Justastory

This disturbing article from the Washington Post, which consistently knocks British papers into a cocked hat for the quality of its reportage, shows that Mexican drug gangs have become a force powerful enough to subvert the progress of democracy in Central America.

SAN SALVADOR — Drug cartel violence in Mexico is quickly spilling south into Central America and is threatening to destabilize fragile countries already rife with crime and corruption, according to the United Nations, U.S. officials and regional law enforcement agents.

The Northern Triangle of Central America — Guatemala, El Salvador and Honduras — has long been a major smuggling corridor for contraband heading to the United States. But as Mexican President Felipe Calderón fights a U.S.-backed war against his nation’s drug lords, trafficking networks are burrowing deeper into a region with the highest murder rates in the world.

The Mexican cartels “are spreading their horizons to states where they feel, quite frankly, more comfortable. These governments in Central America face a very real challenge in confronting these organizations,” said David Gaddis, chief of operations for the U.S. Drug Enforcement Administration.

U.S. attention has mostly focused on Mexico. But the homicide rate there — 14 for every 100,000 residents — is dwarfed by the murder statistics in the Northern Triangle, where per-capita killings are four times higher and rising.

In El Salvador, the region’s most violent country, homicides jumped 37 percent last year, to 71 murders per 100,000 residents, as warring gangs vied for territory and trafficking routes. Police and military officials in El Salvador said cartels are increasingly paying local smugglers in product, rather than cash, driving up cocaine use and the drug dealing and turf battles that come with it.

“The more pressure there is in Mexico, the more the drug cartels will come to Central America looking for a safe haven,” Gen. David Munguía Payés, El Salvador’s defense minister, said in an interview here.

The amount of cocaine moving through the region has risen sharply, although the overall volume entering the United States is falling. Cocaine seizures in Central America nearly quadrupled between 2004 and 2007, according to the most recent U.N. data.

The United States has allocated $258 million in anti-narcotics assistance for Central America since 2007 as part of the three-year, $1.6 billion Merida Initiative. But a report this month by the Government Accountability Office found that only 9 percent of the money promised under the initiative has been spent and that U.S. officials had no reliable way to determine whether it was making a difference in the drug war.

‘A paradise for criminals’

In remote, lawless regions of Guatemala, the Mexican organized crime syndicate known as the Zetas is setting up training camps and recruiting elite ex-soldiers to serve as assassins, arming them with weapons diverted from the country’s military arsenals.

Last month, four human heads were left near the Guatemalan Congress and elsewhere in the capital. The national police spokesman, Donald González, said the grisly display was the work of the Zetas and other Mexican traffickers.

“Guatemala has become a paradise for criminals, who have little to fear from prosecutors owing to high levels of impunity,” the International Crisis Group, a conflict research organization, said in a June report. “High-profile assassinations and the government’s inability to reduce murders have produced paralyzing fear, a sense of helplessness and frustration.”

Over the past two years, Guatemala’s top anti-narcotics official, two national police chiefs and the former president have been arrested on charges related to drug trafficking or corruption. Two former interior ministers are fugitives. In May, the Guatemalan president appointed, then removed after international protests, an attorney general who U.N. prosecutors say has ties to mobsters.

In Honduras, where a military coup last year toppled the president, Mexican cartels have established command-and-control centers to orchestrate cocaine shipments by sea and air along the still-wild Caribbean coast, often with the help of local authorities, according to DEA and U.N. officials. Ten anti-narcotics officers were caught smuggling 142 kilos of cocaine last July. In December, Honduras’s drug czar, Gen. Julián Arístides González, was killed after trying to shut down clandestine landing strips (more…)

I loved this story well put together by Tom Lamont in the Observer this weekend. My keep-fit-mad 17 year old son is a prime candidate for this US survivalist stuff. Hand him an AK47 and wait until you see the whites of their eyes.

Abandon any notion of surviving the apocalypse by doing anything as boringly obvious as running for the highest hill, or eating cockroaches. The American firm Vivos is now offering you the chance to meet global catastrophe (caused by terrorism, tsunami, earthquake, volcano, pole shift, Iran, “social anarchy”, solar flare – a staggering list of potential world-murderers are considered) in style.

Vivos is building 20 underground “assurance of life” resorts across the US, capable of sustaining up to 4,000 people for a year when the earth no longer can. The cost? A little over £32,000 a head, plus a demeaning-sounding screening test that determines whether you are able to offer meaningful contribution to the continuation of the human race. Company literature posits, gently, that “Vivos may prove to be the next Genesis”, and they are understandably reluctant to flub the responsibility.

Should you have the credentials and the cash, the rewards of a berth in a Vivos shelter seem high. Each staffed complex has a decontamination shower and a jogging machine; a refrigerated vault for human DNA and a conference room with wheely chairs. There are TVs and radios, flat-screen computers, a hospital ward, even a dentist’s surgery ready to serve those who forgot to pack a toothbrush in the hurry. “Virtually any meal” can be cooked from a stockpile of ingredients that includes “baked potato soup” but, strangely, no fish, tinned or otherwise. Framed pictures of mountain ranges should help ease the loss of a world left behind.

Vivos says it has already received 1,000 applications. (more…)

Kathryn Bigelow has always been one of my favourite film makers ever since Strange Days – a film I would most highly recommend to anyone who hasn’t yet seen it. I was delighted to hear she won an Oscar today, the first woman to win Best Director. My son has just got The Hurt Locker for us to watch – which is why this piece from the New York Times particularly caught my eye today. It kind of speaks for itself– written by Michael Jernigan, a man who knows.

I was eager to see “The Hurt Locker” since it is one of the first movies about my war.
I found it very interesting. I saw a lot of reality there. I have seen and dealt with, to a limited extent, the addiction to adrenaline. I do not know of anyone who loved it more than their wife and child, but I do know that it can be extremely addictive. Jumping out of an airplane affords great odds of survival. Combat or disarming a bomb does not afford such great odds. Your body will react similarly but with more intensity. When this occurs daily or more than once daily your body craves it like a drug addict craves a drug. I found the movie entertaining, but given my experience, I imagine it was scary to me on a different level than most.

War movies in general are great for what they are: entertainment. I grew up in the 1980s and saw almost all of the good war movies of that time. I was in the theater for “Full Metal Jacket” and have a copy of “Platoon” at home. I own “The Boys in Company C,” “Kelly’s Heroes,” “Sands of Iwo Jima” and a few others. Like I said, they are good entertainment. But of course there is a darker side.
These movies glorify a situation that has no real glory in it. Turn to one of your relatives or friends who has been in combat and ask them what they think of war. I am sure that they will tell you that it is scary, gruesome and requires extreme intestinal fortitude. There are no Sgt. Strykers or Gunny Highways in the real Corps. We don’t have a director who can step in when all hell is breaking loose and yell, “Cut!”
I joined the Marine Corps because I was looking for a way to get my life on track. My grandfather did 28 years in the Corps (Korea and Vietnam) and my father did eight years in the Corps (Vietnam), then 13 in the Army. When I was given the opportunity to go to war in Iraq I was as happy as you can imagine. That was what I grew up watching in the movies. I wanted to be my own “Animal Mother” (see: “Full Metal Jacket”).
When I got to Iraq I soon learned that it was not the movies. In my first few weeks we drove over an I.E.D. We caught the guys as they were driving away by riddling their car with bullets from machine guns and few M-16’s. The driver was struck twice and the passenger was not shot but I think he was having a heart attack when we got over to them.

A few days later while on a foot patrol I spotted a blue blinking light in the road and walked up to it. It was a phone taped to a canister. While running for my life the thing exploded. I was not injured but was very shaken up.
We went to Falluja in April of 2004. Our company saw two to three firefights a day. It was the first time I saw one of my friends get shot. In one month we took light casualties (thankfully, no dead Marines). We then went to Zaidon and a handful of Marines received serious wounds. Our radio man lost his foot; one of our rifleman lost his arm. A friend of mine took shrapnel to the throat and there were other serious wounds. Thankfully, no dead Marines. After that it was back to Mahmudiya: on the second day there we drove over an I.E.D. The only casualty was our Marine “Big Country” getting a concussion from the overpressure.
Later in the deployment my Humvee was hit by a large I.E.D. I had my forehead crushed in, lost both eyes, had to have my right hand fully reconstructed and took severe damage to my left knee. One buddy lost a foot; one of the others took shrapnel to the forehead but lived; one took superficial shrapnel wounds to the arm and one of my best friends died.
Would you bring your children out to the battlefield to witness it live and in person?
On a later deployment to Iraq that I did not go on, I lost three more friends to I.E.D.’s. One of them was the Navy Corpsman (Marine medic) who saved my life on the battlefield back in Mahmudiya. I have a tattoo over my left breast (where my heart is) that says “Semper Fidelis,” the Marine Corps motto. It is Latin for “Always Faithful” and refers to always accomplishing the mission. Around the “Semper Fidelis” are four names. “Thompson,” “Belchik,” Cockerham” and “Hodshire.” All great guys that I would let date my sister.
“The Hurt Locker” and all the other movies I mentioned, whether they are good or bad as entertainment, (more…)

Hmmm. The French resolves weakens on the burkah issue according to the Guardian. Instead of forcing other people to wear French couture in public the French have relented a little….

France will today take the first step towards barring Muslim women from wearing the full veil when using public services, but will stop short of calling for an outright ban after critics argued that such a move would be socially divisive and hard to enforce.

A cross-party committee of MPs was set up last year to explore the controversial issue in France of burkas and niqabs. The committee will recommend to ­parliament that Muslim women should be allowed to continue covering their faces in the street.

Its final report will, however, recommend that anyone covering their face be barred from entering public sector property, including hospitals and schools, or using public transport.

“The full veil is the visible part of this black tide of fundamentalism,” said Communist MP André Gerin, the committee’s president, in an interview last week. Eric Raoult, a rightwing MP heavily involved in the report, said yesterday that the imposition of a full ban – if it were to occur – would have to wait. “We have tried to do something that is coherent and enforceable,” he said, adding that a ban that was unenforceable would “make everyone look ridiculous”.

Under the proposals, a woman who fails to remove her veil inside when using any realm of the statethose public servicin such cases would not face a fine for breaking the law, but would be refused access to the service. She would not, for instance, be allowed to collect her child benefit payments or take the bus.

President Nicolas Sarkozy, who has repeatedly said that the full veil “is not welcome” on French soil, is believed to favour this partial legislation, rather than more radical suggestions from recalcitrant members of his rightwing UMP party.

The president has been warned that an outright ban on the full veil could be found to be unconstitutional and almost impossible to put into practice. Sarkozy, who has stressed the need to find a solution in which “no one feels stigmatised”, is also keen to play down speculation that his policies are doing more to aggravate social divisions than to bridge them.

Steps to ban the burka, which have been opposed by the Muslim Council of France and other religious groups, have coincided with the French government’s “big debate” on national identity. Critics of the government, from the left and right, have accused Sarkozy of encouraging dangerous rhetoric which has seen the country’s 5 million Muslims become the object of increasing critiques.

Tomorrow’s cross-party report – whose contents were leaked to the French press last week – looks likely to recommend the ­passing of a non-binding parliamentary resolution setting out the country’s “symbolic” opposition to the full veil.

After that, steps should be taken to vote into law a series of “separate, but multiple bans” which would make clear the garment’s practical incompatibility with French values of sexual equality and freedom, the report will say.

“We have to make life impossible for them in order to curb the phenomenon,” one MP told the French daily Le Figaro. However, opponents have said that banning the full veil either outright or partially would serve merely to reinforce the isolation of women already partially alienated from mainstream society.

The 32-member panel, which has been meeting and questioning experts on the issue for the past six months, was set up by Sarkozy last summer after he declared that the full veil was “a sign of subservience [and] debasement”.

Gerin has not made any secret of his desire to see a ban on what he has denounced as a “walking prison”. His feelings have tapped into growing concern in France over an item of clothing worn by a small minority of Muslim women.

According to police figures, no more than 2,000 women – most of them young and a quarter of them converts – wear a face-covering veil. But in a country which places a high value on laïcité – secularism – and which in 2004 banned headscarves in schools, it is unsurprising that such an overt display of religion has raised eyebrows. The major political parties, leading feminists and even one prominent imam have made clear their dislike for the full veil, which they view as an affront to women’s rights and a sign of an emerging strand of fundamentalist Islam.

Despite wide-ranging opposition to the garment and polls showing that most French citizens favour a ban, opinions have differed on how to go about discouraging women from covering their faces.

The Socialist party, while condemning the full veil, refused to support a ban.

The UMP’s Jean-François Copé, a politician with half an eye on the 2012 presidential elections, grabbed the headlines with a proposal to outlaw the full veil anywhere on French streets and to fine wearers €750 each – a suggestion rejected by the committee.

I read this story on the BBC website today. US sharpshooters are using a sophisticated light-enhancing gunsight – par for the course in this day and age of advanced weaponry. However the sights are engraved with Biblical texts. Reminded me of Pulp Fiction when the scary hitman (samuel Jackson) reads you a passage from the Bible before bumping you off. Also made me think of a recent conversation with a friend about Holy War – it’s getting just like it used to be in the days of the Crusades.

Coded references to biblical passages are inscribed on gunsights widely used by the US and British military in Iraq and Afghanistan, it has emerged.

The markings include “2COR4:6″ and “JN8:12″, relating to verses in the books of II Corinthians and John.

Trijicon, the US-based manufacturer, was founded by a devout Christian, and says it runs to “Biblical standards”.

But military officials in the US and UK have expressed concern over the way the markings will be perceived.

The company has added the references to its sights for many years, but the issue surfaced only recently when soldiers complained to an advocacy group.

Versions of Trijicon’s Advanced Combat Optical Gunsight (Acog) are used by the US Special Operations Forces, the US Marine Corps and the US Army.

Britain’s Ministry of Defence has just ordered 480 Acog sights for use on its new Sharpshooter rifles – to be used by troops in Afghanistan. Other versions of the Acog sight are “widely in service”, the ministry says.

The inscriptions are subtle and appear in raised lettering at the end of the stock number.

John 8:12 reads: “When Jesus spoke again to the people, he said, ‘I am the light of the world. Whoever follows me will never walk in darkness, but will have the light of life.”

The nod to part of the second letter of Paul to the Corinthians, found on the company’s Reflex sight, references the text: “For God, who said, ‘Let light shine out of darkness,’ made his light shine in our hearts to give us the light of the knowledge of the glory of God in the face of Christ.”

An MoD spokesman told the BBC the ministry appreciated the biblical references could cause offence and was talking to its supplier, but was “not aware at the time of purchase that these markings had any broader significance”.

The US Defense Department is a major customer of Trijicon’s, signing deals for $66m (£40.3m) of the company’s products in 2009 alone.

The US Marine Corps told the BBC they were “concerned with how this may be perceived” and were meeting with the company to “discuss future sight procurements”.

We believe that America is great when its people are good. This goodness has been based on biblical standards throughout our history and we will strive to follow those morals
Trijicon

The US Army said it was looking into any potential policy violation.

The issue has been thrust into the spotlight by the US Military Religious Freedom Foundation (MRFF) – an advocacy group that seeks to preserve the separation of church and state in the military.

On 14 January, the MRFF received an e-mail, purportedly from a Muslim US Army infantryman, complaining about the markings.

“Many soldiers know of them and are very confused as to why they are there and what it is supposed to mean.”

The email adds: “Everyone is worried that if they were captured in combat that the enemy would use the Bible quotes against them in captivity or some other form of propaganda.”

MRFF president Mikey Weinstein says the inscriptions could give the Taliban and other enemy forces a propaganda tool.

“I don’t have to wonder for a nanosecond how the American public would react if citations from the Koran were being inscribed onto these US armed forces gunsights instead of New Testament citations,” he said.

A Trijicon spokesman told the BBC the company “has been working to provide America’s military men and women with high quality, innovative sighting systems for the weapons they use”.

“Our effort is simple and straightforward: to help our servicemen and women win the war on terror and come home safe to their families.

“As part of our faith and our belief in service to our country, Trijicon has put scripture references on our products for more than two decades.

“As long as we have men and women in danger, we will continue to do everything we can to provide them with both state-of-the-art technology and the never-ending support and prayers of a grateful nation,” the spokesman added.

The company states on its website: “We believe that America is great when its people are good. This goodness has been based on biblical standards throughout our history and we will strive to follow those morals.”

Fort Hood, 60 miles north of Austin, is the largest Army base in the United States. More than 53,000 troops are stationed there, and more than 17,000 family members live on the base. An army psychiatrist went on a shooting spree there yesterday. His aunt talks about him and his life below, from the Washington Post, home of proper and good reporting since forever.

He prayed every day at the Muslim Community Center in Silver Spring, a devout Muslim who, despite asking to be discharged from the U.S. Army, was on the eve of his first deployment to war. Yesterday, authorities said Maj. Nidal M. Hasan, a 39-year-old Arlington-born psychiatrist, shot and killed at least 12 people at Fort Hood, Tex.
In an interview, his aunt, Noel Hasan of Falls Church, said he had endured name-calling and harassment about his Muslim faith for years after the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks and had sought for several years to be discharged from the military.
“I know what that is like,” she said. “Some people can take it, and some cannot. He had listened to all of that, and he wanted out of the military, and they would not let him leave even after he offered to repay” for his medical training.
An Army spokesman, Lt. Col. George Wright, said he could not confirm that Hasan requested a discharge.
As authorities scrambled to figure out what happened at Fort Hood, a hazy and contradictory picture emerged of a man who received his medical training from the military and spent his career in the Army, yet allegedly turned so violently against his own. Hasan spent nearly all of his professional life at Walter Reed Army Medical Center in the District, caring for the victims of trauma, yet he spoke openly of his deep opposition to the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan.
Hasan, who was shot while being taken into custody, was reported in stable condition at a hospital Thursday night, authorities said.
The Associated Press reported that Hasan attracted the attention of law enforcement authorities in recent months after an Internet posting under the screen name “NidalHasan” compared Islamic suicide bombers to Japanese kamikaze pilots. “To say that this soldier committed suicide is inappropriate,” the posting read. “It’s more appropriate to say he is a brave hero that sacrificed his life for a more noble cause.”
He steered clear of female colleagues, co-workers said, and despite devout religious practices, listed himself in Army records as having no religious preference.
A longtime Walter Reed colleague who referred patients to psychiatrists said co-workers avoided sending service members to Hasan because of his unusual manner and solitary work habits.
Hasan is a 1997 graduate of Virginia Tech who went on to get a doctorate in psychiatry from the Uniformed Services University of the Health Sciences in Bethesda. From 2003 through last summer, he was an intern, resident and then fellow at Walter Reed, where he worked as a liaison between wounded soldiers and the hospital’s psychiatry staff. He was also a fellow at the Center for the Study of Traumatic Stress at the Bethesda military medical school.
He had been affected by the physical and mental injuries he saw while working as a psychiatrist at Walter Reed for nearly eight years, according to his aunt. “He must have snapped,” Noel Hasan said. “They ignored him. It was not hard to know when he was upset. He was not a fighter, even as a child and young man. But when he became upset, his face turns red.” She said Hasan had consulted with an attorney about getting out of the service.
On the rare occasions when he spoke of his work in any detail, the aunt said, Hasan told her of soldiers wracked by what they had seen. One patient had suffered burns to his face so intense “that his face had nearly melted,” she said. “He told us how upsetting that was to him.”Hasan “did not make many friends” and “did not make friends fast,” his aunt said. He had no girlfriend and was not married. “He would tell us the military was his life,” she said.
The psychiatrist once said that “Muslims should stand up and fight against the aggressor” and that the United States shouldn’t be fighting the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan in the first place, according to an interview with Col. Terry Lee, a co-worker, on Fox News.
At the Muslim Community Center, Hasan stood out because he would sometimes show up in Army fatigues, said Faizul Khan, the former imam there.
“He came to mosque one or two times to see if there were any suitable girls to marry,” Khan said. “I don’t think he ever had a match, because he had too many conditions. He wanted a girl who was very religious, prays five times a day.”
In search of a partner in marriage, Hasan wrote in an application filed with a local Muslim matching service that “I am quiet and reserved until more familiar with person. Funny, caring and personable.”
“He was a very quiet and private person. I can’t say that people knew him very well other than attending prayers,” said Arshad Qureshi, chairman of the board of trustees at the Muslim Community Center of Silver Spring. “You didn’t see him attend anything — school for children or celebrations. He did not go out of the way to engage people. We have thousands of people who come through to pray; he was just one of them.”
A co-worker at Walter Reed said Hasan would not allow his photo to be taken with female co-workers, which became an issue during Christmas season when employees often took group photos. Co-workers would find a solo photo of Hasan and post it on the bulletin board without his permission.
Lee told Fox News that Hasan “was hoping that President Obama would pull troops out. . . . When things weren’t going that way, he became more agitated, more frustrated with the conflicts over there. . . . He made his views well known about how he felt about the U.S. involvement in Iraq and Afghanistan.”
And when he talked about fighting “the aggressor,” he said that his fellow soldiers “should stand up and help the armed forces in Iraq and in Afghanistan,” Lee said.
Rep. Michael McCaul (R-Texas) told reporters after a briefing on the shootings that Hasan was born in Virginia to parents who emigrated from Jordan. The congressman said that Hasan “took a lot of advanced training in shooting.”
Hasan was polite and respectful, according to 1st Lt. Elizabeth Whiteside, who was treated by the psychiatrist at Walter Reed while recovering from a gunshot wound suffered in Iraq.
Whiteside remembers Hasan as serious. During his initial evaluation of her, she tried to make light when he coughed by saying, “Bless you.” Hasan replied that he had coughed and not sneezed.Hasan was “like my sons,” his aunt said, spending holidays and free time at her house. Born at Arlington Hospital, Nidal Hasan graduated from high school in Roanoke, where his parents had moved. He enlisted in the Army after high school and attended Virginia Tech, majoring in biochemistry.
Hasan’s parents died about 10 years ago. He had joined the military over their objections, Noel Hasan said. She said he has two brothers, Eyad, a businessman in Sterling, and Anas, a lawyer in Jerusalem.
When Army officials called Eyad Hasan to relay the news from Fort Hood on Thursday, Noel Hasan said, the brother “fainted when he heard it.” Initially, she said, Eyad was told his brother was injured and in surgery and later was erroneously told he had died.
Hasan was an avid Redskins fan. “That was his main entertainment,” his aunt said. “He was not a movie watcher. He worked hard and had been studying for years. He buried himself in his work.”
Noel Hasan was unaware of her nephew’s pending deployment. “He didn’t call or send an e-mail saying anything like that,” she said.
His last e-mail to her, she said, was a little more than a week ago “and it was just, “Hi, Aunt Noel. How are you doing?’ “

