US and Russia to Have Matching Bases in Conflict Zone

USA To Deploy Army Bases in Georgia To Rearm Nation’s Army

Pravda.Ru

The situation in the Caucuses is again the center of the world media attention. According to the Resonance, a Georgian newspaper, American military bases may appear in Georgia in 2015. The information allegedly came from an undisclosed high-ranking well-informed Georgian source.

The newspaper believes that Georgian President Mikhail Saakashvili could have received this promise at the meeting with US State Secretary Hilary Clinton on September 21. The Pentagon is reportedly working on the project plans.

The issue of locating military bases in Georgia is supervised by several Republican congressmen. In Pentagon the issue is lobbied by the ex-vice president Dick Cheney. The document may be brought to the Congress for consideration.

If US congressmen approve the plan and Georgian officials support it, by 2015 there will be 25,000 American military officers in Georgia. As for the military bases, the US will build two land bases and one navy base on the territory of Georgia. The same number of bases Russia is building in Abkhazia and South Ossetia.

There were no official comments either from Washington or from Tbilisi. Analysts believe that the issue with American bases in Georgia is connected with harsh comments from US State Secretary Hilary Clinton

On September 21 (after the meeting with Mikhail Saakashvili) she said that the United States was not going to recognize independence of Abkhazia and South Ossetia. Washington will do everything to prevent the world from recognizing these republics.

“She mentioned that we believe that the best way to achieve our common (with Georgia – ed.) goal is not to have Abkhazia and South Ossetia recognized by other countries, but recognize that they belong to Georgia,” said Philip Gordon, the US Assistant Secretary for European and Eurasian Affairs.

“Despite Russian pressure, 99 percent of the international community did not recognize their independence. And we are working together with our Georgian friends to prevent it,” he added.

It is not ruled out that “work with friends” implies a war component.

“The USA has been helping Georgia in military respect for the past four years. It involved not only regular supply of military equipment and preparing staff for the Georgian Army,” said Anatoly Tsyganok, an expert with the Institute for Political and Military Analysis.

“For example, during the 2008 campaign the Russian military captured an American control station. Even now at least 200 American soldiers are located in Georgia.

“I do not think that Washington will majorly expand its military aid to Tbilisi. And it will not locate American military bases there. The most it can do is to use Georgian Air Force to supply its Afghan group.

Trial of "Gnjilane Group" begins in Belgrade

24. September 2009. | 14:56

Source: EMportal

The trial of members of the so-called Gnjilane Group of the Kosovo Liberation Army, charged with the torture and brutal murder of Kosovo civilians in 1999, started on Sept. 23 with the recording of the defendants’ personal information and determining who will represent them in the case, which took several hours.

The trial of members of the so-called Gnjilane Group of the Kosovo Liberation Army, charged with the torture and brutal murder of Kosovo civilians in 1999, started on Sept. 23 with the recording of the defendants’ personal information and determining who will represent them in the case, which took several hours.
The trial of the nine defendants, which will be held at the Special Court, did not formally begin on Sept. 23, as the indictment was not read, and the process of recording personal information and selecting defense attorneys took hours due to translation problems.
According to the indictment, between June and late December 1999 members of the Gnjilane Group brutally murdered at least 80 civilians and physically abused at least 153, 34 of whom are still listed as missing.
Seventeen members of the former KLA are standing trial for illegal imprisonment, robbery, torture, abuse, rape, and brutally murder of Serb civilians, non-Albanians and some Albanians. Eight defendants from the group will be tried in absentia, as they are still at large. Nine members of the group were arrested in Presevo on Dec. 26, 2008 and have been in custody in Belgrade since.
Bruno Vekaric, spokesman for the Office of the Special Prosecutor for War Crimes, said on Sept. 23 that the trial of the Gnjilane Group for war crimes against civilians is "a high risk trial."
"A heinous crime was committed, for which 17 individuals have been indicted, and police are searching for the remaining eight. Witnesses from Kosovo received threats during the investigation," Vekaric told reporters outside the Special Court in Belgrade.
He also said the prosecution expects to cooperate with EULEX in the arrest of the main perpetrators, who are still on the run.
"We will aim to convince the trial chamber that we are right about the arguments from the indictment," Vekaric said, stressing that the trial will be adhere to all world standards.

Merkel, Sarkozy agree to push bonus regulations at G-20

Merkel, Sarkozy agree to push bonus regulations at G-20

Großansicht des Bildes mit der Bildunterschrift: Sarkozy and Merkel are on the same page on bonus limits

Angela Merkel has come on board with Nikolas Sarkozy’s plans for tougher rules when it comes to bank bonuses. They plan to try to get the rest of the EU on board before September’s G-20 meeting.

German Chancellor Angela Merkel and French President Nicolas Sarkozy agreed to take a common approach regarding bankers’ bonus payments, following a meeting in Berlin on Monday.

Unbridled risk-taking by some bankers has often been cited as one of the main factors that led to the global financial crisis, and the incentive of lucrative bonus payments has often been blamed for stoking bankers’ willingness to take chances.

“The international community needs to understand that the excesses of speculation and financial (institutions) which led to the crisis cannot resume as though nothing had happened,” Sarkozy said in Berlin.

Merkel reiterated demands for international regulations that would keep the size of global banks in check.

“No bank can be allowed to become so big that it is in a position to blackmail governments,” she said.

Merkel and Sarkozy have also called on the European Union to adopt a common stance before the two-day G-20 meeting, which is to be held in the US city of Pittsburgh beginning on September 24.

Global regulations a tough sell

Despite Berlin and Paris both coming out in clear support of international bank regulations as a way of preventing any future global financial crisis from happening, getting the rest of the G-20 nations to accept these terms is another story.

Bildunterschrift: Großansicht des Bildes mit der Bildunterschrift:  Finance expert Wolfgang Gerke says it is critical for banking regulations to be applied worldwide

“You need the acceptance of all of the G-20 countries, especially the United States and Great Britain,” Wolfgang Gerke, president of the Bavarian Center of Finance, told Deutsche Welle. “They feel that their financial centers would suffer if there is too much regulation. And therefore they are for continuing the system they had for many years.”

