TOON

Western Aid Declines, Financial Bailouts Mount

Over three billion people - almost half the world, live on less than $2.50 a day.

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Thalif Deen
June 26, 2009 - Inter Press Service

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As the world's poorer nations warn about the gravity of the global financial crisis on their fragile economies, the United Nations has exposed the hypocrisy of Western donors who cry poverty even while they raise trillions of dollars to rescue their beleaguered financial institutions.

Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon has warned that the current financial meltdown should not be an excuse to slash development aid or marginalise developing nations, specifically the world's 49 least developed countries (LDCs) - ranging from Bhutan and Benin to Sierra Leone and Solomon Islands.

The United Nations Millennium Campaign, which is battling to help eradicate extreme poverty and hunger worldwide, points out that since the inception of overseas development assistance almost 50 years ago, donor countries have given some 2.0 trillion dollars in aid.

And yet over the past year, 18 trillion dollars has been found globally to bail out banks and other financial institutions.

"The stark contrast between the money dispersed to the world's desperately poor after 49 years of painstaking summits and negotiations and the staggering sums found virtually overnight to bail out the creators of the global economic crisis makes it impossible for governments to any longer claim that the world can't find the money to help the 50,000 people who are dying of extreme poverty every day", says Salil Shetty, director of the Millennium Campaign.

The amount of total aid over the past 49 years represents just 11.0 percent of the money found for financial institutions in one year, he added.

Addressing the three-day U.N. summit on the global financial crisis Wednesday, the secretary-general reinforced the same argument.

The annual aid to the crisis-stricken continent of Africa, he said, was at least 20 billion dollars below the promises made by the leaders of the industrial world in Gleneagles, Scotland back in 2005.

"Surely, if the world can mobilise more than 18 trillion dollars to keep the financial sector afloat, it can find more than 18 billion dollars to keep commitments to Africa," Ban said.

But would it?

The challenge to the industrial world will come up once again at a summit meeting of the G8 countries - the United States, Britain, France, Italy, Germany, Japan, Canada and Russia - in L'Aquila, Italy Jul. 8-10.

"We need clear priorities," Ban told the U.N. summit. "That is why I have just sent a letter to G8 leaders urging concrete commitments and specific action to renew our resolve."

A 16-page outcome document, to be adopted by political leaders Friday, says the evolving crisis, which began within the world's major financial centres, has spread throughout the global economy, causing severe social, political and economic impacts.

"This crisis is negatively affecting all countries, particularly developing countries, and threatening the livelihoods, well-being and development opportunities of millions of people," the draft says.

The bottom line: millions of people all over the world are losing their jobs, their income, their savings and their homes.

The document specifically says that developing countries, "which did not cause the global economic and financial crisis, are nonetheless severely affected by it."

The Food and Agriculture Organisation (FAO) says the economic meltdown has resulted in 100 million more people going hungry, with the total number of the world's starving population reaching over one billion this year.

The World Bank projects a finance gap of up to 700 billion dollars, desperately needed by developing nations, with the possibility of a "lost generation", resulting in added deaths of 1.5 to 2.8 million infants by 2015.

Asked why rich countries keep ignoring the pleas of the world's poorer nations while they bail out banks and other financial institutions, Shetty of the U.N. Millennium Campaign told IPS: "The leaders in rich countries don't face any short-term political consequences by not acting on the needs and aspirations of poor people living in poor countries."

He said the only long-term solution is to build public support through sustained public education on these issues in rich countries.

"The decision-makers in rich countries don't see the same self-interest and mutuality as they now see in climate change, swine flu/pandemics, the so-called war against terror and to a lesser extent in trade on which the need for multilateral action has become painfully clear," he added.

Shetty pointed out they did realise the possible consequences in the case of Eastern Europe, where they live physically next to poor countries.

"They forget that there is less than 10 miles of water separating Europe from Africa," he noted.

Asked if developing nations, who are now part of G20, have a role to play in convincing their rich partners to respond to the call, Shetty said: "Yes, like climate change the growing economic importance particularly of China has certainly rebalanced the highly asymmetric power relations between rich and poor countries."

The members of the G20 are the finance ministers and central bank governors of 19 countries: Argentina, Australia, Brazil, Canada, China, France, Germany, India, Indonesia, Italy, Japan, Mexico, Russia, Saudi Arabia, South Africa, South Korea, Turkey, the United Kingdom and the United States of America, plus the European Union.

Shetty said: "The challenge we now face is to make sure that the BRICs (Brazil, India and China) themselves don't forget the 49 least developed countries (LDCs), as they bargain for a better deal for themselves with the richest countries."

"Otherwise, we could be back to the historic game of divide and rule," he stressed.

Shetty also said it is crucial that the emerging nations continue to place the achievement of the Millennium Development Goals (MDGs) at the forefront of their negotiations at the G8 in Italy in two weeks time and the G20 in September in the United States.

U.S. Lawmakers Act to Tame 'Vulture Funds'

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A coalition of African solidarity and debt relief organizations applauded U.S. legislation introduced last week to protect countries from vulture funds -- companies that profit off of the debt of poor nations.           

June 25, 2009 - OneWorld.net

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What's the Story?

The Stop VULTURE Funds Act is a "key step in protecting developing countries from vulture funds," said Nicole Lee, executive director of the TransAfrica Forum, an African American human rights and social justice advocacy organization.

Reintroduced last week into the lower house of Congress, the bill would block U.S. investment funds from purchasing the debt of impoverished countries at reduced rates and then suing the countries to collect astronomical profits. The bill would also limit the amount of interest for which the firms could sue to six percent and require greater transparency during these transactions.

According to Neil Watkins, executive director of the Jubilee USA Network, an alliance of 75 religious denominations, development agencies, and human rights groups, "vulture funds make their profits by deepening the suffering of millions of people in some of the poorest countries in the world. They are stealing the resources that should be invested in education, health, and infrastructure improvement."

Preying on the Poor

Every year, African nations pay approximately $14 billion in debt remunerations to wealthy nations and international financial institutions while receiving less than $13 billion in international aid. Agreements to cancel or reduce debts have enabled states to spend more on much-needed social programs and translated into a higher quality of life for millions of people in developing countries.

Money used to pay back vulture funds is typically rerouted from programs intended to benefit these countries' least privileged citizens.

One report estimates the average potential cost of lawsuits brought against Heavily Indebted Poor Countries' (HIPCs) by vulture funds amounts to 18 percent of spending on health care and education, 59 percent of debt repayments, and 5 percent of budget revenue. A 2007 study by the organization Debt Relief International found that lawsuit costs totaled 52 percent of health and education expenditure in Niger and 98 percent of revenue in Cameroon.

Vulture funds prey on countries that qualify for debt cancellation precisely because their governments have access to money for such programs, writes the TransAfrica Forum.

"Since the vulture fund buys the loan from the creditor, not the debtor, the vulture fund can technically claim payment of the full amount, even if it paid only a fraction of the value," explains Africa Action. Investment funds that pursue vulture activities often do so in great secrecy, by basing their operations in tax havens like the British Virgin Islands and litigating in European and U.S. courts, which they see consider more creditor-friendly and efficient. Moreover, some investment funds -- known as hedge funds -- are exempt from certain regulatory processes and can more easily target indebted countries.

Zambia and Donegal International

In 1979, Zambia purchased agricultural equipment and services from Romania on credit. Shoddy equipment and European farm subsidies, however, prevented the southern African nation from bringing in the revenue necessary to repay the loan.

In 1999, the two countries agreed to liquidate the debt for $3.28 million. But Donegal International, a British Virgin Islands-based fund, moved quickly to purchase the debt from Romania for the liquidation price and then sued the Zambian government in a U.K. court for $55 million seven years later.

The British High Court ordered Zambia to pay $15.4 million to Donegal International, or what amounted to 65 percent of Zambia's savings in debt relief in 2006.

Clipping the Wings of Vulture Funds

"More than two-thirds of the lawsuits brought by vulture funds are adjudicated in U.S. or U.K. courts," explains the TransAfrica Forum. "In the majority of cases, vulture funds sue in courts located in New York, Paris, and London because these courts are viewed as more creditor-friendly and more efficient."

In addition to efforts in the United States, lawmakers in the United Kingdom introduced legislation in May that would allow funds to sue only for the amount they paid for the debt, force funds to disclose a list of their investors, and introduce measures to combat the corruption often involved in these deals.

The U.K.-based Jubilee Debt Campaign is calling on supporters to urge their local representatives to engage in various efforts aimed at ending "the vulture culture."

Similarly, Jubilee USA is encouraging people in the United States to take action against vulture funds by encouraging greater political support for the Stop VULTURE Funds Act currently under consideration in Congress.

Will the 'Dollar Wars' Kill What's Left of the American Dream?

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Countries yoked to America's currency, and therefore its cratering empire, want to kick the dollar to the curb. And that's bad news for the U.S.

Scott Thill
June 26, 2009 - AlterNet

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Here's a terrible joke: An elderly man walks into a bar and says, "I got good news and I got bad news."

