Trade Imbalances and the Return of Keynes

The US is borrowing about $3 billion a day, just to offset the trade imbalance with China. The Bush Administration blames China for it's under valued currency. But even if China values it's currency at a higher rate, the US would still be borrowing $2 billion a year.
Economics has been undergoing a hidden civil war. Keynes has fallen out of favor by Republicans trying to "starve the beast" of the government institution. So they've run up a huge budget deficit and ignored a trade imbalance. The rich aren't too worried about this problem because they fund their own safety net and think the rest of America could do the same. But of course they feather their nest at the expense of the working person who can barely afford his rising rent or mortgage on his stagnant income.
The Keynes approach? Raise taxes on the rich, cut taxes on the lowest incomes. What an amazing idea!
New York Times

Nothing significant can be done about these global imbalances unless the United States attacks its own problems. No one seriously proposes that businesses save money instead of investing in expanding production simply to correct the problem of the trade deficit; and while there may be sermons aplenty about why Americans should save more — certainly more than the negative amount households saved last year — no one in either political party has devised a fail-proof way of ensuring that they do so. The Bush tax cuts didn’t do it. Expanded incentives for saving didn’t do it.


Indeed, most calculations show that these actually reduce national savings, since the cost to the government in lost revenue is greater than the increased household savings. The common wisdom is that there is but one alternative: reducing the government’s deficit.


Imagine that the Bush administration suddenly got religion (at least, the religion of fiscal responsibility) and cut expenditures. Assume that raising taxes is unlikely for an administration that has been arguing for further tax cuts. The expenditure cuts by themselves would lead to a weakening of the American and global economy. The Federal Reserve might try to offset this by lowering interest rates, and this might protect the American economy — by encouraging debt-ridden American household to try to take even more money out of their home-equity loans to pay for spending. But that would make America’s future even more precarious.


There is one way out of this seeming impasse: expenditure cuts combined with an increase in taxes on upper-income Americans and a reduction in taxes on lower-income Americans. The expenditure cuts would, of course, by themselves reduce spending, but because poor individuals consume a larger fraction of their income than the rich, the “switch” in taxes would, by itself, increase spending. If appropriately designed, such a combination could simultaneously sustain the American economy and reduce the deficit.


Not surprisingly, these recommendations did not emerge from the International Monetary Fund meetings in Singapore. The United States retains a veto there, making it unlikely that the fund will recommend policies that aren’t to the liking of the American administration.


Underlying the current imbalances are fundamental structural problems with the global reserve system. John Maynard Keynes called attention to these problems three-quarters of a century ago. His ideas on how to reform the global monetary system, including creating a new reserve system based on a new international currency, can, with a little work, be adapted to today’s economy. Until we attack the structural problems, the world is likely to continue to be plagued by imbalances that threaten the financial stability and economic well-being of us all. MORE

Details About a Foley Cover-up Emerging

It seems that Republican leadership was informed of Foley's activities a year ago. One of Republican Reps reported him for preying on one of his pages. The Republican leadership left him as Chairman of the Missing and Exploited Children's Caucus!
This morning we find out he has checked himself into Alcoholism treatment, the best place to go to avoid being arrested.
The AlterNet article has details about his activities you won't find in mainstream media.

In a scandal that will likely take down the entire House Republican leadership, everyone is wondering why Rep. Mark Foley, Chairman of the Missing and Exploited Children's Caucus was allowed to carry on his predatory behavior with a teenage boy a year after his relationship was revealed to party leaders.
[...]
Mark Foley, Republican of Florida, was caught sending very explicit sexual messages to 16 and 17 year old boys who worked as pages for Congress. Actually, he was caught by a fellow Republican, Rodney Alexander, because one of the pages worked for Rep. Alexander and turned Foley in. So, what did the Republicans do about it? Absolutely nothing. Zero. Zilch. Nada. They covered it up. Because it's what they do. The Republican Protection Racket stepped in and made the story go away. There was no public apology to the boys that were sexually harassed. No criminal investigation. No ethics investigation. Not a word.


Now, they feign outrage. Why weren't they outraged when they first found out about it? They're not outraged because young boys were jeopardized. They're outraged now because they're jeopardized. But it gets worse. They left Foley in charge of the Missing and Exploited Children's Caucus. Come on!

Paralysis Continues in Palestine

Gaza and West Bank erupted in violence after the power sharing agreement between Hamas and Fatah fell apart over it's center piece, the recognition of Israel's right to exist. Apparently they believe their strength is in maintaining their position rejecting the existance of Israel. Or their support from Iran is contingent on their maintaining this position. Abbas believes that his strength lies in Hamas international weakness.
Abbas is the most shrewd leader the Palestinian's have seen. He delays the obvious move of dissolving the government and forcing an early election knowing that the electorate is not yet in his hands. I believe his path is the only current path towards peace. Hamas will have to deal with thim eventually. It seems unlikely Hamas will sweep the next election assume it is delayed sufficiently to prevent a Hamas sweep.
washingtonpost.com

The deal, as outlined by Hamas and Fatah officials, would have implicitly endorsed a future Palestinian state in the West Bank, Gaza and East Jerusalem. The agreement accepted the 2002 Arab Peace Initiative that calls for the recognition of the Jewish state once Israel leaves all territory it occupied in the 1967 Middle East War. Abbas also pushed Hamas to accept the 1993 mutual-recognition letters between Israel and the Palestine Liberation Organization. In those letters, the PLO recognized Israel and renounced violence while Israel recognized the PLO, until then classified as a terrorist organization.


Accepting those terms would have marked a significant shift in direction for Hamas, whose founding charter calls for the creation of an Islamic state across territory that now includes Israel. But the agreement has unraveled in recent days.


Haniyeh and other Hamas leaders have said that, while the unity government could accept some previous agreements with Israel, Hamas as a movement would never recognize Israel's right to exist. Abbas has accused Hamas of reneging on the agreement, saying the talks to form a unity government are "back to square one."


The United States, the European Union and other international donors have demanded that Hamas renounce violence, recognize the Jewish state and accept signed agreements with Israel in return for a renewal of aid, which accounts for nearly half the authority's $2 billion annual budget.

