Cuts will lead to smallest British army in more than a century but armed forces will see modest spending increases from 2015 After months of fierce debate, the Treasury and Ministry of Defence have promised Britain’s armed forces modest spending increases in the future in return for deep cuts in the army to help plug a budget black hole estimated to be £43bn. Liam Fox, the defence secretary, announced long-awaited cuts, in addition to those made in last year’s defence review, which will lead to the smallest British army in more than a century and the closure of a number of RAF bases. The army will shrink from its present size of about 101,000 to 82,000 by 2020. The defence review had already cut the army by 7,000 by 2015 when British troops will no longer have a combat role in Afghanistan. Though Fox did not say so in his statement to MPs, defence officials made clear that the fresh round of cuts would mean the end of a number of infantry battalions, probably including some whose soldiers have fought recently in Afghanistan. Partly to compensate for the loss of regular soldiers, Fox said he wanted to increase substantially the number of fully-trained reserves of all three branches of the armed forces – the navy, army and air force. He said he wanted to bring Britain more into line with other countries including the US. One of the reserves’ priority tasks would be “homeland security”. Defence officials indicated that the aim was to increase the number of fully trained reservists from a little more than 20,000 to 35,000 by 2015. Beefing up the reserves would cost an estimated £1.5bn. However, Fox made clear his aim was for a “total force of around 120,000 broadly in the ratio 70:30 regular to reserve”. The Treasury said the armed forces will benefit from a 1% real terms increase – that is, taking inflation into account – in their equipment budget from 2015 to 2020 at a cost of £3bn. It is rare for government departments to be offered such increases in advance but the prime minister has backed pleas from defence chiefs for increases in real terms in their budget once the current four-year spending review period is over. The £3bn will pay for 14 new Chinook helicopters, three new US Rivet spy planes, upgrading the army’s ageing fleet of Warrior armoured vehicles, and more unmanned drones for the RAF. The gap between the actual defence budget and weapons programmes promised by previous governments has been estimated at £38bn. Defence officials said on Monday that Bernard Gray, the new head of MoD procurement, had identified an additional £5bn worth of underfunded liabilities. The army will be centred around multi-role brigades, with 19 Light Brigade based in Northern Ireland broken up with some of its constituent parts – including The Black Watch – assigned to other brigades. RAF Leuchars will close, leaving RAF Lossiemouth as the only remaining air force base in Scotland. Leuchars will become an army barracks housing some of the 20,000 British troops who are due to leave Germany by 2020, Fox announced. Most of the changes will take place after 2015, when the next general election is due, Fox said. He described it as “an incredibly complex decision and it has inevitably been a balancing act”. The shadow defence secretary, Jim Murphy, described the government’s announcement as “strategic shrinkage by stealth”. He told Fox: “The army has been slashed to cover up the funding gaps left by the rushed defence review.” Fox had announced cuts to the army of 19,000 – just under a fifth of the entire force – in just 10 months, he said. When in opposition, the Conservatives had promised thousands of extra troops, Murphy said. General Sir David Richards, chief of the defence staff, said in a statement: “If we get it right, this will result in a modern, hard-hitting joint force still capable of operating at the divisional level across the full spectrum of conflict. It will deliver armed forces of which we can all be proud.” The National Audit Office, parliament’s financial watchdog, for the fifth year running, said it could not approve the MoD’s accounts. It said £5.3bn worth of assets could not be accounted for, including more than 4,000 Bowman radio sets used for secure communications. Fox’s statement came as the MoD announced that a British soldier from 1st Battalion The Rifles was killed in an explosion in Nahr-e Saraj district of Helmand province in Afghanistan. The soldier’s death took the number of British troops killed in Afghanistan since 2001 to 377. Defence policy Liam Fox Tax and spending Military Richard Norton-Taylor guardian.co.uk
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Lloyds, RBS and Barclays take £5bn hit as stock and commodity prices plummet, while US urges Europe to be more decisive More than £5bn was wiped off the value of three of Britain’s biggest banks on Monday as global financial markets took fright at the deepening crisis in the eurozone. Stocks fell heavily in Europe and North America while gold rose to a new record of more than $1,600 (£995) an ounce amid concerns that Thursday’s emergency summit of EU leaders would once again fail to resolve the debt problems of the single currency’s weak members. Officials from eurozone countries were on Monday trying to resolve the row between Angela Merkel and the European Central Bank (ECB) over a possible Greek debt default after a day of turbulence that saw bank shares tumble in late trading. Jean-Claude Trichet, the president of the ECB, is resisting pressure from the German chancellor for Greece’s private sector creditors to bear some of the losses of a default, but senior policymakers admitted that it was now vital Thursday’s talks in Brussels come up with a credible plan that will restore market confidence after shares, government bonds and commodities all suffered sharp losses. Sources said one option was to convert much of Greece’s debts into longer-term bonds, an approach used during the Latin American debt crisis of the 1980s. Lloyds, Royal Bank of Scotland and Barclays were the biggest fallers on the FTSE 100, all losing at least 6% of their value as jittery investors digested the results of Friday’s stress tests on European banks , mulled the prospect of the US
