US Affairs (Important Articles)
 

[CENTER][B][FONT="Georgia"][SIZE="5"]America’s Obsession With Israel and Iran[/SIZE][/FONT][/B][/CENTER]
March 25, 2012
by BRIAN CLOUGHLEY

The United States is obsessed with Iran and Israel. It’s not just the Administration in Washington that enjoys this weird fixation, because many Americans, including all Republican presidential candidates, agree with Israel that Iran is an enemy and must be dealt with in a drastic military fashion. Pending that final solution, the tactics are to try to strangle the country by imposing vicious sanctions and to threaten to cripple the economies of other nations that attempt to maintain commercial links with Tehran. As has been obvious for decades, sanctions on any country have little adverse effect on its leaders, but penalize the poor and weak by making their miserable lives even more dismal than usual.

But destroying innocent lives economically is quite acceptable to the US President and Secretary of State, who are also energetically threatening some countries who will not toe the anti-Iran sanctions’ line, while the Pentagon gets ready for yet another “Shock and Awe” farce, and deploys ever more ships and planes to the Persian Gulf in preparation for war on Iran. They won’t dare to try to bully China or India, of course, because the very existence of the US depends on Chinese economic goodwill, and India is a massive market for US weapons, nuclear technology and other vital items that provide generous profits for American companies. But nations such as Pakistan are in the direct line of fire because they have few means of retaliation.

US Secretary of State Clinton has made it clear that Pakistan will be punished if it continues to engage with Iran about construction of a natural gas pipeline. She cares not a fig that the people of Pakistan urgently need natural gas and, indeed, any sort of fuel that can assist the economy and make their lives easier. The Los Angeles Times records that “more than half of Pakistan’s manufacturers use natural gas to power their factories,” and 21 percent of Pakistani vehicles run on compressed natural gas, but “Pakistan produces only 30% of the natural gas it needs.” The Iran-Pakistan pipeline would provide the country with over 750 million cubic feet of gas per day.

It was reported in February that water levels in Pakistan’s two main power-generating dams are dangerously low. This, and the shortage of natural gas, leads to power cuts all over the country that make people’s lives utterly miserable, but means nothing to Secretary Clinton or anyone else in Washington. The fact that Pakistan’s entire economy is under threat because there is not enough fuel for power stations and industrial plants matters not a bit to the jet-setters of international affairs. They will never experience the slightest inconvenience to their luxurious lifestyles because they are cocooned from the problems experienced daily by so many millions of ordinary people.

Clinton is on record as saying that if Pakistan dares to try to improve its parlous economic state by “beginning the construction of such a pipeline either as an Iranian project or as a joint project . . . it would be particularly damaging to Pakistan because their economy is already quite shaky.” This putrid piece of perambulating filth was then reported as saying that “the US is working to find alternative solutions to the deficit that do not necessitate the building of the proposed pipeline.” Her “solution” to Pakistan’s appalling energy crisis involves a pipeline from Turkmenistan running through Afghanistan : “We think that that is a better alternative, both in terms of predictability and to avoid doing business with Iran.”

Anyone who imagines a pipeline could be built through Afghanistan belongs in the funny farm. But that is no reason to roll around the floor, laughing at the monocular moron who is US Secretary of State. She presents the policies of the most important country on earth and must to be listened to, if only because her statements give a good indication of just where that great nation is heading : down the moral plug-hole.

Washington’s obsession with Israel is understandable because Israel can do no wrong in the eyes of America, and US politicians are puppets in its hands. There isn’t a national politician in the United States who would dare criticize Israel, because if they did their political careers would end very quickly. Now that’s power; real power. When a plainly deranged man like Israel’s Prime Minister Netanyahu can get 29 standing ovations from a drooling and sycophantic Congress, then matters have become extremely grave, especially when you consider that they gave their own President a mere 25 standers for his last State of the Union Address. Talk about sit-up-and-beg. The US pawn-poodle pollies deserve some crackers, and they’ll get them, of course, in the shape of lots of lovely money from all the Israel-supporting squillionaires who buy politicians like they’re hamburgers.

In the past ten years Washington has vetoed ten UN Security Council Resolutions that condemned Israel for illegal and barbaric actions. On February 18, for example, “The United States vetoed a Security Council resolution condemning all Israeli settlements established in occupied Palestinian territory since 1967 as illegal, saying that while it agreed that the settlements are illegitimate the resolution harmed chances for peace talks. The other 14 members of the Council voted for the resolution, which demanded that “Israel, as the occupying power, immediately and completely ceases all settlement activities in the occupied Palestinian territory, including East Jerusalem and that it fully respect its legal obligations in this regard.”

Israel’s settlements are not only unlawful, they are xenophobic, racist and based on greed. Tel Aviv’s treatment of Palestinians is contrary to international laws, especially those governing collective punishment, and is deliberately designed to make life hell for millions of innocents. But who cares? — Just listen to the Obama speech made at the beginning of this month to AIPAC, the America Israel Public Affairs Committee, and you’ll realize, between gagging at the oleaginous drivel he mouthed, that mighty America is in thrall to a bunch of murderous, land-grabbing avaricious thugs with an enormous arsenal of nuclear weapons.

It is, said Obama, “our common ideals that provide the true foundation for our relationship.” Yes — from Gaza to Guantanamo, from Palestine to Kandahar, the common ideals are there : to imprison people without trial, to subject them to torture, to blitz villages and slaughter children. He didn’t once mention the word ‘Gaza’ in his obsequious eulogy.

What, exactly, has the US got against the Palestinians whose land has been stolen and occupied by Israelis? Well, it’s simple, really: the Palestinians haven’t got any money to give to political campaigners in America or anywhere else. They have no fantastically rich and powerful organization like AIPAC that can buy and alter the ideals and principles of the President of the United States and all the Senators and members of Congress who packed the AIPAC auditorium. They are obsessed with Israel, and who can blame them, when their very careers depend on toeing the Israeli line?

And it goes deeper and wider, unfortunately, because some important sections of the US armed forces appear to be behind Israel to an alarming degree. Take Air Force Chief of Staff General Norton Schwartz, for example, who told reporters that the Joint Chiefs of Staff have prepared military options to strike Iranian nuclear sites. “What we can do,” he announced, “you wouldn’t want to be in the area.” Strangelove lives, apparently. And according to the Jerusalem Post newspaper “When the Jewish Community Centers Armed Forces and Veteran’s Committee presented its Military Leadership Award to Schwartz in 2004, he said he was ‘Proud to be identified as Jewish as well as an American military leader’.”

When the most senior military officer in the US Air Force boasts of an allegiance other than to his country, the Service he serves, and those whom he has the honor to command, there should be alarm bells ringing. This is dangerous stuff.

General Schwartz’s senior civilian adviser until recently was Dr Lana (Ilana) Kass, who was born and raised in Israel and served as a major in the Israeli Air Force. Her three children were born in Israel. According to the now-deleted entry on the US Air Force website she was Schwartz’s “principal adviser on policy and strategy and formulates, develops, implements, and communicates the policies, programs and goals of the Air Force.”

Even the New York Times had to report, on March 17, that information about Iran’s nuclear program “has not been significant enough for the spy agencies to alter their view that the weapons program has not been restarted.” But General Schwartz makes it clear that his Air Force is ready to go to the extent that when it blitzes Iran “you wouldn’t want to be in the area.” What advice is Schwartz going to give to his President who offers unconditional support to Israel, in that “We’re providing Israel with more advanced technology the types of products and systems that only go to our closest friends and allies”?

Just as Washington is obsessed with Iran to such a degree that it is willing to destroy Pakistan economically if it engages in desperately-needed economic cooperation with its neighbour, so it is obsessed with Israel to the point of national humiliation. The US will support Israel’s bombing assault on Iran because it has no other option. But after that catastrophe, Israel’s puppets in the US Congress and Administration — and the Pentagon — will rue the day they bent their knees to a vile and racist regime that is intent on destroying a country that has never engaged in military conquest and does not seek to do so now. Obsession has a downside. When the US obeys Israel and supports war on Iran the price of oil will go through the roof. And the moral standing of America will go through the floor.

Brian Cloughley’s website is [url]www.beecluff.com[/url]
Source: counterpunch

[CENTER][B][FONT="Georgia"][SIZE="5"]America’s Love Affair With Terrorism[/SIZE][/FONT][/B][/CENTER]
April 1, 2012
By Soraya Sepahpour-Ulrich

Rudy Giuliani, the 2008 Republican Presidential candidate and the former New York Mayor has publicly stated that the United States should use a terrorist group to launch a military attack on Iran’s civilian infrastructure – the nuclear power plants. Giuliani is not alone in his support of the Mujahedin-e Khalq terrorist cult (MEK, also known by other acronyms such as MKO, NCRI). Many prominent voices have put their weight behind the terrorist group.

America has had a long-standing love affair with terrorists. Support for terrorist groups and governments has been part and parcel of American policy. According to William Odom, President Reagan’s former NSA Director, terrorism is a tactic with the United States having a long record of supporting terrorists[ see pdf ] [i] . But what is unique and novel about romancing the MEK is the political elite’s brazen public display of support for the group, and the shameless prostitution of their services for a fee.

This must be a rude awakening for the American public. After hundreds of thousands of lives lost, trillions of dollars spent on waging a war on terror –“fighting them over there so they don’t come over here”, what has come home with the body bags and the debt is the realization that “they”, the terrorists ARE here – and they have out politicians in their pockets.

Many citizens fail to understand America of present day. They have a hard time reconciling “fighting there”, and the government establishing the Unites States as a battleground. They have difficulty understanding prominent politicians receiving payments from a group listed on the State Department’s list of Foreign Terrorist Organization (FTO), while a provision of the defense authorization bill would grant the military the authority to detain and hold anyone indefinitely, or to assassinate any individual suspected of having ties to al Qaeda [ii] — a terrorist group who according to Hillary Clinton was funded and armed by the US (CNN see clip ).

Incomprehensible as the actions of these distinguished MEK supporters may be, it may well be that they take comfort in the fact that it is the MEK that is buying their lip service and not vice versa. Perhaps they would rather line their pockets instead of asking where the money comes from. But the question does bear asking.

According to the Council on Foreign Relations , the approximate number of the MEK terrorist cult is estimated at a few thousand members, 3-4,000 of whom live in Camp Ashraf , Iraq . While the MEK residents of Camp Ashraf greatly benefit from American hospitality, including being chauffeured around by American soldiers , it is unlikely that they would be major contributors to their American supporters.

Who then, provides the funding for the solicitation of America ‘s political elite?

The MEK has long had the support of the United States and policy makers ( History Commons ), although recently, after the most recent assassination of yet another Iranian scientist, U.S. officials disclosed to NBC that the MEK terrorist group was “financed, trained and armed by Israel ‘s secret service. With American tax payers forking out billions of dollars a year to Israel , buying the services of American politicians by the MEK gives new meaning to the words money-laundering and prostitution.

Soraya Sepahpour-Ulrich has a Master’s degree in Public Diplomacy from USC Annenberg for Communication and Journalism and USC School of International Relations. She is an independent researcher and writer with a focus on U.S. foreign policy and the role of lobby groups in influencing US foreign policy.

Source: countercurrents

[CENTER][B][FONT="Georgia"][SIZE="5"]Foreign policy and war lovers[/SIZE][/FONT][/B][/CENTER]
April 3, 2012
By Kurt Jacobsen & Sayeed Hasan Khan

“MADNESS in individuals is something rare,” philosopher Friedrich Nietzsche noted, “but in groups, peoples, parties, ages it is the rule.”

Nietzsche, who himself went crazy from trying to look at life without illusions, had a point. Gaze at the deranged American scene today and it is starkly clear that what US elites most richly deserve as rewards for their recent activities is straitjackets.

American elites and not just the gibbering array of Republican presidential candidates demonstrate daily that they are as unmoored from common reality as the powdered wig French aristocracy before 1789.

Can sane human beings believe that this protracted and unnecessary recession can be remedied by picking the pockets of wage-earners through cuts in services, benefits and employment? Can one really solve the grotesque financial crimes that devastated western economies by rewarding Wall Street con artists such as Goldman Sachs with bailouts and appointing their minions to key government posts?

Can one truly improve democracy by encouraging billionaires to buy up the legislature? Can you create stability in the Middle East by turning a blind eye to Israeli behaviour and obsessively threaten military action against a non-existent Iranian nuclear weapons capacity? Is repeating the Iraq catastrophe in Iran really such a good idea for the victim or the perpetrator?

Are escalating oil and food prices — which commodity index speculators relentlessly stoke — a welcome sign of growth, as mainstream media lamely assert? Can you call anything growth that raises stock prices for the wealthy who overwhelmingly own stocks, but depresses wages, degrades jobs and cuts the purchasing power of average consumers? Is a foreign policy stance truly cautious that views every imaginary threat by an independent oil-producing nation as a compulsory reason for war? Can you protect cherished American civil liberties by stripping them all away, as is the case with Bush’s Patriot Act and the new National Defence Authorisation Act.

It no longer seems to matter to the powerful people even to pretend to care about what the hard-pressed majority wants — which according to polls is single-payer national healthcare, jobs programmes, a return to free or low-cost public education, a restoration of taxes on the rich, the break-up and regulation of too-big-too-fail financial behemoths, and a sensible foreign policy.

The political game has been intricately rigged over many decades to produce outcomes the lofty one per cent desire. Indeed, virtually all the fruits of hard work (93 per cent of increased productivity) in the US flow into the pockets of the top one per cent — just like in a banana republic. Americans work harder and longer not to improve their own lives but to plump up the assets of
the super-wealthy. Don’t you have to be crazy not to see it?

The answer is ‘no’ if you own or work for American banks, Wall Street firms, arms industries, energy giants, insurance companies or the burgeoning homeland security racket who all benefit mightily from these short-term profit-boosting policies.

Short-term thinking is perfectly rational for the single-minded looters, but ultimately it is a flawed pursuit in a world full of other ‘players’ who are harmed and will react.

The answer also is ‘no’ if you are an ordinary American Tea Party fan — on the wane — believing in the outpour of neoliberal ‘free-market’ pieties and the anti-terrorist propaganda choking the air waves.

It wasn’t always this way in the US. President Lyndon Johnson in the mid-1960s stated the credo that Americans embraced since the Second World War: “This nation is mighty enough, its society healthy enough, to pursue our goals in the rest of the
world while still building a great society here at home.” During those war years US (mostly white) workers’ living standards rose 50 per cent, and industry profits, despite tough controls and steep taxation, shot up far faster.

The American middle class, and a regulated consumer society, was born in spite of industrial and financial tycoons who naturally launched a vast propaganda campaign after the war to grab all the credit for prosperity. Cold War arms spending kept
the economy rolling.

In the 1960s, poverty fell a bit but was not wiped out as President Johnson intended, because an expanding Vietnam War began hoovering up every spare federal cent. The Vietnam War did not bring as much prosperity. High-tech weapons require less
labour. Johnson had not made the right choice. Yet nothing seemed more apparent to US citizens than that elites, who detest welfare, are all too delighted to channel tax dollars to glut corporate coffers. So wars, until lately, augured full employment.

And for tycoons war still entails government-guaranteed profits, which is why there is such a belligerent foreign policy.

For higher circles, and those who aspire to join them, international relations is a theatrical game in which the players can prosper even when losing the match. The late John Kenneth Galbraith commented in the 1990s on the “recreational character of American foreign policy” for out-of-touch elites.

Choices between pursuing prosperity at home and grandiose goals abroad were made and they came out in favour of the former. Federal aid to cities, universities, and welfare uses fell, as did taxes on the rich.

No one has yet been indicted for Wall Street’s crimes, nor any Bush administration member prosecuted for the multitude of deceits that led to the Iraq invasion, while one Occupy Wall Street protester spent three weeks in jail just for scribbling on the
sidewalk.

The public is wising up. Two-thirds of Americans according to the Pew Research Centre recognise today that there is an outright conflict between the rich and poor. Obama has done nothing yet to show he is on the side of the so-called 99 per cent. This
spring the Occupy Wall Street movement promises to be very lively and interesting indeed.

The writers authored Parables of Permanent War.
-Dawn

[CENTER][B][FONT="Georgia"][SIZE="5"]Disconnect between US strategy and reality[/SIZE][/FONT][/B][/CENTER]
April 3, 2012
Dr Maleeha Lodhi

A series of recent developments have renewed doubts about America’s Afghan strategy even though the US officials insist their plans are “on track” and the strategy warrants no change. These statements mask the growing disconnect between Afghan realities and Nato’s transition deadline of 2014, when all foreign combat troops are to leave the country.

There is rising concern across the region that the situation in Afghanistan is in danger of spinning out of everyone’s control. Two key planks of the US strategy aimed at securing an orderly transition are clouded in uncertainty: partnering with Afghan forces as they assume charge of security and persuading the Taliban to join a peace process. This calls into question the viability of the present exit plan.

To avoid an unravelling, Washington needs to review its approach and revise its strategy by aligning its military mission to the stated goal of finding a political resolution of the war. This means transitioning from a fight-talk strategy to a talk-talk one.

Last month’s violent backlash in Afghanistan following the burning of copies of the Holy Quran by US servicemen and the massacre of 16 Afghan civilians by an American soldier has been a telling indicator of growing public resentment against foreign occupation. Rising incidents of Afghan soldiers turning their guns on Nato personnel signalled how deep that resentment is.

Far from being isolated, these incidents reflect intensifying animosity between Western and Afghan forces. According to figures released in February by the Pentagon 80 Western servicemen have been killed by Afghan soldiers since 2007, mostly in the past two years. “The longer we stay”, admitted on American official to me, “the greater the risk of such incidents”. Intensifying public anger has already urged President Karzai to demand that Nato forces immediately leave Afghan villages.

On the heels of these incidents came the Taliban’s withdrawal from talks with American interlocutors. Although US officials see the suspension as a negotiating tactic rather than abandonment of talks, the blow to the nascent peace dialogue came at a delicate juncture in the approaching endgame.

Washington’s mounting regional difficulties are of course not limited to Afghanistan. Relations with Pakistan have yet to normalise. With the Nato supply route closed for the past four months and parliament taking its time over defining the new terms of engagement, America’s regional strategy is in flux.

The prolonged diplomatic impasse with Pakistan and the setbacks in Afghanistan have already led to a scaling back of US expectations from the Nato summit. Scheduled for May 20-21 in Chicago, the summit had been cast by US officials as a landmark event that would unveil a comprehensive plan to achieve the 2014 transition, as well as announce the start of a formal Afghan peace process. Now more modest aims are being set for the conference. Announcement of peace talks and formal opening of a Taliban office in Qatar are likely to again be postponed.

Although there are other reasons too behind an informal American offer to Pakistan to participate in the Chicago summit this is also being proposed as an “incentive” for Islamabad to expeditiously reopen the ground lines of communication (or GLOCs). The top US military officer General Martin Dempsey said recently that the restoration of GLOCs was being “urgently” sought before May. This was necessary, he explained, not just to ensure military supplies for the spring fighting season, but the departure of equipment from Afghanistan when the drawdown gets underway. In the next 18 months thousands of Nato forces will pull out including 22,000 “surge” forces this September; removal of military hardware will accompany this.

For Obama a summit that lays out a credible plan to ‘responsibly’ wind down the war is especially important in an election year. This will be his last big international event before the election campaign takes over. He might also announce an accelerated withdrawal. While the US military commanders would disapprove, his public would welcome this.

Recent setbacks have already shifted American public opinion decisively against the war. The latest New York Times/CBS poll found that 69 percent of the Americans did not support the war, reinforcing other poll findings that show majorities want the US troops out of Afghanistan as soon as possible.

