Jerusalem - July 23

Opening Lines: Jerusalem 2111

 

By AMIR MIZROCH

An international sci-fi film competition has challenged contestants to lay out their vision for Jerusalem 100 years from now.

On July 15 an international sci-fi competition for a “Vision of Jerusalem 100 Years from Now” was launched and organized by the Association of Planning and Conservation- Jerusalem (Beit Hamodel), in association with the History Channel, 3D World magazine, the Jerusalem Municipality and the Jerusalem Cinematheque.

The competition, aimed at animators and short-film makers, asks competitors to create their vision of Jerusalem 100 years from now. Following a public online vote on YouTube, an international jury will choose the top video clip, taking into account professional artistic considerations as well as subjective and immeasurable ones. The jury includes star producers such as Wim Wenders (Until the End of the World) and John Landau (Avatar, Titanic). The winners will be announced on December 31.

While similar competitions for other cities worldwide have focused on disasters, alien invasions and other staple sci-fi fare, my vision for Jerusalem 2111 assumes the IDF has contingency plans against alien invasions, and thus focuses on other issues.

BY 2111 the Old City of Jerusalem is encased by a dome, a massive, transparent enclosure covering the Holy Basin and adjacent neighborhoods. The Dome is two million square feet in area, making it the largest domed structure in the world after the Houston Dome, built to save that city from searing heat, devastating hurricanes and unsustainable levels of toxic emissions.

Each of the 200,000 panels making up the dome is 10 meters wide, and at just 1 percent the weight of glass is an incredibly strong yet lightweight material. The dome’s chemical composition was discovered by haredi scientists at the worldfamous Halachatronics Department in the city’s revered Applied Faith College.

The polymer, a mixture of glass, plastic and anti-matter, is a miracle of holy science and won its creators a combined Nobel Prize in Physics, Mathematics, Chemistry, Biology and Peace. The dome, named Kippa, was designed by a team of ultra-unOrthodox scientist/preachers in their laboratory. They discovered the polymer quite by chance while searching for ways to create food particles from mathematical equations in the Kabbala.

The dome’s material does not shatter, cannot be burned, is bullet and laserproof and is impenetrable to rockets, including ones carrying nuclear warheads (this was tested in the last war). The dome never needs repair or maintenance; and it will never be removed until the Messiah comes (a political decision reached between the Elad Municipal Corporation and the construction company, Holyland Engineering) – an eternal dome for part of the eternal capital for some of the world’s Jews and Muslims.

THE TERM ‘HAREDI’ has come to represent an elite group of spiritual scientists who work exclusively on the practical applications of the tiniest particles known to man, called bosons, and who constantly seek these “God particles” inside the deepest recesses of inner space using religious scripture as a guide. In its explanation for bestowing such an unprecedented honor on the team of Jewish spiritual-scientists, the Nobel Prize committee wrote: “As the haredim get closer and closer to God, they find more practical applications for His wonders. They, more than any other scientific-spiritual group in the world, create miracles from God’s particles for the benefit of all humanity.”

The combination of deep religion and advanced science, and the early investment of government funding into the pursuit of faith-based astrophysics, proved a savior for humanity’s escalating struggles against environmental and political threats. Thus their Nobel Peace Prize.

The dome’s entrance is at the Mamilla Financial District GateTM. Ventilation, temperature, precipitation and ambience inside the dome are regulated according to the religious festivals and prayer times. The triple-layered surface of the dome lets in the sun’s rays, which are then filtered by the dome’s polymers, transforming the light that enters In-Dome Jerusalem into a soft, suffuse hue, like the light that a coated bulb shines into a small room. This gives In- Dome Jerusalem a sweet, spiritual ambience which may account for the calm, happy and self-effacing demeanor of its populace. At night, the dome’s polymers enhance the light of the stars, making them twinkle just a little brighter.

The only vent in the dome is at its apex, and is used by the municipal corporation for the occasional airborne arrival and departure of VIPs, including visiting heads of municipal corporations, religious figures, celebrated foreign rabbi-scientists and celebrities. Suspended directly in line above the Dome of the Rock is the magnificent Third Temple, held in the air by a feat of anti-gravitational engineering, another product of the wizards at the Halachatronics Department. Rabbis, Rabbinas, pilgrims and tourists are transported to the Temple by a light-tube reaching from the Mamilla Western WallPlazaTM all the way up hundreds of meters to the Temple’s gates.

At the Mamilla Western Wall PlazaTM itself, gender separation has long been replaced by a more scientific and equitable solution that has allowed complete unity at the holy site. Visitors to the Mamilla Western Wall PlazaTM first have to pass through a “de-genderfier” (another engineering feat), a genderequalizing device that temporarily removes all intrinsic gender identification from a person’s brain, storing it at an on-site, secure database for later retrieval when he/she walks through the “re-genderfier” on his/her way out of the plaza. Thus, while outwardly maintaining the features of a man or woman, the pilgrim can devote all of his/her energy on focused prayer throughout the Plaza without offending anyone of the opposite sex.

The second terminal a visitor to the Wall Plaza has to enter through is the “de-denominizer,” a walk-through device that temporarily removes a person’s religious denomination, storing it at an on-site, secure database for later retrieval when he/she walks through the “re-denominizer” machine. That way pilgrims can communicate their thoughts to God in any words, physical actions or garb they choose without offending those praying next to them.

Rumor has it that the haredi wizards at the Applied Faith Department are working on a new device called the “un-affiliator,” which would remove and reinstall ethnic, denominational and gender affiliation, all in one machine. But this device is still undergoing trials as some test subjects have complained of residue effects (one Ashkenazi Reform man found himself one morning in a mikve strictly for Orthodox women and couldn’t explain what he was doing there).

