January 19, 2006
La Paz Effect in Pakistan
The ripple effect of Evo Morales’s stunning presidential win in Bolivia is being felt – and closely watched – as far away as Pakistan, as shown by a recent op-ed in The News, one of Pakistan’s leading English dailies.
The recent sweep of left leaning presidents in Latin America (referring to the election of anti-neo liberal candidates in Brazil, Argentina, Ecuador, Uruguay, Venezuela and Chile, as well as Bolivia, over the past year) is instructive for Pakistan, writes Farooq Sulehria: “Latin America was the first continent turned into a laboratory for neo-liberal experiments. Ironically, it also is the first to stand up in rebellion.” While Pakistani President Musharraf is “busy implementing…come what will” the free trade and privatization directives of the World Bank and IMF, Sulehria argues that there are lessons to be learned for Pakistan about the rising of Latin resistance to this model:
“By opening up economies to ‘market forces’, Latin American countries were promised significant poverty reduction. In fact, what happened was a significant increase in the hold exercised over Latin American economies by multinationals, especially US corporations. Between 1990, and 2002, multinational corporations acquired 4,000 banking, telecommunications, transport, petrol and mining interests in Latin America.”
Sulehria closes with this warning:
“For the last two decades, Washington has forced neoliberalism (read poverty) down third world throats in order to make the world better for US business. To many the US economic empire, spreading at gunpoint, seemed unassailable. But now, unable to defeat rag-tag Iraqi militias and rapidly losing allies in Latin America, the empire stands exposed to others on the globe. Others, including Pakistan, are watching and learning.”
DAVID MONTERO reports from Islamabad, Pakistan for the Christian Science Monitor.
Posted 10:55 PM | Comments (0)
January 16, 2006
MLK's legacy undone?
The Guardian marks the 20th celebration of Martin Luther King Day with an examination of what many consider to be one of his most lasting legacies, the racial integration of American schools. Despite the widely-held belief among Americans (78% of whites and 66% of Blacks) that progress is being made towards greater integration, the article references a new Harvard study that indicates there has been a steady increase in school segregation over the last 15 years.
[T]he percentage of black students attending schools where most students are non-white increased across the US from 66% in 1991 to 73% in the 2003-2004 school year, according to the report by Harvard's Civil Rights Project and released at the weekend. In the south, where the desegregation effort was concentrated, the number of black students in schools where most students are non-white rose from 61% to 71% over a 12-year period. More than three-quarters of intensely segregated schools serve children from poor families, the report said.
School desegregation is one of the signal achievements of the 1960's Civil Rights movement, both within the US and throughout the world. That there could be increasing segregation, even a return to late-60's levels, strikes at one of the great symbols of America's commitment to racial equality and domestic reform.
Posted 10:17 PM | Comments (0)
A strategic view from Peshawar
It is generally difficult for those without Arabic, Urdu or Pashtoo language skills to guage public opinion the swath of the greater Middle East that represents the heartland of political Islam. But for those English-speakers curious about the Islamist worldview, and especially that of Al Qaeda and its Afghan and Pakistani sympathizers, there is hope in the form of Pakistan's Peshawar-based Frontier Post. Like any newspaper, it reflects the attitudes and values of its readers, who happen to also represent the regional constituency most sympathetic to Al Qaeda and the former Taliban rulers of Afghanistan.
The Frontier Post has recently run an editorial about US involvement in the region, titled "How the US views India and Pakistan?" The question mark seems to be a pure formality, since the author, Mohammad Jamil, prefers the declarative mode, and hammers in his points with authority. He sees the US manipulating India against Pakistan, in effect betraying Pakistan, loyal ally in the Cold War struggle in Afghanistan and in the War on Terror. Indeed, far from commited enmity, the piece strikes a tone of hurt betrayal.
Jamil writes about the indignities and double-dealings Pakistan has suffered at the hands of the US:
Anyhow, the way the US has treated a friend that stood by its allies for about half-a-century, got dismembered as a result of its involvement in military pacts, and even risked its very existence by becoming the frontline state against another super power during the Afghan crisis is deplorable. By entering into strategic partnership with India, the US leadership has not only disappointed Pakistan but also spawned despondency in Kashmir, as the Kashmiris always considered the US a country that stood for the right of self-determination of the suppressed nations.
It is surprising to note the double speak of the US administration. On the one hand it acknowledges Pakistan’s prodigious role in the war on terror but on the other it shows lack of trust when US-led forces enter Pakistan in hot pursuit of Al Qaeda operatives or Taliban remnants. Recently, when Washington was lauding President Pervez Musharraf’s determination against terrorism, and Pakistan forces’ action against terrorists in a briefing, eighteen people were killed and many injured in powerful explosions destroying one house and damaging other hutments in Bajaur Tribal Agency near Peshawar reportedly by the US-led allied forces.
It appears that even in Al Qaeda's backyard, it is specific policy positions and behavior - like Friday's missile strike - that motivate hostility, moreso than ideological or religious hatred.
Posted 04:25 PM | Comments (0)
American rocket strike in Pakistan draws fire
On Friday, January 13th an unmanned Predator drone fired a number of Hellfire rockets into a house in Damadola village, in the Bajaur region near the Afghan border. The target was Ayman al-Zawahiri, the second-in-command of Al Qaeda and, since Osama bin Laden ceased issuing statements last year, the public face of the extremist movement. The CIA was working off of intelligence indicating that Zawahiri would be having dinner at the house. This information proved inaccurate, and no major Al Qaeda figure has been identified among the 18 dead, which include women and children, although some reports suggest that up to 11 may have been lower-ranking Islamic militants.
Pakistan has reacted with shock and anger. In the border provinces, protests sprung up the day after the attack, spreading to major Pakistani cities - Karachi, Islamabad, Lahore and Peshawar - by Monday. In the Western press, the Guardian has published a fairly comprehensive overview of the attacks and the reaction. The largest crowds assembled in Karachi, where 10,000 people marched shouting slogans against the US and Pakistani leader Pervez Musharraf. DAWN, a Pakistani newspaper, gives approximate turnout at protests across the country.
While the largest crowds were in Karachi, the most strident were in Peshawar, the main city of the fiercely Islamic and anti-American North-West Frontier Province. The local Frontier Post reports that those rallies were organized by an Islamic party, the Jamaat-e-Islami. Party leaders pledged themselves to Jihad against the US, advocated the partition of the US into 52 successor states (on the model of the former Soviet Union), and bemoaned the fact that Pakistan's development of nuclear weapons has failed to deter American strikes inside the country.
Posted 03:58 PM | Comments (0)
January 14, 2006
La Paz Effect: Latin Tremors
The ripple effects of Evo Morales’ election as President of Bolivia are continuing to be felt throughout Latin America—most poignantly in the ongoing dissection of the economic reform model known as the ‘Washington consensus’ that was one of Morales’ favorite targets.
Bolivia was supposed to be a laboratory for the ‘consensus’ economic reform model of tight social spending and export-oriented growth. But it was those who perceived themselves as 'disenfranchised' from those policies--millions of small farmers, urban poor and the country’s large indigenous population--who put Morales into the presidential palace in La Paz, and toppled whatever remaining legitimacy for the ‘consensus’ remained within the continent. Shortly after Morales’ election, Argentine president Nestor Kirchner announced that he would pay off the country’s outstanding $9.8 billion debt to the International Monetary Fund, thus unhinging the country from IMF/World Bank constraints; a left candidate for the Peruvian presidency, Ollanta Humalla, surged into second place in the polls; and the Zapatistas, in Mexico over new years, launched “the other campaign” in parallel to that country’s presidential race to highlight issues of indigenous rights--an effort widely perceived as having received a considerable boost from the election results in Bolivia. By January 14, the Colombian newspaper El Tiempo featured a debate between John Williamson, the U.S. economist, affiliated with the Institute for International Economics in Washington, DC, considered to be one of the primary architects of what’s become known as the Washington Consensus; and José Luis Machinea, Secretary General of the Economic Commission for Latin America and the Caribbean at the United Nations, over what, if anything, remains of the “Consensus’.
The changes in Latin America—long in the works, but also intensified by Morales’ election—are not merely ones of rhetoric. Even John Williamson admitted that the World Bank made mistakes in not paying enough attention to the ‘social factors” involved in economic reform. The “Washington consensus,” a complex set of policies so tied to the United States that they bear the name of our nation’s capital, is unraveling just as quickly as a new term is being introduced to suggest a somewhat more welcome economic power in Latin Power: “Chindia,” the combined economic might of India and China. The turn of many Latin countries east—toward Asia as well as toward the European Union—has gone largely un-reported in the United States. But, El Tiempo suggests, such new trading partners offer not only growing and increasingly affluent markets, but none of the political baggage associated with the long history of U.S. intervention in the region:
“Since the end of the communist system in the USSR, the United States has been dreaming of a world dominated by one superpower: the U.S. That is not coming to pass.
The rapid transformation of China into an economic power, with India following in its footprints, signifies that the U.S. better prepare for a different future, one in which it will have to understand how to share power among others like never before. It’s a change that will not be easy.”
