China Matters

How Newt Gingrich Sabotaged the Closing of Guantanamo

2012-01-16T09:22:00.000-08:00

January 2012 marks the 10^th melancholy anniversary of the US detention facility at Guantanamo Bay; if polling is correct, it will also mark the end of Newt Gingrich’s presidential ambitions, as the immense, gas-filled Hindenburg of his ego approaches its Lakehurst in South Carolina.

The two intersect in remarkable fashion.

Gingrich was key to igniting the firestorm of criticism that prevented the public release of 17 Uighur captives from Guantanamo to Germany and the United States in early 2009.

Uighurs were considered to be the cutest and cuddliest of detainees, largely because of a rather bizarre finding that, though they might be terrorists, if they were terrorists they would be anti-China terrorists, not anti-US terrorists.

The term of art was “non-enemy combatants”.

The Uighur detainees were championed by politicians across the board, from liberal Democrats to conservative Republicans…until clearing out Guantanamo became a signature Obama issue, and releasing the Uighurs was advertised as the first victory of President Obama’s humane post-Bush post-terror policy.

Obstruction became the name of the game, Newt Gingrich jumped in, the Democrats stampeded, and the Republicans--including Republican Rep. Dana Rohrbacher, who advertised himself as the champion of the Uighur cause--faded into the woodwork.

The high profile Uighur release fell apart.

Subsequently, the Obama administration followed the precedent of the Bush administration, and quietly dribbled the detainees out to remote, low profile jurisdictions sufficiently insulated from the wrath of the PRC: four to Bermuda in June 2009 and six to Palau (an atoll off the east coast of the Philippines which relies on US aid for a third of its budget; it was reported they agreed to accept the six Uighurs in return for a $200 million payday). Two are apparently destined for Switzerland. The last five have refused resettlement to whatever exotic locale the US has arranged for them, and are fighting in the courts to try to resettle in the US.

Meanwhile, Guantanamo remains open and an embarrassing symbol, both of US reliance on extrajudicial detention and harsh interrogation (which will continue on US military bases and in black offshore prison no matter what happens to the flagship enterprise in Guantanamo) and American political gridlock.

Here’s a piece I wrote on the issue in May 2009:

Uyghurs sold out in the US

Republican leaders in the United States appear eager to hand President Barack Obama a political defeat and diminish his prestige and domestic and international clout - at the cost of the continued detention of 17 Uyghur prisoners at Guantanamo in Cuba.

By accident or design, the US Republicans were able to forestall the imminent release of the Uyghurs from Guantanamo to the US and Europe - detainees that the US had long ago determined posed no threat to the US and has been attempting to release for years.

The Uyghur cause had been a favorite of anti-communist Republicans. Uyghurs are an ethnic group from Central Asia and

Xinjiang province in western China. The ones in Guantanamo were captured in Afghanistan in late 2001.

The Uyghur's high-profile champion in Congress, California Republican Dana Rohrabacher, wrote Secretary of Defense Robert Gates in June of 2008 requesting that the 17 Uyghur detainees be released from Guantanamo into parole into the US.

Rohrabacher also called on the US government to provide an apology and perhaps compensation for any abuse the detainees had endured.

The Uyghurs - and the Republicans' principled position on the issue - fell victim to the conviction of top Republicans that it was of vital importance that the Obama administration suffer a conspicuous setback on an issue that the GOP still sees as political gold: terrorism.

In a recent newspaper column, Newt Gingrich, a key Republican strategist, burned the Republicans' bridges to the Uyghur cause with an inflammatory and misleading attack on the 17 Uyghur detainees at Guantanamo.

Gingrich insisted that the Uyghurs were too dangerous to be released into the Uyghur community in Virginia and accused them of being "trained mass killers instructed by the same terrorists responsible for killing 3,000 Americans on September 11, 2001", who "were trained, most likely in the weapons, explosives and ideology of mass killing, by Abdul Haq, a member of al-Qaeda's shura, or top advisory council."

Gingrich claimed the Uyghurs also committed perhaps the ultimate sacrilege against American values:

At Guantanamo Bay, the Uyghurs are known for picking up television sets on which women with bared arms appear and hurling them across the room.

Contrary to Gingrich's accusations, the Uyghurs indignantly riposted that they are not promiscuously flinging television sets around the camp.

In fact, only one TV was kicked, not tossed, several years ago and the culprit was considered to be so harmless to the US that he has already been released to Albania.

The New York Times, in an excellent report on the plight of the detainees by Tom Golden, had the TV story in June 2008:

They described their imprisonment as bewildering and traumatic, punctuated by moments of the absurd. After they were cleared for release, they were able to watch cartoons and Harry Potter movies, until Mr Mamet smashed the television because of what he said was the guards' refusal to take him to a doctor. The set was replaced with one made in China, the men said dismissively; it broke after a week.

Even if the canard of Islamicist rage against infidel appliances is debunked, the Uyghurs will find it difficult to deal with the political realities driving the abrupt sea change in Republican attitudes.

Republican Lindsey Graham explained how noble causes can be discarded in a heartbeat when the greater good of political advantage dictates:

Asked whether any lawmakers were arguing on behalf of releasing the Uyghurs in the US, he said: "The Uyghur caucus is pretty small."

The caucus of Republican lawmakers anxious to achieve political traction against Obama at any cost is, on the other hand, rather large.

The Republican strategists and their allies in Congress and the media aggressively counter-programmed against Obama's rollout of his new security strategy scheduled for the week of May 18.

In addition to igniting the Uyghur firestorm, the GOP relentlessly pounded speaker of the House Nancy Pelosi's veracity on the issue of confidential briefings she received on "enhanced interrogation techniques".

As a finishing touch, the Republicans sent out ex-vice president Dick Cheney to steal Obama's thunder with an uncompromising defense of the George W Bush administration's torture and Guantanamo policies before the American Enterprise Institute on the same day that Obama delivered his address on torture and Guantanamo at the National Archives (home of the US constitution and Bill of Rights).

There are strong indications that the Obama administration expected to bookend the president's speech with a dramatic demonstration of the moral and practical efficacy of the rule of law and multi-lateralism in America's new post-Guantanamo and post-Bush national security policy: the announcement that the president's team had taken the first concrete steps to closing Guantanamo by arranging the simultaneous release of the 17 Uyghurs to the US and several European countries.

A knowledgeable observer close to the Uyghurs stated, "There was a high level of expectation that we would have seen by now [May 22, 2009] a US release and the simultaneous release of Uyghurs to other willing countries."

When the Uyghur release plan blew up, Obama found himself deprived of the key advantage of his office - the ability to deliver substantive, spectacular results in addition to speeches.

Instead of triumphantly turning the page on the most dismal achievements of the Bush administration - torture and indefinite detention - and pointing the way to dispersing the 241 detainees still at Guantanamo and closing the despised detention facility, Obama discovered, to his chagrin, that the Republicans had fought him to a draw.

The Obama administration had apparently made the error of relying on the traditional bipartisan sympathy for the Uyghurs that extended from human-rights Democratic liberals to red-meat communist rollback conservatives, and neglected the necessary political spadework prior to the announcement.

In the face of an organized attack by the Republicans and spooked by the eagerness of the political press to report and incite a compelling political conflict, the Democratic leadership of Congress retreated in disarray, and stripped funds to close Guantanamo from the Defense Appropriation Bill.

As the Democrats regrouped, they called on the Obama administration for a do-over, this time presumably including detailed discussion and planning for the initiative, as well as preparations to handle aggressive, across-the-board pushback from the emboldened Republicans and their allies.

Gingrich may simply be attempting to gain traction for the Republicans by attacking the Democrats' perceived weakness in the matter of national security. It may also be that Gingrich has a more concrete goal: trying to sabotage an incipient grand bargain by the Obama administration to distribute the detainees throughout Europe.

That is a deal that relied on a crucial confidence-building measure: America's willingness to take its share of Uyghurs - and diplomatic heat from the Chinese - and provide diplomatic cover to the Germans and whatever other country might also step up to accept Uyghur detainees.

The idea of simultaneous release of Uyghurs to US and European custody had already been floated in the international press as early as June of last year, during the last months of the Bush administration.

A report in Der Spiegel on May 12 of this year updated the current status of the initiative in the Obama administration, and perhaps attracted Gingrich's baleful attention. It stated that US Attorney General Eric Holder had asked Germany to take nine Uyghurs, who would presumably find a happy home among the 500 expatriate Uyghurs living in Munich.

The article explicitly addressed the issue of linkage between US and European releases.

Washington now seems to realize they too might have to take a couple of Uyghurs in before European allies like Germany do the same - if for no other reason than to present a common front to the Chinese ... You cannot expect the Europeans to do what you are not prepared to do yourselves, said another high ranking American official, who believes that Germany could eventually be asked to consider further prisoners of different nationalities.

A contemporaneous statement by Uyghur emigre leader Rebiya Kadeer also pointed to a multinational package deal: "I hope that some of them will be released to the United States," says Kadeer, who now lives in Northern Virginia.

With the current collapse of political will for America to take its fair share of Uyghurs, European support can no longer be assured.

Tom Malinowski, Washington advocacy director at Human Rights Watch, said the administration understood that the US needed to take some of the detainees in order to encourage Europe to help, but that the congressional rhetoric would complicate those efforts.

"You can't argue these people are too dangerous to be released in the United States and then ask Germany to take them, that doesn't work," said Malinowski.

The German wavering occasioned by the failure of the US to commit to taking some Uyghur detainees can be seen from the position taken by long-time Bush adversary Gerhard Schroeder, who would certainly be happy to endorse the multi-lateralist foreign policy initiatives of Obama.

From a May 18, 2009, article in Deutsche Welle entitled "Steinmeier against accepting Uyghur from Guantanamo",

[Foreign Minister] Steinmeier has received support for his statement from former German chancellor Gerhard Schroeder, who told Der Spiegel that accepting Uyghurs would certainly put a strain on German-Chinese relations.

Schroeder said that while he is in favor of supporting US President Barack Obama in his efforts to close Guantanamo, only the US is in a position to take in the Uyghurs without suffering any political consequences from China.

Whether or not Gingrich consciously and cynically stampeded the US Congress on the matter of Uyghur detainees in the US to scupper the joint European/American release and deny Obama a political triumph, his assertion of the danger the Uyghurs pose is a misrepresentation of the conclusions reached both by the Bush and Obama administrations.

The Uyghurs' descriptions of their brief and haphazard training was apparently enough to assure the US government of their harmlessness.

Their lack of hostility toward the US was acknowledged early on, and most recently the Uyghurs have been serving their time in the low-security sector of Guantanamo known as Camp Iguana - whose privileges apparently include television.

The public record illustrates the casual, feckless nature of the Guantanamo Uyghurs' encounter with the extremist training/fighting infrastructure along the Afghan-Pakistan border.

Indeed, the picture of the detainees is of wannabe pro-American Uyghur freedom fighters, not death-to-America Islamicist jihadniks.

One of the detainees, seemingly eager to highlight his pro-liberty/pro-free market sympathies to the Bush administration, described what drove him to flee China for the destitute, terrorist-infested reaches of the Pashtun homeland: high taxes.

The reason we left the country was twofold: first, to do business, because it was getting more difficult to do business with rising taxes in China. Secondly, political pressure on Uyghurs had increased. So I left for abroad in 2000 in the hope of doing some business to better the situation of me and my family in a more free environment.

Actually, China has instituted preferential tax policies to aid in the development of Xinjiang.

Be that as it may, it seems clear that many of the Uyghurs were engaged in anti-Chinese activities as they rusticated along the Pakistan border: although some of the captives were innocents snared in the web of bounty hunters, many of them did confess to receiving training on firing a single shared AK-47 rifle at an ETIM-affiliated camp at Tora Bora, according to a study of the publicly available court documents by Long War Journal, and statements some of them made to the media.

Yes, he travelled to Afghanistan. Yes, he learned to fire a semi-automatic weapon there. "But I only ever used the weapon once, I shot four or five bullets. And never at people. And never in combat situations."

That's what Hassan Anvar told his captors at Guantanamo about his time at a training camp in the mountainous Tora Bora region in Afghanistan. He also told them that he doesn't hold a grudge against the United States of America or its allies. "I went to the camp to train to fight against the Chinese," he said.

Despite the desultory nature of their training, once the Uyghurs were linked to the alleged ETIM camp - and the fact was reported in the international media - the Chinese government would be keen to put them on trial.

ETIM - the East Turkestan Independence Movement - is a dirty word in Central Asia, to China, and to Uyghur activists themselves. Neither the US nor the countries bordering Xinjiang have any interest in antagonizing the People's Republic of China by providing any professions of support, let alone a haven, for an avowedly militant liberation movement.

After 9/11, the US obliged China by labeling ETIM a terrorist organization and, in effect, giving China quite a free hand in dealing with Uyghur unrest in Xinjiang.

The Uyghur emigre community has responded by eschewing the destabilizing advocacy of separatism.

It has questioned even the existence of something called ETIM as anything other than a Chinese provocation and excuse for repression, and constituted itself as the "World Uyghur Congress" promoting human rights and democratic Uyghur self-determination in Xinjiang.

This studiously non-violent approach, overtly modeled on the political strategy of the Tibetan exiles, advanced emigre Rebiya Kadeer as the Uyghurs' answer to the Dalai Lama.

At the very least, these efforts achieved a positive profile for the Uyghur cause: a Nobel Peace Prize nomination and a private meeting with former president Bush and his wife for Kadeer, and a Congressional resolution sponsored by anti-communist firebrand Ilena Ros-Lehtinen and co-sponsored by 32 Congresspersons across the ideological spectrum calling on China to release her children from custody.

However, ETIM still lives on in Chinese propaganda, Central Intelligence Agency dossiers, and, one would imagine, deep in the hearts of some aggrieved Uyghurs.

The Uyghur detainees' advocates exploited the fact that the US government failed in any case to demonstrate unambiguous links between ETIM and al-Qaeda or the Taliban and made the argument that these young men should be released since they had never displayed any intention of committing terrorist attacks against the US - the implication being that if they had sought military training, it was solely for the purpose of the independence struggle against the Chinese in Xinjiang.

Indeed, the government had classified the Guantanamo Uyghurs as "non-enemy combatants" as opposed to "enemy combatants". According to court documents, the US had no interest in keeping them at Guantanamo and had been trying to offload 10 of the Uyghurs since 2003, and another five since 2005.

This perceived US tolerance of militantly anti-Chinese Uyghurs and their sympathizers among the emigre community disturbs the Chinese government, which seeks to deter potential domestic copycats by demonstrating its determination to pursue armed separatists outside China's borders, deny them military or political havens, and bring them back to China for trial and punishment.

For China, the Uyghur issue is inextricably linked to the chaotic and dangerous situation in Central Asia.

Since the days of the anti-Soviet jihad, several hundred Uyghur militants have trained and fought in Afghanistan and western Pakistan, and some brought their expertise and anger back to the struggle in Xinjiang. With the resurgence of the Taliban's fortunes, China is concerned that anti-Chinese militants will find a safe haven, material support, and allies in Taliban-dominated areas.

As early as 1992, 22 Uyghur separatists were killed in an armed clash near Kashgar in Xinjiang and the Chinese government shut down its road links with Pakistan, including the legendary Karakorum Highway, for several months to stop the destabilizing flow of fighters, drugs, and AIDS out of the Pashtun areas.

Before 9/11, a special training camp for Uyghurs was reportedly operated near Tora Bora under al-Qaeda and Taliban auspices near the Pakistan border, and a safe house maintained in the Afghan provincial town of Jalalabad.

According to one report at www.americanthinker.com, the Chinese claim 1,000 Uyghur militants trained in al-Qaeda camps.

China reports that the ETIM has ties to Central Asia Uyghur Hezbollah in Kazakstan and that 1,000 Uyghurs were trained by al-Qaeda. They maintain that 600 of them escaped to Pakistan, 300 were caught by US forces on the battlefield in Afghanistan and 110 returned to China and were caught. At the beginning of the conflict in Afghanistan, US forces did, in fact, report that 15 Uyghurs were imprisoned at Guantanamo Bay.

Chinese government has been extremely aggressive in its efforts to ensure that any Uyghur militants seeking independence for Xinjiang do not find welcome anywhere, especially in Pakistan.

China may be hyping the ETIM threat, but clearly regards it as a significant security issue, as B Raman reported:

Talking to a group of senior Pakistani newspaper editors after a visit to China in 2003, [Pakistan's President] Musharraf was reported to have stated that he was shocked by the strong language used by the Chinese leaders while talking of the activities of the Uyghur jihadi terrorists from Pakistani territory.

However, except for the killing of alleged ETIM head Hahsan Mahsum in the Federally Administered Tribal Areas in 2003 by Pakistani forces, for several years Chinese efforts to get Pakistan to hand over East Turkestan fighters were unsuccessful. China noticed.

In October 2008, on the occasion of Pakistani President Asif Ali Zardari's first official visit to China, the Chinese media pointedly published a detailed bill of particulars of the eight most-wanted ETIM terrorists, presumably so that the Pakistani government could not excuse continued inaction with any pretended confusion as to who Beijing was after and why.

In April 2009, Pakistan finally agreed to extradite nine Uyghurs to China.

As for the US, after 9/11, Chinese implacability turned the issue of repatriating the 22 Uyghurs, who were captured and delivered to the US for incarceration at Guantanamo, into a legal and geopolitical headache.

In 2002, the US government made the dubious decision to share the detainees' dossiers with the Chinese, and even allow Chinese interrogators to come to Guantanamo to question the Uyghurs.

The US obligingly softened up the Uyghurs with the "frequent flier program" - a sleep deprivation technique (ironically, it came to US notice when the Chinese practiced it on US prisoners of war during the Korean War) involving waking them up every 15 minutes - in the run-up to the interrogation.

The Uyghurs reported that the Chinese interrogators threatened them and insisted they return to China; not surprisingly they refused. Beijing, its determination perhaps buttressed by the intelligence shared by the United States and the takeaway from its interrogations, demanded that the Uyghurs be repatriated.

The Bush administration, which quietly repatriated several hundred Guantanamo detainees during its two terms, could not bring itself to agree.

Instead, it dug a nice, deep hole for itself.

First it classified the Uyghurs as anti-Chinese combatants. Then it decided it could not transfer them to China for fear of torture and execution.

The US government, which has blithely returned dozens of rendered Egyptians to the tender mercies of the Egyptian police, took repatriation to China off the table, perhaps because of the Bush administration's stated sympathy for the Uyghur cause and Rabiya Kadeer.

According to the New York Times last year:

Some officials at the Pentagon advocated sending the Uyghurs back to China, and the State Department eventually sought and received assurances from the Chinese that they would treat the men humanely. But senior officials finally decided not to repatriate them, citing China's past treatment of the Uyghur minority.

As John Bellinger, Legal Adviser, State Department, testified before the House sub-committee on International Organizations, Human Rights, and Oversight in June 2008:

We are concerned about the situation of the Uyghurs. We made the decision early on because we thought they would be mistreated if returned to China. That even though a number of years back we had concluded not that they were wrongly picked up - they were picked up because they were in a training camp in Afghanistan - but it was concluded rapidly that they were not trying to fight us but they were trying to fight the Chinese. So we made the decision early on that they need to be sent somewhere but they just couldn't be sent back to China.

But even the world's only superpower found that domiciling 17 Uyghurs was beyond its reach.

After the Albanians, in response to considerable American diplomatic and financial inducements, agreed to accept five Uyghurs, the United States couldn't find any country in the world willing to take the rest.

Vijay Padmanabhan, who worked on repatriations as a lawyer for the State Department, talked to Frontline about the largely futile efforts to find another country that would accept the Uyghurs.

Which countries did you approach?

There was a point in 2005 or 2006 when the US government had all of our embassies in every country that was a reasonable possibility go forward and ask them if they would consider accepting Guantanamo detainees for resettlement. African countries, Asian countries, South American countries. Every country in the European Union. And the answer was almost universally no. So without saying, this country is in, this country is out, the reality is that just about every country has been approached on this question.

After Albania stepped up and took the five Uyghurs in 2006 (one of whom recently obtained asylum in Sweden), Chinese pressure on the Albanians has been relentless.

As a result the Albanians have refused to take any more Uyghurs.

The State Department tried to shop the remaining Uyghurs to Germany and Sweden, two countries with Uyghur populations, and also went far afield - way far afield - to places like Gabon in an unsuccessful search for a refuge.

Beijing was also able to prevail upon the Australian government in January 2009 to openly refuse to take any Guantanamo Uyghur detainees, either.

Even as the Bush administration was bedeviled by the practical problem of dispersing the Uyghurs, its efforts were complicated by a major legal issue. Classifying the Uyghurs as "non-enemy combatants" pulled them out of the "war on terror" limbo of sanctioned indefinite detention, and put them in reach of the US legal system and habeas corpus.

The Bush administration was thereby placed in the impossible position of trying to justify the indefinite detention of people who were no threat to the US.

In October 2008, a US judge ruled that the Uyghurs' continued detention at Guantanamo was legally indefensible and called for the detainees to be released into the custody of Rebiya Kadeer and the avowedly non-violent Uyghur emigres in the Washington, DC area.

The Bush administration, reportedly at the insistence of the Department of Homeland Security, decided not to take this opportunity to solve its Uyghur problem with domestic parole. Instead it obtained a stay of the ruling (the decision was reversed by a higher court and is now under appeal) and continued to detain the Uyghurs at Guantanamo.

While Washington has dithered, China has been unwavering in its determination to deny the Uyghurs a refuge outside of Guantanamo or China.

Wherever the US diplomats went, according to the Times, they were dogged by the Chinese government:

"The Chinese keep coming in behind us and scaring different countries with whom they have financial or trade relationships," said one administration official, who insisted on anonymity in discussing diplomatic issues.

Now the Chinese government has found an unlikely ally in its battle against the release of the Uyghur detainees: Newt Gingrich.

Supporters of the Uyghurs are guardedly optimistic that the Obama administration will ride out the political storm, mobilize its allies and advocates, and get the Uyghurs' release right on its second try.

But one observer wondered if the Uyghur detainees will be the ones who "turn the lights out at Guantanamo" - the last ones to leave, long after the rest of the camp's population had been dispersed.

What That Dead Iranian Scientist Has to do With China

2012-01-13T09:10:00.000-08:00

I titled my most recent article for Asia Times “Desperate Days: The Obama Administration Struggles to Disengage from the Middle East and Escape to Asia”. The crack editors at AT instead opted for Obama Drags Middle East Baggage to Asia, which perhaps doesn’t convey the bloody Great Game element as well.

My point is, the logic of economics, diplomacy, and security theater tells the Obama administration that the US will find its future and, equally importantly, welcoming arms in Asia. A meticulous, multi-stage campaign has been crafted to sell the “strategic pivot to Asia” to the key stakeholders: policy wonks and insiders, politicos, US moneybags, military brass, and the nations in Asia that are worried about China but also dubious about American staying power.

Part of the shift in resources involves putting the complications, compromises, and expenses of the Middle East in America’s rearview mirror.

Goodbye Iraq, goodbye Afghanistan, and maybe, just maybe, the United States can work out a modus vivendi with Iran. Iran, without exaggeration, has been desperate for normalization of relations with the US for probably the last decade. The only dispute within Iran seems to be on the terms of engagement and who gets to take credit for reintegrating Iran into the global system.

Our 21^st century partners in Asia, it is safe to say, would also love to see the United States shed its Iran incubus, and lose the fear that their energy imports, banking systems, and futures are hostage to whatever mischief we decide to cook up in the Middle East.

However, whenever it looks like the Obama administration is going to translate its carefully-choreographed campaign of international pressure against Iran into negotiations with Iran, something happens.

I imagine President Obama pounding his desk in frustration and bellowing a la Michael Corleone, “Every time I try to get out, they…pull… me…back…in.”

Funny…about…that.

That’s where the murder of Mostafa Ahmadi Roshan comes in.

Jim Lobe, bless him, makes a similar point in a thoughtful piece up at his blog, flagging the murder as an attempt to disrupt the efforts to restart the negotiations between Iran and the P5+1, possibly conducted by factions inside Iran but more probably by Israel.

Looking at it from the Asian angle, I think it also had something to do with forcing the United States to reaffirm and continue its expensive and destructive engagement with the Middle East.

The US political dynamics also support continued Middle East involvement. Beyond the undoubtedly sincere Israel-love of the American Right, Republicans are no doubt happy to see President Obama continuing to flounder in the bloody bog of the Middle East instead of capering off to peaceful and prosperous Asia.

By the way, there has been an interesting discussion as to whether Ahmad Roshan’s murder should be termed “terrorism”. Slapping the “terrorism” tag on Western policy toward Iran is a useful rhetorical point, but to me the term “terrorism” was always a canard, something meant to discredit the asymmetric warfare of opponents who couldn’t advance their objectives with conventional military forces. Best just to call Ahmad Roshan’s death “murder”. Or, if you prefer, “state-ordered extrajudicial murder”.

To me, Israeli fingerprints are on the operation not because of its precision, but because of the somewhat creepy efforts to avoid collateral casualties with the sophisticated shaped charge (as the media was suspiciously quick to point out). Israel has no qualms about blowing up streetfulls of people in its operations, so I am not inclined to give them a lot of brownie points for massaging the optics of the murder (and making sure that international outrage will not inhibit further murders in the future).

Here’s the takeaway paragraphs from my Asia Times piece:

The signature event in United States-Chinese relations last week was not the anti-climactic release of the US Defense Strategic Review, which re-emphasized the Barack Obama administration's widely touted ambitions to perform a strategic pirouette from the Middle East to East Asia. It was the murder of another Iranian nuclear scientist in Tehran.

The assassination of Mostafa Ahmadi Roshan by forces unknown serves as a message that the Obama administration will find it difficult to reinvent itself as the savior of Asian peace and prosperity; instead, the United States will find itself reprising its dreary and detested role in the Middle East soap opera as defender of the pro-Israel/anti-Iranian status quo.

…

Every time Obama tries to position the US as the guarantor of peace and prosperity in Asia, something or somebody yanks his chain back to the Middle East, war, and the prospect of global economic ruin.

The murder of Ahmadi Roshan came on the one-year anniversary of the murder of two other Iranian nuclear scientists by similar methods (motorcyclist + bomb + car). It also came at a time of heightened tensions (anyway, tensions higher than the usual heightened tensions), inviting the inference that somebody, probably somebody in the region, wants to goad the Iranian government into a response that could start the military action ball rolling.

It is a safe bet that Obama, disengaging from two futile, polarizing, and massively expensive land wars, does not want war with Iran. It is also plausible that Saudi Arabia does not relish the opportunity to prove that it really does have the excess capacity to replace Iranian energy shipments to China, Japan, and South Korea.

And it is certain that Obama does not want the corpse of Mostafa Ahmadi Roshan to serve as the poster child for US foreign policy, or that he wishes to ingratiate himself to America's East Asian friends and allies by bearing the gift of $200/barrel oil (while Beijing exploits its relationship with Iran to buy energy at a discount).

…

But Iran won't go away: Israel, Saudi Arabia, and their US supporters in both parties won't let it.

Because these powerful stakeholders want to make sure that plans to widen the US diplomatic and military footprint in East Asia don't come at the expense of their perceived existential interests in the Middle East.

So Obama has to drag his Middle Eastern baggage to Asia and make the case that Asia-Pacific should help America work through its Iran obsession.

Instead of exporting American solutions to Asia, the US seems to be exporting American problems.

It does not appear that the Obama administration has figured out how to make lemonade from this sackful of citrus.

One can imagine that the Obama message to Asia is "Believe the policy, not the politics", ie, the United States knows where its interests and future lie, and is not going to drive the world off a cliff because election year politics demand appeasement of the anti-Iran cranks.

However, Asia has zero votes in US politics. On the other hand, the people who are caught up in the rhetoric of war with Iran do have the votes, interest, and money to make their influence felt…

Turkey Hoisted on Syrian Cleft Stick of its Own Devise; Arab League Shafted by Anwar Malek

2012-01-12T13:43:00.000-08:00

There is an emerging picture of an embarrassing dilemma for Turkey on Syria.

Eager for regional leader cred and anxious to establish itself as an equal partner with the Western powers in the ongoing Middle East make over, Turkey got out in front in supporting the Syrian rebellion.

Maybe too far in front.

Western military intervention appears genuinely off the table, perhaps because of Russia’s unambiguous opposition.

And Bashar Assad doesn’t seem to be going anywhere for now.

If Turkey wants to finish him off, it will have to take the lead in sending in troops—and in cleaning up the gigantic and destabilizing sectarian mess foreign intervention would probably provoke.

That is beyond Turkey’s ability.

So the rebellion staggers on, and Turkey must brace for the possibility that civil war and all hell break loose anyway, and Ankara will find itself confronting a mess very much similar to the one an invasion might bring.

No guarantee that the West is anxious to step in and end the bloody stalemate, anyway.

I would speculate that Bashar Assad is unable to funnel significant aid to Hezbullah now, and has become a cost center instead of a profit center for Iran, which is struggling to prop up the regime and finds itself inhibited in its full enjoyment of its alliance with the Maliki government in Iraq.

If the regime falls to largely Sunni internal forces, good. If Bashar Assad staggers on, and Syria remains an open, running sore for Iran, well that’s good too. At least for the West and the Gulf States. Maybe not for the Syrian people.

