Dramatic increases in infant mortality, cancer and leukaemia in the Iraqi city of Fallujah, which was bombarded by US Marines in 2004, exceed those reported by survivors of the atomic bombs that were dropped on Hiroshima and Nagasaki in 1945, according to a new study.
Iraqi doctors in Fallujah have complained since 2005 of being overwhelmed by the number of babies with serious birth defects, ranging from a girl born with two heads to paralysis of the lower limbs. They said they were also seeing far more cancers than they did before the battle for Fallujah between US troops and insurgents.
Their claims have been supported by a survey showing a four-fold increase in all cancers and a 12-fold increase in childhood cancer in under-14s. Infant mortality in the city is more than four times higher than in neighbouring Jordan and eight times higher than in Kuwait.
Dr Chris Busby, a visiting professor at the University of Ulster and one of the authors of the survey of 4,800 individuals in Fallujah, said it is difficult to pin down the exact cause of the cancers and birth defects. He added that "to produce an effect like this, some very major mutagenic exposure must have occurred in 2004 when the attacks happened".
US Marines first besieged and bombarded Fallujah, 30 miles west of Baghdad, in April 2004 after four employees of the American security company Blackwater were killed and their bodies burned. After an eight-month stand-off, the Marines stormed the city in November using artillery and aerial bombing against rebel positions. US forces later admitted that they had employed white phosphorus as well as other munitions.
In the assault US commanders largely treated Fallujah as a free-fire zone to try to reduce casualties among their own troops. British officers were appalled by the lack of concern for civilian casualties. "During preparatory operations in the November 2004 Fallujah clearance operation, on one night over 40 155mm artillery rounds were fired into a small sector of the city," recalled Brigadier Nigel Aylwin-Foster, a British commander serving with the American forces in Baghdad.
He added that the US commander who ordered this devastating use of firepower did not consider it significant enough to mention it in his daily report to the US general in command. Dr Busby says that while he cannot identify the type of armaments used by the Marines, the extent of genetic damage suffered by inhabitants suggests the use of uranium in some form. He said: "My guess is that they used a new weapon against buildings to break through walls and kill those inside."
The survey was carried out by a team of 11 researchers in January and February this year who visited 711 houses in Fallujah. A questionnaire was filled in by householders giving details of cancers, birth outcomes and infant mortality. Hitherto the Iraqi government has been loath to respond to complaints from civilians about damage to their health during military operations.
Researchers were initially regarded with some suspicion by locals, particularly after a Baghdad television station broadcast a report saying a survey was being carried out by terrorists and anybody conducting it or answering questions would be arrested. Those organising the survey subsequently arranged to be accompanied by a person of standing in the community to allay suspicions.
The study, entitled "Cancer, Infant Mortality and Birth Sex-Ratio in Fallujah, Iraq 2005-2009", is by Dr Busby, Malak Hamdan and Entesar Ariabi, and concludes that anecdotal evidence of a sharp rise in cancer and congenital birth defects is correct. Infant mortality was found to be 80 per 1,000 births compared to 19 in Egypt, 17 in Jordan and 9.7 in Kuwait. The report says that the types of cancer are "similar to that in the Hiroshima survivors who were exposed to ionising radiation from the bomb and uranium in the fallout".
Researchers found a 38-fold increase in leukaemia, a ten-fold increase in female breast cancer and significant increases in lymphoma and brain tumours in adults. At Hiroshima survivors showed a 17-fold increase in leukaemia, but in Fallujah Dr Busby says what is striking is not only the greater prevalence of cancer but the speed with which it was affecting people.
Of particular significance was the finding that the sex ratio between newborn boys and girls had changed. In a normal population this is 1,050 boys born to 1,000 girls, but for those born from 2005 there was an 18 per cent drop in male births, so the ratio was 850 males to 1,000 females. The sex-ratio is an indicator of genetic damage that affects boys more than girls. A similar change in the sex-ratio was discovered after Hiroshima.
The US cut back on its use of firepower in Iraq from 2007 because of the anger it provoked among civilians. But at the same time there has been a decline in healthcare and sanitary conditions in Iraq since 2003. The impact of war on civilians was more severe in Fallujah than anywhere else in Iraq because the city continued to be blockaded and cut off from the rest of the country long after 2004. War damage was only slowly repaired and people from the city were frightened to go to hospitals in Baghdad because of military checkpoints on the road into the capital.
That is the purpose of a resolutionproposed by Ron Paul and Dennis Kucinich. It received thirty-eight votes, including six Republicans. Not a bad start. Hopefully, Ron Paul is yet again ahead of the political curve.
Gene Healy (vice-president of the solidly right-wing Cato Institute) on the circus that is al Qaeda, and the clown show that was the Bush-administration:
Last week, federal jurors in Brooklyn heard tapes from an undercover informant in what one prosecutor called one of "the most chilling plots imaginable," a 2007 Islamist plan to detonate underground fuel tanks at JFK International Airport.
On the tapes, defendant Russell Defreitas promised "high-tech," "ninja-style" tactics that included releasing rats in the main terminal to distract security. "We got to come up with supernatural things," he told the informant.
Despite his bluster, Defreitas seemed unaware of the technical difficulties involved in igniting hardened underground pipelines, and he never secured explosives.
The JFK plotters’ trial follows May’s attempted Times Square bombing, in which Faisal Shahzad -- trained in explosives at an al Qaeda camp in Pakistan -- failed to set off a bomb made of gas cans, propane tanks, fireworks and nonflammable fertilizer.
You ever get the feeling that some of these guys aren’t the sharpest scimitars in the shed?
If so, you’re not alone. The notion of "savvy and sophisticated" Islamist supervillains is "wildly off the mark," Brookings’ Daniel Byman and Christine Fair write in Atlantic magazine.
Many Afghan suicide bombers "never even make it out of their training camp," thanks to the jihadi tradition of the pre-martyrdom "manly embrace": "the pressure from these group hugs triggers the explosives in suicide vests." (Theological question: Do you get fewer virgins for an own-goal?)
On the American home front, al Qaeda and its sympathizers often don’t look much brighter:
» In 2006, an FBI sting rolled up the "Liberty City Seven," whose ringleader, the Washington Post reported, "wanted to blow up the Sears Tower in Chicago, which would then fall into a nearby prison, freeing Muslim prisoners who would become the core of his Moorish army. With them, he would establish his own country." Sounds like a plan!
» 2007 saw the arrest of six Islamists who planned to launch an armed attack on New Jersey’s Fort Dix, but were rounded up after they "asked a store clerk to copy a video of them firing assault weapons and screaming about jihad."
» In 2003, Khalid Sheikh Mohammed associate Iyman Faris went to jail on charges involving a plan to topple the Brooklyn Bridge by severing its suspension cables with a blowtorch.
» The 2005 Jose Padilla indictment revealed that some Islamic terrorists haven’t quite mastered speaking in code. One of Padilla’s co-defendants insisted he was just talking about sporting goods on the surveillance tapes, but couldn’t explain why he’d asked his co-conspirator if he had enough "soccer equipment" to "launch an attack on the enemy."
Lest you think I’m just cherry-picking particularly incompetent jihadis, recall that the Bush administration once considered Padilla, an American citizen, too dangerous for a civilian trial, and cited Faris’ capture as the crown jewel of successes with its warrantless wiretapping program.
The fact that many terrorists are morons doesn’t mean all are, and even morons get lucky sometimes, so vigilance remains essential.
But the myth that al Qaeda is 100 feet tall has fed dramatic government growth since 9/11. The Washington Post’s new series on "Top Secret America" shows that D.C. has erected vast pyramids in the name of homeland security, with some 1,200 agencies and 850,000 people trolling through e-mail and clear-cutting forests to produce mounds of useless, redundant intelligence reports.
We’ve given al Qaeda power over us they don’t deserve. When we recognize that they’re often inept and clownish, we weaken their ability to sow terror. For the sake of our liberty and security, it’s prudent and patriotic to allow an occasional smirk to cross your stiff upper lip.
1. "The Merchant Marine Act of 1920 is a United States Federal statute that regulates maritime commerce in U.S. waters and between U.S. ports. Section 27, also known as the Jones Act, requires that all goods transported by water between U.S. ports be carried in U.S.-flag ships, constructed in the United States, owned by U.S. citizens, and crewed by U.S. citizens and U.S. permanent residents. The purpose of the law is to supportprovide protectionism for the U.S. merchant marine industry."
2. David Warren: "We learned a simple thing this week: that the BP clean-up effort in the Gulf of Mexico is hampered by the Jones Act. This is a piece of 1920s protectionist legislation, that requires all vessels working in U.S. waters to be American-built, and American-crewed. So while, for instance, the U.S. Coast Guard can accept such help as three kilometres of containment boom from Canada, they can’t accept, and therefore don’t ask for, the assistance of high-tech European vessels specifically designed for the task in hand."
