tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-37438712029652004542024-03-17T02:25:53.452-07:00Barry LandoCommenting mainly on France and U.S.policy in the Middle East and Central Asia. <br>
Author of "Web of Deceit, the History of Western Complicity in Iraq, from Churchill to Kennedy to George W. Bush." Now finishing a novel, "The Watchman's File," delving into Israel's most closely-guarded secret. [It's not the bomb.] Anonymoushttp://www.blogger.com/profile/10909224421344518896noreply@blogger.comBlogger81125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3743871202965200454.post-39430777045174905712013-07-06T03:32:00.000-07:002013-07-06T03:40:55.242-07:00Barry Lando Changes Address: HTTP://BARRYMLANDO.COM<div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on">
To follow me, please go to my new site-- <a href="http://barrymlando.com./">http://barrymlando.com.</a><br />
<br />
I will be blogging there as well as providing background and additional material on my new novel, The Watchman's File, soon to be published.<br />
<br />
Hope to see you there!<br />
<br />
Barry<br />
<br /></div>
<div class="blogger-post-footer">Follow me on Twitter @barrylando</div>Anonymoushttp://www.blogger.com/profile/10909224421344518896noreply@blogger.com371tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3743871202965200454.post-22358372442336541272013-05-24T07:23:00.000-07:002013-05-25T05:48:29.694-07:00Obama and the "Yes-You-Can" terrorists<div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on">
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President Obama’s speech, announcing his intent to reign in
America’s global war on terror is playing out with a certain grisly irony here
in England, a country reeling from the latest terrorist act. </div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
The <a href="http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/uknews/terrorism-in-the-uk/10073910/Woolwich-attack-terrorist-proclaimed-an-eye-for-an-eye-after-attack.html">media
here</a> is filled with ghastly images of a man, clad in a jacket and woolen
cap, glaring at the camera, a knife and meat cleaver in his bloody hand—just
after he and his partner hacked to death and tried to behead a young British
soldier in Woolwich in southeast London two days ago. </div>
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<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>What is particularly
alarming is the similarity of these two newest terrorist murderers in the name
of Islam to the two brothers who bombed the Boston Marathon last month, to the
23 year-old son of Algerian immigrants, who shot down seven people in France a little
more than a year ago.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span></div>
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In England, as in the earlier attacks in the U.S. and France,
the terrorist killings provoked a wave of horror and outrage across the country.
Islamic leaders denied such dastardly deeds had anything to do with the true
faith. The murders were condemned as the totally senseless, cowardly act of
unhinged killers, their minds deranged by radical Islamist claptrap. </div>
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“Britain will never buckle,” said Prime Minister David
Cameron. “The terrorists will never win because they can never beat the values
we hold dear.” </div>
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In fact, however, as one of the two killers in Woolwich talked
to a horrified onlooker before the police arrived, in his own mind, at least, their
actions were quite rational. They were in retaliation for Britain’s
participation in the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan. </div>
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“We swear by almighty Allah we will never stop fighting you
until you leave us alone.” the man with the meat cleaver said. “Your people
will never be safe. The only reason we have done this is because Muslims are
dying by British soldiers everyday. We must fight them as they fight us. An eye
for an eye and a tooth for a tooth. I apologize that women had to witness this
today but in our lands our women have to see the same.”</div>
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He went on, “So what if we want to live by the Sharia in
Muslim lands? Why does that mean you must follow us and chase us and call us extremists,
kill us?”</div>
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“Rather, your lot are extreme. You are the ones. When you drop
a bomb, do you think it picks on a person? Or rather your bomb wipes out a whole
family?’</div>
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The investigation in London is just getting underway, but
there is no evidence that the two men of Nigerian parents were part of al-Qaeda
or any sophisticated terrorist network. One of them had converted from
Christianity to Islam, but they were what the British authorities call
“self-starters,”a potentially far more dangerous threat to Britain and the West
than al-Qaeda itself. </div>
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They were almost certainly swayed by radical Islamic clerics
in England or via the Internet, such as the fiery English-language sermons
delivered by Anwar al-Alwaki, an Al Qaeda preacher based in Yemen. An American
citizen, he was killed in a drone strike in 2011. But the West’s dilemma is
that his call for wannabe <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">jihadis </i>to
launch whatever bloody attacks they can conjure, echoes on—as does the motto “Just
Do It.”<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span><span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
That’s also the story behind the bombings at the Boston
Marathon, perpetrated by the two young Tsarnaev brothers, immigrants from the
restless Muslim nation of <span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Chechnya.
Here again, there is yet no evidence that they received any serious terrorist training
or were acting as agents of any sophisticated network. Like the two men in
Woolwich, they were freelancers--carrying out their own murderous schemes,
inspired by nationalist cum religious sentiments, abetted by on-line instructions
about bomb-making. </div>
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Their motives?<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">
</span>The surviving brother, Dzhokhar Tsarnaev was determined to make them
clear. As he lay bleeding from his wounds, hidden from the police inside a boat
in the back yard of a Watertown, Ma., he <a href="http://www.cbsnews.com/8301-505263_162-57584771/boston-bombings-suspect-dzhokhar-tsarnaev-left-note-in-boat-he-hid-in-sources-say/">wrote
a message</a> on the interior wall of the cabin. </div>
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The note said the bombings
were in retaliation <span style="color: black; font-family: Arial; mso-bidi-font-size: 9.5pt;">for U.S. military action in Afghanistan and Iraq, and called the
Boston victims "collateral damage" in the same way innocent victims
have been in the American-led wars. "When you attack one Muslim, you
attack all Muslims," Tsarnaev wrote.</span></div>
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<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
Again, in March 2012, France was traumatized by the <a href="http://barrylando.blogspot.co.uk/2012/03/toulouse-nightmares-not-over.html">murderous
outbur</a>st of another young Muslim in Toulouse.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Mohammed Merah, 23, first gunned down three French
soldiers—one of them Muslim—then three days later he methodically shot four more
people—a rabbi and three students at a nearby Jewish School. <span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
He attacked the military base, Merah later told police,
because of France’s involvement in Afghanistan; and the Jewish school because
“The Jews kill our brothers and sisters in Palestine.” He was also outraged, he
said, by France’s ban of the full veil.</div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
As in Woolwich and Boston, the immediate suspicion that
Merah was somehow linked to al-Qaeda; but it turned out that it wasn’t. <a href="http://barrylando.blogspot.co.uk/2012/03/toulouse-nightmares-not-over.html">As
I blogged</a> at the time, Merah had been to Pakistan and Afghanistan, but
there was no evidence that this former petty criminal was part of any serious
terrorist network. </div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
That being the case, how on earth can the authorities in the
U.S. and Europe deal with the threat of such “Just-Do-It” jihadis? <span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
Since 2005, for instance, British security services have
prevented more than a dozen terrorist plots on British soil, including a scheme
to blow up airliners with liquid-based bombs, to targeting shopping centers and
nightclubs with fertilizer-based explosives, to taking out the London stock
exchange. But the two Woolwich killers slipped through.</div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
This, despite the fact that, according to reports here, both
of them had been on an MI-5 watch list. One had apparently been arrested while
attempting to travel to Somalia to join a radical Islamic group. </div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
But after that, what should the authorities have done? Hold
him for life? Let him go but keep him under constant surveillance? With some
2.5 million people of Muslim descent in England? Many of them unemployed, alienated
from their government and its tendency to follow the lead of the United States
in Iraq and Afghanistan and the Middle East. How do you keep a handle on them
all?</div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
French authorities also singled out Mohammed Merah for
special attention after his trips to Pakistan and Afghanistan. But Merah shared
space on that watch-list with some 600 other radicals from right to left just in
the Toulouse area alone. Don’t forget, there are more than five million people
of Muslim descent in France, many of them also bitter, unemployed, poorly
housed. </div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
French authorities have also foiled terrorist plots over the
past few years, but there is no way they could have predicted that a young man
like Mohammed Merah, who first turned to Salafism in a French prison, would migrate
from radical “attitude” into full-blown terrorism. Indeed, apparently before he
set out to avenge his Moslem brothers for France’s military role in
Afghanistan, Merah had earlier tried to enlist in the French army, presumably
to go to Afghanistan to fight against Islamic radicals. </div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
Thus, there are certainly other precipitating factors—apart
from ideology alone--that transform young men and women into terrorists. The
elder Tsarnaev brother in Boston, for instance, <a href="http://barrylando.blogspot.com/">had been a</a> promising amateur boxer.
He was apparently radicalized when the people running the Golden Gloves
championships restricted <span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>admission
to American citizens only. That decision meant the end to Tsarnaev’s boxing
career and turned him towards religious extremism. </div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
But, the only real common ground among the terrorist killers
have been the statements they’ve issued themselves: Their bloody actions,
they’ve all claimed, are retribution for the policies of the U.S. and its
allies in the Middle East and Central Asia, the lurid pictures of collateral
damage from Drone strikes, and the continued shame of Guantanamo.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
Ironically, all those actions were supposedly undertaken to
make the U.S. and its allies safe from terrorism. </div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
Will the apparent shift in America’s policy announced by
President Obama change that fatal dynamic? It depends on whether or not he now backs
up his high-flying rhetoric with concrete action. </div>
</div>
<div class="blogger-post-footer">Follow me on Twitter @barrylando</div>Anonymoushttp://www.blogger.com/profile/10909224421344518896noreply@blogger.com11tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3743871202965200454.post-51228348785523389892013-04-28T15:22:00.000-07:002013-04-28T15:22:55.624-07:00Terrifying Lessons of the Boston Terrorists<div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on">
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<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0cm; margin-left: 18.0pt; margin-right: 0cm; margin-top: 0cm;">
It wasn’t Al Qaeda, It was the Golden Gloves.</div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0cm; margin-left: 18.0pt; margin-right: 0cm; margin-top: 0cm;">
<o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0cm; margin-left: 18.0pt; margin-right: 0cm; margin-top: 0cm;">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0cm; margin-left: 18.0pt; margin-right: 0cm; margin-top: 0cm;">
The investigation is still continuing into the motives and methods
of the two Tsarnaev brothers,
but it may well be that the most terrifying lesson of the Boston Marathon
bombings is that what precipitated it were not exhortations of Al-Qaeda-linked
militants; not the U.S. invasions of Iraq and Afghanistan; not the carnage
wreaked by America’s drones —though all that may have played a follow-up role--but
a decision made by the folks who ran the U.S. Golden Gloves boxing competition
in 2010. <o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0cm; margin-left: 18.0pt; margin-right: 0cm; margin-top: 0cm;">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0cm; margin-left: 18.0pt; margin-right: 0cm; margin-top: 0cm;">
This is according to a must-read <a href="http://www.nytimes.com/2013/04/28/us/shot-at-boxing-title-denied-tamerlan-tsarnaev-reeled.html?nl=todaysheadlines&emc=edit_ee_20130428">article</a>
in the New York Times.<o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0cm; margin-left: 18.0pt; margin-right: 0cm; margin-top: 0cm;">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0cm;">
What happened was that in 2010,
the men running the boxing national Tournament of Champions changed the ground
rules so that only American citizens could compete. The result was that several
top amateur boxers were barred--among them, Tamerlan Anzorovich Tsarnaev, 23, a
young man who had immigrated with his family from <span style="background-color: white; background-position: initial initial; background-repeat: initial initial;">Kyrgyzstan a few
years earlier and </span>had
just won his second consecutive title <span style="background-color: white; background-position: initial initial; background-repeat: initial initial;">as the Golden Gloves heavyweight champion
of New England.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0cm; margin-left: 18.0pt; margin-right: 0cm; margin-top: 0cm;">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<span style="background-color: white; background-position: initial initial; background-repeat: initial initial;">According to the
Times, that decision was a major blow for Tamerlan. Amateur boxing had become
an intrinsic part of his identity in his new homeland—a sort of emotional underpinning.
He had talked about wanting to represent the U.S. in the Olympics, and then
turn pro.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0cm; margin-left: 18.0pt; margin-right: 0cm; margin-top: 0cm;">
<br /></div>
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<span style="background-color: white; background-position: initial initial; background-repeat: initial initial;">According to the
Times, who interviewed dozens of people and relatives who had known Tamerlan, </span> “His aspirations frustrated, he dropped out of boxing
competition entirely, and his life veered in a completely different direction….”
<o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0cm; margin-left: 18.0pt; margin-right: 0cm; margin-top: 0cm;">
<br /></div>
<div style="background: white; line-height: 17.6pt;">
<span style="font-family: 'Times New Roman'; font-size: 12pt;">His views
on Islam became increasingly radical, as did his hostility to the U.S. and its
actions in the Muslim world. Presumably, he also radicalized his younger
brother. <o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div style="background: white; line-height: 17.6pt;">
<br /></div>
<div style="background: white; line-height: 17.6pt;">
<span style="font-family: 'Times New Roman'; font-size: 12pt;">But,
again, all that occurred, said the Times, “only after his more secular dreams
were dashed in 2010 and he was left adrift.”<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div style="background: white; line-height: 17.6pt;">
<br /></div>
<div style="background: white; line-height: 17.6pt;">
<span style="font-family: "Times New Roman"; font-size: 12.0pt; mso-bidi-font-size: 10.0pt;">On the other hand, an in-depth
piece on the Tsarnaevs by the <a href="http://www.washingtonpost.com/sf/feature/wp/2013/04/27/the-tsarnaev-family-a-faded-portrait-of-an-immigrants-american-dream/?wpisrc=nl_headlines">Washington
Post ,</a> makes no mention at all of Tamerlan’s being barred from the
Tournament of Champions. But it does chronicle in tragic detail the way in
which the dream that had brought Tamerlan’s family to the United States in
2004, had slowly tarnished, until it all seemed to fall apart in 2010 and 2011—when
his father, with cancer, divorced his mother, and moved back to Dagestan. <o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div style="background: white; line-height: 17.6pt;">
<span style="font-family: "Times New Roman"; font-size: 12.0pt; mso-bidi-font-size: 10.0pt;">Again-all this on the
heels of Tamerlan’s being barred from the tournament of Champions. </span><span style="font-family: 'Times New Roman'; font-size: 12pt;"><o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div style="background: white; line-height: 17.6pt;">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="background: white; line-height: 17.6pt; margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0cm;">
Was
that the precipitating factor that led to the tragedy in Boson? We’ll never know for sure. But that convoluted
and very human tale rings far truer than the facile clichés and pontifications
of the so-called experts on terrorism who filled the media over the past couple
of weeks.<o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="background: white; line-height: 17.6pt; margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="background: white; line-height: 17.6pt; margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0cm;">
It
also brings home the ultimately impossible task of the 200,000 employees of the
Department of Homeland Security, established after 9/11, with a budget of 50
billion dollars a year—dedicated to protecting Americans from exactly the kind
of terrorist activity as occurred in Boston. <o:p></o:p></div>
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<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="background: white; line-height: 17.6pt; margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0cm;">
How
do you provide one hundred percent protection to Americans when the decision by
a Golden Gloves official can propel a young man towards violent jihad, much
more effectively than a fatwa from Osama bin Laden himself?<o:p></o:p></div>
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(You
may be interested in an earlier piece I did on the Boston Bombers: <a href="http://barrylando.blogspot.co.uk/2013/04/boston-cowardice-america-blind.html">America
the Blind.</a>) <o:p></o:p></div>
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<div class="blogger-post-footer">Follow me on Twitter @barrylando</div>Anonymoushttp://www.blogger.com/profile/10909224421344518896noreply@blogger.com4tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3743871202965200454.post-3141340645603643362013-04-16T03:36:00.001-07:002013-04-16T07:29:29.850-07:00Boston & Cowardice & America the Blind<div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on">
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<span style="font-size: 14.0pt; mso-bidi-font-size: 12.0pt;">As
I write this, we still don’t know who was responsible for the horrific bombing
attack in Boston. Perhaps it will turn out to be the work of home grown
rightwing nuts; perhaps it’s the act of foreign terrorists. But, whatever the
source, what strikes me is the number of times the barbaric assault is being denounced
as “cowardly” </span></div>
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<span style="font-size: 14.0pt; mso-bidi-font-size: 12.0pt;">As
in Boston Police Commissioner Ed Davis’s <a href="http://q13fox.com/2013/04/15/bomb-explosions-at-boston-marathon-kill-3-injure-more-than-130/#ixzz2Qc0M79mJ"><span style="font-family: "Helvetica Neue"; mso-bidi-font-size: 10.5pt;">warning</span></a>
that “This cowardly act will not be taken in stride.”<br />
<br />
Indeed, “Cowardly” is the epithet being used by political figures across the
United States; it was used by an editorial writer in <a href="http://voices.kansascity.com/entries/cowardly-attack-boston-marathon">Kansas
City Star</a> and a <a href="http://www.baltimoresun.com/news/breaking/bal-md-muslim-council-condemns-boston-bombings-20130415,0,757469.story">spokesman
for</a> the United Maryland Muslim Council in Baltimore. </span></div>
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<br />
<span style="font-size: 14.0pt; mso-bidi-font-size: 12.0pt;">“Cowardly”
is the term being used in messages of support from abroad, from the Prime
Minister of <a href="http://www.thehindu.com/news/national/pm-writes-to-obama-condemning-boston-blasts/article4623003.ece">India</a>
to the Prime Minister of <a href="http://www.straitstimes.com/breaking-news/world/story/boston-blasts-monti-condemns-us-blasts-cowardly-act-20130416">Italy.</a></span></div>
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<br />
<span style="font-size: 14.0pt; mso-bidi-font-size: 12.0pt;">After
all, what could be more cowardly than for some unknown, unseen, unannounced <span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>killer to blow apart and maim innocent
men women and children, without any risk to himself. <span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span></span></div>
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<br />
<span style="font-size: 14.0pt; mso-bidi-font-size: 12.0pt;">But,
if that be the definition of cowardice, what could be more cowardly, than the now
cliché image of the button-down CIA officer agent driving to work in Las Vegas
to assume his shift at the controls of a drone circling high over some dusty
village on the other side of the world? </span></div>
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<span style="font-size: 14.0pt; mso-bidi-font-size: 12.0pt;">How
different are the images produced by such attacks—shattered bodies, dismembered
limbs, severed arteries, frantic aid givers and terrified survivors—how different
from the moving images of the tragedy in Boston now being broadcast and
rebroadcast on TV stations around the globe?</span></div>
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<br />
<span style="font-size: 14.0pt; mso-bidi-font-size: 12.0pt;">With
those scenes in mind, I would ask you to read a portion of <a href="http://barrylando.blogspot.fr/2013/02/drone-wars-ragheads-4000-vs-americans-3.html">a
blog on</a> Drone Wars I posted a few weeks ago, citing the <a href="http://usnews.nbcnews.com/_news/2013/02/05/16856963-american-drone-deaths-highlight-controversy?lite">fact
that</a> over the past few years, U.S. drones have made mincemeat out of an
estimated 3000 to 4000 people in Pakistan, Afghanistan, Yemen, and
Somalia.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>At least 200 of them were
children. </span></div>
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<br />
<span style="font-size: 14.0pt; mso-bidi-font-size: 12.0pt;">“The
figures are very rough because no one--certainly not the U.S. government--is
releasing an accurate count. <span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>The <a href="http://www.thebureauinvestigates.com/category/all-stories-2/">London
based</a> Center for Investigative reporting, which attempts to track the drone
strikes, has been able to identify by name only a few hundred of the actual
victims. Who knows what their political affiliations really were? Or even less,
what considerations—legal and otherwise—went into justifying their demise?</span></div>
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<span style="font-size: 14.0pt; mso-bidi-font-size: 12.0pt;">“It’s
a terrifying situation.” Jennifer Gibson told me. She’s an American lawyer in
London with Reprieve, an organization taking on the “drone war” issue. “There
are villages in Pakistan,” she says “that have drones flying over them 24 hours
a day. Sometimes they’ll stay for weeks. But my clients and people there have
no way of knowing if they are being targeted. Or what kind of behavior is
likely to get them killed. </span></div>
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<span style="font-size: 14.0pt; mso-bidi-font-size: 12.0pt;">“They
don’t know if the person riding beside them in a car or walking with them in
the marketplace may be a target. It’s terrorizing entire communities. Even
after an attack, there is no acknowledging by the U.S. government, no response
at all, absolutely no accountability. And the vast majority of casualties don’t
even have names attached to them.” </span></div>
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<br />
<span style="font-size: 14.0pt; mso-bidi-font-size: 12.0pt;">“Christof
Heyns, the UN special rapporteur on extrajudicial killings, summary or
arbitrary executions, </span><span style="color: #333333; font-family: Arial; font-size: 14.0pt; mso-bidi-font-size: 9.5pt;"><a href="http://www.blogger.com/null">told</a>
a conference in Geneva that President Obama's attacks in<span class="apple-converted-space"> Pakistan</span>, Yemen and elsewhere, carried
out by the CIA, would encourage other states to flout long-established human
rights standards. He suggested that some strikes may even constitute “war
crimes”.</span></div>
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<br />
<span style="font-size: 14.0pt; mso-bidi-font-size: 12.0pt;">“But,
few Americans seem to carry about U.N. rapporteurs. It’s only when <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">Americans</i> are potential targets for
those drones, that Congress and the media get stirred up.</span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br />
<span style="font-size: 14.0pt; mso-bidi-font-size: 12.0pt;">“And
they’re probably right. A <a href="http://www.informationclearinghouse.info/article33865.htm">recent poll</a>
taken by Farleigh Dickinson University’s Public Mind, found that by a two to
one margin (48% to 24%) American voters say they think it’s illegal for the
U.S. government to target its own citizens abroad with drone strikes. </span></div>
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<br />
<span style="font-size: 14.0pt; mso-bidi-font-size: 12.0pt;">“But,
when it comes to using drones to carry out attacks abroad “on people and other
targets deemed a threat to the U.S.” voters were in favor of a margin of
six-to-one [75% to 13%].</span></div>
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<br />
<span style="font-size: 14.0pt; mso-bidi-font-size: 12.0pt;">(You
may be interested in checking out <a href="http://barrylando.blogspot.fr/2013/01/drone-wars-end-of-history.html">another
blog</a> I wrote-“Drone Wars: The End of History?”)</span><br />
<span style="font-size: 14.0pt; mso-bidi-font-size: 12.0pt;"><br /></span>
<span style="font-size: 14.0pt; mso-bidi-font-size: 12.0pt;">Since I first posted this blog, a reader, Jim Rissman has sent me the<a href="http://tribune.com.pk/story/535729/drones-strike-kills-four-in-north-waziristan/"> link to </a>a brief news article about a drone strike in Pakistan on Sunday--day before the Boston attack:</span><br />
<span style="font-size: 14.0pt; mso-bidi-font-size: 12.0pt;"><br /></span>
<span style="font-size: 14.0pt; mso-bidi-font-size: 12.0pt;"></span><br />
<div style="background-color: white; border: 0px; color: #404040; font-family: 'Open Sans', 'Helvetica Neue', Helvetica, Arial, sans-serif; font-size: 13px; line-height: 19px; margin: 0px; outline: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">
<div style="border: 0px; font-family: inherit; font-style: inherit; margin-bottom: 1em; outline: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">
<span style="font-size: 14.0pt; mso-bidi-font-size: 12.0pt;"><strong style="border: 0px; font-family: inherit; font-style: inherit; margin: 0px; outline: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">A US drone strike killed four militants on Sunday in the Datta Khel tehsil of North Waziristan Agency.</strong></span></div>
</div>
<div style="background-color: white; border: 0px; color: #404040; font-family: 'Open Sans', 'Helvetica Neue', Helvetica, Arial, sans-serif; font-size: 13px; line-height: 19px; margin-bottom: 1em; outline: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">
<span style="font-size: 14.0pt; mso-bidi-font-size: 12.0pt;">A security official said the US drone fired two missiles at a compound in Manzar Khel area of Datta Khel, some 40 kilometres towards west of Miramshah, the headquarters of the agency.</span></div>
<div style="background-color: white; border: 0px; color: #404040; font-family: 'Open Sans', 'Helvetica Neue', Helvetica, Arial, sans-serif; font-size: 13px; line-height: 19px; margin-bottom: 1em; outline: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">
<span style="font-size: 14.0pt; mso-bidi-font-size: 12.0pt;">Tribesmen recalled seeing six drones hovering in the air since the afternoon, spreading panic and fear in the area. One of the drones fired two missiles at around sunset, killing at least four militants.</span></div>
<div style="background-color: white; border: 0px; color: #404040; font-family: 'Open Sans', 'Helvetica Neue', Helvetica, Arial, sans-serif; font-size: 13px; line-height: 19px; margin-bottom: 1em; outline: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">
<span style="font-size: 14.0pt; mso-bidi-font-size: 12.0pt;">The compound caught fire after the strike leaving all the bodies burnt.</span></div>
<div style="background-color: white; border: 0px; color: #404040; font-family: 'Open Sans', 'Helvetica Neue', Helvetica, Arial, sans-serif; font-size: 13px; line-height: 19px; margin-bottom: 1em; outline: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">
<span style="font-size: 14.0pt; mso-bidi-font-size: 12.0pt;">The last drone strike occurred in the agency on March 22, when US drones targeting a vehicle in Datta Khel killed four militants.</span></div>
<div style="background-color: white; border: 0px; color: #404040; font-family: 'Open Sans', 'Helvetica Neue', Helvetica, Arial, sans-serif; font-size: 13px; line-height: 19px; margin-bottom: 1em; outline: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">
<span style="font-size: 14.0pt; mso-bidi-font-size: 12.0pt;">A UN envoy last month said US drone attacks violate Pakistan’s sovereignty.</span></div>
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<div class="blogger-post-footer">Follow me on Twitter @barrylando</div>Anonymoushttp://www.blogger.com/profile/10909224421344518896noreply@blogger.com6tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3743871202965200454.post-90742158454974628322013-04-11T09:25:00.000-07:002013-04-11T09:25:58.431-07:00Mali: Mission Accomplished! Hollande’s Bush Moment: <div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on">
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<span style="font-size: 14.0pt; mso-bidi-font-size: 12.0pt;">Still No Crazy Glue in Sight<br /><span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"></span> </span></div>
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<span style="color: #333333; font-size: 14.0pt; mso-bidi-font-size: 12.0pt;">As Colin Powell famously <a href="http://blogs.independent.co.uk/2011/08/23/natos-dilemma-if-you-break-it-you-own-it/"><span style="color: purple;">warned</span></a> George H.W. Bush on the eve of the
invasion of Iraq, “if you break it, you own it.” </span></div>
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<span style="color: #333333; font-size: 14.0pt; mso-bidi-font-size: 12.0pt;">France is not responsible for “breaking” Mali. The country was
already a West African basket case long before the French intervention.</span></div>
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<span style="color: #333333; font-size: 14.0pt; mso-bidi-font-size: 12.0pt;">But France, which enraged many Americans by refusing to
participate in the invasion of Iraq, now finds itself stuck with the results of
their own intervention.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>And
there’s no crazy glue in sight.</span></div>
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<span style="color: #333333; font-size: 14.0pt; mso-bidi-font-size: 12.0pt;">That’s what I <a href="http://barrylando.blogspot.fr/2013/02/mali-no-crazy-glue-in-sight.html">wrote</a>
a couple of months ago after President Francois Hollande dispatched French
troops to Mali.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="color: #333333; font-size: 14.0pt; mso-bidi-font-size: 12.0pt;">The irony today is that not only is there no obvious solution to
Mali’s plight, but Hollande himself is having enormous problems running his own
deeply troubled country.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="color: #333333; font-size: 14.0pt; mso-bidi-font-size: 12.0pt;">Back in January Hollande’s aides hoped that a forceful
intervention in Mali would give the lie to the charge that he was a feeble,
indecisive leader. </span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="color: #333333; font-size: 14.0pt; mso-bidi-font-size: 12.0pt;">But now, in mid April, with 4,600 French troops in Mali, the
magazine <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">L’Express</i> is running an
abject photo of Holland on the cover, over the humiliating headline: “<i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">M. FAIBLE</i>.” (Mister WEAK). Similar devastatingly
mocking jibes fill the media—from all sides of the political spectrum. </span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-size: 14.0pt; mso-bidi-font-size: 12.0pt;">Indeed,
with Hollande confronting a major domestic political crisis, after his Budget
Minister-in charge of collecting taxes--admitted to having stashed money in secret
bank accounts in Switzerland and Singapore, the president’s popularity is still
plummeting (now about 20%). </span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-size: 14.0pt; mso-bidi-font-size: 12.0pt;">It’s
being driven ever lower by France’s abysmal economic situation,<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>mounting crime and racial tensions.