Inside the Dome, life, like the weather, is regulated according to prayer. Time runs on a spiritual clock. The “lightrail,” which transports beings, or those parts of beings that need to be at certain places at certain times, moves along subjective routes of consciousness. The closer a person’s soul is to “the light,” the faster he or she gets to his or her destination. The purer the intention is, the less congested and crowded is the ride. While this science is hard to explain, it is largely taken on faith, and it works. The “lightrail” and “lightbuses” are always on time and never late, depending on who you are and where you want to go.

UNFORTUNATELY, NOT much is known about life in Off-Dome Jerusalem East and Off-Dome Jerusalem West as both of their municipal corporations were unable to emulate In-Dome Jerusalem’s good governance.

Every infrastructure project planned Off-Dome was derailed by corruption and neglect and was always over budget. No progress was ever made on integrating and fusing science and Halacha into their schools, and so their students were left light years behind, literally.

Religious, ethnic, socioeconomic and political conflicts within and between Off-Dome Jerusalem West and East eventually plunged those areas into perpetual darkness, where only occasional fires and police lights hint at the goings-on there. Not much news travels out of these areas, as ancient electronic communication signals could no longer be received or understood by intelligent new devices inside the Dome. Newspapers are long dead and the only news one can read in those areas are highly subjective diatribes plastered on walls or insensible recordings of loud harangues by Off- Domers with In-Dome Jerusalem Syndrome.

Source :  http://www.jpost.com/Opinion/Columnists/Article.aspx?id=182214

Telegragh - July 23

Can Cameron reignite India's love affair with Britain?

 

As David Cameron heads to New Delhi to foster improved relations, will he succeed in making India our partner in trade?

David Cameron’s decision to take three of his four most senior Cabinet colleagues with him to New Delhi next week, along with his higher education minister, marks a historic moment in almost 400 years of British engagement with India. It gives ceremony to a state of affairs that has been the case for some time but not, until now, acknowledged: we need India more than it needs us.

For those of you whose most recent glimpse of India was the brutal poverty shown in Slumdog Millionaire, or believed you had just elected a government committed to clamping down on south Asian immigration, think again and steel yourselves: Mr Cameron’s visit with the largest senior Cabinet delegation in recent memory heralds the arrival of an Indian century.

His aim is not just to win contracts for British firms, but to establish a strategic relationship in which our scientists, engineers, designers and entrepreneurs will work with their Indian counterparts and combine British innovation and Indian costs to sell to the rest of the world.

It is a challenge to the more familiar view of India, as home to 456 million people living in poverty – just under half its population – and one third of the world’s poor. This grim statistic remains accurate but not as urgent as other developments: India is the world’s second fastest-growing economy. It is expected to overtake China as the fastest-growing within 40 years, and also replace it as the world’s greatest population with more than two billion people by 2050. As its population rises, so too will its number of highly educated graduates and skilled engineers – already qualifying at the rate of 160,000 per year.

The pressing need to “partner” India was explained to me two years ago by a professor heading a series of collaborations between British and Indian university research departments and technology companies. They were hoping to develop revolutionary communications systems which could run on minimal electricity and store sensitive data securely in disaster-proof circumstances. “It is better to help them develop now than be overtaken and alone later,” he said.

Mr Cameron appears to have decided, wisely, that the project needs an injection of urgency: Britain’s snail-like recovery has not eased fears of a double-dip recession, while Indian growth is expected to push on from nine per cent.

If you’re still not persuaded that the Indians are coming, consider another random collection of persuasive facts: Singapore will become an Indian city if its Tamil population continues doubling at the current rate, Britain’s largest manufacturer (Tata, owner of Jaguar Land Rover and Corus steel) is Indian, India’s 700 companies in the UK are our largest job creators, UK businesses owned by British Indians generate £10 billion in turnover, and our richest man, Lakshmi Mittal is an Indian.

All of which explain why David Cameron will arrive in India on Tuesday with William Hague, George Osborne, Vince Cable and David Willetts to genuflect before the “emperors” of the new Raj and try to persuade them we may be of some use.

The scale and symbolism of the gesture hasn’t gone unnoticed. “It’s not a question of perception. David Cameron is on record that he would like an enhanced partnership with India, to deepen and diversify the economic engagement and this has registered with us, it came across clearly and it’s fully reciprocated,” India’s Commerce Minister Anand Sharma told The Daily Telegraph earlier this week.

Politically it marks a sea-change after the last government, which will be appreciated by India, according to Mark Runacres, head of the British Business Group in New Delhi. “We shouldn’t underestimate the political stuff here. The Indians will have come away from the Labour administration feeling that they prefer dealing with the Right than the Left. This manifests itself on issues like Kashmir. There’s a rumbling sense that the more liberal people focus on more sensitive political issues and less on hard business. There was a feeling that with Gordon Brown, China was more front of mind than India. The political message of an enormous delegation is taken as going the extra mile,” he said.

The most memorable contrast is with the visit of the boyish then foreign secretary David Milliband, who lectured ministers about the need to find a solution with Pakistan to their dispute over Kashmir while India was still in shock from the devastating terrorist attack on Mumbai. He made matters worse by appearing to patronise India’s then foreign minister rather than show the traditional respect due to elders.

The question of whether we should be worrying about India’s daunting social problems or licking our lips at the prospect of a piece of its business action divides commentators and diplomats: Should we be salivating over its growth, its successful lunar mission and ranks of new millionaires when hundreds of millions are living on less than a dollar a day, thousands are dying of malnutrition-related illnesses, AIDS, malaria and from drinking water contaminated with sewage?

India’s rapid growth is partly explained by the relationship between its increasingly wealthy middle class and its rising numbers of poor. It has both an inexhaustible supply of cruelly cheap labour in the service of a vast, English-speaking, college-educated middle class with access to large amounts of capital. The greatest fortunes in India are being made selling dirt cheap mobile phones to rickshaw pullers earning less than £3 per day, water-purifyers to those earning slightly more, and motorbikes to those described as middle-class yet earn less than £200 per month (household servants and drivers).

