Systemic failure seen in India's response to attacks

latimes.com

Experts blame deep structural problems in India's anti-terrorism operation, including poor intelligence, inadequate equipment and limited training. And they doubt that reform will be forthcoming.
By Mark Magnier
6:40 PM PST, November 30, 2008
Reporting from Mumbai, India -- Facing mounting public anger over the response of his government and security forces to last week's assault on Mumbai, India's prime minister pledged Sunday to beef up anti-terrorism measures, and a top police official more pointedly fixed blame on a Pakistani group for the violence that left nearly 200 dead.
But analysts and ordinary citizens questioned whether the government's promise of reform would lead to serious changes in an approach whose systemic problems were laid bare by the assault.
"I'll be surprised if this is a wake-up call," said Brahma Chellaney, professor of strategic studies at the Center for Policy Research in New Delhi. "The government has proven quite adept at making statements after every act of terror and going back to business as usual."
The government promised Sunday to create an FBI-style agency and station specially trained forces in four cities in addition to New Delhi. Early in the day, Home Minister Shivraj Patil resigned, taking "moral blame" for security lapses.
Police said the only gunman captured -- 10 others were killed -- had told authorities he belonged to Lashkar-e-Taiba, a militant Islamic group.
Lashkar-e-Taiba was behind the assault on the city, Joint Police Commissioner Rakesh Maria told reporters Sunday, giving a high-ranking voice to previous Indian suggestions that the group was to blame.
Pakistan has denied any links to last week's attack. Western and Indian intelligence officials have long charged that rogue elements in Pakistani intelligence agencies used Lashkar and other militant groups as proxies in their conflict with India over the disputed Kashmir region.
Even as Indian officials focused on the possibility that India had been attacked from abroad, public anger raged at the response to the coordinated attacks launched Wednesday night. The assault on two top hotels, a restaurant, a Jewish center and other sites killed at least 174 people, including six Americans. The death toll was revised downward Sunday after authorities said some bodies were counted twice.
Students, Internet groups, social critics and the media have harshly criticized the government for its failure to protect citizens. "Our Politicians Fiddle as Innocents Die," read a front-page headline in Sunday's Times of India.
Many analysts, former police and military officers and ordinary citizens said they feared that weak political will, corruption and the shortcomings of the nation's anti-terrorism forces would undermine needed reform. All too often, some observers said, terrorist incidents become political footballs for a variety of reasons.
For starters: With Muslims accounting for 13% of India's population, politicians tend to avoid pushing too hard against militant Islamists for fear of alienating this important voting bloc.
"The issue of anti-terrorism, especially around election time, is radioactive," said Ryan Clarke, a researcher with Singapore's International Center for Political Violence and Terrorism Research, saying areas with large Muslim populations can play swing roles in close elections.
Another problem, others said, is that India's porous borders with Pakistan, Bangladesh, Nepal and entry points along the coast make it easy to launch militant operations from a neighboring country and then slip away. Last week's attackers reportedly sneaked into the city aboard rubber dinghies launched from a hijacked fishing trawler.
"Mumbai has 15 patrol boats, and none of them are used for patrolling," said lawyer and former Mumbai policeman Y.P. Singh. "There's such complacency."
Security experts say individual police officers and national guard personnel performed bravely during last week's standoff. And some of the targets chosen by the militants, such as the vast Taj Mahal and Oberoi hotels, would challenge most security organizations. But these factors were far outweighed by deep structural problems, poor intelligence, inadequate equipment and limited training, they add.
Anti-terrorist operations ideally need to quickly and decisively respond. The longer officials wait, the more time terrorists have to wreak havoc and hole themselves up in defensive positions, experts say.
Mumbai lost three of its top anti-terrorism officials almost immediately when the violence began Wednesday night; they were gunned down as they rode together in a van. The three should not have been in the same vehicle, experts said, nor should they have exposed themselves to danger. Their loss badly handicapped the early response.
Mumbai has no equivalent of a SWAT team. It took hours to decide to send in the nation's rapid-response National Security Guards, based in New Delhi. The capital is three hours away by air, but no military aircraft were available and the unit evidently lacked authority to requisition a commercial plane. Military transport was flown in from elsewhere.
On reaching Mumbai, the guards were driven to the hostage sites by bus -- there were no helicopters -- then briefed. By the time they took up positions, many hours had passed.
"A city the size of Mumbai, with [more than] 18 million people, doesn't even have a SWAT team or a helicopter available," said Ajay Sahni, executive director of New Delhi's Institute for Conflict Management. "At every stage there was complete institutional failure. You can't have a rapid-action force that takes seven hours to arrive."
At the two massive hotels, a handful of militants kept hundreds of commandos at bay for two days. Senior commanders would announce that sections of the buildings had been cleared, only to see the attackers move back in.
Government forces lacked hotel floor plans, although the militants seemed to have had them -- and apparently had stockpiled explosives and ammunition at the sites in advance. And the commandos lacked an effective command structure or a good communication system, experts said, whereas the terrorists reportedly used BlackBerrys and GPS devices to navigate and monitor news coverage.
Though the hotels are huge, the Jewish center is located in a five-story building, known as Nariman House, which should have made for a far easier recovery operation. When commandos were dropped on the roof Saturday morning by helicopter, the craft made three sorties, removing any element of surprise.
"These are Jews," Sahni said. "It's very clear they were not going to be allowed to live by these people. This tiny building should've been taken in the first few minutes."
Onlookers at the Nariman House were allowed to watch from a few feet away, hampering police operations. A night counterattack was nixed, reportedly because it was too dark: The attackers had night-vision goggles, the police didn't.
Conventional theory suggests that commandos move quickly once there's indication that hostages are in imminent danger in hopes of getting at least a few out alive. Yet days passed until, in the end, all hostages at the center were killed.
"You can wait, but you use that wait to engage the terrorists and plan," said Yoram Schweitzer, an international terrorism expert at Tel Aviv's Institute for National Security Studies. "Then you engage them quickly, with shock -- prepare for a maximum one- to two-minute strike."
India also has paid the price for corruption in the ranks, said Singh, the former policeman.
"Everyone wants to be in the police station where you have contact with the public and can get payments for resolving a dispute, allowing a builder to build a flat," he said. "If you're assigned to the anti-terrorism unit, you try and find a politician to get you out of it. You can see the results in the past few days."
Also problematic has been the lack of training or equipment. The elite forces had no thermal-imaging equipment, which would have helped distinguish terrorists from hotel guests. And ordinary policemen on the front lines had single-bolt rifles of the sort used in World War I, which they had only fired 10 times total during training.
"We're talking about an early 20th century police system trying to deal with a 21st century threat," security analyst Sahni said.
Intelligence also has come under criticism amid reports that fishermen, the Home Ministry and foreign and domestic intelligence agencies all recorded strange goings-on or received warnings that were never acted upon.
And rather than authorities taking the lessons to heart and reforming the system, many observers see a pattern of reflexively blaming outside elements, finding scapegoats and making excuses.
"Blaming others tends to reduce your anxiety rather than a more professional approach of taking time to investigate," said Abhay Matkar, a retired Indian army major. "While public awareness has expanded after [last] week and I expect there will be some change, politicians really need to be shaken up quite a bit."
Magnier is a Times staff writer
mark.magnier@latimes.com
Copyright 2008 Los Angeles Times

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Is India reaping a harvest of hatred sown by Indians? We have seen it all before-a Sri Lankan perspective

