The NATO force is called ISAF the International Security Assistance Force. However their priority is security for their own forces not Afghans as the article puts it: But U.S. and allied troops in trouble take precedenceKarzai has complained constantly about civilian casualties caused by these airstrikes. The response of the U.S. and NATO has been to increase the number of airstrikes rather than reduce them. Last fall, Afghan President Hamid Karzai, responding to the rising civilian death toll from airstrikes, publicly demanded that the United States find an alternative. But airstrikes only increased. The increasing civilian deaths will recruit more to the Taliban ranks. This will increase the number of attacks. In response the U.S. and others will increase troop levels and increase the level of casualties and violence. Welcome to the New American Century.
www.baltimoresun.com/news/bal-te.airstrikes28jul28,0,6638715.storybaltimoresun.comAfghan air war grows in intensityFears of civilian casualties rise as airstrikes increaseBy David WoodSun reporterJuly 28, 2008.Daily airstrikes by U.S. and allied fighter-bombers in Afghanistan have almost doubled since last summer, according to U.S. Air Force data, a trend that reflects increased insurgent attacks but also raises concerns about civilian casualties.The growing reliance on airstrikes by U.S. commanders in Afghanistan appears to mark a turn in the course of the war.Responding to requests from ground commanders, allied aircraft over the past week have pummeled enemy ground targets an average of 68 times a day across Afghanistan, dropping 500- and 2,000-pound guided bombs and strafing enemy forces with cannon fire, according to Air Force daily strike reports.A year ago, the Air Force was recording about 35 airstrikes per day in Afghanistan.Although the Air Force takes what it says are exhaustive measures to avoid accidental deaths, civilian casualties from airstrikes have spiked twice this year, from none in January to 23 in March to 60 so far this month, according to new, unpublished data from Human Rights Watch researcher Marc Garlasco, a former targeting chief for the Pentagon's Joint Staff.Taliban-led insurgents are attacking in significant numbers and staying to fight rather than engaging in traditional hit-and-run guerrilla tactics, according to U.S. commanders.In several recent incidents, U.S. and allied troops prevailed in pitched battles only after fighter-bombers showed up to blast the insurgents.The growing role of air power suggests that the war will require more than the additional troops recommended by President Bush and both presidential candidates. It might require more manned and unmanned aircraft from an already overstretched Air Force and Navy.And greater use of air power would likely result in more civilian casualties, in a conflict in which winning local loyalty is considered the key to success.Last fall, Afghan President Hamid Karzai, responding to the rising civilian death toll from airstrikes, publicly demanded that the United States find an alternative. But airstrikes only increased.Allied commanders are still investigating a July 6 airstrike that the Afghan government says killed 47 civilians on their way to a wedding."We deeply regret any incident where civilians are harmed," said Royal Navy Capt. Mike Finney, a spokesman for the U.S.-led military coalition in Afghanistan.Enemy 'emboldened'But the Air Force says it is only responding to the intensity of fighting on the ground."Let's face it, the enemy is more emboldened," said Air Force Maj. Gen. Douglas L. Raaberg, deputy commander of air operations in the region. Raaberg is a B-1 bomber pilot who has flown strike missions over Afghanistan as recently as last week."The Taliban, when they have an opportunity to take a stand, they are doing that," he said in a telephone interview from the region.Coalition aircraft have doubled the number of hours they spend each day on airborne "armed overwatch" of U.S. and allied convoys and other operations, he said. He acknowledged that strike missions also have doubled as ground commanders increasingly request air support.To meet the demand, allied air crews are flying more sorties each day, and more U.S. aircraft are on station with the recent diversion of the aircraft carrier USS Abraham Lincoln from Iraq operations to supporting operations in Afghanistan."We are shifting assets as needed to make sure we don't leave [ground forces] uncovered," Raaberg said.But the Air Force has to scramble to meet unexpected demand.A Taliban attack July 13, for example, nearly overran a remote U.S. and Afghan outpost near the Pakistani border. Insurgents held the upper hand in combat until an Air Force B-1 bomber flew in to drop 2,000-pound bombs, an unmanned Predator fired a Hellfire missile and other strike aircraft dropped bombs and strafed the enemy with cannon. The insurgents retreated, leaving nine American soldiers dead."The only reason they weren't completely overrun was air power, and that's the first time that has happened" in the Afghan war, said John McCreary, who retired in 2006 as a senior intelligence analyst for the Pentagon's Joint Staff."Coalition ground forces are not winning every battle, but they are winning every battle where they have air support," said McCreary, who follows Afghanistan closely and still assembles a daily open-source intelligence report.On July 20, Raaberg was piloting a B-1 bomber over Afghanistan when he was redirected to attack Taliban forces gathering for an assault on a U.S. forward operating base in Kunar province, in eastern Afghanistan near the border with Pakistan."They started attacking within half an hour of when I got there," Raaberg recalled. He said U.S. artillery fired at the enemy, followed by airstrikes, followed by more artillery and more airstrikes, "until we ran out of bombs."Defeating such Taliban attacks, he said, is "not so much air [power] saving the day, it's air combined with ground forces combined with our coalition partners. We're trying to use everything."Analysts who have studied casualty patterns in Afghanistan say that the vast majority are caused, deliberately or not, by the Taliban and other insurgents.According to Human Rights Watch, a nonpartisan international research organization, 929 Afghan civilians were killed in the fighting in 2006. Of those, 699 were killed by the Taliban and 230 by U.S. or coalition forces, including 116 by airstrikes.In 2007, 1,633 Afghan civilians died in the fighting, with 950 killed by the Taliban and 434 by U.S. and coalition forces, according to data provided by Garlasco. The rest died under unclear or unknown circumstances, he said.But while the number killed by U.S. or coalition ground forces stayed about the same, those killed by airstrikes more than doubled, to 321.A key reason for the increase is that the Taliban are "shielding" their fighters among Afghanistan's civilian population, Garlasco said."They actually go into peoples' homes, force them to stay there during a battle, force them to build defensive trenches for them - these are true Geneva Conventions violations," Garlasco said.Raaberg said the Air Force will not attack insurgents shielding themselves among civilians "and the enemy knows that."Unplanned strikesBut Garlasco said the Air Force has not taken as much care with its quick-reaction airstrike missions as it has with those planned in detail and reviewed by intelligence analysts and lawyers at the U.S. regional air operations headquarters in Qatar."In their planned airstrikes, they have virtually eliminated the danger of civilian casualties," Garlasco said. "It is in the unplanned airstrikes that you're seeing almost all of the civilian casualties."Such unplanned missions often involve urgent calls to support U.S. and allied troops who unexpectedly engage in battle. Or an unmanned surveillance plane might find a group of people mistakenly identified by targeters as insurgents.Raaberg said that for unplanned missions - such as the one in which he participated July 20 - the air command dispatches not just strike aircraft but intelligence and command aircraft, all in close coordination with ground commanders and tactical air controllers."It's a painstaking effort," he said. If insurgents are mixed in with civilians, "we will wait them out if we can" or ask the ground commander to flush them out.But U.S. and allied troops in trouble take precedence."My hat's off to the ones on the ground," Raaberg said."There's nothing more uncomfortable than to hear on the radio mortars and grenades going off. You've got to go help them."david.wood@baltsun.comCopyright © 2008, The Baltimore Sun
Wednesday, July 30, 2008
India nixes WTO deal to cut tariffs
The developed countries just love to blame these failures on developing countries. Of course developing countries often want to protect their own farmers from competition that could be disastrous for those farmers. At the same time the great free traders in the developed world subsidise their own farmers and thus make their products cheaper and cheaper simply because they are subsidised.
Personally I find it makes a great deal of sense in many cases to protect one's own agricultural production. This can provide food security in many cases whereas removing any protection can create disaster for agricultural producers. Note that Canada was excluded from the main discussions in Geneva. So much for Harper's great new presence on the global stage.
India nixes WTO deal to cut tariffs
BARRIE MCKENNA
From Wednesday's Globe and Mail
July 29, 2008 at 7:53 PM EDT
WASHINGTON — Sending a powerful message to the world's richest countries, India has rejected a long-sought deal to cut global trade barriers on the grounds that it wouldn't have protected poor farmers.
The deal fell apart in Geneva yesterday after India, one of the new standard bearers of an emboldened developing world, balked at U.S. demands that countries limit emergency tariffs to shield their farmers from sudden import surges.
The collapse of talks for the third time in seven years provoked a wave of recriminations and finger pointing.
Indian Trade Minister Kamal Nath, saying he was speaking for a collection of more than 30 developing countries, insisted he wasn't willing to sacrifice the "livelihood of poor and subsistence farmers" for the sake of a deal.
The United States accused India and China of ignoring a global food crisis and turning back the clock on free trade by decades. The World Trade Organization (WTO) estimated the deal would have boosted trade by as much as $130-billion (U.S.) a year.
U.S. Trade Representative Susan Schwab called India and China's stand "unconscionable" at a time of soaring food prices.
"In the face of a global food price crisis it is ironic it came down to how much and how fast nations could raise their barriers to food imports," Ms. Schwab told reporters in Geneva.
The collapse of the talks after 10 days of intense negotiations all but rules out a deal this year, and perhaps much longer as political fatigue and looming elections in the United States and elsewhere get in the way.
And getting them back on track may require a new consensus on globalization between rich and poor countries.
"The days when Western countries can swing a deal are over," said Lawrence Herman, a trade lawyer at Cassels Brock & Blackwell LLP in Toronto.
Indeed, Canada was excluded from the main discussions in Geneva, leaving Trade Minister Michael Fortier to spend the past week in bilateral talks with other trade ministers.
In the interests of speeding up negotiations, WTO chief Pascal Lamy had designated seven trading "powers" to hammer out a deal for everyone else. They were the United States, the European Union, Japan, Australia, Brazil, India and China — representing a cross-section of developed and developing countries. The plan was to get a deal among those powers, and then present the text to the full WTO.
Yesterday, Mr. Fortier said Mr. Lamy shouldn't bother getting ministers back together until the seven have a consensus.
Mr. Fortier, echoing several of his counterparts from the 153-member WTO, talked optimistically about resuming talks in the "not-so-distant future."
But he also said Canada, like the United States, would forge ahead with bilateral free-trade deals to expand access for its exporters in Europe, South Korea and elsewhere.
"Canada is a trading nation, and the growth and prosperity of our manufacturers, service providers and agricultural producers are improved by access to new markets," said Mr. Fortier, who has been on the job slightly more than a month.
In spite of the official optimism, trade experts said the so-called Doha round, launched in 2001 in Qatar, is effectively over, further marginalizing the 14-year-old WTO.
"For all practical purposes, the Doha round is dead," said Arturo Porzecanski, an economist at American University in Washington.
And that's a shame, he said, because a WTO deal would have helped curb soaring global food prices by cutting the subsidies and quotas that bog down agricultural trade.
Just as importantly, the failed talks stand out as a missed opportunity to deal with the key impediments to freer trade in agriculture, and many emerging areas, such as services. The round would also have begun the process of dismantling protectionist trade rules.
"No question this is a lost opportunity, for international business," Mr. Herman said. "There were just way too many unresolved issues to deal with in 10 days."
A disappointed Mr. Lamy said negotiators were "85 per cent" of the way toward a deal.
"Anyone coming from another planet, they would not believe after all the progress we made we were not able to find agreement," said Brazilian Foreign Minister Celso Amorim, visibly shaken. "It's unbelievable, unbelievable, that we failed over this one issue," he said.
But Mr. Fortier and other ministers acknowledged there was a multitude of unresolved issues standing in the way of a deal, suggesting a breakthrough was still a long way off.
Canada, like nearly all other countries, has fought to keep key sectors outside the WTO umbrella. Canada, for example, has insisted that the supply management system, which regulates dairy and poultry production, be kept off the table. It has also jealously guarded the right of the Canadian Wheat Board to be the sole seller of Canadian wheat on world markets, over the objections of the United States and the EU.
The WTO estimates the deal envisaged in Geneva this week would have boosted trade in farm products to the tune of $35-billion a year and the industrial sector by $95-billion a year. The biggest commercial prize was seen to be the freeing up of trade in services such as banking and telecommunications.
Canadian poultry and dairy farmers, who had insisted on continued protection of their sector, said they were simultaneously disappointed and relieved at the talks' collapse.
"The talks didn't seem to be favouring our interests so I guess no deal is better than a bad deal," said Mark Davies, chairman of the Canadian Turkey Marketing Agency.
With files from Juliane von Reppert-Bismarck in Geneva
Personally I find it makes a great deal of sense in many cases to protect one's own agricultural production. This can provide food security in many cases whereas removing any protection can create disaster for agricultural producers. Note that Canada was excluded from the main discussions in Geneva. So much for Harper's great new presence on the global stage.
India nixes WTO deal to cut tariffs
BARRIE MCKENNA
From Wednesday's Globe and Mail
July 29, 2008 at 7:53 PM EDT
WASHINGTON — Sending a powerful message to the world's richest countries, India has rejected a long-sought deal to cut global trade barriers on the grounds that it wouldn't have protected poor farmers.
The deal fell apart in Geneva yesterday after India, one of the new standard bearers of an emboldened developing world, balked at U.S. demands that countries limit emergency tariffs to shield their farmers from sudden import surges.
The collapse of talks for the third time in seven years provoked a wave of recriminations and finger pointing.
Indian Trade Minister Kamal Nath, saying he was speaking for a collection of more than 30 developing countries, insisted he wasn't willing to sacrifice the "livelihood of poor and subsistence farmers" for the sake of a deal.
The United States accused India and China of ignoring a global food crisis and turning back the clock on free trade by decades. The World Trade Organization (WTO) estimated the deal would have boosted trade by as much as $130-billion (U.S.) a year.
U.S. Trade Representative Susan Schwab called India and China's stand "unconscionable" at a time of soaring food prices.
"In the face of a global food price crisis it is ironic it came down to how much and how fast nations could raise their barriers to food imports," Ms. Schwab told reporters in Geneva.
The collapse of the talks after 10 days of intense negotiations all but rules out a deal this year, and perhaps much longer as political fatigue and looming elections in the United States and elsewhere get in the way.
And getting them back on track may require a new consensus on globalization between rich and poor countries.
"The days when Western countries can swing a deal are over," said Lawrence Herman, a trade lawyer at Cassels Brock & Blackwell LLP in Toronto.
Indeed, Canada was excluded from the main discussions in Geneva, leaving Trade Minister Michael Fortier to spend the past week in bilateral talks with other trade ministers.
In the interests of speeding up negotiations, WTO chief Pascal Lamy had designated seven trading "powers" to hammer out a deal for everyone else. They were the United States, the European Union, Japan, Australia, Brazil, India and China — representing a cross-section of developed and developing countries. The plan was to get a deal among those powers, and then present the text to the full WTO.
Yesterday, Mr. Fortier said Mr. Lamy shouldn't bother getting ministers back together until the seven have a consensus.
Mr. Fortier, echoing several of his counterparts from the 153-member WTO, talked optimistically about resuming talks in the "not-so-distant future."
But he also said Canada, like the United States, would forge ahead with bilateral free-trade deals to expand access for its exporters in Europe, South Korea and elsewhere.
"Canada is a trading nation, and the growth and prosperity of our manufacturers, service providers and agricultural producers are improved by access to new markets," said Mr. Fortier, who has been on the job slightly more than a month.
In spite of the official optimism, trade experts said the so-called Doha round, launched in 2001 in Qatar, is effectively over, further marginalizing the 14-year-old WTO.
"For all practical purposes, the Doha round is dead," said Arturo Porzecanski, an economist at American University in Washington.
And that's a shame, he said, because a WTO deal would have helped curb soaring global food prices by cutting the subsidies and quotas that bog down agricultural trade.
Just as importantly, the failed talks stand out as a missed opportunity to deal with the key impediments to freer trade in agriculture, and many emerging areas, such as services. The round would also have begun the process of dismantling protectionist trade rules.
"No question this is a lost opportunity, for international business," Mr. Herman said. "There were just way too many unresolved issues to deal with in 10 days."
A disappointed Mr. Lamy said negotiators were "85 per cent" of the way toward a deal.
"Anyone coming from another planet, they would not believe after all the progress we made we were not able to find agreement," said Brazilian Foreign Minister Celso Amorim, visibly shaken. "It's unbelievable, unbelievable, that we failed over this one issue," he said.
But Mr. Fortier and other ministers acknowledged there was a multitude of unresolved issues standing in the way of a deal, suggesting a breakthrough was still a long way off.
Canada, like nearly all other countries, has fought to keep key sectors outside the WTO umbrella. Canada, for example, has insisted that the supply management system, which regulates dairy and poultry production, be kept off the table. It has also jealously guarded the right of the Canadian Wheat Board to be the sole seller of Canadian wheat on world markets, over the objections of the United States and the EU.
The WTO estimates the deal envisaged in Geneva this week would have boosted trade in farm products to the tune of $35-billion a year and the industrial sector by $95-billion a year. The biggest commercial prize was seen to be the freeing up of trade in services such as banking and telecommunications.
Canadian poultry and dairy farmers, who had insisted on continued protection of their sector, said they were simultaneously disappointed and relieved at the talks' collapse.
"The talks didn't seem to be favouring our interests so I guess no deal is better than a bad deal," said Mark Davies, chairman of the Canadian Turkey Marketing Agency.
With files from Juliane von Reppert-Bismarck in Geneva
Tuesday, July 29, 2008
NAM ministerial conference in Tehran
There seems to be complete silence on this in the western mainstream press. I suppose the non-aligned countries are regarded as of no significance especially given they are meeting in Iran!
NAM ministerial conference opens in Tehran
www.chinaview.cn 2008-07-29 13:55:52
TEHRAN, July 29 (Xinhua) -- The 15th Ministerial Conference of the Non-Aligned Movement (NAM) opened here on Tuesday with an inaugural speech of Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad.
"The world is on the verge of change," Ahmadinejad said in his speech. "It is facing frustrating challenges."
Big powers are root of many problems, said Ahmadinejad, adding that poverty is a result of wrong policy of big powers.
He accused big powers of trying to keep a monopoly on technology, saying that nuclear powers are blocking peaceful nuclear work of other states.
He said that the NAM which has the capacity for peace and justice can establish an arbitration council and can defend countries against invasion and discrimination.
The NAM potentials can be tapped to serve global development, Ahmadinejad added.
Representatives from 118 members, 15 observer members and 8 international and regional organizations including 60 foreign ministers attended the conference at the Conference Hall of the Organization of the Islamic Conference.
The conference is expected to review the developments and implementation of decisions made in the 14th NAM Summit in Havana in 2006, evaluate the latest international developments, particularly those related to the issues of interests for NAM member states, and also assess the achievements made so far in the process of revitalization and strengthening of the NAM since the holding of the last summit.
The NAM, founded in 1961 with 118 members as of 2007, is an international organization of states considering themselves not formally aligned with or against any major power bloc. China became an observer to the NAM in 1992 which is made up of mostly developing countries from Africa, Asia, Latin America and the Caribbean.
NAM ministerial conference opens in Tehran
www.chinaview.cn 2008-07-29 13:55:52
TEHRAN, July 29 (Xinhua) -- The 15th Ministerial Conference of the Non-Aligned Movement (NAM) opened here on Tuesday with an inaugural speech of Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad.
"The world is on the verge of change," Ahmadinejad said in his speech. "It is facing frustrating challenges."
Big powers are root of many problems, said Ahmadinejad, adding that poverty is a result of wrong policy of big powers.
He accused big powers of trying to keep a monopoly on technology, saying that nuclear powers are blocking peaceful nuclear work of other states.
He said that the NAM which has the capacity for peace and justice can establish an arbitration council and can defend countries against invasion and discrimination.
The NAM potentials can be tapped to serve global development, Ahmadinejad added.
Representatives from 118 members, 15 observer members and 8 international and regional organizations including 60 foreign ministers attended the conference at the Conference Hall of the Organization of the Islamic Conference.
The conference is expected to review the developments and implementation of decisions made in the 14th NAM Summit in Havana in 2006, evaluate the latest international developments, particularly those related to the issues of interests for NAM member states, and also assess the achievements made so far in the process of revitalization and strengthening of the NAM since the holding of the last summit.
The NAM, founded in 1961 with 118 members as of 2007, is an international organization of states considering themselves not formally aligned with or against any major power bloc. China became an observer to the NAM in 1992 which is made up of mostly developing countries from Africa, Asia, Latin America and the Caribbean.
U.S. warned against Pakistan missile strikes
Apparently the U.S. carried out the strikes (and others) without the permission of the Pakistani government. Pakistani intelligence already seems to be reacting strongly against the U.S. nuclear deal with India by undermining Indian influence in Afghanistan and certainly Pakistan's relationships with the Karzai government are frigid. No doubt Pakistan is ready to cut a deal with the Taliban and other foes of the Karzai government if it can. The U.S. is helping to create an even more anti-U.S. feeling in Pakistan so that if the Pakistan government takes action to curb the power of the U.S. in Afghanistan and Pakistan that will have a great deal of public support. The U.S. simply does not seem to care about the sensibilities of the Pakistanis about the issue of sovereignty. This same lack of sensitivity is evident in bombings by the U.S. in Afghanistan as well. Karzai has complained mightily without changing the policy one iota. In fact now that bomber McNeill is gone the policy is still continuing under his successor.
US warned against missile strikes Tuesday, July 29, 2008- • Repeated US missile strikes in Pakistan could harm relations between the two countries, a top Pakistani military officer told a visiting US commander yesterday, a statement said.
The warning by General Tariq Majid, chairman of Pakistan's joint chiefs of staff, to Lieutenant General Martin Dempsey, head of US Central Command, came hours after a suspected US missile strike in Pakistan's tribal belt.
"Expressing concern over repeated cross-border missile attacks/firing by coalition and Afghan forces, General Tariq said that our sovereignty and territorial integrity must be respected," a Pakistani military statement said.
"Any violation in this regard could be detrimental to bilateral relations," it said.
Majid "also reemphasised that Pakistan armed forces are capable of handling any challenges to our security."
Pakistani officials said a suspected missile strike by US-led coalition forces in Afghanistan early yesterday had killed three foreign militants and three boys in the South Waziristan tribal region.
The United States has stepped up missile attacks in Pakistan in recent months in response to a surge in violence in parts of Afghanistan bordering Pakistan. Fears have also grown in Pakistan of a possible US offensive in the tribal areas.
Rising violence in Afghanistan has meanwhile, prompted harsh words from Afghan President Hamid Karzai, who accused Pakistani intelligence of orchestrating an attack on the Indian embassy in Kabul earlier this month.
Pakistan's Majid said the "baseless allegations against Pakistan could affect mutual trust and would definitely influence our efforts in the war against terror."
US warned against missile strikes Tuesday, July 29, 2008- • Repeated US missile strikes in Pakistan could harm relations between the two countries, a top Pakistani military officer told a visiting US commander yesterday, a statement said.
The warning by General Tariq Majid, chairman of Pakistan's joint chiefs of staff, to Lieutenant General Martin Dempsey, head of US Central Command, came hours after a suspected US missile strike in Pakistan's tribal belt.
"Expressing concern over repeated cross-border missile attacks/firing by coalition and Afghan forces, General Tariq said that our sovereignty and territorial integrity must be respected," a Pakistani military statement said.
"Any violation in this regard could be detrimental to bilateral relations," it said.
Majid "also reemphasised that Pakistan armed forces are capable of handling any challenges to our security."
Pakistani officials said a suspected missile strike by US-led coalition forces in Afghanistan early yesterday had killed three foreign militants and three boys in the South Waziristan tribal region.
The United States has stepped up missile attacks in Pakistan in recent months in response to a surge in violence in parts of Afghanistan bordering Pakistan. Fears have also grown in Pakistan of a possible US offensive in the tribal areas.
Rising violence in Afghanistan has meanwhile, prompted harsh words from Afghan President Hamid Karzai, who accused Pakistani intelligence of orchestrating an attack on the Indian embassy in Kabul earlier this month.
Pakistan's Majid said the "baseless allegations against Pakistan could affect mutual trust and would definitely influence our efforts in the war against terror."
Bush praises Pakistan just hours after U.S. strike.
This is from the NY Times.
Gilani may be able to neglect to mention the missile strike on Pakistani soil but it will be noticed in Pakistan as I note in another post. This is the second time that Midhat Umar has been reported killed so we still will need to wait to have the kill confirmed. Apparently seven people were killed including the head of a school. That the U.S. should carried out this attack just hours before Bush met with Gilani is meant to send a message to Pakistan. With other attacks inside Pakistan and with the new nuclear deal with India, the U.S. can expect that whatever Pakistan may say they will probably work for some type of deal with the Taliban and even try to undermine the Karzai government and also the influence of India in Afghanistan.
July 29, 2008
Bush Praises Pakistan Just Hours After U.S. Strike
By STEVEN LEE MYERS
WASHINGTON — President Bush on Monday praised Pakistan’s commitment to fighting extremists along its deteriorating border with Afghanistan, only hours after an American missile strike destroyed what American and Pakistani officials described as a militant outpost in the region, killing at least six fighters.
Mr. Bush, meeting with Pakistan’s prime minister, Yousaf Raza Gilani, at the White House, sought to minimize growing concerns that Pakistan’s willingness to fight extremists was waning, allowing the Taliban and Al Qaeda to regroup inside Pakistan and plan new attacks there and beyond.
Senior American officials, including Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice just three days ago, publicly scolded Pakistan for not doing more to root out safe havens like the one bombed on Monday in Azam Warsak, a village in South Waziristan near the Afghan border.
Among those believed to have been killed in the missile attack, evidently carried out by a remotely piloted aircraft operated by the Central Intelligence Agency, was an Egyptian identified as a senior Qaeda trainer and weapons expert, according to residents and officials in the area, as well as American officials. Neither the operative’s identity nor that of the others has been confirmed.
The officials spoke anonymously because of the political and diplomatic sensitivities of attacking targets in Pakistan.
The Egyptian operative, Midhat Mursi al-Sayid Umar, also known as Abu Khabab al-Masri, appears on the State Department’s list of 37 most-wanted terrorists, with a reward of $5 million for his capture. He is said to be the man who designed the explosives that Richard C. Reid, the so-called shoe bomber, hid in his sneakers during a failed attempt to blow up an airliner on a flight from Paris to Miami in 2001.
He was falsely reported to have been killed in a similar attack in January 2006 in news accounts that attributed the claim to Pakistani officials. The timing of Monday’s strike, the latest in a series by remotely piloted American aircraft inside Pakistan, coincided with the first official visit by Mr. Gilani to the United States.
The meetings on Monday carefully sidestepped the political and diplomatic sensitivities that have strained relations ever since political opponents of the country’s authoritarian president, Pervez Musharraf, won elections this year and formed a governing coalition lead by Mr. Gilani.
Neither Mr. Bush nor Mr. Gilani discussed the American strike inside Pakistan, nor recent episodes like the American bombing of a border post in June that killed 11 Pakistani soldiers and inflamed anti-American sentiment. The two leaders appeared eager to show that they were working together closely and respectfully.
With Mr. Gilani by his side on the South Lawn, Mr. Bush praised Pakistan as “a strong ally and a vibrant democracy” and expressed appreciation for “the prime minister’s strong words against the extremists and terrorists.”
“We talked about the need for us to make sure that the Afghan border is secure, as best as possible,” Mr. Bush said before the leaders continued their discussions. “Pakistan has made a very strong commitment to that.”
In his brief remarks and in a joint statement later, Mr. Bush also expressed respect for Pakistan’s sovereignty.
Mr. Gilani, himself seeking to demonstrate his government’s willingness to fight extremism, noted that his party’s leader, Benazir Bhutto, died in an attack by extremists in December.
“This is our own war,” he said, speaking in English. “This is a war which is against Pakistan. And we’ll fight for our own past. And that is because I have lost my own leader, Benazir Bhutto, because of the militants.”
Mr. Bush also announced that the United States would provide $115 million in food aid, including $42 million in the next nine months, to help Pakistan deal with rising food prices, and pledged to support Congressional efforts to expand American aid to areas beyond security and military affairs, including education, energy and agriculture.
The focus of their meetings remained terrorism, though. Asked about tensions in the relationship, the White House press secretary, Dana M. Perino, acknowledged what she described as “the complex issues on the border” between Pakistan and Afghanistan but suggested that differences were overblown.
“It’s tense in that we are working together to try to fight counterterrorism,” she said, “but I think that we are much more on the same page than some people would like to paint.”
In Pakistan, officials and a resident with ties to the Taliban in South Waziristan said Monday’s strike occurred before dawn. At least two missiles hit a compound that had been used as a school, the officials said.
The local resident, who spoke on the condition of anonymity, said there had been a meeting at the compound on Sunday, but that many of the attendees had left. A local militant commander, Maulavi Nazir, said the strike left seven people dead, including the head of the school. He complained of frequent American strikes in Pakistan and violations of its airspace.
In Washington, officials were still awaiting confirmation that Mr. Midhat, the Qaeda operative, was among those killed, an American official said.
If so, the official said, it would deal Al Qaeda a significant blow.
“This guy is one of their absolute key specialists in poisons and explosives,” the official said. “He was also a key trainer of people involved in operations inside and outside the tribal areas.”
Mr. Midhat helped Al Qaeda and Taliban plotters tailor bombs or poisons for specific terrorist missions, according to the official and the State Department’s rewards list..
“It doesn’t mean they can’t find other trainers,” the official said, “but they will have lost their most seasoned trainer.”
Ismail Khan contributed reporting from Peshawar, Pakistan, Pir Zubair Shah from Islamabad, and Eric Schmitt from Washington.
Gilani may be able to neglect to mention the missile strike on Pakistani soil but it will be noticed in Pakistan as I note in another post. This is the second time that Midhat Umar has been reported killed so we still will need to wait to have the kill confirmed. Apparently seven people were killed including the head of a school. That the U.S. should carried out this attack just hours before Bush met with Gilani is meant to send a message to Pakistan. With other attacks inside Pakistan and with the new nuclear deal with India, the U.S. can expect that whatever Pakistan may say they will probably work for some type of deal with the Taliban and even try to undermine the Karzai government and also the influence of India in Afghanistan.
July 29, 2008
Bush Praises Pakistan Just Hours After U.S. Strike
By STEVEN LEE MYERS
WASHINGTON — President Bush on Monday praised Pakistan’s commitment to fighting extremists along its deteriorating border with Afghanistan, only hours after an American missile strike destroyed what American and Pakistani officials described as a militant outpost in the region, killing at least six fighters.
Mr. Bush, meeting with Pakistan’s prime minister, Yousaf Raza Gilani, at the White House, sought to minimize growing concerns that Pakistan’s willingness to fight extremists was waning, allowing the Taliban and Al Qaeda to regroup inside Pakistan and plan new attacks there and beyond.
Senior American officials, including Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice just three days ago, publicly scolded Pakistan for not doing more to root out safe havens like the one bombed on Monday in Azam Warsak, a village in South Waziristan near the Afghan border.
Among those believed to have been killed in the missile attack, evidently carried out by a remotely piloted aircraft operated by the Central Intelligence Agency, was an Egyptian identified as a senior Qaeda trainer and weapons expert, according to residents and officials in the area, as well as American officials. Neither the operative’s identity nor that of the others has been confirmed.
The officials spoke anonymously because of the political and diplomatic sensitivities of attacking targets in Pakistan.
The Egyptian operative, Midhat Mursi al-Sayid Umar, also known as Abu Khabab al-Masri, appears on the State Department’s list of 37 most-wanted terrorists, with a reward of $5 million for his capture. He is said to be the man who designed the explosives that Richard C. Reid, the so-called shoe bomber, hid in his sneakers during a failed attempt to blow up an airliner on a flight from Paris to Miami in 2001.
He was falsely reported to have been killed in a similar attack in January 2006 in news accounts that attributed the claim to Pakistani officials. The timing of Monday’s strike, the latest in a series by remotely piloted American aircraft inside Pakistan, coincided with the first official visit by Mr. Gilani to the United States.
The meetings on Monday carefully sidestepped the political and diplomatic sensitivities that have strained relations ever since political opponents of the country’s authoritarian president, Pervez Musharraf, won elections this year and formed a governing coalition lead by Mr. Gilani.
Neither Mr. Bush nor Mr. Gilani discussed the American strike inside Pakistan, nor recent episodes like the American bombing of a border post in June that killed 11 Pakistani soldiers and inflamed anti-American sentiment. The two leaders appeared eager to show that they were working together closely and respectfully.
With Mr. Gilani by his side on the South Lawn, Mr. Bush praised Pakistan as “a strong ally and a vibrant democracy” and expressed appreciation for “the prime minister’s strong words against the extremists and terrorists.”
“We talked about the need for us to make sure that the Afghan border is secure, as best as possible,” Mr. Bush said before the leaders continued their discussions. “Pakistan has made a very strong commitment to that.”
In his brief remarks and in a joint statement later, Mr. Bush also expressed respect for Pakistan’s sovereignty.
Mr. Gilani, himself seeking to demonstrate his government’s willingness to fight extremism, noted that his party’s leader, Benazir Bhutto, died in an attack by extremists in December.
“This is our own war,” he said, speaking in English. “This is a war which is against Pakistan. And we’ll fight for our own past. And that is because I have lost my own leader, Benazir Bhutto, because of the militants.”
Mr. Bush also announced that the United States would provide $115 million in food aid, including $42 million in the next nine months, to help Pakistan deal with rising food prices, and pledged to support Congressional efforts to expand American aid to areas beyond security and military affairs, including education, energy and agriculture.
The focus of their meetings remained terrorism, though. Asked about tensions in the relationship, the White House press secretary, Dana M. Perino, acknowledged what she described as “the complex issues on the border” between Pakistan and Afghanistan but suggested that differences were overblown.
“It’s tense in that we are working together to try to fight counterterrorism,” she said, “but I think that we are much more on the same page than some people would like to paint.”
In Pakistan, officials and a resident with ties to the Taliban in South Waziristan said Monday’s strike occurred before dawn. At least two missiles hit a compound that had been used as a school, the officials said.
The local resident, who spoke on the condition of anonymity, said there had been a meeting at the compound on Sunday, but that many of the attendees had left. A local militant commander, Maulavi Nazir, said the strike left seven people dead, including the head of the school. He complained of frequent American strikes in Pakistan and violations of its airspace.
In Washington, officials were still awaiting confirmation that Mr. Midhat, the Qaeda operative, was among those killed, an American official said.
If so, the official said, it would deal Al Qaeda a significant blow.
“This guy is one of their absolute key specialists in poisons and explosives,” the official said. “He was also a key trainer of people involved in operations inside and outside the tribal areas.”
Mr. Midhat helped Al Qaeda and Taliban plotters tailor bombs or poisons for specific terrorist missions, according to the official and the State Department’s rewards list..
“It doesn’t mean they can’t find other trainers,” the official said, “but they will have lost their most seasoned trainer.”
Ismail Khan contributed reporting from Peshawar, Pakistan, Pir Zubair Shah from Islamabad, and Eric Schmitt from Washington.
Monday, July 28, 2008
Bush meets with Prime Minister Gilani of Pakistan.
This is from Washington Post.
Quick summary:
Blah blah...democracy hurrah...blah blah militants boo...blah blah...sovereignty hurrah...blah blah..extremists boo....blah blah....self-determination hurrah......terrorists boo....blah blah...co-operation hurrah.......blah blah...thank you all.
Bush Meets With Prime Minister Gilani of PakistanBush, Gilani Hold a Media Availability
CQ TranscriptsMonday, July 28, 2008; 12:28 PM
PRESIDENT GEORGE W. BUSH: Mr. Prime Minister, welcome. It's been a -- it's been a very constructive morning.
PRIME MINISTER SYED YOUSUF RAZA GILANI OF PAKISTAN: Thank you.
BUSH: We've had a good meeting in the Oval Office. And then I'm going to have lunch with the prime minister here in the main White House. And that's fitting. After all, Pakistan is a strong ally and a vibrant democracy, and the United States supports the democracy and supports the sovereignty of Pakistan.
We talked about areas of concern. Of course, we're going to spend a lot of time on the economy, about how the United States and Pakistan can continue to cooperate for economic benefits for all the people, of Pakistan and for our own country, for that matter.
And of course we talked about the common threat we face, extremists who -- who are very dangerous people. We talked about the need for us to, you know, make sure that, you know, Afghan border is secure as best as possible. Pakistan's made a very strong commitment to that.
I told the prime minister that the United States is committed to helping the Afghan democracy succeed, which is in Pakistan's interest. After all, the prime minister wants there to be a peaceful country on his border.
(inaudible), I repeat, respects the sovereignty of this democracy. And we also appreciate the prime minister's strong words against the extremists and terrorists who not only would do us harm, but have harmed people inside Pakistan.
So we welcome you, here, Mr. Prime Minister. And I'm looking forward to having a good lunch with you after -- after your statement.
GILANI: Thank you so much.
(inaudible)
BUSH: Please, yes, absolutely.
GILANI: First of all, I want to thank Mr. President Bush for inviting me to United States. And this is my second meeting with the president. Previously, I met Mr. President in Sharm el-Sheikh, and today again I'm meeting Mr. President.
And I appreciate what he has said about supporting democracy, supporting sovereignty, looking after the interests -- and in a lot of other areas, there is a cooperation between us. We are -- Pakistan and the United States have very cordial relations, and bilateral relations, and this is not of today. This is for over 60 years, since the creation of Pakistan.
We were inspired with their slogan of liberty and self- determination, and now we want to further improve our relations.
We are committed to fight against those extremists and terrorists who are destroying and making the world not safe. And that is -- this is our own war. This is a war which is against Pakistan, and we'll fight for our own cause.
And that is because I have lost my own leader, Benazir Bhutto, because of the militants. And, therefore, I assure the United States and the people of the United States that the majority of the people of Pakistan and the people of those areas in NWFP and FATA -- they are the patriots, the loyalists. They want peace in the world. And they want to cooperate.
And there are few militants -- there are hand-picked people, militants who are disturbing this peace. And I assure Mr. President we'll work together for democracy and for the prosperity and peace of the world.
Thank you very much.
BUSH: Thank you, sir. Thanks.
Thank you all.
Quick summary:
Blah blah...democracy hurrah...blah blah militants boo...blah blah...sovereignty hurrah...blah blah..extremists boo....blah blah....self-determination hurrah......terrorists boo....blah blah...co-operation hurrah.......blah blah...thank you all.
Bush Meets With Prime Minister Gilani of PakistanBush, Gilani Hold a Media Availability
CQ TranscriptsMonday, July 28, 2008; 12:28 PM
PRESIDENT GEORGE W. BUSH: Mr. Prime Minister, welcome. It's been a -- it's been a very constructive morning.
PRIME MINISTER SYED YOUSUF RAZA GILANI OF PAKISTAN: Thank you.
BUSH: We've had a good meeting in the Oval Office. And then I'm going to have lunch with the prime minister here in the main White House. And that's fitting. After all, Pakistan is a strong ally and a vibrant democracy, and the United States supports the democracy and supports the sovereignty of Pakistan.
We talked about areas of concern. Of course, we're going to spend a lot of time on the economy, about how the United States and Pakistan can continue to cooperate for economic benefits for all the people, of Pakistan and for our own country, for that matter.
And of course we talked about the common threat we face, extremists who -- who are very dangerous people. We talked about the need for us to, you know, make sure that, you know, Afghan border is secure as best as possible. Pakistan's made a very strong commitment to that.
I told the prime minister that the United States is committed to helping the Afghan democracy succeed, which is in Pakistan's interest. After all, the prime minister wants there to be a peaceful country on his border.
(inaudible), I repeat, respects the sovereignty of this democracy. And we also appreciate the prime minister's strong words against the extremists and terrorists who not only would do us harm, but have harmed people inside Pakistan.
So we welcome you, here, Mr. Prime Minister. And I'm looking forward to having a good lunch with you after -- after your statement.
GILANI: Thank you so much.
(inaudible)
BUSH: Please, yes, absolutely.
GILANI: First of all, I want to thank Mr. President Bush for inviting me to United States. And this is my second meeting with the president. Previously, I met Mr. President in Sharm el-Sheikh, and today again I'm meeting Mr. President.
And I appreciate what he has said about supporting democracy, supporting sovereignty, looking after the interests -- and in a lot of other areas, there is a cooperation between us. We are -- Pakistan and the United States have very cordial relations, and bilateral relations, and this is not of today. This is for over 60 years, since the creation of Pakistan.
We were inspired with their slogan of liberty and self- determination, and now we want to further improve our relations.
We are committed to fight against those extremists and terrorists who are destroying and making the world not safe. And that is -- this is our own war. This is a war which is against Pakistan, and we'll fight for our own cause.
And that is because I have lost my own leader, Benazir Bhutto, because of the militants. And, therefore, I assure the United States and the people of the United States that the majority of the people of Pakistan and the people of those areas in NWFP and FATA -- they are the patriots, the loyalists. They want peace in the world. And they want to cooperate.
And there are few militants -- there are hand-picked people, militants who are disturbing this peace. And I assure Mr. President we'll work together for democracy and for the prosperity and peace of the world.
Thank you very much.
BUSH: Thank you, sir. Thanks.
Thank you all.
Sunday, July 27, 2008
Democrats: No blank check for Iraq war.
This is from wiredispatch.
I have never heard Obama complain about military spending overall. He wants to send more troops to Afghanistan. It seems as if the Democrats might be willing to grant blank checks for the Afghan war! Anyway they do not seem to have been successful at cutting budgets for the Iraq war.
No 'blank check' for Iraq war, Democrats say
Democratic Sen. Jack Reed: US can't afford GOP strategy of writing blank checks for Iraq war
ANDREW MIGAAP News
Jul 26, 2008 15:16 EST
Sen. Jack Reed says America can't afford the Republican strategy of continuing to write blank checks for the Iraq war.
"At a time when the war in Iraq costs $10 billion each month, Americans are paying $4 a gallon for gasoline, and our economy is struggling, we cannot continue down the path that President Bush and Senator McCain propose: writing blank check after blank check," Reed, a Rhode Island Democrat, said Saturday in his party's weekly radio address.
Reed said Democrats have outlined a better plan to carefully redeploy combat troops out of Iraq and give them missions such as counterterrorism and training Iraq's military.
"Make no mistake: This is a plan that seizes on the progress and sacrifices our troops have made in Iraq, and it recognizes the desire of the Iraqi people to take control of their own destiny," he said.
Reed and Republican Sen. Chuck Hagel of Nebraska accompanied presumed Democratic presidential nominee Barack Obama on a six-day trip to Afghanistan, Iraq, Jordan and Kuwait that ended this week.
Obama says he will pursue a 16-month timetable for withdrawing combat troops if he is elected. That idea won conditional support on Monday from Iraqi leaders during talks in Baghdad.
"Our proposal to responsibly redeploy American troops out of Iraq will send a message to the Iraqi government that it must do more," Reed said. "And it will encourage more progress toward Iraqi self-sufficiency."
A West Point graduate and former Army Ranger, Reed emerged as one of his party's leading anti-war voices after he voted against authorizing the war. Reed, who serves on the Senate Armed Services Committee, is a potential vice presidential pick for Obama.
"Some of the soldiers and Marines we met in the field are on their third and fourth tours of duty," Reed said. "And they deserve a policy that is worthy of their sacrifice."
Source: AP News
I have never heard Obama complain about military spending overall. He wants to send more troops to Afghanistan. It seems as if the Democrats might be willing to grant blank checks for the Afghan war! Anyway they do not seem to have been successful at cutting budgets for the Iraq war.
No 'blank check' for Iraq war, Democrats say
Democratic Sen. Jack Reed: US can't afford GOP strategy of writing blank checks for Iraq war
ANDREW MIGAAP News
Jul 26, 2008 15:16 EST
Sen. Jack Reed says America can't afford the Republican strategy of continuing to write blank checks for the Iraq war.
"At a time when the war in Iraq costs $10 billion each month, Americans are paying $4 a gallon for gasoline, and our economy is struggling, we cannot continue down the path that President Bush and Senator McCain propose: writing blank check after blank check," Reed, a Rhode Island Democrat, said Saturday in his party's weekly radio address.
Reed said Democrats have outlined a better plan to carefully redeploy combat troops out of Iraq and give them missions such as counterterrorism and training Iraq's military.
"Make no mistake: This is a plan that seizes on the progress and sacrifices our troops have made in Iraq, and it recognizes the desire of the Iraqi people to take control of their own destiny," he said.
Reed and Republican Sen. Chuck Hagel of Nebraska accompanied presumed Democratic presidential nominee Barack Obama on a six-day trip to Afghanistan, Iraq, Jordan and Kuwait that ended this week.
Obama says he will pursue a 16-month timetable for withdrawing combat troops if he is elected. That idea won conditional support on Monday from Iraqi leaders during talks in Baghdad.
"Our proposal to responsibly redeploy American troops out of Iraq will send a message to the Iraqi government that it must do more," Reed said. "And it will encourage more progress toward Iraqi self-sufficiency."
A West Point graduate and former Army Ranger, Reed emerged as one of his party's leading anti-war voices after he voted against authorizing the war. Reed, who serves on the Senate Armed Services Committee, is a potential vice presidential pick for Obama.
"Some of the soldiers and Marines we met in the field are on their third and fourth tours of duty," Reed said. "And they deserve a policy that is worthy of their sacrifice."
Source: AP News
Bolton: U.S. should help Israel hit Iran
No doubt Israel already receives intelligence from the U.S. about Iran or perhaps it is the other way around! Fortunately, Bolton is now not in a position of power. Bolton is famous or infamous for his outspoken and aggressive neo-con foreign policy views. This is from the Jewishledger.
Bolton: U.S. should help Israel hit Iran
Published: Wednesday, July 23, 2008 9:08 PM EDT
WASHINGTON, D.C. (JTA) -- Former U.N. ambassador John Bolton said the United States should assist Israel in any strike on Iran's nuclear facilities. The ex-U.S. envoy in an op-ed in the July 15 Wall Street Journal said the United States must consider what assistance to extend to Israel before and after an airstrike. “We will be blamed for the strike anyway, and certainly feel whatever negative consequences result, so there is compelling logic to make it as successful as possible," wrote Bolton, who was known for his hawkish foreign policy views. "At a minimum, we should place no obstacles in Israel's path, and facilitate its efforts where we can." Bolton said the efforts to curb Iran's nuclear ambitions through sanctions had failed, and even if they could still be enacted, the time for their effectiveness has passed. He also lashed out at presumptive Democratic presidential nominee Barack Obama for advocating the threat of sanctions and incentives for changed behavior to divert Tehran from its present course. Bolton had only a slightly milder appraisal of presumptive Republican nominee John McCain's approach, describing the Arizona senator's call for a workable missile defense system to protect the United States from the Iranian threat "only a component of a post-failure policy."
Bolton: U.S. should help Israel hit Iran
Published: Wednesday, July 23, 2008 9:08 PM EDT
WASHINGTON, D.C. (JTA) -- Former U.N. ambassador John Bolton said the United States should assist Israel in any strike on Iran's nuclear facilities. The ex-U.S. envoy in an op-ed in the July 15 Wall Street Journal said the United States must consider what assistance to extend to Israel before and after an airstrike. “We will be blamed for the strike anyway, and certainly feel whatever negative consequences result, so there is compelling logic to make it as successful as possible," wrote Bolton, who was known for his hawkish foreign policy views. "At a minimum, we should place no obstacles in Israel's path, and facilitate its efforts where we can." Bolton said the efforts to curb Iran's nuclear ambitions through sanctions had failed, and even if they could still be enacted, the time for their effectiveness has passed. He also lashed out at presumptive Democratic presidential nominee Barack Obama for advocating the threat of sanctions and incentives for changed behavior to divert Tehran from its present course. Bolton had only a slightly milder appraisal of presumptive Republican nominee John McCain's approach, describing the Arizona senator's call for a workable missile defense system to protect the United States from the Iranian threat "only a component of a post-failure policy."
The 25 most vicious Iraq war profiteers
The list and descriptions of the companies are at businesspundit.
The 25 Most Vicious Iraq War Profiteers
The Iraq war is many things to different people. It is called a strategic blunder and a monstrous injustice and sometimes even a patriotic mission, much to the chagrin of rational human beings. For many big companies, however, the war is something far different: a lucrative cash-cow. The years-long, ongoing military effort has resurrected fears of the so-called “military-industrial complex.” Media pundits are outraged at private companies scooping up huge, no-questions-asked contracts to manufacture weapons, rebuild infrastructure, or anything else the government deems necessary to win (or plant its flag in Iraq). No matter what your stance on the war, it pays to know where your tax dollars are being spent.
Following is a detailed rundown of the 25 companies squeezing the most profit from this controversial conflict.
The 25 Most Vicious Iraq War Profiteers
The Iraq war is many things to different people. It is called a strategic blunder and a monstrous injustice and sometimes even a patriotic mission, much to the chagrin of rational human beings. For many big companies, however, the war is something far different: a lucrative cash-cow. The years-long, ongoing military effort has resurrected fears of the so-called “military-industrial complex.” Media pundits are outraged at private companies scooping up huge, no-questions-asked contracts to manufacture weapons, rebuild infrastructure, or anything else the government deems necessary to win (or plant its flag in Iraq). No matter what your stance on the war, it pays to know where your tax dollars are being spent.
Following is a detailed rundown of the 25 companies squeezing the most profit from this controversial conflict.
Saturday, July 26, 2008
How many US Troops will remain in Iraq
This is from VOA hardly a hard leftist source! The US seems to be doing nothing to build up the Iraqi Air Force. I expect this is deliberate so that control of air space remains in US hands. In fact I gather all air traffic in Iraq is under US control!
As this article points out withdrawal of troops from Iraq means combat troops but there could still be many thousands of troops remaining. This is often overlooked when talking about bringing home the troops. A sovereign Iraq needs a big complement of US troops to look after US interests, the pampered in the embassy mansion, contractors, and so forth.
VOICE OF AMERICA
VOA Home
As Surge Ends, How Many US Troops Will Remain in Iraq?
By Al Pessin Pentagon24 July 2008
Pessin report - Download (MP3) Pessin report - Listen (MP3)
The U.S. troop surge in Iraq has now ended, with the top general's spokesman confirming to VOA that all the combat troops sent in last year to bolster security efforts have ended their tours of duty and left the country. But according to the Pentagon there are about 16,000 more U.S. troops in Iraq now than there were before the surge started early last year. VOA Pentagon Correspondent Al Pessin got out his calculator to try to figure out the discrepancy.
US Troops participating in assault mission, 3 Jul 2008Students of mathematics will tell you there is a traditional approach called Old Math, and there are concepts known as New Math. But they probably don't know about something that falls into neither category. That is Pentagon Math.Before the surge, there were about 132,000 U.S. troops in Iraq. Now the Pentagon says there are 148,000. That's a substantial increase, more than 12 percent. Pentagon Spokesman Bryan Whitman was asked to explain."We've always said that we know there are certain capabilities that the United States military is going to have to continue to provide until the Iraqis can establish their own organic ability to do those things - medical, logistics, maintenance, air support," he responded. So these are support troops, not combat troops, and the support troops are staying - or being replaced by fresh reinforcements - to provide the same capabilities to the increasingly active Iraqi Army and Police.
Boosting Iraq's Security
Iraqi soldier practices 'dime drills' to improve trigger squeezeThe Iraqis have demonstrated considerable combat ability in several recent operations, including the expulsion of insurgent and militia forces from Basra and Mosul. But they still can not provide all their own logistics support, and they lack air power, the ability to do medical evacuations and other important capabilities.Indeed, the increased need for support troops was predicted back in February by Lieutenant General Carter Ham, who was the chief of operations for the senior U.S. military staff, when he predicted that about 8,000 of the surge forces would stay after the surge combat troops left."It also takes into account, as our forces look to transition from leading to partnering and then to over-watch, the need to retain some key enabling capabilities, to help the Iraqi forces with their capabilities," he explained, "such capabilities as command and control headquarters, logistics, aviation, detainee operations and the like."In the end, the Pentagon says the extra support troops number about 10,000. But there are 16,000 more U.S. troops in Iraq than before the surge. The Pentagon says some of the other 6,000 extra U.S. troops are in the process of taking over for departing troops, so the overall number should go down by a few thousand in the coming weeks. But that still leaves at least a couple of thousand troops not exactly accounted for.
US Troop WithdrawalThe Pentagon spokesman, Bryan Whitman, says some may be leaving in the coming weeks, if their services are not needed by the Iraqis. In addition, he says U.S. commanders routinely request additional capabilities, such as bomb squads and intelligence units, which results in the deployment of small groups, or even individuals, which can add up over time."The onesies and twosies become dozens, and the dozens become a few hundred, and a few hundred become a thousand sometimes," Whitman said. "It's just the way it does. Commanders have appetites for capabilities."And he says commanders are always reluctant to give up capabilities once they have them. "It's hard to give up capability. If you're a commander on the ground and you've got something that's working well, it's always a little bit hard to say, 'Well, we can do with less of this or less of that.' It's hard, I'm sure," he noted.
Combat Troops vs. Support TroopsThe number crunching this week over the post-surge U.S. troop numbers in Iraq, raises a question - when Iraqi leaders call for the withdrawal of U.S. troops by 2010, are they talking about all the troops or just the combat troops? Or put another way, if the end of the surge left 16,000 troops behind, how many troops would a so-called complete U.S. withdrawal leave behind?Experts say the Iraqi need for air support and other capabilities will not go away by 2010, and neither will the needs to protect American diplomats and reconstruction teams and to use high-end U.S. military capability to pursue any remaining hard-core terrorists and insurgents.
Senator Barack Obama listens as General David H. Petraeus discusses security improvements in Baghdad, 21 Jul 2008The Democratic Party's presidential candidate, Barack Obama, also wants U.S. troops out of Iraq in 2010, but he is careful to specify that he's talking about combat troops, as he did during a news conference in Jordan on Tuesday, shortly after ending a visit to Iraq. "Once we redeploy our combat brigades, we're still going to retain a capability to protect our personnel, to target terrorists and to train Iraqi security forces, if there is political progress," Obama said.In Pentagon Math, even by a candidate who has pledged to end the war, if you deploy troops and then bring the troops home, you're still likely to have a substantial number of troops remaining. But no one is saying exactly how many will be, as we used to say in Old Math, 'left over.'
As this article points out withdrawal of troops from Iraq means combat troops but there could still be many thousands of troops remaining. This is often overlooked when talking about bringing home the troops. A sovereign Iraq needs a big complement of US troops to look after US interests, the pampered in the embassy mansion, contractors, and so forth.
VOICE OF AMERICA
VOA Home
As Surge Ends, How Many US Troops Will Remain in Iraq?
By Al Pessin Pentagon24 July 2008
Pessin report - Download (MP3) Pessin report - Listen (MP3)
The U.S. troop surge in Iraq has now ended, with the top general's spokesman confirming to VOA that all the combat troops sent in last year to bolster security efforts have ended their tours of duty and left the country. But according to the Pentagon there are about 16,000 more U.S. troops in Iraq now than there were before the surge started early last year. VOA Pentagon Correspondent Al Pessin got out his calculator to try to figure out the discrepancy.
US Troops participating in assault mission, 3 Jul 2008Students of mathematics will tell you there is a traditional approach called Old Math, and there are concepts known as New Math. But they probably don't know about something that falls into neither category. That is Pentagon Math.Before the surge, there were about 132,000 U.S. troops in Iraq. Now the Pentagon says there are 148,000. That's a substantial increase, more than 12 percent. Pentagon Spokesman Bryan Whitman was asked to explain."We've always said that we know there are certain capabilities that the United States military is going to have to continue to provide until the Iraqis can establish their own organic ability to do those things - medical, logistics, maintenance, air support," he responded. So these are support troops, not combat troops, and the support troops are staying - or being replaced by fresh reinforcements - to provide the same capabilities to the increasingly active Iraqi Army and Police.
Boosting Iraq's Security
Iraqi soldier practices 'dime drills' to improve trigger squeezeThe Iraqis have demonstrated considerable combat ability in several recent operations, including the expulsion of insurgent and militia forces from Basra and Mosul. But they still can not provide all their own logistics support, and they lack air power, the ability to do medical evacuations and other important capabilities.Indeed, the increased need for support troops was predicted back in February by Lieutenant General Carter Ham, who was the chief of operations for the senior U.S. military staff, when he predicted that about 8,000 of the surge forces would stay after the surge combat troops left."It also takes into account, as our forces look to transition from leading to partnering and then to over-watch, the need to retain some key enabling capabilities, to help the Iraqi forces with their capabilities," he explained, "such capabilities as command and control headquarters, logistics, aviation, detainee operations and the like."In the end, the Pentagon says the extra support troops number about 10,000. But there are 16,000 more U.S. troops in Iraq than before the surge. The Pentagon says some of the other 6,000 extra U.S. troops are in the process of taking over for departing troops, so the overall number should go down by a few thousand in the coming weeks. But that still leaves at least a couple of thousand troops not exactly accounted for.
US Troop WithdrawalThe Pentagon spokesman, Bryan Whitman, says some may be leaving in the coming weeks, if their services are not needed by the Iraqis. In addition, he says U.S. commanders routinely request additional capabilities, such as bomb squads and intelligence units, which results in the deployment of small groups, or even individuals, which can add up over time."The onesies and twosies become dozens, and the dozens become a few hundred, and a few hundred become a thousand sometimes," Whitman said. "It's just the way it does. Commanders have appetites for capabilities."And he says commanders are always reluctant to give up capabilities once they have them. "It's hard to give up capability. If you're a commander on the ground and you've got something that's working well, it's always a little bit hard to say, 'Well, we can do with less of this or less of that.' It's hard, I'm sure," he noted.
Combat Troops vs. Support TroopsThe number crunching this week over the post-surge U.S. troop numbers in Iraq, raises a question - when Iraqi leaders call for the withdrawal of U.S. troops by 2010, are they talking about all the troops or just the combat troops? Or put another way, if the end of the surge left 16,000 troops behind, how many troops would a so-called complete U.S. withdrawal leave behind?Experts say the Iraqi need for air support and other capabilities will not go away by 2010, and neither will the needs to protect American diplomats and reconstruction teams and to use high-end U.S. military capability to pursue any remaining hard-core terrorists and insurgents.
Senator Barack Obama listens as General David H. Petraeus discusses security improvements in Baghdad, 21 Jul 2008The Democratic Party's presidential candidate, Barack Obama, also wants U.S. troops out of Iraq in 2010, but he is careful to specify that he's talking about combat troops, as he did during a news conference in Jordan on Tuesday, shortly after ending a visit to Iraq. "Once we redeploy our combat brigades, we're still going to retain a capability to protect our personnel, to target terrorists and to train Iraqi security forces, if there is political progress," Obama said.In Pentagon Math, even by a candidate who has pledged to end the war, if you deploy troops and then bring the troops home, you're still likely to have a substantial number of troops remaining. But no one is saying exactly how many will be, as we used to say in Old Math, 'left over.'
Official says Zimbabwe power-sharing talks go well.
So what happens if the talk are successful? Surely the sanctions should be withdrawn. Given that there is still violence and many want Mugabe out completely the talks may end up failing. What is surprising is that talks seem to be going forward at all. The western sanctions just play into Mugabe's script about western colonialism still being a strong force.
Official says Zimbabwe power-sharing talks go well
Zimbabwe talks go well though many Zimbabweans feel betrayed and some violence continues
MICHELLE FAULAP News
Jul 25, 2008 13:20 EST
Power-sharing talks between Zimbabwe's rival political parties were proceeding well Friday, a South African official said, although violence continued and hundreds of opposition supporters remained jailed.
Both sides are under pressure: the opposition from fear of more state-sponsored violence and longtime President Robert Mugabe from widening Western sanctions. The United States on Friday broadened its sanctions against targeted Zimbabweans and their companies, calling Mugabe's an "illegitimate" and "brutal" regime.
South African presidential spokesman Mukoni Ratshitanga said the Zimbabwean talks got "fully under way" on Thursday and were "continuing and they are proceeding well"
Mugabe's ruling ZANU-PF party and Morgan Tsvangirai's opposition Movement for Democratic Change have committed themselves to negotiating "an inclusive government" within two weeks.
The Zimbabwe parties also agreed to negotiate a slew of other issues, including revival of the shattered economy and a new constitution — but most points already had been negotiated at talks that broke off in January, ahead of presidential and legislative elections.
The biggest obstacle is agreeing on who will lead a new government.
"The opposition wants to be in the driving seat. The only way for the economy to be handled is for Mugabe to withdraw altogether, and I don't see that happening," said John Makumbe, a political analyst at the University of Zimbabwe. "I see the whole thing collapsing or, if a deal is reached, it will look so bad no one will accept it."
But the resilient Mugabe, who has survived years of attempts to oust him even by his own party, insists that he should head any government.
Tsvangirai says he won the most votes at the only legitimate election in March. But he did not win enough to avoid a runoff, from which he belatedly withdrew because of mounting state violence against his supporters.
Mugabe ran alone in the June runoff and declared himself victor, though most of the world sees that election as a sham.
Under immense pressure, with even some African leaders declaring they did not consider him Zimbabwe's elected president, Mugabe on Monday signed an agreement with the opposition to hold talks.
Makumbe, the analyst, said Monday's handshake between Mugabe and Tsvangirai has left militant followers of both leaders feeling betrayed. Victims of violence feel Tsvangirai is "supping with the devil," and should not have signed before all his supporters were released.
Tsvangirai's party says some 2,000 of its activists remain jailed on trumped up charges of violence and inciting violence. Three newly elected legislators are out on bail on various charges, including the opposition's chief negotiator at the talks, secretary-general Tendai Biti. He is accused of treason, a charge that carries the death sentence. Seven other opposition legislators are in hiding, on a wanted list for spurious allegations including rape and fraud.
Makumbe said the prospect of Mugabe and Tsvangirai sharing power is bitterly opposed by military commanders backing Mugabe and militants responsible for attacks on the opposition, who now fear retribution.
Monday's agreement also calls for an end to the political violence in which more than 150 people have been killed. Doctors who have been documenting the deaths and injuries say it's too early to tell: Most violence is committed in rural areas and, with roadblocks and other difficulties, it is taking victims up to two weeks to reach hospitals in Harare, the capital.
One opposition supporter who arrived at the Avenues Clinic in Harare this week, suffering complications from a beating perpetrated in rural Zimbabwe two weeks ago, died on Friday, according to the doctors, who spoke on condition of anonymity for fear of attacks.
An opposition official admitted to the clinic this week had been beaten up by ZANU-PF militants at the weekend when he went home, thinking the violence was over, the doctors' group said.
Makumbe said the violence already had diminished after the runoff. "It served its purpose for that election but its always remains an option for ZANU-PF," Makumbe said.
Looking to put pressure on Mugabe, the United States and European Union broadened sanctions banning travel and freezing assets of people and companies considered to support Mugabe's regime.
The United States on Friday added 17 entities and one individual to its existing list targeting 132 people and 36 farms and companies.
On Tuesday, the European Union added another 37 people and companies, increasing its targeted list to 168.
"No regime should ignore the will of its own people and calls from the international community without consequences," President George W. Bush said in a statement.
Source: AP News
2008 Wiredispatch.com
Official says Zimbabwe power-sharing talks go well
Zimbabwe talks go well though many Zimbabweans feel betrayed and some violence continues
MICHELLE FAULAP News
Jul 25, 2008 13:20 EST
Power-sharing talks between Zimbabwe's rival political parties were proceeding well Friday, a South African official said, although violence continued and hundreds of opposition supporters remained jailed.
Both sides are under pressure: the opposition from fear of more state-sponsored violence and longtime President Robert Mugabe from widening Western sanctions. The United States on Friday broadened its sanctions against targeted Zimbabweans and their companies, calling Mugabe's an "illegitimate" and "brutal" regime.
South African presidential spokesman Mukoni Ratshitanga said the Zimbabwean talks got "fully under way" on Thursday and were "continuing and they are proceeding well"
Mugabe's ruling ZANU-PF party and Morgan Tsvangirai's opposition Movement for Democratic Change have committed themselves to negotiating "an inclusive government" within two weeks.
The Zimbabwe parties also agreed to negotiate a slew of other issues, including revival of the shattered economy and a new constitution — but most points already had been negotiated at talks that broke off in January, ahead of presidential and legislative elections.
The biggest obstacle is agreeing on who will lead a new government.
"The opposition wants to be in the driving seat. The only way for the economy to be handled is for Mugabe to withdraw altogether, and I don't see that happening," said John Makumbe, a political analyst at the University of Zimbabwe. "I see the whole thing collapsing or, if a deal is reached, it will look so bad no one will accept it."
But the resilient Mugabe, who has survived years of attempts to oust him even by his own party, insists that he should head any government.
Tsvangirai says he won the most votes at the only legitimate election in March. But he did not win enough to avoid a runoff, from which he belatedly withdrew because of mounting state violence against his supporters.
Mugabe ran alone in the June runoff and declared himself victor, though most of the world sees that election as a sham.
Under immense pressure, with even some African leaders declaring they did not consider him Zimbabwe's elected president, Mugabe on Monday signed an agreement with the opposition to hold talks.
Makumbe, the analyst, said Monday's handshake between Mugabe and Tsvangirai has left militant followers of both leaders feeling betrayed. Victims of violence feel Tsvangirai is "supping with the devil," and should not have signed before all his supporters were released.
Tsvangirai's party says some 2,000 of its activists remain jailed on trumped up charges of violence and inciting violence. Three newly elected legislators are out on bail on various charges, including the opposition's chief negotiator at the talks, secretary-general Tendai Biti. He is accused of treason, a charge that carries the death sentence. Seven other opposition legislators are in hiding, on a wanted list for spurious allegations including rape and fraud.
Makumbe said the prospect of Mugabe and Tsvangirai sharing power is bitterly opposed by military commanders backing Mugabe and militants responsible for attacks on the opposition, who now fear retribution.
Monday's agreement also calls for an end to the political violence in which more than 150 people have been killed. Doctors who have been documenting the deaths and injuries say it's too early to tell: Most violence is committed in rural areas and, with roadblocks and other difficulties, it is taking victims up to two weeks to reach hospitals in Harare, the capital.
One opposition supporter who arrived at the Avenues Clinic in Harare this week, suffering complications from a beating perpetrated in rural Zimbabwe two weeks ago, died on Friday, according to the doctors, who spoke on condition of anonymity for fear of attacks.
An opposition official admitted to the clinic this week had been beaten up by ZANU-PF militants at the weekend when he went home, thinking the violence was over, the doctors' group said.
Makumbe said the violence already had diminished after the runoff. "It served its purpose for that election but its always remains an option for ZANU-PF," Makumbe said.
Looking to put pressure on Mugabe, the United States and European Union broadened sanctions banning travel and freezing assets of people and companies considered to support Mugabe's regime.
The United States on Friday added 17 entities and one individual to its existing list targeting 132 people and 36 farms and companies.
On Tuesday, the European Union added another 37 people and companies, increasing its targeted list to 168.
"No regime should ignore the will of its own people and calls from the international community without consequences," President George W. Bush said in a statement.
