The Elephant Bar

Nato’s Malignant Godchild

2012-02-16T00:38:00.001-05:00

Armed militias are threatening the security and stability of Libya, Amnesty International has warned.

The human rights group says at least 12 detainees held by militias have died after being tortured since September.

The report is being released to coincide with the one-year anniversary on Friday of the revolt that toppled Libyan leader Muammar Gaddafi.

Last month, the UN said about 8,000 pro-Gaddafi supporters were being held by militia groups.

The interim government has said it is trying to reassert authority, but correspondents say it has largely failed to rein in the groups.

'Nobody responsible'

According to Amnesty, some groups of former rebels are committing human rights violations with impunity, unchecked by the interim government.
"Nobody is holding these militias responsible," Donatella Rovera, senior crisis response adviser at Amnesty International, told AP news agency.

The report cites detainees who said they been suspended in contorted positions, beaten for hours with whips, cables, plastic hoses, metal chains and bars, and given electric shocks with live wires and taser-like electroshock weapons.

In one detention centre, in Tripoli, investigators found severely tortured detainees who interrogators tried to conceal, Amnesty said. The report is based on research conducted in Libya in January and February.

The group noted that African migrants and refugees - who were accused during the conflict of being "mercenaries" for Muammar Gaddafi - were among those being abused.

Militias have also been responsible for fatal clashes in Tripoli and fighting in other towns in recent months.

On Tuesday, thousands of fighters from across western Libya held a parade in the capital, displaying heavy machine guns and rocket launchers, and firing rifles in the air.

_________________________

Gabriel GatehouseBBC News

In the past month, the BBC has seen corroborating evidence of torture in Misrata, Libya's third city, as well as the town of Gharyan, south of the capital Tripoli.

In January, the BBC saw the corpse of a man whose body bore the marks of torture, including beating and electric shocks.

On Friday, there will be celebrations across the country to mark the one-year anniversary of the start of the revolution that - it was hoped - would usher in a new era.

There is now a real fear that some of the very men who - with the support of Nato - fought the battle to topple the old regime, are now jeopardising the country's future.

Five Hundred Years of the Female Face

2012-02-15T16:38:00.000-05:00

ACTA - Poland leading the protest for freedom

2012-02-15T01:55:00.000-05:00

Poland Leads a New Struggle for Freedom
By Claudia Ciobanu

Protests against ACTA outside the presidential palace in Warsaw.
Credit:Claudia Ciobanu/IPS.
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WARSAW, Feb 14, 2012 (IPS) - Last weekend saw tens of thousands of people across Europe taking to the streets in protest against the international treaty to enforce intellectual property rights. European politicians are gradually distancing themselves from the treaty, largely as a result of citizen mobilisation initiated in Central Europe.

Several hundreds gathered in front of the presidential palace in Warsaw Saturday Feb. 11, for a two-hour modest protest. That was a far cry from the intense street actions that drew thousands in all major cities in Poland a little over two weeks back.

But, in a way, Polish protesters had already done their part: their own government, which had signed the Anti-Counterfeiting Trade Agreement (ACTA), postponed ratification and inaugurated a period of public debate; European Parliamentarians of various political orientations are declaring they will not ratify the treaty; and ACTA has become an issue for European debate, with coordinated demonstrations taking place on Saturday in almost every EU country.

On Feb. 11, 15,000 protested in Munich, 10,000 in Berlin, 4,000 in Sofia, 2,000 in Prague, and hundreds in other Western and Eastern European cities.

ACTA is meant to establish an international legal framework for targeting counterfeit goods, generic medicines and copyright infringement online. Critics of the act, however, argue that it is "an offensive against the sharing of culture on the Internet" and condemn the lack of public debate over such a significant treaty.

According to La Quadrature du Net (quoted above), an advocacy group defending the rights and freedoms of citizens on the Internet, "ACTA would impose new criminal sanctions forcing Internet actors to monitor and censor online communication. It is thus a major threat to freedom of expression online and creates legal uncertainty for Internet companies. In the name of trademarks and patents, it would also hamper access to generic drugs in poor countries."

European awareness about the threats ACTA could pose was first raised when activists successfully opposed similar copyright protection acts to be applied in the U.S., such as the Stop Online Piracy Act (SOPA) and the Protect IP Act (PIPA). But opposition to ACTA catalysed on Jan. 26, when the European Union and 22 of its member states signed the act in Japan. The treaty had already been signed by eight non-EU members and it is supposed to come into force after ratification by six signatories.

The week of the signing, protests exploded in Poland. Sociologist Gavin Rae from Kozminski University of Warsaw argues that the signing of ACTA by the centre-right government of Prime Minister Donald Tusk was taken particularly hard by Poland’s educated youth for whom the Internet is "not simply an additional activity, but a means of life, where people communicate, socialise, share information, and, crucially, work."

According to Rae, Poland’s youth had already been feeling vulnerable as well as betrayed by the country’s political class, and ACTA acted as the last straw, causing one of the most striking episodes of citizen mobilisation in post-socialist Poland.

"The recent attack on online freedom came at a time when already the country’s youth had been feeling threatened," Rae told IPS. "Unemployment is high in Poland and a third of all Poles are working in temporary, insecure contracts – not counting the numerous ‘self-employed’. The youth is particularly affected by this ‘precariat’."

According to 27-year old activist Piotr Bratkowski, a participant in the anti-ACTA Warsaw protests, some sections of the Polish youth might have socio-economic complaints but are not comfortable using the language of the political left to fight such battles.

Gavin Rae concurs: "The present elite in Poland never wastes an opportunity to wrap itself in the flag of the previous, anti-communist opposition movement and reminisce of the days when they had to fight for freedom. The young generation is now the guardian of such freedoms and it is turning against this elite that it deems wants to take them away."

As a result of the Jan. 24-26 Polish protests, Tusk declared the ratification process of ACTA temporarily halted, and launched a longer period of public debate over the act, with an initial discussion gathering artists, decision-makers and the general public already taking place Feb. 7. Meanwhile, at the Feb. 11 demonstration, activists were collecting signatures to call for a referendum over ACTA. At least 500,000 signatures are needed to trigger the procedure in Poland.

National ratifications are necessary for implementation of criminal penalties included in ACTA, which fall outside the remit of EU law.

Over the first two weeks of February, other governments in Central and Eastern Europe followed Tusk’s example, in response to significant grassroots opposition to ACTA in their own countries. The Czech government has stopped the ratification process and called for a public debate, with the Latvians following suit. Slovakians, who had not signed the treaty, announced they would delay committing to ACTA. The Slovenian ambassador signing the ACTA treaty in Japan has since apologised for her "civically negligent" action.

On Feb. 10, Germany announced it would not sign until it sees the decision of the European Parliament (EP) – the first Western European government to delay adopting ACTA.

Most activists’ eyes are also turned to the EP, whose ratification scheduled for June this year is a condition for the EU-wide implementation of ACTA.

Activists from La Quadrature du Net are advising people how to contact their representatives in the various EP committees which have a say over the final vote. Meanwhile, several groups are collecting signatures in opposition to ACTA to submit to the EP, with petition site Avaaz having gathered over 2,250,000 endorsements so far.

Some EP members have already nodded in the activists’ direction - Greens and the Group of the Progressive Alliance of Socialists and Democrats (S&D) have expressed opposition to the ratification, alongside EP president Martin Schultz (S&D) - although the largest group in the EP, Christian-Democrat European People’s Party (EPP), continues to be in favour of the treaty.

MEPs opposing ACTA have announced they intend to call on the European Court of Justice to weigh in on ACTA’s compatibility with EU law, a procedure that can take up to two years. (END)

Oil rose to a one-month high after the Greek parliament approved an austerity plan, easing Europe’s debt crisis, and sanctions tightened on Iran. Technical issues halted electronic trading late in the session.

2012-02-13T17:42:00.001-05:00

HERE’S WHY:

TALES FROM THE ELDER SCROLLS

2012-02-11T17:52:00.001-05:00

TALES FROM THE ELDER SCROLLS

The Great Council

A saga from the 3rd Age of Usa

by Quirk

The world was in chaos and bathed in woe. War, disease, and famine ran rampant across the land. It was the beginning of the second half of what until then had been called the Golden Age of the fabled Empire of Usa; but these were fey and dour times. There was unrest in the land; brother fought brother; untold masses suffered while a lucky or venal few prospered. Vandals roamed the streets in packs, every home had a weapon, anarcho-capitalism grew with merchants hiring local warlords and their bands of mercenaries to protect their goods. Pilgrims wandered the land predicting Armageddon and Rapture. Peasant revolts were springing up spontaneously in cities throughout the land. The old gods were long abandoned and forgotten.

In the fabled city of Oz, the Dark Emperor O ruled from his throne in the infamous White Palace. He ignored the rules laid down by the Old Ones in the Great Charter. His minions, Lady Pelosi and Lord Harry held sway over the Wise Men elected by the people to offer counsel and direction to the Emperor on their behalf. The Emperor’s policies were profligate and he had brought the country to near ruin.

Much of the known world suffered with Usa. The only ones seeming to prosper and grow stronger daily were her ancient enemies in the lands of the Great Bear and the Great Dragon.

But the Emperor’s powers remained unchecked. The only ones who had the resources in manpower and treasure to stem his disastrous rule were the people of the Gop; but their leaders were weak and torn by internecine squabbling.

They appeared to offer no credible alternative to O’s rule.

Within Usa, there were many lesser powers enthralled to the Emperor. Among them, was the High King Deuce from the realm of Blog in the state of Pa. And it was this same High-King who on the 10th day of the second month of the second year of second decade of the second half or the Golden Age of Usa called forth his Great Council to assemble for a Moot of the high born to discuss major issues and events and reach consensus on actions to be taken.

From across Usa they gathered. There was the great Witch-Queen Zenatherisitawasplenith, riddler and shift changer from the misty lands of the northwest; the Battle mage Gag Reflex, Chief Ranger to the Court ; the Lord Rat, silky and sly, Lord of the Horse from the deserts of ancient Az. There was also truculent Lord Dougo from the fabled land of Maui beyond the sea; and the Corn King, Rufus II, from the swamplands of the South. There was Lord Ash, the Potato Prince from the lands north of the Great Lakes, the lands of the windigo and frost giants; and there was Sir Samuel from the Lands Below, Scribe and Jester to the High-King. There was the warlord OnonomoWiO, Shogun of Oh, who had demanded the moot be called. With him rode Flim Flam, warlock and sorcerer and chief councilor to the Shogun. Nine acolytes accompanied Flim Flam as they always did. Just in case. Also in OnonomoWiO’s train rode, Bobbo his Thane, Jarl of Id, reader of runes, philosopher to the court, and Lord Commander of the Royal Coachmen. There were also great ladies that attended. There was Lady Melody, spellweaver and astrologer, daughter of the moon, born of the ancient blood of elf and fairy. With her came Lady Jenny-Janus, sibyl and seer, magus and medium, dual-natured dark eminence. Also attending was the hydra-headed monster Anonymi, anonymous sower of dissent, son of the idiot god Cthutlu. The only two members of the Council not attending were the Quirkster, Warden of the North and the wizard Whit, friend and councilor to the high-King who had long ago withdrawn into self-imposed exile into the damp, dark recesses of Usa’s southlands.

Those high born who did attend were accompanied by a goodly train of retainers and sycophants.

The edict demanding their presence at the moot was a cause for trepidation among many of the council members. The Council was to assembly at the Post, a huge mead hall in the west of Pa. It was a dark and eldritch place were momentous decisions had been discussed and abandoned in decades past. There was tension in the air for the Great Council was divided and in dispute; and legend informs that the last moot held there had devolved from curses and abuse to a drunken brawl with fists and chairs and (some say) even a shoe being thrown, though none ever admitted to the last act. The incident is still remembered as the Night of the Jabberwocky.

It was near ten in the evening when the Council members began to arrive at the great alehouse. A full moon was rising in the east and it cast stark shadows across the barrow lands through which they road. Because of an unseasonably warm afternoon, wispy tendrils of mist were drifting up from the land into the cool night air. The movement of the mist gave one the impression that barrow wights and vesti were moving silently among the mounds. The travel was slow as the broad highway on which they rode was cracked and pitted and filled with huge cavernous potholes caused by the pervasive neglect that marked the Emperor’s reign. Instead of repairing roads, and bridges, and sewers, Usa’s treasures were being squandered on death panels, wars, military hardware, drones, golf, and vacations for the Empress Michelle, her daughters, mother, her train of tag-a-longs, and a coterie of guards.

The first to arrive at the ancient ale-house was the High-king himself. He was accompanied by the Ladies Melody and Jenny-Janus who had both bummed rides. They approached the alehouse warily, winding their way up the narrow path between the scavenged remains of a Vietnam-era Douglas A-4 Skyhawk on the one side and the hulk of a M48 Patton medium tank on the other, the accoutrements of war and sad symbols of past military adventures. As they approached the entrance, they were confronted by a massive totem topped with a giant, ornately-runed Cross of Malta with a banner draped below bearing the words VFW POST 1264. Beside the totem was another sign, Graham-Foster Wedding: Main Hall. Take Front Entrance. Below in smaller font, The Great Council: The Patton Room. Take Side Entrance.

The High-King and the two Ladies moved to the side entrance but as they entered the hall they were confronted with a roiling miasma of stale beer, mildew, and the tanged odor of old sweat from bitter contests from ages past, of political debate, and drunken brawls, and beer pong matches lasting into the night.

“Good lord, shouted the king. Someone air this place out. Damn. How much did we pay to rent this place anyway?”

After about half an hour, the air in the room had become tolerable and the king took his seat at the head of an array of six square tables that had been arranged to form a circle. Table cloths had been strategically arranged to complete the illusion. Behind him, the wall was dominated by a life-size picture of General George S. Patton, truculent and proud, dressed in jacket and sash with jodhpurs and riding crop. To the side of the king along the wall was a small bar manned by a single bartender who was presently cleaning a crystal tip jar.

The king’s dress belied his foul mood. He wore golden raiment with crimson elephants rampant embroidered on each breast. His crown, a broad golden circlet topped by a pachyderm with lowering proboscis that hung down between his eyes, seemed to sit heavy on his brow. He wore the Black Amulet of the IP draped around his neck, an intricately runed rodent made of some strange impermeable substance which though the king's innate arcane knowledge he was able to manipulate the force of the Web to view some of the hidden secrets of his subjects including even those of the crafty and ubiquitous Anonymi. As he waited, the king toyed nervously with his i-Phone.

Beside the king on the left sat Lady Mel, a breath of spring, dressed gaily in a brief outfit of yellow and crimson lace. It could be described in more detail but as I said it was brief; however, it did show off her tats (yes tats) to maximum advantage. On the king’s right side sat Lady Jenny-Janus the inscrutable. Her moods were often changeable, violent and abrupt, a dangerous women. Oftimes her moods could be judged by the clothes she wore but it was never a certain thing for even the color of her clothes seemed to be able to change to match her mood. When the Good Jenny appeared she often wore brightly colored raiment of greens and reds and purple; but when Janus shifted and Bad Jenny appeared, her clothes usually reflected it, ill-fitting, dark and somber. Tonight, she wore indecipherable shades of sand and light grey. Not knowing which way she or they might shift created tension and uncertainty for all, for the room was now filling up with other members of the council and their minions as they entered carrying their packages. I say packages for as usual the edict mandating the moot spelled out “Dinner: Pot Luck”.

The High-king had his usual five foot Philly Cheese Steak Sub delivered before his arrival. Lady Mel once again went vegetarian with a Caribbean rice and black bean salad while Lady Jenny-Janus contributed an enchilada casserole with Doritos.

Rufus II, the Corn King, grizzled and weary but spoiling for a fight arrived wearing a crown with the words ‘John Deere” drawn from the ancient language of the Cherokee engraved across the front. In one hand, he carried a gallon bottle of crystal clear ambrosia declaring it the be the “whitest damn lighting you will ever taste”. In the other hand, he carried a huge container of Burger Kings “New Fries” which he promptly put on the side board with the other offerings. He then announced a delivery boy from the local Pig-in-a-Poke would be there shortly with his order of corn pone.

Spotting Lady Mel in the corner, he smiled noting she had set up an i-Pod with portable speaker and was now gyrating to the sounds of Heartbreaker.

Queen Zenatherisitawasplenith was the next to arrive. She wore a flowered blouse in greys and blues under a violet jacket of soft leather and over a pair of bitchin tight black slacks. She brought a huge platter of spicy Filipino escabetcheng sauce served over lapu-lapu fish fillets. After setting the platter on the side board, she took her seat and immediately went to the Bible Sayings app on her portable computer to prepare for the moot.

A few minutes later, Lord Ash walked in carrying a quiche and a bottle of port wine with Stilton cheese for dessert. He was dressed in a white parka with matching après ski boots. He was flaunting a pink ‘Walk for the Cure’ ribbon and a NOW Fight for the Right to Choose armband. Noticing the high king was free, he moved to his side.

