EU Competition policy out of control?

A leader in this week’s Economist looks at one of the areas where the EU is rarely criticised for: its competition policy.

EU Competition policy can broadly be divided into two main areas.

The first area deals with state aid - it is the job of the EU to prevent member states from subsidizing their favorite industries. This task has proven particularly challenging in the crisis , as the Opel-Vauxhall case illustrates.

But that is not what the paper is criticising.

The article deals with the second area of EU Competition policy: fighting cartels, monopolies, and abuses of dominant market positions; and controlling proposed mergers, acquisitions and joint ventures. This area deals with firms rather than states.

The leader argues that “by acting simultaneously as investigator, prosecutor, jury and sentencing judge, the commission is denying defendant firms the basic right to be heard by an impartial tribunal”, adding that “In no other area of law would it be thought acceptable for the outcome of such important cases to be determined by a bunch of politicians.”

Another article notes that the EU’s antitrust case against Microsoft, which resulted in a €1bn fine, revealed that investigators failed to keep record of a meeting with an executive from Dell, raising suspicions that Commission staff overlook potentially exculpatory evidence.

This is indeed extraordinary: Politicians in the European Commission have the power to impose a €1.06 billion fine on a company without proper due process. €1 billion is a lot of money. It is more than the annual net contributions to the EU of countries such as Austria and Denmark.

What’s more - and what isn’t mentioned in the article - the EU can “hoard” the money it raises in fines into its own pockets, as Ashley Fox MEP recently pointed out. He said Competition Commissioner Joaquín Almunia had told him that the fines would be held by the Commission and used as part of the EU budget - and that Almunia had no plans to reform the practice. Fox proposed - quite sensibly - that instead: “Monies raised from anti-competition fines should ideally be returned to those consumers who have paid over the odds for products and services. However, as this would be virtually impossible to implement the best alternative is to return the money to the member states.”

Apart from the EU’s heavy regulatory burden, if unreformed, EU competition policy might become another factor deterring business for coming to, and staying in, the EU.

The New Poor: Millions of Unemployed Face Years Without Jobs

February 21, 2010

The New Poor: Millions of Unemployed Face Years Without Jobs

By PETER S. GOODMAN
New York Times

BUENA PARK, Calif. — Even as the American economy shows tentative signs of a rebound, the human toll of the recession continues to mount, with millions of Americans remaining out of work, out of savings and nearing the end of their unemployment benefits.

Economists fear that the nascent recovery will leave more people behind than in past recessions, failing to create jobs in sufficient numbers to absorb the record-setting ranks of the long-term unemployed.

Call them the new poor: people long accustomed to the comforts of middle-class life who are now relying on public assistance for the first time in their lives — potentially for years to come.

Yet the social safety net is already showing severe strains. Roughly 2.7 million jobless people will lose their unemployment check before the end of April unless Congress approves the Obama administration’s proposal to extend the payments, according to the Labor Department.

Here in Southern California, Jean Eisen has been without work since she lost her job selling beauty salon equipment more than two years ago. In the several months she has endured with neither a paycheck nor an unemployment check, she has relied on local food banks for her groceries.

She has learned to live without the prescription medications she is supposed to take for high blood pressure and cholesterol. She has become effusively religious — an unexpected turn for this onetime standup comic with X-rated material — finding in Christianity her only form of health insurance.

“I pray for healing,” says Ms. Eisen, 57. “When you’ve got nothing, you’ve got to go with what you know.”

Warm, outgoing and prone to the positive, Ms. Eisen has worked much of her life. Now, she is one of 6.3 million Americans who have been unemployed for six months or longer, the largest number since the government began keeping track in 1948. That is more than double the toll in the next-worst period, in the early 1980s.

Men have suffered the largest numbers of job losses in this recession. But Ms. Eisen has the unfortunate distinction of being among a group — women from 45 to 64 years of age — whose long-term unemployment rate has grown rapidly.

In 1983, after a deep recession, women in that range made up only 7 percent of those who had been out of work for six months or longer, according to the Labor Department. Last year, they made up 14 percent.

Twice, Ms. Eisen exhausted her unemployment benefits before her check was restored by a federal extension. Last week, her check ran out again. She and her husband now settle their bills with only his $1,595 monthly disability check. The rent on their apartment is $1,380.

“We’re looking at the very real possibility of being homeless,” she said.

Every downturn pushes some people out of the middle class before the economy resumes expanding. Most recover. Many prosper. But some economists worry that this time could be different. An unusual constellation of forces — some embedded in the modern-day economy, others unique to this wrenching recession — might make it especially difficult for those out of work to find their way back to their middle-class lives.

Labor experts say the economy needs 100,000 new jobs a month just to absorb entrants to the labor force. With more than 15 million people officially jobless, even a vigorous recovery is likely to leave an enormous number out of work for years.

Some labor experts note that severe economic downturns are generally followed by powerful expansions, suggesting that aggressive hiring will soon resume. But doubts remain about whether such hiring can last long enough to absorb anywhere close to the millions of unemployed.

A New Scarcity of Jobs

Some labor experts say the basic functioning of the American economy has changed in ways that make jobs scarce — particularly for older, less-educated people like Ms. Eisen, who has only a high school diploma.

Large companies are increasingly owned by institutional investors who crave swift profits, a feat often achieved by cutting payroll. The declining influence of unions has made it easier for employers to shift work to part-time and temporary employees. Factory work and even white-collar jobs have moved in recent years to low-cost countries in Asia and Latin America. Automation has helped manufacturing cut 5.6 million jobs since 2000 — the sort of jobs that once provided lower-skilled workers with middle-class paychecks.

“American business is about maximizing shareholder value,” said Allen Sinai, chief global economist at the research firm Decision Economics. “You basically don’t want workers. You hire less, and you try to find capital equipment to replace them.”

During periods of American economic expansion in the 1950s, ’60s and ’70s, the number of private-sector jobs increased about 3.5 percent a year, according to an analysis of Labor Department data by Lakshman Achuthan, managing director of the Economic Cycle Research Institute, a research firm. During expansions in the 1980s and ’90s, jobs grew just 2.4 percent annually. And during the last decade, job growth fell to 0.9 percent annually.

“The pace of job growth has been getting weaker in each expansion,” Mr. Achuthan said. “There is no indication that this pattern is about to change.”

Before 1990, it took an average of 21 months for the economy to regain the jobs shed during a recession, according to an analysis of Labor Department data by the National Employment Law Project and the Economic Policy Institute, a labor-oriented research group in Washington.

After the recessions in 1990 and in 2001, 31 and 46 months passed before employment returned to its previous peaks. The economy was growing, but companies remained conservative in their hiring.

Some 34 million people were hired into new and existing private-sector jobs in 2000, at the tail end of an expansion, according to Labor Department data. A year later, in the midst of recession, hiring had fallen off to 31.6 million. And as late as 2003, with the economy again growing, hiring in the private sector continued to slip, to 29.8 million.

It was a jobless recovery: Business was picking up, but it simply did not translate into more work. This time, hiring may be especially subdued, labor economists say.

Traditionally, three sectors have led the way out of recession: automobiles, home building and banking. But auto companies have been shrinking because strapped households have less buying power. Home building is limited by fears about a glut of foreclosed properties. Banking is expanding, but this seems largely a function of government support that is being withdrawn.

At the same time, the continued bite of the financial crisis has crimped the flow of money to small businesses and new ventures, which tend to be major sources of new jobs.

All of which helps explain why Ms. Eisen — who has never before struggled to find work — feels a familiar pain each time she scans job listings on her computer: There are positions in health care, most requiring experience she lacks. Office jobs demand familiarity with software she has never used. Jobs at fast food restaurants are mostly secured by young people and immigrants.

If, as Mr. Sinai expects, the economy again expands without adding many jobs, millions of people like Ms. Eisen will be dependent on an unemployment insurance already being severely tested.