Image by d ha rm e sh via Flickr

groundviews

To see what is happening in India today is to look in the rear view mirror of what we did wrong in Sri Lanka. When we suffered terrorist attacks, we blamed it on foreign interference, namely India. India does the same today: the Prime Minister in a televised message blamed a "group based outside the country". Both countries have failed to realize that the root of the problem is not outside our shores; the problem lies within. Messages from the Indian public are scrolled continuously on NDTV, most of them blaming the government for inadequate security and calling for a severe crackdown on terrorism (as if they weren't already trying all this time). Not one message asked the question: "what drove these Indians to do this to other Indians?"
In the interests of combating terrorism, it won't be long before anti-terrorist squads ask Indians with Muslim names questions like: what are you doing out so late? Do you have a legitimate reason for walking near that hotel? How can you prove that you live in this city? If you're not from here, what reason do you have for being in this city? It won't be long before Indian Muslims are arrested simply for being Muslims, and asked to prove that they are not terrorists. As for the public, the great majority will applaud these actions. They'll say it is unfortunate, but it is necessary. We know this because we have seen it all before.
One of the police officers killed by the terrorists in Mumbai was an 'encounter specialist.' This is a euphemism for government assassins who shoot dead alleged gangsters and terrorists without bothering to collect evidence. Our equivalent would be the ubiquitous white vans that make 'suspected terrorists' mysteriously disappear and keeps adding to the tally of bodies that wash ashore or turn up in ditches. How does the public know they really are terrorists? We know, and that's all that matters-who needs evidence anyway? In India these 'encounter specialists' are glorified by the media and cinema as heroes. Murderer equals hero. Isn't that the same logic used by terrorists?
So here's a word of advice from a Sri Lankan to our big neighbour. Don't go down the path we have taken. Don't be tempted to sacrifice the freedom of another for your own safety. Be smarter than us. Look within and find the disease that is causing this fever called terrorism. For now, your terrorists seem to be ad hoc groups of lethal young men. With every attack in your country a new terrorist group with a new label takes credit. That's how it starts. The day will come when a determined and motivated leader manages to coalesce the many fingers of extremism into a hard-hitting fist, with an ideology as compelling as it is evil. When that happens, you will pay a price in blood and sorrow for generations to come. We know this because we have seen it all before.

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India-Pakistan Tensions Grow in Wake of Attacks

Newsweek.com

Despite the rather flimsy evidence pointing to Pakistan's involvement, Islamabad is expected to come under extremely heavy Indian and international pressure once again to get tough with the extremist organizations that still operate rather openly inside the country. After past terrorist attacks Indian authorities have been quick to blame Pakistan and its shadowy Inter Services Intelligence agency (ISI). This time, too, while the hotels still smoldered, Indian Prime Minister Manmohan Singh announced in a nationally televised address that the assailants had "external linkages," clearly a reference to neighboring Pakistan. He added that he would tell India's "neighbors" that the use of their territory to attack India would not be tolerated. Many Indians were pointing a finger at the Pakistani jihadi group Lashkar-I-Taiba, which was formed in the early 1980s with the assistance of the ISI to promote an anti-Indian revolt in Muslim-majority, Indian-administered Kashmir.
New Delhi has long accused Lashkar, and by extension Pakistan, of being behind the long-simmering unrest in Indian Kashmir, as well as being instigators of terror attacks inside India. Indian officials, however, conveniently ignore the serious economic, religious, political and social causes of Muslim discontent in Kashmir as well as in much of India, which is home to more than 150 million Muslims, roughly equivalent to the population of Pakistan. There have been five similar attacks, albeit on a smaller scale with fewer casualties, across India in the last eight months. Security agency sources say that the government's response to the attacks has been routine, if not incompetent, and that inter-agency rivalries and non-coordination often result in terrorists having a free hand. In addition, the police are notorious for using crude methods such as rounding up largely innocent Muslim youth and torturing them to extract information, tactics that alienate even moderate Muslim voices.
As a result, Islamic radicalism now seems to be becoming an increasingly serious threat to India just as it is in Pakistan and Afghanistan. Indeed, there may be enough dissatisfaction among Muslims in India to spawn a cadre of native, would-be jihadists who do not necessarily need external support to carry out terrorist attacks. Even so, the precise planning, stealth and coordination involved in the attacks may point to some external assistance, if not inspiration. Pakistan can certainly be faulted for not having dealt a deathblow to Lashkar and several other similar, ISI-assisted, Kashmir-oriented, jihadist outfits such as Jaish-I-Mohammad, a splinter group that was responsible for American journalist Daniel Pearl's kidnapping and beheading in 2002. Despite several much-ballyhooed crackdowns by former President Pervez Musharraf on Lashkar, Jaish and other such extremist groups, these radical organizations were never dismembered or decapitated. They went underground or kept on functioning under different monikers. Unlike Jaish and other Pakistani jihadi groups, Lashkar wisely did not become involved in military strikes against Pakistani security forces. As a result, the army and police crackdown was less harsh on Lashkar than it was on other extremist groups that were in open revolt against Pakistan after it moved to close the infiltration pipeline into Indian-occupied Kashmir in 2003.
To escape any of the government's anti-extremist dragnets, Lashkar cleverly morphed into Jamaat ud Dawah, a so-called Islamic charitable group, after Musharraf banned it following the September 11, 2001 terrorist attacks. Today Jamaat ud Dawah openly solicits funds and recruits adherents in Pakistan, particularly in mosques, and has undertaken high-profile relief work in the aftermath of the deadly 2005 Kashmir earthquake and the more recent destructive tremor in Baluchistan, earning it an increased following. The group's radical founder, Hafiz Muhammad Saeed, is free and still openly preaches his sermons of hate despite occasional, and brief, stints in jail. Earlier this month, Saeed openly preached to a gathering of tens of thousands of faithful in Pakistan's Punjab province. He called on Pakistan to halt the truck convoys supplying U.S. and NATO forces in Afghanistan through Pakistan, accused the Pakistani army of fighting the Pakistani people, called on U.S. President-elect Barack Obama to embrace Islam, declared that only by invading India would Pakistan get river waters that he claimed were being criminally diverted by India, and promised the jihad would continue until Kashmir was free from Indian rule.
Meanwhile, Jaish-e-Muhammad, like Lashkar, has established insurgent training camps in the tribal areas. And its leader, Maulana Masood Azhar, is said to be working closely with Pakistani Taliban and Al Qaeda operatives in the tribal areas along the Afghanistan-Pakistan border. Indeed, a spate of reports over the past year or so indicated that Kashmir-oriented Pakistani jihadi groups like Lashkar and Jaish had moved most of their camps and operational centers from Pakistani-controlled Kashmir, where they were born, to the safer environs of the tribal area where the Taliban and Al Qaeda hold sway. For the past few years the Pakistan Army and ISI had put these jihadi groups on a very short leash, not allowing them to infiltrate across the heavily mined and guarded Line of Control that separates the Pakistani- and Indian-controlled sectors of Kashmir. As a result, the bulk of the groups are thought to have shifted their main operational bases to the tribal area.
Lashkar, Jaish and other Kashmiri jihadi groups are believed to be involved in cross-border operations into Afghanistan to attack U.S. and coalition troops operating there. But from their new tribal-areas bases, they also get an opportunity to work closely with Al Qaeda planners operating in the region. Indeed these tribal havens are perfect places for Lashkar and other like-minded, anti-Indian groups to safely plan attacks and then communicate operational ideas to loosely affiliated jihadist groups in India, most probably via the Internet. Ayman al-Zawahiri, Taliban sources tell Newsweek, has never hidden his goal of sabotaging the Indo-Pakistani peace process, even though negotiations between the two countries aimed at establishing normal cross border traffic and trade and finding a solution to the Kashmir conflict are moving at a snail's pace. Zawahiri, Al Qaeda's No. 2 man, is on the record saying he would like to promote an all-out conflict between the two nuclear-armed neighbors. Ironically, the foreign secretaries of India and Pakistan had just completed a round of successful talks in Islamabad on countering terrorism and drug trafficking, among other things, the day before the Mumbai attacks occurred.

