rjkspeaks

FRANK RICH'S "PERSON OF THE YEAR" AND THE DECADE OF DECEPTION

noreply@blogger.com (Bob Kalin) — Tue, 22 Dec 2009 15:03:00 +0000

In his regular NY Times, Sunday column, Frank Rich, (December 20, 2009) says fair well to a dreadful year and a horrible decade (a questionable election, 9-11, two unnecessary wars, and a great depression) by discrediting Time Magazine’s choice of Ben Bernanke as “Person of the Year”. According to Rich, the journal's choice of Bernanke was dishonest, and all too typical of the “flight from truth” syndrome which has infected our nation over the last decade. To underscore this national “bend the truth” tendency of the first decade of this century, Frank Rich enrolled his own candidate: four-time US Master's champion-golfer, Tiger Woods as his “Person of the Year”. Who could better represent the decade of deception? Tiger, whose golf and endorsement success was based on his superb mastery of the long drive, followed by a short-iron recovery shot close to the pin from the even the deepest rough, has seen his popularity plummet recently from 85% to 35% due to the explosive press coverage exposing a "Doctor Jekyll and Mr. Hyde" personality. So who could better typify the “decade of deception” than Woods, the first “billion dollar” athlete, who so successfully manipulated his public image- one of a steel-willed, well-disciplined happily-married, privacy-loving "every-man"athlete, as he lived out his secret “wild-life” behind his fortified façade.

According to Frank Rich, awarding, Fed Chairman Ben Bernanke as Time’s ‘Person of the Year, 2009’ was only another example of gross media deception. Awarded since 1927 (Charles Lindbergh was their first) the famous national journal has honored some of the world's true greats--but according to Rich, this year's award went to a “schnook” who foolishly kept the economic mixer whipping at high speed as the economy went into a froth---then did nothing, as economy collapsed like a hot soufflé in a cold breeze. (See http://www.time.com/time/specials/packages/article/0,28804,1946375_1947251,00.html). Since Bernanke’s primary function as Chairman of the Fed was to prevent economic "over exuberance" and financial bubbles, he is a most undeserving honoree, who failed at his primary function. Would they have put Lindberg on the cover if he had ditched in the Atlanic? No! Rather than acting as the nation’s financial guardian, Bernanke took on the role of facilitator of Wall Street’s excesses. (See: “You Ben are the Moral Hazard” by Senator Jim Bunning).

Mr. Rich’s insightful argument is that Time’s hypocritical choice was just another example among many during this last decade of how the media, the government and even private citizens misrepresent facts, bent the truth and lied to the public. One wonders, did Rich have President Obama's Nobel Prize committee in his sights too?

If Time was ready to "bamboozle” the public with the hypocrisy of installing Bernanke as a "Person of the Year". Frank Rich was ready to install Tiger Woods--a man whose personal life and public persona are so obviously, nay bizarrely incongruent, as to underscore the blatant hypocrisy in public discourse over this last decade. Rich’s well-written piece tabulates for us the many ways we have been deceived by our government, the electronic and other media.

"If there’s been a consistent narrative to this year and every other in this decade, it’s that most of us, Bernanke included, have been so easily bamboozled. The men who played us for suckers, whether at Citigroup or Fannie Mae, at the White House or Ted Haggard’s megachurch, are the real movers and shakers of this century’s history so far. That’s why the obvious person of the year is Tiger Woods. His sham beatific image, questioned by almost no one until it collapsed, is nothing if not the farcical reductio ad absurdum of the decade’s flimflams, from the cancerous (the subprime mortgage) to the inane (balloon boy)." .......As cons go, Woods’s fraudulent image as an immaculate exemplar of superhuman steeliness is benign. His fall will damage his family, closest friends, Accenture and the golf industry much more than the rest of us. But the syndrome it epitomizes is not harmless. We keep being fooled by leaders in all sectors of American life, over and over. A decade that began with the “reality” television craze exemplified by “American Idol” and “Survivor” — both blissfully devoid of any reality whatsoever — spiraled into a wholesale flight from truth".Frank Rich, NY Times, December 20, 2009.

That "flight from truth" over the last decade included the lies about Saddam Hussein and his supposed weapons of mass destruction, as well as the non-existent ties to Al Qaidia, lies about non-existing Niger derived yellow-cake, as well as lies about those who attempted to expose lies like Ambassador Joe Wilson and his wife.

Rich reminds of us of all those who bamboozled us over the decade from Barry Bonds who did not use steroids (yeah sure!) and the slippery John Edwards who did not father a baby, to the epitome of deception Bernie Madoff, as well as mere "associates in deception" Karl Rove, Elliott Spitzer, and “family-man” Larry Craig (of the wandering foot in public bathrooms), and don't forget financial huckster Ken Lay (of Enron fame), and many others.

Rich concludes that one of President Obama's problems is that..."... after a decade of being spun silly, Americans can’t be blamed for being cynical about any leader trying to sell anything. As we say goodbye to the year of Tiger Woods, it is the country, sad to say, that is left mired in a sand trap with no obvious way out."

Mr Rich puts the question out there so elegantly and I admire him for his insight. But it makes me wonder. How can these hucksters be so successful? And why are Americans so subject to hucksterism? Why are we so gullible is the underlying question? I believe most of our local charlatans, flim-flamers, bamboozlers, and Wizards of Oz, hidden behind their screens would be exposed elsewhere in the world. Are we so badly educated, so simple, so believing we can not tell a snake-oil salesman from a sincere Senator?

One reason may be that there are too few Mr. Frank Richs (Krugmans, Dowds, and a few others) and too many Judith Millers in our press corps. The press simply is too well “imbedded” in our military , government and business to any longer truly serve its true function as guardian of truth. Then too, there are too few independent sources of information.

A passing survey of the news organs of record indicate how little difference exists among them. The same story makes the rounds, but they repeat the same facts and come to the same conclusions. Rather than raising ones questioning antennae some readers may find that similarity very reassuring. Here in America, there is simply a lack of alternate information. Yes, the Internet is available and may well address that shortcoming, but with far too few exceptions Americans do not get their news there, read foreign languages, and so foreign press is not a useful source, and if they did, they probably would not believe them.

Media consolidation which reached a crescendo in the late 1990s eliminated many independent news outlets. Today, most newspapers are owned by a few large companies. These large institutions have a stake in the status quo. In regard to the electronic media, valuable broadcast licenses and broadcast wavelengths are doled out by the government...which can withhold or terminate a licensee. That potential threat may limit what stories editors and station managers may permit to be aired. Then all too often--as we saw so clearly during the run up to the Iraq invasion of 2003, the established media (such as Frank Rich's employer-- the NY Times) become the propaganda arm of the government. Recall NY Times reporter Judith Miller and her pro-war reports sourced from (and prepared for her by) insiders in the Bush-Cheney White House. One would think that she should have been ostracized, yet she is back on the airwaves...on Fox News.

Modern education is partly to blame for our inability to spot a liar. It tends toward rote-learning, technological subjects, superficial summaries and subjectivism, rather than emphasis on developing analytical skills and critical thinking. But what can you expect from a nation which as recently as 2004 (by a Gallup Poll) revealed that 45% of the population held the mid-Nineteenth century ideas that the earth and man were created a mere 10,000 years ago in a form that is just as they appear today.

Then too the pernicious belief in an American exceptionalism, tends to increase our susceptibility to a flimflam. Though this may be more a the result of the preceding list rather than a itself a cause, the pervasive and pernicious idea that America is somehow "different" (and superior) than other nations is all too prevalent in our thinking. America sees itself as the only virtuous nation in a frightening world of tyrants and evil doers beyond the seas...oh with perhaps a very few exceptions...such as Israel and Great Britain. Thus, the general perception is that we are good, and they out there are bad. As a result, what our "good" government tells us is more likely to be valid, true and believable (and is more comforting and reassuring as well) while the pronouncements of foreigners---were we to understand their unintelligible languages anyway--is suspect. Our weakness is that too many Americans see themselves as living within an "island nation" surrounded by treacherous and alien cultures.

Finally, our susceptibility to deception may stem from simple mentally sloth. It takes effort to dig for facts, do research, question our leaders statements, and study. Most Americans are simply too busy, too well-fed, well-entertained and coddled to care. Here within the "island nation" we have few real threats, whatever former VP Cheney and Rush Limbaugh say. Were we really concerned, and were the outside world truly threatening, we would be forced into learning more about world geography, more foreign languages, and more about other cultures. Furthermore, the absence of these interests and concerns in our population belies the threatening nature of the world beyond our shores. If it were really threatened we would be more interested out of necessity.

On a visit to Salamanca, Spain, many years ago, to visit my daughter who was there as a Spanish language student, I met her roommate, a young Lebanese woman. This young woman's native language was Arabic, and as with almost everyone in Lebanon, she was also fluent in French and English. I also learned that she spoke both Turkish and Hebrew, and like my daughter, was at that time learning Spanish. When I asked her how she came to be such a linguist, she explained that she was no different than many in her country, where multilingualism was common. She had traveled around Europe a good deal as a student and she had learned English that way. French was really the second language of her homeland. "But what about Hebrew...are you Jewish?" I asked. "No, no, I am an Armenian Catholic", she said, with a flashing smile, then added with a sly wink, "But you know, as a minority, you must always know the language of your enemies and also of your friends. It is only for your own survival."

So this last decade of deception and disaster, these years of the "flight from truth" must end, for our nation to pull out of the political, financial and military difficulties we find ourselves in. But we would be wrong to place too much blame on the deceptive mass media, the perfidious George Bush and his ilk, the cardboard-imaged Tiger Woods, or the evil Bernie Madoffs, and duplicitous Ben Bernankes. These sorts will always be with us. We are the ones who have been hoodwinked, flimflammed, bamboozled and deceived and we must change to find our way successfully out of that fairway sand trap. We certainly can not afford another decade like the last. We must do better, think better, educate better, question more, learn more-- and trust less. We as a nation are better than being the butt, the target, and the mark of grasping charlatans.

Get the picture?

rjk

A PRIMER ON GLOBAL WARMING

noreply@blogger.com (Bob Kalin) — Tue, 15 Dec 2009 15:27:00 +0000

As the World Conference on Climate Change in Copenhagen (Thursday and Friday) approaches interest in this global problem has increased as well as the political and economic consequences of actually addressing it. Accordingly, this last weekend I found myself responding to a question from a friend: "Do you believe this stuff on global warming?"

I answered in the affirmative. "The science of it is compelling."

"Science? Aint this jest politics?"

I quickly added, "No! It is very simple. It all has to do with carbon dioxide!"

"Yeah, I knew thaaaaat," yelped my friend.

I continued quickly without a pause, I knew I had only a minute or two of this person's attention span before me. "In the beginning...volcanoes on the primitive earth belched forth huge amounts of carbon dioxide and water. Over millions of years --nearly 500 million--that early atmosphere, rich in carbon dioxide and water, was slowly altered when primitive plants and other living things evolved. Since plants remove CO2 from the atmosphere and convert it into organic solids and over long periods of time geological processes sequestered these carbon-bearing substances underground. Slowly, carbon dioxide became a very rare gas--less than 0.02% by volume of the total. With a lower concentration of this heat-trapping gas, the earth cooled. In the last million years or so, modern man evolved and has learned how to mine the carbon based buried substances, bring them to the surface,burn them in the atmosphere and add carbon dioxide back into the atmosphere--and reconstitute the ancient hot climate of millions of years ago." I said, setting down the beer mug exactly back into its circular water stain from which I had lifted it.

"Oh yeah?"

"Yeah!"

That was as far as we proceeded with that conversation. Later on I though about what I should have said, so I add it here.

So you want to know what the basic science of global warming is, huh?

One must start with the idea that the earth interacts with sun's radiation just like any solid body. It absorbs solar radiation then as a warm body it re-radiates that energy back into space as heat. Eventually, it reaches some average temperature which is a balance between the radiation absorbed and the heat radiated away. As long as those conditions remain unchanged, planet earth, will reach some stable average temperature and remain there. (Though of course surface temperatures over the body may fluctuate wildly from a high-when its surface is exposed to the sun--during the day--to a low--when it surface is shielded from the sun--at night)

The earth follows basic principles of physics, its acts as a "black body" absorbing and re-radiating the sun's energy. However, one critical difference is that the earth has an atmosphere, a thick transparent film of gases which clings to its surface and subtly, but significantly alters the way the absorbed heat leaves the surface.

Think of yourself sitting in front of a large window on a sunny, cold, winter day. The sun streams through the glass and warms your face and body, yet if you place your hand on the glass of the window--the pane remains cold to the touch. The sun's radiation passes through the glass without heating it. But it is absorbed by your body--it heats you. You can readily feel the heat. That is a good analogy of what happens to the sun's rays as they pass through the atmosphere. They are nearly unchanged by the mostly transparent atmosphere, and are absorbed at the earth's surface. The earth's atmosphere is heated from the bottom up.

When solar rays strike the earth's surface they are absorbed and heat that surface. Of course, some surfaces absorb more radiation than others and get warmer than others. Snow or ice fields for example absorbs very little solar radiation, while darker surfaces such as deserts absorb more sunlight and heat up to higher temperatures. Once heated however, the earth's surface re-radiates its heat. However, this "earth radiation" or heat radiation is different than the light and other rays of solar radiation. As the radiant heat passes upward through the blanket of atmospheric gases the earth radiation interacts with certain molecules in the atmosphere to transfer the radiant energy to them. They heat up and transfer that heat to the atmosphere in general. Its temperature rises. Without this effect the earth would be very much colder than it is.

The atmosphere is composed of a mixture of gases--mostly nitrogen (78%) and oxygen (21%) with small amounts of carbon dioxide, methane, nitrous oxide and many other gases in trace amounts--and variable amounts of water vapor. Water vapor is very common in the atmosphere. Because of its molecular shape water molecules readily interact with earth radiation. It is a good absorber of earth radiation and readily heats up. Humid places on earth, such as tropical forests for example, are for this reason warmer than they would be based on the amount of radiation they receive, while deserts--where water vapor is scarce--even in equatorial regions-- can be loose the heat they absorbed during the day very quickly and get very cold at night, since there is little water vapor to trap heat.

Though water vapor is very effective in its absorption of earth radiation, it is a conservative gas...the atmosphere can hold only a certain amount. When its concentration increases, the air may reach saturation. No more water vapor enters the air and any additional water vapor forms swarms of tiny liquid droplets we know as clouds, or fog--or ice crystals--as well and other forms of condensation. Thus, the amount of heat-trapping water vapor in the air is naturally limited...it varies from place to place and time to time, but overall it remains a constant--since when it is too much it is naturally voided from the air as clouds, fogs or as ice crystals and ultimately may fall from the sky in the form of precipitation.

But other gases such as carbon dioxide, nitrous oxide, and methane are not conservative. They have molecular shapes which can interact with earth radiation and absorb earth radiation, and their concentration can change over time. Carbon dioxide is the most important. It is a most effective absorber of earth heat. Do to its presence (and other gases) the earth would be 60 degrees F cooler than it is at present. In the modern atmosphere CO2 presently accounts for less than 0.04% (by volume--see below). Yet it is an effective and important heat- trapping gas. One had only to look toward the planet Venus to understand how effective this gas is as a heat trapping agent (though other effects also play a part) Venus is near to the earth, and of nearly the same size, but unlike the earth, it has an atmosphere that is nearly 97% carbon dioxide--and a surface temperature that is about 900 degrees F.

Note that I discuss here only carbon dioxide, but two other gases-- methane and nitrous oxide-- are also heat trapping gases though not as effective as the former. Perhaps I will discuss their impact in a future blog.

On earth carbon dioxide in the atmosphere is an integral part of the great carbon cycle. As a gas it is absorbed by plants through their leaves to form sugars in the presence of chlorophyll and sunlight to form sugars by photosynthesis. In that process CO2 combines with water (H2O) to produce simple carbohydrates which plants use as building blocks to produce complex sugars, cellulose and starch. In the process, plants--which get the energy for this reaction from sun light and the photolysis (breaking apart) of water molecules--release oxygen as a waste product. Animals use oxygen to oxidize plant-derived sugars and generate energy for their life-processes, and in the process release CO2. There is a lovely balance here, a great cycle-- and in primordial nature..a balance existed between plants and animals. As a result of this balance, the level of CO2 remained remarkably static for hundreds of thousands of years--as did the earth's temperature.

As long as the actions of early human beings remained within the confines of this natural system, there were few changes in the carbon dioxide concentration or the temperature of the atmosphere. When humans mastered fire, the burned wood for fuel, but they added no additional carbon dioxide to the atmosphere..since the carbon of wood was removed by plants--and in the burning of the wood the carbon of the wood is oxidized and reenters the atmosphere as carbon dioxide--and this maintains a steady state for carbon. [As noted above, in the distant past, volcanic activity added large amounts of carbon dioxide to the air. Ancient atmospheres of hundreds of millions of years ago had much higher concentrations of this gas when volcanic activity was more common. However that ancient carbon was taken up by plants and sequestered underground by biochemical and geological processes. At present, volcanism generates less than 1% of the carbon dioxide humans produce.]

Early humans evolved with weak jaws and teeth and relatively small bodies, but they had a large brain--and two hands to manipulate their immediate environment. They soon learned how to make tools, chop down forests (which effectively remove carbon dioxide),dig up long-buried sources of carbon in the form of peat, coal, oil and gas and use these as fuels, raise farm animals which release methane gas, and burn limestone to produce lime-mortar and concrete which release CO2 as well. Recall that the "fossil fuels" humans turned to for fuel were formed millions of years ago by the storage of carbon compounds by ancient plants and animals, and had remained buried by geological processes.

By unearthing of these long-sequestered carbon sources and burning them in the atmosphere (i.e. combining the ancient carbon with the oxygen of the air as in your furnace, automobile, or gas fired fire-place) more recent humans have altered the existing carbon cycle. Human actions have caused an increase in the concentration of CO2 which had been steady at about 200-280 ppmv for millennia. Since the advent of mining fossil fuels and their use as fuel in the early 1800s the end-product of that process--carbon dioxide gas has been rising steadily in concentration.

Based on analysis of air bubbles in glacial ice, the pre-industrial carbon dioxide concentrations in
the atmosphere ranged between 200 and 280 parts per million by volume (ppmv). For example, an ice core measurement for the year 1832 indicated a carbon dioxide concentration of 284 ppmv, or about 100 ppmv lower than it is now. (See: Wikipedia.org)

The "new" carbon derived from fossil fuels is without question "anthropomorphic" i.e. generated by human activity. Burning petroleum,coal and natural gas are (in that order) the most important sources of anthropomorphic carbon dioxide additions to the atmosphere. In addition, more carbon dioxide is produced in the manufacture of cement ( which is an important contributor, but less than the others. Portland cement--so widely used in the modern world--is produced by burning limestone to drive off CO2 to produce what is known as "slaked lime" or CaO. When mixed with sand and water and exposed to the air the slaked lime reabsorbs CO2 from the atmosphere to form CaCO3 crystals (similar to those in the limestone that was its source). All that heating of limestone to by burning fossil fuels to form the slaked lime generates a great deal of waste CO2--thus its listing here.

