Senin, 16 April 2012
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Minggu, 15 April 2012
Global race for 'rare earths' metals
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Korea's effort to find new sources making little headway
Global tension over rare earth metals — often identified as rare earths — has intensified as the United States, European Union and Japan recently teamed up and took it up a notch in pressuring China over persistent trade disputes.
Last month, the trading power players filed a complaint at the World Trade Organization challenging the world’s largest rare earths supplier to remove its export restrictions on the scarce elements used in high-tech goods.
As China continues to tighten its export policy, Korea, a resource-poor country with strong demand for rare earth metals for its high-tech manufacturing, is attempting to stay the course with its biggest trading partner while at the same time, catching up with other nations in the search for alternative reserves.
Late starter READ MORE
Joseon: Korea’s Confucian kingdom
 The statue of King Sejong the Great sits at the Gwanghwamun square in central Seoul. / Korea Times file |
By Kim Tae-gyu and Kevin N. Cawley
This is the sixth of a 10-part series on Korean history from its mythological, ancient beginning until the present day. This project is sponsored by several companies and public agencies including Merck Korea, eBay Korea, Daewoo Securities and Korea Post. — ED. Joseon was the last kingdom in the long history of the Korean Peninsula and founded the framework of modern Korea, such as the capital of South Korea, and the northern boundary of North Korea. Culturally, it helped shape Korea’s unique identity that distinguishes it from its East Asian neighbors.
Joseon lasted over 500 years, making it the longest-lasting Confucian kingdom in world history. From its establishment in 1392, it respected the hegemony of the powerful Chinese empire, but it shaped its own destiny. While it was a part of the great Classical Chinese literary tradition, it nevertheless created its own unique alphabet named Hangeul.
The kingdom’s fortunes waned in the late 16th and early 17th centuries when its closest neighbors staged devastating wars.
Thereafter, Joseon savored around two centuries of peace, but it failed to catch up with the economic development and technological advancement of Western societies partly because it held too fast to the ideals of Confucianism, which led to policies of isolation, as well as endless internal feuds between political factions.
The country, with the moniker of the “Hermit Kingdom,” was eventually annexed by the colonial forces of Japan in 1910 amid a wave of 20th century imperialism that ravaged the country for the next 35 years.
Final kingdom on Korean Peninsula READ MORE
What the Laws of War Allow Do the WikiLeaks War Logs Reveal War Crimes -- Or the Poverty of International Law? By Chase Madar
Anyone who would like to witness a vivid example of modern warfare that adheres to the laws of war -- that corpus of regulations developed painstakingly over centuries by jurists, humanitarians, and soldiers, a body of rules that is now an essential, institutionalized part of the U.S. armed forces and indeed all modern militaries -- should simply click here and watch the video.Wait a minute: that’s the WikiLeaks “Collateral Murder” video! The gunsight view of an Apache helicopter opening fire from half a mile high on a crowd of Iraqis -- a few armed men, but mostly unarmed civilians, including a couple of Reuters employees -- as they unsuspectingly walked the streets of a Baghdad suburb one July day in 2007.
