Thursday, June 12, 2008
Securing the City - Due out February 2009
Sunday, June 08, 2008
The Great (Hoffman-Sageman) Debate
The Myth of Grass-Roots Terrorism
Why Osama bin Laden Still Matters
From Foreign Affairs, May/June 2008
Leaderless Jihad: Terror Networks in the Twenty-first Century. Marc Sageman. University of Pennsylvania Press, 2008, 208 pp. $24.95.
Summary: Marc Sageman claims that al Qaeda's leadership is finished and today's terrorist threat comes primarily from below. But the terrorist elites are alive and well, and ignoring the threat they pose will have disastrous consequences.
... (full text)
Friday, June 06, 2008
Iraq: The Endless Occupation
Revealed: Secret plan to keep Iraq under US control
Bush wants 50 military bases, control of Iraqi airspace and legal immunity for all American soldiers and contractors
By Patrick Cockburn
Thursday, 5 June 2008
A secret deal being negotiated in Baghdad would perpetuate the American military occupation of Iraq indefinitely, regardless of the outcome of the US presidential election in November.
The terms of the impending deal, details of which have been leaked to The Independent, are likely to have an explosive political effect in Iraq. Iraqi officials fear that the accord, under which US troops would occupy permanent bases, conduct military operations, arrest Iraqis and enjoy immunity from Iraqi law, will destabilise Iraq's position in the Middle East and lay the basis for unending conflict in their country.
But the accord also threatens to provoke a political crisis in the US. President Bush wants to push it through by the end of next month so he can declare a military victory and claim his 2003 invasion has been vindicated. But by perpetuating the US presence in Iraq, the long-term settlement would undercut pledges by the Democratic presidential nominee, Barack Obama, to withdraw US troops if he is elected president in November.
The timing of the agreement would also boost the Republican candidate, John McCain, who has claimed the United States is on the verge of victory in Iraq – a victory that he says Mr Obama would throw away by a premature military withdrawal.
America currently has 151,000 troops in Iraq and, even after projected withdrawals next month, troop levels will stand at more than 142,000 – 10 000 more than when the military "surge" began in January 2007. Under the terms of the new treaty, the Americans would retain the long-term use of more than 50 bases in Iraq. American negotiators are also demanding immunity from Iraqi law for US troops and contractors, and a free hand to carry out arrests and conduct military activities in Iraq without consulting the Baghdad government.
The precise nature of the American demands has been kept secret until now. The leaks are certain to generate an angry backlash in Iraq. "It is a terrible breach of our sovereignty," said one Iraqi politician, adding that if the security deal was signed it would delegitimise the government in Baghdad which will be seen as an American pawn.
The US has repeatedly denied it wants permanent bases in Iraq but one Iraqi source said: "This is just a tactical subterfuge." Washington also wants control of Iraqi airspace below 29,000ft and the right to pursue its "war on terror" in Iraq, giving it the authority to arrest anybody it wants and to launch military campaigns without consultation.
Mr Bush is determined to force the Iraqi government to sign the so-called "strategic alliance" without modifications, by the end of next month. But it is already being condemned by the Iranians and many Arabs as a continuing American attempt to dominate the region. Ali Akbar Hashemi Rafsanjani, the powerful and usually moderate Iranian leader, said yesterday that such a deal would create "a permanent occupation". He added: "The essence of this agreement is to turn the Iraqis into slaves of the Americans."
Iraq's Prime Minister, Nouri al-Maliki, is believed to be personally opposed to the terms of the new pact but feels his coalition government cannot stay in power without US backing.
The deal also risks exacerbating the proxy war being fought between Iran and the United States over who should be more influential in Iraq.... (more)
Some background from Shadowland two years ago:
It’s just two years ago this week—two very long years—that President George W. Bush’s handpicked proconsul cut and ran out of Iraq. Instead of a grand ceremony handing over something called “sovereignty” to the U.S.-appointed government of Ayad Allawi, there was a low-key, almost secretive handshake and a very quick set of brief remarks before Paul Bremer jumped on a plane and got the hell out. He didn’t want to attract too much attention, or mortar shells from the growing insurgency.
It was an extraordinary moment, fraught with the arrogant hyperbole and arrant hypocrisy that has characterized this adventure all along. According to Bremer, the idea for the stealth ceremony before the announced date came from President George W. Bush, via Condoleezza Rice, who was then his national-security adviser. She’s quoted in Bremer’s book, “My Year in Iraq,” saying, “The president is trying to ‘wrong foot’ the opposition by doing the transfer of sovereignty a couple of days early.” Bremer agreed to this bright idea but worried that it would “look as if we are scuttling out of here, Condi.” There would have to be “several days of relative calm” beforehand. In the event, he settled for several hours. When Bremer landed in Jordan, he called his wife. “I’m safe and free,” he told her. Which was more than he could say for Iraq.
