan, from the desert vastness of Saudi Arabia’s Sea of Emptiness to the Siberian permafrost in Russia, politics will define the future of the kingdoms of black gold.
Matein Khalid is a Dubai-based investment banker and economic analyst
Tuesday, March 18, 2008
Raimondo catches Obamania
This is shocking. Usually Raimondo has his head firmly screwed on and a cigarette dangling from his lips but maybe now he has a screw loose and marijuana in that cigarette. Obama is committed to increasing the size of the military. To me that sounds as if he is pro-war no matter what he says especially when the U.S. already spends many times as much as any other nation on the military. He is also unabashedly pro-Israel. Anyway Obama is a Democrat. Does Raimondo really think that a front-running Democratic candidate for president can be anything other than an establishment candidate? Why?
from antiwar.com..
Confessions of an Obama Cultist
An open letter
by Justin Raimondo
Dear fellow Obama-maniacs,
Okay, I'm coming out of the closet, and admitting I'm one of you. There, I can say it, at last, out loud and proud: I'm a conservative-paleo-libertarian with a man-crush on Obama.
Whew! What a relief! Now that I've got that off my chest, I can speak freely, and openly, about my condition – and, what's more, address my fellows in the spirit of mutual solidarity and support. Because it looks like we're going to need all the support we can get.
First, my story: Like many of you, I tried to deny it. I lived deeply, and tragically, closeted, afraid to face my inner desires and tortured by the possibility that someone might find out. Trying not to look at him when he came on television – which, as you know, is often. I looked, of course, but only out of the corner of my eye, and tried not to swoon as those golden words melted the very air.
I even denounced him a couple of times right here in this space, just to cover my tracks: yes, I was an Obama-basher, because I just couldn't face the truth about myself. Yet I couldn't resist the siren song of my real desires, and, slowly but surely, I inched out of the closet and into the light.
Obama kept mentioning the war – you know, the one we were lied into on phony "evidence" of a nonexistent nuclear program. Not only that, but he kept reminding Hillary we should never had launched it in the first place: he needled her until she visibly squirmed. That was the hook, the lure that drew me ineluctably into the Obama cult.
Okay, let's admit this, too: it is a cult, i.e. a group centered around a single leader, whose pronouncements and personality form the basis of belief. With Obama, the clincher is that distinctly presidential air he carries with such alacrity: he acts and speaks as if he's already the President, and is merely waiting to be officially elected out of simple courtesy and respect for tradition.
Obama-mania is indeed a cult, but that's okay: after all, I'm a longtime Ron Paul fan, too – my enthusiasms are strictly non-partisan – and so idealism doesn't scare me, I think it's a rare and good thing in politics, and in life. After all, Christianity, when it began, was a cult, and yet now we have presidential candidates chasing after the Christian constituency, no matter how wacky some of their leaders may be.
I have to say that the turning point, for me, was when Rep. Paul's presidential campaign seemed to go into suspended animation. An attempt to derail the Revolution by challenging Paul in the GOP congressional primary necessitated a tactical shift, and Chris Peden, the challenger, was crushed, 70-30. Oh, it was a great day: you could practically hear Roger L Simon sobbing and I'll be damned if I didn't hear the faint echoes of Jamie Kirchick's furious shrieks ("I'm melting! Melting!").
With the GOP presidential sweepstakes over, the antiwar voter – that is, the single-issue voter who conditions his support on the candidate's generally pro-peace foreign policy stance – was left with a single choice, and that is Obama.
This is really the core of Obama's appeal, and not just in my case: his calls to end the war, and change our crazed foreign policy, always elicit the loudest cheers at his mammoth rallies. It doesn't matter that he's not a consistent, principled, down-the-line opponent of interventionism: in the public mind, he is the antiwar candidate. Which is precisely what that 3-in-the-morning Clinton ad was all about: do you trust a peacenik like Obama to be ready to go to war at a moment's notice – to bomb now, and consider all the possibilities later?
That and the Obama-is-a-Muslim rumor, shamelessly validated by Hillary herself – "As far as I know" he's not a Muslim! – generated a Clintonian mini-surge. The results of the Ohio and Texas Democratic primaries may not amount to much in terms of delegates – Clinton picked up around six, according to the system sanctioned by the party's arcane rules – yet nevertheless her comeback represents a major setback for the only antiwar candidate left in the running. The fix is in.
The combative tone of the Clintonites has given the signal to the Democratic establishment that they'd better not even begin to think about abandoning the Clintons to a well-deserved fate. In the end, as I have pointed out previously, the super-delegates will determine Obama's fate – and you don't really think they're going to let a perceived peace candidate anywhere near the White House, now do you?
It's been widely noted that, in going after Obama, the Clintonites are utilizing the same tactics the Republicans would – the three-in-the-morning phone call ad might have been produced by the Republican National Committee, for all the difference it makes. With that ad, the Clintonites announced their scorched earth policy: they would rather split the Democratic party than give up their dream of the Restoration. It's only natural that the breaking point comes in the realm of foreign policy, and specifically over the issue of the alleged permanence of our ongoing "crisis" – the entire rationale behind our foreign policy of perpetual war.
Constant crisis means constant war hysteria, and this is the key to understanding the mindset that got us where we are today in Iraq. In the world of Hillary's red-phone ad, war is a constant option – so that, at any moment, and probably close to if not exactly at 3 a.m., the President of the United States is more than likely to be woken up and forced to make a decision: war, or peace. Which is it to be? No time to think, or consult: it's either give the order to inflict mass death – or chill with a cup of coffee, and maybe even a secret smoke in the Rose Garden, before giving the order to launch World War III.
Hillary the hawk shrieks, and strikes – but, on second thought, she's more like a shrike, a fierce bird that seems to take a perverse pleasure in impaling its victims on thorns, perhaps as a display to frighten its enemies. Our Democratic war-birds have always ruled the party's nest, and the Clintons won't hesitate to push Obama and his supporters to the forest floor, if they have to.
At this point, neither candidate has enough pledged delegates to win, and neither is likely to acquire that magic number. Therefore, in the end, it will be the super-delegates – the party Establishment – who will pick the nominee. A few hundred party insiders – now that's American democracy in action. Keep this in mind the next time the US government takes, say, Russia to task for supposedly veering off the road to democracy.
The probable outcome of all this will be the complete lack of a candidate who holds anything close to a rational position on matters of foreign policy. Hillary Clinton's record on this question is disgraceful: her actual stance is closer to Joe Lieberman's than Obama's, except she doesn't have Joe's courage. And as for McCain ….
Ron Paul has ruled out a third party run, unfortunately, although we are indeed fortunate to have such a staunch opponent of interventionism in the US Congress. Paul's victory in his congressional primary is a real smack in the face to the neocons, and to the Beltway "libertarian" snobs who decided Paul didn't deserve their endorsement (or even a fair shake): screw you, guys, your smear campaign failed miserably.
All in all, however, this one victory in defense of gains already made is far from enough. As it stands now, in terms of changing our counterproductive and downright dangerous foreign policy, there will be no candidate on the presidential ballot this November worth a damn.
There are rumors that Bob Barr, the former Republican congressman from Georgia, will launch a third party challenge on the right: Barr opposes the Iraq war, and has been part of a coalition of conservatives, liberals, and libertarians who oppose the PATRIOT Act, the Military Commissions Act, and similarly authoritarian measures recently imposed by the Bush regime and its Democratic enablers. A meeting between Barr and Ron Paul has been reported, but, as yet, nothing definite seems to have solidified – and the hour grows late.
In my 1993 book, Reclaiming the American Right: The Lost Legacy of the Conservative Movement, I inserted a quotation from Old Right lion Garet Garrett in the front, and did so for a reason that seems especially relevant now:
"Between government in the republican meaning, that is, Constitutional, representative, limited government, on the one hand, and Empire on the other hand, there is mortal enmity. Either one must forbid the other or one will destroy the other. That we know. Yet never has the choice been put to a vote of the people."
"Democracy," American-style, is the War Party's most successful scam, a device by which it gets to validate its war plans without ever having them contested at the ballot box. The primary process is designed to weed out all possible challengers to the bosses of the "major" parties, and, when that doesn't work, the Democratic wing of the War Party always has recourse to the "super-delegates," or some such device, to snatch the prize away from an upstart contender.
With the GOP effectively inoculated against anti-interventionist ideas, and the Democratic antiwar base kept in check by the super-delegate-DLC-PPI axis of Hillary, the antiwar majority is denied even a voice in the presidential election.
The system is in crisis. We simply can't afford to police the world, and we're going bankrupt in the attempt. At the present rate of deterioration, the economic foundations of American imperialism are approaching collapse – and we're looking at a very short time-frame, as such things go.
The economic and social consequences of such a reckless policy are staring us in the face, and this brings to mind another quote from the prescient Garrett:
"No doubt the people know they can have their Republic back if they want it enough to fight for it and to pay the price. The only point is that no leader has yet appeared with the courage to make them choose."
We're in a crisis, alright, a crisis of leadership – or the lack of it. Where is the politician who will challenge the War Party, and take his fight all the way to the end, however bitter it may be? When Obama, for example, is denied the nomination, when we all know he won it fair and square – when the super-delegates crown Queen Hillary with laurel leaves and proclaim "Hail, Clinton!" – what will the Obama-maniacs do? What, for that matter, will Obama do?
There's talk that Hillary will offer him the vice-presidency (certainly she'd never accept a subordinate role), but I don't believe that's any longer possible: the red phone ad pretty much says Obama isn't to be trusted with that phone, and that rules him out for the number two spot on the ticket.
If Obama is really the leader of our dreams, the messiah figure who lives up to our completely unreasonable expectations, and is fated to deliver us from the evil that's enveloped us for the past eight years, he'll launch an independent bid for the White House. Of course, it won't happen: but that doesn't mean it shouldn't happen.
And yet, it could happen: anything can happen, especially in this volatile season. A popular movement demanding that he run, a backlash against the Old Politics and the beginning of a new era of tumult and rising opposition to the Powers That Be – can it happen?
Our answer must be: Yes, it can …
~ Justin Raimondo
from antiwar.com..
Confessions of an Obama Cultist
An open letter
by Justin Raimondo
Dear fellow Obama-maniacs,
Okay, I'm coming out of the closet, and admitting I'm one of you. There, I can say it, at last, out loud and proud: I'm a conservative-paleo-libertarian with a man-crush on Obama.
Whew! What a relief! Now that I've got that off my chest, I can speak freely, and openly, about my condition – and, what's more, address my fellows in the spirit of mutual solidarity and support. Because it looks like we're going to need all the support we can get.
First, my story: Like many of you, I tried to deny it. I lived deeply, and tragically, closeted, afraid to face my inner desires and tortured by the possibility that someone might find out. Trying not to look at him when he came on television – which, as you know, is often. I looked, of course, but only out of the corner of my eye, and tried not to swoon as those golden words melted the very air.
I even denounced him a couple of times right here in this space, just to cover my tracks: yes, I was an Obama-basher, because I just couldn't face the truth about myself. Yet I couldn't resist the siren song of my real desires, and, slowly but surely, I inched out of the closet and into the light.
Obama kept mentioning the war – you know, the one we were lied into on phony "evidence" of a nonexistent nuclear program. Not only that, but he kept reminding Hillary we should never had launched it in the first place: he needled her until she visibly squirmed. That was the hook, the lure that drew me ineluctably into the Obama cult.
Okay, let's admit this, too: it is a cult, i.e. a group centered around a single leader, whose pronouncements and personality form the basis of belief. With Obama, the clincher is that distinctly presidential air he carries with such alacrity: he acts and speaks as if he's already the President, and is merely waiting to be officially elected out of simple courtesy and respect for tradition.
Obama-mania is indeed a cult, but that's okay: after all, I'm a longtime Ron Paul fan, too – my enthusiasms are strictly non-partisan – and so idealism doesn't scare me, I think it's a rare and good thing in politics, and in life. After all, Christianity, when it began, was a cult, and yet now we have presidential candidates chasing after the Christian constituency, no matter how wacky some of their leaders may be.
I have to say that the turning point, for me, was when Rep. Paul's presidential campaign seemed to go into suspended animation. An attempt to derail the Revolution by challenging Paul in the GOP congressional primary necessitated a tactical shift, and Chris Peden, the challenger, was crushed, 70-30. Oh, it was a great day: you could practically hear Roger L Simon sobbing and I'll be damned if I didn't hear the faint echoes of Jamie Kirchick's furious shrieks ("I'm melting! Melting!").
With the GOP presidential sweepstakes over, the antiwar voter – that is, the single-issue voter who conditions his support on the candidate's generally pro-peace foreign policy stance – was left with a single choice, and that is Obama.
This is really the core of Obama's appeal, and not just in my case: his calls to end the war, and change our crazed foreign policy, always elicit the loudest cheers at his mammoth rallies. It doesn't matter that he's not a consistent, principled, down-the-line opponent of interventionism: in the public mind, he is the antiwar candidate. Which is precisely what that 3-in-the-morning Clinton ad was all about: do you trust a peacenik like Obama to be ready to go to war at a moment's notice – to bomb now, and consider all the possibilities later?
That and the Obama-is-a-Muslim rumor, shamelessly validated by Hillary herself – "As far as I know" he's not a Muslim! – generated a Clintonian mini-surge. The results of the Ohio and Texas Democratic primaries may not amount to much in terms of delegates – Clinton picked up around six, according to the system sanctioned by the party's arcane rules – yet nevertheless her comeback represents a major setback for the only antiwar candidate left in the running. The fix is in.
The combative tone of the Clintonites has given the signal to the Democratic establishment that they'd better not even begin to think about abandoning the Clintons to a well-deserved fate. In the end, as I have pointed out previously, the super-delegates will determine Obama's fate – and you don't really think they're going to let a perceived peace candidate anywhere near the White House, now do you?
It's been widely noted that, in going after Obama, the Clintonites are utilizing the same tactics the Republicans would – the three-in-the-morning phone call ad might have been produced by the Republican National Committee, for all the difference it makes. With that ad, the Clintonites announced their scorched earth policy: they would rather split the Democratic party than give up their dream of the Restoration. It's only natural that the breaking point comes in the realm of foreign policy, and specifically over the issue of the alleged permanence of our ongoing "crisis" – the entire rationale behind our foreign policy of perpetual war.
Constant crisis means constant war hysteria, and this is the key to understanding the mindset that got us where we are today in Iraq. In the world of Hillary's red-phone ad, war is a constant option – so that, at any moment, and probably close to if not exactly at 3 a.m., the President of the United States is more than likely to be woken up and forced to make a decision: war, or peace. Which is it to be? No time to think, or consult: it's either give the order to inflict mass death – or chill with a cup of coffee, and maybe even a secret smoke in the Rose Garden, before giving the order to launch World War III.
Hillary the hawk shrieks, and strikes – but, on second thought, she's more like a shrike, a fierce bird that seems to take a perverse pleasure in impaling its victims on thorns, perhaps as a display to frighten its enemies. Our Democratic war-birds have always ruled the party's nest, and the Clintons won't hesitate to push Obama and his supporters to the forest floor, if they have to.
At this point, neither candidate has enough pledged delegates to win, and neither is likely to acquire that magic number. Therefore, in the end, it will be the super-delegates – the party Establishment – who will pick the nominee. A few hundred party insiders – now that's American democracy in action. Keep this in mind the next time the US government takes, say, Russia to task for supposedly veering off the road to democracy.
The probable outcome of all this will be the complete lack of a candidate who holds anything close to a rational position on matters of foreign policy. Hillary Clinton's record on this question is disgraceful: her actual stance is closer to Joe Lieberman's than Obama's, except she doesn't have Joe's courage. And as for McCain ….
Ron Paul has ruled out a third party run, unfortunately, although we are indeed fortunate to have such a staunch opponent of interventionism in the US Congress. Paul's victory in his congressional primary is a real smack in the face to the neocons, and to the Beltway "libertarian" snobs who decided Paul didn't deserve their endorsement (or even a fair shake): screw you, guys, your smear campaign failed miserably.
All in all, however, this one victory in defense of gains already made is far from enough. As it stands now, in terms of changing our counterproductive and downright dangerous foreign policy, there will be no candidate on the presidential ballot this November worth a damn.
There are rumors that Bob Barr, the former Republican congressman from Georgia, will launch a third party challenge on the right: Barr opposes the Iraq war, and has been part of a coalition of conservatives, liberals, and libertarians who oppose the PATRIOT Act, the Military Commissions Act, and similarly authoritarian measures recently imposed by the Bush regime and its Democratic enablers. A meeting between Barr and Ron Paul has been reported, but, as yet, nothing definite seems to have solidified – and the hour grows late.
In my 1993 book, Reclaiming the American Right: The Lost Legacy of the Conservative Movement, I inserted a quotation from Old Right lion Garet Garrett in the front, and did so for a reason that seems especially relevant now:
"Between government in the republican meaning, that is, Constitutional, representative, limited government, on the one hand, and Empire on the other hand, there is mortal enmity. Either one must forbid the other or one will destroy the other. That we know. Yet never has the choice been put to a vote of the people."
"Democracy," American-style, is the War Party's most successful scam, a device by which it gets to validate its war plans without ever having them contested at the ballot box. The primary process is designed to weed out all possible challengers to the bosses of the "major" parties, and, when that doesn't work, the Democratic wing of the War Party always has recourse to the "super-delegates," or some such device, to snatch the prize away from an upstart contender.
With the GOP effectively inoculated against anti-interventionist ideas, and the Democratic antiwar base kept in check by the super-delegate-DLC-PPI axis of Hillary, the antiwar majority is denied even a voice in the presidential election.
The system is in crisis. We simply can't afford to police the world, and we're going bankrupt in the attempt. At the present rate of deterioration, the economic foundations of American imperialism are approaching collapse – and we're looking at a very short time-frame, as such things go.
The economic and social consequences of such a reckless policy are staring us in the face, and this brings to mind another quote from the prescient Garrett:
"No doubt the people know they can have their Republic back if they want it enough to fight for it and to pay the price. The only point is that no leader has yet appeared with the courage to make them choose."
We're in a crisis, alright, a crisis of leadership – or the lack of it. Where is the politician who will challenge the War Party, and take his fight all the way to the end, however bitter it may be? When Obama, for example, is denied the nomination, when we all know he won it fair and square – when the super-delegates crown Queen Hillary with laurel leaves and proclaim "Hail, Clinton!" – what will the Obama-maniacs do? What, for that matter, will Obama do?
There's talk that Hillary will offer him the vice-presidency (certainly she'd never accept a subordinate role), but I don't believe that's any longer possible: the red phone ad pretty much says Obama isn't to be trusted with that phone, and that rules him out for the number two spot on the ticket.
If Obama is really the leader of our dreams, the messiah figure who lives up to our completely unreasonable expectations, and is fated to deliver us from the evil that's enveloped us for the past eight years, he'll launch an independent bid for the White House. Of course, it won't happen: but that doesn't mean it shouldn't happen.
And yet, it could happen: anything can happen, especially in this volatile season. A popular movement demanding that he run, a backlash against the Old Politics and the beginning of a new era of tumult and rising opposition to the Powers That Be – can it happen?
Our answer must be: Yes, it can …
~ Justin Raimondo
FBI presence in bombed Pakistan diner adds to murk.
This is from wiredispatch.
Given that the diner had FBI agents, foreigners, and people who drank, no doubt the attackers were probably Islamic radicals who thought they could kill three birds with one stone.
FBI presence in bombed Pakistan diner adds to murk
Simon Cameron-Moore
Reuters North American News Service
Mar 17, 2008 11:03 EST
ISLAMABAD, March 17 (Reuters) - Pakistani police carried out a dragnet following a bomb attack on Saturday night that killed a Turkish woman and wounded four FBI agents among several other people dining at a Italian restaurant in Islamabad.
Police on Monday said so far they had not linked any of the people picked up with the attack on the Luna Caprese restaurant, a favourite hangout for foreigners as it is one of the few places in the Pakistani capital where alcohol is served.
The investigation was being carried out jointly with intelligence agencies, and a forensics report was awaited to ascertain whether the bomb was planted in the garden dining area or thrown over a wall.
The blast left a crater about a metre wide, and police were immediately able to rule out a suicide attack, which has become Islamist militants favoured mode of attack since mid-2007.
Investigating officer Ashraf Shah told Reuters that 3-4 kg of explosives were used in the attack.
"We have made some detentions focussing on suspicious people, and people unable to account for their presence in Islamabad... But, there has not been any arrest in the case," Senior Superintendent Kaleem Imam said.
The FBI confirmed on Sunday that four of five Americans wounded in the attack were FBI agents.
"Four FBI personnel were slightly injured in the bombing attack in Pakistan," FBI spokesman Richard Kolko said.
State Department spokesman Tom Casey condemned the attack, saying the restaurant was "hardly a military target of any kind. It's clearly designed to affect civilians."
The restaurant was a well-known haunt for expatriates, notably diplomats, journalists and aid agency officials.
Asked if the FBI agents were targeted, he said, "I don't believe the Pakistanis or anyone else has presented information that would indicate these specific individuals were targeted rather than the location they were at."
ABC News identified one of the wounded agents as Ray Biteski, the embassy's FBI attache.
ONE-OFF OR START OF TREND?
While Pakistan has reeled from a wave of violence, the al Qaeda inspired militants had until now focused on Pakistani security forces and political leaders, while Westerners and other foreigners have been mostly spared.
It was too early say if the attack was a one-off, or an attack on a specific target, or the start of a trend to pick out soft targets frequented by foreigners.
Foreigners have been attacked several times in Pakistan since the United States persuaded President Pervez Musharraf to join its global war on terrorism in 2001, and U.S. diplomats have been considered most at risk.
The bureau chief of Japan's Kyodo News, Motonobu Endo, was dining in the garden area when the blast occurred, and didn't see anything being thrown.
"I didn't see anything moving before the blast," Endo said.
He recalled seeing a table full of Americans, and reckoned they were sat around three metres from where the bomb exploded, though a couple, including the dead Turkish aid worker, were sat closer to the blast.
While Endo suffered slight injuries and a damaged ear drum, his colleague Toshihisa Onishi suffered eye and facial injuries.
About a dozen people were wounded, though none suffered life threatening injuries.
A Briton working at the British High Commission was among the wounded, and had since been sent back to Britain, a High Commission spokesman said.
A Canadian and a Chinese national were also hurt, along with three Pakistanis.
The last foreign diplomat to be killed in a militant attack was U.S. diplomat David Foy, who died in a suicide car bomb attack outside the U.S. consulate in Karachi in March 2006. The Karachi consulate had been targeted by bombers several times before.
In 2002, a grenade attack killed five people, including a U.S. diplomat's wife and daughter, at a church in Islamabad's cordoned off enclave for foreign embassies. (Editing by Matthew Jones)
Source: Reuters North American News Service
Given that the diner had FBI agents, foreigners, and people who drank, no doubt the attackers were probably Islamic radicals who thought they could kill three birds with one stone.
FBI presence in bombed Pakistan diner adds to murk
Simon Cameron-Moore
Reuters North American News Service
Mar 17, 2008 11:03 EST
ISLAMABAD, March 17 (Reuters) - Pakistani police carried out a dragnet following a bomb attack on Saturday night that killed a Turkish woman and wounded four FBI agents among several other people dining at a Italian restaurant in Islamabad.
Police on Monday said so far they had not linked any of the people picked up with the attack on the Luna Caprese restaurant, a favourite hangout for foreigners as it is one of the few places in the Pakistani capital where alcohol is served.
The investigation was being carried out jointly with intelligence agencies, and a forensics report was awaited to ascertain whether the bomb was planted in the garden dining area or thrown over a wall.
The blast left a crater about a metre wide, and police were immediately able to rule out a suicide attack, which has become Islamist militants favoured mode of attack since mid-2007.
Investigating officer Ashraf Shah told Reuters that 3-4 kg of explosives were used in the attack.
"We have made some detentions focussing on suspicious people, and people unable to account for their presence in Islamabad... But, there has not been any arrest in the case," Senior Superintendent Kaleem Imam said.
The FBI confirmed on Sunday that four of five Americans wounded in the attack were FBI agents.
"Four FBI personnel were slightly injured in the bombing attack in Pakistan," FBI spokesman Richard Kolko said.
State Department spokesman Tom Casey condemned the attack, saying the restaurant was "hardly a military target of any kind. It's clearly designed to affect civilians."
The restaurant was a well-known haunt for expatriates, notably diplomats, journalists and aid agency officials.
Asked if the FBI agents were targeted, he said, "I don't believe the Pakistanis or anyone else has presented information that would indicate these specific individuals were targeted rather than the location they were at."
