This is from McClatchy. The U.S. is consolidating its imperial operations through this Africa command. Interesting that counterterrorism training, and humanitarian operations are all rolled into one. This is significant since they all are part of the same plan to extend U.S. dominion over Africa insofar as that is possible. No doubt oil resources are one target but there are lots of other resources as well. Interesting that the headquarters is not in Africa! It is interesting that more U.S. oil now comes from Africa than the Gulf countries. I imagine since reconciliation with Libya some of that oil will be from Libya.
McClatchy Washington Bureau
Posted on Mon, Sep. 29, 2008
The Pentagon's new Africa command raises suspicions about U.S. motives
Shashank Bengali McClatchy Newspapers
last updated: September 29, 2008 08:41:50 PM
NAIROBI, Kenya — The U.S. Africa Command, the Pentagon's first effort to unite its counterterrorism, training and humanitarian operations on the continent, launches Wednesday amid questions at home about its mission and deep suspicions in Africa about its intentions. U.S. officials have billed the new command, known as Africom, as a sign of Africa's strategic importance, but many in Africa see it as an unwelcome expansion of the U.S.-led war on terrorism and a bid to secure greater access to the continent's vast oil resources. Several countries have refused to host the command, and officials say Africom will be based in Stuttgart, Germany, for the foreseeable future.
U.S.-based aid groups and some in Congress have expressed worries that Africom will tilt U.S policy in Africa away from democracy-building and economic development and toward security objectives such as stemming the growth of militant Islamist groups in Somalia and North Africa, some of which have ties to al Qaida.
U.S. covert operations in Somalia and elsewhere have fueled the controversy. In late 2006, the U.S. military provided intelligence to help Ethiopia topple a fundamentalist Islamic regime in Somalia, an invasion that's fueled a violent Islamist insurgency.
U.S. forces have since launched several strikes on suspected terrorist targets in Somalia. While one of the strikes killed a top militant commander, Aden Hashi Ayro, in May, Somalis say the attacks also killed and badly wounded civilians.
Underlining the skepticism in Washington, the House of Representatives voted last week to provide $266 million to fund Africom's first year of operations — $123 million less than President Bush had requested. The House Appropriations Committee said the reduction was due partly to "the failure to establish an Africom presence on the continent."
The fledgling command's image problem, at home and abroad, is cause for concern because of Africa's growing importance to the United States.
The Department of Energy says that 17 percent of U.S. crude oil imports now come from Africa, more than the U.S. gets from Persian Gulf countries. But rising powers such as China have strengthened their ties with Africa and become a powerful counterweight to American influence.
Pentagon officials reject claims that Africom is about oil or China, but those perceptions remain strong in Africa.
"Obviously the U.S. is concerned about China's influence, security, oil, counterterrorism, hunting down al Qaida suspects," said Erin Weir of Refugees International, a Washington-based advocacy group that's opposed Africom. "Africans read the newspaper just the same as we do, and they know what drives U.S. interests now."
Witney Schneidman, who served as deputy assistant Secretary of State for African Affairs in the Clinton administration, said: "In many parts of Africa it is perceived as the U.S. bringing its war on terror to Africa. That is not what Africom is about, but that is how it has been seen."
While the public face of the U.S. military in Africa has been that of a benign partner, human rights activists say that the Bush administration's focus on terrorism has fueled suspicion of Africom.
"Anything to do with the U.S. military evokes some level of anxiety," said Hassan Omar, a member of the independent Kenya National Commission on Human Rights. "There is a strong feeling that America would overlook a crisis within a government or violations by certain governments if only they could secure more cooperation on matters of security."
After Bush announced the creation of Africom in February 2007, the Pentagon began issuing mixed messages about its mission, with some officials suggesting that the new command would help "coordinate" U.S. policy in the region. Experts immediately questioned whether U.S. troops would participate in humanitarian programs and other non-combat operations that have long been run by the State Department and U.S. embassies.
Pentagon officials have acknowledged mistakes in marketing Africom, and they no longer list humanitarian projects as part of its mission. Instead, they say that Africom will support other U.S. government agencies and focus on helping bolster African militaries.
"Africom will support, not shape, U.S. foreign policy on the continent," Teresa Whelan, Deputy Assistant Secretary of Defense for African Affairs, told a congressional hearing in July.
About 1,300 people, divided roughly evenly between civilian and military positions, are expected to staff the Germany headquarters, but no additional soldiers will be deployed in Africa yet. Instead, Africom will take charge of small U.S. military teams that are already on the continent training national militaries and maritime agencies, providing immunizations, drilling wells, rebuilding schools and conducting other projects.
Africom will assume control over the largest U.S. military base in the region, the 1,500-strong Combined Joint Task Force-Horn of Africa, housed at a former French Foreign Legion facility in the tiny eastern nation of Djibouti.
Despite the questions about its mission, experts say that Africom will raise Africa's profile in the Pentagon. Currently, three separate regional "combatant commands," which manage overseas U.S. military operations, share responsibility for Africa. The U.S. Central Command oversees seven countries in East Africa, Pacific Command has three Indian Ocean island nations and European Command handles 42 other African countries from Morocco to South Africa.
Now all the countries — except Egypt, which will continue to be grouped with Middle Eastern nations under the Central Command — will fall under Africom's jurisdiction. As with the other regional commands, Africom's commander, four-star Army Gen. William E. "Kip" Ward, reports to Secretary of Defense Robert Gates.
"One of the basic problems of U.S. engagement with Africa historically is there's been a lack of a long-term, sustained and steady commitment," said Abiodun Williams, a Sierra Leonean who's vice president of the Center for Conflict Analysis and Prevention at the United States Institute of Peace in Washington. "One of the positive things about Africom is this might finally be changing."
Tuesday, September 30, 2008
Stiglitz: A Better Bailout
This is a critique of the Paulson plan by a well know economist. Stiglitz has turned out to be wrong about politicians not being willing to vote against the plan however. But this was probably a temporary move. It has meant that there are now some changes to the plan. The new plan seems to replace government ownership of the toxic assets by some type of insurance plan. Perhaps this will mollify those who claim the plan is some sort of socialist enterprise! So weird is discourse about socialism now that bailing out capitalism is called socialist by some! Socialism is socialisation of the major means of production distribution and exchange and production on the basis of need not profit. It replaces capitalism rather than rescuing it.
Better BailoutBy Joseph E. Stiglitz26 September, 2008The NationThe champagne bottle corks were popping as Treasury Secretary HenryPaulson announced his trillion-dollar bailout for the banks, buying uptheir toxic mortgages. To a skeptic, Paulson's proposal looks likeanother of those shell games that Wall Street has honed to a fineart. Wall Street has always made money by slicing, dicing, andrecombining risk. This "cure" is another one of these rearrangements:somehow, by stripping out the bad assets from the banks and payingfair market value for them, the value of the banks will soar.There is, however, an alternative explanation for Wall Street'scelebration: the banks realized that they were about to get a freeride at taxpayers' expense. No private firm was willing to buy thesetoxic mortgages at what the seller thought was a reasonable price;they finally had found a sucker who would take them off theirhands--called the American taxpayer.The administration attempts to assure us that they will protect theAmerican people by insisting on buying the mortgages at the lowestprice at auction. Evidently, Paulson didn't learn the lessons ofinformation asymmetry which played such a large role in getting usinto this mess. The banks will pass on their lousiestmortgages. Paulson may try to assure us that we will hire the best andbrightest of Wall Street to make sure that this doesn't happen. (WallStreet firms are already licking their lips at the prospect of a newsource of revenues: fees from the US Treasury.) But even Wall Street'sbest and brightest do not exactly have a credible record in assetvaluation; if they had done better, we wouldn't be where we are. Andthat assumes that they are really working for the American people, nottheir long-term employers in financial markets. Even if they do usesome fancy mathematical model to value different mortgages, those inWall Street have long made money by gaming against these models. Wewill then wind up not with the absolutely lousiest mortgages, but withthose in which Treasury's models most underpriced risk. Either way, wethe taxpayers lose, and Wall Street gains.And for what? In the S&L bailout, taxpayers were already on the hook,with their deposit guarantee. Part of the question then was how tominimize taxpayers' exposure. But not so this time. The objective ofthe bailout should not be to protect the banks' shareholders, or eventheir creditors, who facilitated this bad lending. The objectiveshould be to maintain the flow of credit, especially to mortgages. Butwasn't that what the Fannie Mae/Freddie Mac bailout was suppose toassure us?There are four fundamental problems with our financial system, and thePaulson proposal addresses only one. The first is that the financialinstitutions have all these toxic products--which they created--andsince no one trusts anyone about their value, no one is willing tolend to anyone else. The Paulson approach solves this by passing therisk to us, the taxpayer--and for no return. The second problem isthat there is a big and increasing hole in bank balance sheets--bankslent money to people beyond their ability to repay--and no financialalchemy will fix that. If, as Paulson claims, banks get paid fairlyfor their lousy mortgages and the complex products in which they areembedded, the hole in their balance sheet will remain. What is neededis a transparent equity injection, not the non-transparent ruse thatthe administration is proposing.The third problem is that our economy has been supercharged by ahousing bubble which has now burst. The best experts believe thatprices still have a way to fall before the return to normal, and thatmeans there will be more foreclosures. No amount of talking up themarket is going to change that. The hidden agenda here may be takinglarge amounts of real estate off the market--and letting itdeteriorate at taxpayers' expense.The fourth problem is a lack of trust, a credibility gap. Regrettably,the way the entire financial crisis has been handled has only madethat gap larger.Paulson and others in Wall Street are claiming that the bailout isnecessary and that we are in deep trouble. Not long ago, they weretelling us that we had turned a corner. The administration even turneddown an effective stimulus package last February--one that would haveincluded increased unemployment benefits and aid to states andlocalities--and they still say we don't need another stimulus. To befrank, the administration has a credibility and trust gap as big asthat of Wall Street. If the crisis was as severe as they claim, whydidn't they propose a more credible plan? With lack of oversight andtransparency the cause of the current problem, how could they make aproposal so short in both? If a quick consensus is required, why notinclude provisions to stop the source of bleeding, the millions ofAmericans that are losing their homes? Why not spend as much on themas on Wall Street? Do they still believe in trickle down economics,when for the past eight years money has been trickling up to thewizards of Wall Street? Why not enact bankruptcy reform, to helpAmericans write down the value of the mortgage on their overvaluedhome? No one benefits from these costly foreclosures.The administration is once again holding a gun at our head, saying,"My way or the highway." We have been bamboozled before by thistactic. We should not let it happen to us again. There arealternatives. Warren Buffet showed the way, in providing equity toGoldman Sachs. The Scandinavian countries showed the way, almost twodecades ago. By issuing preferred shares with warrants (options), onereduces the public's downside risk and insures that they participatein some of the upside potential. This approach is not only proven, itprovides both incentives and wherewithal to resume lending. Itfurthermore avoids the hopeless task of trying to value millions ofcomplex mortgages and even more complex products in which they areembedded, and it deals with the "lemons" problem--the governmentgetting stuck with the worst or most overpriced assets.Finally, we need to impose a special financial sector tax to pay forthe bailouts conducted so far. We also need to create a reserve fundso that poor taxpayers won't have to be called upon again to financeWall Street's foolishness.If we design the right bailout, it won't lead to an increase in ourlong term debt--we might even make a profit. But if we implement thewrong strategy, there is a serious risk that our nationaldebt--already overburdened from a failed war and eight years of fiscalprofligacy--will soar, and future living standards will becompromised. The president seemed to think that his new shell gamewill arrest the decline in house prices, and we won't be faced holdinga lot of bad mortgages. I hope he's right, but I wouldn't count on it:it's not what most housing experts say. The president's economiccredentials are hardly stellar. Our national debt has already climbedfrom $5.7 trillion to over $9 trillion in eight years, and thedeficits for 2008 and 2009--not including the bailouts--are expectedto reach new heights. There is no such thing as a free war--and nosuch thing as a free bailout. The bill will be paid, in one way oranother.Perhaps by the time this article is published, the administration andCongress will have reached an agreement. No politician wants to beaccused of being responsible for the next Great Depression by blockingkey legislation. By all accounts, the compromise will be far betterthan the bill originally proposed by Paulson but still far short ofwhat I have outlined should be done. No one expects them to addressthe underlying causes of the problem: the spirit of excessivederegulation that the Bush Administration so promoted. Almost surely,there will be plenty of work to be done by the next president and thenext Congress. It would be better if we got it right the first time,but that is expecting too much of this president and hisadministration.___________________________________
Better BailoutBy Joseph E. Stiglitz26 September, 2008The NationThe champagne bottle corks were popping as Treasury Secretary HenryPaulson announced his trillion-dollar bailout for the banks, buying uptheir toxic mortgages. To a skeptic, Paulson's proposal looks likeanother of those shell games that Wall Street has honed to a fineart. Wall Street has always made money by slicing, dicing, andrecombining risk. This "cure" is another one of these rearrangements:somehow, by stripping out the bad assets from the banks and payingfair market value for them, the value of the banks will soar.There is, however, an alternative explanation for Wall Street'scelebration: the banks realized that they were about to get a freeride at taxpayers' expense. No private firm was willing to buy thesetoxic mortgages at what the seller thought was a reasonable price;they finally had found a sucker who would take them off theirhands--called the American taxpayer.The administration attempts to assure us that they will protect theAmerican people by insisting on buying the mortgages at the lowestprice at auction. Evidently, Paulson didn't learn the lessons ofinformation asymmetry which played such a large role in getting usinto this mess. The banks will pass on their lousiestmortgages. Paulson may try to assure us that we will hire the best andbrightest of Wall Street to make sure that this doesn't happen. (WallStreet firms are already licking their lips at the prospect of a newsource of revenues: fees from the US Treasury.) But even Wall Street'sbest and brightest do not exactly have a credible record in assetvaluation; if they had done better, we wouldn't be where we are. Andthat assumes that they are really working for the American people, nottheir long-term employers in financial markets. Even if they do usesome fancy mathematical model to value different mortgages, those inWall Street have long made money by gaming against these models. Wewill then wind up not with the absolutely lousiest mortgages, but withthose in which Treasury's models most underpriced risk. Either way, wethe taxpayers lose, and Wall Street gains.And for what? In the S&L bailout, taxpayers were already on the hook,with their deposit guarantee. Part of the question then was how tominimize taxpayers' exposure. But not so this time. The objective ofthe bailout should not be to protect the banks' shareholders, or eventheir creditors, who facilitated this bad lending. The objectiveshould be to maintain the flow of credit, especially to mortgages. Butwasn't that what the Fannie Mae/Freddie Mac bailout was suppose toassure us?There are four fundamental problems with our financial system, and thePaulson proposal addresses only one. The first is that the financialinstitutions have all these toxic products--which they created--andsince no one trusts anyone about their value, no one is willing tolend to anyone else. The Paulson approach solves this by passing therisk to us, the taxpayer--and for no return. The second problem isthat there is a big and increasing hole in bank balance sheets--bankslent money to people beyond their ability to repay--and no financialalchemy will fix that. If, as Paulson claims, banks get paid fairlyfor their lousy mortgages and the complex products in which they areembedded, the hole in their balance sheet will remain. What is neededis a transparent equity injection, not the non-transparent ruse thatthe administration is proposing.The third problem is that our economy has been supercharged by ahousing bubble which has now burst. The best experts believe thatprices still have a way to fall before the return to normal, and thatmeans there will be more foreclosures. No amount of talking up themarket is going to change that. The hidden agenda here may be takinglarge amounts of real estate off the market--and letting itdeteriorate at taxpayers' expense.The fourth problem is a lack of trust, a credibility gap. Regrettably,the way the entire financial crisis has been handled has only madethat gap larger.Paulson and others in Wall Street are claiming that the bailout isnecessary and that we are in deep trouble. Not long ago, they weretelling us that we had turned a corner. The administration even turneddown an effective stimulus package last February--one that would haveincluded increased unemployment benefits and aid to states andlocalities--and they still say we don't need another stimulus. To befrank, the administration has a credibility and trust gap as big asthat of Wall Street. If the crisis was as severe as they claim, whydidn't they propose a more credible plan? With lack of oversight andtransparency the cause of the current problem, how could they make aproposal so short in both? If a quick consensus is required, why notinclude provisions to stop the source of bleeding, the millions ofAmericans that are losing their homes? Why not spend as much on themas on Wall Street? Do they still believe in trickle down economics,when for the past eight years money has been trickling up to thewizards of Wall Street? Why not enact bankruptcy reform, to helpAmericans write down the value of the mortgage on their overvaluedhome? No one benefits from these costly foreclosures.The administration is once again holding a gun at our head, saying,"My way or the highway." We have been bamboozled before by thistactic. We should not let it happen to us again. There arealternatives. Warren Buffet showed the way, in providing equity toGoldman Sachs. The Scandinavian countries showed the way, almost twodecades ago. By issuing preferred shares with warrants (options), onereduces the public's downside risk and insures that they participatein some of the upside potential. This approach is not only proven, itprovides both incentives and wherewithal to resume lending. Itfurthermore avoids the hopeless task of trying to value millions ofcomplex mortgages and even more complex products in which they areembedded, and it deals with the "lemons" problem--the governmentgetting stuck with the worst or most overpriced assets.Finally, we need to impose a special financial sector tax to pay forthe bailouts conducted so far. We also need to create a reserve fundso that poor taxpayers won't have to be called upon again to financeWall Street's foolishness.If we design the right bailout, it won't lead to an increase in ourlong term debt--we might even make a profit. But if we implement thewrong strategy, there is a serious risk that our nationaldebt--already overburdened from a failed war and eight years of fiscalprofligacy--will soar, and future living standards will becompromised. The president seemed to think that his new shell gamewill arrest the decline in house prices, and we won't be faced holdinga lot of bad mortgages. I hope he's right, but I wouldn't count on it:it's not what most housing experts say. The president's economiccredentials are hardly stellar. Our national debt has already climbedfrom $5.7 trillion to over $9 trillion in eight years, and thedeficits for 2008 and 2009--not including the bailouts--are expectedto reach new heights. There is no such thing as a free war--and nosuch thing as a free bailout. The bill will be paid, in one way oranother.Perhaps by the time this article is published, the administration andCongress will have reached an agreement. No politician wants to beaccused of being responsible for the next Great Depression by blockingkey legislation. By all accounts, the compromise will be far betterthan the bill originally proposed by Paulson but still far short ofwhat I have outlined should be done. No one expects them to addressthe underlying causes of the problem: the spirit of excessivederegulation that the Bush Administration so promoted. Almost surely,there will be plenty of work to be done by the next president and thenext Congress. It would be better if we got it right the first time,but that is expecting too much of this president and hisadministration.___________________________________
Kurdistan Regional Govt. signs oil exploration deal with South Korea
Kurdistan seems to go blithely on signing these contracts even though the central government does not recognise them. It is not clear when if ever these conflicts will be sorted out.
Iraq’s Kurdistan Regional Government signs oil exploration deal with South Korea
Published
by
Iraq Oil Report
on September 25, 2008
in Uncategorized.
Media reports from Seoul say a Korea National Oil Corp.-led consortium has signed oil contracts with Iraq’s Kurdistan Regional Government.
The contracts were not verified by the KRG, which typically issues announcements when oil contracts are signed, Ben Lando reports for United Press International.
It has signed more than 20 production-sharing contracts since 2004, despite criticism from the central government in Baghdad, which claims regional and other local governments have no right to sign deals in the oil and gas sector. SK Energy, South Korea’s largest refiner and partner in a 2007 oil exploration and development deal signed between KRG and a KNOC-led consortium, was cut off from oil supplies by Baghdad in retaliation.
Iraq’s Kurdistan Regional Government signs oil exploration deal with South Korea
Published
by
Iraq Oil Report
on September 25, 2008
in Uncategorized.
Media reports from Seoul say a Korea National Oil Corp.-led consortium has signed oil contracts with Iraq’s Kurdistan Regional Government.
The contracts were not verified by the KRG, which typically issues announcements when oil contracts are signed, Ben Lando reports for United Press International.
It has signed more than 20 production-sharing contracts since 2004, despite criticism from the central government in Baghdad, which claims regional and other local governments have no right to sign deals in the oil and gas sector. SK Energy, South Korea’s largest refiner and partner in a 2007 oil exploration and development deal signed between KRG and a KNOC-led consortium, was cut off from oil supplies by Baghdad in retaliation.
Zardari: World safer place because of Bush
Zardari obviously wants to curry favor with the U.S. Zardari is famous for getting his cut of everything. Maybe he wants to increase the flow of U.S. aid. For now the U.S. and NATO seem to be confining their actions in Pakistan to drone operations although there have been some reports of more helicopter overflights. It remains to be seen if Zardari will be able to create any sort of stable government in Pakistan. In some border areas the army is pursuing an offence against militants but this has driven many over the border into Afghanistan. Some militants may have gone with them.
World safer place because of Bush’
* Zardari warns ‘the axis of evil is growing’ * Afghan president says world community should have paid more attention to FATABy Khalid HasanNEW YORK: President Asif Ali Zardari has said that the world is a ‘safer place’ because of President George W Bush’s leadership, adding, “It could have been much worse.”In an interview published by the Washington Post on Saturday, Zardari warned that “the axis of evil is growing”, but did not specify who constituted that ‘axis’. He denied that Pakistan had fired at two United States helicopters that had strayed into Pakistani territory from Afghanistan, saying that only warning flares had been fired, contradicting what Admiral Michael Mullen has alleged.Zardari said Pakistan has the opportunity to ‘do the job’ and has the ‘right credentials’ and so has he, having been through a ‘tough life’ that has prepared him ‘to become even tougher’.Attention: In another interview published by the Washington Post, Afghan President Hamid Karzai said there are Taliban sanctuaries ‘in the region’, while agreeing with the interviewer that the international community and the West should have paid more attention to the Tribal Areas. “They should have done all that was needed to be done — political, diplomatic, the right concentration. All those areas where the training (was taking place),” he added. Asked if former Pakistani president Pervez Musharraf had tried “quite a few options and if they had all failed”, the Afghan president replied, “Maybe he did try, but we did not see the results. Karzai went on to say, “I have faith in Zardari, and I am sure he will deliver. I am hearing good things about Gen Kayani as well. Afghanistan will do everything to give them a sense of confidence.”
World safer place because of Bush’
* Zardari warns ‘the axis of evil is growing’ * Afghan president says world community should have paid more attention to FATABy Khalid HasanNEW YORK: President Asif Ali Zardari has said that the world is a ‘safer place’ because of President George W Bush’s leadership, adding, “It could have been much worse.”In an interview published by the Washington Post on Saturday, Zardari warned that “the axis of evil is growing”, but did not specify who constituted that ‘axis’. He denied that Pakistan had fired at two United States helicopters that had strayed into Pakistani territory from Afghanistan, saying that only warning flares had been fired, contradicting what Admiral Michael Mullen has alleged.Zardari said Pakistan has the opportunity to ‘do the job’ and has the ‘right credentials’ and so has he, having been through a ‘tough life’ that has prepared him ‘to become even tougher’.Attention: In another interview published by the Washington Post, Afghan President Hamid Karzai said there are Taliban sanctuaries ‘in the region’, while agreeing with the interviewer that the international community and the West should have paid more attention to the Tribal Areas. “They should have done all that was needed to be done — political, diplomatic, the right concentration. All those areas where the training (was taking place),” he added. Asked if former Pakistani president Pervez Musharraf had tried “quite a few options and if they had all failed”, the Afghan president replied, “Maybe he did try, but we did not see the results. Karzai went on to say, “I have faith in Zardari, and I am sure he will deliver. I am hearing good things about Gen Kayani as well. Afghanistan will do everything to give them a sense of confidence.”
Monday, September 29, 2008
US economists against the bail-out.
Quite a few economists from prestigious universities are signatories of this. However, parts of the document are a bit weird given the situation..It is the dynamic and innovative private capital markets that brought prosperity so-called that also brought about the financial crisis. Nevertheless the points about fairness and the long term consequences are well taken.
Economists Against The Paulson Plan
To the Speaker of the House of Representatives and the President pro tempore of the Senate: 26/09/09 As economists, we want to express to Congress our great concern for the plan proposed by Treasury Secretary Paulson to deal with the financial crisis. We are well aware of the difficulty of the current financial situation and we agree with the need for bold action to ensure that the financial system continues to function. We see three fatal pitfalls in the currently proposed plan: 1) Its fairness. The plan is a subsidy to investors at taxpayers’ expense. Investors who took risks to earn profits must also bear the losses. Not every business failure carries systemic risk. The government can ensure a well-functioning financial industry, able to make new loans to creditworthy borrowers, without bailing out particular investors and institutions whose choices proved unwise. 2) Its ambiguity. Neither the mission of the new agency nor its oversight are clear. If taxpayers are to buy illiquid and opaque assets from troubled sellers, the terms, occasions, and methods of such purchases must be crystal clear ahead of time and carefully monitored afterwards. 3) Its long-term effects. If the plan is enacted, its effects will be with us for a generation. For all their recent troubles, America's dynamic and innovative private capital markets have brought the nation unparalleled prosperity. Fundamentally weakening those markets in order to calm short-run disruptions is desperately short-sighted. For these reasons we ask Congress not to rush, to hold appropriate hearings, and to carefully consider the right course of action, and to wisely determine the future of the financial industry and the U.S. economy for years to come.
Signed (updated at 9/25/2008 8:30AM CT)
Acemoglu Daron (Massachussets Institute of Technology)Adler Michael (Columbia University)Admati Anat R. (Stanford University)Alexis Marcus (Northwestern University)Alvarez Fernando (University of Chicago)Andersen Torben (Northwestern University)Baliga Sandeep (Northwestern University)Banerjee Abhijit V. (Massachussets Institute of Technology)Barankay Iwan (University of Pennsylvania)Barry Brian (University of Chicago)Bartkus James R. (Xavier University of Louisiana) Becker Charles M. (Duke University)Becker Robert A. (Indiana University)Beim David (Columbia University)Berk Jonathan (Stanford University)Bisin Alberto (New York University)Bittlingmayer George (University of Kansas)Boldrin Michele (Washington University)Brooks Taggert J. (University of Wisconsin)Brynjolfsson Erik (Massachusetts Institute of Technology)Buera Francisco J. (UCLA)Camp Mary Elizabeth (Indiana University)Carmel Jonathan (University of Michigan)Carroll Christopher (Johns Hopkins University)Cassar Gavin (University of Pennsylvania)Chaney Thomas (University of Chicago)Chari Varadarajan V. (University of Minnesota)Chauvin Keith W. (University of Kansas)Chintagunta Pradeep K. (University of Chicago)Christiano Lawrence J. (Northwestern University)Cochrane John (University of Chicago)Coleman John (Duke University)Constantinides George M. (University of Chicago)Crain Robert (UC Berkeley)Culp Christopher (University of Chicago)Da Zhi (University of Notre Dame)Davis Morris (University of Wisconsin)De Marzo Peter (Stanford University)Dubé Jean-Pierre H. (University of Chicago)Edlin Aaron (UC Berkeley)Eichenbaum Martin (Northwestern University)Ely Jeffrey (Northwestern University)Eraslan Hülya K. K.(Johns Hopkins University)Faulhaber Gerald (University of Pennsylvania)Feldmann Sven (University of Melbourne)Fernandez-Villaverde Jesus (University of Pennsylvania)Fohlin Caroline (Johns Hopkins University)Fox Jeremy T. (University of Chicago)Frank Murray Z.(University of Minnesota)Frenzen Jonathan (University of Chicago)Fuchs William (University of Chicago)Fudenberg Drew (Harvard University)Gabaix Xavier (New York University)Gao Paul (Notre Dame University)Garicano Luis (University of Chicago)Gerakos Joseph J. (University of Chicago)Gibbs Michael (University of Chicago)Glomm Gerhard (Indiana University)Goettler Ron (University of Chicago)Goldin Claudia (Harvard University)Gordon Robert J. (Northwestern University)Greenstone Michael (Massachusetts Institute of Technology)Guadalupe Maria (Columbia University)Guerrieri Veronica (University of Chicago)Hagerty Kathleen (Northwestern University)Hamada Robert S. (University of Chicago)Hansen Lars (University of Chicago)Harris Milton (University of Chicago)Hart Oliver (Harvard University)Hazlett Thomas W. (George Mason University)Heaton John (University of Chicago)Heckman James (University of Chicago - Nobel Laureate)Henderson David R. (Hoover Institution)Henisz, Witold (University of Pennsylvania)Hertzberg Andrew (Columbia University)Hite Gailen (Columbia University)Hitsch Günter J. (University of Chicago)Hodrick Robert J. (Columbia University)Hopenhayn Hugo (UCLA)Hurst Erik (University of Chicago)Imrohoroglu Ayse (University of Southern California)Isakson Hans (University of Northern Iowa)Israel Ronen (London Business School)Jaffee Dwight M. (UC Berkeley)Jagannathan Ravi (Northwestern University)Jenter Dirk (Stanford University)Jones Charles M. (Columbia Business School)Kaboski Joseph P. (Ohio State University)Kahn Matthew (UCLA)Kaplan Ethan (Stockholm University)Karolyi, Andrew (Ohio State University)Kashyap Anil (University of Chicago)Keim Donald B (University of Pennsylvania)Ketkar Suhas L (Vanderbilt University)Kiesling Lynne (Northwestern University)Klenow Pete (Stanford University)Koch Paul (University of Kansas)Kocherlakota Narayana (University of Minnesota)Koijen Ralph S.J. (University of Chicago)Kondo Jiro (Northwestern University)Korteweg Arthur (Stanford University)Kortum Samuel (University of Chicago)Krueger Dirk (University of Pennsylvania)Ledesma Patricia (Northwestern University)Lee Lung-fei (Ohio State University)Leeper Eric M. (Indiana University)Leuz Christian (University of Chicago)Levine David I.(UC Berkeley)Levine David K.(Washington University)Levy David M. (George Mason University)Linnainmaa Juhani (University of Chicago)Lott John R. Jr. (University of Maryland)Lucas Robert (University of Chicago - Nobel Laureate)Luttmer Erzo G.J. (University of Minnesota)Manski Charles F. (Northwestern University)Martin Ian (Stanford University)Mayer Christopher (Columbia University)Mazzeo Michael (Northwestern University)McDonald Robert (Northwestern University)Meadow Scott F. (University of Chicago)Mehra Rajnish (UC Santa Barbara)Mian Atif (University of Chicago)Middlebrook Art (University of Chicago)Miguel Edward (UC Berkeley)Miravete Eugenio J. (University of Texas at Austin)Miron Jeffrey (Harvard University)Moretti Enrico (UC Berkeley)Moriguchi Chiaki (Northwestern University)Moro Andrea (Vanderbilt University)Morse Adair (University of Chicago)Mortensen Dale T. (Northwestern University)Mortimer Julie Holland (Harvard University)Muralidharan Karthik (UC San Diego)Nanda Dhananjay (University of Miami)Nevo Aviv (Northwestern University)Ohanian Lee (UCLA) Pagliari Joseph (University of Chicago)Papanikolaou Dimitris (Northwestern University)Parker Jonathan (Northwestern University)Paul Evans (Ohio State University)Pejovich Svetozar (Steve) (Texas A&M University)Peltzman Sam (University of Chicago)Perri Fabrizio (University of Minnesota)Phelan Christopher (University of Minnesota)Piazzesi Monika (Stanford University)Piskorski Tomasz (Columbia University)Rampini Adriano (Duke University)Reagan Patricia (Ohio State University)Reich Michael (UC Berkeley)Reuben Ernesto (Northwestern University)Roberts Michael (University of Pennsylvania)Robinson David (Duke University)Rogers Michele (Northwestern University)Rotella Elyce (Indiana University) Ruud Paul (Vassar College)Safford Sean (University of Chicago)Sandbu Martin E. (University of Pennsylvania)Sapienza Paola (Northwestern University) Savor Pavel (University of Pennsylvania)Scharfstein David (Harvard University)Seim Katja (University of Pennsylvania)Seru Amit (University of Chicago)Shang-Jin Wei (Columbia University)Shimer Robert (University of Chicago)Shore Stephen H. (Johns Hopkins University)Siegel Ron (Northwestern University)Smith David C. (University of Virginia)Smith Vernon L.(Chapman University- Nobel Laureate)Sorensen Morten (Columbia University)Spiegel Matthew (Yale University)Stevenson Betsey (University of Pennsylvania)Stokey Nancy (University of Chicago)Strahan Philip (Boston College)Strebulaev Ilya (Stanford University)Sufi Amir (University of Chicago)Tabarrok Alex (George Mason University)Taylor Alan M. (UC Davis)Thompson Tim (Northwestern University)Tschoegl Adrian E. (University of Pennsylvania)Uhlig Harald (University of Chicago)Ulrich, Maxim (Columbia University)Van Buskirk Andrew (University of Chicago)Veronesi Pietro (University of Chicago)Vissing-Jorgensen Annette (Northwestern University)Wacziarg Romain (UCLA)Weill Pierre-Olivier (UCLA)Williamson Samuel H. (Miami University)Witte Mark (Northwestern University)Wolfers Justin (University of Pennsylvania)Woutersen Tiemen (Johns Hopkins University)Zingales Luigi (University of Chicago)Zitzewitz Eric (Dartmouth College)
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Economists Against The Paulson Plan
To the Speaker of the House of Representatives and the President pro tempore of the Senate: 26/09/09 As economists, we want to express to Congress our great concern for the plan proposed by Treasury Secretary Paulson to deal with the financial crisis. We are well aware of the difficulty of the current financial situation and we agree with the need for bold action to ensure that the financial system continues to function. We see three fatal pitfalls in the currently proposed plan: 1) Its fairness. The plan is a subsidy to investors at taxpayers’ expense. Investors who took risks to earn profits must also bear the losses. Not every business failure carries systemic risk. The government can ensure a well-functioning financial industry, able to make new loans to creditworthy borrowers, without bailing out particular investors and institutions whose choices proved unwise. 2) Its ambiguity. Neither the mission of the new agency nor its oversight are clear. If taxpayers are to buy illiquid and opaque assets from troubled sellers, the terms, occasions, and methods of such purchases must be crystal clear ahead of time and carefully monitored afterwards. 3) Its long-term effects. If the plan is enacted, its effects will be with us for a generation. For all their recent troubles, America's dynamic and innovative private capital markets have brought the nation unparalleled prosperity. Fundamentally weakening those markets in order to calm short-run disruptions is desperately short-sighted. For these reasons we ask Congress not to rush, to hold appropriate hearings, and to carefully consider the right course of action, and to wisely determine the future of the financial industry and the U.S. economy for years to come.
Signed (updated at 9/25/2008 8:30AM CT)
Acemoglu Daron (Massachussets Institute of Technology)Adler Michael (Columbia University)Admati Anat R. (Stanford University)Alexis Marcus (Northwestern University)Alvarez Fernando (University of Chicago)Andersen Torben (Northwestern University)Baliga Sandeep (Northwestern University)Banerjee Abhijit V. (Massachussets Institute of Technology)Barankay Iwan (University of Pennsylvania)Barry Brian (University of Chicago)Bartkus James R. (Xavier University of Louisiana) Becker Charles M. (Duke University)Becker Robert A. (Indiana University)Beim David (Columbia University)Berk Jonathan (Stanford University)Bisin Alberto (New York University)Bittlingmayer George (University of Kansas)Boldrin Michele (Washington University)Brooks Taggert J. (University of Wisconsin)Brynjolfsson Erik (Massachusetts Institute of Technology)Buera Francisco J. (UCLA)Camp Mary Elizabeth (Indiana University)Carmel Jonathan (University of Michigan)Carroll Christopher (Johns Hopkins University)Cassar Gavin (University of Pennsylvania)Chaney Thomas (University of Chicago)Chari Varadarajan V. (University of Minnesota)Chauvin Keith W. (University of Kansas)Chintagunta Pradeep K. (University of Chicago)Christiano Lawrence J. (Northwestern University)Cochrane John (University of Chicago)Coleman John (Duke University)Constantinides George M. (University of Chicago)Crain Robert (UC Berkeley)Culp Christopher (University of Chicago)Da Zhi (University of Notre Dame)Davis Morris (University of Wisconsin)De Marzo Peter (Stanford University)Dubé Jean-Pierre H. (University of Chicago)Edlin Aaron (UC Berkeley)Eichenbaum Martin (Northwestern University)Ely Jeffrey (Northwestern University)Eraslan Hülya K. K.(Johns Hopkins University)Faulhaber Gerald (University of Pennsylvania)Feldmann Sven (University of Melbourne)Fernandez-Villaverde Jesus (University of Pennsylvania)Fohlin Caroline (Johns Hopkins University)Fox Jeremy T. (University of Chicago)Frank Murray Z.(University of Minnesota)Frenzen Jonathan (University of Chicago)Fuchs William (University of Chicago)Fudenberg Drew (Harvard University)Gabaix Xavier (New York University)Gao Paul (Notre Dame University)Garicano Luis (University of Chicago)Gerakos Joseph J. (University of Chicago)Gibbs Michael (University of Chicago)Glomm Gerhard (Indiana University)Goettler Ron (University of Chicago)Goldin Claudia (Harvard University)Gordon Robert J. (Northwestern University)Greenstone Michael (Massachusetts Institute of Technology)Guadalupe Maria (Columbia University)Guerrieri Veronica (University of Chicago)Hagerty Kathleen (Northwestern University)Hamada Robert S. (University of Chicago)Hansen Lars (University of Chicago)Harris Milton (University of Chicago)Hart Oliver (Harvard University)Hazlett Thomas W. (George Mason University)Heaton John (University of Chicago)Heckman James (University of Chicago - Nobel Laureate)Henderson David R. (Hoover Institution)Henisz, Witold (University of Pennsylvania)Hertzberg Andrew (Columbia University)Hite Gailen (Columbia University)Hitsch Günter J. (University of Chicago)Hodrick Robert J. (Columbia University)Hopenhayn Hugo (UCLA)Hurst Erik (University of Chicago)Imrohoroglu Ayse (University of Southern California)Isakson Hans (University of Northern Iowa)Israel Ronen (London Business School)Jaffee Dwight M. (UC Berkeley)Jagannathan Ravi (Northwestern University)Jenter Dirk (Stanford University)Jones Charles M. (Columbia Business School)Kaboski Joseph P. (Ohio State University)Kahn Matthew (UCLA)Kaplan Ethan (Stockholm University)Karolyi, Andrew (Ohio State University)Kashyap Anil (University of Chicago)Keim Donald B (University of Pennsylvania)Ketkar Suhas L (Vanderbilt University)Kiesling Lynne (Northwestern University)Klenow Pete (Stanford University)Koch Paul (University of Kansas)Kocherlakota Narayana (University of Minnesota)Koijen Ralph S.J. (University of Chicago)Kondo Jiro (Northwestern University)Korteweg Arthur (Stanford University)Kortum Samuel (University of Chicago)Krueger Dirk (University of Pennsylvania)Ledesma Patricia (Northwestern University)Lee Lung-fei (Ohio State University)Leeper Eric M. (Indiana University)Leuz Christian (University of Chicago)Levine David I.(UC Berkeley)Levine David K.(Washington University)Levy David M. (George Mason University)Linnainmaa Juhani (University of Chicago)Lott John R. Jr. (University of Maryland)Lucas Robert (University of Chicago - Nobel Laureate)Luttmer Erzo G.J. (University of Minnesota)Manski Charles F. (Northwestern University)Martin Ian (Stanford University)Mayer Christopher (Columbia University)Mazzeo Michael (Northwestern University)McDonald Robert (Northwestern University)Meadow Scott F. (University of Chicago)Mehra Rajnish (UC Santa Barbara)Mian Atif (University of Chicago)Middlebrook Art (University of Chicago)Miguel Edward (UC Berkeley)Miravete Eugenio J. (University of Texas at Austin)Miron Jeffrey (Harvard University)Moretti Enrico (UC Berkeley)Moriguchi Chiaki (Northwestern University)Moro Andrea (Vanderbilt University)Morse Adair (University of Chicago)Mortensen Dale T. (Northwestern University)Mortimer Julie Holland (Harvard University)Muralidharan Karthik (UC San Diego)Nanda Dhananjay (University of Miami)Nevo Aviv (Northwestern University)Ohanian Lee (UCLA) Pagliari Joseph (University of Chicago)Papanikolaou Dimitris (Northwestern University)Parker Jonathan (Northwestern University)Paul Evans (Ohio State University)Pejovich Svetozar (Steve) (Texas A&M University)Peltzman Sam (University of Chicago)Perri Fabrizio (University of Minnesota)Phelan Christopher (University of Minnesota)Piazzesi Monika (Stanford University)Piskorski Tomasz (Columbia University)Rampini Adriano (Duke University)Reagan Patricia (Ohio State University)Reich Michael (UC Berkeley)Reuben Ernesto (Northwestern University)Roberts Michael (University of Pennsylvania)Robinson David (Duke University)Rogers Michele (Northwestern University)Rotella Elyce (Indiana University) Ruud Paul (Vassar College)Safford Sean (University of Chicago)Sandbu Martin E. (University of Pennsylvania)Sapienza Paola (Northwestern University) Savor Pavel (University of Pennsylvania)Scharfstein David (Harvard University)Seim Katja (University of Pennsylvania)Seru Amit (University of Chicago)Shang-Jin Wei (Columbia University)Shimer Robert (University of Chicago)Shore Stephen H. (Johns Hopkins University)Siegel Ron (Northwestern University)Smith David C. (University of Virginia)Smith Vernon L.(Chapman University- Nobel Laureate)Sorensen Morten (Columbia University)Spiegel Matthew (Yale University)Stevenson Betsey (University of Pennsylvania)Stokey Nancy (University of Chicago)Strahan Philip (Boston College)Strebulaev Ilya (Stanford University)Sufi Amir (University of Chicago)Tabarrok Alex (George Mason University)Taylor Alan M. (UC Davis)Thompson Tim (Northwestern University)Tschoegl Adrian E. (University of Pennsylvania)Uhlig Harald (University of Chicago)Ulrich, Maxim (Columbia University)Van Buskirk Andrew (University of Chicago)Veronesi Pietro (University of Chicago)Vissing-Jorgensen Annette (Northwestern University)Wacziarg Romain (UCLA)Weill Pierre-Olivier (UCLA)Williamson Samuel H. (Miami University)Witte Mark (Northwestern University)Wolfers Justin (University of Pennsylvania)Woutersen Tiemen (Johns Hopkins University)Zingales Luigi (University of Chicago)Zitzewitz Eric (Dartmouth College)
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Conservative Quebec support softening?
This is from the CBC.
The Conservatives do not seem poised for the breakthrough in Quebec that they had hoped. As the article notes however the French debate may make a difference if Harper does well. The arts funding issue and get tough on youth crime speech did not help Harper at all in Quebec, quite the opposite it seems. Harper's advisers must be looking too much at his core conservative supporters.
Harper's Quebec support softening?Posted in Political Bytes Posted on September 29, 2008 10:38 AM Two polls published today in the Journal de Montréal and La Presse suggest that support for the Tories may be slipping in Quebec.
Emmanuel MarchandThe Léger poll in Le Journal de Montréal is the largest so far for Quebec with 3,624 people surveyed.
It reports support for the Bloc at 33 per cent of decides voters asked, with the Conservatives at 26 per cent, the Liberals at 23 per cent, the NDP at 12 per cent and the Greens at five per cent.
The regional breakdown is interesting, too with the Liberals and the Bloc pretty much tied on the Island of Montreal.
The Tories are hoping to make gains in the ridings around Montreal but the polls suggest it might be tough for them to pick up those seats.
The Bloc is still comfortably ahead in those riding with a 24-point lead north of Montreal and a 16-point lead in the areas south of the island.
Where the Conservatives do seem to have a good chance of keeping their seats is in the Quebec city area, the Beauce (where Maxime Bernier is still very popular), and the Saguenay.
Just last week the polls were showing the Tories in the lead in Quebec. The general consensus is that cuts to arts funding and Harper’s promise to get tough on youth crime have hurt them here.
La Presse’s poll focused on seven key ridings. It shows the race is tighter than originally thought. In Public Works Minister Jean-Pierre Blackburn’s riding of Jonquière-Alma, the Bloc has taken a comfortable 12-point lead. Although Blackburn may be in trouble, the Conservatives have a good chance of keeping the neighbouring riding of Roberval-Lac-St-Jean. Tory candidate Denis Lebel has a 10-point lead over the Bloc candidate.
In the Quebec City area, the poll in La Presse is showing the Tories look like they may keep the ridings they won last election, but will likely not make any gains.
The French Debate on Wednesday may be key for all parties. Harper will have to come across as more conciliatory in order to try to win back the momentum.
Last election Harper gained a lot of support in the last two weeks and was able to make gains. This election the opposite seems to be happening.
— Emmanuel Marchand
The Conservatives do not seem poised for the breakthrough in Quebec that they had hoped. As the article notes however the French debate may make a difference if Harper does well. The arts funding issue and get tough on youth crime speech did not help Harper at all in Quebec, quite the opposite it seems. Harper's advisers must be looking too much at his core conservative supporters.
Harper's Quebec support softening?Posted in Political Bytes Posted on September 29, 2008 10:38 AM Two polls published today in the Journal de Montréal and La Presse suggest that support for the Tories may be slipping in Quebec.
Emmanuel MarchandThe Léger poll in Le Journal de Montréal is the largest so far for Quebec with 3,624 people surveyed.
It reports support for the Bloc at 33 per cent of decides voters asked, with the Conservatives at 26 per cent, the Liberals at 23 per cent, the NDP at 12 per cent and the Greens at five per cent.
The regional breakdown is interesting, too with the Liberals and the Bloc pretty much tied on the Island of Montreal.
The Tories are hoping to make gains in the ridings around Montreal but the polls suggest it might be tough for them to pick up those seats.
The Bloc is still comfortably ahead in those riding with a 24-point lead north of Montreal and a 16-point lead in the areas south of the island.
Where the Conservatives do seem to have a good chance of keeping their seats is in the Quebec city area, the Beauce (where Maxime Bernier is still very popular), and the Saguenay.
Just last week the polls were showing the Tories in the lead in Quebec. The general consensus is that cuts to arts funding and Harper’s promise to get tough on youth crime have hurt them here.
La Presse’s poll focused on seven key ridings. It shows the race is tighter than originally thought. In Public Works Minister Jean-Pierre Blackburn’s riding of Jonquière-Alma, the Bloc has taken a comfortable 12-point lead. Although Blackburn may be in trouble, the Conservatives have a good chance of keeping the neighbouring riding of Roberval-Lac-St-Jean. Tory candidate Denis Lebel has a 10-point lead over the Bloc candidate.
In the Quebec City area, the poll in La Presse is showing the Tories look like they may keep the ridings they won last election, but will likely not make any gains.
The French Debate on Wednesday may be key for all parties. Harper will have to come across as more conciliatory in order to try to win back the momentum.
Last election Harper gained a lot of support in the last two weeks and was able to make gains. This election the opposite seems to be happening.
— Emmanuel Marchand
Philippines: More clashes with rebel MILF groups
This is from sundaily.
There seems to be no end to conflict with rebel MILF groups. The casualty figures vary wildly from the AFP to the rebel group spokespeople. There is a huge problem with displaced people fleeing the fighting.
32 people killed in three days of fighting in PhilippinesCOTABATO CITY, Philippines (Sept 26, 2008): Thirty-one Muslim rebels and one soldier were killed in three days of fighting in the southern Philippines, military officials said today.
Nine Moro Islamic Liberation Front (MILF) rebels and one soldier were killed in clashes late yesterday in Datu Piang town in Maguindanao province, 960km south of Manila, said Major Peter Edwin Navarro, an army brigade spokesman.
Navarro said the fighting, which lasted until early evening, erupted when pursuing troops caught up with heavily armed MILF rebels in the village of Andavet. One soldier was also wounded in the fighting.
Lieutenant Colonel Julieto Ando, a regional army spokesman, said three more MILF rebels were also killed in a clash with security forces in Aleosan town in nearby North Cotabato province.
Ando said about 50 MILF rebels attacked a police convoy in the village of Sulok Thursday, triggering a running gunbattle that lasted until mid-afternoon. A policeman was wounded in the fighting.
Clashes between government troops and MILF rebels on Tuesday and Wednesday in the towns of Datu Saudi Ampatuan and Guindulungan, also in Maguindanao, resulted in the killing of 19 MILF rebels and the wounding of three soldiers, Navarro said.
But MILF spokesman Eid Kabalu denied the military's claim of the rebel death toll in those clashes, saying one MILF fighter was wounded and 10 soldiers were killed.
Kabalu also said two MILF rebels were killed in the fighting in Datu Piang while government security forces suffered 28 fatalities.
"The soldiers' fatalities were confirmed to us by civilians," he said.
Kabalu said several mosques in the area have been damaged in the fighting. Two army personnel carriers were also damaged, he said.
Government troops have intensified their military offensive against MILF rebels responsible for attacking towns and seizing villages in North Cotabato and nearby provinces last month.
The MILF attacks occurred after the Supreme Court stopped the signing of a deal that would have expanded the existing autonomous Muslim region on the strife-torn southern island of Mindanao.
More than 200 people were killed in subsequent clashes between government troops and MILF rebels and more than 500,000 displaced.
President Gloria Macapagal Arroyo dissolved the government peace panel negotiating with the MILF. She said peace negotiations would resume only when the rebel commanders responsible for the attacks were brought to justice. - dpa
There seems to be no end to conflict with rebel MILF groups. The casualty figures vary wildly from the AFP to the rebel group spokespeople. There is a huge problem with displaced people fleeing the fighting.
32 people killed in three days of fighting in PhilippinesCOTABATO CITY, Philippines (Sept 26, 2008): Thirty-one Muslim rebels and one soldier were killed in three days of fighting in the southern Philippines, military officials said today.
Nine Moro Islamic Liberation Front (MILF) rebels and one soldier were killed in clashes late yesterday in Datu Piang town in Maguindanao province, 960km south of Manila, said Major Peter Edwin Navarro, an army brigade spokesman.
Navarro said the fighting, which lasted until early evening, erupted when pursuing troops caught up with heavily armed MILF rebels in the village of Andavet. One soldier was also wounded in the fighting.
Lieutenant Colonel Julieto Ando, a regional army spokesman, said three more MILF rebels were also killed in a clash with security forces in Aleosan town in nearby North Cotabato province.
Ando said about 50 MILF rebels attacked a police convoy in the village of Sulok Thursday, triggering a running gunbattle that lasted until mid-afternoon. A policeman was wounded in the fighting.
Clashes between government troops and MILF rebels on Tuesday and Wednesday in the towns of Datu Saudi Ampatuan and Guindulungan, also in Maguindanao, resulted in the killing of 19 MILF rebels and the wounding of three soldiers, Navarro said.
But MILF spokesman Eid Kabalu denied the military's claim of the rebel death toll in those clashes, saying one MILF fighter was wounded and 10 soldiers were killed.
Kabalu also said two MILF rebels were killed in the fighting in Datu Piang while government security forces suffered 28 fatalities.
"The soldiers' fatalities were confirmed to us by civilians," he said.
Kabalu said several mosques in the area have been damaged in the fighting. Two army personnel carriers were also damaged, he said.
Government troops have intensified their military offensive against MILF rebels responsible for attacking towns and seizing villages in North Cotabato and nearby provinces last month.
The MILF attacks occurred after the Supreme Court stopped the signing of a deal that would have expanded the existing autonomous Muslim region on the strife-torn southern island of Mindanao.
More than 200 people were killed in subsequent clashes between government troops and MILF rebels and more than 500,000 displaced.
President Gloria Macapagal Arroyo dissolved the government peace panel negotiating with the MILF. She said peace negotiations would resume only when the rebel commanders responsible for the attacks were brought to justice. - dpa
Syria could be paying a price for more moderate policies.
Syria is a secular state and just as with Saddam's Iraq is hated with a vengeance by Al Qaeda types. This tends to be forgotten in the western press. Terrorists are often lumped all in one in western reports but they are quite different. Hamas for example is Sunni and Hezzbolah Shia. The two often do not see eye to eye at all. As this article suggests it may be because of recent overtures to Israel that Syria is being attacked at this time. However Syria has often helped out the west particular with regard to interrogation and torture of suspected Al Qaeda operatives. It doesn't seem to have gained much in return. Syria has long been a foe of Al Qaeda.
Syria could be paying a price for moderating
Syria bomb may be sign it is paying a price for moderating as it tries to end isolation
BASSEM MROUEAP News
Sep 28, 2008 16:50 EST
A rare bombing in Damascus over the weekend could be sign that Syria is paying a price for moderating its hard-line policies as it tries to boost its international standing.
No one has claimed responsibility for Saturday's car bombing outside a state security complex which killed 17 people and wounded 14. The Syrians have not directly accused anyone but state-run newspapers suggested foreign involvement — a veiled reference to northern Lebanon which has become a hotbed for extremist Sunni Muslims.
The Sunni militants, sometimes called Salafists, have been blamed for a string of smaller bombings and attacks against the Syrian government and diplomatic missions in recent years. The main group accused is an offshoot of al-Qaida.
The Sunni extremists are angry over the tightening of security along Syria's border with Iraq, which cuts off their routes to the fight against U.S. forces in Iraq. They also oppose the government's alliance with Shiite Iran and the strict secular nature of the state.
"Once you have Salafists and Jihadis in your country and when you stop their flow to Iraq and their transit in and out from Lebanon, it is not surprising that such bombings" occur, said Andrew Tabler, a Syria analyst and consulting editor at the English-language Syria Today magazine.
Syria has long been viewed by the U.S. as a destabilizing force in the Mideast. An ally of Iran and Hezbollah guerrillas in Lebanon, it has also provided a home for some radical Palestinian groups.
But the country is now trying to emerge from years of international isolation, opening up to Europe and engaging in indirect negotiations with archenemy Israel, even while still professing steadfast support for Lebanese and Palestinian militants.
In recent months, Syria has agreed to establish diplomatic ties with Lebanon for the first time since both countries became independent and has tightened its border with Iraq to control the movement of people and goods. A goal of European rapprochement is to drive Damascus away from its regional ally Iran.
The weekend car bombing could also be a sign of the weakening grip President Bashar Assad's regime on security and of an emerging power struggle between the regime's security agencies, analysts said.
Writing Sunday in the independent conservative Beirut daily al-Anwar, Editor-in-Chief Rafik Khoury linked the bombing to "the dangerous scenarios pertaining to the 'crossroads' of changes in the region."
An Israeli Cabinet minister said the bombing may be linked to Syria's indirect negotiations with Israel.
"There are elements who want to derail this process, mostly Tehran which feels that Syria might be moving toward a peace coalition in the region," said Isaac Herzog.
Assad's secular regime has been battling Sunni Muslim extremists for years. In September 2006, Islamic militants tried to storm the U.S. Embassy in Damascus and three months earlier, a battle near the Defense Ministry left four militants and a police officer dead.
Officials blamed these attacks on Jund al-Sham, which means Soldiers of Syria, an al-Qaida offshoot that was established in Afghanistan. Militants often denounce Assad's regime and have at times called for its overthrow, especially since Syria began cracking down on those crossing the border to reach Iraq.
Despite hosting radical anti-Israeli Palestinian groups, Syria insists it has an interest in fighting Islamic extremist groups such as al-Qaida and in the 1980s, it cracked down heavily on the Syrian Muslim Brotherhood.
Syria is also on poor terms with regional heavyweight Saudi Arabia, which in the past has supported conservative Sunni groups in the region and takes a dim view of Syria's alliance with Iran.
Another motive for the bombing could be the rising Sunni-Shiite tensions in the region. The bomb was placed at a highway intersection a few miles from a Shiite shrine frequented by pilgrims from Lebanon, Iraq and Iran.
The bombing, last month's assassination of a top intelligence general in mysterious circumstances and the February bombing in Damascus that killed Imad Mughniyeh, a top Hezbollah commander and one of America's most wanted terrorists, feeds suspicions carried by opposition media that it could all be part of an internal power struggle between the regime's security agencies.
Syria could be paying a price for moderating
Syria bomb may be sign it is paying a price for moderating as it tries to end isolation
BASSEM MROUEAP News
Sep 28, 2008 16:50 EST
A rare bombing in Damascus over the weekend could be sign that Syria is paying a price for moderating its hard-line policies as it tries to boost its international standing.
No one has claimed responsibility for Saturday's car bombing outside a state security complex which killed 17 people and wounded 14. The Syrians have not directly accused anyone but state-run newspapers suggested foreign involvement — a veiled reference to northern Lebanon which has become a hotbed for extremist Sunni Muslims.
The Sunni militants, sometimes called Salafists, have been blamed for a string of smaller bombings and attacks against the Syrian government and diplomatic missions in recent years. The main group accused is an offshoot of al-Qaida.
The Sunni extremists are angry over the tightening of security along Syria's border with Iraq, which cuts off their routes to the fight against U.S. forces in Iraq. They also oppose the government's alliance with Shiite Iran and the strict secular nature of the state.
"Once you have Salafists and Jihadis in your country and when you stop their flow to Iraq and their transit in and out from Lebanon, it is not surprising that such bombings" occur, said Andrew Tabler, a Syria analyst and consulting editor at the English-language Syria Today magazine.
Syria has long been viewed by the U.S. as a destabilizing force in the Mideast. An ally of Iran and Hezbollah guerrillas in Lebanon, it has also provided a home for some radical Palestinian groups.
But the country is now trying to emerge from years of international isolation, opening up to Europe and engaging in indirect negotiations with archenemy Israel, even while still professing steadfast support for Lebanese and Palestinian militants.
In recent months, Syria has agreed to establish diplomatic ties with Lebanon for the first time since both countries became independent and has tightened its border with Iraq to control the movement of people and goods. A goal of European rapprochement is to drive Damascus away from its regional ally Iran.
The weekend car bombing could also be a sign of the weakening grip President Bashar Assad's regime on security and of an emerging power struggle between the regime's security agencies, analysts said.
Writing Sunday in the independent conservative Beirut daily al-Anwar, Editor-in-Chief Rafik Khoury linked the bombing to "the dangerous scenarios pertaining to the 'crossroads' of changes in the region."
An Israeli Cabinet minister said the bombing may be linked to Syria's indirect negotiations with Israel.
"There are elements who want to derail this process, mostly Tehran which feels that Syria might be moving toward a peace coalition in the region," said Isaac Herzog.
Assad's secular regime has been battling Sunni Muslim extremists for years. In September 2006, Islamic militants tried to storm the U.S. Embassy in Damascus and three months earlier, a battle near the Defense Ministry left four militants and a police officer dead.
Officials blamed these attacks on Jund al-Sham, which means Soldiers of Syria, an al-Qaida offshoot that was established in Afghanistan. Militants often denounce Assad's regime and have at times called for its overthrow, especially since Syria began cracking down on those crossing the border to reach Iraq.
Despite hosting radical anti-Israeli Palestinian groups, Syria insists it has an interest in fighting Islamic extremist groups such as al-Qaida and in the 1980s, it cracked down heavily on the Syrian Muslim Brotherhood.
Syria is also on poor terms with regional heavyweight Saudi Arabia, which in the past has supported conservative Sunni groups in the region and takes a dim view of Syria's alliance with Iran.
Another motive for the bombing could be the rising Sunni-Shiite tensions in the region. The bomb was placed at a highway intersection a few miles from a Shiite shrine frequented by pilgrims from Lebanon, Iraq and Iran.
The bombing, last month's assassination of a top intelligence general in mysterious circumstances and the February bombing in Damascus that killed Imad Mughniyeh, a top Hezbollah commander and one of America's most wanted terrorists, feeds suspicions carried by opposition media that it could all be part of an internal power struggle between the regime's security agencies.
Sunday, September 28, 2008
Ralph Nader on the bailout
This is part of an interview to be found at Information Clearing House. Even though Nader is a presidential candidate you will be hard put to find his comments in the big mainstream media. He contrasts the policies now with those during the depression of Roosevelt and also he questions the need for the bailout. He suggests that Bush is managing to stamped a bailout which will see the US taxpayer paying more for distressed assets than they would ever fetch on a free market.
“Why Is There Need for a Bailout?”By Ralph Nader25/09/08 "Democracy Now! -- As the Bush administration intensifies its pressure for Congress to quickly approve a $700 billion bailout of the financial industry, we get reaction from Independent presidential candidate and consumer advocate Ralph Nader. Nader calls Democratic claims of White House concessions “wish fulfillment” and says the bailout might not be needed in the first place.
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JUAN GONZALEZ: The Bush administration is intensifying its pressure on Congress to quickly approve a $700 billion bailout of the financial industry, despite warnings from economists and some governmental officials that the bailout could worsen the financial crisis.
Last night, President Bush held a prime-time address to warn the nation’s entire economy is in danger if the bailout is not approved as soon as possible.
PRESIDENT GEORGE W. BUSH: The government’s top economic experts warn that without immediate action by Congress, America could slip into a financial panic, and a distressing scenario would unfold. More banks could fail, including some in your community. The stock market would drop even more, which would reduce the value of your retirement account. The value of your home could plummet. Foreclosures would rise dramatically. And if you own a business or a farm, you would find it harder and more expensive to get credit. More businesses would close their doors, and millions of Americans could lose their jobs. Even if you have good credit history, it would be more difficult for you to get the loans you need to buy a car or send your children to college. And ultimately, our country could experience a long and painful recession. Fellow citizens, we must not let this happen.
JUAN GONZALEZ: [Wednesday] night’s address was the first time in his presidency that Bush delivered a prime-time speech devoted exclusively to the economy. His dire scenario about the state of the economy stood in stark contrast to his comments at his last press conference two months ago.
PRESIDENT GEORGE W. BUSH: I think the system basically is sound. I truly do. And I understand there’s a lot of nervousness, and—but the economy is growing, productivity is high, trade’s up. People are working. It’s not as good as we would like, but—and to the extent that we find weakness, we’ll move. That’s one thing about this administration: we’re not afraid to making tough decisions.
AMY GOODMAN: Today, the President is holding an emergency summit at the White House with both John McCain and Barack Obama, as well as top leaders for Congress. The Wall Street Journal reports Democratic leaders are hoping to nail down details of the bailout measure early today.
On Wednesday, McCain said he would suspend his campaign to deal with the financial crisis. He called on Obama to postpone their debate Friday night, saying he would only attend if Congress approves a bailout package before then. Obama said the debate in Oxford, Mississippi at Ole Miss should go on as planned.
We’re joined on the phone right now by a presidential candidate who was not invited to Friday’s debate, Independent candidate Ralph Nader. The longtime consumer advocate has been a vocal critic of the Wall Street bailout.
Ralph Nader, welcome to Democracy Now! First, let’s start off with John McCain announcing that he is going to suspend his campaign and wants the debate cancelled.
RALPH NADER: Well, I think Senator McCain is showboating. I mean, what’s going on in Washington and Congress now is the Bush administration is trying to pull the Constitution out by its roots and demand that Congress give it a blank check, without any criteria, without any accountability, for $700 billion bailout of Wall Street. It’s not dependent on whether John McCain returns to Washington other than to vote. I think he’s turning his back on over 50 million American voters who expect him to show up in Ole Miss with Barack Obama and who have made arrangements to do so. He talks a lot about honor and commitment. I think he ought to change his mind and get down to Ole Miss.
JUAN GONZALEZ: Ralph, the Democrats are claiming that they’ve been able to get some key concessions from the administration on its original plan. They say now they’re going to be—they’re going to cap CEO pay for those who participate in this bailout and that they’re going to get some kind of government participation or investment in these firms, so that if they make profits later on, that—or these securities make profits later on, that the government will be able to participate. But your sense—are these real substantive changes, or is this basically cosmetics on a plan that shouldn’t be in place in the first place?
RALPH NADER: Well, so far, it’s wish fulfillment. If you watch what Barney Frank, the chairman of the House Banking Committee, said yesterday, nothing has really been decided.