While the country’s breakneck “development” is enjoyed by many, it is also the cause of great unhappiness and rebellion in tribal, rural areas and its Hindi-speaking conservative “cow-belt”.

The pressure on India to better exploit its mineral resources has fuelled a Maoist insurgency which now affects more than 200 of its 600-plus districts. Tribal families have been forced from their land by mining companies such as Vedanta, owned by London-based Indian billionaire Anil Agrawal. In Punjab, West Bengal, Haryana and Uttar Pradesh there has been a growing number of “honour killings” by families whose daughters joined the sexual revolution that has accompanied the new jobs for women in India’s call-centre industry.

India’s caste system, with its strict hierarchy and rules on who can love whom, is starting to fray, as bright, educated dalit or “untouchable” boys mingle with higher-caste girls in meritocratic call centres or newspaper offices. Forbidden romances have blossomed out of the sight of conservative families. In Haryana, leaders of the traditionalist Jat clan are demanding state support for the execution of young lovers.

Until May Britain has hedged by pitching for business while giving millions of pounds in aid to some of India’s poorest states. Under the new government, our Indian aid programme is likely to be drastically cut back or even axed while all focus switches to the pursuit of trade.

Besides next week’s show of intense respect with Mr Cameron’s Cabinet delegation, ministers have been stressing our “shared history” in the British Empire and the links continued by Britain’s 1.5 million people of Indian origin. Some in India believe he is wrong to dwell on a colonial past in which Britain dominated India and treated it as a child in need of guidance.

But according to Pavan K Varma, India’s leading cultural analyst and its ambassador to Bhutan, Britain is still regarded with warmth despite conquering the subcontinent. “One of its legacies is that there is in the Indian psyche more goodwill than [between] India and France or India and Germany, and that contributes to a closer relationship with Britain in terms of emotional bondage.

“There is goodwill, nostalgia, and comprehension through language which needs to be capitalised upon with dynamism,” he said. “The problem is that the UK is now longer a super-power and it must deal with that.”

Source :  http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/newstopics/politics/david-cameron/7907293/Can-Cameron-reignite-Indias-love-affair-with-Britain.html

The News - July 23

 Men of steel

The three-member Supreme Court bench which had taken suo motu notice of alleged corruption of Rs22 billion in the Pakistan Steel Mills has had its hands full. The court has heard suggestions that the DG FIA is not interested in getting to the bottom of the matter, the deputy attorney general stated their hands were tied and then backed away from the comment when questioned by Justice Ramday, refusing to say who had tied the knots and the court noted a general lack of willingness on the part of government departments to act morally. This of course is a huge handicap. While the courts continue valiant efforts to root out corruption, and the chief justice has emphasized that those who loot public money will not be spared, the fact also is that goodwill is needed on the part of the government. Without this there can only be limited success in the bid to tackle a problem that is eating away the very soul of our state and destroying public institutions within it. The Pakistan Steel Mills, a giant entity, is reported to have already been left almost hollow by a process of plunder.

All this exposes a great deal about what has gone amiss; at every level we see nepotism, flagrant violations of law, merit and ethics and a readiness to abandon even a pretence of honesty. There is another dimension to this. Unless key investigative agencies are ready and able to perform the duties entrusted to them, we cannot get very far in tackling corruption. As things stand at present, they seem keener to keep the truth hidden. This makes the task of the court a distinctly harder one, given that it can act only on the basis of the evidence laid before it. We must however be grateful that our judges have persevered and that from one institution at least we have a commitment to weed out corruption. The actions taken by courts have revealed a great deal about how corruption takes place and the bonds that link it together. The matter of meting out justice to those wronged by such acts has obviously been taken up as a priority and this is something that offers a ray of hope to lighten up an otherwise formidably dark horizon.

Source : http://www.thenews.com.pk/print1.asp?id=252254

The News - July 23

The NACTA Shame

The chairman of the National Counter-terrorism Authority (NACTA) resigned on Tuesday and the reasons for his departure are gradually leaking into a wider world. It is a shabby story of political preferment trumping the national interest, of powerful ministers seeking to put their placemen inside this key agency rather than having staff appointed on merit. Most tellingly, it is a tale of how the agency tasked with the formulation and implementation of our national strategy to counter terrorism was to be hobbled from its inception. It seems there are many in positions of influence without the slightest interest in the formulation of such a policy as it would cut across their own vested interests, and they sense threat in the establishment of an agency such as NACTA. Losing Tariq Pervez, who was respected in his field and turned down the chance of a job at the UN is not going to play well with the foreign donors keen to see NACTA up and running.

It is a matter of astonishment and dismay to foreign missions in our country that they cannot link to a specific national counter-terrorism authority and that no national plan or policy to counter terrorism is yet in place. We face terrorism every day of every week of every year. Terrorists are mounting a sustained and determined assault on the very fabric of our society and yet we are unable to formulate a policy to combat them at a national level that will be led from the top and enjoy the support of every province. Thousands of our people die every year as a result of terrorist violence, and tens of thousands are wounded, often severely disabled. The outgoing chairman of NACTA had sought to have the agency under the control of the prime minister's secretariat, and its finances independent and ringfenced from the Interior Ministry. The mandarins of the Interior Ministry liked this not, nor did the interior minister himself who had a list of people he wanted to appoint contrary to the wishes of the chairman who was committed to merit appointments. In the end Tariq Pervez resigned, a disillusioned man who had put his country first only to find that his country had no use for such men. He will be hard to replace and our interior minister may now be swift to move into the vacuum left by his passing.

Source : http://www.thenews.com.pk/print1.asp?id=252252

Daily Times - July 23

HUM HINDUSTANI: 

Words and deeds 

J Sri Raman

We have come a long way from the days when one could wonder whether the BJP was for more work or words. Under Gadkari and his revered RSS gurus, the deeds of the BJP and the parivar have now begun to match words, and vice versa. It is time for India's far-right watchers to fasten their seat belts

As a young reporter decades ago, I covered elections in Delhi and around, when rallies of the parent of Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) resounded with the slogan: “Jan Sangh ke badhte kadam, kaam zyada baat kam (Jan Sangh marches forward, with more work and less talk).” India’s far right and its political front have, finally, achieved a fine balance between words and deeds.

