“Soft despotism is a term coined by Alexis de Tocqueville describing the state into which a country overrun by "a network of small complicated rules" might degrade. Soft despotism is different from despotism (also called 'hard despotism') in the sense that it is not obvious to the people."
Why? Why not? What kind of person would want to subject themselves and their family, to the hypocrisy, inanity, and viciousness of American politics?
We have legislatures that pass laws that they have not read. We have a vapid president that has made tele-prompted platitudes an art form and yet receives little serious scrutiny from an intellectually shallow and dishonest press. Why would Sarah Palin or anyone else want to be part of that?
I think Sarah Palin is an attractive but ordinary talented politician that by any measure exceeds the standards of most who serve in the US Congress. I have lost sight of the qualifications necessary to be president. Could she be any worse or less qualified than Jimmy Carter, George Bush the younger or Barack Obama? I doubt it. Is there some tawdry revelation hidden by the media smoke screen of Michael Jackson or the sinning, sorry, sniffling governor from South Carolina?
If you want good government too bad, you aren't getting it in the America of 2009. The American political establishment is a septic sewer of corruption and venality caused by the barter and spoils of minority interests and lobbyists who wheedle the political compass for their paymasters. Still, things have not gotten bad enough to change that.
The Obama presidency rises or falls on the economy. An economic wreck is about the only hope the Republicans have to regain power. Who will lead them to an unlikely victory is anyone's guess. I doubt it will be the good mom from Alaska.
Analysis: Barack Obama's moment of truth in Afghanistan
The thunderous rumble of American armoured personnel carriers storming the Taliban's Helmand citadel, and the whir of its largest helicopter deployment since the Vietnam war - these are the backing tracks as President Barack Obama's Afghanistan policy arrives at its moment of truth.
By Dean Nelson, South Asia Editor. Telegraph Published: 9:59AM BST 03 Jul 2009
Operation Khanjar or "sword strike" was launched in the early hours of yesterday morning with two immediate aims: to break the militants' grip over "Taliban central" so free presidential elections can be held, and to clear enough space to introduce the benefits of the good governance Afghans have not known for 30 years, if ever. Brigadier-General Larry Nicholson flagged off more than 4,000 US marines with a Churchillian statement of intent. "Where we go we will stay, and where we stay, we will hold, build and work toward transition of all security responsibilities to Afghan forces," he said.
That's the plan in a nutshell. The marines go in, Terry Taliban retreats to his mountain lair, the good governance folk come in, the people vote, and suddenly life is better: civilian police, improved schools and clinics. Finally, the more rational militants see they cannot win.
From this new reality, a negotiation is possible. There may be some unreconcilables, but it will be manageable. So the theory goes, and most hope and pray it's one which holds true, because this is President Obama's much-vaunted "surge" and there does not appear to be a plan B.
The omens look better than they have some time. The Americans have withdrawn from Iraq's cities, which means Afghanistan will have its full focus in a way it hasn't had since the initial invasion in 2001. Pakistan appears to have finally realised the Taliban and al-Qaeda threaten its existence as a state and no longer feels so passionately that it's "America's war." More importantly, Pakistan's armed forces appear to have reached the same conclusion after a series of bloody attacks on its major cities. Yesterday, it moved its forces up to the Afghan border to capture Taliban militants fleeing the American advance. Finally there appears to be evidence of the joined up thinking President Obama's new "Af-Pak" policy promised.
But both Western critics and those who oppose America's presence and influence in Pakistan and Afghanistan say it's the wishful thinking of a man looking for a way out. "It's front-loaded withdrawal," as one retired Pakistani general described it last night.
There are two major weaknesses: The Karzai government is riddled with corruption which has alienated many Afghans from both his administration and his NATO allies. Official figures show that despite hundreds of millions of pounds in foreign aid for raising and training Afghanistan's national police, there are many areas which still have no functioning police force at all. The Western benchmarks of good governance – access to decent education and services - are in many parts of Afghanistan hard to make out from the rubble.
One diplomat in Kabul last night said he believed the new strategy has a year or two to deliver before Afghans decisively turn against them, but a former head of Pakistan's ISI intelligence service, General Hamid Gul, said he believes Obama's surge will have foundered by October.
The Taliban will fight a two-pronged strategy, he said: retreat to the hills where America's air power will not be so effective, while the remainder will disappear and wage a guerilla resistance campaign.
He believes the Taliban will learn more about American weaknesses from this new battle, as he says they did in Operation Anaconda in 2002. Then, several thousand American special forces with air support failed to deliver the knock-out blow they had expected.