And also, it’s not clear at all why a bailout is needed. That’s part of the stampede in the pack and the panic that Bush and Paulson and Bernanke are pushing Congress toward. You know, it’s eerily reminiscent, when you listen to Bush yesterday, of how he stampeded the Congress and the country into the criminal war invasion of Iraq in 2003. I mean, look at all his statements: this could do this, this would do that, farms failing, small business, tada, tada. The first question we have to ask as citizens is, why is there a need for a bailout?
The only conceivable purpose of Treasury intervention, said Roger Lowenstein in the New Republic recently, quote, "is to buoy the market using taxpayer funds by paying higher-than-market prices. After all, if the government merely intended to match the market, what would be the point?” end-quote. In other words, if these mortgage-backed securities are distressed, well, they’re going to fetch a lower price. There’s huge amount of money on the sidelines in Wall Street, everybody admits that. So, as a hedge fund manager basically said, look, if the price comes down lower than what the government is trying to keep elevated, we’ll buy this paper. Warren Buffett put $5 billion into Goldman Sachs this week. There’s a lot of money to go around.
It’s quite interesting how the Bush regime is creating its own panic. When the government keeps saying Chicken Little, Chicken Little, the market is going to react in a very nervous manner. It’s a reversal of what the government usually does, which is to counsel stability and patience, etc.
So, the first question Congress should ask in detailed hearings, which aren’t occurring, is simply, why is there need for a bailout? Second is, if there is a need for a bailout, why $700 billion? And third, if there is a need for a bailout, what kind of bailout? Taxpayer equity? So the taxpayer can recover if these companies make a profit, they can recover surplus, perhaps the way they did on the taxpayer bailout in 1979 with Chrysler, where Jimmy Carter demanded that Chrysler issue stock warrants to the Treasury, and Chrysler turned around, and the Treasury sold the warrants for a $400 million profit.
I don’t think the Democrats show any nerve that they are going to do anything but cave here. And the statements by Nancy Pelosi are not reassuring, which is, “Well, it’s the Republicans’ bill, you know. Let them take responsibility for it.” That doesn’t work. She’s the Speaker of the House. The Democrats have got to say, “Slow down. We’re not going to be stampeded into this bill by Friday or Saturday. We’re going to have very, very thorough hearings.” Otherwise, it’s another collapse, at constitutional levels, of the Congress before King George IV.
AMY GOODMAN: We’re talking to Independent presidential candidate Ralph Nader. We’ll come back to this discussion. We’ll also be joined by Arun Gupta, who is the editor of The Indypendent and put out a letter on the internet that has just set the internet on fire, calling for a major protest today on Wall Street. It has gained steam. Many groups have signed on. Stay with us.
[break]
AMY GOODMAN: Our guest on the phone with us from Pittsburgh, where he’s campaigning, is Ralph Nader, Independent presidential candidate. Juan?
JUAN GONZALEZ: Ralph, you mention how the Democrats themselves are being stampeded at this point by the Bush administration. In my column in the Daily News yesterday, I raised how another Democratic leader and another Democratic Congress handled a situation, even a more dire situation, in 1933, on the two days after Franklin Delano Roosevelt was inaugurated as president, with thousands of banks crashing at that point, and he immediately shut down all the banks on his second day in office, called Congress into an emergency session and, over the next hundred days, adopted incredible legislation, including the Glass-Steagall Act, that we’ve mentioned quite often, on federal deposit insurance, aid to homeowners, farm subsidies, created the Tennessee Valley Authority, all in the midst of a crisis, probably the most progressive amount of legislation in the nation’s history, in any period. That’s a quite different approach. And he specifically criticized the banks and Wall Street as being at the root of the crisis.
RALPH NADER: That’s right. In those days, they had a serious solvency problem for these banks, which they don’t have, by and large, today. And that was admitted by Bernanke yesterday. Basically, Bernanke is saying, “Well, we’re doing this because the banks are contracting their credit, and this is affecting the economy.” Well, you can deal with that problem in a far better way than an ill-defined $700 billion bailout with total authority to the Treasury Secretary, with no judicial review, with no criteria and no reforms.
In other words, the Democrats should say, if they’re going to concede this bailout, is to say, “Well, we want comprehensive regulation and disclosure of the financial industry to make sure this doesn’t happen again. We want criminal prosecution of the crooks on Wall Street and disgorgement of their ill-gotten gains. We want a securities derivative tax and higher margin requirements to make speculators use their money, more of their money than other people’s money, like worker pension funds, to keep down speculation, as well as to produce revenues, which might lighten the tax load on working families. And we want to give shareholders control over the corporations they own.”
And they’re not even talking about these kinds of reforms. And this is the best time to get these reforms, because this is called a must bill on Congress—in Congress, and if Bush wants his package, he’s going to have to sign them. So, there’s no reciprocity here. It’s the usual fairly good questions by the Democrats at the hearings, but because they don’t follow through, they don’t have adequate leadership, it becomes a kind of posturing. It’s just maddening to watch how vague Bernanke and Paulson are in answering one question after another. It’s just an evasion, where they keep saying, “We need to do it. We need to do it.” And their Chicken Little material is conducted in closed session with Harry Reid and Nancy Pelosi and the Republican leadership. It’s always in closed session.
“Why Is There Need for a Bailout?”By Ralph Nader25/09/08 "Democracy Now! -- As the Bush administration intensifies its pressure for Congress to quickly approve a $700 billion bailout of the financial industry, we get reaction from Independent presidential candidate and consumer advocate Ralph Nader. Nader calls Democratic claims of White House concessions “wish fulfillment” and says the bailout might not be needed in the first place.
Real Video Stream - Real Audio Stream - MP3 Download
JUAN GONZALEZ: The Bush administration is intensifying its pressure on Congress to quickly approve a $700 billion bailout of the financial industry, despite warnings from economists and some governmental officials that the bailout could worsen the financial crisis.
Last night, President Bush held a prime-time address to warn the nation’s entire economy is in danger if the bailout is not approved as soon as possible.
PRESIDENT GEORGE W. BUSH: The government’s top economic experts warn that without immediate action by Congress, America could slip into a financial panic, and a distressing scenario would unfold. More banks could fail, including some in your community. The stock market would drop even more, which would reduce the value of your retirement account. The value of your home could plummet. Foreclosures would rise dramatically. And if you own a business or a farm, you would find it harder and more expensive to get credit. More businesses would close their doors, and millions of Americans could lose their jobs. Even if you have good credit history, it would be more difficult for you to get the loans you need to buy a car or send your children to college. And ultimately, our country could experience a long and painful recession. Fellow citizens, we must not let this happen.
JUAN GONZALEZ: [Wednesday] night’s address was the first time in his presidency that Bush delivered a prime-time speech devoted exclusively to the economy. His dire scenario about the state of the economy stood in stark contrast to his comments at his last press conference two months ago.
PRESIDENT GEORGE W. BUSH: I think the system basically is sound. I truly do. And I understand there’s a lot of nervousness, and—but the economy is growing, productivity is high, trade’s up. People are working. It’s not as good as we would like, but—and to the extent that we find weakness, we’ll move. That’s one thing about this administration: we’re not afraid to making tough decisions.
AMY GOODMAN: Today, the President is holding an emergency summit at the White House with both John McCain and Barack Obama, as well as top leaders for Congress. The Wall Street Journal reports Democratic leaders are hoping to nail down details of the bailout measure early today.
On Wednesday, McCain said he would suspend his campaign to deal with the financial crisis. He called on Obama to postpone their debate Friday night, saying he would only attend if Congress approves a bailout package before then. Obama said the debate in Oxford, Mississippi at Ole Miss should go on as planned.
We’re joined on the phone right now by a presidential candidate who was not invited to Friday’s debate, Independent candidate Ralph Nader. The longtime consumer advocate has been a vocal critic of the Wall Street bailout.
Ralph Nader, welcome to Democracy Now! First, let’s start off with John McCain announcing that he is going to suspend his campaign and wants the debate cancelled.
RALPH NADER: Well, I think Senator McCain is showboating. I mean, what’s going on in Washington and Congress now is the Bush administration is trying to pull the Constitution out by its roots and demand that Congress give it a blank check, without any criteria, without any accountability, for $700 billion bailout of Wall Street. It’s not dependent on whether John McCain returns to Washington other than to vote. I think he’s turning his back on over 50 million American voters who expect him to show up in Ole Miss with Barack Obama and who have made arrangements to do so. He talks a lot about honor and commitment. I think he ought to change his mind and get down to Ole Miss.
JUAN GONZALEZ: Ralph, the Democrats are claiming that they’ve been able to get some key concessions from the administration on its original plan. They say now they’re going to be—they’re going to cap CEO pay for those who participate in this bailout and that they’re going to get some kind of government participation or investment in these firms, so that if they make profits later on, that—or these securities make profits later on, that the government will be able to participate. But your sense—are these real substantive changes, or is this basically cosmetics on a plan that shouldn’t be in place in the first place?
RALPH NADER: Well, so far, it’s wish fulfillment. If you watch what Barney Frank, the chairman of the House Banking Committee, said yesterday, nothing has really been decided.
And also, it’s not clear at all why a bailout is needed. That’s part of the stampede in the pack and the panic that Bush and Paulson and Bernanke are pushing Congress toward. You know, it’s eerily reminiscent, when you listen to Bush yesterday, of how he stampeded the Congress and the country into the criminal war invasion of Iraq in 2003. I mean, look at all his statements: this could do this, this would do that, farms failing, small business, tada, tada. The first question we have to ask as citizens is, why is there a need for a bailout?
The only conceivable purpose of Treasury intervention, said Roger Lowenstein in the New Republic recently, quote, "is to buoy the market using taxpayer funds by paying higher-than-market prices. After all, if the government merely intended to match the market, what would be the point?” end-quote. In other words, if these mortgage-backed securities are distressed, well, they’re going to fetch a lower price. There’s huge amount of money on the sidelines in Wall Street, everybody admits that. So, as a hedge fund manager basically said, look, if the price comes down lower than what the government is trying to keep elevated, we’ll buy this paper. Warren Buffett put $5 billion into Goldman Sachs this week. There’s a lot of money to go around.
It’s quite interesting how the Bush regime is creating its own panic. When the government keeps saying Chicken Little, Chicken Little, the market is going to react in a very nervous manner. It’s a reversal of what the government usually does, which is to counsel stability and patience, etc.
So, the first question Congress should ask in detailed hearings, which aren’t occurring, is simply, why is there need for a bailout? Second is, if there is a need for a bailout, why $700 billion? And third, if there is a need for a bailout, what kind of bailout? Taxpayer equity? So the taxpayer can recover if these companies make a profit, they can recover surplus, perhaps the way they did on the taxpayer bailout in 1979 with Chrysler, where Jimmy Carter demanded that Chrysler issue stock warrants to the Treasury, and Chrysler turned around, and the Treasury sold the warrants for a $400 million profit.
I don’t think the Democrats show any nerve that they are going to do anything but cave here. And the statements by Nancy Pelosi are not reassuring, which is, “Well, it’s the Republicans’ bill, you know. Let them take responsibility for it.” That doesn’t work. She’s the Speaker of the House. The Democrats have got to say, “Slow down. We’re not going to be stampeded into this bill by Friday or Saturday. We’re going to have very, very thorough hearings.” Otherwise, it’s another collapse, at constitutional levels, of the Congress before King George IV.
AMY GOODMAN: We’re talking to Independent presidential candidate Ralph Nader. We’ll come back to this discussion. We’ll also be joined by Arun Gupta, who is the editor of The Indypendent and put out a letter on the internet that has just set the internet on fire, calling for a major protest today on Wall Street. It has gained steam. Many groups have signed on. Stay with us.
[break]
AMY GOODMAN: Our guest on the phone with us from Pittsburgh, where he’s campaigning, is Ralph Nader, Independent presidential candidate. Juan?
JUAN GONZALEZ: Ralph, you mention how the Democrats themselves are being stampeded at this point by the Bush administration. In my column in the Daily News yesterday, I raised how another Democratic leader and another Democratic Congress handled a situation, even a more dire situation, in 1933, on the two days after Franklin Delano Roosevelt was inaugurated as president, with thousands of banks crashing at that point, and he immediately shut down all the banks on his second day in office, called Congress into an emergency session and, over the next hundred days, adopted incredible legislation, including the Glass-Steagall Act, that we’ve mentioned quite often, on federal deposit insurance, aid to homeowners, farm subsidies, created the Tennessee Valley Authority, all in the midst of a crisis, probably the most progressive amount of legislation in the nation’s history, in any period. That’s a quite different approach. And he specifically criticized the banks and Wall Street as being at the root of the crisis.
RALPH NADER: That’s right. In those days, they had a serious solvency problem for these banks, which they don’t have, by and large, today. And that was admitted by Bernanke yesterday. Basically, Bernanke is saying, “Well, we’re doing this because the banks are contracting their credit, and this is affecting the economy.” Well, you can deal with that problem in a far better way than an ill-defined $700 billion bailout with total authority to the Treasury Secretary, with no judicial review, with no criteria and no reforms.
In other words, the Democrats should say, if they’re going to concede this bailout, is to say, “Well, we want comprehensive regulation and disclosure of the financial industry to make sure this doesn’t happen again. We want criminal prosecution of the crooks on Wall Street and disgorgement of their ill-gotten gains. We want a securities derivative tax and higher margin requirements to make speculators use their money, more of their money than other people’s money, like worker pension funds, to keep down speculation, as well as to produce revenues, which might lighten the tax load on working families. And we want to give shareholders control over the corporations they own.”
And they’re not even talking about these kinds of reforms. And this is the best time to get these reforms, because this is called a must bill on Congress—in Congress, and if Bush wants his package, he’s going to have to sign them. So, there’s no reciprocity here. It’s the usual fairly good questions by the Democrats at the hearings, but because they don’t follow through, they don’t have adequate leadership, it becomes a kind of posturing. It’s just maddening to watch how vague Bernanke and Paulson are in answering one question after another. It’s just an evasion, where they keep saying, “We need to do it. We need to do it.” And their Chicken Little material is conducted in closed session with Harry Reid and Nancy Pelosi and the Republican leadership. It’s always in closed session.
US jets violate Pakistani airspace again.
The US is just reminding Pakistan who controls Pakistani airspace. The U.S. seems to care not a whit that actions such as this create more anti-Americanism within Pakistan. This is from thenews.
US jets violate Pak airspace again
Sunday, September 28, 2008By our correspondentPESHAWAR: Two US jetfighters Saturday night again intruded into Pakistan airspace over South Waziristan area, causing panic among the tribesman. However, neither the security forces nor the tribesmen fired upon the fighter planes. Sources in the tribal agency confirmed to The News that two US jetfighters for about 25 minutes hovered over Angoor Adda, Baghar and Momin Tangi area of the agency. The planes that came across the border from troubled Paktika province of Afghanistan, after the flight over the area went back without any action.
US jets violate Pak airspace again
Sunday, September 28, 2008By our correspondentPESHAWAR: Two US jetfighters Saturday night again intruded into Pakistan airspace over South Waziristan area, causing panic among the tribesman. However, neither the security forces nor the tribesmen fired upon the fighter planes. Sources in the tribal agency confirmed to The News that two US jetfighters for about 25 minutes hovered over Angoor Adda, Baghar and Momin Tangi area of the agency. The planes that came across the border from troubled Paktika province of Afghanistan, after the flight over the area went back without any action.
Secret Taliban Peace bid..
Of course the official line of the U.S. is that there will be no negotiations with terrorists. However it is clear that if the Taliban are willing to give up the fight they will even get posts in the government. There are already reformed Taliban in the government and Afghan democracy allows the death penalty for Muslims who should have the temerity for converting to Christianity and also kicks a female legislator out of parliament for pointing out that former warlords and human rights violators are part of the govenment! The occupiers certainly haven't died in vain.
Revealed: secret Taliban peace bid
Saudis are sponsoring a peace dialogue involving a former senior member of the hardline group
Jason Burke in Kabul
The Observer,
Sunday September 28 2008
Article history
The destroyed entrance gate of the Kandahar prison that was attacked by Taliban militants in June this year. Photograph: Allauddiin Khan/AP
The Taliban have been engaged in secret talks about ending the conflict in Afghanistan in a wide-ranging 'peace process' sponsored by Saudi Arabia and supported by Britain, The Observer can reveal.
The unprecedented negotiations involve a senior former member of the hardline Islamist movement travelling between Kabul, the bases of the Taliban senior leadership in Pakistan, Saudi Arabia and European capitals. Britain has provided logistic and diplomatic support for the talks - despite official statements that negotiations can be held only with Taliban who are ready to renounce, or have renounced, violence.
Sources in Afghanistan confirmed the controversial talks, though they said that in recent weeks they had 'lost momentum'. According to Afghan government officials in Kabul, the intensity of the fighting this summer has been one factor. Another is the inconsistency of the Taliban's demands.
'They keep changing what they are asking for. One day it is one thing, the next another,' one Afghan government adviser with knowledge of the negotiations said. One aim of the initiative is to drive a wedge between Osama bin Laden's al-Qaeda and the Taliban.
Last week the French Prime Minister, François Fillon, referred indirectly to the talks during a parliamentary debate on Afghanistan. 'We must explore ways of separating the international jihadists from those who are acting more for nationalist or tribal motives. Efforts in this direction are being led by Sunni [Muslim] countries such as Saudi Arabia,' he said.
This summer's fighting season in Afghanistan has been the most violent since the invasion of 2001. The deterioration of the situation has provoked a major review of strategy among the 40-nation international coalition pitted against an increasingly confident and effective insurgency.
Although there have been low-level contacts with individual Taliban commanders at district level before, the Saudi initiative is the first attempt to talk to the Taliban leadership council based in or around the south-west Pakistan city of Quetta, known as the 'Quetta Shura'.
The talks started in the summer and have been brokered by Saudi Arabia at the invitation of the Afghan government. The go-between has spent weeks ferrying lists of demands and counter-demands between the Afghan capital, Riyadh and Quetta. He has also visited London to speak to Foreign Office and MI6 personnel. A delegation from Saudi intelligence has also visited Kabul.
The Taliban are understood to have submitted a list of 11 conditions for ending hostilities, which include demands to be allowed to run key ministries and a programmed withdrawal of western troops.
In Kabul, President Hamid Karzai's national security adviser, Zalmay Rasul, has been in charge of the negotiations. It is understood that Karzai has yet to make a formal response to the demands, leading to frustration among some western officials.
The Observer has also learnt of a separate exchange of letters in the summer between Karzai and the Taliban ally Gulbuddin Hekmatyar. The dialogue proved fruitless.
Late last year Karzai said he would welcome the chance to speak directly to Hekmatyar and to Mullah Mohammed Omar, the Taliban's leader and one of the most wanted men in the world, promising that if the Taliban demanded a 'department in this or in that ministry or ... a position as deputy minister' in exchange for ending violence, he would give them the posts.
Previously Taliban spokesmen have said that only the departure of foreign troops, the institution of a fiercely rigorous interpretation of sharia law and a share of government would be acceptable to them as the basis for any deal.
A Foreign Office spokesman said yesterday that he had no knowledge of the 'Saudi initiative', as it is known in diplomatic circles, but that the British government 'actively supported the Afghan government's reconciliation process', which was 'part and parcel of the counter-insurgency campaign'.
In another development, The Observer has learnt that the British government is considering increasing the length of tours served by troops in Afghanistan. The Ministry of Defence confirmed last week that tours for senior soldiers in key command positions are set to be extended from six months to a year.
'We are looking at increasing tour lengths for a small number of headquarters posts ... with the aim of creating greater continuity in key positions,' an MoD spokesman said.
Although the MoD denied any plans to extend other service personnel's combat tours in Afghanistan, the idea of troops deployed to the area serving nine months was raised recently by the army's director of infantry, Brigadier Richard Dennis, in a speech to senior commanders.
Washington is putting pressure on Nato allies such as Britain to match American troop increases.
Revealed: secret Taliban peace bid
Saudis are sponsoring a peace dialogue involving a former senior member of the hardline group
Jason Burke in Kabul
The Observer,
Sunday September 28 2008
Article history
The destroyed entrance gate of the Kandahar prison that was attacked by Taliban militants in June this year. Photograph: Allauddiin Khan/AP
The Taliban have been engaged in secret talks about ending the conflict in Afghanistan in a wide-ranging 'peace process' sponsored by Saudi Arabia and supported by Britain, The Observer can reveal.
The unprecedented negotiations involve a senior former member of the hardline Islamist movement travelling between Kabul, the bases of the Taliban senior leadership in Pakistan, Saudi Arabia and European capitals. Britain has provided logistic and diplomatic support for the talks - despite official statements that negotiations can be held only with Taliban who are ready to renounce, or have renounced, violence.
Sources in Afghanistan confirmed the controversial talks, though they said that in recent weeks they had 'lost momentum'. According to Afghan government officials in Kabul, the intensity of the fighting this summer has been one factor. Another is the inconsistency of the Taliban's demands.
'They keep changing what they are asking for. One day it is one thing, the next another,' one Afghan government adviser with knowledge of the negotiations said. One aim of the initiative is to drive a wedge between Osama bin Laden's al-Qaeda and the Taliban.
Last week the French Prime Minister, François Fillon, referred indirectly to the talks during a parliamentary debate on Afghanistan. 'We must explore ways of separating the international jihadists from those who are acting more for nationalist or tribal motives. Efforts in this direction are being led by Sunni [Muslim] countries such as Saudi Arabia,' he said.
This summer's fighting season in Afghanistan has been the most violent since the invasion of 2001. The deterioration of the situation has provoked a major review of strategy among the 40-nation international coalition pitted against an increasingly confident and effective insurgency.
Although there have been low-level contacts with individual Taliban commanders at district level before, the Saudi initiative is the first attempt to talk to the Taliban leadership council based in or around the south-west Pakistan city of Quetta, known as the 'Quetta Shura'.
The talks started in the summer and have been brokered by Saudi Arabia at the invitation of the Afghan government. The go-between has spent weeks ferrying lists of demands and counter-demands between the Afghan capital, Riyadh and Quetta. He has also visited London to speak to Foreign Office and MI6 personnel. A delegation from Saudi intelligence has also visited Kabul.
The Taliban are understood to have submitted a list of 11 conditions for ending hostilities, which include demands to be allowed to run key ministries and a programmed withdrawal of western troops.
In Kabul, President Hamid Karzai's national security adviser, Zalmay Rasul, has been in charge of the negotiations. It is understood that Karzai has yet to make a formal response to the demands, leading to frustration among some western officials.
The Observer has also learnt of a separate exchange of letters in the summer between Karzai and the Taliban ally Gulbuddin Hekmatyar. The dialogue proved fruitless.
Late last year Karzai said he would welcome the chance to speak directly to Hekmatyar and to Mullah Mohammed Omar, the Taliban's leader and one of the most wanted men in the world, promising that if the Taliban demanded a 'department in this or in that ministry or ... a position as deputy minister' in exchange for ending violence, he would give them the posts.
Previously Taliban spokesmen have said that only the departure of foreign troops, the institution of a fiercely rigorous interpretation of sharia law and a share of government would be acceptable to them as the basis for any deal.
A Foreign Office spokesman said yesterday that he had no knowledge of the 'Saudi initiative', as it is known in diplomatic circles, but that the British government 'actively supported the Afghan government's reconciliation process', which was 'part and parcel of the counter-insurgency campaign'.
In another development, The Observer has learnt that the British government is considering increasing the length of tours served by troops in Afghanistan. The Ministry of Defence confirmed last week that tours for senior soldiers in key command positions are set to be extended from six months to a year.
'We are looking at increasing tour lengths for a small number of headquarters posts ... with the aim of creating greater continuity in key positions,' an MoD spokesman said.
Although the MoD denied any plans to extend other service personnel's combat tours in Afghanistan, the idea of troops deployed to the area serving nine months was raised recently by the army's director of infantry, Brigadier Richard Dennis, in a speech to senior commanders.
Washington is putting pressure on Nato allies such as Britain to match American troop increases.
Saturday, September 27, 2008
With all eyes on the Bailout, House passes trillion dollar defense Bill.
No one but no one seems to be talking of cutting defence spending. No one talks of the tremendous cost of entitlement programs when the issue is military spending. It would seem that the US dollar might be under pressure again once the extent of debt expansion through military expenditure and the debt bailout becomes clear. What will happen to all the US needs in terms of social programmes and repair of infrastructure? They will probably be short changed and state and municipal budgets will be stressed to put it mildly.
With All Eyes on the Bailout, House Passes Trillion-Dollar Defense Bill
By Joshua Holland, AlterNetPosted on September 26, 2008, Printed on September 27, 2008http://www.alternet.org/story/100524/
On Wednesday, the House passed a mammoth defense bill by a 392-39 vote. It's expected to clear the Senate with little difficulty next week.
It was part of a trillion-dollar stop-gap measure to keep programs running through next March, allowing lawmakers to skip town without passing a final budget. The Associated Press reports, "The legislation came together in a remarkably secret process that concentrated decision-making power in the hands of a few lawmakers."
In keeping with the tradition of recent years, Bush held a gun to his own head and threatened to pull the trigger if his demands weren't met. According to the AP, "To earn President Bush's signature rather than a veto, House and Senate negotiators dropped several provisions he opposed. They include a ban on private interrogators in U.S. military detention facilities and what would have amounted to congressional veto power over a security pact with Iraq."
In other words, Congress also maintained recent tradition, swearing not to give Bush a blank check and then whipping out their pens and signing a blank check.
The number that the House sent to the Senate for "defense" -- $612 billion for the coming year -- is eye-popping. Imagine a stack of 612,000 million-dollar bills. Quite a pile.
That number's a sham, however. The budget calls for $68.6 billion for the occupations of Iraq and Afghanistan in 2009. War costs this year totaled $182 billion, according to the Federation of American Scientists.
The House passed the Brobdingnagian spending measure 11 months after George W. Bush vetoed a bill -- one passed with a lot of bipartisan support -- that would have added $7 billion measly dollars per year to the State Children's Health Insurance Program, covering 4 million more uninsured children. You'd be hard-pressed to find a clearer sign of national psychosis.
Here's what "defense" spending looks like in the era of Bush's "War on Terror," according to official figures:
(click for larger version)
But that's just the cash to feed the gaping maw of the Department of Defense. Throw in a bit more than $50 billion for Homeland Security, around $20 billion for the nuclear arsenal in the Department of Energy's budget, about $10 billion for the Coast Guard, a similar number for foreign "security assistance" and maybe another $125 billion -- according to one estimate -- in other defense-related programs scattered throughout the federal budget.
Bush also requested $91 billion for the Department of Veterans Affairs in 2009, up from $72 billion just three years ago. A generation of damaged young men and women are going to cost more and more as the years go by -- many post-traumatic injuries, for example, don't manifest themselves for 10 or more years after people get out of combat. In 2000, nine years after the first Gulf War, 56 percent of those who had served in that conflict were receiving disability payments.
But wait, as they say on late-night infomercials, there's more!
All of this only finances our current military adventures. We're still paying for Korea and Vietnam and Grenada and Panama and the first Gulf War and Somalia and the Balkans and on and on. Estimates of just how much of our national debt payments are from past military spending vary wildly. Economist Robert Higgs calculated it like this:
I added up all past deficits (minus surpluses) since 1916 (when the debt was nearly zero), prorated according to each year's ratio of narrowly defined national security spending--military, veterans, and international affairs--to total federal spending, expressing everything in dollars of constant purchasing power. This sum is equal to 91.2 percent of the value of the national debt held by the public at the end of 2006. Therefore, I attribute that same percentage of the government's net interest outlays in that year to past debt-financed defense spending.
In 2006, he came up with a figure of $206.7 billion for interest payments on past militarism. Add it all up, and we're talking about at least a trillion dollars in military and homeland security spending. If there were a million-dollar bill, you'd have to stack a million of them to reach a trillion dollars.
Of course, very little of this is "defense." This is empire spending, pure and simple ...
What's that? You want health care, education, affordable housing, 21st-century infrastructure?
Sorry, we've got other priorities.
Joshua Holland is an AlterNet staff writer.
© 2008 Independent Media Institute. All rights reserved.View this story online at: http://www.alternet.org/story/100524/
With All Eyes on the Bailout, House Passes Trillion-Dollar Defense Bill
By Joshua Holland, AlterNetPosted on September 26, 2008, Printed on September 27, 2008http://www.alternet.org/story/100524/
On Wednesday, the House passed a mammoth defense bill by a 392-39 vote. It's expected to clear the Senate with little difficulty next week.
It was part of a trillion-dollar stop-gap measure to keep programs running through next March, allowing lawmakers to skip town without passing a final budget. The Associated Press reports, "The legislation came together in a remarkably secret process that concentrated decision-making power in the hands of a few lawmakers."
In keeping with the tradition of recent years, Bush held a gun to his own head and threatened to pull the trigger if his demands weren't met. According to the AP, "To earn President Bush's signature rather than a veto, House and Senate negotiators dropped several provisions he opposed. They include a ban on private interrogators in U.S. military detention facilities and what would have amounted to congressional veto power over a security pact with Iraq."
In other words, Congress also maintained recent tradition, swearing not to give Bush a blank check and then whipping out their pens and signing a blank check.
The number that the House sent to the Senate for "defense" -- $612 billion for the coming year -- is eye-popping. Imagine a stack of 612,000 million-dollar bills. Quite a pile.
That number's a sham, however. The budget calls for $68.6 billion for the occupations of Iraq and Afghanistan in 2009. War costs this year totaled $182 billion, according to the Federation of American Scientists.
The House passed the Brobdingnagian spending measure 11 months after George W. Bush vetoed a bill -- one passed with a lot of bipartisan support -- that would have added $7 billion measly dollars per year to the State Children's Health Insurance Program, covering 4 million more uninsured children. You'd be hard-pressed to find a clearer sign of national psychosis.
Here's what "defense" spending looks like in the era of Bush's "War on Terror," according to official figures:
(click for larger version)
But that's just the cash to feed the gaping maw of the Department of Defense. Throw in a bit more than $50 billion for Homeland Security, around $20 billion for the nuclear arsenal in the Department of Energy's budget, about $10 billion for the Coast Guard, a similar number for foreign "security assistance" and maybe another $125 billion -- according to one estimate -- in other defense-related programs scattered throughout the federal budget.
Bush also requested $91 billion for the Department of Veterans Affairs in 2009, up from $72 billion just three years ago. A generation of damaged young men and women are going to cost more and more as the years go by -- many post-traumatic injuries, for example, don't manifest themselves for 10 or more years after people get out of combat. In 2000, nine years after the first Gulf War, 56 percent of those who had served in that conflict were receiving disability payments.
But wait, as they say on late-night infomercials, there's more!
All of this only finances our current military adventures. We're still paying for Korea and Vietnam and Grenada and Panama and the first Gulf War and Somalia and the Balkans and on and on. Estimates of just how much of our national debt payments are from past military spending vary wildly. Economist Robert Higgs calculated it like this:
I added up all past deficits (minus surpluses) since 1916 (when the debt was nearly zero), prorated according to each year's ratio of narrowly defined national security spending--military, veterans, and international affairs--to total federal spending, expressing everything in dollars of constant purchasing power. This sum is equal to 91.2 percent of the value of the national debt held by the public at the end of 2006. Therefore, I attribute that same percentage of the government's net interest outlays in that year to past debt-financed defense spending.
In 2006, he came up with a figure of $206.7 billion for interest payments on past militarism. Add it all up, and we're talking about at least a trillion dollars in military and homeland security spending. If there were a million-dollar bill, you'd have to stack a million of them to reach a trillion dollars.
Of course, very little of this is "defense." This is empire spending, pure and simple ...
What's that? You want health care, education, affordable housing, 21st-century infrastructure?
Sorry, we've got other priorities.
Joshua Holland is an AlterNet staff writer.
© 2008 Independent Media Institute. All rights reserved.View this story online at: http://www.alternet.org/story/100524/
Friday, September 26, 2008
Philippinres: Forgotten victims of Mindanao Muslim war..
This is from AFP. The AFP use of military and aerial attacks in areas where there are many civilians is bound to produce collateral damage as this article attests as well as destroying property in an area where people possess very little. Some of the MILF commanders have given up entirely on the peace negotiations and are obviously resorting to guerilla warfare.
The forgotten victims of Mindanao's Muslim war
DATU PIANG, Philippines (AFP) - Arbaya Musalip gently cradles her three-day-old daughter swaddled in a piece of old cloth amid the chaos of this filthy evacuation camp in a remote corner of the southern Philippines.
She is waiting for her husband Amil to check on what remains of their tiny village of Dapiawan, days after Moro Islamic Liberation Front (MILF) rebels forced them to flee with only what they could carry of their meager belongings.
The infant, who does not yet have a name, has not been inoculated and has no proper clothes, just the piece of cloth from a nearby pile of relief items.
"We need water, food," Musalip, 25, tells AFP as she swats away flies buzzing near her baby's head.
"It is a very difficult life, I was in labour for nearly two days in this area since we didn't have the money to go to a hospital.
"I just want the war to stop and bring my baby home."
The Musalips left their modest wooden home in Dapiawan's marshlands when fighting between the MILF and the army recently spilled over to their area.
They had initially decided to stay, but when the MILF started harassing civilians, there was no choice but to leave.
She said she walked several kilometres (miles), despite her advanced pregnancy and having two young children in tow.
Hours later, a military airstrike hit a small boat carrying her neighbours who were also fleeing, killing a pregnant woman and five children.
The military apologised for the civilian deaths, but said the attack was justified because their planes were being fired at from the ground.
It claimed 16 rebels were also killed in the devastating airstrike using machine guns and rockets.
"They didn't care even if there were civilians on the ground," says Siti Salipala, a 33-year-old mother of two toddlers.
"The airstrike killed our neighbours, we had to run and seek shelter here," she says, looking around the plaza in the town of Datu Piang now crowded with thousands of war refugees.
They are the forgotten victims of Mindanao's three decades of struggle for self rule in which more than 120,000 people have been killed and between one million and two million made homeless.
Many people have left the trouble spots while others spend their time in relief camps waiting for the day they can return to their homes, or what's left of them.
Dapiawan, once a thriving rural hamlet, is now virtually a ghost town and the only signs of life among the shuttered and padlocked houses are stray cats.
Pockmarked walls, mounds of ash that once were houses, and broken benches and stalls indicate the intensity of the fighting here.
There are no vehicles on the highway that runs through the area, save for the occasional army truck or aid convoy.
The local police say a recent census showed there are 6,329 "heads of families" now staying in the camp, excluding their dependents. With a typical family here consisting of more than eight members, the number of people living here could exceed 50,000.
MILF rebels began stepping up their attacks last month, just after the Supreme Court blocked a proposed deal with the government that would have given them control over a large Muslim autonomous area.
The deal would have paved the way for a final political settlement ending the MILF rebellion that began in the 1970s.
Two senior MILF commanders attacked on different fronts -- taking over dozens of Christian villages and towns and killing more than 50 civilians.
They also torched homes, looted businesses and engaged the army in intense running gun battles.
President Gloria Arroyo responded with a massive military operation, virtually ending any immediate prospects of returning to the peace table.
As the troops advanced and subsequently took over dozens of MILF camps, the rebels splintered into smaller groups and are now engaged in a deadly cat-and-mouse chase with soldiers.
A ranking member of the MILF's inner circle earlier told AFP they were changing tactics to intensified guerrilla warfare, rather than frontal combat.
"We will increasingly hit weak government positions," the rebel said.
The violence has now affected more than half a million people, in what various aid agencies say is fast becoming a humanitarian crisis with no immediate end in sight.
The Red Cross has appealed to its donors for more funds, saying it expected relief operations to continue for the rest of the year, and adding that the situation had "generated very serious humanitarian consequences".
"We are afraid," Salipala says. "But there is nowhere else to run anymore."
The forgotten victims of Mindanao's Muslim war
DATU PIANG, Philippines (AFP) - Arbaya Musalip gently cradles her three-day-old daughter swaddled in a piece of old cloth amid the chaos of this filthy evacuation camp in a remote corner of the southern Philippines.
She is waiting for her husband Amil to check on what remains of their tiny village of Dapiawan, days after Moro Islamic Liberation Front (MILF) rebels forced them to flee with only what they could carry of their meager belongings.
The infant, who does not yet have a name, has not been inoculated and has no proper clothes, just the piece of cloth from a nearby pile of relief items.
"We need water, food," Musalip, 25, tells AFP as she swats away flies buzzing near her baby's head.
"It is a very difficult life, I was in labour for nearly two days in this area since we didn't have the money to go to a hospital.
"I just want the war to stop and bring my baby home."
The Musalips left their modest wooden home in Dapiawan's marshlands when fighting between the MILF and the army recently spilled over to their area.
They had initially decided to stay, but when the MILF started harassing civilians, there was no choice but to leave.
She said she walked several kilometres (miles), despite her advanced pregnancy and having two young children in tow.
Hours later, a military airstrike hit a small boat carrying her neighbours who were also fleeing, killing a pregnant woman and five children.
The military apologised for the civilian deaths, but said the attack was justified because their planes were being fired at from the ground.
It claimed 16 rebels were also killed in the devastating airstrike using machine guns and rockets.
"They didn't care even if there were civilians on the ground," says Siti Salipala, a 33-year-old mother of two toddlers.
"The airstrike killed our neighbours, we had to run and seek shelter here," she says, looking around the plaza in the town of Datu Piang now crowded with thousands of war refugees.
They are the forgotten victims of Mindanao's three decades of struggle for self rule in which more than 120,000 people have been killed and between one million and two million made homeless.
Many people have left the trouble spots while others spend their time in relief camps waiting for the day they can return to their homes, or what's left of them.
Dapiawan, once a thriving rural hamlet, is now virtually a ghost town and the only signs of life among the shuttered and padlocked houses are stray cats.
Pockmarked walls, mounds of ash that once were houses, and broken benches and stalls indicate the intensity of the fighting here.
There are no vehicles on the highway that runs through the area, save for the occasional army truck or aid convoy.
The local police say a recent census showed there are 6,329 "heads of families" now staying in the camp, excluding their dependents. With a typical family here consisting of more than eight members, the number of people living here could exceed 50,000.
MILF rebels began stepping up their attacks last month, just after the Supreme Court blocked a proposed deal with the government that would have given them control over a large Muslim autonomous area.
The deal would have paved the way for a final political settlement ending the MILF rebellion that began in the 1970s.
Two senior MILF commanders attacked on different fronts -- taking over dozens of Christian villages and towns and killing more than 50 civilians.
They also torched homes, looted businesses and engaged the army in intense running gun battles.
President Gloria Arroyo responded with a massive military operation, virtually ending any immediate prospects of returning to the peace table.
As the troops advanced and subsequently took over dozens of MILF camps, the rebels splintered into smaller groups and are now engaged in a deadly cat-and-mouse chase with soldiers.
A ranking member of the MILF's inner circle earlier told AFP they were changing tactics to intensified guerrilla warfare, rather than frontal combat.
"We will increasingly hit weak government positions," the rebel said.
The violence has now affected more than half a million people, in what various aid agencies say is fast becoming a humanitarian crisis with no immediate end in sight.
The Red Cross has appealed to its donors for more funds, saying it expected relief operations to continue for the rest of the year, and adding that the situation had "generated very serious humanitarian consequences".
"We are afraid," Salipala says. "But there is nowhere else to run anymore."
Show us the Money..
This is another view of how the bailout might be framed but it also shows how much Paulson made while he was within the system and how much he made when he left to join government. The fact the CEOs of many of these failing giants get giant benefits sickens people. Greider points out how Buffet makes a great deal to help out Goldman Sachs and claims that the government could do the same thing rather than leaving the taxpayer for the most part 0ut in the cold as does the present rescue plan.
Show Us the MoneyBy William Greider
25/09/08 "The Nation' -- - Taxpayers should wake up the politicians and ask them to tell Wall Street: "We want the same deal Warren Buffett got." The Omaha billionaire announced he is playing White Knight to Goldman Sachs by investing $5 billion in the endangered investment house. What a big-hearted guy. Buffett is an old-fashioned capitalist who invests in companies for the long term and I am a big admirer. But Warren Buffett did not get to be a billionaire by committing public-spirited acts of charity. He plays to win. So his deal with Goldman Sachs is carefully wired to produce gorgeous returns for Buffett's Berkshire Hathaway. Upfront, he gets a 10 percent ownership stake in preferential shares that will pay a 10 percent dividend--even if Goldman's stock price keeps falling. But Buffett also gets the right to buy $5 billion in common shares at below the market price. So if Goldman flourishes in these hard times, Buffett will win big as its stock price soars.
To sweeten his chances, the Omaha sage quickly announced that he endorses the $700 billion bailout plan proposed by Treasury Secretary Paulson. Let's follow the bouncing ball. Buffett puts some of his capital at risk on terms that are smartly protected from loss. Then Buffett urges the taxpayers to put their money on the line too. Only the taxpayers don't have any deal. They are the naked investors in this drama, asked to put up many billions to rescue Wall Street firms with nothing more than a vague promise it will save the Republic. I am reminded of the oldest rule in the financial business: "Get it in writing."
Warren Buffett's intervention provides a clarifying moment because it demonstrates what's wrong with the bipartisan bailout Congress is preparing to authorize. There's nothing illegitimate in what Buffett accomplished. The overlapping terms and contingencies he secured for his capital are standard practice in Wall Street deal-making. Investment bankers work out the fine print and put it in enforceable contracts or the deal doesn't happen.
Hank Paulson was a star in that world. When he left as chief executive to become Treasury Secretary in 2006, Goldman awarded him $110 million in cash to cover remaining stock options and restricted stock, in addition to $51 million to repurchase family shares. These payments were on top of the approximately $500 million in Goldman shares Paulson sold when he joined the government.
Doing hard-nosed deals in the Buffett style is essentially what the federal government should be doing now--bank by bank--as it intervenes to rescue the financial system from ruin. In our situation, the public treasury is the White Knight because private capital is afraid to play. The federal government has all the leverage it needs to demand very stern terms. That includes demanding an equivalent equity stake in banks or brokerages it assists, but also the power to impose explicit commandments and prohibitions on how these rescued firms must behave. The threat that banks will refuse to play is a meaningless whine from the banking industry. If bankers find a better deal from private lenders, they should take it. Otherwise, they are down the tubes.
The underlying power relationship in this crisis has been artfully obscured by the bailout sponsors because they decline to explain clearly what the bailout really is intended to accomplish. First, they said it was to restore calm in markets. Then they said it was the rotten assets centered in mortgage securities. But the problem is more accurately described as the great deflation of Wall Street's illusions--inflated prices, profits, deals, commissions and bonuses. You name it, they ran it up to stratospheric levels. Now the dream is dying and values are falling, but have not yet hit bottom.
To put it more concretely, the banks and investment houses have lost massive amounts of capital--a hole that is real, not psychological. Maybe $1 trillion, possibly twice that. We can't say exactly, because the banks have still not come clean and because assets in bank portfolios continue to lose value as housing prices continue to deflate.
The great capital losses mean Wall Street is sure to get smaller--a lot smaller--with fewer firms, less leveraged deals based on inadequate capital and a general retreat from its domineering role in economic life. Personally, I believe a smaller Wall Street will be good for the country, part of restoring balance to the damaged economy.
In any case, it is folly for Washington to imagine that it can--or should--simply replenish Wall Street's great loss. That essentially is what Paulson's blanket bailout attempts to do--restore conditions to "normal" by buying up the bad assets from banks at inflated prices. In other words, supply the missing capital that private lenders won't provide. Good luck with that.
"Normal" is not in the cards. Trying to accomplish this, given present realities is not in the country's interest. It also resembles King Canute trying to command the tides.
The real goal for government intervention should be to manage Wall Street's inescapble downward adjustments in ways as peaceable as possible. Stabilize the shrinking financial system so it will keep the the real economy going, that is, insure that credit and capital flows continue, while Wall Street is gradually cut down to normal size. There is real pain in that for everyone, but the objective is concrete and manageable.
Washington would exercise an activist supervisory role and offer deals in exchange for cooperative, compliant behavior. Bank regulatory agencies, including the Federal Reserve, already do this with troubled banks; now they have to step up with a more forceful hand. Banking watchdogs estimate at least 100 (maybe 200) banks are already doomed to fail. But another 1,000 banks are still solvent but on the edge. These can be managed to safe ground with tougher regulatory controls and some aid. Subsidiary financial markets need similar treatment and liquidity injections if they seize up.
At center stage are the big, bad players--the mega-banks and some others--who took the extreme risks and are now conveniently described as"too big to fail." If that's so, then one goal of government should be to make them get smaller, either through market forces or by lawful edict. The public likewise needs a new federal agency to manage the deal-making--something like the Reconstruction Finance Corporation during the New Deal--and determine which major banks can be cleaned up and stabilized, which ones cannot. The objective is not to save everyone--that is not what the nation needs--but to wind up with a broadly balanced financial system, chastened by new rules and ready to serve the rest of us, rather than eat us alive.
Only the federal government can do this. But I am suggesting government should mimic the hard-headed assumptions and practices that are commonplace in Wall Street. Don't take wishful promises in exchange for your money. Insist on hedges to protect the broad public interest. And get it in writing.
Maybe Warren Buffett and some other trustworthy capitalists would come to Washington during this emergency and show government officials how to make real deals. These are savvy people. Many are genuinely interested in helping the country get out of this mess. We could offer them a dollar a year.
Update: After I filed the above, the New York Times reported that Bill Gross, managing partner of Pimco, the giant bond investment house, is offering to serve as expert advisor to help Treasury sort through the rotten bank assets. "If the Treasury wanted to use our help, it would come, you know, free and clear," Gross said. Like Warren Buffett, Gross is a brilliant capitalist who plays to win. I happen to know him and I trust him. He has an enlightened understanding of global capitalism, not just financial markets and monetary economics but the deeper tides of history. In fact, Gross should be the next president's pick for chairman of the Federal Reserve. I don't know his politics, though I assume he is Republican.
Show Us the MoneyBy William Greider
25/09/08 "The Nation' -- - Taxpayers should wake up the politicians and ask them to tell Wall Street: "We want the same deal Warren Buffett got." The Omaha billionaire announced he is playing White Knight to Goldman Sachs by investing $5 billion in the endangered investment house. What a big-hearted guy. Buffett is an old-fashioned capitalist who invests in companies for the long term and I am a big admirer. But Warren Buffett did not get to be a billionaire by committing public-spirited acts of charity. He plays to win. So his deal with Goldman Sachs is carefully wired to produce gorgeous returns for Buffett's Berkshire Hathaway. Upfront, he gets a 10 percent ownership stake in preferential shares that will pay a 10 percent dividend--even if Goldman's stock price keeps falling. But Buffett also gets the right to buy $5 billion in common shares at below the market price. So if Goldman flourishes in these hard times, Buffett will win big as its stock price soars.
To sweeten his chances, the Omaha sage quickly announced that he endorses the $700 billion bailout plan proposed by Treasury Secretary Paulson. Let's follow the bouncing ball. Buffett puts some of his capital at risk on terms that are smartly protected from loss. Then Buffett urges the taxpayers to put their money on the line too. Only the taxpayers don't have any deal. They are the naked investors in this drama, asked to put up many billions to rescue Wall Street firms with nothing more than a vague promise it will save the Republic. I am reminded of the oldest rule in the financial business: "Get it in writing."
Warren Buffett's intervention provides a clarifying moment because it demonstrates what's wrong with the bipartisan bailout Congress is preparing to authorize. There's nothing illegitimate in what Buffett accomplished. The overlapping terms and contingencies he secured for his capital are standard practice in Wall Street deal-making. Investment bankers work out the fine print and put it in enforceable contracts or the deal doesn't happen.
Hank Paulson was a star in that world. When he left as chief executive to become Treasury Secretary in 2006, Goldman awarded him $110 million in cash to cover remaining stock options and restricted stock, in addition to $51 million to repurchase family shares. These payments were on top of the approximately $500 million in Goldman shares Paulson sold when he joined the government.
Doing hard-nosed deals in the Buffett style is essentially what the federal government should be doing now--bank by bank--as it intervenes to rescue the financial system from ruin. In our situation, the public treasury is the White Knight because private capital is afraid to play. The federal government has all the leverage it needs to demand very stern terms. That includes demanding an equivalent equity stake in banks or brokerages it assists, but also the power to impose explicit commandments and prohibitions on how these rescued firms must behave. The threat that banks will refuse to play is a meaningless whine from the banking industry. If bankers find a better deal from private lenders, they should take it. Otherwise, they are down the tubes.
The underlying power relationship in this crisis has been artfully obscured by the bailout sponsors because they decline to explain clearly what the bailout really is intended to accomplish. First, they said it was to restore calm in markets. Then they said it was the rotten assets centered in mortgage securities. But the problem is more accurately described as the great deflation of Wall Street's illusions--inflated prices, profits, deals, commissions and bonuses. You name it, they ran it up to stratospheric levels. Now the dream is dying and values are falling, but have not yet hit bottom.
To put it more concretely, the banks and investment houses have lost massive amounts of capital--a hole that is real, not psychological. Maybe $1 trillion, possibly twice that. We can't say exactly, because the banks have still not come clean and because assets in bank portfolios continue to lose value as housing prices continue to deflate.
The great capital losses mean Wall Street is sure to get smaller--a lot smaller--with fewer firms, less leveraged deals based on inadequate capital and a general retreat from its domineering role in economic life. Personally, I believe a smaller Wall Street will be good for the country, part of restoring balance to the damaged economy.
In any case, it is folly for Washington to imagine that it can--or should--simply replenish Wall Street's great loss. That essentially is what Paulson's blanket bailout attempts to do--restore conditions to "normal" by buying up the bad assets from banks at inflated prices. In other words, supply the missing capital that private lenders won't provide. Good luck with that.
"Normal" is not in the cards. Trying to accomplish this, given present realities is not in the country's interest. It also resembles King Canute trying to command the tides.
The real goal for government intervention should be to manage Wall Street's inescapble downward adjustments in ways as peaceable as possible. Stabilize the shrinking financial system so it will keep the the real economy going, that is, insure that credit and capital flows continue, while Wall Street is gradually cut down to normal size. There is real pain in that for everyone, but the objective is concrete and manageable.
Washington would exercise an activist supervisory role and offer deals in exchange for cooperative, compliant behavior. Bank regulatory agencies, including the Federal Reserve, already do this with troubled banks; now they have to step up with a more forceful hand. Banking watchdogs estimate at least 100 (maybe 200) banks are already doomed to fail. But another 1,000 banks are still solvent but on the edge. These can be managed to safe ground with tougher regulatory controls and some aid. Subsidiary financial markets need similar treatment and liquidity injections if they seize up.
At center stage are the big, bad players--the mega-banks and some others--who took the extreme risks and are now conveniently described as"too big to fail." If that's so, then one goal of government should be to make them get smaller, either through market forces or by lawful edict. The public likewise needs a new federal agency to manage the deal-making--something like the Reconstruction Finance Corporation during the New Deal--and determine which major banks can be cleaned up and stabilized, which ones cannot. The objective is not to save everyone--that is not what the nation needs--but to wind up with a broadly balanced financial system, chastened by new rules and ready to serve the rest of us, rather than eat us alive.
Only the federal government can do this. But I am suggesting government should mimic the hard-headed assumptions and practices that are commonplace in Wall Street. Don't take wishful promises in exchange for your money. Insist on hedges to protect the broad public interest. And get it in writing.
Maybe Warren Buffett and some other trustworthy capitalists would come to Washington during this emergency and show government officials how to make real deals. These are savvy people. Many are genuinely interested in helping the country get out of this mess. We could offer them a dollar a year.
Update: After I filed the above, the New York Times reported that Bill Gross, managing partner of Pimco, the giant bond investment house, is offering to serve as expert advisor to help Treasury sort through the rotten bank assets. "If the Treasury wanted to use our help, it would come, you know, free and clear," Gross said. Like Warren Buffett, Gross is a brilliant capitalist who plays to win. I happen to know him and I trust him. He has an enlightened understanding of global capitalism, not just financial markets and monetary economics but the deeper tides of history. In fact, Gross should be the next president's pick for chairman of the Federal Reserve. I don't know his politics, though I assume he is Republican.
No Bailout: Stop Rewarding Incompetence.
Interesting to note that Paulson himself was involved in investment banking and no doubt richly rewarded for his services and he is just one among many now high up in the financial administration that is proposing the bailout plan.
No Bailout: Stop Rewarding Incompetence
By Dean Baker
A friend recently sent a note reminding me that back in 2003, whensome of us were warning about the dangers of the housing bubble, AlanGreenspan, the person most responsible for the housing bubble, wasbeing knighted by the Queen of England. If we look at the list ofbanks and financial institutions that have crashed or now threaten tocrash, we can find a long list of people who brought their companiesand the economy to the brink of disaster and yet have received tens orhundreds of millions in compensation.We can also find a long list of people in top policy positions,including the current Fed chairman, Treasury Secretary, and President,who celebrated the soaring house prices and loan excesses of thehousing bubble. These people now expect to receive even greaterauthority due to the failure of their policy. This must stop.There is no doubt that the world financial system faces unprecedentedstrains as a result of the incompetence of our business and economicelites. The collapse of the system of finance that we started to seelast week would be a genuine disaster. We would not be able to carrythrough the normal financial transactions -- using credit cards,making payments with checks, or getting money from ATMs -- that arethe basis of modern life.However, we did get through the crisis last week with quick actions bythe Fed and Treasury. There is no reason to believe that withcomparable steps in the future, coupled with the raising the $100,000limit on deposit insurance, as suggested by Jamie Galbraith, that wecannot keep the financial system operating.Keeping the financial system alive, but in the intensive care unit, isnot desirable. However, given the integrity and the competence of theindividuals involved, it may be the best option.Secretary Paulson originally requested a $700 billion blank check thathe intended to shower on his friends and former colleagues in thefinancial sector. Fortunately, the Democrats in Congress balked andforced the Bush administration to back away from this position.President Bush is now willing to accept greater oversight,restrictions on CEO pay, and some commitment for giving equity inexchange for bailouts.This is good progress, but reports indicate that President Bush isstill refusing to change the bankruptcy code back to the pre-1991rules and allow judges to rewrite mortgage terms in bankruptcy. Thisis not hugely important -- the overwhelming majority of foreclosedhomes do not end up in a bankruptcy -- but President Bush's refusal tobudge on this issue doesn't sound like the behavior of someone who isworried about the collapse of the financial system.This raises the basic point that it is extremely difficult to trustthis administration. It was good to hear President Bush say that hedoesn't want the CEOs that wrecked their companies to profit from thisbailout, but does anyone believe that he will structure the bailout toensure that this does not happen? Similarly, he has gone along withthe idea that the government will get an equity stake in financialcompanies in exchange for buying their junk, but does anyone believethat we will get as good a deal as Warren Buffet did when he bought astake in Goldman Sachs?There can be no presumption of good faith from this administration.Unless the conditions are written in stone, for example specific rulesthat limit executive compensation using the same type of language thatCEOs use when they sign contracts with their companies, there is noreason for the public to believe that they will get a fair deal inthis bailout. The public should also demand that some genuineoutsiders, representatives of labor, consumer groups and othernon-Wall Street segments of society, have a direct oversight role inthis deal.If these demands are too extreme for the Bush administration, thenthey are not telling the truth about the financial crisis. If therisks are really as great as President Bush claims, then he shouldunhesitatingly agree to guarantees that will prevent the incompetentsfrom profiting further from their incompetence. We shall see.--------------------------------------------------------------------------------Dean Baker is the co-director of the Center for Economic and PolicyResearch (CEPR). He is the author of The Conservative Nanny State: Howthe Wealthy Use the Government to Stay Rich and Get Richer. He alsohas a blog, "Beat the Press," where he discusses the media's coverageof economic issues.
No Bailout: Stop Rewarding Incompetence
By Dean Baker
A friend recently sent a note reminding me that back in 2003, whensome of us were warning about the dangers of the housing bubble, AlanGreenspan, the person most responsible for the housing bubble, wasbeing knighted by the Queen of England. If we look at the list ofbanks and financial institutions that have crashed or now threaten tocrash, we can find a long list of people who brought their companiesand the economy to the brink of disaster and yet have received tens orhundreds of millions in compensation.We can also find a long list of people in top policy positions,including the current Fed chairman, Treasury Secretary, and President,who celebrated the soaring house prices and loan excesses of thehousing bubble. These people now expect to receive even greaterauthority due to the failure of their policy. This must stop.There is no doubt that the world financial system faces unprecedentedstrains as a result of the incompetence of our business and economicelites. The collapse of the system of finance that we started to seelast week would be a genuine disaster. We would not be able to carrythrough the normal financial transactions -- using credit cards,making payments with checks, or getting money from ATMs -- that arethe basis of modern life.However, we did get through the crisis last week with quick actions bythe Fed and Treasury. There is no reason to believe that withcomparable steps in the future, coupled with the raising the $100,000limit on deposit insurance, as suggested by Jamie Galbraith, that wecannot keep the financial system operating.Keeping the financial system alive, but in the intensive care unit, isnot desirable. However, given the integrity and the competence of theindividuals involved, it may be the best option.Secretary Paulson originally requested a $700 billion blank check thathe intended to shower on his friends and former colleagues in thefinancial sector. Fortunately, the Democrats in Congress balked andforced the Bush administration to back away from this position.President Bush is now willing to accept greater oversight,restrictions on CEO pay, and some commitment for giving equity inexchange for bailouts.This is good progress, but reports indicate that President Bush isstill refusing to change the bankruptcy code back to the pre-1991rules and allow judges to rewrite mortgage terms in bankruptcy. Thisis not hugely important -- the overwhelming majority of foreclosedhomes do not end up in a bankruptcy -- but President Bush's refusal tobudge on this issue doesn't sound like the behavior of someone who isworried about the collapse of the financial system.This raises the basic point that it is extremely difficult to trustthis administration. It was good to hear President Bush say that hedoesn't want the CEOs that wrecked their companies to profit from thisbailout, but does anyone believe that he will structure the bailout toensure that this does not happen? Similarly, he has gone along withthe idea that the government will get an equity stake in financialcompanies in exchange for buying their junk, but does anyone believethat we will get as good a deal as Warren Buffet did when he bought astake in Goldman Sachs?There can be no presumption of good faith from this administration.Unless the conditions are written in stone, for example specific rulesthat limit executive compensation using the same type of language thatCEOs use when they sign contracts with their companies, there is noreason for the public to believe that they will get a fair deal inthis bailout. The public should also demand that some genuineoutsiders, representatives of labor, consumer groups and othernon-Wall Street segments of society, have a direct oversight role inthis deal.If these demands are too extreme for the Bush administration, thenthey are not telling the truth about the financial crisis. If therisks are really as great as President Bush claims, then he shouldunhesitatingly agree to guarantees that will prevent the incompetentsfrom profiting further from their incompetence. We shall see.--------------------------------------------------------------------------------Dean Baker is the co-director of the Center for Economic and PolicyResearch (CEPR). He is the author of The Conservative Nanny State: Howthe Wealthy Use the Government to Stay Rich and Get Richer. He alsohas a blog, "Beat the Press," where he discusses the media's coverageof economic issues.
Crisis of A Gilded Age.
This is an article by Doug Henwood of the Left Business Observer. He notes the manner in which the gap between rich and poor has increased with deregulation. People are rightly angry at the attempt now to bail out Wall Street while doing little or nothing to address the problems of the middle class and poor. Certainly some responsibility lies with people who took out mortgages when they should have known they could not finance them but the system was glad to mislead them and their purchases were part of the boom that is now bust.
http://www.thenation.com/doc/20081013/henwoodCrisis of a Gilded Age
By Doug Henwood
It looks like someday finally arrived.For the past two or three decades skeptics watched as deregulated finance got ever more reckless, as the gap between rich and poor widened to a chasm not seen since the turn of the last century, and they said, "Someday there's going to be hell to pay for all this." But despite a few nasty hiccups every few years--the 1987 stock market crash, the savings and loan debacle of the late 1980s, the Mexican and Asian financial crises of the mid-1990s, the dot-com bust of the early 2000s--somehow the economy regained its footing for another game of chicken. Has its luck finally run out?It might seem odd to link the current financial crisis with the long- term polarization of incomes, but in fact the two are deeply connected. During the housing bubble, people borrowed heavily not only to buy houses (whose prices were rising out of reach of their incomes) but also to compensate for the weakest job and income growth of any expansion since the end of World War II. Between 2001 and 2007, homeowners withdrew almost $5 trillion in cash from their houses, either by borrowing against their equity or pocketing the proceeds of sales; such equity withdrawals, as they're called, accounted for 30 percent of the growth in consumption over that six-year period. That extra lift disguised the labor market's underlying weakness; without it, the 2001 recession might never have ended.But that round of borrowing only extended one that had begun in the early 1980s. At first it was credit cards, but when the housing boom really got going around 2001, the mortgage market took the lead. Now households are up to their ears in debt, and the credit markets are broken.Borrowing is only one side of the story. As incomes polarized, America's rich and the financial institutions that serve them found their portfolios bulging with cash in need of a profitable investment outlet, and one of the outlets they found was lending to those below them on the income ladder. (That's one of several places where all the cash that funded the credit card and mortgage borrowing came from.) They also poured their money into hedge funds, private equity funds and just plain old stocks and bonds. That twenty-five-year gusher of cash led to an enormous expansion in the financial markets. Total financial assets of all kinds (stocks, bonds, everything) averaged around 440 percent of GDP from the early 1950s through the late 1970s. They grew steadily, breaking 600 percent in 1990 and 1,000 percent by 2007. With a few notorious interruptions, it looked like Wall Street had entered a utopia: an eternal bull market. Regulators stopped regulating and auditors looked the other way as financial practices lost all traces of prudence. No figure embodies that negligence better than Alan Greenspan, who as chair of the Federal Reserve dropped the propensity to caution and worry characteristic of the central banking profession and instead cheered the markets onward. As he said many times in the 1990s and early 2000s, who was he, a mere mortal, to second-guess the collective wisdom of the markets? He seemed to have no sense that markets embody no collective wisdom and often act with all the careful consideration of a mob.So while the proximate cause, as the lawyers say, of the current financial crisis is the bursting of the housing bubble and the souring of so much of the mortgage debt that financed it, that's really only part of a much larger story. And while it's inevitable that the government is going to have to spend hundreds of billions to repair the damage over the next few years, there's a lot more that needs to be done over the longer term.This is the point where it's irresistibly tempting to call for a re- regulation of finance. And that is sorely needed. But we also need to remember why finance, like many other areas of economic life, was deregulated starting in the 1970s. From the point of view of the elite, corporate profits were too low, workers were too demanding and the hand of government was too heavy. Deregulation was part of a broad assault to make the economy more "flexible," which translated into stagnant to declining wages and rising job insecurity for most Americans. And the medicine worked, from the elites' point of view. Corporate profitability rose dramatically from the early 1980s until sometime last year. The polarization of incomes wasn't an unwanted side effect of the medicine--it was part of the cure.Although we're hearing a lot now about how the Reagan era is over and the era of big government is back, an expanded government isn't likely to do much more than rescue a failing financial system (in addition to the more familiar pursuits of waging war and jailing people). Nothing more humane will be pursued without a far more energized populace than we have. After this financial crisis and the likely bailout, it looks impossible to go back to the status quo ante--but we don't seem ready to move on to something appealingly new yet, either.___________________________________
http://www.thenation.com/doc/20081013/henwoodCrisis of a Gilded Age
By Doug Henwood
It looks like someday finally arrived.For the past two or three decades skeptics watched as deregulated finance got ever more reckless, as the gap between rich and poor widened to a chasm not seen since the turn of the last century, and they said, "Someday there's going to be hell to pay for all this." But despite a few nasty hiccups every few years--the 1987 stock market crash, the savings and loan debacle of the late 1980s, the Mexican and Asian financial crises of the mid-1990s, the dot-com bust of the early 2000s--somehow the economy regained its footing for another game of chicken. Has its luck finally run out?It might seem odd to link the current financial crisis with the long- term polarization of incomes, but in fact the two are deeply connected. During the housing bubble, people borrowed heavily not only to buy houses (whose prices were rising out of reach of their incomes) but also to compensate for the weakest job and income growth of any expansion since the end of World War II. Between 2001 and 2007, homeowners withdrew almost $5 trillion in cash from their houses, either by borrowing against their equity or pocketing the proceeds of sales; such equity withdrawals, as they're called, accounted for 30 percent of the growth in consumption over that six-year period. That extra lift disguised the labor market's underlying weakness; without it, the 2001 recession might never have ended.But that round of borrowing only extended one that had begun in the early 1980s. At first it was credit cards, but when the housing boom really got going around 2001, the mortgage market took the lead. Now households are up to their ears in debt, and the credit markets are broken.Borrowing is only one side of the story. As incomes polarized, America's rich and the financial institutions that serve them found their portfolios bulging with cash in need of a profitable investment outlet, and one of the outlets they found was lending to those below them on the income ladder. (That's one of several places where all the cash that funded the credit card and mortgage borrowing came from.) They also poured their money into hedge funds, private equity funds and just plain old stocks and bonds. That twenty-five-year gusher of cash led to an enormous expansion in the financial markets. Total financial assets of all kinds (stocks, bonds, everything) averaged around 440 percent of GDP from the early 1950s through the late 1970s. They grew steadily, breaking 600 percent in 1990 and 1,000 percent by 2007. With a few notorious interruptions, it looked like Wall Street had entered a utopia: an eternal bull market. Regulators stopped regulating and auditors looked the other way as financial practices lost all traces of prudence. No figure embodies that negligence better than Alan Greenspan, who as chair of the Federal Reserve dropped the propensity to caution and worry characteristic of the central banking profession and instead cheered the markets onward. As he said many times in the 1990s and early 2000s, who was he, a mere mortal, to second-guess the collective wisdom of the markets? He seemed to have no sense that markets embody no collective wisdom and often act with all the careful consideration of a mob.So while the proximate cause, as the lawyers say, of the current financial crisis is the bursting of the housing bubble and the souring of so much of the mortgage debt that financed it, that's really only part of a much larger story. And while it's inevitable that the government is going to have to spend hundreds of billions to repair the damage over the next few years, there's a lot more that needs to be done over the longer term.This is the point where it's irresistibly tempting to call for a re- regulation of finance. And that is sorely needed. But we also need to remember why finance, like many other areas of economic life, was deregulated starting in the 1970s. From the point of view of the elite, corporate profits were too low, workers were too demanding and the hand of government was too heavy. Deregulation was part of a broad assault to make the economy more "flexible," which translated into stagnant to declining wages and rising job insecurity for most Americans. And the medicine worked, from the elites' point of view. Corporate profitability rose dramatically from the early 1980s until sometime last year. The polarization of incomes wasn't an unwanted side effect of the medicine--it was part of the cure.Although we're hearing a lot now about how the Reagan era is over and the era of big government is back, an expanded government isn't likely to do much more than rescue a failing financial system (in addition to the more familiar pursuits of waging war and jailing people). Nothing more humane will be pursued without a far more energized populace than we have. After this financial crisis and the likely bailout, it looks impossible to go back to the status quo ante--but we don't seem ready to move on to something appealingly new yet, either.___________________________________
Nuclear Accord with North Korea becoming undone by US demands inaction on terror list.