Watch, if you can bear it, as the helicopter crew blows people away, killing at least a dozen of them, and taking good care to wipe out the wounded as they try to crawl to safety. (You can also hear the helicopter crew making wisecracks throughout.) When a van comes on the scene to tend to the survivors, the Apache gunship opens fire on it too, killing a few more and wounding two small children.The slaughter captured in this short film, the most virally sensational of WikiLeaks’ disclosures, was widely condemned as an atrocity worldwide, and many punditsquickly labeled it a “war crime” for good measure.But was this massacre really a “war crime” -- or just plain-old regular war? The question is anything but a word-game. It is, in fact, far from clear that this act, though plainly atrocious and horrific, was a violation of the laws of war. Somehave argued that the slaughter, if legal, was therefore justified and, though certainly unfortunate, no big deal. But it is possible to draw a starkly different conclusion: that the “legality” of this act is an indictment of the laws of war as we know them.The reaction of professional humanitarians to the gun-sight video was muted, to say the least. The big three human rights organizations -- Human Rights Watch (HRW), Amnesty International, and Human Rights First -- responded not with position papers and furious press releases but with silence. HRW omitted any mention of it in its report on human rights and war crimes in Iraq, published nearly a year after the video’s release. Amnesty also kept mum. Gabor Rona, legal director of Human Rights First, told me there wasn’t enough evidence to ascertain whether the laws of war had been violated, and that his organization had no Freedom of Information Act requests underway to uncover new evidence on the matter.This collective non-response, it should be stressed, is not because these humanitarian groups, which do much valuable work, are cowardly or “sell-outs.” The reason is: all three human rights groups, like human rights doctrine itself, are primarily concerned with questions of legality. And quite simply, as atrocious as the event was, there was no clear violation of the laws of war to provide a toehold for the professional humanitarians.The human rights industry is hardly alone in finding the event disturbing but in conformance with the laws of war. As Professor Gary Solis, a leading expert and author of a standard text on those laws, told Scott Horton of Harper’s Magazine, “I believe it unlikely that a neutral and detached investigator would conclude that the helicopter personnel violated the laws of armed conflict. Legal guilt does not always accompany innocent death.” It bears noting that Gary Solis is no neocon ultra. A scholar who has taught at the London School of Economics and Georgetown, he is the author of a standard textbook on the subject, and was an unflinching critic of the Bush-Cheney administration.War and International “Humanitarian” Law READ MORE
Collapsing Seas Infographic by ZACHARY SHAHAN
Collapsing Seas Infographic (via Planetsave)
Here’s a not-so-fun but highly informative infographic I thought you could get something from. Basically, I think many of us assume that the oceans are so vast that we can’t do too much harm to them. But oh, how we underestimate the impact of billions of humans. For several reasons, our oceans…
Tech Talk - Extracting the Attic Oil From Abqaiq
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| Figure 1. Extent of Proved Reserves Depletion in Select Fields (Baqi and Saleri, 2004) |
Current figures suggest that world liquid fuels production is running at around 90 mbd, of which roughly 74 mbd is crude. A reasonable estimate of the annual decline in existing well production lies at around 5%, so that each year new sources of oil must be brought on line to generate 5% of 74 mbd (3.7 mbd) to cover these declines. In addition to that need, if world oil markets continue to grow as expected, then an additional roughly 1 mbd of new production will have to be added this year to meet the growth in demand. (China imported 5.95 mbd in February, and though this dropped to 5.55 mbd in March, this is still up 8.7% on March last year.) This state of affairs does not include the fall-out from political actions, such as the embargo on Iranian oil, which imposes additional demands on the rest of the global suppliers of crude by taking that production out of the market. As Econbrowser has just noted, the countries that are potentially capable of upping production to meet the size of the total additional demand likely foreseeable this year seem singularly limited to a kingdom whose initials are KSA.
There is no doubt that Saudi Arabia has considerable oil assets, though I have noted in the past that they tend to use the total discovered oil volume as their reserve, without discounting the amount that they have already produced. Rather, the question that will increasingly arise in the future is whether the country can continue to produce at the same rate, or – if they are to meet the claimed 12.5 mbd of achievable production - to be able to achieve a rate that is 25% higher than current levels. Not that the amount available from some older fields is not of some concern. Consider this plot that came from Aramco in 2004, when Mahmound Abdul Baqi and Nansen Saleri debated Matt Simmons at CSIS. And remember that production has continued from those fields in the eight years since.
In the post last week (and my apologies to Glenn Morton for unintentionally confusing him with Greg Croft at the beginning of that piece) I pointed out that there are a significant number of rock layers under the surface in the country that contain oil. Now not all of them do this very consistently, but as the example with Abqaiq showed, as the original oil reservoir becomes depleted, so other rock layers can be tapped to produce in their turn.
However, the story with Abqaiq shows the difficulty in being able to sustain production as fields reach the end of their life, and the increasing costs that must be incurred to do so.
National Security Assessment: Water Scarcity Disrupting U.S. and Three Continents
In a new report, the U.S. State Department finds a global confrontation between growing water demand and shrinking supplies, in addition to predictions for the next 30 years of water security.
On World Water Day, March 22, U.S. Secretary of State Hillary Clinton introduced a new State Department report on the world’s water crisis. Fourteen of Circle of Blue’s photographs were featured at the State Department event. Click the image to launch slideshow.