3. Howard Portnoy: "In order to accept offers of help, which have come from Belgian, Dutch, and Norwegian firms that claim to possess some of the world’s most advanced oil skimming ships, Obama would need to waive the Merchant Marine Act of 1920 (also known as the Jones Act). So why not simply waive the act? Other presidents have under similar circumstances. George W. Bush waived the Jones Act following Hurricane Katrina, allowing foreign ships into Gulf waters to aid in the relief effort.
The explanation of Obama’s reluctance to seek this remedy is his cozy relationship with labor unions. Joseph Carafano of the Heritage Foundation is quoted as saying: “The unions see it as … protecting jobs. They hate when the Jones Act gets waived, and they pound on politicians when they do that. So … are we giving in to unions and not doing everything we can, or is there some kind of impediment that we don’t know about?"
At least the Isreali leaders. The Wall Street Journal reports:
Israel and Egypt began the blockade of the Gaza Strip three years ago in an effort to cripple Hamas, but the economic isolation has claimed a different victim: the territory’s merchant class.
(...)
Israel defends the blockade as a way to prevent Hamas, the militant Palestinian group in charge here, from getting weapons. But Western officials, aid agencies and analysts have criticized the policy as a form of collective punishment that is doing little to weaken the group.
Hamas can get what it needs, including weapons and cash, via elaborate smuggling tunnels to Egypt. And Hamas’s public resistance to the blockade boosts its popularity here.
The blockade has also decimated Gaza’s private sector, key to weaning the territory from its dependence on imports and aid. The merchant class here has long provided a chunk of Gaza’s employment, and it is one of the few sectors that fostered constructive contact with Israel, through trade.
(...)
Businesses can’t import raw materials or export finished goods. Since the blockade, more than 3,000 private-sector enterprises, including factories and small businesses, have closed, contributing to an unemployment rate of 44%, according to the United Nations Relief and Works Agency in Gaza.
Many of the businesses that have managed to stay open have turned to smugglers to bring in machines, spare parts and raw materials from Egypt, severing trade ties between Gaza and Israeli manufacturers and traders.
All this has bolstered Hamas, businessmen here and aid agencies say. Hamas exerts oversight over the tunnels and their operators. It has expanded its own public-sector payroll, earning local praise for creating new jobs. It has also extended economic tentacles into new businesses.
Yaser Alwadeya, chairman of Alwadeya Group, a 54-year-old trading and manufacturing conglomerate, calls the new economic reality here "the Hamas private sector." Before the blockade, his company made 171 different brands of food, including chips and candy. Some 60% of his products went to Israel or the West Bank.
Much of his manufacturing line was destroyed by Israeli airstrikes during the December 2008-January 2009 Gaza war, he says. Facilities that survived are now starved of basic raw materials like cocoa powder, reducing his product line to just 11 items. That includes ice cream sold in clear plastic bags, because, Mr. Alwadeya says, Israel won’t allow in proper packaging.
He no longer exports anything, and he now employs 45 people, down from 276 before the blockade. "Where do you think they are?" asks Mr. Alwadeya of the employees he has had to fire. "Either on the streets or with Hamas."
Why libertarians cannot support Israels policy towards Jerusalem:
Israeli Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu told the American Israel Public Affairs Council on Monday that "Jerusalem is not a settlement." He continued that the historical connection between the Jewish people and the land of Israel cannot be denied. He added that neither could the historical connection between the Jewish people and Jerusalem. He insisted, "The Jewish people were building Jerusalem 3,000 years ago and the Jewish people are building Jerusalem today." He said, "Jerusalem is not a settlement. It is our capital." He told his applauding audience of 7500 that he was simply following the policies of all Israeli governments since the 1967 conquest of Jerusalem in the Six Day War.
Netanyahu mixed together Romantic-nationalist cliches with a series of historically false assertions. But even more important was everything he left out of the history, and his citation of his warped and inaccurate history instead of considering laws, rights or common human decency toward others not of his ethnic group.
So here are the reasons that Netanyahu is profoundly wrong, and East Jerusalem does not belong to him.
1. In international law, East Jerusalem is occupied territory, as are the parts of the West Bank that Israel unilaterally annexed to its district of Jerusalem. The Fourth Geneva Convention of 1949 and the Hague Regulations of 1907 forbid occupying powers to alter the lifeways of civilians who are occupied, and forbid the settling of people from the occupiers’ country in the occupied territory. Israel’s expulsion of Palestinians from their homes in East Jerusalem, its usurpation of Palestinian property there, and its settling of Israelis on Palestinian land are all gross violations of international law. Israeli claims that they are not occupying Palestinians because the Palestinians have no state are cruel and tautological. Israeli claims that they are building on empty territory are laughable. My back yard is empty, but that does not give Netanyahu the right to put up an apartment complex on it. (my emphasis, Ivan)
2. Israeli governments have not in fact been united or consistent about what to do with East Jerusalem and the West Bank, contrary to what Netanyahu says. The Galili Plan for settlements in the West Bank was adopted only in 1973. Prime Minister Yitzhak Rabin gave undertakings as part of the Oslo Peace Process to withdraw from Palestinian territory and grant Palestinians a state, promises for which he was assassinated by the Israeli far right (elements of which are now supporting Netanyahu’s government). As late as 2000, then Prime Minister Ehud Barak claims that he gave oral assurances that Palestinians could have almost all of the West Bank and could have some arrangement by which East Jerusalem could be its capital. Netanyahu tried to give the impression that far rightwing Likud policy on East Jerusalem and the West Bank has been shared by all previous Israeli governments, but this is simply not true.
3. Romantic nationalism imagines a "people" as eternal and as having an eternal connection with a specific piece of land. This way of thinking is fantastic and mythological. Peoples are formed and change and sometimes cease to be, though they might have descendants who abandoned that religion or ethnicity or language. Human beings have moved all around and are not directly tied to any territory in an exclusive way, since many groups have lived on most pieces of land. (my emphasis, Ivan) Jerusalem was not founded by Jews, i.e. adherents of the Jewish religion. It was founded between 3000 BCE and 2600 BCE by a West Semitic people or possibly the Canaanites, the common ancestors of Palestinians, Lebanese, many Syrians and Jordanians, and many Jews. But when it was founded Jews did not exist.
4. Jerusalem was founded in honor of the ancient god Shalem. It does not mean City of Peace but rather ’built-up place of Shalem."
5. The "Jewish people" were not building Jerusalem 3000 years ago, i.e. 1000 BCE. First of all, it is not clear when exactly Judaism as a religion centered on the worship of the one God took firm form. It appears to have been a late development since no evidence of worship of anything but ordinary Canaanite deities has been found in archeological sites through 1000 BCE. There was no invasion of geographical Palestine from Egypt by former slaves in the 1200s BCE. The pyramids had been built much earlier and had not used slave labor. The chronicle of the events of the reign of Ramses II on the wall in Luxor does not know about any major slave revolts or flights by same into the Sinai peninsula. Egyptian sources never heard of Moses or the 12 plagues & etc. Jews and Judaism emerged from a certain social class of Canaanites over a period of centuries inside Palestine.
6. Jerusalem not only was not being built by the likely then non-existent "Jewish people" in 1000 BCE, but Jerusalem probably was not even inhabited at that point in history. Jerusalem appears to have been abandoned between 1000 BCE and 900 BCE, the traditional dates for the united kingdom under David and Solomon. So Jerusalem was not ’the city of David,’ since there was no city when he is said to have lived. No sign of magnificent palaces or great states has been found in the archeology of this period, and the Assyrian tablets, which recorded even minor events throughout the Middle East, such as the actions of Arab queens, don’t know about any great kingdom of David and Solomon in geographical Palestine.
7. Since archeology does not show the existence of a Jewish kingdom or kingdoms in the so-called First Temple Period, it is not clear when exactly the Jewish people would have ruled Jerusalem except for the Hasmonean Kingdom. The Assyrians conquered Jerusalem in 722. The Babylonians took it in 597 and ruled it until they were themselves conquered in 539 BCE by the Achaemenids of ancient Iran, who ruled Jerusalem until Alexander the Great took the Levant in the 330s BCE. Alexander’s descendants, the Ptolemies ruled Jerusalem until 198 when Alexander’s other descendants, the Seleucids, took the city. With the Maccabean Revolt in 168 BCE, the Jewish Hasmonean kingdom did rule Jerusalem until 37 BCE, though Antigonus II Mattathias, the last Hasmonean, only took over Jerusalem with the help of the Parthian dynasty in 40 BCE. Herod ruled 37 BCE until the Romans conquered what they called Palestine in 6 CE (CE= ’Common Era’ or what Christians call AD). The Romans and then the Eastern Roman Empire of Byzantium ruled Jerusalem from 6 CE until 614 CE when the Iranian Sasanian Empire Conquered it, ruling until 629 CE when the Byzantines took it back.
The Muslims conquered Jerusalem in 638 and ruled it until 1099 when the Crusaders conquered it. The Crusaders killed or expelled Jews and Muslims from the city. The Muslims under Saladin took it back in 1187 CE and allowed Jews to return, and Muslims ruled it until the end of World War I, or altogether for about 1192 years.