Meanwhile with the Chicago summit approaching, American efforts have intensified to conclude a strategic partnership agreement with Kabul. This would allow the US a longer-term military presence after 2014, including access to Afghan bases. News reports suggest frenetic attempts to reach an agreement before May.

Given the Taliban’s opposition to the presence of any foreign forces, the agreement is seen by American officials as another way to press them to resume talks and regain the diplomatic leverage they have steadily lost as the situation in Afghanistan has deteriorated. Whether this agreement can be a negotiating lever and not a deal-breaker with the Taliban is yet to be determined.

Such an agreement is certain to erode the already fraying regional consensus. All of Afghanistan’s neighbours and key regional powers oppose an undefined, indefinite US military presence, irrespective of its size or configuration. Even Kabul has now sought answers from Washington on bases and the nature of the residual force.

As for the stalled peace talks, the Taliban have kept the door open for future negotiations. Their resumption however will require the Obama Administration to expend greater political capital than it has been prepared to do. The tardiness of its opening diplomatic move has much to do with Washington’s concern with the political fallout of talking to those it has been fighting for ten years. But it is also characteristic of President Obama’s modus operandi – a reluctance to remain consistently engaged and put his weight behind his own policy.

The Taliban have insisted on the transfer of five prisoners from Guantanamo Bay to Qatar before the start of formal negotiations. Unwilling to use political capital to overcome Congressional opposition, the Obama Administration has procrastinated and insisted that the Taliban agree to a number of ‘confidence-building measures’ including joining a political process with “other Afghans” (i e the Karzai government).

Taliban representatives have thus far rejected what they describe as new conditions, citing these and Washington’s “inexplicable delay” on the prisoners’ transfer as the reason for last month’s halt to the talks. Taliban spokesman also cited vitiation of the atmosphere by a string of “brutal actions” as another reason to break off talks.

Unless the US is prepared to focus more energy and political capital on the diplomatic process and set realistic terms it will be difficult to swiftly put talks back on track. Washington may calculate this is at present politically costly and prefer to wait until after the presidential elections. But delay and making peace negotiations hostage to the election calendar will imperil the 2014 transition because that rests principally on progress towards a negotiated settlement. The closer the 2014 timeline draws without diplomatic headway the less the Taliban’s incentive to negotiate.

The question that Washington has yet to squarely address – which has far reaching regional implications – is whether it simply wants to head for the exits with an ‘appropriate’ face saver or genuinely search for a peace settlement, and be ready to make strategy adjustments and compromises to achieve this.

If the latter, then more important than assembling a showpiece Nato summit are the changes Washington makes to its strategy. This means directing efforts to secure the mutual de-escalation of violence and negotiating regional ceasefires to wind down the fighting. More fighting will not just delay but compromise chances of a peaceful end to the war. A strategic pause in the fighting will create conditions for meaningful negotiations and accelerate the peace process. This can start with an end to night raids in return for the Taliban ceasing its campaign of assassinations.

The Obama Administration says there is no military solution in Afghanistan. The time to turn these words into strategy is now. This will align the US objectives with those of the region, as well as make the reset with Pakistan easier and perhaps more lasting.
-The News

[CENTER][B][FONT="Georgia"][SIZE="5"]Mitt Romney cannot Defeat President Obama[/SIZE][/FONT][/B][/CENTER]
April 8, 2012
By Saeed Qureshi
Exclusive Article

Predictably, the Republican presidential contender, Mitt Romney cannot defeat the incumbent president Barack Obama in the forthcoming November elections. The foremost reason for this projection is that the Christians of all denominations most notably the orthodox and ultra right conservatives would not want a Mormon otherwise deemed heretic, to preside over the United States. The Mormon faith too is fragmented into various sub sects, and there are Mormon denominations that might also oppose Romney.

Notwithstanding the constitutional caveat granting religious freedom to all brands of religions and sects and banning bigotry; the ground realties markedly present a different scenario. The United States is essentially a Christian state where the majority of the population professes and practices Christian faith. As such, from G.W, Bush era onwards, thousands of new churches and Cathedrals have been built. On Sundays the churches and monasteries remain full of attendees who generously give away donations and charities.

Granting that the common Christian faithful may not know nor would care about the religious background and inclination of Mitt Romney, yet the powerful conservative Christian groups and Roman Catholic sections and even individuals including priests, cardinals, and pastors would resist and oppose the advent of a Mormon to lord over the Christian population. This sentiment or bias may not be manifest daringly, yet one can imagine it is happening in the wake of the vigorous resurgence of Christianity in the United States.
Mitt Romney hailing from a strong and well entrenched political background is still a not a very well known or acknowledged politician in the Republican Party like Gingrich, or Ron Paul. The religious zeal and unflinching conservatism of another candidate Rick Santorum brought him initial victories in some primaries and unprecedented and fabulous financial support from the conservative wealthy republicans. He is almost neck and neck with Mitt Romney for Republican nomination.

Rick has lagged behind in the race for final selection because of his other disqualifications such as his amateurish views about overhauling the taxation regime, streamlining the foreign policy domain, winding up of wars, ensuring safety nuts such as Medicare, and similar issues with a far reaching broad based reform package. His being a conservative religious hawk turned out to be more of a liability than as asset for him.

Mitt Romney is depending and asserting his acumen and experience in economic management and corresponding economic reforms mostly riveted on tax reform and budget making. However, president Obama has already established his ability and competence to stem the voluminous economic rot and stimulating the debt-ridden economy that, in fact was, a spillover from his predecessor.

Despite its flaws, his healthcare reform plan has been like a divine blessing for the countless common and ordinary Americans who could not pay for their medical bills either due to poverty or the refusal of the health insurance companies to pay beyond a certain limit. President Barack Obama is the recipient of the 2009 Nobel peace prize a rare honor, bestowed on him besides only on three other American presidents.

In his tenure which is to end by January 2013, president Obama has several meritorious achievements that are certainly laudable keeping in view his little or no experience in governance. He has been able to achieve many milestones of accomplishments despite a bias againt him of being a non-white president and also being young. He has been thoroughly above personal rancor and kept his political stature beyond aspersions or involvement in blame game.
He signed economic stimulus package in the form of the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act of 2009 for stimulating that certainly jacked up the stagnant and the ailing American economy. The Tax Relief, Unemployment Insurance Reauthorization, and Job Creation Act of 2010 are other landmark reforms that were also helpful in boosting the flagging economic sector of the United States.

Beside, a host of such laws and acts were passed and promulgated that were really like injecting a new life blood into the veins of the mauled socio-economic structure of the United States. These watershed initiatives include the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act, the Dodd–Frank Wall Street Reform and Consumer Protection Act, “Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell Repeal Act of 2010” and the Budget Control Act of 2011.

On the external fronts he wound up the war in Iraq, as well as a scheduled drawing down of American troops from Afghanistan by 2014.His administration singed the New START arms control treaty with Russia and rescued Libya from the despotic regime of Col Qaddafi . His administration’s hunting down Osama bin Laden and killing him in May 2011 is no mean achievement from the
American national security perspective.

He does not brag, is down to earth, does not vindictively retaliate, talks about issues, and is an intellectual and a visionary. He is one of the highly educated presidents of the United State. Obama has not faltered nor purposely did anything as to invite pointing fingers at him.

Obama’s role as the president of the United State has been markedly successful, smooth, plausible and not as thorny and whims-driven as that of his predecessor GW Bush: the architect of the ruination of American robust economy and slandering this great country’s fair reputation by launching unprovoked attack on Afghanistan and Iraq. President Obama has been mostly busy in righting the colossal wrongs wrought by his unscrupulous predecessor.
Mitt Romney is also a pleasant looking, jolly good person but he does not stand as tall with Obama in either intellectual caliber or in veritable achievements for the American people in such a short time despite the ground situation being so messy when he took over. While the American presidential elections are far for a few months, the gossips are reverberating that Romney is banking upon the support of the chairman of the House Budget Committee Representative Paul D. Ryan who prepared the Republican House budget. Merely to claim that he was successful businessman and would straighten the American economy is a puerile argument to win the popular vote.

Romney’s budget that dwells upon the deep cuts in cherished social programs to a Medicare overhaul, could drive up costs for future retirees and fundamentally change the popular health plan. Moreover, it would “cut taxes sharply for the wealthy; gut public education, medical research, and other government programs; and increase the burden on the elderly to pay for their own health care”.

This budget is neither realistic nor its overall tenor is in the public interests. Obama’s reforms to refurbish American dwindling economy far exceed the Ryan’s budget reform in their positive impact with regards to improvement of economy, creation of jobs and providing relief to the downtrodden in the society. Already the job situation is improving and less and less people are claiming unemployment allowances.

The American people are very conscientious who would weigh the pros and cons of both the sides and vote for the better one. They would not prefer to choose an unpredictable head of state who looks raw and offers an agenda with half baked recipes, that that may not come up to the expectations of the suffering sections of the American society. Obama’s achievements outweigh his drawback and pitfalls if any, and therefore, he should be the strong candidate to return to the American presidency for the second term.

The writer is a senior journalist and a former diplomat. He is also a regular contributor to pkarticleshub.com

[CENTER][B][FONT="Georgia"][SIZE="5"]US battle to revive manufacturing[/SIZE][/FONT][/B][/CENTER]
April 14, 2012
Bruce Stokes

In his January 2012 State of the Union address, US President Barack Obama mentioned the word “manufacturing” eight times.

In what was effectively the kickoff of his 2012 presidential reelection campaign, Obama told likely voters worried about the fate of the economy that: “we have a huge opportunity, at this moment, to bring manufacturing back.” His words were music to the ears of a US public eager to return to a not-so distant past when manufacturing jobs provided an income that enabled the average American industrial worker to live a middle-class lifestyle, the ability to save to buy a home and pay for a child’s college education, and money and time to play golf or go fishing.

The loss of that manufacturing-supported standard of living weighs on Americans. A 2011 survey for the Alliance for American Manufacturing found that 79 per cent of likely 2012 voters said that the United States had lost too many manufacturing jobs.

So the president’s newfound interest in manufacturing – he had mentioned the word only once during his three previous State of the Union addresses – was in touch with voter sentiments. And it seems in touch with reality.

The country appears on the cusp of a manufacturing renaissance.

But the underlying reality of manufacturing’s comeback, the role it can play in America’s economic recovery and whether all this can help reelect the president in the fall is less certain. Manufacturing faces severe challenges, as outlined by a recent McKinsey report: technological change that creates new jobs but destroys existing ones, a widening gap between the skills that employers seek and the skills that employees possess, and a geographic mismatch between where the jobs are and where the workforce exists.

The US economy grew 3 per cent, after adjustment for inflation, in the fourth quarter of 2011 compared with the preceding quarter, the latest available data from the US Bureau of Economic Analysis. It signaled an acceleration of the US recovery from the Great Recession triggered by the 2008 financial crisis.

Industry has been a major driver of that growth. Its contribution to growth in 2010 was nearly twice that of the services sector. Manufacturing currently accounts for 11 per cent of America’s GDP – it was 25 per cent in 1947 and has been declining slowly since then, with a precipitate fall off beginning in the late 1990s.

The United States is the world’s mightiest manufacturing economy, producing 21 per cent of all goods made globally. China is second at 15 per cent.

Manufacturers are a major source of innovation, accounting for more than two-thirds of all research and development conducted in the United States. And manufacturing workers have higher pay and more generous benefits – about a fifth higher – than Americans holding non-manufacturing jobs.

Manufacturing remains critical to America’s success in the world marketplace. Exports of goods account for three-fifths of all US sales abroad. President Obama has promised to double US exports by 2014. And the only way to reach that ambitious target is to increase manufactured exports. That requires a stronger industrial sector.

Manufacturing employment is also on the rise. Some analysts contend that revival is just around the corner. A 2011 report by the Boston Consulting Group concluded that by 2015 manufacturing in some parts of the United States will be as economical as producing in China, ushering in a new era for American manufacturing.

The manufacturing revival going on in the United States, perhaps into the future, should not be equated with a revival in the American standard of living. There may be more manufacturing, but workers take home smaller pay packages than a decade earlier. Even then, the manufacturing rebound is happening in a small number of states.

However, manufacturing wages are growing slower than average weekly wages in seven of the 10 key states come November. So, manufacturing workers are losing ground in terms of their standard of living relative to that of their neighbours.

This harsh reality may explain why the recent increase in US manufacturing jobs and Obama’s newfound interest in promoting such resurgence may not benefit him in the fall US election. This reality may also help explain why the most recent public opinion polls show that, in head-to-head competition, Obama is ahead of Mitt Romney by more than the margin of error in only three of the 10 swing states.

So the US economy is recovering, and manufacturing is leading the way. But more jobs and growth will not necessarily translate into a rebound in the American standard of living. Thus despite the resurgence of manufacturing and the revival of US exports that Obama made the centerpiece of his economic strategy, he may still face a tight race for reelection.
Bruce Stokes is a transatlantic fellow at the German Marshall Fund of the United States.

© 2012 Yale Center for the Study of Globalisation

[CENTER][B][FONT="Georgia"][SIZE="5"]Global Peace and Wars: America at War with itself[/SIZE][/FONT][/B][/CENTER]
April 16, 2012
Mahboob A. Khawaja, PhD
Exclusive Article


[I]Built on lies and political deception, the on-going wars were suppose to create a new culture of FEAR amongst the American and European common masses, enabling the ruling elite to sustain their grip over the powerhouses for long time to come as did the Nazis, a war of thousand years to dominate the world. Instead, it has backed fire; the leaders are fearful day and night from the masses and unable to cope with the challenging public concerns on the war causalities or to answer rational questions about the outcome of these self-generated conflicts. Ironically, the American and British leaders are fighting wars they cannot win, nor afford to lose in the public eyes.

“Truth has to be repeated constantly, because Error also is being preached all the time, and not just by a few, but by the multitude. In the Press and Encyclopaedias, in Schools and Universities, everywhere Error holds sway, feeling happy and comfortable in the knowledge of having Majority on its side.” Goethe
[/I]
Wars and aggressions kill people and do not produce peace and harmony but resentment and degeneration. History illustrates when a nation or the leaders challenge the limits of the Laws of God and approach near the end of their lifespan, insanity takes-over common sense and they tend to ignore warnings and reject all voices of reason. Most of the conscientiously responsible Western scholars and political intellectuals are getting increasingly concerned, not to identify their interests with the minority ruling elite of the United States and Britain and other hired private mercenaries and the prospects of the indictment of the ‘war crimes against humanity’ charging George Bush, Cheney, Rumsfeld and Blair and their role in large scale massacres of the civilians and using uranium powered weapons for destruction of human habitats in Iraq, Afghanistan and Pakistan.

C.E.M. Joad (Guide to Modern Wickedness), enlists divergent facets of evil thinking and minds that governed the Europeans to kill each other during and preceding the two World Wars. After prolonged history of barbarity, Europeans seem to be thinking rationally and soul searching for fighting against themselves and are at relative peace within the corridors of the EU. Whereas, some of the American political strategists are making headways for “Perpetual War and Perpetual Peace” to manifest the ambitious imperialism in another major global conflict to wipe out the whole of the humanity. The Western nations under NATO waging the bogus “War on Terrorism” use the mass media as a weapon to misinform and deceive the public of a possible threat to their life and security. The corporate run news media shield the leadership animosity to perpetuate wars for economic and political goals. NATO re-invented a new role to be an active belligerent institution in Afghanistan after its failed history to engage the former USSR on any real front of the major ideological conflicts. Bush and now President Obama claim they were invited to Afghanistan. Lies know no bound in contemporary political wickedness. There exists a wide gulf between the aspirations of the masses in the Western nations and thinking of the type of leaders they have in the ruling elite. People want peace and do not support the war mongering of the few against other human beings in the Muslim world.

Professor John Esposito (Georgetown University, and author of Unholy War and What Everyone Needs to Know about Islam), makes a candid observation:

“in many parts of the Muslim world the war against global terrorism has come to be viewed as a war against Islam and Muslims. The image of America has become that of a neo-imperial power that has sought to redraw the map of the Middle East and the Muslim world, influenced by an unholy alliance of neoconservatives and the militant Christian right.”

The recent wars have gone terribly wrong and the end is fast approaching, sheer madness in thinking and strategic decision making to create new Mi Lia of Vietnam particularly in Iraq and Afghanistan. Near their defeat, the Nazis resorted to mass killings across Europe, and so did the Soviet Union prior to defeat and surrender to the Mujahideen in Afghanistan. Daily massacres of the innocent civilians throughout Iraq and Afghanistan and the stage drama could rest on any given conclusive note to the pages of history. Katrina was the first installment in a series of warnings to come for those leaders who could listen and learn from the history. Not so, to the neo-conservative dominated US administration that failed to achieve its objectives in conquering Iraq and Afghanistan, just to ensure smooth oil supplies and global military and economic supremacy. The global community appeared optimistic after reading the “Audacity of Hope” that President Obama will emerge as a new leader undoing the Bush led extreme militancy and warmongering across the globe and will initiate global peace and harmony and bridge the broken relationships with the important Muslim world. The intensity of the Bush era led bogus wars in Iraq, Afghanistan and Pakistan signal a different action agenda than peace making. President Obama continues to be acting as warmonger rather than a peace maker.

Immanuel Kant, the 18th century German philosopher had envisioned “Perpetual Peace”, the doctrine that gave war riddled Europeans much needed hope and optimism for peace making and conflict management. Once again, humanity appears to have been pushed back to the shameful annals of the European Dark Ages. In search of new animosity, few utopian scholars wanted to distract the humanity after the end of the Cold War to keep the liberal democracy working and ensure electoral voters active participation. In early 90’s, Samuel Huntington reinvented and re-ignited the old cliché – “a clash of civilizations” between the West and Islam – a new age of confrontation between the predominantly technologically advanced culture of the West and the subdued interdependent societal religious culture of the Muslim world. The powerful mass media and the official policy makers throughout the West, fuel the insane imagery that the Arabs and Muslims are “fundamentalists” and “terrorists.”

After the collapse of the ideological wars between the Communism and the Capitalism, the world political arena was free and conveniently available for a new ideology of “a clash of civilizations” to seal the closing chapters of the Cold War. Huntington was courageous and frank to admit “we need ennobling animosity” to survive and shield the decaying human culture of the Western civilization. Most Western leaders politically aligned with the ruling elite, would refute that “a clash of civilizations” is the underpinning framework of the official policy and the “War on Terrorism”, denying the premise of unilateral wars against Iraq, Afghanistan and onward to Pakistan. The mass media would elude ‘smart bomb’ theory hitting the terrorist targets but in reality, more than 3 million Iraqi civilians have reportedly been killed by the US led forces in Iraq since the invasion in March 2003. Deceptive claim as it is that there was a war between the US and Iraq. It was a media entertainment soap opera and above all, a unilateral act of aggression against a fellow UN member state, forbidden under the UN Charter. According to Kofi Annan, the UN General Secretary, it is an “illegal war” to occupy Iraq. French and German leaders resented and resisted politically and morally, but could not dare to challenge the US and Britain through any means of military force to stop the futuristic bloodbath in a country that had no quarrel nor posed any threat to the US or Britain. When facts are ridiculed, ignorant advisors construct dogmas to boast the defeated psyche of the leaders. That is where the former President Bush and British PM Tony Blair found their respective standing. History points out countless wicked people and nations that had transgressed the limits of the Laws of the God, and never acknowledged if there was anything wrong with their THINKING and BEHAVIOR until they experienced the consequential end and their destruction. The Al-Qura’an reveals that Pharaoh claimed, “handful of people have annoyed us, whereas, we are the most powerful people on guard to defend our values.” Moses and the followers crossed safely the Red Sea but God punished Pharaoh and his armies as they vanished in the Red Sea. Does it explain well as a role model, how the egoistic tyrants and transgressors meet their end in this world?

