De Israelische Terreur 480

'Dayton: New PA forces are the most capable ever

Dec. 11, 2008 David Horovitz, THE JERUSALEM POST

Keith Dayton, the US army general who is overseeing the training in Jordan of the Palestinian Authority's National Security Force for the West Bank, has praised the new recruits as "the most capable Palestinian security forces that have ever been fielded here," and firmly played down the notion that they might one day come to turn their weapons on Israel.

In a rare interview, marking the third anniversary of his arrival here to head the United States Security Coordinator (USSC) hierarchy, Dayton told The Jerusalem Post that the trainees are taught over and again that "you are not here to learn how to fight against the Israeli occupation."
Their focus, rather, he said, is "totally on the lawless elements within Palestinian society."

Unlike many Middle East envoys, who fly in and out, Dayton has spent the three years on the ground here, maintaining thorough oversight of the American-funded training programs, which are carried out by the Jordanians.

Several hundred graduates have already been deployed in the West Bank, notably in Jenin and Hebron, and several hundred more are in the middle of training programs. The ultimate goal, said Dayton, is for the deployment of seven battalions of the NSF.

The three-star general, a 38-year army veteran who was formerly the US defense attaché in Russia, led the search for weapons of mass destruction in Iraq and served as the US army's chief strategic planner, said there were "long-term" plans for two battalions of the NSF to deploy in Gaza as well. But he said there was no likelihood of this at present, and that he had no answer to the question of how Gaza might be revived under the control of Mahmoud Abbas.

Dayton stressed that the training program he oversees began only after Hamas came to power in Gaza in a coup in June 2007. "We had no responsibility for training anyone in Gaza," he said.

But he spoke in defense of the Palestinian Authority security forces who fought there at the time. They "lost 250 dead," he noted. "These aren't people that just simply, immediately raised their hands and surrendered. I know this. It took five days. One could say, 'Well, they overran them in five days.'
Baloney. They were clearly outgunned and still they stood their ground for five days... So this wasn't the surrender that is often portrayed."

What the failure in Gaza had shown, he said, "was that the Palestinian security forces need to be organized, well led, well trained, responsible to a civilian authority."

Hence, he said, the PA's embrace of the idea "of sending their young men to Jordan" for proper training, as a critical element of future statehood and to prevent "something like June 2007 from occurring again."

Dayton repeatedly stressed in the interview that none of his work here - which also includes training courses for senior Palestinian leaders and various infrastructure projects - would harm Israel's security. Indeed, the reverse was true, he said.

Organizing competent Palestinian security forces, within the framework of President George W. Bush's vision of two states living side by side in peace and security, he said, was intended to enable "improved law and order in the territories, increased safety and security for the Palestinian people, and improved security for Israel."

He went on: "Nothing I or my team do here will jeopardize the security interests of the State of Israel. Period. Full stop. We won't do it. It's not what we do as Americans."'
Lees verder: http://www.jpost.com/servlet/Satellite?cid=1228728147345&pagename=JPost%2FJPArticle%2FShowFull

Het Neoliberale Geloof 297

Capitalist Fools
by: Joseph E. Stiglitz, Vanity Fair

January 2009 Issue

Behind the debate over remaking US financial policy will be a debate over who's to blame. It's crucial to get the history right, writes a Nobel-laureate economist, identifying five key mistakes - under Reagan, Clinton and Bush II - and one national delusion.

