#3
That's about a mile from my childhood home in a lovely, older exurban neighborhood. Af quick google reveals the mosque just opened a few days ago. They are Shia Twelvers, apparently function in English and Urdu, and would be delighted to receive donations to help them pay off the mortgage. The building is attractive, with plenty of gilding on the domes and such. In my day they would have been medical and university people, but I can't say if that would still be so -- we left Buffalo in 1981.
If they're Pakistani Shiites, would they be as likely to have a jihadi connection?
Investors in Greek debt may have to write-off 50pc of their loans "or more" if financial stability is to be restored to the beleaguered country, a leading rating agency warned.
Standard & Poor's said that "there is increased risk that Greece will take steps to restructure" its 110bn (£97bn) bail-out package which would result in a "distressed exchange" for bondholders.
At the same time, the rating agency cut Greece's credit rating from BB- to B, dragging its debt further into junk territory to reflect its more gloomy views.
Greece hit back at the downgrade, angrily denying any imminent restructuring. The Greek finance ministry said that there have been "no new developments or decisions since the last rating action" by S&P a month ago so the agency's views were "not justified."
In a statement, the ministry added: "Decisions by ratings agencies must be based on objective data, policy makers' announcements and realistic assessments on the conditions facing an economy... When such decisions are based simply on rumours, their validity is seriously cast in doubt".
The fresh fears were sparked after it emerged over the weekend that secret talks had taken place in Luxembourg on Friday between Athens and some of the key European financial leaders. Rumours quickly spread that Greece had said it will not be able to raise 22bn by next year to meet its repayment schedule and was seeking a re-negotiation of the rescue package.
#4
If Greek finances don't stabilize, foreign investors in Greek debt will write off 100% of their loans. Greek finances shows an extremely low probability of stablizing. S&P ratings reflect this. Greek anger is about being found out.
It does not take a lot of deductive reasoning to figure out why France's President Nicolas Sarkozy was so eager to lead a coalition of nations in the "liberation" of Libya. Realpolitik may have played a far greater role than matters of the heart in the case for intervention. The politically disastrous prospect of tens of thousands of North African and Sub-Saharan migrants pouring into France is untenable from Sarkozy's perspective, given the electoral threat posed by the country's far-right. For the same reason it is also clear why Italy's Prime Minister Silvio Berlusconi was compelled to join the Western chorus protesting Libyan aggression against its citizens, even though the Prime Minister has long enjoyed a cozy relationship with Col. Muammar Gaddafii. African migration is the bete noire
See how clever that is? 'Cause noire means black, get it?
of Europe and migrants of every shade are boogeymen to be feared. However, Sub-Saharan Africans and Muslims, according to a multitude of polls on European attitudes toward immigration, are especially feared.
Too many of the ones previously migrated to Europe are causing problems. More to the point, no society can look with equanimity upon the native population being swallowed up by a tsunami of newcomers, even were they of the same hue and culture.
#2
The "bete noire" problem is not found in Japan, unless of course, you are not Japanese. Thinking a bit outside the box so to speak, could it be the general absence of Jackass Penguins in Kansas City has it's roots in something larger than migratory habits?
#3
The French have long memories. They have never recovered from the Frankish invasion and takeover of their country, and don't want anything like that to ever happen again.
#5
Somebody a while back had told me that by reaching Spain, Spaing having a policy similar to Cubans reaching Florida, they could get their Spanish ID which allows for travel within the entire EU, and I have not been able to confirm or deny this claim.
We come from the land of the rocks and sands
From the crescent moon and wipe shit with hands
The holler of allan will blow our boats to new lands
To cover the whores, collect our welfare: Marseille, we are coming!
#1
Personally believe that we're seeing Romney articles everywhere because the MSM is trying to "help" choose the next GOP nominee. If we run RomneyCare against ObamaCare then the fight against ObamaCare is over, and we lost it.
#3
I like Romney and would vote for him over Obama.
But I think Iblis is right: they're trying to do in 2012 what they did in 2008, which was resurrect McCain as the nominee precisely because they thought that Bambi (or Hilde) could beat him.
Posted by: Steve White ||
05/10/2011 21:43 Comments ||
Top||
The usual long and thorough analysis put out by the Stratford team. Herewith an excerpt:
This proved the breakpoint between the two sides. The Americans accepted the principle of Pakistani duplicity, but drew a line at al Qaeda. The Pakistanis understood American sensibilities but didnt want to incur the domestic risks of going too far. This psychological breakpoint cracked open on Osama bin Laden, the Holy Grail of American strategy and the third rail of Pakistani policy.