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Former NI chief executive’s husband denies bag – containing computer, paperwork and phone – belonged to his wife Detectives are examining a computer, paperwork and a phone found in a bin near the riverside London home of Rebekah Brooks, the former chief executive of News International. The Guardian has learned that a bag containing the items was found in an underground car park in the Design Centre at the exclusive Chelsea Harbour development on Monday afternoon. The car park, under a shopping centre, is yards from the gated apartment block where Brooks lives with her husband, a former racehorse trainer and close friend of the prime minister David Cameron. It is understood the bag was handed into security at around 3pm and that shortly afterwards, Brooks’s husband, Charlie, arrived and tried to reclaim it. He was unable to prove the bag was his and the security guard refused to release it. Instead, it is understood that the security guard called the police. In less than half an hour, two marked police cars and an unmarked forensics car are said to have arrived at the scene. Police are now examining CCTV footage taken in the car park to uncover who dropped the bag. Initial suspicions that there had been a break in at the Brooks’ flat have been dismissed. David Wilson, Charlie Brooks’s official spokesman, told the Guardian that Charlie Brooks denies that the bag belonged to his wife. “Charlie has a bag which contains a laptop and papers which were private to him,” said Wilson. “They were nothing to do with Rebekah or the [phone-hacking] case.” Wilson said Charlie Brooks had left the bag with a friend who was returning it, but dropped it in the wrong part of the garage. When asked how the bag ended up in a bin he replied: “The suggestion is that a cleaner thought it was rubbish and put it in the bin.” Wilson added: “Charlie was looking for it together with a couple of the building staff. “Charlie was told it had gone to security, by which stage they [security] had already called the police to say they had found something. “The police took it away. Charlie’s lawyers got in touch with the police to say they could take a look at the computer but they’d see there was nothing relevant to them on it. He’s expecting the stuff back forthwith.” Rebekah Brooks was arrested on Sunday under suspicion of conspiring to intercept communications, and of corrupting police officers. She is due to appear before the Commons culture, media and sport select committee today on Tuesday afternoon. Rebekah Brooks Phone hacking Newspapers & magazines National newspapers Newspapers News of the World Police Amelia Hill guardian.co.uk
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“The chief consequence of the conservatives’ unrelenting faith in the badness of government,” Thomas Franks wrote three years ago in The Wrecking Crew , “is bad government.” But would happen if virtually every article of that faith were wrong or, much worse, a blatant lie? Then you’d have something that looks very much like the crisis over the soon-to-be breached U.S. debt ceiling . After all, despite the dire warnings of impending doom from economists, the Federal Reserve, Wall Street ratings agencies, GOP-friendly business groups and even some of their leaders, many Republicans would sooner see the United States default and its recovery destroyed than follow the dictates of either national interest or reason. And it’s all because the Republican prime directive – political power at any cost – trumps the truth. Arizona’s Jon Kyl , the second-ranking Senate Republican, gave the game away in April when his office declared his slander of Planned Parenthood was ” not intended to be a factual statement .” So it is for just about every GOP talking point . Tax cuts don’t “pay for themselves.” The GOP job creators didn’t create jobs after the Bush tax cuts, though they did when their taxes were higher. There are neither “death panels” nor a “government takeover of health care” in the Affordable Care Act which, despite Republican myth-making, actually reduces the national debt over the next decade. Barack Obama isn’t a Muslim, but he was born in the United States. Public employees are not overpaid and vote fraud does not threaten American democracy. Global warming isn’t “the greatest hoax ever perpetrated on the American people.” And we did not go to war in Iraq “because we were attacked.” Despicable and dangerous as these frauds are, they didn’t threaten to destroy the American economy in a matter of days and with it, the global financial system. It’s not as if the Republican ” default deniers ” and ” debt kamikazes ” weren’t warned. On the same day last week, the U.S. Chamber of Commerce , Federal Reserve Chairman Ben Bernanke and Wall Street rating agencies joined the ever-louder chorus of voices warning Republicans that failure to raise the U.S. debt ceiling would result in “calamity.” Those pleas followed a new analysis by the Bipartisan Policy Center concluded that failure to boost the debt ceiling by the August drop-dead window would force the U.S. Treasury to immediately slash spending by 44% . As The Hill reported, “On an annualized basis, the cut in spending alone is a 10 percent cut in GDP, BPC scholar Jay Powell told reporters.” The IMF similarly cautioned that “the debt ceiling should be raised as soon as possible to avoid damage to the economy and world financial markets.” 235 economists – including six Nobel Prize winners – signed an open letter to Congressional leaders urging them to raise the ceiling, and to do so “without attaching drastic and potentially dangerous reductions in federal spending.” Failure to do so, they warned, “could push the United States back into recession.” So it came as no surprise when Treasury Secretary Tim Geithner declared on Thursday, “We’re running out of time” to avoid what Ezra Klein deemed the ” catastrophic calculations ” of default. But Republicans don’t need to take Geithner’s word for it. They can heed the words of their party bosses. In their few moments of candor, GOP leaders expressed agreement with Tim Geithner’s assessment that default by the U.S. “would have a catastrophic economic impact that would be felt by every American.” The specter of a global financial cataclysm has been described as resulting in “severe harm” (McCain economic adviser Mark Zandi ), “financial collapse and calamity throughout the world” (Senator Lindsey Graham ) and “you can’t not raise the debt ceiling” (House Budget Committee Chairman Paul Ryan ). In January, even Speaker John Boehner acknowledged as much: “That would be a financial disaster, not only for our country but for the worldwide economy. Remember, the American people on Election Day said, ‘we want to cut spending and we want to create jobs.’ And you can’t create jobs if you default on the federal debt.” Nevertheless, eight month after he warned his new GOP House majority that “we’re going to have to deal with it as adults” and three months after he told a Tea Party gathering that “we’re going to have to raise it again in the future,” Speaker Boehner this week acknowledged that at least 60 GOP Congressmen “won’t vote to raise the debt ceiling under any circumstances.” Boehner’s head count doesn’t begin to do justice to the Republican fiscal recklessness bordering on dementia. For months, Republican presidential candidates Michele Bachmann and Tim Pawlenty led the default denier chorus. While Mitt Romney joined Rick Santorum, Newt Gingrich and Ron Paul in supporting the “Cut, Cap and Balance” Pledge which demands a balanced budget amendment and draconian spending cuts as conditions of raising the debt ceiling. This week, the House and Senate will vote on their respective versions of the Cut, Cap and Balance Act, which among other things would require supermajorities to raise taxes or breach a federal spending cap targeted at 18% of U.S. gross domestic product. As it turns out, outlays by the federal government haven’t been as low as 18% of GDP since 1966 . (That’s why the Simpson-Bowles Commission created by President Obama and opposed by Senate Republicans set a 21% target.) As it turns out, the 98% of Republicans in Congress voted for Paul Ryan’s budget plan would fail their own Cut, Cap and Balance test. As Ezra Klein explained in April : House Republicans voted to make the Ryan budget law. But the Ryan budget includes $6 trillion in new debt over the next 10 years, which means that to become law, the Ryan budget would require a substantial increase in the debt ceiling. But before the Republicans agree to increase the debt ceiling so that the budget they passed can become law, Republicans are demanding the passage of either a balanced budget amendment that would make the Ryan budget unconstitutional or a spending cap that the Ryan budget would, in certain years (and if you’re using more realistic numbers, in all years), exceed. Nevertheless, House Republicans, pressured by Tea Party zealots , have been digging in their heels. This week, Congressmen Louie Gohmert (R-TX) and Steve King (R-IA) joined Bachmann in calling the Obama administration’s warnings about the August 2 deadline lies. (Not to be outdone, Sarah Palin , who previously blasted “Timothy Geithner’s false statements to the American people,” tweeted “Obama lies, economy dies.”) Georgia Rep. Paul Broun called for the debt ceiling to be lowered to $13 trillion, would necessitate immediately cutting roughly three-fourths of all federal spending. And while Arkansas Rep. Eric “Rick” Crawford announced that a default “wouldn’t work for just a few days, that would work for a few years,” his freshman colleague Mo Brooks (R-AL) insisted no debt ceiling increase, no problem. As the Washington Post reported: “There should be no default on August 2,” Brooks said. “In fact, our credit rating should be improved by not raising the debt ceiling.” That stands in contrast to a warning from Moody’s. The rating agency said Wednesday that it might downgrade the U.S. government’s top-notch credit rating, “given the rising possibility that the statutory debt limit will not be raised on a timely basis, leading to a default.” It’s now wonder conservative columnist David Brooks fretted that the GOP is no longer “a normal party.” Or as former Bush Treasury Secretary Paul O’Neill put it: “The people who are threatening not to pass the debt ceiling are our version of al Qaeda terrorists. Really. They’re really putting our whole society at risk by threatening to round up 50 percent of the members of the Congress, who are loony, who would put our credit at risk.” Mercifully for the future of the U.S. economy, some of its willing executioners are starting to understand that their debt ceiling hostage taking could mean national suicide. As the Los Angeles Times revealed, the House leadership deployed Paul Ryan to explain the consequences of a Republican failure to raise the U.S. borrowing limit. At a closed-door meeting Friday morning, GOP leaders turned to their most trusted budget expert, Rep. Paul D. Ryan of Wisconsin, to explain to rank-and-file members what many others have come to understand: A fiscal meltdown could occur if Congress fails to raise the debt ceiling. House Speaker John A. Boehner of Ohio underscored the point to dispel the notion that failure to allow more borrowing is an option. “He said if we pass Aug. 2, it would be like ‘Star Wars,’” said Rep. Scott DesJarlais, a freshman from Tennessee. “I don’t think the people who are railing against raising the debt ceiling fully understand that”… Freshman Rep. Steve Womack (R-Ark.) said the presentation about skyrocketing interest rates that could result from downgraded bond ratings was “sobering.” “It illustrates to us that doing nothing is unacceptable,” he said. “I think the conference understands this is a defining moment for us. It’s time to put the next election aside.” Sadly, that small nod to reality doesn’t mean the return of truth to the Republican debt ceiling hostage crisis. As Rep. Joe Walsh (R-IL) put it in a shocking video. “Quit lying,” Walsh told President Obama, adding: “But have you no shame, sir? In three short years, you’ve bankrupted this country and destroyed job creation.” Sadly for Walsh, the shame is all his. Leave aside for the moment that Ronald Reagan tripled the national debt and George W. Bush nearly doubled it . Forget also that the Bush tax cuts were the biggest driver of debt over the past decade, and if made permanent, would be continue to be so over the next. Pay no attention to the federal tax burden now at its lowest level in 60 years or income inequality at its highest level in 80 years after a decade of plummeting rates on America’s wealthiest taxpayers, Ignore for now that Republican majorities voted seven times to raise the debt ceiling under President Bush and the current GOP leadership team voted a combined 19 times to bump the debt limit $4 trillion during his tenure. Look away from the two unfunded wars in Afghanistan and Iraq, the budget-busting Bush tax cuts of 2001 and 2003 and the Medicare prescription drug program because, after all, John Boehner, Mitch McConnell and the Republican majorities in Congress voted for all of it . If today’s Republican extortionists needed any more inspiration to back down from their blackmail scheme, their saint Ronald Reagan provided it in 1983 : “The full consequences of a default — or even the serious prospect of default — by the United States are impossible to predict and awesome to contemplate. Denigration of the full faith and credit of the United States would have substantial effects on the domestic financial markets and the value of the dollar.” Reagan knew what he was talking about. After all, the hemorrhage of red ink at the U.S. Treasury began on his watch. As most analysts predicted, Reagan’s massive $749 billion supply-side tax cuts in 1981 quickly produced even more massive annual budget deficits. Combined with his rapid increase in defense spending, Reagan delivered not the balanced budgets he promised, but record-setting debt. Forced to raise taxes eleven times to avert financial catastrophe, the Gipper nonetheless presided over a tripling of the American national debt to nearly $3 trillion. By the time he left office in 1989, Ronald Reagan signed a stunning 17 debt ceiling increases into law and more than equaled the entire debt burden produced by the previous 200 years of American history. It’s no wonder the Gipper cited the skyrocketing deficits he bequeathed to America as his greatest regret . And ours. Sadly, thanks to a Republican deceit and a complicit media that portrays all issues as conflicts having two (and only two) sides, the truth