Source: AP News
2008 Wiredispatch.com
Friday, July 25, 2008
Cleaning up sunk ferry mess expensive: Philippines.
This is from the Inquirer.
The cleanup of the mess left in the sunk ferry is going to cost millions. Hopefully Titan Salvage will be able to remove the toxic chemicals without too much trouble. For now Sulpico is not allowed to run its ferries according to this article and probably will only be allowed to carry cargo when it can run the ships.
Sulpicio signs deal for retrieval of ferry’s toxic cargo
Titan Salvage has month and a halfBy Riza T. OlchondraPhilippine Daily InquirerFirst Posted 19:46:00 07/24/2008
MANILA, Philippines -- After yet another extension in its deadline, Sulpicio Lines Inc. (SLI) has finally signed a contract to retrieve toxic cargo from the sunken MV Princess of the Stars.
SLI first vice president Edgar Go and Titan Salvage commercial manager Amit Wahil signed, at around 6:50 p.m. Thursday, the $7.55-million contract to retrieve the toxic cargo, bunker fuel and bodies still inside the ferry, SLI lawyer Victoria Florido said.
Florido said the company was "not at liberty" to disclose the name of the bank which gave the letter of credit assuring Titan's payment. This had been the bottleneck of negotiations for more than a week.
Officials estimated it would take about two weeks for Titan to mobilize its personnel and equipment, after which it would need about 30 days for the retrieval operations.
The current contract with Titan does not include the re-floating of the wreck, which would entail further negotiations.
Florido said the company chose to secure the contract for the retrieval of the toxic cargo first "to diffuse the ticking ecological bomb" as a result of the prolonged exposure to corrosive seawater of the highly.
Operations to retrieve the hundreds of bodies believed trapped inside the sunken ferry’s hull were stopped after it was learned that the ship had been carrying 10 metric tons of the highly toxic pesticide endosulfan owned by food company Del Monte.
Aside from this, another chemical shipment, this time owned by Bayer CropScience, was also onboard the vessel.
"First, the endosulfan and other toxic cargo will be removed. The bunker fuel will be removed next, and then the bodies that are still inside the wreck," Florido said.
In the meantime, grounded passenger ships of SLI may be allowed to sail with only cargo, SLI safety and quality assurance manager Nelson Morales said in a separate interview.
"We have not received official advice from Marina [Maritime Industry Authority], but as far as we know, if ever our passenger ships are allowed to sail again, it would just be to deliver cargo," he said. "This is just to maintain the flow of cargo throughout the country."
The cleanup of the mess left in the sunk ferry is going to cost millions. Hopefully Titan Salvage will be able to remove the toxic chemicals without too much trouble. For now Sulpico is not allowed to run its ferries according to this article and probably will only be allowed to carry cargo when it can run the ships.
Sulpicio signs deal for retrieval of ferry’s toxic cargo
Titan Salvage has month and a halfBy Riza T. OlchondraPhilippine Daily InquirerFirst Posted 19:46:00 07/24/2008
MANILA, Philippines -- After yet another extension in its deadline, Sulpicio Lines Inc. (SLI) has finally signed a contract to retrieve toxic cargo from the sunken MV Princess of the Stars.
SLI first vice president Edgar Go and Titan Salvage commercial manager Amit Wahil signed, at around 6:50 p.m. Thursday, the $7.55-million contract to retrieve the toxic cargo, bunker fuel and bodies still inside the ferry, SLI lawyer Victoria Florido said.
Florido said the company was "not at liberty" to disclose the name of the bank which gave the letter of credit assuring Titan's payment. This had been the bottleneck of negotiations for more than a week.
Officials estimated it would take about two weeks for Titan to mobilize its personnel and equipment, after which it would need about 30 days for the retrieval operations.
The current contract with Titan does not include the re-floating of the wreck, which would entail further negotiations.
Florido said the company chose to secure the contract for the retrieval of the toxic cargo first "to diffuse the ticking ecological bomb" as a result of the prolonged exposure to corrosive seawater of the highly.
Operations to retrieve the hundreds of bodies believed trapped inside the sunken ferry’s hull were stopped after it was learned that the ship had been carrying 10 metric tons of the highly toxic pesticide endosulfan owned by food company Del Monte.
Aside from this, another chemical shipment, this time owned by Bayer CropScience, was also onboard the vessel.
"First, the endosulfan and other toxic cargo will be removed. The bunker fuel will be removed next, and then the bodies that are still inside the wreck," Florido said.
In the meantime, grounded passenger ships of SLI may be allowed to sail with only cargo, SLI safety and quality assurance manager Nelson Morales said in a separate interview.
"We have not received official advice from Marina [Maritime Industry Authority], but as far as we know, if ever our passenger ships are allowed to sail again, it would just be to deliver cargo," he said. "This is just to maintain the flow of cargo throughout the country."
Philippine govt. co-ording release of 20 Filipino seamen seized by pirates off Somalia
This is from the Inquirer.
No doubt there will be ransom demanded. The Philippine government leaves it to others to pay the ransom! Of course it does this for noble motives namely that one should not encourage pirates by giving in to ransom demands. It is OK I imagine if others do so though! Some pirates need to kidnap these lofty idealists who refuse to pay ransoms and see if they request that their government not pay to release them.
VICE PRES DE CASTRO:Efforts on for safe release of seamen seized in Somalia
Gov’t coordinating with ship ownersBy Cynthia BalanaPhilippine Daily InquirerFirst Posted 14:34:00 07/24/2008
MANILA, Philippines -- The government is coordinating with a Japanese shipping firm, manning agents and international maritime authorities to secure the safe release of 20 Filipino seamen of a bulk carrier seized by pirates off Somalia last Sunday, Vice President Noli de Castro said Thursday.
In an interview, De Castro, who is also presidential adviser on Overseas Filipino Workers (OFWs), said the Department of Foreign Affairs has instructed the embassies in Japan and Kenya to stay in touch with MMS Co. Ltd. of Tokyo, owner of the MV Stella Maris and provide regular updates on negotiations for the hostages’ release.
The families here of the seamen have been informed by the DFA of the incident and of efforts to secure their release, De Castro said.
DFA Undersecretary for Migrant Workers Affairs Esteban Conejos said the Panamanian-flagged ship, reportedly loaded with lead and zinc, was boarded and seized by the pirates in the Gulf of Aden, which is in international waters, at around 8:30 a.m. Sunday.
Conejos said the ship owners reestablished contact with the ship’s crew and their abductors after two days and were assured that the hostages were unharmed.
As of posting time, the ship was sailing toward the northeast tip of Somalia.
"I was assured that contact has been established between the crew and the owner of the ship…This was also according to the captain who is also a Filipino. All the 20 Filipinos are safe and sound," Conejos said.
Although there has yet been no report of a ransom demand, De Castro said the government would stand firm on its no-ransom policy.
Conejos said that, like similar incidents in the past, the government will not be directly involved in the negotiations for the release of the hostages.
"I stressed to the local manning agent that it is the policy of government never to negotiate with pirates. We look towards the local manning agents and the ship owner and the host country because they have the responsibility to ensure the safety and the earliest release of the crew," Conejos said.
Pirate attacks in Somalia and Nigeria went up in the first quarter of 2008, making Africa the world’s top piracy hotspot, the International Maritime Bureau reported earlier this month.
In April, Somali pirates seized a luxury French yacht with a crew of 30 on board, six of them Filipinos. A week later, French troops arrested six pirates after the hostages were released.
On May 25, about five Filipino seafarers were also held hostage after the MV Amiya Scan was hijacked in the Gulf of Aden. The vessel and its passengers were released by pirates 30 days later. The Filipino crew arrived in the Philippines last July 1.
No doubt there will be ransom demanded. The Philippine government leaves it to others to pay the ransom! Of course it does this for noble motives namely that one should not encourage pirates by giving in to ransom demands. It is OK I imagine if others do so though! Some pirates need to kidnap these lofty idealists who refuse to pay ransoms and see if they request that their government not pay to release them.
VICE PRES DE CASTRO:Efforts on for safe release of seamen seized in Somalia
Gov’t coordinating with ship ownersBy Cynthia BalanaPhilippine Daily InquirerFirst Posted 14:34:00 07/24/2008
MANILA, Philippines -- The government is coordinating with a Japanese shipping firm, manning agents and international maritime authorities to secure the safe release of 20 Filipino seamen of a bulk carrier seized by pirates off Somalia last Sunday, Vice President Noli de Castro said Thursday.
In an interview, De Castro, who is also presidential adviser on Overseas Filipino Workers (OFWs), said the Department of Foreign Affairs has instructed the embassies in Japan and Kenya to stay in touch with MMS Co. Ltd. of Tokyo, owner of the MV Stella Maris and provide regular updates on negotiations for the hostages’ release.
The families here of the seamen have been informed by the DFA of the incident and of efforts to secure their release, De Castro said.
DFA Undersecretary for Migrant Workers Affairs Esteban Conejos said the Panamanian-flagged ship, reportedly loaded with lead and zinc, was boarded and seized by the pirates in the Gulf of Aden, which is in international waters, at around 8:30 a.m. Sunday.
Conejos said the ship owners reestablished contact with the ship’s crew and their abductors after two days and were assured that the hostages were unharmed.
As of posting time, the ship was sailing toward the northeast tip of Somalia.
"I was assured that contact has been established between the crew and the owner of the ship…This was also according to the captain who is also a Filipino. All the 20 Filipinos are safe and sound," Conejos said.
Although there has yet been no report of a ransom demand, De Castro said the government would stand firm on its no-ransom policy.
Conejos said that, like similar incidents in the past, the government will not be directly involved in the negotiations for the release of the hostages.
"I stressed to the local manning agent that it is the policy of government never to negotiate with pirates. We look towards the local manning agents and the ship owner and the host country because they have the responsibility to ensure the safety and the earliest release of the crew," Conejos said.
Pirate attacks in Somalia and Nigeria went up in the first quarter of 2008, making Africa the world’s top piracy hotspot, the International Maritime Bureau reported earlier this month.
In April, Somali pirates seized a luxury French yacht with a crew of 30 on board, six of them Filipinos. A week later, French troops arrested six pirates after the hostages were released.
On May 25, about five Filipino seafarers were also held hostage after the MV Amiya Scan was hijacked in the Gulf of Aden. The vessel and its passengers were released by pirates 30 days later. The Filipino crew arrived in the Philippines last July 1.
Iranian military convoy rocked by mystery explosion.
This is from the Telegraph.
As the article notes at the end the U.S. has increased the funding of covert operations inside Iran to the tune of 200 million. It is just possible that the U.S. is behind the explosion. On the other hand it may simply be an accident.
Iranian military convoy rocked by mystery explosion
Iran's Revolutionary Guards have launched an urgent inquiry after a mysterious explosion wrecked a military convoy in Tehran, killing at least fifteen people and injuring scores more.
By Con Coughlin Last Updated: 1:55PM BST 25 Jul 2008
The explosion took place in the Tehran suburb of Khavarshahar as the military convoy left a munitions' warehouse controlled by the Revolutionary Guards. According to reports received by Western officials, the convoy was taking a consignment of military equipment to Hizbollah, the Shia Muslim militia Iran supports in southern Lebanon, when the explosion occurred.
Senior Revolutionary Guard commanders immediately imposed a news black-out following the explosion, even though it could be heard throughout the capital Tehran, and no details of the incident have so far appeared in the Iranian media.
But Western officials yesterday said they had received reports that the explosion took place in Tehran on July 19, and that the Revolutionary Guards had launched an investigation into the causes of the blast.
"This was a massive explosion that was heard throughout Tehran," one official told the Daily Telegraph. "Even though lots of people were killed the Revolutionary Guards are trying to conceal what really happened."
Iran is believed to have recently stepped up arms shipments to Hizbollah in preparation for any future armed confrontation with the West over its controversial nuclear enrichment programme.
The Revolutionary Guards' investigation into last weekend's explosion is understood to be looking into the possibility that it was caused by sabotage. Iran has suffered a number of unexplained explosions in recent months, including an explosion at a mosque in Shiraz, which had been holding a military exhibition, and another incident at a missile site that killed dozens of Iranian technicians.
Last month Seymour Hersh, the respected American investigative journalist, reported that US President George W Bush had authorised up to $400 million (£200 million) to fund a major escalation of covert operations against Iran to destabilise the regime.
As the article notes at the end the U.S. has increased the funding of covert operations inside Iran to the tune of 200 million. It is just possible that the U.S. is behind the explosion. On the other hand it may simply be an accident.
Iranian military convoy rocked by mystery explosion
Iran's Revolutionary Guards have launched an urgent inquiry after a mysterious explosion wrecked a military convoy in Tehran, killing at least fifteen people and injuring scores more.
By Con Coughlin Last Updated: 1:55PM BST 25 Jul 2008
The explosion took place in the Tehran suburb of Khavarshahar as the military convoy left a munitions' warehouse controlled by the Revolutionary Guards. According to reports received by Western officials, the convoy was taking a consignment of military equipment to Hizbollah, the Shia Muslim militia Iran supports in southern Lebanon, when the explosion occurred.
Senior Revolutionary Guard commanders immediately imposed a news black-out following the explosion, even though it could be heard throughout the capital Tehran, and no details of the incident have so far appeared in the Iranian media.
But Western officials yesterday said they had received reports that the explosion took place in Tehran on July 19, and that the Revolutionary Guards had launched an investigation into the causes of the blast.
"This was a massive explosion that was heard throughout Tehran," one official told the Daily Telegraph. "Even though lots of people were killed the Revolutionary Guards are trying to conceal what really happened."
Iran is believed to have recently stepped up arms shipments to Hizbollah in preparation for any future armed confrontation with the West over its controversial nuclear enrichment programme.
The Revolutionary Guards' investigation into last weekend's explosion is understood to be looking into the possibility that it was caused by sabotage. Iran has suffered a number of unexplained explosions in recent months, including an explosion at a mosque in Shiraz, which had been holding a military exhibition, and another incident at a missile site that killed dozens of Iranian technicians.
Last month Seymour Hersh, the respected American investigative journalist, reported that US President George W Bush had authorised up to $400 million (£200 million) to fund a major escalation of covert operations against Iran to destabilise the regime.
Obama: Jerusalem should not be capital of Palestinian State.
This is from Maan.
Obama continues to court Israeli support or rather the support of the Israel lobbyists in the U.S. Many Palestinians see Obama as just more of the same and that is probably correct. If Israel and the U.S. have a common understanding of what should happen how can the U.S. be an honest broker let alone a neutral mediator between the two sides? Anyway unless Hamas is brought into the picture it is hard to see how there can be any real peace. Israel is going ahead with more settlements and is keeping Gaza crossings virtually sealed. The situation could soon return to increase violence. Hamas is getting almost nothing from the ceasefire.
MAAN NEWS AGENCY---------------------------
Obama: Jerusalem will not be capital of Palestinian state
Date: 24 / 07 / 2008 Time: 09:44
Bethlehem – Ma'an - US democratic candidate Barak Obama said during a press conference on Wednesday in Sderot, a city in the south of Israel, that he does not support the idea of East Jerusalem as the capital of a Palestinian state.Obama made it clear that Jerusalem would remain the capital of Israel and that he would not see the city divided. He added that this position needed to be fixed through negotiations with the Palestinians.Recent years have seen Obama's position on Israel/Palestine shift dramatically towards the Israeli side. He previously stated that the issue of Jerusalem should be on the table of any peace negotiation, but after criticism of his 'naïve' stance, Obama dropped this position.The press conference was held with Israeli foreign minister, Tzipi Livni, who said, "Israel and the USA have a common understanding of what must happen in the region."Earlier Obama met with Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas in Ramallah, where he said that he would work hard to continue the peace process.Obama stressed that if he takes office this fall he will not "start from zero" with the Palestinian peace process. Rather, he said, "we will continue peace process efforts." He also expressed the desire to show Palestinians that there was good reason to hope for a resolution.
Obama continues to court Israeli support or rather the support of the Israel lobbyists in the U.S. Many Palestinians see Obama as just more of the same and that is probably correct. If Israel and the U.S. have a common understanding of what should happen how can the U.S. be an honest broker let alone a neutral mediator between the two sides? Anyway unless Hamas is brought into the picture it is hard to see how there can be any real peace. Israel is going ahead with more settlements and is keeping Gaza crossings virtually sealed. The situation could soon return to increase violence. Hamas is getting almost nothing from the ceasefire.
MAAN NEWS AGENCY---------------------------
Obama: Jerusalem will not be capital of Palestinian state
Date: 24 / 07 / 2008 Time: 09:44
Bethlehem – Ma'an - US democratic candidate Barak Obama said during a press conference on Wednesday in Sderot, a city in the south of Israel, that he does not support the idea of East Jerusalem as the capital of a Palestinian state.Obama made it clear that Jerusalem would remain the capital of Israel and that he would not see the city divided. He added that this position needed to be fixed through negotiations with the Palestinians.Recent years have seen Obama's position on Israel/Palestine shift dramatically towards the Israeli side. He previously stated that the issue of Jerusalem should be on the table of any peace negotiation, but after criticism of his 'naïve' stance, Obama dropped this position.The press conference was held with Israeli foreign minister, Tzipi Livni, who said, "Israel and the USA have a common understanding of what must happen in the region."Earlier Obama met with Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas in Ramallah, where he said that he would work hard to continue the peace process.Obama stressed that if he takes office this fall he will not "start from zero" with the Palestinian peace process. Rather, he said, "we will continue peace process efforts." He also expressed the desire to show Palestinians that there was good reason to hope for a resolution.
Obama on talking with Iran.
This is from Haaretz.
So it seems that one reason for talking to Iran is to legitimate action taken by the U.S. or Israel! It seems that if the Iranians do not give in to U.S. demands then action is legitimate!
Obama to PM: Iran action legitimate only if talks fail
By Barak Ravid and Jack Khoury, Haaretz Correspondents
Tags: Ehud Olmert, Barack Obama
Near the close of his visit to Israel on Wednesday, Democratic presidential hopeful Barack Obama met with Prime Minister Ehud Olmert. A major topic of their long conversation was Obama's declared willingness to engage in direct dialogue with Tehran. Obama reportedly told Olmert that he is interested in meeting the Iranians in order to issue clear ultimatums. "If after that, they still show no willingness to change their nuclear policy, then any action against them would be legitimate," an Israeli source quoted him as saying.
So it seems that one reason for talking to Iran is to legitimate action taken by the U.S. or Israel! It seems that if the Iranians do not give in to U.S. demands then action is legitimate!
Obama to PM: Iran action legitimate only if talks fail
By Barak Ravid and Jack Khoury, Haaretz Correspondents
Tags: Ehud Olmert, Barack Obama
Near the close of his visit to Israel on Wednesday, Democratic presidential hopeful Barack Obama met with Prime Minister Ehud Olmert. A major topic of their long conversation was Obama's declared willingness to engage in direct dialogue with Tehran. Obama reportedly told Olmert that he is interested in meeting the Iranians in order to issue clear ultimatums. "If after that, they still show no willingness to change their nuclear policy, then any action against them would be legitimate," an Israeli source quoted him as saying.
Pilger: Obama, the Prince of Bait-and-Switch
Even though Obama still is simply a candidate for the presidency he is being treated as if he were already one of the chief world leaders whose every move and every mouthing of a platitude is to be covered extensively. Here is an article by John Pilger who puts Obama in a different perspective. With Obama the main change will be in imagery, but the reality with respect to U.S. militaristic foreign policy is not about to change.
Obama, the Prince of Bait-and-Switch
by John Pilger
On 12 July, The Times of London devoted two pages to Afghanistan. It was mostly a complaint about the heat. The reporter, Magnus Linklater, described in detail his discomfort and how he had needed to be sprayed with iced water. He also described the "high drama" and "meticulously practiced routine" of evacuating another overheated journalist. For his US Marine rescuers, wrote Linklater, "saving a life took precedence over [their] security." Alongside this was a report whose final paragraph offered the only mention that "47 civilians, most of them women and children, were killed when a US aircraft bombed a wedding party in eastern Afghanistan on Sunday."
Slaughters on this scale are common, and mostly unknown to the British public. I interviewed a woman who had lost eight members of her family, including six children. A 500lb US Mk82 bomb was dropped on her mud, stone and straw house. There was no "enemy" nearby. I interviewed a headmaster whose house disappeared in a fireball caused by another "precision" bomb. Inside were nine people – his wife, his four sons, his brother and his wife, and his sister and her husband. Neither of these mass murders was news. As Harold Pinter wrote of such crimes: "Nothing ever happened. Even while it was happening it wasn't happening. It didn't matter. It was of no interest."
A total of 64 civilians were bombed to death while The Times man was discomforted. Most were guests at the wedding party. Wedding parties are a "coalition" specialty. At least four of them have been obliterated – at Mazar and in Khost, Uruzgan and Nangarhar provinces. Many of the details, including the names of victims, have been compiled by a New Hampshire professor, Marc Herold, whose Afghan Victim Memorial Project is a meticulous work of journalism that shames those who are paid to keep the record straight and report almost everything about the Afghan War through the public relations facilities of the British and American military.
The US and its allies are dropping record numbers of bombs on Afghanistan. This is not news. In the first half of this year, 1,853 bombs were dropped: more than all the bombs of 2006 and most of 2007. "The most frequently used bombs," the Air Force Times reports, "are the 500lb and 2,000lb satellite-guided..." Without this one-sided onslaught, the resurgence of the Taliban, it is clear, might not have happened. Even Hamid Karzai, America's and Britain's puppet, has said so. The presence and the aggression of foreigners have all but united a resistance that now includes former warlords once on the CIA's payroll.
The scandal of this would be headline news, were it not for what George W. Bush's former spokesman Scott McClellan has called "complicit enablers" – journalists who serve as little more than official amplifiers. Having declared Afghanistan a "good war," the complicit enablers are now anointing Barack Obama as he tours the bloodfests in Afghanistan and Iraq. What they never say is that Obama is a bomber.
In the New York Times on 14 July, in an article spun to appear as if he is ending the war in Iraq, Obama demanded more war in Afghanistan and, in effect, an invasion of Pakistan. He wants more combat troops, more helicopters, more bombs. Bush may be on his way out, but the Republicans have built an ideological machine that transcends the loss of electoral power – because their collaborators are, as the American writer Mike Whitney put it succinctly, "bait-and-switch" Democrats, of whom Obama is the prince.
Those who write of Obama that "when it comes to international affairs, he will be a huge improvement on Bush" demonstrate the same willful naïveté that backed the bait-and-switch of Bill Clinton – and Tony Blair. Of Blair, wrote the late Hugo Young in 1997, "ideology has surrendered entirely to 'values'... there are no sacred cows [and] no fossilized limits to the ground over which the mind might range in search of a better Britain..."
Eleven years and five wars later, at least a million people lie dead. Barack Obama is the American Blair. That he is a smooth operator and a black man is irrelevant. He is of an enduring, rampant system whose drum majors and cheer squads never see, or want to see, the consequences of 500lb bombs dropped unerringly on mud, stone and straw houses.
Obama, the Prince of Bait-and-Switch
by John Pilger
On 12 July, The Times of London devoted two pages to Afghanistan. It was mostly a complaint about the heat. The reporter, Magnus Linklater, described in detail his discomfort and how he had needed to be sprayed with iced water. He also described the "high drama" and "meticulously practiced routine" of evacuating another overheated journalist. For his US Marine rescuers, wrote Linklater, "saving a life took precedence over [their] security." Alongside this was a report whose final paragraph offered the only mention that "47 civilians, most of them women and children, were killed when a US aircraft bombed a wedding party in eastern Afghanistan on Sunday."
Slaughters on this scale are common, and mostly unknown to the British public. I interviewed a woman who had lost eight members of her family, including six children. A 500lb US Mk82 bomb was dropped on her mud, stone and straw house. There was no "enemy" nearby. I interviewed a headmaster whose house disappeared in a fireball caused by another "precision" bomb. Inside were nine people – his wife, his four sons, his brother and his wife, and his sister and her husband. Neither of these mass murders was news. As Harold Pinter wrote of such crimes: "Nothing ever happened. Even while it was happening it wasn't happening. It didn't matter. It was of no interest."
A total of 64 civilians were bombed to death while The Times man was discomforted. Most were guests at the wedding party. Wedding parties are a "coalition" specialty. At least four of them have been obliterated – at Mazar and in Khost, Uruzgan and Nangarhar provinces. Many of the details, including the names of victims, have been compiled by a New Hampshire professor, Marc Herold, whose Afghan Victim Memorial Project is a meticulous work of journalism that shames those who are paid to keep the record straight and report almost everything about the Afghan War through the public relations facilities of the British and American military.
The US and its allies are dropping record numbers of bombs on Afghanistan. This is not news. In the first half of this year, 1,853 bombs were dropped: more than all the bombs of 2006 and most of 2007. "The most frequently used bombs," the Air Force Times reports, "are the 500lb and 2,000lb satellite-guided..." Without this one-sided onslaught, the resurgence of the Taliban, it is clear, might not have happened. Even Hamid Karzai, America's and Britain's puppet, has said so. The presence and the aggression of foreigners have all but united a resistance that now includes former warlords once on the CIA's payroll.
The scandal of this would be headline news, were it not for what George W. Bush's former spokesman Scott McClellan has called "complicit enablers" – journalists who serve as little more than official amplifiers. Having declared Afghanistan a "good war," the complicit enablers are now anointing Barack Obama as he tours the bloodfests in Afghanistan and Iraq. What they never say is that Obama is a bomber.
In the New York Times on 14 July, in an article spun to appear as if he is ending the war in Iraq, Obama demanded more war in Afghanistan and, in effect, an invasion of Pakistan. He wants more combat troops, more helicopters, more bombs. Bush may be on his way out, but the Republicans have built an ideological machine that transcends the loss of electoral power – because their collaborators are, as the American writer Mike Whitney put it succinctly, "bait-and-switch" Democrats, of whom Obama is the prince.
Those who write of Obama that "when it comes to international affairs, he will be a huge improvement on Bush" demonstrate the same willful naïveté that backed the bait-and-switch of Bill Clinton – and Tony Blair. Of Blair, wrote the late Hugo Young in 1997, "ideology has surrendered entirely to 'values'... there are no sacred cows [and] no fossilized limits to the ground over which the mind might range in search of a better Britain..."
Eleven years and five wars later, at least a million people lie dead. Barack Obama is the American Blair. That he is a smooth operator and a black man is irrelevant. He is of an enduring, rampant system whose drum majors and cheer squads never see, or want to see, the consequences of 500lb bombs dropped unerringly on mud, stone and straw houses.
Thursday, July 24, 2008
Naomi Klein on Bush and Iraq Oil
This is excerpted from the Canadian Dimension blog.
There is little mention or discussion of these contracts in the mainstream media. But that is not surprising since the Iraq war is never supposed to be about oil. I hadn't heard about the management contracts. As I understand it the contracts are not yet signed so there could be political opposition before they are finalised as there has been to the Oil Law. The Oil Law benchmark is never mentioned any more!
NAOMI KLEIN: Well, I think we’re seeing the Bush administration in its final months just handing out a series of gifts to the oil and gas industry, both at home, pushing for opening up the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge, and then in Iraq, the prize, the biggest prize of all, which is allowing foreign multinationals to gain control of Iraq’s oil fields. And we’re seeing a two-stage process now, and it isn’t over yet, where first there was the service—the short-term service agreements, no-bid contracts, that were announced. They haven’t been signed yet, but they’re going to the big oil companies that were kicked out of Iraq in the ’70s. They’re coming back.AMY GOODMAN: Explain how that works, these no-bid contracts, how it is—who’s signing these contracts?NAOMI KLEIN: OK. Well, at the moment, Iraq does not have an oil law, so Iraq can’t sign long-term exploration agreements, although they are doing it in Iraqi Kurdistan, and we’ve heard about this with Hunt Oil. But that’s—those are illegal contracts. They’re very precarious. There could be future expropriations. It’s really risky to go that route, because there isn’t a law. And we know it’s been a major push of this administration to get the Iraqi parliament to accept a US-backed oil law. This has been sold as a symbol of Iraqi unity. That’s not the way it’s seen in Iraq.
In Iraq, the reason why it has been years in resisting this oil law is because nationalizing the oil in Iraq was the centerpiece of the anti-colonial struggle, as it was in neighboring nations throughout the Arab world. And it is not just a pro-Saddam idea. It is not just a Baathist idea. It’s the core of Arab nationalism. And that victory is being protected by many political forces in Iraq, and most notably by the oil workers’ unions in Iraq, who said, “We don’t need these foreign multinationals to get the oil out of the ground. We can do it ourselves. We can bring in technical support without giving away management control, without giving away ownership control.”
And, I mean, but let’s stress here that unlike the oil offshore, unlike the shale, this is very difficult oil to extract. It’s extremely—it requires a huge amount of technology. It requires a huge amount of investment. And that’s part of the problem with what the Bush administration is selling. These—actually, they—the oil companies need the price of oil to stay high in order for it to be economically viable to do these—to get oil out of solid rock, for instance, which is very hard, very expensive. Offshore oil drilling, also very, very expensive—you have to build the rigs and so on. Iraq, no. Iraq, stick a straw in the ground and suck. I mean, this is incredibly accessible oil. And Iraqis actually know how to extract this oil themselves. So this idea that they need these foreign multinationals to come in is yet another myth.
And not only have companies like BP and Texaco been offered these no-bid contracts, but what’s strange about it is that they’re service contracts, and these are not oil service companies. So what’s significant about these contracts is that they appear to be giving these oil companies the right of first refusal on future, more significant contracts. So, one week after these smaller service agreements were announced, the Iraqi Oil Ministry announced that they also will be handing out longer-term management agreements, which will give oil companies the ability to manage existing fields in Iraq and hold onto 75 percent of the worth of those contracts and leave only 25 percent for Iraqis, which is absolutely unheard of in the region, where 51 percent for the country is the baseline for new exploration, for new fields. These are existing fields. They’re already working. The technology is already there. And these foreign companies are going to be taking 75 percent of the worth of those existing fields in Iraq. So it’s daylight robbery. It’s armed robbery, actually, Amy.
There is little mention or discussion of these contracts in the mainstream media. But that is not surprising since the Iraq war is never supposed to be about oil. I hadn't heard about the management contracts. As I understand it the contracts are not yet signed so there could be political opposition before they are finalised as there has been to the Oil Law. The Oil Law benchmark is never mentioned any more!
NAOMI KLEIN: Well, I think we’re seeing the Bush administration in its final months just handing out a series of gifts to the oil and gas industry, both at home, pushing for opening up the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge, and then in Iraq, the prize, the biggest prize of all, which is allowing foreign multinationals to gain control of Iraq’s oil fields. And we’re seeing a two-stage process now, and it isn’t over yet, where first there was the service—the short-term service agreements, no-bid contracts, that were announced. They haven’t been signed yet, but they’re going to the big oil companies that were kicked out of Iraq in the ’70s. They’re coming back.AMY GOODMAN: Explain how that works, these no-bid contracts, how it is—who’s signing these contracts?NAOMI KLEIN: OK. Well, at the moment, Iraq does not have an oil law, so Iraq can’t sign long-term exploration agreements, although they are doing it in Iraqi Kurdistan, and we’ve heard about this with Hunt Oil. But that’s—those are illegal contracts. They’re very precarious. There could be future expropriations. It’s really risky to go that route, because there isn’t a law. And we know it’s been a major push of this administration to get the Iraqi parliament to accept a US-backed oil law. This has been sold as a symbol of Iraqi unity. That’s not the way it’s seen in Iraq.
In Iraq, the reason why it has been years in resisting this oil law is because nationalizing the oil in Iraq was the centerpiece of the anti-colonial struggle, as it was in neighboring nations throughout the Arab world. And it is not just a pro-Saddam idea. It is not just a Baathist idea. It’s the core of Arab nationalism. And that victory is being protected by many political forces in Iraq, and most notably by the oil workers’ unions in Iraq, who said, “We don’t need these foreign multinationals to get the oil out of the ground. We can do it ourselves. We can bring in technical support without giving away management control, without giving away ownership control.”
And, I mean, but let’s stress here that unlike the oil offshore, unlike the shale, this is very difficult oil to extract. It’s extremely—it requires a huge amount of technology. It requires a huge amount of investment. And that’s part of the problem with what the Bush administration is selling. These—actually, they—the oil companies need the price of oil to stay high in order for it to be economically viable to do these—to get oil out of solid rock, for instance, which is very hard, very expensive. Offshore oil drilling, also very, very expensive—you have to build the rigs and so on. Iraq, no. Iraq, stick a straw in the ground and suck. I mean, this is incredibly accessible oil. And Iraqis actually know how to extract this oil themselves. So this idea that they need these foreign multinationals to come in is yet another myth.
And not only have companies like BP and Texaco been offered these no-bid contracts, but what’s strange about it is that they’re service contracts, and these are not oil service companies. So what’s significant about these contracts is that they appear to be giving these oil companies the right of first refusal on future, more significant contracts. So, one week after these smaller service agreements were announced, the Iraqi Oil Ministry announced that they also will be handing out longer-term management agreements, which will give oil companies the ability to manage existing fields in Iraq and hold onto 75 percent of the worth of those contracts and leave only 25 percent for Iraqis, which is absolutely unheard of in the region, where 51 percent for the country is the baseline for new exploration, for new fields. These are existing fields. They’re already working. The technology is already there. And these foreign companies are going to be taking 75 percent of the worth of those existing fields in Iraq. So it’s daylight robbery. It’s armed robbery, actually, Amy.
Israel mulls building new settlement in West Bank
This may very well derail any chance of success of peace talks with the Palestinians. Do we hear outraged cries from McCain and Obama?
Israel mulls building new settlement in West Bank
www.chinaview.cn 2008-07-24 19:02:12
Special report: Palestine-Israel Relations
JERUSALEM, July 24 (Xinhua) -- An Israeli parliamentary committee has greenlighted the construction of 20 new housing units for Jewish settlers in the West Bank, local media reported Thursday.
Israeli Defense Minister Ehud Barak is slated to endorse the project soon, which will be carried out at a site named Maskiot in the Jordan Valley, following the approval of the Foreign Affairs and Defense Committee, said local daily Ha'aretz.
The project has to be approved by Prime Minister Ehud Olmert and Defense Minister Ehud Barak to go ahead.
Another newspaper The Jerusalem Post reported that Israel originally announced in 2006 that it would build a settlement at Maskiot, where an Israeli military base had been established decades ago, but the plan had been frozen later after it provoked an international outcry.
The impending construction, which The Jerusalem Post said would become Israel's first new settlement in a decade, is certain to infuriate the Palestinians and raise the eyebrow of the Americans, as the two sides have repeatedly warned the Jewish state that its settlement expansion would jeopardize the already sluggish peace process.
"This is destroying the process of a two-state solution," Palestinian chief negotiator Saeb Erekat was quoted as saying. "I hope the Americans will make the Israelis revoke the decision. I think they can make the Israelis do this."
Israel promised not to establish new settlements in the West Bank at a U.S.-hosted Middle East conference last year where Israeli and Palestinian leaders resumed the long-stalled peace talks and pledged to reach a comprehensive peace deal within 2008.
Meanwhile, Israel has given no signal to halt construction in east Jerusalem, which Israel seized in 1967 and later annexed, in defiance of the official stance of the United States and the Palestinians' demand that east Jerusalem be the capital of their future state.
Earlier this month, Israel gave tentative approval to a plan to build 1,800 new housing units in Har Homa and Pisgat Ze'ev, two neighborhoods in east Jerusalem.
Israel mulls building new settlement in West Bank
www.chinaview.cn 2008-07-24 19:02:12
Special report: Palestine-Israel Relations
JERUSALEM, July 24 (Xinhua) -- An Israeli parliamentary committee has greenlighted the construction of 20 new housing units for Jewish settlers in the West Bank, local media reported Thursday.
Israeli Defense Minister Ehud Barak is slated to endorse the project soon, which will be carried out at a site named Maskiot in the Jordan Valley, following the approval of the Foreign Affairs and Defense Committee, said local daily Ha'aretz.
The project has to be approved by Prime Minister Ehud Olmert and Defense Minister Ehud Barak to go ahead.
Another newspaper The Jerusalem Post reported that Israel originally announced in 2006 that it would build a settlement at Maskiot, where an Israeli military base had been established decades ago, but the plan had been frozen later after it provoked an international outcry.
The impending construction, which The Jerusalem Post said would become Israel's first new settlement in a decade, is certain to infuriate the Palestinians and raise the eyebrow of the Americans, as the two sides have repeatedly warned the Jewish state that its settlement expansion would jeopardize the already sluggish peace process.
"This is destroying the process of a two-state solution," Palestinian chief negotiator Saeb Erekat was quoted as saying. "I hope the Americans will make the Israelis revoke the decision. I think they can make the Israelis do this."
Israel promised not to establish new settlements in the West Bank at a U.S.-hosted Middle East conference last year where Israeli and Palestinian leaders resumed the long-stalled peace talks and pledged to reach a comprehensive peace deal within 2008.
Meanwhile, Israel has given no signal to halt construction in east Jerusalem, which Israel seized in 1967 and later annexed, in defiance of the official stance of the United States and the Palestinians' demand that east Jerusalem be the capital of their future state.
Earlier this month, Israel gave tentative approval to a plan to build 1,800 new housing units in Har Homa and Pisgat Ze'ev, two neighborhoods in east Jerusalem.
Arabs hear alarm bells as ICC targets Sudan's Bashir
In Africa what is looked at in the west in terms of long overdue justice for human rights violators is seen as a form of western imperialism and an attempt to control African countries. The same feeling underlies the reluctance to sanction Mugabe. When the U.S. violates human rights or Israel ignores UN resolutions nothing happens at all. Countries such as China have good relationships with Sudan. The U.S. would be happy for regime change and a regime which favored western oil interests.
Arabs hear alarm bells as ICC targets Sudan's Bashir
Wed 23 Jul 2008, 10:26 GMT
By Cynthia Johnston
CAIRO, July 23 (Reuters) - When the International Criminal Court prosecutor sought an arrest warrant for Sudan's president, the move set off alarm bells in Arab capitals that fear it may showcase a new form of Western meddling in Arab affairs.
Arab leaders, many of whom run governments accused of rampant human rights abuses, worry the court could next turn its focus to other Arab states if it succeeds in prosecuting Omar Hassan al-Bashir for Darfur war crimes.
Anticipating the ICC move, Sudan swiftly called for an emergency meeting of Arab foreign ministers, whose ranks include strong North African friends of Khartoum and who swung to action with a plan that appeared aimed to avoid prosecution of Bashir.
"A large part of the developing world is very, very suspicious of the ICC," Sudan expert John Ashworth said. "If you look at the Arab League itself, I guess there would be members of the Arab League who would fear being indicted as well."
Many Arabs believe that Muslim states are being targetted disproportionately by the West for any perceived misteps, citing the U.S.-led wars on Iraq and Afghanistan as well as pressure on Iran over its nuclear programme.
Meanwhile, Arabs say the international community has failed for half a century to secure statehood for Palestinians or speak up about Israeli human rights violations.
That makes them all the more resentful of Western calls for action on Darfur, where the ICC prosecutor has accused Bashir of orchestrating genocide that has killed 35,000 people outright, at least another 100,000 through slow death, and forced 2.5 million from their homes.
ARAB PLAN
Arabs' cultural and political affinity with Sudan's largely Arab north also means some may feel more natural empathy with the Bashir government than with mostly non-Arab Darfur rebels.
"All the Arabs now feel, and I think they have a right, that they are already targetted... For those average people, Omar al-Bashir represents Arab legitimacy, Arab dignity even," Cairo-based political analyst Diaa Rashwan said.
Both the Arab League and the African Union want the U.N. Security Council to put on hold the ICC move to indict Bashir, and the Arab League said on Tuesday that it had secured a pledge from Sudan to try those it suspects of crimes in Darfur at home.
The deal will allow the United Nations, African Union and Arab League to follow the proceedings, although it would be up to Sudan to decide who to try. The League did not say if two Sudanese indicted by the ICC last year would face charges.
The agreement, after a visit by Arab League chief Amr Moussa to Khartoum, showed the League may be well-placed to pressure Sudan. But the move may still not satisfy Western critics.
"From the Sudan government's point of view, what they clearly want to do is to get the Arab League to put pressure on the African Union to try and back up the president," said Patrick Smith, editor of UK-based Africa Confidential.
"Part of its strategy is to have at any one time four or five different initiatives to deal with what's going on in Darfur. So in that way the core issues are obfuscated," he said.
INSTABILITY FEARS
Some Arab states have practical concerns as well. Cairo, for example, fears a handful of potentially unpredictable new states emerging to its south that could threaten stability or covet Egypt's share of Nile waters, analysts say. Those fears are among factors that lead it to lend more support to Khartoum than to separatist rebels.
But there is by no means a true Arab consensus for full backing of Khartoum, and the League's criticism of the ICC has so far been relatively mild.
Analysts say some states may want to avoid strong criticism of the ICC or unconditional backing for Khartoum because it could embarrass them before the international community.
Yet if diplomatic efforts by Arab and African states are unable to delay an arrest warrant for Bashir, analysts said they doubt very much that the Sudanese leader would face any dangers in the countries of his Arab friends.
"I don't think at all that President Bashir will have any kind of problems in any Arab country," Rashwan said. "I think they will decide to receive President Bashir." (Writing by Cynthia Johnston; Editing by Samia Nakhoul)
© Reuters 2008. All Rights Reserved.
Arabs hear alarm bells as ICC targets Sudan's Bashir
Wed 23 Jul 2008, 10:26 GMT
By Cynthia Johnston
CAIRO, July 23 (Reuters) - When the International Criminal Court prosecutor sought an arrest warrant for Sudan's president, the move set off alarm bells in Arab capitals that fear it may showcase a new form of Western meddling in Arab affairs.
Arab leaders, many of whom run governments accused of rampant human rights abuses, worry the court could next turn its focus to other Arab states if it succeeds in prosecuting Omar Hassan al-Bashir for Darfur war crimes.
Anticipating the ICC move, Sudan swiftly called for an emergency meeting of Arab foreign ministers, whose ranks include strong North African friends of Khartoum and who swung to action with a plan that appeared aimed to avoid prosecution of Bashir.
"A large part of the developing world is very, very suspicious of the ICC," Sudan expert John Ashworth said. "If you look at the Arab League itself, I guess there would be members of the Arab League who would fear being indicted as well."
Many Arabs believe that Muslim states are being targetted disproportionately by the West for any perceived misteps, citing the U.S.-led wars on Iraq and Afghanistan as well as pressure on Iran over its nuclear programme.
Meanwhile, Arabs say the international community has failed for half a century to secure statehood for Palestinians or speak up about Israeli human rights violations.
That makes them all the more resentful of Western calls for action on Darfur, where the ICC prosecutor has accused Bashir of orchestrating genocide that has killed 35,000 people outright, at least another 100,000 through slow death, and forced 2.5 million from their homes.
ARAB PLAN
Arabs' cultural and political affinity with Sudan's largely Arab north also means some may feel more natural empathy with the Bashir government than with mostly non-Arab Darfur rebels.
"All the Arabs now feel, and I think they have a right, that they are already targetted... For those average people, Omar al-Bashir represents Arab legitimacy, Arab dignity even," Cairo-based political analyst Diaa Rashwan said.
Both the Arab League and the African Union want the U.N. Security Council to put on hold the ICC move to indict Bashir, and the Arab League said on Tuesday that it had secured a pledge from Sudan to try those it suspects of crimes in Darfur at home.
The deal will allow the United Nations, African Union and Arab League to follow the proceedings, although it would be up to Sudan to decide who to try. The League did not say if two Sudanese indicted by the ICC last year would face charges.
The agreement, after a visit by Arab League chief Amr Moussa to Khartoum, showed the League may be well-placed to pressure Sudan. But the move may still not satisfy Western critics.
"From the Sudan government's point of view, what they clearly want to do is to get the Arab League to put pressure on the African Union to try and back up the president," said Patrick Smith, editor of UK-based Africa Confidential.
"Part of its strategy is to have at any one time four or five different initiatives to deal with what's going on in Darfur. So in that way the core issues are obfuscated," he said.
INSTABILITY FEARS
Some Arab states have practical concerns as well. Cairo, for example, fears a handful of potentially unpredictable new states emerging to its south that could threaten stability or covet Egypt's share of Nile waters, analysts say. Those fears are among factors that lead it to lend more support to Khartoum than to separatist rebels.
But there is by no means a true Arab consensus for full backing of Khartoum, and the League's criticism of the ICC has so far been relatively mild.
Analysts say some states may want to avoid strong criticism of the ICC or unconditional backing for Khartoum because it could embarrass them before the international community.
Yet if diplomatic efforts by Arab and African states are unable to delay an arrest warrant for Bashir, analysts said they doubt very much that the Sudanese leader would face any dangers in the countries of his Arab friends.
"I don't think at all that President Bashir will have any kind of problems in any Arab country," Rashwan said. "I think they will decide to receive President Bashir." (Writing by Cynthia Johnston; Editing by Samia Nakhoul)
© Reuters 2008. All Rights Reserved.
Car sale growth to slump in Philippines
Given the rising cost of fuel and inflation in the Philippines this is not too surprising. Although the remittances from oversease Filipino workers is rising, those who are paid in U.S. dollars are hurt by the rise of the peso against the U.S. dollar. As the article notes this will still be a record year for sales even though the rate of growth in sales is declining.
Growth in car sales to flag in Philippines
Tue Jul 22, 2008 10:47am BST
MANILA, July 22 (Reuters) - Growth in new vehicle sales in the Philippines is expected to slow to 6 percent this year from 18 percent in 2007 as oil price hikes bite, an industry leader said on Tuesday.
Demand for more fuel-efficient vehicles, however, will continue to support the market, said Elizabeth Lee, president of the Chamber of Automotive Manufacturers of the Philippines.
New car sales in the first half of the year rose nearly 14 percent to 61,654 units despite a flurry of price increases that have seen prices of gasoline and diesel jump 36 percent and 50 percent, respectively, so far this year.
Lee said the industry is targetting sales of 125,500 units this year, up from last year's record 117,903 units.
Honda (7267.T: Quote, Profile, Research) and Toyota Motor Corp (7203.T: Quote, Profile, Research) vehicles are among the top sellers in the Philippines.
"Remittances would (also) be a strong contributor," Lee said on the sidelines of an industry conference.
Remittances from over 8 million Filipinos working overseas, around 10 percent of the population, continue to support the domestic economy in the face of a slowing world economy and financial shocks from the U.S. subprime mortgage crisis.
The Philippine central bank expects total remittances through formal channels this year to reach a new peak of $15.7 billion, up 9 percent from last year's record.
Lee said a change in the buying patterns of consumers who now prefer economical and dual-purpose vehicles over gas guzzling compact wagons and sport utility vehicles would also drive auto sales growth this year.
Growth in car sales to flag in Philippines
Tue Jul 22, 2008 10:47am BST
MANILA, July 22 (Reuters) - Growth in new vehicle sales in the Philippines is expected to slow to 6 percent this year from 18 percent in 2007 as oil price hikes bite, an industry leader said on Tuesday.
Demand for more fuel-efficient vehicles, however, will continue to support the market, said Elizabeth Lee, president of the Chamber of Automotive Manufacturers of the Philippines.
New car sales in the first half of the year rose nearly 14 percent to 61,654 units despite a flurry of price increases that have seen prices of gasoline and diesel jump 36 percent and 50 percent, respectively, so far this year.
Lee said the industry is targetting sales of 125,500 units this year, up from last year's record 117,903 units.
Honda (7267.T: Quote, Profile, Research) and Toyota Motor Corp (7203.T: Quote, Profile, Research) vehicles are among the top sellers in the Philippines.
"Remittances would (also) be a strong contributor," Lee said on the sidelines of an industry conference.
Remittances from over 8 million Filipinos working overseas, around 10 percent of the population, continue to support the domestic economy in the face of a slowing world economy and financial shocks from the U.S. subprime mortgage crisis.
The Philippine central bank expects total remittances through formal channels this year to reach a new peak of $15.7 billion, up 9 percent from last year's record.
Lee said a change in the buying patterns of consumers who now prefer economical and dual-purpose vehicles over gas guzzling compact wagons and sport utility vehicles would also drive auto sales growth this year.
Wednesday, July 23, 2008
Mideast Sees more of the Same if Obama is Elected.
This is from the NY Times.
Although the media strives mightily for product differentiation of the McCain and Obama brands with respect to many policies there are only marginal if any differences between the Obama and McCain. Of course these are already framed as the only choices by the media although there may be a patronising hello once in a while to other candidates.Both candidates in an attempt to get Jewish votes and the support of the Israel lobby declare their undying support for Israel. As many Palestinians point out there is no hope of the U.S. being an unbiased broker for peace, but then there never has been so what you have is more of the same as the article claims.
July 22, 2008
Mideast Sees More of the Same if Obama Is Elected
By MICHAEL SLACKMAN and ISABEL KERSHNER
AMMAN, Jordan — For what feels like forever, Israelis and their Arab neighbors have been hopelessly deadlocked on how to resolve the Palestinian crisis. But there is one point they may now agree on: If elected president, Senator Barack Obama will not fundamentally recalibrate America’s relationship with Israel, or the Arab world.
From the religious center of Jerusalem to the rolling hills of Amman to the crowded streets of Cairo, dozens of interviews revealed a similar sentiment: the United States will ultimately support Israel over the Palestinians, no matter who the president is. That presumption promoted a degree of relief in Israel and resignation here in Jordan and in Israel’s other Arab neighbors.
“What we know is American presidents all support Israel,” said Muhammad Ibrahim, 23, a university student who works part time selling watermelons on the street in the southern part of this city. “It is hopeless. This one is like the other one. They are all the same. Nothing will change. Don’t expect change.”
Across the border, in Israel, Moshe Cohen could not have agreed more. “Jews there have influence,” Mr. Cohen said, as he sold lottery tickets along Jaffa Road in Jerusalem. “He’ll have to be good to Israel. If not, he won’t be re-elected to a second term.”
Mr. Obama, who will be here on Tuesday, has promised change. He has offered to begin dialogue where the current president has refused, in places like Syria and Iran. But when he stepped into the Middle East, he walked into a region where public expectations were long ago set. The Bush years have supercharged those sentiments, especially in the Arab world, where there is little faith that the United States can ever again serve as a fair broker between the sides.
In Israel, Mr. Bush was seen as the most supportive American president yet, and early opinion polls show a preference there for the presumptive Republican nominee, Senator John McCain.
But Mr. Obama gained ground — or lost it, depending on which side was reacting — when he spoke in June to a pro-Israel lobby, the American Israel Public Affairs Committee. He said that Jerusalem “will remain the capital of Israel, and it must remain undivided.”
He later qualified his comments, saying he meant that the two sides of Jerusalem should not be separated by walls or barbed wire. But the message had already been sent.
“The Arabs need America to be straight and unbiased, but anyway we feel, that American policy will not be changed too much,” said a Palestinian who identified himself by his nickname, Abu Fadi, a salesman in an electrical appliance store in downtown Arab East Jerusalem.
Behind this general agreement, there is a fundamental difference. In the Arab streets, there is a hope, perhaps limited, that this candidate might be different. He is black, his father was Muslim and his middle name is Hussein, so there is hope that he will be more sympathetic, though that hope is not joined to any expectation.
“There is optimism wrapped in cynicism,” said Hussein al-Shobokshy, a columnist in the pan-Arab Saudi-owned daily newspaper, Asharq Alawsat.
In Israel, the reverse is true, the lingering suspicion that he is saying what he needs to say to be elected.
Uri Savir, a former director general of the Israeli Foreign Ministry and now president of the Peres Center for Peace in Tel Aviv, said there were people who want peace, like himself, who “are quite excited about what Obama can bring.”
But, he acknowledged that his friends on the center-right were somewhat more ambivalent. “They ask, is he really a friend of Israel?” he said.
The answer here and in Cairo and elsewhere around the region is: Of course he will be a friend of Israel’s.
“He’s like a chameleon,” said Walid Ghalib, 50, as he bought meat from a butcher in the Jabal al Nasr neighborhood of east Amman. “One day he is with the Palestinian cause. One day he’s with Israel. We have a saying here: ‘What’s better, a black dog or a white dog?’ It’s all the same. For us, nothing will change.”
It was not always like this here, but the indifference is a lesson learned.
Eight years ago, many Arabs, leaders and citizens alike, rooted for Gov. George W. Bush over Vice President Al Gore in the race for the presidency. There was an assumption that Mr. Bush would be like his father, who was seen as relatively Arab-friendly.
Nearly four years ago, there was hope among Arabs that Americans would have soured on President Bush and elect Senator John Kerry. President Bush had disappointed. Then American voters did, too.
“The Arab street has been here before,” said Mustafa Hamarneh, the former director of the University of Jordan’s Center for Strategic Studies. “We rooted for this and that, and nothing happened. Its déjà vu.”
“Unless the Americans realize that they really have to change and become more evenhanded and apply justice in the region, things will be the same,” he said.
Jordan is a small country, just six million people, half of whom are of Palestinian descent. It is without oil and without much water, and has been battered by the crises in the West Bank and Iraq. Mr. Obama will visit a city tense with politics and economics, which are inevitably intertwined. It is also conservative, clean and quiet.
Mr. Obama “will be no different than Bush,” said Moatasem Hussein, 34, who sold nuts from a shop on a street corner in east Amman.
“What’s going to be different?” said Jasser Shehadi, 40, who sold shoes in the shop next door. “They are all the same.”
Across the street, Muhammad al-Banna, 41, said: “Obama is excellent. He is direct. He is like the successor to J.F.K.”
Instantly, Khaled Attiat, a carpenter working in an open storefront, jumped into the conversation. “Oh, come on,” he shouted. “They are all as bad as each other.”
Mr. Banna replied, “Yes they are all bad, but still, Obama might be a little less bad.”
The reaction was similar in Egypt which, like Jordan, is one of America’s closest allies in the region.
“For me it doesn’t matter that he’s black or his name is Hussein,” said Ahmed Amin, 34, as he drank a beer in a downtown Cairo bar. “He’s an American, and so I disagree with most of what he says about the Arab world. I mean, Condoleezza Rice was black and poor, and she still invaded Iraq.”
There is, however, at least one positive lesson drawn by some in this region over Mr. Obama’s success. It has served to restore a bit of their faith in American-style democracy, which has been tarnished in recent years by the invasion of Iraq and by an administration that talked about promoting democracy but then seemed to backtrack on its promises, many people here said.
The United States, many said, may be a biased supporter of Zionism hostile to Muslims, and still be, for its citizens, a place of opportunity unknown here.
“I think it’s very impressive that someone can start very poor and reach the top like this,” said Hazen Haidar, 23, a gym clerk in Cairo. “It doesn’t happen in Egypt.”
Michael Slackman reported from Amman, and Isabel Kershner from Jerusalem. Mona el-Naggar contributed reporting from Amman, and Nadim Audi from Cairo.
Although the media strives mightily for product differentiation of the McCain and Obama brands with respect to many policies there are only marginal if any differences between the Obama and McCain. Of course these are already framed as the only choices by the media although there may be a patronising hello once in a while to other candidates.Both candidates in an attempt to get Jewish votes and the support of the Israel lobby declare their undying support for Israel. As many Palestinians point out there is no hope of the U.S. being an unbiased broker for peace, but then there never has been so what you have is more of the same as the article claims.
July 22, 2008
Mideast Sees More of the Same if Obama Is Elected
By MICHAEL SLACKMAN and ISABEL KERSHNER
AMMAN, Jordan — For what feels like forever, Israelis and their Arab neighbors have been hopelessly deadlocked on how to resolve the Palestinian crisis. But there is one point they may now agree on: If elected president, Senator Barack Obama will not fundamentally recalibrate America’s relationship with Israel, or the Arab world.
From the religious center of Jerusalem to the rolling hills of Amman to the crowded streets of Cairo, dozens of interviews revealed a similar sentiment: the United States will ultimately support Israel over the Palestinians, no matter who the president is. That presumption promoted a degree of relief in Israel and resignation here in Jordan and in Israel’s other Arab neighbors.
“What we know is American presidents all support Israel,” said Muhammad Ibrahim, 23, a university student who works part time selling watermelons on the street in the southern part of this city. “It is hopeless. This one is like the other one. They are all the same. Nothing will change. Don’t expect change.”
Across the border, in Israel, Moshe Cohen could not have agreed more. “Jews there have influence,” Mr. Cohen said, as he sold lottery tickets along Jaffa Road in Jerusalem. “He’ll have to be good to Israel. If not, he won’t be re-elected to a second term.”
Mr. Obama, who will be here on Tuesday, has promised change. He has offered to begin dialogue where the current president has refused, in places like Syria and Iran. But when he stepped into the Middle East, he walked into a region where public expectations were long ago set. The Bush years have supercharged those sentiments, especially in the Arab world, where there is little faith that the United States can ever again serve as a fair broker between the sides.
In Israel, Mr. Bush was seen as the most supportive American president yet, and early opinion polls show a preference there for the presumptive Republican nominee, Senator John McCain.
But Mr. Obama gained ground — or lost it, depending on which side was reacting — when he spoke in June to a pro-Israel lobby, the American Israel Public Affairs Committee. He said that Jerusalem “will remain the capital of Israel, and it must remain undivided.”
He later qualified his comments, saying he meant that the two sides of Jerusalem should not be separated by walls or barbed wire. But the message had already been sent.
“The Arabs need America to be straight and unbiased, but anyway we feel, that American policy will not be changed too much,” said a Palestinian who identified himself by his nickname, Abu Fadi, a salesman in an electrical appliance store in downtown Arab East Jerusalem.
Behind this general agreement, there is a fundamental difference. In the Arab streets, there is a hope, perhaps limited, that this candidate might be different. He is black, his father was Muslim and his middle name is Hussein, so there is hope that he will be more sympathetic, though that hope is not joined to any expectation.
“There is optimism wrapped in cynicism,” said Hussein al-Shobokshy, a columnist in the pan-Arab Saudi-owned daily newspaper, Asharq Alawsat.
In Israel, the reverse is true, the lingering suspicion that he is saying what he needs to say to be elected.
Uri Savir, a former director general of the Israeli Foreign Ministry and now president of the Peres Center for Peace in Tel Aviv, said there were people who want peace, like himself, who “are quite excited about what Obama can bring.”
But, he acknowledged that his friends on the center-right were somewhat more ambivalent. “They ask, is he really a friend of Israel?” he said.
The answer here and in Cairo and elsewhere around the region is: Of course he will be a friend of Israel’s.
“He’s like a chameleon,” said Walid Ghalib, 50, as he bought meat from a butcher in the Jabal al Nasr neighborhood of east Amman. “One day he is with the Palestinian cause. One day he’s with Israel. We have a saying here: ‘What’s better, a black dog or a white dog?’ It’s all the same. For us, nothing will change.”
It was not always like this here, but the indifference is a lesson learned.
Eight years ago, many Arabs, leaders and citizens alike, rooted for Gov. George W. Bush over Vice President Al Gore in the race for the presidency. There was an assumption that Mr. Bush would be like his father, who was seen as relatively Arab-friendly.
Nearly four years ago, there was hope among Arabs that Americans would have soured on President Bush and elect Senator John Kerry. President Bush had disappointed. Then American voters did, too.
“The Arab street has been here before,” said Mustafa Hamarneh, the former director of the University of Jordan’s Center for Strategic Studies. “We rooted for this and that, and nothing happened. Its déjà vu.”
“Unless the Americans realize that they really have to change and become more evenhanded and apply justice in the region, things will be the same,” he said.
Jordan is a small country, just six million people, half of whom are of Palestinian descent. It is without oil and without much water, and has been battered by the crises in the West Bank and Iraq. Mr. Obama will visit a city tense with politics and economics, which are inevitably intertwined. It is also conservative, clean and quiet.
Mr. Obama “will be no different than Bush,” said Moatasem Hussein, 34, who sold nuts from a shop on a street corner in east Amman.
“What’s going to be different?” said Jasser Shehadi, 40, who sold shoes in the shop next door. “They are all the same.”
Across the street, Muhammad al-Banna, 41, said: “Obama is excellent. He is direct. He is like the successor to J.F.K.”
Instantly, Khaled Attiat, a carpenter working in an open storefront, jumped into the conversation. “Oh, come on,” he shouted. “They are all as bad as each other.”
Mr. Banna replied, “Yes they are all bad, but still, Obama might be a little less bad.”
The reaction was similar in Egypt which, like Jordan, is one of America’s closest allies in the region.
“For me it doesn’t matter that he’s black or his name is Hussein,” said Ahmed Amin, 34, as he drank a beer in a downtown Cairo bar. “He’s an American, and so I disagree with most of what he says about the Arab world. I mean, Condoleezza Rice was black and poor, and she still invaded Iraq.”
There is, however, at least one positive lesson drawn by some in this region over Mr. Obama’s success. It has served to restore a bit of their faith in American-style democracy, which has been tarnished in recent years by the invasion of Iraq and by an administration that talked about promoting democracy but then seemed to backtrack on its promises, many people here said.
The United States, many said, may be a biased supporter of Zionism hostile to Muslims, and still be, for its citizens, a place of opportunity unknown here.
“I think it’s very impressive that someone can start very poor and reach the top like this,” said Hazen Haidar, 23, a gym clerk in Cairo. “It doesn’t happen in Egypt.”
Michael Slackman reported from Amman, and Isabel Kershner from Jerusalem. Mona el-Naggar contributed reporting from Amman, and Nadim Audi from Cairo.
NAIA 3 finally opens in Manila.
This is from the Inquirer.
It seems that all terminals except Terminal 3 are processing traffic far beyond rated capacity. Whenever I have landed there or left there has not been much in the way of delays but I have heard others complain. There is always the problem of making sure you have money to pay the exit fee! These fees keep increasing and smaller airports now are joining the bandwagon. I see that there are still legal battles going on concerning Terminal 3!
Inquirer Headlines / Nation
http://newsinfo.inquirer.net/inquirerheadlines/nation/view/20080723-150120/After-6-years-NAIA-3-finally-opens
After 6 years, NAIA 3 finally opens
By Tarra QuismundoPhilippine Daily Inquirer
Posted date: July 23, 2008
MANILA, Philippines—Once a white elephant that slept soundly in the dark, the mothballed Ninoy Aquino International Airport Terminal 3 (NAIA 3) flickered into life before dawn Tuesday and accepted its first passengers.
Lights glowed on one side of the kilometer-long terminal on Andrews Avenue in Pasay City while the rest of the city slept. At 3:02 a.m., the facility finally started partial operations for domestic flights of Cebu Pacific Air, ending some six stale years forced by contract controversies and building safety concerns.
“This has been a long time coming,” said Transportation Secretary Leandro Mendoza.
Added Lance Gokongwei, Cebu Pacific president: “This is like heaven when we just came from hell ... It is going to be the same for our passenger experience.”
Originally built for some 13 million international passengers annually, the NAIA 3 terminal opened its main hall—around 20 percent of the building—for eight local flights. The load is expected to carry a daily average of 500 people to destinations like Caticlan, Tuguegarao, Laoag, San Jose (Mindoro) and Naga.
The biggest change
“This gives passengers a welcome reprieve coming from the old domestic terminal and then coming here. It’s a major change ... [Passengers] asked if there will be any changes in the process, and we said there’s none. The biggest change is the feeling of passengers when they come in,” said Cebu Pacific spokesperson Candice Iyog.
Randy Samson and wife Maria Donna Lee were the first passengers to walk into the terminal for check-in Tuesday, more than two hours ahead of their 5:10 a.m. flight to Caticlan.
They were among 48 passengers that boarded Cebu Pacific’s maiden NAIA 3 flight 5J-891, which used one of the airline’s two 72-seater turbo-propeller ATR 72-500s.
Legal disputes that had for long kept the NAIA 3 shut seemed a distant reality for passengers who were only too glad to be using the modern terminal.
“It looks better than the old terminal and the security was very tight. I was informed that we will be using the NAIA 3 and I expected that there might be some additional procedure to be done so we decided to come early,” said Maria Donna Lee, the first recorded NAIA 3 passenger for which she received a roundtrip Cebu Pacific ticket to Caticlan.
First-time Philippine visitors Zheng Yanxia, Wei Zhigang and Mai Ruifang readily noted the difference between the old international terminal and the newer facility when they arrived in Manila Tuesday.
‘At last, it’s open’
The group from Guangzhou province had arrived via a Cebu Pacific flight from China and passed through the NAIA 1 before they shuttled to the new facility. They were not aware that it was the NAIA 3’s opening day until told by the media.
“It’s much, much better. It’s very clean,” said Zheng, 28, who booked a five-day stay in Boracay with her group.
Lisa Panaligan, 33, a migrant worker on a month-long vacation here, thought the new terminal was more conducive to travel than the old NAIA terminal she had been used to seeing on her way to jobs in Taiwan and Dubai.
“At long last, it was opened. When it comes to comfort, it’s bigger and the style of the terminal is for international. The security check was more strict. More expats would be encouraged to come here,” said Panaligan, who flew to Boracay with sister Racquel and aunt Nida Stuart.
Operating at a loss
Those who booked their flights before the planned opening was finalized were informed by phone call, text and e-mail about their flight’s transfer to the new terminal, passengers said.
Alfonso Cusi, general manager of the Manila International Airport Authority (MIAA), said that partial operations of the NAIA 3 would cost more than the fees to be generated.
“We only have eight flights, that will not even be enough to pay the electricity bill. But we’re looking at it as a whole, that we have to put it into use for the interest of the public,” Cusi said.
He said power costs alone to feed the NAIA 3 terminal lights and air-conditioning units would cost roughly P1 million per day even at partial operations.
Overcapacity
Cebu Pacific is planning to move all its operations to NAIA 3, while Philippine Airlines (PAL) is expected to begin operations of its budget-brand PAL Express at the new facility.
The MIAA now operates four terminals, including the NAIA 1 and 2 (Centennial Terminal), and the Manila Domestic Terminal (MDT).
The NAIA 1, built for 4.5 million passengers yearly, was used by 6.5 million passengers last year. The Centennial Terminal, home to PAL operations, hosted 10 million travelers in 2007, or 3 million beyond capacity. The MDT’s 2.5-million capacity building hosted 5 million last year.
Cusi said talks were also under way for PAL to use the NAIA 3 terminal for arrivals of its early morning trans-Pacific flights—from San Francisco, Los Angeles, Las Vegas and Vancouver.
Cebu Pacific is hoping to shift to full domestic operations at the NAIA 3 by early August, moving the rest of its local flights to 19 destinations, Iyog said.
The move would transfer some 80 percent of total domestic operations at the MDT, freeing up the crammed and aged facility for other airlines. The MIAA would retain the domestic terminal fee at P200.
A sigh of relief
“The upside is that passengers are now going to decide to take (Cebu Pacific) because of a better terminal. Now, we have a level playing field,” Iyog said.
The MIAA is expected to continue repair and completion work at the facility as partial operations proceed. Unfinished parts of the terminal include the commercial strip at the departure level.
During ceremonies at 11:30 a.m. Tuesday, some six hours after the inaugural flight, government officials congratulated each other for finally opening the terminal.
