Vital Concerns for the World

A glimpse into the world of the super-rich: The little help Romney gets from his friends

2012-01-28T06:27:00.001-06:00

It’s hard to believe what politicians say when they are seeking election. Mitt Romney has said that he didn’t inherit his huge wealth but earned it. Strange thing to say of the son of the former President of American Motors, former governor of Michigan, and once a candidate for President of the United States.

Here is an excerpt of what the New York Times says about the financial support that Romney is now getting from his friends.

[http://www.nytimes.com/2012/01/28/us/politics/close-ties-to-goldman-enrich-romneys-public-and-private-lives.html]

The securities and investment industry has given more money to Mr. Romney than any other industry, according to the Center for Responsive Politics, and some of its leading figures have donated millions of dollars to Restore Our Future, the “super PAC” bolstering Mr. Romney’s campaign. Goldman employees are also the biggest source of donations to Free & Strong America PAC, a group Mr. Romney founded but no longer controls.

But Mr. Romney’s personal finances are particularly entwined with Goldman.

His federal financial disclosure statements show Mr. Romney and his wife, their blind trusts and their family foundation to be prodigious consumers of the bank’s services. In 2011, Mr. Romney’s blind trust and the couple’s retirement accounts held as much as $36.7 million in at least two dozen Goldman investment vehicles, earning as much as $3 million a year in income. Mrs. Romney’s trust had at least $10.2 million in Goldman funds — possibly much more — earning as much as $6.2 million.

Tax returns released by the campaign this week also highlighted some of the privileges Mr. Romney enjoyed as a friend of Goldman: In May 1999, a few months after he left Bain to run the Salt Lake City Olympics, Goldman allowed Mr. Romney to buy at least 7,000 Goldman shares during the firm’s lucrative initial public offering — a generous allotment even among Goldman clients, according to people with knowledge of the deal. When Mr. Romney’s trusts sold the shares in December 2010, a few months before he formed his presidential exploratory committee for the 2012 race, they returned a profit of $750,000.

Golden Fleece Awards to former members of Congress

2012-01-22T07:50:00.002-06:00

Senator Proxmire used to give The Golden Fleece Award to various government expenditures that he believed were a waste of the people's money. Our Congress now has an approval rate of 11%. No matter: it pays to be there if for no other reason than the salaries and benefits they have voted for themselves. Here are the retirement pay amounts for some former members of Congress:

· former House Majority Leader Richard Gephardt: $106,512 for 28 years as a Missouri congressman;

· former Senate Majority Leader Tom Daschle: $105,804 for 33 years as representative from South Dakota;

· former Senate Majority Leader Bob Dole: $144,432 for 40 years as representative from Kansas;

· former Senate Majority Leader Trent Lott: $110,352 after 39 years as a representative of Mississippi.

· Former Vice President Dick Cheney: $125,976, for 28 years as, Wyoming congressman, Secretary of Defense, White House chief of staff, and 8 years as VP;

· former House Speaker Newt Gingrich: $100,200 for 20 years in Congress. Bloomberg News notes without comment that Gingrich “has argued as a Republican presidential candidate that government employees ought to shoulder more of the burden for planning their retirements.” [Source: BillMoyers.com]

Remember: Such amounts they will be taking in every year for the rest of their lives.

Comment by someone serving in American government:
Meanwhile, my pay has been frozen for the last two years and will be for the foreseeable future. Thanks, Congress! Federal employees sure are out to soak the government... it's good you're shaving .005% off the deficit by asking us to take a hit.

Newt’s Outrage and South Carolina’s “moment of enthusiasm”

2012-01-20T10:34:00.002-06:00

In the Republican debate in Charleston last night Newt Gingrich scored a standing ovation by his response to a question about the statement by one of his divorced wives that he had asked her to agree to “an open marriage” – that is, to “share him” with his mistress Callista Bisek, who is now his wife. This was his response:

“I think the destructive, vicious, negative nature of much of the news media makes it harder to govern this country, harder to attract decent people to run for public office. I am appalled that you would begin a presidential debate on a topic like that.”

The response of the audience was the first of two standing ovations.

Gingrich’s turning the question back on the news media is a familiar political device. What alarms me is the response of the crowd, who not only accepted his response but endorsed it enthusiastically. The question was obliterated by Newt’s outrage and the crowd’s enthusiasm.

Consider the issue raised by the question: How should the American public respond to a claim by an ex-wife of a candidate for President that he had asked her for “an open marriage” so that he could continue his liaison with a mistress and still retain an appearance of a faithful married man? Also, how did this private proposal comport with Gingrich’s public behavior at the time? Could this have been precisely during the time when he was condemning Bill Clinton for his extra-marital liaisons? Gingrich would keep up appearances while presenting himself as a paragon of virtue.

That was then. Now is different, he says: He has admitted to mistakes and now has reformed: He is a good Catholic now; he’s got religion. Now he would have the world understand that it is improper for anyone – and anyone in the media especially – to ask if his behavior in the past is worthy of someone who aspires to be President of the United States. As he was outraged at the behavior of Bill Clinton he is now outraged at the behavior of the media who want to know more about his own behavior.

To this outrage there was an audience in South Carolina that would join him enthusiastically in taking offense. Presumably they agreed that the private behavior of a candidate for President should not be examined, even if it contrasts with the image he even then sought to present of himself.

Their behavior brings to mind two statements of great nineteenth century social scientists on the behavior of crowds. One of them said:

[Referring to “a section of civil society [that] emancipates itself and attains universal domination:] No class in society can play this part [of attaining universal domination] unless it can arouse, in itself and in the masses, a moment of enthusiasm in which it associates and mingles with society at large … and is recognized as the general representative of this society”

The author is suggesting that for a “section of civil society” to attain “universal domination” it must “arouse” in the masses “a moment of enthusiasm” through which it “associates and mingles with society at large” and appears to be “the general representative of the society.” Such a moment of enthusiasm took place last night, when a crowd saw this man Newt Gingrich to be a “general representative” of their sentiments.

The other social scientist who wrote about crowd behavior had this to say:

The great movements of enthusiasm, indignation, and pity in a crowd do not originate in any one of the particular individual consciousness. They come to each one of us from without and can carry us away in spite of ourselves… Once the crowd has dispersed, that is, once these social influences have ceased to act upon us and we are alone again, the motions which have passed through the mind appear strange to us, and we no longer recognize them as ours. We realize that these feelings have been impressed upon us … It may even happen that they horrify us, so much were they contrary to our nature. Thus, a group of individuals, most of whom are perfectly inoffensive, may, when gathered in a crowd, be drawn into acts of atrocity …

I hope that the good people of South Carolina will now, in retrospect, reflect on what happened, what the issues are, and what their response should have been.

(And who were the social scientists I have quoted above? And from what publications?)

A proposal to give the tribal areas full representation In Pakistan

2012-01-17T06:40:00.001-06:00

Dawn has an article by retired army officer Gulman S. Afridi ["Fata needs a new social contract"] that gives us a view conditions in the tribal areas of Pakistan, FATA, that enable us better to understand why so many tribesmen participate in the insurgency.

Afridi points out that the FATA tribesmen were originally enthusiastic about the founding of Pakistan, and

[Their enthusiasm] "was reinforced by the Quaid`s announcement of his decision to pull out all military forces from the tribal areas and to allow the people complete freedom of movement.

However,

The successive constitutions of 1956, 1962 and 1973 of Pakistan, ... retained the colonial-era administrative and legal system enacted in 1872 and embodied in the Frontier Crimes Regulation(FCR) 1901. This system is inherently oppressive, negative in purpose and authoritarian in spirit.
It gave virtually unlimited judicial and administrative powers to the political agents to fine, blockade, detain and seize hostile groups and confiscate or demolish property in the tribal areas.
Fata MNAs did not voice the true feelings of the people as, being themselves no more than glorified maliks, their own interests coincided with the continuation of the system. The larger, dominant state system bears the responsibility for continuing with the outdated parallel legal system for over six decades after Independence.
Lack of effective representation and participation of the tribal population in the decision-making process was always a sore point. At present, they are represented by 12 members in the National Assembly and eight in the Senate but these legislative bodies cannot make any laws for Fata being the absolute domain of the president.
Fata has no representation at a provincial level and no elections are held at the local level. With devolution of powers to the provinces through the 18th Amendment, representation at a provincial level has become critically important.

Neglected for decades, Fata is one of Pakistan`s poorest regions, with reportedly over 60 per cent of the population living below the poverty line.
Huge unemployment, alarmingly low literacy rates, poorhealth services and a badly underdeveloped infrastructure has set Fata apart from the rest of Pakistan. The dismal human development indicators are a clear sign that the state has failed to perform its role in Fata.
Unlike previously, the tribesmen, after some reluctance, welcomed all development initiatives of the government after Independence.
Society was well on its way to progress when it saw its `natural` course of change and development rudely interrupted with the coming of thousands of foreign Mujahideen and recruitment of locals by the US and Pakistan in the 1980s to fight what was then the Soviet Union. The story of how the world abandoned the Mujahideen and Afghanistan, following the end of the Cold War is well known. But what is, perhaps, not known is that Fata too was abandoned, leaving it with a jihadi mindset, an abundance of cheap modern weapons and easy entry and exit of foreign Mujahideen.
The weaponisation of society and the presence of foreign extremist elements has dealt a serious blow to the tribal system. This in large part is responsible for the current imbroglio.

. . . The tribal society, considered classless and egalitarian, has transformed considerably into a class-based society. Four distinct classes comprising the big maliks, the new rich, the educated and professionals and the common masses can be identified in tribal society. Their overall aspiration and social behaviour towards change and reforms are often characterised by the class to which they belong.
. . .

No serious effort was ever made by the government to change the FCR, reduce poverty and give effective political representation, basic human rights and a mechanism to redress grievances to this marginalised region of Pakistan.
By failing to fulfil its obligations, the state appears to have abandoned Fata to its fate.
Fata has suffered heavily for being consigned to the backwaters, ignored and exploited for jihadi activities.
The resulting militancy has considerably weakened the tribal structure as well as the old system of governance that cannot be revived.

Afridi is calling for a structural change in way FATA is integrated into Pakistan society:

A paradigm shift is required in approaching governance and socio-economic issues in Fata. It will not be easy but the path to peace and lasting solution lies in ending the isolation of Fata and integrating the region into the mainstream through a new social contract.

[click on the title for a link to the source.]

A view of "Arab spring" in rural Egypt

2012-01-06T21:08:00.000-06:00

My students and I have been following affairs in the Middle East with great interest, as it reveals a wholly different image of the Muslim peoples of that region than the Americans have had of them. That ordinary people will go out on the street day after day to challenge the regimes in power, sometimes in the fact of armed military equipped with live ammunition. This is what took place in Tunisia, Egypt, Bahrain, Yemen, Syria. And in virtually all of these places the government troops or police killed people for demonstrating on the streets. How many American young people would do that? And these demonstrations, in virtually every case, have been animated by calls for democracy and good governance, for governments that would be accountable to the public. This is what is still going on in Syria: Now they say the number of those killed has reached 5000. That is the number killed by the government troops and police when they shot into crowds of unarmed people whose essential demand is the right to choose their own leaders.

Of all these places the demonstrations in Egypt were no doubt the most significant because Egypt is the most populace of the Arab states and the most strategically located, and the most heavily armed. It was in last January last year that, owing to the demonstrations President Mubarak resigned from office. He is now being tried for a long list of crimes while in office. In recent days, however, the army has become ever more intransigent toward demonstrators. It looks like there will be another struggle in Egypt, this time between the army and the demonstrators. Conceivably, this one will be more brutal, more bloody. We must pray it will not be so.

I have been in correspondence with a recent graduate of American University in Cairo named Keith Whitmire. What Mr. Whitmire tells me about the situation in Egypt in the last year, especially in the rural areas, is so fascinating that with his permission I reproduce some it here. I thank him for his help.

[A]side from a few notable exceptions, rural areas were largely left out of coverage [of the Arab Spring activities] during and after the revolution. Hence, very few people seem aware of the ways rural people in Egypt mobilized during the revolution. [Also,] during and after the revolution, vast amounts of revolution-themed popular culture were created. Moreover, popular culture is something that has always been produced in combination with the countryside. Singers, poets, actors, and actresses are more often than not from the rural and urban poor. Yet post-revolution, the interaction between popular culture and popular protest in rural areas in Egypt has gone almost unstudied. …

It's worth noting that popular culture also has to be defined here, and more importantly defined in a context. A preliminary working definition for what I am looking at would be music, videos, and chants that are produced by non-elites for the consumption of non-elites. Such items tend to be distributed by less official channels (i.e., by individuals on youtube, facebook, and twitter instead of via record labels). In the case of revolution-themed popular culture, the themes tended to be anti-regime, nationalistic, and they tend to emphasize social and economic justice. Needless to say, they also emphasize the downfall of the regime. The context also has to be located within time, and that time would likely be January 25, 2011 and a few months after. Mobilization increased in some quarters after Mubarak's resignation and today's poor revolutionary singer could be tomorrow's wealthy friend of the regime, so it is important to view people as they were then, and not as whatever they might be five years from now.

. . . I deeply believe that we cannot begin to understand the world we live in unless we understand not only history, but history as it is seen by other cultures and peoples. I think the greatest understandings I came to in Egypt were when I could momentarily glimpse history and ordinary life as the Egyptians saw it. . . . .

The military is much more powerful than most people realized in the beginning. The military owns a number of factories and a truly shocking amount of land in the countryside, which they farm for their own profits. It's worth noting that my understanding of their ownership is fuzzy. I don't know where the profits go. I doubt anybody but the generals themselves know that. All this is aside of the property, factories, and businesses that high-ranking military officials own privately, which is again, considerable. Sometimes I think that all the January 25th uprising did was uncover the real power in the country. Up until now, of course, there have been limitations on the military.

Unlike the police or the central security services, military conscripts in Egypt are drafted by lottery. Rumor has it you can buy your way out, but that's far beyond the means of most Egyptians. Central security and police, by contrast, buy their way in with money and connections. So whereas the central security and the police have a lot invested in the current system, the rank and file conscripts in the military do not. Therefore it's been harder for soldiers to do the same brutal things to citizens because the conscripts are drafted and being ordered, whereas the police and central security are doing things because they're protecting their interests and authority. You don't wake up one morning torturing people, you lose your humanity by degrees. Which is of course precisely what's happening with the military right now. When this started, the military didn't have a lot of people willing to torture, kill, and maim to suppress dissent in the Mubarak fashion. They had soldiers trained to fight wars. So they are building a suppressive force by slowly ordering progressive levels of violence and brutality towards protesters. They couldn't have done this all at once. Though there are certainly other factors at play, this is part of why violence has been escalating since the military took power.

At any rate, there are more reasons why the military is such a problem right now, . . . The truth is, some of the things that have happened have shocked even me. The military plays up the "aww shucks" we're just guardians of the people thing a lot, but it really doesn't hold water. The grand picture is not one of an inept, well-meaning force trying to right the country (the initial public opinion in Egypt), but rather a focused, ruthless, and very intelligent group trying to consolidate and hold onto power.

The situation in Pakistan is dire [still!], but the American media pays no attention

2012-01-03T06:15:00.001-06:00

I guess the American media have to make a horserace out of the Iowa caucus, the preoccupation of recent news reports, but as a consequence a lot has been ignored, as if what goes on elsewhere is less significant for the American people. Consider the situation in

Pakistan

, a nation with which we are engaged in the war against the Taliban/Al Qaeda. It still seems to be on the verge of some kind of melt-down. Akbar Ahmed [Al Jazeera, Jan 2, 2012], a Pakistani anthropologist, seem to think the situation is serious. In his recent comment on the problems Imran Khan will face if he succeeds in becoming the Prime Minister there he describes the situation [with each point bulleted separately]:

[Pakistan’s] biggest province Baluchistan, which comprises almost half its territory, is in a state of open revolt. Baluchis complain about government's policy of "kill and dump".
An entire generation of journalists and professors is being systematically killed.
The Tribal Areas of the former Frontier Province is a theatre of war, involving thousands of Pakistani troops.
Suicide bombers terrorise Pakistan with impunity.
There is no end in sight to the violence. . . . No one is safe. Kidnapping and killings are commonly reported.
The tensions between the military and civilian authorities are barely kept under the surface and the two are often pulling in different directions.
Add to this, the woes of the ordinary Pakistani facing unemployment, high prices, shortage of electricity, gas and water who sees his rulers plundering the country and sending their ill-gotten loot abroad and you have Pakistan today.

[The source: http://www.aljazeera.com/indepth/opinion/2012/01/20121272859946334.html]

A nation in such an internal state of confusion and decay, holding nuclear power, engaged rather ambiguously in a war in which Americans put their lives at risk every day – this situation merit’s virtually no notice in the American media. Try as we might, we cannot avoid being part of an ever compressing world, in which what goes on virtually anywhere can have consequences elsewhere. And Pakistan’s woes bear directly on what becomes possible for the American government, whoever becomes its President this year.

Dangers of the Reactionary Mind

2012-01-02T21:00:00.000-06:00

Mark Lilla’s review of Corey Robin, The Reactionary Mind [NewYork Review, Jan 12, 2012] provides an insightful discussion of the meanings of the terms “conservative” and “liberal,” as they have changed over time; it also reveals an alarming agenda among at least some folks on the political right.

Lilla situates the current “conservative” and “liberal” distinctions in their respective historical contexts. He reminds us that “Like all polemical terms their meaning and usage shifted around in partisan debate, …” In the early debates [eighteenth century] the contrast in views was about “human nature.” The conservative view was represented by Edmund Burke [he could have also referred to Herder and Hamann]. “Burke believed that, since human beings are born into a functioning world populated by others, society is … metaphysically prior to the individuals in it. The unit of political life is society, not individuals, who need to be seen as instances of the societies they inhabit.” On this we can appreciate Burke: in fact, even now there is a tendency to ignore the powerful significance of the intersubjective world we call society as necessary to our survival, irreducible to the individuals within it. But what Burke and those who followed him made of this view was somewhat different from my own view: “Conservatives have always seen society as a kind of inheritance we receive and are responsible for; we have obligations toward those who came before and to those who will come after, and these obligations take priority over our rights.” The implication, then, is that social conventions should be protected, as if change was dangerous; the conventions of ordinary life should be protected from disruptions of outside influences or innovative ways of behaving.

The term “liberal” as a political perspective had a different origin. “[T]he term ‘liberal’ was not used as a partisan label until the Spanish constitutionalists took it over in the early nineteenth century … Classical liberals like John Stuart Mill, in contrast to conservatives, give individuals priority over society, on anthropological as well as moral grounds. They assume that societies are genuinely constructs of human freedom, that whatever we inherit from them, they can always be unmade or remade through free human action.” Society and social conventions are thus malleable according to the decisions of individual actors. Malleable, yes, but sometimes less malleable than some would like: Consider how much effort had to go into removing the Jim Crow laws. Changing social orders is not easy.

This kind of difference in viewpoint, conservative versus liberal, was about the question of how to think about culture and individual agency. This question has vexed anthropologists for generations.

But this is not the contrast in viewpoints that Corey Robin presents, for he argues that the key issue is over whether the “elite” should govern or whether the “subalterns” should be allowed to govern the country.

Conservatism is the theoretical voice of this animus against the agency of the subordinate classes. It provides the most consistent and profound argument as to why the lower orders should not be allowed to exercise their independent will, why they should not be allowed to govern themselves or the polity. Submission is their first duty, agency, the prerogative of the elite.

This is view of the conservatives now vying for control of the Republic Party? These folks are “against the agency of the subordinate classes?” Do they really hold that the “lower orders” should be restrained from governing themselves? Who believes that the first duty of the subaltern classes is submission? And that governing should be done by the “elite” classes?

In fact, from here, it looks pretty much as if those views already prevail in our country, for both parties seem unable to avoid catering to the “elite classes”. If Robin is correct, how the party of Lincoln has changed!

The debate between “liberals” and “conservatives” in earlier times was over how to understand the relation of individuals to the collective, a much more intellectually challenging question. But now – if Robin correctly represents the Republican right – the difference is over whether this country should have a real democracy; whether the country should be governed by the “elite” on behalf of the whole or whether the ordinary citizenry can have a real place in the governing process. As Lilla says, in partisan debate meanings and usages of key categories can be radically changed.

The New Railroad in Afghanistan

2011-12-29T11:10:00.001-06:00

The new railroad from Hairatan to Mazar-i Sharif doesn't run very far but it augurs for a momentous technological change in Greater Central Asia because it can eventually link into the rail networks of north and south. Assuming that some day Afghanistan will be at peace, we can believe that the rail line will run beyond Mazar into Pakistan as well as Iran, thus linking the rail networks of the Middle East, South Asia, and North Asia. This was a matter of great interest in the nineteenth century when railroads were critical devices of colonial imperialism. So, finally, it's happening. The effect of such linkages will effectively reduce distances across the vast span of Eurasia, both in cost and in time of travel. So this small, modest innovation seems to portend the emergence of a new and different social, economic, and political world in Eurasia. I reproduce here the report of the Associated Press. RLC [Click on the title below for a link to the source.]

Afghanistan opening first major train service
By KAY JOHNSON, Associated Press – Dec 21, 2011 KABUL, Afghanistan (AP) — Operators ran the first train down Afghanistan's first major railroad Wednesday, clearing the way for a long-awaited service from the northern border that should speed up the U.S. military's crucial supply flow and become a hub for future trade.
A cargoless train chugged into a newly built station in the northern city of Mazar-i-Sharif on Wednesday after a 47-mile (75-kilometer) trial run from the border with Uzbekistan, said Deputy Public Works Minister Noor Gul Mangal, who was on hand for the arrival.
The new rail line is the first stage of an ambitious plan to link landlocked Afghanistan to its neighbors' extensive railways for the first time, eventually opening up new trade routes for goods traveling between Europe and Asia.
Afghanistan has never had a functional rail network, though many projects have been begun and later abandoned, victims of maneuvers of the 19th century Great Game rivalry between Russia and Britain, and then political bickering in the early 20th century. Soviet occupiers abandoned a few rail projects in the 1980s, and later years of bitter civil war made such construction impossible.
So the line from the border town of Hairatan to Mazar-i-Sharif marks a milestone in a violence-wracked country eager for good news on the horizon. It also could be a key route for the U.S. troop withdrawal beginning next year and, eventually, a gateway for Afghan exports that would travel its neighbors, said Fred Starr, chairman of the Central Asia-Caucasus Institute at Johns Hopkins University in Washington
"It's actually a big deal. It's very significant both practically and symbolically," Starr said.
In the short term, service will help release a bottleneck at Hairatan dry port that is now holding up goods — including fuel and other supplies for American troops — while they are loaded off of trains and onto trucks for a hazardous journey over Afghanistan's northern mountain roads.
"This port of Hairatan is where the bulk of commercial cargo is coming from into the country, so it is very important," said Juan Miranda, head of Central and West Asia Department of the Asian Development Bank, which funded the $165 million project.
Allowing trains to come straight in will help Hairatan handle up to 10 times as much cargo, from 4,000 tons per month now to 25,000-40,000 tons per month once the service is fully operating, the ADB says. Once in Mazar-i-Sharif, the goods can be transferred to most of the rest of Afghanistan on surface roads.
Uzbekistan's state-owned SE Sogdiana Trans will run the commercial train service, ADB's Afghanistan representative Noriko Sato said.
A U.S. military spokesman says the new railway will be key to supplying American troops — and possibly also withdrawing non-lethal cargo during the American troop pullout set to begin next year.
"We do not have numbers yet, (but) we anticipate that the rail line will be able to speed the transit of cargo into Afghanistan and out of it," said Cmdr. Bill Speaks of the Office of the Secretary of Defense.
The U.S. has recently shifted much of its supply line to the north from routes going through Pakistan, and the northern routes' importance was brought into sharp focus last month when Pakistan — angered by a disputed NATO strike that killed 24 Pakistani soldiers — closed its two border crossings for U.S. supplies.
Just three years ago, about 90 percent of nonmilitary supplies to Afghanistan went through Karachi, Pakistan. Today, close to 75 percent of cargo is shipped through the northern network.
Just as the Pakistani supply line has been attacked by insurgents, the newer northern routes through Mazar-i-Sharif and other cities are likely to also become targets. In 2009, Taliban forces in the northern province of Kunduz hijacked two fuel trucks, resulting in a fiery NATO airstrike that killed dozens.
While many fear instability or even civil war in Afghanistan after 2014 when most foreign forces leave, others are busy planning for a future in which the country could be a hub in a New Silk Road reconnecting spice and silk routes from centuries past.
The 10-country Central Asia Regional Economic Cooperation project — supported by the ADB along with the U.N., World Bank and International Monetary Fund — envisions a network of some 2,250 miles (3,600 kilometers) of roads and 1,250 miles (2,000 kilometers) of railway linking China and India to the Middle East and Europe, although the project is far from complete.
For years, Afghanistan's poor roads and rails have been the project's missing link to much of that network.
With the northern Hairatan rail line ready to open for business, Afghan officials are already planning to expand its infant railroad with another proposed line to Turkmenistan to the northwest, Mangal said Wednesday.
He said a delegation would meet with Turkmenistan officials to discuss the expansion at the official inauguration for the Hairatan-Mazar-i-Sharif line, which he said would come soon though he wouldn't give a date.
"This is the first railway in Afghanistan and of course when we inaugurate it there will be a big ceremony, Mangal said.
Johnson reported from Bangkok.Copyright © 2011 The Associated Press. All rights reserved.