may not set Americans free. In May, polls by CBS and Gallup showed that Americans by a 2-to-1 margin oppose raising the nation’s $14.3 trillion debt ceiling. (Among Republicans, the gap was a staggering 70% to 8%.) Only now, thanks to the dire warnings of economists, think tanks, international financial bodies and even GOP-friendly business groups , the tide may be turning. A new Pew Research survey showed Americans now split as to whether raising the debt or defaulting on U.S. debt obligations is the greater concern. Reality, as Stephen Colbert told President Bush to his face, may have “a well-known liberal bias,” but for Republicans the supposed debate over the debt ceiling has never been about either reality or the truth. Instead, their objective, as Senate Minority Leader McConnell has boasted repeatedly , is to ensure President Obama is a one-term president. But If the Republican hostage-takers succeed in blocking the debt ceiling increase required by August 2, all Americans will pay the price for the pathological lies of the GOP. Starting August 3. (For more background, see “10 Things the GOP Doesn’t Want You to Know about the Debt.” )
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Thousands of holidaymakers affected as 2,000 taxi drivers block Piraeus and Patras ports, Athens airport and tourist sites Greek taxi drivers protesting against the liberalisation of their profession – an IMF-dictated reform enacted in exchange for the debt-stricken country receiving emergency aid – caused chaos on Monday as they blocked access to ports, archaeological sites and Athens international airport. On the first day of a 48-hour strike, described as “the beginning of a battle”, cabbies took over roads, toll-booths and entries to the ports of Piraeus and Patras in a mass display of defiance against government plans to deregulate their trade. Thousands of holidaymakers visiting Greece were caught up in the mayhem. Many missed connecting flights after some 2,000 taxi drivers took over the road leading to the capital’s airport. Protesters also blocked gates to cruise ship docks preventing some 15,000 visitors from boarding coaches to see prime sites. In northern Greece, holidaymakers were also held up as drivers blocked main roads. “It’s been very trying in the baking heat,” said Mimi Skillett, a British tourist, after missing a plane connection from Athens to Skiathos. Drivers, who vowed to take to the streets on Tuesday, have been spurred into action by a government decision to open up their business by making it easier, and cheaper, to buy taxi licences. The socialist administration implemented the reform as part of efforts to liberalise over 150 “closed shop” professions blamed for stunting competition and Greece’s economic growth. With the country mired in recession, the 23,000-strong sector says its earnings have dropped precipitously. “If you had got a €200,000 [£175,000] loan to buy a car and a taxi licence according of the laws of this country … and suddenly you are told that tomorrow you will have nothing, you tell me what you would do?” Konstantinos Dimos, general secretary of the Athens taxi drivers’ association told state-run television. Under the new rules, drivers will be able to obtain licences for €3,000 compared with the €80,000 demanded previously. With some 15,000 cab owners in Athens alone, unions say there is no need for more drivers. Prime Minister George Papandreou’s government moved ahead with the controversial legislation – lawyers, architects, pharmacists and public notaries will also see their fields opening up – after Athens came under renewed pressure to expedite reforms in return for a second rescue package of loans. The new bailout is expected to be as much, if not exceed, the €110bn financial aid package Greece received last May. Similar action by truckers last year resulted in the government allowing for a respite before the new legislation took effect. Despite appeals from Greece’s culture minister Pavlos Geroulanos, who described the strike as a “huge wound for tourism” – the nation’s biggest foreign currency earner – the drivers vowed to continue their action in future. “This is another blow to the image of our country [after the riots sparked by fresh austerity measures in Athens last month],” said the Association of Greek Tourist Enterprises. “Blocking access to ports and airports creates problems for tourism, one of the main pillars of development and hope that will enable our country to get out of this crisis.” Greece Euro European debt crisis Greece IMF Travel & leisure Athens Helena Smith guardian.co.uk
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At least 10 people die during clashes in flashpoint city of Homs in first sign that the uprising could descend into sectarian strife Syria’s protest movement struggled to keep the uprising peaceful and non-sectarian on Monday after at least 10 people, and possibly up to 30, were reported dead during the first allegedly factional clashes in Homs, a flashpoint city where Sunni and Alawi neighbourhoods sit side by side. According to the Syrian Observatory of Human Rights, a London-based organisation, 30 people were killed in 24 hours of clashes in the city, Syria’s third largest, some 100 miles north of the capital. Other activists and residents disputed both the numbers and the account, with one saying between 10 and 15 people had been killed. The news emerged as diplomatic pressure increased on Syrian president Bashar al-Assad with Qatar, previously a supporter of the regime, closing its embassy in Damascus and the EU announcing it was considering further sanctions. If the clashes were sectarian in origin, it would fuel fears of the potential for further strife between the Sunni majority, who form around three-quarters of the population, and the 10% Alawite minority to which Assad belongs. Not all Alawis support Assad, but the regime has rallied support among the minorities with some success by fear-mongering, arming and drawing in Alawi thugs to help suppress protesters, causing tensions to rise, residents and activists say. The deaths in Homs came after three regime supporters seized last week were killed and mutilated, according to Rami Abdel Rahman, head of the Observatory. “Security forces murdered three people – but they were one Shia, one Sunni and one Alawi – so Alawi pro-regime thugs went and smashed and torched Sunni shops in the areas,” said one Homs resident, adding that protesters had set up roadblocks to protect certain neighbourhoods. Radwan Ziadeh, a US-based human rights activist, said some relatives who had lost protesting family members opened fired in an Alawite area, leading to clashes. Definitive accounts are difficult to confirm in Syria, where reporting relies heavily on amateur footage and eyewitness accounts. The Syrian opposition has been criticised for downplaying reports of tensions between majority Sunnis and the Alawite minority. Activists and protesters have managed to