The recent spate of words from Nitin Gadkari, into his seventh month as the BJP’s supposedly new-style president, supplies a wonderful example. The latest of his verbal salvos to attract wide attention was directed at the leadership of the ruling Congress for its refusal to listen to a BJP-led lynch mob crying hoarse for a hanging. Mohammad Afzal of Kashmir, better known as Afzal Guru, on death row following conviction in the case of an attack on India’s parliament in December 2001, has been awaiting a long-delayed decision on his wife’s petition for a ‘presidential pardon’ to be given on the government’s advice.

Decrying the delay and demanding an immediate hanging at a rally earlier this month, Gadkari asked: “...Afzal inka daamaad hai (Is Afzal their son-in-law)?” Amplifying on the point, he added: “Isko ladki di hai kyaa (Have they given their daughter to him)?” The supplementary raised much more of a storm than the main question. The Congress thought it had cause for serious offence. Sonia Gandhi’s daughter Priyanka Vadra was happily married, after all, and so were the three daughters of Prime Minister Manmohan Singh. The party leaders’ families did not have to go for unbecoming matrimonial alliances, far less for dangerous liaisons of the kind Gadkari mentioned derisively.

The hail of brickbats from the Congress and the rest of the country hardly made the BJP chief budge. He did not stop with persisting with the posers. He proceeded to pose a similar question to Congress veteran and former Madhya Pradesh Chief Minister Digvijay Singh. Was Singh, asked Gadkari, “Aurangzeb ki aulad (the son of Mughal emperor Aurangzeb)?” or “Shivaji ya Rana Pratap ki aulad (the offspring of anti-Mughal Shivaji or Rana Pratap)?” “Mein to Virbhadra ki aulad hun (I am the son of Virbhadra)”, said Singh in answer to the communalism-loaded question, but the answer did not leave Gadkari abashed.

This, of course, is not the first time the party used a pejorative aulad in its political discourse. Sadhvi Ritambara, one of the saffron-clad women leaders of the Sangh Parivar (the far-right ‘family’), made liberal use of the word in the campaign leading to the Babri Masjid demolition of December 1992. Her taped speeches, in which she assailed the ‘Babar ki aulad (the offspring of Babar)’ who defended the mosque in danger, were played everywhere in the run-up to the general election of 1991. No party leader of his level, however, had ever got so personal as Gadkari in questioning the opponents’ parentage.

The BJP helmsman was quick to apologise, however, after his earlier exhibition of verbal vulgarity. The targets then were the two Yadavs — Lalu Prasad (of Bihar and the Rashtriyta Janata Dal) and Mulayam Singh (of Uttar Pradesh and the Samajwadi Party). They had enraged Gadkari by promising to back the BJP in a move to vote out the government in parliament and going back on their word subsequently. Condemning their betrayal, the BJP president compared them to “dogs licking Sonia Gandhi’s feet”.

The parivar’s prominent dog-lover and Sonia-hater, Maneka Gandhi, chose not to demur, no doubt putting the country above the canines. Other party colleagues, however, would appear to have persuaded Gadkari to proffer an apology. The BJP, in their view, could not afford to burn all bridges with the Yadavs, especially Mulayam, with whom it had done profitable business before.

Meanwhile, the Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh (RSS), patriarch of the parivar, which had put Gadkari in his elevated place, was not very happy with all the verbals. It stood for action — as its documented role in so many communal riots demonstrates. So it set an example by going for some action, with the BJP hastening to back it.

The occasion was provided by a ‘sting operation’ on a television channel, which purportedly showed some known RSS and BJP personalities plotting big-scale communal violence, the top billing going to a plan to assassinate India’s scholarly Vice-President Mohammad Hamid Ansari. The parivar struck on the morrow of the programme. On July 16, around 600 of its men and women stormed the offices of the channel in New Delhi and ransacked it as the local police, by most accounts, looked on. The BJP rushed to the mob’s defence, stating in a circuitous language that the attack was a befitting answer to the channel’s anti-RSS blasphemy.

The same day saw a second attack on a television channel. A battalion of Bal Thackeray’s Shiv Sena invaded the Kolhapur station of another channel, airing a live programme on a border dispute between the states of Maharashtra and Karnataka. Viewers were later to watch shocking footage of a fierce assault on an unarmed participant in the programme from Karnataka under the BJP’s rule. The party has still not condemned the musclemen of the Sena, its staunch ally in Maharashtra.

We have come a long way from the days when one could wonder whether the party was for more work or words. Under Gadkari and his revered RSS gurus, the deeds of the BJP and the parivar have now begun to match words, and vice versa. It is time for India’s far-right watchers to fasten their seat belts.

The writer is a journalist based in Chennai, India. A peace activist, he is also the author of a sheaf of poems titled At Gunpoint

Source : http://www.dailytimes.com.pk/default.asp?page=2010\07\23\story_23-7-2010_pg3_5

The Asian Age - July 23

There’s No Excuse For Such Behaviour

Even as we can understand that actions of ordained political actors will be guided by the urge to derive the maximum perceived advantage months before a major election, it is hard to see how the shenanigans of Opposition legislators in Bihar can be justified on any count. The wholly blameworthy acts of disruption and violence indulged in by the Opposition parties in the state Assembly on Wednesday can hardly be said to inaugurate a soiled chapter. In recent years unacceptable behaviour of the same type has been witnessed in several state legislatures. Indeed, the way MPs — who could have set an example — have conducted themselves in the Lok Sabha in recent years can hardly be deemed worthy of emulation. Even so, it is no exaggeration to suggest that Bihar’s legislators have shown the way to a new low in unbecoming conduct by public servants — all in the name of safeguarding the values enshrined in the idea of representative government of course. Before long, in order to shame our legislators, a public-spirited body that cares for democracy might see it fit to invite MLAs and MPs to a tongue-lashing by those who elect them. Or are we expecting too much from those we vote in, considering that a fair proportion — across the political spectrum — have serious criminal cases instituted against them?