Posted 06:32 PM | Comments (0)
December 08, 2005
US-Poland Security Meeting
Gazeta Wyborcza reports on a meeting between US Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsefeld and his Polish counterpart, Radek Sikorski. Poland has a substantial contingent in Iraq - 1,700 men - and has apparently agreed to say on for the medium term, albeit with some reductions and a shift from security operations to training. Sikorski insisted that this was a measure to enhance Poland's security, and not a dig for increases in US aid. Having said that, he then noted that he and Rumsfeld also discussed Poland's expecations of the US, which apparently include help in procuring advanced weapon's technology, communications equipment and smart bombs. Also a Polish priority is American cooperation in the development of the joint Polish-Ukrainian batallion, with the goal of upgrading it to a Polish-Ukrainian-American brigade. This may seem like a distant triviality to American observers, but the Polish goal is actually quite audacious - such a unit would help anchor Ukraine in the Western alliance, and bring US influence right up to the western borders of Russia.
Posted 02:46 AM | Comments (0)
December 04, 2005
Rice to address CIA on Europe trip
Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice will try to turn the tables on critics of U.S. terrorism policy in Europe this week, arguing that the United States acts legally and does not ship suspected terrorists around the globe to be tortured.
One of leading newspaper in Japan, Asahi, is paying attention to the travel across Europe by Secretary Rice as well, since awaiting Rice on her stops in Germany, Belgium, Romania and other destinations will be questions about alleged human rights violations supposedly engineered by Washington.
Citing human rights abuses in its handling of detainees at Guantanamo Naval Base in Cuba and Abu Ghraib Prison in Iraq by the US and also the prison camps during the civil war of the former Yugoslavia , Asahi's Sunday editrial says "If these same countries fail to take a stern and critical look at their own actions, the so-called humanitarianism of the United States and Europe will be condemned as two-faced hypocrisy."
Secretary Rice owes the EU a clear explanation of what has taken place, followed by immediate action by Washington to rectify any wrongdoing.At the same time, the EU should conduct its own independent survey. Until the whole truth about the secret jail claims is told and the citizens of Europe are satisfied with what has been done to rectify the matter, it will be difficult to declare the Continent has truly taken to heart the sad legacy of the Holocaust.
The time has likewise come for the United States and Europe to mend the rift that has widened over the Iraq war and promote greater cross-Atlantic cooperation in rebuilding that shattered nation and on other fronts.
Vague and evasive responses to the current secret jail claims won't serve to move things in that direction.
Posted 11:39 PM | Comments (1)
December 01, 2005
Yellowcake, again
A new episode in the Yellowcake case. Today La Repubblica runs an interview with Alain Chouet, French 007 till 2002. The interview controverts the Italian government reconstruction in four essential points:
1. Rocco Martino, the fake Italian 007, did not work for the DGSE (Direction Générale de la Sécurité extérieure), as the Italian government stated.
2. CIA gets the fake documents about the Niger Yellocake in June 2002. That is, when the Italian magazine Panorama gives the fake documents to the American Embassy in Rome in August 2002, CIA already has the documents.
3. As opposed to what stated by the Italian government, the DGSE did not pass the documents to Washington. On the contrary, Washington passed the documents to the DGSE asking to verify them. The DGSE informs Washington that the documents are false since July 2002.
4. Rocco Martino gets in touch with the DGSE only in the summer of 2002, not before.
If what stated by Alain Chouet is true, as it seems to be so far, La Repubblica gets another scoop about the Yellowcake.
Posted 04:15 PM | Comments (0)
November 29, 2005
Prisonners in the sky?
The EU Council has hired Dick Marty, an ex Swiss prosecutor famous for his fight against the Mafia to investigate the issue. Marty immediately requested photos of some prison sites during the past three years from the European Union's satellite center in Torrejón, Spain.
According to Der Spiegel (Germany): “He also contacted the European aviation authority, Eurocontrol, asking for data on the flight movements of 31 aircraft suspected of having served as CIA shuttles for the transport of prisoners or abducted terrorism suspects.” Articles about flights of planes suspected to belong or to be rented by the CIA have begun to appear at least in the German, the Portuguese and the Spanish press.
The subject is obviously attracting more attention in Europe where sanctions could be applied to member countries if it is proven that they have hosted “Black sites” (see this note).
In the European Parliament, the socialist group (second in importance) criticized European leaders for their complacency. It declared that “the existence of such prisons would be a clear violation of Human Rights and EU criteria.”
One of the touchy issues is that European sanctions against “prisons” would not apply to planes in transit according to Franco Frattini the EU commissioner for Human Rights quoted by Le Monde.
But El País (Spain) quotes Marty as saying that a Guantanamo in Europe was not likely: “Everything indicates rather a methodology and logistics which consists in ferrying prisoners from one point to another and keeps them for a couple of days.”
Der Spiegel goes further: “the highest-ranking al-Qaeda members are apparently kept moving with a small group of CIA interrogation experts, like an invisible caravan, from one of the so-called black sites to another.”
[Map taken from Der Spiegel. See full size here]
Posted 11:30 AM | Comments (0)
Perils In Pakistani Earthquake Relief, Parallels to Katrina
Pakistan is more than just a U.S. ally in the war on terror – it’s also an eerie doppelganger of hard core Republican economic strategies, according to Afiya Shehrbano, a sociologist in Pakistan who points out ‘scary affinities’ between the how the Bush and Musharraf administrations handle disaster relief.
“In fact, [the Musharraf administration’s attitude] is eerily reminiscent of the kind of hard-core Republican strategy that is shaping the reconstruction process in the aftermath of Hurricane Katrina's flooding of New Orleans. First of all, disasters are not indiscriminate, as the fatalists like to believe. Class, race and gender play integral roles in the nature and extent of damage, as do the flaws of rural housing and inadequate infrastructure,” she writes for The News of Pakistan.
The disaster clean-up after Katrina, she writes, is moreover a warning of both what to expect and what to avoid in Pakistan post quake.
She argues for example that, like FEMA, the ranks of Pakistan’s Relief and Reconstruction Authority have been stocked according to the calculus of patronage and profit, rather than skill and merit. Relief efforts should be conducted with a view toward ecological considerations and the needs of the affected people, not lining the pockets of the military, “who have become notoriously involved in real estate as side-businesses in every part of this country,” she advises.
“Note also the likeness in 'optimistic' conservative economic agendas that the Bush administration promised New Orleans victims and which our administration is pushing after the earthquake. Both have pledged to make the affected areas into capitalist utopias through free trade pacts,” Shehrbano observes, concluding, “It is really the right moment for civil society to step in and organise its efforts towards a meaningful, people-oriented rebuilding of the affected communities.”
David Montero, a freelance journalist in Dhaka, Bangladesh, covered the Pakistani earthquake for the Christian Science Monitor and other publications.
Posted 11:27 AM | Comments (0)
The Torture debate viewed from Poland
The Polish daily Gazeta Wyborcza runs an article summarizing the recent torture debates in America. It reprises for Polish audiences debates that by now are familiar to most people following US news - the introduction of the McCain ammendment, the question of drawing a line for interrogation techniques, the new vulnerability of the Bush White House on this issue. A few interesting remarks are made that haven't cropped up elsewhere, however. The article notes that this is far from a new issue - the New Yorker and other higher-end news magazines have been sustaining this discussion for over a year, but it took Congress taking up the issue for it to break into the mainstream imagination.
More interesting, however, is a detail that emerges when the piece examines the effectiveness of torture in intelligence gathering. Apparently in 2002, Ibn Sheikh al-Libi, a senior Al-Qaeda operative caputured in Afghanistan, revealed under torture that Al-Qaeda had sent agents into Iraq, although he later reversed these statements. This information became part of the case for the Iraq invasion and was used to brief Colin Powell before his now infamous session at the UN.
Posted 01:25 AM | Comments (0)
November 21, 2005
US Senate criticizes Siberian exile
Poland's Gazeta Wyborcza picks up a Russia news story concerning a US Senate resolution about the imprisonment of the two former oligarchs of now-defunct Yukos, Mikhail Khodorkovsky and Platon Lebedev. Having been charged and convicted of tax evasion, they are serving out their sentences in Siberia and on the Yamal Peninsula, above the Arctic Circle. This is in violation of Russian penal law, which indicates that convicts serve their sentence either in the area where they reside or where they were convicted - in the case of the Yukos chiefs, this would be Moscow. The prisons that house Khodorkovsky and Lebedev are among the most notorious in Russia. The US Senate has therefore passed a resolution calling on their transfer out of these remote penal colonies back to the Moscow area.
The Senate resolution, of course, has no authority over the Russia government, and it taken as a symbolic gesture. These resolutions are not altogether uncommon - they are seen by US senators as easy ways of placating domestic constituencies. US newspapers do not take such resolutions particularly seriously, and none have reported on this case. But this story in the flagship Polish paper is suggestive of a number of things. First, Poles care much more about the US Senate taking a hard line on Russia than Americans seem to. Second, Poland still grants the US a measure of moral authority, something unlikely in the rest of Europe. Third, it turns out that Khodorkovsky has a certain level of organization and political support in the US. And finally, perhaps this is a sign that US lawmakers are resigned to their own bad reputation concerning detainees, and rather then defending their own record prefer to point out abuses elsewhere.
Posted 11:23 PM | Comments (0)
Poland and missile defense - interview with a former ambassador
Gazeta Wyborcza publishes an interview with Przemysław Grudziński, security scholar and former Polish ambassador to Washington. There is no news to report - negotiations with the US are ongoing about basing interceptors in Poland - but Grudziński clearly spells out Poland's fairly high hopes for the initiative. He notes that previous Western and US oriented security moves - joining NATO, the purchase of US F-16 fighters, participation in the Iraq war - have yet to pay dividends, but he is optimistic that the logistical, manufacturing and infrastructure requirements of hosting bases will serve to spur economic development in Poland. He also notes that such a move would cement Poland's place among the staunchest US allies. It seems that previous disappointments with the US have only increased Poles' desire to demonstrate thier reliability and loyalty.