The image of a single most World Power is fixed and unquestionable, be it fair or foul. The net outcome shows the manufactured imagery of Muslims as the alleged terrorists and the sole inheritor of the 21st century political ideology. With massive corporate sponsorships and the Western mass media collaborative alliances, Islamic civilization is the only targeted client of this emerging business. What about the Arabs and Muslims, have they done anything to challenge the absurdity of the so called “war on terrorism” and to safeguard their political interests and human survivability? Even the most educated ones are indifferent and fearful of the prevalent authoritarian rule in their lands and the dictates of the Western masters to survive. With full awareness of the problem, they live in division, discard and helplessness.

There are no Muslim institutions to provide honest analyses or reflect on the possible remedies. Throughout the Arab-Muslim world, there is not a single established university teaching global peace, security and conflict management – the institutions dealing with the present and envisioning the future that the Western nations are built upon for change and development. Leaderless Muslim masses appear desperate to look for a visionary and intelligent leader to offer some consolence and intellectual security. Not so, in the Arabs or Muslim countries, leaders live in palaces, not with people. All the leaders are pre-screened by the CIA and the World Bank before taking a shape and form to move into a palace. The author of Muslim under Siege clarifies that leaders in Muslim countries are pre-screened and chosen by the West. Everywhere neo-colonial rulers operate the infrastructures and maintain the natural resources across the Muslim world but there are no leaders to organize and unite the Muslim as Ummah-one people, one nation intellectually and politically powerful enough to defend it against the odds.

The neo-colonial rulers have helped the Colonial Masters to make the Muslim masses helpless victim of their warmongering and inhuman atrocities being carried out at Gutanamo Bay, Abu Ghraib Prison, and Massacre at Fullajah, Haditah, Bughdad, Kandhar, South-North Waziristan and elsewhere. The ruling elite would not allow their national press to discuss such sensitive topics. There is no Sultan Salahuddin Ayoubi that the European would fear for centuries to come, there are no Sultan Babyar and Sheikh Izzuddin to give blowing defeats to Halaqu Khan – the Mongol warlord, and no Allama Iqbal or Ali Shariati to awake the sleeping folks and guide the believers to success.

Built on lies and political deception, the on-going wars were suppose to create a new culture of FEAR amongst the American and European common masses, enabling the ruling elite to sustain their grip over the powerhouses for long time to come as did the Nazis, a war of thousand years to dominate the world. Instead, it has backed fire; the leaders are fearful day and night from the masses and unable to cope with the challenging public concerns on the war causalities or to answer rational questions about the outcome of these self-generated conflicts. Ironically, the American and British leaders are fighting wars they cannot win, nor afford to lose in the public eyes. Majority of the well informed masses do not seem to support the wars in Iraq, Afghanistan and Pakistan. Ugly as the outcome of the wars become, the furious will be the media propaganda embodying new strategies to cover up the entrenched leaders. Increasing disclosures of American and British military massacres of the Iraqi civilians, the home-based authorities will forge illegal arrests of young Muslims in North America and Western Europe, alleging connection with non-existing or dead Al-Qaeda group. More and more planned allegations will make news media headlines about the alleged “Terrorist Plan”, purchase of fertilizer commodity and “bomb-making” and what not. The intelligent ones in Washington and London draw the script to enhance economic and political market data. The strategic games are well known, create more problems to dilute and overshadow the massacres of civilians in Iraq, Afghanistan and Pakistan and distract people’s attention from the known acts of crime against the humanity. War is business and political deception is known and tolerable trait of the new global image-making trade.

If there were educated and intelligent leaders in the Muslim world, one could reason the unreason. But the oil exporting Arab leaders operate from a position of political weakness, not strength to play any useful role in international politics. They have built palaces over moving sand, not institutions to educate and protect the interest of the Muslim Ummah. Imagine the dichotomy of the living history, the Christian Crusaders came, ransacked and killed 170, 000 Muslims just in one day to occupy Jerusalem. Despite assurances of peace and religious sanctity, the Crusaders moved horses in blood-flown streets to capture Jerusalem. When Sultan Salahuddin Ayoubi reconquered Jerusalem, the visionary leader allowed and escorted all the Christian Crusaders to safety with human dignity, honor and material wealth. History shall describe a corporate world run by greed and animalistic savagery, preoccupied to influence and control the destinies of the living human beings under the guise of economic feasibility and market interests.

To enforce power of reason and ask for accountability of the few Western Warlords, the humanity has reason to be concerned with, well organized and united to oppose the unilateral barbarity of the wars in Iraq, Afghanistan and Pakistan. This underlines an URGENT NEED for global morality and political accountability in world affairs. The solution cannot come from those who are parts of the problem but only from a civilized people under morally and politically responsible leadership who will know what peace means, and have no colonial history and are readily acceptable as genuinely civilized representatives of the humanity. Immanuel Kant (“Perpetual Peace”), must have sensed the threat to international peace and the nature of destructive wars – “standing armies shall in time be totally abolished.”

Zbigniew Brzezinski (The Grand Chessboard, 1997), former Security Advisor to President Carter, makes an historical reference: “American primacy and its geostrategic imperatives describe American priorities as the economic subjugation of the Soviet Union and the control of Central Asia and the Middle East.” With the continued wars of aggressions in Iraq, Afghanistan and Pakistan, the international institutions overwhelmingly controlled and managed by the Western Powers have become irrelevant to the 21st century needs of the global humanity. The UN and its Security Council are dormant bodies striving for their own functional survival and have abandoned their Chartered–based obligations to protect the humanity from the scourge of war and aggression. To undermine the UN functions, NATO has taken over the role of leading European-American operated institutions to protect the Western strategic and political interest outside its sphere of influence or legal mandate. Contravening its own charter and global undertakings, there is no effective UN organization except as a debating club, no International Red Cross as such, no UN Security Council, no competent Arab League, no other accountable global body to question or investigate why the occupying American and British armed forces are engaged in New Holocaust of the civilian population in Iraq, Afghanistan and Pakistan? The Western Crusade is solely aimed at killings of the Muslims and occupying their natural resources. Likewise, there are no Arab leaders or Muslim armies to offer sense of security to the besieged Arab population victims of the daily massacres in Iraq, Afghanistan and Palestine. Kofi Annan, the former UN Secretary General lacked courage to cross over the limits and question the US led war on Iraq and to “annoy” President Bush or PM Blair, it could have undermined his own candidacy as continued Secretary General of the UN failed body. He simply called the US-British aggression as an “illegal war”.

Across the Western world, masses vigorously oppose the on-going deadly wars in Iraq, Afghanistan and Pakistan. NATO, inadvertently, has assumed the role of fighting in Afghanistan. In wars people are killed, leaders are not. None of the Western leaders have ever fought a war on the real front. Simply put, there are politicians lacking reason and honesty of purpose, and are engaged in time killing discussions. In liberal democracies, leaders were supposed to be accountable to the will of the masses. Not so in the US or Britain, the places with strongest public opposition against the Wars on Terrorism. The leaders and the masses appear to be living in different time zones, not being able to cross-over the widening gaps to interact with one another as democratic rights and obligations would dictate within the working of the political system. Listening was meant to be political learning and reasoning, not any more even President Obama has continued according to Bob Woodward’s “Obama War.” The continued wars serve the interest of the corporate establishments and the Western economies. The image of deliberately dismantled system of global governance is meant to appease the economically influential and politically smart Western elite. Hitler and Mussolini were Europeans, not Arabs or Muslims, and they did not rule alone on their own, as there were millions to cheer them up and support their leadership egos with galvanized news media alignment of the time, and their personal ideologies as law and order of the day. At the initial stages of the 21st century, the replica is exactly the same from the pages of history, only the names and titles have been changed and adjusted – a small minority of ‘sick puppies’ are determined to occupy the oil and gas resources and to wipe out the Arabs and Islamic civilization under the guise of terrorism.

The authoritarian and oil-pumping Arab dictators cannot escape the accountability as they failed miserably to learn from the living history. God provided them ample opportunities to be the leaders of the mankind but they refuted the terms of reference- that was the Islam as a way of thinking and living. They discarded Islam and opted for transitory oil-based economic prosperity, planned, controlled and managed by the Western oil importing countries. This scheme of things had no human progress, values, importance or consideration for the Arab people, their culture, their faith or future. The Arabs remain where they were prior to the discovery of the oil resources – the people ingrained in “Jahalia”- age of ignorance. That is how their Western Masters view them and treat them. Now, the authoritarian rulers have come out in open to commit massacres of their own people – the truth that was covered with lies and deceptions by all the Arab rulers that they are the real enemies of Islam and Muslim people. The emerging conflicts in Syria, Yemen, Libya and massive killings of the civilian population across the Arab world are a prelude to ultimate economic, social and political breakdown and final collapse of the Arab regimes. It is happening fast in Egypt, Yemen, Libya, Syria and in other Arab countries soon to be at the mercy of the US-Britain- the ‘camel jockeys’ as the Western media describes them. The vital question is, was the oil discovery a “fitna” – conspiracy to destroy the Arab world or was a blessing in disguise for the few tribal lords to get entrapped in undoing the Arab world? Do the Arab ruling elite have answers to some of these rational questions?

Changing the names of Hitler and Mussolini, now historian and prosecutors responsible for conducting the war crimes will mention Bush, Cheney, Rumsfeld and Blair and many more. Britain knows what it lost, cannot regain in colonial history, but the American empire has yet to learn the hard lessons. It is more fearful that soon it could be replaced by China in combination of another economically viable power or group of nations from the emerging rival economies of Asia. Amazingly, under the stress of extreme fear and fatigue, America has lost sense of moral direction, values and the true spirit of its own history. Throughout the Two World Wars, the European madness knew its geography and national boundaries – Europeans enjoyed killing fellow Europeans. But under the American Empire, its dimensions are widely insane and global, exclusively aimed at to kill Arabs-Muslims and destroy the Islamic civilization. Professor John Esposito has summed up the History Lessons in a meaningful context:

“An important lesson of history is that rulers and nations do rise and fall. Unforeseen circumstances can bring up unanticipated change. Few expected the breakup of the Soviet Union and the liberation of Eastern Europe to occur when they did ……now is the time for those in all walks of life (political, economic, military, media and academic) who wish to see a new order not to be silenced but to speak out, organize, vote and be willing when necessary to make sacrifices in promoting a new global order.”

There is something terribly wrong with the strategic thinking and decision making process of the Western leaders. With all the technologically advanced firepower, they could not fight against handful of Talaban defending their country. None of the Western leaders have factual knowledge or experience for being on any war fronts. They manage to stage a puppet show to deceive and mislead their own people and the mankind for fighting a worthy cause when there was none. War is not synonymous for peace. Righteousness and wickedness cannot be combined in one mind and character. Foremost, it was an American led aggression against the people of Afghanistan as was the case in Iraq, and then the longest war continued to create new markets for the sale of obsolete US weapons to the oil exporting Arab nations. These wars will distract people to find solutions for the real problems of occupation of Palestine. It is their mindset that requires diagnostic treatment as the ordinary folks across the US and Europe have no interest in killing other people and would prefer to co-exist in peace and harmony with the Muslim people. On the blatant dishonesty to peace and human freedom and opinionated viciousness of the 20th century politicians, Robert Briffault (The Making of Humanity, Cambridge University), an earlier 20th century scholar offered the following rational observation:

“The men who have most injured and oppressed humanity, who have most deeply sinned against it, were according to their standards and their conscience, good men; what was bad in them, what wrought moral evil and cruelty, treason to truth and progress, was not at all their intentions, in their purpose, in their personal character, but in their opinions.”

(Dr. Mahboob A. Khawaja specializes in global security, peace and conflict resolution and comparative Western-Islamic cultures and civilizations, and author of several publications including the latest one: Arabia at Crossroads: Arab People Strive for Freedom, Peace and New Leadership. VDM Publishers, Germany, September 2011. Comments are welcome at: [email]kmahboob@yahoo.com[/email])

The article is contributed to pkarticleshub.com

[CENTER][B][FONT="Georgia"][SIZE="5"]US can’t abandon the Mideast[/SIZE][/FONT][/B][/CENTER]
April 21, 2012
By Hassan Bin Talal

Early this year, the Pentagon’s strategic review signalled a shift in priorities for US foreign policy, suggesting that more attention would be paid to the Asia-Pacific region. Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton spoke of this as a “pivot” towards Asia, signalling what for many analysts and ordinary Americans has been a long-overdue transition away from Iraq, Afghanistan and the Middle East in general.

But there’s a problem with that. The act of pivoting involves turning your back, and the United States should not turn its back on the Middle East.

Of course it makes sense for the US to pay more attention to the Asia-Pacific region, which will be both a leader in economic growth and a security challenge during the 21st century. It is not just the United States that understands this. In Jordan, we are also directing more of our attention eastwards, which makes sense because we, along with much of the Middle East, are located in West Asia. Economic, political and military centres of gravity are clearly changing.

Still, America does have a duty to this region and to the Arab world in general. The euphoria generated by the “Arab awakening” cannot hide the fact that the Middle East is as much of a mess as it ever was. In 2009, President Obama spoke in Cairo of how “while America in the past has focused on oil and gas in this part of the world, we now seek a broader engagement.” Such engagement, which we all hope for, cannot be sustained by pivoting.

American military disengagement from Iraq and Afghanistan is welcomed within the Arab world. But other types of US engagement are still needed. The desire by many Middle Eastern countries for greater self-determination is also qualified by an obvious question: After a decade of war and continued stalemate in the peace process, will America abandon this region and leave it to pick up the pieces?

A sense of mission fatigue in Washington has meant that the lessons of history are being overlooked. Until there is peace between Israel and Palestine, this area of the world will continue to dominate the desks and the resolutions of the United Nations Security Council. There are currently four central powers in the Middle East: Israel, Iran, Turkey and the US. Not one of those powers is Arab. Any substantive pulling back by America is likely to create a power vacuum. In a region where intermediaries are important, this will have consequences. For instance, there is no security forum in the Middle East in which Iran and Saudi Arabia sit at the same table.

Beyond the question of Iran, there is growing potential for the movement of nuclear fissile material, including weaponisation technology, and biological agents, across the Middle East and North Africa. The Nuclear Threat Initiative, of which I am a board member, has concluded that 32 countries possess 1 kilogram or more of weapons-usable nuclear material. If that material ends up being illicitly moved anywhere, it is likely to end up here. West Asia and North Africa has long been a laboratory for every kind of weapon.

Recent upheavals have made borders far more porous: We have seen this in Syria, in Sinai and across the Sahel region, where a huge cache of weapons systems have crossed the border from Libya. The Middle East has the largest number of stateless and internally displaced peoples in the world, and recent upheavals have caused these numbers to surge.

The UN estimates that well over 1 million people fled Libya to border countries such as Tunisia, Egypt, Algeria, Niger and Chad. Archipelagoes of the dispossessed exist throughout the region. Locking down weapons-usable material and the weapons-based underground economy has never been more difficult. The potential for nuclear terrorism within the region has never been greater.

The United States would not be wise to pivot too far or too fast. There is too much that has been left undone. America can help in three ways. First by focusing on the resourcefulness of the people of this region rather than the resources of their governments. The Middle East is the most militarised region of the world, yet nowhere else is insecurity such a physical and psychological fact of life. Programmes that support start-up culture, creative enterprises and local good governance, or which provide training opportunities and micro-loans, actively combat anti-Western propaganda, promote social cohesion and propagate “human security”. People with hopes and opportunities do not become terrorists.

The second thing America can do is foster better relations between states within the region. The frameworks that connect West Asia and North Africa are ad hoc and personalised to an excessive degree. A lack of regional institutions means that when tensions rise, there is no release valve, and conflict is made all the more likely.

At present no body exists to coordinate water and energy policy between countries, despite the fact these resources are shared, take no account of national boundaries and are quickly depleting. There is no Council for Security and Cooperation in the region.

Thirdly and finally, America can renew its legacy in the Middle East, and its image in the world, by bringing about a firm, just and equitable settlement to the peace process.

The move to project American leadership in the Asia-Pacific region through economic growth, regional security and enduring values, in the words of Hillary Clinton, is broadly based on the three elements of the 1975 Helsinki Act: security, economic and technical cooperation, and human rights. Taken together, they form the foundation of a promising new blueprint for relations not just with the Asia-Pacific region but with West Asia too.

A member of Jordan’s royal family Hassan Bin Talal is a board member of the Nuclear Threat Initiative and founder of the West Asia-North Africa Forum.
Courtesy: Los Angeles Times

[CENTER][B][FONT="Georgia"][SIZE="5"]Bridging Sino-US gap[/SIZE][/FONT][/B][/CENTER]
April 23, 2012
Stapleton Roy

If President Obama is reelected this fall, his relationship with Xi Jinping will be a key factor in how relations between China and the United States develop. Unless China and the United States can find ways to block the current drift toward strategic rivalry, tensions will rise. This will make it more difficult to preserve the climate of peace and prosperity that has made East Asia such a dramatic success story.

The next decade is likely to be a decisive period determining the future course of US-China relations. If China’s economy continues to surge ahead while the United States struggles to bring its burgeoning budget deficit under control, the PRC could emerge from this coming decade with the largest GDP in the world. This will have both psychological and strategic significance and could roil the waters of the bilateral relationship.

Recent US attention to East Asia, and particularly to Southeast Asia, is part of a coherent US policy approach in East Asia that seeks not to contain China but to restore confidence in the region. The United States, despite its budget difficulties, is truly committed to maintaining a robust US presence in both northeast and Southeast Asia. Not surprisingly, this flurry of US activity is causing many Chinese to see the United States as challenging China in its own backyard. In reality, the situation is more complex.

China labours under a unique handicap in determining its regional foreign policy. It is the only country in the world that has so many contentious territorial disputes with bordering countries. China’s instinctive desire to use its growing strength to be more assertive in defending its territorial claims only brings it into confrontation with its neighbours, which plays into the hands of the United States. The net result is that for a time China struggled to find the right response to the Obama administration’s policy of rebalancing in East Asia.

Since last summer, China has moved toward an effective counter-strategy marked by a pattern of less assertive behaviour, high-level meetings with leaders in Southeast Asia, and agreements with some of the other claimants to disputed territory over managing tensions. It also reaffirmed Deng Xiaoping’s concept of “setting aside disputes and pursuing common development.” In short, China has adopted the Bismarkian strategy of seeking to persuade the countries around it who feel threatened by China’s rapid rise that their interests will be better served by cooperation with China than by coalescing against it. Nevertheless, the nationalistic pressures unleashed by China’s enhanced claim to global leadership have the potential to undermine the domestic base for Beijing’s current approach.

Nevertheless, Beijing’s diplomatic nimbleness means that the United States must constantly calibrate its approach to the region. In particular, the United States should be careful not to overplay its hand. China’s more assertive behavior following the 2008 financial crisis did indeed increase the desire of Beijing’s neighbors for the United States to remain engaged to play a balancing role. But now, the very countries in Southeast Asia that welcome renewed US attention to the region are worried that the United States may be going too far in provoking China by trumpeting US determination to pivot back into East Asia.

US credibility is also affected by the discrepancy between the more vigorous US posture in Asia against the backdrop of an underperforming US economy and a political system that seems incapable of addressing domestic problems effectively. These factors strengthen the image of the United States as a declining power. America’s closest friends and allies in the region are worried that the United States may become distracted by its domestic difficulties and lack the staying power to counter China’s rise by other than military means.