One of the good things about British society has been our unarmed police policy. However, by some strange back door manouevre, it’s suddenly vanished and armed police are here on the streets of London in Brixton and Haringey. Right here, right now. Maybe some part of us doesn’t want to admit what the nice Rasta in Brockwell Park said to me the other morning about where my wife and I used to live in Brixton: “It’s like a war zone, so it is man.”  What bothers me, is that like the villains, the police are toting automatic weapons. Machine guns in streets of crowded people. Has it really come to this? This coverage is from the Independent.

Armed police officers are to patrol the streets of London for the first time in an attempt to tackle a rise in gang-related gun crime.

Traditionally officers from the Metropolitan Police’s specialist firearms unit – codenamed CO19 – have been deployed on the streets only when a response to incidents of gun crime is necessary or to protect VIPs.

The new initiative, announced yesterday, will see CO19 officers patrolling the capital’s most dangerous streets and housing estates alongside neighbourhood officers. It has been described as a “proactive” response to the 17 per cent increase in gun crime over the past six months.

But it was immediately denounced by members of the Metropolitan Police Authority (MPA), the body which governs the actions of Scotland Yard, which was apparently not consulted on the controversial decision. One MPA member described the move as “totally unacceptable” while another called for an emergency meeting.

Joanne McCartney said: “We want fewer guns on the streets not more, and people to feel safe in their community – not scared of those who are supposed to protect them.

“There has been no debate, no consultation and apparently no consideration to the strong opposition that exists to arming the police. This is more than just an operational decision and should be brought before the police authority as a matter of urgency.”

Jenny Jones, another MPA member, added: “This is a totally unacceptable departure from normal policing tactics. I can’t believe that the sight of a policeman with a machine gun will make people feel safer.

“Are we heading down a slippery slope towards armed rather than community policing? I hope the Met will rethink this terrible decision immediately and think of a genuinely proactive way to prevent gun crime.”

Pilot patrols have already begun in Brixton as well as Haringey and Tottenham, where three Turkish men were shot dead earlier this month in an apparent war between rival heroin gangs.

It is the first time the Metropolitan Police has deployed armed officers for routine patrols outside of protected sites such as Parliament and Royal homes. However a similar project did run in Nottinghamshire in 2000 in an attempt to address the issue of drive-by shootings that afflicted the city.

Yet the fact that Britain’s police officers, unlike their American counterparts, remain predominately unarmed is a source of continuing pride to traditionalists who believe that officers should police through consent rather than force.

But Inspector Derek Carroll, who leads the armed unit, said officers have received positive feedback from residents.

He said: “Historically, CO19 was only called out when someone rang up to report a gun crime. But a lot of streets in London have young people in postcode gangs, aged 14 and upwards, and a lot of communities feel that they are controlling areas of estates. We are looking at gangs that have access to firearms and will be robust in dealing with them.”

 

Love him or loathe him, Adrian Searle writes a really mean article. In the Guardian today the way in which he elevates Antony Gormley’s efforts with the fourth plinth in Trafalgar Square is an art in its own right. (Not to denigrate Mr Gormley of course, I think he is ace.)

In encouraging the public to act, react and interact around Trafalgar Square’s fourth plinth, Gormley’s One and Other is timely – and invokes a rich tradition of living art

At a little before 9am, today a protester scaled the fourth plinth in London’s Trafalgar Square to demonstrate against actors smoking. He was followed by the first official occupant, who stood with a giant lollipop emblazoned with the logo of the NSPCC. Strangely, all this was somehow less compelling than the man in shorts and red T-shirt who came next. He had no apparent agenda at all, except being there. Most of the time, he stood near the lip of the plinth with his hands in his pockets, like a character in search of an author. His presence was what counted. Just as some sculptures have more presence than others (a tiny bronze Giacometti can somehow fill a whole room), so it is with the living.

Not everyone here will be a living sculpture. Some who are lifted on to the plinth will be living advertisements for themselves, craving attention, fame or notoriety. I expect numerous hapless performances, a bit of nudity, protests and declarations at all hours of the day and night. There’s always the chance someone might immolate themselves, or defecate, urinate, masturbate or vomit. Are they allowed shoelaces or belts up there? Are they frisked for weapons or secret intentions? Is there a contingency for those who might wish to give birth, or any potential suicides? Taking a running jump, it would be easy to hurl oneself over the safety net to the paving slabs below. Anyone attempting to recreate the artist Yves Klein’s famous 1960 Leap into the Void, a photograph of him suspended in mid-air above the street, should be warned – his image was doctored. And what about snipers on nearby rooftops, kids with catapults, miscreants with rotten eggs, bricks, guns? A stoning is entirely possible.

Living sculpture has a long and intriguing history. On 1 January 1901 the bullfighter Don Tancredo López covered himself in whitewash and stood on a box in the middle of the bullring in Madrid; the bull circled him but did not attack. López was a statue of himself risking death. When Gilbert and George covered their hands and faces in gold paint, stood on a table and performed Flanagan and Allen’s song Underneath the Arches in a London gallery in 1969, they risked only the derision of the art crowd.

In 1974 Chris Burden spent 22 days on a platform in a New York gallery; and in 2002, the Montenegran artist Marina Abramovicć spent 12 days and nights on a platform, eating nothing and only drinking water. She slept and performed all her ablutions in full view of the public. An hour on a plinth isn’t long, but Trafalgar Square is a different, far more public context, with live action from the plinth streamed on the web 24 hours a day.

So far the most memorable work since the fourth plinth was turned over to contemporary art has been Mark Wallinger’s Ecce Homo, a life-sized cast of a young man in a loincloth, which appeared in 1999. The white resin cast looked like marble. Standing on the edge of the plinth, facing the square, it had more presence than the people who have so far been hoisted there; asking why this might be is a question both about sculpture, and about ourselves.

Yet Gormley’s idea is a rich one. It combines a very old idea about images, and sculptures on plinths in public spaces, with the digital age and the spectacle of reality TV. We know that paying attention to an experiment often changes its outcome. Those who stand and watch have all sorts of expectations and fantasies. The square below is a space for the curious and the ghoulish, for voyeurs and louts; it, as well as the plinth, is a space of transit and for waiting, and for all sorts of performances and gestures. We are all actors here, under the watchful cameras of Sky Arts.

Gormley offers the possibility both for action and inaction. This is where the project’s magic lies – and also its danger. It is probably his best work, even if it risks bringing out the worst in people. The artist has set up the conditions, and what follows is unknown.

Today’s Daily Telegraph runs a short feature quoting the UK Health Secretary Andy Burnham predicting a real surge in the swine flu numbers. We’ve had this illness in our house already – but that doesn’t mean we’re immune as the virus mutates.

Andy Burnham has warned that swine flu could reach 100,000 cases a day by August

The UK has moved past the stage of containing the swine flu outbreak and into the “treatment phase”, he said.

“We have reached the next stage in management of the disease,” Mr Burnham said on Thursday.

“The national focus will be on treating the increasing numbers affected by swine flu.

“We will move to this treatment phase across the UK with immediate effect.”

There are now 7,447 laboratory-confirmed cases in the UK, he said.

London and the West Midlands have already had sufficiently high numbers to move towards a policy of outbreak management, which saw people with swine flu clinically diagnosed rather than being confirmed by laboratory reports.

Mr Burnham said that last week saw a “considerable rise” in swine flu cases.

“There are now on average several hundred new cases every day,” he said.

“Our efforts during the containment phase have given us precious time to learn more about the virus.

“We have always known it would be impossible to contain the virus indefinitely and at some point we would need to move away from containment to treatment.”

He added: “We have now signed contracts to secure enough vaccine for the whole population.”

The first will become available next month, with 60 million doses available by the end of the year.

Hooray! A first ever inclusion for the Sydney Morning Herald – who give us the news today that Saudi Arabia is showing its first public movie in the cinemas for many a year. Thanks to Richard Dean for drawing my attention to this story.

Riyadh goes to the movies – for the first time
June 8, 2009 – 6:27AM

A few hundred Saudis braved a small band of religious hardliners to take part in an historic event on Saturday night: the first public showing of a commercial film in decades in the Saudi capital.

With bags of popcorn and soft drinks in their laps, the men-only crowd of more than 300 in Riyadh’s huge King Fahd Cultural Centre cheered, whistled and clapped when the first scenes of the Saudi-made Menahi hit the screen and the film’s score erupted in surround sound.

“This is the beginning of change,” said university student Ahmed al-Mokayed, attending with his brother and cousin.

Businessman Abdul Mohsen al-Mani, who brought his two sons to the film, was ecstatic, after being denied public cinema for some three decades.

“This is the first step in a peaceful revolution,” he said.

“I don’t want my two sons to grow up in the dark … I told them that in the future they will talk about today like a joke,” he added.

It was long in coming — and no one is certain that it will launch a thriving public cinema industry, with strident opposition from clerics who regard film, music and other entertainment as violating Islamic teachings.

Police at the venue had to fend off a small band of conservative Muslims who warned that films were bringing disasters on the country, citing a recent series of minor earthquakes in western Saudi Arabia.

“Allah is punishing us for the cinema,” one said. “It is against Islam.”

“Menahi”, a comedy about a Saudi country bumpkin getting lost in the big city, was shown in December to huge crowds in the relatively free-wheeling Red Sea city of Jeddah.

Chinese Ships Leave West Sea Border. I do like a laconic headline. This is justastory’s first ever featured article from the Korea Times, reported by Kim Sue-young. It’s about a sudden early departure of Chinese fishing vessels from the waters surrounding Korea’s borderlines. Could be something. Could be nothing. Personally I am of the former view.

Chinese vessels fishing illegally in the West Sea have begun to leave the waters near the Northern Limit Line (NLL), an area that could alert South Korea’s military to a possible provocation by the North.

The military is keeping a close watch on the communist regime’s moves, especially over a possible clash near the NLL West Sea border, Defense Ministry spokesman Won Tae-jae said Friday.

“It is true that the number of Chinese fishing vessels in the West Sea fell by more than half,” Won said. “We are closely monitoring North Korea’s moves, given that this may signal North Korea’s possible provocative action.”

He did not rule out the possibility that the evacuation may have been caused by the closed fishing season which will started June 1 or that the vessels may already have caught enough fish.

But a military source said on condition of anonymity that North Korea might have demanded the withdrawal.

“About 160 Chinese vessels deserted the area in a day, spawning speculation that either the Chinese authorities or North Korea might may have called for immediate evacuation,” he said.

Chinese vessels usually leave the area in mid-June and return between late August and early September but made their departure about two weeks early, the source added.

According to the military and maritime police, more than 100 Chinese ships were fishing around Yeonpyeong Island in the West Sea where two confrontations between South and North Korean patrol boats have taken place.

The second battle broke out in 2002 as a North Korean patrol boat crossed the NLL despite warnings, which left six South Korean soldiers dead and 19 injured.

The communist state has escalated tensions on the Korean Peninsula by launching a long-range rocket on April 5 and conducting an underground nuclear test on May 25. The international community as well as South Korea condemned the activities, claiming it is a violation of U.N. resolutions.

After Seoul declared full participation in a U.S.-led security initiative to prevent the proliferation of weapons of mass destruction earlier this week, Pyongyang warned of a military clash.

On Thursday, the South Korea-U.S. Combined Forces Command raised its surveillance on North Korea to the level two.

To be honest I’ve found this week’s news a bit dull – it’s wrong not to include one of the MP standing down stories, especially one who claims for 75 red cedars on the taxpayer. Can’t see the wood for the trees I guess. Thanks to the Telegraph for running this one. When are they going to get to the real story behind corruptibility amongst MPs? I’m looking out for it I can tell you. Might even start writing it myself if the newspapers keep on getting diverted by the relatively small fry expenses stuff.

The South West Norfolk MP, said he would not contest the next election because of his wife’s continuing ill-health and said his decision was not to do with the controversy over the way he designated his “second home” allowing him to claim money for his £350,000 property in East Anglia.

Mr Fraser also lives on a farm worth £1.2 million in Dorset, where he was an MP between 1997 and 2001, before being voted out and re-elected to the Norfolk seat four years later.

He designates the farmhouse in Dorset as his “main home”, while letting out a smaller farmhouse on the same estate and the surrounding land. He also rents out another property in London.

Mr Fraser used the money claimed on his Norfolk home to buy 140 cherry laurels and 75 red cedars. The MP made the claim for trees worth £933 and fencing worth £875 in February, 2007.

It was initially challenged by the Commons fees office. An official who approved the claim said: “This is a property without any natural boundaries. Mr Fraser felt that in order to provide security and privacy, fences and hedges were required.”

In a statement today the MP said: “I have never sought re-selection for South West Norfolk because I have for some time been seriously considering whether to go forward after the next General Election. My wife’s ongoing health problems and the major operation that she had last year have made it difficult to juggle my family life with my duties as an MP.

“It has been a privilege to serve South West Norfolk, and I have enjoyed the work enormously. I hope that I have in some small way been able to make a difference for the people who have come to me for help.

“With great sadness, I have decided not to seek re-selection for the next election.

“I pledge absolute support to David Cameron and the Conservative Party, and will work between now and the general election for the Conservative government that the country urgently needs.”

Between being elected in May, 2005, and October, 2006, he rented another farmhouse in the constituency for £1,200 a month, the cost of which he claimed back on expenses.

He also claimed £240 for a lawnmower and £70 for the emptying of his “sceptic (sic) tank”. He said: “I purchased the cheapest lawnmower that I could find, and cut the grass myself to save costs.”

Mr Fraser then bought his current “second home”, and made an emergency claim. Officials noted that he “needs money urgently”.

I have to say I didn’t expect to find a story like this in The Observer. The International Times maybe, or some other scurrilous lefty rag from the 1970’s might have run a piece about how the police planted plain clothes men in the crowd of protestors at the G20 summit, inciting other crowd members to throw stones and bottles…….I don’t believe that, said my 16 year old – here it is in the Observer I said……..apparently witnessed by an MP…..

An MP who was involved in last month’s G20 protests in London is to call for an investigation into whether the police used agents provocateurs to incite the crowds.

Liberal Democrat Tom Brake says he saw what he believed to be two plain-clothes police officers go through a police cordon after presenting their ID cards.

Brake, who along with hundreds of others was corralled behind police lines near Bank tube station in the City of London on the day of the protests, says he was informed by people in the crowd that the men had been seen to throw bottles at the police and had encouraged others to do the same shortly before they passed through the cordon.

Brake, a member of the influential home affairs select committee, will raise the allegations when he gives evidence before parliament’s joint committee on human rights on Tuesday.

“When I was in the middle of the crowd, two people came over to me and said, ‘There are people over there who we believe are policemen and who have been encouraging the crowd to throw things at the police,’” Brake said. But when the crowd became suspicious of the men and accused them of being police officers, the pair approached the police line and passed through after showing some form of identification.

Brake has produced a draft report of his experiences for the human rights committee, having received written statements from people in the crowd. These include Tony Amos, a photographer who was standing with protesters in the Royal Exchange between 5pm and 6pm. “He [one of the alleged officers] was egging protesters on. It was very noticeable,” Amos said. “Then suddenly a protester seemed to identify him as a policeman and turned on him. He ­legged it towards the police line, flashed some ID and they just let him through, no questions asked.”

Amos added: “He was pretty much inciting the crowd. He could not be called an observer. I don’t believe in conspiracy theories but this really struck me. Hopefully, a review of video evidence will clear this up.”

The Independent Police Complaints Commission has received 256 complaints relating to the G20 protests. Of these, 121 have been made about the use of force by police officers, while 75 relate to police tactics. The IPCC said it had no record of complaints involving the use of police agents provocateurs. A Metropolitan Police spokesman said: “We would never deploy officers in this way or condone such behaviour.”

The use of plain-clothes officers in crowd situations is considered a vital tactic for gathering evidence. It has been used effectively to combat football hooliganism in the UK and was employed during the May Day protests in 2001.

Brake said he intends to raise the allegations with the Met’s commissioner, Sir Paul Stephenson, when he next appears before the home affairs select committee. “There is a logic having plain-clothes officers in the crowd, but no logic if the officers are actively encouraging violence, which would be a source of great concern,” Brake said.

The MP said that given only a few people were allowed out of the corralled crowd for the five hours he was held inside it, there should be no problem in investigating the allegation by examining video footage.

Spencer S. Hsu tells us today in the Washington Post  that “A Pentagon Cyber-Command Is in the Works”. The story is dry and factual. But……anyone think of Isaac Asimov? Or something more recent perhaps?

The Obama administration is finalizing plans for a new Pentagon command to coordinate the security of military computer networks and to develop new offensive cyber-weapons, sources said last night.