Adherents of Judaism did not found Jerusalem. It existed for perhaps 2700 years before anything we might recognize as Judaism arose. Jewish rule may have been no longer than 170 years or so, i.e., the kingdom of the Hasmoneans.
8. Therefore if historical building of Jerusalem and historical connection with Jerusalem establishes sovereignty over it as Netanyahu claims, here are the groups that have the greatest claim to the city:
A. The Muslims, who ruled it and built it over 1191 years.
B. The Egyptians, who ruled it as a vassal state for several hundred years in the second millennium BCE.
C. The Italians, who ruled it about 444 years until the fall of the Roman Empire in 450 CE.
D. The Iranians, who ruled it for 205 years under the Achaemenids, for three years under the Parthians (insofar as the last Hasmonean was actually their vassal), and for 15 years under the Sasanids.
E. The Greeks, who ruled it for over 160 years if we count the Ptolemys and Seleucids as Greek. If we count them as Egyptians and Syrians, that would increase the Egyptian claim and introduce a Syrian one.
F. The successor states to the Byzantines, which could be either Greece or Turkey, who ruled it 188 years, though if we consider the heir to be Greece and add in the time the Hellenistic Greek dynasties ruled it, that would give Greece nearly 350 years as ruler of Jerusalem.
G. There is an Iraqi claim to Jerusalem based on the Assyrian and Babylonian conquests, as well as perhaps the rule of the Ayyubids (Saladin’s dynasty), who were Kurds from Iraq.
9. Of course, Jews are historically connected to Jerusalem by the Temple, whenever that connection is dated to. But that link mostly was pursued when Jews were not in political control of the city, under Iranian, Greek and Roman rule. It cannot therefore be deployed to make a demand for political control of the whole city.
10. The Jews of Jerusalem and the rest of Palestine did not for the most part leave after the failure of the Bar Kochba revolt against the Romans in 136 CE. They continued to live there and to farm in Palestine under Roman rule and then Byzantine. They gradually converted to Christianity. After 638 CE all but 10 percent gradually converted to Islam. The present-day Palestinians are the descendants of the ancient Jews and have every right to live where their ancestors have lived for centuries.
Joseph Stiglitz, a Nobel economics laureate visiting Venezuela, said developing nations must strike a balance between public and private control of the economy.
After meeting in the presidential palace with Venezuelan leader Hugo Chavez, Stiglitz praised the South American country’s success at distributing its oil income among citizens. He urged the government to ensure its economic policies are leading to sustainable growth.
``What’s fundamental is to have a balance in the role of the market and the government in the economy,’’ Stiglitz said at a forum on emerging markets sponsored by a local bank. ``We have to realize it’s not just about setting interest rates, but also about supporting growth.’’
The Nobel Prize winner said Venezuela’s economic growth in recent years has been ``impressive.’’ (...)
Venezuela, the fourth-biggest supplier of crude oil to the United States, had an 8.9 percent economic growth rate in the second quarter, its fifteenth straight quarter of expansion. Increased consumer demand and government spending has pushed inflation to 15.3 percent, the highest in Latin America.
Stiglitz said during his speech today that relatively high inflation isn’t necessarily harmful to economic growth, and that central-bank autonomy shouldn’t be ``excessive.’’
Chavez plans to formally do away with the Venezuelan central bank’s independence later this year through a rewrite of the constitution.
(...) The economist’s trip to Caracas follows a series of high- profile visits from U.S. citizens interested in the South American nation’s so-called ``Bolivarian’’ socialist revolution.
Actors Kevin Spacey and Sean Penn visited Caracas earlier this year and were received by President Chavez.
(Yemen is) this fascinating but dangerous land that President Barack Obama is planning to increase US political and military involvement. Joint operations will be carried out by the US and Yemeni military. There will be American drone attacks on hamlets where al-Qa’ida supposedly has its bases.
There is ominous use by American politicians and commentators of the phrase "failed state" in relation to Yemen, as if this some how legitimised foreign intervention. It is extraordinary that the US political elite has never taken on board that its greatest defeats have been in just such "failed states"’, not least Lebanon in 1982, when 240 US Marines were blown up; Somalia in the early 1990s when the body of a US helicopter pilot was dragged through the streets; Iraq after the overthrow of Saddam Hussein; and Afghanistan after the supposed fall of the Taliban.
Yemen has all the explosive ingredients of Lebanon, Somalia, Iraq and Afghanistan. But the arch-hawk Senator Joe Lieberman, chairman of the Senate Committee on Homeland Security, was happily confirming this week that the Green Berets and the US Special Forces are already there. He cited with approval an American official in Sanaa as telling him that, "Iraq was yesterday’s war. Afghanistan is today’s war. If you don’t act pre-emptively Yemen will be tomorrow’s war." In practice pre-emptive strikes are likely to bring a US military entanglement in Yemen even closer.
The US will get entangled because the Yemeni government will want to manipulate US action in its own interests and to preserve its wilting authority. It has long been trying to portray the Shia rebels in north Yemen as Iranian cats-paws in order to secure American and Saudi support. Al-Qa’ida in the Arabian Peninsula (AQAP) probably only has a few hundred activists in Yemen, but the government of long time Yemeni President Ali Abdulah Salih will portray his diverse opponents as somehow linked to al-Qa’ida.
In Yemen the US will be intervening on one side in a country which is always in danger of sliding into a civil war. This has happened before. In Iraq the US was the supporter of the Shia Arabs and Kurds against the Sunni Arabs. In Afghanistan it is the ally of the Tajiks, Uzbeks and Hazara against the Pashtun community. Whatever the intentions of Washington, its participation in these civil conflicts destabilises the country because one side becomes labelled as the quisling supporter of a foreign invader. Communal and nationalist antipathies combine to create a lethal blend.
Despite sectarian, ethnic and tribal loyalties in the countries where the US has intervened in the Middle East, they usually have a strong sense of national identity. Yemenis are highly conscious of their own nationality and their identity as Arabs. One of the reasons the country is so miserably poor, with almost half its 22 million people trying to live on $2 a day, is that in 1990 Yemen refused to join the war against Iraq and Saudi Arabia consequently expelled 850,000 Yemeni workers.
It is extraordinary to see the US begin to make the same mistakes in Yemen as it previously made in Afghanistan and Iraq. What it is doing is much to al-Qa’ida’s advantage. The real strength of al-Qa’ida is not that it can "train" a fanatical Nigerian student to sew explosives into his underpants, but that it can provoke an exaggerated US response to every botched attack. Al-Qa’ida leaders openly admitted at the time of 9/11 that the aim of such operations is to provoke the US into direct military intervention in Muslim countries.
In Yemen the US is walking into the al-Qa’ida trap. Once there it will face the same dilemma it faces in Iraq and Afghanistan. It became impossible to exit these conflicts because the loss of face would be too great. Just as Washington saved banks and insurance giants from bankruptcy in 2008 because they were "too big to fail," so these wars become too important to lose because to do so would damage the US claim to be the sole superpower.
In Iraq the US is getting out more easily than seemed likely at one stage because Washington has persuaded Americans that they won a non-existent success. The ultimate US exit from Afghanistan may eventually be along very similar lines. But the danger of claiming spurious victories is that such distortions of history make it impossible for the US to learn from past mistakes and instead it repeats them by fresh interventions in countries like Yemen.
So our President Incarnate, his hands dripping (metaphorically – I’m sure he washes them regularly) with the blood of Pakistani and Afghan children, along with shredded bits of the principles of Nuremberg, jets off to Norway to accept a prize that is supposed to be awarded only to those who have worked for “the abolition or reduction of standing armies.”
There, having given Mahatma Gandhi and Martin Luther King a patronisingly dismissive pat on the head, he adds: “But as a head of state sworn to protect and defend my nation [Note: clearly he must have taken some secret version of the oath of office, because that’s not what the public one says], I cannot be guided by their examples alone.” And then he has the effrontery to propound a bizarro version of history in which, “for more than six decades,” the united states has “brought stability,” “helped underwrite global security,” “enabled democracy to take hold,” and “promoted peace and prosperity from Germany to Korea.” (I suppose this would be an example of the u.s. promoting peace and prosperity in Korea.)
And as if all that weren’t audacity enough, he has the nerve to tell an audience of Scandinavians that “a non-violent movement could not have halted Hitler’s armies.”