"What's the good news?" the bartender asks.

"I stayed out of the stock market, so my retirement dollars are safe."

"What's the bad news?"

"They're dollars."

OK, I said it was a terrible joke. But that may be what the dollar is becoming, now that the critical mass of wartime spending, rampant consumption, hyper-real finance  and environmental collapse has hit the fan.

The hangover from the last three presidential terms, but especially the last two, has taken the American economy down the rabbit hole, with the international monetary system begging for mercy while hitched to its off-the-ralls crazy train. But the ride has stopped, and some countries yoked to America's currency, and therefore its cratering empire, don't want to get back on.

Namely, Brazil, Russia, India and China, loosely termed BRIC by Goldman Sachs economist Jim O'Neill, who is not alone in predicting the four countries' ascendant power, as the United States and the Eurozone fade into the 20th century.

With Brazil and Russia lording over a large share of what's left of the planet's natural gas and oil, and China and India providing a titanic labor force that rivals the intelligence, productivity and regimentation of workers anywhere outside their borders, BRIC is in the house, big time. And it wants a say in what's going on, as Marvin Gaye sang.

What's going on is that the dollar, to which the majority of the planet's economies and currencies are now reliant, has us all by the proverbial balls, and BRIC is screaming about it in the press. Something has to give, it's saying, and that thing is the dollar.

"There is a lot of political and economic posturing involved," Rachel Zimeba, lead analyst at economist Nouriel Roubini's RGE Monitor, explained to AlterNet. "But I think there is substance to it. China has been trying, relatively unsuccessfully, to diversify for a couple of years, which has conflicted with its desire to have undervalued exports. Same thing has happened to countries in the Middle East, which are pegged to the dollar. And we're going to see even more pressure to diversify from these countries to reduce the share of their [dollar] assets.

"They see that the U.S. has a rising debt burden and record financing needs. Over time, they are worried that inflation and a weaker dollar will reduce the value of those assets."

They should be worried. Since the Bush administration took office, the dollar has lost 33 percent of its value. And since the Bushies left office, the dollar has been on autopilot, hovering beneath the pound and euro and jockeying for position with the Canadian dollar for the bronze medal in underperforming currencies, losing or gaining altitude every time a politician from Russia or China slams or praises it in the press. Like the American economy itself, the Humpty Dumpty dollar is wobbling on the fence, hoping reality doesn't hop along and give it a shove.

The good news? It could land softly.

"This is not an overnight thing," Ziemba added. "Same thing goes for these countries' attempts to turn their own currencies into transactional and reserve currencies."

That's reassuring, especially to what's left of those who still have a lot of dollars, as the American unemployment rate rises to levels nearly unseen since World War II. But once you wormhole a bit further into the future, the dollar's fate is much more murky.

"The debate between the inflationists and deflationists is red-hot these days, as the U.S. financial system continues to wobble and the 'real' economy of goods and services staggers," explained Jim Kunstler, author of The Long Emergency, World Made By Hand and the riotously acerbic column "Clusterfuck Nation."  "The fate of the dollar in the short-term depends on which way this really goes. But in the long term, both sides say the dollar is toast."

Helping push America off the debt-soaked cliff it built for itself by hitching its future to hyper-real derivatives and unsustainable deregulation and development is beginning to look less like sacrilege and more like prudent international monetary policy. Whereas in the past, China and Russia's public protestations about the hegemonic corruption of the American empire would have been shooed away like jealous flies, now more countries are joining in the anti-American chorus, even as they shake President Barack Obama's hand and hope openly for a kindler, gentler global village.

What's going on behind the scenes is anybody's guess. But it's probably a good guess that more than a few long knives have been unsheathed. 

"Geopolitically, I suspect there is whispered consensus between our various partners and rivals that the American situation is pretty hopeless,"  Kunstler cracked, "and that they would now all more or less benefit from the diminishment of U.S. power across the board. The Chinese, for instance, must know that we will never again ramp up the orgy of credit spending. Why keep throwing away their wealth to keep us consuming?"   

It's a good question. One of the BRIC members' solutions to the conundrum is to spend more time on their own currencies, as well as those of the beleaguered International Monetary Fund, which has its own currency, called special drawing rights. The SDRs are pegged to a currency basket, containing the U.S dollar, the euro, the yen and the U.K. pound sterling. In other words, the currencies of the 20th century's superpowers. 

BRIC, the purported superpowers of the 21st century, have been buying SDRs like mad lately. When BRIC met in mid-June in the Siberian city of Yekaterinberg, it committed to giving $80 billion to the IMF, with China carrying the lion's share at $50 billion. Add that to the $250 billion that the G20 coughed up in April, and the IMF is quickly becoming the planet's reserve bank of choice. 

"There is a need to make the IMF a true representative of the world's leading economies," Russian Finance Minister Alexei Kudrin asserted in June. "It's not there right now," he said, adding that it would be a decade before what People's Bank of China Governor Zhou Xiaochuan recently called a super-sovereign reserve currency mounted enough of a challenge to displace the dollar.

In the meantime, Russia, China and the other BRIC members are putting their money where they want their mouths to be, which is in the International Monetary Fund's ear. But whether that super-sovereign reserve currency is the SDR is too soon to say.

"The SDR can't handle the load in its current form," Zimeba argued. "You'd need a payment system that accepted the SDR, for one. But where it can grow is in reserve assets, and this upcoming issuance of IMF bonds denominated in SDR will be a significant increase. But SDRs will only be open to governments, not the secondary market where they can be traded, which fails the requirements of convertibility and liquidity.

"Right now, the SDR doesn't have that mechanism. But that can change over time. In the near term, this is a way towards diversification, because the dollar doesn't have a majority share in the SDR."

Kunstler adds: "They're obviously hedging their bets as much as possible. Put yourself in their shoes. They see the U.S. financial system's stupendous swindles, and they know the score. So their interests are strictly tactical and strategic in the interests of their survival. They also surely want to try to insure the continuation of world trade, with or without the U.S. consumer."

Which is why BRIC, and by extension the countries beneath its heel or shaking its hand, are diversifying their dollars and dumping cash into the IMF, where they can attempt to influence the international monetary system in their favor. The United States has so far committed $108 billion, including $5 billion siphoned from the controversial war-funding bill that passed in mid-June.

In addition, it has arranged for the IMF to receive over $500 billion altogether, mostly to prop up zombie European banks that drank too much of the derivatives Kool-Aid. So BRIC has an uphill battle ahead of it. But it's gaining strength, and wants to convert that to IMF say-so.

"They want more significant voting rights in the IMF," Ziemba said. "The money is in exchange for leverage. China has talked in detail about how the over-reliance on the dollar was adding to global instability, creating a situation where the optimal monetary policy for the U.S. is not optimal for countries tacked to the dollar. But it's fairly obvious that, in five to 10 years, the role of these countries in the global economy will only increase. But they also have to figure out how much responsibility they want to take on."

Or can take on. BRIC is ascendant for sure, but it's about to inherit a global economy and environment that is nothing like the respectively stable climates American and European empires have enjoyed over the last few hundred years. From the econopocalypse to climate crisis and beyond, BRIC is quickly going to find its hands full of problems that will doubtlessly dampen its upward surge. Sure, the dollar is toast, but so is Earth's biodiversity and store of natural resources. It's hard to build a superpower on that heap. 

"I think all nations are losing the ability to control events at the global level," Kunstler concluded. "It's a symptom of the crack-up of globalization, per se: A set of transient economic relations that only existed because of special conditions, namely, the final blowout of the cheap energy era. With that over, it's now a mad scramble for each player to survive.

"Observers seem to think that China will become the new global hegemon, but I doubt it. They have problems with water, food, overpopulation and environmental degradation that are much worse than ours. The world is comprehensively headed for a reduced standard of living."

Naval overhaul slides off Russia’s agenda

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Roger N McDermott
Jun 26, 2009 - Asia Times

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The Russian military top brass continues to make officially ambitious and upbeat assessments concerning the navy, mainly alleging that it carries out all "tasks assigned to it".

For example, on June 1, the official Ministry of Defense (MoD) publication Krasnaya Zvezda hailed record tactical exercises of two divisions, naval minesweepers and small anti-submarine warfare (ASW) ships, organized by the Black Sea fleet.

These claims often emanate from the Black Sea fleet information and public relations service, clearly tasked with presenting a positive view of naval activities. For instance, they emphasize that

 

seamen recruited in the draft last autumn participated in recent exercises.

Drafted mainly from Russia's central regions, these latest recruits passed the relevant tests and expressed their desire to serve on surface vessels. "The vessel crews worked skillfully and in a coordinated fashion," said the information service. This was in stark contrast, however, to the reported accidental shelling of a village near St Petersburg on May 28 by a vessel in the Northern fleet.

