Pilger is nothing if not negative! This article makes me feel I should defend Obama but there is a great deal of truth in what he says. Obama's foreign policy follows Bush and even ups the ante to some extent. However, he has opened up a bit on Cuba and is less belligerent in his dealings with Iran and Venezuela than the Bush administration. Also, he is closing Guantanamo but when remains to be seen! He also has released torture memos whereas Bush kept everything under wraps. As Pilger shows Obama has absolutely zilch to do with any sort of leftist radicalism. Everyyone at Fox news should read Pilger!
Obama's 100 DaysThe Mad Men Did Well
By John PilgerApril 29, 2009 "Information Clearing House" -- The BBC's American television soap Mad Men offers a rare glimpse of the power of corporate advertising. The promotion of smoking half a century ago by the “smart” people of Madison Avenue, who knew the truth, led to countless deaths. Advertising and its twin, public relations, became a way of deceiving dreamt up by those who had read Freud and applied mass psychology to anything from cigarettes to politics. Just as Marlboro Man was virility itself, so politicians could be branded, packaged and sold. It is more than 100 days since Barack Obama was elected president of the United States. The “Obama brand” has been named “Advertising Age’s marketer of the year for 2008”, easily beating Apple computers. David Fenton of MoveOn.org describes Obama’s election campaign as “an institutionalised mass-level automated technological community organising that has never existed before and is a very, very powerful force”. Deploying the internet and a slogan plagiarised from the Latino union organiser César Chávez – “Sí, se puede!” or “Yes, we can” – the mass-level automated technological community marketed its brand to victory in a country desperate to be rid of George W Bush. No one knew what the new brand actually stood for. So accomplished was the advertising (a record $75m was spent on television commercials alone) that many Americans actually believed Obama shared their opposition to Bush’s wars. In fact, he had repeatedly backed Bush’s warmongering and its congressional funding. Many Americans also believed he was the heir to Martin Luther King’s legacy of anti-colonialism. Yet if Obama had a theme at all, apart from the vacuous “Change you can believe in”, it was the renewal of America as a dominant, avaricious bully. “We will be the most powerful,” he often declared. Perhaps the Obama brand’s most effective advertising was supplied free of charge by those journalists who, as courtiers of a rapacious system, promote shining knights. They depoliticised him, spinning his platitudinous speeches as “adroit literary creations, rich, like those Doric columns, with allusion...” (Charlotte Higgins in the Guardian). The San Francisco Chronicle columnist Mark Morford wrote: “Many spiritually advanced people I know... identify Obama as a Lightworker, that rare kind of attuned being who... can actually help usher in a new way of being on the planet.” In his first 100 days, Obama has excused torture, opposed habeas corpus and demanded more secret government. He has kept Bush’s gulag intact and at least 17,000 prisoners beyond the reach of justice. On 24 April, his lawyers won an appeal that ruled Guantanamo Bay prisoners were not “persons”, and therefore had no right not to be tortured. His national intelligence director, Admiral Dennis Blair, says he believes torture works. One of his senior US intelligence officials in Latin America is accused of covering up the torture of an American nun in Guatemala in 1989; another is a Pinochet apologist. As Daniel Ellsberg has pointed out, the US experienced a military coup under Bush, whose secretary of “defence”, Robert Gates, along with the same warmaking officials, has been retained by Obama. All over the world, America’s violent assault on innocent people, directly or by agents, has been stepped up. During the recent massacre in Gaza, reports Seymour Hersh, “the Obama team let it be known that it would not object to the planned resupply of ‘smart bombs’ and other hi-tech ordnance that was already flowing to Israel” and being used to slaughter mostly women and children. In Pakistan, the number of civilians killed by US missiles called drones has more than doubled since Obama took office. In Afghanistan, the US “strategy” of killing Pashtun tribespeople (the “Taliban”) has been extended by Obama to give the Pentagon time to build a series of permanent bases right across the devastated country where, says Secretary Gates, the US military will remain indefinitely. Obama’s policy, one unchanged since the Cold War, is to intimidate Russia and China, now an imperial rival. He is proceeding with Bush’s provocation of placing missiles on Russia’s western border, justifying it as a counter to Iran, which he accuses, absurdly, of posing “a real threat” to Europe and the US. On 5 April in Prague, he made a speech reported as “anti-nuclear”. It was nothing of the kind. Under the Pentagon’s Reliable Replacement Warhead programme, the US is building new “tactical” nuclear weapons designed to blur the distinction between nuclear and conventional war. Perhaps the biggest lie – the equivalent of smoking is good for you – is Obama’s announcement that the US is leaving Iraq, the country it has reduced to a river of blood. According to unabashed US army planners, as many as 70,000 troops will remain “for the next 15 to 20 years”. On 25 April, his secretary of state, Hillary Clinton, alluded to this. It is not surprising that the polls are showing that a growing number of Americans believe they have been suckered – especially as the nation’s economy has been entrusted to the same fraudsters who destroyed it. Lawrence Summers, Obama’s principal economic adviser, is throwing $3trn at the same banks that paid him more than $8m last year, including $135,000 for one speech. Change you can believe in. Much of the American establishment loathed Bush and Cheney for exposing, and threatening, the onward march of America’s “grand design”, as Henry Kissinger, war criminal and now Obama adviser, calls it. In advertising terms, Bush was a “brand collapse” whereas Obama, with his toothpaste advertisement smile and righteous clichés, is a godsend. At a stroke, he has seen off serious domestic dissent to war, and he brings tears to the eyes, from Washington to Whitehall. He is the BBC’s man, and CNN’s man, and Murdoch’s man, and Wall Street’s man, and the CIA’s man. The Madmen did well. www.johnpilger.com
Thursday, April 30, 2009
30,000 flee army raid on NW Pakistan
This is from RawStory via AFP.
The Pakistani armed forces tend toward a very destructive scorched earth policy in attacking militants and the result is a huge internal refugee problem and humanitarian disaster. Often resentment against the central govt. simply increases providing recruiting opportunities for the Taliban and other militants.
The Pakistan govt. seems to be going along with the US policy of concentrating upon a military confrontation with Islamic militants, a policy that is not at all popular in Pakistan and may even result in local civil wars. There is a new offensive in Buner.
This new offensive is not going all that well as militants have captured troops and police stations but no doubt the Pakistani forces will prevail but at what cost remains to be seen.
30,000 flee army raid on NW Pakistan: local official
PESHAWAR, Pakistan (AFP) - Around 30,000 people in northwest Pakistan have been displaced by a military offensive to flush out Taliban militants, a provincial minister said Tuesday."Up to 30,000 people have left Maidan in Lower Dir district over the past few days," Mian Iftikhar Hussain, information minister in the government of North West Frontier Province, told a news conference."We are making arrangements for them in Peshawar, Nowshera and Timargarah districts."Residents said thousands of terrified people, mostly women and children, left the area with their belongings after Pakistan troops and helicopter gunships launched the operation over the weekend.One local charity said it had registered 2,241 displaced families so far.Around 50 insurgents were killed in the operation in Lower Dir, near the Taliban-held Swat valley, officials said.The military said eight paramilitary soldiers had also been killed since it launched Operation Black Thunder Sunday.Heavy shelling by the paramilitary Frontier Corps continued in the Maidan area of Lower Dir overnight, a senior military officer said Tuesday."We destroyed several militants hideouts in heavy artillery shelling of suspected bases in the area," the officer told AFP on condition of anonymity.In an earlier statement the military said Lal Qila, a Taliban stronghold in Lower Dir, "has been fully secured after the successful operation.""Search and cordon operations are continuing in the area to flush out militants," it added."The military had to retaliate after militants blocked roads, attacked convoys and killed some government officials," the minister said.The Pakistan government in February agreed to allow the Islamic justice system of sharia to be imposed in Swat valley and its surrounding districts in the Malakand region, which have been troubled by two years of rebellion.But the agreement was followed by further militant encroachments, and the government has been in talks with the militants to try to restore peace there.The Taliban suspended peace talks with the government Monday after the military launched Operation Black Thunder following intense US pressure to stop the extremists' advance."My uncle was working in the fields when he was wounded in helicopter shelling," Hayat Khan 36, one of those who fled the fighting, told AFP."I came to Timargarah with my wife, children and a sister whose husband lives in Dubai. I cannot see them dying there," Khan said, adding that his uncle had been admitted to a hospital in Timargarah."I saw helicopters targeting hills in Maidan yesterday," said 40-year old Omar Zeb, who arrived in Timargarah with 16 other relatives including brother, nephews and nieces."There was intense artillery shelling last night, my children were scared, none of us could sleep the whole night. We left at dawn, fearing the fighting would escalate."Information minister Hussain said the government remained "determined to fully implement the deal but some outsiders who do not want peace have infiltrated in Buner and Dir districts to sabotage the accord."He invited Soofi Mohammad, leader of a sharia movement in the area, to resume talks to avoid any delay in the implementation of the deal.Taliban spokesman Amir Izzat Khan said the operation in Lower Dir could endanger the peace deal."There can be a reaction to the government action," he told AFP.However, President Asif Ali Zardari said Monday the peace deal with the Taliban remained valid until the North West Frontier Province government told him otherwise."There will be a reassessment of the situation by the provincial government and if needed we'll come back to parliament and the parliament will decide," he said in an interview with foreign journalists.
The Pakistani armed forces tend toward a very destructive scorched earth policy in attacking militants and the result is a huge internal refugee problem and humanitarian disaster. Often resentment against the central govt. simply increases providing recruiting opportunities for the Taliban and other militants.
The Pakistan govt. seems to be going along with the US policy of concentrating upon a military confrontation with Islamic militants, a policy that is not at all popular in Pakistan and may even result in local civil wars. There is a new offensive in Buner.
This new offensive is not going all that well as militants have captured troops and police stations but no doubt the Pakistani forces will prevail but at what cost remains to be seen.
30,000 flee army raid on NW Pakistan: local official
PESHAWAR, Pakistan (AFP) - Around 30,000 people in northwest Pakistan have been displaced by a military offensive to flush out Taliban militants, a provincial minister said Tuesday."Up to 30,000 people have left Maidan in Lower Dir district over the past few days," Mian Iftikhar Hussain, information minister in the government of North West Frontier Province, told a news conference."We are making arrangements for them in Peshawar, Nowshera and Timargarah districts."Residents said thousands of terrified people, mostly women and children, left the area with their belongings after Pakistan troops and helicopter gunships launched the operation over the weekend.One local charity said it had registered 2,241 displaced families so far.Around 50 insurgents were killed in the operation in Lower Dir, near the Taliban-held Swat valley, officials said.The military said eight paramilitary soldiers had also been killed since it launched Operation Black Thunder Sunday.Heavy shelling by the paramilitary Frontier Corps continued in the Maidan area of Lower Dir overnight, a senior military officer said Tuesday."We destroyed several militants hideouts in heavy artillery shelling of suspected bases in the area," the officer told AFP on condition of anonymity.In an earlier statement the military said Lal Qila, a Taliban stronghold in Lower Dir, "has been fully secured after the successful operation.""Search and cordon operations are continuing in the area to flush out militants," it added."The military had to retaliate after militants blocked roads, attacked convoys and killed some government officials," the minister said.The Pakistan government in February agreed to allow the Islamic justice system of sharia to be imposed in Swat valley and its surrounding districts in the Malakand region, which have been troubled by two years of rebellion.But the agreement was followed by further militant encroachments, and the government has been in talks with the militants to try to restore peace there.The Taliban suspended peace talks with the government Monday after the military launched Operation Black Thunder following intense US pressure to stop the extremists' advance."My uncle was working in the fields when he was wounded in helicopter shelling," Hayat Khan 36, one of those who fled the fighting, told AFP."I came to Timargarah with my wife, children and a sister whose husband lives in Dubai. I cannot see them dying there," Khan said, adding that his uncle had been admitted to a hospital in Timargarah."I saw helicopters targeting hills in Maidan yesterday," said 40-year old Omar Zeb, who arrived in Timargarah with 16 other relatives including brother, nephews and nieces."There was intense artillery shelling last night, my children were scared, none of us could sleep the whole night. We left at dawn, fearing the fighting would escalate."Information minister Hussain said the government remained "determined to fully implement the deal but some outsiders who do not want peace have infiltrated in Buner and Dir districts to sabotage the accord."He invited Soofi Mohammad, leader of a sharia movement in the area, to resume talks to avoid any delay in the implementation of the deal.Taliban spokesman Amir Izzat Khan said the operation in Lower Dir could endanger the peace deal."There can be a reaction to the government action," he told AFP.However, President Asif Ali Zardari said Monday the peace deal with the Taliban remained valid until the North West Frontier Province government told him otherwise."There will be a reassessment of the situation by the provincial government and if needed we'll come back to parliament and the parliament will decide," he said in an interview with foreign journalists.
Wednesday, April 29, 2009
Washington, auto union to take control of GM, Chrysler.
No doubt some commentators on Fox News and other US media giants will claim that this is socialism. Quite the opposite, it is the rescue of capitalism on the backs of taxpayers and workers. Workers get a share in almost bankrupt auto makers and also the taxpayers get to invest in them as well! While it is true that investors such as bondholders and shareholders have also lost instead of following the free market ideology of letting the companies fail the govt. and workers rush in to bail the companies out. If and when the companies turn profitable the government and probably the unions too will sell their equity. Profit is for private capital not the public or workers the latter share only the risks!
Washington, auto union set to take control of GM, Chrysler
In Washington: Government to buy 50% of GM, UAW seeks 55% of Chrysler GREG KEENAN AND SHAWN MCCARTHY
With a report from AP
April 28, 2009
In a historic reshaping of American capitalism, the U.S. government and the auto workers union are on the verge of controlling both General Motors Corp. and Chrysler LLC.
The latest proposal offered up by GM - now subsisting on loans provided by Washington - would see the U.S. government hold 50 per cent of the company if it accepts a debt-for-equity swap. The United Auto Workers union would hold another 39 per cent of GM, if it agrees to allow a new health-care trust fund to be financed with GM shares.
Ottawa is watching the GM deal closely and is also looking at taking an equity stake.
In a separate deal, the auto workers union would eventually own 55 per cent of a restructured Chrysler under an agreement reached by the union and the auto maker, according to a summary of the arrangement. The revised Chrysler-UAW contract says that Italian automaker Fiat Group SpA eventually will own 35 per cent of a restructured Chrysler, with the remaining 10 per cent stake divided between the U.S. government and secured lenders, mostly banks and hedge funds.
The landmark Chrysler deal was forged at the demands of the Obama administration, which required that equity fund at least half of Chrysler's $10.6-billion obligation to a union-run retiree health care trust. The deal will slash retiree benefits in the U.S., and hand control of the company over to the union, though perhaps only in the interim. Chrysler stock eventually will be traded publicly again, as there are mechanisms for the UAW to sell shares to fund the trust, the summary said.
Chrysler workers will vote to ratify the deal, a process the union hopes will be done by Wednesday, one day before Chrysler's government-imposed deadline to restructure.
The GM deal eliminates another one of its storied brands, vaporizes another 22,000 manufacturing jobs in Canada and the United States, and wipes out almost half its dealer network in both countries by the end of next year. The company's top executive cast it as a plan to remake the company in one fell swoop.
"We need to take this as an opportunity to restructure, and restructure General Motors once," Fritz Henderson, GM's chief executive officer, said yesterday as he outlined the demise of Pontiac and a bond exchange that offers reluctant debt holders shares in GM for their $27-billion (U.S.) in debt.
The plan needs to be approved by government and bondholders, who are likely to be unhappy about receiving just 225 shares of GM in return for every $1,000 worth of bonds.
A senior Canadian official said Ottawa is also looking at taking an ownership stake in GM, which yesterday promised to slash its Canadian production and cut work force by an additional 1,000 jobs. The plan would accelerate job losses in Canada, shrinking to about 5,500 employees by 2014 from more than 20,000 just 15 months ago.
"There's a menu of options we're looking at," the federal official said. "We know the United States is looking at that [equity-for-debt] option quite seriously and we have to see whether that might work for us."
Asked whether Ottawa would take an ownership stake in GM, Industry Minister Tony Clement said: "We've got another 30 days to go [before the GM deadline]. There's a lot of proposals on the table. We have not made any conclusions at this point."
The GM announcement kicked off what is likely to be the most significant week in the history of the Detroit auto makers with the guiding hand of the U.S. Treasury Department on the steering wheel.
GM officials indicated yesterday, for example, that the Treasury Department said it would not support the GM plan if debt holders ended up owning more than 10 per cent of the company after the debt-for-equity swap.
The Canadian and U.S. governments have intervened because a failure by GM would wipe out hundreds of thousands of jobs across the continent. "It would trigger a catastrophe in the economy, if that were to happen," noted David Cole, chairman of the Center for Automotive Research, an industry think tank in Ann Arbor, Mich.
"I have a hard time putting my finger on another [such critical time] unless it was 1941 when the industry just stopped making cars and made guns and planes," added Gerald Myers, a former chairman of American Motors Corp. and now a professor at the University of Michigan.
Some of the restructuring pain is being imposed by governments, which are seeking to ensure that the companies they bail out with long-term loans can survive. "It will take severe restructuring, there's no doubt about it and the job losses are terrible," Mr. Clement said outside the House of Commons. GM will slash its Canadian dealer network in half, to between 395 and 425 outlets by 2010 from 705 outlets now. That's a deeper and faster cut in its retail operations than was in a plan unveiled in February that called for a reduction to between 450 and 500 dealers by 2014.
GM Canada is negotiating with Ottawa to secure a $3-billion bridge loan to carry it until the end of May, and the company said the two sides are "close" to agreement. It is also looking for $7.5-billion in long-term loans from Ottawa and the province of Ontario to keep it alive until North American car sales pick up.
General Motors of Canada spokesman Stew Low said the company remains committed to Canada and that its plan here is largely unchanged, save for the elimination of a planned third shift in Oshawa next year to build the Impala. The company now has to begin negotiations with the Canadian Auto Workers union in an effort to extract the same concessions that the union provided to Chrysler in a deal ratified on the weekend.
GM said it expects to reduce its unionized work force to 4,400 by 2014, mostly through already announced closings at its truck plant in Oshawa next month and Windsor transmission plant in the summer of 2010.
"The landscape is going to shrink dramatically and it's going to have a negative impact right across our communities," said Chris Buckley, president of CAW Local 222 in Oshawa.
The loss of auto jobs is already devastating communities in Southern Ontario that rely on the assemblers and their parts suppliers for high-paying manufacturing jobs. Parts suppliers are warning of a cascading effect as the manufacturers cut back and parts makers face bankruptcy.
GM's survival plan includes slimming down to just four brands, compared with the eight it now offers. The lineup will consist of Chevrolet, Buick, Cadillac and GMC. The auto maker's Saturn, Saab and Hummer brands will be gone by the end of the year.
The plan calls for GM to break even financially in the worst vehicle markets such as that being experienced during the current U.S. downturn and to generate lots of profit when the market returns to healthier levels next decade.
Washington, auto union set to take control of GM, Chrysler
In Washington: Government to buy 50% of GM, UAW seeks 55% of Chrysler GREG KEENAN AND SHAWN MCCARTHY
With a report from AP
April 28, 2009
In a historic reshaping of American capitalism, the U.S. government and the auto workers union are on the verge of controlling both General Motors Corp. and Chrysler LLC.
The latest proposal offered up by GM - now subsisting on loans provided by Washington - would see the U.S. government hold 50 per cent of the company if it accepts a debt-for-equity swap. The United Auto Workers union would hold another 39 per cent of GM, if it agrees to allow a new health-care trust fund to be financed with GM shares.
Ottawa is watching the GM deal closely and is also looking at taking an equity stake.
In a separate deal, the auto workers union would eventually own 55 per cent of a restructured Chrysler under an agreement reached by the union and the auto maker, according to a summary of the arrangement. The revised Chrysler-UAW contract says that Italian automaker Fiat Group SpA eventually will own 35 per cent of a restructured Chrysler, with the remaining 10 per cent stake divided between the U.S. government and secured lenders, mostly banks and hedge funds.
The landmark Chrysler deal was forged at the demands of the Obama administration, which required that equity fund at least half of Chrysler's $10.6-billion obligation to a union-run retiree health care trust. The deal will slash retiree benefits in the U.S., and hand control of the company over to the union, though perhaps only in the interim. Chrysler stock eventually will be traded publicly again, as there are mechanisms for the UAW to sell shares to fund the trust, the summary said.
Chrysler workers will vote to ratify the deal, a process the union hopes will be done by Wednesday, one day before Chrysler's government-imposed deadline to restructure.
The GM deal eliminates another one of its storied brands, vaporizes another 22,000 manufacturing jobs in Canada and the United States, and wipes out almost half its dealer network in both countries by the end of next year. The company's top executive cast it as a plan to remake the company in one fell swoop.
"We need to take this as an opportunity to restructure, and restructure General Motors once," Fritz Henderson, GM's chief executive officer, said yesterday as he outlined the demise of Pontiac and a bond exchange that offers reluctant debt holders shares in GM for their $27-billion (U.S.) in debt.
The plan needs to be approved by government and bondholders, who are likely to be unhappy about receiving just 225 shares of GM in return for every $1,000 worth of bonds.
A senior Canadian official said Ottawa is also looking at taking an ownership stake in GM, which yesterday promised to slash its Canadian production and cut work force by an additional 1,000 jobs. The plan would accelerate job losses in Canada, shrinking to about 5,500 employees by 2014 from more than 20,000 just 15 months ago.
"There's a menu of options we're looking at," the federal official said. "We know the United States is looking at that [equity-for-debt] option quite seriously and we have to see whether that might work for us."
Asked whether Ottawa would take an ownership stake in GM, Industry Minister Tony Clement said: "We've got another 30 days to go [before the GM deadline]. There's a lot of proposals on the table. We have not made any conclusions at this point."
The GM announcement kicked off what is likely to be the most significant week in the history of the Detroit auto makers with the guiding hand of the U.S. Treasury Department on the steering wheel.
GM officials indicated yesterday, for example, that the Treasury Department said it would not support the GM plan if debt holders ended up owning more than 10 per cent of the company after the debt-for-equity swap.
The Canadian and U.S. governments have intervened because a failure by GM would wipe out hundreds of thousands of jobs across the continent. "It would trigger a catastrophe in the economy, if that were to happen," noted David Cole, chairman of the Center for Automotive Research, an industry think tank in Ann Arbor, Mich.
"I have a hard time putting my finger on another [such critical time] unless it was 1941 when the industry just stopped making cars and made guns and planes," added Gerald Myers, a former chairman of American Motors Corp. and now a professor at the University of Michigan.
Some of the restructuring pain is being imposed by governments, which are seeking to ensure that the companies they bail out with long-term loans can survive. "It will take severe restructuring, there's no doubt about it and the job losses are terrible," Mr. Clement said outside the House of Commons. GM will slash its Canadian dealer network in half, to between 395 and 425 outlets by 2010 from 705 outlets now. That's a deeper and faster cut in its retail operations than was in a plan unveiled in February that called for a reduction to between 450 and 500 dealers by 2014.
GM Canada is negotiating with Ottawa to secure a $3-billion bridge loan to carry it until the end of May, and the company said the two sides are "close" to agreement. It is also looking for $7.5-billion in long-term loans from Ottawa and the province of Ontario to keep it alive until North American car sales pick up.
General Motors of Canada spokesman Stew Low said the company remains committed to Canada and that its plan here is largely unchanged, save for the elimination of a planned third shift in Oshawa next year to build the Impala. The company now has to begin negotiations with the Canadian Auto Workers union in an effort to extract the same concessions that the union provided to Chrysler in a deal ratified on the weekend.
GM said it expects to reduce its unionized work force to 4,400 by 2014, mostly through already announced closings at its truck plant in Oshawa next month and Windsor transmission plant in the summer of 2010.
"The landscape is going to shrink dramatically and it's going to have a negative impact right across our communities," said Chris Buckley, president of CAW Local 222 in Oshawa.
The loss of auto jobs is already devastating communities in Southern Ontario that rely on the assemblers and their parts suppliers for high-paying manufacturing jobs. Parts suppliers are warning of a cascading effect as the manufacturers cut back and parts makers face bankruptcy.
GM's survival plan includes slimming down to just four brands, compared with the eight it now offers. The lineup will consist of Chevrolet, Buick, Cadillac and GMC. The auto maker's Saturn, Saab and Hummer brands will be gone by the end of the year.
The plan calls for GM to break even financially in the worst vehicle markets such as that being experienced during the current U.S. downturn and to generate lots of profit when the market returns to healthier levels next decade.
Taliban derides 'worthless' truce
This is from the Guardian.
The Taliban are probably correct in that Pakistan is being forced by the Americans into a more aggressive stance. However, the Taliban did little to defuse the situation when they brazenly entered Buner to extend the territory under their control. Pakistan is now reacting vigorously even though the Taliban had already withdrawn their forces that were from outside the area.
Almost unnoticed in all this is the scorched earth policy often used by Pakistani forces and the humanitarian disaster being caused with thousands being displaced and now internal refugees.
Taliban derides 'worthless' truce with PakistanAP foreign, Monday April 27 2009 ZARAR KHAN
Associated Press Writer= ISLAMABAD (AP) ” Taliban militants declared their peace deal with the Pakistani government "worthless" on Monday after authorities deployed helicopters and artillery against hide-outs of Islamist guerrillas seeking to extend their grip along the Afghan border.
The regions that straddle that frontier form a "crucible of terrorism," British Prime Minister Gordon Brown said during a visit to Afghanistan, where his country and the U.S. have thousands of troops trying to stamp out the militant threat. Brown arrived in Pakistan later Monday.
The Obama administration is pressing Islamabad hard for more robust action against those extremists, who are threatening Pakistan's stability and the security of troops across the border. A collapse of the peace pact would likely please American officials.
President Asif Ali Zardari called for more foreign support for cash-strapped Pakistan to prevent any danger of its nuclear arsenal falling into the hands of al-Qaida and its allies.
Zardari also said Pakistani intelligence thought Osama bin Laden — recently offered sanctuary by militants in the area covered by the peace pact — might be dead, but said there was no evidence of the al-Qaida chief's demise.
"He may be dead. But that's been said before," Zardari told a group of reporters. "It's still between fiction and fact."
The government agreed in February to impose Islamic law in Swat and surrounding districts that make up Malakand Division if the Taliban there would end their violent campaign in the one-time tourist haven.
In recent days, Taliban forces from Swat began entering Buner, a neighboring district just 60 miles (100 kilometers) from the Pakistani capital.
American officials have described the pact as a capitulation and urged Pakistani leaders to switch their security focus from traditional foe India to violent extremists inside their borders.
Pressure on the creaking peace deal grew further Sunday when authorities sent troops backed by artillery and helicopter gunships to attack Taliban militants in Lower Dir, part of the region covered by the pact.
Paramilitary troops killed 20 suspected militants Monday, and a total of 46 have died since the operation began, an army statement said. Maulvi Umar, a spokesman for the umbrella group of Pakistan's Taliban, claimed that insurgents in Dir had killed nine troops and lost two of their own.
Some terrified residents have fled the area clutching no more than their children and a few belongings. At least one soldier was killed Sunday.
A spokesman for the Taliban in their Swat Valley stronghold denounced the operation as a violation of the pact and said their fighters were on alert and waiting to see if a hard-line cleric who mediated the deal pronounced it dead.
"The agreements with the Pakistan government are worthless because Pakistani rulers are acting to please Americans," Muslim Khan, spokesman for Taliban militants in the Swat Valley, told The Associated Press.
A spokesman for Sufi Muhammad said the cleric was trapped in his home in the same area of Lower Dir attacked by troops and that his supporters have been unable to contact him.
"We will not hold any talks until the operation ends," spokesman Amir Izzat Khan said.
Umar , the Pakistani Taliban spokesman, said the militants would agree to talks about the situation in Dir, but only if the military operation is halted.
"We were living peacefully in Dir," Umar said. "Nothing warranted the operation."
Dianne Feinstein, head of the U.S. Senate Intelligence Committee, said Sunday that the recent Taliban advance in Buner — and the lack of a robust military response — suggested Pakistan was "in very deep trouble."
"This thing has to get sorted out and sorted out quickly or you could lose the government of Pakistan, and Pakistan is a nuclear power and that concerns me deeply," Feinstein said on CNN television.
Brown also raised alarm Monday on a trip to tour British bases in southern Afghanistan. He told reporters that areas on both sides of Afghan-Pakistani border "are the breeding ground, the crucible of terrorism."
But Pakistan's foreign minister asked Western officials Monday to "not panic."
"We mean business, and if we have to use force we will use force. We will not hesitate," Shah Mahmood Qureshi told The Associated Press on the sidelines of meetings with his Afghan and Iranian counterparts. "We will not surrender, we will not capitulate, and we will not abdicate."
Zardari, who has termed Pakistan's dire situation as an opportunity to draw in economic and military assistance, insisted Pakistan's nuclear weapons were in "safe hands," but added: "If Pakistan fails, if democracy fails, if the world doesn't help democracy, then any eventuality is a possibility."
Elsewhere in the northwest Monday, a remote-controlled bomb exploded near a police patrol, killing an officer and a passer-by while wounding five other police, officials said. The blast occurred near a railway crossing in the Lakki Marwat area, said Amir Ahmed, a local police officer.
---
The Taliban are probably correct in that Pakistan is being forced by the Americans into a more aggressive stance. However, the Taliban did little to defuse the situation when they brazenly entered Buner to extend the territory under their control. Pakistan is now reacting vigorously even though the Taliban had already withdrawn their forces that were from outside the area.
Almost unnoticed in all this is the scorched earth policy often used by Pakistani forces and the humanitarian disaster being caused with thousands being displaced and now internal refugees.
Taliban derides 'worthless' truce with PakistanAP foreign, Monday April 27 2009 ZARAR KHAN
Associated Press Writer= ISLAMABAD (AP) ” Taliban militants declared their peace deal with the Pakistani government "worthless" on Monday after authorities deployed helicopters and artillery against hide-outs of Islamist guerrillas seeking to extend their grip along the Afghan border.
The regions that straddle that frontier form a "crucible of terrorism," British Prime Minister Gordon Brown said during a visit to Afghanistan, where his country and the U.S. have thousands of troops trying to stamp out the militant threat. Brown arrived in Pakistan later Monday.
The Obama administration is pressing Islamabad hard for more robust action against those extremists, who are threatening Pakistan's stability and the security of troops across the border. A collapse of the peace pact would likely please American officials.
President Asif Ali Zardari called for more foreign support for cash-strapped Pakistan to prevent any danger of its nuclear arsenal falling into the hands of al-Qaida and its allies.
Zardari also said Pakistani intelligence thought Osama bin Laden — recently offered sanctuary by militants in the area covered by the peace pact — might be dead, but said there was no evidence of the al-Qaida chief's demise.
"He may be dead. But that's been said before," Zardari told a group of reporters. "It's still between fiction and fact."
The government agreed in February to impose Islamic law in Swat and surrounding districts that make up Malakand Division if the Taliban there would end their violent campaign in the one-time tourist haven.
In recent days, Taliban forces from Swat began entering Buner, a neighboring district just 60 miles (100 kilometers) from the Pakistani capital.
American officials have described the pact as a capitulation and urged Pakistani leaders to switch their security focus from traditional foe India to violent extremists inside their borders.
Pressure on the creaking peace deal grew further Sunday when authorities sent troops backed by artillery and helicopter gunships to attack Taliban militants in Lower Dir, part of the region covered by the pact.
Paramilitary troops killed 20 suspected militants Monday, and a total of 46 have died since the operation began, an army statement said. Maulvi Umar, a spokesman for the umbrella group of Pakistan's Taliban, claimed that insurgents in Dir had killed nine troops and lost two of their own.
Some terrified residents have fled the area clutching no more than their children and a few belongings. At least one soldier was killed Sunday.
A spokesman for the Taliban in their Swat Valley stronghold denounced the operation as a violation of the pact and said their fighters were on alert and waiting to see if a hard-line cleric who mediated the deal pronounced it dead.
"The agreements with the Pakistan government are worthless because Pakistani rulers are acting to please Americans," Muslim Khan, spokesman for Taliban militants in the Swat Valley, told The Associated Press.
A spokesman for Sufi Muhammad said the cleric was trapped in his home in the same area of Lower Dir attacked by troops and that his supporters have been unable to contact him.
"We will not hold any talks until the operation ends," spokesman Amir Izzat Khan said.
Umar , the Pakistani Taliban spokesman, said the militants would agree to talks about the situation in Dir, but only if the military operation is halted.
"We were living peacefully in Dir," Umar said. "Nothing warranted the operation."
Dianne Feinstein, head of the U.S. Senate Intelligence Committee, said Sunday that the recent Taliban advance in Buner — and the lack of a robust military response — suggested Pakistan was "in very deep trouble."
"This thing has to get sorted out and sorted out quickly or you could lose the government of Pakistan, and Pakistan is a nuclear power and that concerns me deeply," Feinstein said on CNN television.
Brown also raised alarm Monday on a trip to tour British bases in southern Afghanistan. He told reporters that areas on both sides of Afghan-Pakistani border "are the breeding ground, the crucible of terrorism."
But Pakistan's foreign minister asked Western officials Monday to "not panic."
"We mean business, and if we have to use force we will use force. We will not hesitate," Shah Mahmood Qureshi told The Associated Press on the sidelines of meetings with his Afghan and Iranian counterparts. "We will not surrender, we will not capitulate, and we will not abdicate."
Zardari, who has termed Pakistan's dire situation as an opportunity to draw in economic and military assistance, insisted Pakistan's nuclear weapons were in "safe hands," but added: "If Pakistan fails, if democracy fails, if the world doesn't help democracy, then any eventuality is a possibility."
Elsewhere in the northwest Monday, a remote-controlled bomb exploded near a police patrol, killing an officer and a passer-by while wounding five other police, officials said. The blast occurred near a railway crossing in the Lakki Marwat area, said Amir Ahmed, a local police officer.
---
Tuesday, April 28, 2009
Iraqi Govt. Outraged After Deadly U.S. Raid
This is from antiwar.com.
It seems that the U.S. paid no attention to the requirement that there be a court order authorising this operation. The official report seems even more surreal and less connected to reality than usual. It will be interesting to see what if anything the Iraqi govt. does or if there is any notice at all in the manistream media of this event. The Swine Flu seems to be infecting the media so that they cannot report much of anything else.
Iraqi Govt Outraged After Deadly US Raid
Posted By Jason Ditz On April 26, 2009 @ 7:34 pm
A pre-dawn US raid this morning in the Iraqi city of Kut left two civilians dead and several others captured. Hundreds of local residents took to the streets to condemn the raid, while Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki declared the attack a violation of the Status of Forces Agreement (SOFA) between the US and Iraq. He ordered two Iraqi security officials arrested over it, demanded the release of the captives, and for the US to turn over those responsible for the raid to the courts.
As is so often the case the official press release from US forces remained far disconnected from reality. It alleged that those captured included a “financier” for a Shi’ite militant group and six other “associates.” It also perplexedly claimed they were captured without incident even while describing the killing of two people, one they determined was “hostile” while the other was a woman.
It wasn’t long, however, until provincial police declared that those captured were all innocent members of a single family, including an Iraqi police captain.
The press release from the US makes no mention of the Iraqi government’s objection, instead lauding the raid as “supporting Iraq in its effort to maintain security and stability.” In spite of this, the US had released the captives by late afternoon. The head of the household said “if the Americans had only knocked, we would have cooperated.” Another said the US had apologized and returned the property seized in the attack. The SOFA made no provisions for the US to conduct raids on homes without a search warrant from an Iraqi court, though there was no indication they had one.
The question then remains how far the Iraqi government is willing to go to prosecute the US troops involved in the incident. US officials claim Maliki’s position was “politically motivated,” but the SOFA does make provision for trying US soldiers in Iraqi courts.
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It seems that the U.S. paid no attention to the requirement that there be a court order authorising this operation. The official report seems even more surreal and less connected to reality than usual. It will be interesting to see what if anything the Iraqi govt. does or if there is any notice at all in the manistream media of this event. The Swine Flu seems to be infecting the media so that they cannot report much of anything else.
Iraqi Govt Outraged After Deadly US Raid
Posted By Jason Ditz On April 26, 2009 @ 7:34 pm
A pre-dawn US raid this morning in the Iraqi city of Kut left two civilians dead and several others captured. Hundreds of local residents took to the streets to condemn the raid, while Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki declared the attack a violation of the Status of Forces Agreement (SOFA) between the US and Iraq. He ordered two Iraqi security officials arrested over it, demanded the release of the captives, and for the US to turn over those responsible for the raid to the courts.
As is so often the case the official press release from US forces remained far disconnected from reality. It alleged that those captured included a “financier” for a Shi’ite militant group and six other “associates.” It also perplexedly claimed they were captured without incident even while describing the killing of two people, one they determined was “hostile” while the other was a woman.
It wasn’t long, however, until provincial police declared that those captured were all innocent members of a single family, including an Iraqi police captain.
The press release from the US makes no mention of the Iraqi government’s objection, instead lauding the raid as “supporting Iraq in its effort to maintain security and stability.” In spite of this, the US had released the captives by late afternoon. The head of the household said “if the Americans had only knocked, we would have cooperated.” Another said the US had apologized and returned the property seized in the attack. The SOFA made no provisions for the US to conduct raids on homes without a search warrant from an Iraqi court, though there was no indication they had one.
The question then remains how far the Iraqi government is willing to go to prosecute the US troops involved in the incident. US officials claim Maliki’s position was “politically motivated,” but the SOFA does make provision for trying US soldiers in Iraqi courts.
.
Lieberman rules out attack against Iran
This is from antiwar.com.
Of course if you read the article it is clear that Lieberman is ruling out an Israeli attack on Iran. He wants the US to do the job for Israel! At the same time Lieberman has announced the death of peace talks with the Palestinians. The US will probably come into considerable conflict with Israeli policies for the first time in some while. The Obama seems to be encouraging reconiciliation between Hamas and Fatah and is trying to make it possible for aid to flow through a unified Palestinian govt. that would include Fatah.
Lieberman Rules Out Israeli Attack on Iran
Posted By Jason Ditz On April 26, 2009 @ 6:54 pm In Uncategorized
Though only in office for a few weeks, Israeli Foreign Minister Avigdor Lieberman has dramatically redefined Israel’s official foreign policy on a number of fronts. His first major act was to declare the stalled peace talks with the Palestinians dead, sparking both international and domestic outrage. In his first media interview he announced that he was replacing Iran as Israel’s worst threat, bestowing that honor on Pakistan, and declared that the United States would accept any decision the Israeli government made on the peace process.
Now, having dispatched of Iran’s position as Israel’s gravest threat, Lieberman surprised even further by declaring that Israel would not attack Iran, even if international sanctions fail to convince Iran to abandon its civilian nuclear program.
Virtually the centerpiece of Israel’s foreign policy for the last several years has been its nearly weekly suggestions that they may attack Iran in the near future. Abandoning this policy would be a major change for Israel, and shocking coming from the hawkish Lieberman, whose previous cabinet position as Minister of Strategic Affairs was created specifically to coordinate military, intelligence and diplomatic initiatives against Iran.
Not that the foreign minister objects to the idea of attacking Iran. Instead, while he supports “severe sanctions, very severe sanctions,” and “harsher and more effective sanctions” at the moment, he said Israel should not be expected to “resolve militarily the entire world’s problem,” instead suggesting that “the United States, as the largest power in the world, take responsibility.”
Of course if you read the article it is clear that Lieberman is ruling out an Israeli attack on Iran. He wants the US to do the job for Israel! At the same time Lieberman has announced the death of peace talks with the Palestinians. The US will probably come into considerable conflict with Israeli policies for the first time in some while. The Obama seems to be encouraging reconiciliation between Hamas and Fatah and is trying to make it possible for aid to flow through a unified Palestinian govt. that would include Fatah.
Lieberman Rules Out Israeli Attack on Iran
Posted By Jason Ditz On April 26, 2009 @ 6:54 pm In Uncategorized
Though only in office for a few weeks, Israeli Foreign Minister Avigdor Lieberman has dramatically redefined Israel’s official foreign policy on a number of fronts. His first major act was to declare the stalled peace talks with the Palestinians dead, sparking both international and domestic outrage. In his first media interview he announced that he was replacing Iran as Israel’s worst threat, bestowing that honor on Pakistan, and declared that the United States would accept any decision the Israeli government made on the peace process.
Now, having dispatched of Iran’s position as Israel’s gravest threat, Lieberman surprised even further by declaring that Israel would not attack Iran, even if international sanctions fail to convince Iran to abandon its civilian nuclear program.
Virtually the centerpiece of Israel’s foreign policy for the last several years has been its nearly weekly suggestions that they may attack Iran in the near future. Abandoning this policy would be a major change for Israel, and shocking coming from the hawkish Lieberman, whose previous cabinet position as Minister of Strategic Affairs was created specifically to coordinate military, intelligence and diplomatic initiatives against Iran.
Not that the foreign minister objects to the idea of attacking Iran. Instead, while he supports “severe sanctions, very severe sanctions,” and “harsher and more effective sanctions” at the moment, he said Israel should not be expected to “resolve militarily the entire world’s problem,” instead suggesting that “the United States, as the largest power in the world, take responsibility.”
Monday, April 27, 2009
Torture used to try and establish Al Qaida Iraq connection
This is from the Guardian.
Cheney and Rumsfeld did more to corrupt and damage intelligence services than Obama can ever do. Instead of collecting intelligence the services were put to work trying to provide evidence for Rumsfeld Cheney theories that were most improbable but important for justifying their policies.
Shedding some light on why it could have possibly been necessary to waterboard someone 183 times – as was done to al-Qaida planner Khalid Sheikh Mohammed – McClatchy reported that, according to "a former senior US intelligence official familiar with the interrogation issue," former vice-president Dick Cheney and defence secretary Donald Rumsfeld "demanded that intelligence agencies and interrogators find evidence of al-Qaida-Iraq collaboration".
According to McClatchy's source, for most of 2002 and into 2003, Cheney and Rumsfeld were "demanding proof of the links between al-Qaida and Iraq. … There was constant pressure on the intelligence agencies and the interrogators to do whatever it took to get that information out of the detainees, especially the few high-value ones we had, and when people kept coming up empty, they were told by Cheney's and Rumsfeld's people to push harder."
Cheney and Rumsfeld did more to corrupt and damage intelligence services than Obama can ever do. Instead of collecting intelligence the services were put to work trying to provide evidence for Rumsfeld Cheney theories that were most improbable but important for justifying their policies.
Shedding some light on why it could have possibly been necessary to waterboard someone 183 times – as was done to al-Qaida planner Khalid Sheikh Mohammed – McClatchy reported that, according to "a former senior US intelligence official familiar with the interrogation issue," former vice-president Dick Cheney and defence secretary Donald Rumsfeld "demanded that intelligence agencies and interrogators find evidence of al-Qaida-Iraq collaboration".
According to McClatchy's source, for most of 2002 and into 2003, Cheney and Rumsfeld were "demanding proof of the links between al-Qaida and Iraq. … There was constant pressure on the intelligence agencies and the interrogators to do whatever it took to get that information out of the detainees, especially the few high-value ones we had, and when people kept coming up empty, they were told by Cheney's and Rumsfeld's people to push harder."
Sunday, April 26, 2009
CIA death squads killing with impunity in Afghanistan
From wsws.
This type of reporting is virtually absent from the mainstream media. At most there are reports of collateral damage caused by air raids but these special forces raids are for the most part not reported at all or at most very rarely and almost never with any followup. As this article points out followup is almost impossible anyway since everyone clams up and is not interested.
CIA death squads killing with “impunity” in Afghanistan
By Joe Kay19 May 2008
A United Nations investigator released a preliminary report last week citing widespread civilian deaths in Afghanistan, often at the hands of unaccountable units led by the CIA or other foreign intelligence agencies.
The investigator is Philip Alston, a New York University professor serving as the Special Rapporteur of the United Nations Human Rights Council on extrajudicial, summary or arbitrary execution. His report provides a partial glimpse into the illegal actions of intelligence agencies, occupying forces, and Afghan police, as they seek to repress opposition to the US-led occupation and US-backed government.
A more detailed final report will be released later this year.
Alston focused on civilian killings by US and other international military forces, citing 200 reported deaths in the first four months of 2008. This figure, however, was based on tabulations by the United Nations and other international organizations, and is undoubtedly a serious underestimation.
In addition to civilians killed in air raids—often targeted indiscriminately at civilian dwellings—Alston reported on “a number of raids for which no state or military command appears ready to acknowledge responsibility.”
In a press conference on Thursday, Alston elaborated, saying, “I have spoken with a large number of people in relation to the operation of foreign intelligence units. I don’t want to name them but they are the most senior level of the relevant places. These forces operate with what appears to be impunity.” The location of the incidents cited in the report indicate that the intelligence agencies in question include the CIA or US Special Operations Forces.
The report cited a few incidents as examples of extra-judicial killings. In January 2008, two brothers were killed in Kandahar province in a raid led by “international personnel.” Alston found that the victims “are widely acknowledged, even by well-informed Government officials, to have had no connection to the Taliban, and the circumstances of their deaths are suspicious. However, not only was I unable to get any international military commander to provide their version of what took place, but I was unable to get any international military commander to even admit that their soldiers were involved.”
Other incidents involved raids by Afghans led by unnamed “international intelligence services” out of bases in both Kandahar and Nangarhar provinces.
“It is absolutely unacceptable for heavily-armed internationals accompanied by heavily-armed Afghan forces to be wandering around conducting dangerous raids that too often result in killings without anyone taking responsibility for them,” the report stated.
The British Independent newspaper provided some additional information. It noted, “A Western official close to the investigation said the secret units are still known as Campaign Forces, from the time when American Special Forces and CIA spies recruited Afghan troops to help overthrow the Taliban during the US-led invasion in 2001. ‘The brightest, smartest guys in these militias were kept on,’ the official said. ‘They were trained and rearmed and they are still being used.’”
The Independent went on to cite one incident involving British forces. “In Helmand, where most of Britain’s 7,800 troops are based, Special Forces were accused of slitting a man’s throat in a botched night raid last year. Security sources now claim the operation was mounted by a secret spy unit.”
Alston also reported on the actions of Afghan police. “They function not as enforcers of law and order, but as promoters of the interests of a specific tribe or commander,” he reported. He cited one incident in which Afghan police massacred a group from a rival tribe. There was no investigation by the government or the occupying forces. In another incident, police killed nine and wounded 42 unarmed protestors in Sheberghan in May 2007.
In general, he found little to no interest among US or Afghan officials in monitoring or following up on civilian deaths. “The level of complacency in response to these killings is staggeringly high,” he said.
At the press conference, he noted, “When I asked for the number of reported civilian casualties over the past year or so, I was told that those figures are either not available in Afghanistan—which I was told by several senior military people—or that they are secret and cannot be provided to me. When I asked for the results of certain cases, to ascertain whether those involved have been punished, I was told that no such information is available here in Afghanistan and that perhaps I should read the newspapers of the countries concerned.”
The fact that the CIA is involved in covert operations in Afghanistan is neither new nor surprising. Already by the 1970s, the CIA had developed ties to sections of the Afghan population, and in particular Islamic fundamentalist elements, in an effort to undermine the Soviet-backed government. Later, the CIA was heavily involved in developing ties to anti-Taliban warlords prior to the US invasion and occupation in 2001.
Following the invasion, Afghanistan—and in particular the Bagram Air Force Base near Kabul—became a transit point for prisoners captured by the United States and destined for Guantánamo Bay, secret CIA prisons, or US-allied countries that practice torture. US intelligence agencies were reportedly also involved in the interrogation of prisoners at the Abu Ghraib prison in Iraq.
In 2005, US media reported on the operations of US-backed deaths squads in Iraq, deployed to kill suspected opponents of the US occupation. Yasser Salihee, a special correspondent for news agency Knight Ridder who was investigating the death squads, was killed with a bullet to the head in June of that year. Separate reports related how the US military had modeled Iraqi units on the death squads deployed in Central America during the 1980s to eliminate left-wing opposition to US policies.
While most of the CIA’s actions remain shrouded in secrecy, one CIA contractor was prosecuted for torturing an Afghan prisoner to death in 2003. The contractor, David Passaro, interrogated and beat the prisoner, Abdul Wali, for two days, injuring him so severely that he died two days later.
In a separate development, the New York Times reported on Saturday that the Pentagon is moving forward with the construction of a 40-acre prison complex at the Bagram military base. The current prison, as well as separate prisons run by the Afghans and by the US, are reportedly insufficient to hold the massive number of individuals swept up by the occupying forces.
The facility may also be used for prisoners currently detained in Guantánamo Bay. It will be designed to hold as many as 1,100 people.
About the WSWS
This type of reporting is virtually absent from the mainstream media. At most there are reports of collateral damage caused by air raids but these special forces raids are for the most part not reported at all or at most very rarely and almost never with any followup. As this article points out followup is almost impossible anyway since everyone clams up and is not interested.
CIA death squads killing with “impunity” in Afghanistan
By Joe Kay19 May 2008
A United Nations investigator released a preliminary report last week citing widespread civilian deaths in Afghanistan, often at the hands of unaccountable units led by the CIA or other foreign intelligence agencies.
The investigator is Philip Alston, a New York University professor serving as the Special Rapporteur of the United Nations Human Rights Council on extrajudicial, summary or arbitrary execution. His report provides a partial glimpse into the illegal actions of intelligence agencies, occupying forces, and Afghan police, as they seek to repress opposition to the US-led occupation and US-backed government.
A more detailed final report will be released later this year.
Alston focused on civilian killings by US and other international military forces, citing 200 reported deaths in the first four months of 2008. This figure, however, was based on tabulations by the United Nations and other international organizations, and is undoubtedly a serious underestimation.
In addition to civilians killed in air raids—often targeted indiscriminately at civilian dwellings—Alston reported on “a number of raids for which no state or military command appears ready to acknowledge responsibility.”
In a press conference on Thursday, Alston elaborated, saying, “I have spoken with a large number of people in relation to the operation of foreign intelligence units. I don’t want to name them but they are the most senior level of the relevant places. These forces operate with what appears to be impunity.” The location of the incidents cited in the report indicate that the intelligence agencies in question include the CIA or US Special Operations Forces.
The report cited a few incidents as examples of extra-judicial killings. In January 2008, two brothers were killed in Kandahar province in a raid led by “international personnel.” Alston found that the victims “are widely acknowledged, even by well-informed Government officials, to have had no connection to the Taliban, and the circumstances of their deaths are suspicious. However, not only was I unable to get any international military commander to provide their version of what took place, but I was unable to get any international military commander to even admit that their soldiers were involved.”
Other incidents involved raids by Afghans led by unnamed “international intelligence services” out of bases in both Kandahar and Nangarhar provinces.
“It is absolutely unacceptable for heavily-armed internationals accompanied by heavily-armed Afghan forces to be wandering around conducting dangerous raids that too often result in killings without anyone taking responsibility for them,” the report stated.
The British Independent newspaper provided some additional information. It noted, “A Western official close to the investigation said the secret units are still known as Campaign Forces, from the time when American Special Forces and CIA spies recruited Afghan troops to help overthrow the Taliban during the US-led invasion in 2001. ‘The brightest, smartest guys in these militias were kept on,’ the official said. ‘They were trained and rearmed and they are still being used.’”
The Independent went on to cite one incident involving British forces. “In Helmand, where most of Britain’s 7,800 troops are based, Special Forces were accused of slitting a man’s throat in a botched night raid last year. Security sources now claim the operation was mounted by a secret spy unit.”
Alston also reported on the actions of Afghan police. “They function not as enforcers of law and order, but as promoters of the interests of a specific tribe or commander,” he reported. He cited one incident in which Afghan police massacred a group from a rival tribe. There was no investigation by the government or the occupying forces. In another incident, police killed nine and wounded 42 unarmed protestors in Sheberghan in May 2007.
In general, he found little to no interest among US or Afghan officials in monitoring or following up on civilian deaths. “The level of complacency in response to these killings is staggeringly high,” he said.
At the press conference, he noted, “When I asked for the number of reported civilian casualties over the past year or so, I was told that those figures are either not available in Afghanistan—which I was told by several senior military people—or that they are secret and cannot be provided to me. When I asked for the results of certain cases, to ascertain whether those involved have been punished, I was told that no such information is available here in Afghanistan and that perhaps I should read the newspapers of the countries concerned.”
The fact that the CIA is involved in covert operations in Afghanistan is neither new nor surprising. Already by the 1970s, the CIA had developed ties to sections of the Afghan population, and in particular Islamic fundamentalist elements, in an effort to undermine the Soviet-backed government. Later, the CIA was heavily involved in developing ties to anti-Taliban warlords prior to the US invasion and occupation in 2001.
Following the invasion, Afghanistan—and in particular the Bagram Air Force Base near Kabul—became a transit point for prisoners captured by the United States and destined for Guantánamo Bay, secret CIA prisons, or US-allied countries that practice torture. US intelligence agencies were reportedly also involved in the interrogation of prisoners at the Abu Ghraib prison in Iraq.
In 2005, US media reported on the operations of US-backed deaths squads in Iraq, deployed to kill suspected opponents of the US occupation. Yasser Salihee, a special correspondent for news agency Knight Ridder who was investigating the death squads, was killed with a bullet to the head in June of that year. Separate reports related how the US military had modeled Iraqi units on the death squads deployed in Central America during the 1980s to eliminate left-wing opposition to US policies.
While most of the CIA’s actions remain shrouded in secrecy, one CIA contractor was prosecuted for torturing an Afghan prisoner to death in 2003. The contractor, David Passaro, interrogated and beat the prisoner, Abdul Wali, for two days, injuring him so severely that he died two days later.
In a separate development, the New York Times reported on Saturday that the Pentagon is moving forward with the construction of a 40-acre prison complex at the Bagram military base. The current prison, as well as separate prisons run by the Afghans and by the US, are reportedly insufficient to hold the massive number of individuals swept up by the occupying forces.
The facility may also be used for prisoners currently detained in Guantánamo Bay. It will be designed to hold as many as 1,100 people.
About the WSWS
Obama rejects Truth Panel.
Obama is already facing criticism for releasing the torture memos. Most Americans are probably more interested in where the money is coming from to pay living expenses rather than whether the US tortured terror suspects. There is little domestic political advantage in having this commission and the right wing and others would be sounding alarms about Obama being soft on terrorism etc. etc. Obama probably feels he has done more than enough for his human rights constituency by simply releasing the memos but then it is not clear how much choice he had.
Obama Rejects Truth Panel
Commission Would Have Investigated Abuses in Terrorism Fight
By Shailagh Murray and Paul KaneWashington Post Staff WritersApril 24, 2009 "Washington Post" -- President Obama rebuffed calls for a commission to investigate alleged abuses under the Bush administration in fighting terrorism, telling congressional leaders at a White House meeting yesterday that he wants to look forward instead of litigating the past.In a lengthy exchange with House Minority Leader John A. Boehner (R-Ohio), Obama appeared to back away from a statement earlier this week that suggested he could support an independent commission to examine possible abuses, according to several attendees who spoke on the condition of anonymity so they could discuss the private meeting freely. White House press secretary Robert Gibbs, also seeking to clarify the president's position, told reporters that "the president determined the concept didn't seem altogether workable in this case" because of the intense partisan atmosphere built around the issue."The last few days might be evidence of why something like this might just become a political back and forth," Gibbs said.The push for a "truth commission," which grew from the efforts of a few human rights groups, gained fresh momentum with last week's release of the memos from the Justice Department's Office of Legal Counsel that provided the basis for the enhanced interrogation techniques, including the practice of simulated drowning known as waterboarding. Obama has said he is opposed to holding CIA interrogators legally accountable, but in a statement last week, he left open the possibility of legal jeopardy for those who formulated the policy.On Tuesday, Obama explicitly raised the prospect of legal consequences for Bush administration officials who authorized the techniques applied to "high value" terrorism suspects, and said if Congress is intent on investigating the tactics, an independent commission might provide a less partisan forum than a congressional panel.Some key lawmakers, including House Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.) and Senate Judiciary Chairman Patrick J. Leahy (D-Vt.), pounced on his remarks to push for a commission with subpoena power and the ability to grant immunity to some witnesses.As Republicans rejected the idea, Democrats were deeply divided.Yesterday in a briefing before the White House meeting, Senate Majority Leader Harry M. Reid (D-Nev.) instead said that the Senate intelligence committee would conduct its own review, a process that could stretch through December.At almost the same time at another briefing across the Capitol, Pelosi told reporters that she has "always been for a truth commission," a position she reiterated at the White House meeting, one participant in the session said.But a White House official present at the meeting said Obama told lawmakers that a commission would "open the door to a protracted, backward-looking discussion."Boehner also urged Obama to release further classified memos detailing the questionable interrogation techniques. Former vice president Richard B. Cheney has argued that the memos will make clear that aggressive tactics yielded valuable intelligence information that prevented further terrorist attacks.Obama responded that Cheney had done "a good job at telling his side of the story," according to Democrats and Republicans in the room. "Obama said the memos weren't as clear-cut," one attendee said.Earlier yesterday, Boehner criticized Pelosi and leading congressional Democrats who are pushing for the panel by noting that they had been briefed on interrogation tactics as far back as September 2002."All of this information was downloaded to congressional leaders of both parties with no objections being raised," Boehner told reporters. "Not a word was raised at the time, not one word."But Pelosi said leaders were never briefed about the actual use of waterboarding, saying top lawmakers were told only about the existence of legal opinions supporting its rationale."We were not -- I repeat -- were not told that waterboarding or any of these other enhanced interrogation methods were used. What they did tell us is that they had . . . the Office of Legal Counsel opinions [and] that they could be used, but not that they would," she said.In late 2002, Pelosi was the ranking Democrat on the House intelligence committee, so she was part of the "Gang of Four" briefings given to the top members of the intelligence panels in the House and Senate. Pelosi continued receiving highly classified briefings when she became Democratic leader in 2003, as it is customary to brief the top Democrat and Republican from the House and Senate.The select few lawmakers who were briefed about the handling of detainees were then forbidden from discussing with their colleagues what they had learned, she said."They don't come in to consult," Pelosi said of administration officials. "They come in to notify. They come in to notify. And you can't -- you can't change what they're doing unless you can act as a committee or as a class. You can't change what they're doing."Staff writers Perry Bacon Jr. and Michael D. Shear contributed to this report.
Obama Rejects Truth Panel
Commission Would Have Investigated Abuses in Terrorism Fight
By Shailagh Murray and Paul KaneWashington Post Staff WritersApril 24, 2009 "Washington Post" -- President Obama rebuffed calls for a commission to investigate alleged abuses under the Bush administration in fighting terrorism, telling congressional leaders at a White House meeting yesterday that he wants to look forward instead of litigating the past.In a lengthy exchange with House Minority Leader John A. Boehner (R-Ohio), Obama appeared to back away from a statement earlier this week that suggested he could support an independent commission to examine possible abuses, according to several attendees who spoke on the condition of anonymity so they could discuss the private meeting freely. White House press secretary Robert Gibbs, also seeking to clarify the president's position, told reporters that "the president determined the concept didn't seem altogether workable in this case" because of the intense partisan atmosphere built around the issue."The last few days might be evidence of why something like this might just become a political back and forth," Gibbs said.The push for a "truth commission," which grew from the efforts of a few human rights groups, gained fresh momentum with last week's release of the memos from the Justice Department's Office of Legal Counsel that provided the basis for the enhanced interrogation techniques, including the practice of simulated drowning known as waterboarding. Obama has said he is opposed to holding CIA interrogators legally accountable, but in a statement last week, he left open the possibility of legal jeopardy for those who formulated the policy.On Tuesday, Obama explicitly raised the prospect of legal consequences for Bush administration officials who authorized the techniques applied to "high value" terrorism suspects, and said if Congress is intent on investigating the tactics, an independent commission might provide a less partisan forum than a congressional panel.Some key lawmakers, including House Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.) and Senate Judiciary Chairman Patrick J. Leahy (D-Vt.), pounced on his remarks to push for a commission with subpoena power and the ability to grant immunity to some witnesses.As Republicans rejected the idea, Democrats were deeply divided.Yesterday in a briefing before the White House meeting, Senate Majority Leader Harry M. Reid (D-Nev.) instead said that the Senate intelligence committee would conduct its own review, a process that could stretch through December.At almost the same time at another briefing across the Capitol, Pelosi told reporters that she has "always been for a truth commission," a position she reiterated at the White House meeting, one participant in the session said.But a White House official present at the meeting said Obama told lawmakers that a commission would "open the door to a protracted, backward-looking discussion."Boehner also urged Obama to release further classified memos detailing the questionable interrogation techniques. Former vice president Richard B. Cheney has argued that the memos will make clear that aggressive tactics yielded valuable intelligence information that prevented further terrorist attacks.Obama responded that Cheney had done "a good job at telling his side of the story," according to Democrats and Republicans in the room. "Obama said the memos weren't as clear-cut," one attendee said.Earlier yesterday, Boehner criticized Pelosi and leading congressional Democrats who are pushing for the panel by noting that they had been briefed on interrogation tactics as far back as September 2002."All of this information was downloaded to congressional leaders of both parties with no objections being raised," Boehner told reporters. "Not a word was raised at the time, not one word."But Pelosi said leaders were never briefed about the actual use of waterboarding, saying top lawmakers were told only about the existence of legal opinions supporting its rationale."We were not -- I repeat -- were not told that waterboarding or any of these other enhanced interrogation methods were used. What they did tell us is that they had . . . the Office of Legal Counsel opinions [and] that they could be used, but not that they would," she said.In late 2002, Pelosi was the ranking Democrat on the House intelligence committee, so she was part of the "Gang of Four" briefings given to the top members of the intelligence panels in the House and Senate. Pelosi continued receiving highly classified briefings when she became Democratic leader in 2003, as it is customary to brief the top Democrat and Republican from the House and Senate.The select few lawmakers who were briefed about the handling of detainees were then forbidden from discussing with their colleagues what they had learned, she said."They don't come in to consult," Pelosi said of administration officials. "They come in to notify. They come in to notify. And you can't -- you can't change what they're doing unless you can act as a committee or as a class. You can't change what they're doing."Staff writers Perry Bacon Jr. and Michael D. Shear contributed to this report.
Saturday, April 25, 2009
Krugman: Reclaiming America's Soul
Krugman might also mention that America would not only be reclaiming its soul by following through with investigations and possible trials but also this would vastly improve the reputation of the US among many other countries and among human rights organisations around the globe. However, the Obama administation has supported denial of any rights for Gitmo detainees and is carrying on policies such as rendition and attacks by drones and special operation forces that clearly violate human rights so that it should not be unexpected if his administration simply tries to move on. Besides the resistance even to releasing the memo's was fierce and Obama no doubt has had enough.
