by Khody Akhavi - Nov 6, 2007
Pakistani President Pervez Musharraf on Saturday declared emergency rule, fired the country's chief justice, and suspended the constitution, effectively giving him absolute power in a country many U.S. experts warn is spinning out of control.
Despite its unhappiness with the recent developments, it appears the George W. Bush administration, which once lauded the Pakistani leader as an ally in the "war on terror," will continue to provide financial backing for counter-terrorism efforts in Pakistan's Federally Administrated Tribal Areas (FATA).
"I just want to be clear that the United States has made clear that it does not support extra-constitutional measures, because those measures would take Pakistan away from the path of democracy and civilian rule," said Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice in a statement while en route to Tel Aviv, Israel, to advance the White House's upcoming Annapolis Peace Conference.
"And whatever happens, we will be urging a quick return to a constitutional order, we will be urging that the commitment to hold free and fair elections be kept, and we'll be urging calm on all the parties."
A day earlier, Rice said a significant portion of U.S. aid "is directly related to the counterterrorism mission." While the aid program to Islamabad must be reviewed in the wake of the Musharraf move, "I would be very surprised if anyone wants the president to ignore or set aside our concerns about terrorism," she said, according to a report in the Associated Press.
On Monday, President Bush made his first public comments since Musharraf imposed a state of emergency over the weekend, asking the Pakistani leader to hold elections and relinquish his army post "as soon as possible."
Appearing on national television after midnight on Saturday, Musharraf at times spoke in English, saying he wanted to address the United States and the West, according to a report in the Washington Post.
"I would kindly ask you to understand the criticality of the environment inside Pakistan and around Pakistan," he said. "Inaction at the moment is suicide for Pakistan, and I cannot allow this country to commit suicide."
Pakistan's recent turn to martial law echoes the bloodless coup that brought Musharraf to power in 1999, but the most recent occasion underscores the extent to which the Pakistani leader finds himself in an untenable position of juggling multiple and often contradictory interests.
"Musharraf's recent coup against his own government – and that was what it was – was in good part a result of American pressure on him to hold free and fair elections as well as the actions of a Supreme Court that suddenly began to challenge the military's dominant position and a dramatic increase in terrorist violence directed against the Pakistani military itself," wrote Stephen P. Cohen, an expert on South Asian security at the Washington-based Brookings Institute, in a briefing paper on the organization's site.
Musharraf's problems have been compounded by the reemergence of former prime minister and opposition leader Benazir Bhutto to Pakistani public life. Bhutto flew back to Karachi from Dubai, where she was visiting family at the time of the decree, and was reportedly greeted by throngs of supporters at the airport.
"Unless General Musharraf reverses the course, it will very difficult to have fair elections," she told Sky News television by telephone. "I agree with him that we are facing a political crisis, but I believe the problem is dictatorship. I don't believe the solution is dictatorship," she said. "The extremists need a dictatorship, and a dictatorship needs extremists."
According to Cohen, Islamabad has been playing a "double game" with its participation in the "war on terror," with its intelligence services supporting the Taliban, while reluctantly going after al-Qaeda forces embedded in FATA.
"The failure to round up the Taliban leadership was a matter of state policy: the Pakistan army still regards India as its major threat, and the Taliban are used to counterbalance Indian influence in Afghanistan," he said. "As for al-Qaeda, the Pakistan army is prepared to engage in counterinsurgency warfare within its own borders; no wonder several U.S. senators have stated that the U.S. ought to go in to the FATA if Pakistan cannot, and round up the known al-Qaeda (and Taliban) leadership."
Gary Sick, an Iran expert and former National Security Council member during the Jimmy Carter administration, wrote on the Washington Post Web site that the recent travails of Musharraf reminded him a great deal of the problems and ultimate downfall of Iran's monarch, Mohammad Reza Shah Pahlavi.
"The ultimate reason for the U.S. policy failure at the time of the Iranian revolution was the fact that the U.S. had placed enormous trust and responsibility on the person of the shah of Iran," he said. "I see the U.S. locked in much the same kind of policy vise that bedeviled the U.S. in Iran. We have bet the farm on one man – in this case Pervez Musharraf – and we have no fallback position, no alternative strategy in the event that does not work."
The editors of the right-leaning National Review magazine were far less forgiving than the Bush administration. "When it comes to being 'our SOB,' Pakistani President Pervez Musharraf has the 'SOB' part down. We just wish we could have more confidence in the 'our,'" they wrote in a piece entitled "State of Emergency."
"The U.S. should make clear to Musharraf that it is willing to forgive a lot, so long as the Pakistani government shows a commitment to the anti-Islamist campaign that has long been lacking. If Musharraf is determined to govern for now as a dictator, we should at least expect him to be an effective dictator in our interests."
Tuesday, November 6, 2007
The Last 'Enemy Combatant' on the US Mainland
by Andy Worthington - Nov 6, 2007
Torture is defined in many ways. To the Bush administration, nothing that it ever does is torture. In keeping with the notorious "Torture Memo" of August 2002, drafted primarily by Vice President Dick Cheney's chief counsel, David Addington, "enhanced interrogation techniques" – as the administration euphemizes its forays into torture – only become unacceptable if they lead to organ failure or even death.
As a result, Dick Cheney was well within his comfort zone when, on a conservative radio show last October, he responded to a dismissive question about waterboarding – "Would you agree a dunk in water is a no-brainer if it can save lives?" – with, "Well, it's a no-brainer for me." Cheney added, "But for a while there, I was criticized as being the vice president for torture" (courtesy of the Washington Post), and he concluded with the administration's predictable mantra, "We don't torture. That's not what we're involved in."
To others, waterboarding is clearly torture, as the State Department declares every year when it condemns other countries for subjecting prisoners to "a dunk in the water." But while it should be clear to all but the most brainwashed that waterboarding and other techniques that have been used in Guantánamo and that are still part of the CIA's arsenal – including the prolonged use of stress positions, extreme temperature manipulation, and sleep deprivation – are torture, holding a man in solitary confinement for several years is somehow seen as a soft alternative.
This is in spite of the fact that Defense Department lawyers warned Donald Rumsfeld that isolation was "not known to have been generally used for interrogation purposes for longer than 30 days." The lawyers' warnings, it should also be noted, echoed the opinion expressed in the CIA's 1963 KUBARK Manual – with its notorious section on counter-intelligence interrogation – in which the agency warned of the "profound moral objection" to applying "duress past the point of irreversible psychological damage."
My concern with the effects of prolonged solitary confinement hit me abruptly this week when I read – in the New York Times, one of the few media outlets to cover the story – that the case of Ali al-Marri, the last "enemy combatant" on U.S. soil, was causing some consternation for the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Fourth Circuit in Richmond, Va.
A Qatari national and a resident alien in the United States, Marri had studied computer science in Peoria, Ill., in 1991. He had legally returned to the United States on Sept. 10, 2001, with his residency in order, to pursue postgraduate studies, bringing his wife and five children with him. Three months later he was arrested and charged with fraud and making false statements to the FBI, but in June 2003, a month before he was due to stand trial for these charges in a federal court, the prosecution dropped the charges and informed the court that he was to be held as an "enemy combatant" instead.
He was then moved to a naval brig in Charleston, S.C., where he was held incommunicado for 16 months and, according to statements eventually filed by his lawyers (see below), subjected to "inhumane, degrading, and physically and psychologically abusive treatment." Held in "complete isolation" in a bare cell measuring nine feet by six feet in an otherwise unoccupied cell block, Marri was subjected to sleep deprivation and extreme temperature manipulation. He was also frequently deprived of food and water, and he was only allowed outside for "recreation" – also alone – three times a week "when deemed to be 'compliant.'" To reinforce his isolation, his cell contained nothing but a Koran, a "suicide blanket," and a thin mattress. Even the window was blocked, preventing him from ever seeing natural light or knowing the time of day.
Marri stated that, during the first year of his imprisonment in the brig, he was "interrogated repeatedly" and his interrogators "falsely told [him] that four of his brothers and his father were in jail because of him, and promised that they would all be released if he cooperated with them." Interrogators also "threatened to send [him] to Egypt or to Saudi Arabia where, they told him, he would be tortured and sodomized and where his wife would be raped in front of him."
In August 2003, representatives of the International Red Cross were finally allowed to meet with Marri. Two months later he was finally permitted to meet with a lawyer, but despite sporadic visits from the Red Cross and his legal representatives, the extreme isolation in which he has been held – and the perpetuation of the ill-treatment outlined above – has been barely mitigated. Including the six months he spent in isolation in Peoria County Jail and the Metropolitan Correction Center in New York before being transferred to Charleston, he has now spent four years and 10 months (58 times the amount of time recommended by Defense Department lawyers) in solitary confinement.
This is not unique: the alleged "high-value" al-Qaeda operative Abu Zubaydah has been in solitary since March 2002, for example, and several Guantánamo detainees have also spent a substantial amount of time in a similar situation (including, currently, the British resident Shaker Aamer, who has been alone in an isolation block since August 2005). But Marri, as a U.S. resident, is supposed to be protected from this sort of treatment.
The only comparable case – and one that bears close scrutiny – is that of José Padilla, the only other "enemy combatant" to be held for a substantial period of time on the U.S. mainland. Padilla, a U.S. citizen, was held in the Charleston brig for three and a half years, where the extreme isolation to which he was subjected, combined with sensory deprivation and the use of psychotropic drugs, led to the complete disintegration of his mind, according to several psychiatrists who evaluated his mental state.
According to one of Marri's lawyers, Jonathan Hafetz of the Brennan Center for Justice at the New York University School of Law, his client's mental disintegration has not been quite so severe, although he has been described as suffering "severe damage to his mental and emotional well-being, including hypersensitivity to external stimuli, manic behavior, difficulty concentrating and thinking, obsessional thinking, difficulties with impulse control, difficulty sleeping, difficulty keeping track of time, and agitation." While this is a distressing litany of the symptoms to be expected from prolonged solitary confinement, it may be that Marri's relative sanity compared to Padilla (who was described by his guards as "so docile and inactive that he could be mistaken for 'a piece of furniture'") explains why his story has not been so newsworthy. It seems likely that his case has also been largely ignored because he is a resident alien rather than a U.S. citizen, and because his story is not so glamorous.
Unlike Padilla, who shot to undying fame when he was accused of plotting to detonate a "dirty bomb" in a U.S. city, Marri has no such tag to identify him. The presidential order that declared him an "enemy combatant" stated simply that he was closely associated with al-Qaeda and presented "a continuing, present, and grave danger to the national security of the United States," and the "charges" against him have fluctuated. At various times it has been claimed by the government that he attended an al-Qaeda training camp; that he met Khalid Sheikh Mohammed (KSM), the self-confessed architect of 9/11; and that he had connections to al-Qaeda financier Mustafa al-Hawsawi. It has also been alleged that he met Osama bin Laden, pledged that he would kill Americans, volunteered for a "martyr mission," and was working as an al-Qaeda sleeper agent in the U.S. at the time of his capture. Rather more prosaically, it was also alleged that he had documents related to jihadist activities on his computer, including information on hydrogen cyanide (used in chemical weapons), lectures by Osama bin Laden, and a cartoon of planes crashing into the World Trade Center.
None of these claims are reliable. As Jonathan Hafetz explained to me when I spoke to him on Friday (and as has been apparent since Newsweek reported on it in June 2003), most of the supposed intelligence against Marri came from Khalid Sheikh Mohammed, who was captured in March 2003, just three months before Marri was upgraded from an alleged credit card fraudster to a major terror suspect. As I discussed at length in an article in July, "Guantánamo's Tangled Web: Khalid Sheikh Mohammed, Majid Khan, Dubious U.S. Convictions, and a Dying Man," KSM stated during his tribunal at Guantánamo in March this year that he had given false information about other people while being tortured. Though KSM was not allowed to elaborate, I traced in my article several possible victims of these false confessions, including Majid Khan, one of 13 supposedly "high-value" detainees transferred with KSM to Guantánamo from secret CIA prisons in September 2006; Saifullah Paracha, a Pakistani businessman and philanthropist held in Guantánamo; and Paracha's son Uzair, who was convicted in the United States on dubious charges in November 2005 and sentenced to 30 years in prison.
It's possible, therefore, that Marri is another victim of KSM's tortured confessions, but whether or not this is true, the correct venue for such discussions is in a court of law, not in leaks and proclamations from an administration that appears to be intent on holding him without charge or trial for the rest of his life. Since November 2005, when the administration dropped its "dirty bomb" allegations against Padilla and charged him with the far lesser crimes of "conspiracy to murder, kidnap, and maim people in a foreign country, conspiracy to provide material support for terrorists, and providing material support for terrorists," for which he was convicted – pending appeal – in August this year, Marri has had the painful distinction of being the only U.S. "enemy combatant" held on American soil.
The Padilla verdict caused outrage among those who were rightly concerned that the judge had forbidden all mention of the three and a half years that a U.S. citizen had spent in mind-destroying isolation without charge or trial, but Marri's case is arguably even more significant. Under the cover of Marri's perceived second-class status as a resident alien rather than a U.S. citizen, the administration appears to be hoping that the Fourth Circuit judges will endorse what Jonathan Hafetz described to me as "the most radical and far-reaching claim of the imperial presidency: that the president can seize any person in America and imprison him for life, without charge and without evidence, based solely upon his say-so."
This, then, is why the news that Marri's case was being scrutinized by the Fourth Circuit judges seized my attention so vigorously. While the Supreme Court will undoubtedly beckon if the verdict goes the government's way, the Fourth Circuit judges are discussing an issue that should be of paramount importance to all Americans: their right not to be seized on a presidential whim and held forever without charge or trial.
It is, moreover, not the first time that the Fourth Circuit judges have looked at Marri's case. In June, by a 2-1 majority, three judges in the Fourth Circuit appeals court delivered a damning verdict on the president's presumed ability to detain Americans (whether citizens or resident aliens) at will. "Put simply," they declared, "the Constitution does not allow the president to order the military to seize civilians residing within the United States and then detain them indefinitely without criminal process, and this is so even if he calls them 'enemy combatants.'"
The judges had apparently been swayed by the arguments presented by Hafetz and his colleagues, who insisted, as they have maintained all along, that the president "lacks the legal authority to designate and detain al-Marri as an 'enemy combatant' for two principal reasons": because the Constitution "prohibits the military imprisonment of civilians arrested in the United States and outside an active battlefield," and because, although a district court previously held that the president was authorized to detain Marri under the Authorization for the Use of Military Force (the September 2001 law authorizing the president to use "all necessary and appropriate force" against those involved in any way with 9/11), Congress explicitly prohibited "the indefinite detention without charge of suspected alien terrorists in the United States" in the PATRIOT Act, which followed five weeks later. Even more critically, Congress actually rejected a provision in a prior draft of the bill, which would have permitted the attorney general to detain without charge any individual he "has reason to believe may commit, further, or facilitate acts [of terrorism]," insisting instead that suspects be charged "with a criminal offense or an immigration violation within seven days of their arrest" (that's seven days, note, not 2,156 days – as of Nov. 6, 2007 – in solitary confinement).
The verdict in June – a triumph for those who realized how crucial the Marri case was – lasted only until the government appealed. Instead of three judges, the Fourth Circuit court has now convened en banc to reconsider Marri's indefinite detention without trial, and this decision – a last bulwark, effectively, against the whims of a dictatorial president – now rests in the hands of nine judges in one of the most conservative courts in the land.
Unexpectedly, however, the signs are not all bad. As the New York Times explained, "based on the pointed, practical, and frequently passionate questioning" during Wednesday's hearing, the judges were "divided and troubled, and it was not clear which way the majority was leaning." Some responses were predictable. Judge J. Harvie Wilkinson III, for example, remarked that civil liberties groups had "stirred up needless anxiety" about the president's powers. "We're not talking about an indiscriminate roundup," he said. "We're talking about two people in six years [Marri and Padilla] with undisputed ties to al-Qaeda." In response, however, Judge Robert L. Gregory stated that the case was one of "constitutional principle," and a representative of the government, Gregory J. Garre, faced tough questions about the administration's position. Judge M. Blane Michael asked, "How long can you keep this man in custody?" and when Garre replied that it could "go on for a long time," depending on the duration of the "war" with al-Qaeda, Michael stated, "It looks like a lifetime."
Under questioning from Judge William B. Traxler Jr., who inquired about the circumstances required for holding people in secret detention, Garre blustered that Marri had been given a chance to rebut the government's allegations but had "squandered" the opportunity. This was not strictly true. Marri had indeed been given an opportunity to face his accusers in court, but, as his lawyers pointed out, the burden was actually on the government to prove its accusations. "How is a person who is held incommunicado to challenge these things?" Traxler asked, to silence from Garre.
With the judges' overall opinions unclear, Marri, his lawyers, and all responsible American citizens will have to wait for the verdict to be announced, which could be before the end of the year. I can only hope that the judges have listened carefully to the arguments made by his lawyers. As Jonathan Hafetz explained to me, "Mr. Marri's four-plus years of solitary confinement in a Navy prison crosses a line that should never be crossed a civilized society, and cannot be accepted in a nation, like America, committed to basic human rights and the principles of its Constitution."