Planning for the reorganization of Defense Department and intelligence agencies is underway, and a decision is imminent, according to a person familiar with the White House plans.

The new command would affect U.S. Strategic Command, whose mission includes ensuring U.S. “freedom of action” in space and cyberspace, and the National Security Agency, which shares Pentagon cybersecurity responsibilities with the Defense Information Systems Agency.

The Pentagon plans do not involve the Department of Homeland Security, which has responsibility for securing the government’s non-military computer domain.

But President Obama must approve the changes and Congress must be notified of them before they can be implemented, said this source, who has spoken with several White House and military officials. This individual spoke on the condition of anonymity because the process is still “in motion.”
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The Wall Street Journal first reported on the plans last night.

One question is whether the new command’s leader would be a military commander with a four-star rank. The NSA is currently led by Army Lt. Gen. Keith B. Alexander, who has three stars.

News of the proposal comes on the heels of a 60-day White House review of cybersecurity efforts. Federal agency deputies are expected to meet Friday to consider the recommendations of the review team.

As if the provision of porno movies for her husband being claimed on government expenses were not enough – this afternoon it turns out the Jaqui Smith claims £23K on her second home allowance – nearly the max amount allowable. Surely some coincidence. I predict she’s out of a job by the end of the week. What a great photo of her in the Guardian, who also provide this story written by Allegra Stratton and Deborah Summers . Having Gordon Brown rallying behind you must make you feel a whole lot better….

Jaqui Smith claimed £22,948 in 2007-08 – almost the maximum permitted amount – from the allowance to help MPs run a second home, it was revealed today.

The revelation came as Gordon Brown appealed for Smith to be allowed to get on with her work as home secretary after she apologised for claiming the cost of pornographic films on her parliamentary expenses.

As she left her London residence this morning, the beleaguered minister declined to respond to reporters’ questions about the films, watched by her husband, Richard Timney, at their family home in Redditch, Worcestershire, while she was away.

Amid mounting speculation that the incident could cost Smith her government post, the Conservative leader, David Cameron, described the latest revelations as “deeply embarrassing” for the home secretary, but stopped short of calling for her resignation.

Brown offered his support, insisting that she was doing “a great job” and had “done the right thing” by paying the money back.

Before the revelation about pornographic movies, Smith was already under investigation for using the additional costs allowance (ACA) to meet costs associated with her family home in her constituency. When she is working in London she stays with her sister.

Smith’s arrangements are controversial because she treats her sister’s home as her main home for expenses purposes, allowing her to claim for the property in Redditch, on the grounds that she spends most of her time working in London.

Smith has accepted that the claim for two pornographic films was wrong and she has agreed to pay the money back.

But she has not accepted that there is anything wrong with her decision to use the ACA to claim money in relation to her home in Redditch. She has strongly insisted that this arrangement is within the rules.

Today the full extent of her ACA claim for 2007-08 was made public. She claimed £22,948, close to the maximum of £23,083.

Smith’s total expense claim, including travel, office and staffing costs, was £145,331, according to the chart produced by the parliamentary authorities showing figures for all MPs for 2007-08.

Earlier the prime minister was asked at a press conference in 10 Downing Street whether he still had confidence in Smith, who is under investigation for claiming second home expenses on her family house in her Redditch constituency while living as a lodger with her sister in London.

Brown said: “The home secretary is doing a great job and I do not think this issue should be allowed to detract from everything she is doing to ensure we protect the public and keep our neighbourhoods safe.

“She has done the right thing by taking steps to rectify the mistake that was made as soon as she became aware of it.”

Brown added: “This is very much a personal matter for Jacqui. She has made her apology; her husband has made clear that he has apologised.

“The best thing is that Jacqui Smith gets on with her work, which is what she wants to do.”

Timney, who is employed by the home secretary in her constituency office, submitted a claim for a £67 Virgin Media bill last June for a television in the couple’s family home in Redditch. The bill included two adult films, at a cost of £5 each, as well as two viewings of the heist movie Ocean’s 13 and one of Surf’s Up, a children’s film about a rockhopper penguin.

Last month Smith was revealed to have claimed taxpayer-funded allowances for her family home while living with her sister in London. She is due to explain that to the parliamentary commissioner for standards, John Lyon.

The new row brought an immediate climbdown from the Smiths. Within hours of the story being published in a Sunday newspaper, Timney appeared outside the family home to give a brief statement.

Barely looking up, he said he had submitted the claim for the television package “inadvertently” alongside a legitimate claim for his wife’s internet connection. Timney said: “I am really sorry for any embarrassment I have caused Jacqui. I can fully understand why people might be angry and offended by this. Quite obviously, a claim should never have been made for these films, and as you know that money is being paid back.”

Smith, who employs her husband on a salary of £40,000 a year to run her office, was said to be “mortified” after she was forced to apologise for the claim. A close friend of Smith’s said Timney would be “sleeping on the sofa for a while. To say she’s angry with her husband is an understatement.”

Although parliamentary rules on expenses allow MPs to claim the cost of their television package alongside their internet connection, the friend said Smith planned to repay the entire amount. The committee on standards in public life has announced it will look at the system of expense claims by MPs, but it is unlikely to report until after the general election.

Cameron today called on Brown to speed up the review of the whole system of MPs’ pay and allowances announced last week, saying that there needed to be “complete transparency” in relation to claims by MPs.

Speaking on GMTV, the Conservative leader said he believed Smith had “questions to answer” about her reported claim of at least £116,000 in second home allowances on her Redditch family home.

But asked if she should resign, he said: “I do not think this individual thing is the issue.

“I think she has got some questions to answer about the second home issue. It does seem to me pretty incredible to claim that the home where her family is, that is not her main home.

“I think this goes to a deeper problem which is the second home allowance for MPs. The prime minister has ordered a review but he has sort of kicked it into the long grass.

“The review doesn’t start until September, it is not going to report until after the next election. That is hopeless. We have got to get on with it … Have a quick review, right now, sort it out and come up with an answer.”

However, backbench Conservatives cast doubt on Smith’s ability to continue as home secretary. David Davis, the former shadow home secretary, said: “I do think on this circumstance the sympathy for her will be even less than it otherwise would have been because she is not that good at her job.”

Apologising for the wrongful claim, Smith said: “I am sorry that, in claiming for my internet connection, I mistakenly claimed for a television package alongside it. As soon as the matter was brought to my attention, I took immediate steps to contact the relevant parliamentary authorities and rectify the situation. All money claimed for the television package will be paid back in full.”

There are rumours in Whitehall about how details of the Smiths’ television bill emerged. It follows a run of recent expenses scandals involving Labour MPs, suggesting that stories are being leaked from the parliamentary office for expenses claims.

America’s real president speaks out against the drug wars that are turning Mexico into another Colombia. Failed State? War Zone. The picture below shows a relatively small haul from an army raid in Mexico City recently.
The main story is from  The Washington Post, more even handed than me, that’s for sure.

MONTERREY, Mexico, March 26 — Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton said Thursday that Mexico and the United States had agreed to develop a “checklist” of tasks for both sides to intensify the fight against Mexican drug gangs engaged in a bloody turf war.

Speaking near the end of a two-day visit, Clinton said the list would include timelines committing the United States to speed up delivery of drug-fighting aid and getting Mexico to move faster on reforming its judicial and law enforcement institutions.

Clinton also said she was “confident” that a trade tiff with Mexico over trucking would be resolved quickly and that Mexico’s recent decision to slap tariffs on dozens of U.S. products “will be withdrawn.”

Clinton’s visit came as the U.S. government expressed alarm over the surge of drug violence in Mexico, where President Felipe Calderón has deployed the army in a desperate effort to restore order. More than 7,000 people have been killed since January 2008 in attacks by traffickers on their competitors and security forces.

Clinton called on Mexicans to support their government’s fight against the gangs and urged students to use the Internet to send tips on illegal activity to authorities.

“This is the responsibility of citizens as well as leaders,” she said at a speech at the Tecnologico de Monterrey university. “It is a mutual responsibility, and it’s particularly important for the young people of Mexico, who have enormous power right now, to strengthen your democracy, to call for more reforms, to shine a bright light on corruption.”

Monterrey, about 130 miles south of the U.S. border, is Mexico’s third-largest urban area. It is home to some of the country’s most prosperous families, known for their multinational businesses and pricey collections of modern art. But it has seen its former tranquillity shattered by drug violence.
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On the eve of Clinton’s trip, authorities announced the arrest of a man they called a leading cartel figure in the Monterrey area, Héctor Huerta Ríos. Days earlier, they picked up a suspect accused of organizing a gun-and-grenade attack on the U.S. Consulate in the city last October.

During her trip, Clinton emphasized that the United States shares responsibility for the drug war because of the millions of Americans who abuse cocaine, heroin and other drugs that fuel the trade, as well as the traffickers’ easy access to U.S. guns. That stance won her glowing headlines in Mexico, where many people say the American government has neglected its responsibility for the problem.

On Thursday morning, Clinton visited a gleaming new police training facility in eastern Mexico City that is receiving funds through the $1.4 billion Merida Initiative, a U.S. effort started last year to help train and equip Mexican security forces.

She watched police with dogs practice sniffing suitcases for drugs and carrying out a hostage-rescue exercise. She then walked through a hangar to observe two new Black Hawk helicopters purchased by the Mexican government for drug-fighting operations. The U.S. government has pledged to provide more helicopters, but the delivery has been delayed, to the dismay of Mexican authorities.

Among other priority topics during her visit was the dispute over the U.S. Congress’s recent decision to end a pilot program that allowed some Mexican trucks to transport goods in the United States.
U.S. labor unions fought the program, arguing that the vehicles were not safe. Mexico said the move violated the North American Free Trade Agreement and imposed tariffs on such U.S. products as wine and sunglasses.

Between meetings, Clinton met with indigenous students and visited the Basilica of Guadalupe, a shrine to Mexico’s most beloved religious icon.

Fernando Alvarez, 48, was part of a crowd of people who gathered outside a police line to catch a glimpse of Clinton. “Mexicans like her because of President Clinton,” he said. “President Clinton is worshipped. He is very human. He is not very formal. That’s kind of the Mexican way of living.”

In Washington, Dennis C. Blair, the top U.S. intelligence officer, sought to crush perceptions that the United States was worried about Mexico’s stability.

“Mexico is in no danger of becoming a failed state,” he told journalists. Blair said the spike in violence in Mexico showed that the CalderÃn government’s anti-drug policies were having an effect.

Blair said recent U.S. aid to Mexico included assistance in intelligence-gathering to give CalderÃn an advantage against the cartels. He offered no

I’ve sort of flippantly ignored a major story in the last week or so – the return to violence in Northern Ireland – a topic which had dominated the years of my youth. Again, it takes an outsider to properly objectify this story – rather than the message seen in graffiti on Ulster’s walls, ~an eye 4 an eye, back 2 war~ I think David Park in the New York Times has captured the essence of this difficult moment wonderfully.

IN Northern Ireland the squalid and brutal murders of two unarmed, off-duty soldiers taking delivery of pizzas, followed by the execution of a police officer who was responding to a call for help, achieved what all acts of terrorism intend — the release into the body politic of the poisonous spores of fear.

In this case, the fear was all the more potent because it infected the psyche of all those who had lived through the Troubles, regenerating the memories of the darkness. The stigmata of those partly repressed memories were suddenly uncovered and they seemed as vivid as when we first encountered them. There was that almost forgotten surge of fear, then the uncontrolled free fall of emotions rushing through sorrow to anger before stalling in a sense of helplessness.

We recognized and acknowledged, too, the rituals that accompany such deaths — the television pictures of swaths of flowers that transform murder spots into temporary shrines; the bewildered expressions of those who lay them; the white-suited forensic experts carrying plastic bags; the voices of politicians in competitive condemnation. The fear also infected our children, many of them asking their parents questions about history to which it was difficult to find coherent or explanatory answers. In schools some children — and not just the children of police officers — openly expressed an ominous apprehension about the future.

The spoken and unspoken question was whether we were about to see the return of the Troubles. There was an implicit fear that the period of political agreement had merely been a mirage, what Seamus Heaney in his poem “North” described as “exhaustions nominated peace” — a temporary and arbitrary pause for respite.

Certainly, the dissident Republicans who carried out these murders, whether they called themselves the Real I.R.A. or the Continuity I.R.A., must have exulted over what their bullets had achieved, and like all jihadists who believe that killing people is the blood-petaled path to glory, must too in those immediate hours after the killings have felt a gratifying sense of their newly claimed power.

But something quite remarkable has happened in this country as the hours have turned into days. It started with ordinary people interviewed on television and radio who invariably expressed an abhorrence of “returning” or “going back.” At first it was clearly the product of a deep-seated fear of regression towards the abyss, a fear that the peace process itself would crack asunder with the impact of violence, but then the fear turned to anger — an anger that a small group of fanatics with little or no popular support should seek to subvert the will of the people of Ireland.

Across towns and cities people of all traditions assembled to protest in dignified but powerful silence. There was a constant reiteration that what had been achieved could not now be lost, that a peace process, for all its problems, could not be usurped and subverted by the gun.

Something else remarkable happened. In a country where politicians can argue about which way the wind is blowing, they instead lined up shoulder to shoulder, so physically and rhetorically close there was not the tiniest chink or warp of divergence, and expressed their unity in uncharacteristically crystalline language. So we saw Martin McGuinness — once a senior commander in the I.R.A., now a deputy minister in the local government — standing alongside the province’s Protestant first minister and chief constable as he labeled the killers “traitors,” his anger palpable.

Indeed, it was a crossing-the-Rubicon moment for many nationalists as their leaders condemned the killings and urged their followers to pass on any information to the police. What only a decade earlier would have been denounced as “touting” now became the moral responsibility of every citizen.

And then there was Jackie McDonald, a hard-bitten leader of the Ulster Defense Association — a Protestant paramilitary organization that had engaged in many sectarian murders — among the thousands who turned up for the vigil at Belfast’s City Hall. There as a passionate advocate for peace, he praised Mr. McGuinness for his public statements.

There was soon evidence also that paramilitaries on both sides were in communication with their former enemies, offering assurances. So what we initially thought was a potentially dangerous attack on what has been achieved in Northern Ireland, and what we momentarily feared might be the beginning of disintegration, has in fact served only to demonstrate the strength of the process of reconciliation and the inviolable strength of a community that has made its political differences subservient to an overwhelming desire for peace.

So even now, while in brooding housing estates blighted by poverty and corrupted by the commerce and culture of drugs, young men made bitter by the scourge of history throw their bricks and bottles and stones and perhaps dream of more killings; or in some shed deep in South Armagh where a car bomb is painstakingly being assembled, the dissidents that remain must struggle to suppress the insistent truth that while they have the power to kill, each killing merely serves to strengthen what they wish to destroy.

And so the other night when my teenage daughter briefly turned her eyes away from “The Simpsons” to ask in a curiously tentative voice if the Troubles were coming back, I was able to say, “No, no they’re not.” And what I also know is that despite its painful human tragedies, the past week has not been about going back but about how far we’ve come.

It’s interesting to see key European issues discussed by the Americans. Actually I believe the Washington Post is more objective than the British newspapers, in this article by Craig Whitlock today. The crucial fact buried in this one is that Europe held two different meetings at the same venue – one for the Eastern Europeans and one for the “main players”. Their headline was E.U. Denies Request for Bailout of E. Europe – Members Sharply Split Over Economic Action

BERLIN, March 1 — European leaders Sunday rejected a Hungarian plea for a $240 billion bailout of struggling Eastern European countries, as divisions continued to fester over how to prevent economic ills from spreading across the continent.

Germany, Europe’s largest economy, led opposition to the Hungarian proposal. German Chancellor Angela Merkel said a broad, regional rescue plan was ill-conceived, though she did not offer specific alternatives.

“Saying that the situation is the same for all Central and Eastern European states, I don’t see that,” she said Sunday after a European Union summit in Brussels. “You cannot compare Slovenia or Slovakia with Hungary.”

Several Eastern European countries have been slammed by currency devaluations and other economic ailments in recent months, as global investors have warned that the region is ripe for a financial meltdown.

Hungary and Latvia have received bailouts from the International Monetary Fund, and Romania has said it may ask for one. The E.U., as well as the World Bank and other financial institutions, has approved aid, but national leaders say much more is needed.

The 27-member E.U., hamstrung by political infighting, has been unable to agree on how to respond. The E.U. was created as a common economic market; its members spent a generation easing border restrictions, coordinating regulations and harmonizing fiscal policies. But faced with the worst global economic crisis since World War II, members are accusing one another of protectionist impulses and national rivalries.

Hungary’s prime minister, Ferenc Gyurcsany, had proposed the massive rescue fund for Eastern Europe last week. On Sunday, he warned that old conflicts could reemerge and that “large-scale defaults” would result if the E.U. did not come to the aid of its newest members, who have spent the past two decades trying to recover from communism.
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“We should not allow a new Iron Curtain to be set up and divide Europe into two parts,” Gyurcsany told reporters in Brussels before the start of the summit. “This is the biggest challenge for Europe in the last 20 years.”

Disagreements are so widespread that E.U. leaders held two separate summits Sunday.

In the first, elected officials from Eastern European countries, which were granted admission to the E.U. starting in 2004, gathered in Brussels to discuss how to give their region more of a voice in deliberations that have historically been dominated by the continent’s economic powers: Germany, France, Britain and Italy.

Eastern European officials said they were frustrated that few of them have been included in talks with the United States, China, Japan and Western European countries over how to respond to the global economic crisis.

“None of those people around the table are actually from a country that is in the catching-up period in the E.U.,” Mikolaj Dowgielewicz, Poland’s European affairs minister, said Sunday, referring to the time since the collapse of communism two decades ago. “You have lots of old member states. There is certainly an issue here.”

Several Eastern European countries also want the E.U. to make it easier for them to replace their unstable currencies — such as the Polish zloty and the Hungarian forint — with the euro. Germany, France and other Western countries have insisted the new members follow a strict, gradual path into the euro club that limits deficit spending. The recession, however, has made the rules more painful to follow.

At the same time, Eastern European leaders have been squabbling among themselves, with officials from relatively healthy economies taking pains to distance themselves from their weaker neighbors.

Poland and the Czech Republic, for instance, also frowned on the Hungarian bailout proposal, saying they did not need to be rescued and did not appreciate being lumped together. “When it comes to any specific plans for Eastern Europe, we don’t need those plans,” Dowgielewicz told reporters.

“We do not want any new dividing lines,” added Czech Prime Minister Mirek Topolanek, whose country sponsored the summit and holds the rotating E.U. presidency until July. “We do not want a Europe divided along a north-south or an east-west line.”

I heard a rumour about this poem which had been written by a Chilean poet using huge bulldozers in the Atacama desert. The poem says “ni pena ni miedo”. Always hard to translate poetry – but a good approximation is “Neither shame  nor fear.” The poet Raúl Zurita had been persecuted in Pinochet’s rule through the 70’s and 80’s. I found the story by yipero on geo2web.com, as below.

This is a big one! A poet wrote a 3 kilometer-wide message – visible from space – in the desert of northwest Chile. The message says “ni pena ni miedo” which translates in English to “neither shame nor fear“. The poet’s name is Raúl Zurita, and he used a bull dozer to write the message in the desert sand. According to an interview at Jacket Magazine (about half-way down the article), the poet “…doesn’t like abstract poetry. He says that in those days of brutality and distrust and terror, the reign of Pinochet, he began to imagine writing poems in the sky, on the faces of cliffs, in the desert. His words…are gradually fading away, joining thousands of men, women, and children who disappeared in fear and pain during the Pinochet years.” Fortunately, his words are now immortalized in satellite photos and Google Earth! Check out the entire message in Google Earth. It’s huge, and it’s really there – not a photoshop.