There is an interesting natural variation in carbon dioxide concentration in that atmosphere which fluctuates from 3-9 ppmv seasonally and follows the growing season in the Northern Hemisphere. (Since that hemisphere has the most land area and biomass.) As plants grow they take up carbon dioxide and that lowers in the atmospheric carbon, and conversely as they stop growing and decay the concentration rises. The peak CO2 level occurs in May as the growing season just begins and the minimum is in October at the end of the growing season. See Wikipedia]

Recall from above that the present 2008 concentration of carbon dioxide is nearly 0.04%, or more precisely it is: 0.0385% by volume. Stated in parts per million by volume that is more frequently referred to as "385 ppmv" (parts per million by volume).

As noted earlier, this value has been consistently rising and in a predictable way. Beginning in 1965 direct measurements of this gas over Hawaii, in the near-center of the Pacific Ocean, recorded a value of 320 ppmv, by 1989 the value had increased to 350 ppmv, and by 1995 is was 360 ppmv, in 2000, 370 ppmv of carbon dioxide was recorded. Today in 2009 the value is somewhere above 385 ppmv.

Why does the level of the gas rise so predictably?

One has only to measure how much coal, oil or gas a nation burns to calculate the amount of carbon dioxide is being generated by those actions. (Wikipedia informs me that the US burns 1.1 trillion tons of coal each year (one ton of coal produces nearly two tons of CO2), and almost 8 billion barrels of oil per year where one barrel produces nearly one half ton (US) of CO2.) It is a simple chemical equation. Enormous amounts of coal, oil, gas, gasoline and other fossil fuels are burned each year. Measurements of the amount of carbon dioxide added annually to the atmosphere is easily calculated based on how much fossil fuel we consume. For example each gallon of gas burned generates about 8.8 kg of CO2, or about 19.4 pounds of CO2 gas which is released into the atmosphere. So one can simply multiply the number of gallons burned each year to calculate the gasoline-derived component. Then add to that the amount from coal, petroleum and other sources. Credible estimates of the total world production of carbon dioxide indicate an annual additon to the atmospher of about twenty-eight billion metric tons. Twenty-eight billion metric tons of CO2 each year has its effects on the graph of the CO2 concentration in the atmosphere. Each year there are more of us and we all use more and more fossil fuels.

Most knowledgeable observers and many scientists consider the 1989 level of 350 ppmv as a "safe" level for the world and a target level for world leaders to aim for as they consider abatement of addition of CO2 gas to the atmospher. Remember the case of Venus and its surface temperature of 900 degrees F.

It seems clear that the reason the year 2008 was the hottest on record (at least since records have been taken) has much to do with the fact that the level of carbon dioxide was more than one third higher than it was in the pre-industrial years of the early 19th Century.

What nations are mostly responsible for this burden of carbon dioxide?

Well those nations which are presently highly industrialized are mostly responsible. It is an interesting fact that nearly one third of the more than six billion people on the earth or about two billion people still heat their houses and cook their food with wood. They remain free from fossil fuels and barring the aerosol soot produced by their home fires they have little culpability in the global warming problem. However carbon dioxide releases are easily calculated for each nation.

The two nations which contribute more that 40% of the world total of released caron dioxide gas--one is of a modest-sized population (about 308 million), but has an enormous and profligate fossil energy habit, while the other has about average fossil use habits, but has a very large (1.3 billion) population. Those two nations are the USA and China.

China and the US each pump about 20% of the world's total waste CO2 into the world's air. The USA with only 4.5% of the world's population (in 2009 = 6.8 billion) dumps about 6 billion metric tons of carbon dioxide gas each year as does China with 1.3 billion people. The two nation's total,of about 12 billion metric tons, is about 40% of the world's total 28 billion metric tons. Other large scale carbon dumpers are: the EU (population = 499 million and 7% of world population), which contributes about 4 billion metric tons or about 14% of the total. Thus, the total carbon pollution of these three political entities: China, USA and the EU represents more than half (54%) of the world's total.

For a credible response to this world ecological crisis those three political entities must agree to certain restrictions on CO2 dumping.

In terms of per capita pollution, the figures are equally interesting and informative. The world average amount of carbon dioxide dumped per person is about 4 metric tons. Citizens of some nations exceed that amount by a wide margin, while others produce much less. Each US resident is responsible for nearly 19 metric tons of carbon dioxide per year, or nearly five times the world average. On the other hand, Chinese citizens dump only about five tons each, or one-fifth of the amount a US citizen contributes. EU individuals contribute about 8 tons each, less than half of the US citizen, while Russian and Japanese individuals contribute about 10 tons each (about one-half of a US citizen), and the Indian citizen releases the least--less than 2 tons each, or about one-tenth of a US citizen.

It is apparent that climate is one of the many factors in these measurements. India's low consumption level is in part related to its ecomomy, and its generally temperate climate. Citizens in colder climates require more heat energy to meet their energy needs and do so by increased fossil fuel consumption. Another example is Mexico which has an average level of carbon dioxide production per person of about 4 metric tons per year, while neighboring Canada releases19 metric tons of carbon dioxide per person.

Get the (preliminary) picture?

rjk

SIGNS OF RECOVERY?

noreply@blogger.com (Bob Kalin) — Fri, 11 Dec 2009 17:00:00 +0000

I see in the economic journals that November retail sales reports are not what were expected. Though analysts are putting the best spin on on the figures they can. Last year, buyers went into a “defensive crouch” resulting in a whopping 8% drop in sales. This year (according to http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/34254816/ns/business-retail/) economists expected growth in retail sales of about 3-4% based on projections from September and October, but early analysis of available data from stores reporting monthly sales, December registered a decline of 0.3%! The biggest declines were in the more upscale stores, such as Macy’s and Sacs, bargain basement while others did a little better. This cast a pall over the hopes of retailers who turn much of their profit during the Christmas season. Since retail spending accounts for 70% of all US economic activity, this measure is like the wrist-pulse of the physician for the economist. Some analysts attribute the poor figures to the usually warm weather—which was more spring-like than Christmas-like.

However, today (December 11), the more inclusive Commerce Department (CD) figures were published and they suggest a slightly better picture--a paltry 1.3% increase in November, less than the 1.4% increase in October, but no matter, it was good enough for economists desperate to find some signs of silver in the grey clouds overhead. These CD figures include the sale of gasoline, which experienced a sharp rise in prices last month, and consequently skewed the values up a bit. Without gasoline prices the retail sales growth is about 0.8 % for November. (See: http://money.aol.com/article/stock-futures-hold-gains-after-retail/811170?v=aolrss) A less rosy look at these numbers reveals a sharp decline from October’s values (1.4%) in the run up to the Christmas buying season. The same report (op cit) touts the fact that Chinese exports only 1.2% last month, “the smallest drop this year. They posted a decline of more than ten times that amount in October (which was nearly 14% down). Though again, that value may be more the result of the optimism of a few buyers for large concerns who made their plans months ago and has little to say about how much American families will spend for the critical Christmas season. So for this observer the over-all economic picture does not portend well for retail sales this Christmas season.

How can it be otherwise with ten percent of the labor force idle?

But let’s look more closely at those employment figures.
Of the 304 million US population, 155 million are categorized as the “US labor force” (See http://www.bls.gov/news.release/empsit.nr0.htm). In November 2009, some 15.4 million of in that group were listed as formally “unemployed”. That is how the 10% unemployed figure is calculated. But also listed are 9.2 million employed only part-time (these are the involuntary part-time workers who can not find a full time job), there are also some 2 million discouraged workers who have sought employment in the past 12 months. They are remain in the unemployed category but are not counted in the formal figures. The actual rate of idle workers may be calculated thus: 15.4+ 9.2+2= 26.6 million idle out of 155 million workforce, or about 17 %. Thus nearly a fifth of the workforce is idle. That is a large percentage of workers who will not be able to walk into a retail store and purchase freely—as our retailers would like.

In the past many of these idled workers, part-time employed, and discouraged workers might have made purchases with “plastic”. But that has changed too. In an MSNBC piece entitled “Credit card debt, terms limit holiday sales”, Allison Linn (http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/34347297/ns/business-consumer_news/?ns=business-consumer_news&from=ET) lists how and why that avenue of more robust Christmas sales has been shut down this season.

Linn notes several startling facts in her story. She reports that “revolving debt” which is another name for credit card debt in now nearly one trillion dollars! Astounding! That figure has been falling steadily for the last 13 months ---perhaps out of necessity. Banks simply don’t have the money to lend and are more leery of problem lenders. But outstanding credit card debt in the US, after falling a paltry 1% since September last year, still stands at nearly $900 billion dollars! (according to Linn these are recently released Federal Reserve figures which I could not easily verify). That amount, $900 billion dollars, (if accurate) represents an equivalent of nearly $3000 dollars in credit card debt for every man, woman and child in the US. But since the unemployed have likely suspended their use of “plastic” the modest change in that figure may be more a function of unemployment and unavailability of credit than a wised-up and less profligate population.

Another jaw-dropping fact Linn includes is that nearly 14 million US citizens are still paying for credit advanced to them for items purchased last Christmas season!! Many have likely reached their debt limit or had that limit reduced by their credit card company and thus are struck with only cash-on-hand for spending this year. Linn notes that nearly 60 million people have had their credit limits reduced between April 2008 and April 2009 and these would not or could not add to that debt. But for the consumer this is not the worst that could happen.

Consider that credit card interest rates have gone up…without warning or even a polite notice to card holders-- while bank interest rates on deposits have fallen sharply. A cash deposit in your local bank will earn only a paltry 1.2%, while your credit card company is now charging nearly 14% on the amount it advanced you perhaps last Christmas. And that number is up 2% from the 12% they were charging in May 2008

So what about the rosy view of the recovery? Think again…the average consumer out there is underemployed, underpaid, overburdened with debt and not happy. There appears to be a few more shoes to drop.

Get the picture?

rjk

THE ECONOMY OF THE ISLES OF GREECE

noreply@blogger.com (Bob Kalin) — Thu, 10 Dec 2009 01:54:00 +0000

The isles of Greece! the isles of Greece!
Where burning Sappho loved and sung,
Where grew the arts of war and peace,---
Where Delos rose and Phoebus sprung!
Eternal summer gilds them yet,
But all, except their sun, is set.

Lord Byron

According to today’s Financial Times of London, the sun may have set, economically, on the isles of Greece. Its slanting may rays still gild Mount Aegaleo, but the vault of the exchequer in Athens has nothing that glitters. Authors Dave Oakley and Kerin Hope of FT.com report the sad and disturbing news that Greece, "where grew the arts of war and peace," has seen its credit rating downgraded to the lowest level in the eurozone. The result has been a heavy sell-off of Greek stocks and bonds amid fears that the country is heading toward financial disaster---all due to its dangerously high debt-levels. See: Greece downgraded over high debt, (http://www.ft.com/cms/s/0/2763a1d6-e3fc-11de-b2a9-00144feab49a.html) dl 12-09-09.

Since joining the euro in 2001, Greece has consistently failed to carry out difficult financial “structural reforms” which would keep its deficit within the eurozone limit of 3% of gross domestic product (GDP). The present deficit, according to the FT, is between a whopping 9 and 13 percent of GDP. With a downgrade of their bonds immanent the Greek government will face serious problems in raising money through the European Central Bank where they exchange Greek bonds for European Central Bank loans.

So what has happened to Greece since I was there last in 1999?

Greece has a mixed economy, with a large public sector which accounts for half of its GDP which is the 27th largest in the world, (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Economy_of_Greece). Any one who has traveled in that country knows that Greece is largely agricultural, and that is what makes it so attractive as a tourist destination. According to Greeka.com(http://www.greeka.com/greece-economy.htm--dl December 9, 2009, about 20% of the workforce is employed in agriculture such as growing wheat corn, barley, sugar beets, olives, tomatoes, tobacco, potatoes, beef, dairy products and wine. This sector accounts for about 15% of the GDP. While 21% are employed processing food and tobacco, manufacturing textiles, employed in mining, and in the chemicals and metal production industry and the petroleum industry. The remainder of the population, about 59%, is employed in the services sector. This includes the large tourism industry. Up until the recent recession beginning in 2007, tourism attracted more people than the total Greek population each year. Let us not forget the Greek shipping industry, one of the largest in the world.

In 2004 (op cit above) Greece exported a total of about $13 billion dollars of manufactured goods, fuels, food, and beverages to its main trading partners in the EU and US. However, it imports were more than two times that amount, or nearly $30 billion dollars worth of imported manufactured goods, such as food, fuel and chemicals from the EU and the US. Even with economic aid from the EU of nearly $6 billion dollars annually (2004), Greece had an imbalance of trade, of more than $18 billion per year (which has contributed to the nation’s external debt of $42 billion dollars (as of 2004---and fueled its financial problems.

By 2008 (See Wikipedia) Greece’s GDP, estimated at $343 billion, had grown to nearly 3%, its exports were $29 billion dollars, while imports had jumped to $93 billion dollars. The balance of trade deficit at $64 billion dollars, indicates that for every dollar of goods Greece exported, it spent 2.2 dollars for imported products. Figures for its estimated public debt indicate that value grew to a whopping 97% of GDP, while revenues were for that period were $126 billion, and its expenses $144 billion. For comparison, neighboring Turkey, for the same period, recorded a public debt of 40% of GDP (2008), with revenues of $160 billion and expenditures of $173 billion (See https://www.cia.gov/library/publications/the-world-factbook/geos/tu.html).

How did Greece get into this economic hole?

Back in 2001 when Hellas joined the European Monetary Union (EMU) and gave up the drachma, the nation’s leaders could have staunched the growth of debt, but instead behaved like children in candy store. At that time the liberal rules of the European Central Bank (ECB) permitted the Greek government to borrow easily, and with nearly the same interest rate as economically unchallenged Germany. They took up this challenge with gusto. According to Ambrose Evans-Pritchard of the UK Telegraph (Nov 22, 2009) dl December 8, 2009 (See: http://www.telegraph.co.uk/finance/comment/ambroseevans_pritchard/6630117/Greece-tests-the-limit-of-sovereign-debt-as-it-grinds-towards-slump.html) the center-right government dug themselves into a deep hole by low-cost loans and profligate spending, they pumped up public- sector salaries to meet perceived and unrealistic EU standards and gaily went into big debt for the Summer Olympics in 2004 (which some claim cost the nation 10 billion euros and brought only modest and short term benefits) and, most foolishly, they ran "budget deficits near 5% of GDP at the top of the boom” (Ambrose Evans-Pritchard, op cit) rather than decreasing spending to close the deficit gap.

As a result, post 2001 prices have continued to rise in Greece. This had its clear effects on the important tourist trade, encouraging many holiday makers to seek other, less costly and equally sunny destinations..such as neighboring Turkey. But the rising cost of living, also had its effects on the country as a whole, straining household budgets, and risking long term economic growth. The devastating world economic slump, combined with pinched household budgets have had its pernicious impact on the perceptions and sense of well-being of its citizenry. Such feelings can lead to dangerous social instability, such as was demonstrated in the recent December 2009 violent clashes between police and striking shipyard workers in Piraeus, and the December 2008 riots in Athens (sparked by the tragic shooting-death of a 15 year old student by the police) and the reprise of these December riots on the anniversary of the sad event just this week (December 7, 2009).

Unfortunately, as an EU member, stuck within the economic rules of the EU, Greece has few ways open to help itself, warns Evans-Pritchard, who suggests one option as “EU beggary”. In past times, the Greek government would simply print new drachma, devalue the currency and hold their purses tight for purchases from abroad, but enjoy the increased sales of Greek commodities, the pleasure of full hotels and tourist buses--and improved employment figures. But those options are not open to them now. We must wait and see, if this summer the sun will again gild the hills of the lovely isles of Greece.

Get the picture?

rjk

noreply@blogger.com (Bob Kalin) — Thu, 10 Dec 2009 01:32:00 +0000

GEORGE WILL ON THE ECONOMY, NOV 2009

noreply@blogger.com (Bob Kalin) — Thu, 19 Nov 2009 12:13:00 +0000

A PRESCIENT VIEW---

November 12, 2009
Debt is Destroying the Dollar
By George Will

WASHINGTON -- One of the many television commercials exhorting viewers to buy gold says solemnly that it is an asset whose value "has never dropped to zero," a boast that surely sets a record for minimalism. Still, the world's appetite for gold as an investment option is intensifying. Last month, India purchased 200 tons of gold at $1,045 an ounce, before the price topped $1,108 on Monday. China, too, may increasingly diversify from paper -- i.e., bonds -- into gold, the price of which, some experienced investors believe, could soar to $2,500 an ounce in three to five years. One reason for all this is U.S. behavior.

India's 2008 GDP was $1.2 trillion, so its $6.7 billion purchase was small beer. It may, however, be a large portent: Gold increasingly looks to investors to be a more reliable store of value than governments' bonds are, especially U.S. bonds as the U.S. government threatens to pile a mammoth health care entitlement onto the nation's Ponzi welfare state, increasing the nation's debt and borrowing.

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The fiscal year 2009 budget deficit, triple that of 2008, was 10 percent of GDP and, Lawrence Lindsey says, probable policies will produce deficits of 7 percent of GDP for a decade. Ronald Reagan's worst deficit was 6 percent of GDP, and for only one year.

Lindsey -- former member of the Federal Reserve board of governors and director of George W. Bush's National Economic Council (2001-02) -- says Americans' net worth has dropped at least $13 trillion since the recession began in December 2007. What is to be done?

Americans could suddenly begin saving substantially more, but this would deepen and prolong the recession. Alternatively, America could reflate the value of its assets by printing money. Lindsey says it is already doing that -- printing bonds promiscuously and lending money to banks at negligible rates, money banks can use to buy the bonds. This sharply increases the money supply, which sets the stage either for inflation -- too much money chasing too few goods. Or for recovery-snuffing higher interest rates to try to prevent inflation. Or for something like Japan's lost decade -- banks pouring money into government bonds rather than the real economy.

America, says Lindsey, will not become Weimar Germany, where hyperinflation caused people to rush to stores with satchels of rapidly depreciating currency. But, he adds, no country has successfully behaved the way the United States is behaving.

Suppose, he says, you owned some U.S. Treasury bonds or other dollar-denominated assets, and you were sitting in front of two buttons, one marked Buy More, the other marked Sell. Which button would you push? Obviously, Sell.

Fortunately, Lindsey says, there is so much U.S. paper circulating, every owner cannot hit Sell at the same time. But if enough people, institutions or nations sell, others will not buy unless U.S. interest rates rise substantially, which can ignite a vicious cycle -- killing economic growth, thereby depressing revenues and increasing the deficit and borrowing.

Irwin Stelzer of the Hudson Institute notes that China, America's largest creditor, has increased its dollar holdings 20 percent this year, so China has increased its interest in not having the dollar devalued by mass selling. But, Stelzer adds, China thinks geopolitically as well as economically, and might have noneconomic reasons for encouraging a controlled flight from the dollar.