He noted that in the absence of international standards countries that do have tough bonus regulations would be at a disadvantage compared to countries with looser regulations.

“[German investment bankers] would tell the government: if they are too strict, they will quit the country and go to other places, like London,” Gerke said.

Bildunterschrift: Großansicht des Bildes mit der Bildunterschrift:  The G20 Summit is scheduled for September 24-25 in Pittsburgh.Political tool for Merkel

The G-20 meeting comes less than a month before a general election in Germany and it could provide a large platform for Merkel to gain the sympathies of voters.

“The German public will be quite in favour of more regulation of the bonus system,” Gerke said.

mz/dpa/afp

Editor: Chuck Penfold

Merkel to G20: regulation before rebalancing

By Madeline Chambers and Emily Kaiser

BERLIN/PITTSBURGH (Reuters) – German Chancellor Angela Merkel warned on Thursday a U.S. drive to rebalance the global economy risked distracting the Group of 20 from a more urgent need for market regulation at their Pittsburgh summit.

Merkel’s remarks in Berlin suggested tensions between the world’s third largest economy and its largest as she and U.S. President Barack Obama and other G20 leaders headed for talks on Thursday and Friday.

The United States wants G20 countries to commit to reducing the world’s reliance on U.S. consumers by boosting consumption in exporting countries, such as China, while encouraging debt-laden nations such as the United States to save more.

But there was no plan on how that would be achieved as G20 sherpas worked to complete the drafting of a summit communique.

“I have made clear we should not look for other topics and forget about financial market regulation,” Merkel said. “Imbalances are an issue. We must have imbalances and all the possible causes on the agenda. Exchange rates belong to that.”

Merkel, on track to win a second term in an election on Sunday, said the world’s leading countries were making progress on financial reform but warned the momentum could fade.

She stressed that the G20 — which groups big Western economies with emerging powers such as China and Brazil — should not shy away from measures

that might prove unpopular with the banking industry, where the economic crisis began.

“We have to make sure we learn the lessons of the crisis and make sure it is not repeated. Pittsburgh will be decisive in determining whether the subject of financial market regulation continues to be a central issue. For us, it is the most important subject at the meeting,” Merkel told reporters.

“Politicians must have the courage to do things which are not immediately applauded by banks worldwide.”

NEW G20 ROLE

Leaders of the world’s biggest economies meet in Pittsburgh later in the day to discuss ways of nurturing the fragile recovery from the worst global recession since the 1930s and how to help ward off future crises.

British Prime Minister Gordon Brown said global leaders would institutionalize the G20 as the world’s main economic governing council.

In New York to attend the U.N. General Assembly, Brown said G20 leaders would meet regularly, with South Korea taking over the presidency next year.

Downtown Pittsburgh was under a security lockdown for the summit as leaders began streaming into the scenic city at the confluence of three rivers in western Pennsylvania.

The sheer volume of problems the two-day summit is set to address — from the lopsided global growth model to climate change, tougher financial regulation and caps on bankers’ pay — prompted low expectations for any near-term action.

Europe is seeking to curb the excessive risk-taking that provoked turmoil on financial markets and shoved the world economy into recession. Several European leaders are also pushing for crackdowns on bankers’ lavish pay packages.

Now that the recession in many countries appears to be ending, the challenge is to sustain the sense of urgency felt in April when the G20 agreed to work together to rescue the world economy and pledged hundreds of billions of dollars to finance crisis-fighting by the International Monetary Fund.

U.S. GROWTH RETURNS

In the latest sign of incipient recovery, the U.S. Federal Reserve said on Wednesday growth has returned to the world’s biggest economy.

The number of U.S. workers filing new claims for jobless benefits unexpectedly fell by 21,000 last week, government data showed on Thursday.

The euro zone also appears poised to emerge from recession, although most economists expect only a gradual recovery. A key indicator of German business confidence fell short of expectations on Thursday.

The summit’s final statement will say short-term and long-term risks persist and will emphasize that more action is still needed to stabilize the economy, Japan’s Kyodo News reported on Thursday, citing officials.

IMF head Dominique Strauss-Kahn struck a similar note, saying G20 leaders should keep economic stimulus plans in place as long as millions of people who lost their jobs during the crisis remain out of work.

“Once the fire is out, there’s water everywhere. It has to be mopped up,” he told Europe 1 radio. “In Pittsburgh, we have to say, there are still fires to be put out. We’ll see later how to do the mopping up.”

China gave qualified support on Wednesday for the idea of improving global imbalances — a daunting task.

China’s private consumption accounts for little more than a third of its economy, while it exceeds 70 percent in the United States and Britain. By contrast, Chinese households saved about 40 percent of their disposable incomes last year, while the U.S. savings rate was just over 3 percent.

Several nations including China, and Germany, the world’s top exporter last year, have distanced themselves from the U.S. suggestion to make the IMF responsible for regular monitoring and policy recommendations to G20 members.

The summit starts with various bilateral talks on Thursday, with Obama hosting a reception and working dinner in the evening.

(Reporting by Reuters G20 team; Writing by Steve Holland, Tomasz Janowski and David Stamp; Editing by Howard Goller and John O’Callaghan)

Meet the G20

Graphic: GDP of the G20 Nations

reutersgraphics

The G20 is made up of the finance ministers and central bank governors of 19 countries and the European Union.

Kayani Could Not Believe What He Is Saying

[Maybe that explains the permanent grin?]

Army close to winning anti-terror war: COAS

The army will guarantee national security without letting anyone cast an evil eye on Pakistan: General Kayani.—Photo by AP

WANA/TANK: The army is close to winning the war against terrorism and it will guarantee national security without letting anyone cast an evil eye on Pakistan, says Chief of the Army Staff General Ashfaq Parvez Kayani.