“The system was ill prepared for the reality of long-term unemployment,” said Maurice Emsellem, a policy director for the National Employment Law Project. “Now, you add a severe recession, and you have created a crisis of historic proportions.”

Fewer Protections

Some poverty experts say the broader social safety net is not up to cushioning the impact of the worst downturn since the Great Depression. Social services are less extensive than during the last period of double-digit unemployment, in the early 1980s.

On average, only two-thirds of unemployed people received state-provided unemployment checks last year, according to the Labor Department. The rest either exhausted their benefits, fell short of requirements or did not apply.

“You have very large sets of people who have no social protections,” said Randy Albelda, an economist at the University of Massachusetts in Boston. “They are landing in this netherworld.”

When Ms. Eisen and her husband, Jeff, applied for food stamps, they were turned away for having too much monthly income. The cutoff was $1,570 a month — $25 less than her husband’s disability check.

Reforms in the mid-1990s imposed time limits on cash assistance for poor single mothers, a change predicated on the assumption that women would trade welfare checks for paychecks.

Yet as jobs have become harder to get, so has welfare: as of 2006, 44 states cut off anyone with a household income totaling 75 percent of the poverty level — then limited to $1,383 a month for a family of three — according to an analysis by Ms. Albelda.

“We have a work-based safety net without any work,” said Timothy M. Smeeding, director of the Institute for Research on Poverty at the University of Wisconsin, Madison. “People with more education and skills will probably figure something out once the economy picks up. It’s the ones with less education and skills: that’s the new poor.”

Here in Orange County, the expanse of suburbia stretching south from Los Angeles, long-term unemployment reaches even those who once had six-figure salaries. A center of the national mortgage industry, the area prospered in the real estate boom and suffered with the bust.

Until she was laid off two years ago, Janine Booth, 41, brought home roughly $10,000 a month in commissions from her job selling electronics to retailers. A single mother of three, she has been living lately on $2,000 a month in child support and about $450 a week in unemployment insurance — a stream of checks that ran out last week.

For Ms. Booth, work has been a constant since her teenage years, when she cleaned houses under pressure from her mother to earn pocket money. Today, Ms. Booth pays her $1,500 monthly mortgage with help from her mother, who is herself living off savings after being laid off.

“I don’t want to take money from her,” Ms. Booth said. “I just want to find a job.”

Ms. Booth, with a résumé full of well-paid sales jobs, seems the sort of person who would have little difficulty getting work. Yet two years of looking have yielded little but anxiety.

She sends out dozens of résumés a week and rarely hears back. She responds to online ads, only to learn they are seeking operators for telephone sex lines or people willing to send mysterious packages from their homes.

She spends weekdays in a classroom in Anaheim, in a state-financed training program that is supposed to land her a job in medical administration. Even if she does find a job, she will be lucky if it pays $15 an hour.

“What is going to happen?” she asked plaintively. “I worry about my kids. I just don’t want them to think I’m a failure.”

On a recent weekend, she was running errands with her 18-year-old son when they stopped at an A.T.M. and he saw her checking account balance: $50.

“He says, ‘Is that all you have?’ ” she recalled. “ ‘Are we going to be O.K.?’ ”

Yes, she replied — and not only for his benefit.

“I have to keep telling myself it’s going to be O.K.,” she said. “Otherwise, I’d go into a deep depression.”

Last week, she made up fliers advertising her eagerness to clean houses — the same activity that provided her with spending money in high school, and now the only way she sees fit to provide for her kids. She plans to place the fliers on porches in some other neighborhood.

“I don’t want to clean my neighbors’ houses,” she said. “I know I’m going to come out of this. There’s no way I’m going to be homeless and poverty-stricken. But I am scared. I have a lot of sleepless nights.”

For the Eisens, poverty is already here. In the two years Ms. Eisen has been without work, they have exhausted their savings of about $24,000. Their credit card balances have grown to $15,000.

“I don’t know how we’re still indoors,” she said.

Her 1994 Dodge Caravan broke down in January, leaving her to ask for rides to an employment center.

She does not have the money to move to a cheaper apartment.

“You have to have money for first and last month’s rent, and to open utility accounts,” she said.

What she has is personality and presence — two traits that used to seem enough. She narrates her life in a stream of self-deprecating wisecracks, her punch lines tinged with desperation.

“See that,” she said, spotting a man dressed as the Statue of Liberty. Standing on a sidewalk, he waved at passing cars with a sign advertising a tax preparation business. “That will be me next week. Do you think this guy ever thought he’d be doing this?”

And yet, she would gladly do this. She would do nearly anything.

“There are no bad jobs now,” she says. “Any job is a good job.”

She has applied everywhere she can think of — at offices, at gas stations. Nothing.

“I’m being seen as a person who is no longer viable,” she said. “I’m chalking it up to my age and my weight. Blame it on your most prominent insecurity.”

Two Incomes, Then None

Ms. Eisen grew up poor, in Flatbush in Brooklyn. Her father was in maintenance. Her mother worked part time at a company that made window blinds.

She married Jeff when she was 19, and they soon moved to California, where he had grown up. He worked in sales for a chemical company. They rented an apartment in Buena Park, a growing spread of houses filling out former orange groves. She stayed home and took care of their daughter.

“I never asked him how much he earned,” Ms. Eisen said. “I was of the mentality that the husband took care of everything. But we never wanted.”

By the early 1980s, gas and rent strained their finances. So she took a job as a quality assurance clerk at a factory that made aircraft parts. It paid $13.50 an hour and had health insurance.

When the company moved to Mexico in the early 1990s, Ms. Eisen quickly found a job at a travel agency. When online booking killed that business, she got the job at the beauty salon equipment company. It paid $13.25 an hour, with an annual bonus — enough for presents under the Christmas tree.

But six years ago, her husband took a fall at work and then succumbed to various ailments — diabetes, liver disease, high blood pressure — leaving him confined to the couch. Not until 2008 did he secure his disability check.

And now they find themselves in this desert of joblessness, her paycheck replaced by a $702 unemployment check every other week. She received 14 weeks of benefits after she lost her job, and then a seven-week extension.

For most of October through December 2008, she received nothing, as she waited for another extension. The checks came again, then ran out in September 2009. They were restored by an extension right before Christmas.

Their daughter has back problems and is living on disability checks, making the church their ultimate safety net.

“I never thought I’d be in the position where I had to go to a food bank,” Ms. Eisen said. But there she is, standing in the parking lot of the Calvary Chapel church, chatting with a half-dozen women, all waiting to enter the Bread of Life Food Pantry.

When her name is called, she steps into a windowless alcove, where a smiling woman hands her three bags of groceries: carrots, potatoes, bread, cheese and a hunk of frozen meat.

“Haven’t we got a lot to be thankful for?” Ms. Eisen asks.

For one thing, no pinto beans.

“I’ve got 10 bags of pinto beans,” she says. “And I have no clue how to cook a pinto bean.”

Local job listings are just as mysterious. On a bulletin board at the county-financed ProPath Business and Career Services Center, many are written in jargon hinting of accounting or computers.

“Nothing I’m qualified for,” Ms. Eisen says. “When you can’t define what it is, that’s a pretty good indication.”

Her counselor has a couple of possibilities — a cashier at a supermarket and a night desk job at a motel.

“I’ll e-mail them,” Ms. Eisen promises. “I’ll tell them what a shining example of humanity I am.”

US Marines Do Heavy Lifting as Afghan Puppets Lag in Battle

February 21, 2010

Military Analysis: Marines Do Heavy Lifting as Afghan Army Lags in Battle

By C. J. CHIVERS
New York Times

MARJA, Afghanistan — As American Marines and Afghan soldiers have fought their way into this Taliban stronghold, the performance of the Afghan troops has tested a core premise of the American military effort here: in the not-too-distant future, the security of this country can be turned over to indigenous forces created at the cost of American money and blood.