This is from the Washington Post. Both sides are obviiously at fault but once the agreement was signed the U.S. interpreted it to satisfy its own desire for far-reaching inspections that North Korea would probably view as attempting to spy on its military capabilities. No doubt it was. I was under the impression that North Korea had actually been removed from the terror list but apparently that did not happen and was one reason why North Korea is rejecting the agreement now. Korea expected to be removed after destruction of the Yongyon reactor tower.
Far-Reaching U.S. Plan Impaired N. Korea DealDemands Began to Undo Nuclear Accord
By Glenn KesslerWashington Post Staff WriterFriday, September 26, 2008; A20
The unraveling of the landmark deal to end North Korea's nuclear weapons programs began just weeks after its high point -- the televised destruction of the cooling tower at the Yongbyon nuclear reactor in late June -- when U.S. negotiators presented Pyongyang with a sweeping plan for verifying its claims about its nuclear programs.
Under the proposal, heavily influenced by the State Department's arms control experts, the U.S. requested "full access to all materials" at sites that might have had a nuclear purpose in the past. It sought "full access to any site, facility or location" deemed relevant to the nuclear program, including military facilities, according to the four-page document, a copy of which was obtained by The Washington Post. Investigators would be able to take photographs and make videos, remain on site as long as necessary, make repeated visits and collect and remove samples.
The United States pressed ahead with the proposal despite warnings from China, Russia and other countries that it was asking too much of the xenophobic North Koreans, officials said. North Korea immediately balked and the once-promising talks were at an impasse.
The verification plan, details of which have not been revealed before, has deeply split the Bush administration, officials said. Assistant Secretary of State Christopher R. Hill, the chief U.S. negotiator, and his aides were opposed to making such an opening bid, but they were overruled at higher levels.
Some senior officials, in fact, viewed the verification plan as a key test of North Korean intentions. Hill had pushed the envelope repeatedly during months of negotiations, persuading President Bush and Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice to scale back demands and to make concessions to North Korea that more hard-line officials found unacceptable.
U.S. verification experts were not even closely consulted when the six nations involved in the talks concluded a vague agreement on how verification might proceed. But they were given the lead role in drafting the U.S. document presented to North Korea in July.
"It's possible North Korea always intended to say no, but they never had to until now," said an official who pushed for a far-reaching verification plan as a way to test whether negotiators were being "led down the primrose path."
From North Korea's perspective, the emphasis on a verification plan is a betrayal of the deal that resulted in the toppling of the cooling tower, according to Foreign Ministry statements. North Korea submitted a declaration of its nuclear programs -- though it revealed less than the United States originally sought -- and, in exchange, the president was to remove it from the State Department's list of state sponsors of terrorism.
"I am notifying Congress of my intent to rescind North Korea's designation as a state sponsor of terror in 45 days," Bush announced June 26. "The next 45 days will be an important period for North Korea to show its seriousness of its cooperation. We will work through the six-party talks to develop a comprehensive and rigorous verification protocol. And during this period, the United States will carefully observe North Korea's actions -- and act accordingly."
But there was no written document linking North Korea's performance on verification to its removal from the terror list, sources said. So when Bush let the 45 days pass without any action, North Korea denounced what it called "obviously a violation of the principle of 'action for action' essential for realizing denuclearization."
Asked recently if there was a written agreement concerning North Korea's performance on verification, State Department spokesman Sean McCormack sidestepped the question, saying: "We're confident they [North Korean officials] understand what they need to do."
North Korea had been warning visitors privately for months that it would object to an extensive inspection proposal. David Albright, president of the Institute for Science and International Security, a nonpartisan research group, who visited North Korea this year, said Pyongyang made it clear it did not want the International Atomic Energy Agency involved. North Korean officials also did not want visits to their military sites and were distressed to learn how U.S. scientists were able to pick up minute nuclear particles from samples of tubes and documents previously provided to U.S. officials, Albright said.
Albright, a former weapons inspector in Iraq who reviewed the U.S. proposal for The Post, said it would be "completely unacceptable to any country's sovereignty" and amounted to "a verification wish list" and "a license to spy on any military site they have." He said Iraq agreed to such provisions in the 1990s only after it was bombed.
North Korea, in its declaration, listed about 15 nuclear facilities, including sites at Yongbyon and universities. An official involved in drafting the U.S. verification proposal, speaking on the condition of anonymity in order to discuss internal deliberations, said the plan was based on previous inspection proposals, such as the one that resulted in Libya giving up its weapons in 2003.
He said North Korea submitted a counterproposal in which it agreed to a number of U.S. demands but objected to two key elements -- visits to undeclared facilities and the taking of samples.
"Those are basic principles of verification," the official said. "I don't know what we could have done except say to the North Koreans, 'I believe you.' You can't just kick this can down the street."
Albright agreed that North Korea must concede on the taking of samples, which he called one of the most powerful tools inspectors have. "They have always been uptight about it," he said.
In August, the U.S. submitted a counterproposal that was somewhat more vague than the first plan but retained key elements. But in late August, North Korean leader Kim Jong Il suffered an apparent stroke. North Korean officials have not responded to the counterproposal.
Instead, the government has barred international inspectors and their surveillance equipment from the reactor site and indicated that within a week it would once again begin reprocessing spent fuel rods into weapons-grade plutonium.
Far-Reaching U.S. Plan Impaired N. Korea DealDemands Began to Undo Nuclear Accord
By Glenn KesslerWashington Post Staff WriterFriday, September 26, 2008; A20
The unraveling of the landmark deal to end North Korea's nuclear weapons programs began just weeks after its high point -- the televised destruction of the cooling tower at the Yongbyon nuclear reactor in late June -- when U.S. negotiators presented Pyongyang with a sweeping plan for verifying its claims about its nuclear programs.
Under the proposal, heavily influenced by the State Department's arms control experts, the U.S. requested "full access to all materials" at sites that might have had a nuclear purpose in the past. It sought "full access to any site, facility or location" deemed relevant to the nuclear program, including military facilities, according to the four-page document, a copy of which was obtained by The Washington Post. Investigators would be able to take photographs and make videos, remain on site as long as necessary, make repeated visits and collect and remove samples.
The United States pressed ahead with the proposal despite warnings from China, Russia and other countries that it was asking too much of the xenophobic North Koreans, officials said. North Korea immediately balked and the once-promising talks were at an impasse.
The verification plan, details of which have not been revealed before, has deeply split the Bush administration, officials said. Assistant Secretary of State Christopher R. Hill, the chief U.S. negotiator, and his aides were opposed to making such an opening bid, but they were overruled at higher levels.
Some senior officials, in fact, viewed the verification plan as a key test of North Korean intentions. Hill had pushed the envelope repeatedly during months of negotiations, persuading President Bush and Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice to scale back demands and to make concessions to North Korea that more hard-line officials found unacceptable.
U.S. verification experts were not even closely consulted when the six nations involved in the talks concluded a vague agreement on how verification might proceed. But they were given the lead role in drafting the U.S. document presented to North Korea in July.
"It's possible North Korea always intended to say no, but they never had to until now," said an official who pushed for a far-reaching verification plan as a way to test whether negotiators were being "led down the primrose path."
From North Korea's perspective, the emphasis on a verification plan is a betrayal of the deal that resulted in the toppling of the cooling tower, according to Foreign Ministry statements. North Korea submitted a declaration of its nuclear programs -- though it revealed less than the United States originally sought -- and, in exchange, the president was to remove it from the State Department's list of state sponsors of terrorism.
"I am notifying Congress of my intent to rescind North Korea's designation as a state sponsor of terror in 45 days," Bush announced June 26. "The next 45 days will be an important period for North Korea to show its seriousness of its cooperation. We will work through the six-party talks to develop a comprehensive and rigorous verification protocol. And during this period, the United States will carefully observe North Korea's actions -- and act accordingly."
But there was no written document linking North Korea's performance on verification to its removal from the terror list, sources said. So when Bush let the 45 days pass without any action, North Korea denounced what it called "obviously a violation of the principle of 'action for action' essential for realizing denuclearization."
Asked recently if there was a written agreement concerning North Korea's performance on verification, State Department spokesman Sean McCormack sidestepped the question, saying: "We're confident they [North Korean officials] understand what they need to do."
North Korea had been warning visitors privately for months that it would object to an extensive inspection proposal. David Albright, president of the Institute for Science and International Security, a nonpartisan research group, who visited North Korea this year, said Pyongyang made it clear it did not want the International Atomic Energy Agency involved. North Korean officials also did not want visits to their military sites and were distressed to learn how U.S. scientists were able to pick up minute nuclear particles from samples of tubes and documents previously provided to U.S. officials, Albright said.
Albright, a former weapons inspector in Iraq who reviewed the U.S. proposal for The Post, said it would be "completely unacceptable to any country's sovereignty" and amounted to "a verification wish list" and "a license to spy on any military site they have." He said Iraq agreed to such provisions in the 1990s only after it was bombed.
North Korea, in its declaration, listed about 15 nuclear facilities, including sites at Yongbyon and universities. An official involved in drafting the U.S. verification proposal, speaking on the condition of anonymity in order to discuss internal deliberations, said the plan was based on previous inspection proposals, such as the one that resulted in Libya giving up its weapons in 2003.
He said North Korea submitted a counterproposal in which it agreed to a number of U.S. demands but objected to two key elements -- visits to undeclared facilities and the taking of samples.
"Those are basic principles of verification," the official said. "I don't know what we could have done except say to the North Koreans, 'I believe you.' You can't just kick this can down the street."
Albright agreed that North Korea must concede on the taking of samples, which he called one of the most powerful tools inspectors have. "They have always been uptight about it," he said.
In August, the U.S. submitted a counterproposal that was somewhat more vague than the first plan but retained key elements. But in late August, North Korean leader Kim Jong Il suffered an apparent stroke. North Korean officials have not responded to the counterproposal.
Instead, the government has barred international inspectors and their surveillance equipment from the reactor site and indicated that within a week it would once again begin reprocessing spent fuel rods into weapons-grade plutonium.
Thursday, September 25, 2008
James Galbraith on the Financial Crisis
This is an interesting alternative solution to the financial crisis by James Galbraith. Galbraith also notes the huge cuts in public spending at a time when there are huge needs for repairing infrastructure as state and local governments run out of funds and must cut budgets.
Washington PostSeptember 25, 2008A Bailout We Don't NeedBy James K. GalbraithNow that all five big investment banks -- Bear Stearns, Merrill Lynch, Lehman Brothers, Goldman Sachs and Morgan Stanley -- have disappeared or morphed into regular banks, a question arises.Is this bailout still necessary?The point of the bailout is to buy assets that are illiquid but not worthless. But regular banks hold assets like that all the time. They're called "loans."With banks, runs occur only when depositors panic, because they fear the loan book is bad. Deposit insurance takes care of that. So why not eliminate the pointless $100,000 cap on federal deposit insurance and go take inventory? If a bank is solvent, money market funds would flow in, eliminating the need to insure those separately. If it isn't, the FDIC has the bridge bank facility to take care of that.Next, put half a trillion dollars into the Federal Deposit Insurance Corp. fund -- a cosmetic gesture -- and as much money into that agency and the FBI as is needed for examiners, auditors and investigators. Keep $200 billion or more in reserve, so the Treasury can recapitalize banks by buying preferred shares if necessary -- as Warren Buffett did this week with Goldman Sachs. Review the situation in three months, when Congress comes back. Hedge funds should be left on their own. You can't save everyone, and those investors aren't poor.With this solution, the systemic financial threat should go away. Does that mean the economy would quickly recover? No. Sadly, it does not. Two vast economic problems will confront the next president immediately. First, the underlying housing crisis: There are too many houses out there, too many vacant or unsold, too many homeowners underwater. Credit will not start to flow, as some suggest, simply because the crisis is contained. There have to be borrowers, and there has to be collateral. There won't be enough.In Texas, recovery from the 1980s oil bust took seven years and the pull of strong national economic growth. The present slump is national, and it can't be cured that way. But it could be resolved in three years, rather than 10, by a new Home Owners Loan Corp., which would rewrite mortgages, manage rental conversions and decide when vacant, degraded properties should be demolished. Set it up like a draft board in each community, under federal guidelines, and get to work.The second great crisis is in state and local government. Just Tuesday, New York Mayor Michael Bloomberg announced $1.5 billion in public spending cuts. The scenario is playing out everywhere: Schools, fire departments, police stations, parks, libraries and water projects are getting the ax, while essential maintenance gets deferred and important capital projects don't get built. This is pernicious when unemployment is rising and when we have all the real resources we need to preserve services and expand public investment. It's also unnecessary.What to do? Reenact Richard Nixon's great idea: federal revenue sharing. States and localities should get the funds to plug their revenue gaps and maintain real public spending, per capita, for the next three to five years. Also, enact the National Infrastructure Bank, making bond revenue available in a revolving fund for capital improvements. There is work to do. There are people to do it. Bring them together. What could be easier or more sensible?Here's another problem: the wealth loss to near-retirees and the elderly from a declining stock market as things shake out. How about taking care of this, with rough justice, through a supplement to Social Security? If you need a revenue source, impose a turnover tax on stocks.Next, let's think about what the next upswing should try to achieve and how it should be powered. If the 1960s were about raising baby boomers and the '90s about technology, what should the '10s and '20s be about? It's obvious: energy and climate change. That's where the present great unmet needs are.So, let's use the next few years to plan, mapping out a program of energy conservation, reconstruction and renewable power. Let's get the public sector and the universities working on it. And let's prepare the private sector so that when the credit crunch finally ends, we'll have the firms, the labs, the standards and the talent in place, ready to go.Some will ask if we can afford it. To see the answer, don't look at budget projections. Just look at interest rates. Last week, in the panic, the federal government could fund itself, short term, for free. It could have raised money for 30 years and paid less than 4 percent. That's far less than it cost back in 2000.No country in this situation is broke, or insolvent, or even in much trouble. For once, Wall Street's own markets speak the truth. The financially challenged customer isn't Uncle Sam. He's up on Wall Street, where deregulation, greed and fraud ran wild.James K. Galbraith is the author of "The Predator State: How Conservatives Abandoned the Free Market and Why Liberals Should Too."<http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2008/09/24/AR2008092403033.html>
Washington PostSeptember 25, 2008A Bailout We Don't NeedBy James K. GalbraithNow that all five big investment banks -- Bear Stearns, Merrill Lynch, Lehman Brothers, Goldman Sachs and Morgan Stanley -- have disappeared or morphed into regular banks, a question arises.Is this bailout still necessary?The point of the bailout is to buy assets that are illiquid but not worthless. But regular banks hold assets like that all the time. They're called "loans."With banks, runs occur only when depositors panic, because they fear the loan book is bad. Deposit insurance takes care of that. So why not eliminate the pointless $100,000 cap on federal deposit insurance and go take inventory? If a bank is solvent, money market funds would flow in, eliminating the need to insure those separately. If it isn't, the FDIC has the bridge bank facility to take care of that.Next, put half a trillion dollars into the Federal Deposit Insurance Corp. fund -- a cosmetic gesture -- and as much money into that agency and the FBI as is needed for examiners, auditors and investigators. Keep $200 billion or more in reserve, so the Treasury can recapitalize banks by buying preferred shares if necessary -- as Warren Buffett did this week with Goldman Sachs. Review the situation in three months, when Congress comes back. Hedge funds should be left on their own. You can't save everyone, and those investors aren't poor.With this solution, the systemic financial threat should go away. Does that mean the economy would quickly recover? No. Sadly, it does not. Two vast economic problems will confront the next president immediately. First, the underlying housing crisis: There are too many houses out there, too many vacant or unsold, too many homeowners underwater. Credit will not start to flow, as some suggest, simply because the crisis is contained. There have to be borrowers, and there has to be collateral. There won't be enough.In Texas, recovery from the 1980s oil bust took seven years and the pull of strong national economic growth. The present slump is national, and it can't be cured that way. But it could be resolved in three years, rather than 10, by a new Home Owners Loan Corp., which would rewrite mortgages, manage rental conversions and decide when vacant, degraded properties should be demolished. Set it up like a draft board in each community, under federal guidelines, and get to work.The second great crisis is in state and local government. Just Tuesday, New York Mayor Michael Bloomberg announced $1.5 billion in public spending cuts. The scenario is playing out everywhere: Schools, fire departments, police stations, parks, libraries and water projects are getting the ax, while essential maintenance gets deferred and important capital projects don't get built. This is pernicious when unemployment is rising and when we have all the real resources we need to preserve services and expand public investment. It's also unnecessary.What to do? Reenact Richard Nixon's great idea: federal revenue sharing. States and localities should get the funds to plug their revenue gaps and maintain real public spending, per capita, for the next three to five years. Also, enact the National Infrastructure Bank, making bond revenue available in a revolving fund for capital improvements. There is work to do. There are people to do it. Bring them together. What could be easier or more sensible?Here's another problem: the wealth loss to near-retirees and the elderly from a declining stock market as things shake out. How about taking care of this, with rough justice, through a supplement to Social Security? If you need a revenue source, impose a turnover tax on stocks.Next, let's think about what the next upswing should try to achieve and how it should be powered. If the 1960s were about raising baby boomers and the '90s about technology, what should the '10s and '20s be about? It's obvious: energy and climate change. That's where the present great unmet needs are.So, let's use the next few years to plan, mapping out a program of energy conservation, reconstruction and renewable power. Let's get the public sector and the universities working on it. And let's prepare the private sector so that when the credit crunch finally ends, we'll have the firms, the labs, the standards and the talent in place, ready to go.Some will ask if we can afford it. To see the answer, don't look at budget projections. Just look at interest rates. Last week, in the panic, the federal government could fund itself, short term, for free. It could have raised money for 30 years and paid less than 4 percent. That's far less than it cost back in 2000.No country in this situation is broke, or insolvent, or even in much trouble. For once, Wall Street's own markets speak the truth. The financially challenged customer isn't Uncle Sam. He's up on Wall Street, where deregulation, greed and fraud ran wild.James K. Galbraith is the author of "The Predator State: How Conservatives Abandoned the Free Market and Why Liberals Should Too."<http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2008/09/24/AR2008092403033.html>
Drone down in Pakistan
This is from antiwar.com. Not only is there the fog of war but there is the fog of information and misinformation about events such as this. Probably Pakistan did recover a U.S. drone whether shot down or not. The U.S. seems bound and determined to continue its policy of attacks in Pakistan and this will just make Pakistan even more unstable than it already is.
Pakistan: Whose Drone is it Anyway?
Posted September 24, 2008
Following up on yesterday’s myriad of reports regarding what did or didn’t happen to a US Predator Drone near the South Waziristan border, Pakistan’s military has officially admitted to recovering the wreckage of a downed US drone near the border which suffered a malfunction and crashed, finally putting to rest speculation about the incident.
Or perhaps not. Residents still insist the plane was shot down by tribesmen rather than crashing on its own. And though yesterday a US defense official denied that any drones were missing, today a military spokesman conceded that a drone did in fact go down. However, he maintained that the drone crashed in Paktika province, and not close to the Pakistan border. He also said the US recovered the downed craft “immediately.”
So the US claims to have recovered its lost drone, and Pakistan also has recovered another drone. Whose is it? Pakistani TV showed footage of the wreckage, and the footage is apparently consistent with an American Predator Drone. But the part shown has been sold to other countries, so its also possible the drone belonged to the British or some other nation.
US attacks in Pakistan have increased this month amid reports of a new US strategy, and CIA Director Michael Hayden suggested last week that the strikes were an attempt to “tickle” militant groups into reactions in the hope of learning something. Pakistan has pressed the US government to stop unilateral strikes on its territory.
And the mysterious group which claimed credit for Saturday’s suicide bombing in Islamabad has issued a new message in which it threatens to target other Pakistanis who cooperate with “Americans and NATO crusaders.” This message, like the previous one, was delivered to the media over the phone, and in English. Pakistani officials said the preliminary report pointed to Waziristan, the target of America’s recent strikes.
Pakistan: Whose Drone is it Anyway?
Posted September 24, 2008
Following up on yesterday’s myriad of reports regarding what did or didn’t happen to a US Predator Drone near the South Waziristan border, Pakistan’s military has officially admitted to recovering the wreckage of a downed US drone near the border which suffered a malfunction and crashed, finally putting to rest speculation about the incident.
Or perhaps not. Residents still insist the plane was shot down by tribesmen rather than crashing on its own. And though yesterday a US defense official denied that any drones were missing, today a military spokesman conceded that a drone did in fact go down. However, he maintained that the drone crashed in Paktika province, and not close to the Pakistan border. He also said the US recovered the downed craft “immediately.”
So the US claims to have recovered its lost drone, and Pakistan also has recovered another drone. Whose is it? Pakistani TV showed footage of the wreckage, and the footage is apparently consistent with an American Predator Drone. But the part shown has been sold to other countries, so its also possible the drone belonged to the British or some other nation.
US attacks in Pakistan have increased this month amid reports of a new US strategy, and CIA Director Michael Hayden suggested last week that the strikes were an attempt to “tickle” militant groups into reactions in the hope of learning something. Pakistan has pressed the US government to stop unilateral strikes on its territory.
And the mysterious group which claimed credit for Saturday’s suicide bombing in Islamabad has issued a new message in which it threatens to target other Pakistanis who cooperate with “Americans and NATO crusaders.” This message, like the previous one, was delivered to the media over the phone, and in English. Pakistani officials said the preliminary report pointed to Waziristan, the target of America’s recent strikes.
Wednesday, September 24, 2008
Paulson's big Whopper...
This is from NY Times columnist Krugman's blog.
This is excellent journalism, catching Paulson up on this. It certainly does make one wonder how reliable he is on other matters. Everyone is stressing the urgency of quick action but this is a recipe for passing something that itself is a disaster.
September 23, 2008, 3:07 pm
Good ideas and lies
Daniel Davies, in one of the great blog posts of this era, laid down a key principle:
Good ideas do not need lots of lies told about them in order to gain public acceptance.
He was talking about the selling of the Iraq war, but it applies more generally.
So, this morning Hank Paulson told a whopper:
We gave you a simple, three-page legislative outline and I thought it would have been presumptuous for us on that outline to come up with an oversight mechanism. That’s the role of Congress, that’s something we’re going to work on together. So if any of you felt that I didn’t believe that we needed oversight: I believe we need oversight. We need oversight.
What the proposal actually did, of course, was explicitly rule out any oversight, plus grant immunity from future review:
Sec. 8. Review.
Decisions by the Secretary pursuant to the authority of this Act are non-reviewable and committed to agency discretion, and may not be reviewed by any court of law or any administrative agency.
I’m not playing gotcha here. This is telling: if Paulson can’t be honest about what he himself sent to Congress — if he not only made an incredible power grab, but is now engaged in black-is-white claims that he didn’t — there is no reason to trust him on anything related to his bailout plan.
This is excellent journalism, catching Paulson up on this. It certainly does make one wonder how reliable he is on other matters. Everyone is stressing the urgency of quick action but this is a recipe for passing something that itself is a disaster.
September 23, 2008, 3:07 pm
Good ideas and lies
Daniel Davies, in one of the great blog posts of this era, laid down a key principle:
Good ideas do not need lots of lies told about them in order to gain public acceptance.
He was talking about the selling of the Iraq war, but it applies more generally.
So, this morning Hank Paulson told a whopper:
We gave you a simple, three-page legislative outline and I thought it would have been presumptuous for us on that outline to come up with an oversight mechanism. That’s the role of Congress, that’s something we’re going to work on together. So if any of you felt that I didn’t believe that we needed oversight: I believe we need oversight. We need oversight.
What the proposal actually did, of course, was explicitly rule out any oversight, plus grant immunity from future review:
Sec. 8. Review.
Decisions by the Secretary pursuant to the authority of this Act are non-reviewable and committed to agency discretion, and may not be reviewed by any court of law or any administrative agency.
I’m not playing gotcha here. This is telling: if Paulson can’t be honest about what he himself sent to Congress — if he not only made an incredible power grab, but is now engaged in black-is-white claims that he didn’t — there is no reason to trust him on anything related to his bailout plan.
Opposition sees no end to corruption under Arroyo
This is from the Philippine newspaper Malaya.
The anti-corruption campaign is very selective. It is important that the wrong people not be charged and the right people be charged.
UNO sees no endto graft under Gloria
THE United Opposition (UNO) yesterday said it does not expect any improvement in the Philippines’ ranking in the Corruption Perception index (CPI) as long as the Arroyo administration is regularly linked to irregularities, ignores corruption charges against its allies and uses the anti-corruption drive selectively to persecute political opponents.
Makati Mayor Jejomar C. Binay, UNO president, said the administration has been selective in its anti-corruption drive, citing the long-stalled case against former agriculture undersecretary Jocelyn "Joc Joc" Bolante who is accused of funneling P728 million in agriculture funds to administration allies during the 2004 presidential elections.
"We are not surprised at all by the latest result of the CPI. The Arroyo administration uses a double standard in its so-called campaign against corruption. If the case involves allies and personalities close to the First Family, the administration either ignores the charges and even comes to the defense of those accused," he said.
On Tuesday, the Germany-based TI reported that the Philippines scored only 2.3 out of a possible 10 points in its corruption index for 180 countries. Last year the country earned 2.5 points.
On the other hand, Binay said flimsy and even manufactured allegations are raised against political opponents and critics. "If the allegation involves a critic of Mrs. Arroyo, the administration talks tough and even goes to the extent of imposing sanctions that are later overturned by the courts," he said.
The opposition leader said as long as the administration itself is linked to acts of corruption, coddles allies, and persecutes critics, the Philippines will continue to slip in the corruption rankings.
Citing recent reports of irregularities in the disbursement of funds from the Department of Agriculture’s Ginintuang Masaganang Ani program, Binay said corruption takes away food and income from farmers, rural workers and the poor.
"When Mrs. Arroyo and her supporters grabbed power in 2001, they claimed they will end corruption and restore morality in governance. Seven years of Mrs. Arroyo and corruption has worsened, and the trail of corruption in several cases led all the way to Malacañang," he said.
The Palace said the lower Transparency International rating should serve as a wake up call for everyone, not just government, to do better in the campaign against graft and corruption.
Executive Secretary Eduardo Ermita said perception of worsening corruption would negatively impact on the economy.
He said corruption is not tolerated and the government has a continuing campaign against the practice.
He said an educational campaign on how to prevent corruption should be mounted to complement efforts to prosecute offenders.
The anti-corruption campaign is very selective. It is important that the wrong people not be charged and the right people be charged.
UNO sees no endto graft under Gloria
THE United Opposition (UNO) yesterday said it does not expect any improvement in the Philippines’ ranking in the Corruption Perception index (CPI) as long as the Arroyo administration is regularly linked to irregularities, ignores corruption charges against its allies and uses the anti-corruption drive selectively to persecute political opponents.
Makati Mayor Jejomar C. Binay, UNO president, said the administration has been selective in its anti-corruption drive, citing the long-stalled case against former agriculture undersecretary Jocelyn "Joc Joc" Bolante who is accused of funneling P728 million in agriculture funds to administration allies during the 2004 presidential elections.
"We are not surprised at all by the latest result of the CPI. The Arroyo administration uses a double standard in its so-called campaign against corruption. If the case involves allies and personalities close to the First Family, the administration either ignores the charges and even comes to the defense of those accused," he said.
On Tuesday, the Germany-based TI reported that the Philippines scored only 2.3 out of a possible 10 points in its corruption index for 180 countries. Last year the country earned 2.5 points.
On the other hand, Binay said flimsy and even manufactured allegations are raised against political opponents and critics. "If the allegation involves a critic of Mrs. Arroyo, the administration talks tough and even goes to the extent of imposing sanctions that are later overturned by the courts," he said.
The opposition leader said as long as the administration itself is linked to acts of corruption, coddles allies, and persecutes critics, the Philippines will continue to slip in the corruption rankings.
Citing recent reports of irregularities in the disbursement of funds from the Department of Agriculture’s Ginintuang Masaganang Ani program, Binay said corruption takes away food and income from farmers, rural workers and the poor.
"When Mrs. Arroyo and her supporters grabbed power in 2001, they claimed they will end corruption and restore morality in governance. Seven years of Mrs. Arroyo and corruption has worsened, and the trail of corruption in several cases led all the way to Malacañang," he said.
The Palace said the lower Transparency International rating should serve as a wake up call for everyone, not just government, to do better in the campaign against graft and corruption.
Executive Secretary Eduardo Ermita said perception of worsening corruption would negatively impact on the economy.
He said corruption is not tolerated and the government has a continuing campaign against the practice.
He said an educational campaign on how to prevent corruption should be mounted to complement efforts to prosecute offenders.
Iraqis agree to election law finally
This is from yahoo. The election was supposed to take place this fall but now the earliest will be early next year. However, this is progress at least. There are still thorny issues to be resolved later.
Lawmakers acknowledged the delay in passing the measure would make it difficult for the electoral commission to organize the vote and pushed back the deadline for it to be held until Jan. 31, 2009.
The measure still needs to be approved by the three-member presidential panel led by President Jalal Talabani, himself a Kurd who vetoed the last attempt by parliament to push through a measure despite a Kurdish walkout.
But Kurdish legislators agreed to the latest proposal, suggesting presidential approval was more likely.
Agreement was reached after Shiite, Sunni, Kurdish and Turkomen lawmakers adopted a U.N. compromise to form a parliamentary committee to review disputes regarding Kirkuk separately so the elections could go ahead elsewhere.
The new law requires the committee to make recommendations for separate legislation on Kirkuk by March 2009. It also banned political parties from using religious authorities, mosques and government institutions as part of campaigning.
U.N. envoy Staffan di Mistura, who has shuttled relentlessly between the political blocs to pressure them to approve the law, told The Associated Press that preparations for the vote would begin immediately.
"Today is an important day for Iraq and democracy as the parliament found a compromise over election law," he said. "This will help Iraq and Iraqis to express their opinions by voting for their candidates in the provinces."
Parliamentary speaker Mahmoud al-Mashhadani, a Sunni, said the law's passage showed that Iraq's fractured ethnic and religious groups could work together.
"In the past, Kirkuk was the mother of all troubles, but today it has become the symbol of Iraqi unity," he said.
U.S. and Iraqi officials believe the elections are an essential step to building a long-term peace among the country's rival religious and ethnic communities.
Voters will choose provincial councils in 14 provinces, which wield considerable power at the local level.
Excluded from the legislation were the three provinces that comprise the semiautonomous Kurdish region in northern Iraq since they're governed by the Kurdish parliament, as well as Tamim province, which includes Kirkuk.
Many Sunnis and some Shiites boycotted the last provincial election, in January 2005, enabling Shiite religious parties and the Kurds to win a disproportionate share of power.
The vote had been due to be held as early as Oct. 1, then the date was pushed to the end of December while U.N. and Iraqi officials have warned continued deadlock could force it to be postponed until next year.
Lawmakers acknowledged the delay in passing the measure would make it difficult for the electoral commission to organize the vote and pushed back the deadline for it to be held until Jan. 31, 2009.
The measure still needs to be approved by the three-member presidential panel led by President Jalal Talabani, himself a Kurd who vetoed the last attempt by parliament to push through a measure despite a Kurdish walkout.
But Kurdish legislators agreed to the latest proposal, suggesting presidential approval was more likely.
Agreement was reached after Shiite, Sunni, Kurdish and Turkomen lawmakers adopted a U.N. compromise to form a parliamentary committee to review disputes regarding Kirkuk separately so the elections could go ahead elsewhere.
The new law requires the committee to make recommendations for separate legislation on Kirkuk by March 2009. It also banned political parties from using religious authorities, mosques and government institutions as part of campaigning.
U.N. envoy Staffan di Mistura, who has shuttled relentlessly between the political blocs to pressure them to approve the law, told The Associated Press that preparations for the vote would begin immediately.
"Today is an important day for Iraq and democracy as the parliament found a compromise over election law," he said. "This will help Iraq and Iraqis to express their opinions by voting for their candidates in the provinces."
Parliamentary speaker Mahmoud al-Mashhadani, a Sunni, said the law's passage showed that Iraq's fractured ethnic and religious groups could work together.
"In the past, Kirkuk was the mother of all troubles, but today it has become the symbol of Iraqi unity," he said.
U.S. and Iraqi officials believe the elections are an essential step to building a long-term peace among the country's rival religious and ethnic communities.
Voters will choose provincial councils in 14 provinces, which wield considerable power at the local level.
Excluded from the legislation were the three provinces that comprise the semiautonomous Kurdish region in northern Iraq since they're governed by the Kurdish parliament, as well as Tamim province, which includes Kirkuk.
Many Sunnis and some Shiites boycotted the last provincial election, in January 2005, enabling Shiite religious parties and the Kurds to win a disproportionate share of power.
The vote had been due to be held as early as Oct. 1, then the date was pushed to the end of December while U.N. and Iraqi officials have warned continued deadlock could force it to be postponed until next year.
James Galbraith on the Financial Crisis
Galbraith is a left leaning economist at U of Texas Austin. He plays down any Democratic involvement in the crisis through Freddie Mack and Fannie Mae. He suggests that the government needs to intervene even more to get the economy going through infrastructure development. However, this does not address any debt problem.
http://www.harpers.org/archive/2008/09/hbc-90003600Six Questions for James Galbraith on the Financial Crisis and the BailoutBy Ken SilversteinJames K. Galbraith teaches economics at the Lyndon B. Johnson School of Public Affairs, the University of Texas at Austin, where he directs the University of Texas Inequality Project, an informal research group. Galbraith has authored several books, among them The Predator State: How Conservatives Abandoned the Free Market and Why Liberals Should Too. I recently asked him six questions about the unfolding financial crisis and the resulting reaction from Washington, D.C. This interview was edited for length and clarity.[Image]1. It’s hard to get a handle on the scope of the crisis? Just how big of a problem are we looking at?If you’re on Wall Street you’re sitting in the middle of a disaster, and one of your own making. Wall Street took these toxic subprime loans from places like Countrywide and sold them to pension funds and sovereign wealth funds, keeping what they couldn’t sell in their own portfolios. Now those loans can’t be marketed. They’re not all utterly worthless but no one knows the value of the stuff and so the markets have seized up. That’s a big problem for the Wall Street firms involved in the crisis, some of which are basically bankrupt; the problem for the rest of the economy is that the driving motor of economic expansion–the extension of credit from the private sector to homeowners through mortgage and lines of credit–has dried up, and housing values are going to continue to fall. The Treasury Department buying up subprime loans won’t fix that. It will prevent the absolute elimination of the companies, but it won’t change the fact that the value of your home has fallen and now you owe more on it than it’s worth. And nothing has being done to address that yet; it will be the next administration’s problem.2. What are the political origins of the crisis?There’s a Republican talking point going around that lays the blame on Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac, and hence the Democrats. There were big problems in the way Fannie and Freddie were run, but they were very small players in the subprime market. And Fannie and Freddy had standards. They checked on borrowers’ credit and they weren’t giving out subprime, low-doc, or no-doc inflated appraisal loans. The overwhelming responsibility for the crisis is the failure to regulate financial markets, and that is a failure of the Bush Administration. They sent very clear signals that they were in favor of deregulating the industry. All of three weeks ago, Mitt Romney said at the Republican convention that we should take a weed whacker to regulation. Two weeks ago, Governor Palin told Charles Gibson of ABC that her philosophy of economic policy was to “get government out of our hair.” A few months ago, ancient history by now, McCain said, “I’m a deregulator.” That’s been a consistent Republican theme.3. Is a major bailout required?One can argue about the consequences of allowing a collapse to happen. I can see the reasons against it, the most important being that everyone’s pension fund and 401(k) is tied up in these assets and if there’s a disorderly collapse, everyone wakes up a lot poorer.What Congress can do is make sure the companies have to turn over any information that the Treasury wants from the companies, including the computer code4. What should a bailout bill look like?Oversight and accountability have to be included. The Treasury sent up a non-starter of a proposition, which was plainly unconstitutional in saying that its own actions could not be reviewed by any agency or court. Congress needs to put in tough disclosure requirements. Any firm that sells its assets to the Treasury Department should be required to make full disclosure–if you get in bed with the government, the public has the right to know who you are and how you value your assets. And it’s vital to know the price the Treasury Department is paying for the assets, that the firms get some cash but not so much that they don’t have any losses. There also needs to be a “No Cheney” clause; Congress needs to have all the documents and information it asks for, and there needs to be a conflict-of-interest clause. Henry Paulson has a huge fortune and probably owns a lot of Goldman Sachs stock in blind trust. He should be recused from the administration of this program. We need people who can act as tough counterparts to industry and advocates for the public interest, and not people who are likely to profit from the program or who have close ties with people who will.4. The Democrats say they are not going to give the administration a blank check, but there’s a lot of pressure to do something. What sort of conditions should be attached to a bailout?The Democrats have a strong hand. The voters weren’t born yesterday; they understand that it’s a Republican administration in power. Some of the problems are difficult to solve. Executive compensation is clearly a legitimate concern; it’s incredible that Lehman Brothers set aside a $2.5 billion bonus pool as it was going into bankruptcy. On the other hand, what do you do about it? If you tell these people they have to work for $400,000 a year–that’s a lot of money to you and me, but a lot of them are going to say, “See you on the ski slopes, pal.” But what Congress can do is make sure the companies have to turn over any information that the Treasury wants from the companies, including the computer code. If the government is going to buy assets of dubious value, it needs to know that the companies aren’t selling it the worst of the worst, just as you have the right to inspect a used car before buying it.5. How long is it going to take to fix the situation?There’s nothing that can put this right in six months. No bailout can achieve that, but the difference between three years and ten years is important. The Treasury is going to end up with a large portfolio of properties. The government needs to set up the equivalent of draft boards in communities to make a review of properties and see how to keep people in their homes: offering them sustainable payments or converting mortgages into rental contracts, or simply demolishing homes that have been wrecked or that have fallen into irreparable disrepair.6. And what about the bigger financial crisis?We’re not going to have another private credit boom, where economic growth is financed through mortgages and lines of credit, any time soon. So what is going to keep the economy going? The government is, if it knows what it’s doing. Public infrastructure has been neglected to the point that there are places in the country that look like Eastern Europe. With environmental protection, the energy problem, climate change–there’s a lot that can be done to generate a public and private response. It’s a 30-year project but we need to start down that road. There’s no new Internet boom out there waiting to happen, so the government is going to have to take a leadership role. If the Democrats believe they can recreate the Clinton credit boom, good luck. Conditions have changed._____________________
http://www.harpers.org/archive/2008/09/hbc-90003600Six Questions for James Galbraith on the Financial Crisis and the BailoutBy Ken SilversteinJames K. Galbraith teaches economics at the Lyndon B. Johnson School of Public Affairs, the University of Texas at Austin, where he directs the University of Texas Inequality Project, an informal research group. Galbraith has authored several books, among them The Predator State: How Conservatives Abandoned the Free Market and Why Liberals Should Too. I recently asked him six questions about the unfolding financial crisis and the resulting reaction from Washington, D.C. This interview was edited for length and clarity.[Image]1. It’s hard to get a handle on the scope of the crisis? Just how big of a problem are we looking at?If you’re on Wall Street you’re sitting in the middle of a disaster, and one of your own making. Wall Street took these toxic subprime loans from places like Countrywide and sold them to pension funds and sovereign wealth funds, keeping what they couldn’t sell in their own portfolios. Now those loans can’t be marketed. They’re not all utterly worthless but no one knows the value of the stuff and so the markets have seized up. That’s a big problem for the Wall Street firms involved in the crisis, some of which are basically bankrupt; the problem for the rest of the economy is that the driving motor of economic expansion–the extension of credit from the private sector to homeowners through mortgage and lines of credit–has dried up, and housing values are going to continue to fall. The Treasury Department buying up subprime loans won’t fix that. It will prevent the absolute elimination of the companies, but it won’t change the fact that the value of your home has fallen and now you owe more on it than it’s worth. And nothing has being done to address that yet; it will be the next administration’s problem.2. What are the political origins of the crisis?There’s a Republican talking point going around that lays the blame on Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac, and hence the Democrats. There were big problems in the way Fannie and Freddie were run, but they were very small players in the subprime market. And Fannie and Freddy had standards. They checked on borrowers’ credit and they weren’t giving out subprime, low-doc, or no-doc inflated appraisal loans. The overwhelming responsibility for the crisis is the failure to regulate financial markets, and that is a failure of the Bush Administration. They sent very clear signals that they were in favor of deregulating the industry. All of three weeks ago, Mitt Romney said at the Republican convention that we should take a weed whacker to regulation. Two weeks ago, Governor Palin told Charles Gibson of ABC that her philosophy of economic policy was to “get government out of our hair.” A few months ago, ancient history by now, McCain said, “I’m a deregulator.” That’s been a consistent Republican theme.3. Is a major bailout required?One can argue about the consequences of allowing a collapse to happen. I can see the reasons against it, the most important being that everyone’s pension fund and 401(k) is tied up in these assets and if there’s a disorderly collapse, everyone wakes up a lot poorer.What Congress can do is make sure the companies have to turn over any information that the Treasury wants from the companies, including the computer code4. What should a bailout bill look like?Oversight and accountability have to be included. The Treasury sent up a non-starter of a proposition, which was plainly unconstitutional in saying that its own actions could not be reviewed by any agency or court. Congress needs to put in tough disclosure requirements. Any firm that sells its assets to the Treasury Department should be required to make full disclosure–if you get in bed with the government, the public has the right to know who you are and how you value your assets. And it’s vital to know the price the Treasury Department is paying for the assets, that the firms get some cash but not so much that they don’t have any losses. There also needs to be a “No Cheney” clause; Congress needs to have all the documents and information it asks for, and there needs to be a conflict-of-interest clause. Henry Paulson has a huge fortune and probably owns a lot of Goldman Sachs stock in blind trust. He should be recused from the administration of this program. We need people who can act as tough counterparts to industry and advocates for the public interest, and not people who are likely to profit from the program or who have close ties with people who will.4. The Democrats say they are not going to give the administration a blank check, but there’s a lot of pressure to do something. What sort of conditions should be attached to a bailout?The Democrats have a strong hand. The voters weren’t born yesterday; they understand that it’s a Republican administration in power. Some of the problems are difficult to solve. Executive compensation is clearly a legitimate concern; it’s incredible that Lehman Brothers set aside a $2.5 billion bonus pool as it was going into bankruptcy. On the other hand, what do you do about it? If you tell these people they have to work for $400,000 a year–that’s a lot of money to you and me, but a lot of them are going to say, “See you on the ski slopes, pal.” But what Congress can do is make sure the companies have to turn over any information that the Treasury wants from the companies, including the computer code. If the government is going to buy assets of dubious value, it needs to know that the companies aren’t selling it the worst of the worst, just as you have the right to inspect a used car before buying it.5. How long is it going to take to fix the situation?There’s nothing that can put this right in six months. No bailout can achieve that, but the difference between three years and ten years is important. The Treasury is going to end up with a large portfolio of properties. The government needs to set up the equivalent of draft boards in communities to make a review of properties and see how to keep people in their homes: offering them sustainable payments or converting mortgages into rental contracts, or simply demolishing homes that have been wrecked or that have fallen into irreparable disrepair.6. And what about the bigger financial crisis?We’re not going to have another private credit boom, where economic growth is financed through mortgages and lines of credit, any time soon. So what is going to keep the economy going? The government is, if it knows what it’s doing. Public infrastructure has been neglected to the point that there are places in the country that look like Eastern Europe. With environmental protection, the energy problem, climate change–there’s a lot that can be done to generate a public and private response. It’s a 30-year project but we need to start down that road. There’s no new Internet boom out there waiting to happen, so the government is going to have to take a leadership role. If the Democrats believe they can recreate the Clinton credit boom, good luck. Conditions have changed._____________________
Tuesday, September 23, 2008
Spoof on Financial Crisis..
Who knows maybe some will send money!
REQUEST FOR URGENT CONFIDENTIAL BUSINESS RELATIONSHIPDear American:I need to ask you to support an urgent secret business relationshipwith a transfer of funds of great magnitude.I am Ministry of the Treasury of the Republic of America. My country has had crisis that has caused the need for large transfer of funds of 800 billion dollars US. If you would assist me in this transfer, it would be most profitable to you.I am working with Mr. Phil Gram, lobbyist for UBS, who will be my replacement as Ministry of the Treasury in January. You may know him as the leader of the American banking deregulation movement in the 1990s. This transaction is 100% safe.This is a matter of great urgency. We need a blank check. We needthe funds as quickly as possible. We cannot directly transfer thesefunds in the names of our close friends because we are constantlyunder surveillance. My family lawyer advised me that I should look fora reliable and trustworthy person who will act as a next of kin so thefunds can be transferred.Please reply with all of your bank account, IRA and college fundaccount numbers and those of your children and grandchildren towallstreetbailout@treasury.gov so that we may transfer your commissionfor this transaction. After I receive that information, I willrespond with detailed information about safeguards that will be usedto protect the funds.Yours FaithfullyMinister of Treasury Paulson
REQUEST FOR URGENT CONFIDENTIAL BUSINESS RELATIONSHIPDear American:I need to ask you to support an urgent secret business relationshipwith a transfer of funds of great magnitude.I am Ministry of the Treasury of the Republic of America. My country has had crisis that has caused the need for large transfer of funds of 800 billion dollars US. If you would assist me in this transfer, it would be most profitable to you.I am working with Mr. Phil Gram, lobbyist for UBS, who will be my replacement as Ministry of the Treasury in January. You may know him as the leader of the American banking deregulation movement in the 1990s. This transaction is 100% safe.This is a matter of great urgency. We need a blank check. We needthe funds as quickly as possible. We cannot directly transfer thesefunds in the names of our close friends because we are constantlyunder surveillance. My family lawyer advised me that I should look fora reliable and trustworthy person who will act as a next of kin so thefunds can be transferred.Please reply with all of your bank account, IRA and college fundaccount numbers and those of your children and grandchildren towallstreetbailout@treasury.gov so that we may transfer your commissionfor this transaction. After I receive that information, I willrespond with detailed information about safeguards that will be usedto protect the funds.Yours FaithfullyMinister of Treasury Paulson
U.S. Orgy of Debt: Eric Margolis
This is from the Information Clearing House. Actually the debt as percentage of GDP is lower now than in the nineteen fifties under Truman. The debt percentage went way up under Reagan and the first Bush and then down under Clinton. Since Dubya has been in its has been going up again.
U.S. Orgy of DebtAmericans borrowed to hilt, then housing bubble burstBy ERIC MARGOLIS21/09/08 "Toronto Sun" -- - NEW YORK -- The financial panic sweeping the globe is maddeningly complex, but the cause of the worst financial crisis since the 1930s Great Depression is clear.America has reveled for two decades in an orgy of debt. The U.S. national debt is now twice its net worth. From Wall Street's "masters of the universe" financial powerhouses such as Goldman Sachs, Merrill Lynch, Lehman, and Morgan Stanley, to the humblest homeowners, America's national motto became "borrow to the hilt and bet."The traditional regulated banking system was pushed aside by Wall Street's financial titans who created their own money in the form of complex securities and furiously traded these exotic instruments and borrowed recklessly against them with little government regulation or oversight.As Kevin Phillips points out in his prophetic book, Bad Money, America's primary business became non-productive finance. Manufacturing fell to only 12% of GDP. Wall Street titans grew obscenely rich by simply passing around paper. Inflated or semi-worthless securities increased in bogus value at each stage of the trading process.Wall Street was allowed to virtually print money and peddle toxic securities around the globe because the big financial houses and heads of hedge funds bought the politicians of both parties.Equally important, the mammoth financial and housing bubble thus created was hailed by the Bush administration as proof positive of Republican free market philosophy and the true road to prosperity.More cautious European and Canadian bankers were dismissed by Republican chest thumpers as financial sissies.This Ponzi scheme worked so long as markets kept rising. When the music stopped - disaster.It's uncertain how far damage from America's financial equivalent of Hurricane Katrina will spread. Hedge funds, money market funds and automakers could be next. Real estate losses may reach $636 billion by 2012.All stock market gains of the past 10 years have been wiped out in the most dangerous crash since the 1930s.The "free market" Republican administration has ended up nationalizing nearly $1 trillion worth of businesses, including the federal mortgage agencies Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac, Bear Stearns, and global insurer AIG. Welcome to Wall Street socialism.One thing is now clear. When great empires run onto the financial rocks, their power quickly ebbs. France's Sun King, Louis XIV, ended his once glorious rein in near bankruptcy caused by his long, ruinous wars with the British and Dutch. Louis XVI's runaway borrowing to finance the American Revolution helped ignite the French Revolution. The Soviet Union's collapse was caused by spending half its national income on arms, and failure to modernize industry.Over the past decade, the U.S. foreign debt doubled. Japan and China now hold 47% of the U.S. foreign debt and finance Washington's wars. The addition in recent days of at least $1 trillion in new debt will cause interest rates to rise and the dollar to weaken. Even the U.S. government's AAA credit rating now is in question.Washington may no longer be able to spend half the globe's defence budgets.The $12-13 billion a month wars in Iraq and Afghanistan will end up costing $750 billion by December 2008. There will be less cash in Washington's kitty to buy foreign dictators and prop up their regimes, as in the Mideast and Central Asia. Less cash to pay for little wars in Africa.Less for exotic anti-missile systems and death rays.America's enormous global power is based as much on its financial might as military muscle. Wall Street has been the vehicle and policeman of America's hegemony. It shaped the destiny of the globe and made many nations subservient to the demands of New York's titan bankers. Wall Street is essential to raising capital for business expansion, but often it resembled New York's ruthless loan sharks: Once you borrowed from them, you never got off the hook.Americans will have to relearn the hard truth that you can't borrow your way to prosperity.
U.S. Orgy of DebtAmericans borrowed to hilt, then housing bubble burstBy ERIC MARGOLIS21/09/08 "Toronto Sun" -- - NEW YORK -- The financial panic sweeping the globe is maddeningly complex, but the cause of the worst financial crisis since the 1930s Great Depression is clear.America has reveled for two decades in an orgy of debt. The U.S. national debt is now twice its net worth. From Wall Street's "masters of the universe" financial powerhouses such as Goldman Sachs, Merrill Lynch, Lehman, and Morgan Stanley, to the humblest homeowners, America's national motto became "borrow to the hilt and bet."The traditional regulated banking system was pushed aside by Wall Street's financial titans who created their own money in the form of complex securities and furiously traded these exotic instruments and borrowed recklessly against them with little government regulation or oversight.As Kevin Phillips points out in his prophetic book, Bad Money, America's primary business became non-productive finance. Manufacturing fell to only 12% of GDP. Wall Street titans grew obscenely rich by simply passing around paper. Inflated or semi-worthless securities increased in bogus value at each stage of the trading process.Wall Street was allowed to virtually print money and peddle toxic securities around the globe because the big financial houses and heads of hedge funds bought the politicians of both parties.Equally important, the mammoth financial and housing bubble thus created was hailed by the Bush administration as proof positive of Republican free market philosophy and the true road to prosperity.More cautious European and Canadian bankers were dismissed by Republican chest thumpers as financial sissies.This Ponzi scheme worked so long as markets kept rising. When the music stopped - disaster.It's uncertain how far damage from America's financial equivalent of Hurricane Katrina will spread. Hedge funds, money market funds and automakers could be next. Real estate losses may reach $636 billion by 2012.All stock market gains of the past 10 years have been wiped out in the most dangerous crash since the 1930s.The "free market" Republican administration has ended up nationalizing nearly $1 trillion worth of businesses, including the federal mortgage agencies Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac, Bear Stearns, and global insurer AIG. Welcome to Wall Street socialism.One thing is now clear. When great empires run onto the financial rocks, their power quickly ebbs. France's Sun King, Louis XIV, ended his once glorious rein in near bankruptcy caused by his long, ruinous wars with the British and Dutch. Louis XVI's runaway borrowing to finance the American Revolution helped ignite the French Revolution. The Soviet Union's collapse was caused by spending half its national income on arms, and failure to modernize industry.Over the past decade, the U.S. foreign debt doubled. Japan and China now hold 47% of the U.S. foreign debt and finance Washington's wars. The addition in recent days of at least $1 trillion in new debt will cause interest rates to rise and the dollar to weaken. Even the U.S. government's AAA credit rating now is in question.Washington may no longer be able to spend half the globe's defence budgets.The $12-13 billion a month wars in Iraq and Afghanistan will end up costing $750 billion by December 2008. There will be less cash in Washington's kitty to buy foreign dictators and prop up their regimes, as in the Mideast and Central Asia. Less cash to pay for little wars in Africa.Less for exotic anti-missile systems and death rays.America's enormous global power is based as much on its financial might as military muscle. Wall Street has been the vehicle and policeman of America's hegemony. It shaped the destiny of the globe and made many nations subservient to the demands of New York's titan bankers. Wall Street is essential to raising capital for business expansion, but often it resembled New York's ruthless loan sharks: Once you borrowed from them, you never got off the hook.Americans will have to relearn the hard truth that you can't borrow your way to prosperity.
13 Billion in Iraq Waster or Stolen: Ex-Investigator
This issue has been out of the limelight for some time. Probably no one will ever be punished or held accountable for this 13 billion. The amount pales beside the 700 billion dollar bailout that is made necessary because of totally unregulated greed in the financical sector. The deregulation which allowed this was an article of faith in the Bush administration.
$13 Billion in Iraq Aid Wasted Or Stolen, Ex-Investigator Says
By Dana HedgpethWashington Post Staff WriterTuesday, September 23, 2008; A19
A former Iraqi official estimated yesterday that more than $13 billion meant for reconstruction projects in Iraq was wasted or stolen through elaborate fraud schemes.
Salam Adhoob, a former chief investigator for Iraq's Commission on Public Integrity, told the Senate Democratic Policy Committee, an arm of the Democratic caucus, that an Iraqi auditing bureau "could not properly account for" the money.
While many of the projects audited "were not needed -- and many were never built," he said, "this very real fact remains: Billions of American dollars that paid for these projects are now gone."
He said a report that went to Iraqi Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki and other top Iraqi officials was never published because "nobody cares" about investigating such cases. Many investigators, he said, feared for their safety because 32 of his co-workers have been murdered.
Adhoob said he reported the abuses to the U.S. Special Inspector General for Iraq Reconstruction, an agency charged by Congress with helping to root out cases of waste, fraud and abuse in the nearly $50 billion U.S. reconstruction effort. SIGIR spokeswoman Kristine Belisle said her agency continues to "actively follow up" on Adhoob's information, but she would not discuss ongoing investigations.
Adhoob was one of three Iraqi men who testified before the Democratic panel yesterday. Abbas S. Mehdi, a former Iraqi official who held a cabinet-level post, told of widespread corruption. And an Iraqi American who for five years has been a senior adviser to Defense and State department officials in Iraq testified in silhouette by video from an undisclosed location because, he said, he feared for his safety. In a modified voice, he said Iraqi government officials worked with al-Qaeda terrorists at the Baiji refinery to steal oil to sell on the black market.
Sen. Byron L. Dorgan (D-N.D.), who chairs the committee, said that "taxpayers have been bled dry with massive misuse of public dollars."
"It is all pretty sobering," he added later. "Our country cannot continue to be blind or oblivious to what is happening."
Adhoob, who worked for three years at the Iraqi agency and oversaw 200 investigators and other employees, said he had a "firsthand, up-close look at corruption" and eventually had to flee the country because of death threats. He said his agency -- the Commission on Public Integrity, which U.S. government officials say is the equivalent of the FBI -- estimates that an additional $9 billion in U.S. funds was lost because of corruption and waste. Because the $13 billion figure came from the Iraqi auditing bureau and the $9 billion figure came from Adhoob's agency, Dorgan's staff members said there could be some overlap.
Adhoob's agency has been accused of pursuing investigations against political rivals.
In one scheme described by Adhoob, Iraqi Defense Ministry officials helped set up two front companies that were to buy airplanes, armored vehicles, guns and other equipment with $1.7 billion in U.S. funds. The companies were paid, but in some cases they delivered only "a small percentage" of the equipment that had been ordered and, in one case, delivered bulletproof vests that were defective and could not be used.
The companies also overcharged for military helicopters and tried to deliver aircraft that were more than 25 years old, he said. Instead of demanding the money back, Adhoob said, the Defense Ministry renegotiated with the companies for "a series of mobile toilets and kitchens -- which have never been delivered."
Adhoob said some of the investigations conducted by his agency and others uncovered "ghost projects" that never existed or instances in which Iraqi and U.S. contractors did poor-quality work. In one case, $24.4 million was spent on an electricity project in Nineveh province but an oversight agency found that it "existed only on paper."
Investigations by Iraqi oversight agencies also found that some of the money sent to the Defense Ministry was diverted to al-Qaeda in Iraq, Adhoob said, and deposited into banks in Jordan and elsewhere.
Staff researcher Julie Tate contributed to this report.
$13 Billion in Iraq Aid Wasted Or Stolen, Ex-Investigator Says
By Dana HedgpethWashington Post Staff WriterTuesday, September 23, 2008; A19
A former Iraqi official estimated yesterday that more than $13 billion meant for reconstruction projects in Iraq was wasted or stolen through elaborate fraud schemes.
Salam Adhoob, a former chief investigator for Iraq's Commission on Public Integrity, told the Senate Democratic Policy Committee, an arm of the Democratic caucus, that an Iraqi auditing bureau "could not properly account for" the money.
While many of the projects audited "were not needed -- and many were never built," he said, "this very real fact remains: Billions of American dollars that paid for these projects are now gone."
He said a report that went to Iraqi Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki and other top Iraqi officials was never published because "nobody cares" about investigating such cases. Many investigators, he said, feared for their safety because 32 of his co-workers have been murdered.
Adhoob said he reported the abuses to the U.S. Special Inspector General for Iraq Reconstruction, an agency charged by Congress with helping to root out cases of waste, fraud and abuse in the nearly $50 billion U.S. reconstruction effort. SIGIR spokeswoman Kristine Belisle said her agency continues to "actively follow up" on Adhoob's information, but she would not discuss ongoing investigations.
Adhoob was one of three Iraqi men who testified before the Democratic panel yesterday. Abbas S. Mehdi, a former Iraqi official who held a cabinet-level post, told of widespread corruption. And an Iraqi American who for five years has been a senior adviser to Defense and State department officials in Iraq testified in silhouette by video from an undisclosed location because, he said, he feared for his safety. In a modified voice, he said Iraqi government officials worked with al-Qaeda terrorists at the Baiji refinery to steal oil to sell on the black market.
Sen. Byron L. Dorgan (D-N.D.), who chairs the committee, said that "taxpayers have been bled dry with massive misuse of public dollars."
"It is all pretty sobering," he added later. "Our country cannot continue to be blind or oblivious to what is happening."
Adhoob, who worked for three years at the Iraqi agency and oversaw 200 investigators and other employees, said he had a "firsthand, up-close look at corruption" and eventually had to flee the country because of death threats. He said his agency -- the Commission on Public Integrity, which U.S. government officials say is the equivalent of the FBI -- estimates that an additional $9 billion in U.S. funds was lost because of corruption and waste. Because the $13 billion figure came from the Iraqi auditing bureau and the $9 billion figure came from Adhoob's agency, Dorgan's staff members said there could be some overlap.
Adhoob's agency has been accused of pursuing investigations against political rivals.
In one scheme described by Adhoob, Iraqi Defense Ministry officials helped set up two front companies that were to buy airplanes, armored vehicles, guns and other equipment with $1.7 billion in U.S. funds. The companies were paid, but in some cases they delivered only "a small percentage" of the equipment that had been ordered and, in one case, delivered bulletproof vests that were defective and could not be used.
The companies also overcharged for military helicopters and tried to deliver aircraft that were more than 25 years old, he said. Instead of demanding the money back, Adhoob said, the Defense Ministry renegotiated with the companies for "a series of mobile toilets and kitchens -- which have never been delivered."
Adhoob said some of the investigations conducted by his agency and others uncovered "ghost projects" that never existed or instances in which Iraqi and U.S. contractors did poor-quality work. In one case, $24.4 million was spent on an electricity project in Nineveh province but an oversight agency found that it "existed only on paper."
Investigations by Iraqi oversight agencies also found that some of the money sent to the Defense Ministry was diverted to al-Qaeda in Iraq, Adhoob said, and deposited into banks in Jordan and elsewhere.