The terror of a just peace

By Jawed Naqvi

Nothing could unnerve the Netanyahus, the Chidambarams and the assorted AfPak ideologues more than the terror of a just peace. —AP/File Photo

PROF Marc Gopin and Rajmohan Gandhi among other contemporary pacifists belong to the tradition of Martin Luther King, Mohandas Gandhi, Nelson Mandela, Desmond Tutu et al. Gopin is an American rabbi and a university teacher.

In his extensive work on the Middle East conundrum, he has argued that Yasser Arafat would have been a successful leader had he not put emphasis on the pistol in his holster. In other words, a Gandhian resistance to Israeli racism or colonial-imperialist machinations would have got him greater Jewish and American support, which would really count for a lot for the Palestinian cause, than the bloodshed that has been produced.

It is, of course, debatable as to how much really the pacifists of yore managed to succeed in implementing their agenda of a peaceful transition from an unequal society, fraught with racism and colonial habits, to an approximate world of their dream.

From South Africa to the United States to India, their liberating contribution to society has spawned scrutiny and research. Unremitting racism in the US, persistent social inequality in South Africa and the brutalised state that India is hurtling towards have all put a big question mark on the durability of the pacifist experiment.

However, the alternate armed route to resistance has invited even more bloodcurdling repression both by imperialism and its comprador allies who rule the tributary states. Pacifism has another image handicap to overcome to appeal to victims of state violence. Increasingly unleashed on the exploited citizens in India is the nation state’s mindless quest for lucre often on suicidal terms. Comprador states are not averse to advocating cola factories for people parched with drought and water scarcity.

Gandhian pacifism is seen as a status quo worldview in this regard. In its zeal to bring rapprochement it is often said to underplay, if not entirely ignore, the reasons for the origins of a specific strife. These may include economic deprivation of large swathes of people and the forcible violation of their dignified plea to be spared economic development so often a euphemism to uproot lives and the homes of the already dispossessed.

It may not be a coincidence that a satellite view of South Asia would show up the neo-con models of ‘development’ sharply and unambiguously. From Balochistan in the west to Nagaland in the east, it is the tribespeople – the native inhabitants of the regions who had largely remained unaffected by any discourse of nationhood, its success and failures – that are being hunted. The response too is a violent one.

What if we take out violence from the equation and see if a peaceful petition can deliver the message of their protest to their tormentors?

Take India. Among the most brutal campaigns taking shape in South Asia is the one about to be unleashed on the so-called Maoists in Chhattisgarh, a predominantly tribal region, which is rich in untapped mineral resources. Its people are struggling to stall mineral-hungry multinational companies from uprooting their lives. Indian Home Minister P. Chidambaram represents lobbies that have a huge stake in tapping the region’s resources.

The Maoists live in a time warp. Their brutal and excessively violent methods of resistance have isolated them from mainstream democratic politics. Suppose we take away their guns. Let us defuse their claymore landmines and woo them with the promise of a fair transparent democratic dialogue between the state and India’s impoverished people.

In other words, let us bring in the Rajmohan Gandhis and Marc Gopins to pre-empt a massacre that could otherwise make the anti-Taliban campaign look like a picnic.

What are the Maoists saying they should not be saying? The Indian Express recently carried excerpts from their pamphlet, which quoted the prime minister and the home minister as declaring them as the biggest threat to India’s security.

Said the pamphlet: ‘This is a very important point to note since the stress is on police action and military solution. The so-called development is to be done only after establishing [the] peace of the graveyard. Chidambaram also said some of the paramilitary forces from Kashmir would be withdrawn and redeployed in our areas.

‘We have to understand that our revolutionary war is a cruel class war. The reactionary forces can go to any extent, committing mass murders, tortures, arrests, abductions, illegal detention, mass rape of women, use of private armed militias and vigilante squads, rendering lakhs homeless and carrying out a psychological war.’

Let us assume for a moment that the Maoists have been disarmed. Would that change the nature of the problem they rather accurately describe?

The Maoist pamphlet lauded ‘militant uprisings’ in Pakistan, Sri Lanka and Nepal. ‘The reactionaries led by [the] US have unleashed [a] brutal fascist offensive in the economic, political, social and cultural spheres using brute force. West Asia resembles a burning volcano with Iraq, Afghanistan and Palestine engulfed in [the] flames of national liberation. The fighters in Iraq and Afghanistan are inflicting heavy losses on imperialists.’

Surely the unexpected solidarity with fighters in Iraq and Afghanistan ‘inflicting a heavy loss on imperialists’ cannot but be a reference to Al Qaeda and the Taliban. Their affinity with reactionary religious zealots makes for strange bedfellows and it does not bode well for the region. On the other hand, their Marxian view could be looking at the AfPak strife through a more rational prism.

One of the Maoist critiques is well grounded in history and logic. After all before the advent of foreign intervention in Afghanistan, for centuries its Muslim rulers and Muslim citizens had preserved the Bamiyan statues, even flaunted them to visitors. At some point dynamiting the Buddhist statues became a symbolic retribution for the foreign inroads into an otherwise placid, traditional, slowly waking-up conservative society.

After all, the regressive features of the neo-fanatics, be they of the Al Qaeda or the Taliban, were originally enshrined in the state of Saudi Arabia. Who can deny that women were and to an extent still are treated as second-class citizens there? The idea of secular education is far-fetched, as it would seem to be in Swat. Beheading, blinding, maiming, torturing of convicts, traits common to Al Qaeda and Taliban, were carried out routinely in the state of Saudi Arabia. Yet, it was embraced by the world as a moderate Muslim state.

This duplicity legitimately instills the familiar doubt that there is perhaps something other than their fanaticism that makes the Taliban–Al Qaeda duo the target of the world’s most powerful military machine.

Suppose some day, by a miracle, the pacifists of the world succeed in disarming the residual militants in Palestine, the Taliban surrender their arms, Al Qaeda is disbanded and the Maoists in India adopt Gandhian methods. My hunch is that nothing could unnerve the Netanyahus, the Chidambarams and the assorted AfPak ideologues more than the terror of a just peace.