Complete story.
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Ex-ambassador blames Georgia for war with Russia

Mr Ambassador, isn't diplomacy the art making sure you are not misunderstood? Shouldn't Bush share responsibility for mistakenly turning loose the Georgia attack? I think so.
George Bush will go down in history for having destroyed the power, prestige and the economy of the US.

Image by anwer2007 via Flickr

The Associated Press

TBILISI, Georgia (AP) -- Before this summer's Georgia-Russia war, President Mikhail Saakashvili was itching to do battle and authorities mistook messages from the United States as encouragement to use force, Georgia's former ambassador to Russia said Wednesday.
But Russia also takes a share of the blame because it was trying to inflame Saakashvili's itch, Erosi Kitsmarishvili says.
His statements at a news conference added new intensity to a growing debate about what and who bear the onus for staring the five-day war that saw Russia drive deep into Georgian territory, caused devastating damage to Georgia's military, and aggravated already troubled Russia-US relations.
Georgia launched a massive artillery barrage Aug. 7 on the capital of the separatist region of South Ossetia, which was backed by Moscow and patrolled by Russian peacekeeping forces. Russian forces poured into the region, drove Georgian forces out and went on to take control of substantial swaths of northern and western Georgia.
The war ended with Russian forces firmly in control of South Ossetia and another separatist region, Abkhazia. Moscow has recognized both regions as independent.
Georgian leaders have said they launched the Aug. 7 attack after separatists shelled Georgian villages and Russian forces invaded from the north. Russia denies that, saying it sent troops to protect civilians and Russian peacekeepers from the Georgian onslaught.
Interior Minister Vano Merabishvili, in Wednesday testimony to a parliamentary commission investigating the war, presented what he said were telephone recordings supporting the Georgian authorities -- one in which men said to be South Ossetian border guards say Russian forces had crossed the border the night before the barrage and another purporting to show the South Ossetian interior minister receiving an order to raze a village under Georgian control.
But according to Kistmarishvili, "Saakashvili wanted that war, he has been bracing for that during the last four years. And Russia was eager to exploit it, pushing him to that using all means."
In the early postwar period, Georgian public opinion was strongly behind Saakashvili and a large majority believed Georgia had reacted to Russian aggression in launching the attack on South Ossetia.
In recent weeks, opposition politicians have been increasingly critical of the president and the war, but Kitsmarishvili appears to be the most highly placed official of the prewar period to publicly challenge Saakashvili on the conflict.
The former diplomat said Georgian officials had hoped to regain South Ossetia within hours, and did not expect Moscow to intervene.
He said Georgian officials believed the United States backed the idea of sending Georgian troops to reclaim Abkhazia and South Ossetia, which have been de-facto independent and patrolled by Russian peacekeepers since the early 1990s.
Kitsmarishvili said Georgian officials told him President George W. Bush gave his blessing for such a use of force when he met the Georgian president in Washington in March.
"Saakashvili's entourage has tried to form an opinion that the U.S. administration would support the use of force," Kitsmarishvili said. "In reality, it was not like that."
Georgian officials also perceived a July 9-10 visit by U.S. Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice as encouragement for the plan, Kitsmarishvili said. He said people in Saakashvili's circle told him that Rice "gave the green light."
Rice has denied that Washington encouraged Georgia to use force on the provinces. The U.S. Embassy reiterated that line on Wednesday.
Kitsmarishvili made similar allegations to a Georgian parliamentary panel Tuesday, angering pro-government lawmakers who accused him of siding with Moscow and called for a criminal investigation against him. Some pro-government lawmakers accused him of lying in order to deflect attention from his alleged ineffectualness as ambassador.
Georgia recalled Kitsmarishvili from the Georgian Embassy on July 10, about a month before the war broke out. In the intervening weeks, he met in Georgia with an array of Western and Russian politicians and diplomats.
The countries have since severed diplomatic ties.
Associated Press Writer Misha Dzhindzhikhashvili contributed to this report.
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Copyright © 2008 The Associated Press. All rights reserved.

The 10 Worst Corporations of 2008

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AlterNet

By Robert Weissman, Multinational Monitor
Posted on November 24, 2008, Printed on November 24, 2008
2008 marks the 20th anniversary of Multinational Monitor's annual list of the 10 Worst Corporations of the year.
In the 20 years that we've published our annual list, we've covered corporate villains, scoundrels, criminals and miscreants. We've reported on some really bad stuff - from Exxon's Valdez spill to Union Carbide and Dow's effort to avoid responsibility for the Bhopal disaster; from oil companies coddling dictators (including Chevron and CNPC, both profiled this year) to a bank (Riggs) providing financial services for Chilean dictator Augusto Pinochet; from oil and auto companies threatening the future of the planet by blocking efforts to address climate change to duplicitous tobacco companies marketing cigarettes around the world by associating their product with images of freedom, sports, youthful energy and good health.
But we've never had a year like 2008.
The financial crisis first gripping Wall Street and now spreading rapidly throughout the world is, in many ways, emblematic of the worst of the corporate-dominated political and economic system that we aim to expose with our annual 10 Worst list. Here is how:
Improper political influence
...
Deregulation and non-enforcement
...
Short-term thinking
...
Financialization
...
Profit over social use
...
Externalized costs
...
What is most revealing about the financial meltdown and economic crisis, however, is that it illustrates that corporations - if left to their own worst instincts - will destroy themselves and the system that nurtures them. It is rare that this lesson is so graphically illustrated. It is one the world must quickly learn, if we are to avoid the most serious existential threat we have yet faced: climate change.
Of course, the rest of the corporate sector was not on good behavior during 2008 either, and we do not want them to escape justified scrutiny. In keeping with our tradition of highlighting diverse forms of corporate wrongdoing, we include only one financial company on the 10 Worst list. Here, presented in alphabetical order, are the 10 Worst Corporations of 2008.
AIG: Money for Nothing
...
Cargill: Food Profiteers
...
Chevron: "We can't let little countries screw around with big companies"
...
Constellation Energy: Nuclear Operators
...
CNPC: Fueling Violence in Darfur
...
Dole: The Sour Taste of Pineapple
...
GE: Creative Accounting
...
Imperial Sugar: 13 Dead
...
Philip Morris International: Unshackled
...
Roche: Saving Lives is Not Our Business
...
Multinational Monitor editor Robert Weissman is the director of Essential Action.
© 2008 Multinational Monitor All rights reserved.
View this story online at: http://www.alternet.org/story/108321/

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After the Crash: How Software Models Doomed the Markets