Torture is defined in many ways. To the Bush administration, nothing that it ever does is torture. In keeping with the notorious "Torture Memo" of August 2002, drafted primarily by Vice President Dick Cheney's chief counsel, David Addington, "enhanced interrogation techniques" – as the administration euphemizes its forays into torture – only become unacceptable if they lead to organ failure or even death.
As a result, Dick Cheney was well within his comfort zone when, on a conservative radio show last October, he responded to a dismissive question about waterboarding – "Would you agree a dunk in water is a no-brainer if it can save lives?" – with, "Well, it's a no-brainer for me." Cheney added, "But for a while there, I was criticized as being the vice president for torture" (courtesy of the Washington Post), and he concluded with the administration's predictable mantra, "We don't torture. That's not what we're involved in."
To others, waterboarding is clearly torture, as the State Department declares every year when it condemns other countries for subjecting prisoners to "a dunk in the water." But while it should be clear to all but the most brainwashed that waterboarding and other techniques that have been used in Guantánamo and that are still part of the CIA's arsenal – including the prolonged use of stress positions, extreme temperature manipulation, and sleep deprivation – are torture, holding a man in solitary confinement for several years is somehow seen as a soft alternative.
This is in spite of the fact that Defense Department lawyers warned Donald Rumsfeld that isolation was "not known to have been generally used for interrogation purposes for longer than 30 days." The lawyers' warnings, it should also be noted, echoed the opinion expressed in the CIA's 1963 KUBARK Manual – with its notorious section on counter-intelligence interrogation – in which the agency warned of the "profound moral objection" to applying "duress past the point of irreversible psychological damage."
My concern with the effects of prolonged solitary confinement hit me abruptly this week when I read – in the New York Times, one of the few media outlets to cover the story – that the case of Ali al-Marri, the last "enemy combatant" on U.S. soil, was causing some consternation for the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Fourth Circuit in Richmond, Va.
A Qatari national and a resident alien in the United States, Marri had studied computer science in Peoria, Ill., in 1991. He had legally returned to the United States on Sept. 10, 2001, with his residency in order, to pursue postgraduate studies, bringing his wife and five children with him. Three months later he was arrested and charged with fraud and making false statements to the FBI, but in June 2003, a month before he was due to stand trial for these charges in a federal court, the prosecution dropped the charges and informed the court that he was to be held as an "enemy combatant" instead.
He was then moved to a naval brig in Charleston, S.C., where he was held incommunicado for 16 months and, according to statements eventually filed by his lawyers (see below), subjected to "inhumane, degrading, and physically and psychologically abusive treatment." Held in "complete isolation" in a bare cell measuring nine feet by six feet in an otherwise unoccupied cell block, Marri was subjected to sleep deprivation and extreme temperature manipulation. He was also frequently deprived of food and water, and he was only allowed outside for "recreation" – also alone – three times a week "when deemed to be 'compliant.'" To reinforce his isolation, his cell contained nothing but a Koran, a "suicide blanket," and a thin mattress. Even the window was blocked, preventing him from ever seeing natural light or knowing the time of day.
Marri stated that, during the first year of his imprisonment in the brig, he was "interrogated repeatedly" and his interrogators "falsely told [him] that four of his brothers and his father were in jail because of him, and promised that they would all be released if he cooperated with them." Interrogators also "threatened to send [him] to Egypt or to Saudi Arabia where, they told him, he would be tortured and sodomized and where his wife would be raped in front of him."
In August 2003, representatives of the International Red Cross were finally allowed to meet with Marri. Two months later he was finally permitted to meet with a lawyer, but despite sporadic visits from the Red Cross and his legal representatives, the extreme isolation in which he has been held – and the perpetuation of the ill-treatment outlined above – has been barely mitigated. Including the six months he spent in isolation in Peoria County Jail and the Metropolitan Correction Center in New York before being transferred to Charleston, he has now spent four years and 10 months (58 times the amount of time recommended by Defense Department lawyers) in solitary confinement.
This is not unique: the alleged "high-value" al-Qaeda operative Abu Zubaydah has been in solitary since March 2002, for example, and several Guantánamo detainees have also spent a substantial amount of time in a similar situation (including, currently, the British resident Shaker Aamer, who has been alone in an isolation block since August 2005). But Marri, as a U.S. resident, is supposed to be protected from this sort of treatment.
The only comparable case – and one that bears close scrutiny – is that of José Padilla, the only other "enemy combatant" to be held for a substantial period of time on the U.S. mainland. Padilla, a U.S. citizen, was held in the Charleston brig for three and a half years, where the extreme isolation to which he was subjected, combined with sensory deprivation and the use of psychotropic drugs, led to the complete disintegration of his mind, according to several psychiatrists who evaluated his mental state.
According to one of Marri's lawyers, Jonathan Hafetz of the Brennan Center for Justice at the New York University School of Law, his client's mental disintegration has not been quite so severe, although he has been described as suffering "severe damage to his mental and emotional well-being, including hypersensitivity to external stimuli, manic behavior, difficulty concentrating and thinking, obsessional thinking, difficulties with impulse control, difficulty sleeping, difficulty keeping track of time, and agitation." While this is a distressing litany of the symptoms to be expected from prolonged solitary confinement, it may be that Marri's relative sanity compared to Padilla (who was described by his guards as "so docile and inactive that he could be mistaken for 'a piece of furniture'") explains why his story has not been so newsworthy. It seems likely that his case has also been largely ignored because he is a resident alien rather than a U.S. citizen, and because his story is not so glamorous.
Unlike Padilla, who shot to undying fame when he was accused of plotting to detonate a "dirty bomb" in a U.S. city, Marri has no such tag to identify him. The presidential order that declared him an "enemy combatant" stated simply that he was closely associated with al-Qaeda and presented "a continuing, present, and grave danger to the national security of the United States," and the "charges" against him have fluctuated. At various times it has been claimed by the government that he attended an al-Qaeda training camp; that he met Khalid Sheikh Mohammed (KSM), the self-confessed architect of 9/11; and that he had connections to al-Qaeda financier Mustafa al-Hawsawi. It has also been alleged that he met Osama bin Laden, pledged that he would kill Americans, volunteered for a "martyr mission," and was working as an al-Qaeda sleeper agent in the U.S. at the time of his capture. Rather more prosaically, it was also alleged that he had documents related to jihadist activities on his computer, including information on hydrogen cyanide (used in chemical weapons), lectures by Osama bin Laden, and a cartoon of planes crashing into the World Trade Center.
None of these claims are reliable. As Jonathan Hafetz explained to me when I spoke to him on Friday (and as has been apparent since Newsweek reported on it in June 2003), most of the supposed intelligence against Marri came from Khalid Sheikh Mohammed, who was captured in March 2003, just three months before Marri was upgraded from an alleged credit card fraudster to a major terror suspect. As I discussed at length in an article in July, "Guantánamo's Tangled Web: Khalid Sheikh Mohammed, Majid Khan, Dubious U.S. Convictions, and a Dying Man," KSM stated during his tribunal at Guantánamo in March this year that he had given false information about other people while being tortured. Though KSM was not allowed to elaborate, I traced in my article several possible victims of these false confessions, including Majid Khan, one of 13 supposedly "high-value" detainees transferred with KSM to Guantánamo from secret CIA prisons in September 2006; Saifullah Paracha, a Pakistani businessman and philanthropist held in Guantánamo; and Paracha's son Uzair, who was convicted in the United States on dubious charges in November 2005 and sentenced to 30 years in prison.
It's possible, therefore, that Marri is another victim of KSM's tortured confessions, but whether or not this is true, the correct venue for such discussions is in a court of law, not in leaks and proclamations from an administration that appears to be intent on holding him without charge or trial for the rest of his life. Since November 2005, when the administration dropped its "dirty bomb" allegations against Padilla and charged him with the far lesser crimes of "conspiracy to murder, kidnap, and maim people in a foreign country, conspiracy to provide material support for terrorists, and providing material support for terrorists," for which he was convicted – pending appeal – in August this year, Marri has had the painful distinction of being the only U.S. "enemy combatant" held on American soil.
The Padilla verdict caused outrage among those who were rightly concerned that the judge had forbidden all mention of the three and a half years that a U.S. citizen had spent in mind-destroying isolation without charge or trial, but Marri's case is arguably even more significant. Under the cover of Marri's perceived second-class status as a resident alien rather than a U.S. citizen, the administration appears to be hoping that the Fourth Circuit judges will endorse what Jonathan Hafetz described to me as "the most radical and far-reaching claim of the imperial presidency: that the president can seize any person in America and imprison him for life, without charge and without evidence, based solely upon his say-so."
This, then, is why the news that Marri's case was being scrutinized by the Fourth Circuit judges seized my attention so vigorously. While the Supreme Court will undoubtedly beckon if the verdict goes the government's way, the Fourth Circuit judges are discussing an issue that should be of paramount importance to all Americans: their right not to be seized on a presidential whim and held forever without charge or trial.
It is, moreover, not the first time that the Fourth Circuit judges have looked at Marri's case. In June, by a 2-1 majority, three judges in the Fourth Circuit appeals court delivered a damning verdict on the president's presumed ability to detain Americans (whether citizens or resident aliens) at will. "Put simply," they declared, "the Constitution does not allow the president to order the military to seize civilians residing within the United States and then detain them indefinitely without criminal process, and this is so even if he calls them 'enemy combatants.'"
The judges had apparently been swayed by the arguments presented by Hafetz and his colleagues, who insisted, as they have maintained all along, that the president "lacks the legal authority to designate and detain al-Marri as an 'enemy combatant' for two principal reasons": because the Constitution "prohibits the military imprisonment of civilians arrested in the United States and outside an active battlefield," and because, although a district court previously held that the president was authorized to detain Marri under the Authorization for the Use of Military Force (the September 2001 law authorizing the president to use "all necessary and appropriate force" against those involved in any way with 9/11), Congress explicitly prohibited "the indefinite detention without charge of suspected alien terrorists in the United States" in the PATRIOT Act, which followed five weeks later. Even more critically, Congress actually rejected a provision in a prior draft of the bill, which would have permitted the attorney general to detain without charge any individual he "has reason to believe may commit, further, or facilitate acts [of terrorism]," insisting instead that suspects be charged "with a criminal offense or an immigration violation within seven days of their arrest" (that's seven days, note, not 2,156 days – as of Nov. 6, 2007 – in solitary confinement).
The verdict in June – a triumph for those who realized how crucial the Marri case was – lasted only until the government appealed. Instead of three judges, the Fourth Circuit court has now convened en banc to reconsider Marri's indefinite detention without trial, and this decision – a last bulwark, effectively, against the whims of a dictatorial president – now rests in the hands of nine judges in one of the most conservative courts in the land.
Unexpectedly, however, the signs are not all bad. As the New York Times explained, "based on the pointed, practical, and frequently passionate questioning" during Wednesday's hearing, the judges were "divided and troubled, and it was not clear which way the majority was leaning." Some responses were predictable. Judge J. Harvie Wilkinson III, for example, remarked that civil liberties groups had "stirred up needless anxiety" about the president's powers. "We're not talking about an indiscriminate roundup," he said. "We're talking about two people in six years [Marri and Padilla] with undisputed ties to al-Qaeda." In response, however, Judge Robert L. Gregory stated that the case was one of "constitutional principle," and a representative of the government, Gregory J. Garre, faced tough questions about the administration's position. Judge M. Blane Michael asked, "How long can you keep this man in custody?" and when Garre replied that it could "go on for a long time," depending on the duration of the "war" with al-Qaeda, Michael stated, "It looks like a lifetime."
Under questioning from Judge William B. Traxler Jr., who inquired about the circumstances required for holding people in secret detention, Garre blustered that Marri had been given a chance to rebut the government's allegations but had "squandered" the opportunity. This was not strictly true. Marri had indeed been given an opportunity to face his accusers in court, but, as his lawyers pointed out, the burden was actually on the government to prove its accusations. "How is a person who is held incommunicado to challenge these things?" Traxler asked, to silence from Garre.
With the judges' overall opinions unclear, Marri, his lawyers, and all responsible American citizens will have to wait for the verdict to be announced, which could be before the end of the year. I can only hope that the judges have listened carefully to the arguments made by his lawyers. As Jonathan Hafetz explained to me, "Mr. Marri's four-plus years of solitary confinement in a Navy prison crosses a line that should never be crossed a civilized society, and cannot be accepted in a nation, like America, committed to basic human rights and the principles of its Constitution."
Joe Lieberman's War
by Philip Giraldi - Nov 6, 2007
Neoconservative godfather Norman Podhoretz has written that "as an American and as a Jew" he prays that President George W. Bush will attack Iran. He rests his case on his belief that 2007 is really 1938, that Iran is Nazi Germany, and that Mahmoud Ahmadinejad is Hitler. His most recent book, World War IV: The Long Struggle Against Islamofascism, was described by a reviewer as "a hectoring, often illogical screed based on cherry-picked facts and blustering assertions (often made without any supporting evidence), a book that furiously hurls accusations of cowardice, anti-Americanism, and sheer venality at any and all opponents of the Bush doctrine, be they on the right or the left."
Unlike people who subscribe to the view that a war with Iran would be a catastrophe for the United States, Podhoretz reportedly has regular access to the White House to promote his insightful historical analysis. But as Podhoretz is not in government and he controls no carrier groups, he has only a limited capability to bring about his dream of an emasculated Iran to take its place alongside an emasculated Iraq and a presumably soon-to-be emasculated Syria.
But while Podhoretz cannot start a war alone, there are plenty of others in the government, including Vice President Dick Cheney and the National Security Council's Elliott Abrams, who share his enthusiasm for a preemptive attack on Iran. The leader of Congress' Iran hawks is undoubtedly Sen. Joe Lieberman of Connecticut. Lieberman, currently an independent, has long been regarded as a "conservative Democrat," but his voting record reveals that his conservatism is largely limited to foreign policy and more specifically to the Middle East, where he is a strong and uncritical defender of Israel. When he successfully ran for reelection as an independent in Connecticut in 2006, he accused his Democratic opponent Ned Lamont of not being a forceful enough advocate for Israel, claiming that Lamont was "surrounded by people who are either naïve or are isolationists or, frankly, some more explicitly against Israel." A former senior official of the pro-Israel lobby AIPAC also endorsed that view, stating that "the pro Israel community … will stick with Joe Lieberman."
Lieberman has never counted the costs to the United States of pursuing Israeli objectives in the Middle East. He continues to be a vocal supporter of the invasion and occupation of Iraq, frequently mentioning Saddam's alleged links to terrorists and invoking a variation of the White House line that if the U.S. does not fight terrorists in Iraq it will be necessary to fight them in New Haven. In 1998 he co-sponsored the Iraq Liberation Act, which made regime change in Baghdad official U.S. policy. His regular forays to Baghdad have convinced him that Iraq has been transformed from "primitive, killing tyranny" into "modern, self-governing, self-securing nationhood." He saw clear evidence by 2005 of the democratization of Iraq: "Progress is visible … there are many more cars on the streets, satellite television dishes on the roofs, and literally millions more cell phones." More recently, he enthusiastically supported last summer's Israeli invasion of Lebanon and has tried to make Syria the newest member of the axis of evil, claiming without any evidence that it is Syria "through which up to 80 percent of the Iraq-bound extremists transit. Indeed, even terrorists from countries that directly border Iraq travel by land via Syria to Iraq, instead of directly from their home countries, because of the permissive environment for terrorism that the Syrian government has fostered."
Lieberman has also been front and center in taking on the thorny problem of Iran, promoting a military response as the most effective option. In an April 2006 interview in the Jerusalem Post, he freely discussed using military force to disarm Iran, noting that the U.S. had learned a lesson from both Osama bin Laden and Hitler that "sometimes when people say really extreme things … they may actually mean it." In December 2006, Lieberman followed up by explaining that he opposed direct talks with Iran because it would be like going to "your local fire department asking a couple of arsonists to help put out the fire. These people are flaming the fire. They are extremists." On Dec. 29, 2006, Lieberman wrote a Washington Post op-ed in which he explained the situation in the Middle East in simple terms: "On one side are extremists and terrorists led and sponsored by Iran, on the other moderates and democrats supported by the United States."
On June 10, 2007, Lieberman told Face the Nation, "I think we've got to be prepared to take aggressive military action against the Iranians to stop them from killing Americans in Iraq. And to me that would include a strike into … over the border into Iran … where they are training these people coming back into Iraq to kill our soldiers." He later stated that "By some estimates, they have killed as many as 200 American soldiers," and, for good measure, he added that if Iran is not willing to live "according to the international rule of law and stopping, for instance, their nuclear weapons development, we can't just talk to them." On the following day, Weekly Standard editor William Kristol said "It sure does," after being asked if the Lieberman statement would make it easier for the White House to consider an attack against Iran.