Staff researcher Julie Tate contributed to this report.
Pakistan rejects U.S. help in probe of hotel blast.
This is from USA Today.
This is not too surprising as there is already considerable backlash against the U.S. for attacks in the tribal areas that were not sanctioned by the government. The U.S. won considerable favor among Pakistanis for the aid it delivered during earthquakes but now the tide is turning. In particular Pakistanis do not want the US war on terror in the tribal areas. The result of that are terror attacks such as that on the Marriott in Islamabad. Pakistan may very well be driven into a civil war.
Pakistan rejects U.S. help in probe of hotel blast
By Paul Wiseman and Zafar M. Sheikh, USA TODAY
ISLAMABAD, Pakistan — Pakistan on Sunday rejected a U.S. offer to help investigate the weekend suicide bombing that killed at least 53 people and destroyed the Islamabad Marriott, this capital city's best-known hotel.
"We do not need help. We are competent. We reject it," Interior Ministry adviser Rehman Malik told reporters Sunday after the U.S. offered FBI help in pursuing the terrorists behind the attack.
The Marriott bombing is the latest in a series of terrorist attacks across Pakistan and will likely intensify debate within the country over Pakistani support for the U.S. war on terror, says Samina Ahmed, South Asia director for the conflict prevention, non-profit International Crisis Group.
"This strengthens those voices who say this is not our war," she says. Indeed, Maulana Fazal ur Rehman of the religious political party Jamiat Ulema Islam, part of the governing coalition, called Sunday for the country to drop former president Pervez Musharraf's policy of allying with the United States against the militants.
Rescuers continued to pull charred bodies from the wreckage, and fires continued to burn inside the hotel Sunday.
The attack on the heavily guarded, five-star hotel seemed designed to kill as many people as possible, Ahmed said. It occurred just after 8 p.m. Sunday when the hotel's popular restaurants were packed with Muslims just finishing their daytime fasting for the Ramadan holiday. "It was a cowardly act of terrorism in this holy month of Ramadan," Prime Minister Yousuf Raza Gilani said. He announced a 10 million rupee ($143,000) reward for information on the attack.
Law Minister Farooq Naik called the attack Pakistan's 9/11.
The government released surveillance camera footage showing the attack. A suicide bomber at the wheel of a dump truck opened fire at Marriott security guards who refused to let him into the parking lot. He then detonated himself and started a small fire. The guards spent four minutes trying to extinguish the blaze when another, much bigger explosion went off. The truck had been carrying 1,300 pounds of explosives – making it the most powerful bomb terrorists have ever used in Pakistan, Malik said. The second blast left a crater 24 feet deep and 59 feet wide. At least 53 people died, including two Americans and the Czech ambassador who lived at the hotel.
The Marriott attack came exactly one year after al-Qaeda terrorist leader Osama bin Laden called for Muslims to wage holy war against the Pakistani government.
The Marriott was an oasis of civility for foreign diplomats and journalists assigned to Pakistan and for wealthy Pakistanis, who came for afternoon tea or sumptuous buffets at the Nadia restaurant. Like the Jan.14 attack on the five-star Serena hotel in the Afghan capital Kabul, it seemed designed to show that the militants could strike even the most heavily guarded targets in Pakistan and Afghanistan. "It is horrific," Ahmed said.
The Islamabad Marriott was attacked once before. In January 2007, a security guard blocked a suicide bomber, who detonated himself, killing the guard and wounding seven others.
Malik said he suspected Saturday's Marriott attack would be traced back to militants operating from the lawless tribal areas on Pakistan's northwest frontier with Afghanistan. "All roads lead to to South Waziristan," a militant hotbed in the tribal areas, he said.
The Taliban and their al-Qaeda allies regrouped in Pakistan's tribal areas after being driven from Afghanistan by U.S. forces following the 9/11 terrorist attacks on Washington and New York. They have been crossing the border and launching attacks on U.S. and NATO forces defending the pro-U.S. government of Afghan President Hamid Karzai.
For the past four years, the Pakistani army has unsuccessfully tried both offenses and truces to bring peace to the tribal areas. The United States has grown impatient and in recent weeks has launched its own air strikes and raids on Pakistani territory, straining relations with Pakistan's new government.
Polls show that the U.S. war on terror is very unpopular with the Pakistani people, who would prefer to see the government make peace, not war, with pro-Taliban militants. "The government has got to get the message across that this is our fight," Ahmed said.
The Marriott attack came hours after new Pakistani President Asif Ali Zardari delivered a speech promising to get tough on terrorism – but also criticizing the U.S. cross-border attacks.
Zardari spoke to the country again a few hours after the attack. "We will fight this menace. We will not be frightened," he said. "We are a brave nation and should clean this cancer."
The Associated Press also reported:
• Leading newspapers in Pakistan urged the fledgling civilian government and the military today to craft a coherent policy against terrorism following the hotel bombing, no matter the reservations about America's actions in Afghanistan or elsewhere, and despite the notion that the Marriott was targeted because it was a social magnet for foreigners.
"It is time we accepted this war is our own," said a lengthy editorial in The News, one of the largest English language dailies in the country. "There must be no ambiguity about this."
Another leading daily, Dawn, said the country displayed a "distressing" lack of "visible direction," and that "the civilians leaders and their uniformed counterparts must draw up a clear policy to fight terrorism."
• Pakistan's army and the U.S. military in Afghanistan said troops and tribesmen opened fire when two U.S. helicopters crossed into Pakistan from Afghanistan. The two intelligence officials spoke on condition of anonymity today because they were not authorized to speak to media. They cited field informants.
• British Airways has temporarily suspended flights to and from Pakistan amid security fears, airline spokesman Suhail Rehman said today.
Note: Wiseman reported from Hong Kong
Contributing: Wire reports
Find this article at: http://www.usatoday.com/news/world/2008-09-21-pakistan-sunday_N.htm
.
Copyright 2008 USA TODAY, a division of Gannett Co. Inc.
This is not too surprising as there is already considerable backlash against the U.S. for attacks in the tribal areas that were not sanctioned by the government. The U.S. won considerable favor among Pakistanis for the aid it delivered during earthquakes but now the tide is turning. In particular Pakistanis do not want the US war on terror in the tribal areas. The result of that are terror attacks such as that on the Marriott in Islamabad. Pakistan may very well be driven into a civil war.
Pakistan rejects U.S. help in probe of hotel blast
By Paul Wiseman and Zafar M. Sheikh, USA TODAY
ISLAMABAD, Pakistan — Pakistan on Sunday rejected a U.S. offer to help investigate the weekend suicide bombing that killed at least 53 people and destroyed the Islamabad Marriott, this capital city's best-known hotel.
"We do not need help. We are competent. We reject it," Interior Ministry adviser Rehman Malik told reporters Sunday after the U.S. offered FBI help in pursuing the terrorists behind the attack.
The Marriott bombing is the latest in a series of terrorist attacks across Pakistan and will likely intensify debate within the country over Pakistani support for the U.S. war on terror, says Samina Ahmed, South Asia director for the conflict prevention, non-profit International Crisis Group.
"This strengthens those voices who say this is not our war," she says. Indeed, Maulana Fazal ur Rehman of the religious political party Jamiat Ulema Islam, part of the governing coalition, called Sunday for the country to drop former president Pervez Musharraf's policy of allying with the United States against the militants.
Rescuers continued to pull charred bodies from the wreckage, and fires continued to burn inside the hotel Sunday.
The attack on the heavily guarded, five-star hotel seemed designed to kill as many people as possible, Ahmed said. It occurred just after 8 p.m. Sunday when the hotel's popular restaurants were packed with Muslims just finishing their daytime fasting for the Ramadan holiday. "It was a cowardly act of terrorism in this holy month of Ramadan," Prime Minister Yousuf Raza Gilani said. He announced a 10 million rupee ($143,000) reward for information on the attack.
Law Minister Farooq Naik called the attack Pakistan's 9/11.
The government released surveillance camera footage showing the attack. A suicide bomber at the wheel of a dump truck opened fire at Marriott security guards who refused to let him into the parking lot. He then detonated himself and started a small fire. The guards spent four minutes trying to extinguish the blaze when another, much bigger explosion went off. The truck had been carrying 1,300 pounds of explosives – making it the most powerful bomb terrorists have ever used in Pakistan, Malik said. The second blast left a crater 24 feet deep and 59 feet wide. At least 53 people died, including two Americans and the Czech ambassador who lived at the hotel.
The Marriott attack came exactly one year after al-Qaeda terrorist leader Osama bin Laden called for Muslims to wage holy war against the Pakistani government.
The Marriott was an oasis of civility for foreign diplomats and journalists assigned to Pakistan and for wealthy Pakistanis, who came for afternoon tea or sumptuous buffets at the Nadia restaurant. Like the Jan.14 attack on the five-star Serena hotel in the Afghan capital Kabul, it seemed designed to show that the militants could strike even the most heavily guarded targets in Pakistan and Afghanistan. "It is horrific," Ahmed said.
The Islamabad Marriott was attacked once before. In January 2007, a security guard blocked a suicide bomber, who detonated himself, killing the guard and wounding seven others.
Malik said he suspected Saturday's Marriott attack would be traced back to militants operating from the lawless tribal areas on Pakistan's northwest frontier with Afghanistan. "All roads lead to to South Waziristan," a militant hotbed in the tribal areas, he said.
The Taliban and their al-Qaeda allies regrouped in Pakistan's tribal areas after being driven from Afghanistan by U.S. forces following the 9/11 terrorist attacks on Washington and New York. They have been crossing the border and launching attacks on U.S. and NATO forces defending the pro-U.S. government of Afghan President Hamid Karzai.
For the past four years, the Pakistani army has unsuccessfully tried both offenses and truces to bring peace to the tribal areas. The United States has grown impatient and in recent weeks has launched its own air strikes and raids on Pakistani territory, straining relations with Pakistan's new government.
Polls show that the U.S. war on terror is very unpopular with the Pakistani people, who would prefer to see the government make peace, not war, with pro-Taliban militants. "The government has got to get the message across that this is our fight," Ahmed said.
The Marriott attack came hours after new Pakistani President Asif Ali Zardari delivered a speech promising to get tough on terrorism – but also criticizing the U.S. cross-border attacks.
Zardari spoke to the country again a few hours after the attack. "We will fight this menace. We will not be frightened," he said. "We are a brave nation and should clean this cancer."
The Associated Press also reported:
• Leading newspapers in Pakistan urged the fledgling civilian government and the military today to craft a coherent policy against terrorism following the hotel bombing, no matter the reservations about America's actions in Afghanistan or elsewhere, and despite the notion that the Marriott was targeted because it was a social magnet for foreigners.
"It is time we accepted this war is our own," said a lengthy editorial in The News, one of the largest English language dailies in the country. "There must be no ambiguity about this."
Another leading daily, Dawn, said the country displayed a "distressing" lack of "visible direction," and that "the civilians leaders and their uniformed counterparts must draw up a clear policy to fight terrorism."
• Pakistan's army and the U.S. military in Afghanistan said troops and tribesmen opened fire when two U.S. helicopters crossed into Pakistan from Afghanistan. The two intelligence officials spoke on condition of anonymity today because they were not authorized to speak to media. They cited field informants.
• British Airways has temporarily suspended flights to and from Pakistan amid security fears, airline spokesman Suhail Rehman said today.
Note: Wiseman reported from Hong Kong
Contributing: Wire reports
Find this article at: http://www.usatoday.com/news/world/2008-09-21-pakistan-sunday_N.htm
.
Copyright 2008 USA TODAY, a division of Gannett Co. Inc.
Monday, September 22, 2008
US government seeks approval for 700 billion dollar financial bailout
So the home of free markets, and those who prat on about the evils of government regulation, and the moral hazard of bailouts, the inefficiency of government etc.etc. etc. is now having the government bail out that great free market system to the tune of 700 billion. Of course as those same critics point out it is taxpayer money that is involved. The crooks take the profits and the citizens pay for the bad debts. Meanwhile the two presidential candidates support the system. Of course they do since they represent the system and the citizen's free choice as to which one of them will run the system for the capitalists in the next few years. Expect them to offer a few crumbs to the taxpayer while many of the crooks have already landed with their golden parachutes.
U.S. government seeks approval for $700B financial bailout
Proposal would raise U.S. debt limit to $11.3 trillion
Last Updated: Saturday, September 20, 2008 10:30 AM ET
CBC News
The bailout of the U.S. banking industry would cost an estimated $700 billion US, according to a draft of the proposal.
Analysts earlier predicted that the plan to stem losses from faltering mortgage assets would cost anywhere from $500 billion to $1 trillion.
Congressional committees were to be briefed on the legislative proposal on Saturday. The House of Representatives and Senate will examine it as early as next week.
A copy of the draft legislation shows it would give the government broad power to buy the bad debt of any U.S. financial institutions for the next two years.
It also would raise the statutory limit on the national debt from $10.6 trillion to $11.3 trillion, making room for the massive rescue.
The proposal does not specify what the government would get in return from financial companies for the federal help.
Bush, speaking to reporters after a White House meeting with Colombian President Alvaro Uribe, said he has asked Congress to quickly pass the legislation.
Approval of the rescue package is vital to contain the financial crisis and prevent it from spreading to the average American, Bush said.
"This is Wall Street plus Main Street, and I'm worried about Main Street," he said in a message he repeated in his weekly radio address Saturday.
"These measures require us to put a significant amount of taxpayer dollars on the line, but I'm convinced that this bold approach will cost American families far less than the alternative.
"Further stress on our financial markets would cause massive job losses, devastate retirement accounts, further erode housing values and dry up new loans for homes, cars and college tuitions."
Administration officials and members of Congress were to negotiate throughout the weekend. The White House and congressional leaders hope the legislation could pass as early as next week.With files from the Associated Press
U.S. government seeks approval for $700B financial bailout
Proposal would raise U.S. debt limit to $11.3 trillion
Last Updated: Saturday, September 20, 2008 10:30 AM ET
CBC News
The bailout of the U.S. banking industry would cost an estimated $700 billion US, according to a draft of the proposal.
Analysts earlier predicted that the plan to stem losses from faltering mortgage assets would cost anywhere from $500 billion to $1 trillion.
Congressional committees were to be briefed on the legislative proposal on Saturday. The House of Representatives and Senate will examine it as early as next week.
A copy of the draft legislation shows it would give the government broad power to buy the bad debt of any U.S. financial institutions for the next two years.
It also would raise the statutory limit on the national debt from $10.6 trillion to $11.3 trillion, making room for the massive rescue.
The proposal does not specify what the government would get in return from financial companies for the federal help.
Bush, speaking to reporters after a White House meeting with Colombian President Alvaro Uribe, said he has asked Congress to quickly pass the legislation.
Approval of the rescue package is vital to contain the financial crisis and prevent it from spreading to the average American, Bush said.
"This is Wall Street plus Main Street, and I'm worried about Main Street," he said in a message he repeated in his weekly radio address Saturday.
"These measures require us to put a significant amount of taxpayer dollars on the line, but I'm convinced that this bold approach will cost American families far less than the alternative.
"Further stress on our financial markets would cause massive job losses, devastate retirement accounts, further erode housing values and dry up new loans for homes, cars and college tuitions."
Administration officials and members of Congress were to negotiate throughout the weekend. The White House and congressional leaders hope the legislation could pass as early as next week.With files from the Associated Press
Proposed US-Iraq deal slammed as humiliating
This is from the Gulf News.
These revelations are surely not surprising. However, from what I have heard there is no evidence that a deal is likely to be reached any time soon because of disagreements between the parties. Violation of the UN charter and international law characterised the original invasion. But the US didn't worry since the UN also legitimised the occupation of Iraq as well as Afghanistan in the end. The UN will not say boo no matter what is in the agreement between the US and Iraq. As long as Iraq were to agree the UN will not become involved at all. The situation may be different if no agreement is reached.
Proposed US-Iraq deal slammed as humiliating
by Anwar Elshamy A TOP Iraqi analyst has slammed the proposed US-Iraq security deal as “humiliating to Iraq”, saying that it would only turn the current US presence in his country into a “contractual and long-term occupation.” Speaking at a seminar organised by the Doha-based Arab Democracy Foundation (ADF), Dr Hussein Shaaban, who was until recently a director general of the Al Baghdadia Iraqi satellite TV channel, said it was the US that insisted on establishing such a long-term relationship with Iraq as it was looking for an international mandate to “justify its occupation”. “I know the Iraqi side is reluctant to enter into such a pact which will shackle Iraq for long years to come. It would be a very dangerous matter if the Iraqi government signed the deal because it would only give a new shape to the US occupation of Iraq and it would be very difficult for Iraq to get rid of it later,” Shaaban warned.“The problem is that the two parties to the deal are not equal. It is between a strong party who is the occupier and the other whose land is occupied,” he said. The deal constituted a glaring violation of the UN charter as well as international law, he added. Shaaban, who is the secretary general of the International Organisation for Justice, blamed the rise of sectarianism in Iraq on the US occupation, saying US policies following the invasion had just “perpetuated the sectarianism”.“It is Paul Bremer who created the sectarian division of jobs. This formula has continued with all the governments that came to power after the invasion. I think that if this sectarian-based formula continues further, it will only lead to the fragmentation of Iraq from within even if it remains a unified country from outside,” he explained.“Iraq will never rise again without a real application of the principles of citizenship including the freedom of conscience and speech and respect for the different sub-cultures. But the problem is that the national identity has been weakened mainly by the US occupation and identities based on sectarian and ethnic considerations have gained ground. Maybe the new constitution has endorsed excellent principles, but these principles were not put into effect,” he said.He said there would be no genuine state in Iraq as long as “tribes, sects and militias prevail over the state.”“While all of these divisions should be subject to the logic of the state, the state should be subject to the rule of law, equality and pluralism,” he added. Yassin al-Nuseir, an Iraqi writer and critic, also raised doubts about the future of democratisation in Iraq. “The current formula will only lead to a disaster as everything in the country has been divided on a sectarian basis. Even each city has demarcations separating sects,” he said.In an apparent reference to the growing influence of clerics and religious thinking on all aspects of life in Iraq after the US invasion, al-Nuseir said the country was being ruled by the “culture of the dead.” All the laws took this culture into consideration rather than the development plans or future goals of the country, he said.The ADF’s secretary general, Mohsin Marzouq, who was the moderator, said his foundation was setting up a club for members of the media in Qatar.“All those working in the media are invited to register with our new club which would be mainly concerned with issues of democracy and citizenship in the Arab world,” he said.
These revelations are surely not surprising. However, from what I have heard there is no evidence that a deal is likely to be reached any time soon because of disagreements between the parties. Violation of the UN charter and international law characterised the original invasion. But the US didn't worry since the UN also legitimised the occupation of Iraq as well as Afghanistan in the end. The UN will not say boo no matter what is in the agreement between the US and Iraq. As long as Iraq were to agree the UN will not become involved at all. The situation may be different if no agreement is reached.
Proposed US-Iraq deal slammed as humiliating
by Anwar Elshamy A TOP Iraqi analyst has slammed the proposed US-Iraq security deal as “humiliating to Iraq”, saying that it would only turn the current US presence in his country into a “contractual and long-term occupation.” Speaking at a seminar organised by the Doha-based Arab Democracy Foundation (ADF), Dr Hussein Shaaban, who was until recently a director general of the Al Baghdadia Iraqi satellite TV channel, said it was the US that insisted on establishing such a long-term relationship with Iraq as it was looking for an international mandate to “justify its occupation”. “I know the Iraqi side is reluctant to enter into such a pact which will shackle Iraq for long years to come. It would be a very dangerous matter if the Iraqi government signed the deal because it would only give a new shape to the US occupation of Iraq and it would be very difficult for Iraq to get rid of it later,” Shaaban warned.“The problem is that the two parties to the deal are not equal. It is between a strong party who is the occupier and the other whose land is occupied,” he said. The deal constituted a glaring violation of the UN charter as well as international law, he added. Shaaban, who is the secretary general of the International Organisation for Justice, blamed the rise of sectarianism in Iraq on the US occupation, saying US policies following the invasion had just “perpetuated the sectarianism”.“It is Paul Bremer who created the sectarian division of jobs. This formula has continued with all the governments that came to power after the invasion. I think that if this sectarian-based formula continues further, it will only lead to the fragmentation of Iraq from within even if it remains a unified country from outside,” he explained.“Iraq will never rise again without a real application of the principles of citizenship including the freedom of conscience and speech and respect for the different sub-cultures. But the problem is that the national identity has been weakened mainly by the US occupation and identities based on sectarian and ethnic considerations have gained ground. Maybe the new constitution has endorsed excellent principles, but these principles were not put into effect,” he said.He said there would be no genuine state in Iraq as long as “tribes, sects and militias prevail over the state.”“While all of these divisions should be subject to the logic of the state, the state should be subject to the rule of law, equality and pluralism,” he added. Yassin al-Nuseir, an Iraqi writer and critic, also raised doubts about the future of democratisation in Iraq. “The current formula will only lead to a disaster as everything in the country has been divided on a sectarian basis. Even each city has demarcations separating sects,” he said.In an apparent reference to the growing influence of clerics and religious thinking on all aspects of life in Iraq after the US invasion, al-Nuseir said the country was being ruled by the “culture of the dead.” All the laws took this culture into consideration rather than the development plans or future goals of the country, he said.The ADF’s secretary general, Mohsin Marzouq, who was the moderator, said his foundation was setting up a club for members of the media in Qatar.“All those working in the media are invited to register with our new club which would be mainly concerned with issues of democracy and citizenship in the Arab world,” he said.
Philippine editorial...
This is from Malaya.(Philippine Newspaper)
The paper is fiercely anti-government but the fear of Arroyo trying to hang on to power by means fair or foul is no doubt widespread among Filipinos. The problem of poverty and rural underdevelopment is also real enough and one reason for the continuing insurgency. Even the cause of Muslim independence is partly economic as the Muslim areas are among the poorest in the Philippines. The Maoist insurgency is strongest in the countryside where they in fact have virtual control of some areas and exert influence (and collect revolutionary taxes) over a much larger area.
Never again?
Editorial
‘The dangers of a self-executed coup d’etat are real enough.’
Never again! As an expression of commitment to fight attempts to impose martial law, the slogan finds deep and wide resonance given the fascist tendencies of Gloria Arroyo. The people should justifiably be on guard against renewed efforts by Gloria to accumulate power in her hands, to the castration of the Legislative and the Judicial branches.
Gloria is obsessed with staying in power beyond 2010. The current track is the shift to a parliamentary system through Charter change. If that fails, she is likely to shift to martial law or some other form of emergency rule, using the communist and secessionist rebellions as a justification.
The dangers of a self-executed coup d’etat are real enough.
Let us distinguish, however, the greed for power of Gloria, which is a personal defect that is for her and her psychiatrist to sort out, from the dysfunctional Philippines social structure that generates the dynamic of dissent/repression/resistance. Gloria no doubt is the incarnation of the authoritarian personality – a bundle of character traits most distinguished by intolerance. But she is only an individual after all. We have to go beyond her and take a look at the social conditions that made a Gloria possible. For if the same conditions continue to define our society, we will see more Glorias and Ferdinand Marcoses in our future.
Before the declaration of martial law in 1972, Philippine society was described as a social volcano on the verge of eruption. There was a small section of the population wallowing in obscene wealth while the vast masses were mired in abject poverty. That same elite controlled the state while the rest were condemned to powerlessness.
Many are puzzled why the communist rebellion, driven by what is seen as a dead and discredited ideology, continues to flourish. They should not be. The conditions that led Crisanto Evangelista to establish the communist party in 1930 persist to this day.
If anything, the passage of years has only strengthened the resolve of the people below to secure what is promised them – economically and politically - by a state that claims to be founded on equal access to economic opportunities, on justice and on democracy. In the South, the same impulse has resulted in the rise of secessionism.
How do we deal with such forces that spring from the very ideals that gave us the Republic? We either reform to accommodate their demands, or wage war against groups that claim to also pursue our deeply held aspiration through violent means.
If we don’t take the first alternative, the threat of martial law – which after all is the state’s emergency weapon against rebellion – will always hang before us.
The paper is fiercely anti-government but the fear of Arroyo trying to hang on to power by means fair or foul is no doubt widespread among Filipinos. The problem of poverty and rural underdevelopment is also real enough and one reason for the continuing insurgency. Even the cause of Muslim independence is partly economic as the Muslim areas are among the poorest in the Philippines. The Maoist insurgency is strongest in the countryside where they in fact have virtual control of some areas and exert influence (and collect revolutionary taxes) over a much larger area.
Never again?
Editorial
‘The dangers of a self-executed coup d’etat are real enough.’
Never again! As an expression of commitment to fight attempts to impose martial law, the slogan finds deep and wide resonance given the fascist tendencies of Gloria Arroyo. The people should justifiably be on guard against renewed efforts by Gloria to accumulate power in her hands, to the castration of the Legislative and the Judicial branches.
Gloria is obsessed with staying in power beyond 2010. The current track is the shift to a parliamentary system through Charter change. If that fails, she is likely to shift to martial law or some other form of emergency rule, using the communist and secessionist rebellions as a justification.
The dangers of a self-executed coup d’etat are real enough.
Let us distinguish, however, the greed for power of Gloria, which is a personal defect that is for her and her psychiatrist to sort out, from the dysfunctional Philippines social structure that generates the dynamic of dissent/repression/resistance. Gloria no doubt is the incarnation of the authoritarian personality – a bundle of character traits most distinguished by intolerance. But she is only an individual after all. We have to go beyond her and take a look at the social conditions that made a Gloria possible. For if the same conditions continue to define our society, we will see more Glorias and Ferdinand Marcoses in our future.
Before the declaration of martial law in 1972, Philippine society was described as a social volcano on the verge of eruption. There was a small section of the population wallowing in obscene wealth while the vast masses were mired in abject poverty. That same elite controlled the state while the rest were condemned to powerlessness.
Many are puzzled why the communist rebellion, driven by what is seen as a dead and discredited ideology, continues to flourish. They should not be. The conditions that led Crisanto Evangelista to establish the communist party in 1930 persist to this day.
If anything, the passage of years has only strengthened the resolve of the people below to secure what is promised them – economically and politically - by a state that claims to be founded on equal access to economic opportunities, on justice and on democracy. In the South, the same impulse has resulted in the rise of secessionism.
How do we deal with such forces that spring from the very ideals that gave us the Republic? We either reform to accommodate their demands, or wage war against groups that claim to also pursue our deeply held aspiration through violent means.
If we don’t take the first alternative, the threat of martial law – which after all is the state’s emergency weapon against rebellion – will always hang before us.
Sunday, September 21, 2008
Bomb a warning to end Pakistan-US co-operation
The US seems not to care that it is escalating the conflict in Pakistan and may cause civil war. Perhaps the war is already beginning. The plan may be to have the embattled Pakistani government ask for U.S. or NATO aid in battling its opposition. Of course the opposition involves many more than the Taliban. Zardari refused to re-instate all of the justices fired by Musharraf and this resulted in the breakup of his coalition with Sharif. Who knows how many CIA chiefs were in the hotel during this blast. We will probably never know nor know what there fate was.
One thing is sure and that is that there will be more instability and bloodshed in Pakistan.
Bomb a warning to end Pakistan-US cooperation
Marriott bomb seen as warning to Pakistan to end cooperation with US on fighting militants
KATHY GANNONAP News
Sep 20, 2008 19:13 EST
The brazen truck-bombing of the Marriott hotel in Islamabad Saturday is a warning from Islamic militants to Pakistan's new civilian leadership that it should end already-strained cooperation with the United States to pursue al-Qaida and the Taliban, analysts said.
The massive bomb targeting an American hotel chain killed at least 40 people and wounded hundreds, setting a fire that blazed for hours and gutted most of the five-story luxury hotel.
"The attack on the hotel is a message to the Pakistani leadership: End all cooperation with the Americans or pay the price," said Brian Glyn Williams, associate professor of Islamic history at the University of Massachusetts. "Both sides see Pakistan as a vital battlefield in their global struggle and clearly Pakistani civilians are paying the price for being in the middle of this struggle," he told The Associated Press.
The U.S. has angered Pakistanis with increasing cross-border raids by its forces from Afghanistan to root out Islamic militants entrenched in the lawless and rugged tribal regions along the border.
Local newspapers are filled with outrage from columnists who accuse the United States of treating Pakistan as a surrogate, flaunting its sovereignty and killing innocents. Civilian casualties from the U.S. assaults have prompted tribesmen in the volatile frontier to threaten revolt.
Williams said the country's new leaders are caught between pressure from the U.S. to crack down on the militants and al-Qaida demands that they cut all ties with America.
Officials have harshly criticized U.S. incursions into Pakistani airspace and last week, Adm. Mike Mullen, chairman of the U.S. Joint Chiefs of Staff, visited Pakistan to try to calm the anger.
At the same time, the government is also talking tough to the other side.
Just hours before the suicide bombing, Pakistan's newly elected President Asif Zardari vowed to wage war against extremists who have been battling government troops in the violent northwest. Osama bin Laden and his top deputies are believed to be hiding in the border region and the U.S. claims al-Qaida and the Taliban have found a safe haven to regroup there.
Zardari has received several threats from al Qaida and the Taliban, who are suspected of assassinating his wife, former Prime Minister Benazir Bhutto, in December.
Last month al-Qaida No. 2 Ayman al-Zawahri accused Pakistan's new leaders of acting on behalf of the United States and called on his followers to rise up against them.
"Let there be no doubt in your minds that the dominant political forces at work in Pakistan today are competing to appease and please the modern day crusaders in the White House and are working to destabilize this nuclear-capable nation under the aegis of America," said an audio message purported to be from al-Zawahri.
The militant groups that operate in Pakistan's northwest are a ferocious and disparate group.
The Pakistani Taliban operate under the umbrella group, Tehrik-e-Taliban, which was established last December. It used a tried and tested strategy to gain control of the area — promising to restore law and order.
Within months of taking control, the Pakistani Taliban then terrorizes the local population with public beheadings. Occasionally men accused of spying for the United States are taken to the center of the village and publicly beheaded. Taliban fighters often make videos of the gruesome beheadings that circulate in the markets in northwest Pakistan.
Daniel Markey, a fellow at the Council on Foreign Relations and former State Department official, questioned the government's ability to wage a successful battle without overhauling Pakistan's intelligence service, which is often accused of aiding and abetting the militants.
"They are able to fight but not able to win without a lot of changes," he said. "Most will have to be done by the Pakistani army and (intelligence), some by civilian government, and some that would need outside assistance," Markey added.
One thing is sure and that is that there will be more instability and bloodshed in Pakistan.
Bomb a warning to end Pakistan-US cooperation
Marriott bomb seen as warning to Pakistan to end cooperation with US on fighting militants
KATHY GANNONAP News
Sep 20, 2008 19:13 EST
The brazen truck-bombing of the Marriott hotel in Islamabad Saturday is a warning from Islamic militants to Pakistan's new civilian leadership that it should end already-strained cooperation with the United States to pursue al-Qaida and the Taliban, analysts said.
The massive bomb targeting an American hotel chain killed at least 40 people and wounded hundreds, setting a fire that blazed for hours and gutted most of the five-story luxury hotel.
"The attack on the hotel is a message to the Pakistani leadership: End all cooperation with the Americans or pay the price," said Brian Glyn Williams, associate professor of Islamic history at the University of Massachusetts. "Both sides see Pakistan as a vital battlefield in their global struggle and clearly Pakistani civilians are paying the price for being in the middle of this struggle," he told The Associated Press.
The U.S. has angered Pakistanis with increasing cross-border raids by its forces from Afghanistan to root out Islamic militants entrenched in the lawless and rugged tribal regions along the border.
Local newspapers are filled with outrage from columnists who accuse the United States of treating Pakistan as a surrogate, flaunting its sovereignty and killing innocents. Civilian casualties from the U.S. assaults have prompted tribesmen in the volatile frontier to threaten revolt.
Williams said the country's new leaders are caught between pressure from the U.S. to crack down on the militants and al-Qaida demands that they cut all ties with America.
Officials have harshly criticized U.S. incursions into Pakistani airspace and last week, Adm. Mike Mullen, chairman of the U.S. Joint Chiefs of Staff, visited Pakistan to try to calm the anger.
At the same time, the government is also talking tough to the other side.
Just hours before the suicide bombing, Pakistan's newly elected President Asif Zardari vowed to wage war against extremists who have been battling government troops in the violent northwest. Osama bin Laden and his top deputies are believed to be hiding in the border region and the U.S. claims al-Qaida and the Taliban have found a safe haven to regroup there.
Zardari has received several threats from al Qaida and the Taliban, who are suspected of assassinating his wife, former Prime Minister Benazir Bhutto, in December.
Last month al-Qaida No. 2 Ayman al-Zawahri accused Pakistan's new leaders of acting on behalf of the United States and called on his followers to rise up against them.
"Let there be no doubt in your minds that the dominant political forces at work in Pakistan today are competing to appease and please the modern day crusaders in the White House and are working to destabilize this nuclear-capable nation under the aegis of America," said an audio message purported to be from al-Zawahri.
The militant groups that operate in Pakistan's northwest are a ferocious and disparate group.
The Pakistani Taliban operate under the umbrella group, Tehrik-e-Taliban, which was established last December. It used a tried and tested strategy to gain control of the area — promising to restore law and order.
Within months of taking control, the Pakistani Taliban then terrorizes the local population with public beheadings. Occasionally men accused of spying for the United States are taken to the center of the village and publicly beheaded. Taliban fighters often make videos of the gruesome beheadings that circulate in the markets in northwest Pakistan.
Daniel Markey, a fellow at the Council on Foreign Relations and former State Department official, questioned the government's ability to wage a successful battle without overhauling Pakistan's intelligence service, which is often accused of aiding and abetting the militants.
"They are able to fight but not able to win without a lot of changes," he said. "Most will have to be done by the Pakistani army and (intelligence), some by civilian government, and some that would need outside assistance," Markey added.
Saturday, September 20, 2008
Displaced flee to Afghanistan as Bajaur Offensive Continues.
The Pakistani govt. is quite capable of breaking promises too, no doubt at the urging of the U.S. This article shows that Pakistan is doing a great deal to fight Islamic militants and try to get some control of restive areas. They never seem to do enough to please the U.S.
Although recently Pakistan was assured its sovereignty would be expected U.S. drone attack continue and Petraeus has justified incursions. There is bound to be more trouble in the tribal areas and the Afghan war could very well expand.
The American public never seems to tire of the Afghan war and both McCain and Obama are for its continuance plus building up the military. The American public can expect to foot billions and billions in bills for war and bailouts and neither party has made any commitment to solve that problem. It apparently is no problem at all.
Displaced Flee to Afghanistan as Bajaur Offensive Continues
Posted September 19, 2008
Updating a previous story, it has now been three weeks since Pakistan’s government declared its Ramadan ceasefire. With the Muslim holy month more than half way over the ceasefire still hasn’t materialized, and though Pakistani Interior Minister Rehman Malik told the hundreds of thousands of displaced Bajauris that they could return home “without any fear” at the beginning of the month the Pakistani military has continued its bombings and the entire agency has been placed under curfew for the past 15 days. This has certainly not been the happy Ramadan the Bajauris had hoped for when the ceasefire was announced.
In fact the situation has deteriorated so badly in the tiny border agency that some 2,800 families have reportedly fled into neighboring Afghanistan, itself embroiled in an ever worsening military conflict. An Afghan minister says that many of the refugees are staying with family on the other side of the border, and that the displacement is not expected to be permanent. Overall, the conflict his displaced at least half of Bajaur’s 600,000 people, with some estimates placing the number at over 400,000, most of whom are staying in refugee camps around Peshawar.
Pakistan began its Bajaur offensive in early August. Since that time the military claims to have killed over 700 militants in the fighting. But the displaced insist that more civilians than militants have been killed in the campaign, and injured civilians have accused both sides of collateral damage in the heavy fighting.
Although recently Pakistan was assured its sovereignty would be expected U.S. drone attack continue and Petraeus has justified incursions. There is bound to be more trouble in the tribal areas and the Afghan war could very well expand.
The American public never seems to tire of the Afghan war and both McCain and Obama are for its continuance plus building up the military. The American public can expect to foot billions and billions in bills for war and bailouts and neither party has made any commitment to solve that problem. It apparently is no problem at all.
Displaced Flee to Afghanistan as Bajaur Offensive Continues
Posted September 19, 2008
Updating a previous story, it has now been three weeks since Pakistan’s government declared its Ramadan ceasefire. With the Muslim holy month more than half way over the ceasefire still hasn’t materialized, and though Pakistani Interior Minister Rehman Malik told the hundreds of thousands of displaced Bajauris that they could return home “without any fear” at the beginning of the month the Pakistani military has continued its bombings and the entire agency has been placed under curfew for the past 15 days. This has certainly not been the happy Ramadan the Bajauris had hoped for when the ceasefire was announced.
In fact the situation has deteriorated so badly in the tiny border agency that some 2,800 families have reportedly fled into neighboring Afghanistan, itself embroiled in an ever worsening military conflict. An Afghan minister says that many of the refugees are staying with family on the other side of the border, and that the displacement is not expected to be permanent. Overall, the conflict his displaced at least half of Bajaur’s 600,000 people, with some estimates placing the number at over 400,000, most of whom are staying in refugee camps around Peshawar.
Pakistan began its Bajaur offensive in early August. Since that time the military claims to have killed over 700 militants in the fighting. But the displaced insist that more civilians than militants have been killed in the campaign, and injured civilians have accused both sides of collateral damage in the heavy fighting.
Chalabi: US wants secret bases in Iraq.
Perhaps the agreement is meant to be secret. Secret bases are surely bound to be found out! Chalabi used to be a favorite of the U.S. and a great help in getting questionable intelligence about Saddam. He is certainly a survivor. Having lost favor with the U.S. he still seems to have influence in Iraq and Iran. He could very well be telling the truth in this instance.
Chalabi: U.S. wants secret bases in Iraq
BAGHDAD, Sept. 19 (UPI) -- Former Iraqi Deputy Premier Ahmad Chalabi told Iranian state-owned media Friday the United States is seeking to establish secret military bases in Iraq.
In an interview with the Islamic Republic News Agency, Chalabi, once a Washington favorite, said U.S. officials are trying to inject agreements for secret bases in Iraq as part of the long-term security contract slated to govern U.S.-Iraqi relations when the U.N. mandate there expires at the end of this year.
"Within the framework of the security pact, the United States does not wish to merely have open military bases (in Iraq), rather secret military bases (there)," he said.
He said negotiations on the deal were ongoing following the acceptance of a formal draft agreement in August but noted there were still contentious issues surrounding legal authority over U.S. military forces and the use of Iraq as a staging ground for the broader counter-terrorism effort.
Chalabi, who also served as the oil minister in 2005, said heightened diplomatic tensions between the United States and Russia made securing the deal a top priority for U.S. officials.
"If a security deal is not signed … by Dec. 31, regarding the recent U.S.-Russia row over Georgia and the Iraqi government's decision not to extend the U.S. forces' presence in Iraq for another year, the U.S. presence in Iraq will come across with difficulty in terms of the law," he said.
Chalabi: U.S. wants secret bases in Iraq
BAGHDAD, Sept. 19 (UPI) -- Former Iraqi Deputy Premier Ahmad Chalabi told Iranian state-owned media Friday the United States is seeking to establish secret military bases in Iraq.
In an interview with the Islamic Republic News Agency, Chalabi, once a Washington favorite, said U.S. officials are trying to inject agreements for secret bases in Iraq as part of the long-term security contract slated to govern U.S.-Iraqi relations when the U.N. mandate there expires at the end of this year.
"Within the framework of the security pact, the United States does not wish to merely have open military bases (in Iraq), rather secret military bases (there)," he said.
He said negotiations on the deal were ongoing following the acceptance of a formal draft agreement in August but noted there were still contentious issues surrounding legal authority over U.S. military forces and the use of Iraq as a staging ground for the broader counter-terrorism effort.
Chalabi, who also served as the oil minister in 2005, said heightened diplomatic tensions between the United States and Russia made securing the deal a top priority for U.S. officials.
"If a security deal is not signed … by Dec. 31, regarding the recent U.S.-Russia row over Georgia and the Iraqi government's decision not to extend the U.S. forces' presence in Iraq for another year, the U.S. presence in Iraq will come across with difficulty in terms of the law," he said.
Iraq oil minister blames Kurds for delay in oil law
The new oil law has been awaiting approval for ages now and as this article points out it is no nearer to being passed now. The Kurds have made an end run around the law and the central government although not violating the law is also agreeing to new service contracts. This is from AFP via Yahoo.
Iraq oil minister blames Kurds for delay in oil law
by Jay Deshmukh and Salam FarajFri Sep 19, 6:11 AM ET
A series of contracts awarded by Kurdish leaders is blocking the passage of a national oil law, prompting Baghdad to use Saddam Hussein era rules for new deals, Oil Minister Hussein al-Shahristani said.
In an interview with AFP, Shahristani said a majority of parliament's 275 members were hesitating to pass the new oil law after the northern Kurdish administration signed contracts ahead of the national law.
"The KRG (Kurdistan Regional Government) has gone ahead and signed even production sharing agreements. This has created concern among parliamentary blocs," said the former nuclear physicist.
Shahristani said some MPs want the new law to be modified in order to "ban production sharing contracts."
"Others are questioning the usefulness of the new law. They say if the KRG is not abiding by the new law in spite of participating in negotiations during the framing of the bill, why have a new law?," the minister said.
"They say the KRG contracts are clear violations of the new law and the administration is not abiding by the law, then what is the point of passing the new bill. We might as well keep the old law."
The passing of the oil law is seen by Washington as a key benchmark in boosting national unity in the violence-wracked country.
The draft legislation has been intensely disputed by Iraq's bitterly divided communities over how revenues from oil sales would be distributed in the 18 provinces.
The dispute aggravated after the KRG signed a series of contracts with foreign oil companies to boost oil production in its northern territory.
The bulk of Iraq's oil reserves, the world's third largest, are in the Kurdish north and the Shiite south.
Shahristani, a strong opponent of the KRG contracts, said he does not see the law being passed in parliament in the near term.
"If the KRG does not cancel its contracts and make a clear commitment to abide by the new law, parliamentarians would not pass the law," he said, adding Baghdad was left with no option but to tap the existing law from Saddam's regime to boost its own oil production.
"The new law does not offer any more benefits to foreign companies than the prevailing law. After waiting for more than a year, the government decided to go ahead and use the prevailing law to boost production."
Baghdad has recently signed two contracts with foreign companies -- one with state-owned China National Petroleum and the other with Royal Dutch Shell.
China National would develop the Al-Ahdab oil field in central Iraq as part of a service agreement with Baghdad.
The company has managed to get a foothold in the Iraqi oil sector by reviving its 1997 contract signed with the former Iraqi regime.
However, activities were suspended due to UN sanctions and security issues following the US-led war of 2003 that toppled Saddam.
Shahristani said Baghdad has managed to change the previous joint venture contract into a mere service agreement.
In the second venture, Iraq's state-owned South Oil Company will hold a 51 percent stake with Shell holding 49 percent. The new company would capture gas from an oil field in the southern province of Basra.
These two deals do not violate the languishing oil law, said Shahristani, adding "we want to abide by the new law even if it is still to be approved."
Shahristani said the ministry has embarked on an aggressive plan for the next three to four years as it taps the prevailing oil law to ramp up production.
Iraq is estimated to have 115 billion barrels of oil.
It has 80 proven oil and gas fields, including 27 which are operational, the minister said.
"The plan is to offer all these to international bidding gradually."
He said Iraq also has 65 exploration blocks which it plans to offer for similar bidding.
"The decision is to develop oil production as fast as possible by cooperating with international companies," he added.
"The whole idea of bid rounds is to find what is the best offer you can get and what kind of capital investment is required. We are talking of tens of billions of dollars here."
Iraq also plans to step up its refining capacity by adding extra units to existing refineries as well as constructing "new state-of-the-art units."
Shahristani said new refineries are being planned in the provinces of Nasiriyah, Karbala, Kirkuk and Maysan.
Copyright © 2008 Agence France Presse. All rights reserved. Copyright © 2008 Yahoo All rights reserved.
Iraq oil minister blames Kurds for delay in oil law
by Jay Deshmukh and Salam FarajFri Sep 19, 6:11 AM ET
A series of contracts awarded by Kurdish leaders is blocking the passage of a national oil law, prompting Baghdad to use Saddam Hussein era rules for new deals, Oil Minister Hussein al-Shahristani said.
In an interview with AFP, Shahristani said a majority of parliament's 275 members were hesitating to pass the new oil law after the northern Kurdish administration signed contracts ahead of the national law.
"The KRG (Kurdistan Regional Government) has gone ahead and signed even production sharing agreements. This has created concern among parliamentary blocs," said the former nuclear physicist.
Shahristani said some MPs want the new law to be modified in order to "ban production sharing contracts."
"Others are questioning the usefulness of the new law. They say if the KRG is not abiding by the new law in spite of participating in negotiations during the framing of the bill, why have a new law?," the minister said.
"They say the KRG contracts are clear violations of the new law and the administration is not abiding by the law, then what is the point of passing the new bill. We might as well keep the old law."
The passing of the oil law is seen by Washington as a key benchmark in boosting national unity in the violence-wracked country.
The draft legislation has been intensely disputed by Iraq's bitterly divided communities over how revenues from oil sales would be distributed in the 18 provinces.
The dispute aggravated after the KRG signed a series of contracts with foreign oil companies to boost oil production in its northern territory.
The bulk of Iraq's oil reserves, the world's third largest, are in the Kurdish north and the Shiite south.
Shahristani, a strong opponent of the KRG contracts, said he does not see the law being passed in parliament in the near term.
"If the KRG does not cancel its contracts and make a clear commitment to abide by the new law, parliamentarians would not pass the law," he said, adding Baghdad was left with no option but to tap the existing law from Saddam's regime to boost its own oil production.
"The new law does not offer any more benefits to foreign companies than the prevailing law. After waiting for more than a year, the government decided to go ahead and use the prevailing law to boost production."
Baghdad has recently signed two contracts with foreign companies -- one with state-owned China National Petroleum and the other with Royal Dutch Shell.
China National would develop the Al-Ahdab oil field in central Iraq as part of a service agreement with Baghdad.
The company has managed to get a foothold in the Iraqi oil sector by reviving its 1997 contract signed with the former Iraqi regime.
However, activities were suspended due to UN sanctions and security issues following the US-led war of 2003 that toppled Saddam.
Shahristani said Baghdad has managed to change the previous joint venture contract into a mere service agreement.
In the second venture, Iraq's state-owned South Oil Company will hold a 51 percent stake with Shell holding 49 percent. The new company would capture gas from an oil field in the southern province of Basra.
These two deals do not violate the languishing oil law, said Shahristani, adding "we want to abide by the new law even if it is still to be approved."
Shahristani said the ministry has embarked on an aggressive plan for the next three to four years as it taps the prevailing oil law to ramp up production.
Iraq is estimated to have 115 billion barrels of oil.
It has 80 proven oil and gas fields, including 27 which are operational, the minister said.
"The plan is to offer all these to international bidding gradually."
He said Iraq also has 65 exploration blocks which it plans to offer for similar bidding.
"The decision is to develop oil production as fast as possible by cooperating with international companies," he added.
"The whole idea of bid rounds is to find what is the best offer you can get and what kind of capital investment is required. We are talking of tens of billions of dollars here."
Iraq also plans to step up its refining capacity by adding extra units to existing refineries as well as constructing "new state-of-the-art units."
Shahristani said new refineries are being planned in the provinces of Nasiriyah, Karbala, Kirkuk and Maysan.
Copyright © 2008 Agence France Presse. All rights reserved. Copyright © 2008 Yahoo All rights reserved.
Friday, September 19, 2008
Crimea Defies Kiev On Georgia
The only other country than Russia to recognise South Ossetia and Abkhazia so far is Nicaragua. Many other countries such as China fear recognition would only encourage separatist groups within Chinaès borders. The Crimea is autonomous within the Ukraine and there is considerable Russian influence. The Russian Black Sea fleet is centered in the Crimean port of Sevastopol.
With the collapse of the Ukrainian coalition there could be considerable instability in the Ukraine and no guarantee of a continuing pro-Western government.
Crimea Defies Kiev On Georgia18 September 2008SIMFEROPOL, Ukraine -- Lawmakers in Ukraine's Crimea Peninsula, defying the country's pro-Western leaders, called on the national parliament to follow Russia's example and recognize Georgia's two separatist regions. Crimea, a Ukrainian region with a degree of self-government, is populated mainly by ethnic Russians and Russian-speakers, and local leaders have often adopted pro-Russian positions or even sought to rejoin Russia. Some analysts suggested that Russia's conflict with Georgia over South Ossetia could rekindle pro-Moscow or even separatist sentiment in Crimea. The local assembly voted 79-8 to urge Ukraine's national parliament to recognize South Ossetia and Abkhazia. Only Russia and Nicaragua have done so, an action denounced by the United States and European Union. The appeal said Crimea's parliament "expresses its backing for the peoples of Abkhazia and South Ossetia and their right to self-determination and supports the Russian Federation's actions in ensuring security in those republics." Crimea's parliament is dominated by the Regions Party of former Ukrainian Prime Minister Viktor Yanukovych, which has been friendlier to Russia than other political forces and has called for recognition of the two regions.Ukraine's leaders, committed to joining NATO, denounced Moscow's intervention in South Ossetia in support of what Moscow says are Russian nationals there. They deny any suggestion that a similar conflict could erupt in Crimea. Crimea became a part of Russia in the late 18th century and was formally handed to Soviet Ukraine in 1954, when the collapse of the Soviet Union was unthinkable. The region remains autonomous, though Ukrainian authorities cracked down on separatism in the mid-1990s. Russian nationalist politicians call periodically for the return of at least Sevastopol, the Crimean port where Russia's Black Sea Fleet is based under a lease agreement. The Kremlin dissociates itself from such statements and says it respects Ukraine's existing borders. But it also complains that Ukraine pursues policies harming the interests of ethnic Russians.
With the collapse of the Ukrainian coalition there could be considerable instability in the Ukraine and no guarantee of a continuing pro-Western government.
Crimea Defies Kiev On Georgia18 September 2008SIMFEROPOL, Ukraine -- Lawmakers in Ukraine's Crimea Peninsula, defying the country's pro-Western leaders, called on the national parliament to follow Russia's example and recognize Georgia's two separatist regions. Crimea, a Ukrainian region with a degree of self-government, is populated mainly by ethnic Russians and Russian-speakers, and local leaders have often adopted pro-Russian positions or even sought to rejoin Russia. Some analysts suggested that Russia's conflict with Georgia over South Ossetia could rekindle pro-Moscow or even separatist sentiment in Crimea. The local assembly voted 79-8 to urge Ukraine's national parliament to recognize South Ossetia and Abkhazia. Only Russia and Nicaragua have done so, an action denounced by the United States and European Union. The appeal said Crimea's parliament "expresses its backing for the peoples of Abkhazia and South Ossetia and their right to self-determination and supports the Russian Federation's actions in ensuring security in those republics." Crimea's parliament is dominated by the Regions Party of former Ukrainian Prime Minister Viktor Yanukovych, which has been friendlier to Russia than other political forces and has called for recognition of the two regions.Ukraine's leaders, committed to joining NATO, denounced Moscow's intervention in South Ossetia in support of what Moscow says are Russian nationals there. They deny any suggestion that a similar conflict could erupt in Crimea. Crimea became a part of Russia in the late 18th century and was formally handed to Soviet Ukraine in 1954, when the collapse of the Soviet Union was unthinkable. The region remains autonomous, though Ukrainian authorities cracked down on separatism in the mid-1990s. Russian nationalist politicians call periodically for the return of at least Sevastopol, the Crimean port where Russia's Black Sea Fleet is based under a lease agreement. The Kremlin dissociates itself from such statements and says it respects Ukraine's existing borders. But it also complains that Ukraine pursues policies harming the interests of ethnic Russians.
TARP: The new rescue plan for US finance
See the article at politico.com
TAxpayer funded Rescue Plan. This is what it is. The idea of moral hazard as of free markets has gone out the window. Free markets now need huge bailouts to work properly. The real happening is that profits were privatised and now the risks are being socialised and losses paid for by the American public. Capitalism has never been about free markets. It is about profits. If free markets do not bring profits there must be subsidies or combines or other methodologies to get around the discipline of the market. Free market ideology is used to justify capitalism and to criticise government intervention, regulation, etc. but when it conflicts with profit the ideology is thrown out the window in a second.
Actually TARP stands for Trouble Assets Relief Plan. It is the Fed prescription for financial constipation.
TAxpayer funded Rescue Plan. This is what it is. The idea of moral hazard as of free markets has gone out the window. Free markets now need huge bailouts to work properly. The real happening is that profits were privatised and now the risks are being socialised and losses paid for by the American public. Capitalism has never been about free markets. It is about profits. If free markets do not bring profits there must be subsidies or combines or other methodologies to get around the discipline of the market. Free market ideology is used to justify capitalism and to criticise government intervention, regulation, etc. but when it conflicts with profit the ideology is thrown out the window in a second.
Actually TARP stands for Trouble Assets Relief Plan. It is the Fed prescription for financial constipation.
Australian Troops kill Afghan Governor Two Guards!
This is really a disastrous error. No doubt it was the result of false intelligence. It seems that NATO and U.S. intelligence is extremely bad. Information is not properly vetted or verified. The way to get even with anyone is report them as Taliban to NATO or the US. It seems no one is ever held accountable for this type of error.
Australian Troops Kill Afghan Governor, Two Guards in Botched Raid
Posted September 18, 2008
Just days after General David McKiernan announced his “revised tactical order” designed to reduce the number of civilians killed in NATO raids, Australian special forces surrounded a house in the Afghan province of Oruzgan and opened fire, killing district governor Razi Khan and two of his bodyguards, and injuring two others.
Afghan President Hamid Karzai referred to the killings as a “misunderstanding,” and said Governor Khan had been a close associate of his. The incident occurred at the house of a friend of the governor, who believed his house had been surrounded by Taliban, not Australian troops.
Before his stint as district governor, Razi Khan was also the police chief for the province. During that time he had to contend with Taliban forces occupying one of his more remote police headquarters, and survived an assassination attempt in late 2006, when a suicide bomber targeted his vehicle, killing four civilians and wounding 25 others.
The Australian military says it takes a matter very seriously and has promised to cooperate with Afghan authorities in an investigation of the incident. NATO has also promised to investigate the report. No Australian troops were harmed in the raid.
Australian Troops Kill Afghan Governor, Two Guards in Botched Raid
Posted September 18, 2008
Just days after General David McKiernan announced his “revised tactical order” designed to reduce the number of civilians killed in NATO raids, Australian special forces surrounded a house in the Afghan province of Oruzgan and opened fire, killing district governor Razi Khan and two of his bodyguards, and injuring two others.
Afghan President Hamid Karzai referred to the killings as a “misunderstanding,” and said Governor Khan had been a close associate of his. The incident occurred at the house of a friend of the governor, who believed his house had been surrounded by Taliban, not Australian troops.
Before his stint as district governor, Razi Khan was also the police chief for the province. During that time he had to contend with Taliban forces occupying one of his more remote police headquarters, and survived an assassination attempt in late 2006, when a suicide bomber targeted his vehicle, killing four civilians and wounding 25 others.
The Australian military says it takes a matter very seriously and has promised to cooperate with Afghan authorities in an investigation of the incident. NATO has also promised to investigate the report. No Australian troops were harmed in the raid.
Court demands that Philippine Armed Forces release three kidnapped persons.
This is just one example of the AFP's violation of rights. As in the U.S. it is done as part of a war on terror or in the Philippines case against the NPA (New People's Army). Critics claim that the AFP often is involved in the killing of activists. Kidnapping was even more rife in some countries in South America during leftist insurrections there and also as part of the Pinochet repression in Chile. In Argentina too there are hundreds of disappeared.
CA to AFP: Produce2 abducted UP studesSays new evidence show they are held by Army
BY EVANGELINE DE VERA
REVERSING its decision, the Court of Appeals yesterday ruled there is sufficient evidence to prove that the Army’s 7th Infantry Division abducted and continues to have custody of the two University of the Philippines students and a farmer who have all been missing since June 2006.
The CA’s Special Former 11th Division, in a 33-page decision, ordered the Armed Forces to release Sherlyn Cadapan and Karen Empeno, as well as farmer Manuel Merino, who were abducted allegedly by military men on June 26, 2006 in Hagonoy, Bulacan on the ground they are members of the New Peoples’ Army.
The ruling, penned by Associate Justice Jose Catral Mendoza, reversed the CA’s June 2007 decision dismissing the writ of habeas corpus petition filed by the families of the three missing persons based on the testimony of witness Raymond Manalo, who said he was a victim of military abduction and torture, along with his brother Reynaldo.
Manalo’s testimony was considered newly discovered evidence submitted by the petitioners upon a motion for reconsideration on account of his testimony that he and his brother saw Cadapan and Empeno during their captivity in Southern Tagalog between Feb. 14, 2006 until their escape on Aug. 13, 2007.
The CA also ordered the petitions for the issuance of a writ of amparo filed by the families of Cadapan, Empeño and Merino before the Supreme Court consolidated with the petition for writ of habeas corpus.
Named respondents in the petitions for habeas corpus and amparo were Maj. Gen. (ret.) Jovito Palparan, former commander of the Army’s 7th Infantry Division based at Fort Magsaysay, Laur, Nueva Ecija; Maj. Gen. Romeo Tolentino, former commander of the Northern Luzon Command; Lt. Francis Mirabelle Samson, commander of the Barangay Mercado Detachment in Hagonoy, and a certain Arnel Enrique.
The CA said with the additional testimony of Manalo, the petitioners have been able to prove the fact of their detention by elements of the military.
"The testimony of Raymond Manalo can no longer be ignored and brushed aside. His narration and those of the earlier witnesses, taken together, constitute more than substantial evidence warranting an order that the three be released from detention if they are not being held for a lawful cause. They may be moving from place to place but still they are considered under detention and custody of the respondents," the CA said.
The appellate court also directed the PNP to finish its investigation into the disappearance of the three and file charges against those responsible.
The CA said the personnel of the Army’s 7th Division appeared to have "appointed themselves as protective guardians of the Republic whose precious principles, however, they have dishonored by ignoring the rights and liberties of its own citizens."
Based on Manalo’s affidavit, six armed men in military uniform abducted him and his brother on Feb. 14, 2006 from their place in Barangay Buhol na Mangga, San Ildefonso, Bulacan.
From there, they were detained and moved from one place to another, particularly military camps and detachments including Fort Magsaysay and a detachment in Sapang, San Miguel, Bulacan, where they allegedly met Palparan.
From Sapang, Manalo was transported to Camp Tecson under the 24th Infantry Battalion, where three men loaded him in a white car.
Manalo said he was taken to what he learned later a training detachment of the Scout Rangers. He said it was in the barracks that he met Cadapan, with her feet chained to a double bed.
During their conversation, Manalo said Cadapan told him she was abducted from Hagonoy and was subjected to torture."
After a week, Manalo was reunited with his brother who also brought to the camp, where they stayed from September 2006 until Nov. 22, 2006.
Three days after, Raymond said Empeño and Merino were also brought to the camp.
Raymond further said he saw Cadapan being subjected to torture like water treatment through nose, and electric shocks.
In its June 2007 decision, the CA merely admonished Palparan and his men at the 7th ID for withholding information and inconsistencies in their testimonies regarding the abduction and disappearance of the three.
The CA earlier dismissed the petition for habeas corpus on the ground it was not the proper remedy in the case.
The CA said the proper remedy was to initiate the filing of criminal complaints against those the families believe were responsible for the disappearance of the three.
The appeals court said it cannot yet order the prosecution of Palparan and his men due to insufficient evidence that he ordered the abduction of the victims.
CA to AFP: Produce2 abducted UP studesSays new evidence show they are held by Army
BY EVANGELINE DE VERA
REVERSING its decision, the Court of Appeals yesterday ruled there is sufficient evidence to prove that the Army’s 7th Infantry Division abducted and continues to have custody of the two University of the Philippines students and a farmer who have all been missing since June 2006.
The CA’s Special Former 11th Division, in a 33-page decision, ordered the Armed Forces to release Sherlyn Cadapan and Karen Empeno, as well as farmer Manuel Merino, who were abducted allegedly by military men on June 26, 2006 in Hagonoy, Bulacan on the ground they are members of the New Peoples’ Army.
The ruling, penned by Associate Justice Jose Catral Mendoza, reversed the CA’s June 2007 decision dismissing the writ of habeas corpus petition filed by the families of the three missing persons based on the testimony of witness Raymond Manalo, who said he was a victim of military abduction and torture, along with his brother Reynaldo.
Manalo’s testimony was considered newly discovered evidence submitted by the petitioners upon a motion for reconsideration on account of his testimony that he and his brother saw Cadapan and Empeno during their captivity in Southern Tagalog between Feb. 14, 2006 until their escape on Aug. 13, 2007.
The CA also ordered the petitions for the issuance of a writ of amparo filed by the families of Cadapan, Empeño and Merino before the Supreme Court consolidated with the petition for writ of habeas corpus.
Named respondents in the petitions for habeas corpus and amparo were Maj. Gen. (ret.) Jovito Palparan, former commander of the Army’s 7th Infantry Division based at Fort Magsaysay, Laur, Nueva Ecija; Maj. Gen. Romeo Tolentino, former commander of the Northern Luzon Command; Lt. Francis Mirabelle Samson, commander of the Barangay Mercado Detachment in Hagonoy, and a certain Arnel Enrique.
The CA said with the additional testimony of Manalo, the petitioners have been able to prove the fact of their detention by elements of the military.
"The testimony of Raymond Manalo can no longer be ignored and brushed aside. His narration and those of the earlier witnesses, taken together, constitute more than substantial evidence warranting an order that the three be released from detention if they are not being held for a lawful cause. They may be moving from place to place but still they are considered under detention and custody of the respondents," the CA said.
The appellate court also directed the PNP to finish its investigation into the disappearance of the three and file charges against those responsible.
The CA said the personnel of the Army’s 7th Division appeared to have "appointed themselves as protective guardians of the Republic whose precious principles, however, they have dishonored by ignoring the rights and liberties of its own citizens."
Based on Manalo’s affidavit, six armed men in military uniform abducted him and his brother on Feb. 14, 2006 from their place in Barangay Buhol na Mangga, San Ildefonso, Bulacan.
From there, they were detained and moved from one place to another, particularly military camps and detachments including Fort Magsaysay and a detachment in Sapang, San Miguel, Bulacan, where they allegedly met Palparan.
From Sapang, Manalo was transported to Camp Tecson under the 24th Infantry Battalion, where three men loaded him in a white car.
Manalo said he was taken to what he learned later a training detachment of the Scout Rangers. He said it was in the barracks that he met Cadapan, with her feet chained to a double bed.
During their conversation, Manalo said Cadapan told him she was abducted from Hagonoy and was subjected to torture."
After a week, Manalo was reunited with his brother who also brought to the camp, where they stayed from September 2006 until Nov. 22, 2006.
Three days after, Raymond said Empeño and Merino were also brought to the camp.
Raymond further said he saw Cadapan being subjected to torture like water treatment through nose, and electric shocks.
In its June 2007 decision, the CA merely admonished Palparan and his men at the 7th ID for withholding information and inconsistencies in their testimonies regarding the abduction and disappearance of the three.
The CA earlier dismissed the petition for habeas corpus on the ground it was not the proper remedy in the case.
The CA said the proper remedy was to initiate the filing of criminal complaints against those the families believe were responsible for the disappearance of the three.
The appeals court said it cannot yet order the prosecution of Palparan and his men due to insufficient evidence that he ordered the abduction of the victims.