There will come a moment when the most urgent threats posed by the credit crisis have eased and the larger task before us will be to chart a direction for the economic steps ahead. This will be a dangerous moment. Behind the debates over future policy is a debate over history - a debate over the causes of our current situation. The battle for the past will determine the battle for the present. So it's crucial to get the history straight.
What were the critical decisions that led to the crisis? Mistakes were made at every fork in the road - we had what engineers call a "system failure," when not a single decision but a cascade of decisions produce a tragic result. Let's look at five key moments.
No. 1: Firing the Chairman
In 1987 the Reagan administration decided to remove Paul Volcker as chairman of the Federal Reserve Board and appoint Alan Greenspan in his place. Volcker had done what central bankers are supposed to do. On his watch, inflation had been brought down from more than 11 percent to under 4 percent. In the world of central banking, that should have earned him a grade of A+++ and assured his re-appointment. But Volcker also understood that financial markets need to be regulated. Reagan wanted someone who did not believe any such thing, and he found him in a devotee of the objectivist philosopher and free-market zealot Ayn Rand.
Greenspan played a double role. The Fed controls the money spigot, and in the early years of this decade, he turned it on full force. But the Fed is also a regulator. If you appoint an anti-regulator as your enforcer, you know what kind of enforcement you'll get. A flood of liquidity combined with the failed levees of regulation proved disastrous.
Greenspan presided over not one but two financial bubbles. After the high-tech bubble popped, in 2000-2001, he helped inflate the housing bubble. The first responsibility of a central bank should be to maintain the stability of the financial system. If banks lend on the basis of artificially high asset prices, the result can be a meltdown - as we are seeing now, and as Greenspan should have known. He had many of the tools he needed to cope with the situation. To deal with the high-tech bubble, he could have increased margin requirements (the amount of cash people need to put down to buy stock). To deflate the housing bubble, he could have curbed predatory lending to low-income households and prohibited other insidious practices (the no-documentation - or "liar" - loans, the interest-only loans, and so on). This would have gone a long way toward protecting us. If he didn't have the tools, he could have gone to Congress and asked for them.
Of course, the current problems with our financial system are not solely the result of bad lending. The banks have made mega-bets with one another through complicated instruments such as derivatives, credit-default swaps, and so forth. With these, one party pays another if certain events happen - for instance, if Bear Stearns goes bankrupt, or if the dollar soars. These instruments were originally created to help manage risk - but they can also be used to gamble. Thus, if you felt confident that the dollar was going to fall, you could make a big bet accordingly, and if the dollar indeed fell, your profits would soar. The problem is that, with this complicated intertwining of bets of great magnitude, no one could be sure of the financial position of anyone else - or even of one's own position. Not surprisingly, the credit markets froze.
Here too Greenspan played a role. When I was chairman of the Council of Economic Advisers, during the Clinton administration, I served on a committee of all the major federal financial regulators, a group that included Greenspan and Treasury Secretary Robert Rubin. Even then, it was clear that derivatives posed a danger. We didn't put it as memorably as Warren Buffett - who saw derivatives as "financial weapons of mass destruction" - but we took his point. And yet, for all the risk, the deregulators in charge of the financial system - at the Fed, at the Securities and Exchange Commission, and elsewhere - decided to do nothing, worried that any action might interfere with "innovation" in the financial system. But innovation, like "change," has no inherent value. It can be bad (the "liar" loans are a good example) as well as good.
No. 2: Tearing Down the Walls
The deregulation philosophy would pay unwelcome dividends for years to come. In November 1999, Congress repealed the Glass-Steagall Act - the culmination of a $300 million lobbying effort by the banking and financial-services industries, and spearheaded in Congress by Senator Phil Gramm. Glass-Steagall had long separated commercial banks (which lend money) and investment banks (which organize the sale of bonds and equities); it had been enacted in the aftermath of the Great Depression and was meant to curb the excesses of that era, including grave conflicts of interest. For instance, without separation, if a company whose shares had been issued by an investment bank, with its strong endorsement, got into trouble, wouldn't its commercial arm, if it had one, feel pressure to lend it money, perhaps unwisely? An ensuing spiral of bad judgment is not hard to foresee. I had opposed repeal of Glass-Steagall. The proponents said, in effect, Trust us: we will create Chinese walls to make sure that the problems of the past do not recur. As an economist, I certainly possessed a healthy degree of trust, trust in the power of economic incentives to bend human behavior toward self-interest - toward short-term self-interest, at any rate, rather than Tocqueville's "self interest rightly understood."
The most important consequence of the repeal of Glass-Steagall was indirect - it lay in the way repeal changed an entire culture. Commercial banks are not supposed to be high-risk ventures; they are supposed to manage other people's money very conservatively. It is with this understanding that the government agrees to pick up the tab should they fail. Investment banks, on the other hand, have traditionally managed rich people's money - people who can take bigger risks in order to get bigger returns. When repeal of Glass-Steagall brought investment and commercial banks together, the investment-bank culture came out on top. There was a demand for the kind of high returns that could be obtained only through high leverage and big risktaking.'