With three of Hollande’s own ministers now publicly challenging the
government’s economic program, the ineluctable conclusion is that no one’s really
in charge.</span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-size: 14.0pt; mso-bidi-font-size: 12.0pt;">Yet
this is the same man who is supposedly leading the battle to save Mali from
ruin.</span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-size: 14.0pt; mso-bidi-font-size: 12.0pt;">When
France intervened in January, Foreign Minister Laurent Fabius <a href="http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-europe-21007517">vowed</a> the action
would be over in “a matter of weeks.”</span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-size: 14.0pt; mso-bidi-font-size: 12.0pt;">Now
in mid April, 4,600 French troops are still in the country, supported by about
6,000 soldiers from several African states. Led by the French, they’ve retaken most
of the major population centers from the jihadists who had threatened to
overrun the country. They’ve also pummeled rebel redoubts in the North, reportedly
killing hundreds of radicals and destroying tons of equipment. </span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-size: 14.0pt; mso-bidi-font-size: 12.0pt;">Yet
the situation is still tense. Islamists who had faded into the villages and
rugged mountains are still capable of deadly hit-and-run attacks. And the ethnic
Tuaregs in the North, who began the rebellion, are still demanding autonomy or
independence.</span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-size: 14.0pt; mso-bidi-font-size: 12.0pt;">Hollande<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>is also out on a limb. Though he claimed
he was acting to protect Europe from radical Islam spreading in Africa, he has
received precious little support from his European allies. Nor—aside from some
important intelligence and logistics support—has he received much real backing from
the United States.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>After Iraq and
Afghanistan, no one is rushing to get involved in yet another quagmire. </span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-size: 14.0pt; mso-bidi-font-size: 12.0pt;">Meanwhile
the Mali adventure <a href="http://www.france24.com/en/20130207-mali-war-costs-france-70-million-euros">is
costing France</a>—whose budget is already in disarray-- close to three million
Euros a day—probably much more. By this summer, the cost will probably have
risen to at least half a billion Euros…and counting. <span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="color: #333333; font-size: 14.0pt; mso-bidi-font-size: 12.0pt;">Hollande’s predicament now is not that different from the one
facing President Obama in Afghanistan: how to drastically decrease France’s
involvement in Mali without making it look like France has cut and run, leaving
an unseemly chaos in his wake.</span><span style="font-size: 14.0pt; mso-bidi-font-size: 12.0pt;"></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-size: 14.0pt; mso-bidi-font-size: 10.0pt;">The
solution: France will turn over the mess in their former colony, as soon as
possible, to a new “democratically-elected” Malian government. <span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-size: 14.0pt; mso-bidi-font-size: 12.0pt;">Thus
it was that Hollande dispatched Foreign Minister Fabius to Bamako to lay down
his <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">dictat</i> to the major political
actors: <span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>presidential and
legislative elections were to be held by July. </span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-size: 14.0pt; mso-bidi-font-size: 12.0pt;">The
rebel Tuaregs were supposed to lay down their arms, though they still occupy Kidal
and a part of Northern Mali; a French reaction force would stay in place to
ensure that “the terrorists” didn’t come back.</span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-size: 14.0pt; mso-bidi-font-size: 10.0pt;">We
imagine the plans also include a kind of George W. Bush “Mission Accomplished” moment:
A beaming Hollande attending the inauguration of Mali’s new leaders. He salutes
the sacrifice of the heroic French and African troops, vows undying support for
the future of France’s former colony--and continues to withdraw French troops. </span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-size: 14.0pt; mso-bidi-font-size: 12.0pt;">By
the end of 2013 only 1000 French troops will be left to work with a UN
Peacekeeping Force from other mainly African countries.</span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-size: 14.0pt; mso-bidi-font-size: 12.0pt;">That’s
the deal. The problem, according to many observers, is that attempting to hold meaningful--never
mind democratic-- elections by July is just a wishful figment of Hollande’s
desperate imagination--a frail fig leaf for France. </span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-size: 14.0pt; mso-bidi-font-size: 12.0pt;">Even
if Mali were secure, the idea that it might be possible to organize a real
campaign in a country twice the size of France, draw up lists of electors when
at least 400,000 Malians from the north have fled south or to their African
neighbors, is a chimera. </span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-size: 14.0pt; mso-bidi-font-size: 12.0pt;">With
no time for new political leaders or parties to organize and present
themselves, the field is left to the same threadbare, corrupt politicians who
presided over the country’s ruin and final collapse in 2012. </span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-size: 14.0pt; mso-bidi-font-size: 12.0pt;">After
that debacle, it turned out that what had once been trumpeted as a showcase for
post-colonial government in Africa, was in fact a<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>“Potemkin” democracy—all façade, no substance. </span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-size: 14.0pt; mso-bidi-font-size: 12.0pt;">Which
will probably be the upshot of the elections scheduled for July (if they
actually take place.) </span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-size: 14.0pt; mso-bidi-font-size: 12.0pt;">The
scenario after that: those 1,000 French troops, with 10,000 soldiers and police
from the new U.N. force—many of them poorly equipped and trained—will somehow maintain
order in Mali’s restive towns and cities and vast hinterlands, while the new
government struggles to resolve the country’s <a href="http://barrylando.blogspot.fr/2013/01/france-in-malichasing-roadrunner-over.html">huge
problems</a>, made even more desperate by the changing climate of the Sahel.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span><span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-size: 14.0pt; mso-bidi-font-size: 12.0pt;">Bottom
line: fifty years after it became independent, Mali has still to rely on its
former colonial ruler to keep the country intact.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span><span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="background: white; color: black; font-size: 14.0pt; mso-bidi-font-size: 14.5pt;">But after half a century, France, like the other
once great powers, no longer has the appetite nor the resources to play a colonial
role. Hollande, as we’ve noted, is having a hell of a time, just attempting to rule
his own restive nation. </span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="background: white; color: black; font-size: 14.0pt; mso-bidi-font-size: 14.5pt;">Nor for that matter does the United States have
much in the way of state-building zeal these days. President Obama would much rather
deal with terrorist threats through killer drones, than boots on the ground and
massive aid programs.</span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-size: 14.0pt; mso-bidi-font-size: 12.0pt;">Which
means that imposing elections for July on Mali, though a flawed, cynical step,
may be the only realistic way forward. It may at least get some kind of
political process sputtering again.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">
</span></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="background: white; color: black; font-size: 14.0pt; mso-bidi-font-size: 14.5pt;">And France and the rest of the world will provide
some aid, some investment, some military training—and Mali and its peoples will
almost certainly endure decades more of political turbulence and strife. </span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="background: white; color: black; font-size: 14.0pt; mso-bidi-font-size: 14.5pt;">Their desperate situation will be mirrored in the
turmoil, which may also last for decades, of failing states across the region, </span><span style="color: black; font-size: 14.0pt; mso-bidi-font-size: 14.5pt;">from Tunis to
Libya to Egypt to Syria.<span style="background: white;"></span></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="background: white; color: black; font-size: 14.0pt; mso-bidi-font-size: 14.5pt;">After all, the reverberations of the French Revolution,
which took place in 1789, are still being felt in France to this day.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
</div>
<div class="blogger-post-footer">Follow me on Twitter @barrylando</div>Anonymoushttp://www.blogger.com/profile/10909224421344518896noreply@blogger.com5tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3743871202965200454.post-15535009078086947492013-04-04T09:15:00.000-07:002013-04-04T09:15:45.311-07:00France: From Gloire to Desespoir<div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on">
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<br />
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
President Francois Hollande’s government is reeling from the
latest scandal to jolt this country-the admission by Budget Minister, Jerome Cahuzac,
after months of denying the charge, that he had secret offshore accounts. This
newest <i>affaire</i> only adds to the strange
brew of outrage and despair that has enveloped the citizens of what was once Europe’s
greatest power. </div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
Nothing brings home more starkly France’s awful decline than
a visit to the Basilica of Saint Denis in the northern suburbs of Paris. It is still
considered one of the architectural marvels of Europe. Its vaulted domes, 13<sup>th</sup>
century nave, slender towering walls and luminous stained glass windows were
models for the high Gothic style that that inspired the architects of Notre
Dame in Paris and other great abbeys and temples to the Christian God
throughout Europe. Inside are the tombs—though not always the remains--of most
of the kings and queens of France over the past 1500 years. </div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
It’s a memorable
sight. But there were precious few tourists there when I visited yesterday; and
non apparent on the streets outside.
</div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
Once you exit the cavernous, hushed Basilica you’re suddenly
walking the main shopping streets of one of Paris’s most notorious urban slums,
filled mainly with immigrants and the descendants of immigrants from the sprawling
lands that France once ruled in Africa, not that many years ago. </div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
Today, however, Saint Denis is more <a href="http://www.gatestoneinstitute.org/3305/france-no-go-zones">notorious f</a>or
its crime and drug rate than its basilica. Probably 25% or more of the young
people on these streets are unemployed. Saint Denis is also associated with
gang violence, car burnings, housing complexes that even the police fear to
enter, and a predominately Islamic population that feels <a href="http://barrylando.blogspot.fr/2012/10/normal.html">increasingly estranged</a>
from the rest of France. </div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
And Saint Denis is far from being an exception in France. </div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
Despite President Hollande’s vow when he entered office to
reduce unemployment, the number of jobless is still high—<a href="http://www.telegraph.co.uk/finance/economics/9914644/Unemployment-in-France-hits-14-year-high.html">more
than 10%</a> and growing higher--throughout the country. </div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
As is the crime rate, from petty street and auto thefts to
apartment break-ins, assaults, and all-out gang warfare on the streets of
Marseilles. The Interior Minister talks darkly of new violent mafia-like
organizations in France, run by legal and illegal immigrants who have swarmed
into the country from Eastern Europe in the past few years. </div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
Despite President Hollande’s promise to revitalize French
industry and block factory closures, factories continue to shut down. Others
continue to lay off thousands of workers. The 35-hour workweek still reigns
supreme.</div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
Meanwhile, Hollande’s politically-driven drive to raise
taxes on the wealthy, particularly a charge of 75% on those making more than
one million Euros a year, has probably cost France far more than any such tax
could ever bring in. The latest demented development is that the companies that
pay those salaries will also have to pay the taxes. That includes France’s
major football teams and millionaire stars. </div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
Hundreds of thousands of French—many of the best and the brightest--have
fled abroad over the past few years, more than <a href="http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/magazine-18234930">400,000</a> to London alone.
But a survey taken found most of them left not to so much to avoid French
taxes, but to escape stifling French bureaucracy and regulations, and do
something about the huge waste.</div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
Every French government in recent history has promised to do
something about that bureaucracy. None have succeeded in tackling the
entrenched labor unions and special interests. </div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
In fact, most French long ago gave up their claim to be a
major power. They would happily settle for a good, secure government job, with
decent schools, housing, a comfortable retirement and continued access to one
of the world’s best medical systems. They would settle in short for security, in their own land.. </div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
But that’s exactly what’s being threatened in an atmosphere
of moral decay and crisis—of underlying rot.</div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
Francois Hollande was elected eleven months ago to deal with
all this-to bring an end to the frenetic <i>bling-bling</i>
reign of Nicolas Sarkozy, to restore order, to return to a feeling of probity;
to be, as he promised, “a normal president.” Instead, he's turned out to be weak, indecisive, uninspiring.</div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
And now comes the <i>affaire
</i>Cahuzac</div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
Jerome Cahuzac, Francois Hollande’s Minister of the Budget, who
had vowed to clean up France’s huge deficit, its finances, and go after tax
dodgers. This past December a new investigative on-line journal <i>Mediapart,</i> reported that Cahuzac had an
illegal bank account in Switzerland. Cahuzac solemnly swore to his colleagues
in the National Assembly, swore to all who would listen, that the charge was
false. </div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
This week, however, he finally admitted that, yes, he had
secret account in Switzerland, which he then moved to Singapore. The account
totaled about 600,000 Euros. </div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
The French media immediately compared Cahuzac with Bill
Clinton and the Lewinsky affair, Richard Nixon and Watergate. </div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
Cahuzac’s humiliating admission is like blood in the water
to the France’s political and media sharks. Before this scandal broke, the
level of public approval for Hollande had plummeted to less than 30%. </div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
Today, it
could only be lower. Now all sides are demanding to know how, if a small muck-raking
journal could discover Cahuzac’s misdeeds, how is it that President Hollande—with
all the investigative tools at his disposal--couldn’t have found out earlier. </div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
Then today <a href="http://www.huffingtonpost.fr/2013/04/04/jean-jacques-augier-tresorier-hollande-iles-caimans_n_3011907.html?ju">came
further</a> embarrassing news for Hollande. The revelation that the treasury of
his last election campaign—the one that was waged to bring honesty etc. into
government—the treasurer also had a couple of off-shore companies in the Cayman
Islands.</div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
There are increasing calls—even from within his own party--for
him to completely reform his government, to strike out in some heroic new
direction, to revive France’s faith in its future.</div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
There’s no indication that Francois Hollande has either the
stomach or the backbone for such a challenge. Nor that the French would
willingly make the sacrifices necessary to retool and rebuild their nation.</div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
They’re reluctant to even seriously discuss what’s needed. </div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
Perhaps that’s because the problems they confront—like
unemployment, economic growth, crime, racial strife, the survival of the Euro
----perhaps because those problems are so complex, the French—like other
nations—find it much easier to obsess about other simpler issues—issues someone
can have a real opinion about. Like..well, should a Muslim woman working in a
government office be able to wear a veil?
Or, should France’s social security system pay for a homosexual couple
to have a child using artificial insemination and a surrogate mother? </div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
Yet all the while, France’s real problems keep growing.</div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
This week for instance, the <i>Canard Enchaine</i>, reports that, according to a recent government
study, the time-off taken for such things as “sickness” and “accidents at work”
by the 57,000 people employed by the City of Paris, came to an average of 20
days—that is about one month—per employee. That’s in addition to the five weeks
of holiday they get each year. </div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
That represents a total of more than 1.15 million days of
work—a cost of 160 million Euros per year. </div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
Meanwhile, as part of a project to refurbish the Basilica of
Saint Denis, its marvelous stained glass windows, which looked over the tombs
of France’s greatest monarchs, were removed from the church, replaced by
artificially colored panes, and sent off to be repaired by skilled French
artisans. Ten years later, those windows, according to a guide I spoke with,
are still locked away in their protective cases. </div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
The authorities can’t find the money to restore them. </div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
</div>
<!--EndFragment--></div>
<div class="blogger-post-footer">Follow me on Twitter @barrylando</div>Anonymoushttp://www.blogger.com/profile/10909224421344518896noreply@blogger.com4tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3743871202965200454.post-80883702169242046272013-03-28T11:17:00.001-07:002013-03-28T11:21:30.487-07:00Me and my 25,000 Classmates<div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on">
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<br />
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-right: -24.45pt;">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-right: -24.45pt;">
A few weeks ago, I decided to apply
to go back to college--to one of the 20 top liberal arts colleges in America. It
turned out to be deceptively simple: No SAT exams, no mammoth tuition fees, no huge
student loans, no nail-biting wait to see if I was admitted. <span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span><br />
<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"><br /></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-right: -24.45pt;">
I simply signed up and now I’m
now taking a course at Wesleyan given by Michael Roth the President of the University,
a brilliant, entertaining lecturer, an expert, among other things on the
Enlightenment and<br />
Modernist thought.<br />
<br />
The current fees for tuition and housing
at Wesleyan are about $60,000 a year. I’m taking this course for free. </div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-right: -24.45pt;">
<br />
Wesleyan is located in Middletown
Connecticut. I’m taking the course in my home office in Paris. Professor Roth
is not here on sabbatical. He’s on my computer screen. Whenever I want him. </div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-right: -24.45pt;">
<br />
The course is a product of a brave new world of education called MOOC, which stands for Massive On Line
Courses. Massive indeed. I was one of more than 25,000 students across the
globe, of all ages, all nationalities, all with different goals, who signed up
to take this course which began last month. </div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-right: -24.45pt;">
<br />
This could be the beginning of
an enormous revolution in education. Or maybe just a very glitzy but ultimately
ineffectual technology. <span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Rather
than write about it from the outside. I decided to sign up for a course myself.
<br />
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-right: -24.45pt;">
I logged on to the site of <a href="https://www.coursera.org/">Coursera</a>, a startup founded just a year
ago by two Stanford University professors, which now has more than three
million students taking 320 university courses in 210 countries.</div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-right: -24.45pt;">
<br />
I scrolled through the
catalogue of hundreds of on-line courses offered by professors from Stanford to
Cal Tech to Duke to the University of Pennsylvania—Astronomy, Advanced
Calculus, Marketing, Music, Art, Creative Writing, Computer Engineering. </div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="background: white; line-height: 14.0pt; margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<br />
One survey course given by Wesleyan University caught
my fancy: “Modernism and Post Modernism”.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">
</span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-right: -24.45pt;">
We’d be covering the likes of
Kant, Marx, Manet, Darwin, Nietzsche, Freud, Virginia Wolfe, and so on. The
last time I’d been confronted with such a challenging intellectual array was in
college fifty years ago. To my shame, I’ve shied away from such reading ever
since. </div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-right: -24.45pt;">
<br />
The course would be starting
in a few days. It would run for fourteen weeks. </div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-right: -24.45pt;">
<br />
Signing up on line took about
two minutes.</div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-right: -24.45pt;">
<br />
We’re now a little more than half
way through the course, and it’s been great. I’m already recommending it to friends.