A final decision on base locations is expected within a few weeks. Originally, Poland, the Czech Republic and Hungary were considered as possible host countries, but worsening relations between Prague and Washington have ruled out the Czechs. While Hungary still remains a possibility, the odds-on favorite is Poland.
Posted 11:05 PM | Comments (0)
November 18, 2005
Terminator IV: Massive Political Impact (as pitched by Matt Ogdie and Keli Dailey)
"If I would do another 'Terminator' movie, I would
have 'Terminator' travel back in time to tell Arnold not to have a
special election," Schwarzenegger told reporters.
http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?file=/c/a/2005/11/11/MNGFMFMNV21.DTL
--
Let's make another Terminator movie, send the Terminator back in time and tell Ghandi and Neru that the Great Migration was going to cost ~30 million lives. The Terminator strongly advises them to take the necessary precautions!
Or
Let's make another Terminator movie, send the Terminator back in time and inform Lloyd George and the political aristocracies of Europe that the Treaty of Versailles would lead to the rise of Nazi Germany and so predominate the historical landscape of the 20th century that it is impossible to separate the Cold War from it's ill-effects.
Or
Let's make another Terminator movie, send the Terminator T-1000 back in time and tell that stupid jerk Reagan that he could engage the Soviets in a catastrophic financial contest without actually spending trillions of dollars on nuclear warheads that we are currently spending trillions of dollars dismantling and tracking as they inevitably bleed into the black market.
Or ...and this could already be in production…
Let's make another Terminator movie, send the Terminator back in time and send him to Iraq, where he would kick some serious Al-Qaeda ass, befriend a little Kurdish boy who brings out the human spirit in his Terminator source code, which emerges in time for him to sacrifice his cyborg life in order to kill Osama bin Laden in some FANTASTIC way that has lots of explosions..more explosions than anybody's ever seen on film!!!!
Why not just have the Terminator arrest Osama before 9/11? Or inform the authorities? It's a Jerry Bruckheimer film, for chrissake.
Posted 10:22 PM | Comments (0)
November 13, 2005
Missile Defense Base in Poland
Gazeta Wyborcza reports that today the new right-wing government of Poland has formally announced its willingness to participate in the American ballistic missile defense program, even to the point of housing anti-missile rockets in Poland. According to the article, secret negotiations have been taking place between Washington and Warsaw for the last six months, suggesting that the former leftist government also supported this policy. It goes on to cite that Pentagon officials will make a decision in the next six months whether to take up Poland's offer of basing interceptor missiles.
Posted 11:38 PM | Comments (0)
"Black Sites" in Eastern Europe
It has been two weeks since the revelation in the Washington Post that the US holds terror-related subjects in secret prisons in Eastern Europe and elsewhere, presumably to keep them out of the jurisdiction of US law. In Poland, one of the Eastern European countries widely suspected to house one such prison, the reaction has been slow and muted. I only found one piece that dealt with the issue, and only in passing in an article on Guantanamo Bay. The article reported the existence of secret prisons in the Middle East and Asia, but questioned whether any were located in Eastern Europe. The piece cites a Polish intelligence officer denying reports of CIA prisons in Poland, but goes on to note that the Czech government has acknowledged receiving a request to set such a prison up. Czech sources insist that that request was denied.
Posted 11:28 PM | Comments (0)
No APEC, No Bush
Member economies of the Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation (APEC) began the annual APEC forum Saturday , with the start of the Concluding Senior Officials' Meeting (CSOM).
This week Asia Pacific summit will be attended by US President George W. Bush. Exactly like the one in Mar del Plata and Buenos Aires during this year's Summit of the Americas, President Bush has thousands of protesters here in Busan, South Korea's second largest city, again.
Farmers' union leaders said 50,000 of their members would rally in Busan next Friday along with a similar turnout of workers in an anti-Bush, anti-trade liberalization protest."No Bush! No War! No Globalization! No APEC!," read a leaflet calling on workers to take part in an anti-APEC rally.
*snip*
In a statement, the group said APEC had become a tool for US multinationals seeking to expand their dominance in the world market "under the pretext of trade liberalization."The group leaders also criticised Bush at a rally here for leading a "war of aggression" against Iraq. One protester, wearing a face mask and carrying a mock M-16 rifle, was bound by ropes with a sign attached reading "war criminal."
Photo is also from AFP.
Posted 09:37 PM | Comments (0)
November 10, 2005
Bill Clinton and George Bush: same strategy
From the war in Iraq to the Kyoto protocol, to the International Criminal Court, Bush’s international strategy is regularly accused of unilateralism in Europe. "But if George W. Bush’s positions exacerbated the discussion, it is not exclusively an issue of the present administration: Bill Clinton prepared the way", says Mariano Aguirre, expert in international politics, in an article in Enjeux internationaux.
He explains that even the liberal point of view is full of contradictions: “they want to be ‘multilateralists,’ but at the same time continue to act as a superpower.” Aguirre gives the example of the presidential campaign when John Kerry said that the war in Iraq was a mistake but at the same time asked the participation of France and Germany.
Bill Clinton simply was a “transition between the status of superpower during the Cold War and the aggressive leadership of the neo-conservatism of George Bush Jr.” “Bill Clinton already weakened the United Nations,” he says. That’s the consequence of a vision which sees the United States as the unique power in the world. But ironically, this strategy is absolutely not in line with the US’s interest, following Aguirre’s analysis. Over the long term, their interest lies not in a “benevolent domination,” nor in a “new empire.” To the contrary, it is in line with the “reinforcement of the multilateral system and its security, environmental and human rights accords,” he says, pointing out that the Bush and Clinton strategies led their country to “lose their credit, spend enormous resources in military research, and weaken their own economic system.”
In any case, he concludes, the complexity of the international system requires new responses. “A unique State can no more dominate the global system. And even if it could, it would probably not be the United States.”
Enjeux internationaux. N°9. 3eme trimestre 2005
Posted 10:44 AM | Comments (0)
November 08, 2005
Cool Guantanamo
Poland's Gazeta Wybrocza sends Marcin Gadziński on a tour of Camp Delta, the American detainment center at Guantanamo Bay. Setting out, he admits a certain ambivalence:
What is Guantanamo? I considered this on the flight into Cuba. A sybol of American's contempt for the rule of law? Their use of force against individuals who haven't even been formally accused of anything? Or, as Amnesty International alleges, the "gulag of our time?"
But quite quickly into his trip, he reaches the exact opposite conclusion. Under a headline asking "Guantanamo: Gulag or vacation resort?" he describes seeing prisoners, well hydrated with gatorade, playing soccer (and not evening pausing their game at the call to prayer), snacking on California strawberries and Milky Way bars, and making jokes with their guards. Every effort is made to make their incarceration comfortable - prison cooks look up Afghan and Arab recipes on the internet, guards are prohbited from even touching prisoners' Korans, and during Ramadan meals are served before sunrise or after sunset - even the force-feeding of prisoners on hunger strikes only takes place at night.
Gadziński tries to explain the cause for the camps dismal and widespread reputation. The first pictures that came out - of hooded prisoners kneeling in low cages, surrounded by barbed wire - were of Camp X-Ray, a hastily-constructed temporary facility that has since been replaced with the more spacious and adequate Camp Delta. In talking with camp officials, he brings up prisoner allegations about torture. American soldiers explain that, in the early stages of the camp, with 9/11 still fresh in everyone's mind and a very living fear of fresh attacks, the now-notorious interrogation tactics of stress positions, canine intimidation and sexual humiliation were used against inmates. But these were necessary measures, camp officers insist - a lot of good information came out of those interrogations that ended up saving American lives. Since then, and after the outcry over prisoner abuse at Abu Ghreib, those techniques have been suspended and replaced with less invasive, more effective ones.
Bringing up prisoner protestations of innocence, Gadziński is referred to the "Manchester document," a section of an Al-Quaeda manual that gives advice for those caputred. It's first rule is to provide as little information as possible, it's second to always allege torture, and it's third to always protest your innocence. Spreading stories about prisoners innocence, one general tells him, just plays into the hands of Al-Quaeda.
Gadziński sees little at the camp to upset him about this "vital bastion in the war on terror." He describes a friendly staff, respect for prisoners (all of whom, we are reminded, are dangerous terrorists) and clean, spacious conditions (the article is illustrated with slides of the spartan by spic-and-span cells). It's clear that on the gulag vs. vacation resort question, he's been decisively persuaded to the resort side.
Posted 03:42 PM | Comments (0)
Yellowcake timeline
Joshua Marshall posted a detailed timeline of the "yellocake case" on his website.
You can also send additions and corrections to the timeline by sending an email to talk@talkingpointsmemo.com
October 15, 2001:US intelligence agencies receive reports from the Italian intelligence service SISMI of a supposed agreement between Iraq and Niger for the sale of yellowcake uranium. The State Department’s Bureau of Intelligence and Research considers the report “highly suspect” because the French control Niger ’s uranium industry. The CIA, the Defense Intelligence Agency, and the Department of Energy consider a uranium deal “possible.”
October 18, 2001:
The State Department’s Bureau of Intelligence and Research issues a report stating that there is no corroborative evidence that there was any agreement on uranium transfer between Iraq and Niger, or that any uranium was actually transferred.
