Events In Context: October 2008

In Syria, a short-sighted attack

THE WEEKEND attack inside Syria by US Special Operations Forces hunting for an alleged smuggler of Al Qaeda recruits into Iraq may have a fleeting tactical benefit, at best. In all other ways, it runs counter to the interests of the United States and its allies.
If this operation was not authorized at the highest level, there is something wrong with the administration's chain of command. And if President Bush and Vice President Cheney did authorize an action that risks sabotaging Israeli-Syrian peace talks, reversing the trend of Syrian cooperation in Iraq and Lebanon, and playing into the hands of Iran, then Bush and Cheney have learned nothing from their previous mistakes and misdeeds.

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Bush's attack on Syria is typical of his disastrous presidency

Sunday's cross-border raid into Syria by US forces serves as a reminder that although George W. Bush is now a "lame duck" president, he still retains the ability to make dangerous waves in the Middle East. His power might be easier to accommodate if it had been wielded over the years with good judgement for the purpose of achieving clearly defined objectives. The problem is that the 43rd president's pursuits in this part of the world have more often been haphazard, counterproductive and/or disastrous.

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US government throws oil on fire

Free-market fundamentalists have been operating in denial mode for more than a year, since the US financial sector imploded in a credit crisis from excessive debt in August 2007, claiming that the economic fundamentals were still basically sound, even within the debt-infested financial sector.

As denial was rendered increasingly untenable by unfolding events, champions of market fundamentalism began clamoring for increasingly larger doses of government intervention in failed free markets around the world to restore sound market fundamentals. For the market fundamentalist faithful, this amounts to asking the devil to save god.

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Do our rulers know enough to avoid a 1930s replay?

The freight rates for Capesize vessels used to ship grains, coal, and iron ore have fallen 95pc to $11,600 since May, hence the bankruptcy of Odessa’s Industrial Carriers last week with a fleet of 52 vessels. Cargo deliveries dropped 15.2pc at the US Port of Long Beach last month, but that is a lagging indicator.
From what I have been able to find out, shipping is slowing as fast as it did in the grim months of late 1931. “The crisis is now in full swing across the entire world,” said Giulio Tremonti, Italy’s finance minister. “It is hitting the real economy, the productive forces of industry. It’s global, it’s total, and it’s everywhere,” he said.
Italy’s industrial output has fallen 11pc in the last year. Foreign orders have dropped 13pc. But we are all in much the same boat. Europe’s car sales fell 9pc in September (32pc in Spain). US housing starts fell to a 45-year low in September.

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Is US fighting force big enough?

American's armed forces are growing bigger to reduce the strains from seven years of war, but if the US is confronting an era of "persistent conflict," as some experts believe, it will need an even bigger military.

A larger military could more easily conduct military and nation-building operations around the world. But whether the American public has the appetite to pursue and pay for such a foreign-policy agenda, especially after more than five years of an unpopular war in Iraq, is far from clear.

Iraqi government fuels 'war for oil' theories by putting reserves up for biggest ever sale

The biggest ever sale of oil assets will take place today, when the Iraqi government puts 40bn barrels of recoverable reserves up for offer in London.

BP, Shell and ExxonMobil are all expected to attend a meeting at the Park Lane Hotel in Mayfair with the Iraqi oil minister, Hussein al-Shahristani.

Access is being given to eight fields, representing about 40% of the Middle Eastern nation's reserves, at a time when the country remains under occupation by US and British forces.

Two smaller agreements have already been signed with Shell and the China National Petroleum Corporation, but today's sale will ignite arguments over whether the overthrow of Saddam Hussein was a "war for oil" that is now to be consummated by western multinationals seizing control of strategic Iraqi reserves.

Moving Beyond Empire

I am not one to decry what most people call globalization – the increase of trade, international investment, and even outsourcing – as a malignant development. The record is pretty clear that the countries that have participated most in international trade and opened themselves up to foreign investment have tended to prosper most – though not without temporarily troubling displacements – and that more people around the world have been lifted out of grinding poverty than in world history, largely because of increased trade.