adhere to a peaceful, non-sectarian movement for over four months in which 1,500 protesters have been shot dead and thousands detained. But some admit they are struggling to keep it that way as a regime losing control sparks further violence. The government says some 400 security forces and soldiers have also been killed. Mixed cities such as Homs and coastal cities in the heart of the Alawi homeland are the most potentially explosive places. Homs, home to 1.5 million people, is the most religiously mixed city in the country and has had tanks on its streets for weeks. A small minority of residents admit they have been fighting back and some also express anti-Alawite sentiment. Activists and residents in Homs have reported the arming of Alawite villages, the use of Alawite gangs to crackdown on protests and checkpoints in Alawite areas. There are reports of Alawi gangs vandalising and intimidating people in Sunni areas. The security forces stood by and watched as the weekend’s violence unfolded, residents and activists said. The Local Co-ordination Committees of Syria, a group publicising the demonstrations, denied the attacks were sectarian, accusing the government of deliberately stirring tensions between Syria’s multifarious groups as a way of holding on to power. The regime has tried to rally support by warning Alawites, and other minorities, of attacks against them if it falls. One Alawi student in Damascus said he feared being forced to “return to my village”, referring to the Alawi villages around the coastal area. The International Crisis Group reported that some Alawi officials in the capital had already sent their families out of Damascus. “Syria has never had a history of sectarian strife,” said one analyst in Damascus. “But the government’s line can become a self-fulfilling prophecy and this fighting suggests a more violent turn to come. Revenge killings are on the up.” Attitudes to government do not divide neatly along sectarian lines. There are some Alawis who are anti-regime, just as there are Sunnis who support the government. In response to this weekend’s violence, some of the city’s Alawis wrote letters, now circulating online, apologising for the damage to the shops in Homs. The murky and increasingly violent nature of Syria’s uprising is complicated not only by the involvement of pro-regime gangs but also defecting soldiers. In Al Boukamal, on the border with Iraq, elite troops have been moved in after activists claimed 100 soldiers and army intelligence officers had defected to join protesters. Footage of protesters sitting on army vehicles circulated. The city’s proximity to Iraq and the easily availability of weapons is likely to be of concern to the regime, although it has been careful to avoid too many deaths and inflame the tribes in the area. Pro-government newspaper al-Watan described the army as intervening in the “explosive” city after state media agency Sana said three military intelligence officers were killed by insurgents on Friday. Reports from Hama suggest some of the civilian checkpoints have been removed after authorities agreed to release 50 protesters and stop raiding neighbourhoods. Nour Ali is the pseudonym of a journalist in Damascus Syria Arab and Middle East unrest Middle East guardian.co.uk
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Questions raised over whether Hamid Karzai’s power structure could collapse before western combat troops depart in 2014 The assassination of a close ally and mentor of Hamid Karzai a week after the killing of the president’s powerful half-brother has raised new questions over whether Afghanistan’s precarious power structure could collapse even before the departure of western combat troops in 2014. Jan Muhammad Khan was killed when two gunmen stormed his walled compound in Kabul on Sunday night, holding off Afghan security forces until Monday morning. The attackers also gunned down an MP from Khan’s home province, Uruzgan, before being killed themselves. The assassinations of the two powerful warlords, who once seemed unassailable, have caused widespread shock. Ahmed Shan Behsad, an Uruzgan MP, said: “These killings show the weakness of failure of Karzai’s politics. The situation is crisis. Karzai has lost control of the country.” The Taliban said they carried out the killing, but that could not be confirmed. It is also unclear whether they were behind the death last week of Ahmed Wali Karzai, the president’s half-brother, who was shot at close range by his own security chief at his home in Kandahar. A week on, explanations ranged from a vendetta over money to the possibility that the security chief had been “turned” by the Taliban in Pakistan. The two targets had much in common. Ahmed Wali was the president’s closest sibling and the mainstay of his support in Kandahar. Khan was described by some as a surrogate father to the Karzai brothers, and he held similar sway over Uruzgan. Both men were warlords who had built their power on force and were reported to have amassed fortunes from the drug trade. In the absence of more legitimate institutions, western forces had relied on them to help fight the Taliban. Ahmed Wali ran a paramilitary group called the Kandahar Strike Force, which co-operated with Nato special forces and the CIA. Khan, another member of the president’s Popolzai tribe, had left Uruzgan in 2006 on the insistence of Dutch troops unhappy with his drug-running, but his influence persisted. His nephew, Matiullah, runs a private army in Uruzgan that helps fight the Taliban and protects Nato convoys for cash. Khan was believed to have helped the US target suspected Taliban fighters – and his rivals. Thomas Ruttig of the Kabul-based Afghan Analysts Network wrote on Monday: “With his rivals, [Jan Muhammad Khan] dealt ruthlessly. He labelled them Taliban, and sent the special forces after them – who misinterpreted their mandate to support the ‘central government’ as supporting one man against his personal rivals and who appreciated his qualities as an effective Taliban hunter.” Two months ago a key Karzai ally in the north, police chief Muhammad Daoud Daoud, was killed in Takhar province by a Taliban suicide bomber who infiltrated a meeting between local officials and Nato officers. The spate of high-profile assassinations has come amid a string of other killings of figures within the country’s informal power structure – a network of establishment figures, warlords and drug-runners. Cumulatively, observers say, the killings have sapped Hamid Karzai’s political strength and undermined his ability to withstand a Taliban onslaught when western troops leave. Gerard Russell, a former British diplomat to Afghanistan, said: “The balance of power is being radically destabilised, and central government is losing any prospect of wielding authority. The targets are really the linchpins of the post-2001 security settlement, and they are being pulled out one by one. So it’s even more serious that it looks. Afghanistan