The truth behind operation Operation Khanjar is that the Taliban has fought the western allies to a stale-mate in Helmand, and now the only hope lies in a devastating display of overwhelming force, the rapid delivery of good services, and the remotely possibility that it will be enough to impress senior Taliban commanders.
"In other words," as one leading Afghanistan expert said last night, "the US has to show its ability to inflict some serious damage on the Taliban before any real political talks with the Taliban, to reach agreement with at least some significant factions, so maybe it ends up as scoring a few points before the last round when the ref will decide." That appears to be the best victory in prospect
Published: July 2 2009 12:07 | Last updated: July 2 2009 20:26
The startling spike in oil prices to their highest level this year on Tuesday was caused by a rogue broker who placed a massive bet in the Brent oil market, triggering almost $10m (€7m) of losses for his company.
PVM Oil Associates, the world’s largest over-the-counter oil brokerage, said on Thursday it had been the “victim of unauthorised trading”. The privately owned company said that as a result of the unauthorised trades it had been forced to close substantial volumes of futures contracts at a loss.
London-based PVM said it had informed the Financial Services Authority, the UK regulator. But officials at the Commodity Futures Trading Commission, the US regulator, claimed they had been kept in the dark for several hours in spite of an agreement between the watchdogs last year to exchange such market-sensitive information spontaneously.
Oil traders in London and New York said the “unauthorised trading” explained the exceptional spike in business activity and prices in the early hours of Tuesday that some initially thought must have been caused by a geopolitical event. “Trading volumes rose overnight and prices jumped more than $2 a barrel without apparent justification,” a senior oil trader in New York said.
Prices rose in one hour from $71 to $73.5, the highest level for the year, according to Reuters data. In total, futures contracts for more than 16m barrels of oil changed hands in that hour – equivalent to double the daily production of Saudi Arabia, the world’s largest oil producer, and far more than the traditional 500,000 barrels for that time of the day.
Traders said the broker implicated had allegedly accounted for at least half of the unusual activity, with the rest the result of others chasing the rally. Oil prices on Thursday fell to $66.5 a barrel, down almost 10 per cent from Tuesday’s peak.
The Financial Times has identified the PVM broker as Steve Perkins. PVM declined to comment and Mr Perkins could not be reached. Fellow traders said Mr Perkins was considered an experienced broker, well-regarded in the market.
This is the second episode of rogue trading in the oil market this year. In May, an oil trader at Morgan Stanley was banned by the City watchdog after he hid from his bosses potential losses on trades made under the influence of alcohol.
The incidents come as regulators are considering tougher oversight of the commodities markets after policymakers complained that speculators fuelled last year’s surge in oil and agriculture prices.
The involvement of PVM is ironic considering the company’s head, David Hufton, has been an outspoken critic of speculators in the oil market, calling some of the exchanges “electronic oil casinos”. In 2006, he said that “if futures exchanges did not exist, oil prices would be a lot lower”.
The $10m loss is a heavy blow for PVM, which reported profits of just $5.6m in the year to July 2008, according to its accounts.
TEGUCIGALPA, Honduras — Flipping through a stack of legal opinions and holding up a detention order signed by a Supreme Court judge, the chief lawyer of the Honduran armed forces insisted that what soldiers carried out over the weekend when they detained President Manuel Zelaya was no coup d’état.
“A coup is a political move,” the lawyer, Col. Herberth Bayardo Inestroza Membreño, said Tuesday night in an interview. “It requires the armed forces to assume power over the country, which didn’t happen, and it has to break the rule of law, which didn’t happen either.”
Governments around the world have decided differently, labeling Mr. Zelaya’s removal an illegal act and calling for his prompt return to power. On Monday, the day after the coup, President Obama said, “We believe that the coup was not legal and that President Zelaya remains the president of Honduras, the democratically elected president there.”
Colonel Bayardo, dressed in green camouflage and wearing a blue beret, described a behind-the-scenes struggle between the armed forces and Mr. Zelaya that played out over the weeks before the decision to grab the president from his home, shuttle him to a military base and fly him out of the country.
The army had resisted participating in a nonbinding referendum on constitutional changes that Mr. Zelaya continued to push after both Congress and the courts had labeled the president’s move unconstitutional. Army lawyers were convinced that Mr. Zelaya was moving to lift a provision limiting presidents to a single term in office, Colonel Bayardo said.
When the army refused an order to help organize the referendum, the president fired the commander of the armed forces, Gen. Romeo Vásquez. He was reinstated by the Supreme Court, which found his removal illegal.