The writer is Dawn’s correspondent in Delhi.

jawednaqvi@gmail.com

Russia says it will join sanctions against Iran

President Obama’s biggest foreign policy gamble appeared to pay off last night as Russia opened the door to punishing new sanctions on Iran to halt its nuclear programme. Emerging from his first meeting with Mr Obama since the Eastern Europe missile shield was scrapped, President Medvedev of Russia conceded that “in some cases, sanctions are inevitable”. Mr Obama went into the meeting, on the sidelines of the United Nations General Assembly, ready to press Russia to support sanctions if Iran refused to address concerns about its nuclear activities. He emerged saying that Mr Medvedev had agreed that “serious additional sanctions” must be considered if diplomatic efforts fail. That stance was reiterated later by David Miliband, the Foreign Secretary, who emerged from a meeting of foreign ministers from the E3 + 3 countries – Britain, France, Germany, the US, Russia and China — to declare a united front on a policy of diplomacy and sanctions. Mr Miliband called for a “serious response” from Iran at talks scheduled for October 1 if it wished to avoid sanctions. Mr Medvedev’s – admittedly lukewarm – support for sanctions is seen as payback for Washington’s decision to move its defensive missile shield from Poland and the Czech Republic to the Mediterranean. China was the only remaining Security Council power opposing sanctions on Iran, but the statement from the E3 + 3 suggested that it too was ready to consider them. In his address last night, Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, the Iranian President, failed to mention the nuclear issue but sparked a walkout by a handful of Western countries, including Britain, when he slammed Israel as racist and denounced Jewish influence in the world. There had been speculation that he would use even harsher rhetoric to deflect the focus from his disputed re-election and mounting allegations of human rights abuses. Diplomats said that the date of October 1 had been set to give world leaders time for bargaining during the Assembly. Western officials were pressing Arab leaders to get behind the effort. They met delegates from the Gulf Co-operation Council to discuss how to target Iran’s energy sectors. In 2006 the UN Security Council voted to ban the supply of nuclear- related technology and materials to Iran and to freeze the assets of key individuals and companies related to the enrichment programme. Two years later, the EU voted to impose financial sanctions. New sanctions under consideration range from a ban on foreign investment and the encouragement of capital flight to put pressure on Iran’s currency to a ban on the export of equipment or technology for oil and gas exploration. A ban on refined petroleum exports is being considered. Arab states have expressed alarm at Iran’s nuclear capabilities but do not want to ally themselves with Israel. Saudi Arabia is trying to lure Russia into cancelling its S-300 anti-missile system deal with Iran in return for buying $2 billion of its arms. Inducements such as oil deals and jobs for migrant workers could help to persuade China that their interests lie west of Tehran. In his address to the assembly, President Sarkozy of France warned Iran that it would be making a “tragic mistake” if it underestimated worldwide concern over its nuclear ambitions. He said later that December was the deadline for Iran to prove that the diplomatic track was worth pursuing. Mr Ahmadinejad indicated in an interview, however, that he planned to stretch out the negotiations. He insisted that he only wanted uranium enriched to 20 per cent — well below the 90 per cent required for weapons grade — for a small research reactor. Until now, Iran has produced only low-enriched uranium. If his request is refused, it could use this as a pretext to produce highly-enriched material.

Americans see a change in the air in Pakistan

Americans see a change in the air in Pakistan

By Dr Shahid Masood

WASHINGTON: Americans see a change fast, but smoothly, coming in Pakistan in the wake of loss of credibility of the man at the helm, following some domestic legal developments.

After meeting top political and defence decision-makers here in the US capital, where I was invited by the National Defence University (NDU) for a two-day seminar on the anniversary of 9/11, I was told in unambiguous terms that a change in Pakistan was inevitable for US policy interests, although Washington does not intend to disrupt the system.

Several important Pakistani political players have also been conveyed the same message by the US political and defence establishment, including the MQM and recently the ANP, whose chief is travelling with President Asif Zardari in New York.

The main problem being faced by the US administration, which it may never admit publicly, is that the present set-up with Asif Ali Zardari as the de facto ruler, has no credibility at home and no ability to deliver on the promises he makes, either on the military side or on the war on terror or on governance issues.

“Zardari has also abandoned the idea of political consensus which he had started to follow in the early days after the February elections,” one official said on background. “He appears to be non-serious in government and lives in perpetual fear and insecurity, preferring to stay out of the country.”

The US side thinks that they had made a sensible move by pushing an alliance between late Benazir Bhutto and General Pervez Musharraf as this team would have provided all the ingredients of a stable and cooperative Pakistan to Washington. She would have provided the political support while Musharraf would have used his military muscle against the terrorists and extremists in a stable environment.

They say Zardari has failed to provide that environment, rather he has involved himself in day-to-day business and administrative matters while his political coalition and parliament have been left looking like dumb and dummies.

Many officials say Zardari has been asking the US administration to bail him out on too many issues and too many occasions. He has sought the US help to tame the Army, keep his alliance partners, especially the opposition of Nawaz Sharif’s PML-N in check, directly or through the Saudis on sensitive issues like Musharraf’s or cutting his own constitutional powers.

All these demands are way beyond the capacity of any US administration to deliver while Zardari has almost left everything to us to handle, an agitated official said. “If we have to handle everything, his own credibility within the country will sink and has sunk to the lowest low.”

Other officials I met were even blunter. They say the US abhors corruption, kickbacks and commissions anywhere in the world as a matter of policy.

Another official said the US would keep track of the parties or persons involved and money transaction in the Pakistan’s rental power venture. There are still no roadmaps or any modality work sheets in Washington on how a change in Pakistan would occur, but the US capital is keeping its fingers crossed as to what comes out of the NRO case pending with the Supreme Court.