What Bremer did not mention in his book is a document—Coalition Provisional Authority Order Number 17—that he signed on June 27, 2004, just one day before he scuttled out of there, that continues to set the ground rules for the American occupation of Iraq. It is not a “Status of Forces Agreement” (SOFA) like the ones we have with our NATO allies or Japan or other countries where U.S. forces might be based. Those have to be negotiated, and the talks are tough, because truly sovereign countries think sovereignty truly is important. They never like the idea that American soldiers who commit crimes on their territory are not subject to their laws.
But Order 17 was not negotiated with the Iraqis, it was promulgated by the Americans, and it’s purely of the people, by the people and for the people that the United States brought into Iraq. Under its provisions, they are exempt from Iraqi laws, cannot be arrested, prosecuted, tried or taxed. Nor do they have to pay rent for the buildings and land they turn into bases. Ambassador Barbara Bodine, who served in Baghdad immediately after the invasion and subsequently negotiated military agreements with other countries before leaving the State Department in 2004, describes what Bremer pulled off as “a SOFA on steroids.” It’s all about what the Americans get to do, and what the Iraqis get to do for them...(more)
Wednesday, June 04, 2008
Talking Terror
The Brian Lehrer Show with the NYPD's Richard Falkenrath last year. Useful background on the report "Radicalization in the West" and the question of "homegrown terror."
Sunday, June 01, 2008
Don't Give Me That Ol' Time Religion
The New Face of Islam
A critique of radicalism is building within the heart of the Muslim world.
And there is so much more to say. Please do comment and suggest other links. Here are a few that may be of interest:
Using Comics to Turn Off Terror
Muslims Turning a Page on Rage?
The Unraveling
The Rebellion Within
Al Qaeda is losing the war of minds
Recent Work
The U.S. president's latest pronouncements on Iran and the Arab world generated doom and gloom on his Mideast tour.
Shadowland: Slaughterhouse Beirut 13 May 2008
Lebanon's chances for meaningful reconstruction are diminishing by the day. And despite Bush's bravado, it's going to be the same in Iraq.
Newsweek Online: Bombs in the Basement 7 May 2008
Remembering a Civil War relic hunter who survived.
Shadowland: Terrorist Triage 6 May 2008
Why are the presidential candidates—and so many counterterrorism experts—afraid to say that the Al Qaeda threat is overrated?
Shadowland: Bluff and Bloodshed 1 May 2008
The Persian Gulf is more dangerous than ever. Will the U.S. and Iran go to war at sea?
Newsweek: The French Revolution 5 May 2008
Sarkozy attempts to transform the West's military alliances.
Newsweek: Snapshots of Horror 28 April 2008
The curiously human side of the inhumanity that was Abu Ghraib.
Newsweek: Welcome to Paradise 21 April 2008
Oil revenue has made the desert—and plenty of other places—bloom with unexpected treasures for the tourist. Enter if you dare.
Shadowland: 'Jihadi Cool' 15 April 2008
Comic book action heroes may be better weapons against terror than bullets or bombs. (For more graphics and trailers, visit www.the99.org)
Web Exclusive: Italian Politics as Unusual 15 April 2008
Berlusconi wins by a landslide. Why Italy may never be quite the same again. (Written with Jacopo Barigazzi)
Saturday, March 15, 2008
Holland's Xenophobia Alert
Early Warning System for Xenophobia
Learning from the Danish cartoon crisis of 2006 and the Sudanese teddy bear debacle of 2007, the Dutch are preparing to preempt a Geert Wilders-inflicted pandemic of 2008. This preemptive approach seems to be paying off; reversing what looked like an inevitable widening of rifts between the West and the Muslim World. The Netherlands now know that outbreaks of xenophobia must be treated as any other pandemic threatening a population. In preparation for the outbreak, an early warning system must be established and at onset, one must quickly quarantine the ideological disease before it spreads further. With Wilders, the need for preparedness was great.
Geert Wilders, leader of the right-wing, anti-Muslim Freedom Party, of which there are only nine members in the 150-seat Dutch lower house, had long threatened to release a film exhibiting, in his words, "the violent and fascist elements of the Muslim faith". This saber-rattling was not new. On previous occasions, Wilders equated the Qur'an with Mein Kampf and called for both books to be banned (a proposal roundly rejected by parliament). Additionally, Wilders' suggestion that the 1 million Muslims living in the Netherlands renounce aspects of their faith or leave country was also dispelled as nonsensical. This new film, however, was going to trump polemical precedent and the Muslim world was readying for the worst.
