Uri Avnery’s Column

HURRAH FOR EGYPT!

For me this is a wonderful, a joyful occasion.

For many Israelis, this is a worrisome, a threatening sight.

I CANNOT but rejoice when a downtrodden people arises and wins its freedom and human dignity. And not by the intervention of outside forces, but by its own steadfastness and courage. And not by shooting and bloodshed, but by the sheer power of nonviolence.

Whenever and wherever it happens, it must gladden the heart of any decent person around the globe.

Compared to most other revolutions, this Egyptian uprising was bloodless. The number of victims ran in the dozens, not thousands. The current struggle in Syria claims that number of victims every day or two, and so did the successful uprising in neighboring Libya, which was greatly assisted by foreign military intervention.

A revolution reflects the character of its people. I always had a special liking for the Egyptian people, because they are – by and large – devoid of aggressiveness and violence. They are a singularly patient and humorous lot. You can see this in thousands of years of recorded history and you can see it in daily life in the street.

That is why this revolution was so surprising. Of all the peoples on this planet, the Egyptians are among the most unlikely to revolt. Yet revolt they did.

THE PARLIAMENT convened after 60 years of military rule, which also started with a bloodless revolution. Even the despised king, Farouk, who was overthrown on that day in July 1952, was not harmed. He was bundled into his luxurious yacht and sent off to Monte Carlo, there to spend the rest of his life gambling.

The real leader of the revolution was Gamal Abd-al-Nasser. I had met him several times during the 1948 war – though we were never properly introduced. These were all night battles, and only after the war could I reconstruct the events. He was wounded in a battle for which my company was awarded the honorary name “Samson’s Foxes”, while I was wounded five months later by soldiers under his command.

I never met him face to face, of course, but a good friend of mine did. During the battle of the “Faluja pocket”, a cease-fire was agreed in order to bring out the dead and wounded lying between the lines. The Egyptians sent Major Abd-al-Nasser, our side sent a Yemen-born officer whom we called “Gingi” (Ginger), because he was almost totally black. The two enemy officers liked each other very much, and when the Egyptian revolution broke out, Gingi told me – long before anyone else – that Abd-al-Nasser was the man to watch.

(I cannot restrain myself from voicing a pet peeve here. In Western films and books, Arabs often bear the first name Abdul. Such a name just does not exist. “Abdul” is really Abd-al-, which means “servant of”’ and is invariably followed by one of Allah’s 99 attributes. Abd-al-Nasser, for example, means “Servant of (Allah) the Victorious”. So please!)

“Nasser”, as most people called him for short, was not a born dictator. He later recounted that after the victory of the revolution, he had no idea what to do next. He started by appointing a civilian government, but was appalled by the incompetence and corruption of the politicians. So the army took things into its own hands, and soon enough it became a military dictatorship, which lasted and steadily degenerated until last year.

One does not have to take Nasser’s account literally, but the lesson is clear: now as then, “temporary” military rule tends to turn into a lasting dictatorship. Egyptians know this from bitter experience, and that’s why they are becoming very very impatient now.

I remember an arresting conversation between two leading Arab intellectuals some 45 years ago. We were in a taxi in London, on our way to a conference. One was the admirable Mohammed Sid Ahmad, an aristocratic Egyptian Marxist, the other was Alawi, a courageous leftist Moroccan opposition leader. The Egyptian said that in the contemporary Arab world, no national goal can be achieved without a strong autocratic leadership. Alawi retorted that nothing worthwhile can be achieved before internal democracy is established. I think this case has now been settled.

AS WINSTON CHURCHILL famously said, “democracy is the worst form of government except all those other forms that have been tried.” The bad thing about democracy is that free elections don’t always turn out the way you want them to.”

The recent Egyptian election was won by “Islamists”. The tumultuous first session produced by this whiff of freedom was dominated by deputies with religious beards. Elected members of the Muslim Brotherhood and the more extreme Salafists (adherents of the Salafiyeh, a Sunni tendency which claims to follow the teaching of the first three Muslim generations) form the majority. The Israelis and the world’s Islamophobes, for whom all Muslims are the same, are aghast.

Frankly, I don’t like religious parties of any stripe – Jewish, Muslim, Christian or what have you. Full democracy demands full separation between State and religion, in practice as well as in theory.

I would not vote for politicians who use religious fundamentalism as a ladder for their careers – whether they are American presidential candidates, Israeli settlers or Arab demagogues. Even If they were sincere, I would still vote against them. But if such people are elected freely, I accept them. I certainly would not let the success of the Islamists spoil my joy at the historic victory of the Arab Spring.

The way it looks now, Islamists of various shades are going to be influential in all the new parliaments that will be the products of Arab democracy, from Morocco to Iraq, from Syria to Oman. Israel will not be a “villa in the jungle”, but a Jewish island in a Muslim sea.

Island and sea are not natural enemies. On the contrary, they complement each other. The islanders catch fish in the sea, the island shelters the young fish.

THERE IS no reason for Jews and Muslims not to live peacefully together and cooperate. They have done so many times in history, and these were good times for both.

In any religion, there are many contradictions. In the Hebrew Bible there are the inspiring chapters of the prophets and the abominable calls for genocide in the Book of Joshua, for example. In the New Testament, there are the beautiful Sermon on the Mount and the disgusting (and obviously false and later inserted) description of the Jews calling for the crucifixion of Jesus, which has caused anti-Semitism and untold suffering. In the Koran are several objectionable passages about the Jews, but they are overshadowed by the admirable command to protect the “peoples of the book”, Jews and Christians.

It is up to the believers of any religion to pick from their holy texts the passages they want to act upon. Once I saw a Nazi book composed entirely of quotations from the Talmud – hundreds of them. I was certain that they were all false and was shocked to the core when a friendly rabbi assured me that they were all authentic, only taken out of context.

JEWS AND Muslims can and did live peacefully together, and so did Israelis and Egyptians.

Just one chapter: in November, 1944, two members of the pre-state underground Lehi organization (aka Stern Gang) assassinated Lord Moyne, the British Minister of State for the Middle East, in Cairo. They were caught, and their trial in an Egyptian court turned into an anti-British demonstration. Young Egyptian patriots filled the chamber and made no effort to hide their admiration for the accused. One of the two (with whom I was acquainted) reciprocated with a rousing speech, in which he dismissed Zionism and defined himself as a freedom fighter out to liberate the entire region from British imperialism.

When Israel was founded soon after, some of us suggested that the new state use this and other acts in order to present ourselves as the first Semitic state that had liberated itself from foreign rule. In this spirit, we publicly welcomed Abd-al-Nasser’s 1952 revolution. But in 1956, Israel attacked Egypt in collusion with France and Great Britain, and was branded as an outpost of Western colonialism.

AFTER ANWAR SADAT’S historic visit to Jerusalem, I was one of the first four Israelis to arrive in Cairo, For weeks we were the heroes of the city, lionized by one and all. Enthusiasm for peace with Israel gave rise to a carnival mood. Only later, when the Egyptians realized that Israel had no intention whatsoever of allowing the Palestinians to achieve their freedom, did this mood evaporate.

Now is the time to try to restore this mood. It can be done, if we resolutely turn our face toward the Arab Spring and its winter offshoots.

That raises again one of the most basic questions for Israel: Do we want to be a part of this region, or an outpost of the West? Are the Arabs our natural allies or our natural enemies? Does the new Arab democracy arouse our sympathy and admiration, or does it frighten us?

This leads to the most profound question of all: Is Israel just another branch of world Jewry, or is it a new nation born in this region and constituting an integral part of it?

For me, the answer is clear. And therefore I salute the Egyptian people and their new parliament: Congratulations!

========================================

And the previous Avnery column – it dealt with Israel:

This has probably been more or less true of every country since the advent of democracy. Yet in Israel, this seems even truer. (Ironically, it could almost be said that the US has no foreign policy, only an Israeli domestic policy.)

In order to understand our foreign policy, we have to look in the mirror. Who are we? What is our society like?

IN A classical sketch, well known to every veteran Israeli, two Arabs stand on the sea shore, looking at a boat full of Russian Jewish pioneers rowing towards them. “May your house be destroyed!” they curse.

Next, the same two figures, this time Russian Jewish pioneers, stand on the same spot, launching Russian curses at a boat full of Yemenite immigrants.

Next, the two are Yemenites cursing German Jewish refugees fleeing from the Nazis. Then, two German Jews cursing Moroccan arrivals. When it first appeared, that was the last scene. But now, one can add two Moroccans cursing the immigrants from Soviet Russia, then two Russians cursing the latest arrivals: Ethiopian Jews.

That may also be true for every immigrant country, from the United States to Australia. Every new wave of immigrants is greeted by the scorn, contempt and even open hostility of those who came before them. When I was a child in the early 1930s, I frequently heard people shouting at my parents “Go back to Hitler!”

Still, the dominant myth was that of the “melting pot”. All immigrants would be thrown into the same pot and cleansed of their “foreign” traits, emerging as a uniform new nation without any traces of their origin.

THIS MYTH died some decades ago. Israel is now a kind of federation of several major demographic-cultural blocs which dominate our social and political life.

Who are they? There are (1) the old Ashkenazim (Jews of European origin); (2) the Oriental (or “Sephardi”) Jews; (3) the religious (partly Ashkenazi, partly Oriental); (4) the “Russians”, immigrants from all the countries of the former Soviet union; and (5) the Palestinian-Arab citizens, who did not come from anywhere.

This is, of course, a schematic presentation. None of the blocs is completely homogeneous. Each bloc has several sub blocs, some blocs overlap, there is some intermarriage, but on the whole, the picture is accurate. Gender plays no role in this division.

The political scene almost exactly mirrors these divisions. The Labor party was, in its heyday, the main instrument of Ashkenazi power. Its remnants, together with Kadima and Meretz, are still Ashkenazi. Avigdor Lieberman’s Israel Beytenu consists mainly of Russians. There are three or four religious parties. Then there are two exclusively Arab parties, and the Communist party, which is mainly Arab, too. The Likud represents the bulk of the Orientals, though almost all its leaders are Ashkenazim.

The relationship between the blocs is often strained. Just now, the whole country is in an uproar because in Kiryat Malakhi, a southern town with mainly Oriental inhabitants, house owners have signed a commitment not to sell apartments to Ethiopians, while the Rabbi of Safed, a northern town of mainly Orthodox Jews, has forbidden his flock to rent apartments to Arabs.