An intriguing letter of congratulations from Iran

2011-12-27T20:17:00.002-06:00

Below is a statement I received today broadly distributed from Dr. ... , a former official of the the Iranian government under the "progressive" Prime Minister Muhammad Khatami. Dr. ... is notable for his efforts to create relations between Muslim and Christian theologians through an institute which he founded and directs in Tehran. He is also notable for his involvement in the demonstrations against the government of Iran during the 2009 demonstrations, and for the abuse he clearly suffered when he was imprisoned for it. He went into prison a portly short man and came out many months later evidently 100 pounds lighter. The time spent in custody and the lost weight clearly discounted the statements of loyalty he made when he was finally released. Before his ordeal he paid a visit to Washington University in St Louis as well as to Covenant Seminary, whose faculty had visited him in Tehran some months before, so he has friends here who have followed his career and taken note of the abuse he has evidently suffered at the hands of his own government, dominated as it is by a kabal of less progressive Shiite theologians.

Now he is resurfacing as the head of his Institute and making a statement of great interest because it seems to depart from the usual rhetoric of the Islamic Republic. Here, in his statement of congratulations to Christians in their time of celebration, is a condemnation of dictatorship and even a call for the Islamic regimes of the world to allow non-Muslims to practice their faiths.

The Institute ... is honored to compliment New Year to you and your colleagues. Coincidence of New Year and birthday of Christ shows that religion is the most powerful factor in human life, which has been abused either it is able to solve huge problems of humanity. so that we invite all religions to note common subjects and make dialogue about them, to solve man's problems also to achieve the spirituality. The biggest event of world in the last year, was fall of dictators in Muslim's countries. Spirit of the struggle against dictatorship was Islam-willing and once again it confirmed the importance of religion in human life. we, in our turn, request of new leaders and authorities in Islamic countries to accept actual share of other religions and their faithfuls, grant them their full rights of citizenship so that all religions will be able to expand intellectuality and theism in the world, to replace peace instead of current violence. Accept good wishes of my colleagues and me, in the Institute … for New Year. [signed] ... [from] Iran- Tehran

Dr ... is proposing that the "new leaders and authorities in Islamic countries accept ... other religions and their faithfuls [followings], [and] grant them their full rights of citizenship ...." This plea for tolerance of other religious groups can hardly be other than a challenge to his own government, which famously cannot bear dissent or unauthorized religious practice. Buried in his congratulations to those of us in the Western world -- I'm sure it went out to his whole address list -- is a veiled critique of his own political context, one that, as he says, has "abused" religion. I hope he can be safe in such a place; Der ... knows by experience how painful it can be to those who embarrass a dictatorial regime.

Turkistan's gas wealth: 25 trillion cu meters

2011-12-26T06:43:00.000-06:00

[Click on the title to link to the video on this topic.]

Another gas field discovered in Iran

2011-12-24T06:25:00.002-06:00

The Iranians have discovered another large gas field -- they claim 1.4 trillion cubic meters of reserves -- in their Caspian Sea waters. They already have the largest combination of oil and gas reserves in the world. The significance of their discovery will lie in what they can make of it.

In any case, the discovery underlies the special difficulties the western world, especially the United States, of course, has in dealing with the Iranian government. Even though roguish in policy it claims sovereignty over one of the most richly endowed territories on the earth.
Here is the TehranTimes report:

Iran envisages $50b investment to explore oil, gas fields in Caspian Sea
Iranian oil ministry has envisaged investing up to $50 billion to explore oil and gas fields in the Caspian Sea, the Mehr news agency quoted a member of parliament as saying on Friday. “In a recent meeting with the oil minister, he elaborately explained on plans to explore oil and gas fields in the Caspian Sea,” Ali-Asghar Yousefnejad stated. Iran announced on December 11 it has discovered a large gas field in the Caspian Sea with at least 50 trillion cubic feet (some 1.4 trillion cubic meters) of reserves.
The field, in waters 700 meters deep, lies wholly within Iran’s territorial waters, Oil Minister Rostam Qasemi explained. He added excluding this new discovery Iran has 11 trillion cubic meters of proven gas reserves in the Caspian Sea.

[For more, click on the title above.]

The “Symbol-breathing” Animal

2011-12-21T20:29:00.004-06:00

Papers are now read, grades recorded. It’s time to consider how well I taught my students the fundamental concepts of my discipline. [In my courses on "Civil Conflicts" and "Terrorism" and "The Clash of Civilizations" I have gotten used to being asked "What is this course about?" from students who realize that besides the stated topic there is another more abstract one in the course, but they are unsure what it is. How social life is enabled, it turns out, is not easily taught.] Judging from the papers students turned in I have done only fairly. That so few of them really got it reflects on me. My grade should be, maybe a B-. One of my colleagues said the other day he would be satisfied if his students would demonstrate knowledge of merely the basic concepts of biological evolution, nothing more. Me too, for the concept of culture.

As the last exercise, I told them to write a paper comparing five cases [from those we examined in class], but without using the word “culture.” When tempted to use the world “culture” they were to deconstruct what they had in mind, to specify its elements. The point was to force them to identify more exactly the ways that folks in these different settings were engaging with each other and their predicaments by means of symbols.

It was Ruth Benedict who suggested that culture is to us as water is to the fish of the deep. Because water is their medium of existence it is fundamental to all they know. Similarly we human beings dwell in oceans of symbols – layers and layers of forms to which we ascribe meanings. We perceive through symbols, interpret what we perceive through symbols, react to what we perceive by acting meaningfully, that is, symbolically. We create our visions, our expectations, our “worlds” through symbols.

This is no “airy-fairy” world, as some disparagingly characterize such a view, because such a world cannot exist other than materially: Symbols are always material. They are objects – always objects -- to which we ascribe meaning: flows of sound are taken to be meaningful utterances, marks on a page, a monument, or on the human body stand for other things. Material things invested with meaning are the fundamental building blocks of the human imagination.

I wanted my students to recognize how such intersubjective forms enable social life: as human beings we draw from funds of symbols representing the understandings we have acquired through experience in order to make sense of the flow of stimuli that bombard us every waking moment. With these symbolic forms we ascribe significance to those stimuli; we decide how to respond fittingly to the circumstance; and we act so as to convey our intentions, that is, meaningfully.

However, although trained by experience to perceive and interpret and act in familiar ways we are not automatons; we are agents, able to choose how to perceive, how to interpret, and how to respond. What we choose to see, and give significance to, and respond to are never the only possible ways to perceive, interpret, and act.

So the key terms of this frame of reference are,

· *the repertoire of symbolically constituted understandings available to us,

· *our own selves as agents,

· *the context that must be perceived, defined [by using symbols], and responded to meaningfully,

· *the specific selections from our symbolic repertoire that we deploy in order to cope with the exigencies of the moment, and the reasons for those choices.

The ocean of symbols around us, framing our experience, pervading our thoughts, in fact enabling our thoughts, making it possible for us to conceive of a past and future, even to plan for a future – this is our medium. Without it we cannot live. In the absence of it – when we have no sense of significance – we are in danger, for we cannot bear to live otherwise.

These are the fundamental concepts of my discipline that my students need to grasp. I hope to do better next time.

The talking animal that needs to be heard

2011-12-19T15:05:00.002-06:00

A rumination: The other day I met someone who, according to what I had understood, was coming to see me to find out about my research. I was of course flattered that anyone would think I was doing something interesting. But it turned out that in an hour and a half my visitor asked no questions; not one. In fact, what he did do was talk. It became clear early on that he was brilliant and had a lot of creative ideas. He was just talking through his experience and his project, what he was teaching, and what it seemed to mean for his students. I started taking notes. Eventually I decided to butt into what he was saying to tell him what I was doing, and then he began to take notes. As it turned out, we had plenty to share. It was a great time.

But what I wondered afterward was why he came. It required a special effort on his part -- he was from another city and had come to town for other reasons. So why did he want to see me? I think it was because he needed to talk, to tell someone what he was doing, what he thought about some issues he considered vital. I was useful to him as a listener. He needed an audience, someone to pay attention as he worked through his own perception of the issues he cared about. He came to find someone who would appreciate what he was doing. Indeed I did, and I fulfilled his need for a sympathetic audience.

The next weekend I was with a friend who has had a hard life, several tragic events in his life, and again I was obliged to listen. He is one of those types who talks endlessly, if we let him; but it’s hard to listen for very long because he tends to tell the same stories. Above all, he seems also to need an audience.

I wonder now about our human need to be heard. We all seem to need an audience. In the 1990s hearings of the Truth and Reconciliation Commission were established to allow the South Africans to allow the two opposing sides, black and white, to reconcile. Many of them, especially the blacks, had suffered grievously at the hand of the others. The TRC was supposed to enable the victims to tell their stories, perhaps even to confront their abusers, in hopes of bringing closure to the bitter conflicts of the past and to avoid a hopelessly irresolvable civil war. The TRC could not achieve all that had been hoped, but at least for some folks the process was cathartic. Some testified to a sense of relief after just telling their stories to an attentive audience; indeed, what some of them had to say revealed such heinous behavior that the whole country was deeply shaken. For those folks, having someone listen to their stories, to share the anguish they had felt of having no idea what had happened to their loved-ones, gave them a sense of finality.

We human beings seem to need to talk, to write, to “say” something, as if we lust for an audience that appreciates us. I hear that often from my students: they want to write. I wonder if the quest for a sympathetic listener is universal. To me it seems as if that quest is intrinsic to what we are as human beings. Isn't it remarkable that billions of dollars are being spent in search of other creatures like ourselves somewhere out there in the universe?

That seems to be why some of us write blogs. I have never questioned why anyone writes a blog: it is to cry out to be heard. I began this one in desperation, frantic that our government was making egregious blunders in its Middle Eastern wars. I worried, what would be the outcome of such folly? So many errors of judgment, so much unjustified arrogance. I wrote to cry out for sanity. I felt like Jeremiah: “Oh land, land land! Hear the world the of the Lord!”
So why anyone writes is no mystery to me. The mystery is why anyone bothers to read blogs. Who listens? Why does anyone want to know what we say? Such magnanimous souls they are, just to listen! I have no idea who they are – and in my case they are few and rare – but to the degree that they leave traces, as if they had really heard me, they have performed a service.

One of the continuing questions of anthropologists is what makes human beings different from all the other creatures we know about. The more we know, the more difficult it is to specify just what makes us different. Can the lust to be heard, to have an audience, be one of those qualities special to our humanity? We all hope that someone out there is listening.

A deeper historical view of how America came to this

2011-12-18T07:36:00.002-06:00

In this period of the voting cycle it is easy to forget the conditions that brought our country to its tragic and embarrassing condition, in which half our country is near or below the poverty line. As a public most of us Americans are forgetful of things that took place in even the recent past. Most Americans forget that Bill Clinton left the country with a budget surplus. A surplus? We are a long way from that now. How did we get to this place? Here are two assessments by Republicans.

Christopher Buckley [son of Wm F. Buckley] on NOW 3/3/06:
“President Bush has now borrowed more money than all other Presidents combined. The spending that he has enacted is amazing. It amazes me that he calls himself "conservative."”

Francis Fukuyama in 2008:
It is hard to imagine a more disastrous presidency than that of George W. Bush. It was bad enough that he launched an unnecessary war and undermined the standing of the

United States

throughout the world in his first term. But in the waning days of his administration, he is presiding over a collapse of the American financial system and broader economy that will have consequences for years to come. As a general rule, democracies don’t work well if voters do not hold political parties accountable for failure. While John McCain is trying desperately to pretend that he never had anything to do with the Republican Party, I think it would be a travesty to reward the Republicans for failure on such a grand scale."

Celebrating Mohammed Bouazizi's gift to the Arab imagination: His own burning body

2011-12-18T06:58:00.007-06:00

Salman Shaikh of CNN reviews the significance of what has taken place in the Arab world in the last twelve months. So much has changed, so much is still unresolved, so much is potential. This is a time to encourage the authentic appeals for the right of the peoples of the Middle East to choose their own leaders and to hold them accountable for what they do with their country. They are worthy of our support and encouragement. RLC

Mohamed Bouazizi: A fruit seller's legacy to the Arab people By Salman Shaikh, Special to CNN updated 9:23 AM EST, Sat December 17, 2011

(CNN) -- Mohamed Bouazizi's self-immolation one year ago was an act which symbolized the frustration and desperation of millions in the Arab world, setting into motion a series of revolutions across the Middle East and North Africa.His was a cry for dignity, justice, and opportunity, which continues to be heard around a region undergoing tumultuous change. In today's Middle East, people matter. Many are now engaged in what could be a life-long struggle to fight long-standing grievances and take greater control of their lives. This process must involve the creation of new democratic political systems, which ensure greater accountability of leaders, and level the playing field of opportunity for all, not just a select few.

It has been a remarkable year. Three dictators have been toppled and one has transferred power to a deputy. Nonetheless, analysts and policy-makers continue to speak about the slow pace of change in the region and warn of the onset of an "Arab Winter." Such distinctions -- spring and winter -- are misleading. Many seasons will come and go in the transformative years that lie ahead for the Arab world. Revolutions take time to settle. The transformation of societies takes even longer. The colored revolutions of Eastern Europe, two decades on, are still developing. It took centuries for democratic systems to be refined in Europe. We cannot expect democracy in the Middle East to be solidified in only one year.

Still, across the region, there is cause for concern. Egypt's transition to civilian rule carries major worries, even as Egyptians continue to go to the polls. The concern remains that the ruling military council will relinquish power only under heavy pressure; and Egypt's economy and confidence are in nosedive as the populace awaits civil rule. Syrians meanwhile face a regime intent on killing and torturing its citizens to end their uprising. All this as a largely impotent international community argues over how to stop the increasing violence.In Yemen, many are not convinced by a regionally brokered transition deal, which allows Saleh and his family immunity from prosecution as well as continued political influence. Bahrain continues to reel from the absence of a genuine national dialogue between its rulers and the underrepresented and relatively impoverished majority Shia community. Libya's revolutionaries now face the immediate challenge of building a state from scratch, based on the rule of law and democratic principles. To do so, they are learning, they will first have to put down their guns. . . .

[For more, click on the title.]

More signs of rapid climate change

2011-12-11T18:18:00.001-06:00

We would like to believe that the leaders of affairs on the earth will recognize impending disaster early enough to avoid it. That is of course the intention of those meeting to deal with climate change. But as long as major lobbying organizations, for reasons of self interest, seek to obfuscate the issue the prospects are poor -- or so I surmise. Is there not abundant reason to wonder if they will get it together? Here is one of the latest warning reports. RLC

VOA December 10, 2011NASA: Earth's Prehistoric Record Warns of Nearing Rapid Climate Change

A new U.S. space agency study warns the Earth this century could see rapid and catastrophic climate changes if man-made global warming levels are allowed to reach an internationally-recognized so-called “safe limit” of two degrees Celsius.
The NASA researchers examined prehistoric climate conditions during past interglacial periods - the time between ice ages - and compared them with the interglacial period the Earth is currently experiencing. The last interglacial period ended around 115,000 years ago when temperatures were less than one degree Celsius warmer than today, and sea levels were six meters higher.

The scientists say looking at how the prehistoric climate responded to natural changes gives them more insight into determining a dangerous level of man-made global warming for today’s world.

NASA study leader James Hansen says the findings show that Earth’s climate is more sensitive than even recent estimates suggest. He described the notion of limiting man-made global warming to an increase of two degrees Celsius above pre-industrial levels as “a prescription for disaster.”

Recent studies, including those by NASA, indicate the average global surface temperature since 1880 has gone up 0.8 degrees Celsius and is on course to continue rising by 0.1 degrees every decade.

NASA researchers say global warming of two degrees Celsius would more closely match conditions of an interglacial period that occurred some five million years ago when seas were about 25 meters higher than today. . . . [For more, click on the title above.]

The problem as I see it isn't the technical possibilities of avoiding a catastrophe but the known experience with how social policy works: It can work as long as a free and open discussion allows opinion to form around a vital issue, but at a rate determined by the process of information distribution. Right now we have certain industries that foresee a loss to their business if serious measures are taken to reverse the trends in CO2 usage, and they [some of them] are working to make sure no consensus that there is a problem develops. Some in the oil industry [famously, the Koch brothers] seem to be devoted to questioning all research indicating that the world is racing toward a point of no return. It's hard to know how long it will take for the world, even the oil executives themselves, to decide they had better face the practical consequences of denial. The day will surely come. The only issue is whether it comes too late to avoid global catastrophe.

Tracking developments on the World Clock

2011-12-10T07:20:00.000-06:00

Click on the title above and follow the transformations taking place on our globe by the day, month, year. Sobering numbers.

"Carbon Emissions Show Biggest Jump Ever Recorded"

2011-12-05T11:26:00.000-06:00

The news should be no surprise, but it is worrisome -- the biggest reason that the likelihood that the world will actually reverse the trend before the systems is beyond recovery is rising, not diminishing.

Source: Global Carbon Project

"Carbon Emissions Show Biggest Jump Ever Recorded"

Global emissions of carbon dioxide from fossil-fuel burning jumped by the largest amount on record last year, upending the notion that the brief decline during the recession might persist through the recovery.

Emissions rose 5.9 percent in 2010, according to an analysis released Sunday by the Global Carbon Project, an international collaboration of scientists tracking the numbers. Scientists with the group said the increase, a half-billion extra tons of carbon pumped into the air, was almost certainly the largest absolute jump in any year since the Industrial Revolution, and the largest percentage increase since 2003.

The increase solidified a trend of ever-rising emissions that scientists fear will make it difficult, if not impossible, to forestall severe climate change in coming decades.

Climate Progress reported on a similar analysis last month (see “Biggest Jump Ever in Global Warming Pollution in 2010, Chinese CO2 Emissions Now Exceed U.S.’s By 50%“). [For more on the new study click on the title above.]

The profile of CO2 emissions is hardly improving

2011-12-05T10:29:00.001-06:00

A chart that appeared in the New York Times yesterday says a lot about what's happening with C02 emissions.

http://www.nytimes.com/imagepages/2011/12/04/opinion/04edit1.html?ref=sunday

Just to make sure the point come through, I want to put it into words:

The US output is still rising but fortunately at a much lower rate;
China's output has skyrocketed, from about 2.3 metric tons a year to about 7 metric tons
India's output and that of its neighbors has also risen greatly;
The Europeans in the mean time have done much better, even in many cases reducing their total output

All this is to say that the treats to global warming are still rising dramatically. The consequences will be global.

The Times also indicates that generally little is being done to alleviate the problem. If you click on the title of this note it will link to Robert B. Semple's article on the situation: "Remember Kyoto? Most Nations Don’t"

How to fix Congress: The Warren Buffett proposal

2011-11-29T20:23:00.003-06:00

CORRECTION: The only part of the statement below that Warren Buffett made was the first. The rest of it was invented by an unknown person. I like all of those ideas too, but some of them are in fact misleading. The Constitution is not amended by popular petition. [1/21/12]

Below is a statement that has been circulating, about how to fix the logjam in Congress. The proposal was made by Warren Buffett. It was first expressed in a recent interview with CNBC, and now is being circulated in the form of a potential amendment to the Constitution. I don’t know if this is the solution, but I am fed up with the way things are done in Washington, and I believe that most Americans are too, and from all over of the political spectrum. So a move to add an amendment to the Constitution to solve some the problem seems ever more appealing.
What do you think?

"I could end the deficit in 5 minutes," Buffett told CNBC. "You just pass a law that says that any time there is a deficit of more than 3% of GDP, all sitting members of Congress are ineligible for re-election. The 26th amendment (granting the right to vote for 18 year-olds) took only 3 months & 8 days to be ratified! Why? Simple! The people demanded it. That was in 1971 ... before computers, e-mail, cell phones, etc. Of the 27 amendments to the Constitution, seven (7) took 1 year or less to become the law of the land ... all because of public pressure.

Warren Buffet is asking each addressee to forward this email to a minimum of twenty people on their address list; in turn ask each of those to do likewise. In three days, most people in The United States of America will have the message. This is one idea that really should be passed around. *Congressional Reform Act of 2011*

1. No Tenure / No Pension. A Congressman collects a salary while in office and receives no pay when they are out of office.

2. Congress (past, present & future) participates in Social Security. All funds in the Congressional retirement fund move to the Social Security system immediately. All future funds flow into the Social Security system, and Congress participates with the American people. It may not be used for any other purpose.

3. Congress can purchase their own retirement plan, just as all Americans do.

4. Congress will no longer vote themselves a pay raise. Congressional pay will rise by the lower of CPI or 3%.

5. Congress loses their current health care system and participates in the same health care system as the American people.

6. Congress must equally abide by all laws they impose on the American people.

7. All contracts with past and present Congressmen are void effective 1/1/12. The American people did not make this contract with Congressmen. Congressmen made all these contracts for themselves. Serving in Congress is an honor, not a career. The Founding Fathers envisioned citizen legislators, so ours should serve their term(s), then go home and back to work.

If each person contacts a minimum of twenty people then it will only take three days for most people (in the

U.S.

) to receive the message. Maybe it is time. THIS IS HOW YOU FIX CONGRESS!!!!! If you agree with the above, pass it on. If not, just delete. You are one of my 20. Please keep it going.

Google identifies a space center in China

2011-11-23T15:16:00.000-06:00

The following article: Does it indicate China's interest in having Central Asia within range? It may simply be the site where the Chinese have decided to have test facilities for their warheads. Anyway, the most curious feature of this is that it was Google that identified it. Presumably, the military satellites have been tracking affairs all over China for a long time. RLC

Google Earth Identifies Huge Secret Structures in China’s Gobi Desert
By Ankita Mehta. International Business Times. Tuesday, November 15, 2011 4:37 AM EST
Google Earth has apparently spotted large and unidentified structures in China's Gobi Desert. The satellite images have raised questions over what China could be building in the region, which shares borders with Mongolia and is used for military, space and nuclear programs.
According to The Telegraph, the area in question is close to the headquarters of the country's space program - Jiuquan, Gansu. The location is also close to a nuclear test site China has since abandoned. The sites are believed to be on the border of Gansu and Xinjiang provinces in northwestern China, less than 100 miles from Jiuquan.
The buildings are believed to be shaped in rectangular and circular forms and there are also formations that appear to be runways for airplanes. The two images on Google Earth show deep rectangular shapes that seem to be a mile long and a tangle of bright white-colored intersecting lines noticeable from space. The other image shows huge concentric circles, with three jets parked at their centre.
An earlier image, taken in 2007, shows a mass of orange blocks, each the size of shipping container, placed in a circle. A recent image, however, shows them to have moved as far as three miles from the original site.
Although the purpose of the huge structure is unknown, some experts believe it might be an optical test range for missiles.
Tim Ripley, a defense expert, told The Telegraph that the structures all had similar grids to the ones used at the U.S.'s secret military base in Nevada, Area 51.
"The picture of the circle looks very like a missile test range, with target and instrumentation set out to record weapon effects. The Americans have lots of these in Nevada - Area 51!" he said.

Contrary views of what is going on in Syria: From unbiased sources?