This is where the Dutch did right, by discernibly developing mechanisms to dampen down disease spread. With other European Union countries quickly diversifying religiously and ethnically, they too will no doubt trip up on similar potential points of ideological contention. Thus, this model deserves dutiful review and, ultimately, duplication. If the saying "an ounce of prevention equals a pound cure" holds true, the Danish cartoon crisis should shock anyone into an early-warning convert. The potential social, political and financial costs are simply too great to ignore. And the Dutch, as we will see below, understood that. ... (more)
Thursday, March 06, 2008
Postcards from the Edge...And Hitler's Stargazer
The British National Archives at Kew come up with surprising finds of one sort or another in every monthly bulletin. The latest offers postcards and photographs from World War I, including this charming wish for "A Pleasant Christmas."
There's also an interesting collection of papers about the astrologer hired by the British government to conduct stargazing psyops against Hitler, who was a great believer in such things:
Louis de Wohl (KV 2/2821)
De Wohl was a Hungarian astrologer and author who came to the United Kingdom in 1935 and spent much of the war in official employment on propaganda work for the Special Operations Executive (SOE), the Political Warfare Executive (PWE) and other agencies. The work was based on the assumption that Hitler was heavily influenced by his own astrologer, so that by employing their own prominent astrologer, the British could sway his thinking.
Wednesday, March 05, 2008
Truth and Fiction
Where Am I Now When I Need Me: The True Story
Monday, March 03, 2008
Flashback: Islam's Challenge, Davos 2006
Sunday, March 02, 2008
Iranian Bling -- Why Sanctions Won't Work
I am amongst a group of young women at a bustling Tehran restaurant who are celebrating their university graduations. These girls are the sort of young people that writers (myself included) often enthuse about: the educated, burgeoning children of the Iranian Revolution, with enlightened ideals, at odds with their hardline politicians. Yet these students don’t appear to be fully conscious of the outstanding UN sanctions over Iran’s nuclear programme. ‘We’ve been too busy cramming for exams, I can’t even remember the last time I read a newspaper,’ is one typical response. Still, even if she had picked up a newspaper, she would have had to read between the lines to decipher such news. Iran’s National Security Council has for some time banned any negative reporting of outside pressure over its nuclear programme. This uninformed, passive, politically disengaged outlook is rather typical of most Iranians I have talked to in recent months, rich or poor.
Yet like most Iranians these young women openly grumble about the rules and regulations; the lack of jobs, inflation, poverty and corruption. They mock Iran’s President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad and unashamedly breach the strict guidelines by wearing their compulsory headscarves way back over their head to reveal as much (illicit) hair as possible. This is especially daring as Iran has endured an intensive summer crusade to banish widespread violation of the Islamic dress codes that has seen many cautioned and arrested. Shadi proudly shows off a personally compiled list of all the major shopping centres and thoroughfares in Tehran on her possible daily route where police cars and vans are positioned. Her approach is to avoid going through these areas. The salient mood here seems to be to outmanoeuvre and circumvent rather than face confrontation. ... (more)
Shutting Down the Satellites?
http://edition.cnn.com/video/#/video/international/2008/02/29/ic.arab.media.row.bk.c.cnn
Thursday, February 28, 2008
Dangerous Liaisons: Sarko and the Press
Even before the dust has had a chance to settle from French President Nicolas Sarkozy’s ‘get lost you cretin’ mishap at the Agricultural Fair, a new Elysée faux pas has become the talk of the French media. French Daily Le Parisien admitted on Wednesday that the President’s interview published in the paper the day before had not only been reread but also modified by the Elysée press service.
This infringement by the Sarkozy administration blurs the lines between politics and journalism. “In Moscow, they used to hide the official portraits of personalities who had fallen into disfavor. At the Elysée, they rewrite interviews given by the President,” wrote newspaper L’Humanité in its Wednesday edition.
In the interview, Sarkozy stands by Saturday’s outburst adding that “Just because you become President doesn’t mean that you suddenly become something people can wipe their feet on.” L’Elysee thought best to add the sentence “At the Fair, I should not have answered,” thereby significantly changing the tone of his initial answer. “This sounds like a press aide desperately trying to do damage control after the fact,” says Christopher Dickey, Newsweek bureau chief in Paris.
But the bigger problem is the fact that the Le Parisien editorial team - arguing that they were providing useful information to the reader - failed to mention which portions of the interview were an addition. “This is inappropriate,” says Stefan Simons, Paris correspondent for the German weekly Der Spiegel. It isn’t so much the fact that the interview was reread that’s problematic but “the way in which it was done. At Der Spiegel, heads of state are always given the possibility to read and fix their interviews before publication,” he adds....(more)
France to Sarko: "Casse-toi pauvre con!"