Such considerations underscore the fact that successful US reengagement in Southeast Asia will place a premium on effective management of the US-China relationship. East Asians want the United States sufficiently engaged to cause China to be more cautious in using its growing power in inappropriate ways. But they do not want the United States to behave in ways that make China a more dangerous neighbour.

We should constantly bear in mind that China’s challenge to the United States is of an entirely different order than that posed by the Soviet Union during the Cold War. The USSR never posed a serious threat of overtaking the United States in terms of the size or vitality of its economy. In China’s case, it has for an extended period been advancing in multiple areas that contribute to comprehensive national strength. There is no question that China faces daunting problems in sustaining its rapid growth, but US policy should not be based on expectations that China’s structural weaknesses will prevent it from becoming stronger and more prosperous.

Stapleton Roy is director of the Kissinger Institute on China and the United States. In a career of 45 years he served as ambassador to China, Singapore and Indonesia and was Assistant Secretary for Intelligence and Research at the US State Department

© 2012 Yale Center for the Study of Globalisation
Source: Khaleej Times

[CENTER][B][FONT="Georgia"][SIZE="5"]Obama… it’s still about hope[/SIZE][/FONT][/B][/CENTER]
May 7, 2012
Flashpoint

Hope and change powered Barack Obama to the White House four years ago, but can he play the same gambit twice?

Conventional wisdom says no, given the fact that the US president is the steward of America’s demoralised economic state, but Obama, setting off on a six-month trek to a new presidential election, begs to differ.

“If people ask you what this campaign is about, you tell them it’s still about hope,” Obama on Saturday told crowds chanting “four more years” in battleground states Ohio and Virginia.

“I still believe … I still believe we are not as divided as our politics suggest,” Obama said, in an echo of the 2004 Democratic convention speech which shot the then unknown Illinois lawmaker to prominence. “I still believe we have more in common than the pundits tell us. I still believe in you, and I’m asking you to keep believing in me.”

Obama, at the first official rallies of his bid for the second term that all presidents crave, injected some badly needed poetry and excitement back into his brand after three prosaic, slogging years of governing. The president showed again on Saturday he can still move core supporters, who left an arena here buzzing. Carolyn Johnson — who traveled to the rally in Virginia’s state capital Richmond from Warsaw, 50 miles to the east — said she was inspired by Obama’s pep talk. The president seems bent on renewing the passion of 2008 in parts of his new stump speech, though other passages seemed to reflect an attempt by his campaign to throw out red meat to Democratic interest groups to see what works.

Before he bounded on stage, his campaign showed a video featuring Edith Childs, the elderly woman who inspired a tired Obama on a tough day in South Carolina four years ago and coined his chant “Fired, Up, Ready to Go!” And the Obama camp set the table for his debut swing with scorched earth negative campaign ads, questioning millionaire Romney over his Swiss bank account and asking whether he would have had the moxie to kill Osama bin Laden.

Though Obama’s job rating has been fairly robust, just below the 50 per cent threshold presidents see as boosting their reelection hopes, 47 per cent in a RealClearPolitics poll average still say they disapprove of the president.

Some analysts believe that Obama’s arguments on framing a “fair shot” for everyone in a more equitable economy only work if people feel a sense of imminent personal crisis is over.

Interestingly, Obama chose to stage his first official rallies in two states where the state unemployment rate is below the national average: the jobless rate was 7.5 per cent in Ohio and 5.6 per cent in Virginia in March.

Should Obama win both states, in which he currently leads Romney in latest polls, the electoral map sets up in such a way that he would be almost certain to retain the White House.

Republicans appear to scent the danger, and are desperate to make the election a referendum on what they see as a poor economic record. —
Source: Kahleej Times

[CENTER][B][FONT="Georgia"][SIZE="5"]Dilemma for US expats[/SIZE][/FONT][/B][/CENTER]
May 11, 2012
Brian Knowlton

The Pentagon office with responsibilities for assisting US military and civilian overseas voters is issuing a new ballot-request form that requires civilian voters to make an all-or-none declaration either that they plan to return to the United States or have no intent of ever doing so.

Expatriate groups say the choice is confusing and unfair, carries potential tax ramifications and could depress voting in ways that might affect close elections in November.

The new form, the Federal Post Card Application, is issued by the Federal Voting Assistance Programme, the agency legally charged to assist all overseas voters. It resides in the Pentagon. The form is used to help voters abroad register and obtain ballots.

In the past, the form allowed a less absolute response – that the voter was either residing abroad “temporarily” or “indefinitely” – but the new form leaves civilian voters only these choices: “I am a US citizen residing outside the US, and I intend to return,” or “I am a US citizen residing outside the US, and I do not intend to return.”

The Pentagon office says it needs the information to help election officials decide whether to send out just federal ballots or federal and local ballots.

But expatriate groups say this forces people into a choice they do not want, and in some cases are unable, to make.

“I’m very afraid that it will either completely confuse or deter large numbers of would-be voters,” said Lucy Stensland Laederich of the Federation of Women’s Clubs Overseas, who has lived in France since 1970.

At least half the group’s 15,000 members, she said, are living abroad not “because we wanted to, but because of marriage, employment, studies, NGO or church work, etc.”

In a conference call with election officials and expat advocates last week, Bob Carey, director of the Federal Voting Assistance Programme, acknowledged that the changed wording had caused concerns and said that he hoped to add an explanatory preface on the organisation’s Web site. But he said it was almost certainly too late to change the choices.

Carey said he had changed the wording in response to requests from state election officials. Voters from some states, he said, receive federal, state and local ballots only if they indicate an intention to return – no matter when – while those who express no intention to return receive only federal ballots.

The old language on the form, Carey said, was “basically forcing the state or local election official to divine the voter’s intent to return.”

In response to a core concern of expatriate groups, Carey denied that the answers on the form might increase voters’ exposure to taxes. The US law that created his organisation stipulates as much, he said. Intent to return means nothing as far as taxes are concerned, he said.

Asked about the tax issue, Roland Crim, director of American Citizens Abroad, said: “Individual states look at many factors in determining whether persons overseas are subject to state tax. It is incorrect and dangerous to advise voters that tax liability depends solely on whether a state ballot is simply requested or actually cast.”

At least one group that works with overseas Americans, the Overseas Vote Foundation, said it would still post on its Web site an old version of the form with the more accommodating language. Carey said it would be accepted.

If voters refused to check either of the boxes about intent to return, state and local officials might react differently, Carey said. Some would forward the federal ballot, some might forward both sets and some might not send either.

In a year when polls show the presidential contest could be extremely close and where absentee ballots could make a difference, the matter has drawn attention in Congress.

Representative Carolyn B. Maloney, Democrat of New York and chairwoman of the caucus for overseas Americans, sent a letter to Carey saying that the new form made it “more difficult and problematic to use for overseas civilians.”

Carey conceded that the original request for public comment did not spell out this change; it was added later, he said, after the need for change became clear.

The language has the potential to carry real impact in close elections.

© International Herald Tribune

[CENTER][B][FONT="Georgia"][SIZE="5"]The US Armageddon[/SIZE][/FONT][/B][/CENTER]
May 22, 2012
Michael Medved

In looking ahead toward the November election, Republican strategists should take proactive steps to avoid a damaging, dangerous conclusion to the presidential race and to prevent the very real chance that Mitt Romney will win the Electoral College even while losing the popular vote badly to Barack Obama.

The problem stems from the lopsided margins President Obama will surely pile up in a few uncontested states with big populations, including California, New York, Illinois, and Massachusetts. Romney, meanwhile, will likely prevail by comparable margins in only relatively small states: Utah, Idaho, the Dakotas, Alabama, and Alaska. The big states that offer Romney his most plausible path to Electoral College victory probably will be won by much smaller margins, leaving Obama with a clear popular-vote advantage.

All credible scenarios for a Romney victory with his “swing state” strategy begin with the presumptive GOP nominee holding all 22 states McCain carried, which are worth six additional electoral votes this time because of reapportionment. From this Republican base, Romney needs to implement a three/two/one trifecta: winning back the three traditionally Republican states (Indiana, North Carolina, and Virginia) that Obama carried last time; seizing the two perennial battlegrounds that elected George W. Bush twice (Ohio and Florida); and then winning one more state — even a very small state — (New Hampshire is a likely candidate) to bring him the magic number of 270 electoral votes.

In order to accomplish this feat, Romney needs to add as few as 650,000 votes to McCain’s totals in just six decisive states to get an Electoral College victory with the bare minimum of 270 votes, even though Obama won in 2008 with a near-landslide margin of nearly nine million votes in the popular total — 18 times Al Gore’s popular-vote advantage over Bush.

A more likely outcome would give Romney wider margins of victory in swing states, while carrying a few other hotly contested states in the bargain.

GOP partisans may blithely dismiss such calculations as meaningless since the Constitution unequivocally declares that the candidate with the most electoral votes becomes the next president, and the national tally of popular votes means nothing in the eyes of the law.

It’s easy to imagine the national levels of rage, and impossible not to envision the president of the United States lending his voice to the angry chorus. Obama might even consider the National Popular Vote Interstate Compact. Between 2007 and 2011, eight deeply partisan Democratic states (Maryland, New Jersey, Illinois, Hawaii, Washington, Massachusetts, Vermont, and California) and the District of Columbia enacted legislation demanding that their electors cast their votes for the winner of the national popular vote, regardless of which candidate won the state. This provision would only take effect if enough states agreed to this compact to represent a majority of all electoral votes; in an emergency, Democrats might attempt to coerce the five wavering states they need to take action in time to make a difference.

Such action would raise a host of constitutional questions, but the Supreme Court might be unable to provide a final settlement of a disputed election as it did in 2000. For one thing, Obama has already made contempt for the court a hallmark of his presidency — as he did when he used the State of the Union address to openly condemn the Citizens United decision on corporate spending for political advertising.

If the court strikes down key elements of the Affordable Care Act in June, the president will no doubt display additional outrage. The element of race could give an especially dangerous edge to any protracted battle over a disputed election. How many Republicans would lose heart at the prospect of evicting the nation’s first black president on a “technicality” after a clear majority of his fellow citizens expressed support for renewing his White House lease?

What, then, could responsible politicians do to head off the most dire consequences of an inconclusive election?

For Republicans, the answer is easy: they must campaign vigorously in all large states, even those with no realistic possibility for statewide GOP victory. Though the Romney campaign will naturally resist investing precious resources on lost-cause states with hugely expensive media markets (California, New York, and Illinois), they should overcome their reluctance. With no super-heated statewide races in these population centers and no visible Republican drive for statewide victory, conservative voters might feel a natural inclination to stay home — allowing Obama to run up his margins. If Romney can hold Obama’s margin to 55–45 in some of these heavily Democratic big states, he should win the popular vote; if, however, Democrats run up the score past 60–40, then Obama will win a popular-vote majority even if he loses the Electoral College.

Of course, the ideal way to avoid a national crisis over a disputed electoral outcome would be for Romney to win an unexpectedly comfortable nationwide victory, sweeping to Reagan-like success even in states assumed to be solidly Democratic.

Failing that sort of unanticipated landslide, the best policy would be to compete fiercely in every major population center while recognising that in this unique election, even popular votes that seem theoretically irrelevant may play a role in averting catastrophe.

© Newsweek

[CENTER][B][FONT="Georgia"][SIZE="5"]World events that may swing US election[/SIZE][/FONT][/B][/CENTER]
May 28, 2012
By Uri Friedman

The prevailing political wisdom is that the economy — not foreign policy — will determine who becomes the next president of the United States. In a recent Washington Post-ABC News poll on what the single most important issue was for them in choosing a president, 52 per cent said jobs and the economy (and they’re evenly split on whether Barack Obama or Mitt Romney would do a better job on the latter).

To put that figure in perspective, the second most-cited issue was “Health care/repealing Obamacare” at a mere 7 per cent, while foreign-policy issues such as terrorism and the war in Afghanistan each mustered a measly 1 per cent of responses.
But every politician lives in fear of that 3am phone call that can upend the best-laid campaign plans. Here are five global events that could send the US election careening along a very different path than the one it’s travelling down today.

A showdown with Iran: World powers are currently wrapping up a second round of contentious nuclear talks with Tehran, and the European Union is preparing to roll out an oil embargo on Iran in July. But if this diplomatic tack fails to wring meaningful concessions from Iran, there’s an outside chance that Israel — or, in a less likely scenario, the United States and its allies — will conclude before November that military action is the only way to halt Iran’s nuclear advances. Americans see Iran as the country that represents the greatest threat to the United States, and a recent Pew Research Centre poll found that 63 per cent of Americans are willing to go to war if necessary to prevent Iran from developing nuclear weapons — a measure that Romney has promoted more aggressively than Obama.

Some market analysts estimate that a military conflict with Iran could push petrol prices in the United States to between $5 (Dh18.35) and $6 per gallon, alienating voters and jeopardising the country’s fitful economic recovery. And there’s a reason why the National Journal’s Charlie Cook has dubbed Iran the “wild card” this campaign season: The last five times petrol prices have spiked during a US presidential campaign, the incumbent party has lost the election.

n A European nosedive: The prospect of a Greek anti-austerity party winning new elections in June has sparked widespread fear that Greece will default on its debt and exit the eurozone, which could spread contagion in southern Europe and plunge the global economy back into recession. But there’s a debate about the extent to which the European debt crisis will influence the US election.

If a Greek exit precipitates the collapse of the Eurozone, Brookings Institution scholar William Galston argues in the New Republic, it will be disastrous for Europe and the United States. But he adds that US GDP growth would probably slow and the unemployment rate would likely stagnate even if the European monetary union remains intact after Greece’s departure.

“These developments would make it harder for Obama to argue that we’re heading in the right direction, and … I suspect that economic growth at these depressed levels would mean victory for Mitt Romney,” he writes.

A Chinese economic slowdown: China’s slowing economic growth has prompted Chinese leaders to pledge new measures to stimulate domestic demand and commentators to warn of an impending economic crisis in the country. But when Beijing sneezes, does Washington catch a cold? China’s sluggish growth poses a “substantial risk” to the United States as the general election approaches, Campbell Harvey, a professor at Duke University, told CNN. “You don’t need a lot to knock us out of recovery.”
A domestic terrorist attack: The United States has not suffered a major terrorist attack during Obama’s presidency, and the administration has foiled several plots. The president has taken out several high-profile terrorists through drone strikes and touted the killing of Osama Bin Laden as one of his signal achievements — much to Mitt Romney’s chagrin.

But an attack on American soil could instantly shatter the armour Obama has built up on national security, reverse the public’s declining concern about terrorism, and transform the campaign. And such a scenario isn’t out of the question..
n The unknown unknown: There’s a reason we call the “October surprise” what we do — sometimes (though admittedly not often) we simply don’t know what will tilt the results of a race until Election Day is upon us. The term “October surprise” dates to 1972, when National Security Adviser Henry Kissinger declared less than two weeks before the presidential election that peace was “at hand” in Vietnam — comments that were credited with helping President Richard Nixon resoundingly defeat George McGovern (though in truth, Nixon didn’t need much help).

We have a way to go until November, and anything from security in Afghanistan to violence in Syria to elections in Venezuela (ominously scheduled for October) could emerge as a potential game-changer. When the 2008 presidential election got under way, everyone assumed that foreign policy — specifically the war in Iraq — would be the dominant issue in the campaign. And then the global financial crisis hit, propelling the economy to the top of the agenda. It’s too early to rule out the reverse happening in 2012.

Uri Friedman is an associate editor at Foreign Policy.
Courtesy: Washington Post

[CENTER][B][FONT="Georgia"][SIZE="5"]The damage done by Washington’s security mindset[/SIZE][/FONT][/B][/CENTER]
May 30, 2012
By Gordon Robison

An event last week quietly demonstrated just how much damage America’s position in the world has suffered at the hands of America’s political leaders over the last decade: the State Department released its annual survey of human rights conditions around the world. Fifteen or 20 years ago the publication of this annual report was a big deal. It was generally held to be well-researched and carried a kind of moral authority.

I vividly remember living in Cairo in the early 1990s and being approached by Egyptian colleagues who asked me, in those pre-internet days, to go to the American embassy to get them copies. They seemed amazed in equal parts by the fact that the US government compiled details of human rights abuses by a friendly government and that it then shared this information freely with anyone who cared to ask for a copy.

Over time the reports became an established part of the American political landscape. For countries receiving American aid the State Department is now required by law to produce them.

The reports were first published in 1977 — an early initiative of Jimmy Carter’s administration, and a centrepiece of its efforts to put human rights at the heart of American foreign policy. In the decades since they have grown in both number and scope.

Technology has made the entire project easily accessible to anyone with a computer and internet connection, even as the reports have become longer and longer. This year the total exceeds 7,000 pages.

The two most common criticisms of the reports are, first, that the State Department sometimes loses sight of the forest in its examination of individual trees (do we really need thousands of words on the human rights situation in Sweden or Australia?). Second, and more importantly, the reports do not address the US itself. On one level, this is understandable — the State Department is in charge of foreign policy, not domestic self-criticism. For many observers outside the US, however, that bureaucratic excuse rings hollow.

An unspoken, yet inevitable, truth haunts the human rights reports: after a decade in which torture (albeit cloaked in the ridiculous euphemism of ‘enhanced interrogation techniques’) became official US government policy Washington’s moral standing when it comes to looking at other governments’ human rights failings is much-diminished.

Though the Bush administration made torture an accepted instrument of the US government and will be stained by that fact for many generations to come, the Obama administration also bears a degree of responsibility.

George W. Bush rationalised the indefensible, convincing himself and his administration, first, that torture was not torture and, second, that even if it was America’s use of it was somehow different.

Upon taking office Barack Obama made a great show of renouncing torture as an instrument of US policy. He also, however, opted not to hold anyone from the previous administration to account for their actions, and successfully discouraged Congressional efforts to do so.

This undoubtedly made political sense, but it also had the effect of deepening the moral hole first dug by the Bush administration.

More importantly, Obama quietly left in place the legal rationalisations through which Bush had conceived a presidential power to order torture.

For all the official talk about making the US once again a country that does not torture people — period, in today’s America torture is, to all intents and purposes, still permissible if the president judges it to be necessary. Obama changed the policy, but left in place the laws and executive orders allowing him, or any future president, to revive ‘enhanced interrogation techniques’ if circumstances someday change.

One can argue, and many of my fellow Americans will, that a realistic approach to 21st dangers requires just this sort of flexibility, as well as the moral fuzziness that accompanies it.

A more honest reading might be that this is an example of Washington’s post-9/11 obsession with ‘security’ undermining other, less dramatic, attributes of national power.

The State Department human rights reports have never been without an element of hypocrisy. On balance, however, they have historically been more admirable than not. At their best they represented a serious attempt to marry high policy to the country’s professed ideals. In short, the Country Reports on Human Rights (to give them their official name) are an effort to show the world that America’s government means what it says.

The problem is that in important ways what Washington says today is very different from what it used to say.

Watching from a distance, one can only wonder whether people inside the bubble of the State Department and the White House really understand how much has changed and what, in turn, has been lost.

Gordon Robison, a longtime Middle East journalist and US political analyst, teaches political science at the University of Vermont.

Source: Gulf News

[CENTER][B][FONT="Georgia"][SIZE="5"]The drone war is Obama’s war
[/SIZE][/FONT][/B][/CENTER]June 2, 2012
By Seumus Milne,

More than a decade after George W. Bush launched it, the “war on terror” was supposed to be winding down. US military occupation of Iraq has ended and Nato is looking for a way out of Afghanistan, even as the carnage continues. But another war — the undeclared drone war that has already killed thousands — is now being relentlessly escalated.