Meanwhile, all that’s necessary to keep the pot bubbling and further pre-empt (increasingly unlikely) national reconciliation is continued sanctions, covert military support to the opposition, and ostentatious outrage at continued government atrocities and the futility of the Arab League mission.

Speaking of the Arab League, much media hay has been made of the resignation of Algerian author Anwar Malek from the Arab League observer mission in Syria.

Malek’s statements buttress the suspicions of many sympathizers of the Syrian uprising, who consider Syrian regime’s acceptance of the mission as nothing more than a temporizing ruse.

Malek told Al Jazeera:

“They didn’t withdraw their tanks from the streets, they just hid them and redeployed them after we left,” Anwar Malek told Al Jazeera English television at its headquarters in Qatar, still wearing one of the orange vests used by the monitors.

“The snipers are everywhere shooting at civilians. People are being kidnapped. Prisoners are being tortured and no one has been released,” the Algerian former observer said. “Those who are supposedly freed and shown on TV are actually people who had been randomly grabbed off the streets.”

Malek’s statements will undoubtedly provide fodder for those advocating escalating confrontation with the Assad regime, but in truth he is something of a grandstander and dingbat.

The vest is a telling detail since, by Malek’s own admission, he quit the mission and ensconced himself in his hotel room for the last four days of the mission, presumably removing the need to wear that fancy orange attire except when dining out at Homs' finer eating establishments.

Al Jazeera’s Anwar Malek liveblog reported on the contretemp:

The head of the Arab League's monitors mission to Syria, Lieutenant-General Mohammed Al Dabi, issued a statement deriding the remarks made by Algerian monitor, Anwar Malek.

Al Dabi said Malek's statement "had nothing to do with reality."

"Since he was assigned to the Homs team, Malek didn't leave his hotel for six days and wasn't been part of the field visits with the team, citing illness," Al Dabi said.

Al Dabi added that Malek had requested leaving to Paris for treatment and had in fact traveled ahead of schedule on his personal expense and without turning in work property first.

Al Dabi said Malek broke the oath that he took and that his remarks are strictly personal.

Al Dabi concluded by urging the media to be accurate and objective.

Malek responded to the remarks in this statement in an interview with Al Jazeera, saying:

"This is all lies and a kind of tactic because in fact I appeared quite a lot in videos that appeared on the internet and were broadcast by satellite channels even Syrian TV aired about 20 packages that had me in them when I was visiting hospitals, prisons, schools and out on the streets talking to people. I am clearly shown meeting and talking to people in these videos.

So these allegations are all baseless. However what they say about me not leaving my rooms for 4 days is true. I only left to eat but it was at the end of my mission when I decided to quit but this was after I’d spent about 15 days on the field but then I decided to stop work so I stayed in my room for 4 days then I left Homs for Damascus.

I did not send any letter to the head of the mission saying I was unwell and was going to stay in my room. If this is true let them produce the letter. In fact I went to see him to talk to him about my reasons to stop work but he refused to listen to me and gave me only 2 minutes to leave without even listening to me."

Malek’s accomplishments in Arabic literature are beyond me. Listening to him, on the other hand, is demonstrably a chore, as a bizarre and contentious 2009 appearance on Al Jazeera demonstrates.

Youtube has it.

Highlights of his remarks were translated by MEMRI, the Israel-affiliated open source intelligence outfit, and lovingly cited on a multitude of right wing Jewish and Christian fundamentalist websites.

It’s easy to see why.

The theme of his discourse is, in his own words, “The Arabs are backward and not fit for civilization at all.”

Some of his high-speed rant is, in light of current events, rather ironic:

[Arab rulers] emerged from among the people and share the same beliefs. If you placed any Arab citizen in power, I challenge any Arab citizen who may become a ruler to do anything beyond what the current Arab leaders are doing. There is no difference between the Arab rulers and the Arab people.

When the moderator makes the case for contemporary Arab worth as demonstrated by heroic resistance against overwhelming odds, Malek retorts:

What resistance are you talking about? If you are talking about the resistance of Hizbullah, Hizbullah has destroyed Lebanon, in the framework of a Persian conspiracy. I say this point blank.

The picture emerges of a Rush Limbaugh-style cultural provocateur and Arab chauvinist nostalgic for the glory days of the Arab empires—and a reflexive Iranophobe.

And, perhaps, a self-selected plant eager to discredit the observer mission from within.

Interesting choice for an observer group trying to mediate between an Iran-backed Shi’ite-esque regime and a Sunni/Muslim Brotherhood rebellion.

Of course, the issue of how that observer group—headed by Sudan’s strongman for Darfur—got put together in the first place would make an interesting story. Too bad Al Jazeera isn’t interested in telling it.

The Syrian Revolution Hijacked

2011-11-29T13:01:00.000-08:00

The Syrian revolution—a broad-based, non-sectarian, democratic anti-despot national movement—has failed.

Mass demonstrations never materialized in Damascus and Aleppo. The military and security forces didn’t crack. The Alawite on Sunni crackdown (Alawites form the backbone of the army/security forces/irregular goon squads) fomented sectarian divisions, with most non-Sunnis minorities cleaving desperately to the Assad regime. Prosperous Sunnis have presumably been hedging their bets by donating to the anti-government cause in recent days but have not explicitly abandoned the regime.

The Gulf powers and the West would have welcomed a Ba’athist regime collapse at the hand of domestic anti-government demonstrations.

That didn’t happen.

As the peaceful democratic movement has faltered, there has been no move from the Western/Gulf powers to encourage reconciliation and reforms.

Quite the contrary, in fact.

Whenever Assad makes an offer of reform, the Western powers dismiss it as too late and/or insincere.

Victoria Nuland, the State Department spokesperson, counseled Syrian dissidents to defy the Assad regime’s offer of an amnesty in return for handing in illegal weapons, as the LA Times reported:

Syria accused Washington of "inciting sedition, supporting the acts of killing and terrorism," the official Syrian news agency said, quoting an official source at the Foreign Ministry.

…
The comments came a day after State Department spokeswoman Victoria Nuland declared that she would counsel Syrians to reject the amnesty, in which those the government terms arms violators were asked to turn themselves in with their weapons "to the nearest police station" during a one-week period that began Saturday. Those who surrender and have not killed anyone "will be released soon," the Interior Ministry vowed.

"I wouldn't advise anybody to turn themselves in to regime authorities at the moment," Nuland told reporters in Washington.

Nuland, by the way, is married to PNACer and neocon pundit Robert Kagan. Recalling Dick Cheney's enthusiasm for driving to Damascus post-Iraqi Freedom, maybe we should call the Syria enterprise Clean Break II: The Do-Over.

Anyway, democracy didn't work. Time for Plan B.

The foreign powers interested in Assad’s fall—and stripping Iran of a regional ally--have made the decision to piggyback a foreign-supported, foreign-funded insurrection on the faltering anti-government movement.

More accurately, the democratic revolution is now an uncertain and unwilling passenger on the Gulf-funded military machine rumbling toward Damascus.

Havens for anti-Assad fighters have materialized in Turkey, and arms and money are flooding in from all over the place.

Weapons and money for anti-Assad insurrectionists has been trickling in for months, to the blissful disregard of western news outlets fixated on the images of democracy demonstrators struggling against oppression.

Now that the political option is sliding off the table and it is clear a foreign-funded insurrection is needed to remove the Assad regime, the gusher of arms and cash has become too big to ignore.

But the story doesn’t require old-fashioned reporting anymore.

Just go down to a Turkish foreign ministry presser for tea, cookies, and a targeted backgrounder.

Turkey has positioned itself as the indispensable Western/Gulf proxy on Syria’s northern border.

Iran’s IRNA news agency passed on a report in Turkey’s Millyet tabloid a major Turkish news outlet. IRNA is sometimes selective and/or inaccurate in its presentation of international news, so I’m passing it on with a caveat, but the report as presented passes the smell test for me:

According to Milliyet, as cited by IRNA, France has sent its military training forces to Turkey and Lebanon to coach the so-called Free Syrian Army -- a group of defectors operating out of Turkey and Lebanon -- in an effort to wage war against Syria's military.

The report added that the French, British, and Turkish authorities “have reached an agreement to send arms into Syria.”

The Turkish daily said that the three have informed the US about training and arming the Syrian opposition.

According to Milliyet, a group of armed rebels are currently stationed in Turkey's Hatay Province near the border with Syria.

The report comes as an earlier report had revealed that the British and French intelligence agencies have reportedly tasked their agents with contacting Syrian dissidents based in the northern Lebanese town of Tripoli in order to help fuel unrest in Syria.

Reports also said that French intelligence agents have been sent to northern Lebanon and Turkey to build the first contingents of the Free Syrian Army out of the deserters who have fled Syria.

For those of you who prefer to get your Turkey/Syria news from a reliable Crusader source, here’s an eyebrow-raising item from the Daily Telegraph, albeit via Hurryet on November 27:

Syrian dissidents held secret talks Nov. 25 with Libya’s new authorities and Turkish authorities in Istanbul with the aim of securing weapons and money for their insurgency against Damascus, the Daily Telegraph has reported.

Syrian opposition group requested “assistance” from the Libyan representatives and were offered arms, and potentially volunteers, during the meeting, the daily reported Nov. 25.

“There is something being planned to send weapons and even Libyan fighters to Syria,” a Libyan source said on condition of anonymity. “There is a military intervention on the way. Within a few weeks you will see.”

Preliminary discussions about arms supplies took place when members of the Syrian National Council (SNC) – the country’s main opposition movement – visited Libya earlier this month, said the daily.
“The Libyans are offering money, training and weapons to the Syrian National Council,” said Wisam Taris, a human rights campaigner with links to the SNC. Last month, Libya’s interim government became the first in the world to recognize Syria’s opposition movement as the country’s “legitimate authority.”

Large shipments of weapons have not yet been sent, said activists, mainly because of logistical difficulties.

But proposals for a “buffer zone” inside Syria, monitored by the Arab League, or the likely emergence of an area inside the country controlled entirely by rebels, could solve this problem. “The [Libyan] council’s offer is serious,” said Taris.

Sources in the Libyan town of Misrata suggested that some weapons may already have been sent. Some smugglers were caught selling small arms to Syrian buyers in Misrata, said a man who trafficked guns to Libya’s rebels during the country’s civil war.

Libyans feel closely aligned to the Syrian cause, said Hameda al-Mageri, from the Tripoli Military Council.

The Tripoli Military Council is the creature of Islamist strongman Abdelhakim Belhadj.

Belhadj is the preferred in-Libya muscle of the Gulf States—“proxy” is perhaps not too strong a term. He recently found it expedient to issue a non-denial denial that Qatar had dispatched nine planeloads of arms to Tripoli for the exclusive use of his forces.

Belhadj was denied a seat in the new Libyan cabinet thanks to Western anxiety over any overtly Islamist tinge to the proceedings. In an inspiring demonstration of the give-and-take of new Libyan democracy, a representative from Zintan was able to leverage his town’s continued and suspiciously prolonged local custody of Saif Qaddafi into a winning bid for the defense slot.

Instead, Belhadj now has the opportunity to pursue profitable mischief in Syria on behalf of the Gulf states and their anti Sh’ia/anti-Iranian counter revolution (and perhaps dissipating the intimidating shadow of Belhadj and a number of his well-trained and hardened fighters from the streets of Tripoli).

In an amusing sideline, Belhadj--presumably on his way to the Istanbul meeting--got a friendly hazing at the airport from his Zintan buddies. The brief detention was noted by the local Libyan press; the thing about the money was apparently glossed by a pro-Gaddafi website (they still exist!):

The battalion of Zintan men has arrested him after the discovery that the passport is registered with the competent authorities and carrying fake name.

After the arrest the rebels received a call from the President of the Council Mustafa Abdul Jalil asking the Alzentan and officials at the airport in Tripoli to allow Hakim Belhaj to leave the country, this has been found on the large sum of money inside the bag Khuwaildi Belhadj.

The democratic revolution ship has sailed. What’s going on today is a foreign-supported insurrection.

The Chinese and the Russians have a clear-eyed understanding of what’s going on.

The PRC is loath to get on the wrong side of Saudi Arabia, its largest energy supplier, by going too far to defend Syria.

Moscow, which has a real stake in its Iran alliance and cares about the fate of Assad’s regime, has shown no such qualms.

A selection of headlines from RIA Novosti gives an idea of what a responsible multi-lateral response on Syria—as opposed to a hurried military ass-kicking enabled by global anti-Iranian forces meant to obscure the failure of a peaceful "color revolution"—would have looked like:

Syria welcomes Russia as intermediary in reconciliation talks

Syrian opposition should not boycott reforms—Russian FM

Moscow calls on Arab League to work for peace in Syria

None of this is happening, of course.

As to where this all ends up, I will outsource the increasingly plausible endgame--Turkey is ready to invade Syria--to the estimable M. Badhrakumar of Asia Times (and his personal blog, Indian Punchline):

Turkey and its western allies are transferring the Libyan fighters whom they trained and armed to depose Muammar Gaddafi to Syria. Around 600 Libyan ‘volunteers’ have entered Syria. Daily Telegraph reported that secret meetings were held on Friday in Istanbul between the Turkish officials and the Syrian opposition representatives and the Libyan fighters. Large-scale infiltration of weapons from Turkey and Jordan have been going on for months to create civil-war conditions in Syria, but this is the first move to introduce ‘volunteers’.

The move is necessitated by the failure to induce defections form the Syrian armed forces, except a mere handful. Turkey and the western powers are desperate to create the myth of a ‘Syrian resistance’ force without which their blatant aggression will be in full display.

…

Things seem to be heading for a flash point, indeed. The sure sign is that US V-P Joseph Biden is heading for Ankara in the weekend. It is a major signal of the US giving the go-ahead to Turkey to act on Syria without fear. Again, Jordanian King, Abdullah, travelled to israel. He is Saudi Arabia’s ‘back channel’ to Israel and a key regional ally for the western intelligence.

Turkey is indeed shedding its fear of the unknown and is coming out into the open on the Syrian situation. Turkish FM Ahmet Davitoglu indicated today for the first time that Turkey is all set for invasion of Syria once it gets the green signal from its western allies. He said this before heading for the combined meeting of EU foreign ministers and Arab League representatives (read Saudi Arabia and Qatar).

The day Davutoglu spoke, November 29, will stand out as a notable date in the chronicle of the Turkish Republic that Kemal Ataturk founded. Ataturk’s ‘red line’ used to be that Turkey should never get entangled in the affairs of the Muslim Middle East but should instead concentrate on its own ‘modernization’. Evidently, the Islamist government in power today thinks Turkey is today ‘modern’ enough already and can now go back and reclaim its Ottoman legacy.

A Turkish army moving into an Arab country - it is a historic point. It is a century after the Turks were driven out by the ‘Arab revolt’. The matrix is dripping with irony. The Arab revolt against the Turks was instigated by Great Britain. And Britain, although a far weaker power today, is still playing a seminal role - except, it is encouraging the Turks to return to the Arab world. One hundred years ago, Britain successfully pitted the Arabs against the Turks. Today, Turks join hands with some Arabs who have a grouse against some other Arabs.

The Syrian revolutionaries were too weak to get the nation they wanted.

They’ll have to make do with whatever state that Turkey, the Gulf powers, and the western democracies decide to give them.

A Tale of Two Relics

2011-11-16T09:44:00.000-08:00

The Belt of St. Mary Comes to Russia and the Buddha's Tooth Visits Myanmar

One thing that’s pretty clear is that religious movements are, for the most part, conservative and have served as bulwarks of authoritarianism (and a shield against challenges to the wealth and power of the privileged) at least since the days of the Social Democrats.

Authoritarian atheism, after a brief, 20^th century heyday under Hitler, Mao, and Stalin, is perhaps headed for the dustbin of history.

Religion is too good for business, billionaires, and bosses, both in liberal democracies and post-Communist states.

Modern plutocracies have rediscovered the fact that there’s nothing like appeals to religious identity to split the electorate and marginalize those obstreperous liberal activists whose political views usually combine irreligious sentiments with enthusiasm for democracy and a nasty penchant for economic justice.

The PRC is having limited success replacing Communism with nationalism and Confucianism as organizing national faiths. It’s hard to get excited by a quasi-state religion promising little more than order and stability to its followers and offering bland, risk-averse apparatchiks like Hu Jintao and Xi Jinping as its father-figures. And despite Bo Xilai’s Red surge in Chongqing, I don’t think Mao nostalgia is going to make a comeback.

At the same time, the PRC’s attempts to present itself as a protector of Buddhism by sponsoring a tooth tour to Myanmar look rather unconvincing, especially considering the organized pounding the PRC government is giving to Tibetan Buddhist monasteries in western Sichuan (I write about the Sichuan campaign—which looks like nothing less than an organized effort to eliminate the recalcitrant monastery at Kirti through the most onerous oppression possible—in my most recent piece for Asia Times, Will Aba be the CCP’s Waterloo? Yes, Europop lovers, I constructed that title with care and considerable pride).

I think the Russians under Putin have broken the code. You can read about it below in the story of the Virgin Mary’s girdle.

Note in particular that the Russian state now works its religious legerdemain through an ultra-conservative, well-financed, firebreathing defender-of-the-faith-esque religious foundation instead of China’s retro-socialist, atheistic, bureaucratic, and broadly disliked government State Administration for Religious Affairs.

What China’s elites need to energize their rule is a shot of that old time religion, feeding off the invincible charisma of Jesus Christ, or for that matter, Buddha instead of relying on whatever technocrat the Politburo burps out every few years. Maybe, in a few years, we’ll see some Chinese leader profess his militantly Christian (or, what the heck, Buddhist) faith, pour state resources into institutionalizing a mass conservative religious base, and create a virtually unassailable bulwark against his political opponents and those pesky democratic activists.

Religion is not just religion when it comes to national politics and geopolitics.

As a current affairs bonus, there’s a passage on a competing Virgin Mary’s girdle held at a Syriac Orthodox Church in the rebellious city of Homs, and a competing Buddha's tooth that Taiwan will enshrine at a complex built at a cost of one-third of a billion US dollars in Kaohsiung on December 25, 2011.

First, from Russia, via RIA Novosti:

A remarkable procession is currently taking place in Russia…

The Belt of the Virgin Mary, otherwise referred to as the Precious Sash, or Cincture, of Our Most Holy Lady Theotokos – the holy treasure of the Vatopedi Monastery on Mount Athos in Greece, is travelling abroad for the first time. The Belt is travelling in style. It flies in a private jet, chartered by the tour’s organizer – the influential St. Andrew Foundation, and is accompanied by six Vatopedi monks. In St. Petersburg, it was welcomed by none other than Prime Minister Vladimir Putin. In Yekaterinburg, Russia's fourth largest city, Governor Alexander Misharin and the region’s bishop, Metropolitan Kirill, met the relic with the guard of honor before a procession of some 15,000 people took it to the cathedral.

The numbers are stunning indeed. In St. Petersburg, estimated one million people came to venerate the Belt in three days and nights, according to the local media. People stood in line for twelve to fourteen hours to be able to kiss the silver box containing the piece of camel wool fabric believed to have been woven and worn by the Virgin Mary, and take a small band blessed on the relic. In Yekaterinburg it was 300,000, in Krasnoyarsk – 100,000. The relic has already been to the country’s Far East – in Vladivostok, and the Far North – in Norilsk, beyond the Arctic Circle. Volgograd and Stavropol in the South are in the days to come. And it is hard to imagine what kind of crowds will gather in Moscow when, by the end of November, the relic arrives in the capital before leaving Russia for good.

According to the Vatopedi Monastery, the Virgin Mary dropped the belt from heaven for St.Thomas:

According to the Sacred Tradition and the history of our Church, the Most Holy Theotokos [Virgin Mary] three days after she fell asleep she rose from the dead and ascended in body to the heavens. During her ascension, she gave her Holy Belt to the Apostle Thomas. Thomas, along with the rest of the holy Apostles, opened up her grave and didn't find the body of the Theotokos. In this way the Holy Belt is proof for our Church of her Resurrection and bodily ascension to the heavens, and, in a word, at her metastasis.

From AFP, the socio-political angle:

Clerics said they hoped the relic would help more Russian women become mothers as the influential Russian Orthodox Church is actively promoting motherhood to help the government curtail a population decline.

Church officials in several cities plan to take the relic to pregnancy centres that counsel women contemplating an abortion, the Russian Orthodox Church said.

“This event is of huge significance especially when it comes to strengthening people’s faith,” Father Kirill, a spokesman for the Saint Petersburg diocese, told AFP.

“And the fact that this is such a singular relic helping women is especially important for our city and our country, where the demographic situation leaves much to be desired.”

Russian leaders have called the shrinking population a matter of national security.

The country’s latest census released earlier this year showed that the country’s population had shrunk by 2.2 million people since 2002 and now stands at 142.9 million.

There are also photos of Putin and Medvedev solemnly observing the reliquary. Putin chose to appear in his Action Man uniform (no tie, unbuttoned collar), inviting the question of whether his expression is one of stunned reverence or sullen challenge to a potential rival.

All joking aside, Vladimir Putin has jettisoned the official atheism of the KGB and has established the Russian state as a vigorous promoter of the Russian Orthodox Church--and vice versa, as Michael Binyon wrote for The Humanist in 2008:

Putin … is fervently and ostentatiously observant in his religious beliefs. As a result, the Russian Orthodox Church, now richer and more powerful than at any time for almost a century, has been at the centre of all state ceremonies, is a strong supporter of Putin’s policies and has resumed its traditional role as the spiritual arm of the Russian state. Restored churches can be seen everywhere. There are now some 28,000 parish churches in Russia, 732 monasteries and convents and thousands of priests training in seminaries. Putin delivers speeches at major religious festivals; in return the Patriarch acts as his agent in extending his control over all sectors of society. Church and Communist Party have become almost interchangeable.

As reported by Ministry Values in 2010, President Medvedev is equally forthright about playing the religious card:

An icon of Jesus hidden in a Kremlin gate used by Soviet leaders but bricked over in the 1930s during communist times was restored on Saturday to public view.

Russian President Medvedev, on the day that marks the Virgin Mary being taken into heaven, said the "Saviour Smolensky" icon, which depicts Jesus holding open the New Testament, with Russian saints below him, will provide moral support to Russia.

"Now that we've got the icon back, our country secures an additional defense."

The “influential St. Andrew Foundation” cited in the Novosti report—the outfit that sent the private jet to pick up the belt—is a religious foundation run by Vladimir Yakunin, a member of Putin’s inner circle and reputedly a veteran of the KGB’s First Directorate. He is also president of the gigantic state-owned Russian Railways.

Presumably, Yakunin is there to lock up the support of the Russian Orthodox hierarchy for Putin and whatever subsequent strongman craves well-financed, pervasive, and activist backing from the conservative church.

In 2010, European CEO breathlessly pegged him as “the man to watch” as a potential successor to Putin:

This ex-KBG spook is discreet, bright and endowed with a potentially huge powerbase. Vladimir Yakunin has a neighbouring lake-side dacha with prime minister (and former president) Putin. He’s often mentioned in the same breath as other successors to his all-powerful boss…

He’s patently bright and has certainly proved himself able and willing to move with the times. After the Soviet Union collapsed he moved into banking and business before being appointed as deputy transport minister in 2000. Many ex-KGB personnel were able to take advantage of new industry licences and Yakunin, along with some physicist friends, were no exception. In time they established Bank Russia, which later financed Putin’s re-election campaign in 2004.

Yet it would be a mistake to label this discreetly influential man as just another power-hungry party apparatchik or ex-KGB “siloviki”, the unflattering term given to describe the network of ex and current state-security officers. He has a fascination with Russia’s religious legacy and has helped launch a foundation that encourages reconciliation of the Russian Orthodox Church.

Yakunin’s “fascination with Russia’s religious legacy”, and his evolution from amoral KGB apparatchik to creepy, "values"-promoting bigot is reflected in remarks like this:

The head of the Council of Trustees of the St. Andrew the First-Called Foundation and JSC Russian Railways, Vladimir Yakunin, believes tolerance to homosexuality is harmful.

"I think traditional family values and childbearing should not be substituted with some notorious imitations invented by the homosexual propaganda which could be only arbitrarily called attributes of a democratic society," he said at the opening ceremony of the 15th World Russian People's Council held on Wednesday in Moscow.

Yakunin told that he wanted to address this issue in his speech delivered at the Berlin forum last year, but he was warned that "this country will hardly understand you; and you may have troubles here."

"Nothing of the kind. There was not a single protest made and not a single person left the room because I mentioned that the propaganda of homosexuality was the same pollutant for the social environment as other pollutants were for the natural one," he said.

Getting back to the Cincture of the Virgin Mary, another version of the relic is held by the Jacobite Syrian Church in Homs—yes, Homs, ground zero of the anti-Assad rebellion-- under considerably less glamorous conditions.

The reliquary, and a history of Syria’s girdle and religious art showing its bestowal on St. Thomas, can be viewed on a very interesting Flickr feed by Rhoneil Victor de Leon.

On its website, the Cathedral of St. Mary in Homs claims its belt is the one that Mary dropped to St. Thomas from heaven, was brought to Syria in 476 and hidden in the church, and was rediscovered in 1953.

Remarkably, a piece of the Homs belt resides in Jacksonville, Florida at the Mother of God Zunoro Syrian Orthodox Church. The Patriarch of Damascus arranged to bestow a section of the belt on the new church. The relic was first adored at a sister church in Paramus, NJ, before taking up permanent residence in Florida in 1998.

Any competing claim for the Homs belt is not addressed on the Mt. Athos website, which plausibly traces the provenance of its belt back to the Byzantine Empire in the 12^th century and its donation to Mt. Athos by Emperor John the 6th Katakouzinos (1347-1355).

Meanwhile, from around the globe and a religious universe away, via Xinhua:

NAY PYI TAW, Nov. 6 (Xinhua) -- A Chinese Buddha sacred tooth relic was conveyed to Myanmar's new capital of Nay Pyi Taw Sunday afternoon for 48-day public obeisance in the country under the escort of venerable monks.

It is the fourth time that the Chinese Buddha sacred tooth relic was brought to the country for obeisance 15 years after the last conveyance.

Arriving along with the special plane which carried the sacred tooth relic were a Chinese Buddhist delegation led by Director of the State Administration of Religious Affairs of China Wang Zuoan and tooth relic escort team, and Myanmar Religious Affairs Minister Thura U Myint Maung who specially went in advance to Beijing to greet the tooth relic.

Myanmar held a grand ceremony at the Nay Pyi Taw International Airport to greet the arriving tooth relic in accordance with Buddhist practice with national characteristics.

Vice-President Dr. Sai Mauk Kham and other high government officials, representatives of Buddhist circle and followers totaling about 2,000 greeted the Buddha sacred tooth relic at the airport.

The sacred tooth relic is being transferred to colorful floats and white-elephant-decorated vehicles and heading for Nay Pyi Taw' s Uppatasanti Pagoda where President U Thein Sein, along with 6, 000 Buddhist followers, is awaiting for greeting the relic for paying homage.

The Chinese tooth relic will be kept in Myanmar for a total of 48 days for public obeisance from Nov. 6 to Dec. 24 covering three major cities -- Nay Pyi Taw, Yangon and Mandalay.

Of Myanmar's 60-million population, over 80 percent believe in Buddhism. The conveyance of the Chinese sacred tooth relic to Myanmar represents not only a major event of the Buddhist believers but also a fine story of China-Myanmar friendship.

It would seem that this lavish and lavishly costumed exercise was planned well before the recent, orchestrated chill in PRC-Myanmar relations that accompanied the civilian Myanmar government’s recent tilt toward the West.

One would imagine that China decided to proceed with the tooth tour anyway, to show it could be big about the snub.

Buddhism also has its relic-related controversies, sometimes exacerbated by political scraps.

The provenance of China's tooth is relatively secure. It is generally accepted that only two of Buddha's teeth survived his cremation to exist in the earthly realm: one at Lingguang Temple in China, and another at the Temple of the Tooth Relic in Kandy, Sri Lanka.

In the 1990s, Taiwan had well-funded government pretensions of establishing itself as a world center of Buddhism, including Tibetan Buddhism, and even luring the Dalai Lama to reside there. In 1998 a Tibetan Buddhist Rinpoche bestowed a Buddha's tooth (as authenticated by other rinpoches) rescued from the Namgyal Monastery inside Tibet to Fo Guang Shan Temple in Kaohsiung China.

American readers might recognize the Los Angeles branch of the far-flung and absurdly prosperous Fo Guang Shan empire: Hsi Lai Temple in Hacienda Heights, California, where then Vice President Al Gore encountered his campaign contribution bundling awkwardness.

It has taken ten years for Fo Guang Shan Temple to complete the facility that will house and reverence what it claims to be Buddha's third tooth, the Buddha Memorial Center.

The BMC is a colossal structure that, by the temple's own calculation, cost NT 10 billion to construct. That's US $350 million dollars. I repeat:US $350 million dollars. Its official opening is scheduled for December 25, 2011. This artist's rendition gives the best idea of the facility's inter-galactic awesomeness. Those little specs? People. That Buddha in the back there? Largest seated Buddha statue in the world, 108 meters high, roughly the height of a thirty-story building.

Predictably, the PRC government was not amused when Taiwan first shouldered in on the tooth-relic action, as the BBC reported in 1999:

A third relic in the possession of a Tibetan monk caused great excitement when moved to Taiwan last year, but was angrily denounced by Chinese officials as a false tooth.