STATE OF DENIAL

Bob Woodward has his new book out, this time he takes the President apart, outlining the pervasive problem the Bush Administration has had: a preconcieved notion of the world and an agenda to accomplish. There was no room for new information in this world view. The world from the neo-con point of view sees the world as a global game of Risk, the board game, where the goal is world domination. Unfortunately, their view was a fantasy.
washingtonpost.com

On July 10, 2001, two months before the attacks on the World Trade Center and the Pentagon, then-CIA Director George J. Tenet met with his counterterrorism chief, J. Cofer Black, at CIA headquarters to review the latest on Osama bin Laden and his al-Qaeda terrorist organization. Black laid out the case, consisting of communications intercepts and other top-secret intelligence showing the increasing likelihood that al-Qaeda would soon attack the United States. It was a mass of fragments and dots that nonetheless made a compelling case, so compelling to Tenet that he decided he and Black should go to the White House immediately. Tenet called Condoleezza Rice, then national security adviser, from the car and said he needed to see her right away. There was no practical way she could refuse such a request from the CIA director.


For months, Tenet had been pressing Rice to set a clear counterterrorism policy, including specific presidential orders called "findings" that would give the CIA stronger authority to conduct covert action against bin Laden. Perhaps a dramatic appearance -- Black called it an "out of cycle" session, beyond Tenet's regular weekly meeting with Rice -- would get her attention.


Tenet had been losing sleep over the recent intelligence he'd seen. There was no conclusive, smoking-gun intelligence, but there was such a huge volume of data that an intelligence officer's instinct strongly suggested that something was coming. He and Black hoped to convey the depth of their anxiety and get Rice to kick-start the government into immediate action. He did not know when, where or how, but Tenet felt there was too much noise in the intelligence systems. Two weeks earlier, he had told Richard A. Clarke, the National Security Council's counterterrorism director: "It's my sixth sense, but I feel it coming. This is going to be the big one."


But Tenet had been having difficulty getting traction on an immediate bin Laden action plan, in part because Defense Secretary Donald H. Rumsfeld had questioned all the National Security Agency intercepts and other intelligence. Could all this be a grand deception? Rumsfeld had asked. Perhaps it was a plan to measure U.S. reactions and defenses. Tenet had the NSA review all the intercepts, and the agency concluded they were of genuine al-Qaeda communications. On June 30, a top-secret senior executive intelligence brief contained an article headlined "Bin Laden Threats Are Real."


Tenet hoped his abrupt request for an immediate meeting would shake Rice. He and Black, a veteran covert operator, had two main points when they met with her. First, al-Qaeda was going to attack American interests, possibly in the United States itself. Black emphasized that this amounted to a strategic warning, meaning the problem was so serious that it required an overall plan and strategy. Second, this was a major foreign policy problem that needed to be addressed immediately. They needed to take action that moment -- covert, military, whatever -- to thwart bin Laden.


The United States had human and technical sources, and all the intelligence was consistent, the two men told Rice. Black acknowledged that some of it was uncertain "voodoo" but said it was often this voodoo that was the best indicator. Tenet and Black felt they were not getting through to Rice. She was polite, but they felt the brush-off. President Bush had said he didn't want to swat at flies.

washingtonpost.com

He cited the first two orders Bremer signed when he arrived, the first banning as many as 50,000 members of Saddam Hussein's Baath Party from government jobs and the second disbanding the Iraqi military. Now there were hundreds of thousands of disorganized, unemployed, armed Iraqis running around.


Third, Garner said, Bremer had summarily dismissed an interim Iraqi leadership group that had been eager to help the United States administer the country in the short term. "Jerry Bremer can't be the face of the government to the Iraqi people. You've got to have an Iraqi face for the Iraqi people," he said. Garner made his final point: "There's still time to rectify this. There's still time to turn it around."


Rumsfeld looked at Garner for a moment with his take-no-prisoners gaze. "Well," he said, "I don't think there is anything we can do, because we are where we are." He thinks I've lost it, Garner thought. He thinks I'm absolutely wrong. Garner didn't want it to sound like sour grapes, but facts were facts. "They're all reversible," Garner said again.


"We're not going to go back," Rumsfeld said emphatically.

Due Process Suffers a Blow; Ashcroft Is Denied Immunity in Case

It used to be that American justice was a beacon for world full of despotism, selective law enforcement, judicial and executive excess. Now any non-citizen can be kidnapped and held for life without chance of trial, appeal or even seeing the evidence against them. And we have the President's word he won't order them tortured. He's been torturing all along and lying about it. It's a sad day for America when foreigners anywhere are no longer entitled to America's due process laws about imprisonment without trial.
Meanwhile, former Attorney General Ashcroft may be the second Administration official to face a court over the War Powers excesses of the Bush Administration.
Truly this has been a sad time for American values.
washingtonpost.com

Congress approved landmark changes to the nation's system of interrogating and prosecuting terrorism suspects last night, preparing the ground for possible military trials for key al-Qaeda members under rules that critics say will draw stiff constitutional challenges.


The Senate joined the House in embracing President Bush's view that the battle against terrorism justifies the imposition of extraordinary limits on defendants' traditional rights in the courtroom. They include restrictions on a suspect's ability to challenge his detention, examine all evidence against him, and bar testimony allegedly acquired through coercion of witnesses.


[...]Democrats resisted both measures and nearly amended the detainee bill to allow foreigners designated as enemy combatants to challenge their captivity by filing habeas corpus appeals with the federal courts. But Republicans held fast, gambling that Democrats will fail in their bid to convince voters that the GOP is sacrificing the nation's traditions of justice and fairness in the name of battling terrorists and winning elections.

The only real hope is that the Supreme Court will strike down this law or the new 110th Congress appeals the law.
On a more positive note:
washingtonpost.com

A federal judge in Idaho has ruled that former attorney general John D. Ashcroft can be held personally responsible for the wrongful detention of a U.S. citizen arrested as a "material witness" in a terrorism case. U.S. District Judge Edward J. Lodge, in a ruling issued late Wednesday, dismissed claims by the Justice Department that Ashcroft and other officials should be granted immunity from claims by a former star college football player arrested at Dulles International Airport in 2003.