I’ve noticed during the course of the Obama’s election campaign he has referred to Lincoln often – and I thought it apposite on this important day to refer to Lincoln’s second inauguration speech on March 4th 1865. In about four week’s time Lincoln would be dead, assassinated. My source for the story is bartleby online, which is a good source for all kinds of historical stuff.

Fellow-Countrymen: this second appearing to take the oath of the Presidential office there is less occasion for an extended address than there was at the first. Then a statement somewhat in detail of a course to be pursued seemed fitting and proper. Now, at the expiration of four years, during which public declarations have been constantly called forth on every point and phase of the great contest which still absorbs the attention and engrosses the energies of the nation, little that is new could be presented. The progress of our arms, upon which all else chiefly depends, is as well known to the public as to myself, and it is, I trust, reasonably satisfactory and encouraging to all. With high hope for the future, no prediction in regard to it is ventured.On the occasion corresponding to this four years ago all thoughts were anxiously directed to an impending civil war. All dreaded it, all sought to avert it. While the inaugural address was being delivered from this place, devoted altogether to saving the Union without war, urgent agents were in the city seeking to destroy it without war—seeking to dissolve the Union and divide effects by negotiation. Both parties deprecated war, but one of them would make war rather than let the nation survive, and the other would accept war rather than let it perish, and the war came. One-eighth of the whole population were colored slaves, not distributed generally over the Union, but localized in the southern part of it. These slaves constituted a peculiar and powerful interest. All knew that this interest was somehow the cause of the war. To strengthen, perpetuate, and extend this interest was the object for which the insurgents would rend the Union even by war, while the Government claimed no right to do more than to restrict the territorial enlargement of it. Neither party expected for the war the magnitude or the duration which it has already attained. Neither anticipated that the cause of the conflict might cease with or even before the conflict itself should cease. Each looked for an easier triumph, and a result less fundamental and astounding. Both read the same Bible and pray to the same God, and each invokes His aid against the other. It may seem strange that any men should dare to ask a just God’s assistance in wringing their bread from the sweat of other men’s faces, but let us judge not, that we be not judged. The prayers of both could not be answered. That of neither has been answered fully. The Almighty has His own purposes. “Woe unto the world because of offenses; for it must needs be that offenses come, but woe to that man by whom the offense cometh.” If we shall suppose that American slavery is one of those offenses which, in the providence of God, must needs come, but which, having continued through His appointed time, He now wills to remove, and that He gives to both North and South this terrible war as the woe due to those by whom the offense came, shall we discern therein any departure from those divine attributes which the believers in a living God always ascribe to Him? Fondly do we hope, fervently do we pray, that this mighty scourge of war may speedily pass away. Yet, if God wills that it continue until all the wealth piled by the bondsman’s two hundred and fifty years of unrequited toil shall be sunk, and until every drop of blood drawn with the lash shall be paid by another drawn with the sword, as was said three thousand years ago, so still it must be said “the judgments of the Lord are true and righteous altogether.”
With malice toward none, with charity for all, with firmness in the right as God gives us to see the right, let us strive on to finish the work we are in, to bind up the nation’s wounds, to care for him who shall have borne the battle and for his widow and his orphan, to do all which may achieve and cherish a just and lasting peace among ourselves and with all nations.

Michael Lewis wrote this story in The New York Times this weekend. It’s a “lunatics taking over the asylum” piece really – there’s more if you want to read the rest of his telling words in the original article.

AMERICANS enter the New Year in a strange new role: financial lunatics. We’ve been viewed by the wider world with mistrust and suspicion on other matters, but on the subject of money even our harshest critics have been inclined to believe that we knew what we were doing. They watched our investment bankers and emulated them: for a long time now half the planet’s college graduates seemed to want nothing more out of life than a job on Wall Street.
This is one reason the collapse of our financial system has inspired not merely a national but a global crisis of confidence. Good God, the world seems to be saying, if they don’t know what they are doing with money, who does?
Incredibly, intelligent people the world over remain willing to lend us money and even listen to our advice; they appear not to have realized the full extent of our madness. We have at least a brief chance to cure ourselves. But first we need to ask: of what?
To that end consider the strange story of Harry Markopolos. Mr. Markopolos is the former investment officer with Rampart Investment Management in Boston who, for nine years, tried to explain to the Securities and Exchange Commission that Bernard L. Madoff couldn’t be anything other than a fraud. Mr. Madoff’s investment performance, given his stated strategy, was not merely improbable but mathematically impossible. And so, Mr. Markopolos reasoned, Bernard Madoff must be doing something other than what he said he was doing.
In his devastatingly persuasive 17-page letter to the S.E.C., Mr. Markopolos saw two possible scenarios. In the “Unlikely” scenario: Mr. Madoff, who acted as a broker as well as an investor, was “front-running” his brokerage customers. A customer might submit an order to Madoff Securities to buy shares in I.B.M. at a certain price, for example, and Madoff Securities instantly would buy I.B.M. shares for its own portfolio ahead of the customer order. If I.B.M.’s shares rose, Mr. Madoff kept them; if they fell he fobbed them off onto the poor customer.
In the “Highly Likely” scenario, wrote Mr. Markopolos, “Madoff Securities is the world’s largest Ponzi Scheme.” Which, as we now know, it was.
Harry Markopolos sent his report to the S.E.C. on Nov. 7, 2005 — more than three years before Mr. Madoff was finally exposed — but he had been trying to explain the fraud to them since 1999. He had no direct financial interest in exposing Mr. Madoff — he wasn’t an unhappy investor or a disgruntled employee. There was no way to short shares in Madoff Securities, and so Mr. Markopolos could not have made money directly from Mr. Madoff’s failure. To judge from his letter, Harry Markopolos anticipated mainly downsides for himself: he declined to put his name on it for fear of what might happen to him and his family if anyone found out he had written it. And yet the S.E.C.’s cursory investigation of Mr. Madoff pronounced him free of fraud.
What’s interesting about the Madoff scandal, in retrospect, is how little interest anyone inside the financial system had in exposing it. It wasn’t just Harry Markopolos who smelled a rat. As Mr. Markopolos explained in his letter, Goldman Sachs was refusing to do business with Mr. Madoff; many others doubted Mr. Madoff’s profits or assumed he was front-running his customers and steered clear of him. Between the lines, Mr. Markopolos hinted that even some of Mr. Madoff’s investors may have suspected that they were the beneficiaries of a scam. After all, it wasn’t all that hard to see that the profits were too good to be true. Some of Mr. Madoff’s investors may have reasoned that the worst that could happen to them, if the authorities put a stop to the front-running, was that a good thing would come to an end.
The Madoff scandal echoes a deeper absence inside our financial system, which has been undermined not merely by bad behavior but by the lack of checks and balances to discourage it. “Greed” doesn’t cut it as a satisfying explanation for the current financial crisis. Greed was necessary but insufficient; in any case, we are as likely to eliminate greed from our national character as we are lust and envy. The fixable problem isn’t the greed of the few but the misaligned interests of the many.

A lot has been said and written, for instance, about the corrupting effects on Wall Street of gigantic bonuses. What happened inside the major Wall Street firms, though, was more deeply unsettling than greedy people lusting for big checks: leaders of public corporations, especially financial corporations, are as good as required to lead for the short term.
Richard Fuld, the former chief executive of Lehman Brothers, E. Stanley O’Neal, the former chief executive of Merrill Lynch, and Charles O. Prince III, Citigroup’s chief executive, may have paid themselves humongous sums of money at the end of each year, as a result of the bond market bonanza. But if any one of them had set himself up as a whistleblower — had stood up and said “this business is irresponsible and we are not going to participate in it” — he would probably have been fired. Not immediately, perhaps. But a few quarters of earnings that lagged behind those of every other Wall Street firm would invite outrage from subordinates, who would flee for other, less responsible firms, and from shareholders, who would call for his resignation. Eventually he’d be replaced by someone willing to make money from the credit bubble.
OUR financial catastrophe, like Bernard Madoff’s pyramid scheme, required all sorts of important, plugged-in people to sacrifice our collective long-term interests for short-term gain. The pressure to do this in today’s financial markets is immense. Obviously the greater the market pressure to excel in the short term, the greater the need for pressure from outside the market to consider the longer term. But that’s the problem: there is no longer any serious pressure from outside the market. The tyranny of the short term has extended itself with frightening ease into the entities that were meant to, one way or another, discipline Wall Street, and force it to consider its enlightened self-interest.
The credit-rating agencies, for instance.
Everyone now knows that Moody’s and Standard & Poor’s botched their analyses of bonds backed by home mortgages. But their most costly mistake — one that deserves a lot more attention than it has received — lies in their area of putative expertise: measuring corporate risk.
Over the last 20 years American financial institutions have taken on more and more risk, with the blessing of regulators, with hardly a word from the rating agencies, which, incidentally, are paid by the issuers of the bonds they rate. Seldom if ever did Moody’s or Standard & Poor’s say, “If you put one more risky asset on your balance sheet, you will face a serious downgrade.”
The American International Group, Fannie Mae, Freddie Mac, General Electric and the municipal bond guarantors Ambac Financial and MBIA all had triple-A ratings. (G.E. still does!) Large investment banks like Lehman and Merrill Lynch all had solid investment grade ratings. It’s almost as if the higher the rating of a financial institution, the more likely it was to contribute to financial catastrophe. But of course all these big financial companies fueled the creation of the credit products that in turn fueled the revenues of Moody’s and Standard & Poor’s.
These oligopolies, which are actually sanctioned by the S.E.C., didn’t merely do their jobs badly. They didn’t simply miss a few calls here and there. In pursuit of their own short-term earnings, they did exactly the opposite of what they were meant to do: rather than expose financial risk they systematically disguised it.
This is a subject that might be profitably explored in Washington. There are many questions an enterprising United States senator might want to ask the credit-rating agencies. Here is one: Why did you allow MBIA to keep its triple-A rating for so long? In 1990 MBIA was in the relatively simple business of insuring municipal bonds. It had $931 million in equity and only $200 million of debt — and a plausible triple-A rating. By 2006 MBIA had plunged into the much riskier business of guaranteeing collateralized debt obligations, or C.D.O.’s. But by then it had $7.2 billion in equity against an astounding $26.2 billion in debt. That is, even as it insured ever-greater risks in its business, it also took greater risks on its balance sheet.
Yet the rating agencies didn’t so much as blink. On Wall Street the problem was hardly a secret: many people understood that MBIA didn’t deserve to be rated triple-A. As far back as 2002, a hedge fund called Gotham Partners published a persuasive report, widely circulated, entitled: “Is MBIA Triple A?” (The answer was obviously no.)
At the same time, almost everyone believed that the rating agencies would never downgrade MBIA, because doing so was not in their short-term financial interest. A downgrade of MBIA would force the rating agencies to go through the costly and cumbersome process of re-rating tens of thousands of credits that bore triple-A ratings simply by virtue of MBIA’s guarantee. It would stick a wrench in the machine that enriched them. (In June, finally, the rating agencies downgraded MBIA, after MBIA’s failure became such an open secret that nobody any longer cared about its formal credit rating.)
The S.E.C. now promises modest new measures to contain the damage that the rating agencies can do — measures that fail to address the central problem: that the raters are paid by the issuers.
But this should come as no surprise, for the S.E.C. itself is plagued by similarly wacky incentives. Indeed, one of the great social benefits of the Madoff scandal may be to finally reveal the S.E.C. for what it has become.
Created to protect investors from financial predators, the commission has somehow evolved into a mechanism for protecting financial predators with political clout from investors. (The task it has performed most diligently during this crisis has been to question, intimidate and impose rules on short-sellers — the only market players who have a financial incentive to expose fraud and abuse.)
The instinct to avoid short-term political heat is part of the problem; anything the S.E.C. does to roil the markets, or reduce the share price of any given company, also roils the careers of the people who run the S.E.C. Thus it seldom penalizes serious corporate and management malfeasance — out of some misguided notion that to do so would cause stock prices to fall, shareholders to suffer and confidence to be undermined. Preserving confidence, even when that confidence is false, has been near the top of the S.E.C.’s agenda.
IT’S not hard to see why the S.E.C. behaves as it does. If you work for the enforcement division of the S.E.C. you probably know in the back of your mind, and in the front too, that if you maintain good relations with Wall Street you might soon be paid huge sums of money to be employed by it.

At least 100 people were shot by militants, thought to be Islamic mujahadeen in luxury hotels throughout Mumbai yesterday. Gunmen apparently singled out US and British passport holders. The head of India’s anti-terrorist squad was killed in the attacks.

Ironically the property that became the Taj in Mumbai was founded by an Indian, Jamsetji Tata, as a place that would not discriminate, a place of tolerance.  Of course, the name makes me think of the Taj Mahal in Agra as I write this – its Mughal history owes much more to the Persian Islamic tradition than to any Hindu one. It is, essentially, a tomb. As a personal note from me, let me remind readers of Rabindranath Tagore’s (Poet, Philosopher, Musician, Writer, Educator, Nobel Laureate 1861-1941) description of that tomb as “one tear-drop…upon the cheek of time”
This report is by Rina Chandran, and I found it published in the Independent.

Indian commandos freed hostages from Mumbai’s Taj Mahal hotel today but battled on with gunmen who launched attacks across India’s financial capital, killing more than 100 people. The Islamic militants arrived by boats in Mumbai yesterday, before fanning out and attacking luxury hotels, a landmark cafe, hospitals and a railway station, firing indiscriminately.

Some 17 hours after the late-evening assault, soldiers and militants were still exchanging intermittent fire and more than 100 people were trapped inside rooms of the Taj Mahal hotel, a 105-year-old city landmark.

“People who were held up there, they have all been rescued,” Maharashtra state police chief A.N. Roy told the NDTV news channel. “But there are guests in the rooms, we don’t know how many.”

Roy said some people were still apparently being held hostage at the nearby Trident/Oberoi Hotel. “That is why the operation is being conducted more sensitively to ensure there are no casualties of innocent people.”

Police said at least six foreigners were killed and another 287 people were wounded in the attacks, which were claimed by the little-known Deccan Mujahideen group.

“Release all the mujahideens, and Muslims living in India should not be troubled,” said a militant inside the Oberoi, speaking to Indian television by telephone.

The man, who identified himself only as Sahadullah, said he was one of seven attackers inside the hotel, and wanted Islamist militants to be freed from Indian jails.

Later, an explosion was heard at the hotel, a Reuters witness said.

At least two guests, trapped in their rooms in the Taj, also phoned TV stations. One said the firedoors were locked, and another said he had seen two dead bodies by the swimming pool.

“Two of my colleagues are still in there and the last we heard from them was three hours ago and then the phone battery died,” said a German national who escaped the Taj.

The attacks were bound to spook investors in one of Asia’s largest and fastest-growing economies.

Mumbai has seen several major bomb attacks in the past, but never anything so obviously targeted at foreigners.

Authorities closed stock, bond and foreign exchange markets, and the central bank said it would continue auctions to keep cash flowing through interbank lending markets, which seized up after the global financial crisis.

The militants struck at the heart of Mumbai’s financial and tourist centre on Wednesday, with one of the first targets the Cafe Leopold, a famous hangout popular with foreign tourists.

They fired automatic weapons indiscriminately and threw grenades before settling in for a long siege at the Taj and the Trident/Oberoi.

“There could be 100-200 people inside the (Trident/Oberoi) hotel, but we cannot give you the exact figure as many people have locked themselves inside their rooms,” Maharashtra state deputy chief minister R.R. Patil told reporters.

“There could be 10-12 terrorists inside the hotel,” he said. “There are no negotiations with the terrorists.”

The attackers appeared to target British and Americans as they sought hostages. Israelis were also among the hostages, a television channel reported, while police said an Israeli rabbi was also being held by gunmen in a Mumbai apartment. Witnesses said the attackers were young South Asian men in their early 20s, most likely Indians, speaking Hindi or Urdu.

Television footage showed gunmen in a pick-up truck spraying people with rifle fire as the vehicle drove down a Mumbai street.

Hotel staff evacuated wounded on luggage trolleys, with passers-by covered in blood after they rushed to help. Some clambered down ladders to safety.

The attacks could be another blow for the Congress party-led government ahead of a general election due by early 2009, with the party already under fire for failing to prevent a string of bomb attacks on Indian cities.

Strategic expert Uday Bhaskar said the attacks could inflame tensions between Hindus and Muslims.

“The fact that they were trying to segregate British and American passport holders definitely suggests Islamist fervour,” Bhaskar said.

Police said they had shot dead four gunmen and arrested nine suspects. They said 12 policemen were killed, including Hemant Karkare, the chief of the police anti-terrorist squad in Mumbai.

Schools were closed and a curfew was imposed around the Gateway of India, a colonial-era monument. But train services were running as normal taking people to work in the stunned city.

Rakesh Patel, a British witness who was staying at the Taj Mahal hotel on business, said the attackers were looking for British and U.S. passport holders.

“They came from the restaurant and took us up the stairs. They had bombs. Young boys, maybe 20 years old, 25 years old. They had two guns,” he told the NDTV channel, smoke stains covering his face.

Japan’s foreign ministry said at least one Japanese national had been killed and one injured in the attacks, while South Korea said 26 of its nationals had escaped unharmed.

Australian Prime Minister Kevin Rudd confirmed one Australian had been killed by the attacks in Mumbai, but it was possible the number of Australians killed could rise. Two other Australians were also injured in the attacks.

In Washington, the White House and President-elect Barack Obama condemned the attacks, as did France, current president of the European Union, and UN Secretary General Ban Ki-moon.

I found this great article in The New York Times which ran at the start of the week. In Utah’s Pleasant Grove City Park, there’s a monument which bears the Ten Commandments on public display. So….. why shouldn’t other religions – under the American Constitution – also have the right to put up their own monuments in public places, bearing their own key aphorisms or sayings? Good question. So thinks the Summum church anyway – with an interesting set of religious beliefs rather like a Gnostic/Egyptian hybrid.  Personally I’m a fan of Gnostic thinking but then again….ah…um….perhaps best for me to stick to reading the suppressed gospels of St Thomas. Known as the doubter for good reasons. Adam Liptak in his well written article is a little less kind – but undeniably amusing.
I couldn’t find a list of all the Summum aphorisms – any contributions from readers would be welcome – but I do have a list of Seven Summum Principles: Psychokinesis, Correspondence, Vibration, Opposition, Rhythm, Cause and Effect, and Gender. The Summums believe that “knowledge does not come from things such as the intellect or obedience or faith, but from revelatory experience.” Could be. I could buy that. The photo shows Summum leaders, Bernie Aua, Su Menu and Ron Temu, at their headquarters in Salt Lake City.

PLEASANT GROVE CITY, Utah — Across the street from City Hall here sits a small park with about a dozen donated buildings and objects — a wishing well, a millstone from the city’s first flour mill and an imposing red granite monument inscribed with the Ten Commandments.

Thirty miles to the north, in Salt Lake City, adherents of a religion called Summum gather in a wood and metal pyramid hard by Interstate 15 to meditate on their Seven Aphorisms, fortified by an alcoholic sacramental nectar they produce and surrounded by mummified animals.

In 2003, the president of the Summum church wrote to the mayor here with a proposal: the church wanted to erect a monument inscribed with the Seven Aphorisms in the city park, “similar in size and nature” to the one devoted to the Ten Commandments.

The city declined, a lawsuit followed and a federal appeals court ruled that the First Amendment required the city to display the Summum monument. The Supreme Court on Wednesday will hear arguments in the case, which could produce the most important free speech decision of the term.

The justices will consider whether a public park open to some donations must accept others as well. In cases involving speeches and leaflets, the courts have generally said that public parks are public forums where the government cannot discriminate among speakers on the basis of what they propose to say. The question of how donated objects should be treated is, however, an open one.

