BRUSSELS (AP) — The determined resistance by forces loyal to ousted Libyan leader Moammar Gadhafi is “surprising” because the fighters can’t hope to reverse the situation on the battlefield, a NATO spokesman said Tuesday.
The comments by Col. Roland Lavoie appeared aimed at pressuring the former strongman’s troops to lay down their weapons and engage in talks with one-time rebels who now rule the Arab country, thanks largely to NATO firepower.
Instead, in places such as Sirte, Gadhafi loyalists are still fighting, even though they can no longer be resupplied after the new government’s units won control of key parts of the town’s center, Lavoie said.
“So from that perspective, it just does not make sense to see what these few remaining forces are doing,” he said. “This could certainly be qualified as surprising both from military and political point of view.”
Critics of NATO’s campaign have warned of the danger of protracted armed resistance against the new governing authority led by the National Transitional Council. The NTC has refused repeated attempts by the African Union and others to mediate between the warring parties.
NATO has said it would end its 7-month-long bombing campaign once it is clear pro-Gadhafi remnants no longer present a significant threat. But for the time being it is keeping up airstrikes, mainly against targets in Sirte, Gadhafi’s hometown, and the town of Bani Walid, where pro-Gadhafi forces remain in control.
The alliance has been criticized for allegedly misusing a U.N. resolution in March authorizing the use of force to protect civilians in Libya to justify months of airstrikes aimed at overthrowing Gadhafi’s regime. NATO warplanes have flown about 9,500 strike sorties during that period.
After a long stalemate, the air raids paved the way for the advance of opposition forces and the capture of Tripoli and other major population centers in the past two months. Opposition forces are now moving on Bani Walid, Lavoie said.
“We have no evidence of significant pro-Gadhafi presence or activity in the rest of the country,” he said.
The operation in Libya has been cited as proof that the Cold War alliance remains relevant to international security. But the campaign also has revealed deep rifts within the military bloc, only eight of whose 28 members participated. The others stayed away — mostly out of concern of how the new mission would affect the alliance’s commitment to Afghanistan.
Lavoie also said NATO has no information about the thousands of portable surface-to-air missiles that are reportedly missing in Libya.
Last week, the German news magazine Der Spiegel said the alliance has lost track of at least 10,000 surface-to-air missiles from Libyan military depots. These include the small SAM-7 shoulder-launched, surface-to-air missiles which the U.S. and other Western nations fear could be used by terrorists to target civilian airliners.
Lavoie said that since NATO did not have forces on the ground, it’s up to Libya’s new authorities to account for such munitions.
[Now we are getting somewhere. It is time for the great armies of the unemployed to add the dead weight of their warm bodies to the growing protest movement, since they are some of the greatest victims of our unfair situation, which has been caused by the greedy "bubble-makers" (SEE: Profit "Bubbles" Are Unnatural Interruptions of Life-Sustaining Distribution Systems).
October 10: Protesters affiliated with the “Occupy Wall Street” protests march through the Financial District in New York.
NEW YORK – Protesters from the Occupy Wall Street movement plan to leave their downtown Manhattan headquarters Tuesday and head uptown as part of a “Millionaires March” visiting the homes of some of New York City’s wealthiest residents.
Between 400 and 800 people are expected to take part in the demonstration targeting the homes of JP Morgan Chase CEO Jamie Dimon, billionaire businessman David Koch, financier Howard Milstein, hedge fund maven John Paulson and News Corp. Chairman and CEO Rupert Murdoch, Crain’s New York Business reported.
The marchers will hold oversize checks they say demonstrate how much less the wealthy will pay when New York State’s 2 percent tax on millionaires expires at the end of the year.
“Ninety-nine percent of the residents of New York are going to suffer from this tax giveaway so the 1 percent who already live in absolute luxury can put more money in their pockets,” Doug Forand, one of the march organizers, told the New York Daily News. “This is fiscally, economically and morally wrong.”
The march is scheduled to begin at 59th Street and Fifth Avenue about 12:30pm then continue to the Upper East Side.
Organized by lobby groups the Working Families Party, New York Communities for Change, Strong Economy for All and United NY, members of the Occupy Wall Street movement are expected to form the bulk of participants.
Now in their fourth week, the Occupy Wall Street protests began in New York’s Zuccotti Park in Lower Manhattan and have since spread across the United States.
Demonstrators are also expected to gather Saturday in the Swiss cities of Zurich, Geneva and Basel for protests modeled after the marches against U.S. authorities and the banking industry. And a dozen protest actions are planned throughout the day in Austria – including in Vienna, Linz, Salzburg, Graz and Innsbruck.
On Monday, as temperatures in New York pushed past 80 degrees, New York City Mayor Michael Bloomberg said he would allow the protesters to remain in Zuccotti Park indefinitely if they abide by the law.
He also speculated that changing weather might limit the protest’s duration, The Wall Street Journal reported.
But the protesters themselves said they have no plans to leave once colder conditions set in.
“We might have fewer people stopping by in the winter months but we’ll plan, mobilize, organize, maybe get some permits during the winter,” said Ed Needham, part of Occupy Wall Street’s press team.
Protesters insisted that they are marshaling donations to prepare for colder conditions. Organizers have already designated a team to handle donations of clothing and is encouraging supporters to send sleeping bags, blankets, coats, hand-warmers, gloves and hats.
A slew of celebrities joined the protests Monday afternoon, with hip-hop moguls Russell Simmons and Kanye West taking in the sights and sounds of Zuccotti Park.
“I just walked @kanyewest thru the#occupywallstreet,” Simmons wrote on his Twitter account Monday. “I love how sweet and tolerant he was to the crowd.”
Earlier Monday, Rev. Al Sharpton broadcast his nationally syndicated radio show from Zuccotti Park. Tim Robbins, Susan Sarandon, Mark Ruffalo and “Gossip Girl” star Penn Badgley have also been spotted at the protests.