By Brett Walton
Circle of Blue
Circle of Blue
The world’s demand for fresh water is growing so fast that, by 2030, agriculture, industry, and expanding cities on three continents will face such scarce supplies that the confrontation could disrupt economic development and cause ruinous political instability, according to the first U.S. cabinet-level report on the global water crisis.
The report, “Global Water Security,” prepared for the State Department by the National Intelligence Council, found that, unless there are serious changes in conservation and water use practices, global water demand will reach 6,900 billion cubic meters (1,800 trillion gallons) annually by 2030, a figure that is about 2,400 billion cubic meters (634 trillion gallons) higher than today. The authors of the report concluded that level of consumption is “40 percent above current sustainable water supplies,” and will “hinder the ability of key countries to produce food and generate energy, posing a risk to global food markets and hobbling economic growth.”
In other words, this would be the equivalent of adding four Chinas over the next 18 years, since China currently uses around 600 billion cubic meters (158 trillion gallons) of water annually.
These and other findings about global water supply were made public on World Water Day, March 22, by U.S. Secretary of State Hillary Clinton, who called the study “a landmark document that puts water security in its rightful place as part of national security.”
“It’s not only about water,” she added. “It is about security, peace, and prosperity.”
But those goals are imperiled, according to the report, by the collision of two powerful global trends. The first is what the report called “key drivers of rising freshwater demand” — population growth, expanding cities, rising energy demand and production. The second is declining supply caused by deforestation; pollution; leaks and waste; and climate change that is melting glaciers, speeding evaporation, deepening droughts, and increasing the number of extreme weather events.
In remarks at the World Water Day event in Washington, D.C., Clinton introduced a new government initiative to improve global water management and conservation, steps that the report’s authors repeatedly called for in the study. The U.S. Water Partnership, she said, brings together 28 organizations — including government agencies, philanthropic foundations, environmental groups, corporations, and universities — and their body of water knowledge, which will be spread globally through training sessions, web-based data libraries, and collaborations with any organization looking for solutions.
“You can’t work on water as a health concern independently from water as an agricultural concern,” Clinton said. “And water that is needed for agriculture may also be water that is needed for energy production. So we need to be looking for interventions that work on multiple levels simultaneously and help us focus on systemic responses.”
What The Report Says READ MORE
Infographic: Timeline of American Water Infrastructure Development (1651-2011)
From small water-supply systems in the Colonial Era to massive investments in reservoirs, pumps, pipes, and treatment plants in the 20th century, America’s water infrastructure has become more complex. Now, at the start of the 21st century, many of those systems need maintenance and repairs.
In the United States, turning on the tap and receiving clean water is viewed as so basic to the quality of life that many people take it for granted. But, as this detailed and interactive timeline shows, it has been a long road to supply running water to virtually every household in the country, and maintaining these investments continues into the modern era.
Infographic © Katelin Carter/Ball State University for Circle of Blue
Click on the interactive infographic above to learn more about the path to water infrastructure development in the United States. Click on an era at the top, then roll over an icon at the bottom for details of the event that occurred that year.
Source:
- Melosi, Martin V. The Sanitary City. Johns Hopkins University Press, 2000.
- Rowland, W.G. “Water and the Growth of the Nation.” Water Pollution Control Federation Journal 48.7, 1976.
- Congressional Research Service. “Water Infrastructure Needs and Investment: Review and Analysis of Key Issues.” 2010.
Infographic by Katelin Carter, a student of Ball State University’s journalism graphics program, for Circle of Blue, with contribution by Brett Walton, a Seattle-based reporter for Circle of Blue. This graphic was made to accompany Walton’s report, America’s Water Infrastructure Shows Its Age — The National Debate About How to Pay for Repairs. Reach Walton atbrett@circleofblue.org.
Stop Obama’s Drone War in Pakistan
The Pakistani government and its opposition parties have just come together in a rare show of unity to demand that the United States cease all drone attacks inside their country.
As well they should.
The United States hasn’t declared war on Pakistan.
he U.S. has no right to rain bombs down from the sky on this country that it’s not at war with.