But apart from the rift between the Jews and the Arabs, the main problem is the resentment of the Orientals, the Russians and the religious against what they call “the Ashkenazi elite”.

SINCE THEY were the first to arrive, long before the establishment of the state, Ashkenazim control most of the centers of power – social, political, economic, cultural et al. Generally, they belong to the more affluent part of society, while the Orientals, the Orthodox, the Russians and the Arabs generally belong to the lower socio-economic strata.

The Orientals have deep grudges against the Ashkenazim. They believe – not without justification – that they have been humiliated and discriminated against from their first day in the country, and still are, though quite a number of them have reached high economic and political positions. The other day, a top director of one of the foremost financial institutions caused a scandal when he accused the “Whites” (i.e. Ashkenazim) of dominating all the banks, the courts and the media. He was promptly fired, which caused another scandal.

The Likud came to power in 1977, dethroning Labor. With short interruptions, It has been in power ever since. Yet most Likud members still feel that the Ashkenazim rule Israel, leaving them far behind. Now, 34 years later, the dark wave of anti-democratic legislation pushed by Likud deputies is being justified by the slogan “We must start to rule!”

The scene reminds me of a building site surrounded by a wooden fence. The canny contractor has left some holes in the fence, so that curious passers-by can look in. In our society, all the other blocs feel like outsiders looking through the holes, full of envy for the Ashkenazi “elite” inside, who have all the good things. They hate everything they connect with this “elite”: the Supreme Court, the media, the human rights organizations, and especially the peace camp. All these are called “leftist”, a word curiously enough identified with the “elite”.

HOW HAS “peace” become associated with the dominant and domineering Ashkenazim?

That is one of the great tragedies of our country.

Jews have lived for many centuries in the Muslim world. There they never experienced the terrible things committed in Europe by Christian anti-Semitism. Muslim-Jewish animosity started only a century ago, with the advent of Zionism, and for obvious reasons.

When the Jews from Muslim countries started to arrive en masse in Israel, they were steeped in Arab culture. But here they were received by a society that held everything Arab in total contempt. Their Arab culture was “primitive”, while real culture was European. Furthermore, they were identified with the murderous Muslims. So the immigrants were required to shed their own culture and traditions, their accent, their memories, their music. In order to show how thoroughly Israeli they had become, they also had to hate Arabs.

It is, of course, a world-wide phenomenon that in multi-national countries, the most downtrodden class of the dominant nation is also the most radical nationalist foe of the minority nations. Belonging to the superior nation is often the only source of pride left to them. The result is frequently virulent racism and xenophobia.

This is one of the reasons why the Orientals were attracted to the Likud, for whom the rejection of peace and the hatred of Arabs are supreme virtues. Also, having been in opposition for ages, the Likud was seen as representing those who were “outside”, fighting those who were “inside”. This is still the case.

The case of the “Russians” is different. They grew up in a society that despised democracy, admired strong leaders. The “whites”, Russians and Ukrainians, despised and hated the “dark” peoples of the south – Armenians, Georgians, Tatars, Uzbeks and such. (I once invented a formula: “Bolshevism minus Marxism equals Fascism”.)

When the Russian Jews came to join us, they brought with them a virulent nationalism, a complete disinterest in democracy and an automatic hatred of Arabs. They cannot understand why we allowed them to stay here at all. When, this week, a lady deputy (though “lady” may be euphemistic) from St. Petersburg poured a glass of water on the head of an Arab deputy from the Labor party, nobody was very surprised. (Somebody quipped: “a Good Arab is a wet Arab”). For Lieberman’s followers, Peace is a dirty word, and so is Democracy.

For religious people of all shades – from the ultra-Orthodox to the National-Religious settlers, there is no problem at all. From the crib on, they learn that Jews are the Chosen People; that the Almighty personally promised us this country; that the Goyim – including the Arabs – are just inferior human beings.

It may be said, quite rightly, that I generalize. I do, just to simplify matters. There are indeed a lot of Orientals, especially of the younger generation, who are repelled by the ultra-nationalism of the Likud, the more so as the neo-liberalism of Binyamin Netanyahu (which Shimon Peres once called “swinish capitalism”) is in direct contradiction to the basic interests of their community. There are also a lot of decent, liberal, peace-loving religious people. (Yeshayahu Leibovitz comes to mind.) Some Russians are gradually leaving their self-imposed ghetto. But these are small minorities in their communities. The bulk of the three blocs – Oriental, Russian and religious – are united in their opposition to peace, and at best indifferent to democracy.

All these together constitute the right-wing, anti-peace coalition that is governing Israel now. The problem is not just a question of politics. It is much more profound – and much more daunting.

SOME PEOPLE blame us, the democratic peace movement, for not recognizing the problem early enough, and not doing enough to attract the members of the various blocs to the ideals of peace and democracy. Also, it is said, we did not show that social justice is inseparably connected with democracy and peace.

I must accept my share of the blame for this failure, though I might point out that I tried to make the connection right from the beginning. I asked my friends to concentrate our efforts on the Oriental community, remind them of the glories of the Muslim-Jewish “golden Age” in Spain, of the huge mutual impact of Jewish and Muslim scientists, poets and religious thinkers throughout the ages.

A few days ago, I was invited to give a lecture to the faculty and students of Ben-Gurion University in Beer Sheva. I described the situation more or less along the same lines. The first question from the large audience, which consisted of Jews – both Orientals and Ashkenazim, and Arabs – especially Bedouins was: “So what hope is there? Faced with this reality, how can the peace forces win?”

I told them that I put my trust in the new generation. Last summer’s huge social protest movement, which erupted quite suddenly and swept [“along”?] hundreds of thousands, showed that yes, it can happen here. The movement united Ashkenazim and Orientals. Tent cities sprang up in Tel Aviv and Beer Sheva, all over the place.

Our first job is to break the barriers between the blocs, change reality, create a new Israeli society. We need blockbusters.

Yes, it is a daunting job. But I believe it can be done.

Friend – Here’s something that President Obama laid out in his State of the Union that I think deserves special attention: Under current law, American companies can actually get a tax deduction for outsourcing jobs. That’s the opposite of how it should work. President Obama is proposing to end tax deductions for outsourcing, create a new tax credit for bringing jobs home, and lower tax rates for companies that manufacture and create jobs in the United States. If you think this should be a priority during this campaign, it’s up to you to speak out. Support the President and spread the word: http://my.barackobama.com/Keep-Jobs-at-Home This could be a defining issue of 2012. One of our prospective opponents built his career in part on outsourcing jobs in the private sector — and then continued outsourcing jobs as a governor. Is that the kind of economic experience and mindset people want in a President?

————————-

Here’s the quote from the State of the Union:

“Think about the America within our reach: A country that leads the world in educating its people. An America that attracts a new generation of high-tech manufacturing and high-paying jobs. A future where we’re in control of our own energy, and our security and prosperity aren’t so tied to unstable parts of the world. …

What’s happening in Detroit can happen in other industries. It can happen in Cleveland and Pittsburgh and Raleigh. We can’t bring back every job that’s left our shores. But right now, it’s getting more expensive to do business in places like China. Meanwhile, America is more productive. A few weeks ago, the CEO of Master Lock told me that it now makes business sense for him to bring jobs back home. Today, for the first time in fifteen years, Master Lock’s unionized plant in Milwaukee is running at full capacity.

So we have a huge opportunity, at this moment, to bring manufacturing back. But we have to seize it. …

My message is simple. It’s time to stop rewarding businesses that ship jobs overseas, and start rewarding companies that create jobs right here in America. Send me these tax reforms, and I’ll sign them right away.”

The New York Times OP-ED contributor from The World Economic Forum, Davos, Switzerland

At Davos, Debating Capitalism’s Future

By  Ed Miliband –  a member of the British Parliament and the leader of the Labour Party.

Published: January 26, 2012

IS 20th-century capitalism failing 21st-century society? Members of the global elite debated that unusual question on Wednesday at the annual World Economic Forum.

There was a time, not long ago, when such a debate would have been held only among the protesters who annually shelter in igloos farther down the Alpine slopes. So it is encouraging that more than three years since the global financial crisis, a belated process of soul-searching has begun in search of the right lessons to learn from it.

In Britain, members of the Conservative-led government — not least the prime minister, David Cameron — have echoed the Labour Party’s call for a more responsible capitalism.

There is a great difference, however, between being willing to talk about an issue and being ready to act.

It is a difference between those who still believe that all governments can do is get out of the way and those who believe there is a real role for governments in first reviving our economies, and then setting the right rules for future success. The challenge therefore is not just to capitalism but also to politics.

At the Group of 20 summit in London three years ago, Prime Minister Gordon Brown and President Obama led concerted action to guide the world economy from the brink. Three years later, some governments are engaging in a short-sighted fiscal protectionism that can only lead to stunted growth.

If we learned anything from the 1930s, it was that governments cannot shrug their shoulders and watch as their own people are consigned to unemployment. I find it tragic and astonishing that some governments need to learn this lesson again.

Nor should we forget the causes of the current growth and debt crisis as we seek to put our economies on a more sustainable footing.

Both the United States and Britain suffered because their economies were overly reliant on the financial sector’s artificial profits; living standards for the many worsened while the economic rewards skewed to the top 1 percent; a capitalist model encouraged short-term decision-making oriented toward quarterly profits rather than long-term health; and vested interests — from giant banks to media moguls —were deemed too big to fail or too powerful to challenge.

We need to recognize that the trickle-down promise of conservative theorists has turned into a gravity-defying reality in which wealth has flowed upward disproportionately and, too often, undeservedly. To address properly the squeeze in middle-class incomes on both sides of the Atlantic requires fresh thinking from governments about how people train for their working lives and what a living wage should be.

Governments can set better — not necessarily more — rules to encourage productive businesses that invest, invent, train, make and sell real products and services. We need rules that discourage the predatory behavior of those seeking the fast buck through hostile takeovers and asset-stripping that do not have the interests of the shareholders, the employees or the economy at heart.  In Britain, the Labour Party is considering how we can raise the bar for corporate takeovers so that companies’ futures are not determined by just a handful of speculators.

And governments must remember they are elected to serve the people, not the powerful lobbies who can pay for access or influence.

Too often the real enemies of market capitalism are some of the leading beneficiaries of the current model, which favors price-gouging cartels and consumer exploitation.