Beijing, which claims Taiwan as part of its territory, said there was no Buddhist scripture to prove its authenticity - a claim rejected as irrelevant by Taiwanese Buddhist leaders.

Quite possibly, the Chinese government decided to send its tooth on tour this year in order to remind the world once again that the PRC, not Taiwan, possesses a Buddha tooth of widely acknowledged provenance (the Lingguang Temple tooth was sent to Hong Kong for display in 1999, following the Fo Guang Shan bombshell).

Impoverished Myanmar may not be able to match the multi-million dollar spectacle slated for the BMC's Christmas Day 2011 official opening, but it made the arrival of the tooth a national event.

A Myanmar publication, The Village Weekly, depicted the procession on its Facebook page:

New Light of Myanmar, the China Daily as it were of Myanmar, described the unfolding of the Jumbotron-inflected 24-hour simulcast religious raree, while meticulously recording the financial take and the respectful obeisances of local and foreign notables (Jon Patrick Barta of the Wall Street Journal!) in breathless daily reports.

Donations appear to be coming in at a rate of around 20 million MMK (Myanmar Kyat) per day. At the official exchange rate of roughly 6 kyat to the dollar (the rate at which the government will generously sell a visitor its currency), that’s over $3 million per day, or more than $140 million dollars over the 48-day duration of the visit.

The black market rate of the MMK (for people who want dollars but need to buy them illegally) is around 800:1, which makes for a somewhat less impressive $25,000/day.

The IMF apparently believes an exchange rate of 400-450 MMK is a good reflection of the purchasing power of the kyat. Assuming that the value of the gold offerings is calculated at the official rate, the take is perhaps $50,000/day or $2 million for the entire visit.

With over 80% of Myanmar's population identified as Buddhist, the Buddhist establishment is a key political player. As one can see from the list of donors and donations, Myanmar’s leaders spare no expense in publicly associating themselves with Buddhism and its most revered symbols.

I imagine the Chinese delegation took careful note of the phenomenon.

New Light of Myanmar’s website is a mystifying relic of an earlier Internet age, when dinosaurs roamed the earth and Usenet represented the pinnacle of human aspiration. As far as I can tell, it has no useful search engine and no archive beyond retention of the most recent seven days’ stories. So, at the risk of trying my readers’ patience, and playing fast and loose with fair use, I am reproducing a week’s worth of daily reports below for the sake of posterity, and for Myanmarologists who wish to parse the donation levels of the various military and bureaucratic notables who flocked to the event.

From New Light of Myanmar

Uppatasanti Pagoda packed with pilgrims who pay homage to Sacred Buddha Tooth Relic

NAY PYI TAW, 8 Nov-Pilgrims continued to crowd Uppatasanti Pagoda to pay homage to the Sacred Buddha Tooth Relic conveyed for the fourth time from China to Myanmar for Buddhists in Myanmar from dawn to dusk today.

In addition to two elevators installed at southeast and south-west corners of the hill for the sake of public convenience, members of social organizations helped the elders and the disabled climb the hill.

Three pathways are systematically designed in the cave to enable the pilgrims to pay close homage to the Sacred Buddha Tooth Relic and sites for those who want to meditate in the cave are created.

The artistes of Fine Arts Department of the Ministry of Culture performed Dhammapuja songs in the accompaniment with harp troupe. Religious associations of ministries and in Nay Pyi Taw Council Area recited religious verses.

Donation boxes and pavilions are opened at the southern arch and the eastern arch on the precinct of the pagoda for accepting donation of cash and jewellery. A total of 24 donors of K 100000 and above emerged today. Chairman of Financial Sub-committee Deputy Minister for Finance and Revenue U Win Than returned certificates of honour to them.

In the evening, Director of Armoured Unit of Commander-in-Chief (Army) Office Maj-Gen Hla Myint and wife Daw San San Aye and family donated one earring with jade and diamond with estimated value of K 650000, US$ 100 and K 100000.

Secretary of Financial Sub-committee Deputy Director- General Dr Lin Aung of Budget Department under the Ministry of Finance and Revenue accepted donations and returned certificate of honour. Cash donation at the donation centres from 7 November evening till 7 pm today amounted to K 16789410 and US$ 207, RMB 23 Yuan, 100 Baht, 60 jewelleries with estimated value of K 3065600, two silver vases worthy of K 350000 and Non Jade Buddha Image worthy of K 500000.-MNA

Pilgrims throng Uppatasanti Pagoda to pay homage to Sacred Buddha Tooth Relic conveyed from PRC

NAY PYI TAW, 9 Nov- A large number of pilgrims thronged Uppatasanti Pagoda, here, to pay homage to the Sacred Buddha Tooth Relic conveyed for the fourth times from the People’s Republic of China to Myanmar for public obeisance from dawn to dusk today.

For the convenience of pilgrims, an elevator at south-west corner helps monks, the aged and the disabled climb the hill. Apart from Myanmar people, visitors from Germany and Japan paid homage to the Sacred Buddha Tooth Relic.

A total of 14 wellwishers who donated K 100,000 and above and 22, various kinds of jewelries emerged today.

Among donors were U Myo Myint Aung and wife Daw Khaing Su Yin and son Maung Ye Yint Aung of MRTV in Nay Pyi Taw Tatkon who donated two gold rings worth K 312,000 and U Aye Kyaw and wife Daw Myint Myint Than and family of Natalin in Bago Region, a gold ring worth K 295,200. An official of financial subcommittee received the donation and presented certificates of honour to them.

Today’s donation amounted to K 18,406,511, US$ 39, 500 bahts, 500 pesos and 100,000 Indonesia rupiahs and 47 kinds of jewelries worth K4,034,500.

Uppatasanti Pagoda packed with pilgrims to pay homage to Sacred Buddha Tooth Relic

NAY PYI TAW, 10 Nov - Uppatasanti Pagoda was thronged with devotees who pay homage to the Sacred Buddha Tooth Relic conveyed for the fourth times from the People’s Republic of China to Myanmar for making public obeisance from dawn to dusk today.

The Sacred Buddha Tooth Relic was showed on large TV screens for enabling pilgrims to pay close homage to the tooth relic.

Moreover, booklets, pictures of the Sacred Buddha Tooth Relic and religious books are on sale at the bookstall of the Department for Promotion and Propagation of the Sasana at the foot of the Uppatasanti Hill.

For the convenience of pilgrims who pay homage to the Sacred Buddha Tooth Relic, buses of Nay Pyi Taw Council are providing free-of-charge transportation service to pilgrims on this Fullmoon Day of Tazaungmon.

A total of 64 wellwishers who donated K 100,000 and above and 92, various kinds of jewellery emerged today. Among the donors were Deputy Minister for Communications, Posts and Telegraphs U Tint Lwin and wife Daw Khin Mar Lwin and family who donated K 300,000, U Nyi Nyi Hlaing and wife Daw Khin Myo Myat and family of Yati Min Silk House in Mandalay, K 500, 000, Cambodian pilgrims led by Bhaddanta Vilasa of Tipitaka Maha Gannayon Monastery in Mayangon Township, K135, 200, US$ 365, 1000 Vietnamese dongs, 2000 Cambodian riels and 20 bahts.

Today’s donation amounted to K 34,691,370, US$ 794, 820 yuans, 40 bahts, 1000 Vietnamese dongs, 2000 Cambodian riels, 320 Malaysian ringgits, 10 Indian rupees, two units of FEC and 118 items of jewellery worth K 6,269,460 .

Uppatasanti Pagoda continues to be crowded with BuddhaTooth Relic pilgrims

NAY PYI TAW, 11 Nov-Uppatasanti Pagoda continued to be crammed today with pilgrims who paid obeisance to Sacred Buddha Tooth Relic conveyed from China for public obeisance.

Sky Net family donated LED Display Boards at southern and northern archways to enable pilgrims from around the country to pay close homage to the Sacred Buddha Tooth Relic.

U Kyaw Nyunt Yi-Daw Wah Wah Kyaw (Kyaw Nyunt Yi Publishing House) family and U Moe Hsaung- Daw Aye Thuzar Win family donated K 0.3 million each, U Hla Nyunt-Daw Myat Thida Ko and family, three jewellery worthy of K 820000, U Aung Win Htay-Daw Khin Htay Myint family, seven gold rings worthy of K 216000, U Win Khant-Daw Win Pale family, jewellery worthy of K 561500. Members of financial sub-committee returned certificates of honour to 35 donors of over K 0.1 million and 45 donors of jewellery.

Union Minister for Environmental Conservation and Forestry U Win Tun and wife Daw Swe Swe Chit donated K 0.3 million to the Sacred Buddha Tooth Relic yesterday evening.

Donation at the centres from 10 November till 6 pm today amounted to K 26920909, US$ 551, RMB 110, Baht 20, one Ringgit, 10 Singapore dollars, and 81 jewellery worthy of K 4268700.

Donation at the centres from 6 November till 6 pm today amounted to K 107389987, two FEC, US$ 1961, RMB 953, Baht 660, 500 Peso, 321 Ringgit, 100000 Rupiah, 10 Rupee, 100 Dong, 2000 Riel, 10 Singapore dollars, and 332 jewellery worthy of K 19997160.

Pilgrims add in crowd paying homage to Sacred Buddha Tooth Relic

NAY PYI TAW, 12 Nov- Today is the seventh day on which the Sacred Buddha Tooth Relic had conveyed for the fourth time from the People's Republic of China to Myanmar for Buddhists in Myanmar from dawn to dusk.

Pilgrims continued to crowd Uppatasanti Pagoda in which the Sacred Buddha Tooth Relic is sojourning in front of Gautama Buddha Panima Yadana Jade Buddha Image in the Pagoda cave for paying homage to it.

Among the crowds this morning, a total of 21 elder persons- four males and 17 females- from Nay Pyi Taw Pyimanna Home for the Aged participated in the donations for the Sacred Buddha Tooth Relic, accepting take care of Patron Dr Daw Kyawt Tha Sein and officials concerned of the committee for Home for the Aged.

Pilgrims led by Myanmar Monastery Presiding Sayadaw Dr Bhaddanta Nannisara from Kuthinayon of India donated K 0.4 million, 80 bahts and 20 rupees, Director-General of Energy Planning Department U Htin Aung and wife Daw Cho Cho Win and family, K 0.3 million, U San Shwe Aung from the Ministry of Communications, Posts and Telegraphs and wife Daw Aye Aye Than, K 0.2 million, Warrant Officer Class I Sein Win and Daw Sein Sein Aye, one gold crystal and one gold chain
estimated amounted K 720,000, CaptainNaing Zaw Oo (Retd) and brothers and sisters, one gold ring estimated amounted K 0.5 million, U Wumsowe and (Daw Lintngar) Shwewa Family rice shop, one gold ring, a pair of gold earrings estimated amounted K 349,000, Brig-Gen Aung Myo Min (Retd) and Daw Thazin Nwe, two gold rings estimated amounted K 310,000, Daw Khin Aye (Latpan Kharhla) of Zabuthiri Township, one gold bracelet estimated amounted K 310,000.

Members of financial sub-committee accepted donations of 18 donors who made donations over K 0.1 million and 76 donors who donated various kinds of jewelries and presented certificates of honour to them.

In yesterday evening, Commanderin- Chief of Defence Services General Min Aung Hlaing and wife Daw Kyu Kyu Hla donated K 0.5 million, Union Minister for Immigration and Population U Khin Yi and wife Daw Khin May Soe, K 0.2 million.

D o n a t i o n s - K 30682186, US$ 100, 112 yuans, 1159 bahts, 20 rupees, 54000 dongs and 90 kinds of jewelries estimated amounted K 7,965,000, were accepted from yesterday evening to this evening.

Sky Net broadcasts live recording of Sacred Buddha Tooth Relic

NAY PYI TAW, 13 Nov-Sky Net launches DTH-system Dhamma Channel on 14 November to bring round-the-clock live coverage of the Sacred Buddha Tooth Relic to people length and breadth of the country.

The channel stops airing on 24 December, the date set for conveyance of the Sacred Buddha Tooth Relic back to China.

The Sacred Buddha Tooth Relic was conveyed to Myanmar from China for fourth time on 6 November and is displayed in the cave of Uppatasanti Pagoda in Nay Pyi Taw from 7 to 21 November, in the cave of Maha Passana cave on Kaba Aye Hillock in Yangon, and in Maha Atulawaiyan (the unrivalled) Monastery in Mandalay from 8 to 23 December.

To update DTH Receiver, click Menu and select Installation. The DTH Receiver will require you to enter Password plus four zeros. To pay homage to the Sacred Buddha Tooth Relic on Dhamma channel, complete Auto Scan.-MNA

Uppatasanti Pagoda packed with pilgrims who pay homage to Sacred Buddha Tooth Relic

NAY PYI TAW, 14 Nov - Today is the ninth day on which the Sacred Buddha Tooth Relic had conveyed for the fourth time from the People’s Republic of China to the Republic of the Union of Myanmar for public obeisance.

Pilgrims thronged the cave of Uppatasanti Pagoda to pay homage to the Sacred Buddha Tooth Relic which is temporarily being kept in front of Maha Manimaya Gotama Buddha Panima Yadana Jade Buddha Image from dawn to dusk.

The compound of the Pagoda and surrounding area of the hill were packed with pilgrims who took a walk from the southern archway on Yazahtani Road to the foot of Uppatasanti Hill and free-of-charge ferries of Nay Pyi Taw Council to pay obeisance to the Sacred Buddha Tooth Relic.

Among the crowds, Pa-O pilgrims from Phayaphyu ward of Taunggyi led by U Khin Maung Koe donated K 500,000, U Tin Sein-Daw Sandar and family of Thabyegon ward in Zabuthiri Township, K 250,000, U Myint Lwin of ACE Construction and Daw Moe Moe Ngae and family, K 150,000, Managing Director U Hla Thein of No (2) Mining Enterprise and Daw Malar Myo Sein and family and religious association of the Ministry of Home Affairs and staff of Correctional Department and families, K 100,000 each, U Aung Moe Kyaw-Daw Mar Mar Tun and family from Yangon, K 235,000, a family of wellwishers, a block of gold worth K 739, 000, Col San Myint of Command and General Staff College in Kalaw and Daw Aye Aye Mu and family, two pairs of earrings and one gold ring worth K 360,000, U Khin Maung Zaw-Daw Chit Chit Su and family of Mogok, one gold ring worth K 200,000 in memory of Daw Khin Than Myint, Daw Khin Lay Myint (Doh Nyinaung) and family of Takon Township, two gold rings worth K 190,000, U Khun Thein Htut-Daw Nan Lin Lin Aung Win and family, a pair of platinum earrings worth K 150,000 and others, K 100,000 and above and various kinds of jewelleries to the chairman and officials of financial subcommittee who presented certificates of honour to them.

Donations-K 25,922,220, one unit of FEC, US$ 47, 30 yuans, 40 bahts, three Malaysian ringgits, 25 Singaporean dollars and 97 kinds of jewelleries worth K 6,196,600 were accepted from yesterday evening to this evening.

Chinese Vice-Chairman of Internal & Judicial Affairs Committee of the NPC and party pay obeisance to Uppatasanti Pagoda

NAY PYI TAW, 14 Nov - Vice-Chairman of Internal and Judicial Affairs Committee of the National People’s Congress of the People’s Republic of China Mr. Bai Jingfu and party paid homage to Uppatasanti Pagoda, here, this evening.

First, the visiting delegation led by Mr. Bai Jingfu paid obeisance to the Sacred Buddha Tooth Relic which is temporarily being kept in the cave of Uppa-tasanti Pagoda.

After signing visitors’ book, Mr. Bai Jingfu presented K 50,000 to the Pagoda and paid homage to Jade Buddha Image being kept in the cave of the Pagoda.

Then he donated K 50,000 at the donation centre which is kept open for the Sacred Buddha Tooth Relic on the compound of the Pagoda. -MNA

…

Members of Sangha, people pay obeisance to Sacred Buddha Tooth Relic

NAY PYI TAW, 15 Nov-The Sacred Buddha Tooth Relic is temporarily being kept for the public obeisance for the tenth day today in front of Maha Manimaya Gotama Buddha Patima Yadana Jade Buddha Image at Nay Pyi Taw Uppatasanti Pagoda.

The pagoda was crowded with monks and pilgrims and member of the State Central Working Committee of the Sangha of All Ganas Yadanasi Sayadaw Agga Maha Saddhamma Jotikadhaja Bhaddanta Silananda of Loilem in Shan State (South) paid homage to the sacred tooth relic.
Likewise, representatives of Pyithu Hluttaw and Amyotha Hluttaw paid homage to the sacred tooth relic and donated cash.

Bureau Chief Mr Jon Patrick Barta of South-East Asian branch of Wall Street Journal paid homage to the sacred tooth relic this morning and viewed peaceful and happy obeisance of the people to the tooth relic and making donations at the donation centres.

Staff families of the Ministry of Finance and Revenue donated K 401,000, staff families of Ministry of Home Affairs and the Ministry of Religious Affairs K 365,000, Maj-Gen Nyan Tun and family of the Commander-in-Chief (Army)’s Office K 500,000, Asia World Co family K 400,000, U Kyaw Swe and family K 100,000, Daw Khin Aye Than-Daw Nwe Nwe Than family and U Aung Mya Thein-Daw Le Yi Moe family K 50,000 each, U Myat Min-Daw Phu Pwint Thwe and family K 30,000 and others. Their donations amounted to K 1,896,000.

Likewise, members of the financial subcommittee accepted K 370,000 by Pyithu Hluttaw representatives, K 375,000 by Amyotha Hluttaw representatives, K 500,000 by reporter U Zaw Min Aung of Kyemon Daily, daughter The Su Hlaing of Ministry of Commerce and family in memory of late Daw Tin Hlaing, K 333,300 by manager and staff of Yaypyar drinking water factory of Myanma Economic Corporation (Nay Pyi Taw), K 300,000 by U Aung Kyaw Thu-Daw Thida Myint (Thida Biriani) family of Lashio, K 237,000 by a family of Ywathit Sub-Township of Bawlake District in Kayah State, K 200,000 each by Col Kyaw Win and family of Commander-in-Chief (Army)’s Office and grandson Thit Htoo San, U Aung Kyaw Moe-Daw Khin Kyi and family and U Htaik Sein-Daw Lily and family of the US, one ring decorated with nine precious stones worth about K 340,000 by U Maung Sein-Daw Mya Kyi Aye, daughter Amyotha Hluttaw Representative Daw Yi Yi Myint of Mawlamyine Constituency, one golden bracelet worth about K 332,000 by U Thein Aung-Daw Than Myint and family of Dawei, two golden rings worth about K 294,000 by Captain Myo Zaw Aung-Ma Yamin Swe Zaw of Nay Pyi Taw Command, one golden necklace worth about K 280,000 by Daw Hla Myint of Hline Township, one pair of golden earplug worth about K 257,500 by Col Aung Myint Oo-Daw Tin Mar Nwe and family of Kyaikto in memory of late father U Kyaw Sein, one golden chain worth about K 250,000 by U Myo Hlaing-Daw Nan Loung Hsai and family of Pyinmana under the patronage of both side parents, one golden locket worth about K 230,000 by Daw Ngwe Kyi and daughter Khin Su Su Htwe of Kyaikto in memory of late U Kyaw Sein, one golden ring worth about K 227,000 by daughter Daw Nan Loung Hsai and family of Pyinmana in memory of late Sayadaw U Vimalasami, one golden ring worth about K 200,000 by U Htay Lwin-Daw Phyu Phyu Lwin and family of Namhsan of Shan State (South) and K 100,000 and above donations by 63 wellwishers and gold, silverware and jewellery by 58 wellwishers.

Certificates of honour were presented to the donors.

Yesterday evening, Director-General U Kyaw Myint Hlaing of Irrigation Department and wife Daw Sanda Khin (Deputy Minister for Culture) and family and Union Minister for Rail Transportation U Aung Min-Dr Wai Wai Tha and family under the patronage of grandfather U Tha Khaing donated K 500,000 each, Union Minister for Religious Affairs Thura U Myint Maung-Daw Aye Aye Tun and family K 300,000, Union Minister for Labour U Aung Kyi- Daw Thwe Thwe Sein and family K 100,000 and Daw Mya Sein and family of Zeyatheikdi Ward K 200,000, US$ 200 and ¥ 1000.
From evening of 14th November to 6 pm today, donations at the centres amounted to K 28,184,207, FEC 10, US$ 479, RMB 203, Thai baht 1010, Indian rupee 62, S$ 20, Korean Wam 500, Japanese ¥ 1000, Sri Lankan rupee 100, 81 items of gold, silver and jewellery ornaments worth about K 6,419,400.

Communist China and the Western Commentariat Finally Get on the Same Page About this Stupid Democracy Thing

2011-11-10T10:46:00.000-08:00

It’s finally become clear to everyone the key problem in the current Eurozone crisis is just too much democracy.

Pesky voters opposed to austerity measures get in the way of efforts to cut government expenditures in order to reduce deficits and make repayment of national debts more likely.

China’s Global Times on Greece, November 2:

Greece's oldest legacy may be its downfall

[E]ven at this critical moment now, the government may still be wavering between the public's demand and the country's long-term future.

…
At a time of economic difficulty, the government needs to demonstrate more determination to go against popular will.

Exactly one week later, Megan McArdle (via Kevin Drum) has her own authoritarian epiphany: democracy makes even the most advanced, free-est, smartest, most pundit-blessed, whitest countries incapable of doing “the right thing”:

I used to write about developing countries a fair amount. Time and again they would make these bizarre and pointless moves, like suddenly and for no apparent reason defaulting on a bunch of debt....And the other journalists and I would cluck our tongues and say "Why can't they do the right thing when it's so . . . bleeding . . . obvious?"

Then we had our own financial crisis and it became suddenly, vividly clear: democratic governments cannot do even obvious right things if the public will not tolerate it.

Just one week! The gap between elite attitudes in China and the United States is really not that great.

And I’m not joking here.

Count the voters of Greece and Italy cowed, if not entirely convinced by media handwringing on behalf of the vengeful gods of the bond market.

Greece, of course, walked back on the referendum plan. Instead, it has installed Lucas Papademos, previously VP of the European Central Bank, as PM to shepherd the austerity program.

In Italy, Berlusconi is on his way out and a government of “technocrats” i.e. economists focused on deficit reduction and tasked with ignoring public squawking about austerity—will soon be in.

What is perhaps less well understood is that the true nature of many Western governments is being revealed.

The quick and dirty shorthand is that government is like a business. When it borrows, it’s to bridge the temporary imbalances between the income and the outgo.

Not so. Western governments today are not businesses managing revenue and expenditures on behalf of their shareholders (the voters) and working to increase business volume (i.e. economic growth) in order to maximize revenues (tax receipts).

The issue is not the deficit (yearly revenue shortfall); it’s the indebtedness (the ability of the enterprise to issue debt).

Many national governments are quasi-state bucket shops for investment banks, providing a flow of debt product to investment banks for packaging and sale--very much like the mortgage brokers who frantically signed up suckers in the free-money era so the investment banks would have plenty of mortgages to securitize, CDO-ize, and pour into the hedge funds.

Now national governments issue the debt, providing the sovereign low-risk imprature that allows investment banks to send debt-backed securities flooding into the market in search of the greatest fool.

When the naked lunch moment—the time when it looks like the greatest fool is going to wise up, and the wise guy sees it’s time to cash out—arrives, everybody clubs together to make sure that the people responsible for this glorious party, the investment bankers, don’t get hurt.

When debt repayment becomes a problem, governments don’t turn to the prosperity solution; they turn to the austerity fix.

Almost automatically, national governments tilt toward policies that protect the ability of the banks to recover on the debt—and, perhaps more importantly, sustain the viability of the government as a vehicle for continued issuance of debt in the future-- by cutting the expenditures that might prop up personal and national incomes and could be seen to interfere with the flow of interest payments.

In the last analysis, the governments aren’t working for the shareholders (voters), even if examples like Argentina hint that a country might do well by defaulting on its debt.

I don’t even think they’re working for the bondholders, at least not for the dumb sheep who end up getting shorn (“taking haircuts”).

They’re working for the investment bankers who look forward to rolling over, increasing, securitizing, and slicing and dicing government debt—which is the most marketable, available in enormous volume, and is a perceived lower risk because taxpayers are, in the final analysis, hostages of their government when it comes to debt repayment (as long as they can be persuaded they don’t have an alternative).

How governments turned into debt vehicles is a matter for historians to sort out. But I guess it has something to do with trying to keep the rich happy (by cutting taxes) while keeping the rest of us happy (by spending money on services).

When the bills come due, the rich (who have a perpetual interest in low taxes and an addiction to leveraging their profits through investment banking) turn out to have the most votes in our post-democracy democracies.

Whatever You Do, Don’t Read China’s Global Times…

2011-11-05T18:16:00.000-07:00

…You Might Learn Something

I’m not crazy about Global Times (the house organ of Chinese hypernationalism) but I like the sniggering condescension of Foreign Policy magazine(the house organ of neo-lioberalism) even less.

Actually, Christine Larson’s recent profile of Global Times in Foreign Policy is reasonably even-handed.

FP’s editors, however, couldn’t resist juicing the story—and signaling to its readership that GT and its views are not be taken seriously--by titling the piece “China’s Fox News" and adding a sidebar, “The Top 10 Screeds in China’s Global Times,” with takedowns by Uri Friedman.

Example:

Money Quote: " Living in an international environment that China temporarily cannot change, we need to be alert to foreign interference as well as keep a sober mind, clean house and constantly improve governance ... No country is fond of interference from the outside. China is no exception. In addition to hostile forces originating in foreign countries, China also has to face the mixed chorus formed by Tibet separatists, East Turkistan terrorists and the Falun Gong cult, who have gone abroad. Inner calm is specially needed when dealing with the collusions of the above-mentioned forces."

Context: The editorial, which reflects on China's rise in a globalized world, sounds a lot like the paranoia about foreign interference expressed by dictators during the Arab Spring. The appeal at the end to "inner calm" may sound tranquil, but one can't help but wonder whether it's a euphemism for a crackdown.

In case you don't see the out-of-control dingbattery you're supposed to detect in these excerpts, in the interest of full disclosure, I should say that I’m on Global Times’ side of the fence on about half of the pieces, which concern America’s cynical stirring of the South China Sea pot.

Pop Quiz:

Which nation is more likely to pose a long-term threat to freedom of navigation in the South China Sea?

China, which imports most of its oil through the region?

Or the United States, which routinely uses unilateral and multilateral sanctions as a tool of foreign policy, keeps a carrier strike force on tap in the west Pacific, has something of an obsession with bottling up the Chinese strategic nuclear submarine fleet stationed in Hainan, and adores the idea of building an anti-China bloc around the South China Sea conflict?

If you answered China, well, that puts you squarely in Foreign Policy’s preferred demographic: people for whom the US system of liberal democracy and free market capitalism a priori put it in the right in any disagreement with China.

Nevertheless, the US model, which has recently displayed a pretty strong bias toward military coercion and financial dysfunction, has its own flaws.

The Occupy Wall Street movement has, I think, generated a certain amount of cognitive dissonance among Chinese democracy advocates.

The Chinese government can, of course, be mocked for its anxious banning of the word “Occupy” from search engines and microblogs. Crowds of disgruntled, idealistic people showing up in high-profile downtown venues is the ultimate nightmare for the CCP.

At the same time, the OWS movement is a statement that US democracy in the age of Citizens United, runaway corporatism, and abjectly craven politicians is simply not delivering the goods for many Americans.

Hurrah! Americans can impotently demonstrate against the fact that their system isn’t working!

Global Times has a pretty tough row to hoe, of course. Authoritarianism and state capitalism are not popular among the Chinese or foreign intelligentsia.

But their writers are trying to make some sense out of the world beyond regurgitating government propaganda.

I was struck by a statement in a Global Times editorial on the OWS movement that I found charming in its awkward truthfulness:

Western countries can withstand street demonstrations better, since their governments are elected.

The editorial, presumably written by editor-in-chief Hu Xijin (according to Larson he keeps an iron grip on the editorial page) continues:

People think the street demonstrations will not lead to the overthrow of the Western political system. They are merely valves that can help ease pressure built up in democratic societies while the pressure and dissatisfaction on the streets could end up helping the opposition party seize office.

The conflicts may be minor or serious, but it will not bring significant change.

This is a fair argument, but it also reveals one of the core reasons why the western world lacks determination for real change. Political parties have been taking advantage of dissatisfaction in their societies, manipulating them to serve their own short-term political interests, rather than eliminating the causes.

It’s a worthwhile observation that democracy provides a measure of political stability but may also serve as an obstacle to political and economic solutions by empowering forces that want to block a solution.

That’s something that Global Times, which is trying to make the case for the advantages of China’s authoritarian system, is eager to point out; it’s also something that liberal periodicals like Foreign Policy are constitutionally unable to confront.

Like I said, if you read Global Times you might learn something.

I have to admit what really set me off about the article was this passage, which also provided an interesting perspective on where Hu Xijin is coming from:

In 1989, Hu joined the People's Daily as a reporter; from 1993-1996 he was a correspondent in Yugoslavia covering the war in Bosnia and Herzegovina. He returned to Beijing in 1996, and at age 36 joined the new Global Times newspaper as deputy editor.