Maliki: US Iraq security pact facing dangerous obstacles
So much for the U.S. desire to see Iraq develop into a democracy. They do not want to give Iraq power over the occupiers. The U.S. does not want its soldiers to be subject to Iraqi law! There is no way either that the U.S. will allow Iraq command of military operations on their own soil! The Iraqis wanted US soldiers out by the end of 2010 but agreed to extend this to 2011. This matter is not even discussed in the US. In the US the discussion of withdrawal of U.S. troops usually never mentions Iraqi demands! It is what the Americans think is best!
Americans seem to be totally unconscious about their imperialism. But let the Russians try to control a couple of enclaves at their doorstep and wow there is that huge imperialistic Russian bear. Of course Georgia itself is in effect a US client state. Georgia to repay the U.S. for its aid and support sent troops to help out the US in Iraq!
US-Iraq security pact facing 'dangerous' obstacles: PM
by Ammar Karim Wed Sep 17, 2:17 PM ET
BAGHDAD (AFP) - Iraqi Prime Minister Nuri al-Maliki on Wednesday warned that the contentious security pact with the United States was facing "serious and dangerous obstacles."
"There is very serious and dangerous obstacles to the deal," Maliki told a group of Iraqi television journalists.
"They (US negotiators) requested 10 to 14 days to respond to our demands and the time is over now. American negotiators have not responded to our proposals.
"If they implement our demand quickly, the deal will be signed soon, but if they refuse our demands, it will face obstacles and could lead to new negotiations."
Washington and Baghdad are currently negotiating a security pact that would decide the future of US forces in Iraq after the present UN mandate expires at the end of this year.
The UN mandate currently acts as the legal framework for the presence of foreign forces in the violence-wracked country.
Iraqi negotiators have demanded that American soldiers should be subjected to Iraqi laws if they commit "grave and intentional mistakes," a demand which the American negotiators have to respond to.
US soldiers currently are immune from Iraqi laws.
"There is still a dispute over the issue of immunity to American soldiers," Maliki said.
"The present demands of Iraq are related to the country's sovereignty. Iraqis have shown flexibility and we hope that the American side shows more flexibility."
Maliki told journalists that both sides have agreed "that by December 2011 all American troops will leave Iraqi soil."
"The Americans have agreed on this. At the beginning, we demanded that they leave by 2010, but they (Americans) asked to leave by 2011."
The other sticking points that are yet to be resolved between Washington and Baghdad are the command of military operations in Iraq from next year and the right of US forces to detain Iraqi citizens.
US embassy officials in Baghdad were not immediately available for comment.
But last week embassy spokeswoman Susan Ziadeh told AFP that the negotiations were ongoing and the "deal is not done until it is done."
Maliki, however, said the two sides had agreed that foreign private security contractors working in Iraq would be subjected to Iraqi laws from January 1, 2009.
The presence of foreign private security contractors has been extremely controversial after some of them were accused of killing civilians.
Last September 16, guards belonging to Blackwater security company shot dead 17 Iraqi civilians while escorting an American diplomatic convoy through Baghdad. The firm says its guards were acting in self-defence.
Despite strong opposition from Iraqis, the US Department of State earlier this year renewed a contract with Blackwater to protect American officials in Iraq.
Foreign security companies are currently not subject to Iraq law, but they are not governed by US military tribunals either, effectively allowing them to operate with impunity.
Americans seem to be totally unconscious about their imperialism. But let the Russians try to control a couple of enclaves at their doorstep and wow there is that huge imperialistic Russian bear. Of course Georgia itself is in effect a US client state. Georgia to repay the U.S. for its aid and support sent troops to help out the US in Iraq!
US-Iraq security pact facing 'dangerous' obstacles: PM
by Ammar Karim Wed Sep 17, 2:17 PM ET
BAGHDAD (AFP) - Iraqi Prime Minister Nuri al-Maliki on Wednesday warned that the contentious security pact with the United States was facing "serious and dangerous obstacles."
"There is very serious and dangerous obstacles to the deal," Maliki told a group of Iraqi television journalists.
"They (US negotiators) requested 10 to 14 days to respond to our demands and the time is over now. American negotiators have not responded to our proposals.
"If they implement our demand quickly, the deal will be signed soon, but if they refuse our demands, it will face obstacles and could lead to new negotiations."
Washington and Baghdad are currently negotiating a security pact that would decide the future of US forces in Iraq after the present UN mandate expires at the end of this year.
The UN mandate currently acts as the legal framework for the presence of foreign forces in the violence-wracked country.
Iraqi negotiators have demanded that American soldiers should be subjected to Iraqi laws if they commit "grave and intentional mistakes," a demand which the American negotiators have to respond to.
US soldiers currently are immune from Iraqi laws.
"There is still a dispute over the issue of immunity to American soldiers," Maliki said.
"The present demands of Iraq are related to the country's sovereignty. Iraqis have shown flexibility and we hope that the American side shows more flexibility."
Maliki told journalists that both sides have agreed "that by December 2011 all American troops will leave Iraqi soil."
"The Americans have agreed on this. At the beginning, we demanded that they leave by 2010, but they (Americans) asked to leave by 2011."
The other sticking points that are yet to be resolved between Washington and Baghdad are the command of military operations in Iraq from next year and the right of US forces to detain Iraqi citizens.
US embassy officials in Baghdad were not immediately available for comment.
But last week embassy spokeswoman Susan Ziadeh told AFP that the negotiations were ongoing and the "deal is not done until it is done."
Maliki, however, said the two sides had agreed that foreign private security contractors working in Iraq would be subjected to Iraqi laws from January 1, 2009.
The presence of foreign private security contractors has been extremely controversial after some of them were accused of killing civilians.
Last September 16, guards belonging to Blackwater security company shot dead 17 Iraqi civilians while escorting an American diplomatic convoy through Baghdad. The firm says its guards were acting in self-defence.
Despite strong opposition from Iraqis, the US Department of State earlier this year renewed a contract with Blackwater to protect American officials in Iraq.
Foreign security companies are currently not subject to Iraq law, but they are not governed by US military tribunals either, effectively allowing them to operate with impunity.
Thursday, September 18, 2008
A creative bailout entity from the Feds perhaps.
It seems that the Feds are creating a new entity that will absorb all those bad debts and relieve the capitalist institutions that created the mess from having to face the consequences. The public will bail the system out. Of course the stock market likes the idea.
http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20080918/ap_on_bi_st_ma_re/wall_street
http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20080918/ap_on_bi_st_ma_re/wall_street
Which presidential candidate foresaw the Fannie Freddie meltdown
If you said Ralph Nader you were right. Of course he was a bit early in predicting it but eventually he turned out to be right. He has interesting solutions as well.
Nader Predicted Wall Street MeltdownBy The Nader/Gonzalez Campaign
Eight years ago, consumer advocate Ralph Nader correctly predicted that the Federal National Mortgage Association (Fannie Mae) and the Federal Home Loan Mortgage Corporation (Freddie Mac) were on track to follow the savings and loan industry of the 1980s and 90s into a big financial heap of trouble. Nobody listened, and taxpayers are now at risk of losing tens of billions of dollars. Wall Street is being shaken to its foundation. American International Group Inc., the biggest U.S. insurer by assets, is now teetering on the brink of ruin after suffering losses of $18 billion in the past three quarters, largely due to its sub prime mortgage exposure.
"Nader Rips Mae and Mac," declared the Milwaukee Sentinel Journal on June 16, 2000. "Ralph Nader, warning of a potential taxpayer bailout similar to the savings and loan crisis, urged lawmakers to cut government benefits to mortgage-market giants Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac - which he called 'poster children for corporate welfare.'"
This year Nader, who is also running for president as an independent, is getting credit for his prescience.
"Give one presidential candidate credit for identifying the problem and getting the policy right - and doing so before the twin government-sponsored enterprises (GSEs) Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac went into the tank in mid-July," wrote Lou Dubose in The Washington Spectator on Aug. 1. Dubose went on to quote Nader's June 15, 2000 Congressional testimony about HR 3703, a bill that would have reigned in some of the most dangerous tendencies of GSE's, had it passed.
In a letter to SEC Chairman Christopher Cox in 2006, Nader also criticized the exorbitant salary of GSE executives Jamie Gorelick, Daniel Mudd, Robert Levin and Timothy Howard, and noted that their financial incentives were in direct conflict with consumer financial security because of the grave moral hazard created by accounting manipulations they sanctioned that benefited their personal wealth, with no penalty for being caught.
"As you continue to investigate the Fannie Mae accounting debacle, we are writing to urge you to seek civil sanctions, including disgorgement, from senior executives who profited directly from the misconduct at Fannie Mae, and that you urge the Department of Justice to give careful consideration to criminal prosecution of these individuals," wrote Nader.
Candidate Nader has called for an immediate halt to the increase in the national debt, an end to corporate subsidies and unconditional taxpayer bailouts of corporations, and a start to the aggressive prosecution of corporate criminals.
In his prepared remarks for New York Times editors in its Washington Bureau, Nader stated: "Given the contrast between the 'free market' ideology of the Republicans and the corporate or state socialism that is their increasing practice, the time is ripe for full Congressional hearings next year on the organized power, greed and lack of regulation that is shaking the foundations of Wall Street."
Nader added, "What we need to do now is find a just way to deal with the millions of homeowners facing foreclosure and make sure that this level of financial market manipulation does not happen again."
He elaborated a 10-point plan to cool off the financial markets meltdown:
1. No bailouts without conditions and reciprocity in the form of stock warrants.
2. No more lobbying for any company that is bailed out.
3. No golden parachutes and get out of jail free cards for guilty executives.
4. No bailouts without public hearings.
5. Reduce the moral hazard in U.S. mortgage markets by introducing covered bonds for the majority of mortgage products as they do in Western Europe. That gives institutions that finance mortgages an incentive to be prudent, because they cannot just unload them and wipe their hands clean of the liability, but are instead on the hook if the homeowner defaults.
6. Maintain neighborhood stability and housing security by passing a law with a sunset clause allowing below median-value homeowners facing foreclosure the right to rent-to-own their homes at fair market value rates.
7. Avoid future housing bubbles by removing implicit government guarantees for new mortgages that exceed thresholds of greater than 15-20 times the annual fair market rent value of the home.
8. Make the Federal Reserve a Cabinet Position, so it is accountable to Congress, as well as making sure all Federal Reserve Bank presidents are appointed by the President and answerable to congress.
9. Reduce conflicts of interest by taking away power for auditor and rating agency selection from companies and placing it in the hands of the SEC to be administered on random assignment.
10. Implement a securities speculation tax, starting with derivatives to deter casino-style capitalism.
-
Nader Predicted Wall Street MeltdownBy The Nader/Gonzalez Campaign
Eight years ago, consumer advocate Ralph Nader correctly predicted that the Federal National Mortgage Association (Fannie Mae) and the Federal Home Loan Mortgage Corporation (Freddie Mac) were on track to follow the savings and loan industry of the 1980s and 90s into a big financial heap of trouble. Nobody listened, and taxpayers are now at risk of losing tens of billions of dollars. Wall Street is being shaken to its foundation. American International Group Inc., the biggest U.S. insurer by assets, is now teetering on the brink of ruin after suffering losses of $18 billion in the past three quarters, largely due to its sub prime mortgage exposure.
"Nader Rips Mae and Mac," declared the Milwaukee Sentinel Journal on June 16, 2000. "Ralph Nader, warning of a potential taxpayer bailout similar to the savings and loan crisis, urged lawmakers to cut government benefits to mortgage-market giants Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac - which he called 'poster children for corporate welfare.'"
This year Nader, who is also running for president as an independent, is getting credit for his prescience.
"Give one presidential candidate credit for identifying the problem and getting the policy right - and doing so before the twin government-sponsored enterprises (GSEs) Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac went into the tank in mid-July," wrote Lou Dubose in The Washington Spectator on Aug. 1. Dubose went on to quote Nader's June 15, 2000 Congressional testimony about HR 3703, a bill that would have reigned in some of the most dangerous tendencies of GSE's, had it passed.
In a letter to SEC Chairman Christopher Cox in 2006, Nader also criticized the exorbitant salary of GSE executives Jamie Gorelick, Daniel Mudd, Robert Levin and Timothy Howard, and noted that their financial incentives were in direct conflict with consumer financial security because of the grave moral hazard created by accounting manipulations they sanctioned that benefited their personal wealth, with no penalty for being caught.
"As you continue to investigate the Fannie Mae accounting debacle, we are writing to urge you to seek civil sanctions, including disgorgement, from senior executives who profited directly from the misconduct at Fannie Mae, and that you urge the Department of Justice to give careful consideration to criminal prosecution of these individuals," wrote Nader.
Candidate Nader has called for an immediate halt to the increase in the national debt, an end to corporate subsidies and unconditional taxpayer bailouts of corporations, and a start to the aggressive prosecution of corporate criminals.
In his prepared remarks for New York Times editors in its Washington Bureau, Nader stated: "Given the contrast between the 'free market' ideology of the Republicans and the corporate or state socialism that is their increasing practice, the time is ripe for full Congressional hearings next year on the organized power, greed and lack of regulation that is shaking the foundations of Wall Street."
Nader added, "What we need to do now is find a just way to deal with the millions of homeowners facing foreclosure and make sure that this level of financial market manipulation does not happen again."
He elaborated a 10-point plan to cool off the financial markets meltdown:
1. No bailouts without conditions and reciprocity in the form of stock warrants.
2. No more lobbying for any company that is bailed out.
3. No golden parachutes and get out of jail free cards for guilty executives.
4. No bailouts without public hearings.
5. Reduce the moral hazard in U.S. mortgage markets by introducing covered bonds for the majority of mortgage products as they do in Western Europe. That gives institutions that finance mortgages an incentive to be prudent, because they cannot just unload them and wipe their hands clean of the liability, but are instead on the hook if the homeowner defaults.
6. Maintain neighborhood stability and housing security by passing a law with a sunset clause allowing below median-value homeowners facing foreclosure the right to rent-to-own their homes at fair market value rates.
7. Avoid future housing bubbles by removing implicit government guarantees for new mortgages that exceed thresholds of greater than 15-20 times the annual fair market rent value of the home.
8. Make the Federal Reserve a Cabinet Position, so it is accountable to Congress, as well as making sure all Federal Reserve Bank presidents are appointed by the President and answerable to congress.
9. Reduce conflicts of interest by taking away power for auditor and rating agency selection from companies and placing it in the hands of the SEC to be administered on random assignment.
10. Implement a securities speculation tax, starting with derivatives to deter casino-style capitalism.
-
Vested Interests Drove New Pakistna Policy
This is from antiwar.com. This article gives some of the background to the recent policy change allowing unauthorised attacks in Pakistan. It shows that the neo-cons are still in control. However there is no sign that either Obama or McCain opposes the new policy. So much for change. The same disastrous aggressive imperialist policy remains on the books of any new administration.
Vested Interests Drove New Pakistan Policy
by Gareth Porter
The George W. Bush administration's decision to launch commando raids and step up missiles strikes against Taliban and al-Qaeda figures in the tribal areas of Pakistan followed what appears to have been the most contentious policy process over the use of force in Bush's eight-year presidency.
That decision has stirred such strong opposition from the Pakistani military and government that it is now being revisited. Adm. Mike Mullen, chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, arrived in Pakistan Tuesday for the second time in three weeks, and US officials and sources just told Reuters that any future raids would be approved on a mission-by-mission basis by a top US administration official.
The policy was the result of strong pressure from the US command in Afghanistan and lobbying by the Special Operations Command (SOCOM) and the CIA's operations directorate (DO), both of which had direct institutional interests in operations that coincided with their mandate.
State Department and some Pentagon officials had managed to delay the proposed military escalation in Pakistan for a year by arguing that it would be based on nearly nonexistent intelligence and would only increase support for the Islamic extremists in that country.
But officials of SOCOM and the CIA prevailed in the end, apparently because Bush and Vice President Dick Cheney believed they could not afford to be seen as doing nothing about bin Laden and al-Qaeda in the administration's final months.
SOCOM had a strong institutional interest in a major new operation in Pakistan.
The Army's Delta Force and Navy SEALS had been allowed by the Pakistani military to accompany its forces on raids in the tribal area in 2002 and 2003 but not to operate on their own. And even that extremely limited role was ended by Pakistani President Pervez Musharraf in 2003, which frustrated SOCOM officials.
Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld, whose antagonism toward the CIA was legendary, had wanted SOCOM to take over the hunt for bin Laden. And in 2006, SOCOM's Joint Special Operations Command branch in Afghanistan pressed Rumsfeld to approve a commando operation in Pakistan aimed at capturing a high-ranking al-Qaeda operative.
SOCOM had the support of the US command in Afghanistan, which was arguing that the war in Afghanistan could not be won as long as the Taliban had a safe haven in Pakistan from which to launch attacks. The top US commander, Lt. Gen. Karl Eikenberry, worked with SOCOM and DO officers in Afghanistan to assemble the evidence of Pakistan's cooperation with the Taliban. .
Despite concerns that such an operation could cause a massive reaction in Pakistan against the US war on al-Qaeda, Rumsfeld gave in to the pressure in early November 2006 and approved the operation, according to an account in the New York Times Jun. 30. But within days, Rumsfeld was out as defense secretary, and the operation was put on hold.
Nevertheless Bush and Cheney, who had been repeating that Musharraf had things under control in the frontier area, soon realized that they would be politically vulnerable to charges that they weren't doing anything about bin Laden.
The July 2007 National Intelligence Estimate (NIE) was the signal for the CIA's DO to step up its own lobbying for control over a Pakistan operation, based on the Afghan model – CIA officers training and arming a local militia while identifying targets for strikes from the air.
In a Washington Post column only two weeks after the NIE's conclusions were made public, David Ignatius quoted former CIA official Hank Crumpton, who had run the CIA operation in Afghanistan after the Sep. 11, 2001 attacks, on the proposed DO operation: "We either do it now, or we do it after the next attack."
That either-or logic and the sense of political vulnerability in the White House was the key advantage of the advocates of a new war in Pakistan. Last November, the New York Times reported that the Defense Department had drafted an order based on the SOCOM proposal for training of local tribal forces and for new authority for "covert" commando operations in Pakistan's frontier provinces.
But the previous experience with missile strikes against al-Qaeda targets using predator drones and the facts on the ground provided plenty of ammunition to those who opposed the escalation. It showed that the proposed actions would have little or no impact on either the Taliban or al-Qaeda in Pakistan, and would bring destabilizing political blowback.
In January 2006, the CIA had launched a missile strike on a residential compound in Damadola, near the Afghan border, on the basis of erroneous intelligence that Ayman al-Zawahiri would be there. The destruction killed as many 25 people, according to local residents interviewed by The Telegraph, including 14 members of one family.
Some 8,000 tribesmen in the Damadola area protested the killing, and in Karachi tens of thousands more rallied against the United States, shouting "Death to America!"
Musharraf later claimed that the dead included four high-ranking al-Qaeda officials, including al-Zawahiri's son-in-law. The Washington Post's Craig Whitlock reported last week, however, that US and Pakistani officials now admit that only local villagers were killed in the strike.
It was well known within the counterterrorism community that the US search for al-Qaeda leaders in Pakistan was severely limited by the absence of actionable intelligence. For years, the US military had depended almost entirely on Pakistan's Inter-Services Intelligence Directorate, despite its well-established ties with the Taliban and even al-Qaeda.
One of the counterterrorism officials without a direct organizational stake in the issue, State Department counterterrorism chief Gen. Dell L. Dailey, bluntly summed up the situation to reporters last January. "We don't have enough information about what's going on there," he said. "Not on al-Qaeda, not on foreign fighters, not on the Taliban."
A senior US official quoted by the Post last February was even more scathing on that subject, saying "Even a blind squirrel finds a nut now and then."
Meanwhile, the Pakistani military, reacting to the US aim of a more aggressive US military role in the tribal areas, repeatedly rejected the US military proposal for training Frontier Corps units.
The US command in Afghanistan and SOCOM increased the pressure for escalation early last summer by enlisting visiting members of Congress in support of the plan. Texas Republican Congressmen Michael McCaul, who had visited Afghanistan and Pakistan, declared on his return that was "imperative that US forces be allowed to pursue the Taliban and al-Qaeda in tribal areas inside Pakistan."
In late July, according to the Times of London, Bush signed a secret national security presidential directive (NSPD) which authorized operations by special operations forces without the permission of Pakistan.
The Bush decision ignored the disconnect between the aims of the new war and the realities on the ground in Pakistan. Commando raids and missile strikes against mid-level or low-level Taliban or al-Qaeda operatives, carried out in a sea of angry Pashtuns, will not stem the flow of fighters from Pakistan into Afghanistan or weaken al-Qaeda. But they will certainly provoke reactions from the tribal population that can tilt the affected areas even further toward the Islamic radicals.
At least some military leaders without an institutional interest in the outcome understood that the proposed escalation was likely to backfire. One senior military officer told the Los Angeles Times last month that he had been forced by the "fragility of the current government in Islamabad," to ask whether "you do more long-term harm if you act very, very aggressively militarily."
Vested Interests Drove New Pakistan Policy
by Gareth Porter
The George W. Bush administration's decision to launch commando raids and step up missiles strikes against Taliban and al-Qaeda figures in the tribal areas of Pakistan followed what appears to have been the most contentious policy process over the use of force in Bush's eight-year presidency.
That decision has stirred such strong opposition from the Pakistani military and government that it is now being revisited. Adm. Mike Mullen, chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, arrived in Pakistan Tuesday for the second time in three weeks, and US officials and sources just told Reuters that any future raids would be approved on a mission-by-mission basis by a top US administration official.
The policy was the result of strong pressure from the US command in Afghanistan and lobbying by the Special Operations Command (SOCOM) and the CIA's operations directorate (DO), both of which had direct institutional interests in operations that coincided with their mandate.
State Department and some Pentagon officials had managed to delay the proposed military escalation in Pakistan for a year by arguing that it would be based on nearly nonexistent intelligence and would only increase support for the Islamic extremists in that country.
But officials of SOCOM and the CIA prevailed in the end, apparently because Bush and Vice President Dick Cheney believed they could not afford to be seen as doing nothing about bin Laden and al-Qaeda in the administration's final months.
SOCOM had a strong institutional interest in a major new operation in Pakistan.
The Army's Delta Force and Navy SEALS had been allowed by the Pakistani military to accompany its forces on raids in the tribal area in 2002 and 2003 but not to operate on their own. And even that extremely limited role was ended by Pakistani President Pervez Musharraf in 2003, which frustrated SOCOM officials.
Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld, whose antagonism toward the CIA was legendary, had wanted SOCOM to take over the hunt for bin Laden. And in 2006, SOCOM's Joint Special Operations Command branch in Afghanistan pressed Rumsfeld to approve a commando operation in Pakistan aimed at capturing a high-ranking al-Qaeda operative.
SOCOM had the support of the US command in Afghanistan, which was arguing that the war in Afghanistan could not be won as long as the Taliban had a safe haven in Pakistan from which to launch attacks. The top US commander, Lt. Gen. Karl Eikenberry, worked with SOCOM and DO officers in Afghanistan to assemble the evidence of Pakistan's cooperation with the Taliban. .
Despite concerns that such an operation could cause a massive reaction in Pakistan against the US war on al-Qaeda, Rumsfeld gave in to the pressure in early November 2006 and approved the operation, according to an account in the New York Times Jun. 30. But within days, Rumsfeld was out as defense secretary, and the operation was put on hold.
Nevertheless Bush and Cheney, who had been repeating that Musharraf had things under control in the frontier area, soon realized that they would be politically vulnerable to charges that they weren't doing anything about bin Laden.
The July 2007 National Intelligence Estimate (NIE) was the signal for the CIA's DO to step up its own lobbying for control over a Pakistan operation, based on the Afghan model – CIA officers training and arming a local militia while identifying targets for strikes from the air.
In a Washington Post column only two weeks after the NIE's conclusions were made public, David Ignatius quoted former CIA official Hank Crumpton, who had run the CIA operation in Afghanistan after the Sep. 11, 2001 attacks, on the proposed DO operation: "We either do it now, or we do it after the next attack."
That either-or logic and the sense of political vulnerability in the White House was the key advantage of the advocates of a new war in Pakistan. Last November, the New York Times reported that the Defense Department had drafted an order based on the SOCOM proposal for training of local tribal forces and for new authority for "covert" commando operations in Pakistan's frontier provinces.
But the previous experience with missile strikes against al-Qaeda targets using predator drones and the facts on the ground provided plenty of ammunition to those who opposed the escalation. It showed that the proposed actions would have little or no impact on either the Taliban or al-Qaeda in Pakistan, and would bring destabilizing political blowback.
In January 2006, the CIA had launched a missile strike on a residential compound in Damadola, near the Afghan border, on the basis of erroneous intelligence that Ayman al-Zawahiri would be there. The destruction killed as many 25 people, according to local residents interviewed by The Telegraph, including 14 members of one family.
Some 8,000 tribesmen in the Damadola area protested the killing, and in Karachi tens of thousands more rallied against the United States, shouting "Death to America!"
Musharraf later claimed that the dead included four high-ranking al-Qaeda officials, including al-Zawahiri's son-in-law. The Washington Post's Craig Whitlock reported last week, however, that US and Pakistani officials now admit that only local villagers were killed in the strike.
It was well known within the counterterrorism community that the US search for al-Qaeda leaders in Pakistan was severely limited by the absence of actionable intelligence. For years, the US military had depended almost entirely on Pakistan's Inter-Services Intelligence Directorate, despite its well-established ties with the Taliban and even al-Qaeda.
One of the counterterrorism officials without a direct organizational stake in the issue, State Department counterterrorism chief Gen. Dell L. Dailey, bluntly summed up the situation to reporters last January. "We don't have enough information about what's going on there," he said. "Not on al-Qaeda, not on foreign fighters, not on the Taliban."
A senior US official quoted by the Post last February was even more scathing on that subject, saying "Even a blind squirrel finds a nut now and then."
Meanwhile, the Pakistani military, reacting to the US aim of a more aggressive US military role in the tribal areas, repeatedly rejected the US military proposal for training Frontier Corps units.
The US command in Afghanistan and SOCOM increased the pressure for escalation early last summer by enlisting visiting members of Congress in support of the plan. Texas Republican Congressmen Michael McCaul, who had visited Afghanistan and Pakistan, declared on his return that was "imperative that US forces be allowed to pursue the Taliban and al-Qaeda in tribal areas inside Pakistan."
In late July, according to the Times of London, Bush signed a secret national security presidential directive (NSPD) which authorized operations by special operations forces without the permission of Pakistan.
The Bush decision ignored the disconnect between the aims of the new war and the realities on the ground in Pakistan. Commando raids and missile strikes against mid-level or low-level Taliban or al-Qaeda operatives, carried out in a sea of angry Pashtuns, will not stem the flow of fighters from Pakistan into Afghanistan or weaken al-Qaeda. But they will certainly provoke reactions from the tribal population that can tilt the affected areas even further toward the Islamic radicals.
At least some military leaders without an institutional interest in the outcome understood that the proposed escalation was likely to backfire. One senior military officer told the Los Angeles Times last month that he had been forced by the "fragility of the current government in Islamabad," to ask whether "you do more long-term harm if you act very, very aggressively militarily."
The end of American Capitalism as we knew it...
Actually socialising risk while privatising profit is nothing new. Capitalism has always depended upon the public paying costs of education, roads, legal system, etc. and the patent system that are necessary underpinnings of a successful capitalist system even though through taxes the corporate sector does pay some of these costs. What has happened in the last while is that a crisis in the system has shown that all the talk about free markets is tossed out the window when relying upon them threatens the system. At such a time the bad old government must step in if a failure threatens the system. Capitalists view free markets as desirable when they advance their interests but will happily try to circumvent them through subsidies, protective tariffs, monopolies or whatever if that will increase their profits. In fact the whole system of patents is designed to circumvent free markets!
The end of American capitalism as we knew it
This is what I read this morning on FT.com: “The US Federal Reserve announced that it will lend AIG up to $85bn in emergency funds in return for a government stake of 79.9 per cent and effective control of the company - an extraordinary step meant to stave off a collapse of the giant insurer that plays a crucial role in the global financial system. Under the plan, the existing management of the company will be replaced and new executives will be appointed. It also gives the US government veto power over major decisions at the company.”
I almost decided to go back to bed, convinced I must be dreaming.The proximate cause of the demise of AIG as a private firm were its ‘monoline’ activities, its exposure to massive amounts of credit risk derivatives like CDS, many of them linked to the US real estate sector. The largest insurance supermarket in the world, with a balance sheet in excess of $1 trillion nationalised because it was deemed too big and too globally interconnected to fail! The fear that drove this extraordinary decision is that AIG’s failure would increase counterparty risk, actual and perceived, throughout the financial system of the US and the rest of the world, to such an extent that no financial institution would have been willing to extend credit to any other financial institution.Credit to households and non-financial enterprises would have been the next domino to fall, and voilà! , financial Armageddon.
I cannot judge the likelihood of the disaster scenario, but if there ever was a case for applying the precautionary principle in economic analysis, then this is it. It was also done in the right way, by insisting on controlling public ownership, i.e. nationalisation, of the company.The existing management is gone - again as it should. We will find out whether they left with golden parachutes or with just a carton box packed with their personal belongings.
The precise implication of the deal for the old shareholders will also matter for the ultimate judgement on its fairness and on what it does to incentives for future risk taking. Since the existing shareholders were obviously not completely wiped out by the deal, they do well out of it - probably too well. The public take-over appears to imply that all creditors other than the ordinary and preferred shareholders will be made whole. From the perspective of incentives for future excessive risk taking, this is regrettable.
A charge on the creditors, modulated according to the seniority of the debt, would have been preferable.But perhaps my concern about incentives for future risk taking is moot, because it assumes that private, profit-seeking enterprises will again, in the future, pursue the kind of financial activities engaged in by AIG.
If financial behemoths like AIG are too large and/or too interconnected to fail but not too smart to get themselves into situations where they need to be bailed out, then what is the case for letting private firms engage in such kinds of activities in the first place?
Is the reality of the modern, transactions-oriented model of financial capitalism indeed that large private firms make enormous private profits when the going is good and get bailed out and taken into temporary public ownership when the going gets bad, with the tax payer taking the risk and the losses?
If so, then why not keep these activities in permanent public ownership?There is a long-standing argument that there is no real case for private ownership of deposit-taking banking institutions, because these cannot exist safely without a deposit guarantee and/or lender of last resort facilities, that are ultimately underwritten by the taxpayer.
Even where private deposit insurance exists, this is only sufficient to handle bank runs on a subset of the banks in the system. Private banks collectively cannot self-insure against a generalised run on the banks. Once the state underwrites the deposits or makes alternative funding available as lender of last resort, deposit-based banking is a license to print money.
That suggests that either deposit-banking licenses should be periodically auctioned off competitively or that depostit-taking banks should be in public ownership to ensure that the tax payer gets the rents as well as the risks.The argument that financial intermediation cannot be entrusted to the private sector can now be extended to include the new, transactions-oriented, capital-markets-based forms of financial capitalism.
The risk of a sudden vanishing of both market liquidity for systemically important classes of finanial assets and funding liquidity for systemically important firms may well be too serious to allow private enterprises to play. No doubt the socialisation of most financial intermediation would be costly as regards dynamism and innovation, but if the risk of instability is too great and the cost of instability too high, then that may be a cost worth paying.
These are issues that must be pondered not just in Washington but everywhere modern financial intermediation has taken root or is threatening to do so - in the financial heartland (Wall Street, the City of London, Frankfurt, Zurich, Tokyo and Dubai) and in the emerging markets that until recently were having their ears bent on the desirability of precisely the kind of financial institutions and markets that have now turned into trillion dollar collapsing dominos.
From financialisation of the economy to the socialisation of finance. A small step for the lawyers, a huge step for mankind. Who said economics was boring?
September 17th, 2008 in Culture, Economics, Ethics, Financial Markets, Monetary Policy, Politics
The end of American capitalism as we knew it
This is what I read this morning on FT.com: “The US Federal Reserve announced that it will lend AIG up to $85bn in emergency funds in return for a government stake of 79.9 per cent and effective control of the company - an extraordinary step meant to stave off a collapse of the giant insurer that plays a crucial role in the global financial system. Under the plan, the existing management of the company will be replaced and new executives will be appointed. It also gives the US government veto power over major decisions at the company.”
I almost decided to go back to bed, convinced I must be dreaming.The proximate cause of the demise of AIG as a private firm were its ‘monoline’ activities, its exposure to massive amounts of credit risk derivatives like CDS, many of them linked to the US real estate sector. The largest insurance supermarket in the world, with a balance sheet in excess of $1 trillion nationalised because it was deemed too big and too globally interconnected to fail! The fear that drove this extraordinary decision is that AIG’s failure would increase counterparty risk, actual and perceived, throughout the financial system of the US and the rest of the world, to such an extent that no financial institution would have been willing to extend credit to any other financial institution.Credit to households and non-financial enterprises would have been the next domino to fall, and voilà! , financial Armageddon.
I cannot judge the likelihood of the disaster scenario, but if there ever was a case for applying the precautionary principle in economic analysis, then this is it. It was also done in the right way, by insisting on controlling public ownership, i.e. nationalisation, of the company.The existing management is gone - again as it should. We will find out whether they left with golden parachutes or with just a carton box packed with their personal belongings.
The precise implication of the deal for the old shareholders will also matter for the ultimate judgement on its fairness and on what it does to incentives for future risk taking. Since the existing shareholders were obviously not completely wiped out by the deal, they do well out of it - probably too well. The public take-over appears to imply that all creditors other than the ordinary and preferred shareholders will be made whole. From the perspective of incentives for future excessive risk taking, this is regrettable.
A charge on the creditors, modulated according to the seniority of the debt, would have been preferable.But perhaps my concern about incentives for future risk taking is moot, because it assumes that private, profit-seeking enterprises will again, in the future, pursue the kind of financial activities engaged in by AIG.
If financial behemoths like AIG are too large and/or too interconnected to fail but not too smart to get themselves into situations where they need to be bailed out, then what is the case for letting private firms engage in such kinds of activities in the first place?
Is the reality of the modern, transactions-oriented model of financial capitalism indeed that large private firms make enormous private profits when the going is good and get bailed out and taken into temporary public ownership when the going gets bad, with the tax payer taking the risk and the losses?
If so, then why not keep these activities in permanent public ownership?There is a long-standing argument that there is no real case for private ownership of deposit-taking banking institutions, because these cannot exist safely without a deposit guarantee and/or lender of last resort facilities, that are ultimately underwritten by the taxpayer.
Even where private deposit insurance exists, this is only sufficient to handle bank runs on a subset of the banks in the system. Private banks collectively cannot self-insure against a generalised run on the banks. Once the state underwrites the deposits or makes alternative funding available as lender of last resort, deposit-based banking is a license to print money.
That suggests that either deposit-banking licenses should be periodically auctioned off competitively or that depostit-taking banks should be in public ownership to ensure that the tax payer gets the rents as well as the risks.The argument that financial intermediation cannot be entrusted to the private sector can now be extended to include the new, transactions-oriented, capital-markets-based forms of financial capitalism.
The risk of a sudden vanishing of both market liquidity for systemically important classes of finanial assets and funding liquidity for systemically important firms may well be too serious to allow private enterprises to play. No doubt the socialisation of most financial intermediation would be costly as regards dynamism and innovation, but if the risk of instability is too great and the cost of instability too high, then that may be a cost worth paying.
These are issues that must be pondered not just in Washington but everywhere modern financial intermediation has taken root or is threatening to do so - in the financial heartland (Wall Street, the City of London, Frankfurt, Zurich, Tokyo and Dubai) and in the emerging markets that until recently were having their ears bent on the desirability of precisely the kind of financial institutions and markets that have now turned into trillion dollar collapsing dominos.
From financialisation of the economy to the socialisation of finance. A small step for the lawyers, a huge step for mankind. Who said economics was boring?
September 17th, 2008 in Culture, Economics, Ethics, Financial Markets, Monetary Policy, Politics
Philippine Supreme Court to examine constitutionality of Visiting Forces Agreement
This is a sensitive issue in that many Filipinos consider some of th VFA provisions to be against the Philippine constitution and to compromise their sovereignty. Daniel Smith was convicted of rape and is serving his sentence in the U.S. embassy rather than in a Philippine jail. The US claims the right to custody pending all legal appeals under the Visiting Forces Agreement.
High court takes up US soldier’s custody case
09/19/2008
A case filed by local civil rights groups questioning the validity of provisions in the military pact between Manila and Washington, particularly those in connection with Lance Cpl. Daniel Smith, the United States’ Marine serving his sentence for rape inside the American Embassy will be taken up by the Supreme Court (SC) today.
Oral arguments before the high court will take up the challenge on the constitutionality of the Visiting Forces Agreement (VFA),
which is the legal basis for Smith’s detention inside the embassy compound.
In a one-page advisory, the court en banc enjoined the parties in the two petitions to limit their arguments on two principal issues: “Whether the right to custody of accused Daniel Smith during the pendency of his appeal belongs to the Philippine government or the United States authorities and whether there was a contempt of court committed in the transfer of accused Daniel Smith from the custody of the court to that of the United States authorities pending appeal.”
Petitioners include former Senators Jovito Salonga, Wigberto Tañada and several lawyers.
A separate petition was filed by militant groups Bagong Alyansang Makabayan, Bayan Muna, Gabriela and the Public Interest Law Center.
Also named respondents in the two cases were President Arroyo, then acting Defense secretary; Executive Secretary Eduardo Ermita; Foreign Affairs Secretary Alberto Romulo; Justice Secretary Raul Gonzalez; and Interior Secretary Ronaldo Puno.
Salonga’s group argued that the agreements between Romulo and US Ambassador Kristie Kenney transferring the custody of Smith to US authorities are unconstitutional and that the VFA violates the exclusive power of the Supreme Court to promulgate rules and procedure in all courts under the 1987 Constitution.
The issue on the custody of an accused or convict is a matter of procedure, according to the petitioners, which under the Constitution is within the real of judicial power.
Salonga’s group specifically cited Section 6, Article 5 of the VFA as among the provisions that violate the rules on criminal procedures.
Under the provision “the custody of any United States personnel over whom the Philippines is to exercise jurisdiction shall immediately reside with United States military authorities, if they so request, from the commission of the offense until completion of all judicial proceedings.” “Said provision of the VFA…effectively violates and infringes on the power of the Philippine courts to acquire custody over the United States personnel,” Salonga’s group said.
The militant groups also asked the SC to nullify the agreements between officials of the DFA and the US Embassy allowing the latter to take custody of Smith.
Smith, a participant in the RP-US Balikatan military exercise, was found guilty of raping a Filipino woman on Nov. 1, 2005.
Makati Regional Trial Court Branch 139 Presiding Judge Benjamin Pozon sentenced him to reclusion perpetua or a minimum of 20 years to a maximum of 40 years’ imprisonment.
Smith has filed a petition before the Court of Appeals seeking the reversal of the lower court’s decision. The appellate court has yet to issue a decision on his appeal.
Benjamin B. Pulta
High court takes up US soldier’s custody case
09/19/2008
A case filed by local civil rights groups questioning the validity of provisions in the military pact between Manila and Washington, particularly those in connection with Lance Cpl. Daniel Smith, the United States’ Marine serving his sentence for rape inside the American Embassy will be taken up by the Supreme Court (SC) today.
Oral arguments before the high court will take up the challenge on the constitutionality of the Visiting Forces Agreement (VFA),
which is the legal basis for Smith’s detention inside the embassy compound.
In a one-page advisory, the court en banc enjoined the parties in the two petitions to limit their arguments on two principal issues: “Whether the right to custody of accused Daniel Smith during the pendency of his appeal belongs to the Philippine government or the United States authorities and whether there was a contempt of court committed in the transfer of accused Daniel Smith from the custody of the court to that of the United States authorities pending appeal.”
Petitioners include former Senators Jovito Salonga, Wigberto Tañada and several lawyers.
A separate petition was filed by militant groups Bagong Alyansang Makabayan, Bayan Muna, Gabriela and the Public Interest Law Center.
Also named respondents in the two cases were President Arroyo, then acting Defense secretary; Executive Secretary Eduardo Ermita; Foreign Affairs Secretary Alberto Romulo; Justice Secretary Raul Gonzalez; and Interior Secretary Ronaldo Puno.
Salonga’s group argued that the agreements between Romulo and US Ambassador Kristie Kenney transferring the custody of Smith to US authorities are unconstitutional and that the VFA violates the exclusive power of the Supreme Court to promulgate rules and procedure in all courts under the 1987 Constitution.
The issue on the custody of an accused or convict is a matter of procedure, according to the petitioners, which under the Constitution is within the real of judicial power.
Salonga’s group specifically cited Section 6, Article 5 of the VFA as among the provisions that violate the rules on criminal procedures.
Under the provision “the custody of any United States personnel over whom the Philippines is to exercise jurisdiction shall immediately reside with United States military authorities, if they so request, from the commission of the offense until completion of all judicial proceedings.” “Said provision of the VFA…effectively violates and infringes on the power of the Philippine courts to acquire custody over the United States personnel,” Salonga’s group said.
The militant groups also asked the SC to nullify the agreements between officials of the DFA and the US Embassy allowing the latter to take custody of Smith.
Smith, a participant in the RP-US Balikatan military exercise, was found guilty of raping a Filipino woman on Nov. 1, 2005.
Makati Regional Trial Court Branch 139 Presiding Judge Benjamin Pozon sentenced him to reclusion perpetua or a minimum of 20 years to a maximum of 40 years’ imprisonment.
Smith has filed a petition before the Court of Appeals seeking the reversal of the lower court’s decision. The appellate court has yet to issue a decision on his appeal.
Benjamin B. Pulta
Tribesmen to fight US if incursions continue.
Sometimes I wonder about U.S. policy. Does one part of the government not know what another part is doing? Just as Admiral Mullen assures Pakistan the U.S. respects its sovereignty this attack occurs. The result is that the U.S. is uniting the Tribal Areas against the U.S. and may end up with a unified push by the Tribal Areas to confront the U.S. in Afghanistan. This will definitely open up another front with the U.S. openly invading parts of Pakistan. This could provoke outright civil war in Pakistan with horrendous consequences. It seems the U.S. could care less. This is from dailytimes(Pakistan)
Tribesmen to fight US if incursions continue’
* 3,000-strong jirga accuses Kabul of misleading US about Qaeda presence in FATABy Iqbal KhattakPESHAWAR: Every Ahmedzai Wazir tribesman will fight US forces on Afghani soil if their incursions into South Waziristan continue, a 3,000-strong jirga ruled on Wednesday.The jirga consisting of pro-government tribal elders and pro-Taliban clerics was held in Wana.“Each and every Ahmedzai Wazir tribesman, be young or old, will take up arms against the US and fight alongside the Pakistan Army,” eyewitnesses told Daily Times, quoting pro-Taliban Noor Muhammad reading a unanimous resolution at the end of the jirga.The resolution came hours after US Joint Chiefs of Staff Chairman Admiral Michael Mullen met the Pakistani political and military leadership in Islamabad to defuse tension between the two countries following the September 3 US-led ground assault in the Federally Administered Tribal Areas (FATA). “We will take the war to Afghanistan to confront the Americans,” the resolution said. Tribal elders said on condition of anonymity that clerics developed differences over the time to deliver the resolution, adding Jamiat Ulema-e-Islam-Fazl (JUI-F) clerics had wanted to delay the resolution until JUI-F chief Fazlur Rehman returns from Umra. “Other clerics opposed the delay, saying the US needs urgent response,” the tribal elders added.Kabul: The resolution also accused Kabul of ‘misleading’ the US forces about the presence of Al Qaeda in South Waziristan. “Let it be clear to the Americans that the Kabul regime is misleading them. Tribesmen have no business to do with Al Qaeda,” the resolution stated. Jirga members lauded Chief of Army Staff General Ashfaq Kayani’s statement to defend the country against foreign aggression, and reprimanded the political leadership for its ‘soft stand’ on the issue.The jirga demanded a more active political administration, suggesting military actions in FATA should require the political administration’s approval. The jirga participants said they wanted a true implementation of the collective responsibility clauses of the Frontier Crimes Regulation.The political administration has become ineffective after the Pakistani military started doing operations in FATA following the September 2001 attacks in the US.
Tribesmen to fight US if incursions continue’
* 3,000-strong jirga accuses Kabul of misleading US about Qaeda presence in FATABy Iqbal KhattakPESHAWAR: Every Ahmedzai Wazir tribesman will fight US forces on Afghani soil if their incursions into South Waziristan continue, a 3,000-strong jirga ruled on Wednesday.The jirga consisting of pro-government tribal elders and pro-Taliban clerics was held in Wana.“Each and every Ahmedzai Wazir tribesman, be young or old, will take up arms against the US and fight alongside the Pakistan Army,” eyewitnesses told Daily Times, quoting pro-Taliban Noor Muhammad reading a unanimous resolution at the end of the jirga.The resolution came hours after US Joint Chiefs of Staff Chairman Admiral Michael Mullen met the Pakistani political and military leadership in Islamabad to defuse tension between the two countries following the September 3 US-led ground assault in the Federally Administered Tribal Areas (FATA). “We will take the war to Afghanistan to confront the Americans,” the resolution said. Tribal elders said on condition of anonymity that clerics developed differences over the time to deliver the resolution, adding Jamiat Ulema-e-Islam-Fazl (JUI-F) clerics had wanted to delay the resolution until JUI-F chief Fazlur Rehman returns from Umra. “Other clerics opposed the delay, saying the US needs urgent response,” the tribal elders added.Kabul: The resolution also accused Kabul of ‘misleading’ the US forces about the presence of Al Qaeda in South Waziristan. “Let it be clear to the Americans that the Kabul regime is misleading them. Tribesmen have no business to do with Al Qaeda,” the resolution stated. Jirga members lauded Chief of Army Staff General Ashfaq Kayani’s statement to defend the country against foreign aggression, and reprimanded the political leadership for its ‘soft stand’ on the issue.The jirga demanded a more active political administration, suggesting military actions in FATA should require the political administration’s approval. The jirga participants said they wanted a true implementation of the collective responsibility clauses of the Frontier Crimes Regulation.The political administration has become ineffective after the Pakistani military started doing operations in FATA following the September 2001 attacks in the US.
Wednesday, September 17, 2008
Pentagon to expand intelligence operations at Bagram prison in Afghanistan
The U.S. is gearing up to stay in Afghanistan for the long haul. It may be however that they will be asked to leave. They will need to replace Karzai by a more pliable puppet such as Zalmay Khalilzad who is probably being groomed to run against him by the U.S. Bagram is being enlarged. Of course the Afghans have zilch to say on the matter of the U.S. imprisoning their citizens!
Pentagon to expand intel ops at U.S. prison in Afghanistan
By Peter Eisler, USA TODAY
WASHINGTON — The Pentagon plans to expand intelligence operations at its main prison in Afghanistan, records and interviews with military officials show.
Interrogators and analysts are being sought for a bigger Bagram prison scheduled to open next year. They will be hired to question prisoners and provide intelligence that can be used on the battlefield, according to contract solicitations reviewed by USA TODAY. The Army also is seeking a "trained Mullah" to conduct Islamic services for detainees and advise U.S. officials on religious issues.
The developments are the latest indication of U.S. plans for a long-term presence in Afghanistan, where the fundamentalist Muslim Taliban militants have regained strength since U.S. forces ousted them in 2001.
Originally built as a Soviet air base in the 1980s, the Bagram prison was meant to be a short-term holding site. Bagram has been a flash point in the debate over U.S. treatment of detainees. The International Red Cross has negotiated with U.S. officials about conditions and access to detainees.
After peaking at nearly 700 prisoners in 2006, the population at Bagram has hovered for the past year at its 600-prisoner capacity, according to Central Command figures provided in response to a USA TODAY inquiry.
The intelligence hires are to be in place before next summer's scheduled completion of the new detention center that will hold 1,000 prisoners, an increase in capacity by 65%.
"In 2001 … we never thought we'd still be (at Bagram) today," said Brig. Gen. Robert Holmes, deputy operations chief at U.S. Central Command, which oversees Afghanistan operations. "Now that we see this as a sustained activity, there were improvements to be made."
On Monday, the Pentagon announced that 2,000 Marines will go to Afghanistan in November to deal with the increased fighting.
The new facility and staff at Bagram will allow U.S. officials to gather more diverse intelligence from the added prisoners as more U.S. forces arrive in the country to take down Taliban strongholds, said Seth Jones, a military analyst at the RAND Corp. think tank.
"One thing we have not taken advantage of is just trying to understand what is motivating people to join the insurgency," he said.
The new $60 million facility will also include more space for detainee religious services, education programs and family visits.
Find this article at: http://www.usatoday.com/news/military/2008-09-15-Bagram-prison_N.htm
Copyright 2008 USA TODAY, a division of Gannett Co. Inc.
Two Philippine banks set aside provisions for exposure to Lehman
This is from Xinhua(China). The Global reach of the financial debacle in the US is evident. In fact some argue that the reason that the U.S. government took over Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac was to assure Asian banks that their investments were secure. I find it rather surprising that the US dollar seems to remain strong so far during all this turmoil.
Two Philippine banks set aside provisions for exposure to Lehman
www.chinaview.cn 2008-09-17 10:45:00
Print
MANILA, Sept. 17 (Xinhua) -- The Philippines' two largest banks, Metropolitan Bank and Trust Co. and Banco de Oro, were setting aside provisions totaling 94.7 million US dollars to cover their exposure to the Lehman Brothers' collapse, reports said on Wednesday.
"Due to the uncertainty relating to the financial condition of Lehman Brothers, Banco de Oro Unibank Inc. is setting aside provisions totaling 3.8 billion pesos (80.7 million dollars) to cover its exposure to said entity," the No. 2 lender said in a disclosure to the Philippine Stock Exchange, citied by the Philippine Star.
Metrobank, the country's biggest bank in terms of assets, said it has "made provisions equivalent to 14 million dollars" for its direct bond exposure of 20.4 million dollars, according to the report.
Banco de Oro did not disclose the extent of its exposure to Lehman, only saying that its balance sheet should be "adequately covered from potential losses arising from its Lehman exposure."
The Philippine central bank BSP is ready to assist local banks that might get affected but there might be no need for such action because their exposure was small, said BSP governor Armando Tetangco.
"Our banks are benefiting from the banking reforms we've already made, particularly the increase in their capital," Tetangco said.
If things get worse, the BSP has a standing repurchase facility that troubled banks may tap to tide them over the current turmoil, said the governor.
"But its use is unlikely because there is enough liquidity in the system," Tetangco said.
"Nevertheless, we are monitoring the situation particularly for any other potential effects that may arise from recent events," he said.
The two leading banks both said they expect to be in the black at the end of the current calendar year.
Finance Secretary Margarito Teves, meanwhile, said Lehman Brothers' financial troubles could stem investment flows to the Philippines but he said the problem would be "temporary."
"There could be some risk aversion towards emerging markets, including the Philippines, due to the financial troubles of Lehman Brothers which again shook the global financial markets, but we expect this to be temporary," Teves said.
"We hope that when the global markets finally smoothen out, investors would look at the Philippines favorably given the country's resilience and stronger macroeconomic fundamentals due to the fiscal and economic reforms that we have been undertaking," Teves said.
Lehman Brothers, a U.S. investment bank with a history of 158 years, has filed the largest bankruptcy in the United States as Merrill Lynch, another giant, was bought out by Bank of America.
Two Philippine banks set aside provisions for exposure to Lehman
www.chinaview.cn 2008-09-17 10:45:00
MANILA, Sept. 17 (Xinhua) -- The Philippines' two largest banks, Metropolitan Bank and Trust Co. and Banco de Oro, were setting aside provisions totaling 94.7 million US dollars to cover their exposure to the Lehman Brothers' collapse, reports said on Wednesday.
"Due to the uncertainty relating to the financial condition of Lehman Brothers, Banco de Oro Unibank Inc. is setting aside provisions totaling 3.8 billion pesos (80.7 million dollars) to cover its exposure to said entity," the No. 2 lender said in a disclosure to the Philippine Stock Exchange, citied by the Philippine Star.
Metrobank, the country's biggest bank in terms of assets, said it has "made provisions equivalent to 14 million dollars" for its direct bond exposure of 20.4 million dollars, according to the report.
Banco de Oro did not disclose the extent of its exposure to Lehman, only saying that its balance sheet should be "adequately covered from potential losses arising from its Lehman exposure."
The Philippine central bank BSP is ready to assist local banks that might get affected but there might be no need for such action because their exposure was small, said BSP governor Armando Tetangco.
"Our banks are benefiting from the banking reforms we've already made, particularly the increase in their capital," Tetangco said.
If things get worse, the BSP has a standing repurchase facility that troubled banks may tap to tide them over the current turmoil, said the governor.
"But its use is unlikely because there is enough liquidity in the system," Tetangco said.
"Nevertheless, we are monitoring the situation particularly for any other potential effects that may arise from recent events," he said.
The two leading banks both said they expect to be in the black at the end of the current calendar year.
Finance Secretary Margarito Teves, meanwhile, said Lehman Brothers' financial troubles could stem investment flows to the Philippines but he said the problem would be "temporary."
"There could be some risk aversion towards emerging markets, including the Philippines, due to the financial troubles of Lehman Brothers which again shook the global financial markets, but we expect this to be temporary," Teves said.
"We hope that when the global markets finally smoothen out, investors would look at the Philippines favorably given the country's resilience and stronger macroeconomic fundamentals due to the fiscal and economic reforms that we have been undertaking," Teves said.
Lehman Brothers, a U.S. investment bank with a history of 158 years, has filed the largest bankruptcy in the United States as Merrill Lynch, another giant, was bought out by Bank of America.
Tariq Ali: The American War Moves to Pakistan
Both Obama and McCain are onside about this. There seems to be no intelligent discussion of this issue at all in the mainstream US media as far as I have seen. This is a very serious extension of American power and threatens to create chaos in Pakistan. There is not the least concern for Pakistani sovereignty or even the effect these actions will have on a government that is already weak. Support for Zardari may quickly evaporate.
This article does not say much about US aid to the Pakistan military. This aid and dependence upon the U.S. may not be enough to prevent a turn away from the U.S. Russia or China may be willing to help fund the Pakistani military, especially Russia as it now seems more inclined to compete with rather than co-operate with the U.S. This is from antiwar.com.
The American War Moves to Pakistan
Bush's war widens dangerouslyby Tariq Ali
The decision to make public a presidential order of last July authorizing American strikes inside Pakistan without seeking the approval of the Pakistani government ends a long debate within, and on the periphery of, the Bush administration. Sen. Barack Obama, aware of this ongoing debate during his own long battle with Sen. Hillary Clinton, tried to outflank her by supporting a policy of U.S. strikes into Pakistan. Sen. John McCain and vice presidential candidate Sarah Palin have now echoed this view, and so it has become, by consensus, official U.S. policy.
Its effects on Pakistan could be catastrophic, creating a severe crisis within the army and in the country at large. The overwhelming majority of Pakistanis are opposed to the U.S. presence in the region, viewing it as the most serious threat to peace.
Why, then, has the U.S. decided to destabilize a crucial ally? Within Pakistan, some analysts argue that this is a carefully coordinated move to weaken the Pakistani state yet further by creating a crisis that extends way beyond the badlands on the frontier with Afghanistan. Its ultimate aim, they claim, would be the extraction of the Pakistani military's nuclear fangs. If this were the case, it would imply that Washington was indeed determined to break up the Pakistani state, since the country would very simply not survive a disaster on that scale.
In my view, however, the expansion of the war relates far more to the Bush administration's disastrous occupation in Afghanistan. It is hardly a secret that the regime of President Hamid Karzai is becoming more isolated with each passing day, as Taliban guerrillas move ever closer to Kabul.
When in doubt, escalate the war is an old imperial motto. The strikes against Pakistan represent – like the decisions of President Richard Nixon and his National Security Adviser Henry Kissinger to bomb and then invade Cambodia (acts that, in the end, empowered Pol Pot and his monsters) – a desperate bid to salvage a war that was never good, but has now gone badly wrong.
It is true that those resisting the NATO occupation cross the Pakistan-Afghan border with ease. However, the U.S. has often engaged in quiet negotiations with them. Several feelers have been put out to the Taliban in Pakistan, while U.S. intelligence experts regularly check into the Serena Hotel in Swat to discuss possibilities with Mullah Fazlullah, a local pro-Taliban leader. The same is true inside Afghanistan.
After the U.S. invasion of Afghanistan in 2001, a whole layer of the Taliban's middle-level leadership crossed the border into Pakistan to regroup and plan for what lay ahead. By 2003, their guerrilla factions were starting to harass the occupying forces in Afghanistan and, during 2004, they began to be joined by a new generation of local recruits, by no means all jihadists, who were being radicalized by the occupation itself.
Though, in the world of the Western media, the Taliban has been entirely conflated with al-Qaeda, most of their supporters are, in fact, driven by quite local concerns. If NATO and the U.S. were to leave Afghanistan, their political evolution would most likely parallel that of Pakistan's domesticated Islamists.
The neo-Taliban now control at least twenty Afghan districts in Kandahar, Helmand, and Uruzgan provinces. It is hardly a secret that many officials in these zones are closet supporters of the guerrilla fighters. Though often characterized as a rural jacquerie, they have won significant support in southern towns and they even led a Tet-style offensive in Kandahar in 2006. Elsewhere, mullahs who had initially supported President Karzai's allies are now railing against the foreigners and the government in Kabul. For the first time, calls for jihad against the occupation are even being heard in the non-Pashtun northeast border provinces of Takhar and Badakhshan.
The neo-Taliban have said that they will not join any government until "the foreigners" have left their country, which raises the question of the strategic aims of the United States. Is it the case, as NATO Secretary-General Jaap de Hoop Scheffer suggested to an audience at the Brookings Institution earlier this year, that the war in Afghanistan has little to do with spreading good governance in Afghanistan or even destroying the remnants of al-Qaeda? Is it part of a master plan, as outlined by a strategist in NATO Review in the Winter of 2005, to expand the focus of NATO from the Euro-Atlantic zone, because "in the 21st century NATO must become an alliance … designed to project systemic stability beyond its borders"?
As that strategist went on to write:
"The center of gravity of power on this planet is moving inexorably eastward. As it does, the nature of power itself is changing. The Asia-Pacific region brings much that is dynamic and positive to this world, but as yet the rapid change therein is neither stable nor embedded in stable institutions. Until this is achieved, it is the strategic responsibility of Europeans and North Americans, and the institutions they have built, to lead the way. … [S]ecurity effectiveness in such a world is impossible without both legitimacy and capability."
Such a strategy implies a permanent military presence on the borders of both China and Iran. Given that this is unacceptable to most Pakistanis and Afghans, it will only create a state of permanent mayhem in the region, resulting in ever more violence and terror, as well as heightened support for jihadi extremism, which, in turn, will but further stretch an already over-extended empire.
Globalizers often speak as though U.S. hegemony and the spread of capitalism were the same thing. This was certainly the case during the Cold War, but the twin aims of yesteryear now stand in something closer to an inverse relationship. For, in certain ways, it is the very spread of capitalism that is gradually eroding U.S. hegemony in the world. Russian Prime Minister Vladimir Putin's triumph in Georgia was a dramatic signal of this fact. The American push into the Greater Middle East in recent years, designed to demonstrate Washington's primacy over the Eurasian powers, has descended into remarkable chaos, necessitating support from the very powers it was meant to put on notice.
Pakistan's new, indirectly elected president, Asif Zardari, the husband of the assassinated Benazir Bhutto and a Pakistani "godfather" of the first order, indicated his support for U.S. strategy by inviting Afghanistan's Hamid Karzai to attend his inauguration, the only foreign leader to do so. Twinning himself with a discredited satrap in Kabul may have impressed some in Washington, but it only further decreased support for the widower Bhutto in his own country.
The key in Pakistan, as always, is the army. If the already heightened U.S. raids inside the country continue to escalate, the much-vaunted unity of the military High Command might come under real strain. At a meeting of corps commanders in Rawalpindi on Sept. 12, Pakistani Chief of Staff Gen. Ashfaq Kayani received unanimous support for his relatively mild public denunciation of the recent U.S. strikes inside Pakistan in which he said the country's borders and sovereignty would be defended "at all cost."
Saying, however, that the Army will safeguard the country's sovereignty is different from doing so in practice. This is the heart of the contradiction. Perhaps the attacks will cease on Nov. 4. Perhaps pigs (with or without lipstick) will fly. What is really required in the region is an American/NATO exit strategy from Afghanistan, which should entail a regional solution involving Pakistan, Iran, India, and Russia. These four states could guarantee a national government and massive social reconstruction in that country. No matter what, NATO and the Americans have failed abysmally.
Tariq Ali, writer, journalist, filmmaker, contributes regularly to a range of publications including the Guardian, the Nation, and the London Review of Books. His most recent book, just published, is The Duel: Pakistan on the Flight Path of American Power (Scribner, 2008). In a two-part video, released by TomDispatch.com, he offers critical commentary on Barack Obama's plans for Afghanistan and Pakistan, as well as on the tangled U.S.-Pakistani relationship.
Copyright 2008 Tariq Ali
This article does not say much about US aid to the Pakistan military. This aid and dependence upon the U.S. may not be enough to prevent a turn away from the U.S. Russia or China may be willing to help fund the Pakistani military, especially Russia as it now seems more inclined to compete with rather than co-operate with the U.S. This is from antiwar.com.
The American War Moves to Pakistan
Bush's war widens dangerouslyby Tariq Ali
The decision to make public a presidential order of last July authorizing American strikes inside Pakistan without seeking the approval of the Pakistani government ends a long debate within, and on the periphery of, the Bush administration. Sen. Barack Obama, aware of this ongoing debate during his own long battle with Sen. Hillary Clinton, tried to outflank her by supporting a policy of U.S. strikes into Pakistan. Sen. John McCain and vice presidential candidate Sarah Palin have now echoed this view, and so it has become, by consensus, official U.S. policy.
Its effects on Pakistan could be catastrophic, creating a severe crisis within the army and in the country at large. The overwhelming majority of Pakistanis are opposed to the U.S. presence in the region, viewing it as the most serious threat to peace.
Why, then, has the U.S. decided to destabilize a crucial ally? Within Pakistan, some analysts argue that this is a carefully coordinated move to weaken the Pakistani state yet further by creating a crisis that extends way beyond the badlands on the frontier with Afghanistan. Its ultimate aim, they claim, would be the extraction of the Pakistani military's nuclear fangs. If this were the case, it would imply that Washington was indeed determined to break up the Pakistani state, since the country would very simply not survive a disaster on that scale.
In my view, however, the expansion of the war relates far more to the Bush administration's disastrous occupation in Afghanistan. It is hardly a secret that the regime of President Hamid Karzai is becoming more isolated with each passing day, as Taliban guerrillas move ever closer to Kabul.
When in doubt, escalate the war is an old imperial motto. The strikes against Pakistan represent – like the decisions of President Richard Nixon and his National Security Adviser Henry Kissinger to bomb and then invade Cambodia (acts that, in the end, empowered Pol Pot and his monsters) – a desperate bid to salvage a war that was never good, but has now gone badly wrong.
It is true that those resisting the NATO occupation cross the Pakistan-Afghan border with ease. However, the U.S. has often engaged in quiet negotiations with them. Several feelers have been put out to the Taliban in Pakistan, while U.S. intelligence experts regularly check into the Serena Hotel in Swat to discuss possibilities with Mullah Fazlullah, a local pro-Taliban leader. The same is true inside Afghanistan.
After the U.S. invasion of Afghanistan in 2001, a whole layer of the Taliban's middle-level leadership crossed the border into Pakistan to regroup and plan for what lay ahead. By 2003, their guerrilla factions were starting to harass the occupying forces in Afghanistan and, during 2004, they began to be joined by a new generation of local recruits, by no means all jihadists, who were being radicalized by the occupation itself.