Under normal circumstances, this level of tension of institutionalized duplicity should have blown the U.S.-Pakistani relationship apart, with the United States simply breaking with Pakistan. It did not, and likely will not for a simple geopolitical reason, one that goes back to the 1990s. In the 1990s, when the United States no longer needed to support an intensive covert campaign in Afghanistan, it depended on Pakistan to manage Afghanistan. Pakistan would have done this anyway because it had no choice: Afghanistan was Pakistans backdoor, and given tensions with India, Pakistan could not risk instability in its rear. The United States thus did not have to ask Pakistan to take responsibility for Afghanistan.
The United States is now looking for an exit from Afghanistan. Its goal, the creation of a democratic, pro-American Afghanistan able to suppress radical Islamism in its own territory, is unattainable with current forces and probably unattainable with far larger forces. Gen. David Petraeus, the architect of the Afghan strategy, has been nominated to become the head of the CIA. With Petraeus departing from the Afghan theater, the door is open to a redefinition of Afghan strategy. Despite Pentagon doctrines of long wars, the United States is not going to be in a position to engage in endless combat in Afghanistan. There are other issues in the world that must be addressed. With bin Ladens death, a plausible (if not wholly convincing) argument can be made that the mission in AfPak, as the Pentagon refers to the theater, has been accomplished, and therefore the United States can withdraw.
No withdrawal strategy is conceivable without a viable Pakistan. Ideally, Pakistan would be willing to send forces into Afghanistan to carry out U.S. strategy. This is unlikely, as the Pakistanis dont share the American concern for Afghan democracy, nor are they prepared to try directly to impose solutions in Afghanistan. At the same time, Pakistan cant simply ignore Afghanistan because of its own national security issues, and therefore it will move to stabilize it.
The United States could break with Pakistan and try to handle things on its own in Afghanistan, but the supply line fueling Afghan fighting runs through Pakistan. The alternatives either would see the United States become dependent on Russia an equally uncertain line of supply or on the Caspian route, which is insufficient to supply forces. Afghanistan is war at the end of the Earth for the United States, and to fight it, Washington must have Pakistani supply routes.
The United States also needs Pakistan to contain, at least to some extent, Taliban sanctuaries in Pakistan. The United States is stretched to the limit doing what it is doing in Afghanistan. Opening a new front in Pakistan, a country of 180 million people, is well beyond the capabilities of either forces in Afghanistan or forces in the U.S. reserves. Therefore, a U.S. break with Pakistan threatens the logistical foundation of the war in Afghanistan and poses strategic challenges U.S. forces cannot cope with.
The American option might be to support a major crisis between Pakistan and India to compel Pakistan to cooperate with the United States. However, it is not clear that India is prepared to play another round in the U.S. game with Pakistan. Moreover, creating a genuine crisis between India and Pakistan could have two outcomes. The first involves the collapse of Pakistan, which would create an India more powerful than the United States might want. The second and more likely outcome would see the creation of a unity government in Pakistan in which distinctions between secularists, moderate Islamists and radical Islamists would be buried under anti-Indian feeling. Doing all of this to deal with Afghan withdrawal would be excessive, even if India played along, and could well prove disastrous for Washington.
Ultimately, the United States cannot change its policy of the last 10 years. During that time, it has come to accept what support the Pakistanis could give and tolerated what was withheld. U.S. dependence on Pakistan so long as Washington is fighting in Afghanistan is significant; the United States has lived with Pakistans multitiered policy for a decade because it had to. Nothing in the capture of bin Laden changes the geopolitical realities. So long as the United States wants to wage or end a war in Afghanistan, it must have the support of Pakistan to the extent that Pakistan is prepared to provide support. The option of breaking with Pakistan because on some level it is acting in opposition to American interests does not exist.
This is the ultimate contradiction in U.S. strategy in Afghanistan and even the so-called war on terror as a whole. The United States has an absolute opposition to terrorism and has waged a war in Afghanistan on the questionable premise that the tactic of terrorism can be defeated, regardless of source or ideology. Broadly fighting terrorism requires the cooperation of the Muslim world, as U.S. intelligence and power is inherently limited. The Muslim world has an interest in containing terrorism, but not the absolute concern the United States has. Muslim countries are not prepared to destabilize their countries in service to the American imperative. This creates deeper tensions between the United States and the Muslim world and increases the American difficulty in dealing with terrorism or with Afghanistan.
The United States must either develop the force and intelligence to wage war without any assistance which is difficult to imagine given the size of the Muslim world and the size of the U.S. military or it will have to accept half-hearted support and duplicity. Alternatively, it could accept that it will not win in Afghanistan and will not be able simply to eliminate terrorism. These are difficult choices, but the reality of Pakistan drives home that these, in fact, are the choices.
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.
Outside an Amherst, NY home, a sign reads, "Bomb making next driveway".