A cataclysmic event -- say, an interruption of the flow of Middle Eastern oil -- could, Stelzer says, cause the world to flee to the safety of even a depreciating dollar. But absent such an event, the world will be carefully watching a U.S. government that has a powerful incentive to try to use controlled inflation for the slow-motion repudiation of some of its mountain of new debt.

It is, however, hubris -- something abundant in Washington -- to think inflation can be precisely controlled, like an oven's temperature. It is hubris cubed to think inflation can be unleashed just short of provoking a flight from the dollar.

Perhaps Federal Reserve Chairman Ben Bernanke knows how to sop up the trillions of new dollars before inflation ignites. But will he? He knows about "the recession within the Depression" that occurred in 1937, perhaps as a result of premature confidence in a recovery.

Furthermore, he may feel duty-bound to try to use loose money to help reduce unemployment. But although the Fed has suddenly assumed stupendous powers, it still has one sovereign duty -- to preserve the currency as a store of value.

georgewill@washpost.com

LA STRADA--FELLINI--AND A FINE ANALYSIS OF FILM

noreply@blogger.com (Bob Kalin) — Sat, 14 Nov 2009 22:50:00 +0000

La Strada

Fellini’s Magic-Neo-Realism

John Parris Springer
English Department, University of Central Oklahoma
jpspringer@ucok.edu

Along with Roberto Rossellini’s Rome Open City (1945) and Vittorio De Sica’s The Bicycle Thief (1948), Federico Fellini’s La Strada (1954) is among the most important films of post-war Italian cinema. Rome Open City and The Bicycle Thief are the two films that introduced Italian Neo-Realism to the world and restored Italy’s place of prominence in international film culture. But it was Fellini’s La Strada, built upon a firm Neo-Realist foundation yet possessing something more—a fairy-tale-like narrative, resonant with archetypal characters whose lives illuminate the basic truths of the human condition—that revealed the full aesthetic richness of Neo-Realism just as it was being transformed by Fellini into something other than a faithful recording of mundane reality. It is this sometimes whimsical, sometimes hallucinatory visual and narrative quality in Fellini’s work that distinguished him from his fellow Neo-Realists and which, even more significantly, pointed the way to future styles and directions in world cinema. As meticulously situated as the characters and plot of La Strada are in the particularities of post-war Italian society, La Strada has always conveyed to audiences a certain universal significance which has made it one of the most revered films in world cinema; an artistic masterpiece that transcends national borders to deliver a profound commentary on the nature of the human condition and our most basic needs as sentient creatures.

La Strada possesses a fable-like simplicity that conceals the film’s seemingly unplanned, episodic structure. As a filmmaker who came of age during the flowering of Italian Neo-Realism, Fellini has an unerring instinct in La Strada for creating an often harshly realistic portrayal of post-war Italian society. Certainly the film’s attention to lower class and socially marginalized characters reflects the politics of Neo-Realism and its goal of developing the cinema as a tool for representing and analyzing the experiences of average, ordinary people, an impulse that arises from Neo-Realism’s roots in Italian Marxism. Evidence of pervasive poverty and the scarring effects of war are brilliantly incorporated into the mise-en-scene of the film through Fellini’s art direction and costume design. His use of actual locations in La Strada, rather than the more easily controlled environment of the film studio, and his use of untrained actors in several minor roles, likewise followed basic Neo-Realist aesthetic principles that aimed at presenting a more authentically realistic image of the world.

But Fellini was always something more than a realist. Every Fellini film possesses a certain ineffable poetry, a sense of magic and wonder that can range from the hilarious to the frightening to the uncanny. He is what I would call, mixing literary and cinematic modes, a "magic neo-realist." In Fellini’s films we ultimately encounter a fidelity to something larger and more complex than a strictly empirical notion of social and economic reality. We encounter a highly subjective view of the world, often grotesque and distorted, brimming with both irony and pathos and filtered through Fellini’s profoundly humanistic vision as an artist. Indeed, the unique blend of reality and surreality that Fellini’s films offer, their deft mingling of the objective and the subjective, reality and dreams, constitute the very essence of that often-used adjective in film criticism—Felliniesque. Fellini’s pursuit of his own, personal vision as an artist often made him a controversial figure within Italian film culture, where other directors and critics complained that his films failed to live up to the strict ideological requirements of Neo-Realism. Such complaints had little effect on Fellini, however, who continued to pursue his visionary approach to cinematic storytelling over the course of a nearly 40-year career.

La Strada was Fellini’s third film as a director, and it single-handedly established his international reputation as a director of art-house cinema, winning numerous honors and prizes including the Academy Award as best foreign film in 1954. La Strada must also be seen as the product of several fertile collaborative relationships between Fellini and others, most notably his wife, the actress Giuletta Masina who plays the gentle, simple-minded Gelsomina, and the composer Nino Rota, whose musical scores in numerous Fellini films make an enormous contribution to their effectiveness. This is especially the case with La Strada, for which the musical score itself was a huge international hit.

La Strada means "the road," and the film is best understood as a journey taken by the two main characters: Gelsomina (Masina), a simple-minded young woman who is sold by her family to a brutish, itinerant carnival strong man, Zampano (Anthony Quinn). Traveling the countryside in a crude hutch attached to the strong man’s motorbike, Gelsomina is abused and mistreated by Zampano until she is finally driven to madness and death. Along the road they encounter "The Fool," (Richard Basehart) a circus acrobat and clown who teaches Gelsomina that there might be more to life than her servitude to Zampano. The Fool and Zampano are depicted by Fellini as a study in contrasts: the strong man’s sullen brutishness and awkward demeanor around others stand in sharp contrast to the graceful and loquacious Fool, whose free-spirited contempt for authority leads him to taunt and ridicule Zampano. Finally the strong man confronts the Fool, and in the fight that follows he accidentally murders him. Gelsomina, already the victim of Zampano’s physical abuse, witnesses the Fool’s death, and begins a slow descent into madness. Finally, unwilling and unable to care for the increasingly deranged Gelsomina, Zampano abandons her to fate.

Each of the three main characters has certain obvious affinities to natural elements. Gelsomina is associated with water; we first encounter her on the beach at her home and throughout the film her returns to the ocean are shown as cleansing and restorative. Giuletta Masina’s performance as Gelsomina is one of the most outstanding features of La Strada and one of the great performances in film history. She displays a perfect balance of innocent vulnerability and sympathetic openness to others that is continually bruised in her dealings with Zampano. In film criticism the word most often used to invoke such a delicate interplay of comedy and pathos is Chaplinesque, and the spirit of Chaplin’s "Little Tramp" hovers over Masina’s carefully nuanced performance.

The Fool is associated with the air. As an aerialist and high-wire artist, we first see him high above a crowd of spectators eating a plate of spaghetti, and his costume consists of a pair of wings. The Fool represents a carnivelesque energy which seeks to subvert authority and puncture the masculine pretensions of Zampano. Though brash and egocentric, the Fool possesses a generosity of spirit that makes him an emblem of the artist: the creative individual who reaches out to others through artistic expression. He is a teacher and savior figure in the film, and through "the parable of the pebble" that he teaches Gelsomina, he bestows upon her an understanding and sense of purpose which can redeem even her sad existence. Zampano, in contrast, is a loner and outsider who views other people as either instruments to be bent to his will or obstacles to be overcome and vanquished through brute strength. He is associated with the earth, and with impulses that are base, often animalistic. His violent temper and aggression also make him a figure evocative of fire. Yet most often he conveys a sullen mistrust towards others that reveals his underlying fear. Zampano is like a dog that has been kicked so often he has become hostile and suspicious of everyone he meets.

Fellini’s La Strada is fundamentally about different ways of being human, three different ways of interacting with your fellow human beings, and thus about three different ways of finding meaning in human existence. For Gelsomina it is the wide-eyed openness and sensitivity to other beings and forces in the universe that makes her a magical, even holy, presence in the film. She, too, can be seen as a kind of savior through whose death Zampano is finally brought to some kind of emotional and spiritual awakening. For the Fool, the meaning of life is to be found in the play of personal expression, the performance of self for others that has made him a star attraction of the circus. This is also why the Fool is such a fascinating and attractive figure for Gelsomina, despite the fact that he ridicules her and calls her ugly. Still, through the "parable of the pebble," the Fool is able to impart to Gelsomina a sense of her own value and purpose in life that redeems her even in the midst of Zampano’s brutal treatment. However, the interpersonal and existential choices that Zampano makes determine that he will be unable to find any redemptive meaning to existence, any purpose to his endless wanderings as a circus strong man. He seems doomed to continuously perform an act that increasingly becomes a parody of masculinity and male strength and that scarcely conceals his basic loneliness and inability to sympathetically engage with other human beings.

Zampano is the real subject of Fellini’s film. Anthony Quinn’s brooding, laconic performance as Zampano has the effect of making the character seem remote and distant; he is often seen only on the edges of the frame, in the background, as in the first scene when he comes to purchase Gelsomina and Fellini places him hovering in the background while our attention is focused on the drama of Gelsomina’s separation from her family. But his centrality to the film is clearly established by the ending of La Strada. Several years have gone by and the strong man has become noticeably older when he arrives at a seaside village where he hears a young woman singing the plaintive melody that had become Gelsomina’s theme. Zampano learns of her death from the young woman. Later in the evening, after his performance, Zampano wanders down to the beach where he is overwhelmed by his thoughts. The final, redemptive moment occurs when he stares up at the stars and begins to cry, signaling the emergence of human emotions which he had long suppressed and denied. But it is too late; Gelsomina is dead, and the humanizing influence of her gentle spirit is lost in the overwhelming sense of grief and isolation experienced by Zampano.

Clearly La Strada can be seen as both a Christian religious parable and an Existentialist philosophical statement. Yet Fellini rejected such obvious interpretive frameworks, preferring instead to create a sense of openness and ambiguity in the film, another indication of Neo-Realism’s influence on the director. He specifically removed from early drafts of the script all overt Catholic symbolism and Existentialist didacticism in order to fashion a film of rare visual poetry and emotional impact. Finally, La Strada cannot be reduced to either a religious or philosophical argument. It is a film that must be experienced within the context of each viewer’s sense of the human condition and the need for gentleness and companionship that gives human existence whatever sweetness it is capable of possessing. La Strada—The Road is perhaps a too obvious metaphor for the journey we are all embarked upon; a journey in which how we treat others is inevitably the final measure of our own happiness

Reeve Speaks on Afghanistan

noreply@blogger.com (Bob Kalin) — Sat, 14 Nov 2009 14:10:00 +0000

November 14, 2009
An Audience of One
By Richard Reeves

REad at: http://www.realclearpolitics.com/articles/2009/11/14/an_audience_of_one_99153.html

LOS ANGELES -- Most of what you read, see and hear about Afghanistan is not meant for you. The words, optimistic and pessimistic, right and wrong, all the leaks, all the numbers of troop estimates, costs and polls are aimed at an audience of one: the president.

It is very hard to get to chat with any president. But any president has to know what is in the big three of American newspapers (or their Web sites): The New York Times, The Washington Post, The Wall Street Journal. And those papers right now are filled with shouting and whispering to President Obama. The latest shout, a big one, is the leaking to the Times of cables to the State Department from the U.S. ambassador to Afghanistan, who also happens to be a former military commander of American troops in the country.

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That would be ambassador and former general Karl Eikenberry, who told the president that there might be no point in sending more young men and women in uniform to win an unwinnable war in a vast country largely ungoverned or governed by unfathomable corruption. Eikenberry's "classified" words were obviously meant as a countermove designed to check the "classified" request for 40,000 more American troops by the current military commander, Gen. Stanley McChrystal, leaked to The Washington Post last month.

That is the way the game is played and always has been in Washington. I once asked President Bill Clinton whether he got more critical information from daily Central Intelligence Agency reports and briefings or from reading the Times. "From the Times," he answered. "Although occasionally the CIA and the other intelligence agencies are ahead on timing."

For people like me, who believe we should get out of Afghanistan ASAP, the Eikenberry report surfaced in the nick of time -- just as Obama appears ready to make long-term strategy decisions about our military involvement in Afghanistan. What is going on there is a civil war, a political war, and we have learned time and again that all the firepower in the world cannot stop people who want to destroy each other on their home territory. The Afghans have been in those unforgiving mountains for thousands of years, and they will be there for thousands more after we leave. So it does not really matter when we go.

Besides, our own people at home want us to get out, even if the war is being fought by a volunteer army, and to most Americans that means it is like another National Football League game. Our soldiers are professionals putting on a television show, same as the warriors of the NFL.

"All the polling I've ever seen," said William Schneider of CNN, "tells me one thing: Americans hate political wars. They want to win or get out."

Schneider and I were together at a forum called "Obama's Afghanistan: The Media and the War," sponsored by the Center on Communication Leadership at the Annenberg School for Communication and Journalism at the University of Southern California. He went on to say: "We're talking now about persuading the population rather than destroying the enemy. That is the definition of a political war. We are taking sides in another country's civil war."

That message should have gotten through to presidents who ran the war in Vietnam, or it got through too late.

Another panelist, retired Gen. Wesley Clark, the former NATO commander, put it this way: "More troops mean more casualties, which means less public support."

Morton Abramowitz, who was director of the State Department's intelligence bureau in the 1980s when we were training and supplying the mujahedeen fighting and defeating Soviet occupiers in Afghanistan, offered more than a little insight into what is happening now in the same place and sometimes with the same people: "First, we would not be there or in Iraq if we had a draft and people were worried about their children. Second, can anyone tell me why it takes so long to train Afghan soldiers. The Taliban seems to have no trouble training them in a few weeks."

I hope the audience of one is listening to words like that and has the political courage to break his own campaign promises about saving Afghanistan. Save them from what, themselves?

TOM FRIEDMAN'S DECEPTIVE PLAN AND THE FRUSTRATING MIDDLE EAST

noreply@blogger.com (Bob Kalin) — Sun, 08 Nov 2009 13:39:00 +0000

Tom Friedman is at his deceptive best today (Sunday November 8, 2009)writing his NY Times op-ed piece where-in he throws up his hands in seeming disgust with the lack of progress by the Arab-Israeli players in the interminable Middle East drama. Mr. Friedman, the notorious "liberal" Iraq-War supporter, and often considered "biased" as a commentator on the Middle East is good at this. His article calls for the west to "get out of the picture" and let the "players" get on with it, as he obscures underlying facts and ignores "the elephant in the room"-- our staunch support for only one of the actors in the controversy. In: "Call White House, Ask For Barak", November 7, 2009, NY Times, Friedman concludes that the "The Israeli-Palestinian peace process has become a bad play. It is obvious that all the parties are just acting out the same old scenes, with the same old tired clichés — and that no one believes any of it anymore."(See: http://www.nytimes.com/2009/11/08/opinion/08friedman.html)

Friedman states that for all our efforts in that region "the respective leaders continue with their real priorities — which are all about holding power or pursuing ideological obsessions — while pretending to advance peace, without paying any political price. ---Let’s just get out of the picture. Let all these leaders stand in front of their own people and tell them the truth: “My fellow citizens: Nothing is happening; nothing is going to happen. It’s just you and me and the problem we own.”

He adds, "Indeed, it’s time for us to dust off James Baker’s line: “When you’re serious, give us a call: 202-456-1414. Ask for Barack. Otherwise, stay out of our lives. We have our own country to fix. ----It’s time to call a halt to this dysfunctional “peace process,” which is only damaging the Obama team’s credibility.---If the status quo is this tolerable for the parties, then I say, let them enjoy it. I just don’t want to subsidize it or anesthetize it anymore. We need to fix America. If and when they get serious, they’ll find us. And when they do, we should put a detailed U.S. plan for a two-state solution, with borders, on the table. Let’s fight about something big.” (op cit).

Is Tom kidding us? He convieniently forgets that we are the Israeli facilitator. He begs that his readership has forgotten how we continuously support Israel in the UN with our veto power in the Security Council. How supply the billions of dollars annually to Israeli coffers each year to support their massive military. That we provide secret satellite imagery on their neighbors, and look the other way when they use that information to attack potential adversaries, or step out-side of the norm of international behavior in their treatment of occupied populations. Is he calling for us to abandon our policy of ignoring their nuclear arsenal, and protecting them from often-deserved criticism, of maintaining a cruel and inhumane blockade of Gaza, and most recently of supporting their efforts to bury the Goldstone Report? No mention of these issues in Friedman's piece. Does he urge us to change our behavior toward Israel? No these would remain in force as we "turned our backs". Friedman wants only to push these unfortunate facts under the rug and abandon our rightous effort to seek justice for the oppressed in Palestine.

However, Friedman's piece does have an element of truth in it.

A little benign neglect from the US would be good for the Israelis--- were we to really engage in such behavior. For all our efforts in that part of the world, we give but, unevenly---and hand out only lip-service for the Palestinians. Were we to actually "turn our backs" on the injustice in that part of the world-- the Palestinians would not miss our efforts. But Israel would! But that is not what Mr. Friedman is proposing here. Putting the problems of the region on the "back burner" while containing to support Israel (as we do now) would just maintain the status quo. The Mr. Netanyahu would be happy with that..his nation holds all of the pieces of the pie and have no inclination to share it. And we are helping them do it.

Were the US to actually rescind the "Israel support system" that tiny but powerful nation might actually be forced to consider peace as an alternative. But don't expect anything like that soon.

Get the picture?

rjk

NEWS SNIPPETS FROM AFGHANISTAN ON THIS DAY

noreply@blogger.com (Bob Kalin) — Sat, 07 Nov 2009 21:35:00 +0000

CiVILIANS KILLED BY ACCIDENT, AFGHAN TROOPS SHELLED BY ACCIDENT, AFGHANS FEARFUL OF MORE US TROOPS, OBAMA'S MAN IN AFGHANISTAN MISSING IN ACTION, TWO US TROOPS LOST SOMEWHERE, SEARCHERS KILL AND MAIM 25 AFGHANISTANIS

Snippets of News on Afghanistan:November 7, 2009

The stories emanating from Afghanistan today give one pause.

1. From the NY Times: Title: Prospect of more US troops worries Afghans.
2. From the NY Times: Title: NATO Airstrike Reported to Kill 7 Afghan Soldiers (by accident, while searching for two missing US troops…reported dead by Taliban, while 25 others were reported hurt or injured.)
3. From the LA Times: Title: Nine Civilians Killed in Helmand Province by NATO rocket attack. Reporting from Kabul, Afghanistan - North Atlantic Treaty Organization forces said today they were investigating reports that nine civilians were killed in a rocket strike aimed at insurgents in the volatile southern Afghan province of Helmand.
The incident came despite new efforts by international forces to avoid civilian casualties and make the Afghan population feel safe.

Dozens of angry villagers carried the bodies today through the streets of the provincial capital, Lashkar Gah, before they were dispersed by police firing guns in the air, witnesses said. ( Apparently civilians harvesters working in a field were mistaken for Taliban planting a bomb by NATO troops. )
Such incidents have fueled rising anger against international forces.

"I'm sure if the situation continues like this, one day everyone will declare holy war against the infidels," said Anwar Khan, who heads the Helmand provincial council, raising the specter of Afghans turning against the U.S.-led coalition.