<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>There’s nothing to lose but your
own time.</div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-right: -24.45pt;">
<br />
This is the way it works: Ever
Monday, Professor Roth uploads an hour’s video lecture to the course site, the
lecture usually split into four 15 minute segments. <span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Whenever they choose, course members simply log on, download
a segment, and watch it on their PC’s or laptops or IPads or whatever. </div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-right: -24.45pt;">
<br />
We’re not in the classroom
with the professor, true. Many years ago, my father paid a pile so I could
study at a top ivy-league university. I sat in cavernous lecture halls, often
with hundreds of other students, listening to different Great Minds on the
podium, scribbling notes as I tried to stay awake and keep up, jotting
something down even if I wasn’t sure I understood it. I had precious little
personal contact with those Great Minds. </div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-right: -24.45pt;">
<br />
I also take notes as Professor
Roth talks. He’s on the screen just in front of me, most of the time, full-frame,
dynamic, entertaining, comparing Emmanuel Kant with Jean Jacques Rousseau,
reading poetry by Baudelaire, analyzing Sigmund Freud. <span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-right: -24.45pt;">
<br />
But if I drift off or the
telephone rings, and I need to review what he’s said--no problem. I put the
professor on pause, go back a couple of minutes and play it again. </div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-right: -24.45pt;">
<br />
I also download written
material—essays or articles or books by the figures we are covering that week. That
material is also free. </div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-right: -24.45pt;">
<br />
True, most university courses
usually break down into sections, giving students the chance to discuss what
they’re studying face-to-face, directly with teaching assistants and each
other. </div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-right: -24.45pt;">
<br />
There’s no such possibility
with the kind of massive on line course I’m taking. Nor can we go personally to
the professor at the end of class or during office hours to ask our penetrating
questions. </div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-right: -24.45pt;">
<br />
On the other hand, there is an
on-line discussion forum that any of us, from anywhere on the planet, can log
on to and create a new “thread” related to the material we’re studying. </div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-right: -24.45pt;">
<br />
Some threads are predictably
pedestrian. Others, more provocative. “What would Karl Marx have thought of the
Arab Spring?” </div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-right: -24.45pt;">
<br />
The obvious interest and
maturity of many such threads keeps me reading, thinking, and commenting myself.
With some of my fellow students, a bond is already forming. <span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-right: -24.45pt;">
<br />
Several threads were launched
by students looking to hookup with others from their area to form their own
study groups—from India, New York City, Seattle Bulgaria, Melbourne, Turkey,
Iran. There are Spanish-speaking and Russian-speaking groups, but the most
active is : “the Online, Older Study Group.”</div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-right: -24.45pt;">
<br />
What about exams or tests? There
are 8 written assignments, limited to a maximum of 800 words, the subject given
by Professor Roth at the beginning of the week; the essay due about five days
later. </div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-right: -24.45pt;">
<br />
I do a lot of blogging, but I
was surprised by how warily I approached the task of writing a cogent 800-word
essay about such daunting figures as Darwin, Flaubert, or Nietzsche.</div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-right: -24.45pt;">
<br />
Because of the thousands of
people taking the course, there is no way that Professor Roth and his two
teaching assistants can grade the mountain of essays. Instead, we grade each
other. </div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-right: -24.45pt;">
<br />
After submitting our own
essay, I download the essays of three other students. i have no way of
knowing who they are, but, furnished with instructions on how to evaluate them,
<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> I</span> proceed to pass judgment. I
probably learn as much by agonizing over the essays of my peers as by writing
my own assignments. <span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-right: -24.45pt;">
<br />
I was also surprised by the
tightening in my gut as I logged on to the site to find out what kind of marks
my own essay received. </div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-right: -24.45pt;">
<br />
In a breathless blog, Coursera
has just notified me that, though their company is less than a year old, students
around the world have now signed up fro a “staggering 10 million courses.” </div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-right: -24.45pt;">
<br />
What Coursera doesn’t say, is
that, though millions may sign up for free courses, millions also drop out
before finishing. Of the 25,000 who signed up for the course I’m currently
taking, probably only about 10% will finish. </div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-right: -24.45pt;">
<br />
Where is this phenomenon
headed? If the courses are free, how can Coursera and the universities who are
flooding into this market make money? </div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-right: -24.45pt;">
<br />
What’s in it for them? What’s
really in it for the students?<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-right: -24.45pt;">
<br />
And how am I going to deal
with the essay I’m supposed to write on Freud and Virginia Wolfe?</div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-right: -24.45pt;">
<br />
More on all that in my next
blog. </div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-right: -24.45pt;">
<br /></div>
</div>
<div class="blogger-post-footer">Follow me on Twitter @barrylando</div>Anonymoushttp://www.blogger.com/profile/10909224421344518896noreply@blogger.com9tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3743871202965200454.post-21053872856902206982013-03-20T09:11:00.000-07:002013-03-20T09:54:37.401-07:00An Arab dictator gases his own people. Then and Now<div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on">
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<br />
<div class="MsoNormal">
America's outrage over the use of chemical weapons by Arab dictators depends on which dictator did the gassing and when they did it.<br />
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-size: 14.0pt; mso-bidi-font-size: 12.0pt;">For instance, the
regime of Syrian tyrant Bashar Al-Assad is exchanging accusations with Syrian
rebels over the use of chemical weapons in their increasingly deadly battle.
Both sides cite, among other things<a href="http://www.informationclearinghouse.info/article34343.htm">, video footage</a>
that apparently shows attack survivors—soldiers and civilians--gasping for
breath. <o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-size: 14.0pt; mso-bidi-font-size: 12.0pt;"><br /></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-size: 14.0pt; mso-bidi-font-size: 12.0pt;">So
far, investigators say evidence of a chemical attack by either side is far from
convincing. But proof that Assad was indeed using such weapons of mass
destruction would represent a major turning point in the conflict. <o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-size: 14.0pt; mso-bidi-font-size: 12.0pt;"><br /></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-size: 14.0pt; mso-bidi-font-size: 12.0pt;">The
Obama administration—which has long been reluctant to intervene directly—has
warned the Syrian dictator that the use of chemical weapons would “constitute a red line for the United
States.”<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-size: 14.0pt; mso-bidi-font-size: 12.0pt;"><a href="http://www.foxnews.com/politics/2013/03/19/syrian-fighters-trade-accusations-chemical-attack-putting-pressure-on-us/#ixzz2O5WVzEO9">Republican
Senators</a> John Mc Cain and Lindsey Graham are particularly outraged. Their feelings
are understandable-right? How could any U.S. administration stand by as an Arab
dictator gassed his own people?<o:p></o:p></span><br />
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-size: 14.0pt; mso-bidi-font-size: 12.0pt;">President Ronald Reagan not only turned his back on such
ruthless attacks, though they were substantiated by grisly video evidence, but continued
to aid the tyrant who was ordering the savagery. <o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-size: 14.0pt; mso-bidi-font-size: 12.0pt;"><br /></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-size: 14.0pt; mso-bidi-font-size: 12.0pt;">The
dictator in question was Saddam Hussein. That of course was before the invasion
of Iraq ten years ago when the George W. Bush acted to topple the tyrant he
compared to Hitler . <o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-size: 14.0pt; mso-bidi-font-size: 12.0pt;"><br /></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-size: 14.0pt; mso-bidi-font-size: 12.0pt;">It
was in the 1980’s when the U.S. secretly backed Saddam after he invaded Iran. (Along
with Michel Despratx I did a TV <a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_QC5S8zrsYk">documentary</a> covering on
this subject)<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-size: 14.0pt; mso-bidi-font-size: 12.0pt;"><br /></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-size: 14.0pt; mso-bidi-font-size: 12.0pt;">When
word first broke in 1983 that Iraq was using mustard gas against Iranian
troops, the Reagan administration (after a verbal tap on the wrist delivered by
then Middle East envoy Donald Rumsfeld) studiously ignored the issue. Saddam,
after all, was then the West’s de facto partner in a war against the feared
fundamentalist regime of Iran’s Ayatollah Khomeini. <o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-size: 14.0pt; mso-bidi-font-size: 12.0pt;"><br /></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-size: 14.0pt; mso-bidi-font-size: 12.0pt;">Saddam’s
chemical weapons were provided largely by companies in Germany and France (these
days, France is also outraged that Assad may be using chemical
weapons). <o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-size: 14.0pt; mso-bidi-font-size: 12.0pt;"><br /></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-size: 14.0pt; mso-bidi-font-size: 12.0pt;">For
its part, the United States provided Saddam with –among many other things —
vital satellite intelligence on Iranian troop positions.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-size: 14.0pt; mso-bidi-font-size: 12.0pt;"><br /></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-size: 14.0pt; mso-bidi-font-size: 12.0pt;">U.S.
support for Saddam increased in 1988 when Rick Francona, then an Air Force
captain, was dispatched to Baghdad by the Defense Intelligence Agency. His
mission: to provide precise targeting plans to the Iraqis to cripple a feared a
new Iranian offensive. Shortly after arriving, Francona discovered that the
Iraqis were now using even more deadly chemical weapons — nerve gas — against
the Iranians. </span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-size: 14.0pt; mso-bidi-font-size: 12.0pt;"><br /></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-size: 14.0pt; mso-bidi-font-size: 12.0pt;">He informed his superiors in Washington.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-size: 14.0pt; mso-bidi-font-size: 12.0pt;"><br /></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-size: 14.0pt; mso-bidi-font-size: 12.0pt;">The
response, he said, was immediate. “We were told to cease all of our cooperation
with the Iraqis until people in Washington were able to sort this out. There
were a series of almost daily meetings on ‘How are we going to handle this,
what are we going to do?’ Do we continue our relations with the Iraqis and make
sure the Iranians do not win this war, or do we let the Iraqis fight this on
their own without any U.S. assistance, and they’ll probably lose? So there are
your options — neither one palatable.” Francona concluded, “The decision was
made that we would restart our relationship with the Iraqis … We went back to
Baghdad, and continued on as before. ”<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-size: 14.0pt; mso-bidi-font-size: 12.0pt;"><br /></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-size: 14.0pt; mso-bidi-font-size: 12.0pt;">This
policy continued even after it was discovered that Saddam was using chemical
weapons against his own people, the Kurds of Halabja. <o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-size: 14.0pt; mso-bidi-font-size: 12.0pt;"><br /></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-size: 14.0pt; mso-bidi-font-size: 12.0pt;">Fourteen
years later, in March 2003, attempting to justify the coming invasion of Iraq,
George W. Bush repeatedly cited the Halabja atrocity. “Whole families died
while trying to flee clouds of nerve and mustard agents descending from the sky,”
he said. “The chemical attack on Halabja provided a glimpse of the crimes Saddam
Hussein is willing to commit.”<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-size: 14.0pt; mso-bidi-font-size: 12.0pt;"><br /></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-size: 14.0pt; mso-bidi-font-size: 12.0pt;"> But President Bush never explained the
assistance that the United States had given Saddam at the time.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-size: 14.0pt; mso-bidi-font-size: 12.0pt;">When
news first broke about the atrocity in 1988, the Reagan administration did its
utmost to prevent condemnation of Saddam, fighting Congress’ attempt to impose
restrictions on trade with Iraq. <o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-size: 14.0pt; mso-bidi-font-size: 12.0pt;">President
George W. Bush’s father was then vice president. Another key administration
figure involved in the fight was Reagan’s national security advisor, Gen. Colin
Powell.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-size: 14.0pt; mso-bidi-font-size: 12.0pt;"><br /></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-size: 14.0pt; mso-bidi-font-size: 12.0pt;">A
few years later, with their former ally in the Gulf now their targeted enemy,
George W. Bush (assisted by Colin Powell) brushed this history of complicity
with real weapons of mass destruction under the rug, while using nonexistent
WMD as a reason for war.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-size: 14.0pt; mso-bidi-font-size: 12.0pt;"><br /></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-size: 14.0pt; mso-bidi-font-size: 12.0pt;">Could
the issue of chemical weapons propel the U.S. into yet another bloody Middle
Eastern conflict?<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-size: 14.0pt; mso-bidi-font-size: 12.0pt;"><br /></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-size: 14.0pt; mso-bidi-font-size: 12.0pt;">[On
the tenth anniversary of the U.S. invasion of Iraq, you might be interested in
checking out <a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Qkswer28xpk">other
chapters</a> of the documentary I did with Michel Despratx of Canal + on
America’s complicity with Saddam.]<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<!--EndFragment--></div>
<div class="blogger-post-footer">Follow me on Twitter @barrylando</div>Anonymoushttp://www.blogger.com/profile/10909224421344518896noreply@blogger.com2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3743871202965200454.post-42401687486012149652013-02-15T04:21:00.002-08:002013-02-15T05:55:10.033-08:00Zero Dark Thirty: Hijacking history.<div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on">
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<br />
<div class="MsoNormalCxSpFirst" style="line-height: 150%;">
<span style="font-size: 14.0pt; line-height: 150%; mso-bidi-font-size: 12.0pt;"><br /></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormalCxSpMiddle" style="line-height: 150%;">
<span style="font-size: 14.0pt; line-height: 150%; mso-bidi-font-size: 12.0pt;">What if a new film came out
about 9/11, “based on a firsthand account of actual events,” that convincingly
showed no Jews were in the World Trade Center that fateful morning. The fiery
disaster, in fact, was a Zionist/CIA plot to justify launching “The War on
Terror”? </span></div>
<div class="MsoNormalCxSpMiddle" style="line-height: 150%;">
<span style="font-size: 14.0pt; line-height: 150%; mso-bidi-font-size: 12.0pt;">Or what about another film
“based on true historical events,” that Barack Obama is a closet Muslim, and
the drive for gun control paves the way for a jihadist takeover of America? </span></div>
<div class="MsoNormalCxSpMiddle" style="line-height: 150%;">
<span style="font-size: 14.0pt; line-height: 150%; mso-bidi-font-size: 12.0pt;">Outrageous right? </span></div>
<div class="MsoNormalCxSpMiddle" style="line-height: 150%;">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormalCxSpMiddle" style="line-height: 150%;">
<span style="font-size: 14.0pt; line-height: 150%; mso-bidi-font-size: 12.0pt;">What about a film leaving
the impression that brutal methods of torture, though perhaps morally
repugnant, led to the assassination of America’s number one enemy. </span></div>
<div class="MsoNormalCxSpMiddle" style="line-height: 150%;">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormalCxSpMiddle" style="line-height: 150%;">
<span style="font-size: 14.0pt; line-height: 150%; mso-bidi-font-size: 12.0pt;">The first <a href="http://www.snopes.com/rumors/israel.asp">two claims</a>, often <a href="http://divine-ripples.blogspot.fr/2012/12/dhs-insider-on-gun-control-elections.html">backed</a>
up by amateurish photos, videos and ropey <span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>documentation, have been bandied about for years on the
Internet.</span></div>
<div class="MsoNormalCxSpMiddle" style="line-height: 150%;">
<span style="font-size: 14.0pt; line-height: 150%; mso-bidi-font-size: 12.0pt;">The film about torture,
however, is a sophisticated production, turned out by the Sony Corporation and
a talented director, writer and cast, backed up by reams of expensive research,
nominated for five Oscars, and reaping hundreds of millions of dollars in box
offices around the world. </span></div>
<div class="MsoNormalCxSpMiddle" style="line-height: 150%;">
<span style="font-size: 14.0pt; line-height: 150%; mso-bidi-font-size: 12.0pt;">The movie, of course, is <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">Zero Dark Thirty (ZDT)</i>. </span></div>
<div class="MsoNormalCxSpMiddle" style="line-height: 150%;">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormalCxSpMiddle" style="line-height: 150%;">
<span style="font-size: 14.0pt; line-height: 150%; mso-bidi-font-size: 12.0pt;">In a way, that film, and
others like it, are hijacking our history. I’ll get back to that charge.</span></div>
<div class="MsoNormalCxSpMiddle" style="line-height: 150%;">
<span style="font-size: 14.0pt; line-height: 150%; mso-bidi-font-size: 12.0pt;">Some commentators like the <a href="http://www.nytimes.com/2013/02/12/opinion/global/roger-cohen-why-zero-dark-thirty-works.html">Times’</a>
Roger Cohen have praised ZDT “as a courageous work that is disturbing in the
way that art should be.”</span></div>
<div class="MsoNormalCxSpMiddle" style="background: white; line-height: 150%; margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0cm; mso-add-space: auto; vertical-align: baseline;">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormalCxSpMiddle" style="background: white; line-height: 150%; margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0cm; mso-add-space: auto; vertical-align: baseline;">
<span style="color: #111111; font-size: 14.0pt; line-height: 150%; mso-bidi-font-size: 9.5pt;">Indeed,
as befits a work of art, much of the story-line in ZDT is unstated, diffuse.
There are a lot of shadowy images, elliptical scenes, muttered exchanges. But
it’s difficult to come away from the film without the perception that brutal
torture, such as water boarding, played an important role in the CIA’s finding
Usama Bin Laden’s personal courier, which in turn led them to the Al Qaeda
leader himself.</span></div>
<div class="MsoNormalCxSpLast" style="background: white; line-height: 150%; margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0cm; mso-add-space: auto; vertical-align: baseline;">
<br /></div>
<div style="background: white; line-height: 150%;">
<span style="color: #111111; font-family: "Times New Roman"; font-size: 14.0pt; line-height: 150%; mso-bidi-font-size: 9.5pt;">The problem is, <a href="http://www.hrw.org/news/2013/01/11/us-zero-dark-thirty-and-truth-about-torture">according
to</a> a lot of people who should know, that was not the case. The film has
been roundly criticized from Human Rights Watch, to prominent American
Senators, to a former agent in the FBI’s Joint Terrorism Task Force, for giving
Americans the erroneous impression that torture played a key role in tracking
down and killing </span><span style="color: black; font-family: "Times New Roman"; font-size: 14.0pt; line-height: 150%; mso-bidi-font-size: 15.0pt;">Bin Laden.</span></div>
<div class="MsoNormalCxSpFirst" style="background: white; line-height: 150%; margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0cm; mso-add-space: auto; vertical-align: baseline;">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormalCxSpMiddle" style="background: white; line-height: 150%; margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0cm; mso-add-space: auto; vertical-align: baseline;">
<span style="font-size: 14.0pt; line-height: 150%; mso-bidi-font-size: 12.0pt;">In fact,
when challenged on the film’s accuracy, director Kathryn Bigelow <a href="http://www.politico.com/story/2013/01/zero-dark-thirty-torture-cloud-follows-film-premiere-85939.html#ixzz2HVv2RVT6">claims</a>
a kind of artistic license—as if her critics really don’t get what her craft is
all about. “</span><span style="color: black; font-size: 14.0pt; line-height: 150%; mso-bidi-font-size: 6.5pt;">What’s important to remember is it’s a movie and
not a documentary…It’s a dramatization of a 10-year manhunt compressed into
two-and-a-half hours…</span><span style="font-size: 14.0pt; line-height: 150%; mso-bidi-font-size: 12.0pt;">There’s a lot of composite characters and it’s an
interpretation.”</span><span style="color: #111111; font-size: 14.0pt; line-height: 150%; mso-bidi-font-size: 9.5pt;"></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormalCxSpMiddle" style="line-height: 150%;">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormalCxSpMiddle" style="line-height: 150%;">
<span style="color: #111111; font-size: 14.0pt; line-height: 150%; mso-bidi-font-size: 9.5pt;">O.K., just an
interpretation. But Bigelow and her publicists try to have it both ways. <span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>The film’s t<a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cAtWcvCxPhc">railer</a> breathlessly invites
us to “Witness the Biggest Manhunt in History.”</span></div>
<br />
<span style="color: #111111; font-size: 14.0pt; line-height: 150%; mso-bidi-font-size: 9.5pt;">And, as the
film begins, we are solemnly informed that it is </span><span style="background: white; color: black; font-size: 14.0pt; line-height: 150%; mso-bidi-font-size: 10.0pt;">“based
on firsthand accounts of actual events.”</span>
<br />
<div class="MsoNormalCxSpMiddle" style="line-height: 150%; margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0cm; mso-add-space: auto;">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormalCxSpMiddle" style="line-height: 150%; margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0cm; mso-add-space: auto;">
<span style="background: white; color: black; font-size: 14.0pt; line-height: 150%; mso-bidi-font-size: 10.0pt;">But, “It does not say
that it is a factual, unembroidered recounting of those events.”</span></div>
<div class="MsoNormalCxSpMiddle" style="line-height: 150%; margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0cm; mso-add-space: auto;">
<span style="background: white; color: black; font-size: 14.0pt; line-height: 150%; mso-bidi-font-size: 10.0pt;">explains Roger Cohen, sounding
less like the gimlet-eyed columnist and more like attorney for the defense. </span></div>
<div class="MsoNormalCxSpMiddle" style="line-height: 150%; margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0cm; mso-add-space: auto;">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormalCxSpMiddle" style="line-height: 150%; margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0cm; mso-add-space: auto;">
<span style="font-size: 14.0pt; line-height: 150%; mso-bidi-font-size: 12.0pt;">To bolster his case, Cohen quotes Israeli novelist
Amos Oz’s observation that “Facts at times become the dire enemies of
truth.’<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormalCxSpMiddle" style="line-height: 150%; margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0cm; mso-add-space: auto;">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormalCxSpMiddle" style="line-height: 150%; margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0cm; mso-add-space: auto;">
<span style="background: white; font-size: 14.0pt; line-height: 150%; mso-bidi-font-size: 12.0pt;">“Or, put another way,” Cohen explains,
“while reality is the raw material journalism attempts to render with accuracy
and fairness, it is the raw material that art must transform.” </span><span style="background: white; color: black; font-size: 14.0pt; line-height: 150%; mso-bidi-font-size: 10.0pt;"></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormalCxSpMiddle" style="line-height: 150%; margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0cm; mso-add-space: auto;">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormalCxSpMiddle" style="line-height: 150%; margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0cm; mso-add-space: auto;">
<span style="font-size: 14.0pt; line-height: 150%; mso-bidi-font-size: 15.0pt;">In other words, directors like Kathryn Bigelow must be
given the license to shape and change the facts if necessary, so that her
audience can benefit from the film- maker’s memorable take on history.</span></div>
<div class="MsoNormalCxSpMiddle" style="line-height: 150%; margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0cm; mso-add-space: auto;">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormalCxSpMiddle" style="line-height: 150%; margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0cm; mso-add-space: auto;">
<span style="background: white; color: black; font-size: 14.0pt; line-height: 150%; mso-bidi-font-size: 10.0pt;">That’s one argument. </span></div>
<div class="MsoNormalCxSpMiddle" style="line-height: 150%; margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0cm; mso-add-space: auto;">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormalCxSpMiddle" style="line-height: 150%; margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0cm; mso-add-space: auto;">
<span style="background: white; color: black; font-size: 14.0pt; line-height: 150%; mso-bidi-font-size: 10.0pt;">But </span><span style="color: #111111; font-size: 14.0pt; line-height: 150%; mso-bidi-font-size: 9.5pt;">l</span><span style="font-size: 14.0pt; line-height: 150%; mso-bidi-font-size: 12.0pt;">et’s go
back to Amos Oz’s provocative statement that “facts at times become the dire
enemies of truth.”<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormalCxSpMiddle" style="background: white; line-height: 150%; margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0cm; mso-add-space: auto; vertical-align: baseline;">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormalCxSpMiddle" style="background: white; line-height: 150%; margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0cm; mso-add-space: auto; vertical-align: baseline;">
<span style="font-size: 14.0pt; line-height: 150%; mso-bidi-font-size: 12.0pt;">Isn’t it
equally true that lies and distortions presented under the guise of facts <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">also </i>become the dire enemies of truth?</span></div>
<div class="MsoNormalCxSpMiddle" style="line-height: 150%;">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormalCxSpMiddle" style="line-height: 150%;">
<span style="background: white; color: black; font-size: 14.0pt; line-height: 150%; mso-bidi-font-size: 10.0pt;">Are
we really supposed to believe that the intent of the people who made this film
was not to have the audience believe, one hundred percent, that, “yeah, wow,
this is exactly how it went down in Pakistan.” </span></div>
<div class="MsoNormalCxSpMiddle" style="line-height: 150%;">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormalCxSpMiddle" style="line-height: 150%;">
<span style="background: white; color: black; font-size: 14.0pt; line-height: 150%; mso-bidi-font-size: 10.0pt;">So
much money, time, and skill were spent creating believability--in the last half
hour breathlessly following the second-by-second night-vision action of the
Navy Seals as they closed in for the kill. </span></div>
<div class="MsoNormalCxSpMiddle" style="line-height: 150%;">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormalCxSpMiddle" style="line-height: 150%;">
<span style="background: white; color: black; font-size: 14.0pt; line-height: 150%; mso-bidi-font-size: 10.0pt;">What
we were witnessing was much more immediate and “real” than what Barack Obama
must have been seen from the direct CIA feed to the Oval Office when the assassination
of bin Laden took place thousands of miles away. </span></div>
<div class="MsoNormalCxSpMiddle" style="line-height: 150%;">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormalCxSpMiddle" style="line-height: 150%;">
<span style="background: white; color: black; font-size: 14.0pt; line-height: 150%; mso-bidi-font-size: 10.0pt;">But
such story-telling skill cannot erase the fact that the film was also a gross
distortion of reality. One that could make a difference: There’s a national
debate about torture going on. In fact, the T-word has become so sensitive that
government officials </span></div>
<div class="MsoNormalCxSpMiddle" style="line-height: 150%;">
<span style="background: white; color: black; font-size: 14.0pt; line-height: 150%; mso-bidi-font-size: 10.0pt;">and much of the media prefer the euphemism<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>“enhanced interrogation
techniques” </span></div>
<div class="MsoNormalCxSpMiddle" style="line-height: 150%;">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormalCxSpMiddle" style="line-height: 150%;">