That’s right: the president of the country that turned away Jews who were attempting to escape the Holocaust belittles the accomplishments of the people who actually saved their Jews from Hitler’s goons through the use of nonviolent resistance. As Bryan Caplan reminds us:
Danish, Norwegian, and Dutch resistance to Nazism from 1940 to 1945 was pronounced and fairly successful. In Norway, for example, teachers refused to promote fascism in the schools. For this, the Nazis imprisoned a thousand teachers. But, the remaining teachers stood firm, giving anti-fascist instruction to children and teaching in their homes. This policy made the pro-fascist Quisling government so unpopular that it eventually released all of the imprisoned teachers and dropped its attempt to dominate the schools. … In Copenhagen, Danes used a general strike to liberalize martial law. …
But, surely the most amazing but widely neglected case of nonviolent resistance against Nazi Germany was the protection of Jews and other persecuted minorities from deportation, imprisonment, and murder. … Gene Sharp shows how the nations which nonviolently resisted National Socialist racial persecutions saved almost all of their Jews, while Jews in other Nazi-controlled nations were vastly more likely to be placed in concentration camps and killed. The effort to arrest Norway’s seventeen hundred Jews sparked internal resistance and protest resignations; most of the Norwegian Jews fled to Sweden. … When Himmler tried to crack down on Danish Jews, the Danes thwarted his efforts. Not only did the Danish government and people resist – through bureaucratic slowdowns and noncooperation – but, surprisingly, the German commander in Denmark also refused to help organize Jewish deportations. This prompted Himmler to import special troops to arrest Jews. But, in the end almost all Danish Jews escaped unharmed. …
The omnipresent pattern … is that totalitarian governments are not omnipotent. They need the cooperation of the ruled to exert their will. If a people denies cooperation, even a government as vicious as Hitler’s, bound by few moral constraints, might be unable to get what it wants. (The Literature of Nonviolent Resistance and Civilian-Based Defense)
Then after collecting his prize and insulting the givers, Obama jets away again, snubbing the traditional ceremonies. Note to Scandinavia: don’t give our president any more prizes. Really. You don’t need to stay in this abusive relationship.
In the most profound financial change in recent Middle East history, Gulf Arabs are planning – along with China, Russia, Japan and France – to end dollar dealings for oil, moving instead to a basket of currencies including the Japanese yen and Chinese yuan, the euro, gold and a new, unified currency planned for nations in the Gulf Co-operation Council, including Saudi Arabia, Abu Dhabi, Kuwait and Qatar.
Secret meetings have already been held by finance ministers and central bank governors in Russia, China, Japan and Brazil to work on the scheme, which will mean that oil will no longer be priced in dollars.
The plans, confirmed to The Independent by both Gulf Arab and Chinese banking sources in Hong Kong, may help to explain the sudden rise in gold prices, but it also augurs an extraordinary transition from dollar markets within nine years.
The Americans, who are aware the meetings have taken place – although they have not discovered the details – are sure to fight this international cabal which will include hitherto loyal allies Japan and the Gulf Arabs. Against the background to these currency meetings, Sun Bigan, China’s former special envoy to the Middle East, has warned there is a risk of deepening divisions between China and the US over influence and oil in the Middle East. "Bilateral quarrels and clashes are unavoidable," he told the Asia and Africa Review. "We cannot lower vigilance against hostility in the Middle East over energy interests and security."
This sounds like a dangerous prediction of a future economic war between the US and China over Middle East oil – yet again turning the region’s conflicts into a battle for great power supremacy. China uses more oil incrementally than the US because its growth is less energy efficient. The transitional currency in the move away from dollars, according to Chinese banking sources, may well be gold. An indication of the huge amounts involved can be gained from the wealth of Abu Dhabi, Saudi Arabia, Kuwait and Qatar who together hold an estimated $2.1 trillion in dollar reserves.
The decline of American economic power linked to the current global recession was implicitly acknowledged by the World Bank president Robert Zoellick. "One of the legacies of this crisis may be a recognition of changed economic power relations," he said in Istanbul ahead of meetings this week of the IMF and World Bank. But it is China’s extraordinary new financial power – along with past anger among oil-producing and oil-consuming nations at America’s power to interfere in the international financial system – which has prompted the latest discussions involving the Gulf states.
Brazil has shown interest in collaborating in non-dollar oil payments, along with India. Indeed, China appears to be the most enthusiastic of all the financial powers involved, not least because of its enormous trade with the Middle East.
China imports 60 per cent of its oil, much of it from the Middle East and Russia. The Chinese have oil production concessions in Iraq – blocked by the US until this year – and since 2008 have held an $8bn agreement with Iran to develop refining capacity and gas resources. China has oil deals in Sudan (where it has substituted for US interests) and has been negotiating for oil concessions with Libya, where all such contracts are joint ventures.
Furthermore, Chinese exports to the region now account for no fewer than 10 per cent of the imports of every country in the Middle East, including a huge range of products from cars to weapon systems, food, clothes, even dolls. In a clear sign of China’s growing financial muscle, the president of the European Central Bank, Jean-Claude Trichet, yesterday pleaded with Beijing to let the yuan appreciate against a sliding dollar and, by extension, loosen China’s reliance on US monetary policy, to help rebalance the world economy and ease upward pressure on the euro.
Ever since the Bretton Woods agreements – the accords after the Second World War which bequeathed the architecture for the modern international financial system – America’s trading partners have been left to cope with the impact of Washington’s control and, in more recent years, the hegemony of the dollar as the dominant global reserve currency.
The Chinese believe, for example, that the Americans persuaded Britain to stay out of the euro in order to prevent an earlier move away from the dollar. But Chinese banking sources say their discussions have gone too far to be blocked now. "The Russians will eventually bring in the rouble to the basket of currencies," a prominent Hong Kong broker told The Independent. "The Brits are stuck in the middle and will come into the euro. They have no choice because they won’t be able to use the US dollar."
Chinese financial sources believe President Barack Obama is too busy fixing the US economy to concentrate on the extraordinary implications of the transition from the dollar in nine years’ time. The current deadline for the currency transition is 2018.
Saudi Arabia’s central bank chief denied holding talks on dropping the dollar as the currency for pricing oil, and said his country’s foreign-exchange peg to the dollar is a matter of national economic interest.
“We don’t have any emotional or political attachment to the dollar, we have self-interest and it still serves our self- interests,” Saudi Arabian central bank Governor Muhammad al- Jasser said in an interview yesterday in Istanbul, where he’s attending annual International Monetary Fund and World Bank meetings.
Speaking to reporters earlier, he said the U.K.’s Independent newspaper was “absolutely incorrect” in reporting that Gulf oil producers and nations including China, Japan, Russia and Brazil had held secret talks on a nine-year plan to phase out the dollar in oil trade. There has been “absolutely nothing” of that nature discussed between Saudi Arabia, the world’s biggest oil exporter, and other countries, he said.
The newspaper report, coming days after IMF figures showed a drop in the dollar’s share of global foreign-exchange reserves, sent the U.S. currency tumbling versus the euro and yen. Jasser’s remarks indicate the largest Arabian economy doesn’t favor a diminished role for the dollar.
The Independent said talks have been held on a move toward pricing oil in a basket of currencies plus gold, citing unidentified Gulf officials and unidentified Chinese bankers.
(...)
Other countries cited by the Independent as being involved in the secret plan also denied it.
Japanese Finance Minister Hirohisa Fujii said at a news conference in Tokyo yesterday that he “doesn’t know anything about it,” when he was asked about the newspaper report.
Russia’s Finance Ministry isn’t holding talks on replacing the dollar for oil sales, Interfax news agency reported, citing Deputy Finance Minister Dmitry Pankin. Kuwaiti Oil Minister Sheikh Ahmed Al-Abdullah Al-Sabah told reporters yesterday in Kuwait City that Gulf Arab states have no plans to drop the dollar for oil pricing.
Incredibly, President George W. Bush told French President Jacques Chirac in early 2003 that Iraq must be invaded to thwart Gog and Magog, the Bible’s satanic agents of the Apocalypse.
Honest. This isn’t a joke. The president of the United States, in a top-secret phone call to a major European ally, asked for French troops to join American soldiers in attacking Iraq as a mission from God.
Now out of office, Chirac recounts that the American leader appealed to their “common faith” (Christianity) and told him: “Gog and Magog are at work in the Middle East…. The biblical prophecies are being fulfilled…. This confrontation is willed by God, who wants to use this conflict to erase his people’s enemies before a New Age begins.”
This bizarre episode occurred while the White House was assembling its “coalition of the willing” to unleash the Iraq invasion. Chirac says he was boggled by Bush’s call and “wondered how someone could be so superficial and fanatical in their beliefs.”
After the 2003 call, the puzzled French leader didn’t comply with Bush’s request. Instead, his staff asked Thomas Romer, a theologian at the University of Lausanne, to analyze the weird appeal. Dr. Romer explained that the Old Testament book of Ezekiel contains two chapters (38 and 39) in which God rages against Gog and Magog, sinister and mysterious forces menacing Israel. Jehovah vows to smite them savagely, to “turn thee back, and put hooks into thy jaws,” and slaughter them ruthlessly. In the New Testament, the mystical book of Revelation envisions Gog and Magog gathering nations for battle, “and fire came down from God out of heaven, and devoured them.”
