Apr 16th 2009
From The Economist print edition

Barack Obama’s administration said that it was scrapping curbs on remittances and visits to Cuba by Cuban-Americans, and would allow American companies to offer telecoms services to Cubans. The announcement came days before a Summit of the Americas at which Latin American countries were expected to urge the United States to restore diplomatic relations with Cuba. Fidel Castro, Cuba’s former president, said the measures were “positive” but “minimal”.

Police in Colombia arrested the country’s most-wanted drug-trafficker, Daniel Rendón, aka “Don Mario”. Mr Rendón laid down his arms, along with other right-wing paramilitary leaders, three years ago, but quickly returned to life as a warlord in the Urabá region of the Caribbean coast.

Evo Morales, Bolivia’s president, ended a five-day hunger strike after his government and the opposition reached agreement on a law that sets a general election for December. The government accepted the opposition’s demand for a new electoral register.

Guerrillas from the Maoist Shining Path group killed 14 soldiers in two ambushes in a remote area of eastern Peru. The rump of the once-powerful guerrillas survives through drug-trafficking.

Venezuela’s president, Hugo Chávez, appointed a member of his ruling party to a new post as head of government of Caracas, the capital, equipped with most of the powers and budget previously held by the elected mayor. Antonio Ledezma won last November’s mayoral election in Caracas for the opposition.

Regional discord

Egypt’s authorities accused Hizbullah, Lebanon’s Shia party-cum-militia, of setting up espionage cells in Egypt with the aim of overthrowing Hosni Mubarak’s regime and bolstering Hamas, the Palestinian Islamist group that rules the Gaza Strip across Egypt’s border. The row accentuated the rift between Arab and Muslim countries that want to accommodate Israel and those that want to fight it. Having changed the constitution to let himself have a third term, Algeria’s ailing 72-year-old president, Abdelaziz Bouteflika, was re-elected against sparse opposition with more than 90% of votes cast in a high official turnout of 74%, which opposition parties said was a threefold exaggeration.

Pirates off the coast of Somalia seized more ships. This came after the captain of the American-crewed Maersk Alabama gave himself up to pirates as a hostage to secure the release of his vessel. Richard Phillips was eventually rescued in an operation co-ordinated by the American navy, in which snipers killed his assailants.

For the first time South Africans living outside their country were allowed to vote in a general election, casting early votes on April 15th. Their compatriots at home go to the polls on April 22nd, with the ruling African National Congress set to win again.

Ballot measure

After more violent protests in Moldova, the government began a recount of the disputed parliamentary election, won by the ruling Communists. After a savage crackdown, the president, Vladimir Voronin, called for an amnesty to be granted to the protesters.

France’s fishermen yet again blockaded ports on their side of the English Channel to demand more subsidies and higher fish quotas. As usual, those who suffered most from the action were ferry passengers to and from Britain.


Hungary’s parliament endorsed Gordon Bajnai as prime minister. Mr Bajnai, formerly the economy minister, chose a technocrat, Peter Oszko, for the crucial job of finance minister. Hungary secured a $25 billion rescue package from the IMF last year.

Poland became the second country after Mexico to seek a precautionary credit line from the IMF. The Poles are asking for $20.5 billion.

Back to square one?

After the UN Security Council issued a statement criticising its recent launch of a rocket, North Korea announced that it was pulling out of the six-country talks aimed at ending its nuclear-weapons programme. It expelled UN and American nuclear inspectors and said it would take steps to reactivate its partially dismantled nuclear facilities at Yongbyon.
Anti-government protesters in Thailand forced the cancellation of the ASEAN and East Asia summits being held in Pattaya. Some leaders were evacuated by helicopter. Protests continued in Bangkok, with demonstrators calling for the resignation of the prime minister, Abhisit Vejjajiva. Thaksin Shinawatra, the former prime minister deposed in a coup in 2006, called on his followers to stage a “revolution”. After violent confrontations, the protests wound down. Two people died in the trouble.
Unofficial results from Indonesia’s general election on April 9th suggested a big victory for the Democratic Party of the president, Susilo Bambang Yudhoyono, which tripled its share of the vote to about 20% and is poised to become the largest party in the parliament. India’s general election, which is staggered in five stages over four weeks, got under way. A court in Fiji ruled that the interim government led by Frank Bainimarama was illegal. Fiji’s president abrogated the constitution and reappointed Mr Bainimarama as prime minister.

Crossing a line

Janet Napolitano, America’s homeland security chief, appointed Alan Bersin, a former federal prosecutor based in San Diego, as the first “border tsar”. The Obama administration has promised to clamp down on cross-border flows of drugs, guns and migrants. Mr Bersin led a crackdown on illegal crossings at the California-Mexico border in the 1990s. Legal proceedings rumbled on, trying to confirm a winner in last November’s Minnesota Senate race. A panel of judges ruled that Al Franken, the Democrat, had won by a margin of 312 votes, but the incumbent Republican, Norm Coleman, seemed likely to lodge an appeal.

Rod Blagojevich pleaded not guilty to federal corruption charges. The former governor of Illinois was ousted from his job by the state legislature earlier this year. It is rumoured that Mr Blagojevich has been approached to take part in the reality TV show “I’m a Celebrity…Get Me Out of Here!”

Mar 19th 2009 | PARIS
From The Economist print edition

The much-heralded renaissance of nuclear power will fail unless the public can be convinced that all plants, worldwide, are safe


FILMS do not often cause diplomatic incidents. But in November last year the Czech Republic’s ambassador to Austria protested against “The First Day”, a fictional account of the aftermath of a nuclear accident at Dukovany, a real-life Czech plant near Austria’s border. Austria voted in 1978 to ban nuclear power, and its public-service broadcaster showed the film to celebrate the 30th anniversary of the referendum. Not only is the Czech plant portrayed as a menace to Austrians, but the Czech authorities withhold vital information from their neighbours after the accident.

Austria’s long-standing fear of the atomic plants over the border demonstrates why nuclear safety is an international matter. After the accident at Chernobyl in 1986, which was caused by operator mistakes and which spread radiation beyond Ukraine across swathes of Europe, the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) called for more global co-operation on safety. It introduced a Convention on Nuclear Safety and an improved set of safety standards. The nuclear-energy industry, fearing for its survival, also formed the World Association of Nuclear Operators (WANO), a system of “peer review” under which utility companies that belong inspect each other’s nuclear plants and exchange safety information. Both the IAEA and WANO standards are voluntary.

