Cassandra had a curse put on her to make sure no one would believe her predictions. Two people who know how she must have felt are the economics professors Paul Krugman of Princeton and Wynne Godley of Cambridge. The two have been predicting the demise of the the US and UK economies respectively (and in Professor Godley’s case, both) for years without, as yet, their predictions coming true.

Both were back in the fray last week. In one of his New York Times columns, Professor Krugman reminded us that last year America’s imports were 57% larger than her exports, that her borrowing binge was unsustainable and that, since a “soft landing” was unlikely, there could be a 30% fall in the value of the dollar in order to eliminate the trade deficit. Professor Godley (writing with a colleague in the Financial Times) warned that excessively high trade deficits in the US (6.5% of GDP) and in the UK (4.5%), buoyed up by budget deficits and personal borrowing, were unsustainable. If personal borrowing and spending slow down, they argue, neither government has a policy to avert a “prolonged deficiency in total demand”, which implies a serious economic recession. The professors are not alone. Among others, the venerable JK Galbraith, who has been right about so many things, has been predicting a stock market crash and high unemployment for well over 10 years.
guardian.co.uk

Robert Mugabe marks his 82nd birthday today by urging other African leaders to defy former colonial powers. “What one notices is lack of courage … a kind of surrender to European authority, I suppose it’s because of poverty,” he said. “None of them will stand up and say to them, ‘go to hell’. We shrink in asserting our rights. We need much more courage in the African Union.”

In the 90-minute interview on state television and radio, Mr Mugabe also denounced the British government. “Our erstwhile former coloniser still wants to govern us by remote control,” he said, repeating charges denied by Britain that it was sponsoring the opposition Movement for Democratic Change.
guardian.co.uk

Militants in the Niger delta mounted fresh attacks on oil installations yesterday, extending a wave of sabotage which has crippled exports from Africa’s leading oil producer. The guerrillas seized a Nigerian army post in waterways east of the city of Warri after soldiers fled, allowing them to dynamite a floating barracks block and an oil pipeline operated by Royal Dutch Shell.

A Shell spokeswoman confirmed the oil pipeline attack, and said the boat was abandoned when the attackers blew it up. It was unclear who owned the boat. The Anglo-Dutch multinational, the biggest foreign operator in Nigeria, has evacuated all its facilities in the immediate area, a stretch of creeks and swamps which normally produces 500,000 barrels a day.
guardian.co.uk

The Marines may be the most celebrated of the American armed forces, but it’s the Army that does most of the heavy lifting, as it is doing in Afghanistan and Iraq. In the process, the Army is being battered and shattered in the same way that it was in Vietnam.

Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld says that isn’t the case; everything’s fine. But a recent authoritative study says he is wrong. Commissioned by the Pentagon, the study was done by Andrew Krepinevich of the independent Center for Strategic and Budgetary Assessments. He’s a West Point graduate who served in a variety of Army roles, including a stint on the strategic plans and policy division, before retiring. He holds a doctorate from Harvard University.

Krepinevich says that coming out of Vietnam, military leaders were determined never again to get bogged down in prolonged small-unit combat. If the Army must fight, it would hit with overwhelming force, achieve its objectives and get out. The need to behave that way was reinforced by the end of the draft late in the Vietnam War. U.S. military forces now needed to focus on their ability to attract new recruits and retain experienced personnel.

That doctrine dictated how the Army was organized for Afghanistan and Iraq. It was totally unprepared to cope with extended battles against insurgencies; the Bush administration’s strategy didn’t take them into account.

Krepinevich says the Army can deploy no more than 13 brigades to hardship tours at one time. It now has 19 brigades deployed. To fill the gap, two Marine brigades have been sent to Iraq. “Stop loss” and “stop move” orders have been implemented. The reserves have been well tapped out. Active duty personnel now are commonly on their third rotation into Iraq.

The effects of this flawed strategy have been dramatic. The Army has no strategic reserve to call on if another threat were to develop. Divorce rates, domestic abuse and all kinds of mental and physical problems are on the rise among active duty soldiers. In sum, the Army is headed for a “catastrophic decline in recruitment and retention” unless something is done. The “thin green line,” Krepinevich says, will break. And don’t look to NATO, the United Nations or private contractors for more help, or expect Iraqi forces to develop without many years of effort.
shns.com

…The riot that consumed this normally peaceful city near the Iranian border on Feb. 9, leaving four people dead and at least 120 injured, appeared at first to be a sectarian religious conflict. But residents said there was much more to it than that.