<span style="background: white; color: black; font-size: 14.0pt; line-height: 150%; mso-bidi-font-size: 10.0pt;">There is no way that a powerful film like <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">Zero Dark Thirty</i> does not become an important part of that debate:
“I know torture works, Hell, it helped us get Bin Laden. I saw the movie.”</span></div>
<div class="MsoNormalCxSpMiddle" style="background: white; line-height: 150%; margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0cm; mso-add-space: auto; vertical-align: baseline;">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormalCxSpMiddle" style="background: white; line-height: 150%; margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0cm; mso-add-space: auto; vertical-align: baseline;">
<span style="color: #111111; font-size: 14.0pt; line-height: 150%; mso-bidi-font-size: 9.5pt;">Indeed,
at one part in the film, when CIA agents are discussing the fact that the new
Obama administration had given a thumbs down to torture, you couldn’t help
feeling that Obama’s edict was naïve, uninformed, and would only weaken the
United States.</span></div>
<div class="MsoNormalCxSpMiddle" style="line-height: 150%;">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormalCxSpMiddle" style="line-height: 150%;">
<span style="background: white; color: black; font-size: 14.0pt; line-height: 150%; mso-bidi-font-size: 10.0pt;">Of
course, for thousands of years playwrights, from Sophocles to Shakespeare
to<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>have done their own riffs on
history. The difference is that with the increasing sophistication of the
media, film makers have the ability to create the impression that what we are
seeing is God-given truth. </span></div>
<div class="MsoNormalCxSpMiddle" style="line-height: 150%;">
<span style="background: white; color: black; font-size: 14.0pt; line-height: 150%; mso-bidi-font-size: 10.0pt;">So
we swallow the lies and distortions along with the facts. </span></div>
<div class="MsoNormalCxSpMiddle" style="line-height: 150%;">
<span style="background: white; color: black; font-size: 14.0pt; line-height: 150%; mso-bidi-font-size: 10.0pt;">There’s
just no way to tell the difference. </span></div>
<div class="MsoNormalCxSpMiddle" style="line-height: 150%;">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormalCxSpMiddle" style="line-height: 150%;">
<span style="background: white; color: black; font-size: 14.0pt; line-height: 150%; mso-bidi-font-size: 10.0pt;">That
point was driven home by <a href="http://news.wustl.edu/news/Pages/14418.aspx">a
study</a> done in 2009 by Andrew Butler, now at Duke, but then at the
Department of Psychology of the Washington University of Saint Louis. </span></div>
<div class="MsoNormalCxSpMiddle" style="line-height: 150%;">
<span style="background: white; color: black; font-size: 14.0pt; line-height: 150%; mso-bidi-font-size: 10.0pt;">His
researchers gave a group of about fifty students an accurate written account of
an historical event to read. They also showed them an excerpt from a feature
film about that same event, an excerpt that wrongly and blatantly contradicted
the central fact of the printed text. </span></div>
<div class="MsoNormalCxSpMiddle" style="line-height: 150%;">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormalCxSpMiddle" style="line-height: 150%;">
<span style="background: white; color: black; font-size: 14.0pt; line-height: 150%; mso-bidi-font-size: 10.0pt;">When
they were later tested, 50% of the students recalled the misinformation
portrayed in the film as being correct.</span></div>
<div class="MsoNormalCxSpMiddle" style="line-height: 150%;">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormalCxSpMiddle" style="line-height: 150%;">
<span style="background: white; color: black; font-size: 14.0pt; line-height: 150%; mso-bidi-font-size: 10.0pt;">“This
continued,” Butler reported “even when people were reminded of the potentially
inaccurate nature of popular films right before viewing the film.”<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormalCxSpMiddle" style="line-height: 150%;">
<span style="background: white; color: black; font-size: 14.0pt; line-height: 150%; mso-bidi-font-size: 10.0pt;">Another
fascinating result: “the students were highly confident of the accuracy of the
misinformation” sometimes even attributing the false information from the film
to the accurate text they had read. </span></div>
<div class="MsoNormalCxSpMiddle" style="line-height: 150%;">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormalCxSpMiddle" style="line-height: 150%;">
<span style="background: white; color: black; font-size: 14.0pt; line-height: 150%; mso-bidi-font-size: 10.0pt;">Even
when students were told that specific facts in the film were wrong, when they
were tested days later, some still felt that what the vivid version the film
presented was the truth.</span><span style="font-size: 14.0pt; line-height: 150%; mso-bidi-font-size: 12.0pt;"></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormalCxSpMiddle" style="line-height: 150%;">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormalCxSpMiddle" style="line-height: 150%;">
<span style="background: white; color: black; font-size: 14.0pt; line-height: 150%; mso-bidi-font-size: 10.0pt;">These
days, playing to box-office needs, one of the most common film-making
distortions is to give Americans credit for the courage and derring-do of
others.</span></div>
<div class="MsoNormalCxSpMiddle" style="line-height: 150%;">
<span style="background: white; color: black; font-size: 14.0pt; line-height: 150%; mso-bidi-font-size: 10.0pt;">That’s
the <a href="http://www.slate.com/blogs/browbeat/2012/10/12/argo_true_story_the_facts_and_fiction_behind_the_ben_affleck_movie.html">case</a>
of<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span><i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">Argo,</i> which supposedly portrays the rescue of 6 American diplomats
from Iran in 1979, by an intrepid CIA agent, who leads them out of Tehran disguised
as members of a film production crew. The movie is like a recruiting ad for the
CIA. Except for the fact that the idea for the escape, the false passports
provided to the Americans, the reconnaissance of the Tehran airport etc. etc.,
came not from the real-life CIA character, but from plucky Canadian diplomats,
led by their ambassador Ken Taylor.</span><span style="font-size: 14.0pt; line-height: 150%; mso-bidi-font-size: 12.0pt;"></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormalCxSpMiddle" style="line-height: 150%;">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormalCxSpMiddle" style="line-height: 150%;">
<span style="font-size: 14.0pt; line-height: 150%; mso-bidi-font-size: 12.0pt;"><a href="http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-1204884/Hollywood-hokum-Fake-history-films-wipes-facts-learnt-class.html#axzz2KmFSweyf">Similarly</a>
in the <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">Last Samurai</i> (2003), America soldiers
led by Tom Cruise save the day for Japan when they are brought in to train the
Japanese Imperial army against a 19<sup>th</sup> century uprising. Problem is,
it was the French who trained them.</span></div>
<div class="MsoNormalCxSpMiddle" style="line-height: 150%;">
<span style="font-size: 14.0pt; line-height: 150%; mso-bidi-font-size: 12.0pt;">Again, in the film <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">U-571 </i>(2000), courageous American troops
retrieve the Nazi Enigma code machine by boarding a German submarine in
disguise. In fact it was the British who captured the Enigma and broke the
code.</span></div>
<div class="MsoNormalCxSpMiddle" style="line-height: 150%;">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormalCxSpMiddle" style="line-height: 150%;">
<span style="background: white; color: black; font-size: 14.0pt; line-height: 150%; mso-bidi-font-size: 10.0pt;">Then,
there’s Oliver Stone’s <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">JFK,</i> which,
mixing documentary footage with new film,<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">
</span>argued compellingly that a combination of sinister forces--the CIA, the
Mafia, the Military industrial Complex--were behind Kennedy’s assassination. </span></div>
<div class="MsoNormalCxSpMiddle" style="line-height: 150%;">
<span style="background: white; color: black; font-size: 14.0pt; line-height: 150%; mso-bidi-font-size: 10.0pt;">When
one “fact” after another in the film <a href="http://www.guardian.co.uk/film/2011/apr/28/jfk-oliver-stone-john-f-kennedy">was
demolished</a> by experts, Stone retreated to “Hey, Guys …just my take on
history.” His fraudulent account, however, became “truth” to tens of millions
of Americans and audiences across the globe. </span></div>
<div class="MsoNormalCxSpMiddle" style="line-height: 150%;">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormalCxSpMiddle" style="line-height: 150%;">
<span style="background: white; color: black; font-size: 14.0pt; line-height: 150%; mso-bidi-font-size: 10.0pt;">One
of the worst exploiters of the “just-my-take-on-history genre” is Mel Gibson,
whose <a href="http://www.redcoat.me.uk/page4.htm">blood-spattered</a> portrayal
of the </span><span style="font-size: 14.0pt; line-height: 150%; mso-bidi-font-size: 12.0pt;">American Revolution, “<i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">The
Patriot</i>” was judged so misleading, that the Smithsonian Institute , which
had initially provided support, withdrew its backing and disowned any association.</span></div>
<div class="MsoNormalCxSpMiddle" style="line-height: 150%;">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormalCxSpMiddle" style="line-height: 150%;">
<span style="font-size: 14.0pt; line-height: 150%; mso-bidi-font-size: 12.0pt;">But the problem is that, for
the great majority of people on our planet, historical films “based on fact” are
becoming our history books. Whether it be Mel Gibson or Daniel Day Lewis in <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">Lincoln</i>, or Kathryn Bigelow’s <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">Zero Dark Thirty</i>, taken together they
substitute tedious print with a patchwork of spellbinding tales and dramatic
images—a beguiling but often distorted or completely false vision of ourselves
and our past.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormalCxSpMiddle" style="line-height: 150%;">
<span style="font-size: 14.0pt; line-height: 150%; mso-bidi-font-size: 12.0pt;">Should we care?</span></div>
<div class="MsoNormalCxSpMiddle" style="line-height: 150%;">
<span style="font-size: 14.0pt; line-height: 150%; mso-bidi-font-size: 12.0pt;">What can we do?</span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 150%; margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<span style="color: black; font-size: 14.0pt; line-height: 150%; mso-bidi-font-size: 6.5pt;"><a href="http://i.dailymail.co.uk/i/pix/2009/08/06/article-1204884-05FA999C000005DC-223_468x198_popup.jpg"><span class="clicktoenlargetop"><span style="color: white; line-height: 150%; mso-bidi-font-size: 7.0pt;">Enlarge</span></span><span class="clicktoenlargebutton"><span style="color: #003580;"> </span></span></a></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormalCxSpMiddle" style="line-height: 150%;">
<br /></div>
</div>
<div class="blogger-post-footer">Follow me on Twitter @barrylando</div>Anonymoushttp://www.blogger.com/profile/10909224421344518896noreply@blogger.com5tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3743871202965200454.post-86964451833827811512013-02-08T10:05:00.003-08:002013-02-09T06:07:41.759-08:00Drone Wars: Ragheads--4000 vs Americans- 3<div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on">
<br />
<span style="font-size: 14.0pt; mso-bidi-font-size: 12.0pt;">Earlier
this week, NBC News revealed a secret Department of Justice memo</span><span style="color: #555555; font-family: Helvetica; font-size: 14.0pt; mso-bidi-font-size: 10.0pt;"> entitled “Lawfulness of a Lethal Operation Against a U.S.
Citizen Who Is a Senior Operational Leader of Al-Qa’ida or An Associated Force.” </span>
<br />
<span style="color: #555555; font-family: Helvetica; font-size: 14.0pt; mso-bidi-font-size: 10.0pt;"><br /></span>
<br />
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-size: 14.0pt; mso-bidi-font-size: 12.0pt;">NBC’s
scoop has since fueled mounting outrage over the Obama administration’s drone
policy. What is most troubling about the indignation, however, is how much it’s
focused on the fact that, my God, President Obama is even using drone’s to knock
off his own people. </span><br />
<span style="font-size: 14.0pt; mso-bidi-font-size: 12.0pt;"><br /></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-size: 14.0pt; mso-bidi-font-size: 12.0pt;">Or
as a shocked Rachel Maddow put it, “Even an American citizen can be killed.” </span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-size: 14.0pt; mso-bidi-font-size: 12.0pt;">Senator
Ron Wyden <a href="http://www.wyden.senate.gov/news/press-releases/wyden-statement-on-doj-memo-on-the-killing-of-americans-during-counterterrorism-operations">proclaimed,</a>
“Americans have a right to know when their government thinks it’s allowed to
kill them.” </span><br />
<span style="font-size: 14.0pt; mso-bidi-font-size: 12.0pt;"><br /></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-size: 14.0pt; mso-bidi-font-size: 12.0pt;">The
American the Justice Department memo <a href="http://usnews.nbcnews.com/_news/2013/02/05/16856963-american-drone-deaths-highlight-controversy?lite">referred</a>
to was Nasser al-Awlak, a radical Islamic cleric and American and Yemeni citizen,
suspected of being head of operations for al Qaeda in the Arabian Peninusula.
He was also implicated in the 2009 mass shooting at Fort Hood Texas and the
attempted 2011 Times Square bombing by Faisal Shahzad.</span><br />
<span style="font-size: 14.0pt; mso-bidi-font-size: 12.0pt;"><br /></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-size: 14.0pt; mso-bidi-font-size: 12.0pt;">Two
weeks after he was blown apart in Yemen in 2011, his 16 year-old son was
obliterated in another drone strike, also directed under the CIA’s secret
guidelines.</span><span style="color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: 14.0pt; mso-bidi-font-size: 8.5pt;"></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-size: 14.0pt; mso-bidi-font-size: 12.0pt;">The
son’s death was much more shocking than his father’s.</span><br />
<span style="font-size: 14.0pt; mso-bidi-font-size: 12.0pt;"><br /></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-size: 14.0pt; mso-bidi-font-size: 12.0pt;">One
other American has also been killed by Drone strikes. </span><br />
<span style="font-size: 14.0pt; mso-bidi-font-size: 12.0pt;"><br /></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-size: 14.0pt; mso-bidi-font-size: 12.0pt;">But,
much more shocking is the <a href="http://usnews.nbcnews.com/_news/2013/02/05/16856963-american-drone-deaths-highlight-controversy?lite">fact
that</a> over the past few years, U.S. drones have made mincemeat out of an
estimated 3000 to 4000 others—non Americans--in Pakistan, Afghanistan, Yemen,
and Somalia.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>At least 200 of them
were children. </span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-size: 14.0pt; mso-bidi-font-size: 12.0pt;">The
figures are very rough because no one--certainly not the U.S. government--is
releasing an accurate count. <span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>The <a href="http://www.thebureauinvestigates.com/category/all-stories-2/">London based</a>
Center for Investigative reporting, which attempts to track the drone strikes,
has been able to identify by name only a few hundred of the actual victims. Who
knows what their political affiliations really were? </span><br />
<span style="font-size: 14.0pt; mso-bidi-font-size: 12.0pt;">Or even less, what
considerations—legal and otherwise—went into justifying their demise?</span><br />
<span style="font-size: 14.0pt; mso-bidi-font-size: 12.0pt;"><br /></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-size: 14.0pt; mso-bidi-font-size: 12.0pt;">“It’s
a terrifying situation.” Jennifer Gibson, an American lawyer in London with
Reprieve, an organization taking on the “drone war” issue. “There are villages
in Pakistan,” she says “that have drones flying over them 24 hours a day.
Sometimes they’ll stay for weeks. But my clients and people there have no way
of knowing if they are being targeted. Or what kind of behavior is likely to
get them killed. They don’t know if the person riding beside them in a car or
walking with them in the marketplace may be a target.It’s terrorizing entire
communities. Even after an attack, there is no acknowledging by the U.S.
government, no response at all, absolutely no accountability. And the vast
majority of casualties don’t even have names attached to them.” </span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-size: 14.0pt; mso-bidi-font-size: 12.0pt;">Christof
Heyns, the UN special rapporteur on extrajudicial killings, summary or
arbitrary executions, </span><span style="color: #333333; font-family: Arial; font-size: 14.0pt; mso-bidi-font-size: 9.5pt;"><a href="http://www.blogger.com/blogger.g?blogID=3743871202965200454">told</a>
a conference in Geneva that President Obama's attacks in<span class="apple-converted-space"> Pakistan</span>, Yemen and elsewhere, carried
out by the CIA, would encourage other states to flout long-established human
rights standards. He suggested that some strikes may even constitute “war
crimes”.</span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-size: 14.0pt; mso-bidi-font-size: 12.0pt;">But,
few Americans seem to carry about U.N. rapporteurs. It’s only when <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">Americans</i> are potential targets for
those drones, that Congress and the media get stirred up.</span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-size: 14.0pt; mso-bidi-font-size: 12.0pt;">And
they’re probably right. A <a href="http://www.informationclearinghouse.info/article33865.htm">recent poll</a>
taken by Farleigh Dickinson University’s Public Mind, found that by a two to
one margin (48% to 24%) American voters say they think it’s illegal for the
U.S. government to target its own citizens abroad with drone strikes. </span><br />
<span style="font-size: 14.0pt; mso-bidi-font-size: 12.0pt;"><br /></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-size: 14.0pt; mso-bidi-font-size: 12.0pt;">But,
when it comes to using drones to carry out attacks abroad “on people and other
targets deemed a threat to the U.S.” voters were in favor of a margin of
six-to-one [75% to 13%].</span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-size: 14.0pt; mso-bidi-font-size: 12.0pt;"><br /></span>
<span style="font-size: 14.0pt; mso-bidi-font-size: 12.0pt;">The
American Civil Liberties Union and the Centre for Constitutional Rights (The
CCR) have been <a href="http://thehill.com/blogs/defcon-hill/policy-and-strategy/281483-aclu-blocks-dismissal-of-drone-lawsuit-against-panetta-#ixzz2KJdw72Ys">demanding
a</a> court hearing in the United States to determine whether the former head
of the CIA Leon Panetta was guilty of having depriving Nasser al-Awlak and his
son of their constitutional right to life.</span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-size: 14.0pt; mso-bidi-font-size: 12.0pt;"><br /></span>
<span style="font-size: 14.0pt; mso-bidi-font-size: 12.0pt;">Maria
LaHood, an attorney with the CCR frankly admitted to me that they are concentrating
on the two American cases, because that’s the really the only way to get Americans
to focus on the problem. Also because that’s really the best hope they have of
getting an American court to actually agree to hear their case. </span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-size: 14.0pt; mso-bidi-font-size: 12.0pt;"><br /></span>
<span style="font-size: 14.0pt; mso-bidi-font-size: 12.0pt;">‘What
we’re also hoping” she says, “is that if we do get anywhere with this case,
then we can get a legal interpretation from the court that would apply to
everyone--not just Americans. But getting a court to hear this case is going to
be a battle in itself.”</span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;"><span style="font-size: 14.0pt; mso-bidi-font-size: 12.0pt;">Reprieve</span></i><span style="font-size: 14.0pt; mso-bidi-font-size: 12.0pt;"> is also active in the
courts—in Pakistan. Though the Pakistani ambassador in Washington has complained
about the drone strikes, his government has done little to prevent them.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span><i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">Reprieve
</i>now is backing a case in Peshawar to <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">oblige</i>
the Pakistani government to take action against the drones--to protect the
constitutional right to life of its own citizens. </span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-size: 14.0pt; mso-bidi-font-size: 12.0pt;"><br /></span>
<span style="font-size: 14.0pt; mso-bidi-font-size: 12.0pt;">What
particularly concerns <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">Reprieve </i>attorney
Jennifer Gibson is the very nature of the convoluted 16-page memo that
describes the Justice Department’s rationale for okaying the killing of an American,
even outside of a war zone.</span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-size: 14.0pt; mso-bidi-font-size: 12.0pt;"><br /></span>
<span style="font-size: 14.0pt; mso-bidi-font-size: 12.0pt;">“If
the U.S. has such vague, ambiguous standards where Americans are concerned, if
they they’ve set the bar so low for their own citizens, who knows what the
standards are for killing non Americans?”</span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-size: 14.0pt; mso-bidi-font-size: 12.0pt;"><br /></span>
<span style="font-size: 14.0pt; mso-bidi-font-size: 12.0pt;">In
other words, if Justice Department lawyers labored so mightily on producing a
memo setting the guidelines for killing an American citizen, one can only
presume that the guidelines must be much different for those who inhabit the
rest of the world. </span><br />
<span style="font-size: 14.0pt; mso-bidi-font-size: 12.0pt;"><br /></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-size: 14.0pt; mso-bidi-font-size: 12.0pt;">When
do we see <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">that </i>memo?</span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
</div>
<div class="blogger-post-footer">Follow me on Twitter @barrylando</div>Anonymoushttp://www.blogger.com/profile/10909224421344518896noreply@blogger.com4tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3743871202965200454.post-88329479119326581692013-02-04T08:59:00.003-08:002013-02-04T08:59:32.344-08:00Mali-Niger-Uranium: A Chinese Puzzle<div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on">
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<br />
<div class="MsoNormal">
Mali-Niger-Uranium: A Chinese puzzle</div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-size: 14.0pt; mso-bidi-font-size: 12.0pt;">As French
fighter-jets pound rebel targets in the northern reaches of Mali, a detachment
of French special forces have been quietly <a href="http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-africa-21318043">dispatched to
neighboring Niger.</a></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-size: 14.0pt; mso-bidi-font-size: 12.0pt;">Now,
Niger is supposedly one of the ten poorest countries on the planet, with most
people living on less than $1.00 per day. On the other hand, it also has huge
deposits of uranium, and the largest uranium miner is Areva, a sprawling French
energy conglomerate, in which the French government has a major interest. Areva’s
Arlit mine is in a desolate northern region of Niger and the mission of the
Special Forces is to protect it. </span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-size: 14.0pt; mso-bidi-font-size: 12.0pt;">After
all, France depends on nuclear reactors to provide 80% of the country’s
electrical power.</span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-size: 14.0pt; mso-bidi-font-size: 12.0pt;">Thus,
deployment of the special forces is not at all surprising, particularly in
light of the spectacular attack by jihadists on the huge Amenas plant in
eastern Algeria. Indeed, a group linked to Al Qaeda kidnapped seven Areva
employees in 2010, and still holds four of them hostage. <span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-size: 14.0pt; mso-bidi-font-size: 12.0pt;">Which
raises the cynical question: to what degree was France’s dramatic intervention
in Mali driven by France’s own economic interests?</span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-size: 14.0pt; mso-bidi-font-size: 12.0pt;">Which
also brings us to the Chinese, and the quandary they face.</span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-size: 14.0pt; mso-bidi-font-size: 12.0pt;">As
I’ve <a href="http://barrylando.blogspot.fr/2013/01/intervention-in-mali-another-free-ride.html">previously
blogged</a>, the Chinese have huge interests of their own in the
region--including their $300 million SOMINA uranium mine at the desert outpost
of Azalik in northern Niger.</span></div>
<br />
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-size: 14.0pt; mso-bidi-font-size: 12.0pt;">Generally,
wherever they are, the Chinese attempt to work with whatever government is in
power. They don’t attempt to push any particular political line, or raise
questions about potentially embarrassing issues like human rights. </span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-size: 14.0pt; mso-bidi-font-size: 12.0pt;">But
the Chinese might have as good a reason as the French to be nervous about their
operations in Niger. In r<a href="http://www.csmonitor.com/World/Africa/2010/0329/China-mining-company-causes-unrest-in-Niger/">ecent</a>
years, the Chinese operators of the SOMINA mine have been the target of protests
from Tuareg tribesmen in the region, who were hired to work there. The Tuaregs
claimed to have been exploited by their Chinese bosses, poorly paid, poorly
housed, particularly when compared to Chinese workers there. <span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-size: 14.0pt; mso-bidi-font-size: 12.0pt;">Perhaps
they’ve cleaned up their act, but one would think that, in light of current
events, the Chinese would be taking precautions of their own in Niger. </span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-size: 14.0pt; mso-bidi-font-size: 12.0pt;">But
who are they going to get to protect them? Certainly not their own special
forces.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>One can just imagine the
U.S. or French reaction. Do they train and arm their own Nigerien security
guards?</span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-size: 14.0pt; mso-bidi-font-size: 12.0pt;">What
about the project currently in the works of several African countries
contributing to a joint military force, perhaps under UN auspices, to take over
from France in Mali?</span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-size: 14.0pt; mso-bidi-font-size: 12.0pt;">You’d
think the Chinese would be cheering the idea.</span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-size: 14.0pt; mso-bidi-font-size: 12.0pt;">But,
they don’t seem to be--at least not yet. When the African governments <a href="http://barrylando.blogspot.fr/2013/02/mali-no-crazy-glue-in-sight.html">asked</a>
for close to a billion dollars to fund that joint African deployment, the major
donor countries, including the U.S. and Japan, pledged less than half that
amount.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-size: 14.0pt; mso-bidi-font-size: 12.0pt;">And
China?<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>A grand total of $1
million!</span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-size: 14.0pt; mso-bidi-font-size: 12.0pt;">You
figure it out.</span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-size: 14.0pt; mso-bidi-font-size: 12.0pt;">Ironically,
the Nigerien government, which has been <a href="http://www.miningweekly.com/article/niger-wants-to-renegotiate-areva-partnership-terms-2013-02-04">claiming</a>
that their country has not profited from its huge mineral wealth, has been
pushing France to renegotiate its uranium deal with Niger. </span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-size: 14.0pt; mso-bidi-font-size: 12.0pt;">Otherwise,
their president, Mohamadou Issoufou, recently threatened, they might seek other
partners to exploit that uranium.</span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-size: 14.0pt; mso-bidi-font-size: 12.0pt;">Like
China?, he was asked. “There is no reason to exclude other countries that wish
to cooperate with us.” He replied.</span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
</div>
<div class="blogger-post-footer">Follow me on Twitter @barrylando</div>Anonymoushttp://www.blogger.com/profile/10909224421344518896noreply@blogger.com2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3743871202965200454.post-11297842889397806442013-02-03T09:49:00.000-08:002013-02-03T10:08:46.502-08:00Mali: No Crazy Glue in Sight<div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on">
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<br />
<span style="font-family: Helvetica; mso-bidi-font-family: Helvetica; mso-bidi-font-size: 14.0pt;">There is a massive, historic upheaval gong
on—one chaotic Islamic country after another--spanning more than 7000 miles of
the globe—a huge tectonic shift—from Western Africa to the Western frontiers of
China. </span>
<br />
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: Helvetica; mso-bidi-font-family: Helvetica; mso-bidi-font-size: 14.0pt;">And, despite a military budget larger than most
of the rest of the world combined, the Pentagon and Barack Obama, are basically
consigned the roll of on-lookers, cautiously kibitzing from the side,
occasionally trying to influence things. Often, not even leading from behind. </span><br />
<span style="font-family: Helvetica; mso-bidi-font-family: Helvetica; mso-bidi-font-size: 14.0pt;"><br /></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: Helvetica; mso-bidi-font-family: Helvetica; mso-bidi-font-size: 14.0pt;">Mali, at the Western end of that volatile
crescent, is a case in point. </span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: Helvetica; mso-bidi-font-family: Helvetica; mso-bidi-font-size: 14.0pt;">As Colin Powell famously <a href="http://blogs.independent.co.uk/2011/08/23/natos-dilemma-if-you-break-it-you-own-it/">warned</a>
George H.W. Bush on the eve of the invasion of Iraq, “if you break it, you own
it.”<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: Helvetica; mso-bidi-font-family: Helvetica; mso-bidi-font-size: 14.0pt;"><br /></span>
<span style="font-family: Helvetica; mso-bidi-font-family: Helvetica; mso-bidi-font-size: 14.0pt;">France is not responsible for “breaking” Mali.
