Category: Foreign Relations

I’m Sorry Senator Edwards, but You are Wrong!

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In the debate last night, Edwards said the following about troops in Iraq:

I cannot make that commitment. But I — well, I can tell you what i would do as president. When I’m sworn into office, come January of 2009, if there are, in fact, as General Petraeus suggests, 100,000 American troops on the ground in Iraq, I will immediately draw down 40,000 to 50,000 troops; and over the course of the next several months, continue to bring our combat out of Iraq until all of our combat are, in fact, out of Iraq.

I think the problem is — and it’s what you just heard discussed — is we will maintain an embassy in Baghdad. That embassy has to be protected. We will probably have humanitarian workers in Iraq. Those humanitarian workers have to be protected.

I think somewhere in the neighborhood of a brigade of troops will be necessary to accomplish that, 3,500 to 5,000 troops.

I like John Edwards, but he is wrong.

We do not need the forced labor built monstrosity of an diplomatic compound that we currently have in Iraq. It’s not an embassy, it’s an imperial outpost.

It can be moved to a more secure location, and it should be, and if there is none, then it should be closed, like the US Embassy in Somalia.

Why Do Bill Kristol, Paul Wolfowitz, et al. Hate Israel?

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It appears that “Israeli officials warned the George W. Bush administration that an invasion of Iraq would be destabilising to the region and urged the United States to instead target Iran as the primary enemy, according to former administration official Lawrence Wilkerson.”

No surprise there. I’ve always said that some of Israel’s biggest fans are more dangerous to it than its worst enemies.

Henry Wasman and the Case of the Inspector General Who Didn’t

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Henry Waxman has founc another winner in the Bush Administration, this tiem, it’s the Inspector General for the State Department.

Case in point, When asked to investigate allegations of slave labor in the construction of the Iraqi Embassy, he interviewed only those employees that the contractor hand picked for him to interview.

At the rate this guy is going, he’ll soon be Cheney’s chief of staff.

Rice Denied Audience with Pope

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In August, the Pope denied US Secretary of State Condoleeza Rice an audience, citing that “Benedict XVI is on holiday”.

This is clearly not the case. Rather, this is a fallout of disagreements over the war in Iraq, and her previous dealings with representatives of the Pontiff:

No one will say so officially but the refusal may also have been prompted by Ms Rice’s stance in 2003, when she was Mr Bush’s national security adviser. On the eve of the Iraqi conflict, it was Ms Rice who said bluntly that she did not understand the Vatican’s anti-war stance. She treated John Paul II’s envoy, Cardinal Pio Laghi, with a coolness that bordered on disrespect when he was sent to Washington on 2 March 2003 on a desperate mission to avert military intervention. Clearly, the incident has not been forgotten.

It should come as no surprise to any person with half a brain, which apparently does not include Ms. Rice, that when you treat people with disrespect, they are disinclined to help you in the future.

Iraqis Order Blackwater out of Iraq

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Here is where we get to fish or cut bait time. The Iraqi Government* has told Blackwater to get out, and has suspended their license to operate.

This is not surprising. They are a bunch of trigger happy goons who have immunity from Iraqi law and the military’s UCMJ.

The interesting thing here is that Blackwater, nor (IIRC) any of of the other mercenaries employed by the US, are operating under an Iraqi license.

On the other hand, Blackwater is operating under a State Department contract, and while this may give them a measure of diplomatic immunity, it also allows them to be declared personae non grata, and forced to leave the country.

My guess is that Malaki will be told to pound sand, and thus the government will be revealed to be a puppet of the US formed primarily to allocate oil resources to American oil companies.

*Yes, I know that “Iraqi Government” is currently an oxymoron.

China’s central bank raises interest rates

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China’s central bank has raised interest rates by 27 basis points.

As I have mentioned earlier, food prices are skyrocketing there, but the higher interest rates available in china is one more factor in making the dollar less attractive.

The dollar may float downward for a bit, but given the nature of currency markets, eventually, it will crash, and probably overshoot it’s normal equilibrium price, and rising Chinese interest rates, and falling US interest rates within a few days of each other is a double whammy that the dollar can ill afford.

Oil Above $80

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It’s record high, and the basic reason is supply and demand, but it is also that oil is being denominated in a depreciating asset, the US dollar.

Oil exporting countries buy things denominated in Euros, Yen, Sterling, etc., and they can buy less of this when the dollar falls.

If the Fed cuts rates tomorrow, and all signs point to this, I would expect to see a new record low vs the Euro in the next 5-10 business days.

Nukes in South Asia

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Some more updates on how the Bush administration is making what is currently the worst threat to global security even worse by helping India increase its arsenal, with the obvious consequence of the almost failed state of Pakistan following suit.

First, it turns out that Pakistan is going with mobile launch systems, which are more likely to fall into terrorist hands, and India is working on technologies to take out buried facilities.

Lovely arms race there, and Bush is fanning the flames so that American nuclear companies can make a few bucks.

Nuke Worries?

Then we have a “a broad spectrum of political parties calls on the government of Prime Minister Manmohan Singh to scrap the deal, saying it limits the country’s sovereignty in energy and foreign policy matters“.

Basically, Bush is winking at India’s nuclear weapons program, but it’s not enough for the more bellicose and nationalistic members of India’s body politic.

Delightful.

The Rich/Poor Divide on Immigration

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Dean Baker correctly criticizes the New York Times for mischaracterizing the nature of immigration in this article.