February 5, 2002:
The CIA’s Directorate of Operations–the clandestine branch that employed Valerie Wilson–issues a second report including “verbatim text” of an agreement for the sale of 500 tons of uranium yellowcake per year that was supposedly signed July 5-6, 2000.
[...]
Posted 02:22 PM | Comments (0)
November 07, 2005
Two Perspectives on America in the West
Two high-brow American boutique publications - Harper's magazine and the New York Times magazine - have recently published two radically different takes on the ambivalent place of the United States in the Western community of nations.
The New York Times' James Traub starts with the recent awarding of the Nobel Prize in literature to Harold Pinter, a British playwright who "views the United States as a moral monster bent on world domination." The Swedish Academy's decision, Traub argues, is emblematic of the mood in Europe, where "the anti-American left is far more intellectually respectable" even in "the highest reaches of European culture." He names names - John Le Carée, Tariq Ali, Arundhati Roy - and cites the harsh criticism of these "implacable ideologues" to US intervention in Serbia, Iraq and elsewhere as proof of "a virulent strain of anti-Americanism."
He suggests the route cause is the resentment of the European left when confronted by the "socialist debacle" at home and American power and prosperity abroad. His solution? Broadening the war of ideas being waged in the Middle East to now-hostile European territory.
William Pfaff, writing in Harper's, takes an almost opposite approach. Rather then beginning with the fact of European hostility towards the US (prevalent, at least, among the intelligentsia), he starts instead with specific parts of US policy, most significantly the use of torture in the war on terror.
Pfaff notes that there are few significant value differences between America and the other Western nations. One concerns international law - most Western nations view international organizations as legitimate and beneficial, and multilateral agreements, especially on human rights questions, as sacrosanct, while the US tends to view these things instrumentally and suspiciously, preferring to safeguard its sovereignty. Conversely, there seems to be a consensus on the human rights protected - on both sides of the Atlantic, these rights are considered to represent the highest ideals of the West. Under normal circumstances, these differences would not cause severe friction - there is more keeping the West together than pulling it apart. But, Pfaff argues, after Sept. 11 normal circumstances came to an end in the United States.
Instead, he describes a Manichean worldview held by American political leaders, pitting their country against an objectively "evil" terrorist threat. The depravity and seriousness of this threat justified anything in the effort to counter it - disregard for international law, undermining traditional institutions and alliances and, most seriously, the widespread use of torture. Pfaff's accusations are not new - he cites the existence of secret prisons abroad, the practice of extraordinary rendition and, of course, the indefinite detainment of prisoners in Guantanamo and Iraq - but his conclusions, in light of the brazenness of US authorities - are startling.
International illegality, the deliberate repudiation of international law, and torture, gratuitously employed in defiance of the moral intuitions of ordinary people, all show that the Bush Administration has chosen to place itself outside the moral community of modern Western democratic civilization.
If this is being published in Harper's, maybe Traub's war of ideas needs to be taken to the home front as well.
Posted 01:11 AM | Comments (0)
November 06, 2005
Italian Yellowcake
On the Italian newspapers much has been made about the “yellowcake case”.
On the 24th of October the national daily newspaper La Repubblica, a strong Berlusconi opponent, published an investigation revealing that the SISMI (the Italian intelligence agency) made a strong contribution to the hunt for weapons of mass destruction in Iraq. The article accuses the Italian spymaster, General Nicolo Pollari, of knowingly passing forged documents to the United States suggesting that Saddam Hussein had been seeking uranium in Niger, claims that helped justify the case for the 2003 invasion of Iraq. La Repubblica also reported that General Pollari had acted at the behest of Mr. Berlusconi, who was said to be eager to help President Bush in the search for weapons in Iraq.
On the 27th of October the Italian Government categorically denied any involvement in the Niger Fraud, denying any "direct or indirect involvement in the packaging and delivery of the false dossier on Niger's uranium". But nobody seems to really believe that and the debate is still heated in Italy, even after Pollari’s hearing in Rome on the 3rd of November.
While La Repubblica is keeping investigating on the SISMI contribution to the Iraqi war, other right-wing newspapers and blogs are trying to emphasize the errors and the contradictions of its investigation.
In order to have a complete and objective overview of the case, you can look at the Italian blog Paferrobyday.
Posted 05:23 PM | Comments (0)
November 05, 2005
US-Japan Alliance: Cold War again?
In response to the report entitled "US-Japan alliance: For future reforms and regrouping" published at the end of last month, People's Daily, the most influential and authoritative Chinese newspaper, Saturday put the review "US-Japan military alliance reflects Cold War mentality" written by Jiang Xinfeng who is a research fellow with the Chinese Academy of Military Sciences and World Military Research Institute.
Jiang elevated sense of vigilance against accelerating Japan-US military integration and called it "full of Cold War mentality".
On October 29, Japan-US "2+2" Security Consultation Committee held a meeting in Washington, which reached an agreement on the adjustment of US troops stationed in Japan and the share of duties between Japan's Self-Defense Forces and US troops, and published the report entitled "US-Japan alliance: For future reforms and regrouping". Intensified Japan-US military alliance is manifested mainly in the following aspects:
First, accelerating Japan-US military integration, enhancing joint combat capability. The report points out that the headquarters of US troops stationed in Japan will set up a Japan-US joint combat command post at the Yokota Airport, move the US ground force first headquarters on the land of America to the Camp Zama and set up there a central quick reaction group headquarters of Japan's land Self-Defense Forces, move the aviation Self-Defense Forces headquarters located in Foochow to the Yokota Airport where the Fifth Air Force headquarters of the US army is located. This is aimed to establish a Japan-US emergency mechanism, strengthen coordinated command between Japanese and US headquarters, realize share of information and enhance ballistic missile defense capability, thereby speeding up the process of Japan-US military integration and improving Japan-US commanding and combating abilities. Military integration is also manifested in the shared use of US troops' facilities in Japan by the two countries. US troops in Japan and Japanese Self-Defense Forces can use civil airports and docks and harbors under emergency situations.Second, ensuring the containing power of US troops in Japan when they tend to become more capable and flexible. The agreement focuses on adjusting US troops stationed in Okinawa. The Futenma Airport of US forces in Japan will be moved to Camp Schwab, at the same time, US 7,000-member marine corps in Okinawa will be reduced, the majority of which will be shifted to Guam. On the one hand, this can help lighten the burden on the Okinawa Base; on the other hand, it can make US Marine Corps cope with various situations more flexibly. In addition, although US Land Force First Headquarters to be shifted to Camp Zama does not have subordinated army units, once warfare breaks out in the area from the Pacific to the Indian Ocean under its jurisdiction, the headquarters can instantly dispatch crack troops from the US proper and other places to plunge into battles. Despite reduction in the number of US troops in Japan, due to strengthened commanding and controlling functions of US forces in Japan, the containing power of US troops has become stronger.
Third, the substantial upgrading of Japanese military role has made Japan the frontline of US Asian strategy. The report points out that Japan and the United States will strengthen cooperation in a dozen or so fields such as antiaircraft, ballistic missile defense, anti-proliferation and counter-terrorism, the two sides confirm the need to formulate a joint combat plan for dealing with contingencies and stress that Japan will give US troops "unceasing support". The United States regards Japan as a strong point for realizing its Asian strategy, and Japan, on its part, takes advantage of the opportunity to upgrade its military position and role, so as to take more and deeper participation in regional and global security affairs and raise its status in the international community, and thus accumulate capital for realizing its goal of becoming a political power.
Fourth, its intention to contain China and some other countries has become conspicuous. Japan and the United States have clearly regarded the Taiwan Straits and the Korean Peninsula as their common strategic goals in the Asian region. The present adjustment to US troops in Japan and various military cooperation measures of the two countries mainly aim to cope with armed conflicts possibly occur in the Taiwan Straits and the Korean Peninsula in the future, their intention to contain China is obvious.
Amidst the theme of the UN initiation for the establishment of a harmonious world, the act of the United States and Japan in presenting the new military cooperation agreement which is full of Cold War mentality entirely goes against the trend of the times featuring peace and development. It has not only met with severe criticisms from farsighted personages of Japan, but also has aroused the high vigilance of the surrounding countries. That Japan ties itself to the war chariot of the United States will not make itself more secure, but instead will harm its long-term national interests.
The author Jiang Xinfeng is research fellow with the Chinese Academy of Military Sciences and World Military Research Institute; Translated by People's Daily Online
Posted 12:32 PM | Comments (0)
Tokyo Governor Ishihara Bashes US
Some of Japanese media reported at a Washington press conference on Thursday, Tokyo's right-wing governor, Shintaro Ishihara said that if the US and China get into a war, then "there is no chance of the United States defeating China in a war. Washington should take measures to contain China economically."
"A war is an attrition of lives," the anti-US novelist-turned politician said, "the US is making a fuss over 2,000 victims of the Iraq war. But since the Chinese do not value life, they would not care if they lose millions of soldiers, unlike the US."
He said that China has successfully tested ICBM missiles and brought nuclear submarines into Japanese territorial waters, therefore "the world situation is more dangerous than it ever was during the U.S.-Soviet Cold War".
Posted 10:16 AM | Comments (0)
October 31, 2005
US-Japan, Evolving Alliance, Deepening Isolation?
Former Deputy Secretary of State, Richard Armitage called US-Japan Alliance "the most important one" in the world.
There is no doubt that Japan is one of America's staunchest allies and is a key strategic partner in Northeast Asia.