In Britain, airlines need to be more upfront about  the true cost of their fares, and pension firms cannot continue to sign up customers for products that can chip away at their retirement income through exorbitant management fees.

As President Obama noted in his State of the Union address on Tuesday, it is neither socially nor economically sustainable for the wealthiest and most powerful to avoid paying their fair share. I support proposals for a financial transactions tax levied equally on the major trading centers from Hong Kong and Singapore to Wall Street and the City of London. The British government needs to show more leadership on this issue in Europe — and all members of G-20 need to help make it happen.

Britain loses billions of pounds in revenues because of outdated rules that allow our richest citizens to keep their money in off-shore tax havens. Tax authorities need to know about income and wealth hidden behind front companies, trusts and other complex financial products. If these rules cannot be changed by international agreement, progressive governments should go ahead and do it themselves.

As President Obama said in his State of the Union address this week, it is “common sense” to ask a billionaire to pay, proportionally, at least as much as his secretary in taxes. Indeed, in Davos this week, I will look around the room and ask myself who pays taxes at a higher rate — those eating the soup or those serving it?

In my country, I believe that changing the rules of capitalism will mean a change of government. But more generally, it will require a change in what citizens expect and ask of politics. The question is not so much whether 20th-century capitalism is failing 21st-century society but whether politics can rise to the challenge of changing a flawed economic model.

============================

George Soros’s essay in the forthcoming edition of the New York Review of Books: http://www.nybooks.com/articles/archives/2012/feb/23/how-save-euro.
The essay is adapted from a speech he delivered at the opening of the World Economic Forum in Davos.

All best from Michael Vachon

How to Save the Euro

George Soros

The upcoming issue of The New York Review of Books.

My new book, Financial Turmoil in Europe and the United States, tries to explain and, to the extent possible, predict the outcome of the euro crisis. It follows the same pattern as my other books: it contains an updated version of my conceptual approach and the application of that approach to a particular situation, and it presents a real-time experiment to test the validity of my interpretation. Its account is not complete because the crisis is still ongoing.

We remain in the acute phase of the crisis; the prospect of a meltdown of the global financial system has not been removed. In my book, I proposed a plan that would bring immediate relief to global financial markets but it has not been adopted.

My proposal is to use the European Financial Stability Facility (EFSF), and its successor the European Stability Mechanism (ESM), to insure the European Central Bank (ECB) against the solvency risk on any newly issued Italian or Spanish treasury bills they may buy from commercial banks. Banks could then hold those bills as the equivalent of cash, enabling Italy and Spain to refinance their debt at close to 1 percent. Italy, for instance, would see its average cost of borrowing decline rather than increase from the current 4.3 percent. This would put their debt on a sustainable course and protect them against the threat of an impending Greek default. I call this the Padoa-Schioppa plan, in memory of my friend who helped stabilize Italy’s finances in the 1990s and who inspired the proposal. The plan is rather complicated, but it is both legally and technically sound. I describe it in detail in my book.

The European financial authorities rejected this plan in favor of the Long-Term Refinancing Operation (LTRO) of the European Central Bank, which provides unlimited amounts of liquidity to European banks—not to states themselves—for up to three years. That allows Italian and Spanish banks to buy the bonds of their own country and engage in a very profitable “carry trade”—in which one borrows at low interest to buy something that will pay higher interest—in those bonds at practically no risk because if the country defaulted the banks would be insolvent anyhow.

The difference between the two schemes is that mine would provide an instant reduction in interest costs to governments while the one actually adopted has kept the countries and their banks hovering on the edge of a potential insolvency. I am not sure whether the authorities have deliberately prolonged the crisis atmosphere in order to maintain pressure on heavily indebted countries or whether they were driven to their course of action by divergent views that they could not reconcile in any other way. As a disciple of Karl Popper, I ought to opt for the second alternative. Which interpretation is correct is not inconsequential, because the Padoa-Schioppa plan is still available and could be implemented at any time as long as the remaining funds of the EFSF are not otherwise committed.

Either way, it is Germany that dictates European policy because at times of crisis the creditors are in the driver’s seat. The trouble is that the cuts in government expenditures that Germany wants to impose on other countries will push Europe into a deflationary debt trap. Reducing budget deficits will put both wages and profits under downward pressure, the economies will contract, and tax revenues will fall. So the debt burden, which is a ratio of the accumulated debt to the GDP, will actually rise, requiring further budget cuts, setting in motion a vicious circle.

To be sure, I am not accusing Germany of acting in bad faith. It genuinely believes in the policies it is advocating. Germany is the most successful economy in Europe. Why should not the rest of Europe be like it? But it is pursuing an impossibility. In a closed system like the euro clearing system, everybody cannot be a creditor at the same time. The fact that a counterproductive policy is being imposed by Germany creates a very dangerous political dynamic. Instead of bringing the member countries closer together it will drive them to mutual recriminations. There is a real danger that the euro will undermine the political cohesion of the European Union.

The evolution of the European Union is following a course that greatly resembles a sequence of boom and bust or a financial bubble. That is no accident. Both processes are “reflexive,” that is, as I have argued elsewhere, they are largely driven by mistakes and misconceptions.

In the boom phase the European Union was what the British psychologist David Tuckett calls a “fantastic  object”—an unreal but attractive object of desire. To my mind, it represented the embodiment of an open society—another fantastic object. It was an association of nations founded on the principles of democracy, human rights, and the rule of law that is not dominated by any nation or nationality. Its creation was a feat of piecemeal social engineering led by a group of farsighted statesmen who understood that the fantastic object itself was not within their reach. They set limited objectives and firm timelines and then mobilized the political will for a small step forward, knowing full well that when they accomplished it, its inadequacy would become apparent and require a further step.

That is how the European Coal and Steel Community was gradually transformed into the European Union, step by step. During the boom period Germany was the main driving force. When the Soviet empire started to fall apart, Germany’s leaders realized that reunification of their country was possible only in a more united Europe. They needed the political support of other European powers, and they were willing to make considerable sacrifices to obtain it. When it came to bargaining they were willing to contribute a little more and take a little less than the others, thereby facilitating agreement. At that time, German statesmen used to assert that Germany had no independent foreign policy, only a European policy. The process—the boom, if you will—culminated with the Maastricht Treaty in 1992 and the introduction of the euro in 2002. It was followed by a period of stagnation that turned into a process of disintegration after the crash of 2008.

The euro was an incomplete currency and its architects knew it. The Maastricht Treaty established a monetary union without a political union. The euro boasted a common central bank to provide liquidity, but it lacked a common treasury that would be able to deal with solvency risk in times of crisis. The architects had good reason to believe, however, that when the time came further steps would be taken toward a political union. But the euro also had some other defects of which the architects were unaware and that are not fully understood even today. These defects contributed to setting in motion a process of disintegration.

The fathers of the euro relied on an interpretation of financial markets that proved its inadequacy in the crash of 2008. They believed, in particular, that only the public sector is capable of producing unacceptable economic imbalances; the invisible hand of the market would correct the imbalances produced by markets. In addition, they believed that the safeguards they introduced against public sector imbalances were adequate. Consequently, they treated government bonds as riskless assets that banks could buy and hold without allocating any capital reserves against them.

When the euro was introduced, the ECB treated the government bonds of all member states as equal. This gave banks an incentive to gorge themselves on the bonds of the weaker countries in order to earn a few extra basis points, since the yields on those bonds were slightly higher. It also caused interest rates to converge. That, in turn, caused economic performance to diverge. Germany, struggling with the burdens of reunification, undertook structural reforms, principally in its labor markets, and became more competitive. Other countries, benefiting from lower interest rates, enjoyed a housing boom that made them less competitive. That is how the introduction of the euro caused the divergence in competitiveness that is now so difficult to correct. The banks were weighed down with the government bonds of less competitive countries that turned from riskless assets into the riskiest ones.

The tipping point was reached when a newly elected Greek government revealed that the previous government had cheated and the national deficit was much bigger than had been announced. The Greek crisis revealed the gravest defect in the Maastricht Treaty: it has no provisions for correcting errors in the euro’s design. There is neither a mechanism for enforcing payment by member states of the European debt nor an exit mechanism from the euro; and member countries cannot resort to printing money. The statutes of the ECB strictly prohibit it from lending to member states, although it lends to banks. So it was left to the other member states to come to Greece’s rescue.

Unfortunately the European authorities had little understanding of how financial markets really work. Far from combining all the available knowledge in the market’s movements, as economic theory claims, financial markets are ruled by impressions and emotions and they abhor uncertainty. To bring a financial crisis under control requires firm leadership and ample financial resources. But Germany did not want to become the deep pocket for bad debtors. Consequently Europe always did too little too late and the Greek crisis snowballed. The bonds of other heavily indebted countries such as Italy and Spain were hit by contagion—i.e., in view of the failure in Greece they had to pay higher yields. The European banks suffered losses that were not recognized on their balance sheets.

Germany aggravated the situation by imposing draconian conditions and insisting that Greece should pay penalty rates on the loans in the rescue package that Germany and other states provided. The Greek economy collapsed, capital fled, and Greece repeatedly failed to meet the conditions of the rescue package. Eventually Greece became patently insolvent. Germany then further destabilized the situation by insisting on private sector participation in the rescue. This pushed the risk premiums on Italian and Spanish bonds through the roof and endangered the solvency of the banking system. The authorities then ordered the European banking system to be recapitalized. This was the coup de grâce. It created a powerful incentive for the banks to shrink their balance sheets by calling in loans and getting rid of risky government bonds, rather than selling shares at a discount.

That is where we are today. The credit crunch started to make its effect felt on the real economy in the last quarter of 2011. The ECB then started to reduce interest rates and aggressively expand its balance sheet by buying government bonds in the open market. The ECB’s LTRO facility provided relief to the banking system but left Italian and Spanish bonds precariously balanced between the sustainable and the unsustainable.

What lies ahead? Economic deterioration and political and social disintegration will mutually reinforce each other. During the boom phase the political leadership was in the forefront of further integration; now the European leaders are trying to protect a status quo that is clearly untenable. Treaties and laws that were meant to be stepping stones have turned into immovable rocks. I have in mind Article 123 of the Lisbon Treaty, which prohibits the ECB from lending money directly to member states. The German authorities, notably the Constitutional Court and the Bundesbank, are dead set on enforcing rules that have proved to be unworkable. For instance, the Bundesbank’s narrow interpretation of Article 123 prevented Germany from contributing its Special Drawing Rights to a rescue effort by the G20. This is the path to disintegration. Those who find the status quo intolerable and are actively looking for change are driven to anti-European and xenophobic extremism. What is happening today in Hungary—where a far-right party is demanding that Hungary leave the EU—is a precursor of what is in store.

