Disaster at the Top of the World

By THOMAS HOMER-DIXON

Published: August 22, 2010

STANDING on the deck of this floating laboratory for Arctic science, which is part of Canada’s Coast Guard fleet and one of the world’s most powerful icebreakers, I can see vivid evidence of climate change. Channels through the Canadian Arctic archipelago that were choked with ice at this time of year two decades ago are now expanses of open water or vast patchworks of tiny islands of melting ice.

In 1994, the “Louie,” as the crew calls the ship, and a United States Coast Guard icebreaker, the Polar Sea, smashed their way to the North Pole through thousands of miles of pack ice six- to nine-feet thick. “The sea conditions in the Arctic Ocean were rarely an issue for us in those days, because the thick continuous ice kept waves from forming,” Marc Rothwell, the Louie’s captain, told me. “Now, there’s so much open water that we have to account for heavy swells that undulate through the sea ice. It’s almost like a dream: the swells move in slow motion, like nothing I’ve seen elsewhere.”

The Arctic is warming twice as fast as the rest of the planet, and this summer its sea ice is melting at a near-record pace. The sun is heating the newly open water, so it will take longer to refreeze this winter, and the resulting thinner ice will melt more easily next summer.

At the same time, warm Pacific Ocean water is pulsing through the Bering Strait into the Arctic basin, helping melt a large area of sea ice between Alaska and eastern Siberia. Scientists are just beginning to learn how this exposed water has changed the movement of heat energy and major air currents across the Arctic basin, in turn producing winds that push remaining sea ice down the coasts of Greenland into the Atlantic.

Globally, 2010 is on track to be the warmest year on record. In regions around the world, indications abound that earth’s climate is quickly changing, like the devastating mudslides in China and weeks of searing heat in Russia. But in the world’s capitals, movement on climate policy has nearly stopped.

Democrats in the Senate decided last month that they wouldn’t push for approval of a climate bill. In Canada, Australia, Japan and countries across Europe, the global economic crisis and other near-term concerns have pushed climate issues to the back burner. For China and India, economic growth and energy security are more vital priorities.

Climate policy is gridlocked, and there’s virtually no chance of a breakthrough. Many factors have conspired to produce this situation. Human beings are notoriously poor at responding to problems that develop incrementally. And most of us aren’t eager to change our lifestyles by sharply reducing our energy consumption.

But social scientists have identified another major reason: Climate change has become an ideologically polarizing issue. It taps into deep personal identities and causes what Dan Kahan of Yale calls “protective cognition” — we judge things in part on whether we see ourselves as rugged individualists mastering nature or as members of interconnected societies who live in harmony with the environment. Powerful special interests like the coal and oil industries have learned how to halt movement on climate policy by exploiting the fear people feel when their identities are threatened.

Given this reality, we’ll almost certainly need some kind of devastating climate shock to get effective climate policy. That’s the key lesson of the recent financial crisis: when powerful special interests have convinced much of the public that what they’re doing isn’t dangerous, only a disaster that discredits those interests will provide an opportunity for comprehensive policy change like the Dodd-Frank financial regulations.

It is possible that the changes I’m seeing from the ship deck are the beginning of the climate shock that will awaken us to the danger we face. Scientists aren’t sure what will happen when a significant portion of the Arctic Ocean changes from white, sunlight-reflecting ice to dark, sunlight-absorbing open water. But most aren’t sanguine.

These experts are especially concerned that new patterns of air movement in the Arctic could disrupt the Northern Hemisphere’s jet streams — which are apparently weakening and moving northward. This could alter storm tracks, rainfall patterns and food production far to the south.

The limited slack in the world’s food system, particularly its grain production, can amplify the effects of disruptions. Remember that two years ago, when higher oil prices encouraged farmers to shift enormous tracts of cropland from grain to biofuel production, grain prices quickly doubled or tripled. Violence erupted in dozens of countries. Should climate change cause crop failures in major food-producing regions of Europe, North America and East Asia, the consequences would likely be far more severe.

Policy makers need to accept that societies won’t make drastic changes to address climate change until such a crisis hits. But that doesn’t mean there’s nothing for them to do in the meantime. When a crisis does occur, the societies with response plans on the shelf will be far better off than those that are blindsided. The task for national and regional leaders, then, is to develop a set of contingency plans for possible climate shocks — what we might call, collectively, Plan Z.

Some work of this kind is under way at intelligence agencies and research institutions in the United States and Europe. Harvard’s Kennedy School of Government has produced one of the best studies, “Responding to Threat of Climate Change Mega-Catastrophes.”But for the most part these initiatives are preliminary and uncoordinated.

We need a much more deliberate Plan Z, with detailed scenarios of plausible climate shocks; close analyses of options for emergency response by governments, corporations and nongovernmental groups; and clear specifics about what resources — financial, technological and organizational — we will need to cope with different types of crises.

In the most likely scenarios, climate change would cause some kind of regional or continental disruption, like a major crop failure; this disruption would cascade through the world’s tightly connected economic and political systems to produce a global effect. Severe floods dislocating millions of people in a key poor country — as we’re seeing right now in Pakistan — could allow radicals to seize power and tip a geopolitically vital region into war. Or drought could cause an economically critical region like the North China plain to exhaust its water reserves, forcing people to leave en masse and precipitating a crisis that reverberates through the world economy.