The present crisis offers opportunities as well as dangers – opportunities to develop a more peaceful and prosperous world with fewer people living hand-to-mouth. But the temptation is likely to be for various countries, possibly including the United States, to crawl into a nationalist shell, perhaps increasing trade barriers and seeking the chimera of national self-sufficiency. To avoid such a fate, it is important to understand how the world has changed, even since the advent of the ill-fated Bush II administration, and to construct intelligent post-imperial policies.

Israel's Peres warns Iran against surprise attack

JERUSALEM (AFP) — Israeli President Shimon Peres on Sunday warned Iran against considering a surprise attack, at a ceremony commemorating the 35th anniversary of the 1973 Arab-Israeli war.

The war began with Syria and Egypt launching a surprise invasion of Israel on the Jewish holiday of Yom Kippur in which early battlefield successes destroyed the myth of Israel's military invincibility.

Time to go home, Nouri al-Maliki tells Britain

British combat forces are no longer needed to maintain security in southern Iraq and should leave the country, Nouri al-Maliki, the Iraqi Prime Minister, has told The Times.

In an exclusive interview in Baghdad, Mr al-Maliki also criticised a secret deal made last year by Britain with the al-Mahdi Army, Iraq’s largest Shia militia. He said that Basra had been left at the mercy of militiamen who “cut the throats of women and children” after the British withdrawal from the city.

The Iraqi leader emphasised, however, that the “page had been turned” and he looked forward to a friendly, productive relationship with London. “The Iraqi arena is open for British companies and British friendship, for economic exchange and positive cooperation in science and education.”

Financial Crisis: Who is going to bail out the euro?

Better late than never. A half-point cut in global interest rates may not halt the slide into a debt deflation, but at least we can hope to avoid the errors of the Great Depression. The slump – remember – had little to do with the 1929 crash. What turned the mild recession of 1930 into the sweeping devastation of the early 1930s was an entirely avoidable collapse of the banking system in both the US and Europe.

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US standing in Caspian drips away

On Sunday, en route to Astana, Kazakhstan, after a "very nice trip to India", US Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice told reporters accompanying her, "I just wish I could have stayed longer in India". New Delhi must be one of a handful of capitals where officials from the George W Bush administration receive an expectant welcome, and the doomsday warnings emitted from New York and Washington do not seem to matter.

But there was another reason for Rice's trepidation as her jet descended to Astana - US influence and prestige in Central Asia and the Caspian region has again plummeted.

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The complete ISAB report

The Secretary of State's International Security Advisory Board(ISAB) has submitted a mind boggling cold war type Report to the secretary of state on how the American government should react to the growing Military capabilities of China at a time when Beijing is complaining about an unnecessary sale(IMO) of advanced weapon systems to Taiwan.

Read the whole report here .

US told to increase nuclear arsenal as China threat looms

The International Security and Advisory Board (Isab), which reports to Condoleezza Rice, the US secretary of state, warned that "holding the US homeland hostage to missile attack is important to Chinese military goals".

It claimed that China will have "in excess of 100 nuclear-armed missiles that could strike the United States" by 2015.

By contrast, it said the US had allowed its nuclear stockpile and expertise to "deteriorate and atrophy across the board" for the last two decades.

'Displeased' China still engaged in Iran, NKorea nuclear talks

China has curtailed military exchanges with the United States in response to the sales and has said the plan threatens peace in its region.

The US official said several visits by Chinese warships to the United States had been cancelled and an unnamed Chinese general had also pulled out of a trip to the country.

"That is a way of showing displeasure without obviously cutting off important discussions that we need to have on crucial international issues," said the official.

"And there may be some other (nuclear) non-proliferation discussions where the Chinese have decided not to participate."

Bush signs nuclear deal with India

This agreement sends a signal to the world: Nations that follow the path of democracy and responsible behavior will find a friend in the United States of America," Bush said at the signing ceremony for the U.S.-India Civil Nuclear Cooperation Agreement.