Lees verder: http://www.truthout.org/121008R

De Commerciele Massamedia 166

Een lezer verwees me naar een leuk bericht op Zapruder:

'Paddobestrijding.nl is een hoax / reageer
Door arie Tell-a-Friend
Je wist het al? Gefeliciteerd, je bent slimmer dan de gemiddelde Nederlander. Natuurlijk bestaat de Paddobestrijding niet. Een simpele whois query van dit domein toont als contactgegevens MushMush VOF, oftewel http://www.mushmush.nl/, ons bedrijf dat tot 1 december paddokweeksets maakte.
Dode dieren in de tuin? Gif dat 70 cm diep in de bodem wordt gespoten? Je buren aangeven bij de politie? Een beetje over-the-top dachten wij, maar blijkbaar geloofwaardig genoeg om Spits en de NOS voor de gek te houden. Wij hadden niet gerekend op dit ongekende succes. We hebben overigens nul serieuze aanvragen gehad. Nederlanders zijn dus wel gek, maar niet zó gek.
De lijst van verboden paddenstoelen is trouwens wel degelijk de officiële lijst met verboden soorten en land- en tuineigenaren zijn formeel echt in overtreding van de Opiumwet. Een tiental van de verboden soorten komen algemeen voor in Nederland in tuinen, bossen, parken en grasvelden. Dat de officiële lijst een groot aantal soorten bevat die geen werkzame stoffen bevatten is niet onze grap, maar een slechte grap van Minister Klink.
Toen we op vrijdag 28 november hoorden dat we het kort geding verloren hadden, hebben we een domein gereserveerd en heel hard aan onze duim gezogen. En daar is deze site uit geboren. Een paar rare plaatjes van internet, wat leuke tekstjes, een prepaid simkaartje en de Paddobestrijding was geboren.
Op donderdag 4 december werden we gebeld door een verslaggeefster van de Spits die een stukje wilde schrijven. Het artikel dat op 5 december op hun voorpagina verscheen leidde tot een radioverslag met NOS Headlines en ‘s avonds nog tot een interview bij jongerenzender FunX. Ook de Utrechtse School voor Journalistiek heeft ons live op hun radiozender geïnterviewd.'

Lees verder: http://zapruder.nl/portal/artikel/paddobestrijdingnl_is_een_hoax/

Obama 67

Even voor de fans van Obama:

"Government is not reason. It is not eloquence. It is a force, like fire: a dangerous servant and a terrible master." George Washington.

Klimaatverandering 138

Let nu op Obama. Gaat hij de milieuvernietiging adequaat bestrijden? Ik gok van niet.

'UN: Climate Talks to Fail Without Tough CO2 Goals
Tuesday 09 December 2008
by: Alister Doyle and Anna Mudeva, Reuters