Calling the old domestic terminal “an embarrassment,” Sen. Richard Gordon said: “I’m sure when people arrive here, they’ll feel comfort, confidence, pride and safety. Today, we move forward, we address the severe problems we are facing. We heave a sigh of relief.”
The NAIA 3 opening beat the congressional oversight committee’s September deadline for the MIAA to open the terminal.
Controversies
The MIAA had twice postponed planned openings of the terminal in 2006 and 2007 because of structural defects that were traced to the March 27, 2006, collapse of a gypsum board ceiling at the terminal’s arrival area.
The NAIA 3 had remained shut because of controversies surrounding the contract between the Philippine government and the Philippine International Air Terminals Corp. (PIATCo) consortium, which built the terminal with Germany’s Frankfurt Airport Services Worldwide (Fraport) as its principal investor.
The Supreme Court voided the contract in 2003, but claims for the terminal’s construction cost continue in international arbitration courts. With a report from Reuters
^ Back to top
©Copyright 2001-2008 INQUIRER.net, An Inquirer Company
It seems that all terminals except Terminal 3 are processing traffic far beyond rated capacity. Whenever I have landed there or left there has not been much in the way of delays but I have heard others complain. There is always the problem of making sure you have money to pay the exit fee! These fees keep increasing and smaller airports now are joining the bandwagon. I see that there are still legal battles going on concerning Terminal 3!
Inquirer Headlines / Nation
http://newsinfo.inquirer.net/inquirerheadlines/nation/view/20080723-150120/After-6-years-NAIA-3-finally-opens
After 6 years, NAIA 3 finally opens
By Tarra QuismundoPhilippine Daily Inquirer
Posted date: July 23, 2008
MANILA, Philippines—Once a white elephant that slept soundly in the dark, the mothballed Ninoy Aquino International Airport Terminal 3 (NAIA 3) flickered into life before dawn Tuesday and accepted its first passengers.
Lights glowed on one side of the kilometer-long terminal on Andrews Avenue in Pasay City while the rest of the city slept. At 3:02 a.m., the facility finally started partial operations for domestic flights of Cebu Pacific Air, ending some six stale years forced by contract controversies and building safety concerns.
“This has been a long time coming,” said Transportation Secretary Leandro Mendoza.
Added Lance Gokongwei, Cebu Pacific president: “This is like heaven when we just came from hell ... It is going to be the same for our passenger experience.”
Originally built for some 13 million international passengers annually, the NAIA 3 terminal opened its main hall—around 20 percent of the building—for eight local flights. The load is expected to carry a daily average of 500 people to destinations like Caticlan, Tuguegarao, Laoag, San Jose (Mindoro) and Naga.
The biggest change
“This gives passengers a welcome reprieve coming from the old domestic terminal and then coming here. It’s a major change ... [Passengers] asked if there will be any changes in the process, and we said there’s none. The biggest change is the feeling of passengers when they come in,” said Cebu Pacific spokesperson Candice Iyog.
Randy Samson and wife Maria Donna Lee were the first passengers to walk into the terminal for check-in Tuesday, more than two hours ahead of their 5:10 a.m. flight to Caticlan.
They were among 48 passengers that boarded Cebu Pacific’s maiden NAIA 3 flight 5J-891, which used one of the airline’s two 72-seater turbo-propeller ATR 72-500s.
Legal disputes that had for long kept the NAIA 3 shut seemed a distant reality for passengers who were only too glad to be using the modern terminal.
“It looks better than the old terminal and the security was very tight. I was informed that we will be using the NAIA 3 and I expected that there might be some additional procedure to be done so we decided to come early,” said Maria Donna Lee, the first recorded NAIA 3 passenger for which she received a roundtrip Cebu Pacific ticket to Caticlan.
First-time Philippine visitors Zheng Yanxia, Wei Zhigang and Mai Ruifang readily noted the difference between the old international terminal and the newer facility when they arrived in Manila Tuesday.
‘At last, it’s open’
The group from Guangzhou province had arrived via a Cebu Pacific flight from China and passed through the NAIA 1 before they shuttled to the new facility. They were not aware that it was the NAIA 3’s opening day until told by the media.
“It’s much, much better. It’s very clean,” said Zheng, 28, who booked a five-day stay in Boracay with her group.
Lisa Panaligan, 33, a migrant worker on a month-long vacation here, thought the new terminal was more conducive to travel than the old NAIA terminal she had been used to seeing on her way to jobs in Taiwan and Dubai.
“At long last, it was opened. When it comes to comfort, it’s bigger and the style of the terminal is for international. The security check was more strict. More expats would be encouraged to come here,” said Panaligan, who flew to Boracay with sister Racquel and aunt Nida Stuart.
Operating at a loss
Those who booked their flights before the planned opening was finalized were informed by phone call, text and e-mail about their flight’s transfer to the new terminal, passengers said.
Alfonso Cusi, general manager of the Manila International Airport Authority (MIAA), said that partial operations of the NAIA 3 would cost more than the fees to be generated.
“We only have eight flights, that will not even be enough to pay the electricity bill. But we’re looking at it as a whole, that we have to put it into use for the interest of the public,” Cusi said.
He said power costs alone to feed the NAIA 3 terminal lights and air-conditioning units would cost roughly P1 million per day even at partial operations.
Overcapacity
Cebu Pacific is planning to move all its operations to NAIA 3, while Philippine Airlines (PAL) is expected to begin operations of its budget-brand PAL Express at the new facility.
The MIAA now operates four terminals, including the NAIA 1 and 2 (Centennial Terminal), and the Manila Domestic Terminal (MDT).
The NAIA 1, built for 4.5 million passengers yearly, was used by 6.5 million passengers last year. The Centennial Terminal, home to PAL operations, hosted 10 million travelers in 2007, or 3 million beyond capacity. The MDT’s 2.5-million capacity building hosted 5 million last year.
Cusi said talks were also under way for PAL to use the NAIA 3 terminal for arrivals of its early morning trans-Pacific flights—from San Francisco, Los Angeles, Las Vegas and Vancouver.
Cebu Pacific is hoping to shift to full domestic operations at the NAIA 3 by early August, moving the rest of its local flights to 19 destinations, Iyog said.
The move would transfer some 80 percent of total domestic operations at the MDT, freeing up the crammed and aged facility for other airlines. The MIAA would retain the domestic terminal fee at P200.
A sigh of relief
“The upside is that passengers are now going to decide to take (Cebu Pacific) because of a better terminal. Now, we have a level playing field,” Iyog said.
The MIAA is expected to continue repair and completion work at the facility as partial operations proceed. Unfinished parts of the terminal include the commercial strip at the departure level.
During ceremonies at 11:30 a.m. Tuesday, some six hours after the inaugural flight, government officials congratulated each other for finally opening the terminal.
Calling the old domestic terminal “an embarrassment,” Sen. Richard Gordon said: “I’m sure when people arrive here, they’ll feel comfort, confidence, pride and safety. Today, we move forward, we address the severe problems we are facing. We heave a sigh of relief.”
The NAIA 3 opening beat the congressional oversight committee’s September deadline for the MIAA to open the terminal.
Controversies
The MIAA had twice postponed planned openings of the terminal in 2006 and 2007 because of structural defects that were traced to the March 27, 2006, collapse of a gypsum board ceiling at the terminal’s arrival area.
The NAIA 3 had remained shut because of controversies surrounding the contract between the Philippine government and the Philippine International Air Terminals Corp. (PIATCo) consortium, which built the terminal with Germany’s Frankfurt Airport Services Worldwide (Fraport) as its principal investor.
The Supreme Court voided the contract in 2003, but claims for the terminal’s construction cost continue in international arbitration courts. With a report from Reuters
^ Back to top
©Copyright 2001-2008 INQUIRER.net, An Inquirer Company
The Culture of Debt
In order to keep expanding capitalism needs increased consumption. As Marcuse put it, the capitalist ideal is the infinite consumer. Needs are never satiated and so production and consumption can continue to expand indefinitely until resources run out or there is no longer effective demand, that is demand backed by purchasing power. In order to prevent effective demand from drying up credit is required for people who do not have cash on hand. Not only does this keep the economy growing but it also provides new sources of profit through interest on loans. However, the whole process was allowed to balloon out of control with the sub prime mortgage instruments and now the economy is attempting to re-adjust but with rather uncreative destruction with huge rightdowns by banks and many homes lost to purchasers. The culture of debt is an appropriate mind set and is required for an expanding economy. It is unlikely to disappear. This is from the NY Times.
July 22, 2008
Op-Ed Columnist
The Culture of Debt
By DAVID BROOKS
On the front page of Sunday’s Times, Gretchen Morgenson described Diane McLeod’s spiral into indebtedness, and now a debate has erupted over who is to blame.
Some people emphasize the predatory lenders who seduced her with too-good-to-be-true credit lines and incomprehensible mortgage offers. Here was a single mother made vulnerable by health problems and divorce. Working two jobs and stressed, she found herself barraged by credit card companies offering easy access to money. Mortgage lenders offered her credit on the basis of the supposedly rising value of her house. These lenders had little interest in whether she could pay off her loans. They made most of their money via initial lending fees and then sold off the loans to third parties.
In short, these predatory companies swooped down on a vulnerable woman, took what they could and left her careening toward bankruptcy.
Other people emphasize McLeod’s own responsibility. She is the one who took the credit card offers knowing that debt is a promise that has to be kept. After her divorce, she went on a shopping spree to make herself feel better. After surgery, she sat at home watching the home shopping channels, charging thousands more.
Free societies depend on individual choice and responsibility, those in this camp argue. People have to be held accountable for their indulgences or there is no justice. As McLeod herself admirably told Morgenson: “I regret not dealing with my emotions instead of just shopping.”
If you go to the online comment section affixed to Morgenson’s article, you see advocates of these two positions talking past one another, one side talking the morality of social protection and the other the morality of personal responsibility.
And yet if you look at McLeod’s case, and the entire financial crisis that it stands for, there is a third position. This is the position held in overlapping ways by liberal communitarians and conservative Burkeans.
This third position begins with the notion that people are driven by the desire to earn the respect of their fellows. Individuals don’t build their lives from scratch. They absorb the patterns and norms of the world around them.
Decision-making — whether it’s taking out a loan or deciding whom to marry — isn’t a coldly rational, self-conscious act. Instead, decision-making is a long chain of processes, most of which happen beneath the level of awareness. We absorb a way of perceiving the world from parents and neighbors. We mimic the behavior around us. Only at the end of the process is there self-conscious oversight.
According to this view, what happened to McLeod, and the nation’s financial system, is part of a larger social story. America once had a culture of thrift. But over the past decades, that unspoken code has been silently eroded.
Some of the toxins were economic. Rising house prices gave people the impression that they could take on more risk. Some were cultural. We entered a period of mass luxury, in which people down the income scale expect to own designer goods. Some were moral. Schools and other institutions used to talk the language of sin and temptation to alert people to the seductions that could ruin their lives. They no longer do.
Norms changed and people began making jokes to make illicit things seem normal. Instead of condemning hyper-consumerism, they made quips about “retail therapy,” or repeated the line that Morgenson noted in her article: When the going gets tough, the tough go shopping.
McLeod and the lenders were not only shaped by deteriorating norms, they helped degrade them. Despite all the subterranean social influences, there still is that final stage of decision-making when individual choice matters. Each time an avid lender struck a deal with an avid borrower, it reinforced a new definition of acceptable behavior for neighbors, family and friends. In a community, behavior sets off ripples. Every decision is a public contribution or a destructive act.
And now the reckoning has come. The turn in the market punishes many of those seduced by financial temptations. (Sometimes capitalism undermines the Puritan virtues, but sometimes it reinforces them.)
Meanwhile, social institutions are trying to re-right the norms. The government is sending some messages. The Treasury and the Fed are trying to stabilize the system while still ensuring that those who made mistakes feel the pain.
But the important shifts will be private, as people and communities learn and adopt different social standards. After the Depression, a savings mentality set in. After the dot-com bubble, a bit of sobriety hit Silicon Valley. Now it’s the borrowers’ and lenders’ turn. As the saying goes: People don’t change when they see the light. They change when they feel the heat.
July 22, 2008
Op-Ed Columnist
The Culture of Debt
By DAVID BROOKS
On the front page of Sunday’s Times, Gretchen Morgenson described Diane McLeod’s spiral into indebtedness, and now a debate has erupted over who is to blame.
Some people emphasize the predatory lenders who seduced her with too-good-to-be-true credit lines and incomprehensible mortgage offers. Here was a single mother made vulnerable by health problems and divorce. Working two jobs and stressed, she found herself barraged by credit card companies offering easy access to money. Mortgage lenders offered her credit on the basis of the supposedly rising value of her house. These lenders had little interest in whether she could pay off her loans. They made most of their money via initial lending fees and then sold off the loans to third parties.
In short, these predatory companies swooped down on a vulnerable woman, took what they could and left her careening toward bankruptcy.
Other people emphasize McLeod’s own responsibility. She is the one who took the credit card offers knowing that debt is a promise that has to be kept. After her divorce, she went on a shopping spree to make herself feel better. After surgery, she sat at home watching the home shopping channels, charging thousands more.
Free societies depend on individual choice and responsibility, those in this camp argue. People have to be held accountable for their indulgences or there is no justice. As McLeod herself admirably told Morgenson: “I regret not dealing with my emotions instead of just shopping.”
If you go to the online comment section affixed to Morgenson’s article, you see advocates of these two positions talking past one another, one side talking the morality of social protection and the other the morality of personal responsibility.
And yet if you look at McLeod’s case, and the entire financial crisis that it stands for, there is a third position. This is the position held in overlapping ways by liberal communitarians and conservative Burkeans.
This third position begins with the notion that people are driven by the desire to earn the respect of their fellows. Individuals don’t build their lives from scratch. They absorb the patterns and norms of the world around them.
Decision-making — whether it’s taking out a loan or deciding whom to marry — isn’t a coldly rational, self-conscious act. Instead, decision-making is a long chain of processes, most of which happen beneath the level of awareness. We absorb a way of perceiving the world from parents and neighbors. We mimic the behavior around us. Only at the end of the process is there self-conscious oversight.
According to this view, what happened to McLeod, and the nation’s financial system, is part of a larger social story. America once had a culture of thrift. But over the past decades, that unspoken code has been silently eroded.
Some of the toxins were economic. Rising house prices gave people the impression that they could take on more risk. Some were cultural. We entered a period of mass luxury, in which people down the income scale expect to own designer goods. Some were moral. Schools and other institutions used to talk the language of sin and temptation to alert people to the seductions that could ruin their lives. They no longer do.
Norms changed and people began making jokes to make illicit things seem normal. Instead of condemning hyper-consumerism, they made quips about “retail therapy,” or repeated the line that Morgenson noted in her article: When the going gets tough, the tough go shopping.
McLeod and the lenders were not only shaped by deteriorating norms, they helped degrade them. Despite all the subterranean social influences, there still is that final stage of decision-making when individual choice matters. Each time an avid lender struck a deal with an avid borrower, it reinforced a new definition of acceptable behavior for neighbors, family and friends. In a community, behavior sets off ripples. Every decision is a public contribution or a destructive act.
And now the reckoning has come. The turn in the market punishes many of those seduced by financial temptations. (Sometimes capitalism undermines the Puritan virtues, but sometimes it reinforces them.)
Meanwhile, social institutions are trying to re-right the norms. The government is sending some messages. The Treasury and the Fed are trying to stabilize the system while still ensuring that those who made mistakes feel the pain.
But the important shifts will be private, as people and communities learn and adopt different social standards. After the Depression, a savings mentality set in. After the dot-com bubble, a bit of sobriety hit Silicon Valley. Now it’s the borrowers’ and lenders’ turn. As the saying goes: People don’t change when they see the light. They change when they feel the heat.
More U.S. troops in Iraq still than before Surge began
Even though the surge has apparently ended U.S. troop levels are still above the levels when the surge started. It remains to be seen if Bush withdraws many more before he leaves office. Even Obama's timetable is a year and a half in length and some of the troops he withdraws he intends to send to Afghanistan. The U.S. public can look forward to more expense and more casualties if Obama wins and of course more of the same if McCain wins.
The U.S. military had 20 combat brigades in Iraq at its peak in 2007, with troop levels around 160,000-170,000.The current number is well above the 130,000 troops in Iraq when Bush ordered the deployment in January 2007. The Pentagon said last February it expected 140,000 troops to be in Iraq once the five brigade drawdown had finished.
The U.S. military had 20 combat brigades in Iraq at its peak in 2007, with troop levels around 160,000-170,000.The current number is well above the 130,000 troops in Iraq when Bush ordered the deployment in January 2007. The Pentagon said last February it expected 140,000 troops to be in Iraq once the five brigade drawdown had finished.
Tuesday, July 22, 2008
Iraq parliament passes poll law, Kurds walk out.
This is from Reuters.
This is bound to create trouble unless the issue is resolved. Already it is almost too late for elections this year apparently. The Sunnis could become restless again and also Sadr who was counting on doing well in the upcoming electi0n.l
Iraq's parliament passes poll law, Kurds walk out
Tue Jul 22, 2008 6:12pm BST
By Waleed IbrahimBAGHDAD, July 22 (Reuters)
Iraq's parliament passed a provincial elections bill on Tuesday, but a walkout by Kurdish lawmakers over how to deal with the disputed oil city of Kirkuk could mean the law will not be ratified by the presidency.Kurds make up one of three main groups, and their boycott of the vote means the bill could be sent back to parliament.The law is meant to pave the way for polls seen as vital to reconciling Iraq's Sunni Arabs, who boycotted the last provincial elections in 2005, with its other communities."Today parliament passed the provincial elections law, in the absence of the Kurdish alliance, which walked out," Hanin Qado, a lawmaker from the ruling Shi'ite alliance, told Reuters.Deputy Parliamentary Speaker Khalid al-Attiya cast doubt on whether a law passed without the Kurds present would even be ratified by Iraq's presidency council -- which must approve all laws -- headed by President Jalal Talabani, a Kurd."We cannot have a vote with an absence of a whole faction. The vote is useless. It will be rejected by the representatives of this bloc and by the presidency council," he said. Prime Minister Nuri al-Maliki wants the election to take place on Oct. 1, but the Electoral Commission says it will not have time to organise it by then, even with the law in place.Faraj al-Haidari, head of the commission, told Reuters on Tuesday he could not start implementing the election law until it was approved by the presidency council. He reiterated a warning that time was running out to hold polls this year, because the commission needed time to prepare.The law had been held up by a dispute over what to do about voting in multi-ethnic Kirkuk, where a dispute is simmering between Kurds who say the city should belong to the largely autonomous Kurdistan region and Arabs who want it to stay under central government authority.Arabs and Turkmen believe Kurds have stacked the city with Kurds since the downfall of Saddam in 2003 to try to tip the demographic balance in their favour in any vote.Arabs encouraged to move there under Saddam Hussein's rule fear the vote will consolidate Kurdish power and they sought to postpone it, a proposal Kurdish politicians have rejected.Parliament decided to postpone the vote and add another article that the Kurds found unacceptable: that each ethnic or sectarian group gets a set allocation of seats and voting is between individual candidates from those groups. Kurds, Arabs and Turkmen get 10 seats each. Minority Christians get two."We walked out because of the illegality of this article and because the speaker wanted a secret vote, which is not constitutional," said Fouad Masoum, head of the Kurdish bloc.Washington has been urging a speedy provincial election, which it sees as a pillar of national reconciliation, but the poll is also proving a potential flashpoint for tensions.Besides Kirkuk, analysts say the poll will be battleground for a power struggle between Shi'ites in the oil-rich south. (Additional reporting by Mohammed Abbas; Writing by Tim Cocks)
This is bound to create trouble unless the issue is resolved. Already it is almost too late for elections this year apparently. The Sunnis could become restless again and also Sadr who was counting on doing well in the upcoming electi0n.l
Iraq's parliament passes poll law, Kurds walk out
Tue Jul 22, 2008 6:12pm BST
By Waleed IbrahimBAGHDAD, July 22 (Reuters)
Iraq's parliament passed a provincial elections bill on Tuesday, but a walkout by Kurdish lawmakers over how to deal with the disputed oil city of Kirkuk could mean the law will not be ratified by the presidency.Kurds make up one of three main groups, and their boycott of the vote means the bill could be sent back to parliament.The law is meant to pave the way for polls seen as vital to reconciling Iraq's Sunni Arabs, who boycotted the last provincial elections in 2005, with its other communities."Today parliament passed the provincial elections law, in the absence of the Kurdish alliance, which walked out," Hanin Qado, a lawmaker from the ruling Shi'ite alliance, told Reuters.Deputy Parliamentary Speaker Khalid al-Attiya cast doubt on whether a law passed without the Kurds present would even be ratified by Iraq's presidency council -- which must approve all laws -- headed by President Jalal Talabani, a Kurd."We cannot have a vote with an absence of a whole faction. The vote is useless. It will be rejected by the representatives of this bloc and by the presidency council," he said. Prime Minister Nuri al-Maliki wants the election to take place on Oct. 1, but the Electoral Commission says it will not have time to organise it by then, even with the law in place.Faraj al-Haidari, head of the commission, told Reuters on Tuesday he could not start implementing the election law until it was approved by the presidency council. He reiterated a warning that time was running out to hold polls this year, because the commission needed time to prepare.The law had been held up by a dispute over what to do about voting in multi-ethnic Kirkuk, where a dispute is simmering between Kurds who say the city should belong to the largely autonomous Kurdistan region and Arabs who want it to stay under central government authority.Arabs and Turkmen believe Kurds have stacked the city with Kurds since the downfall of Saddam in 2003 to try to tip the demographic balance in their favour in any vote.Arabs encouraged to move there under Saddam Hussein's rule fear the vote will consolidate Kurdish power and they sought to postpone it, a proposal Kurdish politicians have rejected.Parliament decided to postpone the vote and add another article that the Kurds found unacceptable: that each ethnic or sectarian group gets a set allocation of seats and voting is between individual candidates from those groups. Kurds, Arabs and Turkmen get 10 seats each. Minority Christians get two."We walked out because of the illegality of this article and because the speaker wanted a secret vote, which is not constitutional," said Fouad Masoum, head of the Kurdish bloc.Washington has been urging a speedy provincial election, which it sees as a pillar of national reconciliation, but the poll is also proving a potential flashpoint for tensions.Besides Kirkuk, analysts say the poll will be battleground for a power struggle between Shi'ites in the oil-rich south. (Additional reporting by Mohammed Abbas; Writing by Tim Cocks)
Doubts linger over Zimbabwe deal.
This is from the BBC.
There seems to be a bit of sour grapes in this article. The U.S. UK and others wanted tough sanctions and those were vetoed by Russia and China. The Africans were not in favor of that approach. The diplomatic route that has up to now produced little seems to be working now that Mugabe has made his point. Perhaps Mugabe realizes that he must defuse the situation or face even stronger opposition from African countries. He can claim now that at least he has defeated western imperialist machinations against his regime! Actually, Mugabe's cronyism and destruction of the economy has created conditions for his ultimate downfall in any event. The article is probably correct though in thinking that there could still be plenty of trouble ahead.
Doubts linger over Zimbabwe deal
By Brian Hungwe Harare
The ink that marks a possible resolution to the crisis that has dogged Zimbabwe for the last eight years may be dry, but the tears of grieving relatives are not.
Leslie Madamombe of Mashonaland Central province lost three brothers a week before the country's 27 June presidential run-off.
One was shot point-blank and the others forced to drink a lethal Chinese paraquat herbicide by militias from the ruling Zanu-PF party.
"[The agreement] should have happened long back," he says. "Nothing will ever bring my three dead brothers back."
Leslie's mother and elder brother Hilton still fear for their lives, guarded by armed police at a Harare hospital.
"I'm bitter, but I however look forward with hope," he says.
No embrace
National angst remains after President Robert Mugabe and his main political rivals, Morgan Tsvangirai and Arthur Mutambara of the two Movement for Democratic Change (MDC) factions, signed a Memorandum of Understanding that could pave the way for a lasting political settlement.
This is not the time to outdo one another, but to think about the suffering of the ordinary people Mudiwa, Highfields township resident
There was a handshake and a smile, but no embrace. It appears the rivals did not want to physically commit themselves that far.
The body language failed to provide a clue as to whether the ice had really been broken in the hotel where they held a brief meeting.
Mr Mutambara seemed at ease, Mr Tsvangirai disinterested, and Mr Mugabe was, as usual, self-confident.
The handshake was a temporary triumph for South African President Thabo Mbeki and his much-criticised "quiet diplomacy" policy on Zimbabwe.
At last, the rivals had come face to face.
They signed a commitment to "end polarisation, divisions, conflict and intolerance that have characterised our country's politics."
The talks are due to be completed in two weeks.
Economic collapse
With inflation at more than 2.2m%, unemployment at 80%, and basic food commodities vanishing from shelves, locals had been finding things tough, with millions forced into neighbouring countries.
It is a situation President Mugabe was finding difficult to wriggle out of.
After winning the controversial run-off with an official tally of 85%, the economy became his newest challenger.
This time, he could he was never going to win, hence the huge climb-down for negotiations with Mr Tsvangirai - who he had previously characterised as a "puppet," "dumb" and a "frog".
For now, both rivals' loose tongues are tied by a clause in the new deal that states: "The parties shall refrain from using abusive language that may incite hostility, political intolerance and ethnic hatred or undermine each other."
In the townships, there is some confusion.
"We wait and see, it's difficult to trust Mr Mugabe," says Caleb, 34, from Chitungwiza, a dormitory town just south of Harare.
But Mudiwa, of Highfields said: "We trust all our leaders, we hope whatever they will debate, is good for us all."
"This is not the time to outdo one another, but to think about the suffering of the ordinary people."
Around the streets of Harare, the news came as a shock to many.
It drew laughter from those who thought it was a hoax, but excitement from others.
A security officer at a local hotel said people were looking forward to making sure "people are having enough food and they are having enough medication from the hospitals".
Taxi driver Johannes Phiri said: "I am quite happy, what's has been happening was very bad."
"With the agreement, everything will be all right so that we can survive and lead our normal lives again."
'Ball rolling'
A 40-year-old petrol attendant who refused to be identified said the country could return to the relative prosperity of the past.
"The ball is rolling on now. I'm sure the country is going to prosper, it is going to be a Zimbabwe like that one of the yesteryears."
Under Monday's deal, the objectives and priorities of new government are to "restore economic stability and growth," and to address the issue of sanctions and the land question.
The parties agreed to address the thorny issues of a new constitution, national healing, free political activity, the rule of law, and guaranteeing security.
In past weeks, Zanu-PF terror squads have torched countless rural homes, forcing villagers to flee into mountains where temperatures dropped to 6C.
The terror squads or militias are now expected to disband their bases, and preach peace.
"Will they ever do that, let's wait and see, I am very sceptical," says Leslie.
"Are people now able to walk freely with their party T-shirts without risking their limbs?" he asked.
Story from BBC NEWS:
There seems to be a bit of sour grapes in this article. The U.S. UK and others wanted tough sanctions and those were vetoed by Russia and China. The Africans were not in favor of that approach. The diplomatic route that has up to now produced little seems to be working now that Mugabe has made his point. Perhaps Mugabe realizes that he must defuse the situation or face even stronger opposition from African countries. He can claim now that at least he has defeated western imperialist machinations against his regime! Actually, Mugabe's cronyism and destruction of the economy has created conditions for his ultimate downfall in any event. The article is probably correct though in thinking that there could still be plenty of trouble ahead.
Doubts linger over Zimbabwe deal
By Brian Hungwe Harare
The ink that marks a possible resolution to the crisis that has dogged Zimbabwe for the last eight years may be dry, but the tears of grieving relatives are not.
Leslie Madamombe of Mashonaland Central province lost three brothers a week before the country's 27 June presidential run-off.
One was shot point-blank and the others forced to drink a lethal Chinese paraquat herbicide by militias from the ruling Zanu-PF party.
"[The agreement] should have happened long back," he says. "Nothing will ever bring my three dead brothers back."
Leslie's mother and elder brother Hilton still fear for their lives, guarded by armed police at a Harare hospital.
"I'm bitter, but I however look forward with hope," he says.
No embrace
National angst remains after President Robert Mugabe and his main political rivals, Morgan Tsvangirai and Arthur Mutambara of the two Movement for Democratic Change (MDC) factions, signed a Memorandum of Understanding that could pave the way for a lasting political settlement.
This is not the time to outdo one another, but to think about the suffering of the ordinary people Mudiwa, Highfields township resident
There was a handshake and a smile, but no embrace. It appears the rivals did not want to physically commit themselves that far.
The body language failed to provide a clue as to whether the ice had really been broken in the hotel where they held a brief meeting.
Mr Mutambara seemed at ease, Mr Tsvangirai disinterested, and Mr Mugabe was, as usual, self-confident.
The handshake was a temporary triumph for South African President Thabo Mbeki and his much-criticised "quiet diplomacy" policy on Zimbabwe.
At last, the rivals had come face to face.
They signed a commitment to "end polarisation, divisions, conflict and intolerance that have characterised our country's politics."
The talks are due to be completed in two weeks.
Economic collapse
With inflation at more than 2.2m%, unemployment at 80%, and basic food commodities vanishing from shelves, locals had been finding things tough, with millions forced into neighbouring countries.
It is a situation President Mugabe was finding difficult to wriggle out of.
After winning the controversial run-off with an official tally of 85%, the economy became his newest challenger.
This time, he could he was never going to win, hence the huge climb-down for negotiations with Mr Tsvangirai - who he had previously characterised as a "puppet," "dumb" and a "frog".
For now, both rivals' loose tongues are tied by a clause in the new deal that states: "The parties shall refrain from using abusive language that may incite hostility, political intolerance and ethnic hatred or undermine each other."
In the townships, there is some confusion.
"We wait and see, it's difficult to trust Mr Mugabe," says Caleb, 34, from Chitungwiza, a dormitory town just south of Harare.
But Mudiwa, of Highfields said: "We trust all our leaders, we hope whatever they will debate, is good for us all."
"This is not the time to outdo one another, but to think about the suffering of the ordinary people."
Around the streets of Harare, the news came as a shock to many.
It drew laughter from those who thought it was a hoax, but excitement from others.
A security officer at a local hotel said people were looking forward to making sure "people are having enough food and they are having enough medication from the hospitals".
Taxi driver Johannes Phiri said: "I am quite happy, what's has been happening was very bad."
"With the agreement, everything will be all right so that we can survive and lead our normal lives again."
'Ball rolling'
A 40-year-old petrol attendant who refused to be identified said the country could return to the relative prosperity of the past.
"The ball is rolling on now. I'm sure the country is going to prosper, it is going to be a Zimbabwe like that one of the yesteryears."
Under Monday's deal, the objectives and priorities of new government are to "restore economic stability and growth," and to address the issue of sanctions and the land question.
The parties agreed to address the thorny issues of a new constitution, national healing, free political activity, the rule of law, and guaranteeing security.
In past weeks, Zanu-PF terror squads have torched countless rural homes, forcing villagers to flee into mountains where temperatures dropped to 6C.
The terror squads or militias are now expected to disband their bases, and preach peace.
"Will they ever do that, let's wait and see, I am very sceptical," says Leslie.
"Are people now able to walk freely with their party T-shirts without risking their limbs?" he asked.
Story from BBC NEWS:
Monday, July 21, 2008
Report: U.S. Africa Aid is Increasingly Military Advocacy
This is from the Washington Post.
Even though most expert opinion is that political change and development aid are key to preventing or defeating insurgencies the U.S. seems bound and determined to stress military might as a means of imposing its will and as a prime foreign policy tool. Perhaps this is because the military industrial complex has a great deal of influence on policy whereas the U.S. interests that might profit from aid and development expenditures do not have such a strong lobbying group in congress. If the U.S. trains and equips African armed forces this will create a bond between the U.S. and those armies and also provide an outlet for U.S. equipment and arms manufacturers.
Report: U.S. Africa Aid Is Increasingly MilitaryAdvocacy
Group Cites Development Needs
By Stephanie McCrummenWashington Post Foreign ServiceFriday, July 18, 2008; A10
NAIROBI, July 17 -- U.S. aid to Africa is becoming increasingly militarized, resulting in skewed priorities and less attention to longer-term development projects that could lead to greater stability across the continent, according to a report released Thursday by the advocacy group Refugees International.
The report warns that the planned U.S. Africa Command, designed to boost America's image and prevent terrorism, is allowing the Defense Department to usurp funds traditionally directed by the State Department and U.S. aid agencies.
A Pentagon spokesman did not return a call requesting comment. But Defense Secretary Robert M. Gates warned this week against the risk of a "creeping militarization" of U.S. foreign policy and said the State Department should lead U.S. engagement with other countries.
The Pentagon, which controlled about 3 percent of official aid money a decade ago, now controls 22 percent, while the U.S. Agency for International Development's share has declined from 65 percent to 40 percent, according to the 56-page report.
"The danger is this strategy will not achieve the security objectives of addressing the root causes of terrorism," said Mark Malan, author of the report. "And it certainly won't address the developmental objectives of U.S. foreign policy."
Refugees International, based in Washington, provides aid to refugees and advocates for solutions to end conditions that create displacement.
Malan said the militarization has been driven by the U.S. focus on counterterrorism, though the trend dates to the Cold War era. The more fundamental problem, he said, is a lack of consistent, coherent U.S. foreign policy attention to Africa.
For example, the United States has dedicated nearly $50 million to hire contractors to train 2,000 soldiers in post-civil war Liberia, a West African country of 4 million people. Meanwhile, $5.5 million has been dedicated to boosting a weak and unprofessional army of 164,000 soldiers in Congo, a country of 65 million where a decade-long conflict and humanitarian crisis have left an estimated 5 million people dead.
The headquarters of the new African command post, known as Africom, has not been determined, and many African leaders have rejected hosting it. A temporary headquarters is being set up in Stuttgart, Germany, and is expected to begin consolidating responsibility for the continent in October.
Africom in part aims to better integrate U.S. efforts in Africa by coordinating military activities with the State Department and other agencies, but "the State Department is being overwhelmed by the Pentagon," Malan said.
That concern was also raised in a Government Accountability Office report on Africom released this week. The report noted that Africom, which is to have about 1,300 employees, has had difficulty integrating 13 staff members from the State Department and other agencies.
"State Department and U.S. Agency for International Development officials have expressed concerns that Africom will become the lead for all U.S. efforts in Africa, rather than just DOD activities," the report said.
Even though most expert opinion is that political change and development aid are key to preventing or defeating insurgencies the U.S. seems bound and determined to stress military might as a means of imposing its will and as a prime foreign policy tool. Perhaps this is because the military industrial complex has a great deal of influence on policy whereas the U.S. interests that might profit from aid and development expenditures do not have such a strong lobbying group in congress. If the U.S. trains and equips African armed forces this will create a bond between the U.S. and those armies and also provide an outlet for U.S. equipment and arms manufacturers.
Report: U.S. Africa Aid Is Increasingly MilitaryAdvocacy
Group Cites Development Needs
By Stephanie McCrummenWashington Post Foreign ServiceFriday, July 18, 2008; A10
NAIROBI, July 17 -- U.S. aid to Africa is becoming increasingly militarized, resulting in skewed priorities and less attention to longer-term development projects that could lead to greater stability across the continent, according to a report released Thursday by the advocacy group Refugees International.
The report warns that the planned U.S. Africa Command, designed to boost America's image and prevent terrorism, is allowing the Defense Department to usurp funds traditionally directed by the State Department and U.S. aid agencies.
A Pentagon spokesman did not return a call requesting comment. But Defense Secretary Robert M. Gates warned this week against the risk of a "creeping militarization" of U.S. foreign policy and said the State Department should lead U.S. engagement with other countries.
The Pentagon, which controlled about 3 percent of official aid money a decade ago, now controls 22 percent, while the U.S. Agency for International Development's share has declined from 65 percent to 40 percent, according to the 56-page report.
"The danger is this strategy will not achieve the security objectives of addressing the root causes of terrorism," said Mark Malan, author of the report. "And it certainly won't address the developmental objectives of U.S. foreign policy."
Refugees International, based in Washington, provides aid to refugees and advocates for solutions to end conditions that create displacement.
Malan said the militarization has been driven by the U.S. focus on counterterrorism, though the trend dates to the Cold War era. The more fundamental problem, he said, is a lack of consistent, coherent U.S. foreign policy attention to Africa.
For example, the United States has dedicated nearly $50 million to hire contractors to train 2,000 soldiers in post-civil war Liberia, a West African country of 4 million people. Meanwhile, $5.5 million has been dedicated to boosting a weak and unprofessional army of 164,000 soldiers in Congo, a country of 65 million where a decade-long conflict and humanitarian crisis have left an estimated 5 million people dead.
The headquarters of the new African command post, known as Africom, has not been determined, and many African leaders have rejected hosting it. A temporary headquarters is being set up in Stuttgart, Germany, and is expected to begin consolidating responsibility for the continent in October.
Africom in part aims to better integrate U.S. efforts in Africa by coordinating military activities with the State Department and other agencies, but "the State Department is being overwhelmed by the Pentagon," Malan said.
That concern was also raised in a Government Accountability Office report on Africom released this week. The report noted that Africom, which is to have about 1,300 employees, has had difficulty integrating 13 staff members from the State Department and other agencies.
"State Department and U.S. Agency for International Development officials have expressed concerns that Africom will become the lead for all U.S. efforts in Africa, rather than just DOD activities," the report said.
Israel will Attack Iran?
This is from the Information Clearing House.
This article makes the case for thinking that Israel will attack Iran's nuclear facilities. However, it still remains to be seen if diplomacy will yet work at least for a while. But the U.S. and others are adamant that Iran should stop enriching uranium and Iran is just as adamant that it has every right to continue enriching uranium.
Israel would hardly be able to do more than set back Iran's nuclear programme for some time if it attacked and it could very well find itself on the receiving end of Iranian missiles plus attacks from Hezbollah and Hamas as well. The U.S. would probably be drawn into the fracas and this would just set the whole Middle East aflame. The price of oil would skyrocket as well sending western economies into a further tailspin.
New York Times Op-Ed: Israel Will Attack Iran
By Steven D., Booman TribunePosted on July 18, 2008, Printed on July 20, 2008http://www.alternet.org/bloggers/http://www.boomantribune.com//91978/
Yes, you read my title correctly. Today's New York Times includes an op-ed piece by Benny Morris, a Professor of Middle Eastern history at Ben Gurion University. He claims Israel will most certainly attack Iran within the next 4 to 7 months, and if conventional weapons are unsuccessful to knock out Iran's nuclear program, than Israel will escalate to the use of nuclear weapons.
By all accounts Professor Morris is no Likudist or neoconservative stalking horse, but a leading figure among Israel's "New Historians" movement which has portrayed the history of the creation of Israel and the genesis of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict in terms traditional Israeli historians deem revisionist and flawed because it claims to present a more balanced view of the history of the Palestinian conflict, one at odds with the traditional Israeli narrative of the "Palestinian Exodus" from Israel on the eve of the 1948 war.
All this as context for what is a deeply disturbing essay by Professor Morris, for his concerns cannot be brushed aside lightly as the ravings of a right wing Israeli figure, or as propaganda from someone connected to the current Israeli government. If accurate, the next President of the United States will face the beginning of his first term in office with a Middle East in flames with all that portends for the world. Here's Professor Morris in his own stark words describing the current situation as he sees it:
ISRAEL will almost surely attack Iran's nuclear sites in the next four to seven months -- and the leaders in Washington and even Tehran should hope that the attack will be successful enough to cause at least a significant delay in the Iranian production schedule, if not complete destruction, of that country's nuclear program. Because if the attack fails, the Middle East will almost certainly face a nuclear war -- either through a subsequent pre-emptive Israeli nuclear strike or a nuclear exchange shortly after Iran gets the bomb. [...]
But should Israel's conventional assault fail to significantly harm or stall the Iranian program, a ratcheting up of the Iranian-Israeli conflict to a nuclear level will most likely follow. Every intelligence agency in the world believes the Iranian program is geared toward making weapons, not to the peaceful applications of nuclear power. And, despite the current talk of additional economic sanctions, everyone knows that such measures have so far led nowhere and are unlikely to be applied with sufficient scope to cause Iran real pain, given Russia's and China's continued recalcitrance and Western Europe's (and America's) ambivalence in behavior, if not in rhetoric. Western intelligence agencies agree that Iran will reach the "point of no return" in acquiring the capacity to produce nuclear weapons in one to four years. [...]
Nonetheless, Israel, believing that its very existence is at stake -- and this is a feeling shared by most Israelis across the political spectrum -- will certainly make the effort. Israel's leaders, from Prime Minister Ehud Olmert down, have all explicitly stated that an Iranian bomb means Israel's destruction; Iran will not be allowed to get the bomb.
The best outcome will be that an Israeli conventional strike, whether failed or not -- and, given the Tehran regime's totalitarian grip, it may not be immediately clear how much damage the Israeli assault has caused -- would persuade the Iranians to halt their nuclear program, or at least persuade the Western powers to significantly increase the diplomatic and economic pressure on Iran.
But the more likely result is that the international community will continue to do nothing effective and that Iran will speed up its efforts to produce the bomb that can destroy Israel. The Iranians will also likely retaliate by attacking Israel's cities with ballistic missiles (possibly topped with chemical or biological warheads); by prodding its local clients, Hezbollah and Hamas, to unleash their own armories against Israel; and by activating international Muslim terrorist networks against Israeli and Jewish -- and possibly American -- targets worldwide (though the Iranians may at the last moment be wary of provoking American military involvement).
Such a situation would confront Israeli leaders with two agonizing, dismal choices. One is to allow the Iranians to acquire the bomb and hope for the best -- meaning a nuclear standoff, with the prospect of mutual assured destruction preventing the Iranians from actually using the weapon. The other would be to use the Iranian counterstrikes as an excuse to escalate and use the only means available that will actually destroy the Iranian nuclear project: Israel's own nuclear arsenal.
If this is the mindset of even a "revisionist" Israeli historian, a man who considers himself a member of the Israel's Left, than we are in a far more serious situation than previously thought. Perhaps Morris' account is mere bluster and sabre rattling. Perhaps, he is acting on behalf of those in Israel who desire to coerce the Bush administration into an attack on Iran. Perhaps. And perhaps the Times is allowing its Op-Ed pages to be used to further that propaganda effort. But we also have to consider that what Professor Morris is describing is an accurate assessment of Israel's intentions, and the mindset of a majority of its people regarding Iran.
Personally, I do not feel that Iran is as close to achieving a nuclear weapon as Professor Morris contends. Nor do I accept his statements that most "Western intelligence agencies" agree Iran will "pass the point of no return" within 1 to 4 years. Indeed, the last National Intelligence Assessment issued regarding Iran indicated that they abandoned their nuclear weapons program in 2003, and the head of the IAEA, Mohammed ElBaradei, has explicitly stated that his organization's inspectors have seen no evidence of any current nuclear weapons program, and that he sees no military solution to the concerns that the Western powers and Israel have regarding Iran's nuclear program. Any attack on Iran's nuclear facilities would be a "disaster" in his view.
Yet here we have a prominent member of the Israeli Left telling us that war between Iran and Israel is inevitable in the pages of the New York Times. One could hardly expect a more disheartening assessment of Israel's aggressive intentions toward Iran if this op-ed had been written by Prime Minister Olmert or his Defense Minister, Ehud Barak, who last week publicly stated that:
"Israel is the strongest country in the region and has proved in the past that it doesn't hesitate to act when its vital security interests are at stake."
His comment was an apparent allusion to Israel's daring 1981 airstrike that destroyed Iraq's unfinished nuclear reactor. Several top Israelis have publicly argued for a similar strike to destroy Iran's budding nuclear ambitions before the country develops a nuclear arsenal.
Israel's military sent warplanes over the eastern Mediterranean for a large military exercise in June that U.S. officials described as a possible rehearsal for a strike on Iran's nuclear facilities.
Barak, as you may recall, is the former Prime Minister of Israel during the last years of President Clinton's second term, and the head of Israel's Labor Party. In this context, one can assume that prominent members of both the Left and the Right on the Israeli political spectrum are committed to war with Iran should the U.S. fail to act. And so long as George Bush is President, we can assume that the United States government will do nothing to stop an Israeli air and missile strike against Iran, even if it now appears less likely that US military forces will be given that task by the Bush administration. Indeed, Bush has recently indicated he supports any possible military action which Israel might choose to take with respect to Iran:
President George W Bush has told the Israeli government that he may be prepared to approve a future military strike on Iranian nuclear facilities if negotiations with Tehran break down, according to a senior Pentagon official.
Despite the opposition of his own generals and widespread scepticism that America is ready to risk the military, political and economic consequences of an airborne strike on Iran, the president has given an "amber light" to an Israeli plan to attack Iran's main nuclear sites with long-range bombing sorties, the official told The Sunday Times.
"Amber means get on with your preparations, stand by for immediate attack and tell us when you're ready," the official said. But the Israelis have also been told that they can expect no help from American forces and will not be able to use US military bases in Iraq for logistical support.
If you get the sense that Israel and the Bush administration are playing with fire, you wouldn't be the only one. Doubtless, domestic political considerations may have something to do with Bush's posturing. The Republican candidate to replace him as President, and the one most likely to continue Bush's own policies in the Middle East, John McCain, is trailing Barack Obama in the national polls, and his candidacy is not enthusiastically supported by many Republicans. The threat of another military crisis in the Middle East could change that dynamic, however, as McCain's only strength from a political standpoint, his former military experience is still perceived by a plurality of the American public as making him more qualified than Obama for the role of Commander-in-Chief of America's armed forces.
As for Israel's current government, they rightly perceive that a President Obama would be much less likely to support independent military action by Israel, at least not until direct negotiations with Iran and the United States had proved futile and there was clear evidence that Iran was nearing the completion of a nuclear weapon. Even then, the appetite of many in America as to Iran's acquisition of a small nuclear arsenal can perhaps best be summed up by the views expressed by former CENTCOM commander General John Abizaid:
"I believe that we have the power to deter Iran, should it become nuclear," he said, referring to the theory that Iran would not risk a catastrophic retaliatory strike by using a nuclear weapon against the United States.
"There are ways to live with a nuclear Iran," Abizaid said in remarks at the Center for Strategic and International Studies, a think tank. "Let's face it, we lived with a nuclear Soviet Union, we've lived with a nuclear China, and we're living with (other) nuclear powers as well."
The current Secretary of Defense, Robert Gates, expressed similar comments at his confirmation hearing before the Senate when he stated under questioning from Senator Graham (R-SC) that he believed Iran would not use any nuclear weapons it acquired to attack Israel:
Asked by Senator Lindsey Graham if he believed that Iran would consider using nuclear weapons against Israel, he replied:
"I don't know that they would do that, Senator. ... And I think that, while they are certainly pressing, in my opinion, for nuclear capability, I think that they would see it in the first instance as a deterrent. They are surrounded by powers with nuclear weapons: Pakistan to their east, the Russians to the north, the Israelis to the west and us in the Persian Gulf."
Unfortunately, there is no clear sign that Gates' views dominate the current debate within the White House. And if there is one thing we've learned from enduring this incompetent fool of a "Decider" these last 7and 1/2 years, it is this: he prefers military action to diplomacy. At the moment there are small signs that the Bush administration is leaning toward increasing Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice's pursuit of a diplomatic settlement with Iran over the Iranian nuclear program. However, I wouldn't trust this President to carry through with this new found affection for diplomacy. When push comes to shove, I see him as more likely to give Israel it's long awaited "green light" to attack Iran before the end of this year. To assume otherwise is a fool's hope, at best.
© 2008 Booman Tribune All rights reserved.View this story online at: http://www.alternet.org/bloggers/http://www.boomantribune.com//91978/
This article makes the case for thinking that Israel will attack Iran's nuclear facilities. However, it still remains to be seen if diplomacy will yet work at least for a while. But the U.S. and others are adamant that Iran should stop enriching uranium and Iran is just as adamant that it has every right to continue enriching uranium.
Israel would hardly be able to do more than set back Iran's nuclear programme for some time if it attacked and it could very well find itself on the receiving end of Iranian missiles plus attacks from Hezbollah and Hamas as well. The U.S. would probably be drawn into the fracas and this would just set the whole Middle East aflame. The price of oil would skyrocket as well sending western economies into a further tailspin.
New York Times Op-Ed: Israel Will Attack Iran
By Steven D., Booman TribunePosted on July 18, 2008, Printed on July 20, 2008http://www.alternet.org/bloggers/http://www.boomantribune.com//91978/
Yes, you read my title correctly. Today's New York Times includes an op-ed piece by Benny Morris, a Professor of Middle Eastern history at Ben Gurion University. He claims Israel will most certainly attack Iran within the next 4 to 7 months, and if conventional weapons are unsuccessful to knock out Iran's nuclear program, than Israel will escalate to the use of nuclear weapons.
By all accounts Professor Morris is no Likudist or neoconservative stalking horse, but a leading figure among Israel's "New Historians" movement which has portrayed the history of the creation of Israel and the genesis of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict in terms traditional Israeli historians deem revisionist and flawed because it claims to present a more balanced view of the history of the Palestinian conflict, one at odds with the traditional Israeli narrative of the "Palestinian Exodus" from Israel on the eve of the 1948 war.
All this as context for what is a deeply disturbing essay by Professor Morris, for his concerns cannot be brushed aside lightly as the ravings of a right wing Israeli figure, or as propaganda from someone connected to the current Israeli government. If accurate, the next President of the United States will face the beginning of his first term in office with a Middle East in flames with all that portends for the world. Here's Professor Morris in his own stark words describing the current situation as he sees it:
ISRAEL will almost surely attack Iran's nuclear sites in the next four to seven months -- and the leaders in Washington and even Tehran should hope that the attack will be successful enough to cause at least a significant delay in the Iranian production schedule, if not complete destruction, of that country's nuclear program. Because if the attack fails, the Middle East will almost certainly face a nuclear war -- either through a subsequent pre-emptive Israeli nuclear strike or a nuclear exchange shortly after Iran gets the bomb. [...]
But should Israel's conventional assault fail to significantly harm or stall the Iranian program, a ratcheting up of the Iranian-Israeli conflict to a nuclear level will most likely follow. Every intelligence agency in the world believes the Iranian program is geared toward making weapons, not to the peaceful applications of nuclear power. And, despite the current talk of additional economic sanctions, everyone knows that such measures have so far led nowhere and are unlikely to be applied with sufficient scope to cause Iran real pain, given Russia's and China's continued recalcitrance and Western Europe's (and America's) ambivalence in behavior, if not in rhetoric. Western intelligence agencies agree that Iran will reach the "point of no return" in acquiring the capacity to produce nuclear weapons in one to four years. [...]
Nonetheless, Israel, believing that its very existence is at stake -- and this is a feeling shared by most Israelis across the political spectrum -- will certainly make the effort. Israel's leaders, from Prime Minister Ehud Olmert down, have all explicitly stated that an Iranian bomb means Israel's destruction; Iran will not be allowed to get the bomb.
The best outcome will be that an Israeli conventional strike, whether failed or not -- and, given the Tehran regime's totalitarian grip, it may not be immediately clear how much damage the Israeli assault has caused -- would persuade the Iranians to halt their nuclear program, or at least persuade the Western powers to significantly increase the diplomatic and economic pressure on Iran.
But the more likely result is that the international community will continue to do nothing effective and that Iran will speed up its efforts to produce the bomb that can destroy Israel. The Iranians will also likely retaliate by attacking Israel's cities with ballistic missiles (possibly topped with chemical or biological warheads); by prodding its local clients, Hezbollah and Hamas, to unleash their own armories against Israel; and by activating international Muslim terrorist networks against Israeli and Jewish -- and possibly American -- targets worldwide (though the Iranians may at the last moment be wary of provoking American military involvement).
Such a situation would confront Israeli leaders with two agonizing, dismal choices. One is to allow the Iranians to acquire the bomb and hope for the best -- meaning a nuclear standoff, with the prospect of mutual assured destruction preventing the Iranians from actually using the weapon. The other would be to use the Iranian counterstrikes as an excuse to escalate and use the only means available that will actually destroy the Iranian nuclear project: Israel's own nuclear arsenal.
If this is the mindset of even a "revisionist" Israeli historian, a man who considers himself a member of the Israel's Left, than we are in a far more serious situation than previously thought. Perhaps Morris' account is mere bluster and sabre rattling. Perhaps, he is acting on behalf of those in Israel who desire to coerce the Bush administration into an attack on Iran. Perhaps. And perhaps the Times is allowing its Op-Ed pages to be used to further that propaganda effort. But we also have to consider that what Professor Morris is describing is an accurate assessment of Israel's intentions, and the mindset of a majority of its people regarding Iran.
Personally, I do not feel that Iran is as close to achieving a nuclear weapon as Professor Morris contends. Nor do I accept his statements that most "Western intelligence agencies" agree Iran will "pass the point of no return" within 1 to 4 years. Indeed, the last National Intelligence Assessment issued regarding Iran indicated that they abandoned their nuclear weapons program in 2003, and the head of the IAEA, Mohammed ElBaradei, has explicitly stated that his organization's inspectors have seen no evidence of any current nuclear weapons program, and that he sees no military solution to the concerns that the Western powers and Israel have regarding Iran's nuclear program. Any attack on Iran's nuclear facilities would be a "disaster" in his view.
Yet here we have a prominent member of the Israeli Left telling us that war between Iran and Israel is inevitable in the pages of the New York Times. One could hardly expect a more disheartening assessment of Israel's aggressive intentions toward Iran if this op-ed had been written by Prime Minister Olmert or his Defense Minister, Ehud Barak, who last week publicly stated that:
"Israel is the strongest country in the region and has proved in the past that it doesn't hesitate to act when its vital security interests are at stake."
His comment was an apparent allusion to Israel's daring 1981 airstrike that destroyed Iraq's unfinished nuclear reactor. Several top Israelis have publicly argued for a similar strike to destroy Iran's budding nuclear ambitions before the country develops a nuclear arsenal.
Israel's military sent warplanes over the eastern Mediterranean for a large military exercise in June that U.S. officials described as a possible rehearsal for a strike on Iran's nuclear facilities.
Barak, as you may recall, is the former Prime Minister of Israel during the last years of President Clinton's second term, and the head of Israel's Labor Party. In this context, one can assume that prominent members of both the Left and the Right on the Israeli political spectrum are committed to war with Iran should the U.S. fail to act. And so long as George Bush is President, we can assume that the United States government will do nothing to stop an Israeli air and missile strike against Iran, even if it now appears less likely that US military forces will be given that task by the Bush administration. Indeed, Bush has recently indicated he supports any possible military action which Israel might choose to take with respect to Iran:
President George W Bush has told the Israeli government that he may be prepared to approve a future military strike on Iranian nuclear facilities if negotiations with Tehran break down, according to a senior Pentagon official.
Despite the opposition of his own generals and widespread scepticism that America is ready to risk the military, political and economic consequences of an airborne strike on Iran, the president has given an "amber light" to an Israeli plan to attack Iran's main nuclear sites with long-range bombing sorties, the official told The Sunday Times.
"Amber means get on with your preparations, stand by for immediate attack and tell us when you're ready," the official said. But the Israelis have also been told that they can expect no help from American forces and will not be able to use US military bases in Iraq for logistical support.
If you get the sense that Israel and the Bush administration are playing with fire, you wouldn't be the only one. Doubtless, domestic political considerations may have something to do with Bush's posturing. The Republican candidate to replace him as President, and the one most likely to continue Bush's own policies in the Middle East, John McCain, is trailing Barack Obama in the national polls, and his candidacy is not enthusiastically supported by many Republicans. The threat of another military crisis in the Middle East could change that dynamic, however, as McCain's only strength from a political standpoint, his former military experience is still perceived by a plurality of the American public as making him more qualified than Obama for the role of Commander-in-Chief of America's armed forces.
As for Israel's current government, they rightly perceive that a President Obama would be much less likely to support independent military action by Israel, at least not until direct negotiations with Iran and the United States had proved futile and there was clear evidence that Iran was nearing the completion of a nuclear weapon. Even then, the appetite of many in America as to Iran's acquisition of a small nuclear arsenal can perhaps best be summed up by the views expressed by former CENTCOM commander General John Abizaid:
"I believe that we have the power to deter Iran, should it become nuclear," he said, referring to the theory that Iran would not risk a catastrophic retaliatory strike by using a nuclear weapon against the United States.
"There are ways to live with a nuclear Iran," Abizaid said in remarks at the Center for Strategic and International Studies, a think tank. "Let's face it, we lived with a nuclear Soviet Union, we've lived with a nuclear China, and we're living with (other) nuclear powers as well."
The current Secretary of Defense, Robert Gates, expressed similar comments at his confirmation hearing before the Senate when he stated under questioning from Senator Graham (R-SC) that he believed Iran would not use any nuclear weapons it acquired to attack Israel:
Asked by Senator Lindsey Graham if he believed that Iran would consider using nuclear weapons against Israel, he replied:
"I don't know that they would do that, Senator. ... And I think that, while they are certainly pressing, in my opinion, for nuclear capability, I think that they would see it in the first instance as a deterrent. They are surrounded by powers with nuclear weapons: Pakistan to their east, the Russians to the north, the Israelis to the west and us in the Persian Gulf."
Unfortunately, there is no clear sign that Gates' views dominate the current debate within the White House. And if there is one thing we've learned from enduring this incompetent fool of a "Decider" these last 7and 1/2 years, it is this: he prefers military action to diplomacy. At the moment there are small signs that the Bush administration is leaning toward increasing Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice's pursuit of a diplomatic settlement with Iran over the Iranian nuclear program. However, I wouldn't trust this President to carry through with this new found affection for diplomacy. When push comes to shove, I see him as more likely to give Israel it's long awaited "green light" to attack Iran before the end of this year. To assume otherwise is a fool's hope, at best.
© 2008 Booman Tribune All rights reserved.View this story online at: http://www.alternet.org/bloggers/http://www.boomantribune.com//91978/
Philippines: Reproductive health bill loses backer claims archbishop
The Church still retains a considerable influence on issues such as this in the Philippines. You certainly never see ads for condoms. In fact I never saw ads either for viagra or cialis! Although the Roman Catholic Church does support family planning it seems not to be that effective since it allows only abstinence or the rhythm method. However, I recall a survey showing that the reason Filipinos have a lot of children is because they like kids! Given the economic conditions and resources available in the Philippines however the situation would be better if there was more effective family planning and a stable or even declining population.
Reproductive health bill loses backer, says archbishop Prelate says Batangas solon changed his mind
By Christian V. Esguerra, Yolanda Sotelo-FuertesReporterPhilippine Daily Inquirer Northern Luzon Bureau
Posted date: July 20, 2008
MANILA, Philippines--Lawmakers working for a reproductive health and population control bill in the House of Representatives appear to have lost an ally.
Rep. Mark Llandro Mendoza of the fourth district of Batangas has withdrawn his support for the measure, Lipa Archbishop Ramon Arguelles told the Philippine Daily Inquirer (parent company of INQUIRER.net) Sunday.
Arguelles, whose pastoral jurisdiction covers Mendoza's legislative district, said the congressman made known his "change of heart" in a letter to the prelate dated June 28.
"He apologized for his position," Arguelles said.
Repeated calls and text messages from the Inquirer newspaper got no reply from Mendoza Sunday. INQUIRER.net was also unable to reach him.
Apparently, Mendoza had written the bishop before informing his colegislators. Albay Rep. Edcel Lagman, a leading proponent of the reproductive health bill, said Sunday he was not aware of Mendoza's decision.
Mendoza had sponsored his own version of the bill before it was included in the consolidated measure, Lagman said.
Despite Mendoza's about-face, Lagman was optimistic more congressmen would throw their support behind the consolidated bill once sessions resume on July 28. So far, he said, the measure had about 50 coauthors.
Unlike Mendoza, Pangasinan Rep. Victor Agbayani said he was sticking to his position and urged the Church to "give to Caesar what is Caesar's and to God what is God's."
"The bishops have all the right to inform the public about what the Church teaches, but lawmakers should not be prevented from passing a law which they think is good [for the country]," Agbayani said in a telephone interview Sunday.
The Church should not stop married couples from freely choosing which method to use in planning their families, he said.
Census statistics from 2006 showed that 50.6 percent of married women used a family planning method, mostly a modern one.
When Agbayani was governor of Pangasinan, the provincial government put in place a population management program that earned for him a Rafael Salas Population and Development Award in 2003.
The provincial population office (PPO) also won several awards from the Population Commission and other government and nongovernment agencies for its effective population management efforts.
As for the bishops' claims that some contraceptives were abortifacient (cause abortion), Agbayani said many doctors disagreed with the bishops' views.
"It is very clear that the [reproductive health] bill is anti-abortion. Family planning prevents abortion because it avoids the occurrence of unwanted pregnancies. It actually reduces the incidence of abortion," he said.
Agbayani, who was governor from 1998 to 2007, said Pangasinan was the first province to develop a contraceptive self-reliance program after the United States Agency for International Development (USAID) stopped providing free contraceptives to the province.
Former Health Secretary Alberto Romualdez had called on lawmakers not to compromise with the Catholic bishops on the reproductive health issue which would benefit many families.
Meanwhile, Church officials said there was no need to invite President Gloria Macapagal-Arroyo to a "Rally for Life" that they will hold at the University of Santo Tomas on Friday
Fr. Melvin Castro, executive secretary of the Catholic Bishops' Conference of the Philippines (CBCP) Episcopal Commission on Family and Life, said they had already taken up the issue with the President.
In her recent dialogue with the bishops, President Arroyo had said "'the fight (against the passage of the reproductive health bill) is now in Congress,'" Castro said in a phone interview with the Inquirer newspaper.
The priest said they had invited members of Congress like Senators Aquilino Pimentel Jr., and Manuel Villar and Manila Rep. Bienvenido Abante, among others.
"We invited lawmakers to strengthen their support for the Church's stand on the issue," Castro said, but he added that the politicians would not be allowed to use the gathering "for politicking."
Reproductive health bill loses backer, says archbishop Prelate says Batangas solon changed his mind
By Christian V. Esguerra, Yolanda Sotelo-FuertesReporterPhilippine Daily Inquirer Northern Luzon Bureau
Posted date: July 20, 2008
MANILA, Philippines--Lawmakers working for a reproductive health and population control bill in the House of Representatives appear to have lost an ally.
Rep. Mark Llandro Mendoza of the fourth district of Batangas has withdrawn his support for the measure, Lipa Archbishop Ramon Arguelles told the Philippine Daily Inquirer (parent company of INQUIRER.net) Sunday.
Arguelles, whose pastoral jurisdiction covers Mendoza's legislative district, said the congressman made known his "change of heart" in a letter to the prelate dated June 28.
"He apologized for his position," Arguelles said.
Repeated calls and text messages from the Inquirer newspaper got no reply from Mendoza Sunday. INQUIRER.net was also unable to reach him.
Apparently, Mendoza had written the bishop before informing his colegislators. Albay Rep. Edcel Lagman, a leading proponent of the reproductive health bill, said Sunday he was not aware of Mendoza's decision.
Mendoza had sponsored his own version of the bill before it was included in the consolidated measure, Lagman said.
Despite Mendoza's about-face, Lagman was optimistic more congressmen would throw their support behind the consolidated bill once sessions resume on July 28. So far, he said, the measure had about 50 coauthors.
Unlike Mendoza, Pangasinan Rep. Victor Agbayani said he was sticking to his position and urged the Church to "give to Caesar what is Caesar's and to God what is God's."
"The bishops have all the right to inform the public about what the Church teaches, but lawmakers should not be prevented from passing a law which they think is good [for the country]," Agbayani said in a telephone interview Sunday.
The Church should not stop married couples from freely choosing which method to use in planning their families, he said.
Census statistics from 2006 showed that 50.6 percent of married women used a family planning method, mostly a modern one.
When Agbayani was governor of Pangasinan, the provincial government put in place a population management program that earned for him a Rafael Salas Population and Development Award in 2003.
The provincial population office (PPO) also won several awards from the Population Commission and other government and nongovernment agencies for its effective population management efforts.
As for the bishops' claims that some contraceptives were abortifacient (cause abortion), Agbayani said many doctors disagreed with the bishops' views.
"It is very clear that the [reproductive health] bill is anti-abortion. Family planning prevents abortion because it avoids the occurrence of unwanted pregnancies. It actually reduces the incidence of abortion," he said.
Agbayani, who was governor from 1998 to 2007, said Pangasinan was the first province to develop a contraceptive self-reliance program after the United States Agency for International Development (USAID) stopped providing free contraceptives to the province.
Former Health Secretary Alberto Romualdez had called on lawmakers not to compromise with the Catholic bishops on the reproductive health issue which would benefit many families.
Meanwhile, Church officials said there was no need to invite President Gloria Macapagal-Arroyo to a "Rally for Life" that they will hold at the University of Santo Tomas on Friday
Fr. Melvin Castro, executive secretary of the Catholic Bishops' Conference of the Philippines (CBCP) Episcopal Commission on Family and Life, said they had already taken up the issue with the President.
In her recent dialogue with the bishops, President Arroyo had said "'the fight (against the passage of the reproductive health bill) is now in Congress,'" Castro said in a phone interview with the Inquirer newspaper.
The priest said they had invited members of Congress like Senators Aquilino Pimentel Jr., and Manuel Villar and Manila Rep. Bienvenido Abante, among others.
"We invited lawmakers to strengthen their support for the Church's stand on the issue," Castro said, but he added that the politicians would not be allowed to use the gathering "for politicking."
Sunday, July 20, 2008
More on Blackwater!
This is from killfile.
There is more than a little irony in a firm headed by a devout fundamentalist Christian Eric Prinz defending itself by reference to Sharia law. This is the same Blackwater that got into trouble because its agents shot civilians in Iraq. They also have an air division that includes Presidential Airlines that has been involved in rendition flights.
To defend itself against a lawsuit by the widows of three American soldiers who died on one of its planes in Afghanistan, a sister company of the private military firm Blackwater has asked a federal court to decide the case using the Islamic law known as Shari’a.
The lawsuit “is governed by the law of Afghanistan,” Presidential Airways argued in a Florida federal court. “Afghan law is largely religion-based and evidences a strong concern for ensuring moral responsibility, and deterring violations of obligations within its borders.”
If the judge agrees, it would essentially end the lawsuit over a botched flight supporting the U.S. military. Shari’a law does not hold a company responsible for the actions of employees performed within the course of their work.
There is more than a little irony in a firm headed by a devout fundamentalist Christian Eric Prinz defending itself by reference to Sharia law. This is the same Blackwater that got into trouble because its agents shot civilians in Iraq. They also have an air division that includes Presidential Airlines that has been involved in rendition flights.
To defend itself against a lawsuit by the widows of three American soldiers who died on one of its planes in Afghanistan, a sister company of the private military firm Blackwater has asked a federal court to decide the case using the Islamic law known as Shari’a.
The lawsuit “is governed by the law of Afghanistan,” Presidential Airways argued in a Florida federal court. “Afghan law is largely religion-based and evidences a strong concern for ensuring moral responsibility, and deterring violations of obligations within its borders.”