2011-11-23T11:50:00.001-06:00

The following, sent to me by a friend, reveal how different the "news" in other places looks from what we read in the United States. RLC

‘CIA, MI6 and Mossad: Together against Syria’
21 November, 2011
The West is doing its best to destabilize the situation in Syria, author and journalist Webster Tarpley told RT. According to him, civilians have to deal with death squads and blind terrorism, which is typical of the CIA.“What average Syrians of all ethnic groups say about this is that they are being shot at by snipers. People complained that there are terrorist snipers who are shooting at civilians, blind terrorism simply for the purpose of destabilizing the country. I would not call this civil war – it is a very misleading term. What you are dealing with here are death squads, you are dealing with terror commandos; this is a typical CIA method. In this case it’s a joint production of CIA, MI6, Mossad, it’s got money coming from Saudi Arabia, The United Arab Emirates and Qatar,” he explained. He added that Syrian society is the most tolerant society in the Middle East, the one place where all kinds of people live together in remarkable harmony, Muslims and Christians of all kinds. “This is a model of a peaceful coexistence of various ethnic groups. The US policy right now is to smash the Middle East according to ethnic lines,” he added. Assad’s rule is increasingly being called illegitimate.
But the US and Europe do not seem concerned that getting rid of the Syrian president could cause even more violence, as was seen in Egypt, believes Tarpley. “After Libya becoming a bloodbath with 150.000 dead and now with Egypt showing what it was all along – there was no revolution there, it was a complete failure and now people are beginning to understand that. Still, Mrs Clinton and Ms Rice (sic) continue to push this bankrupt model of the colour revolution, backed up by terrorist troops – people from Al-Qaeda and the Muslim Brotherhood. There is a growing movement inside the Islamic community, which says ‘We want reconciliation, we want law and order, and we want legality’,” he said. http://rt.com/news/syria-terrorism-cia-destabilization-863/
--------------------------------------------
Russian FM blames West for ‘provocation’ over Syria
21 November, 2011
Russia has accused the west of exacerbating the already tense situation in Syria. Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov says calls for the overthrow of Bashar al-Assad's regime are nothing but a provocation. “In Syria we are now seeing a situation where the Arab League is calling for a halt to violence and the beginning of dialogue, and western countries and the capitals of some countries in the region are making calls to the contrary, expressly recommending the opposition hold no talks with the Assad regime,” Lavrov announced. “It looks like a political provocation on an international scale. Yes, violence has to be stopped, but this demand has to be addressed to the authorities and armed groups in the Syrian opposition,” he argued. The Russian government has established trustworthy relations with both Assad’s regime and armed opposition groups. Moscow is potentially the only third force capable of forcing the sides to strike a deal.
But as the Russian FM warns, the position of certain foreign states is likely to prevent peaceful negotiations. “A kind of liberation army of Syria has appeared and created a Temporary Military Council, proclaiming as its aim toppling the regime in Syria,” Sergey Lavrov says. “Some European capitals are preparing to discuss the issue at the UN Security Council, equating the military actions of Syrian renegades to the manifestation of democratic aspirations by the people.” The Russian FM reaffirmed Moscow’s stance on Syria: Russia wants to see both sides coming together to discuss peacefully how to lead the country out of crisis. Last week, Syria was expelled from the Arab League, a step “counterproductive to the peace process’, as Sergey Lavrov put it. This is not the first time the Russian FM has leveled accusations at the west regarding Syria. When the Arab League made its decision to expel the country, Mr Lavrov suggested the “shadowy hand of western powers” was behind the move. Many analysts are comparing the situation in Syria with Libya before the NATO invasion. Former allies and friends of President Assad are calling on the west to intervene in Syria. Into its eighth month, the violence in the country has claimed an estimated 3,500 lives. British Foreign Secretary William Hague said on Monday the international community would do its best to turn up the heat on Syria. The statement followed President Bashar al-Assad declaring he would not bow to pressure to crack down on protesters. "We will increase the pressure on the Assad regime. I discussed this with the Secretary of the Arab League yesterday and I believe they will wish to do so at their further meeting tomorrow," he told BBC Radio. "The behavior of that regime is appalling and unacceptable and of course we will do what we can to support democracy in Syria in the future," Hague said. Hague also stated the international community had "done a lot" to increase the pressure on Assad. This included imposing sanctions and stopping all of Syria's crude oil exports from entering EU waters. "We are working this week on a further round of sanctions which I hope we can agree next week," Hague added. Turkish Prime Minister, Recep Tayyip Erdogan warned Bashar al-Assad that his days as Syrian leader were numbered and he cannot remain in power indefinitely with the help of the military force."You can remain in power with tanks and cannons only up to a certain point. The day will come when you'll also leave, "Erdogan said during a meeting in Istanbul. Iraqi Prime Minister Nuri al-Maliki warned that the civil war in Syria could have a destabilizing effect on the whole region. The PM called for implementing reforms in Syria, though he flatly denied the military intervention of other countries would be of any help to resolving the conflict between Damascus and the opposition. http://rt.com/news/syria-international-provocation-lavrov-825/
------------------------------------
CIA spy ring busted in Iran and Lebanon
21 November, 2011,
United States officials are saying that shortcuts, unaccountability, laziness and general mismanagement are to blame for the compromising of several CIA informants in Iran and Lebanon who are now feared dead. A CIA-led program in the Middle East is up in the air after officials confirmed to news organizations today that paid informants in Iran and Lebanon working for the US government have disappeared while attempting to infiltrate Hezbollah, the Iranian-backed military organization considered a terrorist group by the US. Iranian intelligence minister Heidar Mosleh announced in May that more than 30 US and Israeli spies had been discovered and he quickly took to Iranian television to broadcast information explaining the methods of online communication that the agents would use to trade intel. Only a month later, Hezbollah leader Sayyed Hasan Nasrallah announced that two high-ranking officers within his own organization had been identified as CIA spies. Just now, however, does the US government confirm that not only is this information true, but they believe that the rest of their Hezbollah-targeted operations in the Middle East have been compromised. According to some within the agency, all of this could have been prevented. Speaking to ABC News, one former US senior intelligence official speaking without accreditation says that CIA agents were warned to avoid using the same Lebanon hub for secret meet-ups — a Beirut Pizza Hut restaurant — though spies continue to use the location for countless meet-ups with a wide range of informants. "We were lazy and the CIA is now flying blind against Hezbollah," the former official tells ABC. According to several US officials speaking to the press, the CIA used the codeword “PIZZA” to arrange for would-be clandestine meetings at the restaurant. To ABC, however, a current CIA officer denied the allegations that the entire operations evaporated at the eatery Others within the agency, but currently and formerly, say that outside of the Pizza Hut sting, the revealing of the online communication conducted between the CIA and informants in Iran led to “dozens” of assets being compromised. Officials have confirmed that the websites that Intel Ministero Mosleh showed an Iranian television audience were indeed used by the CIA in their secret web chats. "We've lost the tradition of espionage," one former intelligence official tells ABC. "Officers take short cuts and no one is held accountable.” Another anonymous official tells the Associated Press that the CIA was warned by Hezbollah’s Nasrallah that they were cracking down on American spies, but the US pressed on despite the consequences. Prior to the September 11 terrorist attacks, the Hezbollah organization was believed to be responsible for the most terrorism-related deaths of Americans ever. Last year the State Department described the militants as "the most technically capable terrorist group in the world” and a government probe linked the group to hundreds of millions of dollars in funding out of Iran. A 2009 crackdown by Hezbollah aimed at Israeli spies led to the arrest of roughly 100, and a CIA investigation that followed revealed that the United States’ own agents would be just as susceptible to similar strikes. While the fate of the CIA agents remains uncertain — and the final toll kept under wraps — what is known is that for the American intelligence community, not much good can come from this."Hezbollah has disappeared people before. Others they have kept around,” counterterrorism expert Matthew Levitt tells the AP."If they were genuine spies, spying against Hezbollah, I don't think we'll ever see them again," former CIA officer Robert Baer tells ABC. "These guys are very, very vicious and unforgiving." http://rt.com/usa/news/cia-iran-lebanon-hezbollah-861/

Women in the revolutions of the Arab world

2011-11-11T06:19:00.001-06:00

Asghar Ali has an interesting comment on DNA [Daily News Analysis] about the place women played in the recent Arab spring movements, and how they could be again relegated to the margins in some places. [Click on the title above for a link to the source.]

Behind every successful revolution is a womanAsghar Ali Engineer | Friday, November 11, 2011
The Arab world saw great political turmoil in the beginning of 2011. The Tunisian dictator Zine El Abidine Ben Ali was overthrown before January 2011 ended. Then a similar turmoil began in Egypt and hundreds of thousands of people poured in Tahrir square to protest against Hosni Mubarak, another long serving dictator who was forced to go and then Libya, Syria, Yemen and Bahrain. Now all this has been much written about and need not be repeated, but what concerns us here is the role of women in these revolutionary changes.
In all these countries, women played a very significant role, right from Tunisia to Yemen. Both in Egypt and Yemen, women’s initiatives proved to be crucial. In fact, the Tahrir mobilisation was due mainly to a young girl’s appeal on Facebook. The role of women was so significant that it was being expected that the Nobel Prize for Peace this year would be given to three women from Arab countries i.e. Tunis, Egypt and Yemen, but instead it went to women from Africa and Yemen, the latter a Muslim woman who also played a crucial role in the protection of human rights and in the political mobilisation for the overthrow of President Saleh, though there still remains a stalemate in Yemen.
The myth that Muslim women merely sit at home and are worth nothing more than domestic workers and house makers has been shattered decisively. Muslim women have proved once again that they can mobilise people efficiently and purposefully. It is also interesting to note that many women in Tunisia and Egypt were quite active in trade unions and have used their experience to proper use and brought about change in the political sphere.
But post-revolution a shadow of doubt hangs over them. What will this democratic revolution give them? Will it take over the rights they had gained under dictators? It is possible that Islamic laws are re-imposed in these countries. In Tunisia, the Ennahda Party has won elections. Though it describes itself as a moderate Islamic party, Ennahda leader Ghanushi has fortunately declared that there will be no change in gender laws, which clearly means polygamy will not be re-imposed.
However, Libyan women are not so fortunate. The Libyan leader who is projected as the new Prime Minister after ousting Gaddafi has already announced that Islamic laws will be the only laws imposed and polygamy will be reintroduced. Gaddafi, undoubtedly a dictator who had to go, had also done lot of good in introducing and consolidating gender justice in Libya. He had given equal rights to women as provided for in the Qur’an. He abolished polyga-my and gave women an important role in public life. He even maintained that to confine women at home is an imperialist conspiracy to paralyse half the population of the Islamic world. . . . . [for more, click on the title for the whole article.]

Will the new systems established after the Arab Spring avoid the oppressive systems they have overturned?

2011-11-09T06:54:00.003-06:00

The dilemmas of what should happen next in the Arab world have been stated one way by an Iranian opponent of the Iranian government, Ibrahim Yazdi, and another way in an article by the Arab social critic Mahan Abedin [“Arab Spring confounds Iran's opposition,” Asian Times, Nov 10, 2011]. According to Yazdi a danger exists that the successful movements against repressive regimes in the Arab world could now be replaced by equally repressive systems. He seems to blame the unfamiliarity of Muslims with all that is entailed in democracy. Yazdi says:

"Despite struggling for fundamental rights, freedom and self-determination, we Muslims from any nationality lack sufficient experience with democracy. We struggle and overthrow dictators but we don't remove tyranny as a mode of governance and a way of life."

Yazdi of course has seen it happen, for he had been part of the Iranian uprising against the Shah in 1978-1979, and he experienced the takeover by Ruhullah Khomeini and those with him who, once in power, set about to remove [essentially to exterminate] those who could not share their Islamist vision for the country. Yazdi survived but has been alienated for years, the position from which he now warns the Tunisians: Their movement could end up being different from what they had originally been calling for. He has good reason, then, to fear that these successful movements in Tunisia [and also Egypt] could be replaced by a system as repressive as the old; a similar warning was once made by Foucault about revolutionary movements generally.

Abedin is unimpressed by Yazdi's warning, seeing in it a Iranian condescending attitude. But Abedin seems even to push Yazdi's point further, for he thinks that Islam and the democracy that the Arab Spring movements have demanded may be intrinsically incompatible. Of the newly elected Tunisian Islamist party, al-Nahda (Renaissance), he says that

"... these movements have yet to successfully grapple with their ideological dilemma. The essence of their ideology commits them to the creation of a pan-Islamic state, if not a fully-fledged caliphate. It also commits them to introducing the Islamic sharia as the basis of legislation and the general ordering of state and society. While these goals are not necessarily inimical to democracy, they are not harmonious with it either. The Muslim Brotherhood and its many offshoots can legitimately claim to be democratic in spirit once they have resolved this ideological contradiction.

This is an old question. Most Muslims I know see no reason why Islam cannot be built into a constituted democracy; that was the project Pakistan set out to accomplish in 1947. We continue to watch and hope that the new regimes being established in Tunisia and Egypt will indeed establish the kind of democracy that they will cherish and be eager to protect from all forms of social oppression, a necessary feature of democracy if it is to be successfully practiced.

[Click on the title for a link to the original article by Abedin.]

Stratfor: Kurram agency road is open. More access. Better control

2011-11-08T14:44:00.001-06:00

Stratfor has released a map of Kurram agency in Pakistan showing that a key road has been opened to Parachinar. This is a volatile area, in any period. The article says that the road has been closed since 2007 because of fighting between Sunni and Shia Pashtun tribesmen, a familiar problem in this area. The Stratfor article says that

. . . Kurram agency in the past has been used to project influence from the east into Afghanistan and particularly Kabul — which is only 100 kilometers (60 miles) from the Pakistani border — making its value to the Haqqani network obvious. Both Parachinar and Thal are areas where the Haqqani network and Tehrik-i-Taliban Pakistan (TTP) are known to operate safe-houses and use for logistics and training purposes, and opening up the road would facilitate travel for the militants between the two cities.

The road opening seems to be owing to a truce agreement by the two sides, and Stratfor thinks that Haqqani might prefer to close the road. That there will be more military traffic on this road has to be taken for granted. Improvements in transport facilities have a large influence on the course of affairs; that this road is now open says a lot about the politics of the region as well as the quality of transport facilities.

Now we know how Congress can be bought off: Another way to subvert democracy

2011-11-07T17:03:00.000-06:00

Information Clearing House has posted the transcript of Abramoff's interview with Leslie Stahl on "60 Minutes" last night. [Click on the title above for a link to the source.]

Information Clearing House

Jack Abramoff: The lobbyist's playbook Or How To Buy Your Own Congressperson. [An interview with CBS 60 Minutes]

This is a must-read article. If you combine what has been revealed about the activities of the Koch brothers with what Abramoff tells the world, you can easily envision how it is that our congress is locked up, unable to act in the public interest.

Two powerful Kansans whose influence is shaping the course of history, in their own interest

2011-11-05T07:07:00.004-05:00

An article in Al Jazeera on the Koch brothers, Charles and David, is chilling because it reveals how easy it is for money -- that is, people with lots of money -- to subvert the democratic system in the name of democracy. To them "democracy" seems to mean the right for those who have the wealth to keep it and control the flow of information in their own interest, to control Congress so as to ensure that they and their enterprises will prosper, whatever it means to others, the rest of the country or the rest of the world. I reproduce this article here in its entirety to emphasize how such a project works, how the super-rich, if so inclined, can subvert the conventions that are supposed to ensure opportunity for everyone in a society. Could the Kochs themselves, with all their wealth, be the main forces behind the powerful pull to the right in American politics in the last 30 years? That they are from a modest middle class neighborhood in Wichita, Kansas, however, prompts me to have another question: How did they get from there to became what they are now, with their elitist and self-serving agendas? RLC [click on the title above for a link to the source.]

Al Jazeera 01 Nov 2011: “The Koch Brothers: People and Power asks if the tycoon duo's fortune could put the radical right into the White House.” By Bob Abeshouse.

Charles and David Koch are each worth about $25bn, which makes them the fourth richest Americans. When you combine their fortunes, they are the third wealthiest people in the world. Radical libertarians who use their money to oppose government and virtually all regulation as interference with the free market, the Kochs are in a class of their own as players on the American political stage. Their web of influence in the US stretches from state capitals to the halls of congress in Washington DC.
The Koch brothers fueled the conservative Tea Party movement that vigorously opposes Barack Obama, the US president. They fund efforts to derail action on global warming, and support politicians who object to raising taxes on corporations or the wealthy to help fix America’s fiscal problems. According to New Yorker writer Jane Mayer, who wrote a groundbreaking exposé of the Kochs in 2010, they have built a top to bottom operation to shape public policy that has been "incredibly effective. They are so rich that their pockets are almost bottomless, and they can keep pouring money into this whole process".
Koch industries, the second largest privately-held company in the US, is an oil refining, chemical, paper products and financial services company with revenues of a $100bn a year. Virtually every American household has some Koch product - from paper towels and lumber, to Stainmaster carpet and Lycra in sports clothes, to gasoline for cars. The Koch’s political philosophy of rolling back environmental and financial regulations is also beneficial to their business interests.
The Kochs rarely talk to the press, and conduct their affairs behind closed doors. But at a secret meeting of conservative activists and funders the Kochs held in Vail, Colorado this past summer, someone made undercover recordings. One caught Charles Koch urging participants to dig deep into their pockets to defeat Obama. "This is the mother of all wars we've got in the next 18 months," he says, "for the life or death of this country." He called out the names of 31 people at the Vail meeting who each contributed more than $1m over the past 12 months.
In the 2010 congressional elections, the Kochs and their partners spent at least $40m, helping to swing the balance of power in the US House of Representatives towards right-wing Tea Party Republicans. It has been reported that the Kochs are planning to raise and spend more than $200m to defeat Obama in 2012. But the brothers could easily kick in more without anyone knowing due to loopholes in US law.
The Kochs founded and provide millions to Americans for Prosperity, a political organisation that builds grassroots support for conservative causes and candidates. Americans for Prosperity, which has 33 state chapters and claims to have about two million members, has close ties to Tea Party groups and played a key role in opposing Obama's health care initiative.
This year, Americans for Prosperity spent at least half a million dollars supporting Wisconsin Governor Scott Walker's efforts to cut social spending and roll back collective bargaining rights for public employee unions. The legislation passed by Walker makes it more difficult for unions, which are major backers of Democratic candidates, to secure funds for political purposes. Americans for Prosperity is also very active in a battle against unions in Ohio, another important 2012 presidential state. Its president, Tim Phillips, says that the organisation is winning in Wisconsin and around the country "because on the policies of economic freedom, we're right". He refused to tell People and Power reporter Bob Abeshouse how much the organisation is spending to combat the unions.
The Kochs have also poured millions into think tanks and academia to influence the battle over ideas. According to Kert Davies, the director of research for Greenpeace in the US, the Kochs have spent more than $50m since 1998 on "various front groups and think tanks who ... oppose the consensus view that climate change is real, urgent and we have to do something about it". As operators of oil pipelines and refineries, the Kochs have opposed all efforts to encourage alternative sources of energy by imposing a tax on fossil fuels.
Patrick Michaels, a senior fellow at the CATO Institute, often appears in the media to contest global warming science. CATO was founded by Charles Koch, and the Kochs and their foundations have contributed about $14m to CATO. Since 2009, there has been a sharp drop in the percentage of Americans who see global warming as a serious threat according to Gallup polls. Davies argues that the change can be attributed in large measure to the efforts of scientists like Michaels and others who are funded by the fossil fuel industry.
The Kochs have also promoted their free market ideology and business interests through aggressive lobbying in Washington DC, and financial support of political candidates. Greenpeace has tracked more than $50m that Koch Industries has spent on lobbyists since 2006, when Cap and Trade and other legislation to combat global warming was being considered. The Kochs have been the largest political spender since 2000 in the energy sector, exceeding Exxon, Chevron, and other major players.
The Kochs contributed to 62 of the 87 new members of the US House of Representatives in 2010. Members of the House Energy and Commerce Committee that the Kochs supported have taken the lead in opposing US Environmental Protection Agency efforts to reduce global warming emissions. Other members backed by the Kochs belong to the right-wing Tea Party bloc that took the US to the brink of default in July by refusing to consider a budget deal that would include tax increases.
In 2012, many believe that President Obama can raise a billion dollars for the presidential race, and break all fundraising records. But as Lee Fang of the Center for American Progress tells reporter Bob Abeshouse, in the end it may not matter "because the Koch brothers alone increased their wealth by $11bn in the last two years".

"Downplaying justice in favor of stability is a losing strategy"

2011-11-03T06:16:00.000-05:00

The mistakes made in Afghanistan have been numerous and have compounded, to the point where one wonders what hope there is of bringing about a stable social order there. A recent conference made it clear how seriously the American policy has failed. As one participant put it, “US strategy is incentivizing insecurity.” The conference report is discouraging because it points to errors that will be hard to overcome now, after so many years of policies that fail. [Click on the title above for a link to the source]
See: Afghanistan: Experts Give Washington Failing Grade on Warlordism Lesson by Rachel Van Horn.

Eurasianet: Central Asia: Can Expanded Trade Pacify an Unsettled Region?

2011-11-03T05:59:00.001-05:00

Hillary Clinton’s new emphasis on the “New Silk Road” reflects how much is changing in Eurasia. The need for Central Asia’s minerals and the infrastructural improvements in the region that make them more accessible have brought the Americans to the point of inventing – rather appropriating -- an old name for the world’s growing focus on Central Asia. It’s not exactly a new idea; it’s been around for a long time. But it reflects the necessity that if the world’s growing economies are to be fed they cannot ignore the abundance of resources in Central Asian grounds.

http://www.eurasianet.org/node/64419

Published on EurasiaNet.org (http://www.eurasianet.org)

Central Asia: Can Expanded Trade Pacify an Unsettled Region? by Joshua Kucera October 31, 2011

US Secretary of State Hillary Clinton worked quietly and diligently during her recent trip through Central and South Asia to lay the groundwork for a regional stabilization plan, dubbed the “New Silk Road.” The vision sees expanded trade as the balm that can heal the region’s wounds.
The New Silk Road aims to stimulate regional trade between Afghanistan and its neighbors. At its most ambitious, it envisions Central Asia as a trade hub between Europe and Asia, as it was in the days of the old Silk Road. Clinton promoted it on her recent trip through the region [5], including stops in Afghanistan, Pakistan, Tajikistan and Uzbekistan. In the coming weeks, she will continue to make a diplomatic push to enlist allies' support for the vision.
As Clinton sees it, commodity and energy exports have the ability to lift regional economies. Trade, in turn, could naturally suppress Islamic militant tendencies. “Turkmen gas fields [6]could help meet both Pakistan’s and India’s growing energy needs and provide significant transit revenues for both Afghanistan and Pakistan. Tajik cotton could be turned into Indian linens. Furniture and fruit from Afghanistan could find its way to the markets of Astana or Mumbai and beyond,” Clinton said about the Silk Road strategy during a September speech at the United Nations.
As yet, there are few details on how the United States can make its regional trade vision turn into reality. Washington has identified up to 40 infrastructure projects that could be part of the plan, according to a US government official, and will also work to reduce legal and procedural barriers to trade, like onerous and corrupt border-crossing procedures. Clinton will attempt to gain allied support at two upcoming conferences, one November 2 in Istanbul and another in December in Bonn, Germany.
The United States needs to quickly develop an implementation plan if the strategy is to succeed, said S. Frederick Starr, chairman of the Central Asia-Caucasus Institute in Washington, DC. Starr cautioned that the State Department's version of the plan, as he saw it so far, needed to focus more closely on the “software” or border regulations, rather than on infrastructure. He also saw a need to develop a plan for short-, medium- and long-term projects. He proposed starting with relatively easy-to-implement but high-profile projects like truck convoys along a few key corridors. “Skeptics abound,” he told EurasiaNet.org. “We must prove to them that the United States can deliver tangible results that positively affect peoples’ lives, and do so in the short term.”
Starr has promoted a Silk Road vision [7] for several years. The State Department has long been wary of the plan, with officials initially dismissing it as unworkable. But it began to gain favor last year at US Central Command, and its commander at the time, Gen. David Petraeus. Since Marc Grossman became President Obama's special envoy to Afghanistan and Pakistan[8], replacing the late Richard Holbrooke earlier this year, the State Department has come around to support the strategy.
Speaking in Islamabad on October 21, Clinton said: “We want to advance together the vision of a New Silk Road, which would increase regional economic integration and boost cross-border trade and investments between Pakistan and all of her neighbors.” The next day in Tajikistan, Clinton said she discussed the strategy with President Imomali Rahmon and “appreciated the president’s enthusiastic support for this vision.” In Tashkent she discussed the strategy “in some detail” to President Islam Karimov, according to a senior State Department official said, speaking on condition of anonymity.
Doubts remain about the strategy's feasibility. The State Department, in its public statements on the plan, has highlighted a handful of existing or proposed projects on which the New Silk Road could be modeled, including a free-trade agreement signed last year between Pakistan and Afghanistan, and the Turkmenistan-Afghanistan-Pakistan-India (TAPI) natural gas pipeline [9]. Skeptics note that the Pakistan-Afghanistan agreement, which was laboriously, personally brokered by Holbrooke, hasn’t yet been implemented. And implementation appears unlikely in the foreseeable future, due to strained bilateral relations. In a similar vein, versions of the TAPI pipeline have been on the drawing board since the 1990s, but insecurity in Afghanistan has scared away companies that might have the capital to complete the project.
With US and NATO troops scheduled to depart [10] by 2014, the security situation is likely to decline even further, a problem that the Silk Road plan's boosters acknowledge. “We have continued insecurity and instability in Afghanistan,” Sham Bathija, senior economic adviser to President Hamid Karzai of Afghanistan, said at a recent conference in Washington on the strategy. “Yet we have no choice but to forge ahead.”
The Silk Road project may be making too many geopolitical assumptions, especially in the area of diplomatic relations among regional states, suggested George Gavrilis, an expert on Central Asia and borders at the Washington, D.C., think tank The Hollings Center. He noted that many of the countries in the region seem locked in persistent diplomatic spats with their neighbors; Pakistan with Afghanistan and India, Uzbekistan with Tajikistan [11] and Kyrgyzstan. Trade agreements are fragile and vulnerable to political difficulties, as evidenced by the fact that the border between Uzbekistan and Kyrgyzstan has been closed for 18 months, following last summer's violence in southern Kyrgyzstan. The border only reopened this week. “I love the idea [of the New Silk Road] but I just don't see how it can be implemented,” Gavrilis said.
Another potential pitfall is the cost of infrastructure projects. “Unless the job is funded, it ain't going to happen,” said Juan Miranda, Director General of the Central and West Asia Department of the Asian Development Bank, which is a supporter of the project and has been carrying out a related infrastructure project, the Central Asia Regional Economic Cooperation, for several years. “So we have to think about that and it will be a challenge.”
Obama administration officials are mindful of a domestic political environment that is opposed to new government spending, has emphasized that it doesn't plan to allocate a lot of money on the Silk Road project. “With governments all around the world facing economic challenges, we have to focus on ways to make this work with limited government support,” said Robert Hormats, undersecretary of state for economic, energy and agricultural affairs, in a recent speech. “So, for the 'New Silk Road' vision to realize its potential, it is critical that the Afghan government and its neighbors take ownership of the effort.”

Editor's note: Joshua Kucera is a Washington, DC,-based writer who specializes in security issues in Central Asia, the Caucasus and the Middle East. He is the editor of EurasiaNet's Bug Pit blog.

2010 © Eurasianet

Russia's structural need to be an empire?

2011-11-02T16:10:00.002-05:00

Stratfor has just published a significant article: "Russia: Rebuilding an Empire While It Can" [October 31, 2011] by Lauren Goodrich. [Click on the title for a link to the original article.] [See also, "Putin calls for a Eurasian Union" http://www.eurasianet.org/node/64291]

Goodrich says that

Russia’s ultimate plan is to re-establish control over much of its former territories.