Inside the pyramid, sitting on a comfortable white couch near a mummified Doberman named Butch, Ron Temu, a Summum counselor, said the two monuments would complement each other.

“They’ve put a basically Judeo-Christian religious text in the park, which we think is great, because people should be exposed to it,” Mr. Temu said. “But our principles should be exposed as well.”

Su Menu, the church’s president, agreed. “If you look at them side by side,” Ms. Menu said of the two monuments, “they really are saying similar things.”

The Third Commandment: “Thou shalt not take the name of the Lord thy God in vain.”

The Third Aphorism: “Nothing rests; everything moves; everything vibrates.”

Michael W. Daniels, the mayor here, is not the vibrating sort.

Sitting with the city attorney in a conference room in City Hall, Mr. Daniels deftly drew several fine lines in explaining why the city could treat the two monuments differently.

Only donations concerning the city’s history are eligible for display in the park as a matter of longstanding policy, he said, and only when donated by groups with a long association with the city. The Fraternal Order of Eagles, a national civic organization, donated the Ten Commandments monument in 1971.

The donations, Mr. Daniels went on, are transformed when the city accepts them. “Monuments on government property become government speech,” he said.

Under the First Amendment, the government can generally say what it likes without giving equal time to opposing views; it has much less latitude to choose among private speakers.

Asked what the government is saying when it displays the Ten Commandments, Mr. Daniels talked about law and history. He did not mention religion.

Pressed a little, he retreated.

“The fact that we own the monument doesn’t mean that what is on the monument is something we are espousing, promoting, establishing, embracing,” Mr. Daniels said. “We’re looking at, Does it fit with the heritage of the people of this area?”

Brian M. Barnard, a lawyer for the Summum church, said the city’s distinctions were cooked up after the fact as a way to reject his client’s monument. The local chapter of the Eagles, Mr. Barnard added, had only been in town two years when it donated the Ten Commandments monument.

“We have a city that will allow one organization to put up its religious ideals and principles,” Mr. Barnard said. “When the next group comes along, they won’t allow it to put up its religious ideals and principles.”

Last year, the federal appeals court in Denver sided with the Summum church and ordered Pleasant Grove City to erect its monument.

Although the case appears to present questions under the First Amendment’s ban on government establishment of religion, the appeals court said the case was properly analyzed under the amendment’s free-speech protections. That distinguishes it from most cases concerning the display of nativity scenes and the like on government property.

The city, supported by more than 20 cities and states, along with the federal government, has told the Supreme Court that the upshot of affirming the appeals court decision would be to clutter public parks across the nation with offensive nonsense.

A town accepting a Sept. 11 memorial would also have to display a donated tribute to Al Qaeda, the briefs said. “Accepting a Statue of Liberty,” the city’s brief said, should not “compel a government to accept a Statue of Tyranny.”

The brief for the Summum church said the relevant dispute was much narrower. “The government,” it said, “may not take sides in a theological debate.”

Governments seeking to avoid accepting donations they do not want have several options, the Summum brief contended. They can choose to display nothing. They can speak in their own voice by creating or commissioning their own monuments. And they can adopt the messages conveyed by donated monuments as their own, but only if they do so expressly and unequivocally.

The Ten Commandments monument here stands in Pioneer Park, which pays tribute to the city’s frontier heritage, one that is mostly Mormon. The two sides differ about how best to honor that heritage.

Mayor Daniels said the monument broadly reflected local history. Mr. Barnard, the Summum lawyer, said the Ten Commandments did not play a central role in the Mormon faith. “If they wanted to quote from the Book of Mormon,” he said, “that would, at least, relate to the pioneers.”

“Mormons came to Utah because of religious persecution,” Mr. Barnard added. “The pioneer heritage in Utah has to be escape from persecution.”

The Summum church was founded in 1975, and it contains elements of Egyptian faiths and Gnostic Christianity. “Summum,” derived from the Latin, refers to the sum of all creation.

Followers of Summum believe that Moses received two sets of tablets on Mount Sinai and that the Ten Commandments were on the second set. The aphorisms were on the first one.

“When Moses came down from the mountain the first time, he brought the principles of creation,” Mr. Temu said. “But he saw the people weren’t ready for them, so he threw them on the ground and destroyed them.”

Summum’s founder, Corky Ra, says he learned the aphorisms during a series of telepathic encounters with divine beings he called Summa Individuals.

Mr. Barnard has represented the Summum church for many years. “They’re odd,” he said of his clients, with an affectionate smile. “They’re strange. They’re different.”

Bernie Aua, the church’s vice president, said the court case should not turn on how his religion was viewed.

“We have this thing called the Constitution,” Mr. Aua said. “The fact is, it’s a public park. And public parks are public.”

Oh dear. On a live radio phone-in two notorious pranksters deceive Sarah Palin this weekend that they are in fact French president, Nicolas Sarkozy. I found this story on the  website Boing Boing.

The popular Montreal comedy duo Marc-Antoine Audette and Sebastien Trudel, aka “The Masked Avengers” ( Les Justiciers Masqués ) are notorious for prank-calling heads of state and celebrities who take themselves a little too seriously. Surely none take themselves so seriously as Sarah Palin. She was pranked by the pair today when they social-hacked their way past security and convinced her she was speaking to Nicolas Sarkozy, the president of France. Fake Sarkozy tells Palin that his wife is “hot in bed,” drops plenty of hints it’s a fake call, and suggests Palin would make a good president “one day you too.” She replies, “well, maybe in eight years!” Snip: He tells Palin one of his favorite pastimes is hunting, also a passion of the 44-year-old Alaska governor. “I just love killing those animals. Mmm, mmm, take away life, that is so fun,” the fake Sarkozy says. He proposes they go hunting together by helicopter, something he says he has never done. “Well, I think we could have a lot of fun together while we’re getting work done,” Palin counters. “We can kill two birds with one stone that way.” The comedian jokes that they shouldn’t bring Cheney along on the hunt, referring to the 2006 incident in which the vice-president shot and injured a friend while hunting quail. “I’ll be a careful shot,” responds Palin. Playing off the governor’s much-mocked comment in an early television interview that she had insights into foreign policy because “you can actually see Russia from land here in Alaska,” the caller tells her: “You know we have a lot in common also, because … from my house I can see Belgium.” She replies: “Well, see, we’re right next door to different countries that we all need to be working with, yes.”(…) He also tells the Alaska governor that he loved the “documentary” made about her and referred to a pornographic film with a Palin look-alike made by Hustler founder Larry Flynt. She answers tentatively, “Ohh, good, thank you, yes.” Perhaps most damning of all: at the very end of the call, despite the prank caller identifying himself as phoning in from MONTREAL, Palin tells “Bexie” as she hands the phone back that it’s a “radio station from France.” Don’t forget to vote, folks!

It’s about time I ran a serious article about the economy after weeks of crisis – and Melvyn King gave an interesting analysis of what’s been going down in his speech to the Confederation of British Industry this Tuesday, which I am publishing in full here. However when I searched for an image of “King addressing CBI” this one came up, so I thought I would include it anyway. Pound drop, don’t stop….or something.

My first memories of Leeds are from a wet summer in 1958. I was ten years old, we lived on the moors above Hebden Bridge, and my father took me to my first Test Match – England against New Zealand at Headingley. It rained all day on both Thursday and Friday, and, when play started in mid-afternoon on Saturday, on a drying wicket New Zealand were bowled out by Laker and Lock for 67. So I became a slow bowler. I was taught to bowl – slow left arm – at Old Town primary school by the headmaster, Alfred Stephenson. During the morning break he would mark the wickets in chalk in the playground, and draw a small circle exactly on a length. If we could pitch the ball within that circle he would give us a farthing. As we improved, and the payout of farthings increased, the morning break became shorter and shorter – my first lesson in economic incentives, or what is known in the trade as “moral hazard”.
So let me move forward 50 years to the events of 2008, and describe the nature of the financial crisis, the steps that governments and central banks have taken to deal with it, and, most important, the implications of recent events for the UK and world economies. Since August 2007, the industrialised world has been engulfed by financial turmoil. And, following the failure of Lehman Brothers on 15 September, an extraordinary, almost unimaginable, sequence of events began which culminated a week or so ago in the announcements around the world of a recapitalisation of the banking system. It is difficult to exaggerate the severity and importance of those events. Not since the beginning of the First World War has our banking system been so close to collapse. In the second half of September, companies and non-bank financial institutions accelerated their withdrawal from even short-term funding of banks, and banks increasingly lost confidence in the safety of lending to each other. Funding costs rose sharply and for many institutions it was possible to borrow only overnight. Credit to the real economy almost stopped flowing. In financial markets, confidence in others fell to a point where investors sought refuge in government instruments such as US Treasury Bills, which at one point yielded a negative return. Central banks around the world were providing enormous amounts of liquidity to some institutions while at the same time taking large deposits from others. Eventually, on 6 and 7 October even overnight funding started to dry up. Radical action was necessary to ensure the survival of the banking system. And on the morning of 8 October that action was taken when the Prime Minister and Chancellor unveiled a UK plan for recapitalising the banking system on which the Bank, FSA and Treasury had been working for a while. Why was radical action necessary? When the financial turmoil began in August 2007, markets for a number of financial instruments, including mortgage-backed securities, dried up. Most observers expected this closure to be short-lived, and the predominant view was that the crisis was one of (a lack of) liquidity. But, as time passed and markets did not re-open, it became clear that the problem was deeper seated, and concerned the solvency of the banking system and the sustainability of its funding model. Attempts to deal with the problem by injections of liquidity from central banks led to temporary alleviations of the symptoms, but, after an initial improvement, conditions would deteriorate again. The scale of central bank liquidity support during the crisis has been unprecedented, and all central banks have increased the scale of their lending in broadly similar ways. The UK taxpayer now has a larger claim on the assets of banks (in the form of collateral held by the Bank of England) than the total equity value of UK banks. Massive injections of central bank liquidity have played a vital role in staving off an imminent collapse of the banking system. Such lending can tide a bank over while it is taking steps to remove the cause of the concerns that generated a run or lack of confidence. But it can also serve to conceal the severity of the underlying problems, and put off the inevitable day of reckoning. I hope it is now understood that the provision of central bank liquidity, while essential to buy time, is not, and never could be, the solution to the banking crisis, nor to the problems of individual banks. Central bank liquidity is sticking plaster, useful and important, but not a substitute for proper treatment. Just as a fever is itself only a symptom of an underlying condition, so the freezing of interbank and money markets was the symptom of deeper structural problems in the banking sector. So let me explain why a major recapitalisation of the banking system was necessary, was the centrepiece of the UK plan (alongside a temporary guarantee of some wholesale funding instruments and provision of central bank liquidity), and was in turn followed by other European countries and the United States. Securitised mortgages – that is collections of mortgages bundled together and sold as securities, including the now infamous US sub-prime mortgages – had been marketed during a period of rising house prices and low interest rates which had masked the riskiness of the underlying loans. By securitising mortgages on such a scale, banks transformed the liquidity of their lending book. They also financed it by short-term wholesale borrowing. But in the light of rising defaults and falling house prices – first in the United States and then elsewhere – investors reassessed the risks inherent in these securities. Perceived as riskier, their values fell and demand for securitisations dwindled. For the same reason, the value of banks’ mortgage books declined. Banks saw the value of their assets fall while their liabilities remained unchanged. The effect was magnified by the very high levels of borrowing relative to capital (or leverage) with which many banks were operating, and the fact that banks had purchased significant quantities of securitised and more complex financial instruments from each other. Not only were these assets difficult to value, but the distribution of losses across the financial system was uncertain. Banks’ share prices fell. Capital was squeezed. Markets were sending a clear message to banks around the world: they did not have enough capital. At the Annual Meetings of the IMF and World Bank in Washington ten days ago, the message was reinforced by our colleagues from Japan, Sweden and Finland, who, with eloquence and not a little passion, reminded those present of their experience in dealing with a systemic banking failure in the 1990s. Recapitalise and do it now was the lesson. Recapitalisation requires a fiscal response, and that can be done only by governments. Confidence in the banking system had eroded as the weakness of the capital position became more widely appreciated. But it took a crisis caused by the failure of Lehman Brothers to trigger the coordinated government plan to recapitalise the system. It would be a mistake, however, to think that had Lehman Brothers not failed, a crisis would have been averted. The underlying cause of inadequate capital would eventually have provoked a crisis of one kind or another somewhere else. So where does this leave us? The recapitalisation plan is having a major impact on the restoration of market confidence in banks. Perhaps the single most important diagnostic statistic is the credit default swap premium – an indicator of market concerns about solvency of banks. These premia have fallen markedly since the announcement of the UK plan. From the close of business on 7 October to now the premia on the UK’s five largest banks have more than halved. We are far from the end of the road back to stability, but the plan to recapitalise our banking system, both here and abroad, will I believe come to be seen as the moment in the banking crisis of the past year when we turned the corner. As concerns about the viability of our banks recede, banks should regain the confidence of the market as recipients of funding. There are already some signs of greater activity. But the age of innocence – when banks lent to each other unsecured for three months or longer at only a small premium to expected policy rates – will not quickly, if ever, return. In itself that does not affect the ability of banks to fund lending, but confidence has been badly shaken after the traumatic events of the past few weeks. New sources of funding will develop only slowly, although the temporary government guarantees of new lending to banks will help. So it will take time before the recapitalisation leads to a resumption of normal levels of lending by the banking system to the real economy. And we cannot assume that there will not be problems in other parts of the financial system and in some emerging market economies to be overcome before the crisis can truly be described as over. With the plan for recapitalisation in place, the focus of attention has moved to the outlook for the UK and world economies. Over the past month, the economic news has probably been the worst in such a short period for a very considerable time. The most recent activity indicators for the second of half of the year have fallen sharply. In the UK, unemployment continues to rise and, over the past three months, has risen at the fastest rate for seventeen years, albeit from a relatively low level. House prices declined by about 5% in the third quarter and are 13% lower than a year ago. The recent weakness of the housing market is likely to continue. And if the news on the domestic front were not sufficiently discouraging, the rest of the world economy also appears to be slowing rapidly. Why has the outlook deteriorated so quickly? The banking crisis dealt a severe blow to the availability of credit. Growth in secured lending to households fell to an annualised rate of 1.9% in the three months to August, its lowest level in more than a decade. The Bank of England’s survey of credit conditions suggests that the terms on which banks provide credit to companies have tightened even further. And, on some estimates, the supply of finance to the UK corporate sector has ground to a halt. This credit shock has come on top of a fall in real disposable incomes resulting from the rise in energy and food prices earlier in the year. So, taken together, the combination of a squeeze on real takehome pay and a decline in the availability of credit poses the risk of a sharp and prolonged slowdown in domestic demand. Indeed, it now seems likely that the UK economy is entering a recession. At the same time, consumer price inflation, our target measure, has risen from around the 2% target at the beginning of the year to a worryingly high rate of 5.2% in September. Oil and other commodity and food prices have all been rising very rapidly. In those circumstances, it was sensible to allow those price changes to be absorbed by movements in consumer prices. The alternative would have been an even sharper slowdown in the economy. Central banks in other countries also find themselves in a similar position. Over the past year or so, CPI inflation rose from 2.0% to 5.6% in the United States and from 1.7% to 4.0% in the euro-area. It is surely probable that the drama of the banking crisis, which is unprecedented in the lifetime of almost all of us, will damage business and consumer confidence more generally. But two pieces of good news should temper the gloom. First, the banking system will be recapitalised and, in due course, the banking system will resume more normal lending, although by normal I do not mean the conditions that prevailed prior to August 2007. Second, oil prices have now fallen from a peak of $147 a barrel only three months ago to around $70 today. And wholesale gas prices have now also started to follow oil prices down. That will help to support the growth of real incomes as well as bringing down inflation. So, what should the Monetary Policy Committee do now? It must continue to set Bank Rate in order to meet the 2% inflation target, not next month or the month after, but further ahead when the impact of recent developments in both credit supply and world commodity prices will have worked their way through the economy. This is the time not to abandon but to reinforce our commitment to stability. The slowdown in demand, and the recent falls in energy prices, will bring inflation back towards the target. The Committee must balance the risk that a prolonged slowdown in domestic demand pulls inflation materially below the target against the risk that today’s high inflation rate becomes embedded in inflation expectations. During the past month, the balance of risks to inflation in the medium term shifted decisively to the downside. And the MPC – in an action co-ordinated with six other major central banks – cut Bank Rate by half a percentage point to 4.5%. Looking ahead, the outlook is obviously very uncertain – both for the world as well as our own economy. The MPC cannot simply extrapolate the past into the future. The prospects for oil and other commodity prices are difficult to assess. So too are the period over which bank lending will return to normal and the extent of the damage to business and consumer confidence. Moreover, the credit crunch affects not just demand but also the supply potential of the economy, complicating the assessment of the inflationary impact of changes in the level of demand. The associated shift of resources away from those parts of the economy that have flourished in recent years towards other areas of economic activity will moderate the increase in potential output while that adjustment is taking place. The MPC must monitor carefully all the available evidence about fastchanging patterns of spending, supply and prices. It will act promptly to ensure that inflation remains on track to meet our target.
The downturn in the economy will affect not just monetary policy but fiscal policy too. That subject is for another occasion, but there is one point I do want to make tonight. The cost of supporting the banking system will inevitably raise the level of national debt. Managed properly, however, such a rise in national debt need not prove inflationary. Indeed, within a reasonable period it should be possible for the Government to reduce its stake in the banking system, for example by selling units in a Bank Reconstruction Fund, and repay the additional debt that had been issued. That is one difference between past increases in national debt in times of war and the increase now to pay for recapitalisation of the banking system which involves the acquisition of an asset. Let me take you back again to 1958. In the very first television interview given by a Governor of the Bank of England, Cameron Cobbold explained national debt to Robin Day on “Tell the People”, the highlight of ITN’s Sunday evening schedule fifty years ago. Here is the exchange:
Cobbold: The National Debt represents the sums of money which the Government have over the years borrowed from the public, mainly in this country and, to some extent, abroad. That is really the amount of expenditure which they have failed over the period to cover by revenue.
Day: Have we paid for World War II?
Cobbold: No.
Day: Have we paid for World War I?
Cobbold: No.
Day: Have we paid for the Battle of Waterloo?
Cobbold: I don’t think you can exactly say that.

On this occasion, we should have little difficulty in evaluating when we have paid for the recapitalisation. There are, though, questions about the source of the funding and the level of borrowing by the country as a whole from overseas. For several years, the UK banking sector has been relying extensively on external capital flows, principally shortterm wholesale funding, to finance its lending activities. Those external inflows have 9 fallen sharply – a mild form of the reversal of capital inflows experienced by a number of emerging market economies in the 1990s. Unless they are replaced by other forms of external finance, the adjustments in the trade deficit and exchange rate will need to be larger and faster than would otherwise have occurred, implying a larger rise in domestic saving and weaker domestic spending in the short run. With the bank recapitalisation plan in place, we now face a long, slow haul to restore lending to the real economy, and hence growth of our economy, to more normal conditions. The past few weeks have been somewhat too exciting. The actions that were taken were not designed to save the banks as such, but to protect the rest of the economy from the banks. I hope banks will come to appreciate, just as the New Zealanders at Headingley in 1958, the Yorkshire virtues of patience and sound defence when batting on a sticky wicket. I have said many times that successful monetary policy would appear rather boring. So let me extend an invitation to the banking industry to join me in promoting the idea that a little more boredom would be no bad thing. The long march back to boredom and stability starts tonight in Leeds. ENDS

I found this on the internet today and it provided me with a refreshing antidote to the stories of Royal Bank of Scotland plunging over 40 percent in value, America in dissarray, Wall Street bankers hurtling to their doom down the sides of skyscrapers….. purporting to be a 419 scam (you know, those emails from scammers claiming to be the president of Nigeria) for me it captures the mood of a moment.