If the judge agrees, it would essentially end the lawsuit over a botched flight supporting the U.S. military. Shari’a law does not hold a company responsible for the actions of employees performed within the course of their work.
Blackwater flying high..
This is from airforcetimes.
The branch of Blackwater being discussed is Presidential Airways. This is a good name since Prince has good ties to the Bush administration. Presidential Airways could also be named Rendition Airways since some rendition flights have been carried out by its planes.
This article also points out the increasing role of the U.S. in Africa, especially the U.S. military. There may be a slowdown in global growth but this does not seem to apply to U.S. military contractors. There is an undending stream of funds whether Democrats or Republicans control congress and the gravy will continue under Obama who is anxious to get going in Afghanistan.
No word on Presidential Airlines going bankrupt!
Blackwater is also infamous for problems it has had in Iraq because in the process of defending U.S. convoys it has shot a number of Iraqi civilians. See this article.
Prince is a fundamentalist Christian who also has a foundation that makes charitable donations to causes he finds worthy.
Blackwater expands its fleet of airships
By Michael Hoffman - Staff writerPosted : Saturday Jul 19, 2008 7:59:19 EDT
Blackwater Worldwide is building up its own Air Force.
Airmen might soon find Blackwater blimps patrolling Iraq and Afghanistan skies in addition to its helicopter and light transport aircraft already flying thousands of missions in theater.
According to Blackwater Worldwide CEO Erik Prince, eight Blackwater CASA 212 light transport aircraft flew 11,000 sorties in Afghanistan last year supporting 38 combat outposts over 19,000 square miles. Its aircraft transported more than 40,000 personnel and 9.5 million pounds of supplies last year.
“We moved about 40,000 passengers, and our total costs, our total invoice for that mission is about what the U.S. Air Force is paying for one new C-27,” he said.
“So the idea of outsourcing versus having government do it, that’s a pretty simple math question for me.”
Prince, who sat down July 7 for a rare, exclusive interview with Military Times editors and reporters, said he isn’t looking to replace the Air Force — simply fill a void where his company is needed.
“I think there’s a gap,” Prince said. “The C-130 is a great aircraft, but the older ones are getting pretty worn out and the C-130Js are coming online, but that’s a very expensive airplane.”
While he doesn’t want to replace it, Prince did equate his company’s aviation arm to a National Guard or reserve unit working under the operational control of joint forces. Blackwater missions are part of the daily Air Tasking Order just like any Air Force mission, he said.
Prince’s aviation dealings don’t even fall under the Blackwater name, instead aligning his fixed wing and helicopter fleet under Presidential Airways, which he bought in 2003. That company earned $28.6 million in fiscal 2007 Defense Department contracts.
As Africa Command stands up this fall, Prince said he foresees the potential for an even greater need there for his company’s aviation services.
“I think there’s less road now than there was 40 years ago in Africa,” he said. “So, being able to fly around is pretty key and being able to fly into rough places.”
Setting up Africa Command has been pretty sensitive, evidenced by the Defense Department’s inability to find an African country willing to host the new headquarters, so connecting Blackwater and its controversial reputation could add to the anxieties.
Both of Prince’s companies have become the focus of lawsuits, investigations and criticism from U.S. and Iraqi lawmakers as well as military leaders and troops on the ground.
Many troops have questioned the tactics of Blackwater’s private security contractors, calling them “cowboys.” The FBI continues to investigate a September 2007 Baghdad shootout involving Blackwater contractors that left 17 Iraqi civilians dead.
Presidential Airways came under fire in November 2004 when one of its Spanish-made CASA 212s carrying three soldiers slammed into an Afghanistan box canyon, killing all aboard, including the contracted pilot, co-pilot and maintainer.
Army Spc. Harley Miller survived the crash but froze to death after authorities didn’t realize the plane went down for six hours, according to a report by the National Transportation Safety Board. The report faulted the pilots.
“The flight crewmembers … chose to fly a nonstandard route through a valley, they used a global positioning system to navigate, and they deliberately flew the airplane at low altitude through the valley for ‘fun,’ ” the report read.
Presidential Airways kept its contract and eight of at least 10 CASAs Presidential Airways aircraft operate out of Bagram Air Base, Afghanistan, Prince said.
The eight CASAs and crews average almost four sorties a day flying personnel and supplies to the far reaches of Afghanistan, Blackwater officials said.
Four contractors — a pilot, copilot, loadmaster and crew chief — operate each CASA 212 parked on the side of the ramp without protection from a hangar. And Presidential Airways maintainers work out of five shipping containers.
“Our footprint and our cost to the taxpayer is mighty low,” Prince said.
READ MORE: Blackwater
The branch of Blackwater being discussed is Presidential Airways. This is a good name since Prince has good ties to the Bush administration. Presidential Airways could also be named Rendition Airways since some rendition flights have been carried out by its planes.
This article also points out the increasing role of the U.S. in Africa, especially the U.S. military. There may be a slowdown in global growth but this does not seem to apply to U.S. military contractors. There is an undending stream of funds whether Democrats or Republicans control congress and the gravy will continue under Obama who is anxious to get going in Afghanistan.
No word on Presidential Airlines going bankrupt!
Blackwater is also infamous for problems it has had in Iraq because in the process of defending U.S. convoys it has shot a number of Iraqi civilians. See this article.
Prince is a fundamentalist Christian who also has a foundation that makes charitable donations to causes he finds worthy.
Blackwater expands its fleet of airships
By Michael Hoffman - Staff writerPosted : Saturday Jul 19, 2008 7:59:19 EDT
Blackwater Worldwide is building up its own Air Force.
Airmen might soon find Blackwater blimps patrolling Iraq and Afghanistan skies in addition to its helicopter and light transport aircraft already flying thousands of missions in theater.
According to Blackwater Worldwide CEO Erik Prince, eight Blackwater CASA 212 light transport aircraft flew 11,000 sorties in Afghanistan last year supporting 38 combat outposts over 19,000 square miles. Its aircraft transported more than 40,000 personnel and 9.5 million pounds of supplies last year.
“We moved about 40,000 passengers, and our total costs, our total invoice for that mission is about what the U.S. Air Force is paying for one new C-27,” he said.
“So the idea of outsourcing versus having government do it, that’s a pretty simple math question for me.”
Prince, who sat down July 7 for a rare, exclusive interview with Military Times editors and reporters, said he isn’t looking to replace the Air Force — simply fill a void where his company is needed.
“I think there’s a gap,” Prince said. “The C-130 is a great aircraft, but the older ones are getting pretty worn out and the C-130Js are coming online, but that’s a very expensive airplane.”
While he doesn’t want to replace it, Prince did equate his company’s aviation arm to a National Guard or reserve unit working under the operational control of joint forces. Blackwater missions are part of the daily Air Tasking Order just like any Air Force mission, he said.
Prince’s aviation dealings don’t even fall under the Blackwater name, instead aligning his fixed wing and helicopter fleet under Presidential Airways, which he bought in 2003. That company earned $28.6 million in fiscal 2007 Defense Department contracts.
As Africa Command stands up this fall, Prince said he foresees the potential for an even greater need there for his company’s aviation services.
“I think there’s less road now than there was 40 years ago in Africa,” he said. “So, being able to fly around is pretty key and being able to fly into rough places.”
Setting up Africa Command has been pretty sensitive, evidenced by the Defense Department’s inability to find an African country willing to host the new headquarters, so connecting Blackwater and its controversial reputation could add to the anxieties.
Both of Prince’s companies have become the focus of lawsuits, investigations and criticism from U.S. and Iraqi lawmakers as well as military leaders and troops on the ground.
Many troops have questioned the tactics of Blackwater’s private security contractors, calling them “cowboys.” The FBI continues to investigate a September 2007 Baghdad shootout involving Blackwater contractors that left 17 Iraqi civilians dead.
Presidential Airways came under fire in November 2004 when one of its Spanish-made CASA 212s carrying three soldiers slammed into an Afghanistan box canyon, killing all aboard, including the contracted pilot, co-pilot and maintainer.
Army Spc. Harley Miller survived the crash but froze to death after authorities didn’t realize the plane went down for six hours, according to a report by the National Transportation Safety Board. The report faulted the pilots.
“The flight crewmembers … chose to fly a nonstandard route through a valley, they used a global positioning system to navigate, and they deliberately flew the airplane at low altitude through the valley for ‘fun,’ ” the report read.
Presidential Airways kept its contract and eight of at least 10 CASAs Presidential Airways aircraft operate out of Bagram Air Base, Afghanistan, Prince said.
The eight CASAs and crews average almost four sorties a day flying personnel and supplies to the far reaches of Afghanistan, Blackwater officials said.
Four contractors — a pilot, copilot, loadmaster and crew chief — operate each CASA 212 parked on the side of the ramp without protection from a hangar. And Presidential Airways maintainers work out of five shipping containers.
“Our footprint and our cost to the taxpayer is mighty low,” Prince said.
READ MORE: Blackwater
U.S. offers nuclear deadline
Interesting that the article says zilch about what Iran is offering to do. The idea that the U.S. is offering a nuclear deadline is rather weird. The U.S. is threatening Iran with a deadline. A precondition of any deal for the U.S. is a freezing of any nuclear development such as uranium enrichment. So far Iran has steadfastly refused this so unless Iran changes its position or the U.S. softens its demands any deal seems highly unlikely. However, at least talking is preferable to sabre rattling and who knows what is happening behind the scenes. This is from the CBC.
US offers Iran nuclear deadline
Javier Solana on his hopes for an answer from Iran
Iran must decide between confrontation and co-operation in the dispute over its nuclear plans, the US has warned.
At talks in Geneva, envoys from the US, EU and UN asked Iran to suspend its uranium enrichment in return for a pledge not to introduce new sanctions.
Iran gave no guarantees it would halt its activities, so the diplomats gave Tehran two weeks to provide an answer.
The meeting was the first time US and Iranian officials have held face-to-face talks on the nuclear
issue.
Senior US official William Burns was present at the Geneva talks - although he made no public comment.
Instead, state department spokesman Sean McCormack issued a strongly-worded statement in Washington.
"We hope the Iranian people understand that their leaders need to make a choice between co-operation, which would bring benefits to all, and confrontation, which can only lead to further isolation," he said.
'New opportunity'
Mr McCormack added that Mr Burns had delivered a "clear simple message" that Washington was "serious" about the incentives package but that it would only negotiate with Iran if it upheld its side of the deal.
Diplomats had hoped that Iran would respond to a so-called "freeze-for-freeze" offer, under which a freeze of Iran's uranium enrichment programme at its current levels would be matched by a Western pledge not to strengthen sanctions on Tehran.
"It was a constructive meeting, but still we didn't get the answer to our questions," EU envoy Javier Solana told reporters.
'FREEZE-FOR-FREEZE' OFFER
Iran suspends its nuclear activities including the installation of any new centrifuges
At same time the six world powers refrain from any new Security Council resolution on sanctions
Talks can then start on long-term deal on recognising Iran's right to develop nuclear energy for civilian purposes, and lifting of sanctions
"We hope very much we get the answer and we hope it will be done in a couple of weeks," he said.
Mr Solana said he had agreed with Iran's chief negotiator, Saeed Jalili, to speak again either by telephone or personally in two weeks.
The BBC's Jon Leyne in Tehran says Iran is interested in the offer but it is unclear whether there are divisions in the leadership or the Iranians are playing for time.
Mr Jalili said he had put forward many positive ideas and he urged Western powers not turn away from negotiations.
"This package we have proposed contains a number of possibilities. In a nutshell, it is a new opportunity which should not be lost."
But doubt was cast over the value of the talks, after a member of the Iranian delegation said there was "no chance" of a freeze on the uranium-enrichment programme.
Iran says its nuclear facilities are designed to meet its energy needs, denying that it has a weapons programme.
But Tehran's continued activity is defying UN Security Council demands to halt enrichment.
Rising tensions
In addition to the EU, Iranian and US envoys, the talks in Geneva's city hall were attended by representatives from Britain, China, France, Germany and Russia.
The US and Iran have had no diplomatic relations since the 1979 Iranian Revolution and the taking of hostages at the US embassy in Tehran.
Formal contact between the two countries has been extremely limited, though last year they met at ambassadorial level to discuss security in Iraq.
The meeting came after weeks of rising tensions in the Middle East.
The Iranians test-fired missiles last week, and a series of threats and counter-threats between Iran and Israel has been watched nervously in the West.
Story from BBC NEWS:
US offers Iran nuclear deadline
Javier Solana on his hopes for an answer from Iran
Iran must decide between confrontation and co-operation in the dispute over its nuclear plans, the US has warned.
At talks in Geneva, envoys from the US, EU and UN asked Iran to suspend its uranium enrichment in return for a pledge not to introduce new sanctions.
Iran gave no guarantees it would halt its activities, so the diplomats gave Tehran two weeks to provide an answer.
The meeting was the first time US and Iranian officials have held face-to-face talks on the nuclear
issue.
Senior US official William Burns was present at the Geneva talks - although he made no public comment.
Instead, state department spokesman Sean McCormack issued a strongly-worded statement in Washington.
"We hope the Iranian people understand that their leaders need to make a choice between co-operation, which would bring benefits to all, and confrontation, which can only lead to further isolation," he said.
'New opportunity'
Mr McCormack added that Mr Burns had delivered a "clear simple message" that Washington was "serious" about the incentives package but that it would only negotiate with Iran if it upheld its side of the deal.
Diplomats had hoped that Iran would respond to a so-called "freeze-for-freeze" offer, under which a freeze of Iran's uranium enrichment programme at its current levels would be matched by a Western pledge not to strengthen sanctions on Tehran.
"It was a constructive meeting, but still we didn't get the answer to our questions," EU envoy Javier Solana told reporters.
'FREEZE-FOR-FREEZE' OFFER
Iran suspends its nuclear activities including the installation of any new centrifuges
At same time the six world powers refrain from any new Security Council resolution on sanctions
Talks can then start on long-term deal on recognising Iran's right to develop nuclear energy for civilian purposes, and lifting of sanctions
"We hope very much we get the answer and we hope it will be done in a couple of weeks," he said.
Mr Solana said he had agreed with Iran's chief negotiator, Saeed Jalili, to speak again either by telephone or personally in two weeks.
The BBC's Jon Leyne in Tehran says Iran is interested in the offer but it is unclear whether there are divisions in the leadership or the Iranians are playing for time.
Mr Jalili said he had put forward many positive ideas and he urged Western powers not turn away from negotiations.
"This package we have proposed contains a number of possibilities. In a nutshell, it is a new opportunity which should not be lost."
But doubt was cast over the value of the talks, after a member of the Iranian delegation said there was "no chance" of a freeze on the uranium-enrichment programme.
Iran says its nuclear facilities are designed to meet its energy needs, denying that it has a weapons programme.
But Tehran's continued activity is defying UN Security Council demands to halt enrichment.
Rising tensions
In addition to the EU, Iranian and US envoys, the talks in Geneva's city hall were attended by representatives from Britain, China, France, Germany and Russia.
The US and Iran have had no diplomatic relations since the 1979 Iranian Revolution and the taking of hostages at the US embassy in Tehran.
Formal contact between the two countries has been extremely limited, though last year they met at ambassadorial level to discuss security in Iraq.
The meeting came after weeks of rising tensions in the Middle East.
The Iranians test-fired missiles last week, and a series of threats and counter-threats between Iran and Israel has been watched nervously in the West.
Story from BBC NEWS:
Saturday, July 19, 2008
Russia's energy drive leaves U.S. reeling
So the U.S. has now established a base in Georgia right on Russia's doorstep. Look for a new Cold War coming soon. The U.S. is also having war games with Georgia and that in a country where there is a region attempting to break away from Georgia and aided by Russia. Why the U.S. is so bound and determined to foster international conflict is beyond me. Perhaps to keep Americans distracted from the mess at home.
With increasing competition for energy supplies conflict between the U.S. and Russia will also increase as the article points out.
Russia's energy drive leaves US reeling
By M K Bhadrakumar
Global Research, July 18, 2008
Asian Times
Last week, the gloves finally came off the Dmitry Medvedev presidency in Russia. It had to happen sooner or later, but few would have expected this soon. It was crystal clear US President George W Bush administered a diplomatic snub to Medvedev on the sidelines of the Group of Eight (G-8) summit meeting at Hokkaido, Japan.
Bush characterized him patronizingly as a "sharp guy" soon after they met in Hokkaido on July 9, but that was after making sure Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice proceeded to Prague and signed a deal just the previous day to install a US radar system as part of its missile defense system in Central Europe.
If Medvedev's core mission in Hokkaido was to underscore Russia's growing role in the world arena as a power with which the West has to contend, Bush acted as if he couldn't care. The US was also plainly dismissive of Medvedev's proposal at the G-8 for a pan-European security system that would include Russia. Medvedev expressed his "dismay" on hearing about the Prague deal. As if to rub in the snub, Rice proceeded from Prague to Bulgaria, where the US has for the first time established a military base, and then on to Georgia to discuss its plans of joining the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO).
While in Tbilisi, she called for international mediation to stop violence spilling over in Georgia's beakaway regions of South Ossetia and Abhkazia, which have been sources of rising tensions, with Georgia accusing Russia of trying to annex the regions. To carry matters further, the US began a joint military exercise with Georgia codenamed Immediate Response 2008, near Tbilisi, which will continue through the month of July.
The exercise, financed by the Pentagon and planned by the US Armed Forces Eastern Command, is intended as a warning to Russia that Georgia is America's project and Washington wouldn't hesitate to do some heavy lifting to safeguard the "Rose Revolution".
On the face of it, such hubris is illogical and unnecessary since the West should have every reason not to embarrass Medvedev. The West has been propagating in recent months that the youthful Russian president is a potential independent decision-maker in the Kremlin with whom it could do business - unlike his predecessor, Vladimir Putin.
Reflecting US thinking, Carnegie Moscow Center scholar Dmitri Trenin wrote recently that the West noted "Medvedev's quick-wittedness, his calm style of conducting talks, and his clear desire to show that he is the one who is the real master of Russian diplomacy ... There are much greater grounds for expecting that Dmitry Medvedev ... will slowly but steadily concentrate powers in his own hands."
Clearly, what has been going on for the past few months on the East-West stage is one of those pantomimes that the West and Russia are equally adept at playing. But the US seems to have concluded that all the Western flattery about him hasn't really gone to Medvedev's head and he has merely been demonstrating his own skill in dramatics. Actually, nothing much has changed in Russia. The polls show Putin, now premier, is still seen by Russians as their "supreme leader", with a popularity rating coasting above 70% - with Medvedev stuck at 47% - and the truth might be somewhere near what a Moscow commentator recently sized up, namely, that Medvedev is a co-pilot in the cockpit in which Putin remains the captain.
Besides, Medvedev would know that even if he wished to be the European modernizer and G-8 club member that the West wanted him to be, he would find himself hopelessly at odds with his country. According to a poll last week by a Russian television network, the symbol of renewal of present-day Russia turns out to be none other than Josef Stalin. By a substantial margin, Stalin left behind two colorful Vladimirs - the singer Vladimir Vysotsky and the revolutionary Vladimir Lenin - and a host of other perennial Russian heroes like Ivan the Terrible and Alexander Pushkin.
Indeed, when Medvedev signed last Saturday a new foreign policy strategy for Russia, it came to light that for the first time the prime minister has been put in the driving seat to implement foreign policy measures - hitherto a presidential prerogative - which also shows that the Kremlin will pursue the line set by Putin in his eight-year presidency. The vague and somewhat incomprehensible expectations that there might be of some kind of "liberalization" in Medvedev's foreign policy have proved to be unfounded.
But Moscow hasn't taken lightly the US snub. In an address to Russian envoys in Moscow on Tuesday, Medvedev unambiguously stated his intention to continue Putin's foreign policy course, criticizing the US moves on missile defense deployment, the West's failure to ratify the revised Treaty on Conventional Armed Forces in Europe, Kosovo's independence, etc. He said, "We strongly affirm that the deployment of elements of the global missile defense in Eastern Europe only exacerbates the situation ... we will be forced to respond to it in kind ...
"This is linked to Russian-American agreements on strategic stability. Obviously, this common heritage will not be able to survive if one party is permitted to selectively destroy individual elements of this strategic regime. We cannot agree to that."
According to the noted German expert on Russia, Alexander Rahr, last week's Russian veto on the United Nations Security Council draft resolution on Zimbabwe was also a response to the US move on missile defense. "China's opposition is easy to understand as it has many economic interests in Zimbabwe. Russia has none. Russia's veto is a response to the missile shield, to Abkhazia and to many other things ... Russia is trying to show that America cannot decide everything," Rahr said.
The Russian veto generated a new American theme song that Medvedev isn't calling the shots in the Kremlin and might have got slapped down on Zimbabwe. But Moscow brushed aside the suggestion. The Foreign Ministry issued a statement calling the draft resolution on Zimbabwe "a dangerous precedent ... illegitimate and dangerous, leading towards unbalancing the whole UN system". The statement rebuked Washington and London, saying, "Russia took into account the fact that the situation in Zimbabwe does not pose a threat to regional, let alone international peace and security and does not warrant adoption of sanctions against that country."
Again, on Monday, Moscow announced that for the first time since the breakup of the Soviet Union in 1991, Russian warships were resuming patrol of the Arctic waters. In effect, Medvedev signaled he was maintaining the course of expanded military patrols begun by Putin. Why such a sudden quickening of the tempo in US-Russian relations? The answer might be found on an entirely different plane - energy security.
What emerges is that if anything, Medvedev is pursuing Russia's energy diplomacy more robustly than Putin. Soon after taking over in the Kremlin in May, Medvedev ordered the expeditious completion of the first stage of the Eastern Siberia Pacific Oil Pipeline (ESPO) by end-2009. The ESPO has a vital role in Moscow's efforts to balance its oil export strategy between Europe and Asia-Pacific. Moscow hopes to target Asia-Pacific as the export destination for one-third of its oil exports by 2020, as compared to 3% currently.
In early July, Medvedev undertook a diplomatic tour of the Caspian region, covering Azerbaijan, Turkmenistan and Kazakhstan. In Azerbaijan's capital Baku, he made a stunning offer that Russia was prepared to buy Azerbaijan's entire gas output at market prices. In Ashgabat, he shored up Turkmenistan's commitment to the modernization of the Central Asia-Center Pipeline and the construction of a new littoral Caspian pipeline.
Medvedev succeeded in prevailing over competing European and US rivals in the struggle for Turkmen gas. He further ensured that oil and gas from Turkmenistan and Kazakhstan will not bypass Russia. But what has truly incensed the Bush administration are Gazprom's dramatic inroads into Africa.
Russian giant Gazprom, the largest extractor of natural gas in the world, has announced plans to build a pipeline across the Mediterranean to pump Libyan gas to Europe. This is the final lap of a Kremlin strategy that involves Gazprom handling the entire output of Libya's gas, oil and liquefied natural gas (LNG) designated for export to Europe and the US.
Look at Gazprom's terse announcement in Moscow on July 9, "The Libyan side positively evaluated Gazprom's proposal to buy all future volumes of gas, oil and liquefied natural gas assigned for export at competitive prices." Now, Washington gingerly allowed the re-entry into the "international community" by Muammar Gaddafi, Brotherly Leader and Guide of the Revolution in Libya, on the basis of clear understanding. Western statesmen from British Prime Minister Gordon Brown to French President Nikolas Sarkozy and former Italian premier Romano Prodi queued up to climb the window of business opportunity opened by the Bush administration. And then Putin visits Tripoli in April, less than a month before he left office, and the two erstwhile colonels decided to jointly handle all of Libya's energy resources.And Gazprom seeks to buy exploration licenses in Nigeria and proposes to build a pipeline from there to Algeria, and with Algeria, Gazprom is developing a proposal on "joint" marketing of gas in Europe. US officials have gone ballistic. "The monopolistic Gazprom is behaving like a monopolist does. It tries to gain control of the market as much as possible and to stifle competition. And that's clearly what is going on," thundered Matthew Bryza, US deputy assistant secretary of state for Eurasian affairs. "The Kremlin wants Gazprom to be a dominant force in global energy, and the dominant force in global gas. Tying up gas resources in Central Asia and Africa is part of that," he added. The plan is for Gazprom to dominate "in every corner of the planet", he alleged.Bryza's outburst is understandable. The good work he did lies now in ruins. Washington was relieved to see the back of Putin's presidency, but it now transpires that Gazprom may have only stepped up the pace of overtures under Medvedev's astute guidance. Besides, with its new assets in Africa, Gazprom will soon be knocking for access to the US market through supplies of LNG. The European and international companies which have been traditionally present in the African market will be compelled to play a role alongside Gazprom.Washington hit back by ensuring that Russian companies are left out in the cold from the 30 contracts for lucrative oil deals that Baghdad is awarding. It is a big blow for Russia. In February, Moscow had written off US$12 billion or 93% of Iraq's debt to Russia in a move that was widely seen as aimed to help Russian oil company LUKoil regain the Saddam Hussein-era rights to develop Iraq's giant West Qurna-2 oil field. But under US pressure, the Iraqi government is now awarding West Qurna-2 to the US's Chevron.The Kremlin didn't show any anger, but coincidence or not, Gazprom chief executive Alexei Miller suddenly arrived in Tehran on Monday and discussed with Iranian President Mahmud Ahmadinejad the setting up of an organization of gas-producing countries. No doubt, with the Russian foothold in Libya (which has estimated natural gas reserves of 1.47 trillion cubic meters), in coordination with Algeria (which currently supplies over 10% of Europe's gas supplies), Qatar (with proven natural gas reserves of 25.8 trillion cubic meters) and Iran (which has the world's second-largest reserves after Russia), the time for a "Gas OPEC" is approaching.The Iranian leader also suggested to Miller a market-sharing arrangement so that Russia and Iran could "collectively meet the demands of Europe, India and China in the gas sector". During the visit, an agreement was signed on the development of Iran's oil and gas fields by Russian companies; on Russian participation in the transfer of Iran's Caspian Sea crude oil to the Oman Sea; cooperation in the development of Iran's fabulous North Azadegan oil field; and, possible participation of Gazprom in the planned Iran-Pakistan-India gas pipeline project. Evidently, Moscow took a deliberate decision to press ahead with Iran in energy cooperation in the full glare of world publicity in complete disregard of US displeasure. Tehran loved it.To quote a US expert, "Russia's strategic interest in Iran implicitly underscores the futility of hopes that Moscow would cooperate with Washington in imposing meaningful sanctions on Iran. While Western European companies are moving out of Iran or suspending agreements for fear of US sanctions (which penalize investments of more than $20 million a year in Iran's oil and gas sector), Gazprom is enlarging the already existing foothold."Conceivably, the danger of losing out on the last energy frontier to Russia (and China) could be a factor in Washington's policy shift on Iran talks. Washington calls the u-turn "a strong signal to the Iranian government that the United States is committed to diplomacy". But according to The New York Times, Rice has decided to "test Iran's willingness to consider an international package of incentives meant to coax Iran into making concessions on its nuclear program". What we do not know is how close the Bush administration may be for involvement in Iran's energy sector, which is an element in the so-called "international package of incentives". (Halliburton, which Vice President Dick Cheney headed, was a very active player in Iran.)By now it must be obvious to the Bush administration that the youthful-looking, post-communist lawyer-president who took over from Putin has lost no time drilling a hole through the entire US strategy to weaken Gazprom's grip over the supply of gas to Europe. The sense of fury is imaginable. But then Washington has only itself to blame. Medvedev's career as an energy czar is an open book like Cheney's - or Rice's. From 2000, he headed Gazprom. Now he controls Gazprom from the Kremlin.Few took note that when he formally bid farewell to the Gazprom board of directors at a ceremony in Moscow on May 27, Medvedev took immense personal pride in pointing out that during his eight-year stewardship, Gazprom's capitalization skyrocketed by a factor of 46, and one fifth of Russia's budget is today derived from Gazprom's activities. He concluded, "I want to say in my turn that we will have the chance to see each other and discuss things in working meetings. So, nothing is coming to an end. It's only the beginning."In sum, the past week's flow of events in places as far apart as Prague, Hokkaido, Tbilisi, Harare, Tehran and the Arctic underscored that after a brief respite, the rivalries over energy security have revived with a ferocity that can rock the equilibrium of overall US-Russia relations. The situation will likely be exacerbated in the coming period. The geopolitics of energy security are a highly sensitive subject for the Bush administration, whose profound links with Big Oil are legion. It is a tremendous loss of face for the Bush-Cheney-Rice combine that Moscow is outwitting the US on the energy front.The strong possibility is that the Bush administration will press the pedal on multiple fronts on the Eurasian geopolitical landscape and create a fait accompli of US-Russian mutual antagonism for Senator Barack Obama, should he become president. The haste behind the Prague deal on missile defense smacks of such thinking. Almost certainly, Rice will press for a decision on the plan of action in respect of Georgia's and Ukraine's membership of NATO at the meeting of the alliance's foreign ministers in December. The question, "Who is the boss in Russia?" doesn't really seem to matter anymore.Ambassador M K Bhadrakumar was a career diplomat in the Indian Foreign Service. His assignments included the Soviet Union, South Korea, Sri Lanka, Germany, Afghanistan, Pakistan, Uzbekistan, Kuwait and Turkey.
With increasing competition for energy supplies conflict between the U.S. and Russia will also increase as the article points out.
Russia's energy drive leaves US reeling
By M K Bhadrakumar
Global Research, July 18, 2008
Asian Times
Last week, the gloves finally came off the Dmitry Medvedev presidency in Russia. It had to happen sooner or later, but few would have expected this soon. It was crystal clear US President George W Bush administered a diplomatic snub to Medvedev on the sidelines of the Group of Eight (G-8) summit meeting at Hokkaido, Japan.
Bush characterized him patronizingly as a "sharp guy" soon after they met in Hokkaido on July 9, but that was after making sure Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice proceeded to Prague and signed a deal just the previous day to install a US radar system as part of its missile defense system in Central Europe.
If Medvedev's core mission in Hokkaido was to underscore Russia's growing role in the world arena as a power with which the West has to contend, Bush acted as if he couldn't care. The US was also plainly dismissive of Medvedev's proposal at the G-8 for a pan-European security system that would include Russia. Medvedev expressed his "dismay" on hearing about the Prague deal. As if to rub in the snub, Rice proceeded from Prague to Bulgaria, where the US has for the first time established a military base, and then on to Georgia to discuss its plans of joining the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO).
While in Tbilisi, she called for international mediation to stop violence spilling over in Georgia's beakaway regions of South Ossetia and Abhkazia, which have been sources of rising tensions, with Georgia accusing Russia of trying to annex the regions. To carry matters further, the US began a joint military exercise with Georgia codenamed Immediate Response 2008, near Tbilisi, which will continue through the month of July.
The exercise, financed by the Pentagon and planned by the US Armed Forces Eastern Command, is intended as a warning to Russia that Georgia is America's project and Washington wouldn't hesitate to do some heavy lifting to safeguard the "Rose Revolution".
On the face of it, such hubris is illogical and unnecessary since the West should have every reason not to embarrass Medvedev. The West has been propagating in recent months that the youthful Russian president is a potential independent decision-maker in the Kremlin with whom it could do business - unlike his predecessor, Vladimir Putin.
Reflecting US thinking, Carnegie Moscow Center scholar Dmitri Trenin wrote recently that the West noted "Medvedev's quick-wittedness, his calm style of conducting talks, and his clear desire to show that he is the one who is the real master of Russian diplomacy ... There are much greater grounds for expecting that Dmitry Medvedev ... will slowly but steadily concentrate powers in his own hands."
Clearly, what has been going on for the past few months on the East-West stage is one of those pantomimes that the West and Russia are equally adept at playing. But the US seems to have concluded that all the Western flattery about him hasn't really gone to Medvedev's head and he has merely been demonstrating his own skill in dramatics. Actually, nothing much has changed in Russia. The polls show Putin, now premier, is still seen by Russians as their "supreme leader", with a popularity rating coasting above 70% - with Medvedev stuck at 47% - and the truth might be somewhere near what a Moscow commentator recently sized up, namely, that Medvedev is a co-pilot in the cockpit in which Putin remains the captain.
Besides, Medvedev would know that even if he wished to be the European modernizer and G-8 club member that the West wanted him to be, he would find himself hopelessly at odds with his country. According to a poll last week by a Russian television network, the symbol of renewal of present-day Russia turns out to be none other than Josef Stalin. By a substantial margin, Stalin left behind two colorful Vladimirs - the singer Vladimir Vysotsky and the revolutionary Vladimir Lenin - and a host of other perennial Russian heroes like Ivan the Terrible and Alexander Pushkin.
Indeed, when Medvedev signed last Saturday a new foreign policy strategy for Russia, it came to light that for the first time the prime minister has been put in the driving seat to implement foreign policy measures - hitherto a presidential prerogative - which also shows that the Kremlin will pursue the line set by Putin in his eight-year presidency. The vague and somewhat incomprehensible expectations that there might be of some kind of "liberalization" in Medvedev's foreign policy have proved to be unfounded.
But Moscow hasn't taken lightly the US snub. In an address to Russian envoys in Moscow on Tuesday, Medvedev unambiguously stated his intention to continue Putin's foreign policy course, criticizing the US moves on missile defense deployment, the West's failure to ratify the revised Treaty on Conventional Armed Forces in Europe, Kosovo's independence, etc. He said, "We strongly affirm that the deployment of elements of the global missile defense in Eastern Europe only exacerbates the situation ... we will be forced to respond to it in kind ...
"This is linked to Russian-American agreements on strategic stability. Obviously, this common heritage will not be able to survive if one party is permitted to selectively destroy individual elements of this strategic regime. We cannot agree to that."
According to the noted German expert on Russia, Alexander Rahr, last week's Russian veto on the United Nations Security Council draft resolution on Zimbabwe was also a response to the US move on missile defense. "China's opposition is easy to understand as it has many economic interests in Zimbabwe. Russia has none. Russia's veto is a response to the missile shield, to Abkhazia and to many other things ... Russia is trying to show that America cannot decide everything," Rahr said.
The Russian veto generated a new American theme song that Medvedev isn't calling the shots in the Kremlin and might have got slapped down on Zimbabwe. But Moscow brushed aside the suggestion. The Foreign Ministry issued a statement calling the draft resolution on Zimbabwe "a dangerous precedent ... illegitimate and dangerous, leading towards unbalancing the whole UN system". The statement rebuked Washington and London, saying, "Russia took into account the fact that the situation in Zimbabwe does not pose a threat to regional, let alone international peace and security and does not warrant adoption of sanctions against that country."
Again, on Monday, Moscow announced that for the first time since the breakup of the Soviet Union in 1991, Russian warships were resuming patrol of the Arctic waters. In effect, Medvedev signaled he was maintaining the course of expanded military patrols begun by Putin. Why such a sudden quickening of the tempo in US-Russian relations? The answer might be found on an entirely different plane - energy security.
What emerges is that if anything, Medvedev is pursuing Russia's energy diplomacy more robustly than Putin. Soon after taking over in the Kremlin in May, Medvedev ordered the expeditious completion of the first stage of the Eastern Siberia Pacific Oil Pipeline (ESPO) by end-2009. The ESPO has a vital role in Moscow's efforts to balance its oil export strategy between Europe and Asia-Pacific. Moscow hopes to target Asia-Pacific as the export destination for one-third of its oil exports by 2020, as compared to 3% currently.
In early July, Medvedev undertook a diplomatic tour of the Caspian region, covering Azerbaijan, Turkmenistan and Kazakhstan. In Azerbaijan's capital Baku, he made a stunning offer that Russia was prepared to buy Azerbaijan's entire gas output at market prices. In Ashgabat, he shored up Turkmenistan's commitment to the modernization of the Central Asia-Center Pipeline and the construction of a new littoral Caspian pipeline.
Medvedev succeeded in prevailing over competing European and US rivals in the struggle for Turkmen gas. He further ensured that oil and gas from Turkmenistan and Kazakhstan will not bypass Russia. But what has truly incensed the Bush administration are Gazprom's dramatic inroads into Africa.
Russian giant Gazprom, the largest extractor of natural gas in the world, has announced plans to build a pipeline across the Mediterranean to pump Libyan gas to Europe. This is the final lap of a Kremlin strategy that involves Gazprom handling the entire output of Libya's gas, oil and liquefied natural gas (LNG) designated for export to Europe and the US.
Look at Gazprom's terse announcement in Moscow on July 9, "The Libyan side positively evaluated Gazprom's proposal to buy all future volumes of gas, oil and liquefied natural gas assigned for export at competitive prices." Now, Washington gingerly allowed the re-entry into the "international community" by Muammar Gaddafi, Brotherly Leader and Guide of the Revolution in Libya, on the basis of clear understanding. Western statesmen from British Prime Minister Gordon Brown to French President Nikolas Sarkozy and former Italian premier Romano Prodi queued up to climb the window of business opportunity opened by the Bush administration. And then Putin visits Tripoli in April, less than a month before he left office, and the two erstwhile colonels decided to jointly handle all of Libya's energy resources.And Gazprom seeks to buy exploration licenses in Nigeria and proposes to build a pipeline from there to Algeria, and with Algeria, Gazprom is developing a proposal on "joint" marketing of gas in Europe. US officials have gone ballistic. "The monopolistic Gazprom is behaving like a monopolist does. It tries to gain control of the market as much as possible and to stifle competition. And that's clearly what is going on," thundered Matthew Bryza, US deputy assistant secretary of state for Eurasian affairs. "The Kremlin wants Gazprom to be a dominant force in global energy, and the dominant force in global gas. Tying up gas resources in Central Asia and Africa is part of that," he added. The plan is for Gazprom to dominate "in every corner of the planet", he alleged.Bryza's outburst is understandable. The good work he did lies now in ruins. Washington was relieved to see the back of Putin's presidency, but it now transpires that Gazprom may have only stepped up the pace of overtures under Medvedev's astute guidance. Besides, with its new assets in Africa, Gazprom will soon be knocking for access to the US market through supplies of LNG. The European and international companies which have been traditionally present in the African market will be compelled to play a role alongside Gazprom.Washington hit back by ensuring that Russian companies are left out in the cold from the 30 contracts for lucrative oil deals that Baghdad is awarding. It is a big blow for Russia. In February, Moscow had written off US$12 billion or 93% of Iraq's debt to Russia in a move that was widely seen as aimed to help Russian oil company LUKoil regain the Saddam Hussein-era rights to develop Iraq's giant West Qurna-2 oil field. But under US pressure, the Iraqi government is now awarding West Qurna-2 to the US's Chevron.The Kremlin didn't show any anger, but coincidence or not, Gazprom chief executive Alexei Miller suddenly arrived in Tehran on Monday and discussed with Iranian President Mahmud Ahmadinejad the setting up of an organization of gas-producing countries. No doubt, with the Russian foothold in Libya (which has estimated natural gas reserves of 1.47 trillion cubic meters), in coordination with Algeria (which currently supplies over 10% of Europe's gas supplies), Qatar (with proven natural gas reserves of 25.8 trillion cubic meters) and Iran (which has the world's second-largest reserves after Russia), the time for a "Gas OPEC" is approaching.The Iranian leader also suggested to Miller a market-sharing arrangement so that Russia and Iran could "collectively meet the demands of Europe, India and China in the gas sector". During the visit, an agreement was signed on the development of Iran's oil and gas fields by Russian companies; on Russian participation in the transfer of Iran's Caspian Sea crude oil to the Oman Sea; cooperation in the development of Iran's fabulous North Azadegan oil field; and, possible participation of Gazprom in the planned Iran-Pakistan-India gas pipeline project. Evidently, Moscow took a deliberate decision to press ahead with Iran in energy cooperation in the full glare of world publicity in complete disregard of US displeasure. Tehran loved it.To quote a US expert, "Russia's strategic interest in Iran implicitly underscores the futility of hopes that Moscow would cooperate with Washington in imposing meaningful sanctions on Iran. While Western European companies are moving out of Iran or suspending agreements for fear of US sanctions (which penalize investments of more than $20 million a year in Iran's oil and gas sector), Gazprom is enlarging the already existing foothold."Conceivably, the danger of losing out on the last energy frontier to Russia (and China) could be a factor in Washington's policy shift on Iran talks. Washington calls the u-turn "a strong signal to the Iranian government that the United States is committed to diplomacy". But according to The New York Times, Rice has decided to "test Iran's willingness to consider an international package of incentives meant to coax Iran into making concessions on its nuclear program". What we do not know is how close the Bush administration may be for involvement in Iran's energy sector, which is an element in the so-called "international package of incentives". (Halliburton, which Vice President Dick Cheney headed, was a very active player in Iran.)By now it must be obvious to the Bush administration that the youthful-looking, post-communist lawyer-president who took over from Putin has lost no time drilling a hole through the entire US strategy to weaken Gazprom's grip over the supply of gas to Europe. The sense of fury is imaginable. But then Washington has only itself to blame. Medvedev's career as an energy czar is an open book like Cheney's - or Rice's. From 2000, he headed Gazprom. Now he controls Gazprom from the Kremlin.Few took note that when he formally bid farewell to the Gazprom board of directors at a ceremony in Moscow on May 27, Medvedev took immense personal pride in pointing out that during his eight-year stewardship, Gazprom's capitalization skyrocketed by a factor of 46, and one fifth of Russia's budget is today derived from Gazprom's activities. He concluded, "I want to say in my turn that we will have the chance to see each other and discuss things in working meetings. So, nothing is coming to an end. It's only the beginning."In sum, the past week's flow of events in places as far apart as Prague, Hokkaido, Tbilisi, Harare, Tehran and the Arctic underscored that after a brief respite, the rivalries over energy security have revived with a ferocity that can rock the equilibrium of overall US-Russia relations. The situation will likely be exacerbated in the coming period. The geopolitics of energy security are a highly sensitive subject for the Bush administration, whose profound links with Big Oil are legion. It is a tremendous loss of face for the Bush-Cheney-Rice combine that Moscow is outwitting the US on the energy front.The strong possibility is that the Bush administration will press the pedal on multiple fronts on the Eurasian geopolitical landscape and create a fait accompli of US-Russian mutual antagonism for Senator Barack Obama, should he become president. The haste behind the Prague deal on missile defense smacks of such thinking. Almost certainly, Rice will press for a decision on the plan of action in respect of Georgia's and Ukraine's membership of NATO at the meeting of the alliance's foreign ministers in December. The question, "Who is the boss in Russia?" doesn't really seem to matter anymore.Ambassador M K Bhadrakumar was a career diplomat in the Indian Foreign Service. His assignments included the Soviet Union, South Korea, Sri Lanka, Germany, Afghanistan, Pakistan, Uzbekistan, Kuwait and Turkey.
Security transfer stalled in Iraq region.
This article is from AP.
The article points out some of the remaining problems that linger just under the surface of a relatively more peaceful situation than has existed for some time in Iraq. There are conflicts between different Sunni groups and between Sunni and Shia still and also there is no solution yet to the borders of Kurdistan or the oil law. Groups seem to be jockeying to better their position for upcoming elections scheduled for the fall.
Analysis: Security transfer stalled in Iraq region
By BRIAN MURPHY – 1 day ago
BAGHDAD (AP) — Iraq's government hopes to bring the entire country under its security control by year's end. But one critical area stands in the way: the western province of Anbar, where the Sunni insurgency was born and later received its first blows from a civil uprising.
The transfer from U.S. military authority in Anbar has become stalled by worries that a hasty move could tempt unrest and reopen rivalries — drawing in the same armed Sunni factions that the U.S. courted to help uproot al-Qaida in Iraq.
The cautious approach also apparently reflects a desire by Washington not to risk any new complications while Iraqi leaders tussle with a host of messy problems, including seeking agreements on holding provincial elections and opening oil fields to foreign investors.
Talks on Anbar — a vast swath stretching from near Baghdad to the western borders — have moved into the slow lane after much fanfare last month when the planned transfer to Iraqi security control was announced and then abruptly put on hold.
The biggest issue in the holdup is the fear that internal political rivalries in Anbar could escalate into open conflict without U.S. troops as a buffer.
On one side is the old-guard political leadership in Anbar, known as the Iraqi Islamic Party. The other emerging power is the Awakening Council movement — the groups that turned against al-Qaida last year and helped stir a wider Sunni backlash against the insurgency across Iraq.
The challenge is how to withdraw American control without either side feeling it is sacrificing influence or facing pressure from the Shiite-led Iraqi military forces that could step in.
The internal intrigue in Anbar is already growing. Both side are jockeying ahead of provincial elections that Iraq hopes to hold this fall.
Further rifts could provide an opening for al-Qaida to try to regain some footing in Anbar, where insurgents still manage to stage infrequent — but significant — attacks.
Last month, a group linked to al-Qaida in Iraq claimed responsibility for a suicide bombing near Fallujah that killed more than 20 people, including three U.S. Marines and prominent sheiks who had turned against the insurgents. One of the Marines commanded the battalion in the area.
A day after the attack, the U.S. military announced the postponement in the ceremonies to handing over Anbar province to Iraqi security control. The statement said a "new date will be announced as soon as it is made available."
Iraqi officials have hinted at a date sometime after the provincial elections, which are scheduled for Oct. 1.
Sheik Abdul-Karim al-Assal, deputy head of the Anbar Awakening Council, said a security blueprint has been presented to the government. The proposal seeks to bring the Awakening groups into the official security fold.
"We have the ability of maintaining the security of the province along with Iraqi police and army after the hand over," he said.
Mouwaffak al-Rubaie, Iraq's national security adviser, has said negotiations on Anbar are at "a delicate stage" and cannot be rushed. Still, on Wednesday's security handover in the southern province of Qadisiyah, he said Iraqi leaders hope to have their military and police in full charge of the entire country by the end of year.
The puzzle ahead is bigger than just Anbar. Several other provinces remain under U.S. security command, including such key regions as Baghdad, the northern city of Mosul and the oil-rich area around Kirkuk.
But Anbar has deep symbolism. The urban battles in 2004 in Anbar's main cities, Fallujah and Ramadi, became rallying points for the insurgency and sent the message to Washington that there would be no quick and clean exit from Iraq.
Anbar is also the heartland of Iraq's Sunnis, who were favored under Saddam Hussein and then pushed to the margins by the Shiite majority that took over after his ouster.
The strains and suspicions aren't just within Anbar.
Brian Fishman, an expert on the Iraqi insurgency at the U.S. Military Academy, said the rising power of the Awakening Councils in Anbar — sometimes called Sons of Iraq — has helped calm the nation but unsettled the Shiite establishment that replaced Saddam.
The Awakening Council movement "controls the ground and serves the function of a local police force" in Anbar, Fishman said.
"They are resistant to (Shiite) control over them, and at the same time, the Shiite parties in Baghdad are mistrustful of the Sons of Iraq," he said.
"But," he added, "there is no way the government of Iraq can extend any meaningful power over time unless they work with the Sons of Iraq."
Brian Murphy has reported from Iraq at various stages since the U.S.-led invasion in 2003.
Hosted by
Copyright © 2008 The Associated Press. All rights reserved.
The article points out some of the remaining problems that linger just under the surface of a relatively more peaceful situation than has existed for some time in Iraq. There are conflicts between different Sunni groups and between Sunni and Shia still and also there is no solution yet to the borders of Kurdistan or the oil law. Groups seem to be jockeying to better their position for upcoming elections scheduled for the fall.
Analysis: Security transfer stalled in Iraq region
By BRIAN MURPHY – 1 day ago
BAGHDAD (AP) — Iraq's government hopes to bring the entire country under its security control by year's end. But one critical area stands in the way: the western province of Anbar, where the Sunni insurgency was born and later received its first blows from a civil uprising.
The transfer from U.S. military authority in Anbar has become stalled by worries that a hasty move could tempt unrest and reopen rivalries — drawing in the same armed Sunni factions that the U.S. courted to help uproot al-Qaida in Iraq.
The cautious approach also apparently reflects a desire by Washington not to risk any new complications while Iraqi leaders tussle with a host of messy problems, including seeking agreements on holding provincial elections and opening oil fields to foreign investors.
Talks on Anbar — a vast swath stretching from near Baghdad to the western borders — have moved into the slow lane after much fanfare last month when the planned transfer to Iraqi security control was announced and then abruptly put on hold.
The biggest issue in the holdup is the fear that internal political rivalries in Anbar could escalate into open conflict without U.S. troops as a buffer.
On one side is the old-guard political leadership in Anbar, known as the Iraqi Islamic Party. The other emerging power is the Awakening Council movement — the groups that turned against al-Qaida last year and helped stir a wider Sunni backlash against the insurgency across Iraq.
The challenge is how to withdraw American control without either side feeling it is sacrificing influence or facing pressure from the Shiite-led Iraqi military forces that could step in.
The internal intrigue in Anbar is already growing. Both side are jockeying ahead of provincial elections that Iraq hopes to hold this fall.
Further rifts could provide an opening for al-Qaida to try to regain some footing in Anbar, where insurgents still manage to stage infrequent — but significant — attacks.
Last month, a group linked to al-Qaida in Iraq claimed responsibility for a suicide bombing near Fallujah that killed more than 20 people, including three U.S. Marines and prominent sheiks who had turned against the insurgents. One of the Marines commanded the battalion in the area.
A day after the attack, the U.S. military announced the postponement in the ceremonies to handing over Anbar province to Iraqi security control. The statement said a "new date will be announced as soon as it is made available."
Iraqi officials have hinted at a date sometime after the provincial elections, which are scheduled for Oct. 1.
Sheik Abdul-Karim al-Assal, deputy head of the Anbar Awakening Council, said a security blueprint has been presented to the government. The proposal seeks to bring the Awakening groups into the official security fold.
"We have the ability of maintaining the security of the province along with Iraqi police and army after the hand over," he said.
Mouwaffak al-Rubaie, Iraq's national security adviser, has said negotiations on Anbar are at "a delicate stage" and cannot be rushed. Still, on Wednesday's security handover in the southern province of Qadisiyah, he said Iraqi leaders hope to have their military and police in full charge of the entire country by the end of year.
The puzzle ahead is bigger than just Anbar. Several other provinces remain under U.S. security command, including such key regions as Baghdad, the northern city of Mosul and the oil-rich area around Kirkuk.
But Anbar has deep symbolism. The urban battles in 2004 in Anbar's main cities, Fallujah and Ramadi, became rallying points for the insurgency and sent the message to Washington that there would be no quick and clean exit from Iraq.
Anbar is also the heartland of Iraq's Sunnis, who were favored under Saddam Hussein and then pushed to the margins by the Shiite majority that took over after his ouster.
The strains and suspicions aren't just within Anbar.
Brian Fishman, an expert on the Iraqi insurgency at the U.S. Military Academy, said the rising power of the Awakening Councils in Anbar — sometimes called Sons of Iraq — has helped calm the nation but unsettled the Shiite establishment that replaced Saddam.
The Awakening Council movement "controls the ground and serves the function of a local police force" in Anbar, Fishman said.
"They are resistant to (Shiite) control over them, and at the same time, the Shiite parties in Baghdad are mistrustful of the Sons of Iraq," he said.
"But," he added, "there is no way the government of Iraq can extend any meaningful power over time unless they work with the Sons of Iraq."
Brian Murphy has reported from Iraq at various stages since the U.S.-led invasion in 2003.
Hosted by
Copyright © 2008 The Associated Press. All rights reserved.
UN expanding food aid to rebellion torn Philippine areas
This is from AFP.
It will probably take some while before the details of the agreement are actually worked out and meantime displaced persons will certainly find the aid welcome. Even without the conflict many rural areas in the Philippines face difficult times because of rising prices for rice and other goods.
UN expanding food aid to rebellion-torn southern Philippines
22 hours ago
MANILA (AFP) — The United Nations said Friday it will expand its food aid programme in the southern Philippines to a further 500,000 people despite hopes the 40-year-old Muslim insurgency may soon be settled.
The UN World Food Programme, which launched school-based soup kitchens on troubled Mindanao island in 2006, will expand its coverage to 1.5 million people, country chief Stephen Anderson told AFP in an interview.
The agency supplies 12.5-kilogram (27.5-pound) packs of cereals and beans to about 187,000 children in 800 schools every month as an incentive to keep them in school.
The food rations are typically shared by the families of the children who live in, or were displaced from, areas of fighting between Muslim rebels and government forces or between rival Muslim clans.
"We're in the process of finalising our expansion phase, we're not ending for at least another year," Anderson said.
Anderson said the assistance had stabilised school attendance rates in conflict areas of Mindanao, where only 33 percent of children complete primary school compared to 67 percent for the rest of the country.
"The retention rate is extremely important when you're talking about education because once children drop out... it's very difficult to go back," he said.
In a country where a third of the population live on a dollar a day or less, the government says one in six children are not in school due to poverty.
The targeted schools are in areas with the highest child malnutrition rates in the country.
President Gloria Arroyo's government said this week it hopes to proceed to the final stage of peace negotiations shortly with the Moro Islamic Liberation Front after resolving the most contentious issues of the protracted talks that mainly deal with control over the region's natural resources.
The UN official said even if Manila signs a peace treaty with the rebels, "it would still take some time" before these areas can be weaned off food aid.
"Even if you bring in resources, you need to have structures, the institutions in place to handle them and that usually takes a bit of time," he said.
It will probably take some while before the details of the agreement are actually worked out and meantime displaced persons will certainly find the aid welcome. Even without the conflict many rural areas in the Philippines face difficult times because of rising prices for rice and other goods.
UN expanding food aid to rebellion-torn southern Philippines
22 hours ago
MANILA (AFP) — The United Nations said Friday it will expand its food aid programme in the southern Philippines to a further 500,000 people despite hopes the 40-year-old Muslim insurgency may soon be settled.
The UN World Food Programme, which launched school-based soup kitchens on troubled Mindanao island in 2006, will expand its coverage to 1.5 million people, country chief Stephen Anderson told AFP in an interview.
The agency supplies 12.5-kilogram (27.5-pound) packs of cereals and beans to about 187,000 children in 800 schools every month as an incentive to keep them in school.
The food rations are typically shared by the families of the children who live in, or were displaced from, areas of fighting between Muslim rebels and government forces or between rival Muslim clans.
"We're in the process of finalising our expansion phase, we're not ending for at least another year," Anderson said.
Anderson said the assistance had stabilised school attendance rates in conflict areas of Mindanao, where only 33 percent of children complete primary school compared to 67 percent for the rest of the country.
"The retention rate is extremely important when you're talking about education because once children drop out... it's very difficult to go back," he said.
In a country where a third of the population live on a dollar a day or less, the government says one in six children are not in school due to poverty.
The targeted schools are in areas with the highest child malnutrition rates in the country.
President Gloria Arroyo's government said this week it hopes to proceed to the final stage of peace negotiations shortly with the Moro Islamic Liberation Front after resolving the most contentious issues of the protracted talks that mainly deal with control over the region's natural resources.
The UN official said even if Manila signs a peace treaty with the rebels, "it would still take some time" before these areas can be weaned off food aid.
"Even if you bring in resources, you need to have structures, the institutions in place to handle them and that usually takes a bit of time," he said.
Friday, July 18, 2008
Juan Cole: Obama on Iraq and Afghanistan
This is from Juan Cole's blog which as usual has interesting critical commentary on issues in the Middle East. This is his critique of Obama on Iraq and Afghanistan. It will be interesting to see if Iraq ever gets veto power over U.S. operations in Iraq. Even if they do get it formally I doubt that the U.S. will worry about breaking the pledge if they think it is necessary for whatever reasons. The situation in Iraq has certainly calmed down and the Al Qaeda branch of the insurgency has been severely weakened but mostly by the agreement of the U.S. to fund and support Sunni militias. At present there does not seem to be a great deal of violent conflict between Sunni and Shia groups and even disputes about what territory belongs in Kurdistan seems to be on the back burner but who knows how long this will last. On the negative side there is no oil law and no status of forces agreement. Sadr is laying but this means that the Shia who are closest to Iran are consolidating power. If there are winners in this war, they are Iran and Kurdistan.
Monday, July 14, 2008
Obama on Iraq and Afghanistan: A Friendly Critique
Barack Obama wants to get out of Iraq by summer 2010 but wants to send 10,000 extra troops to Afghanistan.Obama's editorial is thoughtful and far more sensible than anything we are hearing from the White House or McCain, and I agree with most of it. But I have one quibble and one major critique. The quibble is that Obama talks about leaving a small American force in Iraq after most of the troops are withdrawn, to continue to fight "al-Qaeda in Mesopotamia."That suggestion is not plausible for several reasons. If there is only a small force in the country, who will rescue them if their helicopter gets shot down or they are ambushed and besieged? Then, how would a small American unit be any good against a terrorist organization operating in remote parts of Sunni Iraq? They don't know Arabic, can't hope for really good intelligence from locals, etc. Wouldn't it be more efficient to let the Special Police Commandos of the Iraqi Interior Ministry take care of this sort of thing? By the way, no one seems to be calling themselves "al-Qaeda in Mesopotamia" any more on the jihadi bulletin boards. The main fundamentalist vigilante group is the "Islamic State of Iraq."And then there is the problem that the Iraqis are demanding veto power over US operations in Iraq, a demand that will only grow with time. If they don't concur that a Sunni group is terrorists, the Baghdad government could just keep the US unit cooling its heels. It is precisely over issues such as Iraqi demands that US troops get permission before they act that Karen DeYoung at WaPo says have definitively derailed negotiations between Bush and al-Maliki on a Status of Forces Agreement. Now the two leaders seem likely just initial some quick and dirty executive-to-executive understanding that may not last past Bush's last day in office next January. So the Iraqis are unlikely to want a special forces unit of the sort Senator Obama envisages running around Iraq at will.It will be over with by then. Iraqis want their sovereignty back.The way to get out of Iraq is to get out of Iraq.The major critique I have is that Obama keeps talking about intensifying the search and destroy missions being carried out by US troops in the Pushtun areas of southern Afghanistan. As we should have learned from Vietnam, search and destroy missions only alienate the local population and drive it into the arms of the insurgency. Tom Engelhardt explains how US bombing strikes sometimes hit innocent civilians, including now several wedding parties, which is rather alienating to the clans that are attacked. (The US military says that the insurgents routinely allege that wedding parties were hit when they were not actually. But then there are those pesky photographs of what are obviously civilians . . .)The cost of such guerrilla struggles is high. On Sunday, Pushtun guerrillas attacked a remote base where US troops were under a NATO command and killed 9 of them, wounding 15. Many more "Taliban" were no doubt killed. But the evidence is that the Afghan insurgents are getting better at fighting the US.When was the last time that an al-Qaeda operative was captured in Afghanistan by US forces? Is that really what US troops are doing there, looking for al-Qaeda? Wouldn't we hear more about it if they were having successes in that regard? I mean, what is reported in the press is that they are fighting with "Taliban". But I'm not so sure these Pushtun rural guerrillas are even properly speaking Taliban (which means 'seminary student.') The original Taliban had mostly been displaced as refugees into Pakistan. These 'neo-Taliban' don't seem mostly to have that background. A lot of them seem to be just disgruntled Pushtun villagers in places like Uruzgan.There has now been a rise of suicide bombings in Afghanistan, on a scale never before seen. One killed 24 people in a bazaar at Deh Rawood on Sunday. Robert Pape has demonstrated that suicide bombings typically are carried out by people who think their country is under foreign military occupation. If the US keeps sending more troops, will that really calm things down? (See also the recent blogging of Barnett Rubin on the situation of Afghanistan)I don't know whether Senator Obama really wants to try to militarily occupy Afghanistan even more than is now being attempted. I wish he would talk to some old Russian officers who were there in the 1980s first. Of course, it may be that this announced strategy is political and for the purposes of having something to say when McCain accuses him of surrendering in Iraq.If the Afghanistan gambit is sincere, I don't think it is good geostrategy. Afghanistan is far more unwinnable even than Iraq. If playing it up is politics, then it is dangerous politics. Presidents can become captive of their own record and end up having to commit to things because they made strong representations about them to the public.I think Obama has a little bit of a tendency to try to fix his political problems by going overboard. Thus, he faces skepticism from Jewish American voters. So he made a Zionist speech in Boca. In the context of US politics, that is to be expected; he would not be any sort of politician, much less a phenomenon, if he did not try to reassure Jewish Americans about his commmitment to Israeli security, which is after all a worthy goal. But Obama went on to praise Zionist thinker Theodore Herzl, who started this nonsense about a people without a land for a land without a people. And then he gave away Jerusalem, undivided and permanently, to the Israelis in the middle of ongoing negotiations over its status between Israel and the Palestine Authority in the context of the Quartet, which the US government supports. Neither of those two things was necessary. It was overkill. And Obama now has some bridge building to do with the Arab and Muslim worlds if he becomes president, since Jerusalem is also dear to their hearts.Search and destroy in Afghanistan is an even worse example of going overboard. My advice to his campaign team is to give more thought to how he can take a strong enough position on an issue to win on it, without giving away the whole store.We who admire him don't want Afghanistan to become an albatross around the neck of a President Obama. I am old enough to remember one of the things that nearly killed the Democratic Party as a presidential party in the US, which was the way Lyndon Johnson let himself gradually get roped into ramping up the US troop presence in Vietnam from a small force to 500,000, and then still not win.Afghan tribes are fractious. They feud. Their territory is vast and rugged, and they know it like the back of their hands. Afghans are Jeffersonians in the sense that they want a light touch from the central government, and heavy handedness drives them into rebellion. Stand up Karzai's army and air force and give him some billions to bribe the tribal chiefs, and let him apply carrot and stick himself. We need to get out of there. "Al-Qaeda" was always Bin Laden's hype. He wanted to get us on the ground there so that the Mujahideen could bleed us the way they did the Soviets. It is a trap.Beware.
Labels: Iraq
Monday, July 14, 2008
Obama on Iraq and Afghanistan: A Friendly Critique
Barack Obama wants to get out of Iraq by summer 2010 but wants to send 10,000 extra troops to Afghanistan.Obama's editorial is thoughtful and far more sensible than anything we are hearing from the White House or McCain, and I agree with most of it. But I have one quibble and one major critique. The quibble is that Obama talks about leaving a small American force in Iraq after most of the troops are withdrawn, to continue to fight "al-Qaeda in Mesopotamia."That suggestion is not plausible for several reasons. If there is only a small force in the country, who will rescue them if their helicopter gets shot down or they are ambushed and besieged? Then, how would a small American unit be any good against a terrorist organization operating in remote parts of Sunni Iraq? They don't know Arabic, can't hope for really good intelligence from locals, etc. Wouldn't it be more efficient to let the Special Police Commandos of the Iraqi Interior Ministry take care of this sort of thing? By the way, no one seems to be calling themselves "al-Qaeda in Mesopotamia" any more on the jihadi bulletin boards. The main fundamentalist vigilante group is the "Islamic State of Iraq."And then there is the problem that the Iraqis are demanding veto power over US operations in Iraq, a demand that will only grow with time. If they don't concur that a Sunni group is terrorists, the Baghdad government could just keep the US unit cooling its heels. It is precisely over issues such as Iraqi demands that US troops get permission before they act that Karen DeYoung at WaPo says have definitively derailed negotiations between Bush and al-Maliki on a Status of Forces Agreement. Now the two leaders seem likely just initial some quick and dirty executive-to-executive understanding that may not last past Bush's last day in office next January. So the Iraqis are unlikely to want a special forces unit of the sort Senator Obama envisages running around Iraq at will.It will be over with by then. Iraqis want their sovereignty back.The way to get out of Iraq is to get out of Iraq.The major critique I have is that Obama keeps talking about intensifying the search and destroy missions being carried out by US troops in the Pushtun areas of southern Afghanistan. As we should have learned from Vietnam, search and destroy missions only alienate the local population and drive it into the arms of the insurgency. Tom Engelhardt explains how US bombing strikes sometimes hit innocent civilians, including now several wedding parties, which is rather alienating to the clans that are attacked. (The US military says that the insurgents routinely allege that wedding parties were hit when they were not actually. But then there are those pesky photographs of what are obviously civilians . . .)The cost of such guerrilla struggles is high. On Sunday, Pushtun guerrillas attacked a remote base where US troops were under a NATO command and killed 9 of them, wounding 15. Many more "Taliban" were no doubt killed. But the evidence is that the Afghan insurgents are getting better at fighting the US.When was the last time that an al-Qaeda operative was captured in Afghanistan by US forces? Is that really what US troops are doing there, looking for al-Qaeda? Wouldn't we hear more about it if they were having successes in that regard? I mean, what is reported in the press is that they are fighting with "Taliban". But I'm not so sure these Pushtun rural guerrillas are even properly speaking Taliban (which means 'seminary student.') The original Taliban had mostly been displaced as refugees into Pakistan. These 'neo-Taliban' don't seem mostly to have that background. A lot of them seem to be just disgruntled Pushtun villagers in places like Uruzgan.There has now been a rise of suicide bombings in Afghanistan, on a scale never before seen. One killed 24 people in a bazaar at Deh Rawood on Sunday. Robert Pape has demonstrated that suicide bombings typically are carried out by people who think their country is under foreign military occupation. If the US keeps sending more troops, will that really calm things down? (See also the recent blogging of Barnett Rubin on the situation of Afghanistan)I don't know whether Senator Obama really wants to try to militarily occupy Afghanistan even more than is now being attempted. I wish he would talk to some old Russian officers who were there in the 1980s first. Of course, it may be that this announced strategy is political and for the purposes of having something to say when McCain accuses him of surrendering in Iraq.If the Afghanistan gambit is sincere, I don't think it is good geostrategy. Afghanistan is far more unwinnable even than Iraq. If playing it up is politics, then it is dangerous politics. Presidents can become captive of their own record and end up having to commit to things because they made strong representations about them to the public.I think Obama has a little bit of a tendency to try to fix his political problems by going overboard. Thus, he faces skepticism from Jewish American voters. So he made a Zionist speech in Boca. In the context of US politics, that is to be expected; he would not be any sort of politician, much less a phenomenon, if he did not try to reassure Jewish Americans about his commmitment to Israeli security, which is after all a worthy goal. But Obama went on to praise Zionist thinker Theodore Herzl, who started this nonsense about a people without a land for a land without a people. And then he gave away Jerusalem, undivided and permanently, to the Israelis in the middle of ongoing negotiations over its status between Israel and the Palestine Authority in the context of the Quartet, which the US government supports. Neither of those two things was necessary. It was overkill. And Obama now has some bridge building to do with the Arab and Muslim worlds if he becomes president, since Jerusalem is also dear to their hearts.Search and destroy in Afghanistan is an even worse example of going overboard. My advice to his campaign team is to give more thought to how he can take a strong enough position on an issue to win on it, without giving away the whole store.We who admire him don't want Afghanistan to become an albatross around the neck of a President Obama. I am old enough to remember one of the things that nearly killed the Democratic Party as a presidential party in the US, which was the way Lyndon Johnson let himself gradually get roped into ramping up the US troop presence in Vietnam from a small force to 500,000, and then still not win.Afghan tribes are fractious. They feud. Their territory is vast and rugged, and they know it like the back of their hands. Afghans are Jeffersonians in the sense that they want a light touch from the central government, and heavy handedness drives them into rebellion. Stand up Karzai's army and air force and give him some billions to bribe the tribal chiefs, and let him apply carrot and stick himself. We need to get out of there. "Al-Qaeda" was always Bin Laden's hype. He wanted to get us on the ground there so that the Mujahideen could bleed us the way they did the Soviets. It is a trap.Beware.