Large labor unions have also thrown their support and resources behind the protests and the Democratic Party Monday moved a step closer to embracing the movement as its own with the top campaign arm for House Democrats sending a petition urging people to “stand with” the protesters, FOXNews.com reported.
In an email Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee (DCCC) director Robby Mook appealed for signatures to an online petition in support of those who want “to let billionaires, big oil and big bankers know that we’re not going to let the richest one percent force draconian economic policies and massive cuts to crucial programs on Main Street Americans.”
The DCCC is trying to gather 100,000 names on the petition to “send a message straight to Eric Cantor, Speaker [John] Boehner, and the rest of reckless Republican leadership in Congress.”
The appeal comes after House Majority Leader Eric Cantor (R-Va.) and other Republicans sharply criticized the protesters Friday. At a Values Voter Summit in Washington, Cantor said he was “increasingly concerned about the growing mobs occupying Wall Street and the other cities across the country.”
He described them as “the pitting of Americans against Americans,” and scolded those who would condone them.
“Getting America back to work means fueling a culture of entrepreneurialism, a culture of competitiveness, a culture of inspiration and optimism,” Cantor said.
But House Democratic Leader Nancy Pelosi said Cantor was being selective in his criticism of popular movements.
“I didn’t hear him say anything when the Tea Party was out demonstrating, actually spitting on members of Congress right here in the Capitol, and he and his colleagues were putting signs in the windows encouraging them,” she told ABC’s “This Week.”
In Washington, protesters were given a reprieve Monday with police granting an extension to their permit, allowing them to stay camped in downtown Freedom Plaza for another four months, The Washington Post reported.
The Stop the Machine group — which has been voicing opinions on the economy like those in Occupy Wall Street — had thought it would be told to move on Monday evening.
Meanwhile, a gathering of protesters from a variety of community groups congregated late Monday afternoon outside the Hyatt Regency in Chicago, where more than 2,100 people in the mortgage-banking field were attending their industry’s annual convention this week, MarketWatch reported.
Protesters demanded relief for struggling homeowners, including loan-principal reduction for those underwater on their mortgages, said Tracy Van Slyke, co-director of New Bottom Line, a campaign that challenges big bank interests on behalf of struggling and middle-class communities. The group also thinks banks are not paying their fair share of taxes and wants them to invest more in small businesses, she said.
One estimate put the crowd at 250 people, many of them chanting, “Hey, hey, ho, ho, Wall Street bankers got to go.” Some hoisted signs, including one that read, “They get rich. We get foreclosed.”
A rather stale Western liberal overview of the plight of Pakistan. Pakistan is indeed a victim, but equally important it must be said that had not the Pakistani military (ISI) participated in Washington’s games in the region for 30 odd years, and had they not been so gullible and naive, Pakistan would not be in the situation it is now.
The primary folly lies with the Pakistan military, and still to this day the Pakistani military clings to gora masterji in the cooperation with them in Afghanistan. The acrimony towards Pakistan now by gora sahib masterji is not because the Pakistani military has ceased reading from the Washington written script, but that there are always power dynamics which change policy in Washington, with competing groups which sometimes harms old faithful ally’s. Diem in Vietnam for example….Saddam in Iraq…Gaddafi in Libya….General Noreiga in Panama…..all products of the USA.
The biggest obstacle for Pakistan is the Pakistan military working with the USA covertly.
As to who is the main victim of 9/11….well I would say Iraq obviously, given what has happened to that country between 2003–2011. Then Afghanistan still under occupation, then the USA as it slides into further decline with $trillions in war costs etc……and the fourth of course Pakistan with the loss of 35,000 civilian deaths, and economic loss according to Pakistan government statistics of $68 billion since 2001.
Pakistan with its 1,100,000 military machine, nuke weapons and substantial conventional forces is a not a “VICTIM” in any sense, bullied by Washington to accept Washington’s terms or else (though threats have been used). After all Pakistan always had China to fall back on.
But it is in the current Failed State due entirely to the folly and stupidity of its military top brasses fascination for gora sahib. Civilian politicians NEVER had the ultimate power to really control and run the country, for better or worse, so they are absolved.
Zardari bhen is a puppet brought to power by the USA…….his job is simply grinning in front of the camera and looting the country……..hence another explanation for the mess in the country.
We have seen 10 years of going nowhere on one side of the border – and 10 of going backwards on the other: back to bloodshed, back to civil chaos. It’s simplistic to say that Afghanistan doesn’t matter. You might as well say that the 100 years of war that scarred medieval Europe didn’t matter. But Afghanistan still belongs to an inchoate, old world of milling conflict. Seize power there and turmoil will soon take it away. Leave enemies to stew. The real victim of Bush’s great 9/11 folly is Pakistan. It might have been a buoyant nation today, joining India and China at world economic forums. Instead it is a failing state.
A decade ago General Musharraf was Pakistan’s new man on top of the heap. He’d locked prime minister Nawaz Sharif away for life. As the army habitually seized Islamabad power, there was nothing too surprising here. Musharraf’s battalions depended on US weapons and cash. Sharif’s Muslim League, seeking friends elsewhere, had endangered all that. What would America do once the dust from the twin towers had cleared? Invade Afghanistan; throw out the Taliban. What could Musharraf do? Only swear to support them.
But it was never that easy, of course. The fatal border, the Durand Line, barely exists in any physical sense. Tribal areas straddle it. Rule of law barely exists, then as now. Two million or more Afghan refugees huddled in ramshackle camps on the road from the Khyber Pass to Peshawar. Pakistan (recruited by Washington as an ally against Soviet occupation in Kabul) couldn’t stand idly by. It was involved in every way – just as India, across its other border, was involved in keeping Musharraf off balance. A political quagmire in the making.
So today, those 10 dreadful years on? Musharraf is in London exile. Benazir Bhutto, the supposed hope of democracy, is dead, murdered by zealots. Her husband, Asif Ali Zardari, is president. And just look at the public opinion polls.