Japanese and U.S. government officials last Saturday put together an interim report on the realignment of U.S. forces in Japan. The report not only details the relocation of U.S. military bases, but its content is aimed at expanding and strengthening the security alliance between Japan and the United States.
The news was greeted by majority of Japanese politicians and Yomiuri Shimbun welcomed this with Monday's editorial "Major turning point in deepening of alliance".
In February, both nations confirmed their common strategic targets. In the Asia-Pacific region, both countries will work to maintain peace and stability in Japan and the whole region, in light of China's buildup of its military capabilities and North Korea's development of nuclear arms. Both countries will also team up in such areas as international peace cooperation activities and the prevention of terrorism in the pursuit of world peace.While called an alliance by both sides, much remains to be done in working out concrete action programs for cooperation between the SDF and U.S. forces.
In line with the realignment of U.S. forces in Japan as part of the United States' global reorganization, the two nations agreed on their respective roles and missions as part of efforts to fill the vacuum in the Japan-U.S. security arrangements.
However, Asahi Shimbun warned "the interim report is a source of concern " in Tuesday's editorial.
The United States attacked Iraq in the name of "the fight against terror." It proved, however, that the supposed threat of weapons of mass destruction, the casus belli, was in fact nonexistent. If a similar situation arises, Japan must avoid being automatically dragged into U.S military action.In its grand strategy, the United States views China as a country that could pose a threat to America's hegemony. But shouldn't Japan ease the possible tension that could build up between Washington and Beijing? Even if Japan takes action in accordance with a U.S. strategy, there should be limits and constraints. Japan should think of its own national interests.
Indeed, there are some concerns within small opposition parties that evolving US-Japan Alliance would be increasing US and Japan's isolation in the world.
Recent online poll conducted by Real time public opinion survey@internet showed almost 60 percenr of Japanese thought the alliance is "essential not only for Japanese security but also for economy, trade, industry and everything".
However, 21.4 percent of Japanese thought "US is untrustworthy as an alliance partner ", and 8.5 percent of Japanese answered "Japan should break up Japan-US alliance and strengthen the alliance between Asian coutries."
Posted 09:53 PM | Comments (0)
October 23, 2005
Non-Diplomatic Diplomacy
An astonishing photo appears in the weekend edition of Le Soir, Belgium’s leading French-language daily newspaper: President Bush is looking, bewildered, up at the rain from under his black umbrella—with a headline reading: ‘Absent Man in the White House’ ('L'Homme absent de la Maison Blanche')
Inside, the paper reports on the accumulating number of top Republicans and former Bush administration officials who have launched scathing criticisms of President Bush’s governing style and reliance on compliant advisers. Foremost among the new critics, it cites a talk and discussion given last week in New York City by retired U.S. colonel, Larry Wilkerson, who was chief of staff to former Secretary of State Colin Powell from 2002-2005. Wilkerson accused Rumsfeld and Cheney of “subverting the Department of State and American diplomacy with policies that have contributed to the isolation of the United States.” The newspaper cites in in particular his criticism of the conduct of the war in Iraq; alienation of our allies in South Korea and failed U.S. diplomacy with North Korea; and the administration’s long delay—to disastrous effect—in joining forces with the European Union to pressure Iran to shut down its nuclear capabilities. In his presentation at the New America Foundation in New York City, Wilkerson criticized the administration’s lack of “grace” in its conduct of foreign affairs:
"If you're unilaterally declaring Kyoto dead, if you're declaring the Geneva Conventions not operative, if you're doing a host of things that the world doesn't agree with you on and you're doing it blatantly and in their face, without grace, then you've got to pay the consequences."
Le Soir includes a comment from political analyst Jurek Kuczkiewicz, who writes that Wilkerson’s revelations suggest how deeply the Bush “cabal”—Rumsfeld, Cheney and Rice—have “severed reality from their decision-making.” Referring to the powerful effect that Wilkerson’s revelations will likely have on American’s and the world’s understanding of Bush’s diplomatic failings, he writes: “His [Wilkerson’s] discourse is like a bomb…It’s the cry of a citizen, of the United States, but also of the world, who are looking for the truth from a country of such grandeur. His speech was like a bomb. But it was also, many hope, a dream.”
Posted 02:34 PM | Comments (0)
October 22, 2005
A controversial definition of security
The Bush administration's attempt to overhaul the CFIUS (Committee of foreign investments in the US) gives us the possibility to think about the definition of "national security".
The Financial Times reports on Senator James Inholfe's call for an overhaul that would give Congress greater oversight of CFIUS. His report highlights "a weakness in CFIUS as the panel did non explicitly define 'national security' to include 'economic' security". Mr Kimmitt, deputy Treasury secretary, notes that lawmakers should not force CFIUS to adopt a strict definition of security, since the concept of security is always in motion: "The day you try to define it, it will be out of date".
Posted 10:23 AM | Comments (0)
October 19, 2005
Yasukuni's impact on the US
Japanese Prime Minister Junichiro Koizumi's visit to Yasukuni Shrine became an explosive issue at home and abroad.
Tuesday'd New York Times editorial "Pointless Provocation in Tokyo" sharply criticized Koizumi's visit to Yasukuni.
No one realistically worries about today's Japan re-embarking on the road of imperial conquest. But Japan, Asia's richest, most economically powerful and technologically advanced nation, is shedding some of the military and foreign policy restraints it has observed for the past 60 years.This is exactly the wrong time to be stirring up nightmare memories among the neighbors. Such provocations seem particularly gratuitous in an era that has seen an economically booming China become Japan's most critical economic partner and its biggest geopolitical challenge.
Japanese leading newspaper Asahi Shimbun analyzed that NY Times editorial represented the US national interests in the East Asia.
No approval was shown by Bush administration or even by pro-Japanese group in the US.
Asahi said deterioration of Japan-China and Japan-Korea relations will destabilize the current six-nation framework including North Korea and the US, and will spoil the regional security in East Asia and US national interests there.
Posted 10:35 AM | Comments (0)
October 18, 2005
Evolving security issues
“Most forms of political violence have declined significantly since the end of the Cold War,” states a recent report published by the Human Security Center under the title Human Security Report: War and Peace in the 21st Century.
The situation has improved significantly since 1990 and the end of the Cold War. The report finds a reduction of 80% in genocides, 40% in the number of conflicts, 30% in the number of refugees. The number of deaths in each conflict is declining significantly but the proportion of civilians in relation to combatants is much higher today than it was 20 years ago. (See graphics here).
Human security is a relatively new concept. “Unlike traditional concepts of security, which focus on defending borders from external military threats, human security is concerned with the security of individuals,” explains the Center. It is linked to the Canadian Consortium on Human Security which is funded by the Human Security Program of the Foreign Affairs Canada (FAC).
The French daily Le Monde asked Gareth Evans, chief executive of the International Crisis Group, to comment on the report.
The International Crisis Group is an independent, non-profit, non-governmental organization working to prevent and resolve deadly conflict. It is chaired by the former European Commissioner for External Relations Lord Patten of Barnes.
An ex Australian Foreign Minister, Evans sees three major threats for today’s world:
- The proliferation of weapons of mass destruction;
- Terrorism;
- “The loss of influence of the notion of international order due to the American administration discourse according to which the world does not need the U.N.”
It is obviously linked to the fact that the Human Security Center Report summarizes its finding by saying that, among other elements, “the best explanation for this decline is the huge upsurge of conflict prevention, resolution and peacebuilding activities that were spearheaded by the United Nations in the aftermath of the Cold War.”
Interestingly enough the title of Le Monde’s interview only says “Two dangers: Nuclear proliferation, and terrorism.”
Posted 12:43 PM | Comments (0)
Hot Water over Water
Canadians are always sensitive to encroachment by the US (whether real or percieved), and that sentiment is manifesting itself in a new phenomenon - aqua-nationalism, an ideological commitment to preserving as much autonomy over Canadian water supplies as possible. In the context of global warming and population growth, as the North American climate shifts while demand continues to grow, there will be growing pressure on Canada to sell its water to thirsty American cities, a number of which, due to poor planning, have been constructed in the middle of deserts. The Walrus, a serious Canadian intellectual magazine, devotes its October issue to examining aqua-nationalism and the thorny issue of managing and sharing water supplies, supplies that have the pesky habit of criss-crossing borders with no regard to national sovereignty. The article manages to capture Canadian axiety on the issue, anxiety that's not entirely unfounded (there was pressure to include fresh water as a tradeable good under NAFTA), but it goes on to argue that some kind of cross-border managemant will be inevitable, as larger and larger scale projects become necessary to supply North American communities and ecosystems with enough water to survive, while diverting water from areas newly-flood prone. Can Canadians overcome their aqua-nationalism? Do Americans know how to simultaneously cajole and reassure thier neighbors? Much may be riding on the answers to these questions.
Posted 12:45 AM | Comments (0)
The Red Scare, Yellow Peril Style
China's meteoric economic growth figures, combined with it's similarly metereoic ascent into space and sky-high defense budget, has provoked considerable anxiety in the United States. Donald Rumsfeld has called China a threat to Asain peace and stability, citing it's increased military expenditures and claims over Taiwan and assorted island chains. The sabre-rattling has begun to infiltrate the elite media as well - in what must count as one of the most provocative instances of alarmisms since the end of the Cold War, the Atlantic ran the following cover to an article on China's rise by Robert Kaplan:
The article itself, "The Next Cold War - How We Would Fight China," was no less inflamatory. Taking conflict almost as a given, Kaplan discusses Chinese tactics in loaded terms:
China has committed itself to significant military spending, but its navy and air force will not be able to match ours for some decades. The Chinese are therefore not going to do us the favor of engaging in conventional air and naval battles, like those fought in the Pacific during World War II. The Battle of the Philippine Sea, in late June of 1944, and the Battle of Leyte Gulf and the Surigao Strait, in October of 1944, were the last great sea battles in American history, and are very likely to remain so. Instead the Chinese will approach us asymmetrically, as terrorists do. In Iraq the insurgents have shown us the low end of asymmetry, with car bombs. But the Chinese are poised to show us the high end of the art. That is the threat.