Trade of nuclear supplies with India, the world's largest democracy, was banned when the South Asian country tested an atomic bomb 34 years ago.

The Senate voted last week to overturn the ban. The House of Representatives later passed the bill without debate.

Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice has called the deal "a historic agreement" that put the United States and India on a "firm footing."

Iceland is all but officially bankrupt

People go bankrupt all the time. Companies do, too. But countries?
Iceland was on the verge of doing exactly that on Thursday as the government shut down the stock market and seized control of its last major independent bank. That brought trading in the country's currency to a halt, with foreign banks no longer willing to take Icelandic krona, even at fire-sale rates.
As the meltdown in the Icelandic financial system quickened, with the government seemingly powerless to do anything about it, analysts said there was probably only one realistic option left: for Iceland to be bailed out by the International Monetary Fund.

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The current financial crisis is only the beginning

Yes, Virginia, the banking crisis will one day end, but what comes after promises to be even more arduous.
With the solvency of the Western banking system seriously in question, there is a temptation to hope that if only the latest bold, last-ditch rescue plan will work, we can go back to the good old days of 2006.
One could argue that the banking crisis is just the cold sweat, not the flu that follows it.
The problem is not just that the banking system has been broken by an orgy of foolish lending but moreover that huge swaths of the global economy are predicated on that foolish lending and the consumption it allowed.

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Chinese defense ministry condemns U.S. for Taiwan arms sales

Ministry spokesman Huang Xueping said China had noticed a Pentagon spokesman's recent comments on U.S.-China military ties, referring to Stuart Upton's remarks on Monday that Washington's arms sales were consistent with the Taiwan Relations Act.
Upton added "uncertainty over the motivations and direction of China's military expansion leads others to hedge," and "this could lead to a security environment less favorable to China's interests, the region's, and our own."
"We are strongly dissatisfied and opposed to the Pentagon spokesman's remarks. The so-called 'Taiwan Relations Act' severely runs counter to the principles of the three Sino-U.S. joint communiques and the fundamental norms governing international relations," Huang said.

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Oil, war, lies and bulls**t'

There's hardly any doubt that the George W Bush administration lied rather consciously about the cause of invasion and subsequent occupation of Iraq. President George W Bush also has been deliberately untruthful to the American public on a number of domestic issues, such as illegal, indiscriminate wiretapping of US citizens, torture of foreign detainees and American political prisoners, and limitless encroachment on civil, human, and legal rights of the American citizenry at large.

As a consequence, at least on the issue of the invasion of Iraq, there's no discernable disagreement about the Bush administration's appalling lies. However, what is still questionable within the public (particularly, the anti-war) discourse is the mistaken belief that oil has been the primary cause of the US war

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White House considers ownership stakes in banks

The Bush administration is considering taking ownership stakes in certain U.S. banks as an option for dealing with a severe global credit crisis.
An administration official, who spoke on condition of anonymity because no decision has been made, said the $700 billion rescue package passed by Congress last week allows the Treasury Department to inject fresh capital into financial institutions and get ownership shares in return.
This official said all the new powers granted in the legislation were being considered as the administration seeks to deal with a serious credit crisis that has caused the biggest upheavals on Wall Street in seven decades and continues to roil global markets.

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Nationalising British Banks

The UK government is poised to announce details of a £50bn rescue package for the banking system, the BBC's business editor has learned.

It will include a proposal to use taxpayers' money to invest in banks - in effect part nationalising them.

The dramatic initiative is aimed at stabilising the financial system and making sure banks have enough cash.

The news comes after a day of steep falls in UK banking stocks and a high-level Downing Street summit

Nuclear bond for North Korea and Myanmar

A recent flurry of high-level contacts between North Korea and Myanmar raises new nuclear proliferation concerns between the two pariah states, one of which already possesses nuclear-weapon capabilities and the other possibly aspiring.

At least three delegations led by flag-level officers from Myanmar's army have traveled to Pyongyang in the past three months, hot on the heels of the two sides' re-establishment last year of formal diplomatic relations. According to a source familiar with the travel itineraries of Myanmar officials, Brigadier General Aung Thein Lin visited North Korea in mid-September.

