#3
Well, look at what he implies: that the free market is the cause of the whole mess, a failure, and those who believe otherwise are merely choosing ideology over pragmatism.
Please consider that people like him have made a _lot_ of money from the bicoastal socialists' assault on real physical industry in this country and the subsequent exporting of it overseas.
And that CHina's whole business plan is based on our hobbling industries at home while at the same time still being able to afford to buy all its junk.
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Finally, he says he saw all this coming. He's in a position of authority. If he really did see all this coming, why did his country's institutions lose so much money?
#4
There's an old saying about lenders: If you owe $10,000 they own you, if you owe $1,000,000 you own them.
Asia's problem is that their economies are based on cheap exports. Selling dollars increases the relative values of their currencies and makes their exports more expensive. This is poarticularly bad when demand is falling and there is excess capacity.
What's bad for the U.S. is that there will be that there will be fewer dollars out there to buy U.S. "stimulus" debt, which will either force up interest rates or force the fed to monetize the stimulus.
#5
Woozie - my point is echoed in the other comments - basically, how well will the rest of the world compete when we match up recessions/contractions? What countries/systems are best able to deal with downturns and recoverys?
Granted, there are endless ways for our political leadership to mess things up, as they proved repeatedly during the depression and more recently the seventies. But, so far we've been able to choose other political leaders, other economic strategies with general free market guidelines, and similar alternative actions - aside from a select few democracies, who else can match that?
WASHINGTON: Whenever New Delhi points a finger at Pakistan in the aftermath of a terrorist attack in India, a weary world seems to say, Here we go again! The old enmity between the two countries can tire spectators who often quickly dismiss Indian accusations of Pakistani malfeasance as little other than political recriminations. Yet, the latest terrorist assault in Bombay involving 10 coordinated strikes that killed close to 200 and the capture of a Pakistani terrorist, Azam Amir Kasab, from Faridkot leaves no doubt about the authenticity of the Indian charge. Whether or not the carnage in Bombay is Indias 9/11, the information now available abundantly confirms that it was not the act of domestic malcontents another Oklahoma City.
The West would do well to take notice that this bloodbath was not the work of homegrown militants aggrieved by Indias failure to integrate its Muslim minority but of the most dangerous Pakistani terrorist group, Lashkar-e-Taiba (LeT), whose wider goals threaten not only secular India but also the West and even Pakistan itself.
The early conclusion that the attack in Bombay was the work of disaffected domestic protesters was arguably consoling because, if true, the threat to the international community would indeed be minimal. Moreover, the contention that New Delhis terrorism problem is largely domestic marginalizes the extent of foreign primarily Pakistani involvement in Indias million mutinies and accentuates the centrality of the unsettled dispute over Kashmir.
These inferences are false. As is now clear, the atrocity in Bombay was not masterminded by internal subversives even if there were individual Indian participants. The meticulous planning, the enormous resources committed to a complex mission across great distances and long periods of time, and the burdens of a difficult sea-land operation, rule out virtually every indigenous terrorist group in India, Muslim or otherwise. The attacks involved months of training in Pakistan and extensive reconnaissance of targets in Bombay; after these were complete, the terrorists appear to have left Karachi by as yet unknown means, hijacked a fishing trawler on the high seas and, upon reaching Indias territorial waters, transferred to inflatable speedboats which landed at two different locations on the city shores from whence the assaults began. No domestic terrorist group has previously demonstrated the capacity to undertake anything as complicated and it would indeed be shocking if any did acquire such capacity unbeknownst to Indian or Western intelligence.
All evidence points to LeT as the perpetrators of the killings in Bombay conducted under the nom de guerre Deccan Mujahideen and reflecting its classic modus operandi: suicidal attacks, but not suicide, involving small squads of highly-armed individuals, intent on inflicting the largest numbers of casualties at symbolic sites. Such violence is emphatically not directed at remedying the grievances of Indias Muslims or resolving the dispute over Kashmir. Although LeT has long operated in the disputed state of Kashmir, its not a Kashmiri organization. Rather, it consists primarily of Pakistani Punjabis financed, trained, armed and abetted by the Pakistani intelligence service, the Inter-Services Intelligence (ISI) a product of the latters war against the Indian state dating back to the late 1980s.
LeTs objectives from the beginning have had less to do with Kashmir and more to do with India and beyond. To begin with, Indias achievement in becoming a peaceful, prosperous, multi-ethnic and secular democracy remains an affront to LeTs vision of a universal Islamist Caliphate begotten through tableegh, or preaching, and jihad. Further, Indias collaboration with the United States and the West in general against terrorism has marked it as a part of what LeT calls the detestable American-Zionist-Hindu axis that must be confronted by force. Finally, New Delhis emergence as a rising global power represents an impediment to LeTs objective of, in the words of its leader, Hafiz Saeed, recovering lost Muslim lands that once spanned much of Asia and Europe.