This is against the U.N. charter, against international law, against the Constitution, and it’s doing us no favor in Pakistan, either, as it’s been enraging the entire country.
This is Obama’s war. He’s increased drone attacks by 600 percent from Bush’s pace. In Bush’s last three years in office, the U.S. launched 39 drone attacks in Pakistan. In Obama’s first three years, that number jumped to 241.
And don’t for a minute think that these attacks killed only Al Qaeda forces or the Taliban. Hundreds of civilians, hundreds of children, also have been slayed by these remote-control bombing raids.
Obama needs to get over his love of drone warfare.
The cost in innocent lives and in our diplomatic relations has gotten too high, and so has the cost in routinely violating international law and our Constitution. http://www.progressive.org/drone_war_in_pakistan.html
Sabtu, 14 April 2012
Shades of 1984 Emerge in Broadcast TV Copyright Flap
READ MORE
Tens of thousands of dime-sized broadcast television antennas line Aereo's datacenter in Brooklyn, New York. Photo: Aere0
A New Breed of Islamist By Ahmed Charai
Following the adoption of a new constitution last summer, Moroccan voters delivered their verdict: the current government is in the hands of the Islamist Party of Justice and Development (PJD). The party enjoys a commanding majority in the present ruling coalition, a third of all parliamentary seats, while its secular, leftist and royalist opponents are divided—at least for now.Yet the situation in Morocco today is markedly different from Egypt, Tunisia and other countries where Islamists dominate or rule. Morocco’s new Islamist-led government did not come about as the result of a revolution. Rather, it was Moroccan king Mohammed VI himself who designed the new constitution, which cedes most domestic authority to an elected prime minister. He is the only Arab leader in this season of upheaval to have engineered a democratic transition. READ MORE
Airlines cancel Israel flights for over 60 percent of pro-Palestinian fly-in protesters
Is Israel a democracy?
Or is it a paranoid rogue state?
Let the world see how Israel is treating the Palestinian people.
Show the world how Israel has stolen their land, water, dignity and pride.
Israel's motto should be
- The persecuted have become the persecutors. -
By Zohar Blumenkrantz, Jack Khoury and Yaniv Kubovich
Among the airlines that notified activists were Lufthansa, Air France and Easyjet; Prime Minister's Office releases sarcastic 'thank you' letter to be given to pro-Palestinian activists.
Over 60 percent of the 1,500 pro-Palestinian activists due to arrive in Israel on Sunday to take part in a fly-in protest have received notifications from airlines that their flights have been canceled, the spokesman for the "Welcome to Palestine" protest told Haaretz on Saturday.
The activists were headed to Israel to participate in a protest against West Bank settlement construction that was scheduled to take place on Sunday. Last July, a similar “fly-in” took place, with over 300 international activists arriving in Israel, and 120 detained READ MORE
Israel's Lawless Settlement Project
by Stephen Lendman
Since June 1967, Israel maintained total domination over Occupied Palestine.
Lawlessly, it includes controlling essential resources, air space, Gaza's coastal waters, borders, who's allowed to cross them, political, economic, and financial activities, internal movement, public assembly and speech, Palestine's population registry, private property by seizures or demolition, and, of course, land.
Priority one is stealing it. Palestinians are forcibly dispossessed and displaced to expand settlements and for other development. Israel wants all valued parts as well as Jerusalem as its exclusive capital.
Overall, settlements, closed military zones, Jewish commercial areas, and others earmarked for development account for over 40% of West Bank land.
Since 1967, Israel established 121 settlements. Another 100 unauthorized outposts exist. In addition, Israel calls 12 annexed Jerusalem neighborhoods settlements. Settler enclaves also exist in Palestinian East Jerusalem.
Yet international law is clear. Fourth Geneva's Article 49 states:
"The Occupying Power shall not deport or transfer parts of its own civilian population into the territory it occupies."
Moreover, in July 2004, the International Court of Justice (ICJ) ruled:
"Israeli settlements in the Occupied Palestinian Territory, including East Jerusalem, are illegal and an obstacle to peace and to economic and social development." In addition, they've "been established in breach of international law" on sovereign Palestinian territory. READ MORE
N/Korea: The Kim dynasty's satellite of love By Pepe Escobar
.................................The North Korean leadership's Big Picture is actually crystal clear; with our nuclear capability firmly established, Washington's only way out is to negotiate a peace treaty with us to end the Korean War (for the moment there's only the July 1953 armistice). That would imply the withdrawal of US troops from South Korea. Over the Pentagon’s collective dead body - of course.