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Scientific American

If Hollywood makes a movie about the worst financial crisis since the Great De­­pres­­sion, a basement room in a government building in Washington will serve as the setting for a key scene. There investment bankers from the largest institutions pleaded successfully with Securities and Ex­­change Commission (SEC) officials during a short meeting in 2004 to lift a rule specifying debt limits and capital reserves needed for a rainy day. This decision, a real event described in the New York Times, freed billions to invest in complex mortgage-backed securities and derivatives that helped to bring about the financial meltdown in September.
In the script, the next scene will be the one in which number-savvy specialists that Wall Street has come to know as quants consult with their superiors about implementing the regulatory change. These lapsed physicists and mathematical virtuosos were the ones who both invented these oblique securities and created software models that supposedly measured the risk a firm would incur by holding them in its portfolio. Without the formal requirement to maintain debt ceilings and capital reserves, the commission had freed these firms to police themselves using risk tools crafted by cadres of quants.
The software models in question estimate the level of financial risk of a portfolio for a set period at a certain confidence level. As Benoit Mandelbrot, the fractal pioneer who is a longtime critic of mainstream financial theory, wrote in Scientific American in 1999, established modeling techniques presume falsely that radically large market shifts are unlikely and that all price changes are statistically independent; today's fluctuations have nothing to do with tomorrow's--and one bank's portfolio is unrelated to the next's. Here is where reality and rocket science diverge. Try Googling "financial meltdown," "contagion" and "2008," a search that reveals just how wrongheaded these assumptions were.
This modern-day tragedy could be framed not only as a major motion picture but also as a train wreck or plane crash. In aviation, controlled flight into terrain describes the actions of a pilot who, through inattention or incompetence, directs a well-functioning airplane into the side of a mountain. Wall Street's version stems from the SEC's decision to allow overreliance on risk software in the middle of a historic housing bubble. The heady environment permitted traders to enter overoptimistic assumptions and faulty data into their models, jiggering the software to avoid setting off alarm bells.
The causes of this fiasco are multifold--the Federal Reserve's easy-money policy played a big role--but the rocket scientists and geeks also bear their share of the blame. After the crash, the quants and traders they serve need to accept the necessity for a total makeover. The government bailout has already left the U.S. Treasury and Federal Reserve with extraordinary powers. The regulators must ensure that the many lessons of this debacle are not forgotten by the institutions that trade these securities. One important take-home message: capital safety nets (now restored) should never be slashed again, even if a crisis is not looming.
For its part, the quant community needs to undertake a search for better models--perhaps seeking help from behavioral economics, which studies irrationality of investors' decision making, and from virtual market tools that use "intelligent agents" to mimic more faithfully the ups and downs of the activities of buyers and sellers. These number wizards and their superiors need to study lessons that were never learned during previous market smashups involving intricate financial engineering: risk management models should serve only as aids not substitutes for the critical human factor. Like an airplane, financial models can never be allowed to fly solo.

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The great game of hunting pirates

Asia Times Online

Sea piracy off the coast of Somalia is looming large on the radar of world opinion. The recent hijacking of the oil tanker Sirius Star - a supertanker big enough to hold a quarter of Saudi Arabia's daily production (2 million barrels) - has dramatically highlighted the expanding dimensions of the problem. The barely functioning government of Somalia is unable to curb the pirates who sail from its ports and seize cargo ships that ply past.
The pirates on board the Sirius Star have issued a US$25 million ransom demand, and warned of "disastrous" consequences if the money is not paid.
[..]Therefore, there is no question that the problem of piracy is also to be addressed ashore in Somalia. But, problems often enough, lend themselves to solution if only soldiers and geostrategists would step aside for a while. That is, at least, the expert opinion of Katie Stuhldreher. Writing in the Christian Science Monitor recently, she put forth a three-way approach to the Somalia problem. One, the international community should appreciate that the piracy in Somalia has its origin among disgruntled fishermen who had to compete with illegal poaching by foreign commercial vessels in its tuna-rich coastal waters.
This unequal fight created a local impoverished population. Resentment was also caused among the coastal population over the shameless dumping of wastes in Somali waters by foreign ships. The disgruntled local fishermen, who lost out, soon organized to attack foreign fishing vessels and demand compensation. Their campaign succeeded and prompted many young men to "hang up their fishing nets in favor of AK-47s".
Stuhldreher suggested, "Making the coastal areas lucrative for local fishermen again could encourage pirates to return to legitimate livelihoods." Therefore, she wrote, "A fishery protection force will eliminate the pirates' source of legitimacy." This could be done under the auspices of the UN or African Union or a "coalition of the willing".
Most important, "An international force sent to protect local industry will achieve the same goal as warships but in a more acceptable way. The principal reason piracy thrives along Somalia's coast is that there is no coastal authority to protect these waters. Armed foreign ships will still serve to fill that vacuum and deter attacks, but with the explicit mission of serving Somalia's people - the very people who have chalked up enough reasons to dislike foreign military interventions and are likely to view the presence of warships as intimidation."
But, will there be any takers for "nation-building" in Africa among the US, NATO and European member countries, Russia or India? Highly unlikely. Ideally, the international community should also commence a reconciliation process involving the residual elements of the ICU. In retrospect, like in Afghanistan in the case with the Taliban, a proper understanding of Islamism would help appreciate the worth of the ICU in stabilizing Somalia.
On the contrary, under the broad rubric of the fight against sea piracy, what we are witnessing is an entirely different template of maritime activity by the interventionist powers. The US has established a separate Africa Command in the Pentagon. NATO and the EU have stepped out of the European theater and entered the Indian Ocean area. Russia is seeking a reopening of its Soviet-era naval base in Aden. India has sought and obtained berthing facilities for its warships in Oman, which is an unprecedented move to establish a permanent naval presence in the Persian Gulf. The Indian Ocean is becoming a new theater in the Great Game. It seems a matter of time before China appears.
China of course is not a newcomer to the Indian Ocean. In 1405, during the reign of Emperor Yung-lo of the Ming Dynasty, a celebrated Chinese naval commander Ching-Ho visited Ceylon (presently known as Sri Lanka) bearing incense to offer at the renowned shrine of the Buddha in the hill town of Kandy. But he was waylaid by Sinhalese King Wijayo Bahu VI, and he escaped to his ships. To seek revenge, China dispatched Ching-Ho a few years later. He captured the Sinhalese king and his family and took them away as prisoners. But on seeing the prisoners, the Chinese emperor out of compassion ordered them to be sent back on the condition that the "wisest of the family should be chosen king". The new king, Sri Prakrama Bahu, was given a seal of investiture and made a vassal of the Chinese emperor. That was how Ceylon remained until 1448, paying an annual tribute to China.
Admiral Mehta has a worthy example in front of him, provided he can coax his reluctant country to flex its muscles in Africa for the first time in its ancient history. His best argument would be that unless he took an early lead, Ching-Ho might reappear in the Indian Ocean. But then there is an inherent risk insofar as the pirates who disappeared into the mist on Tuesday evening might also return looking for the INS Tabar.
Ambassador M K Bhadrakumar was a career diplomat in the Indian Foreign Service. His assignments included the Soviet Union, South Korea, Sri Lanka, Germany, Afghanistan, Pakistan, Uzbekistan, Kuwait and Turkey.
(Copyright 2008 Asia Times Online (Holdings) Ltd. All rights reserved. Please contact us about sales, syndication and republishing.)

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Informed Comment: Joint Experts' Statement on Iran

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Juan Cole

Among the many challenges that will greet President-elect Obama when he takes office, there are few, if any, more urgent and complex than the question of Iran. There are also few issues more clouded by myths and misconceptions. In this Joint Experts' Statement on Iran, a group of top scholars, experts and diplomats - with years of experience studying and dealing with Iran - have come together to clear away some of the myths that have driven the failed policies of the past and to outline a factually-grounded, five-step strategy for dealing successfully with Iran in the future.