Whether through luck or because of improving standards, the nuclear industry has had a better safety record since Chernobyl. The design and monitoring of many reactors has improved. There have been plenty of leaks and other safety incidents, including several in Japan and a serious near-miss at an American plant in 2002, but no known big accidents resulting in deaths. Meanwhile, governments worried about climate change and energy security have noted that nuclear plants emit no carbon dioxide and the raw material for their fuel, uranium ore, can be supplied by friendly, reputable places like Australia.

That, and the recent spike in oil and gas prices, has prompted many governments to look again at nuclear power. In February Italy and Sweden announced plans to start building plants again. Italians had voted to ditch nuclear power a year after Chernobyl; Swedes did the same in 1980, a year after the smaller accident at Three Mile Island in Pennsylvania. American power companies may start building reactors again by the end of this year. Most of the 40 or so plants now under construction are in Asia (many in China) or Russia, but countries in Latin America, the Middle East and Africa are also either building or planning reactors. Among those contemplating building their first ones are Turkey, the United Arab Emirates, Indonesia and Belarus.

Yet public fears about the safety of nuclear power could still derail its revival, at least in richer, democratic nations. In many countries, majorities oppose building new reactors. People fear nuclear accidents, terrorist attacks, the long-term risks of storing radioactive waste and of nuclear fuel being diverted to build weapons. So far, no country has succeeded in building a permanent geological repository for high-level nuclear waste, and only Finland has secured public acceptance for a site.

Concern about climate change has softened opposition a little. According to a poll by the European Commission last year, 44% of people in the European Union now broadly support nuclear energy, up from 37% in 2005; and 45% oppose it, down from 55%. However, in 2007, when the pollsters posed a more detailed question that explained the environmental benefits and safety risks of nuclear power, 61% said its share of the energy market should be cut. In America, too, says Eugene Rosa of Washington State University, everything depends on the question. About 80% of Americans say they think nuclear power will be “an important future source of energy”. But when a Gallup survey in 2007 asked whether people were in favour of expanding the use of nuclear energy, 50% were in favour and 46% were still against.
The extent to which public opposition can block or reverse the building of new nuclear plants will vary between countries. Luis Echávarri, director-general of the OECD’s Nuclear Energy Agency (NEA), says such plants must survive changes of government and thus require “a solid political and social base”. The simplest course would be to build new reactors at existing nuclear sites—in America, 14 of the 21 applications to start building are for existing sites, where permission is easier.

Developing-country governments are less likely to care whether the public backs the expansion of nuclear power. China has 11 nuclear-power reactors already and plans another 20. Companies from the rich world—such as France’s Areva and America’s GE—will find it far easier to build nuclear power plants in the developing world than at home.

Another big accident anywhere could still halt nuclear-energy programmes around the world. The industry’s safety record since Chernobyl means there is a danger of complacency, says Philippe Jamet of the IAEA. So steps must be taken to ensure that less-developed countries run their reactors safely. Last year France created an agency to help newcomers design nuclear laws and set up independent regulators. Some wonder if China’s rapid expansion in nuclear power is being achieved with proper levels of safety. Its regulator may have all the right intentions but it is said to lack resources and enforcement capability. There is also a looming shortage of qualified nuclear engineers, after the three-decade hiatus in building new plants.

Should the IAEA’s safety rules stay voluntary? The agency’s experts are invited in to look at nuclear reactors around the world and, as a United Nations body with the Security Council’s ear, its visits are more feared than those of WANO. But governments decide which plants to show, and when. In November last year the European Commission proposed making the IAEA’s safety rules legally binding throughout the European Union. It hopes other regional blocks, such as those of South-East Asia and South America, will follow suit.

Making IAEA standards compulsory everywhere may be hard to achieve. “But it will become increasingly difficult for a country not to invite a peer safety review,” says the agency’s Mr Jamet. WANO is considering making peer review compulsory for each new plant opened by one of its members. An important question is how increased competition among nuclear-energy firms will affect co-operation on safety, says Pierre Gadonneix, the boss of EDF of France, the world’s largest operator of nuclear plants. Nevertheless, he says, “We are sure that transparency and sharing of information on safety will survive in a newly competitive environment.”

A new reactor being built at Olkiluoto in Finland is one of only two under construction in western Europe. It has become a byword for spiralling costs and delays. But the Finnish experience is exemplary in other ways, argues William Nuttall of Cambridge University: the government gave the local community a large say in choosing the site of a radioactive-waste depository at Olkiluoto. Switzerland and Canada have taken a similarly democratic approach to nuclear power.

This is a welcome contrast to the secrecy that characterised much of the nuclear industry’s interaction with the public in the past. In some countries that secrecy stemmed from the military uses of nuclear fission. But the legacy of Chernobyl and other accidents has changed that. If the industry is to thrive, safety needs to be paramount, wherever new reactors are built.

__________________
~Time owns each and everything~
~Useless youth if not useful for Pakistan~

Feb 26th 2009
From The Economist print edition

A flawed project in Albania has highlighted some broader concerns


WHEN Robert Zoellick took over the World Bank in 2007—after months of bitter wrangling over professional favours done by its former president, Paul Wolfowitz, for his girlfriend—many people hoped that happier times lay head for the institution. So it was a shock to hear Mr Zoellick describe as “appalling” the bank’s behaviour over a bungled project to develop the coast of Albania. He was responding to the findings of a bank-appointed panel which found a clear link between the wrongful demolition of 16 homes in the coastal town of Jale and the project, to which the bank had pledged $17.5m.

Mr Zoellick’s frank mea culpa sounded impressive, and the project has been suspended. The bank management’s response, in a document dated February 18th, is also contrite. And legal aid to the families affected, to help them seek compensation, has been promised.

But investigations have uncovered a sorry tale of incompetence, mismanagement, obfuscation and possibly worse. And they come barely a month after the bank was forced to issue a statement belatedly identifying three IT firms that had been debarred from bank projects—two of them, Wipro and Satyam, for providing “improper benefits” to bank staff. The imbroglio provides fresh fodder to critics of the bank who argue that it is slow, opaque in its decision-making and not sufficiently accountable to people its work affects.

In the Albanian project, this is one of the embarrassing things: an appraisal document included a crucial reference to an agreement with the government about a moratorium on the demolition of unauthorised buildings—until clear rules could be set for defining illegal activity and assisting those who were affected. In reality, no such agreement existed, something that at least some staff knew. Corrections to the document were made shortly before the project was presented to the bank’s board, then amended, then inexplicably dropped. As a consequence, some staff continued to think that an agreement was in place, and to refer to it in other documents. A charitable way to describe the process would be haphazard.