“Your Grace, I bring news from the Warden of the North. I stopped by his hold at Quirk Rock on my way south from the Great White North. The Warden begs your indulgence but says he will be unable to attend the moot. War and chaos have broken out in the twin cities of Detro and Dearbo. In Detro, bandits and thugs roam the streets in packs, looting and harassing the innocent. Drug deals and drive-by shootings occur nightly. There is even talk of cancelling the rest of Black History Month there. As you know, it now runs into mid-March.

And in Dearbo, the children of Islam are in revolt. They are angered that their Queen has been arrested on a DUI and they cite religious persecution despite the fact she blew a 2.0 on the breathalyzer. They are incensed that their leaders are being persecuted, like the owner of the La Shish restaurants chain who was forced to leave the country because of false charges of tax evasion and supporting terrorists. They argue that not all of the Italian restaurants in the city yet offer falafel. They toss abuse and shoes in all directions. I of course reminded the Warden of the numerous Catholic priests who are proven pedophiles but it did nothing to assuage his anger nor his resolve.

He holds the Eight Mile Gate, and vows that none from the twin cities shall pass forth to pollute the lands while he lives.”

The High-King frowned. “That is disturbing news. And disappointing. Did you see the size of that sub I brought? But in this case the Warden must do what he thinks best. He will be missed. I loved those water chestnuts wrapped in bacon with the barbeque sauce that he brought last time. At any rate, I thank you for bringing me his message. Go. Sit. Enjoy yourself while we await the others.”

Proud and defiant, Lord Ash moved to a seat across from Zenatherisitawasplenith and opened up the “Mr. Potato Head” app on his i-Pod while waiting for the others to arrive.

He didn’t have to wait long. Almost immediately, Lord Samuel walked through the door smiling and carrying a huge poke of shrimp cooked fresh off the barbie. He laid the shrimp on the side table and then proceeded to work the room, joking and cracking wise with all there. He was a handsome man, young and virile, recently voted Metrosexual of the Year by the residents of Blog, perfectly coiffed, every hair in place even, one assumes, those that could not be seen, a true dandy. He was wearing a Tori Richard aloha shirt of soft cotton with oyster shell buttons on a black base with a breadfruit design pattern. He wore light khaki pleated slacks over Salvador beach sandals. He moved with easy grace as he circled the room. His lilting voice could occasionally be heard over the general hubbub, “So these two gay guys are sitting in a bar and a horse walks in…”

The next to arrive were Lord Rat and the battle mage, Gag Reflex. The rat was carrying a pot of his famous southwestern chili sin frijoles. He was wearing his trademark sombero and a desert camo outfit under a long sand colored duster. His spurs, attached to newly re-soled Tony Roma boots, jingle jangle jingled as he strode through the door. Gag Reflex, the Chief Ranger walked in beside him wearing dark green camo and carrying a rolled up gilly suit under his right arm. In his left hand, he carried a frog gig and strung over his shoulder was a huge bag of frogs he had harvested along the way. After offering greetings all around, Gag laid the Sterno cans he had brought to cook the frog legs on the bar and then moved to the rest room with his catch to fillet the legs.

It was then that that the double doors separating the Patton Room from the main hall were thrown wide and in strode the Hydra-headed beast Anonymi accompanied by the soft tribal rhythms of the Hokie Pokie as played by the Sam Geiss Trio who had now started upping the beat at the Graham-Foster wedding. Anonymi was forced to come through the main hall as, due to his great girth, he was unable to make it through the side entrance. He wore his usual oversized ninja outfit with slippers, but tonight he also sported Guy Fawkes masks on each of his many heads.

The High-King viewed him with distain, but as he stroked the amulet at his throat, he also thought he detected wary recognition, or was it hidden guilt, in the eyes of a number of his councilors. He knew, even at that, most despised the creature. They had begun calling him the ‘The Thing’, short for ‘The Thing With Many Heads But No Brain”.

Anonymi was always the last to be chosen for any of the occasional pick-up softball games held in Blog. There was something foreign and out of kilter with him. Even when he made it to second base, he would just as likely run back to first instead of advancing to third. It made it almost impossible for those trying to follow the game on their scorecards. But what could you do? Ban him from the blog for being different? Probably not. The high-king was terrible and just but he understood and was tolerant of the weaknesses of man. However, he was still greatly vexed when he noticed Anonymi once again had come to the moot empty handed. No doubt he/they/it would offer the same excuse, “I must have misread the edict.”

After a brief survey of the room, Anonymi moved to the side board, grabbed a few handfuls of frog legs from where Gag had set them, and then proceeded to the table. He ended up taking up about a quarter of the space at the table, partly because of his girth and partly because none seemed to want to sit close to him.

Soon the side entrance opened again, silently and as if by magic. An amorphous mist flooded the entrance, and through it marched the Shogun of Oh, the warlord OnonomoWiO with his minions in tow. To his left, always a step behind so that he could whisper into the shogun’s ear was Allen of Ga, the flim flam man, called ‘The Fox’ by his friends but ‘The Dissembler’ by his many enemies, sorcerer and chief councilor to the shogun. On AnonymoWiO’s right side strode his Thane, Bobbo the Jarl of Id.

They were a formidable looking group. The Shogun was dressed all in black in tactical slacks and a conceal carry shirt by Blackhawk. He wore sport boots by Bates, ventilated shooting gloves by Bob Allen, and a 5.11 tactical series vest. On his shoulder he carried a heavy duffel go-bag which he now tossed near the coat rack. Wearing his ‘Team Glock’ black hat and aviator sunglasses, one had to admit he looked very impressive and bold and…er…well….very, very tactical.

Beside him, the Jarl Bobbo, called ‘Wolfbane’ by his subjects, 'The Poisoner' by his enemies, and ‘Commando’ by his fishing buddies, wore a green plaid shirt and a fishing vest over faded khakis. On his head, he wore a round helm mounted by two huge horns (a gift from his wife). The helm was surrounded by a band of smooth cotton to which he had attached various fishing lures and flies. On his chest, he wore the badge designating him the honorary title of Commander of the Royal Coachmen. Legend had it that this badge of office, actually a uniquely tied Royal Coachman, had actually been tied by the beloved Thaddeus Norris himself. Instead of the usual smoked salmon that Wolfbane usually brought, tonight he opted to bring a batch of pemmican cakes he whipped up from a recipe by Vihljamur Stefansson that he came across in a recent copy of Mark’s Daily Apple. He displayed them to the high-king with a slight bow and then placed them on the side board.

Allen of Ga now brought forth his offering, a steaming platter of gefilte fish slices served with horseradish and carrots which he also placed on the side board. The shogun’s councilor was wearing a long black leather coat that reached nearly to the floor. It covered a black Cossack style shirt and black slacks. Adding a discordant note to the outfit were the knee high red boots that he wore and which lent the outfit a disquieting androgynous look, a look one suspected was intentional.

It was at this point that AnonomoWiO called forth three of the nines acolytes from Allen of Ga’s train. The first two men carried a number of packages on trays, white boxes tied with red ribbon. “A mix of confectionary delights to be shared with my friends” beamed the Shogun. He proceeded to open one box and lay its contents on the side board. It contained extraordinary examples of the confectioner’s art centered by a glorious masterpiece exquisitely wrought yet understated, a white and dark chocolate pistol designed to represent a Glock 38.

AnonomoWiO smiled thinly at the stunned reaction of his audience and then said, “And now for the piece d’resistance”. He again signaled and a third acolyte approached carrying a huge covered serving tray which he placed on the side board. The shogun lifted the lid and an audible gasp swept the room. It was a brisket. But not just any brisket. No. It was a Brisket WiO. Many had thought it just a legend but here it was. It was rumored that cooking it required the skill of the famous fugu chefs who prepare the erotically dangerous torafugu in Japan.

Regardless, the aroma wafting from the meat was intoxicating. Even Lady Jenny-Janus shifted slightly in her chair.

“Enjoy,” said the Shogun.

And they soon did. Not even the high-king could resist.

It was only later that some in the room began to wonder why the shogun had decided to share this treasure even with those he clearly did not like. And some questioned that there might be some hidden meaning in the fact that he was offering them all a gun to eat albeit one made of candy. Again, an ominous level of tension returned and there was a charge in the air.

The high king rose and called for silence.

“Has anyone seen Lord Dougo?” His only answer was silence.

“Then we must begin. We are now approaching the eleventh hour and we only have the room until one.”

Queen Zenatherisitawasplenith rose. “I would like to offer a prayer of thanks for our bounty.”

Instantly, Lord Ash was on his feet. “Bullshit. I will not have it. We have never said a prayer before. And she is Catholic. Do I have to once again remind you of those pedophile priests?”

“Sit down, you putz,” roared the Chief Ranger, and pandemonium ensued.

“Silence,” demanded the high king. “Any praying will be done silently and to yourselves. We have important things to discuss. Barkeep, tap another keg if you please. Let’s eat and get on with it.”

“But it’s a Brisket WiO,” whined Zenatherisitawasplenith.

The king silenced here with a look. Silence returned as they turned to their food, all but for the sound of a near inaudible whisper from the direction of Zenatherisitawasplenith, “Bless us O Lord for these thy gifts…”

AnonomoWiO chuckled, “Well I am surprised. Not that you didn’t let my people offer a prayer in thanksgiving. That was as expected. But instead, by the fact that you didn’t allow all of your little toadies with their Christian praying and proselytizing to do so.

In frustration, the king said, “Please, WiO. We only have a couple hours to wrap this thing up.”

ust as things were getting back to normal, the side entrance was thrust open and in strode Lord Dougo, dour and truculent. In one hand he carried a tin of Macadamia nuts and in the other a half melted bag of ice. It was obvious he was incensed if not livid.

“You bastards. Couldn’t save me a damn parking space could you? Do you know how big that wedding is next door? I had to park a half mile down the road at Pig-in-a-Poke and then hoof it.”

WiO sneered, “Don’t get your panties in a twist, Dougo. They didn’t save my people any spaces either. We are parked out on the lawn beyond the far parking lot. Join the club. I expected nothing less from this bunch.”

It was difficult for Dougo to contain himself but he moved silently to the table. It was there where his anger flared again.

He now noticed the circular configuration of the table which prevented him from taking his usual spot on the ‘right’ side; and worse, most of the seats were taken and he was forced to sit next to Ononymi. The king noticed that same look of recognition (guilt?) in Lord Dougo’s eyes as he looked down upon The Thing; but then reflected the king, perhaps it was merely due to the competitive factor. Lord Dougo was usually the second to last person picked in the softball games.

Turning to the king and gesturing to the table, Dougo asked, “What is this?”

The high king smiled, “Because of the continuing strife on the Council, I thought the round table might make things appear a little more democratic around here.”

Dougo merely groaned.

“And what is this. You didn’t save me one frog leg?”

“As usual, my people didn’t get any either,” said WiO.

“Hell, nobody did. I didn’t’ even get any. The Thing ate them all,” complained The Ranger.

It was then that Dougo noticed the NOW patch on Lord Ash’s parka. With disdain he said, “You friggin PC pansy.”

Lord Ash merely smiled.

Lord Dougo tugged at his shirt. He was wearing a Tori Richard aloha shirt of soft cotton with oyster shell buttons on a black base with a breadfruit design pattern. He wore light khaki pleated slacks over Salvador beach sandals. It appeared as if he had recently had his hair trimmed. He picked up his fork and glanced across the table. He saw Lord Samuel and what he was wearing and blanched. Sam was smiling. Dougo exploded.

“You dirty SOB. Do you know how long it took me to pick out this outfit?”

The main table exploded in laughter and Lord Dougo’s humiliation was complete.

It took some time for the hubbub to die down and the guests to be satiated but then the high king rose.

“Let’s tap another keg. It’s time to get down to business but you can continue munching as we move along. The Shogun has set the main agenda item for the moot, but I would ask if there is any peripheral business that needs to be taken care beforehand.”

Once again Zenatherisitawasplenith rose. “I’m selling 50/50 tickets to the Our Lady of the Lakes Spring Festival. The drawing will be held on the second Wednesday in April on Bingo Night but you don’t have to be present to win.”

“I’m not contributing to no stinking pedophile priests,” yelled Lord Ash.

“Me either”, screamed the Corn King. “I can’t stand those religious hypocrites.”

Gag Reflex chimed in “Damned papists.”

WiO and his coterie merely smiled.

The high king pounded the table and roared, “I meant any peripheral Council business. Take care of that on you own time Z. Let’s go around the table. Thin…er…Ononymi, you first. Any business you want to talk about?”

“Nuttin,” said the central head on The Thing.

“Any of the rest of you?”

“Nuttin”, said the other heads in chorus.

Relieved, the king moved on. “Lady Jenny-Janus? Anything?”

“Nothing right now but I’ll reserve my time.”

“WiO, you have the main agenda item so I assume you will wait.” The shogun nodded to the king.

“Rufus and Gag, I think you are on the agenda for the next moot. Anything to add tonight?”

Both answered in the negative.

“Rat, what you got?”

“Your Grace, I would only point out once again Teddy Roosevelt’s stated disdain for hyphenated Americans. I think we all know to whom I refer.”

“Thanks, rat. Allen of Ga, anything from you?”

“I wouldn’t waste my time with this bunch, Sweetie.”

The king continued.

“Lord Dougo?”

“Merely, a brief statement. I think Rufus is a shit sucking commie and Ash is no better, the friggin PC prick.”

“Thanks, Dougo. Lord Ash?

“Well, there is the matter of the pedo…”

Anyone else? Jarl Bobbo?”

“Thanks, boss. First, let me say to Z, I’d like a few of those 50/50 tickets. My luck’s been rotten lately down at the casino. I’ll catch up with you later. Now with regard to Council business, I would like to nominate WiO to join the king’s Privy Council as he has proven himself worthy of that honor on many occasions. It is also my understanding that he will be nominating me, Allen of Ga, and Allen’s nine acolytes for the same honor.”

The king responded, “Sorry, Bobbo, but you are out of order. You know well that membership in the Privy Council is an honorary title that is bestowed not nominated and voted upon. If that is all, please take your seat.”

“But…” started Bobbo.

“Enough,” said the king.

“What mummery is this? Tis a farce. Blatant discrimination, WiO has proven himself to be the most…”

“Silence”, yelled the King. “Gag, you and the Corn King are selected as co-sergeant-at-arms. If this man continues along these lines, cast him into the darkness.”

“The closet?” asked Gag.

“No, outside,” said the king.

The Corn King, who had now polished off most of the white lightning said, “I…who there…what’s zo dam funny…I…”

From behind and to the left of AnonimoWiO, came a sonorous whispered “tsk tsk tsk” followed by a message indecipherable and “…my preciousessss…” like the song of a snake or some amphibious Gollum. In response, the shogun rose. “I would only comment my Grace that this is merely one more example of the indignity, persecution, and abuse visited upon my people by you and people like you at this bar and across the world through the millennia.”

“Noted,” said the king.

Moving on, the king said, “Lady Mel, what you got?”

“Your Grace, I have heard this bullshit many times before. I beg your permission to join the wedding party in the next room.”

“So be it,” said the king. “I wish I could go with you. Have fun.”

Smiling, Mel said, “Come on Sam. Join me.”

Sam smiled back but said, “Sorry, Mel, but I have to take down the minutes.”

The king interjected, “That’s alright Sam, I am invoking my royal prerogative and commanding that those who remain will commit the evening’s remaining words and events to the communal tribal memory. I would ask that later you all forward your reflections to Sam so that he can convert them to formal minutes.”

The king was aware of the can of worms he was opening up but he didn’t want to send Lady Mel off by herself.

Mel grabbed Sam’s hand and as they passed through the doors to the main hall, the roiling ethnic beat of the ‘Chicken Dance’ swept the Patton Room and then died as the doors were once again closed.

“All right,” said the king, “if that’s it we will now move to the main business of the evening. But as is our habit we will first ask our oracle, the Lady Jenny-Janus, to cast the runes and grant us some vision into the future."

This was always a moment of tension at the moot. No one knew who Jenny would channel, a spirit of good or a spirit of evil. Some were tacitly optimistic as her clothes had taken on an almost imperceptible change in hue.

The seer stood slowly, took a hefty swig of the Grey Goose from the tumbler at her side and sighed. She then slowly opened her eyes and softly spoke the words, “Can’t we all be friends?”

The relief in the room was palpable for though the words in the manner of all sibyls past and present were ambiguous at best, most on the council elected to give them a positive spin especially since the message contained no four letter words starting with F.

“Thank you, my Lady,” said the king. “And now, AnonimoWiO, you are on.”

The shogun stood, proud and tall, defiant in his tactical glory.

“First, I would like to thank the high king for allowing me to present my petition. This grant is highly unusual and I hardly expected that he would grant someone like me an equal or at least somewhat equal chance to speak before this assembly.”

“Next, I would like to hand out this package of documents from AIPAC, B’nai B’rith, the ADL, and Commentary for the council members to review at their leisure. They contain vital information on our historic homeland and its capital.”

The Jarl of Id, who had started imbibing early, was slightly confused and asked, “You mean Stockholm?”

“No, you fool,” hissed the shogun, “I mean Israel, the font of civilization, Zion and its capital city Jerusalem, the City of God, the jewel of the east, the fountainhead.”

“Oh, right,” said Bobbo.