has been built on building blocks like these.” Khan’s killing coincided with departure of General David Petraeus, the architect of Nato’s military strategy in Afghanistan, to become CIA director in Washington, and came a few hours after a ceremony on Sunday to mark the start of transition from Nato to Afghan-run security in the first Afghan province, Bamiyan. A similar handover will be marked this week in Lashkar Gah, the British-garrisoned administrative centre of Helmand province, where seven Afghan policemen were killed at a checkpoint on Monday. The transition is due to be completed by the end of 2014, when all western combat troops are due to have left. However, several observers said that the spate of killings of Karzai relatives and lieutenants raised doubts that the president’s authority would hold up that long. “The biggest thing is the psychological impact on Karzai losing two people very close to him and to the family,” Ruttig said. “In a system here that is very patronage-based, that he is not able to protect his closest allies will have consequences. People will hedge their bets, in case the Taliban come back one day. They will make deals so they can survive that. With the first western soldiers leaving there is an atmosphere of concern and fear. People sending their sons out of the country to study or giving money so smugglers can take them abroad … they don’t trust that the institutions are sustainable enough to survive.” Afghanistan Hamid Karzai Julian Borger guardian.co.uk
Continue reading …“Cut, Cap & Mangled”: Latest Dogmatic Right Wing Political Stunt from the House GOP
July 18, 2011 No CommentTo no one’s surprise, the overwhelming majority of people in this country do not like the crazy, extremist House GOP’s reckless handling of the ongoing default crisis. A CBS News poll came out today showing that only 21 percent of this nation backs the Republicans’ “handling” of default crisis-related negotiations. If the House GOP were led by rational actors who actually cared about the best interest of this country and operated on good faith, they would at this point drop their crazy posturing and get serious about accepting a deal that has already been tilted towards the right. But there is no chance. In fact, the House GOP is doubling down and ratcheting up the crazy. Last week they first trotted out a “balanced budget amendment” , which was basically a “Trojan horse to end Medicare” and other entitlement . Jon aptly described it as ” U.S. fiscal suicide ” back in March. They were making a lot of noise, hoping to bring that reckless piece of legislation to the floor this week. Well, they pulled the BBA off the docket late last week and instead are now planning to bring another dogmatic piece of wingnut legislation with the turd-polishing title of “cut, cap and balance” , which is described charitably by the Republico Politico as “a popular conservative plan to cut spending, balance the budget and put a cap on overall federal spending, the latest Republican attempt to lay down their marker in the debt ceiling debate.” The proposal currently has “little chance” of passing. This is nothing short of a cynical stunt to inject yet more Grover Norquist-blessed “ideologically extreme” policy points into the insane default crisis-related discussions. Let’s get into the craziness after the jump. As noted by Robert Greenstein from the Center on Budget and Political Priorities , this “cut, cap and balance” approach is more extreme than the crazy Paul Ryan plan that will end Medicare as we know it : The “Cut, Cap & Balance” measure cites three constitutional balanced-budget amendments (H.J. Res 1, S.J. Res 10, and H.J. Res 56) and states that Congress must approve one of them or a similar measure before the debt limit can be raised. All three of the cited proposals would require cuts deeper than those in the Ryan budget. All three measures would establish a constitutional requirement that total federal expenditures may not exceed 18 percent of GDP, and all three would essentially require that the budget be balanced within the coming decade. Mr. Greenstein also eviscerated the nonsense that the “cut, cup and balance” approach will not touch Social Security and Medicare : Talking points that the legislation’s proponents circulated on July 15 seek to foster an impression that the measure would protect Social Security and Medicare. Such an impression would not be accurate. The legislation would inexorably subject Social Security and Medicare to deep reductions. The measure does not cut Social Security or Medicare in 2012. And it does not subject them to automatic cuts if its global spending caps are missed. It is inconceivable, however, that policymakers would meet the bill’s severe annual spending caps through automatic across-the-board cuts year after year; if they did, key government functions would be crippled. Policymakers would have little alternative but to institute deep cuts in specific programs. And as noted elsewhere in this statement, before the debt limit could be raised, Congress would have to approve a constitutional balanced budget amendment that essentially requires cuts even deeper than those in the Ryan budget. Reaching and maintaining a balanced budget in the decade ahead while barring any tax increases would necessitate deep cuts in Social Security, Medicare, and Medicaid. After all, by 2021, total expenditures for these three programs will be nearly 45 percent greater than expenditures for all other programs (except interest payments) combined. Big cuts in these programs would be inevitable. Moreover, because taxes — including payroll taxes — would be virtually impossible to raise as a result of the new constitutional barrier, Social Security solvency would have to be restored entirely through benefit cuts. Balanced Social Security packages that include measures to raise Social Security’s $106,000 payroll tax cap, so that higher-income Americans do not escape the tax on much of their earnings, would effectively be ruled out. Michael Linden from Center from American Progress added: The last time the United States had spending this low was in 1966. Much has changed since then, which makes a federal budget at that level both impractical and undesirable. We are an older country, with more retirees receiving the Social Security and Medicare benefits they’ve earned during their working lives. Social Security benefits have been consciously increased to improve the quality of life for retirees. Health care costs have multiplied so providing Medicare, veterans’ care, and Medicaid is much more expensive. Education has become more costly, and government fuel costs have risen along with everyone else’s. How ugly is this proposal. Even the White House has been out in front today issuing a veto threat (via email): The Administration strongly opposes H.R. 2560, the “Cut, Cap and Balance Act of 2011.” Neither setting arbitrary spending levels nor amending the Constitution is