On July 6, 2007, Lieberman wrote an op-ed for the Wall Street Journal in which he claimed, "The Iranian government, by its actions, has all but declared war on us and our allies in the Middle East. American now has a solemn responsibility to utilize the instruments of our national power to convince Tehran to change its behavior," employing "credible force" because Iran is bringing "about the death of American service members in Iraq." He described, without providing any evidence, how the "Iranian government has been using the Lebanese terrorist group Hezbollah to train and organize Iraqi extremists, who are responsible in turn for the murder of American service members." He called Iran's role as "hostile and violent" and complained that Tehran's "fanatical government" demonstrates "expansionistic, extremist behavior." After again referring to Iran's "fanatical regime," he cited "attacks on American soldiers" as a reason why Iran "must be confronted head on."
Lieberman was the co-sponsor of the Kyl-Lieberman amendment to the recently passed defense appropriations bill, which passed by a Senate vote of 76 to 22 on Sept. 26, 2007. The amendment stated that "the murder of members of the United States Armed Forces by a foreign government or its agents is an intolerable act of hostility against the United States."
Lieberman's press release on the subject, dated July 11, 2007, accused Iran of "murdering our troops" and quoted Sen. John Kyl, who blamed Iran for "actively supporting terrorists who are killing our troops in Iraq." When the Kyl-Lieberman amendment was debated in the Senate, James Webb of Virginia said, "At best, it's a deliberate attempt to divert attention from a failed diplomatic policy. At worst, it could be read as a backdoor method of gaining congressional validation for military action, without one hearing and without serious debate." Webb also called the amendment "Dick Cheney's fondest pipe dream" and noted correctly that the attempt to categorize the Iranian Islamic Revolutionary guard as a "foreign terrorist organization" would mandate military action against Iran: "What do we do with terrorist organizations? … We attack them."
There is hardly any point in identifying Lieberman's numerous errors in fact in an attempt to refute his assertions, as he is ideologically driven and not interested in the truth. His sloganeering is more in the nature of propaganda than a careful consideration of policy options or the U.S.' national interests. He twists and embroiders the facts to enable him to rule out speaking to Iran while at the same time blaming it for all of the problems in the region. Lieberman also disregards the reality in Iraq, which is that Iran is deeply embedded there as a result of the United States' invasion, which removed Tehran's traditional rival and empowered the Shia.
Lieberman repeats over and over again that American soldiers are being killed by Iran. Apparently, the neocons have found it too difficult to make the case that Iran is actually seeking a nuclear weapon. That American soldiers are being killed through the active intervention of the Iranian government is in any event debatable, and most of the international media appears to believe that the allegations lack hard evidence. That many Americans do not see the need to attack Iran does not faze Sen. Joseph Isadore Lieberman, a man of self-proclaimed principle who obviously has clearer vision and knows better than his fellow countrymen what is right and what is wrong. If Iran turns into a major catastrophe not only for the U.S. and Iran but also for the entire region, will Lieberman take the blame as a principal enabler of the war so desired by Norman Podhoretz? If Lieberman's lack of contrition over Iraq is anything to go by, almost certainly not.
Neoconservative godfather Norman Podhoretz has written that "as an American and as a Jew" he prays that President George W. Bush will attack Iran. He rests his case on his belief that 2007 is really 1938, that Iran is Nazi Germany, and that Mahmoud Ahmadinejad is Hitler. His most recent book, World War IV: The Long Struggle Against Islamofascism, was described by a reviewer as "a hectoring, often illogical screed based on cherry-picked facts and blustering assertions (often made without any supporting evidence), a book that furiously hurls accusations of cowardice, anti-Americanism, and sheer venality at any and all opponents of the Bush doctrine, be they on the right or the left."
Unlike people who subscribe to the view that a war with Iran would be a catastrophe for the United States, Podhoretz reportedly has regular access to the White House to promote his insightful historical analysis. But as Podhoretz is not in government and he controls no carrier groups, he has only a limited capability to bring about his dream of an emasculated Iran to take its place alongside an emasculated Iraq and a presumably soon-to-be emasculated Syria.
But while Podhoretz cannot start a war alone, there are plenty of others in the government, including Vice President Dick Cheney and the National Security Council's Elliott Abrams, who share his enthusiasm for a preemptive attack on Iran. The leader of Congress' Iran hawks is undoubtedly Sen. Joe Lieberman of Connecticut. Lieberman, currently an independent, has long been regarded as a "conservative Democrat," but his voting record reveals that his conservatism is largely limited to foreign policy and more specifically to the Middle East, where he is a strong and uncritical defender of Israel. When he successfully ran for reelection as an independent in Connecticut in 2006, he accused his Democratic opponent Ned Lamont of not being a forceful enough advocate for Israel, claiming that Lamont was "surrounded by people who are either naïve or are isolationists or, frankly, some more explicitly against Israel." A former senior official of the pro-Israel lobby AIPAC also endorsed that view, stating that "the pro Israel community … will stick with Joe Lieberman."
Lieberman has never counted the costs to the United States of pursuing Israeli objectives in the Middle East. He continues to be a vocal supporter of the invasion and occupation of Iraq, frequently mentioning Saddam's alleged links to terrorists and invoking a variation of the White House line that if the U.S. does not fight terrorists in Iraq it will be necessary to fight them in New Haven. In 1998 he co-sponsored the Iraq Liberation Act, which made regime change in Baghdad official U.S. policy. His regular forays to Baghdad have convinced him that Iraq has been transformed from "primitive, killing tyranny" into "modern, self-governing, self-securing nationhood." He saw clear evidence by 2005 of the democratization of Iraq: "Progress is visible … there are many more cars on the streets, satellite television dishes on the roofs, and literally millions more cell phones." More recently, he enthusiastically supported last summer's Israeli invasion of Lebanon and has tried to make Syria the newest member of the axis of evil, claiming without any evidence that it is Syria "through which up to 80 percent of the Iraq-bound extremists transit. Indeed, even terrorists from countries that directly border Iraq travel by land via Syria to Iraq, instead of directly from their home countries, because of the permissive environment for terrorism that the Syrian government has fostered."
Lieberman has also been front and center in taking on the thorny problem of Iran, promoting a military response as the most effective option. In an April 2006 interview in the Jerusalem Post, he freely discussed using military force to disarm Iran, noting that the U.S. had learned a lesson from both Osama bin Laden and Hitler that "sometimes when people say really extreme things … they may actually mean it." In December 2006, Lieberman followed up by explaining that he opposed direct talks with Iran because it would be like going to "your local fire department asking a couple of arsonists to help put out the fire. These people are flaming the fire. They are extremists." On Dec. 29, 2006, Lieberman wrote a Washington Post op-ed in which he explained the situation in the Middle East in simple terms: "On one side are extremists and terrorists led and sponsored by Iran, on the other moderates and democrats supported by the United States."
On June 10, 2007, Lieberman told Face the Nation, "I think we've got to be prepared to take aggressive military action against the Iranians to stop them from killing Americans in Iraq. And to me that would include a strike into … over the border into Iran … where they are training these people coming back into Iraq to kill our soldiers." He later stated that "By some estimates, they have killed as many as 200 American soldiers," and, for good measure, he added that if Iran is not willing to live "according to the international rule of law and stopping, for instance, their nuclear weapons development, we can't just talk to them." On the following day, Weekly Standard editor William Kristol said "It sure does," after being asked if the Lieberman statement would make it easier for the White House to consider an attack against Iran.
On July 6, 2007, Lieberman wrote an op-ed for the Wall Street Journal in which he claimed, "The Iranian government, by its actions, has all but declared war on us and our allies in the Middle East. American now has a solemn responsibility to utilize the instruments of our national power to convince Tehran to change its behavior," employing "credible force" because Iran is bringing "about the death of American service members in Iraq." He described, without providing any evidence, how the "Iranian government has been using the Lebanese terrorist group Hezbollah to train and organize Iraqi extremists, who are responsible in turn for the murder of American service members." He called Iran's role as "hostile and violent" and complained that Tehran's "fanatical government" demonstrates "expansionistic, extremist behavior." After again referring to Iran's "fanatical regime," he cited "attacks on American soldiers" as a reason why Iran "must be confronted head on."
Lieberman was the co-sponsor of the Kyl-Lieberman amendment to the recently passed defense appropriations bill, which passed by a Senate vote of 76 to 22 on Sept. 26, 2007. The amendment stated that "the murder of members of the United States Armed Forces by a foreign government or its agents is an intolerable act of hostility against the United States."
Lieberman's press release on the subject, dated July 11, 2007, accused Iran of "murdering our troops" and quoted Sen. John Kyl, who blamed Iran for "actively supporting terrorists who are killing our troops in Iraq." When the Kyl-Lieberman amendment was debated in the Senate, James Webb of Virginia said, "At best, it's a deliberate attempt to divert attention from a failed diplomatic policy. At worst, it could be read as a backdoor method of gaining congressional validation for military action, without one hearing and without serious debate." Webb also called the amendment "Dick Cheney's fondest pipe dream" and noted correctly that the attempt to categorize the Iranian Islamic Revolutionary guard as a "foreign terrorist organization" would mandate military action against Iran: "What do we do with terrorist organizations? … We attack them."
There is hardly any point in identifying Lieberman's numerous errors in fact in an attempt to refute his assertions, as he is ideologically driven and not interested in the truth. His sloganeering is more in the nature of propaganda than a careful consideration of policy options or the U.S.' national interests. He twists and embroiders the facts to enable him to rule out speaking to Iran while at the same time blaming it for all of the problems in the region. Lieberman also disregards the reality in Iraq, which is that Iran is deeply embedded there as a result of the United States' invasion, which removed Tehran's traditional rival and empowered the Shia.
Lieberman repeats over and over again that American soldiers are being killed by Iran. Apparently, the neocons have found it too difficult to make the case that Iran is actually seeking a nuclear weapon. That American soldiers are being killed through the active intervention of the Iranian government is in any event debatable, and most of the international media appears to believe that the allegations lack hard evidence. That many Americans do not see the need to attack Iran does not faze Sen. Joseph Isadore Lieberman, a man of self-proclaimed principle who obviously has clearer vision and knows better than his fellow countrymen what is right and what is wrong. If Iran turns into a major catastrophe not only for the U.S. and Iran but also for the entire region, will Lieberman take the blame as a principal enabler of the war so desired by Norman Podhoretz? If Lieberman's lack of contrition over Iraq is anything to go by, almost certainly not.
Monday, November 5, 2007
PetroChina's Value Tops $1 Trillion, Surpassing Exxon
by Ying Lou - Bloomberg.com - Nov 5, 2007
PetroChina Co. almost tripled on its first day of trading in Shanghai, becoming the world's first company to be valued at $1 trillion, more than Exxon Mobil Corp. and General Electric Co. combined.
PetroChina shares rose to 43.96 yuan from the sale price of 16.7 yuan, giving the state-owned oil producer a greater market value than the entire Russian stock market.
The rally makes PetroChina shares four times more expensive than those of Exxon, even though China's biggest oil producer has a quarter of the revenue. China's stock market was valued at less than $1.1 trillion before tripling this year and giving the communist nation five of the world's 10 biggest companies.
PetroChina's valuation is ``an indication of China coming of age and also of its stock market bubble,'' said Hugh Young, who oversees $50 billion at Aberdeen Asset Management Asia Ltd. in Singapore.
The oil producer's Shanghai listing pushes China's stock market beyond the U.K. as the world's third-largest. PetroChina trades at 55 times earnings, four times Exxon's ratio of 13 times earnings and near the 58 times for Google Inc., the world's most- used Internet search engine.
In Hong Kong, PetroChina fell 8.2 percent to HK$18. Exxon shares rose 0.7 percent to $87.93, valuing the company at $488 billion on the New York Stock Exchange.
`Sense of Responsibility'
``I feel very excited today and also feel a very strong sense of responsibility,'' Chairman Jiang Jiemin said at the Shanghai Stock Exchange. ``This is PetroChina returning to our investors and society.''
Jiang struck a gong as the market opened at 9:30 a.m., then toasted the start of trading with a glass of red wine.
China's largest oil and gas producer had 20.5 billion barrels of oil and gas reserves in 2006, compared with 22.1 billion for Irving, Texas-based Exxon, data compiled by Bloomberg show. PetroChina has been adding new reserves at an average annual rate of 5 percent for the past three years, a faster pace than Exxon, Royal Dutch Shell Plc and BP Plc, the world's largest oil companies by sales.
The share sale, the world's biggest this year, surpassed the 66.6 billion yuan raised by China Shenhua Energy Co. in September. PetroChina raised 66.8 billion yuan selling 4 billion shares last week as investors applied for more than 3.3 trillion yuan of stock, almost 50 times the amount PetroChina sold.
Record Oil
Those investors were until now prevented from directly buying PetroChina stock, missing out on a 15-fold surge as economic growth turned the nation into the largest oil consumer after the U.S. and as crude prices reached a record $96.24 a barrel in New York.
The CSI 300 Index of shares listed on the Shanghai and Shenzhen exchanges has increased about 170 percent this year as mainland Chinese investors seek returns on $2.3 trillion of savings, raising investor concerns that the market is too expensive.
Billionaire investor Warren Buffett's Berkshire Hathaway Inc. sold its stake in PetroChina this year, reaping an eightfold gain that contributed to a 64 percent increase in third-quarter profit for the Omaha, Nebraska-based company. Berkshire had 2.34 billion shares as of the end of 2006, the largest holding after state-owned China National Petroleum Corp.
Buffett said on Oct. 24 that Chinese share prices have risen too fast.
`Carried Away'
``It's easy to be carried away in the stock market when things are going very well,'' he said in the northern Chinese city of Dalian. ``We at Berkshire never buy stocks when we see prices soaring.''
Gains in PetroChina's shares in Shanghai may have more to do with Chinese investors seeking better returns than the outlook for the company's exploration and production operations, or its refining business, known as downstream, said Larry Grace, an oil analyst at Kim Eng Securities Co. in Hong Kong.
``Production is static with limited upside for the next three to four years,'' Grace said. ``As for the downstream, the price controls and overall regulatory trend limit the company's earnings.''
China controls fuel prices to shield consumers in the world's most-populous nation from accelerating inflation. The policy limits the ability of PetroChina and China Petroleum & Chemical Corp. to pass on the burden of higher crude oil costs.
The other Chinese companies that rank among the world's 10 largest by market value are China Petroleum, known as Sinopec, China Mobile Ltd., Industrial & Commercial Bank of China Ltd. and China Construction Bank Corp.
``A-share prices don't reflect global benchmarks of value,'' said Lorraine Tan, head of equity research at Standard & Poor's Investment Services in Singapore. ``There should be other measures of a company's position, including revenue and profitability. Market cap is not necessarily accurate.''
PetroChina's share surge means it beat by years a Russian pledge to create the world's largest company.
OAO Gazprom, Russia's natural gas export monopoly, would become the world's largest company by market value and top $1 trillion in ``seven to 10 years,'' Alexander Medvedev, the company's deputy chief executive officer, said in April. Gazprom's market valuation today is $296 billion.
PetroChina Co. almost tripled on its first day of trading in Shanghai, becoming the world's first company to be valued at $1 trillion, more than Exxon Mobil Corp. and General Electric Co. combined.
PetroChina shares rose to 43.96 yuan from the sale price of 16.7 yuan, giving the state-owned oil producer a greater market value than the entire Russian stock market.
The rally makes PetroChina shares four times more expensive than those of Exxon, even though China's biggest oil producer has a quarter of the revenue. China's stock market was valued at less than $1.1 trillion before tripling this year and giving the communist nation five of the world's 10 biggest companies.
PetroChina's valuation is ``an indication of China coming of age and also of its stock market bubble,'' said Hugh Young, who oversees $50 billion at Aberdeen Asset Management Asia Ltd. in Singapore.
The oil producer's Shanghai listing pushes China's stock market beyond the U.K. as the world's third-largest. PetroChina trades at 55 times earnings, four times Exxon's ratio of 13 times earnings and near the 58 times for Google Inc., the world's most- used Internet search engine.
In Hong Kong, PetroChina fell 8.2 percent to HK$18. Exxon shares rose 0.7 percent to $87.93, valuing the company at $488 billion on the New York Stock Exchange.
`Sense of Responsibility'
``I feel very excited today and also feel a very strong sense of responsibility,'' Chairman Jiang Jiemin said at the Shanghai Stock Exchange. ``This is PetroChina returning to our investors and society.''
Jiang struck a gong as the market opened at 9:30 a.m., then toasted the start of trading with a glass of red wine.
China's largest oil and gas producer had 20.5 billion barrels of oil and gas reserves in 2006, compared with 22.1 billion for Irving, Texas-based Exxon, data compiled by Bloomberg show. PetroChina has been adding new reserves at an average annual rate of 5 percent for the past three years, a faster pace than Exxon, Royal Dutch Shell Plc and BP Plc, the world's largest oil companies by sales.
The share sale, the world's biggest this year, surpassed the 66.6 billion yuan raised by China Shenhua Energy Co. in September. PetroChina raised 66.8 billion yuan selling 4 billion shares last week as investors applied for more than 3.3 trillion yuan of stock, almost 50 times the amount PetroChina sold.