Reclaiming America’s Soul
By Paul Krugman
April 24, 2009 "New York Times" -- -
"Nothing will be gained by spending our time and energy laying blame for the past." So declared President Obama, after his commendable decision to release the legal memos that his predecessor used to justify torture. Some people in the political and media establishments have echoed his position. We need to look forward, not backward, they say. No prosecutions, please; no investigations; we're just too busy.And there are indeed immense challenges out there: an economic crisis, a health care crisis, an environmental crisis. Isn't revisiting the abuses of the last eight years, no matter how bad they were, a luxury we can't afford?No, it isn't, because America is more than a collection of policies. We are, or at least we used to be, a nation of moral ideals. In the past, our government has sometimes done an imperfect job of upholding those ideals. But never before have our leaders so utterly betrayed everything our nation stands for. "This government does not torture people," declared former President Bush, but it did, and all the world knows it.And the only way we can regain our moral compass, not just for the sake of our position in the world, but for the sake of our own national conscience, is to investigate how that happened, and, if necessary, to prosecute those responsible.What about the argument that investigating the Bush administration's abuses will impede efforts to deal with the crises of today? Even if that were true - even if truth and justice came at a high price - that would arguably be a price we must pay: laws aren't supposed to be enforced only when convenient. But is there any real reason to believe that the nation would pay a high price for accountability?For example, would investigating the crimes of the Bush era really divert time and energy needed elsewhere? Let's be concrete: whose time and energy are we talking about?Tim Geithner, the Treasury secretary, wouldn't be called away from his efforts to rescue the economy. Peter Orszag, the budget director, wouldn't be called away from his efforts to reform health care. Steven Chu, the energy secretary, wouldn't be called away from his efforts to limit climate change. Even the president needn't, and indeed shouldn't, be involved. All he would have to do is let the Justice Department do its job - which he's supposed to do in any case - and not get in the way of any Congressional investigations.I don't know about you, but I think America is capable of uncovering the truth and enforcing the law even while it goes about its other business.Still, you might argue - and many do - that revisiting the abuses of the Bush years would undermine the political consensus the president needs to pursue his agenda.But the answer to that is, what political consensus? There are still, alas, a significant number of people in our political life who stand on the side of the torturers. But these are the same people who have been relentless in their efforts to block President Obama's attempt to deal with our economic crisis and will be equally relentless in their opposition when he endeavors to deal with health care and climate change. The president cannot lose their good will, because they never offered any.That said, there are a lot of people in Washington who weren't allied with the torturers but would nonetheless rather not revisit what happened in the Bush years.Some of them probably just don't want an ugly scene; my guess is that the president, who clearly prefers visions of uplift to confrontation, is in that group. But the ugliness is already there, and pretending it isn't won't make it go away.Others, I suspect, would rather not revisit those years because they don't want to be reminded of their own sins of omission.For the fact is that officials in the Bush administration instituted torture as a policy, misled the nation into a war they wanted to fight and, probably, tortured people in the attempt to extract "confessions" that would justify that war. And during the march to war, most of the political and media establishment looked the other way.It's hard, then, not to be cynical when some of the people who should have spoken out against what was happening, but didn't, now declare that we should forget the whole era - for the sake of the country, of course.Sorry, but what we really should do for the sake of the country is have investigations both of torture and of the march to war. These investigations should, where appropriate, be followed by prosecutions - not out of vindictiveness, but because this is a nation of laws.We need to do this for the sake of our future. For this isn't about looking backward, it's about looking forward - because it's about reclaiming America's soul.Paul Krugman is professor of Economics and International Affairs at Princeton University and a regular columnist for The New York Times. Krugman was the 2008 recipient of the Nobel Prize in Economics. He is the author of numerous books, including The Conscience of A Liberal, and his most recent, The Return of Depression Economics. © 2009 The New York Times
Reclaiming America’s Soul
By Paul Krugman
April 24, 2009 "New York Times" -- -
"Nothing will be gained by spending our time and energy laying blame for the past." So declared President Obama, after his commendable decision to release the legal memos that his predecessor used to justify torture. Some people in the political and media establishments have echoed his position. We need to look forward, not backward, they say. No prosecutions, please; no investigations; we're just too busy.And there are indeed immense challenges out there: an economic crisis, a health care crisis, an environmental crisis. Isn't revisiting the abuses of the last eight years, no matter how bad they were, a luxury we can't afford?No, it isn't, because America is more than a collection of policies. We are, or at least we used to be, a nation of moral ideals. In the past, our government has sometimes done an imperfect job of upholding those ideals. But never before have our leaders so utterly betrayed everything our nation stands for. "This government does not torture people," declared former President Bush, but it did, and all the world knows it.And the only way we can regain our moral compass, not just for the sake of our position in the world, but for the sake of our own national conscience, is to investigate how that happened, and, if necessary, to prosecute those responsible.What about the argument that investigating the Bush administration's abuses will impede efforts to deal with the crises of today? Even if that were true - even if truth and justice came at a high price - that would arguably be a price we must pay: laws aren't supposed to be enforced only when convenient. But is there any real reason to believe that the nation would pay a high price for accountability?For example, would investigating the crimes of the Bush era really divert time and energy needed elsewhere? Let's be concrete: whose time and energy are we talking about?Tim Geithner, the Treasury secretary, wouldn't be called away from his efforts to rescue the economy. Peter Orszag, the budget director, wouldn't be called away from his efforts to reform health care. Steven Chu, the energy secretary, wouldn't be called away from his efforts to limit climate change. Even the president needn't, and indeed shouldn't, be involved. All he would have to do is let the Justice Department do its job - which he's supposed to do in any case - and not get in the way of any Congressional investigations.I don't know about you, but I think America is capable of uncovering the truth and enforcing the law even while it goes about its other business.Still, you might argue - and many do - that revisiting the abuses of the Bush years would undermine the political consensus the president needs to pursue his agenda.But the answer to that is, what political consensus? There are still, alas, a significant number of people in our political life who stand on the side of the torturers. But these are the same people who have been relentless in their efforts to block President Obama's attempt to deal with our economic crisis and will be equally relentless in their opposition when he endeavors to deal with health care and climate change. The president cannot lose their good will, because they never offered any.That said, there are a lot of people in Washington who weren't allied with the torturers but would nonetheless rather not revisit what happened in the Bush years.Some of them probably just don't want an ugly scene; my guess is that the president, who clearly prefers visions of uplift to confrontation, is in that group. But the ugliness is already there, and pretending it isn't won't make it go away.Others, I suspect, would rather not revisit those years because they don't want to be reminded of their own sins of omission.For the fact is that officials in the Bush administration instituted torture as a policy, misled the nation into a war they wanted to fight and, probably, tortured people in the attempt to extract "confessions" that would justify that war. And during the march to war, most of the political and media establishment looked the other way.It's hard, then, not to be cynical when some of the people who should have spoken out against what was happening, but didn't, now declare that we should forget the whole era - for the sake of the country, of course.Sorry, but what we really should do for the sake of the country is have investigations both of torture and of the march to war. These investigations should, where appropriate, be followed by prosecutions - not out of vindictiveness, but because this is a nation of laws.We need to do this for the sake of our future. For this isn't about looking backward, it's about looking forward - because it's about reclaiming America's soul.Paul Krugman is professor of Economics and International Affairs at Princeton University and a regular columnist for The New York Times. Krugman was the 2008 recipient of the Nobel Prize in Economics. He is the author of numerous books, including The Conscience of A Liberal, and his most recent, The Return of Depression Economics. © 2009 The New York Times
Appeals court rules Gitmo detainees are not ''persons''
This is from Raw Story.
So the Obama administration is behind this appeal to the court. The great new hope of America's own Justice Dept claims the court should find that the detainees have no constitutional nor statutory rights nor are they persons. The court did as it was told and went directly against the logic of the Supreme Court decision cited in the article.
Appeals court rules Gitmo detainees are not 'persons'
04/24/2009 @ 3:58 pmFiled by RAW STORY
A Court of Appeals for the Washington, D.C. Circuit ruled Friday that detainees at the U.S. military prison at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, are not "persons" according to it's interpretation of a statute involving religious freedom.The ruling sprang from an appeal of Rasul v. Rumsfeld, which was thrown out in Jan. 2008. "The court affirmed the district court's dismissal of the constitutional and international law claims, and reversed the district court's decision that the Religious Freedom Restoration Act (RFRA) applied to Guantanamo detainees, dismissing those claims as well," the Center for Constitutional Rights said.After the Supreme Court recognized, over objections from the Bush administration, that terror war prisoners have the right to habeas corpus petitions, it also directed the D.C. court of appeals to reexamine the case. The suit, Rasul v. Rumsfeld, charges numerous Bush administration officials with "violations of the Alien Tort Statute (ATS), the Fifth and Eighth Amendments to the U.S. Constitution, the Geneva Conventions, and the Religious Freedom Restoration Act (RFRA)," CCR said."In its first filing on detention and torture under the Obama administration, the Department of Justice filed briefs in March urging the Court of Appeals to reject any constitutional or statutory rights for detainees," says a release. "The Obama Justice Department further argued that even if such rights were recognized, the Court should rule that the previous administration’s officials who ordered and approved torture and abuse of the plaintiffs should be immune from liability for their actions.""[The] Court reaffirmed its decision from last year that detainees are not 'persons' for the purposes of the Religious Freedom Restoration Act, which was enacted in 1993 to protect against government actions that unreasonably interfere with religious practices," the release continued. "Last year, Judge Janice Rogers Brown, a member of the Court of Appeals panel who issued the decision today, referred to the Court’s holding that detainees are not 'persons' as 'a most regrettable holding in a case where plaintiffs have alleged high-level U.S. government officials treated them as less than human.'"The full press release from the Center for Constitutional Rights follows.####
Court Of Appeals Rules Detainees Are Not “Persons” in Guantбnamo Torture SuitCourt Agrees with Obama Administration that Detainees Still Have No Constitutional Right Not to Be TorturedApril 24, 2009 Washington, D.C. – In a suit brought by British men imprisoned for two years at Guantanamo, the D.C. Circuit Court of Appeals today reaffirmed its previous ruling that Guantanamo detainees lack the fundamental constitutional right not to be tortured and are not “persons” under a U.S. statute protecting religious freedom. Last summer, the Supreme Court directed the Court of Appeals to reconsider its previous decision in Rasul v. Rumsfeld, in light of the High Court’s decision in Boumediene v. Bush, which recognized the constitutional right of habeas corpus for Guantanamo detainees. The plaintiffs urged the Court of Appeals to follow the clear logic of the Boumediene decision and to recognize both the constitutional rights of the detainees to humane and just treatment and the fact that, under any definition of the word, they are “persons” entitled to religious freedom and dignity as required by law. “We’re not surprised by the Court’s ruling, but we are disappointed. The Court failed to follow the Supreme Court’s decision in Boumediene and ignored its own prior decisions holding that habeas corpus is not analytically distinct from other fundamental constitutional rights,” said Eric L. Lewis, of the Washington, DC law firm of Baach Robinson & Lewis, which is lead counsel for the four men in their lawsuit. “If you get habeas, you should get the other fundamental rights that are guaranteed under the Constitution."In its first filing on detention and torture under the Obama administration, the Department of Justice filed briefs in March urging the Court of Appeals to reject any constitutional or statutory rights for detainees. The Obama Justice Department further argued that even if such rights were recognized, the Court should rule that the previous administration’s officials who ordered and approved torture and abuse of the plaintiffs should be immune from liability for their actions."This is a question about accountability for torture and abuse. It’s a disgrace to have a U.S. court stating that Guantбnamo detainees are not persons. It would be a shame to have our new President supporting such a position in the Supreme Court. It was bad enough for the Obama Administration to take this position at this stage. We hope that they reconsider," stated Michael Ratner, President of the Center for Constitutional Rights (CCR). “Boumediene acknowledged that the fundamental rights we take for granted apply to persons in U.S. custody at Guantanamo. This decision runs directly counter to that principle." In its decision today, the Court rejected the detainees’ argument that the Boumediene decision compelled the recognition of fundamental constitutional rights for detainees. Instead, the Court of Appeals held that the Supreme Court’s Boumediene decision applied only to the right of habeas corpus, and that no additional constitutional rights could be extended to detainees unless the Supreme Court specifically authorized and approved such rights. In addition, the Court reaffirmed its decision from last year that detainees are not “persons” for the purposes of the Religious Freedom Restoration Act, which was enacted in 1993 to protect against government actions that unreasonably interfere with religious practices. Last year, Judge Janice Rogers Brown, a member of the Court of Appeals panel who issued the decision today, referred to the Court’s holding that detainees are not “persons” as “a most regrettable holding in a case where plaintiffs have alleged high-level U.S. government officials treated them as less than human.” This statement is noticeably absent from Judge Brown’s substantively identical concurring opinion issued today. For more information on Rasul v. Rumsfeld, click here.The Center for Constitutional Rights is dedicated to advancing and protecting the rights guaranteed by the United States Constitution and the Universal Declaration of Human Rights. Founded in 1966 by attorneys who represented civil rights movements in the South, CCR is a non-profit legal and educational organization committed to the creative use of law as a positive force for social change.
So the Obama administration is behind this appeal to the court. The great new hope of America's own Justice Dept claims the court should find that the detainees have no constitutional nor statutory rights nor are they persons. The court did as it was told and went directly against the logic of the Supreme Court decision cited in the article.
Appeals court rules Gitmo detainees are not 'persons'
04/24/2009 @ 3:58 pmFiled by RAW STORY
A Court of Appeals for the Washington, D.C. Circuit ruled Friday that detainees at the U.S. military prison at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, are not "persons" according to it's interpretation of a statute involving religious freedom.The ruling sprang from an appeal of Rasul v. Rumsfeld, which was thrown out in Jan. 2008. "The court affirmed the district court's dismissal of the constitutional and international law claims, and reversed the district court's decision that the Religious Freedom Restoration Act (RFRA) applied to Guantanamo detainees, dismissing those claims as well," the Center for Constitutional Rights said.After the Supreme Court recognized, over objections from the Bush administration, that terror war prisoners have the right to habeas corpus petitions, it also directed the D.C. court of appeals to reexamine the case. The suit, Rasul v. Rumsfeld, charges numerous Bush administration officials with "violations of the Alien Tort Statute (ATS), the Fifth and Eighth Amendments to the U.S. Constitution, the Geneva Conventions, and the Religious Freedom Restoration Act (RFRA)," CCR said."In its first filing on detention and torture under the Obama administration, the Department of Justice filed briefs in March urging the Court of Appeals to reject any constitutional or statutory rights for detainees," says a release. "The Obama Justice Department further argued that even if such rights were recognized, the Court should rule that the previous administration’s officials who ordered and approved torture and abuse of the plaintiffs should be immune from liability for their actions.""[The] Court reaffirmed its decision from last year that detainees are not 'persons' for the purposes of the Religious Freedom Restoration Act, which was enacted in 1993 to protect against government actions that unreasonably interfere with religious practices," the release continued. "Last year, Judge Janice Rogers Brown, a member of the Court of Appeals panel who issued the decision today, referred to the Court’s holding that detainees are not 'persons' as 'a most regrettable holding in a case where plaintiffs have alleged high-level U.S. government officials treated them as less than human.'"The full press release from the Center for Constitutional Rights follows.####
Court Of Appeals Rules Detainees Are Not “Persons” in Guantбnamo Torture SuitCourt Agrees with Obama Administration that Detainees Still Have No Constitutional Right Not to Be TorturedApril 24, 2009 Washington, D.C. – In a suit brought by British men imprisoned for two years at Guantanamo, the D.C. Circuit Court of Appeals today reaffirmed its previous ruling that Guantanamo detainees lack the fundamental constitutional right not to be tortured and are not “persons” under a U.S. statute protecting religious freedom. Last summer, the Supreme Court directed the Court of Appeals to reconsider its previous decision in Rasul v. Rumsfeld, in light of the High Court’s decision in Boumediene v. Bush, which recognized the constitutional right of habeas corpus for Guantanamo detainees. The plaintiffs urged the Court of Appeals to follow the clear logic of the Boumediene decision and to recognize both the constitutional rights of the detainees to humane and just treatment and the fact that, under any definition of the word, they are “persons” entitled to religious freedom and dignity as required by law. “We’re not surprised by the Court’s ruling, but we are disappointed. The Court failed to follow the Supreme Court’s decision in Boumediene and ignored its own prior decisions holding that habeas corpus is not analytically distinct from other fundamental constitutional rights,” said Eric L. Lewis, of the Washington, DC law firm of Baach Robinson & Lewis, which is lead counsel for the four men in their lawsuit. “If you get habeas, you should get the other fundamental rights that are guaranteed under the Constitution."In its first filing on detention and torture under the Obama administration, the Department of Justice filed briefs in March urging the Court of Appeals to reject any constitutional or statutory rights for detainees. The Obama Justice Department further argued that even if such rights were recognized, the Court should rule that the previous administration’s officials who ordered and approved torture and abuse of the plaintiffs should be immune from liability for their actions."This is a question about accountability for torture and abuse. It’s a disgrace to have a U.S. court stating that Guantбnamo detainees are not persons. It would be a shame to have our new President supporting such a position in the Supreme Court. It was bad enough for the Obama Administration to take this position at this stage. We hope that they reconsider," stated Michael Ratner, President of the Center for Constitutional Rights (CCR). “Boumediene acknowledged that the fundamental rights we take for granted apply to persons in U.S. custody at Guantanamo. This decision runs directly counter to that principle." In its decision today, the Court rejected the detainees’ argument that the Boumediene decision compelled the recognition of fundamental constitutional rights for detainees. Instead, the Court of Appeals held that the Supreme Court’s Boumediene decision applied only to the right of habeas corpus, and that no additional constitutional rights could be extended to detainees unless the Supreme Court specifically authorized and approved such rights. In addition, the Court reaffirmed its decision from last year that detainees are not “persons” for the purposes of the Religious Freedom Restoration Act, which was enacted in 1993 to protect against government actions that unreasonably interfere with religious practices. Last year, Judge Janice Rogers Brown, a member of the Court of Appeals panel who issued the decision today, referred to the Court’s holding that detainees are not “persons” as “a most regrettable holding in a case where plaintiffs have alleged high-level U.S. government officials treated them as less than human.” This statement is noticeably absent from Judge Brown’s substantively identical concurring opinion issued today. For more information on Rasul v. Rumsfeld, click here.The Center for Constitutional Rights is dedicated to advancing and protecting the rights guaranteed by the United States Constitution and the Universal Declaration of Human Rights. Founded in 1966 by attorneys who represented civil rights movements in the South, CCR is a non-profit legal and educational organization committed to the creative use of law as a positive force for social change.
Friday, April 24, 2009
Fudging figures in the Philippines
This is from Asia Times. No doubt the Arroyo govt. can be credited with greater sins than spinning economic data but this article at least gives a less rosy picture of the Philippine economy so that we can have a more balanced view of the situation.
Southeast Asia
Apr 25, 2009
Fudging figures in the Philippines
By Joel D Adriano
MANILA - The Philippine Labor Department has said that unemployment concerns are easing and that the government is now more vigorously tracking job gains rather than losses. This despite the fact the Philippine economy has slowed amid the global economic crisis, with export, foreign investment and corporate profit statistics all down. The Labor Department reported broadly that only 121,000 workers lost their jobs, suffered pay cuts or had their working hours reduced between October last year to mid-March this year. Officials have presented those numbers as positive news, considering they had earlier projected between 180,000 to 300,000 workers would lose their jobs by the end of the first quarter. The electronics and semiconductor sectors, which account for
nearly half of the country's export revenues, were expected to hemorrhage the most jobs. Some argue the government is obscuring the hard unemployment reality by dispensing vague measures. An April 2007 labor survey showed the manufacturing sector had lost 105,000 jobs from the same month the previous year, as global orders for computers and electronics started to collapse. Buoyed by the better-than-projected official statistics, President Gloria Macapagal-Arroyo has now predicted that unemployment will not breach the double-digit threshold this year. Recent government figures show that the unemployment rate hit 7.7% in January, equivalent to around 2.9 million jobless workers, and up from the 6.8% recorded in October of last year. The official optimism comes despite growing private economist concerns of an inrush home of overseas foreign workers (OFWs) who have lost their jobs amid the global recession. The government predicts gross domestic product (GDP) growth will slow to between 3.1%-4.1% this year, down from last year's 4.6% and well off the 7.3% recorded in 2007. The International Monetary Fund is much more pessimistic, predicting Philippine growth will be flat this year, down from its previous 2.25% prediction. Critics say the government's official measures purposefully understate what is a mounting economic problem and potentially volatile political one. That's particularly true of unemployment statistics due to Arroyo's controversial decision to change the official definition over four years ago when unemployment was hovering near double digits. The old definition of "those not working and at the same time looking for work" was changed in favor of a vague "availability of work" concept, which excluded frustrated jobseekers or those who had given up hope of finding employment after searching unsuccessfully for a certain time period. The new definition also added unpaid family labor to the number of employed as part of the distortion, said Elmer Labog of the activist labor group Kilusang Mayo Uno. According to the Social Weather Station (SWS), a private survey research firm, if the old definition were still applied, the actual unemployment rate could be as high as one-third of the total labor force. The SWS estimated that the real unemployment rate was 27.9%, representing over 10 million jobless Filipinos. The Ibon Foundation think-tank put the end-of-year figure at 4.1 million unemployed Filipinos, which was still almost 50% higher than the official rate. Both those higher figures correspond with anecdotal evidence of mounting job losses in depressed urban areas and the rural countryside, where the majority of Filipino workers still live. Even with the government's more optimistic figures, the Philippines' unemployment rate is the second-highest among core Association of Southeast Asian Nation member countries, trailing only Indonesia's 8.4%. The end of year unemployment rates in Thailand, Singapore and Malaysia were 1.4%, 2.6% and 3.3% respectively. The Philippines is also known to have a stubbornly high underemployment rate. According to a recent World Bank study, more than 60% of Filipino workers are employed in low-paid agriculture, fishing, domestic and service work sectors, many of whom are family laborers or non-wage earners. The industrial sector, where job losses are mounting as foreign investors shutter their Philippine operations, accounts for just 15% of the work force and most laborers work on a contractual basis, offering little job security or social safety net benefits, according to the World Bank. The lack of job security, some say, explains why mounting job losses have so far not resulted in more social unrest - although government concerns of unrest could explain its alleged understatement of unemployment figures. Stop-gap measuresArroyo's government has reacted to the economic slowdown by intensifying official efforts to place more Filipino workers overseas, despite the diminishing opportunities amid the rising global economic crisis. With the US and much of Europe in recession, the government is hoping to land more jobs in the Middle East. In that direction, Arroyo is also looking into lifting her government's five-year-old ban on sending workers to Iraq. The Philippines is already a top global source of skilled and unskilled migrant workers, with estimates as high as 12 million, including undocumented Filipino workers employed in over 200 foreign countries. That represents nearly 15% of the total Philippine population and their foreign currency-denominated remittances have been crucial to keeping the local economy afloat. Overseas workers sent home some US$16.4 billion last year, representing nearly one-fifth of GDP and a crucial driver of domestic consumption. Foreign remittances slipped slightly from 1.4 billion pesos in December to 1.26 billion in January, according to most recent official statistics. The World Bank has conservatively predicted a 4% decline in remittances this year, in line with expected migrant job losses overseas. Administration officials contend they have taken big steps to boost local employment and economic activity, including measures in a $2 billion fiscal stimulus package. That included a $2 million earmark for the temporary hiring of 180,000 workers, though the program is scheduled to wind down later this year. Arroyo has also called on local governments to set aside 1.5% of their budgets to create jobs. Critics argue that many of those schemes have been poorly planned, including instructions from the Department of Trade and Industry to one local government to hire people in its municipality to gather scrub plants and convert them into useful products without indicating how to structure or market the grassroots enterprises. "The government is missing on a great deal of opportunity to come up with something and make the best of the crisis," said one local official who declined to be named. "Instead, funds are wasted on activities and job placements that are hardly productive and are simply meant to justify their salaries." Economists note that ramped up spending is putting extraordinary pressures on the national budget and bond yields. The government turned in a $1 billion deficit in March, its largest-ever one-month shortfall. The overall first quarter deficit was nearly $2.4 billion, a full $2 million over target, and has raised concerns the government will need international capital markets to finance the shortfall. The government raised $1.5 billion in a sovereign bond issue in January. Socioeconomic Planning Secretary Ralph Recto has predicted that the country's budget deficit could reach $5.3 billion if tax collections fell short of target and the government failed to raise revenues through asset sales. Privatization proceeds last year, including from the sale of the government's remaining 40% share in oil giant Petron Corp, helped raise non-tax revenue by 35%. This year, officials hope to raise some $1 billion from the sale of government shares in power distribution firm Meralco to the local San Miguel Corp, the biggest food conglomerate in Southeast Asia. The company's chairman, Eduardo "Danding" Cojuangco, has pledged to help with the government's job-generation drive by hiring more local workers. But it's not clear to most that will have any meaningful impact on the Philippines' rising and largely understated unemployment problem. Joel D Adriano is an independent consultant and award-winning freelance journalist. He was a sub-editor for the business section of The Manila Times and writes for ASEAN BizTimes, Safe Democracy and People's Tonight.
Southeast Asia
Apr 25, 2009
Fudging figures in the Philippines
By Joel D Adriano
MANILA - The Philippine Labor Department has said that unemployment concerns are easing and that the government is now more vigorously tracking job gains rather than losses. This despite the fact the Philippine economy has slowed amid the global economic crisis, with export, foreign investment and corporate profit statistics all down. The Labor Department reported broadly that only 121,000 workers lost their jobs, suffered pay cuts or had their working hours reduced between October last year to mid-March this year. Officials have presented those numbers as positive news, considering they had earlier projected between 180,000 to 300,000 workers would lose their jobs by the end of the first quarter. The electronics and semiconductor sectors, which account for
nearly half of the country's export revenues, were expected to hemorrhage the most jobs. Some argue the government is obscuring the hard unemployment reality by dispensing vague measures. An April 2007 labor survey showed the manufacturing sector had lost 105,000 jobs from the same month the previous year, as global orders for computers and electronics started to collapse. Buoyed by the better-than-projected official statistics, President Gloria Macapagal-Arroyo has now predicted that unemployment will not breach the double-digit threshold this year. Recent government figures show that the unemployment rate hit 7.7% in January, equivalent to around 2.9 million jobless workers, and up from the 6.8% recorded in October of last year. The official optimism comes despite growing private economist concerns of an inrush home of overseas foreign workers (OFWs) who have lost their jobs amid the global recession. The government predicts gross domestic product (GDP) growth will slow to between 3.1%-4.1% this year, down from last year's 4.6% and well off the 7.3% recorded in 2007. The International Monetary Fund is much more pessimistic, predicting Philippine growth will be flat this year, down from its previous 2.25% prediction. Critics say the government's official measures purposefully understate what is a mounting economic problem and potentially volatile political one. That's particularly true of unemployment statistics due to Arroyo's controversial decision to change the official definition over four years ago when unemployment was hovering near double digits. The old definition of "those not working and at the same time looking for work" was changed in favor of a vague "availability of work" concept, which excluded frustrated jobseekers or those who had given up hope of finding employment after searching unsuccessfully for a certain time period. The new definition also added unpaid family labor to the number of employed as part of the distortion, said Elmer Labog of the activist labor group Kilusang Mayo Uno. According to the Social Weather Station (SWS), a private survey research firm, if the old definition were still applied, the actual unemployment rate could be as high as one-third of the total labor force. The SWS estimated that the real unemployment rate was 27.9%, representing over 10 million jobless Filipinos. The Ibon Foundation think-tank put the end-of-year figure at 4.1 million unemployed Filipinos, which was still almost 50% higher than the official rate. Both those higher figures correspond with anecdotal evidence of mounting job losses in depressed urban areas and the rural countryside, where the majority of Filipino workers still live. Even with the government's more optimistic figures, the Philippines' unemployment rate is the second-highest among core Association of Southeast Asian Nation member countries, trailing only Indonesia's 8.4%. The end of year unemployment rates in Thailand, Singapore and Malaysia were 1.4%, 2.6% and 3.3% respectively. The Philippines is also known to have a stubbornly high underemployment rate. According to a recent World Bank study, more than 60% of Filipino workers are employed in low-paid agriculture, fishing, domestic and service work sectors, many of whom are family laborers or non-wage earners. The industrial sector, where job losses are mounting as foreign investors shutter their Philippine operations, accounts for just 15% of the work force and most laborers work on a contractual basis, offering little job security or social safety net benefits, according to the World Bank. The lack of job security, some say, explains why mounting job losses have so far not resulted in more social unrest - although government concerns of unrest could explain its alleged understatement of unemployment figures. Stop-gap measuresArroyo's government has reacted to the economic slowdown by intensifying official efforts to place more Filipino workers overseas, despite the diminishing opportunities amid the rising global economic crisis. With the US and much of Europe in recession, the government is hoping to land more jobs in the Middle East. In that direction, Arroyo is also looking into lifting her government's five-year-old ban on sending workers to Iraq. The Philippines is already a top global source of skilled and unskilled migrant workers, with estimates as high as 12 million, including undocumented Filipino workers employed in over 200 foreign countries. That represents nearly 15% of the total Philippine population and their foreign currency-denominated remittances have been crucial to keeping the local economy afloat. Overseas workers sent home some US$16.4 billion last year, representing nearly one-fifth of GDP and a crucial driver of domestic consumption. Foreign remittances slipped slightly from 1.4 billion pesos in December to 1.26 billion in January, according to most recent official statistics. The World Bank has conservatively predicted a 4% decline in remittances this year, in line with expected migrant job losses overseas. Administration officials contend they have taken big steps to boost local employment and economic activity, including measures in a $2 billion fiscal stimulus package. That included a $2 million earmark for the temporary hiring of 180,000 workers, though the program is scheduled to wind down later this year. Arroyo has also called on local governments to set aside 1.5% of their budgets to create jobs. Critics argue that many of those schemes have been poorly planned, including instructions from the Department of Trade and Industry to one local government to hire people in its municipality to gather scrub plants and convert them into useful products without indicating how to structure or market the grassroots enterprises. "The government is missing on a great deal of opportunity to come up with something and make the best of the crisis," said one local official who declined to be named. "Instead, funds are wasted on activities and job placements that are hardly productive and are simply meant to justify their salaries." Economists note that ramped up spending is putting extraordinary pressures on the national budget and bond yields. The government turned in a $1 billion deficit in March, its largest-ever one-month shortfall. The overall first quarter deficit was nearly $2.4 billion, a full $2 million over target, and has raised concerns the government will need international capital markets to finance the shortfall. The government raised $1.5 billion in a sovereign bond issue in January. Socioeconomic Planning Secretary Ralph Recto has predicted that the country's budget deficit could reach $5.3 billion if tax collections fell short of target and the government failed to raise revenues through asset sales. Privatization proceeds last year, including from the sale of the government's remaining 40% share in oil giant Petron Corp, helped raise non-tax revenue by 35%. This year, officials hope to raise some $1 billion from the sale of government shares in power distribution firm Meralco to the local San Miguel Corp, the biggest food conglomerate in Southeast Asia. The company's chairman, Eduardo "Danding" Cojuangco, has pledged to help with the government's job-generation drive by hiring more local workers. But it's not clear to most that will have any meaningful impact on the Philippines' rising and largely understated unemployment problem. Joel D Adriano is an independent consultant and award-winning freelance journalist. He was a sub-editor for the business section of The Manila Times and writes for ASEAN BizTimes, Safe Democracy and People's Tonight.
Frontier (Pakistan) wisdom by Syed Shahzad
This is from asiatimes.
This is just one page of a detailed analysis of what is happening in SWAT and adjacent areas that is in stark contrast to the fear mongering simplistic rhetoric supporting US policy decisions that passes as commentary in the mainstream US press. The situation is not straightforward but extremely complex and it is no easy task for the Pakistanis to accomodate themselves to the simple minded simplistic US view that they should be concentrating on fighting terrorism. This emphasis has already helped the Taliban and emboldened them and is likely to continue to do so. Already the ability to supply Afghan occupiers from Pakistan is being threatened so that more costly routes through Russia and neighbouring states are being set up.
Page 1 of 4INTERVIEW
Frontier wisdom
By Syed Saleem Shahzad
PESHAWAR - A year ago, the United States brokered a deal in Pakistan between then-Pakistani president General Pervez Musharraf and opposition parties to bring Pakistan back onto the path of real democracy, at the same time returning the military to the "war on terror" front. The goal was to empower the political parties to defeat domestic militancy through consensus and broad-based government
, with a civilian president. This happened to some extent following elections in February 2008 and the subsequent formation of a civilian administration under President Asif Ali Zardari
. However, on the first anniversary of those polls, Pakistan has changed horses in midstream by striking deals with militants and
stopping all military operations against militants. In other words, Pakistan is refusing to fight the American war in the region, as was the grand plan. On the front line Pashtun-dominated North-West Frontier Province (NWFP), although the smallest of the four provinces of Pakistan, is center-stage in the struggle against militancy as it borders Afghanistan to the north and the troubled tribal areas to its west. The man who presides over the province, sitting in Governor's House in the capital Peshawar, is Owais Ahmad Ghani, previously a successful governor of southwestern Balochistan province and a former trusted lieutenant of Musharraf. He took over in January 2008 after four-and-a-half years in his previous position. Governor's House reflects some of the rich history of the Pashtuns; its walls have murals of Alexander the Great's army in battle as some Pashtuns believe they are descendents of the leader's Greeks. There is also Koranic calligraphy showing their Muslim legacy. With his background and given his present position, Ghani is intimately informed of the intricacies of Pakistan's evolving policy with regard to militants. In an extensive interview with Asia Times Online, he says that the move towards peace deals with militants was not the result of any blackmail or pressure from the side of militants. Rather, it grew from the realization that the seven-year-long strategy of military operations only aggravated the situation. Now, with peace deals, Pakistan is returning to the pre-1979 setup when, under the aegis of the state, tribes decided their terms of peace through their riwaj (customary laws). Ghani admits that the situation can at best only be contained as long as foreign troops remain in Afghanistan. The Taliban and other groups consider this a reason for jihad, and Pakistan territory is used to fuel this cause. Probably the most important peace deal in NWFP is the one concluded in February with militants in the Swat area after two years of fighting. Asia Times Online: There is a perception of you that you initiate political negotiations, and then follow with military operations. That's what you did when you were governor of Balochistan, and some say that is why you were brought to NWFP. Owais Ahmad Ghani: This is a perception that you have from the outside. But let me explain to you in detail. The situation we face has always revolved around this question: Is this a law-and-order issue, or is it an insurgency? This is the first question I raised when I came here [NWFP]. Law and order is not a protracted activity. It is temporary and there are some immediate issues. It can be criminal issues and it can also be issues of public agitation. For example, against [power] loadshedding, against inflation or political issues. After some debate we came to the conclusion that this is an insurgency in which there is an attempt to dislodge the state of Pakistan and create space for another state. So we started from this premise. I can today state with a degree of confidence that insurgency has now been downgraded to militancy. But certainly last year in January and February our conclusion was that we were facing an insurgency, and we designed a strategy accordingly. Now in such a situation there are two concurring battles being fought. One is the battle of ideas. The other is the battle of arms. The battle of ideas is always a lead battle and the battle of arms is always subservient to the battle of ideas. Please understand this. Here [NWFP] I found a very strange situation in which the battle of arms had been joined, but there was no battle of ideas. The battle of ideas is a political approach. It is the same approach which I have been telling the Americans to adopt in Afghanistan. In 2003-04, I predicted to various American personalities, like ambassadors Ryan Crocker, Nancy Powell, their senators etc, that they were going to fail in Afghanistan because there was an over-emphasis on a military strategy, and I did not see any robust parallel political strategy at work. I said [to the Americans] that what you are doing is that you are trying to find a military solution to an issue which is essentially political in nature. So that is the mistake happening there that I felt was also happening here [in Pakistan]. That's why the Americans have fought in Afghanistan for six or seven years, and I keep on asking them whether they have improved law and order - no. Has security improved? No. Has political stability been achieved? No. Has socio-economic development taken off? No. So obviously they were doing something wrong. We need to step back and review as exactly the same questions can be asked of Pakistan. For three or four years, we [Pakistan] have been fighting in the tribal areas. Have we reduced violence? Have we brought in political stability? Have we brought in security and law and order? Is social economic development taking place? No ... no .... no. So let's step back and let's review. Where are we going wrong? And according to our analysis - you need to understand this analysis, only then will you be able to understand the strategy - that it is not 9/11, it is 1979, which was the trigger which brought instability to this region. Before the 1979 Soviet invasion of Afghanistan, there was a two-power environment in the tribal areas. One was the tribes themselves, the other one was the government of Pakistan. The entire administrative system and the law-enforcement system were designed according to this two-power environment. [In the Pakistani tribal areas] you had the maliks [tribal chiefs], you had the political administration, which I will explain later. However, post the 1979 Soviet invasion of Afghanistan, we were supported by the West and the United States and we used the tribal areas ... Federally Administered Tribal Areas [FATA] ... as the launching pad for the Afghan jihad against the Soviet army. Whatever happened after that is the fallout of an unintended consequence of that conflict. Those jihadi organizations morphed into militant organizations [at the end of the Afghan jihad in 1989] and therefore a third power emerged and the old equilibrium was disturbed. Our administrative systems and law-enforcing agencies were not designed to cope with this three-power environment. A steady decline was there, but it was the shock of 9/11 which brought out the total inadequacy and the weakness of the system. And therefore as a temporary measure to bring about some control and stability, the army had to be inducted. But the main challenge is to reform our administrative and law-enforcing systems to cater for this new environment, which is going to remain for some time. This is our reading because everything is dependent on Afghanistan. If a certain degree of normalcy returns to Afghanistan, normalcy according to Afghan standards, only then can the issues the tribal areas and our provinces and Pakistan face subside. To correct the situation and to bring about stability and control, we fell back on old traditional systems. We had the original power-based tribes, but they had become weakened. Why? For three or four reasons. The militant organizations, they are highly organized because of their background, they are battle-hardened and heavily armed and very well funded. And very importantly, while tribal influence is limited to its own area, its own people, the militant organizations have cross-tribal linkages, cross-border linkages, international linkages. And while tribes are bound by their tribal traditions and customary laws [riwaj], the militant organizations are not. So they have out-gunned, out-funded and out-organized the tribal malik and his tribe, and that's why that system could not respond. So our strategy was very simple, we needed to prop up the tribes because the real strength is the people. No government, whether a civilian government or a military government, can really function or succeed until it has brought public support behind it ... sentiment behind it. For us to prop up the tribal system again, this could only be done by weakening the militants, militarily, so that at a certain point we could make the tribes strong enough. This is the basic approach - the state of Pakistan owes its first loyalty to its own citizens, and its own citizens are the tribes. There were previous agreements, previous to my tenure, but they were flawed. I was sitting in Quetta [as governor of Balochistan] and I said these were flawed and could not succeed because they were between the military and the militants [for example, one signed in September 2006]. The agreements should have been between the government of Pakistan and the tribes. Our approach has been that it is the government of Pakistan dealing with the tribes and making agreements with the tribes. For example, we have conducted only one written agreement, and that is in North Waziristan [tribal area]. There is no other agreement in my period [as governor of NWFP]. On February 17, 2008, we signed an agreement in North Waziristan. Over 380 tribal maliks and tribal elders signed that agreement. ATol: Do the tribal elders matter? OAG: They do. Obviously, we understand that 20-25 of those tribal leaders are very closely aligned with militant elements. I would not call them the Taliban because that has a different connotation altogether. They were with these militants because they were in that society. But we are talking to them on the basis of them being tribal leaders, and they have a certain relationship. Let me explain that relationship.
This is just one page of a detailed analysis of what is happening in SWAT and adjacent areas that is in stark contrast to the fear mongering simplistic rhetoric supporting US policy decisions that passes as commentary in the mainstream US press. The situation is not straightforward but extremely complex and it is no easy task for the Pakistanis to accomodate themselves to the simple minded simplistic US view that they should be concentrating on fighting terrorism. This emphasis has already helped the Taliban and emboldened them and is likely to continue to do so. Already the ability to supply Afghan occupiers from Pakistan is being threatened so that more costly routes through Russia and neighbouring states are being set up.
Page 1 of 4INTERVIEW
Frontier wisdom
By Syed Saleem Shahzad
PESHAWAR - A year ago, the United States brokered a deal in Pakistan between then-Pakistani president General Pervez Musharraf and opposition parties to bring Pakistan back onto the path of real democracy, at the same time returning the military to the "war on terror" front. The goal was to empower the political parties to defeat domestic militancy through consensus and broad-based government
, with a civilian president. This happened to some extent following elections in February 2008 and the subsequent formation of a civilian administration under President Asif Ali Zardari
. However, on the first anniversary of those polls, Pakistan has changed horses in midstream by striking deals with militants and
stopping all military operations against militants. In other words, Pakistan is refusing to fight the American war in the region, as was the grand plan. On the front line Pashtun-dominated North-West Frontier Province (NWFP), although the smallest of the four provinces of Pakistan, is center-stage in the struggle against militancy as it borders Afghanistan to the north and the troubled tribal areas to its west. The man who presides over the province, sitting in Governor's House in the capital Peshawar, is Owais Ahmad Ghani, previously a successful governor of southwestern Balochistan province and a former trusted lieutenant of Musharraf. He took over in January 2008 after four-and-a-half years in his previous position. Governor's House reflects some of the rich history of the Pashtuns; its walls have murals of Alexander the Great's army in battle as some Pashtuns believe they are descendents of the leader's Greeks. There is also Koranic calligraphy showing their Muslim legacy. With his background and given his present position, Ghani is intimately informed of the intricacies of Pakistan's evolving policy with regard to militants. In an extensive interview with Asia Times Online, he says that the move towards peace deals with militants was not the result of any blackmail or pressure from the side of militants. Rather, it grew from the realization that the seven-year-long strategy of military operations only aggravated the situation. Now, with peace deals, Pakistan is returning to the pre-1979 setup when, under the aegis of the state, tribes decided their terms of peace through their riwaj (customary laws). Ghani admits that the situation can at best only be contained as long as foreign troops remain in Afghanistan. The Taliban and other groups consider this a reason for jihad, and Pakistan territory is used to fuel this cause. Probably the most important peace deal in NWFP is the one concluded in February with militants in the Swat area after two years of fighting. Asia Times Online: There is a perception of you that you initiate political negotiations, and then follow with military operations. That's what you did when you were governor of Balochistan, and some say that is why you were brought to NWFP. Owais Ahmad Ghani: This is a perception that you have from the outside. But let me explain to you in detail. The situation we face has always revolved around this question: Is this a law-and-order issue, or is it an insurgency? This is the first question I raised when I came here [NWFP]. Law and order is not a protracted activity. It is temporary and there are some immediate issues. It can be criminal issues and it can also be issues of public agitation. For example, against [power] loadshedding, against inflation or political issues. After some debate we came to the conclusion that this is an insurgency in which there is an attempt to dislodge the state of Pakistan and create space for another state. So we started from this premise. I can today state with a degree of confidence that insurgency has now been downgraded to militancy. But certainly last year in January and February our conclusion was that we were facing an insurgency, and we designed a strategy accordingly. Now in such a situation there are two concurring battles being fought. One is the battle of ideas. The other is the battle of arms. The battle of ideas is always a lead battle and the battle of arms is always subservient to the battle of ideas. Please understand this. Here [NWFP] I found a very strange situation in which the battle of arms had been joined, but there was no battle of ideas. The battle of ideas is a political approach. It is the same approach which I have been telling the Americans to adopt in Afghanistan. In 2003-04, I predicted to various American personalities, like ambassadors Ryan Crocker, Nancy Powell, their senators etc, that they were going to fail in Afghanistan because there was an over-emphasis on a military strategy, and I did not see any robust parallel political strategy at work. I said [to the Americans] that what you are doing is that you are trying to find a military solution to an issue which is essentially political in nature. So that is the mistake happening there that I felt was also happening here [in Pakistan]. That's why the Americans have fought in Afghanistan for six or seven years, and I keep on asking them whether they have improved law and order - no. Has security improved? No. Has political stability been achieved? No. Has socio-economic development taken off? No. So obviously they were doing something wrong. We need to step back and review as exactly the same questions can be asked of Pakistan. For three or four years, we [Pakistan] have been fighting in the tribal areas. Have we reduced violence? Have we brought in political stability? Have we brought in security and law and order? Is social economic development taking place? No ... no .... no. So let's step back and let's review. Where are we going wrong? And according to our analysis - you need to understand this analysis, only then will you be able to understand the strategy - that it is not 9/11, it is 1979, which was the trigger which brought instability to this region. Before the 1979 Soviet invasion of Afghanistan, there was a two-power environment in the tribal areas. One was the tribes themselves, the other one was the government of Pakistan. The entire administrative system and the law-enforcement system were designed according to this two-power environment. [In the Pakistani tribal areas] you had the maliks [tribal chiefs], you had the political administration, which I will explain later. However, post the 1979 Soviet invasion of Afghanistan, we were supported by the West and the United States and we used the tribal areas ... Federally Administered Tribal Areas [FATA] ... as the launching pad for the Afghan jihad against the Soviet army. Whatever happened after that is the fallout of an unintended consequence of that conflict. Those jihadi organizations morphed into militant organizations [at the end of the Afghan jihad in 1989] and therefore a third power emerged and the old equilibrium was disturbed. Our administrative systems and law-enforcing agencies were not designed to cope with this three-power environment. A steady decline was there, but it was the shock of 9/11 which brought out the total inadequacy and the weakness of the system. And therefore as a temporary measure to bring about some control and stability, the army had to be inducted. But the main challenge is to reform our administrative and law-enforcing systems to cater for this new environment, which is going to remain for some time. This is our reading because everything is dependent on Afghanistan. If a certain degree of normalcy returns to Afghanistan, normalcy according to Afghan standards, only then can the issues the tribal areas and our provinces and Pakistan face subside. To correct the situation and to bring about stability and control, we fell back on old traditional systems. We had the original power-based tribes, but they had become weakened. Why? For three or four reasons. The militant organizations, they are highly organized because of their background, they are battle-hardened and heavily armed and very well funded. And very importantly, while tribal influence is limited to its own area, its own people, the militant organizations have cross-tribal linkages, cross-border linkages, international linkages. And while tribes are bound by their tribal traditions and customary laws [riwaj], the militant organizations are not. So they have out-gunned, out-funded and out-organized the tribal malik and his tribe, and that's why that system could not respond. So our strategy was very simple, we needed to prop up the tribes because the real strength is the people. No government, whether a civilian government or a military government, can really function or succeed until it has brought public support behind it ... sentiment behind it. For us to prop up the tribal system again, this could only be done by weakening the militants, militarily, so that at a certain point we could make the tribes strong enough. This is the basic approach - the state of Pakistan owes its first loyalty to its own citizens, and its own citizens are the tribes. There were previous agreements, previous to my tenure, but they were flawed. I was sitting in Quetta [as governor of Balochistan] and I said these were flawed and could not succeed because they were between the military and the militants [for example, one signed in September 2006]. The agreements should have been between the government of Pakistan and the tribes. Our approach has been that it is the government of Pakistan dealing with the tribes and making agreements with the tribes. For example, we have conducted only one written agreement, and that is in North Waziristan [tribal area]. There is no other agreement in my period [as governor of NWFP]. On February 17, 2008, we signed an agreement in North Waziristan. Over 380 tribal maliks and tribal elders signed that agreement. ATol: Do the tribal elders matter? OAG: They do. Obviously, we understand that 20-25 of those tribal leaders are very closely aligned with militant elements. I would not call them the Taliban because that has a different connotation altogether. They were with these militants because they were in that society. But we are talking to them on the basis of them being tribal leaders, and they have a certain relationship. Let me explain that relationship.
Thursday, April 23, 2009
Escobar: Torture whitewash from the Dark Side.
This is from asiatimes.
I was rather shocked by the treatment of these issues by mainstream media such as CNN. On the Lou Dobbs show there was considerable criticism of the Obama decision to release the memos.
This article does not mention that Obama has seemingly changed his tune or at least qualified his view that no one should be charged over the torture. While he claims that those who acted within the parameters of what was at the time declared legal should be immune, those who provided the legal framework might be charged. I doubt that much if anything will come of this.
Dobbs stressed reports that the torture worked as if that should settle the matter. That this uses the principle that the means justifies the end doesn't come up or that it violates basic human rights. Dobbs is at times so stupid and superficial that it boggles my mind. The show also ignored the fact that many experts believe that torture rarely if ever provides much useful information. Dobbs takes self-serving reports by officials as gospel. What a fraud he is at times.
Once or twice a show he gets something right. Even a broken clock is right twice a day.
THE ROVING EYE
Torture whitewash from The Dark Side
By Pepe Escobar
It's a script worthy of Freddie Krueger, the fictional character from the A Nightmare on Elm Street films. Nearly five years after the irruption of the Abu Ghraib prison scandal in Iraq, here's another chamber of horrors, another glimpse of how The Dark Side really works. But the George W Bush torture memos released by the Barack Obama administration
last week, written in legalese by Jay Bybee and Stephen Bradbury, are just a preview. Many will relish the newspeak. ("We conclude that - although sleep deprivation and use of the waterboard present more substantial questions in certain aspects under the statute and the use of tile waterboard raises the most substantial issue - none of these specific
techniques, considered individually, would violate the prohibition in sections 134:0•2340A.") As for the whole movie - a 21st century remix of a D W Griffith epic - it could be called Death of a Nation. The US Senate report, also just released, reads like deja vu all over again: the US establishment under Bush was a replay of the Spanish Inquisition. And it all started even before a single "high-profile al-Qaeda detainee" was captured. What Bush, vice president Dick Cheney, defense secretary Donald Rumsfeld and assorted little inquisitors wanted was above all to prove the non-existent link between Saddam Hussein's Iraq and al-Qaeda, the better to justify a pre-emptive, illegal war planned by the now-defunct Project for the New American Century (PNAC) in the late 1990s. The torture memos were just a cog in the imperial machine. The New York Times, in a fit of decency, at least has already demanded that Congress impeach the lawyerly Bybee, who got his lifetime seat in a federal appeals court from ... Bush. Everyone knew about the torture. Former deputy secretary of state Richard Armitage, who along with Karl "Machiavelli" Rove and Lewis "Scooter" Libby was one of the leakers of the identity of Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) agent Valerie Plame in the infamous Niger yellowcake affair, admitted to al-Jazeera that "in hindsight", "maybe" he should have resigned. Former executive director of the 9/11 Commission Philip Zelikow, very close to secretary of state Condoleezza Rice, also has joined the swelling crowd of "I was against it, too, but in the end I did not resign". More crucially, Armitage also told al-Jazeera why this may well end up being ... just another whitewash. "I don't think the members of the Senate particularly want to look into these things because they will have to look at themselves in the mirror. Where were they? ... They were AWOL, absent without leave." Nobody should expect madam speaker Nancy Pelosi to investigate herself. In Washington, torture seems to be a bipartisan sport. Armitage also told al-Jazeera how he and his then-boss, secretary of state Colin Powell, "lost" the battle to respect the Geneva Conventions during Bush's first term. Japanese officers were tried for war crimes after World War II - by the United States - because they, among other practices, used ... waterboarding. That does not seem to apply to Bush administration officials. Welcome to another instance of American exceptionalism. WhitewashThe question is not that the torture memos should have been kept secret - as the CIA and Dick "Angler" Cheney wanted. The question is how to apply justice and uphold the rule of law. Austrian law professor Manfred Nowak, the Geneva-based United Nations
Human Rights Council's top torture investigator, is adamant: "President Barack Obama's decision not to prosecute CIA operatives who used questionable interrogation practices violates international law." As with the lies that led to the war on Iraq, nobody should expect from US corporate media anything other than ... whitewash. Wall Street Journal's Peggy Noonan, carping about the role of a "great nation" but sounding like a Johnny Walker commercial, said "sometimes in life you just wanna keep walking". Law-abiding citizens walking all across the world, for their part, were hoping that the so-called "Bush Six" - former attorney general Alberto Gonzales, former under secretary of defense Douglas Feith, Cheney's former chief of staff David Addington, John Yoo and Bybee from the Justice Department, and Pentagon lawyer William Haynes - would one day catch a flight to Europe for some deluxe rest and recreation and be arrested on the spot by judges claiming universal jurisdiction over crimes against humanity, just as it happened in England to that notorious, now deceased, torturer/dictator Augusto Pinochet from Chile. But it won't happen. Spanish prosecutors literally put the ball back in the US court. And what about Bush telling Fox News last year "they gave me a list of tools and I said, 'Are these tools deemed to be legal?' and so we got legal opinions, before any decision was made, and I think when people study the history of this particular episode they'll find out that we gained good information". Well, if The Great Decider had "studied the history" he would have learned he didn't protect anything, as even US interrogators have dismissed torture as useless in extracting crucial intelligence. And apparently legal counsel also told The Great Decider it was OK to torture alleged 9/11 mastermind Khalid Sheikh Mohammed's children with ... swarms of bugs. Unfazed, the CIA still insists waterboarding works. But with 183 waterboarding sessions, 15 seconds a session, spread over one month, who did Khalid Shayk Mohammed think he was, Iron Man? Moreover, an analyst told Vanity Fair 90% of what he revealed was "bullshit". As for Cheney, he will never deviate from his own "mission accomplished" script. As he recently told CNN, "My general sense ... is that we accomplished nearly everything we set out to do." Paraphrasing Tacitus, that's quite an accomplishment - to destroy the cradle of civilization in Mesopotamia and call it ... victory. Obama has emitted his own muted version of "Never Again!" Well, not really. Under Obama's executive orders passed in January, the CIA is still engaged in extraordinary renditions and shipping suspects to ... overseas contractors, torture-friendly US allies in the Middle East and Eastern Europe. Pressure, anyway, kept mounting from all quarters. The White House was forced to back down. Obama now has left the door open to prosecution of the lawyerly minions. Cheney, of course, is not backing down. Still convinced that torture is swell, he wants other memos - which allegedly demonstrate torture's effectiveness - declassified. So ideally the Obama administration should come up with a special prosecutor or better yet, a truth commission - and call Cheney's bluff. And all this is happening while an even more damning Dark Side memo has not even been declassified. Next train to The HagueThis whole drama is shaping up as a case of American exceptionalism one cannot believe in. Without accepting full responsibility for torture - and illegal, pre-emptive wars - and without accountability, there can be no catharsis in America. Obama is enough of a smart operator to know that if his "going forward" is perceived like "look the other way", this whole thing will come back to haunt and even destroy his presidency. And if it walks and talks like a whitewash, that's because it must be ... a whitewash. Supposing the Obama Justice Department appoints a special prosecutor and we end up with the "Bush Six" or even Bush-era top dogs in the slammer, and not only a few minions and go-betweens, the whole Washington establishment would literally collapse - a Tower of Babel of scum and corruption. Would Obama ever muster the balls to carry it out? That's unlikely. That would mean in practice burying the American empire - and as Obama has provided plenty of proof in his nearly 100 days in power (from the Afghan surge to his CIA coddling) he doesn't want to go down in history as the man who unraveled the American empire. Seize the moment? No, he won't. All that's left for the rest of walking humanity is just the dream of shipping Cheney to a really accomplished destination - The Hague, so he can be duly tried for treason and crimes against humanity. Pepe Escobar is the author of Globalistan: How the Globalized World is Dissolving into Liquid War (Nimble Books, 2007) and Red Zone Blues: a snapshot of Baghdad during the surge. His new book, just out, is Obama does Globalistan (Nimble Books, 2009). He may be reached at pepeasia@yahoo.com.
I was rather shocked by the treatment of these issues by mainstream media such as CNN. On the Lou Dobbs show there was considerable criticism of the Obama decision to release the memos.
This article does not mention that Obama has seemingly changed his tune or at least qualified his view that no one should be charged over the torture. While he claims that those who acted within the parameters of what was at the time declared legal should be immune, those who provided the legal framework might be charged. I doubt that much if anything will come of this.
Dobbs stressed reports that the torture worked as if that should settle the matter. That this uses the principle that the means justifies the end doesn't come up or that it violates basic human rights. Dobbs is at times so stupid and superficial that it boggles my mind. The show also ignored the fact that many experts believe that torture rarely if ever provides much useful information. Dobbs takes self-serving reports by officials as gospel. What a fraud he is at times.
Once or twice a show he gets something right. Even a broken clock is right twice a day.
THE ROVING EYE
Torture whitewash from The Dark Side
By Pepe Escobar
It's a script worthy of Freddie Krueger, the fictional character from the A Nightmare on Elm Street films. Nearly five years after the irruption of the Abu Ghraib prison scandal in Iraq, here's another chamber of horrors, another glimpse of how The Dark Side really works. But the George W Bush torture memos released by the Barack Obama administration
last week, written in legalese by Jay Bybee and Stephen Bradbury, are just a preview. Many will relish the newspeak. ("We conclude that - although sleep deprivation and use of the waterboard present more substantial questions in certain aspects under the statute and the use of tile waterboard raises the most substantial issue - none of these specific
techniques, considered individually, would violate the prohibition in sections 134:0•2340A.") As for the whole movie - a 21st century remix of a D W Griffith epic - it could be called Death of a Nation. The US Senate report, also just released, reads like deja vu all over again: the US establishment under Bush was a replay of the Spanish Inquisition. And it all started even before a single "high-profile al-Qaeda detainee" was captured. What Bush, vice president Dick Cheney, defense secretary Donald Rumsfeld and assorted little inquisitors wanted was above all to prove the non-existent link between Saddam Hussein's Iraq and al-Qaeda, the better to justify a pre-emptive, illegal war planned by the now-defunct Project for the New American Century (PNAC) in the late 1990s. The torture memos were just a cog in the imperial machine. The New York Times, in a fit of decency, at least has already demanded that Congress impeach the lawyerly Bybee, who got his lifetime seat in a federal appeals court from ... Bush. Everyone knew about the torture. Former deputy secretary of state Richard Armitage, who along with Karl "Machiavelli" Rove and Lewis "Scooter" Libby was one of the leakers of the identity of Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) agent Valerie Plame in the infamous Niger yellowcake affair, admitted to al-Jazeera that "in hindsight", "maybe" he should have resigned. Former executive director of the 9/11 Commission Philip Zelikow, very close to secretary of state Condoleezza Rice, also has joined the swelling crowd of "I was against it, too, but in the end I did not resign". More crucially, Armitage also told al-Jazeera why this may well end up being ... just another whitewash. "I don't think the members of the Senate particularly want to look into these things because they will have to look at themselves in the mirror. Where were they? ... They were AWOL, absent without leave." Nobody should expect madam speaker Nancy Pelosi to investigate herself. In Washington, torture seems to be a bipartisan sport. Armitage also told al-Jazeera how he and his then-boss, secretary of state Colin Powell, "lost" the battle to respect the Geneva Conventions during Bush's first term. Japanese officers were tried for war crimes after World War II - by the United States - because they, among other practices, used ... waterboarding. That does not seem to apply to Bush administration officials. Welcome to another instance of American exceptionalism. WhitewashThe question is not that the torture memos should have been kept secret - as the CIA and Dick "Angler" Cheney wanted. The question is how to apply justice and uphold the rule of law. Austrian law professor Manfred Nowak, the Geneva-based United Nations
Human Rights Council's top torture investigator, is adamant: "President Barack Obama's decision not to prosecute CIA operatives who used questionable interrogation practices violates international law." As with the lies that led to the war on Iraq, nobody should expect from US corporate media anything other than ... whitewash. Wall Street Journal's Peggy Noonan, carping about the role of a "great nation" but sounding like a Johnny Walker commercial, said "sometimes in life you just wanna keep walking". Law-abiding citizens walking all across the world, for their part, were hoping that the so-called "Bush Six" - former attorney general Alberto Gonzales, former under secretary of defense Douglas Feith, Cheney's former chief of staff David Addington, John Yoo and Bybee from the Justice Department, and Pentagon lawyer William Haynes - would one day catch a flight to Europe for some deluxe rest and recreation and be arrested on the spot by judges claiming universal jurisdiction over crimes against humanity, just as it happened in England to that notorious, now deceased, torturer/dictator Augusto Pinochet from Chile. But it won't happen. Spanish prosecutors literally put the ball back in the US court. And what about Bush telling Fox News last year "they gave me a list of tools and I said, 'Are these tools deemed to be legal?' and so we got legal opinions, before any decision was made, and I think when people study the history of this particular episode they'll find out that we gained good information". Well, if The Great Decider had "studied the history" he would have learned he didn't protect anything, as even US interrogators have dismissed torture as useless in extracting crucial intelligence. And apparently legal counsel also told The Great Decider it was OK to torture alleged 9/11 mastermind Khalid Sheikh Mohammed's children with ... swarms of bugs. Unfazed, the CIA still insists waterboarding works. But with 183 waterboarding sessions, 15 seconds a session, spread over one month, who did Khalid Shayk Mohammed think he was, Iron Man? Moreover, an analyst told Vanity Fair 90% of what he revealed was "bullshit". As for Cheney, he will never deviate from his own "mission accomplished" script. As he recently told CNN, "My general sense ... is that we accomplished nearly everything we set out to do." Paraphrasing Tacitus, that's quite an accomplishment - to destroy the cradle of civilization in Mesopotamia and call it ... victory. Obama has emitted his own muted version of "Never Again!" Well, not really. Under Obama's executive orders passed in January, the CIA is still engaged in extraordinary renditions and shipping suspects to ... overseas contractors, torture-friendly US allies in the Middle East and Eastern Europe. Pressure, anyway, kept mounting from all quarters. The White House was forced to back down. Obama now has left the door open to prosecution of the lawyerly minions. Cheney, of course, is not backing down. Still convinced that torture is swell, he wants other memos - which allegedly demonstrate torture's effectiveness - declassified. So ideally the Obama administration should come up with a special prosecutor or better yet, a truth commission - and call Cheney's bluff. And all this is happening while an even more damning Dark Side memo has not even been declassified. Next train to The HagueThis whole drama is shaping up as a case of American exceptionalism one cannot believe in. Without accepting full responsibility for torture - and illegal, pre-emptive wars - and without accountability, there can be no catharsis in America. Obama is enough of a smart operator to know that if his "going forward" is perceived like "look the other way", this whole thing will come back to haunt and even destroy his presidency. And if it walks and talks like a whitewash, that's because it must be ... a whitewash. Supposing the Obama Justice Department appoints a special prosecutor and we end up with the "Bush Six" or even Bush-era top dogs in the slammer, and not only a few minions and go-betweens, the whole Washington establishment would literally collapse - a Tower of Babel of scum and corruption. Would Obama ever muster the balls to carry it out? That's unlikely. That would mean in practice burying the American empire - and as Obama has provided plenty of proof in his nearly 100 days in power (from the Afghan surge to his CIA coddling) he doesn't want to go down in history as the man who unraveled the American empire. Seize the moment? No, he won't. All that's left for the rest of walking humanity is just the dream of shipping Cheney to a really accomplished destination - The Hague, so he can be duly tried for treason and crimes against humanity. Pepe Escobar is the author of Globalistan: How the Globalized World is Dissolving into Liquid War (Nimble Books, 2007) and Red Zone Blues: a snapshot of Baghdad during the surge. His new book, just out, is Obama does Globalistan (Nimble Books, 2009). He may be reached at pepeasia@yahoo.com.