A climate shock in North America is easy to imagine. Say a prolonged drought causes major cities in the American Southeast or Southwest to run out of water; both regions have large urban populations pushing against upper limits of water supply. The news clips of cars streaming out of Atlanta or Phoenix might finally push our leaders to do something serious about climate change.

If so, a Plan Z for this particular scenario would help us make the most of the opportunity. It would provide guidelines for regional and local leaders on how to respond to the crisis. We would decide in advance where supplies of water would be found and who would get priority allocations; local law enforcement and emergency responders would already have worked out lines of authority with federal agencies and the military.

Then there are the broader steps to mitigate climate change in general. Here, Plan Z would address many critical questions: How fast could carbon emissions from automobiles and energy production be ramped down, and what would be the economic, political and social consequences of different rates of reduction? Where would we find the vast amounts of money needed to overhaul existing energy systems? How quickly could different economic sectors and social groups adapt to different kinds of climate impacts? And if geoengineering to alter earth’s climate — for example, injecting sulfates into the high atmosphere — is to be an option, who would make the decision and undertake the operation?

Looking over the endless, empty horizon of the Arctic, I find it hard to imagine this spot being of any importance to global affairs. But it is just one of many places now considered marginal that could be the starting point for a climate shock that plays a central role in the evolution of human civilization. We need to be ready.

Thomas Homer-Dixon is a professor of global systems at the Balsillie School of International Affairs in Waterloo, Canada.

Source : http://www.nytimes.com/2010/08/23/opinion/23homer-dixon.html?ref=opinion&pagewanted=all

When Is a Muslim Not a Muslim?

AUGUST 20, 2010, 6:38 PM

By TOBIN HARSHAW

Do you think Barack Obama is a Muslim? According to the Pew Center, many Americans do. According to Politico’s Josh Gerstein, Time magazine’s pollsters found that a majority of Republicans do. But here’s another question: How many of the Americans who say they think Barack Obama is a Muslim actually believe that he is one? That’s not as obtuse a query as it might appear, as some of the blogosphere’s better minds have argued in recent days.

But before we get to that far remove, let’s look at the raw poll data. The Pew survey, which was taken before the president’s seeming endorsement of the mosque near ground zero last Friday and subsequent backpedaling last weekend, found that “nearly one-in-five Americans (18%) now say Obama is a Muslim, up from 11% in March 2009. Only about one-third of adults (34%) say Obama is a Christian, down sharply from 48% in 2009. Fully 43% say they do not know what Obama’s religion is.”

Time’s poll dealt with Islam more broadly:

Twenty-eight percent of voters do not believe Muslims should be eligible to sit on the U.S. Supreme Court. Nearly one-third of the country thinks adherents of Islam should be barred from running for President — a slightly higher percentage than the 24% who mistakenly believe the current occupant of the Oval Office is himself a Muslim. In all, just 47% of respondents believe Obama is a Christian; 24% declined to respond to the question or said they were unsure, and 5% believe he is neither Christian nor Muslim.

The news led the whole gang at NBC News’s First Read to climb on the same high horse: “These results don’t many anyone look good — Obama’s political opponents (who have helped spread false information about the president’s religion and birthplace), the press (which obviously hasn’t done its job here, thanks to some outlets even serving as a megaphone by running false equivalency debates), and the American populace (which should be embarrassed).”

Polls show Americans increasingly question Obama’s religious faith. But is this really just the emergence of another political code word?

Taylor Marsh, however, doesn’t think the vast right-wing conspiracy needs any willing dupes in press:

The rise in the belief that Pres. Obama is a Muslim is due to a concerted effort from the right. Barack Obama and his team should have learned this lesson from the ’90s, but instead they were too busy running from that reality. It’s why conservatives have jumped on the Corboda House issue, and why the White House political team’s bungling of it is so deadly. Like health care last August, we’ve got another festering issue out there when the public’s mood is set on fume. Pamela Geller, Newt Gingrich 9/11 rally against the mosque planned for September is going to set the stage for an emotional engine that will drive November elections. Numbers on the economy make it worse, but the bonfire hasn’t begun to blaze.

Whether the Cordoba House is moved or not hardly matters at this point. The rallying cry on 9/11 this year will be the funnel through which the right’s fury will be lit for the midterms. There isn’t a similar fire on the Democratic Left, which is no one’s fault but Pres. Obama, who chose to listen to a team of triangulating, concession fetishists, who believed that courting conservatives was more important than listening to his base and movement progressives who know how to wage a fight.

Karoli at Crooks and Liars disagrees, and apparently feels that declaring this a non-issue will make it go away:

Because it’s “let’s be stupid because Congress is on recess and we like jumping over a cliff” month, the story actually gets some traction, because it was reported by the ever-vigilant Washington Post. That the question was polled at all lends legitimacy to it. That it was reported simply offers the cynical and the stupid cover to believe what is just simply not true, not relevant, and not an issue.