Other elements of the Russian navy are also praised in official military sources, no doubt in an effort to boost the morale of its personnel. In 2008, the Pacific fleet made high profile visits to foreign ports, and a detachment from the fleet entered the Indian Ocean in May 2009 under command of Captain First Rank Ildar Akhmerov, preparing calls to the seaports of Salalah (Oman) and Manama (Bahrain).

The detachment was formed before its embarkation, in a "manner which would enable it to tackle the tasks which might emerge both in coordination and independently by individual ships". It included the Admiral Panteleyev, a large ASW vessel, Izhora and Irkut tankers and the MB-37 tugboat, and was similar in composition to a group that carried out international anti-piracy tasks earlier in the year. It was essentially tasked with convoying vessels along the so-called security corridor, following which the detachment separated.

The challenges of containing international piracy have also provided opportunities for an enhanced "footprint" by the Russian navy. According to the International Maritime Bureau Piracy Reporting Center, by early May 2009 the number of attacks on shipping in the Bay of Aden and the eastern coast of Somalia exceeded the figure for the entire year of 2008. Since the start of the year pirates carried out 114 attacks, 29 of which ended in seizure of vessels: compared with 2008, these figures were 111 and 42 respectively.

On June 1, the first deputy Minister of Defense Colonel-General Aleksandr Kolmakov, summarized the results of the winter training period. "During the past winter training period, Russian navy surface ships and submarines took to sea on 438 occasions. During the summer the navy will also participate in international exercises," Kolmakov explained.

He nonetheless admitted the improved figures were only marginal, and that mostly naval elements had underperformed in the winter training period. "In recent years more than 540 modern technical training systems have been delivered to train army and navy personnel. The Defense Ministry is currently completing the development of a blueprint for the development of technical training systems for the period through 2020," he said. Its results, however, appear a long way off.

Objectives: Local or global?
On June 15, Vice Admiral Viktor Kravchuk, the commander of the Caspian flotilla, confirmed that it will remain under the direct subordination to the main staff of the Russian navy, despite the current military reform, in which all formations will be transferred to permanent readiness.

Earlier, Russian media mooted the idea that the Caspian flotilla was scheduled to become an operational naval command subordinated to the commander of the Black Sea fleet by December 1, as part of the reform. "By December 1, 2009, the reorganization of the flotilla will be carried out by abolishing parallel structures and uniting the formations that deal with secondary goals. Twenty five percent of positions will be reduced. However, the Caspian flotilla as a separate combat naval force will remain. The flotilla will remain a force under direct command of the main staff of the Russian navy in Moscow," Kravchuk said.

In his view, this will give the flotilla a "new image", with the critical change being its transfer to permanent readiness. Moreover, he explained that the reorganization of its combat composition will entail reducing older types of weaponry and equipment, and the number of units tasked with duties "not characteristic of a naval force". After the completion of the structural reforms, the Caspian flotilla will consist of two brigades of surface ships, naval infantry, logistical support units and auxiliary ships.

He said that the unstable military-political situation in the Caspian region justified the strengthening of the flotilla's combat capabilities. "The main sources of instability are the problems of the unsettled international legal status of the Caspian Sea, disputed oil and gas fields in the southern Caspian Sea and illegal fishing of valuable species of fish," Kravchuk said.

Sources within the Russian MoD have also alleged that the navy plans to transfer eight to 10 submarines to the Black Sea fleet, which is fiercely opposed by the Ukrainian government. Vasily Kirilich, the press spokesman for the Ukrainian Foreign Ministry, said that "the modernization or the introduction of new vessels of the Russian Black Sea fleet may be undertaken only with the consent of Ukraine, and this is specified clearly by the agreement between Ukraine and the Russian Federation on the parameters of the division of the Black Sea fleet of 1997."

Vice Admiral Oleg Burtsev, deputy chief of the Russian navy main staff, disagrees, arguing that Russia is entitled to replace the fleet's submarine forces without any reference to Kyiv. The Ukrainian Security Service also recently called on the withdrawal of all officers of the Federal Security Service of the Russian Federation attached to the fleet.

The status of the Black Sea fleet aside, it has become more strategically significant following the five-day war between Russia and Georgia in August 2008. Though naval combat played no meaningful role in the conflict, some naval officers have suggested that the fleet needs additional submarines. It currently has one permanent diesel-powered sub, the Alrosa, which is undergoing repairs; a painful situation for officers that recall around 40 submarines stationed in the Black Sea fleet in the Soviet period.

Economic issues challenge naval ambition
A series of setbacks has shaken the navy and the plans to carry out the reform program successfully. The much publicized though wholly unnecessary relocation of the navy headquarters to St Petersburg was "postponed" due to the costs involved and the opposition from admirals and senior officers who questioned its logic.

On June 18, a much more serious blow was disclosed by the deputy Defense Minister for Armaments Colonel-General Vladimir Popovkin, confirming that the planned development of six to seven carrier task groups in 2012 had also been "postponed".

The commander-in-chief of the Russian navy, Admiral Vladimir Vysotsky, first announced this ambitious program in July 2008. "Before going to the trouble, let us first decide what we need carrier task groups for. What strategic interests far from home do we have? There is more to a carrier task group than the aircraft-carrier alone. Aircraft-carriers need escorts. And the Russian navy only includes four fleets nowadays," Popovkin said.

Admiral Vysotsky said that such carrier task groups centered around nuclear-powered aircraft-carriers and capable of supporting strategic nuclear submarines were planned for the Northern and Pacific fleets. He emphatically promised that work on the project would begin in 2012.

If this postponement proves to be a diplomatic way of abandoning the plans, it will indicate that in practical terms the Russian military and security elites recognize the futility of pursuing global military ambitions. Moreover, these targets were announced prior to the global financial crisis while oil prices were relatively high on the world market.

There were also issues concerning which shipyards were capable of carrying out such construction work, while the long-running repairs to the Admiral Gorshkov aircraft carrier earmarked for export to India has been underway for more than a decade, complicating bilateral negotiations on pricing. Popovkin also said that tests of the Yuri Dolgoruky, a Borey class nuclear submarine which will carry Bulava missiles, submarine launched ballistic missiles, were scheduled to begin shortly; while the Bulava tests in 2008 resulted in 50% failure. More tests will commence in July, with four or five scheduled for this year. Equally, the MoD has decided to halve the number of ships scheduled for either repair or modernization.

On June 1, Russian Prime Minister Vladimir Putin criticized the MoD leadership during a Russian government session. He reported that the defense industrial complex enterprise directors have complained about the lack of progress in conclusion of contracts within the framework of the state defense order. "The directors are saying that the money is not arriving at the enterprises. We have the money but real problems are emerging at the enterprises."

The state defense order is based on the program for rearming the army and the navy that has been approved by the government, which was calculated for 2007-2015. The sluggishness involved reflects poor management, weaknesses within the defense industry and state corruption often resulting in vast sums vanishing - originally intended for repair or modernization.

Colonel Yuriy Rubtsov, an expert on the strategic culture fund in Moscow's Academy of Military Sciences, explained: "Unfortunately, the main mass of the 300 ships, which are in the Russian navy's fighting strength today, have been operating for more than 20 years now. The eloquent statements about the state-of-the-art navy are empty promises."

Conclusion
Although Russian military reform plans are currently concentrating on implanting organizational changes, from the mass mobilization principle and abandoning the division based structure, moving toward permanent readiness, a mobile brigade-based system by the end of the end the year, it appears that the navy is being hardest hit by the economic downturn, as the Russian economy contracts.

This might entail a more realistic assessment within the Russian MoD and General Staff concerning global military capabilities, focusing instead on raising the potential to intervene in local conflicts, perhaps in support of a more limited resurgence of Russian power within its near abroad.

Equally, the critique in Western assessments, that the military reform is being conducted in a "crazy" order, without first rewriting the military doctrine, actually makes sense from a Russian military perspective; the need to overcome internal objections to reform meant rushing to first restructure the organizational table.

Having already passed the halfway mark, they have secured the reforms and ensured they cannot be easily unpicked. While this might have implications locally, it appears that the more ambitious elements of the modernization agenda, including the navy and its dream of multiple aircraft carriers, are being corrected: Russia's power aspirations are therefore, more local than global - a point which could take more than a generation for the navy to accept.

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Roger N McDermott is an honorary senior fellow, Department of Politics and International Relations, University of Kent at Canterbury (UK) specializing in defense and security issues in Russia, Central Asia and the South Caucasus.

TOON

Gas Pump Thievery: Who's Really Behind the Rising Prices at the Pumps?

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Jim Hightower 
June 25, 2009 - AlterNet

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Like a Fourth of July crescendo of fireworks, our gasoline prices are rising higher and higher. While this is tough on consumers, we're assured by a covey of tongue-clucking industry analysts that nothing can be done about it, for it's simply the law of supply and demand in action -- so suck it up, and pay up.

But hold your BPExxonMobilShellChevron horses right there. Supply and demand? The supply of crude oil has risen this year to its highest level in nearly two decades, even while the demand for gasoline has dropped dramatically, having fallen this month to a 10-year low. Let's see -- supply up, demand down. That's a classic market formula for cheaper prices at the pump. Yet our prices have steadily moved up, rising by two-thirds since the beginning of the year (and by 60 cents a gallon in the past two months alone).