According to the report by the bank’s general counsel into the curious matter of the agreement that wasn’t, the bank has no clear procedure to fix responsibility for the accuracy of project appraisals. The response of the management admits the need for thoroughness in preparing for board meetings. Some might call this a statement of the obvious.
The Albanian project also sheds light on some murky questions about whom the bank recruits and co-operates with when it executes projects. In this case, the bank’s management told the investigation panel at first that there was no link at all between the demolitions in Jale and the coastal-redevelopment project.

Go directly to Jale

Indeed, the demolitions were carried out by the Albanian construction police, not the bank. But the panel found that the aerial photographs which identified the targets for demolition were provided by staff in the project co-ordination unit, and that they used World Bank funds to get them taken. These photographs were then sent to the construction police, along with a letter from the project co-ordinator asking for action to be taken “as fast as possible”.

The construction police responded to the project co-ordinator’s request with alacrity, arriving in the hamlet of Jale to demolish the “illegal” houses in the early hours of the morning. This eagerness to please was probably not entirely out of respect for the World Bank: the project co-ordinator was the son-in-law of Albania’s prime minister, Sali Berisha, who has recently turned his ire on the bank.

The inspection panel notes in its report that local World Bank staff were concerned both by the co-ordinator’s political links and by his qualifications. He was appointed anyway, getting his job just a few months after his father-in-law took over as prime minister.

This is unlikely to be the only case of its kind. The appointment of influential people with their own agendas, sometimes at loggerheads with the bank’s, poses a large problem for the way its projects are administered. The bank’s response to the Albanian case includes a commitment to try to avoid appointments that involve conflicts of interest “if possible”. But the problem, some would argue, is that having such people on its projects may allow the bank to cut through red tape by virtue of their connections, a valuable “skill” in difficult political environments. And this could provide an incentive for senior managers to look the other way when well-connected people are recruited.

Old-fashioned corruption is a problem too, as is apparent from the saga of the two IT firms mentioned above. There is also a huge brouhaha about fraud in health projects in India, where investigations that ended in 2008 revealed “unacceptable indicators of fraud and corruption”, according to Mr Zoellick.

On the positive side, the bank has at least learnt to admit serious errors when they are proved to have happened. And it has wrestled seriously in recent years with the tough question of whether or not to cut off funding when corruption is suspected. Empowering its inspection panel to look into matters of corruption, which are currently not within its remit, would also be a useful step.

__________________
~Time owns each and everything~
~Useless youth if not useful for Pakistan~

Apr 23rd 2009
From The Economist print edition

South Africans went to the polls in the fourth general election since the beginning of black-majority rule in 1994. There was no doubt that the African National Congress party would win the most votes; early results showed the opposition Democratic Alliance doing well. Final results were expected after The Economist went to press.

An internal Israeli army investigation concluded that, despite a small number of errors, the army kept within the bounds of international law during the assault on the Gaza Strip three months ago. The verdict was immediately challenged by human-rights groups; at the time Israel was widely criticised for its heavy-handed tactics and “disproportionate” use of force.

At a UN conference on racism in Geneva, Iran’s president, Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, delivered a tirade against Israel and the Western countries that helped to establish it. More than 20 European representatives walked out of the conference in protest.

About 40 people were killed in clashes between local residents and gang members of a criminal sect called the Mungiki in central Kenya.
Extracting confessions

Barack Obama visited the CIA’s headquarters after authorising the release of classified memos on “enhanced interrogation techniques”, such as waterboarding, used against al-Qaeda suspects. Civil-liberties groups said he should have gone further and ordered the prosecution of officials who authorised torture. Michael Hayden, George Bush’s last CIA director, criticised the decision, arguing that terrorists could now train to withstand interrogation. Dick Cheney, the former vice-president, wanted the release of memos showing how effective the techniques had been in protecting lives.
In another sharp turnaround from the Bush era, America’s Environmental Protection Agency ruled that carbon dioxide and five other greenhouse gases were pollutants that posed a threat to public health, delighting greens and disappointing some business groups, which gave warning of the cost of further regulation. Scientists at the EPA have long favoured such a ruling, which did not contain any specifics about reducing emissions of the pollutants.

The Department of the Interior declined to appeal against a judge’s reversal of a policy that allowed people to carry loaded guns in national parks and wildlife refuges. The policy came into force in the dying days of the Bush presidency.

Mr Obama held his first cabinet meeting and called for his departments to find $100m in savings to “set the tone”. The cuts represent 0.003% of the $3.5 trillion federal budget.
To the bitter end

Tens of thousands of Tamil civilians fled the last remaining patch of Sri Lanka controlled by the rebel Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam. Some told harrowing tales of their confinement for weeks under heavy artillery fire. The army, having breached the Tigers’ defences, said its final victory in a 26-year war was close at hand. The whereabouts of the Tigers’ leader, Velupillai Prabhakaran, remained uncertain.
North and South Korea held their first bilateral meeting for more than a year, at the joint industrial zone of Kaesong. It lasted just 22 minutes before breaking up with nothing agreed. North Korea subsequently accused the South of moving a border marker.

India held the second of five rounds of voting in its month-long general election. Before the poll, Maoist rebels briefly seized a train carrying several hundred people in the state of Jharkhand.

Tajikistan finalised an agreement with the United States allowing the transit of non-military supplies for forces fighting in Afghanistan. The agreement follows the decision by Kyrgyzstan to close the only American airbase in Central Asia.


A new leaf

At a 34-country Summit of the Americas in Trinidad, Barack Obama called for a “new partnership” between the United States and Latin America. Venezuela’s Hugo Chávez proffered friendship and offered to restore his ambassador to Washington. But several Latin American countries expressed annoyance that the final summit communiqué did not call on the United States to drop its economic embargo against Cuba.

Fidel Castro wrote that Mr Obama had misinterpreted comments by his brother, Raúl Castro, Cuba’s president, that Cuba was prepared to discuss “everything” with the United States. He rejected Mr Obama’s call for Cuba to release political prisoners and scrap a 10% tax on remittances from Cuban-Americans.

Bolivia’s government faced questions over its claim that an Irishman, a Hungarian-Bolivian and another man killed by police in a hotel in Santa Cruz were plotting to murder the president, Evo Morales. The Irish and Hungarian governments said that they doubted the official version.