Record Oil
Those investors were until now prevented from directly buying PetroChina stock, missing out on a 15-fold surge as economic growth turned the nation into the largest oil consumer after the U.S. and as crude prices reached a record $96.24 a barrel in New York.
The CSI 300 Index of shares listed on the Shanghai and Shenzhen exchanges has increased about 170 percent this year as mainland Chinese investors seek returns on $2.3 trillion of savings, raising investor concerns that the market is too expensive.
Billionaire investor Warren Buffett's Berkshire Hathaway Inc. sold its stake in PetroChina this year, reaping an eightfold gain that contributed to a 64 percent increase in third-quarter profit for the Omaha, Nebraska-based company. Berkshire had 2.34 billion shares as of the end of 2006, the largest holding after state-owned China National Petroleum Corp.
Buffett said on Oct. 24 that Chinese share prices have risen too fast.
`Carried Away'
``It's easy to be carried away in the stock market when things are going very well,'' he said in the northern Chinese city of Dalian. ``We at Berkshire never buy stocks when we see prices soaring.''
Gains in PetroChina's shares in Shanghai may have more to do with Chinese investors seeking better returns than the outlook for the company's exploration and production operations, or its refining business, known as downstream, said Larry Grace, an oil analyst at Kim Eng Securities Co. in Hong Kong.
``Production is static with limited upside for the next three to four years,'' Grace said. ``As for the downstream, the price controls and overall regulatory trend limit the company's earnings.''
China controls fuel prices to shield consumers in the world's most-populous nation from accelerating inflation. The policy limits the ability of PetroChina and China Petroleum & Chemical Corp. to pass on the burden of higher crude oil costs.
The other Chinese companies that rank among the world's 10 largest by market value are China Petroleum, known as Sinopec, China Mobile Ltd., Industrial & Commercial Bank of China Ltd. and China Construction Bank Corp.
``A-share prices don't reflect global benchmarks of value,'' said Lorraine Tan, head of equity research at Standard & Poor's Investment Services in Singapore. ``There should be other measures of a company's position, including revenue and profitability. Market cap is not necessarily accurate.''
PetroChina's share surge means it beat by years a Russian pledge to create the world's largest company.
OAO Gazprom, Russia's natural gas export monopoly, would become the world's largest company by market value and top $1 trillion in ``seven to 10 years,'' Alexander Medvedev, the company's deputy chief executive officer, said in April. Gazprom's market valuation today is $296 billion.
Citigroup problems grow
by Jonathan Stempel and Dan Wilchins, Reuters - Nov 5, 2007
Citigroup Inc's (NYSE:C - News) problems deepened on Monday as it was unable to assure investors a potential $11 billion write-down for subprime mortgages won't grow, and its nearly pristine credit rating was downgraded.
The largest U.S. bank also reduced previously reported third-quarter profit because of worsening credit market problems, which it expects to reduce future cash flow. Its shares fell more than 5 percent.
"There's no way I think anyone can give you an assurance of how things are going to move," Chief Financial Officer Gary Crittenden said on a conference call. "We've taken what we think is a reasonable stab."
Citigroup's struggles comes as the bank faces a leadership void following Chairman and Chief Executive Charles Prince's resignation on Sunday.
He left after a four-year tenure during which the bank's shares fell 17 percent amid criticism that Citigroup had grown unwieldy and lacked direction.
Former U.S. Treasury Secretary Robert Rubin, who led the bank's executive committee, was named chairman. Sir Win Bischoff, head of Citigroup's European business, became acting chief executive.
The announcement of an expected $8 billion to $11 billion write-down, equal to $5 billion to $7 billion after taxes, helped drag down shares of rivals such as Bank of America Corp (NYSE:BAC - News), Merrill Lynch & Co (NYSE:MER - News) and Morgan Stanley (NYSE:MS - News).
Investors worry that write-downs for subprime mortgages and other debt might not be isolated.
Citigroup on October 15 wrote off just $1.56 billion for its subprime portfolio for the third quarter, part of a $6.5 billion write-down for a variety of losses. The new write-down reflects problems discovered since then.
Analysts said Merrill Lynch may add to its own announced $8.4 billion write-down. That company ousted its chief executive, Stanley O'Neal, last Tuesday.
"It shows the clumsiness of pricing mechanisms across Wall Street," said Michael Holland, a money manager and founder of Holland & Co. in New York. He said it's difficult to value Citigroup "until the dust settles."
PRINCE ALWALEED
Saudi Prince Alwaleed bin Talal, Citigroup's largest individual shareholder, declined to comment on the company's problems until the "picture becomes clearer," spokeswoman Heba Fatani said.
Alwaleed endorsed bringing back Sanford "Sandy" Weill, who built Citigroup and hand-picked Prince to succeed him, to run the company on an interim basis, CNBC television said. Weill is not interested in returning to run Citigroup, but is willing to do what is needed to help, CNBC said.
Much of Citigroup's trouble relates to $43 billion of so-called collateralized debt obligations, or CDOs, linked to lower-quality mortgages.
While these "super-senior" securities were once considered rock-solid, Crittenden said investors stopped buying them.
Fitch Ratings cut Citigroup's credit rating one notch to "AA," its third-highest grade, from "AA-plus," citing "severe pressure" on capital markets operations and "an inhospitable consumer credit environment" as mortgage delinquencies soar.
Its outlook is negative, meaning another cut is possible within two years. Standard & Poor's said it may also downgrade the bank.
Citigroup lowered third-quarter profit to $2.21 billion, or 44 cents per share, from the reported $2.38 billion, or 47 cents, after writing off $270 million for the CDO portfolio. This brought the total quarterly write-down to $6.8 billion.
"We wouldn't be surprised if additional write-downs were forthcoming," wrote Goldman Sachs & Co. analyst William Tanona, who rates Citigroup "neutral."
SHARES FALL
Citigroup shares fell $1.97, or 5.2 percent, to $35.76 in afternoon trading, after earlier falling to $35.61. They began the year at $55.70. The yield on Citigroup's 6 percent notes maturing in 2017 rose to 1.57 percentage points above U.S. Treasuries from 1.45, according to MarketAxess.
Citigroup's problems come as Rubin and Bischoff try to restore morale while hunting for a permanent chief executive.
Four directors, including Rubin and Time Warner Inc (NYSE:TWX - News) Chief Executive Richard Parsons, are conducting the search.
Parsons is expected later Monday to step down as Time Warner chief executive, to be replaced by Chief Operating Officer Jeffrey Bewkes, but will remain chairman, CNBC said.
On a conference call, Rubin said he wants someone at Citigroup with the capacity to "relate ... to the multiplicity of businesses this institution has."
A candidate needs a "strong international focus, not necessarily enormous international experience," he said.
Citigroup operates in more than 100 countries, and generates nearly half its revenue internationally.
The bank declined to say how long the chief executive position will remain unfilled.
"I look forward to an interesting but relatively short period of months before handing over to the next CEO," Bischoff said.
Citigroup Inc's (NYSE:C - News) problems deepened on Monday as it was unable to assure investors a potential $11 billion write-down for subprime mortgages won't grow, and its nearly pristine credit rating was downgraded.
The largest U.S. bank also reduced previously reported third-quarter profit because of worsening credit market problems, which it expects to reduce future cash flow. Its shares fell more than 5 percent.
"There's no way I think anyone can give you an assurance of how things are going to move," Chief Financial Officer Gary Crittenden said on a conference call. "We've taken what we think is a reasonable stab."
Citigroup's struggles comes as the bank faces a leadership void following Chairman and Chief Executive Charles Prince's resignation on Sunday.
He left after a four-year tenure during which the bank's shares fell 17 percent amid criticism that Citigroup had grown unwieldy and lacked direction.
Former U.S. Treasury Secretary Robert Rubin, who led the bank's executive committee, was named chairman. Sir Win Bischoff, head of Citigroup's European business, became acting chief executive.
The announcement of an expected $8 billion to $11 billion write-down, equal to $5 billion to $7 billion after taxes, helped drag down shares of rivals such as Bank of America Corp (NYSE:BAC - News), Merrill Lynch & Co (NYSE:MER - News) and Morgan Stanley (NYSE:MS - News).
Investors worry that write-downs for subprime mortgages and other debt might not be isolated.
Citigroup on October 15 wrote off just $1.56 billion for its subprime portfolio for the third quarter, part of a $6.5 billion write-down for a variety of losses. The new write-down reflects problems discovered since then.
Analysts said Merrill Lynch may add to its own announced $8.4 billion write-down. That company ousted its chief executive, Stanley O'Neal, last Tuesday.
"It shows the clumsiness of pricing mechanisms across Wall Street," said Michael Holland, a money manager and founder of Holland & Co. in New York. He said it's difficult to value Citigroup "until the dust settles."
PRINCE ALWALEED
Saudi Prince Alwaleed bin Talal, Citigroup's largest individual shareholder, declined to comment on the company's problems until the "picture becomes clearer," spokeswoman Heba Fatani said.
Alwaleed endorsed bringing back Sanford "Sandy" Weill, who built Citigroup and hand-picked Prince to succeed him, to run the company on an interim basis, CNBC television said. Weill is not interested in returning to run Citigroup, but is willing to do what is needed to help, CNBC said.
Much of Citigroup's trouble relates to $43 billion of so-called collateralized debt obligations, or CDOs, linked to lower-quality mortgages.
While these "super-senior" securities were once considered rock-solid, Crittenden said investors stopped buying them.
Fitch Ratings cut Citigroup's credit rating one notch to "AA," its third-highest grade, from "AA-plus," citing "severe pressure" on capital markets operations and "an inhospitable consumer credit environment" as mortgage delinquencies soar.
Its outlook is negative, meaning another cut is possible within two years. Standard & Poor's said it may also downgrade the bank.
Citigroup lowered third-quarter profit to $2.21 billion, or 44 cents per share, from the reported $2.38 billion, or 47 cents, after writing off $270 million for the CDO portfolio. This brought the total quarterly write-down to $6.8 billion.
"We wouldn't be surprised if additional write-downs were forthcoming," wrote Goldman Sachs & Co. analyst William Tanona, who rates Citigroup "neutral."
SHARES FALL
Citigroup shares fell $1.97, or 5.2 percent, to $35.76 in afternoon trading, after earlier falling to $35.61. They began the year at $55.70. The yield on Citigroup's 6 percent notes maturing in 2017 rose to 1.57 percentage points above U.S. Treasuries from 1.45, according to MarketAxess.
Citigroup's problems come as Rubin and Bischoff try to restore morale while hunting for a permanent chief executive.
Four directors, including Rubin and Time Warner Inc (NYSE:TWX - News) Chief Executive Richard Parsons, are conducting the search.
Parsons is expected later Monday to step down as Time Warner chief executive, to be replaced by Chief Operating Officer Jeffrey Bewkes, but will remain chairman, CNBC said.
On a conference call, Rubin said he wants someone at Citigroup with the capacity to "relate ... to the multiplicity of businesses this institution has."
A candidate needs a "strong international focus, not necessarily enormous international experience," he said.
Citigroup operates in more than 100 countries, and generates nearly half its revenue internationally.
The bank declined to say how long the chief executive position will remain unfilled.
"I look forward to an interesting but relatively short period of months before handing over to the next CEO," Bischoff said.
OIL prices aren't rising - the US dollar is plummeting!
Source: http://www.wakeupfromyourslumber.com/node/4476
Oil traders increased BETS that December futures will reach $125 a barrel because of possible disruptions to Middle East supplies and rising demand.
Here we are (us, Americans), day after day, listening to the media tell us all about how "traders" are "trading" oil at ever higher prices because they're a-scared of this shortage or that disruption, or this crisis, or that air strike.
And all the while we watch anxiously, preparing to cut back on our gasoline or dish out more dollars for our commutes.
Well, I have news for you.
When someone "BETS" that something is or is not going to happen and then, based on that bet, buys or sells IOUs for other people's tangible goods, they're not "traders," they're bookies.
They call themselves "traders" because they want to be admired, not despised.
But, two-bit bookies is all they are.
Didn't any of you see the movie "Trading Places" with Eddie Murphy and Dan Akroyd??? Billy Ray will tell you!
We pay higher prices not because of REAL crises or REAL shortages but BECAUSE of IMAGINED shortages, and ANTICIPATED disruptions, many of which NEVER HAPPEN.
In short, we PAY for their rampant hysteria and insatiable GREED.
Traders held call options to buy 2,526 contracts, each representing the right to buy 1,000 barrels, of December oil at $125 in New York as of Oct. 29, from 1 lot on June 29, New York Mercantile Exchange data show. BETS on $100 oil are also surging: Traders held options to buy 49.7 million barrels of December oil at that price on Oct. 30, up from 30 million barrels on Jan. 2.
Crude oil for December delivery rose to a record $96.24 a barrel in New York today, the highest since the futures began trading in 1983. Prices have soared 19 percent the past month as demand pared inventories, a weaker dollar spurred investors to switch into commodities, and political tension in Iran and Iraq attracted speculative buying.
"A few years ago, when triple-digit oil was talked about, it was tempered by negative responses," said Anthony Nunan, deputy general manager of risk management at Mitsubishi Corp. in Tokyo. "Slowly, it's becoming a reality. It's not crazy anymore, it's a reasonable target."
The fact is, these insane spikes in the price of oil have far less to do with supply and demand of OIL than they have to do with the supply and demand of DOLLARS.
With the dollar plummeting down to the pits of hell, people are dumping it left and right.
All that money has to go somewhere - after all, MONEY WAS NOT MADE TO STORE UNDER YOUR COUCH!
These traders know that! So, instead of storing it under their couch, where it just sits there without "appreciating," they "store" it by "buying" something of value (anything but the dollar, which is worthless).
Since the real estate market is officially DEAD and BURIED (because people can defer buying a house), they choose to "invest" their "money" in the types of commodities that they know that people CANNOT LIVE WITHOUT - thus, oil (and food) is perfect (last I checked a gallon of milk was $4).
So, that's what it all boils down to - the price of oil is skyrocketing not because oil is getting more "expensive," but because the dollar is becoming WORTHLESS.
Next time someone tries to convince you that they're "traders," tell them you know better.
Oil traders increased BETS that December futures will reach $125 a barrel because of possible disruptions to Middle East supplies and rising demand.
Here we are (us, Americans), day after day, listening to the media tell us all about how "traders" are "trading" oil at ever higher prices because they're a-scared of this shortage or that disruption, or this crisis, or that air strike.
And all the while we watch anxiously, preparing to cut back on our gasoline or dish out more dollars for our commutes.
Well, I have news for you.
When someone "BETS" that something is or is not going to happen and then, based on that bet, buys or sells IOUs for other people's tangible goods, they're not "traders," they're bookies.
They call themselves "traders" because they want to be admired, not despised.
But, two-bit bookies is all they are.
Didn't any of you see the movie "Trading Places" with Eddie Murphy and Dan Akroyd??? Billy Ray will tell you!
We pay higher prices not because of REAL crises or REAL shortages but BECAUSE of IMAGINED shortages, and ANTICIPATED disruptions, many of which NEVER HAPPEN.
In short, we PAY for their rampant hysteria and insatiable GREED.
Traders held call options to buy 2,526 contracts, each representing the right to buy 1,000 barrels, of December oil at $125 in New York as of Oct. 29, from 1 lot on June 29, New York Mercantile Exchange data show. BETS on $100 oil are also surging: Traders held options to buy 49.7 million barrels of December oil at that price on Oct. 30, up from 30 million barrels on Jan. 2.
Crude oil for December delivery rose to a record $96.24 a barrel in New York today, the highest since the futures began trading in 1983. Prices have soared 19 percent the past month as demand pared inventories, a weaker dollar spurred investors to switch into commodities, and political tension in Iran and Iraq attracted speculative buying.
"A few years ago, when triple-digit oil was talked about, it was tempered by negative responses," said Anthony Nunan, deputy general manager of risk management at Mitsubishi Corp. in Tokyo. "Slowly, it's becoming a reality. It's not crazy anymore, it's a reasonable target."
The fact is, these insane spikes in the price of oil have far less to do with supply and demand of OIL than they have to do with the supply and demand of DOLLARS.
With the dollar plummeting down to the pits of hell, people are dumping it left and right.
All that money has to go somewhere - after all, MONEY WAS NOT MADE TO STORE UNDER YOUR COUCH!
These traders know that! So, instead of storing it under their couch, where it just sits there without "appreciating," they "store" it by "buying" something of value (anything but the dollar, which is worthless).
Since the real estate market is officially DEAD and BURIED (because people can defer buying a house), they choose to "invest" their "money" in the types of commodities that they know that people CANNOT LIVE WITHOUT - thus, oil (and food) is perfect (last I checked a gallon of milk was $4).
So, that's what it all boils down to - the price of oil is skyrocketing not because oil is getting more "expensive," but because the dollar is becoming WORTHLESS.
Next time someone tries to convince you that they're "traders," tell them you know better.