A couple of years ago Gallup Pakistan asked people in the country what the most serious threat to Jinnah’s pure state was. Some 11% said the Taliban, 18% India – but 59% picked the United States of America. Asked the same sort of question (via the Pew Research Centre) this summer, after Bin Laden was killed, and about70% saw America as more enemy than saviour. Every drone attack runs the risk of making that opposition deeper. Who approves of Zardari’s leadership? It lurches along in the 10% range, come rain or more rain. Who wants the army back? Only 8% in 2009, and its commander-in-chief’s ratings are slipping. The leader-in-waiting is Sharif, probably in political business again, but this is back to the future with a vengeance.
There is, in short, no consensus of any meaningful kind – except, perhaps, blind antipathy towards Washington. There are no trusted institutions, no leaders who command respect, no prospect beyond the irredeemably bleak. And it is against this background that America blames Pakistan for its frailty in the fight against terrorism and cuts back on military aid. Pakistan in US eyes is an enemy, not an ally. Pakistan must be lectured and punished. But Pakistan is also a victim of western policy. So many stumbles, so many wrong turnings: but a victim nonetheless.
Its sense of grievance may be unappealing. The preoccupation with India, the futile attachment to Kashmir, the hapless swings between corrupt democracy and army autocracy are all heavy burdens. Yet the message of public opinion, in its bewilderment, cannot be ignored. For three decades of Afghan tumult, Pakistan has been blown hither and yon by outside imbecilities. And 10 full years after 9/11, it is the heaviest casualty of them all.
JOSHUA FOUST – Joshua Foust is a fellow at the American Security Project and the author of Afghanistan Journal: Selections from Registan.net.
Tying Central Asia together with trade is a great idea that needs a heavy dose of realism
ISTANBUL, Turkey — Turkey seems as good a place as any to ponder the latest grand policy idea for Central Asia filtering out of the U.S. government. Parag Khanna ably sums up the current zeitgeistfor the “New Silk Road,” as Secretary of State Hillary Clinton, Central Asia-Caucasus Institute chairman Fred Starr, and others are calling it:
In many respects, New Silk Road is the obvious approach that should have been executed a decade ago: locally owned, private sector enabling and regionally focused. Afghanistan may remain the poorest country in Eurasia for many years to come, but it stands a better chance of prospering as the “Asian Roundabout” – a crossroads for Euro-Asian commerce – than as a permanent American protectorate. As Hillary Clinton recently said in Chennai, the New Silk Road would “not be a single thoroughfare, but an international web and network of economic and transit connections.” Substituting a self-sufficient economic model for military occupation is the only way to achieve the “transition dividend” the administration is hoping for.
This is actually an amazing idea … or would be, if it were workable. The problems with it become apparent when you unpack the assumptions underlying it: that Afghanistan actually is well suited as a commercial hub, that any other country in Central Asia really wants to trade with any other country in Central Asia, that the local governments would actually support “locally owned, private sector” economic initiatives (however those words are defined) and so on.
As a brief example, let’s look at a frequent subject of debate on my other blog, Registan.net, Uzbekistan. I warily support the policy of increasing U.S. Security Assistance to the country to expand the NDN so that policymakers will have alternates to relying on the far more toxic, abusive, and dangerous regime in Pakistan. It is a least bad option to me, which doesn’t mean it’s a goodchoice (and that was very sloppy phrasing on my part). Still, people like our own Michael Hancockdisagree with even that, and that’s okay — this isn’t easy, not by a long shot.
In order to tie Uzbekistan into a New Silk Road, which is necessary if the goal of making Afghanistan a commercial crossroads to Eurasia is to become reality, several things must happen. The first thing that must happen is that Uzbek leader Islom Karimov would need to care, even a little bit, about Uzbekistan’s business community. He clearly does not. And he’s not alone: Turkmenistan also has a very business-hostile climate, and Kyrgyzstan is hardly a friendly place for investment and business creation (I’m actually on my way to Kyrgyzstan right now to investigate some issues relating to local business issues).
So, on a basic level, the good idea of tying together Central Asia based on locally driven economic development runs up against the hostile (and, for the past 20 years, unmovable) climate for business investment. Despite that reality, which is obvious to anyone who spends even a short amount of time actually examining the business climate in this region, the prospects of a New Silk Road driving regional prosperity already seems to be entrenched as official policy. Without a great deal of further thought, years of planning and diplomatic cajoling, and no expectations for real change in anything less than a decade, this is pretty terrible magical thinking.
To wit: last year, Parag Khanna was pushing this same idea, only for China. Like the new, U.S.-driven model, his Old New Silk Road Idea was plagued by magical thinking, and seemed hopelessly at odds with the history of economic and political development in the region. I mean, look at this:
Appropriately then, all of the anchor projects currently being funded and considered in the New Silk Road process involve regional resource corridors, meaning they are focused more on physically connecting oil, gas and minerals such as copper and lithium to markets irrespective of which political borders they lie within or across. The TAPI pipeline could carry natural gas from Turkmenistan’s Caspian Sea coast all the way through Afghanistan and Pakistan to India. A national railway system for Afghanistan, already supported by CENTCOM, is already under construction and would help transport Afghanistan’s abundant mineral wealth to the emerging markets around it. And the CASA-1000 project will transfer electricity from Kyrgyzstan and Tajikistan via Afghanistan to Pakistan. The New Silk Road, then, is both North-South as well as East-West.
TAPI (the The Trans-Afghanistan Pipeline) is not going to happen anytime soon. China already has a gas pipe running east; Russia controls the rest of them going west. Afghanistan is far too unstable — and will remain far too unstable — to support a massive, vulnerable infrastructure development like a pipeline for a very long time. And by then, the economics just wouldn’t work out (just ask Unocal, who tried this in 1998). Same with the railway system. There is a good reason China has not yet build railways to cart away Afghanistan’s gold from the mines it owns: the economics and security just don’t support it. ISAF can barely keep its highways clear of IEDs.