Same article: In the east, a U.S. service member was killed when insurgents attacked a patrol Wednesday afternoon, military officials said. They provided no further details.

Afghanistan News Center: more troops may not be the answer, says Obama adviser
More troops may not be the answer to Nato's Afghanistan problems, a key adviser to President Barack Obama has said.

By Telegraph (UK) reporter 07 Nov 2009

National security adviser James Jones warned that extra troops could just be "swallowed up" in the deserts and mountains where troops are fighting. He was speaking as the president ponders a request to send 40,000 more soldiers to fight in the war, a decision which could prove one of the most crucial of his presidency.

Holbrook Missing in Action in Afghanistan?
Richard Holbrooke’s future unclear as fallout from Karzai rift reaches Washington
See "The Times" (UK) November 7, 2009, Giles Whittell in Washington

Richard Holbrooke has been called many things in his long career: diplomat, peacemaker, bruiser and, in the court of President Hamid Karzai, “the Devil”.

In Kabul a week after it became clear that President Karzai would win a second term without a second round of voting, the most conspicuous truth about President Obama’s special representative to Afghanistan and Pakistan, is his absence.

The man who forced Slobodan Milosevic to the negotiating table and longed to be rewarded with the job of Secretary of State was instead handed the toughest regional portfolio on the planet at the start of President Obama’s term.

He has since hired dozens of advisers and set out goals on reforming everything from Afghanistan’s poppy fields to its notoriously porous prisons. But his critics say he has failed to broker a stable political settlement with President Karzai, largely because relations between the two have broken down. The result is whispering in Washington about how much longer he can retain his job.

“It is a typical Washington parlour game about who’s up, who’s down,” a disdainful State Department spokesman said last month. If the game had a name it would be “Where in the world is Holbrooke?”, and the answers are revealing.

When Senator John Kerry was immersed in ultimately successful negotiations with President Karzai in Kabul last month, Mr Holbrooke was in Washington. When Hillary Clinton was in Pakistan last week, Mr Holbrooke was with her. Then, instead of including Kabul in his itinerary, he flew home. Between those trips he held a rare open briefing widely regarded as intended to show that he had not been sidelined by Mr Kerry.

Asked about his personal relations with President Karzai, Mr Holbrooke called them “fine . . . correct . . . appropriate”, and said he was looking forward to seeing the Afghan leader “in a few days”. More than a few days — and a dramatic climb-down by President Karzai’s main opponent — have passed since, and Mr Holbrooke remains in Washington.

“The optics are not great surrounding him right now,” one fellow diplomat said yesterday. A close Washington confidant of Mr Holbrooke’s admitted: “It would be understandable if people thought he was somewhat missing in action.” His staff retort that during the most intense US foreign strategy review since Vietnam, he needs to be in Washington — advising his immediate boss, Mrs Clinton, but also briefing President Obama privately and without her knowledge.

Yet the case against Mr Holbrooke involves more than geography. He has “needlessly antagonised” the one man with whom he should have cultivated a rapport, aides to a former US Ambassador to Kabul say. He has also misused six months, from April to September, that should have been spent planning for the dire political contingencies that he knew were looming.

Mr Holbrooke confronted President Karzai over his failure to arrest the warlord Abdul Rashid Dostum last year and encouraged opposition figures to run against him. In August he refused to join in President Karzai’s celebrations after his first-round election win, insisting that a second round would be required.

By some accounts this inadvertently sabotaged an opposition move to unite behind a single candidate, and it took Senator Kerry to make President Karzai accept the idea of a second ballot.
Team Holbrooke, meanwhile, is accused of having a confused decision-making apparatus with memos and analysis more notable for enthusiasm than acuity. Mr Holbrooke’s lack of knowledge of Afghanistan has also been noted in Kabul and Washington.

“Somehow the political element never got it together and said, ‘What is the Plan B and Plan C?’ an ally of the envoy told The Times. “‘What do we do if there’s a legitimacy crisis?’” Faced with just such a crisis, many in Washington now believe that Mr Holbrooke will have to take the blame.

Get the picture?

rjk

BEST IN THE WORLD--AMERICA'S FALSE HEALTH CARE ASSUMPTIONS

noreply@blogger.com (Bob Kalin) — Fri, 06 Nov 2009 16:43:00 +0000

I read Nicolas Kristof's column in the NY Times (http://www.nytimes.com/2009/11/05/opinion/05kristof.html?em) published November 4th 2009, as so often Kristof says it all..and so well.

On Fox News Sunday (June 07, 2009) Sen. Richard Shelby (R-Ala.) told Chris Wallace that President Barack Obama's proposed health care plan is the "first step in destroying the best health care system the world has ever known." Kristof used that quote to begin his report on US health care. The blustering Senator Shelby from Alabama...a true blowhard..who states misthruths and misrepresentations which some would have us continue to believe. That America is truly exceptional...even in the realm of health care. Shelby stated to Wallace: "We have the greatest health care system in the world. ....it saves lives in ways that other countries can only dream of. (Foreigners) sit on waiting lists for months, so why should we squander billions of dollars to mess with a system that is the envy of the world? ...(its) the best health care system the world has ever known.”

But Shelby's bluster has more to do with his financial support from the health insurance companies and less to do with actual facts about American health care delivery. Yes it is true that our techology is one of the best and rakns at the very cutting edge...that technology is available to some---such as for our senators and congressmen..and the wealthy elites, but the value of a health care system is not what it is CAPABLE of performing for an elite minority, but what it actually delivers to a nation's citizenry. So as Kristof's piece so aptly points out--the greatest myth of the health care debate is the...the false confidence most Americans have regarding the US health care system. Americans are NOT the best cared for by any measure.

Kristoff points out that our citizens don't live as long as residents of similar economic circumstances and race as those in other industrialized nations. Thirty developed contries rank above us, while we are tied in that category with such stalwarts in health care as Kuwait and Chile. Regarding infant mortality, according to the World Health Organization (WHO) we rank 37th, while in maternal mortality we are 34th. Krsitof states that "A child in the United States is two-and-a-half times as likely to die by age 5 as in Singapore or Sweden, and an American woman is 11 times as likely to die in childbirth as a woman in Ireland."

Another interesting fact is that "Americans take 10 percent fewer drugs than citizens in other countries — but pay 118 percent more per pill that they do take."

Yet another study, cited by Kristof and conducted by the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation and the Urban Institute, looked at how well 19, developed countries succeeded in avoiding “preventable deaths,” such as those where a disease could be cured or forestalled. What Senator Shelby called “the best health care system in the world” ranked in last place."

Get the picture?

rjk

HILLARY A POLITICAL DISASTER IN PAKISTAN

noreply@blogger.com (Bob Kalin) — Sat, 31 Oct 2009 00:41:00 +0000

Regarding Hillary Clinton's trip to Pakistan:I followed her perigrinations with interest. I read the news reports and listened to radio soundbites and watched film snippets aired on TV showing her addressing young Moslem women, praying at a mosque, etc. etc. Our press, which with rare exceptions is incapable of examining US foreign policy in a rational, balanced way--(whatever Fox News claims)--and in accordance with tradition the trip and its on the surface polite reaction was presented to the gullible American public as if it was a success--a tour de force. But watching closely and reading between the lines, I had another opinion. For me, there were clear evidences that our Madam Secretary, Hillary Clinton, bombed in Pakistan. Her arrival, coinciding with the horrible Taliban explosions in Peshawar, was the political equivalent of a truck bomb. Whatever the policy-goals the Obama Administration hoped for with this Clinton trip--they were clearly not achieved.

But read what the Pakistanis had to say:

Two editiorials follow from "The Nation" (Pakistan Newspaper)
Otober 29, 2009, one entitled "Hillary's Tubewells"
http://www.nation.com.pk/pakistan-news-newspaper-daily-english-online/Opinions/Editorials/29-Oct-2009/Hillarys-tubewells, Hl

And the other, on the next day, October 30, 2009 entitled, "Pointless Symbolism":
http://www.nation.com.pk/pakistan-news-newspaper-daily-english-online/Opinions/Editorials/30-Oct-2009/Pointless-symbolism/

1. Hillary's Tubewells
HILLARY Clinton's visit has not brought anything new for the Pakistani people. In fact the visit seems like a PR exercise but who will buy what the US is selling is difficult to imagine, beyond the already compliant government. Unfortunately, she began her visit with the usual targeting of Pakistan's nuclear arsenal by declaring how worried the US was about nuclear-armed terrorists and proliferation. Now if that was really the case the US would hasten to shore up its own rather weak command and control mechanisms, given how its nuclear weapons have a tendency to going missing and are discovered on their air force planes without any authorisation. As for proliferation, after the US-India nuclear accord, the US itself stands guilty of breaching the NPT; and there is the continuing proliferation from the US to Israel that no one seems prepared to discuss. She also wants Pakistan to "work with" the US on the Fissile Material Cutoff Treaty despite the fact that Pakistan has serious reservations on the US draft, which seeks to put Pakistan at a permanent disadvantage to India in terms of fissile material.

But what was worse was the rather obvious effort by the US Secretary of State to send some sort of a "message" to the Pakistan military, not only through her nuclear diatribe but also her overuse of the "democracy" reference! In terms of concrete offerings, there seemed little beyond some 10,000 tube wells, although the usual promises of working for development and so on were there! Unfortunately, our Foreign Minister seems so beholden to the Americans that he goes into a spasmodic mode of gratitude in their company and yesterday was no different. He declared the US a "great friend of Pakistan" but refused to demand of this "friend" that it stop the flow of weapons coming to the TTP from Afghanistan. Given that the Peshawar blast had occurred before the joint press conference, it did not become our Foreign Minister not to have raised this crucial issue. After all, post-9/11 there is a terrorist incident every 40 hours in NWFP, and this cannot happen without the supply of weapons and money from Afghanistan.

On our energy problem, Ms Clinton merely declared that the US is committed to addressing the issue; but if its way of dealing with it is to demand that we end subsidies and abandon the Iran pipeline project then we are better off without their help. If the US is serious it should sign an India-like civil nuclear deal with Pakistan but who out of the present leadership will demand this and stick to it? And that is the problem with Pakistan's US relationship. The US approach towards Pakistan was summed up in the visual of Holbrooke slumped in his chair, chewing gum nonchalantly in the talks. After all, they have what they want from Pakistan. Our tragedy is that amongst all the US-groveling, there is no one left to speak for Pakistan."

[Note: "Tubewells" are small-diameter (10 cm @4") pipes driven into the ground to tap groundwater for domestic water supply. The reference was to some 10,000 wells promised by Ms Clinton for the often parched highlands of Pakistan.]

Then on October 30, 2009
October 30, 2009 Editorial, "Pointless Symbolism":
http://www.nation.com.pk/pakistan-news-newspaper-daily-english-online/Opinions/Editorials/30-Oct-2009/Pointless-symbolism/

2. Pointless Symbolism

"It is a moment to ponder on the insensitivity of the Pakistani leadership that it failed to observe a sense of mourning over the Peshawar carnage with its official banqueting on Wednesday. But the leadership has never been overly sensitive to the people, except perhaps at election time. However, the US Secretary of State could have been more responsive to the tragedy since she was on a major PR exercise targeting the people of Pakistan. Yet, despite the tragic shadow of the Peshawar carnage, Ms Clinton has continued with what is now clearly solely a PR exercise aimed at winning over hearts and minds. But with what? A few sanitised meetings with selected media people, students and the ‘right’ civil society members? (One female scholar declined the invite when asked to come three hours in advance and wait for the coach!) And let us not forget the photo ops at the correct religious symbols - Sufism’s Bari Imam and the historic Lahore symbol, Badshahi Mosque. Clearly the US does not understand the Pakistani nation, which is neither purchasable nor so gullible. Just because Ms Clinton declares that she likes Pakistani food, or visits a Sufi shrine will hardly endear the US and make up for the loss of Pakistani lives in drone attacks; nor will it make us forget the present quagmire we have become stuck in as a result of this “war on terror” which has unleashed a rain of terror on the Pakistani people across the whole country.

There are, therefore, core issues of contention, if not outright conflict, between the US and the Pakistani nation at least, if not the leadership. Unfortunately, Ms Clinton chose to remain silent on them when they were raised even in the sanitised settings created for her. For instance, on the drone attacks, she declared she did not want to get into it. Earlier she had stated that in a war weapons like drones are used but she should have realised that one uses these against an enemy state not against an allied state’s territory!

Again, when asked about the illegal activities of US diplomats in the Capital she simply declared she did not know anything of this. Now given that all US diplomats come under the State Department and Ms Clinton is the Secretary of State, it is astonishing to find that she was ignorant on what has become a major diplomatic issue in Pakistan. All in all, if Ms Clinton really wants to win over the Pakistani nation to thinking positively about the US, she will have to tackle these contentious issues as well as stop the diatribes and warnings regarding our nukes. The time for beguiling the people of Pakistan with symbolism is long over; it is time to show intent through actions. Of course, had Ms Clinton chosen to show some sense of mourning for the over 100 dead Pakistanis in Peshawar, it would have been a most befitting symbolism."

Get the picture?

rjk

ROBERT FISK ON OBAMA NOBEL PRIZE

noreply@blogger.com (Bob Kalin) — Thu, 29 Oct 2009 22:52:00 +0000

It is strange that to be able to get some insight into the machinations in Washington we cannot read our own newspapers (where we are fed pablum and propaganda) but must turn to a British foreign correspondent who writes for the "Independent" in the UK. So for the real picutre read Fisk, a long-time Middle East commentator and resident of Beirut, Lebanon.

Below I copy his article--"Obama A Man Of Peace? No Just a Nobel Prize of A Mistake"-- in its entirety below: from:http://www.independent.co.uk/opinion/commentators/fisk/robert-fisk-obama-man-of-peace-no-just-a-nobel-prize-of-a-mistake-1800928.html (downloaded (dl) October 28, 2009.

"His Middle East policy is collapsing. The Israelis have taunted him by ignoring his demand for an end to settlement-building and by continuing to build their colonies on Arab land. His special envoy is bluntly told by the Israelis that an Arab-Israel peace will take "many years". Now he wants the Palestinians to talk peace to Israel without conditions. He put pressure on the Palestinian leader to throw away the opportunity of international scrutiny of UN Judge Goldstone's damning indictment of Israeli war crimes in Gaza while his Assistant Secretary of State said that the Goldstone report was "seriously flawed". After breaking his pre-election promise to call the 1915 Armenian massacres by Ottoman Turkey a genocide, he has urged the Armenians to sign a treaty with Turkey, again "without pre-conditions". His army is still facing an insurgency in Iraq. He cannot decide how to win "his" war in Afghanistan. I shall not mention Iran.

And now President Barack Obama has just won the Nobel Peace Prize. After only eight months in office. Not bad. No wonder he said he was "humbled" when told the news. He should have felt humiliated. But perhaps weakness becomes a Nobel Peace Prize winner. Shimon Peres won it, too, and he never won an Israeli election. Yasser Arafat won it. And look what happened to him. For the first time in history, the Norwegian Nobel committee awarded its peace prize to a man who has achieved nothing – in the faint hope that he will do something good in the future. That's how bad things are. That's how explosive the Middle East has become.

Isn't there anyone in the White House to remind Mr Obama that the Israelis have never obliged a US president who asked for an end to the building of colonies for Jews – and Jews only – on Arab land? Bill Clinton demanded this – it was written into the Oslo accords – and the Israelis ignored him. George W Bush demanded an end to the fighting in Jenin nine years ago. The Israelis ignored him. Mr Obama demands a total end to all settlement construction. "They just don't get it, do they?" an Israeli minister – apparently Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu – was reported to have said when the US Secretary of State, Hillary Clinton, reiterated her president's words. That's what Avigdor Lieberman, Israel's crackpot foreign minister – he's not as much a crackpot as Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, but he's getting close – said again on Thursday. "Whoever says it's possible to reach in the coming years a comprehensive agreement," he announced before meeting Mr Obama's benighted and elderly envoy George Mitchell, "... simply doesn't understand the reality."

Across Arabia, needless to say, the Arab potentates continue to shake with fear in their golden minarets. That great Lebanese journalist Samir Kassir – murdered in 2005, quite possibly by Mr Obama's new-found Syrian chums – put it well in one of his last essays. "Undeterred by Egypt since Sadat's peace," he wrote, "convinced of America's unfailing support, guaranteed moral impunity by Europe's bad conscience, and backed by a nuclear arsenal that was acquired with the help of Western powers, and that keeps growing without exciting any comment from the international community, Israel can literally do anything it wants, or is prompted to do by its leaders' fantasies of domination."

So Israel is getting away with it as usual, abusing the distinguished (and Jewish) head of the UN inquiry into Gaza war crimes – which also blamed Hamas – while joining the Americans in further disgracing the craven Palestinian Authority "President" Mahmoud Abbas, who is more interested in maintaining his relations with Washington than with his own Palestinian people. He's even gone back on his word to refuse peace talks until Israel's colonial expansion comes to an end. In a single devastating sentence, that usually mild Jordanian commentator Rami Khouri noted last week that Mr Abbas is "a tragic shell of a man, hollow, politically impotent, backed and respected by nobody". I put "President" Abbas into quotation marks since he now has Mr Ahmadinejad's status in the eyes of his people. Hamas is delighted. Thanks to President Obama.

Oddly, Mr Obama is also humiliating the Armenian president, Serg Sarkisian, by insisting that he talks to his Turkish adversaries without conditions. In the West Bank, you have to forget the Jewish colonies. In Armenia, you have to forget the Turkish murder of one and a half million Armenians in 1915. Mr Obama refused to honour his pre-election promise to recognise the 20th century's first holocaust as a genocide. But if he can't handle the First World War, how can he handle World War Three?

Mr Obama advertised the Afghanistan conflict as the war America had to fight – not that anarchic land of Mesopotamia which Mr Bush rashly invaded. He'd forgotten that Afghanistan was another Bush war; and he even announced that Pakistan was now America's war, too. The White House produced its "Afpak" soundbite. And the drones came in droves over the old Durand Line, to kill the Taliban and a host of innocent civilians. Should Mr Obama concentrate on al-Qa'ida? Or yield to General Stanley McChrystal's Vietnam-style demand for 40,000 more troops? The White House shows the two of them sitting opposite each other, Mr Obama in the smoothie suite, McChrystal in his battledress. The rabbit and the hare.

No way are they going to win. The neocons say that "the graveyard of empire" is a cliché. It is. But it's also true. The Afghan government is totally corrupted; its paid warlords – paid by Karzai and the Americans – ramp up the drugs trade and the fear of Afghan civilians. But it's much bigger than this.

The Indian embassy was bombed again last week. Has Mr Obama any idea why? Does he realise that Washington's decision to support India against Pakistan over Kashmir – symbolised by his appointment of Richard Holbrooke as envoy to Afghanistan and Pakistan but with no remit to discuss divided Kashmir – enraged Pakistan. He may want India to balance the power of China (some hope!) but Pakistan's military intelligence realises that the only way of persuading Mr Obama to act fairly over Kashmir – recognising Pakistan's claims as well as India's – is to increase their support for the Taliban. No justice in Kashmir, no security for US troops – or the Indian embassy – in Afghanistan.