Wednesday, April 22, 2009
Philippine Recession 'bottoming out''
This is from the Manila Standard.
The concept of a recession is obviously relative. The Philippines has experienced a slowdown rather than a recession in the sense of negative growth in the economy. Even so, with the global decline the Philippines will be experiencing a decline in foreign remittances which is very important for the economy.
Recession’ bottoming out
By Roderick T. dela Cruz
The economic slowdown in the Philippines has started to bottom out and growth will pick up in the third quarter of the year as the impact of the world financial crisis on the country subsides, Economic Planning Secretary Ralph Recto said yesterday.
“We are seeing a bottoming out of the crisis,” said Recto, who is also director-general of the National Economic and Development Authority.
He said the first quarter growth would be the poorest this year and that higher numbers were expected by the third quarter.
Neda said the economy likely grew 2.1 percent to 3.1 percent in the first quarter of 2009, the period that bore the brunt of the global economic downturn.
Recto, speaking at the sidelines of the launch of the Millennium Development Goals Fund Joint Program on Democratic Economic Governance at Dusit Thani Manila Hotel in Makati City, said growth was expected to pick up in the coming quarters. The National Statistical Coordination Board will release the official growth figures for the first quarter in the third week of May.
Recto said the preliminary growth estimate in the first quarter was based on the poor performance of exports and job losses reported during the period.
Merchandise exports fell 40 percent in January and 39 percent in February, as global demand for electronics and garments tumbled amid the lingering financial crisis.
Recto said some 100,000 Filipino workers were also affected by the crisis in the first quarter, with about half losing their jobs because of company closures or retrenchment.
But Recto said the Philippine economy was one of the only few countries that were expected to grow positively, along with China, Indonesia and Brazil.
He said growth would be supported by consumer spending, which rose by an average of 4.5 percent over the past decades. Personal consumption expenditures account for about two-thirds of the GDP in the Philippines.
Recto said he was optimistic the Philippines would achieve its growth target this year as long as remittances continued to grow at the present pace and inflation remained manageable.
He added interest rates had been easing in support of economic expansion.
The Development Budget Coordination Committee earlier said the GDP was expected to grow within a range of 3.1 percent to 4.1 percent in 2009, from a 4.6 percent actual expansion in 2008.
Fitch Ratings, meanwhile, lowered its economic growth forecast for the Philippines this year, saying the global recession would lead to a decline in exports and remittances from Filipino workers overseas.
The concept of a recession is obviously relative. The Philippines has experienced a slowdown rather than a recession in the sense of negative growth in the economy. Even so, with the global decline the Philippines will be experiencing a decline in foreign remittances which is very important for the economy.
Recession’ bottoming out
By Roderick T. dela Cruz
The economic slowdown in the Philippines has started to bottom out and growth will pick up in the third quarter of the year as the impact of the world financial crisis on the country subsides, Economic Planning Secretary Ralph Recto said yesterday.
“We are seeing a bottoming out of the crisis,” said Recto, who is also director-general of the National Economic and Development Authority.
He said the first quarter growth would be the poorest this year and that higher numbers were expected by the third quarter.
Neda said the economy likely grew 2.1 percent to 3.1 percent in the first quarter of 2009, the period that bore the brunt of the global economic downturn.
Recto, speaking at the sidelines of the launch of the Millennium Development Goals Fund Joint Program on Democratic Economic Governance at Dusit Thani Manila Hotel in Makati City, said growth was expected to pick up in the coming quarters. The National Statistical Coordination Board will release the official growth figures for the first quarter in the third week of May.
Recto said the preliminary growth estimate in the first quarter was based on the poor performance of exports and job losses reported during the period.
Merchandise exports fell 40 percent in January and 39 percent in February, as global demand for electronics and garments tumbled amid the lingering financial crisis.
Recto said some 100,000 Filipino workers were also affected by the crisis in the first quarter, with about half losing their jobs because of company closures or retrenchment.
But Recto said the Philippine economy was one of the only few countries that were expected to grow positively, along with China, Indonesia and Brazil.
He said growth would be supported by consumer spending, which rose by an average of 4.5 percent over the past decades. Personal consumption expenditures account for about two-thirds of the GDP in the Philippines.
Recto said he was optimistic the Philippines would achieve its growth target this year as long as remittances continued to grow at the present pace and inflation remained manageable.
He added interest rates had been easing in support of economic expansion.
The Development Budget Coordination Committee earlier said the GDP was expected to grow within a range of 3.1 percent to 4.1 percent in 2009, from a 4.6 percent actual expansion in 2008.
Fitch Ratings, meanwhile, lowered its economic growth forecast for the Philippines this year, saying the global recession would lead to a decline in exports and remittances from Filipino workers overseas.
Prominent Lawmaker in AIPAC Spy Scandal
This is from antiwar.com.
There seems to be a bipartisan consensus when it comes to AIPAC. I wonder how much media coverage this issue will get. I wonder if the Obama administration will try to protect Harman as the Bush administration did!
Prominent Lawmaker in AIPAC Spy Scandal
by Daniel Luban, April 21, 2009
A U.S. government investigation of Israeli spying caught a prominent Democratic congresswoman discussing what is alleged to be a "quid pro quo" deal involving the American Israel Public Affairs Committee (AIPAC), Washington’s powerful, hawkish pro-Israel lobby.
Rep. Jane Harman of California was recorded in 2005 on a National Security Administration (NSA) wiretap promising a suspected Israeli agent that she would intervene on behalf of two AIPAC staffers accused of passing classified information to the Israeli government, and her interlocutor responded by promising to help get Harman appointed to a top congressional intelligence post, according to an article published Sunday by Congressional Quarterly (CQ).
Perhaps even more notably, then-attorney general Alberto Gonzales later halted an FBI investigation of Harman’s actions because of Harman’s political value as a defender of the George W. Bush administration’s much-criticized warrantless wiretapping program, the CQ report states.
The Harman scandal’s political repercussions appear to be growing, and it sits at the intersection of several controversial issues – among them, the influence of the "Israel lobby" on Capitol Hill, the complicity of top Democrats in Bush-era abuses, and the politicization of judicial proceedings under the Bush administration.
Harman has a reputation as one of the Democratic Party’s foremost hawks, both on Israel-Palestine and on issues related to the "global war on terror." She has long enjoyed a close relationship with AIPAC, and she is scheduled to speak at the group’s annual conference in May.
Allegations of a quid pro quo arrangement involving Harman and AIPAC are nothing new; Time magazine reported in 2006 that the FBI and Justice Department were investigating whether such a deal took place.
What was new in Sunday’s CQ piece, written by reporter Jeff Stein on the basis of conversations with multiple senior national security officials speaking anonymously, were the claims that the deal had been recorded by the NSA wiretap and that attorney general Gonzales had squelched the investigation of Harman for political reasons.
In an online discussion Monday, Stein stated the wiretap was court-approved and did not target Harman; rather, it was directed at the suspected Israeli agent with whom she was speaking.
Harman and her interlocutor were discussing the impending trial of Steven Rosen and Keith Weissman, two senior AIPAC staffers who had been fired and charged with violating the Espionage Act of 1917 for passing classified information to the Israeli government.
(Rosen’s and Weissman’s trial is scheduled to start this summer; Lawrence Franklin, the Pentagon staffer who passed them the classified information, pled guilty to conspiracy in 2006 and was sentenced to over 12 years in prison.)
Harman was recorded saying that she would be willing "waddle into" the AIPAC spying case to try to get the Justice Department to reduce its charges against Rosen and Weissman. In return, the suspected Israeli agent promised to help lobby Nancy Pelosi, at the time the House minority leader and now its speaker, to convince Pelosi to appoint Harman as chair of the House Intelligence Committee.
Harman at the time was serving as the Democratic ranking member of the Intelligence Committee, but had a testy relationship with Pelosi; she was ultimately passed up for the committee chair in 2006 in favor of Rep. Silvestre Reyes.
The identity of Harman’s interlocutor is unknown, although most analysts are assuming that he or she had significant ties to AIPAC, which has traditionally been dominant in lobbying members of Congress on matters pertaining to Israel.
Haim Saban, a prominent Israeli-American businessman, has been frequently mentioned in the "blogosphere" as a possible suspect, but this identification seems primarily to have been based on the fact that Saban’s name was mentioned in the 2006 Time magazine piece about Harman. So far no solid evidence has emerged to link him to the incident.
One anonymous source told the Atlantic’s Marc Ambinder that Harman’s interlocutor was a U.S. citizen.
AIPAC denied having participated in any wrongdoing in the Harman scandal. "AIPAC would never engage in a quid pro quo related to a federal investigation or any other federal matter," spokesman Patrick Dorton said. "That is absurd."
Harman’s office also released a statement denying any wrongdoing.
"The CQ Politics story simply recycles three-year-old, discredited reporting of largely unsourced material to manufacture a ’scoop’ out of widely known and unremarkable facts," the statement said.
"If there is anything about this story that should arouse concern, it is that the Bush administration may have been engaged in electronic surveillance of members of the congressional intelligence committees."
Harman’s concern about the Bush administration’s surveillance policies is somewhat ironic, given that she was previously the strongest defender of the administration’s warrantless wiretapping program among congressional Democrats – and that she appears to have avoided a federal investigation of her AIPAC ties only as a result of her permissive stance on wiretapping.
Harman had previously helped convince the New York Times not to report on the program, and after the newspaper finally decided to run the story, she blasted its editors for compromising U.S. national security.
Due to Harman’s value in providing bipartisan cover for the administration’s policies, Gonzales intervened with CIA director Porter Goss to derail a pending FBI investigation of her, including a court-approved wiretap.
(The wiretap targeting the suspected Israeli agent that captured Harman’s conversation had been approved by the special court established by the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act, and thus was not part of the NSA warrantless wiretapping program.)
According to Stein’s sources, then, the end of the FBI investigation of Harman was not due to "lack of evidence," as her defenders publicly claimed, but rather due to political considerations by the Bush administration.
The Harman scandal comes at an especially unwelcome time for AIPAC. The organization has faced mounting criticism in recent years on charges that it – along with other, similarly right-leaning groups within the "Israel lobby" – have for years skewed Washington’s Middle East policy in a hawkish direction and stifled open discussion of Israel-Palestine issues.
These concerns led to the formation last year of a new pro-Israel lobbying group, J Street, which aims to give voice to what it characterizes as the more dovish views held by most U.S. Jews.
With its annual conference approaching, AIPAC was hoping to head off such criticisms and portray itself in a more moderate light.
Instead, the group finds itself once again in the spotlight, linked to a story that its critics are taking as a corroboration of many of the harshest claims made about it.
(Inter Press Service)
There seems to be a bipartisan consensus when it comes to AIPAC. I wonder how much media coverage this issue will get. I wonder if the Obama administration will try to protect Harman as the Bush administration did!
Prominent Lawmaker in AIPAC Spy Scandal
by Daniel Luban, April 21, 2009
A U.S. government investigation of Israeli spying caught a prominent Democratic congresswoman discussing what is alleged to be a "quid pro quo" deal involving the American Israel Public Affairs Committee (AIPAC), Washington’s powerful, hawkish pro-Israel lobby.
Rep. Jane Harman of California was recorded in 2005 on a National Security Administration (NSA) wiretap promising a suspected Israeli agent that she would intervene on behalf of two AIPAC staffers accused of passing classified information to the Israeli government, and her interlocutor responded by promising to help get Harman appointed to a top congressional intelligence post, according to an article published Sunday by Congressional Quarterly (CQ).
Perhaps even more notably, then-attorney general Alberto Gonzales later halted an FBI investigation of Harman’s actions because of Harman’s political value as a defender of the George W. Bush administration’s much-criticized warrantless wiretapping program, the CQ report states.
The Harman scandal’s political repercussions appear to be growing, and it sits at the intersection of several controversial issues – among them, the influence of the "Israel lobby" on Capitol Hill, the complicity of top Democrats in Bush-era abuses, and the politicization of judicial proceedings under the Bush administration.
Harman has a reputation as one of the Democratic Party’s foremost hawks, both on Israel-Palestine and on issues related to the "global war on terror." She has long enjoyed a close relationship with AIPAC, and she is scheduled to speak at the group’s annual conference in May.
Allegations of a quid pro quo arrangement involving Harman and AIPAC are nothing new; Time magazine reported in 2006 that the FBI and Justice Department were investigating whether such a deal took place.
What was new in Sunday’s CQ piece, written by reporter Jeff Stein on the basis of conversations with multiple senior national security officials speaking anonymously, were the claims that the deal had been recorded by the NSA wiretap and that attorney general Gonzales had squelched the investigation of Harman for political reasons.
In an online discussion Monday, Stein stated the wiretap was court-approved and did not target Harman; rather, it was directed at the suspected Israeli agent with whom she was speaking.
Harman and her interlocutor were discussing the impending trial of Steven Rosen and Keith Weissman, two senior AIPAC staffers who had been fired and charged with violating the Espionage Act of 1917 for passing classified information to the Israeli government.
(Rosen’s and Weissman’s trial is scheduled to start this summer; Lawrence Franklin, the Pentagon staffer who passed them the classified information, pled guilty to conspiracy in 2006 and was sentenced to over 12 years in prison.)
Harman was recorded saying that she would be willing "waddle into" the AIPAC spying case to try to get the Justice Department to reduce its charges against Rosen and Weissman. In return, the suspected Israeli agent promised to help lobby Nancy Pelosi, at the time the House minority leader and now its speaker, to convince Pelosi to appoint Harman as chair of the House Intelligence Committee.
Harman at the time was serving as the Democratic ranking member of the Intelligence Committee, but had a testy relationship with Pelosi; she was ultimately passed up for the committee chair in 2006 in favor of Rep. Silvestre Reyes.
The identity of Harman’s interlocutor is unknown, although most analysts are assuming that he or she had significant ties to AIPAC, which has traditionally been dominant in lobbying members of Congress on matters pertaining to Israel.
Haim Saban, a prominent Israeli-American businessman, has been frequently mentioned in the "blogosphere" as a possible suspect, but this identification seems primarily to have been based on the fact that Saban’s name was mentioned in the 2006 Time magazine piece about Harman. So far no solid evidence has emerged to link him to the incident.
One anonymous source told the Atlantic’s Marc Ambinder that Harman’s interlocutor was a U.S. citizen.
AIPAC denied having participated in any wrongdoing in the Harman scandal. "AIPAC would never engage in a quid pro quo related to a federal investigation or any other federal matter," spokesman Patrick Dorton said. "That is absurd."
Harman’s office also released a statement denying any wrongdoing.
"The CQ Politics story simply recycles three-year-old, discredited reporting of largely unsourced material to manufacture a ’scoop’ out of widely known and unremarkable facts," the statement said.
"If there is anything about this story that should arouse concern, it is that the Bush administration may have been engaged in electronic surveillance of members of the congressional intelligence committees."
Harman’s concern about the Bush administration’s surveillance policies is somewhat ironic, given that she was previously the strongest defender of the administration’s warrantless wiretapping program among congressional Democrats – and that she appears to have avoided a federal investigation of her AIPAC ties only as a result of her permissive stance on wiretapping.
Harman had previously helped convince the New York Times not to report on the program, and after the newspaper finally decided to run the story, she blasted its editors for compromising U.S. national security.
Due to Harman’s value in providing bipartisan cover for the administration’s policies, Gonzales intervened with CIA director Porter Goss to derail a pending FBI investigation of her, including a court-approved wiretap.
(The wiretap targeting the suspected Israeli agent that captured Harman’s conversation had been approved by the special court established by the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act, and thus was not part of the NSA warrantless wiretapping program.)
According to Stein’s sources, then, the end of the FBI investigation of Harman was not due to "lack of evidence," as her defenders publicly claimed, but rather due to political considerations by the Bush administration.
The Harman scandal comes at an especially unwelcome time for AIPAC. The organization has faced mounting criticism in recent years on charges that it – along with other, similarly right-leaning groups within the "Israel lobby" – have for years skewed Washington’s Middle East policy in a hawkish direction and stifled open discussion of Israel-Palestine issues.
These concerns led to the formation last year of a new pro-Israel lobbying group, J Street, which aims to give voice to what it characterizes as the more dovish views held by most U.S. Jews.
With its annual conference approaching, AIPAC was hoping to head off such criticisms and portray itself in a more moderate light.
Instead, the group finds itself once again in the spotlight, linked to a story that its critics are taking as a corroboration of many of the harshest claims made about it.
(Inter Press Service)
Tuesday, April 21, 2009
How Dangerous are the Taliban
This is another well argued criticism of Obama's justification for pursuing his policies in Afghanistan and Pakistan. It should be remembered that at one time the US co-operated with the Taliban and vice-versa. The Taliban were actually presented a check for several million dollars for helping to stop Afghans from growing poppies!
Published on Foreign Affairs (http://www.foreignaffairs.com)
How Dangerous Are the Taliban?
Why Afghanistan Is the Wrong War
John MuellerJOHN MUELLER is Professor of Political Science at Ohio State University. Among his books are Overblown: How Politicians and the Terrorism Industry Inflate National Security Threats, and Why We Believe Them and the forthcoming Atomic Obsession: Nuclear Alarmism from Hiroshima to Al Qaeda.
George W. Bush led the United States into war in Iraq on the grounds that Saddam Hussein might give his country’s nonexistent weapons of mass destruction to terrorists. Now, Bush’s successor is perpetuating the war in Afghanistan with comparably dubious arguments about the danger posed by the Taliban and al Qaeda.
President Barack Obama insists [1] that the U.S. mission in Afghanistan is about "making sure that al Qaeda cannot attack the U.S. homeland and U.S. interests and our allies" or "project violence against" American citizens. The reasoning is that if the Taliban win in Afghanistan, al Qaeda will once again be able to set up shop there to carry out its dirty work. As the president puts it [2], Afghanistan would "again be a base for terrorists who want to kill as many of our people as they possibly can." This argument is constantly repeated but rarely examined; given the costs and risks associated with the Obama administration’s plans for the region, it is time such statements be given the scrutiny they deserve.
Multiple sources, including Lawrence Wright's book The Looming Tower, make clear that the Taliban was a reluctant host to al Qaeda in the 1990s and felt betrayed when the terrorist group repeatedly violated agreements to refrain from issuing inflammatory statements and fomenting violence abroad. Then the al Qaeda-sponsored 9/11 attacks -- which the Taliban had nothing to do with -- led to the toppling of the Taliban’s regime. Given the Taliban’s limited interest in issues outside the "AfPak" region, if they came to power again now, they would be highly unlikely to host provocative terrorist groups whose actions could lead to another outside intervention. And even if al Qaeda were able to relocate to Afghanistan after a Taliban victory there, it would still have to operate under the same siege situation it presently enjoys in what Obama calls its "safe haven" in Pakistan.
The very notion that al Qaeda needs a secure geographic base to carry out its terrorist operations, moreover, is questionable. After all, the operational base for 9/11 was in Hamburg, Germany. Conspiracies involving small numbers of people require communication, money, and planning -- but not a major protected base camp.
At present, al Qaeda consists [3] of a few hundred people running around in Pakistan, seeking to avoid detection and helping the Taliban when possible. It also has a disjointed network of fellow travelers around the globe who communicate over the Internet. Over the last decade, the group has almost completely discredited [4] itself in the Muslim world due to the fallout from the 9/11 attacks and subsequent counterproductive terrorism, much of it directed against Muslims. No convincing evidence has been offered publicly to show that al Qaeda Central has put together a single full operation anywhere in the world since 9/11. And, outside of war zones, the violence perpetrated by al Qaeda affiliates, wannabes, and lookalikes combined has resulted [5] in the deaths of some 200 to 300 people per year, and may be declining [6]. That is 200 to 300 too many, of course, but it scarcely suggests that "the safety of people around the world is at stake," as Obama dramatically puts it.
In addition, al Qaeda has yet to establish a significant presence in the United States. In 2002, U.S. intelligence reports asserted that the number of trained al Qaeda operatives in the United States was between 2,000 and 5,000, and FBI Director Robert Mueller assured [7] a Senate committee that al Qaeda had "developed a support infrastructure" in the country and achieved both "the ability and the intent to inflict significant casualties in the U.S. with little warning." However, after years of well funded sleuthing, the FBI and other investigative agencies have been unable [8] to uncover a single true al Qaeda sleeper cell or operative within the country. Mueller's rallying cry has now been reduced [9] to a comparatively bland formulation: "We believe al Qaeda is still seeking to infiltrate operatives into the U.S. from overseas."
Even that may not be true. Since 9/11, some two million foreigners have been admitted to the United States legally and many others, of course, have entered illegally. Even if border security has been so effective that 90 percent of al Qaeda’s operatives have been turned away or deterred from entering the United States, some should have made it in -- and some of those, it seems reasonable to suggest, would have been picked up by law enforcement by now. The lack of attacks inside the United States combined with the inability of the FBI to find any potential attackers suggests that the terrorists are either not trying very hard or are far less clever and capable than usually depicted.
Policymakers and the public at large should keep in mind the words [10] of Glenn Carle, a 23 year veteran of the CIA who served as deputy national intelligence officer for transnational threats: "We must see jihadists for the small, lethal, disjointed and miserable opponents that they are." Al Qaeda "has only a handful of individuals capable of planning, organizing and leading a terrorist operation," Carle notes, and "its capabilities are far inferior to its desires."
President Obama has said that there is also a humanitarian element to the Afghanistan mission. A return of the Taliban, he points out, would condemn the Afghan people "to brutal governance, international isolation, a paralyzed economy, and the denial of basic human rights." This concern is legitimate -- the Afghan people appear to be quite strongly opposed to a return of the Taliban, and they are surely entitled to some peace after 30 years of almost continual warfare, much of it imposed on them from outside.
The problem, as Obama is doubtlessly well aware, is that Americans are far less willing to sacrifice lives for missions that are essentially humanitarian than for those that seek to deal with a threat directed at the United States itself. People who embrace the idea of a humanitarian mission will continue to support Obama's policy in Afghanistan -- at least if they think it has a chance of success -- but many Americans (and Europeans) will increasingly start to question how many lives such a mission is worth.
This questioning, in fact, is well under way. Because of its ties to 9/11, the war in Afghanistan has enjoyed considerably greater public support [11] than the war in Iraq did (or, for that matter, the wars in Korea or Vietnam). However, there has been a considerable dropoff in that support of late. If Obama's national security justification for his war in Afghanistan comes to seem as spurious as Bush's national security justification for his war in Iraq, he, like Bush, will increasingly have only the humanitarian argument to fall back on. And that is likely to be a weak reed.
Copyright © 2002-2009 by the Council on Foreign Relations, Inc. All rights reserved.
Source URL: http://www.foreignaffairs.com/articles/64932/john-mueller/how-dangerous-are-the-taliban
Published on Foreign Affairs (http://www.foreignaffairs.com)
How Dangerous Are the Taliban?
Why Afghanistan Is the Wrong War
John MuellerJOHN MUELLER is Professor of Political Science at Ohio State University. Among his books are Overblown: How Politicians and the Terrorism Industry Inflate National Security Threats, and Why We Believe Them and the forthcoming Atomic Obsession: Nuclear Alarmism from Hiroshima to Al Qaeda.
George W. Bush led the United States into war in Iraq on the grounds that Saddam Hussein might give his country’s nonexistent weapons of mass destruction to terrorists. Now, Bush’s successor is perpetuating the war in Afghanistan with comparably dubious arguments about the danger posed by the Taliban and al Qaeda.
President Barack Obama insists [1] that the U.S. mission in Afghanistan is about "making sure that al Qaeda cannot attack the U.S. homeland and U.S. interests and our allies" or "project violence against" American citizens. The reasoning is that if the Taliban win in Afghanistan, al Qaeda will once again be able to set up shop there to carry out its dirty work. As the president puts it [2], Afghanistan would "again be a base for terrorists who want to kill as many of our people as they possibly can." This argument is constantly repeated but rarely examined; given the costs and risks associated with the Obama administration’s plans for the region, it is time such statements be given the scrutiny they deserve.
Multiple sources, including Lawrence Wright's book The Looming Tower, make clear that the Taliban was a reluctant host to al Qaeda in the 1990s and felt betrayed when the terrorist group repeatedly violated agreements to refrain from issuing inflammatory statements and fomenting violence abroad. Then the al Qaeda-sponsored 9/11 attacks -- which the Taliban had nothing to do with -- led to the toppling of the Taliban’s regime. Given the Taliban’s limited interest in issues outside the "AfPak" region, if they came to power again now, they would be highly unlikely to host provocative terrorist groups whose actions could lead to another outside intervention. And even if al Qaeda were able to relocate to Afghanistan after a Taliban victory there, it would still have to operate under the same siege situation it presently enjoys in what Obama calls its "safe haven" in Pakistan.
The very notion that al Qaeda needs a secure geographic base to carry out its terrorist operations, moreover, is questionable. After all, the operational base for 9/11 was in Hamburg, Germany. Conspiracies involving small numbers of people require communication, money, and planning -- but not a major protected base camp.
At present, al Qaeda consists [3] of a few hundred people running around in Pakistan, seeking to avoid detection and helping the Taliban when possible. It also has a disjointed network of fellow travelers around the globe who communicate over the Internet. Over the last decade, the group has almost completely discredited [4] itself in the Muslim world due to the fallout from the 9/11 attacks and subsequent counterproductive terrorism, much of it directed against Muslims. No convincing evidence has been offered publicly to show that al Qaeda Central has put together a single full operation anywhere in the world since 9/11. And, outside of war zones, the violence perpetrated by al Qaeda affiliates, wannabes, and lookalikes combined has resulted [5] in the deaths of some 200 to 300 people per year, and may be declining [6]. That is 200 to 300 too many, of course, but it scarcely suggests that "the safety of people around the world is at stake," as Obama dramatically puts it.
In addition, al Qaeda has yet to establish a significant presence in the United States. In 2002, U.S. intelligence reports asserted that the number of trained al Qaeda operatives in the United States was between 2,000 and 5,000, and FBI Director Robert Mueller assured [7] a Senate committee that al Qaeda had "developed a support infrastructure" in the country and achieved both "the ability and the intent to inflict significant casualties in the U.S. with little warning." However, after years of well funded sleuthing, the FBI and other investigative agencies have been unable [8] to uncover a single true al Qaeda sleeper cell or operative within the country. Mueller's rallying cry has now been reduced [9] to a comparatively bland formulation: "We believe al Qaeda is still seeking to infiltrate operatives into the U.S. from overseas."
Even that may not be true. Since 9/11, some two million foreigners have been admitted to the United States legally and many others, of course, have entered illegally. Even if border security has been so effective that 90 percent of al Qaeda’s operatives have been turned away or deterred from entering the United States, some should have made it in -- and some of those, it seems reasonable to suggest, would have been picked up by law enforcement by now. The lack of attacks inside the United States combined with the inability of the FBI to find any potential attackers suggests that the terrorists are either not trying very hard or are far less clever and capable than usually depicted.
Policymakers and the public at large should keep in mind the words [10] of Glenn Carle, a 23 year veteran of the CIA who served as deputy national intelligence officer for transnational threats: "We must see jihadists for the small, lethal, disjointed and miserable opponents that they are." Al Qaeda "has only a handful of individuals capable of planning, organizing and leading a terrorist operation," Carle notes, and "its capabilities are far inferior to its desires."
President Obama has said that there is also a humanitarian element to the Afghanistan mission. A return of the Taliban, he points out, would condemn the Afghan people "to brutal governance, international isolation, a paralyzed economy, and the denial of basic human rights." This concern is legitimate -- the Afghan people appear to be quite strongly opposed to a return of the Taliban, and they are surely entitled to some peace after 30 years of almost continual warfare, much of it imposed on them from outside.
The problem, as Obama is doubtlessly well aware, is that Americans are far less willing to sacrifice lives for missions that are essentially humanitarian than for those that seek to deal with a threat directed at the United States itself. People who embrace the idea of a humanitarian mission will continue to support Obama's policy in Afghanistan -- at least if they think it has a chance of success -- but many Americans (and Europeans) will increasingly start to question how many lives such a mission is worth.
This questioning, in fact, is well under way. Because of its ties to 9/11, the war in Afghanistan has enjoyed considerably greater public support [11] than the war in Iraq did (or, for that matter, the wars in Korea or Vietnam). However, there has been a considerable dropoff in that support of late. If Obama's national security justification for his war in Afghanistan comes to seem as spurious as Bush's national security justification for his war in Iraq, he, like Bush, will increasingly have only the humanitarian argument to fall back on. And that is likely to be a weak reed.
Copyright © 2002-2009 by the Council on Foreign Relations, Inc. All rights reserved.
Source URL: http://www.foreignaffairs.com/articles/64932/john-mueller/how-dangerous-are-the-taliban
Monday, April 20, 2009
Escobar: On Obama's policies in Afghanistan and Pakistan
This is from Asiatimes.
Escobar is good at showing the implausibility if not downright silliness of some of the rationale given for US policy in Afghanistan and Pakistan. Obama may not use the term "'war on terror'' but he uses the same sort of ridiculous rationales as Bush did for US policy in Pakistan and Afghanistan
THE ROVING EYE
The mother of all cockfights
By Pepe Escobar
On one side, the most powerful man on Earth, who happens to carry a Muslim middle name. On the other, the largest tribal nation in the world, which happens to be Muslim. Welcome to the mother of all cockfights. As it was leaked by government sources to the Pakistani daily The News, the success rate of the Barack Obama administration's "hell from above" Predator drone war over the Federally Administered Tribal Areas (FATA) is a mere 6%. Of "60 Predator strikes between January 14, 2006, and April 8, 2009, only 10 hit their targets, killing 14 wanted al-Qaeda leaders" but most of all "killing 687 innocent Pakistani civilians". All of them Pashtuns. Any sensible boss would fire those responsible for such a performance. Not Obama with the Pentagon - which is bound to
continue with its only game in (Pashtun) town, based on amassing non-existent, on-the-ground intelligence; accumulating unbearable "collateral damage"; provoking a mass Pashtun rebellion against the discredited 650,000-strong Pakistani army; and ensuring the military's definitive public humiliation. Last week, Pentagon supremo Robert Gates
left no doubt the Pentagon's future lay with "expeditionary warfare" or "COIN operations", counter-insurgency operations (COIN) of which the "hell from above" Predator diplomacy is a superstar. The strategy also includes replicating the Central Command chief General David Petraeus-coined "Sons of Iraq" COIN gambit - now renamed Afghan Public Protection Force, which will inevitably clash big time with the Hamid Karzai
government in Kabul, just as Sunni Iraqis clash with Prime Minster Nuri al-Maliki in Baghdad. Needless to say, this COIN-saturated "future" peopled with Predator and Reaper drones, special forces and high-tech ground and air sensors apply essentially to Muslim countries. British colonialism, in a pre-COIN past, used to call this "colonial warfare", or "little wars" against brown people. Blame Albion's perfidyObama's lofty team of strategic reviewers seems to have overlooked that it's because of occupying US and North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO) troops that moderate Pashtun tribals support the Taliban or even join the Taliban. Obviously, Obama's strategic reviewers forgot to ask Pashtuns themselves about the new US "strategy". It's now clear in Washington that the troika of special envoy Richard Holbrooke, Petraeus and Secretary of State Hillary Clinton managed to sell to Obama a COIN-based Afghan nation-building scheme - which, if it sounds like a contradiction, that's because it is. Always keen on taking over the news cycle, Obama preferred to strut his catchy, alliterative triad ("disrupt, dismantle, defeat") which will in theory eliminate evil al-Qaeda from the war theater in Afghanistan and Pakistan, or AfPak. Still, the fact remains: Obama's war in AfPak is a war against Pashtuns. Obama's special envoy to Afghanistan and Pakistan Holbrooke, in an involuntary impersonation of Inspector Clouseau, admitted as much to CNN's State of the Union less than three weeks ago:
The people we are fighting in Afghanistan and the people they are sheltering in western Pakistan pose a direct threat - those are the men of 9/11, the people that killed [former prime minister] Benazir Bhutto - and you can be sure that as we sit here today they are planning further attacks on the United States and our allies. Holbrooke manages to muddle it all - merging Arab al-Qaeda with Pashtun Taliban, implying that the Pashtun Taliban were involved in 9/11 and also in the killing of Benazir (which some even claim was an inside Pakistan army/intelligence services job), not to mention the insinuation that Pashtuns are plotting to attack the US in a 9/11 replay. This newspeak is how the Washington establishment under Obama now sells an unwinnable war to US public opinion. What do Pashtuns have to say about it? According to Zar Ali Khan Musazai, chairman of the Pashtun Democratic Council, "Pashtun blood has turned cheaper than water in the area administered by Pakistan." He charges that what's happening is "the genocide of Pashtuns, which is inhuman and against international law". But he also makes the crucial point that as the US and NATO are so fragile - to the extent that they cannot protect even their own military convoys and warehouses - nobody believes they "will protect Pashtuns from terrorism and the wrath of their mentors". He points out to the inevitable - "the day Pashtuns revolt and demand their historic home"; in sum, Pashtunistan. The overwhelming majority of Pashtuns know how, in 1893, Henry Durand, a British colonial functionary, drew his now infamous line by crossing Pashtun tribal areas that Afghans considered their own territory. Now Obama's war at least is making sense of the term "AfPak". Pashtuns never accepted these artificial borders, nor did the Afghan state whenever it was not subject to foreign interference. Pashtuns on both sides of the Durand Line know the 3,300 kilometer-long AfPak border was one more classic "divide and rule" invention of the British Raj. They consider FATA and the North-West Frontier Province (NWFP) as occupied by Pakistan, or what they describe as "Pakistani-Punjabi forces" - who use these areas to foster the destabilization of Afghanistan. They routinely refer to "the Pakistani pro-terrorist establishment". And for them the "unification of Pashtuns with their motherland Afghanistan" is the only way out. Compare this with the way the Pakistan military-intelligence establishment understands "destabilization". The establishment is totally interlinked with the neo-Taliban in Pakistan - and the "historic" Taliban who took power in Afghanistan in 1996 - as part of the "strategic depth" doctrine of fighting any possible Indian influence in Afghanistan. Their ultimate paranoia is Washington losing interest in Afghanistan - again - and thus leaving Pakistan at the mercy of Indian and Russian "encirclement". Islamabad controls most of Pakistan - Sindh and Punjab provinces - with an iron fist. Pakistani police and army control most of NWFP. In "separatist" Balochistan there's only 5% of the total population. For Washington to believe that a small, rural, Pashtun tribal agglomeration of bands of a maximum of 30 fighters, with no air force, no heavy artillery and no tanks, could take over a Pakistan with a 650,000-strong well-trained army is an absolutely ridiculous notion. And for Washington to believe - as Holbrooke implied - that a few Pashtun tribals and a few expat jihadis can take on Western civilization as a whole is also an absolutely ridiculous notion. As for the Pakistan military, whenever they see the activities of the Balochistan Liberation Front or a road being built from Nimruz province in Afghanistan to the Iranian port of Chabahar, they see the hand of New Delhi. Hardcore paranoia as it may be, even senior Pakistan army officers believe in a concerted US-India plot to destabilize FATA and the country as a whole and then confiscate Pakistan's nuclear weapons. Obama's war on Pashtuns will only exacerbate this already volatile mix. The prizeThe Obama administration's war on Pashtunistan may be just a digression. No amount of Washington spin disguises the fact Afghanistan is currently - and will continue to be - occupied by the US and NATO virtually indefinitely as a strategic peon in the New Great Game in Eurasia. It's always crucial to remember Obama's national security advisor, General Jim Jones, is a former NATO supreme commander (2003-2006) and a huge fan of NATO's non-stop expansion in Eurasia. As reported by the Washington Post, the US Army is building no less than $1.1 billion worth of military bases (about the annual budget of President Hamid Karzai's government in Kabul) and planning an extra $1.3 billion in projects for 2009, according to Colonel Thomas E O'Donovan, commander of the US Army Corps of Engineers Afghanistan District. As for NATO, its mission will be to protect the projected, $7.6 billion (and counting), perennially troubled TAPI gas pipeline from Turkmenistan to India via Afghanistan and Pakistan, if investors are foolish enough to give it the go-ahead. As if public opinion mattered in the New Great Game in Eurasia, a recent BBC poll revealed that 73% of Afghans were against Obama's surge - or war against Pashtuns - and a majority supported a negotiated end to the war, even with a coalition government including the Taliban. "The Shadow" himself, the Pashtun Taliban leader Mullah Omar, through Saudi King Abdullah, advanced his plan: a timetable for withdrawal; a "national consensus government"; and the Taliban incorporated into the Afghan National Army. The other alternative scenario is the one advanced by the Shanghai Cooperation Organization (SCO) - this insoluble problem not dealt with by NATO but debated and solved by Afghanistan's neighbors, SCO members China and Russia and SCO observers (and soon to be members) Iran, Pakistan and India. Obama should know by now that Islamabad won't fight the neo-Taliban. The Inter-Services Intelligence supports them - as do different Pashtun layers of the army. So Obama can pull a Donald Rumsfeld "stay the course", as the former US secretary of defense used to say. He can keep the anti-Pashtun surge going while getting rid of Karzai in Afghanistan and President Asif Ali Zardari in Pakistan (shades of Vietnam). What he won't do - and the Pentagon won't allow - is to do a full Vietnam and let the last helicopter leave Bagram, because he does not want to go down as the president who lost the American empire of bases and the dream of prevailing in the New Great Game in Eurasia. Meanwhile, it will be Predator hell from above raining over angry Pashtun tribals. Boing, boom, tschak. Boing, boom, tschak. (The Pentagon might consider hiring the legendary German band Kraftwerk to provide the soundtrack for the strikes; and why not release a videogame?) Countless more Pashtun wedding parties will be incinerated in the name of the brand new "overseas contingency operations", formerly the "global war on terror". Make no mistake: there will be blood - a lot of blood - in the mother of all cockfights. Pepe Escobar is the author of Globalistan: How the Globalized World is Dissolving into Liquid War (Nimble Books, 2007) and Red Zone Blues: a snapshot of Baghdad during the surge. His new book, just out, is Obama does Globalistan (Nimble Books, 2009).
Escobar is good at showing the implausibility if not downright silliness of some of the rationale given for US policy in Afghanistan and Pakistan. Obama may not use the term "'war on terror'' but he uses the same sort of ridiculous rationales as Bush did for US policy in Pakistan and Afghanistan
THE ROVING EYE
The mother of all cockfights
By Pepe Escobar
On one side, the most powerful man on Earth, who happens to carry a Muslim middle name. On the other, the largest tribal nation in the world, which happens to be Muslim. Welcome to the mother of all cockfights. As it was leaked by government sources to the Pakistani daily The News, the success rate of the Barack Obama administration's "hell from above" Predator drone war over the Federally Administered Tribal Areas (FATA) is a mere 6%. Of "60 Predator strikes between January 14, 2006, and April 8, 2009, only 10 hit their targets, killing 14 wanted al-Qaeda leaders" but most of all "killing 687 innocent Pakistani civilians". All of them Pashtuns. Any sensible boss would fire those responsible for such a performance. Not Obama with the Pentagon - which is bound to
continue with its only game in (Pashtun) town, based on amassing non-existent, on-the-ground intelligence; accumulating unbearable "collateral damage"; provoking a mass Pashtun rebellion against the discredited 650,000-strong Pakistani army; and ensuring the military's definitive public humiliation. Last week, Pentagon supremo Robert Gates
left no doubt the Pentagon's future lay with "expeditionary warfare" or "COIN operations", counter-insurgency operations (COIN) of which the "hell from above" Predator diplomacy is a superstar. The strategy also includes replicating the Central Command chief General David Petraeus-coined "Sons of Iraq" COIN gambit - now renamed Afghan Public Protection Force, which will inevitably clash big time with the Hamid Karzai
government in Kabul, just as Sunni Iraqis clash with Prime Minster Nuri al-Maliki in Baghdad. Needless to say, this COIN-saturated "future" peopled with Predator and Reaper drones, special forces and high-tech ground and air sensors apply essentially to Muslim countries. British colonialism, in a pre-COIN past, used to call this "colonial warfare", or "little wars" against brown people. Blame Albion's perfidyObama's lofty team of strategic reviewers seems to have overlooked that it's because of occupying US and North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO) troops that moderate Pashtun tribals support the Taliban or even join the Taliban. Obviously, Obama's strategic reviewers forgot to ask Pashtuns themselves about the new US "strategy". It's now clear in Washington that the troika of special envoy Richard Holbrooke, Petraeus and Secretary of State Hillary Clinton managed to sell to Obama a COIN-based Afghan nation-building scheme - which, if it sounds like a contradiction, that's because it is. Always keen on taking over the news cycle, Obama preferred to strut his catchy, alliterative triad ("disrupt, dismantle, defeat") which will in theory eliminate evil al-Qaeda from the war theater in Afghanistan and Pakistan, or AfPak. Still, the fact remains: Obama's war in AfPak is a war against Pashtuns. Obama's special envoy to Afghanistan and Pakistan Holbrooke, in an involuntary impersonation of Inspector Clouseau, admitted as much to CNN's State of the Union less than three weeks ago:
The people we are fighting in Afghanistan and the people they are sheltering in western Pakistan pose a direct threat - those are the men of 9/11, the people that killed [former prime minister] Benazir Bhutto - and you can be sure that as we sit here today they are planning further attacks on the United States and our allies. Holbrooke manages to muddle it all - merging Arab al-Qaeda with Pashtun Taliban, implying that the Pashtun Taliban were involved in 9/11 and also in the killing of Benazir (which some even claim was an inside Pakistan army/intelligence services job), not to mention the insinuation that Pashtuns are plotting to attack the US in a 9/11 replay. This newspeak is how the Washington establishment under Obama now sells an unwinnable war to US public opinion. What do Pashtuns have to say about it? According to Zar Ali Khan Musazai, chairman of the Pashtun Democratic Council, "Pashtun blood has turned cheaper than water in the area administered by Pakistan." He charges that what's happening is "the genocide of Pashtuns, which is inhuman and against international law". But he also makes the crucial point that as the US and NATO are so fragile - to the extent that they cannot protect even their own military convoys and warehouses - nobody believes they "will protect Pashtuns from terrorism and the wrath of their mentors". He points out to the inevitable - "the day Pashtuns revolt and demand their historic home"; in sum, Pashtunistan. The overwhelming majority of Pashtuns know how, in 1893, Henry Durand, a British colonial functionary, drew his now infamous line by crossing Pashtun tribal areas that Afghans considered their own territory. Now Obama's war at least is making sense of the term "AfPak". Pashtuns never accepted these artificial borders, nor did the Afghan state whenever it was not subject to foreign interference. Pashtuns on both sides of the Durand Line know the 3,300 kilometer-long AfPak border was one more classic "divide and rule" invention of the British Raj. They consider FATA and the North-West Frontier Province (NWFP) as occupied by Pakistan, or what they describe as "Pakistani-Punjabi forces" - who use these areas to foster the destabilization of Afghanistan. They routinely refer to "the Pakistani pro-terrorist establishment". And for them the "unification of Pashtuns with their motherland Afghanistan" is the only way out. Compare this with the way the Pakistan military-intelligence establishment understands "destabilization". The establishment is totally interlinked with the neo-Taliban in Pakistan - and the "historic" Taliban who took power in Afghanistan in 1996 - as part of the "strategic depth" doctrine of fighting any possible Indian influence in Afghanistan. Their ultimate paranoia is Washington losing interest in Afghanistan - again - and thus leaving Pakistan at the mercy of Indian and Russian "encirclement". Islamabad controls most of Pakistan - Sindh and Punjab provinces - with an iron fist. Pakistani police and army control most of NWFP. In "separatist" Balochistan there's only 5% of the total population. For Washington to believe that a small, rural, Pashtun tribal agglomeration of bands of a maximum of 30 fighters, with no air force, no heavy artillery and no tanks, could take over a Pakistan with a 650,000-strong well-trained army is an absolutely ridiculous notion. And for Washington to believe - as Holbrooke implied - that a few Pashtun tribals and a few expat jihadis can take on Western civilization as a whole is also an absolutely ridiculous notion. As for the Pakistan military, whenever they see the activities of the Balochistan Liberation Front or a road being built from Nimruz province in Afghanistan to the Iranian port of Chabahar, they see the hand of New Delhi. Hardcore paranoia as it may be, even senior Pakistan army officers believe in a concerted US-India plot to destabilize FATA and the country as a whole and then confiscate Pakistan's nuclear weapons. Obama's war on Pashtuns will only exacerbate this already volatile mix. The prizeThe Obama administration's war on Pashtunistan may be just a digression. No amount of Washington spin disguises the fact Afghanistan is currently - and will continue to be - occupied by the US and NATO virtually indefinitely as a strategic peon in the New Great Game in Eurasia. It's always crucial to remember Obama's national security advisor, General Jim Jones, is a former NATO supreme commander (2003-2006) and a huge fan of NATO's non-stop expansion in Eurasia. As reported by the Washington Post, the US Army is building no less than $1.1 billion worth of military bases (about the annual budget of President Hamid Karzai's government in Kabul) and planning an extra $1.3 billion in projects for 2009, according to Colonel Thomas E O'Donovan, commander of the US Army Corps of Engineers Afghanistan District. As for NATO, its mission will be to protect the projected, $7.6 billion (and counting), perennially troubled TAPI gas pipeline from Turkmenistan to India via Afghanistan and Pakistan, if investors are foolish enough to give it the go-ahead. As if public opinion mattered in the New Great Game in Eurasia, a recent BBC poll revealed that 73% of Afghans were against Obama's surge - or war against Pashtuns - and a majority supported a negotiated end to the war, even with a coalition government including the Taliban. "The Shadow" himself, the Pashtun Taliban leader Mullah Omar, through Saudi King Abdullah, advanced his plan: a timetable for withdrawal; a "national consensus government"; and the Taliban incorporated into the Afghan National Army. The other alternative scenario is the one advanced by the Shanghai Cooperation Organization (SCO) - this insoluble problem not dealt with by NATO but debated and solved by Afghanistan's neighbors, SCO members China and Russia and SCO observers (and soon to be members) Iran, Pakistan and India. Obama should know by now that Islamabad won't fight the neo-Taliban. The Inter-Services Intelligence supports them - as do different Pashtun layers of the army. So Obama can pull a Donald Rumsfeld "stay the course", as the former US secretary of defense used to say. He can keep the anti-Pashtun surge going while getting rid of Karzai in Afghanistan and President Asif Ali Zardari in Pakistan (shades of Vietnam). What he won't do - and the Pentagon won't allow - is to do a full Vietnam and let the last helicopter leave Bagram, because he does not want to go down as the president who lost the American empire of bases and the dream of prevailing in the New Great Game in Eurasia. Meanwhile, it will be Predator hell from above raining over angry Pashtun tribals. Boing, boom, tschak. Boing, boom, tschak. (The Pentagon might consider hiring the legendary German band Kraftwerk to provide the soundtrack for the strikes; and why not release a videogame?) Countless more Pashtun wedding parties will be incinerated in the name of the brand new "overseas contingency operations", formerly the "global war on terror". Make no mistake: there will be blood - a lot of blood - in the mother of all cockfights. Pepe Escobar is the author of Globalistan: How the Globalized World is Dissolving into Liquid War (Nimble Books, 2007) and Red Zone Blues: a snapshot of Baghdad during the surge. His new book, just out, is Obama does Globalistan (Nimble Books, 2009).
Significance of Obama's decision to release the torture memos.
While many are rightly critical of Obama's decision to protect CIA operatives from prosecution as Greenwald's article points out it took considerable courage just to release these memos to the public. The intelligence community fought against Obama all the way. Obama is nothing if not pragmatic and given the fight he had to get the memos released he probably had no stomach to go further and actually contemplate charging operatives. Perhaps there was even a quiet agreement to that effect if the CIA would tolerate release of the memos. One wonders who is boss! This is from Salon.
The significance of Obama's decision to release the torture memos
The president deserves praise for a politically praiseworthy act, but it's up to citizens to demand that the law be upheld.
Glenn Greenwald
Apr. 17, 2009
(updated below - Update II)
Numerous commentators are objecting to the idea that Barack Obama deserves credit for his release of the OLC torture memos yesterday in light of his accompanying pledge that CIA officials relying in good faith on those memos won't be prosecuted. Chris Floyd is one who articulates that objection quite well and, as is always true for Chris, his criticisms are well worth reading. Many others -- including Keith Olbermann, Jonathan Turley, John Dean and Bruce Fein -- yesterday lambasted Obama for his anti-prosecution stance. Since I gave substantial credit to Obama yesterday for the release of the memos and believe even more so today that he deserves it (despite finding the anti-prosecution case as corrupted and morally bankrupt as ever), I want to return to the issue of Obama's actions.
Purely as an analytical matter, releasing the OLC memos and advocating against prosecutions are two separate acts. It's perfectly coherent to praise one and condemn the other. There is an unhealthy tendency to want to make categorical, absolute judgments about the persona of politicians generally and Obama especially ("I like him"/"I don't like him"; "I trust him/I don't trust him") rather than case-by-case judgments about his specific acts. "Like" and "trust" are sentiments appropriate for one's friends and loved ones, not political leaders. A politician who does something horrible yesterday can do something praiseworthy tomorrow. Generally bad people can do good things (even if for ignoble reasons) and generally good people can do bad things. That's why I care little about motives, which I think, in any event, are impossible to know. Regardless of motives, good acts (releasing the torture memos) should be praised, and bad acts (arguing against prosecutions) should be condemned.
Beyond those generalities, I think the significance of Obama's decision to release those memos -- and the political courage it took -- shouldn't be minimized. There is no question that many key factions in the "intelligence community" were vehemently opposed to release of those memos. I have no doubt that reports that they waged a "war" to prevent release of these memos were absolutely true. The disgusting comments of former CIA Director Mike Hayden on MSNBC yesterday -- where he made clear that he simply does not believe in the right of citizens to know what their government does and that government crimes should be kept hidden-- is clearly what Obama was hearing from many powerful circles. That twisted anti-democratic mentality is the one that predominates in our political class.
In the United States, what Obama did yesterday is simply not done. American Presidents do not disseminate to the world documents which narrate in vivid, elaborate detail the dirty, illegal deeds done by the CIA, especially not when the actions are very recent, were approved and ordered by the President of the United States, and the CIA is aggressively demanding that the documents remain concealed and claiming that their release will harm national security. When is the last time a President did that?
Other than mildly placating growing anger over his betrayals of his civil liberties commitments (which, by the way, is proof of the need to criticize Obama when he does the wrong thing), there wasn't much political gain for Obama in releasing these documents. And he certainly knew that, by doing so, he would be subjected to an onslaught of accusations that he was helping Al Qaeda and endangering American National Security. And that's exactly what happened, as in this cliché-filled tripe from Hayden and Michael Mukasey in today's Wall St. Journal, and this from an anonymous, cowardly "top Bush official" smearing Obama while being allowed to hide behind the Jay Bybee of journalism, Politico's Mike Allen.
But Obama knowingly infuriated the CIA, including many of his own top intelligence advisers; purposely subjected himself to widespread attacks from the Right that he was giving Al Qaeda our "playbook"; and he released to the world documents that conclusively prove how that the U.S. Government, at the highest levels, purported to legalize torture and committed blatant war crimes. There's just no denying that those actions are praiseworthy. I understand the argument that Obama only did what the law requires. That is absolutely true. We're so trained to meekly accept that our Government has the right to do whatever it wants in secret -- we accept that it's best that most things be kept from us -- that we forget that a core premise of our government is transparency; that the law permits secrecy only in the narrowest of cases; and that it's certainly not legal to suppress evidence of government criminality on the grounds that it is classified.
Still, as a matter of political reality, Obama had to incur significant wrath from powerful factions by releasing these memos, and he did that. That's an extremely unusual act for a politician, especially a President, and it deserves praise. None of this mitigates any of the bad acts Obama has engaged in recently -- particularly his ongoing efforts to shield Bush crimes from judicial review by relying on extreme assertions of presidential secrecy powers -- but, standing alone, his actions yesterday are quite significant.
As is obvious from everything I've written over the past three years, I think the need to criminally prosecute those who authorized and ordered torture (as well as illegal surveillance) is absolute and non-negotiable (and, as I wrote earlier today, in the case of torture, criminal investigations are legally compelled). A collective refusal to prosecute the grotesque war crimes that we know our Government committed is to indict all of us in those crimes, to make us complict in their commission.
Criticisms directed at Obama and Holder for advocating immunity for CIA officials who relied in "good faith" on DOJ memos (a mere subset of the government criminals) is absolutely warranted. But, it is not Obama's sole responsibility -- or even his decision -- to prosecute. As a strictly legal matter, that is a decision for the Attorney General, independently, to make; it is Eric Holder who has the obligation to enforce the law, independent of anything Obama wants or says and regardless of what public opinion demands.
But more crucially, it is also the responsibility of the citizenry to demand that this happen. What Obama did yesterday -- whether by design or not -- provided the most potent tools yet to create the political pressure for prosecutions. As Kevin Drum makes clear, no decent human being reading those memos would be anything other than repelled by what was in them. Polls already found that large percentages of Americans, majorities even, favor investigations and/or prosecutions for Bush crimes. The onus is on those who believe in the rule of law to find ways to force the government to criminally investigate whether they want to or not (this petition demanding that Holder appoint a Special Prosecutor is a very good place to begin, though it will require much more than just petitions).
The most criticism-worthy act that Obama engaged in yesterday was to affirm and perpetuate what is the single most-destructive premise in our political culture: namely, that when high government officials get caught committing serious crimes, the responsible and constructive thing to do is demand immunity for them, while only those who are vindictive and divisive want political leaders to be held accountable for their crimes. This is what Obama said in affirming that rotted premise:
This is a time for reflection, not retribution. . . . But at a time of great challenges and disturbing disunity, nothing will be gained by spending our time and energy laying blame for the past. Our national greatness is embedded in America's ability to right its course in concert with our core values, and to move forward with confidence. That is why we must resist the forces that divide us, and instead come together on behalf of our common future.
That passage, more than anything else, is the mindset that has destroyed the rule of law in the U.S. and spawned massive criminality in our elite class. Accountability for crimes committed by political leaders (as opposed to ordinary Americans) is scorned as "retribution" and "laying blame for the past." Those who believe that the rule of law should be applied to the powerful as well as to ordinary citizens are demonized as the "forces that divide us." The bottomless corruption of immunizing political elites for serious crimes is glorified in the most Orwellian terms as "a time for reflection," "moving forward," and "coming together on behalf of our common future."
Regardless of the reasons, it is clear that Obama will not single-handedly eliminate the immunity from the rule of law which the political class and other elites have arrogated unto themselves. If anything, as his comments yesterday reflect, he is likely to affirm and defend that immunity (and, obviously, he personally benefits from its ongoing vitality). Demanding that political leaders be subjected to the rule of law -- and finding ways to force the appointment of a Special Prosecutor -- is what citizens ought to be doing. Either we care about the rule of law or we don't -- and if we do, we'll find the ways to demand its application to the politically powerful criminals who broke multiple laws over the last eight years. Obama's release of those torture memos yesterday makes that choice unambiguously clear and enables the right to choice to be made.
UPDATE: Time's Joe Klein purports to list all the dangers for Obama in alienating the CIA as he has: morale will drop; they'll all retire at the time he needs them most for Afghanistan and Pakistan; Obama is sparking a "potential rebellion in the clandestine service." Klein then unleashes this deeply Orwellian observation (h/t CRust1): "This is an extremely serious claim in the intelligence culture, where some operators are asked to behave extra-legally for the greater good of the nation."
That's what government crimes are called in the eyes of our press corps: they're just acting "extra-legally" -- and not just "extra-legally," but "for the greater good of the nation." You should try that at home. Go rob a bank and when the police try to arrest you, just tell them: "I was just making an extra-legal withdrawal; what's the problem"? That's also how the media (and Democrats) constantly talked about Bush's illegal spying on Americans. What he did was never a "crime" or even "illegal" (even though the law criminalizes the very conduct he got caught engaging in with prison terms and fines); at worst, it was: "he was engaged in eavesdropping in circumvention of the FISA framework." That works, too, if you want to rob a bank: "I was just making a withdrawal in circumvention of the banking regulatory framework."
Similarly, Politico's Mike Allen -- in the same article where he granted anonymity to a cowardly "top Bush official" to do nothing other than smear Obama as a friend of Al Qaeda (and marvel at Allen's pathetic "justification" for doing that) -- proceeded to describe conduct authorized by the OLC memos this way: "aggressive interrogation practices critics decried as torture." I think I know how to speak Politicoese: the attack on Iraq was "aggressive diplomatic outreach critics decried as an invasion"; Lewis Libby's lying was "spirited and inventive story-telling critics decried as obstruction of justice"; and a super-important, extremely influential and profoundly brilliant person with intimate knowledge of many, many important things told me last night: "Politico is a trashy gossip rag with only one governing principle: What will Drudge like?" Another top, key insider added: "they should hand out Mike Allen columns to journalism school students as a guide to what they should avoid at all costs."
George Orwell mistakenly assumed that obfuscating language designed to glorify criminal acts would be invented and normalized by government. At least in the U.S., that function is outsourced to government's most loyal and eager servants: establishment journalists. A principal reason why the government has been able to engage with impunity in the extremism and lawlessness of the last decade is because most journalists refuse even to describe it as what it is.
UPDATE II: In comments, JKP1000 has good advice: the next time you're pulled over by a police officer for speeding, quote Barack Obama: "This is a time for reflection, not retribution." See if that works. If not, move to: "It's time to focus on the future, not look to the past." Criminal defense attorneys should try that on juries and judges, too.
And here, Mike Allen purports to respond to criticisms regarding his grant of anonymity to a "top Bush official." Everyone can decide for themselves if he's remotely persuasive.
-- Glenn Greenwald
The significance of Obama's decision to release the torture memos
The president deserves praise for a politically praiseworthy act, but it's up to citizens to demand that the law be upheld.
Glenn Greenwald
Apr. 17, 2009
(updated below - Update II)
Numerous commentators are objecting to the idea that Barack Obama deserves credit for his release of the OLC torture memos yesterday in light of his accompanying pledge that CIA officials relying in good faith on those memos won't be prosecuted. Chris Floyd is one who articulates that objection quite well and, as is always true for Chris, his criticisms are well worth reading. Many others -- including Keith Olbermann, Jonathan Turley, John Dean and Bruce Fein -- yesterday lambasted Obama for his anti-prosecution stance. Since I gave substantial credit to Obama yesterday for the release of the memos and believe even more so today that he deserves it (despite finding the anti-prosecution case as corrupted and morally bankrupt as ever), I want to return to the issue of Obama's actions.
Purely as an analytical matter, releasing the OLC memos and advocating against prosecutions are two separate acts. It's perfectly coherent to praise one and condemn the other. There is an unhealthy tendency to want to make categorical, absolute judgments about the persona of politicians generally and Obama especially ("I like him"/"I don't like him"; "I trust him/I don't trust him") rather than case-by-case judgments about his specific acts. "Like" and "trust" are sentiments appropriate for one's friends and loved ones, not political leaders. A politician who does something horrible yesterday can do something praiseworthy tomorrow. Generally bad people can do good things (even if for ignoble reasons) and generally good people can do bad things. That's why I care little about motives, which I think, in any event, are impossible to know. Regardless of motives, good acts (releasing the torture memos) should be praised, and bad acts (arguing against prosecutions) should be condemned.
Beyond those generalities, I think the significance of Obama's decision to release those memos -- and the political courage it took -- shouldn't be minimized. There is no question that many key factions in the "intelligence community" were vehemently opposed to release of those memos. I have no doubt that reports that they waged a "war" to prevent release of these memos were absolutely true. The disgusting comments of former CIA Director Mike Hayden on MSNBC yesterday -- where he made clear that he simply does not believe in the right of citizens to know what their government does and that government crimes should be kept hidden-- is clearly what Obama was hearing from many powerful circles. That twisted anti-democratic mentality is the one that predominates in our political class.
In the United States, what Obama did yesterday is simply not done. American Presidents do not disseminate to the world documents which narrate in vivid, elaborate detail the dirty, illegal deeds done by the CIA, especially not when the actions are very recent, were approved and ordered by the President of the United States, and the CIA is aggressively demanding that the documents remain concealed and claiming that their release will harm national security. When is the last time a President did that?
Other than mildly placating growing anger over his betrayals of his civil liberties commitments (which, by the way, is proof of the need to criticize Obama when he does the wrong thing), there wasn't much political gain for Obama in releasing these documents. And he certainly knew that, by doing so, he would be subjected to an onslaught of accusations that he was helping Al Qaeda and endangering American National Security. And that's exactly what happened, as in this cliché-filled tripe from Hayden and Michael Mukasey in today's Wall St. Journal, and this from an anonymous, cowardly "top Bush official" smearing Obama while being allowed to hide behind the Jay Bybee of journalism, Politico's Mike Allen.
But Obama knowingly infuriated the CIA, including many of his own top intelligence advisers; purposely subjected himself to widespread attacks from the Right that he was giving Al Qaeda our "playbook"; and he released to the world documents that conclusively prove how that the U.S. Government, at the highest levels, purported to legalize torture and committed blatant war crimes. There's just no denying that those actions are praiseworthy. I understand the argument that Obama only did what the law requires. That is absolutely true. We're so trained to meekly accept that our Government has the right to do whatever it wants in secret -- we accept that it's best that most things be kept from us -- that we forget that a core premise of our government is transparency; that the law permits secrecy only in the narrowest of cases; and that it's certainly not legal to suppress evidence of government criminality on the grounds that it is classified.