It has also not escaped the attention of virtually the whole developing world that because of its nuclear status, no NATO or selective "international community" is threatening North Korea with military strikes, bunker buster bombs, regime change or R2P ("responsibility to protect").
So it's back to the mystery now lying at the bottom of the Yellow Sea. Was it a satellite? Was it a missile? Or was it a recording of "heaven-sent statesman" Kim Jong-eun singing Lou Reed’s Satellite of Love?.................READ MORE
Suicides Outpace Combat Deaths, and Benefits Access a Struggle, for Veterans of Falklands/Malvinas War
Argentine Air Force Pilots in San Julian Airbase in May 1982 during the Falklands War. (Photo:Wikimedia)The battle for the British-controlled Falkland Islands off the coast of Argentina continues to kill, even 30 years after Argentine troops landed there on April 2, 1982. The struggle for a group of windblown islands in the South Atlantic has claimed more lives since the fighting ended than when battle raged. SAMA - the South Atlantic Medal Association, which represents and helps Falklands veterans in Britain - says that at least 264 veterans of the Falklands have now taken their own lives. This contrasts with the 255 who died in active service.In Argentina, the battle for the Malvinas, as the Argentines call the Falklands, has taken an even higher toll. Much like their US counterparts home from the Iraq and Afghanistan wars - who, in 2010 and 2011, lost more of their lives to suicide than to combat - it is almost certain that more Argentine veterans have taken their own lives than were killed in the Falklands war, according to Peniel Villarreal, a member of the Federation of War Veterans of Argentina. I met with Villarreal and other veterans in a run-down Buenos Aires suburb in 2009. READ MORE
Uranium - Double Standard: The U.S., Kazakhstan and Iran
Iran’s alleged "nuclear threat" has taken center stage among diplomats, military men, and politicians in Washington, Tel Aviv, and the West at-large.
Despite the fact that investigative journalists Seymour Hersh, Gareth Porter and others have meticulously documented the fact that Iran, in fact, poses no nuclear threat at all, the Obama Administration and the U.S. Congress have laid downmultiple rounds of harsh sanctions as a means to "deter" Iran from reaching its "nuclear capacity."
The most recent round featured a call to boycott Iran’s oil industry by President Obama.
While rhetorical attention remains focused on Iran’s "threat", there is an "elephant in the room": Kazakhstan’s booming uranium mining and expanding nuclear industry -- a massive effort involving U.S. multinational corporations and an authoritarian regime increasingly tied to Washington.
Double standards have long reigned supreme in U.S. foreign policy. Few examples illustrate that better than the contrast between Washington’s stance toward the nuclear ambitions of Iran and Kazakhstan. READ MORE
Jumat, 13 April 2012
It never stops: A few words of clarity for an insane world.
....................Yes, it is not all just Syrians fighting other Syrians. There ARE many outside forces at work there. Not just jihadis from the Iraq, Afghan, Libyan wars either. Reports have stated that there are various "special ops" types from Britain and France there along with the al-Qaeda types. No doubt there are a few mercenaries as well, hey, they fight for the highest bidder, yes, even Blackwater or whatever that outfit calls itself today. Mercenaries have no loyalty to any country/flag, just to who pays the best for their services, that is why they are called mercenary. Look it up in the dictionary. The "goal" of the "West" is regime change of course. Apparently the current leader is no longer of use to the US/NATO types. Also, the zionist entity would love to see the current regime go the way of Saddam and Gaddafi. Chaos is what they are giving that country. Just as they did in Iraq, Afghanistan, Somalia, Libya, Serbia, Kosovo, Vietnam, Korea.......the list goes on and on folks. Another reason is that there is oil under the sands of Syria, and we all know how "we" must control that oil, determine who gets to buy it and at what price. Add to the invaders of Syria the GCC, as Pepe Escobar calls it the Gulf Counter-revolution Club, called by the West, the Gulf Co-operation Council. Members Qatar and Saudi Arabia are the prime members of that gang, having supported the elimination of Gaddafi from Libya, they now want to eliminate al-Assad. Poor Syria, the people there do not deserve such "attention" from the US/NATO. Syria is not any threat to the US or Europe. Yes, they do allow the Russians to have a naval base on Syrian territory. So what? Is Syria a "sovereign" nation or not?