Attorneys for the plaintiff in the civil suit, Abdullah al-Kidd, said the decision raises the possibility that Ashcroft could be forced to testify or turn over records about the government's use of the material witness law, a cornerstone of its controversial legal strategy after the Sept. 11, 2001, terrorist attacks.


The law was intended to give authorities the power to detain witnesses they feared might flee before testifying. But after the Sept. 11 attacks, the government used it to hold 70 men, nearly half of whom were never called to testify in court, according to a study by the ACLU and Human Rights Watch.


Kidd -- a Kansas native who was known as Lavoni T. Kidd before converting to Islam -- was arrested in March 2003 as he prepared to board a flight to Saudi Arabia, where he was planning to pursue a doctorate in Islamic studies. Federal prosecutors claimed he was a flight risk crucial to the prosecution of a fellow University of Idaho student, Sami Omar al-Hussayen. Kidd was imprisoned for 16 days in three states and then placed under restrictive court supervision for more than a year. But Kidd was never called to testify against Hussayen, who was eventually acquitted of computer-related terrorism charges.


While not deciding on the veracity of Kidd's claims, Lodge, who was appointed to the federal bench in 1989 by President George H.W. Bush, ruled that Ashcroft could be found personally liable in the case because of his role in establishing and enforcing the government's material-witness policies.

Senate Looking Like Furtile Ground for Dems

The New York Times has a good national review of the Dem's prospects for the Senate looking promising, including some unexpected opportunities.
The local MN race between Amy Klobuchar and Mark Kennedy has been looking like a Democratic route, so Kennedy has been blitzing local media with attack ads, here and here. The tone of these ads is very dark. They are using facts that have very little meaning in an attempt to undermine Amy's credibility. The local paper's blog, big_question describes the latest ad:

...it starts with Klobuchar’s face and voice, saying that the best way to judge the job that someone will do in the future is to “see what they’ve done in the past.” This time, the ad keeps Klobuchar’s voice saying over and over (I count 12 times) versions of “see what they’ve done in the past,” several of which are no more than the word “past.” And this time, no narrator gives you the facts. The factual assertions are made on screen in fleeting, jumpy, hard-to-read type. The words “Broken Promises” appear four times, interspersed with things like “52% of first-degree drug felons were given lighter sentences,” and “career criminals continued to get plea bargains” and “then she kept handing out plea bargains.”

While it is true that plea bargains are a plenty, any one who watches TV knows that plea bargains are the way convictions without adequate evidence are to be had. So the statistic in no way reflects her prosecutor talents.
This ad is a good example.

...before the interests of the giant pharmaceutical companies and the big oil companies and all the thousands of expensive lobbyists that visit the halls of Congress every day.” (Amy Klobuchar, “Solutions for People, For a Change,” December 13, 2005) “But has thousands invested in both.” TRUE: An analysis of Klobuchar’s Personal Financial Disclosure Forms shows an estimated $10,000 to over $51,000 worth of oil and drug company stock.

Anyone who has an annuity has oil investments. If a politician speaks out against big oil, hurting her own investments, it would seem she is supporting people in general rather than her own narrow interests. Clearly, Kennedy is grasping at straws here, trying to take evidence that makes Amy look good and turn it bad, purely with spin.
Then his ad say, "Amy Klobuchar will say anything to get elected." No, Mark Kennedy will say anything, deliberate distortions and half-truths designed to mislead, and he proves it daily on the radio and TV.

Dubya Doesn't Understand Intelligence

It's pretty apparent that Dubya doesn't understand the Intelligence report on Iraq and the worldwide Jihadi movement.
washingtonpost.com

The Bush administration yesterday released portions of a classified intelligence estimate that says the global jihadist movement is growing and being fueled by the war in Iraq even as it becomes more decentralized, making it harder to identify potential terrorists and prevent attacks. The war in Iraq has become a "cause celebre" for jihadists, breeding resentment of U.S. involvement in the Muslim world and drawing new adherents to the movement, the assessment says. The growth in the number of potential terrorists is also being fed by corruption, slow-moving political reform in many Muslim countries and "pervasive" anti-American sentiment, according to the report.


The jihadist movement is potentially limited by its ultra-conservative interpretation of Islam and could be slowed by democratic reforms in the Muslim world, says the document, which reflects the collective judgment of the nation's 16 intelligence agencies. In addition, it asserts that if jihadists are perceived to be defeated in Iraq, "fewer fighters would be inspired to carry on the fight."

So if it's all that important, why is there only 150,000 troops rather than 500,000?

President Bush took the extraordinary step of releasing portions of the classified report, which was completed in April, to counter assertions made after information from the document was leaked to media outlets over the weekend. Articles based on those leaks said the report blames the war in Iraq for worsening the global terrorist threat -- an interpretation that the administration calls a distortion of its contents. Speaking at a White House news conference with Afghan President Hamid Karzai, Bush angrily called the leak a political act intended to affect the upcoming midterm elections. "Somebody has taken it upon themselves to leak classified information for political purposes," he said. The president added that it is naive to think that terrorism would be any less pervasive if the United States had not invaded Iraq, repeating his oft-made point that extremists attacked U.S. interests around the world long before the start of the war. "My judgment is, if we weren't in Iraq, they'd find some other excuse, because they have ambitions," Bush said. "They kill in order to achieve their objectives."

Of course it was political. And of course it was political to keep the report classified. But King Dubya doesn't think he should have to be accountable. Don't you think the American people desire at least an executive summary of the state of our national security before the election?
But the statement about terrorism is no worse and finding some other excuse is the most absurd defense one could imagine. "I know it was bad, that's why I done it. So we're not done!" The man can't think his way out of a box. The Republican poster boy some how got elected on who he knew, rather than what he was capable of.