Then, after stroking the Iranian pussycat at the Geneva nuclear talks, the US president discovered that the feline was showing its claws again at the end of last week. A Revolutionary Guard commander, an adviser to Supreme Leader Khamenei, warned that Iran would "blow up the heart" of Israel if Israel or the US attacked the Islamic Republic. I doubt it. Blow up Israel and you blow up "Palestine". Iranians – who understand the West much better than we understand them – have another policy in the case of the apocalypse. If the Israelis attack, they may leave Israel alone. They have a plan, I'm told, to target instead only US troops in Iraq and Afghanistan, and their bases in the Gulf and their warships cruising through Hormuz. They would leave Israel alone. Americans would then learn the price of kneeling before their Israeli masters.

For the Iranians know that the US has no stomach for a third war in the Middle East. Which is why Mr Obama has been sending his generals thick and fast to the defence ministry in Tel Aviv to tell the Israelis not to strike at Iran. And why Israel's leaders – including Mr Netanyahu – were blowing the peace pipe all week about the need for international negotiations with Iran. But it raises an interesting question. Is Mr Obama more frightened of Iran's retaliation? Or of its nuclear capabilities? Or more terrified of Israel's possible aggression against Iran?

But, please, no attacks on 10 December. That's when Barack Obama turns up in Oslo to pocket his peace prize – for achievements he has not yet achieved and for dreams that will turn into nightmares."

Get the picture?

rjk

noreply@blogger.com (Bob Kalin) — Wed, 28 Oct 2009 21:12:00 +0000

The Jurist (jurist.law.pitt.edu)states the obvious..that the 600 or more people who have been killed by the US aerial drone attacks in Pakistan..since August 2008 may be illegal extrajudicial executions and thus violate international law. Read on...

UN rights investigator warns US drone attacks may violate international law
Amelia Mathias at 9:02 AM ET (See: http://jurist.law.pitt.edu/paperchase/2009/10/un-rights-investigator-warns-us-drone.php, dl 10-29-09)

[JURIST] UN Special Rapporteur on extrajudicial, summary or arbitrary executions Philip Alston [official website] said Tuesday that the use of unmanned warplanes by the US to carry out attacks in Pakistan and Afghanistan may be illegal. Alston criticized the US policy in a report to the UN General Assembly's human rights committee and then elaborated at a press conference [press release; recorded video]:

My concern is that these drones, these predators, are being operated in a framework which may well violate international humanitarian law and international human rights law. The onus is really on the government of the United States to reveal more about the ways in which it makes sure that arbitrary executions, extrajudicial executions, are not in fact being carried out through the use of these weapons. The response of the US is simply untenable, and that is that the Human Rights Council and the General Assembly by definition have no role in relation to killings that take place in relations to an armed conflict. that would remove the great majority of issues that come before these bodies right now.

Alston's report was presented as part of a larger demand that no state be free from accountability.

Alston previously raised the issue of US drone attacks in June. The US government responded that its position is that such attacks are carried out in a war zone where the UN has no role. The controversial attacks have killed about 600 people in northwestern Pakistan since August 2008, including around 400 militants. US Senator John Kerry said this week that the attacks would continue [RTTNews report], claiming that they have been successful in combatting al Qaeda and have resulted in minimal collateral damage. Also this week, a Pakistani court upheld the dismissal of a petition [The Nation report] against US drone attacks that sought to declare the US an enemy state.

The recent UN Goldstone Report concerning the actions of Israel and Hamas during the recent Gaza attacks reveal how serious (and effective) UN investigations have become--thankfully. Perhaps the present administration should take notice of Mr. Netanyahu who is presently squirming under the microscope of world scrutiny for that nation's actions during the so called "Cast Lead" operation in Gaza where more than 1000 civilians were wontonly killed.

Questions such as those raised by Mr Alston regarding the US behavior in Afghanistan and Pakistan indicate a trend--a rightous indignation that all nations should be held accountable for their actions---and could we here in the USA deny that? With that in mind such questions should certainly be part of the President's "review process" on his "new" policy in Afghanistan. Apparently one of the options considered(the Biden gambit) is an expanions and further reliance on the use of extrajudical executions by means of drones.

In regard to the US goverment position that such attacks are carried out in a war zone where the UN has no role--that is poppycock. The controversial attacks are in Pakistan --outside of the war zone and have killed more than 600 people in northwestern Pakistan since August 2008--you can refer back in this blog to some of the more horrible attacks. The US claims to have killed around 400 militants out of this total but those numbers are suspect. Any male between the ages of 15 and 55 is considered a "militant" and counted in that number. US Senator John Kerry who claims that the attacks have been successful in combatting al Qaeda ignores the anger and hatred that these strikes engender in the local population. His statment that they have resulted in minimal collateral damage is simply based on what "collateral means". When an entire family of innocent women, children and grandparents is the "collateral" that is not "minimal" but stentorian senatorial blather.

Get the picture?

rjk

THE AFGHAN WAR, WHO NEEDS IT?

noreply@blogger.com (Bob Kalin) — Wed, 07 Oct 2009 17:40:00 +0000

“In the end, it would seem that some of our leaders need the Afghanistan battleground more than the terrorists do” concludes Robert Scheer in a piece entitled:“War of Absurdity” (See: http://www.truthdig.com/report/item/20091007_a_war_of_absurdity/) a title which is a thrust at President Obama’s recent speech in which he called Afganistan the “War of Necessity”. Scheer bases his absurdity claim on a statement made by Gen. George Jones, President Obama’s National Security Advisor, who is quoted as saying: “The al-Qaida presence is very diminished. The maximum estimate is less than 100 operating in the country, no bases, no ability to launch attacks on either us or our allies.” (See: http://content.usatoday.com/topics/quote/People/Politicians,+Government+Officials,+Strategists/U.S.+Senators/Jon+Kyl/0aYPaHV6O0eOE/04UO601epxcYS/3)
What could be more absurd...a surge of 40,000 troops to kill 100 al-Qaida? The enemy has virtually disappeared. Yet the generals and others are desperate to continue this war. Why?

Scheer informs us that al-Qaida is also declining in Pakistan, . “Even in neighboring Pakistan, the remnants of al-Qaida are barely hanging on. As The Wall Street Journal reported Tuesday, ‘Hunted by U.S. drones, beset by money problems and finding it tougher to lure young Arabs to the bleak mountains of Pakistan, al Qaeda is seeing its role shrink there and in Afghanistan, according to intelligence reports and Pakistan and U.S. officials. … For Arab youths who are al-Qaida’s primary recruits, ‘it’s not romantic to be cold and hungry and hiding,’ said a senior U.S. official in South Asia.”

So who are we fighting in Afghanistan if not al-Qaida? On a near-daily basis we target and kill Taliban "insurgents". Are they simply a target of opportunity, where al-Qaida are scarce? If one is to believe our leaders in Washington (and try to follow this logic), we kill Taliban,--and any innocent civilians who get it our line of fire--because, if the Taliban were to return to power they “might, perhaps" invite al-Qaida back.

So if I understand this correctly, we have eliminated our real enemy, al-Qaida, from Afghanistan, but now we must purge any resurfacing Taliban too, and since they are rather popular in the countryside (where they engage with the locals and attempt to improve their lives), we must first change the character of the Afghan country-culture and society so that it is less likely to give succor to the Taliban. This "new and better" Afghanistan will be a society and culture more suited to our leaders and to General McChrystal’s tastes and will be more amenable to US interests. To achieve that goal may be a very costly and lengthy undertaking.

Increasing our footprint in Afghanistan with 40,000 new troops (to about 108,000) is, as Scheer concludes, ”a prescription, ........ for war without end. That (he adds) might satisfy the marketing needs of the defense industry and the career hopes of select military and political aspirants, but it has nothing to do with fighting terrorism. In the end, it would seem that some of our leaders need the Afghanistan battleground more than the terrorists do.” Well said, Mr. Robert Scheer!

I might add, the level of troop strength requested by McChrystal is about what the Russians fielded over their almost ten year debacle in Afghanistan. Of course they did not have the long supply lines which we have. Our supply routes are so long that a gallon on gas costs us $100.00 by the time it arrives in Kabul. And to field a single trooper in Afghanistan it costs the US taxpayer 3/4 of a million dollars--each! The 40,000 troops McChrystal wants will cost us (40,000 x $750,000 = $30,000,000,000.00) or $30 billion dollars! That is a lot of money the US will have to borrow from the Chinese and Japanese, (and you can add the carrying charges they will charge us!).

Why is it we hear no complaints about military expenses profligacy from Congress? But ask the government for some help for the US taxpayer, or for health-care, or sorely needed infrastructure and quality of life expenses and great clouds of angry dust are raised over Washington.

So let's summarize. Who's needs this war? The generals who see an opportunity to earn higher rank, the defense industry which sees more lucrative contracts, and those in Congress who will use it as a political weapon. The rest of us...we just pay the exorbitant bills...big bills..and suffer the consequences.

Recall how we all gulped and looked on, wide-eyed as Obama gave away a trillion dollars for the great Wall Stree "bail-out", well the Afghan war is the great give-away to the defense industry and the military. It is a transfer of funds from our now dusty and near-empty pockets into the well-lined coffers of the big companies. If they get their way, the Afghan War will cost about a trillion dollars too. It's for the rest of us--the taxpayers-- those who are fated to just look on...we have no one (with a few worthy exceptions) in Washington who will look out for our needs. We don't get any bail-out. We are the bailers!

Get the picture?

rjk

A MAN REAPS WHAT HE SOWS

noreply@blogger.com (Bob Kalin) — Sun, 04 Oct 2009 14:18:00 +0000

Today October 4, 2009, on the front page of the NY Times we read a story by Sabrina Tavernise and Sangar Rahimi:

“Eight U.S. Soldiers Dead in Bold Attack in Afghanistan”
http://www.nytimes.com/2009/10/05/world/asia/05afghan.html?_r=1&hp

The authors and editors of the Times write:

“KABUL, Afghanistan – Groups of tribal militia attacked two American outposts in eastern Afghanistan on Saturday, the American military said, killing eight American soldiers and two Afghan police officers in a bold attack that was the deadliest for American soldiers in months.
.......The attack took place on Saturday night in the Nuristan province, a remote area that shares a border with Pakistan.”

They also report that:

”The area had suffered civilian casualties in the past, and villagers there are extremely wary of American forces.”

But they fail to tell us why the villagers are “extremely wary of American forces".

Are we not up to the full story.."all thats fit to print" about why the attitude of the Nuristan villagers?

Here is what the authors should have made at least some mention of so that the NY Times readership would have the full story and better understand what kinds of difficulties face our forces we so casually place in harms way:

The authors might have noted that extremely mountinous region of steep valleys, and cragy 14,000 foot peaks, was the site of many violent battles during the Russian invasion, and was the recent locus of a dramatic battle in which large numbers of civilians were killed.

Read how the Afghan Conflict Monitor describes this April 7 2008 story:
http://www.afghanconflictmonitor.org/nuristan/

“Afghanistan Probes Civilian Deaths Claim: Ministry, Agence France Presse, 7 April 2008
EXCERPT: "Afghanistan authorities said Monday [7 April 2008] they were investigating claims by provincial officials that up to 33 civilians were killed in a weekend offensive by US-led troops. The defence ministry said it could not confirm that civilians were killed in the raids by US and Afghan forces in the eastern province of Nuristan, a known stronghold of Taliban-led militants. The US-led coalition had earlier reported 'significant' insurgent casualties during the operation. Mohammad Aleem, Nuristan deputy governor, told AFP that 33 civilians, including women and children, were killed and dozens more injured in the day-long operation in the mountainous province's Do'aab district. District chief Qari Daud put the death toll at 28, all of them civilians. The defence ministry said in a statement that reports from the area 'indicate that non-civilians were hurt during that operation.' On Sunday, it had reported 'heavy' militant casualties."

The same story from Information Iraq:
Read at: http://www.williambowles.info/iraq/uruk/2008/0408/uruk_080408.html
"The massacre in the Do’ab district, Nuristan Marc W. Herold, The Afghan Victim Memorial ProjectOn Sunday, April 6, 2008, in three isolated villages including Shok (Sharuk or Shawak), Daba (Dowaba) and Myan-i-Tok in the Shok Valley of the Do’ab district, western Nuristan Province about 15 kms north of the border with Laghman Province. In July 2007, the Taliban had captured the Do’ab and Mandol districts of Nuristan. The villages were intensely bombarded by U.S. warplanes while U.S.-led ground troops (of the Afghan 201st Kandak Company and the Afghan National Police) carried out a ground cordon-and-search assault upon the villages. A resident of Shok village (Shawak) told the independent Pajhwok Afghan News that U.S. helicopters had been fired-upon after which the U.S-led assault began. Heavy fighting lasting numerous hours ensued. As usual, U.S-Afghan soldiers called-in aerial close air support (CAS). Much of Shok village including the mosque was flattened. Yusuf Nuristani, a spokesman for the governor of Nuristan said that some 200 homes in the village of Myan-i-Tok village were badly damaged. 28-40 civilians including many women, elderly and children were slaughtered in the U.S. attack….

The same story from the RAWA, or Revolutionary Association of Women of Afghansitan (www.rawa.org) where the names of some of the victims of the attack are listed.
Read this account at: http://www.rawa.org/temp/runews/2008/04/29/the-massacre-in-the-do-8217-ab-district-nuristan.html

"The massacre in the Do’ab district, Nuristan

Killed by heavy U.S. “precision” bombing

In memory of and sympathy for14 civilians killed:

Saeed Rasul, 50, a fatherRahmatullah, 45, a fatherBibi Jan, 70, a motherHakim’s daughter, 6Hakim’s second daughter, 8Muhammed Aman, 60, a fatherWali Muhammed, 60, a fatherHayat’s son, 5Suleiman’s son, 7Muhammed Siddique’s wife, 40Sattar, 65, a fatherHazrat Shah, 70Reza Muhammed, 60, a fatherShawago’s daughter, 4

Another 7 civilians wounded:
Naik Muhammed, a fatherMuhammed Siddique, 80Karim, 80Haji Najmuddin’s wife, 65Azam, 50, a fatherAfghan, a 50-yr-old manKarim Hazir Mir’s son, 12.

St Paul, in(Galatians 6:7-10) warns us “Do not be deceived: God cannot be mocked. A man reaps what he sows. The one who sows to please his sinful nature, from that nature will reap destruction; the one who sows to please the Spirit, from the Spirit will reap eternal life. Let us not become weary in doing good, for at the proper time we will reap a harvest if we do not give up. Therefore, as we have opportunity, let us do good to all people…”

Get the picture?

rjk

MISS BRENDA'S BROKEN THUMB

noreply@blogger.com (Bob Kalin) — Sat, 03 Oct 2009 21:55:00 +0000

Miss Brenda is my grandaughter’s bus driver. As consequence of their parent’s tight, morning schedules, I--the children's grandfather-- have been pressed into service. So each morning, I walk my two young granddauughters to the bus stop. Together, we listen for the big yellow bus, which arrives at 8:45 AM sharp. Its first stop is just up the road, in front of little Jason’s house. From our stop we watch Jason's mom corall the active youngster and get him on board. Then the bus rumbles up to our stop. I keep the eager little girls perched on the edge of my neighbor’s lawn.

The bus roars up, its breaks squeal. Then it comes to a noisy stop.

“OK, kids, let’s go,” I call.

Miss Brenda, a small woman of about 35 years, sitting high on the big driver's seat, opens the doors with a “woosh”, and the two little girls rush on board.

In these circumstances, it is common for little pleasantries to be passed by the adults present, such as: “Have a nice day!” or “Watch for the rainy weather predicted for this afternoon.” After several days, a strange form of on-going, intermittent conversation begins..consisting of a few words each day, separated by a twenty-four hour period. That's how, over about a week, by means of brief snatches of conversation, I learned that Miss Barbara had a minor mishap before entering her bus one morning.

One day, a few days prior, she had tripped over a loose piece of rubber on the lower step of her bus and jammed her thumb between the first seat-frame and the floor. She said, "I saw stars!" Her thumb swelled up and remained numb and very painful all that day. Though I'm no nosey-body, but in similar innocent-fashion I learned also that Miss Brenda has no medical insurance…she is working for the bus company in a part-time capacity. Her husband, a carpenter, is now employed only part-time as well, and has also has no medical coverage. The couple have a young daughter who attends the middle school---and a mortgage to pay. Miss Brenda’s small income as a school-bus driver, makes family’s financial-ends just about meet. If she were to get seriously hurt or sick…she would simply be out of work and out of that critical pay check. So with her very painful thumb she silently rode out that day, trying to keep her throbbing, swollen finger from touching the wheel.

A few days later her accident came to my notice one day when my granddaughter attempted to hand her a little bouquet of flowers. The child’s hand bumped hers and she winced in pain.

“Sorry honey,” she said with a crooked smile, I can’t take the flower” the ache in her swollen hand was clearly reflected in her face. Over the curly, be-ribboned head of my charge, she explained to me: “Been suffering with this thumb,” she said, shaking it gently to relieve the pain.

That’s when she explained how it happened.

“You should see a doctor,” I offered, raising my voice over the rumbling engine and the chatter of the youngsters greeting each other in the bus aisle.

“What doctor? I can’t afford to go to no doctor.”

“The swelling,” I began….

“Jest a little infection,” she said.

“Is it numb anywhere?”

“Naw, not no more,”

“But if the pain is so sharp,” I persisted, “the bone might be broken.” I added, feeling, I should give my professional opinion, even though I’m retired a long time now.

“I have a friend who’s a nurse, in St. Mary’s, I showed it to her and, she says, she thinks it’s jest a sprain,” said Miss Barbara, resting the hurt-hand gingerly on the big vibrating steering wheel.

“But you should…”

“I been takin’ big doses of ‘butes’ and that seems to help the pain,” she added, as she smiled wanly and waved to me.

Realizing our conversation was ended, I smiled too.

“Have a nice day,” she called out, as she closed the big folding doors.

I walked back home thinking of Miss Brenda. From what she said, and seeing her sharp reaction to the pain, I was pretty sure she had a broken thumb and thus she would at least need a good splint. I was determined to encourage her at our next encounter to perhaps go to the Emergency Room at St. Mary’s Hospital. There they would probably put it in a cast for her.

The weekend passed, and Monday arrived, as my little troop and I walked to the bus stop, I mentally prepared a quick statement for Miss Brenda. My brief time arrived when the two youngsters climbed the bus steps.

“Hi Miss Brenda, how’s the thumb?”

“Oh, still pretty painful, but I figured a way out,” she said, smiling and holding up her hand, for me to see. The hand revealed a wide strip of masking-tape which bound her thumb to her index finger.

“I found that by taping the thumb tight against my first finger, the pain ain’t so bad, and I could still hold the wheel pretty good. “

“Oh?, did the swelling go down?”

“Yeah, and the discoloring’s goin’ away too.”