The country was already a West African basket case long before the French
intervention. </span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: Helvetica; mso-bidi-font-family: Helvetica; mso-bidi-font-size: 14.0pt;"><br /></span>
<span style="font-family: Helvetica; mso-bidi-font-family: Helvetica; mso-bidi-font-size: 14.0pt;">But, as things now stand, France “owns” the shattered
country. And there’s no crazy glue in sight.</span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: Helvetica; mso-bidi-font-family: Helvetica; mso-bidi-font-size: 14.0pt;"><br /></span>
<span style="font-family: Helvetica; mso-bidi-font-family: Helvetica; mso-bidi-font-size: 14.0pt;">In other words, France, which enraged many
Americans by refusing to participate in the invasion of Iraq, now finds itself
stuck with the results of their own intervention. </span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: Helvetica;">French President
Francois Hollande’s dilemma is how to finesse that predicament—without making
it look like France has cut and run, leaving an unseemly chaos in his wake. </span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: Helvetica;"><br /></span>
<span style="font-family: Helvetica;">Hollande made his
conundrum <a href="http://www.lexpress.fr/actualite/politique/en-direct-la-visite-de-hollande-au-mali_1216121.html?xtor=EPR-3020-1216121-201323">clear</a>
during his visit this past Saturday to Mali when he announced that France “will
stay as long as necessary, but its purpose is not to stay.” <span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: Helvetica;"><br /></span>
<span style="font-family: Helvetica;">Not that different a
straddle from the problem the U.S. faced in Iraq and Afghanistan. </span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: Helvetica; mso-bidi-font-family: Helvetica; mso-bidi-font-size: 14.0pt;">In fact, France’s sputtering economy can ill-afford
this military adventure. More than 10% of the population is unemployed,
factories continue to shut down, automobile sales slumped 15% in January, public
employees are out on strike, etc. etc.</span><span style="font-family: Helvetica;"></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: Helvetica; mso-bidi-font-family: Helvetica; mso-bidi-font-size: 14.0pt;"><br /></span>
<span style="font-family: Helvetica; mso-bidi-font-family: Helvetica; mso-bidi-font-size: 14.0pt;">But to whom does France hand-off the ominous situation
it confronts in Mali? </span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: Helvetica; mso-bidi-font-family: Helvetica; mso-bidi-font-size: 14.0pt;">What passes for leadership in that country is a
“transitional regime” the product of a military coup against the previous regime,
which was corrupt, ineffectual, totally unable to deal with the growing crisis.
</span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: Helvetica; mso-bidi-font-family: Helvetica; mso-bidi-font-size: 14.0pt;"><br /></span>
<span style="font-family: Helvetica; mso-bidi-font-family: Helvetica; mso-bidi-font-size: 14.0pt;">Which was why it was overthrown. Somehow,
elections are going to have to be organized, which also means negotiating some
kind of settlement with the Tuaregs of Northern Mali, who have been demanding attention
from the central government for decades. It was their rebellion that was
hijacked by the jihadis-some of whom were linked with Al Qaeda.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span></span><span style="font-family: Helvetica;"></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: Helvetica;"><br /></span>
<span style="font-family: Helvetica;">But what to do about
those jihadis? In fact, the big question now, is where they hell are they? As
far as is known, they took very few casualties. In most cases, without a shot
being fired from the ground, they evaporated back into the desert or from
wherever they came--often long before the French troops arrived. </span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: Helvetica;"><br /></span>
<span style="font-family: Helvetica;">But they’ve still got
their arms, their jihadist ideals, and their income flowing in from traditional
smuggling activities. </span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: Helvetica;"><br /></span>
<span style="font-family: Helvetica;">So, do they just
disappear or launch hit-and-run attacks against troops sent to hunt them down? Or
wait until most of the French pull out? </span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: Helvetica;"><br /></span>
<span style="font-family: Helvetica;">Up till now, the
majority of French still back Hollande’s Mali expedition. But what happens if
the French army—which lost just one soldier in the entire three week
campaign--what happens if they start taking casualties, or more French
civilians get taken hostage by jihadi groups? <span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Or French targets elsewhere are attacked? </span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: Helvetica;"><br /></span>
<span style="font-family: Helvetica;">What happens if the French-backed
Malien army commits more outrages on the civilian population? What happens if
the French feel obliged to overstay their visit, and—like the U.S. in Iraq or
Afghanistan--become viewed as occupiers rather than liberators.</span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: Helvetica;"><br /></span>
<span style="font-family: Helvetica;">The French have been <a href="http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2013/jan/31/france-plan-un-force-mali">talking</a>
about turning over frontline duties to African troops. But the Malien army is woefully
trained, and equipped, its officers are said to be up to their helmets in
cigarette and drug smuggling, often in cahoots with the radical Islamic groups
they were supposed to be keeping at bay. <span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: Helvetica;"><br /></span>
<span style="font-family: Helvetica;">There are also thousands
of other African troops from West Africa, who have been arriving in dribs and
drabs in various states of readiness and training. They also lack weapons,
logistics support, skill in desert fighting, and, above all, money to pay for
their operations. </span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: Helvetica;"><br /></span>
<span style="font-family: Helvetica;">[Indeed some countries volunteer
for such operations because it’s a great way to have someone else pick up the
tab for their own over bloated armies.] </span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: Helvetica;"><br /></span>
<span style="font-family: Helvetica;">So, apart from training
those troops, who’s going to pick up the tab? Again, France finds itself
scanning the horizon for help.</span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: Helvetica;"><br /></span>
<span style="font-family: Helvetica;">Earlier this week, the
President of the Ivory Coast <a href="http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-africa-21242630">announced</a> at a donors’
conference in Ethiopia that the price tag for the “African-led International
Support Mission to Mali” would be $950 million. That’s to cover not just
military deployment and logistics, but humanitarian assistance, and at least
the down payment on future development.</span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0cm; mso-layout-grid-align: none; mso-pagination: none; text-autospace: none;">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0cm; mso-layout-grid-align: none; mso-pagination: none; text-autospace: none;">
<span style="font-family: Helvetica; mso-bidi-font-family: Times;">But despite the supposed crisis that
threatens not just Africa, but Europe as well, the assembled delegates came up
with only $450 million, less than half the amount requested. </span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0cm; mso-layout-grid-align: none; mso-pagination: none; text-autospace: none;">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0cm; mso-layout-grid-align: none; mso-pagination: none; text-autospace: none;">
<span style="font-family: Helvetica; mso-bidi-font-family: Times;">Among the donors, Japan, which pledged
$120 million, the United States, $96 million, Germany, 20 million.</span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0cm; mso-layout-grid-align: none; mso-pagination: none; text-autospace: none;">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0cm; mso-layout-grid-align: none; mso-pagination: none; text-autospace: none;">
<span style="font-family: Helvetica; mso-bidi-font-family: Times;">But the most outrageous pledges came from
the governments of India and China --$1 million dollars—each!</span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0cm; mso-layout-grid-align: none; mso-pagination: none; text-autospace: none;">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0cm; mso-layout-grid-align: none; mso-pagination: none; text-autospace: none;">
<span style="font-family: Helvetica; mso-bidi-font-family: Times;">This is China, mind you, that, <a href="http://barrylando.blogspot.fr/2013/01/intervention-in-mali-another-free-ride.html">with hugeinvestments </a>throughout West Africa, has an enormous amount at risk if political
instability spreads. </span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0cm; mso-layout-grid-align: none; mso-pagination: none; text-autospace: none;">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0cm; mso-layout-grid-align: none; mso-pagination: none; text-autospace: none;">
<span style="font-family: Helvetica; mso-bidi-font-family: Times;">The last thing the Chinese want, however,
is for their projects--and thousands of their citizens--throughout the region
to also become targets of Islamic radicals. </span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0cm; mso-layout-grid-align: none; mso-pagination: none; text-autospace: none;">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0cm; mso-layout-grid-align: none; mso-pagination: none; text-autospace: none;">
<span style="font-family: Helvetica; mso-bidi-font-family: Times;">Let the French handle this one.</span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0cm; mso-layout-grid-align: none; mso-pagination: none; text-autospace: none;">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0cm; mso-layout-grid-align: none; mso-pagination: none; text-autospace: none;">
<span style="font-family: Helvetica; mso-bidi-font-family: Times;">That same caution, fueled by the bitter
lessons of Afghanistan and Iraq, has kept France’s allies on the sidelines, supplying
aircraft to transport French troops and refuel French fighter jets, as is the
U.S., but staying clear of any front-line roles themselves. <span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0cm; mso-layout-grid-align: none; mso-pagination: none; text-autospace: none;">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: Helvetica;">Washington has wanted to
keep an arms length from the conflict in order not to offer the jihadis a rallying
point to inflame recruits. </span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: Helvetica;"><br /></span>
<span style="font-family: Helvetica;">But the U.S. <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">is</i> providing pilotless drones to track
the rebels. And the problem is that to be effective, those drones will also have
to be armed with missiles to take out the rebels they track down. </span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: Helvetica;"><br /></span>
<span style="font-family: Helvetica;">What happens as the
inevitable cases of collateral damage start rolling in?<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: Helvetica;">As a nod to the French,
the British finally decided to send 350 soldiers, but only to serve as
instructors for the African troops. There is no way they’re going to be
involved in ground combat. </span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: Helvetica;"><br /></span>
<span style="font-family: Helvetica;">Indeed Prime Minister
David Cameron, <a href="http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2013/jan/20/david-cameron-statement-algeria-hostage-crisis">delivered</a>
one of the most pessimistic verdicts on the situation, when, during a recent
visit to Algeria, he declared Britain’s determination </span><span style="background: white; color: #3a3a3a; font-family: Helvetica; mso-bidi-font-size: 9.5pt;">to deal with “the terrorism threat” in Mali. “It will require a response
that is about years, even decades, rather than months, and it requires a
response that…has an absolutely iron resolve…” </span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: Helvetica;"><br /></span>
<span style="font-family: Helvetica;">Or, as one retired
French colonel <a href="http://lavoiedelepee.blogspot.fr/">blogged, “</a>war
against non-state organizations is a war of Sisyphus. We’re in the Sahel for a
long time.”</span><span style="color: #666555; font-family: Helvetica; mso-bidi-font-size: 8.5pt;"></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
</div>
<div class="blogger-post-footer">Follow me on Twitter @barrylando</div>Anonymoushttp://www.blogger.com/profile/10909224421344518896noreply@blogger.com3tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3743871202965200454.post-40906131801613026452013-01-25T13:00:00.001-08:002013-01-26T05:58:05.872-08:00Drone Wars: the end of History? <div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on">
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<div class="Body1">
<b><span style="font-family: Arial; mso-hansi-font-family: "Arial Unicode MS";">Drone Wars: the end of History?
<o:p></o:p></span></b></div>
<div style="line-height: 17.6pt;">
<b><span style="font-family: Arial; mso-hansi-font-family: "Arial Unicode MS";"><a href="http://www.nytimes.com/2013/01/25/world/europe/un-panel-to-investigate-rise-in-drone-strikes.html?_r=0">NYT
Jan 25, 2013</a></span></b><span style="font-size: 15pt;">LONDON —
A prominent British human rights lawyer [Ben Emmerson] said on Thursday that a<span class="apple-converted-space"> </span>United Nations panel he leads would
investigate what he called the “exponential rise” in drone strikes used in
counterterrorist operations, “with a view to determining whether there is a
plausible allegation of unlawful killing….”</span><span style="font-family: Georgia; font-size: 15pt;"><o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div style="background: white; line-height: 17.6pt;">
<br /></div>
<div style="background: white; line-height: 17.6pt;">
<span style="font-family: Georgia; font-size: 15pt;">“This form of warfare is here to stay, and it
is completely unacceptable to allow the world to drift blindly toward the
precipice without any agreement between states as to the circumstances in which
drone strike targeted killings are lawful, and on the safeguards necessary to
protect civilians.”<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="Body1" style="margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0cm; mso-pagination: none;">
<br /></div>
<div class="Body1">
<b><u><span style="font-size: 14.0pt; mso-hansi-font-family: "Arial Unicode MS";">Awesome
Engineering Co.</span></u></b><b><u><span style="font-size: 14.0pt;"><o:p></o:p></span></u></b></div>
<div class="Body1">
<u><br /></u></div>
<div class="Body1">
<u>Memo To all Sales Staff: <o:p></o:p></u></div>
<div class="Body1">
<u>|</u></div>
<div class="Body1">
Big News!</div>
<div class="Body1">
<i>The Liquidator</i>, our new unmanned aerial vehicle, is now in full
production. But we<span style="font-family: "Arial Unicode MS"; mso-ascii-font-family: "Times New Roman";">’</span>re after far more than the U.S. market. More than seventy
countries already have drones<span style="font-family: "Arial Unicode MS"; mso-ascii-font-family: "Times New Roman";">—</span>armed and unarmed. That<span style="font-family: "Arial Unicode MS"; mso-ascii-font-family: "Times New Roman";">’</span>s just for starters. Every
self-respecting head of state is going to want his own fleet. <o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="Body1">
<br /></div>
<div class="Body1">
And t<i>he Liquidator</i> will be the flavor of the
decade.<br />
<br /></div>
<div class="Body1">
It can takeoff,
land and hover for a week without need of a human operator. <o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="Body1">
<br /></div>
<div class="Body1">
And it can't
be fooled. From six miles up, thanks
to our new Awesome Laser Optical Scanner (ALOS), it can zoom in to photograph the
face of anyone below, as well as capture the underlying bone structure, with
amazing resolution. </div>
<div class="Body1">
<br /></div>
<div class="Body1">
This
means there is no way the bad guys (or gals) can conceal their identity by
growing beards, dyeing their hair, losing weight, or undergoing radical plastic
surgery. </div>
<div class="Body1">
<br /></div>
<div class="Body1">
The next sales
point is also sensational: <i>The Liquidator</i>
can work totally on its own. Its scanner can instantly interface with a
database of all known or suspected bad guys in any intelligence agency<span style="font-family: "Arial Unicode MS"; mso-ascii-font-family: "Times New Roman";">’</span>s files, or from the new
global terrorist data base that we offer as an additional service. At the same
time, the ALOS can also assess the area around the target for risk of <span style="font-family: "Arial Unicode MS"; mso-ascii-font-family: "Times New Roman";">“</span>collateral damage.<span style="font-family: "Arial Unicode MS"; mso-ascii-font-family: "Times New Roman";">”</span> [cd] </div>
<div class="Body1">
<br /></div>
<div class="Body1">
Note: for
an extra 1$million per unit, we will equip the Liquidator with a CDR
(collateral damage regulator) that permits the operator to dial in the degree
of cd judged acceptable for any given assignment.</div>
<div class="Body1">
<br /></div>
<div class="Body1">
The
operator then has an option. A.
Let <i>the Liquidator</i> run on <span style="font-family: "Arial Unicode MS"; mso-ascii-font-family: "Times New Roman";">“</span>auto-kill<span style="font-family: "Arial Unicode MS"; mso-ascii-font-family: "Times New Roman";">”</span> . That means that once is
positive confirmation of the bad guy target, and the cd is acceptable, the on-board
missile is automatically fired. Absolutely no time-wasting intervention required
from the operator.</div>
<div class="Body1">
<br /></div>
<div class="Body1">
Option B.