WiO continued.

“And finally, I am proposing that the Council adopt by unanimous consent the petition I am about to put before you and that we further unanimously agree to send this petition to the Emperor and demand that he immediately implement its provisions in their entirety.

The petition is as follows,

Your Imperial Majesty O, Emperor of Usa

May it please Your Majesty:

It's time to nuke Iran's under the mountain sites.

Sunday, Feb. 5, Alireza Forghani, head of the Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei's strategic team, was quoted as remarking, "It would only take nine minutes to wipe out Israel."

Notice i did not advocate genocide.

I am advocating the complete destruction of Iran's weapons of mass destruction program, it's oil refineries, it's power grid, it's water and sewage infrastructure, it's ports, it's revolutionary guard barracks, it's runways and it's oil wells.

Once those 1st round of destruction occurs?

ANYTHING that is military should be struck.

Any Iranian governmental employee should be targeted for liquidation anywhere in the world.

Round 3?

Any rally against the Jews calling for their genocide? Should be clusterbombed.

Yeah I know the world will get pissy in public.

I know the retarded bar flies here will condemn me for being a maniac and a murderer...

It's war folks...

They win or we win

We die or they die.

I choose they die.

Of course any rockets from Hezbollah or hamas?

Should be responded to as an act of war.

The populations of both should be driven several hundred miles back and then the empty lands should be salted and made unlivable.

No occupation here folks...

Do what the Romans did...

Salt the ground..

Make it barren

Teach them a lesson...

Dont Tread on me...

Good night

We have the honor to remain Your Imperial Majesty’s obedient servants

The Great Council of the High King of Blog

Stunned silence filled the room. Then it exploded.

"All who live by the sword will die by the sword,” quoted Z while frantically keying her i-Pad.

“Fuck you bitch,’ screamed WiO.

The rat, who had been biding his time, smiled and said, “I have one thing to say, Lester Crown.”

“What the hell has that got to do with this, you damned nazi?” countered WiO.

“Well, it’s undeniably true that…,” started rat but he was cut off.

Z shouted, “Do not take revenge on someone who wrongs you. If someone strikes you on the right cheek, turn to him the other also.”

Rat continued, “The equivalency here is obvious, but of course the Israelis are much more equivalent than…”

That’s right screamed Ash, “If the Israeli’s are as good as WiO says, we should expect more of them.”

“To whom much is given, much is demanded.” Quoted Z.

Lord Dougo rose, “Equivalent? You fucking morons. Next you will be blaming Iran on Donald Rumsfeld and the neocons. None of this could be O’s fault or that of the Libs. No, not in a coon’s age. Man, you people are stupid.”

“All I care about is that none of my money or my kids go to some hell hole in the ME. Screw them all,” said Rufus II. (He was starting to get his second wind and was feeling kinda feisty.)

“Our Scriptures tell us that if you see your enemy hungry, go buy that person lunch, or if he's thirsty, get him a drink. Your generosity will surprise him with goodness. Don't let evil get the best of you; get the best of evil by doing good,” said Z.

“I merely quote the words of the Chief Rabbi of Jerusalem, a man who should know of which he speaks,” said the rat.

“You don’t know shit, crapper. You prove it here daily,” chimed in the Jarl of Id.

"Do not suppose that I have come to bring peace to the earth. I did not come to bring peace, but a sword" quoted Z.

“Who’s side are you on?” questioned the high king.

"I hate those goat-fuckers," said Z as she frantically keyed her machine and followed with, “Jesus said to them, "But now if you have a purse, take it, and also a bag; and if you don't have a sword, sell your cloak and buy one..." The disciples said, "See, Lord, here are two swords." "That is enough," he replied.

“She’s nutz,” said the Corn King.

“Never forget,” screamed WiO.

“Let my people go,” screamed the Jarl of Id.

“Next year in Jerusalem,” screamed Allen of Ga.

The strains of the Macarena suddenly filled the room as Sam stuck his head in the door and asked, “Anyone got change for the condom machine in the john?”

Ash went to give him change but soon returned.

The Ranger had now reached the end of his patience, “Joos, Joos, Joos, Joos, Joos, that’s all we talk about. This is the 30th moot we have had on this subject in the last month. I suggest Korea and nobody listens. Damn.”

“But those who hope in the LORD will renew their strength. They will soar on wings like eagles; they will run and not grow weary, they will walk and not be faint,” said Z.

“What?” said Gag.

“Forget it Gag, she’s batshit crazy,” said the Corn King.

“Yea, though I walk through the Valley of Death, I shall…” Z continued.

“Enough. Enough,” roared the king.

“Enough.”

“It is 12:30 and they will be kicking us out of the hall shortly. We have a motion on the floor presented by the Shogun. It’s time to take a vote. Can we get anonymous agreement? Let’s take a vote by show of hands. All in favor of WiO’s proposal raise your hands.”

Given the votes of Allen of Ga’s nine acolytes and the fact that Doug had moved over to sit with that group, the shogun had achieved a consensus but it was hardly the unanimous approval that he had demanded. He rose and silently gazed upon those who had failed to raise their hands in assent. Then he spoke.

“Once more, you show yourselves to be the base anti-Semitic bastards I have always known you to be. Your blatant disregard for the lives and culture of my people are well known. No more brisket for you. No doggy bags for anyone.

"Allen, have your men collect any of those boxes that haven’t been opened yet. They go with us.

"All that I can say is that you sniveling cowards are a bunch of pussy appeasers who will suffer the same predation my tribe has suffered for thousands of years. When it happens, I will try to contain my laughter. I know I will be unable to contain my derision.

A pox on you and your posterity unto the 10th generation.”

“Ok,” said the high king, “So is that it for tonight?”

Everyone nodded assent and some of the naysayers surreptitiously moved towards the remaining brisket to grab one more bite before the remains were taken away.

“Fine,” said the king.

“Say Ruf, could you let Sam and Mel know that we are wrapping up and will be taking off soon?”

“Sure Deuce. Just need to find my keys.”

As the Corn King entered the main hall it was obvious the Graham-Foster wedding was also wrapping up. Sam was sitting at one of the now nearly empty tables talking to two of the bridesmaids while Melody was in the middle of the darkened dance floor under a giant mirrored disco ball dancing in the flickering lights with a tall, blonde, sensuous beauty to the beat of Clapton’s You Look Wonderful Tonight.

Most in the Patton Room stopped to watch for a moment, then Deuce said, “Just a reminder, at the next Great Moot, the Corn King will present a paper on the progress the state of Ca is making towards energy independence. We will also debate whether to take up the Chief Ranger’s suggestion that we talk about Korea.

“So that’s it. Good meeting. Get those posts with your thoughts over to Sam. I think Lady Jenny-Janus has volunteered to pull together the list of pot luck dishes you are planning to bring for tomorrow's moot. Keep her updated so we don’t end up with a lot of duplicates.

“We’re done here. See you tomorrow night, same time, same place.”

“Take it easy Deuce. Be careful driving,” said WiO.

“I’ll catch you guys tomorrow,” said Ash.

“Damn, I lost my keys again,” complained the Corn King. “Give me a hand here will you rat?”

The lights flickered to announce it was time to go.

The Moot of the Great Council was ended.

Each male is content with 25 females; Do Asian Buffalo Get it Right?

2012-02-11T06:24:00.000-05:00

Costa Rica: Where the buffalo roam?

Posted: Friday, February 10, 2012 - By Mitzi Stark TICO TIMES

AROUND COSTA RICA: Some 30 farms in Costa Rica raise water buffalo as a more sustainable alternative to cattle, and dairy products made with buffalo milk are making their way into supermarkets.

Joan Bougie

Asian water buffalo.

Buffalo cheese? Or to be completely correct, búfala cheese, as only the females give milk, and in Spanish words distinguish gender. The beasts to which we refer here are Asian water buffalo, and they are, literally, gaining ground in Costa Rica and other Latin countries. Twenty-two farms have buffalo herds here and produce dairy products made from buffalo milk.

Farmers find these buffalo more manageable than regular cattle because they are more docile, need less pastureland, don’t trample up the land as cows do, produce high-quality milk, meat and leather, reproduce more rapidly than cows, and are resistant to parasites that attack cattle.

You can ride them like horses – there were a few in San José’s tope in December – and, for hauling loads, one water buffalo can pull as much as a team of oxen.

In Asia, especially in India, Pakistan and China, these animals have been the backbone of agriculture for centuries. In the West, buffalo production is just getting started. Big beef producer Argentina is one country that has been developing buffalo herds and is already exporting buffalo products. Venezuela, Colombia and Brazil are also developing herds.

At the University of Costa Rica’s technical campus in the western Central Valley town of Atenas, formerly the Central American Cattle-Breeding School, Eduardo Barrantes heads a department that includes an hato of buffalo, one male and 25 females. Here, farmers and agriculture students learn about management of the animals and can test their skills at developing new products.

Buffalo mozzarella made in Costa Rica.

Joan Bougie

“Buffalo survive under more difficult conditions,” Barrantes explains, surrounded by the hefty, shaggy animals. “They don’t need human food like corn and soy beans, and in tropical countries where there is a lot of rain they can find grass all year-round. In wetlands, they eat the grass and weeds that choke up the water.”

Each male is content with 25 females, so large herds are broken down into smaller groups, he adds.

Buffalo live longer and produce milk even during gestation, Barrantes says. They produce milk until they are 25 years old. In buffalo meat, the fat is concentrated on the outside so the center part has less fat and cholesterol. Argentina exports buffalo meat for hospitals in Europe because it is healthier.

Buffalo were first brought to Costa Rica from Guatemala in the 1970s by then President José “Pepe” Figueres for use in the banana and palm fields because they can take the hot, tropical climate, Barrantes says. In more recent years, farmers have begun to see the advantages of raising buffalo; there are now about 3,000 in Costa Rica and the number is growing. An association of water buffalo producers lists 30 farms that raise buffalo.

El Porvenir, an hacienda near Guatuso in the Northern Zone, has a herd of 1,000 animals in scattered pastures. The Venezuelan owners began here in 2007 with 300 buffalo, eight males and the rest females. The herd has multiplied, and El Porvenir now sells mozzarella and other types of cheese, yogurt and other lactic products under the brand name Italacteos, with the red, white and green colors of Italy on the label.

Hacienda Santa Rita in Río Cuarto de Grecia, northwest of the capital, began operation in 2009 and now has 180 buffalo. The farm produces a soft, white, Turrialba-style cheese, caramel creamy dulce de leche and yogurt under the brand name Calicanto. Both brands are sold at Auto Mercado, Walmart and other stores around the country.

Other herds are found in the northwest Guanacaste province and the Southern Zone, Barrantes says.

Peace and Harmony in the EU

2012-02-10T04:50:00.001-05:00

Greece Hit by 48-Hour Strike

By NEKTARIA STAMOULI
WSJ

ATHENS—Greece's major unions launched a 48-hour nationwide strike Friday to protest new austerity measures demanded by the country's creditors, adding to social tension in a country now in its fifth year of economic recession.

The general strike comes a day after an agreement was reached by the political parties supporting Prime Minister George Papademos' caretaker government on more than €3 billion ($3.99 billion) in additional cuts to the 2012 budget.

The package of cuts will be put before the government cabinet for approval on Friday and will go before parliament for a crucial vote in a few days.

Greece's international creditors, including fellow euro-zone countries and the International Monetary Fund, demanded the cuts in order to proceed with negotiations for a second bailout that would keep Greece from defaulting on its debts next month.

Greece's two major umbrella unions, the public sector ADEDY and private sector GSEE, said Thursday that in addition to the general strike they will stage three days of rallies around the country, protesting the draconian terms of the new austerity package.

The unions labeled the new cuts "the tombstone of Greek society."

Greece's latest strike will affect central and local government offices, banks and hospitals. It will also lead to the suspension of all metro, bus, urban rail and trolley-bus services in the Athens area. Lawyers have announced a three-day walkout starting on Monday.

Greek Deputy Labor Minister Yannis Koutsoukos resigned in protest at the austerity measures late Thursday, saying the terms will demolish the government's labor relations.

Euro-zone finance ministers meeting in Brussels late Thursday put an extra hurdle in front of the bailout, saying the measures must be approved by the Greek parliament before the €130 billion aid plan is signed off.

That demand added to the uncertainty over Greece's future while shifting the focus back to Athens, where lawmakers could begin debating the new cuts as early as this weekend.

Under a draft agreement Greece will slash the minimum wage in the private sector by 22%, abolish permanent jobs in state enterprises and cut 150,000 jobs in the public sector by 2015, among other measures.

Several lawmakers have signaled they will vote against the reforms, although it is unlikely that a revolt by deputies will endanger the government's big majority in parliament. The three parties that support the government control 252 seats in the 300-member parliament.

Late Thursday, some 9,000 demonstrators—mostly from the Communist-backed PAME union—marched in central Athens to oppose the austerity reforms, according to initial police estimates.

Leftist parties, which openly oppose the cost-cutting measures, have seen their popularity rise significantly in recent polls, posing a new threat to the mainstream parties now supporting the government if elections are called later this spring as planned

Hell in Homs

2012-02-09T22:59:00.001-05:00

The Wrong Horseshoe

2012-02-09T04:02:00.000-05:00

If only he had brought Jeeps

Napoleon's failure: For the want of a winter horseshoe

By Saul DavidPresenter, Bullets, Boots and Bandages BBC

Of all the challenges faced by generals through history, moving armies has been one of the greatest - and Napoleon Bonaparte's invasion of Russia 200 years ago illustrates just how badly things can go wrong when it is underestimated.

It is not enough just to get your forces from A to B - you have to keep them fed and watered as they go. The art of movement, therefore, is one of the most complex and vital that any commander must master, if he is going to win.

In 1812, his armies having swept all before them, Napoleon was at the zenith of his power (shades of another invader of Russia 129 years later). His Grand Armee of 400,000 men was thought to be unbeatable and he himself anticipated a rapid victory.

Yet within six months his huge force had been reduced to a straggling band of ragged fugitives, and fewer than one in 20 of his soldiers would ever see their homes again. How had it come to this?

During previous campaigns in Western Europe, Napoleon had solved the problem of feeding his armies by letting them "live off the land" - either by pillaging or buying up supplies as they advanced.

But aware that such an expedient would not be possible in "the wastelands of the Ukraine", he planned to take his supplies with him.

This was a logistical operation of quite staggering proportions, requiring a wagon train of no fewer than 26 battalions - eight equipped with 600 light and medium wagons each, and the rest with 252 four-horse wagons capable of carrying 1.36 tonnes (a grand total of 9,300 wagons).

To pull these wagons and to transport his cavalry and artillery he had gathered 250,000 horses, all of which required 9kg (20lbs) of forage a day.

And yet the figures did not add up.

Had Napoleon arrived in Moscow in two months, and with only half his original 400,000 men, he would still have required total supplies of 16,330 tonnes, which was almost double the capacity of his supply trains.

Instead he advanced with just 24 days rations. Clearly he was gambling on a rapid victory and a campaign that would not last longer than three weeks. It was wishful thinking.

The Russians refused to stand and fight and destroyed crops and supplies as they withdrew, luring Napoleon ever further across forests, marshes and steppes.

Meanwhile the Grand Armee was losing 5,000 men a day thanks to desertion, disease and suicide and horses perished at a rate of 50 per kilometre (80 per mile) most from eating an unhealthy diet of freshly cut green fodder.

There were only two significant battles - at Smolensk, where the Russians were defeated, and at Borodino, near Moscow, a bloody and inconclusive contest that resulted in combined casualties of 80,000 men (44,000 of them Russian).

As the withdrawal continued, Napoleon entered Moscow in mid-September with only a quarter of his original strength. But Tsar Alexander I's refusal to sue for peace, and the problems of supply caused by his "scorched earth" policy, gave Napoleon little option but to retreat.

His troubles, however, were just beginning. Having entered Russia in June, and anticipating a short campaign, his horses were still shod with summer shoes.

But with the brutal Russian winter fast approaching, this tiny logistical oversight was to cost him dear. Winter horseshoes are equipped with little spikes that give a horse traction on snow and ice, and prevent it from slipping.

Without them, a horse can neither tow a wagon uphill, nor use them as brakes on the way down.

In the Russian winter of 1812, this spelt disaster for Napoleon's reduced force. Horses in summer shoes would have "fallen down underneath whatever it was they were towing", in the words of Bernie Tidmarsh, one of Britain's leading farriers.

"They wouldn't have got any grip going down hill any more than they would have going up," he says. "The end result would have been broken legs and mutilated limbs."

Assailed by hunger, the cold and Russian cavalry, the Grand Armee wasted away.

By the time Napoleon abandoned his army to its fate in Poland - arriving back in Paris on 5 December - it numbered fewer than 10,000 effectives. It was a disaster from which he would never recover.

His long retreat from Moscow has gone down in history as one of the greatest logistical disasters of all time. Without adequate horse transport, 2,400km (1,500 miles) from home, his army had no chance.

If a general gets his logistical preparation right, however, he can literally steal a march on the enemy.

Perhaps the greatest recent example of this was during the Franco-Prussian War of 1870-71 when the Prussian commander Helmuth von Moltke used the efficiency of German railways to concentrate his troops before the French could.