Dear American:
I need to ask you to support an urgent secret business relationship with a transfer of funds of great magnitude.
I am Ministry of the Treasury of the Republic of America. My country has had crisis that has caused the need for large transfer of funds of US$800 billion. If you would assist me in this transfer, it would be most profitable to you.
I am working with Mr. Phil Gram, lobbyist for UBS, who will be my replacement as Ministry of the Treasury in January. As a Senator, you may know him as the leader of the American banking deregulation movement in the 1990s. This transactin is 100% safe.
This is a matter of great urgency. We need a blank check. We need the funds as quickly as possible. We cannot directly transfer these funds in the names of our close friends because we are constantly under surveillance. My family lawyer advised me that I should look for a reliable and trustworthy person who will act as a next of kin so the funds can be transferred.
Please reply with all of your bank account, IRA and college fund account numbers and those of your children and grandchildren to wallstreetbailout@treasury.gov so that we may transfer your commission for this transaction. After I receive that information, I will respond with detailed information about safeguards that will be used to protect the funds.
Yours faithfully,
Minister of Treasury
Paulson

This story comes from Luke Andrews who pointed it out to me earlier today – it ran on the Fox news site today – “pay up or we’ll keep your tanks” was my alternative for this one. Since I started writing this the Washington Post updated the story, which appears below.

CAIRO, Sept. 29 — The U.S. Navy bolstered its force of warships off Somalia on Monday, intensifying its watch over Somali pirates holding a hijacked Ukrainian-operated vessel with crew members, arms and tanks aboard.

Lt. Nathan Christensen, a spokesman for the U.S. Navy 5th Fleet, said “there are now several U.S. ships” within eyesight of the hijacked ship, Faina, which according to the Kenyan government was bound for Kenya when it was seized last week. The pirates are negotiating for ransom with the vessel’s owner.

Speaking by telephone from Bahrain, Christensen declined to say how exactly many other U.S. warships had joined the USS Howard, a guided-missile destroyer, off Somalia. The U.S. ships were staying in international waters off Somalia, Christensen said, while the Somali pirates kept the Faina within the 12-mile territorial bounds of Somali waters.

U.S. sailors remained close enough to see the ship and had established bridge-to-bridge contact via radio, he said.

Somali pirates hijacked the Faina on Thursday, seizing its 21 Ukrainian, Russian and Lithuanian crew members and an arms cargo that included 33 T-72 tanks. Kenya said the tanks and weapons were for its military. Pirates have anchored the hijacked vessel a few miles off the Somali town of Hobyo.

The U.S. Navy intends to maintain “a vigilant, visual watch of the ship” to make sure pirates don’t try to unload the tanks, ammunition and other arms aboard, Christensen said.

“We’re deeply concerned about the cargo and we don’t want it to go into the wrong hands,” he said.

Russia has said it is sending a warship as well.

Radio France International said Monday it had spoken, apparently by cellphone, with a pirate aboard the Faina, who said at least three warships were near the hijacked ship.

“Ships and troops have surrounded us,” said a man identified by RFI as pirate Sugule Ali. He spoke in Somali. “There’s a lot of unusual movement surrounding us and planes are flying overhead. I warn anyone who might be tempted by any military operation or use of force, if we’re attacked, we’ll defend ourselves, until the last one of us dies.”

The man repeated a demand for $20 million in ransom, as well as the release of the ship and the crew.

Somali news media reported over the weekend that one of the hostage crew members had died. Pirates told local elders that the man died of problems related to high blood pressure, according to the Somali news reports.

Somali pirates have launched what the International Maritime Bureau calls the biggest surge of piracy on modern record, attacking more than 60 vessels this year off Somalia and in the adjoining Gulf of Aden. The Gulf of Aden, which connects the Indian Ocean to the Suez Canal, is the main shipping route between Asia and the Middle East to Europe.

Somalia has been without a functioning government since 1991. It is wracked now by fighting between Islamist fighters and a U.S.-backed force from neighboring Ethiopia that is propping up a largely powerless Somali transitional government.

The conflict already has displaced more than 1 million Somalis, according to the U.N. High Commissioner for Refugees. Fighting this week alone has forced at least 16,000 Somalis from their homes, the U.N. refugee agency said.

Many desperate Somalis pay smugglers to ferry them to Yemen, across the Gulf of Aden from Somalia, to escape the violence. But the smugglers typically throw the refugees overboard miles from land.

Since August, the bodies of scores of Somali refugees have washed up on Yemen’s shores.

On Sunday, the U.N. refugee agency confirmed the deaths of at least 52 more Somalis off Yemen. Somali smugglers had set off Sept. 3 in a ship with at least 100 refugees. The Somali vessel broke down within days, and the smugglers abandoned the drifting vessel and the people aboard, the U.N. refugee agency said in a statement.

——————-

MOGADISHU, Somalia —  As a heavily armed U.S. destroyer patrolled nearby and planes flew overhead Sunday, a Somali pirate spokesman told The Associated Press his group was demanding a $20 million ransom to release a cargo ship loaded with Russian tanks.

The guided missile destroyer USS Howard was stationed off the Somali coast on Sunday, making sure that the pirates did not remove the tanks, ammunition and other heavy weapons from the ship, which was anchored off the coast.

But the pirate spokesman warned that the pirates would fight to the death if any country tried military action to regain the ship, and a man who said he was the ship’s captain reported that one crew member had died.

Pirates seized the Ukrainian-operated ship Faina off the coast of Somalia on Thursday as it headed to Kenya carrying 33 Russian-built T-72 tanks and a substantial amount of ammunition and spare parts. The ordnance was ordered by the Kenyan government.

A spokesman for the U.S. 5th fleet said the Navy remained “deeply concerned” over the fate of the ship’s 21-member crew and cargo.

In a rare gesture of cooperation, the Americans appeared to be keeping an eye on the Faina until the Russian missile frigate Neustrashimy, or Intrepid, reaches the area. The Russian ship was still in the Atlantic on Sunday, the Russian navy reported.

Pirate spokesman Sugule Ali said he was speaking Sunday from the deck of the Faina via a satellite phone — and verified his location by handing the phone over to the ship’s captain, who also spoke with the AP. It was not possible to further confirm their identities.

“We want ransom, nothing else. We need $20 million for the safe release of the ship and the crew,” Ali said, adding that “if we are attacked, we will defend ourselves until the last one of us dies.”

Five nations have been sharing information to try to secure the swift release of the ship and its crew — Ukraine, Somalia, Russia, the United States and Britain. Kenyan government spokesman Alfred Mutua, however, insisted his country will not negotiate with pirates or terrorists.

Ali said planes have been flying over the Faina. It was not known which country the planes belonged to. He also said others who made earlier ransom demands did not speak for the pirates holding the ship.

A man who said he was the captain of the seized ship and who identified himself as Viktor Nikolsky told the AP that a Russian crew member died Sunday because of hypertension.

“The rest of us are feeling well,” Nikolsky said, adding that he could see three ships about a mile away, including one carrying an American flag.

Both Ali and Nikolsky spoke on a satellite phone number the AP got from a Somali journalist who spoke to Ali earlier in the day. The conversation lasted about 30 minutes. Ali spoke in Somali with a central Somalian accent and Nikolsky spoke in broken English.

Russian media had earlier identified Nikolsky as the first mate, yet he identified himself to the AP as the ship’s captain. It was not possible to immediately resolve the discrepancy.

U.S. Navy spokesman Lt. Nathan Christensen told AP that the San Diego-based USS Howard had made contact with the Faina on Sunday.

“While we can’t get into details, I will say there has been basic bridge-to-bridge communication established with the ship,” Christensen told the AP in a phone interview from the 5th Fleet’s Mideast headquarters in Manama, Bahrain.

Christensen said the Navy was aware of one crew member’s death, but did know what the cause was.

Pirate attacks worldwide have surged this year and Africa remains the world’s top piracy hotspot, with 24 reported attacks in Somalia and 18 in Nigeria this year, according to the International Maritime Bureau’s piracy reporting center.

Attacking ships has become a regular source of income for pirates in Somalia, a war-torn country without a functioning government since 1991.

Christensen said the Faina was anchored off Somalia’s coast near the central town of Hobyo.

“What’s on board is of concern to us as much as the criminal activity,” Christensen told the AP, adding that the Navy does not want the tanks and other weapons to end up “in the wrong hands.”

Christensen refused to say what the crew of the American destroyer would do if the pirates began to offload the tanks and weapons.

“It’s a very complex situation and we do not want to speculate on any particular aspect of it,” he said.

According to its Web site, the USS Howard has surface-to-air missiles, Tomahawk cruise missiles, anti-submarine rockets, torpedoes, and a five-inch rapid-fire deck gun.

In the latest hijacking in the area, a Greek tanker with a crew of 19 carrying refined petroleum from Europe to the Middle East was ambushed Friday in the Gulf of Aden, according to the International Maritime Bureau.

I actually loved this idea. My son still insists that “art is for people with a lot of time on their hands.” An interesting perspective. As you would expect, I have accused him of being a Nazi book burner. My son, not President Bush of course. I have given my son the Hans Johst quote – “when I hear the word culture, I reach for my gun. ” Some people mistakenly attribute this quote to Himmler or Goring. But let’s not beat around the bush (arrrrgh) Johst was a died in the wool Nazi too. Anyway…….Jean Luc Godard later restyled this in the film “le Mepris”….”when I hear the word culture, I reach for my cheque book.” More like it in this day and age. I have featured a story from der Spiegel…no irony intended. I just love their dry tone of voice here.Please note, as der Spiegel says,  that offensive portions of this picture have not been pixellated.

Artist Jonathen Yeo has created a collage portrait of US President George W. Bush by cutting up porn magazines. The Bush portrait, currently on display in London, has attracted the wrath of Republicans.

British artist Jonathan Yeo had every reason to be offended. The Bush Library in Texas had yet again rescinded a commission it had given him to paint a portrait of United States President George W. Bush. In the end, though, the artist decided to go ahead with his artistic portrayal of the 43rd president, even if he wasn’t getting paid for it — and created a portrait of Bush using a collage of pornographic images.

The tribute has not gone over well with Bush’s supporters. A spokesman for Republicans Abroad International described the portrait as a “cheap stunt” in an interview with the British tabloid The Sun. Meanwhile, a spokesman for the Republican Party in Bush’s home state of Texas didn’t find much humor in the portrait either. “This picture is very distasteful,” he told the paper, adding angrily, “Why would anyone want to make a picture of our president from pornographic material?”

For his part, artist Yeo has reacted calmly to the furore over the smutty visage. “I did it for fun, not to offend,” he told the paper, adding that he was “pleased with it.”

Nor has Yeo always been so cruel to politicians. He recently completed a portrait of former British Prime Minister Tony Blair — without the help of nudity, sexual acts or graphic displays of genitalia.

The artwork, titled “Bush 2007,” is currently being shown as part of an exhibition at London’s Lazarides Gallery and is available in a limited edition run of 150 prints, each measuring 86 by 56 centimeters.

This is a personal view – and I’m reading between the lines here and want more facts – but the report below about the impending collapse of the government in Ukraine looks to me like a power display by pro-Russian forces within the current Ukranian government, flexing their muscles just prior to a visit by Dick Cheney (who is due here on Thursday). We have to see this situation as “six of one and half a dozen of the other.” I don’t blame Russia for disliking American influence in this area. I don’t blame America for wanting to perpetuate democracy in former Soviet states. However I really do feel that America is playing a very dangerous game.
Those vodka-drinking Ukranians. Those nuclear weapons.

This report is by the BBC at mid-day today. Untoned and cool. Not like my comments.

Ukrainian President Viktor Yushchenko has threatened to dissolve parliament and call elections after the collapse of the country’s ruling coalition.

Mr Yushchenko’s supporters walked out in protest following new laws trimming the president’s powers.

The laws were introduced by the pro-Russian opposition and backed by Prime Minister Yulia Tymoshenko’s party.

Former allies, the prime minister and president are now at odds despite sharing pro-Western political goals.

All but one of 12 ministers from Mr Yushchenko’s party boycotted Wednesday’s cabinet meeting.

“A political and constitutional coup d’etat has started in the parliament,” Mr Yushchenko said in a televised speech.

“I will use my right to dissolve parliament and decree early elections if a new coalition is not formed within 30 days,” he said.

But Ms Tymoshenko blamed her rival for the chaos, vowing that the Ukrainian cabinet would continue its work despite the break-up of the coalition.

“I am sorry that the president behaves irresponsibly,” she said at a cabinet meeting. “The coalition was destroyed under his instruction.”

The BBC’s Russian affairs analyst Steven Eke says Mr Yushchenko’s popularity is at rock bottom at the moment with opinion polls giving him single-digit levels of support.

The prime minister and president are believed to be jockeying for position before next year’s presidential election, though our correspondent says Mr Yushchenko’s chances of winning with current popularity levels would be slim.

The crisis follows mounting tension between the president and prime minister with Mr Yushchenko accusing Ms Tymoshenko of treason for allegedly siding with Moscow over the conflict in Georgia.

Mr Yushchenko has been a vociferous supporter of Georgia during the conflict but the prime minister’s party on Tuesday blocked a parliamentary resolution condemning Moscow.

The flare-up comes a day before a planned visit to the country by US Vice-President Dick Cheney.

The trip is part of a tour of former Soviet states which the US sees as key allies.

I found this story on Reuters today originally but the BBC report fills in the gaps pretty well. An important detail which I feel the BBC have glossed over is that Yevloyev was shot in the temple whilst being driven away in a Russian police car. There are rumours of a struggle in the car, but it reminded me that the Gestapo used to describe their murder victims as “shot whilst trying to escape”. All we need to hear now was that it was a small caliber 22 handgun and we will be certain that the assassination was a professional job.

Kremlin critic shot in Ingushetia

The owner of an internet site critical of the Russian authorities in the volatile region of Ingushetia has been shot dead in police custody.

 

Magomed Yevloyev, owner of the ingushetiya.ru site, was a vocal critic of the region’s administration. Yevloyev’s website is said to be one of the most visited for Ingush news

The Russian prosecutor’s office said an investigation into the death had been launched, Russia media report.

A post on Yevloyev’s site says he was detained by police after landing at the airport of the main town, Nazran.

The website owner was taken to hospital but died from his injuries.

Reports quoting local police said Yevloyev had tried to seize a policeman’s gun when he was being led to a vehicle. A shot was fired and Yevloyev was injured in the head.

Fierce critic

Yevloyev was a thorn in the side of Ingush President Murat Zyazikov, a former KGB general.

His website reported on alleged Russian security force brutality in Ingushetia, an impoverished province of some half a million people, mostly Muslims, which is now more turbulent than neighbouring Chechnya.

President Zyazikov had been on the same flight as Yevloyev.

Ingushetia borders Chechnya and has suffered from overflowing unrest.

There is a low-level insurgency, with regular small-scale ambushes against police and soldiers.

In June 2008, the Human Rights Watch group accused Russian security forces there of carrying out widespread human rights abuses.

HRW said it had documented dozens of arbitrary detentions, disappearances, acts of torture and extra-judicial executions.

I’ve been looking for an even handed description of just what’s going on in Georgia. I don’t think I will find it after listening to the Russian ambassador to Britain, Yuri Fedotov, on Radio 4 yesterday – although it was enlightening to hear him refer to Georgia’s current president as “an American puppet.” Not very diplomatic perhaps, but revealing. CJ Chivers in the New York Times wrote the main story here, but I am prefacing it with 3 likely scenarios from Helen Womack in today’s Guardian – because as I’ve said to my sons in the past, there is a greater concentration of nuclear weaponry in the Ukraine than anywhere else in the world – and it’s a vodka-drinking culture.

Scenario 1

If Russia is serious about its peacekeeping role in the region, it will do no more than push Georgian forces out of South Ossetia and attempt to return to the status quo before fighting broke out last week. Returning to the status quo will not be easy, however. On the one hand, South Ossetians are devastated by the destruction of their capital, Tskhinvali, and the estimated loss of 2,000 civilian lives and are highly unlikely to want to be part of Georgia now. On the other, the Organisation for Security and Cooperation in Europe says Russia has lost its neutrality and become party to the conflict. Perhaps the best Georgia can hope for is that Moscow annexes – or, from the South Ossetian point of view, embraces – the territory into the Russian Federation.

Scenario 2

The conflict could widen. Already Georgia’s other separatist region, the Black Sea enclave of Abkhazia, is mobilising and soon Tbilisi could find itself fighting on two fronts. Other small nations could become involved in a broader Caucasian war. Even Chechnya has offered to send peacekeepers to Georgia and Russia’s Cossacks are also volunteering to go to the front. The Kremlin could take advantage of the chaos to try to overthrow Georgia’s president, Mikheil Saakashvili, whom it has hated since the 2003 “Rose revolution”. Some Russian officials are calling for a Hague-style tribunal at which Saakashvili would be tried as a war criminal. Georgia’s own hard-won independence could be at stake if Russia imposed a puppet regime in Tbilisi.

Scenario 3

The conflict spreads further still, bringing in former Soviet republics such as Ukraine which, like Georgia, aspires to Nato membership, and Kazakhstan, which is loyal to Moscow. The war in Yugoslavia would seem like small fry compared with any war among former Soviet republics. The only thing worse than that would be the military involvement of the west, which looks unlikely, given Europe’s dependence on Russian energy and America’s and Britain’s commitments in Iraq and Afghanistan.

the New York Times article begins here….it’s as even handed as I could find.

As the bloody military mismatch between Russia and Georgia unfolded over the past three days, even the main players were surprised by how quickly small border skirmishes slipped into a conflict that threatened the Georgian government and perhaps the country itself.

Several American and Georgian officials said that unlike when Russia invaded Afghanistan in 1979, a move in which Soviet forces were massed before the attack, the nation had not appeared poised for an invasion last week. As late as Wednesday, they said, Russian diplomats had been pressing for negotiations between Georgia and South Ossetia, the breakaway region where the combat flared and then escalated into full-scale war.

“It doesn’t look like this was premeditated, with a massive staging of equipment,” one senior American official said. “Until the night before the fighting, Russia seemed to be playing a constructive role.”

But while the immediate causes and the intensity of the Russian invasion had caught Georgia and the Western foreign policy establishment by surprise, there had been signs for years that Georgia and Russia had methodically, if quietly, prepared for conflict.

Several other long-term factors had also contributed to the possibility of war. They included the Kremlin’s military successes in Chechnya, which gave Russia the latitude and sense of internal security it needed to free up troops to cross its borders, and the exuberant support of the United States for President Mikheil Saakashvili of Georgia, a figure loathed by the Kremlin on both personal and political terms.

Moreover, by preparing Georgian soldiers for duty in Iraq, the United States appeared to have helped embolden Georgia, if inadvertently, to enter a fight it could not win.

American officials and a military officer who have dealt with Georgia said privately that as a result, the war risked becoming a foreign policy catastrophe for the United States, whose image and authority in the region were in question after it had proven unable to assist Georgia or to restrain the Kremlin while the Russian Army pressed its attack.

Russia’s bureaucratic and military groundwork was laid even before Mr. Saakashvili came to power in 2004 and positioned himself as one of the world’s most strident critics of the Kremlin.

Under the presidency of Vladimir V. Putin, Russia had already been granting citizenship and distributing passports to virtually all of the adult residents of South Ossetia and Abkhazia, the much larger separatist region where Russia had also massed troops over the weekend. The West had been skeptical of the validity of Russia’s handing out passports by the thousands to citizens of another nation.