From Pakistan to Somalia, CIA-controlled pilotless aircraft rain down Hellfire missiles on an ever-expanding hit list of terrorist suspects. They have already killed hundreds, perhaps thousands, of civilians in the process.

At least 15 drone strikes have been launched in Yemen this month, as many as in the whole of the past decade, killing dozens. In Pakistan, a string of US attacks has been launched against supposed “militant” targets in the past week, incinerating up to 35 people and hitting a mosque and a bakery.

The US’s decision to step up the drone war again in Pakistan, opposed by both government and parliament in Islamabad as illegal and a violation of sovereignty, reflects its fury at the jailing of a CIA agent involved in the Osama Bin Laden hunt and Pakistan’s refusal to reopen supply routes for Nato forces in Afghanistan. Those routes were closed in protest at the US killing 24 Pakistani soldiers last November, for which Washington still refuses to apologise.

Wajid Shamsul Hassan, Pakistan’s High Commissioner in London, described the latest US escalation as “punitive”. But then Predators and Reapers are Barack Obama’s weapons of choice and coercion, deployed only on the territory of US allies like Pakistan and Yemen — and the drone war is Obama’s war.

In his first two years in office, the US president more than tripled the number of attacks in Pakistan alone. For their US champions, drones have the advantage of involving no American casualties, while targeting the “bad guys” that Bush lost sight of in his enthusiasm to subjugate Iraq. Enthusiasts boast of their surgical accuracy and exhaustive surveillance, operated by all-seeing technicians from thousands of miles away in Nevada.

But that’s a computer-game fantasy of clinical war. Since 2004, between 2,464 and 3,145 people are reported to have been killed by US drone attacks in Pakistan, of whom up to 828 were civilians (535 under Obama) and 175 children. Some Pakistani estimates put the civilian death toll much higher — plausibly, given the tendency to claim as “militants” victims later demonstrated to be nothing of the sort.

The US president insisted recently that the civilian death toll was not a “huge number”. Not on the scale of Iraq, perhaps, where hundreds of thousands were killed; or Afghanistan, where tens of thousands have died. But they gruesomely include dozens killed in follow-up attacks after they had gone to help victims of earlier strikes — as well as teenagers like Tariq Khan, a 16-year-old Pakistani boy decapitated in a strike last October after he had travelled to Islamabad to protest drone attacks.

These killings are, in reality, summary executions and widely regarded as potential war crimes by international lawyers — including the UN’s special rapporteur on extra-judicial killings, Philip Alston. The CIA’s now-retired counsel, John Rizzo, who authorised drone attacks, himself talked about having been involved in “murder”.

A decade ago, the US criticised Israel for such “extra-judicial killings”, but now cites self-defence as the logic to justify the war against Al Qaida. However, these are attacks, routinely carried out on the basis of false intelligence in countries such as Pakistan where no war has been declared and without the consent of the elected government.

Lawyers representing victims’ families are now preparing legal action against the British government — which carries out its own drone attacks in Afghanistan. Parallel cases are also being brought against the Pakistani government and the drone manufacturer General Electric — whose slogan is “we bring good things to life”.

Of course, drone attacks are only one method by which the US and its allies deliver death and destruction in Afghanistan and the wider Middle East, from night raids and air attacks to killing-sprees on the ground. The day after the Al Houla massacre in Syria, eight members of one family were killed at home by a Nato air attack in eastern Afghanistan — one of many such atrocities barely registered in the western media.

While support for the war in Afghanistan has fallen to an all-time low in all Nato states, the drone war is popular in the US. That’s hardly surprising as it offers no danger to American forces — the ultimate asymmetric warfare — while supposedly “taking out” terrorists. But these hi-tech death squads are creating a dangerous global precedent which will do nothing for US security.

A decade ago, critics warned that the “war on terror” would spread terrorism rather than stamp it out. That is exactly what happened. Obama has now renamed the campaign “overseas contingency operations” and is switching the emphasis from boots on the ground to robots.

But, as the trouble in Pakistan and the growth of Al Qaida in Yemen shows, the impact remains the same. The drone war is a predatory war on the Muslim world, which is feeding hatred of the US — and fuelling terror, not fighting it.

Source: Gulf News

[CENTER][B][FONT="Georgia"][SIZE="5"]Drone attacks — myth and reality[/SIZE][/FONT][/B][/CENTER]
June 4, 2012
Muhammad Zubair

Drone attacks in Pakistan’s tribal areas are one of the contentious issues in the current standoff between Pakistan and the United States. Pakistan is demanding a complete stop to drone attacks as part of the new terms of engagement with the US, terming the same as a violation of Pakistan’s sovereignty and resulting in the death of innocent civilians. On the other hand, the US Defence Secretary Leon Panetta has recently responded to Pakistan’s demand by saying that the use of drones is essential for defending the Americans. One is doubtful whether Pakistan would press the demand if NATO agrees to a new price tag the former wants for overland deliveries of military supplies to Afghanistan.

However, it is time to rethink the myth and reality of drone attacks, presently clouded in the Pakistani rhetoric of sovereignty and civilian deaths. It is also important to make a comparative and objective analysis of drone attacks and the air campaign of the Pakistan Air Force (PAF) in the tribal areas in terms of their numbers, effectiveness and its implications for the internal security situation. In this regard, it is imperative to hear the voice of tribal people that has been conveniently ignored so far.

Since 2004, 297 drone attacks have taken place in the tribal areas, mostly in South and North Wazristan (The Long War Journal). Undoubtedly, it has resulted in the elimination of the top al Qaeda leadership and weakening of its organisational structure and coordination capacities. It has also eliminated the most dreaded Pakistani militants like Baitullah Mehsud (leader and founder of the TTP), Qari Hussain (master of suicide bombers), Ilyas Kashmiri, and a score of other local and foreign militants. Many killed in drone attacks were involved in indiscriminate killing of thousands of innocent Pakistani civilians as well as attacks on the army, police and other law-enforcement organisations and their infrastructure.

On the other hand, Pakistan Air Chief Marshal (Retd) Rao Qamar Suleiman made a rare and startling revelation in his address to a conference of air chiefs in Dubai in November 2011. He claimed the PAF had flown 5,000 strike sorties and dropped 11,600 bombs on 4,600 targets in Pakistan’s troubled tribal areas since May 2008. While sharing the lessons learnt, the chief further revealed that until May 2009 when the PAF had acquired Goodrich DB110 electro-optical reconnaissance pods for its F-16s, it had to rely on Google Earth imagery for attacks against the militant targets.

Without having access to the tribal areas, print and electronic media in Pakistan has incessantly been giving high estimates of civilian casualties in drone attacks. In fact, no one from outside the tribal areas knows exactly the identity and number of those killed in such attacks. It is the standard operating procedure of militants to cordon off a targeted area after an attack, without allowing anyone to have access to the dead.

Quite contrary to the media’s unverifiable reports, the IDPs of South Waziristan and people of North Waziristan tell a different story about such attacks, albeit in whispers due to fear. The IDPs claim that drones did not disrupt their social life or cause infrastructural damage or killed innocent civilians because of the precise and targeted nature of their attacks. An old woman in the IDPs camp in D I Khan told me last year, “Son, bangbangane (local name for drones) go after the gunehgar (sinner) and not the innocent.” They recalled the dreaded, heavy and indiscriminate bombing of civilian populations and infrastructure by the heavy artillery of the Pakistan army and PAF jets and compared it with the targeted and precise attacks on individual militants by drones. They held the army/PAF responsible for turning thousands of their houses and hundreds of villages into rubble. Maybe, the use of Google Earth imagery by the PAF is responsible for that!

In comparison to the 297 drone attacks, taking out a significant number of the most dreaded terrorists, one might ask what is the result of 5,000 strike sorties and dropping of 11,600 bombs by the PAF? Why does not a single terrorist worth his name come to one’s mind having been eliminated by these operations? While parliament, the so-called free media and ghairat brigade of Pakistan keeps on shedding tears on the unverifiable killing of an unknown number of innocent civilians in drone attacks, do they have the courage to investigate honestly? How many innocent civilians have been killed? How many houses and villages have been destroyed in the army and PAF operations? Why are thousands of tribesmen, women and children languishing in settled areas as IDPs? Why has Pakistan failed to establish its writ in the tribal areas and provide security to common people with more than a hundred thousand troops on the ground?

The rhetoric of violation of Pakistan’s sovereignty by drones may be a luxury for those who enjoy the comforts of the big cities of Pakistan but it only extracts a wounded smile from the face of a tribesman. They ask a simple question: have the terrorists not violated Pakistan’s sovereignty by flocking into the tribal areas from all around the world, occupying their houses and making them live a miserable life of IDPs in their own country? They think the only effective weapons used against these foreign occupiers are the drone attacks.

By not cleansing the tribal areas of terrorists on the one hand, and by demonising the drone attacks as a violation of Pakistan’s sovereignty on the other, we are only helping the terrorists have safe havens and perpetuating the miseries of the tribal people. It is also the height of ingratitude to the US for taking out terrorists like Baitullah Mehsud and others, who have the blood of thousands of innocent civilian Pakistanis on their hands. I am sure the US would not want to carry on a drone campaign if the military of Pakistan cleans the tribal areas once and for all as it did in Swat.

The writer is an assistant professor of Law at the University of Peshawar, Pakistan. Presently, he is a PhD scholar at the Maurer School of Law, Indiana University, Indiana, USA. He can be reached at [email]zubairfata@yahoo.com[/email] and [email]mzubair@indiana.edu[/email]
-Daily Times

[CENTER][B][FONT="Georgia"][SIZE="5"]Drone war is destroying West’s reputation[/SIZE][/FONT][/B][/CENTER]
June 4, 2012
By Peter Oborne

The theory and practice of warfare has evolved with amazing speed since Al Qaida’s attack on mainland America in September 2001. In less than 11 years it is already possible to discern three separate phases. First, we had the era of ground invasion followed by military occupation.

This concept, which feels terribly 20th century today, appeared at first to work well, with the fall of the Taliban in Afghanistan followed by the easy destruction of Saddam Hussain in Iraq. But by 2005 it was obvious that the strategy was failing. The resurgence of the Taliban and the success of the Iraqi insurgencies led to an urgent reassessment. In desperation, the United States turned to the more sophisticated methodology once favoured by the British and before them the Romans — the elaboration of a system of alliances, otherwise known as “divide and rule”.

This was the second phase, the so-called “surge” of 2007, which made the reputation of General David Petraeus and rescued the second Bush presidency from disaster. Of greater significance than the temporary increase in troop numbers on the ground was the decision by the Western Iraqi tribes, encouraged by the payment of enormous bribes, to detach themselves, at least temporarily, from Al Qaida. The same tactics did not work, however, when duplicated two years later in Afghanistan — and so US policy has unobtrusively moved into a third phase: a new and as yet only partially understood doctrine of secret, unaccountable and illegal warfare. The guiding force has once again been General Petraeus, who is already being tipped as favourite to win the Republican nomination in the 2016 presidential elections. Appointed director of the CIA last summer, he swiftly converted the intelligence agency into a paramilitary organisation. Conventional military forces are scarcely relevant: it is Petraeus who now masterminds what George W. Bush used to call the “war on terror” from the CIA headquarters in Langley, Virginia. President Barack Obama has reportedly allowed his CIA chief to direct Special Forces operation. If so, this is an unconstitutional move because these missions are no longer answerable to Congress. More important still, the CIA also masterminds and directs the drone strikes that have suddenly become the central element of US (and therefore British) military strategy.

Death and democracy
Even ten years ago, drones — remotely operated killing machines — were unthinkable because they seemed to spring direct from the imagination of a deranged science-fiction movie director. But today they dominate.

First of all, they can be deadly accurate. Tribal Afghans have been amazed not just that the car a Taliban leader was travelling in was precisely targeted — but that the missile went in through the door on the side he was sitting. The US claims drones have proved very effective at targeting and killing Taliban or Al Qaida leaders, but with the very minimum of civilian casualties. Second, US soldiers and airmen are not placed in harm’s way. This is very important in a democracy. In America, the killing of a dozen military personnel is a political event. The death of a dozen Afghan or Pakistani villages in a remote part of what used to be called the north-west frontier does not register, unless a US military spokesmen labels them “militants”, in which case it becomes a victory. There is no surprise, then — as the New York Times revealed in an important article on Tuesday — that Obama “has placed himself at the helm of a top secret ‘nominations’ process to designate terrorists for kill or capture, of which the capture part has become largely theoretical”. The least enviable task of an old-fashioned British home secretary was to sign the death warrant for convicted murderers.

According to the New York Times, the President has taken these exquisite agonies one stage further: “When a rare opportunity for a drone strike at a top terrorist arises, but his family is with him, it is the President who has reserved for himself the final moral calculation.” So, in the US, drone strikes are a good thing. In Pakistan, from where I write this, it is impossible to over-estimate the anger and distress they cause. Almost all Pakistanis feel they are personally under attack, and that America tramples on their precarious national sovereignty. There are good reasons for this. When, last year in Lahore, an out-of-control CIA operative shot dead two reportedly unarmed Pakistanis and his follow-up car ran over and killed a third, the American was spirited out of the country. Meanwhile, America refuses to apologise for killing 24 Pakistani servicemen in a botched ISAF operation. This is election year and Obama, having apologised already over Quran burning, may be nervous about a second apology, and has therefore confined himself to an expression of “regret”. I am told by a number of credible sources that this refusal to behave decently — allied to dismay at the use of drones as the weapon of default in tribal areas — is the reason for the unusual decision of the US ambassador in Islamabad, Cameron Munter, to step down after less than two years in his post.

According to a recent poll, more than two thirds of Pakistanis regard the US as an enemy. Britain used to be popular and respected in this part of the world for our wisdom and decency. Now, thanks to our refusal to challenge American military doctrine, the UK is hated, too.

Courtesy: The Telegraph Group Limited, London, 2012

[B][CENTER][FONT="Georgia"][SIZE="5"]Obama’s blatant partiality[/SIZE][/FONT]
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[CENTER][B]Rewards for Israel, threats for Iran, Syria and Hezbollah
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Barack Obama’s first destination at the start of his second tenure was Israel. The US President was under fire during the election campaign for ignoring Israel. The powerful Israeli lobby in Washington is still pressurizing the administration to do more for Israel even if it implies further depriving the Palestinians of their rights. The visit was apparently aimed at reassuring the newly elected Benjamin Netanyahu who had supported Mitt Romney during the campaign that with Obama in power once again, Israel’s interests would be fully safeguarded. In what Netanyahu called a key development, the leaders announced new talks on extending US military assistance to Israel for another 10 years past the current agreement that expires in 2017.

Those who had hoped that the appointment of Chuck Hagel as Defence Secretary was reflective of a change in Obama administration’s policy towards the Middle East would be disappointed. Obama had nothing for Iran, Syria and Hezbollah except warnings and threats. For Israel were reserved approbation and rewards. The speech that Obama delivered before a youth gathering in Jerusalem was one part Zionist ideology and one part real talk, observed a British daily. While sharing Netanyahu’s concern about Iran’s nuclear activity, Obama endorsed Israel’s right to defend itself as it deemed fit. This was an encouragement to Israel’s aggressive designs. Obama has raised with Netanyahu the bogey of Syria’s chemical weapons. He has repeated warnings to the Syrian government to keep them off the battlefield and out of the hands of groups such as Hezbollah. On the issue of the illegal Israeli settlements Obama actually backtracked. During his first tenure he had required putting a freeze on the activity. This time he told the Palestinians not to make the issue a precondition for peace talks. This is in fact a hint to Israel to continue the activity.

Obama talked a lot about peace in the Middle East. The word actually occurs 22 times in the speech he delivered before the Israeli youth. But there was not a word about a new plan to bring Israelis and Palestinians to the negotiating table. Obama reiterated what he was doing for Israel, The security relationship between the two countries was never stronger, he observed. There were more exercises between the two militaries, more exchanges among their political, military and intelligence officials than ever before. The largest program to date to help Israel retain its qualitative military edge was already in place. Despite all the leverage that these measures provide it, Washington was not willing to put pressure on Israel to end the illegal settlements. Nothing was given to the Palestinians. They were however required to give concessions. This is thoroughly immoral.

The visit is likely to raise the anti-US sentiment in the Middle East. What is more, it would strengthen the extremists.

[url]http://www.pakistantoday.com.pk/2013/03/23/comment/editorials/obamas-blatant-partiality/[/url]

[SIZE="5"][CENTER][U][B][FONT="Georgia"]Is Obama’s visit to Israel going to change history?[/FONT][/B][/U][/CENTER][/SIZE]
March 24, 2013

[B][CENTER]“Speaking as a politician, I can promise you this; political leaders will not take risks if the people do not demand that they do. You must create the change that you want to see.”
[/CENTER][/B]
This was one of the highlights of Obama’s speech, who was addressing Israeli students and youth in Jerusalem, during his three day trip to the holy-land, his first as a US president, where he tried to reach out to the people of the region, rather than giving the spotlight to political leadership.

Although most parts of his speech came as expected, it also had chunks of surprises for the Israelis and the world media.

The visit, the statements, and finally the speech narrated the lessons Obama learnt from his mistakes during his 2009 speech in Cairo – where his praise for Muslims did not go well with his critics in the US and Israel.

Although praising the Israeli legacy and affirming the country’s importance in the global community, President Obama shockingly uttered the words that no American president had said before, he said,

“The need for justice for the Palestinians.”

A point worth taking from this statement was the US president’s reiteration of the need for Palestinian justice, meaning the stamping of the concept of the two-state theory, which Israel, on the other hand, is ignoring for years by expanding the Jewish settlements in Palestinian areas.

Such blunt remarks showed Obama’s political maturity.

He manoeuvred his speech well by initially lavishing praise on Israel and afterwards calling for a just solution to the Palestine issue. This, more diplomatic, strategy seemed to work well as his criticisms for Israeli settlements and actions were easily digested.

Another pivot to Obama’s speech was highlighting the security concerns of Israel and their usage as a primary factor for actions against the Palestinian authority. Such an approach, according to Obama, is not fruitful in order to reach a peaceful settlement among both the parties.

Using the term “fortress Israel” and how the country portrays itself as a stronghold under security threats from Palestine, Obama made clear that such a setup for the country would hardly be beneficial.

When it came to Iran, the president held a more rhetorical line of argument.

Most of his comments on Iran were tried and tested jargons of “Nuclear Iran is a threat to Israel and the world”, and “A nuclear Iran leads to terrorism in the region”.

Although he emphasised the possibility of having all the options on the table, there was a lack of focus on a diplomatic end to the deadlock between Israel, Iran and the US.

Obama’s trip as well as his speech marked a beginning of an era of public diplomacy. Even though, long before his trip, he played down its importance stating that the world should not expect much out of his visit, yet during his speech, his address to the youth indicated that he wanted to reach out to the people for a solution.

During his first term, he failed to initiate a peace process between both the parties and that is why he called upon the people to pressurise their leaders for peace.

After Israel, Obama’s next obvious destination was Palestine.

On his visit, he met with President Mahmud Abbas and also Prime Minister Salam Fayyad.

Even though both the Palestinian leaders have their explicit differences, Obama’s meeting with both conveyed a message of seriousness- the US administration is starting to solve the West Bank crisis under Obama.

By making such decisive statements and ignoring the reality of the Palestinian situation on ground means that peace reaching this holy land is still far from reality.