McCain Joins in the Double Talk

McCain is gearing up for 2008. It appears that he is adopting double talk as the official Republican platform. He calmly takes credit for moderating the Administration's position on extra legal detentions and torture, saying he's stripped the bill of the worst mistreatment. But no where does the bill actually say that. Sounds like Dubya has "reassured" McCain that he'll be good now.
We all have seen the track record that says otherwise. While at some point McCain had seemed honorable, even stateman-like. This turn about on civil liberties is nauseating. The Republican party will do and say whatever it takes to do whatever they want behind closed doors. Their positions are little more than window dressing of a newly crowned plutocracy, if they can fix the future elections like they did the last two.
washingtonpost.com

SEN. JOHN McCAIN (R-Ariz.) declared over the weekend that the compromise on detentions that he and other Republican senators worked out with the White House would bar the most abusive of the CIA's interrogation tactics. Extreme sleep deprivation, induced hypothermia and simulated drownings, he said on CBS's "Face the Nation," would no longer be legal: "I'm confident that some of the abuses that were reportedly committed in the past will be prohibited in the future," he said. We wish we could be as sure.


Mr. McCain's reading of his bill is not implausible; it would define as a crime any interrogation technique "intended to inflict severe or serious physical or mental pain or suffering" on a detainee. But the techniques he cites are not explicitly banned, and the Bush administration's history is one of interpreting limitations on interrogation tactics -- including Mr. McCain's previous legislation banning cruel, inhuman or degrading treatment -- as permitting methods most people regard as torture.


In fact, administration officials have loudly proclaimed that the new bill will allow the CIA's program of secret detention and interrogation to continue -- and the normal means of preventing an extreme interpretation of the law doesn't exist. The compromise bill strips the courts of any jurisdiction to hear cases -- including those cases already pending -- concerning detainee treatment. Unless this provision is changed, the administration will be free to ignore Mr. McCain's interpretation.


This is not the first time Congress has sought to limit judicial supervision of detentions in the war on terrorism. After the Supreme Court's assertion of jurisdiction over Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, in 2004 triggered a series of lawsuits, Congress moved to force their dismissal as part of the Detainee Treatment Act. The court found that the act did not apply to pending cases, leaving the lower courts unable to hear new cases but with jurisdiction over those already filed. The new measure would complete the job, removing jurisdiction over the remaining cases. Judicial review would be limited to appeals of verdicts from the military commissions being created to try detainees and findings of other tribunals that determine a detainee's combatant status.


This is a terrible idea. In general, court-stripping is a nuclear weapon in Congress's relations with the judiciary, one that presents profound constitutional questions and should be used only with the greatest of caution. If Congress passes responsible and lawful policies, judicial review poses no threat but serves to validate their lawfulness. In the context of the war on terrorism, judicial review has been the major lever that has forced the administration to moderate its policies and to seek congressional authorization for them.


The pending litigation, while cumbersome for the administration, has in no sense compromised the war effort. The Senate should adopt an amendment by Judiciary Committee Chairman Arlen Specter (R-Pa.) to restore judicial oversight. Preventing further judicial scrutiny would be reckless.

Is Monotheism the Problem or Is It Zealotry

AlterNet has a rather interesting albeit disrespectful article about the "evils" of monotheism. The author's point is that believe in one true god produces a ready conflict when there is disagreement about who is that god and how should one worship him.

The chief authoritarian ideologies of the 20th century were secular and even anti-religious. They are not gone, but they are exhausted. Now, in our global warming, nuclear bomb-loaded world, especially in the United States and the Middle East, we face an older, far more popular and durable ideology: the angry god as mandate and role model.


Like Mark Twain, Bertrand Russell and others before him, Sam Harris insists that the basic premises and literal texts of monotheism are so authoritarian and repressive that people who believe them also easily and frequently support all sorts of other repressive causes. For evidence, see the last 2,000 years of history, or tomorrow's newspaper.


The historic battles within monotheism are legendary: Hebrews vs. Christians, Sunnis vs. Shiites, Catholics vs. Protestants, Lutherans vs. Calvinists, Church of England vs. dissenters, Puritans vs. Baptists, and so many others. Currently some Islamic extremists have a hard time deciding who they despise more: Is it the evil Christian and Jewish heretics, or is it the evil Muslims heretics? So much heresy, so little time.


For monotheism, it always comes down to heresy, to the rejection of orthodoxy. Starting perhaps with Zoroastrianism, each monotheism itself began as a heresy, instantly generating its own orthodoxy. Heresy -- free thought and choosing to reject the rules -- is the primal offense against the monotheists' conception, and love, of their solitary deity.

Indeed, not since the Middle Ages when the conflicts over the true religion tore through Europe, North Africa and the Middle East, Central Asia all the way to China, has the Jihadi call for "monotheism" and killing apostates been heard louder than now. The author makes clear that the Christian and Jewish side of "the monotheism" problem included the original founders of Israel, the guerrilla war against Rome in Palestine. Then of course there was the wars between the Luthers and the Catholics, followed by the bloody crusades.
But is the problem monotheism or is it a self-serving rigid fundamentalist view point that everyone "must" agree or else. One can find that regimented thought in the origins of Orthodox Judaism and Christianity in the Pharisee movement. tiscali.reference.encyclopaedia describes the historical roots of Pharisees. A Pharisee was a...

Member of a conservative Jewish sect that arose in Roman-occupied Palestine in the 2nd century BC in protest against all movements favouring compromise with Hellenistic culture. The Pharisees were devout adherents of the law, both as found in the Torah and in the oral tradition known as the Mishnah.


They were opposed by the Sadducees on several grounds: the Sadducees did not acknowledge the Mishnah; the Pharisees opposed Greek and Roman rule of their country; and the Pharisees held a number of beliefs – such as the existence of hell, angels, and demons, the resurrection of the dead, and the future coming of the Messiah – not found in the Torah.


The Pharisees rejected political action, and in the 1st century AD the left wing of their followers, the Zealots, broke away to pursue a revolutionary nationalist policy. After the fall of Jerusalem, Pharisee ideas became the basis of orthodox Judaism as the people were dispersed throughout the Western Roman Empire.

So the Pharisees where the believers in the Jewish law with rigid interpretations. They also took it upon themselves to decide who was and wasn't complying with their interpretation of the law. But the Zealots put those fundamentalist belief into action. According to Wikipedia the Zealots

have an inviolable attachment to liberty, and say that God is to be their only Ruler and Lord." [...]The Zealots objected to Roman rulership and sought to violently eradicate it; Zealots engaged in violence were called the Sicarii. They raided Jewish habitations and killed Jews they considered collaborators, they also urged Jews to fight Romans and other Jews for their religiopolitical cause. Josephus paints a very bleak picture of their activities as they instituted what he characterized as a murderous "reign of terror" prior to the Jewish Temple's destruction.


