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

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)

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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?

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

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.

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

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.

BM

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

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.

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

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

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's military courts:  The families of six of the hundreds of people given long jail sentences speak out about the 'abuse of justice'".  Reporter in Bahrain 18 Oct 2011 

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

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

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

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

In an attempt to quell the uprising, the island's rulers invited Saudi and other Gulf troops to Bahrain in March, and called for a three-month state of emergency, or what it called the "National Safety Law".

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

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

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

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

"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?

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.

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 The contents of this site are © 2011 Capitol Hill Publishing Corp., a subsidiary of News Communications, Inc.

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

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

A recent post by Peter Van Buren on how he has been harassed for posting a link from his personal blog to a Wikileaks site on the web should alarm everyone.  There are still, and always will be, ways of intimidating individuals without breaking the law, and the treatment of this State Department official is frightening.  This kind of behavior, I can believe, might have taken place during the George W Bush administration when the whole country was punchy about every twitch that could be regarded as a threat to the country.  But, no, this took place only recently, by officials in the Obama administration, which we had all hoped would avoid such knee-jerk reactions.  Consider the following:

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

This was reason to be formally asked if he had “donated any money ... to a forward military base in Iraq.”

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

Mr Van Buren assumed that there was a subtext to this interrogation:  Someone objected to what he had to say in a forthcoming 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 of experience, and in this interview he was told that for the act of simply linking to another website he could lose his security clearance, which for him would of course mean the termination of a career.  The agents questioning him even stated that he was subject to criminal prosecution.  Indeed by merely revealing that he was being thus interrogated he could be charged with “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 Iran or North Korea.  We think an open society is a good thing.  We like the idea of a society in which people are free to use the internet.  It’s OK even to link to other sites the web -- 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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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?

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

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

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