The impression gathered from the words of these top Americans is that the US would not intervene if the apex court starts hearing the case. The view is that if the NRO was discussed and details of who benefited, who made what deals and how serious crimes were committed and then whitewashed, start to be revealed in the SC, the moral authority of the NRO beneficiaries would erode fatally. In this scenario, the NRO beneficiaries may themselves throw in the towel seeking a safe exit.

In several informed US and Pakistani circles I moved in for several days in Washington, the same scenario was repeated, often exactly in the same tone and sequence.

A Pakistani, who knows a lot about developments in Pakistan and the US scene, said that apart from this purely legal and domestic scene, there were four possible ways through which Zardari could exit. These ways were repeated by others who had nothing to do at all with the previous source. They are: one, impeachment; two, voluntary resignation in the wake loss of credibility; three, ‘natural’ or man-made elimination of the president, and, four, an Army coup. The impeachment and coup scenarios are considered non-starter and impossibility.

US and some Pakistani circles said that a resignation after enough dirt is thrown in the public domain when the NRO case details begin to unfold is a favourite way out, as it would not, being an outcome of the legal process, disrupt the system.

I was asked many times whether a coup is a possibility in the current situation and I always said no, but the question kept surfacing again and again.

This is probably because there was some loose talk of a shuffle in the military hierarchy by President Zardari in which Army chief General Kayani was to be replaced by some other pliant general who could ensure continuity and stability for the Zardari regime.

This scenario was shot down in Washington instantly as an impossibility, since it had information that the Pakistan Army considered a coup or intervention as a total no-go area and could have brought back another October 12, 1999 type of situation. It is so also because of the fact that Gen Kayani has established, through words and deeds, that he is all for democracy.

With all these scenarios being discussed, the growing feeling is that not much time is left for the current status quo and it will lead to a period of political turmoil in Pakistan if President Zardari continues with his ways any longer.

The sudden emergence of a top MQM delegation in Washington for talks with the policy makers, officials and think tanks of Washington has also raised many questions as the official Pakistani diplomatic channels were totally cut off and I gather that this was done at the insistence of the US side more than the MQM leadership.

Not even a courtesy meeting between Governor Ishratul Ebad and Ambassador Husain Haqqani was held until four days after the arrival of the MQM delegation and meetings with top strategists, including Bruce Riedel, John Negroponte, Richard Boucher, and current State Department officials, including Richard Holbrooke.

A similar exercise has now been planned with the ANP chief while he will be here in the presidential entourage.

What happened in these meetings is known only to the MQM leaders and the US side but the tone and tenor of MQM in the coming weeks and days will give the first hints of whether the course of the PPP-MQM alliance is changing in stormy waters in the middle of the sea. How the ANP reacts is also to be seen but already Asfandyar Wali is said to be very happy with the praise for his party’s governance in the NWFP by US officials as well as the promises to give them direct financial aid. With the MQM and the ANP almost on board, I will be eagerly waiting for the first signs of the new US strategy unfolding in the days and weeks to come.

Militants and Military Forces Both Pound Mehsud Territory

[Clearing civilians from battle zones, or clearing witnesses from the actors' stage?]

Mass exodus from S Waziristan continues

MIRAMSHAH: Scores of families continued shifting to safer places due to the ongoing clashes between the militants and security forces in Mahsud-inhabited areas of South Waziristan Agency.

Tribal sources said that 450 families started shifting to safer locations via Mir Ali and Razmak routes from Makeen, Ladha and others areas in South Waziristan after militants fired several rockets on these places during Eidul Fitr.

They said the security forces also continued artillery shelling on these areas and the residents, including men, women and children, were compelled to leave their homes and migrate to safer places.

Eyewitnesses said that people in Razmak area were providing shelter and food to the internally displaced persons (IDPs) from the tribal agency while the political administration had been registering the dislocated at Kajori checkpoint.

They said the security forces based in Dosali and Razmak areas of North Waziristan were targeting the militants’ positions in South Waziristan with artillery. They said the members of Torikhel and Borakhel tribes in Razmak had left the area and shifted to safer places due to artillery shelling by security forces and firing of rockets by the militants. Meanwhile, the displaced people were being fleeced by transporters with both hands as Rs25,000 was charged for the journey for Mir Ali town from Makeen.

More from Pak’s New War

Extremists kill 7 tribal chiefs in Bannu

Extremists kill 7 tribal chiefs in Bannu

BANNON: Extremists killed seven tribal chiefs in Bannu.

According to sources in Jani Khel area of Bannu District, extremists have killed seven tribal heads.

The dead bodies of the assassinated tribal chiefs were found from various parts of Bannu today morning.

Meanwhile four dead bodies have been moved to Bannu District Hospital and investigations are underway.

Pakistan’s Lashkar/Taliban War Gets Underway

19 killed as Qaumi Lashker clashes with extremists in Bannu

Bannu: Nineteen peoples have been killed in clashes between Qaumi Lashker and extremists.

According to sources extremists opened fire on a peace Jirga in Jani Khel area of District Bannu.

In the attack the Chief of Jani Khel tribe and six other elites were killed, while five others including a child sustained injuries.

The dead bodies of the deceased have been moved to District Hospital Bannu.

The Qaumi Lashker of Jani Khel tribe decided to kill the extremists on sight starting action against such elements in Jani Khel.

So far 12 people have been killed in clashes between Qaumi Lashker and extremists including four citizens, six extremists and two members of the Qaumi Lashker.

China Firms Selling Fuel to Iran as U.S. Sanctions Loom

By REUTERS

Published: September 23, 2009

Filed at 4:07 a.m. ET

BEIJING/LONDON (Reuters) – State-run Chinese companies are selling gasoline to Iran, a move that could undermine U.S. pressure on Iran to give up its nuclear programme, traders and a newspaper report said on Wednesday.Although some sources said the trade had been quietly ongoing for at least a year as Chinese companies joined a handful of global oil traders and Indian refiners who regularly sell to Iran, the revelation of this flow comes at a time when Western powers may consider target Iran’s fuel imports if it refuses to enter talks over its disputed nuclear programme.