And don’t even get me started on the phantom regional electrical grid. Afghanistan’s purchasing of electricity from Uzbekistan is tenuous enough; transmitting electricity from two electricity-poor countries to a much less electricity-poor country makes little sense.
These ideas, like most of the New Silk Road theories, sound feasible if you don’t think about them too hard. It’s the Unicorn School of Geopolitics: If only everything were awesome and everyone got along, we could totally build a new regional framwork!
Recent meetings around D.C. to push this idea — shepharded by Fred Starr, who’s been all about it for several years now — are great at pulling together the terminal countries: Afghanistan and Germany, as they did last September 29. What they have not yet succeeded in doing is drawing together any of the countries between, say, Afghanistan and Germany … like Uzbekistan. Considering that this event was held literally up the road from the Uzbek embassy, this sort of omission is pretty glaring.
Besides which, China is already developing trans-regional transportation networks. And it ain’t easy: though the ground route takes half as much time as it would to ship something from China to Europe by sea, it is far more expensive and difficult. I can see the urge to look at that and say “let’s try to make this easier and cheaper.” But until it really is cheaper to ship something 6,000 miles over land than it is to ship it 10,000 miles on a container ship, the whole thing is just not going to work.
Central Asia desperately needs a development policy, and it wouldn’t hurt from some U.S. leadership on the issue. But utopian dreams of a Central Asian Customs Union, or something, seem so far out into left field I’m surprised it has gained as much traction as it has. Central Asia needs logic and planning, but the New Silk Road isn’t it.
Besides tensions with Israel, Ankara’s sabre-rattling against Syria isn’t going down very well with Tehran
By Linda S. Heard, Special to Gulf News
Image Credit: Dana A. Shams/Gulf News
Turkey’s strategic alliance with Iran is also shaky not only due to Ankara’s threats against Damascus but, more importantly, due to the Turkish government’s hosting of Nato’s early warning missile shield that is largely directed at Tehran.
Turkish Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan may arguably be the most popular leader in the Muslim world for his pro-Palestinian stance, but his foreign policy is turning once friendly countries into foes. Turkey’s relations with Israel has been at an all-time low since the government downgraded diplomatic relations in response to Tel Aviv’s refusal to apologise for the killing of nine Turkish activists on board the Mavi Marmara in international waters.
In recent weeks tensions between the two countries have suffered a further escalation. Israel accuses the Turkish leader of making a highly inflammatory anti-Israeli speech in Cairo’s Tahrir Square during his visit to Egypt last month. More crucially, Israel doesn’t appreciate his threats to use warships to escort humanitarian aid-bearing vessels en route to breaking Israel’s blockade of Gaza and to disable the weapons systems of Israel’s military ships sailing outside the country’s 19.2-km limit. Tel Aviv believes Turkey is using Gaza as a pretext to prevent Israel from using its navy to protect its own deep water hydrocarbons.
It appears that Erdogan has had enough of Tel Aviv’s bullying and is prepared to use his country’s military might to put Israel in its place. In confirmation of Turkey’s warning that its navy would assert its presence in the eastern Mediterranean, at the end of September, Turkish warships began ordering Israeli merchant vessels straying near Cyprus to alter course eliciting aggressive buzzing from Israeli Air Force planes. Turkey responded by sending two F16s of its own to face-off against Israel’s.
Turkey has also fallen out with the Greek Cypriot government’s decision to instruct a US company Nobel Energy to drill for natural gas in its hydrocarbon-rich waters. Erdogan has termed the Greek Cypriot effort as “madness” despite a promise that northern Cyprus would also benefit, as he believes such exploration should only begin once the divided island is re-united. In turn, the Cypriot President says Erdogan is “a troublemaker” and has vowed to veto Turkey’s aspirations to join the EU. Undeterred, Ankara has employed its own seismic vessel in the same area to grab its share of gas thought to be in the region of trillions of cubic metres.
As incendiary as the Turkish-Cyprus contretemps could become, it is unlikely to flare up due to the involvement of Nobel Energy. However belligerent Ankara is nowadays, the government will think twice before taking on Washington.
Most disturbing of all is Turkey’s sabre-rattling against the Syrian regime which isn’t going down very well with Ankara’s long-time ally Tehran. Turkey’s Foreign Minister Ahmet Davutoglu has announced, if necessary, his country is prepared for an all-out conflict with Damascus.
The Erdogan government is believed to be supplying weapons to the Syrian opposition and has begun military exercises along its border with Syria. Erdogan has turned against his one-time friend President Bashar Al Assad over the Syrian leader’s vicious attacks on demonstrators and there is speculation that he plans to temporarily annex part of Syrian territory to provide a safe haven for fleeing Syrian civilians. According to the website DebkaFile that has links to Israel’s Mossad, in the event Syria is attacked by either Nato or Turkey, it plans to retaliate together with Iran and Hezbollah by “flattening metropolitan Tel Aviv” with “thousands of missiles launched simultaneously by all three — plus the Palestinian Hamas and Islamic Jihad firing from the Gaza Strip.” DebkaFile also evokes a message from the Israeli Defence Minister Ehud Barak last year to the effect that should a single Hezbollah missile hit Israel, “all of Lebanon would go up in flames”.
Turkey’s strategic alliance with Iran is also shaky not only due to Ankara’s threats against Damascus but, more importantly, due to the Turkish government’s hosting of Nato’s early warning missile shield that is largely directed at Tehran. Iran has accused Turkey of kowtowing to the US and of safeguarding the interests of the Zionist regime while warning that Tehran’s ties with Ankara are in jeopardy.
One thing for sure, the region has rarely been as unstable as it is now with many imponderables. Is Turkey merely muscle-flexing or does its threats towards Israel and Syria have real weight? Does Turkey have the military means to hold its own or is it punching above its weight? Will the US, which is currently on a diplomatic drive to quell Turkish-Israel and Turkish-Cyprus tensions, be forced to intervene?