… "But Global Times has been increasingly relevant since 1999," says Anti, "since the bombing of the Chinese embassy in Yugoslavia." -- i.e., the accidental bombing of the Chinese embassy by U.S. and NATO forces, which stirred conspiracy theories in China and happened to take place in Hu's old reporting stomping grounds.

That “i.e. the accidental bombing” is, to me, redolent of smug ignorance. How dare China accuse us of bombing their embassy!

There is plenty of evidence—including an investigative report by England’s The Observer, presumably amply endowed with North Atlantic neoliberal cred in the eyes of FP—that the bombing was intentional and, indeed, was a watershed in elite Chinese attitudes toward the United States.

Because of Foreign Policy’s transgressions, I must perforce repost one of my articles on the Belgrade bombing, with a few minor edits:

Friday, January 26, 2007

Why China Hates Satellite Guided Munitions, Part 1: The Bombing of the Chinese Embassy in Belgrade in 1999

China’s first direct experience with satellite-guided munitions occurred on the night of May 7, 1999, when at least five GPS-guided JDAM bombs slammed into the Chinese embassy in Belgrade, killing three Chinese nationals and wounding 20.

Now is a good time to recap the Belgrade bombing incident and contribute some new information contained in the memoirs of the Chinese ambassador to Yugoslavia during the bombing, Pan Zhanlin.

The JDAM used in the attack is a very successful and relatively inexpensive concept in ordnance by which dumb bombs are, as it were, sent to college, and equipped with a GPS-corrected guidance system that generates corrective adjustments to movable vanes after the bomb is dropped from a plane, enabling reported accuracies of within 13 meters.

The conventional, though implausible, narrative at the time of the embassy bombing was The Bomb was Smart... But We Goofed!

In testimony before Congress in July 1999, George Tenet explained how they meant to bomb some logistics office of the Yugoslavian army, they used an outdated map, somebody did catch the error but the message didn’t get through, the system broke down, sooooooo sorry.

On October 17, 1999, the Sunday Observer, in cooperation with a Danish paper, Politiken, came out with what would seem to be a blockbuster report: that the United States had deliberately targeted the embassy in order to remove a key rebroadcast station directing the military activities of Slobodan Milosevic’s forces in their struggle to resist NATO forces.

I am embarrassed to admit that my Googling skills haven’t turned up a direct link to the article, but the Observer’s sister publication, the Guardian, ran a story summarizing the article’s conclusions.

As to why the Chinese government dared to take the provocative step of hosting a Yugoslavian military radio facility, the article speculates that Beijing cooperated with Belgrade in order to acquire data on U.S. military capabilities:

Why the Chinese were prepared to help Milosevic is a more murky question. One possible explanation is that the Chinese lack Stealth technology, and the Yugoslavs, having shot down a Stealth fighter in the early days of the air campaign, were in a good position to trade. The Chinese may have calculated that Nato would not dare strike its embassy, but the five-storey building was emptied every night of personnel. Only three people died in the attack, two of whom were, reportedly, not journalists - the official Chinese version - but intelligence officers.

The Chinese military attache, Ven Bo Koy, who was seriously wounded in the attack and is now in hospital in China, told Dusan Janjic, the respected president of Forum for Ethnic Relations in Belgrade, only hours before the attack, that the embassy was monitoring incoming cruise missiles in order to develop counter-measures.

Interesting that, according to this report, the Chinese were geared up to monitor cruise missiles sailing over the horizon, and the U.S. surprised them all of a sudden by dropping a JDAM in their laps on a thirty second trajectory from straight overhead.

Wonder if the choice of ordnance was meant to achieve an objective—or to send a message?

According to the Observer, the behind the scenes U.S. attitude to the embassy bombing was: Mission Accomplished.

British, Canadian and French air targeteers rounded on an American colonel on the morning of May 8. Angrily they denounced the "cock-up". The US colonel was relaxed. "Bullshit," he replied to the complaints. "That was great targeting ... we put three JDAMs down into the (military] attache's office and took out the exact room we wanted ...

This story died the death in the U.S. media (I only saw references to it in the English papers at the time) and, to its everlasting credit, FAIR (Fairness and Accuracy In Reporting) took the matter up.

In an October 22, 1999 article, FAIR wrote:

So far, the reaction in the mainstream U.S. media has been a deafening silence. To date, none of America's three major network evening news programs has mentioned the Observer's findings. Neither has the New York Times or USA Today, even though the story was covered by AP, Reuters and other major wires. The Washington Post relegated the story to a 90-word news brief in its "World Briefing" (10/18/99), under the headline "NATO Denies Story on Embassy Bombing."By contrast, the story appeared in England not only in the Observer and its sister paper, the Guardian (10/17/99), but also in their leading rival, the Times of London, which ran a follow-up article on the official reaction the next day (10/18/99). The Globe and Mail, Canada's most prestigious paper, ran the full Reuters account prominently in its international section (10/18/99). So did the Times of India, the Sydney Morning Herald and the Irish Times (all 10/18/99). The prominent Danish daily Politiken, which collaborated with the Observer on the investigation, was on strike, but ran the story on its website.

FAIR and its supporters rattled a few media cages, and got dismissive replies from the New York Times and USA Today.

The Times’ Andrew Rosenthal characterized the Observer article as “not terribly well sourced”.

In its rebuttal, FAIR stated:

FAIR contacted journalists at both the Observer and Politiken. According to the Observer's U.S. correspondent, Ed Vulliamy, its foreign editor, Peter Beaumont, and Politiken reporter Jens Holsoe, their sources included the following:

--A European NATO military officer serving in an operational capacity at the four-star level - a source at the highest possible level within NATO--confirmed three things: (1) That NATO targeted the Chinese embassy deliberately; (2) That the embassy was emitting Yugoslav military radio signals; and (3) That the target was not approved through the normal NATO channels but through a second, "American-only" track.

--A European NATO staff officer at the two-star level in the Defense Intelligence office confirmed the same story.--

Two U.S. sources: A very high-ranking former senior American intelligence official connected to the Balkans - "about as high as you can get," according to one reporter -- confirmed that the embassy was deliberately targeted. A mid-ranking current U.S. military official, also connected to the Balkans, confirmed elements of the story and pointedly refused to deny that the embassy had been bombed deliberately.

--A NATO flight controller based in Naples and a NATO intelligence officer monitoring Yugoslav radio broadcasts from Macedonia each confirmed that NATO's signals intelligence located Yugoslav military radio signals coming from the Chinese embassy in Belgrade. When they informed their superiors, they were told that the matter would be handled further up in the chain of command. Two weeks later, the embassy was bombed.

--An official at the U.S. National Imagery and Mapping Agency told the reporters that NATO's official explanation, which involves a faulty map of Belgrade, is a "damned lie."

Finally, the Times, still coasting on its Pentagon Papers reputation in those halcyon, pre-Judy Miller days, replied to one correspondent:

"There is nothing in the distinguished history of the Times -- where reporters have risked their lives, been threatened with jail and indeed gone to jail to protect the public's right to know things the government does not want to get out -- to suggest that we would withhold such a story."

Hmmm.

A 1999 report by the Campaign for Press and Broadcasting Freedom discusses how the U.K. media spun the war, notes in passing:

Equally, when the Chinese embassy was hit, resulting in several deaths, the true consequences the action were hidden. Television pictures illustrating the structural damage to the building were shown, the bodies of two passing Serbian school children were not. The media played along.

Certainly, the media was willing to give NATO forces the benefit of the doubt and provide them not only with enthusiastic cheerleading but active image management during the Kosovo intervention.

The fact the New York Times was unwilling to pick up the Observer story cannot be attributed solely to the Gray Lady’s irreproachably high standards in journalism.

When weighing the credibility of the Observer report, it is also worth recalling that, by CIA Director Tenet’s own admission, of the 900 targets struck during the Kosovo war, the CIA was responsible for only one targeting package—the bombing that was ostensibly meant to take out an insignificant Yugoslavian paper-shuffling operation and ended up destroying the Chinese embassy’s intelligence directorate instead.

Another investigative report confirmed that, not only was the target selected by the CIA, the entire mission was flown by the United States outside of standard NATO channels (NATO, of course, was the vehicle for European and American intervention in the Kosovo conflict; it was not a U.S.-directed war).

This is not my day for coming up with direct links to original reporting, but I found a posting on Venik’s Aviation of what looks like an accurate transcription of a May 2000 article from Air Forces Monthly, a European publication, detailing the mission.

It delivers the goods on what actually struck the Chinese embassy (not “guided missiles” or “laser guided munitions” as other outlets reported):

In the early hours of May 7, 1999, a USAF B-2 Spirit bomber, escorted by EA-6B defence suppression aircraft and F-15C fighters, dropped three GPS-guided Joint Defence Air Munition (JDAM) bombs on the Chinese Embassy in the Novi Beograd district of Belgrade.

As to how the targeting “error” slipped by NATO:

It should be noted that, in an interview with the author, NATO spokesman Lee McClenny confirmed that the targeting information did not go through JTF NOBLE ANVIL, or any other NATO structure, in contrast to Tennet's [sic] official public statements. Instead, the co-ordinates were passed directly from the CIA to Whiteman Air Force Base, the home of the 509th Bomb Wing, where it was programmed into the JDAMs. Mr McClenny asserted that the entire process had remained 'Stateside', hence the failure of NATO staff to 'scrub' the target to check its accuracy, authenticity and location.
...

When asked, the CIA again asserted that the story given by Tennet [sic] to the House Committee was true, but claimed that the targeting information went from the CIA to the Pentagon to be processed. The Pentagon was only prepared to say that "some of the F-117 and B-2 missions were used as 'national assets' and therefore did not pass through NATO command structures", despite the requirement under the NATO charter to clear all missions carried out under NATO auspices with the NATO general council...

As to whether the United States would take the radical step of bombing a Chinese embassy simply to disrupt Milosevic’s peripatetic radio network, the article speculates that not only was the embassy’s spook contingent acquiring Elint (not Internet-ready lint, but electronic intelligence) on U.S. cruise missile launches, as had been reported in the Guardian article cited above; it was also field testing a passive sensing device that could detect Stealth aircraft.

The article posits that the system may have worked, it may have been provided targeting information to Yugoslavian air defenses, and may have been responsible for the shoot-down of an F-117 Stealth fighter two weeks before the bombing.

The new Passive Coherent Location System (PCLS) ...is capable of acquiring stealth platforms and is also un-jamable, due to the lack of any emissions from the monitoring system. As a result, the PCLS is also immune to Anti-Radiation Missiles (ARMs) and conventional Suppression of Enemy Air Defences (SEAD). ..

In the light of this, it would seem to be relevant to consider that the F-117 lost over Serbia was lost two weeks prior to the strikes on the Chinese Embassy. On the same night that the F-117 was lost, another returned to base with extensive damage. If the PCLS was to be on the verge of deployment, then the Kosovo campaign would have presented the Chinese military establishment with an unprecedented and un-missable opportunity to validate the system in the field. It should also be noted that Belgrade and Beijing have close military ties and it is probable that, were the system in operation, the targeting locks provided by the PCLS would be relayed to Serbian air defences.

The author poses the interesting possibility that the Chinese had compromised US Stealth technology, and that’s why the Stealth bomber that struck the embassy was accompanied by conventional, radar visible escorts:

Furthermore, if the stealth assets were as 'low-observable' as is claimed, the US would have seen no necessity in escorting these assets with non stealth defensive aircraft such as EA-6Bs and F-15Cs as they would not only have been redundant, but would have provided conventional air defence radars with a track on the overall package.

In July 1999, a Hong Kong magazine, Kai Fang, described Chinese intelligence operations in Belgrade in circumstantial detail, with particular attention to the military attache Ren Baokai (whose name was rendered in the Observer article as Ven Bo Koy), who headed a 12-person PLA team in Belgrade. Apparently, Ren’s contributions to Chinese knowledge of U.S. military secrets was so great his fate attracted the personal attention of China’s highest leadership:

...on 23 June, Guangming Ribao carried a report entitled "Chinese Military Attaches amidst the Flames of War." According to the practice in mainland China, this report was apparently a routine "report of positive propaganda." However, it also gave up, unintentionally, a very important secret: After the CPC embassy was destroyed in a missile attack on 8 May, what concerned the CPC top leadership the most was the fate of Ren Baokai, a Chinese military attache in its embassy in Yugoslavia.

As a matter of fact, when the news of the bombing of the Chinese embassy first came out, except for two persons who were already confirmed dead, a dozen of people were reported missing. However, according to this report, the CPC's "relevant departments" had already been informed of the missing of Ren Baokai by that time, "the leading comrades of the party Central Committee, the State Council, and the Central Military Commission showed great concern over the matter," and the PLA Headquarters of General Staff and the Ministry of Foreign Affairs jointly issued a secret order that "Ren Baokai has to be sought out at whatever cost." It was not until over 8 o'clock local time that Ren Baokai was found injured from under the ruins. After he was rushed to the hospital, the CPC made an unusual request that Yugoslavia do all it could to save Ren Baokai; meanwhile, the CPC also asked the Yugoslav Military Medical University to provide medical support for Ren Baokai's treatment. Four days later, Ren Baokai was taken back to China by a special plane, and was received by Jiang Zemin and other leaders.

The Kai Fang article also proposes that the key role of Ren’s team in the Yugoslav shootdown of the F117 drove the United States to the momentous step of attacking China’s embassy in Belgrade.

Therefore, the only conclusion that one can draw to explain why the Chinese embassy was attacked by the United States with missiles is that the CPC's military espionage operation carried out inside the embassy had already constituted a realistic threat to the NATO.

The author of the Kai Fang piece described the US attack as a complete success:

It has been disclosed that before the bombing incident, the CPC had already obtained a host of electronic information on the NATO's air strikes, and had stored a considerably rich amount of combat reference data. However, all the information and data it had gathered was destroyed by US-made missiles, and the important equipment used for further monitoring the NATO's military operational methods was no longer in existence. This apparently made the CPC burning with a frenzy of rage...

Certainly, if the United States believed that intelligence assets within the Chinese embassy had contributed materially to the downing of any U.S. aircraft, whether Stealth or conventional, a savage strike on the embassy, both to disable the operation and put the Chinese on notice, is certainly not out of the question.

But I, for one, wonder if China actually possessed the wherewithal in 1999 to crack the Stealth puzzle, or if they would take the near suicidal risk of passing targeting information to the Yugoslavs if they had it.

We can now bring some more recent, first-hand information to the mix.

China’s Ambassador to Yugoslavia at the time, Pan Zhanlin, has written a Chinese-language memoir entitled My Encounter with War .

Perhaps since it is largely a rather turgid and uninformative recounting of the chronology of the Kosovo crisis and offers no tell-all details about what China was really up to in the Balkans, it’s available free on-line.

Nevertheless, his account does offer some interesting and perhaps important details.

Living in Belgrade during the NATO bombing campaign, Ambassador Pan became something of an expert on precision-bombing tactics, and he reports on the effect of the five bombs in detail:

The first bomb entered the side of the building at an angle near the roof and tore through to the first floor and detonated at a bottom corner at the dormitory, tearing a pit several meters deep. One of the fatalities and many of the injuries occurred here. The second bomb hit the middle of the roof and went through to the first floor auditorium, causing no fatalities but giving Ambassador Zhan food for thought by incinerating his office and melting the frame of his day bed. The third bomb hit the northwest corner and blasted through several floor, killing two people. The fourth bomb came in a window of the half basement, exploded, destroyed the embassy clubhouse and shattered the building’s structural members. The fifth bomb crashed through the roof of the ambassador’s villa. Fortunately for Ambassador Zhan, who was there at the time, it didn’t explode. Since B2s drop their bombs in even numbers to keep the plane balanced, there was speculation that perhaps a sixth bomb had also entered the basement; but it was never found.

Venik’s website has a photograph of a fragment of a JDAM recovered from the Chinese embassy which is on display at the Museum of Yugoslav Aviation near the Belgrade airport. He identifies it as a 2000 pound MK 84 bomb, the biggest bang in the JDAM arsenal.

As to the damage the embassy sustained, news photos and reports show that the facade was blown off one side of the building from roof to ground, and extensive damage and injuries resulted (rescue teams did not find and extract Ren Baokai until more than 8 hours after the attack) but the building did not pancake.

The Chinese were forced to abandon the embassy because of the unexploded and as yet unlocated bomb. Nobody dared redevelop the site and the derelict embassy became an eyesore. Finally the Serbian government raised the funds for the expensive and complex job of removing the bomb.

On July 3, 2004, People’s Daily carried a brief item:

Defense Minister of Serbia and Montenegro Prvoslav Davinic said on July 1 that an unexploded missile has been dug out from the ruins of the Chinese Embassy. At midnight May 7, 1999, the NATO led by the United States launched a missile attack on the Chinese Embassy, with five missiles hitting the embassy, leaving three Chinese reporters dead, more than 20 diplomats wounded and the embassy building devastated. One of the missiles did not exploded [sic].

The article includes a picture of the unexploded bomb in situ, and an exterior shot of the place where the bomb was found.

I leave it to structural engineers and ordnance enthusiasts to assess whether this damage is consistent with an assault of five JDAMs meant to destroy the entire embassy; a surgical strike to take out the military attache’s office; or the aftermath of a dud-studded fiasco.

Concerning the importance of Ren Baokai, Ambassador Pan states that Ren’s fate was indeed the subject of urgent queries from Beijing in the eight hours before he was found.

Taken together with the Guangming Ribao report cited above by Kai Fang magazine, we can safely make the inference that, yes, China’s military attache on the spot monitoring America’s latest high-tech war with China’s most secret and sensitive military technology was probably a pretty important guy.

Was the high-level attention to Ren’s fate was prompted by the institutional concern that the CCP reserves for its most capable and productive operatives, or was Chinese intelligence desperate to get Ren back alive in order to obtain some crucial information that Ren had somehow forgotten to write down and transmit to Beijing while he was sitting in an embassy full of secure communications equipment?

I lean toward the former explanation, but I suppose we could ask Ren himself. The last I was able to find, he was back in Belgrade serving as military attache to China’s embassy to Serbia-Montenegro.

Ambassador Pan is anxious to characterize the American attack as intentional and motivated by pure cussedness: to break the back of the Milosevic regime by demonstrating to its allies that diplomatic support was not only useless but positively dangerous.

He carefully if awkwardly debunks the scenarios that the embassy was bombed because Milosevic was sheltering or visiting there, or that it was rebroadcastingYugoslav military communications.

No reference is made to any electronic intelligence activities by China that might have provoked the strike.

Concerning the shootdown of the F117, Pan reports that the scuttlebutt in diplomatic circles was that the plane was located using the Czech Tamara anti-stealth system. His informants told him it couldn’t detect the Stealth aircraft, but that the passage of the plane through sensor coverage left a distinctive “hole” in the CRT display. The Yugoslavs noticed this anomaly and used it to unleash a barrage of 30 SAM missiles at the place where they guessed that the fighter would be, bringing it down.

Pan might be peddling disinformation but, given the fact that not only China but the United States have been interested in acquiring Tamara systems, I would take issue with the conclusion of the AFM and Kai Fang articles that China was field testing a major breakthrough in anti-Stealth detection in Yugoslavia and using it to shoot down American planes.

It seems more likely that Yugoslavia was using the Tamara equipment rather than deploying some Chinese beta version. The Czech system would have been a vital piece of technology that the Yugoslavs owned and were sharing with the deeply interested Chinese, instead of the other way around.

Also, from my layman’s point of view, the Tamara system (or anything like it for that matter), requiring multiple sensing locations linked to a central processor by microwave, does not look like something that could be installed in somebody’s office in the embassy.

If this is correct, the idea that the United States would destroy the Chinese embassy because its military attache was kibitzing with the Yugoslavian army over an Eastern European anti-Stealth system installed somewhere else in Belgrade—or because we wanted to decapitate China’s military intelligence network in Yugoslavia to make sure that data on successful Stealth countermeasures did not make it back to China--seems to be rather implausible.

There is a third possibility, in addition to the rebroadcast and Elint scenarios: the F-117 wreckage story.

And it has a radically different outcome.

The Chinese Internet is rife with urban legends concerning the Belgrade strike. Nobody regards it as accidental, and many Chinese seem willing to ascribe all sorts of shenanigans to the Chinese embassy that provoked the attack.

The most interesting scenario is one that the poster attributes to “a private encounter with a Chinese naval officer who was slightly tipsy”.

According to this informant, the Yugoslavian government had recovered the wreckage of the shot-down F-117 and sold key pieces of it to China. The navigation system, fuselage fragments with the Stealth coating, and high temperature nozzle components of the engine were spirited into the basement of the Chinese embassy. Unfortunately, there was a locator beacon inside the INU powered by a battery and, before the Chinese could discover and disable it, the U.S. military was alerted to the location of the F-117 fragments.

In this version of the story, at least, there is a happy ending for the Chinese. The U.S. attacked the embassy with a laser-guided bomb meant to penetrate to the basement and destroy the embassy and the F-117 prize, but it didn’t explode!

The wreckage made it to China (in the special plane Beijing dispatched to carry home the survivors and the bodies of the victims of the attack, according to other accounts).

In the reported words of the officer (“who spoke with tears in his eyes”):

“Although some of our people sacrificed their lives, we gained no less than ten years in the development of our Stealth materials. We purchased this progress with our blood and international mortification.”

“虽然我们有人牺牲了，但是我们隐型材料的研制进度一下提高了十年都不止，这种进步，是以血和国际上的屈辱换来的”--他流泪

This is an interesting story.

In certain respects—the laser-guided part and the basement stash—it conflicts with more creditable reports.

The embassy’s sub-basement, which served as an all purpose cafeteria, recreation center, and bomb shelter—an unlikely hidey hole for F-117 parts--was hit once, possibly twice, and it seems unlikely that anything could have been recovered from there.

But conspiracy theorists can draw solace from Ambassador Pan’s description of the four cases of “important state materials” that two brave embassy workers ran up to the fifth floor of the burning embassy to extract. Pan stated:

他们知道，这东西比生命更重要

“They knew these materials were more important than life.”

Standard-issue cypher equipment and secret files?

Special Elint monitoring equipment?

Or the crown jewels of America’s Stealth program?

I lean toward the third explanation, because glomming onto some secret airplane parts and then sneaking them out of a burning building is the kind of low tech triumph that fits in with my sense of China’s capabilities and interests inside Yugoslavia at the time.

The United States may have felt that by purchasing the wreckage, China had crossed the line from diplomatic support for Milosevic and conventional military-attache espionage to a more overt intelligence alliance with Yugoslavia in a deeply sensitive areas of U.S. military technology, and needed to be taught a lesson.

I also wish to explore a pyschological element, which perhaps affects China’s outlook to this day.

You can see hints of it in the F 117 in the basement story. It has a touching, almost child-like wish-fulfillment element: the evil empire destroyed our embassy but we escaped with the plans to the Death Star!

The embassy bombing was quite traumatic to China.

However, when the attack occured, triggering official and popular anger within China, the West was disbelieving, dismissive—and defensive.

It was considered rather churlish of the Chinese to intrude their crude and manufactured nationalistic outrage into our “good war” narrative of the Kosovo conflict by trying to make political capital out of our honest mistake.

And even if we were willing to entertain the possibility that the bombing was intentional, the “precision bombing” meme offered the comforting idea that we had simply given a misbehaving office in the embassy an admonitory plink.

In this context, it is interesting to point out an inaccuracy in both the Observer and Air Forces Monthly accounts.

From the Observer: “The Chinese may have calculated that Nato would not dare strike its embassy, but the five-storey building was emptied every night of personnel.”

From AFM via Venik: Despite the fact that the embassy building was evacuated of all nonessential personnel during the hours of darkness to avoid any potential casualties, three Chinese were killed and more than 20 injured.

As both the casualty reports and Pan’s account makes clear, the embassy was filled with people at night, including members of the staff who were afraid to go home because their residences were too close to NATO bombing targets in Belgrade.

The strikingly similar nature of these inaccuracies indicate that they came not from on the scene reporting but from the correspondents’ military sources.

It could have been a situation in which bad intel ( “Mr. President, we‘ll bomb the place at night, nobody’ll be there but those damn spooks!”) morphed into behind the scenes spin (“Yeah, we did it but there was nobody in there but them spooks!”) and finally mutated into a public excuse for an operation that might otherwise be viewed as excessively reckless ("In a piece of high-tech derring-do, the U.S. staged a daring but successful assault targeting Chinese intelligence assets inside the otherwise empty building".)

I, for one, find it more likely we went in at night simply because we wanted to make sure that Ren Bokai’s meddling team was in the embassy, in its vulnerable fifth-floor office, and huddled over its equipment monitoring our bombing raids when we unleashed the attack.

In any case, both investigative reports erred on the side of credulity in minimizing the human cost of the attack—and the impact it might have on Chinese perceptions and policy.

Today, with further information on the attack and the benefit of perspective, it is difficult to dismiss the shock the Belgrade bombing inflicted on the Chinese.

Post 9/11, Ambassador Pan’s description of the attack is depressing familiar, and more difficult to disregard.

Pan’s plodding prose reawakens dark memories of our own as he conveys the shock and fear as the embassy explodes into flames, “the loudest sound I ever heard”. Survivors found the stairwells blocked by rubble and fire and desperately improvised escapes down the exterior of the building using knotted drapes. Pan saw his friends and colleagues stagger from the ruins of the embassy dazed and bloody, crying out for help.

Amid the chaos everybody ducked in fear of a follow-up attack as NATO bombers thundered overhead (May 7 was one of the busiest nights for aerial bombing). Then came the frantic ad hoc attempts to rally the survivors, account for the living, and search for the missing.

First responders were at first unable to enter the compound because the electric gate was disabled when the bombing cut the power; ambulances race up to the shattered structure with sirens howling to rush away the injured willy-nilly; embassy staffers mounted a frantic search through the local hospitals for the injured.

Finally, there was the extraction of the dead, consoling of the wounded;the grieving; and the defiant patriotic oration.

Again viewed through a post-9/11 lens, Pan’s account also paints a picture of a privileged elite that has been stripped of the illusion that it is immune to attack, and realizing with anger, shame, and disgust that at that moment it is helpless, vulnerable, and unable to retaliate.

Gaddafi, Khaled Mattawa, and the Bacchae

2011-10-26T13:55:00.000-07:00

I suppose the Western media caravan has moved on, and there isn’t going to be a lot of interest in the latest footage of Muamar Qaddafi’s capture obtained by Global Post.

Basically, Qaddafi is brutalized for four minutes by a frantic mob. One triumphalist tries to stick something up his rear end. Everybody yells and shoots in the air as they stomp and pummel the terrified, blood-covered ex-supremo.

Then Qaddafi is bundled off to be shot in the head, killed in a crossfire, suffer a fatal slip in the shower, or whatever fate the embarrassed kibitzers of the NTC decide to cobble together to explain the subsequent appearance of his corpse in a meat locker in Misrata.

The video makes for rather depressing viewing for students of human nature, and also offers a sobering harbinger of things to come in the new Libya.

If I were in Syria, I would find these images dispiriting rather than energizing.

Poet Khaled Mattawa, however, looked at the same tape and had what could be termed a “wargasm”.

He is obviously heir to the ecstatic Dionysian strain of poesy, rather than the detached Apollonian ideal.

The LA Times published his poem After 42 years on its op-ed page. It’s pretty much everywhere now.

What and who taught you O sons of my country to be so fearless cruel?
Him, they say, for 42 years, 42 years of him.
…
Their shrill Allahu Akbars exclamations of astonishment—
What have I done O Lord to deserve the honor of capturing the rat?

If the brutal frenzy is embarrassing, well, blame it on Qaddafi:

Perhaps he was a magnet and he drew evil out of men’s chests,
His hands, his hands saying wait, wait
Reached into their lungs and wound and knotted their raw souls,
A magnet now siphoning cruelty to itself.

Let’s give the older generation a glorious share in the slaughter; in fact, why not ritually wet the hands of the whole country in Qaddafi’s blood, at least vicariously (though I noticed no grateful shoutout to the folks at NATO who made it all possible):

To tear him to bits, my mother’s friend once said.
To tear him to bits, six million hearts had prayed –
O God grant me the sight of him dead!

Heck, let’s just leave humanity out of it:

The rabid beast, captured, kicked about and shot in the head.

Obviously Mattawa really, really hates Qaddafi.

He’s from Benghazi, although his parents sent him to the US during his teens, where he has resided ever since. He is a distinguished poet with a raft of awards and grants, presumably for work better than the stuff quoted above.

Mattawa came out against Qaddafi in February 2011; his family was active in the Benghazi rebellion.

If not for the attention-hogging grandstanding of Bernard Henri-Levy, Mattawa might have the face of the Libyan revolution in the Western media. Now I suppose he must content himself with playing the role of the Kipling of the R2P movement.

Mattawa, who claims Misrata as his ancestral home, doesn’t seem to be above manufacturing outrage for effect.

When one reads After 42 Years, one is invited to assume that Gaddafi’s regime killed his father and brother (certainly the impression you get when Mattawa read this dramatic excerpt on PRI’s The World on October 26):

I was five when the dictator took my brother away

…five years old when my father was killed

standing in front of a hotel.

Matter of fact, as an interview/profile with Mother Jones reported in February 2010, Mattawa and his only brother, Ibrahim, were sent to the United States in their teens, where they have resided ever since.