The Times claims that poor immigrants find far more in the way of barriers than do the rich, and rightly notes that while poor immigrants may run across the borders, “The United States much more severely restricts the flows of highly educated immigrants than less-educated immigrants, it just uses different mechanisms. In the case of highly educated immigrants, the government at least partially enforces laws that prohibit employers from hiring immigrants at wages that are lower than what citizens would be willing to work for. There are no newspapers, hospitals, universities, or law firms that bring in large numbers of undocumented professionals and pay them half of the prevailing wage in their occupation. Such an institution would almost certainly be shut down, with the employers facing prosecution.“

This is not entirely accurate either. While the poor may be smuggled across borders in the back of 18 wheelers, and the more well to do will fly in, which makes the trek for the former easier, the divide is not between rich and poor, but between workers, and “professionals”.

Programmers, engineers, and nurses (which kind of eliminates your hospital example) are routinely replaced by lower paid H1b/L1 workers, and these visas are also used to lower wages in the fields.

The divide is that people who draw up this policy (Lawyers, Economists, and other Academicians), those who belong to professions that they might want their children to go into (Doctors), and those who are needed to cheer lead these policies (Journalists), are protected.

It’s about protecting, “People like us”, more than it is about rich and poor.

Chávez’s Buys Sniper Rifles

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As a result of Bush sanctions against Venezuela, including the denial of spares on the F-16 fleet, Chávez has moved toward acquiring Russian equipment.

Now, he is purchasing a large quantity of Dragunov sniper rifles.

The Dragunov is a derived for the AK-47 with a scope, and while it underperforms designed from scratch sniper rifles, it is simple, more accurate than an assault rifle, and more powerful (it uses a full rifle round). Realistic use is out to about 600m according to wiki.

“Sales like this, and other sales of military equipment and arms to Venezuela, don’t seem consistent with Venezuela’s needs,” David J. Kramer, deputy assistant secretary of state for European and Eurasian affairs, said by telephone.

“It does raise questions about their ultimate use,” he added. “We’re not sure what their purpose would be.”

It took me 5 seconds to realize that this is intended to for a number of things:

  • Deter the US from invading because by increasing casualties.
  • Deterring the Venezualan Army from staging a coup for the same reasons.

Of course, I’m not a blithering idiot Bush administration official, so I can spot the obvious.

Mark Joyce, the Americas editor for Jane’s Country Risk, part of Jane’s Information Group, said that a purchase of thousands of sniper rifles would fit with the continuing military reorganization in Venezuela under Mr. Chávez.

The changes emphasize large civilian reserve forces, which bypass the traditional military chain of command and report directly to Mr. Chávez and could become the core of a domestic guerrilla force if Venezuela were invaded.

Russia and China in Joint War Games

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Not sure what it means, except that perhaps the two countries are far closer than when it was the USSR across the border.

“=The war games were staged under the flag of the Shanghai Cooperation Organisation (SCO), a regional grouping that includes Russia, China and four Central Asian states.“

…

The exercises take place against a backdrop of mounting rivalry between the West, and Russia and China for influence over Central Asia, a strategic region that has huge oil, gas and mineral resources.

That being said, I think that much of the world is looking for some sort of return to a bipolar world.

allofmp3.com Owner Acquitted

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Well, the owner of allofmp3.com just got acquitted in Russia. This is not surprising. While the IP laws in Russia are not what the record distributors would want, it has always been fairly clear that Denis Kvasov was operating within those laws.

The question now is whether Putin finds more advantage in joining the WTO, or giving Washington the finger.

One thing that needs to be said though, this dispute does not affect the amount of money that performers get for their recordings by one cent. That number is still zero. I’ve yet to hear of a performer who has actually received royalties, due to corrupt record company accounting.

The Problem With Mercenaries

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It appears that about one-fifth of British intelligence officers have quit over the past 3 years.

It appears that, “many of the officers leaving were choosing well-paid private security jobs instead, forcing the ministry to hand jobs to people who do not have relevant training or experience.”

Well-paid private security jobs, i.e. Blackwater and the rest of their despicable ilk.

The US and the UK have declined to sign the 1989 UN Mercenary Convention, and this is just one, of many (will post on this later) problems with this position.

The Rush for Arctic Resources Begins

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After the Russians planted a flag on the sea bed at the North Pole, it was inevitable that some sort of scramble for the arctic regions would commence. Now Canada is building a deep water port facility on Baffin Island.

There are two things driving this:

  • It is believed that 25% of untapped oil and gas reserves are there.
  • The Canadians in particular are banking on global warming to make the Northwest passage viable.

US Government Cripples South Korean T/FA-50 Export Prospects

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It appears that thethe US Government is forbidding the use of an advanced radar on the Korean FA-50 trainer derivative (subscription required).

Let’s make this clear, this is not a technology transfer issue. The radar, the Vixen 500E (PDF)

But in declining to permit advanced FA-50 capability, the U.S. side is only exercising rights that were set out when the then-General Dynamics combat aircraft division agreed in the early 1990s to support South Korean development of a fast jet. Under the agreement, the aircraft’s combat capability had to remain below that of the F-16, to avoid competition.

Korea Aerospace will struggle to sell the fighter overseas without the preferred radar, the Vixen 500E active electronically scanned sensor built by Finmeccanica’s Selex unit. But Korean industry officials assume that that was the intention of the U.S. authorities: To ensure the FA-50 would be unattractive on export markets and offer no competition to the Lockheed Martin F-16.

I’m really not sure why anyone with equibalent choices uses US systems, such as choosing the F-15K over the Rafale, which performed better in tests.