The Comptroller and Auditor-General of India has indicted the Bihar government of malfeasance to the tune of several thousand crores of rupees in the last seven years. The matter is out in the open with the Patna high court ordering a CBI probe following a public interest litigation case. In the event, any Opposition worth its timbre would be up in arms. However, this gives the parties outside the government no licence to smash furniture and seek to hurl missiles at the Speaker. It is debatable whether the Speaker should have suspended the entire Opposition for the remainder of the Assembly’s term, set to expire in four months, or if he should have asked the marshals to bundle out the MLAs forcefully. But there is no question that the Opposition parties behaved without a modicum of dignity even when they were within their rights to lodge their protest emphatically. The ruling side too has taken a needlessly confrontationist stand in relation to the judiciary. The Speaker has held that the high court was out of order in ordering a CBI probe before the Assembly had disposed of the matter. This appears an extreme view. The judiciary is an independent branch of the government and is not obliged to take its cue from the legislature. Besides, in this case the high court gave its order in the context of a PIL. The Nitish Kumar-led NDA government has appealed to the court to stay its order directing a CBI probe. It might have been a lot better if the chief minister had himself decided to ask for a CBI inquiry. The Opposition has demanded the resignations of the chief minister and his deputy so that they may not influence the proposed investigation. Since state elections are due in four months, the chief minister may consider exercising his prerogative to dissolve the House.

Source : http://www.asianage.com/editorial/there’s-no-excuse-such-behaviour-682

 

Dawn - July 23

Iran’s Role

US SECRETARY of State Hillary Clinton was not off the mark on Wednesday when she stated in clear terms that Iran has a role to play in the stabilisation of Afghanistan. Iran’s differences with America, be they over nuclear power or the regime’s overall ideology, have a long and tortuous history. ‘Death to America’ is a popular refrain in pro-government rallies in Tehran while the demonisation of Iran is rampant even today in the most respectable of US media outlets. America, apparently, has never come to terms with the fact that its staunchest ally in Iran, the Shah, was ousted through a popular uprising that, many believed, was hijacked by the Islamist followers of Ayatollah Khomeini. And Iran, for its part, has been following an equally antagonistic approach towards the West that makes no pragmatic sense. Both sides need to find some middle ground which allows all regional stakeholders to put their heads together and find a balm for the festering wound that is Afghanistan.

The question here is:


What’s in it for Iran? It shares a huge border with Afghanistan and is a major regional player whose decisions, particularly on the economic front, even affect Pakistan. But can Iran be brought to the negotiating table in the current atmosphere of hostility? America believes that Iran has “a role” to play in Afghanistan’s stabilisation and at the same time is pushing for ever-stricter sanctions against Tehran. The two goals are not compatible and the US must reassess its relationship with Iran on a holistic level if it hopes to find cooperation from so key a regional player. An alliance with Pakistan alone may not solve the Afghan mess that is becoming more unmanageable by the day. Other neighbours, such as Iran, must be taken into confidence so that the vision shared by the US, the Karzai government and Pakistan can be realised sooner than later. It is now clear that Nato is desperately in search of an exit strategy vis-à-vis Afghanistan. Given Afghanistan’s complex ethnic and tribal divisions, it is imperative that Pakistan and Iran are on the same page as America.


Source : http://epaper.dawn.com/ArticleText.aspx?article=23_07_2010_007_002

The Express Tribune - July 24

Democracy and the Generals

The themes of democracy and dictatorship run through the history of Pakistan. The tradition of military dominance that has shaded most aspects of political life in the state means that the decision to extend the tenure of General Ashfaq Parvez Kayani cannot be seen as a decision not tied in to other developments on the national scene. The announcement in a brief late-night address to the nation by Prime Minister Yousaf Raza Gilani means General Kayani will now serve till November 2013, three years longer than the period assigned to him. There had for many months been speculation as to whether the COAS would step down on schedule. The fact that the government has decided he will not means General Kayani will now stay in office beyond the tenures of both the prime minister and the president, who bow out earlier in 2013. Interestingly enough the chief justice of Pakistan, too, is scheduled to retire that same year.

Not many will need persuasion that the move, which follows meetings of the COAS, corps commanders and the top civilian leadership, is intended to ensure that any potential friction between the latter and the military establishment stays at a minimum. Other than that, there is bound to be a perception among some in the country – and it may not be entirely unjustified – that the move will surely have the endorsement of the Americans. According to several media reports, the head of the US military, Admiral Mike Mullen, as well as the head of US forces in Afghanistan, General David Petraeus, and his predecessor General Stanley McChrystal have had a good working relation with General Kayani. Having said that, the threat of military intervention has lingered somewhere in the background since the dramatic restoration of the judiciary in March 2009 — an event the army is said to have played some part in. The grounds offered by the prime minister, that General Kayani has been retained in the interests of national security, raise more questions than they answer. Are we to assume that military strategy follows from the persuasions of individual generals rather than a policy devised by the government? Is there any reason to believe the next COAS would have pursued a different course of action? And how convincing is the claim that we are triumphing over the militants anyway? There are many doubts as to the degree and stability of success within the conflict zone where local residents speak of continued unrest.

There is also the small matter of principle and precedent. General Kayani has been called a soldier’s soldier, under whose reins there has been considerable focus on the welfare of the soldier as opposed to the officer. That said, the failure to follow rules in many ways dooms us to a future of still more speculation and doubt. It also leaves it plain that the elected government is largely powerless against a military that remains assertive — even if this role is more subtle than in the past. There can be no doubt that as yet the balance of power between the military and the civilian set-up has not been righted. Until this happens we can expect only further bumps on the road that leads to democracy. That goal cannot be achieved by the process of balloting alone.