ABC News identified one of the wounded agents as Ray Biteski, the embassy's FBI attache.
ONE-OFF OR START OF TREND?
While Pakistan has reeled from a wave of violence, the al Qaeda inspired militants had until now focused on Pakistani security forces and political leaders, while Westerners and other foreigners have been mostly spared.
It was too early say if the attack was a one-off, or an attack on a specific target, or the start of a trend to pick out soft targets frequented by foreigners.
Foreigners have been attacked several times in Pakistan since the United States persuaded President Pervez Musharraf to join its global war on terrorism in 2001, and U.S. diplomats have been considered most at risk.
The bureau chief of Japan's Kyodo News, Motonobu Endo, was dining in the garden area when the blast occurred, and didn't see anything being thrown.
"I didn't see anything moving before the blast," Endo said.
He recalled seeing a table full of Americans, and reckoned they were sat around three metres from where the bomb exploded, though a couple, including the dead Turkish aid worker, were sat closer to the blast.
While Endo suffered slight injuries and a damaged ear drum, his colleague Toshihisa Onishi suffered eye and facial injuries.
About a dozen people were wounded, though none suffered life threatening injuries.
A Briton working at the British High Commission was among the wounded, and had since been sent back to Britain, a High Commission spokesman said.
A Canadian and a Chinese national were also hurt, along with three Pakistanis.
The last foreign diplomat to be killed in a militant attack was U.S. diplomat David Foy, who died in a suicide car bomb attack outside the U.S. consulate in Karachi in March 2006. The Karachi consulate had been targeted by bombers several times before.
In 2002, a grenade attack killed five people, including a U.S. diplomat's wife and daughter, at a church in Islamabad's cordoned off enclave for foreign embassies. (Editing by Matthew Jones)
Source: Reuters North American News Service
Iraqis don't credit US for safer lives.
This is from Wiredispatch. This is an interesting article on poll results. I have no idea how reliable the poll is. Some Iraqi polls are of doubtful validity because of problems of getting a reliable sample. The poll does seem to reflect the general consensus that there is less violence in Iraq. However, the Iraqis do not think that this is because of the surge. This is probably correct. Other factors are the cease fire of Sadr and the Awakening movement that has driven Al Qaeda out of many areas.
The general consensus seems to be that the situation has gone from horrible to very bad, and that is an improvement!
Iraqis don't credit US for safer lives
Poll Finds Iraqis' Attitudes More Hopeful, but Do Not Credit US-Led Invasion
WILLIAM C. MANN
AP News
Mar 17, 2008 05:38 EST
Iraqis are finding their lives more hopeful but give the United States little credit for the improvement, an international media poll finds.
Instead, poll respondents credited the Iraqi government, police and army.
The poll, released Monday to observe this week's fifth anniversary of the U.S.-led invasion of Iraq, was commissioned by ABC News in conjunction with the British Broadcasting Corp., ARD German TV and the Japanese broadcaster NHK.
The Bush administration has credited an increase of 30,000 troops for a decrease in violence, which it says has improved the lives of ordinary Iraqis.
In the poll, however, more than half the Iraqis, 53 percent, felt that the rapid buildup of U.S. troops in Anbar province and in Baghdad has made overall security worse, not better. Even those negative findings, however, were a sharp improvement since a similar poll last August. Then, 70 percent said the American buildup had made matters worse in the areas it had emphasized. Only 18 percent said it had improved their conditions then, compared with 36 percent now.
The nationwide poll found the Iraqis' negative assessment of the rapid troop buildup came from all categories of respondents. Still, the poll responses reflected the overall improved assessment of conditions now as opposed to August, the month after the buildup was fully in place.
Regarding security, political dialogue, ability of the Iraqi government and economic development, 42 percent to 53 percent of the respondents found the situation worse. Those findings were down by 17 points to 27 points from the same questions eight months ago.
Poll organizers said such ratings reflect lingering negative feelings toward the March 2003 invasion.
"Direct ratings of the surge likely reflect the United States' general unpopularity," the poll's writers said. When "viewed through the filter of general antipathy toward the United States," they wrote, the drop in negative sentiment is notable.
In line with that, the poll's findings on "views of the U.S. presence" in Iraq were the highest since the invasion. Asked whether the "invasion was right," 49 percent said it was. The previous high had been 48 percent in the first poll of the series, by ABC News in February 2004, a virtual tie with the current level due to the poll's 2.5 percent error margin.
In August, 57 percent of Iraqis had replied that it was "acceptable" to attack U.S. forces. The poll released Monday found that number had dropped to 42 percent.
Likewise, 47 percent said last August that the foreign coalition's forces should leave Iraq. In the new poll, that had dropped to 38 percent.
The poll showed that Iraq's sectarian problems remain huge. Asked to evaluate their own lives, the country's current condition and whether they expect better lives for their children, the mood of the Sunni Muslim minority was bleaker than that of either the non-Arab Kurdish minority or the Shiite Arab majority.
More than eight in 10 Sunni Arabs said the condition of the country was bad; just over half of the Kurds, most of whom are Sunni, also felt that the things were going badly. Of the Shiites, who are 60 percent of the population and control the government, fewer than four in 10 found things were going badly.
Despite improvements, overall security remained the country's main problem in the minds of most Iraqis.
At the same time, most reported that their own lives were going well. In August, fewer than four in 10 said that; in the new poll, 55 percent said it. More than six in 10 said local security was good, 19 percentage points higher than in August.
Looking ahead, however, fewer than half expect their country to be better in a year's time. Still, that number, 46 percent, is twice the percentage of last August, when only 23 percent expected a better year ahead.
The poll was conducted Feb. 12-20 through interviews with a random sample of 2,228 Iraqi adults, including oversamples in Anbar province and in Baghdad and other major cities. The margin of error was 2.5 percentage points.
Source: AP News
The general consensus seems to be that the situation has gone from horrible to very bad, and that is an improvement!
Iraqis don't credit US for safer lives
Poll Finds Iraqis' Attitudes More Hopeful, but Do Not Credit US-Led Invasion
WILLIAM C. MANN
AP News
Mar 17, 2008 05:38 EST
Iraqis are finding their lives more hopeful but give the United States little credit for the improvement, an international media poll finds.
Instead, poll respondents credited the Iraqi government, police and army.
The poll, released Monday to observe this week's fifth anniversary of the U.S.-led invasion of Iraq, was commissioned by ABC News in conjunction with the British Broadcasting Corp., ARD German TV and the Japanese broadcaster NHK.
The Bush administration has credited an increase of 30,000 troops for a decrease in violence, which it says has improved the lives of ordinary Iraqis.
In the poll, however, more than half the Iraqis, 53 percent, felt that the rapid buildup of U.S. troops in Anbar province and in Baghdad has made overall security worse, not better. Even those negative findings, however, were a sharp improvement since a similar poll last August. Then, 70 percent said the American buildup had made matters worse in the areas it had emphasized. Only 18 percent said it had improved their conditions then, compared with 36 percent now.
The nationwide poll found the Iraqis' negative assessment of the rapid troop buildup came from all categories of respondents. Still, the poll responses reflected the overall improved assessment of conditions now as opposed to August, the month after the buildup was fully in place.
Regarding security, political dialogue, ability of the Iraqi government and economic development, 42 percent to 53 percent of the respondents found the situation worse. Those findings were down by 17 points to 27 points from the same questions eight months ago.
Poll organizers said such ratings reflect lingering negative feelings toward the March 2003 invasion.
"Direct ratings of the surge likely reflect the United States' general unpopularity," the poll's writers said. When "viewed through the filter of general antipathy toward the United States," they wrote, the drop in negative sentiment is notable.
In line with that, the poll's findings on "views of the U.S. presence" in Iraq were the highest since the invasion. Asked whether the "invasion was right," 49 percent said it was. The previous high had been 48 percent in the first poll of the series, by ABC News in February 2004, a virtual tie with the current level due to the poll's 2.5 percent error margin.
In August, 57 percent of Iraqis had replied that it was "acceptable" to attack U.S. forces. The poll released Monday found that number had dropped to 42 percent.
Likewise, 47 percent said last August that the foreign coalition's forces should leave Iraq. In the new poll, that had dropped to 38 percent.
The poll showed that Iraq's sectarian problems remain huge. Asked to evaluate their own lives, the country's current condition and whether they expect better lives for their children, the mood of the Sunni Muslim minority was bleaker than that of either the non-Arab Kurdish minority or the Shiite Arab majority.
More than eight in 10 Sunni Arabs said the condition of the country was bad; just over half of the Kurds, most of whom are Sunni, also felt that the things were going badly. Of the Shiites, who are 60 percent of the population and control the government, fewer than four in 10 found things were going badly.
Despite improvements, overall security remained the country's main problem in the minds of most Iraqis.
At the same time, most reported that their own lives were going well. In August, fewer than four in 10 said that; in the new poll, 55 percent said it. More than six in 10 said local security was good, 19 percentage points higher than in August.
Looking ahead, however, fewer than half expect their country to be better in a year's time. Still, that number, 46 percent, is twice the percentage of last August, when only 23 percent expected a better year ahead.
The poll was conducted Feb. 12-20 through interviews with a random sample of 2,228 Iraqi adults, including oversamples in Anbar province and in Baghdad and other major cities. The margin of error was 2.5 percentage points.
Source: AP News
Philippines faces rice shortage
This is from the Inquirer. While there are natural causes of the rice shortage corruption within the system also plays a role. Rice is a staple food in the Philippines and if the price continues to rise this will cause hardship among the poor. I was suprised to see that the Philippines actually imports some rice from the U.S. The notorious fertilizer fund was distributed to some urban politicians as well as rural areas.
Inquirer Headlines / Nation
http://newsinfo.inquirer.net/inquirerheadlines/nation/view/20080318-125372/Fast-food-outlets-told-to-cut-rice-serving
Fast-food outlets told to cut rice serving
Philippine Daily Inquirer
Posted date: March 18, 2008
MANILA, Philippines—As the country faces a looming rice shortage, the Department of Agriculture wants fast-food outlets to offer half portions of rice to encourage Filipinos to eat less of the staple.
“I’m asking fast-food restaurants to give their customers an option to order half a cup of rice because right now if you do a survey of all the fast-food joints you will notice a fraction of them always have excess rice,” Agriculture Secretary Arthur Yap said Monday.
Yap noted that people “don’t really finish their rice.”
Fast-food restaurants are popular meeting points for families and office workers in the Philippines and Jollibee Foods Corp., the country’s biggest fast-food chain, as well as international rivals McDonalds and KFC serve rice with their burgers and deep-fried chicken.
The Philippines is struggling to source supplies of up to 1.8 million metric tons this year amid the tight global supply and surging prices.
The Department of Agriculture has warned of a rice deficit of 2.1 million metric tons, equivalent to about two months’ worth of consumption, this year, according to Sen. Manuel Roxas II.
“It’s safe to say that we have enough supply of rice from January to October this year. Come November, where will we get our supply from? And that’s a big concern for us. We cannot depend anymore on other countries’ exports,” Roxas, chair of the Senate committee on trade and commerce, said Monday.
Calling for early action, Roxas urged Malacañang to release calamity funds to local government units so they can store rice to meet the impending shortage.
No shortage yet
Global commodity prices, including those of rice, have soared to record levels for the following reasons:
• Growing affluence and changing diets in developing countries, resulting in higher demand for food.
• Oil price increases, which are driving up freight rates and the cost of irrigation and petroleum-based fertilizers.
• Supply disruptions like floods.
• Stagnating output.
• Higher prices of inputs like fertilizer.
• Funds flowing into commodities as a hedge against a weak US dollar and falling stock markets.
Yap said the Philippines, where rising harvests could not keep pace with population growth of three babies a minute, was not facing a shortage of its national staple but people should conserve the grain, which is eaten at breakfast, lunch and dinner.
If Filipinos could be more prudent with their consumption, rice imports could go down by 37 percent to 1.17 million metric tons compared with last year’s import requirement of 1.87 million metric tons, according to the Department of Agriculture.
Old saying
Other senators are blaming President Gloria Macapagal-Arroyo for the looming rice crisis and for making the Philippines the world’s biggest importer of the cereal.
“Remember the old saying—Magmahal at magkulang na lahat, huwag lang bigas (Everything may cost more and suffer shortages but not rice),” Sen. Francis Escudero said in a text message.
He said the rice crisis should be addressed and taken seriously by the government.
“The root cause is not only external shocks but issues related to high cost of inputs; absence or lack of forward planning; and the shift to corn and jatropha.”
Escudero noted that the government’s thrust to promote jatropha in support of the biofuel program could have diverted funds intended for rice development to oil alternatives.
Rice cartel
Senate President Manuel Villar said the government had a lot of explaining to do on the rice crisis.
“First, the rice cartel. A lot of people might be taking advantage of the situation. Second, the fertilizer scam in which the government did not cooperate in our past investigation. Corruption in areas that directly affect the poor should never be tolerated. If our rice production is low, it is undeniable that fertilizer is one of the reasons,” Villar said in a press conference.
Worse than broadband scandal
Aside from being ineffective against the rice cartel, the government has been lax in checking corrupt practices in the National Food Authority (NFA), according to Villar.
“With the world price of rice spiraling, the government must do its best in handling the crisis because this could be more serious than the National Broadband Network scandal,” he said.
Roxas blamed the NFA for allowing government-bought rice meant to be sold cheaper than commercial rice to get into the hands of unscrupulous rice traders.
He also took to task the agriculture department for failing to secure the country’s rice production.
Roxas said two of the country’s traditional sources of imported rice, China and India, would likely consume their rice surplus instead of selling it to the Philippines.
Emergency rice fund
The Philippines has failed in three consecutive auctions to obtain the full volume of rice it needs and is hoping to tap an emergency regional rice fund to help with a potential shortfall.
Thailand has committed to set aside 15,000 metric tons of rice for the Philippines under the East Asia Emergency Rice Reserve and officials have also contacted Indonesia, Malaysia, Japan and South Korea.
Results for last week’s auction for 550,000 metric tons of rice, which only attracted 355,500 metric tons of bids, are expected this week.
The Philippines is also looking to re-tender to buy up to 100,000 metric tons of rice from the United States after receiving only one bid last week. It is buying the US rice using $65 million in credit guarantees from the US Department of Agriculture.
Rising nervousness
Last month, Ms Arroyo went outside normal commercial channels to ask the Vietnamese Prime Minister Nguyen Tan Dung to guarantee a supply of up to 1.5 million metric tons of rice, signaling rising nervousness about tight supply.
Vietnam, however, said it could only guarantee 1 million metric tons of rice, which already includes a volume of around 700,000 metric tons which Vietnamese traders had already agreed to supply in auctions in December and January.
Vietnam sold nearly 1.4 million metric tons of rice to the Philippines last year.
Vietnam has halted the signing of contracts for rice exports for loading in March and April as it extends a curb from last month to stabilize rising prices on domestic markets, an industry official said Monday. Reports from Reuters, Gil C. Cabacungan Jr. and Dona Pazzibugan
^ Back to top
©Copyright 2001-2008 INQUIRER.net, An Inquirer Company
Inquirer Headlines / Nation
http://newsinfo.inquirer.net/inquirerheadlines/nation/view/20080318-125372/Fast-food-outlets-told-to-cut-rice-serving
Fast-food outlets told to cut rice serving
Philippine Daily Inquirer
Posted date: March 18, 2008
MANILA, Philippines—As the country faces a looming rice shortage, the Department of Agriculture wants fast-food outlets to offer half portions of rice to encourage Filipinos to eat less of the staple.
“I’m asking fast-food restaurants to give their customers an option to order half a cup of rice because right now if you do a survey of all the fast-food joints you will notice a fraction of them always have excess rice,” Agriculture Secretary Arthur Yap said Monday.
Yap noted that people “don’t really finish their rice.”
Fast-food restaurants are popular meeting points for families and office workers in the Philippines and Jollibee Foods Corp., the country’s biggest fast-food chain, as well as international rivals McDonalds and KFC serve rice with their burgers and deep-fried chicken.
The Philippines is struggling to source supplies of up to 1.8 million metric tons this year amid the tight global supply and surging prices.
The Department of Agriculture has warned of a rice deficit of 2.1 million metric tons, equivalent to about two months’ worth of consumption, this year, according to Sen. Manuel Roxas II.
“It’s safe to say that we have enough supply of rice from January to October this year. Come November, where will we get our supply from? And that’s a big concern for us. We cannot depend anymore on other countries’ exports,” Roxas, chair of the Senate committee on trade and commerce, said Monday.
Calling for early action, Roxas urged Malacañang to release calamity funds to local government units so they can store rice to meet the impending shortage.
No shortage yet
Global commodity prices, including those of rice, have soared to record levels for the following reasons:
• Growing affluence and changing diets in developing countries, resulting in higher demand for food.
• Oil price increases, which are driving up freight rates and the cost of irrigation and petroleum-based fertilizers.
• Supply disruptions like floods.
• Stagnating output.
• Higher prices of inputs like fertilizer.
• Funds flowing into commodities as a hedge against a weak US dollar and falling stock markets.
Yap said the Philippines, where rising harvests could not keep pace with population growth of three babies a minute, was not facing a shortage of its national staple but people should conserve the grain, which is eaten at breakfast, lunch and dinner.
If Filipinos could be more prudent with their consumption, rice imports could go down by 37 percent to 1.17 million metric tons compared with last year’s import requirement of 1.87 million metric tons, according to the Department of Agriculture.
Old saying
Other senators are blaming President Gloria Macapagal-Arroyo for the looming rice crisis and for making the Philippines the world’s biggest importer of the cereal.
“Remember the old saying—Magmahal at magkulang na lahat, huwag lang bigas (Everything may cost more and suffer shortages but not rice),” Sen. Francis Escudero said in a text message.
He said the rice crisis should be addressed and taken seriously by the government.
“The root cause is not only external shocks but issues related to high cost of inputs; absence or lack of forward planning; and the shift to corn and jatropha.”
Escudero noted that the government’s thrust to promote jatropha in support of the biofuel program could have diverted funds intended for rice development to oil alternatives.
Rice cartel
Senate President Manuel Villar said the government had a lot of explaining to do on the rice crisis.
“First, the rice cartel. A lot of people might be taking advantage of the situation. Second, the fertilizer scam in which the government did not cooperate in our past investigation. Corruption in areas that directly affect the poor should never be tolerated. If our rice production is low, it is undeniable that fertilizer is one of the reasons,” Villar said in a press conference.
Worse than broadband scandal
Aside from being ineffective against the rice cartel, the government has been lax in checking corrupt practices in the National Food Authority (NFA), according to Villar.
“With the world price of rice spiraling, the government must do its best in handling the crisis because this could be more serious than the National Broadband Network scandal,” he said.
Roxas blamed the NFA for allowing government-bought rice meant to be sold cheaper than commercial rice to get into the hands of unscrupulous rice traders.
He also took to task the agriculture department for failing to secure the country’s rice production.
Roxas said two of the country’s traditional sources of imported rice, China and India, would likely consume their rice surplus instead of selling it to the Philippines.
Emergency rice fund
The Philippines has failed in three consecutive auctions to obtain the full volume of rice it needs and is hoping to tap an emergency regional rice fund to help with a potential shortfall.
Thailand has committed to set aside 15,000 metric tons of rice for the Philippines under the East Asia Emergency Rice Reserve and officials have also contacted Indonesia, Malaysia, Japan and South Korea.
Results for last week’s auction for 550,000 metric tons of rice, which only attracted 355,500 metric tons of bids, are expected this week.
The Philippines is also looking to re-tender to buy up to 100,000 metric tons of rice from the United States after receiving only one bid last week. It is buying the US rice using $65 million in credit guarantees from the US Department of Agriculture.
Rising nervousness
Last month, Ms Arroyo went outside normal commercial channels to ask the Vietnamese Prime Minister Nguyen Tan Dung to guarantee a supply of up to 1.5 million metric tons of rice, signaling rising nervousness about tight supply.
Vietnam, however, said it could only guarantee 1 million metric tons of rice, which already includes a volume of around 700,000 metric tons which Vietnamese traders had already agreed to supply in auctions in December and January.
Vietnam sold nearly 1.4 million metric tons of rice to the Philippines last year.
Vietnam has halted the signing of contracts for rice exports for loading in March and April as it extends a curb from last month to stabilize rising prices on domestic markets, an industry official said Monday. Reports from Reuters, Gil C. Cabacungan Jr. and Dona Pazzibugan
^ Back to top
©Copyright 2001-2008 INQUIRER.net, An Inquirer Company
Monday, March 17, 2008
Philippines: Boxing trumps the war against terror!
This is from IHT. Pacquiao is virtually a national hero in the Philippines. He is from the southern Mindanao city of General Santos. I wonder if the NPA (New People's Army) watched the match as well.
Philippine soldiers briefly halt war to root for Filipino boxing star
The Associated Press
Sunday, March 16, 2008
MANILA: MANILA, Philippines (AP) - The Philippines army declared a seven-hour truce with insurgents, allowing both sides to watch Manny Pacquiao win the WBC super featherweight title on Sunday.
President Gloria Macapagal Arroyo led Filipinos in rejoicing over Pacquaio's victory. The bout in Las Vegas provided a welcome distraction for Arroyo, who has grappled with widespread calls for her resignation over a corruption scandal.
"He is truly one of our nation's heroes who can unite us even in times of divisiveness," said Arroyo, who immediately congratulated Pacquiao by phone.
"I join the Filipino people in savoring this moment of sweet victory and national unity prompted by the courage, discipline and fighting heart of our boxing hero," Arroyo said in a statement.
A prominent left-wing group, the Peasant Movement of the Philippines, congratulated Pacquiao but urged Arroyo not to exploit his victory to prop up her record-low popularity ratings.
Many Filipinos watched the 12-round bout for free in public gymnasiums across the poor Southeast Asian country, including more than 2,000 soldiers and their dependents who cheered for him at army headquarters in Manila.
Military chief of staff Gen. Hermogenes Esperon said he declared a seven-hour truce with insurgents so troops could watch Pacquiao, a reserve army officer who had previously visited soldiers in combat zones to boost their morale.
"Our soldiers wanted to pray and cheer for him. He's one of them," Esperon said.
Army Brig. Gen. Carlos Holganza said the army gymnasium was filled with deafening cheers when Pacquiao floored Marquez with a left hook in the third round. But the crowd fell silent when the Mexican boxer retaliated with rapid punches.
"I hope Manny will always have a fight so we'll always be united," Holganza said.
MANNY PACQUIAO BEATS JUAN MANUEL MARQUEZ IN A SENSATIONAL SPLIT DECISION
LAS VEGAS (AP) - Manny Pacquiao won a narrow split decision to defeat Juan Manuel Marquez and claim the WBC super featherweight title on Saturday in sensational bout that left two of the world's best boxers bloody and triumphant.
Philippine soldiers briefly halt war to root for Filipino boxing star
The Associated Press
Sunday, March 16, 2008
MANILA: MANILA, Philippines (AP) - The Philippines army declared a seven-hour truce with insurgents, allowing both sides to watch Manny Pacquiao win the WBC super featherweight title on Sunday.
President Gloria Macapagal Arroyo led Filipinos in rejoicing over Pacquaio's victory. The bout in Las Vegas provided a welcome distraction for Arroyo, who has grappled with widespread calls for her resignation over a corruption scandal.
"He is truly one of our nation's heroes who can unite us even in times of divisiveness," said Arroyo, who immediately congratulated Pacquiao by phone.
"I join the Filipino people in savoring this moment of sweet victory and national unity prompted by the courage, discipline and fighting heart of our boxing hero," Arroyo said in a statement.
A prominent left-wing group, the Peasant Movement of the Philippines, congratulated Pacquiao but urged Arroyo not to exploit his victory to prop up her record-low popularity ratings.
Many Filipinos watched the 12-round bout for free in public gymnasiums across the poor Southeast Asian country, including more than 2,000 soldiers and their dependents who cheered for him at army headquarters in Manila.
Military chief of staff Gen. Hermogenes Esperon said he declared a seven-hour truce with insurgents so troops could watch Pacquiao, a reserve army officer who had previously visited soldiers in combat zones to boost their morale.
"Our soldiers wanted to pray and cheer for him. He's one of them," Esperon said.
Army Brig. Gen. Carlos Holganza said the army gymnasium was filled with deafening cheers when Pacquiao floored Marquez with a left hook in the third round. But the crowd fell silent when the Mexican boxer retaliated with rapid punches.
"I hope Manny will always have a fight so we'll always be united," Holganza said.