In 2007, Dr. Romer recounted Bush’s strange behavior in Lausanne University’s review, Allez Savoir. A French-language Swiss newspaper, Le Matin Dimanche, printed a sarcastic account titled: “When President George W. Bush Saw the Prophesies of the Bible Coming to Pass.” France’s La Liberte likewise spoofed it under the headline “A Small Scoop on Bush, Chirac, God, Gog and Magog.” But other news media missed the amazing report.
Subsequently, ex-President Chirac confirmed the nutty event in a long interview with French journalist Jean-Claude Maurice, who tells the tale in his new book, Si Vous le Répétez, Je Démentirai (If You Repeat it, I Will Deny), released in March by the publisher Plon.
Oddly, mainstream media are ignoring this alarming revelation that Bush may have been half-cracked when he started his Iraq war. My own paper, The Charleston Gazette in West Virginia, is the only U.S. newspaper to report it so far. Canada’s Toronto Star recounted the story, calling it a “stranger-than-fiction disclosure … which suggests that apocalyptic fervor may have held sway within the walls of the White House.” Fortunately, online commentary sites are spreading the news, filling the press void.
The French revelation jibes with other known aspects of Bush’s renowned evangelical certitude. For example, a few months after his phone call to Chirac, Bush attended a 2003 summit in Egypt. The Palestinian foreign minister later said the American president told him he was “on a mission from God” to defeat Iraq. At that time, the White House called this claim “absurd.”
Recently, GQ magazine revealed that former Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld attached warlike Bible verses and Iraq battle photos to war reports he hand-delivered to Bush. One declared: “Put on the full armor of God, so that when the day of evil comes, you may be able to stand your ground.”
The most exciting and underreported news of the past few weeks in Iran has been that the emerging challenger to the increasingly frantic and isolated "Supreme Leader" Ayatollah Ali Khamenei is former President Ali Akbar Hashemi Rafsanjani. And Rafsanjani has recently made a visit to the city of Najaf in Iraq to confer with Ayatollah Ali Husaini Sistani, a long-standing opponent of the Khamenei doctrines, as well as meeting in the city of Qum with Jawad al-Shahristani, who is Sistani’s representative in Iran. It is this dialectic between Iraqi and Iranian Shiites that underlies the flabbergasting statement issued from Qum last weekend to the effect that the Ahmadinejad government has no claim to be the representative of the Iranian people.
One of the apparent paradoxes involved in visiting Iran is this: If you want to find deep-rooted opposition to the clerical autocracy, you must make a trip to the holy cities of Mashad and Qum. It is in places like this, consecrated to the various imams of Shiite mythology, that the most stubborn and vivid criticism is often to be heard—as well as the sort of criticism that the ruling mullahs find it hardest to deal with.
So it is very hard to overstate the significance of the statement made last Saturday by the Association of Teachers and Researchers of Qum, a much-respected source of religious rulings, which has in effect come right out with it and said that the recent farcical and prearranged plebiscite in the country was just that: a sham event. (In this, the clerics of Qum are a lot more clear-eyed than many American "experts" on Iranian public opinion, who were busy until recently writing about Mahmoud Ahmadinejad as the rough-hewn man of the people.)
It’s not too much to read two things into the association’s statement. The first is that public discontent with the outrages of the last few weeks must be extremely deep and extremely widespread. Differences among the clerisy are usually solved in much more discreet ways. If the Shiite scholars of Qum are willing to go public and call the Ahmadinejad regime an impostor, they must be impressed with the intensity of feeling at the grass roots. The second induction follows from the first: It is not an exaggeration to say that the Islamic republic in its present form is now undergoing a serious crisis of legitimacy.
An excellent article by Abbas Milani in the current issue of the New Republic gives a historical and ideological backdrop to the discrepant forces within Shiism and in particular to the long disagreement between those who think that the clergy must rule on behalf of the people (the ultra-reactionary notion of the velayat-e faqui, ...) and those who do not. Among the more surprising members of the anti-Khomeini opposition is the late ayatollah’s grandson Sayeed Khomeini, a relatively junior cleric in Qum (...). And among the best-known of those who think it is profane for the clergy to degrade and compromise themselves with political power is Grand Ayatollah Sistani, spiritual leader of neighboring Iraq. (To emphasize the cross-fertilization a bit further, bear in mind that Sistani is in fact an Iranian, while Ayatollah Khomeini did much of his brooding on a future religious despotism while in exile in Iraq.)
Which brings me to a question that I think deserves to be asked: Did the overthrow of the Saddam Hussein regime, and the subsequent holding of competitive elections in which many rival Iraqi Shiite parties took part, have any germinal influence on the astonishing events in Iran? Certainly when I interviewed Sayeed Khomeini in Qum some years ago, where he spoke openly about "the liberation of Iraq," he seemed to hope and believe that the example would spread. One swallow does not make a summer. But consider this: Many Iranians go as religious pilgrims to the holy sites of Najaf and Kerbala in southern Iraq. They have seen the way in which national and local elections have been held, more or less fairly and openly, with different Iraqi Shiite parties having to bid for votes (and with those parties aligned with Iran’s regime doing less and less well). They have seen an often turbulent Iraqi Parliament holding genuine debates that are reported with reasonable fairness in the Iraqi media. Meanwhile, an Iranian mullah caste that classifies its own people as children who are mere wards of the state puts on a "let’s pretend" election and even then tries to fix the outcome. Iranians by no means like to take their tune from Arabs—perhaps least of all from Iraqis—but watching something like the real thing next door may well have increased the appetite for the genuine article in Iran itself.
There are, no doubt, other determining factors as well. Contrary to the simplistic distinction between the "liberal urban" and the "conservative rural" that is made by so many glib commentators, Iran is a country where very rapid urbanization of a formerly rural population is being undergone, and all good Marxists ought to know that historically this has always been a moment pregnant with revolutionary discontent. In Saddam’s Iraq, the possession of a satellite dish was punishable by death; everybody knows that the mullahs in Iran cannot enforce their own ban on informal media and unofficial transmission. And yet, precisely because they are so dense and so fanatical, they doom themselves to keep on trying. Every Iranian I know is now convinced that if this is not the end for the Khamenei system, it is at least the harbinger of the beginning of the end.
FBI special agents carried out 20 formal interviews and at least 5 "casual conversations" with former Iraqi dictator Saddam Hussein after his capture by U.S. troops in December 2003 (...).
Saddam denied any connections to the "zealot" Osama bin Laden, cited North Korea as his most likely ally in a crunch, and shared President George W. Bush’s hostility towards the "fanatic" Iranian mullahs, according to the FBI records of conversations from February through June 2004 between Saddam and Arabic-speaking agents in his detention cell at Baghdad International Airport.
The former Iraqi leader, when asked about his accomplishments, listed social progress for the people of Iraq, a temporary truce with the Kurds in the early 1970s, the nationalization of Iraq’s oil in 1972, support for the Arab side during the 1973 Middle East war with Israel, and after that, for the remaining 30 years of his rule, simple survival – through a devastating eight year war with Iran that he had launched, and a 12-year sanctions regime imposed on his people after another war that he began. During the interviews he repeatedly contests FBI evidence and the neutrality of his interlocutors – which one of them finds ironic, given the record of peremptory Iraqi justice under Saddam’s governance. He selectively outlines recent Iraqi history and acknowledges some mistakes, including the destruction without U.N. supervision or verification of some of Iraq’s WMD arsenal left over from the 1980s.
During the interviews Saddam refutes some examples of what he views as myths, like his purported use of body doubles. Instead he says that to evade his enemies he never used the telephone and traveled constantly from one dwelling to another (he describes the farm where he was captured in a “spider hole” as the same place where he took refuge after a failed 1959 coup attempt.)
He takes personal responsibility for ordering the launching of SCUD missiles against Israeli targets during the 1991 Persian Gulf War, because he blamed Israel and its influence in the U.S. for “all the problems of the Arabs”, but denies that his purpose was to draw that country into the conflict and to divide Washington from its Arab allies. He provides details on the lead-up to the war, reporting that during a January 1991 meeting former Secretary of State James Baker told Saddam’s foreign minister that if Iraq did not comply with U.S. conditions “we’ll take you back to the pre-industrial stage.”
Saddam’s historical recollections include his ascendancy within the Ba’athist party in 1968 and 1969; his disappointment after the Iran-Iraq war with Arab governments for their lack of gratitude for Iraq’s “saving all of the Arab world” from occupation by Iran; details about the 1991 Persian Gulf war; and the post-war Shi’a uprising in Iraq’s south, which he characterizes as “treachery” instigated by Iran.
Not included in these FBI reports are issues of particular interest to students of Iraq’s complicated relationship with the U.S. – the reported role of the CIA in facilitating the Ba’ath party’s rise to power, the uneasy alliance forged between Iraq and the U.S. during the Iran-Iraq war, and the precise nature of U.S. views regarding Iraq’s chemical weapons policy during that conflict, given its contemporaneous knowledge of their repeated use against Iranians and the Kurds.