Having gained the initiative, he did not relinquish it until Prussia had won the war, a victory that would usher in German unification.

Horses, however, remained all armies chief means of moving men and supplies over difficult terrain until the Jeep was introduced by the United States military in World War II.

Jeeps were durable, reliable and flexible.

They could be used for almost anything - towing, cable-laying, transporting casualties and supplies, and with the right wheels they could even drive on railway tracks.

Every regiment in the US Army was supplied with 145 Jeeps, and 640,000 were built between the years 1941 and 1945 (18% of all wheeled vehicles).

By Vietnam, the Jeep had given way to the helicopter, and it is hard to imagine a modern army fighting a war without this supremely adaptable workhorse.

Yet as recently as the Falklands War of 1982, when helicopters were in short supply, many British soldiers had to "yomp" for three weeks across the barren heath of East Falkland before fighting a battle on the outskirts of Port Stanley. Some things never change.

Saul David is Professor of War Studies at the University of Buckingham and the presenter of

BBC Four's Bullets, Boots and Bandages.

________________________

Major-General Sir James WilsonBritish military observer

"The naked masses of dead and dying men. The mangled carcasses of 10,000 horses which had in some cases been cut for food before life had ceased.

"The craving of famine at other points forming groups of cannibals. The air enveloped in flame and smoke. The prayers of hundreds of naked wretches flying from the peasantry, whose shouts of vengeance echoed incessantly through the woods.

"The wrecks of cannon, powder-waggons, all stores of every description: it formed such a scene as probably was never witnessed in the history of the world."_________________

From Ivy Halls to the Garden, Surprise Star Jolts the N.B.A.

2012-02-08T12:07:00.001-05:00

New York’s newest basketball sensation spends most nights on a couch in a one-bedroom apartment on the Lower East Side. The housing choice is understandable once you get to know Jeremy Lin.

He is a Harvard graduate playing in the National Basketball Association. He is an Asian-American in a league devoid of them, which makes him doubly anomalous. No team drafted Lin in 2010. Two teams cut him in December, before the Knicks picked him up.

His contract, potentially worth nearly $800,000, was not even guaranteed until Tuesday afternoon. So for the past six weeks, Lin, 23, has been sleeping in his brother Josh’s living room, waiting for clarity and career security.

“He has his own couch,” Josh Lin, a New York University dental student, said cheerfully.

He should be able to reclaim his living room soon enough.

Jeremy Lin’s utterly distinctive, mostly transient N.B.A. existence has taken a rather sudden turn over the past few days.

On Saturday night, Lin came off the bench and powered the Knicks to a 99-92 victory over the Nets at Madison Square Garden, scoring a career-best 25 points with 7 assists. Two nights later, he made his first N.B.A. start and produced 28 points and 8 assists in a 99-88 win over the Utah Jazz.

Knicks fans now serenade Lin with chants of “Je-re-my!” and “M.V.P.!” while the franchise uses his likeness to sell tickets and teammates and coaches gush with praise.

With every game, every precision pass and every clever drive to the basket, Lin is raising expectations, altering the Knicks’ fate and redefining the word “unlikely.” On Twitter, fans and basketball pundits are using another term to describe the phenomenon: “Linsanity.”

Two weeks ago, the 6-foot-3 Lin was not even part of the Knicks’ point-guard rotation, despite their lack of talent at the position. He played sparingly in a few games, showing just enough promise to keep getting another look— a few more minutes, another quarter. But there was never any hint of what was to come.

With 25 points Saturday, Lin set the N.B.A. scoring record for a player from Harvard. For an encore, he became the first player in more than 30 years to record at least 28 points and 8 assists in his first N.B.A. start. The last to do so was Isiah Thomas, the Detroit Pistons’ Hall of Fame point guard, in October 1981.

“I don’t think anyone, including myself, saw this coming,” Lin said after the game Monday.

That is, essentially, the story of Lin’s career. He was cut in December by the Golden State Warriors, his hometown team, after one season in which he rarely left the bench. The Warriors were intrigued enough to sign him but not enough to keep him. The Houston Rockets gave Lin a quick look and cut him.

When the Knicks claimed Lin off waivers Dec. 27, he was fourth on the depth chart at point guard. Now he is No. 1, continuing a long pattern of low expectations and surprising results.

Lin received no college scholarship offers, despite leading his Palo Alto High School team to a 32-1 record and the California championship. At Harvard, he was twice named to the all-Ivy League first team and delivered a signature 30-point performance against 12th-ranked Connecticut.

At draft time, in June 2010, Lin was again overlooked. N.B.A. teams had their doubts — about his defense, about his jump shot, about his ability to keep up with the league’s elite athletes.

They were the kind of concerns scouts have every year about dozens of prospects, from all sorts of programs and all sorts of backgrounds. Yet there was no escaping Lin’s unusual pedigree and the subtle sense that he did not fit a profile.

Lin is the N.B.A.’s first American-born player of Taiwanese or Chinese descent and only the fourth Asian-American in league history. His parents, Shirley and Gie-Ming, who are engineers, emigrated from Taiwan to the United States in the 1970s.

“I think people are surprised, because people don’t know him, or maybe he’s a pioneer,” Shirley Lin said. “There’s not that many Harvard players, not that many Asian-Americans. He’s just kind of like underdog. But he works hard.”

The qualities that make Lin unique, and seemingly held him back, are now the qualities that make him a sensation. Knicks fans were clamoring for Lin before he threw his first pass at the Garden. They roar louder for his shifty layups in traffic than they do for Carmelo Anthony’s.

Lin is the proud underdog defying scouts, stunning opposing defenders and forcing reassessments with every daring burst into the lane. He is more than a novelty now, but also more than just an underrated player finding success.

Social networks lighted up Saturday night and again Monday with excited chatter about Lin, much of it from Asian-American fans who have been following him for years.

“It’s just a real point of pride, the success he is having,” said Carl Park, a 35-year-old graduate student in Chicago and a first-generation Korean-American.

Park grew up a Milwaukee Bucks fan, but he roots for Lin wherever he plays.

“It represents a step for the Asian-American community as it becomes part of American culture more broadly,” Park said.

To illustrate his point, Park posted a humorous “Timeline for what Asian-Americans get called in pickup basketball” on his Facebook page. In 1980, it was “Bruce” (as in Lee). In 1995, “Jackie Chan.” In 2000, “Yao,” for Yao Ming.

In 2012, “Jeremy.”

The first examples came from Park’s own experience as a recreational player. The last, he hopes to hear.

“It’s nice there’s been some progress that way,” Park said, “in that younger guys might actually get called the name of an actual basketball player.”

Yet the Lin phenomenon transcends race or nationality. He resonates with devout Christians, because he speaks openly of his faith, a sort of Taiwanese Tim Tebow. He taps into the passions of Harvard alumni, Ivy Leaguers, New Yorkers and anyone anywhere who loves an underdog.

“Jeremy Lin” was a top trending topic on Twitter on Sunday, in New York and in San Francisco. On Monday, he picked up nearly 10,000 followers on his account, @JLin7. On Tuesday, a Lin-themed rap appeared on YouTube.

No demographic seems to love him as much as Knicks fans, who are suddenly counting on Lin to revive their flagging season. The stars, Anthony and Amar’e Stoudemire, have struggled. The presumed starting point guard, Baron Davis, is recovering from a back injury. The Knicks have lost 15 of their first 25 games, dousing their championship hopes.

Another setback came Tuesday, when the Knicks announced that Anthony would miss up to two weeks because of a groin injury.

On Twitter, the fan response came swiftly: “As long as we have Jeremy Lin, we’ll be fine,” wrote @CareyWilbur.

It is perhaps too much to ask the undrafted player from Harvard to save the season. It seems more likely that Lin, who has a degree in economics, will ultimately settle into a more modest nightly role.

But the uncertainty is over. Lin has cemented himself as a credible N.B.A. player, not a novelty act. On Tuesday, his contract became guaranteed for the season. The Knicks are keeping him. It seems safe to go apartment hunting.

“I think he’s looking forward to it,” Josh Lin said.

Santorum Stuns

2012-02-08T01:22:00.000-05:00

Rick Santorum jolted the Republican presidential race Tuesday by winning nominating contests in Missouri and Minnesota and Colorado puncturing Mitt Romney's claim to be the unstoppable front-runner.

Mr. Santorum, a former Pennsylvania senator, won Colorado, a state Mr. Romney won by a wide margin in 2008.

US Constitution: Ignored, Diluted, Misrepresented and Now Losing Appeal

2012-02-07T10:42:00.002-05:00

Does in mean anything anymore?

‘We the People’ Loses Appeal With People Around the World

By ADAM LIPTAK NYT
Published: February 6, 2012

WASHINGTON — The Constitution has seen better days.

Sure, it is the nation’s founding document and sacred text. And it is the oldest written national constitution still in force anywhere in the world. But its influence is waning.

In 1987, on the Constitution’s bicentennial, Time magazine calculated that “of the 170 countries that exist today, more than 160 have written charters modeled directly or indirectly on the U.S. version.”

A quarter-century later, the picture looks very different. “The U.S. Constitution appears to be losing its appeal as a model for constitutional drafters elsewhere,” according to a new study by David S. Law of Washington University in St. Louis and Mila Versteeg of the University of Virginia.

The study, to be published in June in The New York University Law Review, bristles with data. Its authors coded and analyzed the provisions of 729 constitutions adopted by 188 countries from 1946 to 2006, and they considered 237 variables regarding various rights and ways to enforce them.

“Among the world’s democracies,” Professors Law and Versteeg concluded, “constitutional similarity to the United States has clearly gone into free fall. Over the 1960s and 1970s, democratic constitutions as a whole became more similar to the U.S. Constitution, only to reverse course in the 1980s and 1990s.”

“The turn of the twenty-first century, however, saw the beginning of a steep plunge that continues through the most recent years for which we have data, to the point that the constitutions of the world’s democracies are, on average, less similar to the U.S. Constitution now than they were at the end of World War II.”

There are lots of possible reasons. The United States Constitution is terse and old, and it guarantees relatively few rights. The commitment of some members of the Supreme Court to interpreting the Constitution according to its original meaning in the 18th century may send the signal that it is of little current use to, say, a new African nation. And the Constitution’s waning influence may be part of a general decline in American power and prestige.

In an interview, Professor Law identified a central reason for the trend: the availability of newer, sexier and more powerful operating systems in the constitutional marketplace. “Nobody wants to copy Windows 3.1,” he said.

In a television interview during a visit to Egypt last week, Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg of the Supreme Court seemed to agree. “I would not look to the United States Constitution if I were drafting a constitution in the year 2012,” she said. She recommended, instead, the South African Constitution, the Canadian Charter of Rights and Freedoms or the European Convention on Human Rights.

The rights guaranteed by the American Constitution are parsimonious by international standards, and they are frozen in amber. As Sanford Levinson wrote in 2006 in “Our Undemocratic Constitution,” “the U.S. Constitution is the most difficult to amend of any constitution currently existing in the world today.” (Yugoslavia used to hold that title, but Yugoslavia did not work out.)

Other nations routinely trade in their constitutions wholesale, replacing them on average every 19 years. By odd coincidence, Thomas Jefferson, in a 1789 letter to James Madison, once said that every constitution “naturally expires at the end of 19 years” because “the earth belongs always to the living generation.” These days, the overlap between the rights guaranteed by the Constitution and those most popular around the world is spotty.

Americans recognize rights not widely protected, including ones to a speedy and public trial, and are outliers in prohibiting government establishment of religion. But the Constitution is out of step with the rest of the world in failing to protect, at least in so many words, a right to travel, the presumption of innocence and entitlement to food, education and health care.

It has its idiosyncrasies. Only 2 percent of the world’s constitutions protect, as the Second Amendment does, a right to bear arms. (Its brothers in arms are Guatemala and Mexico.)

The Constitution’s waning global stature is consistent with the diminished influence of the Supreme Court, which “is losing the central role it once had among courts in modern democracies,” Aharon Barak, then the president of the Supreme Court of Israel, wrote in The Harvard Law Review in 2002.

Many foreign judges say they have become less likely to cite decisions of the United States Supreme Court, in part because of what they consider its parochialism.

“America is in danger, I think, of becoming something of a legal backwater,” Justice Michael Kirby of the High Court of Australia said in a 2001 interview. He said that he looked instead to India, South Africa and New Zealand.

Mr. Barak, for his part, identified a new constitutional superpower: “Canadian law,” he wrote, “serves as a source of inspiration for many countries around the world.” The new study also suggests that the Canadian Charter of Rights and Freedoms, adopted in 1982, may now be more influential than its American counterpart.

The Canadian Charter is both more expansive and less absolute. It guarantees equal rights for women and disabled people, allows affirmative action and requires that those arrested be informed of their rights. On the other hand, it balances those rights against “such reasonable limits” as “can be demonstrably justified in a free and democratic society.”

There are, of course, limits to empirical research based on coding and counting, and there is more to a constitution than its words, as Justice Antonin Scalia told the Senate Judiciary Committee in October. “Every banana republic in the world has a bill of rights,” he said.

“The bill of rights of the former evil empire, the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics, was much better than ours,” he said, adding: “We guarantee freedom of speech and of the press. Big deal. They guaranteed freedom of speech, of the press, of street demonstrations and protests, and anyone who is caught trying to suppress criticism of the government will be called to account. Whoa, that is wonderful stuff!”

“Of course,” Justice Scalia continued, “it’s just words on paper, what our framers would have called a ‘parchment guarantee.’ ”

“How many more men must die in support of a mission that is not succeeding?“ an Honest Lt. Colonel

2012-02-06T02:40:00.002-05:00

In Afghan War, Officer Becomes a Whistle-Blower

By SCOTT SHANE

Published: February 5,

WASHINGTON — On his second yearlong deployment to Afghanistan, Lt. Col. Daniel L. Davis traveled 9,000 miles, patrolled with American troops in eight provinces and returned in October of last year with a fervent conviction that the war was going disastrously and that senior military leaders had not leveled with the American public.

Since enlisting in the Army in 1985, he said, he had repeatedly seen top commanders falsely dress up a dismal situation. But this time, he would not let it rest. So he consulted with his pastor at McLean Bible Church in Virginia, where he sings in the choir. He watched his favorite movie, “Mr. Smith Goes to Washington,” one more time, drawing inspiration from Jimmy Stewart’s role as the extraordinary ordinary man who takes on a corrupt establishment.
And then, late last month, Colonel Davis, 48, began an unusual one-man campaign of military truth-telling. He wrote two reports, one unclassified and the other classified, summarizing his observations on the candor gap with respect to Afghanistan. He briefed four members of Congress and a dozen staff members, spoke with a reporter for The New York Times, sent his reports to the Defense Department’s inspector general — and only then informed his chain of command that he had done so.
“How many more men must die in support of a mission that is not succeeding?“ Colonel Davis asks in an article summarizing his views titled “Truth, Lies and Afghanistan: How Military Leaders Have Let Us Down.” It was published online Sunday in The Armed Forces Journal, the nation’s oldest independent periodical on military affairs. “No one expects our leaders to always have a successful plan,” he says in the article. “But we do expect — and the men who do the living, fighting and dying deserve — to have our leaders tell us the truth about what’s going on.”
Colonel Davis says his experience has caused him to doubt reports of progress in the war from numerous military leaders, including David H. Petraeus, who commanded the troops in Afghanistan before becoming the director of the Central Intelligence Agency in June.
Last March, for example, Mr. Petraeus, then an Army general, testified before the Senate that the Taliban’s momentum had been “arrested in much of the country” and that progress was “significant,” though fragile, and “on the right azimuth” to allow Afghan forces to take the lead in combat by the end of 2014.
Colonel Davis fiercely disputes such assertions and says few of the troops believe them. At the same time, he is acutely aware of the chasm in stature that separates him from those he is criticizing, and he has no illusions about the impact his public stance may have on his career.
“I’m going to get nuked,” he said in an interview last month.
But his bosses’ initial response has been restrained. They told him that while they disagreed with him, he would not face “adverse action,” he said.
Col. James E. Hutton, chief of media relations for the Army, declined to comment specifically about Colonel Davis, but he rejected the idea that military leaders had been anything but truthful about Afghanistan.
“We are a values-based organization, and the integrity of what we publish and what we say is something we take very seriously,” he said.
A spokeswoman for Mr. Petraeus, Jennifer Youngblood of the C.I.A., said he “has demonstrated that he speaks truth to power in each of his leadership positions over the past several years. His record should stand on its own, as should LTC Davis’ analysis.”
If the official reaction to Colonel Davis’s campaign has been subdued, it may be partly because he has recruited a few supporters among the war skeptics on Capitol Hill.
“For Colonel Davis to go out on a limb and help us to understand what’s happening on the ground, I have the greatest admiration for him,” said Representative Walter B. Jones, Republican of North Carolina, who has met with Colonel Davis twice and read his reports.
Senator Jeff Merkley, Democrat of Oregon, one of four senators who met with Colonel Davis despite what he called “a lot of resistance from the Pentagon,” said the colonel was a valuable witness because his extensive travels and midlevel rank gave him access to a wide range of soldiers.
Moreover, Colonel Davis’s doubts about reports of progress in the war are widely shared, if not usually voiced in public by officers on duty. Just last week, Senator Dianne Feinstein, Democrat of California and chairwoman of the Senate Intelligence Committee, said at a hearing that she was “concerned by what appears to be a disparity” between public testimony about progress in Afghanistan and “the bleaker description” in a classified National Intelligence Estimate produced in December, which was described in news reports as “sobering” and “dire.”
Those words would also describe Colonel Davis’s account of what he saw in Afghanistan, the latest assignment in a military career that has included clashes with some commanders, but glowing evaluations from others. (“His maturity, tenacity and judgment can be counted on in even the hardest of situations, and his devotion to mission accomplishment is unmatched by his peers,” says an evaluation from May that concludes that he has “unlimited potential.”)
Colonel Davis, a son of a high school football coach in Dallas and who is known as Danny, served two years as an Army private before returning to Texas Tech and completing the Reserve Officer Training Corps program.