“This is not the work of Sunnis or Shias,” said Ghulam Hussain, 35, a car dealer, as he surveyed the damaged Shiite mosque. “This is the work of people who have lost power and want to get it back.”

Many fingers pointed to Ismail Khan, the former provincial governor and militia commander who once ruled Herat as his private fiefdom. Local officials and international observers said the violence was probably orchestrated by Khan in a possible move to return to power — less than 18 months after he agreed to leave office in a well-publicized deal brokered by U.S. diplomats.

Equally worrisome, observers said, is the apparent unwillingness of the U.S.-backed president, Hamid Karzai, to challenge Khan. When Khan was forced from Herat and given a second-tier cabinet post in late 2004, the move was touted as proof of the democratic government’s ability to stand up to regional strongmen. Since then, Karzai has sidelined a number of local militia leaders.

But now, Karzai seems to be ceding control back to one of Afghanistan’s most formidable warlords, asking him to head a commission investigating the Feb. 9 incident. After rushing here from Kabul, Khan — a Sunni with a majestic white beard — spent a week in an ornate hilltop mansion, receiving delegations of notables and informants.
washingtonpost.com

Before the US House of Representatives, February 16, 2006

By Ron Paul

02/20/06 “ICH” — — Mr. Speaker, I rise in strong opposition to this very dangerous legislation. My colleagues would do well to understand that this legislation is leading us toward war against Iran.

Those reading this bill may find themselves feeling a sense of déjà vu. In many cases one can just substitute “Iraq” for “Iran” in this bill and we could be back in the pre-2003 run up to war with Iraq. And the logic of this current push for war is much the same as was the logic used in the argument for war on Iraq. As earlier with Iraq, this resolution demands that Iran perform the impossible task of proving a negative – in this case that Iran does not have plans to build a nuclear weapon.

There are a few things we need to remember when thinking about Iran and this legislation. First, Iran has never been ruled in violation of its international nuclear non-proliferation obligations.

Second, Iran concluded a Safeguards Agreement more than 30 years ago that provides for the verification of Iran’s fulfillment of its obligation to not divert nuclear energy programs to nuclear weapons development. Since this agreement was reached, the International Atomic Energy Agency has never found any indication that Iran has diverted or attempted to divert source or special nuclear materials from a peaceful purpose to a military purpose.

But, this does not stop those eager for conflict with Iran from stating otherwise. As the Washington Post reported last year, “U.S. officials, eager to move the Iran issue to the U.N. Security Council – which has the authority to impose sanctions – have begun a new round of briefings for allies designed to convince them that Iran’s real intention is to use its energy program as a cover for bomb building. The briefings will focus on the White House’s belief that a country with as much oil as Iran would not need an energy program on the scale it is planning, according to two officials.”

This reminds us of the quick move to justify the invasion of Iraq by citing Iraq’s “intentions” when actual weapons of mass destruction could not be found.

The resolution’s second resolved clause is a real misrepresentation of the Iran/EU3 talks. The “efforts of France, Germany, and the United Kingdom” were not “to seek…suspension of enrichment and reprocessing related activities…” As the EU3-Iran Paris Agreement makes very clear, the suspension of enrichment is a purely voluntary measure taken by Iran and is “not a legal obligation.”

This is similar to the situation with Iran’s voluntarily observation of the Additional Protocols (allowing unannounced inspections) without legally being bound to do so. Suspending voluntary observance of the Additional Protocols is not a violation of the NPT. But, those seeking to push us toward war with Iran are purposely trying to connect the two – to confuse voluntary “confidence building” measures taken by Iran with the legally-binding Treaty itself.

Resolved clause four of this legislation is the most inflammatory and objectionable part of the legislation. It lowers the bar to initiating war on Iran. This clause anticipates that the US may not be successful in getting the Security Council to pass a Resolution because of the potential of a Russian or Chinese veto, so it “calls upon” Russia and China to “take action” in response to “any report” of “Iran’s noncompliance. That is right: any report.
informationclearinghouse.info

Following the Post’s report that the US was considering using military bases in Georgia as a platform for a possible attack on Iran, the Georgian chief of General Staff denied the claims.