Given this ideology, the LeT attack is an attempt to cripple Indias economic growth, destroy national confidence in its political system, attack its open society and provoke destabilizing communal rivalries, all while sending a message that India will remain an adversary because its successes make it a hindrance to LeTs larger cause. In this context, the struggle over Kashmir is merely instrumental. To quote Saeed, Kashmir is merely a gateway to capture India en route to LeTs other targets.
Such statements are not simply grandstanding. Outside of Al Qaeda, LeT today represents the most important South Asian terrorist group of global reach. With recruitment, fundraising and operations extending to Afghanistan, Iraq, Central Asia, Europe, Africa and Australia, LeT has rapidly become a formidable threat.
Washingtons concern with Al Qaeda, however justified, should not obscure the reality of other terrorist groups in South Asia that seek to promote obscurantist versions of Islam by attacking democratic societies. The US also ought not to be diverted by spurious analyses that link the carnage in Bombay to the complaints of Indias Muslims however genuine those may be. Whatever their grievances, the Indian Muslim resentment against the Bombay attacks was most clearly exemplified by the refusal of every Muslim cemetery to accept the bodies of the slain terrorists for burial.
The incoming Obama administration should also not be distracted by calls to interject itself in resolving the Kashmir problem, because as Saeed had publicly declared in an interview in 2001, Our struggle will continue even if Kashmir is liberated. We still have to take revenge for East Pakistan. Obviously, this vendetta seems never ending. Saeed had given notice in 1999 that jihad is not about Kashmir only. About fifteen years ago, people might have found it ridiculous if someone told them about the disintegration of the USSR. Today, I announce the break-up of India, Insha-Allah. We will not rest until the whole (of) India is dissolved into Pakistan.
The barbarity in Bombay thus represents the ugly face of Islamist terrorism that threatens India, the US and its allies, and the larger international system, but fundamentally also Pakistan. Saeed has unequivocally declared that the Lashkar intends to plant the flag of Islam in Washington, Tel Aviv and New Delhi. However absurd it might sound, his words could launch thousands of zealots to commit horrible crimes worldwide. Consequently, the US cannot avoid the burden of confronting Islamabad to rid itself of this group and other menacing outfits that utilize its territory for loathsome ends. Arresting one or two of the alleged masterminds, as Pakistan has now done in the face of US pressure, simply will not do: rather, the entire organization must be targeted and put out of business permanently.
A good way to begin this process would be for the outgoing Bush administration to publicly declare what it already knows to be the case: that LeT planned and executed the deadly attacks in Bombay. In any event, its in Pakistans own interest to confront LeTs destructive ideology and subterranean links with the ISI. Such an affray ought not to be precipitated because the US or India demand it, but because it is essential to the success of the civilian governments own objective of transforming Pakistan.
No matter what Pakistan does, the US has to be clear-sighted about the global nature of the LeT threat and together with India and other allies take resolute measures to defeat this newest challenge.
Ashley J. Tellis is a senior associate at the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace.
Posted by: john frum ||
12/13/2008 07:26 ||
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US Senator John McCain is the fourth top American official to descend on Islamabad in one week on the heels of Admiral Mike Mullen, Chairman US Joint Chiefs of Staff Committee, Miss Condoleezza Rice, US secretary of state, and Mr Richard Boucher, US assistant secretary of state for South Asia. Their joint message is that there is "incontrovertible" evidence of the "definite involvement" of Pakistan-based jihadi groups in general and the Lashkar-e-Tayba in particular in the terrorist attack on Mumbai. The sole surviving hard boy is a Pak. His Mom and Dad live in Pakistain. He was a member of LeT and LeT -- at least -- trained him and sent him on his way with the help of parts of the Pak navy, whether officially or unofficially. Other than that there's not much to tie Pak to the attacks except for the other nine turbans, who're now beyond all cares and woe so they can't be made to blab.
If the government of Pakistan does not take "credible action" against the actors involved, says Senator McCain, India will be constrained to lash out with the implicit "understanding" of the international community. Apparently, the Indians and Americans will not be satisfied by the sort of "sham action" taken by General Pervez Musharraf after the jihadi attack on the Indian parliament in December 2001 when scores of workers and activists of hard-line religious parties and groups were hauled up in a great public show of "will" by the state and then quietly released over a period of months. "The cat and mouse game played by Pakistan and America during the Musharraf-Bush years won't work any more", said Senator McCain.