As for his father, a 2009 profile in the Kalamazoo Gazette ended:

When Mattawa moved from his country in 1979, it was "to wait out Gaddafi." Things have mellowed there lately, and Mattawa, now married to a woman from Libya and the father of a child, returns once a summer to see his parents.

"It's sort of normal, in a weird sense," he said.

As Mattawa has frequently recounted in interviews, one of his dominant memories was not of his father’s demise; it was the humiliation of his terrified father driving around with his car plastered with a poster of Gaddafi that he dared not remove.

Normal, in a weird sense, to imply that one’s father, unmanned by Gaddafi's regime, was “killed standing in front of a hotel.”

Psychoanalysts, start your engines.

To me, the interesting element of Mattawa’s resume is his current employment: University of Michigan at Ann Arbor, the same place that Juan Cole works.

I would not be surprised that the desire to keep up with Mattawa had something to do with Cole’s over-the-top cheerleading for the “Free Libya” forces.

You don’t want to be getting the stinkeye from Khaled Mattawa in the faculty lounge for going easy on the rabid beast on Charlie Rose the night before.

For those not yet surfeited with patriotic gore and interested in literature that mixes compassion with its passion, here’s a passage from Euripedes’ The Bacchae (interestingly, Libya was one candidate for the homeland of Dionysus), in the Gilbert Murray translation.

Here the Bacchae, with an assist from NATO—I mean Dionysus--discover Pentheus, son of the high priestess Agave, spying on the proceedings from a treetop.

…scarce was he beheld upon his lofty throne, when the stranger disappeared, while from the sky there came a voice, 'twould seem, by Dionysus uttered-

"Maidens, I bring the man who tried to mock you and me and my mystic rites; take vengeance on him."

…
"Hither” cried Agave; "stand we round
And grip the stem, my Wild Ones, till we take
This climbing cat-o'-the-mount ! He shall not make
A tale of God's high dances! " Out then shone
Arm upon arm, past count, and closed upon
The pine, and gripped; and the ground gave, and down
It reeled. And that high sitter from the crown
Of the green pine-top, with a shrieking cry
Fell, as his mind grew clear, and there hard by
Was horror visible. It was his mother stood
O'er him, first priestess of those rites of blood.
He tore the coif, and from his head away
Flung it, that she might know him, and not slay
To her own misery. He touched the wild
Cheek, crying: "Mother, it is I, thy child,
Thy Pentheus, born thee in Echton's hall!
Have mercy, Mother ! Let it not befall
Through sin of mine, that thou shouldst slay thy son! "

But she, with lips a-foam and eyes that run
Like leaping fire, with thoughts that ne'er should be
On earth, possessed by Bacchus utterly,
Stays not nor hears. Round his left arm she put
Both hands, set hard against his side her foot,
Drew , . . and the shoulder severed ! Not by might
Of arm, but easily, as the God made light
Her hand's essay. And at the other side
Was Ino rending ; and the torn flesh cried,
And on Autonoe pressed, and all the crowd
Of ravening arms. Yea, all the air was loud
With groans that faded into sobbing breath,
Dim shrieks, and joy, and triumph-cries of death.

And here was borne a severed arm, and there
A hunter's booted foot ; white bones lay bare
With rending ; and swift hands ensanguined
Tossed as in sport the flesh of Pentheus dead.
…
And, ah, the head of all the rest,
His mother hath it, pierced upon a wand,
As one might pierce a lion's, and through the land,
Leaving her sisters in their dancing place,
Bears it on high ! Yea, to these walls her face
Was set, exulting in her deed of blood,
Calling upon her Bacchus, her God,
Her Comrade, Fellow-Render of the Prey,
Her All-Victorious, to whom this day
She bears in triumph ... her own broken heart.

Brutal times demand better--not more brutal--poets.

Syrian Bloodshed and the West's Abdication of Journalistic Responsibility

2011-10-17T13:30:00.000-07:00

The October 13 BBC headline read: Clashes in Syria leave 19 dead – rights activists.

That gives the impression that the brutal Syrian army killed 19 Syrian demonstrators.

Not quite. The story continues:

The UK-based Syrian Observatory for Human Rights said 10 people died when government troops attacked the northern town of Banash.

In the southern town of Haara, armed men killed at least nine soldiers.

That’s nine Syrian government soldiers. According to Syrian government reports, 1100 Syrian government forces have been killed since the uprising began.

Anti-government violence by armed groups is one of the inconvenient truths about the Syrian uprising.

Democracy activists don’t want to admit it; sympathetic media outlets don’t want to report it.

Now that the issue is becoming unavoidable, the new tactic is to excuse it as the response of incensed deserters, while deploring the “slide toward civil war.”

Not so.

The issue of “armed gangs” has been there from the beginning.

It took a willful abdication of journalistic responsibility to suppress it—and to continue to misrepresent it in order to evade responsibility for the simple-minded (and single-minded) pro-democracy media cheerleading that characterized most reporting on Syria.

Now that the non-violent anti-government protests are sputtering into futility, center stage is taken by the advocates of violent struggle.

For the West and Sunni states to breathe more life into the anti-Assad movement, violence has to be portrayed as inevitable, principled response, not escalating provocation seeking to obscure the failure of a political movement.

I expect the media to cover the issue of anti-government violence with same dishonest, guilty evasiveness it has displayed in the past.

Here’s a piece I wrote in April 2011 about one of the first incidents—an attack on a government convoy near Banyas that killed almost a dozen soldiers, confirmed by a source that I consider impeccable: the family of Josh Landis, the Syria watcher at University of Oklahoma.

It also describes the state of play around a key anti-Assad figure: Abdul Halim Khaddam.

Tuesday, April 12, 2011

Does Abdul Halim Khaddam Have Anything to Do with What's Going on in Syria?

Is Saudi Arabia Showing George W. Bush How to Run the Regime-Change Table in the Middle East?

Saudi Arabia has engaged in some extremely public and forceful pushback against Middle East unrest in general and Iran in particular. In some quarters, it’s being called the Saudi counter-revolution.

Is the pro-Iran/pro-Hezbollah Assad government in Syria the next Shi'a domino?

Iran’s Press TV certainly thinks so.

In an op-ed entitled Saudi Arabia, Jordan Behind Syria Unrest, the authors write:

Saudi Arabia, which often bows to US and Israel's policies in the region, tried to destabilize Bashar al-Assad's government by undermining his rule.

To this end, Saudi Arabia paid 30 million dollars to former vice president Abdul Halim Khaddam to quit Assad's government.

Khaddam sought asylum in France in 2005 with the aid of Saudi Arabia and began to plot against the Syrian government with the exiled leaders of the Muslim Brotherhood.

Khaddam, who is a relative of Saudi King Abdullah and former Lebanese premier Rafiq Hariri, used his great wealth to form a political group with the aim of toppling Bashar al-Assad.

The triangle of Khaddam-Abdullah-Hariri is well-known in the region as their wives are sisters.

Khaddam's entire family enjoys Saudi citizenship and the value investment by his sons, Jamal and Jihad, in Saudi Arabia is estimated at more than USD 3 billion.

Therefore, with the start of popular protests in Tunisia, Egypt, Libya, Yemen and Bahrain, the Saudi regime saw an opportunity to drive a wedge between Tehran, Damascus and Beirut axis.

Due to the direct influence of the Saudi Wahhabis on Syria's Muslim Brotherhood, the people of the cities of Daraa and Homs, following Saudi incitement and using popular demands as an excuse began resorting to violence.

It is reported that the United States, Israel, Jordan and Saudi Arabia formed joint operational headquarters in the Saudi Embassy in Belgium to direct the riots in southern Syria. Abdul Halim Khaddam, who held the highest political, executive and information posts in the Syrian government for more than 30 years, is said to have been transferred from Paris to Belgium to direct the unrest.

The reason for this was that based on French law, political asylum seekers cannot work against their countries of origin in France and therefore Khaddam was transferred to Brussels to guide the riots.

Jordan equipped the Muslim Brotherhood in the two cities with logistical facilities and personal weapons.

Although, Bashar al-Assad promised implementation of fundamental changes and reforms after the bloody riot in the country, the Brotherhood followed continued to incite protesters against him.

The Syrian state television recently broadcast footage of armed activity in the border city of Daraa by a guerilla group, which opened fire on the people and government forces. It is said that the group, which is affiliated to Salafi movements, obtained its weapons from Jordan and Saudi Arabia.

Because Syria's ruling party is from the Alevi tribes associated with the Shias, the Brotherhood, due to its anti-Shia ideas, has tried for three decades to topple the Alevi establishment of the country.

Hence, the recent riots in Syria are not just rooted in popular demands and harbor a tribal aspect and Saudi Arabia, Jordan and the US are directing the unrest for their future purposes.

Press TV aside, Abdul Halim Khaddam--who used to be Hafez al-Assad's right hand man/fixer before coming up short in the succession struggle--is insisting he’s just letting human nature and pent-up demands for freedom drive events in Syria without any help from him.

In this recent picture, Khaddam looks quite comfortable in his plush Parisian digs, purportedly purchased through the generosity of his brother-in-law, King Abdullah of Saudi Arabia and/or acquired as the result of his own billionaire-level business acumen, so maybe he’s just kicking back and letting politics take its course inside Syria.

Of course, in his own words he’s “working around the clock to set an executable plan to achieve [his] targets”, but we’re led to believe that relates to the political struggle after popular unrest has kicked the props out from under the Assad regime.

He’s also willing to foment anti-Iranian and anti-Shi’a sentiment, something that would please his alleged patrons in Riyadh.

In 2006, Khaddam told had this exchange with an interviewer:

Q: What are you current priorities? Do you want to reform the regime, reform it, or topple it?

A: This regime cannot be reformed so there is nothing left but to oust it.

Q: But how will you oust it?

A: The Syrian people will topple the regime. There is a rapidly growing current in the country. Opposition is growing fast. I do not want to oust the regime by military coup. A coup is the most dangerous type of reform. I am working to create the right atmosphere for the Syrian people to topple the regime.

In another interview in 2006—the year he optimistically expected the Assad regime to fall-- Khaddam elaborated on the theme:

Gulf News: On January 14, you announced you would form a government-in-exile that would take over power when the government of President Bashar Al Assad collapsed, but nothing has happened since then. I have contacted opposition forces in London and Washington who welcomed your move but said they have not heard from you. What happened to the government-in-exile idea and are you going to cooperate with the existing opposition forces or form a government of your own supporters?

Abdul Halim Khaddam: I am working with different opposition forces which exist inside Syria and in exile. We are discussing the formation of a government-in-exile. Its main task will be to fill the power vacuum in the country and be in action after the collapse of the regime in Damascus.

I am discussing my proposal directly with the leaders of opposition factions or through mediators. We are looking to foster and strengthen cooperation among different opposition factions, including Muslim Brotherhood, which are banned by law in Syria since 1980. We will announce a programme for a democratic change in Syria that will include all the topics and the issues to be handled by the opposition in the next stage.

We are working round-the-clock to set an executable plan to achieve our targets and to benefit from the blunders committed by the regime in recent years. The regime has handcuffed itself through a chain of fatal mistakes which will help the opposition overthrow the totalitarian regime and launch a democratic era.

Khaddam also beat the anti-Iran and anti-Shi’a drum in 2007—a worrisome combination for Assad, who as a member of a small Shi’a-esque minority sect, the Alawites, reigns over a Sunni majority (an interesting inversion of the situation in Bahrain--Sunni sheiks lording it over disgruntled Shi'a majority):

Khaddam speculated that Assad's regime was being infiltrated by Iran's elite Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps with Iranian intelligence agents having penetrated the Syrian political and security circles. He pointed to an agreement between Syrian and Iranian security organs, a mutual defence agreement signed in 2006 between Tehran and Damascus and a "broad co-ordination between the security organs in the two countries which covers Lebanon and Syria".

Khaddam accused the Iranian ambassador to Damascus of leading the Shi'itisation process in Syria, saying: "Shi'itisation is a political phenomenon carried out by the Iranian ambassador to Damascus with the objective of creating a political situation that is tied to Iran, and this activity is dangerous as it lays the ground for sectarian strife in Syria".

At the very least, Khaddam showed more message discipline that an organization called the Reform Party of Syria. The only conspicuous achievement of the group mentioned on its Wikipedia page was an endorsement of Nicolas Sarkozy for President (of France).

The RPS, although referred to by the World Tribune (itself the perhaps less than authoritative mouthpiece of the politically-wired Soka Gakkai cult in Japan) as "authoritative", appears to have jumped the shark with its recent backgrounder. It stated:

Iran has deployed its Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps in Syria to bolster Syria's defense. The Washington-based opposition group said the IRGC contingent in Syria includes 10,000 troops, with headquarters in the northern province of Homs.

"In essence, the IRGC now occupies Syria and has become its de facto ruler," RPS spokesman Farid Ghadry said. "Syria has become the 32nd province of Iran."

Leaving levity aside, the references to Abdul Halim Khaddam caught my eye because of a sad, sober post by Josh Landis, one of America’s premier Syria-watchers, on his blog, Syria Comment:

The Syrian revolution struck home yesterday. My wife, Manar Qash`ur [Kachour], burst into tears last night as she read the Facebook page that has kept her updated on events in her hometown, Latakia. Lt. Colonel Yasir Qash`ur, who was Manar’s cousin and 40 years old, was shot in Banyas on Sunday. He was one of two Lt. Colonels and 10 military personnel killed – more were wounded. Yasir’s funeral was held in the village this morning – Monday. My brother-in-law, Firas, and father-in-law, Shaaban, both attended.

...

My father-in-law said on the phone this morning that it seemed that supporters of ex-Vice President Khaddam, who was from Banyas, were behind the attack. It is said that they had set a trap for the military unit. All this is speculation, however. We know precious little about who is killing whom in Syria. Allegations are numerous. Real knowledge is scarce.

There is a widespread enthusiasm for acknowledging the popular character of the demonstrations against Assad.

There is intense unease about exploring the role of armed provocateurs in trying to foment more extreme anti-government unrest.

Al Jazeera—which appears an enthusiastic cheerleader for the Syrian protests, even as it seems to show a willingness to hew to the Saudi line in downplaying reporting on the anti-Shi'a crackdown in Bahrain—did run a video segment on Inside Story, Syria: Conspiracies and Condemnation.

Judging from the version on Youtube, it was originally called Conspiracy over Syria Protests; perhaps that title was considered to give excessive credence to the government’s claims.

To an almost ludicrous extent, the moderator, Nick Clark, tried to get his three panelists to comment on video footage aired on Syrian state TV that showed a white Honda riding down a street in some Syrian town with guys firing automatic weapons out the window.

The panelists admitted in passing that it was plausible that gunmen had joined the anti-government protests.

Nobody was willing to discuss the implications, preferring to treat the footage of gunmen—true or not—as simply an attempt by the government to misdirect attention away from the genuine protests. The panelists critiqued the lack of evidentiary meat on the reportorial bones, and used their lack of interest in the clip to emphasize that the Syrian state media—and by implication, the government—had lost credibility.

That white car, with “a chap hanging out firing a machine gun”, as Clark put it...zero traction.

The possibility that the gunmen were pro-government irregulars has subsequently been floated in the media courtesy of pro-demonstrator spokespeople.

A similar vow of omerta seems to apply to the ambush of the Syrian Army patrol that killed Josh Landis's in-law.

One would think the death of nearly a dozen soldiers in an ambush would be considered a remarkable development, considering that the death of equivalent numbers of demonstrators is a world media event.

It’s also rather shocking that, in an acknowledged authoritarian state like Syria, somebody could come up with the wherewithal to mount a successful attack on a rather sizable military patrol.

But even in news for Banyas, the reports of an ambush are virtually a non-story, as the media concentrates on the crackdown instead.

On Josh Landis’ site, a pro-demonstrator commenter advanced the story that one member of the unit had killed the rest of the soldiers in a fit of patriotism, rather than fire on demonstrators.

If reports in Syrian media are truthful, this would have been a remarkable display of determination and marksmanship. In addition to nine dead, twenty three were wounded. Admittedly, Nidal Malik Hasan killed and wounded more at Fort Hood, but those victims were on base and unarmed; the Syrian soldiers were on patrol and presumably within reach of their weapons.

The pro-democracy slaughter line seems less likely than the story of one of the survivors:

Mazin Fittimi reported that he was sitting in the front part of the convey when armed men ambushed and rained them with bullets and grenades from nearby buildings and water sewage canals at 'Al-Qwz Bridage'.

In the Arab press, Khaddam asserted that his home town of Banyas had a long history of repression, persecution, discrimination and marginalization and “don’t need anyone to guide them”.

We’ll see.

Whether or not Khaddam is Saudi Arabia’s Chalabi for Syria doesn’t get a lot of airing in the regional press.

Whether or not he has assets in his home town that would mount an attack on a government convoy is apparently not a matter of widespread interest.

And that doesn’t even go into the matter of Rifaat Assad, Hafez Assad’s brother—and Bashar Assad’s uncle—who tried to take over in a coup and was exiled to France. Rifaat is also married to one of King Abdullah’s sisters.

So that means that the former Number 2 and Number 3 in the Syrian regime are both eager to see Bashar fall on his behind; and both are close to Saudi Arabia, which now appears to be, more than ever, willing to take positive action to sideline its enemies.

Of course, the Assad regime, as the al Jazeera panel pointed out, has been counterproductively coy and vague about the conspirators it claims are dead-set on undermining the government.

Is the Syrian government just blowing smoke? Trying to build a persuasive case before they name names? Afraid to provoke an open breach with the Saudi and Jordanian governments by publicly accusing Khaddam and Rifaat Assad?

Is Syria trying to get the word out indirectly through the willing, eager, but less than respectable outlet of Iran and Press TV instead?

These questions might be worthy of some more media attention.

Occam’s Razor Helpless Against Iranian Bomb Plot Horsecrap

2011-10-12T13:45:00.000-07:00

Since everybody else is tiptoeing around the issue, I might as well put my hoof in:

The “Iranian bomb plot” smells like BS.

The idea that the Iranian regime or Quds Force decided to pull this off should be fourth or fifth down the list of plausible explanations, if not lower.

It looks more like a black flag operation by Israel or Saudi Arabia.

The fact that the US decided to take the allegation and run with it should itself be a matter of interest and investigation.

After all, just as Iran is trying once again to break out of its diplomatic isolation by refloating the Teheran Research Reactor nuclear fuel swap, the State Department comes up with a new load of manure to dump on the situation.

Makes me think, the Obama administration decided to give the Jose Padilla treatment to this ridiculous scheme in order to reclaim leadership of the anti-Iran jihad, which threatened to run off under the incitement of Saudi Arabia and Israel, both of whom now regard the US as a dubious ally who no longer deserves either a leadership role or even a veto in skullduggery involving Teheran.

But there it is.

The US has blessed the story, so all the responsible commentators—even those who apparently think the idea is ridiculous—have to do some serious chin-stroking along the lines of “what where the mullahs thinking” if indeed that was what the mullahs were thinking.

I’m thinking—with all due respect to the Saudi ambassador—who gives a tinker’s damn about the Saudi ambassador? Ambassadors are errand boys.

The only reason to blow up an ambassador in the United States is to start a war with the US. Does anybody think Iran wants to do that?

Does anybody think Saudi Arabia and Israel don’t want to start a war with Iran—at least get the US to fight the war for them?

Occam’s Razor gets awfully blunt when it starts to cut in the sensitive areas—or to US government BS.

Tires, Trade, and Virtual Nobel Prizes

2011-10-10T17:32:00.000-07:00

Criticism of Senator Schumer’s legislation to punish China for currency manipulation often points out that the most likely outcome of any sanctions would be to shift manufacturing from China to some other low-cost Asia locale, not bring it back to the United States.

Paul Krugman, on the other hand, believes that the US will discover proper exchange rates and suitable areas of competitive advantage vis a vis its trading partners, if and when currencies get a chance to sort themselves out correctly. Sanctioning China’s currency manipulation, in his view, would be an important and positive step toward that goal.

I hesitate to argue with Paul Krugman and his Nobel Prize…actually the Sveriges Riksbank Prize in Economic Sciences in Memory of Alfred Nobel (Nobel had no desire to give honor practitioners of the dismal science; the Swedish state bank gave itself a feel-good present on its 300^th anniversary by endowing the prize in 1968 and the Nobel foundation obligingly went along. I suppose that the Ikea Prize in Ready-to-Assemble Furniture in Memory of Alfred Nobel can’t be far behind)…

Anyway, foreign currency trade is immense and can quickly change the international economic landscape, at least on the current account.

However, I think the emphasis on nation-to-nation competition is misplaced when it comes to the capital account and corralling investment in nice new factories.

The dynamic that drives international investment today seems to be nations in a losing struggle to pursue national advantage while global corporations succeed in pursuing global corporate advantage.

Corporations love profit. But they love growth in profits even better. And America is not delivering the growth.

When the US slaps China around, China loses. American corporations gain. But not in the way one might expect. They gain by adjusting production within their global portfolio of factories with an eye to optimizing growth opportunities.

Instead of looking for merely adequate advantages in the country of its birth, I believe, capital, as befits its globalized, fungible character, flows overseas seeking optimal returns.

I'm sure there are plenty of non-Nobelist as well as Nobelist economists who would be happy to set me straight on this matter.

When they do so, they can also address the issue of US protective tariffs targeting cheap Chinese tires.

Globalized tire companies, including those that are US-registered corporations, profited.

They didn’t profit by increasing US output. They profited by shifting supply to their other low-cost plants in Taiwan, South Korea, and elsewhere.

And they took those profits and reinvested them…in China. Because that’s where the growth is.

Here’s the article I wrote about the tire tariffs in Asia Times. You can click through to the AT archives to get the article and the links.

US drivers pay steep price for China tire tariff

A World Trade Organization appeals court has ruled in favor of the Barack Obama administration on the issue of the tariff it slapped on imports of Chinese tires in 2009. With President Obama's acceptance of the recommendation of the US International Trade Commission, Chinese tires were assessed at an eye-popping tariff of 55% in 2009, declining to 45% on 2010 and 35% in 2011.

A certain amount of misinformation is apparently de rigueur in cases of this sort. No, for Tom Barkley of Marketwatch, the US levy was not a "punitive" tariff. [1] It was a protective tariff, one that acknowledged that the Chinese tires were cheaper, but that the influx was causing unacceptable hardship to American industry.

The Obama administration imposed the tariff under Section 421 of the Trade Act of 1974. Per the US China Business Council backgrounder, "the statute allows the United States to impose duties or quotas to counter 'market disruption' caused by rapidly increasing imports from China. Unlike other trade remedies under US law, the imports don't have to be proven to result from dumping or other illegal actions. [2]

As a price of acceding to the WTO, China agreed to accept imposition of national protectionist measures - aka a "Transitional Product-Specific Safeguard Mechanism" - if discussions failed to cope with a situation of increased Chinese imports that "cause[d] or threaten[ed] to cause market disruption to the domestic producers".

Paragraph 16.4 of China's Accession Protocol defines "market disruption".

Market disruption shall exist whenever imports of an article, like or directly competitive with an article produced by the domestic industry, are increasing rapidly, either absolutely or relatively, so as to be a significant cause of material injury, or threat of material injury to the domestic industry. In determining if market disruption exists, the affected WTO Member shall consider objective factors, including the volume of imports, the effect of imports on prices for like or directly competitive articles, and the effect of such imports on the domestic industry producing like or directly competitive products. [3]

It would appear to be a fool's errand to challenge this ruling, giving the avalanche of Chinese tires that entered the US in 2006-2008 and the obvious implications for employment in the US tire industry.

According to the United Steel Workers Union, Chinese tire imports by volume grew 215% from 2004 until 2008, reaching a volume of 46 million tires. [4]

However, the Chinese case was not quite as weak as one might think.

The PRC's representatives argued that US manufacturers had made a strategic business decision to focus on the most demanding - and profitable - customers, who would not accept a no-name import: the auto manufacturers (known as OEMs or original equipment manufacturers) and the so-called "tier one" replacement customers, who paid more for brand-name, high performance tires.

As a result, the Chinese and other suppliers rushed into the "tier two" and "tier three", that is the cheap and cheaper unbranded market, to slug it out.

Perhaps more to the point, it appears the PRC was attempting to draw a pre-emptive line in the sand and establish some procedural and interpretive precedents to inhibit the serial imposition of protective tariffs in trade disputes.

The PRC asserted that the US procedures leading up the imposition of the penalties had been excessively subjective and slapdash and did not rise to the standard of evaluation demanded by section 16.4. The effort was an outright failure.

The appeals panel slapped down the Chinese, and received aid and comfort from friends of the court briefs filed in support of the US position by the European Union and Japan.

The ruling does not make for particularly inspiring reading. Especially at the appellate level, the "rule based" world order that the US professes to promote and, when convenient, adhere to, is largely a matter of legalistic wriggling.

The PRC asserted that the US had cherry-picked the data to focus on the year of biggest increase, 2008, and had failed to define what "rapid growth" actually was; the WTO ruled that there were no limits on subjective interpretation.

The WTO also ruled that "material" injury was a lower bar than "serious" injury and relieved the US of any obligation to make the case that a specific amount of injury had been caused by Chinese imports, as opposed to other factors such as strategic decisions by US suppliers, the global recession, or competitive pressures of other exporters.

For instance, since Chinese imports were cited as one of four factors in the shutdown of a Bridgestone plant in Oklahoma, that was taken to be evidence of "material" injury, albeit of an undefined degree, that justified the protective tariff.

Moving beyond the ruling, the end result of this protectionist posturing was not terribly impressive.

As free-trade advocates (and the Chinese) quickly pointed out, the result of the protective tariff was not to spur a significant increase in US employment in the tire sector.

Instead, the supply sourcing shifted from the PRC to Taiwan, South Korea, Japan, and Indonesia, all happy to divvy up the low-end market, presumably at higher prices now that the PRC, the most significant low-cost producer, was out of the picture.

In 2010, the US China Business Council issued a widely-publicized (at least in China) Issue Briefing that stated:

Comparing the first half of 2010 with the same period in 2009, total US tire imports affected by the 421 tariff are up 21% by volume and 30% by value. China's share of those imports has dropped from a peak of 45% in August 2009 to just 24% in June 2010. In other words, Americans are buying more tires from overseas - we're just getting the tires from places other than China. [5]

During the same period that the Chinese tires were shut out of the US market, the price of tires jumped over 10%.

Perhaps most students of international trade and foreign relations do not spend much time reflecting on the plight of the financially strapped US buyer of low-end tires - or the retailers that service them - but this October 2010 report from Barry Schlachter of McClatchy, provides some food for thought:

Overall, consumers are paying about 12% more for blackwalls than a year ago, said Bonnie Moreland of Texarkana, Texas-based Golden Star Tires, adding that the jump would be even higher if he didn't absorb some of the waves of price increases imposed by manufacturers.

Dealers who advertised specials like four ''economy'' tires for $99 three years ago are selling them today at $299 to $340 - if they can find the products, said George Salinas, co-owner of G&M Tires in Fort Worth, Texas.

The higher cost makes it harder to stock tires that are available.

''I used to carry 300 tires,'' Salinas said. ''Now I have less than 100 in stock because I can't afford to have them sitting on the shelf.''

Jim Smith, editor of Akron-based Tire Review magazine, which covers the retail industry, said: ''Dealers are terribly frustrated. They've always complained about prices, but this is different from historical grousing. This is a real-world, dollar-and-cents issue for them right now. They can't get customers in the door because of the prices.''

Sam Timmons of Fort Worth Tire, which sells used and new tires, says it's harder finding road-worthy tires for resale because they're being driven longer and come in bald.

"Because of money problems, people are running them until they're as slick as pavement," said Timmons, who laid off five employees in February 2009 and hasn't been able to replace them. "We spend $20,000 a year getting rid of the junk tires. We just get a trickle [of good used tires], and they're sold within days." [6]

However, the true significance of the Chinese tire affair - and even the jump in tire prices - is not the ancient story of the futility of protectionism. It's more about the consequences of globalization.

Tire-making is a globalized affair, driven by the needs of the globalized automotive industry. The automakers are world corporations pursuing world markets. GM sells more cars in China than it does in the United States. And global cars need tires from global suppliers.

When Chinese tires got squeezed out of the US market, they were replaced, of course, by other imports. But not necessarily imports by foreign brands. Many of the tires came from the global plants of the world majors, like Cooper Industries and a host of others.

South Korea's Hankook Tires - which has no US factories and has announced its strategy is to become the number one tire company in China - supplied 10 million tires to the US market in 2010. With a verbal awkwardness that is somewhat charming, it stated in its 2010 annual report:

"[American Regional] headquarters diversified production sources to circumvent the additional 35% safeguard tariff on Chinese-made tires."

Bridgestone Taiwan, which historically did not export, recorded a gratifying bump of one million tires in 2009.

Significantly, when the anti-PRC tire action was first mooted, neither one of the two nominally US tires suppliers, Goodyear and Cooper, supported the effort. True to their globalized priorities, they cared for the continued opportunity to maximize access to all markets for all their plants in every corner of the world.

Cooper is headquartered in Findlay, Ohio. It has plants in China that were a major source of low-end tires for the US market. When the protective tariff hit, it didn't start sourcing cheap aftermarket tires from its US plants to replace the Chinese supply. It shifted to its partners in Taiwan and South Korea to supply the US market.