New AG Nominee: Zionist Dream Come True
Source: http://www.wakeupfromyourslumber.com/node/4524
The case that first secured Judge Mukasey a lasting reputation was the 1995 trial of 10 militant Muslims who were convicted of a plot to blow up the United Nations and other landmarks around the city. Following the trial — which lasted the better part of a year — Judge Mukasey sentenced the central defendant, the terrorist-sheik Omar Abdel Rahman and another man, El Sayyid Nosair, to life in prison.
Judge Mukasey has also presided over high-profile civil cases, including World Trade Center developer Larry Silverstein's battle with the insurers of the trade center.
NY Sun
From helping shakedown insurance companies over the Holocaust™, to trying alleged Muslim perps in the first WTC "false-flag" event in 1993, to helping one of his own secure billions of dollars in questionable insurance payments to the then owner of the WTC, Larry Silverstein, United States Atorney General nominee Mukasey has got to be a Zionist dream come true.
When he does gain office, and he will, with his buds in the Senate, Schumer, Feinstein and Specter paving the way, look for Mukasey to smother any attempts to seek the truth on the actual perpetrators behind 9/11.
One of his first acts will be to throw up roadblocks, if not actually dismiss, the AIAPC spying case, which is due for trial after the first of the year.
That case has members of AIPAC nervous, since if it would go to trial, there could be some nasty secrets revealed about the AIPAC spy ring which has infiltrated the US government at the highest levels.
And some of the people that have been subpoenaed, Secretary of State Rice, NSA honcho Stephen Hadley and Israeli Firster, Eliot Abrams, are the architects of the war against Iraq and the upcoming war against Iran. These types of people don't waste time in courtrooms, not when they could be doing their Zionist masters bidding.
One imagines Mukasey will take his oath of office with his hand on the Torah and not the KLV Bible.
Keep in mind that Mukasey is also on Rudy Giuliani's campaign committee as a Justice Advisor. Just what the megalomaniac Giuliani needs on his campaign: A US Attorney General who is an advocate of torture.
The case that first secured Judge Mukasey a lasting reputation was the 1995 trial of 10 militant Muslims who were convicted of a plot to blow up the United Nations and other landmarks around the city. Following the trial — which lasted the better part of a year — Judge Mukasey sentenced the central defendant, the terrorist-sheik Omar Abdel Rahman and another man, El Sayyid Nosair, to life in prison.
Judge Mukasey has also presided over high-profile civil cases, including World Trade Center developer Larry Silverstein's battle with the insurers of the trade center.
NY Sun
From helping shakedown insurance companies over the Holocaust™, to trying alleged Muslim perps in the first WTC "false-flag" event in 1993, to helping one of his own secure billions of dollars in questionable insurance payments to the then owner of the WTC, Larry Silverstein, United States Atorney General nominee Mukasey has got to be a Zionist dream come true.
When he does gain office, and he will, with his buds in the Senate, Schumer, Feinstein and Specter paving the way, look for Mukasey to smother any attempts to seek the truth on the actual perpetrators behind 9/11.
One of his first acts will be to throw up roadblocks, if not actually dismiss, the AIAPC spying case, which is due for trial after the first of the year.
That case has members of AIPAC nervous, since if it would go to trial, there could be some nasty secrets revealed about the AIPAC spy ring which has infiltrated the US government at the highest levels.
And some of the people that have been subpoenaed, Secretary of State Rice, NSA honcho Stephen Hadley and Israeli Firster, Eliot Abrams, are the architects of the war against Iraq and the upcoming war against Iran. These types of people don't waste time in courtrooms, not when they could be doing their Zionist masters bidding.
One imagines Mukasey will take his oath of office with his hand on the Torah and not the KLV Bible.
Keep in mind that Mukasey is also on Rudy Giuliani's campaign committee as a Justice Advisor. Just what the megalomaniac Giuliani needs on his campaign: A US Attorney General who is an advocate of torture.
'Blank check' seen headed Bush's way, despite Democratic promises to change course in Iraq
by Nick Juliano - November 5, 2007Democratic leaders in Congress are quietly preparing to give President Bush essentially everything he wants to keep the Iraq war going for at least another six months without forcing any change in course.
Swept into power on the votes of war-weary Americans last year, Congressional Democrats have so far failed in all their attempts to curtail Bush's war efforts. As they consider the president's latest request for $200 billion in supplementary war funding party leaders have pledged not to hand over another "blank check."
But, as Roll Call reports, a "blank check" is exactly what appears headed for the Pentagon.
"Democratic leaders continue to fear GOP attacks that cutting off or slowing funds would hurt the troops, despite anger among the Democratic base over the party’s failure to use Congress’ power of the purse to end the war," reports the Capitol Hill newspaper's Steven T. Dennis.
House Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-CA) and Appropriations Committee Chairman David Obey (D-WI) have said they won't consider a supplemental funding bill that doesn't include timelines for troop withdrawals. But, Dennis reports, "Democrats are quietly preparing to give the president enough spending flexibility to keep the war going anyway," for as long as six more months.
As adamant as they say they are about tying war funding to deescalation timetables, Democratic leaders appear even more firmly against an overall cut-off of war funds, which critics say may be their only recourse to actually effect a draw-down of troops from Iraq.
"Sure we have the power on anything to stop the money ... but the thing we have to do is make sure we do it the right way," Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid said on a liberal radio show last month. "It's not a question of all or nothing; it's a question of making sure we do the right thing."
Congress approved billions in extra funding and stopgap spending resolutions after Gen. David Petraeus' testimony on Capitol Hill in September. Next up is the regular Defense spending bill, which Democrats are crafting to allow funding to be diverted from regular Pentagon accounts to fund the war, according to Roll Call. Appropriations Chairman John Murtha (D-PA) told the paper that the Defense Department would be able to maintain the war "until May or June" with the extra flexibility.
In the Senate, an aide told the paper that leaders are considering "short bursts" of war funding as Democrats continue to try to persuade war-weary Republicans to break with the president and support course-changing legislation.
Democrats acknowledge frustration among voters, especially the party's liberal base that has long been calling for an end to America's adventure in Iraq. Pelosi acknowledged the frustration and said she too was frustrated at the lack of progress toward ending the war.
Whether Democrats will be able to reverse the tide depends on their ability to re-frame the debate and stand firm against funding for anything except redeployment, an aide to a Democratic member of the Out of Iraq Caucus told the paper.
"As long as leadership is not willing to challenge the way the president is hiding behind the troops," the aide said, "they're going to continue to get rolled."
Citigroup Inc. Searches for New CEO and Prepares to Take $8 Billion-$11 Billion in Losses
by Madlen Read, Associated Press - Nov 5, 2007
Citigroup Inc. shareholders may have finally gotten what they wanted -- the resignation of Chairman and Chief Executive Charles Prince -- but Wall Street's worries are far from over.
At an emergency meeting of the Citi board Sunday, the nation's largest bank announced Prince's widely expected departure, but also estimated it would take additional losses of $8 billion to $11 billion. In the third quarter, it already took a hit of $6.5 billion in asset mark-downs and other credit-related losses.
Meanwhile, the company remains entrenched in a mire of off-the-books investment vehicles funded by risky debt. Citigroup may need to take the fall for them if they fail.
And Citigroup's not alone in its debt problems. When borrowers with poor credit stopped paying their mortgages, many banks not only had to take losses on those subprime mortgages, they also saw instruments in their portfolios backed by mortgages plummet in value. No one knows how much longer home prices will keep slumping, and whether problems related to the housing market will start affecting other types of consumer debt.
Also to be seen is how much longer the credit markets will stay tight, and if the currently strong portions of the economy will be hampered by banks' inability to make loans.
"It's the lending practices," said Steven Goldman, chief market strategist at Weeden & Co. in Greenwich, Conn. "How much is that going to be impaired?"
Citi said former U.S. Treasury Secretary Robert E. Rubin, once co-chairman of Goldman, Sachs & Co., will be chairing the beleaguered bank. Sir Win Bischoff, chairman of Citi Europe and a member of the Citi management and operating committees, will serve as interim CEO.
Prince joined former Merrill Lynch & Co. CEO Stan O'Neal, who resigned from the investment bank last month, as the highest-profile casualties of the debt crisis that has cost billions at other financial institutions as well.
Prince, 57, became chief executive of Citigroup in October 2003. Many shareholders criticized him openly for much of his tenure, as Citigroup's stock lagged that of its peers while Prince executed what was called an umbrella model of corporate organization, with several separate lines of business. Shares closed Friday at $37.73, about 20 percent below where they were when Prince became CEO.
Rubin, 69, after 26 years at Goldman Sachs, became President Bill Clinton's chief economic adviser in 1993 before leading the Treasury Department. His experience steering the U.S. economy during the Mexican and Asian financial crises could come in handy as Citigroup attempts to navigate the tight credit markets.
Bischoff was the chairman of the British investment bank Schroders PLC, then joined Salomon Smith Barney Inc., a subsidiary of Citi, when it acquired Schroders. He began his current position in May 2000.
"There's no change of strategy that we see, actually, going forward," Bischoff said, noting that the company still plans to focus on international expansion, at least until a new CEO is chosen.
It was not known whether Bischoff was in the running to replace Prince as CEO. Before Sunday's meeting, many ideas for Prince's replacement were floated by industry watchers; one name that has come up often is John Thain, who was once president of Goldman Sachs and is now CEO of NYSE Euronext.
But it may take more than a figurehead change to restore shareholders' confidence in Citigroup, considering how much bad debt it has on its hands and its hard-to-shed image of a rule-flouting old boys club.
In 2004, Citigroup had to close its Japan Private Bank amid allegations of improper activities. And in January, former head of global wealth management Todd Thomson resigned, reportedly having been forced out for extravagant spending and dealings with CNBC anchor Maria Bartiromo.
Citigroup did a minor reshuffing in early October, combining its investment banking and alternative investments businesses into one unit led by Vikram Pandit, who had led Citigroup's alternative investments unit. Tom Maheras, co-CEO of the investment banking unit, left.
Citigroup Inc. shareholders may have finally gotten what they wanted -- the resignation of Chairman and Chief Executive Charles Prince -- but Wall Street's worries are far from over.
At an emergency meeting of the Citi board Sunday, the nation's largest bank announced Prince's widely expected departure, but also estimated it would take additional losses of $8 billion to $11 billion. In the third quarter, it already took a hit of $6.5 billion in asset mark-downs and other credit-related losses.
Meanwhile, the company remains entrenched in a mire of off-the-books investment vehicles funded by risky debt. Citigroup may need to take the fall for them if they fail.
And Citigroup's not alone in its debt problems. When borrowers with poor credit stopped paying their mortgages, many banks not only had to take losses on those subprime mortgages, they also saw instruments in their portfolios backed by mortgages plummet in value. No one knows how much longer home prices will keep slumping, and whether problems related to the housing market will start affecting other types of consumer debt.
Also to be seen is how much longer the credit markets will stay tight, and if the currently strong portions of the economy will be hampered by banks' inability to make loans.
"It's the lending practices," said Steven Goldman, chief market strategist at Weeden & Co. in Greenwich, Conn. "How much is that going to be impaired?"
Citi said former U.S. Treasury Secretary Robert E. Rubin, once co-chairman of Goldman, Sachs & Co., will be chairing the beleaguered bank. Sir Win Bischoff, chairman of Citi Europe and a member of the Citi management and operating committees, will serve as interim CEO.
Prince joined former Merrill Lynch & Co. CEO Stan O'Neal, who resigned from the investment bank last month, as the highest-profile casualties of the debt crisis that has cost billions at other financial institutions as well.
Prince, 57, became chief executive of Citigroup in October 2003. Many shareholders criticized him openly for much of his tenure, as Citigroup's stock lagged that of its peers while Prince executed what was called an umbrella model of corporate organization, with several separate lines of business. Shares closed Friday at $37.73, about 20 percent below where they were when Prince became CEO.
Rubin, 69, after 26 years at Goldman Sachs, became President Bill Clinton's chief economic adviser in 1993 before leading the Treasury Department. His experience steering the U.S. economy during the Mexican and Asian financial crises could come in handy as Citigroup attempts to navigate the tight credit markets.
Bischoff was the chairman of the British investment bank Schroders PLC, then joined Salomon Smith Barney Inc., a subsidiary of Citi, when it acquired Schroders. He began his current position in May 2000.
"There's no change of strategy that we see, actually, going forward," Bischoff said, noting that the company still plans to focus on international expansion, at least until a new CEO is chosen.
It was not known whether Bischoff was in the running to replace Prince as CEO. Before Sunday's meeting, many ideas for Prince's replacement were floated by industry watchers; one name that has come up often is John Thain, who was once president of Goldman Sachs and is now CEO of NYSE Euronext.
But it may take more than a figurehead change to restore shareholders' confidence in Citigroup, considering how much bad debt it has on its hands and its hard-to-shed image of a rule-flouting old boys club.
In 2004, Citigroup had to close its Japan Private Bank amid allegations of improper activities. And in January, former head of global wealth management Todd Thomson resigned, reportedly having been forced out for extravagant spending and dealings with CNBC anchor Maria Bartiromo.
Citigroup did a minor reshuffing in early October, combining its investment banking and alternative investments businesses into one unit led by Vikram Pandit, who had led Citigroup's alternative investments unit. Tom Maheras, co-CEO of the investment banking unit, left.
Screen violence tied to boys' aggression: study
by Andrew Stern, Reuters - No 5, 2007
Boys aged 2 to 5 who viewed an hour of on-screen violence a day increased their chances of being overly aggressive later in childhood, but the association was not seen in girls, researchers said on Monday.
"This new study provides further evidence of how important and powerful television and media are as young children develop," study author Dr. Dimitri Christakis of Seattle Children's Hospital Research Institute said.
"Of 184 boys (in the study), 25 of them had serious problems with aggression and for each hour on average per day they had watched violent TV, they were three times more likely to be in that group" than those who did not watch violent programming, Christakis said in a telephone interview.
Christakis and fellow researchers, writing in the journal Pediatrics, analyzed the television and video viewing habits of 330 children aged 2 to 5, then assessed their behavior five years later.
Christakis said many parents may be unaware that the shows or video games their young children watch are violent or inappropriate for their age group.
"Kids that age can't distinguish fantasy from reality" and need it explained to them, he said. "Cartoon violence teaches kids that violence is funny and without consequence. So when people in cartoons have their heads flattened and they pop right back out and kids laugh at it, they really are thinking there are no serious consequence to hitting someone in the head, which obviously isn't true in the real world."
TRAJECTORY OF AGGRESSION
Aggression is evident even in infants, but "the toddler and preschool years constitute the time during which most children learn to use nonaggressive alternatives ... . When that does not occur, young children can continue on a trajectory of aggression," the study said.
The aggressiveness identified in the study when the children reached the ages of 7 to 10 -- being mean to others without regret, destructiveness, disobedience at school -- could presage bad behavior into adolescence and adulthood, said Christakis, citing previous studies.
The association between violent programming and overly aggressive behavior was not found among the 146 girls in the study, who tended to watch more educational and nonviolent shows than the boys, Christakis said.
Boys may be more genetically predisposed to aggression, "so the same level of exposure brings out aggression in them where it doesn't in girls. It also could be boys are socialized to respond aggressively," he said.
"We'll be launching an experimental study in kids this age and try to reduce the amount of violent TV they watch and increase the amount of pro-social programs -- which should tell us a lot more," Christakis said.
Boys aged 2 to 5 who viewed an hour of on-screen violence a day increased their chances of being overly aggressive later in childhood, but the association was not seen in girls, researchers said on Monday.
"This new study provides further evidence of how important and powerful television and media are as young children develop," study author Dr. Dimitri Christakis of Seattle Children's Hospital Research Institute said.
"Of 184 boys (in the study), 25 of them had serious problems with aggression and for each hour on average per day they had watched violent TV, they were three times more likely to be in that group" than those who did not watch violent programming, Christakis said in a telephone interview.
Christakis and fellow researchers, writing in the journal Pediatrics, analyzed the television and video viewing habits of 330 children aged 2 to 5, then assessed their behavior five years later.
Christakis said many parents may be unaware that the shows or video games their young children watch are violent or inappropriate for their age group.
"Kids that age can't distinguish fantasy from reality" and need it explained to them, he said. "Cartoon violence teaches kids that violence is funny and without consequence. So when people in cartoons have their heads flattened and they pop right back out and kids laugh at it, they really are thinking there are no serious consequence to hitting someone in the head, which obviously isn't true in the real world."
TRAJECTORY OF AGGRESSION
Aggression is evident even in infants, but "the toddler and preschool years constitute the time during which most children learn to use nonaggressive alternatives ... . When that does not occur, young children can continue on a trajectory of aggression," the study said.
The aggressiveness identified in the study when the children reached the ages of 7 to 10 -- being mean to others without regret, destructiveness, disobedience at school -- could presage bad behavior into adolescence and adulthood, said Christakis, citing previous studies.
The association between violent programming and overly aggressive behavior was not found among the 146 girls in the study, who tended to watch more educational and nonviolent shows than the boys, Christakis said.