Alan Colmes takes the Dawkins-Hitchens approach: “It’s a sad commentary that it even has to be stated what faith the president observes, as if it should matter whether he follows Christianity, or any religion at all. What if he were a Muslim? What if he were an atheist? Why should that matter? And let’s not forget that some of the same critics who insist that Obama is a Muslim criticized him for going to a Christian church where prayed for 20 years, got married, and baptized his children.”

And for Paul Rosenberg at Open Left, it’s all the fault of you-know-who: “More than anything, what suggests to me is the severe danger that comes from lying to the American people. The Bush Administration did it all the time. Obama promised to clean things up. But he didn’t. He lied about that. He thought that if he just played nice, the Republicans would play nice, too. So there was no need to ‘look backward,’ and examine all the sordid, mean, and nasty–not to say lethal and illegal–things the GOP had done.”

Back to grasping reality, the Washington Post’s Chris Cillizza thinks the “don’t know” number might be the most worrisome one for the White House:

The political ramifications of the growing uncertainty regarding Obama’s religious affiliation are more difficult to ascertain. There is, without question, some significant level of partisanship inherent in questions about Obama’s faith; the less you like the President, the more likely you are to say he is a Muslim. And, in truth, that 18 percent who falsely identify the President with the Islamic faith would almost certainly never be voting for him anyway.

Perhaps more important from an electoral perspective, however, is the growing number of people who don’t know what religion the President identifies with. While most Americans don’t tend to vote based on religious faith — although being either a Muslim or a Mormon can, among certain demographic groups, complicate a politician’s electoral calculus — they do like to believe that their president is a man of faith.

The Atlantic’s Nicole Allan ponders a trickle-down effect:

If Obama himself were up for re-election in November, the fact that nearly one-fifth of Americans falsely believed he was Muslim, and that Americans in general don’t have the rosiest view of Muslims, might worry Democrats. But it’s unclear whether confusion about the president’s religious identity will trickle down to affect his party’s candidates in congressional and gubernatorial races.

Democrats are already worried about Obama’s plummeting approval and popularity ratings rubbing off on their party’s incumbents, who are facing fierce anti-Washington sentiment at home. The Muslim confusion may not intensify these worries, but it probably won’t soothe them either.

Curiously, Jason Kuznicki of the League of Ordinary Gentlemen, thinks the kerfuffle could actually help the Obama agenda:

Here’s where managed ignorance begins to destroy itself. I disagree with the president on a long, long list of policies and decisions — stimulus spending, health care, Citizens United, civil liberties, surveillance, his Supreme Court nominations… the list probably runs to pages if I think about it. He’s been bad in the areas where I knew he’d be bad, and he’s been even worse in the areas where I thought he might be halfway decent.

But every column-inch devoted to this idiot conspiracy theory forestalls meaningful debate by just that much. Which means we don’t get the political opposition we deserve, Obama’s policies don’t get the scrutiny they so desperately cry out for, and Obama becomes… all the more effective at doing just the things that I wish we could prevent.

On the right, Byron York of The Washington Examiner thinks the White House has itself to blame for not dealing with the issue more openly in the past:

The White House blames the situation on a “misinformation campaign” from Obama’s opponents. But Obama and his aides might also blame themselves for the way they’ve handled the Muslim issue over the years. The question did not come out of nowhere. As Obama said, his grandfather was a Muslim. His father was raised a Muslim before becoming, by Obama’s account, “a confirmed atheist.” Obama’s stepfather was a Muslim. His half-sister Maya told the New York Times that her “whole family was Muslim.”

Obama spent two years in a Muslim school in Indonesia and later, in a conversation with the Times’ Nicholas Kristof, described the Arabic call to prayer, the beginning of which he recited by heart, as “one of the prettiest sounds on Earth at sunset.” Given all that, it is entirely accurate and fair to describe Obama as having Muslim roots.

Yet during the campaign his aides shouted down even a measured discussion of the topic, and Obama’s critics could face ostracism simply for uttering the candidate’s middle name…. Many people do not pay close attention to news reports. It’s entirely possible some of them blurred the distinction between “Muslim roots” and “Muslim,” especially since Obama in Cairo celebrated what his campaign had once downplayed. The public may be doing the same thing now, particularly after Obama chose a White House Ramadan iftar dinner to make a high-profile statement in support of the Ground Zero mosque

Hot Air’s Allahpundit thinks this is mostly a case of honest confusion:

As for why he’s so often accused of being Muslim, the default lefty explanation is of course racism but I think it’s more a combination of his middle name, his background growing up in Indonesia, and his attempt to win over Muslim public opinion with his Cairo speech last year. And all of that gets compounded by soundbites that are taken out of context or cleverly edited to make it sound like he’s making admissions about his “true faith.” Just last week a commenter e-mailed claiming that Obama had once told Stephanopoulos that he was a Muslim and I had to send him the link to this post from two years ago to set him right.

It’s all very lame and obnoxious, especially given the testimony from pastors that Obama takes his Christian faith seriously, but much like the Birther thing, there’s virtually nothing you can say to convince someone who’s sure that O is what he thinks he is.