He served in Germany and fought in the first Iraq war before joining the Reserve and working civilian jobs, including a year as a member of the Senate staff.
After the Sept. 11 attacks, he returned to active duty, serving a tour in Iraq as well as the two in Afghanistan and spending 15 months working on Future Combat Systems, an ambitious Army program to produce high-tech vehicles linked to drones and sensors. On that program, too, he said, commanders kept promising success despite ample evidence of trouble. The program was shut down in 2009 after an investment of billions of dollars.
In his recent tour in Afghanistan, Colonel Davis represented the Army’s Rapid Equipping Force, created to bypass a cumbersome bureaucracy to make sure the troops quickly get the gear they need.
He spoke with about 250 soldiers, from 19-year-old privates to division commanders, as well as Afghan security officials and civilians, he said. From the Americans, he heard contempt for the perceived cowardice and double-dealing of their Afghan counterparts. From Afghans, he learned of unofficial nonaggression pacts between Afghanistan’s security forces and Taliban fighters.
When he was in rugged Kunar Province, an Afghan police officer visiting his parents was kidnapped by the Taliban and killed. “That was in visual range of an American base,” he said. “Their influence didn’t even reach as far as they could see.”
Some of the soldiers he interviewed were later killed, a fact that shook him and that he mentions in videos he shot in Afghanistan and later posted on YouTube. At home, he pored over the statements of military leaders, including General Petraeus. He found them at odds with what he had seen, with classified intelligence reports and with casualty statistics.
“You can spin all kinds of stuff,” Colonel Davis said. “But you can’t spin the fact that more men are getting blown up every year.”
Colonel Davis can come across as strident, labeling as lies what others might call wishful thinking. Matthew M. Aid, a historian who examines Afghanistan in his new book “Intel Wars,” says that while there is a “yawning gap” between Pentagon statements and intelligence assessments, “it’s oversimplified to say the top brass are out-and-out lying. They are just too close to the subject.”
But Martin L. Cook, who teaches military ethics at the Naval War College, says Colonel Davis has identified a hazard that is intrinsic to military culture, in which a can-do optimism can be at odds with the strictest candor when a mission is failing.
“You’ve trained people to try to be successful even when half their buddies are dead and they’re almost out of ammo,” he said. “It’s very hard for them to say, ‘can’t do.’ ”
Mr. Cook said it was rare for an officer of Colonel Davis’s modest rank to “decide that he knows better” and to go to Congress and the news media.
“It may be an act of moral courage,” he said. “But he’s gone outside channels, and he’s taking his chances on what happens to him.”

Bob Dylan - Newport 1965, in case you forgot how good he was.

2012-02-05T12:20:00.000-05:00

10 years of Washington’s wars for “national security,” and we are broke with 45 million on food stamps

2012-02-04T02:57:00.000-05:00

Fact: Iran does not possess a nuclear weapon.

Fact: Iran has the right, according to international law, to develop nuclear energy for civilian use.

Fact: Iran’s nuclear energy program is regularly monitored by the International Atomic Energy Agency.

Fact: Iran has never started a war (in its modern history).

Fact: The United States possesses 10,600 nuclear warheads in its stockpile, 7,982 of which are deployed and 2,700 of which are in a contingency stockpile. The total number of nuclear warheads that have been built from 1951 to present is 67,500.

Fact: The United States is the only country to have ever used nuclear weapons. It did so when it incinerated hundreds of thousands of Japanese people living in the cities of Nagasaki and Hiroshima. Neither city had any military significance.

Fact: The United States has spent $7 trillion on nuclear weapons. The U.S. military budget for 2012 alone is about equal to Iran’s entire Gross National Product.

Fact: Israel, the largest recipient of U.S. foreign aid (about $3 billion in 2011), unlike Iran, possesses hundreds of nuclear weapons.

Fact: Israel, unlike Iran, refuses to sign the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty, or allow the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) into Israel to monitor its nuclear program.

In Iran Dispute, Who’s at Fault?

February 3, 2012 CONSORTIUM NEWS

The Israeli government and the major U.S. news media are escalating their rhetoric in support of a new “preemptive” war, this time against Iran. Yet, as with the Iraq invasion, little attention is focusing on the rules of international law and which side is in the wrong, as Nat Parry describes.

By Nat Parry

As saber-rattling against Iran intensifies, the question of which side in this confrontation really violates international obligations has largely been avoided.

Instead the widespread assumption in the West is that Iran is at fault. On Wednesday, a bipartisan group of former U.S. politicians, generals and officials saidthe United States should deploy ships, increase covert activities and use more bellicose rhetoric to make more “credible” the threat of a U.S. military strike to stop Iran’s nuclear program.

President Barack Obama at his State of the Union Address (White House photo by Pete Souza)

In last week’s State of the Union address, President Barack Obama accused the Islamic Republic of shirking its international obligations and repeated a now familiar threat to Iran, which implicitly includes the possibility of a nuclear strike against Tehran or suspected nuclear sites in the country

“Let there be no doubt,” Obama said, “America is determined to prevent Iran from getting a nuclear weapon, and I will take no options off the table to achieve that goal. But a peaceful resolution of this issue is still possible, and far better, and if Iran changes course and meets its obligations, it can rejoin the community of nations.”

Viewed in conjunction with the Obama administration’s new defense strategy, published just prior to the State of the Union, this ambiguous warning to Iran that “no options are off the table” becomes more clear – and more ominous.

In the official White House playbook, entitled “Priorities for 21st Century Defense,” the U.S. nuclear posture is described in a section called “Maintain a Safe, Secure, and Effective Nuclear Deterrent.” It says: “As long as nuclear weapons remain in existence, the United States will maintain a safe, secure, and effective arsenal.”

Further, “We will field nuclear forces that can under any circumstances confront an adversary with the prospect of unacceptable damage, both to deter potential adversaries and to assure U.S. allies and other security partners that they can count on America’s security commitments.“

There is no mention in the defense strategy of pursuing nuclear disarmament, an explicit obligation of the United States as a state party to the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty (NPT) and as the world’s leading possessor of nuclear weapons.

As the 2010 NPT Review Conference reminded states parties to the treaty: “The Conference recalls that the overwhelming majority of States entered into legally binding commitments not to receive, manufacture or otherwise acquire nuclear weapons or other nuclear explosive devices in the context, inter alia, of the corresponding legally binding commitments by the nuclear-weapon States to nuclear disarmament in accordance with the Treaty.”

The Conference further regretted that nuclear-armed countries such as the United States have failed to live up to their end of the NPT bargain: “The Conference, while welcoming achievements in bilateral and unilateral reductions by some nuclear-weapon States, notes with concern that the total estimated number of nuclear weapons deployed and stockpiled still amounts to several thousands. The Conference expresses its deep concern at the continued risk for humanity represented by the possibility that these weapons could be used and the catastrophic humanitarian consequences that would result from the use of nuclear weapons.”

When it comes to disputes over compliance with the treaty, however, for example Western suspicions that Iran is pursuing nuclear weapons or Iranian complaints that the U.S. is failing to disarm, the Review Conference reiterated the obligation that only diplomatic means should be pursued, and that “attacks or threats of attacks” must be avoided:

“The Conference emphasizes that responses to concerns over compliance with any obligation under the Treaty by any State party should be pursued by diplomatic means, in accordance with the provisions of the Treaty and the Charter of the United Nations. …

“The Conference considers that attacks or threats of attack on nuclear facilities devoted to peaceful purposes jeopardize nuclear safety, have dangerous political, economic and environmental implications and raise serious concerns regarding the application of international law on the use of force in such cases, which could warrant appropriate action in accordance with the provisions of the Charter of the United Nations. The Conference notes that a majority of States parties have suggested a legally binding instrument be considered in this regard.”

It should be noted that despite the unequivocal claims from Washington and in the U.S. media that Iran is pursuing nuclear weapons, there is actually considerable ambiguity over this claim. Former CIA analyst Ray McGovern recently wrote an article for Consortiumnews.com, reminding readers of a formal National Intelligence Estimate (NIE) from November 2007.

The NIE was issued unanimously by all 16 U.S. intelligence agencies and included the following conclusion: “We judge with high confidence that in fall 2003, Tehran halted its nuclear weapons program; … Tehran’s decision to halt its nuclear weapons program suggests it is less determined to develop nuclear weapons than we have been judging since 2005.”

This 2007 joint assessment of the U.S. intelligence community was essentially restated by Defense Secretary Leon Panetta last month, who stated frankly on national television that Iran is not currently attempting to develop nuclear weapons.

“Are they trying to develop a nuclear weapon? No. But we know that they’re trying to develop a nuclear capability. And that’s what concerns us,” Panetta told “Face the Nation” host Bob Schieffer. “And our red line to Iran is to not develop a nuclear weapon. That’s a red line for us.”

For its part, Iran has consistently said its nuclear program is peaceful, for electricity and medical purposes. If the Iranian government decides it is in its security interests to attain nuclear weapons, however, it has the legal right under Article 10 of the Non-Proliferation Treaty to withdraw:

“Each Party shall in exercising its national sovereignty have the right to withdraw from the Treaty if it decides that extraordinary events, related to the subject matter of this Treaty, have jeopardized the supreme interests of its country. It shall give notice of such withdrawal to all other Parties to the Treaty and to the United Nations Security Council three months in advance. Such notice shall include a statement of the extraordinary events it regards as having jeopardized its supreme interests.”

But Iran has not chosen to withdraw, and in accordance with its obligations under the NPT, is continuing to cooperate with the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA), which has the sole authority under the treaty to ascertain states parties’ commitments on non-acquisition of nuclear weapons.

A high-level IAEA delegation just completed a visit to Iran on Wednesday, and officials intend to travel to Iran again “in the very near future,” said the delegation’s leader. The three-day trip was aimed at resolving points of dispute over the country’s past atomic activities.

“We had three days of intensive discussions about all our priorities, and we are committed to resolve all the outstanding issues,” IAEA safeguards chief Herman Nackaerts said after the team arrived in Vienna, Austria, according to the Associated Press. “And the Iranians said they are committed, too.”

“We had a good trip,” Nackaerts added. Global Security Newswire noted that “The official’s remarks suggested the trip had yielded substantive results.”

“The Agency is committed to intensifying dialog. It remains essential to make progress on substantive issues,”IAEA Director-General Yukiya Amano said in a statement on the return of the agency’s delegation.

“The IAEA explained its concerns and identified its priorities, which focus on the clarification of possible military dimensions to Iran’s nuclear program,” Amano was quoted as saying. During the talks, the IAEA also discussed with Iran the topics and initial steps to be taken, as well as associated modalities, he added.

Iran’s official IRNA news agency had reported on Tuesday that the spirit of the talks between Iranian officials and the IAEA team was “positive and constructive.”

Yet, despite these promising diplomatic developments, the U.S. and its allies continue pursuing a war-footing posture in confronting Tehran.

Washington has lobbed accusations that Iran is not only developing nuclear weapons, but is also threatening to strike within the United States. According to the Washington Post: “An assessment by U.S. spy agencies concludes that Iran is prepared to launch terrorist attacks inside the United States, highlighting new risks as the Obama administration escalates pressure on Tehran to halt its alleged pursuit of an atomic bomb.”

The story added, “In congressional testimony Tuesday, U.S. intelligence officials indicated that Iran has crossed a threshold in its adversarial relationship with the United States.”

Director of National Intelligence James R. Clapper Jr. testified to Congress that the alleged Iranian plot to assassinate the Saudi ambassador in Washington last October “shows that some Iranian officials — probably including Supreme Leader Ali Khamenei — have changed their calculus and are now more willing to conduct an attack in the United States in response to real or perceived U.S. actions that threaten the regime.”

There are also new claims being floated that the Iranian regime has links with al-Qaeda, allegations not unlike the spurious accusations Bush administration officials made about Saddam Hussein in preparing the American public for war with Iraq ten years ago. As the Wall Street Journal reports Friday under the headline “US fears Iran’s links to Al Qaeda as officials believe country may have provided aid to terror group”:

“U.S. officials say they believe Iran recently gave new freedoms to as many as five top Al Qaeda operatives who have been under house arrest, including the option to leave the country, and may have provided some material aid to the terrorist group.

“The men, who were detained in Iran in 2003, make up Al Qaeda’s so-called management council, a group that includes members of the inner circle that advised Usama bin Laden and an explosives expert widely considered a candidate for a top post in the organization.”

Defense Secretary Panetta is now publicly voicing concerns that U.S. ally Israel is preparing to attack Iran in the near future, which would almost certainly bring the United States into a direct conflict. As David Ignatius wrote Thursday in the Washington Post:

“Panetta believes there is a strong likelihood that Israel will strike Iran in April, May or June — before Iran enters what Israelis described as a ‘zone of immunity’ to commence building a nuclear bomb. Very soon, the Israelis fear, the Iranians will have stored enough enriched uranium in deep underground facilities to make a weapon — and only the United States could then stop them militarily.”

But as the saber-rattling intensifies, so does the grassroots response to this threat of a new U.S. war in the Middle East. Dozens of demonstrations are planned across the United States for Saturday to oppose a potential war against Iran as well as ongoing U.S. sanctions.

A statement by the veterans’ antiwar group March Forward, which is participating in the protests, offers a reminder of the disastrous consequences of the past decade of U.S.-led wars in the Middle East and Central Asia:

“We’ve just endured 10 years of Washington’s wars for “national security,” which only seem to benefit those who are making a profit, while on the other hand causing massive bloodshed overseas and severe lack of money for people’s needs here at home.

“Like with Iraq, the U.S. government’s sanctions, assassinations, and threats of war towards Iran have nothing to do with self-defense or human rights, but what is best for big business in one of the most profitable regions in the world.”

The call to action lists some basic realities regarding nuclear proliferation, international law and U.S. hypocrisy in the Middle East, reading in part:

Fact: Iran does not possess a nuclear weapon.

Fact: Iran has the right, according to international law, to develop nuclear energy for civilian use.

Fact: Iran’s nuclear energy program is regularly monitored by the International Atomic Energy Agency.

Fact: Iran has never started a war (in its modern history).

Fact: The United States possesses 10,600 nuclear warheads in its stockpile, 7,982 of which are deployed and 2,700 of which are in a contingency stockpile. The total number of nuclear warheads that have been built from 1951 to present is 67,500.

Fact: The United States is the only country to have ever used nuclear weapons. It did so when it incinerated hundreds of thousands of Japanese people living in the cities of Nagasaki and Hiroshima. Neither city had any military significance.

Fact: The United States has spent $7 trillion on nuclear weapons. The U.S. military budget for 2012 alone is about equal to Iran’s entire Gross National Product.

Fact: Israel, the largest recipient of U.S. foreign aid (about $3 billion in 2011), unlike Iran, possesses hundreds of nuclear weapons.

Fact: Israel, unlike Iran, refuses to sign the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty, or allow the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) into Israel to monitor its nuclear program.

Nat Parry is co-author of Neck Deep: The Disastrous Presidency of George W. Bush.

Tell Netanyahu that if he goes to war with Iran, he goes alone.

2012-02-03T04:15:00.000-05:00

Is Israel preparing to attack Iran?

By David Ignatius, Published: February 2

BRUSSELS WAPO

Defense Secretary Leon Panetta has a lot on his mind these days, from cutting the defense budget to managing the drawdown of U.S. forces in Afghanistan. But his biggest worry is the growing possibility that Israel will attack Iran over the next few months.

Panetta believes there is a strong likelihood that Israel will strike Iran in April, May or June — before Iran enters what Israelis described as a “zone of immunity” to commence building a nuclear bomb. Very soon, the Israelis fear, the Iranians will have stored enough enriched uranium in deep underground facilities to make a weapon — and only the United States could then stop them militarily.

Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu doesn’t want to leave the fate of Israel dependent on American action, which would be triggered by intelligence that Iran is building a bomb, which it hasn’t done yet.

Israeli Defense Minister Ehud Barak may have signaled the prospect of an Israeli attack soon when he asked last month to postpone a planned U.S.-Israel military exercise that would culminate in a live-fire phase in May. Barak apologized that Israel couldn’t devote the resources to the annual exercise this spring.