Though, in the world of the Western media, the Taliban has been entirely conflated with al-Qaeda, most of their supporters are, in fact, driven by quite local concerns. If NATO and the U.S. were to leave Afghanistan, their political evolution would most likely parallel that of Pakistan's domesticated Islamists.
The neo-Taliban now control at least twenty Afghan districts in Kandahar, Helmand, and Uruzgan provinces. It is hardly a secret that many officials in these zones are closet supporters of the guerrilla fighters. Though often characterized as a rural jacquerie, they have won significant support in southern towns and they even led a Tet-style offensive in Kandahar in 2006. Elsewhere, mullahs who had initially supported President Karzai's allies are now railing against the foreigners and the government in Kabul. For the first time, calls for jihad against the occupation are even being heard in the non-Pashtun northeast border provinces of Takhar and Badakhshan.
The neo-Taliban have said that they will not join any government until "the foreigners" have left their country, which raises the question of the strategic aims of the United States. Is it the case, as NATO Secretary-General Jaap de Hoop Scheffer suggested to an audience at the Brookings Institution earlier this year, that the war in Afghanistan has little to do with spreading good governance in Afghanistan or even destroying the remnants of al-Qaeda? Is it part of a master plan, as outlined by a strategist in NATO Review in the Winter of 2005, to expand the focus of NATO from the Euro-Atlantic zone, because "in the 21st century NATO must become an alliance … designed to project systemic stability beyond its borders"?
As that strategist went on to write:
"The center of gravity of power on this planet is moving inexorably eastward. As it does, the nature of power itself is changing. The Asia-Pacific region brings much that is dynamic and positive to this world, but as yet the rapid change therein is neither stable nor embedded in stable institutions. Until this is achieved, it is the strategic responsibility of Europeans and North Americans, and the institutions they have built, to lead the way. … [S]ecurity effectiveness in such a world is impossible without both legitimacy and capability."
Such a strategy implies a permanent military presence on the borders of both China and Iran. Given that this is unacceptable to most Pakistanis and Afghans, it will only create a state of permanent mayhem in the region, resulting in ever more violence and terror, as well as heightened support for jihadi extremism, which, in turn, will but further stretch an already over-extended empire.
Globalizers often speak as though U.S. hegemony and the spread of capitalism were the same thing. This was certainly the case during the Cold War, but the twin aims of yesteryear now stand in something closer to an inverse relationship. For, in certain ways, it is the very spread of capitalism that is gradually eroding U.S. hegemony in the world. Russian Prime Minister Vladimir Putin's triumph in Georgia was a dramatic signal of this fact. The American push into the Greater Middle East in recent years, designed to demonstrate Washington's primacy over the Eurasian powers, has descended into remarkable chaos, necessitating support from the very powers it was meant to put on notice.
Pakistan's new, indirectly elected president, Asif Zardari, the husband of the assassinated Benazir Bhutto and a Pakistani "godfather" of the first order, indicated his support for U.S. strategy by inviting Afghanistan's Hamid Karzai to attend his inauguration, the only foreign leader to do so. Twinning himself with a discredited satrap in Kabul may have impressed some in Washington, but it only further decreased support for the widower Bhutto in his own country.
The key in Pakistan, as always, is the army. If the already heightened U.S. raids inside the country continue to escalate, the much-vaunted unity of the military High Command might come under real strain. At a meeting of corps commanders in Rawalpindi on Sept. 12, Pakistani Chief of Staff Gen. Ashfaq Kayani received unanimous support for his relatively mild public denunciation of the recent U.S. strikes inside Pakistan in which he said the country's borders and sovereignty would be defended "at all cost."
Saying, however, that the Army will safeguard the country's sovereignty is different from doing so in practice. This is the heart of the contradiction. Perhaps the attacks will cease on Nov. 4. Perhaps pigs (with or without lipstick) will fly. What is really required in the region is an American/NATO exit strategy from Afghanistan, which should entail a regional solution involving Pakistan, Iran, India, and Russia. These four states could guarantee a national government and massive social reconstruction in that country. No matter what, NATO and the Americans have failed abysmally.
Tariq Ali, writer, journalist, filmmaker, contributes regularly to a range of publications including the Guardian, the Nation, and the London Review of Books. His most recent book, just published, is The Duel: Pakistan on the Flight Path of American Power (Scribner, 2008). In a two-part video, released by TomDispatch.com, he offers critical commentary on Barack Obama's plans for Afghanistan and Pakistan, as well as on the tangled U.S.-Pakistani relationship.
Copyright 2008 Tariq Ali
Tuesday, September 16, 2008
Krugman on the Financial Crisis and Lehman Bros.
Of course Lehman Bros is now in bankruptcy but Krugman provides a short succinct summary of the problems that gave rise to this continuing crisis. It seems that AIG is now teetering on the brink as well.
Financial Russian RouletteBy PAUL KRUGMAN15/09/08 "New York Times' -- - Will the U.S. financial system collapse today, or maybe over the next few days? I don’t think so — but I’m nowhere near certain. You see, Lehman Brothers, a major investment bank, is apparently about to go under. And nobody knows what will happen next.To understand the problem, you need to know that the old world of banking, in which institutions housed in big marble buildings accepted deposits and lent the money out to long-term clients, has largely vanished, replaced by what is widely called the “shadow banking system.” Depository banks, the guys in the marble buildings, now play only a minor role in channeling funds from savers to borrowers; most of the business of finance is carried out through complex deals arranged by “nondepository” institutions, institutions like the late lamented Bear Stearns — and Lehman.The new system was supposed to do a better job of spreading and reducing risk. But in the aftermath of the housing bust and the resulting mortgage crisis, it seems apparent that risk wasn’t so much reduced as hidden: all too many investors had no idea how exposed they were.And as the unknown unknowns have turned into known unknowns, the system has been experiencing postmodern bank runs. These don’t look like the old-fashioned version: with few exceptions, we’re not talking about mobs of distraught depositors pounding on closed bank doors. Instead, we’re talking about frantic phone calls and mouse clicks, as financial players pull credit lines and try to unwind counterparty risk. But the economic effects — a freezing up of credit, a downward spiral in asset values — are the same as those of the great bank runs of the 1930s.And here’s the thing: The defenses set up to prevent a return of those bank runs, mainly deposit insurance and access to credit lines with the Federal Reserve, only protect the guys in the marble buildings, who aren’t at the heart of the current crisis. That creates the real possibility that 2008 could be 1931 revisited.Now, policy makers are aware of the risks — before he was given responsibility for saving the world, Ben Bernanke was one of our leading experts on the economics of the Great Depression. So over the past year the Fed and the Treasury have orchestrated a series of ad hoc rescue plans. Special credit lines with unpronounceable acronyms were made available to nondepository institutions. The Fed and the Treasury brokered a deal that protected Bear’s counterparties — those on the other side of its deals — though not its stockholders. And just last week the Treasury seized control of Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac, the giant government-sponsored mortgage lenders.But the consequences of those rescues are making officials nervous. For one thing, they’re taking big risks with taxpayer money. For example, today much of the Fed’s portfolio is tied up in loans backed by dubious collateral. Also, officials are worried that their rescue efforts will encourage even more risky behavior in the future. After all, it’s starting to look as if the rule is heads you win, tails the taxpayers lose.Which brings us to Lehman, which has suffered large real-estate-related losses, and faces a crisis of confidence. Like many financial institutions, Lehman has a huge balance sheet — it owes vast sums, and is owed vast sums in return. Trying to liquidate that balance sheet quickly could lead to panic across the financial system. That’s why government officials and private bankers have spent the weekend huddled at the New York Fed, trying to put together a deal that would save Lehman, or at least let it fail more slowly.But Henry Paulson, the Treasury secretary, was adamant that he wouldn’t sweeten the deal by putting more public funds on the line. Many people thought he was bluffing. I was all ready to start today’s column, “When life hands you Lehman, make Lehman aid.” But there was no aid, and apparently no deal. Mr. Paulson seems to be betting that the financial system — bolstered, it must be said, by those special credit lines — can handle the shock of a Lehman failure. We’ll find out soon whether he was brave or foolish.The real answer to the current problem would, of course, have been to take preventive action before we reached this point. Even leaving aside the obvious need to regulate the shadow banking system — if institutions need to be rescued like banks, they should be regulated like banks — why were we so unprepared for this latest shock? When Bear went under, many people talked about the need for a mechanism for “orderly liquidation” of failing investment banks. Well, that was six months ago. Where’s the mechanism?And so here we are, with Mr. Paulson apparently feeling that playing Russian roulette with the U.S. financial system was his best option. Yikes.
Financial Russian RouletteBy PAUL KRUGMAN15/09/08 "New York Times' -- - Will the U.S. financial system collapse today, or maybe over the next few days? I don’t think so — but I’m nowhere near certain. You see, Lehman Brothers, a major investment bank, is apparently about to go under. And nobody knows what will happen next.To understand the problem, you need to know that the old world of banking, in which institutions housed in big marble buildings accepted deposits and lent the money out to long-term clients, has largely vanished, replaced by what is widely called the “shadow banking system.” Depository banks, the guys in the marble buildings, now play only a minor role in channeling funds from savers to borrowers; most of the business of finance is carried out through complex deals arranged by “nondepository” institutions, institutions like the late lamented Bear Stearns — and Lehman.The new system was supposed to do a better job of spreading and reducing risk. But in the aftermath of the housing bust and the resulting mortgage crisis, it seems apparent that risk wasn’t so much reduced as hidden: all too many investors had no idea how exposed they were.And as the unknown unknowns have turned into known unknowns, the system has been experiencing postmodern bank runs. These don’t look like the old-fashioned version: with few exceptions, we’re not talking about mobs of distraught depositors pounding on closed bank doors. Instead, we’re talking about frantic phone calls and mouse clicks, as financial players pull credit lines and try to unwind counterparty risk. But the economic effects — a freezing up of credit, a downward spiral in asset values — are the same as those of the great bank runs of the 1930s.And here’s the thing: The defenses set up to prevent a return of those bank runs, mainly deposit insurance and access to credit lines with the Federal Reserve, only protect the guys in the marble buildings, who aren’t at the heart of the current crisis. That creates the real possibility that 2008 could be 1931 revisited.Now, policy makers are aware of the risks — before he was given responsibility for saving the world, Ben Bernanke was one of our leading experts on the economics of the Great Depression. So over the past year the Fed and the Treasury have orchestrated a series of ad hoc rescue plans. Special credit lines with unpronounceable acronyms were made available to nondepository institutions. The Fed and the Treasury brokered a deal that protected Bear’s counterparties — those on the other side of its deals — though not its stockholders. And just last week the Treasury seized control of Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac, the giant government-sponsored mortgage lenders.But the consequences of those rescues are making officials nervous. For one thing, they’re taking big risks with taxpayer money. For example, today much of the Fed’s portfolio is tied up in loans backed by dubious collateral. Also, officials are worried that their rescue efforts will encourage even more risky behavior in the future. After all, it’s starting to look as if the rule is heads you win, tails the taxpayers lose.Which brings us to Lehman, which has suffered large real-estate-related losses, and faces a crisis of confidence. Like many financial institutions, Lehman has a huge balance sheet — it owes vast sums, and is owed vast sums in return. Trying to liquidate that balance sheet quickly could lead to panic across the financial system. That’s why government officials and private bankers have spent the weekend huddled at the New York Fed, trying to put together a deal that would save Lehman, or at least let it fail more slowly.But Henry Paulson, the Treasury secretary, was adamant that he wouldn’t sweeten the deal by putting more public funds on the line. Many people thought he was bluffing. I was all ready to start today’s column, “When life hands you Lehman, make Lehman aid.” But there was no aid, and apparently no deal. Mr. Paulson seems to be betting that the financial system — bolstered, it must be said, by those special credit lines — can handle the shock of a Lehman failure. We’ll find out soon whether he was brave or foolish.The real answer to the current problem would, of course, have been to take preventive action before we reached this point. Even leaving aside the obvious need to regulate the shadow banking system — if institutions need to be rescued like banks, they should be regulated like banks — why were we so unprepared for this latest shock? When Bear went under, many people talked about the need for a mechanism for “orderly liquidation” of failing investment banks. Well, that was six months ago. Where’s the mechanism?And so here we are, with Mr. Paulson apparently feeling that playing Russian roulette with the U.S. financial system was his best option. Yikes.
Bloom off the Rose in Georgia
This is from the American Conservative. via anti-war.com.
This is a bit different from the neo-conservative viewpoint! It is very critical of U.S. policy and gives a very unflattering picture of Georgian leaders and Georgia as a whole.
Bloom Off the Rose PDF
Georgian “democracy” owes more to Josef Stalin than Thomas Jefferson.
By John Laughland
It was when we lifted up the filthy bedcovers that we saw the full extent of the gangrene. Half the man’s leg was eaten away, and he screamed in agony. The women around him wailed too. There was no heating except for a puny electric cooking ring, which glowed dimly in the half-light. There was also no hope: neither this man nor any of his fellow refugees who were housed (if that is the right word) in a derelict building somewhere in the Georgian countryside had seen a doctor for months. Their food deliveries were sporadic. He would die within a matter of weeks.
This was Georgia in 1999, the year the country joined the Council of Europe, the continent’s main human-rights body. To become a member, countries have to demonstrate that they have democratic governments and the rule of law. Georgia has plenty of these things on paper, but the trappings of Western progress are almost entirely absent. Ordinary Georgians live without electricity or heating for most of the day, in conditions of unimaginable poverty. Yet the country counts as pro-Western because it has been the focus for Western expansionism ever since the end of the Soviet Union, supported to the hilt by Republicans and Democrats alike.
The wretches who were dying for lack of medical treatment were Georgians who had fled the separatist region of Abkhazia during the first war fought there in 1992. Because of its geopolitical importance as a Black Sea state on Russia’s border and because it is a transit country for the pipeline bringing Caspian crude to the West, Georgia had by then received countless millions in aid for these refugees and for democracy-building and civil-society projects. But the aid had been stolen and the refugees were left to rot.
Welcome to the country that the West holds up as a beacon of freedom, especially after the recent conflict between the Russian and Georgian armies over the other separatist region of South Ossetia. After the First World War, the Russian empire having collapsed into civil war, the great British geopolitician and strategist Sir Halford Mackinder traveled to Georgia as British High Commissioner to Southern Russia on behalf of the foreign secretary, Lord Curzon. He forced the White Russian commander, General Denikin, to promise Georgia and its neighbors independence because the British wanted to control the Baku-Batumi railway bringing oil from the Caspian to the Black Sea. Following the collapse of the Soviet Union in 1991, the West reacted in exactly the same way toward the Caucasus, and for the same reasons: Mackinder’s American disciples have been focused on Georgia for years as a strategic forward point against Russia and because it is the main transit country for the Western-built Baku-Tbilisi-Ceyhan oil pipeline.
Yet Georgia is not only the country that gave the world Stalin and his most violent henchmen, notably Lavrenti Beria and Grigory Ordzhonokidze. It is a country whose current first lady proclaimed that her husband was a worthy inheritor of those brutes. In 2004, Sandra Roeloffs, the Dutch wife of pro-American president Mikheil Saakashvili, told a newspaper in her home country, “Georgia has produced strong leaders: Stalin, Beria, Gamsakhurdia [the post-Soviet leader], even Shevardnadze before he became addicted to power. They looked further than Georgia alone. My husband does the same. He fits in the tradition. This country needs a strong hand. It is extremely important that respect for authority returns. I think my husband is the right person to frighten people.”
Georgia certainly has a reputation for brutality. Following Russia’s descent into anarchy under Boris Yeltsin during the 1990s, Russian mafia godfathers typically used thugs from the Caucasus for their protection rackets and as business partners. “Georgian” and “Caucasian” now have the same resonance for people in Russia as “Sicilian” used to have for Europeans and Americans—the very epitome of violent clannishness and ruthless gangsterism. Indeed, the West’s cultivation of mafia states like Georgia and Kosovo recalls the alliance the Americans concluded during the Second World War with organized crime in Sicily in order to fight Mussolini. The look cultivated by most Georgian men—five o’clock shadow and a black leather jacket—does little to correct the caricature.
The country’s political history in the 17 years since the collapse of the USSR has been almost exclusively violent. The Georgian nationalist Zviad Gamsakhurdia was overthrown in 1992 after a civil war with the two separatist regions. He was replaced by James Baker’s old friend Eduard Shevardnadze, the former Soviet foreign minister and long-time Communist Party boss in Georgia, who returned to his native land after the collapse of the USSR to take up his old job. Shevardnadze was showered with praise by Western leaders, Left and Right alike, up until the moment when he was overthrown in the Western-orchestrated “Rose Revolution” at the end of 2003, after which he was denounced as a corrupt dictator.
More Western praise was immediately lavished on the new tough man in Tbilisi when he was confirmed in office after winning over 95 percent of the vote in the presidential election, a tally of which Saddam Hussein would have been proud. This applause came in spite of the fact that Saakashvili obviously had a penchant for violence. On Jan. 12, 2004, shortly after the Rose Revolution but before he officially became president, Saakashvili said that he had given orders to the police to open fire on any prisoners who started disturbances. He also said, “We shall liquidate all bandits, as a class.” Later that year, in August, he announced that he had given orders to his navy to shoot at all ships that violated Georgia’s territorial waters, including cruise ships carrying tourists to Abkhazia. (The Black Sea is a popular holiday destination for Russians.)
As soon as he seized power, Saakashvili’s regime unleashed an orgy of arrests of officials. In the name of that old Communist chestnut, an “anti-corruption campaign,” hundreds were rounded up. For months, Georgians were treated daily to live broadcasts of ministers, officials, and judges being bundled into police cars in the middle of the night. No doubt some Georgians relished the sight of the mighty falling, but many probably feared that one day they might get the 3 a.m. knock on the door themselves.
This was all lapped up by Saakashvili’s cheerleaders in the Western media. The Georgian president has indeed achieved extraordinary success in presenting his fiefdom as a Jeffersonian paradise. This is partly due to Georgia’s use of operatives in Washington, such as John McCain’s foreign-policy adviser Randy Scheunemann, and a PR firm in Brussels. But more importantly, it is the result of a virulent form of Western self-delusion. Faced with seemingly intractable domestic problems, in which different political actors have to be balanced, Western states like to indulge in occasional but dangerous flights of foreign-policy escapism. We imagine that we can free subject peoples with our bombs. The image of a victim nation has now become an easy psychological trigger that can be applied indiscriminately to Bosnian Muslims, Iraqis, and now Georgians. These unknown peoples and nations are but a blank screen on which we project our fantasies. Our image of them says much more about us that it does about reality.
One prominent BBC reporter, for example, lauded the Georgian officials in leather jackets as “the most photogenic government in the world” and gasped at the dynamism of the new chief prosecutor, Irakli Okruashvili, and at the way ordinary citizens were invited to register denunciations on the “corruption hotline.” This was true “people power” in action, he enthused—evidently unaware of the Stalinist resonance of what he was describing.
Silence, not enthusiasm, was the reaction, however, when the wheel of fortune turned three years later and Okruashvili fell out with Saakashvili and started up his own opposition party. On Sept. 25, 2007, Okruashvili told a press conference, “The style of Saakashvili’s governance, which has gone beyond the limits, has made dishonesty, injustice and oppression a way of life. Everyday repression, demolition of houses and churches, robbery, ‘kulakization,’ and murders, I would stress, murders, have become common practice for the authorities.”
Okruashvili specifically alleged that Saakashvili had told him to get rid of Badri Patarkatsishvili, a Georgian-Jewish millionaire tycoon living in England, “the way it happened to Rafik Hariri.” Patarkatsishvili was a media baron who initially supported Saakashvili’s regime—notably through his TV channel, which he ran in joint venture with Rupert Murdoch—but who later became disillusioned following the death in suspicious circumstances of the prime minister, Zurab Zhvania in 2005. Okruashvili also suggested that Zhvania had been the victim of a politically motivated murder.
The government’s response to Okruashvili’s press conference and bid for political power was to throw him into the central prison in Tbilisi. By Oct. 8, he had recanted. A videotape of his interrogation was broadcast on TV. Okruashvili, visibly distressed and sinking into long pauses, accused himself of the crimes of extortion and racketeering that had been used to arrest him, exactly as the defendants at the Moscow show trials in the 1930s did. He denied each of the original accusations he had made on Sept. 25 and claimed that he had made them purely for personal political gain. He had evidently been tortured.
It did not take long for the political situation in the country to spiral out of control. Okruashvili’s arrest caused large demonstrations against the Saakashvili government in early November. Vast numbers of heavily armed police were deployed to crush the revolt, and the demonstrators were severely beaten. Even though TV shots of this were broadcast on CNN, Saakashvili continued to be lauded as a democrat. The regime proclaimed a state of emergency, the government was reshuffled, and new presidential and parliamentary elections were held in January and May, in the latter case on the basis of a hastily rejiggered electoral law. Even the normally supine Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe, whose support for Georgian brutality since 1992 has been wicked, had to admit that both campaigns were marred by widespread intimidation, violence, and ballot-stuffing. Saakashvili was re-elected by 53.5 percent, just enough to ensure that there was no second round. And Badri Patarkatsishvili did indeed die of sudden heart failure on Feb. 12, aged 52, as Okruashvili had predicted, after leaving a meeting with a prominent Russian oligarch living in London and his lawyer, Tony Blair’s former attorney general. (The police initially treated his death as suspicious, but in the end no prosecutions were brought.)
It was against this background of rising political instability and plummeting political fortunes that Mikheil Saakashvili launched his midnight onslaught on South Ossetia on Aug. 7. He evidently thought, like the Argentine generals who invaded the Falkland Islands in 1983, that a short war of national liberation would boost his flagging support. He miscalculated. Dick Cheney may have flown to Tbilisi to promise again that Georgia will soon join NATO in spite of the defeat and to commit forces to restoring Georgia’s territorial integrity, but Cheney will be out of a job by next January and so his promises are not worth much. And judging by the swiftness with which political justice is executed in Georgia, Saakashvili—who has probably now caused Georgia to lose her two secessionist regions forever—may soon follow him into early retirement, or worse.
__________________________________________
John Laughland is director of studies at the Institute of Democracy and Cooperation in Paris. His latest book is A History of Political Trials From Charles I to Saddam Hussein.
This is a bit different from the neo-conservative viewpoint! It is very critical of U.S. policy and gives a very unflattering picture of Georgian leaders and Georgia as a whole.
Bloom Off the Rose PDF
Georgian “democracy” owes more to Josef Stalin than Thomas Jefferson.
By John Laughland
It was when we lifted up the filthy bedcovers that we saw the full extent of the gangrene. Half the man’s leg was eaten away, and he screamed in agony. The women around him wailed too. There was no heating except for a puny electric cooking ring, which glowed dimly in the half-light. There was also no hope: neither this man nor any of his fellow refugees who were housed (if that is the right word) in a derelict building somewhere in the Georgian countryside had seen a doctor for months. Their food deliveries were sporadic. He would die within a matter of weeks.
This was Georgia in 1999, the year the country joined the Council of Europe, the continent’s main human-rights body. To become a member, countries have to demonstrate that they have democratic governments and the rule of law. Georgia has plenty of these things on paper, but the trappings of Western progress are almost entirely absent. Ordinary Georgians live without electricity or heating for most of the day, in conditions of unimaginable poverty. Yet the country counts as pro-Western because it has been the focus for Western expansionism ever since the end of the Soviet Union, supported to the hilt by Republicans and Democrats alike.
The wretches who were dying for lack of medical treatment were Georgians who had fled the separatist region of Abkhazia during the first war fought there in 1992. Because of its geopolitical importance as a Black Sea state on Russia’s border and because it is a transit country for the pipeline bringing Caspian crude to the West, Georgia had by then received countless millions in aid for these refugees and for democracy-building and civil-society projects. But the aid had been stolen and the refugees were left to rot.
Welcome to the country that the West holds up as a beacon of freedom, especially after the recent conflict between the Russian and Georgian armies over the other separatist region of South Ossetia. After the First World War, the Russian empire having collapsed into civil war, the great British geopolitician and strategist Sir Halford Mackinder traveled to Georgia as British High Commissioner to Southern Russia on behalf of the foreign secretary, Lord Curzon. He forced the White Russian commander, General Denikin, to promise Georgia and its neighbors independence because the British wanted to control the Baku-Batumi railway bringing oil from the Caspian to the Black Sea. Following the collapse of the Soviet Union in 1991, the West reacted in exactly the same way toward the Caucasus, and for the same reasons: Mackinder’s American disciples have been focused on Georgia for years as a strategic forward point against Russia and because it is the main transit country for the Western-built Baku-Tbilisi-Ceyhan oil pipeline.
Yet Georgia is not only the country that gave the world Stalin and his most violent henchmen, notably Lavrenti Beria and Grigory Ordzhonokidze. It is a country whose current first lady proclaimed that her husband was a worthy inheritor of those brutes. In 2004, Sandra Roeloffs, the Dutch wife of pro-American president Mikheil Saakashvili, told a newspaper in her home country, “Georgia has produced strong leaders: Stalin, Beria, Gamsakhurdia [the post-Soviet leader], even Shevardnadze before he became addicted to power. They looked further than Georgia alone. My husband does the same. He fits in the tradition. This country needs a strong hand. It is extremely important that respect for authority returns. I think my husband is the right person to frighten people.”
Georgia certainly has a reputation for brutality. Following Russia’s descent into anarchy under Boris Yeltsin during the 1990s, Russian mafia godfathers typically used thugs from the Caucasus for their protection rackets and as business partners. “Georgian” and “Caucasian” now have the same resonance for people in Russia as “Sicilian” used to have for Europeans and Americans—the very epitome of violent clannishness and ruthless gangsterism. Indeed, the West’s cultivation of mafia states like Georgia and Kosovo recalls the alliance the Americans concluded during the Second World War with organized crime in Sicily in order to fight Mussolini. The look cultivated by most Georgian men—five o’clock shadow and a black leather jacket—does little to correct the caricature.
The country’s political history in the 17 years since the collapse of the USSR has been almost exclusively violent. The Georgian nationalist Zviad Gamsakhurdia was overthrown in 1992 after a civil war with the two separatist regions. He was replaced by James Baker’s old friend Eduard Shevardnadze, the former Soviet foreign minister and long-time Communist Party boss in Georgia, who returned to his native land after the collapse of the USSR to take up his old job. Shevardnadze was showered with praise by Western leaders, Left and Right alike, up until the moment when he was overthrown in the Western-orchestrated “Rose Revolution” at the end of 2003, after which he was denounced as a corrupt dictator.
More Western praise was immediately lavished on the new tough man in Tbilisi when he was confirmed in office after winning over 95 percent of the vote in the presidential election, a tally of which Saddam Hussein would have been proud. This applause came in spite of the fact that Saakashvili obviously had a penchant for violence. On Jan. 12, 2004, shortly after the Rose Revolution but before he officially became president, Saakashvili said that he had given orders to the police to open fire on any prisoners who started disturbances. He also said, “We shall liquidate all bandits, as a class.” Later that year, in August, he announced that he had given orders to his navy to shoot at all ships that violated Georgia’s territorial waters, including cruise ships carrying tourists to Abkhazia. (The Black Sea is a popular holiday destination for Russians.)
As soon as he seized power, Saakashvili’s regime unleashed an orgy of arrests of officials. In the name of that old Communist chestnut, an “anti-corruption campaign,” hundreds were rounded up. For months, Georgians were treated daily to live broadcasts of ministers, officials, and judges being bundled into police cars in the middle of the night. No doubt some Georgians relished the sight of the mighty falling, but many probably feared that one day they might get the 3 a.m. knock on the door themselves.
This was all lapped up by Saakashvili’s cheerleaders in the Western media. The Georgian president has indeed achieved extraordinary success in presenting his fiefdom as a Jeffersonian paradise. This is partly due to Georgia’s use of operatives in Washington, such as John McCain’s foreign-policy adviser Randy Scheunemann, and a PR firm in Brussels. But more importantly, it is the result of a virulent form of Western self-delusion. Faced with seemingly intractable domestic problems, in which different political actors have to be balanced, Western states like to indulge in occasional but dangerous flights of foreign-policy escapism. We imagine that we can free subject peoples with our bombs. The image of a victim nation has now become an easy psychological trigger that can be applied indiscriminately to Bosnian Muslims, Iraqis, and now Georgians. These unknown peoples and nations are but a blank screen on which we project our fantasies. Our image of them says much more about us that it does about reality.
One prominent BBC reporter, for example, lauded the Georgian officials in leather jackets as “the most photogenic government in the world” and gasped at the dynamism of the new chief prosecutor, Irakli Okruashvili, and at the way ordinary citizens were invited to register denunciations on the “corruption hotline.” This was true “people power” in action, he enthused—evidently unaware of the Stalinist resonance of what he was describing.
Silence, not enthusiasm, was the reaction, however, when the wheel of fortune turned three years later and Okruashvili fell out with Saakashvili and started up his own opposition party. On Sept. 25, 2007, Okruashvili told a press conference, “The style of Saakashvili’s governance, which has gone beyond the limits, has made dishonesty, injustice and oppression a way of life. Everyday repression, demolition of houses and churches, robbery, ‘kulakization,’ and murders, I would stress, murders, have become common practice for the authorities.”
Okruashvili specifically alleged that Saakashvili had told him to get rid of Badri Patarkatsishvili, a Georgian-Jewish millionaire tycoon living in England, “the way it happened to Rafik Hariri.” Patarkatsishvili was a media baron who initially supported Saakashvili’s regime—notably through his TV channel, which he ran in joint venture with Rupert Murdoch—but who later became disillusioned following the death in suspicious circumstances of the prime minister, Zurab Zhvania in 2005. Okruashvili also suggested that Zhvania had been the victim of a politically motivated murder.
The government’s response to Okruashvili’s press conference and bid for political power was to throw him into the central prison in Tbilisi. By Oct. 8, he had recanted. A videotape of his interrogation was broadcast on TV. Okruashvili, visibly distressed and sinking into long pauses, accused himself of the crimes of extortion and racketeering that had been used to arrest him, exactly as the defendants at the Moscow show trials in the 1930s did. He denied each of the original accusations he had made on Sept. 25 and claimed that he had made them purely for personal political gain. He had evidently been tortured.
It did not take long for the political situation in the country to spiral out of control. Okruashvili’s arrest caused large demonstrations against the Saakashvili government in early November. Vast numbers of heavily armed police were deployed to crush the revolt, and the demonstrators were severely beaten. Even though TV shots of this were broadcast on CNN, Saakashvili continued to be lauded as a democrat. The regime proclaimed a state of emergency, the government was reshuffled, and new presidential and parliamentary elections were held in January and May, in the latter case on the basis of a hastily rejiggered electoral law. Even the normally supine Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe, whose support for Georgian brutality since 1992 has been wicked, had to admit that both campaigns were marred by widespread intimidation, violence, and ballot-stuffing. Saakashvili was re-elected by 53.5 percent, just enough to ensure that there was no second round. And Badri Patarkatsishvili did indeed die of sudden heart failure on Feb. 12, aged 52, as Okruashvili had predicted, after leaving a meeting with a prominent Russian oligarch living in London and his lawyer, Tony Blair’s former attorney general. (The police initially treated his death as suspicious, but in the end no prosecutions were brought.)
It was against this background of rising political instability and plummeting political fortunes that Mikheil Saakashvili launched his midnight onslaught on South Ossetia on Aug. 7. He evidently thought, like the Argentine generals who invaded the Falkland Islands in 1983, that a short war of national liberation would boost his flagging support. He miscalculated. Dick Cheney may have flown to Tbilisi to promise again that Georgia will soon join NATO in spite of the defeat and to commit forces to restoring Georgia’s territorial integrity, but Cheney will be out of a job by next January and so his promises are not worth much. And judging by the swiftness with which political justice is executed in Georgia, Saakashvili—who has probably now caused Georgia to lose her two secessionist regions forever—may soon follow him into early retirement, or worse.
__________________________________________
John Laughland is director of studies at the Institute of Democracy and Cooperation in Paris. His latest book is A History of Political Trials From Charles I to Saddam Hussein.
Raids into Pakistan: What U.S. Authority
Pakistan has suffered much more than the U.S. from the effects of terrorism and continues to do so. Pakistan is also supposedly an ally of the U.S. in the war against terror and receives large amounts of military aid. Surely if the U.S. expects continued co-operation it would not unilaterally attack within Pakistan borders without Pakistani permission. The Bush doctrine is a recipe for unilateral intervention and violation of basic norms for international peace. The attacks in Pakistan make little sense even in terms of the basic doctrine enunciated by Bush since Pakistan certainly has been battling against terrorists within its own borders. What Bush requires of Pakistan is not just fighting terrorism but fighting it to a degree that satisfied Bush even if that should mean civil war and be against the advice of US intelligence reports.
THis is from the CSMonitor.
Raids into Pakistan: What U.S. authority?
Bush's orders to send special forces after Taliban militants have roots in previous presidencies.
By Howard LaFranchi Staff writer of The Christian Science Monitor
from the September 15, 2008 edition
WASHINGTON - Orders President Bush signed in July authorizing raids by special operations forces in the areas of Pakistan controlled by the Taliban and Al Qaeda and undertaking those raids without official Pakistani consent, have roots stretching back to the days following the 9/11 terrorist attacks.
In an address to a joint session of Congress nine days after 9/11, President Bush said, "From this day forward any nation that continues to harbor or support terrorism will be regarded by the United States as a hostile regime."
But even before that declaration, two key steps had been taken: One, Congress had authorized the use of US military force against terrorist organizations and the countries that harbor or support them. Two, Bush administration officials had warned Pakistan's leaders of the dire consequences their country would face if they did not unequivocally enlist in the fight against radical Islamist terrorism.
What Mr. Bush's July orders signify is that, after seven years of encouraging Pakistan to take on extremists harbored in remote areas along its border with Afghanistan and subsidizing the Pakistani military handsomely to do it, the US has become convinced that Pakistan is neither able nor willing to fight the entrenched Taliban and Al Qaeda elements. Indeed, recent events appear to have convinced at least some in the administration that parts of Pakistan's military and powerful intelligence service are actually aiding the extremists.
"We've moved beyond the message stage here. I think the US has had it with messages that don't get any action, and that is why the president authorized this," says Kamran Bokhari, director of Middle East analysis for Stratfor, an intelligence consulting firm in Washington. "This says loud and clear, 'We're fed up.' "
Even before the July order, the US had undertaken covert operations in Pakistan's tribal areas. Moreover, the CIA over the past year has stepped up missile attacks by the unmanned Predator drones it operates to hit targets in the region. That increase has coincided with a deterioration of the war in Afghanistan, where the Afghan Army and NATO forces have come under increasing attack from militants crossing over the rugged and lawless border from Pakistan.
But Bush's orders, first reported in The New York Times Thursday, mean that operations against insurgent sanctuaries will become overt and probably more frequent. A Sept. 3 ground assault involving US commandos dropped from helicopters targeted a suspected terrorist compound. Missile attacks by the CIA's unmanned drones, including one Friday reported by Pakistani officials to have killed at last 12 people, are also on the rise.
Precedence for the orders authorizing the attacks on terrorist havens can be found in President Bill Clinton's authorization of retaliatory attacks in 1993 (against Iraqi intelligence facilities) and in 1998 (against terrorist camps in Afghanistan and Sudan), and in President Ronald Reagan's bombing of Libya, legal scholars say.
The administration has debated the use of commando raids in Pakistan for years, but the tipping point came in July, as relations with Pakistan's civilian and military leaders deteriorated, intelligence sources say. The "kicker," according to one source who requested anonymity over the sensitivity of the issue, was two July events: the bombing of India's embassy in Afghanistan's capital, Kabul, an act that US intelligence officials concluded was aided by Pakistani intelligence operatives; and a July 13 attack on a US military outpost in eastern Afghanistan that killed nine US soldiers. The outpost attack was carried out by Taliban militants who had crossed over the nearby border from Pakistan.
The evolution of operations in Pakistan from covert to overt actions is reminiscent of a trajectory followed in some aspects by the Vietnam War, some analysts note.
Patrick Lang, a former Middle East analyst for the Defense Intelligence Agency, says the evolution in Pakistan is similar to what occurred in Cambodia during the Vietnam War, when US operations against Vietcong sanctuaries there were initially covered up.
"We initially crossed into Cambodia as covert forces, but that changed," says Mr. Lang, who was part of special forces that carried out the Cambodia operations. By 1970, cross-border operations against enemy sanctuaries were being carried out in the open. Looking at the evolution in operations in Pakistan, the national security analyst says, "We are letting [Pakistanis] know this could evolve into bigger things."
Adds the intelligence source who requested anonymity, "The message is to the new civilian leadership and the military, 'We have bought all these toys for you – if you don't use them and do things in these areas that are causing us problems, we'll do them for you.' "
The new orders reflect flagging confidence in Pakistan's civilian and military leadership to address the problem of the Taliban and terrorist havens, which are thought to harbor Al Qaeda leader Osama bin Laden and his deputy, Ayman al-Zawahiri. For seven years the Bush administration focused its Pakistan policy on President Pervez Musharraf and his assurances that he was battling the militant sanctuaries. But Mr. Musharraf was forced to resign last month after suffering a crushing electoral defeat earlier in the year, and the US appears to have little confidence in the new civilian and military leaders.
"Musharraf was a one-stop shopping center for US relations with Pakistan, but that no longer exists," says Stratfor's Mr. Bokhari. Senior State Department officials have met with Pakistan's new civilian leaders, he notes, while top Pentagon officials have met with the military leadership including Army chief of staff Gen. Ashraf Parvez Kayani, the top military commander.
"The sense I get is they were given the runaround, and they came away from all these meetings convinced the leadership structure has become much more complex at a time when the Taliban are becoming stronger and the situation in Afghanistan is deteriorating," Bokhari says. "The feeling was the US couldn't sit by and see how the leadership sorts itself out."
Bush's orders authorizing cross-border incursions into Pakistan mean in a sense that the rules governing US special operations have shifted from yellow to green. The military will no longer need a presidential "finding" for each operation – and that, military analysts say, means the handling of forays into Pakistan will fall increasingly into military rather than CIA hands.
That has some intelligence officials worried that the consequences of stepped-up US operations in Pakistan – in terms of Pakistani public opinion and the stability of the government – will get short shrift. According to intelligence sources, officials from the National Intelligence Council recently briefed the Bush administration's national security team on the potentially dire consequences of US actions that could destabilize the government of a country with nuclear weapons.
Find this article at: http://www.csmonitor.com/2008/0915/p02s01-uspo.html
THis is from the CSMonitor.
Raids into Pakistan: What U.S. authority?
Bush's orders to send special forces after Taliban militants have roots in previous presidencies.
By Howard LaFranchi Staff writer of The Christian Science Monitor
from the September 15, 2008 edition
WASHINGTON - Orders President Bush signed in July authorizing raids by special operations forces in the areas of Pakistan controlled by the Taliban and Al Qaeda and undertaking those raids without official Pakistani consent, have roots stretching back to the days following the 9/11 terrorist attacks.
In an address to a joint session of Congress nine days after 9/11, President Bush said, "From this day forward any nation that continues to harbor or support terrorism will be regarded by the United States as a hostile regime."
But even before that declaration, two key steps had been taken: One, Congress had authorized the use of US military force against terrorist organizations and the countries that harbor or support them. Two, Bush administration officials had warned Pakistan's leaders of the dire consequences their country would face if they did not unequivocally enlist in the fight against radical Islamist terrorism.
What Mr. Bush's July orders signify is that, after seven years of encouraging Pakistan to take on extremists harbored in remote areas along its border with Afghanistan and subsidizing the Pakistani military handsomely to do it, the US has become convinced that Pakistan is neither able nor willing to fight the entrenched Taliban and Al Qaeda elements. Indeed, recent events appear to have convinced at least some in the administration that parts of Pakistan's military and powerful intelligence service are actually aiding the extremists.
"We've moved beyond the message stage here. I think the US has had it with messages that don't get any action, and that is why the president authorized this," says Kamran Bokhari, director of Middle East analysis for Stratfor, an intelligence consulting firm in Washington. "This says loud and clear, 'We're fed up.' "
Even before the July order, the US had undertaken covert operations in Pakistan's tribal areas. Moreover, the CIA over the past year has stepped up missile attacks by the unmanned Predator drones it operates to hit targets in the region. That increase has coincided with a deterioration of the war in Afghanistan, where the Afghan Army and NATO forces have come under increasing attack from militants crossing over the rugged and lawless border from Pakistan.
But Bush's orders, first reported in The New York Times Thursday, mean that operations against insurgent sanctuaries will become overt and probably more frequent. A Sept. 3 ground assault involving US commandos dropped from helicopters targeted a suspected terrorist compound. Missile attacks by the CIA's unmanned drones, including one Friday reported by Pakistani officials to have killed at last 12 people, are also on the rise.
Precedence for the orders authorizing the attacks on terrorist havens can be found in President Bill Clinton's authorization of retaliatory attacks in 1993 (against Iraqi intelligence facilities) and in 1998 (against terrorist camps in Afghanistan and Sudan), and in President Ronald Reagan's bombing of Libya, legal scholars say.
The administration has debated the use of commando raids in Pakistan for years, but the tipping point came in July, as relations with Pakistan's civilian and military leaders deteriorated, intelligence sources say. The "kicker," according to one source who requested anonymity over the sensitivity of the issue, was two July events: the bombing of India's embassy in Afghanistan's capital, Kabul, an act that US intelligence officials concluded was aided by Pakistani intelligence operatives; and a July 13 attack on a US military outpost in eastern Afghanistan that killed nine US soldiers. The outpost attack was carried out by Taliban militants who had crossed over the nearby border from Pakistan.
The evolution of operations in Pakistan from covert to overt actions is reminiscent of a trajectory followed in some aspects by the Vietnam War, some analysts note.
Patrick Lang, a former Middle East analyst for the Defense Intelligence Agency, says the evolution in Pakistan is similar to what occurred in Cambodia during the Vietnam War, when US operations against Vietcong sanctuaries there were initially covered up.
"We initially crossed into Cambodia as covert forces, but that changed," says Mr. Lang, who was part of special forces that carried out the Cambodia operations. By 1970, cross-border operations against enemy sanctuaries were being carried out in the open. Looking at the evolution in operations in Pakistan, the national security analyst says, "We are letting [Pakistanis] know this could evolve into bigger things."
Adds the intelligence source who requested anonymity, "The message is to the new civilian leadership and the military, 'We have bought all these toys for you – if you don't use them and do things in these areas that are causing us problems, we'll do them for you.' "
The new orders reflect flagging confidence in Pakistan's civilian and military leadership to address the problem of the Taliban and terrorist havens, which are thought to harbor Al Qaeda leader Osama bin Laden and his deputy, Ayman al-Zawahiri. For seven years the Bush administration focused its Pakistan policy on President Pervez Musharraf and his assurances that he was battling the militant sanctuaries. But Mr. Musharraf was forced to resign last month after suffering a crushing electoral defeat earlier in the year, and the US appears to have little confidence in the new civilian and military leaders.
"Musharraf was a one-stop shopping center for US relations with Pakistan, but that no longer exists," says Stratfor's Mr. Bokhari. Senior State Department officials have met with Pakistan's new civilian leaders, he notes, while top Pentagon officials have met with the military leadership including Army chief of staff Gen. Ashraf Parvez Kayani, the top military commander.
"The sense I get is they were given the runaround, and they came away from all these meetings convinced the leadership structure has become much more complex at a time when the Taliban are becoming stronger and the situation in Afghanistan is deteriorating," Bokhari says. "The feeling was the US couldn't sit by and see how the leadership sorts itself out."
Bush's orders authorizing cross-border incursions into Pakistan mean in a sense that the rules governing US special operations have shifted from yellow to green. The military will no longer need a presidential "finding" for each operation – and that, military analysts say, means the handling of forays into Pakistan will fall increasingly into military rather than CIA hands.
That has some intelligence officials worried that the consequences of stepped-up US operations in Pakistan – in terms of Pakistani public opinion and the stability of the government – will get short shrift. According to intelligence sources, officials from the National Intelligence Council recently briefed the Bush administration's national security team on the potentially dire consequences of US actions that could destabilize the government of a country with nuclear weapons.
Find this article at: http://www.csmonitor.com/2008/0915/p02s01-uspo.html
Monday, September 15, 2008
Eric Margolis: Zardari is the New Musharraf
Zardari probably will not last long. Pakistan may even face civil war. Margolis does not mention that even the US intelligence community warned against these raids. Zardari is corrupt as can be and did not keep his promise to restore all the justices resulting in the departure of Shariz from the coalition government. By signing a nuclear deal with India the U.S. is also alienating Pakistan. Should the U.S. further show its displeasure with Pakistan by cutting off aid no doubt China, Iran, and Russia are waiting in the wings to establish better ties with Pakistan. Discussion of what is happening in the U.S. seems almost nil.
Zardari is the New MusharrafBy Eric S. Margolis 15/09/08 "Khaleej Times" -- - The US has been in a bizarre state of semi-war against its ‘ally’ Pakistan for months, launching covert ground and air raids into its territory while claiming to be a close ally of Islamabad in the so-called war on terror.This week, it was revealed that President George Bush has given the Pentagon the green light to launch major ground attacks inside Pakistan’s tribal territory.Pakistan, first under the US-backed dictator Pervez Musharraf, and now the new, US-backed president, Asif Zardari, has been put in the impossible position of waging a small war at the behest of Washington against its own pro-Taleban Pashtun tribesmen in the frontier zones known as FATA (Federally Administered Tribal Areas) that is bitterly opposed by most Pakistanis and regarded by many as treasonous.Zardari, the widower of the late Benazir Bhutto, is inheriting this dangerous problem and a host of other ones. Pakistan is almost bankrupt, with less than eight weeks of hard currency reserves to pay for vital imports of food and fuel. Half of Pakistan’s 165 million people live on less than $2 daily.Financial and political support from Washington helped engineer Zardari into power. He has been put in charge of the millions a month in overt and secret cash flow from Washington — $11.2 billion officially since 2001 — that Musharraf used to buy influence. Contrary to Washington’s claims it was neutral in the race between Zardari and his rival, former Prime Minister Nawaz Sharif, Washington spent a great deal of money and energy trying to sideline Nawaz, who has long been unpopular in Washington as insufficiently responsive to US interests. Zardari became notorious as ‘Mr. 10 per cent’ when he was minister of public contracts during his wife’s tenure as prime minister. Zardari claims all the corruption charges against him were politically motivated and denies any wrongdoing. But many Pakistanis, particularly in the powerful armed forces, are not happy seeing as their new prime minister a man of dubious reputation and a penchant for personal excess. Even so, Zardari has apparently assumed all of the sweeping powers held by former president Musharraf. Now that Zardari is seen as Washington’s new Musharraf, these charges against him will redouble. Few outside his People’s Party see Zardari as an ideal choice for Pakistan’s leader in a time of growing crisis, but he may yet rise to the occasion. He has certainly pleased Washington by vowing to prosecute the internal war against pro-Taleban tribesmen and aid the US-led war in Afghanistan. Rising violence along the Pakistan-Afghanistan border threatens a far wider crisis. There have been frequent clashes between Pakistan paramilitary units and US forces attacking inside FATA. A major overt US commando raid against a Pashtun village inside Pakistan killed up to 20 civilians last week and brought threats from Pakistan’s chief of staff, Gen. Afshaq Kayani, the 650,000-man armed forces would fight to defend the nation’s territory.Deeply frustrated by the failure of its war in Afghanistan and inability to defeat Taleban, the Bush administration wants to expand the war into Pakistan tribal areas which are supposedly serving as a base for the Afghan resistance to western occupation. The Pentagon’s influential Special Operations Command, whose senior ranks hold a number of militant Christian fundamentalists, leads the effort to expand the war into Pakistan. Once again, arrogance and ignorance are misleading the US into another misfortune. Increased US incursions into FATA will almost certainly arouse most of the Pashtun tribes to resist the attackers and eventually involve units of the regular Pakistani armed forces. Pashtuns, 20 per cent of Pakistan’s population, are heavily represented in the higher ranks of the military and intelligence service, ISI.US attacks will inevitably produce ‘mission creep,’ as American forces are sucked ever deeper into Pakistan. Worse, continuing US attacks on FATA could provoke a major Pashtun tribal uprising and re-ignite a simmering secessionist movement for an independent ‘Pashtunistan’ in the strategic northwest frontier that could tear always fragile Pakistan apart and invite Indian intervention as occurred in East Pakistan in 1971. This explosive issue is barely understood in Washington. Meanwhile, Pakistan is a ticking time bomb and the new Zardari government appears headed into a storm of instability and growing opposition. Eric S Margolis is a veteran American journalist who reported from the Middle East, Pakistan and Afghanistan in the ‘80s and ‘90s
Zardari is the New MusharrafBy Eric S. Margolis 15/09/08 "Khaleej Times" -- - The US has been in a bizarre state of semi-war against its ‘ally’ Pakistan for months, launching covert ground and air raids into its territory while claiming to be a close ally of Islamabad in the so-called war on terror.This week, it was revealed that President George Bush has given the Pentagon the green light to launch major ground attacks inside Pakistan’s tribal territory.Pakistan, first under the US-backed dictator Pervez Musharraf, and now the new, US-backed president, Asif Zardari, has been put in the impossible position of waging a small war at the behest of Washington against its own pro-Taleban Pashtun tribesmen in the frontier zones known as FATA (Federally Administered Tribal Areas) that is bitterly opposed by most Pakistanis and regarded by many as treasonous.Zardari, the widower of the late Benazir Bhutto, is inheriting this dangerous problem and a host of other ones. Pakistan is almost bankrupt, with less than eight weeks of hard currency reserves to pay for vital imports of food and fuel. Half of Pakistan’s 165 million people live on less than $2 daily.Financial and political support from Washington helped engineer Zardari into power. He has been put in charge of the millions a month in overt and secret cash flow from Washington — $11.2 billion officially since 2001 — that Musharraf used to buy influence. Contrary to Washington’s claims it was neutral in the race between Zardari and his rival, former Prime Minister Nawaz Sharif, Washington spent a great deal of money and energy trying to sideline Nawaz, who has long been unpopular in Washington as insufficiently responsive to US interests. Zardari became notorious as ‘Mr. 10 per cent’ when he was minister of public contracts during his wife’s tenure as prime minister. Zardari claims all the corruption charges against him were politically motivated and denies any wrongdoing. But many Pakistanis, particularly in the powerful armed forces, are not happy seeing as their new prime minister a man of dubious reputation and a penchant for personal excess. Even so, Zardari has apparently assumed all of the sweeping powers held by former president Musharraf. Now that Zardari is seen as Washington’s new Musharraf, these charges against him will redouble. Few outside his People’s Party see Zardari as an ideal choice for Pakistan’s leader in a time of growing crisis, but he may yet rise to the occasion. He has certainly pleased Washington by vowing to prosecute the internal war against pro-Taleban tribesmen and aid the US-led war in Afghanistan. Rising violence along the Pakistan-Afghanistan border threatens a far wider crisis. There have been frequent clashes between Pakistan paramilitary units and US forces attacking inside FATA. A major overt US commando raid against a Pashtun village inside Pakistan killed up to 20 civilians last week and brought threats from Pakistan’s chief of staff, Gen. Afshaq Kayani, the 650,000-man armed forces would fight to defend the nation’s territory.Deeply frustrated by the failure of its war in Afghanistan and inability to defeat Taleban, the Bush administration wants to expand the war into Pakistan tribal areas which are supposedly serving as a base for the Afghan resistance to western occupation. The Pentagon’s influential Special Operations Command, whose senior ranks hold a number of militant Christian fundamentalists, leads the effort to expand the war into Pakistan. Once again, arrogance and ignorance are misleading the US into another misfortune. Increased US incursions into FATA will almost certainly arouse most of the Pashtun tribes to resist the attackers and eventually involve units of the regular Pakistani armed forces. Pashtuns, 20 per cent of Pakistan’s population, are heavily represented in the higher ranks of the military and intelligence service, ISI.US attacks will inevitably produce ‘mission creep,’ as American forces are sucked ever deeper into Pakistan. Worse, continuing US attacks on FATA could provoke a major Pashtun tribal uprising and re-ignite a simmering secessionist movement for an independent ‘Pashtunistan’ in the strategic northwest frontier that could tear always fragile Pakistan apart and invite Indian intervention as occurred in East Pakistan in 1971. This explosive issue is barely understood in Washington. Meanwhile, Pakistan is a ticking time bomb and the new Zardari government appears headed into a storm of instability and growing opposition. Eric S Margolis is a veteran American journalist who reported from the Middle East, Pakistan and Afghanistan in the ‘80s and ‘90s
Pakistani troops fire on US Helicopters.
There seems not to be much discussion of this in the US press. It is simply an example of Bush's post 9/11 doctrine that any country that harbors terrorists (the Taliban apparently) will be a foe and not safe from attack. Of course the US harboring anti-Cuban terrorists does not count nor Iraq harbouring anti-Iranian terrorist groups. However, Pakistan receives much military aid from the U.S. and is regarded as an ally. Apparently, Pakistan has a failing grade and so the U.S. is acting on its own. This may plunge Pakistan into civil war but then I guess that is just collateral damage. As a post earlier shows, US intelligence has advised against these actions but then what do they know compared to the Bush neo-con geniuses.
Officials: Pakistani Troops Fired on US Helicopters Trying to Cross Border
Posted September 15, 2008
Early this morning, US helicopters crossed the border into Pakistan’s South Waziristan Agency and attempted to land in Angor Adda, in a raid reminiscent of September 3rd’s unprecedented attack by US helicopters and ground forces in the same region, which killed 20 civilians. This was seen as the beginning of America’s so-called “gloves are off” strategy of escalating attacks along the Pakistani border. But this incident ended quite differently from the previous raid.
Pakistan’s Chief of Army Staff Parvez Kayani announced last week that the Pakistani military would no longer allow foreign forces to operate on Pakistani soil. On Thursday, another high ranking Pakistani official, Major-General Athar Abbas confirmed the order, and said the army had been ordered to retaliate against foreign operations. If the Bush Administration was unclear on the sincerity of this position prior to today, it is no doubt clarified as Pakistani troops opened fire on the invading helicopters, forcing them to retreat into Afghanistan.
Officially, Pakistan’s military denies that the Americans ever crossed the border or that their forces fired on them, but several news agencies cite local officials and anonymous military personnel who confirm the incident. One of the local residents told DPA that they had advanced warning of the impending American attack, and that “thousands of armed tribesmen” had amassed on the Pakistani side of the border intent on fighting them off.
The latest border incident comes with newly elected President Asif Ali Zardari en route to Britain for talks with Prime Minister Gordon Brown. Brown has said that he will press Pakistan to allow NATO forces into its territory, though NATO has insisted that it won’t participate in any US cross-border raids.
President Zardari announced in an editorial published the day after the first Angor Adda attack in the Washington Post that he “stands with the United States,” a position that seems increasingly untenable as the unpopular US air strikes continue and tribesmen in the South Waziristan area threaten to abandon a long-standing peace deal if his government doesn’t end the US attacks on them.
Officials: Pakistani Troops Fired on US Helicopters Trying to Cross Border
Posted September 15, 2008
Early this morning, US helicopters crossed the border into Pakistan’s South Waziristan Agency and attempted to land in Angor Adda, in a raid reminiscent of September 3rd’s unprecedented attack by US helicopters and ground forces in the same region, which killed 20 civilians. This was seen as the beginning of America’s so-called “gloves are off” strategy of escalating attacks along the Pakistani border. But this incident ended quite differently from the previous raid.
Pakistan’s Chief of Army Staff Parvez Kayani announced last week that the Pakistani military would no longer allow foreign forces to operate on Pakistani soil. On Thursday, another high ranking Pakistani official, Major-General Athar Abbas confirmed the order, and said the army had been ordered to retaliate against foreign operations. If the Bush Administration was unclear on the sincerity of this position prior to today, it is no doubt clarified as Pakistani troops opened fire on the invading helicopters, forcing them to retreat into Afghanistan.
Officially, Pakistan’s military denies that the Americans ever crossed the border or that their forces fired on them, but several news agencies cite local officials and anonymous military personnel who confirm the incident. One of the local residents told DPA that they had advanced warning of the impending American attack, and that “thousands of armed tribesmen” had amassed on the Pakistani side of the border intent on fighting them off.
The latest border incident comes with newly elected President Asif Ali Zardari en route to Britain for talks with Prime Minister Gordon Brown. Brown has said that he will press Pakistan to allow NATO forces into its territory, though NATO has insisted that it won’t participate in any US cross-border raids.
President Zardari announced in an editorial published the day after the first Angor Adda attack in the Washington Post that he “stands with the United States,” a position that seems increasingly untenable as the unpopular US air strikes continue and tribesmen in the South Waziristan area threaten to abandon a long-standing peace deal if his government doesn’t end the US attacks on them.
US strike that killed 90 civilians based on false tip
This is from antiwar.com.
The easiest way to obtain revenge on a rival tribe in Afghanistan is to associate the rival with the Taliban and call in the US to bomb them! This is probably just the tip of the iceberg. Also people have also snitched on rivals in order to get them arrested and sent off for interrogation and sometimes even ending up in Guantanamo. Not only do you get even, you get paid for getting even. The U.S. so far has not owned up to the fact that their intelligence might have been bad. It would not be good for PR or for public confidence in the US intelligence capabilities.
Afghan Govt: US Air Strike That Killed 90 Civilians Based on False Tip
Posted September 14, 2008
Afghan police arrested three people and accused them of providing the false tip that led to last month’s disastrous US air strike in Herat Province which a UN investigation determined killed at least 90 civilians and strained ties between NATO forces and the Afghan government.
The US claimed to have targeted and killed a known militant commander in the strike along with 30 militants, but villagers insist that the information that led to the strike was provided to the US by a rival tribesman named Nader Tawakil, whom the US has placed under protective custody.
After the incident, the United States denied that civilians were killed and accused villagers who spoke of the higher death tolls of spreading “outrageous Taliban propaganda“. They continued their denials well after both the United Nations and several investigations by the Afghan government all found similar numbers of slain civilians, but promised to “review” its initial claims after a video emerged showing a large number of dead civilians in the village mosque in the wake of the attack.
A spokesman for Afghan President Hamid Karzai told the AP that the strike was the result of “total misinformation fed to the coalition forces,” and said the incident “was a total disaster, and it made it even worse when there were denials”.
NATO has attempted to repair ties with the Afghan government by announcing a joint probe, Shortly after the attack, the Afghan Council of Ministers called for a review of the presence of international forces and a status of forces agreement to curb the “aerial bombing and illegal detentions” by international forces. Afghan civilians have also expressed outrage at the dramatic increase in US air strikes in 2008, which have led to a large increase in the number of US-inflicted civilian deaths.
The easiest way to obtain revenge on a rival tribe in Afghanistan is to associate the rival with the Taliban and call in the US to bomb them! This is probably just the tip of the iceberg. Also people have also snitched on rivals in order to get them arrested and sent off for interrogation and sometimes even ending up in Guantanamo. Not only do you get even, you get paid for getting even. The U.S. so far has not owned up to the fact that their intelligence might have been bad. It would not be good for PR or for public confidence in the US intelligence capabilities.
Afghan Govt: US Air Strike That Killed 90 Civilians Based on False Tip
Posted September 14, 2008
Afghan police arrested three people and accused them of providing the false tip that led to last month’s disastrous US air strike in Herat Province which a UN investigation determined killed at least 90 civilians and strained ties between NATO forces and the Afghan government.
The US claimed to have targeted and killed a known militant commander in the strike along with 30 militants, but villagers insist that the information that led to the strike was provided to the US by a rival tribesman named Nader Tawakil, whom the US has placed under protective custody.
After the incident, the United States denied that civilians were killed and accused villagers who spoke of the higher death tolls of spreading “outrageous Taliban propaganda“. They continued their denials well after both the United Nations and several investigations by the Afghan government all found similar numbers of slain civilians, but promised to “review” its initial claims after a video emerged showing a large number of dead civilians in the village mosque in the wake of the attack.
A spokesman for Afghan President Hamid Karzai told the AP that the strike was the result of “total misinformation fed to the coalition forces,” and said the incident “was a total disaster, and it made it even worse when there were denials”.
NATO has attempted to repair ties with the Afghan government by announcing a joint probe, Shortly after the attack, the Afghan Council of Ministers called for a review of the presence of international forces and a status of forces agreement to curb the “aerial bombing and illegal detentions” by international forces. Afghan civilians have also expressed outrage at the dramatic increase in US air strikes in 2008, which have led to a large increase in the number of US-inflicted civilian deaths.
Philippines: Arroyo will not interfere in moves to pass reproductive health bill
The Roman Catholic Church still has a great deal of power in determining Philippine policy on matters such as abortion and contraception. The only approved method is the Rhythm method or abstinence. Condoms are not advertised. Strangely enough neither is Viagra or Cialis. Perhaps the Church has deemed that God decreed erectile dysfunction is natural and God sanctioned for those getting older and thou shalt not get a hard on unnaturally just as one should not interfere with the sperm whose natural mission is to penetrate the egg. Eyeglasses are OK though folks since God intended us to see. Nature can be helped in the case of failing eyesight but Nature did not intend that dirty old men with floppy penises should be helped out in their disgusting quest for sex!
GMA won’t interfere in moves to pass bill on reproductive health
Genalyn D. KabilingPresident Arroyo is standing firm on her policy on natural family planning but she would not interfere in revitalized moves to pass a population management bill in Congress.
Press Secretary Jesus Dureza said yesterday the President will let lawmakers debate on the reproductive health bill that reportedly promotes the use of artificial contraception to curb the country’s growing population, adding it was still premature to say if the Chief Executive would exercise her veto powers.
"The President has a clear policy that she is against artificial means of family planning. She’s very consistent with that," he said in government-run Radyo ng Bayan. "Now since the matter is now in Congress, then we will leave that to Congress to make that determination," he added.
While she may have her own beliefs, Dureza said the President respects the independence of the legislature on the matter of crafting a law on reproductive health. "We will respect whatever decision of the majority members of Congress when they take a vote on that particular bill," he said.
Dureza said he could not yet say if the President would refuse to sign into law the population management bill in case it sails through both houses of Congress.
"It’s too premature yet as of this time to even make a determination or make a position on whether there will be a veto or not. Let’s wait for the results of the work of the legislature," he said.
Recently, two lawmakers have withdrawn their support for the reproductive health bill due to the provision promoting contraceptives. Calbayog Bishop Isabelo Abarquez admitted he influenced Western Samar Rep. Reynaldo Uy and Sharee Ann Tan to drop the bill.
The President has been largely criticized by some sectors for following the Catholic Church’s line on natural family planning methods which have been blamed for the rise in the country’s population. Mrs. Arroyo is a devout Catholic mother of three children.
Government critics have warned that the runaway population would worsen poverty and derail the economic development in the country.
GMA won’t interfere in moves to pass bill on reproductive health
Genalyn D. KabilingPresident Arroyo is standing firm on her policy on natural family planning but she would not interfere in revitalized moves to pass a population management bill in Congress.
Press Secretary Jesus Dureza said yesterday the President will let lawmakers debate on the reproductive health bill that reportedly promotes the use of artificial contraception to curb the country’s growing population, adding it was still premature to say if the Chief Executive would exercise her veto powers.
"The President has a clear policy that she is against artificial means of family planning. She’s very consistent with that," he said in government-run Radyo ng Bayan. "Now since the matter is now in Congress, then we will leave that to Congress to make that determination," he added.
While she may have her own beliefs, Dureza said the President respects the independence of the legislature on the matter of crafting a law on reproductive health. "We will respect whatever decision of the majority members of Congress when they take a vote on that particular bill," he said.