Changement de présidence et changement de style au Salon de l'agriculture. L'événement était très apprécié de son prédécesseur Jacques Chirac, qui s'y prélassait presque. Là , c'est quasiment au pas de charge que Nicolas Sarkozy a inauguré la plus grande ferme du monde.
A mi-parcours environ, il s'est soudain vu vertement repoussé par un visiteur du salon auquel il s'apprêtait à à accorder une poignée de main. Ambiance surchauffée et cohue, le Chef de l'Etat s'est alors emporté: "Casse-toi, casse-toi pauvre con" a-t-il lancé, avant de reprendre son parcours mouvementé. Un écart de langage qui n'est pas sans rappeler sa colère face aux pêcheurs bretons.
"Change of president, change of style at the Agriculture Fair. Jacques Chirac liked the event so much that he sort of settled in for a good time. Nicolas Sarkozy, on the other hand, opened the biggest farm in the world charging full speed ahead.
"About halfway through his tour he's suddenly seen brusquely dismissed by a visitor to the show to whom he'd just extended his hand. Amid the overheated crush of people, the head of state let himself get carried away: 'Get lost, get lost, you jerk,' he said before going on, a linguistic departure that's not without echoes of his anger in front of Breton fishermen."
And for those of you interested in the fine points, these are the relevant entries from the very British Dictionary of Modern Colloquial French, by René James Hérail and Edwina A. Lovatt (Routledge & Kegan Paul, 1984):
casser v. trans. reflex. 1 To 'toddle off', to 'run along', to go away. Il est cinq heures, il faut que jue me casse! It's five o'clock. I'll have to split! 2 Ne pas se casser: To take life easy, to worry very little about day-to-day matters.
con n.m. 1 'Cunt', 'pussy', vagina. 2 'Cunt', 'twit', imbecile. Espèce de con! You bloody idiot!...
Le Nouvel Observateur has a particularly sharp cover story about where all this fits into the astonishing plunge of Sarko's approval ratings. Its lead article: "And if this were to end badly ..."For more about this, see the post on the Newsweek blog "Why It Matters."
Thursday, February 21, 2008
Taxi to the Dark Side
Wednesday, February 20, 2008
Mort Rosenblum on Waterboarding, El Submarino and The Many Friends We Have Lost to Torture
THE DARK SIDE
Ask any reporter who knows brutal regimes: No hairs can be split over torture. Victims see no ambiguity. The memory stays fresh all their lives. More than pain, they recall smoldering contempt for their torturers.
You might have asked Baudouin Kayembe, the courageous owner of a weekly paper who helped me when I covered the Congo in the 1960s. But he died from his torture.
Over 40 years, Baudouin's intimates never forgave Mobutu Sese Seko, the man responsible, nor American authorities who kept Mobutu in power.
I saw this repeatedly in Africa, Asia, and the Middle East. But nothing made the point like Argentina's "guerra sucia," its dirty war on terror.
Government goons particularly favored "el submarino." They held suspects' faces underwater until lungs nearly burst. Sometimes they waited too long.
As is usually the case with torture, it backfired. Little useful intelligence was gained. Survivors talked to anyone who would listen. Decent societies reacted. And it took Argentina decades to live it down.
Each time I interviewed victims, hearing their bitter words and watching their hands shake, I felt a flash of gratitude for the blue passport in my left pocket.
We Americans reviled torture, as individuals and as a nation. When it was exposed, we reacted. Torture was one reason we invoked for overturning Saddam Hussein.
Today, we Americans have come up with "waterboarding," which sounds like a fraternity prank. It is el submarino: cruel and, for a people that respects itself, unusual.
Obviously, we are a far cry from an Argentine military which put thousands to death in a long nightmare of official terror. But what are we prepared to accept? ... (MORE)
I have posted variations of this video about Mort all over the place. But, what the hell. I enjoy it every time I watch it.
Tuesday, February 19, 2008
Adios, Fidel
As background reading, I looked up a piece I had written from Havana in 1982, which caught the spirit of the island pretty well, I thought, and at considerable length:
Sinking Expectations Keep Castro's Revolution Afloat
By Christopher Dickey, Washington Post Foreign Service, August 31, 1982
Dateline: Havana
"We ought not to fool ourselves. We have difficulties and we are going to have difficulties in coming years and the difficulties could be even greater."
-- President Fidel Castro on the Cuban economy, July 26, 1982.