And indeed:

Russia’s defining geographic characteristic is its indefensibility, which means its main strategy is to secure itself. Unlike most powerful countries, Russia’s core region, Muscovy, has no barriers to protect it and thus has been invaded several times. Because of this, throughout history Russia has expanded its geographic barriers in order to establish a redoubt and create strategic depth between the Russian core and the myriad enemies surrounding it. This means expanding to the natural barriers of the Carpathian Mountains (across Ukraine and Moldova), the Caucasus Mountains (particularly to the Lesser Caucasus, past Georgia and into Armenia) and the Tian Shan on the far side of Central Asia. The one geographic hole is the North European Plain, where Russia historically has claimed as much territory as possible (such as the Baltics, Belarus, Poland and even parts of Germany). In short, for Russia to be secure it must create some kind of empire.

I don't know how many people pay attention anymore to the structural conditions that affect the course of history, but here Goodrich is pointing out a historical pattern in Russia's past. The Russian empire that reached its peak in the nineteenth century grew out of years of struggling to establish viable limits. Over and over again the problems of maintaining their boundary, especially on the east, induced them to push a little further. They sought to secure their eastern territories by importing Russians who would ensconce themselves in the newly available lands, only to demand protection and help from the frontier peoples who harassed them. Eventually they were drawn eastward all the way to the Pacific coast. Now, contemporary Russia seems to feel it must have better control of some of the frontier countries in Inner Asia. In the mean time China looms, and the Chinese unlike the Russians have lots of personnel. If I were betting I would bet on the Chinese in the long run.

Hazaras in Mongolia, a report that uncaps a host of memories and feelings

2011-10-31T10:36:00.000-05:00

My good friend Hannah has sent me a link to this site. It portrays Hazaras from Afghanistan who are studying in Mongolia. For me is was a surprising treat and brought back so many memories. I am so glad to see the young women, few of whom I actually got to meet in the Hazarajat; clearly the times and the context are different. In ways difficult to explain I have a deep feeling for the Hazaras, among whom I spent the better part of two years many years ago. For this reason I will never be able to read the Kite Runner -- I break down in the first few pages; the experience brings something out of me I never knew was there. Could other anthropologists have such sentimental attachments to the people they studied? For reasons I can't explain I dearly loved the people I knew. Now I see their offspring, and I am thrilled.
[Click on the title to see what has stimulated such memories.] http://www.eurasianet.org/node/64351

The Arab League to Syria’s Assad: Talk to the opposition.

2011-10-31T05:40:00.000-05:00

That the Arab League has come together on a proposal to Assad is good news. Whether it will amount to anything is something else. The opprobrium of the world has not yet forced Assad to step down – which is what his enemies demand if they are to give of their demonstrations. In the mean time Assad’s troops keep on killing unarmed citizens of their country.

That the rest of the world wants to intervene is a sign of how little anyone cares anymore about the conventions of the Peace of Westphalia. The world is too small now; it’s too easy to peak over the fence and see what our neighbors are doing to their citizens. We cringe at what we see in North Korea But Assad tells us that without his regime the Middle East will be an “Afghanistan”. Meaning what? Here is what Al Jazeera tells us. [click on the title for the whole article].

Arab League hands Syria plan to end unrest Oct 31, 2011

The Arab League has handed Syrian officials a plan for ending seven months of increasingly violent unrest against President Bashar al-Assad's rule.

The Arab League committee put its plan, involving talks in Cairo between the Syrian authorities and their opponents, to Syrian Foreign Minister Walid al-Muallem and Bouthaina Shaaban, a political adviser to Assad, on Sunday in Qatar.

The League had previously set a two-week deadline for the start of such talks, which expired on Sunday. The committee said it hoped for a Syrian response to its plan by Monday.

"More important than a dialogue is action... This committee has given a very strong response to the recent killings," Qatari Prime Minister Sheikh Hamad Bin Jassim Al Thani, whose country presides over the committee, told reporters in Doha.

Syrian objections to holding a meeting regarding what they consider domestic affairs outside Syria was one of the points of disagreement between the two sides.

Assad told Russian television on Sunday that he would co-operate with the opposition even as he had earlier warned in another interview of an "earthquake" if the West intervenes in his country.

In an interview with Britain's Sunday Telegraph newspaper, Assad said international involvement risked transforming Syria into "another Afghanistan".

He also stressed Syria was key to keeping the peace in the region.

. . .

Torture is back in Egypt

2011-10-31T05:13:00.000-05:00

Torture has been a powerful radicalizing element in the Middle East. It was torture that turned Sayed Qutb from a critic of the Egyptian government and the west to one who believed the whole system was corrupt and irredeemable: the only hope was extreme action. It was torture that radicalized Ayman Zawahiri, now head of Al Qaeda. And it was torture that created the hatred of the Egyptians for the police and underlaid the explosion of public demonstrations against President Mubarak early this year.

The police seem unable to avoid the practice in Egypt. Now that they are back on the streets the Egyptians are at risk of losing much of what they have gained. Here is an article that appeared in the Bikya Masr website on October 28.

Power and torture in Egypt by Desmond Shephard Oct 28

“We are all Khaled Said” turned to “We are all Mina Daniel” and then on Thursday evening Egyptians began the “We are all Essam” campaign after rights activists and NGOs reported 24-year-old Essam Atta was brutally tortured to death by prison guards at Torah prison in Cairo after they discovered a mobile phone SIM card in his cell.

The images of the slain Egyptian sparked a massive outpouring of anger toward the country’s police, who also shot dead a man just outside the capital on Thursday. The police have returned in full force to Egypt and it has left the country on the edge, with calls for demonstrations beginning to foment once more. Calls for a renewal of revolution have been drifting in for the past day. Activists are angry.

The return of the police, which was largely responsible for the murder of over 850 Egyptians during the 18 days of uprising that ousted former President Hosni Mubarak, has shown that they have regained their power over daily life in the country. Random checkpoints, ID checking and detention have once more become the norm on Egypt’s streets.

Essam Atta has become the new Khaled Said – the man who was tortured and murdered in Alexandria in June 2010, who largely began the road to revolution – after he was sodomized by a hose by prison guards, who then tossed his body in front of Cairo’s Qasr el-Aini hospital Thursday evening.

According to the al-Nadeem Center for Rehabilitation and Torture, Essam Atta suffered a severe drop in blood pressure and heart failure after being tortured by police officials at Tora prison.

There have already been over 2,000 “likes” on the We are all Essam Facebook page, showing that Egyptians can mobilize quickly.

What Thursday’s torture of the 24-year-old represents is the power, corruption and torture intrinsically part of the Egyptian police force. On Wednesday, the two officers who killed Khaled Said were handed baffling sentences of 7 years in prison on manslaughter charges. It signalled to many activists that change had not come to Egypt in the 9 months since Mubarak was ousted. Instead, what we are witnessing is the rise of the police yet again in the country, employing the same tactics that left a country angry, fearful and ready for revolution.

The power the police have in this country is hard to deny. They can come into cafes, interrogate anyone at anytime. Videos showing police torture have done much to spur a mindset change in the country, but the reality is that after decades of state television broadcasting horrendous reports on the glories of the police, cracking through the inherent belief in the military and the police is proving difficult.

One Egyptian mother, who had never heard of a blog and didn’t have a Twitter account, when told that a man had been tortured to death by prison guards wouldn’t believe the military would allow such an incident to occur. “The military would never let this happen, I know that because they supported the revolution and are making Egypt great again,” the 33-year-old woman told me.

Public opinion seems to fall into this line of thinking. Talking with people, the online activists appear out of touch with the majority, even as they espouse arguably the truth about Egypt’s current predicament. The vast majority of Egyptians believe the official government stance on a number of issues, including the Maspero massacre on October 9 that saw the armed forces kill 27 people, police violence, torture and murder. The military, and its police arm, have created an almost monopoly on public discourse that despite the handful of activists on online networks, tend to garner the support of the masses.

Torture is not new to Egypt, unfortunately. From Khaled Said to Essam Atta, hundreds of Egyptians have been tortured by police, electrocuted, beaten and killed. The difficulty now facing Egypt is how to respond. Online campaigns are all good and well, but they will not galvanize the public.

Ahmed Maher, a co-founder of the 6th of April Movement, recently said he doesn’t use Twitter because that is not how to reach people. He is right. What is needed, in order to counter the increasing power and monopoly on information in Egypt, is a grassroots campaign that speaks with the people on the abuses that are leaving Egypt in a precarious position less than one month before parliamentary elections are set to begin.

Change can come, but fighting against power and torture in the country continues to prove difficult. In the end, when the rulers of the country had been part of the former regime for nearly two decades, it’s extremely hard to battle against their machine.

Signs of the reconfiguration of the world: China bailing out the Europeans

2011-10-29T08:31:00.002-05:00

The news that the bailout chief of the Europeans has gone to the Chinese for help marks how much has changed in the world. The wealth of the Chinese is indeed sufficient to stabilize the Euro, but if a deal takes place it will signify what seems already to have happened: The Chinese have become far more hegemonic than they even knew, or most of the rest of us have yet recognized. [Click on the title above for a link to the Reuters report]

Americans are now awakening to the status of their country in the world, that it has been a worldwide hegemon, even though the Americans had no such intention. The country simply grew into that role almost unintentionally. It just seemed natural for American companies to reach further out across the globe in search of the things necessary to keep their profits and in effect to keep the country growing. That the consequence of their outreach was to bring ever greater sectors of the globe into a certain kind of relation with the country was hardly noticed, at least as first.

Now that seems to be happening to the Chinese. I understand that the new play Chinglish captures the confused difference between what Americans think of China [= the world's new hegemon] and what the Chinese think of their country [= up-and-coming but far from having arrived]. While the Chinese people have yet to grasp China's position in the world the rest of the world marvels to observe a country of more than a billion people growing at a pace more than three times the pace that America has ever grown. That's the significance of the appeal for China's help by the EU's bailout chief: it foregrounds the sense that China, whatever its intentions, is about to become the world's new hegemon.

[NB China responded that they are not ready to bail out Europe; link here.]

What an ice free Arctic Ocean may mean: New access, more fossil fuels, Russian benefit.

2011-10-20T15:38:00.004-05:00

We continue to believe that changes in the accessibility of places and people affect the course of events in a profound way. This is the significance of Andrew Kramer’s recent article in the New York Times about the opening of the Arctic Ocean to traffic in summer. As the earth warms the ice packs of the Arctic are giving way to melt and new sea lanes are opening up for what appears to be lengthening periods of the year, effectively drawing closer the largest markets of Europe and the Asia-Pacific region. “The voyage from Rotterdam to Yokohama, Japan, via the Northeast Passage, for example, is about 4,450 miles shorter than the currently preferred route through the Suez …” Costs of travel are declining; speed of access has heightened. Already the Norwegians have found it profitable to resume mining iron ore. They now ship ore to China in 21 days versus the 37 days that it used to take via Suez, reducing their costs by $300,000 per trip. It will also enable the exploitation of gas and oil reserves believed to reside in the Arctic sectors of Russia. [For a link to the New York Times article click here.]

The Ecologist has just published [Oct 19, 2011] a notice that “Putin’s Russia will lead a ‘new era of Arctic industrialization,’” in which Tom Levitt claims that “Russia is leading an urgent rush to exploit the Arctic’s oil and gas reserves.” In a recent conference Vladmir Putin indicated that Russia intends develop “offshore oil and gas exploration and drilling, new sea terminals, infrastructure and the promotion of a commercial shipping route through the increasingly ice-free Arctic Seas.” Russia plans to industrialize the Arctic. Putin exposed a hope that the Arctic will supplant the Suez and Panama Canals as the main shipping lanes between Europe and Asia. And of course Putin has designs on the oil and gas reserves believed to lie under the Arctic Sea. These are believed to be huge, possibly as much a 22 percent of the world’s undiscovered fossil fuel reserves. Already 240 billion barrels of oil and oil equivalents (mostly gas) have been found in the region, “a figure almost as much as the entire proven hydrocarbon reserves of Saudi Arabia.”

Within a few years the earth will be smaller, and incalculable amounts of hydrocarbons will be available for a world that seems unable to acquire enough of them – controlled in this case by Putin’s Russia. Who says Russia’s importance is receeding? For a link to the Ecologist article, click here.]
https://picasaweb.google.com/lh/photo/3kIr7CCp87aTL0VKLmjspVBfVN-64xxytUjS6r8grvs?feat=directlink

https://lh4.googleusercontent.com/-B-VH3bVAjvw/TqYUHEZZ68I/AAAAAAAAAYo/xa3bg_aVbK0/h120/arctic-ocean-map.gif

The world stands by while Bahrain crushes its own citizens. What is there to do?

2011-10-19T12:37:00.002-05:00

The outrage of the situation in Bahrain is that the world is standing by, watching the people of that country suffer terrible abuse, without a word. The article below had to be produced without the author's name being revealed because it tells the story of cases of abuse for which there is no justification whatever, anywhere. But the great nations of the world allow it to take place without comment. This is because the US needs to continue its use of the island as a naval base; Saudi Arabia thinks it must prop up this Sunni regime versus its mainly Shia citizenry lest the Shia of Saudi Arabia get similar ideas of expressing dissent; and the Iranians, who claim to care about Shiite minorities elsewhere, dare not provide too much help to the Bahraini Shia lest their own citizens, whose demonstrations they barely quelled in 2009, get even more restive. So the various parties who might have an influence on Bahrain are content with the system in place remaining unchanged.
Of course we are outraged. But what is there to do about it? This is the world we live in, and we despise its many abuses and pious hypocracies. At the same time it all too easy to be self-righteous about it. We all want a better world; we are all against graft and repression and abuse and greed [at least in others]. But its hard to know how to object without simply being unduly pious about it ourselves.
Thankfully, there is someone in Bahrain, who has done something about the abuses there: he/she has told the world what is going on there. But for that person, unlike me, merely to tell the truth as they find it entails a risk to life and limb, even possibly to family. To them we say thanks; and we pray for their welfare. And thanks to Al Jazeera. [Click HERE for a link to the whole article.]

"Two weeks in Bahrain'smilitary courts: The families of six ofthe hundreds of people given long jail sentences speak out about the 'abuse of justice'". Reporterin Bahrain18 Oct 2011

Protests which began in February continue despite the prisonterms handed out by military courts [REUTERS]

Teachers, professors, politicians, doctors, athletes,students and others have all appeared in Bahrain's military courts. In justtwo weeks, 208 people were sentenced or lost appeals, leading to a cumulativetotal of just less than 2,500 years in prison.

Many of those imprisoned took part in massive pro-democracyprotests earlier this year. Others, families say, were in the wrong place atthe wrong time and were targeted by virtue of their religious sect.

One lawyer, who represents dozens of the convicted and whoasked not to be named, told Al Jazeera the total numbers of how many have stoodin front of military courts are not clear - but he estimates at least 600. Wellover 1,000 people have been arrested since the crackdown began, he said.

In an attempt to quell the uprising, the island's rulersinvited Saudi and other Gulf troops to Bahrain in March, and called for athree-month state of emergency, or what it called the "National SafetyLaw".

With the emergency law came the military trials of hundredsof people in "National Safety Courts". According to the lawyer, thecourts were basically military courts, since both judge and general prosecutorwere both drawn from the military judicial system.

Slavery is still widely practiced in the world. And in the US?

2011-10-18T05:50:00.001-05:00

Most of us have assumed that slavery was abolished long ago. Little do we know. Al Jazeera has a special series of programs on slavery. [Click on the title above for a link.] Their programs highlight several kinds of enslavement.

Food chain slaves: They say there are 40,000 slaves in the US today.
Sex slaves: "There are an estimated 1.4 million sex slaves in the world today and international trafficking is on the rise."
Bonded slaves: "a form of slavery that is passed down from one generation to the next."
Child slaves: "There are at least 8.4 million child slaves in the world today, many of them held as forced labour."
Charcoal slaves: " Poverty stricken men from north of Brazil are lured to remote camps where they are used as slave laborers."
Bridal slaves:

India has the world's largest number of slaves, among them an increasing number of women and girls sold into marriage
.
Prison slaves: In Chinese factories.

There is enough here to give a whole course on slavery around the world. Of course there are several useful books on the topic: For instance, Kevin Bales, Disposable People.

China's restrained relation to Pakistan

2011-10-17T15:07:00.000-05:00

Jane Perlez's report on Pakistani-China relations a while back revealed significant dimensions of that relationship that are worth emphasizing [click on the title for a link to the whole article]: Pakistan, for all its potentiality to China, is not yet in a position to be useful to China. Several statements in this text stood out for me:

"Pakistan’s ability to use China to offset its collapsing relations with the United States may be far more limited than it appears, raising the prospect that Pakistan will be left on the world’s periphery once the Americans wind down the war in Afghanistan ..."

"But China’s core interests lie elsewhere — in its competition with the United States and in East Asia, experts say. China has shown little interest in propping up the troubled Pakistani economy, ... [and they] have pulled back on some [projects] as they have come under the threat of terrorism . . . . Last month a large Chinese coal mining company . . . canceled a $19 billion contract in Sindh Province, citing concerns about security, in particular employees’ safety."

The most important concern about insecurity in Pakistan is that it could spill into Xinjiang.

“[I]f it’s not stable [in Pakistan] we can’t keep the peace in Xinjiang.”

And the project in Gwadar has stalled.

The Pakistanis] "asked China to build a naval base at Gwadar, the port on the Arabian Sea where China completed commercial facilities in 2008. [But they were rebuffed.] ... For the moment, China does not see Gwadar as being of much strategic value, . . . Since its completion, the port has become a rusting hulk, a destination to nowhere."

Yes, the original supposition was that it would become a terminal for pipelines from Turkmenistan, via Afghanistan, and possibly from Iran. Events in Afghanistan have precluded that. Even so, it is reasonable to suppose that under different circumstances Gwadar could become vitally important -- an issue to be watched.

The economic downturn: The scale of the loss

2011-10-15T07:20:00.001-05:00

"The crash of September 2008 brought the largest bankruptcies in world history, pushing more than 30 million people into unemployment and bringing many countries to the edge of insolvency. Wall Street turned back the clock to 1929."

The reason?

"A lack of government regulation; easy lending in the US housing market meant anyone could qualify for a home loan with no government regulations in place." [Al Jazeera, 11/15/11] [Click on the title above for a link to the source.]

Iranian Plot or another Lackawanna Misfire?

2011-10-13T08:45:00.004-05:00

The behavior of the Iranians has been so bizarre over the years that scarcely anything that that regime did would surprise, but there is reason to wonder about this new claim that they had hatched a plot to kill the Saudi ambassador in the United States. The central figure in this plot turns out to be “more a stumbling opportunist than a calculating killer” [NYTimes today; click on the title for a link].

The United States has a huge system of surveillance that costs billions of dollars, but for all they do – and they have to be good at what they do – they have been unable to claim many major discoveries. Not to denigrate this history, because most of us agree that such a system is necessary in this complex world. But the man they have accused of plotting to kill a Saudi diplomat? If today’s paper is to be believed, this man can hardly be up to the task that he is accused of. This guy has “left a string of failed businesses and angry creditors in his wake, and an embittered ex-wife who sought a protective order against him. … [he is] perennially disheveled, …and hopelessly disorganized.”

It is hard not to think back to the accusations against the so-called Lackawanna Six, who were shadowed for over a year because they had once been involved in a training camp in Afghanistan; as it happened no evidence of seditious activity was ever found against them. They were however accused when one of them flew to Yemen and announced in a telegram to his friends that he was getting married. To the intelligence community the word “wedding” in the telegram meant he was about to commit a suicide attack. After a national alert the government quietly dropped all charges: It turned out he did get married after all. Suicide? Well, it depends on what you think about marriage [!].

So now we have a 56 year old loser to accuse of a complex potentially heinous crime. Lets hope it turns out better this time.

Addenda on what others say:

How strong is the case against Iran plot suspect?
Jeffrey Toobin 10/14/11
==========
Wagging the Dog with Iran’s Maxwell Smart
by Juan Cole 10/13/2011
================

*Unanswered questions over the alleged Iranian assassination plot*
http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2011/oct/12/unanswered-questions-iranian-ass
assination-plot?newsfeed=true
================
*Iran 'plot' raises unanswered questions*

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-us-canada-15280746

Iranian plot to kill the Saudi ambassador in the US.

2011-10-11T15:54:00.000-05:00

The following announcement is worrying but not greatly surprising. What is surprising is the strange, ignorant, and irrelevant comments that were added to this announcement. [I omit them here.] RLC

US accuses Iran of plotting to kill Saudi ambassador in Washington

By Daniel Strauss - 10/11/11 02:25 PM ET

The U.S. government charged two men with planning to kill the Saudi ambassador to the U.S in a bomb plot sponsored by elements of the Iranian government and carried out by members of a Mexican drug cartel.
Attorney General Eric Holder announced that the two individuals, Manssor Arbabsiar and Gholam Shakuri, were charged with planning to assassinate the Saudi ambassador, Adel al-Jubeir.

“The criminal complaint unsealed today exposes a deadly plot directed by factions of the Iranian government to assassinate a foreign Ambassador on U.S. soil with explosives,” Holder said. “Through the diligent and coordinated efforts of our law enforcement and intelligence agencies, we were able to disrupt this plot before anyone was harmed."
The two were allegedly planning to kill the ambassador with explosives, according to the Department of Justice. Arbabsiar, a naturalized U.S. citizen, was arrested Sept. 29 at New York’s John F. Kennedy International Airport, and is being held without bail. Shakuri, who U.S. officials believe to be a member of the Iranian Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps, remains at large, the department said.
Flanked by FBI Director Robert Mueller, Assistant Attorney General for National Security Lisa Monaco and U.S. Attorney for the Southern District of New York Preet Bharara, Holder said that the two alleged plotters met in Mexico with a Drug Enforcement Administration (DEA) confidential source who has posed as an associate of a violent international drug trafficking cartel.
The DEA informant in Mexico was to be paid $1.5 million for the assassination plot, the criminal complaint alleges.
According to the complaint, Arbabsiar, Shakuri and their Iranian co-conspirators had been plotting to assassinate the Saudi ambassador since spring.
The complaint also says that Arbabsiar met with a DEA informant on May 24 in Mexico to discuss using explosives for the assassination. The source said that he was familiar with C-4 explosives. Arbabsiar reportedly said that the assassination had to happen, regardless of the number of casualties.
When the DEA source noted that others could be killed by the bomb, including U.S. senators, Arbabsiar allegedly dismissed these concerns as “no big deal,” according to the Justice Department.
"They want that guy [the Ambassador] done [killed], if the hundred go with him f**k ‘em," Arbabsiar said according to the complaint.
. . .
—This story was last updated at 4:09 p.m.
For the rest click on the title above.
Read the complaint below:

Source:
http://thehill.com/blogs/blog-briefing-room/news/186765-holder-announces-two-charged-in-plot-to-assissinate-us-ambassador-to-saudi-arabia

A look at Chomsky's critique of the world's elite

2011-10-09T07:20:00.001-05:00

A friend has pointed me to an article by Noam Chomsky that appeared some time ago, which I provide a link to here. I have tended to see Chomsky as further to the left than I am, but the older I get and the more I learn about the world the more I wonder if Chomsky is right. The whole idea that the elites of the world don't really believe in democracy, don't even want democracy, has seemed extreme. But the more I watch the behavior of American political leaders the more I wonder. I am appalled at the way that so many of them protect the rich -- not merely the well-off but the super-super rich. Lately several of our congressmen have shamelessly argued against asking the 1% to pay a higher percentage than the middle class. They are offended the rich might have to pay a premium for the benefits from investing in this country where investments are believed to be safer than elsewhere. It's no surprise that the politicians want to protect their benefactors, their donors, but what astonishes is that they now do it so openly, so blatantly, and without shame.
So I think Chomsky may have been right all along.
Have a look at what he has to say by clicking on the following: http://www.tomdispatch.com/archive/175382/

How the State Department intimidates its own employees

2011-10-08T13:01:00.002-05:00

A recent post by Peter Van Buren on how he has been harassedfor posting a link from his personal blog to a Wikileaks site on the web shouldalarm everyone. There are still, andalways will be, ways of intimidating individuals without breaking the law, andthe treatment of this State Department official is frightening. This kind of behavior, I can believe, mighthave taken place during the George W Bush administration when the whole countrywas punchy about every twitch that could be regarded as a threat to thecountry. But, no, this took place onlyrecently, by officials in the Obama administration, which we had all hopedwould avoid such knee-jerk reactions. Considerthe following:

Van Buren was told that by posting a link to a WikiLeaks document already availableelsewhere on the Web he had essentially disclosed “classified material.”

Thiswas reason to be formally asked if he had “donated any money ... to a forwardmilitary base in

Iraq

.”

Had he “’transferred’classified information” in any other way?

MrVan Buren assumed that there was a subtext to this interrogation: Someone objected to what he had to say in aforthcoming book, We Meant Well:How I Helped Lose the Battle for the Hearts and Minds of the Iraqi People. Whatever the reason it was un-American.

Van Buren is a State Department employee with 23 years ofexperience, and in this interview he was told that for the act of simplylinking to another website he could lose his security clearance, which for himwould of course mean the termination of a career. The agents questioning him even stated that hewas subject to criminal prosecution. Indeedby merely revealing that he was being thus interrogated he could be chargedwith “interfering with a Government investigation.” A report of the interrogation on his blog would be considered “Law Enforcement Sensitive”.