necessary to restore fiscal responsibility. Increasing the Federal debt limit, which is needed to avoid a Federal government default on its obligations and a severe blow to the economy, should not be conditioned on taking these actions. Instead of pursuing an empty political statement and unrealistic policy goals, it is necessary to move beyond politics as usual and find bipartisan common ground. The bill would undercut the Federal Government’s ability to meet its core commitments to seniors, middle-class families and the most vulnerable, while reducing our ability to invest in our future. H. R. 2560 would set unrealistic spending caps that could result in significant cuts to education, research and development, and other programs critical to growing our economy and winning the future. It could also lead to severe cuts in Medicare and Social Security, which are growing to accommodate the retirement of the baby boomers, and put at risk the retirement security for tens of millions of Americans. Furthermore, H. R. 2560 could require even deeper cuts, since it conditions an increase in the Federal debt limit on Congressional passage of a Balanced Budget Amendment. H. R. 2560 sets out a false and unacceptable choice between the Federal Government defaulting on its obligations now or, alternatively, passing a Balanced Budget Amendment that, in the years ahead, will likely leave the Nation unable to meet its core commitment of ensuring dignity in retirement. The statement of administration policy concluded that “if the President were presented this bill for signature, he would veto it.” So, keep an eye on this story, because no doubt the House GOP and their extremist cronies are going to push it from all directions. If anyone within the Village bubble treat this proposal as some kind of serious package, it shouldn’t be too difficult to blow it up with facts. Then again, given how these default-crisis negotiations have been played out in a field so far stacked to the right, one often wonders whether facts, reason, or logic have anything to do with politics these days in Washington. P.S. One last note for today. In case you missed it, you may want to read up this piece in the Washington Post about how some of the most “fervent” budget cutting “deficit hawks are Republicans who also spend the most taxpayer money to push their crazy, dogmatic, and tone-deaf right wing political ideas masqueraded as policy points.
Continue reading …ABC, CBS and NBC All Skip NYT Revelations of Obama Falsehood on Mother’s Insurance Battles
July 18, 2011 No Comment
Is this, sadly, going to be the second campaign in a row where the so-called mainstream media will make a fetish of fact-checking the Republican candidates while ignoring the misstatements and gaffes of the Democratic candidates — of which there is now just one, President Barack Obama? Last week, as both Newsbusters and the MRC documented, the New York Times (Kevin Sack) published a lengthy piece on how the White House “declined to challenge” a new book by ex-Times reporter Janny Scott that documents how Obama “ mischaracterized a central anecdote about his mother’s deathbed dispute with her insurance company.” The broadcast networks — throughout the 2008 campaign and the President’s push for ObamaCare — repeatedly conveyed Obama’s claim that while his mother, Ann Dunham, was sick with terminal cancer, she had to fight with insurance companies to “pay for her treatment.” “I will never forget my own mother, as she fought cancer in her final months, having to worry about whether her insurance would refuse to pay for her treatment,” Obama told an August 11, 2009 town hall meeting in New Hampshire. But ABC, CBS and NBC have yet to mention Scott’s now-undisputed account, drawn from a review of Ms. Dunham’s correspondence with the insurance company: “Ann’s compensation for her job in Jakarta had included health insurance, which covered most of the costs of her medical treatment. Once she was back in Hawaii, the hospital billed her insurance company directly, leaving Ann only to pay the deductible and any uncovered expenses, which, she said, came to several hundred dollars a month.” On Thursday, NewsBuster Tom Blumer predicted : “Even though it punches a hole a mile wide in the President’s personal narrative justifying the passage of Obamacare, I don’t hold out much hope for seeing what [reporter Kevin] Sack reported at the [New York] Times or [The Blaze’s Christopher] Santarelli’s addendum elsewhere beyond the usual burial grounds at ABC’s Political Punch and the Politico , where stories the establishment press would rather not widely distribute seem to go and die.” Four days later, the early returns are in: Fox News and CNN have reported the revelations (see video), but ABC, CBS and NBC are no-shows on this story, despite numerous pieces in the past few weeks scoffing the supposed misstatements of the 2012 Republican candidates (or, in the case of Sarah Palin, a potential candidate). In the case of Palin’s recounting of Paul Revere’s ride, NBC Nightly News spent three straight weeknights challenging Palin’s account. After Michele Bachmann officially announced her candidacy last month, network reporters got in her face about her supposed misstatements, with CNN’s Kiran Chetry audaciously asking Bachmann: “Did you mean to make false statements intentionally or were you just misspeaking?” But none of these networks has found it worth correcting the record about Obama’s flawed tale about his mother’s battle with the insurance companies, one of his central selling points in his pitch to expand government’s role in health care. It’s not as if the media — the big three networks included — hadn’t served as a vehicle for Obama’s incorrect version of the story over the past several years. A sample: ■ From the September 21, 2007 Chicago Tribune (John McCormack): “Debuting his second new television ad in Iowa this week, Sen. Barack Obama is using an image of his deceased mother to try to make the case that he is the best qualified to bring change to the way the nation delivers health care…. ‘To fix health care, we have to fix Washington,’ Obama says in the ad, after explaining that his mother spent her final months ‘more worried about paying her medical bills than getting well.’” ■ From Obama’s August 28, 2008 speech to the Democratic convention, carried by all of the major networks: “As someone who watched my mother argue with insurance companies while she lay in bed dying of cancer, I will make certain those companies stop discriminating against those who are sick and need care the most.” ■ From the October 7, 2008 presidential debate, carried by all the networks: “For my mother to die of cancer at the age of 53 and have to spend the last months of her life in a hospital room, arguing with insurance companies because they’re saying that this may be a preexisting condition and they don’t have to pay her treatment, there’s something fundamentally wrong about that.” ■ From the