Iran is the world’s fifth-largest crude exporter but imports up to 40 percent of its gasoline as it lacks the refining capacity to meet domestic demand.

State-run Chinese firm Zhuhai Zhenrong Corp, the world’s largest Iranian crude buyer by company and among the first to heed Tehran’s call to pay in euros instead of U.S. dollars, has been shipping a cargo or two each month to Iran for at least a year, two trade sources familiar with the company told Reuters.

The Financial Times, citing traders and bankers familiar with Iran’s purchasing, reported on Wednesday that China supplies Iran through intermediaries. Oil sources contacted by Reuters said it was also possible that Chinese trading companies were buying spot gasoline cargoes from elsewhere to sell to Iran.

“We estimate, based on what we are hearing in the market, that 30,000-40,000 barrels a day of Chinese petrol is making its way from the Asian spot market to Iran via third parties,” the newspaper quoted Lawrence Eagles, head of commodities research at JPMorgan, as saying.

The United States has agreed to take part in talks on October 1 between Iran and the so-called “P5+1,” which includes the five permanent members of the U.N. Security Council — Britain, China, France, Russia and the United States — and Germany.

The meeting is seen as a move toward President Barack Obama’s pledge during last year’s U.S. presidential campaign to try to improve relations with Iran through more direct contacts. The two countries have not had diplomatic ties since 1980.

DATA SHOW NO CHINA GASOLINE TO IRAN

Traders at both Sinopec Corp and PetroChina, China’s dominant oil refiners and trading firms, told Reuters that they are not selling any gasoline to Iran.

“We used to be a regular, direct supplier to Iran back in between 2001 and 2004, when we had lots of surplus barrels for export and there was no credit/embargo problems as we are having now,” said a Sinopec trader.

Official customs data issued on Tuesday showed that none of China’s gasoline exports this year have been shipped directly to Iran, although overall sales have surged. Nearly half its gasoline is shipped to Singapore, Asia’s main trading and storage hub, much of which is likely then sold on.

Whether the gasoline is produced in China or not, the trade is further evidence of the growing energy ties that bind China, the world’s No. 2 crude oil consumer, and Iran, which holds the world’s second-largest crude oil reserves and desperately needs investment in order to develop them.

Iran’s oil minister said last week the country was ready for any fuel sanctions and had signed deals with other countries to purchase more gasoline.

Iranian state media has also reported that Iran will begin importing diesel again by the end of this month.

Zhuhai Zhenrong, which has been lifting Iranian crude for more than a decade, extended its agreement with National Iranian Oil Co (NIOC) to import 240,000 bpd of crude for 2009.

While selling fuel to Iran isn’t illegal or in violation of any specific international sanctions, it is becoming an increasingly popular way to pressure Tehran.

The U.S. Senate in July voted to ban firms that sell gasoline to Iran from also receiving Energy Department contracts to deliver crude to the U.S. Strategic Petroleum Reserve.

Privately owned Indian refiner Reliance Industries, once a mainstay supplier of fuel to Iran, has curbed shipments this year, just as it starts up a massive new facility and begins to make efforts to sell more fuel into the U.S. market.

While gasoline continues to be shipped regularly to Iran, the trade has become increasingly complex due to the reluctance of Western banks to finance letters of credit, reducing the number of companies willing to take the risk, traders say. (Reporting by Daniel Fineren in London, Chen Aizhu in Beijing; editing by Andrew Roche )

Rockefeller Defends Globalization, the Cause of the Crash

[The mouthpiece of The Beast here on earth wants Obama to stop trying to protect America.  His tired old forked tongue really thinks the world wants to hear his claptrap about global trade being the solution to the de-industrialized nation we have become because of the actions instigated by Rockefeller and all his little minions.  Any fool can see that every item that must be imported, instead of made here, carries a high extra cost of all that unnecessary  shipping and handling.  The devil's best disguise is one of friendship and benevolence.  Anybody who reads a paper can see the effects of listening to this man and all the thousands of little demons who worship at his feet.  If this Nation is to survive it will be through a national re-industrialization program dedicated to full employment, health care for all, and non-interference in foreign affairs.]

Present at the Trade Wars

By DAVID ROCKEFELLER

Published: September 20, 2009

AS if he needed another policy concern to distract him from the health care debate, President Obama now finds himself embroiled in a quarrel with China over his imposition of a steep tariff on automobile tires from that country that is to take effect this week. The Chinese have responded by threatening to impose higher tariffs on American chicken. This may seem like a petty dispute, but the controversy could endanger the global economic recovery if the underlying issue — the rise in protectionism —is not resolved quickly and forcefully. Perhaps Washington has justification for increasing tariffs in this particular case, but in general it sets a bad precedent.

President Obama should resist the desire to accommodate the forces of protectionism from unions, environmentalists and cable television pundits alike. Giving in to their demands may be politically astute, but it would send the wrong message to

our trading partners and, more important, inflict damage on the already weakened American economy. Despite the recent rally in the stock market, the next two or three years could still be very painful.

I lived through the stock market crash of 1929 and the Great Depression that followed it, and I saw that there was no direct cause and effect relationship. Rather, there were specific governmental actions and equally important failures to act, often driven by political expediency, that brought on the Depression and determined its severity and longevity.

One critical mistake was America’s retreat from international trade. This not only helped to turn the 1929 stock market decline into a depression, it also chipped away at trust between nations, paving the way for World War II.

In late 1929, intense protectionist pressure from farm, labor and business groups prodded the Republican-dominated Congress to pass the disastrous Smoot-Hawley Tariff Act, which increased rates on imported goods to historically high levels. President Herbert Hoover signed it into law in June 1930, and in doing so raised the prices of more than 20,000 items produced abroad.