Hmm. This is a free society, right? Not Syria,not Saudi Arabia, not Bahrain, not Iranor North Korea. We think an open society is a good thing. We like the idea of a society in which peopleare free to use the internet. It’s OK even to link to other sites theweb -- because of course they are already there.

[To read the whole story click on http://aep.typepad.com/american_empire_project/2011/09/freedom-isnt-free-at-the-state-department.html#readmore]

The risk of having your own thoughts and opinions in Iran

2011-10-01T05:49:00.000-05:00

I reproduce here an article that appeared in the Egyptian online newspaper Bikya Masr:

Iranian Christian pastor Yousef Nadarkhani to be executed for “apostasy”
Sharifa Ghanem | 30 September 2011

DUBAI: An Iranian Christian pastor is facing possible execution for apostasy, international human rights groups have reported. Yousef Nadarkhani refused to renounce his Christian beliefs and now faces the death penalty.

The 33-year-old appeared at an appeals court on September 25 and reports indicate the court asked him to renounce his faith and “embrace Islam” to avoid execution.

“Iranian authorities should immediately free pastor Yousef Nadarkhani and drop all charges against him,” Human Rights Watch said today.

A Supreme Court ruling in June initially overturned a lower court’s sentence of execution against Nadarkhani, but now rights groups are worried that he could still be executed after refusing to give up his Christian beliefs.

“Iran is one of the very few countries in the 21st century where authorities would drag an individual before a court of law and force him to choose between his faith and his life,”said Joe Stork, deputy Middle East director at Human RightsWatch.

“Nadarkhani should not have to spend one more day in jail, let alone face execution.”

Security forces initially arrested Nadarkhani, a member of the Church of Iran and pastor to a 400-member congregation in the northern city of Rasht, in October 2009.

In November 2010, a lower court sentenced Nadarkhani to death for “apostasy from Islam,” despite the fact that no such crime exists under Iran’s penal code. On September 22, Branch 11 of the Gilan Court of Appeals affirmed Nadarkhani’s death sentence for apostasy, but in June the Supreme Court remanded the case to the lower court for further investigation, ruling that Nadarkhani could not be executed if he had not been a Muslim after the age of maturity – 15 years for boys according to Iranian law – and he repents.

He is currently waiting for the Gilan appeals court to issue its verdict and sentence, and plans to appeal again any death or imprisonment sentence to the Supreme Court.

The Supreme Court rejected arguments that apostasy is not a crime under Iran’s laws simply because it is not codified in the Islamic Penal Code, and held that the crime is recognized in Sharia (Islamic law) and by the founder of the Islamic Republic, Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini.

Nadarkhani’s lawyer told Human Rights Watch that his client converted to Christianity at the age of 19, and that prior to that he did not consider himself a Muslim or an adherent of any religion. The lawyer said the debate surrounding whether Nadarkhani was a Muslim before reaching puberty was also not based in law since apostasy does not exist as an offense in Iran’s Islamic Penal Code.

Since 2009, intelligence and judiciary officials have carried out many arrests against evangelical or Christian converts in Iran. One of their main targets is the Church of Iran, an evangelical congregation with members throughout the country. Earlier in September an appeals court upheld one-year sentences against six members of the Church of Iran who were convicted on charges of “propaganda against the state,” reportedly for proselytizing. Authorities initially threatened to charge the pastor of the Shiraz Church of Iran, Behrouz Sadegh-Khanjani, with apostasy, but dropped the charge.

Officials have also targeted and arrested other evangelical or Protestant groups, including home churches. In December 2010 and January 2011, security forces arrested about 70 Christians reportedly affiliated with evangelical churches.

On July 18, 2010, security forces had arrested 15 Christians in Mashad as they were leaving for a meeting with fellow members in the city of Bojnourd. Authorities rarely charge evangelical Christians with apostasy, and instead rely on more traditional charges such as “acting against the national security,” “propaganda against the regime,” or “insulting Islamic sanctities.” Christian groups claim that authorities have arrested more than 250 Christians throughout Iran between June 2010 and February 2011.

Unlike traditionally recognized Christian minorities in Iran, like Armenians, Assyrians, and Chaldeans, evangelical Christian churches conduct their services in Persian. Authorities accuse them of spreading religious literature in Persian in an attempt to attract Muslims to their faith. In February, Morteza Tamadon, the governor of Tehran province, compared evangelical Christians to Sunni extremists and the Taliban, telling the Islamic Republic News Agency that they were “false, deviant and corrupt cults.” “We have caught the leaders of this movement in Tehran province and numerous others will be arrested in the near future,” he added.

During a visit to Qom in October 2010, the supreme leader, Ayatollah Seyed Ali Khamenei, spoke of the “need to combat false and misleading beliefs,” a reference to evangelical orProtestant churches, the Nematollahi Gonabadi Sufis, and Baha’is. High-level Iranian officials, including leaders of the clerical establishment, have expressed concern at what they see as the rising popularity of non-Muslim faiths or beliefs, especially among youth.

In 2006 President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad empowered the General Cultural Council to implement policies aimed at confronting “deviant groups,” especially those of a spiritual or religious nature. The General Cultural Council is an arm of the Supreme Council of the Cultural Revolution, an executive agency charged with promulgating regulations in public sector employment and education.

International law strictly prohibits discrimination and persecution based on religion. Article 18(2) of the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights (ICCPR), ratified by Iran, states: “No one shall be subject to coercion which would impair his freedom to have or to adopt a religion or belief of his choice.” Article 27 of the ICCPR says that members of religious minorities shall not be denied the right to profess and practice their own religion.

Article 13 of Iran’s constitution recognizes Christianity as a protected minority religion, and article 14 provides that “all Muslims are duty-bound to treat non-Muslims in conformity with ethical norms and the principles of Islamic justice and equity, and to respect their human rights.” Article 16 guarantees freedom of association for religious societies.

“Both international and Iranian law require Iranian officials to safeguard the equality and human rights of all Christians, regardless of whether they are historic communities such as the Armenians, Assyrians, and Chaldeans, or Christian converts,” Stork said.

Related posts:
Iranian rights groups demand moratorium on executions
Iranian diplomat detained in Cairo to be expelled
Iranian Baha’i leaders hit by ‘vindictive’ sentence extension
Iranian woman on death row still being investigated
Heavy sentences against jailed Iranian Baha’i leaders

Is The Democracy Sought in the Middle East Being Abandoned in the Neo-liberal World? Corrected version

2011-09-28T13:17:00.008-05:00

At the very time that the societies of the Middle East are crying out for democracy many folks in the the neo-liberal societies of the world are losing faith in the democratic process.

A recent poll in the United States indicates that many Americans are dissatisfied with the way their democratic system is working.

A CNN/ORC International Poll released Wednesday morning indicates that only 15 percent of Americans say they trust the government in Washington to do what’s right just about always or most of the time. Last September that figure was at 25 percent. Seventy-seven percent of people questioned say they trust the federal government only some of the time, and an additional eight percent volunteer that they never trust the government to do what’s right. [from firedoglake.com]

And today's New York Times says that folks in other "democratic" societies are also dissatisfied.
In India, Israel, Spain, Greece and elsewhere there is a deep frustration with the failures of the democratic system to satisfy public needs, especially the need for adequate employment opportunities.

The Times reports that

complaints range from corruption to lack of affordable housing and joblessness, common grievances the world over. But from South Asia to the heartland of Europe and now even to Wall Street, these protesters share something else: wariness, even contempt, toward traditional politicians and the democratic political process they preside over.

They are taking to the streets, in part, because they have little faith in the ballot box.

“Our parents are grateful because they’re voting,” said Marta Solanas, 27, referring to older Spaniards’ decades spent under the Franco dictatorship. “We’re the first generation to say that voting is worthless.”

We are living in fluid times, when the certainties of the past are ever more questioned, and the familiar conventions of social life being challenged. Such fluidity fosters uncertainty, insecurity, on many levels of society. It is easy -- from my position -- to see why Americans are frustrated, but the question is "What is to be done"?

Demands for social justice, for better opportunities, for "freedom", don't always produce such conditions. In the past there have been many social movements calling for more justice and more freedom. But how many of them have yielded positive transformations? Not many. And those, such as took place in the Americas, developed in fields of opportunity that will never exist again.

The Neo-liberal "democracy" of this country has failed to cope with the demands of our times. Our duly elected representatives have on many crucial issues been unable to act in the best interests of those who elected them, apparently because powerful moneyed interests have found ways to intervene in the process.

Addendum and correction to the earlier draft:
The sources mentioned above stress that the move in both contexts -- the Arab Middle East and in the neo-liberal countries -- the hope is to develop something that resembles a more open system of the sort enabled by the web.

Increasingly, citizens of all ages, but particularly the young, are rejecting conventional structures like parties and trade unions in favor of a less hierarchical, more participatory system modeled in many ways on the culture of the Web.

In that sense, the protest movements in democracies are not altogether unlike those that have rocked authoritarian governments this year, toppling longtime leaders in Tunisia, Egypt and Libya. Protesters have created their own political space online that is chilly, sometimes openly hostile, toward traditional institutions of the elite.

My concern is how such a system should be enabled. It would seem that in the American context there might need to be revisions in the constitution as well as the standing laws. What would have to happen for such a change in the system to take place?

The hope is to develop a better "democracy". Certainly if democracy fails, it is hard to envision a better system. I still wonder: What can be done? In the mean time what will happen to the calls for justice and equality in the Middle East? Will the cry for help by the young Yemeni woman that was featured on the previous post be left unanswered? So far it has not.

A Cry of the Heart from Yemen

2011-09-26T12:55:00.004-05:00

So much has been happening in the Middle East and Central Asia -- and I have shared none of it here.

Certainly, the world needs to hear this cry of the heart from Yemen. Click on the title to hear a voice of desperation from Yemen.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_uUrvrLEloc&feature=player_embedded

Is the American Ambassador listening? Who is listening? Will no one listen?

And from Syria: Still, people are going out on the street to challenge an army that has made sure that it has a reputation for brutality against its own citizens -- and Bashir Assad wants his country to be regarded as civilized.

Who else feels helpless and ashamed that there is no help for such earnest youthful voices? Is that the best the world can do for them? All I know to do is pray.

Al Jazeera: From destructive raids by officials in Egypt to rejection at a Texas football game

2011-09-13T07:11:00.001-05:00

The offices of Al Jazeera were wrecked by “officials” in Egypt the other day because they were showing too much about what was happening there. And in Texas an Al Jazeera reporter was denied the privilege of interviewing patrons at a high-school football game because it was “too dangerous.” Gabriel Elizondo is a reporter for Al Jazeera. Here is what he says about it.

This is what Elizondo has to say about his experience. [Click on the title above for a link to the whole article.]

....
He then said something I could not entirely make out, because his voice sort of quivered from a combination of being obviously furious and nervous at the same time.
But I am pretty sure he said:
“I think it was damn rotten what they did.”
“I am sorry, what who did?” I say, not sure exactly if he was calling me rotten, the terrorists rotten, Al Jazeera rotten, or all of the above.
“The people that did this to us,” he says back to me with a smirk, still glaring uncomfortably straight at my eyes.
“Well, I think it was bad too,” I say. “Well, do you think, sir, we can film a bit of the game and talk to some people here about just that?”
“No. You can’t film, you can’t take pictures, or interview people.”
“OK, can I ask why? And if you allow me can I explain…”
Cut off.
“No, I just expect that you will respect it.”
Clearly he didn’t want to hear anything from me.
Al Jazeera is not welcome here.

Mr Lee’s response:
http://www.bookerisd.net/index.htm

The way Egyptian officials honor Al Jazeera: Raid their offices

2011-09-12T19:34:00.003-05:00

Al Jazeera has become one of the most valuable sources of information on what's going on in the Middle East. One wonders if the "Arab Spring" could have taken place without the involvement of the media to broadcast what was going on. Al Jazeera was crucial. But publishing what was happening in the Arab world -- what was really happening -- made Al Jazeera unpopular.

That the Egyptian government has had no use for Al Jazeera is no surprise. New York Times describes Al Jazeera as "known for attentive coverage of street protests" and "known for its attentive, if not sensational, coverage of street protests, including the Israeli Embassy attack on Friday." And for reporting on the attack on the Israeli embassy the other day they were raided by "officials" {not thugs?}. Here is what The Times has to say about this affair:

"The raid also came after a warning last week by Egypt’s minister of media, Osama Heikal, that the government would take legal action against stations that “endanger the stability and security” of the nation, and some analysts said they feared the raid could signal a broader effort to curtail the new freedoms of expression experienced since the uprising that ousted former President Hosni Mubarak this year.

"The network, Al Jazeera Live Egypt, was founded in the aftermath of the uprising and has become known for its attentive, if not sensational, coverage of street protests, including the Israeli Embassy attack on Friday. The raid forced the network to halt its programming for a period before it resumed broadcasting from Al Jazeera’s headquarters in Doha, Qatar.

"Officials of the Interior Ministry said they had raided the network because it lacked a license, and that neighbors had complained about noise. ... But Islam Lotfy, a lawyer for the channel, said the channel had applied for a license in March without a response."

The raid took form as "officers in plain clothes" entering "without showing a warrant or identifying themselves." They "confiscated equipment and arrested an engineer operating it."

But the response of manager of the television channel had an eminently quotable response to all this: “If broadcasting the truth is considered endangering stability,” he said, “then it is an honor for any media outlet to be endangering stability.”

What's being drowned out of the news: Flooding in Pakistan again

2011-09-10T06:53:00.003-05:00

It’s surprising what doesn’t get reported in the news. The case at this moment that strikes me is the flooding in Pakistan. Again the people of Pakistan have to bear flooding -- on top of the suicide bombing, the corruption, the indifference of their own government to their needs, the failure of the education system, etc. etc. The Pakistani folks deserve better leadership. The comparison with what's happening in India displays in stark economic numbers how much Pakistan has suffered because of the narrow-focused military leadership that has controlled politics in the country. In so many ways, Pakistan illustrates how important good leadership matters.

But today's news is what may be called a natural disaster because of the flooding, but as others have pointed out "natural disasters" are actually rarely "natural": Much has to do with the human preparedness for events like this. For this is a repeat of the flooding last year, when the government failed to provide much help to those most affected. Now the numbers are growing.

Here are some details from today’s article in Al Jazeera [“Anger grows over Pakistan flood relief: Rescue efforts after heavy flooding in Sindh province still hampered by bad weather, as 132 deaths reported.” Al Jazeera 10 Sep 2011 06:59].

• A least five million people in Sindh and Baluchisntan provinces have been affected by the monsoon rains.
• About 900 villages have been submerged and about 100,000 homes have been completely destroyed.
• About 200,000 people have turned to relief camps.
• The worst-hit districts are in Sindh and Baluchistan.
• Residents in the area were in desperate need of assistance, asking for food, drinking water and shelter. "We have lost our homes, our belongings, and our lifestock. No one is here to help us, the government is not worried about us," said one person.
• It’s still raining in Sindh. According to one official, "most people have been rescued. There are a few, unfortunately, who want to stay on their own lands. But we are trying to bring rescue to their doorsteps…”
• The flooding has also caused tremendous damage to Pakistani crops during the harvesting. ... up to 13 per cent of the country's estimated crop may have been lost.
• In the "most fertile part of the province [Sindh]” … more than 80 per cent of the cotton crop has been destroyed.
• "60,000 cattle have gone, drowned and dead.” [In Sindh]
• Last year, about 20 million people were directly affected by the worst floods in the country's history. About 2,000 people were killed in the disaster. Now we have another year of it.
• One year after the floods, more than 800,000 families remained without permanent shelter and more than a million people remained in need of food assistance.

Link to the original article here:
Anger grows over Pakistan flood relief - Central & South Asia - Al Jazeera English

Surprising civility among the victors in Libya

2011-09-08T20:05:00.001-05:00

The situation in Libya seems to be taking on qualities most of us didn’t expect. I have supposed that the opposition that came together to fight Ghaddafi’s loyalist forces was a rag-tag collection of volunteers whose only commonality was a hatred of the Colonel. That they, or at least a number of them, had a fair sense of what they wanted the next society to look like was beyond our expectations. We didn’t expect that the opposition fighters would have much of a sense of what to do next – that is, how to establish and observe an organized social order. To the contrary, Nicholas Kristof’s op-ed today [NYTimes 9/8/11] suggests that at least some of the fighters have a reasonable sense of how a society should be operating in the absence of hostilities. He indicates that the people he encountered were already acting as if they were part of an ordered society. No looting – well, limited looting. That’s a surprise. Reasonable treatment of civilians connected with the losing side – this also is surprising. Compared to the way folks behaved in Iraq after Saddam was deposed these Libyan rebels have displayed exemplary courtesy to the losers in this war. Note especially the following statements:

• What’s particularly impressive is the paucity of revenge killings and looting in Tripoli, the capital. There have been a few incidents in which rebel soldiers apparently executed prisoners, and black Africans have been treated abysmally (they are accused of being mercenaries for Col. Muammar el-Qaddafi). But the Libyans who served in that hated regime mostly have not been molested.

• I saw many Libyans fleeing for Tunisia, and, presumably, many of them were Qaddafi loyalists. But rebels did not hinder them at checkpoints or pilfer their belongings. And, as far as I could tell, the homes and luxury vehicles the loyalists left behind have been mostly untouched by neighbors and rebels alike.

• I went through dozens of armed rebel checkpoints and was never once asked for a “baksheesh,” meaning bribe or gift.

• Very few of the rebel leaders have been associated with Islamic fundamentalism. One exception is Abdel Hakim Belhaj, a military commander in Tripoli, who says he was tortured by the C.I.A. in 2004. Yet he told my Times colleague Rod Nordland that all is forgiven and that he appreciates the American role in the Libyan revolution.

• The mood in Tripoli seems largely tolerant and forgiving, and exuberant about the prospect of democracy. “We are free now,” an engineer named Belgassim Ali told me. “Make a newspaper to support Qaddafi; I don’t mind. But no dictatorship!”

• The rebels have coordinated disparate fighting units and have tried to arrange the surrender of holdout towns like Surt, Colonel Qaddafi’s hometown, rather than just marching in with guns blazing.

Of course the observations of one person are insufficient to draw generalizations from, but Kristof’s report suggests that these “rebels” are much more prepared to put together a working society than most of us had imagined.

South China Sea as the emerging center of gravity?

2011-09-08T09:43:00.000-05:00

In a recent article in Foreign Policy Magazine (Sept/Oct, 2011) Robert D. Kaplan has argued that the Western Pacific is becoming the world’s new center of naval activity, specifically the South China Sea. Here are some of the assertions in the article:
• East Asia is the center of global manufacturing.
• More than half the world’s merchant fleet tonnage passes through the choke points leading westward from the South China Sea to the Indian Ocean
• A third of all maritime traffic passes through these choke points.
• Oil from the Indian Ocean passes through the strait of Malacca is more than six times the amount passing through Suez and seventeen times that through Panama Canal.
• About two thirds of Koreas energy supplies pass through the South China Sea; and 60% of Japans; 60% of Taiwan’s; 80% of China’s crude oil imports come through that choke point.
• South China Sea has 7 billion barrels of proven oil reserves and an estimated 900 trillion cubic feet of natural gas.
• All the nine states that touch the South China Sea are necessarily arrayed against China and therefore inclined to US.
• Energy consumption in Asia will double by 2030.
• South China Sea has become an “armed camp”: China has claimed 12 geographic features; Taiwan one; Vitname 25; Philippines 8; Malaysia 5.
• Defense budgets of Southeast Asian states have increased over the last decade while they have declined in the west: Since 2000 Indonesia has increased 84%, Singapore up 146%; Malaysia up 722%.
• Vietnam has spent 2 billion on Russian submarines and 1 Billion on jet planes.
• Military power has shifted from Europe to Asia “quietly”.
All this makes us wonder: How perceptive are we of the changes taking place in our time? It’s not easy to track shifts in power relationships, taking “power” here to mean military power, and even possibly industrial power. I don’t know Kaplan is right but I do take note of the some of the specific details he musters to develop his point: Shifts in leverage and military capability matter – especially in the long run.

Friedman said it plainly: Why our budget is in the red

2011-09-07T19:39:00.000-05:00

Tom Friedman's op-ed piece today [New York Times "The Whole Truth and Nothing But"] says a number of things that need to be said even though in fact they are obvious. The politicians seem unable to say the obvious, the truth. But what I liked was the following succinct formulation of the problem.

Why has this been a lost decade? An answer can be found in one simple comparison: How Dwight Eisenhower and his successors used the cold war and how George W. Bush used 9/11. America had to face down the Russians in the cold war. America had to respond to 9/11 and the threat of Al Qaeda. But the critical difference between the two was this: Beginning with Eisenhower and continuing to some degree with every cold war president, we used the cold war and the Russian threat as a reason and motivator to do big, hard things together at home — to do nation-building in America. We used it to build the interstate highway system, put a man on the moon, push out the boundaries of science, teach new languages, maintain fiscal discipline and, when needed, raise taxes. We won the cold war with collective action.
George W. Bush did the opposite. He used 9/11 as an excuse to lower taxes, to start two wars that — for the first time in our history — were not paid for by tax increases, and to create a costly new entitlement in Medicare prescription drugs.

The reason politicians can get away with such much verbiage and so little information is that the public member is so short. There is no longer any mention that Bill Clinton left office with a budget surplus. The claim that both parties have contributed to the debt problem we have now is obvious but it conceals a critical reality: The administration of George W. Bush effective wiped out all surplus and -- according to a source quoted elsewhere on this page -- borrowed more money than all the presidents before him combined. {I have not checked this out; there should be a way to do it and I will try to get it done.]

Anyway, it's a reality that needs to be faced if wise decisions are now made in choosing the next body of leaders to take us out of this mess.

Field of Hope - where rape is a daily way of life

2011-09-06T05:14:00.002-05:00

Rape in Congo takes place in unbelievable numbers every day. It is hard to internalize what is going on. According to one source, a film on Congo rape, some fighters in the Congo believe they cannot succeed in a battle if they have not just raped a woman successfully. The world they and their women live in is terrifying, violent, cruel. So consider the courage and dedication of a woman that would undertake to help these women recover. Thanks to Al Jazeera for making this available to us.

Field of Hope - Witness - Al Jazeera English

Syria's sign language: Imprinted on the hands of cartoonist Ali Ferzat

2011-08-28T08:33:00.001-05:00

Only human beings kill and maim each other over scratches on a page. Most people in the west think it is bizarre that some radical Muslims want to kill anyone who has tried to draw Muhammad in a cartoon. Now we hear that the Syrian government has maimed a man who has lately been publishing his cartoons on his own website. Such is the terror of a government over images. The incident reveals how powerful and how dependent we are on the imagination. It takes imagination to "read" into scratches on the page a conception of something abstract, especially to see in the drawings of Ali Ferzat images of the Syrian dictatorship. He has drawn a picture of President Assad of Syria trying to hitch a ride with Muammar Ghaddafi as he frantically flees his own rebellious citizens; and of Assad offering tea to a man who is meanwhile being beaten in his feet. It take imagination to grasp the irony of these images but once we know the context we all get it immediately. This is how human society is enabled, through representations -- images, sounds in speech, gestures -- to which we impute connection with things of another order. I know of a situation in which a simple note on a door led to a fist fight between famous scholars.

All this seems perhaps unduly academic. However it works, this is the stuff of the human imagination. And how it works in the intersubjective world of human interaction is one of the most interesting and challenging intellectual pursuits. Unfortunately, contrary to what some people suppose, it leads us to inquire into the conflicts that so broadly characterize the human condition. It leads us to take note of how materially and painfully real are the wounds of Ali Ferzat even if they are powerfully symbolic. Those broken hands "say" to the rest of the people of Syria "Don't mess with this government", "Don't represent this government as disingenuous," "Don't suggest that this government is repressive" [even if everyone in the country knows otherwise]. What must be fully understood -- that this is a repressive regime -- must not be expressed in word or image. Ferzat had his canvas; the government has another: the bodies of citizens. And both tell a story.

The power of the moral imagination.

[Here is a link to the original article in Al Jazeera on Ferzat, with a video]

US condemns Syria political cartoonist attack - Middle East - Al Jazeera English

Portrait of a hedonist; the fruit of Ghaddafi's profligacy

2011-08-28T03:10:00.000-05:00

Nick Meo’s portrait of Mutassim Gaddafi [in today's Telegraph], the son of the dictator in Libya, is sobering. Here is a personality whose life of privilege has deprived him of the ability to appreciate the how much he has enjoyed all his life, to the point where he has scarce respect for the humanity around him, especially for those who serve him. The sense of a person who lives in a bubble of privilege pervades this whole article. As he entertained his guest he displayed a pathetic ignorance of what was actually happening in the world barely outside his door, a popular movement of rebels who hated him and his father and were bent on overwhelming the regime. The article for some of us is a revelation: Could this be the way the upper 1% is able to live these days?: glamorous guests, dinner parties with eminent social figures (Princesses), annual excursions to the Caribbean via a private Boeing jet, hundreds of guests completely provided for in the most expensive hotels, the finest Italian hairdressers flown in for an affair, etc. And in order to remove him, to bring him into the real world, to experience what life is like for the people whom he seems to despise, how many will have to die?

Mutassim Gaddafi's girlfriend tells of the final days of Libyan regime: Mutassim Gaddafi's former girlfriend, Dutch glamour model Talitha van Zon, talks to Nick Meo about the dying days of the Gaddafi regime.