Lastly, where do Arab states stand in all this? Will they throw their support behind Ankara which would create a regional hegemonic bloc against both Israel and Iran and wean the Arab world from Uncle Sam? Or will they stay on the sidelines watching? Unfortunately, I think we all know the answer to that one.
Linda S. Heard is a specialist writer on Middle East affairs. She can be contacted at lheard@gulfnews.com. Some of the comments may be considered for publication.
Monday, October 10, 2011 Aibak (BIA) For cultivation of saffron, 1500 Kg saffron onions have been distributed to farmers in Aibak city of Samangan province.
For cultivation of saffron, 1500 Kg saffron onions have been distributed to farmers in Aibak city of Samangan province. According to Sirajuddin, an official for Red Cross, an international committee in agriculture sector based in Mazar-e-Sharif, the onions bought by the committee from open markets in Balkh distributed to 12 top farmers of eight villages of Aibak city in order that they start cultivating saffron in their fields. He said distribution of such plants aims at encouraging the farmers to cultivate saffron and improving their economy. Test has shown that saffron products are more than other plants and farmers also take huge benefits from it. According to Noor Mohammad, director of agriculture for Samangan, saffron is a good alternative of poppy and season for cultivation of the plant is September and October. An official for the Red Cross said Afghan saffron is the best in the world and currently a kilo of saffron is sold by 5,000 US dollars in Herat while it is sold by 7,000- 8,000 US dollars in the world markets.
KABUL, Afghanistan—Insecurity and rising opium prices drove Afghan farmers to increase cultivation of the illicit opium poppy by 7 percent in 2011 despite a major push by the Afghan government and international allies to wean the country off of the lucrative crop, according to a U.N. report released Tuesday.
Afghanistan’s is the world’s largest producer of opium — the raw ingredient used to make heroin — providing about 80 percent of the world’s crop. Revenue from the drug has helped fund insurgents and the number of people invested in the underground opium economy has made it difficult for the Afghan government to establish its presence in opium-heavy regions.
Tuesday’s report also shows that opium cultivation is spreading to new parts of the country, a troubling trend as international troops are trying to stabilize Afghanistan so that they can hand over security responsibilities to the government.
Farmers cultivated 131,000 hectares of opium poppies in 2011, a 7 percent increase over the previous year, the U.N. Office on Drugs and Crime said in its periodic Afghan opium survey. Farmers said they turned to the illegal opium poppy because of “economic hardship and lucrative prices,” according to the report.
The jump came even though the Afghan government increased crop eradication by 65 percent and made significant seizures in recent months.
There are now 17 provinces in Afghanistan affected by poppy cultivation, up from 14 a year ago. And three provinces that had been declared “poppy free” — a label that brings extra development funding — have backslid and are now opium producers again, the report said.
Much of this happened because farm-gate prices have soared. Dry opium costs about 43 percent more than it did a year ago. Farmers who chose to grow opium in spite of the counternarcotics push received a windfall. The per-hectare price of opium more than doubled to $10,700 from $4,900, according to the report.
Jean-Luc Lemahieu, the head of UNODC in Afghanistan, said this extra revenue is helping to fund crime.
“We cannot afford to ignore the record profits for non-farmers, such as traders and insurgents, which in turn fuel corruption, criminality and instability. This is a distressing situation,” Lemahieu said in a statement.
The largest areas of opium poppy cultivation were the violent south of the country, where it can be hard to make money on legal crops and where criminal networks exist to buy and sell the poppy crop. About 78 percent of cultivation was in the southern provinces of Helmand, Kandahar, Uruzgan, Day Kundi and Zabul, according to the report.
Opium production is also expected to increase significantly. Production in Afghanistan had dropped significantly in 2010 because of a plant disease that killed off much of the crop.
Yulia Tymoshenko, Ukraine’s glamorous former prime minister, was on Tuesday jailed for seven years after being found guilty of exceeding her power when she arranged a controversial 2009 gas deal with Russia.
The harsh sentence will do nothing to enhance the reputation of Ukraine’s brutal political life and will increase the tensions in the country’s relations with the west. But Russian prime minister Vladimir Putin should be pleased with the outcome.
Judge Rodion Kireyev said Tymoshenko had exceeded her powers in decisions that had cost Naftogaz, the state energy company, 1.5bn hryvnia ($188m), Reuters reported from Kiev.
“In January 2009, Tymoshenko Yu. V., exercising the duties of prime minister … used her powers for criminal ends and, acting delibertately, carried out actions … which led to heavy consequences,” he said. He imposed the maximum sentence sought by state prosecutors for Tymoshenko, president Viktor Yanukovich’s main political opponent.
Tymoshenko, who last year narrowly lost the presidential election to Yanukovich, immediately denounced the her rival’s “authoritaritarian regime”. She has from the outset condemned the legal action against her as a Yanukovich political vendetta.
Speaking on Tuesday before the hearing, she told journalists (as Reuters reported): “You know very well that the sentence is not being pronounced by judge Kireyev but by president Yanukovich. Whatever the sentence pronounced, my struggle will continue. This sentence, written by Yanukovich, will not change anything in my life or in my struggle.”
Her vociferous supporters, including hundreds outside the court, argue that Yanukovich wants to get their heroine out of the way before next year’s parliamentary elections. Her opponents claim that as prime minister she ran a corrupt government that benefited her associates at the cost of the nation.
Exactly the same accusations are now levelled against the Yanukovich administration. Ukraine has failed since independence to develop independent instutitions, including courts that could deliver verdicts on VIP defendants that are accepted as fair and credible. As in Russia, there is widespread suspicion that judges kow-tow to the rich and powerful.
The European Union this week warned that a key economic cooperation agreement due for ratification in the next few months will be in jeopardy if the judge jailed Tymoshenko, who has already been in police detention for contempt since August.