His suggestions? Rebuild the NATO alliance to counter China, and build a similar coalition in Asia to encirlce and contain the rising power. And it has found some willing partners - both Japan and India have recently deepened security cooperation with the US.
The response from Chinese sources has been predictable - official media outlets argue the harmlessness of China's growth and try to counter American claims. What is more suprising is that this has been picked up by other media, including in Canada, traditionally one of America's closest allies. In an extensive piece in the Walrus (Canada's most seriously intellecual newsmagazine), Gwynne Dyer argues that is the American strategy of containment, and not China's rise, that threatens regional peace and stability. In his piece, there is no ambiguity about what is at stake, and who is to blame:
If there's anyone left to write the history of how the Third World War happened, they might well focus on June 28, 2005, as the date when the slide into global disaster became irreversible. That was the day when India's defense minister, Pranab Mukherjee, and US Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld signed a ten-year agreement in Washington on military co-operation, joint weapons production, and missile defense - not quite a formal US-Indian alliance, but close enough to one that China finally realized it was the target of a deliberate American strategy to encircle and 'contain' it.'
It's not clear yet what China plans to do about it, but since June the rhetoric out of Beijing has been unprecedentedly harsh. In mid-July, for example, Major General Zhu Chenghu warned in an official briefing that China is under pressure to drop its policy of 'no first strike' of nuclear weapons in the event of a military conflict with the US over Taiwan. 'We have no capability to fight a conventional war against the United States,' he said. 'We can't win this kind of war.' And so China would deliberately escalate to nuclear weapons: 'We Chinese will prepare ourselves for the destruction of all the cities east of Xian. Of course the Americans will have to be prepared that hundreds of [their] cities will be destroyed by the Chinese.
Posted 12:08 AM | Comments (0)
October 11, 2005
Disasters far and near
The Asian Age has a story about how the recent earthquake in Pakistan and Kashmir will change the American geopolitical scene. It cites an American intelligence clearinghouse.
The Stratfor Intelligence has labeled the disaster Pakistan President Pervez Musharraf’s "Hurricane Katrina." The pressures to balance the Al Qaeda threat, deal with the Kashmiri border, and maintain a burgeoning economy are obviously compounded by the quake.
And while discontent with Musharraf should increase as the relief effort stultifies, the lack of political dissent in a country that is already seen as being too close to the U.S. probably gives him "breathing space."
The focus here is predominantly on the border issues of the Asian subcontinent, but the American element seems to be consistently present as a result of involvement in Afghanistan.
Posted 12:27 PM | Comments (0)
October 10, 2005
Public opposed to extending Japan's mission in Iraq: poll
From Mainichi Shimbun
A whopping 77 percent of pollees were opposed to an extension of Japan's noncombatant mission in Iraq while 18 percent were in favor, a Mainichi weekend poll has found.
In December last year when Japan decided to extend the dispatch of the Self-Defense Force (SDF) to Iraq by one year, 62 percent of pollees opposed the move while 31 percent were in favor. The SDF mission expires on Dec. 14 this year.
Several Japanese politicians even from the ruling coalition say the dispatch of the SDF should be reconsidered if British and Australian forces withdraw from the country in May 2006.
The Mainichi polled 1,068 people on Saturday and Sunday and found that 66 percent of pollees who support the ruling Liberal Democratic Party were in opposition to extending the SDF dispatch.
More than 80 percent of those who support the Democratic Party of Japan, Japanese Communist Party or Social Democratic Party were opposed to the extension.
Posted 06:35 PM | Comments (0)
October 07, 2005
Rumsfeld will bypass Japan amid relocation stalemate
Asahi Shimbun reported on Thursday U.S. Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld has canceled a visit to Japan planned for later this month because of a stalemate in talks on where to relocate a U.S. military base in Japan.
Bloomberg said Rumsfeld's decision not to visit Japan reflects U.S. frustration over the pace of negotiations on relocating a military heliport in Okinawa quating Koji Murata, a professor of diplomacy at Doshisha University in Kyoto, ``Washington expects Tokyo to take prompt action to promote better U.S.-Japan relations. There's likely to be some disappointment.''
Professor Murata analyzed ``Bush's domestic political situation is quite tough, while Koizumi's domestic situation is quite favorable. The U.S. waited and put off pressing Koizumi until the postal issue was resolved. Now, ashington expects action.''
Sankei Shimbun, a Japanese conservative paper, worried it might cloud the future of U.S.-Japan alliance.
The two allies had planned to draft an interim report on the realignment by the end of October so it could be approved at a summit between Koizumi and U.S. President George W. Bush expected in mid-November. But Sankei said this summit might be cancelled because of realignment issue.
Koizumi, who has been busy with domestic issue such as nation's postal system, has made very few statement on this military realignment issue. Sankei quoted a former Cabinet official as saying that "Koizumi sits on a good personal relationship with Bush," and concluded that it might be difficult to resolve this issue with Koizumi's time.
The current discussions on base realignment are also aimed at improving U.S-Japan military cooperation and giving Japan a bigger role as a strategic hub from which U.S. forces can respond to regional and global threats.
Posted 12:42 PM | Comments (0)
Living in 2001
From The Spiegel online:
Bush’s speech of yesterday gives the Spiegel an opportunity to talk about his political inability. With the threat of bombing in New York subway, it seemed to be a perfect moment to talk about terrorism, "but his talk was not about the nation's current challenges. He delivered a reprise of his Sept. 11 rhetoric that suggested an avoidance of today's reality that seemed downright frightening […] Yesterday, it seemed like the President was still trying to live in 2001”. It was an ideal moment for Bush to demonstrate that he was really in control of his administration: “For instance, he could have addressed the crisis facing the overstretched military due to the endless demands made by Iraq on both the Army and the beleaguered National Guard”, but he didn’t. He just used again the same rhetoric of 9/11: “The president's inability to grow beyond his big moment in 2001 is unnerving. But the fact that his handlers continue to encourage him to milk 9/11 is infuriating”.
Posted 11:50 AM | Comments (0)
October 06, 2005
Time for amending Japan's pacifist Constitution??
The Yomiuri Shimbun reported Thursday that lawmakers began deliberations at the Diet on a bill stipulating procedures to conduct a national referendum to amend the top law in a significant step toward revising the Constitution in Japan.
According to the Yomirui, representatives of most parties--including the ruling coalition of the Liberal Democratic Party and New Komeito as well as the opposition Democratic Party of Japan and New Party Nippon--said they were in favor of such a law. Only the Japanese Communist Party and the Social Democratic Party expressed opposition to creating such a law, which paves the way to amending the Constitution.
Both of the ruling and opposition parties has been apprehensive about revising the Constitution, especially war-renouncing Article 9, which also bans the threat or use of force to settle international disputes.
However, Japanese people in general appear much more aware of the value of Article 9 than government ministers and lawmakers.
Wednesday's Mainichi Shimbun reported over 60 percent of those surveyed by the Mainichi had said they are opposed to revising Article 9 of the Constitution, even though a majority of the pollees expressed support for constitutional amendment in general. Only 30 percent responded that the clause should be revised.
The article said "The results clearly demonstrate that the majority of people think the pacifist clause should be retained even though the public is increasingly in favor of constitutional amendment amid ongoing discussions in the Diet on such changes."
Asahi Shimbun's poll conducted last April showed the similar result. According to that poll, 51 percent of the respondents said Article 9 should not be changed, in contrast with 36 percent who said it should be revised.
However, the article headlined "Playing the Constitution as a diplomatic card" continued that "the overwhelming majority of those polled also say they support Japan's alliance with the United States."
In fact, 76 percent of respondents to that poll said they approve of the Japan-U.S. Security Treaty, with only 12 percent disapproving.
Given many influential U.S. politicians including former Deputy Secretary of State Richard Armitage, have argued for a revision to Article 9 to allow the Self-Defense Forces to engage in collective self-defense, the article concluded " we can expect the forces urging the amendment to gather momentum by emphasizing the importance of Japan's alliance with the United States."
Posted 10:52 PM | Comments (0)
October 04, 2005
Supreme deception?
Normally the personnel changes of courts warrant little international attention, but the choice of Harriet Miers seems to have struck a chord in much of the Latin American press.
In spite of the fact that President Bush has stated that he thinks Miers "extremely qualified" for the position of Supreme Court justice, Mexican daily El Universal cites complaints relating to her lack of experience, especially in light of the prominent Hispanic candidates in the American judiciary who could have been chosen.
Citing representatives from two prominent Latino advocacy groups, the paper characterizes a sense of disbelief in the community. "This is like a slap in the face of the Hispanic judges who have served in high distinction on the courts," says Raul Yzaguirre of the the National Council of La Raza.
Mexican-American news site La Opinión, meanwhile, situates this discussion as "deception" on the part of an administration that had once considered raising Florida Senator Mel Martinez (Cuban-American) or Attorney General Alberto Gonzalez (Mexican-American) to the high court. This line of reasoning appears to be that it little matters about the ideological suasion of a judicial candidate, important because most American Latinos do not identify themselves as political conservatives.