Labels: Iraq
Philippines hikes interest rates more than expected
This is from marketwatch.
This may slow down the economy. The stock market does not show much confidence in the economy but then stock markets around the globe are mostly doing badly now. Although the Philippine peso is not doing that well compared to other Asian currencies I imagine it is faring rather better against the U.S. dollar!
Philippines hikes rates more than expected to curb inflation
By Polya Lesova
Last update: 10:20 a.m. EDT July 17, 2008
NEW YORK (MarketWatch) -- The central bank of the Philippines raised its key interest rate by 50 basis points to 5.75% on Thursday in a move to fight inflation. The bank said its baseline forecasts show the risk of inflation exceeding the inflation targets for 2008 and 2009. "Authorities believe that the series of policy adjustments will help to steer inflation towards its desired path for the medium term," the bank said in a statement. Most analysts had expected a hike of only 25 basis points. "This sparked an impressive 1.2% rally in the peso, which is still off about 7.7% for the year, making it among the worst performing Asian currencies," said currency strategists at Brown Brothers Harriman. In Manila, the PSE stock index finished up 0.8%. It is down 34% year-to-date.
This may slow down the economy. The stock market does not show much confidence in the economy but then stock markets around the globe are mostly doing badly now. Although the Philippine peso is not doing that well compared to other Asian currencies I imagine it is faring rather better against the U.S. dollar!
Philippines hikes rates more than expected to curb inflation
By Polya Lesova
Last update: 10:20 a.m. EDT July 17, 2008
NEW YORK (MarketWatch) -- The central bank of the Philippines raised its key interest rate by 50 basis points to 5.75% on Thursday in a move to fight inflation. The bank said its baseline forecasts show the risk of inflation exceeding the inflation targets for 2008 and 2009. "Authorities believe that the series of policy adjustments will help to steer inflation towards its desired path for the medium term," the bank said in a statement. Most analysts had expected a hike of only 25 basis points. "This sparked an impressive 1.2% rally in the peso, which is still off about 7.7% for the year, making it among the worst performing Asian currencies," said currency strategists at Brown Brothers Harriman. In Manila, the PSE stock index finished up 0.8%. It is down 34% year-to-date.
Fannie, Freddie and USA Inc..owes foreigners big time..
This is from the Telegraph in the USA.
Fortunately for the U.S. most of these countries also profit from selling goods to the U.S. and certainly do not want to see the U.S. economy collapse. However, the US dollar does seem to be losing some of its influence and many foreign investors may decide to hold more of other currencies and invest in other countries.
Roughly $1.5 trillion of Fannie and Freddie AAA-rated debt - as well as other US "government-sponsored enterprises" - is now in foreign hands. The great unknown is whether foreign patience will snap as losses mount and the dollar slides.Hiroshi Watanabe, Japan's chief regulator, rattled the markets yesterday when he urged Japanese banks and life insurance companies to treat US agency debt with caution. The two sets of institutions hold an estimated $56bn of these bonds. Mitsubishi UFJ holds $3bn. Nippon Life has $2.5bn.But the lion's share is held by the central banks of China, Russia and petro-powers. These countries could all too easily precipitate a run on the dollar in the current climate and bring the United States to its knees, should they decide that it is in their strategic interest to do so.
Fortunately for the U.S. most of these countries also profit from selling goods to the U.S. and certainly do not want to see the U.S. economy collapse. However, the US dollar does seem to be losing some of its influence and many foreign investors may decide to hold more of other currencies and invest in other countries.
Roughly $1.5 trillion of Fannie and Freddie AAA-rated debt - as well as other US "government-sponsored enterprises" - is now in foreign hands. The great unknown is whether foreign patience will snap as losses mount and the dollar slides.Hiroshi Watanabe, Japan's chief regulator, rattled the markets yesterday when he urged Japanese banks and life insurance companies to treat US agency debt with caution. The two sets of institutions hold an estimated $56bn of these bonds. Mitsubishi UFJ holds $3bn. Nippon Life has $2.5bn.But the lion's share is held by the central banks of China, Russia and petro-powers. These countries could all too easily precipitate a run on the dollar in the current climate and bring the United States to its knees, should they decide that it is in their strategic interest to do so.
Fannie, Freddie, spent $200 million to buy influence.
This is from Yahoo.
An interesting article showing how the tentacles of big corporations reach into government and the parties to influence how the government and law treats them.
Fannie, Freddie spent $200M to buy influence
Lisa LererWed Jul 16, 5:44 AM ET
If you want to know how Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac have survived scandal and crisis, consider this: Over the past decade, they have spent nearly $200 million on lobbying and campaign contributions.
But the political tentacles of the mortgage giants extend far beyond their checkbooks.
The two government-chartered companies run a highly sophisticated lobbying operation, with deep-pocketed lobbyists in Washington and scores of local Fannie- and Freddie-sponsored homeowner groups ready to pressure lawmakers back home.
They’ve stacked their payrolls with top Washington power brokers of all political stripes, including Republican John McCain’s presidential campaign manager, Rick Davis; Democrat Barack Obama’s original vice presidential vetter, Jim Johnson; and scores of others now working for the two rivals for the White House.
Fannie and Freddie’s aggressive political maneuvering has helped stave off increased regulation and preserve special benefits such as exemption from state and local income taxes and the ability to borrow at low rates.
When their stock prices took a dive last week, their government allies extended another helping hand with a plan for the Treasury Department, the Federal Reserve and, possibly, Congress to shore up the companies.
The housing crisis is sure to linger into the next administration, when the mortgage companies will inevitably be well-represented — no matter who’s in the White House.
Fannie and Freddie’s political contacts exist deep in the two presidential campaigns.
At least 20 McCain fundraisers have lobbied on behalf of Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac, netting at least $12.3 million in fees over the past nine years.
Political insiders Arthur B. Culvahouse Jr., picked by McCain to vet his vice presidential nominees, and Jim Johnson, picked by Obama to perform the same function, once worked for the mortgage giants.
And for years, Rick Davis served as president of an advocacy group led by Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac that defended the two companies against increased regulation.
So far this election cycle, Freddie Mac’s political action committee and employees have contributed $555,567 to Senate and House candidates, and Fannie Mae’s PAC and employees have given more than $1.1 million, according to the Center for Responsive Politics.
In total, the two companies have spent $170 million on lobbying over the past decade, according to the Center, although they have scaled back in recent years. Last year, they paid $14.1 million in lobbying fees, a significant decrease from a high of more than $26 million in 2004. The connections of both campaigns to the well-entrenched mortgage companies highlight the difficulties the candidates face in selling voters on an outsider message.
McCain’s campaign denied that its political connections have affected his view on the issue.
“I have written every word that has to do with Fannie and Freddie in this campaign, and I don’t know who the people are that are linked to the companies,” said McCain’s economic adviser, Douglas Holtz-Eakin.
“Sen. McCain has favored GSE reform in the past and continues to favor GSE reform,” Holtz-Eakin said. “That’s unchanged.”
McCain has called the government’s weekend intervention in the struggling companies “correct,” saying he hoped that the action would “preserve the ability of Americans to obtain loans in order to buy a home and be able to afford mortgage payments they’re having to make.”
A spokesman for the Obama campaign declined to comment, noting only that former Fannie Mae CEO Jim Johnson stepped down from his campaign post in June. His resignation came in the wake of charges that he collected more then $7 million in home loans at special, below-average rates.
On Sunday, Obama shied away from commenting on the specific proposals, but cautioned regulators to give top priority to the interests of homeowners.
“That should be our No. 1 priority, not just shareholders, investors or CEOs of companies,” he said.
Fannie and Freddie own or guarantee almost half of the country’s $12 trillion in mortgage debt. Over the past few months, their shares of the housing market have grown as private companies curtailed their mortgage lending in the wake of massive subprime-related losses.
Critics have long argued that both Fannie and Freddie operated with too small a capital cushion to adequately offset financial risk. But the mortgage giants have consistently beaten back congressional efforts to increase oversight, even after a major accounting scandal in 2003 resulted in a $400 million fine for Fannie.
Fannie’s government relations operations dramatically expanded in the mid-1990s, when then-CEO Johnson recruited Washington A-listers Robert Zoellick, who served in the Reagan and Bush administrations; Lawrence M. Small, former secretary of the Smithsonian Institution; and William M. Daley, commerce secretary in the Clinton administration.
Johnson spearheaded an aggressive campaign to create a local grass-roots network of company advocates. Under his leadership, Fannie opened more than 50 partnership offices in cities and rural communities. At the same time, the Fannie Mae Foundation, a private nonprofit financed by the mortgage giant, contributed generously to local charities, arts institutions and housing organizations, giving Fannie influence in lawmakers’ home districts.
Both Fannie and Freddie made large and visible commitments to low and moderate-income housing, quieting criticism from advocacy groups. With the companies in trouble, their political ties are under new scrutiny.
Johnson headed Fannie Mae from 1991 to 1998, leaving with a $21 million payout. Even after he left, Fannie continued to pay him an annual fee of at least $300,000 a year for consulting services and a $71,000 monthly pension, according to filings with the Securities and Exchange Commission.
From 2001 to 2005, Fannie also paid for Johnson’s support staff, communications services and provided him a car and driver.
McCain tapped Culvahouse, the former Reagan administration official, to head his search for a running mate.
Currently a partner at O’Melveny & Myers, Culvahouse lobbied on behalf of Fannie Mae in 1999, 2003 and 2004, according to Senate records.
The campaign connections to the two mortgage companies go far beyond vice presidential vetters.
McCain campaign manager Davis headed the Homeownership Alliance, a lobbying association that included Fannie, Freddie, nonprofit groups, real estate agents, homebuilders and consumer advocates. The group’s stated goal was to increase affordable housing. But it also worked to oppose congressional efforts to tighten controls on Fannie and Freddie.
In July 2003, Davis wrote to the American Banker, taking issue with an opinion piece by Leslie Paige of Citizens Against Government Waste, arguing that Fannie and Freddie should operate with greater transparency.
“Several of Ms. Paige’s assertions bear correction,” Davis wrote, defending Fannie and Freddie on behalf of the group. “The GSEs are subject to an innovative and stringent risk-based capital stress test — the toughest in the financial services industry.”
Other McCain aides with ties to the two companies include economic adviser Aquiles Suarez, who worked as Fannie’s director of government and industry relations; congressional liaison John Green, who lobbied for Fannie from 2004 to 2007; and finance co-chairman Frederic V. Malek, a former Freddie board member.
Jamie S. Gorelick, deputy attorney general in the Clinton administration and a chief policy adviser to Hillary Rodham Clinton, is rumored to be a possible attorney general in an Obama administration. She was vice chairman of Fannie Mae and sat on its board of directors.
Copyright © 2008 Capitol News Company, LLC.
An interesting article showing how the tentacles of big corporations reach into government and the parties to influence how the government and law treats them.
Fannie, Freddie spent $200M to buy influence
Lisa LererWed Jul 16, 5:44 AM ET
If you want to know how Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac have survived scandal and crisis, consider this: Over the past decade, they have spent nearly $200 million on lobbying and campaign contributions.
But the political tentacles of the mortgage giants extend far beyond their checkbooks.
The two government-chartered companies run a highly sophisticated lobbying operation, with deep-pocketed lobbyists in Washington and scores of local Fannie- and Freddie-sponsored homeowner groups ready to pressure lawmakers back home.
They’ve stacked their payrolls with top Washington power brokers of all political stripes, including Republican John McCain’s presidential campaign manager, Rick Davis; Democrat Barack Obama’s original vice presidential vetter, Jim Johnson; and scores of others now working for the two rivals for the White House.
Fannie and Freddie’s aggressive political maneuvering has helped stave off increased regulation and preserve special benefits such as exemption from state and local income taxes and the ability to borrow at low rates.
When their stock prices took a dive last week, their government allies extended another helping hand with a plan for the Treasury Department, the Federal Reserve and, possibly, Congress to shore up the companies.
The housing crisis is sure to linger into the next administration, when the mortgage companies will inevitably be well-represented — no matter who’s in the White House.
Fannie and Freddie’s political contacts exist deep in the two presidential campaigns.
At least 20 McCain fundraisers have lobbied on behalf of Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac, netting at least $12.3 million in fees over the past nine years.
Political insiders Arthur B. Culvahouse Jr., picked by McCain to vet his vice presidential nominees, and Jim Johnson, picked by Obama to perform the same function, once worked for the mortgage giants.
And for years, Rick Davis served as president of an advocacy group led by Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac that defended the two companies against increased regulation.
So far this election cycle, Freddie Mac’s political action committee and employees have contributed $555,567 to Senate and House candidates, and Fannie Mae’s PAC and employees have given more than $1.1 million, according to the Center for Responsive Politics.
In total, the two companies have spent $170 million on lobbying over the past decade, according to the Center, although they have scaled back in recent years. Last year, they paid $14.1 million in lobbying fees, a significant decrease from a high of more than $26 million in 2004. The connections of both campaigns to the well-entrenched mortgage companies highlight the difficulties the candidates face in selling voters on an outsider message.
McCain’s campaign denied that its political connections have affected his view on the issue.
“I have written every word that has to do with Fannie and Freddie in this campaign, and I don’t know who the people are that are linked to the companies,” said McCain’s economic adviser, Douglas Holtz-Eakin.
“Sen. McCain has favored GSE reform in the past and continues to favor GSE reform,” Holtz-Eakin said. “That’s unchanged.”
McCain has called the government’s weekend intervention in the struggling companies “correct,” saying he hoped that the action would “preserve the ability of Americans to obtain loans in order to buy a home and be able to afford mortgage payments they’re having to make.”
A spokesman for the Obama campaign declined to comment, noting only that former Fannie Mae CEO Jim Johnson stepped down from his campaign post in June. His resignation came in the wake of charges that he collected more then $7 million in home loans at special, below-average rates.
On Sunday, Obama shied away from commenting on the specific proposals, but cautioned regulators to give top priority to the interests of homeowners.
“That should be our No. 1 priority, not just shareholders, investors or CEOs of companies,” he said.
Fannie and Freddie own or guarantee almost half of the country’s $12 trillion in mortgage debt. Over the past few months, their shares of the housing market have grown as private companies curtailed their mortgage lending in the wake of massive subprime-related losses.
Critics have long argued that both Fannie and Freddie operated with too small a capital cushion to adequately offset financial risk. But the mortgage giants have consistently beaten back congressional efforts to increase oversight, even after a major accounting scandal in 2003 resulted in a $400 million fine for Fannie.
Fannie’s government relations operations dramatically expanded in the mid-1990s, when then-CEO Johnson recruited Washington A-listers Robert Zoellick, who served in the Reagan and Bush administrations; Lawrence M. Small, former secretary of the Smithsonian Institution; and William M. Daley, commerce secretary in the Clinton administration.
Johnson spearheaded an aggressive campaign to create a local grass-roots network of company advocates. Under his leadership, Fannie opened more than 50 partnership offices in cities and rural communities. At the same time, the Fannie Mae Foundation, a private nonprofit financed by the mortgage giant, contributed generously to local charities, arts institutions and housing organizations, giving Fannie influence in lawmakers’ home districts.
Both Fannie and Freddie made large and visible commitments to low and moderate-income housing, quieting criticism from advocacy groups. With the companies in trouble, their political ties are under new scrutiny.
Johnson headed Fannie Mae from 1991 to 1998, leaving with a $21 million payout. Even after he left, Fannie continued to pay him an annual fee of at least $300,000 a year for consulting services and a $71,000 monthly pension, according to filings with the Securities and Exchange Commission.
From 2001 to 2005, Fannie also paid for Johnson’s support staff, communications services and provided him a car and driver.
McCain tapped Culvahouse, the former Reagan administration official, to head his search for a running mate.
Currently a partner at O’Melveny & Myers, Culvahouse lobbied on behalf of Fannie Mae in 1999, 2003 and 2004, according to Senate records.
The campaign connections to the two mortgage companies go far beyond vice presidential vetters.
McCain campaign manager Davis headed the Homeownership Alliance, a lobbying association that included Fannie, Freddie, nonprofit groups, real estate agents, homebuilders and consumer advocates. The group’s stated goal was to increase affordable housing. But it also worked to oppose congressional efforts to tighten controls on Fannie and Freddie.
In July 2003, Davis wrote to the American Banker, taking issue with an opinion piece by Leslie Paige of Citizens Against Government Waste, arguing that Fannie and Freddie should operate with greater transparency.
“Several of Ms. Paige’s assertions bear correction,” Davis wrote, defending Fannie and Freddie on behalf of the group. “The GSEs are subject to an innovative and stringent risk-based capital stress test — the toughest in the financial services industry.”
Other McCain aides with ties to the two companies include economic adviser Aquiles Suarez, who worked as Fannie’s director of government and industry relations; congressional liaison John Green, who lobbied for Fannie from 2004 to 2007; and finance co-chairman Frederic V. Malek, a former Freddie board member.
Jamie S. Gorelick, deputy attorney general in the Clinton administration and a chief policy adviser to Hillary Rodham Clinton, is rumored to be a possible attorney general in an Obama administration. She was vice chairman of Fannie Mae and sat on its board of directors.
Copyright © 2008 Capitol News Company, LLC.
Strike kills 2 Afghan Tribal Leaders NATO says
It seems that McKiernan who took over as head of NATO forces from Bomber McNeil is following in the bombing tradition. The outlook for Afghanistan is more recruits for the Taliban and on the NATO side a surge in Afghanistan led by that great agent for change Barack Obama.
July 18, 2008
Strike Kills 2 Afghan Tribal Leaders, NATO Says
By CARLOTTA GALL
KABUL, Afghanistan — American Special Forces troops and Afghan commandos killed two influential tribal leaders and a number of their followers in western Afghanistan in a joint airborne operation on Wednesday night, military officials said Thursday. But as with some previous operations, there were differing accounts over whether the strike also killed Afghan civilians.
NATO and the Afghan Ministry of Defense declared that the tribal leaders were high-priority Taliban targets and that the operation against them was successful. In a statement from its press office in Kabul, NATO said there was no evidence of civilian casualties.
Villagers, however, gave a different account, saying houses had been bombed and civilians had been killed and wounded as they fled. Local officials confirmed the bombardment and damage to houses but did not say whether civilians had been killed or wounded.
The operation took place in the Zerkoh Valley near Shindand in Herat, a western province where United States Special Forces clashed with the same tribe in April 2007. When they came under fire from villagers, the Special Forces called in airstrikes on the village, resulting in 57 deaths, including women and children.
Those strikes, occurring the month after marines killed 19 civilians in eastern Afghanistan, caused an outcry from Afghan politicians and aid organizations and led the NATO commander at the time, Gen. Dan K. McNeill, to issue orders to his forces to take extra care to avoid civilian casualties.
Gen. David D. McKiernan, who took over command of the NATO forces in Afghanistan in June, is facing a similar problem. As insurgent attacks have increased, so have civilian casualties caused by airstrikes. Calls in Parliament and around Afghanistan are again increasing for the foreign forces to stop their bombing raids. The Red Cross called for the Taliban and the foreign forces to show greater restraint in view of the civilian suffering.
President Hamid Karzai flew by helicopter on Thursday to commiserate with residents in a mountain village in eastern Nangarhar Province where 47 people, mostly women and children, accompanying a bride to a neighboring village were killed in an aerial bombardment on July 6. The United States military said it had killed militants, but a government delegation visited the area and confirmed that the dead had been women and children and included the bride.
Two days before that assault, 15 civilians, including medical workers, were killed in airstrikes in Nuristan Province, government officials said. The United States military, which contended at the time that it had killed militants, has said the matter is under investigation.
The United States-led coalition said Wednesday that it had called in airstrikes on a compound after coming under fire from militants in western Afghanistan and confirmed that eight civilians inside had been killed and two had been wounded.
“Coalition forces never intentionally target noncombatants, and deeply regret any occurrence such as this where civilians are killed and injured as a result of insurgent activity and actions,” the coalition said in a statement.
Government officials said 15 militants were killed in the operation on Wednesday night. Afghan commandos and American Special Forces attacked a militant camp in a mountainous area away from villages, said Gen. Zaher Azimi, the spokesman for the Afghan Ministry of Defense.
The leader of the militant group, Nangialai, and two of his uncles, Hajji Daulat Khan and Hajji Nasrullah Khan, were killed, General Azimi said. He said the forces had intercepted them making a call to Waziristan in Pakistan’s tribal areas, asking for reinforcements from the Taliban. The commandos also freed 15 prisoners they found being held in grim conditions in a private lockup, he said. General Azimi denied that there were any civilian casualties.
But the Khans and members of their tribe had insisted in the past that they had no dealings with the Taliban and that local rivalries had caused government officials to brand them as Taliban.
Zalmai, 31, who brought his wounded uncle to the hospital in Shindand, said planes bombed their village, Parmakan, and two other places, causing many residents to panic and flee. Many were killed or wounded as they left on motorbikes and on foot, he said by telephone.
Zalmai, a shopkeeper who uses only one name, said eight other wounded people, including women and children, were taken to the hospital. He said that more wounded people were still lying under the rubble or in the open and that the soldiers were not letting villagers reach them.
Local officials confirmed that the bombing hit some houses. Abdul Shukur, the Shindand police chief, said three houses were destroyed, The Associated Press reported.
Eric Schmitt contributed reporting from Washington, and Alan Cowell from London.
July 18, 2008
Strike Kills 2 Afghan Tribal Leaders, NATO Says
By CARLOTTA GALL
KABUL, Afghanistan — American Special Forces troops and Afghan commandos killed two influential tribal leaders and a number of their followers in western Afghanistan in a joint airborne operation on Wednesday night, military officials said Thursday. But as with some previous operations, there were differing accounts over whether the strike also killed Afghan civilians.
NATO and the Afghan Ministry of Defense declared that the tribal leaders were high-priority Taliban targets and that the operation against them was successful. In a statement from its press office in Kabul, NATO said there was no evidence of civilian casualties.
Villagers, however, gave a different account, saying houses had been bombed and civilians had been killed and wounded as they fled. Local officials confirmed the bombardment and damage to houses but did not say whether civilians had been killed or wounded.
The operation took place in the Zerkoh Valley near Shindand in Herat, a western province where United States Special Forces clashed with the same tribe in April 2007. When they came under fire from villagers, the Special Forces called in airstrikes on the village, resulting in 57 deaths, including women and children.
Those strikes, occurring the month after marines killed 19 civilians in eastern Afghanistan, caused an outcry from Afghan politicians and aid organizations and led the NATO commander at the time, Gen. Dan K. McNeill, to issue orders to his forces to take extra care to avoid civilian casualties.
Gen. David D. McKiernan, who took over command of the NATO forces in Afghanistan in June, is facing a similar problem. As insurgent attacks have increased, so have civilian casualties caused by airstrikes. Calls in Parliament and around Afghanistan are again increasing for the foreign forces to stop their bombing raids. The Red Cross called for the Taliban and the foreign forces to show greater restraint in view of the civilian suffering.
President Hamid Karzai flew by helicopter on Thursday to commiserate with residents in a mountain village in eastern Nangarhar Province where 47 people, mostly women and children, accompanying a bride to a neighboring village were killed in an aerial bombardment on July 6. The United States military said it had killed militants, but a government delegation visited the area and confirmed that the dead had been women and children and included the bride.
Two days before that assault, 15 civilians, including medical workers, were killed in airstrikes in Nuristan Province, government officials said. The United States military, which contended at the time that it had killed militants, has said the matter is under investigation.
The United States-led coalition said Wednesday that it had called in airstrikes on a compound after coming under fire from militants in western Afghanistan and confirmed that eight civilians inside had been killed and two had been wounded.
“Coalition forces never intentionally target noncombatants, and deeply regret any occurrence such as this where civilians are killed and injured as a result of insurgent activity and actions,” the coalition said in a statement.
Government officials said 15 militants were killed in the operation on Wednesday night. Afghan commandos and American Special Forces attacked a militant camp in a mountainous area away from villages, said Gen. Zaher Azimi, the spokesman for the Afghan Ministry of Defense.
The leader of the militant group, Nangialai, and two of his uncles, Hajji Daulat Khan and Hajji Nasrullah Khan, were killed, General Azimi said. He said the forces had intercepted them making a call to Waziristan in Pakistan’s tribal areas, asking for reinforcements from the Taliban. The commandos also freed 15 prisoners they found being held in grim conditions in a private lockup, he said. General Azimi denied that there were any civilian casualties.
But the Khans and members of their tribe had insisted in the past that they had no dealings with the Taliban and that local rivalries had caused government officials to brand them as Taliban.
Zalmai, 31, who brought his wounded uncle to the hospital in Shindand, said planes bombed their village, Parmakan, and two other places, causing many residents to panic and flee. Many were killed or wounded as they left on motorbikes and on foot, he said by telephone.
Zalmai, a shopkeeper who uses only one name, said eight other wounded people, including women and children, were taken to the hospital. He said that more wounded people were still lying under the rubble or in the open and that the soldiers were not letting villagers reach them.
Local officials confirmed that the bombing hit some houses. Abdul Shukur, the Shindand police chief, said three houses were destroyed, The Associated Press reported.
Eric Schmitt contributed reporting from Washington, and Alan Cowell from London.
Iran "open" to U.S. interests section
This is from aljazeera.
The Iran US situation is certainly mixed up. This comes along with sabre rattling by both sides (and Israel). This is a much more positive step than the provocations that have dominated the news lately. Maybe oil will go down even more now!
Iran 'open' to US interests section
Burns is set to meet Iranian officials to focus on Tehran's nuclear programme [AFP]
Iran is prepared to have dialogue with the United States on establishing a US interests section in Iran, the country's foreign minister has said.
Manouchehr Mottaki also said on Friday that a direct air link between Iran and the United States could be discussed between the two countries.
"In my opinion, talks and a deal on an American bureau in Iran and direct flights between Iran and the United States is possible," Mottaki said after holding talks with Ali Babacan, Turkey’s foreign minister, in Ankara.
Mottaki said Tehran was aware of media reports of a US plan to open an interests section in Iran.
If such a bureau were to be opened, it would mark the first such link between the two countries since the Islamic Revolution in Iran in 1979.
Washington will announce its plan to establish an interests section staffed with diplomats in Iran, London’s Guardian newspaper reported on Thursday.Nuclear talks
Mottaki’s comments come a day before William Burns, the US undersecretary of state, is due to meet Iranian representatives in Geneva to discuss Iran's nuclear programme.
"I hope this progress [in the negotiation format] will also reflect on the content of the talks," Mottaki said of Burns' visit.
"If the negotiations continue in this way, I hope there will be a positive outcome."
Saeed Jalili, Iran’s senior nuclear negotiator, is set to meet Javier Solana, the European Union policy chief, to discuss incentives offered to Tehran to halt its uranium enrichment programme.
The US and other Western powers say that Iran is enriching uranium with a view to attach it to a warhead.
Tehran rejects the charges and says that it is pursuing nuclear technology to generate electricity.
The Iran US situation is certainly mixed up. This comes along with sabre rattling by both sides (and Israel). This is a much more positive step than the provocations that have dominated the news lately. Maybe oil will go down even more now!
Iran 'open' to US interests section
Burns is set to meet Iranian officials to focus on Tehran's nuclear programme [AFP]
Iran is prepared to have dialogue with the United States on establishing a US interests section in Iran, the country's foreign minister has said.
Manouchehr Mottaki also said on Friday that a direct air link between Iran and the United States could be discussed between the two countries.
"In my opinion, talks and a deal on an American bureau in Iran and direct flights between Iran and the United States is possible," Mottaki said after holding talks with Ali Babacan, Turkey’s foreign minister, in Ankara.
Mottaki said Tehran was aware of media reports of a US plan to open an interests section in Iran.
If such a bureau were to be opened, it would mark the first such link between the two countries since the Islamic Revolution in Iran in 1979.
Washington will announce its plan to establish an interests section staffed with diplomats in Iran, London’s Guardian newspaper reported on Thursday.Nuclear talks
Mottaki’s comments come a day before William Burns, the US undersecretary of state, is due to meet Iranian representatives in Geneva to discuss Iran's nuclear programme.
"I hope this progress [in the negotiation format] will also reflect on the content of the talks," Mottaki said of Burns' visit.
"If the negotiations continue in this way, I hope there will be a positive outcome."
Saeed Jalili, Iran’s senior nuclear negotiator, is set to meet Javier Solana, the European Union policy chief, to discuss incentives offered to Tehran to halt its uranium enrichment programme.
The US and other Western powers say that Iran is enriching uranium with a view to attach it to a warhead.
Tehran rejects the charges and says that it is pursuing nuclear technology to generate electricity.
Meanwhile back in Vietnam auto sales soar..
This is from vnagency.
It seems as if price increases are hitting Vietnam even though auto sales are increasing. The Vietnamese stock market is apparently in the doldrums as well. However, there is no news of the sort of protests over declining stock prices of the type that is happening in Pakistan.
April sets another record in auto sales
13/05/2008 -- 12:48 PM
Hanoi (VNA) -- Vietnamese people seemed to be rushing to buy cars before a possible further price hike, as 13,271 units, up 183 percent year on year, were sold last month, breaking the previous month’s record of 13,081 units.The jump was fuelled by outstanding sales of commercial vehicles, which reached 8,185 units, up 248 percent, the Viet Nam Auto Manufacturers Association (VAWA) reported.While the passenger car segment saw a 116 percent boost with 2,221 units, multi-purpose vehicles and sport utility vehicles (MPV/SUV) experienced a 119 percent jump with 2,865 units.On the company’s rankings list, truck and bus manufacturer Vinamotor once again led the line with 3,520 units, accounting for 27 percent of the market share, followed by Toyota and Truong Hai with 2,265 and 2,016 units, respectively, accounting for 17 and 15 percent of the market share.The overall sales of VAWA members in the first four months of the year climbed to 47,366 units, up 181 percent over the corresponding period last year.Meanwhile, the country imported some 12,000 complete built unit (CBU) autos in the first quarter of the year, up 35 percent year-on-year, according to the General Office of Statistics.A number of tariff adjustments were made last month as part of a Government drive to reduce traffic congestion by curbing the mass importation of automobiles into the country, and to reduce the trade deficit.The Ministry of Finance on April 2 raised the import tariff on CBUs from 60 percent to 70 percent and from 70 percent to 83 percent a few days later.While the import tariff on auto parts and components for local assembly was also increased by 3-5 percent, the tariff on used cars was also raised twice this year.The continuous hike of import tariffs on CBUs is believed to have raised not only the price of imported autos, but also the price of locally-assembled autos.As a result, while several car importers have raised their sales prices to cope with the new tariffs, Toyota Viet Nam last week was the first local car assembler to announce a price hike for its fleet, ranging from 100 USD to 700 USD, depending on the models.-
It seems as if price increases are hitting Vietnam even though auto sales are increasing. The Vietnamese stock market is apparently in the doldrums as well. However, there is no news of the sort of protests over declining stock prices of the type that is happening in Pakistan.
April sets another record in auto sales
13/05/2008 -- 12:48 PM
Hanoi (VNA) -- Vietnamese people seemed to be rushing to buy cars before a possible further price hike, as 13,271 units, up 183 percent year on year, were sold last month, breaking the previous month’s record of 13,081 units.The jump was fuelled by outstanding sales of commercial vehicles, which reached 8,185 units, up 248 percent, the Viet Nam Auto Manufacturers Association (VAWA) reported.While the passenger car segment saw a 116 percent boost with 2,221 units, multi-purpose vehicles and sport utility vehicles (MPV/SUV) experienced a 119 percent jump with 2,865 units.On the company’s rankings list, truck and bus manufacturer Vinamotor once again led the line with 3,520 units, accounting for 27 percent of the market share, followed by Toyota and Truong Hai with 2,265 and 2,016 units, respectively, accounting for 17 and 15 percent of the market share.The overall sales of VAWA members in the first four months of the year climbed to 47,366 units, up 181 percent over the corresponding period last year.Meanwhile, the country imported some 12,000 complete built unit (CBU) autos in the first quarter of the year, up 35 percent year-on-year, according to the General Office of Statistics.A number of tariff adjustments were made last month as part of a Government drive to reduce traffic congestion by curbing the mass importation of automobiles into the country, and to reduce the trade deficit.The Ministry of Finance on April 2 raised the import tariff on CBUs from 60 percent to 70 percent and from 70 percent to 83 percent a few days later.While the import tariff on auto parts and components for local assembly was also increased by 3-5 percent, the tariff on used cars was also raised twice this year.The continuous hike of import tariffs on CBUs is believed to have raised not only the price of imported autos, but also the price of locally-assembled autos.As a result, while several car importers have raised their sales prices to cope with the new tariffs, Toyota Viet Nam last week was the first local car assembler to announce a price hike for its fleet, ranging from 100 USD to 700 USD, depending on the models.-
U.S. "Misery Index" climbs to 15 year high on prices.
This is from Bloomberg.
Of course most Americans are probably still better off then the vast majority throughout the world. Misery is to a certain extent relative. However a combination of high unemployment plus higher inflation is bound to cause a degree of misery for many Americans.
U.S. `Misery Index' Climbs to 15-Year High on Prices (Update1)
By Timothy R. Homan
July 16 (Bloomberg) -- Misery hasn't had this much company in more than 15 years.
The jump in consumer prices reported today by the Labor Department means the so-called Misery Index, the sum of the unemployment and inflation rates, is the highest since President Bill Clinton took office in January 1993. The measure, created by Arthur Okun, an economics adviser to President Lyndon Johnson, rose to 10.5 in June from 9.7 in the prior month.
Surging costs and falling payrolls will cause consumers to slow spending growth to the weakest pace since 1991 by the fourth quarter, according to a monthly survey of economists by Bloomberg News. The figures underscore Federal Reserve Chairman Ben S. Bernanke's comment to lawmakers yesterday that U.S. households are under ``tremendous pressure.''
``You add that to what's going on with home prices and that's just a huge stress on consumers,'' said Robert Dye, senior economist at PNC Financial Services Group Inc. in Pittsburgh.
The year-over-year inflation rate accelerated to 5 percent, the fastest since May 1991, the Labor Department said. A separate report July 3 showed a 5.5 percent unemployment rate for June.
Today's consumer price index data also showed wages fell 2.4 percent over the last 12 months, after adjusting for inflation.
``Both sides of stagflation are in greater evidence this week than they've ever been before,'' said Peter Kretzmer, a senior economist at Bank of America Corp. in New York.
The June unemployment rate held at 5.5 percent after soaring the most in two decades in May from April's 5 percent.
The Misery Index peaked in June 1980, when the jobless rate reached 7.6 percent and consumer prices rose 14.4 percent.
To contact the reporter on this story: Timothy R. Homan in Washington at thoman1@bloomberg.net.
Of course most Americans are probably still better off then the vast majority throughout the world. Misery is to a certain extent relative. However a combination of high unemployment plus higher inflation is bound to cause a degree of misery for many Americans.
U.S. `Misery Index' Climbs to 15-Year High on Prices (Update1)
By Timothy R. Homan
July 16 (Bloomberg) -- Misery hasn't had this much company in more than 15 years.
The jump in consumer prices reported today by the Labor Department means the so-called Misery Index, the sum of the unemployment and inflation rates, is the highest since President Bill Clinton took office in January 1993. The measure, created by Arthur Okun, an economics adviser to President Lyndon Johnson, rose to 10.5 in June from 9.7 in the prior month.
Surging costs and falling payrolls will cause consumers to slow spending growth to the weakest pace since 1991 by the fourth quarter, according to a monthly survey of economists by Bloomberg News. The figures underscore Federal Reserve Chairman Ben S. Bernanke's comment to lawmakers yesterday that U.S. households are under ``tremendous pressure.''
``You add that to what's going on with home prices and that's just a huge stress on consumers,'' said Robert Dye, senior economist at PNC Financial Services Group Inc. in Pittsburgh.
The year-over-year inflation rate accelerated to 5 percent, the fastest since May 1991, the Labor Department said. A separate report July 3 showed a 5.5 percent unemployment rate for June.
Today's consumer price index data also showed wages fell 2.4 percent over the last 12 months, after adjusting for inflation.
``Both sides of stagflation are in greater evidence this week than they've ever been before,'' said Peter Kretzmer, a senior economist at Bank of America Corp. in New York.
The June unemployment rate held at 5.5 percent after soaring the most in two decades in May from April's 5 percent.
The Misery Index peaked in June 1980, when the jobless rate reached 7.6 percent and consumer prices rose 14.4 percent.
To contact the reporter on this story: Timothy R. Homan in Washington at thoman1@bloomberg.net.
Thursday, July 17, 2008
Philippine president snubs calls to scrap oil tax
The taxes on oil and gas are probably much less than in many countries. These taxes do help to reduce usage but at the same time they have an uneven impact on people depending upon income. This type of tax is regressive in that high and low income people pay exactly the same percentage but the impact on their total incomes is quite different.
While lower income people may not pay a lot because they don't drive Hummers, they do depend upon jeepneys who must increase their fares to keep in business when diesel and gas prices rise. Arroyo is right that reducing or eliminating tax would eliminate revenues. She talks as if all those revenues are used for programs for the poor! Haha! But no doubt some are but there are other types of taxes such as a more progressive income tax. I am not sure how efficiently taxes such as that are collected in the Philippines though.
Philippine president snubs calls to scrap oil tax
www.chinaview.cn 2008-07-16 15:11:08
MANILA, July 16 (Xinhua) -- Philippine President Gloria Macapagal-Arroyo on Wednesday said the government would not remove or reduce the 12-percent value added tax (VAT) levied on oil consumers despite repeated calls for her to do so to mitigate the impact of spiraling world oil prices.
"Repealing taxes on oil and power will strip the vast majority of our people the means to ride out the world food and energy crisis," Arroyo said in an event held here to promote the use of energy-saving light bulbs to cut electricity bill.
She said the revenues generated by the oil VAT can be used to effectively subsidize people who live under the poverty line and use far less oil than the average.
Arroyo said to scrape the oil VAT at the height of global economic downturn is to "give up the enduring strength for popular but counter-productive, short-term gains."
"If VAT on oil and power is lifted, how do we replace more than70 billion pesos (1.54 billion U.S. dollars) in revenues mostly used to fund projects for the poor," she said.
She said the revenues produced by oil VAT have shielded the nation from the worst effects of the food and fuel crisis.
Calls to scrap the oil tax has been resurging after the price of oil climbed to record high on the international market. Even the powerful Catholic Church in the Philippines had openly urged the government to remove the oil tax.
But the government said it is working hard to cushion the damaging effects of the skyrocketing oil price exerted on the average Filipino but the removal of oil tax is not an option, at least for now, with concerns that such move might undermine market confidence.
The government levied the value added tax on oil and power since 2005. The measure has effectively improved the government's fiscal performance.
While lower income people may not pay a lot because they don't drive Hummers, they do depend upon jeepneys who must increase their fares to keep in business when diesel and gas prices rise. Arroyo is right that reducing or eliminating tax would eliminate revenues. She talks as if all those revenues are used for programs for the poor! Haha! But no doubt some are but there are other types of taxes such as a more progressive income tax. I am not sure how efficiently taxes such as that are collected in the Philippines though.
Philippine president snubs calls to scrap oil tax
www.chinaview.cn 2008-07-16 15:11:08
MANILA, July 16 (Xinhua) -- Philippine President Gloria Macapagal-Arroyo on Wednesday said the government would not remove or reduce the 12-percent value added tax (VAT) levied on oil consumers despite repeated calls for her to do so to mitigate the impact of spiraling world oil prices.
"Repealing taxes on oil and power will strip the vast majority of our people the means to ride out the world food and energy crisis," Arroyo said in an event held here to promote the use of energy-saving light bulbs to cut electricity bill.
She said the revenues generated by the oil VAT can be used to effectively subsidize people who live under the poverty line and use far less oil than the average.
Arroyo said to scrape the oil VAT at the height of global economic downturn is to "give up the enduring strength for popular but counter-productive, short-term gains."
"If VAT on oil and power is lifted, how do we replace more than70 billion pesos (1.54 billion U.S. dollars) in revenues mostly used to fund projects for the poor," she said.
She said the revenues produced by oil VAT have shielded the nation from the worst effects of the food and fuel crisis.
Calls to scrap the oil tax has been resurging after the price of oil climbed to record high on the international market. Even the powerful Catholic Church in the Philippines had openly urged the government to remove the oil tax.
But the government said it is working hard to cushion the damaging effects of the skyrocketing oil price exerted on the average Filipino but the removal of oil tax is not an option, at least for now, with concerns that such move might undermine market confidence.
The government levied the value added tax on oil and power since 2005. The measure has effectively improved the government's fiscal performance.
Wednesday, July 16, 2008
Habeas corpus if necessary but not necessarily habeas corpus
The eminent justices wonder if they have struck the proper balance between liberty and security when they have in effect done away with the right of habeas corpus for one class of citizens, those suspected of ties to terrorism. Fortunately, this will probably end up in the Supreme Court. But who knows this is twenty first century Amerika.
July 16, 2008
Court Backs Bush on Military Detentions
By ADAM LIPTAK
President Bush has the legal power to order the indefinite military detentions of civilians captured in the United States, the federal appeals court in Richmond, Va., ruled on Tuesday in a fractured 5-to-4 decision.
But a second, overlapping 5-to-4 majority of the court, the United States Court of Appeals for the Fourth Circuit, ruled that Ali al-Marri, a citizen of Qatar now in military custody in Charleston, S.C., must be given an additional opportunity to challenge his detention in federal court there. An earlier court proceeding, in which the government had presented only a sworn statement from a defense intelligence official, was inadequate, the second majority ruled.
The decision was a victory for the Bush administration, which had maintained that a 2001 Congressional authorization to use military force after the Sept. 11 attacks granted the president the power to detain people living in the United States.
The court effectively reversed a divided three-judge panel of its own members, which ruled last year that the government lacked the power to detain civilians legally in the United States as enemy combatants. That panel ordered the government either to charge Mr. Marri or to release him. The case is likely to reach the Supreme Court.
How helpful the decision will be to Mr. Marri remains to be seen, as the majority that granted him some relief was notably vague about what the new court proceeding should look like. In that respect, Tuesday’s decision resembled last month’s decision from the United States Supreme Court granting habeas corpus rights to prisoners held at Guantánamo Bay.
Mr. Marri is the only person on the American mainland known to be held as an enemy combatant. The government contended, in a declaration from the defense intelligence official, Jeffrey N. Rapp, that Mr. Marri was a Qaeda sleeper agent sent to the United States to commit mass murder and disrupt the banking system.
Mr. Marri was arrested on Dec. 12, 2001, in Peoria, Ill., where he was living with his family and studying computer science. He was charged with credit-card fraud and lying to federal agents, and was on the verge of a trial on those charges when he was moved to military detention in 2003.
Brian Roehrkasse, a Justice Department spokesman, said the decision properly recognized “the president’s authority to capture and detain Al Qaeda agents who, like the 9/11 hijackers, come to this country to commit or facilitate warlike acts against American civilians.”
Mr. Roehrkasse added that while the department believed that Mr. Marri “had already received all the process he was due,” its lawyers were “studying the court’s decision and will respond to Mr. Marri’s contentions” before the trial judge.
Jonathan L. Hafetz, a lawyer for Mr. Marri with the Brennan Center for Justice at the New York University School of Law, called the Fourth Circuit’s decision deeply disturbing.
“This decision means the president can pick up any person in the country — citizen or legal resident — and lock them up for years without the most basic safeguard in the Constitution, the right to a criminal trial,” Mr. Hafetz said.
The 216-page decision included seven opinions, none of which commanded a majority. The only common ground was four unsigned paragraphs at the beginning of the decision summarizing the result.
The Fourth Circuit is generally considered the nation’s most conservative federal appeals court. The closely divided and complex decision in a major terrorism case therefore came as something of a surprise.
Mr. Marri’s unusual situation played a role, said Robert M. Chesney, a law professor at Wake Forest University. Mr. Marri “was lawfully present in the U.S. and then arrested and held here, as opposed to being a noncitizen captured in a foreign land,” Professor Chesney said. “This consideration makes his case more difficult even in the eyes of relatively conservative jurists.”
The five judges who ruled that the president has the authority to detain people captured in the United States offered differing criteria for who might be subject to such detention.
Judge J. Harvie Wilkinson III said the president might detain members of organizations or nations against which Congress had authorized the use of force who mean to harm people or property to further military goals.
To reverse the trial judge’s decision allowing Mr. Marri’s detention to continue “because he was not captured on a foreign battlefield or foreign soil,” Judge Wilkinson wrote, “is akin to a judicial declaration that Congress and the executive may fight only the last war.”
Judge Diana Gribbon Motz, writing for herself and three other judges, disagreed, saying that Mr. Marri was at most a civilian criminal who may be prosecuted in the courts but not detained by the executive branch.
“This does not mean that al Marri, or similarly situated American citizens, would have to be freed,” Judge Motz wrote. “Like others accused of terrorist activity in this country, from the Oklahoma City bombers to the convicted September 11th conspirator [Zacarias Moussaoui] they could be tried on criminal charges and, if convicted, punished severely. But the government would not be able to subject them to indefinite military detention.”
Judge William B. Traxler Jr. was the swing vote. He agreed that Mr. Marri was subject to detention if what the government said about him was true. But Judge Traxler broke with the judges who voted against Mr. Marri across the board. Those judges said Mr. Marri had already had an adequate opportunity to challenge his detention in court, in the proceeding based on Mr. Rapp’s statement. Judge Traxler said that Mr. Marri must be given a fair and meaningful opportunity to see and refute “the most reliable evidence” against him, subject to national security and other concerns.
The four judges who would have ordered Mr. Marri’s release from military custody — Judges Motz, Roger L. Gregory, M. Blaine Michael and Robert B. King — agreed to join an order returning the case to the trial court based on Judge Traxler’s middle ground. They did so, Judge Motz wrote, “to give practical effect to the conclusions of the majority of the court who reject the government’s position.”
But Judge Gregory expressed frustration over the net effect of the exercise. “There is no concrete guidance as to what further process is due” Mr. Marri, he wrote.
All of the judges who would have denied Mr. Marri any relief — Judges Wilkinson, Karen J. Williams, Paul V. Niemeyer and Allyson K. Duncan — were appointed by Republican presidents; all who would have granted him full relief were appointed by Democrats. Judge Traxler was appointed to the appeals court by President Bill Clinton.
In the conclusion of his long opinion, Judge Wilkinson said terrorism cases presented courts with special challenges.
“We may never know,” he said, “whether we have struck the proper balance between liberty and security, because we do not know every action the executive is taking and we do not know every threat global terror networks have in store.”
July 16, 2008
Court Backs Bush on Military Detentions
By ADAM LIPTAK
President Bush has the legal power to order the indefinite military detentions of civilians captured in the United States, the federal appeals court in Richmond, Va., ruled on Tuesday in a fractured 5-to-4 decision.
But a second, overlapping 5-to-4 majority of the court, the United States Court of Appeals for the Fourth Circuit, ruled that Ali al-Marri, a citizen of Qatar now in military custody in Charleston, S.C., must be given an additional opportunity to challenge his detention in federal court there. An earlier court proceeding, in which the government had presented only a sworn statement from a defense intelligence official, was inadequate, the second majority ruled.
The decision was a victory for the Bush administration, which had maintained that a 2001 Congressional authorization to use military force after the Sept. 11 attacks granted the president the power to detain people living in the United States.
The court effectively reversed a divided three-judge panel of its own members, which ruled last year that the government lacked the power to detain civilians legally in the United States as enemy combatants. That panel ordered the government either to charge Mr. Marri or to release him. The case is likely to reach the Supreme Court.
How helpful the decision will be to Mr. Marri remains to be seen, as the majority that granted him some relief was notably vague about what the new court proceeding should look like. In that respect, Tuesday’s decision resembled last month’s decision from the United States Supreme Court granting habeas corpus rights to prisoners held at Guantánamo Bay.
Mr. Marri is the only person on the American mainland known to be held as an enemy combatant. The government contended, in a declaration from the defense intelligence official, Jeffrey N. Rapp, that Mr. Marri was a Qaeda sleeper agent sent to the United States to commit mass murder and disrupt the banking system.
Mr. Marri was arrested on Dec. 12, 2001, in Peoria, Ill., where he was living with his family and studying computer science. He was charged with credit-card fraud and lying to federal agents, and was on the verge of a trial on those charges when he was moved to military detention in 2003.
Brian Roehrkasse, a Justice Department spokesman, said the decision properly recognized “the president’s authority to capture and detain Al Qaeda agents who, like the 9/11 hijackers, come to this country to commit or facilitate warlike acts against American civilians.”
Mr. Roehrkasse added that while the department believed that Mr. Marri “had already received all the process he was due,” its lawyers were “studying the court’s decision and will respond to Mr. Marri’s contentions” before the trial judge.
Jonathan L. Hafetz, a lawyer for Mr. Marri with the Brennan Center for Justice at the New York University School of Law, called the Fourth Circuit’s decision deeply disturbing.
“This decision means the president can pick up any person in the country — citizen or legal resident — and lock them up for years without the most basic safeguard in the Constitution, the right to a criminal trial,” Mr. Hafetz said.
The 216-page decision included seven opinions, none of which commanded a majority. The only common ground was four unsigned paragraphs at the beginning of the decision summarizing the result.
The Fourth Circuit is generally considered the nation’s most conservative federal appeals court. The closely divided and complex decision in a major terrorism case therefore came as something of a surprise.
Mr. Marri’s unusual situation played a role, said Robert M. Chesney, a law professor at Wake Forest University. Mr. Marri “was lawfully present in the U.S. and then arrested and held here, as opposed to being a noncitizen captured in a foreign land,” Professor Chesney said. “This consideration makes his case more difficult even in the eyes of relatively conservative jurists.”
The five judges who ruled that the president has the authority to detain people captured in the United States offered differing criteria for who might be subject to such detention.
Judge J. Harvie Wilkinson III said the president might detain members of organizations or nations against which Congress had authorized the use of force who mean to harm people or property to further military goals.
To reverse the trial judge’s decision allowing Mr. Marri’s detention to continue “because he was not captured on a foreign battlefield or foreign soil,” Judge Wilkinson wrote, “is akin to a judicial declaration that Congress and the executive may fight only the last war.”
Judge Diana Gribbon Motz, writing for herself and three other judges, disagreed, saying that Mr. Marri was at most a civilian criminal who may be prosecuted in the courts but not detained by the executive branch.
“This does not mean that al Marri, or similarly situated American citizens, would have to be freed,” Judge Motz wrote. “Like others accused of terrorist activity in this country, from the Oklahoma City bombers to the convicted September 11th conspirator [Zacarias Moussaoui] they could be tried on criminal charges and, if convicted, punished severely. But the government would not be able to subject them to indefinite military detention.”
Judge William B. Traxler Jr. was the swing vote. He agreed that Mr. Marri was subject to detention if what the government said about him was true. But Judge Traxler broke with the judges who voted against Mr. Marri across the board. Those judges said Mr. Marri had already had an adequate opportunity to challenge his detention in court, in the proceeding based on Mr. Rapp’s statement. Judge Traxler said that Mr. Marri must be given a fair and meaningful opportunity to see and refute “the most reliable evidence” against him, subject to national security and other concerns.
The four judges who would have ordered Mr. Marri’s release from military custody — Judges Motz, Roger L. Gregory, M. Blaine Michael and Robert B. King — agreed to join an order returning the case to the trial court based on Judge Traxler’s middle ground. They did so, Judge Motz wrote, “to give practical effect to the conclusions of the majority of the court who reject the government’s position.”
But Judge Gregory expressed frustration over the net effect of the exercise. “There is no concrete guidance as to what further process is due” Mr. Marri, he wrote.
All of the judges who would have denied Mr. Marri any relief — Judges Wilkinson, Karen J. Williams, Paul V. Niemeyer and Allyson K. Duncan — were appointed by Republican presidents; all who would have granted him full relief were appointed by Democrats. Judge Traxler was appointed to the appeals court by President Bill Clinton.
In the conclusion of his long opinion, Judge Wilkinson said terrorism cases presented courts with special challenges.
“We may never know,” he said, “whether we have struck the proper balance between liberty and security, because we do not know every action the executive is taking and we do not know every threat global terror networks have in store.”
Philippines Muslim rebels reach deal on homeland
This is from Reuters via Wiredispatch.
Of course the issue is far from settled. Not only are some Muslim rebel groups not involved but also there are people in the Arroyo government who will oppose the agreement. The devil is in the details and the mode of implementation has yet to be negotiated. Already there is an autonomous area but the terms of the autonomy have never been met according to some. The Philippines will hardly be free off rebel activity. Not only are there dissident Muslim groups but also the Maoist NPA. Talks with them seem to have broken off indefinitely as far as I have heard.
EXCLUSIVE-Philippines, Muslim rebels reach deal on homeland
Manny MogatoReuters North American News Service
Jul 16, 2008 06:52 EST
MANILA, July 16 (Reuters) - The Philippine government and the largest Muslim separatist group reached a deal on Wednesday to create an ancestral homeland for 3 million Muslims in the south of the mainly Roman Catholic state, officials said.
The agreement, while crucial for the resumption of formal peace talks, does not guarantee the end of a near 40-year conflict that has killed 120,000 people and displaced 2 million on the resource-rich southern island of Mindanao.
"We have finally settled all the remaining issues on ancestral domain," Mohaqher Iqbal, chief negotiator of the Moro Islamic Liberation Front (MILF), told Reuters at the end of a one-day meeting brokered by the Malaysian government.
"It was a tough meeting. The real battle will be fought on the next level when we start talks on the political formula to end the conflict. But, at least we have hurdled the ancestral domain issue. We can now return to formal negotiations."
Retired general Rodolfo Garcia, the head of the government's peace panel, said: "Praise God. It's over."
Manila and the 11,000-member MILF have been talking for more than a decade on how to give Muslims in the south a greater degree of self-rule and it took the two sides nearly four years to reach this agreement on expanding the coverage of an existing autonomous region for the minority group.
Many in the Philippines are sceptical about a speedy final resolution to one of Southeast Asia's most intractable conflicts, but the government reiterated its optimistic stance.
"We are happy that the talks are finally moving forward," Hermogenes Esperon, the president's peace adviser, told Reuters in Manila after he was informed of the breakthrough.
"We are very positive that we could meet an earlier deadline to wrap up talks and sign a final peace deal with the MILF by next year."
Although President Gloria Macapagal Arroyo has repeatedly said she wants peace, hawks in her cabinet are opposed to giving large swathes of land to Muslims and politically powerful Christian clans in the south would certainly oppose a final deal.
Iqbal said the two sides would now discuss ways to expand and extend the mandate of the 60 unarmed peace monitors from Brunei, Japan, Libya and Malaysia who have been deployed on Mindanao island since October 2004.
"I hope we can convince Malaysia to reconsider its earlier plan to quit the International Monitoring Team," he said, adding the monitors were instrumental in reducing violence in the south.
Last week, General Alexander Yano, the Philippines' military chief, said he had noted a sharp rise in the number of skirmishes and ceasefire violations since Malaysia pulled out 29 monitors from Mindanao in May.
The MILF blamed the delay in the talks for the spike in violence.
Talks to create an ancestral homeland for Muslims stalled in December 2007 over constitutional issues and it took months of diplomacy by Malaysia to get the two sides to narrow their differences and reach a consensus.
Both sides will meet again next week to finalise Wednesday's draft agreement. (Additional reporting by Manila and Kuala Lumpur bureaux; Editing by Carmel Crimmins and Alex Richardson)
Source: Reuters North American News Service
Of course the issue is far from settled. Not only are some Muslim rebel groups not involved but also there are people in the Arroyo government who will oppose the agreement. The devil is in the details and the mode of implementation has yet to be negotiated. Already there is an autonomous area but the terms of the autonomy have never been met according to some. The Philippines will hardly be free off rebel activity. Not only are there dissident Muslim groups but also the Maoist NPA. Talks with them seem to have broken off indefinitely as far as I have heard.
EXCLUSIVE-Philippines, Muslim rebels reach deal on homeland
Manny MogatoReuters North American News Service
Jul 16, 2008 06:52 EST
MANILA, July 16 (Reuters) - The Philippine government and the largest Muslim separatist group reached a deal on Wednesday to create an ancestral homeland for 3 million Muslims in the south of the mainly Roman Catholic state, officials said.
The agreement, while crucial for the resumption of formal peace talks, does not guarantee the end of a near 40-year conflict that has killed 120,000 people and displaced 2 million on the resource-rich southern island of Mindanao.
"We have finally settled all the remaining issues on ancestral domain," Mohaqher Iqbal, chief negotiator of the Moro Islamic Liberation Front (MILF), told Reuters at the end of a one-day meeting brokered by the Malaysian government.
"It was a tough meeting. The real battle will be fought on the next level when we start talks on the political formula to end the conflict. But, at least we have hurdled the ancestral domain issue. We can now return to formal negotiations."
Retired general Rodolfo Garcia, the head of the government's peace panel, said: "Praise God. It's over."
Manila and the 11,000-member MILF have been talking for more than a decade on how to give Muslims in the south a greater degree of self-rule and it took the two sides nearly four years to reach this agreement on expanding the coverage of an existing autonomous region for the minority group.
Many in the Philippines are sceptical about a speedy final resolution to one of Southeast Asia's most intractable conflicts, but the government reiterated its optimistic stance.
"We are happy that the talks are finally moving forward," Hermogenes Esperon, the president's peace adviser, told Reuters in Manila after he was informed of the breakthrough.
"We are very positive that we could meet an earlier deadline to wrap up talks and sign a final peace deal with the MILF by next year."
Although President Gloria Macapagal Arroyo has repeatedly said she wants peace, hawks in her cabinet are opposed to giving large swathes of land to Muslims and politically powerful Christian clans in the south would certainly oppose a final deal.
Iqbal said the two sides would now discuss ways to expand and extend the mandate of the 60 unarmed peace monitors from Brunei, Japan, Libya and Malaysia who have been deployed on Mindanao island since October 2004.
"I hope we can convince Malaysia to reconsider its earlier plan to quit the International Monitoring Team," he said, adding the monitors were instrumental in reducing violence in the south.
Last week, General Alexander Yano, the Philippines' military chief, said he had noted a sharp rise in the number of skirmishes and ceasefire violations since Malaysia pulled out 29 monitors from Mindanao in May.
The MILF blamed the delay in the talks for the spike in violence.
Talks to create an ancestral homeland for Muslims stalled in December 2007 over constitutional issues and it took months of diplomacy by Malaysia to get the two sides to narrow their differences and reach a consensus.
Both sides will meet again next week to finalise Wednesday's draft agreement. (Additional reporting by Manila and Kuala Lumpur bureaux; Editing by Carmel Crimmins and Alex Richardson)
Source: Reuters North American News Service
Naomi Klein: China's All-Seeing Eye
This is an interesting article on the development of surveillance technology and the use of technology to control access to websites and news that might criticise the government. As Klein notes some of the technology is being developed with the help of U.S. companies. As she seems to indirectly note at the end of the article this is because some of the technology is already in use and proven by Homeland Security back in the USA. Personally, I think indirect control rather than the invasive and often ham handed approach of the Chinese is more effective because people have no idea it is even happening. When the government blocks access to a website you know it when you try to access it. However, when the mainstream media simply does not comment on important issues or provide the public with information relevant to making informed decisions very few people will even notice. Chomsky's Manufacturing Consent shows how consent can be obtained without all the technical censorship of the Chinese state. In the end the Chinese model is probably bound to fail. The Chinese still have much to learn from the U.S.
However, perhaps the U.S. is moving somewhat towards the Chinese model as well.
China's All-Seeing Eye: With the help of U.S. defense contractors, China is building the prototype for a high-tech police state. It is ready for export.By Naomi Klein 14/07/08 "Rolling Stone " -- - Thirty years ago, the city of Shenzhen didn't exist. Back in those days, it was a string of small fishing villages and collectively run rice paddies, a place of rutted dirt roads and traditional temples. That was before the Communist Party chose it — thanks to its location close to Hong Kong's port — to be China's first "special economic zone," one of only four areas where capitalism would be permitted on a trial basis. The theory behind the experiment was that the "real" China would keep its socialist soul intact while profiting from the private-sector jobs and industrial development created in Shenzhen. The result was a city of pure commerce, undiluted by history or rooted culture — the crack cocaine of capitalism. It was a force so addictive to investors that the Shenzhen experiment quickly expanded, swallowing not just the surrounding Pearl River Delta, which now houses roughly 100,000 factories, but much of the rest of the country as well. Today, Shenzhen is a city of 12.4 million people, and there is a good chance that at least half of everything you own was made here: iPods, laptops, sneakers, flatscreen TVs, cellphones, jeans, maybe your desk chair, possibly your car and almost certainly your printer. Hundreds of luxury condominiums tower over the city; many are more than 40 stories high, topped with three-story penthouses. Newer neighborhoods like Keji Yuan are packed with ostentatiously modern corporate campuses and decadent shopping malls. Rem Koolhaas, Prada's favorite architect, is building a stock exchange in Shenzhen that looks like it floats — a design intended, he says, to "suggest and illustrate the process of the market." A still-under-construction superlight subway will soon connect it all at high speed; every car has multiple TV screens broadcasting over a Wi-Fi network. At night, the entire city lights up like a pimped-out Hummer, with each five-star hotel and office tower competing over who can put on the best light show.Many of the big American players have set up shop in Shenzhen, but they look singularly unimpressive next to their Chinese competitors. The research complex for China's telecom giant Huawei, for instance, is so large that it has its own highway exit, while its workers ride home on their own bus line. Pressed up against Shenzhen's disco shopping centers, Wal-Mart superstores — of which there are nine in the city — look like dreary corner stores. (China almost seems to be mocking us: "You call that a superstore?") McDonald's and KFC appear every few blocks, but they seem almost retro next to the Real Kung Fu fast-food chain, whose mascot is a stylized Bruce Lee.American commentators like CNN's Jack Cafferty dismiss the Chinese as "the same bunch of goons and thugs they've been for the last 50 years." But nobody told the people of Shenzhen, who are busily putting on a 24-hour-a-day show called "America" — a pirated version of the original, only with flashier design, higher profits and less complaining. This has not happened by accident. China today, epitomized by Shenzhen's transition from mud to megacity in 30 years, represents a new way to organize society. Sometimes called "market Stalinism," it is a potent hybrid of the most powerful political tools of authoritarian communism — central planning, merciless repression, constant surveillance — harnessed to advance the goals of global capitalism.