The results were devastating. Our trading partners retaliated by raising their own tariffs on American goods. From 1929 to 1933, imports from Europe into the United States declined by almost two-thirds and our exports were more than halved. From 1929 to 1934, overall world trade declined by some 66 percent. The tariffs took a toll on the domestic economy as well. When trading partners reciprocated with tariffs of their own, American importers found their goods priced too high to sell, while exporters experienced depressed demand. In both cases, American workers lost jobs. The unemployment rate rose from around 9 percent in 1930 (a bit lower than it is today) to close to 16 percent a year later and a staggering 25 percent in 1933, when Franklin D. Roosevelt took office. We could be at a similar crossroad today.

The high level of economic anxiety is, quite understandably, fueling protectionist sentiment and economic nationalism both here and abroad. Quite a few Americans believe that defeating new trade agreements and gutting existing ones would protect American jobs and stabilize our economy. In reality, those actions would be damaging and counterproductive, and repeat the mistakes of the 1930s.

It’s not too late to get back on the right path. President Obama should use the meeting of the Group of 20 this week in Pittsburgh to argue the case for the expansion of world trade. He should also condemn the subtle protectionist measures — subsidies and domestic content legislation, for example — already used by the United States and many of our trading partners. President Obama should also urge Congress to pass free-trade agreements with Panama, South Korea and Colombia that would truly open those markets to our products. He should also ask Congress to renew “fast track” authority for Ron Kirk, the United States trade representative. This would signal our strong commitment to fair and equitable international trade, as well as our willingness to act quickly on future agreements.

Some will ask why the president should stress trade expansion at a time when our domestic economy is in the doldrums. The reason is that our economy is richer as a result of globalization. At a time when economic growth is flat at best and unemployment is approaching 10 percent, we need every instrument available to stimulate job growth.

President Obama should recognize the critical need for a free flow of trade and finance across the world’s borders, especially our own. He must help Americans understand that the fate of workers in Chinese tire factories, and that of poultry farmers in Arkansas, is inextricably intertwined with their own.

David Rockefeller is the former chairman and chief executive of Chase Manhattan Bank.

Protests, rally before G-20

Amid its tightest security ever, Pittsburgh set for world leaders.

By James O’Toole and Dennis B. Roddy

Pittsburgh Post-Gazette

PITTSBURGH – The limos will roll past Flagstaff Hill this evening as the leaders of nations representing 85 percent of the world’s wealth officially open the Pittsburgh summit, the long-awaited gathering of the Group of 20.

In separate dinners at the Phipps Conservatory, the heads of government and their finance ministers will begin their discussions of the world’s economy. Tomorrow, the conversations shift to the David L. Lawrence Convention Center, amid the tightest security Pittsburgh has ever experienced.

As has become traditional in such gatherings, the world leaders were being greeted with demonstrations ranging from the whimsical to the confrontational.

Protests began at midmorning yesterday with a daring stunt by Greenpeace, the environmental organization known for sometimes confrontational tactics.

Two squads of Greenpeace activists tried to rappel simultaneously down the sides of the Fort Pitt and West End Bridges. Police nabbed the five activists on the Fort Pitt Bridge, but eight protesters at the other bridge managed to unfurl an 80-by-30-foot banner proclaiming

“Danger: Climate Destruction Ahead,” while dangling above the Ohio River as police waited them out.

By early afternoon, those protesters climbed back up and were all arrested, along with a ninth team member who remained on the bridge to assure police that the activists were peaceful and were experienced, equipped climbers.

All 14 demonstrators were taken to the Allegheny County Jail.

But Greenpeace was stymied in later attempts throughout the day to unfurl other banners from atop city structures. A plan to drop a banner at the Andy Warhol Museum ended when a crew arrived to find National Guard troops inspecting the site and a phalanx of state police in a nearby side street.

A bicycle ride by Critical Mass, a group that occasionally takes over downtown streets on weekend rides, brought a disappointing turnout, with city bicycle police outnumbering the protesters.

Stronger stuff is anticipated today when a yet-to-be-determined number of protesters gather at Arsenal Park in Lawrenceville for an unpermitted march downtown toward the convention center.

Representatives from various protest groups gathered last night at the headquarters of the Pittsburgh G-20 Resistance Project, an umbrella group of anarchist organizations that has provided a gathering point.

The council, which was closed to the media, was expected to be the site at which various groups indicate which of a myriad of corporations and other locations they expect to hit in “direct action.” That could range from a protest to a sit-in to attempts to close the location, as well as to block city streets.

City police acknowledged yesterday that they had kept several locations and groups under surveillance.

The security presence, in addition to the 900 officers of the Pittsburgh police force, includes federal agencies ranging from the Secret Service to the Coast Guard, along with 1,200 state troopers. Pittsburgh police also have help from officers from scores of other departments across the country.

Mayor Luke Ravenstahl yesterday swore in about 1,000 visiting law enforcement agents in a ceremony at Soldiers & Sailors Memorial Hall & Museum.

Yesterday evening, hundreds of people gathered at the downtown Point State Park for a pro-green-jobs rally backed by the Alliance for Climate Protection, a group founded by former Vice President Al Gore; the United Steelworkers union; and a Steelworkers-Sierra Club coalition. The event included performances by Joan Jett and the Blackhearts, Big Head Todd and the Monsters, and other musical artists.

De-Brainwashing the Sheeple

Change won’t come to America without prior de-brainwashing By Ben Tanosborn Online Journal Contributing Writer Sep 22, 2009, 00:17

American progressives don’t appear to grasp the implications behind the fact that only slightly over half of those who voted in the last presidential election (53 percent) did so for Barack Obama, presumably to bring change for Americans as individuals, and also as a nation. And that the counter-reformists, who comprised a lion’s share of the remaining vote (47 percent) did so to maintain the status quo, one in which the elite among them holds 80 to 90 percent of the nation’s wealth, influence and power that run government, make most significant corporate/business decisions, and hold most key positions in the full spectrum of American institutions.