July 29, 2009 Washington Post (Ceci Connolly): “The town-hall-style session at the AARP’s Washington headquarters was noteworthy for the human touch Obama applied. Fielding a question about insurance regulation, he spoke of his mother, Stanley Ann Dunham, who died in 1995, at age 52, of ovarian and uterine cancer…. “She had to spend weeks fighting with insurance companies while she’s in the hospital bed, writing letters back and forth just to get coverage for insurance that she had already paid premiums on. And that happens all across the country. We are going to put a stop to that.” ■ From CNN’s Campbell Brown, March 17, 2010 (Campbell Brown): “And he doesn’t do it often, but he did do it on Monday in Ohio. I just want to play that. He talked about his mom. Listen to this: [Clip of President Obama] ‘I’m here because of my own mother’s story. She died of cancer and in the last six months of her life, she was on the phone in her hospital room arguing with insurance companies instead of focusing on getting well and spending time with her family.’” ■ From NBC’s Today, November 27, 2010 (MSNBC political analyst Richard Wolffe): “When you ask, ‘Why did he want to risk his presidency on this? Why did he want to put so much on health care?’ You could see it when he signed the health care bill into law in the East Room, he got extremely emotional, fighting back the tears. A lot of that comes from his mother’s experience, struggling with insurance companies with terminal cancer. Those were the stories that really motivated him through campaigning for health care, and it comes down to that personal thing which I think is surprising for someone we all think of as being very cool and detached from politics.” Match those statements with what the New York Times reported , and what the White House does not dispute: In offering the story as an argument for ending pre-existing condition exclusions by health insurers, the president left the clear impression that his mother’s fight was over health benefits for medical expenses. But in “ A Singular Woman: The Untold Story of Barack Obama’s Mother ,” author Janny Scott quotes from correspondence from the president’s mother to assert that the 1995 dispute concerned a Cigna disability insurance policy and that her actual health insurer had apparently reimbursed most of her medical expenses without argument…. Ms. Scott writes that Mr. Obama’s mother, Ann Dunham, had an employer-provided health insurance policy that paid her hospital bills directly, leaving her “to pay only the deductible and any uncovered expenses, which, she said, came to several hundred dollars a month.” … Robert J. Blendon, a professor of health policy and political analysis at Harvard, said that if an alternate narrative about Ms. Dunham’s dispute had been discovered during the 2008 campaign “people would have considered it a significant error.” He added: “I just took for granted that it was a pre-existing condition health insurance issue.” That doesn’t sound like the kind of minor contradiction that the broadcast networks might leave to others to handle, but a major mistake worthy of coverage. Author Janny Scott has actually given a number of interviews since early May, but it took until mid-July for these revelations to get picked up. Scott was on NPR’s Fresh Air with Terry Gross back on May 3, and on PBS’s Charlie Rose June 7, but in neither case was she asked about what she learned about Ms. Dunham’s insurance vs. President Obama’s claims. Scott was also on MSNBC’s Hardball on May 3 to pitch her book, but host Chris Matthews only wanted to use her research to debunk birther conspiracies about where Obama was born: CHRIS MATTHEWS (Hardball, May 3): Let me ask you — as you did this book and working on getting ready for publication, with all that involves, what were you thinking of these birthers, these wackos out there, we are all questioning whether she actually existed the way we are watching her, actually had — American mother having an American kid and you knew it all as texturized reality, their absolute wall of truth of it and you`re listening to these jokers? What was your reaction to all of that? JANNY SCOTT: It was a little baffling, Chris….I talked to close to 200 people, not a single person ever mentioned any knowledge of Ann Dunham having spent any time in Kenya, around the time of the birth of her son. So, I felt pretty comfortable about that. When it resurfaced, a la Donald Trump, I have to say I was stunned, because I thought it was pretty much a settled issue. And when it continued, I went back and reconsidered all the evidence, and really came to the conclusion that you and everyone else had come to, that it was a classic conspiracy theory. And all evidence to the contrary that you think would convince people otherwise was simply viewed as further evidence of a conspiracy. It pretty much goes without saying, but if a Republican (Sarah Palin? Michele Bachmann?) had been exposed as wrong about such a central and emotional anecdote, the networks would have had a field day. But in the case of Barack Obama, the fastidious fact-checkers at ABC, CBS and NBC seem to have no interest in correcting the record.
Continue reading …Chechnya says energy drinks are un-Islamic and bans their sale to under-18s
July 18, 2011 No Comment
Chechnya’s health ministry says ‘un-Islamic’ energy drinks such as Red Bull are like beer and bans their sale to teenagers Chechnya is to ban the sale of energy drinks such as Red Bull to under 18s, saying they are un-Islamic and dangerous, health officials said on Monday. The ban would be the latest restriction from authorities in Chechnya, where shops can only sell alcohol during a small morning time frame, restaurants and cafes are shut during the Ramadan fasting month, and women must wear headscarves in state buildings. “Energy drinks are comparable to beer,” the deputy minister of health, Rukman Bartiyev, said, adding that they were harmful to health. The proposed ban was met with praise from the more conservative sectors of society, but angered ordinary Chechens who are growing increasingly frustrated at laws that only apply to Chechnya and sometimes contradict the Russian constitution. “There are just too many restrictions lately. We are building a small Islamic state in Russia that looks like Dubai,” said a Grozny resident who gave her name only as Aset, 41. A decade after Moscow drove separatists out of power in the second of two wars since the 1991 Soviet collapse, the Kremlin relies heavily on Chechnya’s strongman leader Ramzan Kadyrov to keep insurgents in check and maintain a shaky peace. But critics of the hardliner say he runs the republic of 1.1 million as a fiefdom, consolidating power by leading a violent crackdown on opponents and imposing his own vision of Islam, leading analysts to warn that Chechnya could move to autonomy once again. Chechnya Europe Islam Religion Ramadan guardian.co.uk
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