“So you can drive OK?”

“Yeah, I’m a tough as an old....! You know what I mean! I can’t say it in front o’ these kids,” she said, reaching for the door-handle.

“Have a nice day,” I called out.

“Yeah…you too.”

"Hope you feel better...I yelled out as the door closed.

As the bus pulled away…and I walked back home, I thought about Miss Brenda. Perhaps her thumb would heal OK and she would recover and have full use of it. But Miss Brenda’s broken thumb, had me pondering, about how here in the US, our medical system--which serves some so well--but for others, there may only prolonged pain, over-the-counter medicines, and masking tape. And yeah...hope.

Get the picture?

rjk

US AND IRAN AT GENEVA:VIEW FROM FRANCE

noreply@blogger.com (Bob Kalin) — Thu, 01 Oct 2009 14:39:00 +0000

Le Monde (October 1, 2009)

American and Iranian Gestures In Advance Of The Nuclear Meeting.
Less than a week after the dramatic and brusque revelation of the Iranian nuclear “dossier”. The Obama administration has made gestures of good will in the prelude to the Council of Six great powers meeting (US, China, Russia, Germany, France, and the UK) with, Iran on Thursday first of October in Geneva.

According to the Dept of State, Barak Obama has given authorization to his negotiator, political director William Burns, to meet with his Iranian counterpart, Said Jalili, on the side of the plenary session, if he wishes. That is not the first time that Mr. Burns has participated in a meeting with the Iranian delegation, but it the first time he has the authority to speak directly, head-head, with a fortiari (even stronger) authority and engage in direct dialog.

The administration has also authorized the (Iranian) minister of foreign affairs Manoucheher Mottaki, who is assigned to New York at the UN, to come to Washington to visit the Iranian-interest-section of the Pakistani delegation, (which functions to represent Iran) in absence of diplomatic relations between the two countries. Such a visit has not been put in place for the last ten years.

The spokesman of the Department of State Philip Crowley, has called this a “coincidence”. Responding to this question, on the eve of the Geneva meeting, (as to why) the administration has provided the visa. “If this is taken as a small gesture and might contribute to making (the meeting) much more (successful), that is excellent”, he added.

Mottaki has not met with the Americans, but he has given an interview on public radio (NPR). The opponents of the dialogue suggest that his visit plays a part in an attempt by the Iranian regime to restore legitimacy, by showing a de-escalation (of tensions) with Washington.
On the other hand, in Teheran, the Swiss ambassador, who represents the interests of the Americas, has received authorization to make a visit to the three Americans arrested in early August in Kurdistan.

In Geneva, where the Swizz authorities have had a preview of the major questions in front of a flood of journalists, diplomats and observers, and where the Americans released on Thursday (a list) of their objectives. The first task: “Establish if the Iranians are ready to engage on the nuclear issue.” Other priorities: That Iran permit “complete access and without hindrance” to the clandestine Qum site, to full revelation, as has been demanded by the AIEA.
The Council of Six wish to obtain gestures (from Iran) that (will) “build confidence”. The proposition which has been on the table for a long time is called “freeze for freeze”, which envisions an intermediary period in advance of suspension of enrichment, and is the “point of departure” of all negotiations, has stated an American official.

This new stage in the (Iranian) dossier is opposed by some American experts. Some such as Flynt and Hillary Leverett, members of the National Security Council under George Bush, plead for a “grand bargain”, a global accord which seemed to be the wish of the Iranians in 2003.
The others such as Gary Milhollin and Valery Lincy of the Wisconsin Project on Nuclear Arms Control, suspect Iran of possessing a clandestine “nuclear archipelago” and (they) call for the allies to demand that Iran release all the plans of its installations. The neo-conservatives, as well as the Republican John McCain are coming back to the idea that “change of regime” is more necessary than ever.

Le Monde: Corine Lesnes
Translated: rjk (Oct 1, 2009)

IRAN AND THE US: TIME FOR DETENTE

noreply@blogger.com (Bob Kalin) — Tue, 29 Sep 2009 15:56:00 +0000

In:How to Talk To Iran, Roger Cohen (NY Times Opinion, Sept 16, 2009) http://www.nytimes.com/2009/09/17/opinion/17iht-edcohen.html Roger Cohen, who spent recent weeks in Iran commenting on the election there and has (thankfully and rightly) focused his recent op-ed pieces on Iran, states in 'How to Talk To Iran" that the US must abandon its “psychotic mistrust” and “broaden its context” in its dealings with Iran.

Cohen summarizes the recent revelations concerning the “new” Qum plant southeast of Tehran and asks, why build a new buried plant with a capacity of 3000 centrifuges, if the 54,000 centrifuge Natantz is at less than 15% capacity now? Though the new plant is now empty, and Iran has adhered to the letter of the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) requirements of notification of a new facility six months prior to introduction of nuclear material, Cohen concludes that the new Qum plant reveals that the Iranian enrichment program has “attained a sacred status as a symbol of Iranian independence”. I add that it also reveals a great deal of insecurity. With the real threats of Israeli attack, aggressive US rhetoric (yes even from President Obama) present US military encirclement, existing UN sanctions, and continuing military, naval, and CIA probes into Iran by the US, Iranian fears are understandable and should have been expected. Cohen predicts sanctions will not work and are only “a feel good option”.

Even Defense Secretary Robert Gates, a "W" Bush apointee, in a televised news interview, this last week- had the same opinion. He stated that sanctions can not work, and added that the military option will only give us a few years at most--then Iran would be back where we are today. Such an outcome is not worth it for the ultimate cost of a military strike. Gates added, "The only way to acheive our goal is to change the opinion of the Iranian government." Was that a vieled threat for "regime change" I hope not. We don't want to go down that road again. Let's hope he meant that the carrot and stick approach of diplomacy would be his choice.

Returning to Cohen's argument, he states that Iran has now has passed the enrichment threshold and the "zero enrichment" demand is no longer a realistic option. Cohen believes a nuclear armed Iran is dangerous..but Iran need not go to that extreme with the proper offers--I do not quote his here but perhaps he is suggesting with a relaxation of the virulent anti-Iranian rhetoric, a mutual security agreement and more economic contact we can move them toward a sense of security which will obviate the need for Iranian weapons. See below Flynt and Hillary Leverett.

Furthermore, the Iranians are within IAEA rules, if they wish only for an enrichment facility devoted to peaceful nuclear power. It is to this level that Iran states and appears to wish to reach--- and for Cohen, this is a possible basis for an agreement.

I heartily agree. Now is the time for President Obama to launch a Nixon style opening to the in this case the Middle East. Iran distrusts us and we distrust them. These mutual feelings are a prescription for disaster. B oth President Obama and President Ahmadinejad are faced with domestic politcal oposition on the home front. They are both fearful of appearing weak. But a bold move from Obama, one in which the five-power-talks on first of October, range beyond the immediate problems of Iran's nuclear aspirations, but enter into the whole gamut of issues between the two nations. Where they agree and where they disagree.

We must not go down the slippery slope toward military options or what Senator John McCAin and the neo-cons are suggesting ---again--"regime change". Such an adventure at this juncture would be a political, military and economic disaster for the entire world. The one nation which sees itself profiting from such a development in the US would also suffer grievously. Let's not go there.

About ten days later Roger Cohen, brought the idea up again in his NY Times, piece “The US-Iranian Triangle”, September 27, 2009, http://www.nytimes.com/2009/09/28/opinion/28iht-edcohen.html.

Finally, the Leveretts give some very good, plain-spoken advice to Obama in:
“How to Press the Advantage With Iran”, See: Flynt and Hillary Leverett (NY Times Opinion, Sept 28, 2009)
http://www.nytimes.com/2009/09/29/opinion/29leverett.html?pagewanted=1&_r=1&ref=opinion

Flynt et Hillary Leverett, were members of National Security Council under George Bush they plead for a type of grand bargain with Iran (See Le Monde, October 1, 2009--a translation is available on this blog--above) of a type of global accord that would addresss all the US-Iranian issues and was on their table during the 2003 period. According to the Levertts "On that basis, America and Iran would forge a comprehensive framework for security as well as economic cooperation — something that Washington has never allowed the five-plus-one group to propose. Within that framework, the international community would work with Iran to develop its civil nuclear program, including fuel cycle activities on Iranian soil, in a transparent manner rather than demanding that Tehran prove a negative — that it’s not developing weapons. A cooperative approach would not demonize Iran for political relationships with Hamas and Hezbollah, but would elicit Tehran’s commitment to work toward peaceful resolutions of regional conflicts."

To me such a plan would work...the Iranians who have suffered greviously at the hands of the Americans in the past: See: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Iran%E2%80%93United_States_relations#Premier_Mossadeq_and_his_overthrow

A BRIEF HISTORY OF US-IRANIAN INTERACTION 1953-PRESENT
Gleaned from the above:http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Iran%E2%80%93United_States_relations#Premier_Mossadeq_and_his_overthrow

In 1953, prime minister Mohammed Mossadeq was overthrown by a CIA financed and organized coup, in what has been called "a crucial turning point both in Iran's modern history and in U.S. Iran relations."

In spring and summer 1953, the United States and Britain, through a covert operation of the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) called Operation Ajax, conducted from the US Embassy in Tehran, helped organize a coup d'état to overthrow the Moussadeq government. The operation initially failed and the Shah fled to Italy, but a second attempt succeeded with the Shah returned and Mosaddeq imprisoned.

US support of repressive Palavi regime after the 1979 coup.

US support of Iraq in the Iran-Iraq war. US gives green light to Iraq to attack and supplies Iraq with intelligence, sattelite images, weaponry, poison gas, biological weapons, such as sarin and VX gas.

Hostage crisis and subsequent sanctions and freezing of Iranian assets ($12 billion dollars worth).

1988 US attack on Iranian Oil platforms

1988 July 3, 1988 US Aegis class warship "Vincennes" cruising illegally within Iranian coastal waters shoots down an Iranian Airbus commercial passenger plane with loss of 290 lives. The US claimed it was an accident. US government did not appologise and later, President George Bush later honors the Vincennes' captain with an honorific and medal.

1995 Clinton imposes total embargo on US companies dealing with Iran and nations which trade with Iran.

2002 President George W. Bush cites Iran in Axis of Evil.

2003 Just prior to the Iraq invasion, the Iranian government sent a message to President Bush which contained overtures of peace and a "grand bargain" to resolve all outstanding issues. President Bush never responded to the overture from Iran. Many considered it a mistake and a missed opportunity.

2003 GWB begins illegal incursions into Iran from Iraq by flights of unmanned aerial vehicles (UAV)to obtain imagery of Iran.

On May 8, 2008, President Amadadinejad sent a personal letter to then President Bush to propose new ways to end the nuclear dispute. Bush and his team dismissed the letter as a ploy and did not respond. Bush continuted bellicose responses and rumors indicated he had decided on an attack of Iran. "President Bush has developed a casus belli in order to prepare public opinion for an attack, focused on three reasons: claims that Iran supports attacks on US troops in Iraq, claims that Iran has a nuclear weapons program, and claims that Iran could become a dominant power in the region and destabilise pro-US governments in Israel, Jordan, Bahrain and Saudi Arabia and thereby endanger oil supplies.[93]" See http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Iran%E2%80%93United_States_relations#Premier_Mossadeq_and_his_overthrow

Obama Administration: continued overflights and drones from both Afghanistan and Iraq have penetrated Iranian air space.

Get the picture?

rjk

AMERICANS LIVE 4%-6% SHORTER LIVES YET SPEND THE MOST ON HEALTH CARE

noreply@blogger.com (Bob Kalin) — Tue, 22 Sep 2009 14:38:00 +0000

WHY THE 3-5 YEAR LONGEVITY GAP IN THE USA?

In a September 1, NY Times piece entitled: “To Explain Longevity Gap, Look Past Health System”(http://www.nytimes.com/2009/09/22/science/22tier.html?scp=1&sq=longevity&st=cse), author, John Tierney, calls on the expertise of prominent demographer, Samuel H. Preston, who attempts to absolve the US health care system for the fact that US citizens lives are shorter than in other nations. Preston“finds no evidence to blame the health care system for the longevity gap between (the US) and other industrialized countries,” states Tierney. “The US…does a pretty good job of identifying major diseases,” states Preston, who is well known for a correlation between a nation’s economic expansion and the longevity of its citizens, referenced in academic texts as the “Preston Curve”. According to the author, the problem in longevity for US citizens, who will live about three years less, than citizens of other Western industrialized nations, and five years less than in Japan, is because they “get sick more often than people in Europe and other industrialized countries.” Preston is quoted as stating that the difference is due to the “high rates of…death among middle aged Americans, chiefly from heart disease and cancer. He identifies the causes, stating: Americans are “fatter” and “smoke more”, and, I might add, are probably exposed to more chemical pollutants . To support his hypothesis of a direct correlation between higher GDP and longevity, (See: the Preston Curve at: http://www.ganfyd.org/images/1/17/PrestonCurves.png) Dr. Preston argues that, it is not health care that is responsible for the gap since once Americans become sick, data suggest they receive “better treatment” and “the mortality rates” from “breast cancer and prostate cancer have been declining significantly faster in the US than in other industrialized countries”.

That seems a poor bargain for the US citizen, who on average has between three and five fewer healthy years in later life—and is more likely to get cancer and circulatory disease than in other industrialized nations.

Does he expect that Americans take any satisfaction from the fact that they will live shorter less healthy lives, but when afflicted earlier in life than other nation’s citizenry, they will “survive” longer in hospital, or as out-patients due to “superior care”? I think not.

The problem of the longevity gap seems clear, other industrialized nations all of which support some form of universal health care, and consequently have a stake in the over-all health of their citizenry, have an economic interest in preventing disease and encouraging a healthy lifestyle. While in the US, without that incentive, the government focus is on the health of business. It favored (for many decades) the health of the tobacco industry over the incidence of lung cancer of its citizens; the health of giant agribusiness (producer of food products loaded with animal fats, cheap sugars and salt) over the obesity of consumers, the health of industries which pollute air and water, versus the breast and colon cancers of its people. It is clear, as Calvin Coolidge so succinctly said: “the business of America is business” (and what is implied: America’s first concern is not the well-being of its citizens).

So this we can agree on with Professor Preston, the longevity gap it’s not all the fault of the health care system (which as it is constituted now, prefers to treat actual disease --and maximize profit) than to accept lower fees for disease prevention).

Perhaps when the American public more fully comprehends these facts and consequence to their own lives they may begin to pressure Congress for a more balanced focus--one that includes a more robust concern for the health of it citizens.

Get the picture?

rjk

ENRON: INSTIGATED DEREGULATION-PROFITED FROM DEREGULATION-ABUSED DEREGULATION

noreply@blogger.com (Bob Kalin) — Sun, 20 Sep 2009 00:15:00 +0000

The Enron Scandal 2001

Enron, an entity now found as a "dba" or a “doing business as" company, working from a seedy mailbox in a dusty central-Texas town, was once, prior to 2001 a giant energy corporation based in "big-oil" Huston, Texas. The company was started by Kenneth Lay, who in 1985 by merged Huston Natural Gas with Inter North two pipeline companies. (See http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Enron, from which most of this data was gleaned). Soon afterward the US Congress deregulated natural gas prices (and it is likely given his political background and connections that Lay was aware of this). The result was a volatile pricing market, and an environment in which Enron found many opportunities for profitability. When variation in pricing and resulting hardship to natural-gas-users caused a public outcry in the halls of Congress for a to return to regulated pricing, Enron invested a good portion of its profits to effectively lobby Congress in opposition. Enron was successful. Its efforts (and those of others) kept the unfettered market in natural gas in place. By 1992 Enron had become the largest purveyor of natural gas in the US. The widely dispersed company needed a rapid means of controlling its varied operations and the new electronic technology and the internet met that need. From its innovative use of this system it developed an “on line trading model” which increased its effectiveness in managing its far-flung business interests. With successes in that field, it soon pursued a diversification strategy to adapt its innovative methods, from strictly natural gas, to other forms of energy and related businesses (wood pulp, paper, oil and gas pipelines, windmills, electricity plants) so by the late 1990s it had become one of the first “energy conglomerates” in the nation. And by 2000, it employed over 17, 000 and was one of the world’s leading electricity, natural gas, pulp and paper, pipeline and communications companies in the world. Its revenues were nearly 101 billion dollars in 2000.

Under the direction of founder, and CEO Kenneth Lay; company president, Jeffrey Skilling, (also chief operations officer); and Andrew Fastow (chief financial officer) the company’s stock price, and reputation grew. Fortune Magazine named Enron “America’s Most Innovative Company” for six consecutive years (See http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Enron). At its zenith, Enron owned or operated, 38 electric power plants world-wide, from gas fired plants in the UK, coal fired plants in Poland, and oil fired plants in the Phillipines; it operated wind farms in Iowa, Minnesota, California and Pennsylvania; generated electricity by means of hydroelectric power in Oregon, and by a “combined power” plant in Dabhol, India which burned naptha when the sources of natural gas were interrupted. It owned and operated natural gas and oil pipelines in South America, Florida, and many states in western USA. It owned and operated electric utilities in the USA, Brazil and Venezuela. It operated natural gas storage facilities in South Korea, Brazil, Jamaica, Puerto Rico and Venezuela. It operated timber and pulp paper companies in Quebec, Canada; and a paper company in New Jersey. It manufactured wind turbines, explored for gas and oil in the Gulf of Mexico, and manufactured pipe valves, thermostats, and electrical controls for appliances. By 2000, it ranked 18th on the Fortune 500 list. In 2000, Fortune 500 listed its revenues at $40 billion dollars, on assets claimed at $33 billion and its profits at nearly one billion ($893 million) and its earnings per share in 1998 was 2 dollars while in 1999 it had dropped to one dollars per share. In 2000, its stock hit a high of $90.00 a share. [For the same year, Fortune 500 ranked WalMart Corporation as number 2 (below General Motors). It listed revenues of nearly $167 billion, assets of $70 billion and profits of 5.4 billion, stockholder equity of $26 billion and market value of 213 billion. Its 1998 earnings per share was about 2 dollars (1.98) while its 1999 earnings were 1.2 dollars. Its ten year growth rate was 17.6%. See: http://money.cnn.com/magazines/fortune/fortune500_archive/snapshots/2000/1551.html] .
These figures, even with comparison to giant WalMart looked good in 2000, but less than a year later, as rumors of scandal hit, the company's stock value tumbled to $60.00 per share.

The “Enron Scandal” revealed that the company’s financial situation was fraudulent and was sustained by “institutionalized, systematic and creatively planned accounting fraud” initiated the subsequent government investigations and the company’s final collapse and failure culminating in a Chapter 11 bankruptcy protection filing. Enmeshed in the scandal was the Arthur Andersen Accounting firm-whose accountants were responsible for oversight. They"looked the other way" over Enron's cooked books. Arthur Andersen one of the five largest accounting businesses in the world was dissolved, when it lost its clients and as a result 85,000 jobs were lost, sending waves through the wider business world.