According to Josephus, the Zealots followed John of Gischala, who had fought the Romans in Galilee, escaped, came to Jerusalem, and then inspired the locals to a fanatical position that led to the Temple's destruction.

This kind of fundamentalism sounds very much like the operating values of the Israelis, as well as the Jihadis and the fundamentalist Christians in the US. A dogmatic ideological group bent on pursuing their beliefs politically and through warfare are "zealots" indeed.

Afghanistan: Another Quagmire

Afghanistan has become another quagmire within which the US and NATO have committed themselves for the long run. The problem is, no one is sending reinforcements. So that means, longer more frequent tours for US National Guard troops. The US regular army has fallen below readiness standards and needs to regroup.
washingtonpost.com

The U.S. military plans no troop cuts in Afghanistan before March, as fighting intensifies against Taliban forces that have gained influence in a political and security "vacuum" in the southern part of the country, according to a senior U.S. commander.


"Our troop levels in Afghanistan will remain about steady through . . . February," said Lt. Gen. Karl W. Eikenberry, who leads the Combined Forces Command in Afghanistan. There are approximately 20,000 U.S. troops in Afghanistan, the highest number since the U.S.-led invasion in October 2001 to overthrow the Taliban government. Eikenberry said Taliban fighters and extremists have grown more numerous, organized and determined in some parts of the south and southeast, where foreign troops were limited and the Afghan government was weak. "You do have challenges where Taliban has moved into an area you could perhaps call a vacuum, or at least very weak governance," Eikenberry said at a Pentagon news conference. "In some areas there are more Taliban extremists than there were at this point last year. And within some areas they . . . demonstrated better command-and-control and they're fighting harder."


[...]The primary challenge in Afghanistan is not military but rather one of extending the reach of the central government and bolstering economic development, Eikenberry said.


Nevertheless, he said, Afghanistan's burgeoning drug trade presents a fundamental threat that could ultimately undermine both the U.S. military mission and the nation's government. The sheer scale of the drug trafficking and the money involved creates "the prospect of absolute corruption of the government," he said, as well as the likelihood that drug money will fund terrorism.

Americans Don't Support Their Government

Although the election looks like a big turn around for the Democrats, I don't think the Dems can take credit. Bush has self-destructed and Congress looks very self-serving in cutting taxes and borrowing for pork.
I would think there would be a Democrat who might jump out of the fray and take a position vis a vis Republicans beyond Murtha. But then again, people who do what they say and say what they do don't get elected, more than once anyway.
New York Times

With barely seven weeks until the midterm elections, Americans have an overwhelmingly negative view of the Republican-controlled Congress, with substantial majorities saying that they disapprove of the job it is doing and that its members do not deserve re-election, according to the latest New York Times/CBS News poll.


The disdain for Congress is as intense as it has been since 1994, when Republicans captured 52 seats to end 40 years of Democratic control of the House and retook the Senate as well. It underlines the challenge the Republican Party faces in trying to hold on to power in the face of a surge in anti-incumbent sentiment.


By broad margins, respondents said that members of Congress were too tied to special interests and that they did not understand the needs and problems of average Americans. Two-thirds said Congress had accomplished less than it typically did in a two-year session; most said they could not name a single major piece of legislation that cleared this Congress. Just 25 percent said they approved of the way Congress was doing its job.


But for all the clear dissatisfaction with the 109th Congress, 39 percent of respondents said their own representative deserved re-election, compared with 48 percent who said it was time for someone new.


What is more, it seems highly unlikely Democrats will experience a sweep similar to the one Republicans experienced in 1994. Most analysts judge only about 40 House seats to be in play at the moment, compared with over 100 seats in play at this point 12 years ago, in large part because redistricting has created more safe seats for both parties.


The poll also found that President Bush had not improved his own or his party’s standing through his intense campaign of speeches and events surrounding the fifth anniversary of the 9/11 attacks. The speeches were at the heart of a Republican strategy to thrust national security to the forefront in the fall elections.

Rendition and It's Horrors

In 2002, an innocent Canadian man of Arab descent was plucked from a NY airport and wisked off to Syria to be tortured for his alleged ties to Al Qaeda. I wrote about his plight in August of 2005. A more complete story is available here in an article about the US torture prison in Afghanistan. Bush continues to claim he didn't know they were going to be tortured, yet his own troops and CIA officers did much the same in secret prisons all over the world. Now, just before a contested election, he wants to put them on trial!
This man has no business being president of the US.
washingtonpost.com

ACOUPLE of years ago, President Bush might well have counted Maher Arar as one of the success stories of the CIA's secret program for detaining and interrogating suspected terrorists. Mr. Arar, a Canadian citizen, was arrested at New York's John F. Kennedy International Airport in September 2002 because he was on a watchlist; Canadian police said they believed he had connections to al-Qaeda. Rather than being returned to Canada, Mr. Arar disappeared into the CIA's secret system -- he was transported to Syria and handed over to its military intelligence service. For several weeks, Mr. Arar was tortured by his Syrian captors, who beat him with an electric cable. Eventually he broke and confessed that he had trained at an al-Qaeda camp in Afghanistan.
The problem with this story, as an official Canadian investigation reported Monday, is that Mr. Arar was innocent. "Categorically there is no evidence" that Mr. Arar was a terrorist or posed a security threat, the report stated. He never traveled to Afghanistan. The Canadian police intelligence about him was simply wrong. But after his coerced confession, he was held in a Syrian dungeon for 10 months and suffered "devastating" mental and economic harm before finally being released in 2003.


[...]From early 2002 until this month the agency held some al-Qaeda suspects in secret prisons and subjected them to harsh interrogation techniques that, though they don't include beatings with cables, violate the Geneva Conventions and current U.S. law. Others, like Mr. Arar, have been secretly handed over to foreign governments known to use torture in interrogations, including Egypt and Jordan as well as Syria -- a practice known as "rendition."