President Obama and Panetta are said to have cautioned the Israelis that the United States opposes an attack, believing that it would derail an increasingly successful international economic sanctions program and other non-military efforts to stop Iran from crossing the threshold. But the White House hasn’t yet decided precisely how the United States would respond if the Israelis do attack.

The Obama administration is conducting intense discussions about what an Israeli attack would mean for the United States: whether Iran would target U.S. ships in the region or try to close the Strait of Hormuz; and what effect the conflict and a likely spike in oil prices would have on the fragile global economy.

The administration appears to favor staying out of the conflict unless Iran hits U.S. assets, which would trigger a strong U.S. response.

This U.S. policy — signaling that Israel is acting on its own — might open a breach like the one in 1956, when President Dwight Eisenhower condemned an Israeli-European attack on the Suez Canal. Complicating matters is the 2012 presidential campaign, which has Republicans candidates clamoring for stronger U.S. support of Israel.

Administration officials caution that Tehran shouldn’t misunderstand: The United States has a 60-year commitment to Israeli security, and if Israel’s population centers were hit, the United States could feel obligated to come to Israel’s defense.

Israelis are said to believe that a military strike could be limited and contained. They would bomb the uranium-enrichment facility at Natanz and other targets; an attack on the buried enrichment facility at Qom would be harder from the air. Iranians would retaliate, but Israelis doubt that the action would be an overwhelming barrage, with rockets from Hezbollah forces in Lebanon. One Israeli estimate is that the Jewish state might have to absorb 500 casualties.

Israelis point to Syria’s lack of response to an Israeli attack on a nuclear reactor there in 2007. Iranians might show similar restraint, because of fear the regime would be endangered by all-out war. Some Israelis have also likened a strike on Iran to the 1976 hostage-rescue raid on Entebbe, Uganda, which was followed by a change of regime in that country.

Israeli leaders are said to accept, and even welcome, the prospect of going it alone and demonstrating their resolve at a time when their security is undermined by the Arab Spring.

“You stay to the side, and let us do it,” one Israeli official is said to have advised the United States. A “short-war” scenario assumes five days or so of limited Israeli strikes, followed by a U.N.-brokered cease-fire. The Israelis are said to recognize that damage to the nuclear program might be modest, requiring another strike in a few years.

U.S. officials see two possible ways to dissuade the Israelis from such an attack: Tehran could finally open serious negotiations for a formula to verifiably guarantee that its nuclear program will remain a civilian one; or the United States could step up its covert actions to degrade the program so much that Israelis would decide that military action wasn’t necessary.

U.S. officials don’t think that Netanyahu has made a final decision to attack, and they note that top Israeli intelligence officials remain skeptical of the project. But senior Americans doubt that the Israelis are bluffing. They’re worrying about the guns of spring — and the unintended consequences.

davidignatius@washpost.com

Groundhog’s Day

2012-02-02T07:21:00.002-05:00

The Beautiful Game

2012-02-02T07:05:00.004-05:00

At least 74 people have been killed in clashes between rival fans following a football match in the Egyptian city of Port Said.

Scores were injured as fans - reportedly armed with knives - invaded the pitch after a match between top-tier clubs al-Masry and al-Ahly.

Officials fear the death toll could rise further.

It is the biggest disaster in the country's football history, said the Egyptian deputy health minister.

"This is unfortunate and deeply saddening," Hesham Sheiha told state television.

Some of the dead were security officers, the Associated Press news agency quoted a morgue official as saying.

Field Marshal Hussein Tantawi, the head of Egypt's ruling army council, went to a airbase near Cairo to welcome back al-Ahly players who were flown back from Port Said on a military aircraft.

BBC

In a translated account of what happened:

The people attacking us were armed with batons, knives, rocks, glass, firworks and all kinds of weapons that would be used in more than football trouble.
When we saw these numbers we knew we wouldn't be able to deal with all of them; so we started running towards the hallways that take us to the doors in order to exit the stadium. These hallways should've been opened for us to leave but they were closed by the army from the outside. The area between the doors of these hallways and the main exit gates had army soldiers and we were locked in. Not even able to escape. We were besieged in the hallway and we had two choices; either die inside or outside because even if were able to make it outside the people of Port Said were waiting for us there at the main gate.

Good News Day - Bad News Day

2012-02-01T06:28:00.000-05:00

The Good News for the Democrats is that the Republicans are stuck with Romney.

The Bad News for the Republicans is that they are stuck with Romney.

Kennewick Man

2012-01-31T05:54:00.001-05:00

Thugs

2012-01-30T05:40:00.000-05:00

John Bolton, Wrong as Usual

2012-01-29T03:24:00.002-05:00

Sarah Palin Signs In.

2012-01-28T12:51:00.000-05:00

Cannibals in GOP Establishment Employ Tactics of the Left

by Sarah Palin on Friday, January 27, 2012 at 2:57pm

We have witnessed something very disturbing this week. The Republican establishment which fought Ronald Reagan in the 1970s and which continues to fight the grassroots Tea Party movement today has adopted the tactics of the left in using the media and the politics of personal destruction to attack an opponent.

We will look back on this week and realize that something changed. I have given numerous interviews wherein I espoused the benefits of thorough vetting during aggressive contested primary elections, but this week’s tactics aren’t what I meant. Those who claim allegiance to Ronald Reagan’s 11th Commandment should stop and think about where we are today. Ronald Reagan and Barry Goldwater, the fathers of the modern conservative movement, would be ashamed of us in this primary. Let me make clear that I have no problem with the routine rough and tumble of a heated campaign. As I said at the first Tea Party convention two years ago, I am in favor of contested primaries and healthy, pointed debate. They help focus candidates and the electorate. I have fought in tough and heated contested primaries myself. But what we have seen in Florida this week is beyond the pale. It was unprecedented in GOP primaries. I’ve seen it before – heck, I lived it before – but not in a GOP primary race.

I am sadly too familiar with these tactics because they were used against the GOP ticket in 2008. The left seeks to single someone out and destroy his or her record and reputation and family using the media as a channel to dump handpicked and half-baked campaign opposition research on the public. The difference in 2008 was that I was largely unknown to the American public, so they had no way of differentiating between the lies and the truth. All of it came at them at once as “facts” about me. But Newt Gingrich is known to us – both the good and the bad.

We know that Newt fought in the trenches during the Reagan Revolution. As Rush Limbaugh pointed out, Newt was among a handful of Republican Congressman who would regularly take to the House floor to defend Reagan at a time when conservatives didn’t have Fox News or talk radio or conservative blogs to give any balance to the liberal mainstream media. Newt actually came at Reagan’s administration “from the right” to remind Americans that freer markets and tougher national defense would win our future. But this week a few handpicked and selectively edited comments which Newt made during his 40-year career were used to claim that Newt was somehow anti-Reagan and isn’t conservative enough to go against the accepted moderate in the primary race. (I know, it makes no sense, and the GOP establishment hopes you won’t stop and think about this nonsense. Mark Levin and others have shown the ridiculousness of this.) To add insult to injury, this “anti-Reagan” claim was made by a candidate who admitted to not even supporting or voting for Reagan. He actually was against the Reagan movement, donated to liberal candidates, and said he didn’t want to go back to the Reagan days. You can’t change history. We know that Newt Gingrich brought the Reagan Revolution into the 1990s. We know it because none other than Nancy Reagan herself announced this when she presented Newt with an award, telling us, “The dramatic movement of 1995 is an outgrowth of a much earlier crusade that goes back half a century. Barry Goldwater handed the torch to Ronnie, and in turn Ronnie turned that torch over to Newt and the Republican members of Congress to keep that dream alive.” As Rush and others pointed out, if Nancy Reagan had ever thought that Newt was in any way an opponent of her beloved husband, she would never have even appeared on a stage with him, let alone presented him with an award and said such kind things about him. Nor would Reagan’s son, Michael Reagan, have chosen to endorse Newt in this primary race. There are no two greater keepers of the Reagan legacy than Nancy and Michael Reagan. What we saw with this ridiculous opposition dump on Newt was nothing short of Stalin-esque rewriting of history. It was Alinsky tactics at their worst.

But this whole thing isn’t really about Newt Gingrich vs. Mitt Romney. It is about the GOP establishment vs. the Tea Party grassroots and independent Americans who are sick of the politics of personal destruction used now by both parties’ operatives with a complicit media egging it on. In fact, the establishment has been just as dismissive of Ron Paul and Rick Santorum. Newt is an imperfect vessel for Tea Party support, but in South Carolina the Tea Party chose to get behind him instead of the old guard’s choice. In response, the GOP establishment voices denounced South Carolinian voters with the same vitriol we usually see from the left when they spew hatred at everyday Americans “bitterly clinging” to their faith and their Second Amendment rights. The Tea Party was once again told to sit down and shut up and listen to the “wisdom” of their betters. We were reminded of the litany of Tea Party endorsed candidates in 2010 who didn’t win. Well, here’s a little newsflash to the establishment: without the Tea Party there would have been no historic 2010 victory at all.

I spoke up before the South Carolina primary to urge voters there to keep this primary going because I have great concern about the GOP establishment trying to anoint a candidate without the blessing of the grassroots and all the needed energy and resources we as commonsense constitutional conservatives could bring to the general election in order to defeat President Obama. Now, I respect Governor Romney and his success. But there are serious concerns about his record and whether as a politician he consistently applied conservative principles and how this impacts the agenda moving forward. The questions need answers now. That is why this primary should not be rushed to an end. We need to vet this. Pundits in the Beltway are gleefully proclaiming that this primary race is over after Florida, despite 46 states still not having chimed in. Well, perhaps it’s possible that it will come to a speedy end in just four days; but with these questions left unanswered, it will not have come to a satisfactory conclusion. Without this necessary vetting process, the unanswered question of Governor Romney’s conservative bona fides and the unanswered and false attacks on Newt Gingrich will hang in the air to demoralize many in the electorate. The Tea Party grassroots will certainly feel disenfranchised and disenchanted with the perceived orchestrated outcome from self-proclaimed movers and shakers trying to sew this all up. And, trust me, during the general election, Governor Romney’s statements and record in the private sector will be relentlessly parsed over by the opposition in excruciating detail to frighten off swing voters. This is why we need a fair primary that is not prematurely cut short by the GOP establishment using Alinsky tactics to kneecap Governor Romney’s chief rival.

As I said in my speech in Iowa last September, the challenge of this election is not simply to replace President Obama. The real challenge is who and what we will replace him with. It’s not enough to just change up the uniform. If we don’t change the team and the game plan, we won’t save our country. We truly need sudden and relentless reform in Washington to defend our republic, though it’s becoming clearer that the old guard wants anything but that. That is why we should all be concerned by the tactics employed by the establishment this week. We will not save our country by becoming like the left. And I question whether the GOP establishment would ever employ the same harsh tactics they used on Newt against Obama. I didn’t see it in 2008. Many of these same characters sat on their thumbs in ‘08 and let Obama escape unvetted. Oddly, they’re now using every available microscope and endoscope – along with rewriting history – in attempts to character assassinate anyone challenging their chosen one in their own party’s primary. So, one must ask, who are they really running against?

- Sarah Palin

The oil Embargo of Iran

2012-01-28T10:56:00.000-05:00

Thank you for your service

2012-01-27T19:27:00.003-05:00

HOORAH

The Brewer Barack Brouhaha

2012-01-27T10:56:00.001-05:00

CLICK IT TO EXPAND IT

Killing and Being Killed. Guilty or Not Guilty?

2012-01-26T03:55:00.000-05:00

Watch Was Justice Served After Haditha Killings? on PBS. See more from PBS NewsHour.

The State of Skepticism

2012-01-25T07:28:00.001-05:00

Here is a discussion and response to Obama’s 2011 State of the Union:

Let’s See How Long This Takes to Go Dark

2012-01-24T01:39:00.002-05:00

How the U.S. Lost Out on iPhone Work

2012-01-23T08:06:00.001-05:00

When Barack Obama joined Silicon Valley’s top luminaries for dinner in California last February, each guest was asked to come with a question for the president.

But as Steven P. Jobs of Apple spoke, President Obama interrupted with an inquiry of his own: what would it take to make iPhones in the United States?

Not long ago, Apple boasted that its products were made in America. Today, few are. Almost all of the 70 million iPhones, 30 million iPads and 59 million other products Apple sold last year were manufactured overseas.

Why can’t that work come home? Mr. Obama asked.

Mr. Jobs’s reply was unambiguous. “Those jobs aren’t coming back,” he said, according to another dinner guest.

The president’s question touched upon a central conviction at Apple. It isn’t just that workers are cheaper abroad. Rather, Apple’s executives believe the vast scale of overseas factories as well as the flexibility, diligence and industrial skills of foreign workers have so outpaced their American counterparts that “Made in the U.S.A.” is no longer a viable option for most Apple products.

Apple has become one of the best-known, most admired and most imitated companies on earth, in part through an unrelenting mastery of global operations. Last year, it earned over $400,000 in profit per employee, more than Goldman Sachs, Exxon Mobil or Google.

However, what has vexed Mr. Obama as well as economists and policy makers is that Apple — and many of its high-technology peers — are not nearly as avid in creating American jobs as other famous companies were in their heydays.

Apple employs 43,000 people in the United States and 20,000 overseas, a small fraction of the over 400,000 American workers at General Motors in the 1950s, or the hundreds of thousands at General Electric in the 1980s. Many more people work for Apple’s contractors: an additional 700,000 people engineer, build and assemble iPads, iPhones and Apple’s other products. But almost none of them work in the United States. Instead, they work for foreign companies in Asia, Europe and elsewhere, at factories that almost all electronics designers rely upon to build their wares.

“Apple’s an example of why it’s so hard to create middle-class jobs in the U.S. now,” said Jared Bernstein, who until last year was an economic adviser to the White House.

“If it’s the pinnacle of capitalism, we should be worried.”

Apple executives say that going overseas, at this point, is their only option. One former executive described how the company relied upon a Chinese factory to revamp iPhone manufacturing just weeks before the device was due on shelves. Apple had redesigned the iPhone’s screen at the last minute, forcing an assembly line overhaul. New screens began arriving at the plant near midnight.

A foreman immediately roused 8,000 workers inside the company’s dormitories, according to the executive. Each employee was given a biscuit and a cup of tea, guided to a workstation and within half an hour started a 12-hour shift fitting glass screens into beveled frames. Within 96 hours, the plant was producing over 10,000 iPhones a day.

“The speed and flexibility is breathtaking,” the executive said. “There’s no American plant that can match that.”

Similar stories could be told about almost any electronics company — and outsourcing has also become common in hundreds of industries, including accounting, legal services, banking, auto manufacturing and pharmaceuticals.

But while Apple is far from alone, it offers a window into why the success of some prominent companies has not translated into large numbers of domestic jobs. What’s more, the company’s decisions pose broader questions about what corporate America owes Americans as the global and national economies are increasingly intertwined.

“Companies once felt an obligation to support American workers, even when it wasn’t the best financial choice,” said Betsey Stevenson, the chief economist at the Labor Department until last September. “That’s disappeared. Profits and efficiency have trumped generosity.”

Companies and other economists say that notion is naïve. Though Americans are among the most educated workers in the world, the nation has stopped training enough people in the mid-level skills that factories need, executives say.

To thrive, companies argue they need to move work where it can generate enough profits to keep paying for innovation. Doing otherwise risks losing even more American jobs over time, as evidenced by the legions of once-proud domestic manufacturers — including G.M. and others — that have shrunk as nimble competitors have emerged.

Apple was provided with extensive summaries of The New York Times’s reporting for this article, but the company, which has a reputation for secrecy, declined to comment.

This article is based on interviews with more than three dozen current and former Apple employees and contractors — many of whom requested anonymity to protect their jobs — as well as economists, manufacturing experts, international trade specialists, technology analysts, academic researchers, employees at Apple’s suppliers, competitors and corporate partners, and government officials.

Privately, Apple executives say the world is now such a changed place that it is a mistake to measure a company’s contribution simply by tallying its employees — though they note that Apple employs more workers in the United States than ever before.

They say Apple’s success has benefited the economy by empowering entrepreneurs and creating jobs at companies like cellular providers and businesses shipping Apple products. And, ultimately, they say curing unemployment is not their job.

“We sell iPhones in over a hundred countries,” a current Apple executive said. “We don’t have an obligation to solve America’s problems. Our only obligation is making the best product possible.”

‘I Want a Glass Screen’

In 2007, a little over a month before the iPhone was scheduled to appear in stores, Mr. Jobs beckoned a handful of lieutenants into an office. For weeks, he had been carrying a prototype of the device in his pocket.

Mr. Jobs angrily held up his iPhone, angling it so everyone could see the dozens of tiny scratches marring its plastic screen, according to someone who attended the meeting. He then pulled his keys from his jeans.

People will carry this phone in their pocket, he said. People also carry their keys in their pocket. “I won’t sell a product that gets scratched,” he said tensely. The only solution was using unscratchable glass instead. “I want a glass screen, and I want it perfect in six weeks.”

After one executive left that meeting, he booked a flight to Shenzhen, China. If Mr. Jobs wanted perfect, there was nowhere else to go.