This story ends on a foreboding note for an administration that is currently in the firing line between ceaseless calls for border tightening and a rising class of malleable Latino voters: It quotes a LULAC lawyer as saying with this move "[the president] risks angering one of the fastest growing electorates in the country."
Posted 06:12 PM | Comments (0)
October 03, 2005
Karen Hughes Mid-East Tour: A Failure of Public Diplomacy
A number of papers are carrying stories related to Karen Hughes’, the Undersecretary of State for Public Diplomacy, recently concluded tour of the Middle East. She stopped in Turkey, Egypt and Saudi Arabia where she met with groups screened to be as receptive as possible to her pro-America, pro-Bush message. Even under these carefully massaged conditions, the trip has caused more harm than good for the image of the US in the Middle East. While the Egyptian leg of the trip, by all accounts, went over passably well, even the Bush-loyalist Weekly Standard acknowledged that her attempt to stand up for women’s rights in Saudi Arabia backfired:
Student after student stepped to the microphones in the hall. Peering out from behind their abayas, they denounced the portrayal in the American news media of Saudi women as powerless and abused.
"We are not oppressed. We are not prisoners in our own homes," said one student. "We are all pretty happy." She demanded to know why Americans have such a negative view of the way Saudi women are treated.
The Washington Post reports that her stop in Turkey likewise failed to impress – there she was met with condemnation for the Iraq occupation:
"This war is really, really bringing your positive efforts to the level of zero," said Hidayet Sefkatli Tuksal, an activist with the Capital City Women's Forum. She said it was difficult to talk about cooperation between women in the United States and Turkey as long as Iraq was under occupation.
Slate’s Fred Kaplan suggests that the whole trip may have been as badly conceived as it was badly executed, beginning with the selection of Hughes as an envoy. Illustrating his point, he comes up with a Muslim version of her:
Put the shoe on the other foot. Let's say some Muslim leader wanted to improve Americans' image of Islam. It's doubtful that he would send as his emissary a woman in a black chador who had spent no time in the United States, possessed no knowledge of our history or movies or pop music, and spoke no English beyond a heavily accented "Good morning."
He goes on to point out that while Middle Eastern audiences raise substantive issues relating to American policy (the war in Iraq, for instance), Hughes is reduced to mouthing sugary slogans, emphasizing her motherhood and love of children. This whole approach of public diplomacy embraces the idea that what is necessary to repair the image of America in the Muslim world is not a revision of policy, but a better marketing campaign. If that’s the case, as dubious as it seems, the US should start looking for a better PR hack.
Posted 11:49 PM | Comments (0)
October 02, 2005
Muslim views of the US: Anger or merely disapproval?
A web-only article at the New Republic challenges the widely-perceived notion that the Muslim world is fiercely hostile towards, rather than just displeased with, the United States. It traces that perception back to the hardest data available, the Pew Global Attitudes Survey, observing:
Evidently few reporters took the time to read the fine print in the [March 2004 survey, "A Year After Iraq War: Mistrust of America in Europe Ever Higher; Muslim Anger Persists."] If they did, they would have found that the poll provided absolutely no evidence to support the charge that "Muslim anger persists." In fact, the word "anger" did not appear in a single poll question. Muslims did give high "unfavorable" ratings to the United States, but there is considerable difference between viewing something unfavorably and being angry at it. (Think of broccoli or Britney Spears.) Pew evidently recognized how problematic this was; in the 2005 version of the Global Attitudes Survey, released in June, references to such sensationalist (and unsubstantiated) terms as "anger" were nowhere to be found. But the damage was already done.
The report further notes that Muslim publics are more accepting of US global leadership than European ones, and that in all Muslim countries but Turkey approval of the US occupation of Iraq had upticked slightly since the previous year. It concludes by noting that there have been few sizeable anti-American protests in 2005, and, tellingly, McDonalds' is reporting sizeable profits throughout the region. But perhaps just as disapproval may not mean anger, so love of the Big Mac may not equal love of Uncle Sam.
Posted 03:59 PM | Comments (0)
October 01, 2005
Conservatives in turmoil
In European press, much is being made of the Conservative scandal after the indictment of Tom DeLay, majority leader of the House of Representatives.
According to The Economist, “A conservative crack-up may be going too far; but a conservative realignment is definitely in the works.” Mr DeLay’s indictment is not the only ethical problem hampering the Republicans. Bill Frist, the Senate majority leader, is being investigated about a stock sale and Karl Rove, President George Bush’s chief strategist, is fighting accusations that he leaked the name of Valerie Plame, an undercover CIA agent. The Conservative movement is in turmoil and long-standing tensions are coming out.
The Spanish El Pais points out how the indictment of Tom DeLay is only the last crack of an already assailed White House: the hurricane Katrina, the war in Iraq, the increasing price of oil barrels, the public deficit. Will be able the Democrats to win 2006 elections?
Posted 11:32 AM | Comments (0)
September 27, 2005
A New York Times views of French sentiments
In today’s New York Times Television Review of the fall season, Alessandra Stanley writes:
"ABC is stretching credibility to the outer limits with its new White House drama. The vice president of the United States is on an official visit to France, and Parisian school children actually sing "America the Beautiful"?
We think not."
In her opinion, it results far more farfetched than a feminist independent woman on a Republican ticket!
Alessandra should have more confidence in the good work of her diplomats in Paris to have school kids behaving properly (or ask them what they did when Condy Rice visited France at the beginning of the year).
The interesting question here is how mutual perceptions feed each other.
Can we seriously study how people in the rest of the world see the U.S. if we don’t pay attention to how Americans see, paint or describe others?
I think not.
And you?
[Photo found on the Paris US Embassy website]
Posted 12:55 PM | Comments (0)
Interview with Al Jazeera Host YUSUF AL-QARADAWI
Yusuf Al-Qaradawi, one of the most influential contemporary Muslim scholars, reaches millions each week with his show televized on Al-Jazeera. Der Spiegel talks with him about terrorism, USA and West modernity.
"SPIEGEL: Your eminence, you are considered one of the most influential contemporary Muslim scholars, but even your word is not unconditional. Does Islam need an uncontested spiritual leader -- a Muslim pope?
Qaradawi: Most Muslims would like such a central authority, to avoid constant debate over contradictory and extremist scholarly opinions. But we don't have a pope; we have the Ulama, the association of scholars. To protect the unity of Islam, we urgently need to reach a consensus on the great questions of our time: terror, occupation, and resistance. We took a first step in July 2004, with the foundation of a world union of Muslim legal scholars. I was elected chairman, and my deputies are a Sunni, a Shiite, and an Ibadit (a branch of Islam found mainly in Oman). We thank God for this success.
SPIEGEL: Yet no one in the Islamic world hinders men like Osama bin Laden or Abu Musab al-Zarqawi -- bin Laden's lieutenant in Iraq -- from setting themselves up as imams and preaching hate.
Qaradawi: A person can't just call himself an imam or a mufti and hand out fatwas according to whim. For this position there are clear prerequisites regarding professional experience, academic background and character.
SPIEGEL: People like bin Laden or Al-Zarqawi don't tend to worry about that. Nevertheless they have a huge influence on Islam's image.
Qaradawi: The vast majority of Muslim scholars have condemned Bin Laden's deeds; only a small minority stand behind him. What helps his reputation even more than scholarly opinion is the injustice that befalls Muslims every day -- above all in Palestine. You underestimate this in the West: The one-sidedness of American support for Israel has devastating consequences."
Continue reading the interview.
See also Islam on line, Al-Qaradawi's web site.
Posted 10:45 AM | Comments (0)
Foreigners care
Sri Lanka ravaged a few months ago by a tsunami sent $25,000. Cuba offered 1,100 medical doctors. Qatar, Kuwait, and the United Arab Emirates promised $100 million each.
Foreign Policy publishes a table of aid offered by foreign countries after Katrina.
FP’s comment:
America’s friends abroad, and even some of its foes, have responded to the horrific destruction to the Gulf Coast in the wake of Hurricane Katrina by pledging money and sending supplies to assist the recovery effort.
All of these gestures do not share a unique meaning, but they certainly give us some indications about perceptions of the U.S. in the world.
They raise some questions too. What does it mean for Mexicans to send soldiers up north? Why did Hungary offer only $5,000, and why the pro-American Poland does not show up in this table. How could Bangladesh find $ 1 million? What happened with the Cuban doctors?
What do you think?
Update – This post in a blog by a staff writer for the Arkansas Leader mentions aid offered or delivered from 94 countries (Poland appears in the list).
Posted 10:22 AM | Comments (0)
September 26, 2005
Face-saving solutions
From Gulfnews:
"Allied troops will stay in Iraq as long as the Iraqi government needs them, chant George W. Bush and Tony Blair, stubbornly singing from the same tired old hymn sheet.
And despite all evidence to the contrary, they are still trying to hammer home to their respective publics the myth of Iraq's sovereignty along with the good works their helmeted legions are supposedly accomplishing there.
In their fantastical universe, Iraq's cobbled together constitution viewed by most as a recipe for civil war could be a face-saver that will clear the way for an exit-plan."
Continue reading the article.
Posted 10:12 PM | Comments (0)
Sino-US ties to progress well if handled with care
From People's daily online (official newspaper of the Communist party of China):
"China's attitude towards the United States is an important part of its foreign policy. The basic tenets of this policy are: On the basis of the three joint communiques, China will strengthen co-operation, reduce differences, avoid confrontation, develop a constructive co-operative partnership between the two countries, and ensure long-term stability and development in bilateral relations.This policy is founded on a very deep understanding of the Sino-US relationship.