Joint Experts' Statement on Iran
Despite recent glimmers of diplomacy, the United States and Iran remain locked in a cycle of threats and defiance that destabilizes the Middle East and weakens U.S. national security.
Today, Iran and the United States are unable to coordinate campaigns against the Taliban and al-Qaeda, their common enemies. Iran is either withholding help or acting to thwart U.S. interests in Iraq, Afghanistan, Lebanon, and Gaza. Within Iran, a looming sense of external threat has empowered hard-liners and given them both motive and pretext to curb civil liberties and further restrict democracy. On the nuclear front, Iran continues to enrich uranium in spite of binding U.N. resolutions, backed by economic sanctions, calling for it to suspend enrichment.
U.S. efforts to manage Iran through isolation, threats and sanctions have been tried intermittently for more than two decades. In that time they have not solved any major problem in U.S.-Iran relations, and have made most of them worse. Faced with the manifest failure of past efforts to isolate or economically coerce Iran, some now advocate escalation of sanctions or even military attack. But dispassionate analysis shows that an attack would almost certainly backfire, wasting lives, fomenting extremism and damaging the long-term security interests of both the U.S and Israel. And long experience has shown that prospects for successfully coercing Iran through achievable economic sanctions are remote at best.
Fortunately, we are not forced to choose between a coercive strategy that has clearly failed and a military option that has very little chance of success. There is another way, one far more likely to succeed: Open the door to direct, unconditional and comprehensive negotiations at the senior diplomatic level where personal contacts can be developed, intentions tested, and possibilities explored on both sides. Adopt policies to facilitate unofficial contacts between scholars, professionals, religious leaders, lawmakers and ordinary citizens. Paradoxical as it may seem amid all the heated media rhetoric, sustained engagement is far more likely to strengthen United States national security at this stage than either escalation to war or continued efforts to threaten, intimidate or coerce Iran.
Here are five key steps the United States should take to implement an effective diplomatic strategy with Iran:
1. Replace calls for regime change with a long-term strategy
Threats are not cowing Iran and the current regime in Tehran is not in imminent peril. But few leaders will negotiate in good faith with a government they think is trying to subvert them, and that perception may well be the single greatest barrier under U.S. control to meaningful dialogue with Iran. The United States needs to stop the provocations and take a long-term view with this regime, as it did with the Soviet Union and China. We might begin by facilitating broad-ranging people-to-people contacts, opening a U.S. interest section in Tehran, and promoting cultural exchanges.
2. Support human rights through effective, international means
While the United States is rightly concerned with Iran's worsening record of human rights violations, the best way to address that concern is through supporting recognized international efforts. Iranian human rights and democracy advocates confirm that American political interference masquerading as "democracy promotion" is harming, not helping, the cause of democracy in Iran.
3. Allow Iran a place at the table - alongside other key states - in shaping the future of Iraq, Afghanistan and the region.
This was the recommendation of the bipartisan Iraq Study Group with regard to Iraq. It may be counter-intuitive in today's political climate - but it is sound policy. Iran has a long-term interest in the stability of its neighbors. Moreover, the United States and Iran support the same government in Iraq and face common enemies (the Taliban and al-Qaeda) in Afghanistan. Iran has shown it can be a valuable ally when included as a partner, and a troublesome thorn when not. Offering Iran a place at the table cannot assure cooperation, but it will greatly increase the likelihood of cooperation by giving Iran something it highly values that it can lose by non-cooperation. The United States might start by appointing a special envoy with broad authority to deal comprehensively and constructively with Iran (as opposed to trading accusations) and explore its willingness to work with the United States on issues of common concern.
4. Address the nuclear issue within the context of a broader U.S.-Iran opening
Nothing is gained by imposing peremptory preconditions on dialogue. The United States should take an active leadership role in ongoing multilateral talks to resolve the nuclear impasse in the context of wide-ranging dialogue with Iran. Negotiators should give the nuclear talks a reasonable deadline, and retain the threat of tougher sanctions if negotiations fail. They should also, however, offer the credible prospect of security assurances and specific, tangible benefits such as the easing of U.S. sanctions in response to positive policy shifts in Iran. Active U.S. involvement may not cure all, but it certainly will change the equation, particularly if it is part of a broader opening.
5. Re-energize the Arab-Israeli peace process and act as an honest broker in that process
Israel's security lies in making peace with its neighbors. Any U.S. moves towards mediating the Arab-Israeli crisis in a balanced way would ease tensions in the region, and would be positively received as a step forward for peace. As a practical matter, however, experience has shown that any long-term solution to Israel's problems with the Palestinians and Lebanon probably will require dealing, directly or indirectly, with Hamas and Hezbollah. Iran supports these organizations, and thus has influence with them. If properly managed, a U.S. rapprochement with Iran, even an opening of talks, could help in dealing with Arab-Israeli issues, benefiting Israel as well as its neighbors.
***
Long-standing diplomatic practice makes clear that talking directly to a foreign government in no way signals approval of the government, its policies or its actions. Indeed, there are numerous instances in our history when clear-eyed U.S. diplomacy with regimes we deemed objectionable - e.g., Soviet Union, China, North Korea, Libya and Iran itself (cooperating in Afghanistan to topple the Taliban after 9/11) - produced positive results in difficult situations.
After many years of mutual hostility, no one should expect that engaging Iran will be easy. It may prove impossible. But past policies have not worked, and what has been largely missing from U.S. policy for most of the past three decades is a sustained commitment to real diplomacy with Iran. The time has come to see what true diplomacy can accomplish.
Annex
Basic Misconceptions about Iran
U.S. policies towards Iran have failed to achieve their objectives. A key reason for their failure is that they are rooted in fundamental misconceptions about Iran. This annex addresses eight key misconceptions that have driven U.S. policy in the wrong direction.
Myth # 1. President Ahmadinejad calls the shots on nuclear and foreign policy.
President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad has grabbed the world's attention with his inflammatory and sometimes offensive statements. But he does not call the shots on Iran's nuclear and foreign policy. The ultimate decision-maker is Supreme Leader Ali Khamenei, the commander-in-chief of Iran's forces. Despite his frequently hostile rhetoric aimed at Israel and the West, Khamenei's track record reveals a cautious decision-maker who acts after consulting advisors holding a range of views, including views sharply critical of Ahmadinejad. That said, it is clear that U.S. policies and rhetoric have bolstered hard-liners in Iran, just as Ahmadinejad's confrontational rhetoric has bolstered hard-liners here.
Myth # 2. The political system of the Islamic Republic is frail and ripe for regime change.
In fact, there is currently no significant support within Iran for extra-constitutional regime change. Yes, there is popular dissatisfaction, but Iranians also recall the aftermath of their own revolution in 1979: lawlessness, mass executions, and the emigration of over half a million people, followed by a costly war. They have seen the outcome of U.S.-sponsored regime change in Afghanistan and in Iraq. They want no part of it. Regime change may come to Iran, but it would be folly to bet on it happening soon.
Myth # 3. The Iranian leadership's religious beliefs render them undeterrable.
The recent history of Iran makes crystal clear that national self-preservation and regional influence - not some quest for martyrdom in the service of Islam - is Iran's main foreign policy goal. For example:
• In the 1990s, Iran chose a closer relationship with Russia over support for rebellious Chechen Muslims.
• Iran actively supported and helped to finance the U.S. invasion of Afghanistan.
• Iran has ceased its efforts to export the Islamic revolution to other Persian Gulf states, in favor of developing good relations with the governments of those states.
• During the Iran-Iraq War, Iran took the pragmatic step of developing secret ties and trading arms with Israel, even as Iran and Israel denounced each other in public.
Myth # 4. Iran's current leadership is implacably opposed to the United States.
Iran will not accept preconditions for dialogue with the United States, any more than the United States would accept preconditions for talking to Iran. But Iran is clearly open to broad-ranging dialogue with the United States. In fact, it has made multiple peace overtures that the United States has rebuffed. Right after 9/11, Iran worked with the United States to get rid of the Taliban in Afghanistan, including paying for the Afghan troops serving under U.S. command. Iran helped establish the U.S.-backed government and then contributed more than $750 million to the reconstruction of Afghanistan. Iran expressed interest in a broader dialogue in 2002 and 2003. Instead, it was labeled part of an "axis of evil."
In 2005, reform-minded President Khatami was replaced by the hardliner, Mahmoud Ahmadinejad. But the same Supreme Leader who authorized earlier overtures is still in office today and he acknowledged, as recently as January 2008, that "the day that relations with America prove beneficial for the Iranian nation, I will be the first one to approve of that." All this does not prove that Iran will bargain in good faith with us. But it does disprove the claim that we know for sure they will not.
Myth # 5. Iran has declared its intention to attack Israel in order to "wipe Israel off the map."
This claim is based largely on a speech by President Ahmadinejad on Oct. 26, 2005, quoting a remark by Ayatollah Khomeini made decades ago: "This regime that is occupying Qods [Jerusalem] must be wiped off/eliminated from the pages of history/our times." Both before and since, Ahmadinejad has made numerous other, offensive, insulting and threatening remarks about Israel and other nations - most notably his indefensible denial of the Holocaust.
However, he has been criticized within Iran for these remarks. Supreme Leader Khamenei himself has "clarified" that "the Islamic Republic has never threatened and will never threaten any country" and specifically that Iran will not attack Israel unless Iran is attacked first. Ahmadinejad also has made clear, or been forced to clarify, that he was referring to regime change through demographics (giving the Palestinians a vote in a unitary state), not war.
What we know is that Ahmadinejad's recent statements do not appear to have materially altered Iran's long-standing policy - which, for decades, has been to deny the legitimacy of Israel; to arm and aid groups opposing Israel in Lebanon, Gaza and the West Bank; but also, to promise to accept any deal with Israel that the Palestinians accept.
Myth # 6. U.S.-sponsored "democracy promotion" can help bring about true democracy in Iran.
Instead of fostering democratic elements inside Iran, U.S.-backed "democracy promotion" has provided an excuse to stifle them. That is why champions of human rights and democracy in Iran agree with the dissident who said, "The best thing the Americans can do for democracy in Iran is not to support it."
Myth # 7. Iran is clearly and firmly committed to developing nuclear weapons.
If Iraq teaches anything, it is the need to be both rigorous and honest when confronted with ambiguous evidence about WMDs. Yet once again we find proponents of conflict over-stating their case, this time by claiming that Iran has declared an intention to acquire nuclear weapons. In fact, Iranian leaders have consistently denied any such intention and even said that such weapons are "against Islam."
The issue is not what Iran is saying, but what it is doing, and here the facts are murky. We know that Iran is openly enriching uranium and learning to do it more efficiently, but claims this is only for peaceful use. There are detailed but disputed allegations that Iran secretly worked on nuclear weapons design before Ahmadinejad came to power, concerns that such work continues, and certainty that Iran is not cooperating fully with efforts to resolve the allegations. We also know that Iran has said it will negotiate on its enrichment program - without preconditions - and submit to intrusive inspections as part of a final deal. Past negotiations between Iran and a group of three European countries plus China and Russia have not gone anywhere, but the United States, Iran's chief nemesis, has not been active in those talks.
The facts viewed as a whole give cause for deep concern, but they are not unambiguous and in fact support a variety of interpretations: that Iran views enrichment chiefly as a source of national pride (akin to our moon landing); that Iran is advancing towards weapons capability but sees this as a bargaining chip to use in broader negotiations with the United States; that Iran is intent on achieving the capability to build a weapon on short notice as a deterrent to feared U.S. or Israeli attack; or that Iran is seeking nuclear weapons to support aggressive goals. The only effective way to illuminate - and constructively alter - Iran's intentions is through skillful and careful diplomacy. History shows that sanctions alone are unlikely to succeed, and a strategy limited to escalating threats or attacking Iran is likely to backfire - creating or hardening a resolve to acquire nuclear weapons while inciting a backlash against us throughout the region.
Myth # 8. Iran and the United States have no basis for dialogue.
Those who favored refusing Iran's offers of dialogue in 2002 and 2003 - when they thought the U.S. position so strong there was no need to talk - now assert that our position is so weak we cannot afford to talk. Wrong in both cases. Iran is eager for an end to sanctions and isolation, and needs access to world-class technology to bring new supplies of oil and gas online. Both countries share an interest in stabilizing Iraq and Afghanistan, which border Iran. Both support the Maliki government in Iraq, and face common enemies (the Taliban and al-Qaeda) in Afghanistan. Both countries share the goal of combating narco-trafficking in the region. These opportunities exist, and the two governments have pursued them very occasionally in the past, but they have mostly been obscured in the belligerent rhetoric from both sides.
About the Experts
* Ambassador Thomas Pickering (Co-chair)
* Ambassador James F. Dobbins (Co-chair)
* Gary G. Sick (Co-chair)
* Ali Banuazizi
* Mehrzad Boroujerdi
* Juan R.I. Cole
* Rola el-Husseini
* Farideh Farhi
* Geoffrey E. Forden
* Hadi Ghaemi
* Philip Giraldi
* Farhad Kazemi
* Stephen Kinzer
* Ambassador William G. Miller
* Emile A. Nakhleh
* Augustus Richard Norton
* Trita Parsi
* Barnett R. Rubin
* John Tirman
* James Walsh