Cooper, in fact, filed a statement with the US International Trade Commission opposing the protective tariff. In a public version made available by the website US China Law Blog, Cooper stated:

Cooper Tire has not abandoned the US tire market, and intends to continue some production in the United States. Cooper Tire invested in China because it could not compete on costs with lower-cost tires being imported by other US producers and importers from many different countries, not just China. Cooper Tire's customers were demanding lower-priced tires. The tires produced in China are made at a lower cost and allow Cooper Tire to even-out its overall production costs, compete for sales in the United States, and meet its customers demands. The reason the tires in China can be made at a lower costs is due to lower labor costs (including hourly rates and benefits), some (but not all) lower raw material; and much lower litigation costs (for not only product liability issues, but also US regulatory issues and other contractual disputes). [7]

The prime mover of the ruling was always the United Steel Workers union, which represents workers at 13 plants within the United States. In the end, the USW initiative arguably gained a few hundred jobs at the cost of tens of millions of dollars in increased tire costs for American consumers.

A certain amount of market inefficiency for the sake of increased employment is defensible. Or, alternately, the strategic and psychic satisfaction of poking a stick in the eye of the Communist Chinese dragon could be added to the rather short list of benefits of the tariff.

However, the most significant net effect of the tariff was to put more money in the pockets of Cooper and other globalized tire manufacturers. In the true spirit of globalization, these extra nickels did not necessarily trickle down to US workers.

Nor were these extra nickels denied to the PRC tire industry. Instead, it appears that the bulk of any tariff windfall will be invested overseas, in locations that not only provide cheaper labor costs - they offer faster growing markets.

Markets like China.

In August 2011, Tire Business magazine reported that global tire manufacturers had announced almost $10 billion in capacity expansions in the last 12 months:

Asia/Pacific accounts for nearly two-thirds of the budgeted investments, with Latin America getting $1.4 billion, or nearly 15%. Europe garnered a bit more than $1 billion and North America is getting $921 million, although Conti's greenfield plant project is not part of that figure.

Tire Business noted the following China projects:

· Bridgestone: $251 million to raise passenger tire capacity at two plants in China.

· Taiwan's Cheng Shin Rubber Co Ltd/Maxxis International: two new plants (their fifth and sixth plants in the PRC) at Xiamen and Chongqing, total investment of around $500 million.

· Cooper Tire & Rubber Co spent $116.5 million to buy the 50% stake in the Cooper Kenda Tire Manufacturing (Kunshan) Co Ltd joint venture in China.

· China's Double Coin Holdings Ltd: $475 million passenger / light truck tire plant in Anhui Province in eventual partnership with Michelin.

· Goodyear: In the words of Tire Business, Goodyear "has begun trial production of passenger tires at its new Pulandian factory in Dalian, China - the company's first step toward replacing its existing factory in Dalian and doubling annual car tire capacity in China to more than 10 million units by 2015. The project is valued at $700 million over five years, about $200 million higher than previous disclosures."

· Hankook: $954 million through year-end 2015 for a car and truck tire plant in Liang Jiang Xin Qu, near Chongquing, China, capable of making 11.5 million car and medium truck/bus tires annually.

· Michelin: $1.46 billion for a car and truck tire plant in Shenyang, China.

· Toyo: $22 million investment in China's Shandong Silverstone Luhe Rubber & Tyre Co Ltd.

· China's Triangle Tyre Co Ltd: $388 expansion to its Weihai, China plant.

The US take, about $1.5 billion of the total, as opposed to about $5 billion going into China:

· Bridgestone: $125 million investment at its Aiken, SC plant.

· Michelin: $250 million for capacity increases at its Lexington, South Carolina and Woodburn, Indiana plants.

· CGS Holdings (Czech manufacturer of agricultural tires): $67 million for a plant in Iowa.

· Continental has announced plans for a major greenfield plant based in the USA "to serve the NAFTA [North American Free Trade Agreement] market" [ie Canada, the US and Mexico] with a possible budget of $500 million.

· South Korea's financially-strapped Kumho Tires has put its announced plant in Bibb County, Georgia on hold until at least 2013.

As for major US investments by the two US-headquartered majors:

· Goodyear: zero.

· Cooper: zero [8]

In its 2010 Annual Report, Goodyear cited "increased low-cost country sourcing" and "continued progress in actions to reduce ... high cost manufacturing capacity" as the cornerstones of its effort to dig itself out of its financial hole.

In a slideshow accompanying its 2011 second-quarter filing, Goodyear cited the "accelerated closure" of its Union City, South Carolina plant as an example of "Operational Excellence". As for "Enabling Investments": "First production of tires in new China factory" and "Expanding China retail network". [9]

Ouch!

Returning to the issue of the spike in tire prices in the US, the high protective tariff on Chinese tires was an enabling factor - but perhaps in a relatively unexpected way. It was not merely a matter of increasing the sales cost of the world's major low cost supplier so that other suppliers could compete in the "second- and third-tier" markets.

What appears to have happened instead was that the tariff to a large extent temporarily eliminated the low-end market, pushing consumers (at least those consumers who could afford it) toward the higher-end tires available from the global majors.

This shift exacerbated the supply problems in the United States in 2010 - when the tire industry was caught between its recession and restructuring - driven plant closings and the revival of the North American auto industry, thereby driving up prices.

The three-year window provided by the high Chinese tariff apparently did not lead to a fundamental restructuring of supply in the US low-end market, certainly not by US domestic producers; it simply temporarily tightened supply and gave tire companies a three-year opportunity to "make hay while the sun shone".

As for 2012, the year the tariff is supposed to go away, a China-tire hand wrote to Modern Tire Daily, the bible of the US tire salesman:

I have been dealing with China since middle 1998. At one point I worked for a major Chinese company for a year, and consulted with them after that. My China product sales at one point reached some 50,000 pieces a month.

Immediately after the 35% duty add-on, it dropped to 2,000 to 3,000 pieces a month average: some months in a row zero, some months 4,000 to 5,000. Today, it barely averages 3,500.

Many (US) compan[ies] have swallowed the increases, as even with 35% on the top, they still need tires, and the US either does not make [them] or is still higher. But stay tuned for mid-2012.

"My perception is that around April, at least in May and June, near 100% (of the US) companies will stop placing monthly production orders, waiting for the rest of the absurd, union-supporting, thanks-to-Obama duty to go away in September. The Chinese are very much a keep-the-factories-running country. No orders will not stop them from making tires. [It will] just stop tires from being shipped for two to three, maybe up to four months.

"And then the flood gates will open, and the world will see a price war like never before in history. Prices will drop like a lead balloon. [There] will be total chaos... [10]

Predictions of a tire Armageddon may be overstated. But it appears clear that the low-end tire market is still very much a Chinese affair. Global manufacturers manufacturing inside the United States did not discover a new-found love for making inexpensive, unbranded tires even when the duty is high, and relief for the consumer of cheap tires will appear only when the duty drops.

Under China's WTO Accession Protocol, other countries are only supposed to have a 12-year window for imposing protectionist duties. So one might expect that the United States will be looking at other ways to manage the China trade relationship.

However, 2012 is an election year, and a year in which the promise of jobs, any jobs, to reassure an American electorate afflicted with an official unemployment rate of over 9% may be welcome.

The US Trade Representative's office cited the creation of 3,000 jobs and $500 million in investment in the US tire industry since the tariff went into effect and welcomed reporters (perhaps rather half-heartedly) to connect the gains to the 421 tariff.

So don't expect protectionist sentiment to evaporate any time soon ... and don't be too surprised if the tire tariff is extended.

Notes
1. US looking carefully at China rare earth policy, Market Watch, September 6, 2011.
2. Tariff on Chinese tires 10 months later - right or wrong remedy?, USCBC, August 2010.
3. Acession of the People's Republic of China, WTO, November 23, 2001.
4. Consumer Tire Imports from China & US Industry Job Losses, United Steelworkers, Apr, 2009.
5. Tariff on Chinese tires 10 months later - right or wrong remedy?, USCBC, August 2010.
6. Tire prices rolling uphill, Ohio.com, Oct 17, 2010.
7. Comments of Toyo Tire Holdings of Americas Inc, China US Trade Law, 2009.
8. Click here for details.
9. Second Quarter 2011 Conference Call, Goodyear, July 28, 2011.
10. Will there be a price war when the tariffs on Chinese consumer tire imports are eliminated? Modern Tire Dealer, July 28, 2011.

The Libyan Revolution Paddles into Crisis

2011-09-30T17:51:00.000-07:00

One of my favorite actors, Michael Caine (Zulu, The Italian Job, Man Who Would Be King, The Ipcress File, The Quiet American) said, "Be like a duck. Calm on the surface, but always paddling like the dickens underneath."

That quote comes to mind when I consider the West’s efforts to keep a lid on things in Libya.

To me, the lesson for Libya (and, for that matter, Syria) is: If a force is too weak to seize power in a country by itself, it’s probably too weak to run the country by itself.

So the West and the Gulf Co-operation Council nations are heroically suppressing their anxiety as the Transitional National Council struggles to stamp out opposition, capture Gaddafi, reconcile its factions, and form a cabinet.

As the new government flails in Tripoli, a certain amount of misdirection is needed to distract attention from the desperate paddling and convey an air of in-control serenity.

You’ve claimed that Gaddafi forces killed 50,000 during the revolution, but there’s an awkward shortage of mass graves and corpses? Publicize the exhumation of remains of victims of the 1996 Abu Salim prison massacre.

Is vigorous tactical support of the overmatched rebels something of an embarrassment as Sirte and other Gaddafi hold-outs (and their civilians, ostensibly the subject of NATO solicitude) are subjected to a general assault?

Point out that Gaddafi representatives had discussions with Chinese weapons suppliers.

Most importantly: Is the West is extremely nervous about dispensing Gaddafi/Libyan state billions to a new government that might crumble overnight or become a creature of battle-hardened Islamists before it follows through on its pledge to honor existing contracts?

Better to divert attention from the West’s anxious stinginess by highlighting identical Chinese reluctance.

And if the rest of the world had legitimate concerns about the Libyan operation, don’t be afraid to look like an arrogant racist by pouring scorn on its concerns.

That’s the theme of a piece I wrote for Asia Times on September 17. The links for the citations can be found by clicking through to the Asia Times archive for the piece.

China: the West's bogeyman in Libya

On the matter of Libya, the West appears on its way to a Pyrrhic victory. Success in Libya gives the West a chance to say it got regime change right after its disaster in Iraq - and reassert its global moral relevance after it bungled the world economy into recession.

The rising BRIC countries, on the other hand, find their mistrust of Western self-delusion, enabled by military force and insistence on a rule-based world in which only the Western democracies have the right to break the rules, confirmed.

In an era in which the United States is still the only power capable of projecting military force across the globe, the unique combination of anxiety, arrogance and oblique post-colonial racism that marks the Libyan intervention will probably not signal the twilight of Western influence.

But the West will probably find its ability to project its power beyond the North Atlantic Treaty Organization and the Gulf Co-operation Council significantly and actively constrained.

Last week, China finally rolled up its sleeves and became involved in that exercise in imperial sausage-making that is New Libya. Per the announcement of the People's Republic of China's (PRC) Ministry of Foreign Affairs:

On September 12, China notified the Libyan National Transitional Council (NTC) of China's decision to recognize it. China stated that the Chinese side respects the choice of the Libyan people, values the important status and role of the NTC, and has maintained close contact with it. China recognizes the NTC as the ruling authority of Libya and the representative of the Libyan people and would like to work with it to push for the smooth transition and development of China-Libya relations. China hopes that the previously signed treaties and agreements between the two sides will remain valid and be earnestly implemented.

The NTC said that the Libyan people and the NTC are happy at China's recognition and has long been looking forward to it. Attaching great importance to China's status and role, the NTC will honor faithfully all treaties and agreements signed between the two sides, stick to the one China policy, welcome China's participation in Libya's reconstruction and jointly advance with China the stable and sustained development of bilateral relations.

This concession by the Chinese was treated with a certain amount of glee in Western capitals and media, as if recognition of the rebel forces that had occupied the capital and virtually all of Libya's urban areas represented a retreat from China's policy of non-interference.

Certainly, the collapse of a fellow authoritarian regime confronted by popular unrest caused Beijing's mandarins considerable heartache and unease. However, it appears more important that the services of the Chinese bogeyman are urgently needed to provide a more flattering contrast to the shaky and dubious Western adventure in Libya.

The Guardian turned to Dr Steven Tsang of Nottingham University to deliver judgement on Beijing's move:

"They have taken their time in recognizing the rebels," said Steve Tsang, professor of contemporary Chinese studies at Nottingham University. ... "You will have quite a lot of people concluding China is much more interested in protecting its own national interests than performing its duties as a leading power in the international scene. As [one of the] P5 [permanent members of the UN national security council] there are certain expectations and moral responsibilities … The way the post-Gaddafi situation has been handled, [people] have not been giving China a particularly high mark," he said.

As to the "people" who are not giving China particularly high marks, one might assume that they are the kind of people Dr Tsang associates with.

The Guardian might have rendered its readers a useful service by revealing that Dr Tsang was previously director of the Pluscarden Center for the Study of Global Terrorism and Intelligence at St Antony's College at Oxford. St Antony's is the pet benefaction of conservative Arab governments seeking to burnish their non-terrorist credentials in the West.

According to a study by the Centre for Social Cohesion, a conservative think-tank eager to alert the world to penetration into the West by the Islamic menace, at least two thirds of the endowment of its Middle East Centre - including a donation of 1 million pounds (US$1.54 million) representing 30% of the MEC's endowment raised in the last 15 years, from Saudi Arabia's King Abdul Aziz Foundation - comes from governments or individuals from the conservative Arab monarchies. [1]

The most conspicuous "get" for the Pluscarden Center's speaker program this year: "His Royal Highness Prince Turki al Faisal, Chairman, King Faisal Centre for Research & Islamic Studies and former Director General of Saudi Arabia's intelligence agency Al Mukhabarat Al A'amah." [2]

The conservative Sunni states forming the Gulf Co-operation Council were Gaddafi's most implacable enemies and the driving force behind the Arab League / United Nations / North Atlantic Treaty Organization campaign for regime change in Libya. [3]

As a matter of fact and public record, the primary enthusiasts for the Libyan operation were the Gulf states led by Saudi Arabia, Qatar, and the United Arab Emirates, and NATO. The rest of the world's reaction to NATO's decision to use a UN resolution as a fig leaf to intervene in Libya on behalf of anti-Gaddafi rebels ranged from quiet disgust - India and Brazil - to vocal opposition from China, Russia, South Africa, and the African Union (AU).

With remarkable arrogance, Susan Rice, US Ambassador to the UN, gave her opinion of "those people":

The US has not been encouraged by the performance of India, Brazil and South Africa during their temporary tenure on the UN Security Council ... "It's been a very interesting opportunity to see how they respond to the issues of the day, how they relate to us and others, how they do or don't act consistent with their own democratic institutions and stated values," Rice said at a briefing with reporters. "Let me just say, we've learned a lot and, frankly, not all of it encouraging." [4]

With attitudes like this, it is not surprising that the UN is deadlocked on Syria.

When Gaddafi did fall, it appears that his end did not come at the hands of the inept and bickering Benghazi-based TNC (which opened August, its month of victory, with the unsolved torture and murder of its main military commander, Abdel Fateh Younes). Instead, the regime collapsed as the result of a drive on the capital by the Tripoli Brigade of Islamist fighters under Abdelkarim Belhadj, and the opportune (and perhaps liberally financed) defection of a key Gaddafi brigade.

Back in June, an al-Jazeera video essay filmed at the Tripoli Brigade's training camp revealed to all who cared to pay attention that Belhaj's faction was due to receive arms from Qatar and the UAE, in apparent violation of the UN resolutions. [5]

When Belhaj reached Tripoli, the US and the UK had to deal with the awkward fact that Belhaj's questionable credentials went beyond his Islamist militancy (since renounced) and his reputed links to al-Qaeda (vociferously denied). Belhaj revealed he had been rendered and tortured by the UK and the US in 2004 and delivered to Gaddafi's Libya for more torture and six years of incarceration, calling into question his enthusiasm for the West and its program in Libya.

In fact, Belhaj looks more like an effective, heavily backed Gulf asset promoting the Saudi ideal of conservative, stable Sunni regimes than a sympathetic ally of the West, making his relationship with the pro-Western TNC bureaucrats out of Benghazi appear rather problematic.

When, after two long and embarrassing weeks, the ostensible architect of the August victory, Mustafa Abdul Jalil, cautiously made his way to Tripoli to deliver his maiden speech in Martyr's Square, the Western media obligingly provided pictures of adoring crowds waving new black, red, and green flags and English language T-shirts and mylar balloons to celebrate the new regime beneath a fireworks display.

It is difficult to determine whether the scene in the square was a demonstration of the remarkable resilience of Tripoli's flag, T-shirt, and balloon manufacturers and fireworks distributors after months of bombings and supply dislocations, or just another sign of the West's persistent spackling of the TNC's public relations facade.

However, Jalil's performance probably caused a fair amount of anxiety for his Western and Gulf patrons. Occasionally clutching the twin microphones like an anxious rider gripping the ears of an untrustworthy donkey, Jalil flatly murmured a speech about reconciliation to a crowd of, as the Guardian revealed, "approximately 10,000". [6]

Even during the darkest days of his regime, in July 2011, Gaddafi was apparently able to muster a bigger, albeit relatively unenthusiastic, crowd of listeners in the square. It will presumably take more than one night of festivities for the residents of Tripoli to forget five months of bombing and sanctions delivered courtesy of the TNC's NATO air arm, or to forgive the capital's new masters at the ballot box.

It will also take concerted perception management by the Western and Gulf powers - not to mention the application of billions of frozen Libyan assets - to provide the pro-Western elements of the TNC with a necessary veneer of authority and effectiveness and co-opt the militant Islamists entrenching themselves in post-Gaddafi Tripoli.

And it will also require a fair amount of China-bashing to draw attention away from the West's continued manipulation of Libyan sovereignty through the medium of the TNC.

The most amusing instance occurred when Canada's Globe and Mail obtained documents detailing contacts between Gaddafi's regime and three of China's leading arms exporters in refuse piled in an upscale Libyan neighborhood.

There was no documentation that contracts had been concluded, let alone that arms had been delivered. The Chinese government issued an explicit denial.

Without providing any evidence, the TNC darkly hinted that these dealings had resulted in the introduction of Chinese arms into Gaddafi's arsenal in violation of UN sanctions. [7]

One purpose of the charge against China seems to have been to shift the focus away from the NATO/GCC serial violation of the UN Security Council resolution 1973 - not only with 8,000 NATO combat sorties on behalf of the rebels (to date, with more ongoing), but also the covert provision of arms and training to the rebels by the French, British, and US and the Gulf States - by alleging malfeasance by a disliked authoritarian regime on Gaddafi's behalf.

Another reason was probably an attempt to put China on the defensive on the matter of unfreezing Libyan assets by tarnishing its credentials as a nation that honored the letter of the UN resolutions on Libya.

The Chinese government has been conspicuously unenthusiastic about approving the unfreezing of Libyan assets through the UN Libyan Sanctions Committee (of which it is a member thanks to its UNSC seat). This is taken as churlishness toward the TNC.

Certainly, Chinese lack of enthusiasm toward the TNC is a given. However, China does not go out of its way to increase its isolation by casual displays of diplomatic vindictiveness. Money and face are probably more compelling explanations for Beijing's behavior.

China had sizable exposure to Libya, not in the areas of oil and gas exports that obsess Europe, but in about 50 infrastructure and industrial projects. When the rebellion heated up, China pulled out 35,000 of its nationals in a massive evacuation effort that left behind half-finished projects, large amounts of material and equipment, and a pile of invoices that the Libyan government had yet to pay.

The biggest single item was a half-finished project to construct 20,000 residential units, which apparently left the China State Construction Engineering Corporation out of pocket by over $2 billion. Counting evacuation costs, China may be looking at a potential loss of around $3 billion.

Potential, that is, because it looks like Beijing, as a matter of commerce and national prestige, hopes to get the money back.

On March 4, Global Times reported:

Media reports suggested that, before the evacuation, many Chinese companies ordered their personnel to back up important files and make detail lists of equipment for future compensation claims. [8]

That provides the necessary context to the September 12 Ministry of Foreign Affairs announcement that "the NTC will honor faithfully all treaties and agreements signed between the two sides".

As yet, no formal matching statement by the TNC has appeared. Given the nascent character of the TNC bureaucracy, that is understandable. But there is the question of who will be making or breaking or delivering on the TNC's promises in the coming weeks as the various factions sort things out.

China's not the only country that's worried. At an August 25 State Department press briefing, a correspondent made an interesting point:

Question: One is you said at the beginning that the TNC has promised that it will meet all of its international commitments. Does it - has the TNC actually made or been in a position to make any binding commitments? I mean, it hasn't. You're just talking about promises that they've made to -
State Department spokesperson Victoria Nuland: We're talking about -
Question: There's nothing in writing here. They haven't signed any treaties that - they aren't a UN member, so these are just the assurances that they've given to you?
VN: These are assurances they've given to us. These are assurances they've given to the members of the international community. These are also assurances that they have made publicly over the past weeks and that, in fact, Prime Minister Jibril made again yesterday. He spoke in his own press conference - I think you saw it, probably - about creating transparent judicial systems, building new institutions including a national congress that's going to be elected. He called for the humane treatment of all Libyans by other Libyans, protection of prisoners.
Question: Right -
VN: He also said that Libya intends to honor the oil contracts that were signed during the Qadhafi era -
Question: Which is -
VN: - another important international commitment.
Question: Which is all fine, except that there is no constitution. I mean, he could say anything he wants.
VN: Obviously, we have to -
Question: But you -
VN: - we're at the beginning stages here.
Question: But - right, but the commitments that you're talking about are all stuff that he has just said or promised or that they have assured. There isn't anything binding about them. In other words, you have no recourse if all of the sudden tomorrow he says something different.
VN: We have always said that there is a long road ahead. What we are saying today is that we're heartened by the commitment to international institutions, international standards, openness, transparency, nonviolence, a unitary -
Question: Right.
VN: - Libya. But obviously, they have to - as they can assume power, as they can begin to establish security and control throughout Libya, we will all be looking for them to walk the walk even as they talk the talk. [9]

As the transcript of the concurrent August 25 background briefing by the State Department reveals, the United States could release the $30 billion in Libyan funds that it froze any time it wants to.

Instead, it chooses to hide behind the UN Libyan Sanctions Committee on the issue of unfreezing assets ... until it's sure that the "walking" matches the "talking".

We can thank Joe Lauria of the Wall Street Journal for asking the right question at the briefing:

Question: Yes, thank you. Hadn't the US already unilaterally frozen these funds from Libya before the Security Council passed its sanctions? And if so, why didn't the U.S. unilaterally unfreeze them the way Italy apparently did today, the $500 million?
Senior administration official one: It's not clear that the money that the Italians unfroze was actually covered by UN Security Council 1970. There are various pots of money. Yes, we did unilaterally freeze assets before we got the Security Council resolution. Once we had the Security Council resolution, we wanted to work within the UN sanctions regime in order to unfreeze it if we possibly could. ...
Question: Oh, so this was a matter of choice, then, not a legal obligation?
Senior administration official one: Correct ... [It] was our preference for maintaining the integrity of the UN system, but we were prepared to act on our own if we couldn't make that happen. [10]

The inference can easily be drawn that the US is keeping the TNC on a short leash (and dangling inducements just beyond the reach of the Islamist Tripoli Brigade, which seems to hold the key to power in western Libya) until it is sure that the new government is displaying the necessary combination of effectiveness and obedience, and walk the walk in addition to talking the talk about those oil contracts and the democratic and free market reforms dear to the hearts of the West.

If the US, a key patron of the TNC, wants to keep its hand on its (actually Libya's) wallet, it is understandable that China has exactly the same attitude about its dealings with the TNC.

If it doesn't get its $3 billion back, if the TNC decides it's going to punish China for its at best lukewarm attitude toward the new regime by shutting it out on new contracts, then China is going to make things as difficult as necessary in the matter of the release of frozen funds.

Ministry of Foreign Affairs spokesperson Jiang Yu declared that China had "no difficulty in principle" with the release of Libyan assets. Practice is, perhaps, another matter.

Per China Daily, Chinese experts offered plenty of reasons for slow-walking the release of funds, at least for a few months:

Gong Shaopeng, a professor of international relations at China Foreign Affairs University, said unfreezing Libya's frozen assets should be a gradual process, as agreed upon during an international conference on Libya's reconstruction in Paris last week.

He said that the assets already unfrozen, worth $15 billion, are enough for the NTC to operate for eight months before a general election is held.

He Wenping, an expert on African studies at the Chinese Academy of Social Sciences, said a supervision mechanism is vital for the assets to be used in a proper way.

"It will be irresponsible if the assets are released without supervision. That may open the door for corruption," she said. [11]

To be fair, Western attitudes on Libya do not appear to be solely a matter of hypocritical maneuvering in order to preserve the facade of a triumph of democratic values over a rebellion that succeeded to a significant extent through the efforts of Islamist militants funded by Gulf autocracies. Genuine Atlantic-centric obtuseness seems to play a role as well.

In a remarkable op-ed, the chief of Reuters' South Africa bureau, Marius Bosch, pressed South Africa to forget about its loyalty to Gaddafi - who, ostracized by most of the Arab community, pursued an Africa-centric foreign policy and lavished support on the African Union - and get with the Western program in Libya. Otherwise, he warned darkly, South Africa might find it getting its lunch eaten - by Nigeria, which recognized the TNC in late August.

South Africa's refusal to recognize Libya's new rebel rulers has again exposed the excessive bureaucracy that often stymies decision-making in Pretoria and could have disastrous consequences for its standing and influence in Africa.

South Africa's snub of the interim ruling National Transitional Council (NTC) puts Africa's largest economy at odds with the West and African economic rival Nigeria. [12]

Bosch quoted other commentators - who appear to be what one might delicately be term Africans of the Caucasian persuasion - who seemed eager to drive a stake in the heart of the African Union, in which South Africa carries heavy influence:

Greg Mills, director of economic think-tank the Brenthurst Foundation, said in a blog post that South Africa's diplomacy has infuriated many diplomats. "They (diplomats) are angered by what is increasingly viewed by some as Pretoria's destructive stance. The term 'rogue democracy' is now on people's lips."

Savoring the delicious term "rogue democracy" and the implication that, once again, "those people" who represent the majority of South African voters are unsuitable stewards of the republic's foreign policy, and leaving aside the question of whether there is any genuine enthusiasm inside Africa for the NATO/GCC-imposed regime change in Libya, the hard fact remains that the Libyan rebellion has been marked by a brutal, racist backlash against the African migrants who provided much low-cost labor in Gaddafi's Libya.

Nigeria, the African state that Bosch claims will backfill in Libya at South Africa's expense, recently had something to say about the state of its relations with the new Libya.

The word "genocide", certainly a hot-button term in the continent that witnessed the Rwandan terror, came up in an article titled: Nigeria Protests the Killing of Its Nationals in Libya.

Minister of Foreign Affairs Amb[assador] Olugbenga Ashiru abandoned a church service yesterday to take distress calls of Nigerians in Libya, including their co-ordinator, Mr Daramola Siji.

Nigerians are being attacked in Tripoli, Benghazi, Gath, Agadez and Sirte ...

A source said: "Unharmed Nigerians are being killed in tens for no just cause. In some instances, they rape Nigerian women before shooting them to death.

"Yet, this is the same TNC that the Federal Government is backing in Libya. The blacks are not involved in Libyan crisis; they do not deserve this massacre."

In one of the distress notes sent to the Presidency and the Minister of Foreign Affairs, Siji, who is from Emure-Ekiti, said: "We cannot go out of our homes, my wife and children. We will certainly be shot. We don't have food and we lack everything.

"We can save lives. I am calling on AU to act and save African families boxed in troubled Libya and if anyone could reach out to the Nigerian government to stop the killing of Nigerians by the former rebels who are now the new leaders in Libya, it will be better."

In a telephone chat with our correspondent, Siji gave details of how Nigerians have become the targets of the rebels.

He added: "The truth is that when Gaddafi was in office, he had sympathy for black Africans and many have even settled in Libya ... But due to Gaddafi's sympathy for the blacks, the rebels assumed that the blacks will naturally do everything to protect Gaddafi. So, they decided to kill any black man on sight.

"Nigerians have been the butt of the attacks on the blacks because the rebels could hardly differentiate them from Ghanaians, Malians, Nigerians, Burkinabes, Senegalese and Gambians ..."

... A government source said: "Apart from talking to Siji directly, the Minister also reached out to the TNC, Britain and France on the need to stop the killing of black migrant workers, especially Nigerians. For about five hours yesterday, the Minister was talking to the TNC leaders, Britain and France on why the genocide must stop.

"The Federal Government has pleaded with Britain and France to prevail on the TNC leaders to ask their foot soldiers to end the massacre of blacks in Libya.

The Minister said Thursday: "The Government of the Federal Republic of Nigeria wishes to note with concern reports of incessant abuse of helpless civilians in Libya ... Regrettably, these reports revealed outright killings, rape and extortion of money from these helpless Africans who have taken refuge in camps as well as those in detention and incarceration.