For over two years, the company had been working on a project — code-named Purple 2 — that presented the same questions at every turn: how do you completely reimagine the cellphone? And how do you design it at the highest quality — with an unscratchable screen, for instance — while also ensuring that millions can be manufactured quickly and inexpensively enough to earn a significant profit?

The answers, almost every time, were found outside the United States. Though components differ between versions, all iPhones contain hundreds of parts, an estimated 90 percent of which are manufactured abroad. Advanced semiconductors have come from Germany and Taiwan, memory from Korea and Japan, display panels and circuitry from Korea and Taiwan, chipsets from Europe and rare metals from Africa and Asia. And all of it is put together in China.

In its early days, Apple usually didn’t look beyond its own backyard for manufacturing solutions. A few years after Apple began building the Macintosh in 1983, for instance, Mr. Jobs bragged that it was “a machine that is made in America.” In 1990, while Mr. Jobs was running NeXT, which was eventually bought by Apple, the executive told a reporter that “I’m as proud of the factory as I am of the computer.” As late as 2002, top Apple executives occasionally drove two hours northeast of their headquarters to visit the company’s iMac plant in Elk Grove, Calif.

But by 2004, Apple had largely turned to foreign manufacturing. Guiding that decision was Apple’s operations expert, Timothy D. Cook, who replaced Mr. Jobs as chief executive last August, six weeks before Mr. Jobs’s death. Most other American electronics companies had already gone abroad, and Apple, which at the time was struggling, felt it had to grasp every advantage.

In part, Asia was attractive because the semiskilled workers there were cheaper. But that wasn’t driving Apple. For technology companies, the cost of labor is minimal compared with the expense of buying parts and managing supply chains that bring together components and services from hundreds of companies.

For Mr. Cook, the focus on Asia “came down to two things,” said one former high-ranking Apple executive. Factories in Asia “can scale up and down faster” and “Asian supply chains have surpassed what’s in the U.S.” The result is that “we can’t compete at this point,” the executive said.

The impact of such advantages became obvious as soon as Mr. Jobs demanded glass screens in 2007.

For years, cellphone makers had avoided using glass because it required precision in cutting and grinding that was extremely difficult to achieve. Apple had already selected an American company, Corning Inc., to manufacture large panes of strengthened glass. But figuring out how to cut those panes into millions of iPhone screens required finding an empty cutting plant, hundreds of pieces of glass to use in experiments and an army of midlevel engineers. It would cost a fortune simply to prepare.

Then a bid for the work arrived from a Chinese factory.

When an Apple team visited, the Chinese plant’s owners were already constructing a new wing. “This is in case you give us the contract,” the manager said, according to a former Apple executive. The Chinese government had agreed to underwrite costs for numerous industries, and those subsidies had trickled down to the glass-cutting factory. It had a warehouse filled with glass samples available to Apple, free of charge. The owners made engineers available at almost no cost. They had built on-site dormitories so employees would be available 24 hours a day.

The Chinese plant got the job.

“The entire supply chain is in China now,” said another former high-ranking Apple executive. “You need a thousand rubber gaskets? That’s the factory next door. You need a million screws? That factory is a block away. You need that screw made a little bit different? It will take three hours.”

In Foxconn City

An eight-hour drive from that glass factory is a complex, known informally as Foxconn City, where the iPhone is assembled. To Apple executives, Foxconn City was further evidence that China could deliver workers — and diligence — that outpaced their American counterparts.

That’s because nothing like Foxconn City exists in the United States.

The facility has 230,000 employees, many working six days a week, often spending up to 12 hours a day at the plant.

Over a quarter of Foxconn’s work force lives in company barracks and many workers earn less than $17 a day. When one Apple executive arrived during a shift change, his car was stuck in a river of employees streaming past. “The scale is unimaginable,” he said.

Foxconn employs nearly 300 guards to direct foot traffic so workers are not crushed in doorway bottlenecks. The facility’s central kitchen cooks an average of three tons of pork and 13 tons of rice a day. While factories are spotless, the air inside nearby teahouses is hazy with the smoke and stench of cigarettes.

Foxconn Technology has dozens of facilities in Asia and Eastern Europe, and in Mexico and Brazil, and it assembles an estimated 40 percent of the world’s consumer electronics for customers like Amazon, Dell, Hewlett-Packard, Motorola, Nintendo, Nokia, Samsung and Sony.

“They could hire 3,000 people overnight,” said Jennifer Rigoni, who was Apple’s worldwide supply demand manager until 2010, but declined to discuss specifics of her work. “What U.S. plant can find 3,000 people overnight and convince them to live in dorms?”

In mid-2007, after a month of experimentation, Apple’s engineers finally perfected a method for cutting strengthened glass so it could be used in the iPhone’s screen. The first truckloads of cut glass arrived at Foxconn City in the dead of night, according to the former Apple executive. That’s when managers woke thousands of workers, who crawled into their uniforms — white and black shirts for men, red for women — and quickly lined up to assemble, by hand, the phones. Within three months, Apple had sold one million iPhones. Since then, Foxconn has assembled over 200 million more.

Foxconn, in statements, declined to speak about specific clients.

“Any worker recruited by our firm is covered by a clear contract outlining terms and conditions and by Chinese government law that protects their rights,” the company wrote. Foxconn “takes our responsibility to our employees very seriously and we work hard to give our more than one million employees a safe and positive environment.”

The company disputed some details of the former Apple executive’s account, and wrote that a midnight shift, such as the one described, was impossible “because we have strict regulations regarding the working hours of our employees based on their designated shifts, and every employee has computerized timecards that would bar them from working at any facility at a time outside of their approved shift.” The company said that all shifts began at either 7 a.m. or 7 p.m., and that employees receive at least 12 hours’ notice of any schedule changes.

Foxconn employees, in interviews, have challenged those assertions.

Another critical advantage for Apple was that China provided engineers at a scale the United States could not match. Apple’s executives had estimated that about 8,700 industrial engineers were needed to oversee and guide the 200,000 assembly-line workers eventually involved in manufacturing iPhones. The company’s analysts had forecast it would take as long as nine months to find that many qualified engineers in the United States.

In China, it took 15 days.

Companies like Apple “say the challenge in setting up U.S. plants is finding a technical work force,” said Martin Schmidt, associate provost at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. In particular, companies say they need engineers with more than high school, but not necessarily a bachelor’s degree. Americans at that skill level are hard to find, executives contend. “They’re good jobs, but the country doesn’t have enough to feed the demand,” Mr. Schmidt said.

Some aspects of the iPhone are uniquely American. The device’s software, for instance, and its innovative marketing campaigns were largely created in the United States. Apple recently built a $500 million data center in North Carolina. Crucial semiconductors inside the iPhone 4 and 4S are manufactured in an Austin, Tex., factory by Samsung, of South Korea.

But even those facilities are not enormous sources of jobs. Apple’s North Carolina center, for instance, has only 100 full-time employees. The Samsung plant has an estimated 2,400 workers.

“If you scale up from selling one million phones to 30 million phones, you don’t really need more programmers,” said Jean-Louis Gassée, who oversaw product development and marketing for Apple until he left in 1990. “All these new companies — Facebook, Google, Twitter — benefit from this. They grow, but they don’t really need to hire much.”

It is hard to estimate how much more it would cost to build iPhones in the United States. However, various academics and manufacturing analysts estimate that because labor is such a small part of technology manufacturing, paying American wages would add up to $65 to each iPhone’s expense. Since Apple’s profits are often hundreds of dollars per phone, building domestically, in theory, would still give the company a healthy reward.

But such calculations are, in many respects, meaningless because building the iPhone in the United States would demand much more than hiring Americans — it would require transforming the national and global economies. Apple executives believe there simply aren’t enough American workers with the skills the company needs or factories with sufficient speed and flexibility. Other companies that work with Apple, like Corning, also say they must go abroad.

Manufacturing glass for the iPhone revived a Corning factory in Kentucky, and today, much of the glass in iPhones is still made there. After the iPhone became a success, Corning received a flood of orders from other companies hoping to imitate Apple’s designs. Its strengthened glass sales have grown to more than $700 million a year, and it has hired or continued employing about 1,000 Americans to support the emerging market.

But as that market has expanded, the bulk of Corning’s strengthened glass manufacturing has occurred at plants in Japan and Taiwan.

“Our customers are in Taiwan, Korea, Japan and China,” said James B. Flaws, Corning’s vice chairman and chief financial officer. “We could make the glass here, and then ship it by boat, but that takes 35 days. Or, we could ship it by air, but that’s 10 times as expensive. So we build our glass factories next door to assembly factories, and those are overseas.”

Corning was founded in America 161 years ago and its headquarters are still in upstate New York. Theoretically, the company could manufacture all its glass domestically. But it would “require a total overhaul in how the industry is structured,” Mr. Flaws said. “The consumer electronics business has become an Asian business. As an American, I worry about that, but there’s nothing I can do to stop it. Asia has become what the U.S. was for the last 40 years.”

Middle-Class Jobs Fade

The first time Eric Saragoza stepped into Apple’s manufacturing plant in Elk Grove, Calif., he felt as if he were entering an engineering wonderland.

It was 1995, and the facility near Sacramento employed more than 1,500 workers. It was a kaleidoscope of robotic arms, conveyor belts ferrying circuit boards and, eventually, candy-colored iMacs in various stages of assembly. Mr. Saragoza, an engineer, quickly moved up the plant’s ranks and joined an elite diagnostic team. His salary climbed to $50,000. He and his wife had three children. They bought a home with a pool.

“It felt like, finally, school was paying off,” he said. “I knew the world needed people who can build things.”

At the same time, however, the electronics industry was changing, and Apple — with products that were declining in popularity — was struggling to remake itself. One focus was improving manufacturing. A few years after Mr. Saragoza started his job, his bosses explained how the California plant stacked up against overseas factories: the cost, excluding the materials, of building a $1,500 computer in Elk Grove was $22 a machine. In Singapore, it was $6. In Taiwan, $4.85. Wages weren’t the major reason for the disparities. Rather it was costs like inventory and how long it took workers to finish a task.

“We were told we would have to do 12-hour days, and come in on Saturdays,” Mr. Saragoza said. “I had a family. I wanted to see my kids play soccer.”

Modernization has always caused some kinds of jobs to change or disappear. As the American economy transitioned from agriculture to manufacturing and then to other industries, farmers became steelworkers, and then salesmen and middle managers. These shifts have carried many economic benefits, and in general, with each progression, even unskilled workers received better wages and greater chances at upward mobility.

But in the last two decades, something more fundamental has changed, economists say. Midwage jobs started disappearing. Particularly among Americans without college degrees, today’s new jobs are disproportionately in service occupations — at restaurants or call centers, or as hospital attendants or temporary workers — that offer fewer opportunities for reaching the middle class.

Even Mr. Saragoza, with his college degree, was vulnerable to these trends. First, some of Elk Grove’s routine tasks were sent overseas. Mr. Saragoza didn’t mind. Then the robotics that made Apple a futuristic playground allowed executives to replace workers with machines. Some diagnostic engineering went to Singapore. Middle managers who oversaw the plant’s inventory were laid off because, suddenly, a few people with Internet connections were all that were needed.

Mr. Saragoza was too expensive for an unskilled position. He was also insufficiently credentialed for upper management. He was called into a small office in 2002 after a night shift, laid off and then escorted from the plant. He taught high school for a while, and then tried a return to technology. But Apple, which had helped anoint the region as “Silicon Valley North,” had by then converted much of the Elk Grove plant into an AppleCare call center, where new employees often earn $12 an hour.

There were employment prospects in Silicon Valley, but none of them panned out. “What they really want are 30-year-olds without children,” said Mr. Saragoza, who today is 48, and whose family now includes five of his own.

After a few months of looking for work, he started feeling desperate. Even teaching jobs had dried up. So he took a position with an electronics temp agency that had been hired by Apple to check returned iPhones and iPads before they were sent back to customers. Every day, Mr. Saragoza would drive to the building where he had once worked as an engineer, and for $10 an hour with no benefits, wipe thousands of glass screens and test audio ports by plugging in headphones.

Paydays for Apple

As Apple’s overseas operations and sales have expanded, its top employees have thrived. Last fiscal year, Apple’s revenue topped $108 billion, a sum larger than the combined state budgets of Michigan, New Jersey and Massachusetts. Since 2005, when the company’s stock split, share prices have risen from about $45 to more than $427.

Some of that wealth has gone to shareholders. Apple is among the most widely held stocks, and the rising share price has benefited millions of individual investors, 401(k)’s and pension plans. The bounty has also enriched Apple workers. Last fiscal year, in addition to their salaries, Apple’s employees and directors received stock worth $2 billion and exercised or vested stock and options worth an added $1.4 billion.

The biggest rewards, however, have often gone to Apple’s top employees. Mr. Cook, Apple’s chief, last year received stock grants — which vest over a 10-year period — that, at today’s share price, would be worth $427 million, and his salary was raised to $1.4 million. In 2010, Mr. Cook’s compensation package was valued at $59 million, according to Apple’s security filings.

A person close to Apple argued that the compensation received by Apple’s employees was fair, in part because the company had brought so much value to the nation and world. As the company has grown, it has expanded its domestic work force, including manufacturing jobs. Last year, Apple’s American work force grew by 8,000 people.

While other companies have sent call centers abroad, Apple has kept its centers in the United States. One source estimated that sales of Apple’s products have caused other companies to hire tens of thousands of Americans. FedEx and United Parcel Service, for instance, both say they have created American jobs because of the volume of Apple’s shipments, though neither would provide specific figures without permission from Apple, which the company declined to provide.

“We shouldn’t be criticized for using Chinese workers,” a current Apple executive said. “The U.S. has stopped producing people with the skills we need.”

What’s more, Apple sources say the company has created plenty of good American jobs inside its retail stores and among entrepreneurs selling iPhone and iPad applications.

After two months of testing iPads, Mr. Saragoza quit. The pay was so low that he was better off, he figured, spending those hours applying for other jobs. On a recent October evening, while Mr. Saragoza sat at his MacBook and submitted another round of résumés online, halfway around the world a woman arrived at her office. The worker, Lina Lin, is a project manager in Shenzhen, China, at PCH International, which contracts with Apple and other electronics companies to coordinate production of accessories, like the cases that protect the iPad’s glass screens. She is not an Apple employee. But Mrs. Lin is integral to Apple’s ability to deliver its products.

Mrs. Lin earns a bit less than what Mr. Saragoza was paid by Apple. She speaks fluent English, learned from watching television and in a Chinese university. She and her husband put a quarter of their salaries in the bank every month. They live in a 1,080-square-foot apartment, which they share with their in-laws and son.

“There are lots of jobs,” Mrs. Lin said. “Especially in Shenzhen.”

Innovation’s Losers

Toward the end of Mr. Obama’s dinner last year with Mr. Jobs and other Silicon Valley executives, as everyone stood to leave, a crowd of photo seekers formed around the president. A slightly smaller scrum gathered around Mr. Jobs. Rumors had spread that his illness had worsened, and some hoped for a photograph with him, perhaps for the last time.

Eventually, the orbits of the men overlapped. “I’m not worried about the country’s long-term future,” Mr. Jobs told Mr. Obama, according to one observer. “This country is insanely great. What I’m worried about is that we don’t talk enough about solutions.”

At dinner, for instance, the executives had suggested that the government should reform visa programs to help companies hire foreign engineers. Some had urged the president to give companies a “tax holiday” so they could bring back overseas profits which, they argued, would be used to create work. Mr. Jobs even suggested it might be possible, someday, to locate some of Apple’s skilled manufacturing in the United States if the government helped train more American engineers.

Economists debate the usefulness of those and other efforts, and note that a struggling economy is sometimes transformed by unexpected developments. The last time analysts wrung their hands about prolonged American unemployment, for instance, in the early 1980s, the Internet hardly existed. Few at the time would have guessed that a degree in graphic design was rapidly becoming a smart bet, while studying telephone repair a dead end.

What remains unknown, however, is whether the United States will be able to leverage tomorrow’s innovations into millions of jobs.

In the last decade, technological leaps in solar and wind energy, semiconductor fabrication and display technologies have created thousands of jobs. But while many of those industries started in America, much of the employment has occurred abroad. Companies have closed major facilities in the United States to reopen in China. By way of explanation, executives say they are competing with Apple for shareholders. If they cannot rival Apple’s growth and profit margins, they won’t survive.

“New middle-class jobs will eventually emerge,” said Lawrence Katz, a Harvard economist. “But will someone in his 40s have the skills for them? Or will he be bypassed for a new graduate and never find his way back into the middle class?”

The pace of innovation, say executives from a variety of industries, has been quickened by businessmen like Mr. Jobs. G.M. went as long as half a decade between major automobile redesigns. Apple, by comparison, has released five iPhones in four years, doubling the devices’ speed and memory while dropping the price that some consumers pay.

Before Mr. Obama and Mr. Jobs said goodbye, the Apple executive pulled an iPhone from his pocket to show off a new application — a driving game — with incredibly detailed graphics. The device reflected the soft glow of the room’s lights. The other executives, whose combined worth exceeded $69 billion, jostled for position to glance over his shoulder. The game, everyone agreed, was wonderful.