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Flying From Detroit on Corporate Jets, Auto Executives Ask Washington for Handouts

WaPo

Instead, the chief executives of the Big Three automakers opted to fly their company jets to the capital for their hearings this week before the Senate and House -- an ill-timed display of corporate excess for a trio of executives begging for an additional $25 billion from the public trough this week.
"There's a delicious irony in seeing private luxury jets flying into Washington, D.C., and people coming off of them with tin cups in their hands," Rep. Gary L. Ackerman (D-N.Y.) advised the pampered executives at a hearing yesterday. "It's almost like seeing a guy show up at the soup kitchen in high-hat and tuxedo. . . . I mean, couldn't you all have downgraded to first class or jet-pooled or something to get here?"
The Big Three said nothing, which prompted Rep. Brad Sherman (D-Calif.) to rub it in. "I'm going to ask the three executives here to raise their hand if they flew here commercial," he said. All still at the witness table. "Second," he continued, "I'm going ask you to raise your hand if you're planning to sell your jet . . . and fly back commercial." More stillness. "Let the record show no hands went up," Sherman grandstanded.
By now, the men were probably wishing they had driven -- and other members of the House Financial Services Committee weren't done riding the CEOs over their jets. "You traveled in a private jet?" Rep. Nydia M. Velázquez (D-N.Y.) contributed. Rep. Patrick T. McHenry (R-N.C.) felt the need to say that "I'm not an opponent of private flights by any means, but the fact that you flew in on your own private jet at tens of thousands itself dollars of cost just for you to make your way to Washington is a bit arrogant before you ask the taxpayers for money."
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It was a display of stone-cold tone-deafness by the automaker chiefs. In their telling, they have no responsibility for the auto industry's current mess. Threatening the nation with economic Armageddon if they are not given government aid, they spent much of the session declaring what a fine job they've been doing in Detroit.
"Chrysler really is the quintessential American car company!" Chrysler's Nardelli boasted.
"We have products that are winning car and truck of the year regularly," General Motors' Wagoner proclaimed.
"We are equal to or better than Honda and Toyota," Ford's Mulally added. "Every new vehicle that we make, whether it's small, medium or large, is best in fuel efficiency. The given is safety. And we have more, at Ford, more five-star quality and safety ratings than any other automobile."
Committee Chairman Barney Frank (D-Mass.) cut him off. "Thank you, Mr. --"
"And the best value!" Mulally blurted out.
"Commercials can go later," the chairman proposed.
[..]Detroit area lawmakers made passionate arguments that the carmakers had already done what "they possibly can to restructure and become globally competitive," as Rep. Thaddeus McCotter (R-Mich.) put it.
But the executives were not helping their own case. When Rep. Paul Kanjorski (D-Pa.) tried to find out when GM would run out of cash, Wagoner hemmed and hawed until the lawmaker protested that "I don't quite understand what the hell you just told me." When Rep. Ed Perlmutter (D-Colo.) asked about GM's outlook for the quarter, Wagoner informed him that "we don't provide financial guidance in earnings."
So it was hard to feel sorry for the executives when Rep. Peter Roskam (R-Ill.), late in the hearing, reminded them again that "the symbolism of the private jet is difficult," and mischievously asked the witnesses whether, in another symbolic gesture, they would be willing to work for $1 a year, as Nardelli has offered to do.
"I don't have a position on that today," demurred Wagoner (2007 total compensation: $15.7 million).
"I understand the intent, but I think where we are is okay," said Mulally ($21.7 million).
"I'm asking about you," Roskam pressed.
"I think I'm okay where I am," Mulally said.
And don't even think about asking him to fly commercial.