Mr. Bush claims that the renditions, secret detentions and harsh U.S. techniques -- which most of the world regards as torture -- have yielded important intelligence. But as the military commanders who oppose such methods have insistently and courageously pointed out, it is well known that the information they produce is unreliable. Many detainees, as Mr. Arar did, will falsely incriminate themselves or others to avoid abuse. Over time, better intelligence can be obtained by working within guidelines mandating humane treatment of detainees -- such as those in the new Army interrogation manual released this month.


Moreover, as Mr. Arar's case illustrates, cruel treatment of prisoners, even in secret, eventually becomes known and can badly damage the honor and influence of the United States and its relations with allies. The mistreatment of Mr. Arar has hurt U.S. relations with Canada and could impede cooperation with its police and security services in the future. Other cases of rendition have similarly upset U.S. intelligence relations with Italy, Germany and Sweden.


It's no wonder that two former Republican secretaries of state, Colin L. Powell and George P. Shultz, oppose Mr. Bush's attempt to modify U.S. compliance with the Geneva Conventions to permit future secret detentions and renditions by the CIA. Or that military leaders ranging from Gen. John W. Vessey Jr., a former chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, to Maj. Gen. Scott C. Black, the senior serving uniformed lawyer in the Army, also oppose the president's initiative. They understand well what Mr. Bush refuses to see -- that the price of his policies is bad intelligence, the criminal mistreatment of some innocent people, and damage to U.S. prestige and alliances that the country can ill afford.

Murdoch Almighty: When the Public Loses Opinion

I don't always find GlobalResearch.ca to have a balenced view of the world. However, everyone once in a while, there is a well written article that addresses the truth in a way that is seldom available in the big money dominance of the new media in the US. Here is an article written by a Palestinian activist whose views are present and openly stated, however his point about the media and the "marketplace of ideas" is much the same as the point made by Al Gore a year ago. This is a well written piece. The whole article is worth the read. Here is an excerpt of the key points.

[...]an article in The Guardian on 1 July by Lance Price, former media advisor to the British prime minister, brought the topic [of public spheres, i.e. public opinion] back to mind. Price asserted that media tycoon Rupert Murdoch was arguably the most powerful man in the media world today. Murdoch, an Australian-born US citizen, literally owns a significant share in public opinion through his control of the world's largest media conglomerates.


"I have never met Mr Murdoch, but at times when I worked at Downing Street he seemed like the 24th member of the cabinet. His voice was rarely heard [but, then, the same could have been said of many of the other 23] but his presence was always felt," Price wrote.


Murdoch "attended many crisis meetings at the Home Office -- the influence of the Murdoch press on immigration and asylum policy would make a fascinating PhD thesis," the author of the best-selling The Spin Doctor's Diary added. "There is no small irony in the fact that Tony Blair flew halfway round the world to address Mr Murdoch and his News International executives in the first year of his leadership of the Labour Party and that he's doing so again next month [July, 2006] in what may prove to be his last."


Shocking as they may seem, the revelations of Price, a man once intimately involved in the workings of the British government, appear utterly consistent with the strengthening bond between the mainstream media and governments in Western democracies. Such a bond is equally, but especially visible in the United States.


But the relationship between states and media become even the more dangerous when both team up -- and not by accident -- on the same ideological turf. Murdoch is a right-wing, pro-Israeli (widely known to be a personal friend of Ariel Sharon), pro-war ideologue. In 2003, every editorial page of his raft of 175 newspapers around the world touted the same pro-war mantras. Some might have innocently deduced that the "world's media" were all inadvertently converging on a consensus that sees President Bush as someone who is "acting very morally [and] very correctly", to borrow Murdoch's own language, and that such convergence is a reflection of the overall international public consensus on the matter. Reality, however, was starkly different.


Of course, Murdoch, who owns numerous newspapers, TV stations and news services throughout the world is not the exception, but the norm. In fact, a greater convergence is constantly taking place in the media world in the United States, which gives a few individual media conglomerates unprecedented ownership of thousands of radio and television stations, newspapers, magazines, etc. While some still laud the "freedom of the press", little aware of who owns what, democracy is being greatly compromised: the "life-world" is conceding like never before to the ever-encroaching "system", and a true "public sphere" is almost non-existent, at least in any meaningful form.


While states cannot prevent events or guarantee absolute power for themselves, they've understood the inimitable value of the media in its ability to forge a favourable climate of public opinion that seems incidentally consistent with that of the state. In exchange, the commercial and even ideological interests of those who own the media are always guaranteed. As long as such a correlation is not fully recognised and disabled, true democracy will continue to experience a frightening decline, whereby meaningful participatory democracy is replaced by mere democracy rhetoric used to satisfy political, ideological, and ultimately imperialistic ends. Without a crucial awakening that gives the public back what is rightfully theirs -- its opinion, its public sphere and its democracy -- this downward spiral is likely to continue.

Gore Calls for Freeze on Greenhouse Emissions

While scientists have been sound the alarm this past year for the rapid warming being experienced in global temperatures, the rapid melting of the Greenland ice pack, only one politician is showing any leadership on the matter. Bush talks about the risk of sending jobs overseas, while jobs continue to go overseas anyway, unrelated to global warming.
Al Gore says he's not running for president. So I wonder why people who show leadership don't ever run. Maybe we only elect wishy-washy politicians that tell us what we want to hear.
New York Times

Former Vice President Al Gore called yesterday for a popular movement in the United States to seek an “immediate freeze” in heat-trapping smokestack and tailpipe gases linked by most scientists to global warming. Speaking at the New York University law school, Mr. Gore said that rising temperatures posed an enormous threat and that only a movement akin to the nuclear freeze campaign for arms control a generation ago, which he said he opposed at the time, would push elected officials out of longstanding deadlock on the issue. MORE

The Pope Apologizes

Finally, the pope speaks up, but they have yet to correct an misquote of the Koran and it's history. Mohammad always preached that there should be "no compulsion in religion", or no forcible conversions.
Meanwhile, not surprisingly, there have been violent reactions from the poor in the Muslim world along with the repeated calls for calm. Some uninformed people in the west still claim Islamic leaders haven't emphatically condemned violence, despite the repeated fatwas from leaders all over the Muslim world.
washingtonpost.com

Pope Benedict XVI said yesterday that he is "deeply sorry" about the reaction in some countries to a recent speech in which he quoted a 14th-century Byzantine emperor as saying that the prophet Muhammad brought "only evil and inhuman" things to the world.