Boys may be more genetically predisposed to aggression, "so the same level of exposure brings out aggression in them where it doesn't in girls. It also could be boys are socialized to respond aggressively," he said.
"We'll be launching an experimental study in kids this age and try to reduce the amount of violent TV they watch and increase the amount of pro-social programs -- which should tell us a lot more," Christakis said.
CNN Wants to Know If Ron Paul is a “Flake”
by Greg Wasserstrom and Mike Aivaz - November 4, 2007
Republican presidential candidate Rep. Ron Paul (R-TX) spoke to CNN’s Soledad O’Brian about his presidential run and his libertarian beliefs, emphasizing his view that US foreign policy is drastically amiss. Paul has garnered more attention in the media than his poll numbers would reflect due to his Internet supremacy and surprising ability to raise campaign cash.
The candidate explained that in a Paul presidency, “[The military] would be more traditional, it would be following the advice of the founding fathers, it would following the advice of President Bush when he ran in the year 2000, that we shouldn’t be involved in nation building, we shouldn’t be policing the world, we should have a more humble foreign policy.”
“Most people can figure it out that we can’t even fight this war without borrowing money from China, Japan and Saudi Arabia,” Paul said of danger presented by continued American involvement in Iraq. “Anytime they want to bring us to our knees, they can.”
Paul’s detractors on both the right and left have charged that his libertarian views are out of step even with many of the people who are drawn to his candidacy because of his anti-war position. Much of Paul’s young, internet savvy following would be turned off by Paul’s positions on domestic issues, critics suggest.
“I’ve never voted once to spend one penny on Social Security, I want to make the system work while it’s there,” Paul said when O’Brien asked him to explain his support for eliminating popular programs and government departments.
“It’s not ideal, it’s not part of the constitution, but I say the only way we can tide our people over who are dependent, we’ve taught them to be dependent, we don’t want to throw them out in the street, and we can save hundreds of billions of dollars if we give up on our American empire.”
“If you pull up articles on you consistently, you’ll see, on occasion but consistently, a lot of people will describe you as a flake,” O’Brien said, teeing up her final question of the interview. “What do you make when you read something like that about yourself?”
“Well, that and radical and extremist,” Paul replied. “I think they’re in charge. I think anybody who thinks they can print money out of thin air and think the dollar is going to keep it’s value and not cause economic harm, I think that’s a pretty flaky idea. That’s pretty bizarre to me.”
Republican presidential candidate Rep. Ron Paul (R-TX) spoke to CNN’s Soledad O’Brian about his presidential run and his libertarian beliefs, emphasizing his view that US foreign policy is drastically amiss. Paul has garnered more attention in the media than his poll numbers would reflect due to his Internet supremacy and surprising ability to raise campaign cash.
The candidate explained that in a Paul presidency, “[The military] would be more traditional, it would be following the advice of the founding fathers, it would following the advice of President Bush when he ran in the year 2000, that we shouldn’t be involved in nation building, we shouldn’t be policing the world, we should have a more humble foreign policy.”
“Most people can figure it out that we can’t even fight this war without borrowing money from China, Japan and Saudi Arabia,” Paul said of danger presented by continued American involvement in Iraq. “Anytime they want to bring us to our knees, they can.”
Paul’s detractors on both the right and left have charged that his libertarian views are out of step even with many of the people who are drawn to his candidacy because of his anti-war position. Much of Paul’s young, internet savvy following would be turned off by Paul’s positions on domestic issues, critics suggest.
“I’ve never voted once to spend one penny on Social Security, I want to make the system work while it’s there,” Paul said when O’Brien asked him to explain his support for eliminating popular programs and government departments.
“It’s not ideal, it’s not part of the constitution, but I say the only way we can tide our people over who are dependent, we’ve taught them to be dependent, we don’t want to throw them out in the street, and we can save hundreds of billions of dollars if we give up on our American empire.”
“If you pull up articles on you consistently, you’ll see, on occasion but consistently, a lot of people will describe you as a flake,” O’Brien said, teeing up her final question of the interview. “What do you make when you read something like that about yourself?”
“Well, that and radical and extremist,” Paul replied. “I think they’re in charge. I think anybody who thinks they can print money out of thin air and think the dollar is going to keep it’s value and not cause economic harm, I think that’s a pretty flaky idea. That’s pretty bizarre to me.”
The Iraq war has become a disaster that we have chosen to forget
With the media subdued, governments have not been held to account for the biggest political calamity of our time
by Madeleine Bunting, The Guardian - November 5, 2007
'You think you are innocent, but you're not," said the British Muslim suicide bomber in the Channel 4 television drama Britz last week. As the compelling actor Manjinder Virk recited her suicide statement to camera, she went on: thousands of women and children are dying every day in Iraq and Afghanistan, and yet the governments responsible have been returned to power.
Her assertion sticks in the mind because it goes straight to the heart of how we choose to forget, choose not to understand; and how from such choices it becomes possible to imagine our innocence.
That's not to say that her own moral choices were defensible - she blew up herself, her beloved brother, fellow Muslims and plenty of women in the crowd - but the challenge even from such a morally flawed character persists. Can we claim innocence of the chaotic violence of Iraq now normalised into the background of our lives? Suicide bombs have long since become routine radio noise. We're numbed to the atrocities; except for some stalwarts, the initial anti-war activism has been crowded out by other responsibilities. Life goes on, even if in Baghdad it frequently doesn't.
And to accompany the indifference is the creeping denial of responsibility. Government ministers now talk of Iraq as a tragedy, as if it was a natural disaster and they had no hand in its making. There's a public revulsion at the violent sectarian struggles best summed up as "a plague on all their houses", as even the horror gives way to exhaustion.
The irony is that in this great age of communications and saturation media, this is perhaps the most important war to become nigh on impossible to report. Unless the reporter is embedded with the occupation forces, it takes either terrifying courage or extraordinary ingenuity to bring images to our screens of those caught up in the awful maelstrom of this imploded country. Without the human stories that bring people and their suffering so vividly to life, there is little chance of public opinion re-engaging with the biggest political calamity of our time.
The Iraq war represents the end of the media as a major actor in war. In Bosnia journalists stirred western Europe's conscience with their vivid accounts; these were people we came to understand, recognise and empathise with, and public opinion forced recalcitrant governments to take note and act. It was a lesson not lost on the Kosovans: they ensured the media saw every atrocity, and the coverage was used to secure a comparable outcome to Bosnia - western governments were forced to act. But in Iraq the number of journalists killed (now at least 138) means that this war is near private - the images and people who might make the horror of this war real don't reach our screens. It's no longer a war that is accessible to public scrutiny or to democratic engagement.
It may have been Iraqi suspicion of western media that ensured this outcome, but it's one that serves US interests nicely. The indifference, the exhaustion and the difficulty of reporting leaves the US forces with arguably a freer hand than they have had in any field of operations for decades. While the Americans and the British keep trying to persuade their public that the war is over - a habit initiated by George Bush himself when he announced his pyrrhic victory on an aircraft carrier in the Gulf in May 2003 - they can carry on fighting it. And there are plenty of people only too eager to hope their political leaders are right and that the whole problem of a country they never knew much about just goes away.
All of which makes the achievement of the few who do break through this news blackout all the more remarkable - Ghaith Abdul-Ahad on this paper, and the Guardian's Emmy-winning film made by an Iraqi doctor on his Baghdad hospital, for example. This week a book is published by another: Dahr Jamail was a mountain guide in Alaska in 2003 who began to take an interest in US foreign policy and ended up picking up his backpack and swapping American mountains for Baghdad and Falluja, driven by a fierce moral imperative that "as a US citizen he was complicit in the devastation of Iraq". After more than three years of reporting he has post-traumatic stress disorder, but has not lost his conviction that "if the people of the United States had the real story about what their government has done in Iraq, the occupation would already have ended".
What is chilling about Jamail's accounts is the routine destructiveness of the US forces; how they demolish nearby homes after a roadside bomb, leave unexploded munitions in the fields of farmers who don't give information, bulldoze orchards. Livelihoods destroyed, families displaced every day, incubating hatred. One of the worst episodes occurred when Jamail's friend was caught by chance at prayer time in a mosque when worshippers were shot dead, with children trapped in the mayhem: a holy place desecrated in a US operation. We may know nothing of such routine details of the prosecution of this war, but these are the stories filling the Arabic media. Across the Muslim world they are taken as irrefutable evidence of the humiliation and persecution of their Islamic faith. We can only pretend we don't understand.
In the meantime, the biggest human displacement crisis in the Middle East for 60 years is unfolding, the fastest growing refugee crisis in the world. One in six Iraqis has now been displaced, 60,000 a month are leaving the country, spilling into Syria (1.4 million) and Jordan (750,000). In an uncanny magnification of our own anxieties about migration and the strain on public services, the capacities of these two Middle Eastern countries to educate thousands of traumatised children or provide basic healthcare have been swamped. The UN's budget for refugees in Syria for 2007 is $700,000 - less than a dollar per person. But this crisis offers no telegenic vistas - people are crammed into the apartments of friends rather than tents on a windy African plain. So it gets even less attention.
Of these millions, Britain confirmed last week that it will take just 500 refugees with a record of having worked for British forces. It drags its feet over offering any more assistance for dispersal, despite requests from the UN; of 123 from Jordan whom the UN have allocated to Britain on tight criteria of having relatives in this country to provide for them, we have so far accepted only three. Britain washes its hands of the consequences of its invasion with the US. There's a horrible contradiction here: those in power accept no responsibility. Those who might have a sense of responsibility feel utterly powerless.
It can take a generation or more for people to grasp the significance and magnitude of historical events. Facts that are infinitely more bizarre and awful than fiction - as Naomi Klein's book The Shock Doctrine documents - take a long time to be fully absorbed. The Iraq war has been about the abject failure of democracy: governments have not been held to account for a war that has squandered lives, billions in public money and the stability of an entire region with reckless criminality.
by Madeleine Bunting, The Guardian - November 5, 2007
'You think you are innocent, but you're not," said the British Muslim suicide bomber in the Channel 4 television drama Britz last week. As the compelling actor Manjinder Virk recited her suicide statement to camera, she went on: thousands of women and children are dying every day in Iraq and Afghanistan, and yet the governments responsible have been returned to power.
Her assertion sticks in the mind because it goes straight to the heart of how we choose to forget, choose not to understand; and how from such choices it becomes possible to imagine our innocence.
That's not to say that her own moral choices were defensible - she blew up herself, her beloved brother, fellow Muslims and plenty of women in the crowd - but the challenge even from such a morally flawed character persists. Can we claim innocence of the chaotic violence of Iraq now normalised into the background of our lives? Suicide bombs have long since become routine radio noise. We're numbed to the atrocities; except for some stalwarts, the initial anti-war activism has been crowded out by other responsibilities. Life goes on, even if in Baghdad it frequently doesn't.
And to accompany the indifference is the creeping denial of responsibility. Government ministers now talk of Iraq as a tragedy, as if it was a natural disaster and they had no hand in its making. There's a public revulsion at the violent sectarian struggles best summed up as "a plague on all their houses", as even the horror gives way to exhaustion.
The irony is that in this great age of communications and saturation media, this is perhaps the most important war to become nigh on impossible to report. Unless the reporter is embedded with the occupation forces, it takes either terrifying courage or extraordinary ingenuity to bring images to our screens of those caught up in the awful maelstrom of this imploded country. Without the human stories that bring people and their suffering so vividly to life, there is little chance of public opinion re-engaging with the biggest political calamity of our time.
The Iraq war represents the end of the media as a major actor in war. In Bosnia journalists stirred western Europe's conscience with their vivid accounts; these were people we came to understand, recognise and empathise with, and public opinion forced recalcitrant governments to take note and act. It was a lesson not lost on the Kosovans: they ensured the media saw every atrocity, and the coverage was used to secure a comparable outcome to Bosnia - western governments were forced to act. But in Iraq the number of journalists killed (now at least 138) means that this war is near private - the images and people who might make the horror of this war real don't reach our screens. It's no longer a war that is accessible to public scrutiny or to democratic engagement.
It may have been Iraqi suspicion of western media that ensured this outcome, but it's one that serves US interests nicely. The indifference, the exhaustion and the difficulty of reporting leaves the US forces with arguably a freer hand than they have had in any field of operations for decades. While the Americans and the British keep trying to persuade their public that the war is over - a habit initiated by George Bush himself when he announced his pyrrhic victory on an aircraft carrier in the Gulf in May 2003 - they can carry on fighting it. And there are plenty of people only too eager to hope their political leaders are right and that the whole problem of a country they never knew much about just goes away.
All of which makes the achievement of the few who do break through this news blackout all the more remarkable - Ghaith Abdul-Ahad on this paper, and the Guardian's Emmy-winning film made by an Iraqi doctor on his Baghdad hospital, for example. This week a book is published by another: Dahr Jamail was a mountain guide in Alaska in 2003 who began to take an interest in US foreign policy and ended up picking up his backpack and swapping American mountains for Baghdad and Falluja, driven by a fierce moral imperative that "as a US citizen he was complicit in the devastation of Iraq". After more than three years of reporting he has post-traumatic stress disorder, but has not lost his conviction that "if the people of the United States had the real story about what their government has done in Iraq, the occupation would already have ended".
What is chilling about Jamail's accounts is the routine destructiveness of the US forces; how they demolish nearby homes after a roadside bomb, leave unexploded munitions in the fields of farmers who don't give information, bulldoze orchards. Livelihoods destroyed, families displaced every day, incubating hatred. One of the worst episodes occurred when Jamail's friend was caught by chance at prayer time in a mosque when worshippers were shot dead, with children trapped in the mayhem: a holy place desecrated in a US operation. We may know nothing of such routine details of the prosecution of this war, but these are the stories filling the Arabic media. Across the Muslim world they are taken as irrefutable evidence of the humiliation and persecution of their Islamic faith. We can only pretend we don't understand.
In the meantime, the biggest human displacement crisis in the Middle East for 60 years is unfolding, the fastest growing refugee crisis in the world. One in six Iraqis has now been displaced, 60,000 a month are leaving the country, spilling into Syria (1.4 million) and Jordan (750,000). In an uncanny magnification of our own anxieties about migration and the strain on public services, the capacities of these two Middle Eastern countries to educate thousands of traumatised children or provide basic healthcare have been swamped. The UN's budget for refugees in Syria for 2007 is $700,000 - less than a dollar per person. But this crisis offers no telegenic vistas - people are crammed into the apartments of friends rather than tents on a windy African plain. So it gets even less attention.
Of these millions, Britain confirmed last week that it will take just 500 refugees with a record of having worked for British forces. It drags its feet over offering any more assistance for dispersal, despite requests from the UN; of 123 from Jordan whom the UN have allocated to Britain on tight criteria of having relatives in this country to provide for them, we have so far accepted only three. Britain washes its hands of the consequences of its invasion with the US. There's a horrible contradiction here: those in power accept no responsibility. Those who might have a sense of responsibility feel utterly powerless.
It can take a generation or more for people to grasp the significance and magnitude of historical events. Facts that are infinitely more bizarre and awful than fiction - as Naomi Klein's book The Shock Doctrine documents - take a long time to be fully absorbed. The Iraq war has been about the abject failure of democracy: governments have not been held to account for a war that has squandered lives, billions in public money and the stability of an entire region with reckless criminality.
This is one dangerous man: it's George Bush with brains
New York's former mayor Rudy Giuliani is living up to his reputation as someone who will do and say anything for power
by Michael Tomasky, The Guardian - November 5, 2007
People of Britain: congratulations are in order. You have now joined ferret owners, sidewalk artists, hot dog vendors, publicly funded attorneys for poor people, low-income community college students, museum curators, a couple of innocent black men shot dead by the police, the sections of the New York City charter governing rules of succession to the mayoralty and, of course, Hillary Clinton, as objects of Rudy Giuliani's demagoguery and wrath.
You may by now have heard the story. In a radio ad that his campaign prepared for New Hampshire voters, Giuliani tells listeners that he was diagnosed with prostate cancer in 2000 and goes on to say: "My chance of surviving cancer - and thank God I was cured of it - in the United States: 82%. My chances of surviving prostate cancer in England: only 44% under socialised medicine."
The numbers are false. The actual five-year survival rate in Britain is 74%, which is still lower than America's, but obviously high enough for the figure not to have constituted fodder for a campaign commercial. (Even the remaining, much smaller difference, is largely explained by more widespread screening in the US, which catches many more incidents of prostate cancer that are non-lethal).
It turned out that Giuliani's numbers were from a seven-year-old article in a conservative policy journal. The article was written by his own healthcare policy adviser, who admitted that his comparison was a "crude" interpretation of a study by a respected health policy group. The group, in turn, said the article's author had grossly misused its numbers.
That's about as red-handed as anyone in politics gets caught these days. But when asked if the campaign would continue to use the figure, a Giuliani spokeswoman said, "Yes, we will."
I know the form all too well. I covered Giuliani for a dozen years in New York (note to angry American rightwingers preparing to email me a warning to keep my foreign nose out of their business: I'm as American as a Ford F-150).