Scenes from this corner of the battlefield, observed over eight days by two New York Times journalists, suggest that the day when the Afghan Army will be well led and able to perform complex operations independently, rather than merely assist American missions, remains far off.

The effort to train the Afghan Army has long been troubled, with soldiers and officers repeatedly falling short. And yet after nearly a decade of American and European mentorship and many billions of dollars of American taxpayer investment, American and Afghan officials have portrayed the Afghan Army as the force out front in this important offensive against the Taliban.

Statements from Kabul have said the Afghan military is planning the missions and leading both the fight and the effort to engage with Afghan civilians caught between the Taliban and the newly arrived troops.

But that assertion conflicts with what is visible in the field. In every engagement between the Taliban and one front-line American Marine unit, the operation has been led in almost every significant sense by American officers and troops. They organized the forces for battle, transported them in American vehicles and helicopters from Western-run bases into Taliban-held ground, and have been the primary fighting force each day.

The Afghan National Army, or A.N.A., has participated. At the squad level it has been a source of effective, if modestly skilled, manpower. Its soldiers have shown courage and a willingness to fight. Afghan soldiers have also proved, as they have for years, to be more proficient than Americans at searching Afghan homes and identifying potential Taliban members — two tasks difficult for outsiders to perform.

By all other important measures, though — from transporting troops, directing them in battle and coordinating fire support to arranging modern communications, logistics, aviation and medical support — the mission in Marja has been a Marine operation conducted in the presence of fledgling Afghan Army units, whose officers and soldiers follow behind the Americans and do what they are told.

That fact raises questions about President Obama’s declared goal of beginning to withdraw American forces in July 2011 and turning over security to the Afghan military and the even more troubled police forces.

There have been ample examples in the offensive of weak Afghan leadership and poor discipline to boot.

In northern Marja, a platoon of Afghan soldiers landed with a reinforced Marine rifle company, Company K, Third Battalion, Sixth Marines, which was inserted by American Army helicopters. The Marine officers and noncommissioned officers here quickly developed a mixed impression of the Afghan platoon, whose soldiers were distributed through their ranks.

After several days, no Marine officer had seen an Afghan use a map or plan a complicated patrol. In another indicator of marginal military readiness, the Afghan platoon had no weapons heavier than a machine gun or a rocket-propelled grenade.

Afghan officers organized no indirect fire support whatsoever in the week of fighting. All supporting fire for Company K — airstrikes, rockets, artillery and mortars — was coordinated by Marines. The Afghans also relied entirely on the American military for battlefield resupply.

Moreover, in multiple firefights in which Times journalists were present, many Afghan soldiers did not aim — they pointed their American-issued M-16 rifles in the rough direction of the incoming small-arms fire and pulled their triggers without putting rifle sights to their eyes. Their rifle muzzles were often elevated several degrees high.

Shouts from the Marines were common. “What you shooting at, Hoss?” one yelled during a long battle on the second day, as an Afghan pulled the trigger repeatedly and nonchalantly at nothing that was visible to anyone else.

Not all of their performance was this poor.

Sgt. Joseph G. Harms, a squad leader in the company’s Third Platoon, spent a week on the western limit of the company’s area, his unit alone with what he described as a competent Afghan contingent. In the immediacy of fighting side by side with Afghans, and often tested by Taliban fighters, he found his Afghan colleagues committed and brave.

“They are a lot better than the Iraqis,” said the sergeant, who served a combat tour in Iraq. “They understand all of our formations, they understand how to move. They know how to flank and they can recognize the bad guys a lot better than we can.”

Capt. Joshua P. Biggers, the Company K commander, said that the Afghan soldiers “could be a force multiplier.”

But both Marines suggested that the Afghan deficiencies were in the leadership ranks. “They haven’t had a chance yet to step out on their own,” Sergeant Harms said. “So they’re still following us.”

Shortfalls in the Afghan junior officer corps were starkly visible at times. On the third day of fighting, when Company K was short of water and food, the company command group walked to the eastern limit of its operations area to supervise two Marine platoons as they seized a bridge, and to arrange fire support. The group was ambushed twice en route, coming under small-arms fire from Taliban fighters hiding on the far side of a canal.

After the bridge was seized, Captain Biggers prepared his group for the walk back. Helicopters had dropped food and water near the bridge. He ordered his Marines and the Afghans to fill their packs with it and carry it to another platoon to the west that was nearly out of supplies.

The Marines loaded up. They would walk across the danger area again, this time laden with all the water and food they could carry. Captain Biggers asked the Afghan platoon commander, Capt. Amanullah, to have his men pack their share. He refused, though his own soldiers to the west were out of food, too.

Captain Biggers told the interpreter to put his position in more clear terms. “Tell him that if he doesn’t carry water and chow, he and his soldiers can’t have any of ours,” he said, his voice rising.

Captain Amanullah at last directed one or two of his soldiers to carry a sleeve of bottled water or a carton of rations — a small concession. The next day, the Afghan soldiers to the west complained that they had no more food and were hungry.

It was not the first time that Captain Amanullah’s sense of entitlement, and indifference toward his troops’ well-being, had manifested itself. The day before the helicopter assault, at Camp Leatherneck, the largest Marine base in Helmand Province, a Marine offered a can of Red Bull energy drink to an Afghan soldier in exchange for one of the patches on the soldier’s uniform.

Captain Amanullah, reclining on his cot, saw the deal struck. After the Afghan soldier had taken possession of his Red Bull, the captain ordered him to hand him the can. The captain opened it and took a long drink, then gave what was left to his lieutenant and sergeants, who each had a sip. The last sergeant handed the empty can back to the soldier, and ordered him to throw it away.

The Marines watched with mixed amusement and disgust. In their culture, the officers and senior enlisted Marines eat last. “So much for troop welfare,” one of them said.

Lackluster leadership took other forms. On Friday night, a week into the operation, Captain Biggers told the Afghan soldiers that they would accompany him the next day to a large meeting with local elders. In the morning, the Afghans were not ready.

The Marines stood impatiently, waiting while the forces that were said by the officials in Kabul to be leading the operation slowly mustered. Captain Biggers, by now used to the delays, muttered an acronym that might sum up a war now deep into its ninth year.

“W.O.A.,” he said. “Waiting on the A.N.A.”

February 21, 2010

Dutch Government Collapses Over Its Stance on Troops for Afghanistan

By NICHOLAS KULISH
New York Times

BERLIN — A last-ditch effort to keep Dutch troops in Afghanistan brought down the government in the Netherlands early Saturday, immediately raising fears that the Western military coalition fighting the war was increasingly at risk.

Even as the allied offensive in the Taliban stronghold of Marja continued Saturday, it appeared almost certain that most of the 2,000 Dutch troops would be gone from Afghanistan by the end of the year. The question plaguing military planners was whether a Dutch departure would embolden the war’s critics in other allied countries, where debate over deployment is continuing, and hasten the withdrawal of their troops as well.

“If the Dutch go, which is the implication of all this, that could open the floodgates for other Europeans to say, ‘The Dutch are going, we can go, too,’ ” said Julian Lindley-French, professor of defense strategy at the Netherlands Defense Academy in Breda. “The implications are that the U.S. and the British are going to take on more of the load.”

The collapse of the Dutch government comes as the Obama administration continues to struggle to get European allies to commit more troops to Afghanistan to bolster its attempts to win back the country from a resurgent Taliban. President Obama has made the Afghan war a cornerstone of his foreign policy and, after months of debate, committed tens of thousands more American troops to the effort.