Manuel Rosales, who lost to Hugo Chávez in Venezuela’s presidential election of 2006, sought political asylum in Peru after being charged with corruption. He says the charges against him are politically inspired.
A “very big” embarrassment

British police released 11 Pakistanis and one Briton whom they had arrested two weeks ago in a counter-terrorism raid. Despite initially describing the alleged plot as “very, very big”, the police failed to find enough evidence to bring charges. The government plans to deport the 11 Pakistanis anyway.
In the British budget, the government said that the economy would shrink by 3.5% in 2009/10, the worst year since 1945. The chancellor, Alistair Darling, raised the top income-tax rate to 50% and also increased duties on fuel, alcohol and tobacco. He forecast that public debt would double to almost 80% of GDP by 2013/14.

A court in Russia unexpectedly ordered the release from prison of Svetlana Bakhmina, a lawyer who worked for the jailed tycoon Mikhail Khodorkovsky. She has recently had a baby. He pleaded not guilty in his second trial on charges of embezzlement.

A parliamentary election in the Turkish-recognised republic of northern Cyprus was won by hard-line nationalists. The result may undermine reunification talks being conducted by the Greek-Cypriot and Turkish-Cypriot leaders.

__________________
~Time owns each and everything~
~Useless youth if not useful for Pakistan~

Apr 23rd 2009
From The Economist print edition

Barack Obama is trying to find a new balance between national security and human rights



DURING a public meeting in Istanbul on April 7th Barack Obama argued that the American ship of state is more like a supertanker than a speedboat. You cannot just spin it around and point it in a new direction; instead, “you’ve got to slowly move it and then eventually you end up in a very different place.”

Ever since the Obama administration released the Justice Department’s so-called “torture memos” on April 16th Americans have been debating what Mr Obama’s “very different place” might mean for counter-terrorism. The memos make disturbing and surreal reading. Disturbing because of the brutality they describe (one man was waterboarded 183 times in a month). Surreal because they combine the torturer’s language with that of the health-and-safety inspector (slamming someone into a wall, or “walling” them, is acceptable, provided that the wall is “flexible” and “the head and neck are supported with a rolled hood and towel that provides a c-collar effect to help prevent whiplash”).

The memos have also stirred a debate about the future of counter-terrorism. How far will Mr Obama go in rolling back the extraordinary powers of surveillance and secrecy, detention and interrogation that the Bush administration accumulated? And how much danger is there that he will overreact to his predecessors’ excesses, leaving his country vulnerable to another attack?

Mr Obama has repeatedly signalled that he will fulfil his campaign promise to turn the page on a dark chapter in American history. On his first day in office he said that he was suspending the military tribunals at Guantánamo Bay. Two days later he signed executive orders banning the CIA’s secret prisons and “enhanced interrogation” techniques, bringing America’s policies on detainees in line with international treaties; he also ordered Guantánamo closed within a year. Many of his supporters regarded his decision to release the torture memos as another example of his determination to break with the past.

But Mr Obama has always been careful to leave himself plenty of wriggle room. Elena Kagan, his solicitor-general, has argued that it may still be necessary to hold some former Guantánamo inmates indefinitely. Mr Obama has not ruled out extraordinary rendition, the practice of sending people suspected of terrorism to other countries for “interrogation”. He has also appointed John Brennan, a veteran CIA figure, as his counter-terrorism adviser, despite the fact that Mr Brennan was passed over for the job of director of the CIA because many Democrats thought that he was too hardline.

Mr Obama has also continued the Bush administration’s practice of urging civilian courts to throw out cases that involve allegations of rendition and torture. In February Mr Obama’s Justice Department persuaded the Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals that a lawsuit on behalf of a Guantánamo detainee, Binyam Mohamed, who also suffered extraordinary rendition, should be dismissed on the ground that it would disclose state secrets.

Mr Obama’s taste for trying to balance both sides of an argument is evident in his handling of the torture memos. He has repeatedly said that he will not prosecute people who were simply obeying orders (“this is a time for reflection, not retribution”). He visited CIA headquarters this week to tell the spooks how much he values their work, and to reassure them that he understands the importance of protecting their identities. But he has also hinted that his administration may establish a “truth commission” to figure out just what happened, and that those responsible for designing the policy of harsh interrogation might face prosecution.

This is partly an attempt to have it both ways, of course. But there is more to it than that. Mr Obama inherited some very difficult problems from the previous regime, not least what to do with people, some of them highly dangerous, who have been in a legal limbo in Guantánamo for years. Conservatives are right to be irritated by foolish liberal claims that America does not face any hard choices in fighting terrorism. But it is equally idiotic to argue, as a fair few conservatives seem to, that tough-minded policies are meritorious simply because they are tough-minded.

Own goal

A pointed objection to George Bush’s policies is not just that they crossed a moral line but that they crossed it to no purpose. Mr Bush’s critics were not confined to bleeding-heart liberals who are even now making a fuss about the rights of a captured Somali pirate. They included a legion, from high-ranking commanders to military lawyers to intelligence operatives, who argued that the techniques were counterproductive.

“Enhanced interrogation” acted as a potent recruitment tool for terrorist organisations. It made it more difficult for America to co-operate with allies, particularly in Europe. It imposed personal burdens on front-line workers who found their values compromised. Dick Cheney points out that the techniques yielded some useful information. But the same information might have been obtained by less controversial means. Torin Nelson, a veteran interrogator, says the administration made a fundamental mistake in focusing on how far it could push detainees, not least because people who are tortured will often confess to anything. It would have been better off recruiting and training more skilled interrogators who knew how to win the trust of their subjects.

There is always a chance that Mr Obama will go too far, replacing Mr Bush’s excessive zeal with excessive timidity. But so far the signs are that he is producing a reasonable balance. He recognises that September 11th 2001 changed the rules of national security. But he also recognises that many of the Bush-era policies were clumsy as well as questionable. The most important comment on Mr Obama’s approach to counter-terrorism so far came on April 20th, from the CIA agents who cheered him to the rafters.

__________________
~Time owns each and everything~
~Useless youth if not useful for Pakistan~

May 7th 2009
From The Economist print edition
To Russia’s fury, NATO staged a modest military exercise in Georgia. Russia’s president, Dmitry Medvedev, called this an “overt provocation”. Earlier the Georgian army had put down a mutiny by a tank battalion. And protesters clashed with police in Tbilisi.

Gunmen killed 44 people at a wedding party in south-east Turkey. Some claimed the assailants were from a militia that had helped Turkish troops fight Kurdish separatists.