Of course, the operator can also make the kill decision himself, if there is,
for instance, the need clearance from higher up the command chain. <o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="Body1">
<br /></div>
<div class="Body1">
Most of
our clients follow the precedent established by President Barrack Obama, who
established his own terrorist kill list. This enables him to wipe out the bad
guys without encumbering legal procedures, yapping congressmen, or public
trials that provide a soapbox and cheap publicity for the <span style="font-family: "Arial Unicode MS"; mso-ascii-font-family: "Times New Roman";">“</span>terrorists<span style="font-family: "Arial Unicode MS"; mso-ascii-font-family: "Times New Roman";">”</span> or whatever and their hysterical
rants. </div>
<div class="Body1">
<br /></div>
<div class="Body1">
We expect
this system to continue spreading worldwide. [In fact, we know of one European
country where the wife of the President gets to have her own kill list; and
another state where the Prime Minister gave kill privileges to his 16 year old
mistress<span style="font-family: "Arial Unicode MS"; mso-ascii-font-family: "Times New Roman";">—</span>though
she only gets to have five people on the list at a time.] </div>
<div class="Body1">
<br /></div>
<div class="Body1">
As part
of this presentation, we include a new interactive: How the history of the world
would have been totally changed<span style="font-family: "Arial Unicode MS"; mso-ascii-font-family: "Times New Roman";">—</span>maybe even ground to a halt--if kings, czars, sheikhs, imams,
tribal chiefs, presidents, and dictators-for-life, had had something like <i>The Liquidator</i> at their disposal in
years gone by. </div>
<div class="Body1">
<br /></div>
<div class="Body1">
The Brits,
for example, could have blown to smithereens early on Jomo Kenyatta, No way he
would have survived to become glorified as the founding father of Kenya. Ditto
Robert Mugabe branded as a <span style="font-family: "Arial Unicode MS"; mso-ascii-font-family: "Times New Roman";">“</span>terrorist<span style="font-family: "Arial Unicode MS"; mso-ascii-font-family: "Times New Roman";">”</span> in what used to be known as Rhodesia. Ditto Michael
Collins of the IRA. <o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="Body1">
<br /></div>
<div class="Body1">
In the
1940<span style="font-family: "Arial Unicode MS"; mso-ascii-font-family: "Times New Roman";">’</span>s,
London also could have knocked off a couple of future Israeli Prime Ministers,
Menachem Begin and Yitzhak Shamir , who organized the bloody-minded Irgun
revolt against England, bombing a hotel and murdering British police.<o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="Body1">
<br /></div>
<div class="Body1">
Going
back even earlier, George III could have nipped the Boston Tea Party in the bud;
taken out Paul Revere before he<span style="font-family: "Arial Unicode MS"; mso-ascii-font-family: "Times New Roman";">’</span>d even saddled up. Hell, America might still be British.<o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="Body1">
<br /></div>
<div class="Body1">
In the
same way, the French would have dispatched Ben Bella, wiped out the FLN before most
people even knew what FLN stood for, and Algeria would still be French. So,
perhaps, would Vietnam, if they<span style="font-family: "Arial Unicode MS"; mso-ascii-font-family: "Times New Roman";">’</span>d targeted Ho Chi Minh when they should have. <o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="Body1">
<br /></div>
<div class="Body1">
And the
Germans, if they<span style="font-family: "Arial Unicode MS"; mso-ascii-font-family: "Times New Roman";">’</span>d
had the <i>Liquidator</i> the Warsaw Ghetto uprising
would have been still born, Jean Moulin and the French <i>Resistance</i> would have been turned into road kill. Same thing for
the Soviets: No Hungarian
revolution. No Prague Spring. </div>
<div class="Body1">
<br /></div>
<div class="Body1">
Best of all, they<span style="font-family: "Arial Unicode MS"; mso-ascii-font-family: "Times New Roman";">’</span>d have shredded Osama Bin
Laden, long before he<span style="font-family: "Arial Unicode MS"; mso-ascii-font-family: "Times New Roman";">’</span>d even thought about turning his bearded crazies against
America. </div>
<div class="Body1">
<br /></div>
<div class="Body1">
Batista
would have splattered Fidel and Che all over the Sierra Maestra in Cuba. <o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="Body1">
Same
story for jokers like Geronimo, Zapata, and Pancho Villa. <o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="Body1">
<br /></div>
<div class="Body1">
And Nat
Turner<span style="font-family: "Arial Unicode MS"; mso-ascii-font-family: "Times New Roman";">’</span>s
slave rebellion in 1861 in Virginia would also have been instantly squelched: No
need to put him into the history books by publicly hanging the guy, then flaying
and beheading the corpse. <i>The
Liquidator</i> would have accomplished all that, and more--but discretely.</div>
<div class="Body1">
<o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="Body1">
<br /></div>
<div class="Body1">
I mean, guys, when you think about it, what
we<span style="font-family: "Arial Unicode MS"; mso-ascii-font-family: "Times New Roman";">’</span>re
really offering our clients is a real shot at The End of History<span style="font-family: Arial Unicode MS;">.</span></div>
<div class="Body1">
<br /></div>
<!--EndFragment--></div>
<div class="blogger-post-footer">Follow me on Twitter @barrylando</div>Anonymoushttp://www.blogger.com/profile/10909224421344518896noreply@blogger.com5tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3743871202965200454.post-84983986227413897542013-01-18T16:26:00.000-08:002013-01-20T08:03:53.491-08:00France in Mali:Chasing Roadrunner over a cliff?<div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on">
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<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
Within the next few days, France will have deployed some
2,500 troops to Mali. That’s as large a commitment as France made to what
became a profoundly unpopular war in Afghanistan. No one knows how long the
troops will be there, but the price tag will surely be tens if not hundreds of
millions of Euros, this to born by a French economy already in woeful
shape.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
The danger is that President Francois Hollande and the French
state, may shortly find themselves in the disastrous situation of the hapless
coyote in the cartoon, <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">Roadrunner</i>, so
intent on chasing his prey that he scurries right over a cliff and suddenly
finds himself flailing in mid air, about to plunge to the desert below. <span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
President Hollande said the menace of a radical Islamic
takeover was so imminent that he had no choice but to intervene—to save not
just Mali, but all of Western Africa, and, the French now imply, Europe as
well. <span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
Strange thing though, despite the supposed urgency of the
situation, France has had precious little luck so far in convincing its
European partners to contribute their own troops to the intervention. Indeed, the
last thing those countries want, after the traumatic experience of Iraq, Libya
and the Afghan crusade, is to become enmeshed in what risks to be an open-ended
conflict, on behalf of an unelected Malian government, against a vague assortment
of ethnic rebels and jihadis in the desert wilds of North Africa. Thus, so far
there have been a lot of pats on the back from France’s allies, offers of
logistic support, intelligence, a few troop transports, drones, but that’s it. <span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span><span style="background: white; color: black; font-family: Georgia; font-size: 9.5pt;">"<a href="http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=169519193">You say</a>,
'We'll give you nurses and you go get yourselves killed,'" said French
deputy Daniel Cohn-Bendit, railed at his fellow deputies in the European
Parliament. "We [Europe] will only be credible if French soldiers are not
the only ones getting killed."</span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
Actually, it was surprising to learn that France, still considered
a major military power, doesn’t have the capability to transport a couple of thousand
troops and their equipment to North Africa. France even had to rely on an offer
from the Italians (!) for tankers to handle in-flight refueling of French fighter
jets. </div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
Despite the tepid response from France’s allies, French
government spokesman are still reassuring the public that French troops are not
going to play the major combat role in the coming ground battles.</div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
The fact is, that even if they wanted to play a major role,
there are nowhere near enough French boots on the ground. It’s instructive to
speculate on France’s combat strength, using what is known as the “<a href="http://dbb.defense.gov/pdf/Tooth_to_Tail_Final_Report.pdf">tooth to tail”</a>
ratio, that is, the number of support troops in the rear needed to support each
combat soldier at the front. For the U.S. military that ratio is about three to
one. If we use the same figure for France, that means that out of 2500 French
troops deployed to Mali, probably about 600-700—a thousand at best--would
actually see front-line combat. </div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
And Mali, don’t forget, is twice the size of France, or Afghanistan
or Texas. </div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
The actual down-and-dirty fighting, we are told, is to be
done by troops from West Africa, some of whom have finally begun arriving in
Mali. But all the reports about those contingents indicate a woeful lack of equipment,
morale, and training, particularly in being able to fight a guerrilla war in
the desert reaches of the Sahel.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
After months of discussion, this week—in the wake of the
hostage crisis in Algeria-- France’s European allies finally agreed to dispatch
250 troops to help train the Malian army and perhaps other African units.
But—unless the fallout from the Algerian disaster changes things--it’s already
determined that those European trainers are to be non- combatants. They will
not even be advising the Malian soldiers in battle. As one senior <a href="http://www.scotsman.com/news/uk/europe-sending-up-to-250-military-trainers-to-help-mali-s-forces-1-2745062">EU
official</a> made very clear. <span style="color: #333333; font-family: Arial; font-size: 11.0pt;">“We will not go north. We will stay in the training areas,” </span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
By the way, one thing I can never figure out—whether it be
Mali or Afghanistan--we‘re always hearing about how the forces being backed by
the U.S. and its allies, like France in this case, invariably seem to be poorly
trained and equipped and demoralized, despite hundreds of millions of dollars
and years of training. [Think Afghanistan where only one out of 23 battalions
is able to function independently of U.S. support.]</div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
Meanwhile, the ragtag rebels they’re combating, usually from
those same third world countries, like the Taliban in Afghanistan or the Touaregs
in Mali are portrayed as dedicated, fierce, battle-hardened warriors, who wreak
havoc on their opponents with often the most primitive improvised weapons or
suicide bombs. Reports are that it will take many weeks, probably months,
before the various African troops will be ready to do any serious fighting. And
there are other problems to deal with apart from training and equipment: the
danger, for instance, of unleashing Christian soldiers from Nigeria to suppress
Islamic rebels in Northern Mali. </div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
Ironically, as I’ve pointed out in a <a href="http://barrylando.blogspot.fr/2013/01/intervention-in-mali-another-free-ride.html">previous blog</a>, while France’s allies are
hanging back, the Chinese, who have huge economic interests and construction projects
underway in every one of Mali’s neighbors, continue to go about their business,
apparently still content to leave the police work to France and Europe and the
West African states.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
The French, for the record, insist that the groups they are battling
in Mali –and now in Algeria--are all lumped together as “terrorists”, linked to
al-Qaeda. There is no recognition of the fact that most of the different rebel
groups, most of them driven by strong ethnic and nationalist aspirations, as
much as by religion--not that different perhaps, from the Taliban in
Afghanistan. </div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
In that case, it’s obvious that the only way this conflict
will ultimately be settled is not by somehow eradicating the “terrorists” ,but
by sitting down to negotiate a deal, as will probably be the case in
Afghanistan. <span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
In Mali, such a deal may be not be that different from the
kind of settlement that was <a href="http://www.nytimes.com/2013/01/16/opinion/global/nationalists-or-islamists.html?_r=0">offered
the</a> Touaregs years ago after a series of rebellions, but which the Malian
government ultimately reneged on. </div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
So, how do the French feel about this? </div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
Estimates are that anywhere from 400,000 to one million
French took to the streets of Paris last weekend. A counter-protest, expected
to draw hundreds of thousands of other militant French, is now being organized.
Tempers are flaring.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
What’s the issue? </div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
Mali?</div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
Well, actually, no. It’s whether the French government
should legalize gay marriage. </div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
As for the intervention in Mali, at first the French, from
all ends of the political spectrum, seemed to be solidly behind their
government and their fighting men. </div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
That consensus is already unraveling, and it’s certain that
as the intervention drags on, the casualties and costs mount, and France’s European
allies still drag their heels, the patriotic surge will flag<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
Which bring us back to the Roadrunner. At<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>some point the French may suddenly look
down to find to their president has taken them over a precipice, and they’re
suspended there, gazing in horror at the chasm below. </div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
</div>
<div class="blogger-post-footer">Follow me on Twitter @barrylando</div>Anonymoushttp://www.blogger.com/profile/10909224421344518896noreply@blogger.com4tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3743871202965200454.post-57265532256669568142013-01-15T14:36:00.000-08:002013-01-15T14:36:50.036-08:00Mali: A double tale of unintended consequences<div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on">
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<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: Arial;">With hundreds of French
troops in Mali, and hundreds more headed that way, the U.S. among other
countries, has also pledged some limited support: intelligence, communication, logistics,
unarmed drones. But Washington obviously would like to keep a low profile. Washington,
in fact, had been militating against just such a move, fearing that another
Western intervention in an Arab land would provide another ideal recruiting
target for erstwhile jihadis across the Muslim world, not to mention to
provoking a spate of terrorist attacks in Europe.</span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: Arial;"><br /></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: Arial;">In fact, though, it turns
out that the U.S. has already played a major role in the crisis. It’s a
devastating lesson of plans gone awry, another dreary footnote to the law of unintended
consequences. <o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: 12.0pt; mso-layout-grid-align: none; mso-pagination: none; text-autospace: none;">
<span style="font-family: Arial;"><br /></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: 12.0pt; mso-layout-grid-align: none; mso-pagination: none; text-autospace: none;">
<span style="font-family: Arial;">According to an
excellent <i><a href="http://www.nytimes.com/2013/01/14/world/africa/french-jets-strike-deep-inside-islamist-held-mali.html?pagewanted=2&_r=0&nl=todaysheadlines&emc=edit_th_20130114&pagewanted=all">New
York Times</a></i> account, for the past several years, the United States has
spent more than half a billion dollars in West Africa to counter the threat of
radical Islam, America’s “</span><span style="font-family: Arial; mso-bidi-font-family: Arial;">most ambitious counterterrorism program ever across these vast,
turbulent stretches of the Sahara<b>.”<o:p></o:p></b></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: 12.0pt; mso-layout-grid-align: none; mso-pagination: none; text-autospace: none;">
<span style="font-family: Arial; mso-bidi-font-family: Arial; mso-bidi-font-weight: bold;">The aim of the program was that, rather than
rely on the U.S. and its allies to combat Islamic terrorism in the region, the
United States would train African troops to deal with the threat themselves. <o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: 12.0pt; mso-layout-grid-align: none; mso-pagination: none; text-autospace: none;">
<span style="font-family: Arial; mso-bidi-font-family: Arial; mso-bidi-font-weight: bold;">To that end, for five years U.S. Special
Forces trained Malian troops in a host of vital combat and counterterrorism
skills. The outcome was considered by the Pentagon to be exemplary<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: 12.0pt; mso-layout-grid-align: none; mso-pagination: none; text-autospace: none;">
<span style="font-family: Arial; mso-bidi-font-family: Arial; mso-bidi-font-weight: bold;">But all that collapsed as the result of another
unintended consequence-- of the French-led intervention in Libya. After the
fall of Khadhaffi, droves of battle-hardened, well-armed Islamic fighters and
Tuareg tribesmen, who had been fighting in Libya, swarmed into Northern Mali. <o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: 12.0pt; mso-layout-grid-align: none; mso-pagination: none; text-autospace: none;">
<span style="font-family: Arial; mso-bidi-font-family: Arial; mso-bidi-font-weight: bold;">Joined by other more radical Islamist forces,
some linked to Al Qaeda, they had no trouble defeating the Malian army. <o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: 12.0pt; mso-layout-grid-align: none; mso-pagination: none; text-autospace: none;">
<span style="font-family: Arial; mso-bidi-font-family: Arial; mso-bidi-font-weight: bold;">Why? Because of the defection to the rebels of
several key Malian officers, who had been trained by the Americans. Turns out that those officers, who were
supposed to battle the rebels, were ethnic Tuaregs, the same nomads who were part
of the rebellion.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: 12.0pt; mso-layout-grid-align: none; mso-pagination: none; text-autospace: none;">
<span style="font-family: Arial; mso-bidi-font-family: Arial; mso-bidi-font-weight: bold;">According to the Times, The Tuareg commanders
of three of the four Malian units in the north, at the height of the battle, decided
to join the insurrection, taking weapons, valuable equipment and their American
training with them. They were followed by about 1600 additional army defectors,
demolishing the government’s hope of resisting the rebel attack. <o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: 12.0pt; mso-layout-grid-align: none; mso-pagination: none; text-autospace: none;">
<span style="font-family: Arial;">In other words, it’s very
likely that the French and their allies-to-come in Mali will be battling rebel troops
trained by the U.S. Special Forces.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: 12.0pt; mso-layout-grid-align: none; mso-pagination: none; text-autospace: none;">
<span style="font-family: Arial; mso-bidi-font-family: Arial;">Caught totally by surprise by the whole ghastly mess, the American
officials involved with the training program were reportedly flabbergasted. </span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: Arial;">There are obvious questions:
How was it possible for the Special Forces and their Pentagon bosses and the
CIA to have had such a total lack of understanding of the Malian officers they’d
trained and the country they’d been operating in for over five years?</span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: Arial;"><br /></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: Arial;"> But you
could ask that same question about U.S. military actions in any number of
countries over the past few decades, from Lebanon to Iraq to Afghanistan, where
the most apt comparison might be
to releasing elephants into a porcelain shop. <o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: Arial;"><br /></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: Arial;">Which leads to a more
fundamental question: how is the U.S. to avoid similar catastrophic mistakes down
the road? The Pentagon has recently announced that some 3,000 troops, no longer
needed in Afghanistan, have been reassigned to work with the local military in 35
countries across Africa--to deal with the threat of Al Qaeda-linked terrorism. <o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: Arial;"><br /></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: Arial;">Sounds just like what was
going on in Mali. <o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: Arial;"><br /></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: Arial;">But does anyone really think
the U.S. and its military will have a better understanding of the myriad
forces, tribes, religions, governments, legal and illicit financial interests
struggling for power and influence in those countries than it did in Mali? <o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: Arial;"><br /></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: Arial;">Or in Iraq, Or Afghanistan
or Iran or Somalia or Lebanon, or Vietnam or Cambodia. <o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: Arial;"><br /></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: Arial;">And has France now embarked
down the same tragic path?<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<!--EndFragment--></div>
<div class="blogger-post-footer">Follow me on Twitter @barrylando</div>Anonymoushttp://www.blogger.com/profile/10909224421344518896noreply@blogger.com8tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3743871202965200454.post-52634844688982644952013-01-13T14:21:00.000-08:002013-01-13T14:21:37.051-08:00Intervention in Mali-Another free ride for China?<div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on">
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<br />
Very reluctantly, we are told, President Francois Holland was
forced to order French troops to intervene in Mali, a former West African
colony. There was no other way to ward off disaster, to prevent yet another
failed African state from becoming a haven for terrorists linked to Al Qaeda.
France had strong cultural, economic and military links to the region that
couldn’t be ignored.
<div class="MsoNormal">
The risks of France’s vague, open-ended venture—which the
U.S. has already indicated it will support--are already being debated. But what
I find particularly ironic is that the country that has probably most to gain from
the intervention--is China.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
Why?</div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
Because, by thwarting the rebels’ drive, France and its
partners-to-be will be preserving the security not only of Mali’s rickety
regime, but of Mali’s neighbors as well, also former French colonies, none of
which can make a serious claim to stability. </div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
But in every one of those countries, China does big business—in
several of them, very big business. </div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>--In <a href="http://www.ft.com/intl/cms/s/0/3eac7388-5d17-11df-8373-00144feab49a.html#axzz2HrZhJiZL">Niger,</a>
for instance, where France has a program of military cooperation, a Chinese
company operates what is China’s largest uranium mine, at Azelik—breaking what
was a <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">defacto </i>monopoly on Niger’s
reserves once enjoyed by France. </div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
China also runs a major oilfield and has signed a deal to
upgrade the country’s power supplies. </div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: Times; mso-bidi-font-size: 10.0pt;">--In
</span><a href="http://thediplomat.com/china-power/chinas-chad-courtship/">Chad,</a>
where per capital income is about $900 per year, the French have a large <span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>airforce base that is being used for their
offensive in Mali. The Chinese have a different kind of operation: their
national petroleum corporation is backing a $1 billion dollar project, to lay 300
kilometers of pipelines from oilfields in Southern Chad to a Chinese-built
refinery near the capital, Ndjamena. The refinery is jointly owned by China and
Chad. China is also building a new international airport nearby.</div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
- The <a href="http://www.skyscrapercity.com/showthread.php?s=99f961d17506c649d29cd55dd2f3be59&p=99125614">Ivory
Coast,</a> once a jewel of the French colonial crown, also has a French
military base, and lots of French business interests. But just two days before President
Holland intervened in Mali, it was announced in Abidjan, that China and the
Ivory Coast had agreed on a massive $500 million low-interest loan from China’s
Export Import bank—to finance the construction of a hydropower station-- by a Chinese
engineering firm--that will be the largest in the country and will export power
to neighboring countries. <span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<a href="http://usa.chinadaily.com.cn/business/2011-12/16/content_14278838.htm">China
is also</a> drilling for oil in the Cameroon, building an airport and port in
Mauritania, importing cotton from Burkina Faso, making huge deals for iron ore
in Guinea and Sierra Leone, while building schools, hospitals, stadiums, not to
mention railway lines all over the continent. </div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
So why is China willing to make such massive gambles in a
part of the world where governments seem to change from week to week, and huge
countries like Mali, which used to be considered one of West Africa’s most
stable regimes, can disintegrate into chaos almost overnight? </div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
Part of it is that China, to fuel its soaring economy, is
willing to get along with just about anyone in power. They’re not out to
organize coups, overthrow regimes or impose their views.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
And in much of West Africa, at least, they’ve probably been bolstered
by the thought that, when the chips were down, highly trained and equipped
French and American troops would help keep chaos at bay. Indeed, the Pentagon is
building small, discrete bases—known as lily-pads--across the continent, and
has also assigned more than three American thousand troops to work with and
train African solders to deal with “terrorist” threats, like the one that’s
just exploded in Mali. <span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
If the presence of those foreign troops ultimately rubs the
native population the wrong way, due to anything from cultural differences to
civilian deaths in collateral damage, it’s the French and/or Americans and
their African military allies who will have to take the heat. </div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
Without any of their own boots on the ground, without helicopter
gun ships or drones in the air, and not a single base outside of China, it won’t
be the Chinese.</div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
That’s how it’s been in <a href="http://barrylando.blogspot.com/">many other parts</a> of the world,
particularly the Middle East: the Chinese have had a free ride, with the U.S.
and its allies patrolling key trade routes, intervening in the name of
political stability.</div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
At least, that’s the way it was. But with the French and
other NATO countries more reluctant to intervene than ever, and with the U.S.
military facing major budget cuts, the day will soon come when China will have
to pick to pick up its own security tab, protect its own trade routes, become
at least one of the cops on the global beat. </div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
China’s leaders may know that. Which is part of the reason
for their on-going military build up, particularly the navy. They’ve already
made a deal to train Afghan soldiers, for instance, now that the U.S. is
pulling out.</div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
That may all make a lot of sense—from China’s view. </div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
But how on earth will the U.S. adapt?</div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
</div>
<div class="blogger-post-footer">Follow me on Twitter @barrylando</div>Anonymoushttp://www.blogger.com/profile/10909224421344518896noreply@blogger.com6tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3743871202965200454.post-8289260094185190902012-11-15T02:29:00.004-08:002012-11-15T02:29:43.312-08:00U.S. picks up the tab for China's security<div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on">
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<br />
<div class="MsoNormal">
All right, kids, we’ll begin our class on world affairs,
with <a href="http://www.nytimes.com/2012/11/15/world/middleeast/navy-sends-more-robotic-mine-clearing-systems-to-persian-gulf.html">an
article</a> from today’s Herald Tribune.</div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
It says that the United States is sending robotic mine
clearing equipment to help protect tanker traffic through the Straits of
Hormuz, in the event the Iranians try to block that waterway. Those narrow Straits,
you’ll remember, are how most of the oil from the Middle East and the Gulf is
shipped to the world. </div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
Protecting them is the main reason that the United States
maintains a large naval base in Bahrain for its aircraft carriers and
destroyers and mine sweepers and so on. All this costs us tens of billions of
dollars a year. But we’ve always been told that it’s worth it. </div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
Back in 1980, Jimmy Carter <a href="http://www.npr.org/2012/11/14/165052133/u-s-rethinks-security-as-mideast-oil-imports-drop?ft=1&f=1001">warned</a>
that the U.S. would go to war to protect that vital region. That kind of
thinking got the U.S. involved in two hugely expensive Gulf wars, and it has
remained bedrock policy.</div>
<div style="mso-line-height-alt: 11.1pt;">
<span style="font-size: 12.0pt; mso-bidi-font-size: 10.0pt;">This past September, for instance, the U.S. <a href="http://www.blogger.com/blogger.g?blogID=3743871202965200454">carried
out</a> a massive joint naval exercise in the Gulf. Among the other countries
practicing what they would do to keep the Straits open in the event of
hostilities, were the United Kingdom, Japan, France, Yemen, Jordan, New
Zealand, Estonia, Netherlands, Italy, Australia, Canada—but, apparently,
not China. <br />
</span><span style="color: black; font-family: Helvetica; font-size: 12.0pt; mso-bidi-font-size: 9.0pt;"><br />
</span><span style="font-size: 12.0pt; mso-bidi-font-size: 10.0pt;">Which, kids, is
kind of ironic—Why?</span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
Because with the huge increase in domestic petroleum production,
the U.S. will soon no longer rely at all on the Gulf. In fact, the country for
whom the region and the Straits of Hormuz are essential for its petroleum needs
is China. </div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
You would think Americans would be furious that they’re
paying huge sums for China’s oil security. Indeed, following Jimmy Carter’s
logic, it’s the Chinese who should carry the burden of patrolling the Gulf. But
that specter terrifies many American officials. </div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
In the same way, you would think the U.S. might welcome
China’s new naval modernization program. They don’t. In fact—though the U.S.
navy is much mightier than China’s, many—like Mitt Romney—argue that the U.S.
should ramp up its own naval program to keep far ahead of the Chinese.</div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
But, wait, the story is even more complicated: The reason the
U.S. navy is bringing that sophisticated new mine clearing equipment to the
Gulf is to free up other U.S. ships currently patrolling those waterways. Free
them up to go where?</div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
To the Pacific—to join the forces that Obama is shifting to
the region to confront-----the Chinese.</div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
O.K. class. Any questions?</div>
</div>
<div class="blogger-post-footer">Follow me on Twitter @barrylando</div>Anonymoushttp://www.blogger.com/profile/10909224421344518896noreply@blogger.com2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3743871202965200454.post-2646792097687292372012-11-14T07:06:00.000-08:002012-11-14T07:11:20.448-08:00It's The Sex, Stupid!<div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on">
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<br />
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
After an interminable presidential campaign, in which many
of the basic questions facing the U.S. were ignored or glossed over, there’s nothing
like a smarmy sex scandal to get Americans to finally zero in on fundamental
issues: like should one of America’s most vaunted military leaders, General David
Petraeus have resigned because of an adulterous liaison with Paula Broadwell, his
sometime jogging partner and biographer? Or, how exactly was Petraeus able to
arrange for Ms. Broadwell to be in Afghanistan at the same time that he was? <span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Or, who was the FBI agent who sent
bare-chested pictures of himself to Jill Kelley a Florida housewife, also,
somehow, involved in the affair? <span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Or why exactly did General John Allen, the head of U.S. forces
in Afghanistan, become such an active email buddy of the attractive Mrs.