Dutch leaders had promised voters to bring most of the country’s troops home this year. But after entreaties from the United States, Prime Minister Jan Peter Balkenende tried to find a compromise to extend the Dutch presence, at least on a scaled-back basis. Instead, the Labor Party pulled out of the government after an acrimonious 16-hour cabinet meeting that ran into the early hours of Saturday.

The Dutch troops have been important to the war effort, despite their small numbers, because about 1,500 of them were posted in the dangerous southern Afghan province of Oruzgan.

Analysts said that new elections in the Netherlands, as well as the departure of the Dutch troops, now appeared inevitable.

The war in Afghanistan has been increasingly unpopular among voters in the Netherlands, as in many other parts of Europe, creating strains between governments trying to please the United States and their own people.

But the tension in the Netherlands also reveals how deep the fissures over the war have grown within the NATO alliance.

As the number of Dutch military casualties has increased — 21 soldiers have died — the public back home has grown increasingly resentful at the refusal of some other allies, in particular the Germans, to join the intense fighting in the south.

The probable loss of the Dutch contingent and the continuing resistance to significant increases in manpower by other allies demonstrate the extent to which the dividend expected from the departure of President George W. Bush, who was so unpopular in capitals across the Atlantic, has not materialized, despite Mr. Obama’s popularity in Europe.

“The support for Obama was always double-faced,” said Stefan Kornelius, foreign editor of the German newspaper Süddeutsche Zeitung. “It was never really heartfelt. People loved what they heard, but they never felt obliged to support Obama beyond what they were already doing.”

Since taking office, Mr. Obama has been pressing the non-American members of the coalition to increase their contribution, seeking up to 10,000 additional troops. While NATO has pledged around 7,000 troops, critics of the alliance’s efforts accuse it of fuzzy math: counting up to 2,000 soldiers who were already in Afghanistan but had been scheduled to leave after the recent election.

And even the 7,000 figure was notional; NATO is holding a “force generation conference” this week at which time official pledges will be made, and there are questions about whether it will reach that number.

The Dutch contingent is part of the roughly 40,000 troops from 43 countries who are aiding the United States in Afghanistan, most of those from NATO. The United States is fielding about 75,000 troops, but that number is expected to rise to about 98,000 by the end of the summer.

The Dutch troops were deployed to Oruzgan in 2006 and were originally supposed to stay for two years; that mandate already had been extended another two years to August 2010.

Analysts in the Netherlands said they expected the Dutch troops to leave on time because any deal to keep them there appeared all but impossible in the tumult following the government’s collapse.

“I don’t think there’s room, with a government falling and waiting for elections, for there to be a decision,” said Edwin Bakker, who runs the security and conflict program at the Netherlands Institute of International Relations.

Although American officials are concerned that an exodus by the Dutch could prompt other allies to follow suit, a sudden rush to exit seemed unlikely.

“There is a groundswell of distress in Europe, of feeling this isn’t working, but does that translate into electorates saying we’re going to vote you down? I don’t see that,” said Constanze Stelzenmüller, a senior fellow at the German Marshall Fund in Berlin.

But the collapse of the Dutch government reinforced the difficulty of holding together an alliance made up of a multitude of countries, each with its own fractious domestic politics.

On Saturday, Mr. Balkenende informed Queen Beatrix, the country’s head of state, of the government’s resignation. According to the Dutch media, she is vacationing in Austria, and the Ministry of Internal Affairs said a decision about whether to hold new elections would probably be made in the next several days. By law the election would have to be held within 83 days of the queen’s decision.

The question of retaining troops in Afghanistan was far from the only issue pulling apart the parties in the governing coalition in the Netherlands; the parties were also divided over a controversial decision to increase the retirement age and the impending need for deep budget cuts. But the dispute over the troops brought relations to the breaking point.

“The majority of the Dutch people say, ‘Go, we’ve done enough. Let other countries do it now.’ That’s a big majority and also the majority in the Parliament,” said Nicoline van den Broek-Laman Trip, a former senator from the Liberal Party, who said she supported the Dutch mission but also believed that it was time to pull back most of the troops, leaving F-16s and perhaps trainers for local Afghan troops.

“They’ve got a small military,” said Mr. Lindley-French of the Netherlands Defense Academy. “The force has suffered a great deal of wear and tear. The Dutch have hung in there.

“The real failing is the ability of NATO partners and allies to rotate through the south and the east of the country, where the real center of the struggle exists.”

Dexter Filkins contributed reporting from Kabul, Afghanistan, Scott Sayare from Paris, and Thom Shanker from Washington.

Rosalyn Brock was appointed the Chair of the Board for the N.A.A.C.P.She has worked as a healthcare executive. Brock is pictured here withPresident Ben Jealous (center) and outgoing Chair Julian Bond.

February 21, 2010

Health Executive to Lead N.A.A.C.P.

By IAN URBINA
New York Times

The National Association for the Advancement of Colored People on Saturday announced the selection of its first new board leader in more than a decade.

Roslyn M. Brock, 44, the board’s current vice chairwoman, will become chairwoman of the board, taking the reins from Julian Bond, who last year, on the eve of the organization’s centennial celebration, announced his decision to step down. The 64-member board is the policymaking arm of the organization.

In being named vice chairwoman of the N.A.A.C.P. board at 35, Ms. Brock was the first woman and the youngest person to hold the position.

Previously she worked in health care administration and policy. In her current job as a vice president of Bon Secours Health Care, Ms. Brock serves as the chief spokeswoman on government relations, advocacy and public policy.

“This is the time for renewal,” said Mr. Bond, 70, who took over the chairmanship in 1998. “We have dynamic new leadership. Roslyn understands firsthand how important youth are to the success of the N.A.A.C.P. She was introduced to the N.A.A.C.P. 25 years ago when she served the N.A.A.C.P. as a youth board member and Youth and College Division State Conference president.”

The most recognized organization in the civil rights establishment, the association was founded in 1909. One of its main missions was to fight the lynchings of blacks.

The organization has played an important role in virtually every major civil rights issue of the last century, including the landmark 1954 Brown v. Board of Education desegregation case, the 1964 Civil Rights Act and the 1965 Voting Rights Act.

It has struggled in recent years, however, with declining membership, financial and political problems and questions of how best to move forward. The group’s reputation was tarnished in the mid-1990s when it fired its president for using organization money to settle a sexual harassment claim against him. In 2007, it laid off more than a third of its staff because of a budget shortfall.

In 2008, the board selected Benjamin T. Jealous, an activist and former news executive, as its youngest president, breaking with a tradition of picking ministers and political leaders and rebuffing criticisms that it was out of touch with the concerns of younger African-Americans.

“We’re looking at a generational shift in our communities,” Ms. Brock said. “We have a 48-year-old president in the White House, an N.A.A.C.P. president who was 35 at the time of his election and a 44-year-old board chair. The wisdom of those who stood the test of time got us to this point, and the youth are who will ensure the future legacy of this organization.”

Zimbabwe News Update: Vice-President Mujuru Hands Over Tractors, UrgesFarmers to Be Productive

VP Mujuru hands over tractors, urges farmers to be productive

From George Maponga in CHIREDZI
Zimbabwe Herald

Zimbabwe has the capacity to neutralise the effects of the illegal sanctions imposed by the West if the citizenry unites and contributes positively towards resuscitating the agricultural sector, Vice President Mujuru said yesterday.

She said sanctions could be rendered useless if Zimbabweans worked together to consolidate the gains of the land reforms that saw Government acquiring formerly white-owned commercial farms to resettle 300 000 landless black families.

VP Mujuru was speaking at Gibbo Stadium in Chiredzi where she handed over 36 tractors to resettled sugarcane farmers.

The farmers are from the lowveld Hippo Valley, Triangle and Mkwasine sugar estates.

The VP said, “It is imperative for every Zimbabwean to make a positive contribution towards the revival of the agricultural sector since it is the backbone and mainstay of our economy.