What's going on here is not the "magic of the marketplace," but some hocus-pocus by brand-name dealers. What might surprise you, though, is that the wheeler-dealers now jacking up our pump prices don't operate under the BPExxonMobilShellChevron brands -- but the logos of Goldman Sachs, Morgan Stanley and other Wall Street traders that have been placing vast, unregulated, secretive bets on the future price of oil. They're playing an electronic casino game in a global "dark market" of exotic derivatives and credit swaps.

If this sounds vaguely familiar to you, it's because this is the same game that Wall Street played with subprime mortgages, leading to the present crash of our economy. And, yes, these are the exact same banksters that you and I are presently bailing out with our trillions of tax dollars.

Yet, there they go again. By pooling money from sheltered hedge funds, sovereign state funds, offshore accounts and other super-wealthy investors, speculators like Goldman and Morgan have quietly been buying trillions of dollars worth of oil derivatives -- which essentially are bets that oil prices will rise to a certain level by a certain date.

Unlike those investors who actually purchase contracts for future delivery of oil, there is no limit on how much money these gamblers can put into the oil market. Nor do they have to report to anyone how much they have bet, even though their massive infusion of money is totally and artificially distorting the real value of petroleum.

As CNBC television's top energy correspondent, Sharon Epperson, reported last month, "It's this money flow -- rather than the fundamental supply-demand data -- that's driving oil prices higher."

Why is this allowed? Because the Commodity Futures' Modernization Act of 2000 included a provision that was quietly tucked into the law by then-Sen. Phil Gramm, R-Texas, specifically prohibiting any regulation of such commodity-based derivatives. Among the enthusiastic backers of this legalized thievery were Robert Rubin, the Wall Streeter who was Bill Clinton's treasury secretary, and his protege, Larry Summers, who is now Barack Obama's chief economic advisor.

This bipartisan cabal created a speculative mechanism that's presently sucking money out of your pocket with every gallon of gas you pump. Meanwhile, every dollar that Goldman, Morgan and the rest use to inflate oil prices is a dollar they are not investing in real economic activity that could create middle-class jobs.

Of course, Wall Street culprits are trying to keep their involvement hush-hush. When a McClatchy newspaper reporter approached Goldman Sachs about it, the response was terse: "Goldman Sachs declines to comment for your story."

As Woody Guthrie wrote in a song about outlaws: "Some'll rob you with a six-gun/Some with a fountain pen." It's time to regulate Wall Street's gas-pump thievery -- and to put a few of the perpetrators in jail.

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Jim Hightower is a national radio commentator, writer, public speaker, and author of the new book, "Swim Against the Current: Even a Dead Fish Can Go With the Flow."

Operation Enduring Folly: US Kills 60 More in Pakistan Air Strike

Slick and deadly: Most of the victims in at least 22 unmanned "drone" missile attacks in Pakistan have been civilians. (US Air Force)

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Pierre Tristam
June 24, 2009 - About.com

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"Operation Enduring Freedom is ostensibly being fought to uphold the American Way of Life. It'll probably end up undermining it completely," the Indian writer Arundhati Roy wrote in 2001, in "The Algebra of Infinite Justice." Roy took a lot of grief for that piece from American public opinion, hijacked at the time by a blind desire for violent revenge (and the silencing of dissenters) that would prove to be far worse than 9/11's mass murders. Far worse, because we're living its consequences still, though far less in the West than in the Middle East: Iraq, Iran (yes, even Iran), Afghanistan and Pakistan as Roy's words have been unfortunately and terribly vindicated many times over, with no end in sight.

Yesterday there was this headline in The Times: "U.S. Tightens Airstrike Policy in Afghanistan," over a Dexter Filkins story quoting the new U.S. commander in Afghanistan, Gen. Stanley A. McChrystal, saying that "Air power contains the seeds of our own destruction if we do not use it responsibly," and pledging, "Even in the cases of active firefights with Taliban forces," in Filkins' paraphrase, that "airstrikes will be limited if the combat is taking place in populated areas - the very circumstances in which most Afghan civilian deaths have occurred. The restrictions will be especially tight in attacking houses and compounds where insurgents are believed to have taken cover."

Then this headline, barely 24 hours later: "Suspected U.S. Strike Kills at Least 60 in Pakistan." The attack was carried out by a CIA or Pentagon drone--killing people attending a funeral in South Waziristan. Dawn, the Pakistani newsper, puts the death toll at 50 and describes most of the victims as "militants." The Times is less categorical:
Details of the attack, which occurred in Makeen, remained unclear, but the reported death toll was exceptionally high. If the reports are indeed accurate and if the attack was carried out by a drone, the strike could be the deadliest since the United States began using the aircraft to fire remotely guided missiles at members of the Taliban and Al Qaeda in the tribal areas of Pakistan. The United States carried out 22 previous drone strikes this year, as the Obama administration has intensified a policy inherited from the Bush administration.
It begs the question. What's Stanley A. McChrystal doing differently? What's the Obama administration doing differently? McChrystal's words sounded strangely similar to those of Mike Mullen, the chairman of the Joint Chiefs, who told a congressional committee in September 2008, "We can't kill our way to victory." Only to let the killing continue.
Sometime this summer, the United States will register its 5,000th American soldier killed as a result of wars in either Iraq or Afghanistan. The media, if there's still any interest in casualties of any sort Stateside, will write the mournful editorial or two, missing, as always, the larger problem: the day-in-and-day-out devastation visited on local populations by the very forces ostensibly dispatched to protect them, at a price far, far heavier than the one sustained by Americans.

That one strike today killed more people in Pakistan than the death toll of American soldiers in Iraq since March. That many, maybe most, of the victims may turn out to be "militants" won't diminish the ripples of the attack in Pakistan, precisely the kind of ripples McChrystal was claiming to want to control from here on.

It's no longer the American Way of Life American deployments are fighting to preserve. The wind went out of that shameless bit of flag-waving years ago. But it hasn't been clear for years, either, what the deployments are fighting for. Or against. Except for the one recurrent target that never fails to take a hit, even when all else fails: civilians.

Cooking in a Coffee Pot and Other Useful Tips for the Homeless

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David Glenn Cox
June 23, 2009 - Smirking Chimp

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I write this for the millions who, like myself, are holed up in basements, garages, empty houses, fields, culverts and what have you. Guilty of being Americans and homeless, trying to make it through just one more day in the land of Fuck You and the home of the slave. I am at the top of the homeless pyramid; I still have internet access and a toilet.

The one thing to remember about the homeless is that they never have a day off. They are homeless every day; it's easy to forget and difficult to understand, but the homeless face the world without a buttress. They are toe-to-toe with the heat and the humidity, the rain, the mud, and the bugs.

They have lost their basic building block of society, a home, a place to lay down their heads. A place to lie in comfort, a simple retreat from the world. I consider myself among the lucky; I have a leaking air mattress and a roof to keep myself dry and a box fan to keep me cool. I don't sleep in a bed but on a floor, and eat on a table salvaged from a dumpster. But it is not a home, it is a garage. It is a refuge and I am a refugee in modern America.

Brought up in another place, I feel myself an alien in this land. This is not the land of my birth. Where did it all go? How can we get back there? Our goals, motives and principles become polluted and reverse reclamated, blurred and obscured by the lack of a home. We live like cave men and women, targeted and dodging the monsters in squad cars or just avoiding the looks of disgust from those who believe themselves invincible.

But we know better and we look back with "see you soon eyes," and we dream a dream of beds with clean linen or a hot bath or a shower. A job with decent wages and maybe even a front door and a window with a screen. But if I had one wish it would be to play the movie "The Grapes of Wrath" on every TV channel for twenty-four hours, because I am living every line of it every day. "Don't take no nerve to do something when you ain't got no other choice."

"It's my dirt, it ain't no good but its mine!"

We are looking for our California, our promised land, a place to start again. Because, just like Tom Joad, we are getting angry. "They're working away at our spirit, trying to make us crawl" feeding us promises, programs that, like the rain, sound good but never reach us here on the ground.

I laugh myself through the want ads each day at jobs that make promises that are either sucker gambits or flat out frauds. Come work for free! Learn Grant Writing, only $200. "I never should have come on this trip. You remember that coupon in the spicy Western stories magazine? Learn to be a radio expert." Jobs that aren't jobs at all, promising good work and good wages but paying a nickel a box when they promised a dime. "An' you fellas will have to take it cause you'll be hungry."

I traded my truck for a 1992 Paseo and $1,500, but I don't drive; it is merely a vestige of who I once was. I don't drive because I don't have insurance, but it is like an escape pod. Just knowing that I could go if I had somewhere to go, it is my last redoubt. I'm down to about $250 dollars and still looking for work, foolishly, pointlessly. I applied to a popular website that was seeking in depth journalism on the subject of homelessness but they never replied. Typical American media, they just want anecdotes about homelessness, they want to hear about it but don't want to know about it.