On to Iran..................... READ MORE
This New $7 Billion Warship Is Part Of The US Response To China's Military Buildup
Looking a bit like an old Civil War Ironclad, the $7 billion DDG 1000 USS Zumwalt will focus on land attacks, relying heavily on its advanced stealth technology to slip in close to shore before unleashing its massive onboard arsenal.
Originally estimated to cost about $3.8 billion, the Zumwalt has so much technology crammed on board that its cost has nearly doubled, and after the first three are built, production will stop.
In addition the Zumwalt will be built to receive the Navy's new electromagnetic rail-gun that can fire projectiles at over five times the speed of sound
Read more: http://www.businessinsider.com/this-new-7-billion-warship-is-part-of-the-us-response-to-chinas-massive-military-buildup-2012-4?nr_email_referer=1&utm_source=Triggermail&utm_medium=email&utm_term=Business%20Insider%20Select&utm_campaign=Business%20Insider%20Select%202012-04-13#ixzz1rxNL9xDa
Israel's Other Temple: Research Reveals Ancient Struggle over Holy Land Supremacy By Matthias Schulz
Clad in gray coat, Aharon ben Ab-Chisda ben Yaacob, 85, is sitting in the dim light of his house. He strikes up a throaty chant, a litany in ancient Hebrew. He has a full beard and is wearing a red kippah on his head.
The man is a high priest -- and his family tree goes back 132 generations. He says: "I am a direct descendent of Aaron, the brother of the prophet Moses" -- who lived perhaps over 3,000 years ago.
Ab-Chisda is the spiritual leader of the Samaritans, a sect that is so strict that its members are not even allowed to turn on the heat on the Sabbath. They never eat shrimp and only marry among themselves. Their women are said to be so impure during menstruation that they are secluded in special rooms for seven days.
Outside, on the streets of Kiryat Luza, near Nablus, a cold wind is blowing. The village lies just below the summit of Mount Gerizim. There's a school, two shops and a site for sacrifices. This is home to 367 Samaritans. It's a small community.
Everyone here is required to attend religious services in the synagogue on Saturdays. "Every baby boy has to be circumcised precisely on the eighth day," says the high priest -- not beforehand, and not afterwards.
Most important of all: the sect only believes in the written legacy of Moses, the five books of the Pentateuch, also commonly known as the Torah. They reject all other scripture from the Bible.
Once in the Majority READ MORE
US-Israel deal for Iran threatens progress By Gareth Porter
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| The last thing Israel wants is for there to be some type of meaningful deal. Israel would rather keep the status quo. Threat after threat, after threat. The U.S. [multinational corps.] want regime change in Iran so that it can be privatized. Lets not forget the coup against a freely elected government of Mossadegh in 1953 by the U.S. and Britain. Israel wants regime change in Iran so it can do as it likes with the Palestinians, and Lebanon. This is/has never been about Iran having nukes. Israel which is a clear and present danger to the region, the world, and to its self has nukes. Why is there never a debate about Israeli nukes? Shhhhhhh, hush, hush. |
By Gareth Porter
WASHINGTON - The Barack Obama administration has adopted a demand in the negotiations with Iran beginning on Saturday in Istanbul that its Fordow enrichment facility must be shut down and eventually dismantled based on an understanding with Israel that risks the collapse of the negotiations.
It is unclear, however, whether the administration intends to press that demand regardless of Iran's rejection or will withdraw it later
in the talks. Washington is believed to be interested in obtaining at least an agreement that would keep the talks going through the electoral campaign and beyond.
The government of Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, on the other hand, has been extremely anxious about the possibility of an agreement that would allow the Iranian enrichment programme to continue. So it hopes the demand for closure and dismantling of Fordow will be a "poison pill" whose introduction could cause the breakdown of the talks with Iran. READ MORE
Karzai ain't walking into the sunset
By M K Bhadrakumar
Afghan President Hamid Karzai took a big step last Sunday to fulfill his part of the deal with the United States to conclude a strategic pact that would provide for long-term American military presence in the region. And as quid pro quo he would expect to get an extended lease of political life beyond 2014 when his second and final term as president is due to end.