“If we optimally utilise our land and vast agricultural potential the illegal sanctions imposed by the West will become negligible.

“Zimbabweans should put their differences aside and work together in unison to shame the West, who up to this day maintained the illegal economic sanctions against our country,” she said.

She said Government was cognisant of the challenges facing the cane industry.

VP Mujuru challenged Zimbabweans to take advantage of Government’s indigenisation drive and take controlling stakes in various industries.

The chairperson of the Commercial Sugarcane Farmers’ Association of Zimbabwe Mr Edmore Hwarare appealed to the Government to establish a cane mill to circumvent acts of sabotage by elitist millers.

‘New sanctions will motivate nation’

Herald Reporter

Zimbabweans should remain dedicated and united against the onslaught by the West after the renewal of sanctions by the European Union.

Addressing troops at a command handover ceremony of 2.3 Infantry Batallion in Magunje yesterday, incoming commander Lieutenant-Colonel Don Chidavanyika said the extension of the illegal sanctions should motivate rather than demoralise the nation.

“Being someone who fears God, I am reminded of Jesus’ words when he said ‘Upon this rock I will build my church and the gates of hell cannot prevail against it’.

“Similarly, against Zimbabwe — the house of stone through unity of purpose — the gates of sanctions and neo-colonialism cannot prevail. This country needs committed and dedicated people who jealously guard the country’s abundant resources and wealth. We have stood the test of the times in the past decade, so what can stop us now.

“We will overcome the adversaries we are facing and the injustice that the Western countries continue to impose on us,” he said.

On his plans for the battalion, Lt-Col Chidavanyika said: “What I will simply do is to further tighten the screws and cut the loose ends.

“I do not demand much from you. All I ask for is simple; a high standard of discipline, teamwork, loyalty, dedication and professionalism, which are the core values of the Zimbabwe National Army.

“The courage and confidence you displayed over the past decade should continue to inspire us into the future,” he said.

Lt-Col Chidavanyika is the unit’s 18th commanding officer since its formation at Independence.

Outgoing commander Lt-Col Clifford Muchono said his tenure had moulded him and the troops into a hard-working and hard-hitting force.

The commander of 2 Brigade Brigadier-General Douglas Nyikayaramba was the witnessing officer and guest of honour.

Sanctions no threat to GPA, says President

By Sydney Kawadza
Zimbabwe Herald

President Mugabe says the illegal Western sanctions will not achieve their intended objective of dividing the inclusive Government.

He said the European Union’s decision this week to extend the embargo was designed to offset unity between Zimbabwe’s political parties.

In an interview with ZTV ahead of his 86th birthday tomorrow, President Mugabe said the inclusive Government had achieved more and it would be “foolish” for the parties to break it over issues outside of the Global Political Agreement.

“Why should they impose sanctions, take a negative step where we have taken a very positive step? They want to negate and obviously undermine the GPA.

“They want to undermine the unity of the people of Zimbabwe. They would want to see us fight each other much more.”

President Mugabe said the people of Zimbabwe decided that quarrelling would hinder development.

He said only a handful of the 27 members of the EU were maintaining the sanctions.

“It’s Britain and perhaps France, Germa-ny, Italy and a few others . . . together with the United States.

“But we belong to the Third World and we say, in spite of their sanctions, we will continue to look East where there is greater friendship,” he said.

On the issue of national unity, he said: “The getting together of political parties that yesterday were fighting each other and that today they are working together is worth celebrating over.

“Just that phenomenon of unity and under that unity or using that phenomenon of unity comes the fact of the arrangement that is within the global agreement; the leaders must work together in accordance with the apportionment of functions and which meant, of course, that each party was given a number of posts, ministerial posts.

“This Government comes from the various parties which were quarrelling yesterday and have ceased to quarrel now and are pursuing the various functions as per the global agreement.

“I think just that arrangement, the fact of that arrangement is worth celebrating. But, of course, we would want to celebrate more when we look at the functions, the performance now of the Government as a whole.”

The Head of State and Government and Commander-in-Chief of the Zimbabwe Defence Forces said the inclusive Government should acknowledge its inadequacies.

He said the Government, given enough resources, would perform much better this year.

On negotiations on the full implementation of the GPA, President Mugabe said everything had been fulfilled as per the agreement.

“We are negotiating about nothing. It is the nothings that are holding us back. All that was important is enshrined in the global agreement and there is hardly anything we are now discussing which falls within the global agreement.

“All the matters that have to do with Tomana and so on and so forth don’t come into the global agreement. There is no mention of Tomana, there is no mention of the Governor of the Reserve Bank, there is no mention of Bennett.

“There is a need for a post of deputy minister of agriculture, which needs to be filled by a candidate from the MDC-T not necessarily by Bennett, by anyone else.”

He said the only pending issue was for the parties to call for the lifting of sanctions.

“And that one, naturally, needs greater attention, much greater attention and one wonders whether we all are at one in regards to it.

However, President Mugabe said even a deadlock on the issue of sanctions would not break the inclusive Government.

“We won’t breach the agreement because of that. I mean, from our point of view, it would be stupid for us to do so.

“I mean, we have gained much more by way of working together than what we might lose by way of our failure to perform in respect of what we are expected to perform at the moment,” he said.

President Mugabe defended the Indigenisation and Economic Empowerment Act.

“This issue of indigenisation is an on-going process. We indeginised land, it was in the hands of outsiders — European farmers, some British, some South African, some German — and we decided, we had agreed with Britain that there would be a land redistribution programme and we proceeded accordingly.

“We are still proceeding in respect with the land acquisition programme. But we are now, after the land, dealing with our ownership of resources in other areas with regard to mining, with regards to raw materials that we want to turn into finished goods, the manufacturing sector . . .”

Touching on the land audit, he said: “I think it’s necessary for us to have the audit.

“Varimi chaivo ngavaregere kuvhunduka, vasiri varimi ngavavhunduke. Vasiri varimi, ndiri kuzvitaura, nekuti pane vamwe vasiri varimi iye zvino kune mirwi yevanhu, perhaps it’s an exaggeration, asi kune vazhinji vasina kurima vakandoshevedza mabhunhu zvakare kuti huyai murime. Mabhunhu achiti tokupayi 10 percent or 15 percent of value of the harvest.

“Vamwe vachitokoka, inviting them. Vakadaro ndivo vatisingade. Tinovatorera. Hatimbomira! And I happen to know quite several kunana Mash West and Mash Central,” he said.

ZBC will broadcast the full interview tonight at 8.30

Strike temporarily shelved

Herald Reporter

Unions representing civil servants yesterday said they will temporarily abandon their strike and instead embark on a sit-in for the next two weeks so as to avoid salary cuts.

The Public Service Commission last week declared the strike illegal, ordering the state employees to return to work.

The Public Service Act stipulates that any State employee who absents him/herself from work for 14 days will not get paid.

Unionists yesterday urged civil servants to report for duty on Monday but said they should not do any work until they get an increment from their employer.

Public Service Minister Eliphas Mukonoweshuro did not pick his phone when contacted to comment on this development and its legal implications.

Addressing civil servants at a rally in Harare yesterday, Zimbabwe Teachers Association president Mrs Tendai Chikowore said: “After a careful scan of the current action and forecasting the future we have decided to change the course and tactics and thus we have adopted the form of a sit in.”

The unionists said the sit–in would end on March 5 and another rally would be convened to map the way forward.

Hundreds of civil servants marched through the City Centre to Parliament Building and the Public Service and Finance Ministries with petitions.

History That Liberates: Africa’s Urgent Need

History that liberates: Africa’s urgent need

By Dr Kwaku Person-Lynn

SUPPRESSING African world history is top priority in the intellectual world. It contains stories that will forever transform world history.

The greatest area of change and correction is revealing that world civilisation evolved from African civilisation.