The detention order, signed June 26 by a Supreme Court judge, ordered the armed forces to detain the president, identified by his full name, José Manuel Zelaya Rosales, at his home in the Tres Caminos area of Tegucigalpa, the capital. It accused him of treason and abuse of authority, among other charges.
“It was a clean operation,” Colonel Bayardo said, dismissing Mr. Zelaya’s remarks before the United Nations General Assembly on Tuesday in which he described the arrest as a brutal coup. “It was a fast operation. It was over in minutes, and there were no injuries, no deaths. We said, ‘Sir, we have a judicial order to detain you.’ We did it with respect.”
Mr. Zelaya has challenged the legality of his ouster, telling reporters that whatever missteps he might have made did not justify his being put on a plane and sent out of the country.
“If I do something illegal, take me to court and give me the right to a defense,” he said. “But do not use the army to kidnap the president and carry him violently out of the country.”
Colonel Bayardo defended the president’s expulsion, saying there was a last-minute decision to send him out of the country, to lower tensions and prevent violence.
Two days before Mr. Zelaya’s removal, military leaders met with Roberto Micheletti, the leader of Congress at the time and now the interim president, to discuss what was viewed as a constitutional crisis, Colonel Bayardo said. But it was not until the day before the raid that everything came into place with a flurry of secret meetings involving army and civilian lawyers as well as a small group of political leaders. About 11 p.m. Saturday, the detention order reached the army’s top command, Colonel Bayardo said. It was carried out early the next morning.
Colonel Bayardo said a tight circle of people knew about the raid, and they did not include any American military or civilian leaders or other foreigners. “We had no obligation to inform the U.S.,” he said.
PERRY TOWNSHIP, Ohio -- A highly respected police chief suddenly retires amidst allegations of impropriety. A video tape has surfaced that's at the center of controversy.
On June 2, 2009 police say Perry Township Chief Timothy Escola went to Cincinnati in a police cruiser to pick up a prisoner.
The police chief wasn't alone during that ride. Another officer went with him.
The two were videotaped inside the cruiser. It shows a female officer touching Escola's neck and face. She turns around and checks on the prisoner numerous times, who was asleep in the back seat. She also kissed the chief on several occasions with her head resting on his shoulder.
Township Trustee Lee Laubacher told FOX 8, "What he did was wrong, because he had a prisoner in the car and having a prisoner in the car put him on duty. Anything you do in there now becomes public."
The Township's Law Director, Charles Hall, says an anonymous source tipped officials off about the cruiser video tape.
When a request was put in for the tape the law director says Escola tendered his retirement notice.
In the letter Escola says, "I have been committed to this township for the past four years, and am now looking forward to spending quality time with my family, and pursuing personal interests."
Reporter Kristy Steeves spoke to the former chief on Wednesday, the morning after the Board of Trustees accepted his retirement. Escola said he did not have sex with the officer, saying "that the tape will show that."
The former chief has also requested a copy of the tape to view it himself.
The attorney representing the former chief, Craig Conley, issued a statement that says, Escola apologizes to his family and to the citizens of Perry Township for engaging in inappropriate behavior.
Conley went on to say, "[Escola] accepts full responsibility and accountability for his actions, along with the attendant consequences."
The statement later reads, "More importantly, without attempting to 'bypass' his own misconduct, to the extent what appears to be a 'gerry-rigging' of the cruiser camera occurred, Mr. Escola expects appropriate law enforcement agencies to investigate and, if merited, to bring criminal charges against the culprit. Along those same lines, Mr. Escola also expects an attempt to 'blackmail' him into resigning will be investigated and, if merited, criminal charges will be brought against the culprit as well. In that regard, Mr. Escola leaves those 'collateral', but obviously very serious matters to the sound discretion of those agencies and he does so with high confidence in our justice system."
The township's law director says there is no longer a need for an investigation into the video tape matter because the chief tendered his resignation.
Charles Hall also said there will be no disciplinary action taken against the female officer because he doesn't feel it's warranted. Fox
Airbus, 310, 330, 340, have numerous allegations regarding design flaw caused accidents that were attributed to pilot error. Were they design errors? Are the design errors due to the insatiable demand for greater fuel efficiency? I believe that is so.
The dirty secret in aircraft design is they are not built as strongly as possible, but as weak as reasonably tolerable. Why is that? Weight, fuel prices and the absurd pricing of commercial air line tickets.
If you fly in many USAIR aircraft today, you will find that the video equipment has been stripped off the plane to save fuel. The increased use of composites is to save fuel.