The neo-neocon thinks the confusion stems from the larger haziness of the entire Obama narrative:

One might just as well say he’s a space alien and leave it at that. There is no other president about whom we’ve asked similar questions, because in some essential way we’ve known who they are/were. We didn’t and still don’t really know Obama, although we’re getting there, we’re getting there.

The relevance of the speculation about Obama’s true religious beliefs is that it is a subset of the speculation on his inner core and how that is expressed in his behavior as president. What are his true wishes for, and allegiance to, this country? His actions make a great many people doubt that he has the usual conventional dedication to its history and its best interests at heart, a speculation that—despite all the arguments about the wisdom of previous presidents, and disagreements with their policies—has not been seriously leveled at his predecessors.

It is leveled at Obama, however. And it’s sticking and growing because of a combination of three things about him that are unique in presidential history:

(1) His previous track record in public life was relatively short.
(2) He has kept many of the other salient facts of his life hidden, and the press has allowed him to do so.
(3) He campaigned as one thing and has governed as another—and this is not true just of a detail or two, but of his basic political stance, including how liberal or middle-of-the-road he is.

But the conservative commentator who got the left most riled was John Hinderaker of Power Line:

Obama postures as a citizen of the world who has graced America by condescending to be our President and to instruct us. Some liberals accept this posturing gratefully, but most Americans don’t. Obama has defined himself as literally exotic. Small wonder that some Americans attribute exotic qualities to him. We’re not sure who he is, exactly, but he certainly isn’t one of us. Given the currents that swirl through world events these days, being a Muslim is one interpretation of Obama’s exoticism. Those who construe Obama in this way may well be wrong, but it is not hard to understand why they interpret his aloof non-Americanism in this way.

“I think on some level, Hinderaker is right,” responds American Prospect’s Adam Serwer, who goes on to explain why Hinderaker is mostly wrong:

Some conservatives see Obama as being different from them, and they deploy “Muslim” as an epithet to express their suspicion and anger toward him. I’m sure part of it also has to do with conservative elites reinforcing or at least winking at the notion that Obama is being deceptive about his religious beliefs and that describing someone as a “Muslim” is some kind of an insult. As the Pew poll notes, “Beliefs about Obama’s religion are closely linked to political judgments about him. Those who say he is a Muslim overwhelmingly disapprove of his job performance, while a majority of those who think he is a Christian approve of the job Obama is doing.” In a less politically correct time they probably would have used a different word.

Slate’s David Weigel runs with that thought: “Maybe before the Great Mosque Freak-Out of 2010 this would have been more surprising, this idea that ‘Muslim’ is synonymous with ‘un-American’ or ‘anti-American.’ But for three weeks we’ve been asked to admire the resilience and bravery of the family members of 9/11 victims who believe that the existence of a Muslim worship center defiles the area near Ground Zero. It’s acceptable, respectable to argue that this religion, not just the radical perversions of it, is a threat to America. So it becomes a way of describing what’s wrong with Barack Obama.”

And Washington Monthly’s Steve Benen takes it to its conclusion:

In other words, we’ve come to a point in our discourse at which “Muslim” isn’t an adjective used to describe 1.5 billion people; it’s an adjective some Americans use as an insult. While some Democrats used to criticize George W. Bush with words like “idiot” and “liar,” Obama’s detractors now use “Muslim” in much the same way. And the more the president’s support falters, the more “Muslim” he appears in the eyes of his critics.

As a cultural matter, this is insane. As a political matter, there doesn’t appear to be much anyone can do to convince Americans that the president is not, in fact, a secret Muslim.

Doug Mataconis of Below the Beltway is hardly a liberal, but he’s no less disturbed than the preceding troika:

I disapprove of the President’s job performance and I don’t think that the President is Muslim, for example… But, for some group of Americans, quite obviously, opposing the President means that you believe every stupid conspiracy theory about him, like the 22% of Americans who believe that President Bush had advance knowledge of the 9/11 attacks but choose not to prevent them. There’s no rational reason for people think things like this, they just do.

That last explanation is disturbing on some level, though. If thinking badly of the President makes someone more likely to think he’s a Muslim, then the next logical conclusion is that people think there’s something bad about being a Muslim. Unfortunately, as another poll out today seems to indicate, that seems to be exactly what some Americans think … It is, quite honestly, easy to believe dark and conspiratorial things about a group of people when you don’t know anyone who belongs to that group.

His final point isn’t any less true for being familiar. What is new, however, is that you can tar the politician of your choice with those conspiracies even if you know he’s not literally a member of the group. So, I’ll ask it again: How many of the Americans who say they think Barack Obama is a Muslim actually believe that he is one? Kudos to anyone who can come up with an answer.

Source : http://opinionator.blogs.nytimes.com/2010/08/20/when-is-a-muslim-not-a-muslim/?pagemode=print

A Brutal Mental Block !

Every writer has to encounter the so notorious writer's block during the process of his writing career.  The reasons could be different in each individual case.

Similarly, I am also facing an unmanageable block that I have termed as 'Brutal Mental Block' since I, along with the whole Pakistani nation and the rest of the world, watched the following video that first went on air 4 days after the unbelievable tortured killing of two young boys.

I have seen HD graphic videos on Facebook that I don't like to post here for apparent reasons.