For more than two decades, Cuba's economy has been sailing in shallow waters without ever quite running aground. American analysts point to massive Soviet subsidies as Castro's salvation, but there are other less tangible factors that have helped this country and this regime to survive.
Shortly after Castro's latest prediction of economic hardship and call for sacrifice, one of hundreds he has issued in his 23-year rule, a Latin diplomat on assignment to Havana from an ardently capitalist country cited what he considered the salvation of the Cuban revolution:
"Expectations are less than in other nations. Because of that, this is a country that has great flexibility. They take what they can get, but [when] they don't have, they adapt. Today it's much easier for them to run with lower expectations because there is more happiness with smaller gains. It's a society that is based on small expectations."
As its economic troubles continue, the extent to which Cuba really has become a revolution of lowered expectations may be crucial to its future and especially to its relations with the United States. It is vital for Castro's resistance of the 20-year-old embargo, but it could also become a factor if trade with Cuba somehow were renewed.
In his July 26 speech, Castro painted a gloomy picture of Cuba's economic expectations. Despite the special relationship with the Soviet Union, which buys Cuban sugar at high prices and sells Cuba oil at well below market rates, the Cuban economy has come to depend on the West for more than 20 percent of its trade -- and for many items necessary to its further development, from food to technology. The question now is whether Cuba can afford these imports.
According to Alberto Betancourt Roa, director of West European and North American trade for the Ministry of External Commerce, Japan and Canada are Cuba's major trading partners.
Despite attempts to cultivate Western trade, to expand the variety of its exports, and even to promote some limited Western investment, primarily in the tourist industry, Cuba remains dependent on sugar sales for the vast majority of its hard-currency earnings. And sugar prices are at a record low.
Some Cuban officials interpreted Castro's bleak forecast as a means of preparing the nation early for its likely inability to make projected economic goals over the next few years.
There is a whole school of thought among Western analysts that suggests Cuban consumerism may be one of the most potent weapons Washington could use against Castro. Many Western diplomats and analysts say that by dropping the embargo, the United States could so penetrate this country's economy that Cuba would at least have to take Washington's views into account.
But there is also evidence that the time is too late for that.
Notwithstanding the exodus of Cubans to the United States through Mariel two years ago, which arose in part from the frustration of people who wanted the freedom to consume, many Cubans seem convinced that from the point of view of social justice and basic needs, their communist island offers more to them than any other Latin country offers its people.
This may be the result of reason or simply of insistent indoctrination. It never lets up. When Henry Fonda died, the Cuban television report showed the hospital where he was treated and noted as an aside that poor people in the United States could never afford such care.
It may also be true that expectations really are not low at all, but that they are hidden in the face of omnipresent and intimidating "revolutionary vigilance" that rewards the revolutionary faithful with the kind of consumer goods the nation as a whole is asked to forgo and deprives dissenters of all but the barest essentials.
Some images and opinions from 10 days on the island:
Gema Perez is a party militant who was 11 when Castro turned Cuba's revolution to communism and she cannot or will not imagine a better life for herself and her people.
Perez was born in the town of Castillo de Jagua in the same tidy frame house where she lives now, nestled among the tile-roofed picture-postcard buildings of the fishing village at the narrow entrance to the Bay of Cienfuegos. In her breezy home are two large Soviet-made television sets, a sewing machine locked in a cabinet and a refrigerator.
Dominating one wall is what looks like a piece of cheap religious art, a framed portrait of Christ. But it is not Christ, Perez hastens to point out. It is a romanticized print of revolutionary hero Camilo Cienfuegos, long-haired, bearded, his hat back on his head so its brim seems a halo.
Before the revolution, says Perez, "this town didn't have anything." Its men led rough lives at sea and earned next to nothing. There were no public utilities; even drinking water had to be collected from cisterns or brought by boat from the city of Cienfuegos. It was, said Perez, "the way one lives in a regime where there is capitalism and you are poor."
Now, for the 1,200 people who dwell in the shadow of the village's colonial fort, there is electricity, a post office, a day-care center, telephone service, a school. New apartments have been built and a technical school, where Perez's husband is a "professor of soldering," was established for both local and visiting workers who are to construct one of Cuba's first nuclear power plants about 10 miles away.
Her four brothers still go to sea for 20 days at a time, but especially since wage increases were instituted in 1980, they earn what are considerable incomes by today's standards in Cuba. Their base pay is about average, but with good catches they receive bonuses of from $400 to $1,000 each trip. "We do not consider ourselves rich," said Perez. "They are remunerated economically for their labor."
In Castillo de Jagua, Perez concluded, "life has not improved a lot -- it has improved entirely. Now there is freedom."