By Nick Meo, Tripoli6:00AM BST 28 Aug 2011
Filipino servants wearing spotless white jackets mixed his favourite Jack Daniels whisky and coke, and then Mutassim Gaddafi raised his glass and toasted the victory that he was sure was close.
Relaxing in one of his Tripoli homes just over a week ago, during a break from commanding at the front, the fifth son of Libya's ruler was in a defiant mood. Soon, he boasted to the blonde foreigner sitting with him, he would lead his father's regime to a victory over the "rats".
The woman at his side was Mutassim's ex-girlfriend Talitha van Zon, a Dutch glamour model who still regularly visited him in the Libyan capital.
Her most recent trip, however, proved to be a far cry from the luxury break she was used to - as the Libyan regime crumbled last week and her male companion took flight, she endured several days of utter terror as battles raged around her five star hotel.
On Wednesday, The Sunday Telegraph found her alone and frightened in a Tripoli hospital ward, where she was being treated for injuries after leaping from a hotel balcony - apparently fearful that a group of rebels were about to burn her alive.

Before she was evacuated from the city by a humanitarian ship to Malta on Friday, though, she gave an extraordinary account of the final days of the Gaddafi regime - an insight into a family who will fight to the death and destroy their country before they give up power.

"I was shocked when I met Mutassim. He had changed," said Miss van Zon. "It was the first time I had seen him since just before the February uprising. He had a beard, he was sitting on a couch strewn with automatic weapons, and he was guarded by unsmiling 16-year-old boys with sub-machine guns." On the wall behind was a huge portrait of his father, Muammar Gaddafi.

... A former Playboy centrefold, Miss van Zon met Mutassim in an Italian nightclub in 2004, kindling a three-month relationship that ended when she learned that she "was not the only woman in his life". ... she was drawn into a fabulous private world of luxury, showered with gifts and invited to some of the world's most exclusive destinations. In Monaco she was taken to the Grand Prix and a dinner party attended by Princess Caroline. At Christmas, there was Mutassim's annual excursion to the Caribbean island of Saint Barts, with his entourage flown there in his private Boeing. When Mutassim was in Paris or London he would book several floors of the most expensive hotels, filling them with his friends, and the finest Italian hairdressers would be flown in from Italy, at a cost of 5,000 euros per time. "I asked him once how much he spent, and he took a minute to add it up in his head," Miss van Zon recalled. "He said 'about $2 million'. I said 'you mean a year?' He said 'no – a month'."

... "Of course I knew that it was not right to spend so much money like that," she said. "I asked him many times about the welfare of the Libyan people, and he said the schools and hospitals were free, that rice and flour were cheap. It was hard for me to judge life in Libya for ordinary people – I was always staying in a gilded cage when I visited. They looked happy enough."

She did, though, see occasional flashes of temper, in particular on one occasion where a servant had brought in a meal that was cold.

"He shouted at the guy and threw plates on the floor. He put that guy like a dog in a corner and then he demanded that he eat the whole lot, there in front of us. It was humiliating. I never saw the servant again, and I don't know what happened to him.
...

The hedonist son also had ambitions for power, inspired by his father's example. "He worshipped his father," Miss Van Zon said. "He talked a lot about Hitler, Fidel Castro, Hugo Chavez. He liked leaders who had a lot of power. He always said 'I want to do better than my father'."

[Click on the title above for a link to the original article.]

A prognosis for the future, from Australia

2011-08-21T15:48:00.001-05:00

Greg Sheridan has an interesting, though risky article, in The Australian [August 20, 2011] --risky because he presumes to predict the future, which of course is why the effort is interesting. He opens with the maxim "You rarely go wrong predicting trouble ahead (and if you do, few remember it anyway)". And indeed he sees things going wrong in the future -- that much is easy. You want to look at the whole thing [click on the title for a direct link to the original], but you should note some of his guesses:

> 2012 will be a particularly dangerous and conflict-prone year [because of] the forthcoming US presidential election, because the US budget is broke and because US leadership looks weak and "uncertain." The problem with the US budget, he says, is not foreign commitments but "the massive bailouts it undertook in response to the global financial crisis; the huge stimulus spending it has undertaken since; the prolonged slowdown in economic growth; and the inexorable rise of social entitlements spending." [Does anyone else think it is strange that he omits the unnecessary Iraq war and the huge giveaway to the super-rich in what Bush W called a "tax break for the middle class"?]

> The US will be unwilling to spend substantial amounts of money on any new commitments. And there will be a move to bring troops home [again, no surprise].

> North Korea will be a major pain because they will test another nuclear weapon in 2012. "The North Koreans want to be a fully capable nuclear weapons state, a status they will never give up once they acquire it. But they still think they might do a profitable deal with the Americans. This would involve the US paying the North Koreans not to export nuclear technology. They are likely to make some kind of deal but as before break it.

> Iran is trying to project its interests in the maelstrom in the Arab Middle East. Iran will not want the Americans to have an elegant or successful departure from Iraq and will work to ensure that either the US leaves Iraq in ignominy or stays in agony. This means increased attacks on Americans in Iraq, many sponsored by Iran.

> Afghanistan is supposed to be vacated by the US by 2014, but there is no chance of the US-led coalition force achieving its intended goals of establishing democracy there, or the rule of law "broadly secular". He asks whether the US will continue to pay for the Afghan army and whether it will keep 10,000 or so troops, perhaps special forces, in Afghanistan to ensure the survival of the government in Kabul and undertake some specific missions. [I'm not sure why he asks; there is no doubt the US will stay in many unspecified ways, including those he mentions.]

> He is correct that the Pushtuns of FATA will continue to resist the American presence in their area.

> In Afghanistan / Pakistan he predicts increased Taliban attacks; increased challenges to the Pakistan state by Pakistani radicals; and a continued effort by Pakistan to keep the pot simmering in order to keep the flow of US aid.

> China is the other factor. Sheridan specifically mentions the Chinese navy which is involved in "a continual series of maritime provocations in the South China Sea and the waters to its north." Strangely, he makes no mention of China's rising presence in the Indian Ocean. IN any case he expects a serious incident at sea.

> And of course there will be an election in 2012 -- that will produce enough fire and brimstone to keep the year interesting.

NB: The trends in Pakistan: population, resources, and public opinion

2011-08-20T20:39:00.001-05:00

I have just finished reading Bruce Riedel's Deadly Embrace: Pakistan, America, and the Future of Global Jihad [D.C.: Brookings] and as usual the more detail I get on Pakistan the more I wonder about the future for that country. I keep hoping for signs that the plethora of dilemmas there are being resolved before they spin completely out of control. But I find it hard not to despair the more I think I know about it.

Here are some statistics that Riedel provides on the country. Consider the trends these numbers represent: are they not reason for alarm? [from Riedel 2011: 120+]

On population
> 53.8% of Pakistanis are under the age of 19.
> 37.7 % of Pakistanis are between the ages of 20 and 39
> At the current rate of fertility in Pakistan the population will reach 460 million by 2025.
> By 2050 Pakistan will be more populous than Indonesia.

On resources
> Probably for reasons of the population growth, per capita water availability between 1951 and 2007 declined from 5,000 to 1100; by 2025 the number will drop to 700.
> This decline could become worse if the warming of the earth cuts the amount of flow from the Himalaya glaciers. I am told that the decline is already measurable.

So, some problems:

What are the prospects for employment of this young population in Pakistan these days? Or in the next ten years? [So far, one of the main paying jobs for young men is jihad.]

And, if the current situation remains so conflicted, what are the prospects for resolving them when the population has doubled? Or tripled?

And then there are the conditions of popular opinion, which has been profoundly influenced by the Pakistani military.

> More than two-thirds of Pakistanis have a negative view of the United States.
> 90% of Pakistanis believe the U. S. wants to weaken the world-wide Muslim community.
> Half of the Pakistanis believe the US is Pakistan’s greatest danger [greater than India].
> Only 11% regard the Taliban and Al Qaeda as its greatest danger.
> 79% of Pakistanis have a favorable view of China.

Note the reaction to the Kerry-Lugar legislation of 2009 that tripled aid to Pakistan: “Pakistanis almost universally denounced it.” [p123] Most of the editorials were against it -- and most of them “were orchestrated by [Gen] Kayani, Chief of the army, and the ISI… " Such are America's colleagues in the attempt to stabilize Afghanistan and crush Al Qaeda and the Taliban.

So it is crucial that our leadership take further steps to reach the Pakistanis people and help them work through the substantial challenges that lay ahead.

Gangs fighting in Karachi over drugs and patronage?

2011-08-19T05:51:00.002-05:00

Bombs going off in Kabul today, and in Khybar agency. And signs of a major turf war in Pakistan. There are many law-abiding people in Pakistan and Afghanistan, but it is hard to envision the many internal issues getting resolved very soon. Below are some excepts from today's Al Jazeera on the fighting in Karachi. Note that drugs are involved and political patronage. Does this imply that the drug industry in Pakistan and the political patronage system are connected?

Maybe we should be surprised, but we are not. Most of us cannot remember that there was a similar article last Aug 2, in which there was the statement:
> Over the years, criminal gangs have been used by political parties in a city-wide war for influence in Karachi, which contributes about two-third of Pakistan's tax revenue.
Below are selected statements from the article in Al Jazeera. [click on the title for a link to the source article.] RLC

Karachi violence claims more lives: Escalating gang violence in Pakistani port city claims lives of at least 37 people in past 24 hours.

At least 37 people have been killed in Karachi in the past 24 hours in another outbreak of gang-related violence that has claimed hundreds of lives in Pakistan's commercial capital and main port city.

… spats between rival gangs have intensified in recent weeks.

… a senior leader of Pakistan's ruling Pakistan People's Party (PPP), was among those killed on Wednesday, ….

...The attacks happened as Karachi's main party, the MQM, said it was rejoining the national PPP-led coalition government.

"Most of the killings have resulted from clashes between criminal gangs …,".
"It's not the kind of fighting that we saw last month; this is more of a gang war."
But police said turf wars between gangs dealing in drugs and extortion rackets were by no means a new development in Lyari.

"These gangs regularly clash and kill members and supporters of rival groups," ….
…. the killings were directly related to gang warfare conducted with the patronage of the country's political elite. ...

Security officials say this is because the killers are being protected by senior politicians.

They say the violence is being used to stoke recently ignited ethnic passions both for political gains and as a means by criminal gangs to fight turf wars behind the facade of political activism.
"Everything boils down to politics," said Hyder.

A city of more than 18 million, Karachi has a long history of violence, and ethnic, religious and sectarian disputes and political rows can often explode into battles engulfing entire neighbourhoods.
….

About 300 people were killed in July, making it one of the most deadliest months in almost two decades. Human rights groups say 800 have been killed since the start of the year.

A tribute to Ehsan Yarshater

2011-08-13T20:54:00.001-05:00

A great tribute to Ehsan Yarshater has appeared in the New York Times today. It is refreshing to see that a popular news source would celebrate the life-absorbing project of a serious and dedicated scholar. Patricia Cohen, the author, has recognized not only the significance of Yarshater’s project – to produce a comprehensive Encyclopedia of Iran – but also the example that he provides of what a life of scholarly commitment consists of. I have never met Yarshater but I have been aware of his work, and have already been mining the Encyclopedia for nuggets available nowhere else. It is worth remembering that for Yarshater “Iran” can include a wide swath of territory, depending on the time, as Persians have had an influence on affairs in virtually all the land between the Mediterranean Sea and the Ganges and from the Aral Sea to the Indian Ocean. This is truly a grand project.
In some university settings professors are obliged to think primarily about getting published early and often in order to gain tenure, a practice that tends to force the grand projects into a distant future. Yarshater has demonstrated that a major enterprise like his, spanning many years, can bring forth a distinctive scholarly resource that will be appreciated for decades. Thanks to the work of Ms. Cohen we are reminded that a few great visionaries in the scholarly world still exist. RLC

New York Times August 12, 2011
A Lifetime Quest to Finish a Monumental Encyclopedia of Iran
By PATRICIA COHEN
Ralph Ellison wrote for 40 years without finishing his novel “Juneteenth.” Antoni Gaudí labored 43 years on the Sagrada Família basilica in Barcelona, but construction continues today. And in the annals of grand quixotica, Ehsan Yarshater also deserves a prominent chapter.
At 53, he embarked on his magnum opus, a definitive encyclopedia of Iranian history and culture. At 75, he started looking for a successor. He didn’t find one so he kept going himself. Now he’s 91. He’s up to “K.”
“My mission is to finish the encyclopedia,” he said recently from his office at Columbia University’s Center for Iranian Studies. He knows he won’t be able to do it personally, especially since the task keeps expanding as progress is made. There are topics to be added and entries to be updated. So Mr. Yarshater has tried to make sure the work will continue by establishing a private foundation with a $12 million endowment and finally choosing three scholars to replace him as general editor.
The sheer ambition of Mr. Yarshater’s vision is daunting. With money from the National Endowment for the Humanities, he has worked to create the most comprehensive account of several millenniums of Iranian history, language and culture in the Middle East, the Indian subcontinent and Central Asia.
“There is nothing like it” in scope or quality, said Ali Banuazizi, a professor at Boston College and a former president of the Middle East Studies Association of North America.
Unlike a conventional encyclopedia, which briefly summarizes existing knowledge, Mr. Yarshater’s work, Encyclopedia Iranica, is producing original scholarship. “Most of the articles require research,” said Mr. Banuazizi, because they are topics no one has studied in much depth.
Mr. Yarshater has raised the bar further. “Our aim is that for each subject,” he said, “we should find the best person in the entire world.” With that in mind, he has been searching two and a half years for an expert to write about Sirjan and Rafsanjan, townships in the south of Iran.
Mr. Yarshater has not been back to Iran in 32 years, ever since the Ayatollah Khomeini overthrew the Shah of Iran and established an Islamic republic in 1979. “The encyclopedia’s impartiality does not please the current Persian government,” Mr. Yarshater said in a low, breathy voice. A troublesome tremor that started in his hand several years ago has moved to his knees and vocal cords, slowing him down and compelling him to use an assistant. But otherwise he feels healthy. “My immune system is excellent,” he boasted.
For years Mr. Yarshater’s routine was to work late into the night, coming home only when his wife walked down the hallway from their apartment to the Iranian center to fetch him. “I don’t know many wives who would tolerate that,” he said appreciatively. (She died in 1999; the couple had no children.)
“I’ve seen him work 12 hours without a break,” said Ahmad Karimi-Hakkak,director of the Center for Persian Studies at the University of Maryland, who has known Mr. Yarshater for more than 40 years. He remembers a visit when Mr. Yarshater stayed up until 3 a.m. editing. Three hours later, he was in the shower, getting ready to return to work.
Mr. Yarshater expects others to have equal enthusiasm for the task. It took him 17 years to choose his replacements, rejecting one potential successor when he concluded that the man was “too concerned about the number of holidays he could take and the number of hours he would work.”
Now Mr. Yarshater works only until 9 p.m., staying long after his colleagues have turned off their lights. When he returns home, he indulges in his latest hobby: learning Russian.
The 1,480 contributors from around the world who, so far, have composed 6,500 entries are familiar with Mr. Yarshater’s relentlessness. “By hook or by crook, he gets you to do what he wants you to do,” Mr. Karimi-Hakkak said. (Eight hundred entries out of alphabetical order are posted in an online version.)
. . .
[For a link to the source article click on the title above.]

Copyright: Robert L. Canfield Contact: canfrobt@wustl.edu

The moral imagination on display in riots and demonstrations: from London to Daraa

2011-08-13T07:22:00.005-05:00

One of the qualities that makes human behavior so complex, so difficult to analyze, is the richness of meanings embedded in it. The riots in London are a good example. Ysmine Ryan has written an article comparing the many nuances in the intentions of the Britain rioters with those of the rioters and demonstrators in Tunisia and Egypt.

Fredrik Barth [in book carefully snubbed by southeast Asiaianists, Balinese Worlds] has pointed out that folks act with intentions that are informed by their own fund of cultural resources whereas the observers of their behavior must “read” their intentions on the basis of their own cultural resources, which means that the possibilities for misreading of each other can be large, and especially so when the actor’s intentions are nuanced with deeply felt personal sentiments. Actors in fact can seek to convey a whole range of meanings in what they do – rage, fear, frustration, a desire for attention, despair, revenge, greed. Sometimes folks do what they do because to them it feels like the most effective way to express their complex feelings – feelings too complex and deeply felt for words. We’ve all been there: In times of exhaustion and frustration we have all been tempted to lash out.

But from the vantage-point of the observer unpacking the meanings embedded in the behavior of others turns out to be a huge challenge. Critical for the observer is the need to appreciate the meanings embedded in the context. The attempt to understand social explosions like those in London or Tunis or Cairo or Yemen or Daraa demands care and empathy – for all the actors on all sides – if one is ever to appreciate what animates the behavior of collectivities in such social movements. We must be ready to appreciate the contradictory and even self-destructive intentions – some of them base, some of them noble -- that animate the behavior of folks in times of stress. If ever there was a complex object of study it is the human imagination.

This article [from Al Jazeera] is rich with the complexities of meaning that inform human behavior. Note, for instance, the statue erected to commemorate one thing, destroyed to commemorate something quite different, and then used by a contemporary artist to convey yet another message, which was, again, destroyed, apparently for reasons considered significant to the state. Meanings upon meanings upon meanings -- an illustration of the the multiple and confused meanings that must be read empatheticly if they are to be understood. Anthropology seeks empathy even when we cannot agree.

From the Arab Spring to Liverpool? : The UK riots have unique roots, but British youths' alienation is similar to the disenfranchisement behind Arab revolts.
Yasmine Ryan: 11 Aug 2011 14:47

In the heart of Toxteth, Liverpool, a mysterious statue appeared in the early hours of July 30.

It was a monument to Mohamed Bouazizi, the young Tunisian man who, after being humiliated by police, had set himself alight in an act of protest that was to inflame the simmering rage of hundreds of thousands of people.

Last Thursday, in the London borough of Tottenham, the British police shot and killed a 29-year-old black man named Mark Duggan. The following day, the monument in Toxteth - a district that had been the site of racially-fuelled social unrest in the 1980s - disappeared, the monument's artist told Al Jazeera.

The Liverpool city council was unable to comment on whether it was responsible for having the monument removed, as they were swamped trying to deal with the riots, which spread to Liverpool over the weekend.

Mohamed Bouazizi's self-immolation, and the uprising that followed, happened in a very different context to the British riots.

When Tunisia's peaceful protesters in the underprivileged centre of the country were slain by the police's use of lethal force, the country’s middle class poured into the streets to show their outrage, and solidarity.

In Britain, by contrast, people across socio-economic groups are calling on the police to protect them from the seemingly uncontrollable mobs of youths, who, according to the dominate media narrative, seem intent on wreaking havoc for the simple reason that they can.

Yet the artist who created the monument to the young Tunisian street vendor, who wishes to remain anonymous in the commodity-free spirit of his work, told Al Jazeera that his work celebrated universal aspirations of emancipation and social justice.

His unsanctioned "people's monument" referenced other recent uprisings in the Arab world, including Egypt and Libya.

Commonalities with Arab Spring?

Closer to home, it also referred to the Toxteth riots of 1981. The statue was mounted on a plinth where a statue of William Huskisson had stood until it was mistaken for a tribute to a slave-trader and torn down in the protests against racism and police brutality of 1981 (the unfortunate Huskisson had, in fact, been the world’s first railway victim in 1830).

The myth that has arisen around Bouazizi is relevant to the UK, the artist explained, where the conservative government's cutbacks have taken their toll on people's daily life.

"[Bouazizi] represented everyday struggle, his gesture was not politically motivated but about the right to exist, to provide for one's family," he said. "I like that fruit and vegetables were the cornerstone of the revolution – not political ideology or other beliefs."

In any event, such overt political messages or symbols have been largely absent during the riots in the UK, which have been left many commentators stunned by the apparent lack of any political agenda.

Will Davies, a spokesperson for Avaaz, an international organisation that works for social justice and has rallied in support of the Arab Spring, told Al Jazeera that those rioting in the UK were, in stark contrast, not politically minded and were causing "anarchy for anarchy's sake".

"Juxtapose that with the situation in Syria, where they've finally got the courage to stand up to a brutal regime and they've done that entirely peacefully."

"They should take a long hard look at what is going on in places like Yemen and Syria," Davies said, noting the state violence and forced disappearances endured by protesters elsewhere in the world simply for exercising the right to peaceful protest or for speaking to the media.

There have, nonetheless, been some attempts to link the UK riots with the string of uprisings in North Africa and Middle East.

For some, emphasising such a link is a way of eliminating any need to discuss the local and national roots to the violence.

The neighbourhood of Toxteth in Liverpool saw some of worst riots over police brutality in 1980s [REUTERS]
Stuart Bell, a British Labour Party MP, told Europe 1, a television station, that "these riots have nothing to do with unemployment, or with government cutbacks. It has its origins in Tunisia".

Others, meanwhile, have taken a more nuanced approached.

Expressing his frustration with the way the media were covering the unrest, Darcus Howe, a 68-year-old West Indian writer, broadcaster and resident of South London, told the BBC that turmoil was very much a consequence of the British police's shooting of Mark Duggan, and of routine police bullying.

Parallel to this very local root cause, the writer argued that the social dissent should also be viewed as part of a global movement.

"I don't call it rioting - I call it an insurrection of the masses of the people. It is happening in Syria, it is happening in Clapham, it's happening in Liverpool, it's happening in Port-au-Spain, Trinidad, and that is the nature of the historical moment," he told the BBC host.

'Only then do the media listen to you'

While most other commentators agree it would be a stretch to argue that the Arab Spring in helped to ferment social unrest in the UK, North African activists who had participated in protests against their own governments told Al Jazeera that they felt solidarity with the British youths who have taken to the streets.

. . . [much is excised here]

[For more, click on the title above for a link to the source]
. . .

As a consequence of issues highlighted by those riots, there was social change which benefited the Liverpool community as a whole, he said.

"The dynamic of this riot is very difficult. This riot is not being led by black people, it is being led by youth," he said. "There's no colour bar, no gender bar."

While the rioters have no clear agenda and their behaviour should not be excused, the poet said, the existence of so many restless young people was directly linked to David Cameron’s conservative government cutbacks to community and social services.

"It should be said that the last civil unrest we've had in this country was under [former prime minister] Margaret Thatcher, during a similar time of austerity," he said.

There had been "disproportionate investment" in the upper and middle classes, notably in the war effort in Afghanistan and Iraq, and in the bank bailouts, while millions of children have received little from their government.

"These are children who now appear to have no purpose. Society does not seem to see them as a significant enough group to invest in."

The story of Bouazizi captured so much attention because of the sheer desperation embodied by the act of self-immolation. Britain’s youth may be speaking a different language and their violence turned outwards, rather than inwards, but they have no less legitimacy than their counterparts in the Arab world.

Follow Yasmine Ryan on twitter: @YasmineRyan

Source: Al Jazeera

Peck's comparative insights on why economic depressions become so severe

2011-08-12T10:32:00.000-05:00

Don Peck’s new book, Pinched, How the Great Recession Has Narrowed Our Futures and What We Can Do About It makes several sobering points about how public sentiment during an economic downturn can make a bad situation worse. Several assertions of that book are worth giving serious thought to.

> Severe recessions often turn out to be more severe and longer-lasting than is expected.

> In periods of economic stress, governments tend to retreat, reducing their commitments, and thus make the economic downturn worse. This seems to be a pattern in other societies than our own.

> Governments commonly underestimate the true cost of economic retreat and conservative spending. At the same time they overestimate the risks of taking aggressive steps to resolve an economic crisis. This has taken place over and over again in American history. Administrations commonly have done too little whereas more expansive commitments actually have helped the economy recover more quickly.

> True recovery requires adjusting to the wider patterns of change in the world at large.

> The primary agenda should be to help the middle class recover.

> A economic depression worsens class distinctions, so that the interests and perspectives of socioeconomic classes become all the more distinct. He refers to it as a “cultural separation” that tends to sort the populations into winners and losers. As a result, the ways of life of the nonprofessional middle class become more like those of the poor while the well-to-do develop ways of life that are quite different financially and emotionally.

If Peck is right, then our country is on track to follow the pattern, which means we are in for a long difficult decline in our economy. What prospect is there that this country will recover?

Attacks against the Shia in Pakistan: From The Friday Times

2011-08-11T12:23:00.001-05:00

The following is an article from The Friday Times [Lahore, Pakistan] that reveals some of the ugly features of Pakistan's internal politics. This source used to be only available for a small fee but it is now free. Take advantage of it.
Consider what it means to live as a minority person in a place like this. But also consider what is entailed in being a journalist in this place. It takes courage to put your name on an article that calls a spade a spade in a place where there is little assurance that a journalist will be protected. Altogether 39 Pakistani journalists have been killed since the 1990s, the most recent being Salim Shahzad, who reported on the hypocrisy of the Pakistani government. RLC

Balochistan crisis: Sectarian groups continue to target the Persian-speaking Shia community, which is not sure if the state wants to protect it
By Zia Ur Rehman

Lashkar-e-Jhangvi behind Hazara killings in Quetta

Eleven people, including a woman, were killed on July 30 when gunmen opened fire on a passenger vehicle near Pishin bus stop in Quetta. All the victims were Hazaras. The incident sparked violent protests and Quetta was completely shut down on July 31.