This statement puts paid to the position adopted by President Zardari that no such credible evidence has been shown to Pakistan so far. What he means is that the government of Pakistan is not willing or able to act against the non-state actors identified by New Delhi and Washington. Unfortunately, however, Pakistan's position is weak for several reasons. First, many local jihadi and sectarian groups make no secret of their continuing hostility towards "Hindu India". Indeed, some flaunt it openly in their magazines, pamphlets and public sermons and declarations. For example, Masood Azhar, the leader of the Jaish-e-Mohammad, actually took credit publicly for the attack on the Indian parliament in 2001 until he was told by his agency handlers to shut up and disappear.
Second, President Zardari's recent statement that "non-state actors want a war between Pakistan and India" is an admission of culpability since most non-state actors of repute in the region are based in Pakistan in pursuit of the Pakistani military's national security objectives in the region.
Third, the contradictory position adopted by Pakistanis on the issue of "Islamist terrorism" is evidence of guilt in the eyes of the world. For instance, we cannot say that neo-con America carried out the 9/11 attacks in order to create a pretext to attack Iraq and Afghanistan, and also claim in the same breath that "America had it coming" because of its imperialist and unjust policies in the Muslim world. In the case of 9/11, the remarkable thing is that both Osama bin Laden and Ayman al Zawahiri have proudly and publicly "owned" the attack not once but several times even as most Pakistanis fervently insist that they didn't do it! In the case of India, the incompetence of its police and security services is excuse enough for most Pakistanis to make the contradictory claim that no Pakistani non-state actor was involved because such sophistication and audacity could only have been manufactured internally by the Indian intelligence services in their devious agenda to break up Pakistan. Of course, the Indian media's outraged rush to judgment had many holes in it but this is not reason enough for its Pakistani counterpart to build self-righteous edifices of innocence.
What are the options for Pakistan, India and the US-led international community in the wake of the Mumbai attacks? The options for all except Pakistan are laid down by their democratically elected respective governments. There are two reasons for this.
(1) There are no armed non-state actors there
(2) The military there has no autonomy and obeys the democratically elected civilian government of the day.
Our military IS the state and not just an organ of the state; our military fashions national security policy; and our civilian leaders and regimes can challenge its supremacy only at their own peril, as we saw in the 1990s, and again recently when the Zardari government tried to wrest control of the political wing of the ISI from the military.
But in Pakistan's case, this is not so. Our military IS the state and not just an organ of the state; our military fashions national security policy; and our civilian leaders and regimes can challenge its supremacy only at their own peril, as we saw in the 1990s, and again recently when the Zardari government tried to wrest control of the political wing of the ISI from the military. In the current situation, Pakistan's military doesn't want to hold any non-state actors accountable for the Mumbai attacks and the Zardari government cannot do anything about it, whatever the evidence.
A glimpse into the military's position was recently afforded when un-named military officials told the media that in the event of a war with India the Pakistani army would be withdrawn from the tribal areas and rushed to the eastern front while the "patriotic Taliban" would be welcomed to assist the national effort. This amounts to saying that the "war against terror" in the tribal areas is not Pakistan's war, despite the civilian government's ownership of it as "Pakistan's war".
Therefore concerned Pakistanis should have no illusions about Pakistan's ominous descent into chaos. This is reckless thinking on the part of Pakistan's civil-military leadership. It should be concerned about getting the state to function properly and Pakistanis to prosper instead of showing wounded pride and misplaced self-righteousness. International censure, sanctions and isolation are the first steps on the way to being declared a rogue state and dealt with accordingly.
This article starring:
MASUD AZHAR
Jaish-e-Mohammad
Posted by: john frum ||
12/13/2008 00:00 ||
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#1
I'd be staying the hell away from Islamabad or Deli, but that's just me.
#4
the ISI hit the Snooze button. Don't hold yer breath
Posted by: Frank G ||
12/13/2008 10:34 Comments ||
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#5
"they can't be made to blab"
Unfortunately for Pakistan, they can. All 9 bodies have been identified and all 9 are from Pakistan. 4 are from the same village as Mr. Kasab.
Posted by: Frozen Al ||
12/13/2008 11:33 Comments ||
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#6
Let me translate:
Beware, O Pakistanis! O Lions of Islam, take heed! For the kufrs of the West, the Americans, and the kufrs of the East, the Indians, have noted your plots and your practices, and they will be the left and right hands of Allah to punish you for it!
We call ourselves The Land of the Pure, and we arrogate to ourselves the rewards that Mohammed (PBUH) received. But Allah sees that we are not what we claim, and that we deserve not that which we dream of. He will allow the kufr to destroy us, even to the smallest mud-walled compound in the wilds of the tribal territories, do we not give up our arrogant and war-like ways.
Beware and take heed, my brothers! Take heed and beware!
#8
We don't have to do anything except tell India that we've no objection whatsoever to them dismantling "the land of the pure" and repairing the mistake of 15 August 1947. If the Indians drive the current inhabitants of that area before them like sheep before a prairie fire and they all move by the millions into Iran, thus drowning that country's infrastructure in a sea of refugees, so much the better. It's a win-win for all the good guys!