MANNY PACQUIAO BEATS JUAN MANUEL MARQUEZ IN A SENSATIONAL SPLIT DECISION
LAS VEGAS (AP) - Manny Pacquiao won a narrow split decision to defeat Juan Manuel Marquez and claim the WBC super featherweight title on Saturday in sensational bout that left two of the world's best boxers bloody and triumphant.
US health insurers sending insured overseas for operations.
Costs in the U.S. continue to rise while there is little or no attempt to control them. The U.S. system is both costly inefficient and unable to provide insurance for many people.
More U.S. health insurers are slashing costs by sending policyholders
overseas for pricey procedures
by Bruce Einhorn
For years, Americans have been traveling abroad to save money on
elective procedures or dental work. David Boucher, 49, doesn't fit the
usual profile for such medical tourists. An assistant vice-president
of health-care services at Blue Cross & Blue Shield of South Carolina,
he has ample health benefits. But Boucher recently chose to have a
colonoscopy at Bumrungrad International Hospital in Bangkok, mainly to
make a point about the expanding options available to Blue Cross
customers. And his company happily picked up the $640 tab—a bargain
by
U.S. standards.
Blue Cross and other insurers would like to see more policyholders
traveling abroad for medical care. Since the start of the year,
Boucher has signed alliances with seven overseas hospitals and hopes
to add five more by yearend, including them all in coverage for his
company's 1.5 million members. As health-care costs continue to rise
in the U.S., "medical travel is going to be part of the solution," he
says.
Yes, just like manufacturing facilities and call centers, health care
is moving offshore. "All of the largest U.S. insurers are starting to
educate themselves or are putting [offshore] programs in place," says
Jonathan Edelheit, president of the Medical Tourism Assn., an industry
group formed just last year. Companies that self-insure are also
bombarding Edelheit's group with requests for information.
Getting covered employees to leave the U.S. won't be that hard, says
Edelheit. An insurance company could waive all deductibles and
co-pays, offer to cover travel costs for the patient and family
members, even throw in a cash incentive, and still save tens of
thousands of dollars. After all, a heart procedure that costs $100,000
in the U.S. runs only $10,000 to $20,000 at some of the best private
hospitals in Asia. And the quality of care? Foreign hospitals in such
arrangements are typically approved by Joint Commission International,
part of the same nonprofit organization that accredits American
hospitals.
Blue Cross took the lead in medical offshoring when it formed its
first partnership, with Bumrungrad Hospital, in February. Since then
the insurer has signed similar pacts with the Parkway Group
Healthcare, owner of three hospitals in Singapore, and hospitals in
Turkey, Ireland, and Costa Rica. Three members of India's Apollo
Hospitals Group are also joining the network. And another large Indian
chain, Wockhardt Hospitals, is talking with U.S. insurers as well.
"Americans haven't come to grips with having their heart surgery in
Thailand," says Curtis Schroeder, the American CEO of Bumrungrad. "But
that will change."
The shift is sure to leave some policyholders disgruntled, of course.
Offering international coverage might make it easier for employers to
limit benefits at home, for instance, by raising the deductibles on
U.S.-based procedures. It's also extremely difficult for patients to
sue for malpractice in most Asian countries. Bumrungrad has offices
for marketing and promotion in 20 countries, but not the U.S.—in part
because having a U.S. office would open the door to potential
liability, hospital officials say. So it will take a while for the
trickle of insured U.S. patients in Asia to become a torrent. But over
time, for policyholders and payers alike, the price may be hard to
resist.
With Catherine Arnst
http://www.businessweek.com/magazine/content/08_12/b4076036777780.htm
More U.S. health insurers are slashing costs by sending policyholders
overseas for pricey procedures
by Bruce Einhorn
For years, Americans have been traveling abroad to save money on
elective procedures or dental work. David Boucher, 49, doesn't fit the
usual profile for such medical tourists. An assistant vice-president
of health-care services at Blue Cross & Blue Shield of South Carolina,
he has ample health benefits. But Boucher recently chose to have a
colonoscopy at Bumrungrad International Hospital in Bangkok, mainly to
make a point about the expanding options available to Blue Cross
customers. And his company happily picked up the $640 tab—a bargain
by
U.S. standards.
Blue Cross and other insurers would like to see more policyholders
traveling abroad for medical care. Since the start of the year,
Boucher has signed alliances with seven overseas hospitals and hopes
to add five more by yearend, including them all in coverage for his
company's 1.5 million members. As health-care costs continue to rise
in the U.S., "medical travel is going to be part of the solution," he
says.
Yes, just like manufacturing facilities and call centers, health care
is moving offshore. "All of the largest U.S. insurers are starting to
educate themselves or are putting [offshore] programs in place," says
Jonathan Edelheit, president of the Medical Tourism Assn., an industry
group formed just last year. Companies that self-insure are also
bombarding Edelheit's group with requests for information.
Getting covered employees to leave the U.S. won't be that hard, says
Edelheit. An insurance company could waive all deductibles and
co-pays, offer to cover travel costs for the patient and family
members, even throw in a cash incentive, and still save tens of
thousands of dollars. After all, a heart procedure that costs $100,000
in the U.S. runs only $10,000 to $20,000 at some of the best private
hospitals in Asia. And the quality of care? Foreign hospitals in such
arrangements are typically approved by Joint Commission International,
part of the same nonprofit organization that accredits American
hospitals.
Blue Cross took the lead in medical offshoring when it formed its
first partnership, with Bumrungrad Hospital, in February. Since then
the insurer has signed similar pacts with the Parkway Group
Healthcare, owner of three hospitals in Singapore, and hospitals in
Turkey, Ireland, and Costa Rica. Three members of India's Apollo
Hospitals Group are also joining the network. And another large Indian
chain, Wockhardt Hospitals, is talking with U.S. insurers as well.
"Americans haven't come to grips with having their heart surgery in
Thailand," says Curtis Schroeder, the American CEO of Bumrungrad. "But
that will change."
The shift is sure to leave some policyholders disgruntled, of course.
Offering international coverage might make it easier for employers to
limit benefits at home, for instance, by raising the deductibles on
U.S.-based procedures. It's also extremely difficult for patients to
sue for malpractice in most Asian countries. Bumrungrad has offices
for marketing and promotion in 20 countries, but not the U.S.—in part
because having a U.S. office would open the door to potential
liability, hospital officials say. So it will take a while for the
trickle of insured U.S. patients in Asia to become a torrent. But over
time, for policyholders and payers alike, the price may be hard to
resist.
With Catherine Arnst
http://www.businessweek.com/magazine/content/08_12/b4076036777780.htm
Fears that Bear Stearns's Downfall may spread..
This is from the New York Times. Interesting that it is OK for the government to rush in and rescue investors. Where is the vaunted discipline of the market. The market is supposed to punish those who misbehave and make bad choices. It is against nature to interfere with this vaunted creative destruction isn't it. I guess I learned my catechism wrong!
Another report claims that J.P.Morgan bought Bear/Stearns for 2 dollars a share. That is a bargain price even for a corpse.
JPMorgan to acquire Bear Stearns
Bear Stearns is one of the best-known US Wall Street firms
JPMorgan Chase has said it is to buy Wall Street's fifth-largest investment bank Bear Stearns for $2 a share.
The deal values the ailing bank at about $236m (£116m).
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
March 17, 2008
Fears That Bear Stearns’s Downfall May Spread
By LANDON THOMAS Jr.
The cash squeeze that brought Bear Stearns to its knees is fanning fears that other investment banks might be vulnerable to the crisis of confidence gripping Wall Street.
Investors are bracing for another volatile week in the markets as bankers and policy makers deal with the fallout from their bid to rescue Bear Stearns.
For now, the prospect of a new wave of consolidation in the beleaguered financial services industry seems remote. That is because would-be acquirers and everyday investors alike have lost faith in the values that Wall Street firms are placing on their own assets.
Of particular concern are the so-called marks placed on mortgage-linked investments like those that undid Bear Stearns, prompting a run on the firm that led the Federal Reserve and JPMorgan Chase to throw Bear Stearns a financial lifeline last week.
James E. Cayne, the chairman of Bear Stearns, mused eight years ago that he might consider selling the 85-year-old bank for a lofty price of four times what it values itself on its books. But now such a notion seems absurd — and not just for Bear Stearns.
The unhappy experience of Bear Stearns proves that it is a lack of confidence, not capital, that ultimately topples even the savviest financial institutions.
“Once you have a run on the bank you are in a death spiral and your assets become worthless,” said David Trone, a brokerage analyst at Fox Pitt Kelton.
In all-day meetings over the weekend, Alan D. Schwartz, the chief executive of Bear Stearns, met with his top executives at the firm’s Madison Avenue headquarters, trying desperately to persuade skeptical potential suitors that the firm was worth buying.
But the market had already passed a harsh judgment on Bear Stearns. On Friday, its stock plunged 47 percent, closing at $30. At that price, its shares were trading at a gaping 62 percent discount to the $80 book value that the firm has reported, reflecting the broad view that the fallout from the credit crisis had permanently devastated Bear Stearns’s core mortgage operations.
In Washington, the Treasury secretary, Henry M. Paulson Jr., signaled strong support for the Fed’s role in supplying a lifeline to Bear Stearns during the crisis negotiations, saying that his priority was to stabilize the financial system and to worry less right now about the problem of avoiding a “moral hazard” by bailing out errant institutions.
“We’re very aware of moral hazard,” Mr. Paulson said in a television interview with George Stephanopoulos on ABC. “But our primary concern right now — my primary concern — is the stability of our financial system, the orderliness of the markets. And that’s where our focus is.”
Indeed, investors are taking a grim view of the prospects for other investment banks like Lehman Brothers and Merrill Lynch. Managers of hedge funds and mutual funds say the problems at Bear confirmed their worst fears about the brokerages — that they have relied too much on leverage and have done a poor job managing the risks they took on during the boom.
The price of insurance on investment banks has surged in the last few days and is exponentially higher than it was last spring. Credit default swaps that offer protection on Bear Stearns debt traded as low as $35 per $10,000 of bonds in May. As of last Friday, the cost was $830.
Shares of investment banks in the Standard & Poor’s 500-stock index are down nearly 28 percent so far this year, and stock futures on Friday showed that a few investors were betting that Bear Stearns stock could lose virtually all of its value in the next few weeks.
“People have started to realize the risks that are there,” said Steven Gross, a principal at Penso Capital Markets, an investment firm in Cedarhurst, N.Y. “The question is have we reached the bottom.
Citigroup, one of the nation’s largest banking companies, is now trading below its book value. Lehman Brothers, at $39, is trading just below the book value it reported at the end of last year. This year, Bear’s stock is down 65 percent and Lehman’s has sunk 40 percent.
Bear Stearns, one of Wall Street’s oldest investment banks, had a market value of $4.1 billion as of last Friday.
But the market did not put much faith in the Fed’s bailout of the firm, announced on Friday. Bear Stearns’s hedge fund servicing business and its clearing operations have traditionally been profitable operations, although they have suffered in recent months as investors and lenders have lost confidence.
Throughout much of its history, Bear Stearns has masterfully persuaded the market that its business — narrowly focused on mortgage finance — was worth more than it actually was. To some degree this trick has been a testament to the coy gamesmanship of two of its past leaders, Alan Greenberg and Mr. Cayne.
Both men are devout bridge players and Mr. Greenberg is an amateur magician as well, so they are well schooled in the art of not showing their hand.
Mr. Cayne’s hint eight years ago — that he would only sell the firm for four times its book value — was even then a flight of financial fancy. Wall Street investment banks rarely command such a premium to their book value, given the inherent and unpredictable risks of their business.
Nevertheless, Mr. Cayne and Mr. Greenberg were adept at spreading the view that Bear Stearns was constantly being pursued by buyers as varied as European commercial banks and even JPMorgan, although it was never clear that any of these talks reached a serious level.
But Bear Stearns’s quirky culture and the high pay it awarded its senior executives made it a difficult fit for larger, more staid institutions, and it always seemed that Mr. Greenberg and Mr. Cayne were having too much fun running their business to sell it to an outsider.
In the last few days, Mr. Schwartz, a veteran investment banker whose approach to deal making is more pragmatic and results-oriented than his predecessor, raced against the clock to seal a deal that salvages some measure of value for shell shocked Bear Stearns employees, who own over 30 percent of the firm, and its investors.
And while Bear’s peers on Wall Street are not yet in such dire shape, they have surely accepted the reality of leaner times and lower valuations in the months to come.
“Banks and brokerages are a house of cards built on the confidence of clients, creditors and counterparties,” Mr. Trone said. “If you take chunks out of that confidence, things can go awry pretty quickly. It could happen to any one of the brokers.”
Vikas Bajaj, Jenny Anderson and Steven R. Weisman contributed reporting.
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Another report claims that J.P.Morgan bought Bear/Stearns for 2 dollars a share. That is a bargain price even for a corpse.
JPMorgan to acquire Bear Stearns
Bear Stearns is one of the best-known US Wall Street firms
JPMorgan Chase has said it is to buy Wall Street's fifth-largest investment bank Bear Stearns for $2 a share.
The deal values the ailing bank at about $236m (£116m).
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
March 17, 2008
Fears That Bear Stearns’s Downfall May Spread
By LANDON THOMAS Jr.
The cash squeeze that brought Bear Stearns to its knees is fanning fears that other investment banks might be vulnerable to the crisis of confidence gripping Wall Street.
Investors are bracing for another volatile week in the markets as bankers and policy makers deal with the fallout from their bid to rescue Bear Stearns.
For now, the prospect of a new wave of consolidation in the beleaguered financial services industry seems remote. That is because would-be acquirers and everyday investors alike have lost faith in the values that Wall Street firms are placing on their own assets.
Of particular concern are the so-called marks placed on mortgage-linked investments like those that undid Bear Stearns, prompting a run on the firm that led the Federal Reserve and JPMorgan Chase to throw Bear Stearns a financial lifeline last week.
James E. Cayne, the chairman of Bear Stearns, mused eight years ago that he might consider selling the 85-year-old bank for a lofty price of four times what it values itself on its books. But now such a notion seems absurd — and not just for Bear Stearns.
The unhappy experience of Bear Stearns proves that it is a lack of confidence, not capital, that ultimately topples even the savviest financial institutions.
“Once you have a run on the bank you are in a death spiral and your assets become worthless,” said David Trone, a brokerage analyst at Fox Pitt Kelton.
In all-day meetings over the weekend, Alan D. Schwartz, the chief executive of Bear Stearns, met with his top executives at the firm’s Madison Avenue headquarters, trying desperately to persuade skeptical potential suitors that the firm was worth buying.
But the market had already passed a harsh judgment on Bear Stearns. On Friday, its stock plunged 47 percent, closing at $30. At that price, its shares were trading at a gaping 62 percent discount to the $80 book value that the firm has reported, reflecting the broad view that the fallout from the credit crisis had permanently devastated Bear Stearns’s core mortgage operations.
In Washington, the Treasury secretary, Henry M. Paulson Jr., signaled strong support for the Fed’s role in supplying a lifeline to Bear Stearns during the crisis negotiations, saying that his priority was to stabilize the financial system and to worry less right now about the problem of avoiding a “moral hazard” by bailing out errant institutions.
“We’re very aware of moral hazard,” Mr. Paulson said in a television interview with George Stephanopoulos on ABC. “But our primary concern right now — my primary concern — is the stability of our financial system, the orderliness of the markets. And that’s where our focus is.”
Indeed, investors are taking a grim view of the prospects for other investment banks like Lehman Brothers and Merrill Lynch. Managers of hedge funds and mutual funds say the problems at Bear confirmed their worst fears about the brokerages — that they have relied too much on leverage and have done a poor job managing the risks they took on during the boom.
The price of insurance on investment banks has surged in the last few days and is exponentially higher than it was last spring. Credit default swaps that offer protection on Bear Stearns debt traded as low as $35 per $10,000 of bonds in May. As of last Friday, the cost was $830.
Shares of investment banks in the Standard & Poor’s 500-stock index are down nearly 28 percent so far this year, and stock futures on Friday showed that a few investors were betting that Bear Stearns stock could lose virtually all of its value in the next few weeks.
“People have started to realize the risks that are there,” said Steven Gross, a principal at Penso Capital Markets, an investment firm in Cedarhurst, N.Y. “The question is have we reached the bottom.
Citigroup, one of the nation’s largest banking companies, is now trading below its book value. Lehman Brothers, at $39, is trading just below the book value it reported at the end of last year. This year, Bear’s stock is down 65 percent and Lehman’s has sunk 40 percent.
Bear Stearns, one of Wall Street’s oldest investment banks, had a market value of $4.1 billion as of last Friday.
But the market did not put much faith in the Fed’s bailout of the firm, announced on Friday. Bear Stearns’s hedge fund servicing business and its clearing operations have traditionally been profitable operations, although they have suffered in recent months as investors and lenders have lost confidence.
Throughout much of its history, Bear Stearns has masterfully persuaded the market that its business — narrowly focused on mortgage finance — was worth more than it actually was. To some degree this trick has been a testament to the coy gamesmanship of two of its past leaders, Alan Greenberg and Mr. Cayne.
Both men are devout bridge players and Mr. Greenberg is an amateur magician as well, so they are well schooled in the art of not showing their hand.
Mr. Cayne’s hint eight years ago — that he would only sell the firm for four times its book value — was even then a flight of financial fancy. Wall Street investment banks rarely command such a premium to their book value, given the inherent and unpredictable risks of their business.
Nevertheless, Mr. Cayne and Mr. Greenberg were adept at spreading the view that Bear Stearns was constantly being pursued by buyers as varied as European commercial banks and even JPMorgan, although it was never clear that any of these talks reached a serious level.
But Bear Stearns’s quirky culture and the high pay it awarded its senior executives made it a difficult fit for larger, more staid institutions, and it always seemed that Mr. Greenberg and Mr. Cayne were having too much fun running their business to sell it to an outsider.
In the last few days, Mr. Schwartz, a veteran investment banker whose approach to deal making is more pragmatic and results-oriented than his predecessor, raced against the clock to seal a deal that salvages some measure of value for shell shocked Bear Stearns employees, who own over 30 percent of the firm, and its investors.
And while Bear’s peers on Wall Street are not yet in such dire shape, they have surely accepted the reality of leaner times and lower valuations in the months to come.
“Banks and brokerages are a house of cards built on the confidence of clients, creditors and counterparties,” Mr. Trone said. “If you take chunks out of that confidence, things can go awry pretty quickly. It could happen to any one of the brokers.”
Vikas Bajaj, Jenny Anderson and Steven R. Weisman contributed reporting.
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Harvard Expert Says US Economy in Recession's Grip
This is from the information clearing house. I think many people had concluded that there was a recession without any help from a Harvard expert. However, an expert's declaration of a recession may cause the Bush administration to venture to use the dreaded R word in the future but perhaps not. The Bush administration is expert in denial as the Iraq war fiasco has shown. Anyway the fundamentals are strong says Bush as Bear/Stearns collapses in the dust.
Harvard Expert Says US Economy In Recession's Grip
By Bloomberg
16/03/08 "Gulf News" -- - Atlanta: Harvard University economist Martin Feldstein, a member of the group that dates business cycles in the US, said the nation has entered a recession that could be the worst since World War II.
"I believe the US economy is now in recession,'' Feldstein, president of the National Bureau of Economic Research (NBER), told the Futures Industry Association conference in Boca Raton, Florida.
"Could this become the worst recession we have seen in the postwar period? I think the answer is yes. I would emphasise the word 'could'."
Feldstein's remarks represent the first time that a member of the NBER's business-cycle dating committee has publicly described the current downturn as a recession. The economy may not respond quickly to Federal Reserve interest-rate cuts, and a package of tax rebates and investment incentives will offer only a temporary boost, he said.
Investors on Friday raised their bets that the Fed will slash interest rates by a full percentage point this week after the central bank and JPMorgan Chase agreed to provide emergency funding to Bear Stearns, the fifth-largest US securities firm.
Bush administration officials including Treasury Secretary Henry Paulson have avoided saying the economy is in a recession.
"We have slowed down very significantly,'' Paulson said on Friday. "I'm not getting into'' whether it is a recession. The economy expanded 0.6 per cent at an annualised pace last quarter, and economists predict the pace will slow to 0.1 per cent in January to March.
The US unexpectedly lost jobs in February for the second consecutive month, a government report showed on March 7. A private report Friday showed consumer sentiment this month sank to a 16-year low.
"By almost every measure the US economy is moving sideways or slightly down for the last few months,'' said Feldstein, who in January put the odds of a recession at more than 50 per cent.
© Al Nisr Publishing LLC 2007
Harvard Expert Says US Economy In Recession's Grip
By Bloomberg
16/03/08 "Gulf News" -- - Atlanta: Harvard University economist Martin Feldstein, a member of the group that dates business cycles in the US, said the nation has entered a recession that could be the worst since World War II.
"I believe the US economy is now in recession,'' Feldstein, president of the National Bureau of Economic Research (NBER), told the Futures Industry Association conference in Boca Raton, Florida.
"Could this become the worst recession we have seen in the postwar period? I think the answer is yes. I would emphasise the word 'could'."
Feldstein's remarks represent the first time that a member of the NBER's business-cycle dating committee has publicly described the current downturn as a recession. The economy may not respond quickly to Federal Reserve interest-rate cuts, and a package of tax rebates and investment incentives will offer only a temporary boost, he said.
Investors on Friday raised their bets that the Fed will slash interest rates by a full percentage point this week after the central bank and JPMorgan Chase agreed to provide emergency funding to Bear Stearns, the fifth-largest US securities firm.
Bush administration officials including Treasury Secretary Henry Paulson have avoided saying the economy is in a recession.
"We have slowed down very significantly,'' Paulson said on Friday. "I'm not getting into'' whether it is a recession. The economy expanded 0.6 per cent at an annualised pace last quarter, and economists predict the pace will slow to 0.1 per cent in January to March.
The US unexpectedly lost jobs in February for the second consecutive month, a government report showed on March 7. A private report Friday showed consumer sentiment this month sank to a 16-year low.
"By almost every measure the US economy is moving sideways or slightly down for the last few months,'' said Feldstein, who in January put the odds of a recession at more than 50 per cent.
© Al Nisr Publishing LLC 2007
Noam Chomsky: We Own the World
As usual Chomsky is provocative and controversial. I have always been astonished by some features of mainstream reporting. The U.S. is hardly in a position to criticise Iran for meddling in Iraq when the U.S. invaded Iraq and is still occupying it! I have never seen a mainstream article comment on the glaring hypocrisy. The U.S. can threaten Iran on the grounds it might be developing nuclear weapons. Of course the U.S. already has them. Certainly no rational doctrine of self defence would justify a war against Iran on those grounds. It is simply the doctrine of might makes right or as Chomsky puts it: The U.S. owns the world.
Some parts of this article are a bit puzzling to me. I don't see what aims the U.S. had already realised when they lost the Vietnam war. Insofar as the domino theory was correct the Vietnamese were able to establish a friendly regime in Laos. However over the long term capitalism has won out in Vietnam. As in China, the leadership has adopted market capitalism enriching themselves and many communist party functionaries and establishing high rates of economic growth that has raised the standard of living of many while increasing inequality and leaving many others worse off than before the transition to capitalism.
We Own The World
By Noam Chomsky
16/03/08 "ZNet " - -- -You all know, of course, there was an election -- what is called "an election" in the United States -- last November. There was really one issue in the election, what to do about U.S. forces in Iraq and there was, by U.S. standards, an overwhelming vote calling for a withdrawal of U.S. forces on a firm timetable.
As few people know, a couple of months earlier there were extensive polls in Iraq, U.S.-run polls, with interesting results. They were not secret here. If you really looked you could find references to them, so it's not that they were concealed. This poll found that two-thirds of the people in Baghdad wanted the U.S. troops out immediately; the rest of the country -- a large majority -- wanted a firm timetable for withdrawal, most of them within a year or less.
The figures are higher for Arab Iraq in the areas where troops were actually deployed. A very large majority felt that the presence of U.S. forces increased the level of violence and a remarkable 60 percent for all of Iraq, meaning higher in the areas where the troops are deployed, felt that U.S. forces were legitimate targets of attack. So there was a considerable consensus between Iraqis and Americans on what should be done in Iraq, namely troops should be withdrawn either immediately or with a firm timetable.