Over 200 Shia Hazaras have been killed in Balochistan in the last three years; they include businessmen, political leaders, government employees, clerics, police cadets, vegetable vendors, and daily-wage workers.

This is not the first such attack on members of the Shia Persian-speaking Hazara community. On July 10, two Hazara policemen were shot and killed on Qambrani Road. On June 22, two people were killed and 11 others injured in Hazar Ganji area when armed men ambushed a bus carrying pilgrims to Iran.

Syed Abrar Hussain Shah, a former Olympian, deputy director of Pakistan Sports Board, and recipient of the prestigious presidential Pride of Performance and Sitara-e-Imtiaz medals, was gunned down on June 16 near Nawab Nauroz Khan Stadium in Quetta. Shah, who belonged to the Hazara community, has represented Pakistan in the Olympics thrice and won a gold medal at the 1990 Asian Games in Beijing.

In another sectarian attack near Mirgahi Khan Chowk on May 18, unidentified men shot dead seven members of the Hazara community, including a baby, and injured five others. Most of the killed were vegetable vendors.

Seven Hazara men were killed and several injured in a rocket and gun attack in Hazara Town on May 6. There were Frontier Constabulary and Police checkposts nearby, but the attackers fled.

Over 200 Shia Hazaras have been killed in Balochistan in the last three years, according to elders of Hazara tribe and media sources. They include businessmen, political leaders, government employees, clerics, police cadets, vegetable vendors, and daily-wage workers. Hazaras are identifiable because of their Mongoloid features.

A large number of Hazaras have also been killed in attacks on religious processions. Last year, over 80 Shias, most of them Hazaras, were killed in a bombing on a Shia procession on September 3.

"Members of our community have been targeted persistently for the last 10 years by sectarian outfits, especially the banned militant organisations Lashkar-e-Jhangvi (LeJ) and Sipah-e-Sahaba Pakistan (SSP)," said Abdul Khaliq, chairman of Hazara Democratic Party.

LeJ has accepted responsibility of most of these attacks. A spokesman for the LeJ in Balochistan, who ironically identifies himself as Ali Sher Haidri, said his group would avenge the killing of Al Qaeda leader Osama bin Laden by targeting not only government officials and security forces, but also Hazara Shias.

Handbills distributed in Quetta recently have warned the Hazaras of a "jihad" similar to the one carried out against the Hazaras of Afghanistan by the Taliban.

Handbills distributed in Quetta recently have warned the Hazaras of a "jihad" similar to the one carried out against the Hazaras of Afghanistan by the Taliban; the Taliban regime had killed 12,000 Hazaras in central Afghanistan.

The 3.5 million Hazaras in Balochistan are said to have migrated to Quetta from Afghanistan a century ago. In the 1990s, the Taliban massacred the community - the third largest in the country - killing thousands in Bamyan, Ghazni and parts of Uruzgan that later became the Daykundi province. They had accused the Hazaras of collaborating with the Afghan Northern Alliance (ANA) fighting the Taliban regime in Kabul. According to an Amnesty International report, about 12,000 Hazaras were killed in central Afghanistan by the Taliban.

"Hundreds of Pakistani young men from militant organisations including the SSP, Jaish-e-Muhammad, Jundullah and Harkatul Mujahideen fought with the Taliban against the ANA," said an expert on militancy who teaches at Balochistan University. "The same men are now killing the Hazaras in Balochistan." He said the Al Qaeda and Taliban-linked groups accuse the community of colluding with the Americans and causing the downfall of the Taliban. Quetta is reportedly the new hub of the defeated Taliban factions, and has become a major site of expression of the hatred
towards the Hazaras.

The LeJ network in Quetta is being run by Usman Saifullah Kurd, Dawood Badini and Shafiqur Rind, a senior police official said. Kurd, who heads the LeJ in Balochistan, has trained a new group of killers who are carrying out attacks on the Hazaras, he said. Rind was arrested in 2003 from Mastung area of Balochistan while Kurd was arrested by the Criminal Investigation Unit in Karachi on June 22, 2006. Both fled from the Anti-Terrorist Force jail in Quetta on January 18, 2008. Rind was rearrested, but Kurd is still at large.

A source in the SSP said Kurd had recently met Malik Ishaq, a founding member of the LeJ, in Rahim Yar Khan and invited him to visit Quetta to address the banned SSP's public meetings.

Ishaq, accused of having masterminded the attack on the Sri Lankan cricket team in 2009 from behind the bars, was recently released by the Supreme Court after 14 years in prison.

The Hazara community had expressed concerns over his release. "The courts are releasing top leaders of banned organisations, and that shows these groups are getting stronger once again," said a Hazara religious scholar.

According to the Hazara Democratic Party chairman, Kurd's escape from jail was proof that these groups have inside support. He said the government claims to have arrested the attackers in all the cases, but they are never brought before the court or the public.

"The government has failed to tackle sectarian violence and protect the Hazara community," Khailq said, whose predecessor Hussain Ali Yousafi was also killed for being a Hazara in 2009.

Hazara elders believe intelligence agencies know about the activities of banned outfits and the whereabouts of their leaders, who simply operate under new names. They believe the state is either indifferent or supporting them.

The writer is a journalist and a researcher who works on militancy and human rights.
He can be contacted at zia_red@hotmail.com

When China wises up, what then?

2011-08-08T16:30:00.000-05:00

The issues of our time are becoming more acute. Of course we watch with alarm the affairs in Libya, Syria, and now Britain. But also, over the long term there is the changing attitude of the Chinese toward the United States, whose wealth, along with that of the Japanese, has been holding up the profligacy of the Americans. An article on this by Stephen S. Roach puts it together for us. Below are some quotes from his article. [Click on the title for a link to the whole article.] RLC

Read China's lips: China may soon be fed up with US fiscal intransigence and show it by halting the purchase of the dollar.
Stephen S Roach: 07 Aug 2011 07:53

The Chinese have long admired the economic dynamism of the US. But they have lost confidence in America's government and its dysfunctional economic stewardship.

… ….Senior Chinese officials are appalled at how the United States allows politics to trump financial stability. One high-ranking policymaker noted in mid-July: "This is truly shocking … we understand politics, but your government's continued recklessness is astonishing."

….China recognises that it no longer makes sense to stay with its current growth strategy - one that relies heavily on a combination of exports and a massive buffer of dollar-denominated foreign-exchange reserves. Three key developments led the Chinese leadership to this conclusion:

First, the crisis and Great Recession of 2008-2009 were a wake-up call. ….Second, the costs of the insurance premium - the outsize, largely dollar-denominated reservoir of China's foreign-exchange reserves - have been magnified by political risk. …. Finally, China's leadership is mindful of the risks implied by its own macroeconomic imbalances - and of the role that its export-led growth and dollar-based foreign-exchange accumulation plays in perpetuating those imbalances. Moreover, the Chinese understand the political pressure that a growth-starved developed world is putting on its tight management of the renminbi's exchange rate relative to the dollar - pressure that is strikingly reminiscent of a similar campaign directed at Japan in the mid-1980s.

…With these considerations in mind, China has adopted a very transparent response. Its new, 12th, Five-Year Plan says it all - a pro-consumption shift in China's economic structure that addresses head-on China's unsustainable imbalances. By focusing on job creation in services, massive urbanisation, and the broadening of its social safety net, there will be a large boost to labour income and consumer purchasing power.

…. It moves economic growth away from a dangerous over reliance on external demand, while shifting support to untapped internal demand. In addition, it takes the heat off an undervalued currency as a prop to export growth, giving China considerable leeway to step up the pace of currency reforms.

But, by raising the consumption share of its GDP, China will also absorb much of its surplus saving.

… So China, the largest foreign buyer of US government paper, will soon say, "enough". Yet another vacuous budget deal, in conjunction with weaker-than-expected growth for the US economy for years to come, spells a protracted period of outsize government deficits. That raises the biggest question of all: lacking in Chinese demand for Treasuries, how will a savings-strapped US economy fund itself without suffering a sharp decline in the dollar and/or a major increase in real long-term interest rates?

The cavalier response heard from Washington insiders is that the Chinese wouldn't dare spark such an endgame. After all, where else would they place their asset bets? Why would they risk losses in their massive portfolio of dollar-based assets?

China's answers to those questions are clear: it is no longer willing to risk financial and economic stability on the basis of Washington's hollow promises and tarnished economic stewardship. The Chinese are finally saying no. Read their lips.

Stephen S. Roach, a member of the faculty at Yale University, is Non-Executive Chairman of Morgan Stanley Asia and the author of The Next Asia.

A version of this article first appeared on Project Syndicate.

Sobering news from Pakistan. A low-grade war in Karachi – or in all of Pakistan?

2011-08-02T21:54:00.001-05:00

The news from Pakistan is worrisome. We have already noted how badly things have been moving there for many years, with signs of the price the Pakistan people are paying for a double-minded administration. The latest evidence is the fighting in Karachi. Here are some quotes from the Al Jazeera article [8/2/11].

Karachi violence leaves 34 dead in single day: Interior minister vows to restore peace after at least 34 people are killed and 90 vehicles burnt over 24-hour period.
02 Aug 2011 16:14

Dozens of people were killed and scores of vehicles burned in Karachi in the latest violence on Tuesday [EPA]

> 34 people have been killed in the past 24 hours.

> at least 18 of the killings targeted political activists,

. . .

> The latest round of violence has been attributed to a fight for political influence in the city between Karachi's main parties, Tyab said.

> police say about 200 people were killed in last month alone,

> Local media put the toll even higher, with the Dawn newspaper reporting that 318 people were killed during the month.

> in Orangi, Karachi's largest and one of its poorest slums... More than 100 people were killed during three days of violence in the slum [recently].

> violence has since spread to other parts of the city of more than 18 million.

> On Monday, at least 90 vehicles were set ablaze in different parts of the city.

> In one incident, at least 80 motorcycles were burnt when dozens of people stormed a textile factory late on Monday and set fire to the vehicles parked outside the industrial unit.

> Over the years, criminal gangs have been used by political parties in a city-wide war for influence in Karachi, which contributes about two-third of Pakistan's tax revenue.

> criminal elements were "exploit[ing] the breakdown of law and order".

> "While gangs of land-grabbers and mafias have tried to exploit the breakdown of law and order, they do not appear to be the main directors of the horrible game of death and destruction; that distinction belongs to more powerful political groups and it is they who hold the key to peace".

> the political parties in Pakistan have been exploiting the divisions that exist in this city ... and often they will turn to the underworld, the criminals, to carry out their dirty work," he said.

> The HRCP had previously said that 1,138 people were killed in Karachi in the first six months of 2011, of whom 490 were victims of political, ethnic and sectarian violence.

Source: Al Jazeera and agencies

Why worry about Al Qaeda when Congress is controlled by saboteurs?

2011-07-29T08:56:00.001-05:00

Joseph McCarthy had this country in terror in the 1950s claiming that a Soviet funded fifth column had infiltrated the highest levels of government. Little did he know. Now our country is under the control of ideologues whose first commitment is to an ideal with no concern for what it will do to the people they are responsible for. Have they no conscience about what they have already been doing to their own people? And they are confidently ready to do even more, with virtually no cost to themselves.

The Republicans formerly signed off on the profligate spending of the GW Bush administration, coupled with the liberal handout to all the rich in the “Bush Tax Cuts”, (remember the surplus that Bush inherited from Clinton?), but now have returned the old Republican religion of fiscal restraint. They are now in the process of disemboweling our government. The Democrats, who were pussy cats during the Bush administration are now pussy cats under Obama.

The result is a government committed to wrecking the whole fabric of our economy in one fell swoop. No one knows what the implications will be of what they are doing, but what seems clear is that Congress has virtually no interest is dealing with the most urgent and fundamental issue this moment: A depressed economy that is likely to languish for years on end. It seems certain that one way or another this Congress will abandon the poor and vulnerable to their own devices at a time when there are no other sources of help than the government.

I can’t find words for my own feelings about this government. We are all despairing of where this country is going. Aren't these leaders vulnerable to the criticism of the greatest social critic of all time?
“You load people down with burdens they can hardly carry, and you yourselves will not lift one finger to help them.”

Reflections on a note in Science about a Central Asian astronomer

2011-07-28T20:54:00.001-05:00

The American Association for the Advancement of Science is the most prestigious scholarly organization in this country. But the June 17 issue of the society’s journal Science has a brief note [p 1365] that veils a useful distinction that to some of us is important.

The note is about the esteemed Central Asian astronomer Ulugh Beg. The note refers to a tribute made to Ulugh Beg by the Polish astronomer Johannes Hevelius in 1687. Hevelius asked for help in finding Beg’s map of the heavens and asked for it to be translated from the Persian.

The resultant map produced by Hevelius is being displayed in a show called Arabick Roots in London. The article refers to the “flow of knowledge from the Arab world to Europe in the 17th century.”
Technically the statement is OK but it masks a certain historical reality. That is, Ulugh Beg was not Arab; he was Turko-Persian, the grandson of Tamer lane, and the son of the famed ruler of Herat Shah Rukh who sponsored an elaborate Turko-Persian culture. Ulugh Beg wrote in Persian even though he may have known Arabic as well as Persian and Turkish. So the “Arabic world” in Ulugh Beg’s time was very Persian as well as Arabic. Much of the scholarly knowledge that came to Europe from the “Arab world” was very Persian as well as Arabic. In fact, some of the most scientific gains in those centuries were made by Central Asians – that is, Turko-Persians. So the flow of knowledge to Europe came from the Turko-Persian societies in Central Asia.

The ugly side of power in the capitalistic world

2011-07-19T09:43:00.004-05:00

I can’t remember a time when the ways capital exerts its influence on social affairs has been so evident in the news.

We are in fact seeing the ugly side of power being displayed in lots of places these days. Usually power masks its ugly side. Syria, for example. Syria has been a stable country for many years, so that a careless observer traveling through would easily suppose that the people are content and all is well. What one only occasionally could see was how the regime in power – composed of a relatively small cadre of relatives and co-sectarians – could remain in control. We are seeing that mechanism of control now: their army has been shooting unarmed demonstrators on the streets. The number of dead is now more than 1400 (not 14,000 as NYTimes says in 7/20/11 issue). All of them were peaceful demonstrators, as far as we know – Of course what we know is limited to what the regime wants us to know. They are trying to control all the news coming out of the country -- fortunately unsuccessfully.

But in the capitalistic world power works differently. The mechanisms of influence exerted by large capitalistic interests are more subtle, usually. But they seem blatant these days, and evident in so many contexts, and many of them seem to be in the foreground of the news lately. Here are some articles that provide examples.

> ProPublica reports on how the donors to the campaign of Louisiana’s President of St Bernard Parish benefitted from the BP oil spill cleanup. “Spillionaires Revisited: Gov’t Official’s Associates Got Big Contracts After the BP Oil Spill.”

> The no-holds-barred way Rupert Murdock’s newspaper did its business is now coming out in the open. There are many good articles but one that summarizes all that is known can be found at the Telegraph web site:
Phone hacking: timeline of the scandal
It’s worth noting that Fox news and the Wall Street Journal, both owned by Murdock have made very little of it. The difference between what his papers have to say about it and what other papers have to say illustrates how much it matters that news ownership be as dispersed as possible.

> Paul Krugman and Robin Wells describe how the same sets of investment/ banking companies keep on bilking the system by over-reaching and then demanding bailouts: “The Busts Keep Getting Bigger: Why?” It's about economic downturns.

> Representative Fred Upton (R-MI) is now for incandescent light bulbs whereas he used to be against them. Try to guess why. Have a look at what drives this bizarre political boondoggle.

> Capital works on the side of contraband behavior also, of course, manifest in the brutality of the Mexican drug war: Here is the Los Angeles Times’ summary of what has been going on.

Sober reflections on the contraries that led to Bastille Day

2011-07-14T20:26:00.001-05:00

[slightly revised 7/15/11 @3:11}
Sometimes a situation becomes so complicated, disputes become so irresolvable, and adversaries so irreconcilable, that a great deal comes to bear on what happens in a single moment. The outcome of a high-stakes situation can be revolutionary change, when the system in place gets upended. I keep hoping that the disputes in our Congress have not reached such a state. But as today is Bastille Day it might be worth noting some circumstances that led up to the French Revolution, in case you notice parallels.

The whole story is too complicated to try to tell here, but I quote William Sewell, Jr’s summary of the issues that set the clash of interests in motion, to create a huge societal convolution in France. I quote from Chapter 8 of his book “The Logics Of History”. I arrange his statement in stages, in order to emphasize how as the situation developed the problems became all the more dire and irresolvable so that the underlying premises that held the French Crown in power were being undermined before it was completely overturned.

> “In 1786 the comptroller general informed the king that the state was nearly bankrupt.

> By the summer of 1789, the crisis of the state’s funding had become a crisis of the system of social stratification (because fiscal reform would mean stripping the clergy and nobility of one of their major privileges, their immunity from taxation);

> it had become a crisis of the privileged corporate institutions that were the integument of the social order of old regime France (because their privileges were linked to particular fiscal arrangements);

> it had become a deep constitutional crisis (because it was unclear which governmental body had the authority to change the system of taxation)

> and it had also become a crisis of the very principles of the social and political order (because proponents of natural rights, national sovereignty, and civic equality had managed to dominate political discourse and gain a sizeable foothold among the deputies to the Estates General.)"

That is to say, the fundamental assumptions that held the King in place were now crumbling at just the time when a contrary and irreconcilable concept of authority was being widely discussed, namely, that sovereignty should belong to the nation and the populace should have a voice in determinations of how (and possibly by whom) they should be governed. The events that took place in a cascade of miscommunications and conflicting agendas as the problems became more acute could never have been predicted, but in retrospect it is possible to notice that the ambiguities and contraraties of the situation were destabilizing the system in place, that is, the monarchy. Nothing required that the events that took place should take place that way, but much in the way of a collapse was potential in the situation. And as events took place a series of errors of understanding and communication added to the possibilities that the old order might be swept away. A spark was all that was needed.

It’s hard to think about the irreconcilable contraries in France in late eighteenth century without wondering if our own country, and perhaps even the capitalistic world as we know it, might be careering toward a point when powerful contrary interests could become, as in the French Revolution, an uncontrollable societal convolution.

The Insurance Institution of Last Resort

2011-07-12T20:00:00.002-05:00

The insurance protection of last resort

Societies hold together by more or less agreeing on a common myth. By myth I mean broad formulations of common interest and of how the world works, what the future looks like. They are broad and general formulations too abstract to be proven by empirical evidence. Rather, they are useful conventions of public discourse that enable people to make plans together and come to an understanding of how they share common interests. I say “more or less” because some people believe these myths while others are willing to work with them even if they aren’t sure about them, and maybe others work with them simply to get along because in fact they don’t really believe them; to disagree openly creates too much trouble. That’s how societies work, how collectivities of self-interested, self-oriented human beings work together.

The common myth of the Republican Party for some time has been that business – private industry – is more efficient than government. Bureaucracy costs too much, they suppose. Whatever has to be done can be done better, more efficiently, and cheaper than government. So they promote the idea that whenever possible government should be replaced by private industry. This is a proposition too abstract to prove even though a few scholars claim to have gotten results that make this view plausible.

So many people believe it. I even remember hearing Mark Shields on the News Hour a couple of years ago say that the Republican Party doesn’t believe in government. He has never hinted such an accusation since that I know of; I suspect he got some flack for saying it. But even if it is unfairly broad, the charge may be almost true for the most extreme elements on the Far-Far Right.

I don’t know for sure but I believe there were similar opinions among the Wall Street and Banking barons in the 1920s. What seems to have been true, in any case, was the belief that the market could solve most of the problems of the world. In any case, it was flourishing.

The prosperity of the 1920s however masked another rarely stated myth that lies behind most publics in the modern age: When things go wrong people demand that the government do something. When the market crashed and the banks failed the American people demanded that the government do something. And in fact Hoover’s administration started programs for the public that did help, but they came too slowly and too late. FDR became President by running against Hoover for the next four terms. He claimed to be representing the common man and boasted that the fat cats hated him. That was because whatever the myth was in the 1920s, in the 1930s the American people demanded that something be done. By the government.

The government is the insurance institution of last resort.

I fear the Republicans have forgotten that. If things turn bad they may have to pay for it as the Republicans did in the 1930s.

Ahmed Wali Karzai is dead

2011-07-12T16:01:00.002-05:00

Reports of the assassination of Ahmed Wali Karzai, younger brother of Hamed Karzai, President of Afghanistan, indicate that he was shot several times by a former bodyguard of their older brother Qayyoum. Stratfor says this is a serious blow to the President. This is what they say:
“His death comes as a major blow to President Karzai who depended on Ahmed Wali for creating a social support base for the president in Kandahar province, the homeland of the Taliban. Ahmed Wali’s official position was head of the legislative council in Kandahar, but he wielded a disproportionate amount of influence in the province and the country at large, claiming close relations with a wide array of players including the CIA, local Taliban elements and even drug lords. Despite his close dealings with U.S. intelligence, American officials openly criticized Ahmed Wali in 2009, accusing him of corruption and being involved in the drug trade.”

Joseph Stiglitz on how severe the economic crisis is

2011-07-11T16:25:00.001-05:00

The Nobel Prize Winner in Economics Joseph Stiglitz has explained in much more elegant terms than I could express in an earlier statement how dire the situation is for our country. Dire doubly: Dire because of the urgency that wise decisions be made soon and dire because the leadership of Congress continue to demonstrate an inability to get beyond their respective ideologies. RLC

From Project Syndicate 2011-07-06
Joseph Stiglitz: The Ideological Crisis of Western Capitalism

NEW YORK – Just a few years ago, a powerful ideology – the belief in free and unfettered markets – brought the world to the brink of ruin. Even in its hey-day, from the early 1980’s until 2007, American-style deregulated capitalism brought greater material well-being only to the very richest in the richest country of the world. Indeed, over the course of this ideology’s 30-year ascendance, most Americans saw their incomes decline or stagnate year after year.

Moreover, output growth in the United States was not economically sustainable. With so much of US national income going to so few, growth could continue only through consumption financed by a mounting pile of debt.

I was among those who hoped that, somehow, the financial crisis would teach Americans (and others) a lesson about the need for greater equality, stronger regulation, and a better balance between the market and government. Alas, that has not been the case. On the contrary, a resurgence of right-wing economics, driven, as always, by ideology and special interests, once again threatens the global economy – or at least the economies of Europe and America, where these ideas continue to flourish.

In the US, this right-wing resurgence, whose adherents evidently seek to repeal the basic laws of math and economics, is threatening to force a default on the national debt. If Congress mandates expenditures that exceed revenues, there will be a deficit, and that deficit has to be financed. Rather than carefully balancing the benefits of each government expenditure program with the costs of raising taxes to finance those benefits, the right seeks to use a sledgehammer – not allowing the national debt to increase forces expenditures to be limited to taxes.
. . . [Some of this is deleted. For a link to the full text of the article click on the title above]
. . .
Regrettably, the financial markets and right-wing economists have gotten the problem exactly backwards: they believe that austerity produces confidence, and that confidence will produce growth. But austerity undermines growth, worsening the government’s fiscal position, or at least yielding less improvement than austerity’s advocates promise. On both counts, confidence is undermined, and a downward spiral is set in motion.

Do we really need another costly experiment with ideas that have failed repeatedly? We shouldn’t, but increasingly it appears that we will have to endure another one nonetheless. A failure of either Europe or the US to return to robust growth would be bad for the global economy. A failure in both would be disastrous – even if the major emerging-market countries have attained self-sustaining growth. Unfortunately, unless wiser heads prevail, that is the way the world is heading.

Joseph E. Stiglitz is University Professor at Columbia University, a Nobel laureate in economics, and the author of Freefall: Free Markets and the Sinking of the Global Economy.

Copyright: Project Syndicate, 2011.
www.project-syndicate.org
For a podcast of this commentary in English, please use this link:
http://media.blubrry.com/ps/media.libsyn.com/media/ps/stiglitz140.mp3

The strange economics of American politics; and a layman’s history of the Great Depression

2011-07-08T05:39:00.003-05:00

I’m having trouble figuring out how the current plans for recovery are supposed to work. I’m not an economist but it seems to me that the plans in some general way should add up, and so far I can’t figure it out.

What I hear from both parties is that the real issue is “Jobs, jobs, jobs”. We all expect we will be hearing about that in the forthcoming election. Also, we are told that for this reason the government must reduce spending. The deficit ceiling plans are not settled but we are getting a sense of some of the way they plan to work it out, and what appears to be happening is that both parties are going to agree to cutting back government spending. Maybe they will ask the super-rich to pay a few more taxes but as we all know the Republicans have been fighting that prospect tooth and nail; they don't even bother to conceal whose side they are on. For me, a non-economist on the sidelines, it’s hard to make sense of all this.

Here is the plan, as I understand it.
• The government will cut back: that is, it will reduce the number of government employees and also reduce the number of contracts with private industry.
• The government will cut back on Medicare and Medicaid, thus reducing the safety net for the most financially vulnerable sector of the economy.
• Also, the plan is to bring our troops home; the sooner the better. So, our troops will be brought back to join the labor force.

Now, lets add this up: fewer government jobs, less money to employ the lower income segment of our society, more unemployed veterans: That means, voila!, More Jobs! If there is a logic here I don't get it. How do we add layoffs, starving the poor, bringing in more unemployed from the military and get a bump in the economy?