The man lies with staggering impunity. But here's the thing: he does it with such conviction and such seeming authority that people who are not inclined to study the matter will believe him - will in fact be utterly convinced that Giuliani is speaking the gospel truth, and they will prove almost impossible to shake from this conviction.
Giuliani's hypocrisy with regard to this ad doesn't end with the fake statistics. As Joe Conason noted on www.Salon.com, Giuliani was at the time of his treatment the mayor of New York and enrolled in a nonprofit health maintenance organisation for government employees - that is, mini-socialised medicine. And as Ezra Klein noted on Comment is free, the treatment that saved Giuliani was developed in Denmark - which, as Klein drolly notes, "is both in Europe and has a universal healthcare system".
But none of this will stop Giuliani. He will say and do anything he feels he needs to say and do to get power.
Newspapers write that he was "liberal" on social issues in his mayoral days, as if his positions on abortion and immigration were matters of conviction. Nonsense. He took the positions he needed to take to be elected in an overwhelmingly Democratic city. (Although to grant him a speck of humanity, I'd guess that his pro-gay rights views were more or less genuine: anyone living in the city gets to know many gay people.)
And now he is saying and doing whatever he needs to say and do to get millions of rightwing Americans to support him. He recently told a meeting of social conservatives that his reliance on God "is at the core of who I am". As mayor he was known to attend mass almost never, he obviously cheated serially on the wife (wife No 2) he married in the Catholic church, and the only occasions on which I can remember him invoking God when he was mayor were the two times he was forced to say "so help me God" in taking the oath of office.
But forward he will charge, telling more lies with even more impunity. And immunity, because in a culture where a sense of history is largely limited to remembering certain stirring television images, he will for the most part get away with it, confident in the knowledge that the main thing most Americans will ever recall about him is the film clip of him running from the rubble of the World Trade Centre on September 11. A far smaller percentage will know that the reason he had run was because he had catastrophically decided to place his emergency command centre in the tower complex - the only building in New York that had previously been the target of a major terrorist attack.
And by the way: shame on Gordon Brown for inviting him to No 10 in September. Yes, there's a long tradition of presidents and prime ministers welcoming party standard-bearers from across the pond. But Giuliani isn't yet that. Brown had no business giving him the kind of special benefit that an audience with a prime minister bestows.
Brown and all of Britain will be better off the sooner they figure this out: Giuliani is a dangerous man. George Bush with brains. Dick Cheney with better aim. Consider yourself warned.
by Michael Tomasky, The Guardian - November 5, 2007
People of Britain: congratulations are in order. You have now joined ferret owners, sidewalk artists, hot dog vendors, publicly funded attorneys for poor people, low-income community college students, museum curators, a couple of innocent black men shot dead by the police, the sections of the New York City charter governing rules of succession to the mayoralty and, of course, Hillary Clinton, as objects of Rudy Giuliani's demagoguery and wrath.
You may by now have heard the story. In a radio ad that his campaign prepared for New Hampshire voters, Giuliani tells listeners that he was diagnosed with prostate cancer in 2000 and goes on to say: "My chance of surviving cancer - and thank God I was cured of it - in the United States: 82%. My chances of surviving prostate cancer in England: only 44% under socialised medicine."
The numbers are false. The actual five-year survival rate in Britain is 74%, which is still lower than America's, but obviously high enough for the figure not to have constituted fodder for a campaign commercial. (Even the remaining, much smaller difference, is largely explained by more widespread screening in the US, which catches many more incidents of prostate cancer that are non-lethal).
It turned out that Giuliani's numbers were from a seven-year-old article in a conservative policy journal. The article was written by his own healthcare policy adviser, who admitted that his comparison was a "crude" interpretation of a study by a respected health policy group. The group, in turn, said the article's author had grossly misused its numbers.
That's about as red-handed as anyone in politics gets caught these days. But when asked if the campaign would continue to use the figure, a Giuliani spokeswoman said, "Yes, we will."
I know the form all too well. I covered Giuliani for a dozen years in New York (note to angry American rightwingers preparing to email me a warning to keep my foreign nose out of their business: I'm as American as a Ford F-150).
The man lies with staggering impunity. But here's the thing: he does it with such conviction and such seeming authority that people who are not inclined to study the matter will believe him - will in fact be utterly convinced that Giuliani is speaking the gospel truth, and they will prove almost impossible to shake from this conviction.
Giuliani's hypocrisy with regard to this ad doesn't end with the fake statistics. As Joe Conason noted on www.Salon.com, Giuliani was at the time of his treatment the mayor of New York and enrolled in a nonprofit health maintenance organisation for government employees - that is, mini-socialised medicine. And as Ezra Klein noted on Comment is free, the treatment that saved Giuliani was developed in Denmark - which, as Klein drolly notes, "is both in Europe and has a universal healthcare system".
But none of this will stop Giuliani. He will say and do anything he feels he needs to say and do to get power.
Newspapers write that he was "liberal" on social issues in his mayoral days, as if his positions on abortion and immigration were matters of conviction. Nonsense. He took the positions he needed to take to be elected in an overwhelmingly Democratic city. (Although to grant him a speck of humanity, I'd guess that his pro-gay rights views were more or less genuine: anyone living in the city gets to know many gay people.)
And now he is saying and doing whatever he needs to say and do to get millions of rightwing Americans to support him. He recently told a meeting of social conservatives that his reliance on God "is at the core of who I am". As mayor he was known to attend mass almost never, he obviously cheated serially on the wife (wife No 2) he married in the Catholic church, and the only occasions on which I can remember him invoking God when he was mayor were the two times he was forced to say "so help me God" in taking the oath of office.
But forward he will charge, telling more lies with even more impunity. And immunity, because in a culture where a sense of history is largely limited to remembering certain stirring television images, he will for the most part get away with it, confident in the knowledge that the main thing most Americans will ever recall about him is the film clip of him running from the rubble of the World Trade Centre on September 11. A far smaller percentage will know that the reason he had run was because he had catastrophically decided to place his emergency command centre in the tower complex - the only building in New York that had previously been the target of a major terrorist attack.
And by the way: shame on Gordon Brown for inviting him to No 10 in September. Yes, there's a long tradition of presidents and prime ministers welcoming party standard-bearers from across the pond. But Giuliani isn't yet that. Brown had no business giving him the kind of special benefit that an audience with a prime minister bestows.
Brown and all of Britain will be better off the sooner they figure this out: Giuliani is a dangerous man. George Bush with brains. Dick Cheney with better aim. Consider yourself warned.
Giuliani: "I will torture."
By Michael J.W. Stickings - Nov 5, 2007
That, more or less, is what Rudy Giuliani said he would do as president in an interview with Bloomberg over the weekend. Think Progress has the clip.
He used "intensive questioning" on "mafia guys" in New York, he said, reiterating what he has acknowledged elsewhere, notably that "aggressive techniques" are acceptable.
Let me make two points:
That, more or less, is what Rudy Giuliani said he would do as president in an interview with Bloomberg over the weekend. Think Progress has the clip.
He used "intensive questioning" on "mafia guys" in New York, he said, reiterating what he has acknowledged elsewhere, notably that "aggressive techniques" are acceptable.
Let me make two points:
- Giuliani is not explicit, but it is clear that his definition of "aggressive techniques" includes what is widely considered to be torture. Asked about waterboarding in the past, he has said that whether or not it constitutes torture depends on context, that is, on who does it and how it's done. The enablers of torture in and around the White House, including and especially Cheney, as well as their supporters in the conservative and Republican ranks, may argue that waterboarding, for example, is not torture, and they may sincerely believe it and/or may be required to argue that it is not torture so as to protect the White House (if it is admitted that waterboarding is torture, such admission would prove that the White House has been lying about not torturing detainees and that, more seriously, the U.S. tortures), but those who know better, and one presumes that one who has actually conducted waterboarding knows better than the enablers of torture in and around the White House, and certainly better than a would-be enabler like Michael Mukasey, know that it is, and that many other such "techniques" are, too.If elected, in other words, Giuliani will authorize the use of torture. Period.
- As John B. Judis argues in the current issue of The New Republic, "Giuliani is actually running to be mayor of the United States". That is, he "is selling himself to voters on the basis of his service as New York's mayor. He is arguing that he has the kind of administrative experience that would prepare him to be president." He was a prosecutor, he was a two-term mayor of one of the largest and most important cities in the world, and, of course, he was there on 9/11 -- that, above all else, lies at the core of his candidacy, his alleged leadership on and after 9/11, that along with his various efforts, some successful, some not, most of them emphasizing authority over liberty, to clean up the city by cracking down on crime.
Make sure to read the entire piece -- it's well worth it -- but here is Judis's assessment of whether or not "what he accomplished in New York is 'transferable' to the nation as a whole":
Put simply, that idea is impossible, disastrous, or entirely misleading. Giuliani cannot export welfare reform from New York to the federal government, since national welfare reform already happened. A broken windows strategy probably wouldn't help the FBI unearth white-collar crime or catch terrorists. Giuliani claims he will "control spending" as he did in New York; but, in fact, the budget went up 37.6 percent during his two terms, leaving his successor with a large deficit even before September 11. As for cutting taxes, which Giuliani has also promised to do, most of his New York tax cuts were relatively minor -- the most important were initiated by the state. And, in any case, the next president will have difficulty selling still another tax cut in the face of huge deficits.
The centerpiece of Giuliani's claim, however, is the suggestion that his approach to fighting crime provides a model for conducting foreign policy. In a recent essay for Foreign Affairs, he wrote: "I know from personal experience that when security is reliably established in a troubled part of a city, normal life rapidly reestablishes itself: shops open, people move back in, children start playing ball on the sidewalks again, and soon a decent and law-abiding community returns to life. The same is true in world affairs. Disorder in the world's bad neighborhoods tends to spread. Tolerating bad behavior breeds more bad behavior.
"This is a foolish analogy. In policing the world, the United States cannot claim to be enforcing its own laws; we lack legitimacy to do so, as we found after invading Iraq. When the NYPD went into poor neighborhoods, it was not an occupying force; when the U.S. military took over Baghdad, it was, and it suffered the consequences. Some of the "neighborhoods" Giuliani wants to clean up, such as Iran, possess their own armies and can call on other "neighborhoods," such as Russia and China, to deter an attempt to punish them for bad behavior. In short, the world is not New York writ large, and the trade-offs between authority and liberty look very different from the White House than from Gracie Mansion. But these distinctions seem lost on the man who aspires to be the next mayor of the United States.
What is also foolish is his suggestion that the use of "intensive questioning" of "mafia guys" in New York is akin to the use of torture on detainees in the war on terror. One doubts that those "mafia guys" were ever subjected to anything resembling, say, the abuses at Abu Ghraib, or were ever stripped of their habeas corpus rights and held indefinitely. There is no Gitmo for made men.
Tackling the New York mafia does not prepare one, let alone qualify one, to lead the war on terror at home and abroad. This, to me, explains in part why Giuliani seems to get everything about the war on terror wrong, why he doesn't seem to understand, or care to understand, that subjecting "mafia guys" to "some degree of pressure" may not constitute torture (and may or may not be justified -- that's another issue) but that subjecting detainees in the war on terror to "enhanced" interrogation techniques -- techniques he evidently knows nothing about, techniques that likely far surpass those used in New York -- does. It seems that he simply cannot distinguish between what was done in New York on his watch and what has been done (and is being done) in the war on terror, and, moreover, cannot grasp that the use of torture has done as much as anything else to destroy America's image and reputation around the world. The mafia may not have the grip on New York it once had, but America is hated more than ever.
For Giuliani, New York is the world and the world is New York. He claims to have a lot of experience -- transferable experience, from one executive office to another -- but, when it comes to what will be required of the next president, or of any president, he has precious little. And, as president, should that nightmare come to be, he will authorize the use of torture not just because he is an authoritarian who believes in it but because his understanding of the world and of his place in it begins and ends with New York and the ideological prism of religious and political authoritarianism through which his narrow experience and limited knowledge are filtered.
Duff diplomacy
The US secretary of state's dash around the Middle East has failed to patch up a foreign policy in tatters.
by Simon Tisdall - Nov 5, 2007
Condoleezza Rice keeps pretty chirpy, but it was a gloomy weekend for US power and interests in the Middle East. Every way she looked during a flying visit to the region, hopes of progress turned to dust in her hands. From Pakistan to the occupied Palestinian territories, there is a sense of imminent unravelling born of misjudgment and long-term neglect.
President-General Pervez Musharraf's "second coup" was a personal rebuff for the US secretary of state. Whatever his other failings, the crisply-pressed Pakistani leader is a gentleman of the English colonial school. But good manners did not prevent him rejecting Ms Rice's latest calls for restraint - and then ignoring her frantic telephone calls.
Gen Musharraf's calculation that the White House and Pentagon will tacitly go along with his putsch is probably correct in the short term. As always his fealty, however conditional, to the "global war on terror" comes first. Ms Rice is reduced to hoping the emergency measures will be short-lived and elections will still go ahead soon.
But US and Pakistani analysts suggest the democracy-security trade-off that has kept Gen Musharraf in power since 9/11 cannot be sustained for much longer. If prolonged civil strife ensues, as some predict, the Bush administration and its British sidekicks will be blamed for not doing more, earlier, to encourage consensual, peaceful reform while it was still attainable.
Opposition leader Benazir Bhutto, her power-sharing plans disrupted, may now be obliged to campaign all-out against the military regime. The ensuing confrontation could be unpredictable and bloody both for her and the general. From the US point of view, various unfolding scenarios, including Gen Musharraf's fall, point towards the same uncomfortable question: who lost Pakistan?
Ms Rice's weekend firefighting expedition to Istanbul was similarly uninspired. The part aim was to furnish Turkey with a good, publicly acceptable reason not to invade northern Iraq in pursuit of Kurdistan Workers party (PKK) militants - something Ankara has been demanding from Washington for at least two years.
The talks preceded today's "showdown" meeting - as Turkish media portray it - between Turkey's prime minister, Recep Tayyip Erdogan, and President Bush in Washington.
In the event Ms Rice appears to have tabled little of substance beyond enhanced intelligence-sharing. Asked what, if any, effective action was planned, including mooted US military moves against the PKK, she neatly explained Washington's dilemma while avoiding giving an answer.
"Effective action means you're actually trying to deal with the infrastructure of terrorism. But you want to do this in a way that doesn't compromise our other major goal, a unified, secure and stable Iraq," Ms Rice said. That suggested little would change. The Turks were predictably unimpressed - and may take matters into their own hands. "It has been a meeting with no resolution," a Turkish diplomat said. "There have been no tangible steps offered to us."
Ms Rice's Israel stop-over on Saturday was unproductive, too, casting further doubt on the usefulness of the US-promoted peace conference, vaguely scheduled for Annapolis, Maryland, either this month or next.
Ms Rice said the parties - principally, Israel's prime minister, Ehud Olmert, and the Palestinian president, Mahmoud Abbas - were still working on "ideas". No agreement has been reached, no final document has been completed and no invitations have yet been issued. Discouraged by this last-minute scramble and lack of a substantive agenda, leading Arab states such as Saudi Arabia warn they may not attend.
"I suspect this will not be the last effort that I will have to make to prepare the meeting ... this is a very delicate time," said a cheerful Ms Rice, whose frequent flier miles are beginning to rival Warren Christopher. "They [the parties] are coming to the realisation ... that Annapolis is an event but it's not the only event. There has to be a day after."
This rather obvious effort to downplay expectations suggested the Bush administration, after largely ignoring the Palestinian issue for six years, was losing confidence in its own project.
As if this display of duff diplomacy were not enough, Ms Rice also found time for a row with Walid al-Moallem, Syria's foreign minister, on the Istanbul sidelines. The US, she said, would not tolerate outside interference in Lebanon's delayed presidential election.
Neither would Syria, Mr al-Moallem waspishly retorted. "Condoleezza Rice speaks about Lebanon as if it is an American state," said Syria's state-run Tishrin newspaper.
Virtually lost amid all the blather and blunder was the original purpose of Ms Rice's visit: a discussion with Iraq's neighbours on how best to support Baghdad's weak, divided but ostensibly democratic government.
The meeting duly went ahead. But like the rest of Ms Rice's long weekend in the Middle East, its concrete achievements do not take long to list ...
by Simon Tisdall - Nov 5, 2007
Condoleezza Rice keeps pretty chirpy, but it was a gloomy weekend for US power and interests in the Middle East. Every way she looked during a flying visit to the region, hopes of progress turned to dust in her hands. From Pakistan to the occupied Palestinian territories, there is a sense of imminent unravelling born of misjudgment and long-term neglect.
President-General Pervez Musharraf's "second coup" was a personal rebuff for the US secretary of state. Whatever his other failings, the crisply-pressed Pakistani leader is a gentleman of the English colonial school. But good manners did not prevent him rejecting Ms Rice's latest calls for restraint - and then ignoring her frantic telephone calls.