Well, the reaction in the post-election U.S. government to that consensus was to violate public opinion and increase the troop presence by maybe 30,000 to 50,000. Predictably, there was a pretext announced. It was pretty obvious what it was going to be. "There is outside interference in Iraq, which we have to defend the Iraqis against. The Iranians are interfering in Iraq." Then came the alleged evidence about finding IEDs, roadside bombs with Iranian markings, as well as Iranian forces in Iraq. "What can we do? We have to escalate to defend Iraq from the outside intervention."
Then came the "debate." We are a free and open society, after all, so we have "lively" debates. On the one side were the hawks who said, "The Iranians are interfering, we have to bomb them." On the other side were the doves who said, "We cannot be sure the evidence is correct, maybe you misread the serial numbers or maybe it is just the revolutionary guards and not the government."
So we had the usual kind of debate going on, which illustrates a very important and pervasive distinction between several types of propaganda systems. To take the ideal types, exaggerating a little: totalitarian states' propaganda is that you better accept it, or else. And "or else" can be of various consequences, depending on the nature of the state. People can actually believe whatever they want as long as they obey. Democratic societies use a different method: they don't articulate the party line. That's a mistake. What they do is presuppose it, then encourage vigorous debate within the framework of the party line. This serves two purposes. For one thing it gives the impression of a free and open society because, after all, we have lively debate. It also instills a propaganda line that becomes something you presuppose, like the air you breathe.
That was the case here. This is a classic illustration. The whole debate about the Iranian "interference" in Iraq makes sense only on one assumption, namely, that "we own the world." If we own the world, then the only question that can arise is that someone else is interfering in a country we have invaded and occupied.
So if you look over the debate that took place and is still taking place about Iranian interference, no one points out this is insane. How can Iran be interfering in a country that we invaded and occupied? It's only appropriate on the presupposition that we own the world. Once you have that established in your head, the discussion is perfectly sensible.
You read a lot of comparisons now about Vietnam and Iraq. For the most part they are totally incomparable; the nature and purpose of the war, almost everything is totally different except in one respect: how they are perceived in the United States. In both cases there is what is now sometimes called the "Q" word, quagmire. Is it a quagmire? In Vietnam it is now recognized that it was a quagmire. There is a debate of whether Iraq, too, is a quagmire. In other words, is it costing us too much? That is the question you can debate.
So in the case of Vietnam, there was a debate. Not at the beginning -- in fact, there was so little discussion in the beginning that nobody even remembers when the war began -- 1962, if you're interested. That's when the U.S. attacked Vietnam. But there was no discussion, no debate, nothing.
By the mid-1960s, mainstream debate began. And it was the usual range of opinions between the hawks and the doves. The hawks said if we send more troops, we can win. The doves, well, Arthur Schlesinger, famous historian, Kennedy's advisor, in his book in 1966 said that we all pray that the hawks will be right and that the current escalation of troops, which by then was approaching half a million, will work and bring us victory. If it does, we will all be praising the wisdom and statesmanship of the American government for winning victory -- in a land that we're reducing to ruin and wreck.
You can translate that word by word to the doves today. We all pray that the surge will work. If it does, contrary to our expectations, we will be praising the wisdom and statesmanship of the Bush administration in a country, which, if we're honest, is a total ruin, one of the worst disasters in military history for the population.
If you get way to the left end of mainstream discussion, you get somebody like Anthony Lewis who, at the end of the Vietnam War in 1975, wrote in retrospect that the war began with benign intensions to do good; that is true by definition, because it's us, after all. So it began with benign intentions, but by 1969, he said, it was clear that the war was a mistake. For us to win a victory would be too costly -- for us -- so it was a mistake and we should withdraw. That was the most extreme criticism.
Very much like today. We could withdraw from Vietnam because the U.S. had already essentially obtained its objective by then. Iraq we can't because we haven't obtained our objectives.
And for those of you who are old enough to remember -- or have read about it -- you will note that the peace movement pretty much bought that line. Just like the mainstream discussion, the opposition of the war, including the peace movement, was mostly focused on the bombing of the North. When the U.S. started bombing the North regularly in February 1965, it also escalated the bombing of the South to triple the scale -- and the South had already been attacked for three years by then. A couple of hundred thousand South Vietnamese were killed and thousands, if not tens of the thousands, had been driven into concentration camps. The U.S. had been carrying out chemical warfare to destroy food crops and ground cover. By 1965 South Vietnam was already a total wreck.
Bombing the South was costless for the United States because the South had no defense. Bombing the North was costly -- you bomb the North, you bomb the harbor, you might hit Russian ships, which begins to become dangerous. You're bombing an internal Chinese railroad -- the Chinese railroads from southeast to southwest China happen to go through North Vietnam -- who knows what they might do.
In fact, the Chinese were accused, correctly, of sending Chinese forces into Vietnam, namely to rebuild the railroad that we were bombing. So that was "interference" with our divine right to bomb North Vietnam. So most of the focus was on the bombing of the North. The peace movement slogan, "Stop the bombing" meant the bombing of the North.
In 1967 the leading specialist on Vietnam, Bernard Fall, a military historian and the only specialist on Vietnam respected by the U.S. government -- who was a hawk, incidentally, but who cared about the Vietnamese -- wrote that it's a question of whether Vietnam will survive as a cultural and historical entity under the most severe bombing that has ever been applied to a country this size. He was talking about the South. He kept emphasizing it was the South that was being attacked. But that didn't matter because it was costless, therefore it's fine to continue. That is the range of debate, which only makes sense on the assumption that we own the world.
If you read, say, the Pentagon Papers, it turns out there was extensive planning about the bombing of the North -- very detailed, meticulous planning on just how far it can go, what happens if we go a little too far, and so on. There is no discussion at all about the bombing of the South, virtually none. Just an occasional announcement, okay, we will triple the bombing, or something like that.
If you read Robert McNamara's memoirs of the war -- by that time he was considered a leading dove -- he reviews the meticulous planning about the bombing of the North, but does not even mention his decision to sharply escalate the bombing of the South at the same time that the bombing of the North was begun.
I should say, incidentally, that with regard to Vietnam what I have been discussing is articulate opinion, including the leading part of the peace movement. There is also public opinion, which it turns out is radically different, and that is of some significance. By 1969 around 70 percent of the public felt that the war was not a mistake, but that it was fundamentally wrong and immoral. That was the wording of the polls and that figure remains fairly constant up until the most recent polls just a few years ago. The figures are pretty remarkable because people who say that in a poll almost certainly think, I must be the only person in the world that thinks this. They certainly did not read it anywhere, they did not hear it anywhere. But that was popular opinion.
The same is true with regard to many other issues. But for articulate opinion it's pretty much the way I've described -- largely vigorous debate between the hawks and the doves, all on the unexpressed assumption that we own the world. So the only thing that matters is how much is it costing us, or maybe for some more humane types, are we harming too many of them?
Getting back to the election, there was a lot of disappointment among anti-war people -- the majority of the population -- that Congress did not pass any withdrawal legislation. There was a Democratic resolution that was vetoed, but if you look at the resolution closely it was not a withdrawal resolution. There was a good analysis of it by General Kevin Ryan, who was a fellow at the Kennedy School at Harvard. He went through it and he said it really should be called a re-missioning proposal. It leaves about the same number of American troops, but they have a slightly different mission.
He said, first of all it allows for a national security exception. If the president says there is a national security issue, he can do whatever he wants -- end of resolution. The second gap is it allows for anti-terrorist activities. Okay, that is whatever you like. Third, it allows for training Iraqi forces. Again, anything you like.
Next it says troops have to remain for protection of U.S. forces and facilities. What are U.S. forces? Well, U.S. forces are those embedded in Iraqi armed units where 60 percent of their fellow soldiers think that they -- U.S. troops, that is -- are legitimate targets of attack. Incidentally, those figures keep going up, so they are probably higher by now. Well, okay, that is plenty of force protection. What facilities need protection was not explained in the Democratic resolution, but facilities include what is called "the embassy." The U.S. embassy in Iraq is nothing like any embassy that has ever existed in history. It's a city inside the green zone, the protected region of Iraq, that the U.S. runs. It's got everything from missiles to McDonalds, anything you want. They didn't build that huge facility because they intend to leave.
That is one facility, but there are others. There are "semi-permanent military bases," which are being built around the country. "Semi-permanent" means permanent, as long as we want.
General Ryan omitted a lot of things. He omitted the fact that the U.S. is maintaining control of logistics and logistics is the core of a modern Army. Right now about 80 percent of the supply is coming in though the south, from Kuwait, and it's going through guerilla territory, easily subject to attack, which means you have to have plenty of troops to maintain that supply line. Plus, of course, it keeps control over the Iraqi Army.
The Democratic resolution excludes the Air Force. The Air Force does whatever it wants. It is bombing pretty regularly and it can bomb more intensively. The resolution also excludes mercenaries, which is no small number -- sources such as the Wall Street Journal estimate the number of mercenaries at about 130,000, approximately the same as the number of troops, which makes some sense. The traditional way to fight a colonial war is with mercenaries, not with your own soldiers -- that is the French Foreign Legion, the British Ghurkas, or the Hessians in the Revolutionary War. That is part of the main reason the draft was dropped -- so you get professional soldiers, not people you pick off the streets.
So, yes, it is re-missioning, but the resolution was vetoed because it was too strong, so we don't even have that. And, yes, that did disappoint a lot of people. However, it would be too strong to say that no high official in Washington called for immediate withdrawal. There were some. The strongest one I know of -- when asked what is the solution to the problem in Iraq -- said it's quite obvious, "Withdraw all foreign forces and withdraw all foreign arms." That official was Condoleeza Rice and she was not referring to U.S. forces, she was referring to Iranian forces and Iranian arms. And that makes sense, too, on the assumption that we own the world because, since we own the world U.S. forces cannot be foreign forces anywhere. So if we invade Iraq or Canada, say, we are the indigenous forces. It's the Iranians that are foreign forces.
I waited for a while to see if anyone, at least in the press or journals, would point out that there was something funny about this. I could not find a word. I think everyone regarded that as a perfectly sensible comment. But I could not see a word from anyone who said, wait a second, there are foreign forces there, 150,000 American troops, plenty of American arms.
So it is reasonable that when British sailors were captured in the Gulf by Iranian forces, there was debate, "Were they in Iranian borders or in Iraqi borders? Actually there is no answer to this because there is no territorial boundary, and that was pointed out. It was taken for granted that if the British sailors were in Iraqi waters, then Iran was guilty of a crime by intervening in foreign territory. But Britain is not guilty of a crime by being in Iraqi territory, because Britain is a U.S. client state, and we own the world, so they are there by right.
What about the possible next war, Iran? There have been very credible threats by the U.S. and Israel -- essentially a U.S. client -- to attack Iran. There happens to be something called the UN Charter which says that -- in Article 2 -- the threat or use of force in international affairs is a crime. "Threat or use of force."
Does anybody care? No, because we're an outlaw state by definition, or to be more precise, our threats and use of force are not foreign, they're indigenous because we own the world. Therefore, it's fine. So there are threats to bomb Iran -- maybe we will and maybe we won't. That is the debate that goes on. Is it legitimate if we decide to do it? People might argue it's a mistake. But does anyone say it would be illegitimate? For example, the Democrats in Congress refuse to put in an amendment that would require the Executive to inform Congress if it intends to bomb Iran -- to consult, inform. Even that was not accepted.
The whole world is aghast at this possibility. It would be monstrous. A leading British military historian, Correlli Barnett, wrote recently that if the U.S. does attack, or Israel does attack, it would be World War III. The attack on Iraq has been horrendous enough. Apart from devastating Iraq, the UN High Commission on Refugees reviewed the number of displaced people -- they estimate 4.2 million, over 2 million fled the country, another 2 million fleeing within the country. That is in addition to the numbers killed, which if you extrapolate from the last studies, are probably approaching a million.
It was anticipated by U.S. intelligence and other intelligence agencies and independent experts that an attack on Iraq would probably increase the threat of terror and nuclear proliferation. But that went way beyond what anyone expected. Well known terrorism specialists Peter Bergen and Paul Cruickshank estimated -- using mostly government statistics -- that what they call "the Iraq effect" increased terror by a factor of seven, and that is pretty serious. And that gives you an indication of the ranking of protection of the population in the priority list of leaders. It's very low.
So what would the Iran effect be? Well, that is incalculable. It could be World War III. Very likely a massive increase in terror, who knows what else. Even in the states right around Iraq, which don't like Iran -- Pakistan, Saudi Arabia, and Turkey -- even there the large majority would prefer to see a nuclear armed Iran to any U.S. military action, and they are right, military action could be devastating. It doesn't mean we won't do it. There is very little discussion here of the illegitimacy of doing it, again on the assumption that anything we do is legitimate, it just might cost too much.
Is there a possible solution to the U.S./Iran crisis? Well, there are some plausible solutions. One possibility would be an agreement that allows Iran to have nuclear energy, like every signer of the non-proliferation treaty, but not to have nuclear weapons. In addition, it would call for a nuclear weapons free zone in the Middle East. That would include Iran, Israel, which has hundreds of nuclear weapons, and any U.S. or British forces deployed in the region. A third element of a solution would be for the United States and other nuclear states to obey their legal obligation, by unanimous agreement of the World Court, to make good-faith moves to eliminate nuclear weapons entirely.
Is this feasible? Well, it's feasible on one assumption, that the United States and Iran become functioning democratic societies, because what I have just quoted happens to be the opinion of the overwhelming majority of the populations in Iran and the United States. On everything that I mentioned there is an overwhelming majority. So, yes, there would be a very feasible solution if these two countries were functioning democratic societies, meaning societies in which public opinion has some kind of effect on policy. The problem in the United States is the inability of organizers to do something in a population that overwhelmingly agrees with them and to make that current policy. Of course, it can be done. Peasants in Bolivia can do it, we can obviously do it here.
Can we do anything to make Iran a more democratic society? Not directly, but indirectly we can. We can pay attention to the dissidents and the reformists in Iran who are struggling courageously to turn Iran into a more democratic society. And we know exactly what they are saying, they are very outspoken about it. They are pleading with the United States to withdraw the threats against Iran. The more we threaten Iran, the more we give a gift to the reactionary, religious fanatics in the government. You make threats, you strengthen them. That is exactly what is happening. The threats have lead to repression, predictably.
Now the Americans claim they are outraged by the repression, which we should protest, but we should recognize that the repression is the direct and predictable consequence of the actions that the U.S. government is taking. So if you take actions, and then they have predictable consequences, condemning the consequences is total hypocrisy.
Incidentally, in the case of Cuba about two-thirds of Americans think we ought to end the embargo and all threats and enter into diplomatic relations. And that has been true ever since polls have been taken -- for about 30 years. The figure varies, but it's roughly there. Zero effect on policy, in Iran, Cuba, and elsewhere.
So there is a problem and that problem is that the United States is just not a functioning democracy. Public opinion does not matter and among articulate and elite opinion that is a principle -- it shouldn't matter. The only principle that matters is we own the world and the rest of you shut up, you know, whether you're abroad or at home.
So, yes, there is a potential solution to the very dangerous problem, it's essentially the same solution: do something to turn our own country into a functioning democracy. But that is in radical opposition to the fundamental presupposition of all elite discussions, mainly that we own the world and that these questions don't arise and the public should have no opinion on foreign policy, or any policy.
Once, when I was driving to work, I was listening to NPR. NPR is supposed to be the kind of extreme radical end of the spectrum. I read a statement somewhere, I don't know if it's true, but it was a quote from Obama, who is the hope of the liberal doves, in which he allegedly said that the spectrum of discussion in the United States extends between two crazy extremes, Rush Limbaugh and NPR. The truth, he said, is in the middle and that is where he is going to be, in the middle, between the crazies.
NPR then had a discussion -- it was like being at the Harvard faculty club -- serious people, educated, no grammatical errors, who know what they're talking about, usually polite. The discussion was about the so-called missile defense system that the U.S. is trying to place in Czechoslovakia and Poland -- and the Russian reaction. The main issue was, "What is going on with the Russians? Why are they acting so hostile and irrational? Are they trying to start a new Cold War? There is something wrong with those guys. Can we calm them down and make them less paranoid?"
The main specialist they called in, I think from the Pentagon or somewhere, pointed out, accurately, that a missile defense system is essentially a first-strike weapon. That is well known by strategic analysts on all sides. If you think about it for a minute, it's obvious why. A missile defense system is never going to stop a first strike, but it could, in principle, if it ever worked, stop a retaliatory strike. If you attack some country with a first strike, and practically wipe it out, if you have a missile defense system, and prevent them from retaliating, then you would be protected, or partially protected. If a country has a functioning missile defense system it will have more options for carrying out a first strike. Okay, obvious, and not a secret. It's known to every strategic analyst. I can explain it to my grandchildren in two minutes and they understand it.
So on NPR it is agreed that a missile defense system is a first-strike weapon. But then comes the second part of the discussion. Well, say the pundits, the Russians should not be worried about this. For one thing because it's not enough of a system to stop their retaliation, so therefore it's not yet a first-strike weapon against them. Then they said it is kind of irrelevant anyway because it is directed against Iran, not against Russia.
Okay, that was the end of the discussion. So, point one, missile defense is a first-strike weapon; second, it's directed against Iran. Now, you can carry out a small exercise in logic. Does anything follow from those two assumptions? Yes, what follows is it's a first-strike weapon against Iran. Since the U.S. owns the world what could be wrong with having a first-strike weapon against Iran. So the conclusion is not mentioned. It is not necessary. It follows from the fact that we own the world.
Maybe a year ago or so, Germany sold advanced submarines to Israel, which were equipped to carry missiles with nuclear weapons. Why does Israel need submarines with nuclear armed missiles? Well, there is only one imaginable reason and everyone in Germany with a brain must have understood that -- certainly their military system does -- it's a first-strike weapon against Iran. Israel can use German subs to illustrate to Iranians that if they respond to an Israeli attack they will be vaporized.
The fundamental premises of Western imperialism are extremely deep. The West owns the world and now the U.S. runs the West, so, of course, they go along. The fact that they are providing a first-strike weapon for attacking Iran probably, I'm guessing now, raised no comment because why should it?
You can forget about history, it does not matter, it's kind of "old fashioned," boring stuff we don't need to know about. But most countries pay attention to history. So, for example, for the United States there is no discussion of the history of U.S./Iranian relations. Well, for the U.S. there is only one event in Iranian history -- in 1979 Iranians overthrew the tyrant that the U.S. was backing and took some hostages for over a year. That happened and they had to be punished for that.
But for Iranians their history is that for over 50 years, literally without a break, the U.S. has been torturing Iranians. In 1953 the U.S. overthrew the parliamentary government and installed a brutal tyrant, the Shah, and kept supporting him while he compiled one of the worst human rights records in the world -- torture, assassination, anything you like. In fact, President Carter, when he visited Iran in December 1978, praised the Shah because of the love shown to him by his people, and so on and so forth, which probably accelerated the overthrow. Of course, Iranians have this odd way of remembering what happened to them and who was behind it. When the Shah was overthrown, the Carter administration immediately tried to instigate a military coup by sending arms to Iran through Israel to try to support military force to overthrow the government. We immediately turned to supporting Iraq, that is Saddam Hussein, and his invasion of Iran. Saddam was executed for crimes he committed in 1982, by his standards not very serious crimes -- complicity in killing 150 people. Well, there was something missing in that account -- 1982 is a very important year in U.S./Iraqi relations. That is the year in which Ronald Reagan removed Iraq from the list of states supporting terrorism so that the U.S. could start supplying Iraq with weapons for its invasion of Iran, including the means to develop weapons of mass destruction, chemical and nuclear weapons. That is 1982. A year later Donald Rumsfeld was sent to firm up the deal. Well, Iranians may very well remember that this led to a war in which hundreds of thousands of them were slaughtered with U.S. aid going to Iraq. They may well remember that the year after the war was over, in 1989, the U.S. government invited Iraqi nuclear engineers to come to the United States for advanced training in developing nuclear weapons.
What about the Russians? They have a history too. One part of the history is that in the last century Russia was invaded and practically destroyed three times through Eastern Europe. You can look back and ask, when was the last time that the U.S. was invaded and practically destroyed through Canada or Mexico? That doesn't happen. We crush others and we are always safe. But the Russians don't have that luxury. Now, in 1990 a remarkable event took place. I was kind of shocked, frankly. Gorbachev agreed to let Germany be unified, meaning join the West and be militarized within a hostile military alliance. This is Germany, which twice in that century practically destroyed Russia. That's a pretty remarkable agreement.
There was a quid pro quo. Then-president George Bush I agreed that NATO would not expand to the East. The Russians also demanded, but did not receive, an agreement for a nuclear-free zone from the Artic to the Baltic, which would give them a little protection from nuclear attack. That was the agreement in 1990. Then Bill Clinton came into office, the so-called liberal. One of the first things he did was to rescind the agreement, unilaterally, and expand NATO to the East.
For the Russians that's pretty serious, if you remember the history. They lost 25 million people in the last World War and over 3 million in World War I. But since the U.S. owns the world, if we want to threaten Russia, that is fine. It is all for freedom and justice, after all, and if they make unpleasant noises about it we wonder why they are so paranoid. Why is Putin screaming as if we're somehow threatening them, since we can't be threatening anyone, owning the world.
One of the other big issues on the front pages now is Chinese "aggressiveness." There is a lot of concern about the fact that the Chinese are building up their missile forces. Is China planning to conquer the world? Big debates about it. Well, what is really going on? For years China has been in the lead in trying to prevent the militarization of space. If you look at the debates and the Disarmament Commission of the UN General Assembly, the votes are 160 to 1 or 2. The U.S. insists on the militarization of space. It will not permit the outer space treaty to explicitly bar military relations in space.
Clinton's position was that the U.S. should control space for military purposes. The Bush administration is more extreme. Their position is the U.S. should own space, their words, We have to own space for military purposes. So that is the spectrum of discussion here. The Chinese have been trying to block it and that is well understood. You read the most respectable journal in the world, I suppose, the Journal of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences, and you find leading strategic analysts, John Steinbrunner and Nancy Gallagher, a couple of years ago, warning that the Bush administration's aggressive militarization is leading to what they call "ultimate doom." Of course, there is going to be a reaction to it. You threaten people with destruction, they are going to react. These analysts call on peace-loving nations to counter Bush's aggressive militarism. They hope that China will lead peace-loving nations to counter U.S. aggressiveness. It's a pretty remarkable comment on the impossibility of achieving democracy in the United States. Again, the logic is pretty elementary. Steinbrunner and Gallagher are assuming that the United States cannot be a democratic society; it's not one of the options, so therefore we hope that maybe China will do something.
Well, China finally did something. It signaled to the United States that they noticed that we were trying to use space for military purposes, so China shot down one of their satellites. Everyone understands why -- the mili- tarization and weaponization of space depends on satellites. While missiles are very difficult or maybe impossible to stop, satellites are very easy to shoot down. You know where they are. So China is saying, "Okay, we understand you are militarizing space. We're going to counter it not by militarizing space, we can't compete with you that way, but by shooting down your satellites." That is what was behind the satellite shooting. Every military analyst certainly understood it and every lay person can understand it. But take a look at the debate. The discussion was about, "Is China trying it conquer the world by shooting down one of its own satellites?"
About a year ago there was a new rash of articles and headlines on the front page about the "Chinese military build-up." The Pentagon claimed that China had increased its offensive military capacity -- with 400 missiles, which could be nuclear armed. Then we had a debate about whether that proves China is trying to conquer the world or the numbers are wrong, or something.
Just a little footnote. How many offensive nuclear armed missiles does the United States have? Well, it turns out to be 10,000. China may now have maybe 400, if you believe the hawks. That proves that they are trying to conquer the world.
It turns out, if you read the international press closely, that the reason China is building up its military capacity is not only because of U.S. aggressiveness all over the place, but the fact that the United States has improved its targeting capacities so it can now destroy missile sites in a much more sophisticated fashion wherever they are, even if they are mobile. So who is trying to conquer the world? Well, obviously the Chinese because since we own it, they are trying to conquer it.
It's all too easy to continue with this indefinitely. Just pick your topic. It's a good exercise to try. This simple principle, "we own the world," is sufficient to explain a lot of the discussion about foreign affairs.
I will just finish with a word from George Orwell. In the introduction to Animal Farm he said, England is a free society, but it's not very different from the totalitarian monster I have been describing. He says in England unpopular ideas can be suppressed without the use of force. Then he goes on to give some dubious examples. At the end he turns to a very brief explanation, actually two sentences, but they are to the point. He says, one reason is the press is owned by wealthy men who have every reason not to want certain ideas to be expressed. And the second reason -- and I think a more important one -- is a good education. If you have gone to the best schools and graduated from Oxford and Cambridge, and so on, you have instilled in you the understanding that there are certain things it would not do to say; actually, it would not do to think. That is the primary way to prevent unpopular ideas from being expressed.