I watch the body shop next door meandering towards oblivion as their work dries up. Friday, they had six body men working on three cars and you can't keep the doors open like that. The cabinetry shop on the other side is working four and a half days a week.

I buy groceries according to what I can keep in a mini fridge, more like an icebox really. It keeps food cool, not cold. For soup you measure a cup of water in a plastic cup and place the soup in the coffeepot. Then you let the water pour through and wait for the warmer to warm the concoction. It's not piping hot, but it's hot enough and beggars can't be choosers now, can they? Because of my culinary limitations I buy the same foods each week; two months ago it cost $45.00 and last week it was $65.00.

The money is rapidly loosing its value, which also explains why gas prices are rising even as demand sinks. I know that more of you are coming to join us in the time that the land forgot and you will have questions just as we had questions. But there are no answers for them, you just do and try and make the day. You wait anxiously for the Georgia sun to go down to offer some relief from the heat. As the sky turns red, the box fan again begins to offer some relief, the only relief available.

The kitties, Moxie and Blackie, still visit me each night and it is peculiar because I've joined their society more than they mine. When I wrote about them before, some people, well-intentioned I'm sure, suggested that I capture them and turn them over to the humane society. You don't understand, we are equals in this life. I don't rat them out and they don't rat me out. If I turned them over maybe they'd have a better life; maybe they'd get gassed.

But, like the Joads, "We had meat tonight, not much but we had it." The kitties are free and for the time being happy. I feed them and welcome them but they are free to go as well. They are not mine, merely night visitors who befriended me without qualifications. It would be too hard on my conscience to turn them in without knowing the outcome. Maybe you understand, maybe you don't. Tom said it like this, "Seems the government has more interest in a dead man than a live one." Or in this case they have more interest in picking up kitties than in finding them homes. Besides, the government has done nothing to help me; why should I expect more for cats that will never vote?

The cool and the stillness of Sunday night are a comfort to me and I must take my pleasure where I can, because the air mattress still leaks and the hot sun will return again tomorrow. So I will lay my head on the floor and dream.

"Fear the time when the strikes stop while the great owners live - for every little beaten strike is proof that the step is being taken … fear the time when Manself will not suffer and die for a concept, for this one quality is the foundation of Manself, and this one quality is man, distinctive in the universe."

I dedicate this posting to citizensue, DGC

US, Israel, Russia Absent at Cluster Bomb Talks

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June 25, 2009 - Agence France Presse

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BERLIN  - Delegates from over 80 countries pledging to destroy their cluster bombs started a two-day conference in Berlin to assess progress since a 2008 agreement banning the weapons.

Absent however were the United States, Israel, Russia and Georgia -- countries which have used cluster bombs in recent years and which refuse to sign up the agreement. China, India and Pakistan also stayed away.

A cluster bomb is a weapon fired by artillery or dropped by aircraft that splits open and scatters multiple -- often hundreds -- of smaller submunitions, or bomblets, over a large area.

Often many of these bomblets fail to explode immediately and can lie dormant for many years, killing and maiming civilians -- many of them children -- long after the original conflict is over.

First employed by the German Luftwaffe on the English town of Grimsby in 1943 and by the Red Army the same year, their use really took off in the US bombing of Vietnam, Cambodia and Laos in the 1960s and 1970s.

Most recently they were deployed by both sides in Georgia's war with Russia in 2008, and in Israel's bombardment of southern Lebanon in 2006, rights groups say, and by the United States and allies in Iraq in 2003 and in Afghanistan in 2001-02.

They were also put to deadly effect by NATO in Serbia in 1999, by the British in the Falkland Islands in 1982, during the Balkan conflicts of the 1990s, by Ethiopia and Eritrea, by Morocco and by Sudan, these groups say.

According to a 2006 report by Handicap International, there have been at least 11,000 recorded and confirmed post-conflict casualties and that the actual number -- levels of reporting being low -- may be as high as 100,000.

Around 98 percent of these are civilians, Handicap International says. A quarter of these are children, who often tragically mistake the bomblets for a toy.

Last year around 100 countries, including Britain, France, Germany, Australia and Japan, agreed to ban their use, development, production, transfer and stockpiling, creating the Convention on Cluster Munitions (CCM).

Ten countries have since ratified the CCM. Once 30 have done so -- as campaigners hope they will by the end of 2009 -- the treaty comes into force, giving the 98 signatories eight years to destroy their stockpiles.

It also requires clearing areas of unexploded submunitions within 10 years, and establishes a framework for assistance to victims.

But the United States, which has as many as one billion cluster munition bomblets, rights groups say, has not signed up. And nor have China and Russia, both of which are thought to have around the same amount.

The US has argued that destroying its stockpiles would put the lives of its soldiers and those of its coalition partners at risk, and that cluster bombs often result in less collateral damage than bigger bombs or larger artillery.

Other notable non-signatories include Israel, India, Pakistan, South Korea and North Korea, as well as Turkey, Georgia, Iran, Libya, Syria, Ethiopia, Eritrea, Nigeria, Sudan and Sri Lanka.

Thomas Nash from the Cluster Munition Coalition, a coalition of non-governmental organisations, said he hoped the Berlin conference would encourage some to drop their opposition.

"Our main focus is to get as many countries to ratify as soon as possible, get more countries to sign on so that we remove the stigma from the treaty," Nash told AFP.

"And that means telling the US, telling other allies that haven't signed the treaty, that they need to get rid of it, that this weapon is a thing of the past. It is no longer a legitimate or morally appropriate weapon to have in your arsenal."

US senators call for Chinese drywall probe

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Peter J Brown
June 24, 2009 - Asia Times

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In early June, four prominent United States senators notified the US Consumer Product Safety Commission (CPSC) that firm action needs to be taken by the CPSC over mounting evidence that drywall imported from China is causing damage to thousands of US homes and adversely impacting the health of thousands. The CPSC has acknowledged that the commission had received 360 complaints by the time the letter arrived.

Drywall is known by many names, including gypsum board, plasterboard, and wallboard. In homes around the world, it is used to form interior walls and ceilings. Drywall is manufactured by placing gypsum, a very soft mineral, between two sheets of paper and then drying it in a kiln.

Approximately a week after the letter arrived at the CPSC, 10 separate class action lawsuits in three states involving drywall imported from China were combined into a single legal proceeding under a US federal judge in New Orleans. The case is known as "Chinese-Manufactured Drywall Products Liability Litigation" and it brings together eight lawsuits from Florida, one from Ohio, and one from Louisiana.

In addition to these lawsuits, more than 60 other similar lawsuits have been identified and will ultimately be included as well.

A Chinese company, Knauf Plasterboard (Tianjin) Co Ltd (KPT) is named in three of these 10 lawsuits, and Knauf Gips KG is named in four of the lawsuits. Both are part of Knauf, a German conglomerate. Various US builders and drywall distributors are also named.

However, another Chinese company which has been linked to this tainted drywall phenomenon stands out from the rest. It is state-owned Beijing New Building Material PLC (BNBM) which holds a controlling interest in Taishan Gypsum Co Ltd, also known as Taian Taishan Plasterboard and Shandong Taihe Dongxin Co Ltd, according to the Sarasota (Florida) Herald-Tribune.

Not only is BNBM conducting its own investigation, but the CPSC and China's General Administration for Quality Supervision, Inspection and Quarantine (AQSIQ) are also exchanging information about what is happening, according to the Sarasota Herald-Tribune. There are reports that a mine in Shandong province is the source of the problem, but this has not been verified. [1]

In their letter, the four US senators make it clear that they are not going to stand by and await the outcome of the complex legal battle shaping up in New Orleans. These senators want something to happen now, and they have "directed" the CPSC "to expedite its investigation and testing "of the drywall products in question ... and to carry out the Chinese drywall investigation without delay".

The senators wrote:
Since 2006, more than 550 million pounds of drywall have been imported from the People's Republic of China. On May 21, 2009, the Commission's Director of the Division of Health Sciences testified that since December 22, 2008, the Commission has received over 320 complaints about problems associated with drywall from China. The Director stated that these complaints include: structural effects on homes, such as metal corrosion in air conditioning units, copper pipes and electrical wiring; as well as health effects on homeowners, such as unexplained nosebleeds, insomnia, skin irritation and asthma. These complaints have been lodged by homeowners in 16 states and the District of Columbia.
Last Thursday, a one-day conference was held in New Orleans entitled, "Chinese Drywall Litigation". Dozens of lawyers and experts were in attendance. One of the speakers, Dr Patricia Williams, is a leading toxicologist and president of Louisiana-based Environmental Toxicology Experts, LLC. She is also an associate professor at the University of New Orleans, and she has been hired by two law firms to help represent their clients who are plaintiffs in the above-mentioned lawsuits.

Williams finds many things unusual with the drywall imported from China.