“Having a document does not make you a Russian citizen,” one American diplomat said in 2004, as Russia expanded the program.

But whatever the legal merits, the Kremlin had laid the foundation for one of its public relations arguments for invading: its army was coming to the aid of Russian citizens under foreign attack.

In the ensuing years, even as Russia issued warnings, Mr. Saakashvili grew bolder. There were four regions out of Georgian control when he took office in 2004, but he restored two smaller regions, Ajaria in 2004 and the upper Kodori Gorge in 2006, with few deaths.

The victories gave him a sense of momentum. He kept national reintegration as a central plank of his platform.

Russia, however, began retaliating against Georgia in many ways. It cut off air service and mail between the countries, closed the border and refused Georgian exports. And by the time the Kodori Gorge was back in Georgian control, Russia had also consolidated its hold over Chechnya, which is now largely managed by a local leader, Ramzan Kadyrov, and his Kremlin-backed Chechen forces.

Chechnya had for years been the preoccupation of Russian ground forces. But Mr. Kadyrov’s strength had enabled Russian to garrison many of its forces and turn its attention elsewhere.

Simultaneously, as the contest of wills between Georgia and Russia intensified, the strong support of the United States for Mr. Saakashvili created tensions within the foreign policy establishment in Washington and created rival views.

Some diplomats considered Mr. Saakashvili a politician of unusual promise, someone who could reorder Georgia along the lines of a Western democracy and become a symbol of change in the politically moribund post-Soviet states. Mr. Saakashvili encouraged this view, framing himself as a visionary who was leading a column of regional democracy movements.

Other diplomats worried that both Mr. Saakashvili’s persona and his platforms presented an implicit challenge to the Kremlin, and that Mr. Saakashvili made himself a symbol of something else: Russia’s suspicion about American intentions in the Kremlin’s old empire. They worried that he would draw the United States and Russia into arguments that the United States did not want.
This feeling was especially true among Russian specialists, who said that, whatever the merits of Mr. Saakashvili’s positions, his impulsiveness and nationalism sometimes outstripped his common sense.

The risks were intensified by the fact that the United States did not merely encourage Georgia’s young democracy, it helped militarize the weak Georgian state.

In his wooing of Washington as he came to power, Mr. Saakashvili firmly embraced the missions of the United States in Afghanistan and Iraq. At first he had almost nothing practical to offer. Georgia’s military was small, poorly led, ill-equipped and weak.

But Mr. Saakashvili’s rise coincided neatly with a swelling American need for political support and foreign soldiers in Iraq. His offer of troops was matched with a Pentagon effort to overhaul Georgia’s forces from bottom to top.

At senior levels, the United States helped rewrite Georgian military doctrine and train its commanders and staff officers. At the squad level, American marines and soldiers trained Georgian soldiers in the fundamentals of battle.

Georgia, meanwhile, began re-equipping its forces with Israeli and American firearms, reconnaissance drones, communications and battlefield-management equipment, new convoys of vehicles and stockpiles of ammunition.

The public goal was to nudge Georgia toward NATO military standards. Privately, Georgian officials welcomed the martial coaching and buildup, and they made clear that they considered participation in Iraq as a sure way to prepare the Georgian military for “national reunification” — the local euphemism of choice for restoring Abkhazia and South Ossetia to Georgian control.

All of these policies collided late last week. One American official who covers Georgian affairs, speaking on the condition of anonymity while the United States formulates its next public response, said that everything had gone wrong.

Mr. Saakashvili had acted rashly, he said, and had given Russia the grounds to invade. The invasion, he said, was chilling, disproportionate and brutal, and it was grounds for a strong censure. But the immediate question was how far Russia would go in putting Georgia back into what it sees as Georgia’s place.

There was no sign throughout the weekend of Kremlin willingness to negotiate. A national humiliation was under way.

“The Georgians have lost almost everything,” the official said. “We always told them, ‘Don’t do this because the Russians do not have limited aims.’ ”

James Purnell (Work and Pensions Secretary of State) spoke today in Parliament about Labour’s new ideas with regard to the unemployed and how they get benefit. As the Independent points out, (all the papers covered this but I have included Ben Russell’s take on it) it would mean a far from sympathetic deal for those unfortunate enough to be drug addicts. Incapacity benefit is to be scrapped altogether. Steer clear of drugs. (240,000 addicts on benefit). And don’t fall ill.

Heroin or crack cocaine addicts will be forced to seek treatment or lose their benefits and the long-term unemployed will be forced to work for their dole under the most radical reform of the welfare state in more than 60 years.

Incapacity benefit and income support will also be abolished in a package that stresses there can be “no right to a life on benefits” for anyone capable of working.

A leaked draft of the Government’s welfare Green Paper, due to be published on Monday, sets out tough conditions for claimants, making it clear that they must match the right to help with the responsibility to find a job.

The plans billed in the document as a “social revolution”, are likely to provoke an angry reaction from some Labour MPs.

Under the proposals, the estimated 240,000 heroin or crack addicts on benefits will be required to seek treatment in return for their money. The document warns: “Many people who are dependent on benefit are also dependent on drugs so we cannot hope to tackle one without addressing the other.”

Pilot schemes will increase pressure on the long-term unemployed to seek work. People on jobseekers’ allowance for more than a year will be forced to do at least four weeks’ full-time work in return for benefits and will be put on back-to-work programmes run by private or voluntary groups paid by results. Those out of work for two years could face tougher tests such as daily signing-on. Incapacity benefit will be replaced with an employment and support allowance. People unable to work will get a higher rate of long-term benefits.

Income support will also be abolished, with claimants transferred on to jobseekers’ allowance. Single mothers will have to seek work once their children turn seven. At present they can remain on benefits until their children reach 16.

In a letter accompanying the leaked draft, James Purnell, the Secretary of State for Work and Pensions, said he wanted to maintain “a clear balance between rights and responsibilities”.

Yesterday’s leak of a full copy of the Green Paper just days before its official publication caused dismay among officials.

But the Conservatives leapt to claim credit for the proposals, many of which they said were lifted from their policy paper on welfare reform earlier this year. Government sources dismissed that suggestion.

Chris Grayling, the shadow Work and Pensions Secretary, said: “Many of these proposals first appeared in our Welfare Green Paper six months ago, and it would be great news for Britain if the Government is planning to introduce the radical change that we have been arguing for.”

Jenny Willott, the Liberal Democrats’ work and pensions spokesman, said: “This Green Paper ignores the fact that over half of the adults living in poverty are in work, largely thanks to the poverty trap Labour has created with means-tested benefits.”

This article was written by Iain Cobain in the Guardian. I include it because in a time whereby we outsource all kinds of manufacturing to Asian countries, and thereby absolve ourselves culturally from the way in which they are made, the conditions in which people work, and the pollution which is caused, in the same way we are pushing geographical distance between ourselves and the human rights of our citizens. I am no supporter of terrorists. But who could condone circumstances in which ordinary innocent people are tortured alongside those guilty of terrorist acts or of planning terrorist acts? Put some distance there and perhaps we won’t think about it too hard.

MPs are calling for an investigation into allegations that British intelligence has “outsourced” the torture of British citizens to Pakistani security agencies after hearing accounts of people being abducted and subjected to mistreatment and, in some cases, released without charge.

John McDonnell, the Labour member for Hayes and Harlington, and Andrew Tyrie, Conservative member for Chichester, say the allegations should be examined by the Intelligence and Security Committee (ISC), the Westminster body that oversees the Security Service, MI5, and the Intelligence Service, MI6.

In a statement to the Guardian, released via the Home Office, the Security Service insisted it did “not participate in, solicit, encourage or condone the use of torture”.

However, details of three new cases have raised concerns among MPs.

McDonnell says he wants to know whether British officials colluded in the abuse of one of his constituents.

The man, a medical student, said he was abducted at gunpoint in August 2005 and held for two months at the offices of Pakistan’s Intelligence Bureau opposite the British Deputy High Commission in Karachi. The student, who has not spoken out before, has described how he was whipped, beaten, deprived of sleep, threatened with execution and witnessed other inmates being tortured.

He was questioned about the suicide attacks on London’s transport network in July of that year, and says that after being tortured by Pakistani agents he was questioned by British intelligence officers. He was released to his father, who says he received a personal apology from the director of the Intelligence Bureau.

The student returned to his London teaching hospital, qualified last year, and is now working in a hospital in the south-east of England. He remains terrified of both Pakistani and British intelligence agencies, however, and has asked not to be identified. A second Briton, Tariq Mahmood, 35, a taxi driver from Sparkhill, Birmingham, has said he was abducted in Rawalpindi in October 2003 and released without charge about five months later.

He is thought to have been held in a prison run by a different agency, Inter-Service Intelligence, where a number of other Britons have also been held and allegedly tortured before being flown to the UK to stand trial. Mahmood’s family say he was tortured, and that MI5 officers and American intelligence officers had a hand in his mistreatment. They have declined to issue any detailed allegation, however, apparently fearing for the safety of relatives in Pakistan.

A third Briton, Tahir Shah, 41, an author from London, was held for 16 days in 2005. He says he was interrogated about the July 7 bombings in what he describes as “a fully-equipped torture chamber”, with mangles, whips and electrical equipment.

He says he was hooded and shackled for long periods and deprived of sleep. He does not allege that British officials were involved, but believes it is unlikely they would not have been informed. He was eventually bundled aboard a scheduled flight to Heathrow, where his passport was returned by an unnamed official whom he believes to have been from MI5.

Allegations of collusion in torture could be examined by the Investigatory Powers Tribunal, established eight years ago with a remit to investigate complaints against MI5 and MI6. Another possibility is that the ISC could look into the claims.

McDonnell said of his constituent: “I believe that there is now sufficient evidence from this and other cases to demonstrate that British officials outsourced the torture of British nationals to a Pakistani intelligence agency.

“This warrants the fullest investigation by the ISC, which is best placed initially to undertake such an inquiry. I would expect the government to cooperate fully with such an investigation and eventually for the prime minister to make a statement to parliament on how this practice has been allowed to develop and what action is to be taken.”

Tyrie, chairman of the All Party Parliamentary Group on Extraordinary Rendition, added: “Any torture of British nationals by Pakistani authorities would be utterly unacceptable. If credible allegations implicating British officials in such mistreatment have been made then they require investigation. The ISC appears to be the most suitable body to examine these issues.”

Asked about the allegations, MI5 asked the Home Office to issue a statement which said: “The government unreservedly condemns the use of torture as a matter of fundamental principle and works hard with its international partners to eradicate this abhorrent practice worldwide.

“The Security and Intelligence Agencies do not participate in, solicit, encourage or condone the use of torture or inhumane or degrading treatment. For reasons both ethical and legal, their policy is not to carry out any action which they know would result in torture or inhumane or degrading treatment.

“The ISC gave the Security Service a clean bill of health in its 2005 report on torture. When Security Service personnel had come across instances when poor treatment of detainees was suspected, the report commended that MI5 officers notified the detaining authorities immediately and this was followed up with an official complaint from London.

“All Security Service staff have an awareness of the Human Rights Act 1998, and are fully committed to complying with the requirements of the law when working in the UK and overseas.” Earlier this year representatives of Amnesty International and Human Rights Watch told another Commons body, the Foreign Affairs Committee, they believed British intelligence officers were colluding in torture.

Tom Porteous, London director of Human Rights Watch, told MPs: “It is pretty clear the US and the UK are relying rather heavily on the well-known abusive Pakistani intelligence agency, Inter-Services Intelligence, in the counter-terrorism operations. It is one of the most brutal intelligence agencies in the world.” He added that British interrogations of people being held by this agency “seem to amount to complicity and collusion in the mistreatment”.

In April the Guardian reported that four other British men, who had been detained in Pakistan during British-led counter-terrorism operations and held illegally for several months without access to a lawyer or court, had each alleged that British officials colluded in their torture.

Under the Criminal Justice Act 1988 it is an offence for British officials to instigate or consent to the inflicting of “severe pain or suffering” on any person, anywhere in the world, or even to acquiesce in such treatment. Any such offence could be punished by life imprisonment.

One of the four, Salahuddin Amin, 33, a university graduate from Luton, later told the Old Bailey that he was interviewed by two MI5 officers several times in 10 months, in between being whipped, beaten with sticks, suspended from his wrists and threatened with an electric drill. MI5 was permitted to give its response to the allegations in camera, with the media and the public excluded.

Allegations of collusion were raised at Amin’s appeal against conviction for terrorism offences last month, which was also heard largely in camera. They are to be raised again later this year at the trial of a British man whose lawyers said he had three fingernails extracted while a prisoner of a Pakistani intelligence agency. They say their client was then questioned by British intelligence officers.

I read about this first in Wired, but the original story is from New Scientist. The Wired article suggests that this device might be used to beam subliminal advertising messages directly into your brain. The voices in my head made me buy it…..The picture is by uberpup

A US company claims it is ready to build a microwave ray gun able to beam sounds directly into people’s heads.

The device – dubbed MEDUSA (Mob Excess Deterrent Using Silent Audio) – exploits the microwave audio effect, in which short microwave pulses rapidly heat tissue, causing a shockwave inside the skull that can be detected by the ears. A series of pulses can be transmitted to produce recognisable sounds.

The device is aimed for military or crowd-control applications, but may have other uses.

Lev Sadovnik of the Sierra Nevada Corporation in the US is working on the system, having started work on a US navy research contract. The navy’s report states that the effect was shown to be effective.

MEDUSA involves a microwave auditory effect “loud” enough to cause discomfort or even incapacitation. Sadovnik says that normal audio safety limits do not apply since the sound does not enter through the eardrums.

“The repel effect is a combination of loudness and the irritation factor,” he says. “You can’t block it out.”

Sadovnik says the device will work thanks to a new reconfigurable antenna developed by colleague Vladimir Manasson. It steers the beam electronically, making it possible to flip from a broad to a narrow beam, or aim at multiple targets simultaneously.

Sadovnik says the technology could have non-military applications. Birds seem to be highly sensitive to microwave audio, he says, so it might be used to scare away unwanted flocks.

Sadovnik has also experimented with transmitting microwave audio to people with outer ear problems that impair their normal hearing.

James Lin of the Electrical and Computer Engineering Department at the University of Illinois in Chicago says that MEDUSA is feasible in principle.

He has carried out his own work on the technique, and was even approached by the music industry about using microwave audio to enhance sound systems, he told New Scientist.

“But is it going to be possible at the power levels necessary?” he asks. Previous microwave audio tests involved very “quiet” sounds that were hard to hear, a high-power system would mean much more powerful – and potentially hazardous – shockwaves.

“I would worry about what other health effects it is having,” says Lin. “You might see neural damage.”

Sierra Nevada says that a demonstration version could be built in a year, with a transportable system following within 18 months. They are currently seeking funding for the work from the US Department of Defence.

Wired guy David Hambling says

Dr. Sadovnik also makes the intriguing suggestion that, instead of being used at high power to create an intolerable noise, it might be used at low power to produce a whisper that was too quiet to perceive consciously but might be able to subconsciously influence someone. The directional beam could be used for targeted messages, such as in-store promotions. Sadovnik even suggests subliminal advertising, beaming information that is not consciously heard (a notion also spotted on the US Army’s voice-to-skull page). While the effectiveness of subliminal persuasion is dubious, I can see there might be some organizations interested in this capability. And if that doesn’t work, you could always point the thing at birds. They seem to be highly sensitive to microwave audio, so it might be used to scare flocks away from wind farms — or shoo pigeons from city streets.

Hmmm. Personally I don’t like anything which impinges upon the privacy – and rights to browse without policing- of the individual – but as a marketing person I can see where this idea is coming from. Difficult, but interesting. This article appeared in the Economist and enjoys their usual high standard of reporting and writing. I’ve asked my ISP whether they have signed up for this. I don’t expect a reply.

IS IT a worrying invasion of privacy for web surfers, or a lucrative new business model for online advertising? A new “behavioural” approach to targeting internet advertisements, being pioneered by companies such as Phorm, NebuAd and FrontPorch, is said to be both of these things. The idea is that special software, installed in the networks of internet-service providers (ISPs), intercepts webpage requests generated by their subscribers as they roam the net. The pages in question are delivered in the usual way, but are also scanned for particular keywords in order to build up a profile of each subscriber’s interests. These profiles can then be used to target advertisements more accurately.

Suppose a web user is idly surfing a travel blog one Sunday afternoon. He visits pages containing words such as “holiday”, “flight” and “hotel”. The behavioural-targeting software watching him inside the ISP’s network registers and categorises this apparent interest in travel. Later, when he logs on to a social-networking site to see what his friends are up to, advertisements for an airline or hotel chain pop up alongside the postings and photos. The depressing prospect of having to return to work the next day prompts him to click on an advertisement and book a minibreak for the next weekend.

To advertisers, this all sounds great. Behavioural-targeting firms are doing the rounds in Europe and America offering the prospect of working out what web surfers are thinking, perhaps even before they know themselves. If this really works, advertisers will be prepared to pay more to place ads, since they are more likely to be clicked on. That in turn means that websites will be able to charge more for their advertising slots. A small cut also goes to the ISP that originally gathered the profile information.

The companies involved suggest that internet users will welcome all this, since more accurate targeting will turn internet advertising from an annoying distraction into a genuinely helpful service. “This idea that we don’t provide a service by doing this is as far from the truth as it’s possible to be,” says Kent Ertugrul, the boss of Phorm. “It creates a situation where there’s less rubbish bombarding you.”

But not everyone likes the idea. Opponents of behavioural targeting have kicked up the biggest fuss in Britain, which is where the technology seems to be making the most progress: the three biggest ISPs (BT, Virgin Media and TalkTalk), which together account for around 70% of the market, have all signed up to use Phorm’s technology. Since news of their plans emerged in February, over 13,000 people have signed an online petition opposing the system. Legal and networking experts have argued that it constitutes an unauthorised wiretap, and is therefore illegal. Richard Clayton, a computer-security expert at Cambridge University who has taken a close look at Phorm’s systems, did not like what he saw. Proponents of behavioural targeting, he concluded, “assume that if only people understood all the technical details they’d be happy. I have, and I’m still not happy at all.”

Phorm, which is now trying to get American ISPs to adopt its technology too, emphasises that consumers will be given the option to opt out of the system if they do not wish to use it. It points out that information about individuals’ surfing habits remains within the custody of the ISP (which already has access to such information anyway), and that user profiles merely associate keywords with an anonymous serial number, rather than a name. Its profiling system ignores sensitive pages, such as those from online-banking sites, and will not be used to target advertising for pornographic sites.

Critics worry, however, that behavioural targeting fundamentally undermines the trusting relationship between ISPs and their subscribers, by allowing a third party to monitor what millions of people are doing. They also worry about Phorm’s previous behaviour. Until last year it was known as 121Media, and it gathered information about internet users’ interests by getting them to download “adware”, which was included in bundles with other pieces of software. This software then monitored users’ surfing habits and used the resulting data to target “pop up” advertisements of the kind that once blighted the web.

All this was legal, but it won 121Media few friends among PC users, who found its software difficult to remove from their machines. The revelation that the company, since renamed Phorm, conducted a secret trial of its new technology with BT in 2006 and 2007, monitoring thousands of customers without telling them, has not helped its image.

As the controversy swirls, Google, the 800-pound gorilla of the internet-advertising industry, is quietly watching. ISPs around the world have looked on jealously as Google has grown rich on their subscribers’ web-browsing, while the ISPs have been reduced to “dumb pipes”, ferrying internet traffic for subscribers but unable to win a share of their online spending.