The ideas of the overwhelming majority of the population, who don't attend Harvard, Princeton, Oxford and Cambridge, enable them to react like human beings, as they often do. There is a lesson there for activists.
Noam Chomsky is a professor of linguistics at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology and the author, most recently, of Hegemony or Survival Americas Quest for Global Dominance.
Some parts of this article are a bit puzzling to me. I don't see what aims the U.S. had already realised when they lost the Vietnam war. Insofar as the domino theory was correct the Vietnamese were able to establish a friendly regime in Laos. However over the long term capitalism has won out in Vietnam. As in China, the leadership has adopted market capitalism enriching themselves and many communist party functionaries and establishing high rates of economic growth that has raised the standard of living of many while increasing inequality and leaving many others worse off than before the transition to capitalism.
We Own The World
By Noam Chomsky
16/03/08 "ZNet " - -- -You all know, of course, there was an election -- what is called "an election" in the United States -- last November. There was really one issue in the election, what to do about U.S. forces in Iraq and there was, by U.S. standards, an overwhelming vote calling for a withdrawal of U.S. forces on a firm timetable.
As few people know, a couple of months earlier there were extensive polls in Iraq, U.S.-run polls, with interesting results. They were not secret here. If you really looked you could find references to them, so it's not that they were concealed. This poll found that two-thirds of the people in Baghdad wanted the U.S. troops out immediately; the rest of the country -- a large majority -- wanted a firm timetable for withdrawal, most of them within a year or less.
The figures are higher for Arab Iraq in the areas where troops were actually deployed. A very large majority felt that the presence of U.S. forces increased the level of violence and a remarkable 60 percent for all of Iraq, meaning higher in the areas where the troops are deployed, felt that U.S. forces were legitimate targets of attack. So there was a considerable consensus between Iraqis and Americans on what should be done in Iraq, namely troops should be withdrawn either immediately or with a firm timetable.
Well, the reaction in the post-election U.S. government to that consensus was to violate public opinion and increase the troop presence by maybe 30,000 to 50,000. Predictably, there was a pretext announced. It was pretty obvious what it was going to be. "There is outside interference in Iraq, which we have to defend the Iraqis against. The Iranians are interfering in Iraq." Then came the alleged evidence about finding IEDs, roadside bombs with Iranian markings, as well as Iranian forces in Iraq. "What can we do? We have to escalate to defend Iraq from the outside intervention."
Then came the "debate." We are a free and open society, after all, so we have "lively" debates. On the one side were the hawks who said, "The Iranians are interfering, we have to bomb them." On the other side were the doves who said, "We cannot be sure the evidence is correct, maybe you misread the serial numbers or maybe it is just the revolutionary guards and not the government."
So we had the usual kind of debate going on, which illustrates a very important and pervasive distinction between several types of propaganda systems. To take the ideal types, exaggerating a little: totalitarian states' propaganda is that you better accept it, or else. And "or else" can be of various consequences, depending on the nature of the state. People can actually believe whatever they want as long as they obey. Democratic societies use a different method: they don't articulate the party line. That's a mistake. What they do is presuppose it, then encourage vigorous debate within the framework of the party line. This serves two purposes. For one thing it gives the impression of a free and open society because, after all, we have lively debate. It also instills a propaganda line that becomes something you presuppose, like the air you breathe.
That was the case here. This is a classic illustration. The whole debate about the Iranian "interference" in Iraq makes sense only on one assumption, namely, that "we own the world." If we own the world, then the only question that can arise is that someone else is interfering in a country we have invaded and occupied.
So if you look over the debate that took place and is still taking place about Iranian interference, no one points out this is insane. How can Iran be interfering in a country that we invaded and occupied? It's only appropriate on the presupposition that we own the world. Once you have that established in your head, the discussion is perfectly sensible.
You read a lot of comparisons now about Vietnam and Iraq. For the most part they are totally incomparable; the nature and purpose of the war, almost everything is totally different except in one respect: how they are perceived in the United States. In both cases there is what is now sometimes called the "Q" word, quagmire. Is it a quagmire? In Vietnam it is now recognized that it was a quagmire. There is a debate of whether Iraq, too, is a quagmire. In other words, is it costing us too much? That is the question you can debate.
So in the case of Vietnam, there was a debate. Not at the beginning -- in fact, there was so little discussion in the beginning that nobody even remembers when the war began -- 1962, if you're interested. That's when the U.S. attacked Vietnam. But there was no discussion, no debate, nothing.
By the mid-1960s, mainstream debate began. And it was the usual range of opinions between the hawks and the doves. The hawks said if we send more troops, we can win. The doves, well, Arthur Schlesinger, famous historian, Kennedy's advisor, in his book in 1966 said that we all pray that the hawks will be right and that the current escalation of troops, which by then was approaching half a million, will work and bring us victory. If it does, we will all be praising the wisdom and statesmanship of the American government for winning victory -- in a land that we're reducing to ruin and wreck.
You can translate that word by word to the doves today. We all pray that the surge will work. If it does, contrary to our expectations, we will be praising the wisdom and statesmanship of the Bush administration in a country, which, if we're honest, is a total ruin, one of the worst disasters in military history for the population.
If you get way to the left end of mainstream discussion, you get somebody like Anthony Lewis who, at the end of the Vietnam War in 1975, wrote in retrospect that the war began with benign intensions to do good; that is true by definition, because it's us, after all. So it began with benign intentions, but by 1969, he said, it was clear that the war was a mistake. For us to win a victory would be too costly -- for us -- so it was a mistake and we should withdraw. That was the most extreme criticism.
Very much like today. We could withdraw from Vietnam because the U.S. had already essentially obtained its objective by then. Iraq we can't because we haven't obtained our objectives.
And for those of you who are old enough to remember -- or have read about it -- you will note that the peace movement pretty much bought that line. Just like the mainstream discussion, the opposition of the war, including the peace movement, was mostly focused on the bombing of the North. When the U.S. started bombing the North regularly in February 1965, it also escalated the bombing of the South to triple the scale -- and the South had already been attacked for three years by then. A couple of hundred thousand South Vietnamese were killed and thousands, if not tens of the thousands, had been driven into concentration camps. The U.S. had been carrying out chemical warfare to destroy food crops and ground cover. By 1965 South Vietnam was already a total wreck.
Bombing the South was costless for the United States because the South had no defense. Bombing the North was costly -- you bomb the North, you bomb the harbor, you might hit Russian ships, which begins to become dangerous. You're bombing an internal Chinese railroad -- the Chinese railroads from southeast to southwest China happen to go through North Vietnam -- who knows what they might do.
In fact, the Chinese were accused, correctly, of sending Chinese forces into Vietnam, namely to rebuild the railroad that we were bombing. So that was "interference" with our divine right to bomb North Vietnam. So most of the focus was on the bombing of the North. The peace movement slogan, "Stop the bombing" meant the bombing of the North.
In 1967 the leading specialist on Vietnam, Bernard Fall, a military historian and the only specialist on Vietnam respected by the U.S. government -- who was a hawk, incidentally, but who cared about the Vietnamese -- wrote that it's a question of whether Vietnam will survive as a cultural and historical entity under the most severe bombing that has ever been applied to a country this size. He was talking about the South. He kept emphasizing it was the South that was being attacked. But that didn't matter because it was costless, therefore it's fine to continue. That is the range of debate, which only makes sense on the assumption that we own the world.
If you read, say, the Pentagon Papers, it turns out there was extensive planning about the bombing of the North -- very detailed, meticulous planning on just how far it can go, what happens if we go a little too far, and so on. There is no discussion at all about the bombing of the South, virtually none. Just an occasional announcement, okay, we will triple the bombing, or something like that.
If you read Robert McNamara's memoirs of the war -- by that time he was considered a leading dove -- he reviews the meticulous planning about the bombing of the North, but does not even mention his decision to sharply escalate the bombing of the South at the same time that the bombing of the North was begun.
I should say, incidentally, that with regard to Vietnam what I have been discussing is articulate opinion, including the leading part of the peace movement. There is also public opinion, which it turns out is radically different, and that is of some significance. By 1969 around 70 percent of the public felt that the war was not a mistake, but that it was fundamentally wrong and immoral. That was the wording of the polls and that figure remains fairly constant up until the most recent polls just a few years ago. The figures are pretty remarkable because people who say that in a poll almost certainly think, I must be the only person in the world that thinks this. They certainly did not read it anywhere, they did not hear it anywhere. But that was popular opinion.
The same is true with regard to many other issues. But for articulate opinion it's pretty much the way I've described -- largely vigorous debate between the hawks and the doves, all on the unexpressed assumption that we own the world. So the only thing that matters is how much is it costing us, or maybe for some more humane types, are we harming too many of them?
Getting back to the election, there was a lot of disappointment among anti-war people -- the majority of the population -- that Congress did not pass any withdrawal legislation. There was a Democratic resolution that was vetoed, but if you look at the resolution closely it was not a withdrawal resolution. There was a good analysis of it by General Kevin Ryan, who was a fellow at the Kennedy School at Harvard. He went through it and he said it really should be called a re-missioning proposal. It leaves about the same number of American troops, but they have a slightly different mission.
He said, first of all it allows for a national security exception. If the president says there is a national security issue, he can do whatever he wants -- end of resolution. The second gap is it allows for anti-terrorist activities. Okay, that is whatever you like. Third, it allows for training Iraqi forces. Again, anything you like.
Next it says troops have to remain for protection of U.S. forces and facilities. What are U.S. forces? Well, U.S. forces are those embedded in Iraqi armed units where 60 percent of their fellow soldiers think that they -- U.S. troops, that is -- are legitimate targets of attack. Incidentally, those figures keep going up, so they are probably higher by now. Well, okay, that is plenty of force protection. What facilities need protection was not explained in the Democratic resolution, but facilities include what is called "the embassy." The U.S. embassy in Iraq is nothing like any embassy that has ever existed in history. It's a city inside the green zone, the protected region of Iraq, that the U.S. runs. It's got everything from missiles to McDonalds, anything you want. They didn't build that huge facility because they intend to leave.
That is one facility, but there are others. There are "semi-permanent military bases," which are being built around the country. "Semi-permanent" means permanent, as long as we want.
General Ryan omitted a lot of things. He omitted the fact that the U.S. is maintaining control of logistics and logistics is the core of a modern Army. Right now about 80 percent of the supply is coming in though the south, from Kuwait, and it's going through guerilla territory, easily subject to attack, which means you have to have plenty of troops to maintain that supply line. Plus, of course, it keeps control over the Iraqi Army.
The Democratic resolution excludes the Air Force. The Air Force does whatever it wants. It is bombing pretty regularly and it can bomb more intensively. The resolution also excludes mercenaries, which is no small number -- sources such as the Wall Street Journal estimate the number of mercenaries at about 130,000, approximately the same as the number of troops, which makes some sense. The traditional way to fight a colonial war is with mercenaries, not with your own soldiers -- that is the French Foreign Legion, the British Ghurkas, or the Hessians in the Revolutionary War. That is part of the main reason the draft was dropped -- so you get professional soldiers, not people you pick off the streets.
So, yes, it is re-missioning, but the resolution was vetoed because it was too strong, so we don't even have that. And, yes, that did disappoint a lot of people. However, it would be too strong to say that no high official in Washington called for immediate withdrawal. There were some. The strongest one I know of -- when asked what is the solution to the problem in Iraq -- said it's quite obvious, "Withdraw all foreign forces and withdraw all foreign arms." That official was Condoleeza Rice and she was not referring to U.S. forces, she was referring to Iranian forces and Iranian arms. And that makes sense, too, on the assumption that we own the world because, since we own the world U.S. forces cannot be foreign forces anywhere. So if we invade Iraq or Canada, say, we are the indigenous forces. It's the Iranians that are foreign forces.
I waited for a while to see if anyone, at least in the press or journals, would point out that there was something funny about this. I could not find a word. I think everyone regarded that as a perfectly sensible comment. But I could not see a word from anyone who said, wait a second, there are foreign forces there, 150,000 American troops, plenty of American arms.
So it is reasonable that when British sailors were captured in the Gulf by Iranian forces, there was debate, "Were they in Iranian borders or in Iraqi borders? Actually there is no answer to this because there is no territorial boundary, and that was pointed out. It was taken for granted that if the British sailors were in Iraqi waters, then Iran was guilty of a crime by intervening in foreign territory. But Britain is not guilty of a crime by being in Iraqi territory, because Britain is a U.S. client state, and we own the world, so they are there by right.
What about the possible next war, Iran? There have been very credible threats by the U.S. and Israel -- essentially a U.S. client -- to attack Iran. There happens to be something called the UN Charter which says that -- in Article 2 -- the threat or use of force in international affairs is a crime. "Threat or use of force."
Does anybody care? No, because we're an outlaw state by definition, or to be more precise, our threats and use of force are not foreign, they're indigenous because we own the world. Therefore, it's fine. So there are threats to bomb Iran -- maybe we will and maybe we won't. That is the debate that goes on. Is it legitimate if we decide to do it? People might argue it's a mistake. But does anyone say it would be illegitimate? For example, the Democrats in Congress refuse to put in an amendment that would require the Executive to inform Congress if it intends to bomb Iran -- to consult, inform. Even that was not accepted.
The whole world is aghast at this possibility. It would be monstrous. A leading British military historian, Correlli Barnett, wrote recently that if the U.S. does attack, or Israel does attack, it would be World War III. The attack on Iraq has been horrendous enough. Apart from devastating Iraq, the UN High Commission on Refugees reviewed the number of displaced people -- they estimate 4.2 million, over 2 million fled the country, another 2 million fleeing within the country. That is in addition to the numbers killed, which if you extrapolate from the last studies, are probably approaching a million.
It was anticipated by U.S. intelligence and other intelligence agencies and independent experts that an attack on Iraq would probably increase the threat of terror and nuclear proliferation. But that went way beyond what anyone expected. Well known terrorism specialists Peter Bergen and Paul Cruickshank estimated -- using mostly government statistics -- that what they call "the Iraq effect" increased terror by a factor of seven, and that is pretty serious. And that gives you an indication of the ranking of protection of the population in the priority list of leaders. It's very low.
So what would the Iran effect be? Well, that is incalculable. It could be World War III. Very likely a massive increase in terror, who knows what else. Even in the states right around Iraq, which don't like Iran -- Pakistan, Saudi Arabia, and Turkey -- even there the large majority would prefer to see a nuclear armed Iran to any U.S. military action, and they are right, military action could be devastating. It doesn't mean we won't do it. There is very little discussion here of the illegitimacy of doing it, again on the assumption that anything we do is legitimate, it just might cost too much.
Is there a possible solution to the U.S./Iran crisis? Well, there are some plausible solutions. One possibility would be an agreement that allows Iran to have nuclear energy, like every signer of the non-proliferation treaty, but not to have nuclear weapons. In addition, it would call for a nuclear weapons free zone in the Middle East. That would include Iran, Israel, which has hundreds of nuclear weapons, and any U.S. or British forces deployed in the region. A third element of a solution would be for the United States and other nuclear states to obey their legal obligation, by unanimous agreement of the World Court, to make good-faith moves to eliminate nuclear weapons entirely.
Is this feasible? Well, it's feasible on one assumption, that the United States and Iran become functioning democratic societies, because what I have just quoted happens to be the opinion of the overwhelming majority of the populations in Iran and the United States. On everything that I mentioned there is an overwhelming majority. So, yes, there would be a very feasible solution if these two countries were functioning democratic societies, meaning societies in which public opinion has some kind of effect on policy. The problem in the United States is the inability of organizers to do something in a population that overwhelmingly agrees with them and to make that current policy. Of course, it can be done. Peasants in Bolivia can do it, we can obviously do it here.
Can we do anything to make Iran a more democratic society? Not directly, but indirectly we can. We can pay attention to the dissidents and the reformists in Iran who are struggling courageously to turn Iran into a more democratic society. And we know exactly what they are saying, they are very outspoken about it. They are pleading with the United States to withdraw the threats against Iran. The more we threaten Iran, the more we give a gift to the reactionary, religious fanatics in the government. You make threats, you strengthen them. That is exactly what is happening. The threats have lead to repression, predictably.
Now the Americans claim they are outraged by the repression, which we should protest, but we should recognize that the repression is the direct and predictable consequence of the actions that the U.S. government is taking. So if you take actions, and then they have predictable consequences, condemning the consequences is total hypocrisy.
Incidentally, in the case of Cuba about two-thirds of Americans think we ought to end the embargo and all threats and enter into diplomatic relations. And that has been true ever since polls have been taken -- for about 30 years. The figure varies, but it's roughly there. Zero effect on policy, in Iran, Cuba, and elsewhere.
So there is a problem and that problem is that the United States is just not a functioning democracy. Public opinion does not matter and among articulate and elite opinion that is a principle -- it shouldn't matter. The only principle that matters is we own the world and the rest of you shut up, you know, whether you're abroad or at home.
So, yes, there is a potential solution to the very dangerous problem, it's essentially the same solution: do something to turn our own country into a functioning democracy. But that is in radical opposition to the fundamental presupposition of all elite discussions, mainly that we own the world and that these questions don't arise and the public should have no opinion on foreign policy, or any policy.
Once, when I was driving to work, I was listening to NPR. NPR is supposed to be the kind of extreme radical end of the spectrum. I read a statement somewhere, I don't know if it's true, but it was a quote from Obama, who is the hope of the liberal doves, in which he allegedly said that the spectrum of discussion in the United States extends between two crazy extremes, Rush Limbaugh and NPR. The truth, he said, is in the middle and that is where he is going to be, in the middle, between the crazies.
NPR then had a discussion -- it was like being at the Harvard faculty club -- serious people, educated, no grammatical errors, who know what they're talking about, usually polite. The discussion was about the so-called missile defense system that the U.S. is trying to place in Czechoslovakia and Poland -- and the Russian reaction. The main issue was, "What is going on with the Russians? Why are they acting so hostile and irrational? Are they trying to start a new Cold War? There is something wrong with those guys. Can we calm them down and make them less paranoid?"
The main specialist they called in, I think from the Pentagon or somewhere, pointed out, accurately, that a missile defense system is essentially a first-strike weapon. That is well known by strategic analysts on all sides. If you think about it for a minute, it's obvious why. A missile defense system is never going to stop a first strike, but it could, in principle, if it ever worked, stop a retaliatory strike. If you attack some country with a first strike, and practically wipe it out, if you have a missile defense system, and prevent them from retaliating, then you would be protected, or partially protected. If a country has a functioning missile defense system it will have more options for carrying out a first strike. Okay, obvious, and not a secret. It's known to every strategic analyst. I can explain it to my grandchildren in two minutes and they understand it.
So on NPR it is agreed that a missile defense system is a first-strike weapon. But then comes the second part of the discussion. Well, say the pundits, the Russians should not be worried about this. For one thing because it's not enough of a system to stop their retaliation, so therefore it's not yet a first-strike weapon against them. Then they said it is kind of irrelevant anyway because it is directed against Iran, not against Russia.
Okay, that was the end of the discussion. So, point one, missile defense is a first-strike weapon; second, it's directed against Iran. Now, you can carry out a small exercise in logic. Does anything follow from those two assumptions? Yes, what follows is it's a first-strike weapon against Iran. Since the U.S. owns the world what could be wrong with having a first-strike weapon against Iran. So the conclusion is not mentioned. It is not necessary. It follows from the fact that we own the world.
Maybe a year ago or so, Germany sold advanced submarines to Israel, which were equipped to carry missiles with nuclear weapons. Why does Israel need submarines with nuclear armed missiles? Well, there is only one imaginable reason and everyone in Germany with a brain must have understood that -- certainly their military system does -- it's a first-strike weapon against Iran. Israel can use German subs to illustrate to Iranians that if they respond to an Israeli attack they will be vaporized.
The fundamental premises of Western imperialism are extremely deep. The West owns the world and now the U.S. runs the West, so, of course, they go along. The fact that they are providing a first-strike weapon for attacking Iran probably, I'm guessing now, raised no comment because why should it?
You can forget about history, it does not matter, it's kind of "old fashioned," boring stuff we don't need to know about. But most countries pay attention to history. So, for example, for the United States there is no discussion of the history of U.S./Iranian relations. Well, for the U.S. there is only one event in Iranian history -- in 1979 Iranians overthrew the tyrant that the U.S. was backing and took some hostages for over a year. That happened and they had to be punished for that.
But for Iranians their history is that for over 50 years, literally without a break, the U.S. has been torturing Iranians. In 1953 the U.S. overthrew the parliamentary government and installed a brutal tyrant, the Shah, and kept supporting him while he compiled one of the worst human rights records in the world -- torture, assassination, anything you like. In fact, President Carter, when he visited Iran in December 1978, praised the Shah because of the love shown to him by his people, and so on and so forth, which probably accelerated the overthrow. Of course, Iranians have this odd way of remembering what happened to them and who was behind it. When the Shah was overthrown, the Carter administration immediately tried to instigate a military coup by sending arms to Iran through Israel to try to support military force to overthrow the government. We immediately turned to supporting Iraq, that is Saddam Hussein, and his invasion of Iran. Saddam was executed for crimes he committed in 1982, by his standards not very serious crimes -- complicity in killing 150 people. Well, there was something missing in that account -- 1982 is a very important year in U.S./Iraqi relations. That is the year in which Ronald Reagan removed Iraq from the list of states supporting terrorism so that the U.S. could start supplying Iraq with weapons for its invasion of Iran, including the means to develop weapons of mass destruction, chemical and nuclear weapons. That is 1982. A year later Donald Rumsfeld was sent to firm up the deal. Well, Iranians may very well remember that this led to a war in which hundreds of thousands of them were slaughtered with U.S. aid going to Iraq. They may well remember that the year after the war was over, in 1989, the U.S. government invited Iraqi nuclear engineers to come to the United States for advanced training in developing nuclear weapons.
What about the Russians? They have a history too. One part of the history is that in the last century Russia was invaded and practically destroyed three times through Eastern Europe. You can look back and ask, when was the last time that the U.S. was invaded and practically destroyed through Canada or Mexico? That doesn't happen. We crush others and we are always safe. But the Russians don't have that luxury. Now, in 1990 a remarkable event took place. I was kind of shocked, frankly. Gorbachev agreed to let Germany be unified, meaning join the West and be militarized within a hostile military alliance. This is Germany, which twice in that century practically destroyed Russia. That's a pretty remarkable agreement.
There was a quid pro quo. Then-president George Bush I agreed that NATO would not expand to the East. The Russians also demanded, but did not receive, an agreement for a nuclear-free zone from the Artic to the Baltic, which would give them a little protection from nuclear attack. That was the agreement in 1990. Then Bill Clinton came into office, the so-called liberal. One of the first things he did was to rescind the agreement, unilaterally, and expand NATO to the East.
For the Russians that's pretty serious, if you remember the history. They lost 25 million people in the last World War and over 3 million in World War I. But since the U.S. owns the world, if we want to threaten Russia, that is fine. It is all for freedom and justice, after all, and if they make unpleasant noises about it we wonder why they are so paranoid. Why is Putin screaming as if we're somehow threatening them, since we can't be threatening anyone, owning the world.
One of the other big issues on the front pages now is Chinese "aggressiveness." There is a lot of concern about the fact that the Chinese are building up their missile forces. Is China planning to conquer the world? Big debates about it. Well, what is really going on? For years China has been in the lead in trying to prevent the militarization of space. If you look at the debates and the Disarmament Commission of the UN General Assembly, the votes are 160 to 1 or 2. The U.S. insists on the militarization of space. It will not permit the outer space treaty to explicitly bar military relations in space.
Clinton's position was that the U.S. should control space for military purposes. The Bush administration is more extreme. Their position is the U.S. should own space, their words, We have to own space for military purposes. So that is the spectrum of discussion here. The Chinese have been trying to block it and that is well understood. You read the most respectable journal in the world, I suppose, the Journal of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences, and you find leading strategic analysts, John Steinbrunner and Nancy Gallagher, a couple of years ago, warning that the Bush administration's aggressive militarization is leading to what they call "ultimate doom." Of course, there is going to be a reaction to it. You threaten people with destruction, they are going to react. These analysts call on peace-loving nations to counter Bush's aggressive militarism. They hope that China will lead peace-loving nations to counter U.S. aggressiveness. It's a pretty remarkable comment on the impossibility of achieving democracy in the United States. Again, the logic is pretty elementary. Steinbrunner and Gallagher are assuming that the United States cannot be a democratic society; it's not one of the options, so therefore we hope that maybe China will do something.