There may be a wider lesson in that the same design and manufacturing strategy will be used by automakers.
What should the airlines do?
The first step is to to reasonably price the cost of air travel. Find the true demand and adjust the capacity. Charge the true cost per mile plus a profit, and base the ticket on the weight of the passenger and their luggage, times miles flown.
I don't want the tail rudder flying off my plane because too many passengers have tails too big and the plain has a tail too weak.
Previous Airbus Incidents:
In November 2001, eyewitnesses saw American Airlines Flight 587, an Airbus-300, shed its vertical stabilizer, the tail fin and rudder, in flight. The airplane crashed in a neighborhood of Queens in New York City. The National Transportation Safety Board investigation said the airplane encountered wake turbulence from another aircraft and that the copilot flying the Airbus over-controlled the airplane’s rudder, which was not subject to computer limits at slow airspeeds, inflicting extreme loads on the structure that failed. The Air France crash has pilots and experts questioning the NTSB’s finding of pilot error in this and other crashes.
In May 1997, American Airlines Flight 903 experienced a non-fatal stall/upset incident involving the use of the rudder on an Airbus A300-600. Investigators determined that abrupt movements of the rudder “can lead to a rapid loss of controlled flight” and might inflict forces capable of ripping the vertical fin off the airframe. An immediate inspection of the tail found no damage, but subsequent detailed inspections of that airframe found cracks in the composite structure that led to the replacement of the tail.
In 2002, a FedEx pilot flying an Airbus A-300 freighter complained about uncommanded movements of the airplane’s rudder while in flight. Ground tests by FedEx maintenance crews found that the hydraulic actuators that swing the rudder left and right exceeded the rudder travel limits and tore holes in the structure in the same area where other Airbus rudders have detached from airplanes in flight.
In March 2005, Air Transat Flight 961, an Airbus A-310, was en route from Cuba to Quebec in level cruise flight when the rudder fell away from the airplane over the Caribbean Ocean. The airplane was able to return for a safe landing, but the incident added to questions about EADS’ use of composite construction technology, inspection methods, and computer controlled flight systems. There are at least two other Airbus 300-series aircraft that went down in oceans due to still unexplained circumstances, but the tail fin of one of those airplanes was found floating near where the airplane crashed.
Rudder could be cause of Air France crash, pilots and experts say There's been a pattern of irregularities linked to the tail fin, but Airbus says it's too soon to know.
NEW YORK - As they work to unravel the mystery of Air France Flight 447, aviation analysts and pilots are now urging investigators to focus attention on the plane's tail fin, known as the vertical stabilizer, in addition to the design of the Airbus's computerized flight controls.
The vertical stabilizer is one of the largest intact pieces of the plane recovered so far, and the Times of London reported this week that "one of the 24 automatic messages sent from the plane minutes before it disappeared pointed to a problem in the 'rudder limiter,' a mechanism that limits how far the plane's rudder can move."
Aviation analysts note that several Airbus 300 series jets have had tail fin and rudder problems in the past. (The rudder is the flight control on the vertical stabilizer, or tail fin.)
The most recent incident was in 2005, when the rudder suddenly ripped off the stabilizer of an Airbus 310 flying at 35,000 feet from Cuba to Quebec, Canada. That plane managed to land safely.
The most deadly event was the 2001 crash of American Airlines Flight 587, in which 265 people died when the plane's vertical stabilizer tore off soon after takeoff. Investigators blamed that crash on "over use" of the rudder pedal by the co-pilot. But critics note that just prior to take off, that plane also had problems with a computer tied to the rudder. That computer was reset by a technician prior to takeoff.
REQUEST TO LOOK AGAIN AT FLIGHT 587
In light of the circumstances surrounding the loss of AF447, some analysts and pilots are now calling for the National Transportation Safety Board (NTSB) to reopen the investigation of AA587 in light of potential similarities between the two crashes. They're also calling for a thorough review of all past vertical stabilizer, rudder, and computer incidents on Airbus planes.
"Absolutely the NTSB should reopen the investigation," says Lee Gaillard, an aviation analyst in Saranac Lake, N.Y. "Given the implications that seem to be surfacing in this Air France crash involving the rudder and potential computer problems, the whole [Airbus] computerized system needs to be taken a very close look at."
FRENCH INVESTIGATORS SEE PROGRESS
French investigators Wednesday said they're now developing "an image that is progressively less fuzzy" about what happened that stormy night June 1 over the Atlantic Ocean, when Flight 447 disappeared.