To argue, or even begin to discuss, the need or virtuosity for change, however self-evident and overwhelmingly good for society, can turn out to be an exercise in futility . . . unless one is prepared to recognize where the seat of power truly resides. Without a significant shift in the number of Americans from the ranks of those who now choose the status quo to the ranks of those clamoring for change, the reformists would be left with three choices: (1) convince at least one-third of the counter-reformists to switch sides since, often for the worse, people ultimately decide on issues not based on facts and logic alone, but on their sense of belonging — allegiance and identity — to a given group; (2) surrender to the desires and designs of the elite; or, (3) take up arms in a revolution or, more appropriately, a civil war.

Accepting a priori that such elite has shaped for generations much of the thinking and conduct of Americans — a most effective form of brainwashing — it follows that unless de-brainwashing takes place there is little or no room for change or reform. That calls for reevaluation of past ideas relating to peace-and-war, to blind adherence to a socio-political-economic system, and also to the role government should have in the well-being of people, making de-brainwashing force majeure to precede change or reform.

De-brainwashing America in terms of peace and war is a monumental task not likely to be accomplished until civil discourse rules the day and existing predatory capitalism is exiled and replaced with a system not in conflict with the aspirations of most Americans, nor with the legitimate aspirations of people around the globe.

Nowadays, the concept of empire assigned to the United States, softened somewhat by what is perceived to be the existence of a non-oppressive Pax Americana — a cruel joke for those nations under American occupation, or the prospect of occupation — is defined more by military decisions taken at the Pentagon than by proclamations made at the State Department. It would be naïve to think any incoming president, particularly one with liberal leanings, as capable of starting a de-brainwashing process with the brass at the Pentagon, or the senior career diplomats carrying the baton at State, or the sordidly-independent group that makes up the Central Intelligence Agency.

Obama, in order to maintain tenure — and possibly his personal safety — is obliged to walk the narrow path determining peace and war for the American empire. For now, that includes acceptance of the impossibility of peace in Palestine, a permanent accord between Israelis and Palestinians, unless and until Israel initiates and consents to it. Also, the termination of Iraq’s occupation (a lost war) as the Pentagon decides what’s in the empire’s best geopolitical interests so as to keep in check Shiite power in Iran and Syria, and the current fluid situation in Afghanistan; this latter, a dire predicament after eight years of occupation (a war being lost). And finally, without exiting the region, the disarray which the US has helped create in Pakistan, first with Pervez Musharrad in power, and now its successor regime (a war which may yet occur).

In less than a decade, the empire has created havoc in the Middle East and Southwest Asia, upsetting the lives of over 100 million people (populations of Afghanistan, Iraq and the Northwestern border of Pakistan), being responsible for up to 1 million people dead in the region, over 5 million people uprooted from their communities, and upwards of 1 trillion dollars in destroyed infrastructure and wasted resources.

But in matters of peace and war, regardless of recent lessons received, Obama will have no choice but to do exactly what the entrenched military-industrial complex wants him to do . . . and absolutely nothing else.

And just as the US president, through his actions, pledges symbolic allegiance to the powers that rule the land — powers not readily identified in civic or history books — he must also do the same with all the institutional forces that jointly represent a socio-political-economic system that equates predatory capitalism with democracy, and accepts nothing short of complete adherence to it.

Americans have been indoctrinated for generations to repudiate any other ism which may be in conflict with capitalism, refusing to learn or tolerate ideas which they are told to be foreign to their blessed land; ideas not acceptable in the American Catechism that has been coauthored by the extreme Economic Right (an elite representing fewer than 5 percent of the population) and a fundamentalist Religious Right (probably approaching 25 percent of the population). And so, concepts such as socialism, unionism, Marxism, anarchism, libertarianism and any other isms denounced in the catechism’s dogma are pejoratively and prejudicially dismissed before they are even understood. Americans have been, and continue to be, kept in extreme ignorance under the guise they are different and unique by divine choice . . . above the doctrines, systems and theories of the outside “inferior” world.

Obama could certainly opt to start the de-brainwashing process to change this state of opprobrious ignorance; however, by so doing, he would self-immolate and become a sacrificial lamb with little prospect of representing his own party in the next presidential election. One cannot imagine this president assuming that role.

But just as Obama’s hands appear manacled in dealing with issues pertaining to peace and war, or upgrading Americans’ understanding of a world other than their own, he has a last resort for impact in the domestic front. His administration could certainly take steps in helping determine the role of government in the well-being of the citizenry — leave an imprint at the very least in defining the commons in American civil society. And no better place to show that he is at least a minimal reformer, and not just another articulate president, a la Bill Clinton, than by directing the overhaul of a healthcare system which is drowning the American economy while a source of embarrassment.

There are many industrialized nations — even some developing countries — that have systems of healthcare superior, certainly more equitable, than that in the US, affording universal coverage for their people at a fraction of the US cost, in relative terms to their nation’s GDP. For Congress to disregard or dismiss existence of such successful programs elsewhere, and not try to learn from them, could be considered just one more sign of arrogance; however, it is just a way of admitting that in the US the legislature is a self-serving political body at the beck and call of special interests which in this case happen to be insurance and pharmaceutical companies, the AMA, and affiliated/kindred for-profit groups.

For Obama to settle for and not veto legislation that will allow this nation to continue with an inferior and far costlier system of healthcare than that of other first world nations would be an affront to a society that prides itself for justice and compassion. Moreover, it would tell the nation, and the world, that Obama is incapable of loosening himself from the corporate yoke.

Baby steps in de-brainwashing could start, if Obama is worth his mettle, right here in the creation of a comprehensive system of healthcare modeled after those systems that work around the world. America need not reinvent the wheel; only acknowledge that it is round.

Americans won’t have long to wait before they find out if there is change in the air, even if small. And neither does the rest of the world.

© 2009 Ben Tanosborn

Ben Tanosborn, columnist, poet and writer, resides in Vancouver, Washington (USA), where he is principal of a business consulting firm. Contact him at ben@tanosborn.com.

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