The outlook is truly dismal but there must be a way to avoid it. After all, history is not predetermined. I can see an alternative. It is to rediscover the European Union as the “fantastic object” that used to be so alluring when it was only an idea. That fantastic object was almost within reach until we lost our way. The authorities forgot that they are fallible and started to cling to the status quo as if it were sacrosanct. The European Union as a reality bears little resemblance to the fantastic object that used to be so alluring. It is undemocratic to the point where the electorate is disaffected and it is ungovernable to the point where it cannot deal with the crisis that it has created.

These are the defects that need to be fixed. That should not be impossible. All we need to do is to reassert the principles of open society and recognize that the prevailing order is not cast in stone and rules are in need of improvement. We need to find a European solution for the euro crisis because national solutions would lead to the dissolution of the European Union, and that would be catastrophic; but we must also change the status quo. That is the kind of program that could inspire the silent majority that is disaffected and disoriented but at heart still pro-European.

When I look around the world I see people aspiring to open society. I see it in the Arab Spring, in various African countries; I see stirrings in Russia, and as far away as Burma and Malayasia. Why not in Europe?

To be a little more specific, let me suggest the outlines of a European solution to the euro crisis. It involves a delicate two-phase maneuver, similar to the one that got us out of the crash of 2008. When a car is skidding, you first have to turn the steering wheel in the direction of the skid, and only after you have regained control can you correct your direction. In this case, you must first impose strict fiscal discipline on the deficit countries and encourage structural reforms; but then you must find some stimulus to get you out of the deflationary vicious circle— because structural reforms alone will not do it. The stimulus will have to come from the European Union and it will have to be guaranteed jointly and severally. It is likely to involve eurobonds in one guise or another. It is important, however, to spell out the solution in advance. Without a clear game plan Europe will remain mired in a larger vicious circle in which economic decline and political disintegration mutually reinforce each other.

In this election year, and thinking of RIO+20, The Green Economy will be promoted by the US by helping the developing countries slow their emission growth in the development process.

—————————————————————————-

GOAL: The goal of USAID’s Climate and Development Strategy is to enable countries to accelerate their transition to climate resilient, low emissions development to promote sustainable economic growth.

The U.S. Agency for International Development (USAID) recently released a new 5-year Climate Change and Development Strategy.

(http://www.usaid.gov/our_work/policy_planning_and_learning/documents/GCCS.pdf) and a one-page summary

(http://www.usaid.gov/our_work/environment/climate/docs/GCC_Strategy_One-Pager.pdf).  We are very excited to be launching this strategy as a great start to 2012.

__________________________

Ms. Duane M. Muller
Senior Climate Change Specialist
U.S. Agency for International Development
EGAT/ESP/GCC

tel 202.712.5304

dmuller@usaid.gov

External: http://www.usaid.gov/climate/

Internal: http://inside.usaid.gov/climate/

—————————————————–
Climate Change Challenges and OpportunitiesIncreasing resilience to climate change.

Some 2.5 billion people depend directly on climate-sensitive economic activities such as agriculture, fisheries, forestry, and tourism for their livelihoods.

Climate change impacts, in the form of rising temperatures, increasingly variable rainfall, stronger storms, and sea level rise, are likely to undermine these livelihoods and threaten food security and public health, especially in the developing countries where USAID works.  USAID, by helping countries increase their capacity to withstand and bounce back from climate change impacts, plays a vital role in preserving economic opportunities and ensuring access to food and health services in spite of a changing climate. Promoting low emission economic development.

According to the International Energy Agency, in 2008 greenhouse gas emissions from developing countries exceeded those from developed countries for the first time.

Over the next 30 years, more than 90 percent of projected growth in global energy demand will come from developing countries.

Investing in low emission development that leapfrogs traditional carbon-intensive energy sources and supports clean, efficient energy solutions benefits both the environment and global economic growth and helps create new markets for U.S. technologies

SPORTS

January 26, 2012
	The New York Times Kiryat Shmona is about two miles from the border between Israel and Lebanon.

Small City Is Home to Israel’s Unlikely Top Team

By JAMES MONTAGUE in The New York Times of January 26, 2012

A soccer team from Kiryat Shmona, a city with a population of 23,000 in the north of Israel, is on course for its first league championship and a qualifying spot in the UEFA Champions League.

KIRYAT SHMONA, Israel — This city is one of Israel’s smallest, a hardscrabble place with a population of 23,000 that is less than two miles from the Lebanese border and through the decades has BBC.com” href=”http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/middle_east/5264594.stm”>repeatedly found itself caught in the crossfire of Arab-Israeli strife.

NYTimes.com” href=”http://select.nytimes.com/gst/abstract.html?res=F70C15FA3559147A93C7AB178DD85F408785F9&scp=10&sq=kiryat%20shmona%201974&st=cse”>In 1974, Kiryat Shmona was the scene of a terrorist attack in which 18 Israelis, many of them children, were killed. Rockets have clobbered the town during cross-border fighting. Underground shelters are as familiar to the city as traffic lights. And jobs can be scarce.

Yet somehow, Kiryat Shmona’s professional soccer team has become the runaway leader of Israel’s top league, has captured a separate tournament that concluded this week and has begun to turn perceptions of this often-beleaguered community upside down.

For now, the king of soccer in this country is a team that plays in a 5,500-seat stadium, has a diverse 23-man roster that includes six Israeli Arabs and is still adjusting to the curiosity it is creating.

When The New York Times recently contacted Adi Faraj, ( by name – he is an Arab- our comment) the club’s 26-year-old press officer, about doing an article about the team, he was initially convinced the phone call was a hoax.

“Why would The New York Times want to write about us?” he said.

But as its remarkable run of victories mounts, more and more attention will come its way. On Tuesday, a sizable contingent of the city’s residents traveled south to Petah Tikva to watch its team take on a traditional Israeli power — Hapoel Tel Aviv — in the final of the Toto Cup, the first major tournament of the season.

In a grueling contest, Kiryat Shmona surrendered a late goal that tied the score but prevailed in a penalty-kick shootout.

More impressively, the club has an 11-point lead at the top of Israel’s 16-team Premier League, putting it on course for its first league championship and, remarkably, a qualifying spot in the world’s richest and most prestigious soccer club competition, the Europe-based UEFA Champions League.

If Kiryat Shmona gets that far, it will become one of the smallest clubs to qualify for the Champions League and will find itself, at least technically, alongside powerhouse clubs like Manchester United, Barcelona and Real Madrid. For comparison, think, perhaps, of a community college somehow showing up in the N.C.A.A. Division I basketball bracket in March.

That this long-shot team — officially known as Hapoel Ironi Kiryat Shmona — has been able to get this far has already shaken up Israeli soccer, which is normally dominated by clubs from Tel Aviv, Jerusalem and Haifa, with their bigger budgets.

Beyond that, the team has given a city that has often felt marginalized and neglected a sense of pride.

“Today, it’s like a dream,” Almorg Moryoussef, a 23-year-old student (by name an Arab – our comment), said as he stood outside Ironi Stadium in Kiryat Shmona last Saturday as the team prepared to play Ironi Nir Ramat HaSharon and local fans — nicknamed the Blue Lions — gathered with drums and banners.

“This is the very first time since Kiryat Shmona was established that the city was in the news not because of the connection with missiles, attacks and war, but football,” he said.

The team’s rise can largely be traced to one man — Izzy Sheratzky, a millionaire from Tel Aviv who made his money in Global Positioning System devices that help track stolen cars and who founded the club 10 years ago.

Sheratzky, a native Israeli, began investing heavily in Kiryat Shmona after being moved by images of its being pounded by Katyusha rockets 13 years ago. Eventually, he decided to buy two local clubs and merge them with a dream of taking his new team to the highest level of European soccer.

“In 1999, I saw the wars and the Katyushas and many bombs,” he said in an interview last Saturday an hour before his team took the field. “Many people left Kiryat Shmona. The situation was very bad. There was no work and there was the bombs. I decided to take care of Kiryat Shmona and to help them.”

At first, Sheratzky looked to the city’s immediate needs: a soup kitchen for the poor, a children’s dental clinic, an English-language school. But he concluded that the city’s residents needed something else to bolster their morale, namely soccer. He bought the two teams, one in Israel’s fourth division, the other in the fifth, and began thinking big.

“We were 11th in the fourth league and now I hope we take the championship, and maybe next year I am coming to London for the Champions League!” he said, laughing.

When Sheratzky first arrived, the players thought his talk of rising through the divisions and of one day winning the Champions League was fanciful at best, deluded at worst.

“Izzy came here when I was a player and said we’ll be in the national league, that we’d be champions and after that be in Champions League,” said Yossi Edri, the club’s 39-year-old general manager. “I thought: Who is this man? We thought he was cuckoo.”

But as the team rose steadily, not by spending lavishly on players, but by investing in an academy to nurture young players, Sheratzky’s vision slowly started to become more realistic. Last year, Kiryat Shmona won the Toto Cup for the first time. Now it has repeated, and if it can capture the State Cup tournament and the league title, it will do something no Israeli team has done before.

It will try to do so with a combination of journeyman players, young prospects, a handful of foreigners — including a 27-year-old Argentine-American midfielder, — and, perhaps most significantly, a mixture of Israeli Arabs and Jews.

“For us, this is very important,” Edri said of the roster’s makeup. “With football you can do peace, the Arab and Israeli living together.”

By the time the referee blew his whistle to start the match last Saturday, 2,000 fans had arrived to cheer on their team, despite biting cold. By the end of the match 3,500 were there, still not enough to fill the stadium. Although that would seem to suggest lingering fan apathy amid all the growing success, it might also illustrate the difficulties such a small city faces in operating on a big-league level.

Sheratzky watched the match unfold, smoking a Cuban cigar as the fans chanted in Hebrew, “Kiryat Shmona, the empire of the north!” In the end, Kiryat Shmona won easily, thrashing Ramat HaSharon, 4-0.

Much of Kiryat Shmona’s fan base is of Sephardic descent, reflecting a population that consists primarily of Jews whose heritage is North African and Middle Eastern. But there are other fans, too, like Jay Abramoff, 41, from the United States, who immigrated to Israel 15 years ago and recently moved to the outskirts of the city.