Phorm and its ilk promise to change that, by offering ISPs a chance to get their hands on a slice of the fast-growing online-advertising pie. Behavioural-targeting firms also like to portray themselves as feisty underdogs taking on mighty Google, which is itself the cause of concern about online privacy. Phorm points out that its system does not retain detailed information about web usage as it builds its user profiles—in contrast to Google, which keeps records of users’ search queries for up to two years. (The European Commission recently called upon Google to delete such information after six months.) “If people knew what was stored right now, they’d be shocked,” says Phorm’s Mr Ertugrul. His company’s system, he says, is “the model for privacy online”.

Even so, most web users are happy to strike an implicit deal with Google: it provides an excellent free search engine in return for the ability to display relevant advertisements. The quid pro quo with behavioural targeting, says Mr Ertugrul, is that ISPs will start making money from online advertising, which they can then spend on upgrading their networks, without raising prices for subscribers. “This is a way of funding the internet,” he says.

Behavioural targeting is not necessarily a bad idea, but imposing it without telling people is likely to annoy them when they find out about it. Without adequate disclosure, an “opt out” system looks like snooping; but an “opt in” system, given all the fuss, now looks like a tough sell.

These are extracts from the diary of Esther, published by the BBC. They speak for themselves about what it means to oppose Mugabe’s regime, in real terms.

Esther (not her real name), 28, a professional living and working in Zimbabwe’s capital, Harare, is writing a regular diary on the challenges of leading a normal life.Zimbabwe is suffering from an acute economic crisis. The country has the world’s highest rate of annual inflation and just one in five has an official job.I have a friend whose brother works as a teacher in an area that is said to be experiencing some of the worst post-election violence.When schools opened about two weeks ago, he decided to stay away from there.

After a while he thought it would be safe to return to his school, as he had heard no reports of violence there.

He was abducted from his home on Monday night, beaten up and returned to his home.

He managed to send text messages to his family, and told them not to come and collect him to seek medical treatment as he was instructed by his assailants not to leave the area “Or else.”

Because he does not hold a Zanu-PF membership card, it was assumed he was an MDC supporter.

And the worst part was that he was given a “certificate” to show he had received his beating.

He was told to produce it whenever someone else wanted to beat him as proof that it had already been done.

The paper even had a date stamp and the signature of the leader of the group.

Another friend of mine had an uncle who recently passed away. He told me he was debating whether or not to go to the countryside for the funeral.

His parents had told him that “war veterans” in the area had set up road blocks, were stopping and searching all vehicles, and telling people travelling in from Harare to go back where they had come from.

There is a good chance that warning would come after a beating they said. In the end, he decided to go and honour his uncle’s memory, and face whatever he came across.

He has not yet returned, so I do not know how he fared.

People are saying this is what the run-up to the presidential election run-off is going to be about – violence and intimidation.

The idea is to force supporters of the opposition to stay away from their homes so that on voting day they cannot cast their vote.

There is no chance that these people are lying. The reports are too numerous and are coming from too many areas.

Life in the city:

For the urbanites, the struggle is – as always – with ever increasing prices.

Public transport fares doubled over one week. Last Friday, a single fare was $50m, today, exactly one week later it is $100m.

The list of what we thought were basics that have since become luxuries continues to grow.

For example, laundry soap now doubles up as bath soap. You can do without bread, and grow your own sweet potatoes instead. If you cannot grow them, then buy them, they are still a lot cheaper.

But this week, I do not feel so much for my people as I do for the Burmese.

Cold, wet, hungry and homeless as their leaders think about whether or not to accept foreign aid.

The suffering ordinary people have to endure as the world respects sovereignty is beyond belief.

Heard this story from Reuters Paris just now and it summed up events for me in a way. After a day of hearing radio and tv news bulletins about incidents involving protests about the Olympic torch and China’s human rights record particularly in Tibet, and an hour or so spent personally musing about how big a percentage of all British manufactured goods is sourced directly from China, this morning I heard a leading policeman, Commander Bob Broadhurst of the Met Police, on Radio 4 differentiating between pro and anti torch demonstrators – in a “goodies and baddies” kind of fashion. The pro demonstrators were “lawful” and the anti were not, apparently. I suppose the law exists to protect property at the end of the day. But……..Chinese property? British property manufactured in China…….? All I can say is, despite the presence of Chinese security guards protecting the torch, I couldn’t help but think (as Jane Austen would say) that you couldn’t protest in anything like this way if you were actually in China. And the lights were going out all over Europe……..

Security officials extinguished the Olympic torch on Monday on the Paris leg of its journey, disrupted by protesters against China’s crackdown on Tibet.

A police source said organizers were forced to put the torch on a bus to protect it from the hundreds of protesters who swarmed the procession after it set off from the Eiffel Tower.

The torch had to be extinguished because of a technical problem, a police spokesman told Reuters. After a brief interruption the relay resumed with the torch alight.

A member of the French Greens party had earlier been restrained by police when trying to grab the torch from the first of 80 torch bearers, former world 400 meters hurdles champion Stephane Diagana.

Escorted by security, Diagana was wearing a badge reading “For a better world”.

Several hundred demonstrators waving banners gathered on the Trocadero esplanade, just the other side of the river Seine from the Eiffel Tower, where the relay got under way at 6:35 a.m EDT.

France has deployed more than 3,000 police officers, some on roller blades, along the 28-km (17 miles) Paris leg of relay, to the Charlety stadium, on the southern edge of town, where the torch was due to arrive at 11:00 a.m EDT.

“Boycott Chinese goods” and “Save Tibet” read some of the banners held by the demonstrators, watched by police in riot gear and prevented by barriers from getting near the courseWe are doing our best but it will take the world to put pressure on China to help bring democracy and human rights to Tibet,” said Phurbu Dolker, a 21-year-old Tibetan refugee.

Thousands of protesters waving Tibetan flags and shouting “Shame on China” tried to disrupt the torch’s run through London on Sunday, the British leg of the international relay billed by Beijing as the “harmonious journey”.

French human rights minister, Rama Yade, denied on Saturday that President Nicolas Sarkozy would boycott the Games’ opening ceremony unless China started talks with the Tibetan spiritual leader, the Dalai Lama, and released political prisoners.

The Olympic flame is expected to remain a magnet for anti-Chinese protests ahead of the August Games in Beijing.

The flame is due to return to Beijing on August 6, two days before it will be used to light the cauldron at the Olympic opening ceremony.

This is the first time I have ever included an article from the Daily Mail. Call me a wishy washy liberal if you like, but I can’t bring myself to respect a newspaper that ran the headline “hurrah for the blackshirts!” even if it was seventy years ago. However, as Deputy leader of the Labour party, Harriet gives us a glaring example of post Blairite media ham-fistedness. And of course, the Mail just loved it. Could have been under the headline Hurrah for the blackshirts, 2.

Harriet Harman has defended her decision to wear a stab-proof jacket during a police walkabout in her own constituency – claiming it was like donning a hard hat on a building site.

The Labour Party’s deputy leader rejected claims it suggested she did not feel safe on the streets.

Ms Harman, who is also Commons leader, said she wore the kevlar-reinforced vest as a “courtesy” to the neighbourhood policing team with whom she toured Peckham, South London.

She said: “There was no security issue whatsoever, it was almost like wearing the kit when you go out with the team.

The famously politically-correct MP, known to her detractors as Harperson, spoke out after facing ridicule over the move.

Her decision to wear the body armour was also seen as a sad reflection of a modern Britain where police feel they have to offer VIP guests “protection”.

It happened two months after the Home Secretary, Jacqui Smith, admitted she would not feel safe walking the streets after dark.

Aides of Miss Smith compounded her gaffe with a desperate attempt to undo the damage by claiming she had recently popped out in the evening to “buy a kebab in Peckham”.

In fact, she has round-the-clock police protection and the owner of the kebab shop revealed that Miss Smith had been accompanied by a burly minder when she dropped in for a £3.90 doner on a late afternoon in January.

Asked whether she would feel safe walking the streets of Hackney, one of the most deprived parts of London, the Home Secretary replied: “Well, no, but I don’t think I’d ever have done. I just don’t think that’s a thing that people do, is it, really?”

The Harman gaffe emerged after aides of the MP for Camberwell and Peckham, who is also leader of the Commons, sent a picture of her touring the area with police to local newspapers.
Privately-educated Miss Harman, 57, also posted the picture on her website, explaining how she had been on the beat with a Neighbourhood Policing Team on the day Labour relaunched its local policing strategy.

“It is absolutely crucial to have neighbourhood policing which is visible,” she wrote. “People feel safer when there is a police presents (sic).”

Sources said that before the walkabout, Miss Harman was asked whether she would like to wear a “Metvest” – the standard issue protective jacket worn by officers in Southwark.

One said: “Everyone is flabbergasted by her decision to wear the vest, especially when she was guarded by three police officers. Senior politicians who have visited Peckham in the past have never worn one.”

This morning Ms Harman told the BBC’s Today programme: “I was not parading the streets of London in a bulletproof vest – I was going out with my neighbourhood police team.

“Just as I might wear a hard hat on a building site or an Indian outfit going to meet Indian constituents, it’s just about wearing the kit.

“There was no security issue whatever. The idea that I put that on because I was fearful of being out and about in my own constituency at nine in the morning is just ridiculous.”

She added: “Then we went out on the streets and they (the police) hitched on their stab vests, I think is what they are called.

“They were telling me about their new version, (which is) much lighter than the old one so that if they have to chase criminals they can do it much more easily and it doesn’t weigh them down.

“And they gave me and my assistant one to wear as well.”

Interviewer John Humphrys said: “You wear a hard hat on a building site because there are dangers there.

“There is the danger that something might drop on your head. You don’t need to wear a bullet-proof vest on the streets of London, do you?”

Ms Harman responded: “No of course you don’t.”

Constituents said Miss Harman had insulted ordinary people who have no option but to walk the streets unprotected.

Beatrice Smith, 63, said: “The only time we see Harriet Harman is either on voting day or during some PR stunt. There is a lot of trouble on the estates but we don’t get given stab vests.

“There were two stabbings nearby earlier today, and I’d rather see her spending time sorting the crime problem out than posing in such a ridiculous outfit.”

Offences of violence in the borough of Southwark, which includes Peckham, have increased by 6.9 per cent in the last year.

In recent years, the inner London district has been the scene of a series of horrific street crimes, including the murder of schoolboy Damilola Taylor in 2000 and the shotgun murder of a woman at a christening.

Shadow Home Secretary David Davis attacked the law-and-order record which led to Miss Harman’s decision to don protection.

“Under Labour London has become one of the most dangerous cities in the world and the minister, like the Home Secretary before her, clearly knows it,” he said.

“You would not need body armour in New York, Paris or Tokyo.”

The picture was also seized on by Labour London Mayor Ken Livingstone’s main rivals for the job in May’s election.

Conservative Boris Johnson said: “The Labour Mayor continues to bury his head in the sand, telling everyone that crime has gone down in this city.

“The simple fact is that 27 teenagers were killed last year and a further 11 so far this year.

“Londoners do not have the luxury of personal police protection or stab-proof jackets which is why I have put tackling crime at the heart of my campaign.”

Liberal Democrat Brian Paddick, a former senior Met Police officer, said: “The fact that the deputy leader of the Labour Party has to wear a stab-proof jacket to protect her from her own constituents is a sad indictment of Ken Livingstone’s failure to deal with gun and knife crime.”

And lest we forget…….(Younger readers can find notes on the BUF here)

This feature in the New York Times caught my eye today, lucidly written by Erik Eckholm. As the American economy continues to feel the impact of the r word – and I don’t mean rain – it looks like more Americans than ever before are having to use their equivalent of a social benefit scheme, the food stamp. An instrument whereby poor people can buy food for their families using an exchangeable coupon. Only for food. And not, as the rules say, for “deli” food. Only in America.

Driven by a painful mix of layoffs and rising food and fuel prices, the number of Americans receiving food stamps is projected to reach 28 million in the coming year, the highest level since the aid program began in the 1960s.

The number of recipients, who must have near-poverty incomes to qualify for benefits averaging $100 a month per family member, has fluctuated over the years along with economic conditions, eligibility rules, enlistment drives and natural disasters like Hurricane Katrina, which led to a spike in the South.

But recent rises in many states appear to be resulting mainly from the economic slowdown, officials and experts say, as well as inflation in prices of basic goods that leave more families feeling pinched. Citing expected growth in unemployment, the Congressional Budget Office this month projected a continued increase in the monthly number of recipients in the next fiscal year, starting Oct. 1 — to 28 million, up from 27.8 million in 2008, and 26.5 million in 2007.

The percentage of Americans receiving food stamps was higher after a recession in the 1990s, but actual numbers are expected to be higher this year.

Federal benefit costs are projected to rise to $36 billion in the 2009 fiscal year from $34 billion this year.

“People sign up for food stamps when they lose their jobs, or their wages go down because their hours are cut,” said Stacy Dean, director of food stamp policy at the Center on Budget and Policy Priorities in Washington, who noted that 14 states saw their rolls reach record numbers by last December.

One example is Michigan, where one in eight residents now receives food stamps. “Our caseload has more than doubled since 2000, and we’re at an all-time record level,” said Maureen Sorbet, spokeswoman for the Michigan Department of Human Services.

The climb in food stamp recipients there has been relentless, through economic upturns and downturns, reflecting a steady loss of industrial jobs that has pushed recipient levels to new highs in Ohio and Illinois as well.

“We’ve had poverty here for a good while,” Ms. Sorbet said. Contributing to the rise, she added, Michigan, like many other states, has also worked to make more low-end workers aware of their eligibility, and a switch from coupons to electronic debit cards has reduced the stigma.

Some states have experienced more recent surges. From December 2006 to December 2007, more than 40 states saw recipient numbers rise, and in several — Arizona, Florida, Maryland, Nevada, North Dakota and Rhode Island — the one-year growth was 10 percent or more.

In Rhode Island, the number of recipients climbed by 18 percent over the last two years, to more than 84,000 as of February, or about 8.4 percent of the population. This is the highest total in the last dozen years or more, said Bob McDonough, the state’s administrator of family and adult services, and reflects both a strong enlistment effort and an upward creep in unemployment.

In New York, a program to promote enrollment increased food stamp rolls earlier in the decade, but the current climb in applications appears in part to reflect economic hardship, said Michael Hayes, spokesman for the Office of Temporary and Disability Assistance. The additional 67,000 clients added from July 2007 to January of this year brought total recipients to 1.86 million, about one in 10 New Yorkers.

Nutrition and poverty experts praise food stamps as a vital safety net that helped eliminate the severe malnutrition seen in the country as recently as the 1960s. But they also express concern about what they called the gradual erosion of their value.

Food stamps are an entitlement program, with eligibility guidelines set by Congress and the federal government paying for benefits while states pay most administrative costs.

Eligibility is determined by a complex formula, but basically recipients must have few assets and incomes below 130 percent of the poverty line, or less than $27,560 for a family of four.

As a share of the national population, food stamp use was highest in 1994, after several years of poor economic growth, with an average of 27.5 million recipients per month from a lower total of residents. The numbers plummeted in the late 1990s as the economy grew and legal immigrants and certain others were excluded.

But access by legal immigrants has been partly restored and, in the current decade, the federal and state governments have used advertising and other measures to inform people of their eligibility and have often simplified application procedures.

Because they spend a higher share of their incomes on basic needs like food and fuel, low-income Americans have been hit hard by soaring gasoline and heating costs and jumps in the prices of staples like milk, eggs and bread.

At the same time, average family incomes among the bottom fifth of the population have been stagnant or have declined in recent years at levels around $15,500, said Jared Bernstein, an economist at the Economic Policy Institute in Washington.

The benefit levels, which can amount to many hundreds of dollars for families with several children, are adjusted each June according to the price of a bare-bones “thrifty food plan,” as calculated by the Department of Agriculture. Because food prices have risen by about 5 percent this year, benefit levels will rise similarly in June — months after the increase in costs for consumers.

Advocates worry more about the small but steady decline in real benefits since 1996, when the “standard deduction” for living costs, which is subtracted from family income to determine eligibility and benefit levels, was frozen. If that deduction had continued to rise with inflation, the average mother with two children would be receiving an additional $37 a month, according to the private Center on Budget and Policy Priorities.

Both houses of Congress have passed bills that would index the deduction to the cost of living, but the measures are part of broader agriculture bills that appear unlikely to pass this year because of disagreements with the White House over farm policy.

Another important federal nutrition program known as WIC, for women, infants and children, is struggling with rising prices of milk and cheese, and growing enrollment.

The program, for households with incomes no higher than 185 percent of the federal poverty level, provides healthy food and nutrition counseling to 8.5 million pregnant women, and children through the age of 4. WIC is not an entitlement like food stamps, and for the fiscal year starting in October, Congress may have to approve a large increase over its current budget of $6 billion if states are to avoid waiting lists for needy mothers and babies.

This story has been in all the TV news reports over the weekend – but the fact I wanted to draw attention to was that Bear Stearns was valued at $169 per share just about a year ago – and today’s price was $2. And this could easily have been regarded as a “safe haven” kind of investment. My forward-looking sunglasses are far from rose-tinted. The news breaks this morning that the bank has been bought by JP Morgan for a fraction of its original value. The cartoon is by Pat Bagley of the Salt Lake Tribune. This article was written by Tony Bonsignore in Citywire

Just when it seemed the news couldn’t get any worse, it duly did, and on a Sunday evening too. Last night’s shock announcement that troubled US investment bank Bear Stearns had been forced into an emergency sale sent shockwaves through Asian and European markets this morning, as panicked investors tried to figure out where the madness might end. Not anytime soon, was the general conclusion.

The scale of the collapse is terrifying. As America’s fifth largest investment bank Bear Stearns was at the forefront of the US housing-led economic boom of the past decade, and currently employs some 14,000 staff. At its peak in January 2006 – interestingly around the same time as the US housing market peaked – the company’s shares were valued at a mind-boggling $169.

Last night’s deal agreement with JP Morgan Chase valued the company at a measly $2 per share, an ignominious way to end 85 years of independence. But perhaps even more disturbing is the speed and nature of Bear Stearns’ fall from grace. That a deal happened at all was only thanks to the US Federal Reserve, which agreed to fund up to $30 billion of the deal. And all this barely a week after the Fed injected more than $400 billion into the financial markets in a desperate attempt to shore up liquidity – a move that some cynics said at the time was indicative of a looming solvency crisis at a major US bank. It is now clear that these worries were well founded, though investors will take no solace in being proved right.

Most commentators this morning agree that the credit crunch has entered a frightening new phase, and that worse may be yet to come. In the very short term investors will be nervously looking to this week’s results from Wall Street giants Goldman Sachs, Lehman Brothers and Morgan Stanley, looking to assess how far they have been hit (or escaped) the worst of the sub-prime fallout. Even then, however, suspicions are likely to remain that banks are yet to come clean about the real extent of their losses. Punch-drunk investors are understandably reticent to believe anything the banks tell them right now.

There are also growing fears that Bear Stearns is not the only major US bank facing solvency issues. If Bear Stearns does turn out to be an isolated incident then we may look back on this as the moment the crisis peaked. However, if another bank hits the skids it is difficult to see how the Fed can contain the damage in the same way; another JP Morgan-style deal will certainly be considerably more difficult to arrange. In that nightmare scenario the US may yet see a full-blown banking crisis on a scale not seen since the 30s, something almost too dreadful to contemplate. Unfortunately in these dark times investors and central bankers cannot help but do just that.

Closer to home, the long term impact of our own banking collapse may become a little clearer later today with news expected of a massive job cull at Northern Rock. The government-owned lender is set to shed at least 2,000 jobs and halve its loan book over the next few years, in a revised business strategy aimed at meeting European competition rules. Meanwhile the Centre for Economic Business Research suggests that some 10,000 City jobs are set to be lost over the next year as a result of the ongoing market turmoil – an increase of more than 50% on its previous estimate, made just three months ago.