"Chinese drywall generates a continuous release of particles. Residents complain of copious amounts of dust that when removed from surfaces reappears in a few hours. Smoke alarms are set off frequently in the same houses due to the dust particles that circulate in the ambient air," said Williams.

Another problem, according to Williams, is that "Chinese drywall has a filler that contains concentrated heavy metals from a coal source. Analytical chemists are evaluating the filler and possible coal sources are coal mining wastes and/or coal fly ash. These heavy metals are toxic and when inhaled can concentrate in the body. Strontium is one of the concentrated heavy metals."

"Strontium is believed to be responsible for the release of the sulfurous gas emissions. The most commonly detected sulfur compounds that are emitted include: carbon disulfide, sulfur dioxide, and hydrogen sulfide. The concentration of strontium is two-10 times greater in Chinese drywall samples that have been tested by our analytical chemist than in US drywall," added Williams. "US drywall is free of sulfur compounds and does not emit these gases."

Besides the CPSC, which has been named as the lead US federal agency for this investigation, the US Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) is also active, working with both the CPSC and the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention's Agency for Toxic Substances and Disease Registry (CDC-ATSDR). According to an EPA analysis conducted earlier this year at the request of the CDC-ATSDR, "sulfur was detected at 83 parts per millions (ppm) and 119 ppm in the Chinese drywall samples. Sulfur was not detected in the four US-manufactured drywall samples ... Strontium was detected at 2,570 ppm and 2,670 ppm in the Chinese drywall samples. Strontium was detected in the US-manufactured drywall at 244 ppm to 1,130 ppm."

What concerns Williams is that the general public does not have a good understanding of the threat posed by this drywall.

"The general public as well as some of the residents in the houses with the drywall do not understand the acute and chronic health effects of the gases and particles released by the drywall as well as the safety risks of the sulfurous erosion of electrical wiring," said Williams. "The health effects range from acute exposure irritation effects to chronic exposure systemic effects such as asthma attacks, stroke, neurological damage, Parkinson disease, lung damage, and much more."

Williams points to other possible toxicants that are known to occur in incinerated coal sources that have not yet been tested for in the Chinese drywall. These include Polycyclic Aromatic Hydrocarbons (PAHs), and radioisotopes such as Radium 226, which are known to occur in coal mine waste and coal fly ash.

"The bleaching process, as well as uncontrolled incineration of coal sources, can generate chlorinated compounds, such as dioxins or chlorinated PAHs. These chemicals have not yet been fully investigated," said Williams.

In November 2006, a team from the Arkansas-based Center for Toxicology and Environmental Health (CTEH), conducted its own analysis of air samples taken from homes in Florida where Knauf Tianjin gypsum plasterboard had been used to see if "the measured compounds posed an unacceptable public health risk".

"The testing revealed that the Knauf Tianjin product released low levels of certain naturally-occurring sulfur-containing compounds. Testing of the bulk material revealed the likely source of these compounds was a sulfur-containing mineral known as iron disulfide. One of the other two products manufactured in China presented a similar odor and also contained the iron disulfide mineral," reported the CTEH team.

However, the team concluded that, "measured concentrations of the detected chemicals in air were not present at levels that present a public health concern". This finding came despite the fact that, "certain naturally-occurring sulfur-containing compounds can be emitted from the Knauf Tianjin product at concentrations higher than present in background air".

The looming legal battle is likely to be a protracted and hotly contested showdown. Attempts by Asia Times Online to reach both German and Chinese company were unsuccessful.

According to Jack Landskroner, a managing partner of the Cleveland law firm Landskroner Grieco Madden, which is representing one of the plaintiffs, nobody has any idea as to the actual number of homes that might be affected, let alone how much money is involved.

"We know that some of the builders are estimating that a minimum remediation effort will cost at least $75,000 per home with an approximate square footage of 2,000. The cost will go up from there based on square footage and the adequacy of the remediation being suggested," said Landskroner.

Some observers see this base estimate as extremely conservative, and do not rule out the possibility that a figure twice as big may emerge over time. This possibility cannot be dismissed entirely given the fact that this estimate simply includes materials, fittings and certain items in the home. It does not include health care costs and other expenses incurred by the people living in the homes.

Although all the class action lawsuits have now been consolidated for the purposes of preliminary management in front of one judge in the Eastern District of Louisiana, it is too early to discuss any timetable or schedule as this case was just assigned to the judge in New Orleans.

"He will likely be holding a hearing in the next few weeks to discuss with the lawyers how the case will proceed," said Landskroner.

Scheduling aside, Landskroner contends that "the claims of our clients are meritorious and that we will obtain a fair and adequate recovery on their behalf by way of an agreed to settlement with the defendants or by way of judgment should the builders and manufacturers choose not to adequately address their culpability to these homeowners. Our clients paid premium prices to purchase their dream homes and instead they are now suffering the effects of bargain basement materials used by the builders which continue to [affect] their property and may also have long term effect on their health."

One resident of Fort Myers, Florida, described the Chinese drywall affair as "huge", but went on to add that while many builders and small businesses in the US would end up in very bad shape - if not out of business entirely - as a result of this situation, "the big guys" overseas named in the lawsuits would likely emerge without a scratch. Others wonder how US homeowners might be compensated for all the damages they may have suffered as a result. Can the foreign companies in question be compelled to mail checks to US homeowners? Many think not.

"The Chinese company involved in this matter as well as the German company have both been named as defendants in our lawsuits. We are in the process of having them served with copies of the lawsuits and expect that they will be party to this litigation," said Landskroner.

One Republican Louisiana state senator said what is unfolding here is tantamount to Chinese companies dumping "toxic waste" between two sheets of paper and exporting it to the US as drywall. Still, an effort during the latest session of the Louisiana state legislature to provide some form of relief to the state's affected homeowners went nowhere.

The consolidation of the lawsuits and the mounting pressure from the US Congress on the CPSC will no doubt bring additional publicity. Yet there are no assurances that demonstrations of concern and greater media scrutiny will bring any relief to thousands of irate US homeowners.

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Peter J Brown is a freelance writer from the US state of Maine and a frequent contributor to Asia Times Online.

Zen (sniff) Moment of the Day

Sanford's infidelity admission adds to an ever-growing list of woes for the out-of-power Republican Party as it looks to rebound against President Barack Obama and his emboldened Democrats. The episode is another distraction for a party seeking a turnaround after disastrous losses in consecutive national elections as it confronts a stark reality: its less than diverse ranks are steadily shrinking, its regional heft is limited to the South and it lacks a leader of stature to guide the party back to power.

- Fox News

http://www.foxnews.com/politics/2009/06/25/sanford-scandal-latest-blow-republicans/

Afghan farmers ditch opium for saffron

Saffron, the world's most expensive spice, is derived from the stigmas of the saffron crocus.

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Farooq Faizi
Jun 25, 2009 - Asia Times

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HERAT, Afghanistan - Abdul Samad has given up growing poppies. The farmer from Gulmir, from a village in Pashtun Zarghon district of Herat province, has found monetary and spiritual benefits in switching to saffron.

"I always felt sinful when I was growing poppies," he said. "The money brought me no joy, and did not allow me to change my life."

In 2007, Afghanistan supplied more than 90% of the world's opium poppy, the raw material for heroin.

Abdul Samad grew the illegal crop for five years until a new

government program helped him make the switch to saffron, the world's most expensive spice.

"I make more money than I used to," he said. "With poppy, I got between US$400 and $600 for each jerib of land. Now I make more than US$5,000." A jerib is approximately half an acre.

Saffron is prized for its taste and color, and is used in food and dyes. People in Herat use it to brew tea when they can afford it. Even locally, a small five-gram knot of the substance costs close to US$25, a bit pricey for villagers making no more than $200 per month.

But saffron is catching on. Bashir Ahmad Ahmadi, head of the marketing department for Herat's Department of Agriculture, estimates that the province now has 212 hectares planted in saffron, with annual production approaching 50-70 tonnes. This may be miniscule compared to the 7,700 tonnes of opium that Afghanistan produced from 157,000 hectares in 2008, but it is a start.

The nation's naturally conservative poppy farmers say they need more secure international markets for saffron before they make the switch in bigger numbers.

The world price of saffron has skyrocketed over the past few years, and is now running at about US$3,000 per kilogram. Rumors that it may prove therapeutic in cancer treatment has caused demand to spike even further.

This is good news for Afghan farmers, who are looking for an alternative to poppy. The banned opium plant is expensive to harvest, and there is the risk of police involvement and possible legal destruction. Worst of all, it is bringing in much less money than it used to. The price of black tar opium has fallen precipitously over the past three years, mainly due to overproduction.

Experts say that saffron is being grown in 16 provinces of Afghanistan, including the northern provinces of Balkh and Kapisa, but the bulk of the product comes from Herat, in the west of the country on the border with Iran.

Saffron has a history in Herat stretching back more than 80 years. The first plants were cultivated in the Hauz-e-Karbos area of the province, and in 1973-74 the government conducted experiments in saffron cultivation.