Now, as China prepares to showcase its economic advances during the upcoming Olympics in Beijing, Shenzhen is once again serving as a laboratory, a testing ground for the next phase of this vast social experiment. Over the past two years, some 200,000 surveillance cameras have been installed throughout the city. Many are in public spaces, disguised as lampposts. The closed-circuit TV cameras will soon be connected to a single, nationwide network, an all-seeing system that will be capable of tracking and identifying anyone who comes within its range — a project driven in part by U.S. technology and investment. Over the next three years, Chinese security executives predict they will install as many as 2 million CCTVs in Shenzhen, which would make it the most watched city in the world. (Security-crazy London boasts only half a million surveillance cameras.)The security cameras are just one part of a much broader high-tech surveillance and censorship program known in China as "Golden Shield." The end goal is to use the latest people-tracking technology — thoughtfully supplied by American giants like IBM, Honeywell and General Electric — to create an airtight consumer cocoon: a place where Visa cards, Adidas sneakers, China Mobile cellphones, McDonald's Happy Meals, Tsingtao beer and UPS delivery (to name just a few of the official sponsors of the Beijing Olympics) can be enjoyed under the unblinking eye of the state, without the threat of democracy breaking out. With political unrest on the rise across China, the government hopes to use the surveillance shield to identify and counteract dissent before it explodes into a mass movement like the one that grabbed the world's attention at Tiananmen Square.Remember how we've always been told that free markets and free people go hand in hand? That was a lie. It turns out that the most efficient delivery system for capitalism is actually a communist-style police state, fortressed with American "homeland security" technologies, pumped up with "war on terror" rhetoric. And the global corporations currently earning superprofits from this social experiment are unlikely to be content if the lucrative new market remains confined to cities such as Shenzhen. Like everything else assembled in China with American parts, Police State 2.0 is ready for export to a neighborhood near you.Zhang Yi points to an empty bracket on the dashboard of his black Honda. "It used to hold my GPS, but I leave it at home now," he says. "It's the crime — they are too easy to steal." He quickly adds, "Since the surveillance cameras came in, we have seen a very dramatic decrease in crime in Shenzhen."After driving for an hour past hundreds of factory gates and industrial parks, we pull up to a salmon-color building that Zhang partly owns. This is the headquarters of FSAN: CCTV System. Zhang, a prototypical Shenzhen yuppie in a royal-blue button-down shirt and black-rimmed glasses, apologizes for the mess. Inside, every inch of space is lined with cardboard boxes filled with electronics parts and finished products.Zhang opened the factory two and a half years ago, and his investment has already paid off tenfold. That kind of growth isn't unusual in the field he has chosen: Zhang's factory makes digital surveillance cameras, turning out 400,000 a year. Half of the cameras are shipped overseas, destined to peer from building ledges in London, Manhattan and Dubai as part of the global boom in "homeland security." The other half stays in China, many right here in Shenzhen and in neighboring Guangzhou, another megacity of 12 million people. China's market for surveillance cameras enjoyed revenues of $4.1 billion last year, a jump of 24 percent from 2006.Zhang escorts me to the assembly line, where rows of young workers, most of them women, are bent over semiconductors, circuit boards, tiny cables and bulbs. At the end of each line is "quality control," which consists of plugging the camera into a monitor and making sure that it records. We enter a showroom where Zhang and his colleagues meet with clients. The walls are lined with dozens of camera models: domes of all sizes, specializing in day and night, wet and dry, camouflaged to look like lights, camouflaged to look like smoke detectors, explosion-proof, the size of a soccer ball, the size of a ring box.The workers at FSAN don't just make surveillance cameras; they are constantly watched by them. While they work, the silent eyes of rotating lenses capture their every move. When they leave work and board buses, they are filmed again. When they walk to their dormitories, the streets are lined with what look like newly installed streetlamps, their white poles curving toward the sidewalk with black domes at the ends. Inside the domes are high-resolution cameras, the same kind the workers produce at FSAN. Some blocks have three or four, one every few yards. One Shenzhen-based company, China Security & Surveillance Technology, has developed software to enable the cameras to alert police when an unusual number of people begin to gather at any given location.In 2006, the Chinese government mandated that all Internet cafes (as well as restaurants and other "entertainment" venues) install video cameras with direct feeds to their local police stations. Part of a wider surveillance project known as "Safe Cities," the effort now encompasses 660 municipalities in China. It is the most ambitious new government program in the Pearl River Delta, and supplying it is one of the fastest-growing new markets in Shenzhen.But the cameras that Zhang manufactures are only part of the massive experiment in population control that is under way here. "The big picture," Zhang tells me in his office at the factory, "is integration." That means linking cameras with other forms of surveillance: the Internet, phones, facial-recognition software and GPS monitoring.This is how this Golden Shield will work: Chinese citizens will be watched around the clock through networked CCTV cameras and remote monitoring of computers. They will be listened to on their phone calls, monitored by digital voice-recognition technologies. Their Internet access will be aggressively limited through the country's notorious system of online controls known as the "Great Firewall." Their movements will be tracked through national ID cards with scannable computer chips and photos that are instantly uploaded to police databases and linked to their holder's personal data. This is the most important element of all: linking all these tools together in a massive, searchable database of names, photos, residency information, work history and biometric data. When Golden Shield is finished, there will be a photo in those databases for every person in China: 1.3 billion faces.Shenzhen is the place where the shield has received its most extensive fortifications — the place where all the spy toys are being hooked together and tested to see what they can do. "The central government eventually wants to have city-by-city surveillance, so they could just sit and monitor one city and its surveillance system as a whole," Zhang says. "It's all part of that bigger project. Once the tests are done and it's proven, they will be spreading from the big province to the cities, even to the rural farmland."In fact, the rollout of the high-tech shield is already well under way.When the Tibetan capital of Lhasa was set alight in March, the world caught a glimpse of the rage that lies just under the surface in many parts of China. And though the Lhasa riots stood out for their ethnic focus and their intensity, protests across China are often shockingly militant. In July 2006, workers at a factory near Shenzhen expressed their displeasure over paltry pay by overturning cars, smashing computers and opening fire hydrants. In March of last year, when bus fares went up in the rural town of Zhushan, 20,000 people took to the streets and five police vehicles were torched. Indeed, China has seen levels of political unrest in recent years unknown since 1989, the year student protests were crushed with tanks in Tiananmen Square. In 2005, by the government's own measure, there were at least 87,000 "mass incidents" — governmentspeak for large-scale protests or riots.This increased unrest — a process aided by access to cellphones and the Internet — represents more than a security problem for the leaders in Beijing. It threatens their whole model of command-and-control capitalism. China's rapid economic growth has relied on the ability of its rulers to raze villages and move mountains to make way for the latest factory towns and shopping malls. If the people living on those mountains use blogs and text messaging to launch a mountain-people's-rights uprising with each new project, and if they link up with similar uprisings in other parts of the country, China's dizzying expansion could grind to a halt.At the same time, the success of China's ravenous development creates its own challenges. Every rural village that is successfully razed to make way for a new project creates more displaced people who join the ranks of the roughly 130 million migrants roaming the country looking for work. By 2025, it is projected that this "floating" population will swell to more than 350 million. Many will end up in cities like Shenzhen, which is already home to 7 million migrant laborers.But while China's cities need these displaced laborers to work in factories and on construction sites, they are unwilling to offer them the same benefits as permanent residents: highly subsidized education and health care, as well as other public services. While migrants can live for decades in big cities like Shenzhen and Guangzhou, their residency remains fixed to the rural community where they were born, a fact encoded on their national ID cards. As one young migrant in Guangzhou put it to me, "The local people want to make money from migrant workers, but they don't want to give them rights. But why are the local people so rich? Because of the migrant workers!"With its militant protests and mobile population, China confronts a fundamental challenge. How can it maintain a system based on two dramatically unequal categories of people: the winners, who get the condos and cars, and the losers, who do the heavy labor and are denied those benefits? More urgently, how can it do this when information technology threatens to link the losers together into a movement so large it could easily overwhelm the country's elites?The answer is Golden Shield. When Tibet erupted in protests recently, the surveillance system was thrown into its first live test, with every supposedly liberating tool of the Information Age — cellphones, satellite television, the Internet — transformed into a method of repression and control. As soon as the protests gathered steam, China reinforced its Great Firewall, blocking its citizens from accessing dozens of foreign news outlets. In some parts of Tibet, Internet access was shut down altogether. Many people trying to phone friends and family found that their calls were blocked, and cellphones in Lhasa were blitzed with text messages from the police: "Severely battle any creation or any spreading of rumors that would upset or frighten people or cause social disorder or illegal criminal behavior that could damage social stability."During the first week of protests, foreign journalists who tried to get into Tibet were systematically turned back. But that didn't mean that there were no cameras inside the besieged areas. Since early last year, activists in Lhasa have been reporting on the proliferation of black-domed cameras that look like streetlights — just like the ones I saw coming off the assembly line in Shenzhen. Tibetan monks complain that cameras — activated by motion sensors — have invaded their monasteries and prayer rooms.During the Lhasa riots, police on the scene augmented the footage from the CCTVs with their own video cameras, choosing to film — rather than stop — the violence, which left 19 dead. The police then quickly cut together the surveillance shots that made the Tibetans look most vicious — beating Chinese bystanders, torching shops, ripping metal sheeting off banks — and created a kind of copumentary: Tibetans Gone Wild. These weren't the celestial beings in flowing robes the Beastie Boys and Richard Gere had told us about. They were angry young men, wielding sticks and long knives. They looked ugly, brutal, tribal. On Chinese state TV, this footage played around the clock.The police also used the surveillance footage to extract mug shots of the demonstrators and rioters. Photos of the 21 "most wanted" Tibetans, many taken from that distinctive "streetlamp" view of the domed cameras, were immediately circulated to all of China's major news portals, which obediently posted them to help out with the manhunt. The Internet became the most powerful police tool. Within days, several of the men on the posters were in custody, along with hundreds of others.The flare-up in Tibet, weeks before the Olympic torch began its global journey, has been described repeatedly in the international press as a "nightmare" for Beijing. Several foreign leaders have pledged to boycott the opening ceremonies of the games, the press has hosted an orgy of China-bashing, and the torch became a magnet for protesters, with anti-China banners dropped from the Eiffel Tower and the Golden Gate Bridge. But inside China, the Tibet debacle may actually have been a boon to the party, strengthening its grip on power. Despite its citizens having unprecedented access to information technology (there are as many Internet users in China as there are in the U.S.), the party demonstrated that it could still control what they hear and see. And what they saw on their TVs and computer screens were violent Tibetans, out to kill their Chinese neighbors, while police showed admirable restraint. Tibetan solidarity groups say 140 people were killed in the crackdown that followed the protests, but without pictures taken by journalists, it is as if those subsequent deaths didn't happen.Chinese viewers also saw a world unsympathetic to the Chinese victims of Tibetan violence, so hostile to their country that it used a national tragedy to try to rob them of their hard-won Olympic glory. These nationalist sentiments freed up Beijing to go on a full-fledged witch hunt. In the name of fighting a war on terror, security forces rounded up thousands of Tibetan activists and supporters. The end result is that when the games begin, much of the Tibetan movement will be safely behind bars — along with scores of Chinese journalists, bloggers and human-rights defenders who have also been trapped in the government's high-tech web.Police State 2.0 might not look good from the outside, but on the inside, it appears to have passed its first major test.In Guangzhou, an hour and a half by train from Shenzhen, Yao Ruoguang is preparing for a major test of his own. "It's called the 10-million-faces test," he tells me.Yao is managing director of Pixel Solutions, a Chinese company that specializes in producing the new high-tech national ID cards, as well as selling facial-recognition software to businesses and government agencies. The test, the first phase of which is only weeks away, is being staged by the Ministry of Public Security in Beijing. The idea is to measure the effectiveness of face-recognition software in identifying police suspects. Participants will be given a series of photos, taken in a variety of situations. Their task will be to match the images to other photos of the same people in the government's massive database. Several biometrics companies, including Yao's, have been invited to compete. "We have to be able to match a face in a 10 million database in one second," Yao tells me. "We are preparing for that now."The companies that score well will be first in line for lucrative government contracts to integrate face-recognition software into Golden Shield, using it to check for ID fraud and to discover the identities of suspects caught on surveillance cameras. Yao says the technology is almost there: "It will happen next year."When I meet Yao at his corporate headquarters, he is feeling confident about how his company will perform in the test. His secret weapon is that he will be using facial-recognition software purchased from L-1 Identity Solutions, a major U.S. defense contractor that produces passports and biometric security systems for the U.S. government.To show how well it works, Yao demonstrates on himself. Using a camera attached to his laptop, he snaps a picture of his own face, round and boyish for its 54 years. Then he uploads it onto the company's proprietary Website, built with L-1 software. With the cursor, he marks his own eyes with two green plus signs, helping the system to measure the distance between his features, a distinctive aspect of our faces that does not change with disguises or even surgery. The first step is to "capture the image," Yao explains. Next is "finding the face."He presses APPLY, telling the program to match the new face with photos of the same person in the company's database of 600,000 faces. Instantly, multiple photos of Yao appear, including one taken 19 years earlier — proof that the technology can "find a face" even when the face has changed significantly with time. "It took 1.1 milliseconds!" Yao exclaims. "Yeah, that's me!"In nearby cubicles, teams of Yao's programmers and engineers take each other's pictures, mark their eyes with green plus signs and test the speed of their search engines. "Everyone is preparing for the test," Yao explains. "If we pass, if we come out number one, we are guaranteed a market in China."Every couple of minutes Yao's phone beeps. Sometimes it's a work message, but most of the time it's a text from his credit-card company, informing him that his daughter, who lives in Australia, has just made another charge. "Every time the text message comes, I know my daughter is spending money!" He shrugs: "She likes designers."Like many other security executives I interviewed in China, Yao denies that a primary use of the technology he is selling is to hunt down political activists. "Ninety-five percent," he insists, "is just for regular safety." He has, he admits, been visited by government spies, whom he describes as "the internal-security people." They came with grainy pictures, shot from far away or through keyhole cameras, of "some protesters, some dissidents." They wanted to know if Yao's facial-recognition software could help identify the people in the photos. Yao was sorry to disappoint them. "Honestly, the technology so far still can't meet their needs," he says. "The photos that they show us were just too blurry." That is rapidly changing, of course, thanks to the spread of high-resolution CCTVs. Yet Yao insists that the government's goal is not repression: "If you're a [political] organizer, they want to know your motive," he says. "So they take the picture, give the photo, so at least they can find out who that person is."Until recently, Yao's photography empire was focused on consumers — taking class photos at schools, launching a Chinese knockoff of Flickr (the original is often blocked by the Great Firewall), turning photos of chubby two-year-olds into fridge magnets and lampshades. He still maintains those businesses, which means that half of the offices at Pixel Solutions look like they have just hosted a kid's birthday party. The other half looks like an ominous customs office, the walls lined with posters of terrorists in the cross hairs: FACE MATCH, FACE PASS, FACE WATCH. When Beijing started sinking more and more of the national budget into surveillance technologies, Yao saw an opportunity that would make all his previous ventures look small. Between more powerful computers, higher-resolution cameras and a global obsession with crime and terrorism, he figured that face recognition "should be the next dot-com."Not a computer scientist himself — he studied English literature in school — Yao began researching corporate leaders in the field. He learned that face recognition is highly controversial, with a track record of making wrong IDs. A few companies, however, were scoring much higher in controlled tests in the U.S. One of them was a company soon to be renamed L-1 Identity Solutions. Based in Connecticut, L-1 was created two years ago out of the mergers and buyouts of half a dozen major players in the biometrics field, all of which specialized in the science of identifying people through distinct physical traits: fingerprints, irises, face geometry. The mergers made L-1 a one-stop shop for biometrics. Thanks to board members like former CIA director George Tenet, the company rapidly became a homeland-security heavy hitter. L-1 projects its annual revenues will hit $1 billion by 2011, much of it from U.S. government contracts.In 2006, Yao tells me, "I made the first phone call and sent the first e-mail." For a flat fee of $20,000, he gained access to the company's proprietary software, allowing him to "build a lot of development software based on L-1's technology." Since then, L-1's partnership with Yao has gone far beyond that token investment. Yao says it isn't really his own company that is competing in the upcoming 10-million-faces test being staged by the Chinese government: "We'll be involved on behalf of L-1 in China." Yao adds that he communicates regularly with L1 and has visited the company's research headquarters in New Jersey. ("Out the window you can see the Statue of Liberty. It's such a historic place.") L1 is watching his test preparations with great interest, Yao says. "It seemed that they were more excited than us when we tell them the results."L-1's enthusiasm is hardly surprising: If Yao impresses the Ministry of Public Security with the company's ability to identify criminals, L-1 will have cracked the largest potential market for biometrics in the world. But here's the catch: As proud as Yao is to be L-1's Chinese licensee, L-1 appears to be distinctly less proud of its association with Yao. On its Website and in its reports to investors, L-1 boasts of contracts and negotiations with governments from Panama and Saudi Arabia to Mexico and Turkey. China, however, is conspicuously absent. And though CEO Bob LaPenta makes reference to "some large international opportunities," not once does he mention Pixel Solutions in Guangzhou.After leaving a message with the company inquiring about L-1's involvement in China's homeland-security market, I get a call back from Doni Fordyce, vice president of corporate communications. She has consulted Joseph Atick, the company's head of research. "We have nothing in China," she tells me. "Nothing, absolutely nothing. We are uninvolved. We really don't have any relationships at all."I tell Fordyce about Yao, the 10-million test, the money he paid for the software license. She'll call me right back. When she does, 20 minutes later, it is with this news: "Absolutely, we've sold testing SDKs [software development kits] to Pixel Solutions and to others [in China] that may be entering a test." Yao's use of the technology, she said, is "within his license" purchased from L-1.The company's reticence to publicize its activities in China could have something to do with the fact that the relationship between Yao and L-1 may well be illegal under U.S. law. After the Chinese government sent tanks into Tiananmen Square in 1989, Congress passed legislation barring U.S. companies from selling any products in China that have to do with "crime control or detection instruments or equipment." That means not only guns but everything from police batons and handcuffs to ink and powder for taking fingerprints, and software for storing them. Interestingly, one of the "detection instruments" that prompted the legislation was the surveillance camera. Beijing had installed several clunky cameras around Tiananmen Square, originally meant to monitor traffic flows. Those lenses were ultimately used to identify and arrest key pro-democracy dissidents."The intent of that act," a congressional staff member with considerable China experience tells me, "was to keep U.S. companies out of the business of helping the Chinese police conduct their business, which might ultimately end up as it did in 1989 in the suppression of human rights and democracy in China."Pixel's application of L-1 facial-recognition software seems to fly in the face of the ban's intent. By his own admission, Yao is already getting visits from Chinese state spies anxious to use facial recognition to identify dissidents. And as part of the 10-million-faces test, Yao has been working intimately with Chinese national-security forces, syncing L-1's software to their vast database, a process that took a week of intensive work in Beijing. During that time, Yao says, he was on the phone "every day" with L-1, getting its help adapting the technology. "Because we are representing them," he says. "We took the test on their behalf."In other words, this controversial U.S. "crime control" technology has already found its way into the hands of the Chinese police. Moreover, Yao's goal, stated to me several times, is to use the software to land lucrative contracts with police agencies to integrate facial recognition into the newly built system of omnipresent surveillance cameras and high-tech national ID cards. As part of any contract he gets, Yao says, he will "pay L-1 a certain percentage of our sales."When I put the L-1 scenario to the Commerce Department's Bureau of Industry and Security — the division charged with enforcing the post-Tiananmen export controls — a representative says that software kits are subject to the sanctions if "they are exported from the U.S. or are the foreign direct product of a U.S.-origin item." Based on both criteria, the software kit sold to Yao seems to fall within the ban.When I ask Doni Fordyce at L-1 about the embargo, she tells me, "I don't know anything about that." Asked whether she would like to find out about it and call me back, she replies, "I really don't want to comment, so there is no comment." Then she hangs up.You have probably never heard of L-1, but there is every chance that it has heard of you. Few companies have collected as much sensitive information about U.S. citizens and visitors to America as L-1: It boasts a database of 60 million records, and it "captures" more than a million new fingerprints every year. Here is a small sample of what the company does: produces passports and passport cards for American citizens; takes finger scans of visitors to the U.S. under the Department of Homeland Security's massive U.S.-Visit program; equips U.S. soldiers in Iraq and Afghanistan with "mobile iris and multimodal devices" so they can collect biometric data in the field; maintains the State Department's "largest facial-recognition database system"; and produces driver's licenses in Illinois, Montana and North Carolina. In addition, L-1 has an even more secretive intelligence unit called SpecTal. Asked by a Wall Street analyst to discuss, in "extremely general" terms, what the division was doing with contracts worth roughly $100 million, the company's CEO would only say, "Stay tuned."It is L-1's deep integration with multiple U.S. government agencies that makes its dealings in China so interesting: It isn't just L-1 that is potentially helping the Chinese police to nab political dissidents, it's U.S. taxpayers. The technology that Yao purchased for just a few thousand dollars is the result of Defense Department research grants and contracts going as far back as 1994, when a young academic named Joseph Atick (the research director Fordyce consulted on L-1's China dealings) taught a computer at Rockefeller University to recognize his face.Yao, for his part, knows all about the U.S. export controls on police equipment to China. He tells me that L-1's electronic fingerprinting tools are "banned from entering China" due to U.S. concerns that they will be used to "catch the political criminals, you know, the dissidents, more easily." He thinks he and L-1 have found a legal loophole, however. While fingerprinting technology appears on the Commerce Department's list of banned products, there is no explicit mention of "face prints" — likely because the idea was still in the realm of science fiction when the Tiananmen Square massacre took place. As far as Yao is concerned, that omission means that L-1 can legally supply its facial-recognition software for use by the Chinese government.Whatever the legality of L-1's participation in Chinese surveillance, it is clear that U.S. companies are determined to break into the homeland-security market in China, which represents their biggest growth potential since 9/11. According to the congressional staff member, American companies and their lobbyists are applying "enormous pressure to open the floodgates."The crackdown in Tibet has set off a wave of righteous rallies and boycott calls. But it sidesteps the uncomfortable fact that much of China's powerful surveillance state is already being built with U.S. and European technology. In February 2006, a congressional subcommittee held a hearing on "The Internet in China: A Tool for Freedom or Suppression?" Called on the carpet were Google (for building a special Chinese search engine that blocked sensitive material), Cisco (for supplying hardware for China's Great Firewall), Microsoft (for taking down political blogs at the behest of Beijing) and Yahoo (for complying with requests to hand over e-mail-account information that led to the arrest and imprisonment of a high-profile Chinese journalist, as well as a dissident who had criticized corrupt officials in online discussion groups). The issue came up again during the recent Tibet uproar when it was discovered that both MSN and Yahoo had briefly put up the mug shots of the "most wanted" Tibetan protesters on their Chinese news portals.In all of these cases, U.S. multinationals have offered the same defense: Cooperating with draconian demands to turn in customers and censor material is, unfortunately, the price of doing business in China. Some, like Google, have argued that despite having to limit access to the Internet, they are contributing to an overall increase of freedom in China. It's a story that glosses over the much larger scandal of what is actually taking place: Western investors stampeding into the country, possibly in violation of the law, with the sole purpose of helping the Communist Party spend billions of dollars building Police State 2.0. This isn't an unfortunate cost of doing business in China: It's the goal of doing business in China. "Come help us spy!" the Chinese government has said to the world. And the world's leading technology companies are eagerly answering the call.As The New York Times recently reported, aiding and abetting Beijing has become an investment boom for U.S. companies. Honeywell is working with Chinese police to "set up an elaborate computer monitoring system to analyze feeds from indoor and outdoor cameras in one of Beijing's most populated districts." General Electric is providing Beijing police with a security system that controls "thousands of video cameras simultaneously, and automatically alerts them to suspicious or fast-moving objects, like people running." IBM, meanwhile, is installing its "Smart Surveillance System" in the capital, another system for linking video cameras and scanning for trouble, while United Technologies is in Guangzhou, helping to customize a "2,000-camera network in a single large neighborhood, the first step toward a citywide network of 250,000 cameras to be installed before the Asian Games in 2010." By next year, the Chinese internal-security market will be worth an estimated $33 billion — around the same amount Congress has allocated for reconstructing Iraq."We're at the start of a massive boom in Chinese security spending," according to Graham Summers, a market analyst who publishes an investor newsletter in Baltimore. "And just as we need to be aware of how to profit from the growth in China's commodity consumption, we need to be aware of companies that will profit from 'security consumption.' . . . There's big money to be made."While U.S. companies are eager to break into China's rapidly expanding market, every Chinese security firm I come across in the Pearl River Delta is hatching some kind of plan to break into the U.S. market. No one, however, is quite as eager as Aebell Electrical Technology, one of China's top 10 security companies. Aebell has a contract to help secure the Olympic swimming stadium in Beijing and has installed more than 10,000 cameras in and around Guangzhou. Business has been growing by 100 percent a year. When I meet the company's fidgety general manager, Zheng Sun Man, the first thing he tells me is "We are going public at the end of this year. On the Nasdaq." It also becomes clear why he has chosen to speak with a foreign reporter: "Help, help, help!" he begs me. "Help us promote our products!"Zheng, an MBA from one of China's top schools, proudly shows me the business card of the New York investment bank that is handling Aebell's IPO, as well as a newly printed English-language brochure showing off the company's security cameras. Its pages are filled with American iconography, including businessmen exchanging wads of dollar bills and several photos of the New York skyline that prominently feature the World Trade Center. In the hall at company headquarters is a poster of two interlocking hearts: one depicting the American flag, the other the Aebell logo.I ask Zheng whether China's surveillance boom has anything to do with the rise in strikes and demonstrations in recent years. Zheng's deputy, a 23-year veteran of the Chinese military wearing a black Mao suit, responds as if I had launched a direct attack on the Communist Party itself. "If you walk out of this building, you will be under surveillance in five to six different ways," he says, staring at me hard. He lets the implication of his words linger in the air like an unspoken threat. "If you are a law-abiding citizen, you shouldn't be afraid," he finally adds. "The criminals are the only ones who should be afraid."One of the first people to sound the alarm on China's upgraded police state was a British researcher named Greg Walton. In 2000, Walton was commissioned by the respected human-rights organization Rights & Democracy to investigate the ways in which Chinese security forces were harnessing the tools of the Information Age to curtail free speech and monitor political activists. The paper he produced was called "China's Golden Shield: Corporations and the Development of Surveillance Technology in the People's Republic of China." It exposed how big-name tech companies like Nortel and Cisco were helping the Chinese government to construct "a gigantic online database with an all-encompassing surveillance network — incorporating speech and face recognition, closed-circuit television, smart cards, credit records and Internet surveillance technologies."When the paper was complete, Walton met with the institute's staff to strategize about how to release his explosive findings. "We thought this information was going to shock the world," he recalls. In the midst of their discussions, a colleague barged in and announced that a plane had hit the Twin Towers. The meeting continued, but they knew the context of their work had changed forever.Walton's paper did have an impact, but not the one he had hoped. The revelation that China was constructing a gigantic digital database capable of watching its citizens on the streets and online, listening to their phone calls and tracking their consumer purchases sparked neither shock nor outrage. Instead, Walton says, the paper was "mined for ideas" by the U.S. government, as well as by private companies hoping to grab a piece of the suddenly booming market in spy tools. For Walton, the most chilling moment came when the Defense Department tried to launch a system called Total Information Awareness to build what it called a "virtual, centralized grand database" that would create constantly updated electronic dossiers on every citizen, drawing on banking, credit-card, library and phone records, as well as footage from surveillance cameras. "It was clearly similar to what we were condemning China for," Walton says. Among those aggressively vying to be part of this new security boom was Joseph Atick, now an executive at L-1. The name he chose for his plan to integrate facial-recognition software into a vast security network was uncomfortably close to the surveillance system being constructed in China: "Operation Noble Shield."Empowered by the Patriot Act, many of the big dreams hatched by men like Atick have already been put into practice at home. New York, Chicago and Washington, D.C., are all experimenting with linking surveillance cameras into a single citywide network. Police use of surveillance cameras at peaceful demonstrations is now routine, and the images collected can be mined for "face prints," then cross-checked with ever-expanding photo databases. Although Total Information Awareness was scrapped after the plans became public, large pieces of the project continue, with private data-mining companies collecting unprecedented amounts of information about everything from Web browsing to car rentals, and selling it to the government.Such efforts have provided China's rulers with something even more valuable than surveillance technology from Western democracies: the ability to claim that they are just like us. Liu Zhengrong, a senior official dealing with China's Internet policy, has defended Golden Shield and other repressive measures by invoking the Patriot Act and the FBI's massive e-mail-mining operations. "It is clear that any country's legal authorities closely monitor the spread of illegal information," he said. "We have noted that the U.S. is doing a good job on this front." Lin Jiang Huai, the head of China Information Security Technology, credits America for giving him the idea to sell biometric IDs and other surveillance tools to the Chinese police. "Bush helped me get my vision," he has said. Similarly, when challenged on the fact that dome cameras are appearing three to a block in Shenzhen and Guangzhou, Chinese companies respond that their model is not the East German Stasi but modern-day London.Human-rights activists are quick to point out that while the tools are the same, the political contexts are radically different. China has a government that uses its high-tech web to imprison and torture peaceful protesters, Tibetan monks and independent-minded journalists. Yet even here, the lines are getting awfully blurry. The U.S. currently has more people behind bars than China, despite a population less than a quarter of its size. And Sharon Hom, executive director of the advocacy group Human Rights in China, says that when she talks about China's horrific human-rights record at international gatherings, "There are two words that I hear in response again and again: Guantánamo Bay."The Fourth Amendment prohibition against illegal search and seizure made it into the U.S. Constitution precisely because its drafters understood that the power to snoop is addictive. Even if we happen to trust in the good intentions of the snoopers, the nature of any government can change rapidly — which is why the Constitution places limits on the tools available to any regime. But the drafters could never have imagined the commercial pressures at play today. The global homeland-security business is now worth an estimated $200 billion — more than Hollywood and the music industry combined. Any sector of that size inevitably takes on its own momentum. New markets must be found — which, in the Big Brother business, means an endless procession of new enemies and new emergencies: crime, immigration, terrorism.In Shenzhen one night, I have dinner with a U.S. business consultant named Stephen Herrington. Before he started lecturing at Chinese business schools, teaching students concepts like brand management, Herrington was a military-intelligence officer, ascending to the rank of lieutenant colonel. What he is seeing in the Pearl River Delta, he tells me, is scaring the hell out of him — and not for what it means to China."I can guarantee you that there are people in the Bush administration who are studying the use of surveillance technologies being developed here and have at least skeletal plans to implement them at home," he says. "We can already see it in New York with CCTV cameras. Once you have the cameras in place, you have the infrastructure for a powerful tracking system. I'm worried about what this will mean if the U.S. government goes totalitarian and starts employing these technologies more than they are already. I'm worried about the threat this poses to American democracy."Herrington pauses. "George W. Bush," he adds, "would do what they are doing here in a heartbeat if he could."China-bashing never fails to soothe the Western conscience — here is a large and powerful country that, when it comes to human rights and democracy, is so much worse than Bush's America. But during my time in Shenzhen, China's youngest and most modern city, I often have the feeling that I am witnessing not some rogue police state but a global middle ground, the place where more and more countries are converging. China is becoming more like us in very visible ways (Starbucks, Hooters, cellphones that are cooler than ours), and we are becoming more like China in less visible ones (torture, warrantless wiretapping, indefinite detention, though not nearly on the Chinese scale).What is most disconcerting about China's surveillance state is how familiar it all feels. When I check into the Sheraton in Shenzhen, for instance, it looks like any other high-end hotel chain — only the lobby is a little more modern and the cheerful clerk doesn't just check my passport but takes a scan of it."Are you making a copy?" I ask."No, no," he responds helpfully. "We're just sending a copy to the police."Up in my room, the Website that pops up on my laptop looks like every other Net portal at a hotel — only it won't let me access human-rights and labor Websites that I know are working fine. The TV gets CNN International — only with strange edits and obviously censored blackouts. My cellphone picks up a strong signal for the China Mobile network. A few months earlier, in Davos, Switzerland, the CEO of China Mobile bragged to a crowd of communications executives that "we not only know who you are, we also know where you are." Asked about customer privacy, he replied that his company only gives "this kind of data to government authorities" — pretty much the same answer I got from the clerk at the front desk.When I leave China, I feel a powerful relief: I have escaped. I am home safe. But the feeling starts to fade as soon as I get to the customs line at JFK, watching hundreds of visitors line up to have their pictures taken and fingers scanned. In the terminal, someone hands me a brochure for "Fly Clear." All I need to do is have my fingerprints and irises scanned, and I can get a Clear card with a biometric chip that will let me sail through security. Later, I look it up: The company providing the technology is L-1.[From Issue 1053 — May 29, 2008]
However, perhaps the U.S. is moving somewhat towards the Chinese model as well.
China's All-Seeing Eye: With the help of U.S. defense contractors, China is building the prototype for a high-tech police state. It is ready for export.By Naomi Klein 14/07/08 "Rolling Stone " -- - Thirty years ago, the city of Shenzhen didn't exist. Back in those days, it was a string of small fishing villages and collectively run rice paddies, a place of rutted dirt roads and traditional temples. That was before the Communist Party chose it — thanks to its location close to Hong Kong's port — to be China's first "special economic zone," one of only four areas where capitalism would be permitted on a trial basis. The theory behind the experiment was that the "real" China would keep its socialist soul intact while profiting from the private-sector jobs and industrial development created in Shenzhen. The result was a city of pure commerce, undiluted by history or rooted culture — the crack cocaine of capitalism. It was a force so addictive to investors that the Shenzhen experiment quickly expanded, swallowing not just the surrounding Pearl River Delta, which now houses roughly 100,000 factories, but much of the rest of the country as well. Today, Shenzhen is a city of 12.4 million people, and there is a good chance that at least half of everything you own was made here: iPods, laptops, sneakers, flatscreen TVs, cellphones, jeans, maybe your desk chair, possibly your car and almost certainly your printer. Hundreds of luxury condominiums tower over the city; many are more than 40 stories high, topped with three-story penthouses. Newer neighborhoods like Keji Yuan are packed with ostentatiously modern corporate campuses and decadent shopping malls. Rem Koolhaas, Prada's favorite architect, is building a stock exchange in Shenzhen that looks like it floats — a design intended, he says, to "suggest and illustrate the process of the market." A still-under-construction superlight subway will soon connect it all at high speed; every car has multiple TV screens broadcasting over a Wi-Fi network. At night, the entire city lights up like a pimped-out Hummer, with each five-star hotel and office tower competing over who can put on the best light show.Many of the big American players have set up shop in Shenzhen, but they look singularly unimpressive next to their Chinese competitors. The research complex for China's telecom giant Huawei, for instance, is so large that it has its own highway exit, while its workers ride home on their own bus line. Pressed up against Shenzhen's disco shopping centers, Wal-Mart superstores — of which there are nine in the city — look like dreary corner stores. (China almost seems to be mocking us: "You call that a superstore?") McDonald's and KFC appear every few blocks, but they seem almost retro next to the Real Kung Fu fast-food chain, whose mascot is a stylized Bruce Lee.American commentators like CNN's Jack Cafferty dismiss the Chinese as "the same bunch of goons and thugs they've been for the last 50 years." But nobody told the people of Shenzhen, who are busily putting on a 24-hour-a-day show called "America" — a pirated version of the original, only with flashier design, higher profits and less complaining. This has not happened by accident. China today, epitomized by Shenzhen's transition from mud to megacity in 30 years, represents a new way to organize society. Sometimes called "market Stalinism," it is a potent hybrid of the most powerful political tools of authoritarian communism — central planning, merciless repression, constant surveillance — harnessed to advance the goals of global capitalism.
Now, as China prepares to showcase its economic advances during the upcoming Olympics in Beijing, Shenzhen is once again serving as a laboratory, a testing ground for the next phase of this vast social experiment. Over the past two years, some 200,000 surveillance cameras have been installed throughout the city. Many are in public spaces, disguised as lampposts. The closed-circuit TV cameras will soon be connected to a single, nationwide network, an all-seeing system that will be capable of tracking and identifying anyone who comes within its range — a project driven in part by U.S. technology and investment. Over the next three years, Chinese security executives predict they will install as many as 2 million CCTVs in Shenzhen, which would make it the most watched city in the world. (Security-crazy London boasts only half a million surveillance cameras.)The security cameras are just one part of a much broader high-tech surveillance and censorship program known in China as "Golden Shield." The end goal is to use the latest people-tracking technology — thoughtfully supplied by American giants like IBM, Honeywell and General Electric — to create an airtight consumer cocoon: a place where Visa cards, Adidas sneakers, China Mobile cellphones, McDonald's Happy Meals, Tsingtao beer and UPS delivery (to name just a few of the official sponsors of the Beijing Olympics) can be enjoyed under the unblinking eye of the state, without the threat of democracy breaking out. With political unrest on the rise across China, the government hopes to use the surveillance shield to identify and counteract dissent before it explodes into a mass movement like the one that grabbed the world's attention at Tiananmen Square.Remember how we've always been told that free markets and free people go hand in hand? That was a lie. It turns out that the most efficient delivery system for capitalism is actually a communist-style police state, fortressed with American "homeland security" technologies, pumped up with "war on terror" rhetoric. And the global corporations currently earning superprofits from this social experiment are unlikely to be content if the lucrative new market remains confined to cities such as Shenzhen. Like everything else assembled in China with American parts, Police State 2.0 is ready for export to a neighborhood near you.Zhang Yi points to an empty bracket on the dashboard of his black Honda. "It used to hold my GPS, but I leave it at home now," he says. "It's the crime — they are too easy to steal." He quickly adds, "Since the surveillance cameras came in, we have seen a very dramatic decrease in crime in Shenzhen."After driving for an hour past hundreds of factory gates and industrial parks, we pull up to a salmon-color building that Zhang partly owns. This is the headquarters of FSAN: CCTV System. Zhang, a prototypical Shenzhen yuppie in a royal-blue button-down shirt and black-rimmed glasses, apologizes for the mess. Inside, every inch of space is lined with cardboard boxes filled with electronics parts and finished products.Zhang opened the factory two and a half years ago, and his investment has already paid off tenfold. That kind of growth isn't unusual in the field he has chosen: Zhang's factory makes digital surveillance cameras, turning out 400,000 a year. Half of the cameras are shipped overseas, destined to peer from building ledges in London, Manhattan and Dubai as part of the global boom in "homeland security." The other half stays in China, many right here in Shenzhen and in neighboring Guangzhou, another megacity of 12 million people. China's market for surveillance cameras enjoyed revenues of $4.1 billion last year, a jump of 24 percent from 2006.Zhang escorts me to the assembly line, where rows of young workers, most of them women, are bent over semiconductors, circuit boards, tiny cables and bulbs. At the end of each line is "quality control," which consists of plugging the camera into a monitor and making sure that it records. We enter a showroom where Zhang and his colleagues meet with clients. The walls are lined with dozens of camera models: domes of all sizes, specializing in day and night, wet and dry, camouflaged to look like lights, camouflaged to look like smoke detectors, explosion-proof, the size of a soccer ball, the size of a ring box.The workers at FSAN don't just make surveillance cameras; they are constantly watched by them. While they work, the silent eyes of rotating lenses capture their every move. When they leave work and board buses, they are filmed again. When they walk to their dormitories, the streets are lined with what look like newly installed streetlamps, their white poles curving toward the sidewalk with black domes at the ends. Inside the domes are high-resolution cameras, the same kind the workers produce at FSAN. Some blocks have three or four, one every few yards. One Shenzhen-based company, China Security & Surveillance Technology, has developed software to enable the cameras to alert police when an unusual number of people begin to gather at any given location.In 2006, the Chinese government mandated that all Internet cafes (as well as restaurants and other "entertainment" venues) install video cameras with direct feeds to their local police stations. Part of a wider surveillance project known as "Safe Cities," the effort now encompasses 660 municipalities in China. It is the most ambitious new government program in the Pearl River Delta, and supplying it is one of the fastest-growing new markets in Shenzhen.But the cameras that Zhang manufactures are only part of the massive experiment in population control that is under way here. "The big picture," Zhang tells me in his office at the factory, "is integration." That means linking cameras with other forms of surveillance: the Internet, phones, facial-recognition software and GPS monitoring.This is how this Golden Shield will work: Chinese citizens will be watched around the clock through networked CCTV cameras and remote monitoring of computers. They will be listened to on their phone calls, monitored by digital voice-recognition technologies. Their Internet access will be aggressively limited through the country's notorious system of online controls known as the "Great Firewall." Their movements will be tracked through national ID cards with scannable computer chips and photos that are instantly uploaded to police databases and linked to their holder's personal data. This is the most important element of all: linking all these tools together in a massive, searchable database of names, photos, residency information, work history and biometric data. When Golden Shield is finished, there will be a photo in those databases for every person in China: 1.3 billion faces.Shenzhen is the place where the shield has received its most extensive fortifications — the place where all the spy toys are being hooked together and tested to see what they can do. "The central government eventually wants to have city-by-city surveillance, so they could just sit and monitor one city and its surveillance system as a whole," Zhang says. "It's all part of that bigger project. Once the tests are done and it's proven, they will be spreading from the big province to the cities, even to the rural farmland."In fact, the rollout of the high-tech shield is already well under way.When the Tibetan capital of Lhasa was set alight in March, the world caught a glimpse of the rage that lies just under the surface in many parts of China. And though the Lhasa riots stood out for their ethnic focus and their intensity, protests across China are often shockingly militant. In July 2006, workers at a factory near Shenzhen expressed their displeasure over paltry pay by overturning cars, smashing computers and opening fire hydrants. In March of last year, when bus fares went up in the rural town of Zhushan, 20,000 people took to the streets and five police vehicles were torched. Indeed, China has seen levels of political unrest in recent years unknown since 1989, the year student protests were crushed with tanks in Tiananmen Square. In 2005, by the government's own measure, there were at least 87,000 "mass incidents" — governmentspeak for large-scale protests or riots.This increased unrest — a process aided by access to cellphones and the Internet — represents more than a security problem for the leaders in Beijing. It threatens their whole model of command-and-control capitalism. China's rapid economic growth has relied on the ability of its rulers to raze villages and move mountains to make way for the latest factory towns and shopping malls. If the people living on those mountains use blogs and text messaging to launch a mountain-people's-rights uprising with each new project, and if they link up with similar uprisings in other parts of the country, China's dizzying expansion could grind to a halt.At the same time, the success of China's ravenous development creates its own challenges. Every rural village that is successfully razed to make way for a new project creates more displaced people who join the ranks of the roughly 130 million migrants roaming the country looking for work. By 2025, it is projected that this "floating" population will swell to more than 350 million. Many will end up in cities like Shenzhen, which is already home to 7 million migrant laborers.But while China's cities need these displaced laborers to work in factories and on construction sites, they are unwilling to offer them the same benefits as permanent residents: highly subsidized education and health care, as well as other public services. While migrants can live for decades in big cities like Shenzhen and Guangzhou, their residency remains fixed to the rural community where they were born, a fact encoded on their national ID cards. As one young migrant in Guangzhou put it to me, "The local people want to make money from migrant workers, but they don't want to give them rights. But why are the local people so rich? Because of the migrant workers!"With its militant protests and mobile population, China confronts a fundamental challenge. How can it maintain a system based on two dramatically unequal categories of people: the winners, who get the condos and cars, and the losers, who do the heavy labor and are denied those benefits? More urgently, how can it do this when information technology threatens to link the losers together into a movement so large it could easily overwhelm the country's elites?The answer is Golden Shield. When Tibet erupted in protests recently, the surveillance system was thrown into its first live test, with every supposedly liberating tool of the Information Age — cellphones, satellite television, the Internet — transformed into a method of repression and control. As soon as the protests gathered steam, China reinforced its Great Firewall, blocking its citizens from accessing dozens of foreign news outlets. In some parts of Tibet, Internet access was shut down altogether. Many people trying to phone friends and family found that their calls were blocked, and cellphones in Lhasa were blitzed with text messages from the police: "Severely battle any creation or any spreading of rumors that would upset or frighten people or cause social disorder or illegal criminal behavior that could damage social stability."During the first week of protests, foreign journalists who tried to get into Tibet were systematically turned back. But that didn't mean that there were no cameras inside the besieged areas. Since early last year, activists in Lhasa have been reporting on the proliferation of black-domed cameras that look like streetlights — just like the ones I saw coming off the assembly line in Shenzhen. Tibetan monks complain that cameras — activated by motion sensors — have invaded their monasteries and prayer rooms.During the Lhasa riots, police on the scene augmented the footage from the CCTVs with their own video cameras, choosing to film — rather than stop — the violence, which left 19 dead. The police then quickly cut together the surveillance shots that made the Tibetans look most vicious — beating Chinese bystanders, torching shops, ripping metal sheeting off banks — and created a kind of copumentary: Tibetans Gone Wild. These weren't the celestial beings in flowing robes the Beastie Boys and Richard Gere had told us about. They were angry young men, wielding sticks and long knives. They looked ugly, brutal, tribal. On Chinese state TV, this footage played around the clock.The police also used the surveillance footage to extract mug shots of the demonstrators and rioters. Photos of the 21 "most wanted" Tibetans, many taken from that distinctive "streetlamp" view of the domed cameras, were immediately circulated to all of China's major news portals, which obediently posted them to help out with the manhunt. The Internet became the most powerful police tool. Within days, several of the men on the posters were in custody, along with hundreds of others.The flare-up in Tibet, weeks before the Olympic torch began its global journey, has been described repeatedly in the international press as a "nightmare" for Beijing. Several foreign leaders have pledged to boycott the opening ceremonies of the games, the press has hosted an orgy of China-bashing, and the torch became a magnet for protesters, with anti-China banners dropped from the Eiffel Tower and the Golden Gate Bridge. But inside China, the Tibet debacle may actually have been a boon to the party, strengthening its grip on power. Despite its citizens having unprecedented access to information technology (there are as many Internet users in China as there are in the U.S.), the party demonstrated that it could still control what they hear and see. And what they saw on their TVs and computer screens were violent Tibetans, out to kill their Chinese neighbors, while police showed admirable restraint. Tibetan solidarity groups say 140 people were killed in the crackdown that followed the protests, but without pictures taken by journalists, it is as if those subsequent deaths didn't happen.Chinese viewers also saw a world unsympathetic to the Chinese victims of Tibetan violence, so hostile to their country that it used a national tragedy to try to rob them of their hard-won Olympic glory. These nationalist sentiments freed up Beijing to go on a full-fledged witch hunt. In the name of fighting a war on terror, security forces rounded up thousands of Tibetan activists and supporters. The end result is that when the games begin, much of the Tibetan movement will be safely behind bars — along with scores of Chinese journalists, bloggers and human-rights defenders who have also been trapped in the government's high-tech web.Police State 2.0 might not look good from the outside, but on the inside, it appears to have passed its first major test.In Guangzhou, an hour and a half by train from Shenzhen, Yao Ruoguang is preparing for a major test of his own. "It's called the 10-million-faces test," he tells me.Yao is managing director of Pixel Solutions, a Chinese company that specializes in producing the new high-tech national ID cards, as well as selling facial-recognition software to businesses and government agencies. The test, the first phase of which is only weeks away, is being staged by the Ministry of Public Security in Beijing. The idea is to measure the effectiveness of face-recognition software in identifying police suspects. Participants will be given a series of photos, taken in a variety of situations. Their task will be to match the images to other photos of the same people in the government's massive database. Several biometrics companies, including Yao's, have been invited to compete. "We have to be able to match a face in a 10 million database in one second," Yao tells me. "We are preparing for that now."The companies that score well will be first in line for lucrative government contracts to integrate face-recognition software into Golden Shield, using it to check for ID fraud and to discover the identities of suspects caught on surveillance cameras. Yao says the technology is almost there: "It will happen next year."When I meet Yao at his corporate headquarters, he is feeling confident about how his company will perform in the test. His secret weapon is that he will be using facial-recognition software purchased from L-1 Identity Solutions, a major U.S. defense contractor that produces passports and biometric security systems for the U.S. government.To show how well it works, Yao demonstrates on himself. Using a camera attached to his laptop, he snaps a picture of his own face, round and boyish for its 54 years. Then he uploads it onto the company's proprietary Website, built with L-1 software. With the cursor, he marks his own eyes with two green plus signs, helping the system to measure the distance between his features, a distinctive aspect of our faces that does not change with disguises or even surgery. The first step is to "capture the image," Yao explains. Next is "finding the face."He presses APPLY, telling the program to match the new face with photos of the same person in the company's database of 600,000 faces. Instantly, multiple photos of Yao appear, including one taken 19 years earlier — proof that the technology can "find a face" even when the face has changed significantly with time. "It took 1.1 milliseconds!" Yao exclaims. "Yeah, that's me!"In nearby cubicles, teams of Yao's programmers and engineers take each other's pictures, mark their eyes with green plus signs and test the speed of their search engines. "Everyone is preparing for the test," Yao explains. "If we pass, if we come out number one, we are guaranteed a market in China."Every couple of minutes Yao's phone beeps. Sometimes it's a work message, but most of the time it's a text from his credit-card company, informing him that his daughter, who lives in Australia, has just made another charge. "Every time the text message comes, I know my daughter is spending money!" He shrugs: "She likes designers."Like many other security executives I interviewed in China, Yao denies that a primary use of the technology he is selling is to hunt down political activists. "Ninety-five percent," he insists, "is just for regular safety." He has, he admits, been visited by government spies, whom he describes as "the internal-security people." They came with grainy pictures, shot from far away or through keyhole cameras, of "some protesters, some dissidents." They wanted to know if Yao's facial-recognition software could help identify the people in the photos. Yao was sorry to disappoint them. "Honestly, the technology so far still can't meet their needs," he says. "The photos that they show us were just too blurry." That is rapidly changing, of course, thanks to the spread of high-resolution CCTVs. Yet Yao insists that the government's goal is not repression: "If you're a [political] organizer, they want to know your motive," he says. "So they take the picture, give the photo, so at least they can find out who that person is."Until recently, Yao's photography empire was focused on consumers — taking class photos at schools, launching a Chinese knockoff of Flickr (the original is often blocked by the Great Firewall), turning photos of chubby two-year-olds into fridge magnets and lampshades. He still maintains those businesses, which means that half of the offices at Pixel Solutions look like they have just hosted a kid's birthday party. The other half looks like an ominous customs office, the walls lined with posters of terrorists in the cross hairs: FACE MATCH, FACE PASS, FACE WATCH. When Beijing started sinking more and more of the national budget into surveillance technologies, Yao saw an opportunity that would make all his previous ventures look small. Between more powerful computers, higher-resolution cameras and a global obsession with crime and terrorism, he figured that face recognition "should be the next dot-com."Not a computer scientist himself — he studied English literature in school — Yao began researching corporate leaders in the field. He learned that face recognition is highly controversial, with a track record of making wrong IDs. A few companies, however, were scoring much higher in controlled tests in the U.S. One of them was a company soon to be renamed L-1 Identity Solutions. Based in Connecticut, L-1 was created two years ago out of the mergers and buyouts of half a dozen major players in the biometrics field, all of which specialized in the science of identifying people through distinct physical traits: fingerprints, irises, face geometry. The mergers made L-1 a one-stop shop for biometrics. Thanks to board members like former CIA director George Tenet, the company rapidly became a homeland-security heavy hitter. L-1 projects its annual revenues will hit $1 billion by 2011, much of it from U.S. government contracts.In 2006, Yao tells me, "I made the first phone call and sent the first e-mail." For a flat fee of $20,000, he gained access to the company's proprietary software, allowing him to "build a lot of development software based on L-1's technology." Since then, L-1's partnership with Yao has gone far beyond that token investment. Yao says it isn't really his own company that is competing in the upcoming 10-million-faces test being staged by the Chinese government: "We'll be involved on behalf of L-1 in China." Yao adds that he communicates regularly with L1 and has visited the company's research headquarters in New Jersey. ("Out the window you can see the Statue of Liberty. It's such a historic place.") L1 is watching his test preparations with great interest, Yao says. "It seemed that they were more excited than us when we tell them the results."L-1's enthusiasm is hardly surprising: If Yao impresses the Ministry of Public Security with the company's ability to identify criminals, L-1 will have cracked the largest potential market for biometrics in the world. But here's the catch: As proud as Yao is to be L-1's Chinese licensee, L-1 appears to be distinctly less proud of its association with Yao. On its Website and in its reports to investors, L-1 boasts of contracts and negotiations with governments from Panama and Saudi Arabia to Mexico and Turkey. China, however, is conspicuously absent. And though CEO Bob LaPenta makes reference to "some large international opportunities," not once does he mention Pixel Solutions in Guangzhou.After leaving a message with the company inquiring about L-1's involvement in China's homeland-security market, I get a call back from Doni Fordyce, vice president of corporate communications. She has consulted Joseph Atick, the company's head of research. "We have nothing in China," she tells me. "Nothing, absolutely nothing. We are uninvolved. We really don't have any relationships at all."I tell Fordyce about Yao, the 10-million test, the money he paid for the software license. She'll call me right back. When she does, 20 minutes later, it is with this news: "Absolutely, we've sold testing SDKs [software development kits] to Pixel Solutions and to others [in China] that may be entering a test." Yao's use of the technology, she said, is "within his license" purchased from L-1.The company's reticence to publicize its activities in China could have something to do with the fact that the relationship between Yao and L-1 may well be illegal under U.S. law. After the Chinese government sent tanks into Tiananmen Square in 1989, Congress passed legislation barring U.S. companies from selling any products in China that have to do with "crime control or detection instruments or equipment." That means not only guns but everything from police batons and handcuffs to ink and powder for taking fingerprints, and software for storing them. Interestingly, one of the "detection instruments" that prompted the legislation was the surveillance camera. Beijing had installed several clunky cameras around Tiananmen Square, originally meant to monitor traffic flows. Those lenses were ultimately used to identify and arrest key pro-democracy dissidents."The intent of that act," a congressional staff member with considerable China experience tells me, "was to keep U.S. companies out of the business of helping the Chinese police conduct their business, which might ultimately end up as it did in 1989 in the suppression of human rights and democracy in China."Pixel's application of L-1 facial-recognition software seems to fly in the face of the ban's intent. By his own admission, Yao is already getting visits from Chinese state spies anxious to use facial recognition to identify dissidents. And as part of the 10-million-faces test, Yao has been working intimately with Chinese national-security forces, syncing L-1's software to their vast database, a process that took a week of intensive work in Beijing. During that time, Yao says, he was on the phone "every day" with L-1, getting its help adapting the technology. "Because we are representing them," he says. "We took the test on their behalf."In other words, this controversial U.S. "crime control" technology has already found its way into the hands of the Chinese police. Moreover, Yao's goal, stated to me several times, is to use the software to land lucrative contracts with police agencies to integrate facial recognition into the newly built system of omnipresent surveillance cameras and high-tech national ID cards. As part of any contract he gets, Yao says, he will "pay L-1 a certain percentage of our sales."When I put the L-1 scenario to the Commerce Department's Bureau of Industry and Security — the division charged with enforcing the post-Tiananmen export controls — a representative says that software kits are subject to the sanctions if "they are exported from the U.S. or are the foreign direct product of a U.S.-origin item." Based on both criteria, the software kit sold to Yao seems to fall within the ban.When I ask Doni Fordyce at L-1 about the embargo, she tells me, "I don't know anything about that." Asked whether she would like to find out about it and call me back, she replies, "I really don't want to comment, so there is no comment." Then she hangs up.You have probably never heard of L-1, but there is every chance that it has heard of you. Few companies have collected as much sensitive information about U.S. citizens and visitors to America as L-1: It boasts a database of 60 million records, and it "captures" more than a million new fingerprints every year. Here is a small sample of what the company does: produces passports and passport cards for American citizens; takes finger scans of visitors to the U.S. under the Department of Homeland Security's massive U.S.-Visit program; equips U.S. soldiers in Iraq and Afghanistan with "mobile iris and multimodal devices" so they can collect biometric data in the field; maintains the State Department's "largest facial-recognition database system"; and produces driver's licenses in Illinois, Montana and North Carolina. In addition, L-1 has an even more secretive intelligence unit called SpecTal. Asked by a Wall Street analyst to discuss, in "extremely general" terms, what the division was doing with contracts worth roughly $100 million, the company's CEO would only say, "Stay tuned."It is L-1's deep integration with multiple U.S. government agencies that makes its dealings in China so interesting: It isn't just L-1 that is potentially helping the Chinese police to nab political dissidents, it's U.S. taxpayers. The technology that Yao purchased for just a few thousand dollars is the result of Defense Department research grants and contracts going as far back as 1994, when a young academic named Joseph Atick (the research director Fordyce consulted on L-1's China dealings) taught a computer at Rockefeller University to recognize his face.Yao, for his part, knows all about the U.S. export controls on police equipment to China. He tells me that L-1's electronic fingerprinting tools are "banned from entering China" due to U.S. concerns that they will be used to "catch the political criminals, you know, the dissidents, more easily." He thinks he and L-1 have found a legal loophole, however. While fingerprinting technology appears on the Commerce Department's list of banned products, there is no explicit mention of "face prints" — likely because the idea was still in the realm of science fiction when the Tiananmen Square massacre took place. As far as Yao is concerned, that omission means that L-1 can legally supply its facial-recognition software for use by the Chinese government.Whatever the legality of L-1's participation in Chinese surveillance, it is clear that U.S. companies are determined to break into the homeland-security market in China, which represents their biggest growth potential since 9/11. According to the congressional staff member, American companies and their lobbyists are applying "enormous pressure to open the floodgates."The crackdown in Tibet has set off a wave of righteous rallies and boycott calls. But it sidesteps the uncomfortable fact that much of China's powerful surveillance state is already being built with U.S. and European technology. In February 2006, a congressional subcommittee held a hearing on "The Internet in China: A Tool for Freedom or Suppression?" Called on the carpet were Google (for building a special Chinese search engine that blocked sensitive material), Cisco (for supplying hardware for China's Great Firewall), Microsoft (for taking down political blogs at the behest of Beijing) and Yahoo (for complying with requests to hand over e-mail-account information that led to the arrest and imprisonment of a high-profile Chinese journalist, as well as a dissident who had criticized corrupt officials in online discussion groups). The issue came up again during the recent Tibet uproar when it was discovered that both MSN and Yahoo had briefly put up the mug shots of the "most wanted" Tibetan protesters on their Chinese news portals.In all of these cases, U.S. multinationals have offered the same defense: Cooperating with draconian demands to turn in customers and censor material is, unfortunately, the price of doing business in China. Some, like Google, have argued that despite having to limit access to the Internet, they are contributing to an overall increase of freedom in China. It's a story that glosses over the much larger scandal of what is actually taking place: Western investors stampeding into the country, possibly in violation of the law, with the sole purpose of helping the Communist Party spend billions of dollars building Police State 2.0. This isn't an unfortunate cost of doing business in China: It's the goal of doing business in China. "Come help us spy!" the Chinese government has said to the world. And the world's leading technology companies are eagerly answering the call.As The New York Times recently reported, aiding and abetting Beijing has become an investment boom for U.S. companies. Honeywell is working with Chinese police to "set up an elaborate computer monitoring system to analyze feeds from indoor and outdoor cameras in one of Beijing's most populated districts." General Electric is providing Beijing police with a security system that controls "thousands of video cameras simultaneously, and automatically alerts them to suspicious or fast-moving objects, like people running." IBM, meanwhile, is installing its "Smart Surveillance System" in the capital, another system for linking video cameras and scanning for trouble, while United Technologies is in Guangzhou, helping to customize a "2,000-camera network in a single large neighborhood, the first step toward a citywide network of 250,000 cameras to be installed before the Asian Games in 2010." By next year, the Chinese internal-security market will be worth an estimated $33 billion — around the same amount Congress has allocated for reconstructing Iraq."We're at the start of a massive boom in Chinese security spending," according to Graham Summers, a market analyst who publishes an investor newsletter in Baltimore. "And just as we need to be aware of how to profit from the growth in China's commodity consumption, we need to be aware of companies that will profit from 'security consumption.' . . . There's big money to be made."While U.S. companies are eager to break into China's rapidly expanding market, every Chinese security firm I come across in the Pearl River Delta is hatching some kind of plan to break into the U.S. market. No one, however, is quite as eager as Aebell Electrical Technology, one of China's top 10 security companies. Aebell has a contract to help secure the Olympic swimming stadium in Beijing and has installed more than 10,000 cameras in and around Guangzhou. Business has been growing by 100 percent a year. When I meet the company's fidgety general manager, Zheng Sun Man, the first thing he tells me is "We are going public at the end of this year. On the Nasdaq." It also becomes clear why he has chosen to speak with a foreign reporter: "Help, help, help!" he begs me. "Help us promote our products!"Zheng, an MBA from one of China's top schools, proudly shows me the business card of the New York investment bank that is handling Aebell's IPO, as well as a newly printed English-language brochure showing off the company's security cameras. Its pages are filled with American iconography, including businessmen exchanging wads of dollar bills and several photos of the New York skyline that prominently feature the World Trade Center. In the hall at company headquarters is a poster of two interlocking hearts: one depicting the American flag, the other the Aebell logo.I ask Zheng whether China's surveillance boom has anything to do with the rise in strikes and demonstrations in recent years. Zheng's deputy, a 23-year veteran of the Chinese military wearing a black Mao suit, responds as if I had launched a direct attack on the Communist Party itself. "If you walk out of this building, you will be under surveillance in five to six different ways," he says, staring at me hard. He lets the implication of his words linger in the air like an unspoken threat. "If you are a law-abiding citizen, you shouldn't be afraid," he finally adds. "The criminals are the only ones who should be afraid."One of the first people to sound the alarm on China's upgraded police state was a British researcher named Greg Walton. In 2000, Walton was commissioned by the respected human-rights organization Rights & Democracy to investigate the ways in which Chinese security forces were harnessing the tools of the Information Age to curtail free speech and monitor political activists. The paper he produced was called "China's Golden Shield: Corporations and the Development of Surveillance Technology in the People's Republic of China." It exposed how big-name tech companies like Nortel and Cisco were helping the Chinese government to construct "a gigantic online database with an all-encompassing surveillance network — incorporating speech and face recognition, closed-circuit television, smart cards, credit records and Internet surveillance technologies."When the paper was complete, Walton met with the institute's staff to strategize about how to release his explosive findings. "We thought this information was going to shock the world," he recalls. In the midst of their discussions, a colleague barged in and announced that a plane had hit the Twin Towers. The meeting continued, but they knew the context of their work had changed forever.Walton's paper did have an impact, but not the one he had hoped. The revelation that China was constructing a gigantic digital database capable of watching its citizens on the streets and online, listening to their phone calls and tracking their consumer purchases sparked neither shock nor outrage. Instead, Walton says, the paper was "mined for ideas" by the U.S. government, as well as by private companies hoping to grab a piece of the suddenly booming market in spy tools. For Walton, the most chilling moment came when the Defense Department tried to launch a system called Total Information Awareness to build what it called a "virtual, centralized grand database" that would create constantly updated electronic dossiers on every citizen, drawing on banking, credit-card, library and phone records, as well as footage from surveillance cameras. "It was clearly similar to what we were condemning China for," Walton says. Among those aggressively vying to be part of this new security boom was Joseph Atick, now an executive at L-1. The name he chose for his plan to integrate facial-recognition software into a vast security network was uncomfortably close to the surveillance system being constructed in China: "Operation Noble Shield."Empowered by the Patriot Act, many of the big dreams hatched by men like Atick have already been put into practice at home. New York, Chicago and Washington, D.C., are all experimenting with linking surveillance cameras into a single citywide network. Police use of surveillance cameras at peaceful demonstrations is now routine, and the images collected can be mined for "face prints," then cross-checked with ever-expanding photo databases. Although Total Information Awareness was scrapped after the plans became public, large pieces of the project continue, with private data-mining companies collecting unprecedented amounts of information about everything from Web browsing to car rentals, and selling it to the government.Such efforts have provided China's rulers with something even more valuable than surveillance technology from Western democracies: the ability to claim that they are just like us. Liu Zhengrong, a senior official dealing with China's Internet policy, has defended Golden Shield and other repressive measures by invoking the Patriot Act and the FBI's massive e-mail-mining operations. "It is clear that any country's legal authorities closely monitor the spread of illegal information," he said. "We have noted that the U.S. is doing a good job on this front." Lin Jiang Huai, the head of China Information Security Technology, credits America for giving him the idea to sell biometric IDs and other surveillance tools to the Chinese police. "Bush helped me get my vision," he has said. Similarly, when challenged on the fact that dome cameras are appearing three to a block in Shenzhen and Guangzhou, Chinese companies respond that their model is not the East German Stasi but modern-day London.Human-rights activists are quick to point out that while the tools are the same, the political contexts are radically different. China has a government that uses its high-tech web to imprison and torture peaceful protesters, Tibetan monks and independent-minded journalists. Yet even here, the lines are getting awfully blurry. The U.S. currently has more people behind bars than China, despite a population less than a quarter of its size. And Sharon Hom, executive director of the advocacy group Human Rights in China, says that when she talks about China's horrific human-rights record at international gatherings, "There are two words that I hear in response again and again: Guantánamo Bay."The Fourth Amendment prohibition against illegal search and seizure made it into the U.S. Constitution precisely because its drafters understood that the power to snoop is addictive. Even if we happen to trust in the good intentions of the snoopers, the nature of any government can change rapidly — which is why the Constitution places limits on the tools available to any regime. But the drafters could never have imagined the commercial pressures at play today. The global homeland-security business is now worth an estimated $200 billion — more than Hollywood and the music industry combined. Any sector of that size inevitably takes on its own momentum. New markets must be found — which, in the Big Brother business, means an endless procession of new enemies and new emergencies: crime, immigration, terrorism.In Shenzhen one night, I have dinner with a U.S. business consultant named Stephen Herrington. Before he started lecturing at Chinese business schools, teaching students concepts like brand management, Herrington was a military-intelligence officer, ascending to the rank of lieutenant colonel. What he is seeing in the Pearl River Delta, he tells me, is scaring the hell out of him — and not for what it means to China."I can guarantee you that there are people in the Bush administration who are studying the use of surveillance technologies being developed here and have at least skeletal plans to implement them at home," he says. "We can already see it in New York with CCTV cameras. Once you have the cameras in place, you have the infrastructure for a powerful tracking system. I'm worried about what this will mean if the U.S. government goes totalitarian and starts employing these technologies more than they are already. I'm worried about the threat this poses to American democracy."Herrington pauses. "George W. Bush," he adds, "would do what they are doing here in a heartbeat if he could."China-bashing never fails to soothe the Western conscience — here is a large and powerful country that, when it comes to human rights and democracy, is so much worse than Bush's America. But during my time in Shenzhen, China's youngest and most modern city, I often have the feeling that I am witnessing not some rogue police state but a global middle ground, the place where more and more countries are converging. China is becoming more like us in very visible ways (Starbucks, Hooters, cellphones that are cooler than ours), and we are becoming more like China in less visible ones (torture, warrantless wiretapping, indefinite detention, though not nearly on the Chinese scale).What is most disconcerting about China's surveillance state is how familiar it all feels. When I check into the Sheraton in Shenzhen, for instance, it looks like any other high-end hotel chain — only the lobby is a little more modern and the cheerful clerk doesn't just check my passport but takes a scan of it."Are you making a copy?" I ask."No, no," he responds helpfully. "We're just sending a copy to the police."Up in my room, the Website that pops up on my laptop looks like every other Net portal at a hotel — only it won't let me access human-rights and labor Websites that I know are working fine. The TV gets CNN International — only with strange edits and obviously censored blackouts. My cellphone picks up a strong signal for the China Mobile network. A few months earlier, in Davos, Switzerland, the CEO of China Mobile bragged to a crowd of communications executives that "we not only know who you are, we also know where you are." Asked about customer privacy, he replied that his company only gives "this kind of data to government authorities" — pretty much the same answer I got from the clerk at the front desk.When I leave China, I feel a powerful relief: I have escaped. I am home safe. But the feeling starts to fade as soon as I get to the customs line at JFK, watching hundreds of visitors line up to have their pictures taken and fingers scanned. In the terminal, someone hands me a brochure for "Fly Clear." All I need to do is have my fingerprints and irises scanned, and I can get a Clear card with a biometric chip that will let me sail through security. Later, I look it up: The company providing the technology is L-1.[From Issue 1053 — May 29, 2008]
Tuesday, July 15, 2008
Terrorist watch list hits one million..
This is from the ACLU. At the end of this post I have posted another from SFgate.
The second article provides an example of the difficulties the list can cause innocent people who may happen to have a name identical to or very much like one of those on the list. The one million figure does not mean there are a million individuals on the list as many names are aliases of one and the same individual. Even so the list is quite large and no doubt contains many names of people who have no or little connection to terrorism.
Terrorist Watch List Hits One Million Names (7/14/2008)
ACLU launches online watch list complaint form
FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE CONTACT: (202) 675-2312 or media@dcaclu.org
WASHINGTON, DC - The nation's terrorist watch list has hit one million names, according to a tally maintained by the American Civil Liberties Union based upon the government's own reported numbers for the size of the list.
"Members of Congress, nuns, war heroes and other 'suspicious characters,' with names like Robert Johnson and Gary Smith, have become trapped in the Kafkaesque clutches of this list, with little hope of escape," said Caroline Fredrickson, director of the ACLU Washington Legislative Office. "Congress needs to fix it, the Terrorist Screening Center needs to fix it, or the next president needs to fix it, but it has to be done soon."
Fredrickson and Barry Steinhardt, director of the ACLU's Technology and Liberty Program, spoke today along with two victims of the watch list: Jim Robinson, former assistant attorney general for the Criminal Division who flies frequently and is often delayed for hours despite possessing a governmental security clearance and Akif Rahman, an American citizen who has been detained and interrogated extensively at the U.S.-Canada border when traveling for business.
"America's new million record watch list is a perfect symbol for what's wrong with this administration's approach to security: it's unfair, out-of-control, a waste of resources, treats the rights of the innocent as an afterthought, and is a very real impediment in the lives of millions of travelers in this country," said Barry Steinhardt, director of the ACLU Technology and Liberty Program. "It must be fixed without delay."
"Putting a million names on a watch list is a guarantee that the list will do more harm than good by interfering with the travel of innocent people and wasting huge amounts of our limited security resources on bureaucratic wheel-spinning," said Steinhardt. "I doubt this thing would even be effective at catching a real terrorist."
Controls on the watch lists called for by the ACLU included:
due process
a right to access and challenge data upon which listing is based
tight criteria for adding names to the lists
rigorous procedures for updating and cleansing names from the lists.
The ACLU also called for the president - if not this one then the next - to issue an executive order requiring the lists to be reviewed and limited to only those for whom there is credible evidence of terrorist ties or activities. The review should be concluded within 3 months.
In February, the ACLU unveiled an online "watch list counter," which has tracked the size of the watch list based on a September 2007 report by the inspector general of the Justice Department, which reported that it was growing by 20,000 names per month.
The ACLU is also announcing today the creation of an online form where victims of the watch list can tell us their stories. We will collect those stories and use them (with permission) in various ways to advance our advocacy. A link to the form is available online at www.aclu.org/watchlist or directly at www.aclu.org/watchlistform.