On Monday the EU’s foreign policy chief Catherine Ashton said:”We are not optimistic about this trial. Our impression remains (that it amounts to) selective application of justice.”
As Reuters reported, when the judge late last month called an adjournment until Tuesday it was widely seen as a strategic pause to give Yanukovich and his advisers time to consider their options in the face of the Western criticism. The president insisted her prosecution was a matter for the courts.
All this plays into Putin’s hands. First, Russia has in recent years succeeded in reasserting its influence in Ukraine after the country turned towards the west in the 2004 Orange Revolution, in which Tymoshenko had a starring role. Increased tensions with the west play into the Kremlin’s hands. Yanukovich becomes more dependent on Russia – notably for cheap gas – and his business associates come under greater pressure to do deals with their Russian counterparts.
Next, Moscow also profits from any general rubbishing of independent institutions in the former Soviet Union. The lower the reputation of independent institutions in the FSU – in this case Ukraine’s courts – the easier it is for the Kremlin to argue that fully-fledged western democracy (with independent institutions) can’t flourish in the ex-Soviet space. The wider this view is disseminated, the easier it is for Russia’s current elite to maintain their authoritarian hold on power.
Finally, there’s no love lost between Putin and Tymoshenko. While the 2009 gas deal that is the subject of the court case saw the two leaders cooperating, the apparent good humour may have been superficial and tactical. Earlier disputes over gas supplies had left Putin fuming – and at one point threatening to arrest Tymoshenko if she ever set foot in Russia.
Newly obtained White House records provide fresh details on how senior Obama administration officials used Mitt Romney’s landmark health-care law in Massachusetts as a model for the new federal law, including recruiting some of Romney’s own health care advisers and experts to help craft the act now derided by Republicans as “Obamacare.”
The records, gleaned from White House visitor logs reviewed by NBC News, show that senior White House officials had a dozen meetings in 2009 with three health-care advisers and experts who helped shape the health care reform law signed by Romney in 2006, when the Republican presidential candidate was governor of Massachusetts. One of those meetings, on July 20, 2009, was in the Oval Office and presided over by President Barack Obama, the records show.
“The White House wanted to lean a lot on what we’d done in Massachusetts,” said Jon Gruber, an MIT economist who advised the Romney administration on health care and who attended five meetings at the Obama White House in 2009, including the meeting with the president. “They really wanted to know how we can take that same approach we used in Massachusetts and turn that into a national model.”
Romney has forcefully defended the Massachusetts law he signed, but says he is adamantly against a “one-size-fits-all national health-care system” imposed on all 50 states. “I will repeal Obamacare,” he has said. “And on day one of my administration, I will grant a waiver from Obamacare to all 50 states.”
Asked about the White House records, a Romney campaign spokeswoman responded by citing comments that Romney made last April after Obama suggested the White House had borrowed from his law in Massachusetts.
“He does me the great favor of saying that I was the inspiration of his plan,” Romney said of Obama. “If that’s the case, why didn’t you call me? …Why didn’t you ask what was wrong? Why didn’t you ask if this was an experiment, what worked and what didn’t. … I would have told him, ‘What you’re doing, Mr. President, is going to bankrupt us.’”
The White House visitor logs suggest that, if Obama officials didn’t talk directly with Romney, senior presidential aides did consult with others — like Gruber — who played important roles in helping to craft and implement the Massachusetts law.
In addition to Obama himself, the meetings attended by Gruber were presided over by the president’s chief economic adviser, Lawrence Summers, then budget director Peter Orzag and Nancy-Ann DeParle, the president’s chief adviser on health care, the records show. Gruber was also given a $380,000 contract by the Obama administration in 2009 to work with Congress on drafting a new federal law based on the Massachusetts law, records show.
Another Romney administration adviser consulted by the White House was Jon Kingsdale, a health-care expert who was appointed in 2006 by one of Romney’s Cabinet secretaries, Thomas Trimarco, to serve as executive director of the Commonwealth Health Insurance Connector Authority — the state agency charged with implementing the new Massachusetts health-care law.
Who met with whom The White House records show Kingsdale attended three White House meetings on health care in 2009. Another expert who attended four White House meetings on health care was John McDonough, who also had played a leading role in shaping the law signed by Romney. As the head of a health-care advocacy group in Massachusetts, McDonough was named by Romney aides as a “stakeholder” to represent consumer interests on the health-care law. McDonough later shared an “innovator in health award” with Romney and 11 others — including several top lawmakers and business leaders — given by NEHI, a leading New England health-care research group, “for their collaborative efforts in achieving Massachusetts health reform.”
The health-care reform law in Massachusetts was seen as a national breakthrough when Romney signed it an elaborate ceremony — complete with a fife and drum band — at Boston’s historic Faneuil Hall on April 12, 2006. It was attended by an array of prominent political figures in the state, including the late Sen. Ted Kennedy, a longtime champion of health-care reform.
Kennedy warmly praised Romney at the event, saying, “You’ve led the way over the long and winding path to this moment.”
Romney himself touted the historic significance of the act. “Massachusetts once again is taking a giant leap forward,” he said at the signing ceremony.
The key features of the new law were an individual mandate, which required state residents to purchase health insurance or face a tax penalty — and the creation of a state agency to help the uninsured to purchase private health insurance plans at reasonable costs. It was touted by Romney at the event as a way of “expanding coverage to all our citizens.”
Romney has since emphasized differences between his law in Massachusetts and “Obamacare,” saying the state law didn’t require any increase in taxes. But the extent to which Romney’s 2006 health-care law served as a blueprint for Obama’s health care plan has been a recurring issue in the GOP presidential contest. Obama aides have fueled the controversy. Romney “did some interesting things there on health care,” David Axelrod, the president’s political adviser, said in an interview earlier this year. “We got some good ideas from him.”