Moreover, until and unless there is no clear stance on Iran, the world will keep guessing whether the United States is serious on resolving the Iranian nuclear issue through a diplomatic channel or not. For that purpose, the United States has to decide whether it has to purse the Iranian issue solely for Israel or for the international community, especially the Middle East.

Palestine and its supporters could take heart from the fact that, this was the first time an American leader stressed upon the need for a solution on lines of a two-state system. Without making huge strides during the visit, Obama’s statements gave a glimmet of hope to Palestinians by taking a stand on establishment of a Sovereign Palestine. He made it clear to the Israelis that Israel’s international and democratic image could only be ensured through a sovereign Palestine’s establishment.

But even if he did so, was it a serious statement or just a comment by a presidential tourist on a ceremonial visit?


[url]http://blogs.tribune.com.pk/story/16620/is-obama-turning-his-back-on-israel/[/url]

[CENTER][U][B][FONT="Georgia"][SIZE="5"]Rethinking US security[/SIZE][/FONT][/B][/U][/CENTER]
March 27, 2013
Hans Binnendijk

The new US Defence Secretary, Chuck Hagel, has asked the Pentagon to review US military strategy in light of budget cuts brought on by deficit reduction and sequestration.

That process will eventually draw in Secretary of State John Kerry and will bear the imprint of both new members of President Obama’s cabinet. The results will be incorporated into a new national security strategy due later this year that could yield greater burden-sharing for America’s allies and partners.
Kerry and Hagel both served on the Senate Foreign Relations Committee with Obama and Vice-President Joe Biden. Both men were wounded in Vietnam and understand the cost of combat. Both have strong ties to Europe and an inclination to exploit diplomacy to the full extent before turning to military force. Their voices will be heard.

Some of the pieces of a new national security strategy are already on the table from Obama’s first term. Two US ground wars – in Iraq and Afghanistan – are or will be over, leaving a much smaller US footprint in the region. Al Qaeda is still active but in retreat. Re-sets with potential and real adversaries generally have not gone well but in most cases talks continue. A new strategic concept adopted by Nato has revitalised the alliance. Obama’s war strategy on Libya was derisively called “leading from behind,” but it worked. China remains a “frenemy”; its rise has triggered a US pivot to Asia.

To set the stage for a new strategy, the National Intelligence Council recently published “Global Trends 2030,” which envisions a world of diffused power shifting increasingly to the East and South; empowerment of new actors, some of whom will have access to disruptive technologies; and a neo-Malthusian mix of demographic trends and greater resource requirements that could make the world more dangerous. For the first time in the history of these reports, it includes the future US strategic posture as a potential global game changer.

A new strategy should not be budget-driven, but it will be budget-influenced. Savings from the termination of two wars are not being reinvested in the military; they will be a peace dividend. Sequestration may cut significantly below that peace dividend.

In short, the United States faces a more dangerous world with fewer national security resources. The new US strategy will either need to retrench and absorb greater risk or develop more robust global partnerships to pick up the slack.

Several prominent thinkers are proposing a strategy called offshore balancing, which involves a degree of retrenchment. It would exert US influence through regional powers and withdraw most US ground forces from Europe and the Middle East. Critics of offshore balancing argue that it would result in US disengagement and possible collapse of US alliances. An alternative approach more likely to capture the views of Kerry and Hagel is forward-partnering. Developed at the National Defence University, the approach would continue to stress US forward-force deployments but with a new purpose: to enable America’s global partners to operate together with US forces and to encourage partners to take the lead in their own neighbourhoods.

This fits with the flow of previous strategies: During the Cold War the United States “contained” enemies to protect partners; during the Clinton administration the US “enlarged” the number of democratic partners, and now the US would “enable” partners to help us maintain global stability.

The notion of enabled partnerships is taking hold in Washington. In Jakarta last week, Deputy Defence Secretary Ash Carter stressed the importance of revitalising defence partnerships as Washington pivots to Asia.

America’s partners in this strategy would be its traditional European and Asian allies, plus emerging democracies like Brazil, India and Indonesia. Regional organisations such as the African Union, the Arab League and the Gulf Cooperation Council would form natural partnerships for regional operations. Forward-partnering would envision a global division of labor. Hagel’s Defence Department would focus on preparing for major combat operations, counterterrorism and special operations.

US forces would also work with partners to ensure maximum military interoperability and to provide military enablers such as air-to-air refueling that are unavailable to them.

Kerry’s State Department would seek to encourage partners to police their own neighbourhoods and to concentrate more on stabilisation operations. In exchange, partners would have a greater voice in global decision-making. This is not a mission improbable; the operations in Libya and Mali serve as models. Europe is also slashing defence budgets, so Nato “smart-defence” efforts to share weapons will need to be put on steroids. America’s Asian allies need to act more multilaterally. US military assistance and training for poorer partners would increase significantly. Free trade arrangements proposed for Asia and Europe would cement the forward-partnering strategy by bolstering political ties with like-minded partners and by strengthening their economies.

The United States needs to rebalance without retreating. Remaining in a forward posture in order to enable partners to share greater responsibilities meets that requirement.

(Hans Binnendijk drafted several national security strategies while serving as a senior director in the Clinton administration’s National Security Council)

[url]http://www.thefrontierpost.com/article/213908/[/url]

[CENTER][U][B][FONT="Georgia"][SIZE="5"]An ally goes to the polls[/SIZE][/FONT][/B][/U][/CENTER]

March 29, 2013
M A Niazi 0



While the caretaker Prime Ministers and Chief Ministers have been appointed, moving the country inexorably to the elections, it must be noted that Pakistan’s elections are by no means the only ones taking place and thus it is hardly a stand-out. So the task of navigating the shoals of government involve a complication; this complication is hardly limited to Pakistan. If we are to look at the difficulty that Pakistan faces, all its interlocutors internationally have either faced an election, or will do so.

The USA has had its third election only last year, since it invaded Afghanistan. It has re-elected its second President. Afghanistan itself will go to the polls next year, in an American presidential-style election, which will not just be the last election under occupation, but will have a new President, since President Hamid Karzai is coming up against the two-term limit.

India, which has grown so close to the USA, is due to have an election not later than next year that might mean a different Prime Minister even if the Congress again manages to form the government, which is by no means a certainty.

Other US allies that experienced changes of government were Japan and South Korea. Japan elected the Liberal Democratic Party back to power, which formed a government headed by Shintaro Abe, a former Foreign Minister. South Korea not only elected a woman President in Park Geun-Hye, but also the daughter of Park Chung Hee, a general who had taken over in 1961, before himself being assassinated in a coup attempt in 1979.
Daughters of dead rulers have been tried elsewhere in Asia, most notably in South Asia, where Indira Gandhi of India, Benazir Bhutto of Pakistan and Hasina Wajid of Bangladesh all not just reminded their nations of famous fathers, but preceded Megawati Soekarnoputri of Indonesia, who was the Muslim world’s first female President.

Myanmar’s Aung San Suu Kyi provides another example of the daughter of a national leader achieving political prominence, being the daughter of Aung San, Myanmar’s fist leader after independence in 1948, though she has not been her country’s chief executive, but leader of its opposition.

However, one of the results that the USA was most interested in, was that of the Israeli election, in which Benjamin Netanyahu was re-elected Prime Minister. That he, himself pro-settlement, headed a government which pushed harder for Zionist settlements in the occupied West Bank, was probably something the USA, and certainly its legislators, found helpful, though it would retard the peace process with the Palestinians.

One of the main differences for the USA lies in that between the British parliamentary-style and the American presidential-style elections. While both India and Pakistan are former British colonies, with parliamentary-governments, Afghanistan has a presidential government.

Similarly, Japan has a parliamentary form, whereas South Korea a presidential. However, since prime ministers produced by the parliamentary system have grown into president-style chief executives, rather than the originally conceived cabinet chairmen, whether a prime minister is elected or a president, it does not seem there will be any substantial difference in dealing with a fully empowered chief executive. Any differences will be national, not systemic. The rule of thumb seems to be that if a country has a parliamentary system already, it will be allowed to retain it, but it will have a presidential system if it has been conquered by the USA.

Another US ally with a parliamentary system and a recent election has been Italy, which might have to go to the polls again soon, because the poll has not yet yielded a government that could do what is required of it by the European Central Bank.

This is the dilemma already faced by Greece, another US ally with recent polls after it had threatened to pull down the euro, and with all the economies of the Euro Zone. Mexico has a presidential system, with a president just elected in the middle of a crime wave because of drug smuggling into the USA.
Nevertheless, where leaders have been re-elected, and thus apparently face no further electoral pressure to behave in a certain manner, their parties remain, and need candidates for the next election. This can be observed in Afghanistan, the USA and South Korea (which has a one-term limit).

In Pakistan, the situation is complicated. One of the advantages of a presidential system over a parliamentary is that the chief executive on offer is clear. One of the factors that has made the parliamentary system more presidential is that parties have needed personalities to lead them in campaigns, and thus in government.

Aspirants to the prime ministership have stepped in with natural consequences when any of them actually won office.

In Pakistan, the PPP does not have a candidate for the prime ministership. ‘Nominee of Asif Zardari’ was what the party had to offer last time, but that is hardly a prospect to enthuse the workers when coming off a less-than-distinguished tenure of government, especially when the nominees seemed more devoted to preventing President Zardari from being faced with the corruption cases against him than with solving the nation’s problems.

If it was sure which party would win if the PPP lost, at least then it might be clear who would be the next Prime Minister. In 1997, it was crystal clear that if the PPP lost, only the PML-N would win, and if it did, then Mian Nawaz Sharif would be Prime Minister. It was reasonably clear all along that Benazir Bhutto was the PPP’s candidate for Prime Minister.

At this point, however, there is no certainty which party will take office, because the PPP faces two candidates to replace it. While it may not have a natural prime ministerial candidate, both Mian Nawaz Sharif and Imran Khan have their hats in the ring as replacements. For all the advantages of electoral democracy, it is not clear who are the possibilities for the prime ministership.

While the USA may be inconvenienced by this change at this point, it is also the first step heralding the end of the US occupation of Afghanistan. It even precedes the impending retirements of the Chief of Army Staff and the Chief Justice.

If the PPP retains office, it is unlikely to see Raja Pervaiz Ashraf remain PM. Though President Zardari will, probably, be re-elected, and will nominate the next PM, at this point it seems that the electorate will punish it for failing to control inflation or end the energy crisis.

The issues in the election are plentiful, and the PPP seems restricted to pleading that it is not the PML-N. From an out-and-out leftist party, it has evolved to one that is left of centre, but which has adopted the capitalist agenda wholeheartedly. As such, it might have an uphill task differentiating itself from the PML-N, which has also adopted that agenda, or the PTI and its reform agenda.

Worldwide, however, the USA seems in the process of having its allies re-elected. That is, perhaps, the only factor that allows the PPP some hope. But the US knows that the policy it is really interested in is determined by the army, not the elected government. So, perhaps, it will not mind a civilian change of guard.

The writer is a veteran journalist and founding member as well as executive editor of TheNation. Email: [email]maniazi@nation.com.pk[/email]

[url]http://www.nation.com.pk/pakistan-news-newspaper-daily-english-online/opinions/columns[/url]

[CENTER][U][B][FONT="Georgia"][SIZE="5"]US job loss
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April 02, 2013
Chen Weihua 0

When I moved from New York City to Washington DC three months ago, I had to call cable and utility companies to cancel the services to my old apartment and fix the Internet service in the new one. It was both time-consuming and painful. Each time I called, I was greeted by an automatic answering system that tried to navigate me to a solution. When that failed, I hit the button for a customer service representative. That was when the real pain started. All the representatives, I was told, were currently busy and the estimated waiting time was 18 minutes in one case and 32 minutes in another.

I sank into despair once when the phone was cut off accidentally after it had waited for nearly 15 minutes accompanied by service promotion ads and monotonous music from the other end. At that moment, I did miss my bank and utility companies in China where customer representatives seem always readily available. I don't know how many people like to talk to a machine. But this is an area where lots of jobs can be created in the United States, especially when unemployment is still high - 7.7 percent in February, albeit the lowest since December 2008.

That probably explains why when China created 12.66 million urban jobs in 2012, the US created only 1.8 million. And mind you, those Chinese jobs weren't taken from Americans despite the fact that many US politicians and average workers seem to think so, and even use it as an excuse to gain political capital. Two economists, Robert Z. Lawrence from the Kennedy School of Government at Harvard University and Lawrence Edwards from the University of Cape Town shed light on the subject during their talk at the Peterson Institute in Washington on Tuesday.

After conducting an extensive survey of empirical literature to date and, more importantly, carrying out their own in-depth analyses of the evidence, they concluded that rapid growth in emerging economies is part of the solution to the US economic problems rather than their cause. The conclusions contradict several popular theories on the negative impact on the US of its trade with developing countries such as China and India.

While many critics, including some economists, believe that the decline in manufacturing in the US has been caused by trade and "off-shoring" of jobs, the two argued that the decline reflects a shift in domestic demand away from spending on goods and faster productivity growth in manufacturing, where fewer workers are needed to maintain the same output.

That also seems to apply to the service representatives I had tried to contact.

According to the two scholars and co-authors of Rising Tide: Is Growth in Emerging Economies Good for the United States?, increased trade can cause "short-term pain in the form of job losses, lower profits, and the dislocation of people and communities", but trade and investment strategies that encourage growth in emerging economies will continue to benefit both the US and its trade and investment partners in the foreseeable future.

Over the years, people have been puzzled by the growing negative feeling about trade among Americans. Why are they not happy when Chinese, Indians and people from other emerging economies help them save money with cheaper manufactured goods? Now we know, according to the economists, that the Americans have just picked the wrong guys to blame.

The author, based in Washington DC, is deputy editor of China Daily USA. The article has been reproduced from China Daily. Email: [email]chenweihua@chinadailyusa.com[/email]

[url]http://www.nation.com.pk/pakistan-news-newspaper-daily-english-online/columns/02-Apr-2013/us-job-loss[/url]

Limits of American power
 

[B][SIZE="4"]Limits of American power
[/SIZE][/B][B]By Javid Husain
[/B]
[I]At the end of the Cold War and following the collapse of the Soviet Union, the US emerged as the sole superpower. Because of its enormous economic and military power, the US loomed large like a colossus on the global geopolitical scene.
[/I]
No other country in the world was even close to it in terms of economic and military strength. It was fashionable at that time to proclaim that in place of the bipolar world of the Cold War era, a unipolar world had dawned.
The period of unipolarity with the US as the dominant global power, however, did not last long. It was China’s phenomenal economic progress that effectively cut short America’s unipolar moment.
China under its paramount leader Deng Xiaoping embarked upon a programme of far-reaching economic reforms and opening to the outside world in 1979. These policies put China on the road to rapid economic progress and within a period of three decades catapulted it to the position of the second biggest economy of the world after overtaking the Japanese economy in 2010.
While America’s GDP ($16,333 billion) still remains ahead of that of China ($9,233 billion) in nominal dollar terms, China is catching up fast with the US economy because of its sustained high economic growth rates.
China’s rapid economic growth combined with fast-growing economies like those of India, Brazil, South Korea, Russia, Indonesia, Turkey and Malaysia is radically transforming the global geopolitical scene.
The centre of gravity of the world economy is shifting from the Atlantic region to Asia-Pacific region. No major decision affecting the world trade and economy can be taken now without the concurrence of the major Asia-Pacific countries. From the economic point of view, this transformation has already brought about a multipolar world.
It is inevitable that high growth rates of the emerging major economies will lead to increase in their military expenditures to protect their expanding global economic interests. By way of example, China is rapidly increasing its annual military budget, which in the current year would amount to $116 billion.
The same trend can be seen in the military budgets of other emerging major economies. American overwhelming superiority in the military field is likely to be challenged by the emerging great powers like China and Brazil after another two to three decades.
What are the policy implications of these trends for the rest of the world, particularly for Pakistan?
It is true that the US still remains by far the most powerful nation in the world, both economically and militarily. The US also has the advantages of advanced technology and “soft power” over its competitors. However, as noted earlier, the US economic and technological advantage over China and other rapidly growing economies is fast eroding. It is no longer in the position to dictate to the rest of the world in the economic field.
In fact, its vulnerabilities as the biggest indebted nation of the world will weaken its hand gradually in the management of international economic relations, despite the advantage that it enjoys of alliances with other advanced countries of Western Europe and Far East.
The relative decline of the US economic and military power will ultimately reflect itself in the structural changes to its disadvantage in international security, economic and commercial institutions like the United Nations Security Council, World Bank and IMF.
The US will also have to give up unilateralism and place increased reliance on multilateral cooperation, both within the framework of the United Nations and outside to realise its foreign policy objectives.
Moreover, it would have to bring its foreign policy objectives within the reach of its power by lowering its sights, by emphasising the use of political or diplomatic means over the use of military for their realisation and by carrying the international community with it, rather than working in defiance of its will.
Military adventures like those undertaken by it in Afghanistan and Iraq at enormous cost in blood and treasure would have to be rejected. The US failure to do so will generate avoidable tensions and crises in international relations.
As time passes, its ability to impose unilaterally effective economic sanctions against other nations will also decline. It will have to seek the cooperation of other economically-powerful nations to make those sanctions effective.
The effectiveness of unilateral US sanctions against other countries in pursuit of its strategic aims was questionable even in the past when it enjoyed overwhelming superiority in military and economic fields. Now when the relative US economic and military power is on the decline, its ability to impose its will on other nations through the use of its economic power will be weakened considerably.
It appears from the policy statements issued by the US leaders and representatives from time to time that the full implications of the relative decline of the US national power vis-à-vis its competitors have not fully sunk in their consciousness.
The way they continue to make threatening statements of military action against other nations in violation of international law and the UN Charter would lead one to conclude that the lessons of the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq have not been fully absorbed by the US foreign policy establishment.
In the case of Afghanistan, Washington should have learnt by now that its attempt to impose a government of its own choice on the Afghan people through the use of brute force has failed miserably. If it does not fundamentally and soon alter its approach, it is likely to leave a chaotic situation and a civil war after its military retreat from Afghanistan.
What the objective of durable peace in Afghanistan requires is national reconciliation and the establishment of a new political order in which different Afghan ethnic communities, including the Pashtuns, the Tajiks, the Hazaras and others, have their due share in power.
The Afghan Taliban, despite their obscurantism, are a political reality. They need to be engaged and brought into the mainstream of the Afghan politics. Washington must get rid of the inertia from which its Afghan policy currently suffers to engage the Taliban politically and set the stage for negotiations among the various Afghan parties.
Similarly, the US would have to change the course in dealing with Iran’s nuclear programme. Threatening statements, which have now become a routine on the part of the US representatives, will not achieve the desired results.
The objective of keeping Iran away from the development and acquisition of nuclear weapons can be achieved instead by recognising its right under the Non-Proliferation Treaty (NPT) to enrich uranium, persuading it to keep the level of enrichment at low levels compatible with the peaceful use of enriched uranium, keeping all Iranian nuclear facilities under stringent IAEA safeguards and lifting all sanctions against Iran.
Pakistan must maintain and where possible even strengthen further friendly relations and cooperation with the US, keeping in view its current position as the most powerful economic and military power in the world. However, our policymakers should be cognisant of the future trend of the relative decline of the US economic and military power. The test of our policymakers would lie in achieving the right balance between the compulsions of the immediate and the demands of long-term trends.
Policies of self-reliance and diversification of our foreign policy options are a must for the management of Pak-US relations in our best national interests. Further, our friendship with the US should not be at the expense of our critically important friendly relations with China or Iran.