“I fell in love with the whole atmosphere and started coming to soccer games for the first time in my life,” Abramoff said at Saturday’s game. “I’ve been involved with teams that came out of nowhere to win a division. I was in Atlanta 20 years ago when the Braves went from worst to first. It feels the same.”

As soon as the final whistle blew, the whole team linked arms and ran toward the stands where the fans had sung continuously through the match. The players bowed in appreciation.

Appreciative, too, was Coach Ran Ben Shimon, 41, who once played internationally and has presided over the team for the last six years.

“Sometimes when we played the big teams we would be shaking,” he said. “But I have smart players.
Stars — it is not that they are found in the sky, they are also found in groups. So this big superstar in this club is the team and the team spirit.”

Meanwhile, Moryoussef, the student who is a Kiryat Shmona fan, and the rest of the Blue Lions packed up their drums and rolled up their signs, as car horns honked loudly outside in celebration.

Sheratzky stood and observed it all as the stadium’s floodlights were turned off one by one. “Look, over there is Lebanon, over there is the Golan,” he said, pointing at the dark hills that rise around the stadium, highlighting the city’s precarious geography. “No cinema here, they all closed. But football is enjoyed by the people.”

Three days later, his players handed him the Toto Cup after their victory in Petah Tikva and again went over to the stands to thank the fans — some of them singing, some of them crying.

Moryoussef was present, too, just as he had been Saturday. “This is my dream,” he said, beaming. “Izzy Sheratzky is right. We are only happy through football.”

NEWLY ELECTED ECOSOC PRESIDENT ENVISAGES ECOSOC AT THE HEART OF RIO+20 AND A POST-2015 DEVELOPMENT FRAMEWORK.

Miloš Koterec, Ambassador and Permanent Representative of Slovakia to the United Nations in New York, has been elected 68th President of the United Nations Economic and Social Council (ECOSOC) – a position he will serve during one year. During the official handover ceremony, the incoming President said that he considered the Council the right place to discuss preparations and follow-up regarding the UN Conference on Sustainable Development (UNCSD or Rio+20), which will be held in June 2012 in Rio de Janeiro, Brazil, as well as to shape the post-2015 development framework.

More information is available online.

===================

18-19 February 2012 13th Global Major Groups and Stakeholders Forum

In preparation for its 12th special session of the Governing Council/ Global Ministerial Environment Forum (GC/GMEF), to be held from 20-22 February 2012 in Nairobi, UNEP is organizing the 13th Global Major Groups and Stakeholders Forum (GMGSF-13) from 18-19 February 2012 in Nairobi. Participants will discuss the state of negotiations and preparations of the UN Conference on Sustainable Development (Rio+20), and the so-called Rio+20 themes.Registration is now open for all interested Major Groups and Civil Society representatives.

=================

VERY IMPORTANT – PLEASE NOTE:

UNCSD DOES NOT STAND ANYMORE FOR THE UN COMMISSION ON SUSTAINABLE DEVELOPMENT – A UN BODY WITH ANNUAL MEETINGS AND ITS OWN SERIES OF RUN-UP MEETINGS – BUT FOR THE UN CONFERENCE ON SUSTAINABLE DEVELOPMENT – A ONE TIME EVENT.

ARE WE RIGHT TO THINK THAT THIS MIGHT FOR ONCE DO AWAY WITH A USELESS UN BODY – CREATED IN HOPE BY THE FIRST RIO CONFERENCE OF 1992 BUT KILLED IN THE DELIBERATIONS THAT ROLLED ON SINCE THEN, AND SUBSTITUTE FOR IT AN OUTCOME FROM THE RIO+20 MEETING?

WHAT WILL BE THIS NEW BODY? COULD IT BE SE4ALL (Sustainable Energy for All), or a COMMISSION FOR A GREEN ECONOMY, OR SOME OTHER FORM OF THE WORLD WE WISH FOR AS PER THE UN SECRETARY GENERAL 5 YEAR PLAN?

THE OIL INDUSTRY TURNED US ALL INTO PRISONERS WITH THEIR INVESTMENT IN GOVERNMENT – CONTRIBUTIONS TO ELECTION CAMPAIGNS IN ORDER TO GET SUBSIDIES FOR THEIR INDUSTRIES IN RETURN. THIS MAKES IT IMPOSSIBLE TO INTRODUCE THE ALTERNATIVES TO OIL, COAL,  AND NATURAL GAS.

——-

from: Bill McKibben for 350.org

Hey everyone,

Yesterday was one of the truly fun days in this whole wild year of organizing. We had hundreds of referees outside the Capitol, and we blew our whistles like crazy, and we threw penalty flags, and we had a hell of a good time.

My favorite scene, actually, was watching hundreds of people in ref shirts descending the escalators to the subway for the ride to the day’s final stop, the American Petroleum Institute. It was an endless line of black and white, a long human stripe of fair play!

I’d like to ask you to join in the fun by leading an action that blows the whistle on your local Member of Congress who is taking money from the oil industry. We need to be a little nuanced: for those of you with representatives who have been taking lots of oil money and then voting for handouts for oil companies, then the task is clear — they need to hear from some refs. For those of you with representatives who are doing what’s right already, get in touch with us – I’m sure there is some other elected official nearby who needs to hear from some refs.

To sign up to lead an action to blow the whistle on Congress, click here.

So go to it!

The Romney – Gingrich debate throws light on the Bain Corporation that was Mitt Romney’s money-maker. Fareed Zakaria takes a peak under the blanket by inviting David Rubenstein on the CNN/GPS program – January 22, 2012. For those with a memory, Texas Oil money was flowing at Carlyle – this includes the first President of the Busch family and people in his entourage. This included also the Bin Laden family. All that was politely not mentioned on the program – but if  interested – there was enough of this on the internet in the post 9/11 days when members of the Bin Laden family where sprinted out from the US by big jet.

——————-

The power of money has no limit and some references seem to be:

In his documentary The World According to Bush (May 2004), William Karel interviewed Frank Carlucci to discuss the presence of Shafiq bin Laden, Osama bin Laden’s estranged brother, at Carlyle’s annual investor conference while the September 11 attacks were occurring.

Zeitgeist The Movie makes similar claims that The Carlyle Group may have played a part in 9/11.

1. Glassman, James K. “Big Deals. David Rubenstein and His Partners Have Made Billions With the Carlyle Group, the World’s Hottest Private Equity Firm. How Have They Made All That Money? Why Are They in Washington?”Washingtonian, June 2006.
2. The Carlyle Group. Economist, Jun 26th 2003

—————–

ZAKARIA: Looting – that is what Newt Gingrich says private equity is all about. But rather than take his word for it, I wanted to go to the top.

RUBENSTEIN: My pleasure, Fareed.

Santorum was the man in front at Iowa but he has no National base beyond the Conservative fringe that elected him as their representative. The more he hangs on the more it is obvious that he has no chance to win in the big game. On the other hand Ron Paul’s Libertarians can reach out to the voting left and in a general election mess things up to the point that he could in fact endanger anyone.

If  Santorum leaves the primaries, within the Republican party, his voters would split between Gingrich and Ron Paul endangering Romney further. With his 13.9% in tax payments Romney stands now little chance to win in November. That leaves Gingrich and Ron Paul as better choices for the Republicans, with Ron Paul at an advantage as he has also outside Libertarians in his reach.

This picture can get clearer by next Tuesday – January 31st – after the Florida primaries.

The supporter, Dr. Miriam Adelson, is the wife of Sheldon Adelson, a longtime Gingrich friend and a patron who this month contributed $5 million to the super PAC, Winning Our Future. Dr. Adelson’s check will bring the couple’s total contributions to Winning Our Future to $10 million, a figure that could substantially neutralize the millions of dollars already being spent in Florida by Mr. Romney andRestore Our Future, a super PAC supporting him.

Mr. Adelson’s initial check financed a barrage of negative ads against Mr. Romney in South Carolina, helping Mr. Gingrich to an upset victory in Saturday’s Republican primary there. But those attacks, which focused on Mr. Romney’s wealth and private equity career, also drew condemnation from many conservatives, who said Mr. Gingrich’s allies were undercutting free-market capitalism and amplifying class-warfare arguments being made by Democrats and Occupy Wall Street demonstrators.

In making the couple’s second $5 million contribution, Dr. Adelson expressed a wish to Winning Our Future officials that the money be used “to continue the pro-Newt message,” one of the people familiar with the contribution said, rather than attack Mr. Romney.

The Adelsons’ contributions on Mr. Gingrich’s behalf illustrate how rapidly a new era of unlimited political money is reshaping the rules of presidential politics and empowering individual donors to a degree unseen since before the Watergate scandals.

The wealth of a single couple has now leveled the playing field in two critical primary states for Mr. Gingrich, a candidate who ended September more than $1 million in debt, finished out of the running in Iowa and New Hampshire and, unlike Mr. Romney, has yet to attract the broad network of hard-money donors and bundlers that traditionally propel presidential campaigns.

The contribution also underscored how the advantages built by Mr. Romney’s campaign, including a potent get-out-the-vote operation in Florida and tens of millions of dollars in campaign contributions raised in chunks of no more than $2,500, are being challenged by new forces, including the high-profile debates that have elevated Mr. Gingrich and the emergence of new campaign finance rules in the wake of the Supreme Court’s landmark Citizens United ruling.

That decision paved the way for super PACs, including the kind that have spent more than $30 million in the Republican primary so far: political committees run by each candidate’s former aides and financed by a few wealthy supporters. Because they are technically independent of the candidate, the groups can raise and spend unlimited amounts of money, rendering less relevant the limits that Congress imposed in the 1970s on contributions to candidates.

———————————————————————–

Many Democrats say the intraparty attacks by Mr. Gingrich especially are certain to weaken Mr. Romney. But on the other hand – some in Mr. Obama’s circle privately caution that the assaults also could strengthen Mr. Romney for a general election fight, by forcing him to improve his debate skills and answer the attacks against him — just as Mr. Obama, his advisers acknowledge, was helped by his long 2008 battle with Hillary Rodham Clinton.  These advisers think that the pre-election fight favors Romney by making his weaknesses acceptable by some voters.