On Monday, Texas Gov. Rick Perry’s campaign unleashed a blistering attack ad — called “Romney’s Remedy” — that accused the former Massachusetts governor of running away from his record on health care. “Even the richest man can’t buy back his past,” reads a tag line on the ad. It cited a line that Romney had deleted this year from the paperback edition of his book, “No Apology: The CASE for American Greatness,” discussing the Massachusetts law which read: “We can accomplish the same thing for everyone in the country.”
“When it comes to government-mandated health care, there is no difference between Mitt Romney and President Obama,” Perry spokesman, Mark Miner, said in a press release accompanying the ad.
Romney’s aides shot back, accusing Perry of distorting his record on health care and taking quotes out of context. “Rick Perry is a desperate candidate who will say and do anything to prop up his sinking campaign,” said Gail Gitcho, Romney’s communications director.
The role of Gruber could complicate the Romney campaign’s efforts to address the issue. An economist who specializes in health-care issues, he was hired by the Romney’s administration as a consultant and asked to run computer models on the costs of various approaches to extending health-care coverage. He told NBC News he attended one meeting with Romney in which the then governor forcefully insisted on including a controversial provision that some of his political advisers were wary about: the “individual mandate” that would require everybody in the state to purchase health insurance or face a tax penalty.
The same provision has since become the most contentious feature of Obama’s Affordable Care Act.
“This was a big decision to be made and Governor Romney clearly stated that he believed without an individual mandate healthy people could just free ride on the system,” Gruber said of Romney’s decision.
Connection played down Romney aides have recently tried to suggest that Gruber was not a true adviser to Romney and did not play a big role in shaping the law. But Gruber was personally recognized by Romney for his role when he signed the health-care bill into law and was later appointed by Romney as a board member to the Connector Authority. (He also was given a photograph of the signing ceremony personally signed by Romney that read: “Jonathan, with deep appreciation and congratulations. A Triumph! Mitt Romney.”)
Gruber now says he is “proud” of Romney for “sticking up for what he did in Massachusetts” but is “disappointed” about his current efforts to make distinctions between the state law and the Affordable Care Act.
(He also noted that the Massachusetts law didn’t require any increase in taxes only because it received federal health-care funds that defrayed the costs of the new law.)
Romney is “the father of health-care reform,” said Gruber. “I think he is the single person most responsible for health care reform in the United States. … I’m not trying to make a political position or a political statement, I honestly feel that way. If Mitt Romney had not stood up for this reform in Massachusetts … I don’t think it would have happened nationally. So I think he really is the guy with whom it all starts.”
A number of Pakistanis are unsure if it will get a non-permanent UNSC seat despite a seemingly easy field, because many believe the US is propping up the opposition against Pakistan.
NEW DELHI: In another 10 days, Pakistan will be asking for votes from 192 countries for a two-year seat in the UN Security Council for 2012-2014, and despite an easy field, it anticipates difficulties, not from India, but the US.
In ordinary circumstances, Pakistan would have had it fairly easy. This year too, the opposition field looks weak enough. Fiji, which was a claimant for the Asian seat, withdrew recently in favour of Pakistan. Pakistan now has only one opposing candidate, Kyrgyzstan. A tiny country, Kyrgyzstan has barely 20 missions in the world and should not pose any real threat to Pakistan.
Sources say Pakistan should have little problem getting the required 128 votes from the UN General Assembly. But a number of Pakistanis are unsure, because many believe the US is propping up the opposition against Pakistan.
India will support Kyrgyzstan, under a reciprocal deal reached with Bishkek during India’s own lobbying for a non-permanent seat in 2010. The deal apart, Indians and Pakistanis generally get along fairly well at multilateral institutions, except when it comes to issues like Kashmir. On many global issues, India and Pakistan not only vote with each other, but also support each other. During India’s vote, Pakistan did not say that it had supported India, yet many Indian diplomats said they had seen the Pakistani ballot paper with “India” written on it. India won with a massive 187 votes.
Munir Akram, who represented Pakistan as UN ambassador several times, wrote on Sunday that India’s opposition would have little effect on Pakistan’s chances. But he suspects that the US may be trying to nix Pakistan’s chances in the UN Security Council. “At the UN, most astute observers are convinced that the Kyrgyz bid has been encouraged, if not inspired, by the US. It is reasoned that the US does not want Pakistan to have a seat on the Security Council during the critical endgame in Afghanistan or to provide it a platform to raise difficult issues… Unlike India, the US has the influence to significantly complicate Pakistan’s bid for the Security Council seat. Some years ago, Africa’s endorsed candidate, Sudan, was defeated by the last-minute US-sponsored candidature of Mauritius.”
Kyrgyzstan does not set the UN on fire, though they apparently have a large delegation working the diplomatic network in Turtle Bay. But this year, Pakistan is not on the global favourite list — hosting Osama bin Laden and its overt reluctance to give up terrorism as an instrument of state policy does not help matters for Islamabad. Yet Kyrgyzstan has refused to give up its candidature for Pakistan, and promised to see this battle through to the bitter end. Surprised, many Pakistanis believe the responsibility for this could lie with the US.
Akram noted the US had yet to support Pakistan publicly, though Indian diplomats say that could change in the days ahead. US has a key base in Manas, Kyrgyzstan, which is used for the war in Afghanistan. America is also expanding activities in the tiny Central Asian country.
An exclusive interview with Dr. Franklin Lamb, international lawyer from Beirut.
A prominent political lawyer says that the US cannot continue to supply arms or economic aid to Israel which yet again is under international pressure for its atrocities against humanity. In an exclusive interview with Press TV, Franklin Lamb tells us more about the future of the US-Israeli relationship.
Press TV: As violent as that video we just aired was, it really shouldn’t come as a surprise because, well, this type of behavior by Israeli forces is pretty much done on a weekly basis in the occupied territories. But you tell us what you think based on the video that has been released by human rights activists.