There wasn’t even a tiny scratch on the screen.

Just how stupid are we?

2012-01-22T02:58:00.000-05:00

Barack Obama can hold a note!

2012-01-22T02:30:00.000-05:00

Thank You ABC & CNN

2012-01-21T11:08:00.000-05:00

Gingrich holds clear lead in new South Carolina poll

By: Stephanie Condon
Topics: Campaign 2012

Republican presidential candidate Newt Gingrich may have pulled too far ahead in South Carolina for Mitt Romney to catch up, according to a poll of likely Republican voters in the Palmetto state released Friday.

The former speaker has the lead with 32 percent in a newClemson University poll, conducted January 18-19. Romney comes in second with 26 percent, while Rep. Ron Paul places third at 11 percent and former Sen. Rick Santorum places fourth with 9 percent. Twenty percent of voters remain undecided. The poll has a 4.73 percent margin of error.

In a separate poll released Thursday by American Research Group (ARG), Gingrich and Romney were essentially tied, 33 percent to 32 percent for the former Massachusetts governor.

The six-point difference between Gingrich and Romney in the Clemson poll may be too large for the former Massachusetts governor to make up before Saturday's primary -- even following the charge from Gingrich's former wife Marianne that Gingrich had asked her for an "open marriage." Gingrich has denied that charge.

"We expect a reaction by the electorate to the personal revelations about Gingrich to be registered on Saturday, however, we do not think it will be substantial enough to erase the lead Gingrich has over Romney," Clemson University political scientist Dave Woodard said in a statement.

After naming their preferred candidates, voters were asked what they liked most about that candidate. The two most popular answers were "he has honesty and integrity" and "his overall political ideology" -- suggesting that electability may not be voters' highest priority.

After Romney virtually tied for first in the Iowa caucuses and won the New Hampshire primaries, he appeared to be on his way to securing the nomination. Now, however, Gingrich is closing in both in South Carolina and nationally.

The Real Abraham Lincoln in his own words - Ron Paul on Lincoln

2012-01-21T10:07:00.000-05:00

The Revenge of the Hackers - Raging at the Machine

2012-01-20T04:49:00.002-05:00

…and talking about striking back at the media. This will go down in the history of all time great political responses.

Gingrich Talks Current Events

2012-01-19T05:18:00.002-05:00

Personnel costs, including retirement and medical care for dependants, account for 55% of the US defense budget.

2012-01-19T05:05:00.000-05:00

Romney’s 15% Mishap

2012-01-18T02:27:00.003-05:00

Romney has admitted that his effective personal tax rates have been around 15%. Romney is worth about $250 million. He described one of his sources of income, speaking fees, as insignificant. (It turns out to be around $350,000.) I do not think people care that Romney is rich. I do think they care that an incredibly wealthy man pays taxes at a rate that is half of what they pay. I also believe that the mantra that taxes on the rich are "too high", while we have $ trillion deficits, is going to be a hard sell for the Republicans.

This is not an argument about logic or what is the right amount of taxation and spending. Politics is about emotions and appearance. Obama will have a field day with this one. If the Republicans think it will be easy to defeat Obama with Romney as their guidon bearer, they may be in for a disappointment.

Portrait of a Coward

2012-01-17T07:33:00.001-05:00

Costa Concordia: coastguard 'ordered captain to return to the ship'

Italian newspaper reports claim Captain Francesco Schettino climbed over rocks and caught a taxi away from the scene

John Hooper in Rome and Tom Kington in Giglio
guardian.co.uk, Tuesday 17 January 2012 06.34 EST
Article history

The captain of the Costa Concordia was ordered by the coastguard to return to the stricken ship after claiming that the evacuation was almost complete when it had scarcely begun, according to transcripts of radio calls and telephone conversations published on Tuesday.

The transcripts indicate that Captain Francesco Schettino said he was going to return to the vessel. But two Italian newspapers, which published the transcripts, said that he instead walked from the rocks where the liner had come to rest to the port of Giglio and there caught a taxi to take him away from the scene of the disaster.

A witness who boarded the cruise ship Costa Concordia after it grounded has added damning claims about the behaviour of the captain of the vessel. Mario Pellegrini, the deputy mayor of Giglio, said he boarded the stranded vessel at about 11pm.

"I then remained on board until 5am helping passengers leave. Although I asked for the officers I couldn't find one – and I never once saw the captain," he told The Guardian.

A regional parliamentarian who visited Schettino in the jail where he is being held quoted him as saying: "The voice of my conscience cries out the loudest of all."

One of the newspapers, Corriere della Sera, said the crew began preparing the lifeboats 13 minutes before the order was given to abandon ship. It described the action, by some of Schettino's officers, as "a kind of mutiny".

On Monday, the chief executive of the cruise company operating the vessel praised the crew at a press conference in which he placed the blame firmly on the captain. But Pellegrini said: "The crew, many of whom did not speak English, were not professional." He said the only officer he found on board who was helping passengers escape was a ship's doctor.

After hitting a rock off the coast of Giglio last Friday night, the Costa Concordia continued past the port as Schettino turned it around and brought it to rest on a headland known as Punta Gabbianara. According to the transcripts, there, at 21.49, he was radioed by the harbourmaster's office in Livorno, which is a regional headquarters of the coastguard.

"Everything OK?" he was asked.

"Affirmative," came the reply. The coastguard was told the liner had suffered a "small technical failure".

Five minutes later, the coastguard radioed the bridge again. The second newspaper, Il Fatto Quotidiano, which did not provide a source for its information, said that in the meantime the harbourmaster's office had been told by the semi-militarised Carabinieri police of a call from a passenger aboard the Costa Concordia talking about a shipwreck.

This time, the coastguard asked not only if the vessel was in trouble, but also what was its position.

"We've only got a technical problem and we're not able to [give the position]," came the reply. "But as soon as it's resolved, we'll communicate [it] to you."

Thereafter, all radio calls to the stricken liner went unanswered. But at 00.32 the coastguard managed to contact Schettino by telephone.

By then, the evacuation had been under way for only about 40 minutes. The captain was asked how many people were still aboard.

"Two, three hundred," he replied.

Ten minutes later, the coastguard rang him again. By then, said Il Fatto quoting a local fire brigade commander, Schettino had left his ship and was on the rocks at Punta Gabbianara.

He was again asked how many people were still aboard.

"I've called the ship owners, and they tell me that about 40 people are missing," he replied.

"So few? How is that possible?" asked the coastguard, before adding: "But you're on board?"

"No. I'm not on board because the bows of the ship are coming up. We've abandoned her."

"What do you mean? You've abandoned ship?"

"No. No way have I abandoned ship. I'm here," Schettino replied.

The final, and most dramatic call, took place at 1.46am when, after confirming that he was speaking to the captain, a coastguard officer told him: "Right. You are now going back on board. You are going to go back up the rope ladder, return to the bridge and co-ordinate operations."

There followed a long silence, Il Fatto reported.

"You must tell me how many people there are," the coastguard officer continued. "How many passengers, women and children – and co-ordinate the rescue."

Schettino protested that he was on hand.

"Captain," said the coastguard officer, cutting across him. "This is an order. Now I am in command. You have declared the abandoning of a ship and are going to co-ordinate the rescue from the bridge. There are already dead bodies."

"How many?" asked Schettino.

"You're the one who should be telling me that," came the reply. "What do you want to do? Go home? Now, go back up and tell me what can be done: how many people there are and what they need."

"Alright," said Schettino. "I'm going."

Let’s try a fresh pot.

2012-01-16T11:49:00.000-05:00

Who’s Tough Call?

2012-01-16T08:07:00.000-05:00

Hell Bent on Dragging the US into Another War.

2012-01-16T05:51:00.003-05:00

Jerusalem - Israel and the US have agreed to postpone a major military defence exercise, a senior security official said on Sunday, amid rising regional tension over Iran's nuclear programme.

"Israel and the United States have agreed to postpone the manoeuvre planned for spring," the official said on condition of anonymity.

"The exercises will take place between now and the end of 2012," the official added, without elaborating.

Earlier, public radio said the "Austere Challenge 12" exercise would be pushed back to the end of 2012 over unspecified budgetary concerns, citing military sources.

Army radio, citing a defence official, said it was being postponed to avoid "unnecessary headlines in such a tense period".

Weapons drive

The joint manoeuvre was to have been the biggest yet between the two allies, and was seen as an opportunity to display their joint military strength at a time of growing concern about Tehran's nuclear ambitions.

Israel, the US and much of the international community accuse Iran of using its nuclear programme to mask a weapons drive, a charge Tehran denies.

The postponement appeared to suggest fears the exercise could dangerously ramp up regional tensions, at a time when Iran has already threatened to close the strategic Strait of Hormuz - a chokepoint for one fifth of the world's traded oil - in the event of a military strike or severe tightening of international sanctions over its nuclear programme.

Meanwhile, the US sent Iran a letter over its threatened closure of the Strait of Hormuz, the Iranian foreign ministry spokesperson said on Sunday, without revealing the letter's contents.

"The US ambassador to the UN, Susan Rice, sent a letter to Mohammad Khazaie, Iran's UN representative, which was conveyed by the Swiss ambassador, and finally Iraqi President Jalal Talabani delivered its contents to officials" in Iran, the official IRNA news agency quoted Ramin Mehmanparast as saying.

"We are in the process of studying the letter and if necessary we will respond."

In December, the Israelis insisted the joint manoeuvres were planned in advance and denied they were related to Iran.

Unease

"The exercise scenario involves notional, simulated events as well as some field training and is not in response to any real-world event," the military said.

The postponement was not expected to affect a visit to Israel by top US military chief General Martin Dempsey, who is scheduled to arrive later this week and meet with Israel's Defence Minister Ehud Barak and Chief of Staff Benny Gantz.

But the delay was announced as reports suggested unease in US-Israeli relations over the best response to Iran's nuclear programme, and after an Israeli official voiced "disappointment" at Washington's approach.

Washington has spearheaded a push for international sanctions against Iran, including on its oil exports and financial institutions.

But Israel's Strategic Affairs Minister Moshe Yaalon told public radio he thought US President Barack Obama's administration should be tougher.

"France and Britain understand that the sanctions must be strengthened, in particular against the Iranian Central Bank," Yaalon said.

"The US Senate is also in favour, but the US government is hesitating, fearing higher oil prices in an election year," Yaalon said. "It's disappointing."

Assassinations

Deputy Foreign Minister Danny Ayalon, speaking on Sunday ahead of a trip to Britain, also accused the international community of dragging its feet.

"It is regrettable that the international community has not yet used all the means at its disposal to stop the Iranian nuclear programme," he said.

Israel has made no secret of its desire to see crippling sanctions imposed on Iran in a bid to slow its nuclear development, and reports suggest it has also taken other actions to delay the programme.

The Jewish state is suspected of involvement both in a computer worm that reportedly set back Iran's nuclear efforts, as well as a campaign of assassinations of Iranian nuclear scientists.

Media reports have pointed the finger at Israel's intelligence agency Mossad.

Foreign Policy magazine reported that Israel's actions had created friction with Washington, and the Wall Street Journal said on Friday US officials had warned Israel against unilateral military action against Iran.

Yaalon said on Sunday that a military strike remained a last resort for Israel.

"Israel must defend itself. I hope that we will not arrive at that point," he said.

Pachelbel's canon

2012-01-15T08:07:00.000-05:00

The Choice Between the Democrats and the Republicans

2012-01-14T02:15:00.002-05:00

What Really Happened In Gaffney, South Carolina?

2012-01-13T08:14:00.009-05:00

The Left is carrying out a coordinated attack on Mitt Romney’s business career. One sees exactly the same allegations, often phrased identically, whether you look at the Daily Kos, the Associated Press, Slate or Think Progress, or listen to Newt Gingrich or Rick Perry. The centerpiece of the Left’s attack has been Bain’s involvement with two companies that merged to become Holson Burnes Group, Inc. Holson made photo albums, and Burnes made picture frames.

In the late 1980s, Holson was in deep trouble because of competition from cheap imports.
Bain helped to save the company, then encouraged its merger with Burnes:

Partly because of the import problem, the Holson family sold out to Bain Capital in 1986; however, the Holson Company, which was still managed by family members, continued to have problems under the Bain umbrella. To return the organization’s competitive edge, Bain called in a series of consulting teams, including one from Price Waterhouse. Among the members of the Price Waterhouse team was Hoffmeister. Bain asked Hoffmeister to join Holson as head of the company in 1988 to effect a turnaround.

In the same year, 1988, Holson opened a factory in Gaffney, South Carolina, where photo albums were produced. The factory initially employed 100 people and eventually around 150–all brand-new jobs that were created by Holson under Bain’s guidance.

Unfortunately, the new company, Holson Burnes, Holson Burnes,
was losing money, suffering net losses in both 1991 and 1992. The new management “worked to streamline the company, eliminate overlap, cut production costs, and jettison poorly performing units.” Those efforts succeeded in making Holson Burnes profitable; they also resulted in closing the Gaffney plant in 1992, after four years of operation.

Rick Perry says, referring specifically to Gaffney:

[T]he idea that you get private equity companies to come in and, you know, take companies apart so they can make quick profits and then people lose their jobs, I don’t think that’s what America’s looking for. I hope that’s not what the Republican Party’s about.

Other demagogues like Gingrich and the goofs at Think Progress say essentially the same thing. From the brief narrative above, one can see how ludicrous these charges are. Bain didn’t “come in and take companies apart;” on the contrary, it brought Holson and Burnes together in what became a profitable enterprise for decades. Bain didn’t make “people lose their jobs;” on the contrary, it created all of the jobs in Gaffney that Perry is talking about. It would have been good if the jobs had lasted more than four years, but there was obviously a net benefit of four years’ work to the employees.

Moreover, Bain’s stewardship helped to ensure that Holson Burnes survived and prospered. At the end of 1992, the company had 588 employees. Profitability returned in 1993 and 1994, and in 1996 Bain and the other shareholders of Holson Burnes sold the company to Newell Rubbermaid for $33.5 million. Leftists grumble that Bain and the other shareholders made money on the deal. I hope they did; they deserved to. Newell Rubbermaid’s purchase of Holson Burnes made it “the world’s largest manufacturer of picture frames, framed art and photo albums.” In the years that have gone by since then, Holson Burnes has changed names and owners, but has continued to prosper and has employed thousands of people. It is now known as Burnes Home Accents, LLC, and has its headquarters in Atlanta.

As for Gaffney, South Carolina, the fact that its 150 citizens had jobs at Holson Burnes for only four years was unfortunate, but hardly catastrophic. The county’s top economic official says:

A 1992 decision by a company controlled by an investment firm once led by former Massachusetts Gov. Mitt Romney to close a Gaffney plant and lay off 150 workers did not have a major impact on the local economy, according to Cherokee County’s top economic development official. …

Jim Cook, executive director of the Cherokee County Development Board, said the county was able to lure another manufacturer in the Meadowcreek Industrial Park off Interstate 85 the same year the Holson Burnes Group — the company controlled by Bain — left town.

“It was not devastating to our economy,” Cook said Wednesday. “The overall impact on the economy was typical of any small business going out. Nobody remembers it, so how significant was that? If anything, it helped us start the industrial park.”

If this is really the best that Think Progress, Barack Obama, Newt Gingrich, the Daily Kos, Rick Perry and the rest of the country’s know-nothings can come up with to smear Mitt Romney’s business career, they had better give it up before they make complete fools of themselves.

All things about Israel and Palestine continued:

2012-01-13T00:47:00.002-05:00

Regardless of the post, the conversation here seems to be fixated on the continuing conflict between Arab and Jew in Israel. I freely admit that I do not have the in depth knowledge of every aspect of the history of the area because I am not that interested in the area except as it disrupts the interests of the United States.

It is my belief that the majority of the wars and violence in the Middle East are a result of the disruption of the area by colonialism and a cultural clash between indigenous peoples and European transplants. It is no different than that which has transpired in the Balkans, Ireland and many parts of Africa. The claim that the land in Palestine is the natural home to people from another continent is validated because of their ancient religion is historically absurd. If you think not, apply the same standard to North and South America, Australia, New Zealand, Hawaii, Canada and the Celtic regions of Great Britain. No honest person can take such a claim seriously. The myths and and religious culture of the area have no more basis in fact than the myths and cultures of any other human civilization on the planet. To think otherwise is the height of jingoism and cultural triumphalism.

What is true is that might makes right. A superior technology and a political will always trump sentimentality and reason until that monopoly is lost and it always gets lost.

I found this video on the history of the area. It is interesting and helps to put the present unsustainable situation in perspective. History has not been kind or sympathetic to countries that ruled by force of arms and technological superiority. It never lasts and neither will this one.

Marines Piss on Dead Taliban Parade

2012-01-12T08:12:00.000-05:00

Used Car Prices

2012-01-12T03:39:00.000-05:00

Heads Up for Dilated Eyes

2012-01-11T19:05:00.000-05:00

Romney, Ron Paul and Huntsman

2012-01-10T22:22:00.000-05:00