——————————————————————————————————————————————————————————————-

FOCUS | Santorum to Rape Victims: ‘Make the Best Out of a Bad Situation’

Tanya Somanader, ThinkProgress
Intro: “Standing steadfast as the most socially right-wing candidate in the GOP presidential field, Rick Santorum has repeatedly touted his extreme anti-choice position, which dictates that abortion should be uniformly illegal, even in cases of rape or incest.”
READ MORE

Ron Paul, Take Two

One thing Glenn and I agree on: Obama’s ban on torture aside, he has been a huge disappointment to anyone who was hoping that his election would mean an end to the violation of the civil liberties, due-process rights and human rights of detainees in the “war on terror.” His refusal to prosecute the architects of torture in the previous administration may have been politically astute (we on the left tend to forget that Obama was elected with plenty of votes from Republicans, independents and conservative Democrats who liked his rhetoric of bipartisanship and national unification). But it has meant that those policies were never confronted, debated and decisively rejected, and the people who put them in place and carried them out were never called to account. Lynndie England went to prison; John Yoo is teaching law at the University of California, Berkeley.

As David Cole wrote in The Nation recently, Bush has been gone for three years. Having signed the NDAA, however reluctantly, Obama now owns those policies, if not the sadistic triumphalism that was the characteristic note of the Bush era, and so do we all. People are even willing to give the government license to kill its own citizens: Anwar al-Awlaki was an American, and his assassination was widely applauded. Paul is one of the few nationally prominent people to have criticized it (along with the assassination of Osama bin Laden). That the president can now order the assassination of US citizens anywhere in the world has become part of the national wallpaper. It’s the way we live now.

These are important issues, and I’m glad Glenn follows them so energetically—and I’m glad someone, even if it’s Ron Paul, is talking them up in the campaign. But let’s not go crazy here. They are not the only issues. It makes no sense for progressive pundits who have devoted their lives to defending the welfare state, progressive taxation, labor unions and the federal government’s ability to protect citizens from abuses at the state level to heap praise on Paul, who vigorously opposes all those things as part of his Ayn Randian anti-government, every-man-is-an-island worldview. It is a fact that most of these pundit fans are white men (not all of them, obviously, as has been pointed out by literal-minded readers), as are (again not exclusively, but predominantly) Paul’s supporters. There are probably numerous reasons for this, but in my opinion, one of them is that some of the areas in which Ron Paul is truly awful are just not politically central to them. (Note by contrast feminist civil libertarian Wendy Kaminer’s carefully parsed discussion of Paul in The Atlantic.) You can’t praise Paul’s stance on “civil liberties” as pure and uncompromising if you see reproductive rights as a civil liberty. You can’t celebrate Paul for bemoaning the effect of the drug war on black America without noting that criminalizing abortion would put a different set of black people into the criminal justice system—not low-level drug users and dealers but ordinary women, mostly mothers. To those who say abortion rights are safe so Paul’s position doesn’t matter, I would suggest a brush-up on recent state developments. We are much closer to criminalizing abortion in the South and Midwest than we are to legalizing crack and heroin anywhere in the United States. And to those who say segregation is a dead letter, I’d say it’s not at all fantastic to see popular libertarianism tipping the balance in favor of allowing landlords, hoteliers, restaurant owners and such to exclude people on racial grounds. Informally, it already happens.

Basically, I’m bewildered by progressives who embrace Paul. It’s as if there has to be a male leader, someone “uncompromising” and “pure” and “principled” to romanticize, and since obviously that can’t be a Democrat (sellouts! wimps!), the eye of the pundit wanders right. With Occupy Wall Street still animating the national conversation, this seems like exactly the wrong time to befriend the nation’s major proselytizer for “Austrian economics.”

It’s not only that the messenger discredits the message—Paul’s wacky statements are not ancient history; just recently he told an evangelical gathering in South Carolina that the gold standard is mandated by the Bible. It’s that the message itself discredits the message. There has to be a better way to argue for diminishing America’s huge global military footprint than by connecting it to an isolationism so extreme it would mean quitting the United Nations and abolishing foreign aid, and a better way to protect civil liberties than by opposing them to civil rights. Positions don’t exist in isolation, either from who is advocating them or who is listening. Context is all. And the extreme-right, anti-government libertarian context is bad news for the left. As I said before, Paul is a reactionary crank, and by branding with his name positions that plenty of progressives take, we inadvertently strengthen the case against ourselves.

One thing Glenn and I agree on: Obama’s ban on torture aside, he has been a huge disappointment to anyone who was hoping that his election would mean an end to the violation of the civil liberties, due-process rights and human rights of detainees in the “war on terror.” His refusal to prosecute the architects of torture in the previous administration may have been politically astute (we on the left tend to forget that Obama was elected with plenty of votes from Republicans, independents and conservative Democrats who liked his rhetoric of bipartisanship and national unification). But it has meant that those policies were never confronted, debated and decisively rejected, and the people who put them in place and carried them out were never called to account. Lynndie England went to prison; John Yoo is teaching law at the University of California, Berkeley.

As David Cole wrote in The Nation recently, Bush has been gone for three years. Having signed the NDAA, however reluctantly, Obama now owns those policies, if not the sadistic triumphalism that was the characteristic note of the Bush era, and so do we all. People are even willing to give the government license to kill its own citizens: Anwar al-Awlaki was an American, and his assassination was widely applauded. Paul is one of the few nationally prominent people to have criticized it (along with the assassination of Osama bin Laden). That the president can now order the assassination of US citizens anywhere in the world has become part of the national wallpaper. It’s the way we live now.

These are important issues, and I’m glad Glenn follows them so energetically—and I’m glad someone, even if it’s Ron Paul, is talking them up in the campaign. But let’s not go crazy here. They are not the only issues. It makes no sense for progressive pundits who have devoted their lives to defending the welfare state, progressive taxation, labor unions and the federal government’s ability to protect citizens from abuses at the state level to heap praise on Paul, who vigorously opposes all those things as part of his Ayn Randian anti-government, every-man-is-an-island worldview. It is a fact that most of these pundit fans are white men (not all of them, obviously, as has been pointed out by literal-minded readers), as are (again not exclusively, but predominantly) Paul’s supporters. There are probably numerous reasons for this, but in my opinion, one of them is that some of the areas in which Ron Paul is truly awful are just not politically central to them. (Note by contrast feminist civil libertarian Wendy Kaminer’s carefully parsed discussion of Paul in The Atlantic.) You can’t praise Paul’s stance on “civil liberties” as pure and uncompromising if you see reproductive rights as a civil liberty. You can’t celebrate Paul for bemoaning the effect of the drug war on black America without noting that criminalizing abortion would put a different set of black people into the criminal justice system—not low-level drug users and dealers but ordinary women, mostly mothers. To those who say abortion rights are safe so Paul’s position doesn’t matter, I would suggest a brush-up on recent state developments. We are much closer to criminalizing abortion in the South and Midwest than we are to legalizing crack and heroin anywhere in the United States. And to those who say segregation is a dead letter, I’d say it’s not at all fantastic to see popular libertarianism tipping the balance in favor of allowing landlords, hoteliers, restaurant owners and such to exclude people on racial grounds. Informally, it already happens.

Basically, I’m bewildered by progressives who embrace Paul. It’s as if there has to be a male leader, someone “uncompromising” and “pure” and “principled” to romanticize, and since obviously that can’t be a Democrat (sellouts! wimps!), the eye of the pundit wanders right. With Occupy Wall Street still animating the national conversation, this seems like exactly the wrong time to befriend the nation’s major proselytizer for “Austrian economics.”

It’s not only that the messenger discredits the message—Paul’s wacky statements are not ancient history; just recently he told an evangelical gathering in South Carolina that the gold standard is mandated by the Bible. It’s that the message itself discredits the message. There has to be a better way to argue for diminishing America’s huge global military footprint than by connecting it to an isolationism so extreme it would mean quitting the United Nations and abolishing foreign aid, and a better way to protect civil liberties than by opposing them to civil rights. Positions don’t exist in isolation, either from who is advocating them or who is listening. Context is all. And the extreme-right, anti-government libertarian context is bad news for the left. As I said before, Paul is a reactionary crank, and by branding with his name positions that plenty of progressives take, we inadvertently strengthen the case against ourselves.

Fareed Zakaria, January 22, 2012, on CNN/GPS:

Here’s my take. I spent the last few weeks working on an essay for “Time” magazine on Barack Obama’s foreign policy, and in association with that piece, I interviewed the president last Wednesday in the Oval Office. Let me give you a few of my thoughts and impressions.

All in all, it’s a pretty strong record, which is why you actually don’t hear Republicans talking much about foreign policy on the campaign trail these days.

For more on all this, you can read my cover essay in this week’s “Time” magazine and the interview, or go to Time.com for the complete interview.

In State of the Union address, Obama says the “defining issue of our time” is how to keep the American dream alive.

“We can either settle for a country where a shrinking number of people do really well, while a growing number of Americans barely get by. Or we can restore an economy where everyone gets a fair shot, everyone does their fair share, and everyone plays by the same set of rules.

“What?s at stake are not Democratic values or Republican values, but American values. We have to reclaim them.”

Watch Obama’s address now on CNN, CNN.com and the CNN mobile apps.

Watch live coverage now on http://CNN.com/Live

Obama announces creation of a trade enforcement unit to investigate “unfair trade practices in countries like China.”

President Obama asks for creation of special unit of federal prosecutors to further investigate mortgage lending practices that led to the housing crisis.

Above sounds like President Obama has listened to a line or two from the Occupy Wall Street  movement.

Declaring that “we’ve come too far to turn back now,” the president used his final State of the Union address before he faces the voters to showcase the extent to which he will try to contrast his core economic principles with those of his Republican rivals in a time of deep economic uncertainty. While many Americans remain disappointed with the state of the economy and the president’s handling of it, Mr. Obama nonetheless tried to bring into relief the difference between where the country was when he took over and where it is now.

“The state of our union is getting stronger,” he declared in time-honored tradition. “In the last 22 months, businesses have created more than three million jobs.” He pointed to renewed hiring by American manufacturers and — borrowing the “built to last” phrase from the auto industry he helped save — he sketched out, albeit vaguely, what he called a blueprint for economic growth in which the wealthy play by the same rules as ordinary Americans.

Mr. Obama presented a somewhat modest list of initiatives he could enact through executive authority coupled with more ambitious proposals unlikely to advance in Congress. It was an address meant to show a president still interested in governing and a leader putting the interests of the American middle class at the top of his agenda.