The watch list counter and other materials are available at: www.aclu.org/watchlist
Here is the other article:
Prosecutor flagged by US terror watch list
By LARA JAKES JORDAN, Associated Press Writer
Monday, July 14, 2008
(07-14) 13:26 PDT WASHINGTON, (AP) --
The Justice Department's former top criminal prosecutor says the government's terror watch list likely has caused thousands of innocent Americans to be questioned, searched or otherwise hassled.
Former Assistant Attorney General Jim Robinson would know: he's one of them.
Robinson joined another mistaken-identity American and the American Civil Liberties Union on Monday to urge fixing the list that's supposed to identify suspected terrorists.
"It's a pain in the neck, and significantly interferes with my travel arrangements," said Robinson, the head of the Justice Department's criminal division during the Clinton administration. He believes his name matches that of someone who was put on the list in early 2005, and is routinely delayed while flying — despite having his own government top-secret security clearances renewed last year.
"I suppose if I were convinced that America is a safer place because I get hassled at the airport, I might put up with it," Robinson said. "But I doubt it."
He added: "I expect my story is similar to hundreds of thousands of people who are on this list who find themselves inconvenienced."
The government calls its watch list one of the most effective tools in its fight against terrorism. It was created after the Sept. 11, 2001 attacks to consolidate 12 existing lists and make sure no terrorists slipped through the cracks — whether when entering the country or if otherwise stopped for questioning. Last year, congressional investigators found "general agreement that the watch list has helped to combat terrorism."
Other audits of the watch list over the last several years, however, have concluded that it has mistakenly flagged innocent people whose names are similar to those on it. More than 30,000 airline passengers had asked the Homeland Security Department to clear their names from the list as of October 2006. Additionally, as many as 20 suspected terrorists were left off the list as of last year due to a technology glitch.
Chad Kolton, a spokesman for the FBI's Terrorist Screening Center that maintains the list, said the government is working to fix the gaps.
"We strive to have the watch list contain all appropriately suspected terrorists who represent a threat to the U.S., but only appropriately suspected terrorists," Kolton said.
The ACLU predicted the watch list would include 1 million names as early as Monday. The civil liberties group reached that number by citing the 700,000 records on the watch list as of last September and adding 20,000 names each month, as forecast by the Justice Department's inspector general.
Kolton disputed that number, however, saying that only about 400,000 individuals are on the list — with the rest being records of aliases or other identifiers for those same people. Kolton said that 95 percent of the people on the list are not Americans or legal U.S. residents — and most aren't even in the country.
The Government Accountability Office, the investigations arm of Congress, similarly concluded last year that the total number of records on the watch list "does not represent the total number of individuals," saying it contains multiple records for the same person.
For some Americans whose names match those on the list, being delayed or detained for extra screening isn't just a hassle — it's frightening.
Chicago-area computer consultant Akif Rahman, who was born in Springfield, Ill., said he has been detained at least seven times after traveling abroad. During one such incident in May, he said, he was held for five hours, shackled to a chair and kicked by a Customs Service agent after being stopped at a U.S. checkpoint on the Canadian border.
"I was fearful for my own safety and that of my family," said Rahman, who is suing the government to have his identity cleared from the watch list. "I simply could not believe that I, a born U.S. citizen, was going though this experience simply re-entering my own country."
___
The second article provides an example of the difficulties the list can cause innocent people who may happen to have a name identical to or very much like one of those on the list. The one million figure does not mean there are a million individuals on the list as many names are aliases of one and the same individual. Even so the list is quite large and no doubt contains many names of people who have no or little connection to terrorism.
Terrorist Watch List Hits One Million Names (7/14/2008)
ACLU launches online watch list complaint form
FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE CONTACT: (202) 675-2312 or media@dcaclu.org
WASHINGTON, DC - The nation's terrorist watch list has hit one million names, according to a tally maintained by the American Civil Liberties Union based upon the government's own reported numbers for the size of the list.
"Members of Congress, nuns, war heroes and other 'suspicious characters,' with names like Robert Johnson and Gary Smith, have become trapped in the Kafkaesque clutches of this list, with little hope of escape," said Caroline Fredrickson, director of the ACLU Washington Legislative Office. "Congress needs to fix it, the Terrorist Screening Center needs to fix it, or the next president needs to fix it, but it has to be done soon."
Fredrickson and Barry Steinhardt, director of the ACLU's Technology and Liberty Program, spoke today along with two victims of the watch list: Jim Robinson, former assistant attorney general for the Criminal Division who flies frequently and is often delayed for hours despite possessing a governmental security clearance and Akif Rahman, an American citizen who has been detained and interrogated extensively at the U.S.-Canada border when traveling for business.
"America's new million record watch list is a perfect symbol for what's wrong with this administration's approach to security: it's unfair, out-of-control, a waste of resources, treats the rights of the innocent as an afterthought, and is a very real impediment in the lives of millions of travelers in this country," said Barry Steinhardt, director of the ACLU Technology and Liberty Program. "It must be fixed without delay."
"Putting a million names on a watch list is a guarantee that the list will do more harm than good by interfering with the travel of innocent people and wasting huge amounts of our limited security resources on bureaucratic wheel-spinning," said Steinhardt. "I doubt this thing would even be effective at catching a real terrorist."
Controls on the watch lists called for by the ACLU included:
due process
a right to access and challenge data upon which listing is based
tight criteria for adding names to the lists
rigorous procedures for updating and cleansing names from the lists.
The ACLU also called for the president - if not this one then the next - to issue an executive order requiring the lists to be reviewed and limited to only those for whom there is credible evidence of terrorist ties or activities. The review should be concluded within 3 months.
In February, the ACLU unveiled an online "watch list counter," which has tracked the size of the watch list based on a September 2007 report by the inspector general of the Justice Department, which reported that it was growing by 20,000 names per month.
The ACLU is also announcing today the creation of an online form where victims of the watch list can tell us their stories. We will collect those stories and use them (with permission) in various ways to advance our advocacy. A link to the form is available online at www.aclu.org/watchlist or directly at www.aclu.org/watchlistform.
The watch list counter and other materials are available at: www.aclu.org/watchlist
Here is the other article:
Prosecutor flagged by US terror watch list
By LARA JAKES JORDAN, Associated Press Writer
Monday, July 14, 2008
(07-14) 13:26 PDT WASHINGTON, (AP) --
The Justice Department's former top criminal prosecutor says the government's terror watch list likely has caused thousands of innocent Americans to be questioned, searched or otherwise hassled.
Former Assistant Attorney General Jim Robinson would know: he's one of them.
Robinson joined another mistaken-identity American and the American Civil Liberties Union on Monday to urge fixing the list that's supposed to identify suspected terrorists.
"It's a pain in the neck, and significantly interferes with my travel arrangements," said Robinson, the head of the Justice Department's criminal division during the Clinton administration. He believes his name matches that of someone who was put on the list in early 2005, and is routinely delayed while flying — despite having his own government top-secret security clearances renewed last year.
"I suppose if I were convinced that America is a safer place because I get hassled at the airport, I might put up with it," Robinson said. "But I doubt it."
He added: "I expect my story is similar to hundreds of thousands of people who are on this list who find themselves inconvenienced."
The government calls its watch list one of the most effective tools in its fight against terrorism. It was created after the Sept. 11, 2001 attacks to consolidate 12 existing lists and make sure no terrorists slipped through the cracks — whether when entering the country or if otherwise stopped for questioning. Last year, congressional investigators found "general agreement that the watch list has helped to combat terrorism."
Other audits of the watch list over the last several years, however, have concluded that it has mistakenly flagged innocent people whose names are similar to those on it. More than 30,000 airline passengers had asked the Homeland Security Department to clear their names from the list as of October 2006. Additionally, as many as 20 suspected terrorists were left off the list as of last year due to a technology glitch.
Chad Kolton, a spokesman for the FBI's Terrorist Screening Center that maintains the list, said the government is working to fix the gaps.
"We strive to have the watch list contain all appropriately suspected terrorists who represent a threat to the U.S., but only appropriately suspected terrorists," Kolton said.
The ACLU predicted the watch list would include 1 million names as early as Monday. The civil liberties group reached that number by citing the 700,000 records on the watch list as of last September and adding 20,000 names each month, as forecast by the Justice Department's inspector general.
Kolton disputed that number, however, saying that only about 400,000 individuals are on the list — with the rest being records of aliases or other identifiers for those same people. Kolton said that 95 percent of the people on the list are not Americans or legal U.S. residents — and most aren't even in the country.
The Government Accountability Office, the investigations arm of Congress, similarly concluded last year that the total number of records on the watch list "does not represent the total number of individuals," saying it contains multiple records for the same person.
For some Americans whose names match those on the list, being delayed or detained for extra screening isn't just a hassle — it's frightening.
Chicago-area computer consultant Akif Rahman, who was born in Springfield, Ill., said he has been detained at least seven times after traveling abroad. During one such incident in May, he said, he was held for five hours, shackled to a chair and kicked by a Customs Service agent after being stopped at a U.S. checkpoint on the Canadian border.
"I was fearful for my own safety and that of my family," said Rahman, who is suing the government to have his identity cleared from the watch list. "I simply could not believe that I, a born U.S. citizen, was going though this experience simply re-entering my own country."
___
Philippines maintains cheapest subsidized rice in Asia
Given the rise in inflation in the Philippines it is certainly good that a basic foodstuff such as rice is available at these subsidized prices. Perhaps the IMF and World Bank may be critical that Arroyo is not letting the Holy Invisible Hand to work its wonders. I am not sure how exactly the subsidized rice is distributed. When I lived in the Philippines a couple of years ago we certainly paid more than 18 pesos a kilo. The rice we bought was about 27 to 30 pesos a kilo. This must be the commercially sold rice the article mentions that now sells for 35 to 40 pesos a kilo. We lived in the Philippines over two years ago.
Philippines maintains cheapest price of subsidized rice in Asia
www.chinaview.cn 2008-07-14 21:58:05
Print
MANILA, July 14 (Xinhua) -- As the world food prices continue to rise, the price of rice in the Philippines is still cheaper compared to other nations in Asia, Philippine President Gloria Macapagal-Arroyo said on Monday.
She said that in Thailand the price of rice is 56 pesos (1.23 U.S. dollars) per kilo, while in Vietnam it is 67 pesos (1.47 dollars). Thailand and Vietnam are the sources of the country's imported rice which is now being sold at 18.25 pesos (0.40 dollars) and 25 pesos (0.547 dollars) per kilo by the National Food Authority (NFA).
Currently, the commercial rice is sold in the market from 35 to40 pesos (0.77 to 0.88 dollars).
"So when we have commercial rice sold at 35 pesos, that's a blessing," the president said in a speech.
The president said that compared to the 25.30 pesos (0.55 dollars) per kilo in Indonesia and 27 pesos (0.59 dollars) per kilo in Malaysia, the country's subsidized rice is still cheaper.
Despite the rice crisis, the president said the national food self-sufficiency and the national fuel conservation are the first principle and state thrust.
"We have a solid plan to attain self-sufficiency in rice in the very near future," the president said as she revealed that the government has already spent two years to increase productivity of rice with the help of the International Rice Research Institute.
The president also said the government has its best response in the longer term to address the global commodity crisis by building up tourism, primary exports and business process outsourcing in the country.
Philippines maintains cheapest price of subsidized rice in Asia
www.chinaview.cn 2008-07-14 21:58:05
MANILA, July 14 (Xinhua) -- As the world food prices continue to rise, the price of rice in the Philippines is still cheaper compared to other nations in Asia, Philippine President Gloria Macapagal-Arroyo said on Monday.
She said that in Thailand the price of rice is 56 pesos (1.23 U.S. dollars) per kilo, while in Vietnam it is 67 pesos (1.47 dollars). Thailand and Vietnam are the sources of the country's imported rice which is now being sold at 18.25 pesos (0.40 dollars) and 25 pesos (0.547 dollars) per kilo by the National Food Authority (NFA).
Currently, the commercial rice is sold in the market from 35 to40 pesos (0.77 to 0.88 dollars).
"So when we have commercial rice sold at 35 pesos, that's a blessing," the president said in a speech.
The president said that compared to the 25.30 pesos (0.55 dollars) per kilo in Indonesia and 27 pesos (0.59 dollars) per kilo in Malaysia, the country's subsidized rice is still cheaper.
Despite the rice crisis, the president said the national food self-sufficiency and the national fuel conservation are the first principle and state thrust.
"We have a solid plan to attain self-sufficiency in rice in the very near future," the president said as she revealed that the government has already spent two years to increase productivity of rice with the help of the International Rice Research Institute.
The president also said the government has its best response in the longer term to address the global commodity crisis by building up tourism, primary exports and business process outsourcing in the country.
A Chinese view on Obama
This is from Xinhua.
This is very much matter of fact reporting and neutral in tone. However, either the article or perhaps it is Obama talks of fighting Al Qaeda in Afghanistan rather than the Taliban. Perhaps neither Xinhua nor Obama sees any difference.
This is the change that Obama will bring, not less war but just as much or maybe more but in a different location! Obama can expect the support of the military industrial complex.
Obama calls for shifting focus from Iraq to Afghanistan
www.chinaview.cn 2008-07-15 06:12:34
Special Report: U.S. presidential election 2008
·Obama would set a goal of shifting more resources to fighting al-Qaida in Afghanistan. ·He also aims to have all U.S. combat brigades out of Iraq by summer 2010. ·He said troop surge has been too costly and has not led to Iraqi political reconciliation.
WASHINGTON, July 14 (Xinhua) -- U.S. Democratic presidential hopeful Barack Obama said Monday that he would set a goal of having all U.S. combat brigades out of Iraq by summer 2010 and shift more resources to fighting al-Qaida in Afghanistan.
U.S. Senator and Democratic Presidential candidate Barack Obama (D-IL), speaks at the National Council of La Raza convention at San Diego's Convention Center July 13, 2008. (Xinhua/Reuters Photo) In an op-ed in The New York Times, the senator from Illinois criticized John McCain, his Republican opponent, and the Bush administration for "refusing to embrace" the idea that Iraqis should take over responsibility for military control of the country and the fight against terrorist and insurgent forces.
He also dismissed the troop surge that McCain supported because he said it's been too costly and has not led to Iraqi political reconciliation.
Obama said current U.S. strategy "is not a strategy for success-- it is a strategy for staying that runs contrary to the will of the Iraqi people, the American people and the security interests of the United States. That is why, on my first day in office, I would give the military a new mission: ending this war."
He pointed to Iraqi Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki's request for a U.S. timetable for withdrawal as an opportunity to "seize this moment to begin the phased redeployment of combat troops that I have long advocated, and that is needed for long-term success in Iraq and the security interests of the United States."
Republican Senator Lindsay Graham of South Carolina, responded to Obama's remarks on behalf of McCain.
"If we had followed his (Obama's) advice, Iraq would have crumbled, al-Qaida would have won and Iran would gain influence," Graham said during a conference call.
It was the second straight day of debate over Iraq policy between the campaigns.
On July 3, Obama kicked off speculation over where his Iraq policy would go after he said he might "refine" his Iraq policy following an upcoming planned trip there.
He quickly sought to put down that speculation.
In Monday's op-ed piece, Obama said he would send at least two more combat brigades to Afghanistan while leaving "a residual force in Iraq."
McCain's campaign said the Arizona senator would speak for his plan for Afghanistan on Thursday.
His advisers declined to say whether he agreed with Obama's Afghanistan proposal before the speech.
This is very much matter of fact reporting and neutral in tone. However, either the article or perhaps it is Obama talks of fighting Al Qaeda in Afghanistan rather than the Taliban. Perhaps neither Xinhua nor Obama sees any difference.
This is the change that Obama will bring, not less war but just as much or maybe more but in a different location! Obama can expect the support of the military industrial complex.
Obama calls for shifting focus from Iraq to Afghanistan
www.chinaview.cn 2008-07-15 06:12:34
Special Report: U.S. presidential election 2008
·Obama would set a goal of shifting more resources to fighting al-Qaida in Afghanistan. ·He also aims to have all U.S. combat brigades out of Iraq by summer 2010. ·He said troop surge has been too costly and has not led to Iraqi political reconciliation.
WASHINGTON, July 14 (Xinhua) -- U.S. Democratic presidential hopeful Barack Obama said Monday that he would set a goal of having all U.S. combat brigades out of Iraq by summer 2010 and shift more resources to fighting al-Qaida in Afghanistan.
U.S. Senator and Democratic Presidential candidate Barack Obama (D-IL), speaks at the National Council of La Raza convention at San Diego's Convention Center July 13, 2008. (Xinhua/Reuters Photo) In an op-ed in The New York Times, the senator from Illinois criticized John McCain, his Republican opponent, and the Bush administration for "refusing to embrace" the idea that Iraqis should take over responsibility for military control of the country and the fight against terrorist and insurgent forces.
He also dismissed the troop surge that McCain supported because he said it's been too costly and has not led to Iraqi political reconciliation.
Obama said current U.S. strategy "is not a strategy for success-- it is a strategy for staying that runs contrary to the will of the Iraqi people, the American people and the security interests of the United States. That is why, on my first day in office, I would give the military a new mission: ending this war."
He pointed to Iraqi Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki's request for a U.S. timetable for withdrawal as an opportunity to "seize this moment to begin the phased redeployment of combat troops that I have long advocated, and that is needed for long-term success in Iraq and the security interests of the United States."
Republican Senator Lindsay Graham of South Carolina, responded to Obama's remarks on behalf of McCain.
"If we had followed his (Obama's) advice, Iraq would have crumbled, al-Qaida would have won and Iran would gain influence," Graham said during a conference call.
It was the second straight day of debate over Iraq policy between the campaigns.
On July 3, Obama kicked off speculation over where his Iraq policy would go after he said he might "refine" his Iraq policy following an upcoming planned trip there.
He quickly sought to put down that speculation.
In Monday's op-ed piece, Obama said he would send at least two more combat brigades to Afghanistan while leaving "a residual force in Iraq."
McCain's campaign said the Arizona senator would speak for his plan for Afghanistan on Thursday.
His advisers declined to say whether he agreed with Obama's Afghanistan proposal before the speech.
More Philippine children staying out of school: Govt.
This is from AFP.
This is a bad sign. I was surprised when I lived in the Philippines to find that school children wore uniforms. Eliminating the uniforms will help somewhat but basically the system needs more money. Salaries are poor for teachers as well, especially in rural areas. There is corruption too in determining who gets what jobs where from what I understand. Given conditions such as this it is not surprising that the Maoist insurgency manages to survive into the twenty first century. What is surprising is that the Arroyo government manages to survive as well!
More Philippines children staying out of school: govt
22 hours ago
MANILA (AFP) — One in six school-age children in the Philippines is being deprived of education and the number is rising steadily, the government said Monday.
The percentage of children enrolled in primary school was down to 83 percent in the 2006-2007 school year from 90 percent five years earlier, the National Statistical Coordination Board said in a study.
The numbers are even worse for secondary education at 59 percent, though they have been steady over five years.
The data "indicate that the country is still far from achieving the goal of providing basic education to all," the government agency said.
President Gloria Arroyo acknowledged last month that the rising cost of food and energy may be pricing education out of the reach of some Filipino families.
She ordered schools not to require their students to wear uniforms to reduce the cost.
This is a bad sign. I was surprised when I lived in the Philippines to find that school children wore uniforms. Eliminating the uniforms will help somewhat but basically the system needs more money. Salaries are poor for teachers as well, especially in rural areas. There is corruption too in determining who gets what jobs where from what I understand. Given conditions such as this it is not surprising that the Maoist insurgency manages to survive into the twenty first century. What is surprising is that the Arroyo government manages to survive as well!
More Philippines children staying out of school: govt
22 hours ago
MANILA (AFP) — One in six school-age children in the Philippines is being deprived of education and the number is rising steadily, the government said Monday.
The percentage of children enrolled in primary school was down to 83 percent in the 2006-2007 school year from 90 percent five years earlier, the National Statistical Coordination Board said in a study.
The numbers are even worse for secondary education at 59 percent, though they have been steady over five years.
The data "indicate that the country is still far from achieving the goal of providing basic education to all," the government agency said.
President Gloria Arroyo acknowledged last month that the rising cost of food and energy may be pricing education out of the reach of some Filipino families.
She ordered schools not to require their students to wear uniforms to reduce the cost.
Monday, July 14, 2008
U.S. visit feeds Pakistani worry over U.S. attack
This is from the wiredispatch.
There seems the possibility of a new alliance between Iran and Pakistan on the one hand and the U.S. and India on the other. However, the U.S. nuclear deal with India is causing problems for the government in India as the communists have left the coalition. The new government of Pakistan is more interested in internal peace than with pleasing the U.S. by pursuing a war against the tribal regions. Such a war will not only loose many Pakistani troops but also foster a rash of suicide and other attacks elsewhere in Pakistan. The relationship between the U.S. supported Karzai govt. and Pakistan is fast deteriorating. The attack on the Indian embassy in Afghanistan may also have involved Pakistani intelligence.
If the US or Israel attacks Iran or if the US violates Pakistani territory more flagrantly than it already has done the situation will become much worse. Obama will be no relief from this policy. Obama is all for doing more in Afghanistan and at one time even said the U.S. should follow insurgents into Pakistan without permission! There is no change with Obama just the same tired old dangerous U.S. imperialism.
U.S. visit feeds Pakistani worry over U.S. attack
Robert BirselReuters North American News Service
Jul 13, 2008 02:22 EST
ISLAMABAD, July 13 (Reuters) - The Chairman of the U.S. Joint Chiefs of Staff, Admiral Mike Mullen, visited Pakistan on the weekend, fueling speculation that the United States was about to take action against militants in northwest Pakistan.
Pakistan has been a close U.S. ally in the global campaign against terrorism but the United States has become increasingly frustrated at what it sees as insufficient effort by Islamabad to fight militants on the Afghan border.
A U.S. embassy spokeswoman confirmed that Mullen had made a one-day trip to Pakistan on Saturday, but said she had no details about his meetings. Pakistani military and government spokesmen were not available for comment.
Pakistani newspapers said Mullen, in talks with Pakistani military commanders and leaders of a new government, had expressed deep frustration with growing cross-border militant attacks and had called for decisive action to stop it.
"Sources quoted Mullen as complaining that militants were moving across the border with greater liberty now than during the previous government," the Dawn newspaper said.
Pakistan's semi-autonomous ethnic Pashtun tribal belt on the border has became a sanctuary for al Qaeda and Taliban militants fighting Western soldiers in Afghanistan and against security forces in Pakistan where 15 soldiers were killed on Saturday.
The U.S. Pentagon said last month insurgent havens in Pakistan were the biggest threat to Afghan security.
Pakistan has ruled out allowing foreign troops onto its soil although U.S. pilotless drones have been increasing their flights, and attacks, over the Pakistani side of the border.
Pakistani Foreign Minister Shah Mahmood Qureshi sought in talks in Washington on Friday to assure the United States his country was doing all it could to fight militants on the border.
"QUITE AGGRESSIVE"
What Pakistanis see as a more aggressive U.S. action on the border has fueled speculation of a U.S. thrust.
Last month, 11 Pakistani border soldiers were killed in a U.S. air strike as U.S. forces battled Taliban militants.
On Saturday, Pakistan lodged a protest with the United States over fire from Afghanistan on Thursday that wounded six Pakistani soldiers. Afghanistan's NATO force blamed militants for the fire saying they were trying to "spark a border incident".
Feeding the worry, some U.S. politicians, including presidential candidate Barack Obama, have said the United States could attack al Qaeda inside Pakistan without Pakistani approval.
A new government took power after President Pervez Musharraf's allies were defeated in February elections, vowing to negotiate an end to violence, but U.S. commanders in Afghanistan say such peace efforts have led to more militant attacks there.
Many Pakistanis oppose the U.S. campaign against militancy and blame Musharraf's cooperation with the United States for inciting violence. Any U.S. action in Pakistan would only exacerbate the problem, they say.
The News newspaper said Mullen was accompanied by officials of the U.S. Central Intelligence Agency: "Apparently the Americans were quite aggressive in their claims," it said.
NATO commanders in Afghanistan have said there mandate goes only as far as the border and their troops would go no further but such statements have done little to dampen speculation of a U.S. attack into Pakistan.
"Newspapers keep reporting this but there is an understanding between the government of Pakistan and the NATO and U.S. forces which I don't think the U.S. would violate," said a senior Pakistani official, who declined to be identified.
But an analyst said limited U.S. strikes were possible.
"I would not say that they would come with full ground forces because they understand that would be a great folly," said security analyst and retired general Talat Masood.
"But it is possible that if they find that there is a cluster of militants which has to be dealt with, they might land some commandos," he said. (Additional reporting by Augustine Anthony; Editing by David Fox)
Source: Reuters North American News Service
There seems the possibility of a new alliance between Iran and Pakistan on the one hand and the U.S. and India on the other. However, the U.S. nuclear deal with India is causing problems for the government in India as the communists have left the coalition. The new government of Pakistan is more interested in internal peace than with pleasing the U.S. by pursuing a war against the tribal regions. Such a war will not only loose many Pakistani troops but also foster a rash of suicide and other attacks elsewhere in Pakistan. The relationship between the U.S. supported Karzai govt. and Pakistan is fast deteriorating. The attack on the Indian embassy in Afghanistan may also have involved Pakistani intelligence.
If the US or Israel attacks Iran or if the US violates Pakistani territory more flagrantly than it already has done the situation will become much worse. Obama will be no relief from this policy. Obama is all for doing more in Afghanistan and at one time even said the U.S. should follow insurgents into Pakistan without permission! There is no change with Obama just the same tired old dangerous U.S. imperialism.
U.S. visit feeds Pakistani worry over U.S. attack
Robert BirselReuters North American News Service
Jul 13, 2008 02:22 EST
ISLAMABAD, July 13 (Reuters) - The Chairman of the U.S. Joint Chiefs of Staff, Admiral Mike Mullen, visited Pakistan on the weekend, fueling speculation that the United States was about to take action against militants in northwest Pakistan.
Pakistan has been a close U.S. ally in the global campaign against terrorism but the United States has become increasingly frustrated at what it sees as insufficient effort by Islamabad to fight militants on the Afghan border.
A U.S. embassy spokeswoman confirmed that Mullen had made a one-day trip to Pakistan on Saturday, but said she had no details about his meetings. Pakistani military and government spokesmen were not available for comment.
Pakistani newspapers said Mullen, in talks with Pakistani military commanders and leaders of a new government, had expressed deep frustration with growing cross-border militant attacks and had called for decisive action to stop it.
"Sources quoted Mullen as complaining that militants were moving across the border with greater liberty now than during the previous government," the Dawn newspaper said.
Pakistan's semi-autonomous ethnic Pashtun tribal belt on the border has became a sanctuary for al Qaeda and Taliban militants fighting Western soldiers in Afghanistan and against security forces in Pakistan where 15 soldiers were killed on Saturday.
The U.S. Pentagon said last month insurgent havens in Pakistan were the biggest threat to Afghan security.
Pakistan has ruled out allowing foreign troops onto its soil although U.S. pilotless drones have been increasing their flights, and attacks, over the Pakistani side of the border.
Pakistani Foreign Minister Shah Mahmood Qureshi sought in talks in Washington on Friday to assure the United States his country was doing all it could to fight militants on the border.
"QUITE AGGRESSIVE"
What Pakistanis see as a more aggressive U.S. action on the border has fueled speculation of a U.S. thrust.
Last month, 11 Pakistani border soldiers were killed in a U.S. air strike as U.S. forces battled Taliban militants.
On Saturday, Pakistan lodged a protest with the United States over fire from Afghanistan on Thursday that wounded six Pakistani soldiers. Afghanistan's NATO force blamed militants for the fire saying they were trying to "spark a border incident".
Feeding the worry, some U.S. politicians, including presidential candidate Barack Obama, have said the United States could attack al Qaeda inside Pakistan without Pakistani approval.
A new government took power after President Pervez Musharraf's allies were defeated in February elections, vowing to negotiate an end to violence, but U.S. commanders in Afghanistan say such peace efforts have led to more militant attacks there.
Many Pakistanis oppose the U.S. campaign against militancy and blame Musharraf's cooperation with the United States for inciting violence. Any U.S. action in Pakistan would only exacerbate the problem, they say.
The News newspaper said Mullen was accompanied by officials of the U.S. Central Intelligence Agency: "Apparently the Americans were quite aggressive in their claims," it said.
NATO commanders in Afghanistan have said there mandate goes only as far as the border and their troops would go no further but such statements have done little to dampen speculation of a U.S. attack into Pakistan.
"Newspapers keep reporting this but there is an understanding between the government of Pakistan and the NATO and U.S. forces which I don't think the U.S. would violate," said a senior Pakistani official, who declined to be identified.
But an analyst said limited U.S. strikes were possible.
"I would not say that they would come with full ground forces because they understand that would be a great folly," said security analyst and retired general Talat Masood.
"But it is possible that if they find that there is a cluster of militants which has to be dealt with, they might land some commandos," he said. (Additional reporting by Augustine Anthony; Editing by David Fox)
Source: Reuters North American News Service
Afghan survivors tell of wedding bombing
This is from the BBC.
These U.S. bombings are one of the most effective recruiting aids for the Taliban. As usual the U.S. response starts out with complete denial that any but insurgents were involved but then as facts start to amass against that position gradually change their tune and at the same time hope that the whole issue will fall off the radar screen. It will in the U.S.
Afghan survivors tell of wedding bombing
The BBC's Alastair Leithead is the first journalist to reach the scene of a US air raid which Afghan authorities say killed about 50 civilians in the east of the country on 6 July. He reports on what he found:
On a hillside high in the mountains of eastern Afghanistan there are three charred clearings where the American bombs struck.
Scattered around are chunks of twisted metal, blood stains and small fragments of sequinned and brightly decorated clothes - the material Afghan brides wear on their wedding day.
After hours of driving to the village deep in the bandit country of Nangarhar's mountains we heard time and again the terrible account of that awful day.
What began as celebration ended with maybe 52 people dead, most of them women and children, and others badly injured.
The US forces said they targeted insurgents in a strike. But from what I saw with my own eyes and heard from the many mourners, no militants were among the dead.
Bombing children
A big double wedding was taking place between two families, with each exchanging a bride and a groom.
So Lal Zareen's son and daughter were both getting married on the same day.
He gave the account with his son, a 13-year-old groom, sitting at his feet.
"This is all the family I now have left," he said in a disturbingly matter of fact sort of way.
From his story and from those of other survivors, it appears the wedding group was crossing a narrow pass in the mountains which divides the valleys where the two families live.
From nowhere a fast jet flew low and dropped a bomb right on top of the pass near a group of children who had impatiently rushed ahead and were resting, waiting for the women to catch up.
Lal Zareen was waiting expectantly for the guests to arrive when he heard the explosion and began to climb up the steep mountain track to the pass.
Shah Zareen was part of the group up on the path - he had narrowly escaped being caught in the first bomb and told the women to stay where they were as he rushed to help the children.
Second blast
Shah Zareen picked up one of the injured, ran down to the village and on his way was calling his local member of parliament on a mobile phone to say they had been attacked.
But then he heard the second blast - the bomb had been dropped on top of the women and almost all of them had been killed.
Three girls escaped, among them the bride, but as they ran down the hillside a third bomb landed on top of them.
Shah Zareen explained to me how one of the many new graves contained just body parts of two or three people and the graves that had been dug and not filled were for those still missing - once their remains had been found.
The BBC team I was with were the first outsiders to see where the bombs hit - even the Afghan investigators did not climb up the steep mountainside - and there was much evidence to support the story.
The fact we could travel to the area in local cars was proof that Taleban insurgents, al-Qaeda operatives or foreign fighters were not present in the valley.
The local people said they had not seen militants, but admitted there could have been people crossing the high pass as the next ridge along leads to Tora Bora, the notorious insurgent area.
Costly mistakes
The US military says it is investigating the incident and it is understood they may have some aerial footage from hours earlier showing insurgents moving nearby.
But it is obvious a huge mistake was made on 6 July. A US statement about the bombing said "any loss of innocent life is tragic".
"I assure you we do not target civilians and that our forces go to great lengths to avoid civilian casualties," said Lt Nathan Perry.
The US no longer insists the dead were insurgents, as it did for two days after the bombing, but it could be some time before the investigation is complete.
Civilian casualties are not new to Nangarhar province - last year a convoy of US Marines was hit by a bomb attack and in the chaos they opened fire in a bazaar killing 19 people.
They were sent home and their officers charged, but a subsequent ruling cleared them of any responsibility for the deaths.
I wonder how many enemies have been created in Nangahar as a result of the latest bloodshed?
Mirwais Yasini, a local MP and the deputy speaker of Afghanistan's lower house, made the point that civilian casualties widen the gap between the people and the government, and the international forces.
As another memorial service took place in the mountains, Lal Zareen told me: "I want President Karzai to make sure the people responsible for this face justice."
That will depend on the US findings and how the Afghan government acts.
These mistakes are incredibly costly in a counter-insurgency campaign which relies on winning people over, not forcing them against the authorities.
I wonder how many enemies have been created in Nangarhar as a result of the latest bloodshed?
These U.S. bombings are one of the most effective recruiting aids for the Taliban. As usual the U.S. response starts out with complete denial that any but insurgents were involved but then as facts start to amass against that position gradually change their tune and at the same time hope that the whole issue will fall off the radar screen. It will in the U.S.
Afghan survivors tell of wedding bombing
The BBC's Alastair Leithead is the first journalist to reach the scene of a US air raid which Afghan authorities say killed about 50 civilians in the east of the country on 6 July. He reports on what he found:
On a hillside high in the mountains of eastern Afghanistan there are three charred clearings where the American bombs struck.
Scattered around are chunks of twisted metal, blood stains and small fragments of sequinned and brightly decorated clothes - the material Afghan brides wear on their wedding day.
After hours of driving to the village deep in the bandit country of Nangarhar's mountains we heard time and again the terrible account of that awful day.
What began as celebration ended with maybe 52 people dead, most of them women and children, and others badly injured.
The US forces said they targeted insurgents in a strike. But from what I saw with my own eyes and heard from the many mourners, no militants were among the dead.
Bombing children
A big double wedding was taking place between two families, with each exchanging a bride and a groom.
So Lal Zareen's son and daughter were both getting married on the same day.
He gave the account with his son, a 13-year-old groom, sitting at his feet.
"This is all the family I now have left," he said in a disturbingly matter of fact sort of way.
From his story and from those of other survivors, it appears the wedding group was crossing a narrow pass in the mountains which divides the valleys where the two families live.
From nowhere a fast jet flew low and dropped a bomb right on top of the pass near a group of children who had impatiently rushed ahead and were resting, waiting for the women to catch up.
Lal Zareen was waiting expectantly for the guests to arrive when he heard the explosion and began to climb up the steep mountain track to the pass.
Shah Zareen was part of the group up on the path - he had narrowly escaped being caught in the first bomb and told the women to stay where they were as he rushed to help the children.
Second blast
Shah Zareen picked up one of the injured, ran down to the village and on his way was calling his local member of parliament on a mobile phone to say they had been attacked.
But then he heard the second blast - the bomb had been dropped on top of the women and almost all of them had been killed.
Three girls escaped, among them the bride, but as they ran down the hillside a third bomb landed on top of them.
Shah Zareen explained to me how one of the many new graves contained just body parts of two or three people and the graves that had been dug and not filled were for those still missing - once their remains had been found.
The BBC team I was with were the first outsiders to see where the bombs hit - even the Afghan investigators did not climb up the steep mountainside - and there was much evidence to support the story.
The fact we could travel to the area in local cars was proof that Taleban insurgents, al-Qaeda operatives or foreign fighters were not present in the valley.
The local people said they had not seen militants, but admitted there could have been people crossing the high pass as the next ridge along leads to Tora Bora, the notorious insurgent area.
Costly mistakes
The US military says it is investigating the incident and it is understood they may have some aerial footage from hours earlier showing insurgents moving nearby.
But it is obvious a huge mistake was made on 6 July. A US statement about the bombing said "any loss of innocent life is tragic".
"I assure you we do not target civilians and that our forces go to great lengths to avoid civilian casualties," said Lt Nathan Perry.
The US no longer insists the dead were insurgents, as it did for two days after the bombing, but it could be some time before the investigation is complete.
Civilian casualties are not new to Nangarhar province - last year a convoy of US Marines was hit by a bomb attack and in the chaos they opened fire in a bazaar killing 19 people.
They were sent home and their officers charged, but a subsequent ruling cleared them of any responsibility for the deaths.
I wonder how many enemies have been created in Nangahar as a result of the latest bloodshed?
Mirwais Yasini, a local MP and the deputy speaker of Afghanistan's lower house, made the point that civilian casualties widen the gap between the people and the government, and the international forces.
As another memorial service took place in the mountains, Lal Zareen told me: "I want President Karzai to make sure the people responsible for this face justice."
That will depend on the US findings and how the Afghan government acts.
These mistakes are incredibly costly in a counter-insurgency campaign which relies on winning people over, not forcing them against the authorities.
I wonder how many enemies have been created in Nangarhar as a result of the latest bloodshed?
Sunday, July 13, 2008
Retired Military Leaders Oppose Provocative House Resolution on Iran
The U.S. seems bound and determined to provoke a confrontation with Iran. Perhaps Israel is egging it on. This resolution just adds fuel to the developing conflict. The missile tests by Iran are regarded by the U.S. as provocative but somehow actions such as Bush supporting an attack by Israel, or the U.S. engaging in exercises in the Straits of Hormuz, or passing a resolution such as this are not supposed to be provocative. The hypocrisy is startling except that it is so common that the mainstream press does not even notice it.
Retired Military Leaders Oppose Provocative House Resolution on Iran
WASHINGTON - July 11 - Three retired military leaders sent a letter to lawmakers urging them to abandon a resolution currently making its way through Congress that might lead to a blockade or the use of force against Iran. The retired military leaders say H.Con.Res. 362 is “poorly conceived, poorly timed, and potentially dangerous.”
The full text of the letter – signed by Lt. General Robert G. Gard, Jr., U.S. Army (ret.); former Assistant Secretary of Defense Dr. Lawrence J. Korb; and Vice Admiral Jack Shanahan, U.S. Navy (ret.) – is available online here.
All three signatories to the letter are available for interviews. Media inquiries for Lt. General Gard should be directed to Carah Ong at 202.378.3334; inquiries for Admiral Shanahan should be directed to Lauren Coletta at 202.841.2381; inquiries for Dr. Lawrence Korb to 202.741.6388.
Both Common Cause and Council for a Livable World solicited the opinions of these experienced individuals to gain a better understanding of the potential military implications of the resolution.
The military leaders cite language in the resolution demanding the President initiate an international effort “prohibiting the export to Iran of all refined petroleum products; imposing stringent inspection requirements on all persons, vehicles, ships, planes, trains, and cargo entering or departing Iran,” as particularly concerning. The retired military leaders believe that implementation of inspections of this nature could not be accomplished without a blockade or the use of force.
According to their letter, “Immense military resources would be required to implement such inspections of cargo moving through the seas, on the ground and in the air. The international community has shown no willingness to join in such an activity. Without a Security Council Resolution, implementation of these measures could be construed as an act of war.”
Additionally, the retired military leaders say, “Implementation of measures called for in the resolution could complicate our operations in Iraq and Afghanistan and could cause oil prices to soar.”
The letter concludes that while H. Con. Res. 362 as a concurrent resolution does not have the force of law, it clearly risks sending a message to the Iranians, the Bush Administration, and the world that Congress supports a more belligerent policy toward Iran.
According to the military experts, “In our view, H. Con. Res. 362 in no way furthers our diplomatic efforts or those of our European allies and should be abandoned.”
The full text of the letter is available online here.
Founded by nuclear scientist Leo Szilard in 1962, Council for a Livable World provides Members of Congress with technical information and operates a Candidate Fund that helps elect candidates who support sensible national security policies. Visit the Council online at http://www.clw.orgCommon Cause is a nonpartisan, nonprofit advocacy organization founded in 1970 by John Gardner as a vehicle for citizens to make their voices heard in the political process and to hold their elected leaders accountable to the public interest. Visit Common Cause online at www.commoncause.org
Retired Military Leaders Oppose Provocative House Resolution on Iran
WASHINGTON - July 11 - Three retired military leaders sent a letter to lawmakers urging them to abandon a resolution currently making its way through Congress that might lead to a blockade or the use of force against Iran. The retired military leaders say H.Con.Res. 362 is “poorly conceived, poorly timed, and potentially dangerous.”
The full text of the letter – signed by Lt. General Robert G. Gard, Jr., U.S. Army (ret.); former Assistant Secretary of Defense Dr. Lawrence J. Korb; and Vice Admiral Jack Shanahan, U.S. Navy (ret.) – is available online here.
All three signatories to the letter are available for interviews. Media inquiries for Lt. General Gard should be directed to Carah Ong at 202.378.3334; inquiries for Admiral Shanahan should be directed to Lauren Coletta at 202.841.2381; inquiries for Dr. Lawrence Korb to 202.741.6388.
Both Common Cause and Council for a Livable World solicited the opinions of these experienced individuals to gain a better understanding of the potential military implications of the resolution.
The military leaders cite language in the resolution demanding the President initiate an international effort “prohibiting the export to Iran of all refined petroleum products; imposing stringent inspection requirements on all persons, vehicles, ships, planes, trains, and cargo entering or departing Iran,” as particularly concerning. The retired military leaders believe that implementation of inspections of this nature could not be accomplished without a blockade or the use of force.
According to their letter, “Immense military resources would be required to implement such inspections of cargo moving through the seas, on the ground and in the air. The international community has shown no willingness to join in such an activity. Without a Security Council Resolution, implementation of these measures could be construed as an act of war.”
Additionally, the retired military leaders say, “Implementation of measures called for in the resolution could complicate our operations in Iraq and Afghanistan and could cause oil prices to soar.”
The letter concludes that while H. Con. Res. 362 as a concurrent resolution does not have the force of law, it clearly risks sending a message to the Iranians, the Bush Administration, and the world that Congress supports a more belligerent policy toward Iran.
According to the military experts, “In our view, H. Con. Res. 362 in no way furthers our diplomatic efforts or those of our European allies and should be abandoned.”
The full text of the letter is available online here.
Founded by nuclear scientist Leo Szilard in 1962, Council for a Livable World provides Members of Congress with technical information and operates a Candidate Fund that helps elect candidates who support sensible national security policies. Visit the Council online at http://www.clw.orgCommon Cause is a nonpartisan, nonprofit advocacy organization founded in 1970 by John Gardner as a vehicle for citizens to make their voices heard in the political process and to hold their elected leaders accountable to the public interest. Visit Common Cause online at www.commoncause.org
UN experts to start assessing toxic threat on Tuesday.
This is from abs-cbn.
This story is not on the mainstream western press and probably won't be unless this turns into another disaster. Not only are there several pesiticides involved as cargo in the container van but there is a lot of bunker fuel as well. The article is not too informative as to whether there is much if any leakage as yet. The situations sounds quite dangerous.
UN experts to start assessing toxic threat on Tuesday
Experts from the United Nations (UN) will spend a week assessing the environmental threat posed by the sunken ferry MV Princess of the Stars beginning Tuesday, an official said. Transportation and Communication Undersecretary Elena Bautista, head of Task Force MV Princess of the Stars, said the UN team will determine if there is a need to dispatch a bigger group of specialists to Sibuyan Island, Romblon to salvage the toxic endosulfan cargoBautista said she will meet with the foreign experts on Monday. “They will be there to make an assessment and join up with the team from Bureau of Fisheries and Aquatic Resources that has established a laboratory on site so that they can more regularly test the water samples,” she told ANC. The international team of experts arrived in the Philippines on Friday amid concerns that the highly toxic endosulfan, stored in a container van that is still in the ship's hull, plus 10,000 liters of bunker fuel, could cause a major ecological disaster. The three-member team -- a marine chemist, an eco-toxicologist and a civil protection expert -- will spend a week in the Philippines to assess the situation and determine priority needs, reports said.The experts were deployed jointly by the UN and the European Union (EU) at the request of Philippine authorities. An on-going threat In an interview with abs-cbnNEWS.com/Newsbreak, Health Secretary Francisco Duque said the government is testing the waters in the vicinity of the ship daily in an attempt to prevent food poisoning and other problems from breaking out in Romblon province. "The [environmental] threat is still there. It's an ongoing threat, so we are monitoring through testing of the water every day. That is the agreement in the task force," he said. Duque said the Philippine government sought the help of foreign experts from the UN and EU since the Philippines lacks the expertise and equipment in managing the environmental threat. "Well, we need as much support and assistance as we can to facilitate the mitigation and the resolution of the problem with regard to the sunken vessel, the recovery of the bodies inside the sunken vessel, the removal of the endosulfan pesticide, as well as the four other toxic insecticides inside the containers of the sunken vessel," he said.Asked about fears that the sea current may cause a regional toxic chemical spill, Duque said: "Well, it depends on the volume of the fuel that is there and the chemicals. And then you have the danger of mixture of the chemicals and the fuel." He said the government still does not know whether there is enough time left to avoid a second disaster from happening. "You're talking about modeling, what could happen after one month. Well, it's very difficult. We need to make some very careful assumptions as to what risks may increase over time, and the longer it takes to get the sunken vessel refloated, what could be the possible consequences," Duque said. "There are many possible consequences."
This story is not on the mainstream western press and probably won't be unless this turns into another disaster. Not only are there several pesiticides involved as cargo in the container van but there is a lot of bunker fuel as well. The article is not too informative as to whether there is much if any leakage as yet. The situations sounds quite dangerous.
UN experts to start assessing toxic threat on Tuesday
Experts from the United Nations (UN) will spend a week assessing the environmental threat posed by the sunken ferry MV Princess of the Stars beginning Tuesday, an official said. Transportation and Communication Undersecretary Elena Bautista, head of Task Force MV Princess of the Stars, said the UN team will determine if there is a need to dispatch a bigger group of specialists to Sibuyan Island, Romblon to salvage the toxic endosulfan cargoBautista said she will meet with the foreign experts on Monday. “They will be there to make an assessment and join up with the team from Bureau of Fisheries and Aquatic Resources that has established a laboratory on site so that they can more regularly test the water samples,” she told ANC. The international team of experts arrived in the Philippines on Friday amid concerns that the highly toxic endosulfan, stored in a container van that is still in the ship's hull, plus 10,000 liters of bunker fuel, could cause a major ecological disaster. The three-member team -- a marine chemist, an eco-toxicologist and a civil protection expert -- will spend a week in the Philippines to assess the situation and determine priority needs, reports said.The experts were deployed jointly by the UN and the European Union (EU) at the request of Philippine authorities. An on-going threat In an interview with abs-cbnNEWS.com/Newsbreak, Health Secretary Francisco Duque said the government is testing the waters in the vicinity of the ship daily in an attempt to prevent food poisoning and other problems from breaking out in Romblon province. "The [environmental] threat is still there. It's an ongoing threat, so we are monitoring through testing of the water every day. That is the agreement in the task force," he said. Duque said the Philippine government sought the help of foreign experts from the UN and EU since the Philippines lacks the expertise and equipment in managing the environmental threat. "Well, we need as much support and assistance as we can to facilitate the mitigation and the resolution of the problem with regard to the sunken vessel, the recovery of the bodies inside the sunken vessel, the removal of the endosulfan pesticide, as well as the four other toxic insecticides inside the containers of the sunken vessel," he said.Asked about fears that the sea current may cause a regional toxic chemical spill, Duque said: "Well, it depends on the volume of the fuel that is there and the chemicals. And then you have the danger of mixture of the chemicals and the fuel." He said the government still does not know whether there is enough time left to avoid a second disaster from happening. "You're talking about modeling, what could happen after one month. Well, it's very difficult. We need to make some very careful assumptions as to what risks may increase over time, and the longer it takes to get the sunken vessel refloated, what could be the possible consequences," Duque said. "There are many possible consequences."
Bush backs Israeli plan for strike on Iran
This is from TimesonLine.
The article is jumping the gun a little in that Bush merely said that he was prepared to approve a military strike if negotiations break down. If Israel decides to strike Iran they will do so without or without the blessing of the U.S. It seems Bush or some in his administration want to strike Iran before he leaves office so perhaps there is collusion between the U.S. and Israel on this matter. However, given the mess the U.S. is in already it seems very foolhardy to start a conflict with Iran now. Perhaps Bush thinks that this will unite Americans and take their mind off the economic mess in the country. Everyone will be concentrating upon being super patriotic and contributing to the war effort. The U.S. is on a course to disaster while the American media tell you about the latest trivialities about Obama and McCain as if it mattered.
Israel could very well force the U.S. hand if it is attacked by Iran after attacking Iran itself.
President George W Bush backs Israeli plan for strike on Iran
As Tehran tests new missiles, America believes only a show of force can deter President Ahmadinejad
President George W Bush: US officials acknowledge that no American president can afford to remain idle if Israel is threatened
Uzi Mahnaimi in Washington
President George W Bush has told the Israeli government that he may be prepared to approve a future military strike on Iranian nuclear facilities if negotiations with Tehran break down, according to a senior Pentagon official.
Despite the opposition of his own generals and widespread scepticism that America is ready to risk the military, political and economic consequences of an airborne strike on Iran, the president has given an “amber light” to an Israeli plan to attack Iran’s main nuclear sites with long-range bombing sorties, the official told The Sunday Times.
“Amber means get on with your preparations, stand by for immediate attack and tell us when you’re ready,” the official said. But the Israelis have also been told that they can expect no help from American forces and will not be able to use US military bases in Iraq for logistical support.
Nor is it certain that Bush’s amber light would ever turn to green without irrefutable evidence of lethal Iranian hostility. Tehran’s test launches of medium-range ballistic missiles last week were seen in Washington as provocative and poorly judged, but both the Pentagon and the CIA concluded that they did not represent an immediate threat of attack against Israeli or US targets.
“It’s really all down to the Israelis,” the Pentagon official added. “This administration will not attack Iran. This has already been decided. But the president is really preoccupied with the nuclear threat against Israel and I know he doesn’t believe that anything but force will deter Iran.”
The official added that Israel had not so far presented Bush with a convincing military proposal. “If there is no solid plan, the amber will never turn to green,” he said.
There was also resistance inside the Pentagon from officers concerned about Iranian retaliation. “The uniform people are opposed to the attack plans, mainly because they think it will endanger our soldiers in Iraq and Afghanistan,” the source said.
Complicating the calculations in both Washington and Tel Aviv is the prospect of an incoming Democratic president who has already made it clear that he prefers negotiation to the use of force.
Senator Barack Obama’s previous opposition to the war in Iraq, and his apparent doubts about the urgency of the Iranian threat, have intensified pressure on the Israeli hawks to act before November’s US presidential election. “If I were an Israeli I wouldn’t wait,” the Pentagon official added.
The latest round of regional tension was sparked by the Iranian Revolutionary Guard, which fired nine long and medium-range missiles in war game manoeuvres in the Gulf last Wednesday.
Iran’s state-run media reported that one of them was a modified Shahab-3 ballistic missile, which has a claimed range of 1,250 miles and could theoretically deliver a one-ton nuclear warhead over Israeli cities. Tel Aviv is about 650 miles from western Iran. General Hossein Salami, a senior Revolutionary Guard commander, boasted that “our hands are always on the trigger and our missiles are ready for launch”.
Condoleezza Rice, the US secretary of state, said she saw the launches as “evidence that the missile threat is not an imaginary one”, although the impact of the Iranian stunt was diminished on Thursday when it became clear that a photograph purporting to show the missiles being launched had been faked.
The one thing that all sides agree on is that any strike by either Iran or Israel would trigger a catastrophic round of retaliation that would rock global oil markets, send the price of petrol soaring and wreck the progress of the US military effort in Iraq.
Abdalla Salem El-Badri, secretary-general of Opec, the oil producers’ consortium, said last week that a military conflict involving Iran would see an “unlimited” rise in prices because any loss of Iranian production — or constriction of shipments through the Strait of Hormuz — could not be replaced. Iran is Opec’s second-largest producer after Saudi Arabia.
Equally worrying for Bush would be the impact on the US mission in Iraq, which after years of turmoil has seen gains from the military “surge” of the past few months, and on American operations in the wider region. A senior Iranian official said yesterday that Iran would destroy Israel and 32 American military bases in the Middle East in response to any attack.
Yet US officials acknowledge that no American president can afford to remain idle if Israel is threatened. How genuine the Iranian threat is was the subject of intense debate last week, with some analysts arguing that Iran might have a useable nuclear weapon by next spring and others convinced that President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad is engaged in a dangerous game of bluffing — mainly to impress a domestic Iranian audience that is struggling with economic setbacks and beginning to question his leadership.
Among the sceptics is Kenneth Katzman, a former CIA analyst and author of a book on the Revolutionary Guard. “I don’t subscribe to the view that Iran is in a position to inflict devastating damage on anyone,” said Katzman, who is best known for warning shortly before 9/11 that terrorists were planning to attack America.
“The Revolutionary Guards have always underperformed militarily,” he said. “Their equipment is quite inaccurate if not outright inoperable. Those missile launches were more like putting up a ‘beware of the dog’ sign. They want everyone to think that if you mess with them, you will get bitten.”
A former adviser to Rice noted that Ahmadinejad’s confrontational attitude had earned him powerful enemies among Iran’s religious leadership. Professor Shai Feldman, director of Middle East studies at Brandeis University, said the Iranian government was getting “clobbered” because of global economic strains. “His [Ahmadinejad's] failed policies have made Iran more vulnerable to sanctions and people close to the mullahs have decided he’s a liability,” he said.
In Israel, Ehud Olmert, the prime minister, has his own domestic problems with a corruption scandal that threatens to unseat him and the media have been rife with speculation that he might order an attack on Iran to distract attention from his difficulties. According to one of his closest friends, Olmert recently warned him that “in three months’ time it will be a different Middle East”.
Yet even the most hawkish officials acknowledge that Israel would face what would arguably be the most challenging military mission of its 60-year existence.
“No one here is talking about more than delaying the [nuclear] programme,” said the Pentagon source. He added that Israel would need to set back the Iranians by at least five years for an attack to be considered a success.
Even that may be beyond Israel’s competence if it has to act alone. Obvious targets would include Iran’s Isfahan plant, where uranium ore is converted into gas, the Natanz complex where this gas is used to enrich uranium in centrifuges and the plutonium-producing Arak heavy water plant. But Iran is known to have scattered other elements of its nuclear programme in underground facilities around the country. Neither US nor Israeli intelligence is certain that it knows where everything is.
“Maybe the Israelis could start off the attack and have us finish it off,” Katzman added. “And maybe that has been their intention all along. But in terms of the long-term military campaign that would be needed to permanently suppress Iran’s nuclear programme, only the US is perceived as having that capability right now.”
Additional reporting: Tony Allen-Mills in New York
The article is jumping the gun a little in that Bush merely said that he was prepared to approve a military strike if negotiations break down. If Israel decides to strike Iran they will do so without or without the blessing of the U.S. It seems Bush or some in his administration want to strike Iran before he leaves office so perhaps there is collusion between the U.S. and Israel on this matter. However, given the mess the U.S. is in already it seems very foolhardy to start a conflict with Iran now. Perhaps Bush thinks that this will unite Americans and take their mind off the economic mess in the country. Everyone will be concentrating upon being super patriotic and contributing to the war effort. The U.S. is on a course to disaster while the American media tell you about the latest trivialities about Obama and McCain as if it mattered.
Israel could very well force the U.S. hand if it is attacked by Iran after attacking Iran itself.
President George W Bush backs Israeli plan for strike on Iran
As Tehran tests new missiles, America believes only a show of force can deter President Ahmadinejad
President George W Bush: US officials acknowledge that no American president can afford to remain idle if Israel is threatened
Uzi Mahnaimi in Washington
President George W Bush has told the Israeli government that he may be prepared to approve a future military strike on Iranian nuclear facilities if negotiations with Tehran break down, according to a senior Pentagon official.
Despite the opposition of his own generals and widespread scepticism that America is ready to risk the military, political and economic consequences of an airborne strike on Iran, the president has given an “amber light” to an Israeli plan to attack Iran’s main nuclear sites with long-range bombing sorties, the official told The Sunday Times.
“Amber means get on with your preparations, stand by for immediate attack and tell us when you’re ready,” the official said. But the Israelis have also been told that they can expect no help from American forces and will not be able to use US military bases in Iraq for logistical support.
Nor is it certain that Bush’s amber light would ever turn to green without irrefutable evidence of lethal Iranian hostility. Tehran’s test launches of medium-range ballistic missiles last week were seen in Washington as provocative and poorly judged, but both the Pentagon and the CIA concluded that they did not represent an immediate threat of attack against Israeli or US targets.
“It’s really all down to the Israelis,” the Pentagon official added. “This administration will not attack Iran. This has already been decided. But the president is really preoccupied with the nuclear threat against Israel and I know he doesn’t believe that anything but force will deter Iran.”
The official added that Israel had not so far presented Bush with a convincing military proposal. “If there is no solid plan, the amber will never turn to green,” he said.
There was also resistance inside the Pentagon from officers concerned about Iranian retaliation. “The uniform people are opposed to the attack plans, mainly because they think it will endanger our soldiers in Iraq and Afghanistan,” the source said.
Complicating the calculations in both Washington and Tel Aviv is the prospect of an incoming Democratic president who has already made it clear that he prefers negotiation to the use of force.
Senator Barack Obama’s previous opposition to the war in Iraq, and his apparent doubts about the urgency of the Iranian threat, have intensified pressure on the Israeli hawks to act before November’s US presidential election. “If I were an Israeli I wouldn’t wait,” the Pentagon official added.
The latest round of regional tension was sparked by the Iranian Revolutionary Guard, which fired nine long and medium-range missiles in war game manoeuvres in the Gulf last Wednesday.
Iran’s state-run media reported that one of them was a modified Shahab-3 ballistic missile, which has a claimed range of 1,250 miles and could theoretically deliver a one-ton nuclear warhead over Israeli cities. Tel Aviv is about 650 miles from western Iran. General Hossein Salami, a senior Revolutionary Guard commander, boasted that “our hands are always on the trigger and our missiles are ready for launch”.
Condoleezza Rice, the US secretary of state, said she saw the launches as “evidence that the missile threat is not an imaginary one”, although the impact of the Iranian stunt was diminished on Thursday when it became clear that a photograph purporting to show the missiles being launched had been faked.
The one thing that all sides agree on is that any strike by either Iran or Israel would trigger a catastrophic round of retaliation that would rock global oil markets, send the price of petrol soaring and wreck the progress of the US military effort in Iraq.
Abdalla Salem El-Badri, secretary-general of Opec, the oil producers’ consortium, said last week that a military conflict involving Iran would see an “unlimited” rise in prices because any loss of Iranian production — or constriction of shipments through the Strait of Hormuz — could not be replaced. Iran is Opec’s second-largest producer after Saudi Arabia.
Equally worrying for Bush would be the impact on the US mission in Iraq, which after years of turmoil has seen gains from the military “surge” of the past few months, and on American operations in the wider region. A senior Iranian official said yesterday that Iran would destroy Israel and 32 American military bases in the Middle East in response to any attack.
Yet US officials acknowledge that no American president can afford to remain idle if Israel is threatened. How genuine the Iranian threat is was the subject of intense debate last week, with some analysts arguing that Iran might have a useable nuclear weapon by next spring and others convinced that President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad is engaged in a dangerous game of bluffing — mainly to impress a domestic Iranian audience that is struggling with economic setbacks and beginning to question his leadership.
Among the sceptics is Kenneth Katzman, a former CIA analyst and author of a book on the Revolutionary Guard. “I don’t subscribe to the view that Iran is in a position to inflict devastating damage on anyone,” said Katzman, who is best known for warning shortly before 9/11 that terrorists were planning to attack America.
“The Revolutionary Guards have always underperformed militarily,” he said. “Their equipment is quite inaccurate if not outright inoperable. Those missile launches were more like putting up a ‘beware of the dog’ sign. They want everyone to think that if you mess with them, you will get bitten.”
A former adviser to Rice noted that Ahmadinejad’s confrontational attitude had earned him powerful enemies among Iran’s religious leadership. Professor Shai Feldman, director of Middle East studies at Brandeis University, said the Iranian government was getting “clobbered” because of global economic strains. “His [Ahmadinejad's] failed policies have made Iran more vulnerable to sanctions and people close to the mullahs have decided he’s a liability,” he said.
In Israel, Ehud Olmert, the prime minister, has his own domestic problems with a corruption scandal that threatens to unseat him and the media have been rife with speculation that he might order an attack on Iran to distract attention from his difficulties. According to one of his closest friends, Olmert recently warned him that “in three months’ time it will be a different Middle East”.
Yet even the most hawkish officials acknowledge that Israel would face what would arguably be the most challenging military mission of its 60-year existence.
“No one here is talking about more than delaying the [nuclear] programme,” said the Pentagon source. He added that Israel would need to set back the Iranians by at least five years for an attack to be considered a success.
Even that may be beyond Israel’s competence if it has to act alone. Obvious targets would include Iran’s Isfahan plant, where uranium ore is converted into gas, the Natanz complex where this gas is used to enrich uranium in centrifuges and the plutonium-producing Arak heavy water plant. But Iran is known to have scattered other elements of its nuclear programme in underground facilities around the country. Neither US nor Israeli intelligence is certain that it knows where everything is.
“Maybe the Israelis could start off the attack and have us finish it off,” Katzman added. “And maybe that has been their intention all along. But in terms of the long-term military campaign that would be needed to permanently suppress Iran’s nuclear programme, only the US is perceived as having that capability right now.”
Additional reporting: Tony Allen-Mills in New York
al Maliki ready to oust the U.S. from the green zone
One benefit of turning over the green zone to the Iraqis is that it will probably result in a test of the building skills of those who built the security walls and blast proof buildings within the U.S. embassy. Insurgents will be able to get closer to the embassy and test its defences. The U.S. will just have to withdraw to its bases and the embassy and leave the rest of the green zone to the Iraqis. The embassy will still be a little America within Baghdad paid for by American citizens who are losing their houses back in the good old U.S.A. Of course it remains to be seen how much Maliki's pronouncement is bluster meant to show he is not a puppet rather than an actual policy he is going to implement soon. He is a politician preparing for fall elections.
July 13, 2008Nouri al-Maliki ready to oust US from Iraq green zoneMarie Colvin in BaghdadThe green zone of Baghdad, a highly fortified slice of American suburbia on the banks of the Tigris river, may soon be handed over to Iraqi control if the increasingly assertive government of Nouri al-Maliki, the prime minister, gets its way.A senior Iraqi government official said this weekend the enclave should revert to Iraqi control by the end of the year. “We think that by the end of 2008 all the zones in Baghdad should be integrated into the city,” said Ali Dabbagh, the government’s spokesman.“The American soldiers should be based in agreed camps outside the cities and population areas.“By the end of the year, there will be no green zone,” he added. “The separation by huge walls makes people feel angry.” Dabbagh acknowledged that getting rid of the green zone would be a huge undertaking, given the thousands of American soldiers, private contractors and foreign workers who live inside. He said the concrete walls that divide it from the rest of the city would be taken down slowly, “depending on the threat and circumstances”.The prospect may prove disconcerting for the Americans, who have just begun to transfer their diplomatic operations in the zone from Saddam Hussein’s Republican Palace to a new embassy, the largest and most expensive in the world.The £300m building, at the heart of the green zone, protected by blast walls and layers of barbed wire, is the size of the Vatican City. It is virtually a self-contained town, with a heli-pad, sewerage and water treatment plants, a telephone exchange with a Virginia dialling code, a swimming pool and a bombproof gym. It will contain 619 blast-resistant flats.Under the Baghdad government’s plan the embassy will remain but the Iraqis will take back the five-square-mile secure “bubble” surrounding it.The green zone, which was built after the US-led invasion in 2003 as a safe administrative hub, has long infuriated Iraqis. It sliced off neighbouring districts from one another.Mortars fall in the area but the kidnappings, car bombs and lack of water and electricity in the rest of the country seem remote to its inhabitants. Many American visitors never leave except to fly by helicopter to Baghdad airport.The call for the “liberation” of the zone reflects Maliki’s growing confidence after military victories that have prompted him to declare that terrorism has been defeated.
July 13, 2008Nouri al-Maliki ready to oust US from Iraq green zoneMarie Colvin in BaghdadThe green zone of Baghdad, a highly fortified slice of American suburbia on the banks of the Tigris river, may soon be handed over to Iraqi control if the increasingly assertive government of Nouri al-Maliki, the prime minister, gets its way.A senior Iraqi government official said this weekend the enclave should revert to Iraqi control by the end of the year. “We think that by the end of 2008 all the zones in Baghdad should be integrated into the city,” said Ali Dabbagh, the government’s spokesman.“The American soldiers should be based in agreed camps outside the cities and population areas.“By the end of the year, there will be no green zone,” he added. “The separation by huge walls makes people feel angry.” Dabbagh acknowledged that getting rid of the green zone would be a huge undertaking, given the thousands of American soldiers, private contractors and foreign workers who live inside. He said the concrete walls that divide it from the rest of the city would be taken down slowly, “depending on the threat and circumstances”.The prospect may prove disconcerting for the Americans, who have just begun to transfer their diplomatic operations in the zone from Saddam Hussein’s Republican Palace to a new embassy, the largest and most expensive in the world.The £300m building, at the heart of the green zone, protected by blast walls and layers of barbed wire, is the size of the Vatican City. It is virtually a self-contained town, with a heli-pad, sewerage and water treatment plants, a telephone exchange with a Virginia dialling code, a swimming pool and a bombproof gym. It will contain 619 blast-resistant flats.Under the Baghdad government’s plan the embassy will remain but the Iraqis will take back the five-square-mile secure “bubble” surrounding it.The green zone, which was built after the US-led invasion in 2003 as a safe administrative hub, has long infuriated Iraqis. It sliced off neighbouring districts from one another.Mortars fall in the area but the kidnappings, car bombs and lack of water and electricity in the rest of the country seem remote to its inhabitants. Many American visitors never leave except to fly by helicopter to Baghdad airport.The call for the “liberation” of the zone reflects Maliki’s growing confidence after military victories that have prompted him to declare that terrorism has been defeated.
Iraqi PM al-Maliki handing out cash to people in the streets.
This is a quite direct way of getting votes and giving immediate benefits to those who vote for you! These handouts are led by a belief that better conditions will lead to more security according to the article. I would think that they are meant to get people to support the government to buy them off rather than create better conditions in other ways! Maybe the Iraqis got the idea from George Bush who gave handouts to get the economy going!
Iraq PM al-Maliki Handing Out Cash To People In The Streets
Posted on July 12, 2008, Printed on July 12, 2008http://www.alternet.org/wire/91294/
BAGHDAD — It is a politician's dream: Handing out cold, hard cash to people on the street as they plead for help. Iraq's prime minister has been doing just that in recent weeks, doling out Iraqi dinars as an aide trails behind, keeping a tally.