Lamb: The crimes against humanity which these video documents constitute, yet again, a clear and unavoidable challenge to American values and to President Obama’s administration that requires a forceful response. And that response from the Obama administration must be that it’s time for America to cut ties with the brutal Zionist occupier of Palestine and disengage politically, militarily and economically.
It’s not public, yet, but it will be this week via pro-Palestinian sources on Capitol Hill—yes, there actually are a few courageous souls up there— that US Defense Secretary Leon Panetta spoke with Netanyahu in very, very strong terms last week. Panetta declared that the Israeli government, as it is today and the state of Israel itself, may well not survive the current Islamic and Arab awakening.
And this is exactly why.
The American people have no stomach anymore for this apartheid regime and I don’t think that Obama can sustain the current course and his egregious groveling to Israel and its Congressional lobby and also in terms of the United Nations fiasco and now UNESCO.
This clear message ricocheting around the region, and increasingly in the West, is that Zionist Apartheid Israel has no place in the region, any region for that matter, and it has no basis for demanding its 6 billion dollars a year handout from the American tax payer, approximately $7 million dollars per day—every day of the year-rain or shine– now in its 4th decade. We’re fed up, we can’t afford it and God knows we have urgent domestic priorities that need our limited and shrinking available resources given the past decade of ill-advised wars of choice which have earned our good people the hatred of much of the world while making a mockery of American values and ruining our economy while depriving our youth of the opportunities they deserve. Regarding our youth, it’s the lack of hope, as much as the jobs, that hurts today’s young unemployed.
Hopefully, Obama will sacrifice a second term, if that’s what’s necessary, in order to revive American principles and American values by standing up to the US Israel lobby as an American Profile in Courage and by acting in the interest of the American people who placed their confidence in him in 2008.
I think recent events show that it’s that clear, it’s essentially black and white. We can’t waffle, we can’t grovel anymore. It’s simply time for America to stand up to and reject the Zionist apartheid regime.
Press TV: You talked about the UN and, of course, the UN General Assembly wrapped up a couple weeks back. Tell us why it is that the UN does not really have any real effect about what Israel is doing? Of course, you can tell us more about the countless resolutions that Israel doesn’t listen to. I want to talk about Ban Ki Moon, during the 2008 war, was standing in that debris in the Gaza Strip and seeing that this shouldn’t be happening with smoke billowing from the background. But yet, we see time and again Israel committing these acts.
Lamb: Absolutely. As we know, the United Nations Security Council, as with NATO, has tragically been diminished to nothing more than an adjunct of the American-Israeli foreign policy. We have to revisit both of those international institutions. We must discard NATO as a dangerous out of control Cold War relic and reform the United Nations, frankly along the lines that President Ahmadinejad recommended during his 2010 lecture on this subject. A brilliant discourse that went largely ignored in the Western media.
It’s true, as you say, we cannot rely on Israel to do anything of a humanitarian nature, but we can rely on the people in the streets, exiting the Mosques and gathering in American cities…inspired by the nine countries that are revolting here in this region and increasingly in the West and we now see also in Wall Street, Washington, and elsewhere.
It’s up to us, individually, ultimately to bring about the necessary change. While we are very concerned about the inaction of these certain international institutions and our own governments, ultimately it’s up to us to make change happen. That is the essence of Democracy isn’t it?
Regarding the demise of Israel, I think Panetta was right. And the report will be made public this week unless Israel can stop it and it argues that we’re going to have to disengage. The quantum military edge which American has guaranteed to Israel that was incorporated into law in America in 2008 by Howard Berman, a pillar of the Zionist community, doesn’t and shouldn’t apply anymore.
We’re not going to be able to support Israel in terms of arms or economic aid, and we’re going to have to discard our habit of putting Israel before our own interests and our own country. And that is what Panetta told Netanyahu in private. I think that’s the direction we will be moving.
It’s clear that this region is not turning back and that the genie is out of the bottle. All of this past when America put Israel above our own interests and sacrificed our real friends must be discarded and the new intifada from Tunisia to Yemen to Ramallah and increasingly to America is the future resistance era. I think all people of good will must support that and change the current apocalyptic direction and restore Palestine to her rightful inhabitants.
GMA/JG
Please see also: Panetta to Netanyahu: ”Israel May Not Survive the Current Arab/Islamic Awakening
(Reuters) – The United States is aggravating the HIV/AIDS problem in Russia and the West by refusing to use its forces to destroy opium crops inAfghanistan, Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov said on Monday.
Lavrov made Russia’s persistent case for poppy crop eradication by U.S. and NATO forces in Afghanistan at a conference on communicable diseases in the eastern Europe and Central Asia region, where AIDS is a growing problem.
“It is hard for us to understand why our American partners don’t want the International Security Assistance Force to do this,” he said. “This issue is crucial to the fight against the drug threat and, consequently, the spread of HIV/AIDS.”
Afghanistan is the world’s biggest producer of poppies used to make opium, the key ingredient in the production of heroin. Russia is the largest per capita consumer of the drug and faces an HIV/AIDS epidemic that is spreading from dirty needles.
“The tragedy of the situation lies in the fact that in Europe, young people … are getting this disease because of the spread of drugs,” Lavrov said, adding that “we must fight not only the use but also the spread of drugs.”
Russia, which fought a decade-long war in Afghanistan in the 1980s, is supporting the Western military campaign in Afghanistan by providing transit routes for personnel and supplies.
It says the United States made a big mistake when it reversed its anti-drug strategy in 2009 by phasing out crop eradication efforts to focus instead on intercepting drugs and hunting production operations and drug lords.
The Unites States said it made the change because drug crop eradication was not damaging the Taliban insurgency but was putting farmers out of work, sowing resentment against foreign intervention.
Russia says it opposes a long-term Western military presence in Afghanistan, but has also expressed fears that the spread of drugs and Islamist militancy toward its borders could worsen if NATO forces leave without first ensuring stability.