Still, as a matter of political reality, Obama had to incur significant wrath from powerful factions by releasing these memos, and he did that. That's an extremely unusual act for a politician, especially a President, and it deserves praise. None of this mitigates any of the bad acts Obama has engaged in recently -- particularly his ongoing efforts to shield Bush crimes from judicial review by relying on extreme assertions of presidential secrecy powers -- but, standing alone, his actions yesterday are quite significant.
As is obvious from everything I've written over the past three years, I think the need to criminally prosecute those who authorized and ordered torture (as well as illegal surveillance) is absolute and non-negotiable (and, as I wrote earlier today, in the case of torture, criminal investigations are legally compelled). A collective refusal to prosecute the grotesque war crimes that we know our Government committed is to indict all of us in those crimes, to make us complict in their commission.
Criticisms directed at Obama and Holder for advocating immunity for CIA officials who relied in "good faith" on DOJ memos (a mere subset of the government criminals) is absolutely warranted. But, it is not Obama's sole responsibility -- or even his decision -- to prosecute. As a strictly legal matter, that is a decision for the Attorney General, independently, to make; it is Eric Holder who has the obligation to enforce the law, independent of anything Obama wants or says and regardless of what public opinion demands.
But more crucially, it is also the responsibility of the citizenry to demand that this happen. What Obama did yesterday -- whether by design or not -- provided the most potent tools yet to create the political pressure for prosecutions. As Kevin Drum makes clear, no decent human being reading those memos would be anything other than repelled by what was in them. Polls already found that large percentages of Americans, majorities even, favor investigations and/or prosecutions for Bush crimes. The onus is on those who believe in the rule of law to find ways to force the government to criminally investigate whether they want to or not (this petition demanding that Holder appoint a Special Prosecutor is a very good place to begin, though it will require much more than just petitions).
The most criticism-worthy act that Obama engaged in yesterday was to affirm and perpetuate what is the single most-destructive premise in our political culture: namely, that when high government officials get caught committing serious crimes, the responsible and constructive thing to do is demand immunity for them, while only those who are vindictive and divisive want political leaders to be held accountable for their crimes. This is what Obama said in affirming that rotted premise:
This is a time for reflection, not retribution. . . . But at a time of great challenges and disturbing disunity, nothing will be gained by spending our time and energy laying blame for the past. Our national greatness is embedded in America's ability to right its course in concert with our core values, and to move forward with confidence. That is why we must resist the forces that divide us, and instead come together on behalf of our common future.
That passage, more than anything else, is the mindset that has destroyed the rule of law in the U.S. and spawned massive criminality in our elite class. Accountability for crimes committed by political leaders (as opposed to ordinary Americans) is scorned as "retribution" and "laying blame for the past." Those who believe that the rule of law should be applied to the powerful as well as to ordinary citizens are demonized as the "forces that divide us." The bottomless corruption of immunizing political elites for serious crimes is glorified in the most Orwellian terms as "a time for reflection," "moving forward," and "coming together on behalf of our common future."
Regardless of the reasons, it is clear that Obama will not single-handedly eliminate the immunity from the rule of law which the political class and other elites have arrogated unto themselves. If anything, as his comments yesterday reflect, he is likely to affirm and defend that immunity (and, obviously, he personally benefits from its ongoing vitality). Demanding that political leaders be subjected to the rule of law -- and finding ways to force the appointment of a Special Prosecutor -- is what citizens ought to be doing. Either we care about the rule of law or we don't -- and if we do, we'll find the ways to demand its application to the politically powerful criminals who broke multiple laws over the last eight years. Obama's release of those torture memos yesterday makes that choice unambiguously clear and enables the right to choice to be made.
UPDATE: Time's Joe Klein purports to list all the dangers for Obama in alienating the CIA as he has: morale will drop; they'll all retire at the time he needs them most for Afghanistan and Pakistan; Obama is sparking a "potential rebellion in the clandestine service." Klein then unleashes this deeply Orwellian observation (h/t CRust1): "This is an extremely serious claim in the intelligence culture, where some operators are asked to behave extra-legally for the greater good of the nation."
That's what government crimes are called in the eyes of our press corps: they're just acting "extra-legally" -- and not just "extra-legally," but "for the greater good of the nation." You should try that at home. Go rob a bank and when the police try to arrest you, just tell them: "I was just making an extra-legal withdrawal; what's the problem"? That's also how the media (and Democrats) constantly talked about Bush's illegal spying on Americans. What he did was never a "crime" or even "illegal" (even though the law criminalizes the very conduct he got caught engaging in with prison terms and fines); at worst, it was: "he was engaged in eavesdropping in circumvention of the FISA framework." That works, too, if you want to rob a bank: "I was just making a withdrawal in circumvention of the banking regulatory framework."
Similarly, Politico's Mike Allen -- in the same article where he granted anonymity to a cowardly "top Bush official" to do nothing other than smear Obama as a friend of Al Qaeda (and marvel at Allen's pathetic "justification" for doing that) -- proceeded to describe conduct authorized by the OLC memos this way: "aggressive interrogation practices critics decried as torture." I think I know how to speak Politicoese: the attack on Iraq was "aggressive diplomatic outreach critics decried as an invasion"; Lewis Libby's lying was "spirited and inventive story-telling critics decried as obstruction of justice"; and a super-important, extremely influential and profoundly brilliant person with intimate knowledge of many, many important things told me last night: "Politico is a trashy gossip rag with only one governing principle: What will Drudge like?" Another top, key insider added: "they should hand out Mike Allen columns to journalism school students as a guide to what they should avoid at all costs."
George Orwell mistakenly assumed that obfuscating language designed to glorify criminal acts would be invented and normalized by government. At least in the U.S., that function is outsourced to government's most loyal and eager servants: establishment journalists. A principal reason why the government has been able to engage with impunity in the extremism and lawlessness of the last decade is because most journalists refuse even to describe it as what it is.
UPDATE II: In comments, JKP1000 has good advice: the next time you're pulled over by a police officer for speeding, quote Barack Obama: "This is a time for reflection, not retribution." See if that works. If not, move to: "It's time to focus on the future, not look to the past." Criminal defense attorneys should try that on juries and judges, too.
And here, Mike Allen purports to respond to criticisms regarding his grant of anonymity to a "top Bush official." Everyone can decide for themselves if he's remotely persuasive.
-- Glenn Greenwald
Naomi Klein: Why we should banish Larry Summers from public life..
This is from the Washington Post.
Another critical view of Larry Summers. Klein certainly is a lively caustic journalist well worth reading even when you don't necessarily agree with her views. One wonders about the quality of intelligence that has brought this crisis upon us. People object to the bailed out bank employers getting big bonuses but Summers is part of the same cabal. Klein is right that Summers represents the phenomenon of a brain bubble but the really odd part of this bubble is that after it burst the brains that helped create the bubble are hired to fix the system.
Why We Should Banish Larry Summers From Public Life
By Naomi KleinSunday, April 19, 2009
I vote to banish Larry Summers. Not from the planet. That wouldn't be nice. Just from public life.
The criticisms of President Obama's chief economic adviser are well known. He's too close to Wall Street. And he's a frightful bully, of both people and countries. Still, we're told we shouldn't care about such minor infractions. Why? Because Summers is brilliant, and the world needs his big brain.
And this brings us to a central and often overlooked cause of the global financial crisis: Brain Bubbles. This is the process wherein the intelligence of an inarguably intelligent person is inflated and valued beyond all reason, creating a dangerous accumulation of unhedged risk. Larry Summers is the biggest Brain Bubble we've got.
Brain Bubbles start with an innocuous "whiz kid" moniker in undergrad, which later escalates to "wunderkind." Next comes the requisite foray as an economic adviser to a small crisis-wracked country, where the kid is declared a "savior." By 30, our Bubble Boy is tenured and officially a "genius." By 40, he's a "guru," by 50 an "oracle." After a few drinks: "messiah."
The superhuman powers bestowed upon these men -- and yes, they are all men -- shield them from the scrutiny that might have prevented the current crisis. Alan Greenspan's Brain Bubble allowed him to put the economy at great risk: When he made no sense, people assumed that it was their own fault. Brain Bubbles also formed the key argument Greenspan and Summers used to explain why lawmakers couldn't regulate the derivatives market: The wizards on Wall Street were too brilliant, their models too complex, for mere mortals to understand.
Back in 1991, Summers argued that the subject of economics was no longer up for debate: The answers had all been found by men like him. "The laws of economics are like the laws of engineering," he said. "One set of laws works everywhere." Summers subsequently laid out those laws as the three "-ations": privatization, stabilization and liberalization. Some "kinds of ideas," he explained a few years later in a PBS interview, have already become too "passé" for discussion. Like "the idea that a huge spending program is the way to stimulate the economy."
And that's the problem with Larry. For all his appeals to absolute truths, he has been spectacularly wrong again and again. He was wrong about not regulating derivatives. Wrong when he helped kill Depression-era banking laws, turning banks into too-big-to-fail welfare monsters. And as he helps devise ever more complex tricks and spends ever more taxpayer dollars to keep the financial casino running, he remains wrong today.
Word is that Summers's current post may be a pit stop on the way to the big prize, Federal Reserve chairman. That means he could actually make "maestro."
Mr. President, please: Pop this bubble before it's too late.
Naomi Klein is the author of "The Shock Doctrine: The Rise of Disaster Capitalism."
Another critical view of Larry Summers. Klein certainly is a lively caustic journalist well worth reading even when you don't necessarily agree with her views. One wonders about the quality of intelligence that has brought this crisis upon us. People object to the bailed out bank employers getting big bonuses but Summers is part of the same cabal. Klein is right that Summers represents the phenomenon of a brain bubble but the really odd part of this bubble is that after it burst the brains that helped create the bubble are hired to fix the system.
Why We Should Banish Larry Summers From Public Life
By Naomi KleinSunday, April 19, 2009
I vote to banish Larry Summers. Not from the planet. That wouldn't be nice. Just from public life.
The criticisms of President Obama's chief economic adviser are well known. He's too close to Wall Street. And he's a frightful bully, of both people and countries. Still, we're told we shouldn't care about such minor infractions. Why? Because Summers is brilliant, and the world needs his big brain.
And this brings us to a central and often overlooked cause of the global financial crisis: Brain Bubbles. This is the process wherein the intelligence of an inarguably intelligent person is inflated and valued beyond all reason, creating a dangerous accumulation of unhedged risk. Larry Summers is the biggest Brain Bubble we've got.
Brain Bubbles start with an innocuous "whiz kid" moniker in undergrad, which later escalates to "wunderkind." Next comes the requisite foray as an economic adviser to a small crisis-wracked country, where the kid is declared a "savior." By 30, our Bubble Boy is tenured and officially a "genius." By 40, he's a "guru," by 50 an "oracle." After a few drinks: "messiah."
The superhuman powers bestowed upon these men -- and yes, they are all men -- shield them from the scrutiny that might have prevented the current crisis. Alan Greenspan's Brain Bubble allowed him to put the economy at great risk: When he made no sense, people assumed that it was their own fault. Brain Bubbles also formed the key argument Greenspan and Summers used to explain why lawmakers couldn't regulate the derivatives market: The wizards on Wall Street were too brilliant, their models too complex, for mere mortals to understand.
Back in 1991, Summers argued that the subject of economics was no longer up for debate: The answers had all been found by men like him. "The laws of economics are like the laws of engineering," he said. "One set of laws works everywhere." Summers subsequently laid out those laws as the three "-ations": privatization, stabilization and liberalization. Some "kinds of ideas," he explained a few years later in a PBS interview, have already become too "passé" for discussion. Like "the idea that a huge spending program is the way to stimulate the economy."
And that's the problem with Larry. For all his appeals to absolute truths, he has been spectacularly wrong again and again. He was wrong about not regulating derivatives. Wrong when he helped kill Depression-era banking laws, turning banks into too-big-to-fail welfare monsters. And as he helps devise ever more complex tricks and spends ever more taxpayer dollars to keep the financial casino running, he remains wrong today.
Word is that Summers's current post may be a pit stop on the way to the big prize, Federal Reserve chairman. That means he could actually make "maestro."
Mr. President, please: Pop this bubble before it's too late.
Naomi Klein is the author of "The Shock Doctrine: The Rise of Disaster Capitalism."
Sunday, April 19, 2009
Naomi Klein: A lexicon of disappointment.
This is a very clever and perceptive article by Klein that appears in the most recent Nation. Certainly Obama has made some quite progressive moves as Klein notes. He is moving towards easing tensions with Venezuela and Cuba but as the article points out there have been a great many backward moves by Obama as well particularly in relationship to Afghanistan and Pakistan. Only a long period of increased casualties and increased expenses will ever force the US to change its direction in the area. The old empire building project is alive if not well.
The Nation
A Lexicon of Disappointment
Lookout
By Naomi Klein
This article appeared in the May 4, 2009 edition of The Nation.
April 15, 2009
All is not well in Obamafanland. It's not clear exactly what accounts for the change of mood. Maybe it was the rancid smell emanating from Treasury's latest bank bailout. Or the news that the president's chief economic adviser, Larry Summers, earned millions from the very Wall Street banks and hedge funds he is protecting from reregulation now. Or perhaps it began earlier, with Obama's silence during Israel's Gaza attack.
Whatever the last straw, a growing number of Obama enthusiasts are starting to entertain the possibility that their man is not, in fact, going to save the world if we all just hope really hard.
This is a good thing. If the superfan culture that brought Obama to power is going to transform itself into an independent political movement, one fierce enough to produce programs capable of meeting the current crises, we are all going to have to stop hoping and start demanding.
The first stage, however, is to understand fully the awkward in-between space in which many US progressive movements find themselves. To do that, we need a new language, one specific to the Obama moment. Here is a start.
Hopeover. Like a hangover, a hopeover comes from having overindulged in something that felt good at the time but wasn't really all that healthy, leading to feelings of remorse, even shame. It's the political equivalent of the crash after a sugar high. Sample sentence: "When I listened to Obama's economic speech my heart soared. But then, when I tried to tell a friend about his plans for the millions of layoffs and foreclosures, I found myself saying nothing at all. I've got a serious hopeover."
Hoper coaster. Like a roller coaster, the hoper coaster describes the intense emotional peaks and valleys of the Obama era, the veering between joy at having a president who supports safe-sex education and despondency that single-payer healthcare is off the table at the very moment when it could actually become a reality. Sample sentence: "I was so psyched when Obama said he is closing Guantánamo. But now they are fighting like mad to make sure the prisoners in Bagram have no legal rights at all. Stop this hoper coaster--I want to get off!"
Hopesick. Like the homesick, hopesick individuals are intensely nostalgic. They miss the rush of optimism from the campaign trail and are forever trying to recapture that warm, hopey feeling--usually by exaggerating the significance of relatively minor acts of Obama decency. Sample sentences: "I was feeling really hopesick about the escalation in Afghanistan, but then I watched a YouTube video of Michelle in her organic garden and it felt like inauguration day all over again. A few hours later, when I heard that the Obama administration was boycotting a major UN racism conference, the hopesickness came back hard. So I watched slideshows of Michelle wearing clothes made by ethnically diverse independent fashion designers, and that sort of helped."
Hope fiend. With hope receding, the hope fiend, like the dope fiend, goes into serious withdrawal, willing to do anything to chase the buzz. (Closely related to hopesickness but more severe, usually affecting middle-aged males.) Sample sentence: "Joe told me he actually believes Obama deliberately brought in Summers so that he would blow the bailout, and then Obama would have the excuse he needs to do what he really wants: nationalize the banks and turn them into credit unions. What a hope fiend!"
Hopebreak. Like the heartbroken lover, the hopebroken Obama-ite is not mad but terribly sad. She projected messianic powers onto Obama and is now inconsolable in her disappointment. Sample sentence: "I really believed Obama would finally force us to confront the legacy of slavery in this country and start a serious national conversation about race. But now he never seems to mention race, and he's using twisted legal arguments to keep us from even confronting the crimes of the Bush years. Every time I hear him say 'move forward,' I'm hopebroken all over again."
Hopelash. Like a backlash, hopelash is a 180-degree reversal of everything Obama-related. Sufferers were once Obama's most passionate evangelists. Now they are his angriest critics. Sample sentence: "At least with Bush everyone knew he was an asshole. Now we've got the same wars, the same lawless prisons, the same Washington corruption, but everyone is cheering like Stepford wives. It's time for a full-on hopelash."
In trying to name these various hope-related ailments, I found myself wondering what the late Studs Terkel would have said about our collective hopeover. He surely would have urged us not to give in to despair. I reached for one of his last books, Hope Dies Last. I didn't have to read long. The book opens with the words: "Hope has never trickled down. It has always sprung up."
And that pretty much says it all. Hope was a fine slogan when rooting for a long-shot presidential candidate. But as a posture toward the president of the most powerful nation on earth, it is dangerously deferential. The task as we move forward (as Obama likes to say) is not to abandon hope but to find more appropriate homes for it--in the factories, neighborhoods and schools where tactics like sit-ins, squats and occupations are seeing a resurgence.
Political scientist Sam Gindin wrote recently that the labor movement can do more than protect the status quo. It can demand, for instance, that shuttered auto plants be converted into green-future factories, capable of producing mass-transit vehicles and technology for a renewable energy system. "Being realistic means taking hope out of speeches," he wrote, "and putting it in the hands of workers."
Which brings me to the final entry in the lexicon.
Hoperoots. Sample sentence: "It's time to stop waiting for hope to be handed down, and start pushing it up, from the hoperoots"
About Naomi KleinNaomi Klein is an award-winning journalist and syndicated columnist and the author of the international and New York Times bestseller The Shock Doctrine: The Rise of Disaster Capitalism (September 2007); an earlier international best-seller, No Logo: Taking Aim at the Brand Bullies; and the collection Fences and Windows: Dispatches from the Front Lines of the Globalization Debate (2002). more...
The Nation
A Lexicon of Disappointment
Lookout
By Naomi Klein
This article appeared in the May 4, 2009 edition of The Nation.
April 15, 2009
All is not well in Obamafanland. It's not clear exactly what accounts for the change of mood. Maybe it was the rancid smell emanating from Treasury's latest bank bailout. Or the news that the president's chief economic adviser, Larry Summers, earned millions from the very Wall Street banks and hedge funds he is protecting from reregulation now. Or perhaps it began earlier, with Obama's silence during Israel's Gaza attack.
Whatever the last straw, a growing number of Obama enthusiasts are starting to entertain the possibility that their man is not, in fact, going to save the world if we all just hope really hard.
This is a good thing. If the superfan culture that brought Obama to power is going to transform itself into an independent political movement, one fierce enough to produce programs capable of meeting the current crises, we are all going to have to stop hoping and start demanding.
The first stage, however, is to understand fully the awkward in-between space in which many US progressive movements find themselves. To do that, we need a new language, one specific to the Obama moment. Here is a start.
Hopeover. Like a hangover, a hopeover comes from having overindulged in something that felt good at the time but wasn't really all that healthy, leading to feelings of remorse, even shame. It's the political equivalent of the crash after a sugar high. Sample sentence: "When I listened to Obama's economic speech my heart soared. But then, when I tried to tell a friend about his plans for the millions of layoffs and foreclosures, I found myself saying nothing at all. I've got a serious hopeover."
Hoper coaster. Like a roller coaster, the hoper coaster describes the intense emotional peaks and valleys of the Obama era, the veering between joy at having a president who supports safe-sex education and despondency that single-payer healthcare is off the table at the very moment when it could actually become a reality. Sample sentence: "I was so psyched when Obama said he is closing Guantánamo. But now they are fighting like mad to make sure the prisoners in Bagram have no legal rights at all. Stop this hoper coaster--I want to get off!"
Hopesick. Like the homesick, hopesick individuals are intensely nostalgic. They miss the rush of optimism from the campaign trail and are forever trying to recapture that warm, hopey feeling--usually by exaggerating the significance of relatively minor acts of Obama decency. Sample sentences: "I was feeling really hopesick about the escalation in Afghanistan, but then I watched a YouTube video of Michelle in her organic garden and it felt like inauguration day all over again. A few hours later, when I heard that the Obama administration was boycotting a major UN racism conference, the hopesickness came back hard. So I watched slideshows of Michelle wearing clothes made by ethnically diverse independent fashion designers, and that sort of helped."
Hope fiend. With hope receding, the hope fiend, like the dope fiend, goes into serious withdrawal, willing to do anything to chase the buzz. (Closely related to hopesickness but more severe, usually affecting middle-aged males.) Sample sentence: "Joe told me he actually believes Obama deliberately brought in Summers so that he would blow the bailout, and then Obama would have the excuse he needs to do what he really wants: nationalize the banks and turn them into credit unions. What a hope fiend!"
Hopebreak. Like the heartbroken lover, the hopebroken Obama-ite is not mad but terribly sad. She projected messianic powers onto Obama and is now inconsolable in her disappointment. Sample sentence: "I really believed Obama would finally force us to confront the legacy of slavery in this country and start a serious national conversation about race. But now he never seems to mention race, and he's using twisted legal arguments to keep us from even confronting the crimes of the Bush years. Every time I hear him say 'move forward,' I'm hopebroken all over again."
Hopelash. Like a backlash, hopelash is a 180-degree reversal of everything Obama-related. Sufferers were once Obama's most passionate evangelists. Now they are his angriest critics. Sample sentence: "At least with Bush everyone knew he was an asshole. Now we've got the same wars, the same lawless prisons, the same Washington corruption, but everyone is cheering like Stepford wives. It's time for a full-on hopelash."
In trying to name these various hope-related ailments, I found myself wondering what the late Studs Terkel would have said about our collective hopeover. He surely would have urged us not to give in to despair. I reached for one of his last books, Hope Dies Last. I didn't have to read long. The book opens with the words: "Hope has never trickled down. It has always sprung up."
And that pretty much says it all. Hope was a fine slogan when rooting for a long-shot presidential candidate. But as a posture toward the president of the most powerful nation on earth, it is dangerously deferential. The task as we move forward (as Obama likes to say) is not to abandon hope but to find more appropriate homes for it--in the factories, neighborhoods and schools where tactics like sit-ins, squats and occupations are seeing a resurgence.
Political scientist Sam Gindin wrote recently that the labor movement can do more than protect the status quo. It can demand, for instance, that shuttered auto plants be converted into green-future factories, capable of producing mass-transit vehicles and technology for a renewable energy system. "Being realistic means taking hope out of speeches," he wrote, "and putting it in the hands of workers."
Which brings me to the final entry in the lexicon.
Hoperoots. Sample sentence: "It's time to stop waiting for hope to be handed down, and start pushing it up, from the hoperoots"
About Naomi KleinNaomi Klein is an award-winning journalist and syndicated columnist and the author of the international and New York Times bestseller The Shock Doctrine: The Rise of Disaster Capitalism (September 2007); an earlier international best-seller, No Logo: Taking Aim at the Brand Bullies; and the collection Fences and Windows: Dispatches from the Front Lines of the Globalization Debate (2002). more...
CIA director asked to preserve secret prisons.
This request is not likely to be met. What will happen is that all incriminating evidence will be destroyed. Already videotapes of the interrogations have been destroyed. With the CIA destruction of evidence of their engaging in criminal activity is patriotic and virtuous since it is all in the great fight of the Virtuous against the Dark Forces of Islamic Terrorism.
- Antiwar.com Original - http://original.antiwar.com -
CIA Director Asked to Preserve Secret Prisons
Posted By William Fisher On April 17, 2009 @ 9:00 pm
Lawyers for a Guantánamo detainee who claims he was held and tortured in one of the "black site" secret prisons run by the U.S. Central Intelligence Agency is demanding that the CIA preserve cells and interrogation paraphernalia there as evidence of mistreatment.
Military and civilian counsel to Abd Al-Rahim Hussain Mohammed al-Nashiri sent a letter to CIA Director Leon Panetta requesting that the CIA "black site" buildings, interrogation cells, prisoner cells, shackles, waterboards and other equipment be preserved for inspection and documentation.
Disclosure of the letter came on the heels of Thursday’s release of four more top-secret "legal memoranda" prepared by the Justice Department’s Office of Legal Counsel during the administration of former President George W. Bush. The memos approved "enhanced" interrogation techniques they claimed were not torture — a claim rejected by both the Barack Obama administration and human rights advocates. Nine other OLC memos were previously released by the Obama administration.
OLC is the DOJ office that provides authoritative legal advice to the president and all executive branch agencies. It drafts legal opinions of the attorney general and also provides its own written opinions and oral advice in response to requests from the executive branch.
Al-Nashiri, who is now detained at Guantánamo, was held in the secret CIA prison facilities from 2002 to 2006. While President Obama has ordered the closure of CIA black sites, al-Nashiri’s attorneys are concerned that the CIA intends to destroy the sites, including the buildings and the equipment used to interrogate and torture al-Nashiri and other detainees. They say that would amount to destroying evidence of his mistreatment.
Panetta told CIA personnel on April 9, 2009, that the CIA would be "decommissioning" the CIA secret facilities. The letter asks Panetta to "preserve all the secret sites."
The CIA has admitted that al-Nashiri was subjected to waterboarding while in CIA custody. Videotapes depicting his abusive interrogations have already been destroyed by the agency and are the subject of ongoing litigation by the American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU).
Through its John Adams Project with the National Association of Criminal Defense Lawyers, the ACLU worked with under-resourced military lawyers to provide legal counsel for several of the Guantánamo detainees including al-Nashiri during the military commissions process.
The lawyers’ letter put Panetta "on notice that we will be seeking discovery and inspection of this highly relevant evidence in whatever court Mr. Al-Nashiri finds himself."
The lawyers added, "We have already lost the video tapes which would have allowed a jury to see what happened to Mr. Al-Nashiri in those secret prisons. We cannot lose the remaining tangible evidence of the actual prisons themselves and the instruments of torture within them."
They note that Panetta’s predecessor, General Michael V. Hayden, has admitted that Mr. Al-Nashiri was subjected to waterboarding, "which is a form of torture, while in the custody of the CIA."
According to the recently released report from the International Committee of the Red Cross (ICRC), ‘waterboarding was only one of the many forms of torture inflicted on Mr. Al-Nashiri while in the custody of the CIA," the lawyers’ letter said.
They claim that, according to the ICRC report, "While in CIA custody, Mr. Al-Nashiri was also forced to stand with his wrists shackled to a bar in the ceiling for prolonged periods of time - extending to several days - and was threatened with sodomy and with the rape and arrest of his family members."
Throughout that time, the letter says, Al-Nashiri "was not able to communicate with his family, a lawyer or anyone. Effectively the CIA ‘disappeared’ him for four years while it tortured him at will and beyond the eyes of the world."
The CIA and other government agencies also admitted to the purposeful destruction of at least 92 videotapes of interrogations and observations of prisoners in its black sites, specifically including the destruction of videotapes of waterboarding and other observations of Mr. Al-Nashiri, the letter says.
It concludes, "Had Mr. Al-Nashiri known that the CIA possessed these video tapes and intended to destroy them, he would have demanded their preservation. However, neither he, his lawyers nor the courts learned of the CIA’s plan until after the tapes had been destroyed and now they are forever gone."
"Although we welcome your decision to cease the secret detention and mistreatment of prisoners of the United States Government, we are concerned that the CIA intends to actually destroy the sites - including the buildings and the equipment used to interrogate and torture Mr. Al-Nashiri - before Mr. Al-Nashiri has had the opportunity to fully investigate his conditions of confinement. We write to avoid the destruction of more evidence - namely the actual secret facilities themselves," the lawyers wrote.
Al-Nashiri was charged in the military commission with offences that carried the death penalty. His lawyers note that, "Although those charges have now been dismissed, we fully expect the government to prosecute Mr. Al-Nashiri and again charge him with offenses that could carry the death penalty. In fact the government is now actively working to determine in what forum he will be prosecuted."
Evidence held by the CIA "is exculpatory evidence" and Al-Nashiri "will be entitled to it."
The letter concludes: "The CIA’s secret prison facilities and the inquisition-like treatment meted out to its prisoners were a tragic, immoral and illegal period in our history that we all hope has come to an end. But its effects are enduring, especially on someone like Mr. Al-Nashiri who, according to the ICRC report, lived through the horror chambers of at least three different secret prisons."
Following Thursday’s release of the four OLC memos, it is likely that the government’s treatment of detainees will attract increased public scrutiny — despite President Obama’s pledge to close Guantánamo Bay and CIA black site prisons.
Continuing concern about U.S. credibility in war-on-terror detentions and prosecutions has been voiced by many U.S. legal scholars. David Cole, one of the country’s preeminent constitutional authorities, told IPS, "For better or worse, the U.S. is a world leader on matters of human rights. When the U.S. violates human rights in the fight against terrorism, it sends a message to autocrats and dictators worldwide that they, too, can deny human rights in the name of counterterrorism."
(Inter Press Service)
Article printed from Antiwar.com Original: http://original.antiwar.com
URL to article: http://original.antiwar.com/fisher/cia-director-asked-to-preserve-secret-prisons/
.
Copyright © 2009 Antiwar.com Original. All rights reserved.
- Antiwar.com Original - http://original.antiwar.com -
CIA Director Asked to Preserve Secret Prisons
Posted By William Fisher On April 17, 2009 @ 9:00 pm
Lawyers for a Guantánamo detainee who claims he was held and tortured in one of the "black site" secret prisons run by the U.S. Central Intelligence Agency is demanding that the CIA preserve cells and interrogation paraphernalia there as evidence of mistreatment.
Military and civilian counsel to Abd Al-Rahim Hussain Mohammed al-Nashiri sent a letter to CIA Director Leon Panetta requesting that the CIA "black site" buildings, interrogation cells, prisoner cells, shackles, waterboards and other equipment be preserved for inspection and documentation.
Disclosure of the letter came on the heels of Thursday’s release of four more top-secret "legal memoranda" prepared by the Justice Department’s Office of Legal Counsel during the administration of former President George W. Bush. The memos approved "enhanced" interrogation techniques they claimed were not torture — a claim rejected by both the Barack Obama administration and human rights advocates. Nine other OLC memos were previously released by the Obama administration.
OLC is the DOJ office that provides authoritative legal advice to the president and all executive branch agencies. It drafts legal opinions of the attorney general and also provides its own written opinions and oral advice in response to requests from the executive branch.
Al-Nashiri, who is now detained at Guantánamo, was held in the secret CIA prison facilities from 2002 to 2006. While President Obama has ordered the closure of CIA black sites, al-Nashiri’s attorneys are concerned that the CIA intends to destroy the sites, including the buildings and the equipment used to interrogate and torture al-Nashiri and other detainees. They say that would amount to destroying evidence of his mistreatment.
Panetta told CIA personnel on April 9, 2009, that the CIA would be "decommissioning" the CIA secret facilities. The letter asks Panetta to "preserve all the secret sites."
The CIA has admitted that al-Nashiri was subjected to waterboarding while in CIA custody. Videotapes depicting his abusive interrogations have already been destroyed by the agency and are the subject of ongoing litigation by the American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU).
Through its John Adams Project with the National Association of Criminal Defense Lawyers, the ACLU worked with under-resourced military lawyers to provide legal counsel for several of the Guantánamo detainees including al-Nashiri during the military commissions process.
The lawyers’ letter put Panetta "on notice that we will be seeking discovery and inspection of this highly relevant evidence in whatever court Mr. Al-Nashiri finds himself."
The lawyers added, "We have already lost the video tapes which would have allowed a jury to see what happened to Mr. Al-Nashiri in those secret prisons. We cannot lose the remaining tangible evidence of the actual prisons themselves and the instruments of torture within them."
They note that Panetta’s predecessor, General Michael V. Hayden, has admitted that Mr. Al-Nashiri was subjected to waterboarding, "which is a form of torture, while in the custody of the CIA."
According to the recently released report from the International Committee of the Red Cross (ICRC), ‘waterboarding was only one of the many forms of torture inflicted on Mr. Al-Nashiri while in the custody of the CIA," the lawyers’ letter said.
They claim that, according to the ICRC report, "While in CIA custody, Mr. Al-Nashiri was also forced to stand with his wrists shackled to a bar in the ceiling for prolonged periods of time - extending to several days - and was threatened with sodomy and with the rape and arrest of his family members."
Throughout that time, the letter says, Al-Nashiri "was not able to communicate with his family, a lawyer or anyone. Effectively the CIA ‘disappeared’ him for four years while it tortured him at will and beyond the eyes of the world."
The CIA and other government agencies also admitted to the purposeful destruction of at least 92 videotapes of interrogations and observations of prisoners in its black sites, specifically including the destruction of videotapes of waterboarding and other observations of Mr. Al-Nashiri, the letter says.
It concludes, "Had Mr. Al-Nashiri known that the CIA possessed these video tapes and intended to destroy them, he would have demanded their preservation. However, neither he, his lawyers nor the courts learned of the CIA’s plan until after the tapes had been destroyed and now they are forever gone."
"Although we welcome your decision to cease the secret detention and mistreatment of prisoners of the United States Government, we are concerned that the CIA intends to actually destroy the sites - including the buildings and the equipment used to interrogate and torture Mr. Al-Nashiri - before Mr. Al-Nashiri has had the opportunity to fully investigate his conditions of confinement. We write to avoid the destruction of more evidence - namely the actual secret facilities themselves," the lawyers wrote.
Al-Nashiri was charged in the military commission with offences that carried the death penalty. His lawyers note that, "Although those charges have now been dismissed, we fully expect the government to prosecute Mr. Al-Nashiri and again charge him with offenses that could carry the death penalty. In fact the government is now actively working to determine in what forum he will be prosecuted."
Evidence held by the CIA "is exculpatory evidence" and Al-Nashiri "will be entitled to it."
The letter concludes: "The CIA’s secret prison facilities and the inquisition-like treatment meted out to its prisoners were a tragic, immoral and illegal period in our history that we all hope has come to an end. But its effects are enduring, especially on someone like Mr. Al-Nashiri who, according to the ICRC report, lived through the horror chambers of at least three different secret prisons."
Following Thursday’s release of the four OLC memos, it is likely that the government’s treatment of detainees will attract increased public scrutiny — despite President Obama’s pledge to close Guantánamo Bay and CIA black site prisons.
Continuing concern about U.S. credibility in war-on-terror detentions and prosecutions has been voiced by many U.S. legal scholars. David Cole, one of the country’s preeminent constitutional authorities, told IPS, "For better or worse, the U.S. is a world leader on matters of human rights. When the U.S. violates human rights in the fight against terrorism, it sends a message to autocrats and dictators worldwide that they, too, can deny human rights in the name of counterterrorism."
(Inter Press Service)
Article printed from Antiwar.com Original: http://original.antiwar.com
URL to article: http://original.antiwar.com/fisher/cia-director-asked-to-preserve-secret-prisons/
.
Copyright © 2009 Antiwar.com Original. All rights reserved.
Report: US Air Strikes in Iraq Kill Mostly Women, Children.
The air strikes are not designed to avoid civilian casualties but to avoid allied casualties. Also, as the article points out, the casualties result to a considerable extent because air strikes are used in crowded urban settings. No doubt the civilian casualties will result in considerable anti-occupation feelings. Obama is carrying out the same policies in Afghanistan and no doubt helping the Taliban recruit many to their cause.
News From Antiwar.com - http://news.antiwar.com -
Report: US Air Strikes in Iraq Kill Mostly Women, Children
Posted By Jason Ditz On April 15, 2009 @ 6:34 pm In Uncategorized
In a report to be published in tomorrow’s issue of the New England Journal of Medicine, researchers have concluded that air strikes by US-led coalition forces have killed mostly women and children. 39 percent were children, while 46 percent were women.
Interestingly enough, though the high-tech weaponry used by the invading forces killed a disproportionately large number of (presumably mostly non-combatant) women and children, it showed that among victims of suicide bombings only 12 percent were children.
The researchers used a database of 60,481 civilians violently killed during the first five years of the war, which was compiled by Iraq Body Count. They say that the shocking number of women and children killed are a function of using air strikes in urban combat settings, and the report may have policy implications elsewhere, where US air strikes seem to be killing large numbers of innocent civilians as well.
Copyright © 2009 News From Antiwar.com. All rights reserved.
News From Antiwar.com - http://news.antiwar.com -
Report: US Air Strikes in Iraq Kill Mostly Women, Children
Posted By Jason Ditz On April 15, 2009 @ 6:34 pm In Uncategorized
In a report to be published in tomorrow’s issue of the New England Journal of Medicine, researchers have concluded that air strikes by US-led coalition forces have killed mostly women and children. 39 percent were children, while 46 percent were women.
Interestingly enough, though the high-tech weaponry used by the invading forces killed a disproportionately large number of (presumably mostly non-combatant) women and children, it showed that among victims of suicide bombings only 12 percent were children.
The researchers used a database of 60,481 civilians violently killed during the first five years of the war, which was compiled by Iraq Body Count. They say that the shocking number of women and children killed are a function of using air strikes in urban combat settings, and the report may have policy implications elsewhere, where US air strikes seem to be killing large numbers of innocent civilians as well.
Copyright © 2009 News From Antiwar.com. All rights reserved.
Saturday, April 18, 2009
17 Filipinos freed by Somali Pirates: 105 still hostaged
This is from the Tribune.
When a US ship is seized there is a media blitz, when over a hundred Filipinos are held hostage it is ho hum in the western mainstream media. This reinforces ideas about who is important and who is not in the world. The Philippines is the worlds largest supplier of crews with over a third of a million sailors around the globe!
17 Pinoys freed by Somali pirates; 105 still hostaged
By Michaela P. del Callar
04/18/2009
Somali pirates have freed 17 Filipino seamen on board a Greek vessel Wednesday after almost a month in captivity, a Department of Foreign Affairs (DFA) official said yesterday.
The release of the sailors brought down to 105 the total number of Filipino seafarers on board seven ships being held by Somali gunmen. Hijacked ships are anchored off Somalia ’s territorial waters.
The MV Titan was seized by heavily
armed pirates last March 19 after sailing through the dangerous waters of Gulf of Aden .
Foreign Affairs Undersecretary Esteban Conejos did not say if ransom was paid to secure the Filipinos’ freedom.
It was known in the past that shipowners pay huge amounts to ransom off their crew and hijacked vessels in Somalia .
Conejos said that, as a policy, the government does not negotiate directly nor pay ransom to the kidnappers.
“We coordinate the actions of foreign governments, the local manning agencies in the Philippines and the latter’s foreign principals in our collective efforts toward the early and safe release of the Filipino crew,” Conejos said.
Since 2006, a total of 227 Filipino seamen who were abducted in Somalia have been released without any intervention from the Philippine government, Conejos said.
The Philippines is the world’s leading supplier of crew, with over 350,000 sailors manning oil tankers, luxury liners and passenger vessels worldwide.
Undeterred by a US military operation that rescued an American ship captain over the weekend, pirates have continued to commandeer ships off the Gulf of Aden .
Conejos said the government is mulling the enforcement of a travel ban to Filipino seafarers in Somalia to avoid exposing them to the risk of being kidnapped.
“We are reiterating our proposal for a ban but we have yet to discuss this with concerned government agencies such as the Labor Department and the Philippine Overseas Employment Agency (POEA). We will also consult manning agencies here in Manila ,” Conejos said.
In the meantime, he said Manila has already appealed to shipping lines carrying Filipino crewmen to stay clear by at least 200 nautical miles off the 3,300-kilometer coastline of Somalia.
He also said that all commercial ships must stay within the designated coordinates of the Maritime Security Patrol Area (MSPA) being patrolled by the naval and air assets of a multi-national military task force led by the United States .
“We asked them to ensure that their ships traverse the affected areas only along this security corridor and preferably to do so in convoy formation,” Conejos said, adding that the government is soon to dispatch a Philippine naval liaison officer to the combined maritime forces in Manama, Bahrain to monitor the condition of abducted Filipino sailors.
There is no existing central government in Somalia . Since the United Nations withdrew in March 1995 without restoring a functioning government, little progress has been made.
Aside from the autonomous, broadly self-governed enclaves of Somaliland and Puntland in the northern parts of the country, over the past 18 years, Somalia has suffered under “governance” by a succession of tribal factions, warlords, Islamist groups, and foreign interventions.
With instability in Somalia , hijacking for profit off its waters has thrived over the years.
Despite the risks, private companies still see the seas surrounding the Horn of Africa as a cost-effective means for moving goods with as many as 20,000 ships travel these waters annually.
Meanwhile, state-based Philippine News Agency (PNA) reported that the Philippines is stepping up precautionary measures as piracy off Gulf of Aden-Somalia heightens
With the number of maritime piracy in the Gulf of Aden-Somalia-Yemen area unabated since it escalated in April last year, the Philippine government has stepped up its precautionary policies on sea-based work deployment, the Department of Foreign Affairs (DFA) said today.
In the first quarter of this year alone, nine vessels with Filipino crew members have been intercepted by Somali pirates, and four more were seized in the first half of April,
The DFA is reiterating its recommendation to would-be seafarers against getting employment with agencies whose vessels are passing through the pirate-infested Gulf of Aden-Somalia area, Conejos said.
Conejos noted that DoLE has issued at least two directives to manning agencies of vessels plying the perilous Gulf of Aden.
Conejos said the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO) has recommended for vessels to: keep a good lookout, and if approached, run at full speed and use evasive maneuvers and fire hoses to repel anyone who attempts to board their vessels.
The Philippines has also brought the matter of the menace of piracy to the attention of the United Nations and the International Maritime Organization, Conejos said.
So far, three resolutions aimed at strengthening the efforts of international forces in fighting piracy have been passed by the UN Security Council. The latest, UNSC Resolution 1851, passed on Dec. 16, 2008, authorizes hot pursuit by the combined international force into mainland Somalia.
At least 3,000 vessels ply the Gulf of Aden each year, and one-third of their crew members are Filipinos. With PNA
When a US ship is seized there is a media blitz, when over a hundred Filipinos are held hostage it is ho hum in the western mainstream media. This reinforces ideas about who is important and who is not in the world. The Philippines is the worlds largest supplier of crews with over a third of a million sailors around the globe!
17 Pinoys freed by Somali pirates; 105 still hostaged
By Michaela P. del Callar
04/18/2009
Somali pirates have freed 17 Filipino seamen on board a Greek vessel Wednesday after almost a month in captivity, a Department of Foreign Affairs (DFA) official said yesterday.
The release of the sailors brought down to 105 the total number of Filipino seafarers on board seven ships being held by Somali gunmen. Hijacked ships are anchored off Somalia ’s territorial waters.
The MV Titan was seized by heavily
armed pirates last March 19 after sailing through the dangerous waters of Gulf of Aden .
Foreign Affairs Undersecretary Esteban Conejos did not say if ransom was paid to secure the Filipinos’ freedom.
It was known in the past that shipowners pay huge amounts to ransom off their crew and hijacked vessels in Somalia .
Conejos said that, as a policy, the government does not negotiate directly nor pay ransom to the kidnappers.
“We coordinate the actions of foreign governments, the local manning agencies in the Philippines and the latter’s foreign principals in our collective efforts toward the early and safe release of the Filipino crew,” Conejos said.
Since 2006, a total of 227 Filipino seamen who were abducted in Somalia have been released without any intervention from the Philippine government, Conejos said.
The Philippines is the world’s leading supplier of crew, with over 350,000 sailors manning oil tankers, luxury liners and passenger vessels worldwide.
Undeterred by a US military operation that rescued an American ship captain over the weekend, pirates have continued to commandeer ships off the Gulf of Aden .
Conejos said the government is mulling the enforcement of a travel ban to Filipino seafarers in Somalia to avoid exposing them to the risk of being kidnapped.
“We are reiterating our proposal for a ban but we have yet to discuss this with concerned government agencies such as the Labor Department and the Philippine Overseas Employment Agency (POEA). We will also consult manning agencies here in Manila ,” Conejos said.
In the meantime, he said Manila has already appealed to shipping lines carrying Filipino crewmen to stay clear by at least 200 nautical miles off the 3,300-kilometer coastline of Somalia.
He also said that all commercial ships must stay within the designated coordinates of the Maritime Security Patrol Area (MSPA) being patrolled by the naval and air assets of a multi-national military task force led by the United States .
“We asked them to ensure that their ships traverse the affected areas only along this security corridor and preferably to do so in convoy formation,” Conejos said, adding that the government is soon to dispatch a Philippine naval liaison officer to the combined maritime forces in Manama, Bahrain to monitor the condition of abducted Filipino sailors.
There is no existing central government in Somalia . Since the United Nations withdrew in March 1995 without restoring a functioning government, little progress has been made.
Aside from the autonomous, broadly self-governed enclaves of Somaliland and Puntland in the northern parts of the country, over the past 18 years, Somalia has suffered under “governance” by a succession of tribal factions, warlords, Islamist groups, and foreign interventions.
With instability in Somalia , hijacking for profit off its waters has thrived over the years.
Despite the risks, private companies still see the seas surrounding the Horn of Africa as a cost-effective means for moving goods with as many as 20,000 ships travel these waters annually.
Meanwhile, state-based Philippine News Agency (PNA) reported that the Philippines is stepping up precautionary measures as piracy off Gulf of Aden-Somalia heightens
With the number of maritime piracy in the Gulf of Aden-Somalia-Yemen area unabated since it escalated in April last year, the Philippine government has stepped up its precautionary policies on sea-based work deployment, the Department of Foreign Affairs (DFA) said today.
In the first quarter of this year alone, nine vessels with Filipino crew members have been intercepted by Somali pirates, and four more were seized in the first half of April,
The DFA is reiterating its recommendation to would-be seafarers against getting employment with agencies whose vessels are passing through the pirate-infested Gulf of Aden-Somalia area, Conejos said.
Conejos noted that DoLE has issued at least two directives to manning agencies of vessels plying the perilous Gulf of Aden.
Conejos said the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO) has recommended for vessels to: keep a good lookout, and if approached, run at full speed and use evasive maneuvers and fire hoses to repel anyone who attempts to board their vessels.
The Philippines has also brought the matter of the menace of piracy to the attention of the United Nations and the International Maritime Organization, Conejos said.
So far, three resolutions aimed at strengthening the efforts of international forces in fighting piracy have been passed by the UN Security Council. The latest, UNSC Resolution 1851, passed on Dec. 16, 2008, authorizes hot pursuit by the combined international force into mainland Somalia.
At least 3,000 vessels ply the Gulf of Aden each year, and one-third of their crew members are Filipinos. With PNA
Friday, April 17, 2009
Obama refuses to hold CIA agents responsible for torture.
This is from the BBC.
It seems that the CIA is immune from any accountability for criminal actions. Of course one could argue that some of the activity was not criminal since the Bush govt. managed to make the practices illegal even though some would constitute torture under international law. Since the US is the hegemon and the CIA agents there is little likelihood of punishment or accountability. Such accountability is limited to the minor players such as Serbian or Bosnian war crime perpetrators.
Obama has not even bothered to take Maher Arar off the no fly list even after he was cleared by an inquiry in Canada and given millions in compensation.
CIA 'amnesty' dismays campaigners
Human and civil rights groups in the US have expressed dismay at news that CIA agents will not face prosecution over interrogation tactics in the Bush era.
Campaigners welcomed the White House's decision to publish details of harsh interrogation techniques now banned by President Barack Obama.
But rights groups said the decision not to prosecute agents was a failure to uphold the law of the land.
Others defended the techniques, saying the interrogations boosted US security.
The former head of the CIA, Michael Hayden, who ran the agency under President George W Bush, said the White House move would undermine intelligence work and dissuade foreign agencies from sharing information with the CIA.
"If you want an intelligence service to work for you, they always work on the edge. That's just where they work," he told the Associated Press.
Boosting morale
Mr Obama banned the use of interrogation techniques such as sleep deprivation and simulated drowning - known as waterboarding - during his first week in office.
CIA agents are now required to use only those methods outlined in the US Army Field Manual.
BUSH-ERA INTERROGATION
Waterboarding: Aimed at simulating sensation of drowning. Used on alleged 9/11 planner Khalid Sheikh Mohammed
Insect: Harmless insect to be placed with suspect in 'confinement box', suspect to be told the insect would sting. Approved for Abu Zubaydah, but not used
Walling: Detainee slammed repeatedly into false wall to create sound and shock
Sleep deprivation: Detainee shackled stading up. Used often, once for 180 hours
The justice department has now released four memos detailing techniques the CIA was able to use under the Bush administration.
In publishing the memos, the Obama administration is clearly hoping to draw a line under the whole episode, says BBC defence correspondent Rob Watson.
The administration did not say it would protect CIA agents who acted outside the boundaries laid out in the memos, or those non-CIA staff involved in approving the interrogation limits.
That leaves open the possibility that those who crafted the legal opinions authorising the techniques, one of whom is now a federal judge, could yet face legal action.
But politically and legally further moves will not be easy, our correpondent adds: the Department of Justice has already in effect ruled out any criminal prosecutions and is even offering legal assistance to any CIA official subject to any international inquiries or congressional investigation.
Politically the Obama administration has been sending strong signals that a functioning CIA is vital to national security and that nothing should be done to weaken confidence or morale at the agency, our correspondent says.
'Crimes committed'
Announcing the release of the four memos, Attorney General Eric Holder said the US was being "consistent with our commitment to the rule of law".
"The president has halted the use of the interrogation techniques described in these opinions, and this administration has made clear from day one that it will not condone torture," he said.
However, civil and human rights campaigners remain uneasy and there are calls for an independent inquiry into the issue, one which could offer immunity from prosecution in return for testimony.
The release of the memos stems from a request by civil rights group the American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU).
Amnesty International said the Department of Justice appeared to be offering a "get-out-of-jail-free card" to individuals who were involved in acts of torture.
"Bottom line here is you've had crimes committed," Amnesty International analyst Tom Parker told the BBC.
"These are criminal acts. Torture is illegal under American law, it's illegal under international law. America has an international obligation to prosecute the individuals who carry out these kind of acts."
One of the four secret memos released on Thursday contains legal authorisation for a list of specific harsh interrogation techniques, including pushing detainees against a wall, facial slaps, cramped confinement, stress positions and sleep deprivation.
The memo also authorises the use of "waterboarding", or simulated drowning, and the placing of a detainee into a confined space with an insect - one technique that was not eventually used.
However, most methods were regularly used on "high value" detainees suspected of belonging to the upper echelons of al-Qaeda's command structure.
Jed Babbin, a former Pentagon official during President Bush's first term, told the BBC that the decision to use harsh methods was justifiable.
"I'm not at all convinced that what we got from them was not valuable intelligence in some circumstances," he said, adding that "retribution" against Bush-era officials would not be productive.
"The job of the American justice system is not to please human rights groups, it is to administer the American law as it exists." REACTIONS TO OBAMA DECISION
The memos' matter-of-fact clinical descriptions belie the harsh tactics to which they gave a green light. But... it is not enough to say that when we have a president who does not believe in cruel and inhuman treatment and torture, the United States will not engage in such practices. We must formally acknowledge that what was done was wrong, indeed criminal.
Georgetown University Professor David Cole, debating the issue at
By repudiating the memos, the Obama administration has again seized the high ground and restored some of the honor lost over the past few years. Yet the decision to forgo prosecutions should not prevent -- and perhaps should even encourage - further investigation about the circumstances that gave rise to torture.
Editorial,
On the surface, the statement today looks like a big ol' grant of immunity - or a concession - or a deliberate attempt to boost morale at the CIA... There are plenty of CIA officers who followed the rules and shouldn't be prosecuted. They're the ones who are a little relieved today... although they might have to explain some things to their priests and their families.
Marc Ambinder,
Another major issue is lingering, however. Did the torture "work"?... Without a rigorous investigation into the alleged efficacy of U.S. torture, we'll never know. But while Obama has turned the page, many others haven't - including the people, and their allies, who think waterboarding was a good idea. Without a commission... we could start torturing all over again.
Mark Benjamin,
Story from BBC NEWS:http://news.bbc.co.uk/go/pr/fr/
It seems that the CIA is immune from any accountability for criminal actions. Of course one could argue that some of the activity was not criminal since the Bush govt. managed to make the practices illegal even though some would constitute torture under international law. Since the US is the hegemon and the CIA agents there is little likelihood of punishment or accountability. Such accountability is limited to the minor players such as Serbian or Bosnian war crime perpetrators.
Obama has not even bothered to take Maher Arar off the no fly list even after he was cleared by an inquiry in Canada and given millions in compensation.
CIA 'amnesty' dismays campaigners
Human and civil rights groups in the US have expressed dismay at news that CIA agents will not face prosecution over interrogation tactics in the Bush era.
Campaigners welcomed the White House's decision to publish details of harsh interrogation techniques now banned by President Barack Obama.
But rights groups said the decision not to prosecute agents was a failure to uphold the law of the land.
Others defended the techniques, saying the interrogations boosted US security.
The former head of the CIA, Michael Hayden, who ran the agency under President George W Bush, said the White House move would undermine intelligence work and dissuade foreign agencies from sharing information with the CIA.
"If you want an intelligence service to work for you, they always work on the edge. That's just where they work," he told the Associated Press.
Boosting morale
Mr Obama banned the use of interrogation techniques such as sleep deprivation and simulated drowning - known as waterboarding - during his first week in office.
CIA agents are now required to use only those methods outlined in the US Army Field Manual.
BUSH-ERA INTERROGATION
Waterboarding: Aimed at simulating sensation of drowning. Used on alleged 9/11 planner Khalid Sheikh Mohammed
Insect: Harmless insect to be placed with suspect in 'confinement box', suspect to be told the insect would sting. Approved for Abu Zubaydah, but not used
Walling: Detainee slammed repeatedly into false wall to create sound and shock
Sleep deprivation: Detainee shackled stading up. Used often, once for 180 hours
The justice department has now released four memos detailing techniques the CIA was able to use under the Bush administration.
In publishing the memos, the Obama administration is clearly hoping to draw a line under the whole episode, says BBC defence correspondent Rob Watson.
The administration did not say it would protect CIA agents who acted outside the boundaries laid out in the memos, or those non-CIA staff involved in approving the interrogation limits.
That leaves open the possibility that those who crafted the legal opinions authorising the techniques, one of whom is now a federal judge, could yet face legal action.
But politically and legally further moves will not be easy, our correpondent adds: the Department of Justice has already in effect ruled out any criminal prosecutions and is even offering legal assistance to any CIA official subject to any international inquiries or congressional investigation.
Politically the Obama administration has been sending strong signals that a functioning CIA is vital to national security and that nothing should be done to weaken confidence or morale at the agency, our correspondent says.
'Crimes committed'
Announcing the release of the four memos, Attorney General Eric Holder said the US was being "consistent with our commitment to the rule of law".
"The president has halted the use of the interrogation techniques described in these opinions, and this administration has made clear from day one that it will not condone torture," he said.
However, civil and human rights campaigners remain uneasy and there are calls for an independent inquiry into the issue, one which could offer immunity from prosecution in return for testimony.
The release of the memos stems from a request by civil rights group the American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU).
Amnesty International said the Department of Justice appeared to be offering a "get-out-of-jail-free card" to individuals who were involved in acts of torture.
"Bottom line here is you've had crimes committed," Amnesty International analyst Tom Parker told the BBC.
"These are criminal acts. Torture is illegal under American law, it's illegal under international law. America has an international obligation to prosecute the individuals who carry out these kind of acts."
One of the four secret memos released on Thursday contains legal authorisation for a list of specific harsh interrogation techniques, including pushing detainees against a wall, facial slaps, cramped confinement, stress positions and sleep deprivation.
The memo also authorises the use of "waterboarding", or simulated drowning, and the placing of a detainee into a confined space with an insect - one technique that was not eventually used.
However, most methods were regularly used on "high value" detainees suspected of belonging to the upper echelons of al-Qaeda's command structure.
Jed Babbin, a former Pentagon official during President Bush's first term, told the BBC that the decision to use harsh methods was justifiable.
"I'm not at all convinced that what we got from them was not valuable intelligence in some circumstances," he said, adding that "retribution" against Bush-era officials would not be productive.
"The job of the American justice system is not to please human rights groups, it is to administer the American law as it exists." REACTIONS TO OBAMA DECISION
The memos' matter-of-fact clinical descriptions belie the harsh tactics to which they gave a green light. But... it is not enough to say that when we have a president who does not believe in cruel and inhuman treatment and torture, the United States will not engage in such practices. We must formally acknowledge that what was done was wrong, indeed criminal.
Georgetown University Professor David Cole, debating the issue at
By repudiating the memos, the Obama administration has again seized the high ground and restored some of the honor lost over the past few years. Yet the decision to forgo prosecutions should not prevent -- and perhaps should even encourage - further investigation about the circumstances that gave rise to torture.
Editorial,
On the surface, the statement today looks like a big ol' grant of immunity - or a concession - or a deliberate attempt to boost morale at the CIA... There are plenty of CIA officers who followed the rules and shouldn't be prosecuted. They're the ones who are a little relieved today... although they might have to explain some things to their priests and their families.
Marc Ambinder,
Another major issue is lingering, however. Did the torture "work"?... Without a rigorous investigation into the alleged efficacy of U.S. torture, we'll never know. But while Obama has turned the page, many others haven't - including the people, and their allies, who think waterboarding was a good idea. Without a commission... we could start torturing all over again.
Mark Benjamin,
Story from BBC NEWS:http://news.bbc.co.uk/go/pr/fr/
Thursday, April 16, 2009
Fiji military occupies central bank, dismisses governor
This is from the Australian (AFP)
It would seem that the Fiji govt. is in effect run by the military in co-operation with a govt. that has overturned the constitution and then dismisses people because they were appointed constitutionally!
Fiji military occupies central bank, dismisses governor
April 14, 2009
Article from: Agence France-Presse
THE governor of Fiji's central bank has been dismissed and the military has taken over the building, a senior bank official says.In the latest upheaval to hit the island nation, Reserve Bank of Fiji governor Savenaca Narube was told to vacate his office today because his appointment was constitutional and Fiji no longer had a constitution, the official said on condition of anonymity. President Josefa Iloilo scrapped the constitution on Friday to bypass an Appeal Court ruling that prime minister Frank Bainimarama had been in power illegally since the 2006 coup he led. He also sacked all judges and judiciary officials before reappointing military chief Bainimarama and his cabinet for five more years. There was no official confirmation of Narube's dismissal, but a statement from the central bank, that exchange controls had been tightened, was issued in the name of deputy governor Sada Reddy. The deputy governor is not a constitutional appointment. The Reserve Bank of Fiji is in the same building as the New Zealand High Commission (embassy) office, and a spokesman for the New Zealand foreign ministry said the commission staff were not under any threat. New Zealand Foreign Minister Murray McCully said soldiers had entered the building and “people coming and going are being checked.” Earlier today, McCully raised the possibility of travel and trade bans on Fiji, and said people should think twice about visiting the popular South Pacific holiday destination. New Zealand has condemned the latest upheaval in Fiji where courts and the public prosecutions office remained closed today because there was no one to staff them on the first working day after the Easter holiday break. The Fiji Human Rights Commission was also shut because it was an office appointed under the constitution. Under emergency regulations, the Fijian media is under orders only to publish positive stories about the political situation or risk being shut down, while foreign journalists face deportation.
It would seem that the Fiji govt. is in effect run by the military in co-operation with a govt. that has overturned the constitution and then dismisses people because they were appointed constitutionally!
Fiji military occupies central bank, dismisses governor
April 14, 2009
Article from: Agence France-Presse
THE governor of Fiji's central bank has been dismissed and the military has taken over the building, a senior bank official says.In the latest upheaval to hit the island nation, Reserve Bank of Fiji governor Savenaca Narube was told to vacate his office today because his appointment was constitutional and Fiji no longer had a constitution, the official said on condition of anonymity. President Josefa Iloilo scrapped the constitution on Friday to bypass an Appeal Court ruling that prime minister Frank Bainimarama had been in power illegally since the 2006 coup he led. He also sacked all judges and judiciary officials before reappointing military chief Bainimarama and his cabinet for five more years. There was no official confirmation of Narube's dismissal, but a statement from the central bank, that exchange controls had been tightened, was issued in the name of deputy governor Sada Reddy. The deputy governor is not a constitutional appointment. The Reserve Bank of Fiji is in the same building as the New Zealand High Commission (embassy) office, and a spokesman for the New Zealand foreign ministry said the commission staff were not under any threat. New Zealand Foreign Minister Murray McCully said soldiers had entered the building and “people coming and going are being checked.” Earlier today, McCully raised the possibility of travel and trade bans on Fiji, and said people should think twice about visiting the popular South Pacific holiday destination. New Zealand has condemned the latest upheaval in Fiji where courts and the public prosecutions office remained closed today because there was no one to staff them on the first working day after the Easter holiday break. The Fiji Human Rights Commission was also shut because it was an office appointed under the constitution. Under emergency regulations, the Fijian media is under orders only to publish positive stories about the political situation or risk being shut down, while foreign journalists face deportation.
Swat Taliban drive ever closer to the capital
This is from thenational.ae.
No doubt the US will be unhappy with the manner in which the Pakistan govt. seems to be willing to negotiate with the Taliban while the Taliban is brazenly working to extend its influence beyond SWAT at the same time. There seems to be a situation where there will be more conflict between Pakistani aims and those of the US.