“This is utterly absurd,” Levan Nikoleishvili, the Georgian chief of the General Staff told Russian news agency Novosti following the Monday morning report.

The Jerusalem Post was told that American officials have been quietly probing whether Georgia, situated just northwest of Iran, will be willing to allow Washington to use its military bases and airfields in the event of a military conflict with Teheran.
jpost.com

02/19/06 “Toronto Star” — — We are stumped by the failure of our democratic concepts to gain a foothold in the Arab world,” wrote Michael Bell, a former Canadian ambassador to Israel, in the Globe and Mail last week.

I wonder which “democratic concepts” Bell had in mind — apparently not the concept that people are free to elect the government they choose.

This is the most basic democratic concept of all. And it’s clearly gained a foothold among Palestinian Arabs, who last month exercised their democratic rights by rejecting a corrupt government that had failed to advance the peace process, and electing the militant Hamas party.

Obviously the Palestinians failed to understand the subtle nuances of Western “democratic concepts.” Just because the West urges them to elect a government doesn’t mean they’re free to elect a government the West considers unacceptable.

The New York Times reported last week that the “United States and Israel are discussing ways to destabilize the Palestinian government so that newly elected Hamas officials will fail and elections will be called again.”

If only the Palestinians would get it right the first time, it wouldn’t be necessary for the West to intervene in their democratic process.
informationclearinghouse.info

US threatens to cut aid to Iraq if new government is sectarian
The US and Britain are pressuring Iraq’s dominant Shia community to relinquish two key ministries in negotiations for a new government, as the country was hit by a wave of bombings that killed at least 24 people.

The US ambassador to Iraq, Zalmay Khalilzad, warned yesterday that Washington might cut aid to the Iraqis if the new government included sectarian politicians, pointing out that the US had spent “billions” in building up the police and the army.

“American taxpayers expect their money to be spent properly. We are not going to invest the resources of the American people into forces run by people who are sectarian,” he said. He singled out the defence and interior ministries, saying they should be in the hands of people “who are non-sectarian, broadly acceptable and who are not tied to militias”.

Jack Straw, the Foreign Secretary, flew into Baghdad last night and was expected to deliver a similar message. A Foreign Office spokesman said that while it was up to Iraqis to decide on their government members, “we are keen to see these two departments in the hands of competent people, probably technocrats”.

avid Irving, the discredited historian and Nazi apologist, was last night starting a three-year prison sentence in Vienna for denying the Holocaust and the gas chambers of Auschwitz.
Irving, who appeared in court confidently yesterday morning carrying his book Hitler’s War and a PG Wodehouse paperback, immediately vowed to appeal against the sentence. “I’m very shocked,” he said as he was led from Vienna’s biggest courtroom back to the cells where he has been held for the past three months.

…Austria has Europe’s toughest law criminalising denial of the Holocaust. Irving went on trial for two speeches he delivered in the country almost 17 years ago. He was arrested in November last year after returning to Austria to deliver more speeches despite an arrest warrant against him and being barred from the country.

In the two 1989 speeches he termed the Auschwitz gas chambers a “fairytale” and insisted Adolf Hitler had protected the Jews of Europe. He referred to surviving death camp witnesses as “psychiatric cases”, and asserted that there were no extermination camps in the Third Reich.

State prosecutor Michael Klackl said: “He’s not a historian, he’s a falsifier of history.” Arguments over freedom of speech were entirely misplaced, he added: “This is about abuse of freedom of speech.”
guardian.co.uk

WASHINGTON, Feb. 20 — In a seven-year-old secret program at the National Archives, intelligence agencies have been removing from public access thousands of historical documents that were available for years, including some already published by the State Department and others photocopied years ago by private historians.

…The program’s critics do not question the notion that wrongly declassified material should be withdrawn. Mr. Aid said he had been dismayed to see “scary” documents in open files at the National Archives, including detailed instructions on the use of high explosives.

But the historians say the program is removing material that can do no conceivable harm to national security. They say it is part of a marked trend toward greater secrecy under the Bush administration, which has increased the pace of classifying documents, slowed declassification and discouraged the release of some material under the Freedom of Information Act.

Experts on government secrecy believe the C.I.A. and other spy agencies, not the White House, are the driving force behind the reclassification program.
nytimes.com