The handouts by Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki and a handful of other top officials are authorized _ as long as each goes no higher than about $8,000, and the same people don't get them twice. Aides say they are meant merely to ease the pain a bit, and are motivated by a belief that better conditions will lead to more security.
The cash handouts are just one small _ if eye-catching _ part of a major investment push this summer by Iraq's government. The aim is to rebuild basic services and jumpstart Iraq's damaged economy by quickly distributing as much of the country's glut of oil revenue as possible.
U.S. officials and a fed-up American public are urging exactly that _ for Iraq to spend its own money, not America's, to rebuild the country now that violence has eased.
Yet the new Iraqi effort runs a high risk of failure: The government is disorganized, fears of favoritism remain and the shadow of corruption haunts every step.
"Money is not a problem," al-Maliki told a recent gathering of tribal chiefs in the southern city of Basra, after government forces had defeated Shiite extremists there. "But we must put it in honest hands to spend."
Despite such problems, Iraq's oil revenues, an estimated $70 billion this year, still provide the best chance of leveraging the country's fragile period of calm into something more lasting, many officials say.
Top U.S. commander Gen. David Petraeus has repeatedly called money a crucial weapon to lure neighborhoods from extremists and stabilize Iraq. The chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, Adm. Mike Mullen, urged the government to pass out money even faster this week on a trip to devastated Mosul in the north.
The United States has been doling out cash itself, most effectively to former Sunni militants who switched sides to fight al-Qaida. The military has also provided money and assistance to projects like fixing damaged roads in the Shiite enclave of Sadr City after battles there.
Yet most recent big spending announcements have been Iraqi: $100 million to rebuild Sadr City; another $100 million to the Shiite city of Basra after fighting there; $100 million for another southern Shiite town, Amarah; and $83 million to help internal refugees return home.
It's unclear how fast the project money will actually get out. Past U.S. surveys have found Iraqi officials actually spent only tiny portions of the money they had allocated, often because of disorganization in government offices or a lack of technical know-how.
Also, discrepancies feed fears of favoritism. One violence-battered and needy northern province, Ninevah, which is mostly Sunni and Kurdish, has received only 20 percent of what the central government has promised, U.S. officials said this week.
Many of the provinces where al-Maliki, a Shiite, has recently pledged money are Shiite.
Yet there are signs of small improvement, other officials say. First Lt. Paul Horton, an assistant civil military operations officer in Diyala, a mixed area north of Baghdad, sees it in efforts to get government money to local farmers suffering from drought.
"We're starting to get a lot more attention and a lot more love," he said.
As for al-Maliki, Arab leaders have long used personal handouts to also gain political loyalty.
Most of the grants the prime minister gives out are only $200 to $400 to help those needing medical care, widows or people without jobs. On one recent visit to the riverside Abu Nawas park in Baghdad, he gave a group of boys each the equivalent of $40 in dinars to buy soccer balls. The biggest grants require documentation like letters from a hospital, his aides say.
On a trip last month to Amarah, an Associated Press reporter saw the prime minister approached by several supplicants during a meeting he was chairing of tribal sheiks. An aide from al-Maliki's office handed out cash at his direction, making each beneficiary sign a receipt.
Asked the reason for such handouts, a senior adviser to the prime minister, Sadiq al-Rikabi, said: "Citizens must realize that security is not just making the law prevail ... Reconstruction and jobs are a big part of it."
___
Associated Press writers Hamza Hendawi and Robert Burns contributed to this report from Baghdad.
Iraq PM al-Maliki Handing Out Cash To People In The Streets
Posted on July 12, 2008, Printed on July 12, 2008http://www.alternet.org/wire/91294/
BAGHDAD — It is a politician's dream: Handing out cold, hard cash to people on the street as they plead for help. Iraq's prime minister has been doing just that in recent weeks, doling out Iraqi dinars as an aide trails behind, keeping a tally.
The handouts by Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki and a handful of other top officials are authorized _ as long as each goes no higher than about $8,000, and the same people don't get them twice. Aides say they are meant merely to ease the pain a bit, and are motivated by a belief that better conditions will lead to more security.
The cash handouts are just one small _ if eye-catching _ part of a major investment push this summer by Iraq's government. The aim is to rebuild basic services and jumpstart Iraq's damaged economy by quickly distributing as much of the country's glut of oil revenue as possible.
U.S. officials and a fed-up American public are urging exactly that _ for Iraq to spend its own money, not America's, to rebuild the country now that violence has eased.
Yet the new Iraqi effort runs a high risk of failure: The government is disorganized, fears of favoritism remain and the shadow of corruption haunts every step.
"Money is not a problem," al-Maliki told a recent gathering of tribal chiefs in the southern city of Basra, after government forces had defeated Shiite extremists there. "But we must put it in honest hands to spend."
Despite such problems, Iraq's oil revenues, an estimated $70 billion this year, still provide the best chance of leveraging the country's fragile period of calm into something more lasting, many officials say.
Top U.S. commander Gen. David Petraeus has repeatedly called money a crucial weapon to lure neighborhoods from extremists and stabilize Iraq. The chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, Adm. Mike Mullen, urged the government to pass out money even faster this week on a trip to devastated Mosul in the north.
The United States has been doling out cash itself, most effectively to former Sunni militants who switched sides to fight al-Qaida. The military has also provided money and assistance to projects like fixing damaged roads in the Shiite enclave of Sadr City after battles there.
Yet most recent big spending announcements have been Iraqi: $100 million to rebuild Sadr City; another $100 million to the Shiite city of Basra after fighting there; $100 million for another southern Shiite town, Amarah; and $83 million to help internal refugees return home.
It's unclear how fast the project money will actually get out. Past U.S. surveys have found Iraqi officials actually spent only tiny portions of the money they had allocated, often because of disorganization in government offices or a lack of technical know-how.
Also, discrepancies feed fears of favoritism. One violence-battered and needy northern province, Ninevah, which is mostly Sunni and Kurdish, has received only 20 percent of what the central government has promised, U.S. officials said this week.
Many of the provinces where al-Maliki, a Shiite, has recently pledged money are Shiite.
Yet there are signs of small improvement, other officials say. First Lt. Paul Horton, an assistant civil military operations officer in Diyala, a mixed area north of Baghdad, sees it in efforts to get government money to local farmers suffering from drought.
"We're starting to get a lot more attention and a lot more love," he said.
As for al-Maliki, Arab leaders have long used personal handouts to also gain political loyalty.
Most of the grants the prime minister gives out are only $200 to $400 to help those needing medical care, widows or people without jobs. On one recent visit to the riverside Abu Nawas park in Baghdad, he gave a group of boys each the equivalent of $40 in dinars to buy soccer balls. The biggest grants require documentation like letters from a hospital, his aides say.
On a trip last month to Amarah, an Associated Press reporter saw the prime minister approached by several supplicants during a meeting he was chairing of tribal sheiks. An aide from al-Maliki's office handed out cash at his direction, making each beneficiary sign a receipt.
Asked the reason for such handouts, a senior adviser to the prime minister, Sadiq al-Rikabi, said: "Citizens must realize that security is not just making the law prevail ... Reconstruction and jobs are a big part of it."
___
Associated Press writers Hamza Hendawi and Robert Burns contributed to this report from Baghdad.
Oil Oligarchy: The War and After
This is an interpretation of America's foreign policy that would generate buckets of denial from any administration spokesperson. It is interesting that even the occupation of Afghanistan is fitted into this broad scheme of interpretation. No doubt other factors are involved but the overall theory makes some sense. It is also true that the policy is damaging to the United States and the economic situation in the U.S. combined with its humungous debt from financing wars may cause the American people increasing hardships. There were much cheaper ways to ensure oil supplies and supplies are now perhaps less secure than ever. U.S. candidates stress the need to become less reliant on foreign oil but as this article shows the U.S. is becoming ever more dependent upon foreign oil and there is no way the U.S. is going to drill its way out of the situation by exploiting what is left in U.S. territory.
Oil Oligarchy:The War And After
By Mir Adnan Aziz
11 July, 2008Countercurrents.org
Gabriel Kolko, noted historian of modern warfare, states in his book 'Another century of war': "A foreign policy that is both immoral and unsuccessful is not simply stupid; it is increasingly dangerous to those who practice or favour it. That is the predicament that the United States now confronts."
Armed with a license to kill in the post September 11 years, the oil oligarchy's doctrine came into play. An occupied Afghanistan was planned to evolve into an American colony manned by permanent military bases. Apart from an easy access for oil pipelines to the Indian Ocean, it was thought to ensure increased US influence in the oil-rich regions around the Caspian basin and perform the critical geopolitical task of countering that of Russia and China.
It was famously said: "If you control Iraqi oil, you are halfway there to controlling all world oil." Iraq's proven oil reserves total more than 112 billion barrels. Potential reserves are estimated at over 200 billion barrels. Additionally, according to U.S. Department of Energy, Iraq contains 110 trillion cubic feet of gas. This was the prize which spurred the Iraqi occupation ironically named 'Operation Iraqi Freedom'.
America's oil oligarchy, sought to support this fantasy by entrenching in power a satellite Iraqi state strewn with military bases. The fact that with a tenth of world oil reserves, four times that of America including Alaska, meant that a US-controlled Iraq would greatly improve the formers energy crisis.
It also saw an occupied Iraq constraining Iran. The strategists thought that with Afghanistan and Iraq occupied and firmly in control along with the control of the Persian Gulf and the Arabian Sea, the regime in Tehran would be cowed into submission.
With an ever increasingly defiant Iran, the historically resilient Afghans resurging to counter an invader and an Iraq getting uncontrollable day after day, we see the oil oligarchy's great oil adventure aflame. The increasingly adaptable insurgencies, by fuelling oil vulnerability globally, are translating the West's nightmare into a reality.
We see increasing attacks on oil and gas operations worldwide in an effort to disrupt jittery energy markets and destabilize governments. The attacks, most intense in Iraq, have also occurred recently in Nigeria Indonesia and Russia. The northern pipeline that carries Iraqi oil to the Turkish port of Ceyhan has been blown up 37 times in just 12 months.
The Taliban have made a remarkable comeback tying down over 50,000 foreign troops. In Iraq, we see a harrowing 25% killed, injured or displaced. Over 100,000 civilians have been killed directly by violence. 4 million have been displaced from their homes; tens of thousands have succumbed to disease and malnutrition. More than 100,000 have been detained without trial. The state/coalitions writ, however, is still confined to the Green Zone.
Since the commencement of the "war on terror," the world has witnessed an unholy relationship between oil and U.S. foreign policy. Oil, America's Achilles heel, has always impacted its policies since World War II. This manifested itself in the Truman, Eisenhower, Nixon, and Carter doctrines but never so overtly and brutally as the oil oligarchy doctrine of today.
The U.S. with less than 5% of the world's total population consumes more than 25% of global oil. In recent years, rather than setting out a strategy for energy independence, it has unfolded a blood drenched roadmap of supplementing its increased dependence on imported oil by gory occupations.
America's own wells are drying up as local demand increases incessantly. By 2010 the US will need to import 60 percent of its oil. Since most of this supply comes from volatile and anti-American zones, its dependency is bound to lead to recurrent military aggression and occupations.
Militarily overextended, with a faltering economy and collapsing currency, its hubris remains undiminished. Neocons, seeking redemption, are busy drawing up plans to attack Iran. They also seek to check China and prevent its emergence as a power beyond their control. The Republican presidential candidate has boasted that he will challenge Russia and bring Putin to heel.The world's greatest debtor is going to take on two powerful countries with the globally largest trade surplus. According to the World Factbook, an annual publication of the CIA, Russia's 2007 current account surplus was $465 billion; that of China $363 billion.The US global current account deficit, on the other hand, is larger than it has ever been. Nearing $800 billion it is almost 7 percent of US GDP. To finance both the current account deficit and its own sizable foreign investments, the United States must import about $1 trillion of foreign capital annually or more than $4 billion each working day. This is unsustainable both in international and domestic financial and trade policy terms. This deficit is larger that the total deficits of all other countries in the world combined.
The cost of the oil oligarchy's wars of occupation is between $3 and $5 trillion. This comes on top of the unfunded liabilities of the US government totalling $53 trillion. A banker of even an average intellect would not hesitate in terming America as the world's worst credit risk.Moreover, its oil dependency is escalating dramatically. In March 2002 oil was $25 a barrel, six years on it hovers around $140. This has seen the US oil import bill rise from $145 billion in 2006 to almost $500 billion presently, a $355 billion addition to an already huge trade deficit.
There is no possibility of America closing this humongous gap. It only survives this enormous deficit because the US dollar is the world reserve currency. This role too is nearing an end as the world looks for more stable stores of value. Although oil still being nominally quoted in dollars, in reality is being priced in euros. Oil producers raise the dollar value only to keep their oil revenues at a constant purchasing power in euros.
With the imminent change of guard let us hope the new US administration, with urgency and clarity, delineates its predicament and changes its energy (foreign) policy. The surreal oil crisis is a direct fallout of US failure to develop a realistic energy policy at home and the means to procure it globally. If the paradigm is not changed, the next decades will see nations paying for America's gluttonous lust for more oil - with more blood.
(miradnanaziz@gmail.com)
Oil Oligarchy:The War And After
By Mir Adnan Aziz
11 July, 2008Countercurrents.org
Gabriel Kolko, noted historian of modern warfare, states in his book 'Another century of war': "A foreign policy that is both immoral and unsuccessful is not simply stupid; it is increasingly dangerous to those who practice or favour it. That is the predicament that the United States now confronts."
Armed with a license to kill in the post September 11 years, the oil oligarchy's doctrine came into play. An occupied Afghanistan was planned to evolve into an American colony manned by permanent military bases. Apart from an easy access for oil pipelines to the Indian Ocean, it was thought to ensure increased US influence in the oil-rich regions around the Caspian basin and perform the critical geopolitical task of countering that of Russia and China.
It was famously said: "If you control Iraqi oil, you are halfway there to controlling all world oil." Iraq's proven oil reserves total more than 112 billion barrels. Potential reserves are estimated at over 200 billion barrels. Additionally, according to U.S. Department of Energy, Iraq contains 110 trillion cubic feet of gas. This was the prize which spurred the Iraqi occupation ironically named 'Operation Iraqi Freedom'.
America's oil oligarchy, sought to support this fantasy by entrenching in power a satellite Iraqi state strewn with military bases. The fact that with a tenth of world oil reserves, four times that of America including Alaska, meant that a US-controlled Iraq would greatly improve the formers energy crisis.
It also saw an occupied Iraq constraining Iran. The strategists thought that with Afghanistan and Iraq occupied and firmly in control along with the control of the Persian Gulf and the Arabian Sea, the regime in Tehran would be cowed into submission.
With an ever increasingly defiant Iran, the historically resilient Afghans resurging to counter an invader and an Iraq getting uncontrollable day after day, we see the oil oligarchy's great oil adventure aflame. The increasingly adaptable insurgencies, by fuelling oil vulnerability globally, are translating the West's nightmare into a reality.
We see increasing attacks on oil and gas operations worldwide in an effort to disrupt jittery energy markets and destabilize governments. The attacks, most intense in Iraq, have also occurred recently in Nigeria Indonesia and Russia. The northern pipeline that carries Iraqi oil to the Turkish port of Ceyhan has been blown up 37 times in just 12 months.
The Taliban have made a remarkable comeback tying down over 50,000 foreign troops. In Iraq, we see a harrowing 25% killed, injured or displaced. Over 100,000 civilians have been killed directly by violence. 4 million have been displaced from their homes; tens of thousands have succumbed to disease and malnutrition. More than 100,000 have been detained without trial. The state/coalitions writ, however, is still confined to the Green Zone.
Since the commencement of the "war on terror," the world has witnessed an unholy relationship between oil and U.S. foreign policy. Oil, America's Achilles heel, has always impacted its policies since World War II. This manifested itself in the Truman, Eisenhower, Nixon, and Carter doctrines but never so overtly and brutally as the oil oligarchy doctrine of today.
The U.S. with less than 5% of the world's total population consumes more than 25% of global oil. In recent years, rather than setting out a strategy for energy independence, it has unfolded a blood drenched roadmap of supplementing its increased dependence on imported oil by gory occupations.
America's own wells are drying up as local demand increases incessantly. By 2010 the US will need to import 60 percent of its oil. Since most of this supply comes from volatile and anti-American zones, its dependency is bound to lead to recurrent military aggression and occupations.
Militarily overextended, with a faltering economy and collapsing currency, its hubris remains undiminished. Neocons, seeking redemption, are busy drawing up plans to attack Iran. They also seek to check China and prevent its emergence as a power beyond their control. The Republican presidential candidate has boasted that he will challenge Russia and bring Putin to heel.The world's greatest debtor is going to take on two powerful countries with the globally largest trade surplus. According to the World Factbook, an annual publication of the CIA, Russia's 2007 current account surplus was $465 billion; that of China $363 billion.The US global current account deficit, on the other hand, is larger than it has ever been. Nearing $800 billion it is almost 7 percent of US GDP. To finance both the current account deficit and its own sizable foreign investments, the United States must import about $1 trillion of foreign capital annually or more than $4 billion each working day. This is unsustainable both in international and domestic financial and trade policy terms. This deficit is larger that the total deficits of all other countries in the world combined.
The cost of the oil oligarchy's wars of occupation is between $3 and $5 trillion. This comes on top of the unfunded liabilities of the US government totalling $53 trillion. A banker of even an average intellect would not hesitate in terming America as the world's worst credit risk.Moreover, its oil dependency is escalating dramatically. In March 2002 oil was $25 a barrel, six years on it hovers around $140. This has seen the US oil import bill rise from $145 billion in 2006 to almost $500 billion presently, a $355 billion addition to an already huge trade deficit.
There is no possibility of America closing this humongous gap. It only survives this enormous deficit because the US dollar is the world reserve currency. This role too is nearing an end as the world looks for more stable stores of value. Although oil still being nominally quoted in dollars, in reality is being priced in euros. Oil producers raise the dollar value only to keep their oil revenues at a constant purchasing power in euros.
With the imminent change of guard let us hope the new US administration, with urgency and clarity, delineates its predicament and changes its energy (foreign) policy. The surreal oil crisis is a direct fallout of US failure to develop a realistic energy policy at home and the means to procure it globally. If the paradigm is not changed, the next decades will see nations paying for America's gluttonous lust for more oil - with more blood.
(miradnanaziz@gmail.com)
Saturday, July 12, 2008
Icelandic-Backed company to develop Geothermal power in Leyte, Philippines
This is from Marketwatch.
Talk about globalisation. Here is an Icelandic company developing geo-thermal energy in the Philippines. The Philippines already has developed a considerable amount of Geo-thermal energy especially from the Mayon volcano near Legazpi. Of course Iceland also has plenty of geothermal energy resources and no doubt a great deal of expertise in developing them.
Envent to Develop a Geothermal Power Plant in Leyte, Philippines
Iceland-Backed Company to Accelerate Utilization of Geothermal Resources in the Philippines
Last update: 2:02 p.m. EDT July 11, 2008
MANILA, PHILIPPINES, Jul 11, 2008 (MARKET WIRE via COMTEX) -- Envent Holding Philippines Incorporated announced today the signing of a Geothermal Service Contract for Biliran Island in Leyte, Philippines. Envent is a renewable energy business dedicated to the exploration and development of geothermal sources in the Philippines.
Envent is currently working on several geothermal projects in the Philippines and is committed to contributing to the Philippine government's target of an additional 1,200 MW of renewable energy by 2013. Envent's key shareholders are Reykjavik Energy Invest and Geysir Green Energy, both global leaders in developing the renewable energy sector, with specific focus on geothermal energy. Both companies are based in Iceland where an impressive 100% of the power capacity is derived from renewable sources (23% geothermal and 77% hydro).
The Biliran Geothermal Development Project is located on the island of Biliran in the Eastern Visayas region of the Philippines. An island province, Biliran lies just a few kilometers north of the island of Leyte. One of the smallest provinces in Philippines, Biliran is 555km2, with a population of 140,000 (2000 census). Its capital is Naval. The mountainous island is considered a compound volcano with a single historic eruption in 1939. It is estimated that Biliran has at least 100 MW of geothermal energy.
The upstream part of the project will be executed by Envent's associate company Biliran Geothermal Incorporated.
Comments:
Mr. Thor Gislason, Chairman of the Board, Envent:
We are pleased to have been chosen by the Department of Energy to undertake the project in Biliran. Envent's key shareholders have over the past decade established themselves as global leaders in the startup of new geothermal power plants. We are now committed to the Philippine market and the Philippine government's goal of an additional 1,200 MW of renewable energy capacity by 2013.
About Envent Holding Incorporated
Envent ( www.envent-power.com) is a renewable energy business dedicated to the exploration of geothermal resources in the Philippines as well as to the development of geothermal power plants in the region. Envent is currently working on several geothermal projects and is committed to contributing to the Philippine government's target of adding 1,200 MW of renewable power capacity by 2013. Envent's key shareholders are Reykjavik Energy Invest and Geysir Green Energy, both global leaders in the development of the renewable energy sector, with specific focus on geothermal energy. Both companies are based in Iceland, where an impressive 100% of the power capacity is derived from renewable sources (23% geothermal and 77% hydro).
About Geysir Green Energy
Geysir Green Energy ( www.gge.is) is a leading developer in the geothermal industry, investing in development projects as well as geothermal operations. Since its foundation in January 2007 Geysir has invested around USD 650 million in geothermal businesses and projects around the world. Building on the extensive experience from the Icelandic geothermal arena, Geysir has received significant attention within the industry and is being recognized as a serious and dynamic player in the field.
About Reykjavik Energy Invest
Reykjavik Energy Invest (REI) ( www.rei.is) is Reykjavik Energy's (Orkuveita Reykjavikur) ( www.or.is) international business development and investment arm. Reykjavik Energy Invest focuses on creating partnerships to develop geothermal areas. The company invests in geothermal exploitation rights, develops, constructs and operates geothermal fields, and seeks to acquire geothermal plants currently in operation. Reykjavik Energy is the world's leading authority in geothermal energy utilization. Over the past 60 years, the company has consolidated its leadership by supplying a large portion of the Icelandic population with geothermal water for domestic heating and by gradually developing new steam fields for power production.
About Biliran Geothermal Incorporated
Biliran Geothermal Incorporated is a company specifically established to undertake upstream development activities on the island of Biliran in the Eastern Visayas region of the Philippines. Upstream geothermal activities include the exploration of geothermal areas, well field construction and the extraction of steam from the area. The company is owned by Filtech Energy Drilling Corporation (Fedco) and Envent Holding Philippines. For further information, contact:
Philippines:
Dom Ligot
+63 917 5076 468
Email Contact
International:
Gudmundur F Sigurjonsson
+354 617 7713
Email Contact
SOURCE: Reykjavik Energy http://www2.marketwire.com/mw/emailprcntct?
Copyright 2008 Market Wire, All rights reserved.
Talk about globalisation. Here is an Icelandic company developing geo-thermal energy in the Philippines. The Philippines already has developed a considerable amount of Geo-thermal energy especially from the Mayon volcano near Legazpi. Of course Iceland also has plenty of geothermal energy resources and no doubt a great deal of expertise in developing them.
Envent to Develop a Geothermal Power Plant in Leyte, Philippines
Iceland-Backed Company to Accelerate Utilization of Geothermal Resources in the Philippines
Last update: 2:02 p.m. EDT July 11, 2008
MANILA, PHILIPPINES, Jul 11, 2008 (MARKET WIRE via COMTEX) -- Envent Holding Philippines Incorporated announced today the signing of a Geothermal Service Contract for Biliran Island in Leyte, Philippines. Envent is a renewable energy business dedicated to the exploration and development of geothermal sources in the Philippines.
Envent is currently working on several geothermal projects in the Philippines and is committed to contributing to the Philippine government's target of an additional 1,200 MW of renewable energy by 2013. Envent's key shareholders are Reykjavik Energy Invest and Geysir Green Energy, both global leaders in developing the renewable energy sector, with specific focus on geothermal energy. Both companies are based in Iceland where an impressive 100% of the power capacity is derived from renewable sources (23% geothermal and 77% hydro).
The Biliran Geothermal Development Project is located on the island of Biliran in the Eastern Visayas region of the Philippines. An island province, Biliran lies just a few kilometers north of the island of Leyte. One of the smallest provinces in Philippines, Biliran is 555km2, with a population of 140,000 (2000 census). Its capital is Naval. The mountainous island is considered a compound volcano with a single historic eruption in 1939. It is estimated that Biliran has at least 100 MW of geothermal energy.
The upstream part of the project will be executed by Envent's associate company Biliran Geothermal Incorporated.
Comments:
Mr. Thor Gislason, Chairman of the Board, Envent:
We are pleased to have been chosen by the Department of Energy to undertake the project in Biliran. Envent's key shareholders have over the past decade established themselves as global leaders in the startup of new geothermal power plants. We are now committed to the Philippine market and the Philippine government's goal of an additional 1,200 MW of renewable energy capacity by 2013.
About Envent Holding Incorporated
Envent ( www.envent-power.com) is a renewable energy business dedicated to the exploration of geothermal resources in the Philippines as well as to the development of geothermal power plants in the region. Envent is currently working on several geothermal projects and is committed to contributing to the Philippine government's target of adding 1,200 MW of renewable power capacity by 2013. Envent's key shareholders are Reykjavik Energy Invest and Geysir Green Energy, both global leaders in the development of the renewable energy sector, with specific focus on geothermal energy. Both companies are based in Iceland, where an impressive 100% of the power capacity is derived from renewable sources (23% geothermal and 77% hydro).
About Geysir Green Energy
Geysir Green Energy ( www.gge.is) is a leading developer in the geothermal industry, investing in development projects as well as geothermal operations. Since its foundation in January 2007 Geysir has invested around USD 650 million in geothermal businesses and projects around the world. Building on the extensive experience from the Icelandic geothermal arena, Geysir has received significant attention within the industry and is being recognized as a serious and dynamic player in the field.
About Reykjavik Energy Invest
Reykjavik Energy Invest (REI) ( www.rei.is) is Reykjavik Energy's (Orkuveita Reykjavikur) ( www.or.is) international business development and investment arm. Reykjavik Energy Invest focuses on creating partnerships to develop geothermal areas. The company invests in geothermal exploitation rights, develops, constructs and operates geothermal fields, and seeks to acquire geothermal plants currently in operation. Reykjavik Energy is the world's leading authority in geothermal energy utilization. Over the past 60 years, the company has consolidated its leadership by supplying a large portion of the Icelandic population with geothermal water for domestic heating and by gradually developing new steam fields for power production.
About Biliran Geothermal Incorporated
Biliran Geothermal Incorporated is a company specifically established to undertake upstream development activities on the island of Biliran in the Eastern Visayas region of the Philippines. Upstream geothermal activities include the exploration of geothermal areas, well field construction and the extraction of steam from the area. The company is owned by Filtech Energy Drilling Corporation (Fedco) and Envent Holding Philippines. For further information, contact:
Philippines:
Dom Ligot
+63 917 5076 468
Email Contact
International:
Gudmundur F Sigurjonsson
+354 617 7713
Email Contact
SOURCE: Reykjavik Energy http://www2.marketwire.com/mw/emailprcntct?
Copyright 2008 Market Wire, All rights reserved.
UN will inspect capsized Philippine Ferry Carrying Pesticides
This is from Bloomberg.
If there is serious leakage of the pesticides into the water this could be disastrous for the local marine environment. Already fishing is banned in the area. Other news reports claim that the ferry is not to be refloated but towed to shore. As usual it takes a while to get agreement on what is to happen.
UN Will Inspect Capsized Philippines Ferry Carrying Pesticides
By Michael Heath
July 11 (Bloomberg) -- The United Nations sent a team of chemical specialists to the Philippines to inspect a ferry carrying pesticides that capsized in a typhoon last month, killing more than 700 passengers and crew.
``If not handled properly, this could be a disaster upon a disaster,'' said Vladimir Sakharov, chief of the environmental unit that coordinates international responses to such emergencies. ``Leakage of the ferry's toxic cargo would cause major ecological damage and thereby have a terrible impact on the livelihoods of people living in the region.''
Philippine salvage crews suspended efforts to retrieve bodies from the MV Princess of the Stars June 27 after discovering tons of pesticides in the vessel lying about 3 kilometers (1.9 miles) off Sibuyan Island in the central Philippines. Only 56 of the more than 800 people on board survived the disaster, with the remainder probably trapped inside the vessel, according to the UN.
The world body is concerned about ``large'' quantities of ``highly toxic'' insecticides including endosulfan, carbofuran and methmamidophos in the vessel, in addition to an estimated 100,000 liters of fuel.
The June 21 accident, which occurred as Typhoon Fengshen struck the area, is the Philippines' worst maritime disaster since the MV Dona Paz ferry sank in 1987 after colliding with an oil tanker, killing more than 4,000 people.
Float Ferry
The Philippines will try to float the ferry in order to remove the pesticides in an operation that may take as long as three months, Transport Undersecretary Elena Bautista said last week. It will involve positioning floaters under the vessel and using ballasts to turn it upright.
The UN team, comprising a marine chemist, an eco- toxicologist and a civil protection specialist, will spend a week in the Philippines to assess how to ensure the pesticides don't leak, the world body said in a statement on its Web site yesterday. The mission is a joint initiative of the UN and European Union, it added.
Philippine and U.S. divers discovered 10 metric tons of endosulfan belonging to Del Monte Philippines, prompting them to abandon salvage efforts, Vice President Noli de Castro told a news conference June 27.
The vessel was on a regular run between Manila and Cebu, the country's biggest cities, when it was caught in huge swells and ran aground before capsizing. The tip of the bow remains above water.
To contact the reporter on this story: Michael Heath in Sydney at mheath1@bloomberg.net Last Updated: July 10, 2008 20:59 EDT
If there is serious leakage of the pesticides into the water this could be disastrous for the local marine environment. Already fishing is banned in the area. Other news reports claim that the ferry is not to be refloated but towed to shore. As usual it takes a while to get agreement on what is to happen.
UN Will Inspect Capsized Philippines Ferry Carrying Pesticides
By Michael Heath
July 11 (Bloomberg) -- The United Nations sent a team of chemical specialists to the Philippines to inspect a ferry carrying pesticides that capsized in a typhoon last month, killing more than 700 passengers and crew.
``If not handled properly, this could be a disaster upon a disaster,'' said Vladimir Sakharov, chief of the environmental unit that coordinates international responses to such emergencies. ``Leakage of the ferry's toxic cargo would cause major ecological damage and thereby have a terrible impact on the livelihoods of people living in the region.''
Philippine salvage crews suspended efforts to retrieve bodies from the MV Princess of the Stars June 27 after discovering tons of pesticides in the vessel lying about 3 kilometers (1.9 miles) off Sibuyan Island in the central Philippines. Only 56 of the more than 800 people on board survived the disaster, with the remainder probably trapped inside the vessel, according to the UN.
The world body is concerned about ``large'' quantities of ``highly toxic'' insecticides including endosulfan, carbofuran and methmamidophos in the vessel, in addition to an estimated 100,000 liters of fuel.
The June 21 accident, which occurred as Typhoon Fengshen struck the area, is the Philippines' worst maritime disaster since the MV Dona Paz ferry sank in 1987 after colliding with an oil tanker, killing more than 4,000 people.
Float Ferry
The Philippines will try to float the ferry in order to remove the pesticides in an operation that may take as long as three months, Transport Undersecretary Elena Bautista said last week. It will involve positioning floaters under the vessel and using ballasts to turn it upright.
The UN team, comprising a marine chemist, an eco- toxicologist and a civil protection specialist, will spend a week in the Philippines to assess how to ensure the pesticides don't leak, the world body said in a statement on its Web site yesterday. The mission is a joint initiative of the UN and European Union, it added.
Philippine and U.S. divers discovered 10 metric tons of endosulfan belonging to Del Monte Philippines, prompting them to abandon salvage efforts, Vice President Noli de Castro told a news conference June 27.
The vessel was on a regular run between Manila and Cebu, the country's biggest cities, when it was caught in huge swells and ran aground before capsizing. The tip of the bow remains above water.
To contact the reporter on this story: Michael Heath in Sydney at mheath1@bloomberg.net Last Updated: July 10, 2008 20:59 EDT
Philippines: Del Monte, Sulpicio swap raps
This is from the Inquirer.
Perhaps Sulpico has been transporting dangerous goods on passenger ferries for some time. I assume that is not legal. It still remains to be seen what the state of the pesticide is within the cargo van within the ship. As another post indicates the UN has sent experts. This shows the danger that may be involved.
Del Monte, Sulpicio swap raps at BMI hearing
By Katherine EvangelistaINQUIRER.netFirst Posted 15:37:00 07/11/2008
MANILA, Philippines -- The broker for the food conglomerate who owns the 10 tons of toxic cargo onboard the ill-fated MV Princess of the Stars faced the Board of Marine Inquiry (BMI) during the resumption of the hearing Friday.
The BMI is the fact finding body investigating the cause of the sinking of the Sulpicio Lines Inc. (SLI)-owned Princess of the Stars which capsized and sank off the coast of Romblon during the onslaught of typhoon “Frank” (international codename: Fengshen), bringing down some 800 passengers and crew and endosulfan on board.
CEVA Philippines Country Manager Dante Macaisa, following orders from their client, Del Monte Philippines Inc. (DMPI), claimed that they solicited the services of SLI to transport the 40-foot container van loaded with 400 boxes of endosulfan pesticide to Cagayan de Oro.
Macaisa added that during the preparation for the domestic bill of loading, CEVA submitted 10 required documents -- the Material Safety Data Sheet, International Bill of Lading (BOL), Certificate of Insurance, and Transit Cargo Manifest to Sulpicio, which properly identifies the endosulfan cargo to be “toxic” and a “marine pollutant.”
However, Macaisa claimed that Sulpicio’s representative said that other documents “were not necessary” and gave them back to CEVA Philippines. Macaisa did not identify which documents were returned.
SLI legal counsel Arthur Lim asked for clarification on whether CEVA Philippines received an “acknowledgement receipt” from Sulpicio’s representative, verifying that the broker had submitted the documents.
In response to the query, Macaisa said that they were not issued the receipt.
In an interview, SLI spokesperson and legal counsel Ma. Victoria Lim-Florido asked whether CEVA could furnish a copy of the acknowledgement receipt that would prove that the pertinent documents were presented.
SLI usually issues acknowledgement receipts to their clients and shippers “especially if it involves dangerous cargo,” Florido added.
However, Florido maintained that their client did not receive the documents, which Macaisa claimed that they had submitted.
Macaisa added that the cargo van onto which the endosulfan was loaded was properly labeled with “uniform international codes for the transport of dangerous goods and is the reference for all ocean carriers for dangerous goods.”
CEVA Philippines and DMPI have been transacting with each other for more than 27 years and that this was the first time that they had encountered a problem like this, Macaisa said.
Perhaps Sulpico has been transporting dangerous goods on passenger ferries for some time. I assume that is not legal. It still remains to be seen what the state of the pesticide is within the cargo van within the ship. As another post indicates the UN has sent experts. This shows the danger that may be involved.
Del Monte, Sulpicio swap raps at BMI hearing
By Katherine EvangelistaINQUIRER.netFirst Posted 15:37:00 07/11/2008
MANILA, Philippines -- The broker for the food conglomerate who owns the 10 tons of toxic cargo onboard the ill-fated MV Princess of the Stars faced the Board of Marine Inquiry (BMI) during the resumption of the hearing Friday.
The BMI is the fact finding body investigating the cause of the sinking of the Sulpicio Lines Inc. (SLI)-owned Princess of the Stars which capsized and sank off the coast of Romblon during the onslaught of typhoon “Frank” (international codename: Fengshen), bringing down some 800 passengers and crew and endosulfan on board.
CEVA Philippines Country Manager Dante Macaisa, following orders from their client, Del Monte Philippines Inc. (DMPI), claimed that they solicited the services of SLI to transport the 40-foot container van loaded with 400 boxes of endosulfan pesticide to Cagayan de Oro.
Macaisa added that during the preparation for the domestic bill of loading, CEVA submitted 10 required documents -- the Material Safety Data Sheet, International Bill of Lading (BOL), Certificate of Insurance, and Transit Cargo Manifest to Sulpicio, which properly identifies the endosulfan cargo to be “toxic” and a “marine pollutant.”
However, Macaisa claimed that Sulpicio’s representative said that other documents “were not necessary” and gave them back to CEVA Philippines. Macaisa did not identify which documents were returned.
SLI legal counsel Arthur Lim asked for clarification on whether CEVA Philippines received an “acknowledgement receipt” from Sulpicio’s representative, verifying that the broker had submitted the documents.
In response to the query, Macaisa said that they were not issued the receipt.
In an interview, SLI spokesperson and legal counsel Ma. Victoria Lim-Florido asked whether CEVA could furnish a copy of the acknowledgement receipt that would prove that the pertinent documents were presented.
SLI usually issues acknowledgement receipts to their clients and shippers “especially if it involves dangerous cargo,” Florido added.
However, Florido maintained that their client did not receive the documents, which Macaisa claimed that they had submitted.
Macaisa added that the cargo van onto which the endosulfan was loaded was properly labeled with “uniform international codes for the transport of dangerous goods and is the reference for all ocean carriers for dangerous goods.”
CEVA Philippines and DMPI have been transacting with each other for more than 27 years and that this was the first time that they had encountered a problem like this, Macaisa said.
Friday, July 11, 2008
U.S. poised to attack Pakistan extremists
This is from the Australian.
It seems that relationships between the U.S. and Pakistan are going from bad to worse. This is not helped by the fact that the U.S. and India are pursuing a nuclear deal. Sometimes I wonder if the U.S. policy makers have much of a clue of the effects they have had in pursuing the so-called war on terror. For one thing they have managed to make Iran one of the key winners by invading Iraq. The Badr brigades and the Shiites in the Maliki government have close ties with Iran much closer than the U.S. maligned Sadr Mahdi militia. Now the U.S. is ensuring that Pakistan will be forced to take a stronger anti-U.S. policy and Pakistani intelligence may forge links between it and the Taliban to undermine the Karzai government. There is already some evidence that Pakistani intelligence may have been involved in the recent attack on the Indian consulate in Kabul.
US poised to attack Pakistan extremists
Bruce Loudon, South Asia correspondent July 11, 2008
US commandos are reportedly poised to launch raids against al-Qa'ida and Taliban targets in Pakistan as Washington moves an aircraft carrier into the Arabian Sea.
The redeployment of the Abraham Lincoln and its escort vessels from the Gulf yesterday came after US military intelligence officials recorded an increase in the number of foreign fighters travelling to Pakistan's tribal areas to join with militants.
A US military spokesman told the The New York Times there had been a corresponding drop in the number of foreign fighters entering Iraq -- now less than 40 a month, compared with up to 110 a month one year ago -- and that "the flow may reflect a change that is making Pakistan, not Iraq, the preferred destination for some Sunni extremists from the Middle East, North Africa and Central Asia seeking to take up arms against the West".
The officials say the influx shows a strengthening of al-Qa'ida forces in the tribal areas, a key base of support for the Taliban.
The paper reported that jihadist websites were encouraging foreign militants to go to Pakistan and Afghanistan, which was considered a "winning fight," compared with the insurgency in Iraq.
Three US congressmen back from a trip to the region revealed yesterday they were briefed about US plans to stage raids against targets in Pakistan's Federally Administered Tribal Areas, where most of the militancy feeding the insurgency in Afghanistan is believed to be based.
The congressmen said plans for heightened US military operations were in response to Pakistan's failure to disrupt terrorist training camps and cross-border attacks blamed for the almost 40per cent increase in Taliban attacks in Afghanistan in recent months. Attacks in Afghanistan in June exceeded those in Iraq.
Pakistan's new democratic Government has insisted it would not allow cross-border raids into its territory by any country.
One of the congressmen was quoted as saying: "If we don't do something now, they're going to strike us again (in the US), and it is going to be out of this area."
Democrat Henry Cuellar added: "Either Pakistan does more or we will be taking things into our own hands. If our troops are fired on, there will be hot pursuit into that territory."
Frustration with Pakistan spilled over at the UN yesterday when Afghan Foreign Minister Rangin Dadfar Spanta told the Security Council that a key reason for the worsening security in his country was "the de facto truce" in Pakistan's tribal areas.
The new Government in Islamabad began talks with Islamic militants in the region soon after winning elections in February, including with Taliban warlord Baitullah Mehsud, who was blamed by the previous government and the US for the December assassination of former Pakistani premier Benazir Bhutto.
"One of the main factors contributing to the deterioration of the security situation in the country is the de facto truce in the tribal areas beyond the border," Mr Spanta said.
A secret agreement between the US and President Pervez Musharraf to allow US special forces to enter Pakistan in pursuit of terrorists in the FATA region is said to have stalled under the new administration in Islamabad.
Jihadi forces have promised to increase suicide bombings if it co-operates with coalition operations in Pakistan.
Additional reporting: AFP
It seems that relationships between the U.S. and Pakistan are going from bad to worse. This is not helped by the fact that the U.S. and India are pursuing a nuclear deal. Sometimes I wonder if the U.S. policy makers have much of a clue of the effects they have had in pursuing the so-called war on terror. For one thing they have managed to make Iran one of the key winners by invading Iraq. The Badr brigades and the Shiites in the Maliki government have close ties with Iran much closer than the U.S. maligned Sadr Mahdi militia. Now the U.S. is ensuring that Pakistan will be forced to take a stronger anti-U.S. policy and Pakistani intelligence may forge links between it and the Taliban to undermine the Karzai government. There is already some evidence that Pakistani intelligence may have been involved in the recent attack on the Indian consulate in Kabul.
US poised to attack Pakistan extremists
Bruce Loudon, South Asia correspondent July 11, 2008
US commandos are reportedly poised to launch raids against al-Qa'ida and Taliban targets in Pakistan as Washington moves an aircraft carrier into the Arabian Sea.
The redeployment of the Abraham Lincoln and its escort vessels from the Gulf yesterday came after US military intelligence officials recorded an increase in the number of foreign fighters travelling to Pakistan's tribal areas to join with militants.
A US military spokesman told the The New York Times there had been a corresponding drop in the number of foreign fighters entering Iraq -- now less than 40 a month, compared with up to 110 a month one year ago -- and that "the flow may reflect a change that is making Pakistan, not Iraq, the preferred destination for some Sunni extremists from the Middle East, North Africa and Central Asia seeking to take up arms against the West".
The officials say the influx shows a strengthening of al-Qa'ida forces in the tribal areas, a key base of support for the Taliban.
The paper reported that jihadist websites were encouraging foreign militants to go to Pakistan and Afghanistan, which was considered a "winning fight," compared with the insurgency in Iraq.
Three US congressmen back from a trip to the region revealed yesterday they were briefed about US plans to stage raids against targets in Pakistan's Federally Administered Tribal Areas, where most of the militancy feeding the insurgency in Afghanistan is believed to be based.
The congressmen said plans for heightened US military operations were in response to Pakistan's failure to disrupt terrorist training camps and cross-border attacks blamed for the almost 40per cent increase in Taliban attacks in Afghanistan in recent months. Attacks in Afghanistan in June exceeded those in Iraq.
Pakistan's new democratic Government has insisted it would not allow cross-border raids into its territory by any country.
One of the congressmen was quoted as saying: "If we don't do something now, they're going to strike us again (in the US), and it is going to be out of this area."
Democrat Henry Cuellar added: "Either Pakistan does more or we will be taking things into our own hands. If our troops are fired on, there will be hot pursuit into that territory."
Frustration with Pakistan spilled over at the UN yesterday when Afghan Foreign Minister Rangin Dadfar Spanta told the Security Council that a key reason for the worsening security in his country was "the de facto truce" in Pakistan's tribal areas.
The new Government in Islamabad began talks with Islamic militants in the region soon after winning elections in February, including with Taliban warlord Baitullah Mehsud, who was blamed by the previous government and the US for the December assassination of former Pakistani premier Benazir Bhutto.
"One of the main factors contributing to the deterioration of the security situation in the country is the de facto truce in the tribal areas beyond the border," Mr Spanta said.
A secret agreement between the US and President Pervez Musharraf to allow US special forces to enter Pakistan in pursuit of terrorists in the FATA region is said to have stalled under the new administration in Islamabad.
Jihadi forces have promised to increase suicide bombings if it co-operates with coalition operations in Pakistan.
Additional reporting: AFP
Israeli jets using Iraq's airspace.
This is from the daily.pk.
Of course we do not hear a peep about this in the western mainstream press that censors itself quite effectively. Anyone who ever thought that Iraq was a sovereign nation should be disabused of this notion. The U.S. controls the airspace. Note that the U.S. has done almost zilch to rebuild the Iraqi air force. The U.S. dominates Iraqi airspace. One would think that Iraq would be very sensitive to this issue. If Israel does attack Iran and uses these bases Iraq may be subject to Iranian retaliation --of course U.S. bases in Iran will probably be targets in any event. It is possible this report is in error although it comes from inside Iraq rather than Pakistan where the Daily is located I believe.
Israeli jets using Iraq's airspace
Thursday, 10 July 2008 12:15 www.daily.pk
The US has allowed Israeli jets to use US airbases and fly over Iraqi air space for a likely attack against Iran, Iraqi media say. It is more than a month that some Israeli planes belonging to Israeli air force use the US military bases in Iraq to land and take off, Iraqi Nahrainnet news network said Wednesday, quoting informed sources close to Iraq's Defense Ministry. The activities and traffic of warplanes- especially at nights- has lately increased in the US airbases in Nasiriya southeast of Baghdad and Haditha a city in the western Iraq province of Al Anbar, the Iraqi residents and sources said. They said the US fighters, cargo planes, helicopters and unmanned planes have intensified their flights in the last three weeks. The US military officials have imposed severe security measures around the bases, they said. They said some aircraft suspected to be Israeli warplanes coming from Jordan, have landed in the US controlled al-Assad airbase near Haditha. It is believed that these activities are parts of a joint Israeli-US training, preparation and coordination to launch an air raid against Iran's nuclear plants. Israel has conducted a military drill under the supervision of top US military commanders over the Mediterranean Sea from May 28 to June 12, using more than 100 Israeli F-16 and F-15 fighters, along with helicopters and refueling tanks which many consider as a possible rehearsal for a strike on Iran's nuclear facilities
Of course we do not hear a peep about this in the western mainstream press that censors itself quite effectively. Anyone who ever thought that Iraq was a sovereign nation should be disabused of this notion. The U.S. controls the airspace. Note that the U.S. has done almost zilch to rebuild the Iraqi air force. The U.S. dominates Iraqi airspace. One would think that Iraq would be very sensitive to this issue. If Israel does attack Iran and uses these bases Iraq may be subject to Iranian retaliation --of course U.S. bases in Iran will probably be targets in any event. It is possible this report is in error although it comes from inside Iraq rather than Pakistan where the Daily is located I believe.
Israeli jets using Iraq's airspace
Thursday, 10 July 2008 12:15 www.daily.pk
The US has allowed Israeli jets to use US airbases and fly over Iraqi air space for a likely attack against Iran, Iraqi media say. It is more than a month that some Israeli planes belonging to Israeli air force use the US military bases in Iraq to land and take off, Iraqi Nahrainnet news network said Wednesday, quoting informed sources close to Iraq's Defense Ministry. The activities and traffic of warplanes- especially at nights- has lately increased in the US airbases in Nasiriya southeast of Baghdad and Haditha a city in the western Iraq province of Al Anbar, the Iraqi residents and sources said. They said the US fighters, cargo planes, helicopters and unmanned planes have intensified their flights in the last three weeks. The US military officials have imposed severe security measures around the bases, they said. They said some aircraft suspected to be Israeli warplanes coming from Jordan, have landed in the US controlled al-Assad airbase near Haditha. It is believed that these activities are parts of a joint Israeli-US training, preparation and coordination to launch an air raid against Iran's nuclear plants. Israel has conducted a military drill under the supervision of top US military commanders over the Mediterranean Sea from May 28 to June 12, using more than 100 Israeli F-16 and F-15 fighters, along with helicopters and refueling tanks which many consider as a possible rehearsal for a strike on Iran's nuclear facilities
Thursday, July 10, 2008
Ferry Owner sues Del Monte over toxic chemical
This will be an interesting case. I presume that if the material was toxic it should not have been shipped on a passenger ferry. News reports do not make it clear if the material has now leaked out into the ocean although fishing is prohibited near the ferry sinking site so either it has or it is just a precaution. This is from the Inquirer.
Sulpicio files civil case vs Del Monte over toxic chemical
By Tetch TorresINQUIRER.netFirst Posted 16:23:00 07/08/2008
MANILA, Philippines – (UPDATE) Sulpicio Lines Inc. has filed a civil case against Del Monte Philippines for its failure to declare as toxic the chemical endosulfan that was loaded into the ill-fated MV Princess of the Stars.
The inter-island ferry vessel sank off Sibuyan Island last June 21 during the onslaught of typhoon “Frank” (international codename: Fengshen) with over 800 passengers and crew on board.
In its eight-page complaint filed before the Manila City regional trial court, Sulpicio said Del Monte violated the breach of term and condition when it failed to inform the shipping company that they were carrying a toxic substance.
Sulpicio insisted that it was the duty of Del Monte to inform them of the cargo that they would be carrying.
The shipping firm is also asking for P5.5 million in damages over the alleged negligence of the food conglomerate to inform them about the toxic chemical
Sulpicio files civil case vs Del Monte over toxic chemical
By Tetch TorresINQUIRER.netFirst Posted 16:23:00 07/08/2008
MANILA, Philippines – (UPDATE) Sulpicio Lines Inc. has filed a civil case against Del Monte Philippines for its failure to declare as toxic the chemical endosulfan that was loaded into the ill-fated MV Princess of the Stars.
The inter-island ferry vessel sank off Sibuyan Island last June 21 during the onslaught of typhoon “Frank” (international codename: Fengshen) with over 800 passengers and crew on board.
In its eight-page complaint filed before the Manila City regional trial court, Sulpicio said Del Monte violated the breach of term and condition when it failed to inform the shipping company that they were carrying a toxic substance.
Sulpicio insisted that it was the duty of Del Monte to inform them of the cargo that they would be carrying.
The shipping firm is also asking for P5.5 million in damages over the alleged negligence of the food conglomerate to inform them about the toxic chemical
Philippines, rebels talk to defuse rising violence
These talks seem to go on interminably. As the article notes some field commanders are growing impatient. There are also other rebel groups that are not part of the talks. Talks with the NPA seem to have broken down some time ago. The U.S. may indirectly play a part in the lack of success in negotiations certainly this is so with respect to the NPA which is listed as a terrorist group by the U.S. and so it frowns on negotiations with them. No doubt those revoloutionaries who fought for U.S. independence from Britain would be terrorists according to the present U.S. definition. Apparently however the U.S. has accepted the Maoist victory in Nepal elections. I guess Nepal does not have any oil!
Philippines, rebels talk to defuse rising violence
Wed 9 Jul 2008, 9:26 GMT
MANILA, July 9 (Reuters) - Philippine troops held talks with Muslim secessionist rebels in an emergency meeting on Wednesday in an attempt to defuse rising tensions that could further derail negotiations to end nearly 40 years of conflict, both sides said.
Since May, when Malaysian peace monitors started pulling out, the two sides have been accusing each other of violating a five-old ceasefire, putting at risk talks to set up a homeland for 3 million Muslims.
"We were called by the Malaysians to an informal meeting to cool down tensions," a member of the truce panel of the Moro Islamic Liberation Front (MILF) told Reuters, adding the peace monitors were worried about rising violence.
This was the first time the Malaysian-led monitoring team has called the two sides for talks to discuss the actual situation on the ground and prevent skirmishes from escalating to a full blown conflict.
On Tuesday night, military chief General Alexander Yano said there had ben a spike in the number of violent incidents on the troubled southern island of Mindanao, where the MILF operates. He said 40 skirmishes were recorded from May 1 to June 30.
When the ceasefire agreement was re-imposed in July 2003, the number of violent incidents involving the two sides went down to almost zero in 2007 from a high of nearly 1,000 incidents in early 2003.
Last month, MILF rebels launched simultaneous attacks on army detachments in three provinces on Mindanao, toppling steel towers holding high-voltage power lines and harassing farmers harvesting rice.
But, the rebels avoided actual confrontation with troops, immediately pulling back after firing at army convoy or at small army outpost.
Mohaqher Iqbal, chief rebel negotiator, said the MILF leadership was committed to the peace talks and did not authorise the actions of some field commanders who were getting impatient due to delays in the peace talks.
Iqbal said they have also filed a complaint against the deployment of troops near MILF bases, describing the moves as "a clear violation of the ceasefire agreement".
The two sides have been talking for 11 years to end a Muslim rebellion that has killed more than 120,000 people and displaced 2 million since the late 1960s.
Talks brokered by Malaysia from March 2001 have been stalled for eight months over constitutional issues, but the two sides are optimistic negotiations would be held late this month in Kuala Lumpur to seal a deal on creating a Muslim homeland. (Reporting by Manny Mogato; Editing by Raju Gopalakrishnan and David Fox)
© Reuters 2008. All Rights Reserved.
Philippines, rebels talk to defuse rising violence
Wed 9 Jul 2008, 9:26 GMT
MANILA, July 9 (Reuters) - Philippine troops held talks with Muslim secessionist rebels in an emergency meeting on Wednesday in an attempt to defuse rising tensions that could further derail negotiations to end nearly 40 years of conflict, both sides said.
Since May, when Malaysian peace monitors started pulling out, the two sides have been accusing each other of violating a five-old ceasefire, putting at risk talks to set up a homeland for 3 million Muslims.
"We were called by the Malaysians to an informal meeting to cool down tensions," a member of the truce panel of the Moro Islamic Liberation Front (MILF) told Reuters, adding the peace monitors were worried about rising violence.
This was the first time the Malaysian-led monitoring team has called the two sides for talks to discuss the actual situation on the ground and prevent skirmishes from escalating to a full blown conflict.
On Tuesday night, military chief General Alexander Yano said there had ben a spike in the number of violent incidents on the troubled southern island of Mindanao, where the MILF operates. He said 40 skirmishes were recorded from May 1 to June 30.
When the ceasefire agreement was re-imposed in July 2003, the number of violent incidents involving the two sides went down to almost zero in 2007 from a high of nearly 1,000 incidents in early 2003.
Last month, MILF rebels launched simultaneous attacks on army detachments in three provinces on Mindanao, toppling steel towers holding high-voltage power lines and harassing farmers harvesting rice.
But, the rebels avoided actual confrontation with troops, immediately pulling back after firing at army convoy or at small army outpost.
Mohaqher Iqbal, chief rebel negotiator, said the MILF leadership was committed to the peace talks and did not authorise the actions of some field commanders who were getting impatient due to delays in the peace talks.
Iqbal said they have also filed a complaint against the deployment of troops near MILF bases, describing the moves as "a clear violation of the ceasefire agreement".
The two sides have been talking for 11 years to end a Muslim rebellion that has killed more than 120,000 people and displaced 2 million since the late 1960s.
Talks brokered by Malaysia from March 2001 have been stalled for eight months over constitutional issues, but the two sides are optimistic negotiations would be held late this month in Kuala Lumpur to seal a deal on creating a Muslim homeland. (Reporting by Manny Mogato; Editing by Raju Gopalakrishnan and David Fox)
© Reuters 2008. All Rights Reserved.
Wednesday, July 9, 2008
ACLU: U.S. blocking payments to Guantanamo attorneys
This is from McClatchy.
As the final part of the article points out the ordinary supposition that a person is innocent until proven guilty is thrown out the window in these trials.
"" Rankin said OFAC's role in the case was triggered because the Bush administration has designated Mohammed, the alleged 9/11 mastermind, and the other four defendants as "Specially Designated Global Terrorists.''
There was no explanation, however, of how that designation squares with the administration's insistence that the military commissions operate under the assumption that the accused are considered innocent until proven guilty.""
So these persons are considered innocent even though they are already classified as specially designated global terrorists! Justice as farce. The blocking of payments is just another part of the Bush administrations' techniques of obstructing justice and making sure there are convictions.
ACLU: U.S. blocking payments to Guantanamo attorneys
By Carol Rosenberg Miami Herald
GUANTANAMO BAY NAVY BASE, Cuba — The U.S. government is blocking the American Civil Liberties Union from paying attorneys representing suspected terrorists held here, insisting that the ACLU must first receive a license from the U.S. Treasury Department before making the payments.
ACLU director Anthony Romero on Tuesday accused the Bush administration of "obstruction of justice" by delaying approval of the license, which the government argues is required under U.S. law because the beneficiaries of the lawyers' services are foreign terrorists.
"Now the government is stonewalling again by not allowing Americans' private dollars to be paid to American lawyers to defend civil liberties,'' Romero said.
Treasury Department spokesman John Rankin declined to comment on the showdown with the ACLU, citing privacy policies.
But he said the Treasury Department's Office of Foreign Assets Control "is treating this request with the seriousness it deserves and strives to process license applications as expeditiously as possible.''
OFAC is perhaps best known for enforcing regulations against Americans' spending money in places like Cuba or North Korea. But OFAC also is responsible for making certain American funds aren't sent to terrorist groups.
The ACLU announced in April that it was teaming with the National Association of Criminal Defense Lawyers to provide top-flight criminal attorneys to Guantanamo detainees facing the death penalty before military commissions at Guantanamo for their alleged role in the Sept. 11, 2001, terrorists attacks.
Under the program, called the John Adams Project after the second American president, who earned criticism from fellow colonists from defending British soldiers, attorneys representing the detainees would be paid for travel, expenses, research and copying as well as $250 an hour. The ACLU said $8.5 million had been set aside for the project. Romero said attorneys already are due $200,000 in payments.
The program was endorsed by a wide range of lawyers including former Attorney General Janet Reno and former FBI Director William Webster.
Participants include Boise, Idaho, lawyers David Nevin and Scott McKay, who are defense consultants to alleged 9/11 architect Khalid Sheik Mohammed, 43; Seattle attorneys Jeff Robinson and Amanda Lee, defending Mohammed's nephew, Ammar al Baluchi, 30, who noted at his June 5 arraignment that he is a Microsoft certified computer engineer; and Chicago lawyer Tom Durkin, defending Ramzi bin al Shibh, accused of organizing some of the Sept. 11 hijackers.
Nevin declared himself surprised at the standoff, especially since the ACLU had long been "in the business of defending people's rights.''
He added: "Obviously, everyone is going to do whatever is required to be done. But, intuitively, it seems odd to me that anyone's permission is necessary.''
The Treasury Department's Rankin this week offered no timetable for when the license might be issued.
''OFAC processes thousands of license requests each year for a variety of sanctions programs and consults with other offices and leadership in the U.S. Treasury and other agencies as the circumstances merit,'' he said.
Rankin said OFAC's role in the case was triggered because the Bush administration has designated Mohammed, the alleged 9/11 mastermind, and the other four defendants as "Specially Designated Global Terrorists.''
There was no explanation, however, of how that designation squares with the administration's insistence that the military commissions operate under the assumption that the accused are considered innocent until proven guilty.
As the final part of the article points out the ordinary supposition that a person is innocent until proven guilty is thrown out the window in these trials.
"" Rankin said OFAC's role in the case was triggered because the Bush administration has designated Mohammed, the alleged 9/11 mastermind, and the other four defendants as "Specially Designated Global Terrorists.''
There was no explanation, however, of how that designation squares with the administration's insistence that the military commissions operate under the assumption that the accused are considered innocent until proven guilty.""
So these persons are considered innocent even though they are already classified as specially designated global terrorists! Justice as farce. The blocking of payments is just another part of the Bush administrations' techniques of obstructing justice and making sure there are convictions.
ACLU: U.S. blocking payments to Guantanamo attorneys
By Carol Rosenberg Miami Herald
GUANTANAMO BAY NAVY BASE, Cuba — The U.S. government is blocking the American Civil Liberties Union from paying attorneys representing suspected terrorists held here, insisting that the ACLU must first receive a license from the U.S. Treasury Department before making the payments.
ACLU director Anthony Romero on Tuesday accused the Bush administration of "obstruction of justice" by delaying approval of the license, which the government argues is required under U.S. law because the beneficiaries of the lawyers' services are foreign terrorists.
"Now the government is stonewalling again by not allowing Americans' private dollars to be paid to American lawyers to defend civil liberties,'' Romero said.
Treasury Department spokesman John Rankin declined to comment on the showdown with the ACLU, citing privacy policies.
But he said the Treasury Department's Office of Foreign Assets Control "is treating this request with the seriousness it deserves and strives to process license applications as expeditiously as possible.''
OFAC is perhaps best known for enforcing regulations against Americans' spending money in places like Cuba or North Korea. But OFAC also is responsible for making certain American funds aren't sent to terrorist groups.
The ACLU announced in April that it was teaming with the National Association of Criminal Defense Lawyers to provide top-flight criminal attorneys to Guantanamo detainees facing the death penalty before military commissions at Guantanamo for their alleged role in the Sept. 11, 2001, terrorists attacks.
Under the program, called the John Adams Project after the second American president, who earned criticism from fellow colonists from defending British soldiers, attorneys representing the detainees would be paid for travel, expenses, research and copying as well as $250 an hour. The ACLU said $8.5 million had been set aside for the project. Romero said attorneys already are due $200,000 in payments.
The program was endorsed by a wide range of lawyers including former Attorney General Janet Reno and former FBI Director William Webster.
Participants include Boise, Idaho, lawyers David Nevin and Scott McKay, who are defense consultants to alleged 9/11 architect Khalid Sheik Mohammed, 43; Seattle attorneys Jeff Robinson and Amanda Lee, defending Mohammed's nephew, Ammar al Baluchi, 30, who noted at his June 5 arraignment that he is a Microsoft certified computer engineer; and Chicago lawyer Tom Durkin, defending Ramzi bin al Shibh, accused of organizing some of the Sept. 11 hijackers.
Nevin declared himself surprised at the standoff, especially since the ACLU had long been "in the business of defending people's rights.''
He added: "Obviously, everyone is going to do whatever is required to be done. But, intuitively, it seems odd to me that anyone's permission is necessary.''
The Treasury Department's Rankin this week offered no timetable for when the license might be issued.
''OFAC processes thousands of license requests each year for a variety of sanctions programs and consults with other offices and leadership in the U.S. Treasury and other agencies as the circumstances merit,'' he said.
Rankin said OFAC's role in the case was triggered because the Bush administration has designated Mohammed, the alleged 9/11 mastermind, and the other four defendants as "Specially Designated Global Terrorists.''
There was no explanation, however, of how that designation squares with the administration's insistence that the military commissions operate under the assumption that the accused are considered innocent until proven guilty.
Guess which action is a provocation!
If Iran tests one of its missiles it is a provocation--even though the same long range missile has been tested earlier! However, whatever the U.S. does even on Iran's doorstep is just business as usual and not provocative apparently. The differential descriptions used by media pass completely unnoticed. It is just as if somehow the public might have been brainwashed so that the response is automatic and not even though about.
Here is an article about Iran's tests from AFP.
Defiant Iran angers US with missile test
2 hours ago
TEHRAN (AFP) — Iran on Wednesday test-fired a missile it said is capable of reaching Israel, angering the United States amid growing fears that the standoff over the contested Iranian nuclear drive could lead to war.
The Shahab-3 was among a broadside of nine missiles fired off simultaneously at 8:00 am (0330 GMT) from an undisclosed location in the Iranian desert, state television showed.
State-run Arabic channel Al-Alam said the missiles test-fired by the elite Revolutionary Guards included a "Shahab-3 with a conventional warhead weighing one tonne and a 2,000-kilometre (1,240-mile) range."
The firing comes at a time of growing tension over Tehran's nuclear drive, which Iran insists is aimed solely at generating energy but the West fears could be aimed at making an atomic bomb.
"The aim of these war games is to show we are ready to defend the integrity of the Iranian nation," Al-Alam quoted Revolutionary Guards air force commander Hossein Salami as saying.
"Our missiles are ready for shooting at any place and any time, quickly and with accuracy. The enemy must not repeat its mistakes. The enemy targets are under surveillance," he added.
The United States, which has never ruled out military action against Iranian atomic facilities, immediately condemned the missile tests.
"Iran's development of ballistic missiles is a violation of United Nations Security Council resolutions and completely inconsistent with Iran's obligations to the world," White House spokesman Gordon Johndroe said.
He expressed concern that Iran's ballistic missiles could be used as "a delivery vehicle for a potential nuclear weapon".
"It's evidence that the missile threat is not an imaginary one," commented US Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice.
In Jerusalem, Prime Minister Ehud Olmert's spokesman said Israel is not seeking war.
"Israel seeks neither conflict nor hostilities with Iran, but no one in the international community should remain indifferent to Iran's nuclear programme and Iran's ballistic missile programme," Mark Regev said.
Also test-fired were the Zelzal, with a range of up to 400 kilometres (250 miles), and the Fateh with a range of around 170 kilometres (100 miles).
State television showed footage of the Shahab-3 and other missiles being launched, apparently successfully.
The Islamic republic test-fired the Shahab-3 for the first time in
Here is an article about Iran's tests from AFP.
Defiant Iran angers US with missile test
2 hours ago
TEHRAN (AFP) — Iran on Wednesday test-fired a missile it said is capable of reaching Israel, angering the United States amid growing fears that the standoff over the contested Iranian nuclear drive could lead to war.
The Shahab-3 was among a broadside of nine missiles fired off simultaneously at 8:00 am (0330 GMT) from an undisclosed location in the Iranian desert, state television showed.
State-run Arabic channel Al-Alam said the missiles test-fired by the elite Revolutionary Guards included a "Shahab-3 with a conventional warhead weighing one tonne and a 2,000-kilometre (1,240-mile) range."
The firing comes at a time of growing tension over Tehran's nuclear drive, which Iran insists is aimed solely at generating energy but the West fears could be aimed at making an atomic bomb.
"The aim of these war games is to show we are ready to defend the integrity of the Iranian nation," Al-Alam quoted Revolutionary Guards air force commander Hossein Salami as saying.
"Our missiles are ready for shooting at any place and any time, quickly and with accuracy. The enemy must not repeat its mistakes. The enemy targets are under surveillance," he added.
The United States, which has never ruled out military action against Iranian atomic facilities, immediately condemned the missile tests.
"Iran's development of ballistic missiles is a violation of United Nations Security Council resolutions and completely inconsistent with Iran's obligations to the world," White House spokesman Gordon Johndroe said.
He expressed concern that Iran's ballistic missiles could be used as "a delivery vehicle for a potential nuclear weapon".
"It's evidence that the missile threat is not an imaginary one," commented US Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice.
In Jerusalem, Prime Minister Ehud Olmert's spokesman said Israel is not seeking war.
"Israel seeks neither conflict nor hostilities with Iran, but no one in the international community should remain indifferent to Iran's nuclear programme and Iran's ballistic missile programme," Mark Regev said.
Also test-fired were the Zelzal, with a range of up to 400 kilometres (250 miles), and the Fateh with a range of around 170 kilometres (100 miles).
State television showed footage of the Shahab-3 and other missiles being launched, apparently successfully.
The Islamic republic test-fired the Shahab-3 for the first time in