Swat Taliban drive ever closer to the capital
Isambard Wilkinson and Ashfaq Yusufzai, Foreign Correspondents
Last Updated: April 15. 2009 8:30AM UAE / April 15. 2009 4:30AM GMT
BUNER, PAKISTAN // Taliban militants from the Pakistani valley of Swat, freed up after striking a peace deal with the government, have moved into neighbouring Buner, about 95km from the capital, Islamabad.The militants are encroaching by using mosques as recruiting centres and the area’s Sufi shrine as their hub of operations.In what appears to be a rehash of the administrative stance that critics say led to Swat being overrun by militants, the police have been told to leave them alone.The first wave of Taliban from Swat, a group of about 100, moved into Buner last month after the government agreed to a peace deal with militants in February.Pakistan’s president, Asif Ali Zardari, formally signed the accord on Monday night after the National Assembly unanimously passed a resolution recommending he approve it.Conservatives and the ruling party of the North West Frontier Province (NWFP), the Awami National Party, had accused Mr Zardari of delaying signing the bill because of liberal and US opposition.The ANP had threatened to pull out of the federal government coalition if Mr Zardari did not sign the Nizam-i-Adl regulation (Sharia) immediately.A military source said signing the peace deal would ultimately be beneficial. He said locals in Swat would see that the Taliban, which has administered executions and floggings, would not provide the kind of justice they were looking for and withdraw their support from the Islamic militia.But the march of the Taliban has continued.Some analysts fear that the deal, which applies to Swat and neighbouring Malakand, an area of around three million people, will embolden the Taliban to target other areas.After their first foray into Buner, a convoy of 10 double-cabin four-wheel drive pick-up trucks, loaded with Taliban militants armed with Kalashnikovs, rocket launchers and heavy machine guns, entered neighbouring Swabi district. From there they took the Islamabad to Peshawar motorway, and exited at Mardan, a key army garrison, before returning to Swat.Analysts are concerned that militants aim to cut off the motorway that runs between Islamabad and Peshawar, the NWFP’s capital.Kamran Shafi, a political commentator and former army officer, said that several weeks after the army handed Swat over to the Taliban, the country’s army chief, Gen Ashfaq Kiyani, said the military was “ready to face any threat, internal or external”.“Can you even believe any of this? What is happening to this country of ours? How long will we live in denial? When will we realise that if we don’t act now it will all be over, that the Taliban will simply take over the state using the shock and awe that comes from killing wantonly and cruelly,” Mr Shafi asked.ANP government officials have told the police to allow Taliban militants in Buner a free hand in a district they captured last week.“We have been instructed by the government to stay away from Taliban as they are our guests and should be allowed to walk around the marketplace”, said a police officer in Pir Baba police station in Buner district.Any action against the Taliban could derail the peace process, he said, requesting anonymity out of concern for his job. Authorities say they are negotiating with the militants to persuade them to withdraw, but the Taliban have stayed and appear determined to take over the valley, police said.“They are everywhere,” said Arsala Khan, a deputy superintendent of police. “They are visiting mosques; they are visiting bazaars asking people to help them in enforcing Sharia.“Buner is fast turning into Swat.”On Saturday, Taliban locked the shrine of Syed Ali Shah Tarmezi, popularly known as Pir Baba, which is visited by Muslims from around the country as a mark of reverence.The shrine’s custodian, Syed Mohammad Makhdoom Hussain Shah, said the Taliban are attempting to sow division. “It is a conspiracy to pit the Muslims of different sects against each other,” he said, a veiled reference to the Taliban, who belong to the “Panjpir” school of Islamic thought and are opposed to shrines.“You remember that Taliban had closed down all shrines when they ruled over Afghanistan,” he said.The Taliban have not faced any resistance in entering Buner except for a group of a few landlords in Sultanwas village 1.5km away from Pir Baba bazaar, who fought them last week in an individual capacity, resulting in the deaths of six individuals, including three police constables. “It’s natural, militants will advance to more districts, such as Mardan, Swabi, Mansehra, Nowshera if they are left unchecked,” said Said Alam Mahsud, a medical doctor and leader of the nationalist Pakhtunkhwa Milli Awami Party.The ANP government has denied a militant problem exists in Bunder.“The Buner problem has been resolved and Taliban have left,” said Mian Iftikhar Hussain, the ANP spokesman and information minister.The mountainous Buner district is home to 7m people. It is impoverished and vulnerable to the Taliban’s overtures. An atmosphere of gloom and fear has enveloped the dusty bazaar and people were unwilling to speak about the Taliban for fear of reprisal.“We are happy over the Taliban’s march towards Buner. They are champions of Islam. We are with them,” said one man who was in a group of about a dozen youngsters who following the Taliban’s soldiers, in a mosque in Kalakheelam village near Pir Baba. The modern, shiny weaponry carried by Taliban entice the youth.Rehmanullah, a vegetable-seller, said he was giving free meals to the Taliban every day as sign of hospitality.“Where is the government? Where are the elected representatives? We are being pushed into the Stone Age,” said Adnan Khan, a student at Swari Degree College in Pir Baba.iwilkinson@thenational.ae
No doubt the US will be unhappy with the manner in which the Pakistan govt. seems to be willing to negotiate with the Taliban while the Taliban is brazenly working to extend its influence beyond SWAT at the same time. There seems to be a situation where there will be more conflict between Pakistani aims and those of the US.
Swat Taliban drive ever closer to the capital
Isambard Wilkinson and Ashfaq Yusufzai, Foreign Correspondents
Last Updated: April 15. 2009 8:30AM UAE / April 15. 2009 4:30AM GMT
BUNER, PAKISTAN // Taliban militants from the Pakistani valley of Swat, freed up after striking a peace deal with the government, have moved into neighbouring Buner, about 95km from the capital, Islamabad.The militants are encroaching by using mosques as recruiting centres and the area’s Sufi shrine as their hub of operations.In what appears to be a rehash of the administrative stance that critics say led to Swat being overrun by militants, the police have been told to leave them alone.The first wave of Taliban from Swat, a group of about 100, moved into Buner last month after the government agreed to a peace deal with militants in February.Pakistan’s president, Asif Ali Zardari, formally signed the accord on Monday night after the National Assembly unanimously passed a resolution recommending he approve it.Conservatives and the ruling party of the North West Frontier Province (NWFP), the Awami National Party, had accused Mr Zardari of delaying signing the bill because of liberal and US opposition.The ANP had threatened to pull out of the federal government coalition if Mr Zardari did not sign the Nizam-i-Adl regulation (Sharia) immediately.A military source said signing the peace deal would ultimately be beneficial. He said locals in Swat would see that the Taliban, which has administered executions and floggings, would not provide the kind of justice they were looking for and withdraw their support from the Islamic militia.But the march of the Taliban has continued.Some analysts fear that the deal, which applies to Swat and neighbouring Malakand, an area of around three million people, will embolden the Taliban to target other areas.After their first foray into Buner, a convoy of 10 double-cabin four-wheel drive pick-up trucks, loaded with Taliban militants armed with Kalashnikovs, rocket launchers and heavy machine guns, entered neighbouring Swabi district. From there they took the Islamabad to Peshawar motorway, and exited at Mardan, a key army garrison, before returning to Swat.Analysts are concerned that militants aim to cut off the motorway that runs between Islamabad and Peshawar, the NWFP’s capital.Kamran Shafi, a political commentator and former army officer, said that several weeks after the army handed Swat over to the Taliban, the country’s army chief, Gen Ashfaq Kiyani, said the military was “ready to face any threat, internal or external”.“Can you even believe any of this? What is happening to this country of ours? How long will we live in denial? When will we realise that if we don’t act now it will all be over, that the Taliban will simply take over the state using the shock and awe that comes from killing wantonly and cruelly,” Mr Shafi asked.ANP government officials have told the police to allow Taliban militants in Buner a free hand in a district they captured last week.“We have been instructed by the government to stay away from Taliban as they are our guests and should be allowed to walk around the marketplace”, said a police officer in Pir Baba police station in Buner district.Any action against the Taliban could derail the peace process, he said, requesting anonymity out of concern for his job. Authorities say they are negotiating with the militants to persuade them to withdraw, but the Taliban have stayed and appear determined to take over the valley, police said.“They are everywhere,” said Arsala Khan, a deputy superintendent of police. “They are visiting mosques; they are visiting bazaars asking people to help them in enforcing Sharia.“Buner is fast turning into Swat.”On Saturday, Taliban locked the shrine of Syed Ali Shah Tarmezi, popularly known as Pir Baba, which is visited by Muslims from around the country as a mark of reverence.The shrine’s custodian, Syed Mohammad Makhdoom Hussain Shah, said the Taliban are attempting to sow division. “It is a conspiracy to pit the Muslims of different sects against each other,” he said, a veiled reference to the Taliban, who belong to the “Panjpir” school of Islamic thought and are opposed to shrines.“You remember that Taliban had closed down all shrines when they ruled over Afghanistan,” he said.The Taliban have not faced any resistance in entering Buner except for a group of a few landlords in Sultanwas village 1.5km away from Pir Baba bazaar, who fought them last week in an individual capacity, resulting in the deaths of six individuals, including three police constables. “It’s natural, militants will advance to more districts, such as Mardan, Swabi, Mansehra, Nowshera if they are left unchecked,” said Said Alam Mahsud, a medical doctor and leader of the nationalist Pakhtunkhwa Milli Awami Party.The ANP government has denied a militant problem exists in Bunder.“The Buner problem has been resolved and Taliban have left,” said Mian Iftikhar Hussain, the ANP spokesman and information minister.The mountainous Buner district is home to 7m people. It is impoverished and vulnerable to the Taliban’s overtures. An atmosphere of gloom and fear has enveloped the dusty bazaar and people were unwilling to speak about the Taliban for fear of reprisal.“We are happy over the Taliban’s march towards Buner. They are champions of Islam. We are with them,” said one man who was in a group of about a dozen youngsters who following the Taliban’s soldiers, in a mosque in Kalakheelam village near Pir Baba. The modern, shiny weaponry carried by Taliban entice the youth.Rehmanullah, a vegetable-seller, said he was giving free meals to the Taliban every day as sign of hospitality.“Where is the government? Where are the elected representatives? We are being pushed into the Stone Age,” said Adnan Khan, a student at Swari Degree College in Pir Baba.iwilkinson@thenational.ae
Wednesday, April 15, 2009
NATO strike kills six civilians in Afghanistan
This is from antiwar.com.
Duh! The officials do acknowledge that a wounded one year old may have been a civilian. Right, some of those one year old Afghan babes tote grenades rather than rattles so maybe the child may not have been a civilian! No doubt the local police chief is a member of the Taliban but they missed him in the attack!
These air attacks are meant to avoid NATO casualties. Of course Afghan casualties are not even counted by the occupiers. Note that the nationality of the planes that attacked are not given. Probably it was US planes. In a tribal society where revenge is a duty these attacks simply serve as recruiting tools for the Taliban.
Officials: NATO Strike Kills Six Civilians in Afghanistan
Kunar Province Attack Also Wounded 16, Mostly Children
by Jason Ditz, April 13, 2009
Provincial officials say a NATO air strike carried out in the Kunar Province overnight has killed six civilians, including two children, and wounded 16 others, most of them also children. The attack destroyed three homes in the restive province, and a three year old girl and 10 year old boy were among those killed.
The NATO forces said they attacked the area based on “multiple intelligence source” and said they saw “no evidence of a civilian presence.” Though they maintain all those killed were “enemy fighters,” they acknowledge now that some of the wounded, including a one-year old, may have been civilians. The district police chief says all the casualties, both dead and wounded, were innocent civilians.
The international forces were already under some uncomfortable scrutiny after a raid last week in the nearby Khost Province killed four relatives of an Afghan military officer. In that incident too the international forces initially touted the killings of “combatants” though they eventually conceded that all those killed, including the unborn baby shot in the womb were not believed to to be involved in militant activities.
As violence in the struggling nation continues to rise, US and NATO forces have launched a growing number of raids, and a large portion of them end up killing mostly, or exclusively, innocent civilians. The rising toll has undermined popular support for the military presence and has created a rift between the international forces and the government....
Duh! The officials do acknowledge that a wounded one year old may have been a civilian. Right, some of those one year old Afghan babes tote grenades rather than rattles so maybe the child may not have been a civilian! No doubt the local police chief is a member of the Taliban but they missed him in the attack!
These air attacks are meant to avoid NATO casualties. Of course Afghan casualties are not even counted by the occupiers. Note that the nationality of the planes that attacked are not given. Probably it was US planes. In a tribal society where revenge is a duty these attacks simply serve as recruiting tools for the Taliban.
Officials: NATO Strike Kills Six Civilians in Afghanistan
Kunar Province Attack Also Wounded 16, Mostly Children
by Jason Ditz, April 13, 2009
Provincial officials say a NATO air strike carried out in the Kunar Province overnight has killed six civilians, including two children, and wounded 16 others, most of them also children. The attack destroyed three homes in the restive province, and a three year old girl and 10 year old boy were among those killed.
The NATO forces said they attacked the area based on “multiple intelligence source” and said they saw “no evidence of a civilian presence.” Though they maintain all those killed were “enemy fighters,” they acknowledge now that some of the wounded, including a one-year old, may have been civilians. The district police chief says all the casualties, both dead and wounded, were innocent civilians.
The international forces were already under some uncomfortable scrutiny after a raid last week in the nearby Khost Province killed four relatives of an Afghan military officer. In that incident too the international forces initially touted the killings of “combatants” though they eventually conceded that all those killed, including the unborn baby shot in the womb were not believed to to be involved in militant activities.
As violence in the struggling nation continues to rise, US and NATO forces have launched a growing number of raids, and a large portion of them end up killing mostly, or exclusively, innocent civilians. The rising toll has undermined popular support for the military presence and has created a rift between the international forces and the government....
Tuesday, April 14, 2009
Another Summers critic..
It surely should concern any Obama supporter that he chose this creep to be his chief economic advisor. It also shows the nature of Harvard that he was once þ¶esident of that institution!
New York TIMES / April 12, 2009
Op-Ed Columnist
Awake and Sing!
By FRANK RICH
... On the same Friday that the Labor Department reported the latest
jobless numbers, the White House released (in the evening, after the
network news) some other telling figures on the financial disclosure
forms of its top officials. From those we learned more about how much
the bubble’s culture permeated this administration.
We discovered, for instance, that Lawrence Summers, the president’s
chief economic adviser, made $5.2 million in 2008 from a hedge fund,
D. E. Shaw, for a one-day-a-week job. He also earned $2.7 million in
speaking fees from the likes of Citigroup and Goldman Sachs. Those
institutions are not merely the beneficiaries of taxpayers’ bailouts
since the crash. They also benefited during the boom from government
favors: the Wall Street deregulation that both Summers and Robert
Rubin, his mentor and predecessor as Treasury secretary, championed in
the Clinton administration. This dynamic duo’s innovative gift to
their country was banks “too big to fail.”
Some spoilsports raise the conflict-of-interest question about
Summers: Can he be a fair broker of the bailout when he so recently
received lavish compensation from some of its present and, no doubt,
future players? This question can be answered only when every
transaction in the new “public-private investment plan” to buy the
banks’ toxic assets is made transparent. We need verification that
this deal is not, as the economist Joseph Stiglitz has warned, a Rube
Goldberg contraption contrived to facilitate “huge transfers of wealth
to the financial markets” from taxpayers.
But perhaps I’ve become numb to the perennial and bipartisan
revolving-door incestuousness of Washington and Wall Street. I was
less shocked by the White House’s disclosure of Summers’s recent
paydays than by a bit of reporting that appeared deep down in the
Times follow-up article on that initial news. The reporter Louise
Story wrote that Summers had done consulting work for another hedge
fund, Taconic Capital Advisors, from 2004 to 2006, while still
president of Harvard.
That the highly paid leader of arguably America’s most esteemed
educational institution (disclosure: I went there) would
simultaneously freelance as a hedge-fund guy might stand as a symbol
for the values of our time. At the start of his stormy and short-lived
presidency, Summers picked a fight with Cornel West for allegedly
neglecting his professorial duties by taking on such extracurricular
tasks as cutting a spoken-word CD. Yet Summers saw no conflict with
moonlighting in the money racket while running the entire university.
The students didn’t even get a CD for his efforts — and Harvard’s
deflated endowment, now in a daunting liquidity crisis, didn’t exactly
benefit either.
Summers’s dual portfolio in Cambridge has already led to one potential
intermingling of private business and public policy in his new White
House post. He tried — and, mercifully, failed — to install the
co-founder of Taconic in the job of running the TARP bailouts. But
again, Summers’s potential conflicts of interest seem less telling
than the conflict of values that his Harvard double-résumé
exemplifies.
In the bubble decade, making money as an end in itself boomed as a
calling among students at elite universities like Harvard, siphoning
off gifted undergraduates who might otherwise have been scientists,
teachers, doctors, entrepreneurs, artists or inventors. The Harvard
Crimson reported that in the class of 2007, 58 percent of the men and
43 percent of the women entering the work force took jobs in the
finance and consulting industries. The figures were similar
everywhere, from Duke to the University of Pennsylvania. Dan Rather,
on his HDNet television program in December, reported that at Penn
this was even true of “over half the students who graduated with
engineering degrees — not a field commonly associated with Wall
Street.”
Clearly the last person to serve as an inspiring role model for
alternative values would have been Summers. But in her first
baccalaureate address last June, his successor as Harvard president,
Drew Gilpin Faust, stepped into that moral vacuum, zeroing in on the
huge number of students heading into finance, consulting and
investment banking. “Find work you love,” she implored the class of
2008. The “most remunerative” job choice “may not be the most
meaningful and the most satisfying.”
... No one is better placed or more philosophically suited than Obama
to construct the new counternarrative as we go forward in our new New
Deal. But many masters of the old universe, including quite possibly
his chief economic adviser, can’t recognize that the world has changed
or should change. Even at the cratered Citigroup, a technical analyst
was moved to write a report last month urging his peers to stop living
in “denial” and recognize that we are witnessing the end of “25 to 30
years worth of excess.” The “new normal” in lifestyle, wealth creation
and profitability of companies, he wrote, “may be a shadow of the
past.”
There was a poignant quality to this Citi report, which cited as its
mantra the R.E.M. song “It’s the End of the World as We Know It (and I
Feel Fine).” Its tone somehow reminded me of the stirring speech
written by the American playwright Clifford Odets in his classic drama
of the Great Depression, “Awake and Sing!” (1935). “Boychick, wake
up!” the grandfather Jacob tells his grandson, Ralph, as the battered
Berger family disintegrates in the Bronx. “Be something! Make your
life something good ... Go out and fight so life shouldn’t be printed
on dollar bills.”
When Lawrence Summers was president of Harvard, he famously delighted
students by signing his autograph on dollar bills that already bore
his signature from his Treasury secretary days. How we leave that
bankrupt culture behind and get to “something good” will be as much a
factor in our recovery from this Depression as the fate of the
unemployment rate and the Dow.<
--
New York TIMES / April 12, 2009
Op-Ed Columnist
Awake and Sing!
By FRANK RICH
... On the same Friday that the Labor Department reported the latest
jobless numbers, the White House released (in the evening, after the
network news) some other telling figures on the financial disclosure
forms of its top officials. From those we learned more about how much
the bubble’s culture permeated this administration.
We discovered, for instance, that Lawrence Summers, the president’s
chief economic adviser, made $5.2 million in 2008 from a hedge fund,
D. E. Shaw, for a one-day-a-week job. He also earned $2.7 million in
speaking fees from the likes of Citigroup and Goldman Sachs. Those
institutions are not merely the beneficiaries of taxpayers’ bailouts
since the crash. They also benefited during the boom from government
favors: the Wall Street deregulation that both Summers and Robert
Rubin, his mentor and predecessor as Treasury secretary, championed in
the Clinton administration. This dynamic duo’s innovative gift to
their country was banks “too big to fail.”
Some spoilsports raise the conflict-of-interest question about
Summers: Can he be a fair broker of the bailout when he so recently
received lavish compensation from some of its present and, no doubt,
future players? This question can be answered only when every
transaction in the new “public-private investment plan” to buy the
banks’ toxic assets is made transparent. We need verification that
this deal is not, as the economist Joseph Stiglitz has warned, a Rube
Goldberg contraption contrived to facilitate “huge transfers of wealth
to the financial markets” from taxpayers.
But perhaps I’ve become numb to the perennial and bipartisan
revolving-door incestuousness of Washington and Wall Street. I was
less shocked by the White House’s disclosure of Summers’s recent
paydays than by a bit of reporting that appeared deep down in the
Times follow-up article on that initial news. The reporter Louise
Story wrote that Summers had done consulting work for another hedge
fund, Taconic Capital Advisors, from 2004 to 2006, while still
president of Harvard.
That the highly paid leader of arguably America’s most esteemed
educational institution (disclosure: I went there) would
simultaneously freelance as a hedge-fund guy might stand as a symbol
for the values of our time. At the start of his stormy and short-lived
presidency, Summers picked a fight with Cornel West for allegedly
neglecting his professorial duties by taking on such extracurricular
tasks as cutting a spoken-word CD. Yet Summers saw no conflict with
moonlighting in the money racket while running the entire university.
The students didn’t even get a CD for his efforts — and Harvard’s
deflated endowment, now in a daunting liquidity crisis, didn’t exactly
benefit either.
Summers’s dual portfolio in Cambridge has already led to one potential
intermingling of private business and public policy in his new White
House post. He tried — and, mercifully, failed — to install the
co-founder of Taconic in the job of running the TARP bailouts. But
again, Summers’s potential conflicts of interest seem less telling
than the conflict of values that his Harvard double-résumé
exemplifies.
In the bubble decade, making money as an end in itself boomed as a
calling among students at elite universities like Harvard, siphoning
off gifted undergraduates who might otherwise have been scientists,
teachers, doctors, entrepreneurs, artists or inventors. The Harvard
Crimson reported that in the class of 2007, 58 percent of the men and
43 percent of the women entering the work force took jobs in the
finance and consulting industries. The figures were similar
everywhere, from Duke to the University of Pennsylvania. Dan Rather,
on his HDNet television program in December, reported that at Penn
this was even true of “over half the students who graduated with
engineering degrees — not a field commonly associated with Wall
Street.”
Clearly the last person to serve as an inspiring role model for
alternative values would have been Summers. But in her first
baccalaureate address last June, his successor as Harvard president,
Drew Gilpin Faust, stepped into that moral vacuum, zeroing in on the
huge number of students heading into finance, consulting and
investment banking. “Find work you love,” she implored the class of
2008. The “most remunerative” job choice “may not be the most
meaningful and the most satisfying.”
... No one is better placed or more philosophically suited than Obama
to construct the new counternarrative as we go forward in our new New
Deal. But many masters of the old universe, including quite possibly
his chief economic adviser, can’t recognize that the world has changed
or should change. Even at the cratered Citigroup, a technical analyst
was moved to write a report last month urging his peers to stop living
in “denial” and recognize that we are witnessing the end of “25 to 30
years worth of excess.” The “new normal” in lifestyle, wealth creation
and profitability of companies, he wrote, “may be a shadow of the
past.”
There was a poignant quality to this Citi report, which cited as its
mantra the R.E.M. song “It’s the End of the World as We Know It (and I
Feel Fine).” Its tone somehow reminded me of the stirring speech
written by the American playwright Clifford Odets in his classic drama
of the Great Depression, “Awake and Sing!” (1935). “Boychick, wake
up!” the grandfather Jacob tells his grandson, Ralph, as the battered
Berger family disintegrates in the Bronx. “Be something! Make your
life something good ... Go out and fight so life shouldn’t be printed
on dollar bills.”
When Lawrence Summers was president of Harvard, he famously delighted
students by signing his autograph on dollar bills that already bore
his signature from his Treasury secretary days. How we leave that
bankrupt culture behind and get to “something good” will be as much a
factor in our recovery from this Depression as the fate of the
unemployment rate and the Dow.<
--
Protests in Moldova made in USA
THis is from the Lou Rockwell Blog.
Never a hint of this background in the mainstream media accounts of what is happening in Moldova. These US financed promoters of freedom and democracy are part and parcel of US imperialism and attempts to surround Russia with US friendly regimes.
April 08, 2009
Moldova’s ‘Twitter Revolution’: Made in America?
Posted by Daniel McAdams at April 8, 2009 10:54 PM
It makes for a great story-line – the kind the international media embrace with relish: thrusting young Moldovans grab their iPhones, rush to the town square, and Twitter their way to a revolution against a Communist Party that had just stolen an election. The story-line has been written with orange and with roses and tulips and almost with denim, the press reducing the phenomena in each case to a few slogans repeated until they become accepted as reality with little further analysis.
Such is the case with recent events in Moldova, where even a casual reading of the vast contradictions between objective reality and the developing story-line – the “Twitter Revolution” – is glaringly obvious.
The protests, which intensified Tuesday, were sparked by claims that the Communist Party of President Vladimir Voronin rigged parliamentary elections last Sunday – a vote they were widely expected to win – to gain enough of a margin to amend the constitution and extend Voronin’s rule beyond that which is currently permitted. While the press lauds the “spontaneous” mass organization to overthrow Voronin, one does not have to dust the scene of the crime too carefully to see US foreign policy fingerprints all over the place.
Let us begin with the Twitterers. According to a New York Times article, one of the leaders of the Twitter Revolution claimed she was able to get 15,000 people into the streets with “six people, 10 minutes for brainstorming and decision-making, several hours of disseminating information through networks, Facebook, blogs, SMSs and e-mails.” That is impressive.
In the same article we are told, correctly, that Moldova is among the poorest countries in Europe. The average monthly salary is approximately 2532 lei, which equals about US$230. Contrasted with the average US salary of approximately US$4,000 per month, this demonstrates the real poverty of Moldova.
Yet according to the website of one of the leading mobile networks operators in Moldova, that Twitter-friendly iPhone would set back a young Moldovan 6,599 lei, or the equivalent of about two and a half times his monthly salary. For an American that would be the equivalent of a US$10,000 iPhone. Not many kids would have one. Even basic high-speed internet access on a lesser instrument would set a young Moldovan back nearly 500 lei per month, or the equivalent of US$800 for an average American. How does this impoverished nation afford such luxuries?
Just as many of us cast a skeptical eye on the sudden emergence of massive plasma-screen televisions in also-poor Ukraine during the “Orange Revolution,” the idea that thousands of young Moldovans are spending such sums on their Twittering seems equally implausible.
So what is fueling this revolution? A brief glance at the website of one of the Moldovan NGOs leading the effort to overthrow the elected Moldovan government, that of the “Hyde Park Organization,” reveals an interesting benefactor: at the bottom of the page, next to a seal of the United States, one can read that “This website is hosted free of charge through the Internet Access Training Program (IATP). IATP is a program of the Bureau of Educational & Cultural Affairs (ECA), US Department of State, funded under the Freedom Support Act (FSA).”
Digging a bit further, one can see on the website of the US Agency for International Development that the United States government, through cut-out organizations like the International Republican Institute and the National Democratic Institute, is funneling large sums of money to Moldova for programs with such fascinating titles as “Strengthening Democratic Political Activism in Moldova (SPA).” USAID boasts that this program is “cultivating new political activists who can formulate and pursue concrete political objectives…” No doubt.
Another program, titled the “Internet Access and Training Program” may hold a clue as to where all these Twitterers came from. According to the US government, this program “provides local communities with free access to the Internet and to extensive training in all aspects of information technology.” Does the training come with iPhones?
The media, with story-line already inked out, mock the Moldovan president’s claims that the protests were “well designed, well thought out, coordinated, planned and paid for,” but isn’t that what the USAID website has already claimed? After all, to what end does the US train and fund NGOs in projects such as the “Moldova Citizen Participation Program,” whose goal is to “build… the capacity of citizens to create tangible and positive change in their own communities through civic activity and democratic practices…by providing training, mentoring, and funding for citizen-initiated projects and strengthening the capacity of NGOs and citizen groups to mobilize their community, advocate for change, and hold government accountable”? In the previous color revolutions we have seen the perversion of “democracy” to mean getting enough people getting to the street to overthrow an elected government.
Why bother with all this? The same reason the US funded the other color revolutions. The same reason the US announced missile defense facilities in Poland and Czech Republic. The same reason the US has propped up and provided massive military aid to a creepily unstable Mikheil Saakashvili in Georgia. Encircle Russia. Maintain the empire. In 2003 Voronin was our “democrat” when he stuck it to Russia over the breakaway region of Transnistria, refusing to sign on to the Russian settlement plan. When Voronin later mended fences with Russia the long knives came out for him. In the words of one observer of the region, this current revolt is against the communists (Voronin) who were yesterday the democrats against the communists in Transnistria. Dizzying.
Demand obedience from foreign rulers or make them face the consequences. It is a project that is not only destined to fail, but is in fact in the process of failing already. And did anyone notice that we have a new president and administration in the US?
Never a hint of this background in the mainstream media accounts of what is happening in Moldova. These US financed promoters of freedom and democracy are part and parcel of US imperialism and attempts to surround Russia with US friendly regimes.
April 08, 2009
Moldova’s ‘Twitter Revolution’: Made in America?
Posted by Daniel McAdams at April 8, 2009 10:54 PM
It makes for a great story-line – the kind the international media embrace with relish: thrusting young Moldovans grab their iPhones, rush to the town square, and Twitter their way to a revolution against a Communist Party that had just stolen an election. The story-line has been written with orange and with roses and tulips and almost with denim, the press reducing the phenomena in each case to a few slogans repeated until they become accepted as reality with little further analysis.
Such is the case with recent events in Moldova, where even a casual reading of the vast contradictions between objective reality and the developing story-line – the “Twitter Revolution” – is glaringly obvious.
The protests, which intensified Tuesday, were sparked by claims that the Communist Party of President Vladimir Voronin rigged parliamentary elections last Sunday – a vote they were widely expected to win – to gain enough of a margin to amend the constitution and extend Voronin’s rule beyond that which is currently permitted. While the press lauds the “spontaneous” mass organization to overthrow Voronin, one does not have to dust the scene of the crime too carefully to see US foreign policy fingerprints all over the place.
Let us begin with the Twitterers. According to a New York Times article, one of the leaders of the Twitter Revolution claimed she was able to get 15,000 people into the streets with “six people, 10 minutes for brainstorming and decision-making, several hours of disseminating information through networks, Facebook, blogs, SMSs and e-mails.” That is impressive.
In the same article we are told, correctly, that Moldova is among the poorest countries in Europe. The average monthly salary is approximately 2532 lei, which equals about US$230. Contrasted with the average US salary of approximately US$4,000 per month, this demonstrates the real poverty of Moldova.
Yet according to the website of one of the leading mobile networks operators in Moldova, that Twitter-friendly iPhone would set back a young Moldovan 6,599 lei, or the equivalent of about two and a half times his monthly salary. For an American that would be the equivalent of a US$10,000 iPhone. Not many kids would have one. Even basic high-speed internet access on a lesser instrument would set a young Moldovan back nearly 500 lei per month, or the equivalent of US$800 for an average American. How does this impoverished nation afford such luxuries?
Just as many of us cast a skeptical eye on the sudden emergence of massive plasma-screen televisions in also-poor Ukraine during the “Orange Revolution,” the idea that thousands of young Moldovans are spending such sums on their Twittering seems equally implausible.
So what is fueling this revolution? A brief glance at the website of one of the Moldovan NGOs leading the effort to overthrow the elected Moldovan government, that of the “Hyde Park Organization,” reveals an interesting benefactor: at the bottom of the page, next to a seal of the United States, one can read that “This website is hosted free of charge through the Internet Access Training Program (IATP). IATP is a program of the Bureau of Educational & Cultural Affairs (ECA), US Department of State, funded under the Freedom Support Act (FSA).”
Digging a bit further, one can see on the website of the US Agency for International Development that the United States government, through cut-out organizations like the International Republican Institute and the National Democratic Institute, is funneling large sums of money to Moldova for programs with such fascinating titles as “Strengthening Democratic Political Activism in Moldova (SPA).” USAID boasts that this program is “cultivating new political activists who can formulate and pursue concrete political objectives…” No doubt.
Another program, titled the “Internet Access and Training Program” may hold a clue as to where all these Twitterers came from. According to the US government, this program “provides local communities with free access to the Internet and to extensive training in all aspects of information technology.” Does the training come with iPhones?
The media, with story-line already inked out, mock the Moldovan president’s claims that the protests were “well designed, well thought out, coordinated, planned and paid for,” but isn’t that what the USAID website has already claimed? After all, to what end does the US train and fund NGOs in projects such as the “Moldova Citizen Participation Program,” whose goal is to “build… the capacity of citizens to create tangible and positive change in their own communities through civic activity and democratic practices…by providing training, mentoring, and funding for citizen-initiated projects and strengthening the capacity of NGOs and citizen groups to mobilize their community, advocate for change, and hold government accountable”? In the previous color revolutions we have seen the perversion of “democracy” to mean getting enough people getting to the street to overthrow an elected government.
Why bother with all this? The same reason the US funded the other color revolutions. The same reason the US announced missile defense facilities in Poland and Czech Republic. The same reason the US has propped up and provided massive military aid to a creepily unstable Mikheil Saakashvili in Georgia. Encircle Russia. Maintain the empire. In 2003 Voronin was our “democrat” when he stuck it to Russia over the breakaway region of Transnistria, refusing to sign on to the Russian settlement plan. When Voronin later mended fences with Russia the long knives came out for him. In the words of one observer of the region, this current revolt is against the communists (Voronin) who were yesterday the democrats against the communists in Transnistria. Dizzying.
Demand obedience from foreign rulers or make them face the consequences. It is a project that is not only destined to fail, but is in fact in the process of failing already. And did anyone notice that we have a new president and administration in the US?
Obama lifts restriction on Cuban Americans
This is from antiwar.com.
The older hard line Cuban Americans predictably are against the easing of these restrictions. No doubt the easing will provide more income for the govt. of Cuba but it will also help Cuban families in need in Cuba. The measures are hardly radical and much less than many were hoping for. It makes little sense to keep travel restrictions on Americans in general and allow it only for Cuban Americans. Obama is being very cautious and gradualist in his approach. Perhaps he worries about backlash from some Cuban Americans but he will get that even with this minor easing of restrictions. The majority no doubt would support even further easing of relations.
Obama Lifts Restrictions on Cuban-Americans
by Jim Lobe, April 14, 2009
Fulfilling a key campaign promise, U.S. President Barack Obama Monday lifted all restrictions on Cuban-Americans to visit their homeland and send money to family members there.
In an executive order, Obama also authorized U.S. telecommunications companies to apply for licenses to do business in Cuba in what the White House described as an effort to increase the flow of information to the Cuban people.
In addition, current limits on the kinds and quantity of humanitarian-related goods that can be sent to Cuba from the U.S. will also be eased, according to the order which marked the first substantive changes in Washington’s policy toward the Caribbean island since Obama became president nearly three months ago.
The moves, coming on the eve of the Fifth Summit of the Americas to be held in Trinidad and Tobago later this week, were welcomed by organizations and activists who have long called for concrete steps to lift the nearly 50-year-old U.S. trade embargo against Cuba., some of whom, however, expressed disappointment that Obama did not go further.
"These are welcome steps, but the right course is to allow all Americans to travel to Cuba, to open up commerce, and to directly engage the Cuban government in diplomacy and solving problems in both countries’ interests," said Sarah Stephens, director of the Center for Democracy in the Americas (CDA).
"The president has a historic opportunity, not to be the last president of the Cold War, but the first president to turn the page in U.S.-Cuba relations. I think he will do more, and that this will be the first of many steps toward better relations with Cuba," she added.
At the same time, hard-line anti-Castro Cuban Americans deplored Obama’s decision. "President Obama has committed a serious mistake by unilaterally increasing Cuban-American travel and remittance dollars for the Cuban dictatorship," said Florida Republican Reps. Lincoln Diaz-Balart and Mario Diaz-Balart.
"Unilateral concessions to the dictatorship embolden it to further isolate, imprison and brutalize pro-democracy activists, to continue to dictate which Cubans and Cuban-Americans are able to enter the island, that this unilateral concession provides the dictatorship with critical financial support," the two brothers said.
Other more moderate Cuban-American lawmakers, including Florida Republican Sen. Mel Martinez, echoed the Diaz-Balarts’ concern that the government of President Raul Castro will benefit financially, especially by the lifting of limits to Cuban-American remittances, but also stressed that Obama’s decision was "good news for Cuban families separated by the lack of freedom in Cuba" and "should provide help to families in need."
That Obama would ease limits imposed by his predecessor, George W. Bush, on the ability of Cuban-Americans to travel and send money to their families in Cuba had been anticipated since his election, if for no other reason than he had personally promised to do so in a major policy address on U.S.-Latin American relations delivered before one of the most important Cuban-American organizations, the Cuban-American National Foundation (CANF), in Miami last May. In the same speech, however, he promised to maintain the embargo as "leverage" to prod Havana into adopting democratic reforms.
That he would make the announcement before the Trinidad summit was also widely anticipated, as virtually all the heads of state with whom Obama will be meeting – notably Brazilian President Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva who raised the issue in talks with the new president at the White House just last month – have called for Washington to end the embargo and normalize ties with Havana.
But the administration’s hopes – recently expressed by its top sherpa to the summit, former Amb. Jeffrey Davidow – that Monday’s announcement would all but remove Cuba from the agenda are unlikely to be realized, according to William LeoGrande, a Cuba specialist and dean of the School of Government at American University.
"I don’t think most Latin American heads of state are going to be too impressed by this," he told IPS. "They’ve asked for a new departure by the U.S. toward Cuba, and this is really not a new departure."
Since his election, majorities in Congress have voted to ease the embargo. In an omnibus appropriations bill approved last month, they prohibited the Treasury Department, which enforces key provisions in the embargo, from spending any money to enforce limits on the travel to Cuba by Cuban Americans. Legislators also authorized the granting of a general license for travel to Cuba for U.S. companies that wish to sell agricultural and medical goods there. Both moves had the effect of repealing restrictions imposed by Bush.
Legislation that was introduced in both houses of Congress last month, the Freedom to Travel to Cuba Act, would extend to all U.S. citizens the right to travel to Cuba and is considered to have a better than even chance of passage by the end of the fiscal year, Sept. 30.
In addition, the ranking Republican on the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, Sen. Richard Lugar, has for the first time taken a leadership role in calling on the president both to lift all travel restrictions and to fully engage Havana diplomatically both bilaterally, on issues such as drug trafficking, energy, and immigration, and in multilateral forums, such as the Organization of American States (OAS) and the International Monetary Fund, from which Washington has sought to exclude Cuba for decades.
At the same time, the U.S. business community, including the National Foreign Trade Council and the U.S. Chamber of Commerce, have been calling for ending the embargo altogether. In a statement issued Monday, the Chamber said it was "very encouraged" by Obama’s announcement but added that it "is only one step forward. … [U]ltimately, we would like to see an end to the Cuban trade embargo."
In this context, Obama’s announcement fell short of the hopes of an increasingly broad coalition of groups and institutions that favors normalizing ties with Havana across the board. Many groups thought that Obama would couple his announcement on easing restrictions on Cuban Americans with new orders that would facilitate scientific, educational, cultural, and other kinds of people-to-people travel and exchanges of the kind that were initiated under former President Bill Clinton but subsequently frozen by Bush. The White House indicated that such a move was still under review.
"It would have been easiest to relax these kinds of travel restrictions as a package along with easing restrictions for Cuban Americans," said LeoGrande. "I think the reason they didn’t is simply that the foreign policy agenda is so full that having to battle with recalcitrant members of Congress about Cuba is something they felt they just don’t have time for now."
But LeoGrande stressed that Obama, by eliminating all restrictions on travel and remittances for Cuban Americans, has actually gone beyond what was permitted under Clinton and could have a major impact on Cuba’s economy. Under Bush, Cuban Americans could visit the island only once a year and send a maximum of $75 a month.
"That was a lot less than what immigrants send to the Dominican Republic or El Salvador, and Cuban Americans are much wealthier, so they could send a lot more," according to LeoGrande, who noted that, before Bush’s restrictions, Cuban Americans were sending about $1 billion a year to their families on the island.
Still, some normalization advocates said it was inappropriate for Obama to limit travel and other rights to Cuban Americans, with Stephen Clemons, director of the American Strategy Program of the New American Foundation (NAF), calling it "cynical and insufficient."
"That our first African-American president would issue an executive order that created openings for a specific class of ethnic Americans – in this case, Cuban Americans – and not for all is not what this democracy is about," he said. "This is not how we approached Vietnam; we didn’t tell Vietnamese Americans to lead the way."
(Inter Press Service)
The older hard line Cuban Americans predictably are against the easing of these restrictions. No doubt the easing will provide more income for the govt. of Cuba but it will also help Cuban families in need in Cuba. The measures are hardly radical and much less than many were hoping for. It makes little sense to keep travel restrictions on Americans in general and allow it only for Cuban Americans. Obama is being very cautious and gradualist in his approach. Perhaps he worries about backlash from some Cuban Americans but he will get that even with this minor easing of restrictions. The majority no doubt would support even further easing of relations.
Obama Lifts Restrictions on Cuban-Americans
by Jim Lobe, April 14, 2009
Fulfilling a key campaign promise, U.S. President Barack Obama Monday lifted all restrictions on Cuban-Americans to visit their homeland and send money to family members there.
In an executive order, Obama also authorized U.S. telecommunications companies to apply for licenses to do business in Cuba in what the White House described as an effort to increase the flow of information to the Cuban people.
In addition, current limits on the kinds and quantity of humanitarian-related goods that can be sent to Cuba from the U.S. will also be eased, according to the order which marked the first substantive changes in Washington’s policy toward the Caribbean island since Obama became president nearly three months ago.
The moves, coming on the eve of the Fifth Summit of the Americas to be held in Trinidad and Tobago later this week, were welcomed by organizations and activists who have long called for concrete steps to lift the nearly 50-year-old U.S. trade embargo against Cuba., some of whom, however, expressed disappointment that Obama did not go further.
"These are welcome steps, but the right course is to allow all Americans to travel to Cuba, to open up commerce, and to directly engage the Cuban government in diplomacy and solving problems in both countries’ interests," said Sarah Stephens, director of the Center for Democracy in the Americas (CDA).
"The president has a historic opportunity, not to be the last president of the Cold War, but the first president to turn the page in U.S.-Cuba relations. I think he will do more, and that this will be the first of many steps toward better relations with Cuba," she added.
At the same time, hard-line anti-Castro Cuban Americans deplored Obama’s decision. "President Obama has committed a serious mistake by unilaterally increasing Cuban-American travel and remittance dollars for the Cuban dictatorship," said Florida Republican Reps. Lincoln Diaz-Balart and Mario Diaz-Balart.
"Unilateral concessions to the dictatorship embolden it to further isolate, imprison and brutalize pro-democracy activists, to continue to dictate which Cubans and Cuban-Americans are able to enter the island, that this unilateral concession provides the dictatorship with critical financial support," the two brothers said.
Other more moderate Cuban-American lawmakers, including Florida Republican Sen. Mel Martinez, echoed the Diaz-Balarts’ concern that the government of President Raul Castro will benefit financially, especially by the lifting of limits to Cuban-American remittances, but also stressed that Obama’s decision was "good news for Cuban families separated by the lack of freedom in Cuba" and "should provide help to families in need."
That Obama would ease limits imposed by his predecessor, George W. Bush, on the ability of Cuban-Americans to travel and send money to their families in Cuba had been anticipated since his election, if for no other reason than he had personally promised to do so in a major policy address on U.S.-Latin American relations delivered before one of the most important Cuban-American organizations, the Cuban-American National Foundation (CANF), in Miami last May. In the same speech, however, he promised to maintain the embargo as "leverage" to prod Havana into adopting democratic reforms.
That he would make the announcement before the Trinidad summit was also widely anticipated, as virtually all the heads of state with whom Obama will be meeting – notably Brazilian President Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva who raised the issue in talks with the new president at the White House just last month – have called for Washington to end the embargo and normalize ties with Havana.
But the administration’s hopes – recently expressed by its top sherpa to the summit, former Amb. Jeffrey Davidow – that Monday’s announcement would all but remove Cuba from the agenda are unlikely to be realized, according to William LeoGrande, a Cuba specialist and dean of the School of Government at American University.
"I don’t think most Latin American heads of state are going to be too impressed by this," he told IPS. "They’ve asked for a new departure by the U.S. toward Cuba, and this is really not a new departure."
Since his election, majorities in Congress have voted to ease the embargo. In an omnibus appropriations bill approved last month, they prohibited the Treasury Department, which enforces key provisions in the embargo, from spending any money to enforce limits on the travel to Cuba by Cuban Americans. Legislators also authorized the granting of a general license for travel to Cuba for U.S. companies that wish to sell agricultural and medical goods there. Both moves had the effect of repealing restrictions imposed by Bush.
Legislation that was introduced in both houses of Congress last month, the Freedom to Travel to Cuba Act, would extend to all U.S. citizens the right to travel to Cuba and is considered to have a better than even chance of passage by the end of the fiscal year, Sept. 30.
In addition, the ranking Republican on the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, Sen. Richard Lugar, has for the first time taken a leadership role in calling on the president both to lift all travel restrictions and to fully engage Havana diplomatically both bilaterally, on issues such as drug trafficking, energy, and immigration, and in multilateral forums, such as the Organization of American States (OAS) and the International Monetary Fund, from which Washington has sought to exclude Cuba for decades.
At the same time, the U.S. business community, including the National Foreign Trade Council and the U.S. Chamber of Commerce, have been calling for ending the embargo altogether. In a statement issued Monday, the Chamber said it was "very encouraged" by Obama’s announcement but added that it "is only one step forward. … [U]ltimately, we would like to see an end to the Cuban trade embargo."
In this context, Obama’s announcement fell short of the hopes of an increasingly broad coalition of groups and institutions that favors normalizing ties with Havana across the board. Many groups thought that Obama would couple his announcement on easing restrictions on Cuban Americans with new orders that would facilitate scientific, educational, cultural, and other kinds of people-to-people travel and exchanges of the kind that were initiated under former President Bill Clinton but subsequently frozen by Bush. The White House indicated that such a move was still under review.
"It would have been easiest to relax these kinds of travel restrictions as a package along with easing restrictions for Cuban Americans," said LeoGrande. "I think the reason they didn’t is simply that the foreign policy agenda is so full that having to battle with recalcitrant members of Congress about Cuba is something they felt they just don’t have time for now."
But LeoGrande stressed that Obama, by eliminating all restrictions on travel and remittances for Cuban Americans, has actually gone beyond what was permitted under Clinton and could have a major impact on Cuba’s economy. Under Bush, Cuban Americans could visit the island only once a year and send a maximum of $75 a month.
"That was a lot less than what immigrants send to the Dominican Republic or El Salvador, and Cuban Americans are much wealthier, so they could send a lot more," according to LeoGrande, who noted that, before Bush’s restrictions, Cuban Americans were sending about $1 billion a year to their families on the island.
Still, some normalization advocates said it was inappropriate for Obama to limit travel and other rights to Cuban Americans, with Stephen Clemons, director of the American Strategy Program of the New American Foundation (NAF), calling it "cynical and insufficient."
"That our first African-American president would issue an executive order that created openings for a specific class of ethnic Americans – in this case, Cuban Americans – and not for all is not what this democracy is about," he said. "This is not how we approached Vietnam; we didn’t tell Vietnamese Americans to lead the way."
(Inter Press Service)
Monday, April 13, 2009
Drone attacks kill more civilians than Al Qaeda
This is from thenews(Pakistan)
A detailed look at the magnitude of the drone attacks. There is not all that much coverage of the issue in the western press. Obama is carrying on and even extending the Bush drone policy. The Pakistani govt. is obviously two faced. Internally the issue forces them to constantly criticise the attacks but still most of the flights actually originate from Pakistani air fields and it seems that the Pakistanis have tried to get the US to assasinate a Pakistani militant leader using the drones!
60 drone hits kill 14 al-Qaeda men, 687 civilians
Amir MirLAHORE:
Of the 60 cross-border predator strikes carried out by the Afghanistan-based American drones in Pakistan between January 14, 2006 and April 8, 2009, only 10 were able to hit their actual targets, killing 14 wanted al-Qaeda leaders, besides perishing 687 innocent Pakistani civilians. The success percentage of the US predator strikes thus comes to not more than six per cent.Figures compiled by the Pakistani authorities show that a total of 701 people, including 14 al-Qaeda leaders, have been killed since January 2006 in 60 American predator attacks targeting the tribal areas of Pakistan. Two strikes carried out in 2006 had killed 98 civilians while three attacks conducted in 2007 had slain 66 Pakistanis, yet none of the wanted al-Qaeda or Taliban leaders could be hit by the Americans right on target. However, of the 50 drone attacks carried out between January 29, 2008 and April 8, 2009, 10 hit their targets and killed 14 wanted al-Qaeda operatives. Most of these attacks were carried out on the basis of intelligence believed to have been provided by the Pakistani and Afghan tribesmen who had been spying for the US-led allied forces stationed in Afghanistan.The remaining 50 drone attacks went wrong due to faulty intelligence information, killing hundreds of innocent civilians, including women and children. The number of the Pakistani civilians killed in those 50 attacks stood at 537, in which 385 people lost their lives in 2008 and 152 people were slain in the first 99 days of 2009 (between January 1 and April 8).Of the 50 drone attacks, targeting the Pakistani tribal areas since January 2008, 36 were carried out in 2008 and 14 were conducted in the first 99 days of 2009. Of the 14 attacks targeting Pakistan in 2009, three were carried out in January, killing 30 people, two in February killing 55 people, five in March killing 36 people and four were conducted in the first nine days of April, killing 31 people.Of the 14 strikes carried out in the first 99 days of April 2009, only one proved successful, killing two most wanted senior al-Qaeda leaders - Osama al Kini and Sheikh Ahmed Salim Swedan. Both had lost their lives in a New Year’s Day drone strike carried out in the South Waziristan region on January 1, 2009.Kini was believed to be the chief operational commander of al-Qaeda in Pakistan and had replaced Abu Faraj Al Libi after his arrest from Bannu in 2004. Both men were behind the 1998 bombings of the US embassies in Dares Salaam, Tanzania, and Nairobi, Kenya, which killed 224 civilians and wounded more than 5,000 others.There were 36 recorded cross-border US predator strikes inside Pakistan during 2008, of which 29 took place after August 31, 2008, killing 385 people. However, only nine of the 36 strikes hit their actual targets, killing 12 wanted al-Qaeda leaders. The first successful predator strike had killed Abu Laith al Libi, a senior military commander of al-Qaeda who was targeted in North Waziristan on January 29, 2008. The second successful attack in Bajaur had killed Abu Sulayman Jazairi, al-Qaeda’s external operations chief, on March 14, 2008. The third attack in South Waziristan on July 28, 2008, had killed Abu Khabab al Masri, al-Qaeda’s weapons of mass destruction chief. The fourth successful attack in South Waziristan on August 13, 2008, had killed al-Qaeda leader Abdur Rehman.The fifth predator strike carried out in North Waziristan near Miranshah on Sept 8, 2008 had killed three al-Qaeda leaders, Abu Haris, Abu Hamza, and Zain Ul Abu Qasim. The sixth successful predator hit in the South Waziristan region on October 2008 had killed Khalid Habib, a key leader of al-Qaeda’s paramilitary Shadow Army. The seventh such attack conducted in North Waziristan on October 31, 2008 had killed Abu Jihad al Masri, a top leader of the Egyptian Islamic group. The eighth successful predator strike had killed al-Qaeda leader Abdullah Azzam al Saudi in east of North Waziristan on November 19, 2008.The ninth and the last successful drone attack of 2008, carried out in the Ali Khel region just outside Miramshah in North Waziristan on November 22, 2008, had killed al-Qaeda leader Abu Zubair al Masri and his Pakistani fugitive accomplice Rashid Rauf.According to the figures compiled by the Pakistani authorities, a total of 537 people have been killed in 50 incidents of cross-border US predator strikes since January 1, 2008 to April 8, 2009, averaging 34 killings per month and 11 killings per attack. The average per month killings in predator strikes during 12 months of 2008 stood at 32 while the average per attack killings in the 36 drone strikes for the same year stood at 11.Similarly, 152 people have been killed in 14 incidents of cross-border predator attacks in the tribal areas in the first 99 days of 2009, averaging 38 killings per month and 11 killings per attack.Since September 3, 2008, it appears that the Americans have upped their attacks in Pakistani tribal areas in a bid to disrupt the al-Qaeda and the Taliban network, which they allege is being used to launch cross border ambushes against the Nato forces in Afghanistan.The American forces stationed in Afghanistan carried out nine aerial strikes between September 3 and September 25, 2008, killing 57 people and injuring 38 others. The attacks were launched on September 3, 4, 5, 8, 12, 15, 17, 22 and September 27. However, the September 3, 2008 American action was unique in the sense that two CH-47 Chinook transport helicopters landed in the village of Zawlolai in the South Waziristan Agency with ground troops from the US Special Operation Forces, fired at three houses and killed 17, including five women and four sleeping children.Besides the two helicopters carrying the US Special Forces Commandos, two jet fighters and two gun-ship helicopters provided the air cover for the half-an-hour American operation, more than a kilometre inside the Pakistani border.The last predator strike on [April 8, 2009] was carried out hardly a few hours after the Pakistani authorities had rejected an American proposal for joint operations in the tribal areas against terrorism and militancy, as differences of opinion between the two countries over various aspects of the war on terror came out into the open for the first time.The proposal came from two top US visiting officials, presidential envoy for the South Asia Richard Holbrooke and Chairman of Joint Chiefs of Staff Admiral Mike Mullen. However, the Pakistani military and political leadership reportedly rejected the proposal and adopted a tough posture against a barrage of increasing US predator strikes and criticism emanating from Washington, targeting the Pakistan Army and the Inter Services Intelligence (ISI) and creating doubts about their sincerity in the war on terror and the fight against al-Qaeda and Taliban.
A detailed look at the magnitude of the drone attacks. There is not all that much coverage of the issue in the western press. Obama is carrying on and even extending the Bush drone policy. The Pakistani govt. is obviously two faced. Internally the issue forces them to constantly criticise the attacks but still most of the flights actually originate from Pakistani air fields and it seems that the Pakistanis have tried to get the US to assasinate a Pakistani militant leader using the drones!
60 drone hits kill 14 al-Qaeda men, 687 civilians
Amir MirLAHORE:
Of the 60 cross-border predator strikes carried out by the Afghanistan-based American drones in Pakistan between January 14, 2006 and April 8, 2009, only 10 were able to hit their actual targets, killing 14 wanted al-Qaeda leaders, besides perishing 687 innocent Pakistani civilians. The success percentage of the US predator strikes thus comes to not more than six per cent.Figures compiled by the Pakistani authorities show that a total of 701 people, including 14 al-Qaeda leaders, have been killed since January 2006 in 60 American predator attacks targeting the tribal areas of Pakistan. Two strikes carried out in 2006 had killed 98 civilians while three attacks conducted in 2007 had slain 66 Pakistanis, yet none of the wanted al-Qaeda or Taliban leaders could be hit by the Americans right on target. However, of the 50 drone attacks carried out between January 29, 2008 and April 8, 2009, 10 hit their targets and killed 14 wanted al-Qaeda operatives. Most of these attacks were carried out on the basis of intelligence believed to have been provided by the Pakistani and Afghan tribesmen who had been spying for the US-led allied forces stationed in Afghanistan.The remaining 50 drone attacks went wrong due to faulty intelligence information, killing hundreds of innocent civilians, including women and children. The number of the Pakistani civilians killed in those 50 attacks stood at 537, in which 385 people lost their lives in 2008 and 152 people were slain in the first 99 days of 2009 (between January 1 and April 8).Of the 50 drone attacks, targeting the Pakistani tribal areas since January 2008, 36 were carried out in 2008 and 14 were conducted in the first 99 days of 2009. Of the 14 attacks targeting Pakistan in 2009, three were carried out in January, killing 30 people, two in February killing 55 people, five in March killing 36 people and four were conducted in the first nine days of April, killing 31 people.Of the 14 strikes carried out in the first 99 days of April 2009, only one proved successful, killing two most wanted senior al-Qaeda leaders - Osama al Kini and Sheikh Ahmed Salim Swedan. Both had lost their lives in a New Year’s Day drone strike carried out in the South Waziristan region on January 1, 2009.Kini was believed to be the chief operational commander of al-Qaeda in Pakistan and had replaced Abu Faraj Al Libi after his arrest from Bannu in 2004. Both men were behind the 1998 bombings of the US embassies in Dares Salaam, Tanzania, and Nairobi, Kenya, which killed 224 civilians and wounded more than 5,000 others.There were 36 recorded cross-border US predator strikes inside Pakistan during 2008, of which 29 took place after August 31, 2008, killing 385 people. However, only nine of the 36 strikes hit their actual targets, killing 12 wanted al-Qaeda leaders. The first successful predator strike had killed Abu Laith al Libi, a senior military commander of al-Qaeda who was targeted in North Waziristan on January 29, 2008. The second successful attack in Bajaur had killed Abu Sulayman Jazairi, al-Qaeda’s external operations chief, on March 14, 2008. The third attack in South Waziristan on July 28, 2008, had killed Abu Khabab al Masri, al-Qaeda’s weapons of mass destruction chief. The fourth successful attack in South Waziristan on August 13, 2008, had killed al-Qaeda leader Abdur Rehman.The fifth predator strike carried out in North Waziristan near Miranshah on Sept 8, 2008 had killed three al-Qaeda leaders, Abu Haris, Abu Hamza, and Zain Ul Abu Qasim. The sixth successful predator hit in the South Waziristan region on October 2008 had killed Khalid Habib, a key leader of al-Qaeda’s paramilitary Shadow Army. The seventh such attack conducted in North Waziristan on October 31, 2008 had killed Abu Jihad al Masri, a top leader of the Egyptian Islamic group. The eighth successful predator strike had killed al-Qaeda leader Abdullah Azzam al Saudi in east of North Waziristan on November 19, 2008.The ninth and the last successful drone attack of 2008, carried out in the Ali Khel region just outside Miramshah in North Waziristan on November 22, 2008, had killed al-Qaeda leader Abu Zubair al Masri and his Pakistani fugitive accomplice Rashid Rauf.According to the figures compiled by the Pakistani authorities, a total of 537 people have been killed in 50 incidents of cross-border US predator strikes since January 1, 2008 to April 8, 2009, averaging 34 killings per month and 11 killings per attack. The average per month killings in predator strikes during 12 months of 2008 stood at 32 while the average per attack killings in the 36 drone strikes for the same year stood at 11.Similarly, 152 people have been killed in 14 incidents of cross-border predator attacks in the tribal areas in the first 99 days of 2009, averaging 38 killings per month and 11 killings per attack.Since September 3, 2008, it appears that the Americans have upped their attacks in Pakistani tribal areas in a bid to disrupt the al-Qaeda and the Taliban network, which they allege is being used to launch cross border ambushes against the Nato forces in Afghanistan.The American forces stationed in Afghanistan carried out nine aerial strikes between September 3 and September 25, 2008, killing 57 people and injuring 38 others. The attacks were launched on September 3, 4, 5, 8, 12, 15, 17, 22 and September 27. However, the September 3, 2008 American action was unique in the sense that two CH-47 Chinook transport helicopters landed in the village of Zawlolai in the South Waziristan Agency with ground troops from the US Special Operation Forces, fired at three houses and killed 17, including five women and four sleeping children.Besides the two helicopters carrying the US Special Forces Commandos, two jet fighters and two gun-ship helicopters provided the air cover for the half-an-hour American operation, more than a kilometre inside the Pakistani border.The last predator strike on [April 8, 2009] was carried out hardly a few hours after the Pakistani authorities had rejected an American proposal for joint operations in the tribal areas against terrorism and militancy, as differences of opinion between the two countries over various aspects of the war on terror came out into the open for the first time.The proposal came from two top US visiting officials, presidential envoy for the South Asia Richard Holbrooke and Chairman of Joint Chiefs of Staff Admiral Mike Mullen. However, the Pakistani military and political leadership reportedly rejected the proposal and adopted a tough posture against a barrage of increasing US predator strikes and criticism emanating from Washington, targeting the Pakistan Army and the Inter Services Intelligence (ISI) and creating doubts about their sincerity in the war on terror and the fight against al-Qaeda and Taliban.
Sunday, April 12, 2009
Free Clinics fill medical void.
This is from USA Today.
Obviously the free and community system is being stressed by increased demand and reduced funding. This is more evidence that the US system needs something akin to the European universal health care plans. However, with the US system tied to a web of powerful insurers and private corporations such reforms have so far proved impossible. Any reform is still likely to leave the US one of the most expensive systems in the world but still not providing adequate treatment for those on the lower end of the income scale.
Free clinics fill medical void
By Marisol Bello, USA TODAY
WEST CHESTER, Pa. — By his analysis, Edward Boyer should be dead.
Boyer, who lost his health insurance with his factory job last May, is an insulin-dependent diabetic who says he can't afford his medicine. He has a new job, working part-time in the kitchen of a chain-store restaurant, but can't afford insurance, he says.
POLL: 21% of Americans scrambling to pay medical, drug bills
SKIPPED: Many forgoing routine dental care, too
A month ago, things looked grim. He had enough insulin to last a few days and didn't have $200 for a refill.
That's when a friend, also diabetic, told him about Community Volunteers in Medicine, a clinic in this suburb 36 miles west of Philadelphia.
The clinic provides free medical and dental services and medicine for the working poor — people who have no insurance but earn too much to qualify for federal or state programs.
"They kept me alive," says Boyer, 28, of Coatesville.
More Americans losing their jobs and health insurance are turning to volunteer-run free clinics and government-funded community health centers for free or low-cost medical care. The safety net is being strained as demand grows and budgets shrink.
For every 1 percentage point rise in unemployment, the number of uninsured people increases by 1.1 million, according to Families USA, a health-reform advocacy group. The U.S. unemployment rate is 8.5%.
"That's placing a major-league burden on health centers," says Tom Van Coverden, CEO of the National Association of Community Health Centers.
Community health centers are funded by states and the federal government and provide services to the poor, regardless of insurance. Patients receive free services or pay on a sliding scale based on their income.
In 2008, the country's 1,200 community health centers treated 7 million uninsured patients, up 3% from 6.8 million in 2007.
Van Coverden says the recession is likely to drive the number of uninsured up by 30%.
Free clinics are charity organizations that provide services to people who can't afford insurance or don't qualify for government health programs. They rely on donations and volunteer medical staff to care for 4 million patients a year, says Nicole Lamoureux, executive director of the National Association of Free Clinics.
Community health centers and free clinics treat a small portion of the estimated 46 million Americans the U.S. Census estimates have no insurance.
Among the challenges clinics and health centers face:
•In West Chester, Community Volunteers in Medicine treated 332 patients in February, up 26% from February 2008. The cost of care was up 21%. At the same time, the clinic was about $100,000 behind in fundraising for its $1.8 million annual budget.
•Ohio's 40 free clinics treated 56,000 uninsured patients in 2008, up from 43,000 in 2007. Marjorie Frazier, executive director of the Ohio Association of Free Clinics, expects the number to increase in 2009. In January, one clinic in Cleveland closed because it lacked funding. Ohio, one of the few states that helps pay for free clinics' operations, is cutting funding. Its two-year allocation for 2008 and 2009 was $2.1 million; for 2010 and 2011, proposed funding is $1.5 million.
•California's 800 community health centers saw increases of up to 20% in uninsured patients in the past six months. The state, facing a $42 billion budget shortfall, is eliminating payments for some services for poor adults, including dental care. As a result, the centers will lay off 1,000 dentists and other staff, leaving as many as 400,000 people without dental care, says Chris Patterson, spokesman for the California Primary Care Association.