"This development is a deviation from the overall expressed desire of the TNC, the African Union and indeed the United Nations for the restoration of democracy and good governance in Libya.

"These extra-judicial killings certainly run contrary to Nigeria's call for the leadership of the TNC to be magnanimous in victory and can only stand in the way of peace building, early reconciliation and reconstruction in Libya." [13]

It remains to be seen whether the Western powers are as eager to exercise their responsibility to protect Nigerian and other African immigrants against an ongoing massacre in Libya as they were to protect their clients from the hypothetical threat of massacre in Benghazi.

However, it would appear that with the killing of black Africans and the burning of their homes and settlements, the new Libya is also burning its bridges to a convenient source of cheap labor.

Fortunately, there is one country that possesses the human and engineering resources to step in and do the necessary work that the oil-rich and labor-poor nation of Libya is unable or unwilling to perform itself. That country, of course, is China.

Notes
1. A degree of influence, Centre for Social Cohesion, 2009.
2. A Saudi National Security Doctrine for the New Decade, St Antony's College, University of Oxford, 2011.
3. China and the Libyan muddle, Asia Times Online, Mar 19, 2011.
4. U.S. ‘Not Encouraged' by India, South Africa, Brazil at UN, Bloomberg, Sep 13, 2011.
5. 'Tripoli Brigade' trains to take capital, YouTube, Jun 6, 2011.
6. Libyan rebel leader addresses crowds in Tripoli, Guardian, Sep 14, 2011.
7. China offered Gadhafi huge stockpiles of arms: Libyan memos, The Globe and Mail, Sep 3, 2011.
8. China counting financial losses in Libya, China.org, Mar 4, 2011.
9. UN Sanctions Committee on Libya, US Department of State, Aug 25, 2011.
10. Ibid.
11. Beijing denies Gadhafi arms trade, China Daily, Sep 6, 2011.
12. S. Africa's out-of-sync Libya policy may cost it dearly, The Citizen, Sep 13, 2011.
13. Nigeria protests killing of its nationals in Libya, The Nation, Sep 5, 2011.

Tinder Well-Stacked for Syrian Sectarian Bonfire

2011-09-27T19:53:00.000-07:00

It is looking more and more like game over for Bashar al Assad in Syria.

Ironically, this is in spite of the fact that Bashar has apparently demonstrated that an authoritarian regime, left to its own devices, can often do a good job of crushing determined domestic dissent.

Especially if the insurgents lack a safe haven, either inside or outside the country.

That may be about to change.

Saudi Arabia and Turkey lead the array of regional powers that see a clear line to advantage and increased influence once Bashar’s Ba’athist regime is out of the picture.

Even though—because—the popular movement in Syria is against the ropes, we can expect an escalation of regional involvement in Syria designed to topple Bashar al Assad.

Turkey has announced it will allow the Syrian political opposition to open an office in Turkey, paving the way for eventual recognition.

However, military reality may outrun the political ambitions of the Syrian dissidents.

In a previous post, I wrote about the new doctrine of “preventive diplomacy” promoted at the Security Council by Ban Ki-moon with an enthusiastic assist from the United States.

It opens the door for abrogating sovereignty of an undesirable state even if/especially when an autocrat is getting the best of a democratic movement.

It’s tailor-made for Syria, of course.

In a way, it represents the failure of the strategy of the broad-based democratic movement, and close to the official uncorking of the sectarian genie.

The Syrian democratic movement staked its moral legitimacy on its unifying and non-violent character. Sunnis and Alawites, country and city, MBs and secularists, lions and lambs, etc.

It drew obvious inspiration from the Egyptian revolution.

Unfortunately, I believe the Syrian democratic movement also suffered from a fatal mendacity.

To sustain its moral legitimacy, it called for dialogue.

But when the Syrian government offered dialogue, its offer was rejected: “not sincere”, “can’t be considered until political detainees released” etc. And every week it seems there was a new outrage, a new martyr, a new reason why demands on the government had to escalate before people could leave the streets and begin dialogue.

No doubt participation in government-orchestrated “dialogue” would have delayed the fulfillment of Syrian aspirations. It might have turned out to be a frustrating hand-job, along the lines of the“negotiations” Israel occasionally inflicts on the Palestinians when the tactical disadvantages and political costs of ignoring them become excessive.

We didn’t get the chance to find out.

I think the democratic movement was banking on what I call the “ecstatic democratic dogpile” theory: the demonstrations would become bigger and bigger, bureaucrats and officers would defect from the regime, and the democratic movement could dictate terms instead of negotiating with the government.

That’s what the US, Saudi Arabia, and other powers hostile to Bashar al Assad also expected, I think.

As Helena Cobban pointed out http://justworldnews.org/archives/004220.html , the United States could have endorsed “dialogue” in Syria, as we did when apartheid South Africa, a rather important client, was facing its democratic transition.

The response to the jaw-dropping spectacle of the United States saying, “Y’all just go home now. Get off the streets before more blood is spilled. C’mon, start dialogin’” would have been amusing to observe.

But it didn’t happen. And the Syrian regime didn’t collapse.

Time for Plan B.

So now some Syrian dissidents are dropping Egypt (which has encountered its own difficulties) in favor of Libya as a revolutionary model: armed struggle supported as needed by explicit foreign military intervention.

It’s based on the well-founded assumption that the Syrian army, largely Sunni conscripts, already worn out by six months of confrontation with democracy protesters, will find its enthusiasm for defending the Alawite regime of Bashar al Assad flagging even more rapidly when it starts taking serious casualties.

This is a strategy that I believe has been a nascent within Syria since the beginning of the uprising for some of Bashar al Assad’s many enemies. There have been credible reports of armed gangs ambushing military forces since early in the uprising, possibly carried out by supporters of exiled strongman and Saudi client (and billionaire!) Abdul Halim Khaddam.

The Western media, wedded to the non-violent democracy movement narrative, did not take the incidents seriously at first; then explained them as “revenge attacks” provoked by the crackdown, as opposed to planned efforts to escalate the conflict and increase polarization between the majority Sunni and other confessions.

As the repression has dragged on and quick victory eluded the democracy movement, polarization also became an inevitable by-product of the peaceful movement itself, despite the sincere efforts of many pro-democracy leaders. The most loyal security forces are Alawite while most of the protesters are Sunni, a fact that has become abundantly and irritatingly clear as the crackdown ground on over the months.

Now, if the West and GCC decide that the peaceful democratic movement can’t close the regime-change deal itself, then open support of the Syrian revolution is in the cards and the legitimacy of the Bashar al Assad regime will be officially revoked for the crime of defending its rule too brutally and successfully.

That opens the door to the whole R2P/no fly/covert military assistance megillah that we saw in Libya, whose primary purpose is to decapitate the command structure of senior regime loyalists and send the message to wavering military units that their best hope is to abandon the regime.

In Syria’s case, the violence won’t be just between loyal senior commanders and rebellious junior officers and rank and file.

Syria’s military, below the Alawite command, is overwhelmingly Sunni. So the violence is going to be Alawite on Sunni and vice versa.

Since the majority of Syria’s civilian population is also Sunni and dissatisfied with the regime, it is to the advantage of the regime’s more hardened opponents to escalate the violence and accelerate the polarization of Syria into Sunni and non-Sunni camps.

That’s a danger that the Bashar al Assad regime has incessantly if self-servingly invoked, even as it stoked the sectarian flames by sending its Alawite loyalists to shoot and stomp their way through dozens of Sunni cities and towns.

A military struggle is probably going to look a lot more like a Sunni rebellion and less like a democratic revolution that cuts across religious and economic lines.

Thanks to optimistic overreach by democracy activists, the Bashar al Assad government’s iron-fisted crackdown, provocations by anti-regime militants, and post-Libya opportunism by the West, the GCC, and Turkey, the fuel for the sectarian bonfire has been stacked.

All that’s needed is for somebody to toss a match, maybe by encouraging/assisting Sunni dissidents to abandon non-violence and proactively (or, as the Security Council would have it, “preventively”) defend themselves.

I expect that Saudi Arabia might be happy to oblige.

That’s not especially good news for Alawites, Christians, or Syria’s pro-democracy dissidents.

Palestine, “Preventive Diplomacy”, and Bashar al-Assad’s Annoying Attempt to Climb Out of the Grave Pre-Dug for Him in Syria

2011-09-23T15:27:00.000-07:00

I have a piece up at Asia Times today about the Palestinian application for full state recognition at the UN, Palestine: Mission Accomplished for China.

The affair is a big black eye for President Obama, who gets to look like Israel’s rent boy.

The Chinese government is rather happy, since the Palestinian bid has shifted the focus away from the US as an international champion of democracy and human rights.

My reference to the West Bank access map issued by the UN Office for Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs—which shows the extent of Israel’s physical encroachment on the territory—got mangled in the article. I’m including it in this post. It's a nice, big image full-size, and well worth the click. However, it's still hard to read. The biggest, bestest image is available at Wikipedia.

I make a couple of points in the article that I don’t see very often in coverage of the Middle East.

First, manufactured hysterics and an atmosphere of crisis are baked into Israel’s Middle East strategy. The last thing the Netanyahu government wants is for Israel’s actions to be judged by the usual standards of national behavior, or allow the United States weigh its own interests in the scales against Israeli priorities.

Therefore, with a big assist from the right-wing megaphone in US politics, every issue is reduced to a litmus test: is the US with Israel, or against it?

PM Netanyahu could have boosted Israel’s image on the West Bank (thereby discomfiting Hamas) and allowed the United States to gain some sorely-needed cred with the Muslim world by not making a big deal out of what is actually a rather meaningless vote at the UN.

Instead, of course, the Israeli government apparently regarded Abbas’s bid as a heaven-sent opportunity to advance the narrative of Israel victimized at the UN and facing betrayal by its only ally. Existential crisis!

The result is that relations between Israel and its adversaries are further polarized, forcing the US administration to side with Israel, followed by further polarization, forcing the US to side with Israel again...etc. etc. etc. ad infinitum.

Of course, humiliating and discrediting US President Barack Obama as a respected and effective interlocutor with the Muslim world was a delicious side-benefit.

The other point I make is that Palestine is pretty much a side issue.

The ghost at the UN banquet is Syria.

Almost everybody’s got the knives out for Bashar Assad, including the Gulf States, Turkey, the EU, the US...

I think it may be missing the point to regard dropping the hammer on Syria as a method to weaken Iran by depriving it of its only meaningful state ally in the region.

Assad is worthless as an ally from now on, and no good to anyone. It seems unlikely that Assad can do anything effectively vis a vis Hezbollah and Hamas in the straits he’s in, or provide any other useful favors to Iran as ally or proxy.

Iran—at least President Achmadinejad—has already distanced itself from Assad’s regime.

It might be argued that the best way to deny Iran an effective Syrian ally is to let the totally isolated, sanctioned Assad regime remain in power.

But everybody wants Assad out—because they want in.

Saudi Arabia sees a natural pickup in Syria: the installation of a friendly, anti-Iranian, conservative Sunni government.

Turkey sees an opportunity to assert its credentials as an emerging power in the eastern Mediterranean by midwifing regime change in Damascus.

The West, I have a feeling, hopes for the creation of a New Syria that is too broke, too reliant on the IMF, too infatuated with Western-style democracy, and too deregulated and penetrated by Western corporations to ever cause trouble with non-aligned fantasies or an independent foreign policy.

The irony is that, as the various powers dig Assad’s grave, it looks like he’s climbing out of it.

The mass anti-government demonstrations have apparently faltered, with protesters switching to smaller hit and run demonstrations as the government has detained most of the opposition leader.

From the Saudi/Western point of view, it looks like the Syrian project might need a bit of help.

The awkward fact that Assad’s oppressive tactics may be working found a rather interesting echo in a Security Council debate yesterday on “preventive diplomacy”.

“Preventive diplomacy” was raised by UN Secretary General Ban Ki-moon in a report for the SC. Judging from the enthusiastic response, the report represents another milestone in Ban’s labors to fashion himself and the UN into the perfect, compliant tool of Western diplomacy.

Ambassador Susan Rice , the eager architect of the Libyan intervention, was there to put rhetorical meat on the bones.

I think an extended quote from Foreign Policy’s Josh Rogin is in order here:

For the United States, preventive diplomacy means combining all the tools of international leverage -- including the use of force -- to prevent conflicts from breaking out or preventing hot conflicts from getting out of hand. It also means building sustainable economies and functioning democracies, with the goal of creating societies that can manage disputes on the national and regional levels.

"Peace, prosperity, and democracy cannot endure if imposed from the outside," U.S. Ambassador to the United Nations Susan Rice said at the session. She covered a lot of ground in her speech, not explicitly defending armed intervention but arguing for its use in some cases. "We should cease to make false distinctions between peacekeeping and prevention; they are in fact inextricably linked," she said.

She also argued that the use of sanctions under Chapter VII of the U.N. charter can be a tool of conflict prevention, a position council members such as China and Russian don't support.

Some other countries used the meeting to explicitly defend the U.N.-sanctioned international military intervention in Libya and called for harsher U.N. measures against the Syrian regime.

"When conflict looms, the world looks to the U.N. for a decisive response," said British Foreign Minister William Hague. "In Libya... our swift action prevented a human catastrophe and saved the lives of thousands of civilians."

Hague went on to say that the British government viewed U.N. Security Council action as "long overdue" on Syria. "The consequences of inaction would weigh heavily upon us if we turn a blind eye to murder and oppression," he said.

German Foreign Minister Guido Westerwelle called on the Security Council to "send a strong message to the government in Damascus to stop the killing of its people."

So it’s no longer “responsibility to protect”; it’s “responsibility to prevent”.

If you’re thinking “pre-emption” in a new suit of clothes, with “struggling democratic movements” replacing “looming but non-imminent terrorist threats”, well, you’re thinking what I’m thinking.

The sound you hear is the Treaty of Westphalia—the principle that sovereign states get to do basically what they want as long as it stays inside their borders—getting another trip through the neo-colonial meat grinder.

The doctrine has an unnerving side, one that Ambassador Rice and other enthusiastic proponents will undoubtedly disregard.

It opens the door to armed intervention on behalf of unsuccessful democratic movements, not just successful ones.

It asserts the principle that local democratic movements can be nudged along by outside forces, even when they aren’t doing particularly well.

Which means it’s a blank check.

And, of course, it’s tailor-made for Syria.

And China.

Taiwan F-16s: Politics as Usual or Geopolitics as Usual?

2011-09-19T14:41:00.000-07:00

The Obama administration is warily inching toward the expected announcement that it will provide Taiwan some upgrades for its current fleet of F-16s, instead of selling 66 new ones.

Expected, that is, if one had read a piece I wrote for Asia Times in July, which I reproduce below (for the links, please go the Asia Times site).

In a nutshell, 66 new F-16s would not have made a great deal of difference. They would not have counterbalanced the PRC’s military buildup in the Taiwan Straits. China has too many missiles and airfields; Taiwan too few. The strategic parity bird, let alone the strategic superiority bird, has flown.

There might be some things that deter the PRC from invading Taiwan—like the interposition of US forces and/or the US nuclear umbrella--but they are all on the US side, not the Taiwan “self defense” side.

The most useful thing that Taiwan might have gotten for its purchase of these planes was an implied sense of obligation by the United States, along the lines of “You spent $3 billion on US warplanes, so you should be entitled to some wartime support.”

That’s a commitment that the pro-independence DPP is ready to welcome, but not the current pro-PRC KMT administration.

And that’s not a place any US government, Democratic or Republican, is quite ready to go.

The argument that a Taiwan sale is needed to keep the F-16 line open has apparently been rebutted by Iraq’s decision to proceed with its purchase (after a one-year postponement to feed its people).

As a matter of even-handedness, I might remark that the Obama administration has also stooped to mendacity in promoting its position.

The possibility that Taiwan might leak modern F-16 secrets to the PRC has been cited as a reason for not making the sale. However, it would seem to me that Iran would have a better chance of extracting F-16 secrets from its quasi-ally Iraq; and, of course, Iran would probably eventually share those secrets with its quasi-ally, China.

The Taiwan Relations Act is not robust enough (i.e. it is intentionally vague enough) to enable Congress to compel the executive branch to make any particular arms sale to Taiwan, despite the vaporings of the neoconservatives and whatever embarrassment the Pentagon's mandated report on Taiwan's air power situation might bring.

Despite the essential meaninglessness of the sale, the anti-PRC optics are irresistible, both to Democrats and Republicans. And maybe the Obama administration is desperate enough for some jobs/national security/China bashing traction as it staggers into the election cycle to go ahead with the sale anyway.

Let's see!

Jul 12, 2011


F-16s: Don't ask, don't sell

There is a good reason for politicians to support United States arms sales to Taiwan. It's good politics. And that's true on both sides of the Pacific.

As Jens Kastner reported in Asia Times Online on June 22, President Ma Ying-jyeou has made his stated eagerness to purchase 66 F-16 fighters (and dispel concerns that he cares more about closer ties with the People's Republic of China (PRC) than the security of Taiwan) a cornerstone of his campaign for re-election in January 2012. [1]

In Washington, the potential F-16 sale has garnered support across a broad political spectrum in congress, from anti-communist conservatives to pro-democracy liberals. Beyond Taiwan-love, the movement draws some of its political heat from the desire to rebuke China for its unnerving growth and assertiveness, as well as for human rights and regional security transgressions.

However, good politics may not be good geopolitics.

The Barack Obama administration is clearly loath to pick a fight with China at this juncture over the always contentious issue of Taiwan arms sales, having just achieved a partial reset of relations with Beijing after a particularly difficult year.

The genuineness of Ma's enthusiasm for the F-16 deal is also open to question.

As a 2009 WikiLeaks cable revealed, Ma's US diplomacy is based on "no surprises". Presumably to contrast Kuomintang (KMT) sobriety and responsibility with the loose-cannon radicalism of his opponents in the independence-friendly (and confrontationally inclined) Democratic Progressive Party (DPP), Ma promised the United States:

    Taiwan would not ask for a certain kind of transit just to show that the US would grant it; Taiwan would not ask for certain weapons systems just to show the US would sell them; and Taiwan would not insist on certain names [ie descriptors used for Taiwan in international organizations] just for domestic political considerations. [2]

When the cable was released in June 2011, a DPP legislator, Peng Shao-chin, harrumphed:

    Could it be that the appeal for a US arms sale publicly made by Ma several times was just for show? I wonder if it was because of the US' reluctance or Taiwan's lack of interest that there has been no progress made in the arms deals." [3]

Legislator Peng may be unfair.

Ma has, by his calculation, called for the US to approve the sale of the F-16s "19 times". No formal Letter of Request (LoR) has been received by the United States from the ROC government ... because the US steadfastly refuses to accept the letter.

On June 27, Wendell Minick reported in Gannett's Defense News:

    Taiwan's June 24 petition to submit a letter of request (LoR) for new F-16 fighter jets was blocked by the U.S. State Department under orders from the U.S. National Security Council, sources in Taipei and Washington said.

    A U.S. defense industry source said that Taiwan's de facto embassy in Washington, the Taipei Economic and Cultural Representative Office (TECRO), was preparing to submit its fourth LoR for price-and-availability data for 66 F-16C/D Block 50/52 fighters to the American Institute in Taiwan (AIT). But it was told by AIT that the LoR would not be accepted. AIT declined to comment.

    "AIT is not opposed to the sale," the source said. "This is a State Department and National Security Council issue."

    The issue has become a Catch-22 for Taiwan, in which TECRO cannot submit an LoR to AIT because it is under State Department orders to deny it, and then TECRO is told by the State Department that the LoR cannot be processed because it was not received, he said. [4]

The Obama administration was not the first to refuse F-16 LoRs. The George W Bush administration refused three letters of request for the jets in 2006 and 2007.

It is not clear whose political interests this procedure is meant to advance.

Is Ma, under the "no surprises" rubric, declining to disrupt US-Taiwanese relations by submitting a request he knows the Obama administration dislikes? Or is the Obama administration providing political cover to Ma by giving him the opportunity to pander to the Taiwanese electorate by stating his desire for the planes ... while avoiding complication in his relations with Beijing by actually putting the request into the pipeline?

The United States is unlikely to be eager to do Ma political favors, despite an apparent preference for keeping the KMT's hand on the tiller and the security situation in the Taiwan Strait off the rocks.

Ma is widely understood to be the architect of Taiwan's gradual, calculated drift into the arms of Beijing, and his protestations of anti-PRC militancy do not carry a great deal of weight in Washington.

A refreshingly tart Congressional Research Service report on the history of Taiwan arms sales noted Ma's mainland-friendly shenanigans and his apparent reluctance to pour money and political capital into a buildup of Taiwan's military forces.

One visualizes the author's lips pursed with disapproval as she describes how US assistance to Taiwan in the aftermath of Typhoon Marakot in 2009 was treated:

    In his national day address on October 10, 2009, President Ma recognized mainland China for its aid that "exceeded those of all other nations," without mentioning the United States in his speech.

In the United States, considerable efforts are underway to build political momentum for a sale despite the apparent qualms of the Obama administration.

On May 26, a missive signed by 43 US senators urging Obama to accept the letter or request was made public. Many of the signers were the president's Republican adversaries, eager to raise him on a cleft stick on the politically difficult matter. However, Democratic senators such as Jay Rockefeller, a longtime supporter of Taiwan, Ohio's Sherrod Brown and outgoing Virginia senator Jim Webb also signed.

Terri Giles, executive director of the Formosa Foundation, a US-based non-profit advocating heightened awareness and support of Taiwan, told Asia Times Online that "the Taiwan issue is one that [congress] is very serious about".

She described efforts to decouple Taiwan arm sales - and Taiwan policy in general - from China policy, stating, "The more we can take China out of the equation the better."

She looks forward to a relationship with Taiwan in which issues like arms sales are regular, continuous and normalized - not occasional, fraught exercises that serve as the focus for aggressive Chinese lobbying and horse-trading.

What may doom a congressional united front on Taiwan, however, is overreach - the apparently irresistible temptation for ideological conservatives to turn every issue into an opportunity to challenge, discredit and confound the Obama administration and its agenda.

After the mid-term congressional elections and the accession of Republicans to control of the House of Representatives, Ileana Ros-Lehtinen, a conservative congressperson from Florida, took over the House Foreign Relations Committee and convened a hearing on "Why Taiwan Matters".

Kurt Campbell, assistant secretary of state for East Asian and Pacific affairs, was unable to attend - apparently the president of Mongolia was in town - but the hearings went ahead anyway.

Clearly, in the eyes of pro-Taiwan conservative congresspeople, the F-16 issue is now politically in play.

The Wall Street Journal puckishly titled its coverage of the Ros-Lehtinen hearings, "Never Fear Taiwan - Congress is Here." It noted the general finger-in-the-eye-of-the-Obama-administration spirit, quoting Ros-Lehtinen's warning of a "new spirit of appeasement in the air", and Dan Burton's resentful insinuation that the non-appearance of Kurt Campbell and other administration officials demonstrated "an absence of concern that is remarkable ... I think they were afraid because they don't have the answers."

The committee also heard a case for the F-16 sale put forward by the US-Taiwan Business Council.

Commerce certainly has its place in these proceedings, since the 66 F-16s would represent more than US$3 billion in revenue for Lockheed Martin, much of it distributed in politically influential states like Texas.

Texas-style hardball, aka the forcible collision of political and economic interests, is already on open display in the F-16 matter, as the Washington Post reported:

    Sen. John Cornyn (R-Tex.), who represents a state where F-16s are assembled, has been the most outspoken on the issue and is holding up a full Senate vote on the confirmation of William J Burns as deputy secretary of state until Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton moves forward on the fighter jet issue.

    An amendment Cornyn introduced last year requires the State Department to produce a report that would assess whether Taiwan's air force needs the jets.

    In a speech last week at the Heritage Foundation, Cornyn said he is negotiating with Clinton to have that report released in exchange for the confirmation vote. [5]

Burns may well join Mark Lippert cooling his heels waiting for his confirmation.

In April 2011, Taipei Times reported that "an unnamed senator" had put a hold on Lippert's appointment as US assistant secretary of defense for Asian and Pacific security affairs because of the same Taiwan air-power report issue. [6]

In testimony before Ros-Lehtinen's committee, the council's president, Rupert Hammond-Chambers, carefully deployed the warning that, if the contract was not issued promptly, the F-16 production line (which now relies entirely on foreign sales) would be forced to close, taking with it not only the jobs but also the subcontractor arrangements that make a future restart possible.

Perhaps in an oversight, no mention was made of another potential F-16 contract, 18 units for Iraq, postponed for a year by the Iraqi government so that the $1 billion could be diverted from the deserving coffers of Lockheed Martin "toward improving food rations for the poor". [7]

However, the US-Taiwan Business Council appears to have more interest in geostrategic than commercial issues.

Its chairman of the board is none other than ex-assistant secretary of defense and notorious neo-conservative author of the Iraq imbroglio, Paul Wolfowitz. Wolfowitz met several times with Taiwanese defense officials during his stint at the Pentagon - a time when elements within the US Department of Defense were notoriously egging on then-president Chen Shui-bian to act on his preference for Taiwan independence.

Rupert Hammond-Chambers clearly exceeded any economic brief when he dabbled in the separation of powers issue by trying to generate some buzz for using the Taiwan Relations Act - presumably interpreted as aggressively and one-sidedly as possible by partisans in the congress - to hold the Obama administration's feet to the fire on arms sales:

    Said Hammond: "At what point do you ask whether the administration is violating the Taiwan Relations Act ... Only Congress can step in and do something about that."

The part of the act that interests conservatives (at least when they control the congress but not the White House) is Section 3: Implementation and its potential for congressional oversight.
It reads

    1. In furtherance of the policy set forth in section 2 of this Act, the United States will make available to Taiwan such defense articles and defense services in such quantity as may be necessary to enable Taiwan to maintain a sufficient self-defense capability.
    2. The President and the Congress shall determine the nature and quantity of such defense articles and services based solely upon their judgment of the needs of Taiwan, in accordance with procedures established by law. Such determination of Taiwan's defense needs shall include review by United States military authorities in connection with recommendations to the President and the Congress.
    3. The President is directed to inform the Congress promptly of any threat to the security or the social or economic system of the people on Taiwan and any danger to the interests of the United States arising therefrom. The President and the Congress shall determine, in accordance with constitutional processes, appropriate action by the United States in response to any such danger.

Unsurprisingly, perfecting the vague and open-to-interpretation TRA as a wedge to challenge the Obama administration's handling of the Taiwan/China brief is apparently also on the agenda: Ros-Lehtinen announced at the hearing that she would push for new legislation updating the Taiwan Relations Act. [8]

As the quest for political critical mass on the F-16 issue continues, a variety of stories has bubbled up, courtesy of promoters of the sale.

A senate staffer made the case to the Washington Times that Obama really wants to sell the F-16s to China, but wants congress to take the heat:

    The Washington Times reported that a senior Senate aide close to the issue believed there is a sense on Capitol Hill that the administration wants Congress to push the Pentagon to go ahead with the sale as a way of limiting fallout from China.[9]

It is unlikely that Obama feels that the secret to success in dealing with Beijing is giving the reins to the notoriously fractious and anti-PRC (and not quite pro-Obama) US Congress. This backgrounder - can we call it Don't Ask Just Sell? - can probably be chalked up to an effort to embolden congresspeople to be aggressive on the issue despite whatever opposing signals the White House is sending out.

Pro-Taiwan groups are also making the argument that the F-16 sale should be pushed through immediately, implying that it will be a political windfall for Ma that will ensure his re-election, and therefore be welcome to Beijing.

Unfortunately, the obverse is probably true. There is a genuine possibility that Ma will be voted out of office in January - the race is neck and neck - on the issue of the faltering economy, and gaudy arms deals may not be a decisive factor.

If the DPP wins in January, Beijing will have the worst of both worlds: a hostile administration backed by a renewed and escalated US commitment to arms sales.

Therefore, a furious PRC dragon, belching fire from every orifice, is likely to take US-Chinese diplomatic relations to the brink on the F-16 issue regardless of who submits the LoR, or when.

In the end, despite special pleading on behalf of the Taiwan Relations Act, it has been the familiar exercise of presidential discretion in foreign affairs that has governed US policy on arms sales to Taiwan.

President Ronald Reagan decided that an effort should be made to maintain Taiwan's superiority over the Chicoms in the area of fighter jets and approved the sale of F-5E fighters in 1982. He described his overarching principle as follows:

    It is essential that the quantity and quality of the arms provided Taiwan be conditioned entirely on the threat posed by the PRC. Both in quantitative and qualitative terms, Taiwan's defense capability relative to that of the PRC will be maintained. [10]

Ten years later, perhaps yielding to the exigencies of his re-election campaign, George H W Bush approved the sale of 150 F-16 A/B jets to Taiwan on similar grounds.

However, by 2009, after the PRC's purchase of Russian jets and a massive domestic development program, the Pentagon advised congress that Taiwan no longer "enjoyed" dominance of the airspace over the Taiwan Strait.

Maintaining Taiwan's capability relative to the PRC (ie air superiority) as envisioned by Reagan is no longer possible, as China gallops ahead to become the world's largest economic power.