Dureza said he could not yet say if the President would refuse to sign into law the population management bill in case it sails through both houses of Congress.
"It’s too premature yet as of this time to even make a determination or make a position on whether there will be a veto or not. Let’s wait for the results of the work of the legislature," he said.
Recently, two lawmakers have withdrawn their support for the reproductive health bill due to the provision promoting contraceptives. Calbayog Bishop Isabelo Abarquez admitted he influenced Western Samar Rep. Reynaldo Uy and Sharee Ann Tan to drop the bill.
The President has been largely criticized by some sectors for following the Catholic Church’s line on natural family planning methods which have been blamed for the rise in the country’s population. Mrs. Arroyo is a devout Catholic mother of three children.
Government critics have warned that the runaway population would worsen poverty and derail the economic development in the country.
Sunday, September 14, 2008
Strip of Iraq on verge of exploding...
It is clear that the Kurds are claiming (or reclaiming) parts of Iraq that have long been part of the central government area. They even fly their own flag rather than the Iraq flag! There are a number of disputed areas in which the conflict between Kurds and the central government has not yet been resolved.
This is from the Washington Post.
Strip of Iraq 'on the Verge of Exploding'Kurds Extend Role Beyond Autonomous Borders, Angering Arabs
By Amit R. PaleyWashington Post Foreign ServiceSaturday, September 13, 2008; A01
JALAWLA, Iraq -- Kurdish leaders have expanded their authority over a roughly 300-mile-long swath of territory beyond the borders of their autonomous region in northern Iraq, stationing thousands of soldiers in ethnically mixed areas in what Iraqi Arabs see as an encroachment on their homelands.
The assertion of greater Kurdish control, which has taken hold gradually since the war began and caused tens of thousands of Arabs to flee their homes, is viewed by Iraqi Arab and U.S. officials as a provocative and potentially destabilizing action.
"Quickly moving into those areas to try and change the population and flying KRG flags in areas that are specifically not under the KRG control right now -- that is counterproductive and increases tensions," said Maj. Gen. Mark P. Hertling, commander of U.S. forces in northern Iraq, referring to the Kurdistan Regional Government, which administers the autonomous region.
The long-cherished dream of many of the world's 25 million ethnic Kurds is an independent state that encompasses parts of Iran, Iraq, Syria and Turkey. All but Iraq adamantly oppose Kurdish autonomy, much less a Kurdish state. Iraqi Kurds continue to insist they are not seeking independence, even as they unilaterally expand the territory they control in Iraq.
The predominantly Arab-led government of Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki in recent weeks has sent the Iraqi army to drive Kurdish forces out of some of the lands, ordering Kurdish troops, known as pesh merga, to retreat north of the boundary of the Kurdish autonomous region.
The face-off between the Iraqi army and pesh merga has stoked fears of Arab-Kurdish strife just as Iraqis begin to recover from years of sectarian violence between Shiites and Sunnis.
A week-long journey across four provinces that abut the southern boundary of the autonomous region illustrated just how pervasive the Kurdish presence has become. Pesh merga fighters were seen manning 34 checkpoints, most of them proudly flying the Kurdish flag, some as far as 75 miles south of the regional border. Kurds say they have historical claims to the territory, citing then-President Saddam Hussein's use of violence and coercion to drive Kurds from their lands in the 1970s.
Although officials in Washington and Baghdad have focused on the Arab-Kurd conflict in Kirkuk, the ethnically mixed, oil-rich city where more than 100 people have been killed in political violence this year, the animosities between the two ethnic groups fester throughout Nineveh, Tamim, Salahuddin and Diyala provinces. Arabs and Kurds in various areas often have unique grievances, confounding efforts to reach an all-encompassing solution.
Kurdish leaders have maintained warm relations with U.S. officials, who have seen the Kurds as allies in the effort to promote democracy and stability in Iraq. The Kurdish region, compared with other parts of the country, is a zone of relative peace and prosperity.
In Jalawla, a majority-Arab town in Diyala province eight miles south of the Kurdish regional boundary, Kurdish authorities have gradually expanded their role over the past year. The pesh merga, the Kurdish police and the Asayesh, the Kurdish intelligence agency, all patrol the region. The Kurdish government provides a larger share of the area's annual budget -- $15 million -- than Iraq's government does, according to the town's Kurdish mayor, who lives north of the Kurdish regional boundary because it is safer.
"Who could argue that we have not already made this area part of the Kurdish regional government?" asked Nihad Ali, acting commander of a 150-person Kurdish detachment now based in Jalawla, at a headquarters that flies the Kurdish flag next door to the fledgling local Arab police force. "Who spent all the money here? Whose martyrs spilled their blood here? These people are totally reliant on the Kurds. We cannot abandon them."
But Arab residents of this town of 70,000 began to chafe over what they described as a campaign to drive them out of their lands. Ahmed Saleh Hennawi al-Nuaimi, an Arab tribal leader in Jalawla and a former army officer under President Saddam Hussein, said the Kurds had imprisoned, kidnapped and killed more than 40 Arabs recently in an attempt to promote "Kurdification," accusations that Kurdish officials reject.
"We are now subject to two occupations -- one by the Americans and one by the Kurds," said Nuaimi, who claimed the area is 85 to 90 percent Arab, although Kurds estimate the figure is closer to 50 or 60 percent. "The Kurdish one is much worse by far and is driving the people to become terrorists. This area is now on the verge of exploding."
With prodding from angry Arabs such as Nuaimi, the Iraqi army last month ordered the pesh merga's 34th Brigade to withdraw within 24 hours from Jalawla and the surrounding area.
The Kurds initially refused. Kurdish officials said they killed only insurgents and were in the area to protect civilians, not occupy territory. But after high-level political negotiations, the 4,000-member brigade pulled back to the mainly Kurdish city of Khanaqin, about 16 miles south of the Kurdish border. Two weeks later, a suicide bomber targeting Arab police recruits in Jalawla killed at least 28 people, an attack the Kurds blamed on Sunni insurgents, and Arabs blamed on Kurds.
Last week, Kurdish officials also agreed to withdraw the pesh merga from Khanaqin as long as the Iraqi army agreed not to enter.
"We cannot stand by with crossed hands and do nothing in the disputed areas while Kurds are being killed," said Jafar Mustafa Ali, the Kurdish regional government's minister of state for pesh merga affairs. "We will step in as soon as the Iraqi government leaves."
Khanaqin's mayor, Mohammed Mullah Hassan, said the city would remain under Kurdish control even if the troops all departed. "We are all pesh merga now," he said.
In Khanaqin, almost all the street signs and conversation are in Kurdish. Government buildings display the Kurdish flag instead of the Iraqi one and the picture of Massoud Barzani, the president of the Kurdish regional government, instead of Maliki. Some Arabs have been required to obtain Kurdish-issued identification cards to enter the city.
"We are not trying to control the area -- we are already controlling the area," said Fuad Hussein, Barzani's chief of staff. "There is a reality on the ground now in disputed areas across Iraq that can't be ignored."
Hussein accused Maliki of trying to seize land that belongs to Kurds. "We have the feeling that there is a hidden agenda here," he said. "They want to drive us from the area. Some of them want to drive the Kurds out of all of Iraq."
Kurdish leaders have agreed to remove pesh merga forces from areas such as Jalawla and Khanaqin to prevent any erosion of their control over a Maryland-size swath of land that makes up about 7 percent of Iraq's territory.
Kurds and Arabs across that area say it is under the authority of Kurds, even in those places without a large pesh merga presence. Even though the ultimate fate of Kirkuk is uncertain, both sides acknowledge that it is run by the Kurds: The governor is a Kurd, the majority of the provincial council is Kurdish, the military leaders of the Iraqi army units in the area are Kurdish, and the secretive Asayesh is said by both sides to have the best intelligence in town.
Many Arabs and Kurds in these areas begin conversations with recitations of their respective narratives of suffering and oppression. For the Kurds, the central villain in their recent history is Saddam Hussein, whose "Arabization" campaign drove tens of thousands of Kurds from their homelands and replaced them with Arabs. Iraqi Arabs in those areas now accuse the Kurds of employing similar tactics.
The question of where to draw the exact boundary of the Kurdish autonomous region is one of the most politically explosive issues in Iraq. The Iraqi constitution called for a reckoning of the competing claims, including a census and a referendum. But the mandated 2007 deadline for the referendum passed, and it is now unclear what will happen.
U.S. and other Western officials, fearing that the issue could imperil the security gains made over the past year, tried to persuade both sides to back a U.N. process to present reports on Kirkuk and other contested areas as part of a strategy to "defuse and deflect the referendum," said Stefan de Mistura, head of the U.N. Assistance Mission in Iraq. Kirkuk, which the Kurds refer to as "Our Jerusalem" because of their emotional and historical attachment to the city, presents a particular difficulty because it lies atop an estimated 7 percent of the world's oil reserves.
"I am going to be one of the wealthiest men in the world," said Ahmed Hameed al-Obaidi, secretary general of the Arab bloc in Kirkuk. "I would never let the Kurds steal this money by making the city part of their region."
Western officials increasingly believe that a referendum in which residents of individual areas decide whether to join the Kurdish autonomous region will only spark greater conflict. De Mistura said the approach now is to have the leaders of each bloc reach a viable compromise, perhaps to be confirmed later through a straight yes-or-no referendum.
"At the end of the day, what we need is a grand deal, not a piecemeal approach," de Mistura said.
Yet far-reaching compromises seem remote from places such as Sinjar, a ramshackle city on the border with Syria that is ringed by Arab villages but controlled by Kurds. After a coordinated bombing there last year killed hundreds of Yazidis, a religious minority that some consider Kurdish, pesh merga forces tightened their control of the area, according to Arab and Christian residents.
Abdullah Ajeel al-Yawer, an Arab tribal leader near Sinjar, gathered dozens of Arabs from the area in his home on a recent morning. They described how Kurdish forces had driven them from their homes, detained and tortured them in prisons in the Kurdish region and prevented them from launching their own political party.
"They are like the Gestapo," Yawer said. "Their treatment is the same as what Saddam Hussein did."
Sarbest Terwaneshy, the head of the Kurdish Democratic Party in Sinjar and described by U.S. and U.N. officials as the most powerful figure in the region, denied the allegations against the pesh merga and said the fighters were in the area only to provide security.
"If the pesh merga leave, all the people will leave in a huge exodus," he said. "Without the Kurds, the massacre of last year would be repeated tens of times."
This is from the Washington Post.
Strip of Iraq 'on the Verge of Exploding'Kurds Extend Role Beyond Autonomous Borders, Angering Arabs
By Amit R. PaleyWashington Post Foreign ServiceSaturday, September 13, 2008; A01
JALAWLA, Iraq -- Kurdish leaders have expanded their authority over a roughly 300-mile-long swath of territory beyond the borders of their autonomous region in northern Iraq, stationing thousands of soldiers in ethnically mixed areas in what Iraqi Arabs see as an encroachment on their homelands.
The assertion of greater Kurdish control, which has taken hold gradually since the war began and caused tens of thousands of Arabs to flee their homes, is viewed by Iraqi Arab and U.S. officials as a provocative and potentially destabilizing action.
"Quickly moving into those areas to try and change the population and flying KRG flags in areas that are specifically not under the KRG control right now -- that is counterproductive and increases tensions," said Maj. Gen. Mark P. Hertling, commander of U.S. forces in northern Iraq, referring to the Kurdistan Regional Government, which administers the autonomous region.
The long-cherished dream of many of the world's 25 million ethnic Kurds is an independent state that encompasses parts of Iran, Iraq, Syria and Turkey. All but Iraq adamantly oppose Kurdish autonomy, much less a Kurdish state. Iraqi Kurds continue to insist they are not seeking independence, even as they unilaterally expand the territory they control in Iraq.
The predominantly Arab-led government of Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki in recent weeks has sent the Iraqi army to drive Kurdish forces out of some of the lands, ordering Kurdish troops, known as pesh merga, to retreat north of the boundary of the Kurdish autonomous region.
The face-off between the Iraqi army and pesh merga has stoked fears of Arab-Kurdish strife just as Iraqis begin to recover from years of sectarian violence between Shiites and Sunnis.
A week-long journey across four provinces that abut the southern boundary of the autonomous region illustrated just how pervasive the Kurdish presence has become. Pesh merga fighters were seen manning 34 checkpoints, most of them proudly flying the Kurdish flag, some as far as 75 miles south of the regional border. Kurds say they have historical claims to the territory, citing then-President Saddam Hussein's use of violence and coercion to drive Kurds from their lands in the 1970s.
Although officials in Washington and Baghdad have focused on the Arab-Kurd conflict in Kirkuk, the ethnically mixed, oil-rich city where more than 100 people have been killed in political violence this year, the animosities between the two ethnic groups fester throughout Nineveh, Tamim, Salahuddin and Diyala provinces. Arabs and Kurds in various areas often have unique grievances, confounding efforts to reach an all-encompassing solution.
Kurdish leaders have maintained warm relations with U.S. officials, who have seen the Kurds as allies in the effort to promote democracy and stability in Iraq. The Kurdish region, compared with other parts of the country, is a zone of relative peace and prosperity.
In Jalawla, a majority-Arab town in Diyala province eight miles south of the Kurdish regional boundary, Kurdish authorities have gradually expanded their role over the past year. The pesh merga, the Kurdish police and the Asayesh, the Kurdish intelligence agency, all patrol the region. The Kurdish government provides a larger share of the area's annual budget -- $15 million -- than Iraq's government does, according to the town's Kurdish mayor, who lives north of the Kurdish regional boundary because it is safer.
"Who could argue that we have not already made this area part of the Kurdish regional government?" asked Nihad Ali, acting commander of a 150-person Kurdish detachment now based in Jalawla, at a headquarters that flies the Kurdish flag next door to the fledgling local Arab police force. "Who spent all the money here? Whose martyrs spilled their blood here? These people are totally reliant on the Kurds. We cannot abandon them."
But Arab residents of this town of 70,000 began to chafe over what they described as a campaign to drive them out of their lands. Ahmed Saleh Hennawi al-Nuaimi, an Arab tribal leader in Jalawla and a former army officer under President Saddam Hussein, said the Kurds had imprisoned, kidnapped and killed more than 40 Arabs recently in an attempt to promote "Kurdification," accusations that Kurdish officials reject.
"We are now subject to two occupations -- one by the Americans and one by the Kurds," said Nuaimi, who claimed the area is 85 to 90 percent Arab, although Kurds estimate the figure is closer to 50 or 60 percent. "The Kurdish one is much worse by far and is driving the people to become terrorists. This area is now on the verge of exploding."
With prodding from angry Arabs such as Nuaimi, the Iraqi army last month ordered the pesh merga's 34th Brigade to withdraw within 24 hours from Jalawla and the surrounding area.
The Kurds initially refused. Kurdish officials said they killed only insurgents and were in the area to protect civilians, not occupy territory. But after high-level political negotiations, the 4,000-member brigade pulled back to the mainly Kurdish city of Khanaqin, about 16 miles south of the Kurdish border. Two weeks later, a suicide bomber targeting Arab police recruits in Jalawla killed at least 28 people, an attack the Kurds blamed on Sunni insurgents, and Arabs blamed on Kurds.
Last week, Kurdish officials also agreed to withdraw the pesh merga from Khanaqin as long as the Iraqi army agreed not to enter.
"We cannot stand by with crossed hands and do nothing in the disputed areas while Kurds are being killed," said Jafar Mustafa Ali, the Kurdish regional government's minister of state for pesh merga affairs. "We will step in as soon as the Iraqi government leaves."
Khanaqin's mayor, Mohammed Mullah Hassan, said the city would remain under Kurdish control even if the troops all departed. "We are all pesh merga now," he said.
In Khanaqin, almost all the street signs and conversation are in Kurdish. Government buildings display the Kurdish flag instead of the Iraqi one and the picture of Massoud Barzani, the president of the Kurdish regional government, instead of Maliki. Some Arabs have been required to obtain Kurdish-issued identification cards to enter the city.
"We are not trying to control the area -- we are already controlling the area," said Fuad Hussein, Barzani's chief of staff. "There is a reality on the ground now in disputed areas across Iraq that can't be ignored."
Hussein accused Maliki of trying to seize land that belongs to Kurds. "We have the feeling that there is a hidden agenda here," he said. "They want to drive us from the area. Some of them want to drive the Kurds out of all of Iraq."
Kurdish leaders have agreed to remove pesh merga forces from areas such as Jalawla and Khanaqin to prevent any erosion of their control over a Maryland-size swath of land that makes up about 7 percent of Iraq's territory.
Kurds and Arabs across that area say it is under the authority of Kurds, even in those places without a large pesh merga presence. Even though the ultimate fate of Kirkuk is uncertain, both sides acknowledge that it is run by the Kurds: The governor is a Kurd, the majority of the provincial council is Kurdish, the military leaders of the Iraqi army units in the area are Kurdish, and the secretive Asayesh is said by both sides to have the best intelligence in town.
Many Arabs and Kurds in these areas begin conversations with recitations of their respective narratives of suffering and oppression. For the Kurds, the central villain in their recent history is Saddam Hussein, whose "Arabization" campaign drove tens of thousands of Kurds from their homelands and replaced them with Arabs. Iraqi Arabs in those areas now accuse the Kurds of employing similar tactics.
The question of where to draw the exact boundary of the Kurdish autonomous region is one of the most politically explosive issues in Iraq. The Iraqi constitution called for a reckoning of the competing claims, including a census and a referendum. But the mandated 2007 deadline for the referendum passed, and it is now unclear what will happen.
U.S. and other Western officials, fearing that the issue could imperil the security gains made over the past year, tried to persuade both sides to back a U.N. process to present reports on Kirkuk and other contested areas as part of a strategy to "defuse and deflect the referendum," said Stefan de Mistura, head of the U.N. Assistance Mission in Iraq. Kirkuk, which the Kurds refer to as "Our Jerusalem" because of their emotional and historical attachment to the city, presents a particular difficulty because it lies atop an estimated 7 percent of the world's oil reserves.
"I am going to be one of the wealthiest men in the world," said Ahmed Hameed al-Obaidi, secretary general of the Arab bloc in Kirkuk. "I would never let the Kurds steal this money by making the city part of their region."
Western officials increasingly believe that a referendum in which residents of individual areas decide whether to join the Kurdish autonomous region will only spark greater conflict. De Mistura said the approach now is to have the leaders of each bloc reach a viable compromise, perhaps to be confirmed later through a straight yes-or-no referendum.
"At the end of the day, what we need is a grand deal, not a piecemeal approach," de Mistura said.
Yet far-reaching compromises seem remote from places such as Sinjar, a ramshackle city on the border with Syria that is ringed by Arab villages but controlled by Kurds. After a coordinated bombing there last year killed hundreds of Yazidis, a religious minority that some consider Kurdish, pesh merga forces tightened their control of the area, according to Arab and Christian residents.
Abdullah Ajeel al-Yawer, an Arab tribal leader near Sinjar, gathered dozens of Arabs from the area in his home on a recent morning. They described how Kurdish forces had driven them from their homes, detained and tortured them in prisons in the Kurdish region and prevented them from launching their own political party.
"They are like the Gestapo," Yawer said. "Their treatment is the same as what Saddam Hussein did."
Sarbest Terwaneshy, the head of the Kurdish Democratic Party in Sinjar and described by U.S. and U.N. officials as the most powerful figure in the region, denied the allegations against the pesh merga and said the fighters were in the area only to provide security.
"If the pesh merga leave, all the people will leave in a huge exodus," he said. "Without the Kurds, the massacre of last year would be repeated tens of times."
Defense Contracts Foretell Military Buildup in Afghanistan
The military industrial complex in the U.S. and elsewhere manages to find ways to stave off recession. There is nary a word it seems about the amount the U.S. wars around the world waged in the name of the war on terror are costing the U.S. and increasing the debt for future generations. Social programs may be cut but not military spending. U.S. priorities are clear.This is from the Washington Post.
Defense Contracts Foretell Military Buildup in Afghanistan
By Walter PincusWashington Post Staff WriterSunday, September 14, 2008; A23
The Defense Department is seeking private contractors to carry out a variety of tasks -- such as clearing land mines, building detention facilities and providing fuel -- to assist U.S. forces in Afghanistan, which are set to grow following President Bush's announcement last week that he will expand military operations there.
This month, the Pentagon issued a proposal seeking civilian contractors to help clear land mines in Afghanistan, including the outer areas of Bagram air base, where new construction is underway. A $25 million contract to build about 14 miles of roads inside the Bagram complex will be awarded later this month. The roads are to "ease traffic flow" and "provide diversions for construction traffic" on the expanding base, according to the published solicitation.
Last week, the Defense Department put out a contract proposal seeking firms that could supply airborne surveillance in Afghanistan with the capability of Constant Hawk, a system now deployed in Iraq. From a single-engine aircraft, Constant Hawk's sensors record and archive data from an area over time in order to capture events such as exploding roadside bombs. Civilian analysts are also being sought to review the recorded incidents and identify perpetrators.
"The military is stretched very thin, and to keep low the deployments numbers, there is a tendency to go to contractors who have played a huge part in Iraq," said Rep. David E. Price (D-N.C.), who as a member of the House Appropriations Committee has sponsored legislation limiting contracts in the intelligence field.
Bush announced on Tuesday that over the new few months, he will send nearly 5,000 additional troops to Afghanistan, which he characterized as an increasingly important front in the battle against extremism. Recent Pentagon contracts provide a picture of what the expanded U.S. presence may be called upon to accomplish in that country.
Some contractors are needed because the military lacks particular equipment or personnel. On Monday, U.S. Central Command said it would be advertising for a contractor who could provide 22 medium- and heavy-lift helicopters to transport passengers and cargo in Afghanistan and Iraq. In his Wednesday appearance before the House Armed Services Committee, Adm. Michael Mullen, chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, said in discussing Afghanistan, "Helicopters is the biggest shortfall we have, and it is very clearly supportive of the [intelligence, surveillance and reconnaissance] effort in addition to the attack effort, as well."
Another Army contract, posted this month, calls for a firm to process, clean, repair and provide secure storage for 4,600 incoming vehicles ticketed for the Afghan National Police. The current contractor is storing 1,200 vehicles. But a flood of new ones, expected over the next year, will arrive at a rate of 300 or more a month, including 3,600 light tactical vehicles, 600 Humvees and 100 Humvee ambulances, according to the notice.
Some larger contracts give an indication of how long the U.S. military might intend to remain in Afghanistan. For example, on Aug. 1, the Army Corps of Engineers announced that Prime Projects International, a firm based in Dubai, United Arab Emirates, had won a $50 million contract to design and build a prison complex at Bagram to hold 1,000 high- and low-risk detainees. The complex is not expected to be completed before October 2009.
Bagram has become a central location for holding detainees picked up in Afghanistan and Pakistan. Similar to its activities in Iraq, the U.S. military has begun hiring intelligence contractors, many with military experience, to screen those captured to determine whether they should be held as enemy combatants. This month, the military advertised for an "Islamic religious specialist" to support "counterinsurgency and information operations" in the Bagram prison.
That person's job would be to "deliver Islamic religious services for enemy combatants detained" with the facility and also "act as a linguist/interpreter in emergency situations," according to the statement of work attached to the contract solicitation.
Defense Contracts Foretell Military Buildup in Afghanistan
By Walter PincusWashington Post Staff WriterSunday, September 14, 2008; A23
The Defense Department is seeking private contractors to carry out a variety of tasks -- such as clearing land mines, building detention facilities and providing fuel -- to assist U.S. forces in Afghanistan, which are set to grow following President Bush's announcement last week that he will expand military operations there.
This month, the Pentagon issued a proposal seeking civilian contractors to help clear land mines in Afghanistan, including the outer areas of Bagram air base, where new construction is underway. A $25 million contract to build about 14 miles of roads inside the Bagram complex will be awarded later this month. The roads are to "ease traffic flow" and "provide diversions for construction traffic" on the expanding base, according to the published solicitation.
Last week, the Defense Department put out a contract proposal seeking firms that could supply airborne surveillance in Afghanistan with the capability of Constant Hawk, a system now deployed in Iraq. From a single-engine aircraft, Constant Hawk's sensors record and archive data from an area over time in order to capture events such as exploding roadside bombs. Civilian analysts are also being sought to review the recorded incidents and identify perpetrators.
"The military is stretched very thin, and to keep low the deployments numbers, there is a tendency to go to contractors who have played a huge part in Iraq," said Rep. David E. Price (D-N.C.), who as a member of the House Appropriations Committee has sponsored legislation limiting contracts in the intelligence field.
Bush announced on Tuesday that over the new few months, he will send nearly 5,000 additional troops to Afghanistan, which he characterized as an increasingly important front in the battle against extremism. Recent Pentagon contracts provide a picture of what the expanded U.S. presence may be called upon to accomplish in that country.
Some contractors are needed because the military lacks particular equipment or personnel. On Monday, U.S. Central Command said it would be advertising for a contractor who could provide 22 medium- and heavy-lift helicopters to transport passengers and cargo in Afghanistan and Iraq. In his Wednesday appearance before the House Armed Services Committee, Adm. Michael Mullen, chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, said in discussing Afghanistan, "Helicopters is the biggest shortfall we have, and it is very clearly supportive of the [intelligence, surveillance and reconnaissance] effort in addition to the attack effort, as well."
Another Army contract, posted this month, calls for a firm to process, clean, repair and provide secure storage for 4,600 incoming vehicles ticketed for the Afghan National Police. The current contractor is storing 1,200 vehicles. But a flood of new ones, expected over the next year, will arrive at a rate of 300 or more a month, including 3,600 light tactical vehicles, 600 Humvees and 100 Humvee ambulances, according to the notice.
Some larger contracts give an indication of how long the U.S. military might intend to remain in Afghanistan. For example, on Aug. 1, the Army Corps of Engineers announced that Prime Projects International, a firm based in Dubai, United Arab Emirates, had won a $50 million contract to design and build a prison complex at Bagram to hold 1,000 high- and low-risk detainees. The complex is not expected to be completed before October 2009.
Bagram has become a central location for holding detainees picked up in Afghanistan and Pakistan. Similar to its activities in Iraq, the U.S. military has begun hiring intelligence contractors, many with military experience, to screen those captured to determine whether they should be held as enemy combatants. This month, the military advertised for an "Islamic religious specialist" to support "counterinsurgency and information operations" in the Bagram prison.
That person's job would be to "deliver Islamic religious services for enemy combatants detained" with the facility and also "act as a linguist/interpreter in emergency situations," according to the statement of work attached to the contract solicitation.
Saturday, September 13, 2008
Philippines: Endless scheming.
Malacanang is more or less equivalent to the White House or the government. Cha cha is constitutional change. This article suggests that the president Arroyo may be planning to institute martial law to give her more powers. Also, she wants to intitiate constitutional change that would allow her to stay in power longer. The Tribune is not exacly a neutral observer. During the last state of emergency the government occupied it for some time. It has not tamed down its rhetoric one bit.
Endless scheming
09/14/2008
Lawyer Avelino Cruz, a partner in the country’s most controversial law firm Villaraza, Cruz, Marcelo and Angangco, and more notably Gloria’s former Defense Secretary, revealed a lot when he appeared before television yesterday.
Cruz said his appearance was at his own request and he came out with a warning over the possibility of an emergency rule, a euphemism for Martial Law, over the current conflict in Mindanao.
Cruz used to be within earshot of those who wield power in Malacañang making his warning absolutely credible. The fact that he came out voluntarily on TV to issue the warning indicated urgency.
It appeared that Cruz did a preemptive strike on a plan he had gotten wind of.
He knows of Gloria Arroyo’s obsession to stay in power forever, if need be and he knows, too, that she will steal, lie and cheat just to stay on forever — that is, until she can hand over the reins of power to one of her sons, perhaps.
Cruz should know her well. He and his law firm were her lawyers long before she grabbed power. Come to think of it, his colleagues in the law firm even wrote that letter to the Supreme Court (SC) justices, claiming that then sitting President Joseph Estrada was no longer able to govern, as everyone — including the military, has withheld his support from him — a letter, incidentally, that was grossly illegal and unconstitutional, since she, as vice president, and a beneficial party, was not empowered to declare Estrada to be incapacitated.
But know her, Cruz does. And like her craving for Charter change (Cha-cha) for political perpetuity, Gloria is always on the lookout for an opportunity to wield extra powers and it seems that the worsening situation in Mindanao is her perfect alibi.
With 2010 getting closer, the efforts to have either Martial Law or a Cha-cha meant to extend the political wick of Gloria’s term appears to be intensifying.
The most recent effort to introduce changes in the Constitution was on the proposal to put up the Bangsamoro Juridical Entity (BJE) through the aborted Memorandum of Agreement on Ancestral Domain (MoA-AD).
The BJE, which was practically a Muslim state, would have required the amending of the Constitution. It appeared that had the Aug. 5 signing of the MoA-AD been rammed through, Gloria would have had the perfect reason to push Cha-cha “for peace in Mindanao” and blame her critics if fighting in Mindanao is reignited if the Cha-cha initiative is again blocked, which is similar to a shotgun pointed at the people’s head to allow Cha-cha.
Cruz, who, as a topnotch lawyer should know, said the MoA-AD was riddled with constitutional infirmities such as self-executing provisions which can be interpreted that the Moro Islamic Liberation Front (MILF) owned the Bangsamoro homeland.
After the SC stopped the signing of the agreement, Gloria and her cabal tried to worm their way out of the treacherous deal by saying that Gloria was unaware of its contents including the giving away of the portion of the country’s territory.
Cruz finally issued a warning about “people holding on to power for too long.”
Without referring to Gloria, he said an amendment to the Constitution, if ever, should provide that the vice president who succeeds or takes over an uncompleted term of a president should not be allowed to run in the next presidential elections.
Gloria grabbed the presidency from popularly elected President Estrada in 2001 through the support of the treacheorus military chiefs, then stole a six-year extension after using government resources to cheat and bribe her way to a fraudulent victory during the 2004 elections.
Cruz, again without referring to Gloria, said most presidents at the beginning of their term are out to serve national interests but if “you are in power too long there are so many pressures and effects on you, you run out of ideas, you get tired, you become less patient listening to public opinion.”
Without naming Gloria, Cruz said a lot about the sinister character of her and the cabal in Malacañang.
And without saying it, he warned the country about what Gloria and her cabal would be capable of in achieving political perpetuity.
Cruz was saying, through it all, not to expect Gloria to willingly step down by 2010.
Endless scheming
09/14/2008
Lawyer Avelino Cruz, a partner in the country’s most controversial law firm Villaraza, Cruz, Marcelo and Angangco, and more notably Gloria’s former Defense Secretary, revealed a lot when he appeared before television yesterday.
Cruz said his appearance was at his own request and he came out with a warning over the possibility of an emergency rule, a euphemism for Martial Law, over the current conflict in Mindanao.
Cruz used to be within earshot of those who wield power in Malacañang making his warning absolutely credible. The fact that he came out voluntarily on TV to issue the warning indicated urgency.
It appeared that Cruz did a preemptive strike on a plan he had gotten wind of.
He knows of Gloria Arroyo’s obsession to stay in power forever, if need be and he knows, too, that she will steal, lie and cheat just to stay on forever — that is, until she can hand over the reins of power to one of her sons, perhaps.
Cruz should know her well. He and his law firm were her lawyers long before she grabbed power. Come to think of it, his colleagues in the law firm even wrote that letter to the Supreme Court (SC) justices, claiming that then sitting President Joseph Estrada was no longer able to govern, as everyone — including the military, has withheld his support from him — a letter, incidentally, that was grossly illegal and unconstitutional, since she, as vice president, and a beneficial party, was not empowered to declare Estrada to be incapacitated.
But know her, Cruz does. And like her craving for Charter change (Cha-cha) for political perpetuity, Gloria is always on the lookout for an opportunity to wield extra powers and it seems that the worsening situation in Mindanao is her perfect alibi.
With 2010 getting closer, the efforts to have either Martial Law or a Cha-cha meant to extend the political wick of Gloria’s term appears to be intensifying.
The most recent effort to introduce changes in the Constitution was on the proposal to put up the Bangsamoro Juridical Entity (BJE) through the aborted Memorandum of Agreement on Ancestral Domain (MoA-AD).
The BJE, which was practically a Muslim state, would have required the amending of the Constitution. It appeared that had the Aug. 5 signing of the MoA-AD been rammed through, Gloria would have had the perfect reason to push Cha-cha “for peace in Mindanao” and blame her critics if fighting in Mindanao is reignited if the Cha-cha initiative is again blocked, which is similar to a shotgun pointed at the people’s head to allow Cha-cha.
Cruz, who, as a topnotch lawyer should know, said the MoA-AD was riddled with constitutional infirmities such as self-executing provisions which can be interpreted that the Moro Islamic Liberation Front (MILF) owned the Bangsamoro homeland.
After the SC stopped the signing of the agreement, Gloria and her cabal tried to worm their way out of the treacherous deal by saying that Gloria was unaware of its contents including the giving away of the portion of the country’s territory.
Cruz finally issued a warning about “people holding on to power for too long.”
Without referring to Gloria, he said an amendment to the Constitution, if ever, should provide that the vice president who succeeds or takes over an uncompleted term of a president should not be allowed to run in the next presidential elections.
Gloria grabbed the presidency from popularly elected President Estrada in 2001 through the support of the treacheorus military chiefs, then stole a six-year extension after using government resources to cheat and bribe her way to a fraudulent victory during the 2004 elections.
Cruz, again without referring to Gloria, said most presidents at the beginning of their term are out to serve national interests but if “you are in power too long there are so many pressures and effects on you, you run out of ideas, you get tired, you become less patient listening to public opinion.”
Without naming Gloria, Cruz said a lot about the sinister character of her and the cabal in Malacañang.
And without saying it, he warned the country about what Gloria and her cabal would be capable of in achieving political perpetuity.
Cruz was saying, through it all, not to expect Gloria to willingly step down by 2010.
Pakistan Hardens Stance Against US strikes.
This is from antiwar.com.
These developments are quite serious but there seems little discussion of them on the US mainstream media that I have seen. Everything is centred on the race for the presidency with Ike in the background. Given the new conflict between the U.S. and Russia you may see moves by Russia to improve relations with Pakistan. It is possible that US actions will precipitate a civil war in Pakistan unless the government takes an even harder line against US attacks. Even NATO refuses to sanction them- for good reason.
Pakistan Hardens Stance Against US Strikes
Posted September 12, 2008
Angry protesters took to the streets today as a US airstrike early this morning near Miramshah reinforced anti-US sentiment in Pakistan. The strike, which Pakistan’s military confirmed occurred at 5:30 AM this morning, hit a residence and a former government school in a village in North Waziristan, not far from the Afghanistan border. The strike killed at least 14 people and injured 12 others.
Residents said the shuttered school had been used by militants, but the home belonged to a local tribesman with seemingly no connection to any militant groups. The owner of the home was among those killed, along with at least six women and children. This was the second US drone strike around Miramshah this week. On Monday, US drones attacked a religious school in the same area founded by a veteran mujahideen commander, killing at least 23.
Pakistan’s Prime Minister Raza Gilani condemned the latest attack, and promised to raise the issue with the United States. He hoped he could convince the US “to respect the sovereignty of Pakistan,” just days after Chief of Army Staff General Parvez Kayani declared that the military would no longer allow foreign forces to operate inside the country. Gilani, however, conceded that there were limits to what the government could do. “We can take up the matter of unilateral strikes in Pakistan at diplomatic level, but cannot wage war,” he told reporters.
Tensions between the United States and Pakistan have risen in recent days over the increase in American attacks, and a reported secret directive signed by President Bush in July, which came entirely without approval from either Pakistan’s military or civilian government. The directive came to light after US ground troops attacked a village in South Waziristan last week, killing 20 civilians.
Pakistan’s coalition government is struggling to balance its commitment to “stand with the United States” in its terror war with its increasing dependence on the support of tribal area legislators. It must also contend with rising militancy in the tribal areas and the very real possibility that Wazir tribesmen will abandon a long standing peace deal, which they threatened to do yesterday if the government doesn’t put a stop to American attacks.
An MP from Pakistan’s opposition PML-N called for a special meeting of parliament to debate a response. He suggested that “Pakistan can consider pulling out completely from this war on terror”. Meanwhile, retired Pakistani General Hamid Gul cautioned “instead of solving the problem it has only exacerbated it. If those people in those areas were not part of the Taliban forces before these strikes they will be now”.
These developments are quite serious but there seems little discussion of them on the US mainstream media that I have seen. Everything is centred on the race for the presidency with Ike in the background. Given the new conflict between the U.S. and Russia you may see moves by Russia to improve relations with Pakistan. It is possible that US actions will precipitate a civil war in Pakistan unless the government takes an even harder line against US attacks. Even NATO refuses to sanction them- for good reason.
Pakistan Hardens Stance Against US Strikes
Posted September 12, 2008
Angry protesters took to the streets today as a US airstrike early this morning near Miramshah reinforced anti-US sentiment in Pakistan. The strike, which Pakistan’s military confirmed occurred at 5:30 AM this morning, hit a residence and a former government school in a village in North Waziristan, not far from the Afghanistan border. The strike killed at least 14 people and injured 12 others.
Residents said the shuttered school had been used by militants, but the home belonged to a local tribesman with seemingly no connection to any militant groups. The owner of the home was among those killed, along with at least six women and children. This was the second US drone strike around Miramshah this week. On Monday, US drones attacked a religious school in the same area founded by a veteran mujahideen commander, killing at least 23.
Pakistan’s Prime Minister Raza Gilani condemned the latest attack, and promised to raise the issue with the United States. He hoped he could convince the US “to respect the sovereignty of Pakistan,” just days after Chief of Army Staff General Parvez Kayani declared that the military would no longer allow foreign forces to operate inside the country. Gilani, however, conceded that there were limits to what the government could do. “We can take up the matter of unilateral strikes in Pakistan at diplomatic level, but cannot wage war,” he told reporters.
Tensions between the United States and Pakistan have risen in recent days over the increase in American attacks, and a reported secret directive signed by President Bush in July, which came entirely without approval from either Pakistan’s military or civilian government. The directive came to light after US ground troops attacked a village in South Waziristan last week, killing 20 civilians.
Pakistan’s coalition government is struggling to balance its commitment to “stand with the United States” in its terror war with its increasing dependence on the support of tribal area legislators. It must also contend with rising militancy in the tribal areas and the very real possibility that Wazir tribesmen will abandon a long standing peace deal, which they threatened to do yesterday if the government doesn’t put a stop to American attacks.
An MP from Pakistan’s opposition PML-N called for a special meeting of parliament to debate a response. He suggested that “Pakistan can consider pulling out completely from this war on terror”. Meanwhile, retired Pakistani General Hamid Gul cautioned “instead of solving the problem it has only exacerbated it. If those people in those areas were not part of the Taliban forces before these strikes they will be now”.
Zimbabwe Deal Gives Opposition Cabinet, police.
I thought that a deal would never be reached. Even though there is a deal now I remain skeptical as to whether it will ever work. As I recall the police said earlier that they would not accept an opposition win so it is difficult to see how they will now accept being run by the opposition. Anyway we will see. Perhaps the situation is so bad that even Mugabe supporters recognise that there must be power sharing and will co-operate.
This is from wiredispatch.
.Zimbabwe deal gives opposition Cabinet, police
Zimbabwe deal gives opposition control of Cabinet, police; Mugabe gets defense
MICHELLE FAULAP News
Sep 12, 2008 09:03 EST
Zimbabwe's breakthrough political deal gives the opposition control of the Cabinet and the police, who have terrorized opponents for years, two opposition officials said Friday.
That means overhauling Zimbabwe's draconian security and media laws will be a top priority for the opposition, the officials said on condition of anonymity because the agreement has not been made public yet.
They said Zimbabwean President Robert Mugabe, 84, retains control of the country's military in the power-sharing deal brokered Thursday night in the Zimbabwean capital. It was expected to be signed Monday in the presence of presidents of neighboring countries, among them South Africa's Thabo Mbeki, who mediated the agreement.
Mbeki said at a late night news conference Thursday that the agreement would be made public Monday. Mugabe has made no statement on the deal, and attempts to reach officials from his party were not immediately successful.
However, five opposition Movement for Democratic Change officials spoke to The Associated Press on condition of anonymity Friday because of a media blackout, with two providing details of the power-sharing deal.
They said it would free the leaders to address Zimbabwe's severe economic problems — which include having the world's highest inflation rate and chronic food and fuel shortages. Western nations are poised to help, but much depends on whether they believe Mugabe has been sidelined.
Morgan Tsvangirai, 56, the leader of the opposition Movement for Democratic Change, will get most seats in the Cabinet, 16 to 15 for Mugabe's Zimbabwe African National Union-Patriotic Front, or ZANU-PF, the two officials said.
Tsvangirai's party gets eight deputy ministries, Mugabe's six and one goes to a breakaway opposition faction led by Arthur Mutambara.
One official said the deal includes disbanding the southern African nation's feared Central Intelligence Organization, which like the police comes under the mantle of the Ministry of Home Affairs, and replacing it with a smaller, more efficient National Security Authority.
Tsvangirai broke a deadlock in the talks by proposing a new Council of State made up of Mugabe and two deputies from his party, and Tsvangirai and two of his deputies, the two
Tsvangirai will be in charge of the Cabinet and Mugabe will be in charge of the council, which will oversee Cabinet. Mugabe would have no veto powers on the council.
The council's role remains unclear, but it does give Mugabe a significant role in government, and apparently led to the compromise that broke the deadlock.
Two of the five opposition officials said some opposition leaders believe Tsvangirai should have held out for more power and the ability to sideline Mugabe, who has ruled Zimbabwe since independence from Britain in 1980, and is accused of widespread fraud and violence.
In neighboring South Africa, however, news of a deal was greeted with cautious optimism among some Zimbabwean refugees, many of whom are eager to return home. Millions of Zimbabweans have sought a haven in South Africa from political violence and economic collapse
"Our country is beautiful. We want to develop it. We don't want to run away again," said Archie Tapera, 35. He called the power-sharing deal "one of the major achievements in the history of Zimbabwe."
"The international community should now assist in reconstruction, reconciliation and nation building in Zimbabwe," South Africa's governing African National Congress said Friday.
European Union spokesman John Clancy said on Friday that officials were waiting to get more details on the agreement on Monday.
The agreement was crucial for Mbeki's international standing, for South Africa's leader has faced growing criticism that his "quiet diplomacy" has only placated Mugabe and deepened Zimbabwe's economic meltdown.
Others, including African leaders traditionally reluctant to criticize one of their own, had become increasingly impatient with Mugabe. Neighboring countries coping with millions of Zimbabwean refugees were among the sharpest critics.
Tsvangirai based his claim to govern on winning the most votes in legislative and presidential elections in March. Tsvangirai he did not win enough to avoid a runoff against Mugabe. An onslaught of state-sponsored violence against Tsvangirai's supporters forced him to drop out of the presidential runoff.
Mugabe kept Tsvangirai's name on the ballot and was declared the overwhelming winner of a June runoff widely denounced as a sham.
The deal envisages the coalition government lasting between two and 2 1/2 years. It calls for a new constitution to be drawn up within 18 months and put to a national referendum. New elections should be held 90 days after.
___
Associated Press Writer Celean Jacobson contributed to this report from Johannesburg.
Source: AP News
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Copyright 2008 Wiredispatch.com
This is from wiredispatch.
.Zimbabwe deal gives opposition Cabinet, police
Zimbabwe deal gives opposition control of Cabinet, police; Mugabe gets defense
MICHELLE FAULAP News
Sep 12, 2008 09:03 EST
Zimbabwe's breakthrough political deal gives the opposition control of the Cabinet and the police, who have terrorized opponents for years, two opposition officials said Friday.
That means overhauling Zimbabwe's draconian security and media laws will be a top priority for the opposition, the officials said on condition of anonymity because the agreement has not been made public yet.
They said Zimbabwean President Robert Mugabe, 84, retains control of the country's military in the power-sharing deal brokered Thursday night in the Zimbabwean capital. It was expected to be signed Monday in the presence of presidents of neighboring countries, among them South Africa's Thabo Mbeki, who mediated the agreement.
Mbeki said at a late night news conference Thursday that the agreement would be made public Monday. Mugabe has made no statement on the deal, and attempts to reach officials from his party were not immediately successful.
However, five opposition Movement for Democratic Change officials spoke to The Associated Press on condition of anonymity Friday because of a media blackout, with two providing details of the power-sharing deal.
They said it would free the leaders to address Zimbabwe's severe economic problems — which include having the world's highest inflation rate and chronic food and fuel shortages. Western nations are poised to help, but much depends on whether they believe Mugabe has been sidelined.
Morgan Tsvangirai, 56, the leader of the opposition Movement for Democratic Change, will get most seats in the Cabinet, 16 to 15 for Mugabe's Zimbabwe African National Union-Patriotic Front, or ZANU-PF, the two officials said.
Tsvangirai's party gets eight deputy ministries, Mugabe's six and one goes to a breakaway opposition faction led by Arthur Mutambara.
One official said the deal includes disbanding the southern African nation's feared Central Intelligence Organization, which like the police comes under the mantle of the Ministry of Home Affairs, and replacing it with a smaller, more efficient National Security Authority.
Tsvangirai broke a deadlock in the talks by proposing a new Council of State made up of Mugabe and two deputies from his party, and Tsvangirai and two of his deputies, the two
Tsvangirai will be in charge of the Cabinet and Mugabe will be in charge of the council, which will oversee Cabinet. Mugabe would have no veto powers on the council.
The council's role remains unclear, but it does give Mugabe a significant role in government, and apparently led to the compromise that broke the deadlock.
Two of the five opposition officials said some opposition leaders believe Tsvangirai should have held out for more power and the ability to sideline Mugabe, who has ruled Zimbabwe since independence from Britain in 1980, and is accused of widespread fraud and violence.
In neighboring South Africa, however, news of a deal was greeted with cautious optimism among some Zimbabwean refugees, many of whom are eager to return home. Millions of Zimbabweans have sought a haven in South Africa from political violence and economic collapse
"Our country is beautiful. We want to develop it. We don't want to run away again," said Archie Tapera, 35. He called the power-sharing deal "one of the major achievements in the history of Zimbabwe."
"The international community should now assist in reconstruction, reconciliation and nation building in Zimbabwe," South Africa's governing African National Congress said Friday.
European Union spokesman John Clancy said on Friday that officials were waiting to get more details on the agreement on Monday.
The agreement was crucial for Mbeki's international standing, for South Africa's leader has faced growing criticism that his "quiet diplomacy" has only placated Mugabe and deepened Zimbabwe's economic meltdown.
Others, including African leaders traditionally reluctant to criticize one of their own, had become increasingly impatient with Mugabe. Neighboring countries coping with millions of Zimbabwean refugees were among the sharpest critics.
Tsvangirai based his claim to govern on winning the most votes in legislative and presidential elections in March. Tsvangirai he did not win enough to avoid a runoff against Mugabe. An onslaught of state-sponsored violence against Tsvangirai's supporters forced him to drop out of the presidential runoff.
Mugabe kept Tsvangirai's name on the ballot and was declared the overwhelming winner of a June runoff widely denounced as a sham.
The deal envisages the coalition government lasting between two and 2 1/2 years. It calls for a new constitution to be drawn up within 18 months and put to a national referendum. New elections should be held 90 days after.
___
Associated Press Writer Celean Jacobson contributed to this report from Johannesburg.
Source: AP News
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Copyright 2008 Wiredispatch.com
Friday, September 12, 2008
John Pilger: A Murderous Theatre of the Absurd
This is an article by John Pilger reprinted in the Information Clearing House.
It has always struck me as absurd that some reporters simply repeat what politicians say and often use what they say as evidence of the truth of what is said! Who says politicians are not truthful and reliable! Pilger is not heavy on sweetness and light!
A Murderous Theatre of the AbsurdIn his latest column for the New Statesman, John Pilger examines news as parody as those prominent in the British media seek to justify the official versions of the invasions of Iraq and Afghanistan.By John Pilger11/09/08 "ICH" -- - Try to laugh, please. The news is now officially parody and a game for all the family to play.First question: Why are “we” in Afghanistan? Answer: “To try to help in the country’s rebuilding programme.” Who says so? Huw Edwards, the BBC’s principal newsreader. What wags the Welsh are.Second question: Why are “we” in Iraq? Answer: To “plant a western-style open democracy”. Who says so? Paul Wood, the former BBC defence correspondent, and his boss Helen Boaden, director of BBC News. To prove her point, Boaden supplied Medialens.org with 2,700 words of quotations from Tony Blair and George W Bush. Irony? No, she meant it.Take Andrew Martin, divisional adviser at BBC Complaints, who has been researching Bush’s speeches for “evidence” of noble democratic reasons for laying to waste an ancient civilisation. Says he: “The ‘D’ word is not there, but the phrase ‘united, stable and free’ [is] clearly an allusion to it.” After all, he says, the invasion of Iraq “was launched as ‘Operation Iraqi Freedom’”. Moreover, says the BBC man, “in Bush’s 1 May 2003 speech (the one on the aircraft carrier) he talked repeatedly about freedom and explicitly about the Iraqi transition to democracy . . . These examples show that these were on Bush’s mind before, during and after the invasion.”Try to laugh, please.Laughing may be difficult, I agree, given the slaughter of civilians in Afghanistan by “coalition” aircraft, including those directed by British forces engaged in “the country’s rebuilding programme”. The bombing of civilian areas has doubled, along with the deaths of civilians, says Human Rights Watch. Last month, “our” aircraft slaughtered nearly 100 civilians, two-thirds of them children between the ages of three months and 16 years, while they slept, according to eyewitnesses. BBC television news initially devoted nine seconds to the Human Rights Watch report, and nothing to the fact that “less than peanuts” (according to an aid worker) is being spent on rebuilding anything in Afghanistan.As for the notion of a “united, stable and free” Iraq, consider the no-bid contracts handed to the major western oil companies for ownership of Iraq’s oil. “Theft” is a more truthful word. Written by the companies themselves and US officials, the contracts have been signed off by Bush and Nouri al-Maliki, “prime minister” of Iraq’s “democratic” government that resides in an air-conditioned American fortress. This is not news.Try to laugh, please, while you consider the devastation of Iraq’s health, once the best in the Middle East, by the ubiquitous dust from British and US depleted uranium weapons. A World Health Organisation study reporting a cancer epidemic has been suppressed, says its principal author. This has been reported in Britain only in the Glasgow Sunday Herald and the Morning Star. According to a study last year by Basra University Medical College, almost half of all deaths in the contaminated southern provinces were caused by cancer.Try to laugh, please, at the recent happy-clappy Nurembergs from which will come the next president of the United States. Those paid to keep the record straight have strained to present a spectacle of choice. Barack Obama, the man of “change”, wants to “build a 21st-century military . . . to stay on the offensive everywhere”. Here comes the new Cold War, with promises of more bombs, more of the militarised society with its 730 bases worldwide, on which Americans spend 42 cents of every tax dollar.At home, Obama offers no authentic measure that might ease America’s grotesque inequality, such as basic health care. John McCain, his Republican opponent, may well be a media cartoon figure – the fake “war hero” now joined with a Shakespeare-banning, gun-loving, religious fanatic – yet his true significance is that he and Obama share essentially the same dangerous prescriptions.Thousands of decent Americans came to the two nominating conventions to express the dissenting opinion of millions of their compatriots who believe, with good cause, that their democracy is evaporating. They were intimidated, arrested, beaten, pepper-gassed; and they were patronised or ignored by those paid to keep the record straight.In the meantime, Justin Webb, the BBC’s North America editor, has launched a book about America, his “city on a hill”. It is a sort of Mills & Boon view of the rapacious system he admires with such obsequiousness. The book is called Have a Nice Day.Try to laugh, please.
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In accordance with Title 17 U.S.C. Section 107, this material is distributed without profit to those who have expressed a prior interest in receiving the included information for research and educational purposes. Information Clearing House has no affiliation whatsoever with the originator of this article nor is Information ClearingHouse endorsed or sponsored by the originator.)
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It has always struck me as absurd that some reporters simply repeat what politicians say and often use what they say as evidence of the truth of what is said! Who says politicians are not truthful and reliable! Pilger is not heavy on sweetness and light!
A Murderous Theatre of the AbsurdIn his latest column for the New Statesman, John Pilger examines news as parody as those prominent in the British media seek to justify the official versions of the invasions of Iraq and Afghanistan.By John Pilger11/09/08 "ICH" -- - Try to laugh, please. The news is now officially parody and a game for all the family to play.First question: Why are “we” in Afghanistan? Answer: “To try to help in the country’s rebuilding programme.” Who says so? Huw Edwards, the BBC’s principal newsreader. What wags the Welsh are.Second question: Why are “we” in Iraq? Answer: To “plant a western-style open democracy”. Who says so? Paul Wood, the former BBC defence correspondent, and his boss Helen Boaden, director of BBC News. To prove her point, Boaden supplied Medialens.org with 2,700 words of quotations from Tony Blair and George W Bush. Irony? No, she meant it.Take Andrew Martin, divisional adviser at BBC Complaints, who has been researching Bush’s speeches for “evidence” of noble democratic reasons for laying to waste an ancient civilisation. Says he: “The ‘D’ word is not there, but the phrase ‘united, stable and free’ [is] clearly an allusion to it.” After all, he says, the invasion of Iraq “was launched as ‘Operation Iraqi Freedom’”. Moreover, says the BBC man, “in Bush’s 1 May 2003 speech (the one on the aircraft carrier) he talked repeatedly about freedom and explicitly about the Iraqi transition to democracy . . . These examples show that these were on Bush’s mind before, during and after the invasion.”Try to laugh, please.Laughing may be difficult, I agree, given the slaughter of civilians in Afghanistan by “coalition” aircraft, including those directed by British forces engaged in “the country’s rebuilding programme”. The bombing of civilian areas has doubled, along with the deaths of civilians, says Human Rights Watch. Last month, “our” aircraft slaughtered nearly 100 civilians, two-thirds of them children between the ages of three months and 16 years, while they slept, according to eyewitnesses. BBC television news initially devoted nine seconds to the Human Rights Watch report, and nothing to the fact that “less than peanuts” (according to an aid worker) is being spent on rebuilding anything in Afghanistan.As for the notion of a “united, stable and free” Iraq, consider the no-bid contracts handed to the major western oil companies for ownership of Iraq’s oil. “Theft” is a more truthful word. Written by the companies themselves and US officials, the contracts have been signed off by Bush and Nouri al-Maliki, “prime minister” of Iraq’s “democratic” government that resides in an air-conditioned American fortress. This is not news.Try to laugh, please, while you consider the devastation of Iraq’s health, once the best in the Middle East, by the ubiquitous dust from British and US depleted uranium weapons. A World Health Organisation study reporting a cancer epidemic has been suppressed, says its principal author. This has been reported in Britain only in the Glasgow Sunday Herald and the Morning Star. According to a study last year by Basra University Medical College, almost half of all deaths in the contaminated southern provinces were caused by cancer.Try to laugh, please, at the recent happy-clappy Nurembergs from which will come the next president of the United States. Those paid to keep the record straight have strained to present a spectacle of choice. Barack Obama, the man of “change”, wants to “build a 21st-century military . . . to stay on the offensive everywhere”. Here comes the new Cold War, with promises of more bombs, more of the militarised society with its 730 bases worldwide, on which Americans spend 42 cents of every tax dollar.At home, Obama offers no authentic measure that might ease America’s grotesque inequality, such as basic health care. John McCain, his Republican opponent, may well be a media cartoon figure – the fake “war hero” now joined with a Shakespeare-banning, gun-loving, religious fanatic – yet his true significance is that he and Obama share essentially the same dangerous prescriptions.Thousands of decent Americans came to the two nominating conventions to express the dissenting opinion of millions of their compatriots who believe, with good cause, that their democracy is evaporating. They were intimidated, arrested, beaten, pepper-gassed; and they were patronised or ignored by those paid to keep the record straight.In the meantime, Justin Webb, the BBC’s North America editor, has launched a book about America, his “city on a hill”. It is a sort of Mills & Boon view of the rapacious system he admires with such obsequiousness. The book is called Have a Nice Day.Try to laugh, please.
Click on "comments" below to read or post comments
In accordance with Title 17 U.S.C. Section 107, this material is distributed without profit to those who have expressed a prior interest in receiving the included information for research and educational purposes. Information Clearing House has no affiliation whatsoever with the originator of this article nor is Information ClearingHouse endorsed or sponsored by the originator.)
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Pakistan army ordered to hit back
This is from theNews.
It seems that new British government suffers from the Blair lap-dog sydrome. At least NATO refuses to take part in this obvious illegal action. I am not sure if the U.S. is copying the Israelis or vice-versa. The whole policy is a total insult to the idea that countries should be treated as sovereign. Apparently if they do not toe the U.S. line on the war against terrorism then they are fair game. In fact it is worse than this. They must carry out the war in a manner approved by the U.S. If Pakistan did this it could very well be overtaken quite quickly by civil war.
Army ordered to hit back
Friday, September 12, 2008Corps commanders discuss latest US strategy News DeskRAWALPINDI: The Pakistan Army has been ordered to retaliate against any action by foreign troops inside the country, Geo News quoted ISPR spokesman Maj Gen Athar Abbas as saying on Thursday night.Shakil Shaikh adds from Islamabad: Pakistan's military commanders resolved to defend the country's borders without allowing any external forces to conduct operations inside Pakistan. The military commanders expressed this resolve on the first day of the two-day Corps Commanders conference, which began here on Thursday at the General Headquarters. Army Chief General Ashfaq Parvez Kayani chaired the all-important conference against the backdrop of the new strategic developments taking place in the region. General Kayani has already rebuffed the American policy of including Pakistani territory in their operations against terrorists and those hiding in the areas bordering Afghanistan. Reports say that the US President Bush has allowed air raids from drones and ground operations in Pakistani areas including FATA. Prime Minister Yousuf Raza Gilani has termed General Kayani's response to the Americans as a true reflection of the government's policy. The military commanders are understood to have discussed the implications of the American attacks inside Pakistan and took stock of the public feeling. "In his statement, Genral Kayani has represented the feeling of the entire nation, as random attacks inside Pakistan have angered each and every Pakistani," said a senior official. As the corps commanders continue their discussion on Friday, the British Prime Minister Gordon Brown has supported the Bush administration's policy of conducting attacks inside Pakistan. President Zardari is expected to talk to Mr. Brown on this issue during his first visit to Britain next week. Pakistan's Ambassador to the US, Hussain Haqqani, is also learnt to have already talked to senior security officials in Washington. The latest spate of attacks from drones in Fata has killed many innocent people recently, which has only added to the gravity and complexity of the situation.
It seems that new British government suffers from the Blair lap-dog sydrome. At least NATO refuses to take part in this obvious illegal action. I am not sure if the U.S. is copying the Israelis or vice-versa. The whole policy is a total insult to the idea that countries should be treated as sovereign. Apparently if they do not toe the U.S. line on the war against terrorism then they are fair game. In fact it is worse than this. They must carry out the war in a manner approved by the U.S. If Pakistan did this it could very well be overtaken quite quickly by civil war.
Army ordered to hit back
Friday, September 12, 2008Corps commanders discuss latest US strategy News DeskRAWALPINDI: The Pakistan Army has been ordered to retaliate against any action by foreign troops inside the country, Geo News quoted ISPR spokesman Maj Gen Athar Abbas as saying on Thursday night.Shakil Shaikh adds from Islamabad: Pakistan's military commanders resolved to defend the country's borders without allowing any external forces to conduct operations inside Pakistan. The military commanders expressed this resolve on the first day of the two-day Corps Commanders conference, which began here on Thursday at the General Headquarters. Army Chief General Ashfaq Parvez Kayani chaired the all-important conference against the backdrop of the new strategic developments taking place in the region. General Kayani has already rebuffed the American policy of including Pakistani territory in their operations against terrorists and those hiding in the areas bordering Afghanistan. Reports say that the US President Bush has allowed air raids from drones and ground operations in Pakistani areas including FATA. Prime Minister Yousuf Raza Gilani has termed General Kayani's response to the Americans as a true reflection of the government's policy. The military commanders are understood to have discussed the implications of the American attacks inside Pakistan and took stock of the public feeling. "In his statement, Genral Kayani has represented the feeling of the entire nation, as random attacks inside Pakistan have angered each and every Pakistani," said a senior official. As the corps commanders continue their discussion on Friday, the British Prime Minister Gordon Brown has supported the Bush administration's policy of conducting attacks inside Pakistan. President Zardari is expected to talk to Mr. Brown on this issue during his first visit to Britain next week. Pakistan's Ambassador to the US, Hussain Haqqani, is also learnt to have already talked to senior security officials in Washington. The latest spate of attacks from drones in Fata has killed many innocent people recently, which has only added to the gravity and complexity of the situation.
Thursday, September 11, 2008
Afghans seething with anger over civilian deaths from air strikes.
No one seems to remark on the fact that even though there is a lot being done to train Afghan ground troops there seems to be virtually nothing done about the air force. The Afghan have nothing but a few Soviet era planes! The U.S. and NATO seem to want to control the skies. Exactly the same pattern occurs in Iraq where the occupiers dominate the sky. I gather in Iraq the US even controls air traffic.
North American News Service
Sep 10, 2008 07:02 EST
KABUL Sept 10 (Reuters) - Afghans are seething with anger over a spate of civilian deaths in air strikes mounted by U.S.-led coalition forces, a top Afghan defence official said on Wednesday, calling for greater involvement of the Afghan army in operations.
Major-General Zaher Azimi said there was no military justification for an air strike in western Herat last month in which the government says more than 90 people, most of them women and children, were killed, a figure backed by the United Nations.
"It is difficult for the Afghan people to tolerate any more. Civilian casualties happen in war, but they are now so much on the rise," said Azimi, a former mujahideen commander and now an adviser and spokesman at the Afghan defence ministry.
The U.S. military, which plans to reinvestigate the Aug. 22 bombing in Herat's Shindand district, says the air strike was called after coalition and Afghan army forces came under intense fire during an operation against suspected Taliban militants in the area.
It said 30 to 35 militants were killed in the raid.
But Azimi said the operation was flawed from the beginning because it was launched on the basis of intelligence input that was not coordinated with the Afghan National Army.
"If they had coordinated with the Afghan troops it wouldn't have ended up in an air strike," he said. "I mean, what justification is there to kill 100 people because 10 rounds were fired at you?"
He said coalition and Afghan troops could have surrounded the village and forced out the Taliban if they were there. "There wasn't really any immediate need for bombardment."
Violence has mounted in Afghanistan in the past three years with a resurgent Taliban carrying out suicide bombings and ambushes, forcing the over-stretched Western coalition forces to rely more and more on air strikes.
Twice as many tonnes of bombs were dropped in 2007 than in 2006, the New York-based Human Rights Watch said in a report this week, citing U.S. Air Force data. More people were killed by air strikes in 2007 than by U.S. or NATO ground fire.
This year as violence hit its highest level since the U.S.-led invasion in 2001 with more than 2,500 people killed, there has been a surge in the use of air power. More bombs have been dropped in the months of June and July than in the whole of 2006.
GIVE US PLANES
Azimi said given Afghanistan's harsh and rugged terrain, the use of air power was inevitable in tackling a full-blown insurgency.
But even here if the Afghans were conducting the operations, the chances of inflicting civilian casualties would be less because they were more likely to know a particular area better than foreign forces.
"We know people by name in our country, and we know their homes. We have pilots who know the villages and can identify targets themselves so that we hit our enemies, not civilians."
Afghanistan's fledgling air force has a fleet of five Soviet-era transport planes, and a few helicopters but no combat aircraft.
Unlike the Afghan army, the rebuilding of the air force, which lost all its 500 aircraft in the Soviet invasion and the civil war later on, has been slow.