This is a deliberately selected low definition video of the brutal, gruesome, ruthless, barbaric and inhumanely tortured killing of two innocent teenager brothers by the mad crowd of beasts in Sialkot, Pakistan on Sunday, 15th of August, 2010, on the forged accusation of dacoity.



And the only reason for posting it here is merely to let the respectable visitors of my blog realize my state of mind after watching these videos.


I seek your pardon for not being able to write or post anything for the last few days and most probably may not be able to do so for another couple of days until I completely get out of the shock.


Please bear with me.


God bless you all and fill every moment of your life with His special blessings.

Blackwater Founder Moves to Abu Dhabi

August 17, 2010

By JAMES RISEN

WASHINGTON — Erik Prince, whose company, Blackwater Worldwide, is for sale and whose former top managers are facing criminal charges, has left the United States and moved to Abu Dhabi, according to court documents.

Mr. Prince, a former member of the Navy Seals and an heir to a Michigan auto parts fortune, left the country after a series of civil lawsuits, criminal charges and Congressional investigations singled out Blackwater or its former executives and other personnel. His company, now called Xe Services, has collected hundreds of millions of dollars from the United States government since 2001.

Current and former colleagues said Mr. Prince hoped to focus on security work from governments in Africa and the Middle East. They also said he was bitter about the legal scrutiny and negative publicity his company had received.

“He needs a break from America,” said one colleague, speaking only on the condition of anonymity about Mr. Prince’s long-rumored move.

Mr. Prince does not face any criminal charges, but five former top company executives have been indicted on federal weapons, conspiracy and obstruction charges. Two guards who worked for a Blackwater-affiliated company face murder charges from a 2009 shooting in Afghanistan, and the Justice Department is trying to revive its prosecution of five former Blackwater guards accused of killing 17 Iraqi civilians in 2007.

Over the past several years, Congress has also conducted a series of investigations of Blackwater’s activities in Iraq and Afghanistan, including an inquiry by the House Intelligence Committee into the company’s involvement in a proposed Central Intelligence Agencyassassination program.

Mark Corallo, a spokesman for Mr. Prince, declined to comment about Mr. Prince’s move. Richard L. Beizer, a Washington lawyer representing Mr. Prince in a civil case, did not respond to requests for comment.

In documents filed last week in a civil lawsuit brought by former Blackwater employees accusing Mr. Prince of defrauding the government, Mr. Prince sought to avoid giving a deposition by stating that he had moved to Abu Dhabi in time for his children to enter school there Aug. 15. In the documents filed in federal court in Virginia, Mr. Prince’s lawyers describe Abu Dhabi as Mr. Prince’s place of residence. His deposition is now scheduled to take place there next week, lawyers involved in the case said.

Mr. Prince made a name for himself during the height of the war in Iraq, when Blackwater became the most recognizable brand name in the booming field of private security contracting. The company, which Mr. Prince founded in 1997, expanded rapidly, winning a series of contracts with the State Department, the C.I.A. and the Defense Department.

But Blackwater personnel in Iraq soon gained a reputation for cowboy tactics and the use of excessive force while guarding convoys of United States diplomats, leading to complaints from Iraqis and friction with the United States military.

Blackwater’s biggest public crisis came in September 2007, when its guards on a convoy in Nisour Square in Baghdad opened fire with machine guns, grenade launchers and other weapons, killing 17 Iraqi civilians. Five guards were indicted in the United States on manslaughter charges, but the charges were dismissed late last year by a federal judge. The Justice Department is appealing that ruling.

The Nisour Square killings ultimately led the State Department to drop Blackwater from its diplomatic security contract in Iraq. But the Justice Department has been investigating whether Blackwater sought to bribe Iraqi government officials to allow the firm to operate in the country after the Nisour Square killings.

In 2009, with scrutiny of Blackwater’s activities intensifying, Mr. Prince changed the company’s name and overhauled the management. He sold the company’s aviation arm early this year, and finally placed the whole company, including its huge headquarters and training complex in Moyock, N.C., up for sale in June.

 Source : http://www.nytimes.com/2010/08/18/world/18blackwater.html?pagewanted=print

Blackwater Reaches Deal on U.S. Export Violations

By JAMES RISEN

WASHINGTON — The private security company formerly called Blackwater Worldwide, long plagued by accusations of impropriety, has reached an agreement with the State Department for the company to pay $42 million in fines for hundreds of violations of United States export control regulations.

The violations included illegal weapons exports to Afghanistan, making unauthorized proposals to train troops in south Sudan and providing sniper training for Taiwanese police officers, according to company and government officials familiar with the deal.

The settlement, which has not yet been publicly announced, follows lengthy talks between Blackwater, now called Xe Services, and the State Department that dealt with the violations as an administrative matter, allowing the firm to avoid criminal charges. A company spokeswoman confirmed Friday that a settlement had been reached. The State Department spokesman, Philip J. Crowley, said he could not immediately comment.

The settlement with the State Department does not resolve other legal troubles still facing Blackwater and its former executives and other personnel. Those include the indictments of five former executives, including Blackwater’s former president, on weapons and obstruction charges; a federal investigation into evidence that Blackwater officials sought to bribe Iraqi government officials; and the arrest of two former Blackwater guards on federal murder charges stemming from the killing of two Afghans last year.