Karzai has proved a smart politician. He raised the pitch of rhetoric as an Afghan nationalist and insisted he wouldn't sign a pact unless the American forces ceased all "night raids" on
Afghan homes (which is a very explosive issue for Afghan men). The American side played ball and didn't relent. A public spat continued through months and the more the American side kept refusing, the more Karzai's image as a nationalist got burnished.
He finally scored a resounding win when the Americans decided that it was about time he won.
On Sunday, a memorandum of understanding (MoU) was signed in Kabul that governs "night raids" in Afghanistan. Afghan Defense Minister Abdul Rahim Wardak and the commander of the US forces in Afghanistan, General John Allen, signed the MoU, around which a lot of hype has been created. "This is a landmark day in rule of law," Allen said, claiming that Afghans are now "in the lead on two of the most important issues: capturing the terrorists and ensuring they remain behind bars." READ MORE
Kamis, 12 April 2012
This Just In: North Korea Still Sucks at Launching Rockets
North Korea's Workers' Party representatives applaud during the party's conference in Pyongyang, North Korea. Photo: AP
Congratulations, North Korea. You have just failed to put a satellite in orbit for the fourth time in fifteen years. Exhale, America: Pyongyang will not be able to attack you at home.
The North Korean rocket launch that gave the world heartburn is a dud. Again. CNN reports that the Unha-3 rocket blew up after failing to get its “Bright Star” satellite into orbit. In case you’re counting, that makes them 0 for 4 since 1998. READ MORE
Did it actually fail?
If it did fail, then they are a threat to no one.
Or, was it destined to fail?
Did they hit the abort button so that all concerned could save some face.
Let the real talks begin.
How to Evacuate 100,000 Israelis From the West Bank
The two-state solution is still practically feasible -- if only the political leadership could deliver it.
A two-state solution to the Israeli-Palestinian conflict is still possible. As part of my debate on this question with Robert Wright, who says "it's too late" as "there are just too many settlements," I offered some proposals on how to include the vast majority of settlers within a new Israeli border that would still allow for a viable and contiguous Palestinian state. Wright was not convinced, arguing that there are practical and political barriers to implementing those proposals. I still think he's wrong, and here's why.
A Jewish settler walks near temporary homes in the unauthorized Jewish outpost of Migron near the West Bank city of Ramallah. Reuters
A two-state solution to the Israeli-Palestinian conflict is still possible. As part of my debate on this question with Robert Wright, who says "it's too late" as "there are just too many settlements," I offered some proposals on how to include the vast majority of settlers within a new Israeli border that would still allow for a viable and contiguous Palestinian state. Wright was not convinced, arguing that there are practical and political barriers to implementing those proposals. I still think he's wrong, and here's why.
Wright's practical argument is that annexing 75 percent of the settlers would likely still leave over 100,000 settlers outside of Israel's new border, that their "uprooting" is not a "readily doable project," and thus the ideas for a two-state solution are not viable.
It's true that getting the 100,000-plus Israelis out of the West Bank would likely be the most practically and politically challenging element of an agreement to implement -- probably even more difficult than the inevitable compromises on Jerusalem. But it doesn't necessarily render a two-state solution impossible.
First of all, the remaining settlers will not all need to be "uprooted" or "extracted," as Wright writes. The majority of settlers are motivated by economic or quality-of-life concerns, since Israel subsidizes housing and amenities in the settlements, and could likely be convinced to relocate voluntarily with economic incentives. Though most of these "pragmatic" settlers are located in settlements that will likely be included within Israel's new borders (and thus will not need to be incentivized to move), many live in these outlying settlements as well.
For example, the settlement of Emmanuel, which will likely fall outside of Israel's new borders, is populated mostly by non-Zionist or anti-Zionist ultra-Orthodox residents who live in the settlements strictly for practical reasons. As a city councilor from the ultra-Orthodox United Torah Judaism party told the Oxford Research Group: READ MORE
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