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Bush/Paulson Criminal Bailout

Image by chantal foster via Flickr

Meanwhile, even some on Wall Street see "Great Depression 2" coming in 2011.

The Nation

The more details emerge, the clearer it becomes that Washington's handling of the Wall Street bailout is not merely incompetent. It is borderline criminal.
Then there is the nearly $2 trillion the Federal Reserve has handed out in emergency loans. Incredibly, the Fed will not reveal which corporations have received these loans or what it has accepted as collateral. Bloomberg News believes that this secrecy violates the law and has filed a federal suit demanding full disclosure.
Despite all of this potential lawlessness, the Democrats are either openly defending the administration or refusing to intervene. "There is only one president at a time," we hear from Barack Obama. That's true. But every sweetheart deal the lame-duck Bush administration makes threatens to hobble Obama's ability to make good on his promise of change. To cite just one example, that $140 billion in missing tax revenue is almost the same sum as Obama's renewable energy program. Obama owes it to the people who elected him to call this what it is: an attempt to undermine the electoral process by stealth.
Yes, there is only one president at a time, but that president needed the support of powerful Democrats, including Obama, to get the bailout passed. Now that it is clear that the Bush administration is violating the terms to which both parties agreed, the Democrats have not just the right but a grave responsibility to intervene forcefully.
I suspect that the real reason the Democrats are so far failing to act has less to do with presidential protocol than with fear: fear that the stock market, which has the temperament of an overindulged 2-year-old, will throw one of its world-shaking tantrums. Disclosing the truth about who is receiving federal loans, we are told, could cause the cranky market to bet against those banks. Question the legality of equity deals and the same thing will happen. Challenge the $140 billion tax giveaway and mergers could fall through. "None of us wants to be blamed for ruining these mergers and creating a new Great Depression," explained one unnamed Congressional aide.
More than that, the Democrats, including Obama, appear to believe that the need to soothe the market should govern all key economic decisions in the transition period. Which is why, just days after a euphoric victory for "change," the mantra abruptly shifted to "smooth transition" and "continuity."
Take Obama's pick for chief of staff. Despite the Republican braying about his partisanship, Rahm Emanuel, the House Democrat who received the most donations from the financial sector, sends an unmistakably reassuring message to Wall Street. When asked on This Week With George Stephanopoulos whether Obama would be moving quickly to increase taxes on the wealthy, as promised, Emanuel pointedly did not answer the question.
This same market-coddling logic should, we are told, guide Obama's selection of treasury secretary. Fox News's Stuart Varney explained that Larry Summers, who held the post under Clinton, and former Fed chair Paul Volcker would both "give great confidence to the market." We learned from MSNBC's Joe Scarborough that Summers is the man "the Street would like the most."
Let's be clear about why. "The Street" would cheer a Summers appointment for exactly the same reason the rest of us should fear it: because traders will assume that Summers, champion of financial deregulation under Clinton, will offer a transition from Henry Paulson so smooth we will barely know it happened. Someone like FDIC chair Sheila Bair, on the other hand, would spark fear on the Street--for all the right reasons.
One thing we know for certain is that the market will react violently to any signal that there is a new sheriff in town who will impose serious regulation, invest in people and cut off the free money for corporations. In short, the markets can be relied on to vote in precisely the opposite way that Americans have just voted. (A recent USA Today/Gallup poll found that 60 percent of Americans strongly favor "stricter regulations on financial institutions," while just 21 percent support aid to financial companies.)
There is no way to reconcile the public's vote for change with the market's foot-stomping for more of the same. Any and all moves to change course will be met with short-term market shocks. The good news is that once it is clear that the new rules will be applied across the board and with fairness, the market will stabilize and adjust. Furthermore, the timing for this turbulence has never been better. Over the past three months, we've been shocked so frequently that market stability would come as more of a surprise. That gives Obama a window to disregard the calls for a seamless transition and do the hard stuff first. Few will be able to blame him for a crisis that clearly predates him, or fault him for honoring the clearly expressed wishes of the electorate. The longer he waits, however, the more memories fade.
When transferring power from a functional, trustworthy regime, everyone favors a smooth transition. When exiting an era marked by criminality and bankrupt ideology, a little rockiness at the start would be a very good sign.

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Report to Congress: Gulf War syndrome is real