Judging from the wreckage and bodies recovered so far, and the few clues sent electronically in the last four minutes of the flight, investigators believe the Airbus 330-200 jet probably broke apart in flight, then scattered over several miles.
"We are in a situation that is a bit more favorable than the first days," Paul-Louis Arslanian, head of the French civil aviation safety agency told reporters at a press conference in Paris on Wednesday. "We can say there is a little less uncertainty, so there is a little more optimism ... [but] it is premature for the time being to say what happened."
He cautioned that the search is continuing for the flight data recorders, which could hold critical clues as to what happened.
Investigators so far have focused on the potential that speed sensors, called Pitot tubes, could have iced up and provided faulty information to the flight control computers. In the past week, Air France has replaced the Pitot tubes on all of its Airbus 330s.
That theory was gleaned from the burst of automated messages about mechanical events sent during the last four minutes of the flight. Most of the messages appear to be linked to "incoherent" speed readings, which then affected other systems of the plane, Mr. Arslanian said.
HISTORY OF FLIGHT 587 PROBE
But the report that one of those automated messages also indicated problems with the rudder limiter has renewed concerns first made public during the AA587 crash investigation in 2001.
At the time, a group of American Airlines pilots presented to the NTSB a 68-page dossier documenting incidences of uncommanded rudder movements in the A300 series jets.
The NTSB eventually concluded the cause of the crash was not a computer problem, but the co-pilot over-using the rudder pedal during some wake turbulence.
The animation in this NTSB simulation shows the pilots pushing the rudder pedals abruptly and sharply to the floor, which is what investigators believed caused the plane to lose its vertical stabilizer and crash.
But some pilots familiar with the A300 series jets still doubt that conclusion. They say that it would be physically very difficult for a pilot to make the kind of abrupt rudder pedal movements indicated in the simulation, particularly while going 250 knots, which the NTSB indicated was the plane's speed at the time.
"I just don't see the co-pilot making the kind of abrupt movement at that speed," says an A330 pilot with more than 20 years experience in military and commercial aviation. "At 250 knots I don't think you can move the rudder pedal that far. It's going full deflection [which means it would be extremely difficult to push down as far as the simulation asserts]."
This pilot suggests that a computer malfunction could also have caused the rudder to fluctuate wildly, particularly because of the past incidences of uncommanded rudder movements in some Airbus jets.
But NTSB investigators note that the investigation took almost three years, and they say potential computer problems were thoroughly investigated at the time.
"In that case, the flight recorder was the source of detailed information that indicated how rapidly and frequently the rudder was moved. Then it was just a matter of aerodynamic calculations to see [what caused the tail to tear off,]" says Richard Healing, who was a member of the NTSB at the time of the investigation. "We were totally convinced the pilot's feet were on the pedals and he was moving the controls manually."
But the A330 pilot and others note that Airbus's computerized flight controls are highly complex and have resulted in other uncommanded rudder and other component movements.
TWO OTHER UNUSUAL INCIDENTS
In addition to the rudder incidents documented by American Airlines pilots prior to the 2001 crash of AA587, last year two Qantas Airlines Airbus 330s experienced uncommanded pitches nose-downward.Nine months before that, in January 2008, an Air Canada Airbus 319 also "experienced a sudden upset when it rolled uncommanded 36 degrees right and then 57 degrees left and pitched nose-down," according to a report on file at the NTSB.
As a result, some pilots and analysts would like to see a more thorough investigation of whether a potential computer glitch may have played a part in the dramatic rudder movement during the AA587 crash. They believe that could hold a key to help understand whether a similar "uncommanded" movement could have played a part in the Air France plane suddenly breaking apart and losing its vertical stabilizer mid-air during a routine flight.
"Airbus has every single incentive to do whatever it takes to find out what could have gone wrong to be sure that information gets in the right hands to prevent further accidents," says Kevin Mitchell, chairman of The Business Travel Coalition in Radnor, Pa. "On the other side of the issue, if they have fundamental structural or design flaws and billions of dollars invested, then it doesn't get any worse in terms of strategic prospects. So organizations like the NTSB and the Federal Aviation Administration must be on the alert for potential conflicts of interests."
Airbus has not returned calls asking for comment on this story. But in a conversation earlier this week, an Airbus spokesman speaking on background cautioned against continued speculation about the cause of the accident.
"All we know at the moment is that, yes, there's a piece of the rudder that's been found and that we know that there were some maintenance messages sent from the aircraft, and one said there was inconsistency with air speed measurements. That's all we know, and it's not enough to build a picture of what happened to the aircraft, which is why it's so important to find the missing black boxes," he said.