Community health centers are getting a lifeline, though. They will receive $2 billion in federal stimulus funding for staffing, equipment and construction of new centers.
In Carrboro, N.C., Piedmont Health Services will receive $686,000 in stimulus money that will keep the center from laying off 19 of its 235 medical, dental and pharmacy workers, says CEO Brian Toomey.
Free clinics, which won't get any of that money, are stepping up fundraising. They are appealing to donors who want to contribute to charities that provide care for those who need it most in the troubled economy, says Maureen Tomoschuk, CEO of Community Volunteers in Medicine.
Anthony Hicklen hopes the donations keep coming. The owner of a janitorial business, Hicklen says he can't afford private insurance and has been going to the clinic since 2003.
This year, the clinic's volunteer doctors diagnosed him with prostate cancer. The clinic helped him join a state program for the poor that will pay for his surgery this month.
"The clinic is the only answer for a lot of people," Hicklen says. "This is a lifesaver for me. I'm 55 years old and I would like to see a few more years."
Copyright 2008 USA TODAY, a division of Gannett Co. Inc.
Obviously the free and community system is being stressed by increased demand and reduced funding. This is more evidence that the US system needs something akin to the European universal health care plans. However, with the US system tied to a web of powerful insurers and private corporations such reforms have so far proved impossible. Any reform is still likely to leave the US one of the most expensive systems in the world but still not providing adequate treatment for those on the lower end of the income scale.
Free clinics fill medical void
By Marisol Bello, USA TODAY
WEST CHESTER, Pa. — By his analysis, Edward Boyer should be dead.
Boyer, who lost his health insurance with his factory job last May, is an insulin-dependent diabetic who says he can't afford his medicine. He has a new job, working part-time in the kitchen of a chain-store restaurant, but can't afford insurance, he says.
POLL: 21% of Americans scrambling to pay medical, drug bills
SKIPPED: Many forgoing routine dental care, too
A month ago, things looked grim. He had enough insulin to last a few days and didn't have $200 for a refill.
That's when a friend, also diabetic, told him about Community Volunteers in Medicine, a clinic in this suburb 36 miles west of Philadelphia.
The clinic provides free medical and dental services and medicine for the working poor — people who have no insurance but earn too much to qualify for federal or state programs.
"They kept me alive," says Boyer, 28, of Coatesville.
More Americans losing their jobs and health insurance are turning to volunteer-run free clinics and government-funded community health centers for free or low-cost medical care. The safety net is being strained as demand grows and budgets shrink.
For every 1 percentage point rise in unemployment, the number of uninsured people increases by 1.1 million, according to Families USA, a health-reform advocacy group. The U.S. unemployment rate is 8.5%.
"That's placing a major-league burden on health centers," says Tom Van Coverden, CEO of the National Association of Community Health Centers.
Community health centers are funded by states and the federal government and provide services to the poor, regardless of insurance. Patients receive free services or pay on a sliding scale based on their income.
In 2008, the country's 1,200 community health centers treated 7 million uninsured patients, up 3% from 6.8 million in 2007.
Van Coverden says the recession is likely to drive the number of uninsured up by 30%.
Free clinics are charity organizations that provide services to people who can't afford insurance or don't qualify for government health programs. They rely on donations and volunteer medical staff to care for 4 million patients a year, says Nicole Lamoureux, executive director of the National Association of Free Clinics.
Community health centers and free clinics treat a small portion of the estimated 46 million Americans the U.S. Census estimates have no insurance.
Among the challenges clinics and health centers face:
•In West Chester, Community Volunteers in Medicine treated 332 patients in February, up 26% from February 2008. The cost of care was up 21%. At the same time, the clinic was about $100,000 behind in fundraising for its $1.8 million annual budget.
•Ohio's 40 free clinics treated 56,000 uninsured patients in 2008, up from 43,000 in 2007. Marjorie Frazier, executive director of the Ohio Association of Free Clinics, expects the number to increase in 2009. In January, one clinic in Cleveland closed because it lacked funding. Ohio, one of the few states that helps pay for free clinics' operations, is cutting funding. Its two-year allocation for 2008 and 2009 was $2.1 million; for 2010 and 2011, proposed funding is $1.5 million.
•California's 800 community health centers saw increases of up to 20% in uninsured patients in the past six months. The state, facing a $42 billion budget shortfall, is eliminating payments for some services for poor adults, including dental care. As a result, the centers will lay off 1,000 dentists and other staff, leaving as many as 400,000 people without dental care, says Chris Patterson, spokesman for the California Primary Care Association.
Community health centers are getting a lifeline, though. They will receive $2 billion in federal stimulus funding for staffing, equipment and construction of new centers.
In Carrboro, N.C., Piedmont Health Services will receive $686,000 in stimulus money that will keep the center from laying off 19 of its 235 medical, dental and pharmacy workers, says CEO Brian Toomey.
Free clinics, which won't get any of that money, are stepping up fundraising. They are appealing to donors who want to contribute to charities that provide care for those who need it most in the troubled economy, says Maureen Tomoschuk, CEO of Community Volunteers in Medicine.
Anthony Hicklen hopes the donations keep coming. The owner of a janitorial business, Hicklen says he can't afford private insurance and has been going to the clinic since 2003.
This year, the clinic's volunteer doctors diagnosed him with prostate cancer. The clinic helped him join a state program for the poor that will pay for his surgery this month.
"The clinic is the only answer for a lot of people," Hicklen says. "This is a lifesaver for me. I'm 55 years old and I would like to see a few more years."
Copyright 2008 USA TODAY, a division of Gannett Co. Inc.
Obama uses Bush funding tactics to finance Afghan and Iraq wars.
This is from the Telegraph (UK)
Buried in this article is the information that Obama is actually increasing the size of the military although he is cutting some weapons programs it would seem. Interesting that Obama feels that it is necessary to use Bush tactics but of course "for the last time." Even his pledge to withdraw from Iraq is now being tempered even though he had always meant to keep up to 50,000 there in "support"roles.
Barack Obama uses Bush funding tactics to finance wars in Iraq and Afghanistan
President Barack Obama has requested another $83.4 billion (£57 billion) from Congress to pay for the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, using a controversial special troop funding provision that he voted against as a senator.
By Philip Sherwell in New York Last Updated: 4:12PM BST 10 Apr 2009
Mr Obama's request seems certain to be approved comfortably, with support from Republicans
Antiwar congressman and activists who played a key role in Mr Obama's election campaign criticised him for deploying the same "off the books" funding tactic that were introduced by his predecessor George W Bush.
Mr Bush was accused of trying to mask the overall cost of the two conflicts – which now stands at virtually $1 trillion - by funding them via annual "emergency" supplements rather than through the usual budgetary process.
The White House says the request, placed on Thursday evening, was needed to secure funding for the current fiscal year and that it will be the last made in this form before the first Obama budget kicks in.
"This will be the last supplemental for Iraq and Afghanistan. The process by which this has been funded over the course of the past many years, the president has discussed and will change," said Robert Gibbs, the president's spokesman.
The request seems certain to be approved comfortably, with support from Republicans. But some liberal Democrats expressed their frustration with the increased funding and Mr Obama's plans for the two conflict zones.
"This funding will do two things – it will prolong our occupation of Iraq through at least the end of 2011, and it will deepen and expand our military presence in Afghanistan indefinitely," said anti-war Rep. Lynn Woolsey. "Instead of attempting to find military solutions to the problems we face in Iraq and Afghanistan, President Obama must fundamentally change the mission in both countries to focus on promoting reconciliation, economic development, humanitarian aid, and regional diplomatic efforts."
The request would fund an average force level in Iraq of 140,000 US troops, finance Mr Obama's initiative to boost troop levels in Afghanistan to more than 60,000 from the current 39,000 and provide $2.2 billion to accelerate the Pentagon's plans to increase the overall size of the US military, the Associated Press reported.
Mr Obama also requested $350 million in new funding to upgrade security along the US-Mexico border and to combat narcoterrorists, along with another $400 million in counterinsurgency aid to Pakistan.
Meanwhile, the top US commander in Iraq has given warning that American combat troops may be required to remain in Iraq after Mr Obama's June 20 withdrawal deadline to deal with al Qaeda terrorists in Mosul and Baqubah. Indeed, General Ray Odierno said that troops levels in the two troubled cities might actually rise rather than fall.
Buried in this article is the information that Obama is actually increasing the size of the military although he is cutting some weapons programs it would seem. Interesting that Obama feels that it is necessary to use Bush tactics but of course "for the last time." Even his pledge to withdraw from Iraq is now being tempered even though he had always meant to keep up to 50,000 there in "support"roles.
Barack Obama uses Bush funding tactics to finance wars in Iraq and Afghanistan
President Barack Obama has requested another $83.4 billion (£57 billion) from Congress to pay for the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, using a controversial special troop funding provision that he voted against as a senator.
By Philip Sherwell in New York Last Updated: 4:12PM BST 10 Apr 2009
Mr Obama's request seems certain to be approved comfortably, with support from Republicans
Antiwar congressman and activists who played a key role in Mr Obama's election campaign criticised him for deploying the same "off the books" funding tactic that were introduced by his predecessor George W Bush.
Mr Bush was accused of trying to mask the overall cost of the two conflicts – which now stands at virtually $1 trillion - by funding them via annual "emergency" supplements rather than through the usual budgetary process.
The White House says the request, placed on Thursday evening, was needed to secure funding for the current fiscal year and that it will be the last made in this form before the first Obama budget kicks in.
"This will be the last supplemental for Iraq and Afghanistan. The process by which this has been funded over the course of the past many years, the president has discussed and will change," said Robert Gibbs, the president's spokesman.
The request seems certain to be approved comfortably, with support from Republicans. But some liberal Democrats expressed their frustration with the increased funding and Mr Obama's plans for the two conflict zones.
"This funding will do two things – it will prolong our occupation of Iraq through at least the end of 2011, and it will deepen and expand our military presence in Afghanistan indefinitely," said anti-war Rep. Lynn Woolsey. "Instead of attempting to find military solutions to the problems we face in Iraq and Afghanistan, President Obama must fundamentally change the mission in both countries to focus on promoting reconciliation, economic development, humanitarian aid, and regional diplomatic efforts."
The request would fund an average force level in Iraq of 140,000 US troops, finance Mr Obama's initiative to boost troop levels in Afghanistan to more than 60,000 from the current 39,000 and provide $2.2 billion to accelerate the Pentagon's plans to increase the overall size of the US military, the Associated Press reported.
Mr Obama also requested $350 million in new funding to upgrade security along the US-Mexico border and to combat narcoterrorists, along with another $400 million in counterinsurgency aid to Pakistan.
Meanwhile, the top US commander in Iraq has given warning that American combat troops may be required to remain in Iraq after Mr Obama's June 20 withdrawal deadline to deal with al Qaeda terrorists in Mosul and Baqubah. Indeed, General Ray Odierno said that troops levels in the two troubled cities might actually rise rather than fall.
Saturday, April 11, 2009
Georgians rally against Saakashvili
This is from Aljazeera.
It remains to be seen whether the protests will actually bring down the govt. or if people will tire of them and the president will be able to repress the opposition. Certainly the economy is bad and the war brought nothing but grief to Georgians.
Georgians rally against Saakashvili
Opposition protesters have said they will continue to rally until Saakashvili resigns as president [AFP]
Thousands of people have rallied in the streets of Tbilisi, the capital of Georgia, for a third day of protests aimed at pressuring President Mikheil Saakashvili to resign.
A coalition of opposition parties led the demonstration on Saturday in front of parliament, continuing what they call a "national disobedience campaign".
The protests came a day after more than 25,000 people had gathered at the same location.
"We have come to a joint conclusion to show the government in a peaceful way that we are not just a small group of Tbilisi residents who want changes, that the whole of Georgia is with us," Irakly Alasania, an opposition leader, said.
"Today we have realised that if we ourselves do not take back control of our country, do not return our statehood, then we will have to face this problem for many years to come."
Saakashvili has rejected the calls to resign and has offered to hold talks with the opposition.
"There is poverty in the country which has been aggravated by the war and the economic crisis and our citizens are angry today because of these problems. I am angry too," he said on Friday.
"It is not easy to overcome all of this ... It requires unity and dialogue."
Opposition determined
Koba Davitashvili, an opposition leader from the People's Party, said on Saturday that protesters would not waver in their calls for the president to leave office.
"There will be no dialogue with Saakashvili. Dialogue is possible on only one issue: his resignation."
Giorgi Kandelaki, a member of Georgia's parliament, told Al Jazeera that while Saakashvili would not step down, there was a need to address issues raised by the opposition.
"This protest once more shows that the government should redouble its effort to broaden political dialogue, which is ongoing with the opposition," Kandelaki said.
Protests began on Thursday, when at least 60,000 people gathered outside parliament, waving flags and chanting "resign".Opposition leaders, angry at Saakashvili's handling of last year's Russia-Georgia war and accusing him of failing to deliver promised democratic reforms, have said they will carry on protesting until he resigns.
David Gamkrelidze, leader of the New Rights party, said: "If [Saakashvili] does not accept our demands, we will intensify pressure and the protests will be sharper, not only outside parliament but in other places as well, for example outside the presidency."
Tired of protests
Matthew Collin, Al Jazeera's correspondent in Tbilisi, said despite the protests, there were signs that Saakashvili still had an element of popularity.
"A lot of Georgians simply want stability," he said.
In video
Georgia's president vows to fight on"They are tired of endless protests in the street, they want to get on with their lives and they want the economy to develop, and they feel political unrest won't allow that to happen."
Opposition to Saakashvili has been growing since the Russia-Georgia war, in which Georgia was defeated.
The conflict has emboldened opponents who argue that Saakashvili has made too many mistakes to remain in power until 2013.
Critics have also accused him of betraying the democratic reforms promised in the 2003 Rose Revolution, in which he came to power.
Source:
Al Jazeera and agencies
It remains to be seen whether the protests will actually bring down the govt. or if people will tire of them and the president will be able to repress the opposition. Certainly the economy is bad and the war brought nothing but grief to Georgians.
Georgians rally against Saakashvili
Opposition protesters have said they will continue to rally until Saakashvili resigns as president [AFP]
Thousands of people have rallied in the streets of Tbilisi, the capital of Georgia, for a third day of protests aimed at pressuring President Mikheil Saakashvili to resign.
A coalition of opposition parties led the demonstration on Saturday in front of parliament, continuing what they call a "national disobedience campaign".
The protests came a day after more than 25,000 people had gathered at the same location.
"We have come to a joint conclusion to show the government in a peaceful way that we are not just a small group of Tbilisi residents who want changes, that the whole of Georgia is with us," Irakly Alasania, an opposition leader, said.
"Today we have realised that if we ourselves do not take back control of our country, do not return our statehood, then we will have to face this problem for many years to come."
Saakashvili has rejected the calls to resign and has offered to hold talks with the opposition.
"There is poverty in the country which has been aggravated by the war and the economic crisis and our citizens are angry today because of these problems. I am angry too," he said on Friday.
"It is not easy to overcome all of this ... It requires unity and dialogue."
Opposition determined
Koba Davitashvili, an opposition leader from the People's Party, said on Saturday that protesters would not waver in their calls for the president to leave office.
"There will be no dialogue with Saakashvili. Dialogue is possible on only one issue: his resignation."
Giorgi Kandelaki, a member of Georgia's parliament, told Al Jazeera that while Saakashvili would not step down, there was a need to address issues raised by the opposition.
"This protest once more shows that the government should redouble its effort to broaden political dialogue, which is ongoing with the opposition," Kandelaki said.
Protests began on Thursday, when at least 60,000 people gathered outside parliament, waving flags and chanting "resign".Opposition leaders, angry at Saakashvili's handling of last year's Russia-Georgia war and accusing him of failing to deliver promised democratic reforms, have said they will carry on protesting until he resigns.
David Gamkrelidze, leader of the New Rights party, said: "If [Saakashvili] does not accept our demands, we will intensify pressure and the protests will be sharper, not only outside parliament but in other places as well, for example outside the presidency."
Tired of protests
Matthew Collin, Al Jazeera's correspondent in Tbilisi, said despite the protests, there were signs that Saakashvili still had an element of popularity.
"A lot of Georgians simply want stability," he said.
In video
Georgia's president vows to fight on"They are tired of endless protests in the street, they want to get on with their lives and they want the economy to develop, and they feel political unrest won't allow that to happen."
Opposition to Saakashvili has been growing since the Russia-Georgia war, in which Georgia was defeated.
The conflict has emboldened opponents who argue that Saakashvili has made too many mistakes to remain in power until 2013.
Critics have also accused him of betraying the democratic reforms promised in the 2003 Rose Revolution, in which he came to power.
Source:
Al Jazeera and agencies
Friday, April 10, 2009
Sachs on the Geithner-Summers banking plan.
This is another critique of the Geithner bank bailout plan that shows again how taxpayers are buying into a raw deal while the bankers will be making a great deal of money. No wonder financial stocks have been rising the last few days!
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/jeffrey-sachs/the-geithner-summers-plan_b_183499.htmlTwo weeks ago, I posted an article showing how the Geithner-Summers bankingplan could potentially and unnecessarily transfer hundreds of billions ofdollars of wealth from taxpayers to banks. The same basic arithmetic waslater described by Joseph Stiglitz in the *New YorkTimes*<http://www.nytimes.com/2009/04/01/opinion/01stiglitz.html?scp=2&sq=stiglitz&st=cse>(April1) and by PeytonYoung in the *FinancialTimes*<http://www.ft.com/cms/s/3e985de0-1ee7-11de-a748-00144feabdc0,Authorised=false.html?_i_location=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.ft.com%2Fcms%2Fs%2F0%2F3e985de0-1ee7-11de-a748-00144feabdc0.html&_i_referer=http%3A%2F%2Fsearch.ft.com%2Fsearch%3FqueryText%3Dpeyton%2Byoung%26x%3D0%26y%3D0%26aje%3Dtrue%26dse%3D%26dsz%3D>(April1). In fact, the situation is even potentially more disastrous thanwe wrote. Insiders can easily game the system created by Geithner andSummers to cost up to a trillion dollars or more to the taxpayers.Here's how. Consider a toxic asset held by Citibank with a face value of $1million, but with zero probability of any payout and therefore with a zeromarket value. An outside bidder would not pay anything for such an asset.All of the previous articles consider the case of true outside bidders.Suppose, however, that Citibank itself sets up a Citibank Public-PrivateInvestment Fund (CPPIF) under the Geithner-Summers plan. The CPPIF will bidthe full face value of $1 million for the worthless asset, because it canborrow $850K from the FDIC, and get $75K from the Treasury, to make thepurchase! Citibank will only have to put in $75K of the total.Citibank thereby receives $1 million for the worthless asset, while theCPPIF ends up with an utterly worthless asset against $850K in debt to theFDIC. The CPPIF therefore quietly declares bankruptcy, while Citibank walksaway with a cool $1 million. Citibank's net profit on the transaction is$925K (remember that the bank invested $75K in the CPPIF) and the taxpayerslose $925K. Since the total of toxic assets in the banking system exceeds $1trillion, and perhaps reaches $2-3 trillion, the amount of potential rip-offin the Geithner-Summers plan is unconscionably large.The earlier criticisms of the Geithner-Summers plan showed that even outsidebidders generally have the incentive to bid far too much for the toxicassets, since they too get a free ride from the government loans. But oncewe acknowledge the insider-bidding route, the potential to game the plan atthe cost of the taxpayers becomes extraordinary. And the gaming of thesystem doesn't have to be as crude as Citibank setting up its own CPPIF.There are lots of ways that it can do this indirectly, for example, buyingassets of other banks which in turn buy Citi's assets. Or other stakeholdersin Citi, such as groups of bondholders and shareholders, could do the same.Several news stories suggest some grounding for these fears. Both *BusinessWeek* and the *Financial Times* report that the banks themselves might beinvited to bid for the toxic assets, which would seem to set up just thescam outline above. What is incredible is that lack of the most minimaltransparency so far about the rules, risks, and procedures of thistrillion-dollar plan. Also incredible is the apparent lack of any oversightby Congress, reinforcing the sense that the fix is in or that at best we areall sitting ducks.The sad part of all this is that there are now several much better ideascirculating among experts, but none of these seems to get the time of dayfrom the Treasury. The best ideas are forms of corporate reorganization, inwhich a bank weighed down with toxic assets is divided into two banks -- a"good bank" and a "bad bank" <http://voxeu.org/index.php?q=node/3320> --with the bad bank left holding the toxic assets and the long-term debts,while owning the equity of the good bank. If the bad assets pay off betterthan is now feared, the bondholders get repaid and the current bank shareskeep their value. If the bad assets in fact default heavily as is nowexpected, the bondholders and shareholders lose their investments. The keypoint of the good bank -- bad bank plans is an orderly process to restorehealthy banking functions (in the good bank) while divvying up the losses ina fair way among the banks' existing claimants. The taxpayer is not neededfor that, except to cover the insured part of the banks' existingliabilities, specifically the banks' deposits and perhaps other short-termliabilities that are key to financial market liquidity.Cynics believe that the Geithner-Summers Plan is exactly what it seems: anaked grab of taxpayer money for Wall Street interests. Geithner and Summersargue that it's the least bad approach to a messy situation, in which weneed to restore banking functions but don't have any perfect ways to dothat. If they are serious about their justification, let them come forwardto confront their critics and to explain to the American people why theother proposals are not being pursued.Let them explain the hidden and not-so-hidden risks to the American taxpayerof the plan that they have put forward. Let them explain why they are sointent on saving the banks' bondholders, even the long-term unsecuredcreditors who clearly knew they were taking market risks in buying Citibankbonds. Let them work with their critics to fashion a less risky and lesscostly plan. So far Geithner and Summers tell us that their plan is the onlyoption, but without a word of further explanation as to why.___________________________________
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/jeffrey-sachs/the-geithner-summers-plan_b_183499.htmlTwo weeks ago, I posted an article showing how the Geithner-Summers bankingplan could potentially and unnecessarily transfer hundreds of billions ofdollars of wealth from taxpayers to banks. The same basic arithmetic waslater described by Joseph Stiglitz in the *New YorkTimes*<http://www.nytimes.com/2009/04/01/opinion/01stiglitz.html?scp=2&sq=stiglitz&st=cse>(April1) and by PeytonYoung in the *FinancialTimes*<http://www.ft.com/cms/s/3e985de0-1ee7-11de-a748-00144feabdc0,Authorised=false.html?_i_location=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.ft.com%2Fcms%2Fs%2F0%2F3e985de0-1ee7-11de-a748-00144feabdc0.html&_i_referer=http%3A%2F%2Fsearch.ft.com%2Fsearch%3FqueryText%3Dpeyton%2Byoung%26x%3D0%26y%3D0%26aje%3Dtrue%26dse%3D%26dsz%3D>(April1). In fact, the situation is even potentially more disastrous thanwe wrote. Insiders can easily game the system created by Geithner andSummers to cost up to a trillion dollars or more to the taxpayers.Here's how. Consider a toxic asset held by Citibank with a face value of $1million, but with zero probability of any payout and therefore with a zeromarket value. An outside bidder would not pay anything for such an asset.All of the previous articles consider the case of true outside bidders.Suppose, however, that Citibank itself sets up a Citibank Public-PrivateInvestment Fund (CPPIF) under the Geithner-Summers plan. The CPPIF will bidthe full face value of $1 million for the worthless asset, because it canborrow $850K from the FDIC, and get $75K from the Treasury, to make thepurchase! Citibank will only have to put in $75K of the total.Citibank thereby receives $1 million for the worthless asset, while theCPPIF ends up with an utterly worthless asset against $850K in debt to theFDIC. The CPPIF therefore quietly declares bankruptcy, while Citibank walksaway with a cool $1 million. Citibank's net profit on the transaction is$925K (remember that the bank invested $75K in the CPPIF) and the taxpayerslose $925K. Since the total of toxic assets in the banking system exceeds $1trillion, and perhaps reaches $2-3 trillion, the amount of potential rip-offin the Geithner-Summers plan is unconscionably large.The earlier criticisms of the Geithner-Summers plan showed that even outsidebidders generally have the incentive to bid far too much for the toxicassets, since they too get a free ride from the government loans. But oncewe acknowledge the insider-bidding route, the potential to game the plan atthe cost of the taxpayers becomes extraordinary. And the gaming of thesystem doesn't have to be as crude as Citibank setting up its own CPPIF.There are lots of ways that it can do this indirectly, for example, buyingassets of other banks which in turn buy Citi's assets. Or other stakeholdersin Citi, such as groups of bondholders and shareholders, could do the same.Several news stories suggest some grounding for these fears. Both *BusinessWeek* and the *Financial Times* report that the banks themselves might beinvited to bid for the toxic assets, which would seem to set up just thescam outline above. What is incredible is that lack of the most minimaltransparency so far about the rules, risks, and procedures of thistrillion-dollar plan. Also incredible is the apparent lack of any oversightby Congress, reinforcing the sense that the fix is in or that at best we areall sitting ducks.The sad part of all this is that there are now several much better ideascirculating among experts, but none of these seems to get the time of dayfrom the Treasury. The best ideas are forms of corporate reorganization, inwhich a bank weighed down with toxic assets is divided into two banks -- a"good bank" and a "bad bank" <http://voxeu.org/index.php?q=node/3320> --with the bad bank left holding the toxic assets and the long-term debts,while owning the equity of the good bank. If the bad assets pay off betterthan is now feared, the bondholders get repaid and the current bank shareskeep their value. If the bad assets in fact default heavily as is nowexpected, the bondholders and shareholders lose their investments. The keypoint of the good bank -- bad bank plans is an orderly process to restorehealthy banking functions (in the good bank) while divvying up the losses ina fair way among the banks' existing claimants. The taxpayer is not neededfor that, except to cover the insured part of the banks' existingliabilities, specifically the banks' deposits and perhaps other short-termliabilities that are key to financial market liquidity.Cynics believe that the Geithner-Summers Plan is exactly what it seems: anaked grab of taxpayer money for Wall Street interests. Geithner and Summersargue that it's the least bad approach to a messy situation, in which weneed to restore banking functions but don't have any perfect ways to dothat. If they are serious about their justification, let them come forwardto confront their critics and to explain to the American people why theother proposals are not being pursued.Let them explain the hidden and not-so-hidden risks to the American taxpayerof the plan that they have put forward. Let them explain why they are sointent on saving the banks' bondholders, even the long-term unsecuredcreditors who clearly knew they were taking market risks in buying Citibankbonds. Let them work with their critics to fashion a less risky and lesscostly plan. So far Geithner and Summers tell us that their plan is the onlyoption, but without a word of further explanation as to why.___________________________________
Thursday, April 9, 2009
Insolvent banks and Imaginary fire sales
This is a critique of the view that toxic assets are incorrectly priced due to illiquidity. This article could explain why the financial system seems so happy about the TARP plan. Financial stocks have been rising of late. Perhaps as the recent stress shows banks are not really insolvent but are being kept afloat by government injection of funds. THis article obviously disagrees with economists such as Krugman.
http://www.businessinsider.com/insolvent-banks-and-imaginary-fire-sales-2009-4The government's official view that toxic assets are incorrectly priced dueto illiquidity "fire sales" is wrong, a new study by Harvard and Princetonfinance professors suggests.You can read the whole paper by Harvard's Joshua Coval and Erik Stafford andPrinceton's Jakub Jurek below. The striking conclusion is that the lowprices of toxic assets actually reflect the fundamentals, rather than beingdriven by an illiquidity discount."The analysis of this paper suggests that recent credit market prices areactually highly consistent with fundamentals. A structural frameworkconfirms that bonds and credit derivatives should have experienced asignificant repricing in 2008 as the economic outlook darkened andvolatility increased. The analysis also confirms that severe mispricingexisted in the structured credit tranches prior to the crisis and that alarge part of the dramatic rise in spreads has been the elimination of thismispricing."This contrasts sharply with the analysis that underlies most of thefinancial rescue programs launched by the Federal Reserve and the TreasuryDepartment. The white paper released to support the Private-PublicInvestment Partnerships, the program that seeks to encourage private firmsto buy toxic assets with government subsidized loans, took the oppositepoint of view."Troubled real estate-related assets comprised of legacy loans andsecurities, are at the center of the problems currently impacting the U.S.financial system...The resulting need to reduce risk triggered a wide-scaledeleveraging in these markets and led to fire sales," the Treasury and theFed claimed.Many prominent economists--including such diverse types as Anna Schwartz andPaul Krugman--have taken with this official view, saying the government wasmistaking a solvency crisis for a liquidity crisis. This latest papereffectively demolishes the "fire sale" view. It draws three importantconclusions.** - *Many banks are now insolvent. *"...many major US banks are now legitimately insolvent. This insolvency can no longer be viewed as an artifact of bank assets being marked to artificially depressed prices coming out of an illiquid market. It means that bank assets are being fairly priced at valuations that sum to less than bank liabilities." - *Supporting markets in toxic assets has no purpose other than transfering money from taxpayers to banks.* "...any taxpayer dollars allocated to supporting these markets will simply transfer wealth to the current owners of these securities." - *We're making it worse. *"...policies that attempt to prevent a widespread mark-down in the value of credit-sensitive assets are likely to only delay – and perhaps even worsen – the day of reckoning."In short, the government cannot save the banks by improving liquidity orchanging mark to market rules because the problem isn't illiquidity oraccounting. The problem is that highly leveraged financial firms own assetsthat are worth far less than they thought they would be, and the firms areinsolvent as a result. This is why the latest bailout plans secretly givehuge subsidies to banks--because the only way to keep the insolvent zombiesafloat is to transfer billions of dollars to banks, bank stockholders, andbank creditors. The alternative--allowing the insolvent banks to fail,seizing the assets, wiping our shareholders, giving bond holders a serioushaircut--is still not on the official agenda.
http://www.businessinsider.com/insolvent-banks-and-imaginary-fire-sales-2009-4The government's official view that toxic assets are incorrectly priced dueto illiquidity "fire sales" is wrong, a new study by Harvard and Princetonfinance professors suggests.You can read the whole paper by Harvard's Joshua Coval and Erik Stafford andPrinceton's Jakub Jurek below. The striking conclusion is that the lowprices of toxic assets actually reflect the fundamentals, rather than beingdriven by an illiquidity discount."The analysis of this paper suggests that recent credit market prices areactually highly consistent with fundamentals. A structural frameworkconfirms that bonds and credit derivatives should have experienced asignificant repricing in 2008 as the economic outlook darkened andvolatility increased. The analysis also confirms that severe mispricingexisted in the structured credit tranches prior to the crisis and that alarge part of the dramatic rise in spreads has been the elimination of thismispricing."This contrasts sharply with the analysis that underlies most of thefinancial rescue programs launched by the Federal Reserve and the TreasuryDepartment. The white paper released to support the Private-PublicInvestment Partnerships, the program that seeks to encourage private firmsto buy toxic assets with government subsidized loans, took the oppositepoint of view."Troubled real estate-related assets comprised of legacy loans andsecurities, are at the center of the problems currently impacting the U.S.financial system...The resulting need to reduce risk triggered a wide-scaledeleveraging in these markets and led to fire sales," the Treasury and theFed claimed.Many prominent economists--including such diverse types as Anna Schwartz andPaul Krugman--have taken with this official view, saying the government wasmistaking a solvency crisis for a liquidity crisis. This latest papereffectively demolishes the "fire sale" view. It draws three importantconclusions.** - *Many banks are now insolvent. *"...many major US banks are now legitimately insolvent. This insolvency can no longer be viewed as an artifact of bank assets being marked to artificially depressed prices coming out of an illiquid market. It means that bank assets are being fairly priced at valuations that sum to less than bank liabilities." - *Supporting markets in toxic assets has no purpose other than transfering money from taxpayers to banks.* "...any taxpayer dollars allocated to supporting these markets will simply transfer wealth to the current owners of these securities." - *We're making it worse. *"...policies that attempt to prevent a widespread mark-down in the value of credit-sensitive assets are likely to only delay – and perhaps even worsen – the day of reckoning."In short, the government cannot save the banks by improving liquidity orchanging mark to market rules because the problem isn't illiquidity oraccounting. The problem is that highly leveraged financial firms own assetsthat are worth far less than they thought they would be, and the firms areinsolvent as a result. This is why the latest bailout plans secretly givehuge subsidies to banks--because the only way to keep the insolvent zombiesafloat is to transfer billions of dollars to banks, bank stockholders, andbank creditors. The alternative--allowing the insolvent banks to fail,seizing the assets, wiping our shareholders, giving bond holders a serioushaircut--is still not on the official agenda.
Nawaz Sharif asks Obama to part ways with Bush policy
This is from thenews (Pakistan). Sharif obviously has gained considerable political capital with his successful demonstrations that forced that government to re-instate the chief justice and many judges. Now Sharif may be able to have the decision not to allow his candidacy overturned. As can be seen from the article Sharif is hostile to the US mode of attacking terrorism especially the use of drones and is also for negotiation with the Taliban rather than direct confrontation.
Obama seems to be even more aggressive in his stance towards Pakistan than was Bush.
Nawaz asks Obama to part ways with Bush policy
Wednesday, April 08, 2009Calls for support to democracy, development, respect of Pak sovereignty; to appear before SCBy Muhammad AnisISLAMABAD: Pakistan Muslim League-Nawaz Quaid Muhammad Nawaz Sharif has urged US President Barack Obama to part ways with the Bush administration policy to fight terrorism.“Diplomacy and development should be given priority,” Nawaz Sharif said while talking to US Special Representative Richard Holbrooke and Joint Chiefs of Staff Admiral Mike Mullen during a meeting at the residence of US Ambassador Anne W Patterson at a luncheon meeting here on Tuesday.Sharif said fight against terrorism requires consensus at all levels and Pakistan’s sovereignty must be respected. The former prime minister reminded the senior US officials that drone attacks were counter productive.Later, talking to reporters at the Punjab House after meeting with the US special representative, Nawaz Sharif said he shared his stance with the US officials. Nawaz said he told the visiting officials that President Obama will have to change the US policy regarding drone attacks.He urged the nation to get united to deal with the prevailing challenges. To a question, Nawaz said he has no intention to rejoin the federal cabinet, saying it was the party’s decision to part ways with the federal government.The PML-N Quaid said the Charter of Democracy (CoD) should be implemented now. He stressed the need for stabilising the country on economic and political fronts. “I have complete confidence in judiciary following the restoration of Chief Justice Iftikhar Muhammad Chaudhry,” he added. He said now they would appear before the Supreme Court in their case.Nawaz said he had nothing personal against President Asif Ali Zardari, adding his differences were based on principles.Online adds: The PML-N Quaid said he had no personal grudge with President Asif Ali Zardari. “Our dispute was based on principles. The whole nation rejoiced the restoration of judiciary. The need is to implement the Charter of Democracy like the reinstatement of the judges, he said.Nawaz said judiciary would provide justice to the nation in real sense following the restoration of the deposed judges.
Obama seems to be even more aggressive in his stance towards Pakistan than was Bush.
Nawaz asks Obama to part ways with Bush policy
Wednesday, April 08, 2009Calls for support to democracy, development, respect of Pak sovereignty; to appear before SCBy Muhammad AnisISLAMABAD: Pakistan Muslim League-Nawaz Quaid Muhammad Nawaz Sharif has urged US President Barack Obama to part ways with the Bush administration policy to fight terrorism.“Diplomacy and development should be given priority,” Nawaz Sharif said while talking to US Special Representative Richard Holbrooke and Joint Chiefs of Staff Admiral Mike Mullen during a meeting at the residence of US Ambassador Anne W Patterson at a luncheon meeting here on Tuesday.Sharif said fight against terrorism requires consensus at all levels and Pakistan’s sovereignty must be respected. The former prime minister reminded the senior US officials that drone attacks were counter productive.Later, talking to reporters at the Punjab House after meeting with the US special representative, Nawaz Sharif said he shared his stance with the US officials. Nawaz said he told the visiting officials that President Obama will have to change the US policy regarding drone attacks.He urged the nation to get united to deal with the prevailing challenges. To a question, Nawaz said he has no intention to rejoin the federal cabinet, saying it was the party’s decision to part ways with the federal government.The PML-N Quaid said the Charter of Democracy (CoD) should be implemented now. He stressed the need for stabilising the country on economic and political fronts. “I have complete confidence in judiciary following the restoration of Chief Justice Iftikhar Muhammad Chaudhry,” he added. He said now they would appear before the Supreme Court in their case.Nawaz said he had nothing personal against President Asif Ali Zardari, adding his differences were based on principles.Online adds: The PML-N Quaid said he had no personal grudge with President Asif Ali Zardari. “Our dispute was based on principles. The whole nation rejoiced the restoration of judiciary. The need is to implement the Charter of Democracy like the reinstatement of the judges, he said.Nawaz said judiciary would provide justice to the nation in real sense following the restoration of the deposed judges.
Dahr Jamail: On the Awakening Councils conflict in Iraq
This is from truthout.
This is another instance of blowback. While the councils helped defeat Al Qaeda in Iraq they also set the stage for the present confrontation with the Shia dominated government. It remains to be seen whether the situation is defused or if more Sunnis return to insurgency.
The Storm Widens
Monday 06 April 2009
by: Dahr Jamail, t r u t h o u t Report
One week after Iraqi government forces arrested an Awakening Group (commonly referred to as Sons of Iraq, al-Sahwa) leader, Adil al-Mashhadani, head of a patrol unit in central Baghdad's Fadhil neighborhood in Baghdad, sparking gun battles that raged for hours between US-backed Iraqi forces and US-allied Sunni militiamen that killed three people, militiamen have once again been detained, widening concerns that sectarian violence may once more engulf Baghdad. There are 50,000 Sahwa fighters in Baghdad alone.
While the Sahwa leader, who had been detained with 32 of his fighters, was eventually released by the Iraqi government, tensions grew in the wake of his detention as threats made by both sides increased. Thus far, only 11 of the 32 others have been released.
Just days after the aforementioned detention, Iraqi forces arrested two more Sahwa guards in the al-Dora neighborhood of Baghdad, which is controlled by their forces. In an article for Truthout last week, I voiced my concerns of these government attacks against Sahwa forces spreading. I am surprised at the rapidity at which this is occurring now, as this trend, if it continues, appears almost certain to spark a dramatic flare of sectarian violence in the capital city.
The Sahwa fighters, who once numbered 100,000 across Iraq according to the US military, were backed and paid by US forces until the Shiite-led Iraqi government took over the program last October, a process that was completed this week. Payment to Sahwa leaders by the US military, however, has shifted from overt payments to payment in the form of "construction contracts" to key leaders.
That the treatment of the Sahwa forces by the Iraqi government is largely seen as a barometer for the process of reconciliation does not bode well for these recent events. Most of the Sahwa fighters are former resistance fighters, who feared they would be arrested for their previous attacks against the Iraqi government. For example, Mashhadani was arrested, according to Iraqi government officials, for running a bomb-making factory among other reasons.
Further complicating matters, in separate incidents last week, US forces opened fire on a group of fighters they said could belong to a Sahwa unit, killing one, after allegedly spotting them planting a bomb. In addition, last Friday, Iraqi police arrested Hussam Alwan, a Sahwa leader in the town of Muqtadiya, 50 miles northeast of Baghdad.
On Sunday, April 5, two houses were blown up in the Abu Ghraib district of west Baghdad, one of which belonged to a leader of the local Sahwa group. A man was killed and two women wounded, municipal officials said. Assuming this trend continues, the leadership of the Sahwa groups under attack and the fighters under their control are left with two choices: sit by and wait to be arrested or assassinated, or begin to fight back. Thus far, we are seeing the latter, and there is little reason to suspect this wonít increase if the government continues with its policy.
As the threat of a resurgence of sectarian violence grows, black funeral banners hang across Baghdad, ominous reminders that there is no normal life in the war-ravaged country. The Los Angeles Times reports , "At a time when the Iraqi government and US military speak of lower death tolls, black banners drape the mosque walls and traffic circles of Baghdad, telling a different story of a world beyond statistics, where killings still ripple through society. These disposable funeral banners, randomly read by drivers who pass on the word about the drive-by shootings, bombings and assassinations they document, remind ordinary Iraqis that nothing is as it seems, that the embers of the recent civil war still burn."
Meanwhile, violence continues across the country. A brief tally of the last several days gives an idea of the situation in Iraq:
Sunday, April 5: nine Iraqis killed, 30 wounded
Saturday, April 4: one US marine, two Iraqis killed; eight Iraqis wounded
Friday, April 3: one US soldier, five Iraqis killed; 17 Iraqis wounded
Thursday, April 2: nine Iraqis killed, 22 wounded
Wednesday, April 1: one US soldier, 15 Iraqis killed; 25 Iraqis wounded
At the height of the sectarian violence that ravaged Iraq between early 2006
This is another instance of blowback. While the councils helped defeat Al Qaeda in Iraq they also set the stage for the present confrontation with the Shia dominated government. It remains to be seen whether the situation is defused or if more Sunnis return to insurgency.
The Storm Widens
Monday 06 April 2009
by: Dahr Jamail, t r u t h o u t Report
One week after Iraqi government forces arrested an Awakening Group (commonly referred to as Sons of Iraq, al-Sahwa) leader, Adil al-Mashhadani, head of a patrol unit in central Baghdad's Fadhil neighborhood in Baghdad, sparking gun battles that raged for hours between US-backed Iraqi forces and US-allied Sunni militiamen that killed three people, militiamen have once again been detained, widening concerns that sectarian violence may once more engulf Baghdad. There are 50,000 Sahwa fighters in Baghdad alone.
While the Sahwa leader, who had been detained with 32 of his fighters, was eventually released by the Iraqi government, tensions grew in the wake of his detention as threats made by both sides increased. Thus far, only 11 of the 32 others have been released.
Just days after the aforementioned detention, Iraqi forces arrested two more Sahwa guards in the al-Dora neighborhood of Baghdad, which is controlled by their forces. In an article for Truthout last week, I voiced my concerns of these government attacks against Sahwa forces spreading. I am surprised at the rapidity at which this is occurring now, as this trend, if it continues, appears almost certain to spark a dramatic flare of sectarian violence in the capital city.
The Sahwa fighters, who once numbered 100,000 across Iraq according to the US military, were backed and paid by US forces until the Shiite-led Iraqi government took over the program last October, a process that was completed this week. Payment to Sahwa leaders by the US military, however, has shifted from overt payments to payment in the form of "construction contracts" to key leaders.
That the treatment of the Sahwa forces by the Iraqi government is largely seen as a barometer for the process of reconciliation does not bode well for these recent events. Most of the Sahwa fighters are former resistance fighters, who feared they would be arrested for their previous attacks against the Iraqi government. For example, Mashhadani was arrested, according to Iraqi government officials, for running a bomb-making factory among other reasons.
Further complicating matters, in separate incidents last week, US forces opened fire on a group of fighters they said could belong to a Sahwa unit, killing one, after allegedly spotting them planting a bomb. In addition, last Friday, Iraqi police arrested Hussam Alwan, a Sahwa leader in the town of Muqtadiya, 50 miles northeast of Baghdad.
On Sunday, April 5, two houses were blown up in the Abu Ghraib district of west Baghdad, one of which belonged to a leader of the local Sahwa group. A man was killed and two women wounded, municipal officials said. Assuming this trend continues, the leadership of the Sahwa groups under attack and the fighters under their control are left with two choices: sit by and wait to be arrested or assassinated, or begin to fight back. Thus far, we are seeing the latter, and there is little reason to suspect this wonít increase if the government continues with its policy.
As the threat of a resurgence of sectarian violence grows, black funeral banners hang across Baghdad, ominous reminders that there is no normal life in the war-ravaged country. The Los Angeles Times reports , "At a time when the Iraqi government and US military speak of lower death tolls, black banners drape the mosque walls and traffic circles of Baghdad, telling a different story of a world beyond statistics, where killings still ripple through society. These disposable funeral banners, randomly read by drivers who pass on the word about the drive-by shootings, bombings and assassinations they document, remind ordinary Iraqis that nothing is as it seems, that the embers of the recent civil war still burn."
Meanwhile, violence continues across the country. A brief tally of the last several days gives an idea of the situation in Iraq:
Sunday, April 5: nine Iraqis killed, 30 wounded
Saturday, April 4: one US marine, two Iraqis killed; eight Iraqis wounded
Friday, April 3: one US soldier, five Iraqis killed; 17 Iraqis wounded
Thursday, April 2: nine Iraqis killed, 22 wounded
Wednesday, April 1: one US soldier, 15 Iraqis killed; 25 Iraqis wounded
At the height of the sectarian violence that ravaged Iraq between early 2006
Wednesday, April 8, 2009
Rabbani: US Drone Attacks Violation of Pakistan's Sovereignty
This is from the DailyTimes (Pakistan).
No doubt the attacks are a violation of international law. The US is the global cop, judge, and executioner all in one and able to cause collateral damage and deaths with impunity. The Pakistan govt. objects constantly to these attacks even though the drones oftent take off and land at bases in Pakistan! Also, it seems that Pakistan has covertly urged the US to use the drones to try and assasinate Mehsud a leader of Islamic militants in Pakistan.
US drone attacks violation of Pakistan’s sovereignty: Rabbani
* Parliamentary committee chairman says parliament should send strong message to visiting US envoy * Says objections to committee’s pace will be negated Staff ReportISLAMABAD: The Parliamentary Committee on National Security on Monday termed US drone attacks in Pakistani territory against the sovereignty of the country and demanded an immediate end to such attacks.“The committee feels that since Richard Holbrooke, the special US envoy to Afghanistan and Pakistan, is in the capital, a strong message should go from parliament that it will not compromise on its sovereignty,” Senator Raza Rabbani told reporters after chairing the committee meeting at Parliament House. He said drone attacks were counterproductive and the Pakistan government would take up the issue with the new US administration aggressively at every available forum. “The foreign minister will raise this issue with Holbrooke during their meeting,” he added.“Being a representative of a democratic government, we hope Holbrooke will respect the sentiments of Pakistan’s parliament. The committee has made it clear that drone attacks inside Pakistan are unacceptable,” he said. He said the committee had made substantial progress during Monday’s meeting and hoped it would finalise its interim recommendations by today (Tuesday). “I hope that these recommendations will be submitted before parliament in the forthcoming sessions of the National Assembly and Senate,” he added.Not slow: Rabbani said Senator Afrasiab Khattak had briefed the committee on the latest law and order situation in FATA and NWFP. However, he refused to share details with reporters, saying these were in-camera briefings. He also dispelled the impression the committee was moving at “a snail’s pace”. “We do not have a magic wand. It is a very complex, multi-faceted and multi-dimensional issue involving state and non-state actors. We are trying to prepare workable recommendations keeping all aspects in view. All objections in this regard will be diluted when interim recommendations come forward,” he added.To questions about the public flogging of a girl by Taliban in Swat, the senator said it was not appropriate to discuss this issue, as the Supreme Court had already taken it up. He said law enforcement agencies were also conducting an inquiry into the matter.
No doubt the attacks are a violation of international law. The US is the global cop, judge, and executioner all in one and able to cause collateral damage and deaths with impunity. The Pakistan govt. objects constantly to these attacks even though the drones oftent take off and land at bases in Pakistan! Also, it seems that Pakistan has covertly urged the US to use the drones to try and assasinate Mehsud a leader of Islamic militants in Pakistan.
US drone attacks violation of Pakistan’s sovereignty: Rabbani
* Parliamentary committee chairman says parliament should send strong message to visiting US envoy * Says objections to committee’s pace will be negated Staff ReportISLAMABAD: The Parliamentary Committee on National Security on Monday termed US drone attacks in Pakistani territory against the sovereignty of the country and demanded an immediate end to such attacks.“The committee feels that since Richard Holbrooke, the special US envoy to Afghanistan and Pakistan, is in the capital, a strong message should go from parliament that it will not compromise on its sovereignty,” Senator Raza Rabbani told reporters after chairing the committee meeting at Parliament House. He said drone attacks were counterproductive and the Pakistan government would take up the issue with the new US administration aggressively at every available forum. “The foreign minister will raise this issue with Holbrooke during their meeting,” he added.“Being a representative of a democratic government, we hope Holbrooke will respect the sentiments of Pakistan’s parliament. The committee has made it clear that drone attacks inside Pakistan are unacceptable,” he said. He said the committee had made substantial progress during Monday’s meeting and hoped it would finalise its interim recommendations by today (Tuesday). “I hope that these recommendations will be submitted before parliament in the forthcoming sessions of the National Assembly and Senate,” he added.Not slow: Rabbani said Senator Afrasiab Khattak had briefed the committee on the latest law and order situation in FATA and NWFP. However, he refused to share details with reporters, saying these were in-camera briefings. He also dispelled the impression the committee was moving at “a snail’s pace”. “We do not have a magic wand. It is a very complex, multi-faceted and multi-dimensional issue involving state and non-state actors. We are trying to prepare workable recommendations keeping all aspects in view. All objections in this regard will be diluted when interim recommendations come forward,” he added.To questions about the public flogging of a girl by Taliban in Swat, the senator said it was not appropriate to discuss this issue, as the Supreme Court had already taken it up. He said law enforcement agencies were also conducting an inquiry into the matter.
US watchdog calls for bank executives to be sacked.
Already many commentators have remarked on the different treatment of the top GM executive who was in effect fired as a condition for further govt. help and the financial institutions which not only received a virtual blank check without conditions and on top of that in some cases paid big bonuses to those who helped bring on this disaster. It remains to be seen whether anyone will pay attention to Warren. Probably the power brokers would like to see her fired!
<http://www.guardian.co.uk/business/2009/apr/05/useconomy-regulators>US watchdog calls for bank executives to be sacked
James Doran in New YorkThe Observer, Sunday 5 April 2009
Elizabeth Warren, chief watchdog of America's $700bn (£472bn) bank bailout plan, will this week call for the removal of top executives from Citigroup, AIG and other institutions that have received government funds in a damning report that will question the administration's approach to saving the financial system from collapse.Warren, a Harvard law professor and chair of the congressional oversight committee monitoring the government's Troubled Asset Relief Program (Tarp), is also set to call for shareholders in those institutions to be "wiped out". "It is crucial for these things to happen," she said. "Japan tried to avoid them and just offered subsidy with little or no consequences for management or equity investors, and this is why Japan suffered a lost decade." She declined to give more detail but confirmed that she would refer to insurance group AIG, which has received $173bn in bailout money, and banking giant Citigroup, which has had $45bn in funds and more than $316bn of loan guarantees.Warren also believes there are "dangers inherent" in the approach taken by treasury secretary Tim Geithner, who she says has offered "open-ended subsidies" to some of the world's biggest financial institutions without adequately weighing potential pitfalls. "We want to ensure that the treasury gives the public an alternative approach," she said, adding that she was worried that banks would not recover while they were being fed subsidies. "When are they going to say, enough?" she said.She said she did not want to be too hard on Geithner but that he must address the issues in the report. "The very notion that anyone would infuse money into a financially troubled entity without demanding changes in management is preposterous."The report will also look at how earlier crises were overcome - the Swedish and Japanese problems of the 1990s, the US savings and loan crisis of the 1980s and the 30s Depression. "Three things had to happen," Warren said. "Firstly, the banks must have confidence that the valuation of the troubled assets in question is accurate; then the management of the institutions receiving subsidies from the government must be replaced; and thirdly, the equity investors are always wiped out."
<http://www.guardian.co.uk/business/2009/apr/05/useconomy-regulators>US watchdog calls for bank executives to be sacked
James Doran in New YorkThe Observer, Sunday 5 April 2009
Elizabeth Warren, chief watchdog of America's $700bn (£472bn) bank bailout plan, will this week call for the removal of top executives from Citigroup, AIG and other institutions that have received government funds in a damning report that will question the administration's approach to saving the financial system from collapse.Warren, a Harvard law professor and chair of the congressional oversight committee monitoring the government's Troubled Asset Relief Program (Tarp), is also set to call for shareholders in those institutions to be "wiped out". "It is crucial for these things to happen," she said. "Japan tried to avoid them and just offered subsidy with little or no consequences for management or equity investors, and this is why Japan suffered a lost decade." She declined to give more detail but confirmed that she would refer to insurance group AIG, which has received $173bn in bailout money, and banking giant Citigroup, which has had $45bn in funds and more than $316bn of loan guarantees.Warren also believes there are "dangers inherent" in the approach taken by treasury secretary Tim Geithner, who she says has offered "open-ended subsidies" to some of the world's biggest financial institutions without adequately weighing potential pitfalls. "We want to ensure that the treasury gives the public an alternative approach," she said, adding that she was worried that banks would not recover while they were being fed subsidies. "When are they going to say, enough?" she said.She said she did not want to be too hard on Geithner but that he must address the issues in the report. "The very notion that anyone would infuse money into a financially troubled entity without demanding changes in management is preposterous."The report will also look at how earlier crises were overcome - the Swedish and Japanese problems of the 1990s, the US savings and loan crisis of the 1980s and the 30s Depression. "Three things had to happen," Warren said. "Firstly, the banks must have confidence that the valuation of the troubled assets in question is accurate; then the management of the institutions receiving subsidies from the government must be replaced; and thirdly, the equity investors are always wiped out."
Who Likes Larry Summers
Another caustic take on Larry Summers. Talk about the fox guarding the hen house!
<http://gawker.com/5200704/who-likes-larry-summers>Who Likes Larry Summers?
By Pareene, 2:20 PM on Mon Apr 6 2009,
Well, Barack Obama does. And Tim Geithner. But no one else. Not one other person on god's green earth likes Lawrence H. Summers. Which is why all the Summers income documents were dumped on Friday.Summers is Obama's chief economic advisor, a position that, conveniently, doesn't require Senate confirmation. If it had required Senate confirmation, Summers probably woulda been Daschle'd. Not necessarily because he doesn't pay his taxes (though he probably doesn't, who knows) but because he is totally beholden to everyone in finance.So. Summers earned $5.2 million for a part-time gig at the hedge fund D. E. Shaw.And hey, what a shock this is to learn:At Harvard and at Shaw, Mr. Summers cultivated a small circle of financial professionals - particularly hedge fund managers - to serve as an informal brain trust. He consults with them on policy matters from his perch in the White House.And suddenly the Geithner plan makes a little more sense! Well, except that they still can't convince the HEDGE FUNDS THAT WILL SAVE THE ECONOMY to sign on, even when the government is basically promising to insulate them from risk.More fun facts about Larry: after he stepped down as President of Harvard because he said gurls are stoopid, he still made $528,996 as "Charles W. Eliot University professor" this last year, making him Harvard's highest-paid professor! This while he was working at the hedge fund and all the other shit he gets paid millions to make appearances at.Naturally Harvard forbids devoting more than "20 per cent of one's total professional effort" to "outside work," which it could be argued that Mr. Summers has been doing since he stepped down as President to remain a highly paid pretend professor back in '06.Anyway. Larry Summers. We keep hearing about how he is THE MOST BRILLIANT ECONOMIST OF HIS GENERATION but maybe that only applies if his economic theories made you rich in the 90s and are keeping you rich now.
<http://gawker.com/5200704/who-likes-larry-summers>Who Likes Larry Summers?
By Pareene, 2:20 PM on Mon Apr 6 2009,
Well, Barack Obama does. And Tim Geithner. But no one else. Not one other person on god's green earth likes Lawrence H. Summers. Which is why all the Summers income documents were dumped on Friday.Summers is Obama's chief economic advisor, a position that, conveniently, doesn't require Senate confirmation. If it had required Senate confirmation, Summers probably woulda been Daschle'd. Not necessarily because he doesn't pay his taxes (though he probably doesn't, who knows) but because he is totally beholden to everyone in finance.So. Summers earned $5.2 million for a part-time gig at the hedge fund D. E. Shaw.And hey, what a shock this is to learn:At Harvard and at Shaw, Mr. Summers cultivated a small circle of financial professionals - particularly hedge fund managers - to serve as an informal brain trust. He consults with them on policy matters from his perch in the White House.And suddenly the Geithner plan makes a little more sense! Well, except that they still can't convince the HEDGE FUNDS THAT WILL SAVE THE ECONOMY to sign on, even when the government is basically promising to insulate them from risk.More fun facts about Larry: after he stepped down as President of Harvard because he said gurls are stoopid, he still made $528,996 as "Charles W. Eliot University professor" this last year, making him Harvard's highest-paid professor! This while he was working at the hedge fund and all the other shit he gets paid millions to make appearances at.Naturally Harvard forbids devoting more than "20 per cent of one's total professional effort" to "outside work," which it could be argued that Mr. Summers has been doing since he stepped down as President to remain a highly paid pretend professor back in '06.Anyway. Larry Summers. We keep hearing about how he is THE MOST BRILLIANT ECONOMIST OF HIS GENERATION but maybe that only applies if his economic theories made you rich in the 90s and are keeping you rich now.
Tuesday, April 7, 2009
Philippines: Davao mayor sanctions extra-judicial killing of suspected criminals.
The findings of Human Rights Watch are rather startling. No doubt the practice is popular among many in the city of Davao especially those hit by crime. Probably opponents of the mayor as well as critics of the police could also become victims of the practice. Of course Arroyo keeps quiet about it all and even uses Duterte as an advisor on peace and order!
Duterte’s tacit support to death squads alarms US human rights group
By Michaela P. del Callar and Jason Faustino
04/08/2009
The US-based Human Rights Watch (HRW) yesterday accused Davao City Mayor Rodrigo Duterte of giving “tacit support” to death squads behind the killing of 800 people in the city over the past decade, monstrous squads that allegedly grew under the aegis of city officials and local police.
HRW made the accusation after it found a “pattern of official complicity” and “at times direct involvement of government officials and members of the police in killings” that were carried out by death squads operating in Davao City, HRW deputy Asia director Elaine Pearson told a press briefing.
“The words and actions of long-time Davao City mayor Rodrigo Duterte...indicate his support for the targeted killing of criminal suspects,” HRW said in a study of vigilante murders which took place between 1998 and 2008. It added that Duterte “continues to deny the undeniable” by refusing to investigate the killings.
At a media briefing in San Juan City, HRW executive director
Kenneth Roth reported that “the hundreds of targeted killings in Davao City in recent years are clearly not random events but the result of planned hits by a death squad involving police officers and local officials.”
“The police consistently fail to bring the perpetrators to justice, while the local government cheers from the sidelines,” Roth added.
While there was no “hard evidence” linking Duterte to the murders, Roth quoted previous statements by Duterte where he said criminals in Davao “are a legitimate target of assassination.” He also cited Duterte’s earlier practice of reading out names of suspected criminals over the radio to warn them.
Duterte has not yet responded to the allegations, although he had previously denied any involvement with the vigilantes.
In its 103-page report released yesterday, “You Can Die Any Time: Death Squad Killings in Mindanao,” HRW detailed the involvement of police and local government officials in targeted killings of alleged drug dealers and petty criminals, and street children.
The HRW criticized the Arroyo government for “largely turn(ing) a blind eye to the killing spree in Davao City and elsewhere” and for the “lack of any effort by the authorities to investigate the killings and to bring those responsible to justice.”
Mayor Rodrigo Duterte had repeatedly denied allegations of state-sponsored killings in the city. He had made numerous statements justifying the killing of suspected criminals as having a deterrent effect against crimes. Local security officials had also denied involvement of their men in the killings.
But the HRW report concluded that “at least some police officers and barangay officials are either involved or complicit in death squad killings,” saying that “such killings continue and the perpetrators enjoy impunity largely because of the tolerance of, and in some cases, outright support from local authorities.”
The Philippine National Police, HRW noticed, has not sought to confront the problem while the inaction of the national institutions responsible for accountability, namely the Department of Justice, the Office of the Ombudsman, and the Commission on Human Rights, “has fueled widespread impunity.”
Citing accounts from insiders, HRW said most members of the Davao Death Squad are “either former communist New People’s Army insurgents who surrendered to the government or young men who themselves were death squad targets and joined the group to avoid being killed.”
Hired guns earn from P5000 to as high as P100,000, the report said.
The killers’ “handlers” are “usually police officers or ex-police officers” who provide them with “training, weapons and ammunition, motorcycles, and information on the targets,” HRW said.
The report said firearms issued to Davao death squad vigilantes were mostly .45-caliber handguns, a weapon commonly used by the police.
HRW has urged the Philippine government to investigate the proliferation of “death squads” responsible for hundreds of targeted killings in Davao City and other cities on the southeastern island of Mindanao.
“The number of victims of targeted killings in Davao City has steadily increased in the past decade. From two reported cases in 1998, the number rose to 98 in 2003, and 124 in 2008. In 2009, 33 targeted killings were reported in January alone,” the report said.
On March 30 and 31, 2009, the Commission on Human Rights held the first-ever public hearing on death squads in Davao City.
“Human Rights Watch found a pattern to the killings. The assailants usually arrive in twos or threes on a motorcycle without a license plate; they wear baseball caps and buttoned shirts or jackets, apparently to conceal their weapons, and they shoot or stab their victim without warning, often in broad daylight with little regard for those witnessing the crime,” the report said.
Witnesses told Human Rights Watch that the police arrived at the scene long after the assailants had left, even if the nearest police station was just a stone’s throw from the crime scene.
Police often failed to collect obvious evidence such as spent bullet casings, or to question witnesses or suspects, but instead pressured the families of victims to identify the killers, it said.
Families that provided information to the police, such as names of potential suspects and witnesses, said the police either failed to follow up on such leads or had not informed the family if they had done so.
In many cases, witnesses were also afraid to come forward with information, as they believed they could become targets by doing so, HRW said.
While police blamed the lack of successful investigations on a lack of witnesses, the group said police or other institutions “should create credible protection mechanisms so witnesses will report death squad killings to the authorities.”
However, it lamented that “no protection mechanism can be fully successful so long as police are involved in the killings.”
HRW also investigated a number of cases in which those killed were seemingly unintended targets, including victims of mistaken identity.
Some Davao City residents also expressed belief that some death squad members had become guns-for-hire, making everyone a potential target, HRW said.
In recent years, reports of targeted killings have expanded beyond Davao City to other cities in Mindanao, and to Cebu City, the Philippines’ second-largest metropolis. Mayors and city officials in several of these cities have made statements similar to Duterte’s, justifying killings in their own cities.
“The administration of President Gloria Macapagal Arroyo has largely ignored the targeted killings in Davao City and elsewhere. In fact, in 2003, Duterte became Arroyo’s consultant on peace and order, indicating her approval of his ‘tough-on-crime’ approach that encourages violations of law,” HRW said.
The group has called on the Philippine government to “publicly denounce extra-judicial killings and local anti-crime campaigns that promote or encourage the unlawful use of force, and to take all necessary action to end the extra-judicial killing of suspected criminals and street children, beginning in Davao City.”