It was ancient before Europeans started the struggle of creating civilisation. Africans were the only people with experience and the capacity to teach from its universities. Europeans (ancient Greeks and Romans) had no great learning centres. The Nile Valley was the intellectual, spiritual, educational, industrial centre for the ancient world.

The areas of science, medicine, mathematics, engineering, parenting, architecture, philosophy, religion, public works projects, distribution, preparing food and so many other human activity areas were created there and were distributed throughout the world by various conquerors and travellers.

This revelation changes the entire complexion of all we were taught. Once this is realised, there will be no accurate history books published outside of a few exceptions: John G. Jackson’s Introduction To Civilisations and Chancellor Williams’ Destruction Of Black Civilisation, the various volumes of The Journal Of Civilisations, edited by Ivan Van Sertima, along with some other rare literature. These works are closer to accuracy than the large majority of books published on the subject.

What is missing is a current book, incorporating the vast amount of incredible new information, adding a new component, DNA studies.

This new literary effort can only be legitimate from an African point of view. Writers of European descent have written the majority of books on African history. This is not to say Europeans cannot write history. They are better at writing their own history than any one else. It is more the concept of starting from within, rather than without. Beginning with the primary, rather than the traditional method of analysing and interpreting from the secondary.

Europeans have written volumes on African history. A mammoth amount is colonial or slave history, written from that perspective. To have a holistic approach to history, one must examine as many perspectives as possible.

A view that has been alive for a few years is that one must start with the origin of humanity.

There is such a lack of respect for Ernest E. Just, an American African biologist who worked at Howard University, early 1900s, who through his fertilisation and cell separation research brought us DNA. Thanks to his efforts, the origin of humanity work is almost at its conclusion.

All of the present evidence leads straight to Africa more specifically, Ethiopia.

The African influence in world civilisations is so massive it may take a few decades to document all that it means.

Unfortunately, there are strenuous efforts to obstruct this information from public consumption and dissemination. There are people afraid of change. There are innate beliefs that people of African descent do not have the intellectual capacity to do serious scholarship. And there are those who suffer from the mental illness of colour prejudice.

Lack of knowledge can be one cause of negative conduct.

The bulk of immoral behaviour by people of African descent, particularly the youth, today is acquired from birth, several generations, learning and acting someone else’s habits, customs, behaviour, principles, culture, almost totally abandoning everything their ancestors taught.

Cursory examination of things projected in Western culture indicates that it does not put much value in truth and moral character. That can be devastating and self destructive to young people being born and raised in that kind of environment. It will make people with little resources prey on each other. Understanding that this is arranged by purposeful design is the beginning of developing counter measures.

One of many reasons why it is mandatory information of African world history be researched, written, distributed, read and analysed. In one sense, it is liberating. It frees a person from seeing the world from one perspective; primarily that people of European descent created all the great things. As self-serving as that has been for the perpetrators of that type of thinking, much of it is based on gross inaccuracies and omissions.

Western intellectuals are fearful their authoritative scholarship and public trust may not prove as precise and accepted as it once was.

This could cause a great dilemma among Western scholars as students, faculty and the general public become aware of this.

Their next statement may be, “Since most of our teachers and books did not give us all of the information or withheld information, maybe we should look elsewhere.” The foremost concern is where that elsewhere may be.

–Dr Kwaku Person-Lynn, Ph.D. is the author of On My Journey Now - The Narrative and Works of Dr John Henrik Clarke, The Knowledge Revolutionary. First Word: Black Scholars, Thinkers, Warriors, Knowledge, Wisdom, Mental Liberation. He can be reached on DrKwaku@hotmail.com.

This article is reproduced from the African Executive.

From the Inbox - This Ad could stop Cabela’s Sponsored Wolf Killings

Send Cabela’s A Hometown Message About Wolf-Killing Derbies Cabela’s has sponsored wolf-killing derbies — brutal competitions where contestants are awarded cash and prizes based on how many wolves and other animals they can kill. Please donate now to help run this powerful, full-page ad in Cabela’s hometown newspaper this Saturday, end wolf-killing “derbies” and save the lives of wolves and other wildlife. Or call 1-800-385-9712 to contribute by phone

We’re turning up the heat on Cabela’s to stop sponsoring cruel wolf-killing derbies and funding anti-wolf litigation. Caring people like you have already sent more than 100,000 messages to Cabela’s urging them to end their support for wolf-killing predator derbies.

But despite the public outrage, the company has yet to act. We must increase media attention and public action directed at them.

Help us get their attention and stop corporate-sponsorship of wolf slaughters. Donate now to help place our powerful full-page ad in the company’s hometown newspaper this Saturday.

As I wrote earlier, this major outdoor retailer has been sponsoring wolf-killing derbies — brutal competitions where contestants vie to see how many wolves and other animals they can kill, with three points awarded for each dead wolf.

Worse, proceeds from these derbies are being used to support anti-wolf litigation to block the restoration of life-saving federal protections for these magnificent animals.

Our hard-hitting full-page ad spotlights the support of Cabela’s for wolf-killing predator derbies in Idaho that have been held by the misleadingly named Sportsmen for Fish and Wildlife — the same group that is also lobbying for the awful anti-wolf bill that we’re fighting in Utah.

With your help, we’re going to run the full-page color ad this Saturday in Sidney, Nebraska — home of the Cabela’s corporate headquarters.

We’re going to let every manager, receptionist, office worker, accountant and employee at Cabela’s corporate headquarters know that the company’s sponsorship of these terrible killing contests is hurting their bottom line.

The ad features quotes from wildlife-loving outdoor enthusiasts, hunters and anglers who have vowed to stop shopping at Cabela’s until the company stops sponsoring wolf-killing derbies.

Please donate now. With your support, we can run our powerful new ad in this Saturday’s edition of the Sidney Sun Telegraph.

And your tax-deductible contribution will do a lot more.

We’re keeping the pressure on Cabela’s with our national activist mobilization. We’re fighting Sportsmen for Fish and Wildlife in Utah and in federal court. We’re educating others on the important role that wolves play in restoring the balance of nature. And we’re intensifying our campaign to convince President Obama to restore life-saving federal protections for these long-persecuted animals.

The clock is ticking. Can you chip in to support our vital efforts to save the lives of wolves and other imperiled wildlife?

For the Wild Ones,

Rodger Schlickeisen President Defenders of Wildlife

Sudanese Government to Sign Formal Peace Deal With Darfur Rebels

Sudanese government to sign formal peace deal with Darfur rebels

From Jennifer Z. Deaton, CNN

(CNN) — Sudanese President Omar al-Bashir’s government will formally sign next week a framework agreement for a cease-fire with rebels in Sudan’s volatile Darfur region, a rebel representative and state media said Saturday.

Dr. Tahir al-Fati, chairman of the rebel group Justice and Equality Movement’s legislative assembly, told CNN that a preliminary document for the framework agreement was signed Saturday in Chad between representatives of the two sides.

He said the framework agreement will be formally signed Tuesday in Doha, Qatar.

Al-Bashir said Saturday that it will be signed within two days, Sudan’s state news agency, SUNA, reported. The president also called off death sentences against members of the rebel group who were convicted after clashes in the Khartoum suburb of Omdurman.

Mahamat Hisseine, spokesman for the government of Chad, told CNN that the document to be signed on Tuesday will “be an agreement as a cease-fire between the government of Sudan and the Justice and Equality Movement [JEM].”

He added, “All these details would be part of a general cease-fire agreement that is still being finalized.”

A permanent cease-fire will be a final step, al-Fati said.

Last year, Sudan’s government and the JEM rebels signed a confidence-building agreement in Qatar, a step toward ending a six-year conflict that has killed hundreds of thousands.

Qatar has been mediating talks between the two sides in the Darfur conflict, which erupted in 2003 after rebels began an uprising against the Khartoum government.