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British envoy says mission in Afghanistan is doomed

Britain’s Ambassador to Afghanistan has stoked opposition to the allied operation there by reportedly saying that the campaign against the Taleban insurgents would fail and that the best hope was to install an acceptable dictator in Kabul.
Sir Sherard Cowper-Coles, a Foreign Office heavyweight with a reputation for blunt speaking, delivered his bleak assessment of the seven-year Nato campaign in Afghanistan in a briefing with a French diplomat, according to French leaks. However sources in Whitehall said the account was a parody of the British Ambassador’s remarks.
François Fitou, the deputy French Ambassador to Kabul, told President Sarkozy’s office and the Foreign Ministry in a coded cable that Sir Sherard believed that “the current situation is bad; the security situation is getting worse; so is corruption and the Government has lost all trust”.

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Pat Robertson: Nuke strikes in US after the election

Christian Broadcasting Network co-founder Pat Robertson, in a new update to his Web site, states that, "we have between 75 and 120 days before the Middle East starts spinning out of control."

The 700 Club host is convinced that Israel will attack Iran's nuclear energy facilities shortly after the US presidential election, triggering a series of "dramatic events" that conclude only once "God has rained fire on the islands of the sea and on the invading force coming against Israel."

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Brussels in stand-off with Russia on Georgia

European Union monitors were due to start a delicate mission in Georgia today aimed at helping to restore the country's fragile stability, with arguments between Brussels, Tbilisi and Moscow about the scope of the deployment still unresolved.
Under the EU-brokered ceasefire agreement that ended the brief summer war between Georgia and Russia, both sides are committed to withdrawing their forces to pre-conflict positions once international observers are in place.
But, far from pulling out of the separatist Georgian territories of South Ossetia and Abkhazia, Russia has recognised the enclaves as independent states and announced plans for the long-term stationing of 8,000 troops. Moscow has also refused to allow the EU monitors access to the two regions, even though they are mandated to work throughout Georgia. "We have a clear stand - off here and I do not see how immediately we will get out of it," said an EU diplomat in Tbilisi.

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Confronting Taliban, Pakistan Finds Itself at War

An estimated 250,000 people have now fled the helicopters, jets, artillery and mortar fire of the Pakistani Army, and the assaults, intimidation and rough justice of the Taliban who have dug into Pakistan’s tribal areas.
About 20,000 people are so desperate that they have flooded over the border from the Bajaur tribal area to seek safety in Afghanistan.
Many others are crowding around this northwest Pakistani city, where staff members from the United Nations refugee agency are present at nearly a dozen camps.

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Japan Reports Rare Trade Deficit

Japan, a nation that rode exports to become the world's second-largest economy, posted a highly unusual trade deficit in August.

It was an alarm signal for the country's already shrinking economy and yet another worrisome indicator for troubled global markets. The August figure was Japan's first monthly trade deficit in 26 years, excluding the atypical month of January, when exports here always drop for the holidays.

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2008 Vice Presidential Debate - A Foreign Policy Breakdown

The first and only 2008 Vice President Debate is over, and between Governor Sarah Palin’s “shout out” to third-graders from a particular elementary school and imploring “Joe Six-packs” and “Hockey Moms” to band together or Senator Joe Biden’s quip about the “ultimate bridge to nowhere” and comments about how much time he spends at the Home Depot in Wilmington, Delaware the two actually spent quite a bit of time discussing their respective positions on foreign policy.

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Can We Surge in Afghanistan?

The dialog between McCain and Obama in the presidential debate was mind blowing. Both are in full agreement on the need to increase our troop presence in Afghanistan. However, neither of them offer any firm plan to cut troop levels in Iraq -- something necessary to surge in Afghanistan. Regardless of policy positions being crafted by their staff and advisers, this issue is defining itself with the increasing strain on our military that continues to suffer the pain of continued deployments.

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Events In Context