These policies sound much like the policies that got this country into trouble during the Great Depression – that’s the way I remember it (but remember I’m not an economist). At a time when the stock market tanked and the banks failed the government cut back on expenditures. And as the world economy collapsed other countries did the same. To me that sounds like what has been going on in our time: Britain has cut back, the US is cutting back, the EU is struggling to right itself owing to the debt in several countries.

So how do we know we are not on the verge of another Great Depression? That is a terrifying prospect.

To emphasize the point, I will rehearse what the Depression meant for my family. My father grew up in a wealthy Oklahoma family. Six sons. All went to college in the 1920s. But my grandfather lost everything in 1930. Everything; he was a pauper for the rest of his life. My father and mother had married just before the collapse, and although a graduate in Chemical Engineering he could not find work, although my mother got some income by teaching music in a small town. During the day my father carried ice for an ice factory (few people had refrigerators then) and at night he worked on a correspondence course in accounting. When he finally qualified as an accountant he looked for jobs keeping books for small companies. All of the companies were struggling to survive, and a couple times, when he finally got a company's books in order, he found out it was broke; there was no money even for him to be paid. He moved from job to job. We moved from town to town. When he got a job in Wichita he was able to take in one of our cousins, a teenager whose parents had no money. But that job disappeared and we had to live with a distant relative on an oil reservation, a man who was a gruffy old geezer who didn’t like kids (like me).

It was the war that brought the country out of depression. Roosevelt had started a number of national work projects in order to put people to work – Work Projects Administration, the CCC (I don’t remember what that stood for, but they built many of the facilities in national parks that are still in use). The government didn’t have much income so FDR had to borrow by issuing government bonds – all the while wondering whether it was a good idea to borrow from ourselves. Anyway, his administration started many of the safety-net programs like Social Security that the Republicans, who hated them then, are now trying to dismantle. And when war started in Europe Roosevelt borrowed more so that our country could support the Allies in Europe. When we entered the war the American government went into full press mode, mostly with borrowed money. And when the war was over the US Congress invented an amazing new idea – can anyone imagine a congress that would do this now?: they would pay the veterans to go to college. The GI Bill was opposed by the major universities of America. They thought it would bring the ordinary riff-raff into our institutions of higher learning, which saw them selves as serving the upper class (which of course no one wanted to admit existed in this country). It didn’t take even those universities long to discover there was money in this program for them so they finally went along with it -- and discovered that the veterans were better students than the usual college students.

All this took place because the government borrowed money. The more they spent on national projects the stronger the middle class got and were able to pay the taxes that kept the country going.

So much for what a non-economist remembers about how the world works. That’s why I at least can’t figure out how the plans being talked about in Congress today could add up to anything but disaster.

Another formulation of the issues in Central Asia

2011-07-07T05:19:00.000-05:00

I'm glad to see any signs of interest in the growing investment of the Chinese in Central Asia, as is indicated in this opinion piece by Pepe Escobar, even if it seems a bit jargonistic ("Great Game", "pipelinestan", angel of history). In geopolitical terms we can speculate whether the war in Afghanistan-Pakistan is mere the current expression of what augurs to be a century-long power struggle over access and control over the mineral resources of Inner Asia. On that issue China is winning, as Escobar suggests. From Al Jazeera. RLC

Opinion
High stakes in Eurasia's 'New Great Game'
China and Russia will benefit from US mistakes in Afghanistan, and the operation in Libya, gaining influence and energy.

Pepe Escobar Last Modified: 04 Jul 2011 14:39

China is investing on a land-based Central Asian energy strategy - a pipeline-driven New Silk Road from the Caspian Sea to China's Far West in Xinjiang [GALLO/GETTY]
Antonio Gramsci once mused that the old order has died but the new one has not yet been born.

While Washington's geopolitical/energy focus was on Afghanistan, Pakistan, Iraq and Iran, and to a lesser extent on Central Asia, international politics was already in transition from a unipolar world towards a new, polycentric system.

And then the 2011 Arab Revolt irrupted all across the MENA (Middle East-Northern Africa) chessboard, turning all calculations upside down and reconfiguring the relationship between the US, the main Eurasian nations, and Northern Africa.

Time to recall an ultimate Cold Warrior, Dr Zbigniew Brzezinski, who in 1997, in the article "A Geostrategy for Eurasia", published by Foreign Affairs, conceptualised that: "Eurasia is the world's axial supercontinent. A power that dominated Eurasia would exercise decisive influence over two of the world's three most economically productive regions, Western Europe and East Asia. A glance at the map also suggests that a country dominant in Eurasia would almost automatically control the Middle East and Africa. With Eurasia now serving as the decisive geopolitical chessboard, it no longer suffices to fashion one policy for Europe and another for Asia. What happens with the distribution of power on the Eurasian landmass will be of decisive importance to America's global primacy and historical legacy."

US power waning

Fast forward to the first decade of the 2000s. The George W Bush administration devised a strategy for a Great Central Asia according to which the US would roll back Russia's traditional and China's growing influence.

Washington would have New Delhi as the partner of choice in Afghanistan and Central Asia - laying the foundations of a new Silk Road.

And Washington would establish itself not far from Xinjiang, in Western China, and close to Russia's underbelly. Essentially, that's how the US would win the New Great Game in Eurasia.

This strategy was inbuilt in the Pentagon's Long War - codename for the Full Spectrum Dominance doctrine - and its far more important, if half-hidden, twin: the global energy war.

In my 2007 book Globalistan, I branded this process as Liquid War; here we would find "liquidity" not only in terms of fast-flowing capital and information shaping liquid modernity (a hat tip to Zygmunt Bauman), but also as in oil/gas pipelines crisscrossing an enormous battlefield, what I have called Pipelineistan.

The problems with the Bush administration strategy may have already started way back in 2003, when Turkey - the bridge par excellence between Central Asia and the Mediterranean - decided not to support the war in Iraq.

Since then, Turkey has gotten closer to Russia and, following Foreign Minister Ahmet Davutoglu's concept, in fact all its neighbors, especially Iran - performing what could be called an "escape from the US" - and thus denting its role as a NATO base for penetration into Eurasia.

It's in this context that an Ankara-Tehran-Damascus alliance was solidified (and, incidentally, may now be unraveling). Meanwhile Eurasia as a whole changed at breakneck speed.

Russia was "back" on a continental and also global scale; China and India emerged geo-economically; the US got bogged down in Afghanistan and Iraq. Soon the US was not the "indispensable nation" anymore.

China and Russia

Very few former Soviet states were annexed to the US sphere of influence - as it was expected after 9/11. Moreover, Washington's dream of a line of control stretching from the Mediterranean all the way towards Central Asia, aimed at cutting in two the Eurasian landmass, did not happen.

China and Russia developed a joint Eurasia policy - organised, among other channels, by the Shanghai Cooperation Organisation (SCO), the Eurasian Economic Community and now increased military cooperation.

In Pipelineistan terms, China didn't have to send a single soldier (to Iraq) or get bogged down in an infinite quagmire (in Afghanistan); instead it will get plenty of oil from Iraq and much of the natural gas it needs from Turkmenistan.

China is massively investing in a land-based Central Asian energy strategy - a pipeline-driven New Silk Road from the Caspian Sea to China's Far West in Xinjiang.

The US's geopolitical perspective is characteristic of a sea power - framing its relationship with other nations from the position of an "island"; the Mediterranean basin and Central Asia are viewed as placed in a so-called "arc of instability", as defined by Dr Brzezinski.

Over these past few years, in a constantly evolving context, much more than Great Central Asia, what became paramount for Washington was the geopolitical concept of a Great Middle East - expanding on Brzezinski's "arc of instability" and running from the Maghreb all the way to Central Asia.

So as much as Brzezinski conceptualised Central Asia as a volatile and unpredictable "Eurasian Balkans", we had the Bush administration forcefully dreaming of the "birth pangs" of the Great Middle East. The aim was unmistakable; to cause a lot of trouble to the increasing geopolitical union between China and Russia.

Botched operations

In these past few years, up to the - largely botched - Africom/NATO operation in Libya, the US strategy has been aimed at the militarisation of the entire arc between the Mediterranean and Central Asia.

Africom, the US Africa command implemented in 2008 with a headquarters in Stuttgart, Germany, has now engaged in its first African war, in Libya. Africom aims at rapid intervention all across Africa but also has its sights on the "New" Middle East and Central Asia.

So now the US strategy can finally be examined in detail as a militarisation of the Mediterranean-Central Asian arch.

That would assure the US a wedge between Southern Europe and Northern Africa; assure military control over Northern Africa and Southwest Asia, with particular emphasis on Turkey, Syria and Iran; and "cut" Eurasia in two. In sum: divide and rule.

So this geopolitical road map was bound from the start to target Syria (already happening); Iran (a perpetual neo-con dream); and even Erdogan's Turkey - all useful for a US advance in Eurasia.

Meanwhile Eurasian powers Russia, China and India - all BRICS member countries - not to mention Iran and Turkey themselves, are slowly calibrating their response.

In the midst of this ever-shifting accommodation of tectonic plates, Afghanistan assumes an even more crucial role. It could - and should - recover its status of crossroads/hub bringing Central Asia and South Asia together. Yet that may ultimately happen not under American sponsorship - but under Chinese and Russian partnership.

The Moscow/Beijing counterpunch is to organise the SCO as a rival to NATO in terms of providing security for Central Asia - and for Afghanistan. Wily Hamid Karzai has seen which way the wind is blowing - and he's all for it.

Moscow and Beijing have decided to enter into "tight cooperation" (their terminology) not only in Central Asia but in the Middle East and North Africa as well; Chinese Premier Wen Jiabao admitted as much in a recent op-ed piece for the Financial Times newspaper.

The wake-up call was the Western intervention in Libya. The Chinese economic/political/diplomatic push will be organised under the aegis of the BRICS group of emerging powers (Brazil, Russia, India, China, South Africa).

The complex hidden agendas at play in Syria; the unraveling of the Ankara-Tehran-Damascus alliance; the West's double standards over Bahrain; Washington's determination to overstay its military presence in Iraq -these developments are all seen by Moscow and Beijing as part of a strategy to perpetuate Western dominance in the Middle East.

So expect even more feverish moves by the angel of history. Eurasian actors Turkey, Iran, Russia and China will be ever more active in the Mediterranean and Central Asia - the key geostrategic battleground in a 21st century New Great Game that might even be pitting Washington against Eurasia itself.

Pepe Escobar is the roving correspondent for the Asia Times. His latest book is Obama Does Globalistan (Nimble Books, 2009). He may be reached at pepeasia@yahoo.com

The views expressed in this article are the author's own and do not necessarily reflect Al Jazeera's editorial policy.

Source: Al Jazeera

Immigrant Young Maids of America, Watch Out!

2011-07-04T09:46:00.008-05:00

This is addressed to immigrant women generally but in fact Rita and I know a number of them, and their stories are so similar to that of the Guinean maid who is about to lose her case against former IMF chief Dominique Strauss-Kahn that it occurs to me to address a note to them generally.

What I know about you is that you left your home country out of desperation. You had good reasons to flee, but they were too complicated to make sense to Americans who have scarcely any sense of what it’s like out there, and certainly your problems were far different from anything the American legal system would recognize. So you had to lie. And you had to get help fabricating a story that would make sense to the American legal system. Once you figured out what might work you memorized it.

The truth was otherwise, of course; the reality was far too bizarre from the American point of view that even your friends in American now cannot understand it. In fact, many of the judges that have to decide on your story, whether to allow you to immigrate, have becomes so jaded, so frustrated by the ways they have been deceived that they can be scornful of anything you tell them. So you have to make your story really good.

But anyway the story you invented got you here. And then once on the ground, you discovered how hard life is here, especially for someone who comes with essentially no skills. And of course you had no money. And no language. Whatever English you thought you knew was little help. Everyone talked so fast and used so many colloquial idioms that you were overwhelmed from the beginning.

So you were lost and helpless, with hardly a friend, and virtually no one with means to help. Desperate, you had to do whatever to survive. You had children, and you needed to escape from the dive the immigration authorities put you in when you arrived. So what you were reduced to, you will never want to admit.

Thank God, somehow you survived. You lived through those horrible days, and now you are at least more or less ensconced in this country. Eventually you came to know – it’s among the various schemes that get passed around among the immigrant populations of this country -- that if you claimed to have more children than you actually had your taxes would be lower and maybe you could even get more financial aid from the government. So you claimed your neighbor’s children on your taxes as well as your own.

All of this seems to have paid off. You at least have been able to survive. At least you are holding on. What you have not realized is that the lies are now your history, and they have left you vulnerable. With this kind of history you have little chance of making any claim in a dispute over any issue without your history being brought up against you in court. So without knowing it you have placed yourself in a far more vulnerable position than you know. Besides being limited in your English and your skills and still desperately poor you are un-savvy, and in this country that can be a tragic weakness. You are exceedingly vulnerable, and more so if you are young and pretty.

We all know the platitudes: In the end it doesn’t pay to lie. But the consequences in this country can be devastating if you have to make a case in court. If by some miracle you should inherit a billion dollars, there is maybe a chance for you. At least we surmise so from what we read in the newspapers.

A Sudanese regime that doesn't know how to blush.

2011-06-30T06:56:00.004-05:00

A friend of mine recently said he recoiled when he saw yet one more report by Nicholas D Kristof about human rights violations. I had to confess that I myself sometimes have turned away from reports of violent and cruel abuses of women and the murder of unarmed helpless civilians. Outrage fatigue.

But then what would the world be like if there were no reporting on the abuses of power in the world. How many other incidents have taken place that have not been reported on? And how many powerful figures, even in the face of the evidence, lie, denying what they have done to vulnerable human beings in their paths? We live in a broken world, and without serious reporting few would have even a clue about what is going on.

Even so, I’m appalled at the shameless behavior of some regimes. Syria, Bahrain, Yemen, Iran, North Korea – in these countries and others the regimes in power will do anything to their own citizens to stay in place.

Now we hear about Sudan – again. Yet again we hear of a government that will send its troops into a community to brutalize, rape, and burn. Have they no shame? We can only invoke the language of one of the greatest social critics of all time: "Are they ashamed of their loathsome conduct? No, they are absolutely shameless. They do not even know how to blush." [Jer 8:12]

Here is a link to today’s report by Kristof: what would we do without him?
"Yet again in Sudan."

Are our politicians running the country over a cliff?

2011-06-27T21:14:00.000-05:00

Does it seem strange to anyone the way politicians are proposing to fix the economy? So far, the only solution that either party seems to propose is to reduce the deficit. How is that supposed to produce a viable economy? I am not an economist but I believe we are in for a year of campaigning about deficit reduction solutions that won't solve anything.

What turns on my worry is the latest edition of Investment Outlook written by Bill Gross, manager of [what is said to be] the largest mutual fund in the world.

This is what I get from his new Outlook.

Both parties seem to believe "that balancing the budget will magically produce 20 million jobs over the next 10 years."

However,

"over the past 10 years, under both Democratic and Republican administrations, only 1.8 million jobs have been created."

In the mean time

"the available labor force has grown by over 15 million."

So what miracle power will enable any administration to produce 20 million jobs in the next 10 years?

At a time when interest rates can go no lower, we as a country are "untrained, under-invested and over-indebted relative to our global competitors."

At the same time,

"politicians feel that fiscal conservatism equates to job growth." However, "if implemented too quickly [it] could stultify economic growth."

Here is Bill Gross -- the guy who manages the largest bond fund in the world -- saying

"government must take a leading role in job creation.... In the short term, no rational observer can believe that global or even small businesses will invest here when the labor over there is so much cheaper. ... Our labor force is too expensive and poorly educated for today's marketplace."

He quotes the former Washington University economist Hyman Minsky --

"a modern-day economic godfather who predicted the subprime crisis. 'Big Government,' he wrote, should become the 'employer of last resort' in a crisis, offering a job to anyone who wants one -- for health care, street cleaning, or slum renovation."

What the politicians seem to miss -- and our country will ignore at a terrible cost, I fear -- is these

"dominant headwinds that cannot be dismissed: 1] Labor is much more attractively priced over there than here, and 2] U. S. employment based on asst price appreciation/finance as opposed to manufacturing can no longer be sustained. The 'golden' days are over."

Western civilization prides itself on its rationality, it's ability to assess pitfalls ahead and adjust. So, where is the adjustment? Is anybody thinking about where this country is going? One of the problems with the power of interest-driven arguments is that the various interests involved in state building are preoccupied with short range benefits. Our system is set to re-assess, rethink every four years. Four years of planning driven by powerful corporate interests may drive the country over the cliff. Can there be a return?

Here is Bill Gross's assessment:

It is clear, however, that neither party has an awareness of the why or the wherefores of how to put America back to work again.

Juan Cole is now as admired as Owen Lattimore

2011-06-17T16:09:00.000-05:00

If I am honest with myself I have to admit that I am profoundly envious of Juan Cole. I have long admired his work. He writes richly documented scholarly works and he runs a blog in which he demonstrates every morning that he has already read everything in Arabic and Persian that was published that day. He must read and write in his sleep.
Yes, it’s envy: I only wish I could have done half as much fine work as he has, and that I could maintain an informed, up-to-the-moment commentary on even a small sector of the world comparable to his blog. But now he has now been elevated to an unparalleled level of scholarly greatness by the revelation that someone in the George W Bush administration tried to sabotage his career.
Few scholars ever get such an honor. The only other one so honored that I know of was someone else I have long admired, Owen Lattimore. Lattimore was the most eminent scholar on Chinese affairs in the 1940s and 1950s. He wrote some of the greatest studies of all time on the influence of the frontier on social affairs. His Inner Asian Frontiers of China was one of the great works in a field now given a name, political ecology. He had a powerful influence on American foreign policy in his day, as he was Roosevelt’s adviser on East Asian affairs. But what distinguished him above many other worthy scholars of his time was Joseph McCarthy’s attack against him during the 1950s. McCarthy accused him of being a Communist sympathizer, “a top Russian spy.” At the moment of the attack Lattimore was en route to Afghanistan where he had been designated the new head of the United Nations Mission there. When he arrived in Kabul and read a telegram notifying him of McCarthy’s charges, he got back on the same plane and went home. In Washington he vigorously defended himself and when the hearings were over he published a book, Ordeal by Slander, written in three months, no doubt in a fit of anger.
So now it turns out that Juan Cole has been elevated to such a stature. Only in his case no one will admit to trying to dig up dirt against him. Yesterday’s New York Times only indicates that someone in the G W Bush administration was asking Glenn L. Carle, a former Central Intelligence Agency officer, to gather sensitive information on Juan Cole. Who would that be? We know that the office of the Vice President was up to such shenanigans – that’s why Scooter Libby went to jail.
Whatever the situation it has now elevated Juan Cole into the class of most envied scholars. He is now on a par with Owen Lattimore.

Siddique on the corrosive power of politics on Pakistan's military

2011-06-08T16:30:00.000-05:00

Abubakar Siddique of Radio Free Europe has a great statement of the problem with Pakistan's military: It has long been not only rich [holding land, many companies, large trust funds, investment funds, etc.] but also politically entrenched. The combination of wealth and political power is corrosive everywhere. Siddique describes the extant problem [see also Tariq Ali, "The color Khaki"]. RLC

Radio Free Europe: Feature article
Pakistan: Armed With Power, Perks, And Privileges
June 04, 2011
By Abubakar Siddique

It has been a turbulent month for the Pakistani military.

First came the May 2 killing of Al-Qaeda leader Osama bin Laden, on Pakistani soil, by American commandos. The raid led to questions of how the Al-Qaeda leader could find a safe haven alongside Pakistan's elite military training academy, and how such a raid could be successfully carried out unbeknownst to the armed forces.

Then came the deadly insurgent attack on a naval base in Karachi on May 22-23, which took 16 hours to contain and which resulted in the death of at least 10 military personnel and four militants. Eyebrows were raised over how the armed services could fail to protect a key military installation.

Capping off the month was the kidnapping on May 29 of journalist Syed Saleem Shahzad. His abduction in the capital came shortly after he had written an investigative piece alleging that the Karachi attack stemmed from a breakdown in secret negotiations between the navy and Al-Qaeda.

There have been allegations that journalist Syed Salim Shahzad was tortured and killed by Pakistan's ISI intelligence agency.
Days after Shahzad warned that he had received threats because of his report, his tortured body was discovered far from the capital. Suspicions turned toward the Inter-Services Intelligence (ISI) agency, considered an integral part of what Pakistanis refer to as the "military establishment."

Human rights campaigners and journalists are clamoring for investigations into Shahzad's death as well as reports he had been threatened by the ISI, which the intelligence agency denies.

An Old Debate Rekindled

It is far from open season on the military, which takes the lion's share of foreign aid, possesses enormous wealth, and has dominated political and economic life in Pakistan for decades.

But lawmakers, the media, and the public have now become emboldened enough to rekindle an old debate about the considerable perks and privileges enjoyed by the country's powerful military.

Why, they ask, are immense resources being used to prop up bloated security institutions while a growing and impoverished population is left wanting?

The grumbling can be expected to get louder in the coming days.

"There are a lot of questions about where the resources are going," says Islamabad-based author and journalist Zahid Hussain, who asks "whether the huge military budgets are properly utilized?

"There are also questions about the…military's own professionalism," he says. "Professionalism in dealing with this kind of situation. Particularly, there are questions about the army running other businesses and not concentrating on their professional duties."

These are the type of questions that Hussain has suffered personally for asking in the past.

In a 2002 article for "Newsweek" magazine, he documented how the Pakistani military had carved out a corporate and real-estate empire that gave the then-ruling generals enormous wealth, power, and advantages.

'Military Generals Play Golf All The Time'

In response, Hussain was banned for years from covering the press conferences of President General Pervez Musharraf, who held office from 1999-2008.

Others have suffered more for going against the grain in the nuclear-armed Islamic nation, which has been ruled by military dictators -- Musharraf being the last -- for more than 30 of the years since its founding in 1947.

Sixty-year-old Pakistani lawyer Asma Jahangir has spent most of her life campaigning for the rights of religious minorities and landless farm workers effectively bound to a life of modern-day slavery.

Her work has placed her in direct opposition to the military's dominance of the Pakistan's decision-making process. For this she has been imprisoned and placed under house arrest.

Peaceful demonstrations she has orchestrated have been met with harsh police violence, and her family's businesses have suffered as her patriotism has been questioned.

Nevertheless, Jahangir continues to be one of the most vocal public voices questioning the perks enjoyed by the military.

"These military generals play golf all the time," she said on a popular night-time talk show on May 26. "And then they talk about where they will get plots [of land]. Please tell me how a marriage hall can operate in a sensitive [military] installation such as the [naval base] that was attacked in Karachi recently. Have you heard this happening anywhere else?"

An Immense Economic Machine

Jahangir's comments have attracted angry press statements and letters to the editor from former senior military officers, as have more subdued criticisms lodged on other TV talk shows and newspaper columns.

It will take a lot more than public questioning to put a dent in the military's immense economic machine, however.

Under the country's annual budget released on June 3, the military gets a major slice of the pie -- about 25 percent. Healthcare and education, by contrast, receive only a sliver -- less than 5 percent combined.

. . . [For more, click on the title above]

Iranian government thugs beat a famous woman scholar, who collapsed of heart attack

2011-06-07T06:11:00.000-05:00

Haleh Sahabi's death was not accidental but deliberate, by a regime that has been reduced to showing its true character. The story of her death as she mourns the death of her father is told by Hamed Dabashi, Al Jazeera, June 3, 2011.

Haleh Sahabi: Our Antigone in Tehran: Haleh Sahabi defied human law to defend moral, divine law; her life writing a heroic legend of the future. AlJazeera [6/3/11]
Haleh Sahabi, 54, was a distinguished Quranic hermeneutician, a religious comparatist, a women's rights scholar, and a committed activist to the cause of her people's civil liberties. Haleh Sahabi was sentenced to a two-year prison term after she had joined a rally in front of the Iranian parliament in the aftermath of the contested presidential election of 2009.

While serving her term in jail, Haleh Sahabi was informed of her father's impending death. He was the prominent Iranian dissident Ezzatollah Sahabi (1930-2011), a revered democracy activist, known and admired for his mild manner, open-minded generosity of spirit, a liberal demeanor, and a commitment to non-violent activism on a religious-nationalist platform for over half a century.

Haleh Sahabi was briefly allowed out of prison to be present for the final days of her father's life. Ezzatollah died, at the age of 81 on May 31, 2011. Millions of Iranians in and out of their homeland were saddened by his death, deeply grateful for his moderate and caring positions, even those who did not agree with him.

His funeral began on the following day, June 1, under tight security control, and - according to a number of reliable eyewitness accounts- including those of Ahmad Montazeri, the son of the late Grand Ayatollah Montazeri, and Ahmad Sadr Haj Seyyed Javadi, an aging opposition politician - a band of organised plainclothes security forces began to disrupt the funeral, ridiculing and humiliating the attendants, and moved to snatch the body of the deceased from those who were carrying it for a proper burial.

Haleh Sahabi, leading the funeral, tried to prevent the disruption, while holding on to a picture of her father. The picture was violently taken away from her by a security agent and she was hit on her side. She fell to the ground in the scuffle and soon after died of a cardiac arrest.

The International campaign for Human Rights in Iran holds the plainclothes security forces responsible for Haleh Sahabi's death, and has called for an official investigation. "The shameful actions of government thugs in this incident reveal a deep contempt for traditions that belong to all Iranians, and they have resulted in a tragedy," said Hadi Ghaemi, spokesperson for the campaign. Shirin Ebadi, the Iranian Nobel Peace laureate, has declared Haleh Sahabi's death,"intentional murder".

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