As a result of the dissolution of the Enron company “more than 20,000 Enron employees lost their jobs, pension funds and other compensation. A 2004 settlement provided $85 million out of a $2 billion dollar pension fund that was lost (or a little more than 4 cents on the dollar). Each employee received $3,100 dollars. In 2005 investors received a $4.2 billion dollar settlement. In 2008 a $7.2 billion dollar settlement was reached for a $40 billion dollar law-suit on behalf of shareholders ( See: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Enron_scandal#Aftermath). That amount was distributed among the 1.5 million individual plaintiffs and U California (lead plaintiff). University of California’s law firm, Coughlin, Geller, Rudman and Robbins received $688 million dollars in fees---the highest in any securities fraud case.

Soon afterward the Sarbanes-Oxley Act was passed by Congress. The main provisions of the act (passed July 3, 2002) establishes a “Public Company Accounting Oversight Board to “develop standards for the preparation of audit reports.

In addition, on February 13, 2002 the SEC enacted changes in regulations for the NY Stock Exchange relative to the Enran debacle: The new rules stated: All firms must have a majority of independent directors (See defiition below). The compensation committee, nominating committee, and audit committee must be composed of independent directors. Audit committee members “should be” financially literate and one member is required to have accounting expertise. Finally besides regular sessions boards should hold additional sessions without management present.

According to the American Heritage Dictionary of Business Terms (http://www.yourdictionary.com/business/independent-director) An independent director is a corporate director who has no material relationship with the company in which he or she serves as director. For example, an independent director cannot be employed or have a family member employed by the company.

The Enron scandal did not alter the business world's taste for deregulation...it prospered and "advanced" over the next turbulent seven years under the younger Bush..a close friend of Ken Lay and culminated in the Bernie Madoff scandal the collapse of the Stock Market, the dissolution of Leahman Brothers, and the economic crisis we face today. When will we learn?

Get the picture?

rjk

To read about the Great Depression and other scalywags go on to read about "Ivar Kreuger the original Madoff"-- http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/business/7939403.stm Kreuger was the owner of the original Enron...the response to the Kreuger Crash was a series of worthy regulations which were only abandoned in 1992.

EXCESSIVE RISK-TAKING TO GARNER BONUSES BY CEOs LEAD TO ECONOMIC CRISIS

noreply@blogger.com (Bob Kalin) — Sat, 19 Sep 2009 01:46:00 +0000

The underlying causes of this last 2008 massive global recession was and remains a lack of effective regulation and oversight by the government and its agencies. During the Great Depression many of the very same problems were identified and addressed. But slowly, during the ascendency of monetary and social philosophies which aggrandized greed, and political parties which “poo-pooed” government regulation as too repressive, and corporations which insisted that they “regulate themselves” based on ineluctible “truths" and "market forces”, these sensible and needed government safety-nets were slowly closeted, closed down, or weakened. The results were economic chaos, bank failures, financial hardship, massive monetary loss and bankruptcy.

Besides lack of governemnt regulation from outside the corporation offices, lax regualations within the boardrooms also had their effects, resulting in excessive chief-executive-officer (CEO) compensation, which encouraged unwise corporate risk-taking leading to bank and corporate failures which ultimately became a major factor in the 2008 global economic collapse. Acccording to Seekingalpha.com, "Many bank executives received large salaries and large bonuses for the growth and illusory short-term profits associated with mortgage lending and mortgage securitization that landed us in the current mess." See: http://seekingalpha.com/article/85806-bank-executive-compensation-and-the-bailout

Why couldn’t we have well-learned our history and economic lessons and kept in place those post-Great Depression government regulations? Our behavior would have been termed by the ancient Greeks as prideful or hubristic and they would have predicted that such actions must call down on us our nemesis--economic chaos. And it did! Concerning hubris, Herodotus states (in part): “Seest thou how God with his lightning smites down” (the tallest animals first, and )….”his bolts fall ever on the highest houses and the tallest trees? So plainly does He love to bring down everything that exalts itself….” And how the Wall Street moguls did exalt themselves…with great big stock options, cash, perks, and massive bonuses.

If excessive CEO compensation was a factor in this recent economic crisis, what are we talking about? What is excessive ?

Recently Goldman-Sachs’ CEO, Mr Lloyd Blankfein joined the chorus of people lashing out at excessive executive bonuses..asserting that “compensation continues to generate controversy and anger. There is little justification for the payment of outsized discretionary compensation when a financial institution lost money for the year,” stated Blankfein, (reported by Bloomberg and at bloggingstocks: http://www.bloggingstocks.com/2009/09/09/goldman-sachs-ceo-blasts-excessive-compensation) who is the same person who, in 2007, awarded himself $68.5 million in annual compensation as valid compensation for his company’s participation in what would later turn out to be a giant bubble economy, and who (yes the same Lloyd Blankfein) recently directed Goldman-Sachs to set aside a record $1.4 billion (yes with a “b”) for executive compensation in 2009—yes this did occur during a global recession.

Is this the classic case of a Greek hubris, or simple conservative hypocrisy of the “Kάνω όπως εγώ λέω, όχι όπως εγώ κάνω” or “Do what I say, but don’t do what I do” sort?. Or perhaps it is simply greed. The "take it if you can and damn the hindmost" concept.

In 2007, the latest year that figures are available, the largest corporate participants in the Obama Administration’s bailout program paid their chief executives an average annual compensation of $11 million dollars (each), including salary, bonus and benefits. Of that amount, according to a review by Equilar, an executive compensation firm, only about $844,000 was cash salary. While about $2.5 million was in a cash bonus, with the bulk — $7.4 million — in stock awards, and the remainder in benefits and perks. See http://www.nytimes.com/2009/02/05/us/politics/05pay.html. But see below how stock awards can be manipulated by “back dating” so that the actual amount of compensation is difficult to ascertain.

These figures may be put into perspective by examining executive compensation as compared to salaried workers in the same companies. While in Japan--not a country where executive talent is so common (and cheap) that you can find a talented executive in every Tokyo sushi joint—executives are paid an average of three (3X) times greater than non-management employees. Their companies and executives seem to do quite well…in view of their large share of our domestic auto-market. The Nipponese compensation package does not come close to the excesses found in the US workplace. For example, in the US even as far back as the 1980s, the ratio of total executive compensation (including bonuses and deferred compensation, pensions and perks) to the comparable figure earned by non-management employees was 50 (i.e. executive compensation was 50 times greater than non-management employees). About two decades later, by around 2003, this ratio had blossomed by a factor of six to over 300 times greater than non-management salaries for the approximately 400 largest corporations in the US. While in the fewer very large corporations, it rose to as much as 500 times greater! Thus, in a large corporation in which the average non-management employee made $65,000 dollars per year…the executive class were earning $2.6 million dollars, and in the very large entities, an executive might be taking home more than $3.2 million dollars annually. http://economix.blogs.nytimes.com/2009/02/06/supply-demand-and-executive-pay/

Recall that the most powerful head of state, the premiere executive, and perhaps the one with the most demanding job in the world, is the President of the US--who earns only $400,000 in cash and no stock options. He does get good health care, a plane and a nice house to live in and some other perks that go along with that. But the whole package could not reach the annual level described for Mr Blankfein a Goldman-Sachs’ executive…of a corporation which had to be bailed out and lost money for its investors.

Even corporate board members themselves, view executive compensation as too “rich”. In an inquiry into excessive CEO compensation by the Center for Effective Organizations at the University of Southern California board members of the corporations studied acknowledge that CEO compensation is “frequently too high” . The authors conclude that 75% of board members questioned, agree that compensation (other than their own corporations) is too “rich”, and of that group, some 25% consider compensation to be “generally too high” in some high-profile cases. But in regard to their own corporation, their opinions are more sanguine regarding the level of compensation. http://www.businessweek.com/managing/content/feb2009/ca2009025_072667.htm?chan=careers_managing+index+page_top+stories.

In an precient article entitled: “The solution to the bonus culture”, Davendra Kodwani (http://www.guardian.co.uk, March 26, 2009) states: that “the corporate entity with limited liability, where the owners delegate the responsibility of managing a business to professionals, may have been the most powerful of social innovations of the last four centuries”…but, as a result of the “innate conflict of interest between the managers and shareholders –the conflict is also at the heart of the current banking failures and the chaos in the world economy. ” (http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/2009/mar/25/corporate-governance-bonus-incentives)

What went wrong? Kodwani explains that in the 1970s companies tried to align these opposing interests by designing “compensation deals” that would link manager’s and shareholder’s interests. But how did the deal backfire? Kodwani asks, why didn’t the link prevent managers from assuming astronomical risks? First, most academic research indicates that there is really little support for a link between a firm’s performance and the level of executive incentives. Second: when a firm’s executive incentives are based on “CEO compensation in stock options , it increases the chances of questionable (perhaps a better word is fraudulent?-- Remember Enron) financial reporting in following years.” Kodwani reminds us that “reward and risk should go hand in hand…particularly in the age-old business of lending and borrowing”.

But what about using stock options as a way to “link” shareholders and managers interests? In regard to the potential for fraud in using stock options: (See 9-12-2006 OMB Watch Senate Finance Committee Looks at Executive Compensation Excesses“ Stock options are automatically considered "performance-based" and have become a popular way of providing deductible executive compensation. Companies can "backdate," or choose the date from which the options would be issued, to change the value of the stock option. Stock “backdating” is not necessarily illegal, but it can make it easier for companies to hide the true extent of an executive's pay. “ (See: http://www.ombwatch.org/node/3051)

David Reilly, in “Bankers craving bonuses, fudge loan-loss reality” evaluates another problem with the "bonus culture". Reilly states that “Back in the early 1990s, postmortems of the savings and loan crisis found banks had too much leeway in determining potential losses. As a result of their fradulent or misleading book keeping, "this ended up leading to bigger losses and making it tougher for regulators to deal with weakened institutions. Fast forward to today’s crisis and investors and regulators are seeing this same problem. Bankers apply a "light touch" (rjk's quotes) to loan-loss reserves, allowing them to reap profits -- and bonuses --even though a day of reckoning may result. The failure last week of Colonial BancGroup Inc., the largest U.S. bank to collapse since Washington Mutual Inc. did last fall, is the most recent example. In acquiring most of Colonial’s assets and liabilities, BB&T Corp. marked down the value of Colonial’s loans by an average of 37 percent.

That exceeds the average markdown of 18 percent at recently failed banks, according to research from Goldman Sachs Group Inc. When it took over Washington Mutual, JPMorgan Chase & Co. wrote down that institution’s residential mortgages by about 16 percent and home-equity loans by about 20 percent.

This means that the collapsed banks hadn’t created adequate reserves for possible losses, leading their loans to be wildly overvalued. The Federal Deposit Insurance Corp. is left to clean up the mess. See( http://www.bloomberg.com/apps/news?pid=20601039&sid=a4LNv_COFnzY)

Why is executive compensation so often excessive? And why are companies unable to control the excesses? Most non-management employees agree to a level of compensation when they are hired and then live with it. But in the executive corporate world, it is the CEOs who head the board of directors and it is that body (the board) which sets their compensation package. Oh! how I would have liked that situation when I was an employee!

“ In the US, the CEO is usually the chair of an organization’s board but that person also selects the board members. In addition, continued tenure on the board is often dependent upon the willingness of the CEO to support reappointment of board members. As a result, the boardroom is the one place where pay is determined by the very people who are subservient to the person whose pay is being set.” I envison this as something like, permitting kindergartners to set their teacher’s salary, of course with her able assistance. In a board meeting managers can obviously set the agenda, control the figures presented to the board, and since they provide all the supporting information the board receives--they can manipulate that data to fit their own purposes. Anyone who has ever sat on a board knows how essentially powerless individual board members are relative to the manager. http://www.businessweek.com/managing/content/feb2009/ca2009025_072667.htm?chan=careers_managing+index+page_top+stories.

Understandably, companies are very reluctant to hand over to the “government” or some outside agency the power to control their executive compensation, but since it is now fully apparent that they cannot do it themselves, and recent history has indicated how dangerous to the economy at large the “bonus culture” of large corporations remains. Thus, if corporations are unable or unwilling to monitor and control themselves—and their actions are a threat to our economy, we must act to protect us from executive excess (greed) and the government must step in to act.

Thus, government must step in and help control the “bonus culture” in American board rooms, a culture which leads to inefficiency, fraudulent practices and ultimately to economic chaos.

To underscore the seriousness of the situation, I submit here an article posted by Stephen Castle (September 17, 2009) in the NY Times: entitled: “Banker Pay to Face Global Limits at G20 Session” (downloaded 9-18-09). In it, Castle states that “The Euopean Union leaders…on Thursday agreed to use the Group of 20 meeting next week in Pittsburg to press for binding global rules on banker’s pay and new controls on bonuses, but avoided any explicit call for a ceiling on remuneration.” It is an unprecedented action to take –where by an international body such as the G20—would be setting rules for corporations within a sovereign state. But a good solution—if they can arrive at some reasonable mechanism and put teeth into rules for non-compliance.

The Europeans who suffered dearly from a recession that originated right here in NY City and are now united behind a call for new global rules..”backed up by the threat of sanctions at a national level”. Castle claims that the leaders of both Germany and France were determined to take a strong message to the G20 meeting and "put pressure on President Obama" (who has been wavering on this issue). “The leaders of both countries blame excessive risk-taking by bankers, motivated by the prospect of” (massive and excessive) “bonuses, for part of the economic crisis.” Unfortunately, “a ceiling on bonuses was opposed by Washington and London, where it was seen as unworkable”. Probably because, as noted above, there are many ways that a devious and determined CEO could arrange for a variety of compensation arrangements through stocks, stock options, back dating, etc. that would be difficult to police.

One option endorsed by Gordon Brown of the UK was the principle of “extending payments over several years and clawing back” portions of the pay-out if the company does not prove to be making a profit." This proposal seems more complex and even more easily circumvented than a simple bonus and salary ceiling. Howver even Brown was determined and stated firmly, that “there was no going back to the bonus structure of the past.” http://www.nytimes.com/2009/09/18/business/global/18trade.html?_r=1&ref=global-home

Get the picture?

rjk

ISRAEL ACCUSED OF WAR CRIMES IN GAZA

noreply@blogger.com (Bob Kalin) — Tue, 15 Sep 2009 19:43:00 +0000

War Crimes in Gaza—UN Report.

Israel has been accused of War Crimes in Gaza and now finds it hard to maintain its “victim” status.

First a bit of history for those of you who do not even know where Gaza is and are weak on facts about Israel.

Israel ranks as one of the top battle-hardened military forces in the world. Considering its stockpile of hundreds of nuclear weapons, the nation is military is ranked probably third or fourth in the world. If one ignores its nuclear capacity, and evaluates its airpower, and ground forces alone, it ranks 11th in the world just under Turkey (10th) and above South Korea, Italy, Pakistan, Taiwan, Iran, Sweden, Australia, Spain and many other nations (See: http://www.globalfirepower.com/).

Gaza, on the other hand, is an approximately 25 by five long by 5 mile wide desert coastal strip (smaller than Long Island’s South Fork from Southampton to Montauk) and one of the most densely populated places on earth with 1.4 million Palestinians, many of whom are long-term refugees from Israel proper. Israel controls the bordering sea as well as the airspace over Gaza. Its security fences seal off all Gaza borders (save in the southwest where Egypt controls the short Rafah boundary though it is also monitored by Israel military). Gaza is essentially a 139 square mile outdoor prison- ghetto controlled by Israel. The occupants have no way out--or back in-- were they so fortunate as to be whisked away from this outdoor prison.

In 2005, Israel, which has occupied the strip since 1967, unilaterally pulled its forces out of Gaza. However, since it still controls all crossing, air space, sea access all crossings as well as the amount of fuel, water, fuel, building materials, medicines and supplies that enter as well as all human access…international law still considers the territory to be occupied by Israel.

On December 27, 2007 When Israel unleashed the full power of its IDF with bombing and strafing raids by American-built F16 jets against tiny Gaza it was like the proverbial turkey shoot. It was no contest.

According to Wikipedia account of that war: "On 27 December 2008,[80] Israeli F-16 strike fighters launched a series of air strikes against targets in Gaza. Struck were police stations, schools, hospitals, UN warehouses, a mosque, various Hamas government buildings, a science building in the Islamic University, and a U.N.-operated elementary school in a Palestinian refugee camp.[81] Israel claimed that the attack was a response to Hamas rocket attacks on southern Israel, which totaled over 3,000 in 2008, and which intensified during the few weeks preceding the operation. UN medical staff were killed by Israeli combatants during the attacks[citation needed]. Palestinian medical staff said at least 434 Palestinians were killed, and at least 2,800 wounded, made up mostly civilians and some Hamas members, in the first five days of Israeli strikes on Gaza. Israel began a ground invasion of the Gaza Strip on 3 January, 2009.[82] Israel rebuffed many cease-fire calls and both sides declared unilateral cease-fires.[83][84]
In total 13 Israelis and more than 1300 Palestinians were killed in the 22-day war.[85]
After 22 days of fighting, Israel decided to stop fighting, while insisting on holding its positions, while Hamas has vowed to fight on if Israeli forces do not leave the Strip.[86]
5,000 homes, 16 government buildings, and 20 mosques were destroyed. 25,000 homes were damaged.

Today the Gaza blockade continues

Main article: 2007–2009 blockade of the Gaza Strip

The 2-year old blockade of the Gaza strip continued after the end of the war, although Israel allowed to move in humanitarian aid.

The Red Cross has released a report that argues that Israel's continued blockade is making it impossible for Gaza to recover from the war. The Red Cross claims that the blockade is "strangling" the Gazan economy and also notes that the blockade has caused a shortage of basic medicines and equipment such as painkillers and x-ray film.[88]" See Wikipedia (Gaza Strip) downloaded September 16, 2009.

Now back to the NY Times article:

The title of the NY Times piece tells it all. The long expected UN report on the possibility of war crimes in Gaza appeared in the NY Times and should have been entitled something like “UN FINDS SIGNS OF WAR CRIMES IN GAZA” But typical of the Times which is unable to call a spade a spade when it comes to the Middle East. The Times—perhaps fearful of the response of its Jewish readership—entitled this piece by Sharon Otterman , Sept 15, 2009, "UN FINDS SIGNS OF WAR CRIMES ON BOTH SIDES IN GAZA". But read down to find that more than 1300 unarmed Palestinians were killed in Israeli Gaza incursion as they fled during the shameful three week “war: (that is as far as they could go within the confines of the 25 mile long outdoor prison called Gaza) from Israeli tanks, air-force, ground troops and artillery—firing phosphorus shells. Thirteen Israelis also died in the attack. But the Times disgraces itself with the shameful header. See: http://www.nytimes.com/2009/09/16/world/middleeast/16gaza.html?hp. The fact is that only through understanding of both sides of this issue can we as a nation and a people come to support government policies that will finally bring peace to both communities. The Times (though in truth it rasied the issue to first column status the following day) as the paper of record and with the most influential readership must bring the issues clearly and forthrightly to the public. Perhaps on day two they did.