The Czech Senate voted to approve the European Union’s Lisbon treaty, but the Czech president, Vaclav Klaus, said he would not sign it until Ireland decides whether to ratify it. Lech Kaczynski, the Polish president, is taking a similar line. The Irish are expected to hold a second referendum in October.

Kosovo, the former province of Serbia whose independence is recognised by only a few dozen countries, said it had accumulated enough votes to join the International Monetary Fund. Saudi Arabia recently became the first big Muslim country to recognise it.

Trouble at the top

Nepal’s Maoist prime minister, Pushpa Kamal Dahal, better known as Prachanda, resigned, raising doubts about a three-year-old peace settlement in the country’s civil war. He was protesting against the president’s reinstatement of the army chief, whom Mr Dahal had tried to sack for refusing to accept soldiers from the Maoists’ former army into the ranks of the army proper. A day later a group of other political parties agreed to form a “national government”.

Tens of thousands of people fled the Swat valley in north-west Pakistan as a peace agreement between the government and local Taliban militants fell apart. Pakistan’s president, Asif Zardari, flew to Washington for talks with Barack Obama and his Afghan counterpart, Hamid Karzai.

Mr Karzai registered as a candidate for Afghanistan’s presidential election, due in August. He disappointed Western sympathisers by naming a civil-war era strongman, Mohammad Fahim, as one of his running-mates.

Hillary Clinton, America’s secretary of state, said her country deeply regretted the deaths of Afghan civilians in an air strike in the western Farah province. The Red Cross said dozens had died.

Antasari Azhar, the head of Indonesia’s anti-corruption agency, was arrested as a suspect in the murder of a prominent businessman killed in a drive-by shooting in March.

Australia published its first defence white paper since 2000. It envisaged a big boost in weapons purchases for the navy and air force, estimated to cost some $75 billion.

On the mend?


Mexico’s government began to reopen schools and lift restrictions on businesses, after a five-day shutdown, as panic over swine flu abated. At least 42 Mexicans were officially confirmed as having died of the bug. A second person died in the United States. Worldwide, confirmed cases rose to almost 1,400 in more than 23 countries. Four schools were temporarily closed in Britain and China quarantined over 70 Mexicans and 22 Canadian students, prompting protests from those countries.

Ricardo Martinelli, a supermarket magnate running as a centrist independent, easily won Panama’s presidential election. His victory bucked a recent drift to the left in Latin America.

Canada and the European Union began discussing a free-trade agreement. Nobody seemed to have told the European Parliament, which voted to ban imports of seal products in protest at the annual cull of several hundred thousand young seals in Canada.

Venezuela’s national assembly gave preliminary approval to a law that would allow President Hugo Chávez’s government to seize control of some oil-service companies. Faced with a steep fall in its revenues, PDVSA, the state-owned oil company, wants to cut its costs.

Meet the new boss

Jacob Zuma, leader of South Africa’s ruling African National Congress (ANC), was formally elected the country’s president by members of Parliament on May 6th and was due to be inaugurated on May 9th. His party won a landslide victory in a general election on April 22nd.

In Zimbabwe 18 political and human-rights campaigners, including members of Morgan Tsvangirai’s Movement for Democratic Change, which is in an awkward coalition with President Robert Mugabe’s Zanu-PF party, were again released on bail. They had been briefly sent back to prison despite being allowed out on bail in March. The episode highlighted the fragility of the unity government.

In an apparent effort to narrow his differences with the American administration, Israel’s new prime minister, Binyamin Netanyahu, said he would resume negotiations with the Palestinians, though he has yet to agree with Barack Obama’s statement that the Palestinians should have a state of their own.

Egypt’s government ordered all the country’s 250,000 pigs slaughtered in response to the outbreak of swine flu, even though the disease has not yet reached Egypt and international health officials say eating properly cooked pork is safe. That upset the country’s 6m-plus Coptic Christians, who own most of the pigs.

Supreme no more

David Souter announced his retirement from America’s Supreme Court, and will step down when the court’s term ends in June. Justice Souter was appointed by George Bush senior in 1990, but generally sided with the court’s liberal contingent. Barack Obama is widely expected to nominate a woman as Justice Souter’s replacement.

The city council of Washington, DC voted to recognise gay marriages performed in other states. Congress has 30 days to decide whether to prevent the measure from becoming law. Meanwhile, Maine’s governor signed into law a bill that legalises same-sex marriage in the state.
Tributes were paid to Jack Kemp, who died at 73. A former quarterback with the Buffalo Bills, Mr Kemp entered politics in the 1970s and became influential within Reagan circles for his support of tax-cutting, supply-side economics. He was Bob Dole’s vice-presidential running-mate in 1996.

__________________
~Time owns each and everything~
~Useless youth if not useful for Pakistan~

The scramble for the seabed

May 14th 2009
From The Economist print edition


Coastal states have now made their bids for vast new areas of continental shelf


YOU never know what may come in handy. That is the principle behind the rush for the seabed that reached a climax of sorts this week with the deadline on May 13th for lodging claims to extensions of the continental shelf. When Russia sold Alaska to the United States for two cents an acre (five cents a hectare) in 1867, it thought it was parting with a useless lump of ice. After gold was discovered there, it began kicking itself. Now it is one of a host of countries eagerly laying claim to swathes of the seafloor that may one day yield huge riches. That is the hope anyway.

The rules for this carve-up derive from the 1982 United Nations Convention on the Law of the Sea. These gave all countries that had ratified the treaty before May 13th 1999 ten years in which to claim any extension of their continental shelf beyond the normal 200 nautical miles (370km), so long as that extension was no more than 100 miles from the point at which the sea reached a depth of 2.5km, and no more than 350 miles from land. Any other country wishing to make a claim has ten years from the date on which it ratified the treaty. It must then, like all the states that have now made their claims, submit copious scientific evidence to show that the seabed in question is indeed continental shelf.

If it passes all the tests, it can exploit the minerals on or under the seabed in this margin, so long as any revenue is shared with poorer and landlocked states. No new rights are given over fish or other creatures in the water column, but living creatures on or below the seafloor that are immobile “at the harvestable stage” are treated like minerals. Harvesting here is not entirely fanciful. Pharmaceutical companies are already mincing up marine creatures known as sea cucumbers that may yet provide drugs for treating cancer. Sea cucumbers can move, but other useful plants or animals may be stuck in the mud.