Well, China finally did something. It signaled to the United States that they noticed that we were trying to use space for military purposes, so China shot down one of their satellites. Everyone understands why -- the mili- tarization and weaponization of space depends on satellites. While missiles are very difficult or maybe impossible to stop, satellites are very easy to shoot down. You know where they are. So China is saying, "Okay, we understand you are militarizing space. We're going to counter it not by militarizing space, we can't compete with you that way, but by shooting down your satellites." That is what was behind the satellite shooting. Every military analyst certainly understood it and every lay person can understand it. But take a look at the debate. The discussion was about, "Is China trying it conquer the world by shooting down one of its own satellites?"
About a year ago there was a new rash of articles and headlines on the front page about the "Chinese military build-up." The Pentagon claimed that China had increased its offensive military capacity -- with 400 missiles, which could be nuclear armed. Then we had a debate about whether that proves China is trying to conquer the world or the numbers are wrong, or something.
Just a little footnote. How many offensive nuclear armed missiles does the United States have? Well, it turns out to be 10,000. China may now have maybe 400, if you believe the hawks. That proves that they are trying to conquer the world.
It turns out, if you read the international press closely, that the reason China is building up its military capacity is not only because of U.S. aggressiveness all over the place, but the fact that the United States has improved its targeting capacities so it can now destroy missile sites in a much more sophisticated fashion wherever they are, even if they are mobile. So who is trying to conquer the world? Well, obviously the Chinese because since we own it, they are trying to conquer it.
It's all too easy to continue with this indefinitely. Just pick your topic. It's a good exercise to try. This simple principle, "we own the world," is sufficient to explain a lot of the discussion about foreign affairs.
I will just finish with a word from George Orwell. In the introduction to Animal Farm he said, England is a free society, but it's not very different from the totalitarian monster I have been describing. He says in England unpopular ideas can be suppressed without the use of force. Then he goes on to give some dubious examples. At the end he turns to a very brief explanation, actually two sentences, but they are to the point. He says, one reason is the press is owned by wealthy men who have every reason not to want certain ideas to be expressed. And the second reason -- and I think a more important one -- is a good education. If you have gone to the best schools and graduated from Oxford and Cambridge, and so on, you have instilled in you the understanding that there are certain things it would not do to say; actually, it would not do to think. That is the primary way to prevent unpopular ideas from being expressed.
The ideas of the overwhelming majority of the population, who don't attend Harvard, Princeton, Oxford and Cambridge, enable them to react like human beings, as they often do. There is a lesson there for activists.
Noam Chomsky is a professor of linguistics at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology and the author, most recently, of Hegemony or Survival Americas Quest for Global Dominance.
Sunday, March 16, 2008
Paraguay president has 5 per cent rating!
This is from Angus Reid.
When President Bush sees a rating such as this he can feel popular again and the same with President Arroyo of the Philippines. Fortunately for Duarte he is not eligible to run for another term in the upcoming April elections!
Angus Reid Global Monitor : Polls & Research
Only 5% Back President Duarte in Paraguay
March 16, 2008
(Angus Reid Global Monitor) - The tenure of Paraguayan president Nicanor Duarte has received a dreadful review this month, according to a poll by Ati Snead published in La Nación. Only five per cent of respondents think Duarte has done a good or very good job, while 71.9 per cent deem it bad or very bad.
Duarte won the April 2003 election as a candidate for the National Republican Association - Red Party (ANR) with 37.1 per cent of all cast ballots. The ANR has been involved in Paraguay’s government since 1947, even during the dictatorship of Alfredo Stroessner. Duarte is not eligible for a new term.
Following his victory, Duarte pledged to end corruption and help improve the lives of Paraguay’s population. The country remains one of the most corrupt and poor in South America.
The next presidential election is scheduled for Apr. 20. Some ANR members have called for retooling the ticket of Blanca Ovelar and Carlos MarÃa Santacruz—who currently trail former bishop Fernando Lugo and running mate Federico Franco of the Patriotic Alliance for Change (APC) in voting intention polls—to have a better shot at winning the ballot.
On Mar. 12, Duarte adamantly refused such calls, saying that "individualistic" interests are second to the party’s interests, and declaring, "They say we must think of leadership, but let them go to hell. (...) What matters now is that we all take care of the party and swallow our own vomit."
When President Bush sees a rating such as this he can feel popular again and the same with President Arroyo of the Philippines. Fortunately for Duarte he is not eligible to run for another term in the upcoming April elections!
Angus Reid Global Monitor : Polls & Research
Only 5% Back President Duarte in Paraguay
March 16, 2008
(Angus Reid Global Monitor) - The tenure of Paraguayan president Nicanor Duarte has received a dreadful review this month, according to a poll by Ati Snead published in La Nación. Only five per cent of respondents think Duarte has done a good or very good job, while 71.9 per cent deem it bad or very bad.
Duarte won the April 2003 election as a candidate for the National Republican Association - Red Party (ANR) with 37.1 per cent of all cast ballots. The ANR has been involved in Paraguay’s government since 1947, even during the dictatorship of Alfredo Stroessner. Duarte is not eligible for a new term.
Following his victory, Duarte pledged to end corruption and help improve the lives of Paraguay’s population. The country remains one of the most corrupt and poor in South America.
The next presidential election is scheduled for Apr. 20. Some ANR members have called for retooling the ticket of Blanca Ovelar and Carlos MarÃa Santacruz—who currently trail former bishop Fernando Lugo and running mate Federico Franco of the Patriotic Alliance for Change (APC) in voting intention polls—to have a better shot at winning the ballot.
On Mar. 12, Duarte adamantly refused such calls, saying that "individualistic" interests are second to the party’s interests, and declaring, "They say we must think of leadership, but let them go to hell. (...) What matters now is that we all take care of the party and swallow our own vomit."
Saturday, March 15, 2008
Saudi Aramco to sell stake in Petron, Philippine refiner and retailer
It seems that Arroyo has no plans for the government to buy the 40 per cent shares even though the government has the right to do so. As with most rulers nowadays they pursue privatisation often leading to the enrichment of their cronies and certainly opening up everything for foreign investment as well.
This is from IHT.
Saudi Aramco unit to sell stake in Philippine oil refiner, retailer Petron
The Associated PressPublished: March 14, 2008
MANILA, Philippines: Petron Corp., the largest Philippine oil company by assets, said Friday that major shareholder Aramco Overseas Co. plans to sell its 40 percent stake to SEA Refinery Holdings, a company owned by Ashmore Group PLC.
Petron said is a statement to the Philippine Stock Exchange the Ashmore unit has offered US$550 million (€353 million) for the 3.75 billion Petron shares held by Aramco Overseas, a subsidiary of Saudi Aramco, the national oil company of the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia.
Officials from Aramco and Ashmore weren't immediately reachable for comment.
Ashmore is a global asset management company listed on the London Stock Exchange that manages US$36.5 billion (€23.4 billion) in assets.
State-owned Philippine National Oil Co. — Petron's other major shareholder with a 40 percent stake — said separately it will evaluate the terms of Ashmore's proposal and decide whether to exercise its right of first offer to purchase the shares.
"We have received a notice from Aramco Overseas regarding the proposed sale of its shares in Petron, and will carefully evaluate this filing with the diligence and rigor necessary and appropriate to determine the best course of action," said PNOC President and Chief Executive Antonio Cailao.
In 1994, the government privatized Petron, with PNOC selling a 40 percent stake to Aramco Overseas for US$535 million. PNOC held onto another 40 percent and sold 20 percent to the public.
President Gloria Macapagal Arroyo said in a statement that Ashmore's decision to purchase Aramco's Petron shares is "a vote of confidence in Petron and the positive environment that has been created for foreign investment in our country."
She said Ashmore "knows the Philippines well through its investment in our international financing and in an important utility, Maynilad Water."
At the exchange rate of 41.45 pesos to the U.S. dollar, Ashmore's offer values Petron at 6.08 pesos per share, compared to Thursday's close of 6.10 pesos. Its shares fell 1.7 percent Friday to 6 pesos.
"Petron's business remains strong and I am confident that our momentum will continue," said Petron Chairman and Chief Executive Nicasio Alcantara. The company is looking forward "to continuing our relationship commercially under Saudi Aramco's commitment to maintain crude oil supply," he said.
Petron operates a 180,000 barrel a day refinery and supplies nearly 40 percent of the country's oil requirements, according to its statement. It also has more than 1,250 service stations, the largest network in the Philippines.
This is from IHT.
Saudi Aramco unit to sell stake in Philippine oil refiner, retailer Petron
The Associated PressPublished: March 14, 2008
MANILA, Philippines: Petron Corp., the largest Philippine oil company by assets, said Friday that major shareholder Aramco Overseas Co. plans to sell its 40 percent stake to SEA Refinery Holdings, a company owned by Ashmore Group PLC.
Petron said is a statement to the Philippine Stock Exchange the Ashmore unit has offered US$550 million (€353 million) for the 3.75 billion Petron shares held by Aramco Overseas, a subsidiary of Saudi Aramco, the national oil company of the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia.
Officials from Aramco and Ashmore weren't immediately reachable for comment.
Ashmore is a global asset management company listed on the London Stock Exchange that manages US$36.5 billion (€23.4 billion) in assets.
State-owned Philippine National Oil Co. — Petron's other major shareholder with a 40 percent stake — said separately it will evaluate the terms of Ashmore's proposal and decide whether to exercise its right of first offer to purchase the shares.
"We have received a notice from Aramco Overseas regarding the proposed sale of its shares in Petron, and will carefully evaluate this filing with the diligence and rigor necessary and appropriate to determine the best course of action," said PNOC President and Chief Executive Antonio Cailao.
In 1994, the government privatized Petron, with PNOC selling a 40 percent stake to Aramco Overseas for US$535 million. PNOC held onto another 40 percent and sold 20 percent to the public.
President Gloria Macapagal Arroyo said in a statement that Ashmore's decision to purchase Aramco's Petron shares is "a vote of confidence in Petron and the positive environment that has been created for foreign investment in our country."
She said Ashmore "knows the Philippines well through its investment in our international financing and in an important utility, Maynilad Water."
At the exchange rate of 41.45 pesos to the U.S. dollar, Ashmore's offer values Petron at 6.08 pesos per share, compared to Thursday's close of 6.10 pesos. Its shares fell 1.7 percent Friday to 6 pesos.
"Petron's business remains strong and I am confident that our momentum will continue," said Petron Chairman and Chief Executive Nicasio Alcantara. The company is looking forward "to continuing our relationship commercially under Saudi Aramco's commitment to maintain crude oil supply," he said.
Petron operates a 180,000 barrel a day refinery and supplies nearly 40 percent of the country's oil requirements, according to its statement. It also has more than 1,250 service stations, the largest network in the Philippines.
First Roman Catholic Church opens in Qatar
I don't often post from Fox news! However, here is an interesting snippet. The number of Roman Catholics is 100,000 about half the number of Qatar natives. The immigrant labor force is many times the local population. The cost of 15 million seems a rather high price given that many of the flock must be immigrant laborers who are probably not that rich and also send money back home to support their families. My dearly departed former mother-in-law used to rail against her Church for collecting money to beautify the Church when it claimed its mission was to help the poor.
First Catholic Church Opens in Qatar, Sparking Fear of Backlash Against Christians
Friday , March 14, 2008
By Sonia Verma
Qatar's first Christian church has no cross, no bell and no steeple.
And when 5,000 faithful flock to Our Lady of the Rosary to celebrate its historic consecration this weekend, they pray no one will notice.
Father Tom Veneracion, the parish priest, is worried about a backlash.
"The idea is to be discreet because we don't want to inflame any sensitivities," he says. "There isn't even a signboard outside the church. No signs at all."
Qatar's fledgling Catholic community considers its sprawling $15 million saucer-shaped facility a victory. A 15-minute drive into barren desert, it has been built with the blessing of the nation's emir.
But some people in this Muslim country have branded it an offense; one prominent politician has called for a national referendum to determine its fate.
And as the church lookd forward to its first Easter service, the controversy is getting considerable attention among this gas-rich country's press.
"The cross should not be raised in the sky of Qatar, nor should bells toll in Doha," wrote Lahdan bin Issa al-Muhanada, a leading columnist in Doha's Al-Arab newspaper.
But Abdul Hamid al-Ansari, the former dean of the Islamic law school at Qatar University, disagrees. He wrote that having "places of worship for various religions is a fundamental human right guaranteed by Islam."
Sitting in his sparse office in the portable building that has served as a makeshift chapel for his congregation for the last six years, Veneracion said he was bewildered by the dispute.
"It is confusing to us," said the priest, a soft-spoken man from the Philippines who seemed genuinely caught off guard by the controversy.
"We tried to be discreet, and I think there's an atmosphere generally in the Gulf that's fairly anti-Christian, but that's mainly to do with what's happening in Iraq and Afghanistan.
"It has nothing to do with us at all."
In Doha, the call to build a Catholic church has grown as waves of migrant workers from South Asia and the Philippines arrived in the Gulf, answering the call for cheap labor to fuel the region's runaway economy.
But the Christian immigrants have sometimes collided with the native Qatari population, which practices Wahhabism, a strict interpretation of Islam.
Native Qataris account for only 200,000 of the country's population of 900,000.
The Vatican estimates there are 100,000 practicing Catholics in Qatar. They attended underground services until seven years ago, when Sheikh Hamad bin Khalifa al-Thani, the country's current ruler, granted permission to five denominations to open churches.
The Sheikh, who seized control from his father in a 1995 palace coup, is a staunch U.S. ally, and the move is part of a broader push to promote Qatar as an open and tolerant society, in order to attract tourism and business.
Veneracion says that the church, when it's completed, will serve as a place for "prayer and inter-faith dialogue." The grounds boast a catechism building and conference center. A wedding party has already booked a ceremony and reception in May.
When Our Lady of the Rosary opens its doors, it will make Saudi Arabia the only Gulf state that still bans churches.
But it remains unclear if Qataris will accept the church, or whether a backlash will force it to close its doors.
Rashed al-Subaie, a Qatari engineer, wrote in a letter to the Al-Watan newspaper that Christians should practice their faith only "in line with public morals without being given licenses to set up places of worship."
Christians should "worship their God in their homes," he wrote.
But Qatar's Catholic faithful remain resolute. A few days ago, Lourdes Carvallo and her elderly mother attended what they prayed would be one of their last morning services in the makeshift chapel.
The 38-year-old housewife from Goa, India, was born in Qatar and grew up attending underground mass in neighbors' homes.
She said: "We have been waiting for this for such a long time and we are feeling very hopeful, because finally we will have a proper place of worship."
Copyright 2008 FOX News Network, LLC. All rights reserved.
All market data delayed 20 minutes.
First Catholic Church Opens in Qatar, Sparking Fear of Backlash Against Christians
Friday , March 14, 2008
By Sonia Verma
Qatar's first Christian church has no cross, no bell and no steeple.
And when 5,000 faithful flock to Our Lady of the Rosary to celebrate its historic consecration this weekend, they pray no one will notice.
Father Tom Veneracion, the parish priest, is worried about a backlash.
"The idea is to be discreet because we don't want to inflame any sensitivities," he says. "There isn't even a signboard outside the church. No signs at all."
Qatar's fledgling Catholic community considers its sprawling $15 million saucer-shaped facility a victory. A 15-minute drive into barren desert, it has been built with the blessing of the nation's emir.
But some people in this Muslim country have branded it an offense; one prominent politician has called for a national referendum to determine its fate.
And as the church lookd forward to its first Easter service, the controversy is getting considerable attention among this gas-rich country's press.
"The cross should not be raised in the sky of Qatar, nor should bells toll in Doha," wrote Lahdan bin Issa al-Muhanada, a leading columnist in Doha's Al-Arab newspaper.
But Abdul Hamid al-Ansari, the former dean of the Islamic law school at Qatar University, disagrees. He wrote that having "places of worship for various religions is a fundamental human right guaranteed by Islam."
Sitting in his sparse office in the portable building that has served as a makeshift chapel for his congregation for the last six years, Veneracion said he was bewildered by the dispute.
"It is confusing to us," said the priest, a soft-spoken man from the Philippines who seemed genuinely caught off guard by the controversy.
"We tried to be discreet, and I think there's an atmosphere generally in the Gulf that's fairly anti-Christian, but that's mainly to do with what's happening in Iraq and Afghanistan.
"It has nothing to do with us at all."
In Doha, the call to build a Catholic church has grown as waves of migrant workers from South Asia and the Philippines arrived in the Gulf, answering the call for cheap labor to fuel the region's runaway economy.
But the Christian immigrants have sometimes collided with the native Qatari population, which practices Wahhabism, a strict interpretation of Islam.
Native Qataris account for only 200,000 of the country's population of 900,000.
The Vatican estimates there are 100,000 practicing Catholics in Qatar. They attended underground services until seven years ago, when Sheikh Hamad bin Khalifa al-Thani, the country's current ruler, granted permission to five denominations to open churches.
The Sheikh, who seized control from his father in a 1995 palace coup, is a staunch U.S. ally, and the move is part of a broader push to promote Qatar as an open and tolerant society, in order to attract tourism and business.
Veneracion says that the church, when it's completed, will serve as a place for "prayer and inter-faith dialogue." The grounds boast a catechism building and conference center. A wedding party has already booked a ceremony and reception in May.
When Our Lady of the Rosary opens its doors, it will make Saudi Arabia the only Gulf state that still bans churches.
But it remains unclear if Qataris will accept the church, or whether a backlash will force it to close its doors.
Rashed al-Subaie, a Qatari engineer, wrote in a letter to the Al-Watan newspaper that Christians should practice their faith only "in line with public morals without being given licenses to set up places of worship."
Christians should "worship their God in their homes," he wrote.
But Qatar's Catholic faithful remain resolute. A few days ago, Lourdes Carvallo and her elderly mother attended what they prayed would be one of their last morning services in the makeshift chapel.
The 38-year-old housewife from Goa, India, was born in Qatar and grew up attending underground mass in neighbors' homes.
She said: "We have been waiting for this for such a long time and we are feeling very hopeful, because finally we will have a proper place of worship."
Copyright 2008 FOX News Network, LLC. All rights reserved.
All market data delayed 20 minutes.
Are Multinationals good for America
It seems that the multinationals have lots of money to invest. It seems that a lot of their investment since 2000 has been overseas given the reduction in jobs in their U.S. plants. The decline in the U.S. dollar makes U.S. exports cheaper so that may help a bit but even so U.S. labor will no doubt be battered even more as capital can move easily around the globe looking for the cheapest labor.
Mandel, Michael. 2008. "Multinationals: Are They Good for America?"
Business Week
(28 February): pp. 41-51.
41: "the top 150 U.S.-based nonfinancial multinationals, which include
the likes of
Hewlett-Packard, Pfizer, eBay, and Sara Lee, had more than $500 billion
in cash and
short-term investments at the end of 2007."
41: "Figures collected by the Bureau of Economic Analysis suggest the
multinational
sector has in some ways been a drag on the U.S. economy since 2000.
From 2000 to
2005, the last year for which full data are available, U.S.
multinationals cut more
than 2 million jobs at home, even as employment in the rest of the
private sector
grew -- and there's no sign the trend has significantly reversed."
Mandel, Michael. 2008. "Multinationals: Are They Good for America?"
Business Week
(28 February): pp. 41-51.
41: "the top 150 U.S.-based nonfinancial multinationals, which include
the likes of
Hewlett-Packard, Pfizer, eBay, and Sara Lee, had more than $500 billion
in cash and
short-term investments at the end of 2007."
41: "Figures collected by the Bureau of Economic Analysis suggest the
multinational
sector has in some ways been a drag on the U.S. economy since 2000.
From 2000 to
2005, the last year for which full data are available, U.S.
multinationals cut more
than 2 million jobs at home, even as employment in the rest of the
private sector
grew -- and there's no sign the trend has significantly reversed."
Biofuels to be developed on land in Mindanao.
This is from bizjournals. There is little detail on this. Mindanao is a huge island. There is no indication where on the island the project will be. Is there any jatropha curcas on the acreage already? The plant is not native to the Philippines although it no doubt can be grown there. However consider this from Wikipedia.
However, despite its abundance and use as an oil and reclamation plant, none of the Jatropha species have been properly domesticated and, as a result, its productivity is variable, and the long-term impact of its large-scale use on soil quality and the environment is unknown. [1]
Given the proclivity of Philippine politicians to sign contracts with payoffs for everybody but Philippine citizens this seemingly good development should be viewed with some caution.
Wednesday, March 12, 2008 - 1:56 PM PDT
Abundant Biofuels to develop biodiesel on land in the Philippines
Silicon Valley / San Jose Business Journal
Abundant Biofuels Corp. said Wednesday it reached a deal in the Philippines to develop more than 1.2 million acres for the production of biodiesel.
Monterey-based Abundant Biofuels did not disclose financial details of the deal with the Supreme Council of Datus Alimaong to use jatropha curcas in land on the island of Mindanao.
Abundant Biofuels Charles Fishel said jatropha "is the only biodiesel feedstock that does not divert agricultural land from food production. It has the added advantage of producing 20 times more energy than the energy required to produce it."
As part of the agreement, Abundant Biofuels will deploy part of its profits for infrastructure development on the island of Mindanao, including improved housing, medical care programs, better school facilities and "resources for people to affirm cultural identities such as music, dance, food, attire and drama."
However, despite its abundance and use as an oil and reclamation plant, none of the Jatropha species have been properly domesticated and, as a result, its productivity is variable, and the long-term impact of its large-scale use on soil quality and the environment is unknown. [1]
Given the proclivity of Philippine politicians to sign contracts with payoffs for everybody but Philippine citizens this seemingly good development should be viewed with some caution.
Wednesday, March 12, 2008 - 1:56 PM PDT
Abundant Biofuels to develop biodiesel on land in the Philippines
Silicon Valley / San Jose Business Journal
Abundant Biofuels Corp. said Wednesday it reached a deal in the Philippines to develop more than 1.2 million acres for the production of biodiesel.
Monterey-based Abundant Biofuels did not disclose financial details of the deal with the Supreme Council of Datus Alimaong to use jatropha curcas in land on the island of Mindanao.
Abundant Biofuels Charles Fishel said jatropha "is the only biodiesel feedstock that does not divert agricultural land from food production. It has the added advantage of producing 20 times more energy than the energy required to produce it."
As part of the agreement, Abundant Biofuels will deploy part of its profits for infrastructure development on the island of Mindanao, including improved housing, medical care programs, better school facilities and "resources for people to affirm cultural identities such as music, dance, food, attire and drama."
Iraq oil minister slams KRG on Turkey trip
There is still no sign of a federal oil bill being passed after almost a year so it is not too surprising that the KRG is going its own way. However, it is the Kurdish reluctance to give much power over oil to the central government that is part of the problem. The issue is not likely to go away. This is from UPI.
Iraq oil minister slams KRG on Turkey trip
Published: March 10, 2008 at 9:22 PM
Print story Email to a friend Font size:ANKARA, Turkey, March 10 (UPI) -- Iraq's oil minister reaffirmed ties with Turkey and rejected Iraqi Kurdistan's oil deals in visits to Ankara over the weekend.
Turkey, which wants to further develop Iraq oil and gas to ship to and through its territory, is also sparring with Iraq's Kurds over rebels in the northern Iraq mountains.
Hussain al-Shahristani made overtures to Turkey on a project to build a refinery in Iraq, which badly needs fuels, and other joint projects between the countries' respective oil firms, Today's Zaman reports.
Iraq already has a pipeline sending oil to a Turkish port. The countries have talked of adding another line and increasing flow, which is below capacity, as well as adding a parallel line to send Iraqi gas north.
"Iraq is open to the world when it comes to oil cooperation especially with the neighboring countries," Oil Ministry spokesman Assem Jihad told United Press International last week. He said the pipeline is sending between 250,000 and 350,000 barrels per day to Turkey, and the short-term goal is 500,000. Jihad said gas in Iraq's western desert could be developed and sent to Turkey, and on to Europe, via Syria as well.
"So Turkey is a spot of our oil and gas transferring to the outside world," he said.
After a meeting with Turkish Energy Minister Hilmi Guler, Shahristani assured "all contracts will be handled by the central government, referring to the Kurdistan Regional Government's dozens of oil deals with international oil companies.
The move, as well as a regional oil law, has challenged Baghdad's control over the oil sector in Iraq. Shahristani has called the deals illegal, stopped oil sales to two firms that signed with the KRG and threatened to keep all such firms out of future Iraqi oil deals.