A top UN climate expert has called the latest round of climate talks a failure. (Photo: AFP)
Poznan, Poland - The United States and other rich nations must pledge by the end of next year specific targets for cutting greenhouse gas emissions by 2020 to win agreement on a U.N. climate pact, the UN's top climate official said on Tuesday.
Some analysts say that President-elect Barack Obama may not be ready to set formal emissions targets for 2020 within a year, and that economic recession could delay an end-2009 deadline by 190 nations for agreement on a new UN global warming pact.
"We have to have numbers on the table from industrialized countries (by the end of 2009) otherwise the other dominoes won't fall," Yvo de Boer, head of the U.N. Climate Change Secretariat said during December 1-12 talks on global warming.
Poor nations such as China and India would not sign up for more action to slow their rising emissions, mainly from burning fossil fuels, without leadership from the rich, he told a news conference during U.N. talks of 11,000 delegates in Poznan.
And he gave a one-word answer - "Yes" - when asked if he would rate the negotiations a failure if they set no 2020 greenhouse cuts for rich nations to succeed 2012 goals set by the existing Kyoto Protocol.
A U.N. official said de Boer's remarks covered the United States, even though President George W. Bush kept the country out of Kyoto. Bush said Kyoto was too costly and wrongly excluded 2012 targets for developing nations.
But de Boer also cautioned against too much ambition for a new global deal due to be agreed in Copenhagen next year, saying that many details of a new pact could be worked out later.
Risk Nothing
"We should be careful not to reach too far and achieve nothing," he said. Targets for rich nations, clarity on aid for the poor and institutions were essential in Copenhagen.
The talks in Poznan, Poland, are reviewing progress toward the new pact meant to be agreed in Copenhagen in 2009, half-way through a two-year push launched in Bali, Indonesia, a year ago.
Obama said last month that he aims to cut U.S. emissions, running almost 17 percent above 1990 levels in 2007, back to 1990 levels by 2020 as part of a fight to avert more heatwaves, disease, water shortages and rising seas.
But it is unclear if Obama would have to get the Senate's blessing before making a commitment as part of an international treaty. With the economic crisis, U.S. domestic climate laws are unlikely to be in place by late 2009, analysts say.'

Lees verder: http://www.truthout.org/121008O

Irak 265

The US invasion of Iraq caused irreparable damage to historic sites in Babylon. (Photo: British Museum)

Hoe de Amerikanen zich schaarden in de rij barbaren van Djenghis Kahn en Timoer Lenk:

'Babylon's History Swept Away in US Army Sandbags
Monday 08 December 2008
by: Agence France-Presse

Babylon, Iraq - Fragments of bricks, engraved with cuneiform characters thousands of years old, lie mixed with the rubble and sandbags left by the US military on the ancient site of Babylon in Iraq.
In this place, one of the cradles of civilisation, US troops in 2003-2004 built embankments, dug ditches and spread gravel to hold the fuel reservoirs needed to supply the heliport of Camp Alpha.
Today, archaeologists say a year of terracing work and 18 months of military presence, with tanks and helicopters, have caused irreparable damage. The Americans remained five months in Babylon and then handed over to the Poles who pulled out 16 months later.
Hands on hips, and wearing a seemingly permanent air of dismay, Maithem Hamza, director of the - totally empty - museum on the site, points to the soil: "Look at this land, it is packed with remnants. They filled their bags with them."
He pushes with his foot a fragment of raw brick, with cuneiform inscriptions plainly visible. To one side of it, on soil filthy with fuel oil, lies the broken door of a Hummer, the US army's light vehicle.
Undoubtedly the palace built on the site and on an artificial hill in 1993 by then-president Saddam Hussein drew the US military to Babylon during its invasion in March 2003.
The palace, like elsewhere in Iraq, was requisitioned as a military headquarters.
On one wall, near the door of the monumental entrance, a black stencil proclaims: "Building No.1". Further on, adorning a warehouse wall, graffiti reads: "Miss you, Smoothy!."
From April 2003 to June 2004, huge gravelled avenues were gouged out around the ruins of the palaces of Nebuchadnezzer in order to set up prefabricated buildings which became home to up to 2,000 troops.
The heliport is only some 300 metres (yards) from the remains of the north palace, and according to Maithem Hamza, vibration from the aircraft caused the base of the temple of Ninmah - rebuilt by Saddam in the 1980s - to collapse.
In a report published in 2005, experts from the British Museum confirmed that damage visible on nine of the dragon casts on the temple's Door of Ishtar, and those on the cobbles of the processional way, were due to vibration caused by the passage of heavy machinery.
"That which is broken is broken... We will try to repair what we can," said Maryam Omran Mussa, director of the site, speaking in her office near the entrance to the site which has been closed to the public since 2003.
"Many of the relics were buried near the surface. Vibration from tanks and lorries caused irreversible damage, that's for real... From the start, we told the Americans (their actions) were a mistake. I wrote letters...
"They finally understood, and left, but it took time."
British Museum curator John Curtis was one of the first to sound the alarm over the ancient site.
"They understood when photographs started to be published on the World Wide Web, particularly aerial photographs showing the extent of the military camp there," he said.
"It's only because of that that the military authorities of the coalition started to be very nervous and decided that they had to leave."
In the face of the protests, terracing and building work was interrupted in June 2004, six months before the troops left.
In its defence, the US military argued that if its presence there certainly had caused damage, it had also protected the site from looters who were running riot during the first weeks of the occupation.
Questioned in 2006 in a programme on the BBC, Marine Colonel John Coleman accepted the principle of an apology to the director of the Iraqi antiquities department.
"If it makes him feel good, I can certainly give him one," he said.'