The government launched a brutal counter-insurgency campaign, aided by government-backed Arab militias that went from village to village in Darfur, killing, torturing and raping residents, according to the United Nations, Western governments and human rights organizations.

Al-Bashir is under pressure to end the fighting, particularly because he was charged with genocide by the International Criminal Court last year for the government’s campaign of violence in Darfur.

In the past seven years, more than 300,000 people have been killed through direct combat, disease or malnutrition, the United Nations says. An additional 2.7 million people fled their homes because of fighting among rebels, government forces and allied militias.

Links referenced within this article

International Criminal Court
http://topics.edition.cnn.com/topics/International_Criminal_Court
Omar al-Bashir
http://topics.edition.cnn.com/topics/Omar_al_Bashir
Sudan
http://topics.edition.cnn.com/topics/Sudan
Darfur
http://topics.edition.cnn.com/topics/Darfur

US Liberals Get War President of Their Own

Liberals get war president of their own

Zimbabwe Herald

SUDDENLY and surprisingly, we have a Bush-like Obama Doctrine. To the applause of liberal hawks and formerly critical neo-cons, the president declared in his Nobel Peace Prize speech that the US will continue to wage war — though naturally, only “just” war — anywhere and against anyone it chooses in a never-ending struggle against the forces of evil.

His antiwar supporters can take seats on the sidelines. It’s all-reminiscent of John F. Kennedy and the prescient George Ball, and afterward Ball and Lyndon Johnson.

In the early ’60s, JFK—reluctantly, we are told by his admirers—decided to send 16 000 “trainers” to Vietnam to teach the South Vietnamese how to play soldier and to stop the Communists from sweeping over Southeast Asia.

Vast quantities of money and assorted advisers were shipped without accountability to the corrupt gang of thugs running and ruining that country.

Ball, the one dissenter in Kennedy’s entourage, pleaded with JFK to recall France’s devastating defeat in 1954 at Dien Bien Phu and throughout Indochina. “Within five years we’ll have 300 000 men in the paddies and jungles and never find them again,” he warned the liberal icon in the White House. But JFK thought he knew better, caustically answering, “George, you’re crazier than hell.

That just isn’t going to happen.” Ball would also press Lyndon Johnson to stand down in Vietnam before he destroyed his presidency, domestic agenda, and more importantly the lives of tens of thousands of American soldiers and their families, not to mention a few million Southeast Asians.

But LBJ wasn’t going to be the first president to lose a war and be blasted by pugnacious home-front warriors. Failing to stop the North Vietnamese would sooner or later have us fighting them on Waikiki Beach, or so the Cold War line went.

Ever since then, we have continued to hear about regional menaces that supposedly, if left unchecked, will threaten vital US interests or even Americans at home. Ronald Reagan employed that rationale in defending the proxy war in Central America waged by US-backed Contras.

George H.W. Bush and Bill Clinton extended the tradition of intervention, sending troops to theatres of combat as far-flung as Panama, Kuwait, and the Balkans, while the second Bush launched invasions of Iraq and Afghanistan. They have all been war presidents.

But Barack Obama was going to be different, or so my fellow antiwar liberals — and a few antiwar conservatives — hoped. He was to herald the end of that uncompromising and unilateral era of preventive war.

The hundreds of thousands who joyously greeted the president-elect in Grant Park or the 1,5 million at his inauguration were ecstatic with anticipation. Left-wing pundits wrote excitedly about FDR’s 100 Days and projected great plans onto the new Man from Illinois.

In countless articles, Republicans were declared brain dead, and the Bush-Cheney policies that got us into Iraq, Afghanistan, and the torture business were buried.

One year after those celebrations, it’s the neocons cheering, seeing in Obama’s policies a vindication of the late administration.

Who would have dreamed that following Obama’s West Point speech announcing 30 000 more troops destined for Afghanistan, William Kristol would laud Obama in the pages of the Washington Post, writing, “the rationale for this surge is identical to Bush’s,” and praise the Democratic president for having “embraced the use of military force as a key instrument of national power”?

War makes strange bedfellows. Michèle Flournoy, Obama’s under secretary of defence for policy, has been invited to speak about the president’s hopes for a new Afghanistan on a panel led by Frederick W. Kagan at the American Enterprise Institute, the heart of neo-conservatism. Why did Obama buy what the hawks sold him?

What if he had levelled with the nation and acknowledged that, however obnoxious and cruel the Taliban may be, they pose no danger to the United States?

What if he had vowed that we would not dispatch tens of thousands of additional troops to a civil war in an agrarian, impoverished, largely illiterate country divided by tribal loyalties?

It was not to be. Instead, as New York Times columnist David Brooks stated approvingly, “With his two surges, Obama will more than double the number of American troops in Afghanistan.” Charles Krauthammer was direct and sharp: “most supporters of the Afghanistan war were satisfied.

They got the policy; the liberals got the speech”—and no say in the construction of that policy.

After West Point and Oslo, neo-cons saw Obama as a more coherent Bush, an electrifying orator who had dazzled antiwar Democrats and independents and then promptly dumped them.

When the New York Times printed a photo of the men and women who helped Obama reach his decision to escalate, not one dove was present.

Were there no alternatives? In this huge country, could he not find a handful of realists, whether Left or Right, to supply some workable ideas for eliminating third and fourth tours for our overextended troops and the resulting suicides, amputations, epidemics of post-traumatic stress disorder, and legions of weeping relatives at gravesides? Hold on, Obama’s loyal liberal defenders counter, shuddering at the memory of Bush.

Why blame him for the miserable decisions he has to make based on impossible situations he did not create?

They would prefer not to explain why they and their allies in the think tanks and Congress have so little influence. Granted, some of Obama’s base reacted negatively.

In December, MoveOn .org sent its millions of members a scorching email denouncing Obama’s troop escalation for “deepen (ing) our involvement in a quagmire.”

Anti-Vietnam War rebel Tom Hayden removed the Obama sticker from his car. United for Peace and Justice, the main organiser of mass peace rallies around the country, announced, “It’s Obama’s War, and We Will Stop it.”

The widely read liberal TomDispatch.com dubbed its former champion the “Commanded-in- Chief” for giving way to the hardball pressures exerted by the generals.

Matthew Rothschild of The Progressive, founded by the fabled anti-militarist Robert M. LaFollette Sr. in 1909, compared Bush and Obama’s rhetoric and wrote an article called “Obama Steals Bush’s Speechwriters.”

But these protests notwithstanding, we remain — and will throughout Obama’s presidency — an empire of military colonisation, the goal for decades of neoconservatives and assorted liberal hawks.

In anthropologist Hugh Gusterson’s wonderfully evocative words, “The US is to military bases as Heinz is to ketchup.” American forces are stationed at approximately 1 000 military bases in 120 countries at a cost topping $100 billion annually.

Diego Garcia, a remote island in the Indian Ocean midway between Africa and Indonesia, is apparently so essential a base that 5000 locals were thrown out of their homes so the US could have yet another top-secret facility from which to conduct its perpetual wars.

Far from being a consensus-seeking peacenik, Obama would not even sign the Landmine Ban Treaty, which Bush also refused to endorse, thus leaving the US the only NATO nation unwilling to participate.

Said Steve Goose of Human Rights Watch’s Arms Division, “they have simply decided to allow the Pentagon to dictate terms.”

A shocked Bill Moyers pointed out that 5000 people died from mine explosions in 2008, noting the disconnect between Obama’s refusal to enlist the support of the government he leads and the Oslo speech in which he maintained, “I am convinced that adhering to standards, international standards, strengthens those who do and isolates and weakens those who don’t.”

In another instance of history repeating, the first Obama defence budget has been virtually the same as Bush’s military appropriations.

Obama has reduced spending on Cold War weapons such as the F-22 fighter, but he reportedly plans to ask Congress for an extra $33 billion for the ongoing wars in the Middle East and Central Asia.