“Arroyo has been taking security advice from someone who openly advocates murder to bring peace and prosperity,” HRW said. “But this needs to stop. The Arroyo government should send a clear message to local officials and the police that the killings of petty criminals, drug users, and street children will not be tolerated.”
Duterte’s tacit support to death squads alarms US human rights group
By Michaela P. del Callar and Jason Faustino
04/08/2009
The US-based Human Rights Watch (HRW) yesterday accused Davao City Mayor Rodrigo Duterte of giving “tacit support” to death squads behind the killing of 800 people in the city over the past decade, monstrous squads that allegedly grew under the aegis of city officials and local police.
HRW made the accusation after it found a “pattern of official complicity” and “at times direct involvement of government officials and members of the police in killings” that were carried out by death squads operating in Davao City, HRW deputy Asia director Elaine Pearson told a press briefing.
“The words and actions of long-time Davao City mayor Rodrigo Duterte...indicate his support for the targeted killing of criminal suspects,” HRW said in a study of vigilante murders which took place between 1998 and 2008. It added that Duterte “continues to deny the undeniable” by refusing to investigate the killings.
At a media briefing in San Juan City, HRW executive director
Kenneth Roth reported that “the hundreds of targeted killings in Davao City in recent years are clearly not random events but the result of planned hits by a death squad involving police officers and local officials.”
“The police consistently fail to bring the perpetrators to justice, while the local government cheers from the sidelines,” Roth added.
While there was no “hard evidence” linking Duterte to the murders, Roth quoted previous statements by Duterte where he said criminals in Davao “are a legitimate target of assassination.” He also cited Duterte’s earlier practice of reading out names of suspected criminals over the radio to warn them.
Duterte has not yet responded to the allegations, although he had previously denied any involvement with the vigilantes.
In its 103-page report released yesterday, “You Can Die Any Time: Death Squad Killings in Mindanao,” HRW detailed the involvement of police and local government officials in targeted killings of alleged drug dealers and petty criminals, and street children.
The HRW criticized the Arroyo government for “largely turn(ing) a blind eye to the killing spree in Davao City and elsewhere” and for the “lack of any effort by the authorities to investigate the killings and to bring those responsible to justice.”
Mayor Rodrigo Duterte had repeatedly denied allegations of state-sponsored killings in the city. He had made numerous statements justifying the killing of suspected criminals as having a deterrent effect against crimes. Local security officials had also denied involvement of their men in the killings.
But the HRW report concluded that “at least some police officers and barangay officials are either involved or complicit in death squad killings,” saying that “such killings continue and the perpetrators enjoy impunity largely because of the tolerance of, and in some cases, outright support from local authorities.”
The Philippine National Police, HRW noticed, has not sought to confront the problem while the inaction of the national institutions responsible for accountability, namely the Department of Justice, the Office of the Ombudsman, and the Commission on Human Rights, “has fueled widespread impunity.”
Citing accounts from insiders, HRW said most members of the Davao Death Squad are “either former communist New People’s Army insurgents who surrendered to the government or young men who themselves were death squad targets and joined the group to avoid being killed.”
Hired guns earn from P5000 to as high as P100,000, the report said.
The killers’ “handlers” are “usually police officers or ex-police officers” who provide them with “training, weapons and ammunition, motorcycles, and information on the targets,” HRW said.
The report said firearms issued to Davao death squad vigilantes were mostly .45-caliber handguns, a weapon commonly used by the police.
HRW has urged the Philippine government to investigate the proliferation of “death squads” responsible for hundreds of targeted killings in Davao City and other cities on the southeastern island of Mindanao.
“The number of victims of targeted killings in Davao City has steadily increased in the past decade. From two reported cases in 1998, the number rose to 98 in 2003, and 124 in 2008. In 2009, 33 targeted killings were reported in January alone,” the report said.
On March 30 and 31, 2009, the Commission on Human Rights held the first-ever public hearing on death squads in Davao City.
“Human Rights Watch found a pattern to the killings. The assailants usually arrive in twos or threes on a motorcycle without a license plate; they wear baseball caps and buttoned shirts or jackets, apparently to conceal their weapons, and they shoot or stab their victim without warning, often in broad daylight with little regard for those witnessing the crime,” the report said.
Witnesses told Human Rights Watch that the police arrived at the scene long after the assailants had left, even if the nearest police station was just a stone’s throw from the crime scene.
Police often failed to collect obvious evidence such as spent bullet casings, or to question witnesses or suspects, but instead pressured the families of victims to identify the killers, it said.
Families that provided information to the police, such as names of potential suspects and witnesses, said the police either failed to follow up on such leads or had not informed the family if they had done so.
In many cases, witnesses were also afraid to come forward with information, as they believed they could become targets by doing so, HRW said.
While police blamed the lack of successful investigations on a lack of witnesses, the group said police or other institutions “should create credible protection mechanisms so witnesses will report death squad killings to the authorities.”
However, it lamented that “no protection mechanism can be fully successful so long as police are involved in the killings.”
HRW also investigated a number of cases in which those killed were seemingly unintended targets, including victims of mistaken identity.
Some Davao City residents also expressed belief that some death squad members had become guns-for-hire, making everyone a potential target, HRW said.
In recent years, reports of targeted killings have expanded beyond Davao City to other cities in Mindanao, and to Cebu City, the Philippines’ second-largest metropolis. Mayors and city officials in several of these cities have made statements similar to Duterte’s, justifying killings in their own cities.
“The administration of President Gloria Macapagal Arroyo has largely ignored the targeted killings in Davao City and elsewhere. In fact, in 2003, Duterte became Arroyo’s consultant on peace and order, indicating her approval of his ‘tough-on-crime’ approach that encourages violations of law,” HRW said.
The group has called on the Philippine government to “publicly denounce extra-judicial killings and local anti-crime campaigns that promote or encourage the unlawful use of force, and to take all necessary action to end the extra-judicial killing of suspected criminals and street children, beginning in Davao City.”
“Arroyo has been taking security advice from someone who openly advocates murder to bring peace and prosperity,” HRW said. “But this needs to stop. The Arroyo government should send a clear message to local officials and the police that the killings of petty criminals, drug users, and street children will not be tolerated.”
Thousands flee bomb attacks by US drones
This massive humanitarian emergency gets little play in the western press. This is from the Timesonline.
This internal migration is caused not simply by drone attacks but by the scorched earth policy of the Pakistan military who simply level villages controlled by militants. Almost nothing is said about this policy arguably a war crime. The Pakistan situation is simply being exacerbated by the emphasis on the war on terror. On this issue there are obvious division both within the armed forces and especially the intelligence services.
From The Sunday Times
April 5, 2009
Thousands flee bomb attacks by US drones
Daud Khattakin and Christina Lamb
AMERICAN drone attacks on the border between Afghanistan and Pakistan are causing a massive humanitarian emergency, Pakistani officials claimed after a new attack yesterday killed 13 people.
The dead and injured included foreign militants, but women and children were also killed when two missiles hit a house in the village of Data Khel, near the Afghan border, according to local officials.
As many as 1m people have fled their homes in the Tribal Areas to escape attacks by the unmanned spy planes as well as bombings by the Pakistani army. In Bajaur agency entire villages have been flattened by Pakistani troops under growing American pressure to act against Al-Qaeda militants, who have made the area their base.
Kacha Garhi is one of 11 tented camps across Pakistan’s frontier province once used by Afghan refugees and now inhabited by hundreds of thousands of Pakistanis made homeless in their own land.
So far 546,000 have registered as internally displaced people (IDPs) according to figures provided by Rabia Ali, spokesman for the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees, and Maqbool Shah Roghani, administrator for IDPs at the Commission for Afghan Refugees.
The commissioner’s office says there are thousands more unregistered people who have taken refuge with relatives and friends or who are in rented accommodation.
Jamil Amjad, the commissioner in charge of the refugees, says the government is running short of resources to feed and shelter such large numbers. A fortnight ago two refugees were killed and six injured in clashes with police during protests over shortages of water, food and tents.
On the road outside Kacha Garhi camp, eight-year-old Zafarullah and his little brother are among a number of children begging for coins and scraps. “I want to go back to my village and school,” he said.
With the attacks increasing, refugees have little hope of returning home and conditions in the camps will worsen as summer approaches and the temperatures soar.
Many have terrible stories. Baksha Zeb lost everything when his village, Anayat Kalay in Bajaur, was demolished by Pakistani forces. His eight-year-old son is a kidney patient needing dialysis and he has been left with no means to pay.
“Our houses have been flattened, our cattle killed and our farms and crops destroyed,” he complained. “There is not a single structure in my village still standing. There is no way we can go back.”
He sold his taxi to pay for food for his family and treatment for his son but the money has almost run out. “God bestowed me with a son after 15 years of marriage,” he said. “Now I have no job and I don’t know how we will survive.”
Pakistani forces say they have killed 1,500 militants since launching antiTaliban operations in Bajaur in August. Locals who fled claim that only civilians were killed.
Zeb said he saw dozens of his friends and relatives killed. Villagers were forced to leave bodies unburied as they fled.
Pakistani officials say drone attacks have been stepped up since President Barack Obama took office in Washington, killing at least 81 people. A suicide attacker blew himself up inside a paramilitary base in Islamabad, killing six soldiers and wounding five yesterday.
This internal migration is caused not simply by drone attacks but by the scorched earth policy of the Pakistan military who simply level villages controlled by militants. Almost nothing is said about this policy arguably a war crime. The Pakistan situation is simply being exacerbated by the emphasis on the war on terror. On this issue there are obvious division both within the armed forces and especially the intelligence services.
From The Sunday Times
April 5, 2009
Thousands flee bomb attacks by US drones
Daud Khattakin and Christina Lamb
AMERICAN drone attacks on the border between Afghanistan and Pakistan are causing a massive humanitarian emergency, Pakistani officials claimed after a new attack yesterday killed 13 people.
The dead and injured included foreign militants, but women and children were also killed when two missiles hit a house in the village of Data Khel, near the Afghan border, according to local officials.
As many as 1m people have fled their homes in the Tribal Areas to escape attacks by the unmanned spy planes as well as bombings by the Pakistani army. In Bajaur agency entire villages have been flattened by Pakistani troops under growing American pressure to act against Al-Qaeda militants, who have made the area their base.
Kacha Garhi is one of 11 tented camps across Pakistan’s frontier province once used by Afghan refugees and now inhabited by hundreds of thousands of Pakistanis made homeless in their own land.
So far 546,000 have registered as internally displaced people (IDPs) according to figures provided by Rabia Ali, spokesman for the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees, and Maqbool Shah Roghani, administrator for IDPs at the Commission for Afghan Refugees.
The commissioner’s office says there are thousands more unregistered people who have taken refuge with relatives and friends or who are in rented accommodation.
Jamil Amjad, the commissioner in charge of the refugees, says the government is running short of resources to feed and shelter such large numbers. A fortnight ago two refugees were killed and six injured in clashes with police during protests over shortages of water, food and tents.
On the road outside Kacha Garhi camp, eight-year-old Zafarullah and his little brother are among a number of children begging for coins and scraps. “I want to go back to my village and school,” he said.
With the attacks increasing, refugees have little hope of returning home and conditions in the camps will worsen as summer approaches and the temperatures soar.
Many have terrible stories. Baksha Zeb lost everything when his village, Anayat Kalay in Bajaur, was demolished by Pakistani forces. His eight-year-old son is a kidney patient needing dialysis and he has been left with no means to pay.
“Our houses have been flattened, our cattle killed and our farms and crops destroyed,” he complained. “There is not a single structure in my village still standing. There is no way we can go back.”
He sold his taxi to pay for food for his family and treatment for his son but the money has almost run out. “God bestowed me with a son after 15 years of marriage,” he said. “Now I have no job and I don’t know how we will survive.”
Pakistani forces say they have killed 1,500 militants since launching antiTaliban operations in Bajaur in August. Locals who fled claim that only civilians were killed.
Zeb said he saw dozens of his friends and relatives killed. Villagers were forced to leave bodies unburied as they fled.
Pakistani officials say drone attacks have been stepped up since President Barack Obama took office in Washington, killing at least 81 people. A suicide attacker blew himself up inside a paramilitary base in Islamabad, killing six soldiers and wounding five yesterday.
Pepe Escobar on NATO
This is an interesting critique of the present role of NATO in particular its function as a global robocop--mostly at the behest of the US and to bypass the UN.
As Escobar points out Obama is unlikely to get many if any more combat troops from his NATO allies. The most he can hope for is more money and perhaps troops whose combat role will be severely limited. At a time when the US is in economic dire straits it seems odd that Obama is committing the US to a long term expensive project in Afghanistan. Perhaps it is part of a stimulus project for the global military industrial complex funded by the US taxpayer and paid for with increased US casualties as well.
The theme of humanitarian aims such as improving the rights of Afghan women are now often played up especially with the recent law re a husband's right to sexual intercourse with the wife are concerned. Karzai is fishing for the Islamist vote. This type of humanitarian imperialism is a facade and no doubt bound to failure as the Soviets found when they too did even more for the rights of women. The US tolerates all kinds of anti-woman laws in Saudi Arabia, the Gulf States and elsewhere. They even fostered a democratic Iraq where women have fewer rights under the Shiite dominated govt. than they did under Hussein.
THE ROVING EYE Globocop versus the TermiNATO
By Pepe Escobar
The people of Strasbourg have voted in their apartment balconies for the French-German co-production of the North Atlantic Treaty Organization's 60th birthday this Saturday. Thousands of "No to NATO" banners, alongside "Peace" banners, sprung up all around town until forcibly removed by French police. Prime "liberal democracy" repression tactics were inevitably on show - just as in the much-hyped "we had 275 minutes to save the world and all we could come up with was half-a-trillion dollars for the International Monetary Fund" Group of 20 summit in London. Protesters were tear-gassed as terrorists. Downtown was
cordoned off. Residents were forced to wear badges. Demonstrations got banished to the suburbs. Then there's the musical metaphor. When NATO was created in Washington on April 4, 1949, the soundtrack was Gershwin's It Ain't Necessarily So. When seven countries from the former Warsaw Pact were admitted in 2004, the soundtrack came from the ghastly Titanic blockbuster. For the 60th birthday bash in Baden-Baden - with the Barack Obama, Nicolas Sarkozy, Angela Merkel trio attending - it's Georges Bizet's Carmen. As much as Carmen is a gypsy who believes a fortune-teller and ends up dead, NATO is a global traveler who may end up dead by believing fortune-teller Washington. Sultans of swing NATO certainly has plenty to celebrate. France, under adrenalin junkie Sarkozy - known in NATOland as the "Sultan of Bruni", in reference to his smashing wife Carla - is back to NATO. Obama is presenting his new, comprehensive Afghanistan-Pakistan strategy to NATO. NATO "secures the peace" in Mafia-ridden Kosovo (an entity not recognized even by NATO members such as Spain and Greece). NATO, in full "war on terror" mode, acts like a supercop in the Mediterranean. NATO patrols the Horn of Africa looking for pirates. NATO trains Iraqi security forces. For a body of 60, NATO is fully fit. Physically, NATO is a bureaucratic nightmare occupying a huge, horrid building on Blvd Leopold III in Mons, outside of Brussels, employing 5,200 civilians divided into 320 committees sharing an annual budget of $2.7 billion. These committees manage 60,000 combat troops scattered all around the world. NATO should have been dead immediately after the fall of the enemy it was created to fight - the Soviet Union. Instead, NATO had a ball during the 1990s, when Russia was down and out and Russian president Boris Yeltsin spent more time filling up his vodka glass than worrying about geopolitics. In 1999 - to the delight of weapons makers in the US industrial-military complex - NATO expanded to the Balkans via its devastating air war on Russian ally Serbia, sold to world public opinion by then US president Bill Clinton on humanitarian grounds when it was, in fact, humanitarian imperialism. To say that NATO - a North Atlantic body - is overextended is an understatement. Members Romania and Bulgaria are nowhere near the Atlantic Ocean. Hungary, the Czech Republic and Slovakia are landlocked. In Central Asia, Afghanistan (or at least the non-Taliban-controlled parts of it) is de facto occupied by NATO. Mega-bases such as Ramstein (Germany), Aviano (Italy) and Incirlik (Turkey) now have a counterpart halfway around the world in Bagram (Afghanistan). Decades after the British Empire, "Europe" tries to (re)occupy the Hindu Kush. Afghanistan is NATO's first war outside Europe and first ground war ever. It involves all 26 members (now 28; Albania and Croatia were finally admitted) plus 12 "partners", including five European nations that used to be neutral: Austria, Finland, Ireland, Sweden and Switzerland. All of them are bound by NATO's first-ever invocation of Article 5 of its charter, which determines mutual military assistance. In a mix of reading the writing on the wall (this is an unwinnable war) and appeasing the fury of their pacifist public opinions, most European governments will never relent to Obama's appeal - as charm offensive-laden as it may be - for more troops in Afghanistan. Opposition to the Afghan war in Germany, for instance, is around 70% (humanitarian aid is a different story). Many countries, including the most powerful, will shun Obama's demands based on secret "national provisos". As lawyers in Berlin told NATO, for example, German soldiers are prohibited from launching a pre-emptive, on-the-ground attack on the Taliban. That utterly misleading acronym, ISAF (International Security Assistance Force) used to be in charge of the Western occupation of Afghanistan starting in December 2001 - until, Transformer-style, it became a huge counter-insurgency (COIN) drive expanding all over the country all the way to western Pakistan. The management of this COIN is obviously American - first and foremost because it totally bypasses NATO's very complex political voting mechanisms. There's nothing "international" about ISAF. ISAF is NATO. And with swarms of combat troops and air strikes there’s nothing "assistance" about it either. ISAF/NATO is headquartered in Kabul, in a former riding club on renamed Great Masoud Road which was rebuilt into a veritable fortress. The buck stops with - what else is new - not an European, but an American, four-star General David McKiernan. As much as his personal mission in the 1970s was to prevent the Warsaw Pact from infiltrating West Germany, his mission nowadays is to prevent al-Qaeda from, in his words, "infiltrating Europe or the United States". By the way, if anybody had any doubts, this whole thing still falls under ongoing "Operation Enduring Freedom", according to the Pentagon. This really "enduring" freedom applies to no less than Afghanistan, Pakistan, Cuba (because of Guantanamo), Djibouti, Eritrea, Ethiopia, Jordan, Kenya, Kyrgyzstan, the Philippines, Seychelles, Sudan, Tajikistan, Turkey, Uzbekistan and Yemen. McKiernan's big thing had to be the upcoming Obama Afghan surge - which will be executed by American, not NATO soldiers. After all, hardcore combat has nothing to do with ISAF's original mandate. But the problem is in the fog of war and ISAF/NATO has become a TermiNATO - ensnared as much as the Americans in a peace-by-Predator logic. Call it the coalition of the unwilling. No wonder European public opinion is horrified. And that leads to the breakdown of Obama lecturing NATO on his "AfPak" war, which needed, according to him, a "more comprehensive strategy, a more focused strategy, a more disciplined strategy". In the end, Obama is reduced to hitting up the Europeans for more money. The ISAF/NATO commander for all of southern Afghanistan, Dutch Major-General Mart de Kruif, believes the surge is the right thing - as US troops will go to "where they are most needed: to Kandahar and Helmand provinces", where Taliban commanders "are capable of launching major operations". As he told Dutch daily NRC Handelsblad, "we need more boots on the ground" and "we will also be able to transport more men and material via air transport". But when De Kruif talked about Petraeus' Iraq-surge-replay plan of arming local militias, he at least let it be known how hard it will be. "If you're going to arm local militia you need to make sure that they mirror the local power structure," he said. "Also, the local police has to be effective enough to guide and control the militia. You don't want some vague commander running the militia. You need to give the militia members the prospect of a job in the police force. And you need to have an exit strategy, a way to disband the militia again without having all those weapons disappear." Another Dutchman, pro-Iraq war Bush "poodle" Jaap de Hoop Scheffer, has been NATO's secretary general since January 2004 (he leaves next July). At least he's now admitting - to German weekly Der Spiegel - that the Afghan war "can't be won militarily". Instead, he believes success lies in capturing the "hearts and minds of the people". Certainly not by accumulating bomb-a-wedding "collateral damage". ("We must be careful to avoid civilian casualties while battling the insurgents," he says.) Scheffer is also forced to admit that "cooperation with Iran" in Afghanistan is essential. Time for PATO? Key NATO powers France and Germany simply can't afford to antagonize Russia. Germany is a virtual energy hostage of Gazprom. Unlike irresponsible Eastern Europeans, no French or German government would even contemplate being a hostage of a New Cold War between Russia and the US (one of the key reasons why NATO membership for Georgia and the Ukraine is now virtually dead in the water). Paris and Berlin know Moscow could easily station missiles in Kaliningrad or in Russian-friendly Belarus pointed towards them. Russia's colorful ambassador to NATO Dmitry Rogozin has the definitive take on NATO's spy-versus-spy obsession of encircling Russia. As he told Der Spiegel, "The closer their bases get to us, the easier it is for us to strike them. We would have needed missiles in the past. Today, machine guns are sufficient." As for Georgia and Ukraine as NATO members, Rogozin adds, why not invite "Hitler, Saddam Hussein and [Georgian president Mikhail] Saakashvili." Russia, Rogozin told French daily Le Monde, expects NATO to become "a modern political and military alliance", not a "globocop" (as Der Spiegel dubs it). Russia expects a partnership - not encirclement. Rogozin could not be more explicit on the Russian position regarding Afghanistan: "We want to prevent the virus of extremism from crossing the borders of Afghanistan and take over other states in the region such as Pakistan. If NATO failed, it would be Russia and her partners that would have to fight against the extremists in Afghanistan." The NATO-Russia Council is bound to meet again. Moscow's official view is of a security order stretching "from Vancouver to Vladivostok". Something even more ambitious than NATO: "Perhaps NATO could develop into PATO, a Pacific-Atlantic alliance. We just cannot allow troublemakers to deter us." Messing with Russia, anyway, was never a good idea - except for history and geography deprived neo-conservatives. In 2008 alone, no less than 120,000 US and NATO troops transited through Manas airbase in Kyrgyzstan (the base will be closed this year). This, along with the neo-Taliban bombing of NATO's supply routes in the Khyber Pass, has forced Petraeus to turn to the Caucasus (Georgia and Azerbaijan) as alternative military transit routes, and beg Kazakhstan and Tajikistan in Central Asia for help; this will only materialize if Russia says "yes". Magnanimously, meanwhile, Russia has opened its territory for the transit of NATO supply convoys. What is NATO for? As much as Palestine is an invaluable test lab for the Israeli Defense Forces, Afghanistan, and now AfPak, is a lab for both the US and NATO for test driving weapons systems and variations of Petraeus' COIN. On the other hand, NATO incompetence has been more than evident in the drug front. Afghanistan under NATO occupation was back to being the world's number one producer and exporter of opium. And that, in turn, led to the current US/NATO drug war. So AfPak has really been a true Transformer war - from the hunt for Osama bin Laden to war against that portmanteau word "the Taliban" and to a Colombia-on-steroids drug war. And all this leaves aside the eternally invisible Pipelineistan angle - centered on the $7.6 billion Turkmenistan-Afghanistan-Pakistan-India pipeline which the Bill Clinton administration wanted to go ahead with via an (aborted) deal with ... the Taliban, who were in power in the second half of the 1990s. Watching Obama's actions so far, and considering the Pentagon mindset, there's no evidence to support the possibility that Washington and NATO would abandon crucially strategic Afghanistan, which happens to be a stone's throw from the heart of Eurasia. Just ask China, Russia and observer member Iran of the Shanghai Cooperation Organization (SCO). The SCO was founded in June 2001, at first to fight transnational drug smuggling and Islamic fundamentalists and then started to promote all sorts of cooperation on energy, transportation, trade and infrastructure. Both the US and NATO have totally ignored one of the SCO's aims: to find a regional, non-weaponized solution for the enduring Afghan tragedy. The US and NATO's intransigence during the Bush era is much to blame for the process of the SCO turning into Asia's NATO. In Asian and Russian eyes, NATO has nothing to do with "nation-building", peacekeeping or "humanitarian assistance". And Afghanistan proves it. Asians don't need a globocop - much less a TermiNATO. Obama, McKiernan, Scheffer, no one will admit it - but many in Washington and Brussels would actually love NATO to really be a borderless TermiNATO, bypassing the UN to perform humanitarian imperialism all over the globe, taking out "al-Qaeda" and "terrorists" anywhere, protecting Pipelineistan and pipeline lands for Western interests in all directions. The US, supported by NATO, was the midwife of a new incarnation of "Islamic fundamentalism" which should, as it did, get rid of the Soviets in Afghanistan and in the former, energy-rich Soviet republics. The fact that, millions of dead and millions of displaced people later, NATO is now asking for Russian help so as not be stranded in Afghanistan is just another bitter irony of AfPak history, and certainly not the last. Pepe Escobar is the author of Globalistan: How the Globalized World is Dissolving into Liquid War (Nimble Books, 2007) and Red Zone Blues: a snapshot of Baghdad during the surge. His new book, just out, is Obama does Globalistan (Nimble Books, 2009). He may be reached at pepeasia@yahoo.com.
As Escobar points out Obama is unlikely to get many if any more combat troops from his NATO allies. The most he can hope for is more money and perhaps troops whose combat role will be severely limited. At a time when the US is in economic dire straits it seems odd that Obama is committing the US to a long term expensive project in Afghanistan. Perhaps it is part of a stimulus project for the global military industrial complex funded by the US taxpayer and paid for with increased US casualties as well.
The theme of humanitarian aims such as improving the rights of Afghan women are now often played up especially with the recent law re a husband's right to sexual intercourse with the wife are concerned. Karzai is fishing for the Islamist vote. This type of humanitarian imperialism is a facade and no doubt bound to failure as the Soviets found when they too did even more for the rights of women. The US tolerates all kinds of anti-woman laws in Saudi Arabia, the Gulf States and elsewhere. They even fostered a democratic Iraq where women have fewer rights under the Shiite dominated govt. than they did under Hussein.
THE ROVING EYE Globocop versus the TermiNATO
By Pepe Escobar
The people of Strasbourg have voted in their apartment balconies for the French-German co-production of the North Atlantic Treaty Organization's 60th birthday this Saturday. Thousands of "No to NATO" banners, alongside "Peace" banners, sprung up all around town until forcibly removed by French police. Prime "liberal democracy" repression tactics were inevitably on show - just as in the much-hyped "we had 275 minutes to save the world and all we could come up with was half-a-trillion dollars for the International Monetary Fund" Group of 20 summit in London. Protesters were tear-gassed as terrorists. Downtown was
cordoned off. Residents were forced to wear badges. Demonstrations got banished to the suburbs. Then there's the musical metaphor. When NATO was created in Washington on April 4, 1949, the soundtrack was Gershwin's It Ain't Necessarily So. When seven countries from the former Warsaw Pact were admitted in 2004, the soundtrack came from the ghastly Titanic blockbuster. For the 60th birthday bash in Baden-Baden - with the Barack Obama, Nicolas Sarkozy, Angela Merkel trio attending - it's Georges Bizet's Carmen. As much as Carmen is a gypsy who believes a fortune-teller and ends up dead, NATO is a global traveler who may end up dead by believing fortune-teller Washington. Sultans of swing NATO certainly has plenty to celebrate. France, under adrenalin junkie Sarkozy - known in NATOland as the "Sultan of Bruni", in reference to his smashing wife Carla - is back to NATO. Obama is presenting his new, comprehensive Afghanistan-Pakistan strategy to NATO. NATO "secures the peace" in Mafia-ridden Kosovo (an entity not recognized even by NATO members such as Spain and Greece). NATO, in full "war on terror" mode, acts like a supercop in the Mediterranean. NATO patrols the Horn of Africa looking for pirates. NATO trains Iraqi security forces. For a body of 60, NATO is fully fit. Physically, NATO is a bureaucratic nightmare occupying a huge, horrid building on Blvd Leopold III in Mons, outside of Brussels, employing 5,200 civilians divided into 320 committees sharing an annual budget of $2.7 billion. These committees manage 60,000 combat troops scattered all around the world. NATO should have been dead immediately after the fall of the enemy it was created to fight - the Soviet Union. Instead, NATO had a ball during the 1990s, when Russia was down and out and Russian president Boris Yeltsin spent more time filling up his vodka glass than worrying about geopolitics. In 1999 - to the delight of weapons makers in the US industrial-military complex - NATO expanded to the Balkans via its devastating air war on Russian ally Serbia, sold to world public opinion by then US president Bill Clinton on humanitarian grounds when it was, in fact, humanitarian imperialism. To say that NATO - a North Atlantic body - is overextended is an understatement. Members Romania and Bulgaria are nowhere near the Atlantic Ocean. Hungary, the Czech Republic and Slovakia are landlocked. In Central Asia, Afghanistan (or at least the non-Taliban-controlled parts of it) is de facto occupied by NATO. Mega-bases such as Ramstein (Germany), Aviano (Italy) and Incirlik (Turkey) now have a counterpart halfway around the world in Bagram (Afghanistan). Decades after the British Empire, "Europe" tries to (re)occupy the Hindu Kush. Afghanistan is NATO's first war outside Europe and first ground war ever. It involves all 26 members (now 28; Albania and Croatia were finally admitted) plus 12 "partners", including five European nations that used to be neutral: Austria, Finland, Ireland, Sweden and Switzerland. All of them are bound by NATO's first-ever invocation of Article 5 of its charter, which determines mutual military assistance. In a mix of reading the writing on the wall (this is an unwinnable war) and appeasing the fury of their pacifist public opinions, most European governments will never relent to Obama's appeal - as charm offensive-laden as it may be - for more troops in Afghanistan. Opposition to the Afghan war in Germany, for instance, is around 70% (humanitarian aid is a different story). Many countries, including the most powerful, will shun Obama's demands based on secret "national provisos". As lawyers in Berlin told NATO, for example, German soldiers are prohibited from launching a pre-emptive, on-the-ground attack on the Taliban. That utterly misleading acronym, ISAF (International Security Assistance Force) used to be in charge of the Western occupation of Afghanistan starting in December 2001 - until, Transformer-style, it became a huge counter-insurgency (COIN) drive expanding all over the country all the way to western Pakistan. The management of this COIN is obviously American - first and foremost because it totally bypasses NATO's very complex political voting mechanisms. There's nothing "international" about ISAF. ISAF is NATO. And with swarms of combat troops and air strikes there’s nothing "assistance" about it either. ISAF/NATO is headquartered in Kabul, in a former riding club on renamed Great Masoud Road which was rebuilt into a veritable fortress. The buck stops with - what else is new - not an European, but an American, four-star General David McKiernan. As much as his personal mission in the 1970s was to prevent the Warsaw Pact from infiltrating West Germany, his mission nowadays is to prevent al-Qaeda from, in his words, "infiltrating Europe or the United States". By the way, if anybody had any doubts, this whole thing still falls under ongoing "Operation Enduring Freedom", according to the Pentagon. This really "enduring" freedom applies to no less than Afghanistan, Pakistan, Cuba (because of Guantanamo), Djibouti, Eritrea, Ethiopia, Jordan, Kenya, Kyrgyzstan, the Philippines, Seychelles, Sudan, Tajikistan, Turkey, Uzbekistan and Yemen. McKiernan's big thing had to be the upcoming Obama Afghan surge - which will be executed by American, not NATO soldiers. After all, hardcore combat has nothing to do with ISAF's original mandate. But the problem is in the fog of war and ISAF/NATO has become a TermiNATO - ensnared as much as the Americans in a peace-by-Predator logic. Call it the coalition of the unwilling. No wonder European public opinion is horrified. And that leads to the breakdown of Obama lecturing NATO on his "AfPak" war, which needed, according to him, a "more comprehensive strategy, a more focused strategy, a more disciplined strategy". In the end, Obama is reduced to hitting up the Europeans for more money. The ISAF/NATO commander for all of southern Afghanistan, Dutch Major-General Mart de Kruif, believes the surge is the right thing - as US troops will go to "where they are most needed: to Kandahar and Helmand provinces", where Taliban commanders "are capable of launching major operations". As he told Dutch daily NRC Handelsblad, "we need more boots on the ground" and "we will also be able to transport more men and material via air transport". But when De Kruif talked about Petraeus' Iraq-surge-replay plan of arming local militias, he at least let it be known how hard it will be. "If you're going to arm local militia you need to make sure that they mirror the local power structure," he said. "Also, the local police has to be effective enough to guide and control the militia. You don't want some vague commander running the militia. You need to give the militia members the prospect of a job in the police force. And you need to have an exit strategy, a way to disband the militia again without having all those weapons disappear." Another Dutchman, pro-Iraq war Bush "poodle" Jaap de Hoop Scheffer, has been NATO's secretary general since January 2004 (he leaves next July). At least he's now admitting - to German weekly Der Spiegel - that the Afghan war "can't be won militarily". Instead, he believes success lies in capturing the "hearts and minds of the people". Certainly not by accumulating bomb-a-wedding "collateral damage". ("We must be careful to avoid civilian casualties while battling the insurgents," he says.) Scheffer is also forced to admit that "cooperation with Iran" in Afghanistan is essential. Time for PATO? Key NATO powers France and Germany simply can't afford to antagonize Russia. Germany is a virtual energy hostage of Gazprom. Unlike irresponsible Eastern Europeans, no French or German government would even contemplate being a hostage of a New Cold War between Russia and the US (one of the key reasons why NATO membership for Georgia and the Ukraine is now virtually dead in the water). Paris and Berlin know Moscow could easily station missiles in Kaliningrad or in Russian-friendly Belarus pointed towards them. Russia's colorful ambassador to NATO Dmitry Rogozin has the definitive take on NATO's spy-versus-spy obsession of encircling Russia. As he told Der Spiegel, "The closer their bases get to us, the easier it is for us to strike them. We would have needed missiles in the past. Today, machine guns are sufficient." As for Georgia and Ukraine as NATO members, Rogozin adds, why not invite "Hitler, Saddam Hussein and [Georgian president Mikhail] Saakashvili." Russia, Rogozin told French daily Le Monde, expects NATO to become "a modern political and military alliance", not a "globocop" (as Der Spiegel dubs it). Russia expects a partnership - not encirclement. Rogozin could not be more explicit on the Russian position regarding Afghanistan: "We want to prevent the virus of extremism from crossing the borders of Afghanistan and take over other states in the region such as Pakistan. If NATO failed, it would be Russia and her partners that would have to fight against the extremists in Afghanistan." The NATO-Russia Council is bound to meet again. Moscow's official view is of a security order stretching "from Vancouver to Vladivostok". Something even more ambitious than NATO: "Perhaps NATO could develop into PATO, a Pacific-Atlantic alliance. We just cannot allow troublemakers to deter us." Messing with Russia, anyway, was never a good idea - except for history and geography deprived neo-conservatives. In 2008 alone, no less than 120,000 US and NATO troops transited through Manas airbase in Kyrgyzstan (the base will be closed this year). This, along with the neo-Taliban bombing of NATO's supply routes in the Khyber Pass, has forced Petraeus to turn to the Caucasus (Georgia and Azerbaijan) as alternative military transit routes, and beg Kazakhstan and Tajikistan in Central Asia for help; this will only materialize if Russia says "yes". Magnanimously, meanwhile, Russia has opened its territory for the transit of NATO supply convoys. What is NATO for? As much as Palestine is an invaluable test lab for the Israeli Defense Forces, Afghanistan, and now AfPak, is a lab for both the US and NATO for test driving weapons systems and variations of Petraeus' COIN. On the other hand, NATO incompetence has been more than evident in the drug front. Afghanistan under NATO occupation was back to being the world's number one producer and exporter of opium. And that, in turn, led to the current US/NATO drug war. So AfPak has really been a true Transformer war - from the hunt for Osama bin Laden to war against that portmanteau word "the Taliban" and to a Colombia-on-steroids drug war. And all this leaves aside the eternally invisible Pipelineistan angle - centered on the $7.6 billion Turkmenistan-Afghanistan-Pakistan-India pipeline which the Bill Clinton administration wanted to go ahead with via an (aborted) deal with ... the Taliban, who were in power in the second half of the 1990s. Watching Obama's actions so far, and considering the Pentagon mindset, there's no evidence to support the possibility that Washington and NATO would abandon crucially strategic Afghanistan, which happens to be a stone's throw from the heart of Eurasia. Just ask China, Russia and observer member Iran of the Shanghai Cooperation Organization (SCO). The SCO was founded in June 2001, at first to fight transnational drug smuggling and Islamic fundamentalists and then started to promote all sorts of cooperation on energy, transportation, trade and infrastructure. Both the US and NATO have totally ignored one of the SCO's aims: to find a regional, non-weaponized solution for the enduring Afghan tragedy. The US and NATO's intransigence during the Bush era is much to blame for the process of the SCO turning into Asia's NATO. In Asian and Russian eyes, NATO has nothing to do with "nation-building", peacekeeping or "humanitarian assistance". And Afghanistan proves it. Asians don't need a globocop - much less a TermiNATO. Obama, McKiernan, Scheffer, no one will admit it - but many in Washington and Brussels would actually love NATO to really be a borderless TermiNATO, bypassing the UN to perform humanitarian imperialism all over the globe, taking out "al-Qaeda" and "terrorists" anywhere, protecting Pipelineistan and pipeline lands for Western interests in all directions. The US, supported by NATO, was the midwife of a new incarnation of "Islamic fundamentalism" which should, as it did, get rid of the Soviets in Afghanistan and in the former, energy-rich Soviet republics. The fact that, millions of dead and millions of displaced people later, NATO is now asking for Russian help so as not be stranded in Afghanistan is just another bitter irony of AfPak history, and certainly not the last. Pepe Escobar is the author of Globalistan: How the Globalized World is Dissolving into Liquid War (Nimble Books, 2007) and Red Zone Blues: a snapshot of Baghdad during the surge. His new book, just out, is Obama does Globalistan (Nimble Books, 2009). He may be reached at pepeasia@yahoo.com.
Monday, April 6, 2009
Cole Juan: Top Ten Ways US is Turning Afghanistan into Iraq.
While much of this is no doubt well taken it is not clear that Afghanistan can be turned into Iraq. If anything it is becoming much worse while Iraq is for the moment rather better than it was earlier. The US may even be able to withdraw without the government being ousted. The same is probably not true in Afghanistan.
Some of Cole's points are somewhat debatable. The threat from the Taliban is real enough even though in any open battle of course the US and NATO can call in air support and beat off the attackers. Still the Taliban are able to quietly extend their influence throughout new areas.
As Cole correctly notes the rights of woman in Iraq are no doubt less than they were under Hussein since the Shiites are predominant in the government and are trying to implement more Sharia laws. While feminist groups decry the new law in Afghanistan there seems no big outcry about the even more reactionary laws that allow a person who was Muslim and converts to Christianity to be condemned to death.
It remains to be seen how recruiting local militias will work out. The Afghan government may not look kindly on that but no matter. Now in Iraq there are conflicts between the US supported Sunni awakening councils and the Shia dominated government.
Informed Comment
Thoughts on the Middle East, History, and Religion
Juan Cole is President of the Global Americana Institute
Friday, April 03, 2009
Top Ten Ways the US is Turning Afghanistan into Iraq
1. Exaggerating the threat. An Afghan army foot patrol was attacked by guerrillas in Helmand Province on Wednesday, according to AP. US and Afghan soldiers responded, engaging in a firefight. Then the US military called in an air strike on the Taliban, killing 20 of them. On Tuesday, a similar airstrike had taken out 30 guerrillas.It is this sort of thing that makes me wonder why the Taliban (or whoever these guys in Helmand were) are considered such a big threat that the full might of NATO is needed to deal with them. They have no air force, no artillery, no tanks. They are just small bands, apparently operating in platoons, who, whenever they mass in large enough numbers to stand and fight, can just be turned into red mist from the air.
2. The US has actually only managed to install a fundamentalist government in Afghanistan, which is rolling back rights of women and prosecuting blasphemy cases. In a play for the Shiite vote (22% or so of the population), President Hamid Karzai put through civilly legislated Shiite personal status law, which affects Shiite women in that country. The wife will need the husband's permission to go out of the house, and can't refuse a demand for sex. (Since the 1990s there has been a movement in 50 or more countries to abandon the idea that spouses cannot rape one another, though admittedly this idea is new and was rejected in US law until recently).No one seems to have noted that the Shiite regime in Baghdad is more or less doing the same thing. In Iraq, the US switched out the secular Baath Party for Shiite fundamentalist parties. Everyone keeps saying the US improved the status of women in both countries. Actually, in Iraq the US invasion set women back about 30 years. In Afghanistan, the socialist government of the 1980s, for all its brutality in other spheres, did implement policies substantially improving women's rights, including aiming at universal education, making a place for them in the professions, and so forth. There were socialist Afghan women soldiers fighting the Muslim fundamentalist guerrillas that Reagan called "freedom fighters" and to whom he gave billions to turn the country into a conservative theocracy. I can never get American audiences to concede that Afghan women had it way better in the 1980s, and that it has been downhill ever since, mainly because of US favoritism toward patriarchal and anti-progressive forces.
3. The US is building a mass of hardened bases costing over $1 bn. in Afghanistan. That's about the annual budget of the Afghanistan government.
4. It begins. The US is creating local militias in Wardak called the Afghan Public Protection Force. You wonder how long it will be before the Karzai government is engaged in firefights with them (cf. Fadl in Baghdad earlier this week).
5. Now thousands of private security contractors (i.e. mercenaries) will be hired in Afghanistan. But they won't be Americans for the most part. Children, can you say "Hessians"? I don't understand the concept of paying someone $200,000 a year to guard armed GIs being paid a fraction of that. Wouldn't it be better to expand the size of the army if you need more troops? Wouldn't it be more efficient to have one line of command? Aren't these essentially high-priced MPs?
6. The secretary of defense is predicting that the US military will be in Afghanistan indefinitely and will only achieve limited goals there. (!)I ask myself, "why?"
7. An attempt by officials in the Obama administration to replace Guantanamo with Bagram in Afghanistan has been shot down by a Federal judge. The government actually argued that the three men (2 Yemenis and a Tunisian) did not have habaeus corpus rights because they are in a war zone.Why are they in a war zone? Because the US government transported them there!
8. The president is corralling a coalition of the reluctant for troop contributions in Afghanistan.
9. While militaries spend tens of billions on fighting disgruntled Pashtun tribesmen, a fifth of pregnant women or women with newborns are malnourished in Afghanistan. In Iraq, as well, public health crises took a back seat while hundreds of billions were spent on weapons and warfare.
10. A new Friedman unit. It was always the "next six months" that would be "crucial" for Iraq. It is now "this year" that is crucial for Afghanistan. By the math of Friedman units, does this mean the Afghanistan occupation will last twice as long as the Iraq one?
Some of Cole's points are somewhat debatable. The threat from the Taliban is real enough even though in any open battle of course the US and NATO can call in air support and beat off the attackers. Still the Taliban are able to quietly extend their influence throughout new areas.
As Cole correctly notes the rights of woman in Iraq are no doubt less than they were under Hussein since the Shiites are predominant in the government and are trying to implement more Sharia laws. While feminist groups decry the new law in Afghanistan there seems no big outcry about the even more reactionary laws that allow a person who was Muslim and converts to Christianity to be condemned to death.
It remains to be seen how recruiting local militias will work out. The Afghan government may not look kindly on that but no matter. Now in Iraq there are conflicts between the US supported Sunni awakening councils and the Shia dominated government.
Informed Comment
Thoughts on the Middle East, History, and Religion
Juan Cole is President of the Global Americana Institute
Friday, April 03, 2009
Top Ten Ways the US is Turning Afghanistan into Iraq
1. Exaggerating the threat. An Afghan army foot patrol was attacked by guerrillas in Helmand Province on Wednesday, according to AP. US and Afghan soldiers responded, engaging in a firefight. Then the US military called in an air strike on the Taliban, killing 20 of them. On Tuesday, a similar airstrike had taken out 30 guerrillas.It is this sort of thing that makes me wonder why the Taliban (or whoever these guys in Helmand were) are considered such a big threat that the full might of NATO is needed to deal with them. They have no air force, no artillery, no tanks. They are just small bands, apparently operating in platoons, who, whenever they mass in large enough numbers to stand and fight, can just be turned into red mist from the air.
2. The US has actually only managed to install a fundamentalist government in Afghanistan, which is rolling back rights of women and prosecuting blasphemy cases. In a play for the Shiite vote (22% or so of the population), President Hamid Karzai put through civilly legislated Shiite personal status law, which affects Shiite women in that country. The wife will need the husband's permission to go out of the house, and can't refuse a demand for sex. (Since the 1990s there has been a movement in 50 or more countries to abandon the idea that spouses cannot rape one another, though admittedly this idea is new and was rejected in US law until recently).No one seems to have noted that the Shiite regime in Baghdad is more or less doing the same thing. In Iraq, the US switched out the secular Baath Party for Shiite fundamentalist parties. Everyone keeps saying the US improved the status of women in both countries. Actually, in Iraq the US invasion set women back about 30 years. In Afghanistan, the socialist government of the 1980s, for all its brutality in other spheres, did implement policies substantially improving women's rights, including aiming at universal education, making a place for them in the professions, and so forth. There were socialist Afghan women soldiers fighting the Muslim fundamentalist guerrillas that Reagan called "freedom fighters" and to whom he gave billions to turn the country into a conservative theocracy. I can never get American audiences to concede that Afghan women had it way better in the 1980s, and that it has been downhill ever since, mainly because of US favoritism toward patriarchal and anti-progressive forces.
3. The US is building a mass of hardened bases costing over $1 bn. in Afghanistan. That's about the annual budget of the Afghanistan government.
4. It begins. The US is creating local militias in Wardak called the Afghan Public Protection Force. You wonder how long it will be before the Karzai government is engaged in firefights with them (cf. Fadl in Baghdad earlier this week).
5. Now thousands of private security contractors (i.e. mercenaries) will be hired in Afghanistan. But they won't be Americans for the most part. Children, can you say "Hessians"? I don't understand the concept of paying someone $200,000 a year to guard armed GIs being paid a fraction of that. Wouldn't it be better to expand the size of the army if you need more troops? Wouldn't it be more efficient to have one line of command? Aren't these essentially high-priced MPs?
6. The secretary of defense is predicting that the US military will be in Afghanistan indefinitely and will only achieve limited goals there. (!)I ask myself, "why?"
7. An attempt by officials in the Obama administration to replace Guantanamo with Bagram in Afghanistan has been shot down by a Federal judge. The government actually argued that the three men (2 Yemenis and a Tunisian) did not have habaeus corpus rights because they are in a war zone.Why are they in a war zone? Because the US government transported them there!
8. The president is corralling a coalition of the reluctant for troop contributions in Afghanistan.
9. While militaries spend tens of billions on fighting disgruntled Pashtun tribesmen, a fifth of pregnant women or women with newborns are malnourished in Afghanistan. In Iraq, as well, public health crises took a back seat while hundreds of billions were spent on weapons and warfare.
10. A new Friedman unit. It was always the "next six months" that would be "crucial" for Iraq. It is now "this year" that is crucial for Afghanistan. By the math of Friedman units, does this mean the Afghanistan occupation will last twice as long as the Iraq one?
Sunday, April 5, 2009
Lawrence Summers received over 5 million from D.E. Shaw
Anyone who thinks of Obama as some sort of radical out to change the power structure of America needs to do some research on the backgrounds of his top advisors. The same people
who made big profits from the greed that helped produce the present economic meltdown are now in charge of restarting and restructuring the economy. Summers has always struck me as a completely disgusting individual revealed by his famous memo re exporting pollution to Africa to some of his pronouncements while president of Harvard. How he ever became chief advisor to Obama is beyond me.
Summers is part and parcel of the Wall Street cabal that brought this disaster upon America and as one can see his punishment is millions in compensation and the job of chief economic advisor to that great agent of change Barack Obama. Meanwhile the public anger is diverted to the bonuses paid to AIG operatives!
<http://online.wsj.com/article/SB123879462053487927.html>
Summers Received Over $5 Million From D.E. Shaw
By JOHN D. MCKINNON and T.W. FARNAMWASHINGTON -- Top White House economic adviser Lawrence Summers received about $5.2 million over the past year in compensation from hedge fund D.E. Shaw, and also received hundreds of thousands of dollars in speaking fees from major financial institutions.A financial disclosure form released by the White House Friday afternoon shows that Mr. Summers made frequent appearances before Wall Street firms including JP Morgan, Citigroup, Goldman Sachs and Lehman Brothers. He also received significant income from Harvard University and from investments, the form shows.In total, Mr. Summers made a total of about 40 speaking appearances to financial sector firms and other places, with fees totaling about $2.77 million. Fees ranged from $10,000 for a Yale University speech to $135,000 for an appearance paid for by Goldman Sachs & Co.The disclosure -- in a financial report that is required for federal office holders -- comes as Mr. Summers is involved in shaping the Obama administration's policy decisions on the financial meltdown as well as the broader recession. Among the many decisions the economic team has wrestled with has been whether to step up regulation of hedge funds, one of the most contentious subjects during a summit of world leaders this week. European nations pushed for tougher rules, while the Obama administration preferred a less stringent approach.Asked to comment, White House spokesman Ben LaBolt said that, "from the first days of the administration, we have bolstered accountability over banks" and made other rules changes to that " the influence of lobbyists is curbed, executive compensation is reined in, and firms are required to show how they will preserve or expand lending using government funds." He added: "Dr. Summers has been at the forefront of this administration's work to shore up our nation's financial system and to put in place a regulatory framework that will strengthen the financial system and its oversight -- all in an effort to help the families across America who have paid a very steep price for risky decisions made by Wall Street executives."A White House official added that the speeches "long pre-date Summers's work as an official of the Obama administration or even the Obama transition. He was not an adviser to or an employee of the firms that paid him to speak."Mr. Summers joined D.E. Shaw Group in late 2006 as a managing director. He helped develop strategies including new businesses and also helped evaluate investments for the New York firm, which oversees about $30 billion in assets, making it one of the biggest hedge-fund managers in the world. A D.E. Shaw spokeswoman couldn't be reached for comment.In at least one instance, Mr. Summers shed fees paid to him from a Wall Street firm that received federal funds. His form shows that he received a $45,000 speaking fee from Merrill Lynch on Nov. 12 -- about a week after Barack Obama won the election -- and that he donated the sum to charity.The White House official said that when Mr. Summers "became aware that Merrill Lynch would be accepting taxpayer funds through its merger with Bank of America, he attempted to cancel his appearance." The official added that "when he was unable, he elected to donate those funds to charity."Mr. Summers also received significant income from Harvard University, where he served until 2006 as president, and from investments, his disclosure form shows.In addition to the Summers form, the White House released financial disclosure material for other top aides.David Axelrod, the president's top political advisor, reported in his form that he will get $3 million over the next five years from the sale of his two media consulting firms, ASK Public Strategies, LLC and AKP&D Message and Media. In addition, Mr. Axelrod took a salary of $896,776 last year from AKP&D and reported $651,914 in partnership income from the two companies.In total, Mr. Axelrod reported assets valued between $6.9 million and $9.5 million. Mr. Axelrod's clients were mostly political campaigns, including those of Rep. Patrick Kennedy, New York Attorney General Andrew Cuomo, and Chicago Mayor Richard M. Daley. He also reported receiving money from large corporations such as AT&T Inc., Comcast Corp. and the nuclear energy company Exelon Corp.___________________________________
who made big profits from the greed that helped produce the present economic meltdown are now in charge of restarting and restructuring the economy. Summers has always struck me as a completely disgusting individual revealed by his famous memo re exporting pollution to Africa to some of his pronouncements while president of Harvard. How he ever became chief advisor to Obama is beyond me.
Summers is part and parcel of the Wall Street cabal that brought this disaster upon America and as one can see his punishment is millions in compensation and the job of chief economic advisor to that great agent of change Barack Obama. Meanwhile the public anger is diverted to the bonuses paid to AIG operatives!
<http://online.wsj.com/article/SB123879462053487927.html>
Summers Received Over $5 Million From D.E. Shaw
By JOHN D. MCKINNON and T.W. FARNAMWASHINGTON -- Top White House economic adviser Lawrence Summers received about $5.2 million over the past year in compensation from hedge fund D.E. Shaw, and also received hundreds of thousands of dollars in speaking fees from major financial institutions.A financial disclosure form released by the White House Friday afternoon shows that Mr. Summers made frequent appearances before Wall Street firms including JP Morgan, Citigroup, Goldman Sachs and Lehman Brothers. He also received significant income from Harvard University and from investments, the form shows.In total, Mr. Summers made a total of about 40 speaking appearances to financial sector firms and other places, with fees totaling about $2.77 million. Fees ranged from $10,000 for a Yale University speech to $135,000 for an appearance paid for by Goldman Sachs & Co.The disclosure -- in a financial report that is required for federal office holders -- comes as Mr. Summers is involved in shaping the Obama administration's policy decisions on the financial meltdown as well as the broader recession. Among the many decisions the economic team has wrestled with has been whether to step up regulation of hedge funds, one of the most contentious subjects during a summit of world leaders this week. European nations pushed for tougher rules, while the Obama administration preferred a less stringent approach.Asked to comment, White House spokesman Ben LaBolt said that, "from the first days of the administration, we have bolstered accountability over banks" and made other rules changes to that " the influence of lobbyists is curbed, executive compensation is reined in, and firms are required to show how they will preserve or expand lending using government funds." He added: "Dr. Summers has been at the forefront of this administration's work to shore up our nation's financial system and to put in place a regulatory framework that will strengthen the financial system and its oversight -- all in an effort to help the families across America who have paid a very steep price for risky decisions made by Wall Street executives."A White House official added that the speeches "long pre-date Summers's work as an official of the Obama administration or even the Obama transition. He was not an adviser to or an employee of the firms that paid him to speak."Mr. Summers joined D.E. Shaw Group in late 2006 as a managing director. He helped develop strategies including new businesses and also helped evaluate investments for the New York firm, which oversees about $30 billion in assets, making it one of the biggest hedge-fund managers in the world. A D.E. Shaw spokeswoman couldn't be reached for comment.In at least one instance, Mr. Summers shed fees paid to him from a Wall Street firm that received federal funds. His form shows that he received a $45,000 speaking fee from Merrill Lynch on Nov. 12 -- about a week after Barack Obama won the election -- and that he donated the sum to charity.The White House official said that when Mr. Summers "became aware that Merrill Lynch would be accepting taxpayer funds through its merger with Bank of America, he attempted to cancel his appearance." The official added that "when he was unable, he elected to donate those funds to charity."Mr. Summers also received significant income from Harvard University, where he served until 2006 as president, and from investments, his disclosure form shows.In addition to the Summers form, the White House released financial disclosure material for other top aides.David Axelrod, the president's top political advisor, reported in his form that he will get $3 million over the next five years from the sale of his two media consulting firms, ASK Public Strategies, LLC and AKP&D Message and Media. In addition, Mr. Axelrod took a salary of $896,776 last year from AKP&D and reported $651,914 in partnership income from the two companies.In total, Mr. Axelrod reported assets valued between $6.9 million and $9.5 million. Mr. Axelrod's clients were mostly political campaigns, including those of Rep. Patrick Kennedy, New York Attorney General Andrew Cuomo, and Chicago Mayor Richard M. Daley. He also reported receiving money from large corporations such as AT&T Inc., Comcast Corp. and the nuclear energy company Exelon Corp.___________________________________
Saturday, April 4, 2009
13 killed as US drone hits Pakistan Civilians
One can imagine the uproar among many in the US left if Bush had continued with these type of strikes. Pakistan now seems to approve the attacks and even encourage attacks against Baitullah Mehsud and his followers who are mounting terror attacks in Pakistan in reply to earlier drone attacks. This is a great recipe for disaster and more civil unrest in Pakistan. The US manages to set itself up as judge jury and executioner and kill people even the innocent without so much of a murmur from most that this might just violate international law.
13 Killed as US Drone Hits Pakistan Civilians
Foreign Militants Were in Home at the Time
Posted April 3, 2009
US drones launched a missile attack against a home in North Waziristan on Saturday morning, killing at least 13 and wounding at least eight others. Officials say that civilians were among the casualties caused by the two missiles. One intelligence official said that foreign militants were staying in the home at the time of the attack.
That attack occurred in the Datta Khel area, at around 3 AM. It was the latest in a growing number of attacks launched by the Obama Administration over the past two months.
The attacks have largely centered around followers of TTP chief Baitullah Mehsud, and Mehsud says the terror attack in Lahore earlier this week was retaliation for the US attacks. Mehsud has also threatened to launch “an attack in Washington that will amaze everyone in the world.”
Find this article at: http://news.antiwar.com/2009/04/03/us-drones-kill-at-least-13-in-north-waziristan
Copyright 2008 Antiwar.com
setTimeout('showLayer();',200);
13 Killed as US Drone Hits Pakistan Civilians
Foreign Militants Were in Home at the Time
Posted April 3, 2009
US drones launched a missile attack against a home in North Waziristan on Saturday morning, killing at least 13 and wounding at least eight others. Officials say that civilians were among the casualties caused by the two missiles. One intelligence official said that foreign militants were staying in the home at the time of the attack.
That attack occurred in the Datta Khel area, at around 3 AM. It was the latest in a growing number of attacks launched by the Obama Administration over the past two months.
The attacks have largely centered around followers of TTP chief Baitullah Mehsud, and Mehsud says the terror attack in Lahore earlier this week was retaliation for the US attacks. Mehsud has also threatened to launch “an attack in Washington that will amaze everyone in the world.”
Find this article at: http://news.antiwar.com/2009/04/03/us-drones-kill-at-least-13-in-north-waziristan
Copyright 2008 Antiwar.com
setTimeout('showLayer();',200);
US Warplane attacks pro-US militia members
There is obviously a growing blowback from the awakening councils as the Maliki govt. takes over the job of superivising and paying them. The transition is not working out well with many groups apparently so disgruntled that they are returning to their original role as insurgents. The US obviously supports the Maliki govt. but this may very well drive more Sunnis into their previous role as insurgents.
US Warplane Attacks Pro-US Militia Members
Military Says They Were Planting a Bomb
Posted April 3, 2009
Last night, a US warplane attacked members of the Awakening Council north of Baghdad, killing one and wounding two others. Officials claim the men were seen planting a roadside bomb, which prompted the attack and the capture of the wounded men.
Major General Daniel Bolger says that “while we value our Sons of Iraq (another name for the Awakening Councils) brothers, these men had broken faith with their fellow Sons of Iraq, the Iraqi people and us.”
The attack comes less than a week after Iraqi government forces launched a gunbattle against the US-backed militia in a Sunni slum in Baghdad, whose protest over mistreatment by government forces had turned into a full-blown uprising. It also comes just after reports that al-Qaeda had been attempting to recruit disenfranchised members of the Sunni militia.
The growing tension between the US-backed Shi’ite-majority government of Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki and the exclusively Sunni Awakening Councils that the US played such a huge role in creating threatens to spawn a much larger conflict in the war-torn nation. But if there was any question which of their two allies the American forces would eventually side with, today’s attack seems to have removed any doubt. America stands with the Maliki government, and the Sunni fighters will be faced with a choice of accepting that or rejoining the insurgency that most of them came from in the first place.
Find this article at: http://news.antiwar.com/2009/04/03/us-warplane-attacks-pro-us-militia-members
Copyright 2008 Antiwar.com
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Friday, April 3, 2009
Margolis: Beware those treacherous Afpakis
Whatever is changed, it is certain that what is linguistically proper has changed under Obama. There is a new single entity causing headaches for the US in Afghanistan and Pakistan, Afpak. The war on terror has been hurled into linguistic oblivion and replaced by Overseas Contingency Operations. This latter is just too difficult for the mass mind and will be replaced whenever mentioned by OCOs.
Margolis mentions the rather ironic fact that the US put into power the Northern Alliance a group backed by the Russians although I was unaware it was dominated by Communists as Margolis claims. I thought it consisted mainly of warlords concerned with advancing their own power and interests.
As Margolis mentions the Pakistani intelligence service deals with the Taliban and other insurgents as ensuring their own interests in Afghanistan and Pakistan are met. The US on the other hand seems to see the situation soley in terms of its own interest and pursuing the war on terror or in Obamaspeak Overseas Contingency Operations. After all did not the US itself support these same jihadists when the US found this in their own interest during the Cold War with the old Evil Empire.
The Obama policy in Pakistan may very well destabilise Pakistan and bring to power the military or an even more anti-US govt. Policies such as extending drone flights can only further the growth of anti-Americanism in Pakistan.
Beware Those Treacherous Afpakis
By Eric Margolis
April 01, 2009 "Lew Rockwell" -- -President Barack Obama has now taken full ownership of the Afghanistan War. Gone are Washington’s pretenses that a western "coalition" was waging this conflict. Gone, too, is the comic book term, "war on terrorism," replaced by the Orwellian sobriquet, "overseas contingency operations."
Obama’s announcement last week of deeper US involvement in Afghanistan and Pakistan – now officially known in Washington as "Afpak" – was accompanied by a preliminary media bombardment of Pakistan for failing to be sufficiently responsive in advancing US strategic plans.
The New York Times in a front-page story last week that was clearly orchestrated by the Obama administration charged that Pakistan’s military intelligence agency, Inter-Service Intelligence (ISI), has been secretly aiding Taliban and its allies in both Afghanistan and Pakistan.
In 2003, the NY Times severely damaged its once stellar reputation by serving as a primary conduit for fake war propaganda put out by the Bush administration over Iraq. The Times has been beating the war drums for more US military operations against Pakistan.
Even so, these latest angry charges being hurled by Washington at Pakistan’s spy agency ring true. Having covered ISI for almost 25 years, and been briefed by many of its director generals, I would be very surprised if ISI was not quietly working with Taliban and other Afghan resistance movements.
Protecting Pakistan’s interests, not those of the United States, is ISI’s main job.
According to Gen. Pervez Musharraf, Washington threatened war against Pakistan after 9/11 if it did not fully cooperate in the US invasion of Afghanistan. Pakistan’s bases and ports were and remain essential for the US occupation of Afghanistan.
Pakistan was forced at gunpoint to accept US demands though most of its people supported Taliban as nationalist, anti-Communist freedom fighters and opposed the US invasion. Taliban, mostly composed of Pashtun tribesmen, had been nurtured and armed by Pakistan.