More beguiling perhaps are metal deposits and energy reserves. These include not just petroleum but also methane hydrates, white, sorbet-like compounds that exist in profusion under the sea, perhaps containing more energy in total than all known deposits of fossil fuels. They can often be found on the slopes of the continental shelf, though as yet they are impossibly awkward to extract. In the long run, however, they may prove valuable to countries like Japan and India with few energy sources on land.
For many countries, though, the first booty from any newly acquired seabed will be either oil or gas, both of which can now be extracted fairly easily from deep water. It was surely with this in mind that Russia, in 2001 the first country to submit a continental-shelf claim, made a bid to extend its rights in both the Pacific and the Arctic oceans. Six years later a Russian submersible was to plant a titanium flag on the seabed 4km below the North Pole.

Since the Russian application, 49 others have followed, some making multiple claims in several places, some submitted jointly by several countries in one area. Some countries have also made more than one submission. Thus Britain, France, Ireland and Spain have jointly made a claim in the Celtic sea and the Bay of Biscay. Britain has made a second in respect of Ascension island in the South Atlantic, a third concerning the Hatton-Rockall area in the North Atlantic and a fourth concerning the Falklands, South Georgia and the South Sandwich islands in the South Atlantic.

All of this last area is also claimed by Argentina, which went to war with Britain in 1982 over the Falklands. It will now be hotly contested again. Argentina’s latest claim, moreover, appears to include land and sea right down to the South Pole, to judge by the map filed with its submission.
This is not the only place in which two countries have competing designs. China and South Korea are at odds over a part of the East China sea. And China has submitted a map that seems to assert ownership of a vast part of the South China sea. This includes much more than the Spratlys, an island group long claimed by Malaysia, the Philippines and Taiwan too. China objected within hours to Vietnam’s Spratlys claim on May 7th.

Trouble is also brewing in the Indian ocean. Tanzania and the Seychelles look like falling out over an area near Aldabra, and Mauritius has claimed an area round Rodrigues island that includes the Chagos archipelago. This is regarded by Britain as part of its Indian Ocean Territory. It includes Diego Garcia, whose people, all removed in the 1970s so that the island could be used as an American base, last year lost a legal appeal to be allowed home.
Another old imperial power, France, is also hoping to make the most of its residual colonies, and in doing so is antagonising friends. Its clash is with Canada, and concerns St Pierre & Miquelon, a group of tiny islands little more than 25km from Newfoundland that front onto a shelf blessed with oil deposits. They belong to France.

Canada did not ratify the law-of-the-sea treaty until 2003, so has no need to submit its claims until 2013. Denmark likewise has until 2014, and the United States has no deadline since it has not ratified the treaty . These are three of the five countries that border on the richest, and trickiest, prize of all, the Arctic (Denmark because it owns Greenland, unless and until the Greenlanders should become independent, as some wish). All five states have ambitions for more Arctic seabed.

Most of the Arctic is continental shelf, so most of it will eventually be allotted to one of the five neighbours (Iceland also has a small claim within the Arctic Circle). But since it has been largely covered with year-round ice throughout modern history, it is the least mapped ocean. Claims are therefore specially hard to substantiate.

The Arctic is rich in oil and gas. Indeed, some people think it holds nearly a quarter of the world’s undiscovered reserves. Though Russia put in an early four-part bid under the treaty, the part concerning the Arctic has in effect been shelved. So the only submission under active consideration is Norway’s. Each of the other Arctic neighbours, however, is busy mapping and preparing the data needed for claims already made public (see map below).


Clashes are plain between Canada and the United States, and between Russia and Norway. And Canada, Denmark and Russia are each likely to make individual bids for the North Pole. Even so, there is a lot of co-operation among the competitors. Canada and Denmark, for instance, are working together to try to show that the Lomonosov ridge, which cuts across the Arctic and is the basis of Russia’s claim for the pole, extends to their territories.

Similar co-operation has taken place among countries in other parts of the world. Most coastal states that knew a claim would be contested have made agreements that one would not object to a neighbour’s bid if the other showed reciprocal forbearance. Many of the joint submissions will be followed by further deal-making among the states concerned.

Formally, all states now have three months in which to make protests. In reality, they have much longer. Some of the submissions are not firm, merely “indicative” bids that will serve as holding operations. Even now the Commission on the Limits of the Continental Shelf, the body that considers the claims, is in danger of being overwhelmed. It must rule on everything from the geophysical (is the sedimentary composition correct?) to the metaphysical (what’s the difference between a rock and an island?). A month ago it had given full consideration and approval to only five of the 22 claims lodged. Since then another 28 have followed.

The commission will encourage states to settle squabbles by negotiation. If they fail, they can go to the International Court of Justice in The Hague, or to a special tribunal in Hamburg. But too much should not be made of the disputation. The most remarkable feature of the seabed scramble is that it gives the potential of huge economic gains to some of the world’s smallest and poorest countries—coastal states in Africa, island nations in the Pacific, poor places like Barbados, Suriname and Yemen, none of them usually seen as sophisticated maritime powers. If they are now lucky enough to gain new rights over oil or minerals, they may soon be able to exploit them. Neptune should be smiling.

__________________
~Time owns each and everything~
~Useless youth if not useful for Pakistan~

May 7th 2009
From The Economist print edition


Poor countries are not fretting about the boundaries between state and market. Instead, they are debating whether to rely on domestic or foreign demand


Illustration by Claudio Munoz

A STRIKING feature of the worldwide economic crash is what hasn’t happened. While rich countries agonise about whether Anglo-Saxon capitalism should be replaced by the French version (and the French flirt with revolutionary socialism), emerging markets have stayed angst-free. Arvind Subramanian, an Indian economist, says there has been “no serious questioning of the role of the market.”

That may sound like an exaggeration. As in rich countries, the state’s role in many poor ones has increased as a result of the recent global meltdown. China’s 4 trillion yuan ($587 billion) stimulus package last year will benefit state-owned enterprises. Its sovereign-wealth funds have been buying stakes in publicly-traded companies and (as in America and Europe) state subsidies have been flowing to loss-making industries, such as carmakers.

In India, critics of liberalisation have gained ammunition. They have long cautioned against giving foreign banks freer rein or allowing pension funds to invest more money in stockmarkets, leading one prominent magazine to ask, “did the left save India?” Some economists called the central bank timid last year for resisting attempts to let international capital flows dictate the value of the rupee. It now feels vindicated. Depositors have also been shifting away from private banks—former stars of the new Indian economy—towards once-unfashionable state-owned ones. While private banks retrench, state ones are expanding their lending vigorously.