To his credit, the president is trying to negotiate a new nuclear-arms reduction pact with Russia and close a few of the CIA’s clandestine prisons.

But in many other vital areas of defence and national security, like warrantless wiretaps and renewal of much of the Patriot Act, he persists in activities that violate fundamental freedoms.

He has also refused to hold anyone from the Bush-Cheney era accountable. There’s more: his administration has just signed an accord with Colombia granting the US 10 -year right to use seven of its bases, including the centrepiece of the agreement, Palanquero AFB.

Take heed, any leftist South American government that dares defy Uncle Sam. At the same time, Obama blinked at the coup d’état in Honduras. “They really thought he was different,” said Julia Sweig of the Council on Foreign Relations, referring to Latin America’s opinion of Obama.

“But those hopes were dashed over the course of the summer.” So what happened? Barack Obama happened. More eloquence than substance happened. More time-honoured political caution than audacity or hope.

Liberal and conservative Cold Warriors as key advisers. A reluctance to cross wartime profiteers.

A recognition by his poll-counters that, with future elections in mind, it was best to govern from some ill-defined centre, acting tough abroad to keep the neocons off his back while throwing an occasional bone to his left.

That strategy may buy him a second term as fruitless as his first — or it could render him indistinguishable from his deservedly maligned predecessor and cost him re-election in 2012.

The Left howls now, but from the very start, Obama signalled his lack of interest in McGovernite ideas of change in foreign policy. There was a time when he talked about pressing Israel to dismantle its settlements.

But thus far he has been cowed by Netanyahu and his American backers, betraying any hope for a genuinely independent Palestinian state. There was that stirring speech in Cairo and then silence. There was talk about closing Guantanamo but no mention of the much larger Bagram prison in Afghanistan.

The sad truth is everything we are seeing we have already seen. Despite presidents who come and go, permanent war is a hallowed American institution.

Start if you will with the War of 1812, the invasion of Mexico, and the carnage of a Civil War. Move to the mass murder of Native Americans and theft of their property, the killing, torture, and prison camps in the Philippines, then the blood-drenched 20th century.

The 21st likewise dawns red. It never changes. Doves protest, hawks rule, ordinary people pay the penalty. All wars are “just.” As surely as the bloodletting persists, so does the opposition.

The old chestnut that liberals have always stood for peace and conservatives for war is historically false. In fact, our past is rich with anti-militarist heroes of surprisingly varied political colours.

Daniel Webster opposed the War Hawks and the draft they proposed in 1812.

Abolitionist Theodore Parker denounced the Mexican War and called on his fellow Bostonians in 1847 “to protest against this most infamous war.”

Henry Van Dyke, a Presbyterian minister and ardent foe of the annexation of the Philippines, told his congregation in 1898, “If we enter the course of foreign conquest, the day is not far distant when we must spend in annual preparation for wars more than the US$180 000 000 that we now spend every year in the education of our children for peace.”

Socialist and labour leader Eugene Debs received a 10-year prison sentence for daring to tell potential draftees in 1918 that it was “the working class who fight all the battles, the working class who make the supreme sacrifices, the working class who freely shed their blood and furnish the corpses.”

Against US entry into World War I, Republican Sen. George Norris of Nebraska asked, “To whom does this war bring prosperity? Not to the soldier . . . not to the broken-hearted widow . . . not to the mother who weeps at the death of her baby boy . . . War brings no prosperity to the great mass of common and patriotic citizens . . . War brings prosperity to the stock gambler on Wall Street.” Rep. Barbara Lee (D-Calif.), the only member of Congress in 2001 who voted against George W. Bush’s decision to invade Afghanistan, warned her colleagues to be “careful not to embark on an open-ended war with neither an exit strategy nor a focused target.”

Conservative Russell Kirk laid out a post-World War II programme for conservatives by reminding them, “A handful of individuals, some of them quite unused to moral responsibilities on such a scale, made it their business to extirpate the populations of Nagasaki and Hiroshima; we must make it our business to curtail the possibility of such snap decisions.”

Anti-militarism is very much an American tradition, but it has never been a majority position. Who now reads Finley Peter Dunne, the Chicago newspaperman who invented the brogish bartender Mr Dooley speaking to his customer, Mr Hennessey, while deriding American excesses and the national passion for imperial expansion?

He wondered why many leaders and everyday Americans passively embraced, without much knowledge, our devotion to world hegemony — specifically in his time, the decision to invade and occupy the Philippines.

“’Tis not more than two months,” he told his pro-annexation readers, “ye larned whether they were islands or canned goods.”

Yet just as certain as opposition to foreign adventuring arises, again it goes unheeded. As we begin President Obama’s second year in office, of this we can be certain: in global affairs, but for a few crumbs here and there, antiwar views will rarely be welcomed by this White House. And when these marginalised voters complain all the president’s men will remind them that they were told Afghanistan was a “necessary war” and “national security” is everything.

I can imagine Obama’s advisers confidently telling him that however many troops he ships to these and future wars, however much money he spends on military hardware, his anguished allies have no place else to go. Plus ça change. — www.trinicenter.com

5 Killed in Ivory Coast Anti-Government Protests

5 killed in Ivory Coast anti-government protests

By MARCO CHOWN OVED Associated Press Writer © 2010 The Associated Press
Feb. 19, 2010, 5:21PM

ABIDJAN, Ivory Coast — Police fired on demonstrators at an anti-government rally Friday, killing five people and wounding a dozen others in Ivory Coast’s latest protest since the president dissolved the government a week ago, the opposition said.

Demonstrations spread to at least eight cities in the West African nation on Friday. Moussa Dembele of the opposition RDR party said the deadly protest took place in Gagnoa, about 125 miles (200 kilometers) northwest of the economic capital, Abidjan.

President Laurent Gbagbo had set a Friday deadline to form a new government but the prime minister on Thursday evening asked for a 48-hour extension.

Dembele said late Wednesday that the death toll had increased to five people, from three earlier in the day.

“The police were aiming directly at the protesters,” he said. “These weren’t stray bullets.”

Augustin Gehoum, a spokesman for Gbagbo’s party, said the deaths were “regrettable,” but said police were not to blame. He also said the protests were part of an opposition strategy to destabilize the country after Gbagbo’s decision to dissolve the government.

“Now they are crying ‘dictatorship,’” he said. “It’s nothing of the sort. Mr. Gbagbo dissolved a body that had lost the confidence of the Ivorian people.”

The dissolution of the government has thrown into doubt the political reconciliation process in Ivory Coast, which was about to hold elections. Five years after the president’s term ended, Ivory Coast has yet to hold a ballot to replace him.

The now-defunct government was the fruit of a peace agreement signed by Gbagbo’s government and the New Forces rebels in 2007 following a civil war that had split the world’s No. 1 cocoa producer into a rebel-held north and a government-controlled south. The unity government was composed of 33 ministers from all political parties and rebel factions.

At the heart of the impasse that has delayed elections for five years is the question of who is really Ivorian. Before its brief civil war, Ivory Coast was one of Africa’s economic stars boasting a modern, cosmopolitan capital which lured tens of thousands of immigrants from poorer neighboring nations. At least a quarter of the nation’s 20 million people have been disqualified from voting based on the electoral law’s convoluted definition for determining eligibility, stoking tension.

U.N. Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon expressed “grave concern” at the Ivorian political situation, according to U.N. deputy spokeswoman Marie Okabe.

“The secretary-general is concerned about the clashes that occurred today in Gagnoa, which resulted in a number of deaths and injured people and are a reminder of the volatility of the situation,” Okabe said.

“The secretary-general urges the Ivorian people to remain calm and the Ivorian political actors, authorities and the media to refrain from any action and rhetoric that could result in more violence,” she said.