Many of his proposals centered on changes to the tax code, including limiting deductions for companies that move jobs overseas, rewarding companies that return jobs to the United States and increasing taxes on wealthy Americans.

Mr. Obama proposed a way to allocate savings from ending the war in Iraq and winding down the war in Afghanistan: by using half of the war savings on infrastructure projects and the other half to reduce the deficit.

“We will not go back to an economy weakened by outsourcing, bad debt and phony financial profits,” Mr. Obama said.

Mr. Obama’s income tax proposal, based on what he calls the “Buffett Rule” ( named after the Berkshire Hathaway  chairman – the multi-billionaire  Warren E. Buffett who first suggested this –  whereby people making more than $1 million a year would pay a minimum effective tax rate of at least 30 percent in income taxes. was particularly charged, coming as it did less than 24 hours after Mitt Romney, a Republican presidential candidate, released tax returns showing that he and his wife, Ann, had an effective federal income tax rate in 2010 of 13.9 percent and an income ranking among the top one-10th of 1 percent of all taxpayers in 2010. To illustrate this further, Mr. Obama used Mr. Buffett’s secretary, Debbie Bosanek, as one of his props, seating her with the first lady Michelle Obama.  Ms. Bosanek  effective tax rate is higher than Mr. Buffett’s, he has said quoting what Mr. Buffett said earlier.)

Mr. Obama would like the new tax to replace the  alternative minimum tax, which was created decades ago to make sure that the richest taxpayers with plentiful deductions and credits did not avoid income taxes, but which now affects millions of Americans who are considered upper middle class.

While he was addressing Congress and assembled dignitaries, Mr. Obama was reaching to  the far greater national television audience of American voters, and his speech, while deep in policy initiatives, served in many ways as a prime-time kickoff of his re-election campaign.

The official Republican response to the address, delivered by Gov. Mitch Daniels of Indiana said among other things – in a clearly sad voice:

“The president did not cause the economic and fiscal crisis that continue in America tonight,” Mr. Daniels said. “But he was elected on a promise to fix them, and he cannot claim that the last three years have made things anything but worse.”

Most of the first lady’s guests on Tuesday night came from states that figure heavily in Mr. Obama’s re-election plans. Included were North Carolina, from where Mr. Obama selected both a worker and an employer, to demonstrate the benefits of public-private partnerships, and Florida, from where he chose a homeowner who was able to keep her house thanks to Mr. Obama’s housing refinance program.

Mr. Obama said a major part of his agenda would be the expansion of domestic energy supplies, both from traditional fuels like oil and natural gas and from cleaner sources like wind and the sun. He singled out the rapid growth of domestic natural gas production through the technique known as hydraulic fracturing, or fracking, which the government says has unlocked a 100-year supply that now makes the United States the Saudi Arabia of natural gas.

Mr. Obama took credit for reviving the US auto-motive industry and returning General Motors to be again the biggest car manufacturer in the world, and getting Chrysler to hire workers again.

Reflecting the heavy emphasis on the economy in an election year, the president’s speech was relatively short on national security, where most political observers and believe anyway that his performance has been  stronger than on the economy.

Mr. Obama ended his speech with the American assault last year that finally, after 10 years, killed Osama bin Laden, and talked of that fateful day last May when he monitored the attack from the White House.

He called on the country to emulate the unity of the Navy Seal team that conducted the raid. “When you’re marching into battle, you look out for the person next to you,” the president said, “or the mission fails.”

We post this not because we have major disagreements with the APN, but because we get more and more disgusted by the fact that Palestinians keep shooting at their own feet and miss every opportunity fate allows them. Ahmedi-Nejad will not be there to turn the UN over to the Mufti. We hope the Iranian people will get rid of him by themselves.

And yes – WE REMEMBER! The Mufti during the days of WWII went to Berlin to see Hitler and expressed his allegiance because Hitler killed his Jews.

=====================

Washington, DC – Americans for Peace Now (APN) strongly condemns the belligerent anti-Jewish comments made by the Palestinian Authority’s Mufti of Jerusalem at a public event in the West Bank earlier this month.

At the ceremony celebrating the 47th anniversary of the founding of the Palestinian Fatah movement, Mufti Muhammad Hussein cited a Muslim tradition, attributed to Prophet Muhammad, which says that the yearned-for “Day of Resurrection” would only come after Muslims kill all Jews.

“We are appalled by these comments, coming from the most senior Muslim cleric on the Palestinian Authority’s payroll,” said Debra DeLee, APN’s President and CEO.
DeLee added, “What we find particularly disturbing is that these vile comments were broadcast on the Palestinian Authority’s official television channel, amplifying their inciting affect.”

“People in positions of religious authority, on all sides, bear a heavy responsibility of avoiding incendiary rhetoric. The Israeli-Palestinian conflict is a dispute between two national movements with conflicting claims to the land between the Jordan River and the Mediterranean. Clerics on both sides must prevent this conflict from being perceived as a religious conflict and from becoming one.”

http://www.almasryalyoum.com/en/node/606031

Construction site of al-Dabaa nuke power plant, Marsa Matrouh, Western Desert.

Dabaa nuke power plant Marsa Matrouh Western Desert Science and Technology

Egypt Independent reports on vandalizing, looting, and fighting at the nuclear power plant being built at El-Dabaa, a town in the desert to the west of Alexandria. The account draws on an unnamed source at the Ministry of Electricity and Energy who accused security authorities and the governor of North Sinai of “causing the disaster.” The official said the initial losses were around LE0.5 billion [= US$83 million]. He also accused a businessman and former member in the defunct National Democratic Party of being “behind the chaos,” but did not name the businessman allegedly involved.

The source said the meteorological station, ground water station and many of the offices had been attacked by “organized looters,” who took objects including computers, monitoring devices for earthquakes, furniture, cables and transformers.

On Friday, about 500 residents had rallied demanding the dismantling of the nuclear power plant, saying their land had been confiscated for the project. They say the government did not compensate them for the land it took.

However, other reports suggest that the construction site was attacked by residents of the area angry at the way in which the land for the power plant had been acquired by the government. Residents of Dabaa staged a sit-in on Saturday after clashes with Egyptian military police on Friday. The clashes left 41 people injured, including 29 soldiers, according to state-run newspaper Al-Ahram.

Comments: (1) L’Institut d’Égypte, a nuclear power plant site … the situation has degenerated in Egypt to the point that nothing is safe.

(2) The Islamists lack real power but they appear to be in charge; so as Egypt heads into economic decay and social anarchy, they will receive the blame. Could this be what the crafty military tyrants want, so they can swoop in and “save” the country? (January 16, 2012)

Jan. 20, 2012 update: The news gets worse, with the possibility that radioactive material was stolen:

The UN atomic energy agency issued a statement Thursday saying “the items that have gone missing are low-level radioactive sources. The sources were stolen not from an operating NPP (nuclear power plant), but from a laboratory at a construction site for an NPP that is not yet operational,” the International Atomic Energy Agency said. The Vienna-based agency said it is “in touch with the Egyptian authorities.”

Al-Ahram newspaper reported Thursday that a safe containing radioactive material was stolen from a site in Al-Dabaa, on the Mediterranean coast. Another safe was broken and some of its contents were taken, Al-Ahram said. … It said the team of experts entered the site but “did not find the missing safe. It did, however, find two sources of radioactivity in another safe that had been broken into.”

The following posting was of January 14, 2012 – now we update it with the list of speakers that will appear at the SeNIOR RELIGIOUS LEADERS INTERFAITH MISSION REUNION – January 23., 2012.

The interactive panel discussion followed by a moderated question and answer session.

When: Monday, January 23, from 6:30 p.m. – 8:30 p.m.

Who:   Updated Panelists Include:

Rabbi Ammiel Hirsch, Stephen Wise Free Synagogue

Reverend Shari Brink, Marble Collegiate Church

Rabbi Marcelo Bronstein, B’nai Jeshurun Congregation

Reverend Galen Guengerich, All Souls Unitarian Church

Sheikh Dr. Ibrahim Abdul-Malik,  Fairleigh Dickenson University

Reverend Brenda Husson, Rector, St. James Episcopal Church

Reverend Dr. James Kowalski, Cathedral Church St. John the Divine

Rabbi Elliot Cosgrove, Park Avenue Synagogue

Reverend Stephen Phelps, The Riverside Church

Imam Muhammad Hatim, Ph.D., Admiral Family Circle Islamic Community

Moderator:

Haim Handwerker, correspondent from Israeli newspaper Ha’aretz

*participants are subject to change

Where: Stephen Wise Free Synagogue, 30 West 68thStreet (between Central

Park West and Columbus Avenue) New York City, in the Sanctuary

=================================

On January 4th the national headquarters of Chabad Lubovitch issued a statement condemning the widely publicized attack by ultra-Orthodox Jews on an 8-year-old girl in the Israeli town of Beit Shemesh last month. That attack triggered outrage in Israel and among friends of Israel in the United States and beyond. Chabad’s statement said: “Violent behaviors of individuals or groups who abuse, intimidate and insult others are a flagrant offense to Torah and tzniut (modesty), in both letter and spirit, and deserve to be unequivocally condemned.”

Chabad is normally an inward-looking movement, and deserves credit for condemning this religiously-motivated violence in Israel.
However, Chabad’s condemnation is too narrow.
Consistent with its own religious values, Chabad also needs to see the larger picture and speak out against extremist settlers’ violence.

Attacking an innocent girl on her way to school in the name of Judaism is obviously despicable, but no less despicable are the attacks on innocent Palestinians and their property.
And the repeated attacks by settler zealots against official representatives of the state of Israel are aimed at the very legitimacy of Israel as a sovereign democracy.
Taking a stand against such violence is important not only for the sake of protecting its victims but for the sake of protecting Israel’s character as a democracy and a Jewish state.

Despicable also are activities in the name of Islamic extremism, and as well those activities that are based on Christian extremism.
There is no Holy-land in the Land of Israel to speak off – in  a place were zealots’ insanity commits profanity in the name of religious ideas.

The battle for Israel’s soul and survival demands that all Jews, secular and religious, stand up against extremism of all kinds.
People of the World should be asked then to join in – in the name of peace.

=====================

The new set of ideas as per the January 22, 2012 appearance on Fareed’s program.
We post this UPDATE because we realized that people were reading our old posting – so there is indeed interest in our readership on the subject of Pakistan.