Many of Pakistan’s generals and senior ISI officers are Pashtun, who make up 15–18% of that nation’s population and form its second largest ethnic group after Punjabis. ISI routinely used Taliban and militant Kashmiri groups Lashkar-i-Toiba and Jaish-e-Mohammed.
Pakistan was enraged to see its traditional Afghan foes, the Communist-dominated Northern Alliance of Tajiks and Uzbeks, put into power by the Americans. The Northern Alliance was strongly backed by India, Iran, Russia, and the Central Asian post-Communist states.
Pakistan has always considered Afghanistan it "strategic hinterland" and natural sphere of influence. The 30-million strong Pashtun people straddle the artificial Pak-Afghan border, known as the Durand Line, drawn by Imperial Britain as part of its divide and rule strategy.
Pakistan supports the Afghan Pashtun, who have been excluded from power in US-occupied Afghanistan. But Pakistan also fears secessionist tendencies among its own Pashtun. The specter of an independent Pashtun state – "Pashtunistan" – uniting the Pashtuns of Afghanistan and Pakistanhas long been one of Islamabad’s worst nightmares.
Pakistanis are outraged by US bombing attacks against their own rebellious Pashtun tribes in the frontier agencies. Most also strongly oppose Washington’s "renting" 130,000 Pakistani troops and aircraft to attack pro-Taliban Pashtun tribesmen. A majority believe the increasingly unpopular and isolated government of President Asif Zardari serves the interests of the US rather than Pakistan.
Pakistan is bankrupt and now lives on American handouts.
Its last two governments have been forced to do Washington’s bidding though most Pakistanis are opposed to such policies.
The US has ignored intensifying efforts by India, Iran, and Russia to expand their influence in Afghanistan. India, in particular, is arming and supplying Afghan foes of Pakistan.
Washington sees Pakistan only as a way of advancing its own interests in Afghanistan, not as a loyal old ally. Obedience, not cooperation, is being demanded of Islamabad.
President Barack Obama announced that more US troops and civilian officials will go to Afghanistan, and more billions will be spent sustaining a war against the largely Pashtun national resistance in Afghanistan and Pakistan.
None of this will benefit Pakistan. In fact America’s deepening involvement in "Afpak" brings the threat of growing instability and violence, even the de facto breakup of Pakistan as the US tried to splinter fragile Pakistan just as it did Iraq.
It is ISI’s job to deal with these dangers, to keep in close touch with Pashtun on both sides of the border, and to counteract the machinations of other foreign powers in Afghanistan and Pakistan’s tribal belt.
Many Pakistanis also know that one day the US and its allies will quit Afghanistan, leaving a bloody mess behind them. Pakistan’s ISI will have to pick up the pieces and deal with the ensuing chaos. Pakistan’s strategic and political interests are quite different from those of Washington. But few in Washington seem to care in the least.
ISI is not playing a double game, as Washington charges, but simply assuring Pakistan’s strategic and political interests in the region. The Obama administration is making an historic mistake by treating Pakistan with imperial arrogance and ignoring the concerns and desires of its people. We seem to have learned nothing from the Iranian revolution.
Eric Margolis [send him mail], contributing foreign editor for Sun National Media Canada. He is the author of War at the Top of the World and the new book, American Raj: Liberation or Domination?: Resolving the Conflict Between the West and the Muslim World. See his website.
Margolis mentions the rather ironic fact that the US put into power the Northern Alliance a group backed by the Russians although I was unaware it was dominated by Communists as Margolis claims. I thought it consisted mainly of warlords concerned with advancing their own power and interests.
As Margolis mentions the Pakistani intelligence service deals with the Taliban and other insurgents as ensuring their own interests in Afghanistan and Pakistan are met. The US on the other hand seems to see the situation soley in terms of its own interest and pursuing the war on terror or in Obamaspeak Overseas Contingency Operations. After all did not the US itself support these same jihadists when the US found this in their own interest during the Cold War with the old Evil Empire.
The Obama policy in Pakistan may very well destabilise Pakistan and bring to power the military or an even more anti-US govt. Policies such as extending drone flights can only further the growth of anti-Americanism in Pakistan.
Beware Those Treacherous Afpakis
By Eric Margolis
April 01, 2009 "Lew Rockwell" -- -President Barack Obama has now taken full ownership of the Afghanistan War. Gone are Washington’s pretenses that a western "coalition" was waging this conflict. Gone, too, is the comic book term, "war on terrorism," replaced by the Orwellian sobriquet, "overseas contingency operations."
Obama’s announcement last week of deeper US involvement in Afghanistan and Pakistan – now officially known in Washington as "Afpak" – was accompanied by a preliminary media bombardment of Pakistan for failing to be sufficiently responsive in advancing US strategic plans.
The New York Times in a front-page story last week that was clearly orchestrated by the Obama administration charged that Pakistan’s military intelligence agency, Inter-Service Intelligence (ISI), has been secretly aiding Taliban and its allies in both Afghanistan and Pakistan.
In 2003, the NY Times severely damaged its once stellar reputation by serving as a primary conduit for fake war propaganda put out by the Bush administration over Iraq. The Times has been beating the war drums for more US military operations against Pakistan.
Even so, these latest angry charges being hurled by Washington at Pakistan’s spy agency ring true. Having covered ISI for almost 25 years, and been briefed by many of its director generals, I would be very surprised if ISI was not quietly working with Taliban and other Afghan resistance movements.
Protecting Pakistan’s interests, not those of the United States, is ISI’s main job.
According to Gen. Pervez Musharraf, Washington threatened war against Pakistan after 9/11 if it did not fully cooperate in the US invasion of Afghanistan. Pakistan’s bases and ports were and remain essential for the US occupation of Afghanistan.
Pakistan was forced at gunpoint to accept US demands though most of its people supported Taliban as nationalist, anti-Communist freedom fighters and opposed the US invasion. Taliban, mostly composed of Pashtun tribesmen, had been nurtured and armed by Pakistan.
Many of Pakistan’s generals and senior ISI officers are Pashtun, who make up 15–18% of that nation’s population and form its second largest ethnic group after Punjabis. ISI routinely used Taliban and militant Kashmiri groups Lashkar-i-Toiba and Jaish-e-Mohammed.
Pakistan was enraged to see its traditional Afghan foes, the Communist-dominated Northern Alliance of Tajiks and Uzbeks, put into power by the Americans. The Northern Alliance was strongly backed by India, Iran, Russia, and the Central Asian post-Communist states.
Pakistan has always considered Afghanistan it "strategic hinterland" and natural sphere of influence. The 30-million strong Pashtun people straddle the artificial Pak-Afghan border, known as the Durand Line, drawn by Imperial Britain as part of its divide and rule strategy.
Pakistan supports the Afghan Pashtun, who have been excluded from power in US-occupied Afghanistan. But Pakistan also fears secessionist tendencies among its own Pashtun. The specter of an independent Pashtun state – "Pashtunistan" – uniting the Pashtuns of Afghanistan and Pakistanhas long been one of Islamabad’s worst nightmares.
Pakistanis are outraged by US bombing attacks against their own rebellious Pashtun tribes in the frontier agencies. Most also strongly oppose Washington’s "renting" 130,000 Pakistani troops and aircraft to attack pro-Taliban Pashtun tribesmen. A majority believe the increasingly unpopular and isolated government of President Asif Zardari serves the interests of the US rather than Pakistan.
Pakistan is bankrupt and now lives on American handouts.
Its last two governments have been forced to do Washington’s bidding though most Pakistanis are opposed to such policies.
The US has ignored intensifying efforts by India, Iran, and Russia to expand their influence in Afghanistan. India, in particular, is arming and supplying Afghan foes of Pakistan.
Washington sees Pakistan only as a way of advancing its own interests in Afghanistan, not as a loyal old ally. Obedience, not cooperation, is being demanded of Islamabad.
President Barack Obama announced that more US troops and civilian officials will go to Afghanistan, and more billions will be spent sustaining a war against the largely Pashtun national resistance in Afghanistan and Pakistan.
None of this will benefit Pakistan. In fact America’s deepening involvement in "Afpak" brings the threat of growing instability and violence, even the de facto breakup of Pakistan as the US tried to splinter fragile Pakistan just as it did Iraq.
It is ISI’s job to deal with these dangers, to keep in close touch with Pashtun on both sides of the border, and to counteract the machinations of other foreign powers in Afghanistan and Pakistan’s tribal belt.
Many Pakistanis also know that one day the US and its allies will quit Afghanistan, leaving a bloody mess behind them. Pakistan’s ISI will have to pick up the pieces and deal with the ensuing chaos. Pakistan’s strategic and political interests are quite different from those of Washington. But few in Washington seem to care in the least.
ISI is not playing a double game, as Washington charges, but simply assuring Pakistan’s strategic and political interests in the region. The Obama administration is making an historic mistake by treating Pakistan with imperial arrogance and ignoring the concerns and desires of its people. We seem to have learned nothing from the Iranian revolution.
Eric Margolis [send him mail], contributing foreign editor for Sun National Media Canada. He is the author of War at the Top of the World and the new book, American Raj: Liberation or Domination?: Resolving the Conflict Between the West and the Muslim World. See his website.
Obama to turn the screw in push for Afghan help.
This is from the Times. As times goes on and casualties increase Obama would like to use NATO allies to promote US aims in Afghanistan rather than have the US carry a heavier burden. The surge will cost the US both in increased casualties and increased expense at a time when the US deficit is already entering the stratosphere. The Afghan missions are uniformly unpopular in Europe and even in Canada a majority oppose the mission. With the exception of Great Britain which seems to want to retain its position under Blair as chief US poodle the US will probably have to be content with some more non-military aid from NATO allies.
President Barack Obama to turn the screw in push for help in Afghanistan
Tom Baldwin, Sam Coates and Michael Evans
President Obama is to put Gordon Brown under pressure to deploy more troops in Afghanistan after senior figures in his Administration declared Britain and other Nato allies needed to start "talking specifics" about what more they can contribute for the war effort.
After months of indecision about whether to extend the UK's military commitment beyond the current level of around 8,000 personnel, the Prime Minister faces a test of the alliance he forged with Mr Obama this week at the G20 summit when the caravan moves on to a meeting of Nato in Strasbourg this weekend.
Hillary Clinton, the US Secretary of State, said yesterday that although the Nato summit is not a pledging conference, "of course we'll be talking about how our allies can match their resources to the needs identified in the strategic review" of policy in Afghanistan that Mr Obama unveiled last week.
Asked by The Times if the Adminstration was pushing for more British troops, she replied that all America's allies in Afghanistan had been asked to conduct their own review so that they "take a hard look at what they believe is their highest and best contribution". She added: "We'll begin talking in specifics at the NATO summit in Strasbourg."
In a press conference last night where he hailed an "historic" achievement at the G20 summit, Mr Obama made pointed reference for the need for co-ordinated international action on a range of other issues including fighting terrorism and stabilising Afghanistan."
Mr Obama has so far been rebuffed by many allies, including those from Europe, who have said they are unwilling to follow his lead in committing more troops to the war. Advisers believe their most realistic hope is to secure additional funds for rebuilding Afghanistan and help with training the country's own security forces.
Disclosures that Hamid Karzai, the Afghan president, has ratified laws imposing new draconian Taleban-era restrictions on women may also shake Western confidence in the moral authority of a military operation that has already lasted more than seven years and shows no sign of ending.
Britain, as the second-biggest contributor of troops to the war, has previously indicated that it is doing enough already and suggested other countries to carry a bigger share of America's burden.
But Sir Richard Dannatt, the head of the Army told The Times last week that as many as 2,000 additional British troops had been "earmarked for Afghanistan" and could be deployed swiftly depending on the political will.
The issue is causing tension within the Government which wants to be seen as backing Mr Obama's ambitious global agenda while also acknowledging that a war-weary public and the state of Treasury finances may mitigate against any further investment of British blood and money.
Both Mrs Clinton and General James Jones, Mr Obama's national security adviser, yesterday denied that they had given up on getting more Nato soldiers for the fight against a Taleban insurgency in Afghanistan.
"We have a national election coming up" said Gen Jones, referring the looming presidential election in Afghanistan. "Allies are considering how they might reinforce themselves and their forces. So I expect there will be additional troop contributions "
A Ministry of Defence spokeswoman last night said it expected that any formal request for further troops would be made the summit in Strasbourg where Mr Obama arrives with other Nato leaders today. Downing Street also suggested it was expecting the US would "challenge Nato to step up to the plate”. While aides stressed that some demands for extra firepower might be for the election period only, they acknowledged that any requests would likely cover some troops needed for could longer term operations.
In Strasbourg, a senior Nato official said that while Mr Obama's emphasis would be on financial investment and training teams to support the US military operation, "if the Americans wanted any ally to offer more troops for Afghanistan it would be the British".
Another source added: "An increase of 20 per cent in British troops would be a demonstration that Mr Brown truly believes in the special relationship which is not about forging new financial deals but about people who pull triggers."
President Barack Obama to turn the screw in push for help in Afghanistan
Tom Baldwin, Sam Coates and Michael Evans
President Obama is to put Gordon Brown under pressure to deploy more troops in Afghanistan after senior figures in his Administration declared Britain and other Nato allies needed to start "talking specifics" about what more they can contribute for the war effort.
After months of indecision about whether to extend the UK's military commitment beyond the current level of around 8,000 personnel, the Prime Minister faces a test of the alliance he forged with Mr Obama this week at the G20 summit when the caravan moves on to a meeting of Nato in Strasbourg this weekend.
Hillary Clinton, the US Secretary of State, said yesterday that although the Nato summit is not a pledging conference, "of course we'll be talking about how our allies can match their resources to the needs identified in the strategic review" of policy in Afghanistan that Mr Obama unveiled last week.
Asked by The Times if the Adminstration was pushing for more British troops, she replied that all America's allies in Afghanistan had been asked to conduct their own review so that they "take a hard look at what they believe is their highest and best contribution". She added: "We'll begin talking in specifics at the NATO summit in Strasbourg."
In a press conference last night where he hailed an "historic" achievement at the G20 summit, Mr Obama made pointed reference for the need for co-ordinated international action on a range of other issues including fighting terrorism and stabilising Afghanistan."
Mr Obama has so far been rebuffed by many allies, including those from Europe, who have said they are unwilling to follow his lead in committing more troops to the war. Advisers believe their most realistic hope is to secure additional funds for rebuilding Afghanistan and help with training the country's own security forces.
Disclosures that Hamid Karzai, the Afghan president, has ratified laws imposing new draconian Taleban-era restrictions on women may also shake Western confidence in the moral authority of a military operation that has already lasted more than seven years and shows no sign of ending.
Britain, as the second-biggest contributor of troops to the war, has previously indicated that it is doing enough already and suggested other countries to carry a bigger share of America's burden.
But Sir Richard Dannatt, the head of the Army told The Times last week that as many as 2,000 additional British troops had been "earmarked for Afghanistan" and could be deployed swiftly depending on the political will.
The issue is causing tension within the Government which wants to be seen as backing Mr Obama's ambitious global agenda while also acknowledging that a war-weary public and the state of Treasury finances may mitigate against any further investment of British blood and money.
Both Mrs Clinton and General James Jones, Mr Obama's national security adviser, yesterday denied that they had given up on getting more Nato soldiers for the fight against a Taleban insurgency in Afghanistan.
"We have a national election coming up" said Gen Jones, referring the looming presidential election in Afghanistan. "Allies are considering how they might reinforce themselves and their forces. So I expect there will be additional troop contributions "
A Ministry of Defence spokeswoman last night said it expected that any formal request for further troops would be made the summit in Strasbourg where Mr Obama arrives with other Nato leaders today. Downing Street also suggested it was expecting the US would "challenge Nato to step up to the plate”. While aides stressed that some demands for extra firepower might be for the election period only, they acknowledged that any requests would likely cover some troops needed for could longer term operations.
In Strasbourg, a senior Nato official said that while Mr Obama's emphasis would be on financial investment and training teams to support the US military operation, "if the Americans wanted any ally to offer more troops for Afghanistan it would be the British".
Another source added: "An increase of 20 per cent in British troops would be a demonstration that Mr Brown truly believes in the special relationship which is not about forging new financial deals but about people who pull triggers."
Thursday, April 2, 2009
Escobar: The secrets of Obama's surge
This is from Asia Times.
Another trenchant critique of Obama's policy in Afghanistan and Pakistan. The policy of selective assasination with drones and special forces carrying out the policy will hardly stop the Taliban or Al Qaeda. Given the collateral damage associated with the drones and the targetting of people on the basis of incorrect intelligence the likelihood is that this policy will increase the animus against the US in Afghanistan and Pakistan.
The secrets of Obama's surgeBy Pepe Escobar
Is United States President Barack Obama telling it like it is as far as his new strategy for the Afghanistan and Pakistan war theater - AfPak, in Pentagonspeak - is concerned? There are reasons to believe otherwise. Obama's relentless media blitzkrieg stressed the new strategy is refocusing on al-Qaeda. Washington, we got a problem. Why deploy 17,000 troops against "the Taliban" in the poppy-growing province of Helmand, not in the east near the Pakistani tribal areas, where "al-Qaeda" is holed up, plus 4,000 advisers to train the Afghan Army, when Washington actually wants to fight no
more than 200 or 300 al-Qaeda jihadis roaming in Afghanistan, plus another 400 maximum in the Pakistani tribal areas? And by the way they are not Afghans - they are overwhelmingly Arabs, with a few Uzbeks, Chechens and Uyghurs thrown in. President Hamid Karzai, the puppet in Kabul which has left Washington beyond exasperated, loved Obama's plan to "disrupt, dismantle and defeat" al-Qaeda and the Taliban. Especially because it involves the improbable "hunt for the good Taliban" (always bribable by loads of US dollars) mixed with Special Ops inside Pakistan, and not Afghanistan. Former Pakistani premier Benazir Bhutto's widower, President Asif Ali Zardari, the puppet in Islamabad, loved it too. But as the Pakistani daily Dawn revealed, his Foreign Office diplomats definitely did not. The Afghanistan-Pakistan war has got to be 2009's prime theater of the absurd. It took the New York Times and the usual "American officials" something like 13 years to "discover" that the Pakistani Inter-Services Intelligence (ISI) - a Central Intelligence Agency twin - helps the Taliban. And this while the CIA, alongside their ISI pals, is compiling a mega hit list in the Pashtun tribal areas inside Pakistan. Maybe this is what US Central Command supremo General David "I'm always positioning myself for 2012" Petraeus means by a "trilateral" love affair, as he told CNN's State of the Union. The Pentagon's preferred pal is doubtless Pakistani Army Chief General Ashfaq Kayani, who happens to approve of what's not in Obama's presentation of the surge: the relentless drone war - with inevitable "collateral damage" - over what is for a fact Pashtunistan. As for the Pakistani masses, which have no say in all of this, they see the whole thing as a charade, and al-Qaeda as a threat to the US - not to Pakistan. Obama is selling the surge basically as nation building, based on trust. A hard sell if there ever was one - as Washington cannot trust the ISI or the Pakistani government, while the Pakistani masses don't trust Washington. Insistent rumors in Washington point to a troika - Holbrooke-Petraeus-Clinton - finally being able to convince Obama that the surge should be just the first step towards long-range nation building. Anyone with minimal familiarity with Afghanistan knows this is an impossible strategic target. The Salvador option And then Richard Holbrooke, Obama's special envoy to AfPak, finally let it slip on CNN: the "people we are fighting in Afghanistan" are essentially ... Pashtuns. This was followed by a stark admission: "In the informational side ... we don't have a strong enough counter-informational program to combat the Taliban and al-Qaeda." So this amounts to the State Department admitting that the Pentagon/Petraeus "humint" (human intelligence) component of counter-insurgency in AfPak, hailed as a gift from the Messiah all across US corporate media, is essentially useless. This also means there's no way of winning local hearts and minds. In the absence of "humint", what prevails is inevitably The Salvador option, performed by a Dick Cheney-supervised-style "executive assassination wing", as investigative icon Seymour Hersh first revealed in a talk at the University of Minnesota on March 10, "going into countries, not talking to the ambassador or to the CIA station chief, and finding people on a list and executing them and leaving". The "assassination wing" is in fact the Joint Special Operations Command (JSOC) - a shadowy, ultra-elite unit including Navy Seals and Delta Force commandos immune to Congressional investigations. So if you have such a unit killing "al-Qaeda" jihadis at random from Iraq to Kenya, from Somalia to countries in South and Central America (these are not necessarily "al-Qaeda"; let’s say they are inimical to "US interests"), why not let them loose in Afghanistan and the Pakistani tribal areas? Instead of a $5 million bounty on his head, why not send a crack JSOC commando to South Waziristan and take out Pakistani Taliban superstar Baitullah Mehsud, who has just boasted his outfit will "soon launch an attack on Washington that will amaze everyone in the world?" Well, maybe because US "humint" on South Waziristan is negligible - and even JSOC cannot infiltrate. JSOC by now should have been more than fully equipped to find Osama bin Laden and Ayman al-Zawahiri. Anyway, Vice-President Joseph Biden, to whom the unit would have to answer to, could at least come clean and state the "Salvador option" is not on the cards anymore. Or maybe it still is. The Obama administration is mum about it. A priceless, self-described "hip pocket" manual prepared by the US Army Training and Doctrine Command - TRADOC, one more wonderful, Pentagon acronym to memorize - and available only to "US government personnel, government contractors and additional cleared personnel for national security purposes and homeland defense" spells out what's (visibly) going on. On page 5, one learns this is a US war against, yes, Pashtuns, as Holbrooke said on CNN. The overwhelming majority of the "insurgent syndicate", they are funded by drug smuggling and US allies in the Gulf such as Saudi Arabia, Kuwait and the Emirates, and are trained and assisted by, yes, the ISI, with some - in fact marginal - al-Qaeda assistance. Al-Qaeda is a detail here. TRADOC does not seem to understand that al-Qaeda has a pan-Islamic agenda while the various groups bundled as "Taliban" are essentially in a war against foreign occupation and interference, with no dreams of establishing a Caliphate. On page 7, TRADOC estimates the Taliban in Afghanistan to be around 30,000, half of them Pakistani, and supported by the ISI. That's correct. But they overestimate al-Qaeda to be 2,000; these "Arab-Afghans" plus some recently arrived "white moors" (European Arabs) are probably no more than 700. On page 10, TRADOC finally admits that Karzai in Kabul is supported by a myriad of "warlord militias" profiting from crime, narco-trafficking and smuggling. The key element here is not "terrorism" - but regional wars for control over ultra-profitable poppy/heroin manufacturing and smuggling routes. Then there's this stark admission, by former Taliban commander Mullah Abdul Salam, currently governor of a town in poppy-infested Helmand province. He told Reuters that the Taliban are not the real enemy. If Kabul was not so corrupt, and capable of providing security to the rest of the country, most Pashtuns would not even be Taliban. No wonder the Obama administration has stacks of reasons to get rid of Karzai. An opening in The Hague Asia knows this whole thing is upside down. The crucial Shanghai Cooperation Organization (SCO), grouping China, Russia and the Central Asian "stans", all concerned neighbors of Afghanistan, met in Moscow last Friday to discuss it, ahead of the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO) meeting in The Hague this Tuesday privileged by the US. This is how Asia sees it - and that's an absolutely taboo issue for Obama to touch upon every time he faces American public opinion: Asians simply don't want US military bases in Central Asia. No wonder Iran, which is currently an observer, and soon to become a full member, officially said the SCO is the right forum to solve the Afghan tragedy, not NATO. A minimum of 40% of Afghans are either Shi'ites or they speak Dari, a Persian language. Well, at least Holbrooke admits "the door is open" for Iran to have a say on Afghanistan, but always with conditions attached ("plus our NATO allies"). If Holbrooke is clever, he should immediately buy dinner for legendary mujahid Ishmail Khan, the Lion of Herat, in Western Afghanistan. Khan, a complex mix of feudal warlord and economic developer, told al-Jazeera English "friendship between Iran and America" is essential to solve the Afghan riddle. What Washington has to admit is that Iran has been deeply involved for years in visible, post-Taliban reconstruction in Afghanistan - from roads and railroads to restoration of mosques, financing of libraries and madrassas and the provision of electricity. The Iranian Consulate in Herat, for instance, houses no less than 40 diplomats. Khan - the key Iranian liaison in Herat - was so successful in spite of Kabul that Karzai, under US pressure, stripped him off his enormous powers as local governor and gave him an innocuous ministry in Kabul. At the UN-sponsored, US-backed international conference on Afghanistan this Tuesday in The Hague, Mohammad Mehdi Akhundzadeh - one of Iran's deputy foreign ministers - officially broke the ice, offering to help the rebuilding and stabilization of Afghanistan, something that Iran is already doing anyway. Akhunzadeh was specifically referring to projects fighting drug trafficking - which badly affects Iranian society. But he was also very clear on how Iran views NATO: "The presence of foreign forces has not improved things in the country and it seems that an increase in the number of foreign forces will prove ineffective, too." But, significantly, he tipped his hat to Obama's decision to send those 4,000 trainers for the Afghan Army, when he stressed "Afghanization should lead the government-building process". As for US Secretary of State Hillary Clinton, she described corruption in the Kabul government, ie Karzai and his gang, as a "cancer" as threatening to Afghanistan as the Taliban. One more sign from Washington that Karzai’s days may be numbered. Follow the moneyDid Obama's "strategic reviewers" read this Carnegie Endowment report (http://carnegieendowment.org/files/afghan_war-strategy.pdf)? Apparently not. It states flatly "the mere presence of foreign soldiers fighting a war in Afghanistan is probably the single most important factor in the resurgence of the Taliban". So the question Americans must ask themselves is this: Would you buy a used car - sorry - war from people like Mullen, Petraeus, McKiernan? Well, former CIA analyst Ray McGovern, who's seen them all since John F Kennedy, wouldn't. For him, "they resemble all too closely the gutless general officers who never looked down at what was really happening in Vietnam. The Joint Chiefs of Staff of the time have been called, not without reason, 'a sewer of deceit'." So what if the AfPak quagmire had nothing to do with "terrorists" but with these facts: 1. A Cold War mentality in action still prevailing at the Pentagon. That explains a Vietnam-style surge - expanding the war to Cambodia then, expanding it to Pakistan now. As University of Michigan's Juan Cole has pointed out, the rationale is the same old fallacious domino theory (communism will take over Southeast Asia, terrorism will take over Central/South Asia). The Taliban are simply not able to take over and control the whole of Afghanistan (they didn't from 1996 to 2001). Al-Qaeda simply can't have bases in Afghanistan: they would be bombed to smithereens by the 80,000-strong Afghan Army plus Bagram-based US air strikes. 2. The US Empire of Bases still in overdrive, and in New Great Game mode - which implies very close surveillance over Russia and China via bases such as Bagram, and the drive to block Russia from establishing a commercial route to the Middle East via Pakistan. 3. The fear of a spectacular NATO failure. NATO Secretary General Jaap de Hoop Scheffer, absolutely despised by progressives in Brussels and assorted European capitals, is pressuring everyone for more troops to avoid what he calls the "Americanization" of the war. No one is impressed - especially because Scheffer himself was forced to admit troops will have to stay on the ground "for the foreseeable future". 4. Last but not least, the energy wars. And that involves that occult, almost supernatural entity, the $7.6 billion Turkmenistan-Afghanistan-Pakistan-India (TAPI) pipeline, which would carry gas from eastern Turkmenistan through Afghanistan east of Herat and down Taliban-controlled Nimruz and Helmand provinces, down Balochistan in Pakistan and then to the Pakistani port of Gwadar in the Arabian Sea. No investor in his right mind will invest in a pipeline in a war zone, thus Afghanistan must be "stabilized" at all costs. So is AfPak the Pentagon's AIG - we gotta bail them out, can't let them fail? Is it a Predator drone war disguised as nation building? Will it become Obama’s Vietnam? Whatever it is, it's not about "terrorists". Not really. Follow the money. Follow the energy. Follow the map. Pepe Escobar is the author of Globalistan: How the Globalized World is Dissolving into Liquid War (Nimble Books, 2007) and Red Zone Blues: a snapshot of Baghdad during the surge. His new book, just out, is Obama does Globalistan (Nimble Books, 2009). He may be reached at pepeasia@yahoo.com.
Another trenchant critique of Obama's policy in Afghanistan and Pakistan. The policy of selective assasination with drones and special forces carrying out the policy will hardly stop the Taliban or Al Qaeda. Given the collateral damage associated with the drones and the targetting of people on the basis of incorrect intelligence the likelihood is that this policy will increase the animus against the US in Afghanistan and Pakistan.
The secrets of Obama's surgeBy Pepe Escobar
Is United States President Barack Obama telling it like it is as far as his new strategy for the Afghanistan and Pakistan war theater - AfPak, in Pentagonspeak - is concerned? There are reasons to believe otherwise. Obama's relentless media blitzkrieg stressed the new strategy is refocusing on al-Qaeda. Washington, we got a problem. Why deploy 17,000 troops against "the Taliban" in the poppy-growing province of Helmand, not in the east near the Pakistani tribal areas, where "al-Qaeda" is holed up, plus 4,000 advisers to train the Afghan Army, when Washington actually wants to fight no
more than 200 or 300 al-Qaeda jihadis roaming in Afghanistan, plus another 400 maximum in the Pakistani tribal areas? And by the way they are not Afghans - they are overwhelmingly Arabs, with a few Uzbeks, Chechens and Uyghurs thrown in. President Hamid Karzai, the puppet in Kabul which has left Washington beyond exasperated, loved Obama's plan to "disrupt, dismantle and defeat" al-Qaeda and the Taliban. Especially because it involves the improbable "hunt for the good Taliban" (always bribable by loads of US dollars) mixed with Special Ops inside Pakistan, and not Afghanistan. Former Pakistani premier Benazir Bhutto's widower, President Asif Ali Zardari, the puppet in Islamabad, loved it too. But as the Pakistani daily Dawn revealed, his Foreign Office diplomats definitely did not. The Afghanistan-Pakistan war has got to be 2009's prime theater of the absurd. It took the New York Times and the usual "American officials" something like 13 years to "discover" that the Pakistani Inter-Services Intelligence (ISI) - a Central Intelligence Agency twin - helps the Taliban. And this while the CIA, alongside their ISI pals, is compiling a mega hit list in the Pashtun tribal areas inside Pakistan. Maybe this is what US Central Command supremo General David "I'm always positioning myself for 2012" Petraeus means by a "trilateral" love affair, as he told CNN's State of the Union. The Pentagon's preferred pal is doubtless Pakistani Army Chief General Ashfaq Kayani, who happens to approve of what's not in Obama's presentation of the surge: the relentless drone war - with inevitable "collateral damage" - over what is for a fact Pashtunistan. As for the Pakistani masses, which have no say in all of this, they see the whole thing as a charade, and al-Qaeda as a threat to the US - not to Pakistan. Obama is selling the surge basically as nation building, based on trust. A hard sell if there ever was one - as Washington cannot trust the ISI or the Pakistani government, while the Pakistani masses don't trust Washington. Insistent rumors in Washington point to a troika - Holbrooke-Petraeus-Clinton - finally being able to convince Obama that the surge should be just the first step towards long-range nation building. Anyone with minimal familiarity with Afghanistan knows this is an impossible strategic target. The Salvador option And then Richard Holbrooke, Obama's special envoy to AfPak, finally let it slip on CNN: the "people we are fighting in Afghanistan" are essentially ... Pashtuns. This was followed by a stark admission: "In the informational side ... we don't have a strong enough counter-informational program to combat the Taliban and al-Qaeda." So this amounts to the State Department admitting that the Pentagon/Petraeus "humint" (human intelligence) component of counter-insurgency in AfPak, hailed as a gift from the Messiah all across US corporate media, is essentially useless. This also means there's no way of winning local hearts and minds. In the absence of "humint", what prevails is inevitably The Salvador option, performed by a Dick Cheney-supervised-style "executive assassination wing", as investigative icon Seymour Hersh first revealed in a talk at the University of Minnesota on March 10, "going into countries, not talking to the ambassador or to the CIA station chief, and finding people on a list and executing them and leaving". The "assassination wing" is in fact the Joint Special Operations Command (JSOC) - a shadowy, ultra-elite unit including Navy Seals and Delta Force commandos immune to Congressional investigations. So if you have such a unit killing "al-Qaeda" jihadis at random from Iraq to Kenya, from Somalia to countries in South and Central America (these are not necessarily "al-Qaeda"; let’s say they are inimical to "US interests"), why not let them loose in Afghanistan and the Pakistani tribal areas? Instead of a $5 million bounty on his head, why not send a crack JSOC commando to South Waziristan and take out Pakistani Taliban superstar Baitullah Mehsud, who has just boasted his outfit will "soon launch an attack on Washington that will amaze everyone in the world?" Well, maybe because US "humint" on South Waziristan is negligible - and even JSOC cannot infiltrate. JSOC by now should have been more than fully equipped to find Osama bin Laden and Ayman al-Zawahiri. Anyway, Vice-President Joseph Biden, to whom the unit would have to answer to, could at least come clean and state the "Salvador option" is not on the cards anymore. Or maybe it still is. The Obama administration is mum about it. A priceless, self-described "hip pocket" manual prepared by the US Army Training and Doctrine Command - TRADOC, one more wonderful, Pentagon acronym to memorize - and available only to "US government personnel, government contractors and additional cleared personnel for national security purposes and homeland defense" spells out what's (visibly) going on. On page 5, one learns this is a US war against, yes, Pashtuns, as Holbrooke said on CNN. The overwhelming majority of the "insurgent syndicate", they are funded by drug smuggling and US allies in the Gulf such as Saudi Arabia, Kuwait and the Emirates, and are trained and assisted by, yes, the ISI, with some - in fact marginal - al-Qaeda assistance. Al-Qaeda is a detail here. TRADOC does not seem to understand that al-Qaeda has a pan-Islamic agenda while the various groups bundled as "Taliban" are essentially in a war against foreign occupation and interference, with no dreams of establishing a Caliphate. On page 7, TRADOC estimates the Taliban in Afghanistan to be around 30,000, half of them Pakistani, and supported by the ISI. That's correct. But they overestimate al-Qaeda to be 2,000; these "Arab-Afghans" plus some recently arrived "white moors" (European Arabs) are probably no more than 700. On page 10, TRADOC finally admits that Karzai in Kabul is supported by a myriad of "warlord militias" profiting from crime, narco-trafficking and smuggling. The key element here is not "terrorism" - but regional wars for control over ultra-profitable poppy/heroin manufacturing and smuggling routes. Then there's this stark admission, by former Taliban commander Mullah Abdul Salam, currently governor of a town in poppy-infested Helmand province. He told Reuters that the Taliban are not the real enemy. If Kabul was not so corrupt, and capable of providing security to the rest of the country, most Pashtuns would not even be Taliban. No wonder the Obama administration has stacks of reasons to get rid of Karzai. An opening in The Hague Asia knows this whole thing is upside down. The crucial Shanghai Cooperation Organization (SCO), grouping China, Russia and the Central Asian "stans", all concerned neighbors of Afghanistan, met in Moscow last Friday to discuss it, ahead of the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO) meeting in The Hague this Tuesday privileged by the US. This is how Asia sees it - and that's an absolutely taboo issue for Obama to touch upon every time he faces American public opinion: Asians simply don't want US military bases in Central Asia. No wonder Iran, which is currently an observer, and soon to become a full member, officially said the SCO is the right forum to solve the Afghan tragedy, not NATO. A minimum of 40% of Afghans are either Shi'ites or they speak Dari, a Persian language. Well, at least Holbrooke admits "the door is open" for Iran to have a say on Afghanistan, but always with conditions attached ("plus our NATO allies"). If Holbrooke is clever, he should immediately buy dinner for legendary mujahid Ishmail Khan, the Lion of Herat, in Western Afghanistan. Khan, a complex mix of feudal warlord and economic developer, told al-Jazeera English "friendship between Iran and America" is essential to solve the Afghan riddle. What Washington has to admit is that Iran has been deeply involved for years in visible, post-Taliban reconstruction in Afghanistan - from roads and railroads to restoration of mosques, financing of libraries and madrassas and the provision of electricity. The Iranian Consulate in Herat, for instance, houses no less than 40 diplomats. Khan - the key Iranian liaison in Herat - was so successful in spite of Kabul that Karzai, under US pressure, stripped him off his enormous powers as local governor and gave him an innocuous ministry in Kabul. At the UN-sponsored, US-backed international conference on Afghanistan this Tuesday in The Hague, Mohammad Mehdi Akhundzadeh - one of Iran's deputy foreign ministers - officially broke the ice, offering to help the rebuilding and stabilization of Afghanistan, something that Iran is already doing anyway. Akhunzadeh was specifically referring to projects fighting drug trafficking - which badly affects Iranian society. But he was also very clear on how Iran views NATO: "The presence of foreign forces has not improved things in the country and it seems that an increase in the number of foreign forces will prove ineffective, too." But, significantly, he tipped his hat to Obama's decision to send those 4,000 trainers for the Afghan Army, when he stressed "Afghanization should lead the government-building process". As for US Secretary of State Hillary Clinton, she described corruption in the Kabul government, ie Karzai and his gang, as a "cancer" as threatening to Afghanistan as the Taliban. One more sign from Washington that Karzai’s days may be numbered. Follow the moneyDid Obama's "strategic reviewers" read this Carnegie Endowment report (http://carnegieendowment.org/files/afghan_war-strategy.pdf)? Apparently not. It states flatly "the mere presence of foreign soldiers fighting a war in Afghanistan is probably the single most important factor in the resurgence of the Taliban". So the question Americans must ask themselves is this: Would you buy a used car - sorry - war from people like Mullen, Petraeus, McKiernan? Well, former CIA analyst Ray McGovern, who's seen them all since John F Kennedy, wouldn't. For him, "they resemble all too closely the gutless general officers who never looked down at what was really happening in Vietnam. The Joint Chiefs of Staff of the time have been called, not without reason, 'a sewer of deceit'." So what if the AfPak quagmire had nothing to do with "terrorists" but with these facts: 1. A Cold War mentality in action still prevailing at the Pentagon. That explains a Vietnam-style surge - expanding the war to Cambodia then, expanding it to Pakistan now. As University of Michigan's Juan Cole has pointed out, the rationale is the same old fallacious domino theory (communism will take over Southeast Asia, terrorism will take over Central/South Asia). The Taliban are simply not able to take over and control the whole of Afghanistan (they didn't from 1996 to 2001). Al-Qaeda simply can't have bases in Afghanistan: they would be bombed to smithereens by the 80,000-strong Afghan Army plus Bagram-based US air strikes. 2. The US Empire of Bases still in overdrive, and in New Great Game mode - which implies very close surveillance over Russia and China via bases such as Bagram, and the drive to block Russia from establishing a commercial route to the Middle East via Pakistan. 3. The fear of a spectacular NATO failure. NATO Secretary General Jaap de Hoop Scheffer, absolutely despised by progressives in Brussels and assorted European capitals, is pressuring everyone for more troops to avoid what he calls the "Americanization" of the war. No one is impressed - especially because Scheffer himself was forced to admit troops will have to stay on the ground "for the foreseeable future". 4. Last but not least, the energy wars. And that involves that occult, almost supernatural entity, the $7.6 billion Turkmenistan-Afghanistan-Pakistan-India (TAPI) pipeline, which would carry gas from eastern Turkmenistan through Afghanistan east of Herat and down Taliban-controlled Nimruz and Helmand provinces, down Balochistan in Pakistan and then to the Pakistani port of Gwadar in the Arabian Sea. No investor in his right mind will invest in a pipeline in a war zone, thus Afghanistan must be "stabilized" at all costs. So is AfPak the Pentagon's AIG - we gotta bail them out, can't let them fail? Is it a Predator drone war disguised as nation building? Will it become Obama’s Vietnam? Whatever it is, it's not about "terrorists". Not really. Follow the money. Follow the energy. Follow the map. Pepe Escobar is the author of Globalistan: How the Globalized World is Dissolving into Liquid War (Nimble Books, 2007) and Red Zone Blues: a snapshot of Baghdad during the surge. His new book, just out, is Obama does Globalistan (Nimble Books, 2009). He may be reached at pepeasia@yahoo.com.
International dismay as Karzai backs law ravaging women's rights
We already count as allies countries that consistently restrict women's rights including the big oil producers Saudi Arabia and the Gulf States. Afghanistan already has condemned one of its citizens to death for converting to Christianity and kicked a female parliamentarian out of the legislature for uttering the obvious truth that there were former warlords who had violated human rights in the government. No wonder the socalled moderate Taliban might find a place in the government.
It is understandable that feminists should ride their moral high horses when such a pernicious law is presented but it is quite another thing to think that foreign occupation and force from outside is the way to change anything. The Soviets also contributed considerably to advancing the rights of women in Afghanistan but ultimately they were forced out with the help of the West of course who at the time considered these same jihadis with the same anti-feminist values as freedom fighters!
AFGHANISTAN CONFERENCE: 'THIS WILL CREATE SERIOUS DIFFICULTIES FOR THE GOVERNMENT OF CANADA': HILLARY IS NOT IMPRESSED
International dismay as Karzai backs law ravaging women's rights
Law would legalize rape within marriage, UN says, putting damper on summit hopes and outraging ministers
DOUG SAUNDERS
April 1, 2009
THE HAGUE -- An effort by ministers from the United States, Canada and other members of the 42-nation coalition fighting in Afghanistan to put an optimistic face on the war's progress came close to collapse yesterday when Afghan President Hamid Karzai was publicly accused of supporting a law that dramatically limits the rights of women.
Attended in total by 72 countries and organizations interested in rebuilding the country, The Hague summit was meant to be a "big tent" show of support for U.S. President Barack Obama's new Afghanistan war plans. But by day's end the participants had been forced to confront the reality of a government riddled with corruption and committed to legislating sexual inequality.
According to United Nations organizations that have seen it, a law backed by the Karzai government would legalize rape within marriage and would forbid women from going to the doctor or leaving their home without their husband's protection.
It also reportedly grants custody of children only to fathers or grandfathers.
When the law was brought to the attention of the summit by the Finnish Foreign Minister yesterday afternoon, forcing U.S. Secretary of State Hillary Clinton to back away from her optimistic message, it marked the culmination of a day in which public statements of progress in Afghanistan were contradicted by private expressions of deep concern.
"Things are going worse for us than they have during the past four or five years - the Taliban controls more of our territory than before, and we have made no progress at all on corruption," a Canadian official said moments before Foreign Affairs Minister Lawrence Cannon told the summit that he was "immediately able to see the results and impacts of our efforts" in Afghanistan.
The rape-law allegations were an especially severe blow to a conference meant to be what Ms. Clinton called a "blank slate," in which the 42 countries in the coalition would commit themselves with renewed vigour to the eight-year-old UN-mandated campaign, with support from 4,000 additional U.S. troops and a long-term commitment from Mr. Obama.
Faced with questions about the law yesterday afternoon, Ms. Clinton expressed dismay. She is said to have upbraided Mr. Karzai, whose presidency has been backed and promoted by the United States for years, in a private meeting.
"This is an area of absolute concern for the United States," she told reporters. "My message is very clear. Women's rights are a central part of the foreign policy of the Obama administration."
Officials from other countries had even more trouble hiding their disappointment with a government that was meant to signal a turn away from the sexual oppression of the ousted Taliban regime.
In Ottawa, Trade Minister Stockwell Day, chairman of the cabinet committee on Afghanistan, suggested that if the reports are true, Canada's support for the Afghan government will be affected.
"If these prove to be true, this will create serious problems for the government of Canada, for the people of Canada," Mr. Day said. "The onus is upon the government of Afghanistan to live up to its human-rights responsibilities, absolutely including the rights of women. If there is any wavering on this point ... this will create serious difficulties, serious problems for the government of Canada."
Spousal sexual assault is an offence in most parts of the Western world, and became a crime in Canada in 1983. In its 1993 declaration on the elimination of violence against women, the UN High Commissioner for Human Rights established marital rape as a human-rights violation.
For many officials, the reports of Mr. Karzai's support for the law making rape exclusively an extramarital crime mark the culmination of years of frustration with the corruption, inertia and culture of impunity for which his government is known. One Canadian official said that Mr. Karzai no longer has the support of any country fighting in Afghanistan, but nothing can be said in public because he is likely to win the presidential election scheduled for this summer.
A British cabinet minister was more explicit. "We are caught in the Catch-22 that the Afghans obviously have the right to write their own laws," Lord Malloch Brown, the foreign secretary for Africa and Asia, told the Guardian newspaper yesterday. "But there is dismay. The rights of women was one of the reasons the U.K. and many in the West threw ourselves into the struggle in Afghanistan. It matters greatly to us and our public opinion."
With 2,800 soldiers fighting in the most dangerous part of Afghanistan, Canada has suffered the highest casualty rate of any coalition member, and has an important leadership role in the country's troubled south. Mr. Cannon was able to proclaim a Canadian victory in having built a new agreement between Pakistani and Afghan border officials, after talks organized by Canada. But there was a distinct sense that Canada is no longer being treated as a major coalition partner now that both the governing Conservatives and the opposition Liberals have made it clear that they will withdraw all combat troops from Afghanistan by the end of 2011.
Canada did not share in the major international development of the day, a public diplomatic contact between the United States and Iran for the first time in 30 years. Signalling a possible rapprochement between Iran and the West, Iran sent a mid-level official to the meeting and held talks in which Tehran agreed to co-operate with drug-eradication schemes in Afghanistan and allow non-military supplies to be sent across its borders - in both cases solving difficult logistical problems for the coalition.
With reports from Campbell Clark in Ottawa and Caroline Alphonso
dsaunders@globeandmail.com
It is understandable that feminists should ride their moral high horses when such a pernicious law is presented but it is quite another thing to think that foreign occupation and force from outside is the way to change anything. The Soviets also contributed considerably to advancing the rights of women in Afghanistan but ultimately they were forced out with the help of the West of course who at the time considered these same jihadis with the same anti-feminist values as freedom fighters!
AFGHANISTAN CONFERENCE: 'THIS WILL CREATE SERIOUS DIFFICULTIES FOR THE GOVERNMENT OF CANADA': HILLARY IS NOT IMPRESSED
International dismay as Karzai backs law ravaging women's rights
Law would legalize rape within marriage, UN says, putting damper on summit hopes and outraging ministers
DOUG SAUNDERS
April 1, 2009
THE HAGUE -- An effort by ministers from the United States, Canada and other members of the 42-nation coalition fighting in Afghanistan to put an optimistic face on the war's progress came close to collapse yesterday when Afghan President Hamid Karzai was publicly accused of supporting a law that dramatically limits the rights of women.
Attended in total by 72 countries and organizations interested in rebuilding the country, The Hague summit was meant to be a "big tent" show of support for U.S. President Barack Obama's new Afghanistan war plans. But by day's end the participants had been forced to confront the reality of a government riddled with corruption and committed to legislating sexual inequality.
According to United Nations organizations that have seen it, a law backed by the Karzai government would legalize rape within marriage and would forbid women from going to the doctor or leaving their home without their husband's protection.
It also reportedly grants custody of children only to fathers or grandfathers.
When the law was brought to the attention of the summit by the Finnish Foreign Minister yesterday afternoon, forcing U.S. Secretary of State Hillary Clinton to back away from her optimistic message, it marked the culmination of a day in which public statements of progress in Afghanistan were contradicted by private expressions of deep concern.
"Things are going worse for us than they have during the past four or five years - the Taliban controls more of our territory than before, and we have made no progress at all on corruption," a Canadian official said moments before Foreign Affairs Minister Lawrence Cannon told the summit that he was "immediately able to see the results and impacts of our efforts" in Afghanistan.
The rape-law allegations were an especially severe blow to a conference meant to be what Ms. Clinton called a "blank slate," in which the 42 countries in the coalition would commit themselves with renewed vigour to the eight-year-old UN-mandated campaign, with support from 4,000 additional U.S. troops and a long-term commitment from Mr. Obama.
Faced with questions about the law yesterday afternoon, Ms. Clinton expressed dismay. She is said to have upbraided Mr. Karzai, whose presidency has been backed and promoted by the United States for years, in a private meeting.
"This is an area of absolute concern for the United States," she told reporters. "My message is very clear. Women's rights are a central part of the foreign policy of the Obama administration."
Officials from other countries had even more trouble hiding their disappointment with a government that was meant to signal a turn away from the sexual oppression of the ousted Taliban regime.
In Ottawa, Trade Minister Stockwell Day, chairman of the cabinet committee on Afghanistan, suggested that if the reports are true, Canada's support for the Afghan government will be affected.
"If these prove to be true, this will create serious problems for the government of Canada, for the people of Canada," Mr. Day said. "The onus is upon the government of Afghanistan to live up to its human-rights responsibilities, absolutely including the rights of women. If there is any wavering on this point ... this will create serious difficulties, serious problems for the government of Canada."
Spousal sexual assault is an offence in most parts of the Western world, and became a crime in Canada in 1983. In its 1993 declaration on the elimination of violence against women, the UN High Commissioner for Human Rights established marital rape as a human-rights violation.
For many officials, the reports of Mr. Karzai's support for the law making rape exclusively an extramarital crime mark the culmination of years of frustration with the corruption, inertia and culture of impunity for which his government is known. One Canadian official said that Mr. Karzai no longer has the support of any country fighting in Afghanistan, but nothing can be said in public because he is likely to win the presidential election scheduled for this summer.
A British cabinet minister was more explicit. "We are caught in the Catch-22 that the Afghans obviously have the right to write their own laws," Lord Malloch Brown, the foreign secretary for Africa and Asia, told the Guardian newspaper yesterday. "But there is dismay. The rights of women was one of the reasons the U.K. and many in the West threw ourselves into the struggle in Afghanistan. It matters greatly to us and our public opinion."
With 2,800 soldiers fighting in the most dangerous part of Afghanistan, Canada has suffered the highest casualty rate of any coalition member, and has an important leadership role in the country's troubled south. Mr. Cannon was able to proclaim a Canadian victory in having built a new agreement between Pakistani and Afghan border officials, after talks organized by Canada. But there was a distinct sense that Canada is no longer being treated as a major coalition partner now that both the governing Conservatives and the opposition Liberals have made it clear that they will withdraw all combat troops from Afghanistan by the end of 2011.
Canada did not share in the major international development of the day, a public diplomatic contact between the United States and Iran for the first time in 30 years. Signalling a possible rapprochement between Iran and the West, Iran sent a mid-level official to the meeting and held talks in which Tehran agreed to co-operate with drug-eradication schemes in Afghanistan and allow non-military supplies to be sent across its borders - in both cases solving difficult logistical problems for the coalition.
With reports from Campbell Clark in Ottawa and Caroline Alphonso
dsaunders@globeandmail.com
Wednesday, April 1, 2009
Juan Cole: Obama's Domino Theory
While Cole gives a plausible critique of Obama's domino theory I just wonder if Cole thinks that the theory is developed as Obama's real rationale for his Afghan and Pakistan policies or if there is some alternative rationale that Obama refuses to reveal. Personally given the obvious errors in the theory that it is probably a public consumption rational based on public fear of terrorism. I think that probably the real reason for Obama's Pakistani and Afghan policy is to project US influence and power in the region. However, Obama seems not to be aware of the difficulties of doing this using the methods he has chosen. Increased military presences will mean more expense and casualties and increased use of drones in Pakistan will increase anti-US feeling in Pakistana and perhaps destabilise the Pakistani govt. resulting in a less co-operative govt. taking power in Pakistan.
Obama's domino theoryThe president sounds like he's channeling Cheney or McCain -- or a Cold War hawk afraid of international communism -- when he talks about the war in Afghanistan.
By Juan Cole
Mar. 30, 2009
President Barack Obama may or may not be doing the right thing in Afghanistan, but the rationale he gave for it on Friday is almost certainly wrong. Obama has presented us with a 21st century version of the domino theory. The U.S. is not, contrary to what the president said, mainly fighting "al-Qaida" in Afghanistan. In blaming everything on al-Qaida, Obama broke with his pledge of straight talk to the public and fell back on Bush-style boogeymen and implausible conspiracy theories.
Obama realizes that after seven years, Afghanistan war fatigue has begun to set in with the American people. Some 51 percent of Americans now oppose the Afghanistan war, and 64 percent of Democrats do. The president is therefore escalating in the teeth of substantial domestic opposition, especially from his own party, as voters worry about spending billions more dollars abroad while the U.S. economy is in serious trouble.
He acknowledged that we deserve a "straightforward answer" as to why the U.S. and NATO are still fighting there. "So let me be clear," he said, "Al-Qaida and its allies -- the terrorists who planned and supported the 9/11 attacks -- are in Pakistan and Afghanistan." But his characterization of what is going on now in Afghanistan, almost eight years after 9/11, was simply not true, and was, indeed, positively misleading. "And if the Afghan government falls to the Taliban," he said, "or allows al-Qaida to go unchallenged -- that country will again be a base for terrorists who want to kill as many of our people as they possibly can."
Obama described the same sort of domino effect that Washington elites used to ascribe to international communism. In the updated, al-Qaida version, the Taliban might take Kunar Province, and then all of Afghanistan, and might again host al-Qaida, and might then threaten the shores of the United States. He even managed to add an analog to Cambodia to the scenario, saying, "The future of Afghanistan is inextricably linked to the future of its neighbor, Pakistan," and warned, "Make no mistake: Al-Qaida and its extremist allies are a cancer that risks killing Pakistan from within."
This latter-day domino theory of al-Qaida takeovers in South Asia is just as implausible as its earlier iteration in Southeast Asia (ask Thailand or the Philippines). Most of the allegations are not true or are vastly exaggerated. There are very few al-Qaida fighters based in Afghanistan proper. What is being called the "Taliban" is mostly not Taliban at all (in the sense of seminary graduates loyal to Mullah Omar). The groups being branded "Taliban" only have substantial influence in 8 to 10 percent of Afghanistan, and only 4 percent of Afghans say they support them. Some 58 percent of Afghans say that a return of the Taliban is the biggest threat to their country, but almost no one expects it to happen. Moreover, with regard to Pakistan, there is no danger of militants based in the remote Federally Administered Tribal Areas (FATA) taking over that country or "killing" it.
The Kabul government is not on the verge of falling to the Taliban. The Afghan government has 80,000 troops, who benefit from close U.S. air support, and the total number of Taliban fighters in the Pashtun provinces is estimated at 10,000 to 15,000. Kabul is in danger of losing control of some villages in the provinces to dissident Pashtun warlords styled "Taliban," though it is not clear why the new Afghan army could not expel them if they did so. A smaller, poorly equipped Northern Alliance army defeated 60,000 Taliban with U.S. air support in 2001. And there is no prospect of "al-Qaida" reestablishing bases in Afghanistan from which it could attack the United States. If al-Qaida did come back to Afghanistan, it could simply be bombed and would be attacked by the new Afghan army.
While the emergence of "Pakistani Taliban" in the Federally Administered Tribal Areas is a blow to Pakistan's security, they have just been defeated in one of the seven major tribal agencies, Bajaur, by a concerted and months-long campaign of the highly professional and well-equipped Pakistani army. United States Secretary of Defense Robert Gates replied last summer to the idea that al-Qaida is regrouping in Pakistan and forms a new and vital threat to the West: "Actually, I don't agree with that assessment, because when al-Qaida was in Afghanistan, they had the partnership of a government. They had ready access to international communications, ready access to travel, and so on. Their circumstances in the FATA (Federally Administered Tribal Areas) and on the Pakistani side of the border are much more primitive. And it's much more difficult for them to move around, much more difficult for them to communicate."
As for a threat to Pakistan, the FATA areas are smaller than Connecticut, with a total population of a little over 3 million, while Pakistan itself is bigger than Texas, with a population more than half that of the entire United States. A few thousand Pashtun tribesmen cannot take over Pakistan, nor can they "kill" it. The Pakistani public just forced a military dictator out of office and forced the reinstatement of the Supreme Court, which oversees secular law. Over three-quarters of Pakistanis said in a poll last summer that they had an unfavorable view of the Taliban, and a recent poll found that 90 percent of them worried about terrorism. To be sure, Pakistanis are on the whole highly opposed to the U.S. military presence in the region, and most outside the tribal areas object to U.S. Predator drone strikes on Pakistani territory. The danger is that the U.S. strikes may make the radicals seem victims of Western imperialism and so sympathetic to the Pakistani public.
Obama's dark vision of the overthrow of the Afghanistan government by al-Qaida-linked Taliban or the "killing" of Pakistan by small tribal groups differs little from the equally apocalyptic and implausible warnings issued by John McCain and Dick Cheney about an "al-Qaida" victory in Iraq. Ominously, the president's views are contradicted by those of his own secretary of defense. Pashtun tribes in northwestern Pakistan and southern Afghanistan have a long history of dissidence, feuding and rebellion, which is now being branded Talibanism and configured as a dire menace to the Western way of life. Obama has added yet another domino theory to the history of Washington's justifications for massive military interventions in Asia. When a policymaker gets the rationale for action wrong, he is at particular risk of falling into mission creep and stubborn commitment to a doomed and unnecessary enterprise.
Obama's domino theoryThe president sounds like he's channeling Cheney or McCain -- or a Cold War hawk afraid of international communism -- when he talks about the war in Afghanistan.
By Juan Cole
Mar. 30, 2009
President Barack Obama may or may not be doing the right thing in Afghanistan, but the rationale he gave for it on Friday is almost certainly wrong. Obama has presented us with a 21st century version of the domino theory. The U.S. is not, contrary to what the president said, mainly fighting "al-Qaida" in Afghanistan. In blaming everything on al-Qaida, Obama broke with his pledge of straight talk to the public and fell back on Bush-style boogeymen and implausible conspiracy theories.
Obama realizes that after seven years, Afghanistan war fatigue has begun to set in with the American people. Some 51 percent of Americans now oppose the Afghanistan war, and 64 percent of Democrats do. The president is therefore escalating in the teeth of substantial domestic opposition, especially from his own party, as voters worry about spending billions more dollars abroad while the U.S. economy is in serious trouble.
He acknowledged that we deserve a "straightforward answer" as to why the U.S. and NATO are still fighting there. "So let me be clear," he said, "Al-Qaida and its allies -- the terrorists who planned and supported the 9/11 attacks -- are in Pakistan and Afghanistan." But his characterization of what is going on now in Afghanistan, almost eight years after 9/11, was simply not true, and was, indeed, positively misleading. "And if the Afghan government falls to the Taliban," he said, "or allows al-Qaida to go unchallenged -- that country will again be a base for terrorists who want to kill as many of our people as they possibly can."
Obama described the same sort of domino effect that Washington elites used to ascribe to international communism. In the updated, al-Qaida version, the Taliban might take Kunar Province, and then all of Afghanistan, and might again host al-Qaida, and might then threaten the shores of the United States. He even managed to add an analog to Cambodia to the scenario, saying, "The future of Afghanistan is inextricably linked to the future of its neighbor, Pakistan," and warned, "Make no mistake: Al-Qaida and its extremist allies are a cancer that risks killing Pakistan from within."
This latter-day domino theory of al-Qaida takeovers in South Asia is just as implausible as its earlier iteration in Southeast Asia (ask Thailand or the Philippines). Most of the allegations are not true or are vastly exaggerated. There are very few al-Qaida fighters based in Afghanistan proper. What is being called the "Taliban" is mostly not Taliban at all (in the sense of seminary graduates loyal to Mullah Omar). The groups being branded "Taliban" only have substantial influence in 8 to 10 percent of Afghanistan, and only 4 percent of Afghans say they support them. Some 58 percent of Afghans say that a return of the Taliban is the biggest threat to their country, but almost no one expects it to happen. Moreover, with regard to Pakistan, there is no danger of militants based in the remote Federally Administered Tribal Areas (FATA) taking over that country or "killing" it.
The Kabul government is not on the verge of falling to the Taliban. The Afghan government has 80,000 troops, who benefit from close U.S. air support, and the total number of Taliban fighters in the Pashtun provinces is estimated at 10,000 to 15,000. Kabul is in danger of losing control of some villages in the provinces to dissident Pashtun warlords styled "Taliban," though it is not clear why the new Afghan army could not expel them if they did so. A smaller, poorly equipped Northern Alliance army defeated 60,000 Taliban with U.S. air support in 2001. And there is no prospect of "al-Qaida" reestablishing bases in Afghanistan from which it could attack the United States. If al-Qaida did come back to Afghanistan, it could simply be bombed and would be attacked by the new Afghan army.
While the emergence of "Pakistani Taliban" in the Federally Administered Tribal Areas is a blow to Pakistan's security, they have just been defeated in one of the seven major tribal agencies, Bajaur, by a concerted and months-long campaign of the highly professional and well-equipped Pakistani army. United States Secretary of Defense Robert Gates replied last summer to the idea that al-Qaida is regrouping in Pakistan and forms a new and vital threat to the West: "Actually, I don't agree with that assessment, because when al-Qaida was in Afghanistan, they had the partnership of a government. They had ready access to international communications, ready access to travel, and so on. Their circumstances in the FATA (Federally Administered Tribal Areas) and on the Pakistani side of the border are much more primitive. And it's much more difficult for them to move around, much more difficult for them to communicate."
As for a threat to Pakistan, the FATA areas are smaller than Connecticut, with a total population of a little over 3 million, while Pakistan itself is bigger than Texas, with a population more than half that of the entire United States. A few thousand Pashtun tribesmen cannot take over Pakistan, nor can they "kill" it. The Pakistani public just forced a military dictator out of office and forced the reinstatement of the Supreme Court, which oversees secular law. Over three-quarters of Pakistanis said in a poll last summer that they had an unfavorable view of the Taliban, and a recent poll found that 90 percent of them worried about terrorism. To be sure, Pakistanis are on the whole highly opposed to the U.S. military presence in the region, and most outside the tribal areas object to U.S. Predator drone strikes on Pakistani territory. The danger is that the U.S. strikes may make the radicals seem victims of Western imperialism and so sympathetic to the Pakistani public.
Obama's dark vision of the overthrow of the Afghanistan government by al-Qaida-linked Taliban or the "killing" of Pakistan by small tribal groups differs little from the equally apocalyptic and implausible warnings issued by John McCain and Dick Cheney about an "al-Qaida" victory in Iraq. Ominously, the president's views are contradicted by those of his own secretary of defense. Pashtun tribes in northwestern Pakistan and southern Afghanistan have a long history of dissidence, feuding and rebellion, which is now being branded Talibanism and configured as a dire menace to the Western way of life. Obama has added yet another domino theory to the history of Washington's justifications for massive military interventions in Asia. When a policymaker gets the rationale for action wrong, he is at particular risk of falling into mission creep and stubborn commitment to a doomed and unnecessary enterprise.
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