The French paper Le Monde, entitiled their report: Selon l'ONU, Israël a commis des "crimes de guerre" à Gaza (According to the UN, Israel has commite war crimes in Gaza) http://www.lemonde.fr/technologies/article/2009/09/15/l-assemblee-adopte-hadopi-2-contre-le-telechargement-illegal_1240973_651865.html#ens_id=1232569

Le Figaro takes the point of view of Hamas entitling the report: ONU/Gaza:un rapport "politique"(Hamas) ( UN /Gaza : a politcal report (Hamas). Hamas states this is a political report, unequal and dishonest, in its evaluation it put the same blame on those who committed the crimes (of war) to those who were (simply) resisting (the attack) has declered the AFP director of Hamas in Gaza, Ismael Radwin

The scathing UN report (released Tuesday) concluded that both the Israeli military and the Palestinians “committed actions amounting to war crimes and crimes against humanity.” What is the difference between “war crimes” and “actions amounting to war crimes” I don’t know.

The investigation carried out by Justice Richard Goldstone, a widely respected South African judge, found that neither Israel or the Palestinians carried out any “credible investigations” into alleged violations. I wonder how one could conceivably attempt to equate the Hamas revolutionaries in Gaza with the State of Israel…but I guess it served the interests of the US and UN to do so. Otherwise all that could be said was that Israel committed war crimes and then didn’t bother to investigate. What war cries could be ascribe to the victims…they didn’t die fast enough or get out of the way soon enough?

The charge against the Isreali side was that the report was “too one-sided ignoring the thousands of (ineffective and non fatal) rocket attacks.” In response (though I have not read the report) the summary indicates that it addresses that issue. The problem is that no one expects Israel not to defend itself or its citizens...it must do so. It was justified in responding to the rocket attacks (although logically one can justify the rocket attacks as a response to Israeli actions as well). However, this Gaza action was not a simple attack on rocketeers. It was a punitive incursion ment to punish as whole population and bomb them back into the stone age. That is the weakness in the Israeli argumument. It is addressed fully in the report and Judge Goldstone, addresses the same issue in a rebuttal as published in the NY Times the following day.

No one has brought up the question of “proportionality” in this disgraceful attack on an essentially confined, unarmed civilian population by a mighty modern military ranked as the fourth or fifth most powerful in the world (but see above).

The bulk of the report, for good reasons focuses on the Israeli violations. It concludes that Israeli forces engaged in a deliberate policy of “collective punishment in furtherance of “an overall and continuing policy aimed at punishing the Gaza population” through blockades and the destruction of food, water and sanitation systems of its people.”

In one case, armored bulldozers of the Israeli forces systematically flattened the chicken coops of a farm that reportedly supplied 10 percent of the Gazan egg market, killing all 31,000 chickens inside. In another, the forces carried out a strike on a sewage plant wall, sending 200,000 cubic meters of raw sewage into neighboring farmland, the report said. The panel did not find a justifiable reason for the Israelis’ actions in either case.

It also found that the Israeli forces used disproportionate force against the Palestinian civilian population. In a number of cases, it said, Israeli forces launched “direct attacks against civilians with lethal outcome,” even when the facts indicated no justifiable military objective. Based on the available evidence, some of those incidents, the report concluded, amounted to war crimes.
One such event took place in the Samouni neighborhood in Gaza City, when Israel soldiers shelled a house where soldiers had forced Palestinian civilians to gather. In seven cases, the report found, “civilians were shot while they were trying to leave their homes to walk to a safer place, waving white flags and in some cases, following an injunction from the Israeli forces to do so.”

Israeli forces also intentionally attacked civilians in aiming a missile strike at a mosque during the early evening prayer, killing 15 people, and in firing antipersonnel flechette munitions, which release thousands of metal darts, on a crowd of family members and neighbors at a condolence tent, killing 5.

Israeli forces twice shelled civilian hospitals in Gaza, but in neither case was the attack justified, the report found. In the attack on Al Quds Hospital, the shelling of the building and an adjacent ambulance facility with white phosphorus shells caused fires that took a day to extinguish, and at no point was any warning given of an imminent strike, the report said. The panel found no evidence of the enemy fire that the Israeli military cited as rationale for its attack.

“These incidents indicate that the instructions given to the Israeli forces moving into Gaza provided for a low threshold for the use of lethal fire against the civilian population,” the report said. The conduct of the Israeli armed forces in these instances, it said, “constitute grave breaches of the Fourth Geneva Convention” and as such, “give rise to individual criminal responsibility.”

On the side of the Palestinians their armed groups fired repeated rockets and mortars into southern Israel. By failing to distinguish between military targets and the civilian population, those actions also “constitute war crimes and may amount to crimes against humanity,” the report said.

The mission found no evidence that Palestinian combatants “mingled with the civilian population with the intention of shielding themselves from attack,” the report said, nor did it find evidence to suggest that Palestinian armed groups “either directed civilians to areas where attacks were being launched or forced civilians to remain within the vicinity of the attacks.”

The panel conducted 188 interviews, reviewed 10,000 pages of documents, and viewed more than 1,000 photographs and videos before drawing its conclusions. The panel said that Israel did not respond to a comprehensive list of questions, but that Palestinian authorities in both Gaza and the West Bank cooperated.

Now what can we do here in the US? Must we continue to support a nation accused of war crimes and crimes against humanity, continue to supply them with weapons, prop up their economy and support their foreign policy goals. When do we let them go on their own?

When will the world court take up this case?

Get the picture

rjk

REVISITING CELL PHONES AND MALIGNANT GLIOMAS

noreply@blogger.com (Bob Kalin) — Sat, 12 Sep 2009 01:19:00 +0000

Representatives of the cell-phone industry in the US continually assure us that cell-phones don't cause cancer since there is "no known mechanism" for radiation from their instruments to affect brain tissues. While the National Cancer Institute asssures us that the incidence of brain cancer has remained relatively steady over the years.

On the other-hand, the Central Brain Tumor Registry of the US-- a data base that should count heavily--has detected a rise in some forms of brain cancer. According to officials from that organization, the cause the increase in these lesions is still "uncertain" and "needs further study" . (See: LA Times: http://www.latimes.com/business/la-fi-lazarus9the-2009sep09,0,7825195.column downloaded September 12, 2009.)

One suspects the authors in the American press such as the LA Times piece above, purposefully take a "on the fence" position. Their reports are so non-committal they seems designed only to confuse and titillate the reader. It is well to remember that in the US, as Calvin Coolidge said so famously, and with such innocence and brevity--"The business of America is business". Meaning if you're making money here in some capacity --the government is in there with you. It will do next to nothing to control your efforts (baring perhaps a release of radioactive nuclear waste) to restrict your profit making! So don't expect to hear any early alerts or warnings from that quarter. Trade groups are suspect for good reason. While scientists are often on the payroll of the very industries they are evaluating. And for newspapers-- remember they are in the business of selling advertisments.

Thus we can not expect any real "plain talk" until an verified health-care bill is passed some day and the government and insurance companies have an actual monetary stake in our citizen's health and long-term welfare. Until then, please look elsewhere for your health-related information.

Often that's what I do. I scan the foreign press--where "business bias" is somewhat modulated by other factors. Then again, sometimes I find it is better to evaluate how people are reacting to certain types of information, rather than to what they say or write. For that reason I was particularly alerted by Jeff Lean’s piece in the UK's Telegraph newspaper (on line) entitled: “Mobiles and Cancer—The Plot Thickens” (See: http://www.telegraph.co.uk/earth/earthcomment/geoffrey-lean/6175172/Mobiles-and-cancer-the-plot-thickens.html) down loaded September 11, 2009.

My proverbial ears perked up as I read Jeff's statement in the Telegram: “The official European Environment Agency (EEA) is sounding a discreet alarm. And the French government is so concerned, that it is developing measures to ban the (cell-phone) devices from primary schools, stop their promotion to children under 12, and prevent them being sold without a headset to heavily reduce radiation exposure. ” Try to imagine that happening here in the US. The cell-phone lobby would have gone "postal" at such a move. Perhaps that is one of the underlying causes that the EU countries enjoy so much longer life span and reduced disease incidence while spending less than half of what we do on health care.

Those few sentences gave me pause. Lean added that “evidence is increasing that radiation from handsets present a cancer hazard, particularly to children and to those who use their phones for more than a decade.”

Furthermore, Lean's piece states that recent studies from Sweden, where heavy mobile phone-use began years before other areas in Europe (and the US), have now included these early users in their evaluations. The resulting research indicates that long term users "are about twice as likely to get malignant gliomas – an incurable brain cancer – and importantly these occur on the side of the head where they held the handset. Lean warns that "as the latency period for cancers is usually 20 to 30 years, this may indicate a much bigger toll to come.”

Other Swedish results evaluating the effects of cell phone use on children and teenagers "found that people who started using the phones before the age of 20 were five times more likely to contract the cancers, and eight times more prone to get them on the appropriate side of the head.”

If these warning prove valid, the more than two billion people using mobile phones around the world today may be subject to the threat of malignant glioma. This is a very troubling thought. Lean notes that in Britain – "where there are now nearly two cell phones in use per person – and where at least 90 per cent of 16-year-olds have their own handsets, as do more than 40 per cent of primary pupils."

Prof David Carpenter, dean of the school of Public Health at the State University of New York, Albany, flatly predicts an “epidemic of brain cancers” among today’s children as they grow up.”

I think those facts are pretty scary. I would be very careful using the cell-phones close to your body…or too close to your young children.

Get the picture?

rjk

THE AFGHANISTAN KILLING FIELDS AND US STRATEGY

noreply@blogger.com (Bob Kalin) — Fri, 11 Sep 2009 16:12:00 +0000

WHY AFGHAN CIVILIANS CONTINUE TO DIE AT THE HANDS OF NATO

A February 2009 UN report noted that the number of civilians killed in armed conflict in Afghanistan rose 40 percent last year (2008), to a record 2,118. CNN adds that Afghan security forces, and "U.S. and NATO troops killed 828 civilians.
Airstrikes -- many at night -- were responsible for the largest percentage of these fatalities." http://www.cnn.com/2009/WORLD/asiapcf/02/17/afghanistan.civilian.casualties/index.html: The full accounting of this horrible war is not available for 2009, but the recent Kunduz fuel-truck bombings and its bizzare and bloody aftermath will certainly balloon the fatality numbers for the present year, beyond what they were in the past.

The Septermber 4th bombing of the two fuel trucks in Kunduz, may have caused the horrible incineration deaths of as many as 125 civilians if recent estimates are correct. The numbers are staggering and cause one to question our nations motives and actions in that nation--and wonder---why we are there?. Why do we do it? (See http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2009/sep/04/afghan-village-devastated-nato-missiles).

The self-serving response of German PM, Angela Merkel (one of her nationals, a German NATO officer, Colonel Klein, called in the bomb-request) to this tragedy as reported in the world media, and her insistence, in the face of facts to the contrary, that “all of the dead were insurgents” just angered me further. (See: http://news.yahoo.com/s/time/20090907/wl_time/08599192089000). If I could easily imagine the circumstances in a rural mountain community where, when poor farmers learned there was “free fuel” for the taking just down the road---valuable commodity that would be needed for the coming winter—they rushed en mass to the site, so could a much-better informed Ms Merkel.

Furthermore, regarding the number of "insurgents" killed: it would be hard to imagine more than a small contingent of Taliban arriving with the two fuel trucks. The trucks cabs could probably accommodate no more than three or four men each. No other vehicles were pictured at the bomb-site. Possibly, with men hanging on the outside, there were at most ten "insurgents", maybe less. While the number of locals responding to such a “fire sale” could easily be in the many scores.

The fact that many AK47 rifle parts were found scattered at the blast site was offered as "proof" by the Germans that only insurgents were killed. But it is well known that most of these local civilians carry AK 47s. Ammo and parts of these weapons would be normally scattered on the ground where they died. In regard to the carrying of the AK47 by villagers, See: http://www.time.com/time/world/article/0,8599,1921633,00.html.

The awful pictures of the site showing the burnt and twisted remains of the trucks also revealed scattered of gerry-cans, barrels and containers, just what locals would have brought with them to fill with free fuel.

The responses of the media simply did not ring true. Civilian casualty reports ranged from only 5(!) to as many as 130, depending on who was reporting. Such wild variations are surely a sign of lack of information or even deception somewhere along the line of information.

Furthermore, the fuel-truck-bombing was only the last one in a long series of distressing attacks all with similar outcomes. Recall the UN report of over 800 civilians killed by NATO and US bombardment. These reports tell of innocent Afghan civilians, mothers, infants, children, young women, old people, all dying horrible deaths as they huddle together for safety indoors, or are caught in the open as they mass for a family gathering, a meeting or a wedding celebration. (See also an earlier blog of this author concerning NATO attacks on Afghan hospitals. (http://rjkspeaks.blogspot.com/2009/09/transfer-of-bad-behavior-iraq-to.html)

Reading these distressing reports, one is struck with the casual way bombing decisions are finalized, particularly where innocent civilians are know to be located. I found the following incident--one of scores-- in data provided by Human Rights Watch. This incident occurred in the Nijrab Distric: Kapisa Province, on March 4, 2007. (See Human Rights Watch, "Troops in Contact", downloaded September 11, 2009: http://www.hrw.org/sites/default/files/reports/afghanistan0908webwcover_0.pdf. Page 13)

The Human Rights Watch (HRW) report reveals that two insurgents were observed by American spotters firing a hand-held rocket at a US outpost. The spotters watched as the men retreated and then were seen to enter a near-by house. Soon after that, US planes dropped two, 2000 pound bombs on the house. Inside nine innocent civilians died in the blast, five women, three children and an elderly man. The two men were not among the dead.

A subsequent investigation revealed that the American troops had actually been in that house prior to the attack. They had seen the civilians and knew of their presence before planning to bomb the place. Yet they proceeded anyway. According to a witness: “US forces conceded their troops had been at the village the day before," said a relative of the family. “The Americans came here the day before they bombed, they searched the whole house and saw women and children in the house. Then the bombs fell."

What could have gone wrong? Was it an error? Perhaps nothing went wrong. To my mind, the large number of “accidental” attacks on civilians seems too difficult to explain as simple happenstance or error, one must assume that these are not accidents. They are just part of the regular military plan of an occupier--this is what is called "counter insurgency". Yes it is ugly. But that's what we are doing in Afghanistan.

This last fuel tanker incident was no different. Why were the trucks hit? Since they were wheel-rim deep in river sand, they were not going anywhere. Thus they were no threat to the German NATO troops--who were safely bivouacked two to three miles away. Reports have revealed that it was known to military observers--using high-tech (unmanned drone) reconnaissance that “large numbers of people were in the vicinity of the trucks.” The answer came to me in a flash. They knew local villagers were there but they bombed them anyway! It was not an accident!

The over-all strategy of any occupier from Caesar in Gaul to the Russians in Afghanistan, and the US in Iraq (or Vietnam) was and remains the same-- deny the “native warriors”, the “insurgents”, or “revolutionaries” what ever you want to call them--access to resources. The British did it to colonials right here on Long Island, when they attacked residents who might provide sustenance to the local Revolutionary militia.

Only a stone's throw from where I write, a colonial's hay rack was burned and his cattle killed by British occupation forces in 1778 in retaliation for the fact that the man's son had joined the local militia. Later the next day, a squad of British troops came marching down the road and arrested the lad's father and were marching the man off when a local Tory (the man's neighbor) begged them to let him go. Happily they did. In that situation, the US colonists were the insurgents—while the British Red Coats were the occupiers, who burned our hay stacks, shot our cattle, and used local residences as stables for their horses. In effect, to take what they wanted, deny any resources to the colonial insurgents, and punish those that would go over to the other side.

Our policy in Afghanistan remains the same--to deny resources to the enemy and to separate the insurgents (Taliban) from the civilian population. Furthermore that harsh strategy includes a form of "lethal instruction". In the case of US forces in Afghanistan, part of their operational goal is to "teach" the local Afghans that it is dangerous to either aid or support the insurgents.

Thus our recent actions in Afghanistan, and I expect General McChrystal’s "new plan" must have this element in it somewhere. Since it is obvious that “punitive” bombing raids and attacks have not stopped. If an Afghan villager gives aid or shelter to the Taliban, he (and his family) may be targeted. According to US military strategy, (as I interpret the facts) that is the important message for villagers to learn. Our unmanned drones, which attack stealthily in seemingly isolated Afghanistan mountian villages are another way to teach this tough lesson. A form of terrorism yes. It is “terror from the skies” designed to generate fear and respect for the US and NATO forces. To encourage the locals to abandon their ties to the Taliban, and come over to our side. The raw display of force says to them “we are stronger and can protect you better”.

So why the attack on the house with the resident family, and on the two tanker trucks? Those two cases were one way the US and NATO can "teach a lesson" to the rest of the population.

In regard to the fuel trucks, the contraband was a valuable resource, military planners could not let fall into the hands of the Taliban. The US command was convinced it must deny them the use of the fuel and prevent them its use as a "valuable commodity" to bargain away, or even simply give away. Fuel could be used to win friends. Thus the tankers trucks had to be destroyed.

If we killed those villagers who were “sympathetic” or leaning toward to the Taliban—as we destroyed the fuel…well that was too bad. There is my view of our strategy. It is an hypothesis that explains all of the accidents, mess ups, poor targeting and "mistakes".

That is why Afghan civilians continue to die.

Get the picture?

rjk

WHAT ABOUT THE RESCUE OF STEVE FARREll?

After this fuel-truck disaster one would think that Kunduz had enough "learning" at the hands of its occupiers--already. So why was Gordon Brown encouraged (or ordered or cajoled) to send in the Biritsh Paratroopers to rescue Steve Farrell the NY Times reporter taken hostage by local Taliban as he investigated the fuel-truck story? Recall that while the Taliban were closing the deal for a release of Farrell and his interpreter the British troops stormed the compound guns blazing. The wife and infant child of the house's owner, a Taliban who remained in the house (the others fled), a British paratrooper, and Sultan Munadi, Farrell's Afghan interpreter were all killed. Only Farrell made it out. Why did they persist in this unnecessary and bloody attack--when both men were likely to be released unharmed?

For similar reasons as catalogued above. The US and its allies must be the arbiters of power. We can not "bargain" with the enemy. To do so would indicate to the locals that they--the Taliban-have some legitimacy--that would be handing over a powerful psychological tool to them. We must deny the "enemy" all power and respect--if we are to win over the minds of the local citizenry. Again, to be seen as the powerful military to whom the Afghans must render respect and who will eventually protect them. Those are the goals

This US military strategy has a long history, a logic and a coherence to it. We cannot deny its probable efficacy-- as inhumane and cruel as it is. The real question remains, why are we there in Afghanistan implementing this cruel strategy? What do we gain? What threats are we facing from the Taliban or from Afghanistan for us to demean our nation in this way? There are no apparent benefits to write down here. What advantages does our continued occupation and control of Afghanistan offer us? There may be some reason to hold that ground, but they have not been enunciated and what we have learned over these last eight years is that the costs are so very high---to us--and to the Afghans that one must ask...can it be worth it?

Get the picture?

rjk