There is also the question of the role of international players. General Kayani has been able to persuade key allies that he is central to the effort against militancy. While they speak frequently of bolstering democracy in Pakistan and of their commitment to keeping it afloat, these players have little hesitation in doing business with military chiefs. We do not know what events took place behind the scenes leading to the late-night address to the nation. But we do know that the first-ever extension to an army chief granted by a civilian government will add to the difficulties Pakistan faces in establishing control over its military and ending the long era through which the men in uniform have scripted the plot of the story of political life.

Source : http://tribune.com.pk/story/30456/democracy-and-the-generals/

The Future of Freedom Foundation - Freedom Daily

How a Rich and Proud Nation Went Broke
by Jim Powell, Posted April 16, 2010

Amidst a multitrillion dollar spending spree, President Obama apparently believes it’s inconceivable that a mighty nation such as the United States could go broke.


Yet France, once the most powerful nation in Europe, went broke and was plunged into a revolution that consumed the king and queen. Germany was bankrupted by reparations following World War I as well as the ruinous costs of sustaining money-losing, government-run enterprises (particularly railroads). Chile’s socialist regime was bankrupt during the early 1970s. In recent years, Thailand, Korea, and Hungary were bailed out by the International Monetary Fund. Russia, Ecuador, Pakistan, and Ivory Coast have defaulted on their debts.
Argentina is probably the most intriguing case for Americans now. Argentina is currently broke, and last year President Cristina Fernandez de Kirchner seized private pension funds in a desperate effort to cover government budget deficits.


Argentina has been in trouble for so long that it’s easy to forget that from about 1880 until World War I it ranked among the world’s wealthiest nations. The most lavish buildings in Buenos Aires date from that era. They include towering, ornately embellished monuments in the classical style, such as Banco de la Nacion (1888), Palacio Municipal (1891), Casa Rosada (1894), Hotel Paris (1895), and the National Congress (1906). Buenos Aires business barons dined at the turn-of-the-century Jockey Club, whose lavish rooms were decorated with tapestries and gilded mirrors. Writing about Buenos Aires in 1914, the American minister G.I. Morrill marveled at its sophistication:


An afternoon walk shows the city very much like Paris in its architecture and fashionable stores. At night it is a big white way with electric lights blazing a trail to the light-hearted cafes and theaters.
James Bryce, the British author who wrote a great deal about the Americas, gave a similarly enthusiastic account in 1916:


All is modern and new; all belongs to the prosperous present and betokens a still more prosperous future.
Argentina prospered thanks to booming exports of beef, wheat, and wool. It was endowed with some of the most fertile land on Earth. Immigrants from Spain, Italy, Germany, and elsewhere powered a dramatic economic expansion. Foreign investors expressed their confidence in Argentina by financing railroads and heavy industries.
But politicians were beginning to disparage Argentina’s remarkable market economy. Radical Civic Union leader Hipólito Yrigoyen, known as “el polido” (the hairy armadillo), talked about government intervention in the economy and won the 1916 presidential elections. He didn’t actually do much, other than keep Argentina out of World War I and enable the country to prosper by exporting its valuable commodities to belligerents. Elected again in 1928, he proved unable to deal with unrest resulting from the Great Depression, and an army coup forced him out of office two years later.


Argentines responded to the Great Depression by raising tariffs that shielded local industries from overseas competition. This was intended to promote industrialization, but competitive companies failed to develop behind tariff walls, and the tariffs forced farmers to pay more for manufactured goods, undermining the natural advantages of Argentine agriculture.


The rise of Juan Perón


In May 1943, a group of military officers, known as Gruipo de Oficiales Unidos, issued a declaration of Argentine nationalism. Among them was Juan Perón, an influential 47-year-old colonel. “Germany is making a titanic effort to unite the European continent,” they wrote. They vowed to make Argentina supreme in South America. The following month, they overthrew the conservative government of President Ramon S. Castillo and selected the tall, charming, and impulsive Perón to be the new government’s labor minister.


A teacher’s son, born in Lobos, October 8, 1895, Perón had launched his career as a teenage army cadet. From 1939 to 1941, he had served with the Argentine embassy in Italy. He admired Mussolini and Hitler for policies that he believed could help promote “social democracy” in Argentina. He recognized that to further his ambitions, he needed a power base. As labor minister, he was able to assert power over unions and manipulate them to help expand his own power. In 1945, he issued a regulation requiring that collective bargaining agreements be approved by the government. He awarded government jobs to union bosses who supported him. He made life difficult for union bosses who opposed him. He publicized everything he did for unions. His lover, Eva (Evita) Maria Duarte, a rancher’s daughter, became a popular radio personality.


Alarmed that Perón was emerging as a political threat, the military arrested him on October 12, 1945. Some 300,000 union members gathered in front of the Casa Rosada, the government’s main office building, to protest his arrest. He negotiated for his release and for a cabinet filled with his supporters. He was freed on October 17, thereafter celebrated as Loyalty Day.


The military agreed to hold presidential elections on February 24, 1946, and Perón won with 52 percent of the vote. His battle cry was economic nationalism. He introduced a Soviet-style five-year plan. He established a government monopoly of the export trade: farmers had to sell their commodities to the government and accept below-market prices, and the government then sold the commodities overseas at higher, market prices. Perón used the profits to subsidize favored industries. He took control of the central bank, the vaults of which were loaded with gold bars. He went on to nationalize the insurance industry and grabbed assets in its portfolios. He nationalized aircraft-construction companies, oil companies, and commercial shipping companies. He nationalized the British-owned railroads and telephone system.


Perón maintained the support of labor union bosses by making sure their members received benefits regardless of their productivity. He ordered employers to pay one month’s wages as a Christmas bonus. He decreed more national holidays. He launched a government-run retirement program like Social Security. He subsidized summer camps and rest homes. At the same time, he insisted on controlling union decisions about strikes and other labor policies.