But by paying fines rather than facing criminal charges on the export violations, Blackwater will be able to continue to obtain government contracts. While the company lost its largest federal contract last year to provide diplomatic security for United States Embassy personnel in Baghdad, where the Iraqi government was incensed by killings of Iraqis in one highly publicized case, it still has contracts to provide security for the State Department and the C.I.A. in Afghanistan.

Blackwater, its reputation tainted in part because of the excessive use of force by some of its personnel in Baghdad, sought for years to extend its reach far beyond the war zones of Iraq and Afghanistan.

For a time, the company’s founder, Erik Prince, had ambitions to turn Blackwater into an informal arm of the American foreign policy and national security apparatus, and proposed to the C.I.A. to create a “quick reaction force” that could handle paramilitary operations for the spy agency around the world. He had hopes that Blackwater’s military prowess could be an influential force in regional conflicts around the world.

Mr. Prince, a former Navy Seals member and the heir to an auto parts fortune, took an interest in Africa, particularly Sudan, and he is said to have wanted Blackwater to step in to help the rebels in southern Sudan, which is predominantly Christian and animist, fight the Sudanese government and the Muslim north, despite United States economic sanctions.

Blackwater’s ambitions in Sudan were described in detail by McClatchy newspapers in June.

The settlement with the State Department, involving practices from the days before Blackwater was rebranded as Xe Services, comes as Mr. Prince is trying to shed his ties to Blackwater and its past activities.

He overhauled the company’s management in 2009, changed its name, and has now put the privately held company up for sale. He has just moved with his family to Abu Dhabi from the United States, a move that colleagues say was a result of his deep anger and frustration over the intense scrutiny he and his firm have received in recent years.

The State Department export controls require government approval for the transfer of certain types of military technology or knowledge from the United States to other countries. But Blackwater began to seek training contracts from foreign governments and other foreign organizations without adhering closely to American regulations.

The company also shipped automatic weapons and other military equipment for use by its personnel in Iraq and Afghanistan in violation of export controls, and in some cases sought to hide its actions, according to the government. In one incident, Blackwater shipped weapons to Iraq hidden inside containers of dog food.

A federal investigation into the company’s weapons shipments to Iraq led to guilty pleas on criminal charges by two former Blackwater employees who are believed to have cooperated with a broader federal inquiry.

Investigators reportedly looked into whether some of the weapons that were shipped to Iraq were sold on the black market and ended up in the hands of a Kurdish rebel group, the Kurdistan Workers’ Party, or P.K.K., which Turkey considers a terrorist organization. Turkish officials reportedly complained to the United States about American weapons seized from the group.

In 2008, after a federal investigation of Blackwater’s actions was begun, the company admitted “numerous mistakes” in its adherence to export laws and created an outside board of experts to supervise the firm’s compliance.

Current and former government officials say that the government’s inquiry into some of Blackwater’s export control violations began as part of a federal grand jury investigation in North Carolina, where Blackwater is based. But the matter was apparently shifted to the State Department when the criminal investigation in North Carolina narrowed its focus.

That grand jury handed down the indictments of the five former Blackwater executives earlier this year. That indictment includes charges that Blackwater executives sought to hide evidence that they had given weapons as gifts to King Abdullah of Jordan.

Despite the fines and investigations that have plagued Blackwater, the firm has continued to win contracts from the State Department and the C.I.A.

In June, the State Department awarded Blackwater a $120 million contract to provide security at its regional offices in Afghanistan, while the C.I.A. renewed the firm’s $100 million security contract for its station in Kabul. At the time, the C.I.A. director, Leon E. Panetta, defended the decision, saying that the company had offered the lowest bid and had “cleaned up its act.”

Source : http://www.nytimes.com/2010/08/21/world/21blackwater.html?ref=state_department&pagewanted=print

Islamic Radicalization

Lessons from Both Sides of the Atlantic on Tackling Islamic Radicalization

Azeem Ibrahim 

I recently had the honor of being invited to the Pentagon to meet the US Assistant Deputy Secretary of Defense and the Deputy National Security Adviser from the White House.

Although I have been to Congress and met a sitting President, I had never, until now, visited the Pentagon. I have to confess that my first impressions of it were that it was just like it is portrayed in the movies! You walk past guys looking at big screens with maps of who-knows-where, huddled round multiple computer screens in rooms with ominous-sounding names like 'Central Operations Command.'

But whereas the Pentagon of the movies is always about massive military force, we were there to talk about the less glamorous threat of homegrown radicalization in the Muslim American community, and specifically the South Asian diaspora.

I had given a briefing to Congress on the topic, because of my experience here in Scotland. Because the reality is that the challenge of Islamic radicalization is one which Europe and the US both face in common. There are important differences, of which more later, but the dynamics of radicalization are the same on both sides of the Atlantic.

What is more, over the past few years, scholars have built up an impressive array of research into how radicalization works in practice on the streets. We now know a lot more than we used to about how kids come to be radicalized.