"You mustn't report anything that would let them identify me," a service worker in his late 20s told a journalist in downtown Havana. "State Security works very well."
The reporter had asked if it were true, as some Cuban officials contend, that there is freedom of speech at the personal level even if there is not in the state-run mass media. "Why do you think you see people standing on corners acting like worms, running down the revolution?" a functionary had asked, answering himself: "Because they know they can get away with it."
"That is not true," said the fearful, frustrated worker. In Cuba, a man's politics, apparently, are inseparable from his economic well-being. "You can't stand on a corner and denounce the revolution. You do that and they accuse you of being a counterrevolutionary, and that's a crime. People who talk like that are left without work. If you were an engineer, you're no longer an engineer. If you were a manager, no longer. You're sweeping streets."
The worker seemed to be embittered by a sense of class conflict that Cuban officials say does not exist here. His hatred was directed at what he called the "high life" led by favored party functionaries who, as he described them, live in newly built apartment complexes in East Havana, wear Italian pullovers, Lee blue jeans and smoke Winstons or Marlboros.
"The party militants, they are the socialist bourgeosie," said the man. "But you can't say that either."
He tended to blame these people for almost all the country's problems while discounting their charges that what they describe as the U.S. blockade and the CIA are responsible for Cuba's hardships.
"The blockade and the CIA, those are the revolution's reasons for everything. Always 'the hand of the CIA.' My wife is heating milk and it boils. 'Aha!' I tell her. 'The hand of the CIA,' " he said. "I was forged by this 'socialism.' But let's just say I don't have the intellectual capacity to understand it."
Eugenio Balari is the guru of Cuban consumerism.
The head of Havana's Institute of Internal Demand has a favorite Marxist credo, but not the utopian communist notion of "From each according to his ability, to each according to his needs." Rather, as it says on one of Balari's economic flash cards, "To each according to the quantity and quality of his labor."
Balari is a bit of a showman. When he offers coffee to a visitor in his air-conditioned office -- in a reconditioned mansion a block from the seafront -- the coffee is a new instant that can be bought for the equivalent of about $8 a can "outside the ration book."
Fresh coffee is rationed, and an individual's 15-day allotment only makes about three little pots, carefully brewed. But since Cubans are great coffee drinkers, that clearly is not enough. It took more than 20 years after rationing was introduced to meet the demand by creating Instacafe, but now that it is here, Balari says it should help relieve the seemingly perpetual shortage of the favorite beverage. In the universal language of marketing he says, "It has found a great deal of acceptance."
The ration book once controlled virtually all purchases here. Now it's down to 30 percent, but it still makes interesting reading as the Cuban consumer's hated little passport to survival.
A month's supplies for one person include 10 ounces of beans, one bar of soap to clean yourself and one for your clothes plus seven ounces of detergent, half a pound of cooking oil, five pounds of rice, four cigars and four pounds of sugar -- the one thing there is a lot of in Cuba, although many sweet-toothed Cubans complain there is never enough.
The ration book limits trousers and shoes to one pair a year. "You have to be very careful with your pants," a cab driver said with barely a smile. The policies Balari advocates attempt to better rationalize the ration system and make more goods available outside it.
Alongside the cups on the conference table are copies of Opina, a monthly tabloid edited by Balari that offers feature stories providing some lightweight balance to the heavy political-intellectual fare in most of the government's publications. But most important, it publishes want ads: classified offers to sell 1952 Oldsmobiles in this city that has no traffic because it is almost without cars; offers to spray-paint refrigerators in this society where workers compare the merits of General Electric appliances made 35 years ago to those made 25 years ago.
Balari's government institute also brainstormed the peasant food mar- kets and the craft markets that raised publicity last year as the first apparent steps toward loosening the tightly controlled economy.
But even though the markets still operate, they have suffered some setbacks as the Cuban Communists found that a little capitalism, like a little learning, can be a dangerous thing. The free markets around Havana generated a new class of unauthorized middlemen.
There was the problem of shoes sold in the craft market in front of Havana's cathedral, for instance. Shoes, Balari conceded, are generally a problem in Cuba. There is always a shortage. The ration book allows only that one pair. So craftsmen making decent shoes and selling them in the open market had no trouble getting high prices and making a lot of money.
This raised suspicions. There was an investigation and, sure enough, "there appeared some subtractions of leather from some state factories. From there it was easy to find who did it." Some such middlemen, Balari said, "have had to confront revolutionary justice."
Balari can martial many statistics to show how much life has improved for Cuba's people since the triumph of the revolution on Jan. 1, 1959.