We had many earlier postings and we long said that Pakistan is the real problem in the Af-Pak region.
To treat Afghanistan one must deal first with Pakistan and not the other way around.
In order to have a successful retreat from Afghanistan peace must be restored first in Pakistan – even at the price of allowing some break-away regions in Pakistan.

Imran Khan points out that the Pakistan military has been discredited a long time ago, the US backed Civil Government is no solution either – as it is even more corrupt then before.  The US involvement in Pakistan because of Afghanistan – was and still is – the destabilizing element in Pakistan – and Pakistan went nuclear under the US eyes.

IT ALL BOILS DOWN TO THE US BACKING THE WRONG PEOPLE HOLDING ON TO THE PAKISTANI GOVERNMENT AND THE ILLUSION of FIGHTING WITH THEIR HELP A WAR THAT CREATES ONLY MORE SUBVERSIVE ELEMENTS – AS WHAT IS CALLED COLLATERAL  DAMAGE IS IN EFFECT THE REAL UNCONTROLLED DISASTER CREATOR.

But then even American media do not see as positive the emergence of an independent judiciary in Pakistan as evidenced in today’s posting in the New York Times on-line:

http://www.nytimes.com/2012/01/23/world/asia/pakistan-high-court-widens-role-and-stirs-fears.html?_r=1&nl=todaysheadlines&emc=tha2

Imran Khan on the other hand finds the only hope in the high level of the Judiciary – The Supreme Court Judge.

“From an imposing, marble-clad court on a hill over Islamabad, and led by an iron-willed chief justice, Iftikhar Muhammad Chaudhry, the judges have since 2009 issued numerous rulings that have propelled them into areas traditionally dominated by government here. The court has dictated the price of sugar and fuel, championed the rights of transsexuals, and, quite literally, directed the traffic in the coastal megalopolis of Karachi.

But in recent weeks the court has taken interventionism to a new level, inserting itself as the third player in a bruising confrontation between military and civilian leaders at a time when Pakistan — and the United States — urgently needs stability in Islamabad to face a dizzying array of threats.”

LET US LISTEN NOW  TO IMRAN KHAN – after all he knows Pakistan from the inside:

——

ZAKARIA: Tell me, first, what you make of these rumors of coups. There are lots of people in Pakistan, as you know, who are talking about how the military is trying to prepare the ground for either a soft coup or an outright coup. Do you think there is any validity to this?

KHAN: See, Fareed, Pakistan has moved on. The media, the independent television channels have changed Pakistan. This is no longer the old days where the military could walk in.

The level of political awareness in Pakistan is such that across the board there’s consensus that military dictatorship or military governments are not the answer because now we have a history of military dictatorships, and it’s like curing cancer with aspirin (ph). You have a little – the problem eases for a while, and then the cancer spreads much more. So I don’t think there is any chance of a military coup.

ZAKARIA: But what about the way in which the military is taking on the civilian government where people say that the courts are acting in support of the military? They’ve – they’re attacking the prime minister. There is this case relating to Memogate. There seems to be a kind of concerted effort to weaken the civilian government.

KHAN: You know, Fareed, the biggest enemy of the government is the government itself. It is the worst government in the history of Pakistan. It is the most corrupt, the most incompetent government ever.

I mean, according to the government survey, the economic survey of Pakistan, which is a government report which is published, never has the situation of Pakistanis been as bad as it is today. There’s an unprecedented inflation. There is unemployment. There’s no gas. There’s no electricity. Factories are closing down. There’s lawlessness. Corruption has broken all records.

So if the people are turning against the government or if the government feels beleaguered, it’s not because of either the army or the Supreme Court. In fact, people like us think that the Supreme Court is too soft on the government. Remember, this is the only independent Supreme Court ever in our history, and the way we have an independent chief justice is because people came out in the streets.

It was our equivalent to the Arab Spring where masses came out in support of the chief justice. He was reinstated once, then again he was kicked out. Again, people rallied behind the chief justice.

Now, what we expected from the chief justice is to check the corruption in high places. In fact, in other words, if people come into government, they start looting the country, you wanted an independent judiciary to check the corruption. So far the government has stone walled the Supreme Court.

ZAKARIA: But tell me about the atmosphere in general in Pakistan. It seems as though the problem of a kind of Jihadi groups and terrorist groups remain unchecked. The problem of out of control elements within the military remains unchecked. Is that – is that picture, you think, accurate?

KHAN: When you talk about the Jihadi groups or the extremists, this war on terror is the biggest producer of Jihadists and extremists. The longer this war goes, the more polarize the society is getting. The more extremism and radicalization is rising in Pakistan.

And the way to deal with it is to somehow get out of this war. The only way out is a political settlement, which, of course, I have been advocating for for a long time and which now, of course, the U.S. is trying to have some sort of a political settlement in Afghanistan. It’s the only way out.

You must understand the problem. I mean, the people in the U.S. must understand what’s happening here. In the tribal areas there are million armed men. Every man is – knows how to wield a weapon, carries a weapon. So there are million armed men there.

Now, when you do an operation or when the army does an operation and there’s collateral damage, what happens? Anyone who loses a near or dear ones and they do lose them because their villages that are being bombed through airplanes, through helicopter gun ships, through artillery. Remember then it’s not an army they’re fighting. These are fighters in villages.

So when there’s collateral damage, the local people then become militants. So every military operation has produced more militants.

ZAKARIA: But what should the United States do because, as you say, the Obama administration has been trying to negotiate with the Taliban, but one of the big problems they have had in Afghanistan is that the Taliban and elements, other groups have had these safe havens in North Waziristan and so they can always retreat to that sanctuary and, therefore, feel themselves to be invulnerable and don’t want to compromise and don’t want to negotiate and don’t want to make any concessions.

KHAN: The problem with Obama administration is that they are stuck – they are dealing with the Pakistani government which unfortunately is a discredited government. If they had a partner in Pakistan, a political government which was credible, only a credible government not only would be able to pull our army out of the tribal areas where we are stuck, we would be able to help the Americans in getting some sort of a peace process going.

At the moment there is no help from Pakistan. All we are doing is military operations and we are going nowhere.

—–

ZAKARIA: If you were to be Prime Minister of Pakistan, what’s the first thing you would do?

KHAN: The first thing I would do is have a cease-fire. You cannot talk and fight at the same time. Either you talk or you fight. Fighting has failed, so I would go for a political settlement. I would have a cease-fire.

I would – when the people of the tribal areas, these one million fighters, which I’m talking about, I win them over to my side by saying it’s the end of jihad. Cease-fire. Fighting is over. These tribal area people will not take on the militants as long as they think they’re fighting a jihad. It means a foreign occupation.

Once it’s no longer jihad, they will deliver peace in that area. It’s in their interest to have peace. But this insanity of pushing this million strong men by bombing collateral damage and pushing them over to the other side, it’s so insane, I don’t know who is the think tank who is leading this senseless policy. There are no results.

I mean surely after seven years, there should be some review of this policy. And certainly in Pakistan and all parties conference, all 50 parries of Pakistan said give peace a chance. It’s time for a political dialogue. End of military actions.

ZAKARIA: Imran Khan, always a pleasure to have you on.

=============================

The old article – August 22, 2012:

Imran Khan Niazi (born 25 November 1952) is a retired Pakistani cricketer who played international cricket for two decades in the late twentieth century and has been a politician since the mid-1990s. He is considered a National hero in Pakistan.

Currently, besides his political activism, Khan is also a charity worker and cricket commentator.

In April 1996, Khan founded and became the chairman of Pakistan Tehreek-e-Insaf (Movement for Justice), a small and marginal political party, of which he is the only member ever elected to Parliament.^[3] He represented Mianwali as a member of the National Assembly from November 2002 to October 2007.^[4] Khan, through worldwide fundraising, helped establish the Shaukat Khanum Memorial Cancer Hospital & Research Centre in 1996 and Mianwali’s Namal College in 2008.

He is an outspoken intellectual with Pakistan at his heart – if this is not an oxymoron.

The good looking Imran was educated at Aitchison College, the Cathedral School in Lahore, and the Royal Grammar School Worcester in England, where he excelled at cricket. In 1972, he enrolled to study Philosophy, Politics and Economics at Keble College, Oxford, where he graduated with a second-class degree in Politics and a third in Economics.^[8]

On 16 May 1995, Khan married English socialite Jemima Goldsmith, a {Jewish} convert to Islam, in a two-minute Islamic ceremony in Paris. A month later, on 21 June, they were married again in a civil ceremony at the Richmond register office in England, followed by a reception at the Goldsmiths’ house in Surrey.^[9] The marriage, described as “tough” by Khan,^[7] produced two sons, Sulaiman Isa (born 18 November 1996) and Kasim (born 10 April 1999).^[10] As an agreement of his marriage, Khan spent four months a year in England. On 22 June 2004, it was announced that the Khans had divorced because it was “difficult for Jemima to adapt to life in Pakistan”.^[11]

Khan now resides in Bani Gala, Islamabad, where he built a farmhouse with the money he gained from selling his London flat. He grows fruit trees, wheat, and keeps cows, while also maintaining a cricket ground for his two sons, who visit during their holidays.[7

He is Fareed Zakaria’s favorite Pakistani.

Today Imran said that it is when the flood waters recede we get to know the full extent of the disaster that is still growing these days.

People were left without food, shelter, the cotton crop for income, the cattle, – this is 20 million people completely destitute.

Pakistan has not come to terms how to deal with this. He went a couple of times to the camps and saw people fighting over the goods that were brought in. The government has to put the army to keep them from fighting.

You speak of Cathrina – but Bush did not go to visit his chateau and burnish the image of his son when the flooding went on!

There is no help money coming in and there is no leadership in Pakistan now.

Fareed asked: Islamic fundamentalists make inroads just because there was no government – is that true?

And the anwer was clear – The WORLD MUST STOP TO LOOK AT AN ISLAMIC COUNTRY JUST BECAUSE A RELIGIOUS PARTY DOES CHARITY WORK – FOR PAKISTAN THIS IS NOT AN ISSUE.

IF THIS CONTINUES FOR THREE MONTHS THE COUNTRY WILL IMPLODE WITH 20 MILLION PEOPLE NOT HAVING WHERE TO GO.

Sen. Bernie Sanders during a news conference on Capitol Hill in Washington, 05/10/11. (photo: Alex Brandon/AP)