The pope said that the quotation from Manuel II Palaeologus does not reflect his personal views, and that his speech last Tuesday at Germany's University of Regensburg was intended to invite inter-religious dialogue "with great mutual respect." Benedict's brief statement was the third attempt by Vatican officials in as many days to cool the reaction to his speech, which escalated from diplomatic protests to violence over the weekend.


On Saturday, Palestinian Muslims threw firebombs and sprayed bullets at five churches in the West Bank and Gaza. Yesterday they torched a 170-year-old church in the West Bank town of Tul Karem and partly burned a smaller church in the village of Tubas. In Somalia, an Italian nun and her bodyguard were fatally shot, but it was not immediately clear whether that attack was related to the pope's speech.


The Vatican has gradually ratcheted up its efforts to explain the speech, beginning with a statement Friday by Federico Lombardi, head of the Vatican press office. It said that the pope's remarks were meant as "a clear and radical rejection of the religious motivation for violence."


On Saturday, Cardinal Tarcisio Bertone, the pope's new secretary of state, said that the church "esteems" Muslims and that Benedict "sincerely regrets" that the address was "interpreted in a manner that in no way corresponds to his intentions."

Still, this error is unforgivable in the sense of the pope's leadership is so powerful, he must be more careful, have all of his words repeatedly reviewed before uttering them. Many more will suffer for his grievous error. Let's just hope that most get his intended message of dialogue. Unfortunately, his words defeated his purpose.

Pope Benedict Inciting a New Crusade?

The Inquisition Pope, known since taking the job for his leadership in supporting evolution, now makes a unforgivable mistake of judgment in communicating his point to those listening. HIs comments have been characterized as intolerant, bigotted, sounding like Hitler and Mussilini. An Iranian Shia scholar correctly finds his statements more similar to Zionists than to the Christian bible.
Despite what it looks like, I don't believe Benedict intended to start a new Crusade! But he certainly has added fever to the situation. I can imagine the Christian Right wingnuts are salivating as they sharpen their "terrible swift swords."
Guardian Unlimited

The pope quoted from a book recounting a conversation between 14th-century Byzantine Christian Emperor Manuel Paleologos II and a Persian scholar on the truths of Christianity and Islam. ``The emperor comes to speak about the issue of jihad, holy war,'' Benedict said. ``He said, I quote, 'Show me just what Muhammad brought that was new, and there you will find things only evil and inhuman, such as his command to spread by the sword the faith he preached.''' The pope did not explicitly agree with nor repudiate the comment.

Unbelievably, the Vatican has not corrected the impression yet. A weak statement that he meant no offense is hardly sufficient.

Notably, the strongest denunciations came from Turkey - a moderate democracy seeking European Union membership where Benedict is scheduled to visit in November as his first trip as pope to a Muslim country.
Salih Kapusuz, deputy leader of Turkish Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan's Islamic-rooted party, said Benedict's remarks were either ``the result of pitiful ignorance'' about Islam and its prophet or, worse, a deliberate distortion. ``He has a dark mentality that comes from the darkness of the Middle Ages. He is a poor thing that has not benefited from the spirit of reform in the Christian world,'' Kapusuz told Turkish state media. ``It looks like an effort to revive the mentality of the Crusades.'' ``Benedict, the author of such unfortunate and insolent remarks, is going down in history for his words,'' Kapusuz added. ``He is going down in history in the same category as leaders such as Hitler and Mussolini.''


Even Turkey's staunchly pro-secular opposition party demanded the pope apologize before his visit. Another party led a demonstration outside Ankara's largest mosque, and a group of about 50 people placed a black wreath outside the Vatican's diplomatic mission.

So much for the "papal infallibility" principle of the Vatican. The danger here is concern that admitting his mistake may be seen as a grave political risk that would doom the perception that the pope is infallibility. It does not appear infallibility is applicable here.
Wikipedia

In Roman Catholic theology, Papal infallibility is the dogma that the Pope is preserved from error when he solemnly promulgates, or declares, to the Church a dogmatic teaching on faith or morals. This doctrine was defined dogmatically in the First Vatican Council of 1870. In Catholic theology, papal infallibility is one of the channels of the Infallibility of the Church. Papal infallibility does not signify that the Pope is impeccable, i.e., that he is specially exempt from liability to sin.

The pope has a responsibility to further tolerance and understanding. Clearly his words did not represent his intent. Such careless words have started wars thousands of times in human history. The man who supposedly represents the "Prince of Peace" needs to act quickly to eat his words. Politics bedamned! We need a big unequivocal papal apology! Now!

Afghanistan Among the Failed States Threatening The World

The World Bank has released a report on the failed state list. Unfortunately, they don't list all the countries, for political reasons. Notably, Afghanistan is on the list. I suspect Iraq is as well, or should be. Gaza, the West Bank, many African states, Cambodia, Kosovo, and of course Haiti and Sudan.
It's most interesting that the US, most notably, Bush has had a direct hand in creating the conditions that failed states threaten us.
washingtonpost.com

The number of weak and poorly governed nations that can provide a breeding ground for global terrorism has grown sharply over the past three years, despite increased Western efforts to improve conditions in such states, according to a new World Bank report.


"Fragile" countries, whose deepening poverty puts them at risk from terrorism, armed conflict and epidemic disease, have jumped to 26 from 17 since the report was last issued in 2003. Five states graduated off the list, but 14 made new appearances, including Nigeria and seven other African countries, Kosovo, Cambodia, East Timor, and the West Bank and Gaza. Twelve states, including Afghanistan, Somalia and Sudan, made both lists.


[...]Hurdles facing the countries at risk, often referred to as "failed" or "failing" states, include "weak security, fractured societal relations, corruption, breakdown in the rule of law, lack of mechanisms for generating legitimate power and authority" and limited investment resources to meet basic needs, the report said.


To avoid "adverse spillover effects -- such as conflict, terrorism and epidemic diseases -- the international community and the Bank need to find more effective ways" of assisting them, it said.