His numbers are displayed on colorful cards indicating everything from a 23-year rise in life expectancy (now 73) to the number of televisions (up from 6 per 100 families to 79). Yet Balari says it is doubtful that the country will achieve the goals set in its current five-year plan. "We are entering a stage in the life of the people that is austere but decorous," he said.
Asked about the kind of austerity that had a 15-year-old pressing her face against a store window one night recently to sketch the dresses on the rack so she could try to sew them by hand at home, Balari said, "You see, she can get the cloth."
On a hot, clear afternoon recently, 18-year-old Zenen Pumariega and his half-brother Fernando were swimming off the rocks below Havana's seafront boulevard, the Malecon, a quick escape from the stifling closeness of the residential streets in the decaying older sections of the city.
Neither Zenen, a cafeteria worker and part-time student, nor Fernando, who is about to enter the Cuban Army, can think of a much better place to live than here.
There was a time when members of their family wanted to go to the United States, said Zenen. Two years ago, a sister and uncle left through Mariel. But the latest word from the sister in Miami is that "life is pretty hard," according to Zenen.
The two teen-agers were asked what they would buy if they could buy anything in the world.
"A house, a car, food, clothes," said Fernando.
But any special car, any special food or clothes?
"Nothing special," said Fernando.
"A car that would get me to work, get me to school and get me to the beach," said Zenen.
But the boys still want to know how much things cost in the United States, and how much they cost in the dollar stores at the Havana tourist hotels to which they are forbidden access.
Zenen, who just wanted basic transportation, who seemed to have no dreams of Trans-Ams, Camaros or Mercedes, had just put on Sasson jogging shoes brought to him by a relative. The price for such luxurious footwear, noted Fernando as he donned some old army boots with a hole in the toe, would be about $120 on the street in Havana.
"And how much," Zenen wanted to know, "would a bottle of Paco Rabanne cologne go for?"
Copyright 1982 The Washington Post
Monday, February 18, 2008
Italy's Agony and Ecstasy
This week's Newsweek International cover story written with Jacopo Barigazzi in Milan and Barbie Nadeau in Rome is about what went wrong with Italy, and what's still right with it.
The full text was translated into Italian by La Repubblica in its print edition on Monday, February 18, but the only extended version I could find on line (and it's not the whole thing) is at Clandestinoweb: "Caos Calmo."
I think it's pretty clear we all love Italy, for all of its faults, and sometimes because of them.
One point of irritation writing the story, however, was that none of the right-wing politicians, commentators or businessmen we approached seemed able to find the time -- over the course of a month -- to give us interviews. At the top of that list would be Gianfranco Fini, who was perfectly pleasant, but just didn't have ten minutes to spare. We also approached Giuliano Ferrara, who is a wonderfully agile thinker and writer close to Berlusconi, but, again, he just couldn't be bothered. -- C.D.
This viral video by Bruno Bozzetto has been around for a decade, but Jacopo's article about it, and the video itself, are not to be missed. Just click on the picture below, then click on "Play":
Recent articles:
Newsweek Internatonal Cover: Agony And The Ecstasy, 17 February 2008
Italy barely functions. Yet its people are happy. What explains this? (With Jacopo Barigazzi and Barbie Nadeau)
http://www.newsweek.com/id
http://www.blog.newsweek.com
Turkey's top tycoons speak out on ties to Europe, headscarves, the military and other controversies. http://www.newsweek.com/id
Once you can claim that a critical press is on the wrong side of God's law, after all, you can do just about anything you want to shut it down. That's not only a problem for Afghanistan or for Islam. I think that's a danger in any country where politicians claim they answer to a higher law.
Shadowland: The End-of-the-World Economic Forum 30 January 2008
In this great age of denial, Davos may seem out of touch, but the Bush administration is so much worse.
Shadowland: Of Cops and Candidates 11 January 2008
America still faces clear and present dangers. So why are the presidential debates about national security increasingly detached from reality? (There is also a video shot in New York -- "NYPD Unseen" -- linked to the article.)
Newsweek Issues 2008: The Ghost In The Machine 28 December 2007
Don't blame America. Cultural remix has been around since Roman times. It just happens a lot faster today.
Tuesday, January 29, 2008
Saffron and Sugar: Iran's Recipe for Disaster
Iranian blogger Nasrin Alavi has written an interesting analysis of power shifts among the elite in Tehran for OpenDemocracy.net. The most intriguing part, to my mind, is the sketch of what's gone wrong in the Iranian economy:
"...The disillusion with the United States among many Iranians has meant that the hopes and energies for change are increasingly grounded in the domestic troubles of the regime. The people's frustrations with the government's economic mismanagement are rising at a moment when an important electoral test - elections to the 290-seat majlis (parliament) on 14 March 2008 - is approaching.