Kelley? <span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span><span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br />
It goes without saying that talk shows hosts and news
editors are much more interested in tempting their public with the red meat of
what could be mistaken for a new hit cable TV series, than focusing instead on the
fact that General Petraeus’ strategies in Iraq and Afghanistan were not, in the
long term, a stunning success. Those directing our media might also consider
the remarkable fact that General Allen is the fifth—that’s right the fifth—American
general to be running that war, now in its 11th year, yet was one of those
subjects—along with climate change--never seriously debated--in the presidential
campaign. </div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br />
Instead of clucking over the thousands of emailed pages that
General Allen sent to Mrs. Kelley, they might highlight <a href="http://www.rawstory.com/rs/2012/11/11/talks-due-on-status-of-u-s-troops-in-afghanistan-official/%20http://www.rawstory.com/rs/2012/11/11/talks-due-on-status-of-u-s-troops-in-afghanistan-official/">the
fact that</a> 68,000 American soldiers are among the 100,000 Nato troops still
fighting in Afghanistan and that, despite the U.S. having spent 400 billion
dollars on the Afghan war effort, the Taliban are still firmly entrenched. </div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br />
And further, even as the President Obama warns it may be
necessary to bite the bullet and cut back on vital domestic programs, the U.S.is
still pouring two billion dollars a week into an Afghan conflict that no one
feels is winnable. </div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br />
As remarkable as a catfight between two women over an
American general, is the fact that U.S. military planners are still talking
about leaving a “follow-on force” of some 15-20,000 American troops in Afghanistan
---even after 2014! <span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>This in a land
where corruption is rampant, billions in U.S. funds have simply disappeared,
and the security forces that the U.S. has already worked so hard to build are
as a much a threat to their American trainers as is the Taliban.</div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br />
As for the huge sums in aid that the U.S. has spent so far to
get Afghanistan back on its feet, a recent Congressional Research Service <a href="http://www.fas.org/sgp/crs/row/RL30588.pdf">report</a> concluded, “Even
if these economic efforts succeed, Afghanistan will likely remain dependent on
billions in U.S. foreign aid indefinitely."</div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br />
Instead of salivating over other recent tales of adulterous
military commanders, the media might look at the underlying premises of
American Exceptionalism driving its foreign policy. That ideology, in the end, is
what continues to fuel the endless War against Terror, justifies the more than
1,000 military bases the U.S. has abroad, and creates the need for American
soldiers to be absent from their mates for so long and so often </div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br />
Instead of seeing who can be the first to get THE interview
with Petraeus or Broadwell, network TV star reporters might assign some of
their staff to prepare a report on the outrageous phenomenon that while, over
the past ten years, the U.S. has spent literally trillions of dollars
supposedly to safeguard America’s strategic interests and trade routes in the
Middle East and Central Asia, the Chinese, without trying to overthrow any
regimes, dispatch any boots on the ground, or Predators in the air, <a href="http://barrylando.blogspot.fr/2011/11/china-and-iran-lessons-from-lab-rat.html">continue
to make</a> huge commercial inroads throughout those same regions.<br />
</div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
Now we have a new Whac-a-Mole situation:<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>As U.S. forces finally withdraw from
Afghanistan, many of them transferred to the Pacific to meet a supposed Chinese
threat—the Chinese are already poised to fill the vacuum in Afghanistan, not
with their military, but with huge new contracts in that mineral rich country. </div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br />
As the U.S. leaves, “the Chinese”, according to one <a href="http://www.foreignpolicy.com/articles/2012/10/03/chinas_afghan_moment?page=0,1">recent
report</a>, “will become the dominant power in Afghanistan.”<br />
</div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
In fact, if they weren’t so besotted with sexy new terms
like “The Bathsheba Syndrome” , [go ahead, <a href="http://www.stripes.com/news/navy/do-fired-navy-cos-suffer-from-bathsheba-syndrome-1.171525">check
the link</a>] our talk show hosts might consider whether President Obama’s new buildup
in the Pacific, rather than convincing the Chinese to back off their own military
spending and claims to mineral resources in the South China Sea, might actually
trigger a totally opposite response: a potentially disastrous arms race between
the globes two major powers.<br />
</div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
America’s opinion makers might take a breather from the
Petraeus sex caper to focus on such issues…but don’t hold your breath. </div>
</div>
<div class="blogger-post-footer">Follow me on Twitter @barrylando</div>Anonymoushttp://www.blogger.com/profile/10909224421344518896noreply@blogger.com5tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3743871202965200454.post-319393088209027242012-11-04T08:14:00.000-08:002012-11-04T08:14:06.284-08:00The Saudi-Israeli Nexus (2)<div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on">
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<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
“What was the real cost for not recognizing Israel in 1948
and why didn’t the Arab states spend their assets on education, health care,
and the infrastructures instead of wars? But the hardest question that no Arab
national wants to hear is whether Israel is the real enemy of the Arab world
and the Arab people.”</div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
A quote from an Aipac press release or a briefing from Israeli
Prime Minister Bibi Nethanyahu? Guess again. These questions are posed
not by a source we would normally think of as sympathetic to Israel, but in a recent
column in the major English-language newspaper in Saudi Arabia, the<a href="http://www.arabnews.com/arab-spring-and-israeli-enemy"> Arab News</a>--a
paper controlled by the son of the Crown Prince; the author, retired Saudi naval
Commodore Abdulateef Al-Mulhim </div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
His premise: that it’s not Israel and its American ally
responsible for the current plight of the Arab world, but the Arabs
themselves-specifically, their leaders.</div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span class="apple-converted-space"><span style="color: #111111; font-family: Arial; font-size: 8.5pt;"> </span></span><br />
“…the destruction and the atrocities are not done by an outside enemy. The
starvation, the killings and the destruction in these Arab countries are done
by the same hands that are supposed to protect and build the unity of these
countries and safeguard the people of these countries….</div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
“The Arab world wasted hundreds of billions of dollars and
lost tens of thousands of innocent lives fighting Israel, which they considered
is their sworn enemy, an enemy whose existence they never recognized. The Arab
world has many enemies and Israel should have been at the bottom of the list.
The real enemies of the Arab world are corruption, lack of good education, lack
of good health care, lack of freedom, lack of respect for the human lives and
finally, the Arab world had many dictators who used the Arab-Israeli conflict
to suppress their own people. These dictators’ atrocities against their own
people are far worse than all the full-scale Arab-Israeli wars.”<br />
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<div class="MsoNormal">
“Finally, if many of the Arab states are in such disarray,
then what happened to the Arabs’ sworn enemy (Israel)? Israel now has the most
advanced research facilities, top universities and advanced infrastructure.
Many Arabs don’t know that the life expectancy of the Palestinians living in
Israel is far longer than many Arab states and they enjoy far better political
and social freedom than many of their Arab brothers. Even the Palestinians
living under Israeli occupation in the West Bank and Gaza Strip enjoy more
political and social rights than some places in the Arab World.” <br />
<!--[if !supportLineBreakNewLine]--><br />
<!--[endif]--><span style="color: #111111; font-family: Arial; font-size: 9.0pt;"><o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
In <a href="http://www.arabnews.com/columns/what-if-arabs-had-recognized-israel-1948">another
column,</a> the Saudi Commodore speculated on what would have happened if,
rather than attacking the Zionist state, the Arab countries had recognized
Israel back in May 14, 1948. The result he claimed would have been better for
all parties concerned, particularly the Arabs:</div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
“…the
Palestinians would have been able to free themselves from the hollow promises
of Arab dictators who kept telling them the refugees would be back in their
homes, all Arab lands would be liberated and Israel would be sent to the bottom
of the sea. Some Arab leaders used the Palestinians to suppress their own
people and stay in power.</div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
“Since 1948, if an Arab politician wanted to be a hero, he
had an easy way of doing it. He just needed to shout as loud as he could about
his intention to destroy Israel, without mobilizing a single soldier (talk is
cheap.” </div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
The history of the entire region would have been radically
changed, according to this column: among </div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
other benefits, there would have been
no Nasser, no Saddam Hussein, no Muammar al-Gaddafi. </div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
“Even a non-Arab country (Iran) used Palestine to divert its
people from internal unrest. I remember Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini declaring
that he would liberate Jerusalem via Baghdad, and President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad
making bellicose statements about Israel, though not even a firecracker was
fired from Iran toward Israel.</div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
“Now, the Palestinians are on their own; each Arab country
is busy with its own crisis – from Egypt, Tunisia, Libya, Sudan, Yemen, Syria,
Jordan, Somalia, Algeria, Lebanon and the Gulf states.”</div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
Intrigued, I called the retired Commodore to ask if he’d had
any problems publishing such outspoken views in what is essentially a
semi-official Saudi publication. None at all, he said. </div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
“This is read by many from the Saudi Royal family. Nobody
was upset. If they were, they would have told me not to write my weekly
articles any more. But they haven’t I’ve never been stopped. That doesn’t mean
that they agree with it. It’s an
idea that they are interested in having out there.”</div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
On the other hand, when you stop to think about it, such
apparently pro-Israeli views in the semi-official Saudi media are not at all that
surprising. </div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
One of the most curious of alliances in the Middle East have
been the clandestine goings on between the Zionist State of Israel and the Saudi
royal family, the guardians of Mecca, among the most conservative of Arab monarchs.
As I wrote <a href="http://barrylando.blogspot.co.uk/2012/10/saudis-backrolling-israels-mossad.html">in
a previous blog,</a> that relationship is based on a venerable political tenet:
the enemy of my enemy is my
friend. The common enemy, in this case, being Iran, radical Islam, and the
political upheaval known as the Arab Spring. </div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
Both Israel and the Saudi royals are threatened by the rise
of Iran, the crumbling of the old order, the end of brutal dictators, the
explosion of popular political and religious passions. </div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
This is true, even though the Saudis (and Qataris) helped
finance the fall of Gaddafi, who they despised, and are backing the rebels in
Syria against Assad. They hope to use their money and influence to control the
outcomes, to safeguard their own monarchies. </div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
Though Commodore Al-Mulhim decries the brutalities of
dictators like Assad, Nasser, and Gaddafi, other columns speaks glowingly of
the traditional links between the Saudi people and their benevolent royal
family. </div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
The continued political turbulence stoked by the
Israeli-Palestinian dispute is also a threat to the Saudi </div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
royals. And the Commodore’s
tough-worded critique of the Arabs’ refusal to recognize Israel dovetails
perfectly well with a peace plan the Saudis first put on the table in 2002. In
exchange for the Arab states normalizing relations with Israel , <span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 11pt;">Israel would withdrawal
to the 1967 borders. <o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
Indeed, over the years, the Israelis have joined forces
clandestinely with the Saudis to take on other mutual enemies. <br />
<br />
In 1962, for instance, when
civil war broke out after the monarch was toppled in Yemen, a coalition of the
Mossad, the Saudis, and the British SAS took on rebels backed by the armed
forces of Egypt’s President Nasser. <o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
Again in <a href="http://article.wn.com/view/2010/07/04/Top_Lebanese_Shiite_cleric_Fadlallah_dies_at_75_8/">Beirut
in March 8,</a>1985 the Saudis and the Mossad joined in an attempt to
assassinate Muhammad Fadlallah, the cleric who founded Hezbollah. According to
Bob Woodward, William Casey then director of the CIA claimed that the Saudis
helped organize placement of an explosives-laden vehicle, which went off in
front of Fadlallah’s home. Several buildings collapsed,80 people were killed,
but Fadlallah survived.</div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
It’s a good bet that similar clandestine adventures between
the Israelis and the Saudis continue to this day.</div>
<!--EndFragment--></div>
<div class="blogger-post-footer">Follow me on Twitter @barrylando</div>Anonymoushttp://www.blogger.com/profile/10909224421344518896noreply@blogger.com5tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3743871202965200454.post-77722911834155747462012-10-26T04:55:00.001-07:002012-10-28T01:09:08.808-07:00Saudis Bankrolling Israel's Mossad?<div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on">
;
<br />
A friend, with good sources in the Israeli government,
claims that the head of Israel’s Mossad has made several trips to deal with his
counterparts in Saudi Arabia—one of the results: an agreement that the Saudis
would bankroll the series of assassinations of several of Iran’s top nuclear
experts that have occurred over the past couple of years.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>The amount involved, my friend claims,
was $1 billion dollars. A sum, he says, the Saudis considered cheap for the
damage done to Iran’s nuclear program.
<br />
<div class="MsoNormal">
At first blush, the tale sounds preposterous. On the other
hand. it makes eminent sense. The murky swamp of Middle East politics has
nothing to do with the easy slogans and 30 second sound bites of presidential
debates. </div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
After all, nowhere more than in the Middle East does the
maxim hold true: the enemy of my enemy is my friend. And both Israel and the
Saudis have always detested Iran’s Shiite fundamentalist leaders. The feeling
is mutual. Tehran has long been accused of stirring up trouble among Saudi’s
restless Shiites. </div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
Israeli and Saudi leaders particularly fear Iran’s attempts
to develop nuclear weapons. Thus, it would only be natural that (along with the
U.S.) they would back a coordinated program to at least slow up, if not permanently
cripple, Iran’s nuclear ambitions.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">
</span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
It also makes perfect sense, that, in retaliation for the
cyber attacks on their<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">
</span>centrifuges, the Iranians reportedly launched their own cyber attack on
a Saudi state-owned target: Saudi Aramco, the world’s most valuable
company.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Last August 15<sup>th</sup>,
someone with privileged access to Aramco’s computers was able to unleash a
virus that wreaked havoc with the company’s systems. <a href="http://www.nytimes.com/2012/10/24/business/global/cyberattack-on-saudi-oil-firm-disquiets-us.html">U.S.
intelligence expe</a>rts point their finger at Tehran.</div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="background: white;">Indeed, <a href="http://www.presstv.com/detail/239783.html">a report earlier</a> this year
by Tel Aviv University cites Saudi Arabia as the </span><br />
<span style="background: white;">last hope and defense line for Israel. With most
of Israel’s traditional allies in the region sent packing or undermined by the
Arab Spring, the Saudis are the Jewish State’s last chance to protect its
political interests in the Arab world.</span><br />
<br style="mso-special-character: line-break;" />
<br style="mso-special-character: line-break;" /></div>
</div>
<div class="blogger-post-footer">Follow me on Twitter @barrylando</div>Anonymoushttp://www.blogger.com/profile/10909224421344518896noreply@blogger.com114tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3743871202965200454.post-89057549656833925192012-10-23T10:45:00.000-07:002012-10-24T05:48:24.899-07:00U.S. to Defend Israel?Key question never answered. <div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on">
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<div class="MsoNormal">
<i>Several questions asked in the third presidential debate were never clearly answered. One of the most vital concerns Israel: What exactly is the U.S. commitment to that country? It's a question that an American president may suddenly be confronted with, some chaotic night at three A.M.</i><br />
<i><br /></i>
<i>The reporter moderating the debate attempted to get an answer.</i><br />
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="background-color: white; background-position: initial initial; background-repeat: initial initial; font-family: Georgia;"><a href="http://www.nytimes.com/2012/10/22/us/politics/transcript-of-the-third-presidential-debate-in-boca-raton-fla.html?pagewanted=all">BOB
SCHIEFFER</a>: “Red lines, Israel and Iran. Would either of you —Would either
of you be willing to declare that an attack on Israel is an attack on the
United States, which of course is the same promise that we give to our close
allies like Japan? <o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="background-color: white; background-position: initial initial; background-repeat: initial initial; font-family: Georgia;">And if you made such a declaration, would not
that deter Iran? It’s certainly deterred the Soviet Union for a long, long time
when we made that — when we made that promise to our allies.</span><o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br />
[<i>[Good question…a request to clarify what has been a very intimate
but imprecise relationship--challenging an American president --or future
president--to make a stark commitment to Israel on his own accord, without
seeking the consent of the Senate or Congress. Which, who knows, one chaotic
night at three in the morning, he might be called upon to do.]</i></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: Georgia;"><br /></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: Georgia;">PRESIDENT OBAMA: Well, first of all, Israel is a true friend. It
is our greatest ally in the region. And if Israel is attacked, America will
stand with Israel. <o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: Georgia;">I’ve made that clear throughout my presidency. And —<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: Georgia;"><br /></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: Georgia;">[J<i>ust a minute, he didn’t really answer…but the moderator was
there</i>:] <o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: Georgia;"><br /></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: Georgia;">MR. SCHIEFFER: So you’re saying we’ve already made that
declaration?<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: Georgia;"><br /></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: Georgia;">[<i>Good question, but dodged again:</i>] <o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: Georgia;"><br /></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: Georgia;">PRESIDENT OBAMA: I will stand with Israel if they are attacked. <o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: Georgia;"><br /></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: Georgia;">[Unasked question: What does
“stand by” mean, Mr. President? Cheer from the sidelines? Send emergency
arms, dispatch rockets to shoot down incoming missiles, as was done in past
crises by the U.S? <o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: Georgia;">But Obama went on.]<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: Georgia;"><br /></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: Georgia;">OBAMA: And this is the reason why, working with Israel, we have
created the strongest military and intelligence cooperation between our two
countries in history. In fact, this week we’ll be carrying out the largest
military exercise with Israel in history, this very week.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: Georgia;"><br /></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: Georgia;">[<i>Unasked Question: Does that mean, Mr. President, that American
armed forces would become directly involved if Israel were attacked?…if say,
its perimeter defenses were overwhelmed? If the Arabs or Iranians were marching on Tel Aviv?<o:p></o:p></i></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: Georgia;"><i>If not, what is the point of carrying out the “largest military
exercises in history” with Israel? Exercising for what?</i>”]<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: Georgia;"><br /></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: Georgia;">[<i>Next to a question about economic sanctions against Iran</i>…]<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: Georgia;">OBAMA:<span style="background: white;"> …the reason we did this is
because a nuclear Iran is a threat to our national security and it’s threat to
Israel’s national security. We cannot afford to have a nuclear arms race in the
most volatile region of the world. <o:p></o:p></span></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="background-color: white; background-position: initial initial; background-repeat: initial initial; font-family: Georgia;"><br /></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="background-color: white; background-position: initial initial; background-repeat: initial initial; font-family: Georgia;">[Unasked question: <i>Nuclear arms race? Hasn’t
<a href="http://barrylando.blogspot.fr/2012/02/iran-and-israel-oblamas-blindspot.html" target="_blank">Israel had nuclear weapons</a> for decades now, Mr. President? </i>]<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="background-color: white; background-position: initial initial; background-repeat: initial initial; font-family: Georgia;">[<i>And now to Romney on Israel</i>:]<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: Georgia;"><br /></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: Georgia;">MR.
ROMNEY: Well, first of all, I — I want to underscore the — the same point the
president made, which is that if I’m president of the United States, when I’m
president of the United States, we will stand with Israel. And — and if Israel
is attacked, we have their back, not just diplomatically, not just culturally,
but militarily. <o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: Georgia;"><br /></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: Georgia;">[<i>Unanswered
Question: Uh, again, what does that mean, Governor? Would you commit boots on
the ground? Cruise missiles? Destroyers? Under what circumstances?]<o:p></o:p></i></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: Georgia;"><i><br /></i></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: Georgia;"><i>[Then,
when the subject of Egypt’s shaky new government came up]</i><o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: Georgia;"><br /></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: Georgia;">OBAMA: They [the Egyptians] have to abide by their treaty with
Israel. That is a red line for us, because not only is Israel’s security at
stake, but our security is at stake if that unravels.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: Georgia;"><br /></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: Georgia;">[<i>Mr.