#9
they will be the left and right hands of Allah to punish you for it!
I personally love the idea that Allah would use the infidel Hindus, Christians and Jews as his intrument to show his Muslim children the error of their ways. But then I'm a big fan of irony.
Notwithstanding widespread hopes that US President-Barack Obama will save the Middle East from itself, it is increasingly evident that it might will be beyond anyone's powers to soon repair the damage wrought by eight years of George W. Bush. Regardless of how committed Obama may (or may not) prove to be, the fact remains that many of the conditions necessary for a resolution of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict are neither present nor close at hand. The Hamas-Fatah feud makes one side too divided to either negotiate a full and fair agreement or properly implement one, and Israel's voters apparently feel so guilty at having been led by Ehud Olmert that they look set to engage in mass self-flagellation by electing Benjamin Netanyahu, an avowed foe of the entire peace process. All of this threatens to extend the Palestinians' seemingly interminable season of dispossession.
My own unease over this state of affairs is piqued by the evident satisfaction that some commentators - particularly American neoconservatives but also some of their fellow travelers in the Middle East - are taking at something that ought to unnerve any reasonable individual. These suggest (as they always have) that Arabs don't (and shouldn't) care all that much about the Palestinian cause, argue tacitly that peace is not even worth pursuing until Arab states have democratized, and peddle the familiar line that Hamas is irrevocably hostile to a negotiated solution.
To be fair, the records of the neocons and their minions make such positions virtually unavoidable unless they are to abandon even the pretense of consistency. Their cheerleading for George W. Bush's illegal and immoral war in Iraq leaves no option but to deny the Palestinians their rights until each of their cousins has had a Magna Carta moment. And their ritual denunciations of political Islam, absent similar scorn for things like Christian fundamentalism and Zionism, close all avenues but those leading to a classic Catch-22: The Arabs have to embrace democracy soon or the Islamists will take over, but if the Arabs embrace democracy, the Islamists will take over even sooner.
Continued on Page 49
Posted by: Fred ||
12/13/2008 00:00 ||
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#1
Odious, gigantic genocidal despotism (Iraq) eliminated, consensual democratic base laid in its stead.
Libyan kooks intimidated into abandoning WMD madness.
Gaza evacuated. Palestinian elections held. One billionth forthcoming chance offered to Palestinians to make something of the situation.
Boy, that's some "damage" and "lethal legacy".
Not that it's the first time it's occurred to me, obviously, but the depth of detachment from reality, and the moral inversion, of people like this author are astonishing. Borrowing one of Steyn's phrases, it's now looking like "Israel Alone," thanks to the ascent of the empty one in the US.
#2
The only way to make peace with Arabs is to make a solitude and call it peace. At present it's impractical due to "World Opinion". However, with the coming worldwide depression (one that'll compare to the "Great Depression" like WWII compared to the "Great War"), "World Opinion" will too busy with other things to worry about uppity Jews. And George, the mental titan, certainly bears responsibility for that happening on his watch. S0 you see Mark, at least for Arab-Israeli conflict, his legacy is good.
#3
Marc J. Sirois is managing editor of THE DAILY STAR (Lebanon).
so, Marc, as usual, it's all the Joooos faults and Boosh for imposing consequences for the Paleo behavior. Damn them! Bias and loud-mouthed ignorance, the hallmark of journalism
Posted by: Frank G ||
12/13/2008 10:39 Comments ||
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#4
I hope the writer is correct about Israel choosing Netanyahu in February. I had great hopes for Kadimah under Ariel Sharon, but...
#5
The Hamas-Fatah feud makes one side too divided to either negotiate a full and fair agreement or properly implement one,
The writer's premise, and I think Obama's as well, is that there is any desire on the part of the palestinians for a full and fair agreement. I wonder how long they will cling to that belief and what the cost will be.
#6
The only people Hamas would rather kill than Fatah is Jews. Paleos are like Orcs; they hate each other to the death, but have no qualm whatsoever about joining together to fight, and if possible kill, anyone less foul than them. Which just happens to be anyone that isn't Paleo.
A multi-volume chronology and reference guide set detailing three years of the Mexican Drug War between 2010 and 2012.
Rantburg.com and borderlandbeat.com correspondent and author Chris Covert presents his first non-fiction work detailing
the drug and gang related violence in Mexico.
Chris gives us Mexican press dispatches of drug and gang war violence
over three years, presented in a multi volume set intended to chronicle the death, violence and mayhem which has
dominated Mexico for six years.
Rantburg was assembled from recycled algorithms in the United States of America. No
trees were destroyed in the production of this weblog. We did hurt some, though. Sorry.