Consolidation of power


The more power Perón acquired, the more inconvenient the Argentine constitution became. Enacted back in 1853, it specified some limits on what the government could do. Most inconvenient was the one-term limit. Since Perón’s supporters controlled both houses of Congress, he simply rewrote the constitution, and the Argentine congress rubber-stamped it. The new constitution went into effect March 1949 without the pesky term limit. The constitution also enabled Perón to gain arbitrary power during a “state of siege.” Gone was an 1853 provision protecting private property. Perón’s constitution said that “private property has a social function.… It is incumbent on the State to control the distribution and utilization of the land.” The new constitution declared that minerals, petroleum, coal, waterfalls, and other natural resources were “inalienable property of the Nation.”


Perón and Evita, who by this time had become his second wife, encouraged a personality cult to bolster their power. They appealed to the “descamisados” (“shirtless ones”), who were the putative principal beneficiaries of Perón’s policies. He staged vast, orchestrated rallies that promoted his socialist-fascist doctrine, called justicialismo. She established the Eva Perón Foundation to extort contributions from businesses, distribute some proceeds to the poor, and promote their personality cult. Her supporters hailed her as “the Mother of All Argentine Children.”


Journalist Philip Hamburger observed the personality cult first-hand during the mid 1940s. “Everywhere I heard the same stories,” he wrote in The New Yorker.


How Señor Perón is at his desk each morning by 6:30 and does not leave until 7 or 8 at night; how Señora Perón arrives early at her office in the Under Secretariat of Welfare and Labor; how she receives from 10 to 20 delegations of farmers, laborers and sheepherders a day; how she attentively listens to their problems and comforts them with advice or a promise that their demands will be granted; how she has worn herself to the point of anemia by her untiring social work; how, when she travels around the countryside, she is greeted as though she were a saint.


On Loyalty Day, October 17, 1951, Evita declared, “I ask you today, comrades, only one thing — that we will all swear publicly to defend Perón and fight to the death.” She died in 1952 of cervical cancer, and to this day people leave flowers at her family vault in Buenos Aires.


The personality cult, however, couldn’t avoid the economic crises that were a consequence of Perón’s policies. Government spending led to inflation, which disrupted the economy and discouraged long-term business investment. Coddled by subsidies, Argentina’s nationalized industries stagnated. Burdened by taxes to pay for industrial subsidies, agriculture slumped, and Argentines, who before Perón had excelled as world-class producers of wheat and beef, had to endure coarse black bread and a meat shortage. One writer commented,
By 1953, there were fewer paved roads than in 1945, neon lighting was curtailed, and shop window displays were lit up with kerosene, while there were fewer cars per head of the population than in 1929.


Argentina dissolved into chaos. The country was rocked by strikes. Coup attempts spurred Perón to further concentrate power. He kept weapons out of the hands of his supposedly beloved descamisados. He blamed speculators for his troubles. He jailed opponents and padlocked their presses, including La Prensa — among the most influential Argentine newspapers. His supporters burned Catholic churches and such bastions of the aristocracy as the Jockey Club.


“During the dictatorship,” recalled Argentine poet Jorge Luis Borges, “they sent police to monitor my lectures, fired me from my small library job, and named me poultry inspector.” He added, “I resented Perón making Argentina look ridiculous to the world.”


The economic turmoil caused by Perón’s inflation, price controls, exchange controls, interest-rate controls, trade restrictions, and nationalizations led to political turmoil that weakened his grip on power. In 1955, the Argentine military pulled off a successful coup against him, and he was sidelined for the time being. Union bosses, however, remained powerful, and union members’ pay increased faster than productivity, which caused more economic problems.


Perón’s successors


Meanwhile, a home-grown socialist theoretician mounted an intellectual defense of government intervention that dominated public policy debates in Argentina. The theoretician was Raoul Prebisch, born in Tucoman, Argentina, April 17, 1901. He earned an economics degree at the University of Buenos Aires and was a professor there from 1925 to 1948. Over the years, he held a number of positions at the United Nations. His principal idea was that free trade enabled rich countries to exploit poor countries. He rejected Adam Smith’s observation that peaceful trade was mutually beneficial. Prebisch argued that the “terms of trade” worked against the “Periphery” (agriculturally based poor countries) and in favor of the “Center” (industrialized rich countries). Hence, his claim that by exporting agricultural commodities and importing manufactured goods, the Periphery impoverished itself. He insisted that the only way the Periphery could gain an equal footing with the Center was to develop its own industries behind tariff walls. He viewed foreign exchange restrictions as self-defense against the Center. He urged Center countries to give the Periphery foreign aid as a way of compensating for their supposedly unjust advantages. Third World dictators loved the idea of free money. But Perón had pursued the kinds of policies Prebisch favored. They flopped in his homeland and everywhere else they were tried, as it turned out.


After Perón’s overthrow, there were three military rulers, then politician Arturo Frondizi. He tried to cut the bloated railroad workforce by 75,000, but union bosses had him overthrown in March 1962. His successor, Dr. Arturo Illia, had a go at trying to reduce government intervention in the economy, but soon he too was gone. Lt. Carlos Ongania asserted military control of the government, provoking strikes and riots.


Exasperated military leaders agreed to set elections for March 11, 1973. Perón wasn’t permitted to run for the presidency, but his stand-in, Hector J. Campora, won and helped Perón maneuver his way back into power — with his third wife, María Estela (Isabel) Martínez de Perón, a former cabaret dancer. Perón promised more goodies for unions, and again he shut down publications that opposed him. Mercifully, he died at 78 on July 1, 1974.
Isabel took over, and the public sector went wild. Money-losing nationalized enterprises expanded their payrolls by 340,000 during her presidency. Inflation hit 335 percent in 1975. Violence escalated, claiming more than 1,000 lives. She was overthrown in a military coup on March 24, 1976.

Runaway inflation


It was common knowledge that government control of business converted it into a vast jobs program, and endless wage demands consumed all the capital. Businesses incurred losses that couldn’t be controlled because executives were forbidden to reduce compensation levels or fire any union members. On the contrary, political pressure actually led to more hiring and bigger losses.


The military couldn’t help manage Argentina’s 353 nationalized industries because officers were in the same racket. The Ministry of Defense sat atop a morass of nationalized military industries. The biggest was Fabricaciones Militares, which was involved with iron ore, chemicals, gun powder, tanks, and much more. The air force had aircraft factories. The Navy operated shipyards. Since the military couldn’t control its own nationalized industries, few observers were surprised that it failed to resolve chronic problems of nationalized civilian industries.
Unable to cut government spending, Argentine ministers repeatedly announced anti-inflation plans that consisted of currency devaluation and controls on prices, wages, foreign exchange, and interest rates. But government printing presses churned out bales of paper money, and inflation skyrocketed. By June 1985, it hit 3,000 percent. The old peso was abandoned, and Argentina adopted a new peso, but since government spending remained out of control, the new peso soon became worthless like the old peso. The new peso was replaced by the austral. Various economic controls caused endemic shortages. Capital flight accelerated amidst worsening economic crises.


In the years since then, a succession of Argentine presidents have had some hopeful moments when market reforms were introduced, but invariably these collapsed because of lobbying from interest groups, especially labor unions. Programs once started became politically impossible to stop, regardless how harmful they proved to be.
Politicians seem to promote government intervention in the economy because they imagine they will gain more control; but intervention causes increasingly serious economic problems that ironically lead to political problems and a loss of control.


Comedian Enrique Pinto, who performed in Buenos Aires variety shows, ridiculed Argentina’s humiliating descent from wealth to poverty. He said, “It took real talent and perseverance to bring down such a wealthy country.”
Americans might have a hard time coming up with solid reasons that something like this couldn’t possibly happen to us.


Jim Powell is policy advisor to the Future of Freedom Foundation and a senior fellow at the Cato Institute. He is the author of FDR’s Folly, Bully Boy, Wilson’s War, Greatest Emancipations, The Triumph of Liberty and other books.


This article originally appeared in the January 2010 edition of Freedom Daily.Subscribe to the print or email version of Freedom Daily.

Source : http://www.fff.org/freedom/fd1001d.asp

The Jerusalem Post - July 17

Putting Iron Dome into perspective

Technology cannot hermetically seal our skies.

The technological achievement that took the original Iron Dome concept from the drawing board to a deployable multi-tested anti-missile system is remarkable – the latest in the impressive collection of feathers in the caps of Israel’s innovative scientists and defense industries.

Within a few months, batteries of anti-missile missiles are to be positioned in vulnerable Gaza-vicinity communities to protect them against indiscriminate rocketry fired from the Hamas bastion. The various towns are already competing hard to make sure they will be adequately covered.

That said, nobody promises that the Iron Dome will offer absolute protection. Even what is touted may well be beyond the system’s practical capabilities.

Earlier in the week, it passed its final operational tests with flying colors, but real life is a whole other opera (as Israelis may remember from the disappointing performance, to put it mildly, of the Patriots in the First Gulf War).

Deputy Defense Minister Matan Vilna’i candidly admits that the Iron Dome cannot intercept all Gazan rockets and that Israeli communities will remain menaced. Nevertheless he is confident that 80 percent of incoming projectiles can be foiled. But can they? Even the optimistic Vilna’i notes that Iron Dome cannot be deployed everywhere and would have to be installed according to “operational requirements.”

The Kassams and assorted primitive hardware, however, are highly maneuverable, and there can be scant intelligence as to when someone will fire them or from where.

Hence, unless every inch of the western Negev is covered 24/7, it’s unrealistic to expect even an 80% success rate. For how can even the most learned assessments keep up with roving Kassam crews? Adding to the complexity is the fact that some of the communities under Kassam threat are too close to the borderline for sufficient warning time. The Iron Dome system requires 15 seconds to identify an incoming Kassam. But incoming rockets can (and have in the past) hit their targets after being airborne for shorter durations. The Iron Dome, furthermore, doesn’t offer protection against mortars.

Last but not least, there’s the sticky issue of footing the bill. The popular mantra is that no price is too high to save lives, which – considered strictly on the moral plane – is indisputable. Keep in mind, though, that it costs next to nothing to manufacture a Kassam and that Hamas may have many scores of thousands of crude rockets stored in its arsenals.

One single Iron Dome anti-missile missile costs $100,000.

Clearly, firing against any flying object from Gaza could wreak havoc with the already slashed IDF budget. The army, likewise, would not want to squander all available Iron Dome batteries in a short time and then remain helpless until more come down the production lines.

The prevailing counter-argument is that only Kassams that threaten defined communities would be downed. But such calculations are far from foolproof.

It isn’t always possible to forecast where a Kassam will hit. If not every Gaza projectile is targeted by the Iron Dome, there’s no telling what the Kassam that is not taken down can destroy.

IT IS imperative that Israelis are keenly aware of all of the above, in order to shatter the dangerous delusion that a magical, defensive panacea exists to the Kassam and mortar threat from Gaza. Such delusions can become addictive. And when the magic is exposed, the bitterness can be all the deeper.

Let there be no mistake – technologically, again, the Iron Dome is a stellar achievement that holds great promise. It may fall short of constituting a major deterrent, yet it could help render the Kassam a less attractive mode of terrorizing Israelis. But its contribution to securing Israel, though potentially valuable, should not be exaggerated.

The Iron Dome underscores Israel’s ongoing technological superiority in the region, and it can buy us time. Unfortunately, it cannot hermetically seal our skies. Nor can it replace traditional battlefield offensives to take out terror bases across the lines.

Source : http://www.jpost.com/LandedPages/PrintArticle.aspx?id=182154