But war intervened, and the project was dropped. Not until 1991-92, with the influx of returnees from Iran, was saffron reintroduced. Iran, jealously guarding its near-monopoly on saffron in the region, did not allow saffron bulbs to be exported. The enterprising Afghans smuggled them in.

"The returnees from Iran brought bulbs with them, illegally, and began to grow saffron in Ghoreyan district [in Herat]," said Ahmadi.

When the Taliban took over in 1996, they encouraged farmers to grow poppy, said Abdul Qader, a farmer from Pashtun Zarghon.

"The Taliban were buying our harvest for a very high price," he explained. "Many saffron farms were destroyed, and converted to poppy."

Poppy cultivation rose quickly, said Qader, as drugs were the main funding source for the Taliban. But in 2000-2001, the Taliban banned poppy. Some see savvy marketing behind the prohibition.

"When the price of opium dropped on world markets in 2000-2001, [Taliban leader] Mullah Omar issued a decree banning poppy," said Ahmadi. "They wanted to boost the price of poppy in world markets."

After the Taliban were routed in the 2001 United States-led offensive, farmers returned to the now lucrative poppy trade, joining an Afghanistan-wide movement that made the country the number one opium producer in the world.

Drug money funds the insurgency and fuels government corruption, hindering development and threatening to turn Afghanistan into a pariah state. The search for an alternative to poppy has been going on for several years, and some think that saffron might be the answer.

The government of Herat, with assistance from the local, Italian-led Provincial Reconstruction Team, began to distribute saffron bulbs free of charge to those willing to make the switch. Saffron grows well in Herat's hot, dry climate, say farmers. It is also easier and cheaper to grow and harvest than poppy.

"Saffron does not need a lot of water," said Abdul Qader. "It does not need a lot of fertilizer, and you need fewer people to harvest it." Also, he added, the bulbs, once planted, are productive for six years.

Like Abdul Samad, Qader said that his life had improved dramatically since he began to grow saffron.

"This plant has brought blessings to our land," he said. "During the first three years I was making one kilogram of saffron per jerib of land. But by the fifth year I was getting three kilograms."

The value of his land has also increased, he explained. Before farmers began growing saffron in the area a jerib of land sold for 70,000 afghani ($1,400). The price has now more than doubled to 150,000 afghani.

According to Mohammad Hashem Aslami, a saffron expert and head of the agriculture section of the Danish organization DACAAR in Herat, Afghan saffron, particularly the Herati variety, is the best in the world.

"There are three reasons for our high quality," he explained. "First, we have the right climate; second, we harvest by hand; and third, we have a very great capacity for production."

Ghafar Hamidzai, director of Afghanistan's largest saffron company, Afghan Saffron, agrees. "If the farmers use the right methods of cultivation and harvesting, Afghanistan's saffron will be the best," he said. "We are attracting a lot of attention from Western markets."

Saffron could be a boon to Afghanistan's agricultural export industry if it is properly managed, according to the agriculture department's Ahmadi.

"Over the next six years, if farmers receive help from the government and non-governmental organizations, the production of saffron will increase to 50-70 tons per year," he told IWPR. "This is a very positive step for the development and prosperity of this country and the region."

But help from the Afghan government has been slow in coming, complain the farmers.

"The Ministry of Agriculture encouraged us to plant saffron, and promised us lots of assistance," said Qader. "But they have not done anything for us yet."

Not true, says Ahmadi. His office has distributed saffron bulbs to the farmers free of charge, he insisted. They sponsored some of them to go to Kabul for training, and they are working on getting Afghan saffron into international markets.

Hajji Toryalia Rausi, an official of the Herat chamber of commerce, told IWPR that farmers had not asked his organization for help.

"The farmers have not told us about problems with marketing of saffron," he said. "If they provide information on their rate of production, we can approve a specific and stable rate for their product."

But still, says DACAAR's Aslami, Afghanistan's farmers require more substantive support.

"It would be difficult for Afghanistan to compete with Iran on saffron production," he told IWPR. "We still lack a comprehensive plan."

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Farooq Faizi is an IWPR trainee in Herat.

Israel stunned by Obama's tough love

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Seema Sirohi
Jun 24, 2009 - Asia Times

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JERUSALEM - United States President Barack Obama's bold new rulebook for the Middle East attempts a much-needed balance in a US foreign policy that has long tilted in favor of one against the region's many.

Israel is no longer more equal than others, the Palestinians no longer a mere backdrop and all evil does not emanate from the Arab world. Obama has changed language and tone to break through the tough mythologies of the region, calcified in years of failure to make peace.

He seems to want an honest engagement with the Muslim world and an honest accounting of the Israeli conduct. Obama is sending signals to all the regional players - from Syria to Iran, from Egypt to Saudi Arabia, even Hamas - to begin afresh and "unclench" fists. The new policy tries to level an uneven playing field on which Israel has always won, no matter the contest or context.

Obama's decision to plunge headlong into the world's toughest region, to resolve its most difficult conflict, is farsighted because success here can multiply into success wherever Muslims live. To try to remove the most persistent agenda item from the long list of grievances is a move laden with possibilities, most of them positive.

By addressing the Middle East problem early in his administration, unlike his two predecessors who paid attention to the festering wound only towards the end of their terms, shows his seriousness and resolve to resuscitate the peace process. Depending on how his partners - the Israelis, the Palestinians and certain Arab countries - translate his plan, relations between the West and the Islamic world could improve with wider implications on other fronts.

Obama's speech to the Muslim world in Cairo, advocating a separate state for Palestine was a dramatic opening salvo, a frank admission of what needs to be done. He equated Palestinian and Jewish suffering, speaking of the two peoples in the same breath, something no other American president has done. He humanized and elevated the Palestinians who have long languished in the netherworld of neglected priorities of both the West and the Arab world.

Obama also loudly demanded an end to Jewish settlements in the occupied West Bank as a prerequisite to restarting the peace process. A future Palestine weighed down by illegal Jewish settlements is a recipe for more, not less, conflict. It is also an issue where Israel has no cover - international law bars any demographic changes in the occupied territories.

No wonder Washington's new stance has rattled the Israeli government, lit up the Jewish blogosphere and made the religious right angry. Posters calling Obama "anti-Semitic" and wearing the kaffiyeh (scarf) are being waved at rallies in Jerusalem while YouTube videos filled with anti-Obama hate speech are multiplying.

That his middle name is "Hussein" has suddenly become a potent cry in Israel. A recent poll indicated that 51% of Israelis think he is pro-Palestinian. Many say he is pushing Israel to score "points with the Muslim world".

Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, heading a right-wing coalition, replied to Obama with his own "speech" trying to put limits on this new American enterprise. Full of conditions and caveats, his short answer was "No, you can't" to Obama's campaign pledge of "Yes, we can."

Netanyahu has been cold to the idea of Jerusalem as a shared capital of two separate states. He refused to freeze settlements and referred to the occupied territories by their Biblical names of Judea and Samaria. Although Netanyahu uttered the word "Palestine" for the first time, he envisioned it as a state without sovereign power, one that can not buy arms or control its own air space. He demanded many promises and assurances from the Palestinians even before negotiations began.

"He persuaded no one that he really intends to fight for peace. He did not lead Israel to a new future. He only collaborated with its old, familiar anxieties," wrote David Grossman, an Israeli author and peace activist on the front-page of Ha'aretz, a liberal newspaper. Palestinians have derided the speech as a non-starter. Mustafa Barghouti, a moderate Palestinian MP, said Netanyahu's speech endorsed "a ghetto", not a state. But Netanyahu's right-wing support has remained intact.

While a future state is still down the line, the most immediate test for Obama is the question of settlements. Will he compromise and allow what Israelis call "natural growth" - expansion of already existing settlements? Palestinian leaders and Arab governments say it is a litmus test for Obama.

According to researchers, nearly 300,000 Israelis live in 121 settlements in the West Bank, occupying 35% of the land through an intricate system of separate jurisdictions, security zones, schools, industrial areas and roads. Palestinians are not allowed to enter these settlements or use the road network.

Former US president Jimmy Carter and others have called this apartheid, but successive Israeli governments have encouraged, connived at and supported the settlements.

So far, the US Congress and the American Jewish community are behind Obama in his attempt to invigorate the process. The Europeans support him as do liberal Israelis who want a two-state solution.

If Obama gains momentum on this thorny issue, he can legitimately ask the Arab states to make gestures towards peace - such as low-level trade with Israel and tourism. He would also gain support for his policies in Afghanistan and Pakistan if he could heal rifts with the Muslim world.

But equally, a public spat with Israel, if prolonged, could erode his own base and unleash the power of the pro-Israel lobby in Washington. Can Obama and his advisers realize their vision?

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Seema Sirohi is a correspondent based in Jerusalem.

Israeli Leader Reveals Why Israeli Shuns Negotiation

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Ira Chernus
June 24, 2009 - Smirking Chimp

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Israeli government officials are experts at finding excuses to avoid negotiating with Palestinians. Israel's Minister of Strategic Affairs, Moshe Ya'alon, pulled out an old one the other day: "There is no partner on the Palestinian side, we just give, and we get nothing."