This series of interviews also does not address chemical warfare in Kurdish areas of Iraq in 1987-1988, although an FBI progress report says Saddam was questioned on the topic. (...)
George Kennan, America’s senior diplomat: Reagan did not won the cold war. His military build-up, if anything, retarded it’s end:
The extreme militarization of American discussion and policy, as promoted by hard-line circles over the ensuing 25 years, consistently strengthened comparable hard-liners in the Soviet Union.
The more America’s political leaders were seen in Moscow as committed to an ultimate military rather than political resolution of Soviet-American tensions, the greater was the tendency in Moscow to tighten the controls by both party and police, and the greater the braking effect on all liberalizing tendencies in the regime. Thus the general effect of cold war extremism was to delay rather than hasten the great change that overtook the Soviet Union at the end of the 1980’s.
Terrorism is not a major global killer; on the contrary, for a Westerner, the chances of dying in a terrorist attack are a fraction of those of winning the lottery.
If the American economy requires oil, there is no need to use military measures to secure it. Countries with oil have every incentive to trade with us. Hostile countries are no exception. (...) The American foreign-policy elite has indeed sought control of foreign resources, but this reflects its own quest for power and profit rather than an attempt to fulfill the demands of the rapacious consumer.
Everything you always wanted to know about the Somali pirates:
Pirate activity might not be a threat to national security, but it’s still costly.
Absolutely. But you have to keep your perspective. The cost of the fight would be far greater than the cost imposed by piracy itself.
So if you don’t send the Marines, what do you send? Aid? Nation-building advisors?
The wise men in Washington are no better equipped at remolding Somali society than they are at remolding the auto industry. The aid we have sent there over the last few decades has almost invariably ended up boosting the power of one local faction or another.
Somalia is capable of producing for itself; it’s just that poor governance and civil strife periodically get in the way. Unfortunately, the U.S. has done much more to foster that poor governance and fan that civil strife than to end them. The evidence of this goes all the way back to the 1970s, when, for reasons related to the Cold War, the Ford administration started sponsoring a brutal military regime run by a self-proclaimed Marxist, Siad Barre.
Hold on. If this was part of the Cold War, why were we siding with a Marxist?
Somalia’s great rival was Ethiopia, and Ethiopia had just joined the Soviet bloc.
Did Barre change his ways when he started getting U.S. aid?
He and his representatives deployed a different set of platitudes when begging from their benefactors. But the basic structure of the Somali state stayed the same. It didn’t have much to do with either socialism or capitalism as a set of principles: The regime was a kleptocracy in which those who had political pull stole from those who did not. The old tribal structure adjusted itself to the new political context. Now one subclan could expropriate a chunk of land from another, start a "project" on it, and present it to the international community as aid-worthy "economic development."
After Barre was overthrown in 1991, such interclan battles stopped being subsumed within the system and spilled out into the open. Figures once called bureaucrats were now called warlords. But the civil strife of the early 1990s was essentially the same process carried out in a bloodier way.
And that’s when the United States and United Nations sent in soldiers?
But when the troops pulled out, didn’t everything go to pot?
You’ve got it backwards. The U.S./U.N. intervention made things worse: It undercut local farmers by dumping free food into circulation, herded self-reliant nomads into disease-ridden refugee camps, and disarmed civilians while leaving the warlords’ stockpiles largely untouched. At every point during the country’s crisis in the early to mid 1990s, the most constructive responses came from the Somalis themselves. (The local Red Crescent Society was responsible for more successful relief than all the foreign efforts combined.) When the outsiders left, the peacemaking elements of Somali society were able to reassert themselves, with elders arbitrating truces between the clans and entrepreneurs establishing a growing economy.
The results were hardly utopian—literacy rates were low, violence was down but was still fairly high, and the drinking water wasn’t always clean—but conditions were improving, and by the region’s standards they were pretty impressive. A 2004 study for the World Bank revealed that Somalia had as many roads per capita as its immediate neighbors, a better telecommunications infrastructure, and lower rates of extreme poverty; despite the absence of a central government, the country had reasonably effective systems of courts, credit, social insurance, and electric power. After 9/11, though, when the U.S. started channeling aid to the warlords, the fragile social peace started breaking down.
Wait. Back up. America aided the warlords?
Yes. The Bush administration worried that jihadists were seeking shelter in Somalia, so it allied itself with secular Somalis, who styled themselves the "Alliance for the Restoration of Peace and Counter-Terrorism." They included some of the very same figures the U.S. had battled in the early ’90s.
How did that work out?
The warlords used the aid to pursue their own agendas, and the fighting ramped back up. The chaos pushed ordinary Somalis into the arms of the Islamic Courts Union, a confederation of sharia-based arbitrators that gradually took over roughly half the country, including the nominal capital, Mogadishu.
Displeased with this result, Washington backed an Ethiopean invasion and occupation of the country. This was supposed to establish a central government for once and for all. Instead it was a gory failure whose chief effect was to rip apart civil society and turn the country into a violent free-for-all. As Human Rights Watch reported in 2008, "the last two years are not just another typical chapter in Somalia’s troubled history. The human rights and humanitarian catastrophe facing Somalia today threatens the lives and livelihoods of millions of Somalis on a scale not witnessed since the early 1990s."
One effect was to push more people into desperate and risky ways of making a living. Such as piracy.
That wasn’t the beginning of the piracy, though.
No, pirates had been active off the Somali coast since the ’90s. At first, to give the devil his due, this was a sort of self-defense, as fishermen fought off foreigners poaching in their waters and seized European boats illegally dumping nuclear waste. Such targets made the freebooters into folk-heroes, and it is one of the two main reasons the pirates have a fair amount of popular support onshore.
The buccaneers still describe themselves with PR-savvy names like the "National Volunteer Coast Guard." But as it became clear that there were enormous profits in piracy, any innocent sailor on an inadequately defended boat became potential prey. Once the war wiped out many other means of making a living, the number of pirate attacks increased further.
Now Ethiopia has withdrawn and left the "transitional government" in charge, to the extent that anyone in Somalia is in charge. The newly elected president of the transitional government, incidentally, is Sheikh Sharif Sheikh Ahmed, whose previous job title was commander in chief of the Islamic Courts Union.
Let me get this straight. To combat communism in east Africa, the United States propped up a Marxist dictator. After sending troops to battle the warlords, it intervened again to assist the warlords. It did this about-face to stanch the growth of Islamism, but the effect was to put an Islamist group in charge of the country. And after Washington backed an invasion and occupation of the nation to end the Islamic Courts Union’s control, the result was a government run by a former commander of the Islamic Courts Union?
You can see why I’m skeptical about a war on the pirates. It’ll probably end with Obama dedicating a 60-foot statue of Blackbeard in the middle of Mogadishu.
So how do we fix the problems on the mainland, if we don’t invade and don’t send aid?
We butt out. If we can’t solve Somalia’s problems, we can at least refrain from making them worse. The closest the country has had to a period of optimism and growth came when the international community—with the ignoble exceptions of the fish thieves and waste dumpers—largely left the place to its own devices. Do that long enough, and the Somalis may develop institutions strong enough to help rein in the pirates. In the meantime, the best place for us outsiders to focus our efforts is in finding smarter, more effective ways to defend our ships.
That isn’t a very optimistic conclusion.
Sorry, but the region isn’t exactly bubbling over with reasons for hope. It’s easy to call vaguely for humanitarian assistance or for military action. It’s harder when you think through the likely consequences of such interventions, especially in light of the consequences of all the earlier aid and war.
Whether you’re building a working society on the land or protecting ships at sea, real solutions are only going to come incrementally, experimentally, and at the initiative of the people directly affected. The best thing the world’s governments can do is to figure out what they might be doing that blocks rather than facilitates such gradual, bottom-up change, and then to stop doing it.
Russia is to reduce its defence budget for the current year by 15 per cent in response to the financial crisis, the head of the State Duma’s defence committee said on Thursday, Interfax reported.
"A decision was made for a reduction of 15 per cent and it is highly likely that this is not the last decision on the budget," said Mikhail Babich.
He added that spending on new weapons would remain unchanged.
"The important question now is to know which lines of military spending will be reduced in order to not affect the fundamentals we want to preserve: state order and social spending," he said.
This year the Defence Ministry’s budget was set at around $39.5 billion.
Russia’s authorities indicated Feb. 5 that the 2009 budget deficit would be at least 8% of GDP because of the economic crisis that has hit Russia.
Russia’s economy, driven in recent years by the soaring price of raw materials, has been hit particularly hard by the collapse of oil prices.
The rouble has lost a third of its value against the euro and the dollar since last November and the government says it expects somewhere between 0%-0.2% decline in GDP this year.
It seems likely to me that more people oppose the auto bailout than support it, more people oppose the housing bailout than support it, more people oppose the stimulus than support it, and more people oppose the bank bailout than support it.
Starting last September, our country has gone through six months that shook the world. We have abandoned free markets. We have abandoned democracy, in the sense of having policies that reflect the popular will. The United States has become a technocratic dictatorship.