The Congressional Research Service report stated:

    [T]he [Defense] Secretary's report on PRC military power had told Congress in March 2009 that it was no longer the case that Taiwan's Air Force enjoyed dominance of the airspace over the strait. In assessing the shifting security situation, Assistant Secretary of Defense for Asian and Pacific Security Affairs Wallace Gregson stressed in September 2009 that Taiwan's military will never again have quantitative advantages over the PLA. [11]

In fact, the Republic of China Air Force (ROCAF) cannot even sustain parity with its own historical capacity, let alone keep up with the PRC. It appears to be characterized today by obsolescence, decrepitude and diminished capacity.

The ROCAF fighter jet component consists of the 150 aging F-16s purchased in 1982; 60 French Mirage 2000 jets whose expensive maintenance and low availability is a source of dismay and embarrassment; and Taiwan's own contribution to 21st century air warfare, its Indigenous Defense Fighter or IDF.

When the fighter plane pipeline from the United States dried up, Taiwan turned to a variety of US airframe, engine and electronics contractors for assistance in constructing its own fighter plane.

In a vivid illustration of the terrible hazards involved in combining Western conventions, Chinese commemorative impulses and the tricky Wade Giles romanization to generate military aircraft nomenclature, Taiwan decided to honor its revered ex-president, Chiang Chingkuo, by incorporating initials for his given name Chingkuo ("respecter of the nation") into the descriptor for its fighter.

The result was the F-CK-1 series of aircraft. Defense Industry News inevitably took the bait with its headline concerning upgrades to the IDF fighter, Taiwan Seeking a Better F-CK, With Possible Longer-Term Aspirations. [12]

On an operationally more significant note, the IDF program took place under the watchful eye of the US government, which allowed US contractors to participate in the project. However, US pressure apparently precluded the supply of high-thrust engines for the project, leaving the capability of the IDF in doubt. The IDF is apparently best suited as a lead-in trainer to the more muscular F-16s and Mirage 2000s.

Taiwanese media attacked the plane as a gold-plated boondoggle, jocularly suggesting that "IDF" stood for "I Don't Fly" or "I Don't Fight".

Nevertheless, 130 of the planes entered into service; some are now being upgraded.

On June 30, Ma Ying-jyeou attended the roll-out six newly upgraded IDF fighters, in order to demonstrate the government's commitment to air defense.

His praise of the upgraded IDF fighter was somewhat less than full-throated, indicating that the program is considered to be something of a stopgap until higher-performance aircraft can be obtained:

    "I hope the IDF jets will stand for 'I do fight' and 'I don't fail'," said President Ma Ying-jeou, who gave a thumbs-up as he sat in the cockpit of the improved warplane. [13]

Defense Industry News delivered a thumbs up on the upgrade,stating that the F-CK-1C/D would be a genuine addition to Taiwan's arsenal if and when it was actually deployed in significant numbers.

However, it is still considerably inferior to planes already rolled out on the other side of the strait:

    China continues to deploy advanced SU-30 family and J-10 4+ generation fighters on their side of the Taiwan Straits. The new "F-CK-1C/D Hsiung Ying" (Brave Hawk) would still be a generation behind China's most advanced machines.

Lockheed also hastened to advise the Taipei Times that the upgraded IDF was no substitute for new F-16s:

    While the upgrade points to advances in Taiwanese avionics and capabilities, defense experts and Lockheed, maker of the F-16, say the new IDF is insufficient to ensure parity with an increasingly modern People's Liberation Army Air Force. [14]

The Taiwanese government indicated that it would upgrade 71 of the IDF fighters over the next four years, which implies that four years from now almost half of the IDF fleet will be de facto obsolescent and the rest will have great difficulty going toe-to-toe with the People's Liberation Army (PLA) air force.

The issue for American presidents is whether or not restoring the ROCAF to basic relevance is possible, cost-effective or even prudent.

Writing on the blog of the conservative American Enterprise Institute, Michael Mazza conflated the F-16 sale with forestalling World War III:

    A decision not to sell new fighters to Taiwan is, frankly, a decision that Taiwan doesn't need an air force. A Taiwan that can't control its skies is a Taiwan that can't defend itself. And a Taiwan that can't defend itself is a Taiwan that invites Chinese coercion, if not outright aggression. The outbreak of fighting in the Strait is not likely to be a conflict from which the United States can remain aloof. There will be no neutrality, no splendid isolation to enjoy when China starts loosing missiles on its neighbors. [15]

The impact of the potential F-16 sale may be somewhat less dramatic.

In 2009, RAND Corporation's David Shlapak co-authored a report on air superiority issues in the Taiwan Strait, titled A Question of Balance: Political Context and Military Aspects of the China-Taiwan Dispute. [16]

The report concluded that, despite the superiority of US equipment and personnel and whatever Taiwan could throw at the PRC, Taiwanese and US forces could not achieve air superiority in the straits given China's quantitative advantage in planes and, especially, missiles.

China's key advantage is perhaps its ability to sustain its airbase infrastructure, and fuel and re-arm its planes for multiple sorties, while destroying Taiwanese airbases and giving their planes nowhere to land after their first sortie (assuming they make it off the ground in the first place).

Shlapak told Asia Times Online that US planners could find the risks entailed in a campaign to negate China's advantages in airfields to be unacceptable:

    The PRC has about 40 airbases within range of Taiwan. Taiwan has ten airbases. The US has one nearby base, plus its aircraft carriers. Now the PRC has surface-to-surface ballistic missile forces available to cut runways and destroy aircraft. Taiwan's network of highway landing strips - without infrastructure or protection - [does little to mitigate the problem].

    U.S. weapons are air-launched and require penetration of China's borders by US aircraft in order to engage. Taking out 40 airbases in the interior of China is a much bigger job than [the PRC's task of destroying] ten bases on Taiwan.

    There are limits to bombing China. There is danger of escalation. The general rule is, Never cross swords with another nuclear power.

Considering that the current F-16 purchase request would do little more than replace the Reagan-era F5Es, Shlapak commented:

    It is difficult to see how a changeout of fighter aircraft can dramatically improve the situation.

An F-16 purchase would make little difference in the all-out war scenario. It would be useful primarily as a demonstration of sustained American resolve to support Taiwan despite the disadvantageous shift of the balance of power in the strait; maintain the ROCAF as a force to be reckoned with; and perhaps play a significant role in a limited conflict - for instance, a scenario in which the PRC doesn't mount a full-scale attack, but tries to get Taiwan to fold through a blockade.

Cynics also commented that, by serving as targets on Taiwanese airfields, the additional F-16s could help by exhausting China's arsenal of surface-to-surface missiles. [17]

At present, the stars appear to be aligning in favor of a proposal that is much more piecemeal than the purchase of new F-16s.

On July 4, Agence France-Presse reported a statement by Lin Yu-fang, chair of the Legislative Yuan's Foreign and National Defense Committee, that there would be "a compromise deal" to execute a long-existing plan to add improvements to Taiwan's existing fleet of F-16s, instead of buying new ones.

As to timing, Lin observed sagely:

    The US is anticipated to make the decision within the next two to three months. The Obama administration certainly won't want to see the arms deal become an issue during his election campaign for the second term. [18]

Terri Giles warned that an F-16 A/B upgrade "may not cut the mustard" with US politicians pushing for an enhanced security and political profile for Taiwan inside the Washington Beltway.

However, if the conservative backers of the sale overplay their hand, Democratic supporters will very likely drift away out of loyalty to Obama, and from dark memories what happened to America during the first George W Bush administration, the last time they let doctrinaire conservatives dominate the foreign policy discourse and decision-making process.

An ex-director of the American Institute in Taiwan, Richard Bush, told an audience in Taipei on June 24 that the loss of military parity requires more than new airplanes; it requires new thinking:

    "I would say it is important to build a consensus on the island about what is truly important for the future of the people on this island," he said.[19]

Notes
1. Taiwan's Ma looks for F-16 boost, Asia Times Online, Jun 22, 2011.
2. Click here for the WikiLeaks cable.
3. ‘No surprises' approach outlined: WikiLeaks, Taipei Times, Jun 19, 2011.
4. U.S. Blocks Taiwan's F-16 Request Again, Defense News, Jun 27, 2011.
5. Pressure builds for F-16 sale to Taiwan, Washington Post, July 5, 2011.
6. US delaying F-16 upgrade, report says, Taipei Times, Apr 2, 2011.
7. Iraq postpones purchase of F-16s, F-16.net, Feb 15, 2011.
8. Never Fear, Taiwan - Congress is Here, Wall Street Journal, Jun 17, 2011.
9. Pressure for F-16 sales mounts, Taipei Times, Jun 9, 2011.
10. Taiwan: Major U.S. Arms Sales Since 1990, Congressional Research Service, Jun 3, 2011.
11. Ibid.
12. Taiwan Seeking a Better F-CK, With Possible Longer-Term Aspirations, Defense Industry Daily, Jun 26, 2011.
13. Taiwan unveils upgraded fighter jets, AFP, Jun 30, 2011.
14. Air force receives first upgraded fighters, Taipei Times, Jul 1, 2011.
15. U.S. Taiwan Policy: Officially Absurd, The American, Jun 28, 2011.
16. A Question of Balance, Rand, 2009.
17. F-16 Sale to Taiwan, Would It Make A Difference?, Defense Tech, Mar 15, 2010.
18. US to upgrade F-16s, KMT lawmaker says, Crisis Boom, Jul 4, 2011.
19. Taiwan must decide what to defend: ex-AIT chair, China Post, Jun 24, 2011.

Neoliberalism and its Discontents: Gaddafi, Assange, and China

2011-09-02T07:53:00.000-07:00

One might think that in this brave new world of escalating global economic and social problems and burgeoning BRICs, priority might be given to forging consensus with the new rising powers to get the planet out of its economic rut and building a future less reliant on ruinous competition for resources and security.

However, it seems that traditional elites are more interested in keeping the mace of geopolitical power and moral authority firmly in the hands of the West.

The claim that fealty to Western neo-liberalism is the key to global peace and prosperity looks increasingly threadbare. Nevertheless, the undeniable attractiveness—and political corrosiveness—of democratic ideals to the societies of the authoritarian regimes holds out the hope that Western values will prevail even as the Western nation-states forged in the 19th and 20th century crumble under the assaults of globalization, increasingly mobile capital, and disengaged elites.

Therefore, as the US and European economies struggle with anemic economic growth and political gridlock, it is desperately important for proponents of both Western hegemony and liberal democracy to assert that We Did the Right Thing in Libya.

Of course, we didn’t do the Right Thing in Libya, as Alexander Cockburn’s stable of correspondents have been pointing out indefatigably in the pages of Counterpunch.

The Western and Gulf powers illegally provided military support for a hodgepodge of anti-Gaddafi forces under cover of a UN resolution to “protect civilians”.

The whole enterprise seemed doomed to an embarrassing collapse and negotiated settlement at the beginning of August.

However, it appears that an as yet underappreciated factor in Gaddafi’s fall was the implacable hatred of Saudi Arabia, Qatar, and the UAE for the Libyan autocrat—and their willingness to act on that hatred beyond their rather symbolic support of the NATO air war.

As the Benghazi-based TNC flailed away in eastern Libya, the “Tripoli Brigade” under Abdelkarim Belhadj drove on Tripoli and occupied it end-August, aided by the timely defection of a Gaddafi brigade commander, Barani Eshkal, and the surrender of his Mohammed Megrayef Brigade, which had been entrusted with the defense of the capital.

Belhadj, a militant Islamist, one-time leader of the Libyan Islamic Fighting Group, and reputed friend of al Qaeda, had been captured by the US in 2004 and tortured in a black prison in Thailand before being handed over to Gaddafi.

In what was not an example of Saif Gaddafi’s best work, at least in retrospect, Belhadj was released in 2010 as part of an effort to defang and integrate Islamists into the Gaddafian Libyan order.

The obvious inference would appear to be that Belhadj was assisted by the Arab Gulf states in 2011 out of sympathy for his militant Sunni leanings, and to rescue the Libyan adventure from Western blundering.

Indeed, an al Jazeera video from June 6 preserved on Youtube features attendance by correspondent James Bays at an orchestrated display of Tripoli Brigade will and martial prowess and included the declaration that new weapons provided by the UAE and Qatar “would soon arrive”-- seemingly illegal support at that stage of the “civilian protection” effort.

It is also not impossible that Gulf gold was deployed to arrange the timely surrender of the Mohammed Megrayef Brigade, or that the torture and murder of the chief rebel commander (and suspected accommodationist) Abdel Fateh Younes, represented the determination of Gulf-backed Islamist forces to take the bit in their teeth put an end to the dilatory phony war conducted out of Benghazi.

Given the instinctive discretion of the Gulf States and the almost hysterical need of the Western powers to claim credit for the collapse of Gaddafi’s regime, it will be interesting to see when and if the full story of the role of Islamists and the Sunni Gulf autocracies ever comes out.

In any case, don’t expect to see a lot of think pieces about the fall of Gaddafi as a victory for the forces of the conservative Sunni counter-revolution in your hometown paper.

Julian Assange has also fallen victim to the neo-liberalist need to defend the US and other Western democracies against charges of immorality, incompetence, and growing irrelevance.

On the left, one might believe that the wholesale release of government cables might be regarded as a victory for transparency, citizen supervision, whatever.

However, with a few notable exceptions (Counterpunch again, Antiwar.com, and Glenn Greenwald) the general response has been queasy anxiety and a lot of sniggering over Julian Assange’s sexual techniques and dance style, even as “liberal” media outlets have liberally availed themselves of the revelations in the cables for their news stories—and Bradley Manning rots in detention for his defense of the apparently indefensible “right to know”.

Recently, Wikileaks got its tit in a wringer when it was revealed that a complete, unredacted file of the cables (revealing the identities of whistleblowers and other informants) emerged on the Internet. The file was accessible to all since its public encryption key had been published in a book by the Guardian’s David Leigh.

Apparently, nobody had discovered the second file and put it together with Leigh’s revelation of the actual password in his book until this week.

The implication appears to be that the second file was Assange’s insurance policy, destined for release if he got handed over to the U.S. authorities.

The subsequent back and forth reveals a lot about the unacknowledged synergies between the media and Wikileaks. Wikileaks issued an editorial describing its process and its fraught relations with the Guardian:

The WikiLeaks method involves a sophisticated procedure of packaging leaked US diplomatic cables up into country groups or themes, such as ’resources corruption’, and providing it to those organizations that agreed to do the most research in exchange for time-limited exclusivity. As part of the WikiLeaks agreement, these groups, using their local knowledge, remove the names of persons reporting unjust acts to US embassies, and feed the results back to WikiLeaks. WikiLeaks then publishes, simultaneously with its partners, the underlying cables together with the politically explosive revelations. This way publications that are too frightened to publish the cables have the proof they need, and the public can check to make sure the claims are accurate.
...

Guardian investigations editor, David Leigh, recklessly, and without gaining our approval, knowingly disclosed the decryption passwords in a book published by the Guardian. Leigh states the book was rushed forward to be written in three weeks—the rights were then sold to Hollywood.

The following extract is from the Guardian book:

----

Leigh tried his best not to fall out with this Australian impresario, who was prone to criticise what he called the “snaky Brits”. Instead, Leigh used his ever-shifting demands as a negotiating lever. “You want us to postpone the Iraq logs’ publication so you can get some TV,” he said. [WikiLeaks: We required more time for redactions and to complete its three Iraq war documentaries commissioned through the Bureau of Investigative Journalism. The documentaries were syndicated through Channel 4 (UK) and al Jazeera English and Arabic] “We could refuse, and simply go ahead with publication as planned. If you want us to do something for you, then you’ve got to do something for us as well.” He asked Assange to stop procrastinating, and hand over the biggest trove of all: the cables. Assange said, “I could give you half of them, covering the first 50% of the period.”

Leigh refused. All or nothing, he said. “What happens if you end up in an orange jump-suit en route to Guantánamo before you can release the full files?” In return he would give Assange a promise to keep the cables secure, and not to publish them until the time came. Assange had always been vague about timing: he generally indicated, however, that October would be a suitable date. He believed the US army’s charges against the imprisoned soldier Bradley Manning would have crystallised by then, and publication could not make his fate any worse. He also said, echoing Leigh’s gallows humour: “I’m going to need to be safe in Cuba first!” Eventually, Assange capitulated. Late at night, after a two-hour debate, he started the process on one of his little netbooks that would enable Leigh to download the entire tranche of cables. The Guardian journalist had to set up the PGP encryption system on his laptop at home across the other side of London. Then he could feed in a password. Assange wrote down on a scrap of paper:

XXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXX

“That’s the password,” he said. “But you have to add one extra word when you type it in. You have to put in the word ‘XXXXXXX’ before the word ‘XXXXXX’ [WikiLeaks: so if the paper were seized, the password would not work without Leigh’s co-operation] Can you remember that?” “I can remember that.” Leigh set off home, and successfully installed the PGP software.

[In Leigh’s book, the offending password is completely described.]

WikiLeaks severed future projects with the Guardian in December last year after it was discovered that the Guardian was engaged in a conspiracy to publish the cables without the knowledge of WikiLeaks, seriously compromising the security of people in the United States and an alleged source who was in pre-trial detention. Leigh, without any basis, and in a flagrant violation of journalistic ethics, named Bradley Manning as the Cablegate source in his book. David Leigh secretly passed the entire archive to Bill Keller of the New York Times, in September 2011, or before, knowingly destroying WikiLeaks plans to publish instead with the Washington Post & McClatchy.

David Leigh and the Guardian have subsequently and repeatedly violated WikiLeaks security conditions, including our requirements that the unpublished cables be kept safe from state intelligence services by keeping them only on computers not connected to the internet. Ian Katz, Deputy Editor of the Guardian admitted in December 2010 meeting that this condition was not being followed by the Guardian.

The Guardian responded:

Initially, as has been widely reported, Assange was unwilling to remove material to protect informants but the Guardian and its media partners persuaded him that the diplomatic cables should be carefully redacted before release, and this editing process was carried out by the newspapers. We are deeply concerned that the release of the unredacted files could put at risk sources we and our partner newspapers worked very hard to protect.

WikiLeaks published 130,000 apparently unredacted cables last week. Until Wednesday of this week very few people had the required information to access the full cables, but over the last few days WikiLeaks has published more and more hints about how they could be accessed and are now carrying out their own “online poll” about whether they should publish all the cables.

WikiLeaks should take responsibility for its own pattern of actions and not seek to deflect it elsewhere.

The Guardian’s defense seems to be castigating Wikileaks for following up with release of the unredacted cables after the public file was put together with the password in Leigh’s book.

Wikileaks attitude appears to be that bad guys have already obtained the decrypted data, so the issue of Wikileaks subsequently distributing the cables to the general public is moot.

As to why the second file was dumped on the Internet with the same encryption as the Guardian file, one explanation appears to be Wikileaks gormlessness. Another possibility is that Assange 1) wanted the Guardian to be able ton confirm the bona fides of the publicly available encrypted file and 2) did not realize that Leigh’s fetish for veracity would lead him to put the actual password in his quickie book.

The Guardian continued with the “irresponsible Wikileaks” framing with an article titled Wikileaks prepares to release unredacted US cables.

The article could also have been entitled Guardian anxiously backfills on Wikileaks story.

The reportage contained an interesting nugget:

However, at a later stage the same encrypted file and at least one other encrypted with the same password was posted on the peer-to-peer file-sharing network BitTorrent. One of these files was first published on 7 December 2010, just hours before Assange's arrest. In the days running up to his arrest, Assange had spoken of "taking precautions" in the event of anything untoward happening to him.

This file, it was later discovered, was the same file that had been shared with the Guardian via the secure server. It shared the same file name and file size, and could be unlocked using the same password as that given to Leigh.

Daniel Domscheit-Berg, a former member of staff at WikiLeaks who is attempting to set up a rival whistleblowing website, discovered this republished file and shared information on WikiLeaks's security breach with a small group of journalists.

Maybe we haven’t learned the last of Daniel Domscheit-Berg’s intimacies with “a small group of journalists”. Then again, given the general scalphunting of Assange, maybe we have.

Finally, China.

China has been doing rather well in its economic and military competition with the West, and the apparent result that criticism of its democratic shortcomings must be ratcheted up proportionally.

Neo-liberalism is alive and well inside China as well, at least among dissident intellectuals.

A prominent pro-democracy blogger, Yang Hengjun, praised the Libyan revolt as an exercise in popular democracy.

Then he doubled down, going where few American pundits dare to go, and praised the US invasion of Iraq (Yang also tiptoed close to the line of sedition by holding up the example of North Korea, a frequent stalking horse for Chinese dissident criticisms of CCP rule, as a suitable target for intensified US democratic intervention):

[W]e can’t help but remember the words we’ve seen on so many websites in China lately: “We’re concerned that Libya might become another Iraq . . . ”

“Another Iraq”? This definitely means seeing Iraq as a negative example. After the American invasion of Iraq there certainly was a time of chaos and killing, but was that not because the dictator Saddam was unwilling to give up his absolute rule and continued to put up a resistance? Try asking the Iraqi people: How many of you are unwilling to make these sacrifices and would rather return to the era of Saddam Hussein? Was there less mass murder and chaos in Iraq under Saddam than there is now?

Iraq today is certainly not a negative example. Just look at the way major television news networks no longer have news to broadcast about mass killings and you know. Particularly in comparison to the era of Saddam Hussein, Iraq is heading towards brighter times.

When we hear international media reporting again and again on continued chaos and violence in Iraq, however, and when see Iraqis saying on the television that times aren’t as good as they once were, this in fact shows us the biggest difference between Iraq in the time of Saddam and Iraq today. In the Saddam era, did we ever see Iraqis looking into the lens of international media and daring to express their dissatisfaction with political leaders? Those who see Iraq as a textbook of bad examples should look at North Korea, which the American military never has managed to topple. Are the people there harmonious? Are there no killings? Is there no chaos?

America is the world’s preeminent political, economic and military power, and it is also the base camp for so-called freedom and democracy. These actions to overthrow political despots can’t happen without America’s participation.

Iraqis are welcome to weigh in on the benefits of the US invasion.

As a first-hand consumer of 21st-century corporate democracy, American-style, I am not as sanguine as Mr. Yang.

In any case, I predict that, in direct proportion to Chinese economic and political rise—and despite any baby steps the regime might take in the direction of democracy and freedom of expression—the neo-liberal critique of China’s democratic failings will intensify.

Because the West is increasingly anxious to validate its own values (and assert its moral and political relevance) by holding up China as the supreme counter-example.

Panda-pummelers will be encouraged by the fact that the CCP appears genuinely befuddled about how to deal with the refusal of the West and domestic dissidents to acknowledge the legitimacy and achievements of its rule, the wealth and power and bread and circuses.

Its ham-fisted attempts to muzzle domestic and international critics merely draws attention to the issue and accentuates the weakness of its arguments.

Therefore, the irresistible temptation will be to escalate and seek to further undermine the legitimacy and political foundations of the regime.

If the PRC regime falls victim to an Arab Spring-style uprising, we can celebrate the power of democracy and ignore the whole US-brewed illegal wars/security state/global economic meltdown/war against the poor/corporatist democracy cum gridlock magilla.

I don’t think we’ll see Sarkozy and Henri-Levy announcing an R2P operation to protect China’s endangered conceptual artists. But we’ll see plenty of provocations and countermeasures against PRC military and economic power designed to highlight its immorality and illegitimacy.

It’s an inherently destabilizing and dangerous dynamic. However, since the alternative would be a painful examination of the deficiencies of the Western model in its current form, the combination of Western weakness and PRC strength will be perilous—for China.

Congo Copper, the Three Gorges Dam, and America's $6.6 billion Imperial Rounding Error in Iraq

2011-06-20T12:37:00.000-07:00

My piece in Asia Times this week is China plays long game on Congo copper.

For students of the IMF vs. Chinese theories of economic development, I think the details of the Chinese struggle to keep this project going in the teeth of Western disapproval strikingly illustrates some conspicuous and interesting differences.

For people who like a good anti-imperialist horse-laugh, there's this excerpt:

United States Secretary of State Hillary Clinton took a swipe at China in a June 11 press conference in Zambia, urging African nations to resist "new colonialism" and for foreign investors to practice "good governance".

    "We saw that during colonial times, it is easy to come in, take out natural resources, pay off leaders and leave," Clinton said in Lusaka, the Zambian capital, before flying off to Tanzania. "And when you leave, you don't leave much behind for the people who are there. We don't want to see a new colonialism in Africa."

    Although she didn't mention China by name, officials traveling with Clinton said she wanted to stress that African countries should hold Chinese investors to the same standards that they apply to Americans and Europeans. Clinton said the United States didn't want any foreign governments or investors to fail in Africa, but wanted to make sure that they give back to local communities. "We want them to do well, but also we want them to do good," she said. [1]

This declaration appeared at the same time that America's most conspicuous post-colonial initiative in Africa - the bombing of Libya - was entering its third month with a cost approaching US$1 billion and no end in sight.

It was the same week that the world got another look at the US exercise of good governance in Iraq, courtesy of the Special Inspector General for Iraq Reconstruction. The George W Bush administration had airlifted $12 billion in cash into post-conquest Iraq. $6.6 billion - more than half - cannot be accounted for. It is now assumed that it was stolen, perhaps "the largest theft of funds in [US] national history".

The LA Times reported:

    U.S. officials often didn't have time or staff to keep strict financial controls. Millions of dollars were stuffed in gunnysacks and hauled on pickups to Iraqi agencies or contractors, officials have testified.

    House Government Reform Committee investigators charged in 2005 that U.S. officials "used virtually no financial controls to account for these enormous cash withdrawals once they arrived in Iraq, and there is evidence of substantial waste, fraud and abuse in the actual spending and disbursement of the Iraqi funds."

    Pentagon officials have contended for the last six years that they could account for the money if given enough time to track down the records. But repeated attempts to find the documentation, or better yet the cash, were fruitless. [2]

In the requisite ironic coda, it turns out that the billions weren't even American taxpayers' money. The US government pulled the cash from the Development Fund for Iraq administered by the Federal Reserve Bank of New York. The fund accumulated the proceeds from Iraq's energy exports during the Saddam Hussein oil-for-food sanctions years for eventual disbursement for the benefit of its true owners: the citizens of Iraq.

Tough luck, Iraqi citizens.

If China decides to take the US fiduciary meltdown in Iraq as precedent for its overseas activities, the bar for "doing good" and "giving back" to the local community is going to be extremely low.

For those keeping score, $6.6 billion is 66 million $100 bills. It is 72 tons of shrink-wrapped cash. It is the payload of three C-130 Hercules transports.

It is also the stated value of the Sino-Congolese infrastructure-for-copper agreement, trumpeted as the "deal of the century".

The much-touted neo-colonialist Chinese penetration of the Democratic Republic of Congo , in other words, is roughly equivalent to an American imperialist rounding error.

My article of the week before, Three gorges dam crisis in slow motion, looks at some of the TGD's highly publicized problems.

The dam is something of an overpriced fiasco. The reservoir is starting to demonstrate a lot of the unattractive characteristics of a stopped-up toilet. Billions of dollars will have to be spent in Sichuan dealing with the consequences of the dam: building more dams upstream to trap silt; constructing pollution-treatment facilities; stabilizing the reservoir banks to prevent landslides and dangerous, tsunami-esque wave surges; and maybe finding a new home for the port of Chongqing if China's hydrologists are outmaneuvered by the masses of silt marching upriver to the city's port.

The TGD is also a metaphor for big, bad China. The PRC forged ahead and built the dam in the teeth of post-Tiananmen criticism of the regime, its leadership style, and its economic policies as symbolized by the TGD.

So, international critics tend to pile on whenever some problem crops up in the vicinity, even when the link to the dam is tenuous at best.

In my piece, I take issue with accusations that the TGD was cause of the prolonged drought in the Yangtze River basin. Long story short, holding water behind the dam was probably a factor in the dramatic but temporary drying-up of the shallow floodplain lakes Dongting and Poyang. However, the dam did not cause the droughts. More importantly, with an apparent trend toward longer droughts broken by brief, severe rainstorms, the big dams will play a big role in alleviating rather than exacerbating droughts.

As I complained in my piece on the misreporting of the Dalai Lama's statements on the death of Bin Laden , there seems to be a tendency toward laziness blogginess in the major news outlets. Please, MSM, leave lazy blogginess to lazy bloggers!

...some outlets decided to use the Yangtze basin drought as a news hook for the story. As the Washington Post reported, "Amid severe drought, Chinese government admits mistakes with Three Gorges Dam." [1] CNN pitched in with "Has the Three Gorges Dam created Chinese drought zone?" [2] Associated Press: "China drought renews debate over Three Gorges Dam." [3]

In example of the bloggy "it would be irresponsible not to speculate" writing that news outlets increasingly turn to in order to fill their pages and attract readers, Elaine Kurtenbach of AP reported the allegation that "many villagers and some scientists suspect the dam ... could also be altering weather patterns, contributing to the lowest rainfall some areas have seen in a half century or more."

A modicum of research - ie recollecting that the Yangtze experienced one of the biggest floods in its history in the not-too-distant past, that is to say 10 months ago - casts doubt on this particular exercise in empirical inquiry.

The Yangtze River basin historically has a surplus of water, not a dearth, and this situation is likely to persist. Research on the effects of climate change on the Yangtze River basin predicts that global warming - not the TGD - will bring more rainfall in brief, more intense episodes from the summer monsoon. It was therefore undoubtedly a matter of considerable but not unexpected relief to the government as Xinhua reported that the drought broke under torrential rains - as much as 10 inches in some localities.