Others have now come up with a new one: Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said in his recent speech, "Let us begin peace negotiations immediately without prior conditions"; but the Palestinians, backed by the Obama administration, are demanding a halt to settlement expansion as a precondition to talks.

Either way, it seems, the Palestinians (as usual) must take all the blame.

But now, in a rare moment of unguarded honesty, Israel's second ranking leader, Ehud Barak -- Defense Minister, former Prime Minister, former head of the military -- has let the truth slip out. According to Israel's premier newspaper, Ha'aretz, Barak told reporters: "In negotiations with the Palestinians, Israel is the 'only one that can give, the Palestinians are the underdog and the talks are asymmetrical.' But in regional talks, Barak said, it becomes clear that Israel is the isolated party."

Israel has to look like the isolated underdog to keep up the myth that it is the innocent, virtuous, aggrieved party. That has always been a fundamental principle of Israeli strategy: Someone else must take all the blame for the conflict that keeps Israelis as well as their neighbors insecure. The only difference now is that a top Israeli leader has admitted it in public.

Barak knows perfectly well that the other excuses for avoiding direct negotiations with the Palestinians are bogus.

Take the "no partner" ploy. For many years the Israelis had a universally-accepted Palestinian partner, Yasser Arafat. Arafat could not embrace Barak's so-called "generous offer" at Camp David in 2000 because it was actually an offer to create a state of Palestine that was bound to fail. The New York Times recently called it, quite rightly, an "archipelago" of small clumps of land separated by Israeli settlements, security roads, and check points. The Israelis continue to offer only variants on the same impossible plan.

When Arafat turned down the offer, knowing that his people would never tolerate it, the Israelis launched a calculated plan to make him "irrelevant" and then proclaim that they had "no partner for peace." Unfortunately, the plan worked all too well.

After Arafat's death and the electoral victory of Hamas, the Israelis' great fear was that the two major Palestinian parties, Hamas and Fatah, would create a unified government, whose head would obviously be a partner for peace. So they torpedoed every effort in that direction, exacerbating (with U.S. help) the conflict between the two parties that continues to the present day.

Palestinian unity efforts continue, too. Fatah leader Mahmoud Abbas has just ordered the release of all Hamas prisoners held by his security forces, in a goodwill gesture aimed at speeding the formation of a single Palestinian government. We can expect some kind of high-profile Israeli violence to break up that effort any day now, to make sure there is "no partner for peace."

The other Israeli argument against negotiations -- the claim of Palestinian preconditions -- is equally bogus. It was Netanyahu who recited, in his major address, a litany of conditions the Palestinians would have to accept in any settlement, many of them so painful that he can be quite sure they're impossible for his foe to swallow: no capital in Jerusalem, no right of return (not even a symbolic one), no withdrawal from or even freeze on settlements, and a state at some vague future date with no army, no control of their air space, no right to sign treaties unless Israel approves them.

As Barak rightly pointed out, Israel is in a position to demand such preconditions because it has all the power. It is "the only one that can give," and that leaves it in a position to dictate the outcome of negotiations from the beginning. Against all that, the Palestinian negotiators have to come up with some way to shift the power balance a tiny bit in their direction. Otherwise, they will sit down at the negotiating table powerless. And then, why should they bother to talk at all?

So against all of Israel's preconditions they've come up with this one, relatively minor precondition of their own: freezing expansion of the settlements immediately, which means only that Israel should begin complying with international law. Full compliance with Article 47 of the Fourth Geneva Convention would mean removing all the quarter-million or so Jewish settlers from the occupied territories, as Tony Judt recently pointed out. However, as Judt noted, Netanyahu has made it painfully clear that the settlements will stay: "His government has no intention of recognizing international law or opinion with respect to Israel's land-grab in "Judea and Samaria."

That makes it all the more important for the Israelis to find some way to avoid direct talks with the Palestinians while keeping up their image as the innocent underdogs. Hence, as Barak said quite plainly, they will resist two-way talks with the Palestinians and demand a regional peace conference -- which can be dragged on for years, with the settlement issue lost amid the vast complexities of regional matters, while the settlements themselves continue to grow quite unnaturally. Thank you, Mr. Defense Minister, for that rare moment of honesty.

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Ira Chernus is Professor of Religious Studies at the University of Colorado at Boulder and author of American Nonviolence: The History of an Idea and the forthcoming book "Monsters to Destroy: The Neoconservative War on Terror and Sin."

Bush Assails Those Who Offer Terrorists 'Therapy'

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Though His Administration Sent Detainees to Saudi Counseling Center

June 18, 2009 - ABC News

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At a speaking engagement last night, former President George W. Bush defended his administration's counterterrorism policies, including Guantanamo Bay, the Washington Times reports.

"The way I decided to address the problem was twofold: One, use every technique and tool within the law to bring terrorists to justice before they strike again," Mr. Bush said.

Refraining from directly criticizing President Obama, Mr. Bush said, "I'll just tell you that there are people at Gitmo that will kill American people at a drop of a hat and I don't believe that persuasion isn't going to work. Therapy isn't going to cause terrorists to change their mind."

Interestingly, it was the Bush administration that sent some Gitmo detainees to a Saudi jihadi rehabilitation camp -- called the "Prince Mohammed bin Nayef Centre for Care and Counseling."

To decidedly mixed success.

Earlier this year the Saudi government published a list of 85 wanted terrorism suspects. Eleven of them had been prisoners at Guantanamo put through the Saudi rehabilitation program.

Said Ali al-Shihri, transferred to Saudi Arabia from Guantanamo during the Bush administration in 2007, is currently the deputy leader of al Qaeda's Yemen branch.

The Bush administration also released Gitmo detainee Ghulam Rasoul into the Saudi rehabilitation program. Now known as Mullah Abdullah Zakir, he's a leader against U.S. forces in southern Afghanistan, according to military and intelligence officials.

Daring to Dream

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David Sirota
June 18, 2009 - Truthdig

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Most of the great advances we remember involve reimagination and dreams, not merely tweaks and tinkers. The Wright Brothers' plane wasn't a newfangled horse and buggy, Einstein's theories weren't a simple update of old physics, and Edison's creations didn't aspire to make a brighter-burning wax candle. It's been the same thing in politics. The Founding Fathers' Constitution didn't replicate monarchy, Franklin Roosevelt's New Deal wasn't just tinkering with Hooverism, and Ronald Reagan's revolution didn't merely dismantle the welfare state.

All of these inventors envisaged machines, theories or societies that never before existed. And that's why for all the positive, even admirable steps Obama's America seems poised to take, the aspirations still seem too small, too unimaginative, too confined by old parameters and old conceptions of how things must work.

Consider the Wall Street bailouts. By simply giving banks trillions of dollars with no strings attached, our government theorizes that the problem is not the financial system, but a momentary cash drought that can be solved by temporary recapitalization. These bailouts do not aspire to change the whole industry into one dominated by many small institutions rather than a few big ones. They also don't reach for "a tightly regulated banking system, which made finance a staid, even boring business," as Paul Krugman said we once had—they envision the same get-rich-quick casino that generated huge profits and huge losses.

On health care, even as the Obama administration pushes to create a public health care option for consumers to buy into, most of the proposals for universal health care being debated in Washington still imagine a health care system integrally involving private insurance companies. In fact, the one proposal that sees a new health care system without those companies—a single-payer system—has been shoved to the side by both parties as too radical.

Same thing, again, for efforts to address global warming. Bills compelling companies to cap their carbon pollution and then trade it for credits are positive steps. However, they still embrace an energy system that relies on fossil fuels—and they don't strive for a day when we power our economy primarily with clean renewable energy.

I could go on, but you get the point. We are suffering from a lack of imagination—a failure of "the vision thing," as George H. W. Bush once called it.

Part of that is a product of a money-dominated political system whose most powerful forces don't want anything reimagined because they have a vested interest in the no-imagination status quo.

Another part of that shortsightedness, however, stems from our president's natural disposition. When I interviewed him in 2006, he acknowledged that the difference between reimagining institutions and aiming only to tinker with them is always the question that determines a political era. "Are you a revolutionary or are you a reformist?" as he put it before firmly stating which one he is.

"I think within the institutional structures we have, we can significantly improve the life chances of ordinary Americans," he said.

There's certainly merit to that line of thinking. We can, in fact, improve things for a lot of people by simply making many existing institutions work better. Patch a few banks, revamp the private insurance system and fiddle with our existing energy policies and we can prevent hundreds of financial industry bankruptcies, thousands of unnecessary deaths, and millions of tons of carbon emissions. Those would be no small achievements.

However, if that's all we aim for, then we will have passed up this historic opportunity to structurally transform the country for the long haul. In short, we will have missed the chance not just to tweak, but to dream again.

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David Sirota is the best-selling author of the books "Hostile Takeover"  and "The Uprising".