First, the United States is the only superpower with the greatest national strength in the world. This state of affairs is not going to change for a long time. China, in its effort to strive for an environment that is conducive to its peaceful development, regards the cultivation of a positive co-operative relationship with the United States as most important.
Second, there are a vast number of common interests and a high level of effective co-operation in the areas of commerce, trade and security - including regional security, and non-traditional security areas such as prevention of the proliferation of weapons of mass destruction and counter-terrorism.
However, the two countries have different social systems and ideologies, and both must handle the relationship with each other well if they want to develop their mutual interests and resolve such matters as human rights.
Third, in recent years, the Sino-American relationship has evolved to one between a superpower and a major rising power. Improvement or deterioration of this relationship is increasingly influencing regional and international arenas. China is worried that the United States, in order to sustain its dominant position, is bent on obstructing China's development. This has helped heighten the importance, complexity and sensitivity of the relationship between the two countries. "
Continue reading the article.
Posted 09:35 PM | Comments (0)
September 25, 2005
Changing definitions of security
While the Bush Administration has consistently attempted to frame security issues within the parameters of defense and terrorism, natural disasters have added a nuance to the word. The military has been the most overt face of relief in the days following Katrina, and Rita (as well as other unnamed events) will likely be no different if the president proceeds with his current plan of action.
According to the Guardian, "Bush said he would ask Congress to consider putting the Pentagon in charge of disaster rescues after military leaders indicated the need for such a national plan - a politically sensitive proposal for lawmakers trying to avoid trampling on states' rights."
Meanwhile, The Centre for Research on Globalisation (CRG), a Canadian think tank, has pointed specifically to his speech in San Antonio as an indication of the militarization of disaster relief. Highlighting his statement that the armed forces will be in a position of coordination of such efforts in the future, CRG implies that there will be a further "militarisation of disaster relief and the subordination of federal, state and mincipal (civlian) institutions by the Military."
Posted 06:52 PM | Comments (0)
September 22, 2005
Global warming: a British perspective
“Global warming is the most severe threat we face…more serious than terrorism” declared Sir David King a year or so ago. Sir David is the Chief Scientific Adviser to the UK Government and his declaration caused some sensation in Downing Street, in London, and in other parts of the world as one can easily imagine.
“I am happy to repeat that statement” said Sir David in Berkeley where he was invited by the Journalism School, on September 16th, to give a talk on the subject.
Katrina was the subject of some of the first questions asked by Michael Pollan and Sandy Tolan who hosted the event.
For Sir David, “Katrina is a potential tipping point of our attitudes towards natural disasters.” One has to be careful though: “It is not directly related to global warming but it is an example of disasters that might come. We do know that the intensity of hurricanes depends on ocean temperature. There is a little bit of a warning here.”
Asked about American media tendency to say that human impact on global warming is not clear, Sir David answered: “I’m amazed at the power of paid lobbyists in this country.”
Some mistakes are made, he admitted, and scientists ought to challenge each other, but “The science of climate change is mature. We know there is global warming. We know what causes it. What we don’t know is the impact it is going to have country by country.”
“There is room to say we need more science,” added Sir David. But we must anticipate that coastal cities will come under increasing risks. They will be higher in the developing world.” World wide more than a 100 million people are threatened.
The British government is taking the issue seriously. Five years ago it allocated 200 millions pounds to protect its coastal population. The budget has already risen to half a billion.
Richer countries have to give the proper example, act as leaders. “I would very much like to see the US take this leadership role,” he added.
Some people in the U.S. argue that controlling carbon dioxide emissions would slow growth. The British case seems to prove the opposite: “The UK could decrease its emissions in 12% while seeing its GDP grow 38%. It can be done,” said Sir King.
One of the issues addressed by Sir David during his talk is the difficulty to grab the attention of politicians on such issues as global warming. It’s much easier with terrorism of course. And still, Prime Ministers and heads of industries have families “they have genetic worries about their children.” Is the specie at risk? “Our DNA will survive, maybe in a different form,” said Sir David with a strange kind of a smile.
[Picture found on Greenpeace.org.uk]
Posted 09:51 AM | Comments (0)
September 21, 2005
New Poll Tracks Latin American Perceptions of the US
FLASCO, a Chilean social-science institute, has released new telephone survey data tracking public perceptions of the US in four Latin American capitals – Santiago, Montevideo, Buenos Aires and Brasilia. Although this is billed as a Latin American survey, the fact that research was limited to capitals and to those four countries weakens its conclusions – adding the provinces of these states, or other Latin American countries (Venezuela for anti-Bush, Columbia for pro) would likely significantly alter these results.
That said, it is useful to consider some of their conclusions.
Some of the findings confirm conventional wisdom – George Bush is extremely unpopular in Latin America, gathering his highest ratings in Santiago with a mere 19% of favorable responses. Unfavorable responses ranged from 40% (in Santiago), to 64% in Buenos Aires. Much and varied blame is laid at his feet, with 69% of respondents complaining about his neglect for their country, while 82% argue that the US interferes excessively in other countries affairs.
Although there are complaints about neglect, there also seems to be a perception that US involvement may be neither neccessary nor desirable - 60% of respondents don’t believe that US aid is necessary to tackle their country’s problems. There is also a significant divergence about what those problems are – terrorism is not considered to be a threat by a majority of respondents anywhere, while narco-trafficking, corruption, unemployment and poverty score very high levels of concern.
The survey also shows significant negative attitudes towards the US as a country. 70% of respondents consider it “an imperialist country,” and an equal amount do not believe America contributes to world peace. Neither US military power or democracy gather any accolades but, on the bright side, most of those called spoke favorable of US culture and economic dynamism.
There seems to be a consensus that the US does promote development abroad, though opinion is torn on whether free trade is a good idea – a majority of Chileans are pleased with their free trade agreement, a majority of Argentines and Brazilians are hostile to one, while Uruguayans are ambivalent.
Posted 10:05 PM | Comments (0)
September 20, 2005
“No society is immune”
Most of the stories published about Katrina and its aftermath in the foreign media are very critical of the U.S., and in particular of President Bush and his Administration.
Some notable stories, though take a much more careful approach.
Early on, The Irish Examiner told its readers:
“The first thing worth remembering is that, in the chaos and the looting, we are seeing not just America in crisis, but the drama of humanity everywhere.
A special case can be made that New Orleans, at the best of times, is a sad and lawless place. [...]
No society is immune. Once disaster strikes, two things happen. The survival instinct gets the better of some people and they do all sorts of things to make it through alive.”
Conservative essayist Guy Sorman ran a more analytical piece in the French Le Figaro.
“Bad news for the anti-Americans: the United States are not the Atlantis and they will not be more engulfed by hurricane Katrina that they have been wiped out by the 9/11 attacks.”
The reason, he says can be found in its history and in today’s vibrant civil society and market forces.
According to Sorman, local and State authorities are as responsible as the Federal Government for the failures in Katrina’s aftermath.
Republicans, he writes, have already chosen a “minimal State”. But, with Francis Fukuyama they think that “a free society requires a strong state.”
Is this the whiff of a contradiction?
Not at all. Sorman calls for a “Security State” that leaves social, cultural and educational issues to charitable foundations, local institutions and the market. He then concludes:
“The hurricane strengthens this neoconservative vision of the State: at the center heightened security, while everything else goes to civil society and to market.”
This is one example of how perceptions of what goes on and what is said in the U.S. can be part of the political and ideological debate in Europe… and elsewhere.
Posted 12:02 AM | Comments (0)
September 19, 2005
Murdoch on Blair on the BBC on Katrina
Invited to participate in Bill Clinton’s Global Initiative Forum, Rupert Murdoch has said in a speech that Tony Blair had told him in a private conversation BBC’s coverage of Hurricane Katrina was "full of hate of America and gloating about our troubles".
Mr Blair’s office has not commented on the issue. The BBC says it has received no complain. According to a story on the BBC’s website Bill Clinton:
“said he had seen the report Mr Blair was referring to, and there was "nothing factually inaccurate" in it.
But he said it was designed "almost exclusively" to criticise the Bush administration's response to the crisis.”
The Guardian comments:
“Certainly the BBC highlighted the federal government's tardy response to the hurricane. But a claim of institutionalised loathing from the chairman and chief executive of News Corporation, which owns countless newspapers and broadcasters around the world, among them the BBC's direct rival Sky News - how on earth do you prove that?”
Posted 10:09 PM | Comments (0)
Californian Democracy
“Who runs your world?” is a BBC's season examining the nature of power in the world today. The first of a series of five articles by Robin Lustig analyses democracy in California.
It focuses on Orange County, one of the richest place on the planet, and takes as example the city of Santa Ana. A third of its residents entered the US illegally, most of them across the border of Mexico. So they have no papers, no official identity and no right to vote. They are politically invisible. Yet their presence is crucial for Santa Ana. Because they are the gardeners, the nannies, the cleaners, the cooks, the waiters.
So the question asked is: “When President Bush talks of spreading democracy and freedom across the world, is Californian-style democracy what he has in mind?”.
Posted 06:54 PM | Comments (0)
September 17, 2005
US-Canada: A key relationship under strain
While foreign perceptions of the US manifest themselves most through speeches and writing, they can also be detected in what people choose to do, or where they choose to go. The