For example, a former CIA operations officer called Marc Sageman conducted the largest ever survey of radical Muslims to date, in order to understand why kids radicalize. In a groundbreaking study, he analyzed over 500 profiles of Islamic terrorists. He concluded that radicalization normally happens in four distinct stages.

It is sparked when the individual reacts with moral outrage to stories of Muslims suffering around the world. Some move on from that to the second stage, in which that spark is inflamed by a radical Manichaean interpretation which explains such suffering in the context of a wider war between Islam and the West. A few move on to the third stage, in which that resentment is fueled by negative personal experiences in western countries (e.g., discrimination, inequality, or just an inability to get on despite good qualifications). And of those, some make it into the fourth stage, in which the individual joins a terrorist network which becomes like a second family, albeit one closed to the outside world. This situation stokes the radical worldview and prepares the initiate for action and, in some cases, martyrdom. The crucial stage is reached when a young Muslim begins to believe that Islam justifies violence and closes his or her mind to other viewpoints.

Remember, this explanation - the four stages - are not a product of speculation. They are the patterns detected in the hundreds of cases of radicalization which Sageman studied.

Another trend which has been noticed by those who study Islamic radicalization is the correlation between radical extremism and lack of Islamic education. Researchers estimate that almost 90% of violent Islamists have had no authentic religious education at all. For example, none of those who carried out the 9/11 attack on the United States or the 7/7 attack on London had received such education. Even al-Qaeda's leadership lacks credibility. Osama Bin Laden never attended a religious seminary and has no formal religious training. Most of its leaders have backgrounds in medicine, engineering, or business.

The fact that the vast majority of radicals have received no such education makes it look very much like authentic Islamic education prevents violence. So the best way to prevent such violence is to teach young Muslims what real, authentic Islam actually says.

I am pleased to say that this is the approach that the US is beginning to take. They are planning the Presidential Summit on Entrepreneurship, which, by encouraging both economic and social entrepreneurship, will both bypass the disenfranchisement which Sageman identified as being the third step on the path to radicalization, and use social entrepreneurship as a mechanism to build capacity within Muslim communities.

But on this topic we can learn from each other. The US still has much to learn from the UK. For example, any Islamic education programs in the US will need to understand how centrally important it is to find teachers who are knowledgeable in both secular and Islamic law and who can synthesize their knowledge of both. The teachers also need to be personally credible to potential young radicals.

The best people for this are often young teachers who are a few years older than their students, who have at one time been tempted towards radicalization themselves, and so who can empathize with the pull their charges may feel, whilst also being able to explain why it is wrong. Lastly, they need to understand the inadequacy of relying solely on Mosque-based education programs.

But there is also much that we in Europe can learn from the US.

Despite a lack of formal education programs, the demographics of Muslims in the US tend to be different from European Muslims. Compared to the Muslim minorities in Europe, those in the States tend to be more educated, and to work in the professions. That means they tend to be more integrated into US society, which prevents them reaching the third stage of the process Sageman identified.

US Muslims also tend to see themselves as much more American than European Muslims see themselves as European. I think this is because, more than Europe, many see the US as less of a nation and more of a set of ideals, like freedom, equality, and democracy. If you subscribe to them, you can have a stake in society. We, unfortunately, do not have an equivalent in Europe. Perhaps that is why many European Muslims still find themselves being treated as immigrants. In many, particularly continental European countries, the Islamic minority is treated essentially as a problem and an object of suspicion and disdain. We should perhaps not be so surprised that so many have serious identity crises.

I came away from the meeting inspired by the way that the US sought to solve its societal problems. The US, like the UK, is willing to listen and learn, make an effort to understand the problem of Islamic radicalization, and work out how to solve them. On this front, the work has begun.

Azeem Ibrahim is a Research Scholar at the Kennedy School of Government at Harvard University, Member of the Board of Directors at the Institute for Social Policy and Understanding and Chairman and CEO of Ibrahim Associates.

Source : http://www.huffingtonpost.com/azeem-ibrahim/lessons-from-both-sides-o_b_682278.html

The Constitution and the Mosque

President Obama showed his understanding of the Constitution, and his respect for the American people, last week when he defended the right of a Muslim community group to build a mosque and Islamic center two blocks north of ground zero in Lower Manhattan.

Mr. Obama’s words at a White House dinner celebrating the Muslim holy month of Ramadan were simple and forceful. “Muslims have the same right to practice their religion as everyone else in this country,” he said.

Republican ideologues, predictably, used his statement as one more excuse not only to attack the president but to spew more of their intolerant rhetoric.

Newt Gingrich, who has been beating this drum for weeks, accused the president of “pandering to radical Islam” and said the mosque would be a symbol of Muslim “triumphalism.” We were hesitant about repeating those comments here. But the country ignores such cynicism and ugliness at its own peril. Make no mistake, the rest of the world is listening.

Like President George W. Bush before him, President Obama warned against linking all followers of Islam to terrorists. “Al Qaeda’s cause is not Islam — it is a gross distortion of Islam,” he rightly said. It is our tolerance of others, he said, “that quintessentially American creed,” that stands in contrast to the nihilism of those who attacked us on Sept. 11, 2001.