Lees verder: http://www.truthout.org/121008L

Obama 66

The First Hundred Days or the Last Hundred Days? Obama's Rendezvous With Destiny - and Ours
Tuesday 09 December 2008
by: Ira Chernus, TomDispatch.com

'Looking back on Barack Obama's first post-election interview with "60 Minutes," no one should be surprised that he admitted he's reading about Franklin D. Roosevelt's first hundred days in office. In fact, the president-elect - evidently taking no chances - is reportedly reading two books: Jonathan Alter's The Defining Moment: FDR's Hundred Days and the Triumph of Hope and Jean Edward Smith's FDR. As he told "Sixty Minutes," his administration will emulate FDR's "willingness to try things and experiment... If something doesn't work, [we're] gonna try something else until [we] find something that does." That's one reason Obama, like FDR, has claimed that he wants advisors who will offer him a wide variety of viewpoints.
Not too wide, however. In his first hundred days, Roosevelt made it clear that he - like Obama - considered himself a reformer, but distinctly not a radical. He certainly didn't intend to use the economic crisis of 1932 to create a society of full economic equality and social justice. He just wanted to make sure that every American had at least a bare minimum of economic security.
FDR's overriding goal was, in reality, to head off movements for fundamental change. As he wrote privately before he became president, it was "time for the country to become fairly radical," but only "for a generation" - because "history shows that where this occurs occasionally, nations are saved from revolution."
"There will be a gain throughout our country of communistic thought," Roosevelt also warned, "unless we can keep democracy up to its old ideals and its original purposes." Years later, he would boast that his greatest achievement was saving the capitalist system.
Obama ended his "Sixty Minutes" interview on a similar note: "Our basic principle that this is a free market system and that that has worked for us, that it creates innovation and risk taking, I think that's a principle that we've gotta hold to." Though he talks about the benefits of "spreading the wealth around," like his famous predecessor, he most certainly doesn't want to spread it too fast or too far, nor does his team of economic advisers.
But the president-elect may be reading the wrong history. Perhaps, instead of reading about Roosevelt's first hundred days, he should read Chapter 16 of Smith's FDR, which describes how growing political pressure kept Roosevelt looking over his left shoulder. By 1934, new labor organizations like the Congress of Industrial Organizations, charismatic leaders like Louisiana's Governor Huey Long, and social innovators like California physician Francis Townsend were offering concrete plans to spread the wealth far faster and wider than Roosevelt's New Deal ever would. Continuing economic catastrophe, fused with the mood of hope and change that he himself had stirred up, gave rise to the threat that the president might be unseated if he did not move leftwards.'

Lees verder: http://www.truthout.org/121008K