Gen Musharraf's calculation that the White House and Pentagon will tacitly go along with his putsch is probably correct in the short term. As always his fealty, however conditional, to the "global war on terror" comes first. Ms Rice is reduced to hoping the emergency measures will be short-lived and elections will still go ahead soon.
But US and Pakistani analysts suggest the democracy-security trade-off that has kept Gen Musharraf in power since 9/11 cannot be sustained for much longer. If prolonged civil strife ensues, as some predict, the Bush administration and its British sidekicks will be blamed for not doing more, earlier, to encourage consensual, peaceful reform while it was still attainable.
Opposition leader Benazir Bhutto, her power-sharing plans disrupted, may now be obliged to campaign all-out against the military regime. The ensuing confrontation could be unpredictable and bloody both for her and the general. From the US point of view, various unfolding scenarios, including Gen Musharraf's fall, point towards the same uncomfortable question: who lost Pakistan?
Ms Rice's weekend firefighting expedition to Istanbul was similarly uninspired. The part aim was to furnish Turkey with a good, publicly acceptable reason not to invade northern Iraq in pursuit of Kurdistan Workers party (PKK) militants - something Ankara has been demanding from Washington for at least two years.
The talks preceded today's "showdown" meeting - as Turkish media portray it - between Turkey's prime minister, Recep Tayyip Erdogan, and President Bush in Washington.
In the event Ms Rice appears to have tabled little of substance beyond enhanced intelligence-sharing. Asked what, if any, effective action was planned, including mooted US military moves against the PKK, she neatly explained Washington's dilemma while avoiding giving an answer.
"Effective action means you're actually trying to deal with the infrastructure of terrorism. But you want to do this in a way that doesn't compromise our other major goal, a unified, secure and stable Iraq," Ms Rice said. That suggested little would change. The Turks were predictably unimpressed - and may take matters into their own hands. "It has been a meeting with no resolution," a Turkish diplomat said. "There have been no tangible steps offered to us."
Ms Rice's Israel stop-over on Saturday was unproductive, too, casting further doubt on the usefulness of the US-promoted peace conference, vaguely scheduled for Annapolis, Maryland, either this month or next.
Ms Rice said the parties - principally, Israel's prime minister, Ehud Olmert, and the Palestinian president, Mahmoud Abbas - were still working on "ideas". No agreement has been reached, no final document has been completed and no invitations have yet been issued. Discouraged by this last-minute scramble and lack of a substantive agenda, leading Arab states such as Saudi Arabia warn they may not attend.
"I suspect this will not be the last effort that I will have to make to prepare the meeting ... this is a very delicate time," said a cheerful Ms Rice, whose frequent flier miles are beginning to rival Warren Christopher. "They [the parties] are coming to the realisation ... that Annapolis is an event but it's not the only event. There has to be a day after."
This rather obvious effort to downplay expectations suggested the Bush administration, after largely ignoring the Palestinian issue for six years, was losing confidence in its own project.
As if this display of duff diplomacy were not enough, Ms Rice also found time for a row with Walid al-Moallem, Syria's foreign minister, on the Istanbul sidelines. The US, she said, would not tolerate outside interference in Lebanon's delayed presidential election.
Neither would Syria, Mr al-Moallem waspishly retorted. "Condoleezza Rice speaks about Lebanon as if it is an American state," said Syria's state-run Tishrin newspaper.
Virtually lost amid all the blather and blunder was the original purpose of Ms Rice's visit: a discussion with Iraq's neighbours on how best to support Baghdad's weak, divided but ostensibly democratic government.
The meeting duly went ahead. But like the rest of Ms Rice's long weekend in the Middle East, its concrete achievements do not take long to list ...
Americans want change in direction
AFP - November 5, 2007
Polls shows widespread dissatisfaction
Sixty percent of all Americans strongly want the country to change direction after nearly seven years of President George W. Bush's rule, according to a new opinion poll released late Sunday.
The survey by The Washington Post and ABC News indicated that only 24 percent of those surveyed think the nation is on the right track, and three-quarters said they want the next president to chart a different political course.
A new direction is wanted not only by Democrats, but also by three-quarters of Independents and even half of Republicans, according to the poll.
More than six in 10 called the war in Iraq not worth fighting, and nearly two-thirds gave the national economy negative marks.
Meanwhile, about seven in 10 see an economic recession as likely over the next year.
There is evidence in the new poll that the coming battle for the White House is shaping up to be another hard-fought, highly negative and closely decided contest, The Washington Post said.
At this point, Senator Hillary Clinton, the Democratic frontrunner, holds the edge in hypothetical match-ups with four of the top contenders for the Republican nomination.
But her margins are far from comfortable against the two best-known Republican candidates, former New York mayor Rudolph Giuliani and Senator John McCain, The Post said.
Not one of the leading candidates in either party has a favorable rating above 51 percent in the new poll.
Twenty-eight percent said they feel strongly favorable toward Clinton, but more than a third, 35 percent, have strongly negative views of her, the survey showed.
For the fourth consecutive month, President Bush's approval rating remains at a career low, The Post said.
Thirty-three percent said they approve of the job he is doing, and 64 percent disapprove.
Polls shows widespread dissatisfaction
Sixty percent of all Americans strongly want the country to change direction after nearly seven years of President George W. Bush's rule, according to a new opinion poll released late Sunday.
The survey by The Washington Post and ABC News indicated that only 24 percent of those surveyed think the nation is on the right track, and three-quarters said they want the next president to chart a different political course.
A new direction is wanted not only by Democrats, but also by three-quarters of Independents and even half of Republicans, according to the poll.
More than six in 10 called the war in Iraq not worth fighting, and nearly two-thirds gave the national economy negative marks.
Meanwhile, about seven in 10 see an economic recession as likely over the next year.
There is evidence in the new poll that the coming battle for the White House is shaping up to be another hard-fought, highly negative and closely decided contest, The Washington Post said.
At this point, Senator Hillary Clinton, the Democratic frontrunner, holds the edge in hypothetical match-ups with four of the top contenders for the Republican nomination.
But her margins are far from comfortable against the two best-known Republican candidates, former New York mayor Rudolph Giuliani and Senator John McCain, The Post said.
Not one of the leading candidates in either party has a favorable rating above 51 percent in the new poll.
Twenty-eight percent said they feel strongly favorable toward Clinton, but more than a third, 35 percent, have strongly negative views of her, the survey showed.
For the fourth consecutive month, President Bush's approval rating remains at a career low, The Post said.
Thirty-three percent said they approve of the job he is doing, and 64 percent disapprove.
Taliban capture third western Afghan district
Reuters - Nov 5, 2007Taliban insurgents have captured a third district in western Afghanistan, local officials said on Monday, defying Western assertions the rebels are unable to mount large military offensives.
The hardline Islamist Taliban relaunched their insurgency two years ago to topple the pro-Western Afghan government and eject the 50,000 foreign troops, expanding their operations further from the mainly Pashtun south where they are strongest.
Western forces say the Taliban's greater reliance this year on suicide and roadside bombs is a result of heavy battlefield casualties they and Afghan troops have inflicted on the rebels and the insurgents' inability to hold ground.
But in the last week, the Taliban have captured three districts in the western province of Farah, bordering Iran, forcing lightly armed Afghan police to flee and defying Afghan and foreign forces to retake the lost ground.
First, Taliban rebels captured the Farah district of Gulistan a week ago, then on Wednesday took nearby Bakwa. On Sunday, the insurgents seized Khak-e Sefid without a fight.
"Khake-e Sefid district fell into Taliban hands yesterday without any resistance from Afghan forces," Qadir Daqiq, a Farah provincial council member told Reuters. A provincial official who declined to be named also confirmed the report.
Taliban forces had been building up around Khak-e Sefid for some days, a Western security analyst said. The rebels in Farah have been receiving arms through a Taliban leader based close to the Iranian border, he said on condition of anonymity.
"There are many Iranians and Pakistanis fighting among the Afghan Taliban," Farah provincial police chief Abdulrahman Sarjang told Reuters.
POLICE MORALE LOW
Afghan and Western officials have often said the Taliban's ranks are reinforced with foreign fighters, but have said they have no proof of any assistance at an official level.
Poor morale among Afghan police meant that up to 38 officers had defected to the Taliban in the last week in Farah, the security analyst said, and those that remained were unwilling or unable to put up much of a fight.
"As soon as the Taliban attacked in numbers they did their best to make a tactical withdrawal -- they basically got out of there as quick as they could," he said. "Their motivation is not there to fight."
Local residents have complained that NATO-led troops, under Italian command in western Afghanistan, have not helped Afghan forces to retake the districts.
"The residents are complaining that foreign forces do not assist Afghan troops to retake the districts," Maolavi Yahya, district chief of neighbouring Delaram told Reuters. "They have been complaining for a week now."
As fighting in Afghanistan drags on, frustration is growing among ordinary Afghans that their government and its Western backers have not provided security six years after Afghan and U.S.-led forces toppled the Taliban in 2001 for not handing over al Qaeda leaders in the wake of the September 11 attacks.
NATO commanders admit they have a limited window in which to defeat the Taliban and provide much-needed development before the Afghan public turns against their presence and public opinion in the West, frustrated by growing casualties, calls for the troops to be withdrawn, handing victory to the insurgents.
Giuliani Quotes False Stats to Deny America's Health Care Crisis
Rudy Giuliani has a habit of saying things that are demonstrably untrue. And the American people have a right to know that.
by Paul Krugman, The New York Times - November 5, 2007.
"My chance of surviving prostate cancer -- and thank God I was cured of it -- in the United States? Eighty-two percent," says Rudy Giuliani in a new radio ad attacking Democratic plans for universal health care. "My chances of surviving prostate cancer in England? Only 44 percent, under socialized medicine."
It would be a stunning comparison if it were true. But it isn't. And thereby hangs a tale -- one of scare tactics, of the character of a man who would be president and, I'm sorry to say, about what's wrong with political news coverage.
Let's start with the facts: Mr. Giuliani's claim is wrong on multiple levels -- bogus numbers wrapped in an invalid comparison embedded in a smear.
Mr. Giuliani got his numbers from a recent article in City Journal, a publication of the conservative Manhattan Institute. The author gave no source for his numbers on five-year survival rates -- the probability that someone diagnosed with prostate cancer would still be alive five years after the diagnosis. And they're just wrong.
You see, the actual survival rate in Britain is 74.4 percent. That still looks a bit lower than the U.S. rate, but the difference turns out to be mainly a statistical illusion. The details are technical, but the bottom line is that a man's chance of dying from prostate cancer is about the same in Britain as it is in America.
So Mr. Giuliani's supposed killer statistic about the defects of "socialized medicine" is entirely false. In fact, there's very little evidence that Americans get better health care than the British, which is amazing given the fact that Britain spends only 41 percent as much on health care per person as we do.
Anyway, comparisons with Britain have absolutely nothing to do with what the Democrats are proposing. In Britain, doctors are government employees; despite what Mr. Giuliani is suggesting, none of the Democratic candidates have proposed to make American doctors work for the government.
As a fact-check in The Washington Post put it: "The Clinton health care plan" -- which is very similar to the Edwards and Obama plans -- "has more in common with the Massachusetts plan signed into law by Gov. Mitt Romney than the British National Health system." Of course, this hasn't stopped Mr. Romney from making similar smears.
At one level, what Mr. Giuliani and Mr. Romney are doing here is engaging in time-honored scare tactics. For generations, conservatives have denounced every attempt to ensure that Americans receive needed health care, from Medicare to S-chip, as "socialized medicine."
Part of the strategy has always involved claiming that health reform is suspect because it's un-American, and exaggerating health care problems in other countries -- usually on the basis of unsubstantiated anecdotes or fraudulent statistics. Opponents of reform also make a practice of lumping all forms of government intervention together, pretending that having the government pay some health care bills is just the same as having the government take over the whole health care system.
But here's what I don't understand: Why isn't Mr. Giuliani's behavior here considered not just a case of bad policy analysis but a character issue?
For better or (mostly) for worse, political reporting is dominated by the search for the supposedly revealing incident, in which the candidate says or does something that reveals his true character. And this incident surely seems to fit the bill.
Leave aside the fact that Mr. Giuliani is simply lying about what the Democrats are proposing; after all, Mitt Romney is doing the same thing.
But health care is the pre-eminent domestic issue for the 2008 election. Surely the American people deserve candidates who do their homework on the subject.
Yet what we actually have is the front-runner for the Republican nomination apparently basing his health-care views on something he read somewhere, which he believed without double-checking because it confirmed his prejudices.
By rights, then, Mr. Giuliani's false claims about prostate cancer -- which he has, by the way, continued to repeat, along with some fresh false claims about breast cancer -- should be a major political scandal. As far as I can tell, however, they aren't being treated that way.
To be fair, there has been some news coverage of the prostate affair. But it's only a tiny fraction of the coverage received by Hillary's laugh and John Edwards's haircut.
And much of the coverage seems weirdly diffident. Memo to editors: If a candidate says something completely false, it's not "in dispute." It's not the case that "Democrats say" they're not advocating British-style socialized medicine; they aren't.
The fact is that the prostate affair is part of a pattern: Mr. Giuliani has a habit of saying things, on issues that range from health care to national security, that are demonstrably untrue. And the American people have a right to know that.
by Paul Krugman, The New York Times - November 5, 2007.
"My chance of surviving prostate cancer -- and thank God I was cured of it -- in the United States? Eighty-two percent," says Rudy Giuliani in a new radio ad attacking Democratic plans for universal health care. "My chances of surviving prostate cancer in England? Only 44 percent, under socialized medicine."
It would be a stunning comparison if it were true. But it isn't. And thereby hangs a tale -- one of scare tactics, of the character of a man who would be president and, I'm sorry to say, about what's wrong with political news coverage.
Let's start with the facts: Mr. Giuliani's claim is wrong on multiple levels -- bogus numbers wrapped in an invalid comparison embedded in a smear.
Mr. Giuliani got his numbers from a recent article in City Journal, a publication of the conservative Manhattan Institute. The author gave no source for his numbers on five-year survival rates -- the probability that someone diagnosed with prostate cancer would still be alive five years after the diagnosis. And they're just wrong.
You see, the actual survival rate in Britain is 74.4 percent. That still looks a bit lower than the U.S. rate, but the difference turns out to be mainly a statistical illusion. The details are technical, but the bottom line is that a man's chance of dying from prostate cancer is about the same in Britain as it is in America.
So Mr. Giuliani's supposed killer statistic about the defects of "socialized medicine" is entirely false. In fact, there's very little evidence that Americans get better health care than the British, which is amazing given the fact that Britain spends only 41 percent as much on health care per person as we do.
Anyway, comparisons with Britain have absolutely nothing to do with what the Democrats are proposing. In Britain, doctors are government employees; despite what Mr. Giuliani is suggesting, none of the Democratic candidates have proposed to make American doctors work for the government.
As a fact-check in The Washington Post put it: "The Clinton health care plan" -- which is very similar to the Edwards and Obama plans -- "has more in common with the Massachusetts plan signed into law by Gov. Mitt Romney than the British National Health system." Of course, this hasn't stopped Mr. Romney from making similar smears.
At one level, what Mr. Giuliani and Mr. Romney are doing here is engaging in time-honored scare tactics. For generations, conservatives have denounced every attempt to ensure that Americans receive needed health care, from Medicare to S-chip, as "socialized medicine."
Part of the strategy has always involved claiming that health reform is suspect because it's un-American, and exaggerating health care problems in other countries -- usually on the basis of unsubstantiated anecdotes or fraudulent statistics. Opponents of reform also make a practice of lumping all forms of government intervention together, pretending that having the government pay some health care bills is just the same as having the government take over the whole health care system.
But here's what I don't understand: Why isn't Mr. Giuliani's behavior here considered not just a case of bad policy analysis but a character issue?
For better or (mostly) for worse, political reporting is dominated by the search for the supposedly revealing incident, in which the candidate says or does something that reveals his true character. And this incident surely seems to fit the bill.
Leave aside the fact that Mr. Giuliani is simply lying about what the Democrats are proposing; after all, Mitt Romney is doing the same thing.
But health care is the pre-eminent domestic issue for the 2008 election. Surely the American people deserve candidates who do their homework on the subject.
Yet what we actually have is the front-runner for the Republican nomination apparently basing his health-care views on something he read somewhere, which he believed without double-checking because it confirmed his prejudices.
By rights, then, Mr. Giuliani's false claims about prostate cancer -- which he has, by the way, continued to repeat, along with some fresh false claims about breast cancer -- should be a major political scandal. As far as I can tell, however, they aren't being treated that way.
To be fair, there has been some news coverage of the prostate affair. But it's only a tiny fraction of the coverage received by Hillary's laugh and John Edwards's haircut.
And much of the coverage seems weirdly diffident. Memo to editors: If a candidate says something completely false, it's not "in dispute." It's not the case that "Democrats say" they're not advocating British-style socialized medicine; they aren't.
The fact is that the prostate affair is part of a pattern: Mr. Giuliani has a habit of saying things, on issues that range from health care to national security, that are demonstrably untrue. And the American people have a right to know that.
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