We wish he hadn’t diluted the message the next day, telling reporters that he wasn’t commenting on “the wisdom of making the decision to put a mosque there. I was commenting very specifically on the right people have that dates back to our founding.”

He would have done better if he had explained the wisdom of going ahead with the project, which developers said is intended to bring Muslims and non-Muslims together. In addition to a place of worship, it would have a pool and performing arts center. They also have said they want the board to include members from other faiths — a promise they should take care to keep.

Too many Republican leaders are determined to whip up as much false controversy and anguish as they can, right through November. Some Democrats will cave. We were disturbed on Monday when a spokesman for the Senate majority leader, Harry Reid, said that Mr. Reid “thinks that the mosque should be built someplace else.”

Mr. Obama and all people of conscience need to push back hard. Defending all Americans’ right to worship — and their right to build places to worship — is fundamental to who we are.

Source : http://www.nytimes.com/2010/08/17/opinion/17tue2.html?_r=1&ref=global&pagewanted=print

China's Ticking Time Bomb

By SAM CHAMBERS

Sometimes statistics collide at just the right time to paint a picture. China’s growing energy needs are resulting in a surge of industrial incidents, and there is little chance that the country’s string of environmental catastrophes are likely to ebb anytime soon.

It’s been one month since the People’s Republic suffered its worst ever oil spill. The disaster on July 16 came at a sensitive time for Beijing, as news emerged that China has surpassed the United States in energy consumption.

The spill happened after two pipelines exploded at an oil storage depot at the port of Dalian run by the China National Petroleum Corp., parent of the world’s most valuable company by market capitalization, PetroChina. As early as 2006, the accident site had been deemed an environmental risk by local authorities.

The incident triggered a spectacular blaze that burned for three days, sending an acrid stench across the northeastern metropolis, a regular winner in polls for China’s most livable city.

Just days after the explosion the International Energy Agency said China was now the world’s largest energy consumer, not the United States. The historic shift comes years ahead of forecasts, as China’s energy use has more than doubled in less than a decade.

The I.E.A. said China’s 2009 consumption of energy from oil and coal to wind and solar power was equal to 2.265 billion tons of oil. The United States used 2.169 billion tons last year. Per capita, though, the Americans still consume five times more energy.

Last year China became the world’s largest car market. In August 2009 alone Beijingers bought more new cars than the whole American population. And yet China has just one-twentieth as many cars per person as the United States, with Mckinsey, the management consulting firm, estimating the number of automobiles on China’s roads will more than triple by 2020.

Beijing quibbled over the I.E.A. numbers. Nevertheless, the statistical haze was brought into sharp clarity days later with figures from China’s own environmental protection ministry.

The number of environmental accidents rose 98 percent in the first six months of the year, according to the ministry, as demand for energy and minerals lead to poisoned rivers and oil spills in the country that is now the world’s largest polluter.

“Fast economic development is leading to increasing conflicts with the capacity of the environment to absorb” demands, the ministry said in a statement late last month. It added that air quality deteriorated for the first time in five years in the first six months of this year.

The last two decades have seen oil supplies become a top national security priority. In January 2009, China’s dependence on imported foreign oil reached 50 percent for the first time. This dependency will only grow — neither China, nor India for that matter, have significant untapped oil reserves to call upon; their economic growth will continue to vastly outstrip their ability to increase domestic oil production. Importing the bulk of their energy requirements is now a fact of life for the world’s two most populous nations.

Between 2004 and 2009 China accounted for fully 40 percent of the total increase in world oil consumption, a key factor in the rising oil prices seen during that period. Beijing knows that any long-term interruption to oil supplies would leave the country hostage to foreign interests, cause chaos in its manufacturing industry and throw millions out of work.

Thus, China has embarked on an effort to build up its shipyards and merchant fleet, and is increasing strategic investment in certain port areas, predominantly in the Indian Ocean. Beijing wants China to be the world’s largest shipbuilder by 2015, and to have 40 percent of all the country’s oil imports carried on Chinese vessels by that date.

A decade ago there was just one shipyard in China capable of building the largest tankers. Now, the country has a dozen yards easily capable of building mammoth ships.

In the year 2000, China’s fleet carried only 6.7 percent of the country’s crude oil imports; that share surged to 20 percent in 2005. The 40 percent goal is likely to be reached in 2011, four years ahead of schedule, as almost fortnightly deliveries of new tankers currently are made to Chinese owners. Yet quality remains an issue — shoddy workmanship makes many Chinese-built ships environmental time bombs.

China also has dramatically sped up the construction of large oil terminals above 200,000 dead weight tons. In the year 2000, there were still only three large oil terminals for the entire country. By the end of 2009, China had built 13 oil terminals of 200,000 dead weight tons and above, with a capacity to handle 282 million tons of oil.

In the space of decade China has built up an incredible array of infrastructure to handle its seaborne oil trade. No one has ever assembled a tanker fleet or string of terminals of such scale in a similar time frame. But such speed does bring problems — as the Dalian disaster shows.

Sam Chambers is co-author of “Oil On Water,” a study of how China is shifting global oil trading patterns. 

Source : http://www.nytimes.com/2010/08/17/opinion/17iht-edchambers.html?ref=global&pagewanted=print