"No army in the world can have successful operations unless it has an air force to give it logistics, transport and firepower support," he said. "But especially in the kind of environment we are in Afghanistan, we need a strong Afghan air force. (Additional reporting by Hamid Shalizi; Editing by David Fogarty)
Source: Reuters North American News Service
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Copyright 2008 Wiredispatch.com
North American News Service
Sep 10, 2008 07:02 EST
KABUL Sept 10 (Reuters) - Afghans are seething with anger over a spate of civilian deaths in air strikes mounted by U.S.-led coalition forces, a top Afghan defence official said on Wednesday, calling for greater involvement of the Afghan army in operations.
Major-General Zaher Azimi said there was no military justification for an air strike in western Herat last month in which the government says more than 90 people, most of them women and children, were killed, a figure backed by the United Nations.
"It is difficult for the Afghan people to tolerate any more. Civilian casualties happen in war, but they are now so much on the rise," said Azimi, a former mujahideen commander and now an adviser and spokesman at the Afghan defence ministry.
The U.S. military, which plans to reinvestigate the Aug. 22 bombing in Herat's Shindand district, says the air strike was called after coalition and Afghan army forces came under intense fire during an operation against suspected Taliban militants in the area.
It said 30 to 35 militants were killed in the raid.
But Azimi said the operation was flawed from the beginning because it was launched on the basis of intelligence input that was not coordinated with the Afghan National Army.
"If they had coordinated with the Afghan troops it wouldn't have ended up in an air strike," he said. "I mean, what justification is there to kill 100 people because 10 rounds were fired at you?"
He said coalition and Afghan troops could have surrounded the village and forced out the Taliban if they were there. "There wasn't really any immediate need for bombardment."
Violence has mounted in Afghanistan in the past three years with a resurgent Taliban carrying out suicide bombings and ambushes, forcing the over-stretched Western coalition forces to rely more and more on air strikes.
Twice as many tonnes of bombs were dropped in 2007 than in 2006, the New York-based Human Rights Watch said in a report this week, citing U.S. Air Force data. More people were killed by air strikes in 2007 than by U.S. or NATO ground fire.
This year as violence hit its highest level since the U.S.-led invasion in 2001 with more than 2,500 people killed, there has been a surge in the use of air power. More bombs have been dropped in the months of June and July than in the whole of 2006.
GIVE US PLANES
Azimi said given Afghanistan's harsh and rugged terrain, the use of air power was inevitable in tackling a full-blown insurgency.
But even here if the Afghans were conducting the operations, the chances of inflicting civilian casualties would be less because they were more likely to know a particular area better than foreign forces.
"We know people by name in our country, and we know their homes. We have pilots who know the villages and can identify targets themselves so that we hit our enemies, not civilians."
Afghanistan's fledgling air force has a fleet of five Soviet-era transport planes, and a few helicopters but no combat aircraft.
Unlike the Afghan army, the rebuilding of the air force, which lost all its 500 aircraft in the Soviet invasion and the civil war later on, has been slow.
"No army in the world can have successful operations unless it has an air force to give it logistics, transport and firepower support," he said. "But especially in the kind of environment we are in Afghanistan, we need a strong Afghan air force. (Additional reporting by Hamid Shalizi; Editing by David Fogarty)
Source: Reuters North American News Service
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Copyright 2008 Wiredispatch.com
Bush said to give orders allowing raids in Pakistan
This is from the NYTimes.
The U.S. reserves the right it seems to carry out attacks on the soil of an ally without its permission. So where do the presidential candidates stand on this issue. I imagine no one will ask them such a trivial question. I wonder if Obama will bother to issue any statement on this deploring Bush's actions. I won't hold my breath. Obama probably thinks it is a good idea too.
September 11, 2008
Bush Said to Give Orders Allowing Raids in Pakistan
By ERIC SCHMITT and MARK MAZZETTI
WASHINGTON — President Bush secretly approved orders in July that for the first time allow American Special Operations forces to carry out ground assaults inside Pakistan without the prior approval of the Pakistani government, according to senior American officials.
The classified orders signal a watershed for the Bush administration after nearly seven years of trying to work with Pakistan to combat the Taliban and Al Qaeda, and after months of high-level stalemate about how to challenge the militants’ increasingly secure base in Pakistan’s tribal areas.
American officials say that they will notify Pakistan when they conduct limited ground attacks like the Special Operations raid last Wednesday in a Pakistani village near the Afghanistan border, but that they will not ask for its permission.
“The situation in the tribal areas is not tolerable,” said a senior American official who, like others interviewed for this article, spoke on condition of anonymity because of the delicate nature of the missions. “We have to be more assertive. Orders have been issued.”
The new orders reflect concern about safe havens for Al Qaeda and the Taliban inside Pakistan, as well as an American view that Pakistan lacks the will and ability to combat militants. They also illustrate lingering distrust of the Pakistani military and intelligence agencies and a belief that some American operations had been compromised once Pakistanis were advised of the details.
The Central Intelligence Agency has for several years fired missiles at militants inside Pakistan from remotely piloted Predator aircraft. But the new orders for the military’s Special Operations forces relax firm restrictions on conducting raids on the soil of an important ally without its permission.
Pakistan’s top army officer said Wednesday that his forces would not tolerate American incursions like the one that took place last week and that the army would defend the country’s sovereignty “at all costs.”
It is unclear precisely what legal authorities the United States has invoked to conduct even limited ground raids in a friendly country. A second senior American official said that the Pakistani government had privately assented to the general concept of limited ground assaults by Special Operations forces against significant militant targets, but that it did not approve each mission.
The official did not say which members of the government gave their approval.
Any new ground operations in Pakistan raise the prospect of American forces being killed or captured in the restive tribal areas — and a propaganda coup for Al Qaeda. Last week’s raid also presents a major test for Pakistan’s new president, Asif Ali Zardari, who supports more aggressive action by his army against the militants but cannot risk being viewed as an American lap dog, as was his predecessor, Pervez Musharraf.
The new orders were issued after months of debate inside the Bush administration about whether to authorize a ground campaign inside Pakistan. The debate, first reported by The New York Times in late June, at times pitted some officials at the State Department against parts of the Pentagon that advocated aggressive action against Qaeda and Taliban targets inside the tribal areas.
Details about last week’s commando operation have emerged that indicate the mission was more intrusive than had previously been known.
According to two American officials briefed on the raid, it involved more than two dozen members of the Navy Seals who spent several hours on the ground and killed about two dozen suspected Qaeda fighters in what now appeared to have been a planned attack against militants who had been conducting attacks against an American forward operating base across the border in Afghanistan.
Supported by an AC-130 gunship, the Special Operations forces were whisked away by helicopters after completing the mission.
Although the senior American official who provided the most detailed description of the new presidential order would discuss it only on condition of anonymity, his account was corroborated by three other senior American officials from several government agencies, all of whom made clear that they supported the more aggressive approach.
Pakistan’s government has asserted that last week’s raid achieved little except killing civilians and stoking anti-Americanism in the tribal areas.
“Unilateral action by the American forces does not help the war against terror because it only enrages public opinion,” said Husain Haqqani, Pakistan’s ambassador to Washington, during a speech on Friday. “In this particular incident, nothing was gained by the action of the troops.”
As an alternative to American ground operations, some Pakistani officials have made clear that they prefer the C.I.A.’s Predator aircraft, operating from the skies, as a method of killing Qaeda operatives. The C.I.A. for the most part has coordinated with Pakistan’s government before and after it has launched missiles from the drone. On Monday, a Predator strike in North Waziristan killed several Arab Qaeda operatives.
A new American command structure was put in place this year to better coordinate missions by the C.I.A. and members of the Pentagon’s Joint Special Operations Command, made up of the Army’s Delta Force and the Navy Seals.
The move was intended to address frustration on the ground about different agencies operating under different marching orders. Under the arrangement, a senior C.I.A. official based at Bagram air base in Afghanistan was put in charge of coordinating C.I.A. and military activities in the border region.
Spokesmen for the White House, the Defense Department and the C.I.A. declined to comment on Wednesday about the new orders. Some senior Congressional officials have received briefings on the new authorities. A spokeswoman for Senator Carl Levin, a Michigan Democrat who leads the Armed Services Committee, declined to comment.
American commanders in Afghanistan have complained bitterly that militants use sanctuaries in Pakistan to attack American troops in Afghanistan.
“I’m not convinced we’re winning it in Afghanistan,” Adm. Mike Mullen, the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, told the House Armed Services Committee on Wednesday. “I am convinced we can.”
Toward that goal, Admiral Mullen said he had ordered a comprehensive military strategy to address the border region between Pakistan and Afghanistan.
The commando raid last week and an increasing number of recent missile strikes are part of a more aggressive overall American campaign in the border region aimed at intensifying attacks on Al Qaeda and the Taliban in the waning months of the Bush administration, with less than two months to go before November elections.
State Department officials, as well as some within the National Security Council, have expressed concern about any Special Operations missions that could be carried out without the approval of the American ambassador in Islamabad.
The months-long delay in approving ground missions created intense frustration inside the military’s Special Operations community, which believed that the Bush administration was holding back as the Qaeda safe haven inside Pakistan became more secure for militants.
The stepped-up campaign inside Pakistan comes at a time when American-Pakistani relations have been fraying, and when anger is increasing within American intelligence agencies about ties between Pakistan’s Inter-Services Intelligence Directorate, known as the ISI, and militants in the tribal areas.
Analysts at the C.I.A. and other American spy and security agencies believe not only that the bombing of India’s embassy in Kabul, Afghanistan, in July by militants was aided by ISI operatives, but also that the highest levels of Pakistan’s security apparatus — including the army chief, Gen. Ashfaq Parvez Kayani — had knowledge of the plot.
“It’s very difficult to imagine he was not aware,” a senior American official said of General Kayani.
American intelligence agencies have said that senior Pakistani national security officials favor the use of militant groups to preserve Pakistan’s influence in the region, as a hedge against India and Afghanistan.
In fact, some American intelligence analysts believe that ISI operatives did not mind when their role in the July bombing in Kabul became known. “They didn’t cover their tracks very well,” a senior Defense Department official said, “and I think the embassy bombing was the ISI drawing a line in the sand.”
Pakistani military to Bar Foreign Operations
This is from Antiwar.com.
It is not clear how the Pakistani military is going to bar these operations. Will they shoot down drowns or attack the U.S. forces? The U.S. seems bound and determined to make the situation in Pakistan even worse than it is. Perhaps they think they can buy off the new Pakistani president. However, Pakistan has already cut off NATO supply lines in retaliation for these attacks. Meanwhile discussion in the US is about pigs and lipstick.
Pakistani Military to Bar Foreign Operations
Posted September 10, 2008
With drone attacks already up over threefold from 2007 the US desire to ramp up attacks inside Pakistan even further has run into another wall today as Pakistan’s Chief of Army Staff General Parvez Kayani announced that foreign forces would no longer be allowed to conduct missions inside of Pakistani territory. Gen. Kayani said the rules of engagement were well defined and did not permit coalition forces to operate in Pakistan.
The announcement comes just one week after US helicopters and ground troops attacked a small village in South Waziristan, killing at least 20 civilians according to one Pakistani official. The strike produced a myriad of harsh comments from Pakistani officials and days later the Pakistani government cut supply lines to NATO troops in Afghanistan, a move which Defense Minister Chaudhry Ahmed Mukhtar said would show “how serious we are”. Earlier this week, a drone strike against a school in North Waziristan which was reportedly carried out by the CIA killed at least 23.
This comes amid reports that the National Intelligence Council warned President Bush last month that attacks in Pakistan were liable to further destabilize Pakistan’s government and military. However, speaking before the House Armed Services Committee today, Defense Secretary Robert Gates and Joint Chiefs head Admiral Michael Mullen stressed the need for striking the “safe havens” of militants inside Pakistan, and recent activities suggest this strategy has won out despite the NIC’s warnings.
It is not clear how the Pakistani military is going to bar these operations. Will they shoot down drowns or attack the U.S. forces? The U.S. seems bound and determined to make the situation in Pakistan even worse than it is. Perhaps they think they can buy off the new Pakistani president. However, Pakistan has already cut off NATO supply lines in retaliation for these attacks. Meanwhile discussion in the US is about pigs and lipstick.
Pakistani Military to Bar Foreign Operations
Posted September 10, 2008
With drone attacks already up over threefold from 2007 the US desire to ramp up attacks inside Pakistan even further has run into another wall today as Pakistan’s Chief of Army Staff General Parvez Kayani announced that foreign forces would no longer be allowed to conduct missions inside of Pakistani territory. Gen. Kayani said the rules of engagement were well defined and did not permit coalition forces to operate in Pakistan.
The announcement comes just one week after US helicopters and ground troops attacked a small village in South Waziristan, killing at least 20 civilians according to one Pakistani official. The strike produced a myriad of harsh comments from Pakistani officials and days later the Pakistani government cut supply lines to NATO troops in Afghanistan, a move which Defense Minister Chaudhry Ahmed Mukhtar said would show “how serious we are”. Earlier this week, a drone strike against a school in North Waziristan which was reportedly carried out by the CIA killed at least 23.
This comes amid reports that the National Intelligence Council warned President Bush last month that attacks in Pakistan were liable to further destabilize Pakistan’s government and military. However, speaking before the House Armed Services Committee today, Defense Secretary Robert Gates and Joint Chiefs head Admiral Michael Mullen stressed the need for striking the “safe havens” of militants inside Pakistan, and recent activities suggest this strategy has won out despite the NIC’s warnings.
Wednesday, September 10, 2008
Arroyo governement rejects peace talks with Communists
It is interesting that the MILF which uses some of the same tacts the communist New Peoples Army is not on the US, EU terror list. The Maoist insurgent NPA is hardly new but has been going on for decades! The insurgency is mainly in the countryside and as long as there is extreme poverty and neglect in the countryside it is unlikely to simply go away or even be beaten by force. The movement also has legal front organisations that hold seats in the parliament.
This is from the Manila Standard.
Malacañang junks Communists’ peace offer
By Joyce Pangco Pañares
The Communist Party of the Philippines-National Democratic Front has expressed willingness to resume peace negotiations with the Philippine government provided that certain demands, like the removal of the terror tag against the movement, are met.
But Malacañang immediately rejected the demands of the Communist rebel group, saying they should lay down their arms first and sign a ceasefire agreement before talks can resume.
“We cannot sit down with them and negotiate because they are adamant in rejecting the ceasefire,” Executive Secretary Eduardo Ermita said yesterday. “We cannot give in to their demand to revive the JASIG [Joint Agreement on Safety and Immunity Guarantees]. How can you reinstate the JASIG when they [CPP-NDF] continue to give orders to their commanders to attack us?”
Ermita said the consensus during yesterday’s National Security Council-Cabinet cluster meeting was to apply the same formula of frontloading talks on disarmament, demobilization and rehabilitation if negotiations are to resume with the CPP-NDF as has been the case in the suspended peace talks with the Moro Islamic Liberation Front.
While he declined to give details on the Communist offer, Ermita insisted the government cannot compel the United Nations and European Union to remove the CPP-NDF and its armed wing, the New People’s Army, from the list of terrorist organizations.
“We cannot agree to what they want to happen because we cannot meddle in the affairs of sovereign states like the US and the EU. This is the time for them to show goodwill if they really want to be removed [from the terror list],” Ermita said.
Last week, CPP founding chairman Jose Ma. Sison and NDF chief negotiator Luis Jalandoni met with a delegation of the Philippine Ecumenical Peace Platform in Utrecht where the Communist leaders expressed their willingness to resume peace talks with the government.
The PEPP delegation was composed of co-convenors Archbishop Antonio Ledesma and Sharon Rose Joy Ruiz-Duremdes, and members Bishop Deogracias Iniguez, Bishop Efren Tendero, Sr. Cres Lucero and Ofelia Cantor.
Sison and Jalandoni were joined by the Communist group’s peace panel members Julieta de Lima and Coni Ledesma and NDF Monitoring Committee members Danilo Borjal and Ruth de Leon.
Sison, in particular, said the issue of terror list can be easily resolved if the government agrees to “make a joint declaration that no foreign government should breach Philippine sovereignty and territorial integrity by interfering with legal and political matters that are strictly internal to the Philippines.”
This is from the Manila Standard.
Malacañang junks Communists’ peace offer
By Joyce Pangco Pañares
The Communist Party of the Philippines-National Democratic Front has expressed willingness to resume peace negotiations with the Philippine government provided that certain demands, like the removal of the terror tag against the movement, are met.
But Malacañang immediately rejected the demands of the Communist rebel group, saying they should lay down their arms first and sign a ceasefire agreement before talks can resume.
“We cannot sit down with them and negotiate because they are adamant in rejecting the ceasefire,” Executive Secretary Eduardo Ermita said yesterday. “We cannot give in to their demand to revive the JASIG [Joint Agreement on Safety and Immunity Guarantees]. How can you reinstate the JASIG when they [CPP-NDF] continue to give orders to their commanders to attack us?”
Ermita said the consensus during yesterday’s National Security Council-Cabinet cluster meeting was to apply the same formula of frontloading talks on disarmament, demobilization and rehabilitation if negotiations are to resume with the CPP-NDF as has been the case in the suspended peace talks with the Moro Islamic Liberation Front.
While he declined to give details on the Communist offer, Ermita insisted the government cannot compel the United Nations and European Union to remove the CPP-NDF and its armed wing, the New People’s Army, from the list of terrorist organizations.
“We cannot agree to what they want to happen because we cannot meddle in the affairs of sovereign states like the US and the EU. This is the time for them to show goodwill if they really want to be removed [from the terror list],” Ermita said.
Last week, CPP founding chairman Jose Ma. Sison and NDF chief negotiator Luis Jalandoni met with a delegation of the Philippine Ecumenical Peace Platform in Utrecht where the Communist leaders expressed their willingness to resume peace talks with the government.
The PEPP delegation was composed of co-convenors Archbishop Antonio Ledesma and Sharon Rose Joy Ruiz-Duremdes, and members Bishop Deogracias Iniguez, Bishop Efren Tendero, Sr. Cres Lucero and Ofelia Cantor.
Sison and Jalandoni were joined by the Communist group’s peace panel members Julieta de Lima and Coni Ledesma and NDF Monitoring Committee members Danilo Borjal and Ruth de Leon.
Sison, in particular, said the issue of terror list can be easily resolved if the government agrees to “make a joint declaration that no foreign government should breach Philippine sovereignty and territorial integrity by interfering with legal and political matters that are strictly internal to the Philippines.”
France criticises Pakistan bombings
This is from antiwar.com. Lately France has been supportive of the U.S. on a number of issues but on this one France is taking a critical view, but it is the same as many in the U.S. intelligence community!
Wednesday, September 10, 2008News DeskPARIS: France warned on Tuesday that missile strikes by suspected US drones in the tribal areas were undermining international efforts in Afghanistan and Pakistan."Not only are these creating human tragedies but also situations that have counterproductive effects on the political dynamics that we would like to see, and that means a partnership between Afghanistan, Pakistan and the international community," said foreign ministry spokesman Eric Chevallier."Anything that creates suffering in the civilian population creates problems in trying to reach an understanding and an acceptance of these populations of the international presence in the region," said the foreign ministry spokesman.Chevallier did not single out the United States for criticism, but referred to the "bombings that took place in Pakistan and left civilian casualties, in particular in the Pakistani tribal areas on Monday."
Wednesday, September 10, 2008News DeskPARIS: France warned on Tuesday that missile strikes by suspected US drones in the tribal areas were undermining international efforts in Afghanistan and Pakistan."Not only are these creating human tragedies but also situations that have counterproductive effects on the political dynamics that we would like to see, and that means a partnership between Afghanistan, Pakistan and the international community," said foreign ministry spokesman Eric Chevallier."Anything that creates suffering in the civilian population creates problems in trying to reach an understanding and an acceptance of these populations of the international presence in the region," said the foreign ministry spokesman.Chevallier did not single out the United States for criticism, but referred to the "bombings that took place in Pakistan and left civilian casualties, in particular in the Pakistani tribal areas on Monday."
Georgian Opposition Urges Saakashvilis Ouster
This was bound to happen after the Russian withdrawal and things settled down a bit. At the time of the Russian incursion everyone felt they had to support Saakashvili but now the reality of the losses and setbacks that Georgia suffered are sinking in. Of course Saakashvili hopes that US aid will prop him up and rebuild his military. It very well could because there is absolutely no sign that the US is changing its policy of encircling Russia with unfriendly states propped up by the US and linked with them eventually through NATO. Imagine if Mexico, Canada, and Cuba joined in a defence pact headed by Russia and were all hostile to the U.S.
This is from antiwar.com.
Georgian Opposition Urges Saakashvili’s Ouster
Posted September 9, 2008
Georgia’s brief war with Russia is over, and though President Mikheil Saakashvili is eying future wars with Russia, his attention must turn now to a more immediate problem. While most Georgians rallied behind the government during the fighting, the sobering effect of post-war reality has left many Georgians questioning the wisdom of provoking a war with their enormously larger and more powerful neighbor to the north.
Emboldened by the turn in popular opinion, Georgia’s opposition has called for President Saakashvili’s ouster. Opposition leader David Gamkredlidze declared that the president no longer had any right to his position, saying “Despite numerous warnings Saakashvili unilaterally took the criminal and irresponsible decision to shell Tskhinvali, which led to catastrophic consequences for the country”.
The war destroyed much of Georgia’s military, displaced a large number of civilians along the border and severed a key rail link with Azerbaijan. It also placed the breakaway enclaves of Abkhazia and South Ossetia, already enjoying large measures of de facto independence, completely out of Georgian control with Russia formally recognizing the independence of both.
Bolstered by very public messages of support from the west however, President Saakashvili has remained confident, vowing to reclaim the breakaway enclaves of Abkhazia and South Ossetia. Speaking this weekend, Saakashvili said he expected the rest of the world to unite against Russia and restore his country’s “territorial integrity”. On the question of provoking a war with Russia, President Saakashvili also claimed today to have presented “very solid proof” to the European Union that Russia had actually started the war. Mysteriously, Saakashvili has chosen to keep this proof a secret, which will likely lead to questions about its veracity.
This is from antiwar.com.
Georgian Opposition Urges Saakashvili’s Ouster
Posted September 9, 2008
Georgia’s brief war with Russia is over, and though President Mikheil Saakashvili is eying future wars with Russia, his attention must turn now to a more immediate problem. While most Georgians rallied behind the government during the fighting, the sobering effect of post-war reality has left many Georgians questioning the wisdom of provoking a war with their enormously larger and more powerful neighbor to the north.
Emboldened by the turn in popular opinion, Georgia’s opposition has called for President Saakashvili’s ouster. Opposition leader David Gamkredlidze declared that the president no longer had any right to his position, saying “Despite numerous warnings Saakashvili unilaterally took the criminal and irresponsible decision to shell Tskhinvali, which led to catastrophic consequences for the country”.
The war destroyed much of Georgia’s military, displaced a large number of civilians along the border and severed a key rail link with Azerbaijan. It also placed the breakaway enclaves of Abkhazia and South Ossetia, already enjoying large measures of de facto independence, completely out of Georgian control with Russia formally recognizing the independence of both.
Bolstered by very public messages of support from the west however, President Saakashvili has remained confident, vowing to reclaim the breakaway enclaves of Abkhazia and South Ossetia. Speaking this weekend, Saakashvili said he expected the rest of the world to unite against Russia and restore his country’s “territorial integrity”. On the question of provoking a war with Russia, President Saakashvili also claimed today to have presented “very solid proof” to the European Union that Russia had actually started the war. Mysteriously, Saakashvili has chosen to keep this proof a secret, which will likely lead to questions about its veracity.
Tuesday, September 9, 2008
Intel Council Warned Against Raids in Pakistan
I thought I should reprint this since it parallels my own thinking on the issue almost entirely, although it really does not require any great acumen to see why the U.S. policy might be counter productive. I just wonder how intelligence operatives feel when their observations are simply ignored. I wonder why their advice is ignored as well. The policy seems bound to produce more conflict not less. This is from antiwar.com
Intel Council Warned Against Raids in Pakistan
by Gareth Porter
The National Intelligence Council, the U.S. intelligence community's focal point for estimating future developments, warned the George W. Bush administration last month that a decision to launch commando raids by U.S. troops against al-Qaeda-related targets in Pakistan's Northwest Frontier region would carry a high risk of further destabilizing the Pakistani military and government, according to sources familiar with the intelligence community's response to the issue.
That blunt warning was conveyed to the White House in an oral briefing by a top official of the NIC two or three weeks ago, according to Philip Giraldi, former operations officer and counter-terrorist specialist in the CIA Directorate of Operations, who maintains contacts with the intelligence community.
Another source, who has been briefed by NIC officials on the issue, confirms that the NIC message, representing a consensus in the intelligence community, was conveyed to the Bush administration in August, just as an intense debate over whether to carry out commando raids against al-Qaeda and Taliban targets in the Federally Administered Tribal Areas (FATA) of Pakistan was still under way.
The source, who asked not to be identified because of the confidentiality of his contacts with the NIC, said the White House was warned that if U.S. commando raids continued over a longer period of time, the NIC believes they could threaten the unity of the Pakistani military.
U.S. special operations forces based at Bagram Air Force base in Afghanistan carried out a commando raid in South Waziristan on Sept. 3, which reportedly killed as many as 20 people, most of whom were apparently civilians. Both the New York Times and Washington Post said top officials indicated this was only the beginning of wider campaign of raids against al-Qaeda and Taliban targets in the frontier area of Pakistan.
The Pakistani government lodged a diplomatic protest over the raid, and the Pakistani parliament condemned it in a resolution.
The intelligence community believes U.S. military incursions into Pakistan will benefit the political-military organizations allied with the Taliban that are seeking to destabilize the national government in Islamabad.
Patrick Lang, former defense intelligence officer for the Middle East at the Defense Intelligence Agency, told IPS he understands the intelligence community issued a "pretty clear warning" against the commando raid. "They said, in effect, if you want to see the Pakistani government collapse, go right ahead," Lang said.
A key to the strategy of Islamic extremists in the FATA region in northwest Pakistan is believed to be winning over troops in both the Frontier Corps, the militia recruited from the local population, and the regular Pakistani army. The Pakistani military rejected a proposal earlier this year from U.S. military leaders for U.S. special operations officers to train units of the Frontier Corps in counter-insurgency, along with use of cash payments to obtain their cooperation against the Taliban and its allies.
But the intelligence community regards the Frontier Corps as already "wavering," the source familiar with NIC thinking says, and it is feared that U.S. military raids would cause more of those units to actively support the militant Islamic organizations in the FATA.
The intelligence community's greatest fear, according to the source, is the impact of anti-U.S. anger on the morale of the regular Pakistani army. One reason for that concern is the fact that a disproportionate percentage of the army officers serving in the region are Pashtun. The tribal population of the FATA is largely Pashtun, and if the U.S. commando raids continue beyond a few months, analysts believe they could provoke large-scale defections from the Pakistani army serving in the FATA.
Selig Harrison of the Center for International Policy, a veteran journalist and author specializing in Pakistan affairs, agreed in an interview that the raids, along with targeted missile strikes that have caused many civilian casualties, are likely to strain the loyalties of Pashtun army officers serving in the FATA.
In an article in the International Herald Tribune in August 2007, Harrison warned that the Pashtun-based radical movement in the northwest "could lead to the unification of the estimated 41 million Pashtuns on both sides of the border, the breakup of Pakistan and Afghanistan, and the emergence of a new national entity, 'Pashtunistan,' under radical Islamist leadership."
Although the NIC is responsible for producing national intelligence estimates, it has not been asked to provide any estimate on the potential consequences of a policy of raids by U.S. special operations forces against targets in the FATA believed to be linked to al-Qaeda, according to the former CIA official.
Ironically, it was the July 2007 national intelligence estimate produced by the NIC on al-Qaeda that contributed to growing pressures for direct U.S. military actions in Pakistan. The conclusion of NIE that al-Qaeda enjoyed a safe haven in Pakistan, which had become the primary center of its operations worldwide, was highly publicized and highly charged politically.
The Pakistani military reacted to the U.S. raid last week by citing the danger that it would provoke new attacks by militants in the frontier area. The New York Times quoted the spokesman for the Pakistani military, Gen. Athar Abbas, as warning that, because of the killing of civilians, there is now a greater risk that tribesmen who have supported the Pakistani soldiers and opposed the Taliban in the past will shift their loyalties out of anger.
"Such actions are completely counterproductive and can result in huge losses, because it gives the civilians a cause to rise against the Pakistani military," Abbas was quoted as saying.
According to Pakistan's leading daily newspaper, Dawn, Pakistan's National Security Council received an intelligence report in June 2007 on the "Talibanization" of the region, which cited "the presence of foreign forces in Afghanistan" and the "growing feeling among Muslims that they are under attack" as factors contributing to the "growing insurgency" in the region.
(Inter Press Service)
Intel Council Warned Against Raids in Pakistan
by Gareth Porter
The National Intelligence Council, the U.S. intelligence community's focal point for estimating future developments, warned the George W. Bush administration last month that a decision to launch commando raids by U.S. troops against al-Qaeda-related targets in Pakistan's Northwest Frontier region would carry a high risk of further destabilizing the Pakistani military and government, according to sources familiar with the intelligence community's response to the issue.
That blunt warning was conveyed to the White House in an oral briefing by a top official of the NIC two or three weeks ago, according to Philip Giraldi, former operations officer and counter-terrorist specialist in the CIA Directorate of Operations, who maintains contacts with the intelligence community.
Another source, who has been briefed by NIC officials on the issue, confirms that the NIC message, representing a consensus in the intelligence community, was conveyed to the Bush administration in August, just as an intense debate over whether to carry out commando raids against al-Qaeda and Taliban targets in the Federally Administered Tribal Areas (FATA) of Pakistan was still under way.
The source, who asked not to be identified because of the confidentiality of his contacts with the NIC, said the White House was warned that if U.S. commando raids continued over a longer period of time, the NIC believes they could threaten the unity of the Pakistani military.
U.S. special operations forces based at Bagram Air Force base in Afghanistan carried out a commando raid in South Waziristan on Sept. 3, which reportedly killed as many as 20 people, most of whom were apparently civilians. Both the New York Times and Washington Post said top officials indicated this was only the beginning of wider campaign of raids against al-Qaeda and Taliban targets in the frontier area of Pakistan.
The Pakistani government lodged a diplomatic protest over the raid, and the Pakistani parliament condemned it in a resolution.
The intelligence community believes U.S. military incursions into Pakistan will benefit the political-military organizations allied with the Taliban that are seeking to destabilize the national government in Islamabad.
Patrick Lang, former defense intelligence officer for the Middle East at the Defense Intelligence Agency, told IPS he understands the intelligence community issued a "pretty clear warning" against the commando raid. "They said, in effect, if you want to see the Pakistani government collapse, go right ahead," Lang said.
A key to the strategy of Islamic extremists in the FATA region in northwest Pakistan is believed to be winning over troops in both the Frontier Corps, the militia recruited from the local population, and the regular Pakistani army. The Pakistani military rejected a proposal earlier this year from U.S. military leaders for U.S. special operations officers to train units of the Frontier Corps in counter-insurgency, along with use of cash payments to obtain their cooperation against the Taliban and its allies.
But the intelligence community regards the Frontier Corps as already "wavering," the source familiar with NIC thinking says, and it is feared that U.S. military raids would cause more of those units to actively support the militant Islamic organizations in the FATA.
The intelligence community's greatest fear, according to the source, is the impact of anti-U.S. anger on the morale of the regular Pakistani army. One reason for that concern is the fact that a disproportionate percentage of the army officers serving in the region are Pashtun. The tribal population of the FATA is largely Pashtun, and if the U.S. commando raids continue beyond a few months, analysts believe they could provoke large-scale defections from the Pakistani army serving in the FATA.
Selig Harrison of the Center for International Policy, a veteran journalist and author specializing in Pakistan affairs, agreed in an interview that the raids, along with targeted missile strikes that have caused many civilian casualties, are likely to strain the loyalties of Pashtun army officers serving in the FATA.
In an article in the International Herald Tribune in August 2007, Harrison warned that the Pashtun-based radical movement in the northwest "could lead to the unification of the estimated 41 million Pashtuns on both sides of the border, the breakup of Pakistan and Afghanistan, and the emergence of a new national entity, 'Pashtunistan,' under radical Islamist leadership."
Although the NIC is responsible for producing national intelligence estimates, it has not been asked to provide any estimate on the potential consequences of a policy of raids by U.S. special operations forces against targets in the FATA believed to be linked to al-Qaeda, according to the former CIA official.
Ironically, it was the July 2007 national intelligence estimate produced by the NIC on al-Qaeda that contributed to growing pressures for direct U.S. military actions in Pakistan. The conclusion of NIE that al-Qaeda enjoyed a safe haven in Pakistan, which had become the primary center of its operations worldwide, was highly publicized and highly charged politically.
The Pakistani military reacted to the U.S. raid last week by citing the danger that it would provoke new attacks by militants in the frontier area. The New York Times quoted the spokesman for the Pakistani military, Gen. Athar Abbas, as warning that, because of the killing of civilians, there is now a greater risk that tribesmen who have supported the Pakistani soldiers and opposed the Taliban in the past will shift their loyalties out of anger.
"Such actions are completely counterproductive and can result in huge losses, because it gives the civilians a cause to rise against the Pakistani military," Abbas was quoted as saying.
According to Pakistan's leading daily newspaper, Dawn, Pakistan's National Security Council received an intelligence report in June 2007 on the "Talibanization" of the region, which cited "the presence of foreign forces in Afghanistan" and the "growing feeling among Muslims that they are under attack" as factors contributing to the "growing insurgency" in the region.
(Inter Press Service)
Moro group: US forces helping in offensive against MILF rebels.
Involvement of U.S. forces in these clashes is always kept under wraps as far as possible since the Filipinos often react negatively to U.S. military involvement. However, the connection between the U.S. and AFP seems rather close in terms of training and even joint exercises.
http://newsinfo.inquirer.net/breakingnews/regions/view/20080909-159655/US-forces-helping-in-offensives-vs-MILF-rebels--Moro-group
US forces helping in offensives vs MILF rebels--Moro group
By Inquirer MindanaoPhilippine Daily Inquirer
Posted date: September 09, 2008
COTABATO CITY, Philippines—A Moro group on Tuesday said US forces have been helping in the offensives against Moro Islamic Liberation front rebels in Maguindanao.
But the military denied it even in the wake of photos taken by the Philippine Daily Inquirer which showed US forces holding an unmanned aerial vehicle during the early days of the offensive against the forces of MILF Commanders Ameril Ombra Kato and Wahid Tundok.
The US forces were seen inside an Army camp in Datu Saudi Ampatuan on August 24, when government troops were shelling Kato's position.
Bai Ali Indayla, spokesperson of Moro human rights group Kawagib, said there were also instances when they saw American forces in full battle gear with Filipino troops in Maguindanao last month.
"We do not know what more the Armed Forces of the Philippines and US troops were doing inside Maguindanao with their covert operations. Last night, there was a helicopter flying at night within Maguindanao areas but we cannot see it because it's dark," Indayla said Tuesday.
Colonel Marlou Salazar, commander of the 601st Infantry Brigade, who supervises the punitive action against Kato's group, declined to comment on photos of US forces holding the body and wings of a white unmanned aerial vehicle inside the military camp in Crossing Salvo in Datu Saudi town.
During the anti-Abu Sayyaf operations in Sulu in 2006, US forces also used drones to track down Khadaffy Janjalani and other bandit leaders.
Major General Eugenio Cedo, then commander of the Western Mindanao Command (Westmincom), said the drones were used for intelligence gathering purposes.
One of the drones later crashed in Indanan and was recovered by village officials.
Major Armand Rico, spokesperson of the Eastern Mindanao Command (Eastmincom) in Davao City, said he could not confirm if spy planes were being used in Maguindanao.
Commenting on the Inquirer photos, Rico said: "We could not confirm it is a spy plane. We still cannot ascertain. The ones being used by US soldiers were bigger than that."
Salazar also did not comment on photos taken by the Inquirer, which showed other US soldiers inside the said camp.
"You ask them (US soldiers)," he said.
Rico said there is an ongoing exercise with US forces in Central Mindanao which began about last month.
"There is an ongoing training there. There are many courses involved, (explosive ordinance handling), monitoring, engineering and (handling of) technical equipment," he said.
He said the stay of US forces inside the military camp in Crossing Salvo could still be part of the said exercise.
As to allegations US soldiers were seen with their Filipino counterparts, Salazar said: "The rules they follow, if something happened on the ground like clashes, they will stay and remain in an Army camp."
The US Embassy in Manila has repeatedly denied US forces have joined combat operations.
But Herbert Docena, researcher of the Focus on the Global South and author of the books "At the Door of All the East, The Philippines in the United States Military Strategy," and "Unconventional Warfare--Are US Special Forces engaged in an Offensive War in the Philippines?" was consistent in his claim that "US troops in the Philippines are into actual combat operation with the Filipino forces."
"It's ludicrous, very ridiculous for our government and for the United States to declare their soldiers are not into combat operations," Docena told the Inquirer by phone Tuesday.
Docena said "they are stretching the meaning of combat."
"If they say their activity is not combat like searching for dud bombs, conducting intelligence gathering, evacuating wounded soldiers, (then) they are not just lying to the Filipino people or to the public, they are also lying to themselves," he said.
Docena said even the United States Army War manual described their operation as "combat operations."
In Lanao del Norte, several US soldiers arrived Tuesday as the military was intensifying its manhunt against another MILF commander, Abdullah Macapaar alias Commander Bravo.
But Colonel Benito Antonio Templo De Leon, who took over the helm of the 104th Infantry Brigade, said no US soldiers will be joining the manhunt.
The center of the operation now, he said, is in Mt. Gurain, which borders the two Lanao provinces.
He said aside from soldiers, the Philippine National Police is also helping in the operation against Bravo.
As this developed, the local government of Datu Piang in Maguindanao has called for an investigation into the death of six civilians, including a teenage mother and two children, during an alleged military air strike on Monday morning.
Musib Tan, spokesperson of the Datu Piang municipal government, said witnesses have confirmed claims that the bomb came from a military aircraft.
The victims were fleeing the fighting aboard a motorized banca when they were hit by an explosion, Tan said.
Lt. Col. Julieto Ando, speaking for the 6th Infantry Division, said the 6th Infantry Division was conducting an investigation.
"We're not hiding anything here. The reported deaths of the six alleged civilians happened right in the area where MILF fighters were firing shots at aircraft hovering above them," Ando said.
He said the military only flew "persuasion flights" but no bombings were conducted.
Samsudin Ali, a 50-year-old Muslim farmer, said they were certain that a bomb or a rocket landed on the motorized banca.
"Na-direct hit ang pump boat, makapal ang usok (smoke was thick)," Ali said.
Tan also said metal fragments pierced through the bodies of the victims.
The incident has also triggered alarm over villagers in other parts of Datu Saudi and Datu Piang towns.
On Monday afternoon, the Datu Piang town plaza had already been teeming with displaced persons.
In Datu Saudi, Tan said the number of evacuees has already swelled to more than 10,000 following the influx Monday of another batch seeking refuge from the violence.
"Not only are we attending to our Maguindanao constituents, but also Muslim evacuees from Aleosan and Midsayap in North Cotabato," Tan said.
As this developed, the Autonomous Region in Muslim Mindanao police were ordered to ensure the safety of relief workers following the alleged hijacking of a truck loaded with rice from the World Food Program (WFP) in Mamasapano town.
Chief Superintendent Joel Goltiao, police chief for ARMM, said the police were willing to provide armed police escorts to relief organizations.
©Copyright 2001-2008 INQUIRER.net, An Inquirer Company
http://newsinfo.inquirer.net/breakingnews/regions/view/20080909-159655/US-forces-helping-in-offensives-vs-MILF-rebels--Moro-group
US forces helping in offensives vs MILF rebels--Moro group
By Inquirer MindanaoPhilippine Daily Inquirer
Posted date: September 09, 2008
COTABATO CITY, Philippines—A Moro group on Tuesday said US forces have been helping in the offensives against Moro Islamic Liberation front rebels in Maguindanao.
But the military denied it even in the wake of photos taken by the Philippine Daily Inquirer which showed US forces holding an unmanned aerial vehicle during the early days of the offensive against the forces of MILF Commanders Ameril Ombra Kato and Wahid Tundok.
The US forces were seen inside an Army camp in Datu Saudi Ampatuan on August 24, when government troops were shelling Kato's position.
Bai Ali Indayla, spokesperson of Moro human rights group Kawagib, said there were also instances when they saw American forces in full battle gear with Filipino troops in Maguindanao last month.
"We do not know what more the Armed Forces of the Philippines and US troops were doing inside Maguindanao with their covert operations. Last night, there was a helicopter flying at night within Maguindanao areas but we cannot see it because it's dark," Indayla said Tuesday.
Colonel Marlou Salazar, commander of the 601st Infantry Brigade, who supervises the punitive action against Kato's group, declined to comment on photos of US forces holding the body and wings of a white unmanned aerial vehicle inside the military camp in Crossing Salvo in Datu Saudi town.
During the anti-Abu Sayyaf operations in Sulu in 2006, US forces also used drones to track down Khadaffy Janjalani and other bandit leaders.
Major General Eugenio Cedo, then commander of the Western Mindanao Command (Westmincom), said the drones were used for intelligence gathering purposes.
One of the drones later crashed in Indanan and was recovered by village officials.
Major Armand Rico, spokesperson of the Eastern Mindanao Command (Eastmincom) in Davao City, said he could not confirm if spy planes were being used in Maguindanao.
Commenting on the Inquirer photos, Rico said: "We could not confirm it is a spy plane. We still cannot ascertain. The ones being used by US soldiers were bigger than that."
Salazar also did not comment on photos taken by the Inquirer, which showed other US soldiers inside the said camp.
"You ask them (US soldiers)," he said.
Rico said there is an ongoing exercise with US forces in Central Mindanao which began about last month.
"There is an ongoing training there. There are many courses involved, (explosive ordinance handling), monitoring, engineering and (handling of) technical equipment," he said.
He said the stay of US forces inside the military camp in Crossing Salvo could still be part of the said exercise.
As to allegations US soldiers were seen with their Filipino counterparts, Salazar said: "The rules they follow, if something happened on the ground like clashes, they will stay and remain in an Army camp."
The US Embassy in Manila has repeatedly denied US forces have joined combat operations.
But Herbert Docena, researcher of the Focus on the Global South and author of the books "At the Door of All the East, The Philippines in the United States Military Strategy," and "Unconventional Warfare--Are US Special Forces engaged in an Offensive War in the Philippines?" was consistent in his claim that "US troops in the Philippines are into actual combat operation with the Filipino forces."
"It's ludicrous, very ridiculous for our government and for the United States to declare their soldiers are not into combat operations," Docena told the Inquirer by phone Tuesday.
Docena said "they are stretching the meaning of combat."
"If they say their activity is not combat like searching for dud bombs, conducting intelligence gathering, evacuating wounded soldiers, (then) they are not just lying to the Filipino people or to the public, they are also lying to themselves," he said.
Docena said even the United States Army War manual described their operation as "combat operations."
In Lanao del Norte, several US soldiers arrived Tuesday as the military was intensifying its manhunt against another MILF commander, Abdullah Macapaar alias Commander Bravo.
But Colonel Benito Antonio Templo De Leon, who took over the helm of the 104th Infantry Brigade, said no US soldiers will be joining the manhunt.
The center of the operation now, he said, is in Mt. Gurain, which borders the two Lanao provinces.
He said aside from soldiers, the Philippine National Police is also helping in the operation against Bravo.
As this developed, the local government of Datu Piang in Maguindanao has called for an investigation into the death of six civilians, including a teenage mother and two children, during an alleged military air strike on Monday morning.
Musib Tan, spokesperson of the Datu Piang municipal government, said witnesses have confirmed claims that the bomb came from a military aircraft.
The victims were fleeing the fighting aboard a motorized banca when they were hit by an explosion, Tan said.
Lt. Col. Julieto Ando, speaking for the 6th Infantry Division, said the 6th Infantry Division was conducting an investigation.
"We're not hiding anything here. The reported deaths of the six alleged civilians happened right in the area where MILF fighters were firing shots at aircraft hovering above them," Ando said.
He said the military only flew "persuasion flights" but no bombings were conducted.
Samsudin Ali, a 50-year-old Muslim farmer, said they were certain that a bomb or a rocket landed on the motorized banca.
"Na-direct hit ang pump boat, makapal ang usok (smoke was thick)," Ali said.
Tan also said metal fragments pierced through the bodies of the victims.
The incident has also triggered alarm over villagers in other parts of Datu Saudi and Datu Piang towns.
On Monday afternoon, the Datu Piang town plaza had already been teeming with displaced persons.
In Datu Saudi, Tan said the number of evacuees has already swelled to more than 10,000 following the influx Monday of another batch seeking refuge from the violence.
"Not only are we attending to our Maguindanao constituents, but also Muslim evacuees from Aleosan and Midsayap in North Cotabato," Tan said.
As this developed, the Autonomous Region in Muslim Mindanao police were ordered to ensure the safety of relief workers following the alleged hijacking of a truck loaded with rice from the World Food Program (WFP) in Mamasapano town.
Chief Superintendent Joel Goltiao, police chief for ARMM, said the police were willing to provide armed police escorts to relief organizations.
©Copyright 2001-2008 INQUIRER.net, An Inquirer Company
Philippines: Supreme Court dismissed an Associate Jusitce and punishes four others.
Good to see that the Supreme Court has moved to punish some corrupt members of the judiciary. It is too bad that the Supreme Court cant punish a few miscreants in the Arroyo administration as well! This is from the Inquirer.
SC dismisses CA justice in bribery case
4 others penalizedBy Leila Salaverria, Tetch TorresINQUIRER.net, Philippine Daily InquirerFirst Posted 12:03:00 09/09/2008
MANILA, Philippines -- (UPDATE 4) The Supreme Court has dismissed an associate justice for violating the Code of Judicial Conduct and penalized four others in the bribery controversy at the Court of Appeals.
In a 58-page per curiam decision, the high court, voting 12-1, dismissed Associate Justice Vicente Q. Roxas because of his “undue interest” in the Manila Electric Company’s case against the Government Service Insurance System.
At the same time, the high tribunal said Roxas failed to rule on several motions, including a motion for his inhibition before issuing a ruling that voided the Securities and Exchange Commission order stopping Meralco from including proxy votes in its board elections on May 27.
The high court -- citing multiple violations of the canons of the Code of Judicial Conduct, grave misconduct, dishonesty, undue interest and conduct prejudicial to the best interest of the service -- also ordered the forfeiture of all his benefits except accrued leave credits due to. He is barred from working in any branch of the government, including state owned and controlled firms.
On the other hand, the original whistle blower in the bribery scandal, Associate Justice Jose Sabio, was found guilty of simple misconduct and conduct unbecoming of a justice of the Court of Appeals and was suspended for two months without pay.
Although Sabio signed the temporary restraining order to stop the SEC from investigating the proxy votes contrary to the stand of his brother, Presidential Commission on Good Government Chairman Camilo Sabio, his "unusual interest in holding on to the Meralco case seems to indicate that he may have been actually influenced by his brother," the high court said.It also said that Sabio's continued communication with businessman Francis De Borja, despite the latter’s alleged attempt to bribe him was "highly inappropriate and shows poor judgment on the part of Justice Sabio who should have acted in preservation of the dignity of his judicial office and the institution to which he belongs."
Presiding Justice Conrado Vasquez was severely reprimanded "for his failure to act promptly and decisively in order to avert the incidents that damaged the Court of Appeals, while Associate Justice Bienvenido Reyes was found guilty of simple misconduct with mitigating circumstance and was reprimanded.
Associate Justice Myrna Dimaranan-Vidal was found guilty of conduct unbecoming of a justice of a Court of Appeals and was "admonished to be more circumspect in the discharge of her judicial duties."
The four justices were also warned that a repetition of the same or similar offenses would warrant more severe penalties.
Ten Supreme Court justices voted for Sabio’s two-month suspension while one each voted for dismissal, a six-month suspension and a reprimand with credit given for being the whistle blower.On the other hand, eight justices voted to reprimand Reyes and five voted to suspend him for one month.
Voting on the sanctions imposed on the other appellate court justices was unanimous.
Only Chief Justice Reynato Puno and Associate Justice Antonio Carpio have been allowed to inhibit from the case.
The high court referred the case of Camilo Sabio to the Office of the Bar Confidant and told the Department of Justice (DoJ) to investigate De Borja.
Roxas left early from his office at the Court of Appeals after reports leaked that he has been dismissed.Sabio, on the other hand, said he would file a motion for reconsideration before the high court.
Earlier in the day, the Philippine Daily Inquirer obtained a copy of the report of the three-man panel that investigated the bribery case at the Court of Appeals and found Roxas, Sabio Jr., Reyes, Vasquez, and Vidal liable.
The panel members, composed of three retired justices, said Sabio's version that he was offered a P10-million bribe by an unnamed emissary of the Manila Electric Co. to inhibit himself from the case was "more credible" than that of De Borja.
De Borja, who felt alluded to, said Sabio told him about being offered a Supreme Court seat and money to rule in favor of the Government Service Insurance System, and that the magistrate wanted P50 million to reject the offer.
But the panel members found that Sabio had "unusual interest in holding on to the Meralco case" and that this "seemed to indicate that he may have been actually influenced to 'help GSIS'" as his brother and PCGG chairman Sabio had advised. This constituted a violation of the code of judicial conduct, it added.
It also said the PCGG chairman’s phone call to his brother Justice Sabio to convince him of the GSIS stand showed that they both violated the Code of Professional Responsibility.
In the case of Roxas, the panel found him "dishonest and untruthful" since he attached a fabricated transcript of deliberations. There were also falsehoods in the supposed transcript, he added.
Roxas also showed "undue interest and unseemly haste" in light of his "rush to judgment."
The panel said Roxas prepared a decision even before the parties had filed their memoranda, and added that he "cheated the parties' counsel of time, effort and energy they invested in the preparation of their ponderous memoranda."
"He made a mockery of his own order for the parties to submit memoranda, and rendered their compliance a futile exercise," it said.
The panel also found "completely false" Roxas’ account on why he brought a copy of the decision to Vidal.
As for Vasquez, the panel said he was indecisive in handling the dispute between Reyes and Sabio on which division should decide on the Meralco case. It also criticized his silence, inaction and indifference to the alleged bribery attempt.
The panel found Reyes discourteous to Vasquez for ruling on the case even though the presiding justice had yet to hand down his opinion.
As for Vidal, the panel said she was "too compliant" when she signed the Meralco decision without reading the memoranda and without deliberation.
The panel also found that Roxas violated the Code of Judicial Conduct when he failed to resolve several motions before deciding on the case.
The high court also it was not the first time Roxas failed to resolve a pending motion.It cited the case of Orocio v. Roxas where Roxas failed to act on a motion despite the promulgation of the main case. He was fined P15,000 and warned that future commission of act of impropriety "will be dealt with more severely."Roxas is the third Court of Appeals Associate Justice who has been dismissed from service.
Justice Demetrio Demetria was removed form the bench in 2001 after he was found guilty of interceding on behalf of alleged drug queen Yu Yuk Lai.
In 2007, the high court sacked Justice Elvi John Asuncion for gross ignorance of the law and delaying motions of consideration filed before his division. Asuncion was also accused of accepting bribe money.
Copyright 2008 INQUIRER.net, Philippine Daily Inquirer. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten or redistributed.+
SC dismisses CA justice in bribery case
4 others penalizedBy Leila Salaverria, Tetch TorresINQUIRER.net, Philippine Daily InquirerFirst Posted 12:03:00 09/09/2008
MANILA, Philippines -- (UPDATE 4) The Supreme Court has dismissed an associate justice for violating the Code of Judicial Conduct and penalized four others in the bribery controversy at the Court of Appeals.
In a 58-page per curiam decision, the high court, voting 12-1, dismissed Associate Justice Vicente Q. Roxas because of his “undue interest” in the Manila Electric Company’s case against the Government Service Insurance System.
At the same time, the high tribunal said Roxas failed to rule on several motions, including a motion for his inhibition before issuing a ruling that voided the Securities and Exchange Commission order stopping Meralco from including proxy votes in its board elections on May 27.
The high court -- citing multiple violations of the canons of the Code of Judicial Conduct, grave misconduct, dishonesty, undue interest and conduct prejudicial to the best interest of the service -- also ordered the forfeiture of all his benefits except accrued leave credits due to. He is barred from working in any branch of the government, including state owned and controlled firms.
On the other hand, the original whistle blower in the bribery scandal, Associate Justice Jose Sabio, was found guilty of simple misconduct and conduct unbecoming of a justice of the Court of Appeals and was suspended for two months without pay.
Although Sabio signed the temporary restraining order to stop the SEC from investigating the proxy votes contrary to the stand of his brother, Presidential Commission on Good Government Chairman Camilo Sabio, his "unusual interest in holding on to the Meralco case seems to indicate that he may have been actually influenced by his brother," the high court said.It also said that Sabio's continued communication with businessman Francis De Borja, despite the latter’s alleged attempt to bribe him was "highly inappropriate and shows poor judgment on the part of Justice Sabio who should have acted in preservation of the dignity of his judicial office and the institution to which he belongs."
Presiding Justice Conrado Vasquez was severely reprimanded "for his failure to act promptly and decisively in order to avert the incidents that damaged the Court of Appeals, while Associate Justice Bienvenido Reyes was found guilty of simple misconduct with mitigating circumstance and was reprimanded.
Associate Justice Myrna Dimaranan-Vidal was found guilty of conduct unbecoming of a justice of a Court of Appeals and was "admonished to be more circumspect in the discharge of her judicial duties."
The four justices were also warned that a repetition of the same or similar offenses would warrant more severe penalties.
Ten Supreme Court justices voted for Sabio’s two-month suspension while one each voted for dismissal, a six-month suspension and a reprimand with credit given for being the whistle blower.On the other hand, eight justices voted to reprimand Reyes and five voted to suspend him for one month.
Voting on the sanctions imposed on the other appellate court justices was unanimous.
Only Chief Justice Reynato Puno and Associate Justice Antonio Carpio have been allowed to inhibit from the case.
The high court referred the case of Camilo Sabio to the Office of the Bar Confidant and told the Department of Justice (DoJ) to investigate De Borja.
Roxas left early from his office at the Court of Appeals after reports leaked that he has been dismissed.Sabio, on the other hand, said he would file a motion for reconsideration before the high court.
Earlier in the day, the Philippine Daily Inquirer obtained a copy of the report of the three-man panel that investigated the bribery case at the Court of Appeals and found Roxas, Sabio Jr., Reyes, Vasquez, and Vidal liable.
The panel members, composed of three retired justices, said Sabio's version that he was offered a P10-million bribe by an unnamed emissary of the Manila Electric Co. to inhibit himself from the case was "more credible" than that of De Borja.
De Borja, who felt alluded to, said Sabio told him about being offered a Supreme Court seat and money to rule in favor of the Government Service Insurance System, and that the magistrate wanted P50 million to reject the offer.
But the panel members found that Sabio had "unusual interest in holding on to the Meralco case" and that this "seemed to indicate that he may have been actually influenced to 'help GSIS'" as his brother and PCGG chairman Sabio had advised. This constituted a violation of the code of judicial conduct, it added.
It also said the PCGG chairman’s phone call to his brother Justice Sabio to convince him of the GSIS stand showed that they both violated the Code of Professional Responsibility.
In the case of Roxas, the panel found him "dishonest and untruthful" since he attached a fabricated transcript of deliberations. There were also falsehoods in the supposed transcript, he added.
Roxas also showed "undue interest and unseemly haste" in light of his "rush to judgment."
The panel said Roxas prepared a decision even before the parties had filed their memoranda, and added that he "cheated the parties' counsel of time, effort and energy they invested in the preparation of their ponderous memoranda."
"He made a mockery of his own order for the parties to submit memoranda, and rendered their compliance a futile exercise," it said.
The panel also found "completely false" Roxas’ account on why he brought a copy of the decision to Vidal.
As for Vasquez, the panel said he was indecisive in handling the dispute between Reyes and Sabio on which division should decide on the Meralco case. It also criticized his silence, inaction and indifference to the alleged bribery attempt.
The panel found Reyes discourteous to Vasquez for ruling on the case even though the presiding justice had yet to hand down his opinion.
As for Vidal, the panel said she was "too compliant" when she signed the Meralco decision without reading the memoranda and without deliberation.
The panel also found that Roxas violated the Code of Judicial Conduct when he failed to resolve several motions before deciding on the case.
The high court also it was not the first time Roxas failed to resolve a pending motion.It cited the case of Orocio v. Roxas where Roxas failed to act on a motion despite the promulgation of the main case. He was fined P15,000 and warned that future commission of act of impropriety "will be dealt with more severely."Roxas is the third Court of Appeals Associate Justice who has been dismissed from service.
Justice Demetrio Demetria was removed form the bench in 2001 after he was found guilty of interceding on behalf of alleged drug queen Yu Yuk Lai.
In 2007, the high court sacked Justice Elvi John Asuncion for gross ignorance of the law and delaying motions of consideration filed before his division. Asuncion was also accused of accepting bribe money.
Copyright 2008 INQUIRER.net, Philippine Daily Inquirer. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten or redistributed.+
At least 23 killed as US drones attack school in North Waziristan.
This is from antiwar.com. It seems that the U.S. and NATO are becoming ever more aggressive in violating Pakistan borders without any authorisation it would seem. This makes the situation even more difficult for Pakistan in attempts to reach some type of accomodation with the tribal areas. Of course the U.S. does not care what difficulties this creates for Pakistan and seems indifferent to the fact that these actions inflame anti-US sentiment in Pakistan. It is simply another sign of great power arrogance. The total hyocrisy of the U.S. should be evident. The leader they are targetting was a hero when he was fighting the Soviet Union and the U.S. even wanted to make him president of Afghanistan! Now of course he is evil and to be eliminated.
Many of these reports have the format: officials say. They are often anonymous and not independently verified.
At Least 23 Killed as US Drones Attack School in North Waziristan
Posted September 8, 2008
Last Updated 9/8 3:05 PM EST
This morning two US Predator Drones attacked a small village two miles north of Miramshah in Pakistan’s North Waziristan Agency, killing at least 23 and wounding 20 others. Ten of those killed were said by officials to be militants, although a previous official was quoted as saying “no foreign militant was killed” in the strike. At least four women and two children were reported among the dead and most of the wounded are also reported to be women and children.
The attack centered on a religious school founded by Jalaluddin Haqqani, a religious scholar and veteran commander of the US-backed mujahideen who fought against the Soviet Union’s invasion of Afghanistan. Haqqani is well-connected in both militant and government circles, having been accused of ties with both al-Qaeda and Pakistan’s Inter-Services Intelligence by US officials.
Haqqani has recently been accused of a role in the bombing of India’s embassy in Kabul, and was also allegedly linked to an assassination attempt earlier this year against Afghan President Hamid Karzai. Incredibly enough, the United States attempted to install Haqqani as Prime Minister of Afghanistan, a position which he refused citing the number of Afghans killed in the 2001 invasion. Haqqani was reportedly in Afghanistan at the time of the attack.
The strike comes just days after an earlier US drone strike on another village not far from Miramshah, but on the Afghan side of the mountainous border, killed at least five civilians. It also comes less than a week after US ground troops killed 20 civilians in an attack on a village in South Waziristan, an action which led to widespread condemnation from Pakistan’s government and military, as well as anti-US protests among the tribesmen in the area. Pakistan’s government recently cut off supply lines to NATO troops in Afghanistan though there was some disagreement, even within the Pakistani government, whether this was in retaliation for last week’s South Waziristan attack. So far the only comment came from Pakistan’s military, who admitted the incident had occurred and said it was investigating the cause.
Many of these reports have the format: officials say. They are often anonymous and not independently verified.
At Least 23 Killed as US Drones Attack School in North Waziristan
Posted September 8, 2008
Last Updated 9/8 3:05 PM EST
This morning two US Predator Drones attacked a small village two miles north of Miramshah in Pakistan’s North Waziristan Agency, killing at least 23 and wounding 20 others. Ten of those killed were said by officials to be militants, although a previous official was quoted as saying “no foreign militant was killed” in the strike. At least four women and two children were reported among the dead and most of the wounded are also reported to be women and children.
The attack centered on a religious school founded by Jalaluddin Haqqani, a religious scholar and veteran commander of the US-backed mujahideen who fought against the Soviet Union’s invasion of Afghanistan. Haqqani is well-connected in both militant and government circles, having been accused of ties with both al-Qaeda and Pakistan’s Inter-Services Intelligence by US officials.
Haqqani has recently been accused of a role in the bombing of India’s embassy in Kabul, and was also allegedly linked to an assassination attempt earlier this year against Afghan President Hamid Karzai. Incredibly enough, the United States attempted to install Haqqani as Prime Minister of Afghanistan, a position which he refused citing the number of Afghans killed in the 2001 invasion. Haqqani was reportedly in Afghanistan at the time of the attack.
The strike comes just days after an earlier US drone strike on another village not far from Miramshah, but on the Afghan side of the mountainous border, killed at least five civilians. It also comes less than a week after US ground troops killed 20 civilians in an attack on a village in South Waziristan, an action which led to widespread condemnation from Pakistan’s government and military, as well as anti-US protests among the tribesmen in the area. Pakistan’s government recently cut off supply lines to NATO troops in Afghanistan though there was some disagreement, even within the Pakistani government, whether this was in retaliation for last week’s South Waziristan attack. So far the only comment came from Pakistan’s military, who admitted the incident had occurred and said it was investigating the cause.
Monday, September 8, 2008
Human rights group says civilian deaths in Afghanistan on the rise.
This is from the CBC Canada. Karzai has complained about the NATO and US bombing many times but the deaths seem to be increasing. The reason is clear. The political fallout at home is much greater for troop deaths than Afghan casualties. The main aim of the occupying forces is to keep down their own casualties as far as possible. Of course in the propaganda war the occupiers insist that they do their best to avoid civilian casualties and their reports always understate civilian deaths or collateral damage as it is called. The occuppiers do not even both to count these deaths.
Human rights group says civilian deaths in Afghanistan on rise
Last Updated: Monday, September 8, 2008 | 4:03 PM ET Comments9Recommend7CBC News
Human Rights Watch is urging the U.S. and NATO to change tactics to prevent civilian deaths in Afghanistan.
The human rights group, based in New York City, issued a report Monday that said most civilian deaths in Afghanistan occur during "unplanned air strikes," when bombing is carried out to support ground troops under attack by insurgents.
Civilian deaths undermine local support for the international effort in Afghanistan and could be prevented through better intelligence, the report said.
"The recent air strikes killing dozens of Afghans make clear that the system is still broken and that civilians continue to pay the ultimate price," Brad Adams, Asia director at Human Rights Watch, said in a release.
"Civilian deaths from air strikes act as a recruiting tool for
Human rights group says civilian deaths in Afghanistan on rise
Last Updated: Monday, September 8, 2008 | 4:03 PM ET Comments9Recommend7CBC News
Human Rights Watch is urging the U.S. and NATO to change tactics to prevent civilian deaths in Afghanistan.
The human rights group, based in New York City, issued a report Monday that said most civilian deaths in Afghanistan occur during "unplanned air strikes," when bombing is carried out to support ground troops under attack by insurgents.
Civilian deaths undermine local support for the international effort in Afghanistan and could be prevented through better intelligence, the report said.
"The recent air strikes killing dozens of Afghans make clear that the system is still broken and that civilians continue to pay the ultimate price," Brad Adams, Asia director at Human Rights Watch, said in a release.
"Civilian deaths from air strikes act as a recruiting tool for