In routine circumstances, the leadership of President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad and his supporters would at such a time seek to heighten the confrontational rhetoric against the US, mobilising nationalist sentiment against revolutionary Iran's number-one enemy. On this occasion, the tactic may be less effective, for two reasons.
First, the US's national intelligence estimate (NIE) published on 3 December 2007 controverted the White House's portrayal of the alleged Iranian nuclear peril, thus going a little way to defuse tension and undermine the portrayal by Iranian authorities (and in particular by Ahmadinejad himself) of an immediate threat from the US (see "Iran: the uses of intelligence", 6 December 2007). Second, most Iranian citizens are so hard-pressed by their daily circumstances that their concern is not with foreign policy or how their country's nuclear-energy programme is perceived, but with their economic condition and how to improve it.
This is bad news for the president. Ahmadinejad had campaigned for the presidency in June 2005 on an economic platform, and won power by tapping into the vein of popular anger against corruption and cronyism and promising to create jobs and security for Iran's poor and deprived. In the middle of his third year in office, the hopes he raised have largely dissipated: the government has introduced petrol rationing, and there has been disruption in gas supplies and more than sixty deaths amid a spell of severely cold weather - all this in the country that is the fourth-largest oil producer in the world, and has the second-largest natural-gas resources.
In addition, chronic unemployment remains widespread and inflation has continued to climb: the official rate is 19%, though the real figure may be even higher (the cost of housing and of foreign-made consumer and electronic goods has more than doubled in the last year alone). Ahmadinejad is justified in attributing much of the inflation to past policy errors, but he has compounded these by populist and yet wasteful inflationary handouts.
The recipients of these handouts appreciated them, but their euphoria proved short-lived. An illustration is provided by Ahmadinejad's decision at the outset of his presidency to double the price of saffron, which especially helped Iran's poorly-paid saffron-pickers in Khorasan province in eastern Iran; the instant doubling of their income meant that the president had kept his promise to bring some the fruits of Iran's oil wealth into their lives.
By August 2007, however, the picture looked very different. The artificial pricing policy and higher wages for the saffron-workers meant that the price of Iranian saffron had risen fivefold in a year, to $1,945 per kilo; by December, the head of the saffron exports promotion fund was reporting a 70% drop in exports in the first seven months of the Iranian year that started on 21 March 2007. In less than two years, the farmers of Khorasan - who used to cultivate nearly 90% of the world's saffron - have seen their market and (possibly) their long-term livelihoods damaged by a presidential whim.
Iran's sugar industry is also grappling with crisis. The level of domestic demand is around 1.9 million tons per year, but official figures estimate that over 3 million tons of cheap sugar that undercut local produce has been imported. Ahmadinejad often accuses his political rivals of intentionally sabotaging his economic policies. In this case at least, the charge rebounds: Ayatollah Mohammad-Taqi Mesbah-Yazdi - whose reputation in the west is for his role as Ahmadinejad's spiritual guide and adviser - is known to most Iranian people as a major importer of sugar whose companies have dominated the sector since the 1979 revolution. Today, thirty-four sugar factories are facing closure, while workers protesting at not being paid - like those at the Haft Tappeh company in Khuzestan province - have been met by riot police and threats of dismissal.
Iran's Arab neighbours - especially those in the Gulf states that were the principal audience of Bush's speech in Abu Dhabi on 13 January - are flushed with liquidity due to record oil prices; but they have responded by investing in long-term national projects and enhancing their governmental portfolios (including the emergent "sovereign wealth funds") by buying large shares in major international industries. Iran's oil infrastructure is in dire need of modernisation and investment yet the government's policy response to its troubles (including a potential budget deficit) has been to inject about $140 billion in 2007-08 into an already cash-addicted economy; this has had the effect of increasing prices still further.
The rising discontent amongst the very people who were Ahmadinejad's core supporters in 2005 - and whose lives he pledged to improve - may be an important political factor in the approach to the 14 March elections. Its reverberations have already been felt in establishment circles. When he came to power, Ahmadinejad was initially endorsed by many of Iran's senior conservatives, including - crucially - the supreme leader, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei. The policy failures of the protege in whom they had invested so much is generating strains at the heart of Iran's revolutionary elite. This is evident in Khamenei's rare intervention in a budgetary spat between the government and the majlis, when (in a letter made public on 21 January) he effectively admonished the president. Ahmadinejad is losing support from "above" as well as from "below"....
A contrasting view appeared a few weeks ago on the BBC. Some of the online comments denounced it as Iranian regime propaganda: