Category: In The News

The Hindu : From Eisenhower to Clinton to Bush

The Hindu : Opinion / Leader Page Articles : From Eisenhower to Clinton to Bush
An editorial in today’s edition of The Hindu, one of India’s largest circulation newspapers, suggests that while the burgeoning middle class seems to embrace the “American Dream,” this country’s poorest citizens remain suspicious, if not indifferent, to the U.S. agenda.

MANIFESTO: Together facing the new totalitarianism

Indland Jyllands-Posten

Salman Rushdie should soon have some more compatriots with his Fatwah death threat; after he and 11 leading secular Muslims published this manifesto in a Danish paper. Click on the link above to read the full original. Here is an excerpt:

After having overcome fascism, Nazism, and Stalinism, the world now faces a new totalitarian global threat: Islamism.

Islamism is a reactionary ideology which kills equality, freedom and secularism wherever it is present. Its success can only lead to a world of domination: man’s domination of woman, the Islamists’ domination of all the others. To counter this, we must assure universal rights to oppressed or discriminated people.

Iraqi Politics

IRAQ THE MODEL

This blog by an Iraqi, in Bagdhad, gives you an insight into what is really going on. That is why it was voted the best blog from that part of the world. In today’s posting, he notes that in the aftermath to the recent near civil war that “…politicians have realized that those clerics, whether Sunni or Shia, are the origin of the problem and are ready to coup on even their political allies, which made the politicians more aware of the danger imposed by clerics on the project of building a state ruled by the law.”

Here come the Pakistani Taliban

He’s Welcome In Pakistan
The majority of Afghan Pashtuns now want the benefits of peace — economic development, roads and schools.
Pakistan’s Pashtuns, by contrast, have become more radicalized than they ever were before 9/11. And the bloody Taliban-al Qaeda resurgence now under way has relied on Pakistan’s Pashtun belt for most of its recruitment, logistics, weapons and funding.

The Real Focus for Port Security

Stephen E. Flynn, a specialist in maritime security at the Council on Foreign Relations, noted that although the company is state-owned, several members of its top management are Americans — including its general counsel, a senior vice president and its outgoing chief operating officer, Edward H. Bilkey, who is a former U.S. Navy officer. And since the Sept. 11, 2001, terrorist attacks, the United States has increasingly depended on such foreign port operators to cooperate in inspecting cargo before it heads for U.S. shores.

“It’s a global network at the end of the day that we’re trying to secure here,” Flynn said. “And that doesn’t happen by the United States owning every bit of it. What we should be focusing on instead is the question, are the security standards adequate?”

Critics voiced strong doubts about whether the existing procedures are commensurate with the threat. “There are not enough Customs and Border Protection inspectors at the nation’s ports to handle the incoming traffic that we have now, and our guys at the ports are being told that they can’t do any overtime,” said Charles Showalter, president of the American Federation of Government Employees union, which represents officers who inspect ships. “That combination often results in uninspected ships being left unattended in port overnight.”

Concerns over insufficient inspectors worry many security experts far more than the issue of who owns the companies managing the terminals.

Flynn cited a litany of unsettling practices, such as the lack of any screening for the thousands of truck drivers, many of whom are immigrants, hauling containers from the ports of Los Angeles and Long Beach, Calif., to railway lines.

“What I hope for out of this whole debate is that, as Americans suddenly realize most of our marine terminals are managed by foreign-owned companies, they ask, given that that’s a reality, how do we secure it?” Flynn said. “I also hope this current situation doesn’t lead to a feeding frenzy [against foreign operators], because if we want things to be secure over here, we’re going to have to work with foreign counterparts.”

 

A Ship Already Sailed

A Ship Already Sailed – New York Times

In the outcry over who should run America’s seaport terminals, one clear trend appears to have been overlooked: American companies began withdrawing decades ago from the unglamorous business of stevedoring, ceding the now-booming industry to enterprises in Asia and the Middle East.

Little Mideast Oil Wealth Is Going Toward Takeovers of U.S. Assets

Little Mideast Oil Wealth Is Going Toward Takeovers of U.S. Assets – New York Times

Oil-exporting nations in the Middle East and North Africa are expected to earn about $530 billion from sales of crude oil this year, compared with $300 billion in 2003, according to the International Monetary Fund.

Middle Eastern countries account for less than 1 percent of $1.5 trillion of foreign direct investment in United States businesses and real estate, according to a recent report by the Congressional Research Service. That lags far behind the largest foreign investors: Britain, Japan, Germany, the Netherlands and France.