President, could you explain why America’s security is dependent on a treaty between
Egypt and Israel?]<o:p></o:p></i></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: Georgia;"><i><br /></i></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: Georgia;"><i>[If
these question weren’t asked during the debate, did any one hear them raised afterwards-- by any of the army of pundits?]<o:p></o:p></i></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<!--EndFragment--></div>
<div class="blogger-post-footer">Follow me on Twitter @barrylando</div>Anonymoushttp://www.blogger.com/profile/10909224421344518896noreply@blogger.com3tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3743871202965200454.post-71980582544170081482012-10-09T08:36:00.001-07:002012-10-09T08:39:48.877-07:00Un Pain au Chocolat-France, increasingly divided.<div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on">
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<br />
<div class="MsoNormal">
`</div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
France is in deep trouble. As <a href="http://barrylando.blogspot.fr/2012/10/france-misses-target-jihad-is-homegrown.html">I
blogged</a> yesterday, this country has spent several billions of Euros over the
past 11 years sending its troops, planes and ships, to join the War against Terrorism
in Central Asia. Now, however, the French are finally discovering the threat of
radical Islam is at home, under their own noses. </div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
According to a poll in today’s centre-right Figaro, 82% of
the 44,000 French questioned fear an increase in Islamic terrorism in France. Provoking
this fear, sensational headlines about a network of 12 jihadis—converted in
overcrowded French prisons—and rounded up by police over the past few days. </div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
But, more serious, than the threat of radical Islam is the
fact that France is menaced by mounting racial tensions stoked by extremists on
both sides.</div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<a href="http://barrylando.blogspot.fr/2012/10/france-misses-target-jihad-is-homegrown.html">I
discussed</a> the rise of radical Islam among France’s five million Muslims in
previous blogs. An equally alarming development is that, on the other side, Islamophobes
are also on the rise. </div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
This past weekend, one of the most prominent of Nicolas Sarkozy’s
former ministers, Jean-Francois Cope, who is campaigning to become leader of his
party, the UMP, , made headlines with the story of a good “French” working
class family, whose son, as he was leaving school, had his pain au chocolat ripped
from his hands by “a young punk” (obviously Muslim) who told the distraught little boy he had
no right to be eating during the Muslim fast of Ramadan.</div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
Overnight, the little French boy losing his pain au chocolat
to a brutish Muslim kid has, in the eyes of many French, become a symbol of
what’s really wrong with this country. </div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
It’s also become
endlessly discussed on French television.</div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
On the Grand Journal last night, one of the commentators, Jean
Michel Aphatie, pointed out that, if you check the dates of Ramadan –which was
in the summer for the past couple of years--there’s no way this incident could have
recently happened, if it did happen at all. </div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
In any case, as Aphatie pointed out, Cope’s views are far
from original. He presented <a href="http://www.canalplus.fr/c-divertissement/pid3349-c-le-grand-journal.html?vid=743550">a
video of</a> former French President Jacques Chirac, delivering a stunningly crude
anti Arab/Mulsim diabtribe at a banquet in Orleans in 1991: </div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
Imagine, said Chirac, a working man, who together with his
wife makes 15,000 francs a year, and is sitting on the landing of his little
flat and sees across from him, on the same landing another “head of a family with
three or four wives and twenty kids, who, naturally without working, is making
50,000 francs a year--from welfare.</div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
“You add to that,” said the President of France, “the noise--and
the smell--and the French worker goes crazy.”</div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
The only difference between Cope and Chirac, suggested, Jean-Michel
Apathie, was that Chirac was probably a little drunk at the time. </div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
Indeed, here in Paris, my wife is constantly being forwarded
some astonishingly blunt racist
videos--from well meaning friends. Like one <a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cBcHfjKAoIg">received today,</a> that
apparently originated with a Catholic professional, we know, an educated, upper
class man; who sent it to another Jewish friend of ours, also charming and
highly educated; who forwarded it to us:</div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
It’s called “Les Envahisseurs” and is a dubbed takeoff of
the science fiction series, The Invaders, from the Sixties. While the original
series dealt with evil creatures from another star system trying to take over
the earth, this modified version substitutes the intergalactic villains with,
of course, the Muslims in France. </div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
They’re fomenting jihad, taking over the streets with their
prayers, demanding that schools serve only hallal meat. When the hero turns for
help to the authorities, he finds that it’s too late—they too are Muslims!</div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
The furor over Cope’s pain au chocolat tale was still on the
mid-day TV news today in Paris.</div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
-We watched as France’s Prime Minister proclaimed his
determination to go after all forms of “extremism.”</div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
On the same show there was also video of hundreds of outraged
French workers, whose jobs are at risk because of factory shutdowns, being blocked
by riot police from entering the lustrous automobile show currently going on in
Paris. One of the factories being shut down is Peugeot.</div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
-The TV news also had live coverage of French President
Holland presenting his plan to totally overhaul France’s creaking education
system. Unemployment among French under 25 is 23%. </div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
After the President had finished, one expert interviewed on
the news show asked, with the government having to drastically cut back its
budget, where the money for reform would come.</div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
As he was talking, a crawl ran across the bottom of the
screen, a bulletin about the round up members of the internal investigation
unit of the Marseilles police. Turns out 19 of them have been hauled in,
targets themselves of corruption charges. </div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
-One bright spot: A sponsor of the TV News today was the French Justice
Ministry, with a major job offer: they’re looking for more prison guards. </div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
Meanwhile, some
1200 French troops remain in Central Asia, continuing to support the “War on
Terrorism.”</div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<!--EndFragment--></div>
<div class="blogger-post-footer">Follow me on Twitter @barrylando</div>Anonymoushttp://www.blogger.com/profile/10909224421344518896noreply@blogger.com14tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3743871202965200454.post-91912011436052990132012-10-08T06:35:00.000-07:002012-10-08T06:35:17.508-07:00France misses the target: Jihad is homegrown. <div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on">
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<br />
<div class="MsoNormal">
Have to admit there’s a certain bitter irony in today’ s headlines
in France about an Islamic terrorist network being rounded up in Strasbourg,
Paris, Nice and Cannes, at the same time as the TV news shows French forces
beginning their withdrawal from Afghanistan. </div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
Why the irony? Because while France has spent billions of
Euros over the past ten years to battle the threat of radical Islam in Central
Asia, they find once again the threat is homegrown, fostered in their own
schools, decaying neighborhoods and prisons. </div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
As <a href="http://barrylando.blogspot.fr/2012/03/toulouse-nightmares-not-over.html">I’ve
written</a> in previous blogs, It’s got much more to do with economic
stagnation, bleak job outlooks, mounting food prices—in short, increasingly
bitter frustration, particularly in the poorer suburbs of cities like Paris and
Marseille. </div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
Anger is particularly high among second and third generation
Muslim youth. France’s population of 5 million Muslims is Europe’s largest,
and, partially because of the woeful economic situation in this country, France
has had a difficult time absorbing them.</div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
Some of those outraged young people have turned to criminal
activities—from petty to violent. And one of the major areas where their conversion
to violent jihad takes place is not so much in Central Asia’s barren hinterlands,
but in overcrowded French prisons.</div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
Further, a number of those for who have espoused jihad, were
not born Muslims at all, but are recent converts—also proselytized in French prisons.
That’s exactly the <a href="http://www.nytimes.com/2012/10/07/world/europe/french-police-kill-a-man-during-antiterrorism-raid.html">backgroun</a>d
of Jérémie Louis-Sidney, the 33 year old member of the terrorist gang who was
gunned down after shooting at police attempting </div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
to arrest him last Saturday in
Strasbourg.</div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
It’s the background of many—perhaps all- of the 12 supposed
members of the “terrorist” ring currently being questioned by French police.</div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
Bottom line, forget humanitarian interests. From the coldly
pragmatic view of defeating radical Islam, the French would have been—and still
would be--much better off deploying the billions of Euros they’ve squandered sending
troops, planes and ships to Central Asia, deploying those funds back home where
they really might make a difference. </div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
It goes without saying, that so would the United States.</div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<!--EndFragment--></div>
<div class="blogger-post-footer">Follow me on Twitter @barrylando</div>Anonymoushttp://www.blogger.com/profile/10909224421344518896noreply@blogger.com2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3743871202965200454.post-46984290776494357802012-10-04T07:39:00.000-07:002012-10-04T08:27:16.202-07:00What You Won't Hear Debated:the Trillion Dollar Misunderstanding<div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on">
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<br />
<div class="MsoNormal">
It’s <a href="http://barrylando.blogspot.fr/2012/09/afghanistan-us-out-china-surges-in.html">estimated
t</a>hat, for defense and national security, the U.S. spends about one trillion
dollars a year—which amounts to more than 80% of this year’s <a href="http://www.cbsnews.com/8301-505103_162-57522459/issue-brief-debt-and-deficit/">expected
deficit</a>.</div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
Mitt Romney is <a href="http://money.cnn.com/2012/05/10/news/economy/romney-defense-spending/index.htm">promising
to</a> spend even more—an additional 2.1 trillion dollars over the next ten
years. President Obama has called for some cuts, but is loath to challenge the
premises that underlie those enormous expenses. </div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
Why the caution? There are too many powerful interests at
play--what President Dwight Eisenhower in 1961 <a href="http://coursesa.matrix.msu.edu/~hst306/documents/indust.html">portrayed</a>
as the Military-Industrial complex—interests sustained by that massive hemorrhage
of American treasure. And those interests- corporations, labor unions, the
pentagon, think tanks, politicians--use their massive clout to keep the torrent
flowing. </div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
To get a sense of that endless outflow, check out a site
called <a href="http://www.dangerzonejobs.com/artman/publish/index.shtml">Danger
Zone Jobs.</a> It’s aimed at those—mainly ex-military--looking for work in America’s
sprawling “defense” establishment. To that end, the folks running DZJ, regularly
troll hundreds of major “defense” corporations to produce a list of potential
job opportunities. </div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
Barack Obama may talk about ending the surge in Afghanistan,
pulling out of Iraq, and so on. But the list of new military contracts being
let tells a very different story. 210 major U.S. companies are currently offering jobs in
“Afghanistan, Kuwait, and other high risk areas.” </div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0cm;">
On Tuesday,
September 25<sup>th</sup>, 2012, for instance, </div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0cm;">
L-3 Services Inc., Alexandria, Va., was awarded an
$84,420,000 cost-plus-fixed-fee contract. The award will provide for the
modification of an existing contract to supply services in support of the Law
Enforcement Professionals Program. Work will be performed in Afghanistan. <o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
Comment: But aren’t all U.S.
troops supposed to be out of Afghanistan by the end of 2014? And what about, the <a href="http://www.nytimes.com/2012/10/02/world/asia/us-scales-back-plans-for-afghan-peace.html?pagewanted=all">New
York Times</a> report that the U.S. has also quietly given up on one of its
major goals in Afghanistan—“battering a Taliban into a peace deal “<o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<span style="background-color: white; background-position: initial initial; background-repeat: initial initial; font-family: Georgia;">Instead, after having
spent 1.2 trillion dollars over the past 12 years, lost 2,000 men and 17,000
wounded, surged in and surged out, <o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<span style="background-color: white; background-position: initial initial; background-repeat: initial initial; font-family: Georgia;">“The once ambitious
American plans for ending the war are now being replaced by the far more modest
goal of setting the stage for the Afghans to work out a deal among themselves
in the years after most Western forces depart, and to ensure<span class="apple-converted-space"> </span></span><a href="http://topics.nytimes.com/top/news/international/countriesandterritories/pakistan/index.html?inline=nyt-geo"><span style="background: white; color: #666699; font-family: Georgia;">Pakistan</span></a><span class="apple-converted-space"><span style="background-color: white; background-position: initial initial; background-repeat: initial initial; font-family: Georgia;"> </span></span><span style="background-color: white; background-position: initial initial; background-repeat: initial initial; font-family: Georgia;">is on board with any eventual settlement. </span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
Despite the bleak views of U.S. military and civilians in Afghanistan, the list of new
contracts for that country spews on. </div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span class="summarydate"><br /></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span class="summarydate">Friday, September 21, 2012</span><br />
<span class="summary"><br /></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span class="summary">Eiden Systems
Corp., Charlottesville, Va., was awarded an $8,494,620 cost-plus-fixed-fee
contract. </span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span class="summary">The award will provide for the necessary services in support of the
U.S. Army Intelligence and Security Command. Work will be performed in
Charlottesville and Afghanistan.</span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
Thursday, September 27, 2012<br />
--ECC International L.L.C., Burlington, Calif., was awarded a
$13,734,629 firm-fixed-price contract. The award will provide for the
construction of three buildings for the Afghanistan National Army. </div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
Thursday, September 27, 2012<br />
-Serco Inc., Reston, Va.,
was awarded an $11,396,739 cost-plus-fixed-fee contract. The award will provide
for the services in support of the Logistics Civil Augmentation Program. Work
will be performed in Afghanistan, Kuwait and Iraq.<br />
<br />
<span class="summarytitle">Then there’s Iraq:<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span class="summarytitle">-</span><span class="summary">American Science and Engineering Inc.,
Billerica, Mass., was awarded a $20,799,851 firm-fixed-price contract. The
award will provide for the contractor logistic support services to the
Government of Iraq.</span><br />
<!--[if !supportLineBreakNewLine]--><br />
<!--[endif]--></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
In fact, the U.S. may be winding down in Iraq, but they’ve
sure been winding up in neighboring Kuwait. September 27<sup>th</sup> must have
seemed like Christmas for defense contractors involved with that oil-rich. </div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
Thursday, September 27, 2012<br />
--Exelis Systems Corp., Colorado Springs, Colo., was awarded a
$434,442,522 cost-plus-award-fee contract. The award will provide for the
operations and security support services in Kuwait. </div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
Thursday, September 27, 2012<br />
--ManTech Telecommunications and Information Systems Corp. was awarded a
$61,077,332 cost-plus-fixed-fee contract to procure contractor logistics
sustainment support services for Route Clearance Vehicles, Special Operations
Command and Mine Resistant Ambush Protected Family of Vehicles.<br />
<!--[if !supportLineBreakNewLine]--><br />
<!--[endif]--></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
Thursday, September 27, 2012<br />
--September Science Applications International Corp., McLean, Va., was
awarded an $82,142,479 cost-plus-fixed-fee contract for the necessary logistics
support across all configurations of the Mine Resistant Ambush Protected Family
of Vehicles.<br />
<!--[if !supportLineBreakNewLine]--><br />
<!--[endif]--></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
Thursday, September 27, 2012<o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
--VSE Corp., Alexandria, Va., was awarded a $13,210,858 firm-fixed-price
and level-of-effort contract. The award will provide for the maintenance and
repair services in support of the Mine Resistant Ambush Protected Family of
Vehicles in Kuwait.</div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
Thursday, September 27, 2012<o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
--Honeywell Technology Solutions
Inc is being awarded a not-to-exceed $6,900,718 cost-plus-fixed-fee task order
to provide contingency equipment support on various military vehicles. Work
will be performed within Kuwait.<br />
<!--[if !supportLineBreakNewLine]--><br />
<!--[endif]--></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
But, with more than 1,000 American
bases spanning the globe, according to Nick Turse who <a href="http://original.antiwar.com/engelhardt/2011/01/09/all-bases-covered/">follows
the phenomenon</a>, job opportunities are by no means limited to old standbys
like Iraq, Kuwait and Afghanistan. Check out the action in Djibouti, in the
Horn of Africa. <o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
Wednesday, September 26, 2012<br />
KBR’s wholly-owned subsidiary KBR Federal Services was awarded the U.S.
Naval Facilities (NAVFAC) Engineering Command construction contract for the
aircraft logistics apron, taxiway enhancement and parking pads upgrade at Camp
Lemonnier, Djibouti, </div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
Question: How many millions? Doesn’t say.<br />
<!--[if !supportLineBreakNewLine]--><br />
<!--[endif]--><o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
Thursday, September 27, 2012</div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
Tetra Tech EC Inc., Lakewood, Colo., is being awarded a
$59,030,099 firm-fixed-price construction contract for the design and
construction of Bachelor Enlisted Quarters and containerized living units for
expeditionary lodging at Camp Lemoniier, Djibouti, Africa.</div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
Hold it! Airfields and bachelor enlisted quarters. Sounds
like they’re settling in for a long stay. But you’re not really sure where
Djibouti is? And you’ve never heard of Camp Lemoniier? You don’t know what CJTF-HOA
stands for? [ Would Romney or Obama?] </div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
It’s the Combined Joint Task Force Horn of Africa (HOA). It <a href="http://www.sourcewatch.org/index.php?title=Combined_Joint_Task_Force-Horn_of_Africa">was
set up</a> in 2002 to help rout out possible terrorists in the area—think
Somalia, Yemen, the Sudan--and, obviously, it’s flourishing.</div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span class="summarydate"><br /></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span class="summarydate">Sunday, September 16, 2012</span><br />
<span class="summary">Rome Research
has been awarded $14.2m for IT Telecommunication Services in support of the
Combined Joint Task Force-Horn of Africa (CJTF-HOA) and other tenants at Camp
Lemonnier, Djibouti. <o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span class="summary">Question:
Other tenants??<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span class="summarydate"><br /></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span class="summarydate">Sunday, September 16, 2012</span><br />
<span class="summary">Washington
Consulting Group was awarded $7m to augment the staff at Ambouli International
Airport in Djibouti, Africa and train personnel in order for them to become
certified in accordance with International Civil Aviation Organization (ICAO)
Standards and Recommended Practices (SARPS).</span><br />
<br />
For those of you who thought the U.S. had plunged into a massive undertaking
when it invaded Iraq and Afghanistan, just listen to the audacious goals of
CJTF_HOA as proclaimed <a href="http://www.hoa.africom.mil/">on their web site.</a> </div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
“CJTF-HOA builds and strengthens partnerships to contribute to security and
stability in East Africa. The task force’s efforts, as part of a comprehensive
whole-of-government approach, are aimed at increasing our African partner
nations’ capacity to maintain a stable environment, with an effective
government that provides a degree of economic and social advancement to its
citizens. An Africa that is stable, participates in free and fair markets, and
contributes to global economic development is good for the United States as
well as the rest of the world. Long Term stability is a vital interest of all
nations.</div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
The government may
be cutting back on vital services in the U.S. but when you read their <a href="http://www.dvidshub.net/news/95157/tanzanians-cjtf-hoa-partner-veterinary-civic-action-program#.UG1e9vlrYdA">press
releases,</a> it’s clear that CJTF-HOA is spending America’s money on all kinds
of stuff. Ever heard of VETCAP? <o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0cm;">
Sep 22, 2012, Fifteen Tanzanian animal
healthcare professionals, Soldiers from the U.S. Army 448 th Civil Affairs
Battalion, and the Joint Civil Affairs Team in Tanzania assigned to Combined
Joint Task Force- Horn of Africa came together to participate in a two week <span style="background-color: white; background-position: initial initial; background-repeat: initial initial;">Veterinary Civic
Action Program, or VETCAP, training session in Mkinga District, Tanzania Sept.
3-14.</span><br />
<!--[if !supportLineBreakNewLine]--><br />
<!--[endif]--><span style="font-size: 7.5pt;"><o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0cm;">
Question: Whatever ever happened to the U.S.
Agency for International Development?
And then there’s AFRICOM:<o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
From September 19<sup>th</sup> to 21<sup>st</sup>, the folks
from CJTF-HOA also took part in a conference attended by 20 military chaplains
from the US Africa Comnand (AFRICOM) and nine East African countries, for the
third annual AFRICOM-sponsored African Military Chaplain Conference in Djibouti
City. </div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
Question? Did everyone get a souvenir coffee mug and T-shirt.
</div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
Meanwhile in the Central African
Republic…also on September 27, 2012<o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
Evergreen Helicopter Inc was
awarded a $10,122,153 firm-fixed-price contract. The award will provide for the
transportation services for personnel and equipment. Work will be performed in
Central African Republic. <o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
Checking out what the U.S. might
be up to in the Central Africa Republic, I found a fascinating New York <a href="http://www.nytimes.com/2012/04/30/world/africa/kony-tracked-by-us-forces-in-central-africa.html?pagewanted=all">Times
article</a> written last April that could have been penned by Kurt Vonnegut:<o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="background: white; margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0cm;">
“One hundred of
America’s elite Special Operations troops, aided by night vision scopes and
satellite imagery, are helping African forces find a wig-wearing,
gibberish-speaking fugitive rebel commander named <a href="http://topics.nytimes.com/top/reference/timestopics/people/k/joseph_kony/index.html?inline=nyt-per"><span style="color: #666699; mso-bidi-font-size: 12.0pt;">Joseph Kony</span></a>who has
been hiding out in the jungle for years with a band of child soldiers and a
harem of dozens of child brides.<o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="background: white; margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="background: white; margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0cm;">
“No one knows
exactly where Mr. Kony is, but here in Obo, at a remote forward operating post
in the Central African Republic, Green Berets pore over maps and interview
villagers, hopeful for a clue…Picture towering trees that blot out the sun,
endless miles of elephant grass, and swirling brown rivers that coil like
intestines and are infested with crocodiles; one of them recently ate a Ugandan
member of the force.<o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="background: white; margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="background: white; margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0cm;">
“This is not going
to be an easy slog,” said Ken Wright, a Navy SEAL captain and the commander of
the joint American detachment assisting in the Kony hunt.”<o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="background: white; margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="background: white; margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0cm;">
Indeed, American
forces and their African allies are apparently still trying to run Kony down.<o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="background: white; margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="background: white; margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0cm;">
Those troops <a href="http://www.aljazeera.com/indepth/opinion/2012/07/20127158391089237.html">are
among some</a> 5,000 American troops and DOD personnel [remember those job
offers] currently defending U.S. interests across the African continent.<o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="background: white; margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="background: white; margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0cm;">
Question: Under
Barack Obama?!<o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="background: white; margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="background: white; margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0cm;">
[For more on the
U.S. in Afghanistan, please check out my <a href="http://barrylando.blogspot.fr/2012/09/afghanistan-us-out-china-surges-in.html">latest</a>
blogs].<o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="background: white; margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<!--EndFragment--></div>
<div class="blogger-post-footer">Follow me on Twitter @barrylando</div>Anonymoushttp://www.blogger.com/profile/10909224421344518896noreply@blogger.com2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3743871202965200454.post-1315996604939089302012-10-03T08:03:00.000-07:002012-10-03T08:26:57.618-07:00Benghazi 2012-Tehran 1979: Another big screwup<div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on">
<br />
<div class="MsoNormal">
A U.S. administration is accused of not increasing security
at a sensitive diplomatic outpost in the Middle East, despite warnings from its
own intelligence agencies. The results are catastrophic.</div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
We’re talking not just about Libya today---but Iran 30 years
ago—when 52 Americans were held hostage for 444 days.</div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
According to several top secret U.S. government documents,
which we revealed on 60 Minutes on <span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>March 2,1980, the administration of Jimmy Carter failed to
heed warnings from top Iranian officials and its own diplomats about the
dangers if the U.S. were to admit the deposed Shah of Iran to the United
States.</div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
On November 4, 1979, several hundred radical Iranians,
outraged at the U.S. decision to admit the Shah they detested to New York for
medical treatment, stormed the U.S. embassy in Tehran, overwhelmed the security
guards, and took the American diplomats hostage.</div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
It looked as if the Carter administration was innocent,
overwhelmed by events:<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>they had simply
extended a humanitarian hand to a former ally who suddenly and desperately
needed medical treatment.</div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
It later turned out that the taking of the embassy was far
from spontaneous. On the other hand, as we discovered, U.S. government planning
for the Shah to come to the U.S. had begun months before, and had continued
despite ample warning of looming disaster. </div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
Ironically, chapter and verse of those warnings were
provided by files seized during the embassy takeover. As the mobs surged
through the gates, officials inside frantically shredded thousands of documents.
The hostage-takers, however, turned over that supposedly illegible mountain of debris
to an army of local Iranians—many of them supposedly skilled weavers. After
months of effort, they painstakingly pieced hundreds of documents back
together. They were then published and put on sale –outside the American
Embassy itself, for instance, where we picked up a copy. <span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
Among that trove was a State Department document classified
“secret sensitive.” written in August 1979 and titled “Planning for the Shah to
come to the U.S.” That was three months before the Shah’s arrival in New York.
It said that once Khomeini is firmly established “it seems appropriate to admit
the Shah to the United States.”</div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
The discussion between officials in Washington and Tehran
continued. In September, 1979, the embassy’s charge d’affaires, warned that the
Shah’s coming to the U.S. could spell trouble to the embassy. <span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>“I doubt that the Shah being ill, would
have much ameliorating effect on the degree of reaction here.”</div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
About that reaction, a State Department report specifically
warned of “the danger of hostages being taken” and advised “When the decision is
made to admit the Shah, we should quietly assign additional American security
guards to the embassy, to provide protection to key personnel until the danger
period is considered over.”</div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
Despite that warning, Henry Precht then head of the Iranian Desk
at the State Department, admitted to us that, “those guards were never
provided.”</div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
The Carter administration attempted to defend itself by
claiming that Iranian officials had assured them that, if the Shah were to come
to the United States, the Iranians would still protect the embassy. <span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
But Ibrahim Yazdi, Iran’s former Foreign Minister, gave us a
different story. He told us that he was officially informed by the U.S. only 24
hours before the arrival of the Shah in New York. </div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
Yazdi said that he then warned the State Department, “You
are playing with fire. There will be a very drastic reaction.”</div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
When President Carter asked then Secretary of State Cyrus
Vance if the embassy could be protected, Vance later told Mike Wallace, “We
said that we could. But we didn’t.”</div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
</div>
<div class="blogger-post-footer">Follow me on Twitter @barrylando</div>Anonymoushttp://www.blogger.com/profile/10909224421344518896noreply@blogger.com2