I’m tired of watching Paulson, Geithner, Bernanke, and now the Obama Administration picking through my wallet and giving my money to people who I don’t want to see get it. President Reagan expressed a vision for the fall of the Soviet Union when he said, "Mr. Brezhnev Gorbachev, tear down that wall." My vision for the fall of the technocratic dictatorship might be expressed as, "Mr. Obama, give back my wallet."
The European Union has turned into an undemocratic and elitist project comparable to the Communist dictatorships of eastern Europe that forbade alternative thinking, Czech President Vaclav Klaus told the European Parliament on Thursday.
Klaus, whose country now holds the rotating EU presidency, set out a scathing attack on the EU project and its institutions, provoking boos from many lawmakers, some of whom walked out, but applause from nationalists and other anti-EU legislators.
Klaus is known for deep skepticism of the EU and has refused to fly the EU flag over his official seat in Prague during the Czech presidency, saying the country is not an EU province.
He said current EU practices smacked of communist times when the Soviet Union controlled much of eastern Europe, including the Czech Republic and when dissent or even discussions were not tolerated.
"Not so long ago, in our part of Europe we lived in a political system that permitted no alternatives and therefore also no parliamentary opposition," said Klaus. "We learned the bitter lesson that with no opposition, there is no freedom."
He said the 27-nation bloc should concentrate on offering prosperity to Europeans, rather than closer political union, and scrap a stalled EU reform treaty that Irish voters have already rejected.
Klaus said that questioning deeper integration has become an "uncriticizable assumption that there is only one possible and correct future of the European integration."
"The enforcement of these notions ... is unacceptable," Klaus said. "Those who dare thinking about a different option are labeled as enemies." Observers had been expecting Klaus to deliver a critical speech during his first and only visit to the EU chamber at a time when his country holds the EU limelight as chair of the 27-nation bloc.
"I have never experienced a situation where the presidency of the European Union ... compares the EU with the Soviet Union," said Belgian lawmaker Ivo Belet.
Northern Africa, 1803. The first American attempt to regime change:
(...) Jefferson and Madison approved the first U.S. attempt to replace a hostile foreign government. Madison conceded that to "intermeddle in the domestic contests of other countries" violated American principles, but, he reasoned, "it cannot be unfair, in the prosecution of a just war"’ to exploit "the enmity and pretenses of others against a common foe." With authorization from Washington, the U.S. consul at Tunis (...) plotted with the pasha’s exiled brother to overthrow the government of Tripoli.
Can we classify this as another change we can believe in?
Missiles fired from suspected US drones killed at least 15 people inside Pakistan today, the first such strikes since Barack Obama became president and a clear sign that the controversial military policy begun by George W Bush has not changed.
Security officials said the strikes, which saw up to five missiles slam into houses in separate villages, killed seven "foreigners" - a term that usually means al-Qaeda - but locals also said that three children lost their lives.
Dozens of similar strikes since August on northwest Pakistan, a hotbed of Taleban and al-Qaeda militancy, have sparked angry government criticism of the US, which is targeting the area with missiles launched from unmanned CIA aircraft controlled from operation rooms inside the US.
The operations were stepped up last year after frustration inside the Bush administration over a perceived failure by Islamabad to stem the flow of Taleban and al-Qaeda fighters from the tribal regions into Afghanistan. Mr Obama has made Afghanistan his top foreign policy priority and said during his presidential campaign that he would consider military action inside Pakistan if the government there was unable or unwilling to take on the militants.
The strikes come just a day after Mr Obama appointed Richard Holbrooke, a former UN ambassador, as a special envoy for the region.
Eight people died when missiles hit a compound near Mir Ali, an al-Qaeda hub in Pakistan’s North Waziristan region. Seven more died when hours later two missiles hit a house in Wana, in South Waziristan. Local officials said the target in Wana was a guest house owned by a pro-Taleban tribesman. One said that as well as three children, the tribesman’s relatives were killed in the blast.
Pakistan has objected to such attacks, saying they are a violation of its territory that undermines its efforts to tackle militants. Since September, the US is estimated to have carried out about 30 such attacks, killing more than 220 people.
French foreign minister Bernard Kouchner admits there is "a permanent contradiction between human rights and the foreign policy of a state", and adds "even in France". Chris Blattman responds:
"(E)ven in France"? This is a nation with the sorriest record of post-colonial meddling and great power politics in Africa--and there are a great many sorry records out there.
History was made at the United Nations yesterday when 60 countries signed onto a General Assembly declaration in support of the decriminalization of homosexuality. France--which currently holds the rotating presidency of the European Union--spearheaded the resolution, which was a 13 point declaration "to ensure that sexual orientation or gender identity may under no circumstances be the basis for criminal penalties, in particular executions, arrests or detention."
Opposing the resolution, were the United States, the Holy See, and members of the Organization of the Islamic Conference.
Coca is a serious destabilizer—keeping Colombia’s rebels armed and the country’s progress in check. But after almost a decade, U.S.-assisted efforts to reduce the crop’s production in Colombia haven’t just failed; they’ve been downright counterproductive. Plan Colombia was meant to improve security, stamp out drug cultivation, and improve law and order after a decades-long conflict with leftist militants. But coca cultivation rose 15 percent between 2000 and 2006, an October 2008 U.S. Government Accountability Office (GAO) study found. A separate U.N. study found that in 2007 alone, the area of land hosting coca crops rose 27 percent. To put it mildly, something is not working.
Coca, the base crop for cocaine, has funded the operations of various paramilitaries and the rebel group FARC for decades. Although Colombian military operations have severely hampered FARC’s activities during the last several years, the drug trade continues apace. Aerial spraying and manual eradication have had temporary effects, but coca farmers tend to grow the lucrative crop again because there’s rarely an equally profitable alternative. The GAO reckons that many farmers have moved to more remote areas to avoid the eradication efforts. Meanwhile, the market value of coca rose by roughly $450 per kilogram in 2007 to more than $2,000.
The United States has spent $6 billion on Plan Colombia, but Colombia still supplies 90 percent of U.S. cocaine. Time for a rethink on the drug war?
Hillary’s foreign policy cannot possibly go wrong. I don’t think I agree with Kaplan’s assertions that Nixon’s choice for Kissinger was "fortuitous" but the rest of the article is quite excellent:
In the spring of 1977, Menachem Begin was elected prime minister of Israel and surprised everyone by choosing as his foreign minister not someone from his own Likud Party, but a star of the opposing Labor Party, Moshe Dayan. It proved a brilliant choice, as Dayan helped direct the peace process with Egypt that culminated with the Camp David accords.
In the fall of 1968, Richard Nixon was elected president of the United States, and rather than choose as his secretary of state someone from among his own supporters, he chose Henry Kissinger, a supporter of Nixon’s arch-rival, Nelson Rockefeller. Again, that proved a fortuitous choice, as Kissinger helped orchestrate a rapprochement with China, as well as accords in the Middle East and with the Soviet Union.
President-elect Barack Obama has now done something similar, picking a rival, Sen. Hillary Clinton, to be his secretary of state, rather than someone from among his own supporters. It could also end up a fortuitous choice. Clinton may not be as steeped in foreign policy expertise as a Dayan or a Kissinger, but neither is she a neophyte. Moreover, she will build a strong team at State from among her own supporters, notably former United Nations Ambassador Richard Holbrooke.
But the real reason that Obama and Clinton might enjoy success is something that goes barely mentioned in the media. Obama and Clinton are buying into a bottomed-out market vis-à-vis America’s position in the world. It is as if they will be buying stock after the market has crashed, and just at the point when a number of factors are already set in motion for a recovery. For President George W. Bush did not just damage America’s position in the world, he has also, over the past two years, quietly repositioned himself as a realist in foreign policy, and that, coupled with a bold new strategy in Iraq, known as the “surge,” has poised America for a diplomatic rebound, which the next administration will get the credit for carrying out.
Consider the following:
Iraq is on the mend, with local and national elections scheduled for 2009 and 2010 respectively, which could well solidify our withdrawal under better-than-previously-expected circumstances. Afghanistan is not on the mend, but Obama will have the benefit of moving more troops there from an improved Iraq, as well as putting into place the new strategy of Army Gen. David Petraeus, who has just taken over Central Command, giving Petraeus responsibility not just for Iraq, but for the Greater Middle East. Moreover, Al-Qaeda may be on the run, thanks to a quiet agreement that President Bush negotiated recently with Pakistan for aerial strikes against enemy targets inside Pakistani territory. Then there is Iran, perhaps about to become more reasonable, given the collapse in the price of oil. Syria has been subtly re-engaged by both America and Europe, and may be about to inch away from Iran’s orbit. And Arab-Israeli peace negotiations have been making a little headway over the course of 2008, even as there has been almost no coverage of it. Here, too, Team Obama is poised to get the credit for break-throughs.