Yet such state intervention is driven not by ideology but, mostly, by pragmatism. In China the Adam Smith-toting prime minister, Wen Jiabao, argues that his country “would rather speed up reforms” to combat the crisis and should “give full play to market forces in allocating resources”. Whereas American and European countries have re-regulated business, China, set on meeting its 8% growth target, has continued to liberalise. This year, for example, it removed some barriers that curbed the yuan’s use in international trade.

Few if any serious attempts have been made to restore state ownership. When Embraer, a formerly state-owned aircraft manufacturer in Brazil, laid off thousands of workers, unions demanded its renationalisation—in vain.
In other words, emerging markets have adopted different policies, as well as ignoring the rich world’s philosophical agonising. But why?

The first reason is that the global crisis originated in America and Europe and inflicted itself on the rest of the world. So emerging-market governments see little reason for painful self-examination in response to other people’s problems. Moreover, the largest emerging markets are beginning to see hints of recovery. China’s output was 6% higher in the first quarter of this year than it had been in the same period in 2008. Chinese and Indian manufacturing output rose in April, pushing Asian stockmarkets up sharply. Though these are merely short-term gains, they are enough to deflect navel-gazing for the moment.

Second, in many emerging markets, the state is fairly large already, especially in banking. The current demarcation between state and market commands broad public support and the main issue, as Mr Subramanian puts it, “is how to continue reducing [the state’s] role in a gradual and pragmatic manner.” So even if the demarcation line shifts statewards in rich countries, emerging markets are well beyond that point already, and see little advantage in moving the line any farther.

Tricks of the trades

Yet the global crisis has provoked anguished disagreement about an equally fundamental matter: how much to rely on exports and how much on domestic demand. At this month’s annual meeting of the Asian Development Bank, minister after minister said countries should rely more on each other and less on selling to America. Thirteen Asian countries also agreed to create a $120 billion fund—part of a nine-year-old system of swap agreements called the Chiang Mai initiative—from which they can (in theory) draw when financial pressures become acute.

How this would work in practice is uncertain. But the impetus behind it is clear: pooling risk expresses Asian fellow feeling and common Asian caution about both the International Monetary Fund and further fallout from America’s crisis. Emerging countries concluded from the financial crises of the 1990s that they could not rely on fickle foreign capital. Now the collapse of international trade is causing them to wonder whether they can rely on fickle foreign customers.

__________________
~Time owns each and everything~
~Useless youth if not useful for Pakistan~

May 21st 2009 | WASHINGTON, DC
From The Economist print edition

America's climate-change bill is weaker and worse than expected


AL GORE calls it “one of the most important pieces of legislation ever introduced in Congress”. Joe Barton, a Republican congressman and global-warming sceptic, says it will put the American economy in a straitjacket. For something that practically no one has read, the American Clean Energy and Security Act provokes heated debate. It would establish a cap-and-trade system for curbing carbon-dioxide emissions, thus transforming the way Americans use energy.

President Barack Obama has long argued that America should join Europe in regulating planet-cooking carbon. But he has left the details to Congress. And the negotiations to craft a bill that might actually pass have not been pretty. The most straightforward and efficient approach to reducing carbon emissions—a carbon tax—was never seriously considered. Voters do not like to hear the word “tax” unless it is followed by the word “cut”.

So Mr Obama proposed something very similar to a carbon tax, albeit slightly more cumbersome. Industries that emit carbon dioxide would have to buy permits to do so. A fixed number of permits would be auctioned each year. The permits would be tradable, so firms that found ways to emit less than they were entitled to could sell some of their permits to others. The system would motivate everyone to reduce emissions in the most cost-effective way. It would raise energy prices, which is the point, but it would also raise hundreds of billions of dollars, most of which Mr Obama planned to give back to voters. Alas, that plan looks doomed.

On May 15th Henry Waxman and Edward Markey, the Democratic point-men on climate change in the House of Representatives, unveiled a bill that would give away 85% of carbon permits for nothing, with only 15% being auctioned. The bill’s supporters say this colossal compromise was necessary to win the support of firms that generate dirty energy or use a lot of it, and to satisfy congressmen from states that mine coal or roll steel.
Giving away permits creates several problems. First, it generates no money, thereby royally messing up Mr Obama’s budget. Second, it means that the permits go not to those who value them most (as in an auction) but to those whom the government favours. Under Waxman-Markey, electricity-distributors would get the largest share, with the rest divided between energy-intensive manufacturers, carmakers, natural-gas distributors, states with renewable-energy programmes and so on. Oil firms, with only 2% of the permits, feel hard done by. But most polluters, having just been promised hundreds of billions of dollars’ worth of permits for nothing, are elated. So it is not just the owners of ski resorts and businesses with negligible carbon footprints that are queuing up to praise the bill. Duke Energy, a power generator with lots of coal-fired plants, is also enthusiastic.

The grand handout to shareholders is meant to last until around 2030, by which time all permits will be auctioned. In the meantime, the bill’s supporters say that consumers will be protected from higher energy prices because the largest chunk of the free permits will go to tightly regulated electricity distributors. Regulators can simply order these firms to keep prices low. Problem solved.

Not so, says Alan Viard, an analyst at the American Enterprise Institute, a conservative think-tank. If electricity is cheap, Americans will buy more of it, generating more emissions than would otherwise have been the case. Other industries will accordingly have to cut their emissions more, since there are a fixed number of permits. The cost of this will be passed on to consumers. Overall, ordinary Americans will endure price hikes just as severe as they would have under Mr Obama’s plan, while receiving far less compensation. Mr Viard likens giving permits to polluters to handing the proceeds of a tobacco tax to the shareholders of Philip Morris.

Another problem with Waxman-Markey is its complexity. At 932 pages, it is half as long again as an already-bloated previous draught. It includes a dizzying array of handouts, mandates and technical standards for everything from hot-food-holding cabinets to portable spas. It allows for a huge increase in “offsets”—where a polluter pays someone else to stop polluting instead of curbing his own emissions. These are open to abuse, as Europe’s experience shows. There is little to stop foreign factories from starting to pollute just so that someone will pay them to stop.

Among environmentalists, support for the bill varies. Some denounce it for doing less to curb greenhouse gases than was once promised. It aims to cut emissions by 17% below the level in 2005 by 2020, instead of 20%. Greenpeace’s American arm says it cannot support the bill in its current state. Other greens reckon that if this is the strongest bill that can pass, the best idea is to pass it now and tighten it later.

That is the most likely outcome, though far from certain. Mr Waxman wants his bill to pass through the House energy committee this week. Republicans such as Mr Barton could slow it down by offering hundreds of amendments or forcing it to be read aloud. (Mr Waxman has hired a speed-reader, just in case.) But they probably do not have enough votes to stop it, either in committee or when it eventually comes before the full House.

The next step will be the Senate, where the minority has more power. It is hard to predict what will happen there. Republicans plan to berate the bill as both a job-destroyer and a handout to big business. Some will also argue that it will make little difference to the climate if China and India do not also curb their emissions.



The bill’s supporters retort that both countries will come on board only if America sets a good example. Time is running out before the big global climate conference in Copenhagen in December. If the United States does not have a cap-and-trade law in place by then, the chance of a global agreement will plummet. The bill may be imperfect, says Steve Tripoli of Ceres, a green business group, but having no bill at all would be unthinkable.

Meanwhile, Mr Obama continues to attack climate change from other angles. On May 19th he announced that he would impose tougher fuel-efficiency standards. Carmakers will have to produce vehicles that go eight miles farther on a gallon of petrol by 2016. Cars must eke out 39 miles (63km) per gallon, on average; light trucks must manage 30 miles. Carmakers, some of whom would be bankrupt if Mr Obama was not pumping them full of taxpayers’ money, meekly applauded. In the past an agreement such as this would have been thought impossible, the president crowed.
Mr Obama admitted that more fuel-efficient cars might cost more. But he promised that motorists would save thousands of dollars by cutting their fuel bills. In fact, they can already cut their fuel bills by buying smaller cars, but most choose not to. Mr Obama could discourage petrol use more directly and efficiently by taxing the stuff, but that would be unpopular. Ideally, politicians who want to save the planet would be honest with voters about how much this will cost. But America’s leaders do not seem to think Americans are ready for straight talk about energy.

__________________
~Time owns each and everything~
~Useless youth if not useful for Pakistan~

May 21st 2009
From Economist.com

Barack Obama and Dick Cheney disagree about how best to ensure America's national security


THE contrast was stark: on the one hand Barack Obama, young, idealistic, wet-behind the ears, and on the other Dick Cheney, the former vice-president and the voice of experience, in his best growling form. Both gave speeches on Thursday May 21st: Mr Obama at the National Archives, home of the American constitution, and Mr Cheney at the American Enterprise Institute, the favourite nest of the now-rather-quiet neoconservatives. Mr Obama's voice boomed as it echoed around the walls that house America's revered founding documents; a wheezy Mr Cheney sipped from a water bottle.

Between them, the men represent the two poles of the national-security debate that is raging in Washington. Mr Obama has pledged to shut the prison camp at Guantánamo Bay, in Cuba, by January 2010, but even his own party disagrees with him. Democrats in Congress have rebelled and removed money for closing the prison camp, and possibly building another, from war-spending bills that are going through Congress. They will not be happy with the president’s proposal until he produces a thought-out plan that can convince them that wild-eyed jihadists are not about to be released into their neighbourhoods. Mr Obama made his speech to try to persuade them that he does, indeed, have such a plan.
Having admitted that the camp was “quite simply, a mess”, Mr Obama went through the categories of prisoners and how he intended to deal with them. The most dangerous of the 240 detainees would be sent to “super-max” federal prisons—from which, he reminded his audience, no one has ever escaped. Some trials would be held in federal court, where several terrorists have already been tried and sentenced. Military commissions were “appropriate” for those who had violated the laws of war, and he had not changed tack on them; he had always approved of them, he said, in a reformed shape. Detainees who were suitable for transfer abroad would be shifted there (although, as Mr Cheney pointed out, other countries are not lining up to take them). Those who had been ordered released would be released. As for those who could not be prosecuted but were still a threat, he had begun to “reshape” standards and construct a “legitimate legal framework” to deal with them. Details were lacking.

The great bulk of Mr Obama’s lawyerly speech, however—which repeated well-worn themes from his campaign and seemed unnecessarily lengthy—was devoted to moral principles. Unless America abided by its fundamental values, its people would never truly be safe. Guantánamo had “set back our moral authority”, and had become instead “a rallying cry for our enemies”. In the same way, “enhanced interrogation techniques”—as both he and Mr Cheney fastidiously referred to torture—had not advanced America’s principles, but undermined them. That was why he had released the Bush administration’s “torture memoranda”, to show the world what America was no longer prepared to do. Ending water-boarding (simulated drowning) and closing Guantánamo were further steps down the path of legality and morality.

Fine, unexceptionable words, delivered with the usual eloquence. But Mr Obama looked like a man whose closest brush with terror had been watching “Independence Day”. Mr Cheney, by contrast, had been there. He recalled the moment on September 11th 2001 when he had been bundled from his White House office into the presidential bunker. It had not made him a different man, he said, but it had focused all his thoughts on the safety of the country. Another attack might come at any time. So, mindful of that, the Bush administration had invoked Article two of the constitution: “all necessary and appropriate force” could be used to protect the American people. Mr Cheney, too, can bring on the Founding Fathers when he needs to.

Included in that appropriate force, Mr Cheney continued, were wiretapping and the extraction of information from terrorist suspects. It was “lawful, skilful” work, he said. The liberals’ bête noire, water-boarding, had been used on just three notable terrorists, including Kahlid Sheikh Mohammed, the self-confessed mastermind behind the September 11th plot and beheading of a journalist, Daniel Pearl. When captured, Mr Mohammed demanded to speak to his lawyer in New York. The interrogation techniques had been reviewed by lawyers, said Mr Cheney, and the line between toughness and torture carefully followed. To reveal these techniques by releasing the memos had done a “serious injustice” to the officers concerned. In fact, rasped the old bulldog, Mr Obama’s people had whipped up “feigned outrage based on a false narrative”.

The Obama administration had released redacted versions of classified memos that revealed what had been done to extract information, but was silent on the usefulness of that information and the possible atrocities that had been averted. And as for the plan to close Guantánamo, that had been done without proper deliberation; the president might find, “on reflection”, that it was a bad idea to let hardened terrorists go. Mr Cheney was on a roll.

Time still remains for Congress to add Guantánamo funds to the spending bill, if it wants to. The president’s moral argument remains unimpeachable. But his vague and virtuous hopefulness rang a little hollow beside the straight talk of Mr Cheney whose action at the time of September 11th had seemed justified—to some senior Democrats, as well as Republicans—at the time.

__________________
~Time owns each and everything~
~Useless youth if not useful for Pakistan~