[I]The writer is a retired ambassador and the president of the Lahore Council for World Affairs.[/I] Email: [email]javid.husain@gmail.com[/email]

[url]http://www.nation.com.pk/pakistan-news-newspaper-daily-english-online/columns/16-Apr-2013/limits-of-american-power[/url]

[CENTER][U][B][FONT="Georgia"][SIZE="5"]The horror in Boston
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[B]Not difficult to empathize with the victims
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The attack on Boston marathon is a highly condemnable act. The bombing was carried out on Patriots Day when hundreds of people had gathered to watch the iconic event for the city. Initially there are reports of three people dead including a 10 year old boy. Over a hundred are injured, including nine children. Many of the injured are in a critical state, and some with shattered limbs had face amputation. The possibility of more deaths cannot be ruled out.

The people of Pakistan have gone through tragic events of the sort for years now. Hundreds of families have lost their near and dear ones in terrorist attacks. Unsuspecting people traveling in buses, children attending schools and grownups offering prayers in mosques have been mowed down or turned into mincemeat. Similarly many innocent people have died in the US drone attacks which continue on their deadly mission unabated. It is therefore not difficult to understand the suffering of the affected people and their families in Boston.

What remains to be determined is who is responsible for the act. The FBI and police are highly trained and well equipped with the latest gadgetry to investigate crimes of the sort. Currently fingers are being pointed in two directions. A former FBI counterterrorism investigator told a British newspaper that the attack was reminiscent of the Madrid commuter train bombings, a coordinated attack using multiple explosive devices on March 11, 2004 which was attributed to an Al-Qaeda-inspired terrorist cell. The Al-Qaeda has developed the skills needed to launch an attack of the sort while it has also an international reach. The other possible source of the attack could be the US homegrown terrorists of various sorts including the white supremacists. Last year alone a gunman claimed 26 lives including kids and teachers in a firing spree at an elementary school in the Connecticut state, the US Army veteran Wade Michael Page killed six in a shooting rampage in Wisconsin, another gunman man killed 12 in Colorado while two people were killed and at least eight wounded in a shooting outside the Empire State Building in New York.

President Obama has assured that whoever is found guilty after investigation will feel the full weight of justice. There is a need in the US to rethink the whole strategy of dealing with those responsible for such incidents be they Al-Qaeda related terrorists or homegrown killers. This is all the more needed because whatever measures have been taken in the past have failed to achieve the results.

- See more at: [url]http://www.pakistantoday.com.pk/2013/04/17/comment/editorials/the-horror-in-boston/#sthash.iEG5JEn8.dpuf[/url]

[CENTER][U][B][FONT="Georgia"][SIZE="5"][COLOR="DarkOliveGreen"]Marathon attack[/COLOR][/SIZE][/FONT][/B][/U][/CENTER]

April 17, 2013


Two blasts targeting a marathon’s finish line in Boston killing four people and leaving 100 injured while a third one rocking the John F. Kennedy Presidential library are without any shadow of a doubt totally condemnable and utterly reprehensible attacks.

As things stand, it would be premature to point a finger at the perpetrators, since the investigations are yet in the initial stages. There is on the other hand, consensus that this is a terrorist attack. Some quarters have been quick to indulge in callous and disgusting schadenfreude, citing Pakistan's own crippling losses which number in the thousands. Innocent lives lost, no matter where in the world must not be treated with the indignity of political point scoring. In this tradition, perhaps Pakistan ought to attempt a lead, given the attacks in Boston and the deaths of 30 at a wedding party in Afghanistan, including several young children, not to mention in Peshawar. As a whole, humanity must look within itself and reflect how matters got to such a head. It will be tempting to blame, allege, belittle and bemoan; but ultimately, it is a reality that the world over humanity is feeling unsafe. How can we protect ourselves once from hate and despair? No one country has the answer, and so far we all continue to suffer in varying degrees of severity.

[url]http://www.nation.com.pk/pakistan-news-newspaper-daily-english-online/opinions/editorials[/url]

[CENTER][U][B][FONT="Georgia"][SIZE="5"]Collective self-reflection in the wake of a national tragedy


Richard Falk[/SIZE][/FONT][/B][/U][/CENTER]


The dominant reactions to the horrific bombing at the Boston Marathon on April 15 - which also happened to be the Patriots Day - have been so far: compassion for the victims, a maximal resolve to track down the perpetrators, and a pundit's notebook that reports to Americans that they have been protected against terrorist violence since 9/11 and that the best way to prevail against such enemies is to restore normalcy, avoid dwelling on the gory details, not memorialise the scene of the mayhem with reminders, and move forward with calm resolve and freedoms undiminished.

Such responses are far preferable to the war fever nurtured by leaders, the media and a vengeful public after the 9/11 attacks.

Of course, the scale and drama of the attack, while great, was not nearly as large or as symbolically resonant as the destruction of the World Trade Centre and damage to the Pentagon. Also, although each life is sacred, the magnitude of tragedy is somewhat conveyed by numbers, and the Marathon incident has so far produced three deaths as compared to 3,000, or a 1/1,000th.

Also important, the neocon presidency of George W Bush, was in 2001 prior to the attacks seeking a pretext to launch a regime-changing war against Saddam Hussein's Iraq, and the 9/11 events, as interpreted and spun, provided a supportive domestic climate for launching an aggressive war against the Baghdad regime that was undertaken despite the UN Security Council failure to lend its authority to such an American deadly geopolitical venture.

American grand strategy

In 2001, the preferred American grand strategy, as blueprinted by the ideologues of the American Enterprise Institute and the Hoover Institution, was given a green light by the Bush/Cheney White House even in the face of the UN red light.

Although there are many distressing continuities that emerge if the Obama presidency is compared in relation to the counter-terrorist agenda of his predecessors, but there are also some key differences of situation and approach. Obama came to Washington after the failed wars of Afghanistan and Iraq that had devastated two countries, seemingly beyond foreseeable recovery, added nothing to American security, and wasted trillions expended over the several years during which most Americans still felt the hardships and pain of the deepest economic recession since the 1930s.

In other words, temporarily at least, the Beltway think-tanks and the government are doing their best to manage global crises without embarking on further wars. The brief period of easy and victorious wars (quickly concluded, and with minimal casualties), as was the Gulf War of 1991 and the NATO Kosovo War of 1999, is over. Irresponsible and unlawful warfare seems no longer to be the centrepiece of America's foreign policy as it was in the first decade of the 21st century.

What unfortunately remains taboo at this moment of 24/7 commentary on American security policy is any type of self-scrutiny by either the political leadership or the mainstream media, but at least there are a few hopeful signs of awakening on the part of the citizenry.

Listening to a PBS programme hours after the Boston event, I was struck by the critical attitudes of several callers: it is horrible, but we in this country should not be too surprised, given our drone attacks that have unwittingly targeted weddings and funerals in Afghanistan and Pakistan.

Another caller asked if it is not retribution for the kind of torture inflicted by American security forces acting under the authority of the government, verified by pictures of the humiliation of Islamic prisoners at Abu Ghraib or in light of the authoritative reports of officially sanctioned torture as detailed in the 577 page report of a task force chaired by two former senators - one a Republican, the other a Democrat - and containing senior military and security officials.

Is it not time that one among our politicians had the courage to connect these dots? Can we not ponder WH Auden's haunting line: "Those to whom evil is done/do evil in return"?
The American global domination project is bound to generate all kinds of resistance in the post-colonial world. In some respects, the US has been fortunate not to experience worse blowbacks, and such could yet happen, especially if there is no disposition to rethink US relations to others in the world, starting with the Middle East.

America's military prowess
Some of us hoped that Obama's Cairo speech in 2009 was a beginning of such a process of renewal, timid in many ways, yet with a tonality that seemed to acknowledge that relations with the Islamic world needed a fundamental shift in the direction of reconciliation, including a move toward a more balanced approach to the Palestine/Israel situation. But as the months passed, what became evident, especially given the strong pushback by Israel and its belligerent leader, Bibi Netanyahu, was the accelerating back peddling of the Obama presidency.

Now at the start of his second presidential term, it seems that Obama has recognised the constraints, and seeks to confine his legacy to such domestic concerns as immigration, gun control and health care, abandoning the international agenda except to handle crisis diplomacy in a manner that does not disturb the global status quo or shorten America's global reach. Obama's trip to Israel, punctuated by his speech in Jerusalem on March 21, was more in the spirit of a love letter to the Israeli public than a genuine effort to bring a just peace, and contrasted with the much more visionary outlook exhibited in his early first term visit to the Middle East.

Self-scrutiny and mid-course correction of America's global role is long overdue. Such a process is crucial both for the sake of its own future security and for the wellbeing of others. Such adjustments will eventually come about either as a result of a voluntary process of self-reflection or through the force of events. How and when this process of reassessment occurs remains a mystery.

Until it does, America's military prowess and the abiding confidence of its leaders in hard power diplomacy makes the US a menace to the world and to itself. This is as true if Mitt Romney rather than Barack Obama was in the White House. The continuity reflects bipartisan support of a globe-girdling geopolitics, which has so far refused to acknowledge the evidence of national decline that is accentuated by pursuing an unsustainably ambitious global security role.

[url]http://www.weeklycuttingedge.com/[/url]

[CENTER][U][B][FONT="Georgia"][SIZE="5"]How can the US build a better immigration system?


Laura E. Enriquez
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In recent months, comprehensive immigration reform has become central to the political debate. Elected officials are in the process of developing the specifics of a law which will update current immigration system and address the 11 million undocumented individuals living in the US.

Polls show that nearly 60 per cent of Americans support immigration reform and the creation of a pathway to citizenship. Yet, we still do not know what this new law will look like. I believe that four provisions are key to making it a success:

Help people 'waiting in line': Address the visa backlog and amend visa caps

At present, US immigration policies are structured to promote family reunification. However, these policies were developed not so much as a way to value and strengthen families, but as a nativist tool to increase immigration opportunities to European-origin individuals.

When comprehensive immigration laws were developed and enacted in the mid-1900s, they sought to promote immigration from Europe by prioritising family-based petitions with opened pathways for migration for family members of US citizens, most of whom, at the time, had origins and thus family members in Europe.

In addition, they restricted immigration from non-European countries by limiting the number of visas available in each country. While these visa caps have been increased in the past, they still exist to limit immigration.

While there is no limit to visas available for the spouses, minor children and parents of citizens, there are limits on the number of visas available to the married children, siblings and extended family members of citizens as all family is sponsored by legal permanent residents. These limits mean that the "lines" for visas are extraordinarily long.
As of November 2012, 4.4 million people had been petitioned for and approved for a visa but are waiting for the availability of a visa. If you are lucky enough to be in one of the higher preference categories - an unmarried child of a US citizen - the wait averages seven years. However, demand in high migration countries creates backlogs so the wait reaches 15 years if you are from the Philippines and 20 if you are from Mexico.

While these numbers are dismal, they are worse for individuals lower on the preference categories. In fact, the longest wait time surpasses almost two lifetimes - 163 years for a citizen to reunite with a sibling from Mexico.

These wait times mean that undocumented migration is one of the few options open for individuals who do not want to be separated from family members for a lifetime. Additionally, it means that undocumented immigrants, who were fortunate enough to have family members petition for their legalisation upon their arrival, are still waiting for the availability of visas.

In the past, immigration reform has included increases to the number of visas available in each country. Similar steps to expand the visa pools are critical for the success of any comprehensive immigration reform bill. Though current proposals aim to clear this backlog, there needs to be consideration of how future backlogs will be prevented. Proposals for a shift away from family reunification to skill-based assessments could potentially reproduce these family-based backlogs, or worse deny visas and permanently separate families.
Help people who want to 'get in line': Eliminate the 10-year bar

While current immigration law provides pathways to legalisation for undocumented immigrants via the family reunification methods discussed above, many immigrants are dissuaded from even applying due to the complicated nature of this process.

Specifically, a 1996 immigration reform law enacted a 3- and 10-year bar process which requires individuals who entered "without inspection" (that is, without a visa) to return to their country of origin to obtain their visa. Once back, they face a 3-year bar to their return if their stay was less than one year and 10-year bar if their stay was longer.
While individuals can petition to lift this "bar" based on the undue hardship it will place on their citizen petitioners, it is a risky process with uncertain outcomes. As a result, many eligible undocumented immigrants choose not to apply for legalisation once they find out about the "bar".

Those individuals who choose to apply and risk being barred from the US have to return to their country of origin to file petitions with their consular office. In the Mexican case, this happens in Ciudad Juarez, a border city plagued by violence and death. Petitioners can wait for months to years for appointments and processing and often are separated from family members during this time.

Interviewing recently legalised young adults who had to travel to Mexico revealed that these stays often had significant emotional consequences. One man spoke about how he had to watch his son learn to talk via Skype. Another spoke of the post-traumatic stress he developed after spending a night hiding in his hotel room bathtub while there was a shoot-out outside.

On the other hand, individuals who are allowed to complete the legalisation process in the US, report fairly positive experiences with the immigration system. This suggests that the proposed immigration reform law should make provisions to eliminate this provision. Dropping the 3- and 10-year bars would allow, and in fact encourage, eligible individuals to legalise their status in a safe and streamlined manner. This would help to reduce the undocumented population by encouraging them to apply through some avenues that are already open.

Help people who want to legalise: Increase acceptable Documents

The Immigration Reform and Control Act of 1986, or IRCA, was the most recent immigration law to create a pathway to legalisation. While it legalised approximately 1.6 million undocumented immigrants, some eligible individuals were unable to apply due to a lack of acceptable documents to prove their work status and length of time in the US.
This was a lot harder for undocumented women to do, as they tended to work in private homes as housekeepers and nannies - where their employers did not want to confirm their employment - and did not have bills or accounts in their names, because it was their husbands' responsibility.

This historical fact suggests that finding documentation of an undocumented life is hard. Many undocumented individuals strive to leave no mark of their existence for fear of deportation. In addition, many have their accounts and/or bills set up under citizen family member or friend because having a social security number makes it easier to open these accounts.

Imagine if you spent most of your life paying in cash and had few, if any accounts, in your name. How would you prove that you have been somewhere? This is a consideration that needs to be addressed as the specifics of a legalisation pathway are developed.

A glimpse into how this can be successfully implemented can be taken from the Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals programme which provides a 2-year deferral of deportation and access to a work permit for undocumented youth who entered before the age of 16 and are under the age of 31.

To prove their length of residence in the US, these young adults have been using a variety of documents - Facebook check-ins, gym records and receipts. Immigration officials have been open to these various types of non-traditional documents which have made it easier for many eligible individuals to apply.

The successful deployment of this Deferred Action programme suggests that future programmes should replicate its process. The proposed law should include such provisions to improve the current system.

Help people become full members of society: Create a shorter path to citizenship

The current proposed immigration reform bill suggests that there will be a 13-year pathway to citizenship - a 10-year provisional residency followed by a 3-year permanent residency at which point they can apply for citizenship.

However, my discussions with undocumented young adults has made it clear that years of feeling socially rejected only makes them feel like they do not belong. Many feel that it becomes increasingly unlikely that these negative feelings will go away as they wait longer to legalise their status.

Longer wait times only serve to make sure that the people we intend to admit in the future will be less likely to act like full members of a society when we finally do admit them. While legalisation will help undocumented immigrants' transition out of what some refer to as second-class citizenship, lengthened wait times will only strengthen their feelings that they are second-class citizens who do not belong in the US. This not only hurts immigrants, but it hurts US society as a whole.

[url]http://www.weeklycuttingedge.com/[/url]

[CENTER][U][B][FONT="Georgia"][SIZE="5"]America’s response to tragedy

Michael Felsen
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It’s been a hard week for Boston. A native New Yorker, I’ve lived in this town for close to forty years. My wife and I raised three boys who hawked Coke and peanuts in the grandstands at Fenway Park, and cheered on the Celtics at Boston Garden. And for many years, we stood together each April and applauded the countless runners, from countless countries, who sped toward the finish line at the magnificent Boston Marathon.

Those warm memories are tarnished now. The harrowing events of last week have left us dazed by a cluster of senseless bursts of violence. Baghdad, Oklahoma City, Mumbai, Kabul, Moscow, Columbine, London, Newtown and so many other places around the globe, have been victimised by terrorising acts of one stripe or another. Now, unhappily, Boston joins those ranks. What twisted logic could have inspired, or what hidden trauma could have impelled anyone to inflict such wanton destruction on the lives of innocents? Today, one suspect is dead and the other is hospitalised and in custody. The nagging question remains: Why?

In one sense, it really doesn’t matter. Whatever the motivating force, the damage is done. The wounds are inflicted on families and communities. In every case, the acts are inexcusable. And yet, we care about “why” because we look for lessons and wonder what, if anything, we can do to prevent the next such catastrophe.

Two days after the Boston Marathon bombings, National Public Radio featured University of Arizona psychologist Jeff Greenberg, who studies how people respond to events that force them to confront their own mortality. “When death is percolating close to consciousness, people become more ‘us vs. them’ - they become defensive of their belief system, positive toward those they identify with and more negative to those who espouse a different belief system,” he said.

That human tendency lurks here, in the wake of last week’s events. We’ve learned that the suspects of the heinous acts of 15 April self-identified as Muslim. In response, some have already chosen to shun, and even vilify, that entire community of faith.

This despite the fact that we have already heard from Muslim leaders in Boston and beyond that these acts were crimes, pure and simple, and in no way justifiable by the Islamic faith.

Among the many lessons from the week’s events is this: it’s our job to prevent this kind of blaming and stigmatising of an entire group on account of the unconscionable acts of a few. Wholesale demonization of the “other” simply can’t be justified as serving the cause of security, justice, human understanding or, for that matter, any other value.

This message came through loud and clear at the interfaith memorial service held on 18 April in Boston’s South End. More than two thousand gathered and listened while Christian, Jewish and Muslim faith leaders, joined by Boston’s Mayor Tom Menino, Massachusetts Governor Deval Patrick and President Barack Obama spoke words of comfort and inspiration.

We were reminded that we can’t allow another’s hate to make haters of us; that our task is to heal and rebuild, united by our common humanity. We were reminded that our community is defined not by violence, hatred or fear, but by love and generosity, as seen, for example, in the actions of those heroic bystanders and first responders who ran toward - rather than away from - danger, and aided those injured by the explosions. And we heard this resonant theme: that the dilemma of evil is that it inspires good; in our diversity, we have been united.

Patrick recalled the words of Martin Luther King: “Darkness cannot drive out darkness - only light can do that.” And Obama enjoined: “In the face of cruelty, we will choose compassion… we’ll choose friendship, we’ll choose love.” Can any of us doubt that an outstretched hand is more likely to promote an open mind and an open heart in the “other,” than a clenched fist?

We miss the point entirely if we allow the acts of extremists to force us into our own respective corners. They win if in response to their acts we poison our community, by shunning - instead of engaging - those whose culture or beliefs are different from our own.

Here in Boston - but not only here in Boston - that’s a race we need to run, and win, together.

(Michael Felsen is an attorney and President of Boston Workmen’s Circle, a 110-year old communal organisation dedicated to secular Jewish education, culture and social justice)


[url]http://www.thefrontierpost.com/category/40/[/url]

[CENTER][U][B][FONT="Georgia"][SIZE="5"]Boston tragedy

Muhammad Daheem[/SIZE][/FONT][/B][/U][/CENTER]


Boston bombing seems to be an adventure of the two individual legal permanent residents of the USA. This seems to be local terrorism that is the part of the American culture.

FBI has come to the conclusion that explosion was managed “with pressure- cooker bombs packed with lethal explosives.” At least one pressure cooker and a torn black bag were part of the bomb. Three victims, Martin Richard, Krystle Campbell, 29, a restaurant manager from Medford, Massachusetts and a Chinese student could not survive. According to law enforcement sources, Dzhokhar Tsarnaev admitted he and his brother learned how to make the pressure cooker bombs from internet magazine, Inspire.