The Bush administration has described failing states as a major threat to U.S. security. "The danger they pose is now unparalleled," Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice wrote in a column that appeared late last year in The Washington Post. "Absent responsible state authority, threats that would and should be contained within a country's borders can now melt into the world and wreak untold havoc.


"Weak and failing states," Rice said, "serve as global pathways that facilitate the spread of pandemics, the movement of criminals and terrorists, and the proliferation of the world's most dangerous weapons."

Novak Swipes at Armitage

Novak has publically disputed Armitage's account of casual conversation about Plame. Apparently stung by the inference that Novak had ran with a story with little collaboration, Novak admits that he knew he was releasing information about a CIA officer, understanding from Armitage that this fact was not widely known, maybe even secret? Apparently neither fear prosecution for releasing national security secrets that has been considered a violation of the law, certainly unethical behavior.
washingtonpost.com

Columnist Robert D. Novak, who first revealed Valerie Plame's employment by the CIA and touched off a lengthy federal leak investigation, is accusing his primary source of misrepresenting their conversation to make the source's role in the disclosure seem more casual than it was.


In an unusual column that appears today, Novak says his initial source, former deputy secretary of state Richard L. Armitage, was more sure of Plame's ties to the CIA than the source has indicated. Novak adds that Armitage linked her directly to her husband's CIA-sponsored trip to Niger and suggested the disclosure would be a good item for Novak's column.


[...]Novak said further that "Armitage did not slip me this information as idle chitchat. . . . He made clear that he considered it especially suited for my column." In an interview, Novak said that Armitage effectively described it as stock, Washington-insider information of the sort that often appeared in the column.


Armitage, in reply, said his disclosure to Novak was inadvertent and noted that Novak himself described it as "offhand" in an Oct. 1, 2003, column. Armitage said he could not recall whether he identified the CIA division where Wilson's wife worked. He added that he rejects any suggestion he was deliberately trying to plant the information, explaining that "I had no reason to wish him [Wilson] any ill" and that Wilson "was simply verifying what had already been reported [about Iraq] through State channels."

Information is Power, NSA Plays Its Hand

They say that information is power. In this day, with the Internet connecting the world at the speed of light, it's power is beyond most people's comprehension. Typically government agencies refrain from entering the political process of funding and authorization, sticking to providing Congress with the facts and data documented the products they are authorized to provide for government.
The National Security Agency is in a unique position. They can't share with Congress sterling examples of their product since that information is usually highly classified. The NSA sifts through many terra bytes of information looking for national security threats. They also have enabled international criminal investigations. Under the Bush Administration, the NSA has taken the lead in spying on the Internet and other electronic communications, such as cellphones. There has been much controversy regarding their spying on American citizens and America's competing businesses. Everyone is happy they are looking for terrorists.
But now the NSA is providing "talking points" to Republican Congressional leadership to help in the authorization struggles for funding of projects. This is a clear conflict of interest and needs to be stopped. The kinds of inappropriate manipulations that are potential here is chilling.
washingtonpost.com

Democrats on the Senate intelligence committee are complaining that the National Security Agency has played politics in support of the secret program to intercept phone calls between alleged terrorists in the United States and abroad.


On July 27, shortly after most members of the committee were briefed on the controversial surveillance program, the NSA supplied the panel's chairman, Pat Roberts (R-Kan.), with "a set of administration approved, unclassified talking points for the members to use," as described in the document.


Among the talking points were "subjective statements that appear intended to advance a particular policy view and present certain facts in the best possible light," Sen. John D. Rockefeller IV (D-W.Va.) said in a letter to the NSA director.


The cleared statements included "I can say the program must continue" and "There is strict oversight in place . . . now including the full congressional intelligence committees," as well as "Current law is not agile enough to handle the threat posed by sophisticated international terrorist organizations such as al-Qaeda" and "The FISA should be amended so that it is technologically neutral." FISA refers to the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act, the current law.


Rockefeller and six Democrats on the panel wrote Lt. Gen. Keith B. Alexander, the NSA's director, on Aug. 29 that they believed those statements "appear intended to advocate particular policies rather than provide guidance on classification." The letter added: "We believe that it is inappropriate for the NSA to insert itself into this policy debate."

Bush on Iraq: The Song Remains The Same

Bush keeps trying new variations on the same old propaganda. The proboem is that we know more about this issue and he keeps pretending we don't. Dubya, we aren't that ignorant!
WaPo

President Bush's Oval Office speech last night was the culmination of two weeks of efforts to rally the nation behind his policies and presidency by summoning the memory of Sept. 11, 2001. Five years after that indelible day, however, this president's capacity to move the public is severely diminished.


There were echoes of the language and logic Bush invoked five years ago when he united a stricken nation looking to him for both comfort and leadership. But he was speaking to a different nation last night.


[...]In his speeches, Bush has advanced several arguments, starting with the proposition that the United States is engaged in a long-term ideological struggle between forces of freedom and Islamic radicals who want to destroy freedom. Although U.S. adversaries come from different backgrounds -- ranging from radical Sunnis in al-Qaeda to Shiite militants such as Hezbollah -- Bush has characterized the opposition as forming a single movement, "a worldwide network of radicals that use terror to kill those that stand in the way of their totalitarian ideology."


Bush this week reiterated his four-year-old argument that Iraq is a central front in the broader struggle against Islamic terrorism. Premature withdrawal, he asserted, could make Iraq what Afghanistan was before the Sept. 11 attacks, an incubator for al-Qaeda. To support the point, he has noted not only the flow of foreign fighters to Iraq but, as on some earlier occasions, the words of al-Qaeda leaders themselves. In his speech last week to the Military Officers Association of America, Bush quoted Osama bin Laden as describing the war in Iraq as "a war of destiny between infidelity and Islam."


Daniel Benjamin, a U.S. counterterrorism official in the Clinton administration who has written extensively about the subject, said efforts to defeat the radical Islamist ideology have been undermined by the Iraq invasion.


"There is no acknowledgment that because we have inadvertently confirmed their claims -- that we seek to occupy Muslim lands, as we have in Iraq -- the ideology is spreading and undermining our efforts," Benjamin said.