Turkey views the deals as emboldening Iraq's Kurds, possibly bolstering their future call for an independent state and empowering Turkey's sizeable Kurdish population. Turkey has recently stepped up attacks, including a five-day incursion, on the separatist Kurdistan Workers Party's camps in northern Iraq mountains. The PKK is considered a terrorist organization by the United States, the European Union, Turkey and, ostensibly, Iraq. The organization has killed tens of thousands in its decades-long quest for Kurdish independence and human rights in Turkey.
In an opening on Turkish-Kurdish relations, the Iraq delegation was led by President Jalal Talabani, a Kurd.
Iraq oil minister slams KRG on Turkey trip
Published: March 10, 2008 at 9:22 PM
Print story Email to a friend Font size:ANKARA, Turkey, March 10 (UPI) -- Iraq's oil minister reaffirmed ties with Turkey and rejected Iraqi Kurdistan's oil deals in visits to Ankara over the weekend.
Turkey, which wants to further develop Iraq oil and gas to ship to and through its territory, is also sparring with Iraq's Kurds over rebels in the northern Iraq mountains.
Hussain al-Shahristani made overtures to Turkey on a project to build a refinery in Iraq, which badly needs fuels, and other joint projects between the countries' respective oil firms, Today's Zaman reports.
Iraq already has a pipeline sending oil to a Turkish port. The countries have talked of adding another line and increasing flow, which is below capacity, as well as adding a parallel line to send Iraqi gas north.
"Iraq is open to the world when it comes to oil cooperation especially with the neighboring countries," Oil Ministry spokesman Assem Jihad told United Press International last week. He said the pipeline is sending between 250,000 and 350,000 barrels per day to Turkey, and the short-term goal is 500,000. Jihad said gas in Iraq's western desert could be developed and sent to Turkey, and on to Europe, via Syria as well.
"So Turkey is a spot of our oil and gas transferring to the outside world," he said.
After a meeting with Turkish Energy Minister Hilmi Guler, Shahristani assured "all contracts will be handled by the central government, referring to the Kurdistan Regional Government's dozens of oil deals with international oil companies.
The move, as well as a regional oil law, has challenged Baghdad's control over the oil sector in Iraq. Shahristani has called the deals illegal, stopped oil sales to two firms that signed with the KRG and threatened to keep all such firms out of future Iraqi oil deals.
Turkey views the deals as emboldening Iraq's Kurds, possibly bolstering their future call for an independent state and empowering Turkey's sizeable Kurdish population. Turkey has recently stepped up attacks, including a five-day incursion, on the separatist Kurdistan Workers Party's camps in northern Iraq mountains. The PKK is considered a terrorist organization by the United States, the European Union, Turkey and, ostensibly, Iraq. The organization has killed tens of thousands in its decades-long quest for Kurdish independence and human rights in Turkey.
In an opening on Turkish-Kurdish relations, the Iraq delegation was led by President Jalal Talabani, a Kurd.
Icy hand of China corruption bared.
It took Old Man Winter to reveal the corruption involved in China's Great Leap Forward into market capitalism. The poles that were made in the bad old times when China was so "backward" remain standing-- about all that is left of communism in China:
Beijing Youth Daily reported on February 25 that two major types
of
concrete electricity poles are currently used. One was produced and
erected
in the 1950s and 1960s, the other type is those produced and erected
after
1999 when the reformation of the rural power grid started. These two
types
of poles performed differently in the snowstorms. The older ones stood
erect, while 90% of the newer types jack-knifed.
Icy hand of China corruption bared
By Zhang Yi
Asian Times
March 6, 2008
Hong Kong - There is a Chinese saying that damages from a natural
disaster
can be largely amplified by a man-made calamity, the latter being more
scary
than the former.
In the aftermath of the worst snowstorms in 50 years that devastated
vast
areas in east and south China for two weeks ahead of the Chinese lunar
new
year holiday in early February and killed at least 107 people and
caused
billions of dollars in direct economic losses, Chinese authorities have
discovered that substandard electricity poles used in some regions
broke
apart in the storms, causing power blackouts.
It turns out that the huge damage caused by the snowstorms may be at
least
partially blamed on some artificial factors.
As reported by the Chinese media, an unspecified number of concrete
power
poles in South China's Guizhou province, which were jack-knifed by the
snowstorms to interrupt electricity supply, have been found to have had
no
required reinforcing steel bars inside. Instead, small iron wires were
used
to replace the reinforcing steel bars. Vast areas in mountainous
Guizhou
province suffered the worst power blackouts amid the snowstorms due to
the
collapse of pylons and poles for overhead transmission.
Critics said flaws in the government system had led to incompetence in
combating corruption, which in turn made the situation even worse.
A devastating natural disaster like the snowstorms is certainly beyond
human
control. However, analysts say, what a government can and must do is to
prevent man-made factors from worsening the damage caused by the
natural
disaster. In the case of Guizhou, had qualified materials been used,
power
blackouts might not have been so serious or lasted so long.
The Beijing News, an outspoken and influential daily based in the
Chinese
capital, reported that in Guizhou's Kaili prefecture, a huge number of
power
poles turned out to be produced with substandard materials, as no
reinforcing steel bars were found inside when they broke and collapsed
in
snowstorms.
Embarrassed by the report, officials with the state-owned China
Southern
Power Grid Co, the monopoly power supplier for South China, said that
no
hard evidence had been found yet, but stressed that the producers and
suppliers of substandard products would definitely be forced out of the
power grid market.
But Beijing News was not the first to expose the use of problematic
power
poles. Beijing Youth Daily reported on February 25 that two major types
of
concrete electricity poles are currently used. One was produced and
erected
in the 1950s and 1960s, the other type is those produced and erected
after
1999 when the reformation of the rural power grid started. These two
types
of poles performed differently in the snowstorms. The older ones stood
erect, while 90% of the newer types jack-knifed.
According to reports, most of the broken poles exposed small-diameter
iron
wire instead of strong reinforcing steel bars as required by production
standards. In one estimate, in Kaili prefecture alone, over 10,000
poles
were broken and still need to be replaced.
As it is clear power shortages in many places were caused by the poor
quality of electricity poles rather than by the snowstorms, the Chinese
government is obligated to launch a thorough investigation. Producers
and
suppliers of the substandard poles, and those who approved the purchase
and
use of them, are in the firing line. As is often the case, official
corruption is likely involved in such massive production and use of
substandard products.
In response, China Southern Power Grid has dispatched six quality
supervision teams to Guizhou to supervise the replacement of
substandard
poles. On February 23, the company summoned some 41 electrical material
suppliers to underscore the need to guarantee the quality of all
disaster-relief supplies. The company also sent a warning that
substandard
material suppliers will be barred from the domestic market.
On websites, many Chinese netizens have applauded the news media for
once
again playing an important watchdog role. Blogs and websites across the
country are urging the the government to make a thorough investigation
into
the scandals - including the possible involvement of official
corruption -
and to punish those who used their power to protect groups with vested
interests.
Also, Beijing is being called on to review and improve its mechanisms
aimed
at curbing the corruption that now runs rampant in almost every sector
of
society.
Analysts point out that one root cause of corruption is the difficult
task
of reining in over-empowered local officials, and the best way to fight
corruption and reduce its damages is to introduce a system of
checks-and-balances.
Even President Hu Jintao, in his speech to the National Congress of the
Communist Party last October, called for separation and mutual checks
on
decision-making, supervisory and executive power. For the very first
time,
he also put on the party's agenda the need to "protect people's rights
to
know, to participate, to express themselves and to supervise". It is
time
for the party to put Hu's ideas into practice.
******
Zhang Yi is a contributor to the Chinese-language edition of Asia times
Online.
Copyright 2008 Asia Times Online Ltd. All rights reserved.
http://www.atimes.com/atimes/China/JC06Ad01.html
Beijing Youth Daily reported on February 25 that two major types
of
concrete electricity poles are currently used. One was produced and
erected
in the 1950s and 1960s, the other type is those produced and erected
after
1999 when the reformation of the rural power grid started. These two
types
of poles performed differently in the snowstorms. The older ones stood
erect, while 90% of the newer types jack-knifed.
Icy hand of China corruption bared
By Zhang Yi
Asian Times
March 6, 2008
Hong Kong - There is a Chinese saying that damages from a natural
disaster
can be largely amplified by a man-made calamity, the latter being more
scary
than the former.
In the aftermath of the worst snowstorms in 50 years that devastated
vast
areas in east and south China for two weeks ahead of the Chinese lunar
new
year holiday in early February and killed at least 107 people and
caused
billions of dollars in direct economic losses, Chinese authorities have
discovered that substandard electricity poles used in some regions
broke
apart in the storms, causing power blackouts.
It turns out that the huge damage caused by the snowstorms may be at
least
partially blamed on some artificial factors.
As reported by the Chinese media, an unspecified number of concrete
power
poles in South China's Guizhou province, which were jack-knifed by the
snowstorms to interrupt electricity supply, have been found to have had
no
required reinforcing steel bars inside. Instead, small iron wires were
used
to replace the reinforcing steel bars. Vast areas in mountainous
Guizhou
province suffered the worst power blackouts amid the snowstorms due to
the
collapse of pylons and poles for overhead transmission.
Critics said flaws in the government system had led to incompetence in
combating corruption, which in turn made the situation even worse.
A devastating natural disaster like the snowstorms is certainly beyond
human
control. However, analysts say, what a government can and must do is to
prevent man-made factors from worsening the damage caused by the
natural
disaster. In the case of Guizhou, had qualified materials been used,
power
blackouts might not have been so serious or lasted so long.
The Beijing News, an outspoken and influential daily based in the
Chinese
capital, reported that in Guizhou's Kaili prefecture, a huge number of
power
poles turned out to be produced with substandard materials, as no
reinforcing steel bars were found inside when they broke and collapsed
in
snowstorms.
Embarrassed by the report, officials with the state-owned China
Southern
Power Grid Co, the monopoly power supplier for South China, said that
no
hard evidence had been found yet, but stressed that the producers and
suppliers of substandard products would definitely be forced out of the
power grid market.
But Beijing News was not the first to expose the use of problematic
power
poles. Beijing Youth Daily reported on February 25 that two major types
of
concrete electricity poles are currently used. One was produced and
erected
in the 1950s and 1960s, the other type is those produced and erected
after
1999 when the reformation of the rural power grid started. These two
types
of poles performed differently in the snowstorms. The older ones stood
erect, while 90% of the newer types jack-knifed.
According to reports, most of the broken poles exposed small-diameter
iron
wire instead of strong reinforcing steel bars as required by production
standards. In one estimate, in Kaili prefecture alone, over 10,000
poles
were broken and still need to be replaced.
As it is clear power shortages in many places were caused by the poor
quality of electricity poles rather than by the snowstorms, the Chinese
government is obligated to launch a thorough investigation. Producers
and
suppliers of the substandard poles, and those who approved the purchase
and
use of them, are in the firing line. As is often the case, official
corruption is likely involved in such massive production and use of
substandard products.
In response, China Southern Power Grid has dispatched six quality
supervision teams to Guizhou to supervise the replacement of
substandard
poles. On February 23, the company summoned some 41 electrical material
suppliers to underscore the need to guarantee the quality of all
disaster-relief supplies. The company also sent a warning that
substandard
material suppliers will be barred from the domestic market.
On websites, many Chinese netizens have applauded the news media for
once
again playing an important watchdog role. Blogs and websites across the
country are urging the the government to make a thorough investigation
into
the scandals - including the possible involvement of official
corruption -
and to punish those who used their power to protect groups with vested
interests.
Also, Beijing is being called on to review and improve its mechanisms
aimed
at curbing the corruption that now runs rampant in almost every sector
of
society.
Analysts point out that one root cause of corruption is the difficult
task
of reining in over-empowered local officials, and the best way to fight
corruption and reduce its damages is to introduce a system of
checks-and-balances.
Even President Hu Jintao, in his speech to the National Congress of the
Communist Party last October, called for separation and mutual checks
on
decision-making, supervisory and executive power. For the very first
time,
he also put on the party's agenda the need to "protect people's rights
to
know, to participate, to express themselves and to supervise". It is
time
for the party to put Hu's ideas into practice.
******
Zhang Yi is a contributor to the Chinese-language edition of Asia times
Online.
Copyright 2008 Asia Times Online Ltd. All rights reserved.
http://www.atimes.com/atimes/China/JC06Ad01.html
Friday, March 14, 2008
China: Accord with Philippines, Vietnam conducive to peace.
This is from mb.com.ph.
It seems that some in the Philippines think that the joint Vietnamese, Philippines, China deal was signed in exchange for some payments to persons in the Philippines associated with the broadband and other deals. Since there may be oil and gas reserves in the Spratly Islands area there is bound to be some degree of conflict as to who owns what. An agreement between the three concerned countries though does seem a positive development in principle at least.
Accord with RP, Vietnam conducive to peace – China
Charissa M. Luci
The Chinese government stood firm yesterday that the tripartite cooperation agreement it forged with the Philippines and Vietnam is "conducive" to maintain peace and stability in the South China Sea.
Peng Xiubin, Chinese embassy spokesman, said his government’s position on the issue is "consistent and explicit."
"China stands for peaceful resolution of disputes over the South China Sea through friendly consultation. In order to maintain stability in the South China Sea and to promote mutually beneficial cooperation, China has put forward the proposition of shelving disputes and going in for joint development, which serves the common interest of all sides concerned," he said in a statement.
The Chinese official said the Joint Marine Seismic Undertaking (JMSU), an agreement signed in 2004 by China and the Philippines and with Vietnam the following year, complies with the principles of the Association of Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN)-China Declaration on the Conduct of Parties in the South China Sea.
It is "conducive to maintenance of peace and stability in South China Sea and the region at large," he said.
Peng also expressed China’s concern over claims that such deal impinged on the Philippines’ sovereignty and territorial integrity on the disputed Spratly islands in the South China Sea and has something to do with the Chinese loans.
"China is worried about some recently emerged tendencies in the Philippines, which may impose negative influence on China-Philippine friendly relations and mutually beneficial cooperation," he said.
Various camps claimed that the agreement was inked in exchange for Chinese loans on the infamous broadband, cyber education, North Rail and South Rail projects.
"We hope to make joint efforts with the Philippines to properly handle the problems related to our bilateral cooperation, so as to maintain healthy development of China-Philippine relations and to safeguard peace and stability in South China Sea and the region at large," Peng said.
He said the bilateral relations have been growing over the years, adding that China considers the Philippines as an important and strategic partner in Southeast Asia.
"With the common efforts of China and the Philippines, China-Philippines relations have been developing smoothly over the recent years. The increasingly expanded mutually beneficial cooperation in various fields between the two countries has brought about tangible benefits to the two peoples," he said.
Peng said the Chinese government has established the policy of developing strategic partnership and all-round friendly cooperation with member- countries of the ASEAN.
"As the Philippines is a important member of ASEAN, China attaches great importance and makes relentless efforts to developing good-neighborly friendly relations with the Philippines," he said.
Earlier, Chinese Ambassador Song Tao cited said the three-decades old diplomatic relations between China and the Philippines has moved into "a new period of comprehensive development."
* * * *
Congress urged to pass archipelagic baselines law
David Cagahastian
Chief Presidential Legal Counsel Sergio Apostol urged Congress yesterday to pass the bill that would update the Philippines’ archipelagic baselines, including its territorial claims on the disputed Spratly Islands in the South China Sea.
Apostol said Congress should pass the bill or the Philippines will lose its claims to some parts of the disputed Spratly islands which are believed to have untapped oil and gas reserves.
"Dapat ituloy ng Congress ang amendments of the existing law on the continental shelf, otherwise we will no longer claim what is ours within the 200-mile exclusive economic zone (EEZ) granted to us by the United Nations Convention on the Law of the Sea (UNCLOS)," Apostol said.
If Congress does not pass the bill, he said, other claimant countries like China and Vietnam might claim ownership of even established Philippine territory, like the so-called Scarborough Shoals, which is not claimed by any other country.
The Philippine baselines were set by Republic Act 3046 and amended by RA 5446, but Agriculture Secretary Arthur Yap said the Philippines’ baselines, as defined by the two laws, still do not abide by some provisions of the UNCLOS defining new archipelagic baselines which the Philippines, being an archipelago, should formally claim through legislation.
The passage of the bill that would update the baselines was postponed at the House of Representatives after the Department of Foreign Affairs (DFA) submitted to the House an unsigned document supposedly signifying China’s opposition to the passage of the bill.
Apostol said the Chinese should bring to the United Nations their objections to the passage of the bill that will update the Philippines’ baselines if they indeed have objections to it.
The updating of the archipelagic baselines would also update the 200-nautical mile EEZ of the Philippines and allow the Philippines to come up with a formal claim before the UN over the extended continental shelf in the seas surrounding the country.
The Philippines only has until May 13, 2009 to file a formal claim before the UNCLOS on the extent of its extended continental shelf. The claim cannot be completed until the archipelagic baselines are updated by legislation.
It seems that some in the Philippines think that the joint Vietnamese, Philippines, China deal was signed in exchange for some payments to persons in the Philippines associated with the broadband and other deals. Since there may be oil and gas reserves in the Spratly Islands area there is bound to be some degree of conflict as to who owns what. An agreement between the three concerned countries though does seem a positive development in principle at least.
Accord with RP, Vietnam conducive to peace – China
Charissa M. Luci
The Chinese government stood firm yesterday that the tripartite cooperation agreement it forged with the Philippines and Vietnam is "conducive" to maintain peace and stability in the South China Sea.
Peng Xiubin, Chinese embassy spokesman, said his government’s position on the issue is "consistent and explicit."
"China stands for peaceful resolution of disputes over the South China Sea through friendly consultation. In order to maintain stability in the South China Sea and to promote mutually beneficial cooperation, China has put forward the proposition of shelving disputes and going in for joint development, which serves the common interest of all sides concerned," he said in a statement.
The Chinese official said the Joint Marine Seismic Undertaking (JMSU), an agreement signed in 2004 by China and the Philippines and with Vietnam the following year, complies with the principles of the Association of Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN)-China Declaration on the Conduct of Parties in the South China Sea.
It is "conducive to maintenance of peace and stability in South China Sea and the region at large," he said.
Peng also expressed China’s concern over claims that such deal impinged on the Philippines’ sovereignty and territorial integrity on the disputed Spratly islands in the South China Sea and has something to do with the Chinese loans.
"China is worried about some recently emerged tendencies in the Philippines, which may impose negative influence on China-Philippine friendly relations and mutually beneficial cooperation," he said.
Various camps claimed that the agreement was inked in exchange for Chinese loans on the infamous broadband, cyber education, North Rail and South Rail projects.
"We hope to make joint efforts with the Philippines to properly handle the problems related to our bilateral cooperation, so as to maintain healthy development of China-Philippine relations and to safeguard peace and stability in South China Sea and the region at large," Peng said.
He said the bilateral relations have been growing over the years, adding that China considers the Philippines as an important and strategic partner in Southeast Asia.
"With the common efforts of China and the Philippines, China-Philippines relations have been developing smoothly over the recent years. The increasingly expanded mutually beneficial cooperation in various fields between the two countries has brought about tangible benefits to the two peoples," he said.
Peng said the Chinese government has established the policy of developing strategic partnership and all-round friendly cooperation with member- countries of the ASEAN.
"As the Philippines is a important member of ASEAN, China attaches great importance and makes relentless efforts to developing good-neighborly friendly relations with the Philippines," he said.
Earlier, Chinese Ambassador Song Tao cited said the three-decades old diplomatic relations between China and the Philippines has moved into "a new period of comprehensive development."
* * * *
Congress urged to pass archipelagic baselines law
David Cagahastian
Chief Presidential Legal Counsel Sergio Apostol urged Congress yesterday to pass the bill that would update the Philippines’ archipelagic baselines, including its territorial claims on the disputed Spratly Islands in the South China Sea.
Apostol said Congress should pass the bill or the Philippines will lose its claims to some parts of the disputed Spratly islands which are believed to have untapped oil and gas reserves.
"Dapat ituloy ng Congress ang amendments of the existing law on the continental shelf, otherwise we will no longer claim what is ours within the 200-mile exclusive economic zone (EEZ) granted to us by the United Nations Convention on the Law of the Sea (UNCLOS)," Apostol said.
If Congress does not pass the bill, he said, other claimant countries like China and Vietnam might claim ownership of even established Philippine territory, like the so-called Scarborough Shoals, which is not claimed by any other country.
The Philippine baselines were set by Republic Act 3046 and amended by RA 5446, but Agriculture Secretary Arthur Yap said the Philippines’ baselines, as defined by the two laws, still do not abide by some provisions of the UNCLOS defining new archipelagic baselines which the Philippines, being an archipelago, should formally claim through legislation.
The passage of the bill that would update the baselines was postponed at the House of Representatives after the Department of Foreign Affairs (DFA) submitted to the House an unsigned document supposedly signifying China’s opposition to the passage of the bill.
Apostol said the Chinese should bring to the United Nations their objections to the passage of the bill that will update the Philippines’ baselines if they indeed have objections to it.
The updating of the archipelagic baselines would also update the 200-nautical mile EEZ of the Philippines and allow the Philippines to come up with a formal claim before the UN over the extended continental shelf in the seas surrounding the country.
The Philippines only has until May 13, 2009 to file a formal claim before the UNCLOS on the extent of its extended continental shelf. The claim cannot be completed until the archipelagic baselines are updated by legislation.
U.S. economists see long-term ills from Iraq war.
Of course the war also benefits select groups of military suppliers and contractors both U.S. and foreign who get lucrative reconstruction and supply contracts. The decline in the U.S. dollar means that the U.S. is paying its debt in cheaper dollars than when it borrowed. However, foreign holders of U.S. dollars are becoming less and less happy about the situation and are switching to other currencies. The role of the U.S. dollar as THE global currency has been eroding over the last few years and the pace of change is accelerating with the plunge in the dollar.
ANALYSIS-U.S. economists see long-term ills from Iraq war
Richard Cowan
Reuters North American News Service
Mar 13, 2008 07:00 EST
WASHINGTON(Reuters) - What's over $100 billion a year in Iraq war costs to a $14 trillion U.S. economy? Not much now, but the tab is growing on a "buy-now-pay-later" plan that threatens long-term problems.
Money was not much of an issue five years ago when President Bush led the country into war in Iraq. Instead, all eyes were on allegations, later proven unfounded, that then-Iraqi President Saddam Hussein had weapons of mass destruction and could use them against the United States.
But $500 billion later, experts worry about the impact on the world's biggest economy, already facing a crippling housing crisis.
"The short-term economic consequences of the war have been manageable and modest. But the long-term consequences will be substantial," said Mark Zandi, chief economist of Moody's Economy.com.
Much of the problem, economists say, is that every month of combat adds more than $10 billion to a U.S. debt that now tops $9 trillion.
"Extra government debt is undoubtedly a bad thing for our economic performance in the long run," said Doug Elmendorf, senior fellow at the Brookings Institution and a former economist for the Federal Reserve Board.
Other expenses -- such as health care costs for the poor and a new prescription drug plan for the elderly -- combine to increase the government's debt at a much faster rate than the Iraq war, Elmendorf noted.
'STOP DIGGING'
"The rule when one is in a hole is to stop digging," Elmendorf said of debt and war costs.
Robert Reischauer, head of the Urban Institute and a former director of the Congressional Budget Office, said the benefits of war spending for the U.S. economy had been "muted" because so much of the money is spent on goods and services abroad. That, he said, was "stimulating economies elsewhere, not the least being the economies of Iraq, Kuwait and Saudi Arabia."
War backers would point out that failing to secure the United States after the Sept. 11 attacks would have a severe impact on economic well-being, he said.
"If one thinks this war is very important for our national security, then ultimately, it is important for our economic success as well," Elmendorf said, adding that "if it was, it was also worth paying for" it instead of borrowing.
At some point, government debt comes due and the Treasury Department either must pay it off or roll it over and pay more interest, just like a family facing monthly credit card bills.
Higher government borrowing also could push up interest rates, making it more expensive for consumers to borrow for home mortgages and businesses to finance investments.
In early 2003, it seemed a remote possibility that the U.S.-led invasion could create economic problems at home.
On Jan. 29, 2003, less than two months before the war, then-Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld said the White House budget office "has come up with a number that's something under $50 billion for the cost." And of that, he added, a portion might be paid by "other countries."
Vice President Dick Cheney tried easing economic concerns by saying Iraqi oil revenues could cover some costs.