Los Angeles Times

Contradicting nearly two decades of government denials, a congressionally mandated scientific panel has concluded that Gulf War syndrome is real and still afflicts nearly a quarter of the 700,000 U.S. troops who served in the 1991 conflict.
The report cited two chemical exposures consistently associated with the disorder: the drug pyridostigmine bromide, given to troops to protect against nerve gas, and pesticides that were widely used -- and often overused -- to protect against sand flies and other pests.
"The extensive body of scientific research now available consistently indicates that Gulf War illness is real, that it is a result of neurotoxic exposures during Gulf War deployment, and that few veterans have recovered or substantially improved with time," according to the report presented today to Secretary of Veterans Affairs James Peake.
The report vindicates hundreds of thousands of U.S. and allied veterans who have been reporting a variety of neurological problems -- even as the government maintained that their symptoms were largely due to stress or other unknown causes.
"Recognition of the full extent of the illnesses suffered by these veterans of the conflict and the obligation owed them is long overdue," said Marshal of the Royal Air Force Lord David Craig, chief of the British defense staff during the war. "They are victims of the war as much as anyone struck by a bullet or shell."
The panel, made up of scientists and veterans, called on Congress to appropriate $60 million per year to conduct research into finding a cure for the disorder.
"The tragedy here is that there are currently no treatments," said the panel's chair, James H. Binns, a former principal deputy assistant secretary of defense and a Vietnam veteran.
The reports of a Gulf War syndrome have percolated ever since the end of the war. Many veterans reported memory and concentration problems, persistent headaches, unexplained fatigue and widespread pain. Some also reported chronic digestive problems, respiratory symptoms and skin rashes.
The new report is the product of the Research Advisory Committee on Gulf War Veterans' Illnesses, which was chartered by Congress in 1998 because many members felt that veterans were not receiving adequate care. Its 15 members, about two-thirds scientists and the rest veterans, were not appointed until January 2002.
Critics charged that the VA was reluctant to spend the research and treatment funds that such a committee might recommend.
Several reports had already been issued by the prestigious Institute of Medicine, an arm of the National Academy of Sciences, concluding that there was little evidence to support existence of the syndrome.
Today's report, however, concludes that those studies were inappropriately constrained by the VA.
The bulk of the evidence about the neurotoxic effects of the chemicals to which the soldiers were exposed comes from animal research, but the VA ordered the institute to consider only the much more limited human studies, skewing the results, the panel said.
"Everyone quotes the Institute of Medicine documents as meaning nothing's going on here," said Roberta F. White, associate dean of research at the Boston University School of Health and the panel's scientific director. "Some people feel that the IOM reports have been permission to ignore these guys. . . . Veterans repeatedly find that their complaints are met with cynicism and a 'blame the victim' mentality that attributes their health problems to mental illness or non-physical factors."
The panel urged VA to instruct the Institute of Medicine to redo its reports and take into consideration all the available animal research.
The new report says that scientific evidence "leaves no question that Gulf War illness is a real condition," and it cites dozens of research studies that have identified "objective biological measures" that distinguish veterans with the illness from healthy controls.
The major causes of the disorder appear to be self-inflicted. Pyridostigmine bromide was given to hundreds of thousands of troops in the fear that the Iraqis would unleash chemical warfare against them.
The pesticides cited in the report were sprayed not only around living and dining areas, but also on tents and uniforms, White said.
Another, although probably lesser cause, was the U.S. demolition of Iraqi munitions near Khamisiyah, which may have exposed about 100,000 troops to nerve gases stored at the facility, according to the panel.
It cited a 2007 study by White that showed that the exposure could have caused lasting brain changes in troops and that the extent of the changes correlated with the degree of exposure.
The panel also noted that veterans have significantly higher rates of amyotrophic lateral sclerosis than other veterans and that troops who were downwind from Khamisiyah have died from brain cancer at twice the rate of other veterans.
Binns emphasized that the report was not written to yield recriminations about past actions.
"The importance . . . lies in what is done with it in the future," he said. "It's a blueprint for the new administration."
Engel and Maugh are Times staff writers
mary.engel@latimes.com
thomas.maugh@latimes.com

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Krugman, Delong Eviscerates George Will

Video: Krugman Eviscerates George Will

Brad DeLong

I have never been able to make any sense at all of the right-wing claim that the New Deal prolonged the Great Depression by creating a "crisis of confidence" that crippled private investment as American businessmen feared and hated "that Communist Roosevelt." The crisis of confidence was created by the stock market crash, the deflation, and the bank failures of 1929-1933. Private investment recovered in a very healthy fashion as Roosevelt's New Deal policies took effect.
The interruption of the Roosevelt Recovery in 1937-1938 is, I think, well understood: Roosevelt's decision to adopt more "orthodox" economic policies and try to move the budget toward balance and the Federal Reserve's decision to contract the money supply by raising bank reserve requirements provide ample explanation of that downturn. And once those two factors had run its course the continuation of Roosevelt's policies was no obstacle to an investment recovery driven by war-related exports monetary expansion produced by capital flight from Europe.

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Meet Sen. Norm Slimy (R-MN), the Ted Stevens of the Midwest

Image by Getty Images via Daylife

The LA Progressive

Although I've lived in Toronto for going on two decades, Minnesota was my last state of residence in the US, so it is where I've voted since moving here. Reading on-line editions of the Minneapolis Star-Tribune and the St. Paul Pioneer Press, coupled with having friends - some since high school - who still live there, it's easy for me to keep up with home state politics.
In a state known for squeaky clean, Lake Woebegon-like politics, Sen. Norm Coleman is the poster child of slimy political stunts, self-serving manoeuvring, and kow-towing to corporate campaign donors.
He was narrowly elected to the Senate in 2002 after incumbent Democrat Paul Wellstone was killed in a plane crash during the campaign - a sad irony because Wellstone was first elected in 1996 barnstorming the state in an battered, old, school bus. Now, Coleman is embroiled in a state-mandated recount because the election results in his fight against Al Franken fell within 0.5% of a tie.
How slimy is Coleman?
Besides demanding that Franken forego the recount even though precious few votes separate them and the law requires it, Coleman and his surrogates are attacking everyone from poll workers to Minnesota's Secretary of State Mark Ritchie with lies about vote count shenanigans, being untrustworthy and practically criminal behaviour. When Republican lies are disproven - sometimes by the very people who started them - Coleman conveniently ignores reality and goes on with his smears.
Well, what can you expect? Coleman was first approached about running for the Senate by Karl Rove.
Typical Coleman Crappola
This week on The Rachel Maddow Show, Ritchie fired back at the Senator. He noted that, as the elected Secretary of State, it is his job to take the jabs and smears "but Sen. Coleman has no business attacking the integrity of election judges around the state, many of whom have been volunteering for decades without a hint of wrongdoing or impropriety."
Now Coleman and the national Republican Party are flying in some 100 GOP lawyers to peek over the volunteer's shoulders as Minnesota's 87 counties recount the Senate vote. But while much of the nation is aghast at what Coleman is doing, for people in Minnesota his smarmy representation is nothing new.
For example, in March 2007, Coleman introduced legislation to kill the Defense Travel System, a program to automate Defense Dept. travel purchases, which spends roughly $5.5-billion annually for travel. Shortly after filing the legislation, Coleman received a generous contribution from CEO Marilyn Carlson Nelson of Minneapolis-based Carlson Companies, owner of Carlson Wagonlit Travel. Its Government Travel unit provides lucrative services for numerous federal agencies. Moreover, over the years, Coleman has received tens of thousands of dollars in campaign donations from other Carlson Companies executives.
As a constituent, I wrote objecting to his measure to bring efficiency to travel purchases by the federal government. Weeks later, a form letter showed up in my e-mail saying, in effect, go stuff yourself.
He backed President Bush's plan to privatize Social Security, telling me in a letter I wrote to him at the time objecting to the scheme that Americans can better take care of their future than the government. As the stock market crash amply demonstrated, had Social Security been privatized as Coleman wanted, the nation's elderly would be even worse off now than they are.
He told me in another letter that the Patriot Act is an important way to protect Americans from terrorism, saying that people not involved in nefarious activities have nothing to worry about. Uhm, it turns out we all have a lot to worry about as Attorney General Michael Mukasey proved again a few weeks ago by allowing FBI agents to investigate anyone for any reason.
charley-james.jpgSmart Money
I stopped writing to Sen. Coleman once I realised all I was receiving in return were Republican talking points, the same ones The White House shares with Fox News every day. By comparison, when I write to my other senator, Amy Klobuchar, I receive a thoughtful reply that includes a rationale for her position. I don't always agree with her but at least she explains why she is supporting or opposing some piece of legislation.
Coleman merely spits in my face.
Friends in Minnesota tell me that the smart money in the recount is on Franken who carried the urban Hennepin and Ramsey counties and their surrounding suburbs by wide margins as well as counties in the traditionally heavy Democratic-voting Iron Range, which includes Duluth. The state and the US Senate would be well-served by ridding itself of another self-serving toady who, in his own quiet way, is the Ted Stevens of the Midwest.

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