Indeed, the Middle East may just possibly be on the brink of a positive rearranging of pieces over the next few years, thanks to a new American president with the clout derived from high approval ratings both domestically and internationally, that will, in turn, affect decision-making in places like Teheran and Damascus, whose citizenries likely have a higher opinion of Obama than they have of their own leaders. Do not underestimate the importance of a popular American president coupled with increased stability in Iraq, which will be progressing from one democratic election to another.
Then there’s China, India, and Russia. China and the United States may be about to move closer together, thanks to the world economic crisis, which now increases the degree to which each of these two great powers will depend on the other. In India, Bush has left a legacy of improved relations, thanks in no small measure to the recently concluded nuclear pact. And Obama’s promise to engage Russia, while perhaps calling a halt to NATO expansion - even as Russia is weakened by falling oil prices and a negative international reaction to its adventure in Georgia – could signal improved ties on that score. And improved ties with Russia could mean more Russian pressure on Iran.
In South America, Venezuelan strongman Hugo Chavez has become measurably more unpopular according to recent polls, even as he, too, is weakened by falling oil prices. Obama can also look forward to the end of the Castro regime in Cuba and that of Robert Mugabe in Zimbabwe over the next four years. Burma may be edging towards a transition away from its aging, implacable dictator, Than Shwe. North Korea is a dicey call, as Kim Jong Il continues to manipulate negotiations, but the overall trend there is in the direction of a comprehensive agreement.
So, yes, this may be a market where buyers are once again starting to trickle in, signifying that a bottom has been reached. Good timing for Hillary.
So it is really refreshing, at this historical moment, to see some folks challenging St. Franklin from the Left. And it’s deeply unfortunate, but not surprising, that it is refreshing to see that. It ought to be easy and common to make the Leftist case against a millionaire dynastic politician who officially kicked off his administration with a series of massive bank bail-outs, systematically attacked labor radicals, created a bureaucratic apparatus intended to buy off and domesticate labor moderates and conservatives, while sidelining or criminalizing labor’s most effective tactics, and presided over repeated physical attacks on organized workers. A millionaire dynastic politician who, in 1936, ordered J. Edgar Hoover to ramp up federal surveillance of questionable domestic political groups, and who aggressively dispensed with traditional restraints on unilateral executive power in order to pack the courts in favor of his own policies and to elevate himself to President-for-Life. A President-for-Life who conscripted millions of workers in the United States’ first ever peacetime military draft, who then spent a couple years deliberately wangling his way into a position where he could throw his new conscript army into the largest and most destructive war in the history of the world, who then, using the exigencies of a global war on tyranny as his excuse, drove Congress to create the House Un-American Activities Committee, imprisoned war protesters and political opponents on sedition and espionage charges, extracted no-strike agreements from the now-politically-controlled labor unions, commandeered virtually every good and imposed massive rationing and government-mandated wage freezes on American workers, created the modern military-industrial complex, ordered the firebombing of hundreds of German and Japanese cities, and, with a series of unilateral executive orders and military proclamations, summarily seized the property of hundreds of thousands of Japanese Americans, imposed arbitrary curfews on them based solely on their nationality, and finally sent in the military to roust them out of their homes and march them into concentration camps scattered across the American West.
Neoliberalism is poised for a comeback, in a country that was one of the first experimenters, New Zealand:
The National party (conservative) just won the general election in New Zealand a few hours ago (see here and here). The Labour party, which had been in power since 1999, was ousted. Prime Minister Helen Clark is to be replaced by John Key, the leader of the National party.
The really good news is that the ACT party, which is the most free-market party in NZ (and perhaps the most free-market party to be seating in parliament anywhere in the world), won five MPs with 3.7% of the votes. There are 122 seats in the NZ Parliament. As I am writing this, National has won 59 seats, which means that National and ACT together have the majority to govern. This is important because the electoral system in NZ is based on proportionality and, as a result, coalition governments have plagued the political landscape for years (see here and here). It is true that no party seems to have the majority, but National and ACT better fit together than other coalitions of the past. Moreover, the famous Sir Roger Douglas, the father of the NZ reforms in the 1980s is back in Parliament. He is one of the five ACT MPs. Douglas is tremendously intelligent and will be an asset for NZ politics.
While New Zealand has done fine in the last 20 years or so, it could have done better (see here). The short story is that the parties in power (especially the Labour Party) since around 1997 have not built up on the past reforms and have not done much to increase the social surplus. For instance, New Zealand has been running budget surpluses for years but a recent forecast showed potential deficits after 2010. This would mark the end of an amazing record of fiscal prudence spanning different governments under the guidance of the Fiscal Responsibility Act of 1994. While conservative by European standards, the Labour government has implemented many bad policies: such as loosening the inflation target, increasing the marginal income tax rate, implementing vast government saving schemes, and re-regulating and nationalizing utilities and transport.
As the world (especially the US and the EU) seems to be turning toward more Keynesian policies and interventionist views, New Zealand replaced its left-leaning party in favor of a more economically conservative one. While I have no idea as to what John Key wants to do as Prime Minister, one may hope that New Zealand, one more time, will lead the way by engaging in sound reforms promoting an institutional environment enabling freer markets (but don’t hold your breath).
The qualities of charisma and rhetoric that Obama brings to this task may be a match for it. His declared policies are not. His desire to disengage from Iraq is not appreciably different from that of the Bush administration and the Iraqi government. On the other hand, his clearly expressed wish to beef up the war in Afghanistan is reckless.
Obama has approved the bombing of targets inside Pakistan (and presumably now Syria) and proposed invasion to "secure" that country’s nuclear arsenal. He has backtracked on compromise with Iran and done nothing to suggest an end to the macho provocation of Russia.
At home Obama would appear from his statements and voting records to be a conventional Democrat, essentially tax, spend and protect with tariffs. While some of this is America’s business, the world economy needs a protectionist US like a bullet in the head. American markets open to world goods are vital for recovery, as is America’s active participation in the easing of world trade. Obama has shown no sign of accepting this.
On all these fronts there is a more alarming prospect. It is that a Democratic president, even with an overwhelmingly Democratic Congress, must beware of seeming soft or dovish or "appeasing terror". Such is politics that the more liberal the man, the more illiberal he can feel compelled to behave, as was the case with Bill Clinton and Tony Blair. Obama has yet to indicate a retreat from the Patriot Act or the language of George Bush’s war on terror.
Any modern leader parrots the language of change. Obama proclaims himself the embodiment of a revolution in American public life. Yet his record is anything but radical. He even supports the right to bear arms. (Isn’t that radical? Ivan) Were it not for his colour, he would be a candidate running on a conventional Democratic ticket, with few policies more constructive than those of his opponent, John McCain, on how the US might now escape from its many predicaments.
The porn industry seems to be struggling as a consequense of the financial crisis. Should we bail them out? Anyone? Nicolas? Arnold Kling:
Robert Shiller complains about groupthink among policymakers. He means that they didn’t heed his warnings of a housing bubble.
My complaint is about the groupthink that says we really, really must revive the mortgage securities industry. Instead, I suggest thinking about it as if it were the porn video industry. Both of them were essentially nonexistent forty years ago, before video cassettes and before GNMA. Both are ubiquitous today.
Suppose that it were the porn video industry that had collapsed. Would we need to bail it out? I would argue otherwise. I mean, whatever people, er, accomplish by watching porn videos, they were able to accomplish it before there ever were porn videos.
Similarly with the mortgage securities industry. People were able to buy houses and finance them with mortgages before there were mortgage securities.
(...)
next time you hear Ben (Bernanke) or Hank (Paulson) or Barney (Frank) or some other leader (Nicolas Sarkozy) proclaim the importance of the mortgage securities market, imagine that they were advocating the equivalent government support for the porn video industry.
“It’s the beginning of the decline of the US financial empire. The Great Depression ended in a massive war. I hope that’s not going to happen but it’s pretty ugly now,” said Professor Roubini, an academic and former US Treasury adviser.
He expects a global recession to last for at least two years and said the current crisis could lead to a "massive, ugly war."
“We’re now paying the price for the biggest asset and credit bubble in history," Professor Roubini said at a hedge fund conference in London. "The bail-outs have not worked because the markets are no longer rallying, and the policymakers have run out of options.”
The global meltdown financial meltdown accelerated this month, with the UK and US governments being forced to take stakes in some of the world’s biggest banks. Stock markets around the world have fallen sharply this month as investors’ concern switches to the impact on the wider economy.
Professor Roubini, who is known for predicting some of the trouble engulfing the financial system, said he would not be surprised if the US and other countries soon had to close their stock markets for more than a week.
“It’s like we’re walking blind in a minefield. Every situation has become risky and no-one can trust each other,” Mr Roubini said.“The banks are too big to be allowed to fail, but they’re also too big to be saved.”
He said that the problems were not just caused by the US sub-prime market, but all kinds of risky lending the world over - from mortgages and cars to student and commercial loans. Investors, according to Professor Roubini, should stay clear of risky assets and keep their money in cash.