Five years later, the war may have helped some local economies, where bullets and tank armor are made, or enriched contractors working in Baghdad. But none of Iraq's oil revenues have been tapped and U.S. taxpayers have bankrolled an effort that so far has cost them not $50 billion, but around $500 billion, with hundreds of billions of dollars more ahead.
U.S. ELECTION
As November's U.S. presidential and congressional election nears and voters worry about pocketbook issues, Democrats have begun tying the war to the faltering economy.
"You cannot separate the economy from the long, bloody civil war in Iraq," Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid, a Nevada Democrat, told reporters. Democrats were hearing from voters back home that "we (the U.S.) don't have money for anything anymore. We're borrowing all the money for Iraq," he said.
Washington's overall spending on domestic programs outside of defense, such as education, highways and law enforcement, has grown. But over the seven years of the Bush presidency, that funding represents a declining share of the budget and economy.
Nobel Prize-winning economist Joseph Stiglitz, who says the Iraq war could end up costing $3 trillion when factoring in combat and other long-term related costs, also blames the war for part of the run-up in world oil prices.
At the beginning of March 2003, just before the fighting began, U.S. crude oil was $37.21 a barrel. This week, that same barrel hit a record $110.
The war accounted for $5 to $10 of oil's higher price, Stiglitz told Congress.
Robert Ebel, a senior energy adviser at the Center for Strategic and International Studies, said Mideast political instability always factored into oil prices. But the huge increase over the past five years, he said, was not so much due to Iraq.
"Growth in demand has not been matched by substantial growth in supply," with China's oil thirst rising, oil- exporting countries' spare production capacity down and no new U.S. refineries being built.
Largely because of World War Two, which brought a huge expansion in industrial production and millions of jobs, there has been a notion that wars are good for the economy.
That may have been the case in the 1940s. But in 2003, with an economy growing and full employment, war did not bring the kind of investment that was needed or in the long-term interest, according to Stiglitz.
"America is a rich country. The question is not whether we can afford to squander $3 trillion or $5 trillion. We can. But our strength will be sapped," he told Congress. (Editing by Patricia Zengerle)
Source: Reuters North American News Servic
ANALYSIS-U.S. economists see long-term ills from Iraq war
Richard Cowan
Reuters North American News Service
Mar 13, 2008 07:00 EST
WASHINGTON(Reuters) - What's over $100 billion a year in Iraq war costs to a $14 trillion U.S. economy? Not much now, but the tab is growing on a "buy-now-pay-later" plan that threatens long-term problems.
Money was not much of an issue five years ago when President Bush led the country into war in Iraq. Instead, all eyes were on allegations, later proven unfounded, that then-Iraqi President Saddam Hussein had weapons of mass destruction and could use them against the United States.
But $500 billion later, experts worry about the impact on the world's biggest economy, already facing a crippling housing crisis.
"The short-term economic consequences of the war have been manageable and modest. But the long-term consequences will be substantial," said Mark Zandi, chief economist of Moody's Economy.com.
Much of the problem, economists say, is that every month of combat adds more than $10 billion to a U.S. debt that now tops $9 trillion.
"Extra government debt is undoubtedly a bad thing for our economic performance in the long run," said Doug Elmendorf, senior fellow at the Brookings Institution and a former economist for the Federal Reserve Board.
Other expenses -- such as health care costs for the poor and a new prescription drug plan for the elderly -- combine to increase the government's debt at a much faster rate than the Iraq war, Elmendorf noted.
'STOP DIGGING'
"The rule when one is in a hole is to stop digging," Elmendorf said of debt and war costs.
Robert Reischauer, head of the Urban Institute and a former director of the Congressional Budget Office, said the benefits of war spending for the U.S. economy had been "muted" because so much of the money is spent on goods and services abroad. That, he said, was "stimulating economies elsewhere, not the least being the economies of Iraq, Kuwait and Saudi Arabia."
War backers would point out that failing to secure the United States after the Sept. 11 attacks would have a severe impact on economic well-being, he said.
"If one thinks this war is very important for our national security, then ultimately, it is important for our economic success as well," Elmendorf said, adding that "if it was, it was also worth paying for" it instead of borrowing.
At some point, government debt comes due and the Treasury Department either must pay it off or roll it over and pay more interest, just like a family facing monthly credit card bills.
Higher government borrowing also could push up interest rates, making it more expensive for consumers to borrow for home mortgages and businesses to finance investments.
In early 2003, it seemed a remote possibility that the U.S.-led invasion could create economic problems at home.
On Jan. 29, 2003, less than two months before the war, then-Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld said the White House budget office "has come up with a number that's something under $50 billion for the cost." And of that, he added, a portion might be paid by "other countries."
Vice President Dick Cheney tried easing economic concerns by saying Iraqi oil revenues could cover some costs.
Five years later, the war may have helped some local economies, where bullets and tank armor are made, or enriched contractors working in Baghdad. But none of Iraq's oil revenues have been tapped and U.S. taxpayers have bankrolled an effort that so far has cost them not $50 billion, but around $500 billion, with hundreds of billions of dollars more ahead.
U.S. ELECTION
As November's U.S. presidential and congressional election nears and voters worry about pocketbook issues, Democrats have begun tying the war to the faltering economy.
"You cannot separate the economy from the long, bloody civil war in Iraq," Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid, a Nevada Democrat, told reporters. Democrats were hearing from voters back home that "we (the U.S.) don't have money for anything anymore. We're borrowing all the money for Iraq," he said.
Washington's overall spending on domestic programs outside of defense, such as education, highways and law enforcement, has grown. But over the seven years of the Bush presidency, that funding represents a declining share of the budget and economy.
Nobel Prize-winning economist Joseph Stiglitz, who says the Iraq war could end up costing $3 trillion when factoring in combat and other long-term related costs, also blames the war for part of the run-up in world oil prices.
At the beginning of March 2003, just before the fighting began, U.S. crude oil was $37.21 a barrel. This week, that same barrel hit a record $110.
The war accounted for $5 to $10 of oil's higher price, Stiglitz told Congress.
Robert Ebel, a senior energy adviser at the Center for Strategic and International Studies, said Mideast political instability always factored into oil prices. But the huge increase over the past five years, he said, was not so much due to Iraq.
"Growth in demand has not been matched by substantial growth in supply," with China's oil thirst rising, oil- exporting countries' spare production capacity down and no new U.S. refineries being built.
Largely because of World War Two, which brought a huge expansion in industrial production and millions of jobs, there has been a notion that wars are good for the economy.
That may have been the case in the 1940s. But in 2003, with an economy growing and full employment, war did not bring the kind of investment that was needed or in the long-term interest, according to Stiglitz.
"America is a rich country. The question is not whether we can afford to squander $3 trillion or $5 trillion. We can. But our strength will be sapped," he told Congress. (Editing by Patricia Zengerle)
Source: Reuters North American News Servic
Pakistan protests four deaths by NATO artillery fire
This is from wiredispatch. Don't expect to see this is in any mainstream press headlines. As the article mentions this is not an isolated incident. Events such as these help recruit suicide bombers in tribal societies who feel bound to revenge such killings.
ROUNDUP: Pakistan protests four deaths by NATO artillery fire
dpa
dpa - International News Service in English
Mar 13, 2008 07:37 EST
Islamabad (dpa) - Pakistan lodged a "strong protest" with the US-led coalition forces in Afghanistan after one of their artillery shells killed four people on the Pakistani side of a remote border region, an army spokesman said Thursday.
Two children and two women were killed early Wednesday when coalition forces fighting militants in Afghanistan fired artillery shells into Pakistan's North Waziristan Agency and destroyed a house, Pakistan army spokesman Major-General Athar Abbas said.
It took a day to confirm the deaths because the remote area along the mountainous border has little infrastructure and it took time for Pakistani troops to get there, but once confirmed, "we lodged a strong protest," Abbas told Deutsche Presse-Agentur dpa.
"It was an accident. It didn't happen by design," he added.
Pakistan's tribal areas have experienced similar attacks since Taliban and al-Qaeda militants fled into the area after US-led forces attacked Afghanistan in late 2001.
In June last year three rockets which were fired from Afghanistan hit a madrassa in a small village south of the Dattakhil area of North Waziristan, killing more than 30 people, a local security official told Deutsche Presse-Agentur dpa at the time.
Wednesday's attack sparked a protest by around 2,500 angry tribesmen in Khar town of the neighbouring tribal district of Bajaur.
The demonstrators chanted slogans like "Death to American" and "Death to Musharraf," and set ablaze an American flag.
"This is not the first American attack in tribal areas. They carry out at least one such attack in every 15 to 20 days," a member of parliament from the tribal district, Kamran Khan, told the rally. "We condemn the killings of innocent people." dpa me ns jh
ROUNDUP: Pakistan protests four deaths by NATO artillery fire
dpa
dpa - International News Service in English
Mar 13, 2008 07:37 EST
Islamabad (dpa) - Pakistan lodged a "strong protest" with the US-led coalition forces in Afghanistan after one of their artillery shells killed four people on the Pakistani side of a remote border region, an army spokesman said Thursday.
Two children and two women were killed early Wednesday when coalition forces fighting militants in Afghanistan fired artillery shells into Pakistan's North Waziristan Agency and destroyed a house, Pakistan army spokesman Major-General Athar Abbas said.
It took a day to confirm the deaths because the remote area along the mountainous border has little infrastructure and it took time for Pakistani troops to get there, but once confirmed, "we lodged a strong protest," Abbas told Deutsche Presse-Agentur dpa.
"It was an accident. It didn't happen by design," he added.
Pakistan's tribal areas have experienced similar attacks since Taliban and al-Qaeda militants fled into the area after US-led forces attacked Afghanistan in late 2001.
In June last year three rockets which were fired from Afghanistan hit a madrassa in a small village south of the Dattakhil area of North Waziristan, killing more than 30 people, a local security official told Deutsche Presse-Agentur dpa at the time.
Wednesday's attack sparked a protest by around 2,500 angry tribesmen in Khar town of the neighbouring tribal district of Bajaur.
The demonstrators chanted slogans like "Death to American" and "Death to Musharraf," and set ablaze an American flag.
"This is not the first American attack in tribal areas. They carry out at least one such attack in every 15 to 20 days," a member of parliament from the tribal district, Kamran Khan, told the rally. "We condemn the killings of innocent people." dpa me ns jh
Thursday, March 13, 2008
Afghan death toll soars to 8,000 last year..
This is from the Guardian.
Some NATO members such as the U.S. Canada, and Britain are becoming annoyed at other NATO members who they feel are not "pulling their weight". However, the Afghan mission is nowhere popular in Europe in the countries providing the troops. Even in Canada a majority oppose the mission. Most politicians do not court political suicide.
Afghan death toll soars to 8,000 last yearMatthew Weaver and agencies guardian.co.uk, Tuesday March 11 2008
The United Nations has delivered a grim assessment of the conflict in Afghanistan, reporting that violence increased sharply last year and resulted in the deaths of more than 8,000 people, at least 1,500 of them civilians.
In a report to the security council, the UN secretary general, Ban Ki-moon, said the number of violent incidents rose from an average of 425 a month in 2006 to 566 each month last year.
The number of suicide attacks rose to 160 in 2007 from 123 in 2006 — with 68 attempts thwarted in 2007 compared with 17 in 2006, he said.
Ban claimed that while the insurgency drew strength from local people, much of the violence was led from abroad. "The support of foreign-based networks in providing leadership, planning, training, funding and equipment clearly remains crucial to its viability," he said.
Current violence in Afghanistan is at its highest level since a US-led invasion in 2001 to oust Taliban rulers.
The focus of the conflict has been in Afghanistan's southern and eastern provinces, but the insurgents are increasingly using Iraq-style tactics - such as roadside bombs, suicide attacks and kidnappings - against foreign and Afghan targets around the country.
"Afghanistan remains roughly divided between the generally more stable west and north, where security problems are linked to factionalism and criminality, and the south and east, characterised by an increasingly coordinated insurgency," the secretary general said.
He cited a number of worrying trends, including the gradual emergence of insurgent activity in the previously calm north-west, and the encroachment of insurgents into the two provinces of Logar and Wardak, which border the capital, Kabul.
Ban said the tactics of anti-government elements changed noticeably in 2007 in response to the superiority of Afghan and international security forces in conventional battles.
The opposition groups were forced "to adopt small-scale, asymmetric tactics aimed largely at the Afghan national security forces and, in some cases, civilians: improvised explosive devices, suicide attacks, assassinations and abductions", Ban said.
Ban also expressed concern at the increase in attacks on Afghan and international humanitarian workers. In more than 130 attacks, 40 aid workers were killed and 89 abducted, of whom seven were later killed by their captors, he said.
A committee of MPs found yesterday that the costs of operations by British forces in Afghanistan rose by 122% to £1.6bn.
Some NATO members such as the U.S. Canada, and Britain are becoming annoyed at other NATO members who they feel are not "pulling their weight". However, the Afghan mission is nowhere popular in Europe in the countries providing the troops. Even in Canada a majority oppose the mission. Most politicians do not court political suicide.
Afghan death toll soars to 8,000 last yearMatthew Weaver and agencies guardian.co.uk, Tuesday March 11 2008
The United Nations has delivered a grim assessment of the conflict in Afghanistan, reporting that violence increased sharply last year and resulted in the deaths of more than 8,000 people, at least 1,500 of them civilians.
In a report to the security council, the UN secretary general, Ban Ki-moon, said the number of violent incidents rose from an average of 425 a month in 2006 to 566 each month last year.
The number of suicide attacks rose to 160 in 2007 from 123 in 2006 — with 68 attempts thwarted in 2007 compared with 17 in 2006, he said.
Ban claimed that while the insurgency drew strength from local people, much of the violence was led from abroad. "The support of foreign-based networks in providing leadership, planning, training, funding and equipment clearly remains crucial to its viability," he said.
Current violence in Afghanistan is at its highest level since a US-led invasion in 2001 to oust Taliban rulers.
The focus of the conflict has been in Afghanistan's southern and eastern provinces, but the insurgents are increasingly using Iraq-style tactics - such as roadside bombs, suicide attacks and kidnappings - against foreign and Afghan targets around the country.
"Afghanistan remains roughly divided between the generally more stable west and north, where security problems are linked to factionalism and criminality, and the south and east, characterised by an increasingly coordinated insurgency," the secretary general said.
He cited a number of worrying trends, including the gradual emergence of insurgent activity in the previously calm north-west, and the encroachment of insurgents into the two provinces of Logar and Wardak, which border the capital, Kabul.
Ban said the tactics of anti-government elements changed noticeably in 2007 in response to the superiority of Afghan and international security forces in conventional battles.
The opposition groups were forced "to adopt small-scale, asymmetric tactics aimed largely at the Afghan national security forces and, in some cases, civilians: improvised explosive devices, suicide attacks, assassinations and abductions", Ban said.
Ban also expressed concern at the increase in attacks on Afghan and international humanitarian workers. In more than 130 attacks, 40 aid workers were killed and 89 abducted, of whom seven were later killed by their captors, he said.
A committee of MPs found yesterday that the costs of operations by British forces in Afghanistan rose by 122% to £1.6bn.
Serbian leader calls snap polls
This is from the BBC. Given that many in the West particularly the U.S. have recognised Kosovo it would not be surprising if the nationalists opposed to Western influence should triumph in these elections. Perhaps the Serbian enclaves in Kosovo may attempt to join Serbia.\
As expected from an august organisation such as the BBC the legality and issues surrounding the unliteral declaration are left undscussed. BBC is now over the pond Fox news lite with British characteristics.
Serbian leader calls snap polls
Serbian President Boris Tadic has dissolved parliament, calling snap elections for 11 May.
The move follows last week's collapse of the governing coalition led by Prime Minister Vojislav Kostunica.
Ministers failed to agree on whether to suspend ties with the European Union, in protest at recognition of Kosovan independence by some EU members.
EU officials have said they hope Serbia's pro-EU parties will win the May elections.
The fresh ballot is seen as a way out of Serbia's deepening political crisis, says the BBC's Helen Fawkes in Belgrade.
Belgrade's dilemma
"The elections are a democratic way for citizens to say how Serbia should develop in years to come," President Tadic said in a statement.
Mr Kostunica, who leads the Democratic Party of Serbia (DSS), says recognition of Kosovo by major EU states is illegal.
"All parties want Serbia to join the EU, but the question is how - with or without Kosovo," he said last week.
President Tadic says Belgrade will only be able to defend its right to Kosovo if it joins the EU.
He says the main difference between himself and his prime minister is not on Kosovo but Serbia's "European and economic outlook".
Kosovo's declaration of independence on 17 February came nearly a decade after Nato forces expelled Serbian forces from the majority ethnic Albanian territory.
The US and most EU states have recognised Pristina's unilateral move.
Serbia and its ally Russia say they will never accept it.
As expected from an august organisation such as the BBC the legality and issues surrounding the unliteral declaration are left undscussed. BBC is now over the pond Fox news lite with British characteristics.
Serbian leader calls snap polls
Serbian President Boris Tadic has dissolved parliament, calling snap elections for 11 May.
The move follows last week's collapse of the governing coalition led by Prime Minister Vojislav Kostunica.
Ministers failed to agree on whether to suspend ties with the European Union, in protest at recognition of Kosovan independence by some EU members.
EU officials have said they hope Serbia's pro-EU parties will win the May elections.
The fresh ballot is seen as a way out of Serbia's deepening political crisis, says the BBC's Helen Fawkes in Belgrade.
Belgrade's dilemma
"The elections are a democratic way for citizens to say how Serbia should develop in years to come," President Tadic said in a statement.
Mr Kostunica, who leads the Democratic Party of Serbia (DSS), says recognition of Kosovo by major EU states is illegal.
"All parties want Serbia to join the EU, but the question is how - with or without Kosovo," he said last week.
President Tadic says Belgrade will only be able to defend its right to Kosovo if it joins the EU.
He says the main difference between himself and his prime minister is not on Kosovo but Serbia's "European and economic outlook".
Kosovo's declaration of independence on 17 February came nearly a decade after Nato forces expelled Serbian forces from the majority ethnic Albanian territory.
The US and most EU states have recognised Pristina's unilateral move.
Serbia and its ally Russia say they will never accept it.
Pentagon cancels release of controversial Iraq report
Well not exactly cancelled but certainly release will be restricted. I wonder how many newspapers other than this one will report on the issue. The contents are hardly news to anyone who has done much reading on the issue but the fact that a Pentagon source confirms that Saddam did not have any links with Al Qaeda is significant. No doubt a significant number of Americans will continue to believe that Hussein and Al Qaeda have close links in spite of the evidence against this opinion.
Pentagon cancels release of controversial Iraq report
By Warren P. Strobel | McClatchy Newspapers
Stephanie Sinclair / Chicago Tribune
WASHINGTON — The Pentagon on Wednesday canceled plans for broad public release of a study that found no pre-Iraq war link between late Iraqi President Saddam Hussein and the al Qaida terrorist network.
Rather than posting the report online and making officials available to discuss it, as had been planned, the U.S. Joint Forces Command said it would mail copies of the document to reporters — if they asked for it. The report won't be posted on the Internet.
The reversal highlighted the politically sensitive nature of its conclusions, which were first reported Monday by McClatchy.
In making their case for invading Iraq in 2002 and 2003, President Bush and his top national security aides claimed that Saddam's regime had ties to Osama bin Laden's al Qaida terrorist network.
But the study, based on more than 600,000 captured documents, including audio and video files, found that while Saddam sponsored terrorism, particularly against opponents of his regime and against Israel, there was no evidence of an al Qaida link.
The study comes at a difficult time for the Bush administration. The fifth anniversary of the Iraq war is approaching on March 19, and Bush is attempting to hold support for a continued large U.S. troop presence there following a report from his on-the-ground commander, Army Gen. David Petraeus, in early April.
Navy Capt. Dennis Moynihan, a spokesman for the Norfolk, Va.-based Joint Forces Command, said, "We're making the report available to anyone who wishes to have it, and we'll send it out via CD in the mail."
Moynihan declined further comment.
Bryan Whitman, a Pentagon spokesman, referred questions to Joint Forces Command.
An executive summary of the study says that Saddam's regime had interaction with terrorist groups, including Palestinian terror organizations and some pan-Islamic groups.
But "the predominant targets of Iraqi state terror operations were Iraqi citizens, both inside and outside of Iraq," says the summary, posted online by ABC News.
That confirms what many experts on Saddam's Iraq have long argued: that his security services were dedicated mainly to fighting threats to his rule.
The summary says that Saddam's secular regime increased cooperation with — and attempts to manipulate — Islamic fundamentalists after the 1991 Persian Gulf War, despite being leery of the Islamists. Iraqi leaders "concluded that in some cases, the benefits of associations outweighed the risks," it says.
(Nancy A. Youssef contributed to this report.)
Pentagon cancels release of controversial Iraq report
By Warren P. Strobel | McClatchy Newspapers
Stephanie Sinclair / Chicago Tribune
WASHINGTON — The Pentagon on Wednesday canceled plans for broad public release of a study that found no pre-Iraq war link between late Iraqi President Saddam Hussein and the al Qaida terrorist network.
Rather than posting the report online and making officials available to discuss it, as had been planned, the U.S. Joint Forces Command said it would mail copies of the document to reporters — if they asked for it. The report won't be posted on the Internet.
The reversal highlighted the politically sensitive nature of its conclusions, which were first reported Monday by McClatchy.
In making their case for invading Iraq in 2002 and 2003, President Bush and his top national security aides claimed that Saddam's regime had ties to Osama bin Laden's al Qaida terrorist network.
But the study, based on more than 600,000 captured documents, including audio and video files, found that while Saddam sponsored terrorism, particularly against opponents of his regime and against Israel, there was no evidence of an al Qaida link.
The study comes at a difficult time for the Bush administration. The fifth anniversary of the Iraq war is approaching on March 19, and Bush is attempting to hold support for a continued large U.S. troop presence there following a report from his on-the-ground commander, Army Gen. David Petraeus, in early April.
Navy Capt. Dennis Moynihan, a spokesman for the Norfolk, Va.-based Joint Forces Command, said, "We're making the report available to anyone who wishes to have it, and we'll send it out via CD in the mail."
Moynihan declined further comment.
Bryan Whitman, a Pentagon spokesman, referred questions to Joint Forces Command.
An executive summary of the study says that Saddam's regime had interaction with terrorist groups, including Palestinian terror organizations and some pan-Islamic groups.
But "the predominant targets of Iraqi state terror operations were Iraqi citizens, both inside and outside of Iraq," says the summary, posted online by ABC News.
That confirms what many experts on Saddam's Iraq have long argued: that his security services were dedicated mainly to fighting threats to his rule.
The summary says that Saddam's secular regime increased cooperation with — and attempts to manipulate — Islamic fundamentalists after the 1991 Persian Gulf War, despite being leery of the Islamists. Iraqi leaders "concluded that in some cases, the benefits of associations outweighed the risks," it says.
(Nancy A. Youssef contributed to this report.)
Wednesday, March 12, 2008
Gloria and God in the Philippines
This is from atimes. This corruption within the Church through government donations not only causes division within the Church it may cause some activist priests to leave the Church altogether and even join the Maoist insurgents. No doubt the policy of the Pope to discourage outright political activity by the Church is also a factor that makes many Church leaders cautious in their criticism of Arroyo.
Gloria and God in the Philippines
By Cher S Jimenez
MANILA - Mounting popular calls for President Gloria Macapagal-Arroyo's resignation on corruption charges have sharply divided the Philippines' politically powerful Roman Catholic clergy into pro- and anti- government camps.
Now new charges that the embattled premier may have curried favor with certain influential religious groups with alleged secret cash handouts threaten to further escalate the political conflict and sully the clergy's reputation as a source of moral authority amid the country's rough and tumble politics.
Numerous scandals have stuck to Arroyo's administration, starting with her alleged rigging of the 2004 elections, the alleged use of the country's fertilizer fund to finance her campaign drive, and now charges that her husband and a close political associate
received millions of
Gloria and God in the Philippines
By Cher S Jimenez
MANILA - Mounting popular calls for President Gloria Macapagal-Arroyo's resignation on corruption charges have sharply divided the Philippines' politically powerful Roman Catholic clergy into pro- and anti- government camps.
Now new charges that the embattled premier may have curried favor with certain influential religious groups with alleged secret cash handouts threaten to further escalate the political conflict and sully the clergy's reputation as a source of moral authority amid the country's rough and tumble politics.
Numerous scandals have stuck to Arroyo's administration, starting with her alleged rigging of the 2004 elections, the alleged use of the country's fertilizer fund to finance her campaign drive, and now charges that her husband and a close political associate
received millions of