The bombs were probably packed with shrapnel, metal shards, ball bearings and nails intended to intensify the effect of the explosion. These items were possibly part of the equipment in bags holding the bombs. The FBI agent described it as “disciplined crime.” It is said that this technique is used by Italian and Irish underworld gangsters involved in organized crimes.

A large number of victims of the Boston bombing are still in hospitals. At least 200 persons, including a Saudi national, injured and 6 are under critical condition. It is believed that bombs were stuffed into duffel bags and left on the ground. The bombs, according to officials, set off probably had remote controls from toy cars inside them and were triggered by cell phones.

The bombs exploded and tore the bodies of the victims. It was a sad, awful and hellish spectacle. Everybody seemed to be confused and horrified.

Tamerlan Tsarnaev is suspected of carrying out the deadly Boston Marathon bombing. He is also reported responsible for the killing an MIT campus police officer three days later. Tamerlan Tsarnaev died following a firefight with police. The blast injury, gunshot wounds and several other injuries were probably the cause of his death. Dzhokhar Tsarnaev, the wounded suspect, has been charged in his hospital bed.

Authorities believe Tamerlan Tsarnaev was probably responsible for a triple homicide back in 2011. The three killed were Brenden Mess, one of Tsarnaev’s friends and sparring partners, as well as two Jewish men, Erik Weissman and Raphael Teken.

FBI questioned Tamerlan Tsarnaev in 2011, possibly about his interest in certain activities or ties to Chechnya, but failed to find reasonable cause to detain him. It is almost confirmed that Tamerlan and Dzokhar Tsarnaev were not affiliated with any international terrorist group.

The press is going overboard with the family of these guys in its efforts to make this an international incident. Several journalists are politicizing the issue and making the situation more horrible and grim. American justice system and society has created crime culture. These crimes are happening right under every American’s nose but these are ignored. But this particular event has been given publicity because two Muslims are involved in it. Americans know very well that all such criminal acts are part of their lifestyle and gun culture.

The violent American history is full of terrorist attacks. The society has lost its values and worth. The criminals are making their place in American society. Nonetheless, community intelligence can be helpful in assisting to reduce the crime rate.

It is time for Americans to get rid of ridiculous and useless war on terror coined by Bush, Blair and their massive teams.
Something is missing in American culture and that seems to be tolerance.

It is pertinent to mention here that Dzhokhar Tsarnaev was born in Kyrgyzstan and Tamerlan Tsarnaev was born in Russia. Both brothers were in this country legally. The elder brother has been in this country for around a decade. Tamerlan Tsarnaev, 26, was a legal permanent resident. He was follower of mainstream Sunni Islam. Dzhokhar Tsarnaev is an US citizen. His online profile shows his interest in his career and money-making. It is reported that both brothers were greatly influenced by Misha,” probably a Christian, who helped them in training.

The early reports of the police about the guys were confusing and lacking signs of professional maturity. The authorities probably tracked the suspect using the stolen Mercedes built-in navigation system.

The Boston tragedy shows flaws in the security system. Infrastructure certainly needs improvement. There are several flaws in the police strategy. The well-trained police could not puncture or halt the car though the fight continued for about an hour and the guy succeeded to flee from the scene.

“Then there are several questions. Where is the guy the boys had as a hostage for 30 minutes? Where is the Mercedes SUV they hi-jacked?” Thousands of police workers could not control the guys in the “battlefield”. Finally, Tamerlan Tsarnaev, 26, identified as the first suspect died quickly following a firefight with police. The second wounded suspect was arrested later on.

According to an American writer the perpetrators of the Boston Marathon bombing are not ‘white Americans’ but whiter than that race. “They are Caucasian.”
It seems an alien American group is at war with another alien American group: “both intimately familiar and frighteningly alien at the same time.” Race always played an important role in the history of America. An American critics says, “it’s all about race in racist America. Racism is America’s original sin. Racism will ultimately destroy America. It’s a really sad state of affairs.” All Americans are one way or the other immigrants except aboriginals.

The comic aspect is that almost everyone in the western media is trying to link this act of two suspected brothers to the “Muslim Extremists.” The ironic aspect of the Boston tragedy is that everyone is presenting their own conspiracy theory. It is just possible in future new irrational terms may be coined based on race and religion such as “white non-Islamic terrorists” and “white radical religious extremists “etc.

America’s so-called democratic values of justice, fairness and human decency are joke of the American heritage. It may be interesting to note that Social Media Campaign shows support For Boston Bombing suspects.

Boston bombings, according to Stella Tremblay, a New Hampshire state legislator were in fact orchestrated by the US government. She believes that drones and now ‘terrorist attacks’ are carried by American government.

According to FBI agents/investigators, Dzhokhar Tsarnaev told that he and his brother were influenced by the Internet sermons of Anwar al-Awlaki who was later on killed in American drone strike. The involvement of two brothers in Boston bombing is a “very complicated and multilayered puzzle.”


Tamerlan Tsarnaev was a champion boxer in the Boston community when he married Katherine Russell, converted to Islam, in 2010 at a mosque in Boston’s Dorchester suburb. She worked up to 80 hours a week as a home-care aide in Cambridge where she lived with her husband. According to Tsarnaev’s mother, she adopted the Islamic name Karima Tsarnaeva. She has a baby child.

According to western media Tamerlan’s views had become increasingly radical. Facts will come to light sooner or later to form a concluded opinion. Cobin Rain says that “militant Islam” is a worldview, a belief system which funnily enough seems to spread faster and faster with every “victory” we proclaim.

[url]http://www.thefrontierpost.com/category/40/[/url]

[QUOTE=Anam swati;593358]Again u dint mention da course plz do it[/QUOTE]

Current Affairs

[CENTER][U][B][FONT="Georgia"][SIZE="5"]How Israel dented US economy

Zaheerul Hassan & Sajjad Shaukat
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According to Israeli news agency, on May 7, 2013, Israel’s Ministry of Finance published a new austerity economic plan, with a view to reduce the country’s 11 billion U.S. dollars of budget deficit. The Israeli cabinet will vote on the new budget, along with the Economic Arrangements Bill, which includes legislative changes as part of the economic policy. But focus of covert agenda of Israeli budget designers will remain to keep on yelling in the name of Israeli defence and force the Jewish Lobby to guard Tel vive interests against Arabs and Iran.
From the very outset it would not be wrong in saying that Israel has caused termite effects in US economy. A country that used to rule global economy forced to accept bailout package from her traditional rival China. Let analyze that whether President Obama, now in his second tenure in Whitehouse will be successful to put the country’s economy on track.
Although, US as per Obama exit policy will say Goodbye to Afghan region by 2014 but Israel will keep on milking US economy in the name Iran nuclear programe.
Notably, since the September 11 tragedy, Israel and Jews who had overtly and covertly jumped on Bush’s anti-terrorism enterprise in order to targeting Pakistan, Iran and China in particular and other Islamic countries in general have been damaging their global economic interests by manipulating the US war on terror.
On the other side, in the aftermath of 9/11, various suicide attacks in Israel, Indonesia, Saudi Arabia, Egypt, Spain, Britain etc., and an unending wave of the same in Iraq and Afghanistan shows that the Muslim revolutionaries are giving a greater setback to the world economic which especially safeguards the interests of the Jews at the cost of the small states which have become arena of this new style conflict.
It is notable that many big cartels of the world are owned by the Jews. By controlling the major multinational corporations, arms factories, five star hotels, oil companies, liquor business, food industries, mining and mineral resources, banks, film industry, print and electronic media on international level-having influence on the financial institutes like World Bank and International Monetary Fund, Jews have direct and indirect hold on the global economy.
In this regard, many intellectuals like Don Allen and others reveal, “the Council on Foreign Relations (CFR) was founded in New York City by Col. Edward Mandell House (real name: Haus-Jewish), chief adviser to President Woodrow Wilson, in league with stockholders of the Federal Reserve Bank…was part of a conspiracy to gain control of both US political parties to use them as instruments…seventy-three percent of the members of the Council on Foreign Relations are Jews. There are a number of organizations that comprise the Invisible Government that runs America and the world- from behind the scenes. A Jewish group is in control of national governments and multinational corporations, promotes world government through control of the military, media, foundation grants and education including NGOs…and controls and guides the issues of the day, and thus they control most options available. They will manage the money, the land, the food, and the guns-of everyone in the world.”
According to Ted Pike, “almost every substantial library in America contains a number of books confirming such Jewish control.
The extent of Jewish grip on the US Administration and American policies could also be judged from the observation of Mike Stathis who, while quoting Senator William J., writes, “The great majority of the Senate of the United States…somewhere around 80 percent…are completely in support of Israel, anything Israel wants. This has been demonstrated time and again.” And “without the all out support by the US in money and weapons and so on the Israelis could not do what they have been doing.”
The American Israel Public Affairs Committee (AIPAC) is a lobbying group that advocates pro-Israel policies to the Congress and Executive Branch of the United States. The New York Times has described it as “the most important organization affecting America’s relationship with Israel,” while other sources calls it “as one of the most powerful lobbying groups in Washington, DC stating that it “acts as an agent of the Israeli government with a stranglehold on the US Congress with its power and influence.”
However, Jews who shape and mould the American foreign policies including those of some western countries in one or the other way have also got the services of some Hindus and Americans so as to continue their anti-Muslim campaign. In this respect, by availing the ongoing international phenomena of terrorism, Jewish-Hindu lobbies are collectively working in America and other European countries to manipulate the double standards of the west in relation to terrorism and human rights vis-à-vis Pakistan, Iran and China in particular and Syria, Libya, Yemen, Egypt etc. in general in wake of the violent protests and uprising in these Middle East states. Particularly Israel and India are equating the ‘war of independence’ in Kashmir and Palestine with terrorism. If New Delhi considers Pakistan as her enemy number one, Tel Aviv takes Iran in the same sense especially due to its nuclear programme which is also negated by the US. Israel is also against Pakistan as it is the only nuclear Islamic country.
It is due to the Jewish control over world media and collective secret alliance of American CIA, Israeli Mossad and Indian RAW that some Indian, Israeli and western politicians have introduced dangerous socio-religious dimension in their societies by equating the “war on terror” with “war on Islam” and acts of Al Qaeda with all the Muslims. Their media have also been contributing to heighten the currents of world politics on cultural and religious lines with the negative projection of Islam. In this connection, reprinting of the caricatures about Prophet Muhammad (PBUH) and release of a Dutch film against the Holy Quran in the recent past might be noted as an example.
It is noteworthy that in a prolonged war of more than ten years, despite heavy aerial bombardment and ground shelling in Iraq, Afghanistan and now in Pakistan through intermittent drone attacks, US-led forces have badly failed in obtaining their objectives. These tactics have killed more innocent civilians-created massive resentment against Washington, and have been expediting the radicalism among the young men, turning them into suicide bombers, giving a greater setback to the security of Afghanistan and Pakistan.
US-led different war between the sovereign and non-sovereign entities has proved that big powers have failed in crushing the power of the Islamic militants on global and regional level through armed forces, equipped with sophisticated weaponry. Such a state terrorism by the sole superpower has resulted into more terrorism from Somalia to Iraq and Nigeria to Afghanistan, while destabilizing the economy of the whole world which is in fact dominated by the Jews.
America whose external policy is directed by the Jews intends to convert particularly Pakistan into a “failed state” by causing political and economic instability as a perennial wave of suicide attacks, bomb blasts and targeted killings sponsored by CIA, RAW and Mossad coupled with the US threat of high-value targets inside the country indicates. Besides, Washington is going to act upon exit strategy from Afghanistan, so it has started shifting Afghan war in Pakistan. Nevertheless, such an ill-conceived strategy will create external insecurity which is likely to further harm America’s larger geo-political and economic interests on regional and international level.
While taking cognizance of the US-led prolonged war on terror, decline of dollars, heavy cost of war and intensity of financial crisis which severely hit the economy of the US in particular and other European countries in general-in the present era of globalization of markets, multi-nationals and media networks, even western think-tanks have recognized inter-relationship between peace, economics, politics and terrorism. Now, they agree in light of the US failed strategy against terrorism and defeatism in Afghanistan that religious fanaticism and stiff resistance of the Islamic militants are linked to political and economic injustices.
Under the pretext of terrorism, it is because of anti-Muslim developments that a greater resentment is being found among the Muslims who think that the US in connivance with the Jewish-Hindu lobbies is sponsoring state terrorism, directly or indirectly in Afghanistan, Iraq, Kashmir and Palestine including other countries of the Middle East and Africa.
Nonetheless, if Jews want to protect their economic and financial interests in the modern world of today, they should abandon the old theories of Machiavelli, Morgenthau, Waltz and Kissinger who emphasized power as the main determinant of international relations, endorsing the principle of might is right. Otherwise, Muslim militants, fighting against the imperialist powers through ambush assaults, rocket attacks and suicide bombers have broken the myth of old model of power-based theories which only safeguard the economic interests of the Jews which are well-penetrated in the US and other western countries, and want to continue present war against the Islamic radicals. In this regard, in a short war of 2006, Tel Aviv and American Jews should also learn a lesson from Israel’s defeat by the non-state entity-Hezbollah.
No doubt, experience of war against terrorism has now clearly proved that the militants are bringing about instability in the world economy dominated by the Jews visibly and invisibly. So Jews are rapidly damaging their own economic and financial interests in a word which has changed into a global village. In this context, Jewish interests demand peace and security in the world.
For this purpose, they must give up conspiracies against Pakistan, Iran, China and other Arab countries. They must also play a positive role in resolving the thorny issues of Kashmir and Palestine.
In short, the US masses and leadership probably have started realizing now to mend the American economic plans and there is no need to get blackmailed in the hands of Israeli Jews. They also realized to settle the ME issue to become again a sole global economic power.

[url]http://www.thefrontierpost.com/category/40/[/url]

[CENTER][U][B][FONT="Georgia"][SIZE="5"]Delay on cabinet picks affects Obama’s agenda

Laura Litvan[/SIZE][/FONT][/B][/U][/CENTER]


Senate Republicans are delaying at least two Cabinet-level nominations with potential effects on industries, complicating President Obama’s second-term agenda.
Obama’s choices to lead the Labor Department and the Environmental Protection Agency have been delayed by feuds over their past positions and the policies of departments they aspire to lead. His nominee to lead the Energy Department had been stalled, though an agreement was reached late Thursday for a confirmation vote.
All Republicans on a panel that was scheduled to vote Thursday on Gina McCarthy’s nomination to head the EPA delayed it by refusing to show up. An unidentified Republican on May 8 postponed for a week a panel vote on Labor Secretary nominee Thomas Perez, as party leaders announced they oppose him.
A single senator had stalled a full Senate vote on Energy Secretary nominee Ernest Moniz.
“The confirmation process is increasingly turning into a hostage situation,” said Ross Baker, a political science professor at Rutgers University in New Brunswick, N.J.
The Senate earlier this year had disputes over the confirmations of Defense Secretary Chuck Hagel and Central Intelligence Agency Director John Brennan.
The current delays may be a warm-up to what could be a contentious confirmation process for Chicago businesswoman and Obama fundraiser Penny Pritzker to lead the Commerce Department.
Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid, D-Nevada, denounced what he said are Republican stalling tactics on the nominations.
“Republicans will use any procedural roadblock or stall tactic available to deny the President qualified nominees,” Reid said Thursday on the Senate floor. “But my Republican colleagues can try every trick in the book. I assure you Mr. Perez will have his day in the Senate. I assure you Ms. McCarthy will have her day in the Senate.”
White House press secretary Jay Carney said Thursday that Senate Republicans should “stop the theater” and move on with McCarthy’s nomination. He told reporters traveling with the president to an event in Texas that the administration remains confident the nominees eventually will be confirmed.
Senate Republican leaders say the criticism is unfounded, and that the recent holdups are part of a careful examination of nominees whose records raise important questions.
“We’ve processed a lot of nominations, but some of the nominees the president has put up are really problematic,” said Sen. John Cornyn of Texas, the second-ranking Republican leader. “Congress has a role to play, in terms of advice and consent. They need to relax a bit and let the Senate do its job.”
The Cabinet-level nominations have encountered roadblocks for different reasons.
Perez, now the Justice Department’s top civil rights lawyer, has differed with Republicans over his handling of two whistle-blower lawsuits that the Justice Department declined to pursue. They were part of a deal in which St. Paul, Minnesota, agreed to drop a case being appealed to the Supreme Court in return for the department withdrawing from the other cases. The Supreme Court case risked striking down an enforcement tool used by Justice in housing discrimination cases.
At his confirmation hearing last month, Perez clashed with Republicans over the lawsuits. Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell, R-Kentucky, added muscle to growing partisan opposition this week, calling Perez a “crusading ideologue” with a history of twisting the law to win desired outcomes.
An unidentified Republican senator invoked a seldom-used Senate rule to delay a planned committee vote until next week. Meanwhile, McConnell spokesman Don Stewart said it’s clear Perez will need backing from at least 60 senators to end delaying tactics by opponents.
McCarthy’s detractors said that their decision to avoid the planned panel vote had less to do with her than with the agency’s actions. Sen. David Vitter of Louisiana, the top Republican on the Senate Environment and Public Works Committee, said the EPA refused to fully answer a series of questions he posed that relate to transparency over the agency’s development and analysis of clean-air rules. McCarthy is now the EPA’s assistant administrator for air pollution.
The confirmation of Moniz, a Massachusetts Institute of Technology physics professor, was approved by the Energy and Natural Resources Committee on a 21-1 vote in April. Sen. Lindsey Graham, R-S.C., had placed a “hold” on a floor vote to protest the administration’s recommended cuts to a plutonium processing plant in his home state.
Reid announced late Thursday that an agreement had been reached to debate and vote on Moniz’s nomination.
In 2012, Republicans — facing record-low approval ratings and White House accusations that they were obstructionists — decided against holding up confirmations to protest the president’s appointment of officials while Congress was on a holiday break.
On Jan. 4, 2012, Obama bypassed Senate confirmation and installed the first US consumer financial watchdog — a position Republicans wanted to abolish — and three new members to the National Labor Relations Board. Republicans debated holding up nominations, though later let judicial and executive- branch picks move through the chamber, which Democrats control with 55 votes.
This month’s delays return the Senate to the confirmation battles of 2011. Republicans that year for months held up a vote on former Edison International Chief Executive Officer John Bryson, Obama’s choice for commerce secretary, until the White House forwarded pending trade deals for South Korea, Panama and Colombia to Congress for approval.
Some nominees, including Federal Reserve board choice Peter Diamond, withdrew their names from consideration that year because of delays.
Obama’s nomination last week of Tom Wheeler, a venture capitalist and former lobbyist, to lead the Federal Communications Commission may face a confirmation fight amid a cool reception from Senate Commerce Committee Chairman Jay Rockefeller, D-W.Virginia
“What’s unusual is the number of these disputes that are breaking out now,” said John Pitney, a political science professor at Claremont McKenna College in Claremont, California
He said the number of current disputes over Obama’s nominees is partly because the balance of power didn’t shift in Washington after the 2012 election. Republicans, he said, are starting to look to the 2014 congressional elections, and a 2016 presidential contest when Obama will have left the stage.
“The president is now a lame duck,” Pitney said. “Second-term presidents don’t have the same energy and influence they had. The laws of political gravity are taking hold, and some nominees are getting pulled down as a result.”


[url]http://www.thefrontierpost.com/category/40/[/url]